Table of Contents

Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15.

The Revelation of God

1 John 4: 9, 16

The Second Advent Before, not After, the Millennium.

The Second Advent of Christ Premillennial.

William Kelly

A Reply to the Rev. D. Brown, D.D.

first

second

first

second

II

III

IV

VI

VII

VIII

IX

The Lord's Second Coming and Kingdom.

The Second Coming of Christ.

Abram: The Friend of God

Genesis 12, 13.

GENESIS 14.

GENESIS 15.

GENESIS 16.

GENESIS 17.

GENESIS 18.

GENESIS 19.

GENESIS 20.

GENESIS 21.

GENESIS 22.

GENESIS 23.

GENESIS 24.

GENESIS 25.

The Actions of the Holy Spirit in the Assembly.

1 Corinthians 12.

THE ACTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE ASSEMBLY.

The Administration of the Fullness of the Seasons.

Ephesians 1: 10

The Advocacy of Christ

Is the Anglican Establishment a Church of God?

The So-called Apostolical Fathers on the Lord's Second Coming.

A Draft Appeal

Thus saith the Lord.

The Apostle at Athens

With appeals to Souls now.

Acts 17: 16, 17.

ACTS 17: 18.

ACTS 17: 19-21.

ACTS 17: 24.

Babylon and the Beast.

Rev. 17.

In the Beginning,

And the Adamic Earth:

Preface to the First Edition.

GENESIS 1: 1

GENESIS 1: 2

GENESIS 1: 3-5

GENESIS 1: 6-8

GENESIS 1: 9-13

GENESIS 1: 14-19

GENESIS 1: 20-23

GENESIS 1: 24, 25

GENESIS 1: 26, 27.

GENESIS 1: 28

GENESIS 1: 29-31.

GENESIS 2: 1-3.

Blackheath re Ramsgate, A Letter.

The Body, the Church.

Born of Water and Spirit.

John 3: 5.

The Bride, the Lamb's Wife.

Rev. 19 - 22.

The Broken State of Christendom

1 Cor. 3

The Call of the Bride

The "Strange Doctrine" on Propitiation.

Christ: not Christendom, nor Judaism.

The Judgment, not Reunion, of Christendom.

Christian Science: A Delusion of the Day.

On "The Church" in a Place, City, or Town.

The Church of God,

SYNOPSIS.

THE CHURCH OF GOD.

Eph. 4.

1 Cor. 12: 1-13.

1 COR. 14.

John 4: 10-24.

Eph. 4: 7-11.

2 Tim. 2: 11-22.

The Church.

Eph. 4: 4.

The Church, and the Churches.

The Church of God and the Ministry of Christ,

The Church of the Scriptures.

The Church of God

Behold He Cometh with Clouds

The Coming and Day of the Lord viewed morally.

2 Thess. 2: 1, 2.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 2: 1-8.

The Comforter.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 2

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 1-2

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 3

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 4

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 5-7

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 8

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 9-12

1 TIMOTHY 6: 14

The Coming of the Lord

Covenant or Testament — Which?

Brief Notice of G. Cox's Thirty-six Reasons Against the Immortality of the Soul.

The Creation

Genesis 1, 2.

The Higher Criticism.

The Scripture of Truth

Daniel 11, 12

Daniel 12

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision.

Daniel 2, 7

The Eastern Little Horn

Daniel 8

The Only Key to Daniel's Prophecies.

The Day of the Lord.

The Day Star.

2 Peter 1: 19.

Deliverance.

The New Development 1890

The Doctrine of Christ, and Bethesdaism.

Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World."

The Elders in Heaven.

Rev. 4, 5: 1-10.

Elements of Prophecy

Answer to Historicism

The Second Advent

Table of Contents

Publisher's Note (Present Truth Publishers)

Preface

Introduction

The True Principle Compared with Current Maxims

Alleged Presumptions for Historicalism

The Four Empires

The Vision of the Ram and He-Goat

Supplementary Observations

The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9

The Scripture of Truth:

General Conclusions

The Lord's Great Prophecies in the Gospels

The General Design of the Apocalypse — Objections Met

The General Design of the Apocalypse — Direct Arguments

On the Year-Day Theory

The Year-Day Theory Continued

The Apocalyptic Numbers

The Year-Day Theory Concluded

Concluding Observations

{Prophecy: Its Classes, Purpose and Study}

The Jewish and Christian Expectation of Christ Briefly Contrasted

Part Six:  Miscellaneous Texts and Subjects

Israel's Millennial Temple

The Little Horn of Daniel 7

The Little Horns of Daniel 7 and 8: Not the Same

Daniel 8: 14

Translation of Daniel 9: 26, 27

The Antichrist

Daniel 12: 11, 12

Daniel 12: 2

Matthew 13 and the Present Hope

The Ten Virgins

Does the Parable of the Ten Virgins Refer to the Jewish Remnant?

1 Corinthians 6: 9 and Partial Rapture

Saints and Believers

The Catching Up of the Man-child

The Fall of the Dragon and His Hosts

The Seven Heads and the Seven Kings

Fine Linen

Translation of Revelation 20: 5.

Where Will the Heavenly Saints Reign?

Application of Revelation 22: 17

Will the Church Escape the Great Tribulation?

The Two Parts of the Lord's Coming

When Will the Saints be Caught Up?

When Are O.T. Saints Raised?

Looking for the Appearing

The Bride

America, Australia, etc., in the Coming Crisis

Abraham and Christians

Earthly and Heavenly Spheres During the Millennium

Millennial Conversion

The Separate State And the Resurrection

Enduring Temptation and Entering into Temptation.

James 1: 2, 12; Matt. 26: 41

Exodus 1-3: 22

Ex. 1: 1-7

Ex. 1: 8-14.

Ex. 1: 15-22.

Ex. 2: 1-10.

Ex. 2: 11-25.

Ex. 3: 1-5.

Ex. 3: 6-22.

The Feasts in Deuteronomy 16.

Jesus Forsaken of God,

and the consequences.

Psalm 22.

The Free Service of Christians:

The Fulness of Christ.

John 1: 29-51.

Our Future Glory, and Our Present Groaning in the Spirit.

Rom. 8: 18-27.

A Letter to Mr. Geo. B. Gilpin,

In Reply To His "Warning," etc.

The Gospel of the Glory of Christ.

2 Cor. 4: 6.

The Gospel of God.

A Letter on Recent Heterodoxy.

A Letter to an Inquiring Hindu.

The Heavenly Hope

JOHN 14: 1-3

LUKE 12: 35-39

1 CORINTHIANS 1: 7

2 PETER 1: 19

REVELATION 22: 16-17

The Coming Hour of Temptation.

Rev. 3: 10

Innovation.

Isaac

Introduction

His Antecedents

Genesis 12-20

The Son and Heir Born

Genesis 21: 1-7

Isaac Abiding Hagar and Ishmael Dismissed

Genesis 21: 8-21

Jehovah, God Everlasting

Genesis 21: 22-34

Isaac Dead and Risen in Figure

Genesis 22: 1-14

Isaac: The Numerous Seed, and the One Seed

Genesis 22: 15-24

Sarah Dead and Buried

Genesis 23

The Bride Called for Isaac

Genesis 24: 1-9

Genesis 24: 10-21

Genesis 24: 22-29

Genesis 24: 28-33

Genesis 24: 34-49

Genesis 24: 50-53

Genesis 24: 54-60

The Meeting and the Marriage

Genesis 24: 61-67

Isaac the Heir

Genesis 25: 1-6

Abraham Dead, and Isaac Blessed

Genesis 25: 7-11

The Generations of Ishmael

Genesis 25: 12-18

The Generations of Isaac

Genesis 25: 19-26

The Sons, Esau and Jacob

Genesis 25: 27-34

Jehovah Appears to Isaac

Genesis 26: 1-5

Isaac in Gerar

Genesis 26: 6-11

Isaac Blessed of Jehovah

Genesis 26: 12-16

Isaac Up to Rehoboth

Genesis 26: 17-22

Isaac at Beersheba

Genesis 26: 23-35

Isaac Old and Seeing Dimly

Genesis 27: 1-5

Rebekah's Advice

Genesis 27: 6-17

The Common Sin and Shame

Genesis 27: 18-29

Isaac Blessing Esau

Genesis 27: 30-40

The Family Distracted

Genesis 27: 41-46

Isaac's Charge to Jacob

Genesis 28: 1-5

Isaac's Death

Genesis 35: 27-29

The Known Isaiah.

Isaiah 40-56.

Isaiah 28-35.

Isaiah 36-39.

Isaiah 40-48

Isaiah 49-57.

Isaiah 58-66.

"Is baptism a figure of what is, or what is about to be, possessed?"

On Isolation, or Independency.

Jacob.

Gen. 25: 30-34

Gen. 27.

Gen. 28: 1-9.

Gen. 28: 10-22.

Gen. 29: 1-14.

Gen. 29: 15-30.

Gen. 29: 31-35.

Gen. 30: 1-13.

Gen. 30: 14-24.

Gen. 30: 25-43.

Gen. 31: 1-21.

Gen. 31: 22-55.

Gen. 32: 1-12.

Gen. 32: 13-32.

Gen. 33: 1-15.

Gen. 33: 16-20.

Gen. 34.

Gen. 35: 1-8.

Gen. 35: 9-15.

Gen. 35: 16-20.

Gen. 35: 21-29.

Gen. 37.

Gen. 38, 39.

Gen. 40 - 45.

Gen. 46, 47.

Gen. 48.

Genesis 49, 50.

Jewish and Christian Expectation of Christ Contrasted.

Christ — the Door of the Sheep

John Nelson Darby as I knew him.

Joseph

JOSEPH

Gen. 37: 17-36

Gen. 39: 1-6

Gen. 39: 6-18

Gen. 39: 19-23

Gen. 40: 1-8.

Gen. 40: 9-15

Gen. 40: 16-23

Gen. 41: 1-7

Gen. 41: 9-14.

Gen. 41: 15-32.

Gen. 41: 45-57.

Gen. 42: 1-9.

Gen. 42: 10-20

Gen. 42: 21-28

Gen. 42: 29-38.

Gen. 43: 1-15.

Gen. 43: 15-34.

Gen. 44: 1-17.

Gen. 44: 18-34.

Gen. 45: 1-15.

Gen. 45: 16-28.

Gen. 46: 1-7.

Gen. 46: 28-34.

Gen. 47: 1-12.

Law and Grace

Ex. 34; 2 Cor. 3.

Life Eternal.

A Critique

by W. Kelly of:

"Lights in the World," and "The Gravity of the Moment."

Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer.

The Lord's Supper

1 Cor. 11.

"We must all be manifested."

2 Cor. 5; John 5.

A Man of God

2 Timothy 3:17

Remarks on Matthew 18.

On the Millennium.

On the Millennium

Remarks on Dr. Wardlaw's Sermon on the Millennium

Christian Ministry

The Rev. A. Moody Stuart on "Brethren."

The Mystery and the Covenants.

The Mystery of Godliness.

Active Neology

The Blessedness and Scope of the New Creation.

No More Conscience of Sins.

Heb. 10: 2

Not  Sinai but Zion

With other coming glories heavenly and earthly.

The Lord's Prophecy on Olivet

Matthew 24: 45 - 25: 30

Matthew 25: 31-46

The Great Olivet Prophecy

of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Wherein are contrasted the Jewish and Christian calling and hope.

The End of the Age.

The New Age.

Jewish disciples.

Jerusalem and the Temple.

The Gospel of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth.

Then let them which be in Judea flee to the Mountains;

Christ the Key to the Bible.

Further Jewish Signs.

Jerusalem and Judea.

The Eagles and the Carcase.

Who are the Elect?

The Parable of the Fig Tree.

This Generation.

"A

Generation to Come."

Taken or Left?

The Christian and Jewish Hope Contrasted.

The Faithful and Wise Servant.

All That Love His Appearing.

The Great Tribulation Jewish.

The Ten Virgins.

The Ten Virgins Christian not Jewish.

The Outpouring of the Spirit.

The Foolish Virgins.

The Midnight Cry.

The Shut Door.

Judgment of the Living Nations.

One Body and One Spirit

Oneness and Union

Concerning Unions: Worldly or Religious.

Openness in Receiving and Freedom in Serving.

Why many saints were outside the Park Street of 1881.

"The Plymouth Brethren,"

The Pentateuch and its Critics.

Peter's Denial of the Lord.

MATT. 26: 69-75.

MARK 14: 66-72.

LUKE 22: 54-62.

JOHN 18: 25-27.

Philadelphia and Laodicea.

Rev. 3: 7-22.

Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII.

On the Unity of the Church.

THE FOLD.

UNITY.

PERPETUITY.

THE FAITH.

HEADSHIP.

DOES THE CHURCH TEACH?

THE CHURCH OR ASSEMBLY, CHRIST'S BODY

WAS PETER CHRIST'S VICE-GERENT?

"The powers that be"

Presbyterianism,

Presbyterianism,

The Priesthood of Christ.

Hebrews 4: 14-16.

THE ADVOCACY OF CHRIST.

1 JOHN 2: 1, 2.

The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison.

'The prize of our high calling'

The Promise of the Father.

Propitiation

The Prospects of the World according to the Scriptures.

2 Thessalonians 2: 1-12

Providence and Faith.

Ex. 2; Acts 7; Heb. 11.

Purchase and Redemption.

1 Corinthians 7: 20-24.

Who Made Purification of Sins?

The Purpose of God for His Sons and Heirs.

Eph. 1: 3-7.

The Rapture of the Saints:

who suggested it, or rather on what Scripture?

Rationalism.

1 Cor. 2: 6-16.

"Receive ye the Holy Ghost."

John 20: 22.

On Reconciliation.

The Red Heifer

Numbers 19.

THE THIRD AND SEVENTH DAYS

Numbers 19

The Salvation of God

as typified in the Red Sea and the Jordan

The Red Sea

Exodus 14

The Jordan

Joshua 3, 4

Christ for the Saint and Christ for the Sinner.

Rev. 22: 17.

"Hold fast that which thou hast."

Rev. 3: 11.

Remarks Connected with the Study of the Revelation.

The Righteousness of God: what is it?

Rom. 3: 21-26.

Kings and Priests

Kings and Priests

Rationalism and Ritualism Distinguished

Gospel Truth Preserves from Rationalism and Ritualism

Christ Jesus Gives Us the Truth

Christ Takes the Place of the Figures of Moses

Christ Brought God In and Put Sin Out

Brought Nigh through Christ's Death Not Incarnation

Ritualism Denies the Rent Veil

A Special Earthly Priesthood Revived

The Present Christian Priesthood

The So-called Christian Fathers

The “Fathers” and the Scriptures

Ritualism is Built on Incarnation Only

Christ's Atoning Death Slighted

The Rending of the Veil

Dr. Newman and the Converted Robber

Every Christian a Churchman

Romans and Righteousness

Christian Privileges Surrendered

Ritualism and Baptism

Ritualism and the Lord's Supper

Ritualism and the Risen Christ

The Sabbath and the Lord's Day.

Present Salvation

Salvation by Grace

The Schools of the Prophets

On Alleged Neutrality and Real Sectarianism.

Self-abnegation.

The Separate State, and the Resurrection.

Behold My Servant

Isa. 52: 13-15, Isa. 53.

The Seventy Weeks

Daniel 9: 24-27

Sinai and Its Terrors.

Hebrews 12: 18-21

The Sinner Saved

Luke 7: 36-50.

Sanctification.

The Soul — neither mortal, nor to sleep.

Restraint put on speaking in the Assembly

The Spirit of God

Stephen the Christian Proto-Martyr.

Acts 6, 7.

Acts 7: 1-8

Acts 7: 9-16.

Acts 7: 17-28.

Acts 7: 29-35.

Acts 7: 36-43

Acts 7: 44-50

Acts 7: 51-53

Acts 7: 54-56.

Acts 7: 57-60

Christ Tempted and Sympathising

Christ the Life

John 14: 6.

Christ the Truth

John 14: 6

Christ the Way

John 14: 6

The Hope of Christ

compatible with prophecy.

Brethren and their Traducers:

"The Unity of the Spirit"

Ephesians 4: 1-3.

The Need for Diligence

Too large a Unity-Looseness

Too Narrow a Unity-Sectarianism

Intelligence no Test for Reception

Christ the only Centre (and opposing claims)

Human Obstacles to the Unity of the Spirit

Forbearance and Faithfulness

Our Urgent Duty-to keep the Unity of the Spirit

Scriptural Grounds of Exclusion

Grace and Liberty

The fact is that we are apt to forget our own beginnings and the gracious dealings of the Lord with us when we ourselves first broke bread, knowing as little perhaps as any.

For a long time Satan has endeavoured to falsify the testimony of Christ amongst those professedly gathered to His name. One of his wiles has been, under pretence of light and righteousness, to undermine grace and truth in recognising freely the members of Christ's body.

Never is the church rightly or truly learnt save

according to the word, where you must leave room for growth in the truth by faith and God's grace.

God's Principle of Unity.

Unity of the Church in Inspired History.

The Unity of the Spirit, and what it is to keep it.

"Unto my name."

Matt. 18: 20.

Gathered unto His Name:

"I am the true vine."

The Vision: and the just shall live by faith.

Habakkuk 2: 2-4.

Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples.

John 13: 1-10.

By Whom "Sent"?

Use and Abuse of Wine, etc.

The testimony of the Bible to the:

THE USE AND ABUSE OF WINE

GENESIS.

EXODUS.

LEVITICUS.

NUMBERS

DEUTERONOMY.

JOSHUA.

JUDGES.

1 SAMUEL.

2 SAMUEL.

1 CHRONICLES.

2 CHRONICLES.

NEHEMIAH.

ESTHER.

JOB.

PSALMS.

PROVERBS.

ECCLESIASTES.

SONG OF SOLOMON.

JEREMIAH.

LAMENTATIONS.

EZEKIEL.

DANIEL.

HOSEA.

JOEL.

AMOS.

MICAH.

HABAKKUK.

ZEPHANIAH.

HAGGAI.

ZECHARIAH.

GENESIS.

NUMBERS.

DEUTERONOMY.

JUDGES.

2 KINGS.

2 CHRONICLES.

NEHEMIAH.

PSALMS.

PROVERBS.

ISAIAH.

JEREMIAH.

HOSEA.

JOEL.

MICAH.

HAGGAI.

ZECHARIAH.

EZRA.

DANIEL.

DEUTERONOMY.

ISAIAH.

ISAIAH.

HOSEA.

NAHUM.

CANTICLES.

ISAIAH.

JOEL.

AMOS.

PROVERBS.

ISAIAH.

LEVITICUS.

NUMBERS.

DEUTERONOMY

JUDGES.

1 SAMUEL.

PSALMS.

PROVERBS.

ISAIAH.

MICAH.

MATTHEW.

MARK.

LUKE.

JOHN.

ROMANS.

EPHESIANS.

1 TIMOTHY.

TITUS.

REVELATION.

ACTS.

LUKE.

The Word of God

2 Tim. 3: 16.

Christian Worship

Worship in the hour that now is.

John 4: 23, 24.

WKELLY - Miscellaneous Writings

William Kelly

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

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

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

Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15.

(Bible Treasury Vol. 3 p. 298-300.)

W. Kelly.

It is amazingly sweet that the very day on which we came together to remember Christ, and to show forth His death, speaks to the intelligent ear of eternal blessedness — tells those who come at the bidding of the Lord Jesus that the great victory is won; that that is removed which was the only difficulty in the way of God.  And, beloved, there was but one thing that ever was a difficulty to Him, and I think I may say with reverence, that there was a difficulty even to God.  Undoubtedly all things are possible with God; but then it was possible only at the cost of His Son.  Now this was the great thought always before God.  For there never was a more profound mistake than to suppose that sin was a mere accident that came into the world; and that the gift of Jesus, the redemption of Jesus, was a bare remedy and necessity on God's part, if that terrible thing, sin, was to be taken out of the way.  It is perfectly true that sin was in no wise entitled to fill a place in the universe of God.  "An enemy hath done this."  It was God's enemy that brought it into the world once spotless, and the outward reflection of God's beneficent power; and all was ruined.  But then it is of all importance for our souls to bear in mind steadily that it was always the thought of God to permit that the very worst should be done in order that He might show His own depths of love and grace to those that were ruined by sin, that He might bring out such tenderness, and patience, and wisdom, and goodness in the midst of evil, as never else could have been seen.  And goodness is never so thoroughly proved as where there is that evil which resists it and hates it.  It is all well when things are smooth.  We know from personal experience that it is an easy thing to go on when there is no difficulty in the way, where everything is congenial and in favour of what is good; where there is no trial and no contrariety to the spirit.  But that which puts the soul to the proof is where everything runs hard and foul against it.

Now God permitted that the enemy should introduce into this world that which denied and opposed Himself at every point; that which left God not a particle of character in the world that He had made; for what in God has not been belied of Satan?  What evil, what calumny has not Satan invented, have not our hearts believed about Him?  Who is it we have so much dreaded as God?  Who is it  we have most endeavoured to flee from?  Yet, in the face of all this evil which God has allowed to come out in its worst colours, He has provided that there is not a word, nor a deed, nor a feeling that Satan could excite in this world, but brings into evidence something of God that never had been so well known before.  The wonder is this: the Son of God has come, lived, died, and is risen; and we assemble here together at His bidding on His resurrection day.  The evil meanwhile goes on; God has Himself told us that it must increase; "evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived — bad times — worse times — the last days the worst of all — until what God has wrought in the death and resurrection of Christ is brought out before the whole world by His power. But just think, now, what a wonderful place is ours! And this was the prominent thought upon my spirit; that we, having found Christ, have had our feet, as it were, set upon the rock of ages by God Himself, that we stand upon that which is imperishable and unchangeable, and which brings us into association with the very deepest thoughts of God, and with the greatest victory that even He has ever achieved. For, in fact, all other victories are but the result of that one which is already ours in Christ. Because it must be evident to every intelligent mind that, if that which is the worst of all, and the root of all the confusion, has been met; if the poison that has been trickling all over the world, and penetrating and corrupting everything else — if that has been dealt with, it is only a question of God's will, the bringing, out of that which He has already found and given to us in the death and resurrection of Christ. Now, every Christian knows that he has found it there. I do not mean that every Christian realizes what God has done there. If so, there never would be anything but hearts entirely above all the circumstances of this world. There might be holy weeping and loving sorrow over a groaning, sinful world, but the heart would be evermore overflowing with thankfulness to God. For it is quite possible to have in the affections of our hearts drawn out towards the saints of God in all their trials, and to have the deepest feeling for the poor world, and yet have nothing but praise and thanksgiving as we look at Christ and think who has given Him for us and to us. This is our place. This is what God Himself brings before us in connection with the very day on which we assemble to remember Christ; and it is a blessed thought for us that God did not choose that day when Christ died. Most solemn it was that the Messiah should be smitten in the house of His friends — though it was the death of Him by whom alone our sin could be put away; for God Himself was obliged to turn away His face from His beloved Son when our sins were laid upon Him. But the day of the cross is not that which summons us together, nor is it the day that intervened between his death and resurrection — the day when man was keeping, alas! his holy day; when those who thought themselves something for God on the earth, but who were really the enemies of the Father and the Son, vainly supposed that they were sanctifying a day to the Lord of Hosts — the day when their own Messiah lay in the grave, slain by their wicked hands.

But now this is the grand change, when God has put forth His power once more — not now to make a world that Satan might come and spoil it all, but the day when the new power is put forth — when God has raised Jesus up from the dead, who had all our sins laid upon Him. And where are the sins? Where is that which God charged upon Jesus? It is gone! He is risen! And out of His resurrection flows every blessing, and this not to the Church only; for there is no lasting blessing that God will confer but what is founded on that death, and flows out of that resurrection. Yet the evil was allowed to go on. The world was making merry, little thinking that such a work was done. Nor was it, indeed, intended of God to be openly, undeniably known to the world yet. But God speaks from heaven Himself. He sends down the Holy Ghost to those whose hearts are opened by His grace upon the earth. And they know this mighty work that God has wrought — that Christ is risen, the first-fruits of them that slept. And there we have the Holy Ghost; for He cannot rest when He opens such a theme till He shows us the end of it — if indeed end it can be called; for he launches out into that scene where God shall be all in all, and there shall be no end — where there will not be one single enemy to put down — not a sorrow to heal — not a breach to repair; but when all will be the full and suited result of the power of that life which is already ours in Christ.

Beloved friends, how do our hearts enter into all this? We owe it to God that we should feel all that is around is — that we should take notice of that which He is doing — that there should be no sorrow of the creature or of His own children, but what we should have hearts entering into it, and expressing our groan by the Spirit to God. For, so richly are we blessed, that God calls us to be imitators of Himself in this evil world. And how does not God feel for every wound and all the havoc that His enemy has caused? He is tender in pity towards all. Even if he were to execute judgment upon the proudest city that had threatened to ravish His beloved people — the city of Nineveh, He must first send a prophet to warn them; and that prophet, little entering into His mind, might prefer judgment to mercy, if his own character as a prophet lay at stake. Yet, on the confession and repentance of the people, God turned aside the blow. It might be but a little confession, and one that soon passed away. And the destruction came afterwards, and fell upon the fickle, guilty people, for their early repentance was but a transient thing. But there never is even so much but what God takes notice of it. And, therefore, when there was even this outward repentance of the people — clearly not of the Holy Ghost (for had it been the work of the Holy Ghost, it would have had permanency), God sets aside His own prophet, makes him heartily ashamed of himself, and even the little children and the very cattle of the place are brought into the remembrance of God.

We little enter into the largeness of His goodness, and His compassion, for every creature that He has made. But again, the very depth of Hs compassions, when despised, and where there is the unbelief that rejects Jesus, only brings the more surely eternal destruction from His presence.

But what a thought is this astonishing mercy and compassion of God for the ruined and miserable in the world! It is true that misery is not taken away, and the death of Christ has left the world apparently in the same state. The world, in fact, only got rid of One that troubled it. But what have the saints got through it? We are on God's side. We look at the death and resurrection of Christ, on the side not of man, but of God. And what do we see? In this poor world, which man might think but a speck in creation, we see the wonder of wonders that puts to shame not merely all on earth, but everywhere else; for what is there in heaven itself compared with the death and resurrection of Christ? Never, at any time, nowhere in any sphere that God has made, and that man in his poor thoughts and feelings might set above it, is there ought to be compared with that which calls us together this day. We remember One who was God, but who became man for us — One who did not only come from heaven, full of goodness and power, but to stiffer death, the death of the cross, because we had sins that could not otherwise be put away. But what thanks shall we render unto God that we know this? that we have His own certain testimony of it? that all that God wants is that we should take the fulness of the blessing He has given us? We cannot make too much of Christ's death and resurrection. God has brought us within the precincts of perfect goodness. He has borne away all our evil; and what we have to do is simply to believe and enjoy and rest upon Himself. We may even find death encroaching, coming near and touching and withering up, as it touches that which is very dear to us. But we know resurrection-life in Christ — a far better life than a life would have been that had not known death. For what would have been even Christ, living in this world, if Christ had not died? (2 Cor. 5) It is His death that proves the power of His life, as of His love — the life which triumphed for ever over death. For the eternal victory is won, and God has given it to us. There is nothing more to be done for us in respect of our sins. There is a great deal to be done in respect of our bodies and of the heavens and earth over which we are to reign. But there is nothing to be done to make good our position before God, or our deliverance, and the putting away of everything that could be a difficulty before God. The only real difficulty has been grappled with, and it if; gone. The difficulty was that we lay under sin, and that God could not get over sin. But it is gone — entirely gone. He has done it Himself, at the cost of His beloved Son, and God leaves us in the world that we may learn the sufficiency of His grace in practice, as we know the triumph of it in Christ. And we are come to remember what He has done and to rejoice in what He is to us, to anticipate the sure glory that is coming, glory without end. No doubt it is glory that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Am I not put in the place of a son in his father's house, who has perfect community of interest in all that his father has and is? We are waiting to be manifested as sons and heirs through Christ; but such we are even now. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Nothing will be altered as regards the world till God has taken us to Himself to be with Jesus — till Jesus has come to receive us and to represent us in the Father's house. For there will be no such thing for us as slipping into heaven. He will come for us to receive us, that when we do enter the Father's house, it may be with fulness of acceptance in that Blessed One who makes all sweet that the Father looks upon. We shall be ushered in by the Son Himself — not even the least one will be left behind. What a change will it be for all — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye! Then God will have the joy of having all His own way, and then Satan will have the misery of seeing all those whom he had attempted to injure fully blessed of God!

Such is our portion even now in hope. We are not like those who have to wait till our bodies are changed to know what God feels towards us. May we remember that we are not dependent upon anything that may happen. We rest upon this — God has shown us Jesus. He has given its to believe in Jesus, and not only in Him, but in the mighty work — that God has wrought for us in him.

May we enter into this our portion with increasing simplicity, remembering that the day approaches!

The Revelation of God

1 John 4: 9, 16

W. Kelly.

It is an immense thing to have a revelation of God. I do not mean merely a revelation from God, but a revelation of God Himself. God has given us both: revelations, again and again, revelations of the most varied character; revelations in the most suitable order; but, most of all, and specially with the view to this, the revelation of Himself, the revelation of Himself in this world.

For little as this world may be, compared with other parts of the creation of God, it is here that man is — here now; and this is a very solemn consideration for you and for me. It is here that we are put to the test as moral beings; here that we are lost or saved.

Men may speculate about other worlds, but no man has any real ground to say that God has ever revealed Himself except here, or indeed that there are others to whom He would reveal Himself as He has revealed Himself here. May I go farther, and venture to say this — He never revealed Himself anywhere as He has done here? It is here that He sent His Son; it is here that He sent Him to be a man (unspeakable witness of His grace towards man!), and remember when man was fallen. Not till then was there the very smallest word of it from God, but man was no sooner fallen than He speaks; and now the word that God spoke so long past is become a great substantial fact, which puts every heart, every conscience of every man, woman, and child, completely to the proof. Do I prefer sin to God? Do I prefer my selfishness, my misery, the darkness and guilt of sin, to God and His grace?

For when God did send His Son into the world, it was to deal with sin, it was to deal with Satan, it was to bring in what man could find nowhere, else, LIFE — eternal life! Life that could feel according to God, life that could have pleasure in the presence of God, life that could take delight in the will of God, life capable of knowing and enjoying God! And where was this found? Where is it? Is it in man's heart? In ordinances? Nowhere but in the Son of God! But (wondrous to see now) the Son of God a real man! certainly much more than a man, but a man. He was God from everlasting to everlasting, but He became a MAN. Assuredly He did not cease to be God; nor will He ever cease to be a man! and there it is that God has given in itself the most astonishing pledge and proof that He has no designs against man, nay, that He had the fullest love towards man.

Yet this was what man was so slow to credit. And why so? Most of all because he is a sinner. He has a bad conscience; he is afraid of God. And good reason he has to be afraid of God, as far as he is concerned; the best reason has he if there be none other than he. But there is. There is one man that is God — I will not say like God. He is never said to be "like God." And I will tell you why. Because He is God. He is said to be the "image of God." He has given me to see what God is. He has brought the very image of God before my heart, before me in this world. He is the "image of the invisible God." But He is never called His likeness, for this were to deny His glory. He is God's very transcript. He is the true God and Eternal Life; and this is the One that God sent into the world to save, to save all that believe — not to be a judge, yet He will judge. Every man, as man, nay, every man absolutely, must give account — I do not say be judged. Every man as man must be judged, but every soul, every saint even, must give account of all that he has done in the body.

You observe that I have spoken of a difference in these two things, and there is one. It is not understood generally, but I will tell you what and why it is. It is because salvation is not understood! Thanks be to God, people do not lose salvation because they do not understand it. Wretched were it so, that is, if God only blessed according to their measure, but He blesses according to Christ. And is there any measure there? On the contrary, what a fulness, fulness infinite, according to Himself, according to all His grace and His truth.

Such is the Saviour! Is He yours? Do you know Him? Tell me not that He cannot be known. Are you a heathen, or a Jew? You, a Christian, to say that God cannot be known! What sort of Christianity is that? More guilty than Judaism or even heathenism. A heathen, just because he was a heathen, had not the knowledge of God. He had therefore gone after false gods, gods that were no gods. No wonder he should say God cannot be known; but even a Jew knew something about God, though he did not know God Himself. And you who take the place of being a "Christian," even if it be on the slenderest confession, be it so! But what Christianity is based upon is this, that God has revealed Himself; yet you, you call yourself a "Christian," and do not know Him! perishing, in the presence of the richest abundance! dying, although eternal life has come here in the person of the Saviour!

It is for sinners, life has come; not for those who have life. Though I grant that all that can strengthen, all that can fill the heart, all that can guide and bless, is found in that same One who is "Eternal Life." But I ask, For whom was He sent, and for what? Here we have it. "In this was manifested the love of God towards us; in that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him." And this is so true that no man can see the Son and believe in the Son, without having eternal life. So this very inspired writer says; and you must remember an inspired writer means one who gives the sure unfailing truth of God. It is impossible for God to lie, and this is the way He speaks in His word. Surely there is One who had the words of God when He was here. He is the Word of God. But the apostle says, "He that knoweth God, heareth us." He could be known, then. The apostles were raised up, they were inspired, for the very purpose of communicating God's word.

"Heareth us." One does not pretend to be above the apostles, or to do without the apostles, for we have their writings, but hears them. "He that is not of God heareth not us." And do you hear not the apostles? When you say that God cannot be known, you certainly do not hear the apostles. You never learned that from them. On the contrary, you have learned it from men who speak as of the world, and the world hears them. I do not say they speak "for" the apostles, for they speak against their word, though they may call themselves, ever so much, their successors. And this is exactly the state in which Christendom now is. These high pretensions always go with denying the sure present knowledge of God by faith.

THAT WE MIGHT LIVE THROUGH HIM

But let us hear what he says who writes these divine words: "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, in that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him." This was His very object. There was no life here, nor could life be got through any other. It was not enough to point to the Son in heaven; that would not satisfy God. No, God sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him; and it is in this way that souls do live. He sets before us this One, and tells us who the Son of God is, even Jesus — undoubtedly the son of man, but the Son of God, the only-begotten Son of the Father, yet God just as much as His Father. You are a man if you are the son of your father. In a still more glorious, ineffable way was the only-begotten Son of God Son of the Father. And in this also it is that God triumphs, because man had only believed a lie, judging of God by Himself — the sure way to be lost. You cannot by searching find out God. The Son of God, "the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Thus the simplest believer knows the only true God; there is none he knows so well. He is known by my need, by my wants, in His own divine love and skill meeting me where I am and in spite of all that I am.

It is evident that, if the only-begotten Son was sent into the world that we might live through Him, there was no life without Him, for life does not mean mere existence. True, the soul is immortal, but the immortality of the soul does not hinder the soul from being lost. The soul is immortal; and, further, the body will be raised. Oh! it is an awful thought that the body will be raised to be bound to the guilty soul, that both soul and body should prove what it is to have despised God — to have hated Him — and to have proved it by despising the Son. It is not merely for his sins that man is lost, but because he refused this unspeakable love of God who sent His Son. He is too proud, too given up to selfishness; he does not want to give up his sins, above all, he will not be beholden to God; he would rather risk it.

There it is that the Spirit of grace works to touch the conscience of the sinner. Where does he turn then? To the very God he has wronged, avoided, dreaded, hated too. There is no surer proof of hatred than that you never care to see a person's face. Now you who have not the knowledge of God, is not this what you would like best — if you could only be sure you could always escape God; if you could go on as you like, and never face God, never have to give account of your sins? If you could go on with your pursuits, your pleasures, without being cast into hell, would you not like that? You are dead in sins!

But the Spirit of God, when He works, makes the truth quickening. I am a sinner. I am ashamed to think of my sins, ashamed to tell them to God. I feel I have been most guilty. Yet such an one turns by Christ to God. He confesses his guilt, cost what it may. If God were to cast him into hell on the confession of his guilt, it would be just, and man must justify God. He tells it all out to God. He must draw near — the consciously shameful, shameless, guilty soul — and pour out the confession of his sins into the ear of God. And what does God tell out to him? "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, in that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him."

THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS

Is that all? Most blessed it is, but not all. Then we find immediately in a still fuller way God coming in to that poor soul feeling its state, its incapacity to love God, and it learns, "Herein is love, not that we loved God," but the very reverse. We endeavoured to escape God, we desired not the knowledge of His ways. Such was our wretched history. But "He loved us and sent His Son, the propitiation for our sins." It was not enough " that we might live through Him"; because, if we lived, if we felt what was due to God, if we had a desire to do the will of God, it must be still immense misery, and constant fear, in the sense of His holiness and of our utter unfitness for His presence.

When there is no life one tries to get rid of God's presence — to drown oneself in pleasure; one turns even duties into ruin by occupying oneself with anything to shut out the sense of having to do with God. But where there is a conscience, one must go to Him. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him," said one of old. There is a distinct desire after Him, while one maintains His righteous character. But how little is He known as Saviour, for this is what He is — One who has thoughts of good, and not of evil — One who (when a man thus espouses the cause of God against himself, when he heeds the word that condemns him out end out) sent His Son the propitiation, for my sins! Thus not only does He give a nature that hates sin, but the mighty work of the Lord Jesus Christ is to take away all my guilt out of His sight. Ah! there is love indeed — not merely that I might have spiritual feelings instead of natural religion, not merely that I might groan over my evil, but that I might be justified. And this is secured by the work of Christ's atonement for me. I see it in all its perfection. He sent His Son for me to live, for Him to die! What does He give me in His death? Propitiation for my sins. In this twofold way God has proved His love.

It is in this world — in no world but this — that eternal life is given. It is not to any other world but here that Jesus came. We have not the smallest ground to believe that the Son of God ever came, ever died, in any world but this. God is not looking for great people but for wretched sinners. He is not looking for great worlds any more than people, but a sinful earth! He is seeking wretched sinners. But now that the Son is come and I believe in Him, He is my life, and my sins are sent away. Is that not enough? No; He is coming to take me on high. Would you like to be in heaven? No place you would enjoy so little, if in your sins! You would dread it, although you do not like to say so, more than any spot in God's creation. The light, the love, the holiness of God, would be unbearable to you. But God, who has searched you through and through sent His Son. Why? He has but one Son — the only begotten, yet His Son was sent to sinners. He is the "propitiation for our sins." Why fear, if you believe on Him?

The glory of His person is maintained. Take a poor guilty woman caught in the vilest sin. The moment Christ speaks a word, they who had accused her were the first to turn from His presence. Thus the glory of the Lord, the light in His person, is far more confounding than in the law. One ray from Him — they fled from His presence! What will it be with you when you stand to give account of yourself to God? Stand and give account now. Faith does not wait for the day of judgment. Those who believe are willing to tell out their sins now. What do they find? Judgment? Life eternal, a new nature, the knowledge and love of God, their sins forgiven. Men say that they believe in the remission of sins. Well, are your sins gone? "Oh no," you will answer. Is there then no such thing as the certainty of the truth? If I do not know them gone, can I say truly that I know God? It is not a question of activity, or depth, of mind. Thank God the gospel is for the poor, and for persons of feeble mind too, for God has saved many such. It has nothing to do with any particular power of this kind; but I will tell you with what it has to do — with my bowing to God's word that condemns me and puts me down as a sinner without life, who yet has his sins; and there they are, crying out for the judgment of God. My being such a sinner is a shame to me, but to believe in His Son is life and glory. Oh, what delight God has in having souls who believe in His Son! Do you suppose it honours God to wait, to hesitate? Do you suppose that not to receive His word is the way to believe? May God give you to hearken, to believe and to know what this is by the Spirit of God! Naturally you are afraid, and indifferent, or hostile, because you are full of self-will and bent upon pleasing yourself; and this with consciousness of sin, with judgment before you, but in presence of God sending His only-begotten Son to bless you in His love if you bow to Him now.

But there are those who receive Christ, and what is the result? They possess the fulness of God's love. Who are they? Every believer. There is no believer that has not life according to it. It may be very feeble — that is, there may be what is of himself which shrouds and enfeebles — and God has His way of taking down all that thus hinders His own work; but I affirm that every soul thus born of God loves God. The apostle does not say 'We ought to love God' because we do. It is a necessity of the new nature, of the life of God, in every believer. But he does say, "We ought to love one another" — we love God, but as to one another — well, one sees plenty of faults, and surely (if conscience is in the light of God) most in oneself. Doubtless this hinders, but God has His way of using all for good, while humbling us for our faults. Do you think God loves His children less because they are faulty? You have a child that other people don't think much of, whatever you do. But do you love that child less because of its faults? It may be you spoil the poor child. I scarce ever knew a parent that had not his affections, his heart, drawn out by those faults of the child. God loves us, and this love is so real that our faults only draw out the wonderful resources of His love. If you love a child of yours it is thus with you. I do not mean God makes light of anything wrong: but He never turns aside His love, and people who think so do not know God as He has revealed Himself. They have a very feeble knowledge of who and what He is.

HE HATH GIVEN US OF HIS SPIRIT

"No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us." When Christ was here He was the great witness, and now, wonderful to say, Christians are the witness. Oh, how ashamed of ourselves we ought to be when our levity blots out the testimony God looks for in this world! It is a great deal more than knowing the love. Now if one of us had written these words, he must have been thought most presumptuous. Yet are they true. Hereby we know, "because He hath given us of His Spirit." I admit it is a very strong word, and that no man could have ever said it or gathered it except by divine teaching. The apostle writes it calmly and quietly, as the real truth about the Christian, "because He hath given us of His Spirit."

It is not merely "the Spirit," because the Spirit was given occasionally to persons who were not renewed. Mighty power wrought in people, said to be partakers of the Spirit, who were not born of God. Here it is more than that. "He hath given us of His Spirit" implies, not merely power but communion of nature, and that is the force of the difference. It is what characterises God's own nature, and that is the force of the difference: It is what characterises God's own nature and that in divine power, and this is what belongs to the Christian now. It is not only life. The Lord Jesus is eternal life, and we live by Him. Perhaps there is some soul miserable enough here, who yet has eternal life. If I do not give God credit that He has truly blotted out my sins, I cannot have peace. If I really believe God's love that the Saviour came down for it, why am I still troubled about my sins?

'But I don't walk as I ought.' Well, my dear friend, let us settle one thing at a time. There is no such encouragement for walk afterwards as that all is secured between God and the soul. The Holy Ghost is given, sealing the person and working in this new divine nature. That is what I call the communion of nature, the Holy Ghost being the power. Now the result of this is, that we not only go to God, but we dwell in God. Is not this much more than going to Him in time of trouble? It is not merely occasional visits, nor merely that life is eternal, but as the Holy Ghost, dwells in us, so we dwell in God.

THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD

"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (ver. 14). That is the effect of being thus blessed of God. We have a special testimony to which we are called. The apostle does not speak about the law; God has put the Christian on an entirely different ground. It is not commandments, though there are commandments that are most suited, because there is a Living Person to obey. There is a Divine Person that has quickened us, sealed us, and come down as power; not merely to cheer us, not merely as Comforter. The Holy Ghost is always the Spirit of power. It is in communion with God, with His mind and His affections; and this is what characterises the Christian. "We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." "We have seen" — what a sight! Greater than Moses ever saw! It was never made known till He (the Lord Jesus) came that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Now it is the testimony of every Christian. The believer who does not testify this does not understand Christianity. The truth has been spoiled; there is that which is wrong mixed up with it. Half Jewish, half Christian, are their thoughts; but here it is Christian testimony, that "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour," not merely of Israel, but "of the world." No matter how bad, how distant, how dark, the individual sinner might be found, He is the Saviour; and such a Saviour could not be confined to any portion of mankind.

CONFESSING JESUS THE SON OF GOD

"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God" (ver. 15). Whosoever shall confess! Oh, weigh it well, you that have never yet confessed. Here is what will save your soul. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God (not merely shall be saved, but) God dwelleth in him and he in God." Oh, what a wonderful thing! Is this true? Nothing more so. How is it made true? The Holy Ghost has taken His place in that man, that woman, that child. "God dwelleth in him," and as a consequence of it, "he in God." The heart has an abiding rest in God. I am certain of God; I can be certain of no one else. You may have perhaps that most faithful, blameless, devoted friend. Ah, you are not always certain of your friend. There may come the moment when you will be disappointed; but never in God. The simplest Christian knows it. I do not say he may not be foolish and forget, but he knows it is his folly. The apostle is looking at the consequence of thus confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. It is there that God dwells. It was not miraculous outward power, but what was always greater, what could not be seen. "Jesus died and rose again." Is that all? "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God."

WE HAVE KNOWN AND BELIEVED THE LOVE

"And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us" (ver. 16). He goes back to the same great truth. "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him." Now, observe the change of order here.

The reason is this. Where he is speaking of the confession of Christ, the object is to give the soul confidence in Him who fills the soul with His own pure grace. He has received the Spirit. The consequence is that his heart goes out to God. But now he is walking like a Christian; he is dwelling in love. Instead of being occupied with evil he is occupied with love, and dwelling in love. What is the consequence? "He dwelleth in God," he rises above all that is here, and the result is that God puts fresh blessing upon him, working in power, God dwells in him.

Not merely is it the fact of the Holy Ghost dwelling in him, true as it is. First of all, God gives him the Spirit. God dwells in him and he in God. "Hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." Then, as the effect of that, my heart goes out to Him; I have confidence in Him; I spread out great and small into His bosom. But if I am walking in love, in the midst of all that is calculated to act upon the flesh and distract, God makes me enjoy fresh blessing, acting in me by the Spirit. It is not merely the fact of having the Holy Ghost, but God working in us by it — and not less than this is the Christian's portion. The least Christian should say that God dwells in him and he in God; but the most spiritual cannot rise beyond this, that, as he dwells in God, God dwells in him. This is the privilege of communion, as that is of faith. And if I know the one, I ought to seek the other. If blessed by grace let us walk in the fellowship of His love (Gal. 5: 25).

Oh, may those that confess Jesus to be the Son of God not fear to take their stand, that this is the truth, that this is their portion. Blessed portion! for if God dwells in me, and I in Him, He is training me in that which will be the greatest joy for eternity. Of course then only will all the hindrances be gone, and the circumstances in which we now are; but I am not speaking of circumstances, but of God dwelling in me and I in Him. This is the portion that grace gives to the simplest confessor of Jesus. Fear not then to take it, fear not to confess Him. This honours God if I speak and act upon the truth of God. If this be the case, I can confide in Him for everything. It is not only a hope; it is not merely cherishing desires. It is a great, glorious, divine fact for faith only. It is not that blessedness first, and then I believe: I believe first, and then the blessedness comes. Next follows deep enjoyment, which becomes powerful in our dependence on God, and works according to God.

May the Lord bless His own word, both to those who do confess, and to those who have never yet confessed, that Jesus is the Son of God! Amen.

W. K.

The Second Advent Before, not After, the Millennium.

W. Kelly.

Bible Treasury 17: 137, etc.

Scripture is not only the mine, but the standard, of truth. Error cannot stand before the inspired word. Not that the believer is competent of himself either to draw out or to apply aright; our sufficiency is from God, Who also made us sufficient, says the apostle, as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

Every Christian cites 1 Thess. 1: 10; 1 Thess. 2: 19; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 1 Thess. 4: 16, etc.; 1 Thess. 5: 2; 2 Thess. 1: 6-10; 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2, 8; 2 Thess. 3: 5, to prove that Christ's coming, or παρουσία, is our hope, and that His day will bring judgment on the world. With all this, it is allowed, the apostle's later Epistles agree, as do those of James, Peter, John, and Jude. It is not otherwise with the Gospels.

But it is a strange position to except the Book of Revelation, especially Rev. 20: 1-8, unless we concede the synchronism of vv. 8, 9, with 2 Thess. 2: 8! Even so it is confessed that the very great difficulty is involved of a preliminary victory over Satan earlier than the final victory. "But possibly," says professor Beet, "the events of Rev. 19: 11, Rev. 20: 4, may take place without any interruption of the ordinary course of human life" (p. 30)! Let the Christian read and judge.

To what is all this unbelieving perplexity owing? To the notion that Christ's coming cannot possibly be followed by the millennium and its subsequent conflict, and must therefore follow these events. But is this true? What saith the scripture?

The Lord taught the disciples, not merely that He was to return from heaven, but that they were to be as men looking for him. "Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning; and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their lord, when he shall return from the marriage feast; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may straightway open unto him "(Luke 12: 35, 36). Of a millennium to intervene first, not a word. What is said rather excludes it; for will it be a "little flock" as now, when "Jehovah's people shall be all righteous," and "all nations shall flow" unto the mountain of Jehovah's house? Christ's coming was not a mere doctrine assented to, nor a prophetic event at such or such a date. A living hope was bound up, with His coming — they knew not how soon. The Lord laid the utmost stress on their state of habitual expectancy — that when He comes and knocks, they may open immediately unto Him. "Blessed are those (He adds, v. 37) Whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching." This goes far beyond mere acquiescence that He will come at some distant date.

Prof. Beet treats this attitude even now, and of course à fortiori of old, as a mistake. "It was near to the thought of the early Christians"; yet he agrees with the infidel that it was an error. "It must be at once admitted that we cannot, with reasonable confidence, expect a return of Christ during the lifetime of men now living. Still less can we daily expect His return" (pp. 149, 150). This with a vengeance is the higher criticism of modern thought.

It is really bolder than any man should be with (not apostles only but) the Lord of all. Did not He know the truth? Did He deliberately set His own to watch in a way open to Gibbon's sneer or Mr. B.'s correction? Did He not encourage them to watch for His coming from heaven as the only right state of soul? His teaching is uniformly to this end: so much so that He characterized the evil servant in Matt. 24: 48 by saying in his heart, "My lord tarrieth," the prelude to beating his fellow-servants, and to eating and drinking with the drunken. In accordance with this the Lord presents the virgins in the following parable as gone forth to meet the bridegroom. Such in fact was the position of the early Christians, the wise and the foolish alike. The Lord warned that during His delay they would all go asleep, as they all did. This was but partially "in the days of the apostles"; but it became worse and worse not long after. Certain it is, as He predicted, that soon "they all slumbered and slept." But the Lord also indicates that "at midnight," when all was darkest, there is a cry, Behold the bridegroom! Come (or, Go) ye forth to meet him. Then what activity! all arose and trimmed their lamps. It is this cry that awakes slumbering Christendom. When the foolish are in quest of the grace they lack, the wise resume the original place so long abandoned by the saints, the bridegroom comes, and those that were ready go in with him to the marriage feast. The foolish and unready come to find the door was shut. It is false that our Lord's return was not expected as a constant outlook "by His better informed followers."

Nothing was revealed in prophecy to blunt the edge of that hope. The Lord seems to have expressly provided that His own, however intelligent, might be kept, expecting Him as habitually as the simplest. Thus, as far as parabolic language goes, none could infer that the same saints should not go out to meet Him, fall asleep, wake up, go out afresh and in with Him to the wedding. On this principle are all the parables constructed: the wheat-and-tarefield, the mustard-seed, the leaven, and the rest in Matt. 13, in no way forbid but fall in with waiting for Him in their lifetime, whatever may be the filling up of the sketch as He tarries. It was the due posture of hope, which all the truth strengthens instead of weakening. Our Lord did predict in Luke 21, as well as in ch. 19, the near approaching destruction of Jerusalem: did this hinder it? Why, it also was in that one lifetime; and the next event described is His judicial dealing with mankind when seen coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Even Peter's death, and John's survival, are carefully so presented in John 21 and 2 Peter 1 as not to interfere with watching for Christ. A special revelation of the apostle's death left all open for the heart, and Peter recalls it only when about to depart. But he does more. In the same ch. 1 of his Second Epistle he distinguishes between "the prophetic word," and the "day-star arising in the heart." The former they had known, even in their unconverted days; and they did well to pay heed to it still. But now they had, or at least ought in the gospel to have, a better light than the lamp of prophecy, shining in the "squalid place" of the earth as it is. As Christians they should enjoy the heavenly light that shines through the rent veil, and Christ Himself as the morning star for the heart's hope, before the sun of righteousness cannot be hid from the world. It is therefore ignorance of scripture, and a misuse of prophecy, to let any supposed intervening events check the hope of Christ's coming. The Lord, and the apostles, down to the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, always and strenuously make the hope independent of prophecy, not by a fanciful sentimentality, but by a revealed difference in nature and character. The hope is of Christ for heaven. Prophecy treats of events for the earth; which a better knowledge of the word learns to be subsequent. There is no earthly sign revealed to intercept the hope of Christ's coming for us, to receive us to Himself.

Now there are no Epistles of St. Paul so full of the hope as those to the Thessalonians. There, therefore, we may surely look not merely for better information, but for the unerring light of God.

Did the apostle then lead the saints in Thessalonica to look for the millennium before Christ's coming? He taught them, turning from their idols, as a part of their conversion, to wait for God's Son from heaven as well as to serve a living and true God (1 Thess. 1: 10). And so filled was he for himself with this bright hope that in his labors this is his one unfailing joy, not any proximate prospect for European Asia or the world at large, but "Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming"? So he prays that the Lord would give them to abound in love to the establishing of their hearts in holiness before our God and Father at our Lord's coming with all His saints. He will not, does not, sever "that day" from the actual moment in his desires for them and all. Then ch. 4 is worthy of close attention. The Christians at Thessalonica were so intent on the immediate coming of Christ, that they grieved excessively over one or more of their number who had died. This was just the occasion to tell them, as so many do, that death is to all practical purposes the coming of Christ to that individual. Whatever analogy people may frame, the apostle presents our Lord's coming as the divine comfort and remedy for, or rather His triumph over, it. But he does this in a way which demonstrates the fundamental antagonism of post-millennialism to the true hope. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord that we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep" (1 Thess. 4: 15). The same formula he carefully repeats in vv. 16, 17: "and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air" etc. If the express intention of the Holy Spirit had been to set the apostle with the saints, then living, in looking for Christ always, assured of His coming soon but not knowing when, could any words be conceived more suited to the purpose? How easy to have put "those who might be alive" when He comes, in the third person, — to have said "they," as he did say of the deceased.

Nor is it here and now only that the inspired writer so speaks. In 1 Corinthians, written after both those to the Thessalonians, we find precisely the same thing in his great vindication of the resurrection, when he adds a secret as to the saints found alive at the advent. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed . . . for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed" (1 Cor. 15: 51, 52). Compare also 2 Cor. 5: 1-10, converging on the same point. It is therefore the clearly maintained principle of a proximate, not an ultimate, hope. The language of scripture joins issue with the theology of the schools. Christendom has lost the tongue of Canaan, because the truth is no longer a living reality for men. The apostle put no date, and made not a shade of error. Like his Master, he in the Spirit would have the saints ever waiting and looking for Christ's coming.

Beyond controversy the early part of 1 Thess. 5 speaks of the day of the Lord in a way wholly different from that which prevails among our "negative " brethren. It is judicial for the world which it will overtake as a thief in the night, but not the Christian who certainly ought not to be in darkness, that that day should overtake him so. How could it surprise any suddenly if it cannot be before a thousand years of peace beyond example? The coming of the Lord rightly held presupposes the believer resting on redemption, sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and already meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. Those who confound the Lord's coming and His day are as the rule in a like confusion as to the soul; they rarely distinguish aright the work of Christ for them and of the Spirit in them. In such a condition they rather dread, than welcome, the coming of the Lord, and willingly drop into the illusion of great progress and of indisputable improvement, both in the churches and in society at large . . . To these must be added the many triumphs of the foreign mission field. Before our eyes Christ . . . is going forth conquering and to conquer (p. 151). How averse such minds are and must be from the solemn warnings of divine judgment! Yet how plain and sober is scriptural truth! Hear the scriptures that speak of God's purpose to fill the earth with His glory and the knowledge of it: Num. 14: 21; Isa. 11: 9; Hab. 2: 14. In all these the connection is with His judicial dealings, not with our preaching the gospel. Nothing is so blinding, and self-exalting, as unbelief.

Could a better informed follower of Christ say that the Thessalonians, "like so many others since, had misunderstood St. Paul to teach that the Great Day was close at hand"? (p. 150). Really such misunderstanding, both of St. Paul and of the Thessalonians, is discreditable, though a too prevalent error. It is no opinion but a fact, now recognized by the Revisers (of 1881), as well as by all recent translators and reliable commentators, that the ground of such an impression is a mere blunder, though it misled every body for more than a thousand years. I pointed it out to my friend Dr. D. Brown many years ago, while he lived in Glasgow, before exposing it in public. Yet there it stands uncorrected still in the sixth edition of his Second Coming (pp. 4, 5, 42-51, 425-433), though he has not ventured to controvert, as I am persuaded neither he nor any other can fairly overthrow, the evidence of it. The delusion which alarmed the Thessalonians was the cry that the day of the Lord was actually come (ἐνέστηκεν); and the apostle beseeches them by, or for the sake of (ὑπὲρ), the reassuring hope of the Lord's coming and our gathering together unto Him, not to be shaken about that day (2 Thess 2: 1). First, it was the disturbance of fear, and this through the false alarm that the day had come, not at all excitement about the blessed hope; which hope on the contrary is appealed to as a reason by the way to comfort them against their groundless alarm. Secondly, the true text and translation of the last clause in 2 Thess. 2: 2 is, beyond doubt, "as that the day of the Lord is present."

Dr. Brown and Prof. Beet are under a delusion here about God's word less excusable than that of the Thessalonian saints. Not only do they wholly mistake what was at work then and there, but they set thereby the apostle at war with himself. For their misunderstanding makes him explode here what he urges later on the Romans (Rom. 13: 12), that the day is at hand (ἤγγικεν). Compare too Phil. 4: 5, Heb. 10: 37. James speaks similarly (James 5: 8); and so substantially Peter (1 Peter 4: 7). Indeed the Lord had Himself impressed His coming suddenly as a motive for all to watch in the early Gospel of Mark (13: 35-37); and none other is what we may call, pace Prof. Beet, His last word closing the Apocalypse. It seems clearly meant to hinder that fatal misuse of the prophetic visions, which enfeebles, if not frustrates, the divinely given hope of His coming. "He which testifieth these things saith, Yea, I come quickly." Did John cavil or correct his Master? He answered, "Amen; come, Lord Jesus."

The apostle next explains that the day — for this was the question, not His coming to gather us to, Himself on high, but His day or judicial dealing with the world — cannot be till the evils are completely developed, which that day is to judge. Of these he specifies the apostasy, the falling away from God's truth after being once professed; and further the revelation of the lawless one, as the consummation of the mystery of lawlessness already at work. Once the actual hinderer was removed, the lawlessness doing its secret evil would culminate and be manifested in the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus shall slay (or destroy) with the breath (or spirit) of His mouth, and shall bring to naught by the shining forth (or appearing) of His coming — not by His coming simply, but by the appearing of it (2 Thess. 2: 8). Now when Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then (τότε, not εἶτα) shall we also with Him be manifested in glory (Col. 3: 4). It is the moment of His and our appearing, after we have been caught up to Him.

Prof. Beet abandons the Protestant interpretation (reformers and also historicism) of the apostasy or at least of the man of sin. What unbiased Christian can wonder?

There is nothing now corresponding in the least degree to the tremendous antagonist of God and man described in 2 Thess. 2: 4 (p. 150). This may be true as to the person, but the principles are latently at work; and it is unwise to speak as he does of the slow development in modern times of forces bad, if not of good. The passage itself, if we were not living in an age of movement intensely rapid in every sense, most naturally prepares us for the most sudden display of the son of perdition, depending as this does simply on the removal of him that restraineth now. Undoubtedly the worst evil, the lawless person (Antichrist), must be revealed before that day which is to annul him; but to say that the day is not near is flatly to contradict the word of the living God, as well as ignorance of what the text here teaches. Only Mr. B. is to be congratulated for breaking loose from the post-millennial argument, under which others still lie, that the παρουσία of our Lord in 2 Thess 2: 1 is His personal advent, in v. 8 is only figurative. This sleight of hand Prof. B. repudiates (p. 22). He owns it is the same throughout; but where then is his millennium before Christ comes? The text reveals a continuity of unbridled willfulness, already working as leaven, till it rise (on the removal of an existing barrier) into a revealed head, the lawless one to fall under the Lord Jesus in His day. How then possibly foist in there the millennium before that day? The Thessalonians, misled as they were by the delusion of a judgment-day already come, fell into no such a preposterous dream as this truly strange doctrine.

It is unfounded then, as a commentator ought to have known, a mere vulgar error, that the Thessalonians had misunderstood St. Paul. He himself gives quite a different source of the mischief. He speaks of either a word, or spirit, or epistle as from us, i.e., pretending so to be (2 Thess 2: 2). It was not his First Epistle misunderstood, but a spurious communication that is meant; for the apostle never taught anything in the least resembling it. The misleaders must have insinuated a figurative day of the Lord under the gospel, answering to such partial or germinant applications of that day as we have in Isa. 13, 19, etc., on Babylon, Egypt, etc. For the Thessalonian saints were passing through sore trial and persecution; so that he had sent Timothy even before his First Epistle, lest by any means the tempter had tempted them to the compromise of their faith and of his own labor. He foresaw their danger of being moved by these afflictions. It seems to have been just in this way that Satan was now working.

Before the First Epistle they were so enthusiastic as to be cast down exceedingly because some fell asleep; for they imagined that these would thereby lose their place at Christ's coming. This was dispelled by the assurance that these also put to sleep by Jesus will God bring with Him; for, when He descends from heaven with an assembling shout, the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them. But the more serious error corrected in the Second Epistle is about the living on whom the false teachers sought to bring the terror of the day of the Lord, availing themselves probably of their sore trials as indicating that the day was come. Not so says the apostle in 2 Thess 1. In that day the trouble will be to the persecutors and other wicked men; the righteous are to rest. Their blessed hope of being gathered to the Lord at His coming ought to have guarded them from such a panic. Besides, that day can only arrive when secret lawlessness is replaced (the barrier being gone) by the openly lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by the appearance of His coming. Not misunderstanding but positive deception marked the misleaders. They were Judaizers; and they wrought by fear of that day as come, not by the hope of the Lord's coming, as not a few imagine. Beyond doubt a previous millennium can find no place either in the thoughts of the Thessalonians or in the apostle's words.

It is hard to understand why 1 Cor. 1: 7, 9, or 2 Cor. 15: 23, 52, or 2 Cor. 5: 10, should be adduced pp. 22, 23). They are appropriate and forcible for those who believe in waiting for the coming of Christ in His day; but how do they even appear to furnish the shadow of an argument for an antecedent millennium of earthly blessedness? Is there any reality or even show of proof in the Synoptic Gospels to which we are next turned (p. 23)? Where is there a millennium before Christ's coming in Matt. 13? 16? or 24? What evidence there is is clean opposed to the post-millennial plan. The tares sown among the wheat are never removed till the harvest; and the harvest the Lord explains as the completion of the age (σ. τοῦ αἰῶνος) not the end of the world, which "world" is expressly distinguished only in the verse before (Matt. 13: 38, 39). Where is the millennium here before the second advent?

The same objection applies with yet more force to the use made of Matt. 16: 27. Does this text prove a millennium before it? When the Son of Man comes, He awards to each according to his doing. Is this only to be cast into the lake of fire?

Prof. Beet, indeed, allows the just force of συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος to be "completion of the age." Now Matt. 12: 32 speaks of "the age to come," as well as of "this age," which was to end with His coming. What is meant? Does it not signify the future age when the Messiah should reign, as distinguished from the age of the law not yet come to its close? Blasphemy against the Spirit shall be forgiven in neither. Whatever may be pardoned in either age, that cannot be. That is, this age and the coming one are two dispensations. The nature of the case excludes the eternal scene where there is no question of either sin or its forgiveness. If there be an αἰὼν to come after this which is closed by the Lord's coming, what can it be but the millennium? Heb. 6: 5 confirms this. The powers of the "age to come" mean samples of such power over Satan, disease, and the like, which the disciples wrought when Christ was here and subsequently; of which the age to come will be the full theatre, and display to God's glory, when Satan's overthrow will be manifest all over the earth.

But there is yet more to observe in Matt. 13: 41, 42. Does anyone doubt that it is of the harvest-field, the world, our Savior speaks as His kingdom, whither at His coming His angels are sent to gather out all offences (or trap-falls) and those that practice lawlessness? On the other hand, who can question that, when the earth is thus purged (not yet dissolved or destroyed) for the Son of man's kingdom, then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father? It is the age to come before eternity, the millennial age, wherein are the glorified on high, and the earth delivered from the usurper and blessed under the reign of Christ. For, as the Lord taught in the Fourth Gospel, God's kingdom comprises, not only "earthly things," as to which Nicodemus was so dull, but "heavenly things," (John 3: 12) which only came to full light when Christ was glorified, and the Spirit could lead into them those who enjoyed redemption through His blood.

A King reigning in righteousness will characterize the new age. Now the Lord sits on the Father's throne (Rev. 3: 21); then He will sit on His own throne and will rule with a rod of iron, shattering all that rebel as the vessels of the potter. So it will be in the age to come or millennium. How absurd to apply this to the eternity that succeeds! As it has been well remarked, righteousness dwells in the new heavens and new earth when the promise is fulfilled absolutely and for ever. It is no question then of righteous government which represses or punishes evil, as in the millennial day. Neither is it this "evil age" when grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5: 21). Now the Lord asks, or prays, not for the world, but for His own, the gift of the Father (John 17: 9). By and by, when this age is to close, and the coming one to dawn, He asks the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. It will be no question then of the mysteries of the kingdom during which He is the rejected but glorified Son of Man. Having received for Himself the kingdom (Dan. 7, Luke 19), He returns. During His absence His servants, according to the parable, trade with the money entrusted, and on His return receive according to fidelity; as the citizens who hated Him and would not let Him reign over them are slain before Him. Here is without doubt the coming of Christ, but not a hint of a millennium before it; whilst the character of the judgment executed at His coming perfectly suits a millennium, not an eternity to follow.

The same lesson flows from Luke 17, where the days of Noah and of Lot are by Himself compared with the day when the Son of Man is revealed. Here is not the smallest resemblance to the loosing of Satan and the war of Gog and Magog in Rev. 20, any more than to the past siege of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70). Before the Lord appears in judgment it will be so, as we may see in 1 Thess. 5. When His day comes as a thief, it will overtake them eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building, marrying and given in marriage. How strange to apply Luke 17: 31 to the dissolution of all things! or even to the destruction of Jerusalem! It is neither an indiscriminate judgment in providence, with which vv. 34, 35 stand in marked contrast, nor yet the last judgment, with which not a feature tallies. It is simply and only the Lord's appearing, with the millennium to follow this judgment of the quick which it cannot precede.

But we must not omit Matt. 25: 31-46. How any sober Christian can turn this scene into the counterpart of Rev. 20: 11-15 is inexplicable, if one knew not the power of prejudice. The latter is expressly a judgment of the dead, without one living man; the other not even of all living men, but only of all the Gentiles or nations, the Jews being before us in the early part of Matt. 24 and professing Christians in the parables that close ch. 24 and go on to Matt. 25: 30. Hence it is the King as such Who judges the Gentiles on their treatment of His envoys, His brethren; and they are set as sheep on His right or as goats on His left accordingly. This is wholly foreign to the judgment of the dead at the end of all in Rev. 20, the "resurrection of judgment"; as vv. 4-6 gave us the previous "resurrection of life," answering to John 5. That of the righteous only is before us in John 6, 1 Thess. 4, and 1 Cor. 15. As this is a resurrection from among the dead, it is necessarily prior, like Christ's, to that of the remaining dead. And εἶτα "then" may be a long interval as easily as a short; just as "hour" and "day" may last a thousand years and more, as the context proves. But where in all these texts, or in any of them, is Prof. B.'s millennium before the Second Advent?

Throughout St. Paul's Epistles and the Gospels, to which we might add the Book of Acts and the Epistles of James and Peter and Jude, we find everywhere the same metaphors and the same phraseology (p. 26). So say those opposed. But let us read on. The early Christians were looking for Christ's sudden and visible return from heaven, to raise the dead, good and bad, to judge all men, and to bring in eternal retribution. Really this is a perplexing argument from one whose theme is that Christ's coming must follow the millennium. Rev. 20: 1-8 is therefore the millstone around the Professor's neck, which must be somehow got rid of and cast into the sea, if possible.

Now it is wholly denied that the blessed manifested kingdom of Christ rests on that passage only of the N.T., while the O.T. prophets are full of it, yea law, Psalms, and Prophets. Take Acts 3: 19-21, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and He may send Jesus Christ, Who hath been fore-appointed unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." Seasons of refreshing were to come from the Lord's presence, Who would send Jesus that had been fore-appointed for them (Israel's repentance being in full view, as usually for the millennium). Heaven must receive Him till times for restoring all things according to prophecy. That is, Jesus will be sent to bring in these blessed times when all things shall be (not destroyed, as in Prof. Beet's scheme, but) reconstituted, as the prophets of old testified. Christ will come from heaven to earth in order to establish millennial blessing. The Greek must be wholly altered to bear the meaning "till all be accomplished." Christ is on high till times come of restoring all, not till all shall have been restored. Having received the kingdom, He returns in it, and must reign till He has put all His enemies under His feet; for He is to abolish all rule, and all authority, and power, before He gives up the kingdom at the end of all. The repentance of Israel, the return of Jesus, the restoring of all things, besides fulfillment of the prophetic word, point to the millennial kingdom.

Again, Luke 20: 34, 35, is entitled to great weight on this head, as it also confirms what has been already said on Matt. 12, 13, and Heb. 6. "The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but they that are accounted worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead," etc. Before eternity arrives "that age" is to run its course, as well as "this age" to close. And "that age," or dispensation, is characterized here by "the resurrection of the just," those counted worthy to have part in that age and the resurrection from the dead. How contrasted with the dead who, unworthy and unblessed and unholy, are only raised, after "that age" is over, for a resurrection of judgment and the lake of fire! Scripture never speaks of a general resurrection but of two distinct risings — of life, and of judgment, separated by the kingdom of Christ and those who reign with Him, the only age when these thousand years of blessing for the earth that now is can be in consistency with Scripture. Compare Phil. 3: 11, 20, 21. To say that the resurrection from the dead is not as peculiar by priority of time as well as in nature, accompaniments and issues, is to give up the force of language as well as description and context. The phrase itself is so weighty that one of the ablest, stumbled by faulty premillennialists, made the wrong vulgar reading in Phil. 3: 11 a chief ground of objection, as Griesbach strangely accepted it. It is now exploded by all critics. What would the late Mr. Gipps have said now?

The more one weighs Prof. B.'s words on the Book of Revelation generally, and on Rev. 20 especially, the less one can accept them.

"That this event" — "the one definite event for which the early Christians were waiting," (Christ's return) "is less conspicuous in the Book of Revelation (!) than in the rest of the New Testament (!!) excites no surprise" (p. 27)!!! To ordinary Christians this seem as surprising a deliverance as one has heard for a long while. The reason is as peculiar as the conclusion. The other writers leave us outside the veil (which is untrue); the Revelation takes us within, and portrays the unseen world before, and during, and after, the coming of Christ. And therefore! in a book which is thus instinct with what is before, and during, and after Christ's coming, this event is less conspicuous than elsewhere, where it is touched on for the most part practically, and but occasionally if we except 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Q.E.D.

"The question nevertheless remains, Where, amid the many and various visions of this mysterious book, shall we place the great event," [ etc.] Yes, this is just Prof. B.'s difficulty, because he is not content to believe it where God has placed it and written it for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope. "The only answer" to this question which seems good in his eyes is, that we must not leave it where "this mysterious book" gives it, and we must "place" it, where this book testifies that Christ does not and cannot come. In Rev. 20: 11 there is total and manifest contrast with Christ's coming found in the Gospels and Epistles, save the fact of Christ's sitting on a throne (which is true generally of His reign for a thousand years and more, to say nothing of His present seat on His Father's throne). Is it seriously contended that the twelve sitting as assessors on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, symbolizes with the eternal judgment of the dead? Then is the time when 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3 will be fulfilled; not the outrageous confusion with the judgment of the dead, where are no thrones nor assessors, whatever commentators may dream and say. And so in Matt. 24 the powers of the heavens are shaken, and all tribes of the earth mourn, and the angels gather together His elect (which the context here limits to Israel) from one end of heaven to the other. But all these statements describe a time different from and anterior to the fleeing away of the earth and the heaven when no place will be found for them. They abide in Matt. 24, but not Rev. 20: 11.

The other collocations of scriptural texts in p. 28 have been already shown to be unsound and imaginary, doing violence to Scripture at every turn. And all this to blot out the appearing of Christ from Rev. 19: 11-21 where it is revealed, and to foist it into Rev. 20: 11 where there is no coming described, for the very plain and decisive reason that He will have come already! Nor is it too much to say that, unless Christ come before, it becomes no longer possible thenceforth; for Christ's coming means to this earth whence He ascended (Acts 1). Now before the white-throne judgment the first heaven and the first earth passed away. As nobody pleads for coming to the heaven and new earth of eternity, it is demonstrable that He must have come before "the end," when the elements are dissolved with fervent heat. Christ's coming therefore must be before, not after, the millennium. What avail our notions of difficulty, or facility, or safety (pp. 29-31), against the word of God? Matt. 25: 32 at the beginning of the kingdom is in no way inconsistent with Rev. 20: 7-10 at the end. The camp of the saints and the beloved city (Jerusalem) may be compassed; but not a saint is hurt, and not a sinner escapes: fire from God out of heaven comes down and devours the bad. Surely if there was affliction for the oppressors, and rest for the oppressed, proved gloriously at the Lord's revelation from heaven (2 Thess. 1: 6, 7), there is nothing in that to reconcile with divine judgment falling on the unconverted of the millennium, who had rendered feigned obedience, till at the end the temptation of Satan proves the irremediable evil of man not born of God, in presence of glory then so long familiar, as now in contempt of God's grace.

Nor is there any such strange confusion as adversaries feign. The risen saints reign with Christ over (not "on") the earth; the saints threatened come together as such, consisting of saved Israel and the godly Gentiles. Only the wicked die at that time under God's hand (Isa. 65). On the Holy Mount the Lord had once shown a vision of His power and coming, where on the one hand men appeared in glory, and on the other men in their unchanged bodies, and Christ the head of both. Was not this a little sample of the kingdom that is to be? It does not answer either to this age, or to eternity. Why is it judged incredible with you (alas! in Christendom), if God does what He says? It was, for men who had not tasted of death in this age, a vision of the kingdom of God coming in power (Matt. 16: 28-17: 13; 2 Peter 1: 16), the beautiful and impressive foreshadowing of that which shall be at the advent, when the glorified shall reign over the earth, and Israel and the nations are here below. It pleased Christ: surely nothing but extreme prejudice, not to say the carnal mind, makes it displeasing to Christians. The kingdom of God comprises "heavenly" as well as "earthly things" (John 3: 3, 5, 12); and the sooner this is learned the better for souls.

Here indeed our men of allegory are deplorably astray. There is no complaint of the Fourth Gospel; but why speak so ungratefully of the "most mysterious book of the New Testament" (p. 137)? Many an unbelieving assault has been made on the Gospel; why then remind the unwary reader of the difficulties which surround the authorship of the Apocalypse? Prof. B. has ill-will enough to point out its "startling grammatical forms and entirely different modes of thought" (p. 38), in order to cast doubt or discredit on it. Yet he well knows how Paul and Peter and James have been each and all attacked more or less. But is it in him quite honest? He may not be aware that the peculiarities of form and thought belong to its prophetic character, and are wholly independent of its date and authorship, which are as certain as anything of the kind can be for all fair and competent students. But does he not himself believe that John the beloved, the Patmos prisoner of Domitian, wrote the book, even though here only he assumed the Hebraistic style and rough garment of a prophet? This was just as much in keeping with its revelation of judgment, as the Epistles and Gospel called for, and have, another mould of thought and speech for their design.

Let me say that Genesis in its noble simplicity is no more admirable an introduction to the Bible, than the Apocalypse is its suited, worthy, and profound completion. The wrestling-ground for contending commentators of every school, and hence open to the sneer of worldly men, divines or sceptics, too indifferent to God's word, and too disposed to lay the faults of its misusers on the book itself, there it stands, still pronouncing the blessing of the Lord on him that reads its words, and on those that hear and keep them; "for the time" (whatever unbelief may cry) "is at hand." And in fact where is the inspired book which, especially in difficult and dangerous times, has wrought more powerfully for good in grave Christian men, notwithstanding many a mistake through haste or prejudice? It is idle to expect that comprehensive and deep understanding of the Apocalypse should exist where there is not familiar acquaintance with all the prophets, as well as with the distinctive ways of God which the New Testament reveals. For where the Old Testament prophets are discursive in the main, and little beyond Daniel and Zechariah is consecutive, and even these have separate visions of no great length or variety, St. John was enabled by the Holy Ghost to communicate a systematic, connected, and complete view of the things which should be after "the things which are," or the church-state (Rev. 2, 3), till time melts into eternity under the judicial hand of our Lord and of His Christ.

No doubt some men of marked piety and general learning, and many with little of either, have written on the book; but even when they were so (marked by learning and piety), this is far from being all that is required to write competently and profitably on it. More than any other book, it openly presses into its service, or subtly refers to, almost every part of the Old Testament; yet is there a characteristically mystic use which is adapted to the New Testament and convicts the mere literalist of a wholly mistaken principle. Originality, after a divine sort, appears throughout; The most able and erudite of its expositors have been in no way distinguished for spiritual intelligence, and are often the devotees of a foregone conclusion, so that they can be entitled to little weight in such a question. And what is the object of alleging mere and evident extravaganzas, from whatever quarter they may come? Is it to commend truth? or to merge God's word in men's uncertainties? It is the opprobrium of commentators, and of none so much perhaps as the prophetic, that they search, not for God's mind, but for the support of their own preconceived ideas; and that the repute of some draws a long train of followers; as their transparent fallacies provoke another crowd of opponents. Yet the truth remains, sure and acceptable in God's grace to those who have faith to depend on the Lord for it.

But surely John 17, on Prof. B.'s confession, belongs to "the solid platform" of the N. T. writers. Can it then be denied that in vv. 22, 23, we have in weightiest correlation those who are glorified on the one side, and on the other men alive on earth, whether yet to die or not (p. 31)? The glorified, and the unchanged are there in presence one of another, as the Lord teaches us, and with blessed result (in a prayer of His own heart), which these believers do not believe, and therefore venture to stigmatize as "mixed together in strangest confusion" (p. 31). It is really distressing unbelief on their part, who do not apprehend this the third unity — of glory. For there are three. The first (John 17: 11) is the united expression before a hating world of the Father's name, given to Christ, and now to keep those who were then around Him. The second is in view of those who should believe through their word, unity of communion in the Father and the Son, that the world might "believe " (John 17: 21). The third is the closing unity of glory, where therefore alone they are perfected into one; and, as it would be manifested, it is for the world to "know." The demonstration will be before their eyes; for Christ and His own are to be displayed from heaven in the same glory.

With this agrees Rev. 21: 9-22: 5: a retrogressive vision introducing the relation of the Bride to the kings and nations after Christ comes; just as Rev. 17 is to show how the great Harlot stands toward the kings and nations before He comes. In both cases it is a return to give what was not before described. This is undeniable in the case of Babylon whose fall had been given in Rev. 14: 8, and Rev. 16: 19. Then Rev. 17 explains why, closing with the dirge in Rev. 18. So Rev. 21: 1-8 is the everlasting state which is altogether distinct, the Lamb not being seen as such, but "God all in all." It is the conclusion chronologically of the series that began in Rev. 19, 20 and in fact the end of all, if we can so designate the everlasting state. As you can have nothing subsequent to eternity, the Holy Spirit helps us here as before by a mark (Rev. 21: 9), strikingly similar to that which introduced the retrogressive description of Rev. 17, 18; so that we might discern a like retrogressive description of the Bride (not merely in heaven, as in Rev. 19, nor as in the new heavens and earth of Rev. 21: 1-8 but) in its millennial aspect. That this is the truth appears clearly and certainly from "the nations" (Rev. 21: 24, 26, Rev. 22: 2), and "the kings of the earth" (Rev. 21: 24), which are not and cannot be in eternity, as surely our opponents must admit. As it is not this age, any more than eternity, what can it be but the age to come, the millennium, or "the kingdom"? Prof. Beet therefore ought to see that his idea of "the everlasting splendor pictured in Rev. 21, 22" (p. 28) needs the corrective of the text itself more maturely and accurately weighed. Still less true is his statement in p. 34 that "there is nothing to prevent us from reading the glorious visions of the prophets as descriptions of the final glory." Let him or Dr. Brown face Zech. 14 squarely, to take but a single text, and say whether such a chapter can be fulfilled either now or in eternity. When then? This is but a sample from the prophets, who in truth support nothing but premillennialism.

It is frankly acknowledged that the principle of new heavens and a new earth is laid down in Isa. 65, 66. But the remarkably abstract form of the Hebrew construction is not to be overlooked, not the relative and indicative, but the present participle, which seems a favourite way of describing an action apart from a specified actual time. There is another consideration which any observing Christian reader can see; — that the context restricts its application here to Jerusalem, and the land and the people of Israel. None can deny that the state of things portrayed is not eternity, any more than things as they ever were or are now, or can be, save in a different age. So even Dr. J. A. Alexander allows (Comm. in loco) that "it is a promise or prediction of entire change in the existing state of things; the precise nature of the change, and the means by which it shall be brought about, forming no part of the revelation here". It is true that this change he, in his usual manner, inclines to believe moral or spiritual only. But this is a mere opinion: he admits an "entire change," to which the Apocalypse gives the fullest scope, far beyond O.T. or Jewish limits, now that Christ is come and the Holy Spirit given that we might have the mind of Christ, and enter into the boundless counsels of God. It is sorrowful where such grace is not appreciated.

Thus then we have the symbol of the glorified church, the holy city Jerusalem (not the earthly one), but coming down out of heaven from God; yet there are "the nations," and "the kings of the earth," contemporaneously connected and blessed here below. It is in vain to cry What a mongrel state of things is this! What an abhorred mixture of things inconsistent with each other! (Brown's Second Advent p. 392). It is no answer to speak of "the transient glimpses at the Transfiguration," etc. The thesis is that God reveals a long millennial period, widely different from all that has been, and in many respects from the eternity which follows, to which those glimpses are a partial testimony. To the earth Christ will come in His own glory, and of the Father, and of the holy angels: there may be difficulties beyond what is revealed; but the opposite scheme, in the desire to delay His coming, and to deny the true character of the kingdom, makes His coming an impossibility; for it is imagined to be, when the earth and the heavens will have fled away. Now Christ is to come here again.

Take another instance, which the system of these brethren furnishes of the havoc it works for all the practice as well are the truth of the church. Indisputably Christians are called to be unworldly, suffering, separate, and subject like the crucified Lord here below. Now if Dan. 2: 44 (p. 140) is thus misapplied to the kingdom already set up, the church has to subdue and destroy the imperial powers, or "anti-Christian systems," as they are styled. That is, it must, like Popery, subjugate and overthrow all opposing powers that be. Thus does the church, through that error, become a rebel in Christ's name, instead of a holy sufferer, as Christ and His servants taught and practiced. Take it as God's kingdom when Christ comes "in the days of these kings," the ten toes of the statue, and all becomes true, plain, and consistent. No need then to metamorphose the instant and irreparable destruction of the powers into the slow dealing of providence, any more than to rob Christ of His prerogative of filling the whole earth with indisputable authority, immediately consequent on His judgment of the quick. Dan. 7 confirms this as the only true interpretation. The Ancient of days comes when judgment is given to the saints of the high or heavenly places. Then they will safely and holily reign with Christ to God's glory. To attempt it now is a sin and a lie; it is in theory if not in fact to play the part of fifth-monarchy men, whether Papists or Protestants, Covenanters or Roundheads.

The truth is that all is vague on this human scheme, which grew up as men neglected scripture, and hope in man supplanted faith in God. Christ personally recedes into the distance; and "His cause," identified with the efforts of men (of ourselves or persons like us), takes the place of Himself with His own. This may please and flatter our nature; but it betrays that sad decay of proper bridal affection which characterized the decline and fall of the church since apostolic days, through the darkness of medieval times, and which, in no way retrieved at the Reformation (however blessed as far as it went), has well-nigh vanished away in the isolating though busy unchurch-system of our century. I regret that I in speaking what is in my judgment unquestionable, one must wound the susceptibilities of many brethren I love and esteem highly. But let God be true, and Christ's honour above all; and the rather, as it is in their highest interests that, if the truth, it should be spoken out. I repudiate a party or school of doctrine to cry up, and yet more the petty spite or vanity of crying down, those dear to the Lord.

Again, it ought not to be a light thing that the hope of Christ's coming, while owned in word, should become for children of God no more than a dead letter. This it must be where men look and labor avowedly, before Christ can possibly come, for a vainly expected universal diffusion of revealed truth, universal reception of true religion and unlimited subjection to Christ's scepter, universal peace, much spiritual power and glory, inbringing of all Israel, ascendancy of truth and righteousness, and great temporal prosperity over all the earth for a thousand years or more, perhaps much more, as a previously certain and revealed barrier. They may indeed love the Lord's appearing, and long for Him to break the usurper's spell over the world, and establish for rebellion peace, and for wretchedness blessing to God's glory. But it is unreal to profess waiting for One, Who, as you are assured, cannot possibly come yet, nor for a long while, according to this hypothesis. The hope ceases to be a present reality in the soul, as it is supposed to be a mistake of scripture. Watching for Him becomes a poetical idea, an amiable or pious enthusiasm, which, notwithstanding the positive and known hindrances from prophetic light, veers from long to short, and anon from short to long in a seesaw truly marvelous. So apologizes Principal Brown. Prof. Beet speaks with more open plainness of speech.

If we have no reliable proof of the nearness of the visible return of Christ, to speak of it as near is in the last degree dangerous(p. 36). He knows the danger of what the Lord recommends! It represses missionary effort!

To the early christians, although the day of Christ was known to be not close at hand etc. (p. 152)! This error has been already refuted. The apostles speak in a way which a post-millennialist must in honesty avoid.

Like the Master, also the servants will die (p. 154). Not so, says St. Paul, but rather, "We shall not all sleep (die), but we shall all be changed." It is appointed unto men, indeed, once to die, but after this the judgment. Faith in Christ and His work alters all for us. That was lost man's sad portion; what is the Christian's? Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear a second time without sin unto salvation. The soul's want was provided for at His first advent, as the body's will be when He shall be seen a second time.

Christ is the Life as well as the Resurrection, and the saints so profit thereby, that according to scripture we ought to wait, as the early Christians did, not for death, but for Christ's coming habitually. It was to be not only a sure goal of their hopes one day, but a practical constant outlook, confirmed, not corrected, even in both the Epistles to the Thessalonians, where, quite different misapprehensions were cleared up. But the divine light vouchsafed then shone brightly on that blessed and living hope, not only not setting it aside, but joining the inspired apostle with the saints alive on earth, as the "we" that wait (for aught that was made known) for His coming. A post-millennialist, if he expressed his creed, must say, They that shall be alive, that remain unto the coming of the Lord; he could not truly and intelligently say, "We." Either he knows better than the apostle, or he ought (as is the truth) to infer that his own system is false. None who holds this system can, ex animo, join the apostle and say, "We that are alive, that remain," etc.

There is another fatal issue of post-millennalism. It presents the kingdom when supposed to be triumphant without the King. It abuses the present abnormal phase of the kingdom to deny its future regular form according to the Old Testament prophets as well as the New. Now the King, rejected by His earthly people is hid in God above, seated on the Father's throne, not on His own (Rev. 3: 21); and hence we have its "mysteries" made known, as in Matt. 13, to explain its singularities, till this age ends, and the new age displays it and the King reigning in righteousness, times of restoring all things, as God declared from the beginning. But this glorious exhibition before the universe for a thousand years is just what unbelief leaves out: an irreparable blank in God's revealed plan, which cannot be without also introducing confusion every where else. Thus Christ's person is absent from the scene of His exaltation, and the church is no longer to fast but enjoy honour and glory, where He was crucified without. It can be no longer true for the thousand years that His members suffer with Him. They are in idea, what the apostle said as a reproach and not without irony, — they are reigning "without us," yea, without Christ. But, said the large and true-hearted servant, "and I would that ye did reign, that we also might reign with you." When the day really comes, Christ will reign and all His risen saints. The Corinthians had practically dropped into a figurative reign of His cause.

But the word is, as long as there is a member of Christ, "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him." "If so be that we suffer together, that we may be also glorified together." And as they wrongfully exclude Christ from their millennium, so do they keep Satan in the face of positive scripture. The reasoning on 1 John 3: 8-10; Heb. 2: 14, 15, and Rom. 16: 20, is as weak and false as the unbelief of Rev. 20: 1-3, 7, is painful and complete. The issue is worthy of such grounds — the melancholy fable of the church in Christ's hand not only defeating Antichrist, but for a thousand years never permitting the devil to gain an inch of ground to plant his foot on over the wide world! It must never be the truth of Christ reigning personally. I can conceive no interpretation of Rev. 20 more perverse, nor more at issue with the New Testament throughout. But indeed all that these believers say on the millennium is mere incredulity, a muster of cavils against its revealed character, and a substituted fanciful exaggeration of the present, but no real reign of Christ and the glorified saints, no personal exclusion of Satan, no true deliverance of the groaning creation, though Dr. Brown does admit a sort of restoration of Israel to their land, which ill assorts with his other views.

Nor is there any less loss for the soul now. For the hypothesis of a general resurrection and of a simultaneous universal judgment undermines the distinctive peace, joy, and assurance of salvation for the believer. Confound the two resurrections, enfeeble the resurrection of the saints from among the dead; and the consciousness of present union with Christ is impaired if not lost, and all is confusion as to the future. Christ's coming, and His appearing, the great day and the white-throne judgment, are all huddled together in one lump, so that the poor heart oscillates between hope and fear, the joy of meeting our Lord and the anxiety of judgment. In scripture how different! The saints even now live of the life of Christ risen from the dead (John 20: 20; Col. 3: 4); and accordingly life and salvation in His name both point to those spoken of as quickened with Him, raised up together, and seated together (not yet with, but) in Him in the heavenly places (Eph. 2). Christ has borne the believer's judgment; and so he comes not into judgment, but has passed from death into life. Undoubtedly he will give account of all done in the body (2 Cor. 5: 10), and receive accordingly, no less than the unbeliever who, rejecting Christ, has neither life nor fruits of the Spirit, as the believer has. Hence for the one it is judgment, for the other it is not. And any Christian has but to consider and see the absurdity of being judged after you are justified, and of God too. Yea, the believer is glorified at Christ's coming before he renders an account, which supposes that he is saved, but determines the special position he is to receive in the kingdom. The resurrection of the just is therefore a resurrection of life, as that of the unjust is one of judgment. Believing in Christ, the saints had life here and now; they will be raised when He comes again, to have that life applied to their bodies which they already know for their souls since He first came. And it is as distinct in time as in principle and results; like His own it is a resurrection from among the dead, even if we were not told that there is an interval of at least a thousand years.

Nor is that interval without grave moral significance. It is a reign over the earth, but of heavenly glory with Christ, for those who suffered with Him, as all saints do till He comes again. The millennial saints do not thus suffer, and hence do not share in this special reign, but enjoy its benefits to the full. In another sense all saints are to reign in life (Rom. 5: 17, millennial with the rest), throughout eternity. It is no question of suffering for Christ, or being martyrs, as many have gathered from a hasty view of scripture, and especially of Rev. 20: 4, though the passage itself leaves ample room for all that had suffered with Christ. For if children, heirs also — heirs of God and joint-heirs with Him; if we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him (Rom. 8: 17). So, if we endure (and in the millennium it is enjoyment, not endurance), we shall also reign together (2 Tim. 2: 12). Such shall be "accounted worthy to obtain, that age" (whatever they might suffer in this age), and the resurrection from among the dead. They are sons of God being sons of the resurrection. The wicked have no such spiritual relation, and are compelled to rise for judgment at the appointed hour, when that special reign is over, and a large addition is made to their already large ranks from all ages.

But we may go farther. The distinctness of time as well as of character is therefore a weighty part of revealed truth. But it is even to be gathered from a book as ancient as Job (14 and 19). For thence we learn that unlike any vegetable ever shooting "afresh," sinful man as such "lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Not a word of the Lord's coming then; but there is the very significant synchronism of no more heaven, though it be ordinarily less shaken than the earth: the negative and the positive marks precisely agree with Rev. 20: 11, 12. It is the end, not of "the age," or "this age," but of the kingdom and of the heavens and earth that now are. Then, and not before, "man" shall be raised. How different that which we read of the saint in Rev. 19! "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand up at the last on the earth (or dust); and after my skin hath been thus destroyed, yet from (or in) my flesh shall I see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." This is, we may perhaps say, what is appointed for the saint, and evidently before the heavens and earth are no more. It is the first resurrection, as the other will be the second death. To the greatest of all prophecies, closing (as no other book could so well) the canon of scripture, we are indebted for the exact measure of the kingdom in time; but the difference of the two resurrections, and the priority of that of the saints, are as certainly to be gathered from one of the earliest books of the Old Testament, as from the latest of the New. Even the Pharisees did not question a resurrection of both just and unjust. It was reserved for Christendom to confound both in one general resurrection, though Christ (John 5) and scripture so carefully discriminate them. We have seen by the way, how inexcusable is the assumption that the premillennial advent is taught only in one chapter; but of this perhaps enough has been said already.

Now where is even an approach in any text adduced for the desired inference that the millennium precedes the advent? Not a hint of it appears either here or in any other scripture: let it be produced, if there is one. Every one of these texts admits of the millennium after Christ's coming; not one intimates such a thing before it. Instead of so blessed a change for the earth, we are warned of a spoiled crop till harvest-time in the end of the age (Matt. 13), of days like those which brought the judgments in the days of Noah and of Lot (Luke 17), of departure from the faith in the latter times (1 Tim. 4), of seducers waxing worse and worse in the last days, of men having a form of godliness, but denying the power (2 Tim. 3), and of a mystery of lawlessness to work up, on the removal of a restraint, into the lawless one revealed, who draws down, as Mr. B. confesses, the Lord Jesus personally appearing in judgment (2 Thess. 2). If the Gentile did not abide in God's goodness (and who would dare to say he does?), cutting off would ensue, says Rom. 11, not the millennium. To unsophisticated minds such continuous and prevalent iniquity, till the Lord judges the quick at His advent, excludes a millennium, such as scripture describes, or even Dr. Brown's imaginary amelioration of this age before that day. Nay, some of those very scriptures, with a crowd of others, imply the millennium only when Christ is come.

Again, our Lord and His apostles never once speak of a millennial issue of preaching or the like. Where the millennium is spoken of, prophecy invariably declares that divine judgments introduce it. Compare Isa. 1: 24-31; Isa. 2; Isa. 4; Isa. 9: 4-7; Isa. 11: 4-9; Isa. 24-25; Isa. 59: 16-21; Isa. 60-66; Jer. 10: 7-25; Jer. 23; Jer. 30; Ezek. 20; Ezek. 38; Ezek. 39; Dan. 2; Dan. 7; Dan. 11; Dan. 12; Hosea 2; Hosea 3; Amos 9; Obadiah 15-21; Micah 4; Micah 5; Nahum 1; Hab. 2; Hab. 3; Zeph. 3: 8-20; Haggai 2: 6-9, 22, 23; Zech. 2: 8-13; Zech. 10; Zech. 12; Zech. 14; Mal. 4. The Psalms as well as the Law might be cited; but this will suffice. The gospel was to be preached in the world for a witness unto all the nations; but for this age not a sound of the world being converted or even brought as yet to a universal profession of the Lord's name. This is at best unauthorized enthusiasm, the fruit of unconscious presumption in neglect of scripture, which alone can decide the "how" as well as the "what." That the earth is to be full of the knowledge of Jehovah's glory is certain; that preaching or the church is to effect it is not only without, but against, God's word. It is an honour reserved for Christ in person, Who will execute judgment on His enemies, destroy idolatry, expel Satan, bring Israel and the nations to repentance, bless all creation, and reign in power with His glorified saints till the last foe is annulled, when He will give up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father, that God may be all in all. The eternal state is not the delegated kingdom, though there will be everlasting glory in the new heavens and new earth.

The gospel mission, as it is of God's grace, could not be other than universal in its scope and call; and the infinite work of Christ's atonement demands nothing less. This for the responsibility of the disciples was to disciple all the nations (Matt. 28), but what a very different thing from the effect in man's hand or from God's counsels! Simeon related (says Acts 15) how first God visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name. To this agrees the clear and general testimony of the N. T. It is in vain to oppose vague statements, or fanciful interpretations of "the tree" and "the leaven," as if scripture could contradict itself. Our Lord expressly anticipates some as believing, and some as disbelieving (Mark 16); and such was the fact according to the inspired history (Acts 28). God is not in this age proposing universal blessing under Christ's government in power and glory over the earth; He gathering for heaven saved souls, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, that, when all things are in fact put under Him, they too may be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3). This will be the millennium. The world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ will have come (Rev. 11: 15).

But the N.T. is made completely inapplicable, if the millennium come ere this age closes and the day of the Lord arrives. For its habitual language is essentially distinctive, and supposes, not all nations flowing to Zion, exalted above the hills, but "sheep in the midst of wolves," who have to "beware of men" (Matt. 10), a people purified to Himself for His own possession (Titus 2), "a chosen generation" (1 Peter 2), "in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation" (Phil. 2), "all that will live godlily suffering persecution" (2 Tim. 3) — the very opposite of reigning in righteousness, peace, and glory; expressly suffering with Him now, and looking to reign with Him only in "that day." As the Lord had said in John 16, "in the world ye shall have tribulation." To him that overcomes now, the promise is by and by to sit with Christ on His throne (Rev. 3), as we see verified in Rev. 20; but this is the millennium of His day. Even when the final testimony in this age goes forth i.e. the everlasting gospel (Rev. 14), the solemn warning that accompanies it is, "for the hour of His judgment is come" (Rev. 14: 7). Alas! for the self-flattering unction, that we, or any like us, are the men to make good the millennium by our efforts! This is truly a carnal and unscriptural expectation, which takes fire at true testimony as paralyzing missionary zeal, though obliged to own that none in fact are more zealous than those who look for Christ's coming before the millennium. In principle, the waiting for the Lord to come in grace and in judgment ought on the face of it to add urgency to our love and labors.

Further, it is a mistake to suppose that the N.T. (save in Rev. 20) is silent about the millennium, if we mean the thing and not the mere word; if only the latter, it is but illusion. The following are but a selection of N.T. scriptures which apply to the millennial day rather than to any other: Matt. 19: 28; Luke 1: 70-79; Acts 17: 31; Rom. 8: 19, 23; Rom. 11: 26-31; 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3; Eph. 1: 10; Phil. 2: 10, 11; Col. 1: 20; 2 Thess. 1: 5-10; 2 Tim. 2: 12; 4: 1; Heb. 2: 5-8. The O.T. had so fully described the millennium, and shown it to hinge, not only on the Messiah's presence, but on terrific judgments as introducing it, that there was the less need for the N. T. to dwell on what had been revealed already. To hold out the Lord's coming was therefore the exigency of the truth, if the millennium follows, but scarcely comprehensible if it be conceived to precede. For His coming in due time brings in the heavenly glory, as well as the peaceful reign over the earth, when the war-judgments have overwhelmed the wicked. And the Revelation is exactly the place to give particulars; for only in such a prophetic book could we intelligently expect the full, detailed, and relative order of these stupendous events. This we accordingly find with a precision and completeness, as well as unity, found nowhere else in the compass of inspiration, whatever rationalism may object to. No wonder it is called The Revelation. But dark unbelief casts its shadow over its pages, and would, if it could, convert it into the enigma of man, instead of owning it the solution of our Lord Jesus.

Why too, in comparing the Fourth Gospel with the Synoptists, refer to John 14: 18 (p. 24), and say nothing of the opening of the same chapter, where Christ's proper coming is set forth, not with earthly signs, but with heavenly blessings beyond any other? One might as fairly set Matt. 16: 28, Mark 8: 38, Luke 9: 27, against the prophecies of His advent in each Gospel and say that "His words here are not accompanied by any of the many and constant associations which mark, both in the Gospels and Epistles, the visible return of Christ at the last day." Is mystification sought? What else is the aim? In John 14: 1-3 the truth of His coming is revealed in its strict personality and heavenly aspect as our hope at least as distinctly as elsewhere. In John 5: 28, 29, the resurrection had been shown to be, not simultaneous, but fundamentally distinguished as twofold, a resurrection of life, and a resurrection of judgment, whilst ver. 25 is decisive that "hour" may be long enough to let in a thousand years and more. So in John 6 (not to speak of John 11: 24) "last day" can be no difficulty. And where is a previous millennium supposed in any of these scriptures?

It may have been the unhallowed wish of the multitude in John 6, who owned Jesus as the prophet that should come, and desired to make Him a King, as the fulfiller of Ps. 132: 15. But what would it have been but a carnal millennium on this side of death? Now it is the very aim of the Lord Jesus to make known that, instead of any present blessing by His reign now, He was come from heaven, and incarnate, to give the believer eternal life and resurrection at the last day, feeding meanwhile on His flesh, and drinking His blood. Thus a millennium is excluded till the last day comes and the righteous join Christ, for the display of His glory in the universe according to prophecy; as the apostle connects the raising of the saints with inheriting the kingdom (1 Cor. 15), where the words rendered "then" simply indicate subsequence; whether long or short, depends wholly on other facts or statements, as do the words "hour" and "day." So 1 Thess. 4 speaks only of the dead and living saints at Christ's coming; but how does any one of these scriptures, I say not involve, but admit of, the millennium before the second advent? If the millennium follow, their bearing is plain enough, though man's mind can easily suggest difficulties.

It may not be unseasonable to repeat that the N.T. says so much the less of the millennium, because it occupies so large a place in the O.T. The promises to the fathers (Genesis passim) suppose that time as the season of their most manifest fruition, however truly faith takes them up now in Christ. But it will hardly be contested that the Abrahamic inheritance of the world will then be enjoyed more distinctly than at any other period. So, in the prophecy of Jacob (Gen. 49), the gathering or obedience of the peoples to Shiloh looks onward to that day. Without dwelling on more debatable witness in the types of Ex., Lev., Num., etc., we may refer to the Psalms as running over with intimations beyond mistake. Take, among others, Ps. 2, 8, 22, 45, 72, 93-101, 110, 117, 118, 132, to say nothing of the concluding Hallelujah Psalms.

Still richer thus, if possible, were the prophets. Isaiah is almost too familiarly known in this connection to call for many words. But we may notice that, after appeals to conscience and heart, Isa. 1: 24-31 speaks of the Lord suddenly intervening in judgment to bring in righteousness for the chosen people; as Isa. 2 shows it will be the same principle and result for the nations. It is the kingdom by and by, not the gospel now, idolatry vanishing only in that great day. Is it possible that spiritual men can confound with the gospel "the spirit of judgment," and the "spirit of burning " (Isa. 4) by which the Lord is to purge the blood of Jerusalem? Then follows manifested glory upon Zion. Such will be the character of that future reign. Meanwhile, Israel having stumbled at the Stone of stumbling — Messiah in humiliation, the testimony is bound up, the law sealed, among His disciples — the children given to Christ Whom the prophet represents, signs and wonders, while Jehovah hides His face from Jacob (Isa. 8). If this, according to Heb. 2, applies now, Isa. 9 is no less explicit that the end of the age will see the intervention of His glorious power, when He breaks the rod of the oppressor, and Israel rejoice before Him. Then will they wake up from their long and fatal sleep, and joyfully own "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful," etc. And so one might pursue the theme throughout.

A mourner over Judah's sins and judgments as Jeremiah was, none the less does he point to the kingdom fully in chs. 3, 16, 23, 30-33. Ezekiel too is not silent on this head: chs. 16, 17, 20, 28, 34, 36, 38. Daniel shows us, as the issue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and of his own visions, the kingdom of God consequent on a judgment that extirpates the Gentile powers, rather than a description of that kingdom. On the so-called Minor Prophets we need not dwell. Speaking generally, they bear witness to the same glorious result on earth, as does the O.T. as a whole. It is neither heaven nor eternity, but Messiah's reign.

The N.T. confirms the Old in this fully; but it does more and better. To us it opens heaven and higher hopes, which gradually grew into brightness in the rejected Messiah glorified as man on high, and there made head over all things to the church which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1: 22, 23). Hence, save for special purposes, it is the heavenly side of the kingdom, on which the O.T. is all but silent, whereas it becomes the prominent and characteristic testimony of the N.T. The earthly side was in no way denied, but rather disappeared in the incalculably superior glory of what has now come fully to view. Yet, painful to say, it is this special privilege for the Christian to enjoy in hope, consequent on Christ's accomplished redemption and the gift of the Spirit, which appears to stumble some of our brethren. For the N.T. says no more than is requisite of the earth by and by: the aim is to insist on heaven in a way and measure which is quite new; and therefore Christ's coming, to receive us to Himself and give us a place with Himself in the Father's house above, becomes the distinctive keynote. But the Christian does not therefore lose his part in the kingdom, though the heavenly hope helps to explain more clearly the exalted relation he is to have in reigning with Christ at that day.

The Father's kingdom will come where the risen saints shine like the sun; and His will be done on earth as in heaven, because the glorious Son of man will hold the reins of power (Satan being bound), and the angels of His might gather out of His kingdom (clearly the earth) all scandals and those that do lawlessness (Matt. 13). Then, and then only, are the saints to judge the world, yea, angels (1 Cor. 6), as the apostles sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19). It is a state of things surely to be fulfilled, but as surely neither in this age nor in eternity, but in the age between, when all things, the habitable world to come among them (Heb. 2: 5-8), will be seen put under Christ, as they cannot be now or when the kingdom is given up (1 Cor 15: 25-28). It is to be feared that those who find it incredible that God's kingdom should consist of earthly and of heavenly things to be displayed together at Christ's manifestation, when we, too, shall be manifested together with Him in glory (Col. 3: 4), fall into the kindred unbelief now of excluding from their hearts and their teaching such unearthly and glorious motives. The apostle counted the letting in of this heavenly light on common matters most desirable, wholesome, and influential. It did not occur to him that real Christians would object to the divine scheme of the kingdom, because Christ will be the displayed Head of all things in heaven and of all things on the earth (Eph. 1: 10). The objectors are not indeed Sadducees; but unbelief as far as it goes joins saints in bad companionship. Together they err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

And the consequence of this unbelief has been disastrous from early days to our own. The low chiliastic views of the second and third centuries, which fell back on the Jewish hope of the earth at Christ's coming, were met for the most part by the allegorizing interpretation, which assumed a reign of the gospel and of the church, either already or at a future day. The purpose of God to put the universe heavenly and earthly under Christ was given up by both to the unspeakable loss of the saints, and sad slight of their Lord. Under this error lie our brethren today. Even Dr. B., who differs from most of his friends by looking for all Israel's inbringing as a leading feature of the latter day, nullifies its distinctiveness by his usual argument of less now and more then, so as to assimilate all and deny a new age or dispensation. This vagueness dissolves the power of the truth: else he must feel that the nature of the church as the one body of Christ wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile forbids, and is inconsistent (as long as it is in process of building) with, the inbringing of all Israel. But this he does not see, because he, as much as those who reject Israel's hope, ignores the special calling and character of the church. Now according to scripture it is not the merging of all Israel in the church which is predicted; but, along with their conversion, prophecy points out their restoration to more than pristine glory and blessedness under Messiah and the now covenant; and this, to be the head of the nations on earth, when the glorified reign over it from their heavenly seats with Christ.

When the church ceased to affirm the future prospects of Israel on earth, she along with this lost sight of her own heavenly hopes, and began to seek ease, honour, and power here below, and naturally perverted the prophecies to this end. At length she substituted herself so completely for the ancient people of God, that she dreamed Jerusalem and Zion, Judah and Israel, to be only so many varying expressions of her own glory, either now or at a future day. For another age characterized by Christ's presence and reign was now become intolerable. As long as (alas! how briefly) the church walked in the living hope of her own heavenly association with Christ's glory, she also confessed God's immutable mercy for Israel here below; that at Christ's coming He might have the glorified with Himself above, and concurrently therewith His earthly people, the channel and means of the universal spread of His name among all nations broken by judgments, and under the Spirit's latter rain, Satan being banished from his wonted haunts.

The prevalent view betrays the usual symptoms of unbelief. It does not face a quantity of plain scriptural testimony. It occupies itself with exaggeration of others or with its own difficulties and objections, not positive truth. It neglects the scriptures which tell us clearly how the kingdom is to come. It is based on the assumption of human progress in the face of the clearest warnings of failure increasing till Christ come. It hides its self-confidence under the plea of the Spirit in and by man working Christ's cause to ultimate triumph. It denies the divine purpose of putting all things visibly under Christ, and the glorified saints on high with Israel and all nations blessed here below before eternity come. It banishes the King from His kingdom, for His bride to enjoy it if she can in His absence, and insists on keeping Satan in his bad eminence, spite of the strongest assurance to the contrary. To what is such obstinate incredulity due? Were the eye single to Christ's personal glory (not "His cause" in our hands), the whole body would be full of light, instead of the confusion this error breeds for this and almost every other truth.

It is false that Christ's second coming "will be at once followed by the final separation of the good and bad, and by the eternal glory" (p. 135), and that consequently the millennium cannot follow it. Our Lord, to correct the thought that the kingdom of God was about to be manifested immediately, spoke parabolically (Luke 19) of going to a distant country (heaven) to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return. His servants (Christians) meanwhile trade with His money; His citizens (the Jews), not content with rejecting Him as they were already doing unto the death of the cross, send a messenger after Him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. All this (in spite of Peter's call in Acts 3) was punctually fulfilled in the murder of Stephen, sent after Christ as it were with that insulting message. So indeed it was shown in the Acts at large and the N. T. generally. But when Christ comes back again, having received (not given up) the kingdom, He awards to His servants for the kingdom authority over this or that, and utter loss for such as make no use of what was given; He also executes judgment on the rebellious people. All this will be as surely fulfilled. But it is in no respect the great white-throne judgment for the lake of fire, nor the eternal glory of Rev. 21: 1-8 when He shall give up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father. It is what the apostle had in view when he charged Timothy by (or testified both) Christ's appearing and His kingdom (1 Tim. 4: 1); for He is to judge not dead only at the end, but quick at the beginning and in one form or another all through the kingdom. Reigning in righteousness is the characteristic display then; and we shall share His throne.

The post-millennial system misapplies or excludes that grand prospect which the apostle was inspired to open out to us in Eph. 1: 10; Phil. 2: 10, 11; Col. 1: 20. For, though there be results for eternity, the millennium will be the blessed manifestation before the universe of the Savior's triumph. What grace does now is in no way the administration of the fullness of times; nor will eternity be anything of the kind, for Christ shall deliver up the kingdom and Himself be subject to Him that did subject all things unto Him, that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) may be all in all (1 Cor. 15: 24-28).

The millennium is not a characteristic period of conflict between good and evil, however changed the conditions. It is a reign of righteousness on earth, Christ and His glorified saints reigning together over it. It is the heavenlies, no longer infested by spiritual wickednesses, but purged for ever, and filled with those who were once the slaves of Satan, bearing in their risen bodies the image of His glory. It is the heavenly Jerusalem, reflecting from on high, not glory only, but that same spirit of grace (Rev. 22: 2) in which those who compose it once walked on earth by faith: the beautiful contrast of the earthly Jerusalem which in that day will still be the witness and instrument of unsparing righteousness (Isa. 60: 12). Then more fully will be seen the truth of the great Melchizedek, not only in person and title but in the exercise of His priesthood, when He will bless man with the blessing of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth; and bless the Most High God Who will have delivered the enemies into the hand of the faithful. Heaven and earth will no more stand severed and opposed through sin; nor will it be merely grace in Christ from heaven shining for all that they may believe, and on believers as they feebly pursue their pilgrim path; but heaven and earth shall form the harmonious theater of suited glory. "For there are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and that of the terrestrial is another." "And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith Jehovah, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel (Hosea 2: 21-22).

Eternity is not an "administration" or stewardship, as this will be; nor is it true as a fact yet, but, a revealed purpose for that intervening day "to sum (or head) up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth" — "in Him in Whom we also obtained an inheritance," having been foreordained according to His purpose. For we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. During this evil age Satan is the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2), the god of this age, who beguiled its rulers to crucify the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2). This, however, only gave occasion to the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church. While Christ sits exalted head over all things at God's right hand, the Holy Spirit is sent down to gather out and together the members of the one body, the sons of glory; so that, when He comes again, having received the kingdom, they too may reign with Him. Then the earth will be judicially cleansed from its defilement, and the ancient people of God in repentance welcome their once rejected but now glorified Messiah, and thus take their destined place, though on the ground of pure mercy, as the head of all nations and families of the earth, at length blessed under the sway of the only worthy One.

In the eternal universe there will be no more sea (Rev. 21: 1). For the millennial state it is written, "Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful before Jehovah; for He cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall He judge the world and the peoples with equity." It is the kingdom of God before being given up. Then will creation be, not burnt up as at the end, but delivered; for the revelation of the sons of God is come; and as they are no longer waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body, creation groans no more, but is set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of God's children (Rom. 8). It is the day of the displayed glory of the Second Man, and His manifested triumph over Satan, not the conflict, but the kingdom; and when this (not the strife) draws towards its close, Satan is loosed for a little time, but for a great moral lesson, after which he is overwhelmed and tormented forever. Then only will be the eternal state.

Then will the world, not "believe," as it ought, now, that the Father sent the Sea (John 17: 21), but "know " that the Father did send Him and love the saints on high as He loved Christ (v. 23); for will they not then shine in the same heavenly glory? For the glory which the Father gave Christ, Christ gave them (v. 22), now first said to be "perfected into one," as indeed cannot be till then. This is the perfection of supernatural interference, the very reverse of "heaven and hell withdrawing from the field, and leaving it to the inherent power of principles as manifested in human life on earth," as Dr. Edwards erroneously thinks (p. 73).

Dr. Edwards writes for the most part calmly. Yet with an adequate knowledge of scripture one cannot yield to his thoughts or his reasoning.

It is true, as a matter of course, that the advent of the Messiah is first shown in the O.T. (p. 63), and that only after His rejection by the Jews was His second advent discerned clearly from the first. But it is a mistake that the second advent is ever represented in the N.T., as introducing "the eternal reign of God when Christ shall have delivered the mediatorial kingdom to the Father" (p. 64). The age to come is ignored between the end of this age and the eternal day. Nor does scripture leave room for a third advent, which cannot therefore be postulated.

That the end of (not this age, but) the world and the judgment of the dead will be ushered in by an advent of our Lord Jesus, is certainly opposed to the N. T. Rev. 20 is absolutely silent about His advent, because it has been already described in Rev. 19, and what follows consists of its results. There are no quick (living) to be judged after fire from God has devoured the rebellious nations (Rev. 20: 7-9); so that the judgment in vv. 11-15 consists solely of the dead, and we may add of the wicked, who, if we believe our Lord in John 5: 24, exclusively come into judgment, as these do. They are judged according to their works, which for a sinner is perdition. The books according to the figure employed bore witness of their deeds; the book of life had none of their names. Divine sovereignty was silent; their works confessed the justice of their doom. If Christ must appear to judge quick and dead, it cannot be at the end of the kingdom, because there is no earth to come to, any more than quick to judge. According to the express terms of the vision, earth and heaven will have fled away, and no place be found for them. The dead stand before the throne; but it is neither the earth nor yet the heaven as far as we know, for they are then gone. It is a going of the dead to be judged by Christ, not in any sense His coming, which is a fabulous interpolation for that time. His true advent for the judgment of the quick is in Rev. 19: 11, not in Rev. 20: 11, when it is no longer possible, as in fact it is not so written.

As to "inherent improbability" (pp. 65-67), no argument can be more precarious. The nature of the case implies a divine intervention unexampled in the past. The only question for a believer is, What saith the scripture? The first coming of our Lord was no mere link in the chain of the world's history; nor will His second coming be. The one was God's humiliation in Christ's person in grace; the other will be in Him man's exaltation in glory. That both are above "development" is simple to faith, whatever be the speculations of philosophy. The atonement of Christ is not more the answer to a guilty conscience, than it is God thereby glorified even in the face of sin; and the kingdom will be the display of His victory before the universe to the joy of all the once groaning creation, the blessing of long deceived and benighted man, the glorified enjoying the reward of fidelity — in their reign with Christ as they once suffered with Him. Yet Dr. E. asks, "What is gained by a millennium?" and answers, "Apparently, nothing; absolutely nothing." This is really too dense.

The new age, however necessarily distinct from all before, is a stewardship, an economy. It will have its peculiar object — for Christ to put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. Though He has the title already (Head over all things, which God has put under His feet), He is not yet making good that title against His enemies. While sitting at the right hand of God, and on the Father's throne, He is acting as priest, etc., for His friends, till God makes His enemies His footstool. Then He will come, having received the kingdom, rule in the midst of His enemies, and strike through kings in the day of His wrath. It is a new age marked by its own special principles and ways, wholly distinct from what He or we are doing now, when He is gathering the co-heirs who are associated with Himself in a heavenly way for His reign over the earth at His coming.

Is it not profane to speak of this holy and glorious kingdom of Christ and His own, as wearing the appearance of an immense demonstration, like the triumph of a Caesar? Such a comparison one might understand from the lips of a Festus, who regarded the revelation of God as questions of superstition, and of one Jesus which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.

"It neither grows out of the intellectual and spiritual condition of the human race, nor leads to higher attainments intellectual or spiritual" (p. 66). It is the purpose of God to glorify the Lord Jesus and those who have in faith shared His sufferings, not only as now in Himself on high, but from out of the heavens over the earth, placed as it has never yet been in fact under His scepter.

But Dr. E. should not speak as he does both of the millennial reign, and of the short space that follows: For a time it burns like a fierce light to be quenched in utter darkness; again, however, to blaze out in final and unending day (p. 66). Satan expelled, Israel and all nations blessed, creation delivered, Christ and His own that are changed reigning over the earth, the Most High God possessor of heaven and earth united and in peace, and He Who was erst crucified bearing up the pillars of God's glory: can anything be more worthy of Christ, or more in accordance with God's word? Otherwise a vast deal of scripture in O. and N.T. is reduced to a blank, which again obscures both this age and eternity, with which in that case its contents are more or less confounded.

No prospect so desirable both for Christ and for the race. God occupies Himself with the glory of Christ, which will not fail. The millennium is no mistake, but a revealed and splendid chapter in God's story of the universe. In Adam man fell and died; in Christ man will be made alive and blessed. Israel under law became ruined and scattered to every land; under Christ their King, and the new covenant, they will yet be gathered and maintained in peace, and joy, and honour. The nations invested with imperial authority became "beasts," as Daniel calls them, till the last, in the blasphemous pride of its chief, brings down the Son of man's judgment in His kingdom, when all peoples, nations, and languages shall serve Him. The church, saved by grace, and the responsible witness on earth now to Christ glorified on high, being united to Him by the Holy Spirit, has proved unfaithful and corrupt, as the professing mass will assuredly fall into the apostasy, when the man of sin shall provoke the vengeance of the Lord, no less than the self-exalting civil head; but none the less will Christ present to Himself the church glorious, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and unblemished. Now the millennium will be the "immense demonstration" of all this and more before the world; but as unlike a Caesar's triumph, as a man of dust differs from the Lord of glory. If there were no millennium, what a gap in God's ways and in the display of His counsels!

That the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ shall come at the close of this age, and last for a long but terminable period constituting the new age, before "the end" or eternity begins, is no difficulty to a true-hearted believer accustomed to bow to scripture, and on his guard against tradition. And the insurrection of the distant nations after the thousand years are over, when Satan is let loose for the last temptation, simply shows that it is an age or dispensation when man is tried under quite new conditions and for the last time. Would the experience of a thousand years of righteousness, peace, and outward blessing, under the glorious reign of Christ and the heavenly saints, endear God to the race as such, so that then they would reject the deceit of Satan?

To this the answer of God's word by the little space (Rev. 20: 7-10) is, that the race (however controlled to their own immense advantage, with every mercy around them through the infinitely beneficent and mighty One Who held the reins and shed the blessing) only needs the active temptation of Satan to turn and rebel once more at God. Nothing but to be born of God can avail. They submitted in Satan's absence, when it was their own interest to render such obedience as it was, and when every transgression paid a just and speedy penalty. There was no temptation; and all was good around, and abundantly too. In such a state they could not be God's people, and He their God, for the new heavens and the new earth. Satan's temptation, unless God must or would convert them all, was precisely the due way to test them, as the race had been, if otherwise, always tested before; and they fall to their ruin at the first trial of Satan, as did man from the beginning. Is it godly, is it intelligent, is it decent, first to blot out the truth of the scriptural millennium, and then to stigmatize its freedom from social conflict, and its "reign in holiness and profound peace for a thousand years," as a state to which "the actual history of the world is infinitely preferable" (p. 67)? Truly "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Matt. 12: 34). "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned" (Matt. 12: 37).

It is ignorance and unbelief to regard the millennium as earthly alone. The distinctive truth is that, both heaven and earth will be in blessed nearness of harmony under Christ and the risen saints. And here it may be well to observe that the chief, perhaps only, N.T. semblance of proof for the earth exclusively is the misrendering of Rev. 5: 10, where it is painful to see the error of the A.V. reproduced by the Revisers (of 1881). For the usage, as far as appears, is that with words of authority or rule ἐπὶ indicates the sphere ruled over, ἐν the place in which the ruler lived. There is a shade of difference between gen. dat. and accus., but none as to the general fact that they express the subject of rule, not the ruler's abode. It will be seen, in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, for instance, that the locality of the king is regularly expressed by ἐν, the sphere by ἐπί. This being so, the true rendering is "over," not "on." Those who have given the latter have adopted a legitimate force of the preposition generally, not its meaning when modified by the connected βασ. The millennial reign then is heavenly, but over the earth, where Israel and the nations do not reign but are reigned over.

Every one fairly informed on the question knows that the N.T. assumes the O.T. revelation of God on the millennium, but it is almost exclusively on the earthly side. The N.T. is not "more authoritative" (p. 69), but it adds very fully the connection with the heavens under the risen Christ, Heir of all things. Still, while the coming of the Lord is put forward prominently, the kingdom is in no way hidden in the N.T. nor even in the Epistles to the Thessalonians. "The kingdom" implies Christ's coming to reign over the earth. In 1 Thess. 2: 12 the apostle speaks of God calling to this, as an encouragement to walking worthily of God; and 2 Thess. 1 shows the enemy had taken advantage of their persecutions and afflictions to say that the day of the Lord was arrived. The apostle, even before he dissipates this delusion, treats their troubles, on the contrary, as a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, "that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which ye also suffer." It is clearly the millennial reign with Christ which was suggested. And this is the more evident from v. 10, where it is said that Christ "shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marveled at in all them that believed." The world will then know by the glory in which Christ and His own shall be manifested, that the Father sent the Son and loved them as He loved Him. This is the millennium, not the eternal scene in the new heaven and new earth.

The next argument of Dr. E. on 2 Thess. 2 (pp. 69, 70), like some of Prof. B.'s, goes against the millennium, whether before or after Christ's return. Now it is quite true, that what the apostle says excludes the millennium before He appears to destroy the lawless one. Here we are cordially agreed. But where is there the shadow of a reason against a subsequent thousand years of peace? More extraordinary still is the next statement:

The impression left on the reader's mind is that Christ's reign is a long conflict with evil, which in the end embodies itself in the person of the lawless one, whose defeat brings the war to a close. A similar misconception appears in Prof. B.'s paper (p. 28). The impression given by the chapter is that the open outbreak and God-defying pride of the lawless one brings the Lord from heaven to annul him by the shining forth of His presence. This coalesces not only with Rev. 19: 11-21, but with Isa. 11: 4; both of which are followed beyond controversy by the millennial reign. After that reign is over, Satan is let loose for a special and needed sifting of the unrenewed masses of millennial Gentiles, and judgment falls from God's fire, not from Christ's appearing, without a semblance of the lawless one at that epoch. And no wonder: he had been destroyed irretrievably a thousand years before. Not the lawless one but Satan leads afterwards.

On 1 Cor. 15: 25 one need say little; for it is agreed that the verse speaks of Christ reigning. But not a word implies that it "has already begun." The verse does imply that God will have set Christ's enemies as a footstool for His feet to trample down. Is it seriously argued that Christ is actively subduing His enemies now, as He will when the kingdom comes? As to really vanquishing them, He is quiescent now: all His activities are of grace in converting foes, and nourishing, etc., friends; and this, because the members of His body, the church, are not complete. The marriage of the Lamb takes place in heaven, before He appears in judgment of His open foes (the lawless one first of all), and enters on the reign where all things are to be subjected to Him in fact, as they are now in title. But the reigning is when the dispensed power is in full and public operation before the universe. When that is done, not only in the millennial reign, but by the judgments which precede, and the still more solemn eternal judgment that follows, then the Son shall also Himself be subjected to Him that subjected all things to Him, the kingdom is surrendered, and God is all in all. So far from there being no hint, there is a pointed reference to the millennial reign in the latter half of 1 Cor. 15: 24 and the whole of v. 25.

But Dr. E. makes up for such shortcomings by his open admission (pp. 71, 72) that the figurative interpretation of Rev. 20: 1-10, for which Dr. Brown and Prof. Beet contend keenly as a question of life or death, "completely breaks down." Nay more, he frankly accepts the interpretation that finds in the passage the doctrine of two resurrections, and that a long period, symbolically designated a thousand years, comes between the resurrection of the saints and that of the rest of the dead. What is there to contend about after such an admission? the plain Christian may ask in surprise. That the millennium is a governmental system, and for a time only, in Christ's hands, is the point. It is not the perfection of the new heaven and earth, when rule is over.

"This passage (adds Dr. E.) contains no hint that Christ comes before the thousand years begin . . . But St. Paul plainly tells us that the saints are raised at Christ's coming (1 Cor. 15: 23). In this respect, that is, in reference to the resurrection of the saints, I infer that the advent is premillennial. Beyond this I cannot see that the passage supports the millennial theory." It appears to me that a premillennialist must be hard to please who cannot see in this admission Dr. E.'s surrender of the post-millennial view; nor can I doubt that his two negative coadjutors must have been scandalized by a confession so distinct and positive, if not complete. To hold that Christ comes from heaven to raise the saints a thousand years and more (symbolically or literally) before He raises the rest of the dead, and yet that He does not then reign, and does not bring in times of restoring all things, though so full of prophetic testimony and therefore of such interest to God and His children, and that the world is not to know the wonders of God's love to Christ and those that were His in days of suffering, and that there is to be no accomplishment of God's purpose for administration of the fullness of times, no heading up of all things in Christ, both heavenly and earthly (Eph. 1: 10), in which we are to share the inheritance with Him: — to hold what Dr. E. allows, and to deny, as he does, these glorious consequences of Christ's coming, is to present as remarkable a group of inconsistencies as one can expect to see in a man of ability. In this judgment Prof. Beet and Dr. Brown would agree against Dr. E., unless I am greatly mistaken. One can but deplore the violence done thereby to the texture of scripture, and the impotence to which even the truth confessed is thus reduced.

The fact is, however, that our negative brethren are singularly at war with each other on vital questions. Thus Prof. Beet will have it, as the teaching of very many statements, by various sacred writers . . . that the coming of Christ will for ever end the conflict of good and evil (p. 140). Such is his main position. This is directly at issue with Dr. Edwards, who holds that Christ comes to raise the saints for heaven where they will reign with Him, before the millennium (or a thousand years symbolical before the rest of the dead are raised, Satan being meanwhile bound and cast into the bottomless pit). Yet he also holds that the thousand years, far from being a time of holy peace, are a continuation of the conflict between good and evil, but under changed conditions . . . Heaven and hell withdraw from the field to leave it to the inherent power of principles, as manifested in human life on earth (p. 73). Thus all is avowedly reduced to a human level and order, beyond any dealing of God in the past!

"The conflict assumes apparently a more human character!" and this, after confessing Christ come, the saints raised, and Satan bound!! Of course Dr. B., as well as Prof. B., wholly reject all these features of Dr. E.'s wonderful millennium. "A more human character" is only true, if the all-important place of the risen Head and the risen saints is owned, not "withdrawn" but from heaven controlling the earth for good, as never before, and ruling the nations with a rod of iron, in contrast with the gospel. The loosing of Satan after the thousand years, and his successful seduction of men far and wide on earth (for be never gains the place of accuser in heaven, as we know him), will only the more bring out that all flesh is grass; for it might have been thought an "inherent improbability" for such as judged from the unbroken peace, righteous government, and visible glory, of that unparalleled period. But flesh ensnared even then by Satan is devoured by fire coming down out of heaven; and heaven and earth are dissolved and vanish away for Christ's judgment of the dead, who are cast into the lake of fire; and new heavens and a new earth appear wherein righteousness dwells, and God (not the exalted Man) is all in all.

For Dr. B. here, and more fully in his Second Advent, contends for a millennium which only differs from this age by an increase of the good now at work, and a diminution of the evil, with scarce one thing adequately answering to the visions of the kingdom as set forth in both Old and New Testaments alike. Dr. B. indeed does not argue like Prof. Beet, as if the passage in Rev. 20: 1-9 stood alone and at issue with every other in the N. T. The chief thing peculiar to that passage in fact is defining the length of the kingdom; and where in the N. T. could that measure be given so fittingly as in its one great prophecy? The kingdom itself is most fully described in the Old Testament as well as less so in the New. Dr. B. does not question, as Prof. B. seems to do, the sphere of the reign with Christ (pp. 30, 146). They do indeed join arms in throwing doubt over its being a resurrection of the saints. One of them calls it an unproved assertion that the prophet speaks (in v. 4) of three classes, i.e., of the saints in general, besides the twofold Apocalyptic martyrs; another assumes that they are only martyrs.

In truth Prof. B. leaves it doubtful as far as appears (and I should abhor misjudging him or any other), whether he believes in a millennium at all, save possibly "a fresh departure greater and better even than the Reformation" (pp. 34, 35)! And he widely differs in the hasty assertion that "the visions of Daniel refer always to the eternal glory " (p. 33). Dr. B. on the contrary, with no less confidence, maintains the opposite error that the first vision (and the same principle applies no less to the last) is not even a new dispensation, but only a final step of the same unbroken dispensation as the present (pp. 119-121)! Thus both ignore "the age to come" in flat opposition to scripture. Again, Dr. B., in his aversion to the natural interpretation of Rev. 20: 4-6, which Dr. E. admits it is impossible to evade, dwells on the symbolical and difficult nature of the Revelation, with almost every possible interpretation advanced, and the varieties of understanding this very passage among its literal interpreters (pp. 107, 108). Now what matters all this cloud of dust, if he is sure it is inspired, and that the Holy Spirit enables him to understand its genuine meaning? When people are so full of others' uncertainties, can one trust their own assurance? Prof. Beet goes farther still, and does what he can to take up the old scepticism which those who shrunk from Rev. 20: 1-10 fell into respecting even its genuineness (pp. 137, 138). But no man ever quarreled with the Apocalypse, unless the Apocalypse gave no quarter to his own idols. There is no book of scripture more self-evidently of God.

As far as appears, Dr. E. symbolizes with the late Prof. Moses Stuart, who believed in a first resurrection literally, and yet adhered to the traditional view of a general resurrection before the great white throne. But this amalgam is incoherent, and the exegesis unsatisfactory, even to the Andover expositor himself; as every comment must be which is not based on two distinct resurrections, of the just, and of the unjust. A general resurrection, or a universal judgment, is opposed to God's word, and fraught with perplexity and error.

Dr. Brown, after some prefatory words of no concern here, begins with 2 Peter 3: 10-13. His fundamental mistake is the assumption that the day of the Lord is the equivalent of the Second Advent. Now any careful reader of the O.T. may see that "that day" includes a vast variety of divine dealings, and is a period, not an epoch. It begins (not with the Lord's presence or coming (i.e., the rapture) at all, which is positively and plainly contra-distinguished from it in 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2, as we have already shown, but) with His judicial dealings on earth (beginning with His appearing in glory); which judgments, in one form or another, occupy the kingdom for more than 1000 years, till it is delivered up at the end. This is the simple truth of the day of the Lord, apart from controversy; and it thus completely disposes of the difficulty. The dissolution of the universe is near the close of that day, but still within it, which is just what the apostle states (see 2 Peter 3: 7-13, JND translation). Dr. B. perplexes himself by taking for granted that it is at the beginning. His argument in pp. 91-93 is wholly invalid.

The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up; the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat; but all that the apostle Peter determines is, that it is "in" that day (v. 10) and by reason of it (v. 12). It was not to be before, nor yet after, but within (the day of the Lord), and because of the presence of, the day of God (i.e., the eternal state). The Apocalypse of John adds, where alone we ought to expect distinct details in their relative order, that this same destruction of heaven and earth is to be only just before the end. No wonder therefore that those who cling to the postmillennial theory decry the inspired book which demolishes it. The burning up and sweeping away are just before the day (of the Lord) ends, which had been running its course for more than a thousand years, an ample period for all that scripture predicts or premillennialists say. Nor is it true that the warning to the scoffers is pointless. If they ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" the apostle answers with "the day of the Lord" and its overwhelming terrors, which will destroy the ungodly at the beginning, but will not end before the heavens and earth that now are pass away: the fitting and full reply of God to the scornful scepticism which took its stand against His word on the (alleged) stability of the visible creation. The day will come as a thief, nor will it terminate till every word is accomplished. Dr. B.'s argument cannot survive the touch of scripture.

Just as vain is his reasoning on John 6, and the kindred texts in pp. 94-96. The Lord will assuredly raise up all the dead saints, and change the living ones, to be caught up together in clouds to meet the Lord in the air; but this leaves all open as to any who may be born of God afterwards during the day of the Lord, when Messiah's praise shall be of God "in the great congregation," and "all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kingdoms of the nations shall worship before Thee." It is absurd to ignore the harvest of the millennial earth, necessarily distinct from the saints who compose the first resurrection. They that are Christ's are to be raised at His coming; but how unreasonable, as well as unscriptural, to fancy that Christ has none to bless in the day of His power and joy! Texts which speak of saints past or present do not shut out the "generation" to come. Psalms and Prophets speak distinctly of saints in that day on the earth. That they die not proves they will not be raised; that they do not suffer with Christ indicates that they are not to reign with Him in that day, for they will be reigned over; but as nothing forbids the gracious quickening of the Spirit in that day, so they will have their blessed portion in the eternal state. A premillennialist must be a simpleton to be perplexed by a conclusion as unsound as the premise is negligent of scripture.

In pp. 97, 98 follows a string of texts (Matt. 10: 32, 33; John 5: 28, 29; Rom. 2: 6-10, 16; 2 Cor. 5: 10) which are cited for simultaneous presentation and judgment of righteous and wicked at Christ's second coming. Not one of them utters a word to that effect. All teach award; none defines the time or way, still less simultaneity. Other scriptures prove that they are wholly apart; one at least defines the long interval. Dr. B. connects Rom. 2: 16 with v. 10 and preceding; whereas it really links with v. 12. Again, Acts 17: 31 speaks solely of Christ's judging the habitable earth, and not the dead. It is therefore nothing to Dr, B.'s purpose, but proves a different judgment, which the postmillennial scheme ignores. John 5 is so far from indicating a simultaneous judgment, that it proves the believer's portion to be life, in contrast with judgment which awaits the wicked only; so that there are two contrasted resurrections also. Hence in 2 Cor. 5: 10 we read that we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each may receive the things done through the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad; but not a hint that it will be for just and unjust at the same time, which is elsewhere shown to be unfounded, yea, contradictory of God's word. Dr. B. is loose and unhappy in his citations.

But what then of Rev. 20: 11-15, which is supposed to express clearly the absolute universality of the Last Judgment? (p. 99.) Can reasoning be feebler? As in Rev. 11: 18, and 19: 5, "the small and the great" include none beyond those that are named, the God-fearing, so in the passage questioned "the great and the small," do not go beyond the dead that now stand before the throne for judgment, after the blessed and holy we saw raised 1000 years before to reign with Christ. Dr. B.'s argument really upsets his own conclusion. "The great and the small," as well as the mention of the sea, death, and Hades, do solemnly mark the universality of the dead left by the first resurrection; but to seek, as is sought, to include those already raised in "the dead," who now so long after stand before the throne to be judged, seems as opposed to all just interpretation of the chapter and to all scripture, as it is to all sound reasoning. It can only be accounted for by the darkening influence of error, πρῶτον ψεῦδος.

Every one must be manifested before Christ's Bema, saints and sinners at their respective and due times: the saints already glorified to give account and receive according to their deeds; sinners, as they have violated conscience, transgressed God's law, or rejected His gospel, to come into judgment, whence none of them can be saved, for they have not life. Hence here it is said (Rev. 20: 12) that " the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books according to their works." If so, it was and could only be everlasting rain, as inspired David expresses it (Ps. 143: 2); and so in the N.T. judgment is contrasted both with life (John 5: 24, 29) and with salvation (Heb. 9: 27, 28).

Yet my excellent friend Dr. B., after citing the affecting repetition in verse 13 ("and they were judged every man according to their works"), appeals to "the almost identical language of the Gospels and Epistles already quoted," which do not treat the judgment of the righteous and wicked as one whole. He asks, Are we to believe that Life's book was opened for no other purpose than to show that not one of those then raised and then judged was to be found in it? The answer is, that the text expressly declares that the dead, not some but all, οἱ νεκροὶ, were not merely "made manifest" as all saints are to be, but "judged" also, as no believer is or can be, if we accept the words of our Lord, "out of the things that were written in the books." This is inevitable perdition, as every believer saved by grace through the faith of Christ ought to know.

For what then was or could that "other book" be opened, save to make plain that if God's wrath, long revealed and despised, must take its course righteously, God's sovereignty was neither disappointed nor conflicting? The names of the condemned were not there. Therefore it is not "baldly," but with awful emphasis, added, "And if any one was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." Not a hint of one who was found written there. The book of life tallied perfectly with the books of deeds. Their works called for God's final punishment; to grace they had been indifferent or actively opposed. I regret that a dear Christian should count it "bald" to believe the divine expression of a most weighty truth — the consistency of sovereign grace with everlasting judgment. And the folly of traditional theology is the more evident; for if the righteous were "nakedly expressed" here or anywhere as sharing the judgment with the wicked, it would contradict the O.T. as well as the New, the Lord no less than the apostle. The error strikes not only at "the most mysterious book of the N. T.," but at fundamental revelation in general. To say that the believer comes into judgment is at issue with the truth of the gospel itself, and is the mere fruit of reasoning from the assumptions of the natural mind.

It is not true, then, that "the one answer to all this" (p. 101) is the "first resurrection," though it be irreconcilable with the anti-scriptural dream of a last simultaneous judgment of all. For we have seen thus far that there is not an atom of truth in one argument alleged. Now Dr. B. betakes himself to another venerable and widespread error, that the persons raised in this first resurrection are the martyrs exclusively" (p. 102). Two classes, he says correctly enough, are here very definitely specified; but how come he and his friends to overlook the general description which precedes, leaving room for all saints beyond those martyrs? "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given them," — exactly fulfilling what the apostle brought before the unspiritual and forgetful Corinthians (1 Cor. 6). Does not Dr. B. know that the saints (not the martyrs exclusively) shall judge the world? Here is the vision of its accomplishment.

We know from 1 Cor. 15, 1 Thess. 4, 2 Thess. 1, and many other scriptures, that the saints at large, of O. and N.T. alike, are to meet the Lord at His coming (the rapture), and to be with Him in the Father's house on high. This the Revelation, as being characteristically a judicial book, does not describe on any scheme whatever; but it does disclose the glorified saints above ere this, notably the marriage of the Lamb come and His wife (the church assuredly as having made herself ready in Rev. 19. Others are there entering into the joy of heaven, not in that most intimate relation, yet blessed indeed — they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19: 9), not the bride but the guests. It is not faith nor wisdom to slight, or confound, these distinctions of God's word. And it is but a shuffle to evade them under the pretense that it is a question only of interpretation. Not so. The text is plain, too plain for prejudice; and therefore it must be explained away by misusing Rev. 21: 2. The bride is not invited to her own wedding; nor are those invited to it the bride. So in Heb. 12: 22-24 (where the different objects are marked by καὶ, "and," but neglected in both the Authorized and the Revised Versions), "the church of the firstborn," who are enrolled in heaven, are clearly distinguished from the" spirits of just men made perfect." It is a false system which merges all saints in one throng; and if the O.T. saints are thus distinguished from the assembly of firstborn ones, how much more the saints in the wholly changed conditions of the age to come! Not seeing this, and bent on denying it, Dr. B. (in his Second Advent p. 84) has been betrayed into the stupendous blunder that Heb. 11: 40 ("God having provided some better thing concerning us [of the N.T.], that apart from us they [the O.T. saints] should not be made perfect,") means "They without us could not be made perfect, that is, without Christ and the Spirit! whose proper economy ours certainly is." Such is the result of his desperate effort to escape the plain distinction drawn by inspiration between the saints of the O.T. and those of the New.

Now both compose the general mass of saints, which our brethren overlook, as seen by St. John, already occupying thrones in Rev. 20: 4, as before seen following Christ out of heaven in Rev. 19: 11-14. Compare also Rev. 17: 14. When Daniel (Dan. 7: 9) beheld the thrones, not "cast down," but "set up," he speaks of no sitter but one, the Ancient of days; when John saw thrones, they were filled by sitters on them, and judgment was given to them. The phrase is purposely general, the better to comprise the undefined body of changed saints just issued out of heaven with Christ in order to reign with Him. But as not a few had suffered unto death in the earlier and later persecutions described in the Apocalypse (Rev. 6: 9-11, Rev. 13: 7, 15), these, who had been slain subsequently to the rest and were not yet raised, are carefully specified as now alive from the dead, both classes of them, to join the general group already enthroned (Rev. 20: 4). No doubt this goes far to put out of court the historicalist notion of the Pagan and the Papal periods; but this is a secondary question of application which may be left to the speculative. Our business now is the true exposition of the text before us; and there is no intelligible ground in its plain terms for doubting that there is first, in the opening clause of verse 4, the general body of those who have part in the first resurrection; then the earlier class of Apocalyptic martyrs; and lastly the later company, for which the earlier were to wait. The last sufferers having been killed even as those before, the two specified classes are now raised in time to join the great bulk of the glorified who had already been seen on the thrones (having been caught up at the rapture), so that they all might reign with Christ a thousand years. Who can fail to see that this is the clear and sure meaning when attention is once fairly drawn to the passage? It was unnecessary to define who filled the thrones (p. 146); for it could not but be the saints answering to the bride and the guests at the marriage supper of the Lamb, who had followed Him out of heaven for His judgment and reign over the earth.

These form the first and general class (of Rev. 20: 4); to which both groups of Apocalyptic sufferers (the martyrs during Daniel's 70th week) were added when raised, as the prophet was given to see. Dr. B. at least expressly admits the two "very definitely specified" classes of martyrs, though he, like many others, has not taken account of the already enthroned saints (of Rev. 4). It is idle to dispute that the verse reveals the general body, with two classes added of special interest in the Apocalypse. It is negligence or prejudice which accounts for the strange oversight of the general clause. What does it matter if the (church) Fathers saw not the wood of that clause in their hasty preoccupation with the trees in the subjoined clauses? What avails parading moderns, whose exegesis was not "strict," but really fanciful in the extreme, or vague and lifeless? There the word of God stands, the test of all interpretation. Disprove what is here given, if mistaken. Let objectors give the exact sense without ignoring its most important introduction.

Dr. E. is right, Dr. B. quite wrong, as to Rev. 20: 4-6, which, only if taken literally, corresponds with Rev. 1: 6; Rev. 2: 10, 11, 26, 27; Rev. 3: 21; Rev. 5: 10; as it is the sole adequate recompense for such suffering as we see in Rev. 6: 9-11, etc. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him"; not His "cause" merely having the upper hand in other persons without Him, but ourselves reigning gloriously with Him.

And here let us observe how unjust is the slight put on the Revelation, as not having equal authority with other books of scripture. Is it to be justly blamed because its expositors have so differed one from another? There can be no sliding scale among inspired writings. If it be, as the apostle John declares, what the Lord Jesus gave him from God, woe be to the man who contemns it in comparison with other books. As with St. Paul's letters there are things in the Apocalypse hard to be understood; but the amount is excessively overrated. The first five chapters are as plain as most parts of the N. T. So are chs. 7, 10, and even 12-15; chs. 17-22 are so for the most part. Only chs. 6, 8, 9, 11, 16 present serious difficulty in some respects; yet even in these will be found unquestionably edifying matter for souls.

In fact, then, Rev. 20: 4 is a comprehensive sketch of the saints risen to reign with Christ. Its peculiarity is, not only that it defines the duration of that reign over the earth before "the end," but that it specifies two added classes of sufferers slain in the crisis which precedes the day of the Lord. Without this vision it could be but dimly seen how those specified would fare; though one might be sure on first principles that all must be well with them. For they were not put to death till after those symbolized by the twenty-four crowned elders were in heavenly glory (Rev. 4); and their slaughter did not cease while the Beast and the False Prophet lived to kill them. Thus they did not survive to enjoy the blessings of Christ's reign over the earth. But by dying for His sake, even so late, they gained immensely instead of losing; for they too, as the vision declares, live and reign with Christ, no less than all that were His raised previously and already seated on thrones. To gainsay this, and on the score of "legitimate principles of interpretation" (pp. 108, 109), where the main entry is omitted, and only the two added items are taken into reckoning, is carelessness and self-deception as gross, at least, as if one, in describing the British Empire, dwelt only on Scotland and Ireland, and forgot there was such a part of it as England and Wales.

It is well-known that the post-apostolic Fathers till Origen were millenarians. The remains of some and the writings of others, bear ample testimony to early and prevalent conviction of a literal resurrection of the saints, and their reign with Christ for a thousand years. But these ante-Nicene views were but partially true at best, to say nothing of Talmudical reveries that crept in here or there. They looked for a reign and living of the glorified on the earth. They never rose to the height of God's purpose for Christ's glory in the universe. They entered not into the N.T. light in 1 Cor. 15, Eph. 1 and Heb. 2, cast on Ps. 8: the risen Son of man at the head of all creation, not Palestine only nor yet the earth, but "all things that are in the Heavens and on earth"; and the saints till then changed into His glorious likeness at His coming, and associated with Him, the heavenly bride of the Bridegroom. Like their adversaries that followed, they mixed up the (heavenly) hope with the prophetic word; so that dreaded times or expected seasons intercepted the heart's waiting for Christ, and lowered their eyes from heaven to earth.

Then the ruin of the church's testimony grew apace. Origen spread widely his allegorizing system, Dionysius of Alexandria his dialectic, Eusebius of Caesarea his flattery of the powers that then were. At length the influence of Augustine established all but universally in Christendom the so-called spiritual theory, that the first resurrection means regeneration in virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, and that the baptized, if at least God's elect, are reigning with Christ ever since He ascended to heaven!! This truly "wild" interpretation not only prevailed before the Reformation, but keeps its ground since among Romanists, as among many of the Protestants who still hold it, save where the yet lower ecclesiastical theory of Grotius proved acceptable, till the Arian Dr. Whitby broached, early in the eighteenth century, his discovery — to spread like wild fire — of a future reign of Christ's cause on earth, gradually brought about by divine blessing on Christian agencies, but helped on by providential dealings also.

Of the Whitbyite hypothesis Virtringa, though striving to trace a foreign source, was the learned advocate, as Dr. Brown is the chief popularizer and warm special pleader in our day. More plausible in one respect than the Augustinian fancy, it undermines and supplants the revealed hope more fatally, falls in readily with the delusion of human progress, and thus corrupts the faith with an expectation essentially worldly and carnal. In particular, the Grotian idea of an ecclesiastical reign since Constantine left men free to conceive, as did the late Bp. Waldegrave and many other brethren, that the millennium is past, and the little space ebbing out; so that they could look for Christ's coming without one revealed event between. For all these speculators had alike fallen into the error of identifying His advent with "the end" or the judgment of the Great White Throne. So men like the admirable S. Rutherford or Bp. Hall might be dark indeed as to prophecy; but the hope for them was not so paralyzed, as it became half a century or more afterwards by Whitbyism, which suits perfectly the unbounded self-confidence of the revolutionary liberal movement, the characteristic of the last hundred years. Scripture, on the contrary, assures of declension and apostasy, the mystery of lawlessness, and the lawless one revealed, whom the Lord Jesus destroys at His appearing (2 Thess 2: 8) — the distinct reversal of the Whitbyite expectation, which glorifies present instrumentalities and robs Christ personally of His honour, as it leaves Satan in possession, however reduced.

Take a sample or two of its effects manifest in the in the essays before us, as everywhere else in this school. They all object to what is said to be revealed but once: an irreverent unbelieving notion worthy of all detestation as applied to God's word, nay, unworthy even of honourable men. "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater" (1 John 5: 9), says the beloved disciple. "Know ye not" says St. Paul, "that we shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6: 3). Now this follows the question in v. 2, "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?" — the same truth, which reappears explicitly in Rev. 20: 4-6, as it had with less detail appeared in Dan. 7: 18. But if it had been true that the reign of the saints with Christ had been revealed only once, is our judging angels the less credible or important, because we here have it in this single passage? Christ's surrender of the kingdom to the Father is notified only in 1 Cor. 15: 24. Is it therefore of dubious import or of insignificant value? Is it not a truth of the utmost consequence, because it draws the line (undivulged in the O.T.) between the millennial reign and eternity? Without it one could not decide, as Prof. Beet and Principal Brown do not yet, the just force of the O.T. prophecies in general and of not a few in the N. T. Hence it is idle on this ground to object to the stoppage of Satan's temptations for a thousand years, or to the revolt he stirs up in the little space that follows. Their argument at bottom is blind unbelief, sure only to err, and lead astray all who lean on that broken reed of Egypt.

Again, it is argued in this hazy system that the beginning of the millennium may be as uncertain as the starting-point of the seventy weeks. Now where is the analogy? On the one hand it is a question mainly between the seventh or the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Longimanus, and two commandments not a little resembling. On the other hand, the most tremendous judgments will fall first on the western powers in confederation with the Jews and their king, followed by the destruction of the eastern under their great northern chief, with carnage beyond example in both cases: events which close this age, and open the age to come, or millennial reign. Is it wise to set the easily understood vagueness of one ancient imperial mandate, out of two not unlike, against a crisis of unexampled solemnity and horror, to say nothing of Christ's appearing, or of the universal peace and blessing that ensues without an enemy or an evil occurrent? The effort to find gradual and successive steps in Dan. 2: 44, Dan. 7: 26, and 2 Thess. 2: 8 is unworthy of sound philology, and contradicts the plain objects of the three texts, which describe nothing else or less than a sudden and complete extinction. Consuming in a slow sort and by evangelical means is precluded by the least approach to exact criticism as well as by a spiritual judgment.

But it is pleaded that the Whitbyite view is strengthened by the frank concession that the thing seen in the vision of Rev. 20: 4 was a literal resurrection (pp. 109-111); and that Rev. 11: 3-12, as well as Ezek. 37, etc., help the figurative force (pp. 112-115). I must reject Dr. B.'s historical application of the Two Witnesses as the full adequate sense for the crisis when every word is to be fulfilled. Probably Prof. B. and Dr. E. accept it no more than I do. Then the prodigal son in Luke was dead spiritually, and so made alive. Dr. B. himself admits that this is not the force of our text. So again in Rom. 11, if Israel's casting away be the world's reconciliation, what shall be their reception but life from the dead? Resurrection is the figure, not the explanation as in Rev. 20. Further, Dr. B. admits the reference to Rev. 6: 9-11, where undeniably literal death is meant. How then can he escape the inevitable conclusion that here those literally slain are literally raised to life? Surely in all this argument logic and exegesis are equally at fault.

As the Two Witnesses are too questionable to afford a sure test, let us try the Jewish prophecy. Ezekiel was given to see a multitude of dry bones come together, acquiring flesh and sinew and breath, so that they stood on their feet an exceeding great army. This revival is the figure, of which the explanation follows, "These bones are the whole house of Israel," who were to be placed in their own land (Ezek. 37: 11-14). John saw thrones with persons seated on them; and then two classes of disembodied souls who had been slain for Christ, or in refusal of the beast, and were now caused to live that they too might reign with Christ. This is the Apocalyptic vision, of which the explanation is, "This is the first resurrection" (Rev. 20: 5). Plainly therefore, in all accuracy of exegesis, the cases are in contrast; for in the Jewish prophet resurrection is the vision, in the Christian prophet resurrection is the declared meaning of the vision. Figures are in no way denied, nor yet symbols. The question is as to the meaning of the vision here, and the revealed answer is, This is the first resurrection.

The context demands the literal sense. Dr. E. confesses it here. Dr. B. resists it in vv. 4-6, while a little lower (vv. 12, 13) he cannot but allow it. Is this spiritual? or reasonable? or consistent? In the same short context two resurrections are predicted, with nothing but blessedness affixed to the first, with nothing but judgment and the lake of fire attached to the second. Yet, according to this shifty invention of Dr. Whitby (as poor a commentator as he was a contemptible critic, to say nothing of his fundamental heterodoxy), the first is to be figurative, the second beyond doubt literal notwithstanding the design and character of this ambiguous and debatable book! Such principles of criticism, such exegetical practice, who can consider but as illegitimate in the extreme? For surely in two visions of the same context, successively balanced against each other with the respective keywords, This is the first resurrection, and, This is the second death, they should be, in all consistency, either both literal or both figurative. As even the allegorist is obliged to admit that the second is literal, we insist that so ought to be the first: else the chapter is not fairly dealt with. No book could be intelligibly interpreted on a plan so arbitrary. It is not the book which is censurable, but its interpreters, of whom the Whitby school is perhaps the lowest.

To obviate the pressure Dr. B. asks for the literal sense of v. 5, "The rest of the dead lived not till the thousand years should be finished." But, instead of waiting for an answer from a neighbor capable of searching him, he insinuates a reply which simply proves his own bewilderment: Is it a set of men rising literally from the dead? Why, in the place of this, we find them to be a cloud of mortal men in the flesh, enemies of Christ and His cause, etc. (p. 115). Now the true answer is, that the prophet saw that the rest of the dead did live, and that the most incredulous of believers admit that so it is, in vv. 12, 13. The insurrection of vv. 7-10 is never called a resurrection. In vain is it objected that there was "a little time" more in the account. For the "till" in no way negatives an added space after the thousand years; it denies the rising of the rest of the dead before that. The attempt to substitute the insurrection of Gog and Magog for the resurrection which the prophet only saw afterwards (the sole possible reference that is not fraudulent), is a too evident diversion to prop up the tottering mythical interpretation of vv. 4-6. This may be truly designated as "distortion " wholesale (p. 116); whereas not a word is distorted in either vision, when both are interpreted literally. The one is a resurrection of life, as the other is of judgment; and thus the Revelation perfectly harmonizes with the Gospel of John. If we believe the Lord in both, a "catholic" or simultaneous resurrection is a mere figment, which scripture discountenances and dispels.

Dr. B. does not put forward here, but he does strongly maintain, in a useful book devoted to it, the restoration of the Jews, once more and for ever blessed nationally in the Holy Land. His error is in assuming that it will be under the gospel, instead of for the kingdom in the new age. For it is a matter of apostolic doctrine, with which the O.T. of course agrees, that "as touching the gospel they (the Jews) are enemies for our (Gentiles') sake; but as touching the election they are beloved for the fathers' sake" (Rom. 11: 28). They stumbled at the Stumbling-stone — a humbled, rejected, suffering, and crucified Messiah. Therefore are they scorning the gospel, themselves rejected. During their eclipse Gentiles are called by the gospel, and the believers (Jew or Gentile) are united to Christ the heavenly Head by the Holy Spirit sent down. When this new dealing of God is complete (wherein Jewish and Gentile distinctions vanish, and Christ is all), and we go to meet Christ in the air, divine mercy begins afresh to work in Israel, fitting them to be His earthly people, the leader of the nations under the Lord's reign. Thus are God's gifts and calling shown to be unrepented of. Now blindness in part has befallen Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in (Rom. 11). By-and-by all Israel shall be saved, but this only when there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, Who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob (Rom. 11: 26). It is the kingdom, not the gospel as now.

It is deeply interesting to compare in Rom. 3 the quotations of Ps. 53, and of Isa. 59, not only with the connection in these chapters, but with the citation of Isa. 59 in Rom. 11. Nor does it bear slightly on the question before us. It proves a total change between God's ways under the gospel as now, and under Messiah at His coming again.

In Rom. 3 the apostle quotes the psalm and the prophet to prove the Jew shut up under sin, no less than the Gentile about whom the Jew at least, had no doubt. But, says the apostle, the law, of which you boast as yours only, speaks of you Jews, and condemns you explicitly and utterly; so those two witnesses (which might have been multiplied) conclusively declare it, "that every mouth may be stopped and all the world be under God's judgment." What follows meanwhile? The gospel of God's grace, whilst Christ is away, glorified in heaven, consequent on His death on the cross. This accordingly is pursued, instead of the conclusion of the psalm, or of the prophecy; which say not a word about the grace which now flows out without respect of persons to Jew and Gentle. They point only to the future when the salvation of Israel is to come out of Zion, God bringing back the captivity of His people, and the Redeemer Himself coming to Zion. The apostle in Rom. 3 says nothing of Israel's hope, because this is not the gospel; it dwells only on the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God set forth a propitiatory or mercy-seat through faith in His blood.

But in Rom. 11 he is proving that the present rejection of the Jew, which makes room for the indiscriminate grace of the gospel, is not to last always. For the Gentile, if he continue not in God's goodness, will surely be cut off; as the ancient people, if they continue not in their unbelief, will as surely be grafted in. And this he proceeds to show as a prediction from the same Isa. 59. All Israel (not (merely individual) Jews only) shall be saved. But it is, on the one hand, when the fullness of the Gentiles is come in; and on the other, when there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer: two facts most momentous, which indicate the present age at an end, and the new one come. It will be the kingdom when Israel are to be saved; as it is the gospel which gathers out the Gentiles in a mercy which ignores the national and peculiar privileges of Israel. God's covenant to take away Israel's sins only takes effect when Christ comes to and out of Zion.

Dr. B.'s contention is really with St. Paul. Is not this an immense change in God's methods? A heavenly people cannot consist with an earthly one, both owned here below at the same time. The national restoration of Israel is incompatible concurrently with the indiscriminate grace of the gospel which blots out all natural differences in those who compose Christ's body for heaven. The coming of Christ closes the heavenly purpose, and introduces in due time the earthly plans of God, Christ being the centre of both. The Father's name is developed in the former, as in the latter the name of Jehovah, the Almighty God; the Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth. These blessed counsels and ways of God in Christ for His glory are blurred or effaced by the post-millennial scheme.

Of the appeal to missionary feeling in pp. 116-120, and the closing words, little more is needed, as it has been sufficiently met already. It is sweet to find in a single verse of Rev. 22 the adequate safeguard. "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take life's water freely." Here we have the heavenly hope, absolutely apart from, and thus unfettered by, the visions of coming judgments, providential or personal. St. John at the close is as fresh in living hope, as St. Paul at the beginning: they at least were God-informed followers of Christ, if the Thessalonians were alarmed by the false cry that the day of the Lord — in some figurative sense probably — was come. There is no mistake in any part of scripture. The Lord bade His servants stand, as it were, behind the door, that when He came and knocked, they might open to Him immediately. Watching for Him is higher and nearer His heart than working, though blessed are both; and best of all, when watching for Christ imprints ever a heavenly character on serving Him.

It was no question of less or better informed followers. The church was to say, Come (Rev. 22); aye, and not the church only (for even she might, and did, err), but "the Spirit and the bride say, Come." It was the body of Christ, warranted, guided, and sustained, at the last point to which revelation leads us. The enemy would strive to divert them from the constant waiting for Christ's presence; be might seek to shake by dread of the day, or by the great tribulation; or he might seek to interpose the improvement of the world or a millennium of Christ's cause. But no! "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." And so was the individual to say who had only heard Christ's voice, ill-informed perhaps about prophecy, the church, or aught else. Still this is the individual hope too: "He that heareth, let him say, Come."

Then do we find the other side. Our first and best affections are, and ought to be, for Christ our hope. But Christ gives us while waiting for Him to share divine love toward perishing souls; and therefore we can turn round to a lost world and take up the good news, "He that is athirst let him come": yea, more, "He that will, let him take life's water freely." This is the gospel in all its free grace, and in its due place; but it is subordinate to Christ and the hope of Christ, if indeed we are subject to God's word.

The Second Advent of Christ Premillennial.

William Kelly

A Reply to the Rev. D. Brown, D.D.

(from the 1868 edition)

Preface

The reader has before him an examination of a work long before the public. The author reviewed will not impute to me any lack of personal regard. We agree, too, in the importance of what is in question, doctrinally and practically. We agree in rejecting errors taught by many premillenarians. We agree in accepting truth seen by few postmillennialists. There remains much, however, and of wide, deep, and lasting moment, in which I have the firmest conviction that my Christian brother is wrong, and can only mislead the Church to the dishonour of the Lord and of the truth. I have therefore consented to the republication of my review of his book, with remarks added on the latter half of it, which was not originally taken up.

Dublin, July, 1868.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Second Coming and Kingdom of Christ

Part 1, Chapter 1:

The Hope of Christ's Coming Again, and Its Relation to the Question of Time*3

*(1. Christ's Second Coming: Will it be Pre-millennial? By the Rev. David Brown, St. James's Free Church, Glasgow. 1856.

2. Outlines of Unfulfllled Prophecy; being an enquiry into the Scripture testimony respecting the "good things to come." By the Rev. T. R. Birks, M.A., rector of Kelshall. Seeleys, 1854.

3. Simples Essais sur des sujets prophètiques. Par W. Trotter, Tomes I. II. 1855-56.)

The battlefield is somewhat changed. The champion of post-millennialism proclaims the second advent to be “THE VERY POLESTAR OF THE CHURCH.”

That it is so held forth in the New Testament is beyond dispute. Let any one do himself the justice to collect and arrange the evidence on the subject, and he will be surprised — if the study be new to him — at once at the copiousness, the variety and the conclusiveness of it (Brown, p. 15).

“Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me”; is a sound dear to all that love His name. They “love His appearing” because they love Himself. To put anything in the place of it is not good. Nor will it succeed; for those who preach Him bringing His reward with Him will prevail, as indeed they ought. Nor is it in regard to the personal appearing of the Savior that only premillennialists will and ought to prevail against all who keep it out of sight. There is a range of truth connected with it, which necessarily sinks out of its scriptural position and influence, whenever the coming of Christ is put out of its due place. I refer to the RESURRECTION as a coordinate object of the Church's hope, and to all the truths which circle around it, in which there is a power to stir and to elevate, which nothing else, substituted for it, can ever possess. The resurrection-life of the Head, as now animating all his members, and at length quickening them from the tomb, to be for ever with Him; these, and such like, are truth in the presentation of which premillennialists are cast, in the mold of Scripture, from which it is as vain as it were undesirable to dislodge them (Brown, p. 455).

For these and similar admissions we are thankful, and we are confident that they will not stop there. Our adversaries had long treated Christ's coming unworthily. They confounded it with the mission of the Holy Ghost, with the destruction of Jerusalem, with the departure of the spirit at death, with the judgment of the dead before the great white throne. They are now compelled to own that

Premillennialists have done the Church a real service, by calling attention to the place which the second advent holds in the word of God and the scheme of divine truth.

More than this: the immense practical importance of the question is frankly avowed. It was passing strange and most trying to hear men of God, not combating Premillennialism because of a supposed lack of Scriptural proof, but neglecting it as a mere secondary, trivial notion, even if true. Such sentiments are deplorable: better to be “cold” than thus “lukewarm.” Here, again, Dr. Brown confesses the untenable ground of such of his partisans.

Some may think it of small consequence whether this system be true or false; but no one who intelligently surveys its nature and bearings can be of that opinion. Premillennialism is no barren speculation, useless though true, and innocuous though false. It is a school of Scripture interpretation; it impinges upon and affects some of the most commanding points of the Christian faith; and when suffered to work its unimpeded way, it stops not till it has pervaded with its own genius the entire system of one's theology, and the whole tone of his spiritual character, constructing, I had almost said, a world of its own; so that, holding the same faith, and cherishing the same fundamental hopes as other Christians, he yet sees things through a medium of his own, and finds everything instinct with the life which this doctrine has generated within him (p. 8).

This witness is true. Evidence may be asked and weighed before the Lord; but the incalculable moment of the doctrine ought to be immediately and universally felt. An event which at once and definitively disposes of the saints who have slept in Jesus, or who may be then alive — an event which subsequently deals with all mankind, Jew or Gentile, and even with the tempting as well as accusing power of Satan — an event which brings the long-groaning creation out from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of glory, must obviously be one of the most solemn and impressive transactions which the world can behold, or the mind contemplate. To say, then, that it can be an immaterial consideration, really proves that those who so speak have never thought seriously about the matter.

It is also, perhaps, worthy of note, that in speaking of prejudice for and against premillennialism, our opponent puts in the first class of those ready to embrace it almost immediately, — would the reader believe, who? The curious and marvel-loving? the materializing? No, but souls that burn with love to Christ, who, with the mother of Sisera, cry through the lattice “Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariot?” and with the spouse, “make haste, my Beloved, and be thou like to a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of spices.”

It is indeed singular that a state of heart so healthful, and so according to the evident desire of the Lord, should predispose in favour of a scheme at variance with the word of God, crude in its principles, defective as a system, and perilous, in its results (p. 454). Nearly as strange, considering his own views, is Dr. Brown's acknowledgment of the anti-premillennial tendencies, which require to be guarded against.

Under the influence of such tendencies, the inspired text, as such, presents no rich and exhaustless field of prayerful and delighted investigation; exegetical inquiries and discoveries are an uncongenial element; and whatever Scripture intimations, regarding the future destinies of the Church and of the world, involve events out of the usual range of human occurrences, or exceeding the anticipations of enlightened Christian sagacity, are almost instinctively overlooked or softened down. Such minds turn away from premillennialism (p. 10).

Undoubtedly true, but surely unaccountable, if, as Dr. B. thinks, premillennialism be false — unaccountable, that the vigorous and spiritual, who burn with love to Christ, should be ready to embrace the doctrine, while the meager and sapless souls who search little into and expect less from God's word, “have hardly patience to listen to it.” Let the dispassionate judge.

Part 1, Chapter 2

The Hope of Christ's Coming Again, and

It's Relation to the Question of Time

The grand question begins in Chapter 2: Is habitual waiting for Christ compatible with the revelation of a millennium which must necessarily intervene first? Neither Dr. Brown nor ourselves attach any particular moment to the precise period of 1,000 years, though we believe, as he does, that there are good grounds for taking it definitely and literally. But when he says that no one is to suppose he expects the beginning and end of this period to be discernible without a doubt on any mind, one can only lament the effects of a false system. A reign of Christ and his saints, coextensive with a restraint on Satan's presence and seductions, preceded by the awful end of the Beast and the false Prophet, with the destruction of their adherents, and followed by the “little season,” during which Satan, let loose once more, shall marshal for his last battle the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth — such a time one might expect to be of all others the most strongly defined in the history of this world, as it is characterized in the Bible by features which distinguish it in the clearest way from all preceding ages, and from the eternal state which is to succeed. If it were true, therefore, that past scripture dates follow Dr. B.'s law, (that is, the law of doubt and uncertainty as to their beginning and end,) it would not follow as to the millennium, because it is an unprecedented epoch. But we must be excused if we pronounce the alleged “law” to be a delusion, and the statement, that it is “the law of all scripture dates in this respect,” to be as unfounded in fact, as it is unsound in principle. The Seventy weeks of Daniel, and the 1260 days of anti-Christian rule, are the only instances which Dr. B. adduces — those, doubtless, which he judged most in point. But he has no right to assume that uncertainty overhangs the seventy weeks: if the existence of controversy proves that, all certainty is gone as to God's election, sovereignty, and faithfulness in keeping his own; for these truths, however clearly revealed, are keenly and constantly disputed by many true Christians. Yet Dr. B. would never allow the doubts of a large portion of Christendom to unsettle the truth in his own soul; much less would he affirm that these matters were intentionally shrouded in obscurity. If he, in spite of controversy has a fixed and clear judgment as to the five points of Calvinism, he must not be surprised if others do not share his hesitation as to Dan. 9 or Rev. 11. Many thousands of God's people in our day have as much certainty touching these prophetic periods as be has touching any truths which have been debated in the church. The millennial period has signatures more peculiar and prominent than any past age, and therefore ought to be preeminently unambiguous. As to the picture which Dr. B. draws of its gradual introduction, and especially of its waning glory at the close, as if either or both could be dubious, it has but at most a shadowy support from the Word of God. There is no clearly recorded decay till after that day is over; then Satan is let loose, and this is the signal and the means of the apostasy that ensues.

Whoever examines the Lord's discourse in Luke 12 and kindred Scriptures with a simple mind, can scarcely escape the conclusion that, besides giving the disciples a personal and a heavenly object of hope, He insists much upon their so waiting that, when He comes and knocks, they may open to him immediately. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching.”

Now the Lord himself founds the need of thus watching upon the fact, that he was coming in an hour when they thought not; and it will be shown that no after- communications of the Holy Ghost interfere with this habitual expectancy of the Lord. The Epistles confirm the saints in looking for him; and this, for aught they knew to the contrary, as their proximate hope. Hence the Apostle in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians says, “We that are alive and remain.” The Spirit gave them no scriptural intimations which could falsify the looking for Jesus, even in apostolic times, much less since.

Doubtless to the Old Testament saints, yea even to Daniel, much was sealed “to the time of the end,” when the wise should understand. To the New Testament saints, on the contrary, all Scripture is open, and John is told not to seal the sayings even of its most mysterious book, and including of course all the prophetic times whether days or years. But so far from hinting that the attitude was changed, the last chapter of the Revelation (22) more than any other in the book supposes the Christian and the church in constant waiting, without any known obstacle to the Lord's return. Were this the mere hope of unintelligent love, we might hear the bride saying, Come; but “THE SPIRIT and the bride say, Come.” It is longing hope of love inspired and maintained by the full intelligence and power of the Holy Ghost, and not the mere sentimentalism of anon seeming long, and anon short, such as Dr. B. describes. It is fully conceded, that the knowledge of the pre- millennial advent, and this holy bridal-waiting for Christ, are two distinct things. There are those who have the correct theory, and yet know little or nothing of that blessed hope as the expression of their hearts. There are those whose spiritual instincts are sound, in spite of views about our Lord's return more or less erroneous. It has yet to be proved that Rollock and Rutherford shared the scheme adopted by Dr. Brown, as Wodrow did in substance. If they did, all that could be deduced fairly is that, where the heart is in the main true to Christ and fresh in his love, mistakes, serious though they may be in themselves, cannot stifle, but may hinder and obscure, what is of God. Nor is anything more common than language which goes beyond the narrowness of a wrong system. Who has not known the most rigid super-lapsarian sometimes overflowing with love and desire after the lost? Who has not heard the lowest Arminian now and then owning the full and sovereign grace of God that saved him?

It is not more surprising if spiritual men occasionally anticipate the coming of Christ, though, doctrinally putting it off for at least 1000 years. It may be an inconsistency, but it is a happy one, and quite useless to Dr. B. It proves simply that Scripture often asserts its supremacy in defiance of systems, where the heart is at all subject to scriptural language and thought.

Dr. Brown puts together Matt. 25: 5, and Heb. 10: 37, as if they indicated an oscillation of the heart between two very different and seemingly opposite views of the interval between its own day and the day of Christ's appearing. It might have struck him as remarkable, however, that the “tarrying” is not spoken of in the later statement, where one could understand, on his principles, the tried and persecuted crying out, “But thou, O Lord, how long?” Now, the reverse is the fact. It is the parable of the virgins which discloses the tarrying of the bridegroom, and most certainly this revelation did not hinder the apostles, after the Pentecostal Spirit was given, and fuller light imparted, from increasingly expecting the Lord. It is the apostle Paul, towards the close of his career, who comforts the Hebrew believers with the assurance that yet a very little while and the Coming One will come, and will not tarry. “The very little while” in the one corresponds with the tarrying of the bridegroom in the other; that being over, he will come and “will not tarry.” Both are perfectly harmonious. At the time the Epistle was written, the Lord had tarried; the apostle knew not the hour of his return, and was inspired simply to announce that it would be sure and soon. It is the less reasonable to cite Matt. 25 in support of the notion that a long revealed delay is reconcilable with constantly waiting for Christ, seeing that not a word in the Virgins or the Talents protracts his return beyond the lifetime of those first watching or trading. There is nothing to imply even another generation to succeed the one addressed. Of course we are arguing solely from the Lord's own words, and supposing the disciples to know nothing of the future, save what was fairly deducible thence. Ex post facto we know that the delay has been extended; but the question is: Could — ought the apostles to have gathered a delay of eighteen centuries at least, from what the Lord uttered? On our view, all is simple. The calling of the faithful, as here presented, was to go forth in order to meet the bridegroom: their sin was that they all slumbered and slept. The delay, which should have proved their patience, gave occasion to their unfaithfulness; and when the cry was made at midnight, they have to resume their first position — “Go ye out to meet him!” The course pursued by our Lord, we need scarcely say, was worthy of himself — the wisest, tenderest, and best in every way. He showed the only right object for the virgins; he warned all of such a delay as should check impatience, but not such as should entitle those then (or at any time) alive to say, “The bridegroom is not coming in our day.” If He had wished His people to be continually expecting Him, but withal not to be stumbled if He tarried He could have done, it seems to us, no other than He has done.

But we are told that our view is founded “on a very narrow induction of Scripture passages, and stands opposed to the spirit of a large and very important class of divine testimonies”; that we hold up but one future event, (namely, Christ's coming,) and even but one aspect of it, (namely, its nearness,) and the corresponding duty of watching for it; that other purposes had to be served besides these, which have drawn forth truths of quite another order; and if the one set of passages, taken by themselves, might seem to imply that Christ might come tomorrow, there are whole classes of passages which clearly show that the reverse of this was the mind of the Spirit.

I refer to those Scriptures which announce the work to be done, and the extensive changes to come over the face of the church and of society, between the two advents (Brown, p. 33).

The first class of passages includes the commission in Matt. 28: 18-20, the parables (in Matt. 13) of the tares, mustard-seed, leaven and net, as well as those texts which announce the transfer of the kingdom from the Jews to the Gentiles, Matt. 21: 43; Luke 21: 24; Rom 11: 25-26; and Acts 1: 6-8. The question is, whether any intelligent Christian could look for all this in his own lifetime. Now, we do not hesitate to say that a true-hearted believer, after the day of Pentecost, had better grounds for expecting the world-wide diffusion of the gospel within the span of his own generation, than Dr. B. has for expecting it now, in ten centuries of such missionary efforts and successes as the world has witnessed since. We are aware that this judgment will be unpalatable to who those derive their thoughts from the strains of modern platforms and reports, and we shall be told that we are paralyzing their energies. We do rebuke their Laodiceanism; but God forbid that our belief in the increasing dangers and deceits of the present and future, and in the imminence of divine judgments, not on Rome only, but on universal Christendom, should not lead us to desire quickened zeal and redoubled exertions on the part of ourselves, and all the servants of the Lord, that at least a true testimony may be rendered everywhere. And this God will surely bless, as far as it seemeth him good, but not the baseless expectations even of Christians. It is evident that Dr. B. exaggerates the results to be expected; such misinterpretation leads to hopes doomed to bitter disappointment, and so works no little mischief in practice. The Lord, in Matt. 28, merely gives the universal direction of their service, in contrast with legal narrowness, its blessed character flowing out of the name of God, no longer hidden, but fully revealed; and his own far deeper than Messianic authority and presence with them. All the Gentiles, or nations, (not the Jews only, as heretofore,) were to be the objects of this evangelization; and he guarantees to be with them, as thus engaged, unto the end of the age: but not a trace of the predicted effects. Indeed, in his previous prophecy, Matt. 24: 14, the Lord had said that “this gospel of the kingdom small be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” If no more than this had been done, Matt. 28 would have been fulfilled, and there was nothing to hinder it before the end of the Jewish polity arrived, though one would not restrict it to that. So also St. Paul reminds the Colossians that the gospel was come to them as in all the world, and bringeth forth fruit, etc. Again, the tares were sown during the earliest slumbers of Christ's servants. What else were the ungodly men who had even then crept in unawares, Jude 4, 16? What else the false teachers, with many who followed their pernicious ways, 2 Peter 2? These tares, like the wheat, were in the field (or world), and not merely in Israel; but there is nothing to imply a course of centuries, either for the good or the evil. The net presents, if possible, less difficulty still: all the fish of the sea are not enclosed, but the net is filled with some of every kind. No doubt the “end of the age” closes the scene, and judicially separates; but why, as far as the chapter teaches, might not this have been before the apostolic era had ceased? No solid reason for protracting the dispensation can be assigned, but the will of God. They are times and seasons which the Father has put in his own power. Nor is it true that the tree is said to overshadow the world, any more than the leaven is said to overspread all human society (p. 35). How long was to elapse before the end was in no way revealed. Doubtless the word left room for a prolonged scene; but certainly those parables do not per se disclose, much less necessitate, that prolongation. And this is the whole matter; for we are speaking of the expectation derived from the word. The tree might remain a long while, the leaven take some time leavening; but all this is left open. As to Matt. 21: 43, Luke 21: 24, and Rom. 11: 25, 26, they have no dates or equivalent landmarks to render them precise. They are expressed in general terms, and therefore cannot be made to prove a delay of centuries, though room is left for it. Acts 1: 6-8 speaks of no witnesses save those addressed and then living; it cannot, therefore, as an argument strengthen the position of a necessarily long delay. God's testimony was borne faithfully in that very age to the utmost limits of the known world. And as for that which followed for more than 1000 years, the less that is said the better: the Lord does not sanction or notice it here.

Next, such passages as 1 Tim. 4: 1-3, 2 Tim. 3: 1-5, 2 Peter 3: 3, 4, even Dr. B. does not press; because (these germs of evil being at work) a primitive Christian, as he allows, might readily conceive of their full development in no long time. Taken in connection with the former chapter, he thinks them fitted to repress our idea. But we have only to examine the context of these and similar Scriptures, in order to see that, however the delay may have ripened the various forms of pravity, they were already there, and because they were, are warned against by the apostles. Hence it is impossible to say that these revelations necessarily involve a long future; especially as many who look for Christ's coming, believe that between our removal to meet him in the air, and our appearing with him in judgment, there will be an interval, during which the darkest shadows of prophecy shall have their appalling accomplishment.

There is still a class of passages, greatly clearer to the same effect, of which one example may suffice for all. (Acts 3: 20, 22, is then cited.) Would any Christian in apostolic times, though unable to tell what might be meant by this “restitution of all things,” be encouraged by it to expect the immediate or very speedy return of Christ to the earth”? (pp. 37).

To us this reasoning seems the more extraordinary, as it is in the face of the context itself. It is evident that the apostle calls on the Jews to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out, so that (not when) the times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord, and he might send Jesus Christ, etc., whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, etc. Unquestionably the work must be vast, but why should it not be a short one? To our mind the passage has a force directly and powerfully opposed to Dr. B.'s conclusion. We do not doubt that Peter then regarded the repentance of Israel as a possible if not probable contingency; and the passage itself shows that, on their repentance, the mission of Jesus from heaven would surely follow without delay. Not an allusion appears in the passage to the footing which the gospel had to get in the world; not a hint of blows to be afflicted on the heathenism of the empire (pp. 38). These notions imported into Acts 3 we consider clouds, not “light on this point”: they are interpolation, rather than interpretation.

In the parable of the pounds, Luke 19: 11, 27, the Lord is correcting the mistake of those who thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. That is, they seem to have connected it with his next visit to Jerusalem. They forgot (alas, how often!) that first must He suffer many things and be rejected of this generation — yea, that He must accomplish His decease at Jerusalem. This parable, accordingly, corrects this hasty notion of the disciples, and the form in which it is conveyed in Matt. 25 conveys the additional circumstance of the absence of the Lord for a long time. But it is equally obvious that the revealed delay was relative, not absolute: that, so far as the parable speaks, the return might be before the death of the servants who first received and employed their master's talents.

Of Dr. Urwick's remark [that the only errors mentioned in the New Testament respecting the time of our Lord's coming, all consist in dating it too early] one can scarcely speak in too strong terms of censure. It is a worthy sequel of it, that his first example is the case of the servant who says, “My Lord delayeth his coming!!” When words expressly designed to show the evil state of heart, and the pernicious consequences of putting off the expectation of the Lord's return, can be urged by Dr. U. and repeated by Dr. B. as an instance of the error of dating it too early, it is high time to suspend discussion and to pray that our brethren may be delivered from the influence of a scheme which turns light into darkness and calls darkness light. The process of assumption, whereby the Lord's warning is thus perverted, is painfully instructive; but we have no further space to bestow on such a mode of dealing with the word of God.

A similar observation applies to, and may suffice for, the use made of the importunate widow in Luke 18: 1-8. Besides, it is the Son of man's coming in judgment: and this, as already remarked, leaves room for a great and rapid development of evil at the close of the age, instead of being spread over ten or fifteen centuries.

2 Thess. 2 is the only Scripture which remains. Though it is the one on which Dr. B. has dwelt longest and most confidently, it is perhaps of all others the least understood. He supposes that the corrupt Jewish element — “that the kingdom of God should immediately appear” — had taken a stirring form in the Thessalonian church.

Their inexperienced minds and warm hearts were plied with the thrilling proclamation, “that THE DAY OF CHRIST WAS AT HAND,” or “IMMINENT” (ἐνέστηκε). And how does the apostle meet their expectation? He fearlessly crushes it . . . No such entreaty, we may safely affirm, would ever come from a premillennialist — at least of the modern school. He would be afraid of “destroying the possibility of watching” (pp. 42, 43).

Now we meet this, and what follows, by the twofold assertion,

first

, that Dr. B.'s view requires us to confound the coming or presence of the Lord and His day, which we maintain to be here not only distinguished but contrasted; and

second

, that it demands an indubitably wrong rendering of ἐνέστηκε. What the Apostle really combats is the impression, that the day of the Lord was present or come, (not “at hand”). Nowhere is it denied that the day is at hand; nay, more, St. Paul himself afterwards tells the Roman saints that “the day is at hand.” Is it to be believed that he deliberately affirms to them what he had denied to the Thessalonians?

Such is the natural dilemma in which our version (KJV) of 2 Thess. 2: 2 plunges those who accept it, if they will but compare Rom. 13: 12. As the latter text is without doubt correct (for it is the simple, sure, and sole possible meaning of the Greek), he who believes that the Spirit could not contradict Himself would naturally sift the former. And what is the result? That in every other occurrence of the word in the New Testament we are compelled to assign a different meaning to the perfect of ἐνίστημι. Nay, our translators themselves give present, and never merely, “to be at hand,” or “ imminent.” In several instances they exhibit, and with perfect accuracy, “present “ in contradistinction to “future,” or “coming.” (Compare Rom. 8: 38; 1 Cor. 3: 22; 7: 26; Gal. 1: 4; and Heb. 9: 9; besides 2 Tim. 3: 1.) Nor is it St. Paul only who presses that the day is nigh, for the same truth, substantially, reappears in 1 Peter 4: 7, (“the end of all things is at hand,”) as well as in James 4: 7-9, not to speak of Rev. 1: 3, 22: 10. That is, the New Testament is, from first to last, positive and consistent in maintaining what 2 Thess. 2: 2 appears to set aside (in the KJV), but what we have seen is, beyond legitimate question, a mis-translation; and this mis-translation is the grand basis of Dr. B.'s argument.

Hence, he entirely misconceives the drift of the delusion which the false teachers were seeking to foist in. For they were exciting fear, and not hope; whereas the apostle beseeches the brethren by their hope, even the presence of the Lord, which is to gather them to Himself in the air, not to be shaken or troubled, as if His day, His judgment, were arrived. It was not feverish enthusiasm, but uneasy apprehension, in consequence of the terror of that day being brought on their souls. The misleaders may have given that turn to the trials which these saints were then underlying, or to any other external circumstances supposed to be capable of such a color. They may have taken advantage of the Old Testament application of that term to God's summary inflections on particular places and people. However they may have brought it about, the fact is clear that the false teachers did alarm the Thessalonians with the cry that the day was there; and the remedy which the apostle applies is, first, recalling them to their proper hope of being caught up to the Lord at his coming (2 Thess. 2: 1) — an antidote as thoroughly premillennial as it is the last which our adversaries would think of; next, he explains to them that the day of the Lord presupposes not merely lawlessness working, as even then it was secretly, but, all restraint being removed, its rise to such a height and its manifestation in such a head, that the Lord must terminate all by his own appearing in decisive judgment.

It is allowed, then, that the apostle shows that the day of the Lord could not come before the apostasy, and the revelation of the man of sin, because that day is to judge it root and branch; but there is nothing to imply that the obstacle, then operating, might not be taken away in ever so short a time; and in that case the last evil or lawless one being revealed would bring on the day. There is no protracted system, but a mysterious evil then at work; and when a certain hindrance, then also existing, should be removed, that power of evil would appear without mystery, which is to call down the Lord's judgment.

We have now examined the use which Dr. B. has made of the various Scriptures to which he refers, in proof that the known interval of 1000 years, and more, is compatible with that watching for the Lord's coming which the N. T. supposes and enjoins. We have proved his application in every instance to be ungrounded and fallacious. We have shown that the true position, in which the New Testament sets the church, is the looking for Christ's return habitually, not knowing how soon it may be; whereas Dr. B.'s theory is the certainty that it cannot be till the millennium is past, and the absolute impossibility of our being alive and remaining till the Savior comes.

Can such an one be said, in a natural, unambiguous, and full sense, to wait for the Savior from heaven? He is really expecting first a millennium on earth, which, by the way, if true, would have been the obvious corrective to the false rumor that troubled the Thessalonians; but not a word of the sort is hinted by the apostle. Confessedly, premillennialists have been at a loss how to reconcile 2 Thess. 2: 2, as it ordinarily stands, with the general testimony of the New

Testament: but was not their difficulty more worthy of respect than Dr. B.'s shadowy triumph, founded, as it is, on a mere blunder, though we allow he shares it with many men on both sides? It ought to be a serious thing to his conscience when be discovers, as we trust he will on adequate examination, with prayer, that the delusion which alarmed the Thessalonians is, of the two, more conceivable on Dr. B.'s own hypothesis, pp. 426-432, than on the principles of premillennialism rightly understood: for it was probably built upon a figurative sense of the day of the Lord, and it assuredly consisted in its alleged presence there and then. On the other hand, the nearness of Christ's coming, which Dr. B. characterizes as that delusion, and imputes to designing men, is, we are bold to say, the uniform presentation of the Holy Ghost.

The oscillation theory, with which Dr. Brown concludes his second chapter, may be passed over without further comment. Other topics of more importance we hope to discuss in due order, if the Lord will.

Part 1, Chapter 3

Premillennialism Consistent with the Completeness of the Church at Christ's Coming Again

Dr. Brown arranges his evidence against the premillennial advent under a series of propositions, the first of which is, the church will be absolutely complete at Christ's coming.

"If this can be established, the whole system falls to the ground. If all that are to be saved, will be brought in before Christ comes, of course there can be none to come in after his advent, and in that case, the lower department of the expected kingdom disappears."

Now, the fact is, that the mass of premillenarians hold the unbroken completeness of the church at the second advent, no less strenuously than Dr. B. How then comes it, that they and their adversary appear to hold the same thing? Because “the church” has a different sense in their lips and in his. They hold that Scripture limits the term, in its proper application,*4 to the saints that are now being gathered by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Dr. B. extends it equally to “all that are to be saved,” the millennial saints included. Were this true, the question would be at an end: for it is admitted on all hands, that, when Christ comes, His body, the bride, is complete. If Scripture proved on the other hand, that the church of God is exclusive of the millennial saints, that others, after the church is formed, may be and shall be saved, who stand in quite different relationships, the reasoning is at least good for nothing.

*(We speak solely of the application of the term to the body of Christ. For the New Testament employs ἐκκλησία in reference to at least two other subjects: one, the assembly at Ephesus, Acts 19: 32, 39, 40; the other, the congregation of Israel in the wilderness, Acts 7: 28, which is in our version rendered "church in the wilderness." "Congregation" would evidently be better, as "church" here is calculated to mislead; for there is no question of a body baptized by the Holy Ghost. A similar remark, perhaps, applies also to Heb. 12: 23.)

Our Lord, in Matt. 16: 18, decides the question. Salvation was not a new thing, though the work which procured it had still to be accomplished. But His church was not yet built.*5 “Upon this rock I WILL build my church.” It was not even building. The foundation had to be laid in his own death and resurrection, Himself, the revealed and confessed Son of the living God, its rock. Accordingly, for this new building — the Lord prescribed, in Matt. 18, an order of discipline equally new — not Jewish law and ordinance, but grace, practical grace, reigning through righteousness, acting after the pattern of the Father's will, and the Son's work. Accordingly for the first time, we have in Acts 2: 47, this body, the church, historically spoken of. It supposes two things:

first

, Christ crucified, risen and ascended; and

second

, the Holy Ghost, “the promise of the Father,” sent down from heaven.

It is of all importance to understand this last point; for confusion is here fatal to real intelligence as to this subject. It is not the regeneration of the Spirit; for that was true from the first, and will always be true of those who see, or enter the kingdom of God. It is the gift, the personal presence of the Spirit, sealing the believers, now that there was not promise only, but accomplishment in Christ, the earnest of the inheritance, and above all baptizing them, whether Jew or Gentile into one body, an altogether unprecedented work. Previous to the cross, such an union did not exist, and was contrary to God's command (cp. Eph. 2: 14, 15). Our Savior, during his earthly ministry, bound the disciples to seek Jews only, not Gentiles or Samaritans. Risen from the dead, He sends them expressly to disciple all nations. But this is not all. The Holy Ghost, given by the ascended Lord, brings all the disciples, Jew or Gentile, into one body or corporation on earth. When we say “one body” we do not mean that all the members of the church necessarily assembled in a single locality, but that, whether they met in one chamber or in twenty, in one city or over the world, they formed a united society in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which the Holy Ghost, dwelling in and with them, was the bond. To this body, all the believers, all the saved since Pentecost, belong; but it would be a false inference that God can never terminate its existence here below, and introduce a totally different thing for the display of his own ways and glory. As there were saved persons in the Old Testament times, who were not, and could not be members of a society then future, so there is no reason why there should not be a fresh class of witnesses raised up by and by, and called to a different work. Nay, we can go further. Scripture is explicit, that Jewish and Gentile distinctions are to reappear in the Millennium. The Psalms and prophets which reveal this glorious time, reveal as plainly, that it essentially differs from the present dispensation, because God will not then be gathering Jew and Gentile into one. Jews and Gentiles are to be blessed richly, but in unequal measure; the former being nearest to the Lord, and enjoying His presence and honour most, the grand link between Him and the Gentiles. This we need scarcely say, is as different as possible from the present time, when, in Christ, all earthly and fleshly distinctions disappear: all is of grace and above nature, and as free, consequently, to the Gentile as to the Jew.

*The following observations from Bishop Pearson may be helpful to some, though a few thoughts and words are open to exception. "Again, being [seeing] though Christ was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and whosoever from the beginning pleased God, were saved by his blood; yet because there was a vast difference between the several dispensations of the law and gospel, because our Saviour speaks expressly of building himself a church when the Jewish synagogue was about to fail, because catholicism, which is here attributed unto the church, must be understood in opposition to the legal singularity of the Jewish nation, because the ancient fathers were generally wont to distinguish between the synagogue and the church, therefore I think it necessary to restrain this motion to Christianity. Thirdly, therefore, I observe that the only way, to attain unto the knowledge of the true notion of the church, is to search into the New Testament, and from the places there which mention it, to conclude what is the nature of it. To which purpose it will be necessary to take notice that our Saviour, first speaking of it, mentioneth it as that which then was not, but afterwards was to be; as when he speaks unto the great apostle, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church;' but when he ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost came down, when Peter had converted 3,000 souls, which were added to the 120 disciples, then was there a church (and that built upon Peter, according to our Saviour's promise); for after that we read, 'The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.' A church, then, our Saviour promised, should be built and by a promise made before his death; after his ascension, and upon the preaching of St. Peter, we find a church built or constituted, and that of a nature capable of a daily increase. We cannot then take a better occasion to search into the true notion of the church of Christ, than by looking into the origination and increase thereof; without which it is impossible to have a right conception of it." — Exposition of the Creed, Art. ix., Vol, i., pp. 505, 506.

These differences of dispensation are so patent in the Old and New Testaments, as to render the citation of particular proof-texts a work of supererogation. We defy any Christian to produce a single passage to the contrary. Nevertheless Dr. B. ignores all. To him, “all the saved” are the church; the Old Testament saints, those of the New Testament, and those of the Millennium, all compose “the church.” We ask for Scripture: he can produce none. He supposes and affirms that they are all one and the same body; but he has not a title of divine evidence, not a single text which implies that God regards them all as His church. The burden of proof lies on him; for such is his assertion, and it is essential to the greater part of his book. He is absolutely without any other proof than common, loose, traditional notions, the language of many ancient and modern theologians, but never once stated or insinuated in the Word of God. If it be, where? If it be not, Dr. B.'s reasoning rests on an unscriptural assumption. The church of God, in the proper New Testament use of the expression, means not the aggregate of the saved from the beginning to the end, but those who, since Christ's ascension, are being builded together, whether Jew or Gentile, for an habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2: 22), baptized by the Spirit into one body (1 Cor. 12: 13), of which Christ glorified is the Head (John 7: 39; Acts 2: 32, 33; Col. 2: 19; etc.). Such a basis did not exist during our Lord's life, much less before. Hence, though possessed of life, through faith, as all preceding saints were, even the apostles had not the baptism of the Spirit which forms the one body, till Jesus was glorified and sent down the Holy Ghost in a way never before experienced by Man (John 14-16). “Ye shall be,” says the Lord, just before He was taken up, “baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1: 5). Pentecost saw his word fulfilled. Now it is by this operation that the body, the church, is formed, not by regeneration merely, which is common to all saints of all ages, but the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which was unknown to any before Christ was by the right hand of God, exalted. Outward signs accompanied the gift and announced it visibly to the world. But it is not to be confounded with the miraculous powers which were its external vouchers; for before He was given, the Lord said that this other Paraclete should abide with the disciples for ever, which was never said of the sign-gifts. For indeed, this baptism of the Spirit is the formative and perpetuative power of the church's existence; so that where He was not thus given, the church would not be; and so long as the church exists here below, so does this baptism of the Spirit last. “For by one Spirit,” says St. Paul (1 Cor. 12: 13), “are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”

Undoubtedly then, as all agree, there were saints, saved persons born of the Spirit, before Pentecost, so all agree there shall be during the Millennium. But Scripture is plain and decisive that the baptism of the Spirit, gathering believing Jews and Gentiles into one body on earth, was not the state of things which existed before Pentecost. It is equally clear that it will not exist after the Millennium begins. Jews and Gentiles were saved before Christ, as they will be on a still grander scale in the Millennium; but there is no such thing described as union in one body, where all distinctions in the flesh vanish away.

These principles will enable the reader to judge how far the following passages decide the matter.

From 1 Cor. 15: 23, Dr. B. deduces that “they that are Christ's,” means the whole federal offspring of the second Adam. But he forgets that the question is one of resurrection. This is so true that a special added revelation comes in, towards the close of the chapter, so as to meet the case of the saints whom Christ will find living when be comes. Thus the previous statement (in v. 23) which Dr. B. alleges to be so universal as to embrace all the saved of every dispensation, is in reality so restricted as not to admit all the saints of the present dispensation. Hence, it was needful for the Holy Ghost to supplement the general argument of the chapter, with a particular unfolding of what, in the Old Testament, was a secret. “Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not ALL sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Dr. B. says quite correctly, as opposed to Mr. Birks, that the burden of this chapter as a whole, and of v. 23 especially, is the RESURRECTION of believers; but, for that reason, it does not include in its general scope, the saints who survive at the second advent; and accordingly another statement, as to their portion as connected with those who rise from the dead is furnished by the Spirit from v. 51 et seq. But the same principle still more emphatically excludes the Millennial Saints; for it has never been shown that they, as a class, are to die at all. Nay, Isa. 65 seems to us decisive, not that death is destroyed, but that saints will not die during the millennium, that none will die save those judicially accursed of God. Hence, 1 Cor. 15: 23, could not apply to these saints; for it speaks solely of those who die and rise again, whereas the saved of the millennium, it would appear, shall never see death. 1 Cor. 15: 51 proves that the text on which the chief stress is laid, so far from comprehending “the whole saving fruit of Christ's work,” leaves out all the members of the church who shall be alive and remaining when the Lord comes. The argument of Dr. B. is then absolutely null and clearly refuted by the chapter itself.

Still less need such texts as Eph. 5: 25-27; 2 Thess. 1: 10; Jude 24; Col. 1: 21, 22; and 1 Thess. 3: 13, perplex any one. How do statements of the church's glory and purity, any more than its completeness, prove that none else are to be blessed? Doubtless the church will be to the praise and admiration of Christ at his revelation from heaven; doubtless all will be regarded with ineffable complacency by “God, even our Father.” Nevertheless, the questions remain: Is not the millennium a time of exceeding blessing for the world, for countless souls among Jews and Gentiles according to the Old Testament? and is it not, according to the New Testament, the special season for the reign of Christ and the heavenly saints manifested over the earth? These propositions we affirm to be equally true, and mutually consistent. But if they are, Dr. B.'s theory, which sets the completeness, etc., of the church at Christ's advent in opposition to the ingathering of saints subsequently upon the earth, is, if he will forgive our saying it, confusion arising from ignorance of the Scriptures.

It is a question of the Bible in general, and not merely of two or three texts like Zech. 14: 5; Rev. 19: 6-9; and Rev. 21: 24; though these do plainly indicate the calling of other saints after, and distinct from, the church.

Dr. B. tries to defeat the application of Zech. 14 to the advent partly by questioning whether “saints” here may not mean angels, and chiefly, because the “coming” is not a personal advent, but perhaps the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, or even the conflicts before the millennium. The minute literal details, are, to his mind, irreconcilable with 2 Peter 3: 10. Evidently here, as elsewhere, Christ's coming is confounded with his day. There are connecting links between the subjects; but it is an error to suppose that the burning up of the earth signalizes his coming (Brown p. 59). That tremendous catastrophe occurs within the day of the Lord, and as we learn from other Scriptures, at its close, not at its commencement. There is no reason therefore, from 2 Peter 3: 10, to deny that Zech. 14: 5 speaks of Christ's literal coming again to inaugurate the millennium; and if so, there are certainly men on earth subsequently saved and blessed.

This is confirmed by Rev. 19: 6-9, where no ingenuity can fairly dispose of the fact that the marriage of the Lamb with the church takes place before the millennium, when confessedly the elect are not complete.

In reply to this (says Dr. B.) it may be enough to say that this cannot be the actual consummation of the marriage between Christ and his church in glory, because in the two last chapters of this book (which most of my opponents agree with me in referring to the everlasting state*6) the church is described as “descending,” after the millennium is all over, “as a bride adorned for her husband”; and it is rather awkward to suppose a bridal preparation and a presentation of the parties to each other, a thousand years after the union has been consummated.

But this is to totally misconceive the bearing of these Scriptures. The marriage, beyond a doubt, takes place not, in Rev. 21, after the millennium, but in Rev. 19, before it. The latter chapter merely describes the descent of the glorified church, already long married, and now entering on the eternal state, in relation to the new heavens and earth in the fullest sense, invested after the 1,000 years with the same bridal beauty which characterized her when made ready for the wedding. What is to hinder one from speaking of his wife, ten years after the marriage, and setting out on some grand occasion, “as a bride adorned for her husband”? How absurd to infer, from such a simile, that the parties were only presented to each other so many years after the union was consummated!

*We believe that the first part of Rev. 21 describes the eternal state, as the sequel to the course of events and changes presented in the preceding context, and that Rev. 21: 9, et seq., is a retrogressive vision in order to enter into the relation of the heavenly bride to the earth and its nations, with their kings, during the millennium. There is a striking parallel to this arrangement in the retrospective view, Rev. 17, of Babylon, in relation to the kings and peoples of the earth, after her fall had been given in Rev. 14, 16. — REVIEWER.

As to Rev. 21: 24, there is not the slightest need that the object and the prayers of the homage, the New Jerusalem, and the nations with their kings, should be homogeneous, or in the same state. It is the very thing we deny, the very thing Dr. B. ought to prove and not assume. Why should not the nations and their kings be in an earthly condition, the New Jerusalem being surely glorified? Why should not the latter answer to the transfigured Moses and Elias, and the former to the disciples, still unchanged upon the Holy mount (Matt. 17) (especially as the word εἰς may mean the vague unto, the context so requiring it, no less than the more precise “into,” which Dr. B. appears to allow, as indeed he must)? The simple, unforced meaning of the passage presents the conjunction of two different states: a higher and heavenly one; a subordinate, though blessed, earthly one. Nor can this be got rid of by the pretense that it is merely a mysterious prophecy which discloses the coexistence of two different conditions, so abhorrent to Dr. B. One might fairly ask where else it could be so naturally expected as in a book which expressly lifts the veil from the future. Still it is not made known there only. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” (1 Cor 6: 2). Dr. B. cannot here argue that the “saints” mean angels, for the next verse positively distinguishes and contrasts them. “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” There would be no sense if the terms were interchangeable. “Unto the angels hath he not put in subjection, the world οἰκουμένην to come whereof, we speak.” This must be in millennial times; for no such order of things can possibly exist after the millennium, and it is clearly contrary to the suffering and subject place which Scripture assigns to the saints before the millennium. The inference is plain and sure. It is the millennial relation of the heavenly saints, not of men in flesh and blood on earth. “Know ye not, that we shall judge angels?” Assuredly it is not our employment in this dispensation, or throughout eternity. The teaching of Eph. 1: 10 is similar. God hath purposed in Himself, in (for or against) the dispensation of the fullness of times, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, etc. Clearly the apostle speaks not of the present, but of a future period, and of a grand gathering of all things, earthly and heavenly, under the headship of Christ, we being associated with him as Eve with Adam in his dominion. That is, it is the millennial and not the eternal state; for the millennium is the special display before the world of Christ's exaltation as King: that over, Christ gives up the kingdom that GOD (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) should be all in all. Here, then, we have two states, the things which are in heaven, and the things which are on earth, united in a system of glory; not the earthly things sublimated into heavenly, much less the heavenly things reduced to the earthly level, but both, in their several spheres, under the sway of Christ and his bridal coheir. Probably Dr. B. might tell us here too, as well as in Rev. 21: 24 (p. 62), that the commentators agree in applying the verse to one or other of these states, but not to both. We regret it of course; but this does not lessen our conviction that the word is against them, and that no serious Christian should allow modern tradition, any more than ancient, to make Scripture of none effect.

We have no space for dwelling on Dr. B.'s exposure of such vagaries as those of Homes, Burnet, Perry, and Burchell. If we were called on to analyze them, we might find grounds for a deeper tone of censure than what marks his criticisms. Their common difficulty is the Gentile army which Satan musters at the end of all, Rev. 20: their solutions, a mere choice of fable; for the first two take the rebels to be mortal men, and one of these two thinks that they may probably be generated from the slime of the ground and heat of the sun! the third conceived them to be the wicked when raised out of their graves, and the fourth, evil spirits. In reality they agree, or differ, quite as much with Dr. B.'s scheme as with ours.

As to the renewed asseverations that the church means “the universal family of the redeemed,” a few words must suffice:

. “They that are Christ's at his coming,” and all like texts are necessarily limited to the dead saints. Such passages, therefore, CANNOT refer to the saints of the millennium who are never said to die.

. Such views, being true to the letter and spirit of these scriptures, are just what ought to be looked for from those who rightly interpret the word of God. Those who argue from the use of figurative language, against the facts thereby announced, are as little to be trusted, ofttimes, in dealing with the plainest declarations in the Bible. The premillennial advent is a truth which loosens their system. It is no wonder then to witness the pertinacity with which it is rejected till God teach them better.

. The inconsistency of premillenarians (pp. 72-77) is not so great, in the extracts cited, as Dr. B. imagines; and even if it were real rather than apparent, it would evince the badness, not of the cause, but of its advocates. We humbly think that we have in hand something more important than the justification of the Bloomsbury lecturers.

The premillennial scheme reconciles the doctrine of the completeness of the church at Christ's coming with a harvest of saints during the millennium. There is no dilemma, no shade of difficulty, save to him who starts with ignoring the scriptural definition and account of the church of God. And the notion of Christ's coming to the earth only after the millennium, so far from being “the belief which clears all up,” (p.79), is sheer error. For the vision of the great White-Throne judgment is in fact no coming of Christ, but a going of the dead before Him — no return of the Lord or of any one else to the earth, for there is no earth to come to. “I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.”

The “Supplementary Remarks” demand small notice from us; for we have already stated the sound view of “the church,” and it differs too decidedly from that of Messrs. Bickersteth and A. Bonar, and even from the Duke of Manchester's, to claim our interposition in their battles. For, although his Grace rightly made its starting-point to be the ascension of Christ, he very wrongly uses Archdeacon Hare's citation of Olshausen to prove that regeneration belongs essentially to the New Testament — a delusion which one had hoped was confined to the author of “Nehushtan,” and his wretched “Teaching of the Types.” Salvation is not possible, in any dispensation, by external operations of the Spirit; He always quickened souls, as He ever will, by the word of God. Nor is it a question of excluding the Old Testament saints from the scene of glory which we shall enjoy with them in the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 8: 11). But common privileges, either of grace or of glory, cannot disprove the plain testimony of the word, that the baptism of the Spirit (as distinct from regeneration) was not experienced before Pentecost; that on that baptism depends the body, the church, wherein Jewish and Gentile differences are unknown the distinguishing feature of the present economy; and that the millennium will see another condition where these distinctions reappear, with many features of the times before Pentecost, and with others peculiar to the new age. There are, thank God, many mercies which essentially pertain to all saints of all ages; but these must not be abused to deny differences which God's sovereignty has affixed to the various dispensations as it has pleased him. Heb. 11: 40, taken

naturally, stands in the way of Dr. B. How, (will the reader guess) does he explain it away? They without us could not be made perfect — that is, without Christ and the Spirit!! whose proper economy ours certainly is (p. 84). Well, this is no pleasant fruit of post-millennial interpretation. It is a bold figure, in expounding a plain doctrinal statement, to treat “without us,” as equivalent to without Christ and the Spirit. Besides, it is in no way the meaning even thus: for the Holy Ghost lays down two things;

first, that God has provided some better thing for us (i.e. clearly something better than “the promise,” precious as it was, for which all the Old Testament saints were waiting); and

second, that the Old Testament saints were not to be perfected, (viz., by resurrection glory,) apart from us.

Thus, the word of God, while showing ample ground where we all meet, is decisive that the elect are not to be jumbled together in a single indiscriminate mass, and proves most important distinctions, not merely between the church and the millennial saints, but between those of the Old Testament and either. It never speaks, on our view any more than Dr. Brown's, of any portion of the church not rising and reigning with Christ. On the contrary, it proves that many saints besides the church shall reign with Christ when He comes.

Part 1, Chapter 4

The Premillennial Advent in Relation to the Agencies of Salvation

The church of God, we have seen, is not the sum of those saved throughout all ages, but rather the Scriptural designation of the one body gathered from among Jews and Gentiles since the day of Pentecost — habitation of God through the Spirit. Hence it is a manifest oversight to suppose that the agencies and instrumentalities which the Lord employs in founding and perpetuating the church, are necessarily bound up with the salvation of the elect. “God hath set some in the church, first apostles [not patriarchs, or elders, who of old obtained a good report through faith]; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers”; etc. That is, a New Testament order of things is contemplated. So in Eph. 4:

When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men . . .; and he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” etc.

This machinery, most appropriate to the church-state, came in with the ascension of Christ to his place as Head, and with the consequent descent of the Holy Ghost. It was unknown to Judaism, and to the fathers. Yet all must allow God had been saving souls for four thousand years previously, when no such means or functions existed. There is not, therefore, the shadow of a presumption for maintaining that God will discontinue to save when the church disappears, scaffolding, building, and all. So that the fairest and most satisfactory test which Dr. B. can imagine, by which to try the truth of his doctrine, exposes, in effect, its total groundlessness; and confirms, in the most decided way, the speciality of the church as a body distinct, on the one hand, from the Old Testament saints, and on the other, from the millennial saints. Ministry, such as the New Testament connects inseparably with the church, flows from an ascended Lord as its source and giver, and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven as its power. Nevertheless, as beyond doubt saints there were before, all must own that saints there may be after.

Plainly, then, the testimony of Scripture is lost, in the second, third, and fourth propositions, which are connected, and as follows:

Christ's Second Coming will exhaust the object of the Scriptures.

The sealing ordinances of the New Testament will disappear at Christ's Second Coming.

The intercession of Christ, and the work of the Spirit, for saving purposes, will cease at the Second Advent.

For though it be true that baptism and the Lord's Supper (i.e. in theological phrase, the New Testament sealing ordinances) naturally terminate with the Second Advent, it is a mere blunder to confine the stream of divine grace within these rites, let them be ever so precious; and much worse to treat them as its sole and inseparable channel. Abel, Enoch, and Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, knew them not; yet will Dr. B. acknowledge, that they were saved no less than ourselves. Why should it not be so with the saints during the Millennium?

Let us, however, examine what is urged, and in Dr. B.'s order. The following texts are cited as instances of the universal teaching of the Bible:

(1) As to Saints, Luke 19: 13; 2 Peter 1: 19; James 5: 7; 1 Peter 1: 13; 2 Tim. 4: 8; Phil. 3: 20;

(2) As to Sinners, 2 Thess. 1: 7-10; 2 Peter 3: 10; Luke 12: 39, 40; 17: 26, 27, 30.

Thus one half of the Scripture would be inapplicable to saints, and the other half to sinners living after Christ's coming (Brown, p. 98).

Now it is obvious that these texts are drawn exclusively from the New Testament, and from those parts of it which describe or suppose the state of things going on now, and previous to the millennium. What they prove, therefore, is the experience proper to the present dispensation, and nothing more. But this is useless, in all fairness, to Dr. B., who fallaciously takes for granted that these texts give us that which characterizes souls in the age to come. The argument deduced from them is no more valid against another experience in a new economy, than passages descriptive of the Lord as truly man in life and death could disprove his eternal Godhead. The Psalms and prophecies of both Testaments anticipate an era when (not to speak of Satan bound, and the Lord, with his risen ones, reigning over the world) righteousness shall flourish and evil be smitten; when the earth shall groan no more, but be glad; when both houses of Israel shall walk before the Lord in unenvying unjealous love, and all the ends of the earth shall fear God. These features are in contrast with those which now appear: they suppose a time for the saints on earth of good triumphant and not suffering, of enjoyment, and not hope; they involve the judgment of wickedness when it appears, not merely solemn warnings of future vengeance. It is perfectly right to use such Scriptures as Dr. B. refers to for our own guidance now; it is ignorance to neglect a mass of prophecy which predicts the earth full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, when the Lord's people shall not be a little flock, and the godly shall not suffer persecution. That will be a day of glory doubtless, but not to the drying up of the stream of active saving mercy. “In that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.” It is clear that now, between the advents, the Lord is saving the world, and not judging it: we speak of the aspect of His coming and work, not, of course, of the results. The error is the exclusion of another economy when He will both judge and save. “And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.” This is a most extensive and positive judgment; but it is in no way inconsistent with saying “in that day, lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord: we have waited for him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” The evidence is ample. If the reader will only search into what is said of “that day,” he will soon satisfy himself that, while it differs essentially from the present dispensation as the season of divine intervention in the judgment of the world, it will be as evidently the season of the world's all but universal blessedness.

Hence, the disappearance of baptism and the Lord's supper need be no difficulty to any serious mind. Their importance is indisputable — the one, as the initiatory and individual, and the other as the corporate, confession of Christ and his accomplished redemption. But as they were certainly introduced late in the day of God's mercy to sinners, so if God has willed it thus, there is no ground a priori why they might not pass away, when that special hour which witnessed their imposition has come to a close. And this is exactly what Scripture shows, however opposed to the ordinary systems of theology. Not that there is the slightest reason for expecting a new revelation, as some have rashly conceived: still less is it true, as our antagonist asserts without an attempt at proof, that a new dispensation necessarily implies a new revelation to usher it in (Brown, p. 106).

The Bible shows a past economy, when God saved souls before the sealing ordinances (to use Dr. Brown's terminology) of the New Testament had appeared; it shows us the present time, and the institution of those striking rites; it shows us a future epoch clearly revealed in the prophets, when they vanish away, and yet Jehovah's house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. In other words, the old revelation is express as to a new dispensation, or age, when the glory of God shall be manifest in Christ, and His government instead of being true to faith only, shall be justified in public immediate action before the world. The sinner now, as in all past ages, is saved by grace, utterly irrespective of the external seal, ordinance or no-ordinance; it will be so far the same then, whatever be the outward forms of confession. If, as we believe, they differ, this depends on the revealed will of God, and merely distinguishes the dispensations, not the salvation. All is a question of the divine mind made known in His word, not of what “we may expect to find,” which is a prolific source of mistake and confusion. Beyond a doubt, Matt. 28: 18-20, and 1 Cor. 11: 26, do not extend beyond the time of Christ's absence from this world; but can Dr. B. deny that grace saved before baptism and the Lord's supper? If not, it is ridiculous to argue thence that it may not save after they are taken out the way. Nay, more: Scripture demonstrates that salvation does go on in “the world (οἰκουμενῃ habitable earth) to come” when neither is heard of.

The same reasoning, in substance, applies to Dr. B.'s fourth proposition. It is true that the Epistle to the Hebrews (7-9) treats exclusively of the priesthood of Christ carried on within the holiest, after He had entered in once by His own blood; it is true that this applies from beginning to end of God's work in forming the church of the First-born. Christ ascended and took his place as Priest, before the Holy Ghost was sent down to bring in a single soul into the proper “church-state.” But how does all this hinder the only-wise God from putting forth His grace and power, when Christ shall take His place on His own throne, instead of being, as now, seated on the throne of His Father? (Rev. 3: 20). The objection is the less reasonable, because Dr. B. cannot dispute the fact that Christ was not thus a Priest in Old Testament times — had not entered into heaven by His own blood — had not yet obtained eternal redemption for any. If then the Old Testament saints were saved in spite of this lack, why not the millennial saints? If the credit of it, when it did not exist, sufficed for the one class, why not for the other? In fact, it is not that the millennial saints will be without His priesthood, but only that its form will be changed. “He shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zech. 6: 13). So that the difference is really in favour of these saints, as compared with those of the Old Testament.

The fallacy as to the work of the Spirit is equally palpable. John 7: 38, 39; John 14: 16, 17, 26; John 15: 26; John 16: 7, 14; Acts 2: 33; Titus 3: 5, 6; Rev. 3: 1, and Rev. 5: 6, are the texts cited. But granting that the Holy Ghost may not be given in the way in which most of these Scriptures speak, that was as true of the times before the first advent as it can be after the second. If, in spite of this, the Holy Ghost did work for saving purposes in those early days (when be was not given in a full New Testament way, because that Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7: 39)), why not in the last days, when Jesus is manifested in all His glories?

The argument, therefore, is weak to excess, and even absurd. The fact is, that the millennial saints will enjoy an outpouring of the Spirit suited to the magnificent purposes of God in those days of which Pentecost was but a sample. This will be plain to the unbiased reader of Joel 2, with its context, of Isa. 32, 44, 49; Ezek. 36, 37; and Zech. 12, 14.

Thus, the argument in connection with these three propositions entirely fails. For it does not follow that when Christ and the Church appear in glory, the work of salvation will terminate. Nor is it Scriptural, nor even logical, to assert that none will be saved when the New Testament “sealing ordinances” disappear; for beyond doubt many were saved before these ordinances appeared. All the objects of the Scripture will not be exhausted, because the special design of this dispensation is accomplished. Finally, Christ will still be Priest, and the Spirit be more than ever poured out after the completion of the Church and of this age. In every part, therefore, Dr. B. is singular and hopelessly astray; and some of his arguments go far to strengthen the system which he desires to oppose and overthrow, in particular the peculiarity of the church and of the present dispensation, and a millennium governed by different principles and characterized by mercies of another order.

Part 1, Chapter 5

The Kingdom

If our object were the exposure of errors and contradictions in the scheme of our adversaries, no part perhaps could be found more fertile than the question of Christ's kingdom. But this would be disingenuous; for the province is so vast, and its boundaries in general so ill-defined in the minds of most Christians, that abundant scope presents itself for hostile criticism within the ranks of premillennialists. Dr. B. has, not unnaturally, taken advantage of the confusion, and seemingly with the most complete unconsciousness that it is “worse confounded” in his own statements. We shall try to steer as clear as may be of the same danger, though forced to show briefly how little the popular view can lay claim to accuracy or comprehensiveness.

Nor is our task difficult; for the scriptural account is simple enough. The Lord Jesus was born King of the Jews. Matt. 1 gives His genealogy as the Son of David, the Son of Abraham: Matt. 2 His recognition by the heaven-directed Magi, as the predicted ruler of Israel. But if He was there for His people, they were unready for Him. His star was no bright harbinger, save to the distant Gentile; His birth no joy, save to the despised of men: not only was the false King, the Edomite, troubled, but “all Jerusalem with him.” What a welcome for the newborn King! Alas! all followed true to the sad beginning, growing false to Him around whose head prophecy and miracle, grace and truth, circled for a crown of testimony and blessing, such as man had never worn. Blinded by self and Satan, the Jews saw no beauty in Him who was a Savior as well as King, who could not, would not, reign, when His people needed to be saved from their sins. They were wrong, not intellectually alone, but morally. The chief priests and scribes of the people could answer correctly, and without hesitation, where the Messiah should be born. About His kingdom, too, they had no difficulty, though doubtless little true light; but a Messiah lifted up from the earth was to them an insoluble enigma, and a deadly stone of stumbling. “We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?” They were not mistaken in what they imagined the ancient prophets had foretold; but their carnal minds used one part of the revealed truth to contradict another equally true, and yet more vital. It is obvious and undeniable that the law does teach the perpetuity of the Son of man and His kingdom; no subsequent revelations rescind, deny, or modify this. So far the Jews were right, and our friends are wrong. But a rejected, suffering Messiah was foreshown with no less clearness; and why was such an one excluded from their faith? Why did they look for His glory without His sorrows and His death? Because they had no adequate sense of their sins, nor of God's holy majesty; because instinctively they turned away from what is most humbling to man, and as tenaciously clung to that which might aggrandize their place and nation. Cain-like, they brought their offering to God: why should He not accept it? It was their best. Ah! in His sight it was their worst, and could only end in His cross, who proved that self-complacent race to be but a viper-brood, whose sin was unconfessed, unatoned for; and God cannot overlook that, however easily man may. Jesus can save His people, suffer for them, and forgive to the uttermost; but reign over them in their sins He will not. And Jesus was not Messiah only: He was Emmanuel, God manifest in the flesh, with all its solemnly blessed consequences for faith, with its distastefulness then and its terrors by and by for unbelief. Man likes not God: hence the rejection of Jesus.

It was not, then, a false inference from the ancient prophets, that the Son of David was to bless Israel and exalt Jerusalem, though doubtless on a holier foundation and pattern than their dark hearts were prepared for.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, the Lord liveth which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but the Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven thee; and they shall dwell in their own land (Jer. 23: 5-8).

And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee: for in my wrath I smote thee” (which is true of the earthly Jerusalem, not of the heavenly), but in my favour have I had mercy on thee. Therefore thy gates shall be open continually: they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted (Isa. 40: 10-12).

This is, beyond a doubt, not the holy city which comes down from heaven with healing for the nations, but the earthly city, — holy, but earthly, — the vessel of mercy, but withal the minister of righteous retribution here below in the day of the Lord.

It was not so much there that the blindness of Israel lay, but in this, that they saw not, heard not, God in Jesus. His kingdom was in their midst when Jesus was there, delivering from the thraldom of the enemy. “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matt. 12: 28). “Behold the kingdom of God is within (in the midst of) you” (Luke 17: 21). This they believed not; and that fatal error led them on, under Satan's guidance, to the place which is called Calvary; and there, in His crucifixion, they proclaimed to God and man how they esteemed Him who was wounded for their transgressions, and bruised for their iniquities. Their rock of shipwreck was the exaltation of themselves in their then state, and their consequent refusal of Him who came to bless them, in turning away every one of them from their iniquities: not their expectation of His Davidical kingdom, but their exclusion of redemption, and their virtual denial of its need.

For our part, we fear something painfully akin, not externally, but in the core, pervades Christendom, and strongly tends to keep up the prevalent unbelief as to the true nature, objects, issues, and of course the time of the Lord's Advent. For men not unreasonably fear and dislike a coming of Christ in sudden judgment of what they are pursuing with eagerness. And even Christians who mingle with the literature, the philosophy, and the politics of the world, are apt to get tinctured more or less with the spirit of the age. Let them remember how the promise of a returning glorious Christ was to face with the last-day scoffers. Forgetfulness of this exposes one to the expectation unauthorized by scripture, of a gradually victorious reign of the gospel, instead of God's testimony to the gospel of the reign. This is accompanied by (if it does not create) the thought that the godly need not suffer persecution, but rather and rightfully expect a share of this world's respect and honours and influence, as their hoped-for millennium draws near. Thus they prophesy smooth things for their children, yet more than for themselves — a proximate triumph for the Church, in Christ's absence, on earth, instead of waiting for the appearing of both in heavenly glory, whereby the world shall know that the Father sent the Son, and loved the Church as He loved Him.

It is not denied, that “the kingdom of heaven” began with the ascension. Nothing can be more perversely untrue than that premillennialism obscures or weakens this. On the contrary, none have derived so much light as premillennialists from Matt. 13, which is the grand exhibition of the kingdom in this aspect, and during the present dispensation. Here they and their opponents necessarily take common ground against unbelieving Jews. But then it is a peculiar and anomalous aspect of the kingdom; not the predicted manifestation of divine power, when the evil shall be put down in this world, and the good shall dwell at ease, but “the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 13: 11). It is a wholly different thing which we find in the prophets, though confessedly both are states of the kingdom. Thus, if we look at “the little stone” in Dan. 2, it is beyond legitimate question that it symbolizes the dominion entrusted to the Lord Jesus. It is cut without hands (i.e., without human agency). It is “in the days of these kings”: not, as has been assumed, and upon no substantial grounds, “during the currency of the four famous kingdoms” (for the last only is supposed to be subsisting imperially); but in the days of the ten kings just intimated by the toes of the great image; precisely as in Dan. 7, we have the closing history of the fourth empire followed by a solemn session of judgment, and the investiture of one like the Son of Man in presence of the Ancient of days. Both manifestly exclude the ascension, which is entirely passed over here, as is the Lord's stay and work on earth; both show the time in question to be during, and in reference to, the last form of the anti-Christian Roman empire before its destruction. With this all coheres. For the first action of the stone is judgment. There is no mere spiritual or moral influence which acts on the heart set forth here, but a direct and judicial demolition of the last human empire which is seen on earth. It is not the slow and checkered sowing of the gospel seed, often caught away, dying off, or choked up; neither is it some grand development ever and anon absorbing its enemies into its own substance or body. It is a grand display of divine force, which suddenly and utterly destroys the existing imperial power, with all that remained of its predecessors, before it becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth (Dan. 2). No such idea appears in the passage as “the now existing church” (Brown, p. 322), “fighting and winning its way to the throne of the world” (ibid., p. 321); which is indeed a dream worthy of Papists or Mormons, not the truth as it is in Jesus. Dr. B.'s view (and it is the common one) subverts the entire teaching of the New Testament as to our right relations to the kingdoms of this world, and therefore must be rejected, not merely as erroneous interpretation of a prophecy, but as unsound and mischievous doctrine. It denies the essentially subject and suffering place of the Christian on earth; and, if practically carried out, would degrade the Church into an organized system of rebellion against the powers that be, at least in their anti-Christian principles and characters, — a conspiracy consecrated under the plea that the kingdoms of this world are themselves conspirators against the interests and the people of God here below.*7

*We do not charge Dr. B., as some appear to have done, with making the fall of the stone to be a judgment upon a mere abstraction. On the contrary, it seems to us to be a thoroughly practical evil. Again, he has no right to limit the sphere of judgment to the Papacy. All the kingdoms of the Roman empire are judged with the little horn.

No! the more we reflect, the more are we satisfied that no Jesuit, no Hildebrand even, would ask more sanction for their ambitious schemes than Dr. B. concedes in the following words:

Christ's presently existing kingdom has within itself the whole resources by which it is destined to crush the anti-christianism that obstructs its universal triumph, and to win its way to the throne of the world (p. 319).

He may guard his thought as much as he will; he may tell us that, as a mere succession of civil monarchies, the vision has nothing to do with them; he may say that the fall of those anti-Christian kingdoms can only be considered their fall in the character of hostility to the Church of the living God. But Cardinal Wiseman justifies the projects of Rome on precisely similar principles, with equal claim, as far as expounding the prophecy goes, and with greater ability. And such are the inevitable consequences, be it observed, of the attempt to apply the ordinary notion of Christ's kingdom to the exposition of Dan. 2.

While it is true, then, that the kingdom of heaven is going on now, it must be carefully remembered that its present form is mysterious and special, because of Israel's unbelief and rejection of the Lord. This is what we find fully brought out in the Gospel of Matthew. In consequence of the people's refusing the King, He goes on high, and the anomaly appears of the kingdom, entrusted to the responsibility of man, proceeding in patience, and not enforced by power; so that if tares are sown by the enemy and seen growing in the wheat-field, there is to be no gathering of them until the harvest, when angels do that work. Such is the form and character of the kingdom presented in the New Testament — long-suffering grace on the part of Christ's servants towards evil doers, falsely professing His name. It is not a question of church discipline, to which it has been often and monstrously perverted, but of conduct towards the evil in the field (“the world”), where they are on principle to be let alone, mingling with the children of the kingdom till the end of this age (not of the next or millennial age, where a totally different state of things is found, and a different principle governs). In the end of THIS age the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity. That is to say, the form and character of the kingdom will change, judgment shall be executed on the wicked then alive (instead of grace bearing with them as now), and the righteous shall shine forth then, instead of groaning within themselves, as now. Judgment shall return unto righteousness in that day, and this publicly, manifestly, under the Son of Man. Hence in Daniel, where we have the normal aspect of the kingdom, there is the execution of judgment as its introductory act here below: as indeed it is the chief, though not exclusive, feature of the millennial reign, and everywhere so presented in the word of God.

The reader may now judge how far scripture is the source or sanction of Dr. B.'s fifth proposition:

Christ's proper kingdom is already in being; commencing formally on His ascension to the right hand of God, and continuing unchanged both in character and form, till the judgment (p. 124).

Satan may still reign the prince of this world; creation may still groan, subject to vanity; all that live godly in Christ Jesus may still suffer persecution; the Jews may still cry, “Not this man but Barabbas”; the Gentiles may never so much boast, and never so little stand in God's goodness: yet is it, according to Dr. B., Christ's proper kingdom! Satan may be bound, and creation delivered into the liberty of glory; the saints that suffered first may reign with Christ; the Jews may say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, and the Gentiles may rejoice with them: nevertheless, according to Dr. B., the kingdom continues “unchanged both in character and form.” Now there is tribulation, then there will be none; now there are wars, then it will be learnt no more; now the gospel is being preached to all as a testimony, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, then (at least in Israel) “they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know me.” No matter, according to Dr. B.,

the extent is nothing. The principle is the only thing of consequence, and who does not see that that is the same in both cases (p. 368)?

It is “Christ's proper kingdom,” and it continues unchanged, both in character and form, till the final judgment!! Such is Dr. B.'s principle, and these are some of its consequences.

But we must glance at the evidences:

(1) Acts 2: 29-36, compared with Zech. 6: 12, 13; Rev. 5: 6; Rev. 3: 7, 8-13; Isa. 9: 7.

(2) Acts 3: 13-15, 19-21.

(3) Acts 4: 26-28.

(4) Acts 5: 29-31.

(5) Ps. 110: 1, compared with Heb. 10: 12, 13; and 1 Cor. 15: 24-26.

These passages are employed by Dr. B. to show that the apostles take up precisely his “position against the premillennialists regarding the kingdom of Christ” (p. 128). These are bold words. How are they made good?

1. Peter's arguments prove that Christ was the risen Messiah; that His death, and resurrection, and session at the right hand of God, were predicted, as well as His right to the throne of David. This we accept as cordially as Dr. B. Not a particle of this was believed by the incredulous Jews, with whom he associates his premillennialist brethren. But he further maintains that the Pentecostal mission of the Spirit was Christ's first exercise of royal authority from the throne of Israel.

That CHRIST IS NOW ON DAVID'S THRONE, is as clearly affirmed by Peter in this sermon as words could do it (p. 130).

We, on the other hand, maintain not only that there is not one word to this effect, but that Christ's ascension is expressly distinguished from his Davidical title. Three separate Psalms are cited or referred to in proof of three distinct glories of Christ: Ps. 16 as indicating Christ's resurrection; Ps. 132 God's oath touching David's throne; and Ps. 110 His session on Jehovah's throne in heaven, which, as the apostle argues, was no more true of David than the resurrection of Ps. 16. This, then, affords not proof, but disproof: the Father's throne above (where Christ is sitting — Rev. 3: 21) is not the throne of David or of Israel, as men most singularly make out of Peter's words. So, as to Zech. 6: 12, 13, (though it is quite lawful for us to appropriate very much that is blessed in it,) it supposes a time yet future, when “he shall be a priest upon his throne”: the regular and formal fulfillment of the prophecy, and indeed of the kingdom; not the mystery of His present place on the Father's throne, Rev. 3: 21. The possession of David's key applied figuratively in Rev. 3: 7 is an extraordinary witness to call, seeing that it pertained not to the king, but to his subject and servant. David's throne is quite another thought. As to understanding Isa. 9: 7 of “the administration of Christ in the church,” we can only say that, as interpretation, whether one looks at the text or its context, it is a sense which is destitute, to our mind, of the smallest probability. The passage supposes unprecedented vengeance executed, and the government carried out on principles of righteousness.

2. “Prince of life” we deny in toto to be the same as sitting on the throne of David. It seems to us a singular instance of a preoccupied mind that such a title should be cited in proof of a force so distant from its own proper meaning. Again, Dr. B. is quite wrong in asserting that “premillennialists tell us that Christ's second coming must precede the conversion of the Jews.” Some, no doubt, have so thought, but by no means all. We ourselves agree with Dr. B. that the reverse appears here, as, indeed, we may add, from our Lord's own words, “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh,” etc. Their heart must be touched so to say, and so they shall say before they see the Lord. But Dr. B. has no warrant for adding, that on their conversion, “and events then hastening on apace,” He would send again to the earth your predicted Messiah. This interpretation is, we presume, to gain more time, and so far postpone the coming of Christ. Further, Dr. B. says, in reference to “till the times of restitution,” “the sense plainly is, that whatever the things predicted be, they are to be accomplished ere Christ comes; and that certainly will not be before the millennium.” But this is to miss the point. If the grand theme of all the prophets had been the great white throne (Rev. 20) and the subsequent eternal state, there might be force in what he says; for in that case Christ's coming would be connected with the end of the millennium. But since all the prophets dwell, not on the final scene, but on the millennial times of blessing and righteousness, it follows that Christ's coming is bound up with those times, not with their end or what follows; that is, the passage tells decisively for premillenarianism and against Dr. B., notwithstanding good Joseph Perry's convictions.

3. The apostolic use of Ps. 2 in Acts 4 is the next argument.

They apply the Psalm, beyond all contradiction, to the present sovereignty and rule of Jesus in the heavens (p. 140).

But it is clearly used, not to prove or illustrate the nature of Christ's kingdom, but solely as predictive of the world's opposition to God and His anointed servant. Unquestionably, much of the Psalm was not accomplished; it cannot thence be assumed that Christ was actually reigning in Zion; and other scriptures show that He is not yet.

4. Still less plausible is the use made of Acts 5: 29-31. What the Jews did not believe was that Jesus of Nazareth was the predicted Savior-Prince, and that salvation could only be through His cross. The word here translated “Prince” does not express regal dignity, but a “leader” or “captain,” as in Heb. 2 and 12. Further, it is His title in relation here to Israel (presented to their responsibility then, and by and by to be accepted through the grace of God); not a word is hinted about Christ's actual relation to the Church, which is our author's thesis.

5. Neither does Ps. 110: 1 help Dr. B., nor do the comments on it in Acts 2; Heb. 10; and 1 Cor. 15. Sitting at Jehovah's right hand is rather in contrast with the exercise of His Davidical throne, as we have seen in Acts. 2. Heb. 10 uses the fact of His seat there to show the work perfect and finished, instead of being always a-doing, as with the Jewish priest. It would rather prove that Christ was not ruling in the midst of His enemies. He is expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. When he reigns in the sense of Ps. 90 the enemy will have been made His footstool. In Heb. 10 He has completed His offering for His friends; henceforth He waits for another thing, viz., vengeance upon His enemies; and this “the kingdom,” in the full and literal sense of the term, is to witness. “Then cometh the end, when he shall, have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the father . . . For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.”

Dr. B. urges, as to this, the discrepancies of pre-millennialists; but, after all, what do they amount to? A mere difference in the application of a particular verse or clause in 1 Cor. 15. Some hold that the kingdom delivered up means the kingdom as now going on in mystery; others, and we believe more correctly, the proper and future kingdom of Christ. On this Dr. B. triumphs without reason. He conceives that you have only to combine the separate statements (that “the kingdom” is in being with the one, and that it is the full Davidical reign of Christ with the other) to overthrow both classes of antagonists, and establish his own system. But it is plain, as Mr. Birks well observes, (Outlines, p. 203) that the same mode of argument may be used with equal success to establish any one of the conflicting theories by premises derived from the others. If we assume, with Dr. B., that the Davidical reign is clearly intended, and with Dr. McNeile, that that reign is future, the result is premillennialism as commonly held. Again, if we agree with Dr. B. that the reign here mentioned is begun, and with Dr. McN. that the Davidical reign is future, premillennialism follows equally.

Nothing, then, can be more illusive than this ad captandum style of reasoning, which would extract, from the admissions of two different sets of opponents, their common refutation.

Part 1, Chapter 6

The First Resurrection and the Second Death

Our purpose is, as briefly as may be consistent with perspicuity, to examine the arguments put forth by Dr. Brown in support of his sixth and seventh propositions, which are as follows:

When Christ comes, the whole Church of God will be “made alive” at once — the dead by resurrection, and the living, immediately thereafter, by transformation; their mortality being swallowed up of life (p. 164).

All the wicked will rise from the dead, or be “made alive,” at the coming of Christ (p. 178).

First of all, he opens with justly reprobating the painfully repulsive notion held by a few writers, that there is to be a succession of living generations upon the earth throughout all eternity. In denouncing this monstrous idea we are happy to agree with Dr. B., and so, we are persuaded, do the mass of godly and intelligent premillennialists. The fallacy depends on taking “for ever,” etc., absolutely in all cases, instead of interpreting such phrases relatively to the context. Possibly our author may be right in conjecturing that its advocates were hurried into it through the gap which premillennialism leaves touching the ultimate destiny of the righteous who live on earth during the thousand years. For our part, we frankly own that, as far as we see, scripture is reserved about this, as about many other points. If the Bible furnishes specific information about it, let the passages be produced, and we are as willing to bow to them as our opponents. The general principle of God's word is clear, necessary, and unchanging, that corruption cannot inherit incorruption; that when the everlasting state comes (the new heavens and earth in the fullest sense), the former things are passed away; that He who sits on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new.” The men with whom God's tabernacle is said then to be (Rev. 21: 3), we believe to be the saved men that had lived in the millennial earth; and if all the things around them are renovated, a fortiori so are they. “And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.” This had been partially true in the millennium, but it is perfectly true now. We are not told when their bodies were changed into this new condition, nor is any account given how they were translated into the eternal world where righteousness dwells. We know the fact; and if this was enough for God to reveal, it ought to satisfy Dr. B., as it does ourselves. If postmillennialism ventures to fill up the picture and to describe the when and the how these millennial saints are changed and translated, it will be found that the system runs before and against the scriptures. If premillennialism holds its peace, it is because the mouth of the Lord has not spoken upon the details; and in such a case, who are the wiser, the humbler and the truer men? Surely those who prefer the silence of the Lord to the loudest and most confident utterance of men. We accept, then, with Dr. B., the scriptural principle and the general fact of the everlasting condition of the saints who had lived during the millennium: with him, also, we reject the revolting Adamism which some dead and living premillennialists have expected to exist throughout eternity; but we repudiate, as less revolting, no doubt, but as equally unscriptural, Dr. B.'s scheme, which pretends to determine the time and manner of the change which affects the millennial saints. If it be urged that he includes those saints in the whole Church of God made alive when Christ comes, the answer is, that this is simply to affirm what we emphatically deny; and the burden of proof falls, of course, upon him. Dr. B. has not proved it, and we venture to say that he cannot. His theory is a mere begging of the question.

He cites, indeed, for one simultaneous and glorious resurrection, 1 Cor. 15: 20-23; John 6: 39, 40; John 17: 9, 24 (i.e., the passages produced in his ch. 4 to show the completeness of the Church at Christ's coming, which no one doubts). The true enquiry is, whether scripture does not leave room for the blessing of other men on earth after the proper Church-work is done. Let Dr. B. ponder John 11: 51, 52, for instance. Is it not plain that we are there taught the efficacy of Christ's death for the Jewish nation, and not for this only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad? That is, we have the Lord's death announced formally for Israel and for Christians, as for two distinct objects. The Apocalypse, like Old Testament scriptures, exhibits the blessing, which results from it to the millennial nations, yea, to the universe itself, as the latter point is stated doctrinally in Ephesians and Colossians. Dr. B. ought to have applied the scriptures cited to those actually contemplated in the respective passages, without going farther and excluding what is revealed elsewhere. The Lord and His apostle, in Dr. B.'s quotations, address and intend the class of heavenly sufferers only. Whether there be others redeemed and saved in another state of things (i.e., the millennium) cannot be settled one way or another by these scriptures, because they refer exclusively to premillennial times. In point of fact, 1 Cor. 15: 20-23, and John 6: 39, 40, could not apply to the millennial saints, because those texts speak of raising the dead, and these saints are never said to die, and therefore come under the “change,” not resurrection. And John 17 seems to us an unhappy chapter for a postmillenarian to quote, because it is through the heavenly and glorified saints, that the world is to know that the Father sent the Son. That is, there are others undoubtedly so influenced by this glorious unity as to recognize the Lord — a strange proof that themselves are already included in this unity. It is really a very strong proof of what Dr. B. objects to. In his scheme there is no world which could thus and then learn the Father's mission of the Son, when the risen or changed saints appear with Christ in glory.

Upon the closing and supplementary remarks of ch. 7, which aim at overthrowing Dr. H. Bonar's use of Isa. 25: 8, we need not enter; partly because we differ somewhat from the argument, and chiefly because we have already rested the coexistence of earthly and heavenly blessing and glory during the millennium upon other proofs.

As for the Socinians and Dutch Remonstrants (p. 181, who employed Luke 14, 1 Cor. 15 and 1 Thess. 4, to deny any resurrection for the wicked), it may be “interesting” to those who eke out the feebleness of their cause and their reasoning by puny appeals in terrorem; but we doubt how far it will “strengthen” Dr. B.'s remarks. He concedes that this group of passages does imply that believers rise ALONE; that is, on a principle peculiar to themselves, and in a company amongst whom the wicked are not found.

Besides, it is utterly false that the same answer suffices for his premillennialist brethren now, as for the Socinianizing party: because the last denied and the former hold strenuously, and more distinctly than the soi-disant orthodox divines, a resurrection of the unjust.

But Phil. 3: 11 receives from Dr. B., and claims from us, a fuller notice.

It was a resurrection peculiar to believers — a resurrection exclusively theirs — exclusive, however, not in the time of it, but in its nature, its accompaniments, and its issues (p. 183).

Moreover, he acknowledges that the preferable reading is (not the vulgar ἐξανάστασιν τῶν νεκρῶν, but what, since Bengel, and in spite of Griesbach, “has been established”) ἐξανάστασιν τῶν ἐκ νεκρῶν. *8 This, we venture to affirm, is the strongest possible statement in Greek of an eclectic resurrection. “The out-resurrection from the dead” may convey some idea of its force to the unlearned reader. It is even more emphatic, as Bengel observes, than the word used of our Lord's rising from the dead. The main question, however, is on the latter part of the phrase. Is ἐκ νεκρῶν ever predicated of the resurrection of the wicked dead, of those who, as we believe, rise last? NEVER.  Ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν is, of course, true of Christ, and of the righteous, no less than of the wicked; for all that it means is the rising again of dead persons. This, then, is in not the smallest degree favourable to Dr. B., as he inconsiderately infers. On the other hand, the phrase ἐκ νεκρῶν is restricted to Christ and His saints; because this resurrection (whether of Him or of them) was from among the dead, who were left for the time undisturbed by it in their graves — a prior, as well as a peculiar, resurrection. Nor is there the least difficulty in discerning why St. Paul chose the more general expression in 1 Cor. 15 though he there confines himself (as Dr. B. believes with us, in opposition to Mr. Birks, Barnes, etc.) to the resurrection of Christ and of them who are Christ's. The reason is because he is asserting the abstract doctrine of resurrection which some of the Corinthians, though holding the perpetuity of the soul, had denied. But the apostle insists on the resurrection of dead persons, — of the body. He shows that to question this is to destroy alike the foundation in Christ and the hopes of the Christian — the grand motives to, and power of, present holy suffering. Can Dr. B. refuse this explanation of his objection? If not, the argument founded on the distinctness of the Greek formulas is thoroughly sound and conclusive. Neither is there ambiguity, in the phrase ἐκ νεκρῶν· it means “out of,” or “from amongst the dead,” not “from the place or state of the dead.” Mr. Inglis's criticism on Heb. 11: 19 (preface, pp. vi., vii.), founded on ο(θεν, “whence,” as if it necessarily meant the dead state, is quite inept; because, the expression being figurative (ἐν παραβολ;), “out of dead persons” yields a sense just as good as its rival. Like the Latin unde, this Greek adverb means not only “whence” but from whom or which, and this, not in mere loose and barbarized dialects, but in the purest Attic authors. Mr. I.'s remarks ignore this (being founded on the mistaken idea that ;θεν can only mean whence, and only be applied to the dead state), and therefore, if ingenious, must forfeit claim to accuracy.

*In a note to p. 183, Dr. B. says that though this "was originally an emphatic form, it came gradually to be employed even where no emphasis was intended. Winer says it 'almost uniformly' did so; and he makes this remark in connection with the passage before us." Now we cannot say what this German scholar may have remarked in former editions, but we can affirm that, having examined his latest (sixth) edition of the "Grammatik," we believe that no reference is made to the passage, much less is there an assertion so unworthy of a really learned man as is imputed to him. If W. ever committed himself to that opinion, it seems to have vanished from his most mature statements. The section 19, to which Dr. B. alludes (now at least) without reason, discusses the omission of the article under certain limitations — a subject of which Winer is by no means master. It may be remarked here, that the late Mr. Gipps founded an argument of apparent weight and acuteness on the common text against a literal resurrection of saints before the rest are raised for judgment. The absence of ἐκ was the gist of his reasoning. But the fact is that the sentence is not correct Greek, and hardly sense, as it stands in Text. Rec.; whereas the oldest and best authorities, for τῶν, read τὴν ἐκ. Had Mr. G. known this, he would have felt that his main objection was gone — nay, that the clause told strongly against him. "If," says he, "Phil. 3: "had been meant to express the rising from the dead, the preposition ἐξ in composition with ἀνάστασις would have been repeated " (p. 85, note). It is repeated according to the latest critics, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf, none of whom sympathizes with pre-millennialism. The ancient MSS. A, B, (C is here defective), D, E read τὴν ἐκ.  F, G, give τῶν ἐκ  which is evidently a slip for τὴν ἐκ, and this again was, probably, the parent of τῶν without ἐκ in J, K and the cursive manuscripts which follow them. The best versions and fathers confirm the reading from the dead. The currency which the common reading once had says little for the accuracy of copyists, editors, and commentators.

Dan. 12: 2, *9 if it treat of a literal bodily resurrection, is decidedly opposed to Dr. B., because it makes it immediately succeed the great conflicts in Palestine, which most certainly are before, not after the millennium. The Gog and Magog insurrection (in Rev. 20) is too distinct to need discussion. We do not doubt that it is borrowed from the resurrection of just and unjust, which it supposes to be a known truth; but it is a figure to express the resuscitation of Israel, just as in Ezek. 37, Hosea 6, 13, and many other Old Testament scriptures. In John 5: 28, 29, we have the Lord's testimony to two resurrections, a life-resurrection and a judgment-resurrection, both comprehended in an hour that is coming. Dr. B. deduces simultaneousness, we distinctness, of the two, be the interval short or long. That the word does not of necessity imply shortness, the context just before proves unanswerably. But, answers Dr. B., the unbroken continuousness of the period is essential; and, in that case, a long continuity of resurrection in both kinds would be involved (pp. 191-194). We reply that ο(ρα (“hour”) has nothing to do with the continuity of facts occurring in it, but with the unity of the epoch, so as to make one time or season of it. Thus it is used for a year; yet spring and summer, autumn and winter, seed-time and harvest, very opposite and not continuous facts, occur in it. If, in the case before us, the hour derived its character from the resurrection, the whole argument is unfounded; for there are two resurrections opposed in character, and no continuity is derived from them. If it does not derive its character from the resurrection, then the fact of its having two resurrections in it, a thousand years apart, does not destroy its continuity. Two periods were in the first “hour” (v. 25), characterized by Christ's presence and His absence. There was an epoch when souls should rise at the voice of the Son of God; there was another (v. 28) when bodies should rise. This hour derives its unity, not continuity, from something else. What gave that unity is another question, to which, we believe, the true answer is the presence of the Lord in glory, in that power in which He rose from the dead. They were not to marvel if He quickened souls, for at a future epoch He would manifest His power in raising all that are in the graves, and this in resurrections as contrasted as “life” and “judgment.”

*It is attempted by the help of Augustine (De Civ. Dei. XX. xxiii. 2), Calvin, and others, to maintain a strict parallel between this text and John 5: 28, 29. But it is not true that "many" is the equivalent to "all." The chief witness called by most is the alleged interchange of these expressions in Rom. 5: 18, 19. But we deny the fact even there; for in the latter verse οἱ πόλλοι is employed in relation to ὁ εἷς  (the mass connected with the one), and in the former there is no such relation expressed; and the idea is the universal bearing of one offence and of one righteousness respectively, not the actual effect which follows in the next verse, where, accordingly, the phrase is altered. Moreover, "many" is not the same thing as "the many:" they are very particularly and frequently distinguished in Daniel . Compare, for the former, Dan. 11: 34, 44; Dan. 12: 2, 4, 10; and, for the latter, Dan. 9: 27; Dan. 11: 33, 39; Dan. 12: 3. Marckius' reply to Cocceius, which identifies them, is therefore unfounded, and even Dr. B. "now greatly doubts it." And it is evident that he has little confidence in the explanation of Munster and Clarius, who suppose that the change of the living righteous is hinted at in the word "many." The truth is that, on no view, pre-millennial or post-millennial, can our text be applied to a literal resurrection consistently with other scriptures or with the context. We have no doubt, therefore, that it refers to God's revival of Israel, both nationally and spiritually, and with the open judgment of the wicked among them, after the destruction of the last king of the North ("the Assyrian," so often predicted in the prophets). Dan. 11 had already spoken of the Jews in the Land up to their closing troubles and deliverance for the elect. Dan. 12: 2 shows us the reappearance on the scene of "many" long slumbering among the Gentiles. They had been "asleep" when movements of the deepest interest had been going on in the land and people of the Jews. Now they "awake;" but, as among the Jews in Palestine, not a few were apostate and cut off by God, and only such were delivered out of their last time of unparalleled tribulation as were "written in the book;" so of these returned Israelites, some are found destined to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. For they are not all Israel which are of Israel. We doubt not that, though employed figuratively, as often in the Psalms and Prophets, the language pre-supposes the known truth of a bodily resurrection, and this of just and unjust. It is possible that John 5 may allude to the passage, but that would not prove the literality of Dan. 12: 2. It is much more certain that itself alludes to Isa. 26: 19, which Dr. B. correctly refers to the figurative resurrection of Israel (pp. 234, 235). The language is at least equally strong in both, and the resemblance striking and undeniable,. "Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing (the prophet addressing them), ye that dwell in dust," etc. Ezek. 37 is, if possible, stronger than Dan. 12 "Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel." Beyond a doubt, not a physical but a resurrection is here meant, just as in Daniel. It is the only interpretation which meets all the conditions of the text and context, and it is entirely free from the inseparable difficulties which encumber the use made of it by many on both sides.

This distinction, it is notorious, reappears in Rev. 20; only that in the prophecy we have, as might be expected, the contrast of time, as well as of character. A chronological period of a thousand years, or more, separates the two resurrections, but their identification with John 5 is palpable. Rev. 20: 4, 6, describes the life-resurrection — “they lived and reigned with Christ. On such the second death hath no power.” Rev. 20: 12 to the end, describes the judgment-resurrection — “The dead were judged out of those things,” etc., “They were judged every man according to his works.”

As to the argument for universality, based on the phrase, “the dead, small and great,” it will not stand a moment's investigation; because the wicked are the only dead left. In immediate juxtaposition with the account in v. 4 of the various classes who share in the first resurrection, it is said, “the rest of the dead lived not.” But now, when the thousand years are over, when the last fruitless rebellion of the nations, led on by Satan and dealt with summarily by divine judgment, has added a countless throng to the mass of the dead, all are summoned up from their graves to stand before the throne. Here there is neither need nor room for describing them as “the rest of the dead,” because of the interval which separates them from the first resurrection. Nay, more; “the rest of the dead,” in v. 12, would have been a misleading and improper phrase, because it might naturally have been restricted to the same body of whom v. 5 had spoken: whereas in fact it includes ALL the dead, except those already disposed of in the first resurrection; not those only who were dead when the millennial reign began, but such as had died during its course, and the vast multitude whom fire from God devoured at its close. Nothing can be plainer. A blessed resurrection is first described of those who reign with Christ, and with this is expressly conjoined the statement that the rest of the dead lived not till a certain long period terminated. During this period we know, from Isa. 65, 66, that, at least, the wicked die; and at the end of it, we know, from Rev. 20: 7-9, that the living wicked are destroyed without remedy. Most appropriately, therefore, on our view, scripture speaks of those called up afterwards for the judgment-resurrection as “the dead, small and great,” — the largest and most precise possible terms, so as to embrace all that remain, who are necessarily all wicked. The righteous had been long since raised. After that, no righteous are ever intimated as dying. No matter how comprehensive, then, may be the phraseology employed, it can only apply to the wicked, because they only, at that epoch, are “the dead.” The minute specification of the sea, death, and hades, is most solemn. No hiding-place could longer detain the wretched victims of sin. The deepest gulfs of the sea and unseen worlds deliver up their prisoners to stand before the Judge. And as to the production of “the book of life,” and “the books,” it is quite simple. Here is a figure (for, indeed, the description of the second death is just as symbolical as that of the first resurrection), — a figure taken from human tribunals and from two sides of an account. The books prove that their works were evil. The book of life discloses that their names were not written therein; for not a hint is given of even one who was. Both agree that they should be cast into the lake of fire.

Not content with his general remarks upon Rev. 20, Dr. B. devotes his entire ch. 9 to certain presumptions and nine internal evidences against the literality of the first resurrection. His à priori probabilities are of no weight:

. It is true that the duration of the interval between the two resurrections is only mentioned six times in one passage of the Apocalypse; but surely this was abundant testimony to the number of years which should separate them, one clear revelation being as certain as one hundred. Besides, we have already demonstrated that the term “resurrection from (or, from among) the dead,” which is restricted to the resurrection of Christ and His saints, implies in both cases a prior resurrection. What can be plainer than these words, for example, “They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that age (αἰῶνος), and the resurrection from the dead (τῆς ἀν. τῆς ἐκ νεκρῶν), neither marry nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” We do not wonder that Dr. B. has found it convenient to evade the discussion of this striking testimony, and only refers to its existence in the notes to pp. 181 and 186. But the reader will see that, among the dead, none but the worthy, the children of God, are to obtain that age — that special and long-expected age, when God shall fulfil His blessed promises in all their precision, as well as all their breadth and compass. For such, as far as concerns the dead, are reserved “that age and the resurrection from the dead.”

“The rest of the dead” are not to live till that age has run its course, and the resurrection FROM the dead is no longer possible. “And I saw the dead, small and great . . . and the dead were judged.” The wicked dead are excluded from that age no less than from the resurrection from the dead. The truth is that an indiscriminate resurrection (p. 260) is totally unknown to scripture, and the reasoning goes much farther than the millennium. All scripture which speaks of resurrection shows a distinct act, if there be only a minute between. Those who are Christ's are never confounded with the rest, whatever the interval (which is naturally made known in a prophecy, that is peculiarly rich in times and seasons, days and years).

. We utterly reject the assertion that Rev. 20: 4-6 is an ambiguous revelation. People may have made mistakes about the extent of its subjects; but the thing itself has been clearly held even by men as eccentric as Mr. Burgh. And Dr. B. forgets that all premillennialists differ from his opinion of the subjects of the final resurrection, and most of them from his view of its character and results.

. His last presumption, viz., that any other description of the resurrection of the saints is catholic, while this is limited, is a mere but decided blunder. Dr. B. omits the first clause of Rev. 20: 4 (“And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them”). Having thus decapitated the verse, having deprived it of a clause which, in our judgment, was purposely written in the most general form, so as to take in the saints of the Old and New Testaments, no wonder that he finds in the rest only disjecta membra. But then the mutilation is his own deed, as will be seen more fully by and by. At the same time we must do our author the justice to say that he discards the old objections, grounded on “souls” (not bodies) being named, on the want of particular mention of the earth, as the theater of the millennial reign, and on the word resurrection, as if it did not denote the restoring of life to the dead.

His nine arguments admit of distinct and conclusive refutation:

. Dr. B. reasons that “this is the first resurrection” “seems to be figurative, because contrasted with the second death.” Why, it is hard even to imagine. The first death is the wages of sin in this world, the second death is the full and final wages hereafter. Dr. B. has overlooked the fact that both are explanations, and not the symbols to be explained. If the two deaths are literal, though they may differ, the two resurrections may differ, but are equally literal.

II

. We are almost ashamed to speak of the objection to the clause “on such the second death hath no power,” taking for granted that the first resurrection is literal. “Is it likely,” says Dr. B., “that the Spirit of God means nothing more here than such a truism?” Such hypercriticism would make fearful carnage of the living word of God. It is the habitual way, especially in the psalms and prophets, of causing the reader to pause and ponder well their comforts or their warnings. Dr. B. will scarcely deny the parallelistic structure which pervades the scripture, and not least the Apocalypse. Nor is anything more common than to mark doubly, what was meant to impress the soul, i.e., both positively and negatively, as here. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power.” The second death is so awful a reality as to make God's gracious assurance of exemption from it anything but a needless repetition.

Indeed, (says Mr. Birks, p. 116) the words are a distinct proof that the resurrection is literal. For the second death is never named except with reference to a first death which has gone before it. The church of Smyrna is the only one which receives the command, “Be thou faithful unto death”; and hence it receives the special promise, “he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.” It is not to saints as living but as having suffered death, or about to suffer it, that exemption from the second death is promised. This character does not apply to millennial believers, who are exempt from the first death during its continuance, but applies fully to the martyrs, and indeed to all believers who have died in the faith before the Lord comes.

III

. There are but two alternatives in this prophecy, says Dr. B., — the first resurrection, or the second death. Into which are we to put the millennial myriads? Into neither, as far as the millennial saints are concerned, who, not dying, will not rise, but be changed doubtless. The rest, dying before, or destroyed in the Gog and Magog insurrection, will be cast into the lake of fire. On Dr. B.'s view, the blessing is reduced to the character of the millennium as one of prevailing spiritual life: but thus, as another remarks, all the emphasis is lost, since believers in any age are blessed and holy, and are equally exempted from the power of the second death.

IV

. The limitation of the reign to 1000 years is no difficulty. Rev. 22 shows that the book recognizes the reigning for ever and ever, while Rev. 20 takes up the reigning for a special purpose which has an end.

. The next difficulty, viz., that the rest of the dead do not rise immediately on the expiry of the thousand years, but after the little season beyond, is weaker still. It is nowhere tied to that moment; it could not be before — that is all. On the other hand, there is a difference in the way Satan's period is spoken of — μετὰ ταῦτα δ. αὐ. λ. μ. χ. This formula does connect the loosing of Satan with the close of the thousand years, but it is nowhere used of the resurrection of the rest of the dead. The truth, therefore, is against Dr. B. and his colleague in the British Quarterly.

VI

,

VII

. These are merely the arguments reasoned by Mr. Gipps, on the opening of the book of life, and on the sea, death, and hades delivering up their dead, only in connection with the great white throne, not with the first resurrection. But we have already replied enough on these heads to show that they are appropriate where they are, rather than elsewhere, on the literal scheme. Besides, a book is not like a seal which can be opened but once; and here, say what Dr. B. will, it is connected solely with those not found in it. The other images are not of blessedness, but of trouble, sorrow, etc., and therefore are fitly joined with the wicked.

VIII

. The next objection to the literal sense is that it is exclusively a martyr scene. But this is simply to repeat the mistake of the third presumption. Dr. B. objects to Mr. Elliott's way of stating the case, that he makes St. John to specify particularly, as conspicuous among those seen seated on thrones, the martyrs and confessors; whereas, according to his own interpretation, they only are seen. The fact is, that Mr. E. has understated the matter. For the beheaded saints, and those who refused the beast's overtures, are two classes added to those who were already seen enthroned. The apostle saw certain thrones filled, and judgment committed to those who sat there. Besides, he sees souls of slaughtered saints; and, moreover, there were such as had rejected all connection with the beast; and these two classes, who for the time seemed to have lost all, are reunited to their bodies, and reign with Christ no less than the rest. Dr. B. speaks of the verb ἐκάθισαν (“sat”) as a virtual impersonal. This is not doubted; but it in no way connects the clause with what follows, which is his desire. If it had been put in the sentence after the other clauses, there might be ground for such a supposition. As it is, there is none. The first clause leaves room for all the heavenly saints, save the added Apocalyptic sufferers and faithful, which the next clauses distinguish and subjoin. Christ and these heavenly saints quitted heaven together, in Rev. 19; Christ and they reign together over the earth, in Rev. 20; and all those who suffered from, but who really overcame, the beast, are there too, not as Israel reigned over, but reigning with Christ as those who had gone before them. On the figurative view, what can be more absurd than a revival of martyr-spirit, when it is least needed, when all is unprecedently happy and prosperous for the Church?

IX

. The last objection is, that our view can offer no consistent explanation of the “judgment” that “was given unto” the enthroned saints. We must be forgiven for pronouncing such a remark somewhat perverse. It is not expressly connected with the slain martyrs, though no doubt they had it as well as the rest; and this, therefore, dissolves the narrow limits which Dr. B. seeks to borrow from Rev. 6: 10. We do not deny that there may be a link; but we affirm that the Lord God's judging and avenging the blood of His slain ones is a very distinct thing from judgment being given to others seated on thrones, nay, to themselves there. Dr. B.'s object is to bind together, in the judgment given, both the slain and their slayers, so that if the saints be personally present their persecutors must be also in the same personal way; and if the latter be spiritually understood, so the former. But, as we have seen, this is not the force of judgment being given to

men. In his sense, God had already avenged the blood of saints and prophets in Babylon; and the beast and the false prophet, with their instruments, had met their terrible doom from the Lord, before the enthroned saints had judgment given to them, or began to reign with Christ.

Are we mistaken in affirming that our ingenious opponent has wasted his time, his research, his labor, in vainly assaulting the impregnable fortress of a first resurrection? Is it not as true for all saints who suffer with Christ, as the second death is sure for all sinners who despise Him?

Part 1, Chapter 7

The Judgment and the Eternal State

There are few subjects as to which the thoughts of men more decidedly clash with the revealed mind of God than the Judgment; there is none, perhaps, in which the children of God are more endangered by the unbelief so natural to the heart at all times, and by the confusion which has prevailed so long. The enemy has sought to avail himself of all sorts of things, good or bad, in order to darken spiritual intelligence and blind the eye alike to “that blessed hope” and to the judgment which hangs day by day over this doomed earth. Thus he has taken advantage of the modern impetus given to Bible circulation and missionary efforts, admirable as they are in their objects, and still more as they might be, if directed according to the word by the wisdom which comes down from heaven, but capable of the sad illusion that men are to bring about the times of refreshing for the world in the absence of its rejected Lord. To such the idea of a sudden, unprecedented, divine interruption, not crowning their successes, but calling to account for unfaithfulness, for self-seeking, for despising the scripture, for grieving and quenching the Holy Ghost, is painful and unwelcome, and so much the more when Christians are drawn into the snare of the common hopes, interests, and efforts of the age. It convicts them of ignorance of scripture, and of opposing, as far as they can, the mind and counsels of God. It detects the pride which endeavors to patch up the broken vessel rather than confess our fault and submit to the sentence of God. It recalls to zealous repentance from the bustling plans and enterprises which tend to cover the weakness, and ruin, and guilt of man. Above all, it demands an immediate stop to every movement which is outside and against God's word, and positive separation, in all its forms, from a world which is recognized as ripening for vengeance. Let none say that this is to damp the activities of the grace which seeks the good of all men, specially of the household of faith. The removal of obstructions, the cessation from known evil, the refusal of the world's harness — in a word, obedience is ever peremptorily due to God, and never can lead to relaxation of Christian love and labors, though it may throw off the slough of the serpent that has mixed itself up with them.

But we must turn to Dr. Brown, who assumes that the judgment is “one undivided scene,” not rule over nations, nor vengeance upon public bodies, but a judgment of individual persons. He urges that the two things are so different that they cannot be put into one unmixed conception. Now, is it not evident that such statements as these betoken a mind unsubject to the word of God, which never speaks of an unbroken scene, nor of an unmixed conception? The question is not whether there is a judgment of individuals, of the secrets of the heart, but whether the Bible reveals but one single judgment act at the end of all, an act which embraces every creature, saint or sinner, indiscriminately, and then for the first time manifests their eternal destiny.

But it is plain at a glance that such a scheme fails, not because there is no truth in it, but because it is the narrowest section of the truth. It interprets the entire judgment of God by that which is a single though a most solemn and momentous part. The true question is, does not scripture make known both temporal and eternal judgment, executed by Christ the Lord? Does it not disclose vengeance on living men, as well as a holy assize over the dead? Does it not require us to believe that there will be what we may distinguish as His war-judgment, previous to His judging as a King, and this again before He calls up the dead for the resurrection of judgment? (Rev. 19, 20). This is the plain, simple meaning of the last great prophetic strain which treats of the orderly sequence of these events, against which it is in vain to appeal, as Dr. B. does, to texts here and there, which merely speak of judgment when Christ comes: for all, premillennialist and postmillennialist, equally bow to this.

But we are pointed to Matt. 25 as an insuperable difficulty in our way. In order to explain what we believe to be its true bearing, it will be necessary to take the prophecy as a whole. First of all, it is clear that the first and greater part of Matt. 24 addresses the disciples, as they were associated in feeling, faith, and hopes with Jerusalem and the special portion of Israel in their land. Hence they are warned against false Messiahs, they are guarded against confounding the earlier sorrows with the great tribulation that is to precede the nation's deliverance; but the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom, the prophetic admonition to flee is for “them which be in Judea,” the token on earth is the idol set up in the sanctuary and the Jewish Sabbath is supposed to be in force. Furthermore, there is not a thought of going to be with the Lord in the air; not a hint of the Father's house, but a very specific showing them that the Son of man is to appear in the most vivid and sudden way, “as the lightning,” for their deliverance. They are not therefore to go into the desert, nor to believe that He is arrived and in some secret chambers; for when He does appear, it will be with power and great glory; and their enemies shall see and mourn. It is Christ's coming to the earth for the deliverance of the godly Jewish remnant who will be at the close of the age awaiting Him. The disciples were their forerunners in many obvious and important respects. But it is plain that the close of Matt. 24 and the parables of the virgins and of the talents in Matt. 25, drop all particular connection with the Jews and Jerusalem, and evidently are verified in the calling and occupation of Christians as such, during the absence of Christ in heaven. Equally clear, is it that Matt. 25: 31 to the end concerns distinctively the Gentiles.

It is not a mere infliction of chastisement, it is not an outpouring of vengeance on a particular nation, or an assemblage of hostile people; it is the calm session of judgment before the King of all the earth, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. But it is in positive contrast, as to its subjects, with Rev. 20: 11, 12, *10 because there all that stand before the throne are the dead, here all are the living; there, as we have shown, they are exclusively the wicked, here they are both good and bad; there the judged, being the dead, were irrespective of country and race, here they are the Gentiles as distinct from the Jews. The ground of the judgment, which hangs like a millstone round the neck of the traditionalist, confirms the true view. For the king does not on this occasion enter on the details of general conduct. There is no judging of the guilty Jew according to the law, and of the guilty Gentile outside the law, according to his actual condition, as in Rom. 2. But the gathered nations are dealt with according to their treatment of the King's brethren, sent out to announce the kingdom before it was, as it will then be, established in power: for God will take care to send forth previously an adequate and universal testimony; and this will act as a test among the nations. Accordingly the King owns as done to Himself the least kindness shown to His messengers, and punishes their dishonour as leveled at His own person. But manifestly such a test best applies to a brief and eventful crisis, when the gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed far and wide, immediately before the appearance of the King who judges thereon by a criterion utterly inapplicable to the times when the glad tidings were not so preached, much less the kingdom. Again, the true interpretation accounts for the King's brethren as a class distinct from “the sheep,” or godly Gentiles. They are His converted Jewish brethren, who witness the kingdom of all nations before the end comes. This distinction is lost and useless in the common view; for important as such a thing is in a judgment of the quick, all differences of Jew and Gentile disappear in the resurrection, which, it will be observed, is here unnoticed, and we believe incompatible with the language employed. Scripture never speaks of nations after resurrection, as Dr. B.'s exposition supposes. Nor is there real force in Mr Birks' objections. For:

1. The judgment of the living nations has not been given in the preceding parables, but we have had the Jews and the Christians: now we have the Gentile as such;

2. Isa. 66 in no way denies such a gathering of all nations as Matt. 25 describes;

3. The sentence being final is no obstacle, for the King is there to decide everlastingly;

4. As to the notion of a climax, it is to us an evident mistake. The prophecy to be complete naturally shows us the ways of the King with the nations after sketching His ways with His Jewish remnant (Matt. 24: 1-44), and with the Christian parenthesis (Matt. 24: 45-25: 30).

*At the time of the judgment in Matthew the fire is said simply to be prepared for the devil and his angels; whereas before the great white throne judgment the devil is cast into the lake of fire, where the Beast and False Prophet had been long previously.

Accordingly we have no doubt that it is quite fallacious to confound this very special dealing of the Lord with all the Gentiles summoned before His millennial throne, and the description of His judgment of the dead found elsewhere. But this overthrown, the chief buttress of Dr. B.'s proposition eighth is undermined. We believe, as well as he, that when Christ comes He will put honour on such as have confessed Him and shame on those who have denied Him; we believe that both reward and punishment will be “in that day”; but it does not thence follow that all are dealt with simultaneously, as Dr. B. takes for granted. Hence Matt. 7: 21-23; Matt. 10: 32, 34; Matt. 13: 30, 43; Matt. 16: 24-27; Matt. 25: 10; John 5: 28, 29; Acts 17: 31; Rom. 2: 5-16; 1 Cor. 3: 12-15; 1 Cor. 4: 5; 2 Cor. 5: 9-11; 2 Thess. 1: 6-10; 1 Tim. 5: 24, 25; 2 Tim. 4: 1; 2 Peter 3: 7-12; 1 John 2: 28; 4: 17; Rev. 3: 5; Rev. 20: 11-15; Rev. 21: 7, 8; Rev. 22: 12, 15, are wholly unavailing. Some of these texts refer only to the quick, and others to the dead alone; none treats good and bad, quick and dead, as judged in one indiscriminate judgment. Indeed John 5 shows that, in the most momentous sense, the believer shall not come into judgment and that a life-resurrection awaits him, as a judgment-resurrection remains for the evil doer.

It is useless, therefore, for Dr. B. to prove, as he does clearly, that man is appointed to death and judgment: we believe it as strongly as himself. No more does it serve his purpose to urge that we must all be manifested before the tribunal of Christ, and receive according to the good or bad done in the body; for we too insist on it as a clear and necessary truth. Both look for "the hour," and "that day": both connect judgment with the coming of Christ: both maintain that "then he shall reward every man according to his works." But not a text hints, nor an argument proves, that "the righteous and the wicked will be judged together." Dr. B.'s case entirely breaks down. His claim would have been strong, indeed, if Matt. 25: 31, and seq., could be legitimately identified, in time, character, and subjects, with Rev. 20: 11, and seq. But there is a plain and certain contrast between them, not sameness. In Matthew, nations are in question, in the Revelation the dead; in the one the scene is the earth, in the other earth and heaven are fled away; in the former both the righteous and the accursed are seen, in the latter none but the lost; in the gospel the living Gentiles are tested by a very special preaching of the kingdom, which is to go forth before the end of the age, and they are sentenced according to their behavior towards the messengers of the king, while in the Apocalypse it is a solemn scrutiny of those things which were written in the books, according to the works of the dead — a ground of judgment not limited to a peculiar testimony and epoch, but embracing all ages and dispensations, before the flood and after it, — under the law, or without the law, — whether they had, or whether they had not, heard the gospel. The difference, therefore, is complete, and so is the failure of Dr. B.'s scheme of a universal and simultaneous judgment. It remains to notice his ninth and last proposition:

At Christ's second appearing, "the heavens and the earth that are now," being dissolved by fire, shall give place to "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness," without any mixture of sin — good unalloyed by the least evil. The passages cited are 2 Peter 3: 7-13; Rev. 20: 11; Rev. 21: 1. By putting this passage, then, in Revelation alongside of the passage in Peter, we obtain the following argument, which I believe it to be impossible to answer: The conflagration and passing away of the heavens will be "as a thief in the night, in or at the day of the Lord," — the time of His second advent (2 Peter 3). But the millennium precedes the "fleeing or passing away of the earth and heaven" (Rev. 20, 21). Therefore the millennium precedes the second advent" (B. p. 289). But there is an obvious and fatal fallacy here. For we deny that the day of the Lord is equivalent to the time of His second advent. There are most momentous changes linked with the Lord's coming and previous to His day. Thus the dead saints are raised, the living are changed, and both caught up to be with the Lord in the air at His coming. How long this precedes the day of the Lord, it is not our present object to enquire; but we altogether reject Dr. B.'s assumption that they are the same thing, or even at the same time. Without that identification, which the author takes for granted instead of proving, the syllogism comes to nothing. The truth is, that "the day of the Lord" may be readily seen, by any who examine the Old Testament prophets, to be a long period characterized (when it is fulfilled, not in early types, but in the grand events of the last days) by the direct intervention of Jehovah's presence, power, and glory here below. Peter furnishes the connecting tie between Isa. 65, 66 and the Revelation, and embraces within the compass of that great day, not only the millennium, but the season that succeeds till the heavens and earth that now are give place to "all things made new." The millennium then does not precede the day of the Lord, but is included within its magnificent range. The coming of the Lord gathers His saints to Him before that day, and a fortiori before the millennium, as we have already sufficiently shown in commenting on 2 Thess. 2: 1. Thus the argument, which Dr. B. supposed it impossible to answer, is as loose and incoherent as the sand. And here we close our reply to his assault upon premillennialism.

Part 2

Part 2, Chapter 1

The Millennium — How Brought About

When God was converting souls as He never did for extent in real quickening power, either before or since, the apostolic preacher told his hearers to repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out, so that seasons of refreshing might come from the face of the Lord, and He might send Christ Jesus that was fore-appointed to them, whom heaven must receive till the times of restoring all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began (Acts 3). This is plain and conclusive.

It is impossible more definitely to connect the sending of Jesus from heaven, not with the destruction, but with the restoration of all things — the subject of the bright visions of the prophets, in contradistinction to the work of the gospel. The ungrieved power of the Spirit was then operating largely and profoundly; but this had for its effect on Peter's mind to urge repentance on Israel, that so might come from Jehovah's face that which really brings about the millennium. There is no thought of a "continued effusion of the Spirit," still less of a professing world, as the adequate answer. It is that which is elsewhere styled "the regeneration" (Matt. 19), when the Son of man shall sit (not on the Father's throne as now, Rev. 3, but) on the throne of His glory; and His once suffering apostles shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. If no such state of things consists with this age, or with eternity, when can it be save in the millennium? Manifestly, therefore, that good age which succeeds "the present evil age," and which precedes eternity when national distinctions shall have for ever passed away, supposes the Son of Man to come again and to reign over the world.

Thus the nobleman, according to the parable, will have returned, having received the kingdom; and the kingdom He delivers up to Him who is God and Father at "the end," not of this age, but of the age to come — i.e., the millennium, when He shall have put down all rule and authority and power; for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. This is not what occupies Christ now. He is calling out those who were enemies, and gaining them as His friends, yea, His body and bride, to reign with Him when the world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ is come (Rev. 11). He is not in this age dealing righteously but in long suffering with His enemies; in that age He shall put them under His feet, not in title only, but in fact. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him (which will be the work and issue of the Millennium, not of this age), then shall the Son also Himself be subject to Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15: 28). This is disclosed in Rev. 21: 1-8; not in what goes before or after.

The common postmillennial system of Christendom ignores and opposes all this clear, positive teaching of Scripture. It is in effect a denial of the Bible millennium altogether. Dr. B.'s view, even if true, would make it simply an extension of what is going on now throughout the world. He excludes Christ, he includes Satan, he maintains the mixture of tares with wheat in his scheme. Thus it is not a new age but the last stage of this present evil age, conceived to be an exceptional period which shall surpass in brightness all the world has yet beheld. It is a visionary millennium of man without a shred of divine evidence, nay, in hopeless antagonism to the word of God. The root of it is unbelief as to the central place of Christ in the ways of God, and the substitution for Him of salvation or the saved. Hence, habitually all is viewed from present experience, and tends to magnify man as he is or hopes to be — not the Lord. Instead of calling the Christian to self-judgment, because of our miserable fall from primitive power, purity, and love, this scheme directly fosters the proudest and wholly baseless hope of doing that by the gospel which God receives for Christ sent from heaven in judgment of the world and especially of Christendom. "When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." It is perfectly true that the earth in the millennium is to be the scene of universal blessing; it is utterly false that this is ever once attributed in Scripture to a preached gospel. The delusion would not stand an hour's examination of Scripture, if it did not flatter man* to the dishonour of Christ — the common source of all error even among children of God. And what (can the reader believe it?) is the Scripture, the one Scripture adduced to support the scheme? "All power," etc., Matt. 28: 18-20. The late Cardinal Wiseman, like many a Romish controversialist before him, cited the same passage with quite as much reason to support the fabric of Papal infallibility. It need hardly be said that there is not a syllable which supports either the claims of the Pope, invested with all power in heaven and on earth, or the hopes of missionary societies. The Lord pledges His presence with His servants in their making disciples of all the Gentiles; but far from hinting at the conversion of the world in the age to come as the effect of their work. He expressly speaks of being with them all the days until the completion of the age. He himself would come in power and glory for that age, using His angels to clear out of His kingdom all offences and those that practice lawlessness; and then should the righteous shine in their heavenly sphere, as He had taught them already according to a previous chapter of this gospel, which explicitly shows us the separating judgment that will distinguish the end of this age, and thus prepare the way for the peculiar features of the age to come, that follows before the eternal state.

*Weigh the following words: — "Some looked to the revival of miracles as one great means of the rapid conversions which are to signalize the latter day; but in vain. As we do not need them, so the soul in a healthy state does not desire. them. The Church is in its manhood, and miracles are for its infancy" (Brown p. 302). I do not cite, this because of agreeing with those who would revive miracles for converting souls in the latter day, but to illustrate the blind self-conceit of the Gentile, spite of Rom. 11. Was the apostolic age, as compared with ours, the infancy and the manhood of the Church?

Part 2, Chapter 2

Nature of the Millennium

The remarks already made on the parable of the tares preclude the need of much argument here. Only, it is an exaggeration and mistake if people have taught such that the millennium is a perfect state, or that there can be such till eternity. Isa. 65 is clear that sin and death are still possible within its course; and Rev. 20: 7-10 demonstrates, that after its expiration there will be a vast muster of the distant nations, Gog and Magog, under the guidance of Satan, once more deceiving men. These have been all born within the thousand years, and may have rendered a feigned obedience throughout; but not being renewed, they fall under Satan's snares as soon as he is loosed and goes out to deceive them. The reign of the Lord in visible glory over the earth will not change the heart nor deliver from temptation when the enemy appears.

But this has nothing in common with the wheat field, among which tares were sown. Tares do not mean men as merely evil by nature, but the result of Satan's special sowing in Christendom — heretics and other corrupt persons mingled with the confessors of Christ. In that field the servants are forbidden to take in hand the extermination of the tares from among the wheat. Care for the true, not judgment of the false, is their business. Others — the angels — will deal with the children of the wicked one in the time of harvest (i.e., in the completion of the age). Patient grace becomes the servants, not earthly judgment, which in their hands might work, as indeed it always has wrought, mischief to the children of the kingdom.

At the present there reigns grace; in the Millennium righteousness will reign; in eternity righteousness will dwell. The thousand years will not be without evil, but the earth will be happy and perfectly governed, till Satan, during the short space that succeeds, is allowed to marshal the distant nations against the camp of the saints and the beloved city (earthly Jerusalem); but those nations who fall under Satan's last deceit are never called "tares." They were no produce of Satan's seed, for they existed in an unregenerate state before he was let loose. It is not the fact that any intelligent premillennialist describes the millennium "just as other people do" (p. 310); for postmillennialism by extending such a parable as that of the tares to that day, simply destroys the millennium. The clearance of tares from the kingdom of the Son of man will not hinder the birth of men throughout the thousand years, multitudes of whom will be unrenewed, and thus exposed to the enemy at the close. The popular system is infidelity as to the millennium; it denies the introduction of a new age after this age, and the coexistence and display of the kingdom of God in both its parts — heavenly and earthly. The end of the age is not the end of the world, but the completion of the present course of time, when the Lord will not have His Servants exercise judgment by rooting the evil out of the field. In the end, judgment will be applied to purge out all scandals for the reign of Christ and those who are glorified along with Him. The making disciples of all nations cannot contradict the Lord's word, that the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations. It is the grossest begging of the question to say there is no millennium to come after this. Preaching for a witness suits the actual time, but not the millennium. Jehovah shall be king over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Jehovah and His name one.

Part 2, Chapter 3

The Millennium — Display of the Kingdom in Judgment

The two visions in Dan. 2-7, to which our attention is challenged, are as strong evidence as need be asked to the falsehood of the postmillennial theory of the advent.

First, as to Dan. 2, it is manifest that the stone cut out without hands — symbolizing the kingdom of God introduced by Christ — falls with destructive effect on the image in its final stage (i.e., the feet of iron and clay); and that only after this execution of judgment does the stone become a great mountain and fill the earth. The stone smiting the symbol of this world's power is, according to the mysticists, the Kingdom of Grace (p. 315). As Kingdoms, simply — as a mere succession of civil monarchies — the vision has nothing to do with them, and the kingdom of Christ has no quarrel with them; for civil government, as such, whatever be the form of it, is a Divine ordinance. The mission of the Church is not to supplant, but to impregnate and pervade it with a religious character, and to render it subservient to the glory of God" (pp. 319-420). Is this a fair intelligent interpretation of God's kingdom breaking in pieces and consuming the great Imperial powers of this world? Is it a reasonable explanation that the blow of the stone which breaks and disperses utterly the iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, means the Church impregnating and pervading civil government with a religious character? Is it possible that a man should be so blinded by a false system as to put Matt. 13: 31-33 along with Nebuchadnezzar's dream, as if they were akin? What! a woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened, analogous to a stone crushing the image of imperial power, and then expanding into a great mountain, that fills the whole earth!

The truth is, that neither Nebuchadnezzar's dream nor Daniel's explanation, alludes to the kingdom of grace. When Christ came in grace, the Roman empire smote Him, not He it. Afterwards that empire became nominally Christian, and established Christianity, instead of being destroyed by it. All this is entirely outside the statements of the chapter, for the feet and toes were not even formed till afterward. What the prophet gives is the wholly distinct picture, first, of an aggressive act which destroys the Gentile power; and secondly, of the growth and supremacy of the kingdom, when that judgment is executed. This, and not grace, is the first act of the stone, which is, therefore, altogether unfulfilled. Necessarily, then, the Kingdom as here portrayed, belongs to the future. The image, down to the toes, was already formed before the stone fell on them, and destroyed the entire statue, after which it expands and fills all the earth. It is as kingdoms rebellious against the God who ordained them that the vision has everything to do with; and the stone has nothing to say to them pregnating and pervading with a religious character, but to supplanting and sweeping powers off the face of the earth, that the kingdom of God in Christ may become paramount. Christianity is not the point here, nor Christendom, as in Matt. 13, but the judgment of Gentile imperial power by God's kingdom in Christ, which thereon spreads over the earth as the waters cover the sea. It is not a mere difference of prosperity or extent, but of character as contrasted as judgment with grace — of administration as different as Jesus displayed in power and glory is from that same Jesus hid in God. The weapons are wholly new, the change of dispensation complete.

Dan. 7 is substantially similar. The kingdom of the Son of Man over all people, nations, and languages, is after the fourth beast is destroyed in consequence of the blasphemies of the little horn. Dr. B. misquotes v. 25, which means that the times and laws (not the saints) are given into the hands of the little horn. But this is the error of most divines. What has this to do with "the kingdom of grace," so called? Is it not divine judgment in the strictest sense — not the eternal judgment of the dead before the great white throne of Rev. 20, but that of Rev. 19? It is an absurd begging of the question, and even opposition to the plainest Scripture, to ask "who does not see that this has nothing to do with the second personal advent of Christ" (p. 329)? Dr. B. is quite right in joining Ps. 2 with this scene; but does he really believe that Christ's breaking the nations with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel, is the kingdom of grace, and not the execution of judgment on the quick? Does he want us to believe that grace and judgment, even to consigning the beast and the false prophet to the lake of fire, are the same thing, and not irreconcilably opposite? Now the Lord works by the Holy Ghost through the Gospel on souls; then He will destroy nations. Is this no change of constitution, form, or dispensation, but merely its latent energies set free, and its internal resources developed, for the benediction of a miserable world? Can (de)lusion be more complete or plain? Destruction of earthly power, according to this teaching, is the full blow of heavenly grace.

The whole is there from the first, not a new element is added. Expansion and development, growth and maturity are all the difference (p. 332). Postmillennialism has its "development," no less than Popery.

It is not correct that Dan. 7: 26, any more than 2 Thess. 2: 8, intimates the gradual nature of the destruction to fall on the Lord's enemies. It means that the effect of the judgment will be thorough, not a slow process, nor repeated acts of vengeance. And to insinuate that an outpouring of wrath from above on the gathered hosts of the west is "carnal warfare" is to my mind bolder than becomes a man with God's word.

Ben Ezra (i.e., Lacunza) seems to think almost all interpreters of Scripture regard the prophecy of the little stone as fully accomplished in Christ's incarnation and cross, and the mountain in the Christian Church (vol. I, pp. 146-147). But this is not so. Probably most Latins follow Jerome, who was himself led away by Origen's allegorizing; and beyond doubt a more decidedly non-natural explanation can hardly be conceived. But Hippolytus applies the fall of the stone to Christ's judgment at his second advent; and so does even Theodoret (in Dan. c. ii.). The latter reasons elaborately against the supposition that the fifth empire is in progress.

But if they say that the former presence of the Lord is signified by these words, let them show the empire of the Romans destroyed immediately after the appearing of our Savior; for quite contrariwise, one may find it in full vigour, not subverted, at the birth of the Savior. . . If, therefore, that former event, the Lord's nativity, did not destroy the Roman empire, it remains that we should understand His second appearing. There appears to be some confusion in what follows from the good Bishop of Cyrus; for it is evident that the expansion of the stone into a mountain that filled the whole earth was after the execution of judgment on the Roman empire in its final divided state. Crushing, and destroying, too, not saving, is the character of the stone's action from the first, as here depicted; and that is not grace, but judgment. To call judgment "carnal" is a sin as well as an error.

Rom. 8: 19-25 clearly leads us to the same conclusion. It is a question neither of this age nor of eternity, but of the intervening millennium. Preaching, profession, or even the real faith of saints, will not deliver the creature from that vanity to which it has been made subject since the fall. The outpouring of the Pentecostal Spirit left it as a whole groaning and travailing in pain together as before. Even the Christians who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan as they wait, not for more of the same kind to meet their need, but for the redemption of the body, when the longing of the creature shall be gratified with the revelation of the sons of God; thereon follows its own deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We, a new creation in Christ, stand in the liberty of grace now; then the creature itself, the still captive earth, shall enjoy the liberty of glory. How will this be brought about? If the deliverance of the creature depends on the manifestation of God's sons, the answer is certain. It is not in this age; for, all through, our life is hid with Christ in God. It cannot be in eternity; for this will not be till the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up. It is between the two, as we have said already. "When Christ our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear in glory." Then and thus shall the millennium be brought about.

"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6). Assuredly this, too, can only refer to the millennium, not to the present time, nor to eternity. Not to the present; because we are called to suffer now, not to reign. Not to eternity; because there will be no world to judge then. "The Kingdom," i.e., the special kingdom, whether of Christ or of those who, having suffered with Him, shall also reign together with Him, will have terminated; though in another sense all saints, millennial or ante-millennial, shall for ever reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.

Again, God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself for the administration of the fullness of the time. And what is this purpose of His? To gather together (or head up) in one all things in Christ, both those in heaven and those in earth; in Him in whom we have also obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1: 9-11). This is millennial, and as distinctly marked off from the present time as from eternity. The eternal state will be no such display of Christ's headship, with His associated bride over all things, but the delivery to the Father of that displayed supremacy, that God — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — may be all in all. And as to the present, what can be in more evident contrast, whether in good or evil? Judaism, Heathenism, Mohametanism, Popery, sectarianism, worldliness, ritualism, rationalism, rampant in Christendom: is all this God's purpose? Is this the heading up of all things in Christ? Even if we look only at that which is good, it is a good of quite another complexion and aim; for God is now gathering out a people for His name, forming His elect from Jews and Gentiles into one body, not gathering all the universe under the headship of Christ. Clearly, therefore, as it falls in with the characteristics neither of this age nor of eternity, the Scripture cited must refer to the blessed millennial days, when Jehovah-Jesus shall be not only king over all the earth, but head of all things heavenly and earthly, the Church being united and reigning over all with Him.

Observe, too, that the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks both of the time and of the sphere of the millennium as "to come," and manifestly is the mark of distinction both from the present and from eternity. For the inspired writer designates the miraculous displays which were signs to unbelievers in the earthly days of the Gospel, as "powers of the age to come," i.e., partial testimonies of that energy which will characterize the future age, when Jehovah shall not more truly forgive all iniquities than heal all diseases, and the creature shall be set free and joyful (Ps. 96-97), instead of groaning in bondage as now. And as this is a defined future age (μέλλων αἰῶν) so the theater of it is designated in Heb. 2: 5, the world, or the habitable earth to come (ἡἀἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα), a description which, as it is expressly not the present, so it is inapplicable to eternity. It is not heaven but the earth, and the earth not dissolved but placed under the rule of the glorified Son of Man, when all things shall be seen to be put under Him.

Another remark, too, it may be well to make, that of the three Scriptures which speak of universal blessedness and glory for the earth, none connects it with the preached Gospel, all with divine judgment. Thus in Num. 14: 21 is the first mention of this purpose of the Lord, after Israel had betrayed the apostasy of their hearts, when the Lord pardoned according to the intercession of Moses, but pronounced judgment on all that provoked Him by their unbelief. A remnant was saved then, and so it will be at the end of this age. Isa. 11 is the second, where the picture of millennial blessedness; and in this the earth is full of the knowledge of Jehovah, is prefaced by the Lord smiting the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips slaying the wicked. The judicial act (by Christ) the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2: 8) explains to be the manifestation of Christ's presence, which does not convert sinners but destroys the man of sin, in order to His millennial reign. The third and last case is Hab. 2: 14, where it is evident that the filling of the earth with the knowledge of Jehovah's glory is in no way the fruit of people labouring for love or vanity, but of God's mighty intervention for His own glory, when the proud head of nations shall be brought to nought.

Thus all is uniform in Scripture, and as no passage attributes the great change for the world to that which is now entrusted to man, so all Scripture show that the saints will be taken to heaven, that men on earth will be judged, and that the days of heaven on earth will follow to the praise of the Lord alone.

Part 2, Chapter 4

Millennial Revival of Jewish Peculiarities

It is thought strange that any Christians should agree with Jews in their views of Old Testament prophecies, and look for a rebuilt temple, a re-established priesthood, restored sacrifices, and an Israelitish supremacy. But Dr. Brown misstates both Scripture and ecclesiastical history in his zeal against such convictions.

What our risen Lord corrected (Acts 1) was not the expectation of the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, but the expectation of it "at this time." Rather does He confirm the apostles in it, while intimating that it was not theirs to know times and seasons which the Father put in His own power. That element was not expelled from their minds wholly or in part, but shown to be reserved in the Father's hands. Another work was about to proceed, not Israelitish supremacy yet, but a witness to the dead and risen Jesus in the power of the Spirit both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Their error was not so much in the thing itself as in the time, just as on the last journey He added a parable because He was near Jerusalem, and they thought the king would immediately appear. The parable, then, like the answer before the ascension, corrects their haste, but maintains instead of combating their expectancy of the kingdom. "He said, therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return." Then we have the immediate work, not the kingdom received, and his return; but the servants entrusted with the money began then to trade with it meanwhile till he came. And lastly he comes back, having received the kingdom. They were only premature, not wholly wrong, and the Lord did not set aside, but only postponed the expectation derived from the prophets, which He never denied, though He did reveal what would intervene between His glory on high and His return. The popular view of Christendom, as usual, is ignorance, even of the New Testament, which it employs to set aside the hopes of the Old Testament. Again, it is quite incorrect that any question of restoring the kingdom to Israel agitated the saints in Galatia or at Colosse. It was a wholly contrary principle, and decidedly akin to the ordinary view of Christendom, viz., bringing Christians now under the law or Jewish ordinances. To hold fast Jewish expectations for Israel to be restored at Christ's second advent is a main means of preserving Christianity distinct and uncontaminated by Judaism; and thus the apostle ever fought against those who would Judaize now. The heresies of Cerinthus or others who grossly Judaized in early days were the result of carrying out these errors to the full. None of them held Christianity pure and simple for the church now, the restored kingdom for Israel by and by, but jumbled all together to the degradation of our own position and hopes, and the defrauding of Israel; and Christendom, in general, is fallen into the same error in principle, though less offensively in form, and with better views (thank God) of Christ and His work. Even the orthodox premillennialists of the second and third centuries missed heavenly truth, as they failed to see the future restoration of Israel to their land, and the promises then to be accomplished in them nationally. The overwhelming majority of Christians (or at least of professing Christians) rejects not only premillennialism but the restoration of Israel to their land, as to which Dr. B., strange to say, agrees with us against the mass alike of ancients and moderns.

There is no ground to expect new revelations, but the fulfillment of old prophecies is another matter. According to these predictions, the world to come will be blessed under Messiah and the new covenant. Christians will then be on high, and the gospel, as it is or ought to be now preached, will have done its work here below. Where lies the difficulty? It is hard to see. That all nations shall flow to the religious center of the millennial age, the mountain of Jehovah's house in Jerusalem, that the Canaanites shall no more be in His house, that no uncircumcised stranger shall enter into His sanctuary, are all true and consistent. So in Mal. 1: 11, Jehovah's name shall be great among the Gentiles, etc. If they contradict each other, to take them figuratively would not really reconcile them; but there is no discrepancy whatever. Objections of this sort are hardly better than cavil, which, even if we could not solve them at all, cannot and ought not to bring to nought the overwhelming force of the positive evidence.

Part 2, Chapters 5 and 6

Millennial Coexistence of Earthly and Heavenly Things

The great defect of Dr. Brown's reasoning here, as elsewhere, is the assumption that things are to abide essentially as they are now till the eternal state closes the present. This is unequivocally to ignore Scripture, which speaks of the age to come in contradistinction to that which now is, as of course before eternity. It is in vain to take advantage of those who ignorantly mix up the heavenly and the earthly, and to break forth into the exaggerated cry — "What a mongrel state! What an abhorred mixture of things totally inconsistent with each other!" The millennium differs from all that has been. The transfiguration was but a partial and passing sample. Jos. Perry's desertion of his friends for the opposite view here will avail little against Scripture. Take John 17: 22-23, and compare with it Eph. 1: 10-12, and Rev. 21: 9-27. Are not the glorified saints, made perfect in one, to be a proof to the world that the Father sent the Son, and loved the saints as He loved Christ? How deny it when they appear in the same glory? In what condition will "the world" be? Is not this the display of the glorified to men in flesh? And when can this be save in the millennium? Will there be "the world" in the eternal state to know anything of the sort?

The effort to make the Millennium a mere extension of present blessing, more converts, etc., with "not one(!)" element in it that has not been already realized, needs no refutation to those who accept what has been before us. The question is not one of salvation but of God's ways in the government of the world. The end of the age is when the Son of Man takes (not, gives up) the kingdom, and, having received it, returns. He will then judge the habitable earth, Acts 17), as He will judge the dead before He gives up the kingdom.

Eph. 2: 14-19, and John 4: 21-23 apply solely to Christians now since redemption, and neither to believers before Christ, nor to those of the Millennium. Isa. 2: 2-3, Micah 4, and Zech. 14 are equally explicit as to a wholly different order, accompanied by marks which are certainly not seen under Christianity. When the prophets are fulfilled, Christ will be judging among the peoples, not as now gathering out a people for His name by the gospel; and nations shall learn war no more; and Israel shall be restored to their land, and the Gentiles shall be thoroughly humbled. You cannot safely Christianize Judaism any more than Judaize Christianity. Distinguish this age from that which is to come, as Scripture does, and those objections vanish; confound them, and you have the main source of Christendom's ruin, and the chief mischief of Dr. Brown's work, because it denies the distinction, place, and responsibility, both of the Christian now, and of the Jew by-and-by.

One evident consequence is, that those who deny the revival of Jewish pre-eminence in the millennium find themselves hopelessly dumb in presence of such scriptures as the closing chapters of Ezekiel; and the efforts after the figurative makes the late Duke of Manchester the ally, so far, of Dr. Brown, blending thus in one vague company the upholders and the deniers of Israel's national hope. Such is the effect of error. The strongest evidence has been already adduced to prove that the condition which the prophet depicts is the most striking contrast with the Christian state. If it was only the absence of Pentecost, when the feasts shall be once more celebrated by restored Israel, how distinctive of their future, as compared with their past (or with our present) of which that feast is the standing type!

Part 2, Chapter 7

Millennial Binding of Satan

This popular scheme not only eliminates the presence of the Lord from the coming age, but explains away the exclusion of Satan. It is asked, If the expectation of an entire cessation of Satanic influence be indeed Scriptural, how came it to pass that no mention is made of it — not so much as a hint given of it in all Scripture, but in this solitary passage (Rev. 21: 3, 7), in a book, the import of whose symbols has divided the Church to this day. I answer, first, that the unbelief seems to me deplorable which would reject a truth if it be but clearly revealed in this book of Scripture; and there are as plain revelations here as in any other part of the Bible, as is manifest from the hold which numerous portions take of the simplest believers throughout Christendom. But, secondly, it is a mistake that no hint is given elsewhere of the same truth.

Isa. 24: 26 declares the humiliation in the day of Jehovah, which awaits the powers that govern men, both unseen and seen. He shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth (for this is the true sense, which the authorized version obscures and enfeebles). The next verse intimates that it is not their final judgment, but a setting aside from their mischievous influence "in that day," after which they shall be dealt with (and as we know from the Revelation, not for a limited time, but for eternity). "And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited." Thus all are in due season and place. The Jewish prophet reveals what was bound up with the deliverance of earth and Israel with the nations. The final Christian prophecy lets us into the link of the future age with eternity. Even Dr. B. confesses as perfectly possible that the general idea expressed by Isaiah is symbolically developed by St. John. It is a superficial thought that this is no part of the putting aside of Satan's power, or a shift to which he who believes it is reduced.

Isa. 27: 1 may be compared, "In that day the LORD, with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." Granted that the language is figurative; but what do the figures mean but the destruction of Satan's power among men in a way quite unprecedented? Only, of course, the latest revelation must be heard, explaining the figures supplied in the earlier communication.

It is only the New Testament, which, revealing the Trinity, also develops the truth as to the world, the flesh, and the devil. In the Old Testament the full character of them is comparatively in the dark. Nevertheless enough is revealed from the first to indicate their presence and action, though not yet detected as they were when Christ manifested them in the power of His Spirit. The Old Testament shows him (save in the earliest temptation, as the Serpent) rather as an adversary, an accuser in nature, etc. (1 Chron. 21; Job 1, 2; Ps. 109; Zech. 3). The New Testament shows this enemy as the Prince of the power of the air, and lord of this world, and everywhere supposes their approaching downfall. "Art thou come to destroy us?" says the man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1). "Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?" say the two demoniacs from the country of the Gergesenes (Matt. 8). "And they besought him (says Luke 8: 31) that he would not command them to go out into the deep" (τὴν ἄβυσσου, the bottomless pit). The time was not yet come; but the demons had the presentiment before them. The word of God had sentenced them long ago. Christianity, as such, had yet to be brought in; and in appearance Satan acquired greater power than ever by the death of Him who in that death really broke his power in God's sight, however slowly and by stages the results of the victory may be manifested among men, and against the powers of evil. But Rom. 16 declared that the God of peace would bruise Satan under the feet of the saints shortly. That this does not take in each stage of his defeat, but only the final act, is more than any man should say. The casting out of demons by the disciples was to our Lord the keynote of the last triumphal song (Luke 10: 17-19). But Eph. 6: 12 is explicit that, whatever the victory before God which faith even now knows in the cross (Heb. 2: 14), the Christian has still to struggle against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenlies. Other allusions in the Epistles are familiar. And most appropriately, in the last book of the New Testament, which presents the windup of time and the eternal scene, the Spirit indicates the successive applications of power to the overthrow of the devil. First, he and his angels are cast down from heaven to earth — not by spiritual energy of faith in the heart, but by angelic ministration (Rev. 12). Next, he is effectually shut out, even from the earth, in the abyss, or bottomless pit, by angelic power, just before the millennium (Rev. 20: 1-3). Lastly, though allowed for a short space to emerge after the thousand years, and to deceive the nations then living in the four corners of the earth, it is but the eve of his final and everlasting perdition; for he is thereon cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where there is but torment unceasingly, and whence no being ever escapes (Rev. 20: 10).

How do people meet this distinct testimony of God? On the plea that, as the fall of Satan in Rev. 12 meant paganism losing its influence in the Roman empire under Constantine, so the binding of Satan in the abyss for a thousand years meant the cause of Christ carrying it everywhere, and the Church never permitting the devil to gain an inch of ground over the world for that time (Brown, pp. 379-386). The grand mistake which vitiates the popular theory is that the work of grace is made everything, and thus the Scriptures that speak of the divine government of the world in the millennium are confounded with those that relate to the salvation of souls — the coming age, with this age. It is not meant that God will cease to save man by grace on earth during the millennium; but the distinctive character and prime object of that age will be, not the gathering God's children into one by the Spirit sent down from heaven, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, but divine power displayed in the Son of man's putting down Satan, and reigning over the earth till all be subjected to Him, after which He surrenders the kingdom, that God may be all in all throughout eternity.

The principles Dr. B. here lays down are mistaken, and his reasoning of no force. He argues from 1 John 3: 8-16, Heb. 2: 14-15, and Rom. 16: 20, that Satan's presence and action are inseparately connected with man in his fallen state — consequently, as Hengstenberg puts it, that death, sin, and Satan reign during the thousand years! Certainly the apostles, as well as the prophet Isaiah (11, 32, 35, 36) have taken pains to teach us the very reverse — the prophet dwelling on earthly things, the apostles chiefly on the heavenly side.

I do not deny analogies to the past and present in the Apocalyptic visions; but the moment you insist on the punctual fulfillment of such a prophecy as Rev. 12 in the Christianizing the empire under Constantine, the failure becomes manifest. It was not the spiritual victory of the saints, but Michael and his angels, that ejected the dragon and his angels from heaven. The brethren overcame him thus, while he was not cast down, and this is the warfare the Christian has to wage (Eph. 6). But a quite different war casts him out of heaven, not saints by faith, but angelic, by virtue of divine power, exercised judicially. When Rev. 12: 8-9 is accomplished, the Christian warfare will have no more place here than Satan and his angels will have place on high. A total change will have occurred, and another testimony will be in progress on earth, Christians having been caught up on high. It would have been a strange issue of Constantine's victory that the woman (who in this scheme means the Church) should thereon flee into the wilderness to escape the enemy's rage. We could better understand triumph than flight, and that the high place, rather than the wilderness, should protect the people of God, as the fruit of such a victory, if here intended. It was a singular crisis to bring persecution on the woman when the Gospel had triumphed over Satan in his pagan tools. Dr. B. speaks of error flying before the truth; but his text shows us the woman flying from the face of the serpent. Is this the interpretation of Rev. 12 which is to inspire confidence in his view of Rev. 20?

Part 2: Chapter 8

Millennial Features and the "Little Season" that Follows

Dr. B. concedes somewhat more than the mass of postmillennialists; for he allows that the millennium will be characterized not only by the universal diffusion of revealed truth, by unlimited subjection to Christ, by universal peace, by much spiritual power and glory, by the ascendancy of truth and righteousness in human affairs, by great temporal prosperity, but by the territorial restoration of the natural Israel then converted. So far there is nothing to contest, though there is much to desire, especially as to Christ Himself. The main divergence is the answer to the question how the millennium is to be brought in. The common notion is that it will be by means at present in operation, indefinitely increased, but not, as we believe, by the appearing and personal reign of Christ, judging the quick first, and finally the dead. The difference is immense in itself and in its results. A mistake here, though not fatal to faith in Christ, confuses all truth as to the ways of God, flatters Christendom instead of warning it, and lowers Christ as unduly as it exalts the Church while it is on earth. The moral effects are thus as disastrous for the soul as the error in interpretation darkens the mind to almost every part of the Bible. Nothing more directly tends to put new wine into old skins, to the ruin of both.

It is evident also that Dr. B.'s adherence to his former convictions, in the matter of Israel's restoration nationally to their land, fits ill with his adoption of Whitby's (or the common) hypothesis. For national conversion and restoration to a particular land does not savor of the gospel any more than temporal prosperity and universal peace or mere profession of the truth. And in fact the Apostle Paul contrasts, in Rom. 11, the future destiny of Israel with their lot now, while the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles. "As touching the gospel, they [the Jews] are enemies for your sakes [i.e., the Gentiles now grafted in], but, as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes." When the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, their partial blindness will cease, and so all Israel shall be saved, not by their believing the gospel now preached and thus merging in Christianity, but by the coming of the Deliverer out of Zion, who shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And if their casting away was the reconciling of the world [as now under the gospel], what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? There the Lord, "reversing all His former methods," will not merely deal with a chosen people, calling out the Church to the faith of His cross and heavenly glory, in spite of Satan seemingly more than ever paramount, but He, with His glorified saints, will come and expel the enemy, and not without judgments establish His ancient and now repentant people, filling the glad earth, which as yet groans, with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. All Scripture, of Old and New Testament alike, looks on to this mighty change, while it attests the faithfulness of God in the meantime, whatever the sorrow and shame through the allowed power of Satan till that day. But manifestly the distinction from the Gentile of the Jew, blessed as a nation in their own land, is precisely what cannot be under the gospel, which shows it now blotted out entirely, for God is making Jew and Gentile who believe one new man, and building them together for His habitation through the Spirit (Eph. 2). The millennium will behold wholly different conditions.

It is easy to see that almost all his proofs point to another system, not the gospel. Thus Isa. 11 supposes a divine smiting of the wicked or lawless one; and this Paul binds indissolubly with the appearing of Christ's presence, not a mere providential event in His absence (2 Thess. 2: 8). So Isa. 25: 7 is surrounded by divine judgment, and the resurrection of the saints (cp. 1 Cor. 15) as the circumstances and means of "that day's" deliverance. Again, Ps. 2 supposes the execution of judgment by our Lord, and (according to Rev. 2: 26-27) by the glorified saints with Him. Isa. 2 is in contrast with the gospel, which goes out to all nations, not all nations flocking to Jerusalem, v. 4 being the very reverse of what the Lord declares shall be in this age till the end come (Matt. 24: 7-14). So blinding is this scheme, that the gospel is regarded as "the rod of Christ's strength!" Now, if any intelligent Christian will only examine Ps. 110, he cannot but see that the first verse, Christ's session at Jehovah's right hand, is while the gospel goes forth; whereas, in Ps. 110: 2, the sending forth of Christ's rod out of Zion is when the time comes to rule in the midst of His enemies, not converting them into His friends and forming them for heaven. Being a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, He will of course be of that order then, as He is now: indeed then He will exercise it fully, and be displayed as such. But then only, and not now, He will strike through kings, because it will be the day of His wrath; whereas now it is the day of His grace, when the gospel is being preached to every creature. It is extraordinary that a sensible man should cite Isa. 64 and Zech. 14 for a similar purpose, seeing that both open with the execution of unprecedented judgments when the Lord shall come with His saints and plead with all flesh by fire and sword, and cleave Mount Olivet as the standing witness that the returning King of Israel is Jehovah the Creator. The blessing here is after this: but is the gospel?

Dr. B. thinks there will be declension in the millennium. Though there be no distinct proof, analogy is certainly in favour of the thought, which appears to be confirmed by the typical teaching in Numbers. But there is no real support of the notion that this "little season" may extend through one, two, or three centuries. However, this is so purely speculation as not to deserve further notice. But the last gathering to war of Gog and Magog has nothing in common with Luke 18 and 17: 20-30, 1 Thess. 5: 2-3, and 2 Peter 3: 3-4. Good and evil are entirely apart in Rev. 20, whereas in the other passages they are mingled as now till judgment falls. Nor is there any coming of Christ in their case; but "that day" spans over the millennium and the space beyond, so as to embrace all judgment of quick and dead within the kingdom. There is no coming for the great white throne, because the Lord had come to reign more than a thousand years before. All the dead who had not shared in the first resurrection go and stand before Him to be judged according to their works, and are accordingly consigned to the lake of fire. On the other hand, the righteous enjoy the new heavens and new earth for ever, reigning in life by one, Jesus Christ, spite of the surrender of the kingdom to God as we are told in 1 Cor. 15: 24.

Part 3

Objections 2 Thess. 2: 1-8.

An effort is made to parry this witness, which the late M. Faber, followed by Dr. B., regard, as in their judgment, "the only apparent evidence for the premillennial advent." The statement of the case is very inexact. It is not true that what excited and unsettled the Thessalonians was the time of Christ's second personal advent, but the false representation that the day of the Lord was come ένἐστηκεν. Nor is the express subject of discourse the second personal "coming" of our Lord, but a disproof of the error about the "day" which had alarmed them.

The apostle beseeches them, by a motive drawn from their bright hope of Christ's presence and their gathering to Him, not to be shaken by the rumor about the day of the Lord. Then he proceeds to show the impossibility of that day arriving before the well-known apostasy was developed, and the manifestation of the man of sin, which evils are to be judged in the day of the Lord. The παρουσία and the ἡμέρα of the Lord are not only not identified as by Dr. B., but they are in contradistinction; for the former is used as a comfort to the Thessalonians, as well as a disproof of the rumor that the terrible day of the Lord was then present. The Thessalonians were persuaded by some (and the authority of a letter of the apostle was falsely alleged in support of it), that the day of the Lord was (not at hand or imminent, but) arrived, as pointed out in an early part of this book. They, teachers and taught, must have meant some such figurative sense as Dr. B. contends for; and there is no doubt that the Old Testament not infrequently uses the phrase in this way, as for Babylon, Egypt, etc., an earnest, it would seem, of its full force at the end of the age.

Now the apostle meets the error by showing them in 2 Thess. 1 that the day is not figurative but a real personal revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with His mighty angels, taking vengeance in flaming fire on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel. It is not His party triumphing by the gospel, nor a political overthrow of their adversaries, but a solemn retribution — to the troubled saints "rest with us," and to the troublers tribulation. Then he assumes their remembrance of his first epistle, in which he had taught them both about the presence of the Lord to translate the saints to Himself on high, and about the day of the Lord with its sudden blow on the careless world. Hence he beseeches them by that joyful hope, not to be troubled by the pretended revelation that the day of the Lord was there; for this (not the presence of the Lord) could not be till the ripening of the predicted horrors which that day is to avenge. When the Lord does appear, the saints appear with Him, instead of being then caught up to Him. Hence the apostle discriminates, and as he was inspired to connect our gathering together to the Lord with His presence, so he links the judgment of the man of sin with the manifestation of His presence. Compare 2 Thess. 2: 1 with v. 8. The result is, then, that while all agree that the presence of the Lord in v. 1 is personal, v. 8, far from being some previous and preparatory figure, is a subsequent state of His advent, and means, not merely His presence in order to gather to Himself above those who look for Him, but the appearing or epiphany of His presence, when He destroys the lawless enemy or Antichrist of the last days of this age. Nowhere does Daniel attribute his destruction to the church, nor does any Scripture attribute it to the truth, as Dr. B. alleges without the smallest reason.

Matt. 24: 29-31. The assertion is, that the direct and primary sense of the prophecy is Christ's coming in judgment against Jerusalem; and that this is decided by v. 34. I ask Dr. B. to compare with this Luke 21, where he will see that the Lord, as there represented, brings in the times of the Gentiles not yet run out after the destruction by the Romans, and His own advent after those times, and not till then says, This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. Will any man stand to such a sense of the prophecy, and to claim for it our Lord's decision? Joel 2 refers to the same great event, but, though accomplished in part, it is not fulfilled yet any more than Mal. 4.

Rev. 19: 11-21 (pp. 442-446). Dr. B. thinks the "detail" is the very thing which proves! it not to be the personal coming of Christ, and contrasts the passage with Matt. 16: 27; Heb. 9: 28; 2 Thess. 1; Col. 3; Titus 2; and even Rev. 1. Can reasoning be less solid? Doctrinal use or allusion in a few words proves that a prophetic book cannot mean the greatest event of prophecy, because this gives details, the other texts not! Where could detail be revealed with such propriety as in Rev., and surely in the visions rather than in the mere preface of the book? It is in vain, I would add, to found an argument on ηροσώπου (Rev. 20: 11), as if it involved the idea of Christ's presence then. The word which would warrant such an inference would be παρουσία. "From whose face" applies wherever Christ may be, whether He come again to the earth, or the earth and the heaven flee away from before Him as is expressly said in this very clause. It remains then that postmillennialism is a dream, and that Christ's appearing is blotted out from Rev. 19 where God reveals it, and put in where the nature of the case (Rev. 20: 11) excludes it. Can there be more palpable insubjection to scripture or love of a tradition that makes void the word of God? Matt. 25: 31-36, with which the close of Rev. 20 is identified, is exclusively a judgment of the living nations when He comes again; Rev. 20: 11-15 is the final judgment of the dead who did not rise to reign with Christ. Can contrast be more definite and certain?

Rev. 5: 10. Dr. B. understands the future reign on (or over) the earth as relating to the ultimate triumphs of Christ's cause upon earth during the present state (the vicious thought that everywhere pervades his book), more than to the glorified condition of the saints (pp. 446-447). Is refutation called for? The passage proves that not even the redeemed in heaven are yet (at the point of the Apocalypse referred to) reigning over the earth. They are to reign with Christ, as all scripture shows; and this, as the book elsewhere proves, is the result of His coming when they are risen, and He has received the kingdom. A triumph of the church on earth during the present state is contrary to scripture. The apostasy, not a reign of Christendom, and then the man of sin revealed, precede His presence in judgment or the day of the Lord.

Matt. 19: 28. No wonder Dr. B. does not object to vague and incorrect statements of the case which confound the millennium with the eternal state of which Rev. 21: 5 treats. But a little consideration suffices to demonstrate that the fulfillment of the Lord's assurance to the apostles is in "the kingdom," in the millennial age, and neither before nor after it. For "the regeneration" is expressly said to be when the Son of man shall sit on His throne of glory. Now assuredly this is when He comes, not before the second advent, nor when heaven and earth flee away before His face as He sits on a wholly different throne, the great white throne for judging the dead (not the twelve tribes of Israel). There are none said to be assessors with Christ in that eternal judgment of the dead. Not even Dr. B. contends that "the regeneration" is a picture applicable during the present state, when Christ is not come but seated on His Father's throne (Rev. 3: 21): will he argue that during the eternal state there can be an apostolic royal judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel? If it be neither, the millennium is the sole alternative that remains; and if it be so, in what condition but a glorified one can the apostles thus judge Israel? Or are the judges and the judged to be both explained away?

Heb. 4: 9, the Sabbath-keeping of glory is the last objection Dr. B. discusses at length. I have no care to interpose on behalf of the seventh millenary as the sabbatism of the apostle; but the notion of Calvin, which Dr. B. endorses, that it is a question of the present rest, which is the portion of believers in Jesus, seems to me clean contrary to the scope of the chapter. We are called to fear and to labor now; we are in the wilderness still, and are only on our way to the rest of God. We who have believed enter, but we are not yet entered into the rest. We have already entered into rest in Jesus, as to which we do not fear, nor do we labor. But we do fear settling down when we ought to be marching on, lest, a promise being left of entering into God's rest (i.e. in glory), any of us should seem to have come short of it. It is not time yet for the believer to rest from his works, but to use diligence to enter into that blessed rest, which is not arrived but remains, for the people of God. Postmillennialism, here as everywhere hinders intelligence of the scriptures.

My task is closed. I believe I have answered fairly and conclusively, if scripture be really our standard, the arguments of Dr. Brown. How far the answer is satisfactory to him or to those who share the popular view of a postmillennial advent of Christ must rest with their consciences now. The day hastens which will declare the truth to all who have not already ascertained it with certainty from the word of God. May He bless by the power of His spirit His own revelation to the praise of the name of Jesus.

3 a.  Christ's Second Coming: Will it be Premillennial? By the Rev. David Brown, D.D., St. James's Free Church, Glasgow. Fourth Edition. Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1856.

b. Outlines of Unfulfilled Prophecy; being an enquiry into the Scripture testimony respecting the “good things to come. By the Rev. T. R. Birks, M. A, rector of Kelshall. Seeleys, 1854.

c. Simples Essais sur des sujets prophetiques. Par W. Trotter, Tomes I. II. Paris: Grassart, 1855-56.

4 We speak solely of the application of the term to the body of Christ. For the New Testament employs __ in reference to at least two other subjects: one, the assembly at Ephesus, Acts 19: 32, 39, 40; the other, the congregation of Israel in the wilderness, Acts 7: 38, which is in our version, rendered “church in the wilderness.” “Congregation” would evidently be better, as “church” here is calculated to mislead; for there is no question of a body baptized by the Holy Ghost. A similar remark, perhaps, applies also to Heb. 12: 23.

5The following observations from Bishop Pearson may be helpful to some, though a few thoughts and words are open to exception.

Again, being [seeing] though Christ was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and whosoever from the beginning pleased God, were saved by His blood: yet because there was a vast difference between the several dispensations of the law and gospel, because, our Savior speaks expressly of building Himself a church when the Jewish synagogue was about to fail, because Catholicism, which is here attributed unto the church, must be understood in opposition to the legal singularity of the Jewish nation, because the ancient fathers were generally wont to distinguish between the synagogue and the church, therefore I think it necessary to restrain this motion to Christianity. Thirdly, therefore, I observe that the only way to attain unto this knowledge of the true notion of the church, is to search into the New Testament, and from the places there which mention it, to conclude what is the nature of it. To which purpose it will be necessary to take notice that our Savior, first speaking of it, mentioneth it as that which then was not, but afterwards was to be; as when He speaks unto the great apostle, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”; but when He ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost came down, when Peter had converted 3,000 souls, which were added to the 120 disciples, then was there a church (and that built upon Peter (but cp. 1 Cor.3: 11), according to our Savior's promise); for after that we read, “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” A church, then, our Savior promised, should be built, and by a promise made before his death; after His ascension, and upon the preaching of St. Peter, we find a church built or constituted, and that of a nature capable of a daily increase. We cannot then take a better occasion to search into the true notion of the church of Christ (God), than by looking into the origination and increase thereof, without which it is impossible to have a right conception of it. Exposition of the Creed, Art. ix., Vol. I., pp. 505, 506.

6 We believe that the first part of Rev. 21 describes the eternal state, as the sequel to the course of events and changes presented in the preceding context, and that Rev. 21: 9, et seq., is a retrogressive vision in order to enter into the relation of the heavenly bride to the earth and its nations, with their kings, during the millennium. There is a striking parallel to this arrangement in the retrospective view, Rev.17, of Babylon, in relation to the kings and peoples of the earth, after her fall had been given in Rev. 14, 16 -REVIEWER.

7We do not charge Dr. B., as some appear to have done, with making the fall of the stone to be a judgment upon a mere abstraction. On the contrary, it seems to us to be a thoroughly practical evil. Again, he has no right to limit the sphere of judgment to the Papacy. All the kingdoms of the Roman empire are judged with the little horn.

8 In a note to p. 183, Dr. B. says that though this

was originally an emphatic form, it came gradually to be employed even where no emphasis was intended. Winer says it “almost uniformly” did so; and he makes this remark in connection with the passage before us.

Now we cannot say what this German scholar may have remarked in former editions, but we can affirm that, having examined his latest (sixth) edition of the Grammatik, we believe that no reference is made to the passage, much less is there an assertion so unworthy of a really learned man as is imputed to him. If W. ever committed himself to that opinion, it seems to have vanished from his most mature statements. The section 19, to which Dr. B. alludes (now at least) without reason, discusses the omission of the article under certain limitations — a subject of which Winer is by no means master. — It may be remarked here, that the late Mr. Gipps founded an argument of apparent weight and acuteness on the common text against a literal resurrection of saints before the rest are raised for judgment. The absence of _ was the gist of his reasoning. But the fact is that the sentence is not correct Greek, and hardly sense, as it stands in Text. Rec.; whereas the oldest and best authorities, for , read _ _ . Had Mr. G. known this, he would have felt that his main objection was gone — nay, that the clause told strongly against him. “If,” says he, “Phil. 3: 11 had been meant to express the rising from the dead, the preposition _ in composition with __ would have been repeated” (p. 85, note). It is repeated according to the latest critics, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf, none of whom sympathizes with premillennialism. The ancient MSS. A, B, (C is here defective), D, E read _ _. F, G, give  _ which is evidently a slip for _ _., and this again was, probably, the parent of  without _ in J, K and the cursive manuscripts which follow them. The best versions and fathers confirm the reading from the dead. The currency which the common reading once had says little for the accuracy of copyists, editors, and commentators.

9It is attempted by the help of Augustine (De Civ. Dei. XX. xxiii. 2), Calvin, and others, to maintain a strict parallel between this text and John 5: 28, 29. But it is not true that “many” is equivalent to “all.” The chief witness called by most is the alleged interchange of these expressions in Rom. 5: 18, 19. But we deny the fact even there; for in the latter verse _ is employed in relation to _ _ (the mass connected with the one), and in the former there is no such relation expressed; and the idea is the universal bearing of one offence and of one righteousness respectively, not the actual effect which follows in the next verse, where, accordingly, the phrase is altered. Moreover, “many” is not the same thing as “the many”: they are very particularly and frequently distinguished in Daniel. Compare, for the former, Dan. 11: 34,44; 12: 2,4,10; and, for the latter, Dan. 9: 27; 11: 33,39; 12: 3. Marckius' reply to Cocceius, which identifies them, is therefore unfounded, and even Dr. B. “now greatly doubts it.” And it is evident that he has little confidence in the explanation of Munster and Clarius, who suppose that the change of the living righteous is hinted at in the word “many.” The truth is that, on no view, premillennial or postmillennial, can our text be applied to a literal resurrection consistently with other scriptures or with the context. We have no doubt, therefore, that it refers to God's revival of Israel, both nationally and spiritually, and with the open judgment of the wicked among them, after the destruction of the last king of the North (“the Assyrian,” so often predicted in the prophets). Dan. 11 had already spoken of the Jews in the Land up to their closing troubles and deliverance for the elect. Dan. 12: 2 shows us the reappearance on the scene of “many” long slumbering among the Gentiles. They had been “asleep” when movements of the deepest interest had been going on in the land and people of the Jews. Now they “awake”; but, as among the Jews in Palestine, not a few were apostate and cut off by God, and only such were delivered out of their last time of unparalleled tribulation as were “written in the book”; so of these returned Israelites, some are found destined to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. For they are not all Israel which are of Israel. We doubt not that, though employed figuratively, as often in the Psalms and Prophets, the language presupposes the known truth of a bodily resurrection, and this of just and unjust. It is possible that John 5 may allude to the passage, but that would not prove the literality of Dan. 12: 2. It is much more certain that itself alludes to Isa. 26: 19, which Dr. B. correctly refers to the figurative resurrection of Israel (pp. 234, 235). The language is at least equally strong in both, and the resemblance striking and undeniable. “Thy dead shall live, my dead body shall they arise. Awake, and sing (the prophet addressing them), ye that dwell in dust,” etc. Ezek. 37 is, if possible, stronger than Dan. 12. “Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.” Beyond a doubt, not a physical but a figurative resurrection is here meant, just as in Daniel. It is the only interpretation which meets all the conditions of the text and context, and it is entirely free from the inseparable difficulties which encumber the use made of it by many on both sides.

10At the time of the judgment in Matthew the fire is said simply to be prepared for the devil and his angels; whereas before the great white throne judgment the devil is cast into the lake of fire, where the Beast and False Prophet had been long previously.

The Lord's Second Coming and Kingdom.

W. Kelly.

1 HIS COMING A PROPER, PERSONAL ONE

"This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." (Acts 1: 11) The Lord had Himself promised the same thing. "I go to prepare a place for you. . . . . I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14) That the Son of man will literally return, and be revealed, is also clear from Luke 12: 35-46, Luke 17: 22, 37, Luke 18: 1-8, Luke 19: 11-27, Luke 21: 27-36. The last is the more important, because it shows the fallacy of such as suppose Matt. 24: 30, Mark 13: 26, to have been fulfilled in the siege of Jerusalem under Titus. Past and present disasters, "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," are fully described already in Luke 21: 20-24. Next follows the closing scene — distress of nations with perplexity; and men see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. "This generation" (i.e., the present unbelieving race of the Jews) lasts till then; it shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. For "the world to come," grace will convert "a generation to come." (Ps. 102: 18) In a word, death, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the destruction of Jerusalem, are all distinct things from the advent of the Lord Jesus. He is coming, and quickly. (Rev. 12: 7-20.)

2 HIS COMING PRE-MILLENNIAL.

"He shall send Jesus Christ . . . whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution (i.e., restoring of all things which God hath spoken of by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." (Acts 3: 20, 21) Jesus is still in heaven, and that blissful period is not yet commenced: His mission and those times upon earth are to run on together Romans 8: 19-23 teaches that creation must groan till the sons of God are manifested. But their manifestation depends on that of Christ. (Col. 3; Col. 4; 1 John 3: 3.) Therefore, the predicted blessing of creation — which is one main feature of the millennium — is to be when Christ and the Church appear in glory; not before. Nay, "ourselves also which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption; to wit, the remedy of our body." And, confessedly, the redemption of the body, or resurrection, awaits His doming. That is, there is no relief to a groaning creation, or to a groaning Church, till Christ comes; in other words, there can be no millennium till then. Again, Israel is now blinded in part, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. "And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." (Rom. 11: 25, 26) Here again we learn that the coming of the Saviour is to accomplish the salvation of all Israel, which is another characteristic of the millennium. With Jeremiah 30: 7, and Daniel 12: 1, we may compare Zechariah 12; Zechariah 13; Zechariah 14; they will be found to afford fresh proofs. Zechariah 14: 2, 8 announces that the Lord is to come for the deliverance of the Jews when they are in the deepest trouble; that His feet shall stand upon the same spot He had touched before His ascension — upon the mount of Olives, which is to be cloven in twain; that all the saints shall come with the Lord, and that, after this, living waters shall go out of Jerusalem, and the Lord shall be King over all the earth. Is not this the millennium? It is preceded by the Lord's coming. Another witness is to be found in such scriptures as 2 Thessalonians 2; 2 Peter 2; 2 Peter 3; Jude; 1 John 2; where evil is shown to have been introduced within the bosom of Christian profession from the days of the apostles, and that it is to spread, ripen, and be terminated only by the judgment which the Lord shall execute when He returns. Not the Church, but Christ is to destroy the Antichrist, and this by His personal appearing. His presence gathers the Church above; its Shining forth or epiphany destroys the Lawless One here below. (2 Thess. 2: 1-8) Compare with this Isaiah 11: 4, to which the allusion is evident. The reign of blessedness on earth ensues: "When thy judgments are in the earth the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." Matthew 13 is to the same effect: the Son of man, by His angels, clears the field. 1 Corinthians 15: 23-28, and 2 Tim. 4: 1, are very distinct in connecting Christ's appearing with His kingdom, not with the end, and the end (not with His appearing to reign, but) with the surrender of the kingdom to God the Father. In this kingdom the risen saints reign with Him; they rise to meet Him at His coming, preparatory to His reign. (2 Tim. 2: 12; Rom. 8: 17) Revelation 19; Revelation 20 distinctly prove that Christ and His saints come from heaven to destroy the beast and the false prophet, with their adherents, and then to establish His kingdom on the earth for a thousand years, previously to the judgment of the great white throne, and the new heavens and earth.

3 HIS COMING TWO-FOLD; 1, FOR, AND 2, WITH HIS SAINTS.

1. For His saints: John 14: 3 ; 1 Cor. 15: 23; 1 Thess. 1: 10; 1 Thess. 4: 13-18; Phil. 3: 20; Rev. 3: 10, 11.

2. With His saints: Zech. 14: 5 ; Col. 3: 4 ; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 2 Thess. 1: 10; Jude 14; Rev. 17: 14; Rev. 19: 14.

It may be well to notice here that Rev. 4-19, gives us a divine description of the Church's position in heaven — symbolized by twenty-four crowned elders — after Christ has come for them, and before He comes with them. From the moment they are caught up to meet Him in the air, they are ever with the Lord! with Him in the Father's house; with Him when the successive judgments (under the figures of seals, trumpets, and vials) are falling on the earth; with Him when the marriage supper of the Lamb is celebrated above; with Him when He comes from heaven to war with His civil and religious enemies; with Him when we reign together on the earth for a thousand years; and with Him in the subsequent eternal state. "So shall we over be with the Lord."

4 HIS COMING AND KINGDOM OUR PROXIMATE OBJECT OF HOPE, AND A GRAND MOTIVE OF HOLINESS, PATIENCE, AND FAITHFUL SERVICE.

Luke 12: 35, 36; John 14: 3; John 21: 22; Rom. 13: 11, 12; Rom. 16: 20; 1 Cor. 1: 7; 1 Cor. 11: 26; 1 Cor. 15: 23, 58; Phil. 1: 9, 10; Phil. 3: 20; Col. 3: 4, 5; 1 Thess. 1: 3, 10; 1 Thess. 2: 12, 19; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 1 Thess. 4: 13; 1 Thess. 5: 1-6, 23, 24; 2 Thess. 1: 7, 10; 2 Thess. 2: 1-14; 2 Thess. 3: 5; 1 Tim. 6: 14; 2 Tim. 1: 12, 18 ; 2 Tim. 4: 1, 8, 18; Titus 2: 12, 13; Heb. 9: 28; 10: 37 ; James 5: 7-9; 1 Peter 1: 5, 13; 2 Peter 3: 11-14; 1 John 2: 28; 1 John: 3: 2, 3; Jude 14, 21, 24; Rev. 3: 11; Rev. 22: 7, 12, 17, 20.

5 THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST DIFFERENT IN SOURCE, CHARACTER, TIME, AND, ISSUES, FROM THAT OF THE UNJUST.

Luke 14: 14; Luke 20: 35, 36; John 5: 28, 29; John 6; Rom. 8: 11, 23; 1 Cor. 6: 14; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Cor. 4: 14; 2 Cor. 5: 1-10; Phil. 3: 11, 20, 21; Heb. 11: 35; Rev. 20: 5, 6.

W. Kelly.

Oh, what a bright and blessed world  Rev. 11: 15.

This groaning earth of ours will be,  Rom. 8: 21.

When from its throne the tempter hurl'd,  Rev. 20: 3.

Shall leave it all, O Lord, to thee.   Zech. 14: 9.

But brighter far that world above,   Rev. 21: 10, 11.

Where we, as we are known, shall know;  1 Cor. 13: 12.

And, in the sweet embrace of love,  John 17: 23.

Reign o'er this ransomed earth below.  Rev. 21: 24.

IF THIS TRACT SHOULD FALL INTO THE HANDS OF ANY THAT ARE SAYING, WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?

THEY WILL FIND THE ANSWER IN Acts 16: 31, AND Acts 26: 18.

The Second Coming of Christ.

W Kelly

F. E. RACE 3 & 4 London House Yard, Paternoster Row, E.C. LONDON.

Before the Saviour went to the cross, He left as a parting promise to the disciples these words of love — "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14: 1-3). Thus, the Christian hope is, not the spread of the knowledge of the Lord throughout the world, nor is it our own departure by death to be with Christ, but it is His return to receive us unto Himself, that we may be with Him, the Son, in the Father's house. Blessed, heavenly hope!

Accordingly, when the apostles on Olivet looked after their ascended Lord, "two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1: 10, 11). Well they knew that it was a real personal departure of their Master; just as certainly will His return be real and personal. Jesus shall come again from heaven. Incredulity may deny it; but not even incredulity will assert that it is a secondary matter. It will change at once the face of the church, the world, and all things. Is this secondary?

Hence, in Acts 3: 19-21, Peter calls on the Jews to repent and be converted, in order to the blotting out of their sins; so that seasons of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord, and He might send forth Jesus that was fore-appointed to them, whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets since the world began. Though the day of Pentecost was fully come, and the Holy Ghost given in unprecedented power, and never had the world beheld such unselfish love among thousands of believers as at that moment, yet the apostle shows that the full blessing of Israel and of the earth depends on the future coming of Christ from heaven. It is His mission, not that of the Spirit, to restore all things according to the prophetic word, though no doubt the Spirit will be at the same time poured out upon all flesh. Further, Christ will be sent, according to these testimonies, not for the destruction, but for the restitution of all things. And this exactly agrees with the vision in Revelation 19, 20, where Christ is represented as coming from heaven, reigning with His risen saints, and, when this glorious kingdom closes, and the earth and heaven are fled away, only then judging the dead before the great white throne.

The Gospels the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse, all converge on the same point. Not death, nor the destruction of Jerusalem, is the revealed hope, but the return of Jesus. The Christian, the Church has the Holy Ghost, and has to wait for Christ.

Those who put off His coming find their prototype in the evil servant of Matthew 24: 48. And what our Lord said unto the early disciples He says unto all, "watch": and this in view, not of death, but of His own coming, the conqueror of death (Mark 13: 33-37). For, in truth, it is only the Lord who is the Bridegroom; and our calling, as set forth in the parable of the virgins (Matt. 25), is to go forth to meet Him. Such was the uniform expectation formed by our Lord's own teaching. Its moral bearing we find in Luke 12: 35 and seq.; and this as the constant hope of the heart  -  sure He is coming, not sure when, but ever looking out for Him from day to day. "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants."

Need I dwell on the righteous wisdom of God in this? It was the Word who was made flesh, not the Spirit; it was here that Jesus suffered for sins, and by the grace of God tasted death for every one. He is glorified in heaven, but as truly as Jehovah lives, all the earth shall be filled with His glory, and not merely hear the message of His grace. Hence the counsel of God (Eph. 1: 10) is to gather up again all things in Christ, the things that are in heaven and the things that are on earth. The Holy Ghost is, meanwhile, a witness only, and not the accomplisher; He is the seal of the redemption which Christ has effected by His blood, and the earnest of the inheritance which we shall share with Christ at His coming.

Hence, from Romans 8 we learn that the creation itself, ruined by the sin of the first Adam, is destined to be set free by the victory of the last Adam. Meanwhile it groans, and so do we, albeit heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; and none the less because we have the firstfruits of the Spirit  -  "even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body." Our souls already have redemption in Christ, the forgiveness of sins; our bodies wait for redemption when He comes again; and when we are manifested with Him (Col. 3: 4), the very creation around, if it be necessarily incapable of profiting like us by grace, shall be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.

But though we find the coming of Christ bound up with the walk, the joys, the sorrows, the worship, the service, and the hopes of the saints throughout the Epistles of Paul (as in Rom. 13: 12; 1 Cor. 1: 7, 8; 1 Cor. 3: 13; 1 Cor. 4: 5; 1 Cor. 5: 5; 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3; 1 Cor. 11: 26; 1 Cor. 15: 23-55; 2 Cor. 5; Phil. 1: 10, 11, 16; Phil. 3: 20, 21; Phil. 4: 5; 1 Tim. 6: 14, 15; 2 Tim. 1: 18; 2 Tim. 4: 8; Titus 2: 13; Heb. 9: 28; Heb. 10: 25, 37), yet is it in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians that we have the subject most fully developed. Is the coming of Christ too high a theme, too abstruse, for the young and uninstructed? 1 Thess. 1 on the contrary, proves that it should blend into the work from our conversion. "Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven." Again, if there are sorrows in serving the saints, and Satan's hindrances too, what is the labourer's crown of rejoicing? Some present reward or memorial? Nay, "Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming" (1 Thess. 2: 19)? Moreover, if an apostle prayed for the saints, he desired their growing exercise in love, that they might be confirmed unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints (1 Thess. 3). How near such a prayer brings that day, casting its light upon the present walk and its responsibilities! Then, again, were they grieving as if any brethren deceased from among them might miss their part in the coming of Christ, and in being caught up to meet Him on high? 1 Thessalonians 4 fully dispels the dark shade of unbelief, and shows that the true hope is not the separate state of bliss above,* but association with Christ when He comes again: for the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we, the living, which remain, shall be caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. As to the world, rejecting the only Deliverer from wrath, its portion must be the day of the Lord coming as a thief by night (1 Thess. 5). "The day" is the manifestation of Christ's coming in judgment; and as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth (Luke 21). But Christians are sons of light and day, and that day shall not overtake them as a thief. Accordingly he prays, not only that the God of peace Himself might sanctify them wholly, but that their whole spirit and soul and body might be preserved without blame in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 23).

*The intermediate state remains a clear scriptural truth, and its character as sweet as it is sure, for such as sleep in Christ till the resurrection. (See Luke 23: 43; Acts 7: 59; 2 Cor. 5: 8; and Phil. 1: 21-23.

2 Thess. sets the soul right touching fears for the living saints, as the First Epistle had corrected the error as to the dead. The Lord's revelation from heaven will be retributive  -  rest for His saints, and tribulation for their troublers (2 Thess. 1). Why, then, be afraid of the false rumour, whatever the fictitious authority claimed for it, that the day of the Lord was come with its terrors and snares? He beseeches them, therefore, by the coming of the Lord, which is to gather the saints to the Lord above, not to be alarmed by the notion that His day was present. For, in truth, that day could not come till the evil was thoroughly ripe and manifest, with which judgment is to deal (2 Thess. 2). Finally, in 2 Thess. 3 the apostle prays the Lord to direct their hearts into the love of God and the patience of Christ. How blessed the thought that if we are waiting for His return, we have communion with His patience! We wait with Him, if we wait for Him.

It need hardly be added, that the Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude do but confirm, enlarge, and enforce the same doctrine, interweaving it also into the practical life of every day. See James 5: 7-9; 1 Peter 1: 7, 13; 1 Peter 2: 12; 1 Peter 4: 5, 7; 1 Peter 5: 1, 4; 2 Peter 1: 19; 2 Peter 3; 1 John 2: 28; 1 John 3: 2, 3; Jude 14, 24.

The Revelation impresses upon the whole its most emphatic seal. In the introduction (Rev. 1: 7) we read, "Behold, he cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen." How suitable to visions of judgment! Equally in keeping is the conclusion (Rev. 22: 17): "And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, come." Such is the expression of the heart from the individual saint and from the church. What else indeed could the Bride say in answer to Him who announces Himself as the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star? Observe, too, that the Spirit, the divine Comforter who dwells in her, sanctions and leads the call to the Bridegroom. If, you, dear reader, have heard the quickening voice of the Saviour, take up the same. You may have followed Jesus only yesterday or to-day; nevertheless, fear not: "Let him that heareth say, Come." But if you have never known His voice, listen now, ere it be too late, to these gracious words: Let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Are you deeply conscious of your wants, your misery, your sins  -  are you athirst? If so, you cannot say to Him, Come; but you may yourself come to Him and welcome. Yea, if most of all you feel your lack of feeling, if you only desire from Him what you want, and can get nowhere else, "whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

"He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Rev. 22: 20). It follows from this, the true hope of the Christian, that the expectation of seeing the world gradually filled with blessing, or even the semblance of it through the profession of the gospel, before the return of Jesus, is altogether unwarranted. He will have the glory of reducing all opposing powers, and of ushering in at His second advent that acceptable year of Jehovah which He proclaimed at His first coming. But the day of vengeance, which in His humiliation was left out (cp. Luke 4: 19, 20 with Isaiah 61: 1-3), will be the immediate effect of His appearing again, followed by His reign of peace and glory. See Isaiah 11: 4-9; 17, 18, 24 - 27, 30, 32, 35, 60 - 66; Jeremiah 31, 32; Ezekiel 36 - 47. Daniel is very explicit on this head: "Thou sawest," says the prophet to the king, "till a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." The divine interpretation (vv. 44, 45) need leave no doubt as to the meaning: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure." Other Scriptures, too, furnish more light, especially Matt. 21: 42-44: "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder."

Thus, if it be clear that Christ is the stone, it is equally clear that at His first coming He was the despised and rejected stone. He is now become the head of the corner, glorified at God's right hand. He will by and by return in judicial power; and as surely as those who stumbled at His humiliation have been broken, so, when He descends in judgment, shall His adversaries be ground to powder. When He first came, far from falling on the Roman Empire (or iron power of Nebuchadnezzar's image), the representative of the empire crucified Him; but when He returns in glory, He will execute judgment upon that empire in its final state of division into separate kingdoms. It is only after this destructive blow that "the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth." Daniel 7, 11, 12; Revelation 17, 19, 20 corroborate this and supply further detail. But the general truth is as distinct as it is practically momentous. Christendom, far from progressing in good or purging out evil, is to end in a widespread apostasy, like Judaism since the law, like mankind at large before and since the flood. (Cp. Matt. 13: 30; Luke 17: 26-30; Rom. 11; 1 Thess. 5; 2 Thess. 1, 2; 2 Tim. 3; 1 John 2, 2 Peter 2, 3; Jude). After the Lord, at His coming, has judged the professing Christian body as well as the Jews and the Gentiles (Matt. 24, 25), He will cause the days of heaven to dawn upon the earth, His bride being manifested with Him on high, and Israel the ransomed of the Lord below, His earthly centre with the Gentiles abundantly blessed around them. The Lord will hasten it in His time.

Abram: The Friend of God

W. Kelly.

Genesis 12, 13.

What we see in the word of God before this remarkable account of the call of Abram, though profitable surely for us, is also humbling; and none the less the more we think of it, and see what God has told us of man's sin and ruin, not merely as bringing on the flood, but as following it. What was to be done now? For God had hung out a sign in the very heavens that He would no longer visit the iniquity of the race as He had done in the deluge. There had been a secret principle of grace with God that He always acted on; but now this principle was to be brought out manifestly. What had made the difference in the case of Abel, of Enoch, or even Noah? It was grace that had flowed to them and wrought in them whatever was good and holy and true. But there is a new thing that comes out in the history now before us. It was to be no longer the favour of God in its hidden dealings.

Promise was to be thenceforth a public ground of action on the part of God. Is not this a most weighty and instructive change? God was no longer content that He should act after a secret sort. If He had Himself called souls without any one knowing it outside, now He would make the call distinct and plain, drawing to it the attention of friends and enemies: and this so definitely that it has been the invariable starting-point with God from that day to this. It was the call of God, no more secret but evident to all.

So we are told in this place: "Now Jehovah had said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show thee." We are apt to pass over such a statement of the ways of God because of the tendency to confound what is a secret of grace with what is manifest. But Abram was called by God to a place of separation, so as to be manifest. This is the express point with which the chapter opens, and the great principle that God would have us now to weigh with all seriousness, as we read His word.

By Israel at Sinai the ground of law was taken. Yet God had called His people by grace out of Egypt; but they were, as most know, put (or put themselves) under the law. The consequence was that, however divine the principle was, it fell through in the case of the chosen nation. So again, God has now applied the self-same principle to the call of the church. There it is not (one need not say) a body put under law, but the very contrary, dealt with in sovereign grace. It is not merely mercy towards the soul, for this has always been true; but God has a body publicly called in this world, composed of such as are meant to be witnesses of His grace in Christ on high, just as much as Israel ought to have represented the law graven on stones and manifested it before the whole earth.

This will show, then, how early and wide the principle is. But the Lord begins, as you can easily understand, first of all with an individual; and there was great wisdom and much force in this. Long centuries after, it was the resource of the prophet Isaiah, impressed upon his heart by God when Israel was passing into a desperately low condition, and with the prophecy of still greater ruin at hand. How does he seek to comfort the people? With the fact that God called Abraham alone. He falls back upon what was the salient principle of God's dealing at this very time. It was as good as saying, "Be things as they may, count on the Lord. Impossible to be lower than that with which Israel began; for when God called and blessed at first, it was Abraham alone."

To what end was this? Not only that he himself should be blessed, but to be a blessing: and this not only to his own seed, but to others far and wide. "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

In the earth and with men, as they are, such is the sole possible way of blessing. In the line of His call God brings out His promises, and there it is that His blessing is found and maintained. Man may, no doubt (not to say that he must, when put on the ground of law), end in more manifest ruin than ever; but the principle of His call is not only sound but invariably true. If there is to be blessing at all in a world that is ruined, it must be on the ground of one who comes out obedient to the call of God, not staying where he is, nor attempting to reform the evil in the midst of which he may be. God made it particularly manifest at this time; for it was now that the world for the first time had seen nations and families and tongues, all arranged in the elements of that which is in our day approaching its finally developed form. The world was no more as it had been before the flood; it was separated into its distinct nationalities. Government also had now been instituted. This was of course an outward mercy for the world. Wickedness was not to go on unpunished, iniquity must be restrained by the judge. God had accordingly given responsible charge on the earth to man who was thenceforth to curb evil in the world. He had authority for it from God. (Gen. 9)

But now that idolatry had entered (Joshua 24: 2), separation to God, the true God, comes in as the recognised place. Instead of having souls to walk individually with Him, although seeking to please Him by faith, God, from that day to this, takes up what was then a wholly new thing for man, that, if He is to be pleased or magnified, if His will is really to govern, it must be as separate to Himself, and not merely by our looking to Him individually where we are, and in the midst of all our national associations. God looks for more now; He calls out. Hence the force of the word here, "Get thee out," etc.

It is not simply "believe;" this was not at all the question put. The great object of faith was not brought out, though we find a type of the way of faith in Gen. 15 where Abram's faith is seen exercised on the word of promise that God gave him; but still it is not a question here of the gospel being sent out, nor of Christ being presented personally. It is God who separates to Himself, at His own word, a man who was in the midst of all that is evil — his own family worshipping false gods like the rest. For although God had already marked off a certain part of the sons of Noah as preserved for blessing, and Shem particularly so — that it might be proved it was in no way an after-thought, but God's purpose in all stedfastness and not depending on a certain part of mankind as in themselves better than others (though in fact piety was there); yet here too was the solemn fact that the family of Shem had gone into idolatry no less than others. In spite of the predicted purpose of God, Shem's sons had proved faithless. What next could be done? Was there no way of securing God's honour? This was the way: the call of God goes out in sovereign grace, separating to Himself a man no better than his fellows but avowedly involved in the idolatries of his fathers. "Get thee out of thy country . . . . unto a land that I will show thee."

Now the first thing I would press is that faith is shown, not so much by following what others have received before, but in believing what God brings home now to one's own soul and for one's own path. For God has a will about each successive stage in all the varying phases of life, as evil itself grows and works in the world. Satan does not limit himself to the same snares of falsehood and sin, but becomes more and more subtle and determined in his plans. God looks for faith in His word accordingly. So in this case (I refer now to Shem's line) the very family that had whatever there was to hope for were fatally involved in his meshes just like other men. But God has a way, a blessed and worthy way, of vindicating Himself; and this is a way which, giving all the glory to Himself, faith at once feels is just what it ought to be. The call comes without the slightest ground for it in Abram himself. This we see to be perfectly consistent with the dealings of God. He meant the blessing to be in that line; He meant to take up this man and make him the father of the faithful; but he was evidently a child of the unfaithful, and no doubt an unfaithful child himself. The calling was, accordingly, of grace: God Himself called; and God, at the same time, was fitting this man for the place of blessing; and God had, before Abram was fitted for it, pronounced what it was in His heart to give him, so that it might be, not of Abram who deserved it, but of God that called him. It was grace. "And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great."

The whole principle of the blessing as flowing out of the call of God had been manifested in a man distinctly separated to Him, and (I would add) called out without disturbing the arrangements of the world. There was no setting him up with a mightier sword in his hand to put down the workers of iniquity. The world was left, after having been arranged under the providence of God in separate families, nations, and tongues, but not till government by man was sanctioned by God. But there God's honour being completely set aside, and false gods worshipped, He separates under His promise of blessing the man who comes out at his call to the land He would show him.

This then is God's own blessed way — one most effectual, as it is also peculiar to Himself; and on it in fact God has acted in our own call, whether to Himself or into the church. It is on my heart to dwell a little on the general truth of the call of Abram, so as to illustrate the way in which God connects the principle of the call with the promises and with the whole place of faith here below. It was much for God to say, "I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great." But there was another word, and this was especially dear to the heart of one so blessed himself. "Thou shalt be a blessing." This was to make him not only the object of grace, but the instrument of it. It was to give him communion with God Himself in the activity of His own goodness. "Thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee" (of course, on the earthly side); "and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

Abram then acts on the word of the Lord. "He departed, as Jehovah had spoken unto him." But there was more than one drawback. Lot his nephew went with him and we shall see the consequence of that. Further, Abram not only took Lot, "his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran," but in the chapter before we have a remarkable intimation not brought before us here. It was not that Abram took Terah, but that "Terah took Abram." This was not merely a hindrance, it was a false position as long as it lasted. It acted as an interference with the call of God; for although the call might seem to nature harsh, and that which no doubt man would have been quick to condemn, the word of God was plain — "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." Abram does get out of his country, though hardly from his kindred; but instead of getting "out of his father's house," his father takes him. There was clearly an influence at work that was inconsistent with the call of God. It was not merely that Terah was with him; the Spirit of God has not put it so, and of course it was incompatible with due relationship that a man should or could be said to take his father. It was "Terah took Abram."

Here then was that which positively hindered the accomplishment of the will of God as long as Terah lived. The call of God should be paramount; but the honour due to a father who was not in it must oppose. "Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees." The simple fact is stated in Genesis 11; and one can see that the reason why it is stated there is this. It was purely a question of Abram acting from his own judgment, from himself, and not from the call of God, who therefore does not make it a part of Genesis 12. No doubt, the move was after the call of God spoken of in chapter 12, but inasmuch as it was not the accomplishment of His will, God puts it in the chapter of nature and providence (that is, Gen. 11) and not in that of grace and promise, Gen. 12. We have in chapter 11 simply a list of fathers and sons from the flood, and among the rest Abram and Nahor. Sarai is seen there with no child. This was nature; and had it simply been a question of nature, so it would always have been — Sarai always barren. When grace begins to act, we find the dawning of hope in the heart of Abram (at any rate what we can now well understand to point in that direction); finally God gives the distinct word that Sarah shall have a child. But this was after grace begins to be developed. At first there is nothing of the sort, and it is here therefore we have the account of Terah taking his son Abram and coming as far as Haran, and dwelling there. Accordingly there also we have the days of Terah shown us, and Terah's death.

But now there is another side so distinct that, although the same facts are alluded to, God begins an entirely new unfolding of His mind. In chapter 12. He is not speaking of the family as viewed in nature but of His call. Although Abram believed in God, yet nature was at work and had its way. Accordingly God takes no notice of it here. Thus we see that what looks a great difficulty in the two chapters — a thing which people have often put one against another — is perfectly solved the moment we come to see that the one chapter is the story of the family in nature, the other is the secret of grace now made manifest.

"Now Jehovah had said to Abram, Get thee out." Note that so He "said to Abram," not to Terah. As long as Terah was there, he was the acting person, as indeed he had the claim of father; and if (not God but) you bring a father on to the ground of faith, what is the effect? If he is not in the call of God and you are, what must result from allowing your father's authority to have its way there? It swamps you. It is not that you raise him into the higher regions of faith, but that he drags you down into the quagmire of nature. This is what we may see in these two chapters; so that, spite of the blessed call of God, we have the fact brought before us that Abram remains at Haran and fails to reach Canaan.

At length however "Terah died in Haran;" and what follows? We are told next (ver. 5) that "Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Now what a different tale! Not that everything was according to God, for there is no perfection save in One; but still Abram could now act and not before. Lot was his nephew only, and did not bar the way as his father had done. While he was alive along with him, Abram must needs be subject, but henceforth he was free. Lot might act selfishly and be an encumbrance; but his father, if there at all, must have a father's authority; and so it was. He found himself in a sort of half-way ground, and this was what compromise leads to. It is certainly no longer Ur of the Chaldees, but yet only Haran, and not Canaan. The fact brought before us in the previous chapter explains how it is he can get no farther. Terah, who was not in the call of God, was nevertheless the one who "took Abram" thus far, and Terah acted so positively as a hindrance, that, as long as he lived, Abram could never get on; but the moment that Terah is taken away, as we read, Abram took Sarai, etc., "and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."

There is no failure, so far, in the accomplishment of the purpose of God. When they reach Canaan, what is it that God sets before us? "The Canaanite was then in the land" (ver. 6). Things were not yet according to God. It was not only that Abram's faith shows the weakness of man, but further, the state of Canaan was altogether opposed to that which befits the nature and proper purpose of God. It was not only that the world already left behind by the man of faith was still pursuing its idolatries; but if there were men on earth peculiarly under the curse of God, it was the very race that Satan planted in Canaan. "Cursed is Canaan." What a solemn thing, the meeting of the blessed one, about to be a blessing, with the cursed ones, that God would surely deal with in the day that was coming (and so accordingly we find)! Satan's object by it was no doubt to thwart the purpose of God: but it only gave Him the opportunity of carrying it more thoroughly and gloriously to the enemy's shame and everlasting contempt.

We never understand the importance of our walk here below, unless these two things are distinctly and stedfastly before us, not merely that we are objects of God's tender mercy and personal interest, but that we are called out to Himself, as well as to "the better country" that He has shown us. But He has told us too who has meanwhile usurped possession of it. The heavens are now opened, and we see by the Holy Ghost sent down thence Him who is on the throne of God, interceding for us as cleansed by His blood, and gone to prepare a place for us. The heavens were opened not merely for Him to enter as the victorious Saviour, but they are open still where He is exalted. This is the way in which He is now revealed to us. They will be open until the Lord has brought us there. I do not say that they will be closed after that, but that judgments will fall thence. In grace they are open for us to look now into. He whose blood opened them for us is the One on whom they opened, not for judgment, as we read once in Ezekiel 1, but, as in the very beginning of the New Testament (Matt. 3: 16), that God might express His delight in Him, His Son, the perfect man withal here below.

Let us remember then that we too are identified with God's great starting-point for Abram; we are called out, and blessed, to inherit and to be a blessing. Does the grace of it (and it is not the richest part of our blessing) fill our hearts at all times? Take for instance our ways as members of Christ's body, the church, etc. It is not merely that we come together to acknowledge His mercy to us, which of course we do. Thankfulness should be the first thought of the heart that has been opened by the grace of God. Who are we that now speak to God, looking up and singing praises? Sinners brought out from guiltier evil than that out of which Abram was called. I can understand those who never had sin celebrating His praise, where sense of personal delivering grace is not the special character of their thank-offering before God. But who can understand a soul that is redeemed presuming to begin with anything but hearty thanksgiving for the mercy that has plucked him from destruction, and put him so that he can look up to God and magnify his Saviour? But whatever we begin with should not be the end for us. It is very right that we should feel evermore what it is to be the object of the tender mercy of God, in awakening our hearts and lips to thank Him; but we should go on to praise Him for what He is as well as own all He has done. For now we see how worthy He is, and can delight in what He is even apart from ourselves. The heart can thus go out in adoration of another and a higher character, in praise and blessing as well as thanksgiving.

But I was going to dwell upon another point. It is not only that we are blessed, and that the spring of thanksgiving is touched, and that praise flows forth from those that are blessed; but there is more than this, an activity of love that looks around according to the goodness we have learnt in Him, as well as love breaking out in praises as we look on high and see Him who in our midst praised and taught us to praise before He went there. So we see here: "Thou shalt be a blessing," and "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." Take the occupation of the Lord's day. That which calls forth our hearts, is it only when we gather round the Lord at His supper? Has not such grace and truth as His furnished special occupation all through the day? I should say that its entire course has its calls and place no less than the assemblage at His table, and I say it the more because there is a danger of a little reaction. Time was when men used to think the chief thing worth hearing was a gospel sermon, and when they used often to bear a great deal that tried them to get what was not even a good sermon, longing to hear something that might help, comfort, and strengthen their souls. There are many Christians in that state still. Are we in the enjoyment of better blessings from God? Have we the sense of what His grace has done for us in heavenly places? But do we, as well, keep up the activity of His love in our souls? or are we settling down, content simply to give thanks for the blessing that we possess as children of God ?

Do you suppose that a person can be at the spring of blessing without also knowing more or less of joy in the power of its active going forth? Depend upon it that this is of great importance to the Christian as such and to the assembly; for it will always be found true, that if we are not going forth in the power of blessing, the world in its power of evil steals in upon us. There will be a withering influence that will show itself under perhaps fair forms. Do you say, why should I go and listen to the gospel? What have I to do with the message to the unconverted? You have, you ought to have, a great deal to do with it. You may not be a preacher; but is there no such thing as fellow-working? or even loving interest if not positive help? Are there no hearts that go forth with every word that is said by the evangelist, none to pray with him for every soul that listens, and especially for those awakened by the Spirit? I do say that we are called on, not to be as we once were, with our heads down and our eyes anxiously looking out, if haply we might get something to satisfy our starving souls. By grace we now know God to be no hard master, and we can in our measure see and enjoy the rich provision of His glory. We of all men then should not appear like the bold beggar that having got his morsel goes off therewith content. Can it be that this is what it has come to with any of us? Or that any soul would sanction such selfishness? Take care that we never seem to come short in this respect. Let us look to it that we put far from us every semblance of heeding only our own things but the things of Jesus Christ as to sinners as well as saints. If we value the things of our Lord in the church, so also let us not be slack in the gospel. Let us have this simply and fully before our hearts, to remember that we too have Abram's portion, not only as objects but as instruments and channels of blessing. For indeed it is meant that we should draw from the very spring of grace that is ever flowing, whether for the help of those who are already Christ's, or for those in that darkness out of which we have been delivered by infinite mercy.

There is a fresh point I should point out. "Jehovah appeared unto Abram" — He not only spoke but "appeared," language to me not casual, but intentional. "Jehovah appeared to Abram and said." How it was done, we do not know; but we do know what is written. All that we read the first time is that "Jehovah had said," but now we find "Jehovah appeared to Abram and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land." There is nothing vague any longer, but precise. It is not "a land that I will show thee," but "unto thy seed will I give this land." What is the consequence? There "he builded an altar unto Jehovah," and not this merely, but "unto Jehovah who appeared unto him." It is quite evident therefore to my mind that in this was the needful preliminary to worship, which necessarily awaits the manifestation of the Lord. Worship follows, when He has appeared, and the heart knows Him as He has made Himself known. So Abram, when Jehovah has not merely spoken but also appeared, builds an altar to Him.

Do we know how blessedly true this is in our Lord Jesus Christ? This is precisely what He was showing, but what the disciples were so dull to take in. You remember Philip saying, "Lord, show us the Father," when the Lord Jesus had been showing them the Father in His own self all the while here below. It is what the Holy Ghost soon after made real, not when Jesus was there, but after He had gone, that it might be completely a matter of faith, and that we who never saw but believe might have the joy no less. Need I say, that what the word of God gives us of our Lord Jesus Christ is incomparably more to us than if we had but seen Him ever so long with our bodily eyes? I hope we all really understand this; for it is of no slight moment. We can easily imagine what a wonderful thing it was to have looked on Him and to have heard Him; but no intelligent believer need hesitate to say that we have far more of Himself in and by the word than if we had seen and heard Him all through His life and ministry on earth without that word. Do we not appreciate this? If we believe it, let us give God thanks now as we shall for ever.

I will explain why this is so. Are your eyes and your ears as good as those of God? The word is not merely Peter's or Matthew's or John's impressions of the Lord, but God's truth, though no doubt He employed them to write it. Then think of the advantage we possess in having it not only perfectly but permanently, not left to the shifting sands of memory under the ebbs and flows of the heart, still less to anything before the eye for a passing moment. Here we have God's mind about Jesus faultlessly, completely, and imperishably, in the word of God.

And now is sent down the Spirit that we might see the Father in One who alone could make known the Father. What is the consequence? Wherever the heart surrenders itself to God as He manifests Himself, there is an altar built. This is by grace the way and the effect. It is not therefore the fact, observe, that we had the worship all at once. Not the least trace of it appears till now. Possibly Abram may have built altars on his pathway from Ur of the Chaldees to and in Haran; but this I do say that, if so, God makes nothing of it at all. The only altar up to this He mentions is now in Canaan after He had appeared to Abram. It may well be, in point of fact, the first altar that he ever erected; but of this we must be sure, that it was the first that God thought worth naming to us. What a lesson for our souls !

Abram was now in what answered to the heavenly land, and there the Lord gave a fresh manifestation of Himself. It is when the soul has reached this in faith, when (not merely His word and His work, but) the Lord Himself is personally known to us brought nigh to Him (for this is the point that it sets before us as a principle), that one truly worships. If He has brought me near Him and shown Himself to me in Christ, what can I do but use the altar built for His worship? For "we have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle" — they who prefer Jewish forms and shadows to Christ, now that He is come and has wrought redemption and placed us as children before His God and Father.

But there is more than this. Abram "removed from thence;" but if he pitches his tent elsewhere, he none the less worships. Move or not, Abram has his altar, wherever he finds himself in the land of Canaan. "There he builded an altar to Jehovah, and called upon the name of Jehovah."

Alas! a new scene opens to us. "There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there." Did he ask Jehovah before going there? Did he spread the circumstances of the land before Him? Not a word is said implying it; and I think there is the strongest reason to gather from the silence of scripture that He did not. For its silence, if we are familiar with it, speaks to us no less than what it utters. God brings before us now the sad slip into Egypt of the man who, once called out in the face of difficulty and spite of hindrances which his own unbelief had brought in or allowed, had at last found himself in the place of blessing with God; but, there getting into trial, he goes unbidden into the place of the world's plenty. "There was famine in the land." Why did he not then lay all before Jehovah? Undoubtedly Canaan was not yet as it should be according to God; but had He not called him there? and could not He keep him there? Abram goes down to Egypt to sojourn in it without a word of guidance from Jehovah. It was the direction of common sense, "for the famine was grievous in the land." God states the fact without reserve; He never withholds the truth, albeit to the shame of those He loves.

"And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know thou art a fair woman to look upon; therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife; and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister." How solemn it is when a saint takes and perseveres in the downward path I It is not only now that he departs from the land that Jehovah had shown him, and given to his seed; that he is distressed just like a Gentile by the famine, and bound for a country (Egypt, figure of the world, as Canaan of heaven) where there was abundance without a word from God; but now, further, having put himself into these circumstances of nature, he falls even from its proprieties.

Indeed, I may ask, do you ever find a child of God taking the ground of nature without going below it? When the Christian deserts Christ to stand on character, wonder not if his character utterly fails. Is God with him in it? A Christian is called to be a witness not merely of justice and right but of Christ. Do you look for no more than honesty in a Christian? Where then is his testimony to the grace and truth of Christ? He is content to give up Christ if he is content to be only an honest man. "He does not want to be always praying and singing, preaching and bringing in his religion." To slight Christ thus is a solemn thing. I did not ask for his religion, but that he should manifest Christ. Is he ashamed of Him? Is his conduct such, his bearing such, that it would not do for Christ to be named by him? Is it not to be feared so? He does not like to name Christ, lest persons should ask, Who is this that talks so about Christ? He who by faith behaves in a way which becomes that excellent name does not shrink from speaking of Him. But the unfaithful Christian is content to be known among his own class as an honest man. Will this last since God is not with him? God upholds those who humbly confess Christ. To speak of Christ is to sound the silver trumpet of the Lord, who thereon will own and be with you; but you who do not sound His name, have you the Lord to protect you? Assuredly you will fail.

So it was with Abram at this time. He goes down without Jehovah directing his way, as he seems not to have called on His name: and in Egypt, sad to say, the father of the faithful is guilty of equivocation, with no purpose higher than that of protecting himself at the expense of his wife: not a noble place for a husband, nor a worthy use to make of his wife. But so it is, when one who ought to have been walking in faith falls back on the slippery paths of his own fears and the world's favours.

See another result. Everything now flourishes outwardly. Abram had never been so rich. Had he ever been prospered before as now? Was it not the marked blessing of the Lord? "He had sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she-asses and camels." We do not read of this in past times. But how was it all gained? Oh, if Abram had only now got before the Lord, if Abram had but placed himself before Him that appeared to him, not a single acquisition but would have been a wound in his heart, and the keener too as it was through the denial of his wife. Was this to live Christ?

The Lord nevertheless dealt in His own marvellous way; for He did net smite Abram, or even Abram's servants to thin them down, but "he plagued Pharaoh and his house with greet plagues." How striking are the ways of the Lord, and how full of instruction for us! The righteous government of God was at work: for Pharaoh knew well enough that he had no right to take the woman, even if she were Abram's sister. He was taking advantage of his position to claim what did not belong to him. The issue is that, struck by the evident hand of God, Pharaoh calls Abram and finds out the truth. Now it was Abram's turn to feel. If Pharaoh was plagued, Abram was put to the blush: what a humiliation for him! The very world reproaches Abram. And what can he say? He came without God and he went without honour.

Abram quits Egypt. Pharaoh had learnt somewhat of God's righteous ways: what could he think of Abram? Were his riches to his credit? He had gravely compromised himself, and been rebuked by a heathen; but at least he is on the right road again. "He went up out of Egypt, he, and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the south," and afterwards goes to Bethel "unto the place of the altar which he had made there at the first, and there Abram called on the name of Jehovah" (Gen. 13: 4).

Yet surely, brethren, that passage in Abram's life had not been in vain. Did not grace then as now cause all things to work for good to those who love God? No slight work was that which went on in Abram's soul. He had been compelled to review his conduct, and we see clearly that it was the Lord who brought him back to the point whence he ought never to have departed. Repenting before His sight he returns, and in due time and place is found again a worshipper. But it is in Canaan, not in Egypt, where scripture hints not a word at either tent or altar.

Lot now comes before us. If I do not dwell more on him now, let me remark at this juncture how nobly Abram comes out. There was a strife among their respective herdsmen; and what does Abram do? Lot was the nephew, he the uncle. To Abram, not to Lot, all had been promised; nevertheless, when dispute arises, he stands up for no rights of his. He had learned too well his wrongs. He had been down before the Lord, and is as far as possible from taking a high place, even with one who ought to have been subject.

But mark the blessedness of bowing before the Lord and of refusing to fight for our rights, however natural to the heart. The moment that Abram gives up to Lot, Jehovah appears again; and never was a gift in such distinct and large terms to man as that which He now gives to Abram. Lot "lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan," and chose the best of it. Now Jehovah says to Abram "after that Lot was separated from him, [that is, after he had taken possession of his ill-gotten gains,] Lift up now thine eyes" — how blessed are the words of the Lord! — "Lift up now tine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever."

How sweet for Abram to have trusted in the Lord, leaving all the question, though apparently with Lot, really with Jehovah! When shall we learn to be thus simple and confiding? Assuredly we shall also learn at the same time that there never is a giving up of self that is not answered by the Lord, in His grace and in the sweet assurance of it to our souls, by a better gift still through Jesus Christ our Lord!

GENESIS 14.

I have contented myself now with reading the remarkable scene with which the Spirit of God closes the public history of Abram. We may, if permitted, look a little by and by at the beginning of that which is of a more private and personal nature; but we must now follow up the close of Abram's call with its consequences. It was intended to be of the most public nature in its effects, if not in the fact itself. As already shown, it was not that the secret choice of God was a new principle, — He had always acted on the ground of election in His own mind; but Abram was a person chosen and called out to be a publicly separated witness. This helps us a little more to see the force of that often misunderstood chapter, Romans 11, where we have the figure of the olive tree introduced. Its root is the divine call of Abram into a separate place of privilege, and consequently of testimony on earth — testimony that might be of an outward character simply, as in the case of-the children of Israel, or rise to a higher object as Christians are responsible for now. But the Jews were what the chapter describes as the natural branches of the olive tree. Nevertheless it is plain that God's glory was for the time being connected with that very testimony; and our Lord Jesus Himself was pleased to go into it as minister of the circumcision, and we ourselves now form a part of it, grafted in there by the grace of God. It must be remembered that this is not at all the highest part of our testimony; and it is only referred to now for the purpose of illustrating the difference between what we have had, and what we may have in what follows.

From the beginning of Genesis 12 to the end of chapter 14 is the more public part of Abram's history, which illustrates the dealings of God, not so much with his soul, as bringing him out into a place of testimony for the glory of God here below. He is here seen therefore soon put to the proof; for this is a discipline from which no person escapes here below. It will presently be shown how this bears on the chapter just before us. But I mention it in order to remark, the more definitely, the difference between what we have had already, ending with chapter 14, and what begins in chapter 15.

Here the results soon appear of that which had already come out in the respective ways of Abram and Lot. What took place in the land of Canaan might seem to have not the smallest connection with the struggles of these powers of the earth. But a witness for God, let me remind my brethren, is a very important thing, both to Him who raised it up on the one hand, and to the enemy on the Other. Now we are slow to learn this. The first great lesson of a soul — and that which our hearts feel most (at our starting-point at least) — is when the mercy of God arrests us in the path of our folly, awakens us to our excessive danger, brings us to Himself through our Lord Jesus, and gives us then in peace to enjoy the grace wherein we stand. And there, practically, many of the children of God stop. But there is much more than this, and indeed this is not the first thing that comes out. For the main lesson we have here is very different from what we might have anticipated. If we had had to do with the history of Abram, I do not hesitate to say that we should have begun with Genesis 15. Ourselves believers, we might have thought first of his soul's need, and so of bringing him out distinctly as one quickened and then justified by faith. But God shows us here another thought. It is not as if all this and more is not all-important, and the gospel now makes it quite plain. But here God is pleased to give us first of all a general sketch of the public place of Abram. By "public" I mean what Abram was called out to be as a witness for God.

Now Lot, as we know, had chosen for himself. He coveted what seemed to be, and what I suppose really was, the fairest in the land. For as a single eye is very quick to discern that which concerns the glory of Christ, a covetous one is sharp enough to see its own interest. But there is a truth, beloved friends, that some of us have to learn, deeply it may be, that it is better to trust the Lord's eyes than our own; and that although, no doubt, in the world shrewdness may discern much, yet the world at its best is but vanity and assuredly deceives those who love it most. Nor is it only true that God will expose its folly and evil in the day that is coming; for one of the precious lessons we have learnt from the word is, that now is the time when God deals with us in the way of government, just because we belong to Himself; and being in the public place of testimony for God brings us peculiarly under it. Hence, to illustrate practically what affects ourselves in connection with this, God has been pleased in His grace to put us who believe in His Son in a place not merely to gather blessing for our souls, now that by faith we are enjoying His salvation, but in our little measure to be identified with the glory of Christ in the world. Do we know what it is to be in the place of testimony for the truth of Christ? What is the consequence of it? That things which might once seem little become great, as the great have dwindled wonderfully. Thus the old definitions of great and little well-nigh disappear. And no wonder, as we find while God brings us, little as we are, into connection with His greatest things, on the other hand our little things (or that which flesh, when it wants its own way, would call the least) become of importance because they concern Christ and represent Him either truly or falsely.

Now it must have seemed to Lot a very natural thing to choose what would suit himself, as Abram appeared wholly indifferent where he went. At any rate thus he may have reasoned. Evidently there was not a thought of testimony for God or of faith in this. Abram shows in general one who walked in dependence on God. There was this difference in their character: not that there was not faith and practical righteousness in Lot, nor that there was not failure sometimes in Abram, for we see how clearly scripture has laid both before us: but for all that there was generally this marked difference, that in Lot we see one who profits by his opportunities, wherever he may be, while Abram shows us one who went out, as it is said, "not knowing whither he went." Would Lot have done this? I cannot conceive it. Lot, on the contrary, took good care where he was going, first with whom, and next, when alone, he looked well out for what would be useful to his cattle, that is, to himself. As Abram did not seem to be so very particular, Lot thought he would be; so he chose the best he could see. After all he made but a bad calculation, as men always do in such cases; just because they have come into the place of the testimony of God. Lot never thought of this. It did not enter his account; but God had Lot before Him, and He does not forget it.

And allow me to remind you, brethren, that we too are there. No doubt there are some that understand the truth better than others, having a graver sense of the conflict, and a more solemn feeling of responsibility to the Lord: but whether we have thought of it or not, whether we have weighed it passingly or gravely, there we are. And what is more, the world feels it, and, one may add further, Christians feel it; and therefore they are concerned and occupy themselves with all who are testifying to Christ in a way altogether disproportionate to their apparent importance. It might be a very simple soul, and perhaps ever so young, occupied with work of the humblest kind; but they feel all of them, that here is a person distinctly and avowedly identified with Christ before God and man. Consequently what might pass with others, and produce no remark or feeling at all, draws out at once the judgment of those that see and hear him. So we find in this very case: only here it is a more solemn thing, for in this chapter we have God marking, by what He brought about, and by what seemed altogether remote from what is before us, His decision about the matter.

This comes in, it may be observed, very abruptly. God leaves us to form a spiritual judgment as to the connection of it with what we have had before. For it is always by the Spirit of God, simply following His guidance, that we are enabled to form a distinct and (in the measure of our faith) an assured judgment as to the lesson that God is showing us. Be this as it may, it came to pass in these days that there was war between the kings named. War doubtless was no such uncommon matter; but there was something very unusual in the results of this battle. God indeed ordered things so as to draw unmistakeably the attention of all to Himself. There was a lesson thereby shown to the world, as there was a lesson now taught to Lot, that ought not to be forgotten. I do not say that Lot did not fail afterwards; for he did. But there was a lesson in this which, if Lot overlooked it afterwards, God has preserved for our instruction now.

These kings then came to a conflict, which raged not at all in the far distant east of some of those engaged in the strife. God's witting hand brought it close to the spot where His witness walked. We see them in the vale of Sodom. There things came to an issue that seemed final, as it is said, "the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell there, and they that remained fled to the mountain. And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their victuals, and went their way." Now comes the connection with our story in verse 12. "And they took Lot, Abram's brother's son." Here we find no particular stress laid on, nor express reference to, any part of Lot's previous life. Why so? Because God looks for a spiritual understanding in His people. He has not told us the previous tale of chapter 13 in vain. He looks for our understanding why it was, without further explanation. Yet we may ask here why not Abram? Why Lot? "They took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom, and his goods and departed." This might seem natural enough; but we shall see whether all could be merely natural before we have done with the chapter.

I do wish to impress it strongly as on my own mind, so on yours, my brethren: never forget that we as believers have to do with what is supernatural every day. In no case allow yourselves to be beaten out of the true groundwork of faith for yourselves, nor permit men of the world to drag you down from God's word to what they call "good common sense" — an excellent thing for the world, but wholly short and misleading for the Christian in that which concerns God. And the simple reason is, that we are bound to walk by faith. It is our call. We are entitled to confide in God and His word. What to a man looks so foolish as that? If God is still "the unknown God" to the world, His ear is open to us.

There is a word the apostle uses which perhaps you may never have weighed well, never have had it so before you as to make an impression on your mind; and that is where scripture tells us that "every creature of God is sanctified to us by the word of God and prayer."  Ἔντευξις is not the ordinary word for "prayer." There is a reason for that; because in 1 Timothy 4 it is not the expression of mere want. This indeed is not the idea at all. Ordinary prayer is the drawing near to God, and asking Him for what we have not got; but in this case it is clearly not that, because it is supposed we may have the thing in our possession. But is there therefore to be no going out of heart to God about it? Suppose now it is what we have actually in the house. Common sense would say, "You cannot ask Gad for what you have got."

The fact is, it is the expression of a heart open, not only for God to speak to us, which was always true, but for us to draw near to God. It is intercourse with God that is the point, and not only the expression of want: free, simple, happy, communication with God — such is the idea. And this should be our thought and feeling and way in partaking of anything that God's mercy grants to us, whether we have it at the present moment or not. If we have it not before our eyes, it is before His eyes. He loves us, and cares for us — why should we trouble? Does He really hear us as we speak to Him? We have only to bethink ourselves for a moment in order to rebuke our unbelief. But suppose we have the things needed: are we to be independent? God forbid. If there be no wants to present to God now, have you no wish to speak to God now ? — no sense of the blessing of God upon you? Do you not want to tell Him how greatly He loves you, how truly He is caring for you? This is what is specified here; and in this sense to us every creature of God is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

The word translated "prayer" here, you may not have perceived, is the opening of this intercourse with God by which we can speak to Him about anything and everything — even the commonest matters which concern us day by day. I refer to it because all this is very intimately connected with the strength of our testimony. Abram knew its principle well; but now God has revealed Himself incomparably more fully than in the days of Abram, and our familiarity with God ought to be in the measure of His communications to us. As it is said, "every creature of God is sanctified by the word of God." It must begin with Him. It is first He who speaks to us; then we speak to Him; and the consequence of His so speaking to us is that we freely speak to Him. It was just the want of simplicity and vigour, if not reality, the want of living thus before God, that enfeebled the testimony of Lot. Assuredly power of public testimony depends, after all, on faith in what is unseen, and the resulting intercourse that goes on between God and our souls.

Here it comes out plainly. God reminds us that Lot dwelt in Sodom.. This would at once disclose or recall what Lot's behaviour and unbelief had been; how little his soul could taste in daily life of "the word of God and prayer." Was there not the very reverse? It was not Lot standing only for God, but striving to care for himself. The consequence is, when the strife and turmoil of the battle between the powers of the world take place, there is an end of Lot's settling down for the present. But that which was no small rebuke to Lot was the occasion for Abram to come out as one who walked with God confiding in Him, and who shows us, too, that power of grace which rises above whatever had been personally wrong. There was no doubt about Lot's failure in testimony. But Abram thought nothing about his faults now. What he looked at was a righteous man (for no doubt Lot, spite of all, was righteous) swept away by the contending potsherds of the earth. This drew out his feelings of loving desire for Lot's rescue. "When Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan."

We must not misuse such a fact as this. No doubt we do find, in the history not only of Abram but of Daniel and others, that which could be no kind of direction for the Christian now. Most of us know that to use the superior mind or the strong arm to deal with the world would be anything but suitable for a Christian; but then we must carefully remember that there are things which, though right enough morally, would be quite wrong for the Christian because he is brought into heavenly associations in Christ. This I hold to be a very important consideration for practice, as it is a grave principle to understand in scripture; because otherwise we get either into capricious laxity or into undue severity of judgment. We may begin to reason and conclude that this was a wrong thing on the part of Abram, because it does not become a Christian. If a line of action is clearly outside the path of Christ, does not this decide for us? What were the ways of our Lord when He was here, and what suits Him now (for it is with Him as He is that we are united) is the question for us. We have thus to use the light of Christ to see what is becoming for a Christian now; but it would be altogether a wrong measure to judge Abram by. God had not yet brought in any such unfolding of His mind as we have. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ; it was not fully uttered before. The true light had not shone, before which darkness fades away. Hence there are ways that not only were not wrong in Abram, but that God Himself was pleased to bless him in, regarded in those early days without even a sign of disapprobation; and no doubt this was one of them. I see no ground whatever to suppose that Abram had made any mistake, or acted wrongly, in employing these three hundred and more trained servants that were born in his house, with whom he pursued the retreating kings to Dan.

"And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus. And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people." Have we not a very marked fruit of Abram's testimony here? Just as Lot had come to nothing, which was the end of his lending himself to his own thoughts, and of his desires unjudged; so on the other hand here was the power and honour of God with Abram. It was, I need not say, far from being a natural affair. Here were victorious kings marching home with their armies; and a private individual,? pilgrim and a stranger, was so led and strengthened of God, that the victors are vanquished in their turn and the faulty believer rescued.

But this gives the occasion now for a closing scene of the deepest possible interest in another way, and for one of our grandest types of that which will be displayed in our Lord Jesus at the end of the age. The New Testament makes grave and interesting use of it. "And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter . . . and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God." It will be observed, there is an intentional abruptness in the introduction of the royal priest. It is with distinct design that the Holy Spirit introduces him without the slightest previous mention. He comes forward and he disappears from the scene in a like mysterious way. What are we to gather from this? That Melchizedek was an angel? That Melchizedek was an apparition of the Son of God? No more than it is Shem under a new name. There is no hint of such a disguise here or in any part of the scripture. Melchizedek was a priest, as he was also a king; scripture says so. But there is no ground to suppose that the peculiar manner in which he is here named indicates that there was more than a real and royal and priestly personage in Melchizedek himself. It is the way in which he is introduced by the hand of the Spirit of God that is so remarkable. There is no hint of anything angelic or divine in his person. And one whose ancestry or descendants are expressly hidden stands in full contrast with Shem. Again, he who met Moses on his coming out of Egypt, and who, under very important circumstances, counselled him in the wilderness, was both a priest and king. It was therefore in early days, by no means so uncommon a combination. Prophecy shows that it will be so again in our Lord Jesus, when He reigns over the earth. We may see the principle of it at any rate in David when he wears the linen ephod and dances before Jehovah. This was of course short of the reality; but it showed that even in the days of his throne in Israel, the glory of Jehovah was dearer to him in that which concerned the sanctuary than anything which touched his own person, about which Michal showed jealousy of unbelief fatal to herself. All these might be shadows; but the great and abiding reality is coming for the world, and the Lord Jesus is the One who alone will display it unfailingly. But still, as a matter of fact, there were men who were both kings and priests in those days of yore, and Melchizedek is one. Further, I see no reason to doubt that he was then living, a real king and priest, at this very time, and in this very quarter; but the Spirit of God introduces him in a way that becomes typically most striking, appearing on the scene and vanishing from it after a singular sort.

All this combination of facts was ordered of God for the purpose of making him so much the better a shadow of the glory of the Lord Jesus as the sole royal priest. The very meaning of the word is "king of righteousness," as the apostle Paul insists in Hebrews 7 and after that "king of peace," referring to his place of reign. The person, of course, was before the place. The name of the person was Melchizedek, that is, "king of righteousness," and his relation to the place was king of Salem, which means "peace." These facts the Spirit of God, by the apostle Paul, uses beautifully as a prefiguration of the glory of our Lord. It is true of His person, of that which is come and seen now; and this was particularly telling to a Jew, because the story is introduced in that part of scripture which every Jew acknowledged to be divine. If there was indeed any part which to his mind had supreme place in point of authority, it was the five books of Moses; and here in the first of them, in the earliest section of the word of God, stands out this marvellous intervention of a person who appears after the stirring scenes of the defeated kings, and blesses returned and victorious Abram. Now the father of the faithful was no small personage in a Jew's estimation; he had naturally and rightly a very great place; but here comes one who, suddenly and strangely appearing, occupies an incontestably greater. To him Abram pays tithes, as he also confers blessing on Abram; and, beyond controversy, the sacred homage from the one and the blessing from the other alike imply the stranger's superiority over the patriarch.

The bearing of this can scarcely be exaggerated. It is a prophetic type. In that land there will be a mighty conflict at the end of this age; and in it the guilty people of the Lord will be involved; and when the victory seems to be won that sweeps them away, the mighty power of God by a greater than Abram will interfere. Then that blessed One whom we await, not merely for our own joy and glory in the heavens, but for changing the face of the earth and all things on it, will answer both to the victorious Abram and to the blessing Melchizedek. It is our Lord Jesus at His coming again, and this at the issue of the world's conflicts when all will be reversed to the glory of God.

This closes, we may see, the public testimony. Then will be another scene not so much of testimony as of the application of God's kingdom in power. For the Lord will bring in the kingdom when He comes in His glory. What is going on now unseen, to be then displayed in the kingdom, is proclaimed in testimony. It may be well to say so much here, as often the thoughts of many a child of God are not distinct about the place of Christ as the true Melchizedek.

It is plain that the priesthood in question is altogether peculiar, for Melchizedek offers no sacrifice, nor is there anything of intercession. He brings out bread and wine for man, without a word of sprinkling blood before God. And it is remarkable that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which refers to Genesis 14 and Psalm 110, the moment we come to the exercise of the priesthood of Christ, Melchizedek is dropped, and Aaron is brought forward, and this is what makes the difficulty, though not to a spiritual mind. First of all our Lord is brought before us as the true priest. This is done as early as the end of Hebrews 2. In Hebrews 3 it is still pursued. Our Lord is evidently alluded to as answering to the type of both Moses and Aaron. In the end of chapter iv. Moses entirely disappears, and Aaron remains a type of Christ. But the point there is not at all what Melchizedek was doing, but intercession grounded upon sacrifice. It will be noticed that in this scene of Abram and Melchizedek there is neither one nor other of these things. Melchizedek does not offer up a sacrifice, whatever the ignorance of Fathers or Romanists may dream; it would have been entirely inappropriate here. Nor is there any such thing as intercession in a sanctuary. It is all public. We have seen throughout that the testimony had been public, and so here the action of the royal priest is of this character; whereas the very point of propitiation is that it goes up to God, and the efficacy of it simply to Him, though it may be for man here; and intercession is that which proceeds within the veil in the presence of God. Neither of these had any place in the scene before us.

But let us pursue for a little moment what we find in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to profit by this instance of the beautiful interlacings of the truth, seeing the way in which Old Testament facts are handled by the Holy Ghost in the New.

Aaron beyond doubt is prominently before the mind as the type of our Lord's priesthood in Hebrews 5. This closes with a digression, which goes through Hebrews 6, and then in Hebrews 7 Aaron is dropped, and Melchizedek introduced. What is the reason of so remarkable a break in the chain? It seems to me plain. The apostle wants to show the incontestable superiority of the priesthood of Christ to that of Aaron, although Aaron might be the great high-priestly type of Christ. This he proves by the fact that of old a royal priest came out to Abram who gave him tithes of all and received his blessing. The head of a family like Abram was superior to his descendants by the common acknowledgment that a father is above his sons; so the fact that Aaron was only a branch of Levi, as Levi was of Abram, and that it was Abram himself who paid tithes, showed therefore his subjection to a greater than himself. Nay further, not only did Abram pay tithes to Melchizedek, but more than that, Melchizedek blessed him; and, as we are told, "without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better." The person that confers a blessing is greater than the person that receives it; and so it was that Abram did not pretend to bless Melchizedek. There was an act on Abram's part which implied subjection to Melchizedek, and an act on Melchizedek's part which implied superiority to Abram, giving a double illustration and witness of surpassing dignity.

Such is the argument in Hebrews 7 and nothing can be more complete in its place as against those who cried up the Aaronic priesthood to deny Christ. For now the apostle shows that Melchizedek was not merely a conspicuous personage of old, of the highest authority and with evident glory attached to him, a king and a priest; but, further, he is introduced by Moses in a most striking manner. As far as scripture tells about him, he has "neither beginning of days nor end of life." Not that he was not born, nor that he did not die, but that scripture says not a word about either; never alluding to children, any more than to his father or mother. So far as the history goes there is a blank as to all this. Scripture treats it with absolute silence in order to make him a type of the One, who, as Son of God, clearly had no father or mother, though He might, as born of the Virgin Mary, still be Son of God, as in fact He was; yet He would not have been Son of God, as born of Mary, if independently of this He had not been so in His own divine right and being. And thus it is evident that there was a deeper glory in the person of the Son of God, on which all the glory that was seen in this world hung, that this glory was eternal, and that it belonged to Him in the title of His own divine nature and person from eternity to eternity.

But the royal Psalmist also takes up the same truth hundreds of years after this scene of Abram and Melchizedek was over. Psalm 110. speaks of a certain person in quite as extraordinary a way; a man, David's son, whom nevertheless his inspired father, to the contradiction of mere human nature, owns as Lord, and calls Lord. And He whom David thus calls his Lord, though (as our Lord reminds the Jews) really his son, (the great and insuperable difficulty to unbelief,) takes a place quite peculiar to Himself on the throne of Jehovah.

And He is not merely there on the throne of God, but acknowledged to be priest. "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." He is a priest like Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron: a truth of all-importance to rightly understand the Epistle to the Hebrews. I purposely dwell a little on this, because it is so extremely momentous that we should have simple faith in it, and due understanding of what is meant by it. The meaning is clearly this: — in Aaron's case there was a succession, for his was a priesthood of dying men following each other; the clean opposite of what is said of Melchizedek, (viz. "that he liveth,") not a word being said in Genesis or elsewhere of his death. The apostle uses this as a type of One that ever lives in the fullest sense. Hence Melchizedek is brought before us as a suited type of Christ, who is for ever after that order, instead of dying like Aaron and his sons. Christ stands alone an undying Melchizedek and so needs no successor, the sole and sufficient priest, as the Christian knows.

Melchizedek is, however, soon dropped again. We have him introduced simply to show the glory of his person, and his superiority to Aaron, whether in life, not dying, or consequently alone, as needing no transfer of his functions to successors. But the moment we come to the actual unfolding of priesthood in application to the believer, the apostle takes up Aaron again, and drops Melchizedek. Why is this? The reason is obvious. Though He is the great Melchizedek, He is not acting in that quality yet. What is He doing now? He is interceding in the heavenly sanctuary before God, and this grounded on the propitiation once for all offered for our sins. What has this to do with Melchizedek? Nothing.

Thus you see how perfectly the truth hangs together, and how God uses the person for His own purposes, and then takes up an exercise wholly different. The truth is that the application of Melchizedek, not to the person of the Son in His superiority to Aaron, but to what He will do as Melchizedek, will be at the end of the age, and not before. The force of his bringing out bread and wine to Abram has nothing at all in common with our eating and drinking wine in the Lord's Supper; and it is extremely important to carry this in our minds distinctly and to understand the ground of it. Popery, being blind, has an immense hand in thus leading the blind into this ditch. One of the chief errors of the catholic system of old was applying things to the church which were promised to Israel, and so antedating the dealings of God. It is on this ground that Popery now claims to put down and rule the governments of the world. There is a time coming when the Lord will do so, reigning in Zion, but it will be when Christ takes the reins. The church is incompetent to do it in its present state, as it is also wholly foreign to the grace which is characteristic of the Christian. To suffer with the rejected Christ, while espoused as a chaste virgin to Him who is on high, and looking to reign with Him at His coming, alone suits the heavenly character of the church of God while on earth.

But when our Lord Jesus appears as Melchizedek by-and-by, then will be the day for our glory with Him; and the various traits here prefigured will coalesce in Him, not merely the sole dignity of the priest but the exercise of the priesthood in its character of blessing. Then will be the answer to Abram's putting down of the victorious powers of the world, the deliverance of the poor though faulty people of the Lord (shown by Lot), and finally the bringing out the symbol of what God gives not only for the sustenance of His people but for their joy — the bread and the wine of that day. So it is that the Lord will then act; for this will be one of the wonderful differences between the Lord Jesus as the priest on His throne and all others that have ever governed in this world. It is the sorrowful necessity of those that govern now that they must take the means of maintaining their dignity and grandeur from the people whom they govern; that even the poorest contribute to that which the world owns as greatness and majesty. It must be so; it is the necessity of earthly glory which never can rise above its source; for the haughtiest monarchy of the world is after all founded, whatever the sovereign gift and ordinance of God, on the least contributions of the least people on earth. But when creation is arranged according to the mind of God, and when His kingdom comes in its proper power and majesty, how different! It will be His prerogative to supply all. The instinctive sense of this was what made the people wish the Lord Jesus to be king when He was here below. When He miraculously fed the multitudes with bread, they as it were said, This is the kind of king we want — a king that will give us plenty of food without our working for it.

And doubtless the day is coming when the kingdom will be so ordered. That which the corrupt heart of man would like very well now, to avoid toiling in the sweat of his face, the Lord will give, according to His own goodness, when man is bowed down as well as broken and the riches of God's grace are no longer made the cloak of man's selfishness to His dishonour. This is one of the great distinctive features of that future kingdom, and Melchizedek shows it here. It is not only that there is food for the hungry, but he brings out bread and wine for the conquerors. That is, it is not merely the meeting of the necessities of man, but God acting after the victory is won according to His bounty and as is due to His own glory. And so it is that in the great day of the coming kingdom God will do these wonderful things on man for the earth. But mark His wise and righteous way — not before the cross, that is, the mighty work of the Son, is a fact; not before the Spirit of God has wrought to bring the souls of those very men into the acknowledgment of Him that wrought it, and into the appreciation of the value of that atonement which was accomplished on the cross. God will have wrought this work in the remnant of His people whom He will make a strong nation, when the day arrives for the Lord Jesus to manifest Himself in the exercise of His Melchizedek priesthood — not merely to be the anti-typical Melchizedek, for this He is now.

At present He is not yet bestowing His Melchizedek favours; but when that day comes, it will be, I repeat, for the exercise of the priesthood, and not merely the glory of that one sole priest. The need of man too will be secured in that day. The people will be prepared for blessing. If there will be power and glory, it will be the portion of a people poor in spirit, confessedly contrite and broken down, sensible of the mercy that God had shown their souls, and made honest enough by grace to confess their sins, a people in short that will have found all their boast in that Saviour whom they once despised and in that which was their abhorrence. Then it will not be a base and selfish seeking of what merely suits themselves and allows them to vegetate in idleness. Not so; but it is the day for the King to lavish what He has Himself wrought, and for God to manifest what was ever in His heart. For God has always longed to bless men; but He awaits the day when He can righteously as well as freely bless them. Alas! man has never yet been in the state wherein he can be blessed. For to bless him when his heart is at enmity to God, where would be the good of it for man, not to speak of God? Would it not be, on the contrary, the grossest mockery to pour out blessing on man who, being unrenewed and unrepentant, must after all be cast into hell? Such is the state of every man naturally; no showers of blessing from above, if this were all, could change the soil. In his natural state he is not fit for heaven, nor even for the earth under the reign of our Lord Jesus, but only to be cast into the place that is prepared for the devil and his angels. But in the day that is coming the Lord will have a people born of God, washed every whit clean, and rescued out of the hand of the spoiler, by His own redeeming grace and power; and then we see the Lord Jesus bringing out all that will manifest the goodness of God and glory of God, making the heart of man to rejoice before Him, and his face glad for ever. Then shall man know what is the God he has to do with, when he sees reversed and set aside and rooted out every vestige of Satan's old lie that God does not take pleasure in goodness and in lavishing the fruits of it on man here below.

This then is the scene that is soon to open, surpassing fable indeed, and yet true. Mark too how all confirms it in the context. Christ is the antitype of Melchizedek, the king of righteousness and afterwards of peace. Then will be the day of peace founded on righteousness. But further He is the "priest of the most high God." Glorious title! It is not merely "Jehovah," nor merely "Almighty." The almightiness of God comes out in protecting His poor pilgrims; and His character of Jehovah, as of old in judgment when the people were under the first covenant, so under the second, particularly when He shows Himself the unchangeable God, who cleaves to His purpose of blessing a people that were alas! changeable more than all others on the earth. But "the most high God " — what is its force? Just this. When all other oracles are dumb, when every false god becomes, like Dagon, a fallen and dishonoured stump before the true ark and Him whose glory dwells there, then and then for the first time, since Satan foisted idol-worship into the world, shall every idol vanish out of it, and their worshippers be ashamed before the only true God. Then shall God have His place as "the most high God."

Yet He is not only this, but "the possessor of heaven and earth." When will that be, and what will display His possession of heaven and earth? We all know He is so now in real title; but when is the due testimony to it on the earth? Where the power that enforces it? As far as one sees, man is the possessor of the earth now; and if one bows to scripture, who can deny that the devil is the god of this world, the prince of the power of the air? It is only faith can say that God is really so; but in that day it will be evident to all. His possession of heaven and earth will be manifest when the Lord Jesus comes. For whence does He come? Not from Bethlehem then, but from heaven. He will come from God's right hand and put down all contrary powers here below, and the heavens and earth, long severed, will be manifestly at one. The mind of heaven will be no longer as now in contrast with the mind of the earth. Then will come the reconciler, the blessed One who will unite, for God's glory and under His own sway, "all things, whether they be things in heaven or things on earth" — even in Him "in whom we have obtained an inheritance."

This then is the evident meaning of the glorious foreshadowing brought before us in this divine tale of Melchizedek.

I need dwell no more on the history, except to point out one moral feature, the beautiful manner in which Abram, thus blessed, and deeply affected by both God's dealings on the one hand and this remarkable confirmation of his faith on the other, answers the king of Sodom, who, feeling all thankfulness for the mighty intervention of divine power through Abram, offers unsought to give Abram the goods. But Abram at once shows us that faith is more generous still, knowing what it is to be rich toward God, and refusing to tarnish His testimony by anything that would enable the king of Sodom to say, "I have made Abram rich." At the same time he pleads for the others. Whatever may be the self-renouncing grace of Abram, he in the largeness of his heart forgets not what is due to those who had not his faith. He asks for Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre, who had helped him. It was only and quite right that they should participate in the spoil.

I need not spend many words in exploding the petty and nauseous hypothesis which regards the whole chapter, the battle of the kings and the interview of Melchizedek and Abram, as a traditional patch worked in at this point. Certainly there is a discriminating use of the divine names in the different portions of Genesis as everywhere in Scripture even to the Revelation of John in the New Testament; but only the credulity of an infidel could have thence been induced to believe that Genesis, any more than the Revelation, is a compilation of distinct documents by differing writers.

A rationalist may be learned; but he is necessarily ignorant of God's mind in Scripture, as his false principle leads him to deny it, and hence not even to seek it, as the believer does who sees in the word of God the Spirit's testimony to Christ.

GENESIS 15.

There is a sensible difference between the portion we are entering on now, as compared with the chapters we have had before us. They have given not only a distinct, but also, as it appears to me, within their own line, a complete view of that side of the truth which it was in the mind of the Spirit of God to convey. In this way chapters 12, 13 and 14 form a whole; and, as we have already seen, the great thing there before God was the call of Abram, and its consequences from first to last, the public step that He was Himself taking in His own ways, in having a man, not only walking by faith, as others had done before, but set apart openly to Himself as none had ever been before. I do not mean merely separate spiritually now, for no doubt Abel was so, to begin at the beginning. No one can doubt that, before the difference between him and Cain, or the terrible issue came out into view, the moral distance between the first brothers had been existing, and was felt, not only by themselves, but by every one else. It is plain that Cain's own spirit found it intolerable; and it was just this conviction which he resented, and which carried him to lift up, first his hand in violence against his brother, then his voice in irreverence and rebellion against God, as his heart had been a stranger to Him all through.

Here is another thing. For the first time we see the efficacious principle of a separate witness, to whom God conveyed a promise, and a promise too that had to do not only with what was unseen but with what all could see, after coming out at God's word. The latter was indeed the earlier of the two; for Hebrews 11 shows us that, first of all, Abram was actuated by faith in leaving the country to which he belonged, and when he came into the land that God promised to give him, then his eyes were lifted higher still. Thus does the Spirit of God show us the introduction of the great principle which God has never given up since, but has always been carrying out. He set it publicly before Israel in an earthly way, and now He is giving it effect after a heavenly sort. This seems to be the subject of chapters 12, 13, 14. That it is concluded there is manifest from this, that we have a scene which brings distinctly before us the last great conflict — the battle between the kings of the earth, and the victory which the man of faith enjoys by the power of God, even over the powers previously victorious. In short, it is there we have the type of the great "Priest upon his throne" in Melchizedek, active toward God as well as man, blessing man in the name of the "most high God," and blessing the "most high God" on the part of man. All this will assuredly find its due place and season when Christ appears in glory.

To this I have referred in a brief summary, to show you that there is a complete whole in these chapters, starting with the call, and ending with the glory; so that we have the general public picture of the life of faith, with its worship, its drawbacks, failure, and recovery; the disclosure of the earthly mind too, its covetousness, and its disasters; faith's triumph over the world it had left behind, and the sudden appearing of Him who will display the glory of God in the blessing of man, and the harmony of heaven and earth; all brought before us within the compass of these three chapters.

But what follows seems rather to come back again, and make a new start. That this is true is most evident from Genesis 15, as compared with those before it, and indeed it relieves one of no little difficulty when seen to be so intended by the Spirit. For if it be viewed simply as a continuance of the former chapters, would it not be very extraordinary to hear how Abram is justified by faith? There is naturally, therefore, a fresh beginning. Of course, it is not denied for a moment that what took place at this time did literally occur after the scene with Melchizedek; but we are now speaking of the ulterior and deeper aim which the Spirit of God had in recording these matters. It is a question not only of facts, but of God's mind in His word; and we are seeking to regard it as a divinely given source of profit for ourselves, and of gathering from the Lord why it is; for we may with reverence inquire, and indeed are bound to inquire, seeing this is the way in which we grow in the knowledge of the mind of God.

Why then, we ask, does the Spirit of God introduce the theme at this particular place? It appears to me that here we have a fresh start, and another course of divine lessons for our souls, in looking at the new dealing with God with His servant. And it will be shown further that there is a series, as it is not merely an isolated fact; but! just as we saw in what went before, a chain of circumstances all connected one with another, and completing the subject as a whole. A similar principle governs here as there. There is this remarkable difference, that here we come to what is far more personal, as one may call it. We have no longer public testimony. What we have had bears this character right through from first to last. But here another thing is impressed on us, and very important in its place — that we are not merely witnesses. Here, accordingly, personal faith comes first before us.

Some of us must be more or less aware of the danger to the soul from being so occupied with that which is public as to neglect what is personal. Take, for instance, the gathering together of the saints to the Lord's name — our assembling around His table. Who does not know that, however precious the privilege, however closely bound up with the Lord's glory, however full of comfort, and blessing, and growth to our souls, if used aright, there remains much which is not a question of testimony, but of the exercise of faith individually, carrying one more into God's presence, and intercourse between Him and our souls?

Here, at any rate, in the wonderful book before us, begins a new series of instruction: God is showing His own dealings with the soul of Abram, not viewing him so much as a witness for Him before others. He is looked at alone as in his house, but, above all, with God. Every one could see when Abram had left his country, and set out for a promised land; they could see too that he sometimes failed for a season to accomplish what was before him. And it is all most instructive. Then, again, his pitching his tent, or rearing an altar, was all visible, and meant to be so. So, further, the victory over the powers of the world was that which men generally could not only hear of but feel: it was a real and public testimony. But had this been all, it would not have met what God meant to give, and what He loves to give, for the blessing of the soul. There is such a thing as living too much in the public walk and activity of a saint, to the neglect of that which is more personal. This seems precisely what the Spirit of God enters into here from chapter 15 — the dealings of God with the soul individually, beginning with its wants, but leading on to a far deeper communion with Himself.

The first thing to notice by the way is, "After these things." This is the usual way of marking off a new division or a fresh subject. You will find a similar expression at another and similar section in Genesis 22. There clearly begins a line of things quite distinct from what preceded. So it is here. "After these things the word of Jehovah came unto Abram." We have not had. this expression before, although we have had "Jehovah said to Abram." What makes it more remarkable is, that in the counterpart of it in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 7), we are told that "the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham" at that very time. Thus it is the more striking, because, although He did appear, it is not so said in Genesis 12. It was according to the mind of God only to speak of His speaking to Abram. Of course it remains perfectly true that He did appear, but not a word of it is mentioned in the history, which adds indeed to the point of it, by the seventh verse of the same chapter, where it is distinctly declared that God appeared to him; and worship is thus grounded on it, that is, on the positive revelation of God to his soul, and not merely on a revelation from God. Such, too, is the form in which God presents that which has come out now in Christ our Lord. There the Father was. showing Himself in Him. We are called to the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and truly our fellowship is with both, the Holy Ghost being the power that gives the enjoyment of it. Thus it is not merely His words we have, but the showing of Himself. So one of the disciples said, "Show us the Father," though this indeed He was ever doing, but they were dull to see it. An hour was coming, however, when they should see it. This was the hour for christian worship, which is the answer of the heart, the precious and spontaneous effect of the revelation of God to the soul.

Here then, as one sees, is a new form we have not had before. It is not merely that Jehovah "said," still less that Jehovah "appeared," but, suitably to the fresh lesson of the Spirit of God, "After these things the word of Jehovah came unto Abram." What "the word" calls for is faith. There we discern at once the reason of it; and faith is the groundwork of all dealings between the soul and God. As, on the one hand, it is "the word of Jehovah" that came to Abram; so on the other, faith answers to His word; and this is the point of truth illustrated here.

But there is another trait noticeable, the wisdom of God in not always putting — indeed we may say never — the highest truth first. He thinks of the soul's need. This is of great moral interest. Even if it were the Lord Jesus from heaven speaking to Saul of Tarsus, still after all He is dealing first with his conscience, though by the light of the glory in Himself. There might be that which Saul, afterwards pondering, enters into far more deeply than when he was converted; but the thing that was blessed to his soul was a divine person, yet a man in heaven, judging all, but in perfect grace, and not something that supplied merely a wonder for the mind to be occupied with. This was not the point. He was made nothing of before the Lord. No flesh may glory. One can glory, but only in the Lord. And so I find here. This scene may not be at all so deep, high, or large in its character as what follows, but it just marks the way of the Lord in dealing with the soul to justify it.

The truth is, when the "word of Jehovah" comes to a man, it not only finds wants but awakens them. Such is its just fruit. It is not merely that we are needy. The present case of Abram was not that of one disturbed and anxious about its condition. Abram long ago had been quickened of God, and indeed had walked in His ways, as we know, for many years before this; but God was pleased to make the chapter that comes before us the first of a new series for the opening of His truth in the more hidden and personal life of His servant. The first thing seen here is that He sets him in perfect confidence in Himself.

"Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." No doubt there was a beautiful suitability in this revelation after what had just passed. Abram had refused what the world had to give, and God graciously owns this with complacency, and announces Himself his sufficient reward. If God were his shield, Abram need not fear the jealousy of the Canaanite, nor even the hostile reprisals of the kings he had defeated, nor yet from any other quarter. "I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." God would be true to His own word. Here was a bulwark of protection, and source of supply, at once secured to His servant. But mark the effect. It awakens the sense of wants, and draws out too the expression of those wants. If Abram had long felt in secret any such desire, there is no reason to suppose that he had ever told it out to God before. Now he does. God had given him the land of promise, but with this he was not content, and God meant that he should have more. His unfolding Himself to him in this new way leads Abram to breathe out what he had perhaps never defined to himself before. He was not content with the general terms God had hitherto used to him. He says, "Lord Jehovah, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?" Where was the value of God's being ever so great a reward, if after all he was childless, "and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?" What matter the lands he might have, if all was to go to his servant?

Now I do not say that this is by any means the highest point of Abram's faith; on the contrary, it seems to me far from what we see not long after. But still there was reality, and this is assuredly one point of moment for us here — that God would always have us in the truth of our state, whatever this may be. Suppose a person is not at ease about his sins, let him not gloss it over. If God is dealing with his soul, He brings it clearly out If to be fully blessed, the person is made as unhappy as he can be, and in fact the same grace which gives to the soul the assurance that God blots out and forgives also brings the soul to look at its own sins to the very depth. So again, yet more, supposing a person is clear enough about his forgiveness, still he may be troubled about the sin that dwells in him. This is another exercise for souls. But, whatever the occasion, God will always have reality; and though He encourages in grace, that He begins with it is what we find in His dealing with Abram now. He sounds Abram's wishes and thoughts, and He brings out from his lips what was at the bottom of his heart. He who had the promises was not satisfied, because he had not a son to inherit all that God had given him. And so he takes this place — "Behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir."

Soon the word of Jehovah comes to him again. "This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." And then he is taken abroad, and bid to "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars if thou be able to number them; and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in Jehovah, and he counted it to him for righteousness" — that very fruitful scripture, which the New Testament uses over and over again for the most important purposes. In all these, however, it will be observed, that the object is to meet the soul at the starting-point individually, which is exactly what I am showing in the account of Abram, though in fact the thing occurred in Abram's history after he had been a believer some time. Still, even the New Testament shows that life is not justification, so that the truth abides substantially alike everywhere. But even though quickened, a person cannot go on stedfastly, or enter into the mind of God fully, until he is clear as to the grave point of righteousness. This too gives us an instructive lesson for ourselves in having to do with others. It makes us feel the incomparable mercy that God has shown us in this respect; for if there is one thing that He has been pleased to bring out into distinctness, and to give the simplest soul to enjoy through faith in Christ and His work, it is that personal freedom, and deliverance from every question, which it is our privilege now to enjoy; and I believe that a greater mercy there cannot possibly be for the believer individually.

Very likely what first arrested one was something quite different. It may have been with us as it was with Abram. Many of those called out in our day were brought into and occupied at first with the public ways of God. What we had understood as the church was learnt to be a mere ruin. We had received from God truth as to His own will and counsels about us, as Abram had; but God wrought, and powerfully too, in another way. Not of course that any one could assume in such a state to have more than a very partial insight into God's mind in that respect. But this one may say, that unless a soul be at one time or another — perhaps not always at the start — brought into clearance, into thorough enjoyment of its own place by grace through faith, the public walk of faith in testimony and worship will not always possess its charm, still less will the soul always hold it in power for the Lord's glory. The real reason, one will find, why souls (and not infrequently, grievous to say) slip out of the place of witness to Christ, is that they have never been thoroughly broken down as individuals. They have never really been brought into that which would make the preciousness of Christ alone, and liberty by and in Him, enjoyed by their souls. They have slurred over the great matter of personal clearance with God. The public life, in short, has been not only that on which the soul first entered but where it abides, and this entails an unconscious escaping from the question of finding and getting the answer to our wants personally with God.

Now this seems to me of no small moment, not only for ourselves, but also in dealing with the persons we meet from day to day. Were it only a question of what is public, it would not bear the stamp of the truth of God. It might be true, but still there would be something wanting for spirituality of soul.

I believe it, therefore, to be a matter of profound thankfulness to our God that He has not only brought out from His word the path of faith in worship and public walk, and given some few to enter into it more or less, but He has brought the same souls into the liberty with which Christ makes free. Doubtless there are differences of apprehension, and there must be so among the people of God; we are not all equally spiritual or simple. But it remains true that God has of late wrought so that we should by grace enjoy both these aspects of the truth, the public and the personal, and that the very same testimony which on one side of it has made clear to us what is publicly for the glory of the name of the Lord Jesus, has brought the word of God unto our souls to establish us in His righteousness more clearly, and with greater power, than we ever knew before we trod that public place of testimony. Can I not appeal to the souls that read these words for the truth of them?

But as some despise what is public in desire for the supply of personal need, so others may merge all in what is public. There is danger, therefore, on either side. The general testimony may expose to the danger of neglecting the more personal part of the truth. As we see, it was not so with Abram; and it is of great consequence that we should look to this for ourselves, if we are not in perfect peace, and for souls generally.

Never assume that those who bear the Lord's name in Christendom are personally clear before God. If they are in thorough departure from the mind of God ecclesiastically, they are just as ignorant and unestablished as to the soul. It is a good thing to bring them out of all that hinders them; but seek far more than that. Do not fail to probe the soul as to the consciousness of its place with God. Do not be content that they should hear a little of what is meant by the assembly; that they should see the importance of what it is to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. This is well, and also most important; but there is a nearer want, which may never have been fully faced and met. Can the person take the place now of standing before God in calm and constant confidence, without spot or stain? Does he know what it is (for that is the form the truth takes for us) to be not only justified by faith, but dead to sin, and crucified to the world? Sometimes, through unwillingness to offend, or assumption that a believer must know, we are apt to slur over these matters, just as if, because they have taken a public stand, all the rest must be settled. Often it has never been so; and very generally, if not always, it will turn out that those who have slipped aside from the testimony are men that never enjoyed the individual clearance of their souls. "That day" may show that all who have departed from what is due to the name of the Lord Jesus were weak personally. Indeed, if we ourselves come to search, looking back, and weigh that which they have talked, or (it may be) preached, do we not see ground enough to infer that there had always been a lack there? No wonder that the public walk failed, if the personal faith was never according to the just measure of the truth of God.

This then is the prominent point here; and you will observe that in this chapter Abram does not rise above the answer to his wants. Let none slight what is so needful and important in its season. It is no use to be asking for great things, if there be an unsatisfied want that is near the heart; and this was the case with Abram. Undoubtedly God meant all through to have given him a son; nevertheless He would have Abram's heart thoroughly searched, and sends His word purposely to bring out what was there, meets him where he is, answers the faith that was exercised, and gives him further enlargement, with a token by which he should know that he should inherit the land. Thus his heart is first drawn out about a son, and if a son, then an heir. The inheritance follows, though after intervening sorrow and trial.

"And he said unto him, I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord Jehovah, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when the fowls came down upon the carcase Abram drove them away" (vers. 7-11). It was of course no question of expiation here, but of confirming the divine grant of the inheritance; and in the character and variety of the animals slain God (as it seems to me) took into account the weakness of faith that asked the sign. He does not decline to give Abram the bond that he asked, or to make all sure by death. (Compare Jer. 34: 18, 19) But it was not to be made good without tribulation as well as patience on the part of the seed. "And when the sun was going down," more followed for his discipline and our instruction, which was very appropriate as a sign of this: "a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him." You see it is not one that stands in the light of God, but one that lingered in the region of his own wants, and of all the sorrow that belongs to wants connected with such a world and such a state.

"And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full (vers. 13-16).

Ultimately we find the land of promise secured to Abram as punctually as in a map. "When the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces" (ver. 17). Jehovah knew what was in Abram's mind, and so He enters into this covenant — "Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites" (vers. 18-21).

Throughout the chapter, then, it is what man wanted, and this made it a suited scene for illustrating justification. It was not God appearing, but the word that came, and Abram believed, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness. Jehovah had adapted His word to bring this about by saying, "I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." Then Abram asks and has the promise of a son and heir out of his own bowels, his seed to be as the stars for number. The pledge follows whereby he should know his inheritance of Canaan. It is sealed by a sacrifice; and the horror of great darkness which fell on sleeping Abram seems to be in keeping with the prophecy of affliction for his seed in a strange land, however surely Jehovah would judge the nation they should serve, and they in due time come again to Canaan when the iniquity of the Amorites was ripe for divine vengeance. So it was in fact as we all know.

A smoking furnace and a lamp of fire passing between the pieces point to this too, while the same day Jehovah covenants with Abram, marking the limits of the land and the devoted races of Canaan. Throughout it is the wants of man on the earth, and God securing the answer, in His grace, by sacrificial death. It is the earthly people to be delivered by judgment on their enemies in and out of the land. Those who fall under the judicial dealings of the Lord are met in grace with definite pledges for their tried faith; and the prophetic word, excellent as it is for all, casts its light as from a lamp on the dreary scene of man's lawlessness where the sword of the Lord clears the way for the sceptre according to His mind. In none of these passages do we see the counsels of grace for heavenly glory. It is first the individual justified by faith; and next the people to pass through tribulation, but to be saved at the end of God's allotted time.

GENESIS 16.

But Abram did not know how to wait; and Sarai takes no happy part in the action of this chapter. It is first "that which is natural," though we can also add, "afterward that which is spiritual." Flesh is impatient, and seeks at once the accomplishment in its own way. She proposes her Egyptian bondrnaid, Hagar, and, Abram hearkening instead of walking by faith, the maid conceives, and her mistress is despised. The Epistle to the Galatians gives the certain clue to what we else might never have understood. It is the covenant of Sinai which she represents, answering to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. The law works not peace but wrath, not the accomplishment of the promise but fleshly pride, and a child born in sorrow who cannot be heir. What a contrast to blessing and praise through the royal priest in chapter 14, or the altars of chapters 12, 13! If the justified man take up the law (save to convict others), no wonder if the issue be disappointment on all hands. Such is the solemn admonition of our chapter. The law is good if one use it lawfully; but it is not applied rightly to righteous persons, but to lawless. The believer has no more to do with it for himself now, than Abram then should have taken Hagar. It is interesting to observe that as Hagar was really of Egypt and a slave, so she typically is mount Sinai in Arabia, the covenant that genders to bondage (Gal. 4). The flesh, the world, and the law work together, and the gospel delivers the believer from all by the death of Christ, as unbelief exposes to mischief from them all.

GENESIS 17.

But now we come to another scene of a wholly different nature. "When Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me and be thou perfect." What a change! We see here that it is no longer Abram bringing out what was concealed in his own heart, but God unfolding Himself with a greater fulness than He had ever been pleased to do before with Abram or indeed any one else. Here is the then characteristic revelation of Himself, and farther than this none of the patriarchs ever advanced. El Shaddai (God Almighty) is the substance of the distinctive truth on which the fathers flourished. Here was that which especially became their joy and their source of strength. This they learned in the face of all difficulties and of every foe. "I am the Almighty God."

We must not look at these words merely from the blessedness into which we are brought. It were well to reflect how such a revelation must have told on Abram. He had just before this been proving how feeble he was, and how little he could see before him. He had experienced the danger of listening to his own wife. What ill-feeling followed as the immediate consequence and what trouble there was likely to be in store! Now we have God revealing Himself, though of course in a grace suitable to those He was blessing. Still it is not in view of man's wants on earth, as in chapter 15. There, as we have seen, Abram had been faithful, he had not only conquered the enemy's power but refused the world's honour in his jealousy for the Lord; who thereon speaks to him, and, if one may so say, rewards him. Abram accordingly asks according to his own measure. He thinks of what would be sweet and comforting for him then, but it was connected with himself; and so, again, what the Lord shows him is a vista, bright in the end, connected with his seed and with the land which was to be their own. It was all consequently of a comparatively narrow character, gliding into prophecy as to Israel and the land. Not so here, and for the simple reason that now there is a still deeper lesson to be taught and learnt.

It is not failure by the way; this we have had in chapter 16. It is not merely want supplied, most true and important in its place, and useless to be slurred over. How vain to ignore what we do lack, and talk of things we do not feel! Abram brought out what he felt, and God met him there most abundantly.

But now there is far more than this; not what Abram feels or wants, but what God wanted for him and loved to give him. God therefore imparts the richest revelation ever made known up to that time. "I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly." What was the consequence? No horror of deep darkness follows now, no deep sleep falls on him here. "Abram fell on his face;" nor was this all: "God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations." Those enumerated in the end of chapter 15 were the enemies, the races that had usurped the land and were to be subdued; but now a far higher range of things opens. Abram should have a child, and be the father "of many nations." It is evident therefore that the circle is immensely enlarged, and all in pure grace. Abram has not asked a word; nor does he seek any pledge or token.

It is not Abram now that presents what God had, as it were, suggested and drawn out of him, what was then in his heart, and what was of importance to be forced out because it was there. Far other things are here. Abram had been humbled, feeling his weakness and his foolishness, and Sarai's too. Accordingly God now, out of nothing but His own grace, unveils Himself in this special manner: "I am the Almighty God: walk before me and be thou perfect." If He was the Almighty God, it was not merely a question of enemies now. Not a single word is said about them. It would have been unsuitable at this time to have talked of putting down this or that people. They do not require God's almightiness to deal with them; and Abram had already counted on His power upon this fresh revelation of Himself; and surely not in vain. But He needed to be the Almighty God to bung about the blessedness He is here speaking of. The connection of El Shaddai, I repeat, is not with putting down foes, but, wonderful to say, with Abram's walk before Him! "Be thou perfect."

What an introduction of Abram to new privileges! What a groundwork to go on! There he was, a stranger, surrounded by those who wished him evil, and after having just proved his own weakness. No matter what all else might be: "I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be thou perfect; and I will make my covenant between me and thee." Is it not intensely personal too? All the questions that could rise up as a matter of trial, all thoughts of disappointment, have now disappeared. God had already met his wants as a man; and if these had not been perfectly met, would there have been the same suitability in this fresh vision? But they were: the void for his heart would be filled; nothing in this respect could trouble more. The one thing that remained lacking for Abram's present comfort, a son and heir, God would take in hand. His wife's expedient had only brought sorrow on them all by her haste. He had everything else. But now he leaves all in the hands of God, who here speaks after a wonderful way.

After God has brought in Himself in His almightiness before Abram, He speaks of the land for ever given to him and to his seed. But not a word of this in the first instance. It was of all importance to Abram that there should not be a word about his prospects till after the revelation of God Himself. God does not even say, "I am thy God." He does not connect Himself with Abram in any such way. The first word here was the simple revelation, "I am the Almighty God." On this Abram's heart rests. It is not Abram seeking it of himself with God, but God unfolding Himself to Abram. Such is the great thought, and this as "the Almighty." "I will make a covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly." How it was to be He does not yet explain; but it follows in due time.

Then see the effect on Abram. He never felt so overwhelmed in the presence of God, just because he had never been so near Him in spirit before. "He fell upon his face, and God talked with him." Yes, Abram is in the dust before Him. It is not worship at the altar, nor a sacrifice to secure a promised gift, but communion: God deigns to talk with Abram. His falling on his face is not conviction of sin, or darkness of soul, but lowliness before God. He is really far nearer God practically than in Genesis 15, and can confide more simply in His word. Then he had unsettled questions: then too a horror of darkness; and failure ensued in chapter 16. But here is the blessing of Abram personally, the establishment of an everlasting covenant between himself and his seed, and the promise of many nations and kings.

Notice further the expression of communion. "God talked with him." It is so put purposely by the Spirit of God; for He had nowhere else used this language before. It serves, I have no doubt, expressly to show nearness of intercourse; and a very weighty thing it is. Such is the force we see in 1 Timothy 4, where we are told of the wondrous place into which we are brought, far beyond that of Abram (though the scene we have before us may be viewed as a kind of premonition and shadow of it), that "every creature of God is good," — "for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer," that is, by free intercourse with God in His grace.

Here in Abram's history we have it. If the "word of God" comes in Genesis 15 and in the chapter which follows, as we have seen, now we have this familiar intercourse with God in chapter 17. The word "prayer" in 1 Tim. 4: 5, as is well known, is not the ordinary expression of wants. It is not the word for supplication; which has its own place and a very important one too. However blessed we may be, we never get out of that need here below. Were any one to assume now that, because we have intimacy of fellowship in Christ, we cease to be in the place of need, and no longer are called to persevere in prayer as the expression of our dependence on God, need one say what a dishonour to Him is done, and what a downfall must be at hand? But still there is something more than prayer; there is the enjoyment of intercourse; and where souls do not enter into this, where they cannot get near enough to God, so to speak, and do not habituate their souls to His talking to them in His word, and their free pleading before Him, which is what the Christian is entitled to now (I am not speaking of formally kneeling down and presenting our needs, but of being able to draw near to God and speak about everything), there is a great lack in the private personal life of the Christian.

It is well to note that the intercourse in the scene before us is the fruit of God's revealing Himself more perfectly to the soul. Thus all was founded, not on a fresh start taken by man, but on His gracious ways with the soul. It is far from the vain idea of a self-consecration, or the higher life that men prate about, however one may share their protest against the habit of others to go on sinning with a measure of contentment, or at least with a sense of necessity that so it must be. The reverse is seen here; even God's unfolding Himself by a fuller revelation of His name. He was making Himself known in a way that never was heard of before. It is one thing for man to summon up from his own mind what he would say to God; quite another what God says about Himself as the suited revelation for the blessing of a man's soul. Here there can be no doubt about its character. He appears to Abram, and says "I am the Almighty God." He does not even say He is the Almighty God to him. It was not called for.

When a soul is young in the ways of grace, God links Himself with him, vouchsafing various helps to the soul that yet knows Him feebly, unable to enjoy Him unless He stretches out His hand to. help the struggling sinking soul. But it is not so here. Abram did not want it at present. He had learned both about himself and about God, and he shows the profit of it here. Now that God says "I am the Almighty God," it is enough for Abram. No doubt He adds, "I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly," but the way in which He reveals Himself is not so much what He was to Abram, but what He is in Himself. When justified by faith, we are entitled to enjoy this. We can joy in God (not only in the blessing but in the Blesser) through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore it is that, though in the first dealings of God with our souls there is no one that has not found it an immense thing to know Him as Father — the "babes" (1 John 2: 13) being distinguished by this very thing, they "know the Father," and there being no Christian who does not enjoy Him as such, DO matter how long he may be in the ways of the Lord — yet I am persuaded that when a soul advances in the knowledge of divine things, there comes out, not merely the cleaving to Him as Father, but the ability to "joy in God."

But if one has to do with worldly men, they do not know what you mean when one speaks of God as his Father, save as the Father of everybody. They use this which is true to deny His special relationship to the Christian. It is then no small thing for the soul to know that "God is my Father," in the Spirit to cry, Abba Father; but it is another thing, where all questions are settled, and we are able peacefully to enjoy Him as God. This is assuredly of great moment and will be found to be true in the ways of God with our own souls. It is evident that our Lord Jesus meant that we should find and enjoy it; for if we refer to the message on the resurrection day, He says, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father" — but this is not all — "and to my God and your God." I do not believe it is possible to enjoy "His God and our God" until we have known what it is to look up with perfect rest in Christ and in conscious relation to God as "His Father and our Father." In short all true real believing enjoyment of God as such follows the enjoyment of the Father.

As long as there remains a single question unsettled, there will always be a shrinking from God as such. Note the calmness of Abram here. He can enter, without anything to come between, into what God is in Himself as "the Almighty God." But further, it is said, "God talked with him;" not "the Almighty" nor "Jehovah," but "God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations I have made thee."

Not merely has the patriarch a new name given him, but mark how everything rises now. It is not only the land where the Kenites and others dwelt, but "I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee; and I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant." It is not then alone that there is such an immensely greater sphere opened out for the hopes of Abraham, but the time also is unlimited. It is an "everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger." God had not forgotten the lesser gift in presence of greater things — "all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God."

Observe too another thing that goes along with this. No longer now does Abraham ask for a token whereby he should know that he is to inherit the land. Not a word of the kind is dropped. But God speaks of the seal of circumcision. It is not now something outside him, as we saw in the dead animals of chapter 15, but "Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee: every man-child among you shall be circumcised." What does it mean? Flesh mortified before God; the sentence of death put on man in His sight, and this in Abram's own person as well as in his seed afterwards.

Circumcision here accordingly is not introduced in a legal way, any more than the sabbath in Genesis 2. It is really the answer in man to the grace of God. It is that which God has made the Christian's portion in our Lord Jesus, that "circumcision without hands," which God has given us in Him, for in Him we are circumcised. It is not the death of a victim now, but every child of Abraham takes the place of death by this sign, which typically sets forth our death with Christ, the perfect deliverance of the individual as dead with Him. Until one knows what it is to be thus dead, there is no possibility of enjoying what it is to be free unto God. What a precious thing it is that this is precisely what God has made true in an incomparably better way to us now, bringing us into the calm and peaceful enjoyment of Himself, with the certainty that everything that is offensive to God — our very nature as children of Adam has the sentence of death on it, not only pronounced but executed! This is what one knows now as a Christian. It is no longer a sign, precious as this was to Abraham (and I pretend not to say how far he entered into it), but we are entitled to understand its truth; it is a part of the wonderful blessing in Christ that God has given us. It is not merely His meeting our wants; for I do not believe when it is a question simply of wants, that a soul ever enters into the sense of personal liberty and deliverance. But after having Christ for all our need and wretchedness, there is the further blessing that He is bringing us into, living intercourse with Himself now. We require a sound and solid basis for this; and God has given it to us in our death with Christ.

But this also you may observe: it is not our asking for a token. Who would have looked for such a thing as to be dead with Christ, or risen with Christ? Never did such a thought enter the heart of man. It is all God's grace, His own perfect wisdom and goodness to our souls. Yet is it all the fruit of the work of Christ Jesus our Lord. It is not merely a man risen; persons had been raised from the dead: but what was this to Christ being raised? They would all have to die again. But now we have got to the knowledge of resurrection in a wholly different and far superior way to this, for Christ rose, breaking the power of death for us, and we shall experience it soon as the consequence of that which He has done already. As dead and risen with Christ, we are waiting for a resurrection like His from among the dead, or a change, which is the same thing practically — when we shall be with Him, and be like Him, endued with the same incorruptness and glory according to the power of His resurrection.

But he that had obtained such favour was moved for the child of the bondwoman and said to God, "Oh, that Ishmael might live before thee!" If Sarai was to be thenceforward Sarah, to become nations, and kings to be of her, though he and she were no better than dead, why should not Ishmael share the covenant? But nay: the child of promise and of the free-woman is the one with whom God establishes His covenant, though Ishmael for Abraham's sake goes not without His blessing, begets twelve princes, and becomes a great nation. And the selfsame day Abraham is circumcised, Ishmael and every male born in his house or bought with his money (vers. 25-27). Thus fall the reasonings of a saint, and God's will alone stands, even in blessing outside the covenant of promise. Even there no flesh shall glory in His presence. In no case is it improved but passes under sentence of death.

May the Lord, then, give our own souls to enter into these wondrous lessons of God, whether they be the public ones for a life of testimony, or the individual ones for personal intercourse with God!

GENESIS 18.

The portion read now is founded a good deal upon the previous chapter, and the general train runs on to the end of Gen. 21. We can see at a glance that Gen. 22 introduces a series of truths altogether new. The distinctive mark already mentioned, "After these things," makes a decided break, a fresh start in thought; and you will observe how completely this is the fact, because there it is not only an altogether new train of communications from God, but also of a different character. The death and resurrection of the promised son are brought before us in a figure, and all the other dealings of God that are founded on this grave fact; as for instance the passing away for the time of the covenant of grace with Israel in Sarah, and the call of the bride in Gen. 24.

Of course I do not mean to enter on these subjects just now; but I make the remark in order to help persons to read the scriptures for themselves, that they may have a clearer understanding of the order of these things, and have more fixed in their souls the consciousness that it is the word of God, and not the thoughts of ingenious men, really a matter of divine truth, and altogether independent of anybody's fancies. This I hold to be a capital point for the children of God, particularly in these days; that they may have a distinct ground to go on, not only for their own souls, but also in case of being challenged by others. For there are those who, not knowing the truth, are the more ready to doubt the reality of the blessing which they do not themselves enjoy. They have the miserable desire to spoil the happiness to which they are themselves strangers. Hence we cannot be too simple. Besides this, we do well to seek to be thoroughly established in the truth that we receive — to see how it is all bound up with the personal work of Christ, as well as revealed in the word of God, foreshadowed in the Old Testament and clearly set out in the New.

In this case then the communication is in a measure founded on chapter 17, which we saw introduced an unfolding of God's name in a way that was an advance on all before. But in this case it was not as with Jacob, where he sought to know the name of God, who withheld His name. Indeed the difference is remarkable. With Abraham there was more ease, and God begins to speak out plainly. Not but that Jacob was afterwards brought to hear God unfolding the very same name of "the Almighty God;" but to Abraham it was brought out at once. There was no such thing as the desire — still less was there any "wrestling." Abraham, on the other hand, intercedes with Him; and indeed "wrestling" is not exactly the word that would be suitable to the character of Abraham's intercourse with God. It was both more peaceful and of a higher character. In Jacob's case there was immense activity of nature. I do not mean sin, of course, but nature in its best sense, that is, domestic affection. The love of family was exceedingly strong in Jacob's case: no one of the patriarchs seems more marked by it than Jacob. It is not meant of course that either lacked in this way, for they did not. Witness in Isaac a character remarkable for his home attachments, with a life more equable than Jacob's.

Abraham, however, had this distinguishing feature, that he was a man who very simply went to God about everything as it rose. Consequently God could act more freely and immediately in His dealings with him. There was not so much that required first to be broken down, as we find in Jacob's case: how often he must be made nothing of before God could be revealed! Therefore it was comparatively late in the history of Jacob before God made His name known to him. To Abraham, as we saw, Jehovah appeared, and opened out His name, unasked, as the "Almighty God;" and there followed the making of the covenant, which supposed the death of the flesh, the express figure of that which we now know in its truth and power in Christ; would that so wondrous a weapon of deliverance from all on that score were well wielded by all saints t What a source of trial, difficulty, and perplexity, do the great mass of God's children find through not knowing it! For, as many know, it is not in their case a question so much of the faith that overcomes the world, as it is really doubt about their own personal clearance before God. He that is dead is justified from sin, but this they do not perceive. They are as yet under law. But we have seen that here circumcision is not at all connected with the law, but, on the contrary, with that covenant God made in grace long before it. It is the sign of blessing God was to give in Christ Himself. Circumcision is viewed as the type of the complete setting aside of the flesh before God. This is what we have had in Genesis 17. Now we enter on a further activity of God, and its consequences, which are carried on to chapter 21.

Here again the Lord appears, though we may notice this special feature about it now, that He leaves it to Abraham to find out Who was visiting him. There is no outward token of the majesty of His presence — no special intimation betrays Who was there. It is also to be noticed that on this occasion the Lord personally came, attended by two others, who, no doubt, were outwardly much like Himself. He deigned to take the appearance of a man; as it is said, "He (Abraham) lift up his eyes, and looked, and lo, three men stood by him." We have no reason to suppose that it was in such a manner that God was pleased to appear to His servant oh former occasions. It was a dealing with Abraham, founded on what went immediately before in chapter 17, but having its own distinct character. This is preserved throughout.

"When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door." He was one of those who, like Lot in the next chapter, had an ungrudging hospitality, which had its reward in this, that, ready as they were to receive those who looked but strangers, they were really entertaining "angels unawares." Nay, more: this present occasion was the most remarkable entertainment ever enjoyed by any on the earth until Jesus came. Some might count it even more wonderful than that; because the Lord Jesus, being pleased by being born of a woman to become a man and to tabernacle amongst us, came down habitually into human circumstances as a man with men. I do not doubt, however, that, in all these manifestations of the Lord in the Old Testament, we are to understand the Son of God was the one manifested. Not only was He pleased to come in the appearance of a man, which may have been the case on other occasions also, as seen in the history of Noah, Gideon, and others; but here it is said there were three men, meaning by this of course what they seemed to the eyes of men. The peculiar privilege here was that God Himself deigned to be the guest of Abraham: yea, and more than that, for He treats him as His intimate, stamping on the patriarch for ever that remarkable designation, "the friend of God," which is founded on this very chapter. Assuredly the circumstances are such, that we do well to look into them with care.

Abraham then "bowed himself toward the ground" — as far as we are told, not knowing at first who the three were. But God is gracious to His people, and leads on step by step. We can see at a glance whose grace it was that put into the heart of Abram the habit of what we might call indiscriminate generosity and kindness; and this readiness is the more to be observed as it was the part of one called out to be separate to the Lord. A grave and important lesson it is for us in this respect, that the man who was most of all separate is the same whose heart went most of all out towards others, and that strangers.

There is nothing in the most complete separateness to the Lord to hinder the largest and most active kindness, not merely to the people of God. but to all men. Abraham did not know at this time who or what his visitors might be; he merely saw three men, and his heart was at once towards them. Not strained nor scanty was the flow of divine goodness; there was a heart ready at once to meet and even seek others, desirous of their blessing. Is it not in the highest sense so with the Lord? Does He not constantly pour blessing into the heart of the man that is intent on the blessing of others? In this case, too, there was a greater honour in store, though the object of it knew it not.

Though we must not suppose that at first Abraham knew the divine dignity of one of "the three men," there is the remarkable fact that he addressed himself to one, and I can hardly doubt to which of the three. However that may be, he says, "My lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant; let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet." He does not confine himself to the one to whom he had at first addressed himself. He is thinking of that which was needful, not only in courtesy but in love. "Rest yourselves under the tree, and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts." We can scarce doubt, I think, that he is treating them according to the appearance in which they stood, though we shall find that it is not long before he learns more. "After that ye shall pass on, for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do as thou hast said."

Abraham accordingly hastens, making Sarah the partner of his kindly toil, and soon after stands by them under the tree as they eat. Then comes their turn before us. They said to him, "Where is Sarah thy wife?" Perhaps it was then that the first word, intimating the divine power of Him who deigned to be there, fell on the attentive ear of Abraham. "I will certainly return unto thee." It does not become man to talk of certainly returning. Was this lost on Abraham? Assuredly not; more particularly when his long-cherished hope is about now to enjoy the promise of a specified, and, I may say, dated accomplishment. "I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son." If it appeared vague before, it was henceforth distinct and defined. But the one who was immediately concerned had not the same sense as Abraham of the presence of God. There was not the same preparedness of heart for it. Sarah, no doubt, was an honoured woman, but her state was spiritually different from that of Abraham. We hear of her during this conversation behind the door. I dare say she ought not to have been there, but there she was; and if she was where she ought not to have been, need we wonder that she indulges in feelings that little became her? She laughed in her doubt of the word. Could any of us imagine Abraham behind a door? Was there not a simple dignity in him incapable of hiding and listening behind a door?

We can understand easily an eastern wife's temptation to conceal herself in more modern times, when woman was more of a prisoner, and otherwise degraded; but it is evident that in those early days no such reason operated, and no excuse could thence be for anything of the kind. For we find Rebekah, and others far later, going to the well, without any idea of impropriety. Sarah must no doubt have enjoyed no less a degree of freedom, but would have from her circumstances much more. She, the matron, by no means young now, was under no conceivable custom of keeping out of sight. Wherever such manners as those before us are resorted to, never expect anything good or worthy. It is no light mercy to be delivered from all the darkness and all the pettiness of nature, and to be brought to walk in the light as God is in it. It is sweet to think of it as the Christian's place, but it is what we all want to }earn more of. What else enables one to stand so simply in the presence of man? Not that we begin with man, and then know how to stand before God, but just the other way: God gives us the root of the matter first, and this is where we are brought in virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ. He could not do more, nor would He do less. He has brought us by and in Himself near to God. This is what in its spirit was true of Abraham; and he was one who enjoyed much of the conscious presence of God; and it is this that I am persuaded had its reward now. He had a conviction of who it was that was addressing him in words which could not fail. There was a sort of instinctive feeling, a growing assurance, in Abraham's soul who the guest must be he was entertaining.

It is remarkable, however, that he hears these words quietly. No astonishment is expressed. How happy when the soul is thus kept calm before God! We are not then taken by surprise: we expect good, and not evil. Instead, therefore, of stooping to the ways which let out how mean the flesh is, the sense of His presence preserves, and true dignity is associated with the utmost simplicity. It is not in this case self-possession, nor the pride of being anything, nor the vanity of desiring what we have not; but all is founded in the deep sense that it is God with whom we have to do, and whose voice we hear and obey.

Abraham, then, as I have said, stands in marked contrast with Sarah hiding behind the door, and laughing within herself. But when charged with it, she is ashamed to own the truth, which she felt an ignominy to herself. But He that was on the other side of the door soon shows that such an obstacle could not keep Him from seeing and knowing what passed in the heart of Sarah, as well as where she was. "Jehovah said unto Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I of a surety bear a child, which am old?" How surprising it must have been to her, and how sharp the rebuke, though conveyed without a harsh word! "Is anything too hard for Jehovah?" How blessed to accustom ourselves, beloved brethren, to this one answer to all difficulties I For this we are called to walk by faith, not by sight. God never had a thought of a Christian, or of His church, being exempted from difficulties. To hinder this is the main effort of man after the flesh.

Directly men look at the church as a human institution, they want to smooth its way, to put it on the ground of natural rules and arrangements, and thus reduce the Christian to a walk of mere prudence and common sense. They forget it is God's habitation through the Spirit, and cease to walk in dependence on the Lord. No doubt morality is quite according to the law of God: I quite admit it. But all that is entirely distinct. Supposing a person were to walk within the letter of the ten commandments every day, he never would behave in a single particular as a Christian ought. The doing of all the commandments would not meet the will of God about the Christian. It would be very proper for a man, and excellent in a Jew; but far from being Jews, now that we are in Christ, we are no longer sons of Adam, but, according to His grace, His children by faith. We are born of God, and brought into a new place by redemption, and are blamed if we are walking as men.

So the Apostle Paul with the saints at Corinth. He reproaches them because they "walked as men," not as bad men, but "as men." It was unworthy of grace that they should be on mere human ground. If a brother offended another, is one to have him up before the law-court? We can understand that the Christian might easily reason about it, and say, "For my part I cannot but feel that a Christian is a great deal worse than a man of the world if he is guilty of a wrong, and therefore I must have him tried and punished by the magistrate." The premise is true; the conclusion, false. For it is not at all a question of wrong or right, but of Christ. I perfectly grant that a Christian may do wrong, and that the assembly should judge it; but to do-right is not enough for a Christian. He is sanctified to the obedience of Christ, to obey God as the Lord did. It is a question, not of doing the law, but of obeying like Christ. This is what is written on us, as the law was on the tables of stone. Israel ought to have represented the law graven upon stones. We have Christ on high, and are called to walk and witness accordingly. This is the point of the apostle's words in the chapter referred to. The Christian is the "epistle of Christ," and nothing short of a manifestation of Christ can satisfy the mind of God as to him.

Here we see Jehovah as man in a beautiful way. So it was, I believe, in this case, although not of course as yet the Word made flesh, yet the nearest approach to it; and just as we shall see in the series that follows (Gen. 22), the resurrection of the Son of God in type, and the dealings of God founded on that great fact, so here we have, as far as it could be, the coming down of God to be among men, and the grace that accompanied His presence here below. Thus I read this very scene; and that is the reason why here, and here alone, the Lord takes the place of a man.

How beautiful to look back, and see how suitable it is that, before the series that introduced the work, there should be the series that introduced the person, in as near an approximation to His taking flesh as was possible to be beforehand! If there be one thing that marks a man with others, it is sitting at the same table in social intercourse. This is what the Lord does here. It is one of the very things in which an unbeliever finds an enormous difficulty: but what is poison to an infidel is the food and joy of faith. Accordingly, where faith receives it, we rejoice in so blessed a thing as God thus deigning to be at Abraham's table, and partaking of his hospitality, with His angels round Him; but this in the guise of men.

After He has thus put Himself along with His servant on familiar terms, He speaks of that which was nearest to the heart of Abraham. He knew that he was surely to have a son; but he had waited long, and wanted to know when the son would come. Now it is fixed; there is a distinct time allotted, and for the first time. God here too shows Himself considerate of Abraham's feelings. As we saw, Sarah was not up to the mark yet; she needed a rebuke. The communication that God makes brought out what was not according to the proprieties of the presence of God. She was not used to it, like her husband, in spirit, day by day; and when the Lord did come, she did not know how to behave herself; but Abraham did, and there is nothing more remarkable than the ease, and calm, and comeliness of Abraham in all this scene. He was in no way thrown off his balance when it begins to dawn upon him Who it was that deigned to talk and eat with him; the wonderful fact that he stood before the true God, the Lord of heaven and earth — the pledge of the incarnation, when He should take flesh and dwell among us.

Jehovah brings all out plainly now. "Is anything too hard for Jehovah? At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son." But Sarah laughed in her incredulity and then, convicted, she denied it, saying, "I laughed not" — denied it for the same reason that some of us may have had to reproach ourselves for no less. "She was afraid!" How often these sad departures from the truth arise from nothing but the want of moral courage! What would train up the soul in unflinching and most scrupulous truthfulness is exactly what Abraham cultivated, and what Sarah failed in — habitual acquaintance with the presence of God.

There is no safeguard so efficacious, even supposing we be ever so disposed to exaggerate, uncareful, quick to speak, slow to consider and weigh what is said. There is nothing that would keep and form the soul more simply in truthfulness than this very thing, the constant sense of the presence of God. This it is that characterized Abraham more than most; not that we may not find failure, for Abraham was not Christ. In this particular too, under solemn circumstances, Abraham broke down, and, sad to say, twice about the same thing — once in the earlier part of his career, and once later. For God would give the terrible lesson, that flesh in no way ever improves, and that Abraham needed the presence of God to keep him towards the close of his career, just as much as at the beginning.

Now we see that as the Lord convicts Sarah for her own good, so He blesses Abraham more and more. But though it is sad that a saint of God should fail in truthfulness, it is no small mercy that God should make that untruthfulness felt where the soul has been guilty. I do not know anything worse for any one who has fallen into untruthfulness than that such a one should go without the discovery of it, and without its being painfully brought home to the soul by God Himself. Here we have it. The Lord does not do it in this case as in so many others in the Bible; for one of the remarkable features elsewhere plain is that we have cases of untruthfulness, and other things equally bad, found in God's people, but they are left, either without conviction, or with the fact simply stated. Here it was brought home for Sarah's profit, and we know that she gained it, But we must turn to the Lord's way with Abraham.

This is the very thing that perplexes unbelievers. It is not so to faith. God disciplines and exercises the hearts of His people in judging these things from their acquaintance with His own character, and with His word in general. In this particular case there was a lesson to be taught, and therefore God does not pass it by. He does not permit that Sarah should simply say, "I did not laugh;" so He says, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." The sin is brought home by the unmistakeable voice of God. Oh, what a thought for Sarah afterwards, and how humiliating, not only that she lied, but that she ventured on a lie to God Himself, and that, at her one interview with Him, this she should have to reflect on! It was the last word that passed between her and God Himself.

This, no doubt, is a serious thing for our own souls, worthy of reflection, yet full of comfort also. For what a God we have to do with! What patience, long-suffering, goodness! and this with (not a human being merely, but) a child of His! And His way is to let a word from Him act on her conscience. Never do we hear of any repetition of the evil on Sarah's part. It was a lesson not to he forgotten, yet how gracious!

We read next that "the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom." Here we enter on another part of Jehovah's action at this time. We have had Him coming down in richest grace, and dealing with the utmost possible tenderness, even with such a failure as that of Sarah. But now we have to see the manner in which all this operated spiritually on the heart of Abraham. "And the men rose up, and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them, to bring them on the way." Here is another beautiful feature in Abraham, which also had its reward. His was not a mere hospitality that receives like a patron without going farther. There was nothing of what we may call the condescension of a great man in Abraham, which is scarcely to be called true, or at least christian, hospitality. He in whom that is found will, on the contrary, be found filled with the importance of himself, his family, and his position; he scorns to act below the idea he has, and would impress on others, of his own dignity. Who that reflects could call this grace? "This did not Abraham." Genuine humility was there, and yet withal an unmistakeable stamp of dignity in his character, yet none the less of true kindness, of lowly and persevering love. Thus he hangs upon their steps; and no wonder. At this time it was not merely the ready heart for a stranger, but a sense of the glory of his visitors, and among them of One especially. Who can be surprised that Abraham was loth to see them depart, and accompanied their way? But again, let me say that scripture speaks of such a reception of strangers as though it were no unwonted thing for this generous man. I do not suppose that it was the first time for him to bring such forward on their journey after a godly sort, any more than to receive them into his tent, and treat them as he did.

"And Jehovah said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do justice and judgment; that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." What a character! But I would ask myself as well as you, beloved brethren, is that what the Lord can say of you and me? Does He really know this of us? I do not mean that He said it to Abraham, but in His word about him. Now He has written it for us; and for what purpose? That we should merely know what He felt towards Abraham? Nay, but that we should search ourselves, and see whether there are grounds for the Lord to speak so about ourselves and our households. For you generally find that a saint's ways are shown, not merely in his own personal conduct, but even more in the relation of his family all round to the Lord, as the fruit of his faith or the lack of it. This is the reason why (in the New Testament), no matter what gift a man had, no matter how much he might be personally excellent, if his household were unruly and not in subjection, such an one could not be an elder or bishop. How could a person rule the church of God, if he could not rule his own home ~ Because, where moral power would be shown most is, not in a discourse, or in company, or in a visit, but where a man unbends, where he is no longer the teacher or preacher, where he can either familiarly bring in God or habitually leave Him out, where he can have a free and constant circulation of that name, with all its fruitful consequences, in the family, or he proves that his heart is in ease. Show or money for them is really for himself.

The Lord assuredly looks for a reflex in the household of the ways of God with the head of it; because there it is that God should manifestly be owned, and habitually govern; and there it is that the one who stands at the head is responsible to God for showing what his mind and heart value. It may be done with great simplicity, one need not say, with tender attention and care and interest in what goes on with each member of the family. And I do not mean merely the children, though the children have the nearer place; but servants also, supposing there are such in the house, Servants, it is true, are not expressly mentioned in 1 Timothy 3, possibly because some of the elders might be among the poorest, and perhaps servants themselves. Therefore God puts the matter in a general way; but where there are such domestics, just the same thing should be found. For that which sheds blessing among the children secures blessing among the servants. At any rate there should be godly order, even if the children or servants be not yet brought to the knowledge of God. So it most assuredly was at this time, and ordinarily, true of Abraham's house.

"For I know him:" was it ever so said about Lot? It would have had a sorrowful meaning in Lot's case; it has a blessed one in Abraham's. For this is the knowledge of approval, of divine complacency; it is the knowledge that prepared the way for his being the depository of the secrets of Jehovah — the one to whom He could communicate that which no angel knew, save those who had their orders from Him and were just about to be the executioners of His judgment. But the angels in general, I venture to presume, knew little or nothing of it. It was enough for them to learn it when the thing had taken place. Thus it is that they learn about the church, and the wonders that God has shown to us. The church of God is His living lesson-book for the angels (Eph. 3); it is by the dealings that He carries on with individual Christians, and with the assembly above all, that He is instructing them in His ways; as He did already by our Lord Jesus Christ in the highest degree, when He was here and exalted on high. He was not pleased to tell them of Christ beforehand; whereas one of the most remarkable privileges saints of old had was the revelation, as far as it went, of the sufferings of Christ and the glories after these. And now we know things to come, as well as the things of Christ above. "Ye, therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before." This is, or ought to be, one of the cherished privileges of the Christian.

For every child of God now really has, not only a priestly place in the grace of Christ, but what may be called a prophetic one. He is not of course a prophet, in the sense of giving out inspired communications from God. This the prophets did, as part of the foundation of the church, and it might be in what is called prophesying. But all ought to enjoy the reality of seeing, and testifying the things that are not as though they were, according to divine revelation, giving us to enter into the mind of God before His word comes to pass. The whole of the New Testament supposes that a part of what the Holy Ghost is come down here to do is, not only to "take of the things of Christ, and show them to us," but to show us "things to come" (John 16).

In this chapter, and in the fresh scene that I am dwelling on, we have the very pattern of Christ when He was present here; I do not say when the sacrifice of Christ was offered in sign, which comes before us in Genesis 22. But here there is a remarkable anticipation of the presence of Jehovah — of God's presence in Christ, when He tabernacled as a man among men. Hence the wonderful opening out of that which was in His own heart; just as the Lord did in John 15, which may be viewed as the counterpart of what we find here. He had, as we know, been with the disciples in the tenderest love. There, it is true, it is not courteous furnishing of water for His feet, but (wondrous way!) His washing theirs. Supper time was come for Him and them: and He would stoop down and wash their feet, as a witness of His work of love when He should leave them; but, before He goes, He would tell them what was in His mind. He is treating them as friends; so He lets them know what the Holy Ghost is about to do when He Himself is absent on high. "It is expedient for you that I go away, else the Comforter will not come." But He went, and the Holy Ghost came and more than made up for His absence. So we find in measure with Abraham. The angels proceed; Jehovah remains behind with Abraham, who enters into a phase of communion with Him far beyond what he had enjoyed before.

"And Jehovah said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know." He is speaking here just after the manner of men. Jehovah adopts the familiar language of common life, and deigns to adapt Himself to that which every one could understand in a man. It is wholly above our comprehension how God knows all things at once, without inquiry or investigation. He condescends here to speak so that Abraham might be thoroughly free in His presence.

"And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before Jehovah. And Abraham drew near, and said." How precious is this access to Him who had thus come down! Abraham shows no shrinking behind the door. He has confidence in God. "Abraham drew near." The Christian can understand it all, now that redemption has been accomplished, and sin has been judged, and we have been left, according to the word of God and the work of Christ, without a single spot or stain to arrest the eye of the Judge. Such is the efficacy of the blood in which we have been washed from our sins, even as we ourselves are a new creation in Christ before Him. But is there always in us, as here in Abraham, a real readiness to draw near and speak to our God? Are we happy in making due use of the: privileges we possess? This is a serious question for our souls. We see how it was with the patriarch.

"He drew near" and says, "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" Now, mark, it is no longer a question about himself, or about the son. The son was soon to come. All this was settled. He rests upon it, his heart is perfectly free. He has no longer a single want for himself; not one suit remains to be spread before Jehovah. His heart is drawn out in a spirit of grace, which answers to the grace of the Lord towards himself. He entreats Jehovah about others. He does not yet mention the one that no doubt lay heavily on his heart. His nephew was in Sodom; Lot dwelt there. Who was there living that knew the faults of Lot better than Abraham? But Abraham entered, in his measure, into the feelings of God. For if faults, if blots, could have fumed away the love of God, where should we be? Lot had done Abraham no little harm; he had been the cause of considerable trouble. It was a case of risking life itself on one occasion never to be forgotten.

All this, however, made little or no difference to Abraham. But now he could only think in sorrow of Lot as in the very midst of the doomed city. We need not suppose that he had only mourned over Lot for the first time. Could it be an entirely new thought to Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah were nests of wickedness, and utterly unfit for the sojourn of that righteous man, Lot? Why should he "vex his soul" there? It was certainly not God who had called him into it. Was the old man hankering after wealth or honour in town, as once for the well-watered plains of Jordan near it? He had not reamed his lesson, and now a far more serious chastening was at hand. Now he was only going to be saved so as by fire. Soon must he abandon that seat of honour in the gate of Sodom he too dearly loved. Lot must now taste the bitterness of what he had chosen. Whatever is our wrong must in the long run be our chastening.

But look at Abraham. "Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" All his heart is moved, now that he has a glimpse of the destruction so swiftly coming on the plains which had beguiled his kinsman. "Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt thou also destroy, and not spare, the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? Such is his plea with Jehovah. He pleads as one whose heart felt deeply; end when our hearts are engaged, the work is not done badly. That is the real secret of it. We may do things simply — and we cannot be too simple — but we see the mark clearly where the heart feels aright. It was so with Abraham. He intercedes earnestly and with perseverance, giving expression to that sentiment which the New Testament brings forward under the hand of the Apostle Paul — "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" Of course He will, and here we have the answer of grace: "Jehovah said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes."

Then Abraham ventures to take a little more courage, and brings his request down to forty-five, to forty, and to twenty (vers. 27-31). At last he says, "Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once. Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake." Why "this once"? Alas! our faith never reaches up to the grace of God. We weary and fail, not He. We get enough, through His grace, for our blessing, but rarely do we venture into its depths. Sound as we may, we certainly never get to the bottom. It was to be proved so here; for although Jehovah answered to the full all that Abraham's faith and confidence in His grace essayed, His grace far exceeded, for it descended after all to that one person who lay on the heart of Abraham, though he had not the boldness to say so. But Jehovah knew it; and while He surely did not spare that wicked place (and it was according to His righteous government that it should be made an example of divine judgment), none the less did He rescue that righteous soul spite of his faults.

But I refer to this now in order to note the gracious effect on Abraham's spirit of being brought into the knowledge of God's mind about the future. For it issues not merely in prayer, but in intercession for others. It may be well to ask, beloved brethren, whether we are given to similar intercession, who know that the Lord is soon coming to judge the habitable earth? There are few persons in this room who do not know a great deal more of what is coming to pass on the earth than those who have the credit for learning and theology in this day of ours. We know how great are our shortcomings, and how little we know; but still, as a matter of undeniable fact, it is certain that we are accustomed to look into the future, that we are used in spirit, where God has made Christ our all, to enter into that to which He points us on. We have no doubt what is coming on the world, and on the different parts of the world, as clearly as if we saw it on a map — one painted blue, and another black. We know perfectly well that there is a land where the eyes of Jehovah rest, and He will surely magnify His name. On the other hand, we know of other lands that shall be given up to desolation. The revealed future is thus a matter of settled knowledge to us which has its results practically, though of course in different degrees.

But I ask again, what is the present effect of all on our souls? Does it draw us out in intercession? Are we pleading with the Lord? Ought it not to be so, if we really believe what is coming to pass on the flower of Christendom? Has it engaged our hearts in intercession? Are we sufficiently alive to the way in which God's children are at this moment dishonouring Him by unworthy, mistaken, unbelieving thoughts? or to the great danger from this to their souls? Can any of these things be without loss or peril to them? They are deeply injurious, these false expectations, as well as the want of faith in what is before men. They look for the improvement of society and the progress of Christendom. They believe not in a judgment of the living to be executed by our Lord when He comes in His kingdom at, or just before, the end of which He will judge the wicked dead.

This trifling with the word of God, this blotting out from the future of God's warning, have present consequences of the most serious kind; but do they stir our hearts in desire for the saints of God? We know, of course, that nothing can stay the judgments that are coming on the ungodly, and that God will shelter the righteous in that day; but are our hearts going out to Him about His people? We see how Abraham interceded. The Lord give us to be like Him! It supposes hearts at rest in His grace as to all that concerns ourselves before Him. But that very grace gives us confidence in Him for others dear to Him; and their failures, or dangers, should draw out intercession; yet HE is beyond all that we ask or think.

GENESIS 19.

The connection of the solemn history which now opens before us is one of contrast, especially full of instruction for us who find ourselves on the eve of a judgment of incomparably larger extent. Our Lord Himself pointedly applies it no less than the catastrophe in the days of Noah to present warning. "And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot's wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." (Luke 17: 26-33.) It will be a judgment of God, not merely in providence, but directed by the Lord, and as none of the wicked shall understand, so shall none escape. It essentially differs from such scenes as the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, to which the commentators so perversely refer it. The intimation of verse 34 seems expressly added to refute such a notion. Let us turn to the facts, as scripture records them.

"And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them, rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned into him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat." (Gen. 19: 1-3.) Jehovah no longer deigns to accompany His messengers, nor visits Lot, like Abraham. He would have been ashamed to be called the God of Lot, who "sat in the gate of Sodom," instead of running to meet them "from the tent door," like his kinsman pilgrim. Yet was much in common: no less courtesy, perhaps, but a little hospitality. Nevertheless, we see a certain shrinking on the part of the angels, as we have already noticed the absence of Jehovah. Not even He, much less they, said Abraham Nay, or proposed to stay without. To Lot, even though it was, they decline his proffered shelter, and propose to abide in the street all night. At length they yield to his pressure, enter his house, and accept of his unleavened bread.

Their visit gives occasion to the open and unnatural depravity of the inhabitants, "both old and young, all the people from every quarter" (ver. 4). They foam out their shame shamelessly (ver 5). Lot goes forth to plead for his guests, to remonstrate with his fellow-townsmen (alas! he calls them "brethren"), and offer his two daughters (ver. 6 8). For he has lost the simplicity of faith, and, instead of looking only to the Lord in this scene of difficulty and danger and surrounding wickedness, he chooses in worldly wisdom what he conceived the lesser of two evils. Could we expect better from a righteous Lot which "sat in the gate of Sodom?" "And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door" (ver. 9).

How often had Lot flattered and excused himself, as he gradually drew nearer to guilty Sodom, that his was the wise and right course, not like his exclusive uncle, Abraham! What is the use, what the duty, of a good man in the world, if not to improve it? Was there not a haughty and self-righteous stiffness under the lowly guise of Abraham, who kept himself apart from all his neighbours in the land? Separate from the present world, he in his tent declared plainly that he was seeking a better (that is, a heavenly) country. But did not Lot's conscience ever smite him, lest (under his assumption of a more active and benevolent zeal) there might lurk an unjudged unbelief of God's estimate of the present and promise of the future, which left room for the rank growth of covetousness, and the love of ease, honour, wealth, and power? Abraham had not a question as to God's favour and kindness, any more than as to His purpose of blessing and glory by-and-by: as little did he doubt that the world and, above all, the races in the midst of whom he pursued his stranger path, were doomed to divine judgment, though there might be a defined delay in its execution. Lot had no such clearness of vision. He anticipated better things. He had more confidence in human nature, more assurance of the moral influence of a good man like himself. He hears too late the rebuke of his folly from the lips of the most unclean Sodom: "This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge." They felt that a righteous man had no consistent place in their midst; and they were not so blind to his motives as himself. What had Lot gained, with his position, but vexation to his soul, as he saw from day to day their filthy conversation and lawless deeds? Certainly he had not pleased the Lord, whose will and lessons he had despised: how had he fared with the world to which he had held? How different it was with Abraham before the sons of Heth in Gen. 23!

But the hour of destruction was at hand for the cities of the plain; and when the miscreants came near to break the door, the angels "put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? Son-in-law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place. For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of Jehovah; and Jehovah hath sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for Jehovah will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law. And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; Jehovah being merciful unto him; and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord: Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast showed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither (is it not a little one? ) and my soul shall live. And he said unto him, See, 1 have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken. Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt" (vers. 11-26).

Even in the hour of deliverance, it is humiliating to read how Lot "lingered," though he might not, like his wife, "look back," and become the lasting witness of the truth of the warning. No wonder there was no power in such a preacher of righteousness! Dwelling among the men of Sodom is the way neither to glorify God, nor to win their souls to the Saviour. Even the last fatal night "he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law," as we have seen what a storm he brought on himself from his townsmen. What a contrast with him of whom Jehovah said, "I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do justice and judgment; that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him!" Yet, to worldly philanthropy and wit, did Abraham seem a useless person in his day and generation; to faith he is the man of whom God said, and of whom faith is sure, "Thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

Just so, there are many Lots; but where are those blessed, and a blessing, with faithful Abraham? If content to be less, we certainly sink below even this sad level, like Abraham's seed, who were not Abraham's children (John 8.). We may, in the pure and sovereign mercy of God, be "delivered" men, like Lot: but are even now, like Abraham, men separate to the Lord, and knowing these things before? (2 Peter 3). Is it enough for us to be snatched, as it were, out of the fire, when the word is, "we will destroy this place; escape for thy life, lest thou also be consumed"? Or do we covet the portion (which indeed it is the Christian's shame not to covet) of being with the Lord before a sign of doom appears, morally far apart from all that cries for divine vengeance, sharing His mind who deigns to open His secrets and treats us as His friends? Are we interceding for others in love, as Abraham in Genesis 18; or deprecating what we dread, as Lot in Genesis 19? "Oh, not so, my Lord; behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou hast showed unto me in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: behold now, this city is near to flee into, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live." So it is always. The saints who live like others in the world share the world's fears. Their prayers savour of its state. Its troubles oppress them, as its successes ensnare them. This did not Abraham. "The mountain," which was the source of fear to Lot, was the scene of communion between Jehovah and Abraham. There he had prayed, with touching importunity for the righteous endangered by the approaching judgment, and not in vain; for God did better than he asked. He did destroy the guilty cities, but He delivered less than ten righteous found there, righteous Lot himself, who was here begging (and not in vain) for the least city of the five.

And, now that the blow is struck, the difference between the heavenly-minded man and the earthly minded is still kept up as strikingly as ever. "Abraham get up early in the morning to the place where he stood before Jehovah: and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. And it came to pass, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt. And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters" (vers. 27-30). Was not Abraham even here, where it could be least looked for, not only blessed but a blessing? Nothing could be done to Sodom and Gomorrah till Lot came to Zoar; but was it not for Abraham's sake? It was even then and there, because "God remembered" not Lot but "Abraham."

This then was the end of the place where Lot had lived and laboured, or at least talked. He was as little in the secret of Jehovah as the men of Sodom, though no doubt he was vexed, or rather (as scripture so pregnantly tells us) the righteous man vexed his righteous soul from day to day. But God never called Lot to Sodom, as He had called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan. Abraham's groans were gracious, and had profitable fruit; Lot's were not without his own fault and torment, groans barren even for himself. Abraham is attracted to the place where he had enjoyed the presence and converse of Jehovah, and looks down on the scene of desolation which attested in its solemn way what it is to hate Jehovah, and what to love Him. And there Lot too goes up out of Zoar: afraid to go at God's bidding when there was no ground for fear there, afraid longer to stay in Zoar, and not afraid to go where and when he had feared most of all, had he been aware into what a snare he was about to be caught by wine and women — alas! his own daughters. Such was the end of him who would needs be a judge in Sodom, but only the beginning of those who should inflict sorrowful results on the children of Abraham throughout their history, till that day come when Sodom's doom finds its antitype, and the Branch out of Jesse's roots shall reign, and Moab, with Edom, shall be the laying on of Israel's hand, and the sons of Ammon their obedience (Isa. 11: 14).

And have saints who now court and cleave to the world, valuing position and honour in it, no reproof to learn?

GENESIS 20.

Nevertheless a signal time of favour and blessing may precede a great humiliation through unwatchfulness and sin. So it was now with Abraham, as he sojourned in the land of the Philistines. Was it that he too, as well as Lot, feared to abide under the shield of the Almighty in view of the scene of the recent judgments? This were to tempt God, as Israel in the desert when they questioned His presence in their midst and His care. Certain it is that he journeyed from where he once stood before Jehovah in intercession. and a little later in awe-inspiring contemplation of the judged land of the plain whence the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of the furnace. Long-before it the pinch of famine induced him to journey toward the south, even to Egypt, and to sojourn there. Now he dwells between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourns in Gerar; and now as then he denies his true relationship to his wife. "She is my sister" says Abraham of Sarah among the Philistines, as at an early day he told her to say so among the Egyptians (Gen. 12: 11-13; Gen. 20: 1, 2). What! the father of the faithful? And this again, after all the times which had passed over him?

Alas! "all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of Jehovah bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever." No difference in this respect distinguished the first father of Israel. Abraham sinned now, like Adam at the beginning; and he who taught his wife to prevaricate before they entered Egypt falls into the like snare himself in Philistia.

Christ has never denied the church; though I would not weaken the warning that if we deny, He also will deny us; if we are unfaithful, He at least abides faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. But the church in spite of His warnings and His faithful love has denied her true relationship to Him, has denied it because of fear of the world or the world's seed that borders on the heavenly land, utterly failing in faith of His unseen presence and that power which would assuredly arm her where He did not call on her to glorify Him in suffering or death.

But where sin abounded grace super-abounded. For if Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah, God came to him in a dream by night, and said unto him, Behold, thou art a dead man for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is married to a husband. The Philistine king, however, could plead the sincerity of his heart and the innocency of his hands, identifying his people with himself. "Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation?" Abraham and Sarah were both guilty of deceit. Yet it is to be noted that, while God allowed the plea, intimating indeed that He had kept the king from actual sin, He maintains the special place, in which Abraham stood. "Now therefore restore the man his wife: for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine. Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid" (vers. 7, 8). This is a principle in God's ways, and as evident in the New Testament as in the Old. Thus the Lord may reprove (however graciously) the Baptist who inquires through his disciples whether He was the Christ, pointing simply to His irrefragable proofs; but He turns round and at once vindicates the place of honour given to John beyond all born of woman. So here it was unquestionable that Abraham was wrong, and that far more grievously now than nearer the commencement of his course. Yet Abimelech must restore him his wife, "for he is a prophet and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live:" otherwise he must die with all his.

"Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? And Abraham said, Because I thought, Surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's sake. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. And it came to pass, when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her, This is thy kindness which thou shalt show unto me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, He is my brother. And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife. And Abimelech said, Behold, my land is before thee: dwell where it pleaseth thee. And unto Sarah he said, Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold he is to thee a covering of the eyes, unto all that are with thee, and with all other: thus she was reproved. So Abraham prayed unto God: and God healed Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants; and they bare children. For Jehovah had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham's wife" (vers. 9-8). It is a sad picture when the believer has to own his fault as Abraham was now doing not only before Jehovah, but before the power of the world; and when his account of his motives is but the laying bare of unbelieving fears, the more guilty because the deception was planned and agreed on between man and wife. But when does one sin stand alone? and where is sin so ugly as in saints of God? It was an early fear, the root of it was not thoroughly judged in Egypt, and as lack of self-judgment exposed them to it in Gerar, so it was attended with severer abasement the second time than the first.

It is even so with the Christian. It is not that he who is bathed loses the virtue of that divinely given privilege: the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost are not at all the working of man's will, ephemeral as this is, but of God who begets sovereignly by the word of truth. But he does indeed need to wash his feet. Defilements from walking through the world must be removed: else one has no part with Christ. In His incomparable grace He thus keeps clean the cleansed, or removes whatever grieves the Holy Spirit. This Peter had to learn, though reluctant in his haste and folly, first in word, that the Lord should stoop so low for his sake, and then in all the depth of the truth. How little did the disputing apostle anticipate that he would so soon feel his own need and bless his Master for the active constancy of His love! It is grace suited to the saint as necessary as that which the sinner wants (1 John 2: 1).

Here Abimelech restores Sarah to Abraham with many a sheep and ox, manservant and maid, and gives him express leave to dwell in the land where it was good in his eyes, yet not without a severe reproof to Sarah and indeed to her husband. The Philistine had paid his reparation price; but what a covering of the eyes had the husband been for the wife to all that were with her and with all others! Is it not humbling when the Gentile can thus justly rebuke the people of God for failure in holding fast their privileges till it end in a breach of common truthfulness? Nevertheless God listened to the prayer of Abraham, and the judgment which had fallen on the house of Abimelech was removed. "When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another, he suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." If He was thus watchful of the children, He cared no less for their father. He would only relieve an Abimelech at the intercession of Abraham; but Abraham must first be put to shame before the Philistine, and make confession of the sin which had exposed him to the censure and rebuke of the uncircumcised. How often has fear of the world been thus a snare, and equivocation on the part of those who should have been a faithful witness (as being elect and called) thrown the portion of faith into the hands of the world to the confusion and danger of all! But God is faithful and knows how to extricate for His own name's sake those who should have walked in separation to Himself.

How holy and wholesome too is that word which God has magnified above all His name! Where spurious holy writings venture on the ground of fact, they cry up their heroes, and hide their faults with diligent care, even when they do not descend to positive fable. Far otherwise does the Spirit of God deal, in the Old Testament, with the conduct of the fathers or the people of Israel, in the New with the sins even of an apostle, with the shame of a whole assembly. So with the portrait of the father of the faithful here, drawn by Moses for the chosen nation, yea by the Holy Spirit for all saints of all times: who but He would have so simply and truthfully set before us Abraham and Sarah on the one hand, or Abimelech the Philistine king on the other?

GENESIS 21.

The power of God was now accomplishing what His mouth had promised. The child is born of Sarah, the son given to Abraham, type of Him, the Son, whom God sent forth, when the fulness of the time was come, to effect redemption, and be the centre of all His purposes for heaven on earth, and the judge of all He will cast into hell.

"And Jehovah visited Sarah as he had said, and Jehovah did unto Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was torn unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, being eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was an hundred years old when his son Isaac was born unto him. And Sarah said, God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham, that Sarah should have given children suck? for I have born him a son in his old age" (vers. 1-7).

Thus was Isaac's birth the occasion of joy in measure, as his very name imports, when Sarah laughed no more in unbelief, as once (Gen. 18: 12-15), but in gladness of heart, as in the fellowship of all that hear of the goodness of the Lord. It is a lovely witness to the power of grace when faith thus gives the victory in what had been one's weakness, and sin, and shame. And so, if Abraham gives the name to his son, Sarah needs no prophet, but explains the mind of God in it for herself, and for ever.

But another sight of the family of faith is next vouchsafed to us. "And the child grew, and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. And God said unto Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. And also of the son of the bondwoman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed" (vers. 8-13). Of this incident, which our light hearts might quickly pass over, the Holy Ghost makes a great deal in the two Epistles of the New Testament, which either assert or vindicate the fundamental truth of justification by faith.

The first occurs in Galatians 4, where the apostle is convicting the bewitched Galatians of their folly in departing from grace to law. If they desired to be under the law, why not hear the law? The two sons of Abraham should have had a voice to every believer. One was by a slave, the other by a free woman; one born after the flesh, the other by promise, as the mothers answered to the two covenants, Jerusalem that was in bondage with her children, and Jerusalem which is above, the free mother of the free. But this, though much, is not all; for after citing from Isaiah a marvellous testimony to the reckoning of grace during the desolation of Jerusalem, the tale of the child of promise is again used to show (1) that as he that was born after the flesh then persecuted him that was after the Spirit, so it is now; (2) that the sentence of scripture is, Cast out the bondmaid and her son; for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. Grace refuses partnership with law or flesh. The child of promise alone inherits.

It is the more instructive and important to note that in this transaction Abraham was weak, and Sarah strong. He did not give glory to God as she did; hence God called on Abraham to hearken to Sarah's voice, whatever might be the natural subjection of wife to husband — a subjection in which the apostle Peter expressly cites this very Sarah as an admirable pattern to christian women generally. But here the weaker vessel was by grace the stronger of the two, and Abraham must not regard Sarah's feeling as the mere affronted pride of the mistress who could not brook the airs of aspiring and mocking Ishmael. She was in the secret of Jehovah more deeply than her husband; while he was allowing unduly the claims of flesh, and was grieved at the proposal of expelling the bondmaid's son from the house. But so it must be according to God. Sarah was right. Her child was of promise, as the word was which declared Jehovah would return at the time appointed and Sarah should have a son.

It was not so with Hagar and Ishmael, though God would make a nation of him because he was Abraham's seed. But there must be liberty in the house for all that are of God, and no entangling with the yoke of bondage. Every remnant of law, world, and flesh must be expelled, and what was of promise alone abide. But it is all ever thus judged till the day of "a great feast." Then comes the decisive moment, and what is of the flesh persecutes what is of the Spirit, and grace gives the Sarahs to speak out, and God will have it heard and acted on, though an Abraham may be grieved: but then, and not till then, is the bondmaid cast out with her son. The Sinai covenant that genders to bondage and her child after the flesh can be no longer tolerated in the household of faith.

The second quotation is in Romans 9: 7. The apostle is combating the pretension of the Jews to enjoyment of the promises by natural or national descent, so as to exclude Gentiles. This he establishes in the most conclusive way by an appeal to Abraham's own seed, Ishmael. If the promise necessarily falls to the seed of Abraham as such, the Ishmaelites must be let in. As no Jew would allow of this, he must abandon his principle. It is a question of promise, not of fleshly descent but of His own sovereignty who had limited the call to Isaac. "In Isaac shall thy seed be called." Sovereignty therefore is the only source of hope for Israel, which is reasoned out still more fully in the chapter, and applied to Jacob, to the exclusion of Esau, though of the same mother as well as father, and even twins. But the same sovereignty of God is shown to be the sole resource for Israel at Mount Sinai, when all else had been ruin for the people as a whole by their worship of the golden calf: so completely were they silenced on the score of their own righteousness. Driven thus from the ground of law, as well as of lineal descent, on what could they fall back? On the sovereign mercy of God. This alone did, or could, save a sinner or a sinful people in entire accordance with Exodus 33: 19; but if they owned this, who were they to dispute that sovereignty calling Gentiles too, as indeed the prophets expressly declare that He would, when Israel became for a season Lo-ammi by their idolatry and their rejection of Messiah ?

Here we go beyond the passage which has given occasion to the apostolic argument. Still, looked at in the narrowest point of view, how fruitful is scripture, and how marvellously does He who wrote in the Old Testament use the facts and words of the New Testament! How self-evidently divine are both! Ishmael, like Israel after the flesh, cannot take the inheritance by law, but are cast out, though preserved of God.

It does not come within my present scope to dwell on God's dealings with Hagar, the comfort He gave her then and afterwards as to Ishmael, or his subsequent history (vers. 14-21); though we may notice in passing that, as the bondmaid mother was an Egyptian, so the wife she took her son was out of the land of Egypt: law, flesh, and world go together.

But in the next section we see Abraham in his true place and dignity. "And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest: now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son; but, according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. And Abimelech said, I wot not who hath done this thing; neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but today. And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant. And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves? And he said For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me that I have digged this well. Wherefore he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they sware both of them. Thus they made a covenant at Beer-sheba: then Abimelech rose up, and Phichol the chief captain of his host, and they returned into the land of the Philistines" (vers. 22-32).

In the beginning of the chapter we saw that the servant abides not in the house for ever: Ishmael and his mother are dismissed. The son abides always: Isaac is there, the heir of all.

Now we see that the Gentile king, who once inspired Abraham with guilty fear and became the occasion of a foul snare, not only seeks favour of the father of the faithful but is himself reproved. The power of the world acknowledged God to be with Abraham, and asks for a covenant between them. (Compare Zech. 8: 23). Earthly righteousness is now asserted, as before we saw heavenly long-suffering, save where a corresponding pledge of the coming kingdom came before us in Genesis 14, which concluded that series, as this concludes the later series. Here therefore the well of the oath is recovered and secured, and a grove or orchard is planted there, for the wilderness shall be glad, and the desert blossom as the lily; yea, there shall break out water and brooks, and there shall walk the redeemed. And Abraham "called there on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God. And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days" (vers. 33, 34). He is in type no longer the pilgrim, but the head of the nations and heir of the world.

Thus the second division of Abraham's history terminates with the figure of the kingdom in manifested power of glory, when beauty is given for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

GENESIS 22.

The last chapter closed that series of divine dealings with our patriarch which opened with Genesis 15. We can readily see that it forms a natural conclusion. The long-promised heir is come; the legal covenant and the child of flesh are cast out; the prince of the Gentiles is reproved instead of reproving, and seeks the friendship of the father of the faithful, who plants a grove and calls there on the name of the everlasting God. Thus, as in Genesis 14, we are brought again to a picture of millennial peace and power and blessing.

In Genesis 22 we begin another series of yet deeper character and moment — final too, as far as Abraham and Sarah are concerned.

"And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham; and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." It was the greatest trial to which God had ever put the heart of a saint. It was not tempting with evils any more than God is tempted with them. It was, on the contrary, His own good that was before God, who would make His friend the witness of it, while testing his confidence in Himself and His word to the uttermost. Isaac was loved as only a child so promised, born and reserved for a wondrous destiny, could be — to say nothing of personal qualities that must endear him to his parents. How the father's heart must have pondered on God's covenant with "thee, and thy seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant," and the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession; especially after Hagar and Ishmael were expelled, and the word of promise came, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called!" The father was assured therefore that this son, and no other, was that of the promises. God could not lie; but He might and does try, and those most whom He loves best. So with Abraham now. God demands that the father shall offer up his only son for a burnt-offering on Mount Moriah. It was the shadow of His own incomparable and infinite gift, but only the shadow; for Christ really did suffer and die, and God the Father sent Him, in divine love, to be thus a propitiation for our sins.

Abraham was only "tried"; still he was tried most severely, and by grace endured the trial, and was blessed accordingly. There was no delay in giving up his son to God, any more than he had doubted of God's word that he should have a son of Sarah when both were as good as dead.

"And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, as took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you" (vers. 3-5).

The moment was come when Abraham must challenge his heart for the last time, counting on God to make good his promise, and give him back that very Isaac to be the heir of all assured to himself, and the channel of blessing to all families of the earth. God must raise Isaac assuredly, as his own mind was made up to sacrifice him at God's bidding. "And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering" (vers. 6 8).

Unconscious prophet of a truth too well (too little) known, Abraham anticipates exactly what God has done in the gospel, of which this very scene stands out, in some respects, the most eminent type. Guilty man, in his heart of hearts, thinks all depends on some atonement he is to make, even if he also, in ever so orthodox a manner, confesses our Lord Jesus as a Saviour. But this he confesses for all the world: for himself to get the benefit, he really trusts to a sort of compounding for his sins. He hopes to give up his sins, most of all, and that God will be merciful. Such is the gospel of the largest part of Christendom, where it is not even an avowed confidence in life-giving ordinances, and saving rites and works of goodness. What a contrast with "God will provide himself a lamb!" What grace on God's part! What a call for faith on man's! "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be of grace." Nor could any other way suit either. Sins are thus borne and judged, and forgiven to the believer but yet to God's glory, while His grace reigns to eternal life. Anything else would depreciate God, as it would exalt the sinner, for which certainly Christ did not die; but suffered once, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God; and this He has done for every believer cleansed from every sin by His blood.

"So they went both of them together; and they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of Jehovah called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of Jehovah it shall be provided" (vers. 9-14). Thus was Abraham fully tried, and God magnified and honoured by his simple-hearted trust in Himself. Yet not a drop of Isaac's blood was shed. God remains God. He spared not His own Son, but gave Him up freely for us all. In all things Christ has the pre-eminence.

Still Abraham shines brightly in the scene, and God marks His appreciation of it. "And the angel of Jehovah called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith Jehovah, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son; that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice" (vers. 15-18).

Galatians 3: 16 casts fresh light on the blessing here pronounced. The blessing is twofold. In verse 17 it is Jewish, and consists in a countless progeny, which possess the gate of their enemies. In verse 18 no number is attached to "thy seed." This, accordingly, is what the Holy Spirit contrasts as "the seed" of Abraham to which the promises were made. "He saith not, And to seeds as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ." Thus the Seed with no number or multiplicity annexed to it is shown to be Christ, typified by Isaac, risen again from the dead in figure, who blesses all the Gentiles, as now in the gospel, contra-distinguished from the numerous Jewish seed, who are to subject the nations and rule over them, in the age to come. The Seed risen from the dead has evidently broken the link with life or relationship on earth, and is in a wholly new condition wherein He is able to bless the Gentile as freely as the Jew. This Christ is doing now, as the Epistle proves, wholly apart from law or circumcision which suppose the flesh and the Jew still under the probation of God, and so in effect deny the cross.

We see accordingly how harmonious is the teaching. of Hebrews 11: 17-19 with Galatians 3. Christ is the true Seed of Abraham, and this not only of promise but, as dead and risen. It is, thus the promises are secured; it is thus also that they open out to all the nations or Gentiles; even as it is written, In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. The Seed dead and risen is as free to bless the Gentile as Jew. Both were lost in rejecting Him; but He is risen from the dead, and God is pleased to bless in Him not only the Jew but all the Gentiles. The Seed of the woman is the Son of Abraham risen from the dead after being offered up. And the blessing is unconditional grace, independent of the law which came in long after the promise and for a wholly different end, as the apostle argues and proves to the bewitched Galatians. Law can only bring a curse on those who take that ground for their souls with God. Blessing is by faith in virtue of Him who died and rose again, and can thus in pure grace reach the believer, spite of flesh, law and world, which ensure only condemnation for sinful man. But Christ is dead and risen, and the blessing is confirmed in Him by God's oath to all the nations. So much the more awful will be the lot of all who despise Him, trusting in themselves, in others, or in aught else!

The rest of the chapter (vers. 20-24) calls for no particular notice now. It was meant to prepare the way for Rebekah, by showing her relationship with Abraham's lineage, in view of a still closer tie.

GENESIS 23.

The death of Sarah follows, and God takes special notice of it, not only for Abraham's sake, but, as it would seem, for its typical bearing, since it comes after the sacrifice and resurrection of the son, and before the call of the bride. In this point of view we must remember that, as Hagar represents the legal covenant of Sinai, Sarah is the shadow of the covenant of promise (Gal. 4). One cannot wonder that her death as a figure is unintelligible to those who regard her as symbolic of our best and characteristic church blessings. But it is not so: scripture is right, theology as usual wrong. Sarah sets forth the covenant of promise presented to the Jew after the cross (but on his unbelieving refusal) passing away to make room for the call of the church to heavenly glory and union with Christ on high. Of all this the reader may find the key in studying the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. Compare especially Acts 3, which answers to Sarah, with Acts 9, on the total rejection of this in the death of Stephen, when God begins to send the gospel outside Jerusalem, raising up Paul as minister of the church in its full character.

Certain it is that Abraham's wife is the only woman whose years are carefully noted. To her death and the account of the purchase of a burying place the whole chapter is devoted. "And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her" (vers. 1, 2). Faith does not enfeeble affection; it heightens our sense of the havoc sin has wrought. But we sorrow not as others who have no hope, looking for His coming who is the Resurrection and the Life.

Again, we are expressly told in Hebrews 11 that these all (Sarah included) died, not in possession, but in faith. Of this the scripture before us is the most striking witness. Till the burial of Sarah Abraham possessed not so much as to set his foot on. He abides the pilgrim and stranger to the last. He has to buy even for a burying-place. He would have Canaan only under the glory of the Lord, and in the day of resurrection. He is content to wait till then. The time of faith is the time of Christ. While He is hidden, believers are hidden also; when He appears, then shall they also appear along with Him in glory.

There can be no greater mistake than that faith destroys lowliness, or promotes a want of considering others. It really brings God in, and thus is self judged, and love can flow. See the admirable bearing of Abraham with the children of Heth.

"And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth. And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a burying-place amongst you. And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead. And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land" (vers. 3-12). God had given him the moral respect of his neighbours; but he neither presumes on his favour in their eyes, nor will he take advantage of their feelings. As he rises above the sorrow that pressed on his heart, so he does not accept what cost him nothing for the burial of his dead. If he exceeded the sons of Heth in courtesy, he was none the less careful that the fullest value should be paid in due form, and with adequate witness.

"And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant."

"And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and al} the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city" (vers. 13-18). Faith never was meant to encourage a careless spirit, as Abraham's conduct in this business exemplifies, at a moment when any one else would have rather availed himself of another's help. Whatever the circumstances, faith makes the believer superior to them all.

"And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying-place by the sons of Heth" (vers. 19, 20). God works, doubtless; but the believer himself is exercised before Him and is delivered from his own will, or from the influence of objects such as the enemy uses to divert from God. So it was here. God gave Abraham such a place in the esteem of his neighbours that there was no difficulty whatever; but Abraham bore himself as one who sought not his own things but the will and pleasure of Him who had called him out by, and to, His promises — promises as yet unfulfilled.

Burial in the land began with Sarah. It was no mere feeling or fancy, sentiment or superstition, but a fruit of faith, in Abraham. He looked to have from God's hand the land wherein he laid her body. The gift of Canaan was far surer than any possession of a burying-place meanwhile. I deny not that he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly, that he looked for the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. But he rejoiced to see the day of Christ and expected in it the wresting of the earth from the hands of the enemy, and knew that all the land of Canaan would be his for an everlasting possession.

Hence the importance to the patriarchs, while preserving their pilgrim character, of burial in Canaan. So, when Abraham was gathered to his people, his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the same spot, "in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre, the held which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife" (Gen. 25: 9, 10). There too was Isaac laid by his sons Esau and Jacob (Gen. 35: 27-29). And so it was with Jacob, though he died in Egypt, for Joseph had him embalmed; "and his sons did unto him according as he commanded them, for his sons carried him into the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burying-place of Ephron the Hittite before Mamre" (Gen. 50: 12, 13). Joseph again (Gen. 50: 25, 26) "took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." Hence he too was embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt; but when deliverance came, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him (Ex. 13: 19), which the children of Israel in due time buried, not in the cave of Machpelah but in Shechem, "in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver; and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph" Joshua 24: 32).

Very different is the spiritual feeling which the hope of Christ's coming forms in the breast of the Christian. As His presence on high, in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man, calls one in worship from earth to heaven, and thus makes it no longer a question of Jerusalem any more than of "this mountain," so we look for Christ to come, gather us round him in the air, and present us in the Father's house, as well as to reign with Him after a heavenly sort over the earth. A special resting-place here below vanishes from a mind thus formed and nourished. We look, not for death though we may meanwhile fall asleep, but for Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, and will change us whether we wake or sleep into His glorious image, transforming our body of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory according to the working of the power which He has, even to subdue all things to Himself. Thus the opening of the heavens for us, consequent on redemption and our Lord's ascension, makes the earth to be of no account for the Christian in any way or for any present purpose.

GENESIS 24.

It is not my purpose to dwell at length on the call of Bethuel's daughter to be the bride of Isaac, however attractive the subject may be; but I would only point out in passing the striking propriety that here, after the death of Sarah, we should have the introduction of Rebekah. He who is at all instructed in the ways of God recognises in the latter the bride for the risen Son and Heir of all things, and this after the figure of the covenant of promise in Sarah has passed away. Till the Jews had refused the fresh summons of God to own their Messiah, now risen and glorified, there could be fittingly no bringing in of the Gentiles, no formation of a heavenly bride, the body of a heavenly Christ.

Not that the tale of Rebekah opens out the mystery which was reserved hidden in God for the apostle Paul to reveal to us, itself revealed not to the Old Testament writers, but to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This however does not hinder, but rather help, us, now that the secret is revealed, to understand the type of Rebekah as far as it goes; but it may be noticed that it does not set out either of the two great parts of the mystery — first, Christ, the Head of all things, heavenly and earthly; secondly, the church, in which Jewish and Gentile distinctions disappear, united to Him as His body in that universal supremacy, conscious of the relationship even while here on earth by the Holy Ghost sent down from on high. The type fits in with all, but cannot be said to reveal it.

My task now is to say a little of Abraham's part in what is here recorded. "And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and Jehovah had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: but thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou bring not my son thither again. The Jehovah God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again. And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and sware to him concerning that matter" (vers. 1-9).

In all this the Father's purpose seems clearly foreshown; a new thing was in progress — a bride to be fetched for His Son. None but the most careless can forbear to see the great and unusual solemnity of the transaction. Thus his trusty Eliezer is employed "that ruled over all he had," who aptly prefigures the place of service which the Holy Spirit is pleased now to take in executing the purpose of God as to the church in this world. In no other case, not of Genesis only but of all the Old Testament, do we find an oath introduced, the purport of which is so urged again and again. The subject of it too is no less to be observed. A wife must on no account be taken for Isaac from the daughters of Canaan. She must be sought from the country and kin out of which the father of the faithful had himself been called. Angels are not called, fallen or unfallen: sovereign grace chooses from the world. But there is another provision no less insisted on — the risen Son must on no account be brought again to the world for calling His bride. It is the Holy Ghost who accomplishes this work, not the Bridegroom. The Spirit is sent down from heaven to preach the gospel, and so to effect the formation of the church. The risen Bridegroom abides exclusively in heaven, while the call proceeds. Most impressively does Abraham admonish us in type of what moment it is to see that Christ has nothing but a heavenly relation to the church, and in absolute separation from the world.

How true this is in Christ for the Christian! "We all with open face beholding [or reflecting] the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Lord the Spirit." "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." So our Lord Himself said (John 16), the Comforter, on coming, should "convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe on me; of righteousness, because I go away to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." The righteous One was cast out by the unjust and lawless world, but God the Father has accepted and exalted Him at His right hand. This is the righteousness of God in its heavenly aspect; and there we know Him, not as the Messiah reigning on earth, but as the rejected One exalted in heaven. He is in no sense of the world; and Christians are not, even as He is not. Nay, more, "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. 15). The practice depends on the principle: the position of Christ determines the walk, as well as the spirit, of the Christian. Rebekah was to have Isaac in Canaan before her; there only was to think of him. On no account — not even to win his bride — must the bridegroom leave his place, save only to receive her to himself at the end. Isaac stays in Canaan and there only is known, while she is being led from her father's house, across the desert, by trusty Eliezer.

We may notice next the place which prayer receives in the servant, and this, not through pressure of trial as in Jacob, but in giving (as here) character to the walk of faith. "And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor. And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water, at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water. And he said, O Jehovah God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: and let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast showed kindness unto my master" (vers. 10-14).

So it is with the Christian in the world. "We walk by faith, not by sight." "Pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." "In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." Intercourse is established between the believer and God. He knows Whom he has believed. "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we seek anything according to his will, he heareth us; and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him." "And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. And the damsel was very fair to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her: and she went down to the well, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I pray thee, drink a tattle water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord: and she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand and gave him drink. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. And the man wondering at her, held his peace, to wit whether Jehovah had made his journey prosperous or not" (vers. 15-21).

Thus faith is kept in constant happy exercise. It is the work of the Spirit in man, especially now that redemption is known. Conscience is at rest, and the affections are free.

But there is more than prayer which distinguishes the christian and the church. The power of the Spirit finds ground of thanksgiving as well as of prayer and supplication. It is indeed the hour when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him, and the figure of this we find here. "And it came to pass, as the camels had done drinking, that the man took a golden ear-ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold; and said, Whose daughter art thou? tell me, I pray thee: is there room in thy father's house for us to lodge in? And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Milcah, which she bare unto Nahor. She moreover said unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in. And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped Jehovah. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I being in the way, Jehovah led me to the house of my master's brethren" (vers. 22-27).

That which came forth from God in guidance goes forth to Him in praise, a still more evident characteristic of the Christian. If we live in the Spirit we should walk, as well as worship, in the Spirit.

Along with this difficulties disappear. As the Lord directs, so He opens the door and blesses. There is the comfort of this — the comfort of knowing that it is His own hand that does all. Whatever may be the hindrances, the mission of the Spirit is accomplished. It stands not in persuasible words of man's wisdom, but in the power of God. No doubt there are gifts which accompany from the first the message of the witness, and array the bride, but the work is eminently one of faith and not of human influence. And hence it looks for, and has, the blessing of the Lord.

"And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things. And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban; and Laban ran out unto the man, unto the well. And it came to pass, when he saw the ear-rings and bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spake the man unto me; that he came unto the man: and, behold, he stood by the camels at the well. find he said, Come in, thou blessed of Jehovah, wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels. And the man came into the house: and he ungirded his camels, and gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the men's feet that were with him. And there was set meat before him to eat: but he said, I will not eat until I have told mine errand. And he said, Speak on. And he said, I am Abraham's servant. And Jehovah hath blessed my master greatly; and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and menservants, and maidservants, and camels, and asses. And Sarah my master's wife bare a son to my master when she was old: and unto him hath he given all that he hath. And my master made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I dwell; but thou shalt go unto my father's house, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son. And I said unto my master, Peradventure the woman will not follow me. And he said unto me, Jehovah before whom I walk, will send his angel with thee and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred, and of my father's house: then shalt thou be clear from this my oath, when thou comest to my kindred; and if they give not thee one, thou shalt be clear from my oath. And I came this day unto the well, and said, O Jehovah God of my master Abraham, if now thou do prosper my way which I go: behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass, that when the virgin cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher to drink; and she say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the same be the woman whom Jehovah hath appointed for my master's son. And before I had done speaking in mine heart, behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down unto the well, and drew water: and I said unto her, Let me drink, I pray thee. And she made haste, and let down her pitcher from her shoulder, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: so I drank, and she made the camels drink also. And I asked her, and said, Whose daughter art thou? And she said, The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor's son, whom Milcah bare unto him: and I put the ear-ring upon her face, and the bracelets upon her hands. And I bowed down my head, and worshipped Jehovah, and blessed Jehovah God of my master Abraham, which had led me in the right way to take my master's brother's daughter unto his son. And now if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me: that I may turn to the right hand, or to the left. Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth from Jehovah: we cannot speak unto thee bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, and go, and let her be thy master's son's wife, as Jehovah hath spoken. And it came to pass that, when Abraham's servant heard their words, he worshipped Jehovah, bowing himself to the earth. And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah: he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things" (vers. 28-53).

Lastly it is the work of the Spirit to give, and keep up, and strengthen the desire of being with Christ and of His coming, whatever communion of saints may be enjoyed here. "And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and tarried all night; and they rose up in the morning, and he said, Send me away unto my master. And her brother and her mother said Let the damsel abide with us a few days, at the least ten; after that she shall go. And he said unto them, Hinder me not, seeing Jehovah hath prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master. And they said, We will call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go" (vers. 54-58).

So, in the Revelation, the Spirit and the bride say, Come, when Christ presents Himself as the bright, the morning, star. It is the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom! go ye out to meet him," which awakens the slumbering virgins at midnight. It is this which recalls the saints now to go out, as they were called at the first, to meet the Bridegroom. "And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them. And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebekah, and went his way. And Isaac came from the way of the well Lahai-roi: for he dwelt in the south country. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide: And he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master: therefore she took a veil, and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (vers. 59-67).

So will it be with the heavenly bride. "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up, together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." The Father's purpose shall not fail of accomplishment, and all heaven shall rejoice and give honour to Him, "for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready."

GENESIS 25.

The first part of the chapter, comprehended in these verses, gives us the closing scenes of Abraham's eventful and instructive history. The Jewish tradition which identifies Keturah with Hagar is not only without proof but set aside by verse 6, which speaks of "the sons of the concubines which Abraham had;" and as Hagar was one, so Keturah was the other, not (as I think) to imply that she filled this relation during any part of Sarah's life, but rather to affirm her inferiority of place. Keturah is expressly called Abraham's "concubine" in 1 Chronicles 1: 32; as Hagar, on the other hand, is styled his "wife" in Genesis 16: 3. Nor need we revert to the Gentile difficulty, that sons were begotten of Abraham after Sarah's death, which has induced not a few of old as now* to believe that Abraham took Keturah during Sarah's life-time, and that the whole paragraph, if not chapter, is placed out of its chronological sequence in order not to break the main narrative. Proof of this is wanting, as the whole paragraph flows naturally, after Rebekah's marriage with Isaac, up to the several portions of the sons, as distinguished from the heir, and the death of the patriarch which was severed from Sarah's by at least thirty-seven years.

One may refer for instance to Mr. E. S. Poole, in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," 2: 12.

"Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah. And Jokshan begat Sheba, and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, and Letushim, and Leummim. And the sons of Midian; Ephah, and Epher, and Hanoch, and Abidah, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, while he yet lived, eastward, unto the east country" (vers. 1-6).

Here then we see, after the call of the bride, the blessing of nations associated with Abraham. It is a very distinct thing from that which faith receives now; for they which are of faith, the same are the children [sons] of Abraham. It is now a blessing open to all or any of the nations; and they are blessed with faithful Abraham. Through the cross the blessing comes to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith; and as Christ is dead and risen, and thus the accomplisher as well as object and crown of the promises, so there is no Jew nor Greek. Fleshly distinctions disappear. All are one in Christ Jesus. In that which is typified by the concubines' sons to Abraham we see the strongest possible contrast with Isaac. Midian may be there, and Jokshan, with the rest; perhaps Sheba, Dedan and Ephah, the son's sons. All these were Keturah's children.

Still it is written that "Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac." The risen son is the heir of all things; and if we are of Christ, then are we Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise. But unto the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away. They receive gifts, not the inheritance of the promises; and they are sent away, instead of abiding in the house for ever, as does the son.

So it will be in the age to come on earth, when, the church being completed, the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife has made herself ready. Blessing will flow, and the land of the morning will be no longer "the immovable east." I do not speak of Israel, the head of the nations under Christ's reign here below; still less of the glorified saints on high; nor do I mean only those that may then be born of God in every nation or people or tribe under the sun. But all the Gentiles are to rejoice with His people — a principle more deeply true, doubtless, in the present election for heaven from among Jews and Gentiles, but to be far more openly and widely seen in that bright day; and this, too, even in that quarter of the globe where dark superstitions of Christendom grow up rank, and side by side, with the Mahometan imposture and heathenism of every type.

"And these are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife" (vers. 7-10).

Thus peacefully passed away the man who, of all in Old Testament story, most strikingly combines the title of "friend of God" with "stranger and sojourner on the earth." Not that others — his son, grandson, and other descendants — did not carry on the blessed line of pilgrims who also walked with God. As a whole, however, what saint of old equalled him in these respects? Still less could any be said to surpass "the father of all them that believe."

Let us not at the same time forget that we have to do, not so much with the promises as he had, but with accomplishment in Christ (Rom. 4); and that, whatever promises of God there be, in Christ is the yea, and in Christ the amen, for glory to God by us. We are more than Abraham's seed, being blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1: 3). Sovereign grace alone accounts for a purpose so rich and above the thoughts of men or even the ancient oracles of God. Do we believe it for our own souls and for all that are Christ's? Do we walk and worship accordingly as we wait for Him from heaven?

The Actions of the Holy Spirit in the Assembly.

1 Corinthians 12.

W. Kelly.

The subject of which the apostle treats in this chapter, as an exposition of the principle (which is continued in the next chapter, where we have the spring of power, and in the one after, where we have the practice) was one most deeply needed at that time by the Corinthian saints, and not at all less now. For there is no greater forgetfulness of any part of the truth of God among Christians, than as to their great need of the Holy Ghost on the one hand, and as to God's great gift of Him on the other. Indeed, it is bound up with all the distinctive blessing of the church. Not that these chapters contain all, not that they exhaust every side of the blessing; for we have here the church more particularly viewed as the scene of God's power, not so much as the object of Christ's affection. For the latter we must look into Ephesians. But here we have the truth of the church (not the individual) viewed as that to which God had given the Spirit of power, of love (which the apostle treats of in 1 Cor. 13), and of the sound mind that should be shown (which we have in 1 Cor. 14).

The Spirit of power was there, but, whatever the energy He works in, the Holy Ghost has in no way set aside responsibility. Man cannot understand this. A divine person — His office is to be here, that He might be in the saints, the dwelling of God, and that they should have therefore an infinite resource; but, at the same time, not so that the might of the almighty Spirit of God could not be thwarted and hindered, or the testimony which was intended to be borne not be spoiled — not only ruined in its object, but turned to wholly different objects.

This was the state of things which came then before the apostle's mind, as a matter for warning, especially in 1 Cor. 10. Much more is it that which is actually found around us at the present moment, out of which the word of God has called us to emerge. But what we have to remember, beloved brethren, is that every one of us is apt to turn back more than we suspect to what we have left behind. And hence there is a continual source of weakness, even greater than, though not so gross as was found amongst the Corinthian saints. We see plainly in them how little the evil effects of that out of which they had come had disappeared from them. They were no doubt but young in the truth; but length of time does not eradicate evil, being in no way a cure for anything that savours of man. There is only one means, and that is divine power by the truth; for, if it works in us, it works in self-judgment. Divine power invariably — if there is to be deliverance from evil — makes us sensible of it, as well to judge ourselves in the light of God. There is not, nor can ever be practical deliverance, until the Lord, by the power of His own truth brought home by the Spirit, makes us to sit in judgment on ourselves, searching and trying ourselves to the very core.

But as for the Corinthian saints, they were accustomed to a good deal of a different species of evil — having been under the influence and working of Satan, as he wrought powerfully in the heathen. Even before Christ came, there was a vast deal of demoniacal power in the world. We see it surrounding the blessed Lord at every step. No doubt there were different forms of Satan's power; but one of the worst was that which, usurping the name of God, had given to the Corinthians the idea of religious power. Out of this terribly false condition the Corinthians had come into the church.

And have we no special danger? or if so, what? We have emerged from a state of things, not, it is true, of that gross character, but from what is not less really foreign to the mind of God. We have come out of what is in point of fact a corruption of Christianity, and hence, therefore, we are very apt to bring in thoughts, feelings, and habits, which we do well to bring to the test of the word of God — even the oldest of us. But those who are comparatively young in the way need it more particularly; they have never yet proved duly their convictions; they have accepted a quantity of things, much more than they are aware of, on the evidence of others, rather than by divine teaching for themselves. Along with much that is good there is always the danger of our mingling a little of ourselves in every step of that process, and in particular we ought not to let in or slip back into what we have got out of.

But now for the principle. There are two main ideas among men around us, out of one or other of which we have all come. The one which most extensively prevails is that which I may call the Catholic idea, though perhaps most individuals in this room have known comparatively little of it as experience. Still it is before our eyes, and we are constantly in contact from time to time with persons who suffer from it; and it is well to know how to meet it. The Catholic idea is mainly characterised by this: all blessing, all privilege, is in the church. The grand object of God is the church; there is the Saviour, life, pardon, every blessing; the only means of having these is to be in and of it; and this, too, as a present thing. For the Catholic idea does not venture far into the future; nor is heaven so much the object of its contemplation as is the earth. The notion is that, all privilege being concentrated in the church, the individual has scarcely any appreciable place. He is merged. He is only a cypher, and all his importance is because he belongs to the church. As to himself, why he is not even allowed to call himself a saint; and, as to being a saint at all, it is entirely a question for the church to settle. Not God, but the church determines whether he is to be a saint or not; and perhaps it is not done till fifty years after he is dead and gone. Now, no doubt all this is very gross ignorance, but it is the form that the Catholic idea has taken. And remember, in speaking of this I am not referring merely to Romanism, but to ancient Christendom, under whatever guise it may present itself.

We have remains, as you know, which show how greatly this theory had taken root not very long after the apostles themselves disappeared from the earth. No doubt there has been development since; but still the great idea was and is much what I have been endeavouring to set before you. This only is essential: all else is matter of detail and may differ. It is found in Romanism as well as in the Eastern Christian bodies; so it was early after the apostles left.

But a new thing began at the Reformation. When the Catholic system had ripened into a monstrous head of corruption, when the results were morally unbearable among men, when the thought of the church had completely ruined or blotted out all right understanding of God, when, on the one hand, these who belonged to it, individually considered, were so little in the mind of men that it was no question of living faith, provided they belonged to the church; and, on the other hand, when all who were outside the church, no matter how real their faith or love, were considered heretics, and deserving of no better fate than to be punished soundly in this world for the good of their souls; then came up another and counter thought in which the individual only is prominent. The one point here was that a man should read the Bible for himself, that he must believe and be justified for himself, and that as by faith he becomes a child of God for himself, so he should have his conscience left free to serve God for himself. Here all thought of the church was completely lost, and consequently, giving up consideration of the church of God, individuals of this way of reasoning combined and formed churches for themselves. This grew, no doubt, to a far larger extent, and was carried out more fully, than was contemplated when first acted on.

But we find, in fact, that those who justly insisted on the importance of individual faith as the saving principle for the soul, and as that which alone glorified God, began to collect together at last, sometimes in a country to themselves, and then again, when in that country there began to be divergences of opinion among them, they made their own distinct churches. If they did not like the great public church of the country, they chose to split off into different religious societies, all essaying to become churches. One was, as they considered, as good in principle as another, but the best church was that which suited a man's own mind. This was the individual idea carried out to its natural results, and such is exactly what we find around us now.

We have the two systems confronting each other in fact. We have the old Catholic notion in those bodies who make everything to be a question of church privilege, who say that it is in the church alone can be found eternal life, or at any rate the hope of it — I might almost say, the chance of it, for it comes to that. The whole system is a question of the church dispensing, the church acting, the church pronouncing, the church teaching what is truth, and really saving: everything is a question of the church. But in the other case the church is lost in the individual. It is the individual who by faith has received the gospel and become a Christian, who consequently uses his own judgment in forming his own church, or joining the church he likes best. Such is the state of things around us.

Let me now ask you, what is the truth of God respecting it all ? And this is where the importance of revealed truth comes in. The Corinthians were in danger of drifting into one or other of these two things, as we shall clearly find in these chapters. It is not, indeed, a very uncommon thing to find a mixture of the two, and this mixture we may trace among the Corinthians. The great thing I want to call your attention to is this: the blessed manner in which the Holy Ghost interferes in order to establish the believer in the truth; and so, without controversy, the soul finds itself able, while kept from what is wrong in each of these principles, to enjoy all that is right in both, as God's will alone is.

There is no possibility of a thing holding its ground on earth, unless there be something which gives it a moral claim. There must be a fragment of truth in order to win and keep Christians together. So it is when we look at the Catholic idea, and in what may be called the Protestant one. There is a measure of truth in each; but when we get to God's word, there we have the truth about both, and in this order: — it is not the church first and then the individual, but the individual first and then the church.

So it is introduced to us in this chapter, as it is always in Scripture. Take Matthew 16; What is the question the Lord first puts? "Whom do men say that I am?" One of them gives an answer for himself — an answer which would have done for each, though he who spoke went beyond the rest, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." This was a full confession of Christ, owning Him to be not the true Messiah only, but a divine person in the nearest relation to the Father; and the moment the Lord Jesus hears it, He brings out the thought of the church — "On this rock I will build my church." He had not then begun to build it, and He has not done building it yet.

Again in the Epistle to the Ephesians the same order is most marked. The individual Christian always precedes the body. Take for instance Ephesians 1. It is only in the last verse we see the church; and, if you look through the whole of the Epistle, it is regularly so. The individual is always set in his own place, and this necessarily is a question of faith; for faith is indispensable to the individual, and must be so. He cannot have faith for another. Each must have faith in God for himself. There may be the faith — the common deposit of the truth, which we all own; but still, when we look at faith itself, it is necessarily individual in the soul. Then comes the question of the church as the body of Christ.

When one believes the gospel, one receives the Spirit, who is not only the seal of salvation, but also unites him to Christ as a member of His body. These are divinely given relationships, whether individual or corporate; but the corporate follows the individual, the power in both being the Holy Ghost after redemption was effected, for the Holy Ghost was not given till Jesus was glorified.

It is just the same thing in the chapter which is before us now.

The apostle opens the matter thus: — "Concerning spiritual [gifts] brethren, I would not have you ignorant." It will be observed that the word "gifts" is inserted by the translators. Nor is it correct; for the subject, though embracing gifts, goes farther, and takes in what is of far deeper moment as being the source of all, the presence of the Spirit working in the sovereign power of a divine person in the church, and by its members. Perhaps "spirituals" would give the idea if our language could bear it without any addition. If we must, for clearness, supply one, it should be "manifestations" rather then "gifts."

Next, he tells them, "Ye know that when* ye were Gentiles" — not "that ye were." It was nothing new to tell them they were Gentiles, but "when ye were Gentiles, ye were carried away unto those dumb idols even as ye were led." That is, it was not a mere leading, but rather in those heathen days a carrying away to what they would now look back on with pain, seeing the excessive folly of it as well as its daringness. It was Satan's direct opposition to the truth of God. They would learn that the true God is anything but a dumb idol — that He is one who has not only spoken to us by His Son, but who opens the mouths that were once dumb to speak for Jesus Christ the Lord by His Spirit.

*The Received Text omits ὅτε on small authority, and to the destruction of the sense which requires the adverb; but we have it in all the great witnesses to the ancient text, , B, C, D, E, L, P, more than fifty cursive manuscripts, Vulg., old Latin, Syr., Sah., Arm., Aeth. and many Fathers, Greek and Latin.

Thus the apostle brings in the test of spirits in the confession of Jesus as Lord (ver. 3), "Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed." Here he does not, of course, mean only the precise term "anathema," or "accursed;" but what he has, as I judge, in his mind, is this: whatever lowers Jesus is an impossibility to the Holy Ghost — a very simple principle, but one which is the only perfect test for all truth in the church of God. The apostle gives it in a double form, a criterion for as well as against. "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." If man ventures without the Spirit of God, he becomes a prey to the evil one who seeks to lower Jesus. The Holy Ghost alone knows what is proper to Jesus. And He does not speak of Him merely as the Son of God. The point where error comes in is in the Son of God becoming a man; for it is the complex person of the Lord Jesus that exposes persons to break down fatally. There are those, no doubt, who deny His divine glory; but there is a far more subtle way in which the Lord Jesus is lowered, and this is where He is owned to be a man, but where the manhood of the Lord is allowed in some way to swamp His glory, and neutralise the confession of His person. Thus, one is soon perplexed, and lets that which puts Him in association with us here below work so as to falsify what He has in common with God Himself. There is but one simple thing which keeps the soul right as to this, and that is, that we do not venture to pry and never dare to discuss it, fearing to rush in human folly upon such holy ground, and feeling that on such ground as that we are only worshippers. Wherever this is forgotten by the soul, it will invariably be found that God is not with it — that He allows the self-confident one, who of himself ventures to speak of the Lord Jesus, to prove his own folly. It is only by the Holy Ghost that he can know what is revealed about the Lord Jesus. But then we have the double guard: if a man lowers Christ, it is not by the Spirit; and if a man truly says that He is Lord, it is by the Spirit. Here is the chief test for perpetual use in the church of God.

This is the truth about which we ought above all to be jealous. For there is a divine nature in the child of God that is sensitive to what affects Christ, and ought to be so. I cannot conceive anything more destructive to the soul than losing this sensitiveness. The person of Christ is a matter too serious, too fundamental, for any speculation to be allowed, and, in point of fact, the reason of it is this: the Holy Ghost, by whom is all true teaching, is not really with the soul that ventures to teach out of his own resources. He is here for the express purpose of glorifying Christ. Now this is a great thing to be simply settled on. The Holy Spirit of God is here for the purpose. It is not merely for comforting or edifying, though both come in; but the purpose constantly in view is this, — He is here for exalting Christ, and guarding Him from all that lowers Him. It is the aim and work of the Spirit of God as presented in the teaching before us.

Now that the apostle has brought in this great two- edged sword, as it were, to guard the glory of the Lord Jesus, we find him turning to another grave truth in verse 4, "There are diversities of gifts." The Corinthians acted as if the only gifts worth talking about, and these above all and evidently grand, were such a manifest display of the divine power as in speaking many tongues without having learned them, or in working miracles. No doubt they did draw attention to the person who had the power so to speak or work; and it is very evident that there was divine power acting in a special way. But the Spirit of God recalls to one of the most characteristic truths attached to His own presence in the church — "There are diversities of gifts." Whatever does not leave room for every gift that God has given is not the church of God acting as such. Whenever it is an accepted principle or a settled practice, whenever there is a state of things which shuts out the diversities of gifts that God is now giving to the church of God, it is a state which He disowns. It is contrary to the nature and aim of the church of God. Nor do I mean an opening for their exercise here or there in outposts, or in less important and comparatively private ways, but on the greatest occasions, the coming together of all saints as God's assembly (ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ) whether for the Lord's Supper or at other times. So the Lord ordained as is shown by the apostle in all the context where, correcting disorders, he maintains this intact.

There are diversities of gifts, "but the same Spirit," because although these gifts differ immensely in their character, yet they all come from the same source. God has to do with one as truly as another. There is an immense difference between the lesser and the greater gifts, but "the same Spirit;" and if I would respect the Spirit of God, I should respect the least gift that comes from Him. Then there is another thing which the Corinthians had forgotten (verse 5), "And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord." One cannot have a gift without being a servant; that is, one is not his own master in the use of the gift, but a servant of the Lord Jesus. This the Corinthians had forgotten. They were acting independently. Even the Holy Ghost Himself has deigned to take the place of a servant, and, having come down to that place, He lifts no one above it. This is the next great truth presented to us — not only diversities of gifts and the same Spirit, but differences of administrations, that is to say, of services, yet the same Lord. And, lastly, there were the results produced by these powers which wrought in subjection to the glory of the Lord Jesus. For if there were these differences or "diversities of operations" as they are called (verse 6), "it is the same God that worketh all in all." What an immense fact in a world of vain show!

If this was rather the general statement of divine power in the church of God, we come in the next place to its working in each individual. The apostle has been showing the common principle. There was the same Spirit, by whom all gifts were distributed, the same Lord, and the same God; but now he comes to the particular forms of the gift (verse 7): "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal." It was not to display the individual himself, but for others' benefit. For these gifts to effect common good is the grand aim of all these workings of the Spirit of God in the church.

Then (verse 8) we have "For to one is given by the Spirit [not miracles, but] the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge." Note that he carefully adds "by the same Spirit," because knowledge has a considerably lower character than wisdom, but at the same time the "knowledge" that he owns here is as truly by the Holy Ghost as the "wisdom." What is this word "wisdom" as compared with the word "knowledge?" To gather truth by serious study of God's word is far from being wrong. Indeed it is of the Holy Spirit; and the result is "knowledge," and the utterance of it He gives is "the word of knowledge." So Timothy was called to give himself wholly up to it. In fact, what is gathered thus is most justly to be considered the "word of knowledge," and this no doubt has its value; as everything has that God gives by the Holy Ghost to the church of God. What a person gleans, spiritually labouring in the field of the word of God, has its place, is meant for all, and is refreshing to the saints of God. But it is not exactly the same as the "word of wisdom;" for the word "wisdom" indicates that the soul is occupied not merely with scripture, but with Him who gave it that one might know Himself; where the soul, furnished by the word of God, knows what it is to gather God's own mind; not merely to have it in details, as given here and there in scripture, but by a deeper appreciation of His word, to enter into that acquaintance with Him that is found not so much in studying texts, as from communion with His own nature, ways, character, and above all with Christ Himself. He was found, I need not say, always "the wisdom of God." Christ is never called the "knowledge of God," nor could He be, but the "wisdom of God." It is rather, I repeat, to be drinking not merely from the stream, but at the spring of all in God Himself. It is thence that the "word of wisdom" is drawn, following the course of the river up.

Now you will have noticed that the apostle does not commence with what was so evidently striking. He begins, on the contrary, with that which the Corinthians had very little love for, what they had evidently neglected and set aside in seeking after those mighty displays that occupied their active minds. The apostle takes them first to what edifies: "To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge." He then passes on to the gift of "faith," namely, that power which enables the soul to break through difficulties. This is the faith that is referred to here. You must remember the gift of faith does not mean the act of believing the truth, which, of course, is indispensable to all saints.

Then we come to what was sensible to everybody or palpable even to an unbeliever. "To another the gift of healing by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits." The latter means not discerning whether or not people were Christians, but discerning whether the spirit by which they spoke was of God or of Satan. In short, it was special power in the application of the preliminary criterion given in the third verse, which we have already noticed.

Then we have (ver. 10 to 12), "To another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." Here we have the fundamental principle that I wish to assert tonight with all plainness of speech; and hence we perceive how the divinely taught may take in whatever is true of the two ideas that we have seen at work, give its just place to each, and combine them both, instead of setting them at war one with another.

Anything that really weakens faith would not be of God. Whatever would intercept the soul, whatever dared to come between it and the object of faith, could not be of God; and hence, therefore, the word of preaching that God employs for our conversion has exactly this for its object, viz., to put the individual before God — to present Christ to him, to meet his wants and his misery, and his distance from God. There, consequently, it is entirely a question of faith. By faith it is that a man is justified; by faith he becomes a child of God. All the great individual blessings turn on faith in Christ that a man has for himself, given to him by the Holy Ghost through the word of God. It is through Christ (I need not say) brought and revealed to his soul that this faith is produced.

But there is more than this to see. When he is a believer, what follows? When he submits to the testimony of God, when he has received the word of truth, when he has given to him the Holy Ghost, what is the effect? He is brought into the unity of the body of Christ. It is not simply that he has got the Holy Ghost, giving him the joy of the truth he has received, and withal power and liberty before God; but, besides, the Spirit gives union with all those here on earth who belong to God, who are set free for God and to God.

Here then is exactly how we find the combination of the two principles entirely dislocated by man. He has divorced what should be always bound together. If you look only at man, there can be no doubt that the individual (or, as we may say, the Protestant) principle of faith is an incomparably safer one than the Catholic one, which makes the church all. But, beloved friends, we are not looking at things simply with regard to man, but also as to God; and we are bound to do so, and the Holy Ghost is here for the purpose of taking care of the glory of God, which is done by making Christ the object. He only is the object of all the purposes of God, and the consequence is, that until we enter into God's purposes there never can be the sure or large enjoyment of the truth.

For when we have the Spirit of God, as He now is given to the believer, it is not only individually; but he is baptised into, or made to belong to, the one body. He is "one spirit with the Lord." He is, consequently, one with all that are the Lord's. This, then, brings us face to face with the further truth that the Holy Ghost does not merely imprint unity upon the saints, and then leave them, but is here to make good all the objects of the glory of God. It is of very great moment that the children of God should look at the thing personally. I am even afraid — and particularly so where people trust creeds instead of scripture — that the simplicity and the force of the simple truth that the Holy Ghost is a divine person is but little understood and little believed. Such is the case now, I believe, among those who are commonly called "Evangelicals," whether they are Dissenters or Churchmen. Faith in the Holy Ghost as a divine person being feebly entertained, you will find that they generally talk about the Holy Ghost as an "influence." It is not that they deny the existence of the Spirit of God, but they do not see the all-importance of His being a divine person; and, further than that, a divine person who is here working in God's saints and in God's assembly, sovereignly or as He will, to glorify the Lord Jesus.

Now here precisely we have the truth that the Corinthians too so little appreciated, and therefore the apostle brings it out in this distinct manner. "All these," not "some of them," not those only which made themselves so conspicuous, but "all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body being many are one body: so also is [not the church only, but] Christ." The apostle is no doubt looking at the church, but he looks at it with the Head, as inseparably united together. He does not so speak to the Ephesians. They did not require it to be so impressed upon them as the Corinthians. Impossible to have been so loose as the Corinthians were, if they had remembered that the whole being, head and body, was all one Christ. They looked upon themselves as invested with power, and this was the whole affair practically. But the apostle would show them that these powers are but a small part, and an inferior part, of a vast system of divine working in the church on earth. It is a body one with Christ, and even called so, of which each and all of us are living members. "So also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit."

Then we have (ver. 14), "For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not of the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?" There plainly we have discontent with what the Lord had given. And was there never greater reason for this to be looked at than now? Whenever a soul is found to be using the gift that is given to it, there will always be blessing; but if, on the contrary, the one with a humble gift, such as would be represented by "the foot," should covet what he has not got, his own proper work is lost by ignoring his own place in the body. The whole thought therefore is dishonouring to God. So again (ver. 16), "If the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?" It may run through the members, the highest as well as the lowest.

In the 17th verse he puts it thus, "If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?" The blessedness of the body is in each member doing its own function; because it is not merely my ear that hears, but I that hear, nor is it only my eye that sees, but rather I who see. It is the man. And this it is which gives, therefore, such a sense of unity and is so real a means of blessing to every member, the least just as much as the greatest. They all contribute; and indeed there would be a most sensible loss, were the least member to fail in doing its part. This is what the Corinthians had seriously lost sight of; but we are in just the same danger as they were, and indeed we are more particularly in danger, because, having come out of systems where there was only room for the priest or the minister, we naturally tend to it. There is nothing that people sooner slip into than this kind of isolation and individuality; because for the most part they have come from where individuality was strong, and the place of the church was unknown or swamped. For not more truly does the "church" principle destroy the "individual" one, than the "individual" principle does the "church" one, if each stands alone.

The blessedness of the truth is that we have both — the individual blessing first clear, and then the corporate one, and both, too, made good by the Spirit of God. If the Spirit of God brings my soul to know Christ, to rest on Him, and rejoice in Him before God, I cannot have that without looking after others who have the same blessing. This is the way in which God brings the two principles together and conciliates them round the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. For it is not merely that I have Him as a Saviour; I have Him also as the Head of the body, as we are told here. "So also is Christ." What an ennobling yet truly humbling standard for our practice, that all we are is a representation of Christ! I do not mean individually alone, but when we come together in the assembly, for this is the public way of showing the church. How jealous ought we to be, therefore, that every meeting of the assembly should present Christ in truth! If we belong to God's church, what matter about any other church? His is the only church worth contending for; if we are Christians, we are of it. All we need to see to is that we walk, and meet, and worship accordingly.

This, then, is the first violation of the thought of unity, viz., discontent with the place the Lord has given us, the desire for something greater, something more prominent than that which is ours. "But now," says the apostle, "hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him." How establishing this is to the soul! This is what, beloved brethren, we all want to be more distinct about. Perhaps there are persons in this room who have come in merely believing that here we are enjoying things more simply and with more purity. I believe it; but that does not give you the true measure, nor explain why we have left what man has done in self-will. It is the fact that we have to do with God in the matter, and that God has to do with us; that we meet because and as it is the will of God. Surely God is still carrying on that building, His holy temple; surely He is still carrying on the work of the Holy Spirit according to the figure that is spoken of here — the body of Christ. Whatever may be the difficulties, or disorder, or confusion, it abides, and of that body are we. We have come to that which expresses it, and it is as members of Christ we meet as we do. Each meeting of the faithful that we have our part in is a witness to the one body, though we frankly own the ruin-state in which the church is here below; even the humblest soul that is accepted in the name of the Lord Jesus, as made by the Holy Ghost a member of Christ's body, has just as real a place in it as any other. Not merely so are the prominent members, but no less are those described according to the apostle's figure here as the "uncomely" ones (ver. 23). It is of practical moment that we should accept unreservedly, the truth of God respecting this. So that, supposing there are real Christians that cause trouble or difficulty, it is the teaching of the Spirit of God that we should heartily accept these. What sort of a mother would it be that would find fault and become impatient with one of her children which had anything the matter with it? A true mother would anxiously care for that child more than any of the others, because it would most need her love. May I not then say that it is exactly thus the Lord really calls us to be? For what is a spiritual mind, but a mind in possession of affections and of a judgment according to God, so that we shall be found seeking just the same things as Christ — not in the least wishing to get rid of a trial or difficulty or anything of the kind, but bearing it, not only in patience, but with love exercised by it.

Let us take up briefly the other form in which the working of the Spirit of God is apt to be set aside (ver. 21). "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you." Here we have the exact counterpart to what we have been looking at. It is not the inferior part that wants to be something greater, but the superior part that disdains the lesser one. These things, brethren, ought not so to be. But as they were then and are now, so we do well to lay this instructive warning to heart. The very nature of the body rises up to rebuke the greater gift which would look down or hinder the less. Let us be thankful to the grace which has given us any place; let us discharge earnestly the functions God has given us in the body of Christ; but let us prize and make the most of every other member, and not least those who have a place wholly different from our own. Disdain be as far from us as discontent.

Here we have the two great hindrances that are too often at work. In both cases we see clearly flesh and not the Spirit of God; for the Spirit of God, as He works in all, so He takes up each and gives each his place, and this because it is God that has put them there. Consequently, whenever the Spirit of God works thus in souls, there should be the shrinking from anything that would weaken or frustrate the will of God: especially if love also is drawn out towards each member of the body of Christ, because it is a member. However we need not enter into that further now.

You will note that in the 21st verse the apostle is more peremptory than in the 15th. We have in the former, "The eye cannot say unto the hand," whereas in the latter it is "If the foot should say." The one is the danger of the strong or greater gift, the other of the weak or less; and the former is of the two the most offensive to the Lord.

In ver. 21 the apostle takes in the two greatest extremes of all. "Neither again the head to the feet, I have no need of you." He is looking here, of course, simply at the body, and bringing out the moral force of the comparison, which is, that the highest gift cannot treat the lowest as if he were needless to him. And, indeed, it is so where grace works; for I am persuaded that you will find that the greater the gift (where there is spirituality as well as gift), there will be the more hearty desire for the working of the least gift that God has given for the good of the church. There will be no such thought as that, because one person has a superior gift, all others are to hold their peace while he is present. The spring of blessedness in the assembly is God Himself, and not any particular member of the body, though he may be by grace a very important channel of working for the good of the assembly. The great point is the sense that God it is who works in the church; and God may, even in the presence of the very greatest, it might be even of the apostle himself, be pleased to use, in a true way to edification, a very simple and lowly member of the body of Christ.

The main thing is that neither the lesser members are to desire a greater place than they have, nor the greatest ones in any way to act as if they could do without the least. They are all precious in the assembly of God. "Nay, much more" (and this brings in what I referred to), "those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary." It is not that they have their place only, but "they are necessary." They may be trying enough by times, and too plainly show the feebleness of those who have not the power to rise above the circumstances and things around, but still "they are necessary." "And" (ver. 23) "those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need." Take for instance the face. Care of that is not wanted, for it is of itself a comely part. But we take more care naturally of that part which has not the same comeliness, as for instance the foot. So here we find the divine aim: "But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: that there should be no schism in the body." See to it then that there be no setting aside of what God has given for the good of the church, whether it be the lesser or the greater ones opposing each other. If so, the same result, in either case, is produced. It is man thwarting the government of God, nay, His richest grace in the church: would he even make the Spirit appear a party to the dishonour of the Lord? May we be kept and guided in the path of Christ!

The apostle goes on (ver. 26), "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it." And then, in the next verse, he brings in a statement well worthy of our mature consideration, "Ye are the body of Christ." Not, of course, that they were independent of any others throughout the world; but still they were the expression of Christ in that particular place. Strictly speaking, it is neither "a" body as if there was more than one, nor "the" body as if they alone completed it, but "Christ's body." They had the privileges and the responsibility attached to it. They were His body there. If you went to another place, you would find not another body but still the same. Looking at them individually, we see that "they are members in particular."

Each member is a member of Christ, not of a, but of the church, His body. In fact, there is no such thing in scripture as a member of a church. Scripture repudiates such language, which proceeds from the "individual" idea that we have been looking at. There everything is individualised, even the church itself, as well as every person that belongs to it. It is all on a false foundation, not for our relations as Christians, but for those of the church.

The truth is that the Holy Ghost, being a divine person — equally, therefore, acting in all the assemblies throughout the world — necessarily makes all one; and this is the reason why there was no such thing as "one body" until the Holy Ghost came down. In this way it is not faith that unites to Christ. I quite admit that, unless there is faith, a man will never get to heaven, and therefore nothing is more important. This was true before the church existed at all; but now with it something more is true. A divine person is come down, who never took flesh like the Lord Jesus, and never therefore was pleased, so to speak, to unfold His glory in any method so circumscribed as having a body prepared to be incorporated with His divine nature, i.e., to be Himself a man while yet God. But now in fact the Holy Ghost, never having been pleased so to take a body or become incarnate, takes up all those who believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and brings them into unity. This is the true account of the church, and no other; and the consequence is therefore that, no matter where it may be, it is always the "body of Christ." It is so wherever one finds saints gathered to Christ's name. Wherever they are met in His name, there the Holy Ghost is left free to work for Christ's glory. Alas! how many true saints are scattered in sects, not so met. The state of things around us is that the two things are not found together. There are "members in particular," but not holding to Him as the Head, or gathered on the ground of "the body of Christ." I speak of the fact, not of intelligence. There are many real Christians, no doubt, but they are not found simply on that footing. I speak now of individuals scattered up and down among the denominations. They are Christ's members; but could one say of them denominationally that they are met as "the body of Christ"?

Now, our wisdom is to own and act on this truth as on every other known to us. God has shown us the failure and the ruin of the church, and that whatever does not uphold the principle of the body of Christ will always be wrong. If I think only of the ruin of the church, there will be no confidence, nor a happy going forward according to the mind of God: the fact of the ruin will be used as an excuse for doing nothing. But, where we believe that God has His church, although it is at the present time in a state of confusion, we ought, if members of it, to grieve over it, and humble our souls about it; but we must see that we be not acting inconsistently ourselves. If there are ever so few meeting together who own this truth, these the Spirit of God will own. The grand principle of it is true now as it ever was, because the Spirit of God is as truly here now as He was then. Say I this to encourage assumption? God forbid! for I should not myself meet with any who would arrogantly claim to be the church of God, any more than with such as meet on any other ground than that. Let us cleave to the truth, and this practically, without setting up to be more or other than we really are, not daring to meet in any other way or name but His, but owning the present ruin-state. The only sound and sacred principle to meet on is the one body, and this the body of Christ.

We are next told (ver. 28) "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." Observe, it is the same design as before — putting down to the lowest place that which the Corinthians had set first. "First apostles," and last of all are these "diversities of tongues." None of the brethren, however, possessed all the gifts, as we find in the 29th and 30th verses: "Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?" Further, they are set in the church, not in a church; and it is the church on earth, not in heaven. It is real living unity in practice. Nationalism or Voluntaryism are therefore excluded no less than Romanism. They all deny the one body in principle and in practice.

The chapter closes with an exhortation to "covet earnestly the best gifts;" that is, those that were for edification, though they had less of display than of power and blessing for the assembly.

THE ACTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE ASSEMBLY.

(1 CORINTHIANS 14: 20-40. )

Before taking up the portion just read, I may add a few words as connecting the previous part of this chapter and the chapter before with what we have already had. I showed, in 1 Cor 12, that the great principle is laid down, not merely of gifts, but of what is called "spirituals" — the word "spiritual" being much more than a question of spiritual "gifts." What appertains to the Spirit is the point. Now the most important of all is this — not so much these gifts, in which is displayed His power in various forms, but, above all, the presence of God; the presence of God now made good in this especial form of it, that the Holy Spirit is here to act sovereignly in the assembly.

This, therefore, is a deeper question, and of greater moment than any display of particular gifts; and we must not forget that it is included in the doctrine of 1 Cor 12. It shows, no doubt, that there are various forms in which He works. But who is it that works? It is God; and it is not only in a general way in which He may be said to do everything, but the solemn truth that is brought before us, and which we must each value according to the measure of our appreciation of divine things, is this — God present in a new and intimate way, as He never was before, nor could be apart from the accomplishment of redemption. It immensely clears the subject where the soul enters into this.

We know very well that at all times in the history of the world God intervened. Never did He fail to leave Himself a witness of His power and goodness. But it is another thing to have Himself so present as to give character to the place where He has been pleased to come and make it His dwelling. Granted that it is no question now of a visible sign. In Israel it was; and they being dull, and its being according to the character of His general dealings, Jehovah there gave a palpable proof of His presence. There was the cloud that betokened it. This gave the certainty, therefore, to an Israelite that God dwelt there in a way He had never done before. If they were redeemed out of Egypt, they had God Himself thus taking His abode in the midst of His people. But then this was only a sign; and it was a sign of God dwelling in the darkness too, for such was the nature of it — of a God who could not be approached too near, of a God who was purposely bringing out the sinfulness of the people that stood in this comparative nearness to Him. Still there was amongst them sin, and no offering as yet which could put it away for ever.

Now, on the contrary, the basis of the presence or dwelling of God with us is the glorious fact that sin is judged in the cross, and that God accordingly can be present not merely judicially, nor merely with a sign of His glory, but in the reality of His grace; not closing as yet the place of responsibility of course, nor taking us out of the path of faith, but strengthening us in it. Accordingly the grand point throughout all these chapters is this: whatever consists not with the presence of a God of grace who is Himself in the midst of His people — actually there, whatever is not suited to Him is unsuited to them. It is not a question merely of the people being Christians — which is all taken for granted — but of fidelity, care, dependence on God in the use of the means that He gives us to glorify the Lord Jesus by the Spirit in His assembly.

God is here in our midst: not merely dwelling in each, which is perfectly true, but God making us, when gathered together, His dwelling. This principle is laid down, not merely in 1 Cor. 12, but in 1 Cor. 3, and supposed throughout the Epistle. We must remember that it is a presence here, not merely one by-and-bye, but here on earth. At that time they had God acting according to the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over Satan; so that there were healings, and miraculous powers, the fruit of complete victory over what even the judgment of God had brought into the world. But besides that, there was what is of permanent value for the testimony of God here below; as, for instance, grace edifying the members of the body of Christ by teachers and the like — the word of wisdom, and of knowledge, etc. On this I need not dwell, but simply recall the two great facts: a dwelling of God on the earth; and, secondly, that dwelling, while really good and true in each particular spot, as really one wherever it may be found. That is, there is a stamp of unity about it, which is bound up with the fact that the Holy Ghost is there, who by His presence is incapable of imprinting anything else than unity. Who does not see one Spirit emphatically brought before us in the chapter?

Now I press this, because there is not a single religious system on the face of the earth which has not in some way let slip that unity — even those who boast most of it. Take, for instance, the Church of Rome. After all there is a vast deal, even in Rome, of what you may call independency, as admitting not only of its separate parishes and distinct dioceses, etc., but of totally distinct orders of priesthood. The only thing that has the appearance of unity is that there is one governor over all. They and others talk about unity of doctrine, discipline, and the like. But they do not see how utterly short this is of the "one body." For there might be the same kind of doctrine and discipline in half-a-dozen bodies, and no unity whatever; as, for instance, in the Methodist bodies, or in the Presbyterian ones, which are apart from one another.

But what a different thing is unity in the mind of God — how wholly distinct the oneness of the church according to scripture! For there we do not see "One Spirit" and many bodies, even if they had a similar polity, but One Spirit and one body. And what a blessed thing to know, beloved friends, that this unity is ours, and that it is ours not in an exclusive but in an inclusive sense — that the unity of which we remind one another, as to which we need continually to rebuke our narrow hearts, is that which we maintain for all that are His! It is not a strange place that we wish to compel the saints into, it is not something which we crave as an object near to our hearts in a selfish way, and therefore cry it up; but our one motive is that — it is the truth, this unity of the Spirit according to the will of God. It is a relationship, and this in grace, which God has established by the presence of His Spirit for all that are His on earth, the great effort of the devil being to hinder its manifestation, to destroy the sense of it, and, consequently, all just action upon it in the minds and ways of God's saints. For I press it, that it is not merely a question of the world coming in, but the more solemn thought that God's saints have lost even the idea of this unity. Consequently, when most look at the various churches that are existing around them, it is with a feeling of complacency, not of shame and sorrow for the Lord's injured name. But even if they grieve, let them rise and do the will of the Lord themselves without waiting for others; especially as to obey is better than sacrifice, and example gives the more force to precept. Why should they go on with what is unscriptural? Who asks this at their hands? Certainly not the Lord.

The doctrine of 1 Cor 12 is that "God has set some in the church, first apostles," etc. (verse 28) That is, the Spirit of God blots out all the efforts of man to arrange matters so as to avoid difficulties, and allow what he calls rights to be maintained, and best secured, as he thinks, against collision. Men have got the notion that there is no truth, but only "views" as to divine things; so that it is impossible, where souls come freely together, that there should not be difficulty and danger. Granted; we all admit that. If we have the idea that, coming and finding ourselves upon the ground of God's truth about the church, we shall not find difficulties, and avoid all collision, we have certainly deceived ourselves. And, beloved friends, it is far better that we should be convinced of this from the beginning, and that we should remember that God never guaranteed His assembly that there should not be trials thus to prove us. On the contrary, it is there I look for them, and they are sure to be found; but then is that all? Is the church merely a number of godly persons who come together and who seek grace to bear with one another? Nay, it is God's dwelling-place; and is not God there? He is verily, and displaying Himself, not by a cloud, as in the days of old, but by the Holy Ghost — as it is said, "The habitation of God through the Spirit." The Holy Ghost has the same place now to us, as the cloud of glory had for Israel; and what was then only a visible though glorious sign is now a divine person in power. For if there be any person in the Godhead to whom it belongs to act in power, it is the Holy Ghost. Whatever may be the counsels of the Father, and whatever may be the work that the Son has done to give effect to those counsels, the Holy Ghost is always the One that brings them out; and the Holy Ghost now has taken this very place. There is the secret of the unity. Who is it that is in the church, and what makes it to be the church of God? Not I say, godly men merely, but in fact the Holy Ghost's presence. It is therefore a question of whether we really do believe in it, and whether we look for it. If we do, the consequence will be that our faith will be tried and put to the proof; but then we shall find that faith, however tried, is never disappointed. If we have brought in any unbelief of our own, any thoughts natural to ourselves, any expectations of our own, they, no doubt, will be disappointed; but this will be a blessing. It is good for us to be corrected of the Lord; and He has brought us where He can deal with us as One present with us, and acting for His own glory.

And as this is what 1 Cor 12 sets before us, so, following it up, the apostle reminds the Corinthians that there was one thing even better than gifts. This was love. Hence, therefore, the place of 1 Cor 13. Looking at God's nature, no doubt He is Light, but what is the energy of that nature? It is love. It is this which actively comes to us from God and blesses us. As He has taken His place in the church, it is no question of His law for a people in the flesh who could not draw near, because God Himself is there. It is not put simply in the form of grace. Love is the energy of the divine nature, as grace its special way towards the evil with which it deals, and which it rises above. Thus love may be where there is no question of what it deals with, being the spring of what expresses the divine nature in its delight and activity in good. This is developed in the most blessed manner in 1 Cor 13. It is what Christ showed us to be in God; it is what the Spirit would now exercise in us.

It is impossible for the assembly of God to move healthfully or to enjoy happily the truth, unless the effect of truth is to free us from what hinders love — to judge all the roots of that which would impede the exercise of this divine principle. Hence, therefore, the apostle insists upon it that, whatever might be the value of prophecy, or knowledge, or any other gift, they all sooner or later depart. They are suited only to an imperfect condition, after all found necessarily here below; but love is not so. Like Him who is its source, it abides and changes not. Nevertheless the blessed fact is that love is also a present thing, and never more truly needed than now, as a holy spring of activity for the saint, as such, or in the church. This the apostle shows us in the last verse of the chapter — "Now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

In coming to 1 Cor 14, then, we have not the principle (that we have in 1 Cor. 12) nor the spring of power as in 1 Cor. 13, but the practice, the application, of the great truth. It is true — and I make the remark because I have seen it objected to not very long ago — that we do not hear very much about gifts in 1 Cor. 14. The reason is because God supposes that we have read 1 Cor 12. He does not write the word to save people trouble, nor is it written, as men preach, in texts; by which the scriptures are divorced, and their strength in connection destroyed. Not so; God has written His word to be prized, to be a matter for waiting on the Lord, that we may enter in and fully enjoy it, though it may not be understood all at once. How wisely it is so! I thank God that His word is so written that there never was a soul since the world began that could take it up and fathom it — even the apostles and prophets themselves. I thank God that His word does call us to take the place of learners. The more God gives us to know, the more He makes us feel how much there is yet to learn, and so we are kept, as He would have us, in the attitude of waiting. No doubt this does not suit the world. It suits much better to talk as if all was understood, while, on the contrary, it will be found how little is actually known.

The point here is this, that 1 Cor 14 is an integral part of the great argument which is begun in 1 Cor. 12; and 1 Cor. 13 is not, as men suppose, a mere digression on love, but a most necessary element of all. For, whatever may be the place of love individually, how much more is it necessary when we are brought into the place of such nearness, of such scope for affection, of such need of patience, of such call for faith!

No doubt our coming together as God's church supposes our redemption. It is not a question of some peculiar gift or doctrine, but of God's presence who redeemed us — that He might enjoy with us, and we with Him, whatever He has given us. This is the church of God. Accordingly, then, it is the place where love has its full exercise; and I do not hesitate to say that there could not be such a sphere for love as that which is given us now. We shall have it in heaven in another way, and in a fulness without alloy suitable for heaven. There, of course, all will be positive perfection and enjoyment; but here, in a place of difficulty, of sorrow, of trial, in a place where we have constantly to walk superior to circumstances, is a sphere where love can grow, and its effects may flourish.

In 1 Cor 14 the gifts, of which the apostle had been speaking in 1 Cor 12, are supposed. To argue as unbelief does, as if there were nothing in 1 Cor. 14 of the same nature as in 1 Cor. 12 is mere folly. But, coming to the point now, there is one thing I would desire to explain before mentioning the general argument of the apostle. In the beginning of the chapter he contrasts prophesying with tongues at great length, speaking of the former in these terms (ver. 3), "He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort." Now, there is many a person that understands this to mean that whoever speaks to exhortation and comfort prophesies. This is to mistake him. You could not invert the sentence and still hold the truth. What the apostle means is this: the man that only speaks in a tongue does not edify, nor does he exhort nor comfort; the man that prophesies does. The truth is, that prophesying is the highest character of divine communication through man. It is not a question of opening futurity, but of bringing God and the soul together. An instance of it we may see in the case of the woman of Samaria. What Christ said to her evidently brought God Himself home to her conscience, and she at once awoke to the conviction that He who spoke was a prophet. Prophecy is therefore the most intimate and direct communication of God in dealing with the soul, giving a person the certainty that the mind of God is being expressed. Of course the man that prophesies does edify; but there are many other forms of ministration to the soul. There is comfort and exhortation in teaching; and again, in preaching the gospel there might be great comfort to the soul; but still these things are distinct from prophesying.

Now the apostle singles out (I make this remark for the purpose of a little help to the understanding of the general scope of the chapter) two gifts, one of which was slighted, the other overvalued, by the Corinthians. They slighted prophesying, because they were not in the least degree exercised about the enjoyment of God. They valued signs and tongues; and the apostle has given them various severe blows, from the beginning to the end of the epistle, as to their low condition in this very particular. In short, they were walking as men. They enjoyed intellectual exercise, lively speculations, sparkling flow of eloquence. All these things had charms for the Corinthian saints. I do not mean that it was not about scripture. Of course it may have been; but what they did not enjoy was God dealing with their souls. And the reason is plain. They were in an unbroken state. They were some of them getting litigious, others making light of heathen temples and sacrifices; there was disorder in worship, foundation-doctrine questioned, some of them (as we know) not even moral, gross sin being very slightly judged.

Well, as we saw, the apostle confronts these two gifts, prophesying and tongues, chiefly, because they are the antipodes, as it were, of one another — speaking in a tongue being one of the lowest forms in which God's Spirit wrought, as prophesying is the highest. He censures them for their continually speaking with tongues in the assembly of God, while there was no real value felt for prophesying. How came this? They had started upon a false idea. Their notion being that the church was the place for the display of divine power, and speaking with tongues being one of the most striking and conspicuous proofs of God's power, it was, they thought, the most fitting display for the church of God. Not so, says the apostle, who therefore brings in, as a means to help him in what follows, the bearing of love. There is nothing so characteristic of God amongst His own as love. For we are not here speaking of love going out towards the rebellious, as for instance the gospel used in winning souls. It is remarkable, the gospel never occurs in this chapter, most precious as it is in its own place. In the Epistle to the Ephesians the evangelist is an essential feature; and there accordingly the Lord puts him forward in a most important way, not merely as connected with souls but with the church. This ought not to be forgotten, the evangelist being one of those who are given "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. 4: 12). Here he disappears, because it is not the witness of love to the church, still less to the world but the presence of God in the church before the world that is the point in our Epistle.

The Corinthian idea was that whatever displayed power in them before the world was the thing for the church. Not at all, says the apostle, and for this reason there is no love in it; and, consequently, as he shows here (1 Cor. 14: 3), there is no comfort, nor anything that acts upon the soul to edification. This is the effect of divine love. There never can be real edification without divine love in some way or other being that which acts on the soul, or in which the soul itself is acting.

So the apostle brings these two gifts together at considerable length. He shows the perfect folly of these unknown tongues being dragged into the church simply because they were a display of divine power. But what follows? We have the striking way in which the Spirit is brought before us here in His action; and again, how saints, unquestionable saints, having unquestionable power in the Spirit of God, may after all be fighting against the will of God.

What a lively picture it gives us, first of all, of the fact that the Spirit of God is come down to serve. His action might be all perverted, but still He was there. He did not withhold these powers. This is a very solemn thought. It is not only full of comfort in what is good, but extremely humbling as to what is evil.

And now, on what does this wonderful fact rest, that the Holy Ghost is here, and abides with us, and this for ever? It is not because of the saints; but because of Christ and Christ's redemption. This is the reason why no dark ways of men, no break-up of the church, drove Him away. The Spirit of God abode on and on; and will abide until the church is completed. Therefore it is no use for persons to say, "Where are those powers now?" This is not at all the question. The point is the presence of the Spirit Himself. But yet you will observe, when they had the power, there might be and was the greatest confusion. And when these powers are no longer displayed, what then? It is there unbelief comes in, and would ignore the grand truth of the presence of the Spirit in the church.

I ask you, beloved friends, can you say that God has taught you this truth; or are you indifferent about it? Is the presence of the Spirit that which brings you together to honour Him as Lord who died for you? I am sorry to say that it does not seem in many cases as if it were; for I am afraid that some of God's children who have not sickness or other lawful hindrances, allow themselves just the breaking of bread, and no more, and so fail to magnify the Lord in His will and ways, and hinder their own blessing immensely. If it were a question of persons who could not get out, or of those who had no other opportunity, it would be most worthy of love and respect for souls to be quietly bearing such trial and difficulty; but I confess to you that it is great pain where one sees brethren who only put in an appearance on Lord's day morning — just keeping within the verge of that which entitles them to have their place in name, and no more. Precious as is the Supper of the Lord, when partaken of in the fellowship of saints, and according to the word of God, if thus it forms not only the staple but the whole of one's Christian service and worship in public at least, it seems to be only another form of Ritualism. The Lord does not deserve this at our hands; nor would He receive it from such as feel who it is that is waiting to meet us when we come together. And is the Lord there only when we break bread? Is He not there when we come together to join in prayer? Have we no petitions to offer? Or do we suppose that, because we do not take part actively, we have no place there?

It is indeed great forgetfulness of God, and of His working in all; for it is not only the great gifts, but, as we have it in Ephesians, "What every joint supplieth." It is not a question of chief men only, but what every one owes the rest. Surely, beloved friends, whatever may be the humble place that a saint of God has in the body of Christ, he has that place which is given him by God in the body — the church. If scripture is believed, you cannot deny that it is a reality here; and if it be so, then there is not a joint in that body but what is meant, not merely to receive, but to supply good. No doubt, one great source of our weakness lies in the little faith that each saint has in the importance of his place to all the others. God is not working in the spiritual body, or in the natural one, entirely independent of the state and condition of the particular members. The spiritual body is a living body, and it is an intelligent body. In the house of God the Spirit dwells and acts. Is He not the "Spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind?" and is that true of those only whose voice is heard in the meetings of the saints? Is it not true of every one in whom He dwells, of each one that is a constituent part of Christ's body, as every saint is?

Let us have more faith, therefore, in what God has written for the common blessing of all, and more confidence in the Lord using those that may be little or weak. Their presence is a great thing, and still more the activity of their souls when thus present. Our place is not to criticise, nor to be displeased at this or that, to indulge in partisanship or any work that would thus grieve the Spirit; for in either way we should be coming together for the worse and not for the better. When there is the certainty of God being there, and that we are each forming a part of that which glorifies Him, what a difference it makes! How is it? Why, because in love we are seeking the edification of all; and, I say again, that it is not only what is said or what is prayed, but the tone of all, too, which has a great deal to do with it, the spirit in which we are there. Is it true, that when assembled we really are found in the truth of what we are there for — our souls going out in prayer, worship, or whatever it may be? Inasmuch as it is a divine person that is present with us, He knows all hearts, and we need to look well to it how far we are hindering or helping on the object for which we come together — the glory of Christ.

But as the Corinthians were childish in this matter of the tongues, the apostle rebukes them severely, and demands (verse 7) what the effect would be if all were a jargon of sound; using all this to convict them of the folly of that which was practically a mere jumble of undistinguishable sounds. That the speaker should be understood is pressed in repeated forms (vers. 11-17). Not that the apostle did not speak with more tongues than them all; but in the assembly he had rather speak five words with his understanding, that he might teach others, than ten thousand words in a tongue (vers. 18, 19). He brings it down to this point (ver. 20), that they were only children as yet. "Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men."

Whether it be individually or as an assembly, the end for which God has redeemed us is His own glory, and the way in which He forms us for that glory now is through One who is here with us on whom we are called to lean, whose work and delight it is to exalt and commend Jesus. He has sent the Spirit on whose action we are called to count, no matter what the difficulty may be. Now take, for example, a case of discipline: I mention that because you are familiar with it. How would this show itself in the assembly as contrasted with the ways of men, or with a company even of God's children acting on human grounds? How would the latter decide it? At best they would try to settle it, after the facts had been brought before them, by a majority, by a show of votes. This is man's way. He knows no better, because the prominent idea is the men who are there, the individuals whose business it is to judge. How would faith in the presence of God — of His Spirit, how would this influence such a matter? The case is brought before the assembly. There may be a difference in the minds of those present. The facts are stated. There is perhaps a sense before a word is said that there is something lacking. There is dead silence. A brother rises (for God would not have us depart from the order of His assembly; there may be some sisters who may have a simple spiritual judgment as truly as men, but they do not violate the order of God), who states that he feels a difficulty, and he suggests that it would be well to inquire, to wait on God a little further. The assembly bows. Discipline is a thing that may not be forced. It is not a question of a majority, but rather of God giving an intelligent conviction to the assembly. Accordingly there is a pause in the proceedings. The case is examined a little more fully. The point of doubt is looked into. God does not refuse His light. Facts are brought forward again; during the pause the truth is brought forth convincingly. The doubt whether the case was not fully known, whether the sin under judgment was as grave as it appeared, is entirely removed. The facts are too plain; there is no doubt remaining any longer on the mind of any spiritual person; and discipline must take its course.

The church of God is entitled, by virtue of Him who is in it, to look for divine light; not to act in the dark, but to wait on God with the certainty of learning His own mind. Now, I do not deny that there may be in certain cases a mistake, but then there is always an intelligible ground for seeing how the mistake has been made. The assembly might act hastily, and this very thing would convict it; for supposing you show that in a certain case of discipline they have been too ready to act upon a single testimony, no wonder they have not had the guidance of the Lord. For it is a plain scriptural principle that "in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." It is an extremely humiliating thing when an assembly has to acknowledge that it has acted hastily; for the very fact of our being so gathered together is meant, as far as means can go, to correct what may be lacking in us as individuals. When really subject to the Lord, all is sure.

We are entitled, I say, to look for the guidance of God; but one quite admits there may be such a thing as a mistake. The assembly is no more infallible than an individual Christian. For what makes the assembly to be that of God is not that they are Christians, but that they have His presence there — God present and left free to act by His own word. And this is the ground upon which we do look for guidance. But then the same thing is true of an individual. He has God's presence in him, but does this make him infallible? The truth is, there is no such thing as infallibility except in God Himself; but then we must hold, that, so far as an individual waits upon God, he is proportionately guided; and, of course, so far as the assembly waits upon God, they enjoy the same gracious guidance. But there is no ground for anything like high pretension, or the notion that there may not be a mistake, through haste, on the part of the one or the other, though it is far less likely in the assembly. We have to pray that, just where apt to be hasty through over-confidence, there we might be made watchful; as, on the contrary, we must bear in mind that just because God's grace has put us into the place of the church of God, in that place Satan is peculiarly anxious to lower, pervert, and dishonour the name of the Lord Jesus by our means.

This should teach us to lean on the Lord, and, as God's assembly, seek to be faithful to His word. But it is most important to remember that God's assembly as a whole is now in a state of ruin. I should not trust the man who held this precious truth of the presence of God in the church, without the sense of the condition of things at this present moment. We need this deeply; for where this is lost sight of, there is apt to be rashness, and such dangerous high-mindedness in the use of truth, as would leave us outside the action of the Spirit of God.

So with a person who is brought to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not merely that He is brought to God through faith. This is quite true; but there is that also which puts the soul in the dust in the confession of its total ruin, as truly as there is the sense of the blessedness into which it is brought. And so it is now, when God has not merely placed us in such intimate relations with Himself as an assembly, but has also shown us the state of the church generally. And of all persons on the face of the earth, we ought to remember it most.

But again we observe another point of interest. We see in the course of this chapter the fact coming out that in the assembly, as Paul knew it, you have the same kind of action as we are familiar with. We have singing, we have praying, and we have blessing. The grand centre of the last was the table of the Lord, as we learn from the preceding chapters (1 Cor 10 and 1 Cor. 11) Here, on the other hand, it is the action and presence of the Holy Spirit. But I would recall to you that we here read of just the same elements as are met with now, not all that then were, but as far as they go.

Coming to our subject, we see in this chapter that, powerfully as tongues might serve as a sign to unbelievers, what the apostle prefers a great deal is that which acts in and by the understanding of the believer. He takes particular pains to show that his feeling on the subject was not through jealousy, or because he had not so many gifts as they had. The apostle had no ground personally to decry in any way the gifts about which he was speaking; for (ver. 18) he says, "I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all." But what he wanted was edification, that is, the building up of the saints. And the growth of the saints is inseparable from the activity of divine love on their behalf. This he therefore pressed. Whatever was not given for edification was unsuited to the church of God.

Here I may say as a principle, that this should guard us against any love of singularity amongst the saints of God — such as, among the young, the vanity of preaching on hard scriptures. Now, no doubt, by dwelling on some such portions of the word of God, there may be a kind of factitious interest attached to it, or by giving some application of a plain text that no one else has heard of. It always seems to me uncommonly small; and, further, I cannot but think it really shows rather a want of self-judgment and of earnest desire for the edification of the saints of God. The thing we should wish is what will manifest God. Could one conceive of Christ doing such a thing? I find in our blessed Lord exactly the contrary. He was the absolute perfection of all grace and truth. How He takes the simplest fact, the most common subject of daily life! how He turns to account even the woman sweeping her kitchen floor, if I may so say, for a lost piece of silver; or the shepherd seeking for his lost sheep! The most trivial incidents in His hands are vehicles of the highest truths for the soul. For there it is where real power shows itself — bringing God into them, and making them the witness of His gracious interest in our souls. There is far more power when one sees in the most simple subject the dignity and grace of the Lord. It brings home to us God acting in Him. As for the other, it may be ingenious; but what if we never can trust it, whether it be true or not? How unlike God's ways!

But I merely mention this now, as giving a practical turn to the very principle that was then at work among the Corinthians. They were occupied with what would astonish and surprise, and not with that which would help the growth of the soul in the knowledge of God Himself.

The apostle comes now to another fact (ver. 21). He draws attention to the scriptures in the Old Testament that speak of foreign tongues. Whenever God's people came in contact with these tongues, they had got all wrong. If Israel had remained in their integrity, such strange sounds would have been kept far away. They were let loose on them when they departed from their true place. The Corinthians would do well to ponder, that foreign tongues in Israel's case had not a good connection; they might remind them of their folly and evil, being in no way an honour to the Jews.

Besides, for whom were the tongues meant? "Wherefore" (ver. 22), "tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not." The Corinthians were using them for a display among believers — most wrong and unintelligent. "But prophesying" — that which they really slighted — "serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe." This is its direct use. But now he shows another thing, that although prophesying is not in its direct use addressed to unbelievers, it may have a mighty effect on them, and in a way too that tongues could not have. This he puts in a pungent form (verse 23). "If, therefore, the whole church be come together in one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?" Such would be the effect, supposing they were all speaking with tongues (and if it was good for one, it was for all). But (ver. 24) "if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest." The result is that he is constrained to say "God is there."

This is a point that I do impress on you as of the greatest importance for ourselves. We are called on to look to the Lord that we may not hinder the manifestation of God in the conscience even of an unbeliever. When we do come together as His assembly, let it never be that we may take part, but that He may work as He will, and by whom He will. Neither, again, let us be impatient. Our part is to count on Him; neither hindering others, nor refusing to go forward if He leads. Suppose that there is a silence that may be painful to some — never surely a sign of the power of God there, but, on the contrary, that there is something which hinders — still let us not doubt but believe. He knows how to try and humble as well as comfort. The main thing is to seek now His unfailing presence and action. In the long run He never disappoints as man always does. But we do not go to sit silently, but to worship audibly and be edified. Silence is quite exceptional. For our God is not a mute God, but One who has spoken to us, and who gives us now to speak for Him and to Him. The church of God therefore is in no way the .witness of a dumb idol, but of the living and true God who is in the midst of it. We ought to desire when we come together that there should be no restraint; but even this is not so painful as the forwardness of those who would speak because there is an open door, not because God gives them the word.

We ought to pray then that, when we come together, God would manifest His presence there in our midst, and that nothing should be done that is not suitable to Him. It may be a very simple soul that He uses. I am sure that God can do it by one who has nothing of this world's learning, and that He loves to do so. But still we must cry up neither unlearned nor learned, or suppose that there is any particular virtue in the mere circumstances of the saints of God, though it is a great witness that there is liberty in the assembly, when the simplest are welcome in their desires to edify. But this, remember, is for God, and not for ourselves. It is not done by giving out a hymn, or reading a chapter, because there is silence, and we can bear to wait no longer; nor is it because a particular chapter has blessed ourselves that it should be read. Why should not I be content to enjoy the chapter myself? Why bring it out then? Have I the assurance that God would have it to be read there ? This is a very severe test; but surely, where it is God who gives the word, those who are spiritual would have the sense of it. Who is sufficient for these things? Our sufficiency is of God, who has given us His Spirit for this and all other ends in the church now.

The great thing, then, is the manifestation of God's presence in the assembly. It was, no doubt, an extreme case where the apostle supposes them all prophesying, but the principle is true in all cases. And we find, in fact, an important regulation as to this soon follows.

Another point we have in the 26th verse — "How is it, then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation.'' Now the apostle does not condemn this. He leaves it as an open question, to be judged on spiritual principles. I do not say that he approves of it: he states the simple fact; but he now brings in what was to judge that fact on every occasion. What is the great criterion here? "Let all things be done to edifying." Could they say so? Could the man who had a psalm say that his motive was to edify, or the man who had a doctrine or the like? Let them search and see. There is One who knows the truth; and this One is pleased to act in the church of God. It is thus a challenge, as it were, to God where the soul dares in His presence to act out of its own will and inclination. Can anything be more solemn than for a person to take part in the assembly unexercised, without continual self-judgment to see whether his motive arises from simple obedience to the will of God?

To press this would not hinder God's action, it would only question our own; and this is why God lays down the principle. It would give seriousness. A man should think of Him before he speaks or reads. He should not give out a hymn simply because it was a sweet one in itself, or a favourite of his own. All those things might be true; and they might be well enough in one's own home; but here God is acting with a view to the edification of the assembly, and the point is, Am I confident in my soul that it is God who is guiding me? Now, the apostle Peter lays this down most positively where he says, "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God"; not merely according to the oracles of God. One might speak according to the scriptures, and yet be out of season; for in this he might be wrong, because it is not what God is giving then, for He alone knows what is best and for His glory. The meaning in fact is, If any man speak, let him speak as His oracle, or mouth-piece then. It is a serious thing for one's soul. Am I sure that God would have this to be spoken now? Is it suited for God's assembly at this time? I ought to wait, if I am not sure about it. It is what the Spirit of God implies in the exhortation, "Let all things be done to edifying." But the later Scripture puts it expressly.

If there is solemnity on the one hand, there is also love and liberty on the other. If I am too much afraid, I must take care that I am not wrapping up in a napkin what is lent for the good of others. So we see one cannot escape from danger on either hand. The man who is always silent, because he is afraid, what witness is he of the grace that feeds the flock in due season? and on the other hand, the man who is always so ready to come forward, what witness is he? Alas! only of his own spirit, of his own self-confidence, nothing more. Hence what we have to look for is that God act here, and nothing should satisfy us short of that. The spiritual will appreciates it, and every child of God reaps the blessing, though the carnal would, no doubt, prefer what pampers man.

But, further, the apostle lays down (ver 27) that "If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, and at the most by three, and that by course, and let one interpret." If there were no interpreter, it had no business there. Edification is the rule absolute in God's assembly.

In due course we come to the other thing — prophesying (ver. 29). Surely you could not have too much prophesying! This is what he says, "Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge." Why so? Because God is thinking of the edification of His assembly. Supposing half a dozen persons were to speak one after another, what would be the effect? Why it would really be too much of a good thing. It must be bewildering to many, particularly to the simpler saints; and God always thinks of the little ones: the stronger ones do not need so much His care, or, at least, not precisely in the same way. They might even get good by it. But God, I repeat, thinks of the little ones; and what would perplex the simple or be too much God here forbids. "Let all things be done to edifying." So that, whilst the Spirit of God stops the strange tongues unless they could be turned to edification, He does not allow even prophesying beyond the measure that would be for the profit of all.

Then another thing laid down (ver. 32) is that the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Because what some of these Corinthians maintained (judging from the blow that is struck at it here) was that they could not interfere with prophesying. If any had the Spirit to speak, they must speak. Paul says to them, You are talking as men might who are possessed by spirits; that might be the case with a man under a demon; but is it so with the Spirit of God? The Spirit of God never puts a man, as it were, into a vice. He in His operation makes it no kind of necessity. In a moral way, He may lay it on the heart; but never do we find that a man is absolutely tied and obliged to speak. Balaam might have been in an extraordinary manner forced to give an utterance, just as his ass then spoke under that imperative power; but surely no one would speak of either as being analogous to the action of the Holy Ghost in God's assembly.

No, the Corinthians who said or pretended (as an excuse for their love of hearing themselves speak so often) that it was a necessity, were all wrong. This is a most important principle, and that too on the side of good, as well as a warning on the side of evil. For, as the 30th verse tells us, "If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace." Revelation had this simple place of superiority over anything else. The scripture was not yet all revealed. "For (ver. 31) ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints." No power delivers from responsibility to the Lord in the use of the power; and He who is Lord has regulated the due use of each gift by His word, as here by the apostle's Spiritual power must subserve His lordship and bow to His authority. Irresponsible or irresistible power is not of the Holy Spirit.

In ver. 34 we hear of one class, and only one in the church of God, who are not allowed to take any part in public, viz., the women. Not that God does not give as precious gifts to women as to men; but whatever gifts be given them to exercise, it is not in the assembly that they are to be manifested. I am aware that some have used this as a reason for women preaching. The idea of women preaching to the world was an irregularity not even yet contemplated. It is not supposed that woman had so completely forgotten the propriety of nature. No Corinthian even wished women to go with unblushing face before the world, nor yet pleaded the case of "perishing sinners" as an excuse for forfeiting that retirement which always becomes a woman.

As for the women spoken of here, they might have argued thus — and I suppose they did: — "If we cannot preach, surely we might speak in such a holy place as the assembly. There the men will not misunderstand, or impute it to any want of decorum." If there was any place at all where women might speak, it surely was in the assembly. But it is forbidden there — not meaning by this that they were free to preach before the world, but that they might not speak anywhere publicly, not even in the assembly. I grant you that in their own homes or with women, there is a place; or a married woman might speak with her husband; but in the assemblies of the saints, I repeat, even there it was forbidden. What therefore was to be done? "If they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" (ver. 35). He does not suppose that the young unmarried ones even wished to speak in the assembly, but only the elder ones. Of course, the younger ones would ask their parents.

"What," continues he, "came the word of God out from you, or came it unto you only?" The word of God comes out from no church, and it comes to no saints exclusive of others. What a principle, and how deep-reaching and important for all! The reverse of this is what the church has always desired in one form or another. I do not know a single society that is called a church of man that has not sought to originate what ought to have been left to the word of God.* When a church lays down its rules, when it formulates its beliefs, when it puts forth anything to be acted upon for discipline, or government, or doctrine, which is not in simple subjection to the word of God, it falls into the same error that the Corinthian church is here guarded against. It is evident that this church was really (not in the form, of course, but in principle) the progenitor of the present disorderly condition that exists in Christendom from the Pope down to the smallest sect of Protestantism. For what we find in the Epistle is, not that the Corinthian church was the only place where these gifts of the Holy Ghost were, but the place where He was interfered with, where much was perverted, where human principles were allowed to hinder the blessed action of the Spirit of God. To their charge accordingly was laid interference with the Lord's place.

* Take the Congregationalists, who used to take their stand on the sufficiency of scriptures. Yet even they always fail at the first step, the choice of a preacher or pastor by the votes of the congregation. This being absolutely unrecognised in scripture, and in principle wholly opposed to what is found there (which shows the Lord giving gifts and God setting in the church as He will), decided the late Mr. Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, to abandon dissent. But it is certainly no improvement to admit the choice of a bishop or the nomination of a patron. Apostles, or their delegates, did choose or appoint elders; but they, according to scripture, have no successors. The gifts were always immediate from the Lord, and never required human appointment. He abides to give, not they to choose. Christendom pretends to choose without authority, and despises the gifts of Christ, save where they fall under its own unfounded and unscriptural usurpation.

For there are two grand principles in the chapter, both working in connection with the central truth of God's presence in the assembly. Around that uniting fact are these two guards — "Let all things be done to edifying" (verse 26), and "Let all things be done decently and in order" (verse 40): one, the working of the power of divine grace, and the other correcting and guarding the display of it; that, whatever might be done in the desire for edification, there should be submission to the authority of the Lord Jesus. The church is for His glory, edification the aim, and this in comely order according to the word of the Lord.

It is instructive to remark here, as has been often done before, that no elders appear to have been as yet in Corinth. Such there were in many of the assemblies; and they were of course desirable in all when the due time was come. But in Corinth none are spoken of, where, if anywhere, it would be reasonable to hear of them. This is of great moment, because it proves that they are in no way essential to what God addresses as His assembly. In the most ecclesiastical of the Epistles, where church discipline, both in putting out and in restoring, are most developed, where we have the fullest light as to the Lord's Supper and the assembly of God, elders are ignored, and, as I believe, evidently were not. But it is mere ignorance to conclude that, where elders were, as at Ephesus, etc., the gifts were not exercised, or that the assembly of God was not looked to act as in 1 Cor. 12, 1 Cor. 14. The happy thought is that, when there are no apostles to choose, the Lord continues the presence of His Spirit. Have we faith to act on the ground of His assembly? But the one-man ministry, when used (as it is in Christendom) to deny His action by whom He will, and this in His assembly, is as unscriptural as the Papacy. They are guilty of impiously implying a change in the apostle's mind, who try to pervert 1 Timothy or Titus, or Revelation 1-3, so as to neutralise 1 Corinthians as well as to justify the device of the one-man minister. But it is all vain. Scripture, being divine and of course consistent, cannot be broken; and the Lord is speedily coming to judge the many idols of those who bear but deny His name.

Thus then we have the presence of the Spirit of God making good the precious truth that God is in the assembly. There is the activity of His love in seeking the edification of His saints as the motive, but there must also be no infringement of the commandments of Him who is Lord (ver. 37). All these canons were no doubt written by the apostles, but they are none the less His commandments. The word of God comes to the Corinthian church — it does not originate thence. Further, it comes not to these saints only, but to all. The place of the church is never to teach but to bow to the word of God. The church has no authority in such matters — it can originate neither doctrine nor government. The church's place is to be subject, and this of course to the Lord. It is not exactly that the church is under the presidency of the Spirit of God: this I believe to be an unscriptural expression. The Lord is in that place; and hence the apostle brings in the Lord where it is a question of authority. The Spirit has taken the place rather of service; and hence (as pointed out the last time I spoke), where operations are brought in, the Spirit of God works all in power, but where it is a question of authority, it is the Lord Jesus. He it is accordingly whom the Spirit gives us to know as in authority over us when we come together, as at all other times. But we have to guard against the snare of those who avail themselves of Jesus being Lord, to deny that the Spirit both divides sovereignly and works all in all.

Let us be careful, while we seek only what is for edification, that all things be done decently and in good order, our aim being the promotion of the glory of the Lord Jesus. Let us judge ourselves continually by the standard of the word, and, in particular, the assembly by these special scriptures which apply to it.

The Administration of the Fullness of the Seasons.

Ephesians 1: 10

W. Kelly.

Christ is the true and only center of the purposes of God, as it is only by Him the Holy Ghost reveals them. Hence it is, and must be in the proportion of our Spirit-taught acquaintance with Christ, that the divine plans are understood and appreciated. When He is not steadily kept before the soul, what becomes of the study of scripture itself? It is no longer truth which sanctifies, but barren theology which puffs up. And why has prophecy been perverted to unfruitful and injurious speculation? Because God's grand object has been lost sight of (“that in all things he might have the preeminence” one might perhaps apply here); and thereby the Spirit has been grieved, and has blown upon the busy exercises of man's mind. “He shall glorify me,” said the Lord, “for He shall take of mine and show it unto you” (John 6: 14). The moment the view of the glory of Christ is supplanted by researches into providence for instance, important as this may be in its place, the temple of prophecy degenerates into a counting-house of human intellect; and the tables of those traffic in mere erudition crowd its courts, until by the just judgment of God it is left desolate. But by His grace a better sanctuary is opened for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see Jesus crowned with glory and honor in the heavens. May we have grace to draw near through the rent veil, and there by our Master's side, with unshod feet and worshiping hearts, follow His eye and finger as they rest upon the spheres of His varied but harmonious glory!

“Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, besides Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.” There the Jewish prophet necessarily stopped. “But,” says the apostle (1 Cor. 2) taking up the words, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world (or, the ages] unto our glory.” How often we hear a member of the body of Christ quoting the words, “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard it,” to justify an ignorance which the Spirit of God takes pains to show us is no longer excusable. The things which God hath prepared for them that love Him are now disclosed. Our position is the contrast of that of the Jews. God did reveal them to us through His Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. True, these depths are not the things of man, and are therefore undiscoverable by human ken. But a Christian is called no longer to walk nor to think κατὰ ἄνθρωπον: if he seem to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise. “The things of God knoweth no one except the Spirit of God.” And what is that to the Christian? Everything. “For we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” “We have the mind (νοῦν) of Christ.”

So in Ephesians, God caused grace to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself for the administration of the fullness of the seasons, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which. are in the heavens, and which are on the earth, in Him in whom also we obtained inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose, etc. (Eph. 1: 9-11).

The great and precious revelations of the Old Testament, as Moses told the Jews (Deut. 30: 29), belong, in an emphatic sense, unto them and their children. Jehovah their God had reserved these secret things unto Himself. Hence the force and importance of the verses just cited from this epistle. His grace He caused to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence. He has made known unto us the secret of His will, according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself for an administration of the accomplishment of the set times. And what is this purpose of God? It is in one head, Christ, to sum up the universe, the things in heaven, and the things on the earth; in Him in whom also we were allotted inheritance. That is, the mystery of God's will consists of two great parts: first, Christ is to be the Head of all things heavenly and earthly; and secondly, the church is to be associated with Him in that inheritance. And so the apostle, having treated of the design of God to re-head all things in Christ, turns also at once to the collateral purpose of joining the church as heir with Him, first alluding to the Jewish saints brought into this relationship, and then to the Ephesians themselves, the Gentile saints whom he was actually addressing: “that we [i.e. the Jews now believing] should be to the praise of His glory who are pre-trusters in Christ; in whom ye also, i.e. Gentile believers], etc. When they heard, they believed the gospel. For they had no previous revelation or hope like the Jews.

In the closing verses of this chapter we have the same twofold truth, with this difference, that it is not in connection with God's future purpose respecting the heading up of all things in Christ when the appointed times are completed, but with Christ's present exaltation at the right hand of God. Nevertheless, here as before, is seen the double glory of Christ. God hath given Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. And thereupon Eph. 2 enters into the manner of God's display of His grace in His kindness towards Jew and Gentile in Christ Jesus.

If we turn to Acts 3 it is clear, that the times of refreshing and the restoring of all things were no secret of God's will. Peter speaks of this restitution of all things as the familiar hope of the Jewish nation. God had spoken of this by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began. It therefore must be a distinct thing from, however closely connected with, the mystery of Eph. 1: 9-11. Let us take one of these prophetic testimonies, and the difference will be plain.

Therefore say unto the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen whither ye went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am Jehovah, saith the Lord Jehovah, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord Jehovah, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that pass by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I Jehovah build the ruined places, and plant that which was desolate: I Jehovah have spoken it, and I will do it. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock. As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am Jehovah (Ezek. 36: 22-38).

This citation is the more observable, because it seems the one the Lord had chiefly in view in His conversation with Nicodemus (John 3). Jesus had laid down the necessity of being born afresh as the condition of seeing the kingdom of God; and to the question of the Jewish ruler, He answered, that except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter that kingdom. Flesh and Spirit admit of no modification in the nature of each, which remains distinct and unchanged. Hence Nicodemus was not to marvel if Jews must be born again in order to have part in God's kingdom; for the question is about the kingdom, and not salvation merely. When then Nicodemus still inquires, “How can these things be?” the Lord says,

Art thou the teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

Thus it is clear, that when the Lord spoke of the need of the new birth, the Jewish teacher ought to have understood; for so had the prophet Ezekiel shown.

Before Israel enjoys the earthly blessings in the promised land, Israel will be born again. Israel will be sprinkled with clean water, and will have a new spirit put within them. It is afterwards they have the earthly things of the kingdom of God. “I will also save you from all your uncleannesses; and I will call for the corn, and will increase it,” etc. “And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden.” The important thing to notice, is, that in all this the Lord had not gone beyond the earthly things, or that which was essential to their enjoyment, i.e. the new birth. Of course, to have blessings in heavenly places a man must à fortiori be born again; but even the Jewish people, as we have seen, must be born afresh to have the earthly promises in God's kingdom. In speaking of the new birth, He had not gone beyond the range of earthly things and what a Jew ought to have learned from the prophets.

If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?

On the latter, the Lord does not touch further than to intimate the lifting up of the Son of man, and the gift of the Son of God in God's love not to the Jews on but to the world: which things involve, as we know, the exaltation of the Lord into glory on high, and the union of the church with Him there, as the fullness of that heavenly Man. The lifting up of the Son of man was, so far as man's responsibility is concerned, the demolition (though in God's wisdom and grace the ultimate security) of all the earthly hopes of the Jews. For in Christ all the promises of God found their meeting-place; and if He had been received, they would have been made good to His earthly people. But He was rejected. Wherefore God also highly exalted Him. The promises remain to be accomplished, based as they are upon the blood of the Mediator; but before that accomplishment takes place, a new and extraordinary work goes on; namely, the formation of the body to share the glory of Christ above, when God's purpose is fulfilled of gathering all things, heavenly and earthly, under the headship of Christ, for the church shares that inheritance with Him. This, then, was the mystery of the will of God: not the kingdom of God, nor the new birth, indispensable as it is for its earthly promises. Of these the Prophets had spoken; but they were silent on the purpose of God which destined Christ and the church to rule over all things in the heavens and on the earth. The restitution of all things was not in any sense a mystery; but that was.

Be it observed by the way, that 1 Peter 1: 10-12 does not at all refer to this mystery, but to other privileges which formed the burden of many a prophetic strain. The salvation of souls was certainly no hidden secret: “of which salvation the prophets,” etc. They searched, no doubt what, or what manner of, time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify; but it is manifest that the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, testified beforehand by the ancient prophets, cannot be the mystery which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit (Eph. 3). Here were things testified beforehand, ministered unto us and not unto themselves; for it was so revealed to them.

But clearly these previously revealed privileges totally differ from another sphere of blessing which from the beginning of the world was kept hid in God {Eph. 3: 9}. Nor do the Epistles of Peter once allude to our fellowship with Christ as His body. The mystery is nowhere introduced. We are regarded “as begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled . . . kept by the power of God” etc. We are exhorted to diligence, sobriety, confident hope, obedience in holiness, and withal to pass the time of our sojourning in fear, knowing our redemption with the precious blood of Christ. It is not doubted that the persons whom Peter addressed were members of Christ's body; but it is certain, that the Spirit here dwells upon the blessings which spring from the resurrection of Christ; our incorruptible life in power, holy and royal priesthood, pilgrim calling, and the like. He speaks not of our union with Christ in heaven. Hence also, when the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven is referred to, it is as the power of preaching the gospel unto us, never as the One Who constituted us, Jew and Gentile, God's habitation (Eph. 2), or Who baptized us into one body (1 Cor. 12: 13). In other words, the mystery is not treated in the Epistles of Peter, whereas it is the main subject to the Ephesians and also to the Colossians.

The administration, we have seen, awaits “the fullness of times,” or the expiry of the various periods appointed by divine wisdom. All things are out of course, and waxing worse and worse, until Christ takes the reins. The only Righteous One is still an outcast from the world, though known to the church as crowned with glory and honor in heaven, while those who love the Lord of glory suffer here below. God's favored earthly people are a proverb and a byword among all nations, and driven out from a country of which God delighted to be the landlord. And what has been, what is, the history of that people and land? Their oppressors, the Gentiles, have they walked in abasement or in pride? Have they honored the King of heaven? And how fares creation? Does not the whole of it groan and travail in pain together until now? And where is Satan? Is it on earth merely that he walks about, or is there spiritual wickedness in heavenly places? Well, there is a set time for each of these things; and these seasons shall have a full term. Satan shall lose his away over the air and the earth; creation shall be delivered into the liberty of the glory of God's children; the smitten Gentile image shall give place to an everlasting kingdom; Israel shall blossom and bad, and fill the face of the world with fruit; the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and Christ shall appear and we with Him in glory. This will be the fullness of the seasons spoken of.

When the destined fullness arrives, how great our joy, beloved, to see Him, not only as the Melchizedek blessing God and blessing man, but actual Possessor of heaven and earth, all things therein being beaded up in Him Who, though He be the most High God, administers as the exalted Man; to be too ourselves so near Him and so truly one with Him, that then we shall at length forget all save His love and His glory. And yet (O wondrous grace!) is it not so now, as regards His love? Are we not here and now members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones? Yet surely we may long for the day when, seeing Him, we shall be for ever like Him, according to that working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.

Yes, all things in heaven and earth shall be headed up in Him, not things under the earth {infernal beings}; but every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Worthily has He won such a place, that blessed One. And how true the word!

Who, subsisting in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, having taken upon him the form of a bondman, having come in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also highly exalted him, and freely gave him the name which is above every name (Phil. 2: 6-9).

It is false, utterly false, that Jesus took this place when He was born. It is true, that then was the fullness of the time come for God to send forth His Son. The very children were enslaved under the rudiments of the world, and all were shut up under sin. Man had proved himself competent to ruin himself under the law of God, only the more readily because it was good and he was bad. But was God's business done when the Son was here, come of a woman, come under the law? By no means. The Incarnation was but the means, not the end. Redemption was the grand point to which God turned. Therefore the Son was thus sent and come

to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye [the Gentiles, who had not been under the law] are sons, etc. (Gal. 4: 4-6).

Turning to the higher and larger sphere of Colossians, we hear the same truth. In the Son of God's love we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins; “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” Is this His highest title? Is this His Divine glory? No; but founded upon it. He is the firstborn of every creature, not because He partook of flesh, nor because He was the holy Man Who triumphed over all the consequences of the first Adam's sin, and conquered him that led the first man captive at his will: in a word, not because He was here below, be it the most faithful and glorious, but because He was the Creator. He is the firstborn of every creature, for by (or, in virtue of) Him were all things created. Here is His right to the supremacy in question.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created through him, and for him: he is before all things, and by (or, in virtue of) him all things consist (Col. 1: 16, 17).

His primacy over all creation flows from His Divine creative power. He asserts it as man; but His title flows from another and higher source. But He is more than firstborn of all creation. “He is head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” This, as we have seen, is the glory especially dwelt on in the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Sin was here below. Man, who ought to have been the first, was the lowest morally; and creation itself, by reason of him, was steeped in the bondage of corruption. And those whom God was about to bring into the church, what were they? Alienated and enemies in their mind by wicked works. Hence, though the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, though all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, even this could not meet the evil and misery of man, nor the holiness and the heart of God. The light of God was there, His love was there; in Him was life, and the Life was the light of men. Alas! it was manifest that the Jews, that all, were irreparably blind, yea, dead.

If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other hath done, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father (John 15: 22-24).

What was to be done? “Verily, verily,” saith the Lord, “except a corn of wheat fail into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” His death could alone deliver. But this was ever before the soul of our blessed Master.

I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished?” “This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood” (1 John 5).

Hence in the Epistle to the Colossians, Col. 1: 20-22, we read

And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens. And you, that were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now did he reconcile, in the body of his flesh through death; to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight.

The church is reconciled even now. To the living members of Christ it can be said, You did He reconcile.” Creation is not so yet, though the blood of the cross is shed on which the reconciliation is grounded; it will be so in the fullness of the seasons.

At present no such administration takes place, though we here learn God's purpose that it shall. Christ is, no doubt, head of angels, of Jews, of men, of creation. But is He exercising these rights? Now it is of the administration when the periods are ripe that our verses speak. But none of these things are being yet gathered. On the contrary, there is yet to be a deeper crisis of rebellion than ever. It is now the time when all things are severed from Christ, or, if gathered, gathered only in the ruin and the wretchedness which the guile and power of Satan have introduced. It is also the time of another gathering, the gathering of the joint-heirs who shall be glorified with Christ.

But this is the gathering of Eph. 2, not of Eph. 1. It is the gathering of the members of His body, not of the subjects of His rule.

Some, I know, have conceived that by “all things in heaven and earth” is meant the church. But first of all the expression “all things,” etc., forbids the thought. The church never was and never will be, “all things.” And though now the calling is being effected on earth, it is not a gathering there, but out of it; and, even when complete, it is in heaven; whereas the gathering in Eph. 1: 10 is a gathering, at the same time, of all things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth under the headship of Christ. Again, not only is the church an elect body, but in v. 11 we have members of it referred to as an additional thing to the heading up all things in Christ, “in whom also we obtained” etc. Further, in v. 22 we have “all things” again spoken of as put by God under Christ's feet, Who is given as head over all things to the church; which therefore, far from being merged in all things, enjoys and shares His supremacy, as His body and glorious bride.

This is entirely confirmed by the verses immediately before and after v. 10: in the one case where the mystery of God's will is made known touching all things in heaven and on earth; and in the other, because we are spoken of as having the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is the earnest of our inheritance. Such is what we have in the mean time: not the possession which comes at the fullness of the seasons and not before, but the Spirit meanwhile, as the earnest until, the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory. For when that fullness arrives, it will be glory, His glory, and not as now the dealings and riches of His grace. The Lord hasten that glorious day!

The Bible Treasury, New Series, vol. 2.

The Advocacy of Christ

Lecture on 1 John 2: 1, 2

W. Kelly.

The distinctive character and object of Christ's priesthood has been already set out. In scripture it stands in relation exclusively to those who by the work of Christ are brought to God. It is therefore in no way an association of the Lord with the world or those of it. Its aspect is not to the wants of the sinner as such, but rather to those of the sanctified, whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. For God's design by it is not to give a standing, but to sustain and succour those whom grace has already brought nigh to Him by the blood of Jesus. This makes the matter sufficiently plain for the priesthood of Christ. Grace would thereby maintain a holy people according to that nearness which He has already given them; and hence therefore in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as we saw, it is assumed that they have free access to God, a privilege never taken away from the saints.

We are brought to God by Him Who "suffered once for sins," by Christ's one offering. This nearness the Christian never loses. We may fail and act with grievous inconsistency; and it is most sorrowful when we do. But for the believer access to God (being founded, not on legal conditions, but on Christ's blood) remains, and this too of a kind quite absolute, because its measure is the value which God puts upon the work of His own Son; and it is impossible that God could slight that sacrifice. In virtue of it then He acts in our favour, according not merely to our thoughts but to His estimate of what the Lord Jesus has done for us in His sight. Hence, we who believe being thus brought nigh, its efficacy abides unchanged evermore, as scripture carefully and clearly insists.

It is possible indeed, as we are warned, that some who have confessed the Lord, and been sanctified too by His blood, might give Him up (Heb. 10). Such is the solemn admonition to those who from among Hebrews had been baptised; and a like danger of course applies to the Gentiles also, as we hear in 1 Cor. 10. Evidently, however, not failure is here in question, but abandoning Christ. It is apostasy, though no doubt the Holy Spirit speaks to check the incipient tendency to turn aside, pointing out the awful result. The renewed man heeds the word of God; whereas the warning is lost on the unconverted man, perhaps only attracted by the novel and intrinsic beauty of the gospel as an intellectual scheme; and so much the more in those days when it was first heard by the Jews so long inured to Rabbinical traditions — dry as their parchment rolls, as Gentiles were to the clashing vanities of Greek philosophy.

We can readily understand what refreshing power was in the facts of the Son of God come in flesh, His life, His death, His resurrection and His ascension — facts as wondrous as the heavenly principles of Christianity, which could not but exercise an immense charm on candid minds as minds. But this of itself never lasts; neither, if alone, does affection touched by the sound of God's mercy, unless it lead to repentance. Nothing abides short of a new nature, when the conscience is reached by God's Holy Spirit, Who brings in a man before God as nothing but a sinner, to find his one resource, remedy, and deliverance in the Lord Jesus. Where this is laid hold of by faith, nearness to God is given by the blood of Christ. And the priesthood of the Lord Jesus is that office of divine grace which is carried on by the Lord risen, living, and interceding for us at the right hand of God; whereby His word is applied to keep us up, and to lead us on, in the face of all trial, difficulty, opposition, and suffering, as well as of our own weakness. This is contemplated and provided for by God in giving us such a Priest as His Son in His presence on high, so that we may see it to be sustaining and seasonable mercy. It is that which perfectly meets and keeps, but keeps us a holy people in the midst of dangers as great as our weakness.

Again, we must never confound infirmities with sins, or call sins infirmities. The essence of sin is self-will, not necessarily transgression of law. Whether there be known law or not, self-will is sin; it is acting without a divine motive; if not against the authority or will of God, it is independence of Him and His word as that which prompts the action. When we do not even seek Him, are we not acting without Him and pleasing ourselves? All this is sin, it matters not how fair our ways may seem in the eyes of men. This is not what the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ was meant to meet, but the need of those who suffer in striving against sin.

When we suffer for His name or for righteousness, when we are tried just because we seek to follow the Lord, we do need His sympathy and comfort. We shrink from trial and cannot but suffer from it, sometimes with mixed feelings. Our blessed Lord ever felt it holily and perfectly. Not an atom of sin was in His sorrow and suffering, and all His path was full of it; for He was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. So with Christians in their measure. It is quite right that we feel the contrariety of things here to God. We wrong Him and yield to the enemy whenever we seem to make up our minds to the awful state that surrounds us now, as if it were any adequate reflection of God, or of His moral government. For, though He does govern in secret providence, and this most wisely and righteously too, carrying on His will in the face of the subtlest foes and of apparently insuperable difficulties, and in the conflict of circumstances, yet is the actual state of the world as far as can be from a due manifestation of God's government. In the midst of such a condition His own must suffer; for there is our weakness, and a hostile world, and a malignant foe, the accuser of the brethren and the deceiver of the whole world. Here it is that the priesthood of the Lord Jesus applies to us — as a people holy, but feeble and persecuted — who feel what is around, and are tried by it, and suffer through it; but the priesthood of Him, Who is all-competent, is established on high to carry us through in spite of all.

But now we have to look at another part of the subject. May we not sin, although we are a holy people? And when "we" is used, the family of God is meant — none the less or more; that is, all saints are those who now bear the name of the Lord Jesus, and love Him in incorruption; all that call out of a pure heart. And may not such fail ? May they not slip through unwatchfulness in such a way as to grieve the Holy Spirit of God? Most assuredly. "In many things we all stumble." This is sin. Call it not infirmity but rather sin. Do not use "failure" in such a way as to imply something between infirmity and sin for what is really sinful. Call things by their true names. Grace emboldens us to be thoroughly truthful and upright, to be honest with God and man, and above all to hold the right and title of God against that nature which (whilst ourselves are held for dead to it), not being treated as utterly evil, has been allowed to work out to God's dishonour.

Should one sin, what is the resource according to scripture? The advocacy of Christ. Therein is just the importance of these two dealings of divine mercy and living grace in our Lord Jesus, now at the right hand of God; for they belong to Him there, and they are both viewed as reaching us here. But they are not the same office; and to confound them is to lose the characteristic power of each of them; and as is always the case when you muddle together truths which are distinct, both are enfeebled, if not lost. You may have perhaps a general vague sense of them both, but you have not the precision and full comfort of either. Yet the Lord freely gives us both, as we need both.

In 1 John 2 we find to what the advocacy of the Lord applies, and what it assumes. We are not merely brought into the presence of God, but have communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We have a new life or divine nature, and along with the possession of this previously unknown spiritual being, given us by divine love in and through the Lord Jesus, there is the enjoyed fellowship with the Father and the Son. Evidently, when we speak of communion, we have before us that which is very delicate and sensitive exceedingly. For we have only to reflect a moment, and we must see that God the Father could have no communion with sin, or with us in it.

We who understand the gospel know that our being the most wretched of sinners did not hinder God from applying the blood of Christ in all its efficacious power to us. It was for such that His Son shed His blood; nor would there have been sufficient ground for it except for such. The sin-offering of the Lord Jesus supposes our utter vileness and distance from God. But now we are through that one offering not only sanctified but perfected for ever. This has been done by His death; and once done, the work for ever stands. But it is quite another thing when you speak of communion in the practical sense. Confound these, and you destroy either confidence as to your soul, or enjoyment of God, if not both.

What then is the basis of our communion? It is Christ; but this being so, whatever is not of Him, whatever is of self, whatever is of sin, interrupts the enjoyment of communion. And what restores it when broken? The advocacy of Christ. It is not therefore, observe, the ministration of that which strengthens, consoles, or gives courage to a holy people who are brought into absolute nearness to God, while walking in a world where all is counter to Him and to them because they are His; for it is not yet in fact under His sway, but rather under that of His enemy. Here it is a question of the practical state of our souls. And this is just as true in its place, and of the greatest possible moment for the saint. For you will find that the persons who merely dwell on such truth as is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, or rather on that part of it which discusses the effect of atonement (as the early part of Romans does our justification), and make this, momentous as it is, to be the sum and substance of Christianity, are apt to be indeed a cold set of people, in danger of becoming formal and dry doctrinally, as well as deficient in sensitiveness of heart and conscience for the glory of God.

The work of Christ is not all. When we rest on it, the priesthood of the Lord Jesus applies to our need day by day. If I am brought into holy nearness with God, Christ's ministration of grace does not fail to act, so as to conciliate my practical condition with my standing by grace in Christ before God, to maintain me here according to such a title of holy access to Him there. But may I not sink to, or even allow, what is positively evil — be betrayed into bad feelings, bad thoughts, bad words, bad ways? It is too true. And what then? Am I to despair because I have sinned after baptism, as a child and saint of God delivered from the guilt and power of sin? Am I to quiet my conscience with the plea that I must sin, as being still in the body and the world? Neither the one nor the other would be according to God.

This let me add, dear brethren: knowledge in itself does not preserve, but rather, when alone, it endangers; and the Christian who is most liable, yea sure to slip, is he who knows most, but least seeks to walk in dependence on God. No position is more critical. Indeed we may say he who ceases to walk dependently is morally ruined already. What worse therefore than when a vast deal of truth is taken in without the continued exercise of conscience before God? We need that self-judgment continually go on, and this too in the sense of weakness and waiting on God. For as the essence of sin is the desire to be independent, so also that on which godliness turns, and of which it practically consists, is the spirit of constant reference and subjection to God in things small or great. Without waiting on Him, acceptable obedience cannot be; and when that is found, obedience surely follows; and obedience is of the very essence of the walk to which we are called and sanctified. So the apostle Peter says, "Elect through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." That is, we are the chosen of the Father as well as sanctified by the Spirit for the purpose of obeying as Christ obeyed. We have all the comfort of His blood-sprinkling and washing us clean from every spot; and we are sanctified to obey, not like Israel under law, but sons under grace as He obeyed.

When the soul enters into this, tenderness of conscience will be cherished, distrust of self, and watchfulness before God, with a spirit of prayer, which is the simple expression of our dependence on God. But one may be easily unwatchful; then open sin ensues ere long. Therefore says John the apostle, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not." This is the word of God to the Christian practically. I speak of His word now, of course, as the ordinary rule of our daily ways. His servant writes, "that ye sin not."

But then, if all are warned against sin, the Spirit of God fully provides for any one that may stray; not as if evil were coolly looked for, but with guarded terms and careful regard to holiness; "And if any man sin." He does not say, "If we sin." How could he say of the family, "If we sin"? Had it been said, "And if we sin," it would be as good as allowing the thought that all must sin. Never does the Spirit of God say anything of the sort. And if any man — any one — "sin," it is a lamentable alternative to the Spirit of God; but still such a fact may be. It is, alas! in the believer's history what one has to face and feel and humble one's self before God for. "If any man sin, we have an advocate." He does not merely say "he," but "we." How perfect is His word, even in that which to a Grecian would be sure to sound an irregular or peculiar phrase! Can one doubt that they of old criticised John's words, or Paul's, just as much as or more than anything that we poor creatures might write now? This clause would have sounded harsh enough to Attic ears. Yet the men who flatter themselves that they understand writing so well, know but little about the divine accuracy of scripture. Let us delight in the perfection of that sentence, and maintain against all comers the accuracy of what the Spirit of God has written there. Not all the world could improve on it; and the very singularity too, which embarrasses them — which they count so strange in the structure of it — seems to be one proof of its perfectness.

An ordinary man of letters, if writing the sentence, might have said, "If any man sin, he has an advocate with the Father;" or if he had intended "we have," he would have changed it to "If we sin." But no; the Spirit of God has exactly given the right thing; because by saying "If any one sin," He makes it a sorrowful individual case. He keeps up the sense that it ought never to be. It is a contingency that may be, and it is always to be regarded as a most painful humiliation for our own souls, the sense of which we ought to maintain undimmed — in no way making light of sin, or treating it as if it were a common thing that we must all do sometimes. We may fall, doubtless; and we should never lose sight of the danger. On the other hand, we have an Advocate with the Father. There He is; and we have Him as Advocate: that is, Christ belongs thus to every Christian. He acts thus in the presence of God. It is the fulness of love which has given Him there to meet this great and distressing need of the soul. But still we have, not merely he has. If it had been said, "he has," this might have given the idea that it was his need that created the office, so to speak, or that it was this which set Christ to work as an advocate. No; He is always there, not simply as Priest with God, but as Advocate with the Father. "And if any man sin, we have an advocate." He is the common portion of all in the blessed fulness of the grace that takes up the deepest want of any created by sin. And this is exactly what is expressed best by the language of the Holy Ghost in the sentence — "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father."

Now observe how he goes back to the language of grace. He introduced the coming down of divine love in the person of the Lord Jesus, the Eternal Life which was with the Father before the world was, to spend Himself upon us, to give us what He alone possessed, what was peculiar to Him; for no man, nor angel, had it. Neither Adam, fresh created, nor the archangel, had that eternal life: only the Son of God. "In him was life," and "he that hath the Son hath life." Communion with the Father and with the Son was the consequence. "And these things write we unto you, that your joy might be full." It is not merely a question of peace with God, nor anything which only tends to that end, as we have said, but the great and blessed truth of a communion which flows out of having Christ the Son of God, and eternal life in Him.

Thus, whatever in our conduct may be inconsistent with the action of divine life, Christ, as Advocate, takes up. Nor is the result uncertain. The effect is revealed to us. So absolute is the grace that the apostle says, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." If any uninspired Christian had written such a sentence as this, can one hesitate to affirm, that men would have called it downright antinomianism? I am persuaded that the only thing which shields many a word of the apostles from such a calumny is because most are as yet unprepared openly to speak ill of the Bible. There are men that so much the more do so, and not a few, and they are growing; and in this country, as in others, they lose shame and become bolder. In some neighbouring lands, Romanist and Protestant alike, they are practised in modern forms of the scepticism once rampant here, but abashed till of late; alas! now it spreads, the reaction from ritualism — this the religious, that the profane, enemy of the gospel; and you must be prepared for it and far greater abominations than these.

Many godly people then, but, if godly, not established in grace, are just such as find most difficulty in the fulness of God's provision. Incredulous minds are not troubled in general by such things, being rather glad to fasten on any inspired words which might seem to give them a loophole and excuse for sin; for so it is that they wretchedly pervert the scriptures to their own destruction. I speak now of such as love the Lord, but have never been brought to nought in their own eyes, nor to rest only in the grace of God; and such are apt to be particularly tried by what exceeds their measure.

For instance, take such a word as this, "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace." What can they make of it? For their part they had been diligently trained to think, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or any others, that, saved by grace, they were now put under that very law as a rule to live by. This the apostle declares they are not under; yea more, because they are not under law but under grace, that sin shall not have dominion over them. As it never occurs to them to suspect the prevalent tradition, they are thereby incapable of understanding this scripture. So, lack of appreciating the fulness of redemption hinders souls from attaching any intelligible idea to that great privilege of the Christian — "no more conscience of sins" (Heb. 10: 2).

It is the same here again: "If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father." Wondrous way of God, in such a connection to tell us that we have Christ in all righteousness, making good our cause with the Father! There is precious assurance of communion in John 14, 15. to such as walk in obedience; but here it is, "If any man sin," — not if any man adhere to the good and holy and acceptable will of God. "If any man sin," says the apostle; not even "If he be made sensible of his sins;" nor yet, "If he spread it out, and humble himself for his sins." It cannot be that the holy and true God could lessen one's moral horror of evil: how comes it then that He should set forth our having an Advocate with the Father, and such an Advocate — "Jesus Christ the righteous"? There is a confessor of Christ who, we will suppose, has fallen into some deed of unrighteousness: what then does he need? "Jesus Christ the righteous;" not the miserable idea of substituting His perfect ways for his own evil ones.

Most precious truth in its own place is the scriptural doctrine of Christ's substitution, the true Azazel, on the cross. Viewed as a sinful man, I have my substitute in Him there, suffering for my sins, not sympathy then. Even He must suffer for them to the uttermost — Just for unjust. God forbid that any one should look for sympathy in his sins! There we have the Substitute. And there, in my sorrow and trial and suffering, I have that blessed Priest Who Himself suffered, and is "able to succour them that are tempted." But now, after God's grace to me, is found a sad practical contradiction to my place as His child and saint. Here is that with which God can have no fellowship — sin. I have sinned, and in the most bitter sense too, sinning against His grace, because I failed to walk watchfully and humbly in prayer and self-judgment, and so fell to the Lord's dishonour. "If any man sin" — not "he must begin again;" nor "he has lost his blessing;" nor "let him apply afresh to the Saviour for life eternal." Nothing of the sort "we have an advocate with the Father."

Thus, it is not the poor thought of comforting us because He was righteous, wherein we were all wrong. This is not God's way; but "we have an advocate with the Father." It ought to be plain that the Puritan notion of substituting His rights for each wrong of ours would act as a continual destruction for the conscience. No; "we have an advocate with the Father." We have One that takes up all our business, One that acts for us where we could not, One that enters thoroughly into the case with the Father. Men know what it is to have in court a man of business worthy of all confidence in what they might compromise through many causes, and what would certainly be for them a source of the greatest possible perplexity. Here you, a Christian, are in exceeding trouble through your own fault; and you hate yourself the more, because you know His love against Whom you have sinned. Yet oh, the comfort of grace! He tells you of One in Whom you have the fullest trust, Who, knowing all your history, state, and heart, is entirely identified with you, and gives what is more — the perfect certainty that, as He is all-prevailing and righteously so before God, so surely He will extricate you to God's praise, if to your humiliation. This, and no less, is what our Advocate is; and this He is too, not "with us," though He does wash us every whit clean, but "with the Father."

It is not said "with God" in this case, as if it were a question simply of our justification. But is all hope of communion gone after such failure? after having so disgraced His name and our own confession of it? No; "we have an advocate with the Father." It is for the restoration of the communion that had been interrupted. For though the sin of the believer in his walk may not destroy his nearness to God (his access to God being made good by the sacrifice of Christ on which he rests), it does interrupt the enjoyment of communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; and it is the very Son Himself who does set Himself as Advocate to enter into this otherwise hopeless necessity of the soul. Nothing shall separate from His love.

"We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." How blessed! His advocacy is as perfect to restore the saint's broken communion, as His blood to cleanse the once guilty sinner. But it is not simply the fact that He is my righteousness, which remains most true, unimpaired, and unimpeachable. The evil is dealt with, not spared. Not only does the Father feel that His child has so sinned, though there was grace to have kept right through, but I judge myself. And, in point of fact, this is the way in which the advocacy of Christ works. He is an Advocate with the Father; but then He deals with my soul also. It is not merely an exercise of what He is for me, though this is quite true and important, nor can one be too firm in holding fast one's standing. This abides according to its own perfection through Christ's work; but then it is not His advocacy. So here we have the standing supposed in "Jesus Christ the righteous," in whom, as St. Paul tells us, we are made God's righteousness. Even as advocate He probes the wound, and in very love to my soul does what makes me feel, more truly and hence acutely, my failure; for He heals me by the Spirit as well as manages my cause with the Father. He is Patron or Advocate no less than the Propitiation for my sins, and this too abides intact. The work is done by which the sins of the believer are effaced. But such riches of grace only cause the soul, where there is living faith, and so divine life, to feel the more anguish and shame for the sin against God; not because one dreads His judgment of ourselves, but just because we know His love so true and faithful, spite of unfaithfulness.

It remains that I should seek to show a little how this truth stands in the application of Christ's advocacy to the saint. We have seen the main fact, the doctrine, and its relation to the truth of Christ our righteousness and of the propitiation, into which, of course, we need not enter now. It is a subject which is more or less familiar to all here. Let us then endeavour to adhere to the special truth that claims a somewhat fuller illustration just now, that is, Christ's advocacy; and now not only the truth in itself, but in its application to the soul. This too we find in the writings of the same apostle John. It is not doubted that we find the principle elsewhere, but we are indebted to the apostle John for its brightest presentation. Just as Paul lets us best see the priest, and in this connection with our being a sanctified, purged, and perfected people by virtue of the blood of Christ, so here we have the advocacy of the Lord Jesus for those who, having eternal life, are brought into communion with the Father and His Son.

Here let me direct your attention more particularly to John 13, where it is said of the Lord Jesus, when He was about to depart out of this world unto the Father, that "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." What blessed comfort for the needy! He loved them unto the end. Even when He goes out of the world, it is only to work for His own in another way. On the one hand we have the enemy in all the malice of his activity against the Lord Jesus. He had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him. On the other hand, we have the Son of God in all the fulness of divine love to His own, spite of defiling influences, "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands," etc. Thus it is not only that He goes back to God in all the purity in which He came from Him as God, but also with the glory which the Father had conferred upon Him.

"Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God, and went to God, he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself." He is the servant still. It is the task divine love must take up for such a world as this. Man loves to figure and be somebody for a little while; God humbles Himself, and becomes a man, yea, a bondman, in order to deliver from self and Satan, loving and serving to the end, not merely as now because of wretchedness and sin. It could not be otherwise. It is exactly what Jesus did, and does, and will do. Love serves, and seeks the good of others. We see it not only in the Son, but in the Father Himself also, though in another way. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

Such is love, but it was displayed above all in the Son. Jesus would intimate what would occupy His heart about us when He should be on high; especially as it would prove no small difficulty for the Jewish mind or any other. Further, it was meant to form the heart and ways of the saints in their mutual relations. He shows them in this significant act that He was still to be their Servant in divine love. His cross would in no way exhaust the ever-flowing and fresh spring, for it was not a question of expiation only; but, if He was going up into glory, He would work so that they might have part with Him, even while they were upon earth, being destined to share that glory into which He was gone, and would come thence for them. Therefore "he took a towel and girded himself, and after that poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet."

Carefully remember that all through the context it is the washing of water by the word, and not by blood. In no case, so far as this scene typifies, have we propitiation here. The doctrine of the chapter is exclusively grounded on cleansing by water. No doubt the very same Son of God shed His blood for His own; but this was, observe, to wash us from our sins and expiate guilt before God. Here it is the cleansing by water of these when reconciled to God, meeting the failures and sins of saints in their daily walk. "If any man sin;" but it is as saints that the Lord here regards them — as His own; not those that grace seeks and brings to Christ out of the ranks of a rebellious world, but such as were already His own, and loved accordingly. And this was the way in which He would prove His love: He would cleanse them in divine grace when He went up on high. He showed them here what He would do there. He washes the feet of those already bathed — bathed in water, and washed with water. It is the word used at first, then throughout the believer's career. The bathing that He supposes as a ground for washing their feet is water, not blood, although there was blood at first too and of everlasting efficacy. But here water only is meant.

For remember "This is He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood." This is the more important to recall, because it is one of the truths that has well- nigh dropped out of the professing church of God. Whoever met a man yet in the ordinary profession of Christianity that understood well the washing of water by the word? But few indeed have any just idea of it whatever. Some may count this plain speaking; but is there not a cause? At any rate it is quite evident that the truth intended is of no less value for saints. It is the provision of grace against what defiles in our walk. One is far from meaning that the godly persons included in the previous statement have not had some real effect of the truth itself; for we may be quite sure grace has secured that. But I am now speaking of intelligence in the word which rightly implies it, and so avoids utter misconstruction of a really important part of divine truth. Refer it to baptism, and you have absurdity as well as false doctrine; use it as the symbol of new birth, and of the subsequent cleansing by the word for the saints when defiled and you have the truth most needed.

For that which the Lord then and there represented is exactly what the Holy Ghost is carrying on here below in answer to Christ's advocacy on high. For evidently another truth is intimately connected with it, the action of the Holy Ghost now sent down from heaven, and this, we know, grounded upon Christ's ascension. For having accomplished redemption, He went on high, and is glorified at God's right hand, whence He sent down the Holy Ghost here, Who, in answer to His advocacy with the Father, works in us by the word. Hence therefore is readily seen how it applies to the soul. "If any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Carrying out the purposes of that advocacy, as far as concerns the saints in their need, the Spirit of God brings home the word in power to the conscience and in every detail of our practice day by day.

Let us just refer to a clear instance in another Gospel, which may show that the principles run through scripture. We have seen that the doctrine and the application are particularly found in John, as bound up with divine life and communion. But now take an instance from the great moralist among the four Evangelists, who was inspired to give us his account how Peter fell into a public and scandalous offence, calculated to shake the confidence of all weak believers. For, as he was a weighty man, and a well-known leader, the public fall of such a one denying his own Master in the hour of His greatest need, and this with oaths so solemnly and repeatedly and openly as in Peter's case, could not but necessarily be a tremendous shock to the infant company of the disciples who were then gathering to the name of the Lord Jesus. This being so flagrant a case, and recorded for our admonition, the Spirit of God shows us how it was dealt with by the Lord. First, he had been solemnly warned. When boasting of his love, he was told of the fall that was at hand — told of it in the presence of his fellows undisguisedly, but also with the most tender desire, if peradventure he might only be wise enough to profit by it. Alas! it is part of the state of him who is about to fall that he does not realise his danger.

Here it was Peter's own Master Who told him what impended; and he had confessed before that Jesus was a divine person, for he had owned Him to be the Son of the living God. Nevertheless, our ears are but heavy when we like not to hear, and we do not understand what we do not at the present time feel to be our own need. Unpalatable truths pass over us: what is then said is "a parable," as we find with the disciples on a previous occasion. Peter therefore had no deep impression left on his soul, no vivid sense of need produced. Indeed such a fall, an aggravated outward evil, is always the effect of inward or secret failure before God. It neither comes alone nor all at once. Before this, Peter's case, though a man singularly fervent and of earnest purpose, had not wanted certain traces of unjudged forwardness and self-confidence. And this it was that furnished the occasion; for the apostle was so sure of himself and of his own courage that, if everybody else denied the Master, it was impossible to his own mind that Peter could. Yet this was the man that denied the Christ of God through fear of a mere servant-girl. So it is: if unbelieving and unwatchful, we fall into the very thing in which we are proudest, and in the way that is most humbling to us.

But look at the merciful ways of the Lord Jesus: for this it is of all things we want most to see — not Peter's fall, but Christ's fulness of grace. Before it He had said (Luke 22: 31), " Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Satan demanded to have the disciples to sift them in general as wheat; and the Lord said to Simon individually, "But I (emphatically) have prayed for thee," not merely "for you." Ah! did not Peter need it? How sweet soon would be the proof of such interest and deep concern on the Lord's part about himself under such circumstances, as if there had not been another to care for, and all His love were concentrated on the one on the point of such-grievous dishonour of His name. "I have entreated for thee, that thy faith fail not quite. And thou, when thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren." The word rendered "converted" means the turning to God, whether it be conversion originally, or the turning back when one has departed from Him. The latter is of course what is meant here. It is what we commonly call "restoration" of soul rather than what people in general understand by "conversion." The word is suitable to either. "Thou, when once thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren."

But the point I would now press and clear is the grace of the Lord that could so provide for a wanderer, and that would give the certainty of it to the soul in such an hour of distress and humiliation. That flesh and hypocrisy might take advantage is true; but such grace is needed and shown. How comforting is the truth of God! Observe that this rich grace does not appear in answer to a penitent cry. Not for a moment does one doubt that the Lord hears and answers such; but there was in the case before us a reason for speaking otherwise, and, to my mind, of no small importance. If one had only the consolation of the word of the Lord, and of His appearing on our behalf when we begin to repent of any sins and judge ourselves before God, one might perhaps think it was one's own repentance, or prayers, that drew out His grace and awakened His care. And such is the thought of many a soul around us. It is exactly where people ordinarily find themselves in Christendom. That is, they make out that a man's conversion, as well as his restoration, is in answer to his prayer, a substitution throughout of human merit for grace. Where is Christ in such a scheme? It is semi-Pelagianism.

It is not so scripture speaks. There God ever takes the first place. It was God that began the good work when the soul sought Him not; as here it is the Lord evidently that entreated even before Peter fell, not the failing man after it, though of course he did pray and weep bitterly. But the stress is thrown on the prayer of Christ, not of Peter, however men may reason. "If any one sin," we have — not shall have when he repents — "If any one sin, we have an advocate with the Father." It is the settled possession that Christians always have. Sin is inexcusable always in a saint; but if one should be guilty, "we have an advocate with the Father." His advocacy brings us to repentance. It is not our repentance that makes Him our advocate, but His grace which puts all in effectual activity.

Have you seized the truth? Thus, as grace it is at the beginning, so is it throughout every step of the way. The spring is mercy all through. Far I am from implying there is no righteousness; for indeed without it not anything else were good. Without the full maintenance of God's character and ways, all must be wrong; but this we have in Christ Himself, Who is our life, "Jesus Christ the righteous." And besides, as we know, the fullest account has been taken of all that we were. "And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." It may not be in precisely the same way as for the believer; but still He died for all. The blood is on the mercy-seat, and this is not limited to the people of God merely, but embraces the largest outlook over God's creation, so that the gospel can go out righteously in His grace to all, commanding "all everywhere to repent" no doubt, but appealing in love, persuading and warning souls far and wide that they may be saved.

It appears to me then, that we have the subject distinct thus far in God's word. We are born of water and of the Spirit. It is that action of the Holy Ghost by the word of God, carrying out the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which first of all the soul is set apart to God. Hence we read that He saved us "by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." There we find what is clearly from the starting-point of the Christian's career. For "God chose us from the beginning to salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." So also Christ "loved the church, and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it with the washing of water by the word." The disciples were clean through the word Jesus spoke to them; certainly not in baptism, a heathen idea, leading to antinomianism and self-deception, and bound up with sacerdotalism, but by the Spirit through the word of God.

The truth too is often taught without the figure, as where we read in James 1, that we are "begotten by the word of truth." It is the same principle in 1 Peter 1: "We are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible," which is true from the very first.

The same distinction is maintained in the symbolic action of John 13, to which I have already referred. "He that is washed" (or bathed) "needeth not save to wash his feet." "Bathed" also is in the water of the word. It is not in blood, but in water still. Only this is when a man is first converted, or set apart unto God. He is bathed, as it were all over. Afterwards, when there is a particular case of failure, the word is applied by the Spirit to convict us of that failure, and to humble us for it in self-judgment. So we see in Luke 22: 61, that the Lord turned and looked upon Peter when he fell. "And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." It was the washing of water by the word. The words of Jesus were recalled in all their life and power to his soul. "And Peter went out, and wept bitterly."

There is another remark, too, that I have to add as to this. We come to further details in the practical application to this particular instance. The work was not completely done when Peter went out and wept bitterly. This was right and seasonable; it was of God; but it was not complete. And therefore we find that the Lord Jesus afterwards deals with the inmost soul of this very Peter. As far as the apostles were concerned, His first interview was with Peter, with him alone. But even after this we learn what must be to make the work complete, and this not judicially, but in the perfection of His love. "Simon, son of Jonas," said He, "lovest thou me more than these?" Simon protests He knew that he dearly loved Him. The Lord repeats the question of his love, and the third time takes up his claim of special attachment; on which Peter was grieved that He said the third time, Dost thou love me dearly? Well he might feel; for it became evident that his threefold denial was before the Lord's eye, and its root also. And now Peter gets to see how it came to pass. Not but that he had wept over it, and felt already his great sin and the Lord's great grace; but had he thoroughly judged himself?

It is not a question therefore of merely judging the particular offence. Never do we reach the bottom of that which has misled us if we but look at the outward act. What exposed one to it? And what was it that exposed Peter? He thought he loved the Lord better than anybody; he could go where the others could not; he could trust himself who loved Him so truly: never should he deny the Messiah. Peter was satisfied that he loved Jesus more than all, and could face prison, death, anything for His sake. The Lord thus brought to light the root of his failure. There, without one harsh word, without even an ostensible reference to the threefold denial, without the smallest needless exposure to others, the root was laid bare and dealt with; and Simon Peter was perfectly restored, and the Lord now could commit His sheep and His lambs to his tending and feeding. "When thou art restored, strengthen thy brethren." He was converted (restored) now, and had the promise in the end, when nature's strength should wither, that he should follow Himself even to the death of the cross. Nor is it only in the New Testament that we find this truth. We have there, of course, the doctrine and the application, and such a special instance as I have just cited; but now I go farther, and affirm that it is a principle which is no less true of the Old Testament, though it is only the New Testament which gives us to understand it clearly. The water of separation which the law enjoined on the children of Israel — what did it mean? Water was mingled with the ashes of an heifer that was wholly burned, skin and all, even what was most offensive. The whole was reduced to ashes, being one of the few sacrifices where this was done completely; and why? For the very important reason of vividly expressing in a figure the consuming judgment of God. In no sacrifice was this more fully carried out than in the burning of the red heifer. The ashes (for that was the point) were kept mixed with running water, and the Israelite, if defiled, was ordered to be sprinkled with this as a water of separation. There were two sprinklings; the first on the third day, and the second on the seventh day if the defiled one had been sprinkled on the third. The meaning I take to be that he was sprinkled on the third day, not the first, because one does not show a due sense of sin by being over quick to get through it. You have seen a child who, directly she has been guilty of a fault, readily tells you how sorry she is. But the same child will fall into the fault again no less quickly. Would you not rather see a child that showed more shame, and remained for a while under the feeling of it, than one so very hasty to ask pardon, and then forgetting the sin the very next moment? Alas! we are but naughty children ourselves, and sometimes we have behaved as ill to God our Father.

The only wise God provided this institute for the people passing through the wilderness; for, remark, it appears only in Numbers, the book of the wilderness journey. And there it was, and is, wanted. It contemplates the people, not in Egypt, nor in Canaan, but on their march through the wilderness. Accordingly the Israelite was called to abide under the sense of his uncleanness; he must bear the feeling of defilement till the third day. There must be no haste. The man who was unclean must abandon life to the pain of it for two days, and only on the third day, when there was a full witness ("in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established") is he sprinkled. Such I believe to be the force of the third day here. It has nothing to do with resurrection. It signifies, it would seem, an adequate testimony to his having been unclean; and it is when he feels it before God, and abides under it thus, that the seventh day sprinkling takes effect and the man is clean. Thus it is the reverse of trying to escape and have done with it, as a man would like to do; just as Saul, when he said, "I have sinned," and then forgot all. Here the unclean was not sprinkled till the third day, and then afterwards on the seventh. This one case gives us sin in the presence of grace, as the other grace in the presence of sin. Thus all defilement was now judged and gone. The once defiled Israelite is now fully cleansed. Grace triumphs.

How great, then, the grace of our Lord! Who, while making the fullest provision in case of sin nevertheless in no case makes light of it; even in the very provision for restoring, grace turns all to holy account. Thus is the soul made to feel its sin as it never did before, not the particular act simply, but that which exposed to it, so that one may be profited and strengthened as well as humbled, in a way and degree which had not been the previous experience. Thus, too, where sin abounded, grace yet more, giving a better state to the Lord's praise alone, which could not be if there were no more than the open evil act seen; for we may be as liable to fall again, if not more so. What riches of grace thus meets us! Assuredly it does meet us in the particular act that disgraces and pains us: only according to both Old and New Testament it does not stop there, but would go to the root of the matter, that the defiled might judge self in its roots, and the soul gather strength for itself, minister grace to others, and God be glorified in all things by Jesus Christ our Lord.

May we, then, rejoice in the Lord, and rejoice always. May we know how to hold every particle of His truth, in the confidence of His grace. May we look to it, that all the grace and truth we know in Him be used to maintain and vindicate the revealed will and word of God, that it may deal with our own souls as with others, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

W. K.

Is the Anglican Establishment a Church of God?

W. Kelly.

The question is as to its distinctive doctrines and practices, as an ecclesiastical body, not as to what Anglicans hold in common with other Christians. Still less is it a question whether there be real members and ministers of Christ in that body: none but the ignorant, or the bitterly prejudiced, would deny it. The mere assumption of the name — Church of God — is no proof; if it were, the pettiest sect might produce the same pretentions. Doubtless, separation from a Church of God is false ground; but, on the other hand, no institution ought to be owned as a Church, without plain scriptural proof that its claims are well founded.

1. — Now, the grand and characteristic feature of the Church of England (so called) is, that the sovereign of the country is ex officio its supreme governor or head. This makes the Anglican system to be the church of the country. Where is the warrant for it in Scripture? They may refer to Saul doing this — David, Solomon, Hezekiah, or Josiah, doing that. But what is all this to the purpose? They were kings of Israel, whose polity, civil and religious, was divinely ordered as no other nation was, is, or shall be. Our inquiry has to do with the Church of God, on which the New Testament casts as distinct a light as the Old Testament does on Israel. According to the Acts and Epistles, Henry the Eighth could not have been received as a member of God's Church, yet he took the place of head in the Church of England. In the Church of God, our sovereign lady the Queen could not rule in the humblest way; in the Church of England she has the chief power. The conduct of bishops is amenable to her judgment as a last resort. Even upon the grave question, whether a given doctrine, held or rejected, unfits a man for induction, she decides through a few lawyers, who form the judicial body of the Privy Council; for, all estates, ecclesiastical or civil, are under her government, as the chief. Such is the doctrine of Art. XXXVII. Is it scriptural or unscriptural? May we not add, (remembering 1 Tim. 2: 11). Is it not anti-scriptural? If men say, Times are changed; the answer is, Alas! they are, but God's Word is unchanged and unchangeable. It would be more candid to confess that the institution is unsustainable by Scripture, in the fundamental point of the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters — an innovation never heard of before the Reformation.

2. — Again as to the three orders of Clergy, no such distinction appears in Scripture. It is certain that the terms bishop and elder (or presbyter) were originally used as synonyms, and indiscriminately applied to the same persons. (See Acts 20: 17, 28; Phil. 1: 1; 1 Tim. 3; Titus 1; 1 Peter 5: 1, 2.) Next, it is certain from Scripture that none did appoint to the charge of elder or bishop save apostles, or their delegates. Hence, in order to claim a valid ordaining power, people were driven to the idea of apostolic succession: if that be false, as most evangelical men allow, their ordination has no scriptural nor divine authority whatever. But even when there were apostles, and apostolically appointed elders, etc., there were whole classes of ministers, acting both within the church and towards the world, who never needed any human authorization. (Compare Acts 8: 1-4; Acts 11: 20; Acts 18: 24-28; Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 3, 12, 14, 16; Eph. 4, Phil. 1: 14; Col. 2: 19; 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13; Heb. 13: 7, 17, 24; 1 Peter 4: 9, 10; James 3: 1.) Now, this scriptural principle is flatly contradicted and excluded by Art. XXIII., which teaches that "those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work BY MEN who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord's vineyard." How different is all this from Scripture! There I find our Lord telling His disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers (Matt. 9). It is the householder that hires them (Matt. 20); and again, it is the Lord which called his own servants and delivered unto them his goods. (Matt. 25) And with this agrees the doctrine of the Epistles, as may be seen in Rom. 10: 15; Eph. 4: 7, 8, 11-16; Col. 4: 17. That is, the Scriptures and the Articles are at open war on this point. The former makes the Lord's mission to be the essential thing, the latter makes it indispensable to be called by men. When and how was this public authority given? by whom, and to whom? I admit that you can find it in the Fathers, but not in Scripture, which, on the contrary, shuts out what the Church of England treats as the only lawful call, at least since the Act of Conf. 1662.

3. — Lastly, I would direct attention to the Services for Baptism, the Catechism, and the Order of Confirmation; they do plainly teach regeneration in and by the baptismal rite.

There are three Baptismal Services, all of which exclude any other doctrine. (1.) In the "Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants" the language alike of exhortation and prayer, before the ordinance, supposes the unbaptized infant to be unregenerate. The petition then was, that the babe might be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, born again, and received into Christ's Holy Church. After the ordinance, thanks are given that it has pleased God to regenerate the infant with His Holy Spirit, etc. Beyond a doubt, to an unprejudiced mind, the rite of baptism is regarded as the instrument.

(2) The phraseology is, if possible, more defined in the ''Ministration of Private Baptism." It is, "Seeing now, beloved brethren, that this child is by baptism regenerate, and grafted," etc. Again, "I certify you that in this case all is well done, and according unto due order, concerning the baptism of this child; who being born in original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by the laver of regeneration in baptism, received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of everlasting life.'' (3.) The "Ministration of Baptism to such as are of riper years" proves how consistent these services are in this heretical dogma. For while these adults are regarded as believers previous to their baptism (and therefore the god-parents do not promise on their behalf) they are regarded in the exhortation as not yet having remission of their sins. Therefore the prayer runs thus: "Give Thy Holy Spirit to these persons, that they may be born again, and be made heirs of everlasting salvation;" and so throughout the service, which is essentially similar, of course, to those for infants. They are certainly considered to be unregenerate up to the moment of the rite. The case of such as are of riper years, therefore, heightens the confusion, aggravates the evil, and proves incontestably that the services attribute regeneration to the sacrament. When they are baptized, and not before, the word is, "Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that these persons are regenerate," etc.

Next, the words of the Catechism are equally precise, for, in the answer to the second question, the child is to say that his godfathers and godmothers gave him his name in his baptism; wherein he was made a member of Christ, etc. And though he is taught that repentance and faith were required of persons to be baptized, the latter is to believe the promises of God made to them in that sacrament. Such faith, I need hardly say, is worthless, because it rests on a foundation of sand. It is the church, so called, not God, which has made promises in a sacrament. Lastly, the Order of Confirmation seals this deplorable system of false doctrine and delusive ordinance. For after the misguided young have taken upon themselves the Sinai-like vows, which their god-parents had at first promised for them, the bishop says, "Let us pray. Almighty and ever-living God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water and the Holy Ghost, and hast given them forgiveness of all their sins, strengthen them," etc. Thus far, all is harmonious error.

Membership with the Church of England rests on this sacramental foundation. And violent indeed are the efforts of godly Churchmen to evade the plain language of the Book of Common Prayer. In it the whole baptized population are regarded, according to the Romish model, as the Church. No wonder that men, surrounded by such a state of things, ask, "What is the world?" All are treated, in virtue of baptism, as born again, as therein made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. No godly man can hinder this. It is the regular course and aim of Anglicanism,* not an abuse; so much so, that if a minister or a member were in these points to act scripturally, he must act schismatically. In other words, the actings of the Spirit Himself would be condemned as schismatical, if judged by the Services and Articles, the Rubrics and Canons of that system — a most solemn consideration for those who are upholding or in any way sanctioning it! No system can be of God, where the ways of a formalist might be canonically right, and those of the Holy Ghost must be canonically wrong; and this, notwithstanding many excellent persons there, is exactly true of the English Establishment. It is in vain to say, "I do not believe in baptismal regeneration:" the important point is, What says the English Church? And this must be determined by the literal and grammatical sense of the formularies. In these all the members are supposed to acquiesce; if they do not, they have no business there — they ought to leave.

*Hence, says the Rubric, appended to the order of the Communion, "And note that every parishioner shall communicate at the least three times in the year, of which Easter to be one." The curate has power to refuse no moral worldly man, but only an open and notorious evil liver or one guilty of known wrong. The gathering together of God's children (i.e. the Church of God) is not and cannot be contemplated there. Therefore it is that the celebrated Hooker, who will not be accused of bearing false or incompetent testimony, does not scruple to say (Eccles. Pol. book viii, vol. iii, p. 290, ed. Oxford, 1793,) "There is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England." Could this be said of a Church of God, according to His Word?

Thus, whether you look at the headship, the ministry, or the membership of the Anglican body, the system, as such, is thoroughly and hopelessly without Scripture, and opposed to it. Dear brethren in Christ, ought we not to obey God rather than men? And what is the difficulty? Nothing but unbelief. Let us then have done with "my church" and "your church," and retrace our steps to the ground which we ought never to have left — the ground of the Church OF GOD. This is not schism, but separation from evil, which is God's principle of unity; as man's principle is the mingling of light and darkness, of the world and the Church — in a word, BABYLON. To stand aloof from what is holy and true is a sin; to separate from what is unholy and untrue is a Christian duty. If the national body be unscriptural, to renounce all connection with it (not with the Christians in it) is a matter of simple obedience to God. "Cease to do evil: learn to do well."

The So-called Apostolical Fathers on the Lord's Second Coming.

W. Kelly.

A brief survey will suffice to test the worth of these scanty remains of Christian antiquity for the truth in question. The marvel is that any man of spiritual judgment who has read them with care should count them of the least weight, especially on such a matter. They have indeed a sorrowful interest, as they attest the rapid departure and profound downfall from apostolic teaching. Can anything be conceived more evident or striking than the immeasurable distance which severs these earliest writings from the scriptures? The Apocrypha, merely human as it is, does not so startlingly differ from the O.T. as do Barnabas, Clemens Rom., and Hermas from the apostles Paul, Peter, and John. Yet these productions were read like the scriptures to Christian congregations in early days; and Clemens Alex. quotes the most heterodox and nonsensical of the three as scripture! Even the Sinaitic Uncial has appended to the N.T. Barnabas and Hermas, as the Alexandrian has Clemens Rom. What a contrast these and all the rest from the dignity, holiness, love, and authority of the inspired Epistles! These early relics are merely the word of man, betraying not only weakness but trumpery. If able and learned men have lauded them to the skies, it only proves that tradition has blinding power, and that all have not faith.

Yet a pious man of our day ventures to say that "in God's gracious providence we possess such early writings." To what can one attribute infatuation like this in an evangelical clergyman but to his passionate zeal for the Jewish hope against the Christian one? Judaising in any form tends always to strife and bitterness. How strange to be directed first to the "Didache" or "Teaching of the twelve Apostles"! Here then are the editio princeps of Bryennius (Constantinople, 1883), that of Hitchcock and Brown (New York, 1884), moreover that of H. de Roumestin (Parker and Co., Oxford and London, 1884), and Dr. C. Bigg's little volume with at least equal discernment critically as any.

The fuller title is daring enough, "The Lord's Teaching through the twelve Apostles to the nations."

But it is a meagre compilation, beginning with the Two Ways of life and of death, which occupy six chapters, or nearly half of the little treatise, without one word to show how life is given or guilt removed.

Then follows an inept chapter on baptism, prescribing a fast to precede; and another chapter on fasting in general. The great difference from "the hypocrites" seems to be that they fast on the second and the fifth days of the week, whereas the right fast is on the fourth and sixth (or preparation)! They are also not to pray as "the hypocrites," but as the Lord commanded, and thrice a day! In chapter 9 about the Eucharist, take the following flight: "As this broken [bread] was scattered over the hills and gathered together became one, so let thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom." Can any thought be poorer?

The notable fact is that the Twelve apostles are made to forget the all-importance of Christ's death in both baptism and the Lord's Supper. Again, the name of David figures strangely in 9* and 10 where we have "the four winds." After eccentric talk in 11 - 13 we have in 14 Mal 1: 10, 14 utterly perverted, as do the Papists notoriously to the mass. It is the old unbelief of substituting the Church for Israel. Does our brother fancy that from east to west the name of Jehovah is yet great among the nations, or ever will be till the Lord returns in glory? Is he not as assured as those to whom he foolishly ascribes "the modern theory," that only then, never before, "in every place incense shall be offered to My name, and a pure oblation; for My name shall be great among the nations, saith Jehovah of hosts."

* The equivalent appears in Clem. Alex., and Origen, all referring, as Dr. Bigg judges, not to the Lord, but to the Eucharistic cup! It really seems so; but how incongruous the mixture of Jewish figure with a strictly Christian institution!

Hence no apostle ever applied this prediction to Christianity in the N.T. It is the misinterpretation of the spurious Didache; for the true Twelve never really sanctioned it. But it suited the pride and the ignorance of the Catholic church even before Popery. Matthew Henry perhaps well skips the verse, for the nonconformists give scant heed to prophecy; but W. Lowth, T. Scott, and perhaps all other commentators boldly follow the antiquated delusion in full chorus. The late Dr. Pusey of course laboured to prove it, looking only at the Jews of the past and present. But his argument defeats itself; for the prophet speaks of no "new revelation of Himself," but rather of the old promise made good in grace and power, not for Jews only but among the nations, when Jehovah shall be king over all the earth, one Jehovah and His Name one in that day. There is no excuse for misreading this bright prospect, still future, into the truly new and deeper revelation of His name as Father, which the Lord Jesus made known (John 4: 21-23) for the hour that "now is," when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth.

But let us turn to the last chapter of the Didache, "still more apposite" it is said. No one can doubt that Matt. 24 is therein mixed up with other scriptures which speak of the Lord's coming, whether to mankind invisible or visible." And then shall appear the signs of the truth (!): first a sign of an opening in heaven; then a sign of trumpet's voice (or, sound); and the third, resurrection of the dead. Yet not of all, but as it was said, The Lord will come, and all the saints with him."

Now Matt. 24: 30 speaks, not of the sign of "an opening in heaven" appearing, but of the Son of man in the heaven as a sign of His coming to the earth, which causes all the tribes of the earth (or, land) to lament. But even the Didache cites Zech. 14: 5 for all the saints coming with Him at this very epoch. Now this is our thesis, and it necessarily implies their previous change in order to come suitably to His appearing in glory. The mission of His angels (in ver. 31) with a great sound of trumpet cannot be for the gathering together unto Him of the glorified who all come with Him, but for the subsequent act of gathering together, after He appears, the elect of Israel from the four winds, scattered till then all over the earth. There is not a trace here of "the last trumpet" when the dead saints shall rise and we are changed, in order to come with Him in due time to gather the elect of Israel to the great King in Zion. For we must have been caught up before, that when He shall be manifested in glory, we too may then be manifested together with Him in it. There is no catching up in Matt. 24. Nor does it speak of the third sign of the resurrection of the saintly dead. Indeed no scripture treats it as "a sign." They were raised to appear with Him when He appears and "the world sees the Lord coming on the clouds of heaven."

If it be argued that Rev. 20: 4 speaks of the First Resurrection (after His appearing and the judgment of the Beast and the False Prophet with the kings of the earth and their armies, as well as the binding of Satan), not only is this admitted but its importance is insisted on. For it proves that there are stages in that resurrection as well as in Christ's presence. We learn from that verse that the general company of the glorified (all the saints of O.T. and New, till Christ come for them) compose those who emerge from heaven as the Lamb's followers. They were seen now seated on thrones, and judgment given to them; thereon two special classes of saints succeed, martyred in the earlier and later periods of the Apocalyptic crisis, who, as yet disembodied, were made to live, in order to reign with Christ for the thousand years, no less than the general company already enthroned. These all make up the First Resurrection. It is false and directly contradictory to this scripture that those Apocalyptic sufferers rose at the same time with the first company.

Is it too much to say that of the truth here revealed, the Didache, and Christians at large are still wholly ignorant? Why should that be incredible which the Revelation makes known in the clearest terms? These early writings are most defective and, through ignorance of the scriptures, often opposed to the truth; and so are moderns. Scripture alone is the standard; and the Christian is not left without a divine Guide dwelling in him to lead into all the truth. Let us believe God's word as a whole, and not accept one part while we omit another.

But what we thus learn scatters into thin air the assumption that there were not to be distinct and different objects, both for blessing and for judgment, which unpractised eyes merge in one. Matt. 24 of course practically coalesces with 1 Thess. 5 and 2 Thess. 1 and many other intimations of the day of the Lord i.e. His coming judicially. But no one is entitled therefore to take for granted that the promised comfort and heavenly joy of the saints in John 14 and in 1 Thess. 4: 15-17 will be at that same time, any more than that the Lord's "Parousia" in 2 Thess. 1 synchronises with "the appearing of His Parousia" in ver. 8. If these be equally seen by man, where would be the propriety of the change of phrase? The connection too is so different that the Parousia in ver. 1 is with sovereign grace, the epiphany of His Parousia is with signal vengeance. It is equally His presence in either case, but absurd to assume that they must happen together.

As the Lord's character of Son of man in that day will be judicial (John 5: 22), the Parousia of the Son of man goes with His appearing. Thus He comes for Israel and the nations (Matt. 24: 30, 25: 31), but not so receives us to Himself for the Father's house. It is not that we deny in a general way what these brethren advance about "that day." In 2 Thess. 1 we have, as simultaneous effects of the Lord's revelation from heaven, the relief and vindication of the troubled saints, and the trouble and punishment of the wicked. But these are alike the exercise of righteous judgment, and not of sovereign grace; and hence neither can be till He appears in glory. Why should any be so absorbed in the earthly side of the Lord's Parousia as to be bitter against such as see and firmly hold the heavenly side also? We believe the heavenly hope to be an immense gain for the Christian, having already known what it is to be ignorant of it, as almost all thus begin. But growth in the truth, or elevation above the visible sphere, if sound and spiritual, is a boon beyond price; yet God's word and Spirit alone can safely lead on.

The Didache then may have interest as being rather ancient, though of no doctrinal importance. It departs from the truth, even as to the saints choosing bishops (chap. 15); whereas scripture speaks only of apostles, or their delegate, choosing elders for them (Acts 14: 23, Titus 1: 5). This was a radical change. Yet we need not suppose that it purposely left out elders, but (like Clem. Rom.) identified them with bishops, as scripture does: compare Acts 20: 17 with 28; Phil. 1: 1; and Titus 1: 5, 7.

But with the earliest age how strange to hear of the "apostolic Constitutions," betraying as it does internal evidence of being centuries later? What evidence can it afford of "the first century belief"? The Didache just lets us see the growing decay a little earlier; the Apostolic Constitutions came after that. Both misapplied Matt. 24 to Christendom.

The Epistle of Barnabas was long before those spurious "Apostolic Constitutions." Who this Barnabas was we know not. It dishonours the apostle's early friend and fellow-labourer, "a good man and full of the Holy Spirit and faith," to attribute to him a document so childish in its mystical reveries. Yet it stands favourably contrasted with the probably interpolated Epistles of Ignatius, which too evidently evince the desire to cry up the clerical order. The Barnabas before us appears to have had at heart to counteract the judaising of that early day. But a mighty chasm separates his work from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which with divine energy really translates the Levitical types as the figures of heavenly things. Tertullian, etc. show lack of discernment by assigning the inspired Epistle to the companion of the apostle (himself too without doubt the man whom the Holy Spirit calls an apostle). Yet this author sets up no such pretension, but had a due sense of his humble position. The true hope of the Christian is nowhere seen. All is vague and earthly, as with others far abler down to our own day. Spiritual intelligence in this respect is of the rarest.

Again, it is surprising that anyone who has the least regard for orthodoxy or even decency should cite from "The Shepherd" of Hermas. Besides, the Muratorian Canon has convinced all scholars, that this Hermas lived at about the middle of the second century, a brother of Pope Pius I, and not therefore "the brother" mentioned by the apostle. Far be it from my wish to expose the mere trash of a weak and fanciful mind in its Visions, Commands, and Similitudes. But it is a far graver case, when Hermas talks of God's holy angel filling a man with the blessed Spirit! of men's having all their offences blotted out because they suffered death for the name of the Son of God! and, worse still if possible, of the Holy Spirit being created first of all! Think of citing such a one on the question of our having to pass through the great tribulation! and of the comment on all this worse than nonsense, "Such was the belief of the Apostolic Christian." But let us draw a veil over the addendum on the false prophets who branded Jeremiah, and on Ahab, Zedekiah, and Shemaiah. Such vituperation must injure those that indulge in so acrimonious a spirit on a question that needs the quiet and holy guidance of the Spirit of God.

It is singular that the Epistle from the Church in Rome to that in Corinth (assigned to Clement, perhaps the earliest of these extra-scriptural remains) is passed by; for it is comparatively sober and grave, earnest and affectionate. Yet it seems inconceivable that the Clement (a name then of frequent occurrence), to whom the apostle alludes as "my fellow-labourer," could have written, as this Epistle does, of Danaides and Dirces* (chap. 6), or of the fabulous phoenix. This last first appears in the Fragments of Hesiod (Loesner, p. 450), and swells into the legend that Herodotus relates in his garrulous way (ii. 73). See also Tacitus (Ann. vi. 28), and the elder Pliny (Hist. Nat. x. 2). Is it not humbling that what the old pagan historian found incredible was accepted by Clement of Rome, with a whole cluster of later Fathers assenting, such as the Latins, Tertullian and Ambrose, and the Greeks, Origen, Epiphanius, Cyril Hier., Greg. Naz., etc.? Archbp. Wake and Mr. Chevallier were influenced by P. Young (Junius) to omit the heathen reference in chap. 6 as an interpolation; but the discovery since of added MS. evidence corroborates the insertion, however discreditable it must be to those who drew up the letter to Corinth. For Clement does not claim the Epistle as his own. It was probably a composite communication, like the letter from the apostles and elder brethren to the brethren of the Gentiles in Antioch and elsewhere (Acts 15), Clement taking the part in Rome that James had done before in Jerusalem. But what a wide difference between the brief and authoritative wisdom divine in the one, and the prolix elaboration, with faulty and compromising details, in the other!

* 'To say that those heathen women "attained the firm centre of faith" and that they "weak in body received a noble reward" is to surrender the gospel, unconsciously but really. It is inexcusable error, not to say downright folly.

How again could Christian saints of intelligence cite Isa. 64: 4, and 1 Cor. 2: 9, and stop short, as ignorant souls do to-day, of the apostolic addition, "But unto us God revealed [them] through the Spirit"? (See chap. 34) For this is just the wondrous favour we enjoy above the O.T. saints by Christ's redemption, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. It means unwittingly, that one ignores the vantage ground of Christianity in the presence of the Spirit, that we are no better off as to this than Israel of old.

This Epistle is also exceedingly reticent as to the Lord's return, and hence precarious in its quotation of prophecy. Take that from Isa. 60: 17 in chap. 42. This is the application. "Preaching therefore through countries and cities, they [the apostles] used to appoint their first-fruits [a hazardous statement] to be bishops and deacons over those who should believe, after having proved them by the Spirit. Nor this in any new way; for in truth it had in long past times been written concerning bishops and deacons! For the scripture somewhere saith, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith." Now a Christian has only to read the prophet in order to be convinced of the outrageous mistake. The chapter as a whole supposes the day of glory come for earthly Jerusalem, the city of Jehovah, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel; when the afflicted but spared people shall become a strong nation, and, what is better still, shall all be righteous. It is a picture quite different from the glorified church, the holy Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God. The force of ver. 17 is that in the day of restored Israel Jehovah will make their rulers peace, and their officers righteousness. Neither war nor exaction shall be any more. Is this fulfilled as yet?

There is here absolutely no room for an allusion to bishops and deacons in the churches; it is pure hallucination. But it is worse by far. It indicates, like the Epistle of Barnabas, that which soon overran Christendom like a flood, the sprouting of the Gentile conceit, of which the apostle warned the saints in Rome. The promises abide for Israel, who are yet to be blessed as a people under Messiah and the new covenant. Branches of the olive-tree by their unbelief were broken off, and Gentiles meanwhile grafted in; but the Gentile tenure is by faith and contingent on their continuance in goodness: otherwise they also shall be cut off. Nothing is more certain than that the professing Gentiles have utterly failed, are unbelieving to excess, and must end in the apostasy as the apostle predicted.

Equally certain is it (even from this chapter and all the prophets) that Israel will not continue in their present unbelief, but shall be grafted in again. Their hardening is only till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; "and so all Israel shall be saved." These are enemies in the gospel days which will soon end. God has not forgotten His promises, or His election of the fathers; He only awaits the right moment, when the Gentile complement is made up, to prove His faithful love to Israel. For His gifts and calling do not admit of change of mind. Christendom from early days assumed on the contrary that He had cast off Israel, and given the church an indefeasible title: a false, proud and ruinous delusion. Here in these apostolic fathers the germ grows and spreads apace as it were flag-weed, till judgment destroys it for ever.

Are these the men or the writings to produce as of value to interpret the scriptures which reveal a truth incompatible with this vain conceit? For their denial of Israel's hopes led to the transfer of earthly glory to the church now, and the consequent refusal of present suffering, forgetful of future glory on high: the abandonment of the true portion of God's church. These early fathers had lost the truth of our calling upwards, and took more and more the glowing visions announced to Israel as meant for us, and not for them. To maintain the heavenly privilege in its power and purity we must own that to Israel God destined the earth, with the Gentiles rejoicing in willing subjection. But we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies even now in Christ, and to be with Him there in the day of glory. To seek earthly power and glory now is for the church high treason to Christ.

But the principle of looking to "the early belief" is a false one, the ignis fatuus of the Tractarian movement, and the fully developed lie of Popery; which, if there is to be an interpreter, demands and professes to have an infallible one in itself, the Holy Catholic church, and now indeed the Pope. This of course when plainly stated the Protestant abjures. The Christian, the church, believing in the ever abiding presence and operation of the Holy Spirit sent forth on and since Pentecost, has what the latter confessedly lacks, what the former vainly and madly professes. The Spirit dwells here below to guide into all the truth, and makes this good in the measure of our faith and spiritual state. For He is here to glorify Christ, not the saint or the church; who are only right in awaiting Christ's coming for our glory with Him. Now is the time for lowly service, unworldly devotedness, and self-renunciation, yea for sharing His rejection and suffering. It is no time for reigning without the apostles, and without Christ; it is the time for entire dependence on Him in separation from the world, content ourselves to be meanwhile reviled, persecuted, and defamed like our betters for Christ's sake. The scripture is the standard; in no way what the Christians may have believed, thought, said, or done, even in apostolic days.

Hence the saints in Rome are warned not to be high-minded but fear; and we have already seen why. It was the very snare which misled them and all Christendom to deny God's faithfulness to Israel, and to claim the succession to Jewish power and honour now on earth, which could not be without forfeiting present rejection and future glory on high with Christ.

Still more manifest and manifold is the care to correct the church in Corinth (with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, theirs and ours) from their aberrations. There were internal divisions and carnal strifes; clashing schools of thought with chiefs (however themselves unwilling) dragged in to accentuate the rival parties. What more opposed to the one Head and the one body? They were puffed up, instead of mourning at the horrible leaven unjudged in their midst. They were not ashamed that anyone of them should prosecute his suit before the world, and not before the saints as the Lord had laid down. They were loose as to personal purity, the known prevalent immorality of the place. They needed to have the marriage relation etc. cleared and defined. They were admonished against their levity as to heathen temples and sacrifices. They were reminded authoritatively that those who labour in the gospel are entitled to live of the gospel, whilst it was the apostle's own joy to make it without charge, in the Spirit of Christ not using his right. They were warned that preaching to others without personal self-abnegation is an awful peril. Nor is it only preachers that need to take heed; but any Christian if unwary will fall, as is seen in the wilderness history of Israel, types of us. Open disorders too are reproved, not only in women forgetting their place of subjection, but in scandalous dishonour to the Lord, even at His supper, it would seem through mixing the love-feast with it, but really through their bad state of soul. Further, the principle and practice flowing from the Spirit's action individually and congregationally were fully stated to guide them and us, in chaps. 12-14. with the deeply needed intervening chapter calling for love to enforce and characterise both. Most pointed too in the bearing on our subject is chapter 15, which proves how little "early christian belief" can be trusted; for some among them questioned a resurrection, though it does not seem that they doubted the immortality of the soul.

It is the scripture that we accept, not only as the source of divinely given truth but as its criterion. The Holy Spirit is the sole unfailing interpreter, just so far as we look to Christ's glory. If we seek our own things, calling them perhaps the church's glory or right, we have no promise from God and no security for ourselves; but on the contrary we shall have to learn our folly. One might similarly apply several more of the Epistles, besides the greatest for general Christian doctrine, and the no less great for ecclesiastical truth and order.

Notably again the Epistle to the Galatians calls for a few words in proof that what the early Christians held is not the smallest guarantee for the truth. For the apostle writes to the assemblies of that considerable region in Asia Minor, where he had himself planted the gospel, to reproach them sadly and solemnly with having so quickly changed from him that called them in Christ's grace to a different gospel which is not another. It was truly a perversion of the gospel of Christ. If saints, after the best of all preaching in that early day, could so soon follow judaizers, and fall from grace into legalism as the apostle affirms, can any thoughtful mind be surprised that they might soon slip into defective views and even error about the Second Advent?

But we need not assume this. The Epistles to the Thessalonians prove doubly the fact, and not the danger only. For the apostle, in instructing them more on that glorious truth, had in the First to correct, at least as soon, their mistake about their deceased brethren, and in the Second to expose a still wider and worse error about the day of the Lord for living saints. How plainly the mystery of lawlessness was already at work!

It is not for any one to minimise the incalculable moment of the proper hope of the Christian. But nothing is easier to understand than the difficulty it presented to the Jews that became Christians, accustomed only to the Lord's coming as predicted in the O.T. to deliver the godly remnant of Jews at the last gasp, as it were, from the apostate mass of their fellow-Jews with the Antichrist at their head and the Roman Beast his patron and ally, and from the vast assemblage of the Eastern nations, their embattled or besieging enemies under the King of the North, and the Russian Gog behind the latter. The remnant justly look for Christ's advent in displayed power and glory to overwhelm both their internal and external foes, and thus deliver themselves on the earth. Also Gentile believers, again, were slow to enter into the blessed wonder of Christ's coming to translate on high all real Christians, in its grandeur far beyond what Enoch or Elijah experienced of old: so completely was it beyond even saintly men's expectation or conception. Only Christ's promise and God's new revelation could account to our souls for such surpassing glory. Hence to the inspired word of the N.T. we confidently appeal, as it only is here entitled to convince any.

But we specially invite the attention of our opposing brethren to a consideration which escaped all the Patristic remains, and every theologian till our day. For we love them, and mind not overmuch froth and fury signifying nothing, due also to their zeal for the little which fills their vision, having most of us passed through similar objections and prejudices. Scripture we found far larger and higher than a scheme based on the O.T. hope, confirmed as it is by N.T. revelation. For we frankly acknowledge its truth and its importance, if rightly applied. Yet the N.T. also reveals what was of old hidden but now manifested, that Christ, on His total rejection by Jew and Gentile, was to sit raised from the dead at God's right hand; and this, not merely to be Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, as He intercedes too for His friends, and by-and-by to strike through kings in the day of His wrath when His enemies are made His footstool. He was to be there now for a new order of things, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. For God put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. This is the great secret now revealed.

It is not my aim to trace the means which the apostle unfolds, in pursuance of the exalted Head, that we may know God's operation in associating us who now believe with Christ in the heavenlies, as we read in Eph. 2 - 4, but to direct renewed and closer attention to the counsels of God who made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good. pleasure which He purposed in Him (or, Himself) for administration of the fulness of the seasons. These seasons will only be full when Christ comes again, to carry out to God's glory as the Second man all the trusts in which the first man has so conspicuously failed. In Christ will be then displayed the obedient Man, the Governor, the Depository of the promises, the One to make the law great and glorious, the Priest, the Prophet, the King of Israel and Son of Man, Ruler of all peoples, nations, and languages, the Head over all things to the church. For Satan is still the prince of the world, and the god of this age. And the Lord, though crowned with the chaplet of victory and King of kings in title, is not yet seated on His own throne but His Father's, till He appears with His many diadems and establishes His world-kingdom. Then only will all things be summed up in Christ as the centre of the universe in the day of manifested glory, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, in Him in whom we also were given (or, obtained) inheritance, being predestined according to His purpose that works all things according to the counsel of His own will.

The heading up of the universe in Christ as in Eph. 1: 10 must be carefully distinguished from the gathering together into one of the scattered children of God, of which John 11: 52 speaks. For Christ died that there might be now the holy gathering into one of God's children, for which He also made request in John 17: 20, 21. But that heading up is of all things in God's creation, "the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth," now so long severed, and the earthly at least made subject to vanity through man's fall. But all things groaning below shall be freed from the bondage of corruption when the coming glory is revealed, with Christ the Heir of all things at its head. At present it is an operation of divine grace to call out and together from Jews and Gentiles God's children (and if children, heirs also: heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ), if indeed we suffer with [Him], that we may also be glorified with [Him]. This is the day of grace, and an indisputably elective process; that, a gathering of the whole creation both heavenly and earthly; which is so far from meaning the church either now or then, that we His members are expressly here distinguished from "all things." The inheritance we, God's heirs, are to share with Christ in that day. For this we have the Holy Spirit as earnest, who has also sealed us already for redemption's day.

This then is the revealed purpose of God for the glory of Christ and the church, His body and bride. Tradition furnishes not an echo of it. Universal consent, if we can speak of such a thing in presence of the Babel of Christendom, rises not above the earth. First, such writers as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus looked for a glorious metamorphosis of nature, for a grander Jerusalem on earth, and vines bearing prodigiously, not for Israel, but for the glorified saints (c. Haer. v. 333, ed. Massuet)! Then later Eusebius (V. C. iii. 15, 33, iv. 40, etc.), in a reaction from such grotesque stuff, treated the prophetic visions as fulfilled in Constantine's victory over Paganism, with worldly ease and honour for the Christian profession! Along with this came in souls blessed after death as an alternative interpretation; so that the resurrection as well as Christ's coming well nigh vanished, save for judgment; and the sheep and the goats were confounded with the great white-throne-judgment of the dead.

Yet the Lord had intimated even to Nicodemus that God's kingdom has "heavenly things" as well as "earthly." Again He pointed out to the disciples the distinction of the Father's kingdom on high for the glorified saints, from the Son of man's kingdom below out of which are to be cleared those that practise lawlessness. These truths paved the way for the Spirit to reveal that purpose of God for the heavens and all the things in them, and for the earth and all the things on it, to be set under Christ as the Head over all things to the church. Had this truth been received, it would have guarded saints from setting the one against the other, the common source of manifold error and evil. Here our brethren, like ourselves, have to take heed and learn.

A Draft Appeal

W. Kelly, August, 1898

For Private Circulation only.

"For circulation among brethren still cleaving to the 'Christ of God'."

Beloved Brethren,

We write to you about the anomalous state of divisions feeling that it is not more to our Lord's dishonour than to our common shame and loss. Do you not feel it too?

We are apart from no question of the faith, from no difference as to due order. We acknowledge for practice the same divine principles. It is well known that we have sought to remove whatever barriers may hinder, as far as we can with a good conscience in subjection to the word. That the enemy should seek to frustrate our being gathered together in one (John 11: 52) one understands, but why should you or we acquiesce in his scattering those who should be united? We do not doubt that 1 Cor. 1: 10-12, Eph. 4: 2-6, Phil. 2: 1-4, are still weighty in your eyes as in ours.

With you we cherish the place divinely given, to faith and love, of gathering to the Lord's name and would each judge himself for all that has been done inconsistently with it. Neither you nor we would individually nor together consent to weaken the responsibility of maintaining at all cost the person and work of Christ, the present action of the Holy Spirit or the authority of God's word.

Holding the head we welcome the members walking in truth and in love as at the first, not without profit from all that has been since. Alas! it cannot be for such as compromise Him who is the true God and life eternal. Ought it not to be for all who confess Him truly? Who or what forbids?

We avoid disputations and address all who with ourselves value no unity save of the Spirit. We believe that to get rid of obstacles to its better enjoyment and manifestation is for the Lord's glory and for the blessing of the saints. It would also disarm the enemy of a permanent occasion for stumbling the weak and for reproach to the truth.

Free to confess failures on our part we appeal to all others involved in the divisive action of 1881, and ask, Does Scripture sanction settling down contentedly with things as they are? Do we not alike own one body and one Spirit, even as called in one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all? Can any rest indifferent to a scattering without parallel and without an effort? Have you, however, no faith in or desire for the healing Grace of our God?

A notion prevails that reunion must be individual. It is a modern thought at issue with our past convictions and action. Where does Scripture lay down anything of the sort? It does show us the principle of collective sins met collectively, individual individually. We have dealt individually and rightly with an individual seceder or with a person emerging from a sect. But grace handled the truth in another spirit when a rupture came in, however sadly, among those gathered. Take as a comparatively recent instance, what some have not forgotten, the episode of Mr. A. Stewart, who broke up the assembly in Jersey by forcing a discipline which, spiritual souls could not acknowledge to be of God. Mr. Darby in concurrence with brethren of London of that day drew up a letter in which the saints of both meetings, then divided and breaking bread separately, were exhorted to receive one another and meet together as before. But Mr. S. insisted on his discipline and refused, thereby losing recognition and afterwards going from bad to worse, while those willing to act in grace had the confidence of their brethren. No man of weight then doubted that the re-union of divided meetings was right and comely before the Lord. To insist on individual reception in such circumstances would only be self-righteous and an effectual bar to His will of gathering His own in one. Surely as compared with the painful case of Jersey there is even less ground for hesitation now.

All who concur will feel the call to approach the Lord in confession as to the past and prayer for the present. Meetings could follow for united supplication and conference. Private questions could be fittingly enquired into in private.

"Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in uncorruptness."

Thus saith the Lord.

W. Kelly.

(Pray refer to the Scriptures quoted)

(Published by Broom: also in French, German and Italian.)

A COLLECTION OF GOD'S WORDS ON GOD'S WAY OF ASSEMBLING GOD'S CHILDREN;

For the Word of God, which discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4: 12), is able to furnish the man of God thoroughly unto all good works (2 Tim. 3: 16, 17); and, being so, it would never leave the manner for the children of God to assemble themselves together undetermined, to become a bone of contention amidst diversities of opinion. People may assert that, without man's additions, it is not capable of building up a Church, but Paul asserts that it is (Acts 20: 32). Moreover GOD'S WORD must be referred to (Isa. 8: 20; Matt. 4: 4; John 17: 17; 1 Peter 2: 2), searched (John 5: 39; Acts 17: 11), understood (Matt. 13: 23; Luke 24: 45; Acts 8: 30; Col. 3: 16), and obeyed (Ezra 9: 4; Isa. 66: 2, 5; 1 Thess. 2: 13; James 1: 21-25), and it alone on all points; —  else we go wrong (Matt. 15: 9; Matt. 22: 29; Mark 7: 7-9, 13; Titus 1: 14; Rev. 22: 18, 19).

1.

When Jesus was on earth among the disciples the Father had given (John 6: 37), and brought (John 6: 44, 65), by the operation of His Spirit (John 3: 5-8) and word (John 4: 41; John 8: 47; James 1: 18), to Him (John 3: 14-17; 1 John 5: 1), to receive eternal life, from Him (John 5: 24; John 17: 2; 1 John 5: 11, 12), they gathered round His person (Matt. 10: 38; Matt. 19: 27; Mark 6: 30, 31), and were subject to His commands (Luke 10: 1; John 10: 4; John 15: 14) and teaching (Matt. 5: 1, 2: Luke 11: 1); and, when He departed, He promised them His presence still (Matt. 28: 20; John 14: 18), and especially so to any two or more believers gathered in His name (Matt. 18: 20).

2.

After He had by Himself purged our sins (Heb. 1: 3; 1 Peter 2: 24), Jesus Christ ascended up on high, far above all principality and power (Eph. 1: 20, 21; 1 Peter 3: 22), and sat down on the right hand of God (Rom. 8: 34; Heb. 10: 12, 13; Heb. 12: 2). This He did as the Risen Head of His Body, the Church (Col. 1: 18); which is said to be dead with Him to sin (Rom. 6: 2-11), the law (Rom. 7: 1-6; Gal. 2: 16-21), and the world (Col. 2: 20), risen with Him from the dead (Col. 3: 1-3), and seated in Him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2: 5, 6); where He is our life (Col. 3: 4) and peace (Eph. 2: 14), we being there accepted (Eph. 1: 6), complete (Col. 2: 10), and blessed with all spiritual blessings (Eph. 1: 3) in Him, and joint heirs with Him of God (Rom. 8: 16, 17), He being the RESURRECTION-HEAD over ALL THINGS to HIS BODY the Church (Eph. 1: 21-23).

3.

But, before He was parted from His disciples and carried up into heaven (Luke 24: 51), He promised not to leave them comfortless or destitute down here (John 14: 18), but to pray the Father (John, 14: 16), who, after His departure (John 16: 7) and His entrance into His glory (Luke 24: 26; John 7: 37-39; Acts 2: 33), would give them in His stead ANOTHER COMFORTER to abide with them FOR EVER, even the HOLY GHOST (John 14: 16, 25, 26), — the Holy Spirit of promise (Luke 24: 49; Acts 2: 33; Eph. 1: 13), — who should be sent them in the name of Christ (John 14: 26), to glorify Him amongst His disciples on earth (John 16: 13, 14; 1 Cor. 12: 3), and to enable them there abidingly to enjoy the manifested presence of the Father and His Son (John 14: 16-26; John 15: 26; John 16: 14-16; Eph. 2: 18; Eph. 3: 16, 17; 1 John 1: 3; 1 John 2: 24, 27; 1 John 4: 13).

4.

The world cannot receive this blessed Comforter (John 14: 17), but only those who, by Him, have been led to believe in the Lord Jesus (John 7: 37-39; 2 Cor. 1: 22; Gal. 3: 2-5, 14; Gal. 4: 6; Eph. 1: 13).

5.

Such was our gracious Lord's promise of this great blessing to His flock; and we find them commanded to pray for it (Luke 11: 13), and wait for its most glorious fulfilment after His ascension (Luke 24: 49); which they did (Acts 1: 14): and we find it bestowed first on believing Jews (Acts 2: 1-4, 33, 37, 38), and subsequently on believing Gentiles (Acts 10: 44-46).

6.

The Holy Ghost, having thus descended on all believers, baptizes (Mark 1: 8; John 1: 33; Acts 1: 5) them all, Jew and Gentile irrespectively (Acts 11: 15-18; Acts 15: 7-9; Rom. 10: 12; Gal. 3: 28; Eph. 2: 18; Col. 3: 11), — the Jewish economy, etc., being now taken out of the way (Eph. 2: 11-17; Heb. 8, Heb. 9, Heb. 10, Heb. 13: 9-14, etc.), — into one body (1 Cor. 12: 13; Eph. 3: 6; Col. 1: 18, 24; Col. 3: 15), even the body of Christ (Rom. 12: 5; 1 Cor. 12: 27), being of His flesh and His bones (Eph. 5: 29-32); which body is the temple of God (2 Cor. 6: 16; Eph. 2: 20-22); all believers being one spirit with the lord (1 Cor. 6: 17), so having Christ in them the hope of glory (Col. 1: 27), and also being partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1: 4). THIS BODY OF CHRIST and TEMPLE OF GOD, composed irrespectively of Jews and Gentiles, and INHABITED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD HIMSELF, was the great mystery hidden from ages and generations (Col. 1: 24-28), but now made known to Christ's holy apostles and prophets, and through them to the saints by the Spirit (Rom. 16: 25, 26; Eph. 3: 1-11; Eph. 5: 29-32).

7.

Farther, we find that this Holy Ghost, the glorious gift of a bountiful, triumphant, risen Christ to His Bride, the Church (Eph. 4: 7-10), not only assures believers of their sonship to God (Rom. 8: 15-17; Gal. 6: 6), gives them abiding confidence (2 Cor. 5: 5, 6), is the earnest of their inheritance (Eph. 1: 13, 14), produces in them the fruits of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (Gal. 5: 22, 23), and can impart to them the mind of Christ, even in the deep things of God (John 16: 13-15; 1 Cor. 2: 9-16), so that they are said to know all things by Him (1 John 2: 20-27), etc.; but, having made all believers everywhere members of one body in Christ (Rom. 12: 5), He imparts to each member some gift (Rom. 12: 3-8; Eph. 4: 7; 1 Peter 4: 10), dividing severally to every man as HE WILL (1 Cor. 12: 11, 18, 28; Heb. 2: 4), to be used for the edification (building up) of the body, till we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, etc., (Eph. 4: 11-16), These gifts, which are to be earnestly coveted (1 Cor. 12: 31), — and the right using and cultivating of them, are much dwelt upon in the Word of God (Rom. 12: 5-8 1 Cor. 12, 1 Cor. 14; 1 Tim. 4: 13-16; 2 Tim. 1: 6; 1 Peter 4: 10, 11 etc.)

8.

Not only is the whole Church of Christ called into existence through faith in His name, and indwelt and built up by the Spirit of Christ, but we find believers in various localities exhorted not to forsake the assembling of themselves together (Heb. 10: 25), in the name of the Lord Jesus (Matt. 18: 20; 1 Cor. 5: 4): —  His name through faith in His name, being the only door of admission prescribed; for, whilst they were commanded to receive those weak in the faith (Rom. 14: 1), they were enjoined to try the spirits (1 John 4: 1, Rev. 2: 2; see also Acts 9: 26, 27), and forbidden to have fellowship with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6: 14-18); though false brethren might creep in privily or unawares (Gal. 2: 4; Jude 4), they were commanded to warn the unruly (1 Thess. 5: 14), to have no company with such as walked disorderly or insubordinately to God's word (Rom. 16: 17, 18; 2 Thess. 3: 6, 14), and to judge, and even put away, inconsistent persons (1 Cor. 5: 9-13), —  as well as to comfort the feeble-minded (1 Thess. 5: 14), restore the faulty in a spirit of meekness (Gal. 6: 1), and forgive the truly penitent (2 Cor. 2: 5-8), —  because they being many were one bread or loaf (1 Cor. 10: 16, 17), and a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump (1 Cor. 5: 5-7; Gal. 5: 9; Heb. 12: 15, 16): and we find them commended for showing indignation and revenge against evil detected amongst themselves, as well as godly sorrow about it (2 Cor. 7: 11, 12). When thus assembling themselves together, they were to exhort one another (Heb. 10: 25), and, —  praying in the Holy Ghost (Rom. 8: 26, 27; Jude 20, 21), —  to build themselves up, and comfort one another (1 Thess, 5: 11); and they were commanded to give the FULLEST SCOPE AND LIBERTY TO "THE LORD THE SPIRIT" (see 2 Cor. 3: 17, 18, marg.) to exercise as He would (1 Cor. 14: 30, 31; 1 Thess. 5: 19, 20), such gifts as He had distributed according to His will (1 Cor. 12: 11; Heb. 2: 4). They were also enjoined to break bread and drink wine together in celebration of our blessed Lord's death, and in expectation of His return (Matt. 26: 26-28; Mark 14: 22-24; Luke 22: 19, 20; 1 Cor. 11: 23-26); which they used to do on the first day of the week (Acts 20: 7).

9.

Those who called themselves of any denomination or sect beyond that of Christians (Acts 11: 26; 1 Peter 4: 16), —  stigmatised as the "sect of Nazarenes" (Acts 24: 5; Acts 28: 22), —  are blamed (1 Cor. 1: 12, 13; 1 Cor. 3: 3-9): as also those would have been, who, instead of endeavouring to keep THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT (Eph. 4: 3), by which we are built up in the unity of the faith (Eph. 4: 13), separate themselves for any unity not in subjection to the Holy Ghost.*

* Qy. Might not Jude 19 apply corporately to such unions?

10.

Moreover we find that where THE PRESENCE of the LORD JESUS, through His Representative the HOLY GHOST, is PRACTICALLY and fully recognized and realized in, and by, an assembly of members of Christ, nor merely as a doctrine, but as a LIVING TRUTH, the POWER OF GOD is promised (Matt. 18: 15-19), and displayed in that assembly, to rule, judge, guide, bless, teach, build up, etc., etc., (Acts 5: 1-11, 13, 14; Acts 11: 27, 28; Acts 13: 1-4; Acts 15: 2-29, 32; Acts 20: 22, 23; Acts 21: 4, 10, 11; 1 Cor. 5: 4-13; 1 Cor. 11: 19-32; 1 Cor. 14: 24, 25, 30, 31; 2 Cor. 2: 6, 7), in a greater or less degree.

11.

But where then are the college-educated, and regularly or humanly ordained, and salaried ministers and dignitaries? The scriptures do speak, —  although not as man speaks, —  of instruction and elocution (Matt. 11: 25-27; Matt. 13: 11-16, 51, 52 Matt. 16: 17; Luke 24: 25-27, 44-48; Acts 4: 13, 20; Acts 18: 24-28; 1 Cor. 1: 17 - 2: 16; 2 Cor. 10: 10; Gal. 1: 10-23), and salaries (Acts 18: 3; Acts 20: 33-35; 1 Cor. 4: 11, 12; 1 Cor. 9: 7-18; 2 Cor. 11: 27; 2 Cor. 12: 13-18; Phil. 4: 10-18; 1 Thess. 2: 9; 2 Thess. 3: 7, 8; 1 Peter 5: 1-3; 3 John 6-8), and also of regularly ordained (appointed) elders (called also bishops or overseers, comp. Acts 20: 17 with 28, and Titus 1: 5 with 6, 7), and deacons (that is, servants or ministers), in some of the churches, in the New Testament; but only the apostles (Acts 6: 2, 3, 6; Acts 14: 23), or those like Timothy or Titus, with a special gift of the Holy Ghost (2 Tim. 1: 6), and authority from an apostle (Titus 1: 5), might appoint these (1 Tim. 3: 1-15; 1 Tim. 5: 17-22; Titus 1: 5-9; and comp. Acts 6: 3 with 6).* Also we read of the Spirit and His gifts being communicated in those days through the laying on of hands (Acts 8: 15-19; Acts 9: 17; Acts 19: 6; 1 Tim. 4: 14; 2 Tim. 1: 6), which, as practised in the present day, being unaccompanied by real power, is as mere a form as anointing a sick person with oil (James 5: 14) would now be. But we never find that the different churches might appoint the one, or conferred the other, for themselves; for sheep cannot choose or create their own rulers and shepherds: still less could money (Acts 8: 14-24), or even those ordered of God to govern this world (Matt. 17: 24-27; Rom 13: 1-7; Titus 3: 1, 2; 1 Peter 2: 13-18), do so for them (Matt. 22: 21). Only the Lord of the harvest (Matt. 9: 37, 38; Heb. 2: 4) and the Chief Shepherd Himself (Eph. 4: 7, 8), or one deriving delegated, vested, and real authority and power from HIM (and not from the flock or the world), could do so. If, then, any one can clearly prove that he has this authority to ordain, and this power to impart spiritual gifts (by apostolic succession and a special gift of the Holy Ghost), then the power to ordain, and to impart the Holy Ghost still really exists amongst us; but, if no one can satisfactorily produce and prove such authority and commission, then this power mush have been lost amidst the mournful wreck and apostasy of the professing Church; and those who pretend to it are infringing on what now is alone the direct right of the Holy Ghost. Paul said something about "apostolic succession" to the Ephesians (Acts 20: 28-32), and then John has a word of approval to them for having acted on it (Rev. 2: 2).

* Qy. If the Churches could ordain elders, etc., for themselves, why need Paul have left Titus (Titus 1: 5) to do it?

12.

But even in the apostles' times, although they appointed overseers, etc., and communicated spiritual gifts, in some of the churches, this did not at all prevent the Holy Ghost, even then, distributing gifts, such as pastors, teachers, etc., like Apollos (comp. Acts 18: 24-28 with 1 Cor. 3: 6), and the house of Stephanas (1 Cor. 16: 15), etc., in the churches without any intervention; and if the disciples were enjoined to submit themselves to such then (1 Cor. 16: 16; 1 Thess. 5: 12; Heb. 13: 17), —  though not blindly (Matt. 15: 14), as to those having dominion over their faith (2 Cor. 1: 24), but in the fear of GOD (Eph. 5: 21), and the light of His word (Isa. 8: 20; Acts 17: 11), —  how much more now. I repeat, all such apostolic power having clearly ceased, we can, in the present Church ruin and day of weakness, only fall back on the blessed Comforter, who is to abide with us FOR EVER (John 14: 16; 1 John 2: 27), and whose presence in the Church, therefore, will never cease, and thankfully acknowledge and receive such gifts as He may be pleased still to raise up amongst us, "dividing severally to every man as HE will" (1 Cor. 12: 11), and, —  knowing that God has expressly spoken of the many vain talkers, false teachers (2 Cor 11: 14, 15), mere formalists and ungodly men, who resist the truth, covetous practices, perverse ways, doctrines and disputings, vain babblings, old wives' fables, etc., etc., which would come in these perilous times, the last days (Acts 20: 29, 30; 2 Thess. 2: 7; 1 Tim. 4: 1-3; 2 Tim. 3: 1-9, 13; 2 Tim. 4: 3, 4; Titus 1: 10-16; 2 Peter 2, 2 Peter 3: 3-7; 1 John 2: 18, 19; 1 John 4: 1; Jude 1-23), —  obey Him by withdrawing and purging ourselves from all these (Matt. 7: 15-20; Matt. 18: 17; John 10: 5; Eph. 5: 11; 1 Tim. 1 Tim. 4: 7, 12-16; 1 Tim. 6: 3-11; 2 Tim. 2: 14-23; 2 Tim. 3: 5 Titus 2: 7, 8; Titus 3: 9-11; Heb. 13: 13; 2 John 8-11 Rev. 2: 14, 15, 20; Rev. 18: 4), and by following after righteousness, faith, charity and peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart (2 Tim. 2: 22; Jude 20, 21).

Finally, GOD says, HEARKEN, — and, — OBEY (1 Sam. 15: 22). Let God be true, but every man a liar (Rom. 3: 4). Prove ALL THINGS; hold fast that which is good (1 Thess. 5: 21); for to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is SIN (James 4: 17); and let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity (2 Tim. 2: 19). ABHOR that which is evil, cleave to that which is good (Rom. 12: 9). If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye DO them (John 13: 17). Grieve not the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4: 30). Quench not the Spirit (1 Thess. 5: 19).

"Thus saith the LORD;" and if I go and worship in another way, I show either my ignorance, or my self-will and disobedience, and thereby I create, or by my presence countenance, some sect, denomination, or party outside GOD'S principles, which are 'THE UNITY OF THE FAITH" and the "UNITY OF THE SPIRIT." I speak as to wise men, judge ye what I say (1 Cor. 10: 15); for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard (Acts 4: 20).

The Apostle at Athens

With appeals to Souls now.

W. Kelly

PAUL AT ATHENS.

Acts 17: 16, 17.

The apostle had fared no better in Europe than in Asia. He was persecuted and evil-entreated in Philippi, and had to flee for his life from Thessalonica and Berea. Now he was alone in Athens, waiting for Silas and Timothy. He found no pleasure in the mother of arts, and eloquence, and philosophy. Its beauty of sculpture and statuary, its splendour of architecture, was contaminated with idolatry. As was said by a satirist, it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens; so that his spirit was stirred to its depths within him, as he beheld the city full of idols. What a sight for him who in his unrenewed days was brought up in another city which boasted that not one idol defiled it!

For Paul such boasting was now vain. He had learnt from God, and learnt it for his own soul, that there is none righteous, no, not one; none that understands, none that seeks after God. Such is God's sentence even on those under law (for there was no question of Gentile evil); that every mouth may be stopped and all the world be under judgment to God. In short, there is no difference as to ruin; for all sinned, and fall short of the glory of God, as he himself said by inspiration at a later day.

But the love of Christ constrained the lonely saint. The eye and altar of Greece had not a single charm for his single eye and devoted heart. What to him was the far-famed Acropolis with the gigantic statue of the tutelary goddess Pallas Athene, helmet, shield and spear gleaming in the sunlight? What the Areopagus with its dark sanctuary of the Eumenides? What the still striking temple of Theseus? What every public building, every available place, with altars dedicated to deities of besotted mankind, yea, abstractions not merely of an elevated sound, but down to Insolence and Impudence, a religious cover for all lusts, depravities, dishonours and dishonesties? They were nothing but horrors to his spirit; for they simply displayed a people that gloried in slavery to Satan, in religion so false and base as to consecrate the most shameless dissoluteness, and in the most senseless ignorance of the only true God.

Instead of being stunned by such profound iniquity and darkness, isolated as he was and valuing fellowship beyond any known to us, he looked to his Master as a faithful servant; and with unflinching courage he dared to testify Him Who, being light and love, demonstrated it by sending His Son to make Him known to Jew and Gentile. That very city compelled one of its most enquiring citizens to drink a cup of poison for teaching the duty of heeding the monitor which God has lodged in fallen man. It was what we more rightly call conscience, but regarded by him as a sort of divinity. But on his own showing it only warned him at best against wrong, had never communicated any positive good, and evidently failed to apprise him of the folly of having a cock sacrificed to Aesculapius on his death.

Undeterred by such a fate, the apostle was led to throw himself heart and soul to make known the truth. "So he kept reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout, and in the market-place with those he met with." Alas! the ancient people of God needed the gospel, no less than the Pagans. They owned one living God: a great and blessed truth, where it has also living power. But rejecting their own Messiah, even to the death of the cross, they were now the open and extreme enemies of God and His Son. The only hope therefore, for them, "the rebellious" as their own scripture calls them, lay in confessing their fatally unbelieving error at His feet, Who suffered for sins that He might bring them to God, whiter than snow by His precious blood; for no less than this does His word assure.

Equally is the Lord Jesus the Saviour of the Gentile through faith in God's testimony to His Son. Such is the gospel, the glad tidings, of God. And we learn from the few and plain words of the inspired historian how assiduously the apostle gave himself up to the work of publishing it, the most gracious message God ever sent to sinful guilty man. If diligent in the synagogue on the sabbath, he discoursed in the agora, or marketplace, every day to those he met: deep their need, burning his zeal. The cross of Christ proved that the Jew was no better in heart than the heathen, nay, that he was worse because he turned his greater privileges to pride, and after a deadlier sort hated Messiah and God Who sent Him.

But what and where are you who read these lines? Have you profited by the darkness of the Gentile and the downfall of Israel to judge your own self? Is not all your life fitting you only for judgment and the lake of fire? Or are you setting up the wretched plea that all the world has gone wrong, and that you are no blacker than others? Will this be the smallest comfort to you in the endless punishment of hell? O the folly and the madness of turning away from Him Who speaks to you in the gospel, as He did through His bondman alike to the idolatrous Athenians, and to the Jews, with such Gentiles as found their way to the synagogue to hear the Law and the Prophets, awakened to discern the abominations of heathenism, however adorned by poetry or the fine arts.

You have privileges still greater than the Jew. You have been brought up where the New Testament is accepted as God's word, no less than the Old. You have in a general way heard of the Son of God come as the Saviour of sinners. You have read that God sent Him that, believing on Him, you may have life eternal and everlasting redemption, without money and without price. How reckless then to go on impenitent and unbelieving! Sinners are perishing every moment: is this no warning to you no less a sinner than they?

Another apostle warns of idols still more engrossing and prevalent than those which shocked Paul at Athens. Invisible though they be, they govern the heart, and will quite as much as, or more than, those of gold, silver, or stone, graven by man's art and imagination. What are ease, pleasure, power, honour to all sorts and conditions of men, high or low? What is Mammon but the basest of false gods? Riches, more eagerly worshipped by man universally than any one or all idols together of the heathen world, as the means of gratifying every other passion and desire? Forget not the Lord's solemn word, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." Who can deliver you from this innate evil but the same One Whom God raised from among the dead, Jesus the Deliverer from the wrath to come? He is equally the Deliverer from present sins and lusts to serve a living and true God, and to await Himself from the heavens.

O sinner, delay not but hear Him now speaking in His word to you personally, that the salvation of God may be yours by faith, now for your soul, then for your body at His coming again.

THE PHILOSOPHERS, EPICUREAN AND STOIC.

ACTS 17: 18.

A new adversary of the gospel encountered the apostle at Athens. It was not, as at Philippi, the insidious effort of Satan through the spirit of Python, which essayed to flatter or patronise the servants of the Most High, but was spurned and cast out with holy indignation, whatever might be the enmity of disappointed selfishness and the world's persecution. Nor was it, as at Thessalonica, the old and ever active jealousy of Jewish unbelief, which took advantage of Paul's preaching the Lord's kingdom to accuse of rebellion against Caesar. At Athens philosophers now figure for the first time, never suspending their baneful influence till its career is closed in the coming apostasy. For philosophy occupies itself with phenomena, never rises above second causes, and will not bow to God's authority revealing Himself in the written word, still less in the personal Word. It is but man's mind, without real activity of conscience or the truth.

"But some also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers assailed him. And some said, What would this chatterer say? and others, He seemeth to be an announcer of strange demons, because he preached [or evangelised] Jesus and the resurrection."

We do not hear of the Academicians or of the Peripatetics. The schools that followed Plato and Aristotle respectively lay in the north-west and in the north-east of the suburbs. But those of Epicurus and of Zeno adjoined the marketplace, where they crossed the apostle's path, and heard words of grace and truth, not only altogether new to their ears, but wholly subversive of their systems. And their systems did not emulate the idealism of Plato, nor the comprehensive earthly knowledge which was the boast of Aristotle. The Epicureans and the Stoics occupied themselves far more than the others with man's actual life of every day, opposed flatly to each other, but both utterly and directly to God's revelation of Himself in Christ.

With these the gospel preached by his ambassador came into open collision: first, Jesus in person; secondly, the resurrection. But philosophers, with all their speculative activity and lofty soarings above the vulgar, are ever apt as here to show themselves the dullest of mankind in the things of God. The Jews, spite of intense prejudice and envious hostility to a new revelation, never manifested such stupidity as this case betrayed; nor did the gross and half-barbarous Lycaonians or other heathen denizens of Asia Minor. These philosophers seem to have conceived that Paul set forth Jesus and the resurrection, as two divinities, male and female, a division of the gods common to perhaps all forms of idolatry except Tsabaism.

The Epicureans were materialists and practically if not professedly Atheists, though they admitted the existence of gods taking no notice of any one. The Stoics were Pantheists, and equally excluded one true and living God with Whom every soul must have to do, but held a soul of the world as god. Chrysippus rather than Zeno of Citium formulated this school, which also held the soul to be a body and perishable; but the Soul of all things, of which the souls of animals are part, imperishable. Both denied creation; both fancied matter to be eternal. Divine judgment was equally set aside, sense of sin before God, and relationship with Him, on which really depends all moral duty. Chance, according to the Epicureans, characterises the world; Fate, according to the Stoics: the one as easy-going, as the other was severe, issuing in pleasure for the former, and pride for the latter.

How completely was this learned ignorance exposed as corrupt imagination, and condemned by the glad tidings of God! When sin entered to the ruin of our first parent, He then pointed out in a rather mysterious way (till the fact explained in all simplicity) the woman's Seed Who was to crush the serpent, Satan, and deliver such as looked to Himself in faith and repentance. He had marked out the Blesser, as the Seed of Abraham and, yet more restrictedly, of David. He had later still shut up the Saviour even more narrowly to the Son of "the Virgin" of David's house, thus clearing, seven centuries before, the unique personality of Him, Who should be truly Immanuel, God with us yet man. "Jesus" alone centres all this and more in Himself, Who was to give His life a ransom for many; Jesus, that cured the sick and raised the dead, yet hated and slain by those to whom He did nothing but good; Jesus, Who thus proved man's enmity to God, and God's love unbounded to man. For in truth by that sacrifice alone could those who believe be forgiven, receive life eternal, and be cleansed from every sin.

God had from of old testified all this by the law and the prophets. But He had recently crowned His old and written word by the new and stupendous fact, which the Lord had openly and repeatedly attested by His lips, in His resurrection from the dead. Him whom man killed God raised up again, as He in due time received Him up in glory. How blessed the tidings for all that believe! How awful the guilt of those who cleave to empty philosophy, Epicurean, Stoic, or any other!

For those it is the indifference of man, insensible of his sins, and blind to the true God Who so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son that the believer might not perish but have life eternal. For these it is the haughty self-sufficiency which admires itself, spouts about virtue, and scorns to own the sins, and to receive a Saviour from God in Jesus. Yet He meekly bore the shame of the cross at man's hand, and God's judgment of our evil, that He might save one from his sins: alike God's grace, and His new justifying righteousness, to which His resurrection of Christ affixed a divine seal.

And now, my reader, be assured there is no other Saviour for you, or any other. You may be unlearned or a philosopher. But sin levels all to the dust of death. O through Jesus believe in God that raised Him from among the dead and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope may be in God. There is no other way to God. As God is one, so there is but one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus Who gave Himself a ransom for all. Now God's testimony claims your faith. To the believer only is the blessing. How could it be for those who do not repent of their sins, nor receive God's glad tidings? O doubt not, delay not, but believe His word that abides for ever!

"THIS NEW DOCTRINE"

ACTS 17: 19-21.

The more familiar one may have been with the demoralising vanities of Greek mythology, the less one can wonder at the surprise which greeted the apostle's words in the market-place of Athens. If some were contemptuous, others were curious. Mental activity works all the more freely where conscience slumbers, and the soul is not purified by obeying the truth to unfeigned love. As political importance too had long vanished thence, quips and quiddities were their resource to fill the vacuum. "And having laid hold of him they brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would therefore know what these things may mean. (Now all Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else than either to tell or to hear last news)."

Though there was and had been for some time a remarkable scarcity of brilliant men in Athens, they had, as they boasted, a rich inheritance of the beautiful in art, of exercised and daring thought in philosophy, of finished elegance in poetry, eloquence, and history, along with utter corruption and unnatural depravity in morals, and their gods the magnified image of their own degradation. At that time appeared Jesus the Son of God, the woman's Seed. In Him shone the light of God, and the love of God. To announce Him was indeed new teaching. He, and He only, was the perfect image of the invisible God. "He was in the world, and the world was made [brought into being] by Him, and the world knew Him not." How besotted was the world! how vain, useless, blinding was its wisdom! The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib. But the world in its highest civilisation knew not its own Creator. And no wonder. It had long stumbled on in the darkness of evil and of gods that were only demons.

But the Jews? They were no better; they were even guiltier. "He came to His own things, and His own people received Him not." They had the law and the prophets, and John the Baptist to prepare His way. But their will was engaged against Him. They would have relished a Messiah to put down the Romans and to set Israel at the head of all the nations. This will be when He comes again in power and glory. But He with God made it the first work to save sinners. What would be the worth of His kingdom if sin were not first atoned for? A lowly, gracious, holy, and suffering Messiah was hateful to their proud hearts, because He was infinitely better and higher than they had conceived, and they themselves immeasurably worse.

Philosophy had never found out that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It never learnt even that when man was made, he and every thing around him were "very good;" still less that he is fallen under sin, and the creature subjected to man, like man, under the power of death. It was to meet this state of sin and ruin that, when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under law, that He might redeem those under law, that we might receive sonship.

What had this to do with science unable to rise above causes and effects? and, when pursued to its utmost height, finding only a blank wall which it cannot pass? So acknowledged one of earth's sages just departed. Science cannot get beyond phenomena, and the general laws deduced from them. Science is but the classification of what exists and the discovery of what the philosophers are pleased to call nature's "laws." But Who produced the phenomena and imposed those laws? There it is blind and dumb; and the utmost it confesses is the existence of primordial facts or causes, of which it can give no account. And why not? Because they point to the First Cause, the Uncaused One, Who is the cause of all secondary causes. But this men refuse, and prefer to remain Agnostics, strange stronghold of the pride of knowledge. "The world [not by folly only, but also] by wisdom knew not God."

Yea, there was the awful sight of man with all his pride bowing down to his own handiwork, idols of metal or stone, in blank ignorance of the true and living God Who had sent His Son to die for sinners and rescue all who believe from the present evil age. Is He the only potentate, the alone Good, King of kings and Lord of lords, Who must not punish rebellion? And is it not plain and deadly rebellion against Him to worship, as they were doing, false gods? and gods so vile!

But He is love; and He has proved it by sending His Son to become man (while always God), that He might suffer for sins, and thus save all sinners that submit to Him. To the acceptance of this, the only efficacious sacrifice, God has borne witness by raising the crucified Saviour from the dead. Hear it, ye who are under the spell of haughty scientists. The risen Jesus testifies to His Father's glory, and to the love He is showing even to His worst enemies that repent. If His own birth of the virgin is wholly above the sphere of causes and effects, much more His resurrection proclaims that God acts in that power equal to His love, and righteously interposes to save all that believe. Not even a philosopher could argue that death is the cause of resurrection. No, it is God that raises the dead; and He it is Who in the gospel announces these glad tidings that you may believe, and, though a lost sinner, be saved by His grace.

Yes, the gospel is "new doctrine;" and the truth of God is of all things strangest to fallen man — stranger far than fiction.

AN "UNKNOWN GOD."

ACTS 17: 22, 23,

In the vast throng of strange gods at Athens the discerning eye of the apostle observed an altar with an inscription which unconsciously acknowledged the ruined estate, not only of its inhabitants, but of all the heathen world. Not that they thereby intended a humbling admission; yet the words told the fact to him who knew the truth. It appears from adequate witnesses that there were several altars thus inscribed. Paul certainly saw one, and spoke accordingly. In their grossly polytheistic zeal they devoted shrines, not only to all home and foreign deities, but to unknown gods, that not one should miss due honour. This furnished Paul with his plea; and how immeasurably superior to the Apology of Socrates is the appeal of the "apostle of nations!"

"And Paul stood amidst the Areopagus and said, Men of Athens, in all things I behold you more [than others] in awe of divinities (demons). For coming through and beholding your objects of worship, I found also an altar on which had been inscribed, TO AN (or, THE) UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye reverence without knowing, this I announce to you."

Grace with single eye laid hold of what was true, to reach conscience and judge the false. No introducer of strange divinities was the apostle, but made known the God whom this altar openly acknowledged to be "unknown." Which of them could deny that the gods of Olympus, the most honoured in their midst, were by their own account the most arbitrary, corrupt, and violent personages within their ken, and afforded to their devotees a basis not of morality but of the vilest and even unnatural indecency? And if this was the religion of the multitude, kept up by sacerdotal selfishness and sanctioned for state-craft by politicians, what had proud or sceptical philosophers done? Nothing but aggravate the evil by vain efforts to reconcile a world of sin, sorrow, and death with a feeble god, with gods unavailing or indifferent, who left it for guilty presumptuous men to make progress and improve things here below.

For not one of their divinities claimed to be eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent in self-being. Not one of them said, I AM, or was ever said to be Light morally, or Love in the energy of his nature. Yet there is in every human being, unless he be drunk with superstition or fatally poisoned by scepticism, what has been called God-consciousness, and is forced to own, that God there must be. And though no one could by searching find out His nature; yet when presented to man by revelation, his conscience owns that these attributes and this nature are alone worthy of Him.

What then makes the insurmountable difficulty? That little word, but awful, personal, and universal reality, SIN. Yet it alone accounts for the ruin, the confusion, the darkness, the uncertainty, and the misery for man everywhere. And what is it for a good, and holy, and righteous God? Bible or no Bible, a world wicked and wretched is a fact before all. But it is a notion worthy of the arch-enemy that the eternal God made it as it is; it negatives all just thought of His goodness, wisdom, and power. That it fell into its actual condition through the transgression of its head is the sole reasonable key, as the Bible distinctly declares it to have been the simple fact. Idolatry and philosophy only added to the mischief by denying the good state which a faithful Creator made to hinge on the obedience of the first man. For man was constituted and tried as a moral being. But they do still worse; they lead men to disbelieve in the Second man, Who being God came in the light and love of God to save all who believe on Him; and Who, also becoming man, died as the one efficacious sacrifice for the sins, and rose for the justification, of those who repent and believe the glad tidings. O how worthy of God and His Son!

Man from the first departed from God, Who left him to feel his exile from the paradise of Adam, though not without both sentence of judgment and a revelation of a suffering Deliverer, the woman's Seed. But the race willingly, contentedly, did without His presence and favour, save a few men of faith; and the rest gave themselves up to corruption and violence, till He intervened by the deluge which swept them all away. Only Noah and his sons, and their wives, with animals clean and unclean, were saved in the ark; and the present age began. But it was soon marked not only by fresh institutions of God, but by a new evil. As the apostle tells us, "Knowing God, they glorified him not as God, nor were thankful; but fell into folly in their thoughts, and their unintelligent heart was hardened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and quadrupeds and reptiles. Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness." It is his holy account of paganism, and of its utter absence of truth, piety, and moral decency.

Such was Athens, with an unknown God. Such were heathen men who through faith of Christ turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God made known to them in His Son, the risen Saviour. Believing on Him, it was not pardon only they received, but life eternal: the basis of a new nature and walk, seen and made known by chosen and inspired witnesses. Some were as dark and dissolute as any in Athens or Corinth, to whom the apostle wrote after they believed, "But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified." How was this wondrous change? In virtue of what? "In the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

Thus is God known in His Son and by His Spirit, as scripture abundantly testifies. Take our Lord's few words in John 17: 3: "This is life eternal, to know thee [the Father] the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou didst send." O turn not away from such grace and truth, but "believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house."

THE GOD THAT MADE THE WORLD.

ACTS 17: 24.

Creation is a great truth, which unbelief never recognised. It seems not to have been denied among men before the Deluge, though of no value or effect because of their growingly vile condition. Scripture implies that idolatry sprung up after that solemn judgment of God. They were without excuse; because the things that are made, the very reverse of a development, pointed to the invisible, His everlasting power and divinity; and also because when they knew God externally and without dispute, they glorified Him not as God, and were not thankful. Such guilty indifference led them into folly which their darkened heart accounted wisdom; so that they exchanged the truth of God for the lie of the great enemy, and honoured and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed for ever. Amen. The shameful lusts before became shameless afterwards; and no sadder proof could be asked than Athens then presented to a godly and discerning eye. They even gloried in their shame.

With admirably delicate tact the apostle, in making known an unknown God, begins with the miracle whose effect is before all eyes, in spite of the disorder everywhere through the fall. Instead of being an announcer of strange demons, he was the first, at their own invitation to the Areopagus, to assert gravely, graciously, and with all plainness of speech the rights of the one true God. When they themselves sought or at least asked to know what this new doctrine meant, how little they expected such a simple and noble testimony carrying its own self-evidencing power to every unbiased conscience!

"The God that made the world and all things that are in it, he being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made by hands." Every clause, every word one might say, undermined paganism without a syllable justly to offend. The grand yet elementary truth left no room for the myths of priests and poets, or for the reasonings of sages in pitch darkness. The remarkable fact is that none of the jarring leaders of religion or philosophy claimed for their gods, home or foreign or unknown, to have made the world and all things that are therein. They attributed that wonderful work neither to any one approaching supremacy, nor to all working together in respective spheres to that common end. So far they unwittingly told the truth. The demons had nothing to do with making the world, or any one of the things that are in it. The true God whom they knew not made them all.

They had their varied dreams. But their schemes as to the origin of all around and above and beneath, their cosmogonies, so called, are but one speculation more absurd than another. The only rare resemblance to the facts is found in whatever bit of early tradition they might adopt which lingered in men prone to forget. The prevalent idea of the philosophers is eternal matter. So pantheism ruled for ages in India, whence it spread south and west, more and more, as it grows now in Europe and America. Brahm or God had no personality, and hence no creation could be, but the Darwinian development idol. The wretched details of emanation which made polytheism a necessary result are not worth refuting or repeating.

What a contrast are those dark and foul vapours with the clear light of scripture and creation, brief yet adequate before man, with ample and interesting and all-important accounts when the earth was formed, and he was ushered into a scene which was equally suited to prove God's beneficence and to furnish the proper sphere for man's responsibility. The apostle here states, without controversy, the fact which delivered from human dreams derogatory to the truth.

Nor is the God that made all only a Creator. He is Lord of heaven and earth. His authority is constant everywhere. Fallen man writhes under this truth, because it at once appeals to conscience. As a man, I am His creature, and by that tie necessarily His servant. Am I doing His will? Am I pleasing Him as the motive of my life? But now I am a fallen man, departed from Him, and I like to do my own will, though knowing it is opposed to His. But if He is Lord of heaven and earth, He must call me to account for my misdoing; and what and where must be my portion, especially if I go as I am? He could not be the good and holy and righteous, as He must be as the true God, if He were indifferent to His own honour, and to His creature's dishonour, habitual too as it is.

He does "not dwell in temples made with hands." So implied the prophet Isaiah to those who rested on that boon in their midst, soon to fall. So Stephen precisely said; and Paul who then heard with unbelieving ears now proclaimed it in faith and love to the Athenians more devoted than any on earth to that show in honour of the demons that consecrated every vile lust. Will the Lord of heaven and earth endure or pass by such iniquity? Will He not execute judgment not only on the demons but on their votaries because of their rebellion against Himself?

Therefore it was that the apostle had preached Jesus and the resurrection in the busy haunts of men, before they hied to the Areopagus. Therefore it was that God was sending to all mankind the glad tidings of a dead and risen Saviour. The God that made the universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, Who dwells not in temples made with hands, deigns to look on one that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembling at His word. His goodness leads the sinner to repentance; and where shone His goodness as in Jesus? It was this that attracted the woman that was a sinner; it was this that won the hard robber to penitence and faith on the cross; it was this that overwhelmed Paul the crusader of law into the most lowly saint and sufferer for Himself.

This is the One that is now announced to you. If you, who have no righteousness fit for God, have not yet submitted to the righteousness of God in Christ, your need, your danger, is as real as that of the Athenians. O look to Jesus, the life, the life eternal, that you may live to God now and ever more. The gospel is not only remission of sins to every one that believes, but life through Christ's name. He that suffered for the sins of every believer is the giver of life eternal now, and will raise him up at the last day.

THE SELF-SUFFICING GIVER OF ALL THINGS TO ALL.

"Nor is he served by human hands as needing something, himself giving to all life and breath and all things. — Acts 17: 25.

The God unknown at Athens, as everywhere else among the nations, the apostle first made known, as the maker of the world and of all things therein. Even this man soon gave up. He heeded not the evidence of His everlasting power and divinity in the world of creation. He forgot the traditional knowledge which all had at first, weary of glorifying Him, and unthankful for His mercies. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into nature worship, and next into deified humanity if we so may call the chief object of their adoration invested with sex and the like human properties. The multiplicity of religions attested the loss of the one true God: no splendour of image or of temples could hide but only publish the imposture. How circumscribe the Omnipresent Lord of heaven and earth within man's work?

Next in verse 25 witness is borne not to His creative majesty alone but to His goodness. "Nor is he served by human hands as needing something, himself giving to all life and breath and all things." In these respects too God was an unknown God to the heathen world. They thought Him morally such a one as themselves. Their conviction was that the gods had no pleasure in man's happiness, but rather in casting down the exalted and reversing the prosperous. Thus none was to be called blessed till his life came unscathed to an end.

The apostle set before the Athenians One who, good in Himself, does good actively, even in the world out of course as it is now, since man's fall brought in sin and death universally. Yet He who needs nothing for Himself makes His sun rise on evil and good, and sends rain on just and unjust. Nor has He left Himself without witness in doing good, and giving from heaven fruitful seasons, and filling hearts with food and gladness. So it was among all the nations whom in times past He suffered to go in their own ways of ignoring Him: He gives to all life and breath and all things. How simple and self-evidencing the plain fact to make known the God whom confessedly they knew not! What a contrast with all the false gods (the real demons) of the world who debased their devotees to their own rebellious evil and mischievous selfishness, enabling also their priests to prey on the guilty fears of mankind.

The true God gives to all life and breath and all things. Even in a ruined world this active beneficence went out impartially. He makes the grass grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man, to bring forth bread out of the earth, and wine that gladdens man's heart, making his face shine — shine more than with oil; and with bread he strengthens man's heart. He makes darkness, and it is night, wherein all the beasts of the forest creep forth, the young lions roaring for their prey, and to seek their food from God. The sun rises: they retreat, and lay them down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work and to his labour till the evening. How manifold are Thy works, O Jehovah; in wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy riches. They all look to Thee, that Thou mayest give them food in its season; Thou givest them, they gather; Thou openest Thy hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled; Thou takest away their breath, they expire and return to their dust. What a comment is Psalm 104 on God's sustaining goodness!

Yet Athens had little ear to hear though the truth carried its proof to every unbiased ear. The apostle was cut short on Areopagus. The pleasures of sin monopolised his hearers in general. God's judgment was an intolerable idea. Let us eat and drink, talk and laugh; for to-morrow we die. But God is not mocked. Nor is man a mere animal with higher mental capacity than the brute, but made in God's image, after His likeness. The Judge of all "formed" him alone of earth's denizens, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, man only having his soul in immediate association with Him as His moral governor, and in direct responsibility to Him in his peculiar nature and place. Whatever men shamelessly speculate, no beast has a conscience toward God, as man has, drug or deny it as he may. Hence infinite compassion flowed to man in his sin and ruin.

He who was God but became man, the woman's Seed, deigned to be the unparalleled gift of divine love, that lost man might believe and be saved. For God so loved the world that He gave His only- begotten Son, that whoever believes on Him shall have life eternal. For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes on Him becomes a child and a son of God; and if so, he receives the gift of the Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, crying Abba, Father.

No doubt that the new relationship creates fresh wants. But God is ever the same bounteous giver; and if He be for us, who against us? He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him grant us all things? Who shall lay charge against God's elect? It is God that justifies: who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea but rather that was raised up, who is also at God's right hand, who also intercedes for us: who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? According as it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we were reckoned as sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we more than conquer through Him that loved us. Truly every good gift, and every perfect giving, comes down from above, from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation or shadow of turning.

Why then should you, my reader, if you have never yet believed, die in your sins? Why longer yield to the destruction and bondage and lie of Satan against the Saviour God? The truth alone can and will set you free. Behold and believe on the Son; He shall set you free, and you too be truly free.

EVERY NATION FROM ONE SOURCE, AND UNDER GOD'S CONTROL.

"And of one [blood] he made every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having defined ordained seasons and the bounds of their dwelling." Acts 17: 26.

The apostle next adverted to the providential arrangement for man as he is over the earth. If men departed from God so as not to know Him, as they assuredly desired not the knowledge of His ways, it might have been thought that the origin of nations was not utterly forgotten. But man readily lets slip what humbles him, as he accepts or invents the fable of moral progress, because it humours his vanity. Nor was any part of the race more inflated with self- satisfaction than the Greeks who then heard of the true God, not only in His creative and sustaining goodness, but in His forming those communities called "nations."

After the deluge, sent judicially to sweep away a generation corrupt and filled with violence, sacrifice was made the ground on which the world that now is was set. The principle of government too was introduced; "whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Flesh, not the herb only, was now free for his food, but not the blood, reserved for God to whom life belongs.

But the renewed earth saw man renewing his iniquities. Even Noah the governor failed to govern himself, and disappeared from further notice, as Adam after the fall. As men journeyed from the east they found a plain in the land of Shinar where they decided to dwell, instead of replenishing the earth as they had been enjoined. Their device was to centralise by erecting a city and a tower, and make themselves a name, for God was in none of their thoughts, lest they should be scattered. Union was strength; and they would be independent. But Jehovah scattered them abroad by the new, simple, and effective means of confounding their mutual communications by differing tongues; for hitherto the whole earth was of one lip and of one speech.

Thus, instead of a vast commonwealth of all mankind, the divine Governor brought about man's dispersion first, and at length in Peleg's day the division of the earth. Whatever might come by migration or resolution, the nations after their families and tongues occupied their lands to the apostle's day and to ours. God is not mocked.

"And of one [blood] he made every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having defined ordained seasons and the bounds of their dwelling."

So the prophets from Moses to Malachi, confirmed by the New Testament, declare that the King of kings and Lord of lords at His coming in power and glory will judge them as nations in their respective measures before the eternal judgment, not only the dead works individually, but the secrets of darkness and the counsels of hearts. Compare for the former Deut. 32: 41-43, Deut. 33: 26-29; Ps. 2: 5, 9-12, Ps. 9: 8, 9, 15-20, Ps. 10: 16-18, Ps. 45: 4, 5, Ps. 48: 4-7, Ps. 76: 10-12, Ps. 110: 2, 5, 6, Ps. 149: 6-9 ; Isa. 2: 10-22, Isa. 13: 6, 11, Isa. 14: 26, Isa. 17: 12-14, Isa. 24: 1, 21-23, Isa. 26: 9-11, Isa. 29: 5-7, Isa. 34, Isa. 63: 1-6, Isa. 66: 15-16 ; Jer. 25: 30-33 ; Ezek. 38, 39; Dan. 2: 44, 45, Dan. 7: 23-27; and even more pointedly if possible in the twelve shorter Prophets, in particular Joel 3: 1, 2, 9-14; Obadiah 15-21; Micah 4: 11-13, Micah 7: 15-20; Nahum 1: 2-6 ; Hab. 2: 13, 14, Hab. 3: 12, 13 ; Zeph. 3: 8, 19, 20; Haggai 2: 6, 7, 22; Zech. 9: 13, 14, Zech. 10: 3-9, Zech. 14: 1-4; Mal. 4: 1-3.

Vain imaginations can alter neither facts nor His control who will soon prove that, whatever the wicked rebellion of man, He works all things after the counsel of His own good and holy will. All the nations sprang from one forefather — all were involved in common sin, as ignorant of God as of themselves. Death from the first entered for parents and progeny. None can dispute that so it is now. The Athenians to their great loss knew not why it was. Revelation alone explained how sin came in; and happy he who on God's authority believes it and looks to the only Deliverer. Man could ruin but not save himself. Yet is it by His Son become man, Christ Jesus, that God righteously saves the chief of sinners, but only on his faith, not surely in his unbelief; for faith honours God, and the Son no less than the Father.

It is true that all nations from their rise forgot God, and that no one manifested the evil more than those to whose conscience the apostle was appealing. Notwithstanding their willing ignorance, God interested Himself in their actual circumstances, defining the appointed seasons of their national life, progress and fall, with the bounds of their dwelling. Their fresh trial as world-powers, on the ruin of Israel and Judah, only eventuated in greater pride, in compulsory idolatry, and in persecution of such as clung to the confession of the true God who had ordained them to rule.

Thus we see the prophet Jonah sent even before the catastrophe of the chosen people to the capital of the Assyrians; and the correction of the narrow selfishness which never appreciates goodness to the bad outside its own limits. God on the contrary would let His warning fall in presence of repentance. But as this touched the self-importance of the messenger, he fled till humbled by God's mighty hand. Even then in his fear that divine mercy might arrest judgment, he sulked till he took to heart the moral of the withered gourd that had sheltered him from the burning sun, and wrote the tale of his own folly, and of the pity that delighted to spare a mourning city of Gentiles, "wherein are more than six score persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle." Such was the God that Israel little knew, and the heathen not at all.

If it be so in only the seen and the temporal, how much more does His goodness in Christ extend to sinners, in view of man's loss of relation to Himself and its everlasting consequences! For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world and forfeit his own self? and what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Only what God gives and does can save the lost. None but the Only-begotten Son of God has life to bestow on the dead in sins when they have heard His voice. None but the Son of Man on the cross could avail to bear God's judgment of sin. Do you not know that Himself tells you so, that believing on Him you may not perish but have life eternal? What then clearer than that the Lord Jesus is the object of faith? Him the sinless One God made sin for us, who were His enemies, whether Jews or Greeks.

How plainly then salvation is not of works but of faith, that it might be according to grace, God's grace, not ours. Thus it avails for Gentiles in all their deadly ignorance and evil, equally as for Jews in their high-minded pride as to the law which only condemned them. Grace in Christ opens the blind eyes to see and judge self with all its sins, and the dumb lips to bless the God who commends His own love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. What has not God meant and found and given to the believer in that death? What does it not proclaim in the gospel to every lost creature? Thus it is that God has answered human distrust and disobedience and ruin by giving His best and unspeakable gift to save His worst foes, and make them through faith in His Son to love and serve Him who first loved them with a sovereign and creative love only possible to Himself.

TO SEEK GOD.

"To seek God, if indeed they might feel after and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us." Acts 17: 27.

The diversity of nations gave the heathen of old, as it gives the unbelieving now, occasion to deny the unity of the race. But God made of one (blood) every nation of men to dwell on every face of the earth, whatever local traditions aver, whatever the dreams of early poets or of later philosophers or geographers. Man readily forgot himself, as well as God. If God was unknown, so was man's origin and creation: the very formula of si deo, si deae, betrayed his ignorance. Religiousness is natural even to the most corrupt of mankind; faith acceptable to God is supernatural. Superstition suits the devil not less than scepticism. Neither pleases God, who never left man that left Him, as he was justly banished by Him but not without the testimony of creation without and of conscience within.

Hence the apostle by the simple statement of divinely attested facts sets aside alike a multitude of independent deities and of independent nations derived from these Satanic impostors. He asserts one true God and one common race, whose fears, with independence of God and self-centring confidence in man, and means of effecting it in direct opposition to God's declared will, brought on dispersion by the different languages in their lands, after their tongues, their families, and their nations. For up to the deluge mankind was but one community, and, whatever their growing corruption and violence, no strange gods were set up against God. Nor had God inaugurated government as a human institution having authority from Him. When He did, it was left neither to fate nor to chance, but He determined the seasons, and the limits of their dwelling. Job 12: 23, etc. from early days shows how distinctly this was known by those who had the fear of God; and Deuteronomy 32: 8 goes even beyond what the apostle declared to the Athenians.

But providential disposal of the nations was far from all His care. He felt graciously for every soul of man, who in losing Him had lost the only and the necessary centre for the heart, and the basis for all true morality, of which known relationship to Him must be the corner-stone. This is touched in verse 27 as His great aim for them individually — "to seek God,* if haply they might feel after and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." For man was fallen from God, and sin reigned in death; and thus death passed upon all men, for that all sinned. The sad fact is patent and undeniable. But God remained the God of goodness and mercy, ready to hear and forgive. But man must seek Him, conscious of sin, misery, and darkness. Hence God from the garden of Eden held out to guilty man, even before he was expelled as an inexcusable rebel, the hope of a Deliverer from the power of Satan, and, O what grace! to be born of woman, though the woman drew the man into her disobedience.

*"The Lord," as in the Authorised Version is a bad reading: "God" is in the best copies, and required by the truth intrinsically. What had the nations to do with "Jehovah"? What could they know of Him whom God made Lord and Anointed?

From the day of man's departure from God, one must seek God in grace and by grace. God uses means of all kinds to exercise the conscience as well as attract the heart. And He whom we know as the Lord Jesus Christ was ever the object of faith in some true way, however small the measure. God's goodness leads to repentance. The grace of Christ emboldens the weary and burdened sinner to confess his sins to God; and now that He is come, all is deepened and sure by the glad tidings of His grace. Even for the Jewish saints much was lacking which is now revealed in the gospel: how much less did poor benighted souls among the nations apprehend? Yet there were Gentiles who believed throughout the law; and we see in the book of Job believers before the law who were not of Israel. We may enter into the apostle's cautious language, "if haply [or indeed] they might feel after and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." Compared with the gospel after Christ's work, it was groping in the dark, save at least where the True Light was shining.

In every case of real conversion to God faith supposes the sinner brought to judge himself and own his sins to God, to renounce self-defence and to cast himself on God's grace in Christ. It was this grace that secretly drew, hindered despair, and sustained faith in the face of the most varied and serious difficulties; to know what God has wrought for the sinner in Christ's death and resurrection brings the believer into solid and abiding peace. But even before the Son of God came, and gave us an understanding to know Him that is true, God was not far from each one. If He interests Himself in a nation and its king and the meanest subject, if He will call into account national responsibility, as well as every soul that comes into judgment at the close, how He yearned over every troubled soul that sought Him! He that counts every hair of the believer's head and takes notice of each sparrow that falls took deep concern in the perplexed Gentile who hated his sins, and yet turned to God about them: it might be through the slightest gleam of the Light of men. No, He was not far from each one then; and now we hear the fullest clearest testimony that there is no difference of Jew and Greek; for the same Lord of all is rich toward all that call upon Him. "The word is near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach: that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that God raised him from out of the dead, thou shalt be saved."

IN HIM WE LIVE.

"For in Him we live and move and are, as also some of the poets among you have said, For we are also his offspring." Acts 17: 28.

Not in ourselves, but in Him do men exercise their activity, and have their being when they no longer live and move as in their existence here below. Death that closes all for every other animated creature on earth does not close man's being. Through one man, Adam, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, its present wages, but only in part, before its full payment, judgment, everlasting judgment. This is the second death, neither the first nor the second being extinction; for not only does man's soul exist for ever, but the Son of God shall call from the tomb both those that have done good to a resurrection of life, and those that have done ill to a resurrection of judgment: an unchangeable state respectively of bliss or of woe. So says the word of God: how bright for the believer, and how unutterably solemn for him that rejects the Father and the Son!

It is intelligible in a physical point of view to describe man as the sole species of his genus, and the sole representative of his order. But the apostle rises far above the natural philosophy, and regards him in his relation to God, and with that consciousness of it, which no other animated being on earth possesses. This the great enemy of God and man seeks to darken, if he cannot destroy it; but as revealed truth asserts that relation in the clearest terms, so the echo of it was heard even where the true God was not known. Hence the apostle could cite from Greeks themselves, centuries before he spoke: "As also some of the poets among you have said, For we are also his offspring." These precise words occur in the astronomical poem of Aratus, a Cilician like himself, the Phaenomena, extant to this day, and again with but one letter different, in the Stoic Cleanthes' hymn to Zeus, also extant.

It is so far infidelity, and very low infidelity, to doubt that man has an immortal soul. As to him only God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the skies, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth. And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Think of so exceptional a dignity given to man. But there is more in Genesis 2: 7, where relationship is treated, and not creation only. "And the LORD God formed man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Compare it with Genesis 1: 24 "Let the earth bring forth living souls after their kind; cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, after their kind." Into none but man did Jehovah Elohim breathe the breath of life. He is thus doubly distinguished. from the rest of creation subjected to him as head, and alone brought into relationship with Him who inbreathed. Hence his soul had, by its constitution apart from grace and a new life, an association with God morally, peculiar to man. And he alone, while favoured beyond all, had a test of obedience applied in Paradise. Such a creature was responsible to obey God and must give an account to Him. Think of a horse or cow, a dog or a cat, levelled up to man's position, or man levelled down to theirs! Is it not rank insubjection to God's word? The sensuous and sensual Egyptians did not sink so low; they doubted not the soul's existence after death, and a future judgment, however crude and debased by their deification of the powers of nature.

Yes, in God man lives, moves, and is of quite another sort than those creatures whose soul is as evanescent as their bodies, and has no moral link with God. Man, no doubt, shares with them the "dust of the ground;" but even so, his position is naturally erect, his eye looks up, not down, his hand is unique as Sir C. Bell proved, to suit a soul and spirit and even a body peculiar to the race, to fill a responsible relationship with God, or the consequence of rebellion against Him. Hence in scripture "mortal" is never said of the soul, but of the body. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," has a quite different force, and means the person, the living human being, because the individuality lies in the soul, and led to such common phrases as "all the souls," etc., in Genesis 46: 15, 18, 22, 25, 26, 27. They were God's offspring, and so were the Athenians, though pagans, because all mankind shares the relationship, even if they make the grossest use of their natural privilege, deny their responsibility, reject the glad tidings of God's grace in Christ, and become objects of His judgment.

How then is it with you who read these words? Grace, God's grace, in Christ can alone save you, a guilty and lost sinner. Life for you, whose old life is forfeited through sin, is nowhere but in the Son; and now is proclaimed to sinners everywhere and of every sort, but only to such as believe God about His Son. Do you speak of your sins as fearful, and your state as an active source of evil in His sight? It is sadly true; but I rejoice if you own it humbly, frankly, and fully to God. Confess your sins to Him who sent His Son as propitiation for our sins, whose blood cleanseth the believer from every sin. It was He, not you, that paid redemption's price, a price beyond the value of all worlds, the precious blood of God's Son, God's Lamb. What could you offer as a sinner but sins? Are you not altogether sin in your nature as it is? So His word declares: what are your words, your thoughts, your feelings? Redemption lies wholly in the worth and work, not of the redeemed, but of the Redeemer.

Beware of bolstering your case on God's natural Fatherhood. Were not the head fallen and the race sinful, this might plead for living and against death. But as you are, you need a new and eternal life and an everlasting redemption; and the Saviour God of all grace calls you to receive both by faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus.

THE DIVINE.

"Being therefore God's offspring, we ought not to think the divine is like gold or silver or stone, graven by man's art and thought." Acts 17: 29.

Men are God's offspring, not because they have a body, as all animals have, nor even a soul and spirit, as they too have, suited to their place and function in creation, but because they have an inner man direct from God by His inbreathing. This we know, as no Athenians did, and as not a few Christians forget, from the only reliable account in Genesis 2: 7: "and Jehovah Elohim formed man [of] dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul," or person. This assuredly explains why of all on earth man alone has an immortal soul for good or for ill beyond calculation, and why he must give account to God. But here the apostle used this relationship (from the peculiarity of the immaterial part of his nature) to prove the folly of an idolatrous image to represent God. No doubt, man's body was formed in divine wisdom with a view to the soul and spirit communicated by a subsequent and intimate act of Jehovah Elohim in giving him only the inner man from His own breath. From this fact flows his moral relationship to God; and he alone of earth's beings has it.

But this fact refutes the irrationalism of idol (or image) worship of God. For it is in the immaterialism of his nature that man is thus God's offspring. His soul and spirit only are from God's inbreathing; and in this he stood alone here below. Therefore, as urged, "we ought not to think the divine is like gold or silver or stone, graven by man's art and thought." The sculpture of these material substances by man's skill and imagination only adds absurdity to absurdity. For the material was but a creature of God; and the shape given to each was man's fancy and manufacture. "God is a spirit," and so can be omnipresent, as man's conscience bears witness to His penetrating energy throughout all mankind, unless stupefied by sin and infidelity, which drown thought of Him. But He is behind all ineffaceably, though Satan poses as the god of the world, deifying men's lusts to gratify them, and the pride of deceased ancestors, and the powers of nature above and below, as he works by demons who personate the various national divinities which are but names to deceive.

But there is a true and perfect image of the invisible God, Jesus the Lord, not only unknown to the Greek and the nations universally, but unwelcome to the Jew in his unbelief, Who revealed God in His essence and attributes and relationship of Father, as He the eternal Word and Son knew Him; Who brought God nigh to man in His life and service, and brought nigh to God all who believe, be they Jew or Gentile. To this end He is, as He must be, both true God, and perfect man, in one Person. And He is the only safe-guard from false gods and from idols, from idols of the mind no less than material images. He too is the one mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus, not only God but man; Who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony in its own times, when Jew and Gentile condemned themselves as reprobates and lost sinners by condemning the only Righteous One and hating the God who sent His Son in saving grace.

O what a contrast between the enemy deifying sinful men and their fears and passions and their ideas of vanity, with real demons unseen becoming thus objects of worship; and God the Father giving the Christian fellowship with Himself and His Son by the Holy Ghost! Therein is God kept in His own supreme place, and man, believing man, put into his true position of dependence and subjection, yet brought even now into the relationship of His child in all the confidence of His perfect love which has cast out all fear through our Lord Jesus. All other images are but the shameless rivals of the great enemy's hatred of Him; the resuscitated spawn of Paganism, which the Lord vanquished in the seeming defeat of His cross, when He spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them publicly, leading them in triumph by it. And to what is Christendom returning but homage to these spectres of darkness, as the Jews will shortly in these last days, before grace creates the "generation to come?"

REPENTANCE ENJOINED.

"The times however of ignorance God overlooked, but now enjoineth men that all everywhere repent." Acts 17: 30.

The apostle refers to "the times of ignorance" before the gospel came, not only to believers personally, but also in all the world bearing fruit and growing. It was an immense change for Gentiles as such, predicted by Simeon as he held the infant Saviour in his arms and said, "Mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou preparedst before the face of all the peoples, a light for revelation of Gentiles [or nations], and glory of thy people Israel." Israel's glory is postponed because of their unbelief, but Christ meanwhile is a light for unveiling Gentiles till Israel's heart turns to the Lord when he shall be saved.

Thus for a season the old condition is reversed. The chosen people who had the only religious privileges enjoyed on earth lost them for their rejection of their own Messiah; and "Be it known therefore to you, that this salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles; they also will hear." Accordingly too he wrote to the saints in Rome (the then Gentile metropolis), "By their fall [there is] salvation to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy. But if their fall [be the] world's wealth, and their loss Gentiles' wealth, how much more their fulness?" And so the fulness of Israel will prove under the Messiah and the new covenant. Truly it will be the glory of His people Israel when their brightest hopes are more than realised, and the earth shall yield her increase, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him, yea, the whole earth shall be filled with His glory.

Here the apostle confines himself to the fact that God, instead of executing judgment on the times of deplorable and inexcusable ignorance, in His goodness overlooked the past, and now calls to repentance. It was no longer the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea; it was no longer the Twelve sent only to the lost sheep of Israel's house, and expressly not into a way of Gentiles nor into a city of Samaritans. Now that the rejected Christ died as propitiation and was raised up, He Himself marks the change now come: "Go therefore, make disciples of all the Gentiles;" "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all the creation;" "Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all the Gentiles, beginning with Jerusalem," the guiltiest of all on earth!

How true it is that the message of God's love in salvation to every one that believes is His own command! The apostle (himself called as apostle of Gentiles by the Lord from heaven) was then acting as His ambassador, when he proclaimed to the Athenians that "God now enjoineth men that all everywhere repent." The Gentiles who ignored the true God, and set up idols to His dishonour and their own shame, are no more ignored of God. "The true light already shineth." Coming into the world it lightens every man. It is true that the world was so blind as not to know Him. But the God of all grace does not leave them to their folly; He sends this charge to them, that they should "all everywhere repent." What compassion for and concern in "all everywhere"!

No sinner, no child of fallen man, had ever turned to God in faith as all did from Abel downward without repentance. It is faith that produces it if real and Godward, though it may not be yet for many souls faith in the glad tidings. But faith in God's word invariably causes it; and its character is self-judgment before Him. Not only one's ways, but one's self, is laid naked as seen by His holy eyes with whom we have to do.

Without doubt, there is a changed and new mind about God, which is rather the effect of faith; but this in itself is never repentance. For repentance is by grace the soul's eye turned on itself and seeing only and continually its guilt, its evil. Faith which produces repentance is in no way repentance; it looks away from self to Christ for the remission of the sins which repentance condemns, and condemns one's self for without an excuse before God.

Feeble faith, like the absence of it, shrinks from this moral weighing and estimate of ourselves as God sees us; it is in a hurry to get pardon at once, content with that, or with zeal turning preacher, and thus slurring over so essential a work in us, because of joy in Christ's work for us. But this negligent haste is as unscriptural as it is a wrong to God and a dangerous lack for our souls.

The apostle then, having already preached Jesus and the resurrection in the market-place, speaks on the Areopagus of their life of idolatrous rebellion against the One True God, and presses on their conscience God's present injunction to men, that they all everywhere should repent. He waits on all, and graciously welcomes in Christ's name all who repent and believe the gospel.

O my reader, have you repented? Do you repent now of your thoughtless, guilty, selfish life? You need to repent as truly as the Athenians. The door is open; and Jesus is the door to God and all His grace. The true sense of your badness is morally in you the beginning of goodness. May it be the goodness of God "leading thee to repentance." Repent and believe the gospel. The Father hitherto and the Son work; they had not found as yet an adequate ground for the true and everlasting sabbatism. There was perfection in Jesus; but till He died atoningly, He abode alone. Divine love would have much fruit through His death for and in us who believe.

THE RISEN JUDGE.

"Because he set a day in the which he is about to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man Whom he appointed, affording proof to all in that he raised him from among the dead." Acts 17: 31.

Here the apostle applies the truth to the conscience. He had preached "Jesus and the resurrection" in the market-place; but in this, whether to wit or ignorance or both, he seemed a setter forth of strange divinities. Now on Areopagus he proclaims the risen Jesus, whom God ordained to be the judge of living men on the earth, after having insulted the One living and true, the Creator and sustainer of the universe, by their many gods and many lords, the demons of the Pagan world. But he also points to the new and fatal sin of that generation, which the Gentiles shared with the still more guilty Jews, the crucifixion of His Son and righteous servant Jesus, God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

It was divine love coming down from the height of glory, and deigning, in the person of the Son, to become man in the midst of sinful and wretched men to seek and to save the lost. This they would not have but disdained. When He fed the hungry, cured the sick and raised the dead, cast out evil spirits, rebuked the wind and the waves, they wondered and admired. Such a man exalted mankind; but it was another thing to convict them of guilt, warn them of everlasting judgment, and speak of giving His life as a ransom in God's grace toward His enemies, that whosoever believed on Him should not perish but have life eternal. For where man did his worst, there also God did His best; and human enmity was far exceeded by divine love. The soldier's insolent spear drew forth from the dead Saviour's heart water and blood: the emblems of what purifies the unclean, and what atones for the guilty. Compare John 19: 32-37, and 1 John 5: 6-8.

O my reader, is not this what the sinner needs? So I have found by faith: if you have not, lose not a moment and submit to the truth. God in His word presents it to you and any other, as to me and every one who has already believed. The Holy Spirit attests the three witnesses in the gospel to every creature. O the sin of despising such love! To refuse it is to make your case worse than a pagan's.

The resurrection of the Lord is alike the ground of faith God has given you, and the warning of a day when He will judge the quick. For Him whom man condemned to the cross God raised up again, as He Himself over and over uttered to the dull ears of His disciples. When He hung on the tree God laid the awful burden of sin upon Him, made the sinless One sin for us, that we who believe might become His righteousness in Christ.

It was God's righteousness, not ours, for we were the sinners for whom He became substitute. Thus is God just in justifying the believer, who owns his sins and finds Him not sparing His own Son that we might be washed clean for His presence. Jesus is ready to judge the habitable world which cast Him out. The world and all in it inherit this load of guilt unremoved to this day. The only way to escape judgment is to repent and believe the gospel. This God enjoins on all men everywhere, as we saw. Is not this grace to every creature? But grace rejected seals your guilt. Jesus is coming, first to receive His own for His Father's house; secondly, to judge in righteousness the inhabited earth, not yet the dead but living man everywhere. He, knowing well how incredulous most would be, said, "when the Son of man cometh [i.e. for His second and judicial act], shall he find faith on the earth?"

Beware then that you trifle not, lest you prove His words true in your everlasting ruin. He tells you in Luke 17 how that day is to be. "As it came to pass in the days of Noah, so also shall it be in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank; they married, they were given in marriage; until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all. And in like manner as it came to pass in the days of Lot. They ate, they drank; they bought, they sold; they planted, they builded. But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from heaven, and destroyed all. After the same manner shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed."

The judgment of the dead is under wholly different conditions, which it is folly to confound with that of the quick. More like it in a slight degree was the destruction of Jerusalem, and on a far smaller scale. But the words added by our Lord are incompatible with either, and describe what will be when He appears for the judgment of living man. "In that day, he who shall be on the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not go down to take it away; and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember the wife of Lot;" and so to the end of the chapter, I might cite words quite inapplicable to the siege of Titus, still less to the judgment of the dead before the "great White Throne," when the earth and heaven shall have fled before the Judge's face; whereas every word tallies with His coming to judge the living.

Is it not truly ominous — the unbelief of man so nearly concerned, and with issues so incalculable? Jews have no difficulty in looking for a divine judgment on the living, and expect the verification of their national hopes in a destruction to fall on all the nations of the earth when they are gathered to their land for more than pristine glory under David and Solomon. But they are little alive to the clear account of the judgment of the dead. Christendom acknowledges the judgment of the dead, but puts it off indefinitely and mixes it up with the judgment of the quick; so that the power of neither tells, as both ought, on the conscience. Nor can there be a plainer proof of this error than its effect in confounding two scriptures so distinct as Matt. 25: 31-46 and Rev. 20: 12-18; for in the first is found not one dead man, in the second not one living. Tradition blurs them into one, and makes both interpretations erroneous. Thereby is lost the profit from each, which rightly understood is very great. A vague muddle takes their place, which is not only inconsistent with what God has revealed, but helps on unbelief in defiance of every word which proceedeth from His mouth.

But the resurrection of Jesus disarms the believer of all fear, whether from the judgment of the living at the beginning of the Kingdom to come, or from the judgment of the dead at its end. The believer will be manifested before His judgement-seat, and will give account of all done in the body; but as the Lord unmistakably declared, he "cometh not into judgment," being already justified. Now it is God that justifieth; and if God be for us, who against? Till the disciples understood it in the light of scripture, they were filled with perplexity and gloom, as we read in the beginning of Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20, yet soon dispersed by His blessed light and joy. He that was so dear and well-known stood in the midst on the resurrection day, "and saith to them, Peace to you. And having said this, he showed to them his hands and his side. The disciples therefore rejoiced when they saw the Lord." Does He change? or the efficacy of His death? or the triumphant peace and joy of His resurrection? He that had the power of death was vanquished, the sins blotted out by His blood, the judgment of God borne on the cross, man in Him entering on a new order of being, fit for the presence and glory of God above, and for the Holy Spirit to indwell here below meanwhile.

Such was the virtue of His death displayed in the power of resurrection, and given as the portion of every Christian thenceforward able to say, His Father and my Father, His God and my God, while looking forward with assurance to a hope as glorious as the faith is certain, both flowing out of God's love from eternity and to eternity, known by His word and enjoyed now in the power of His Spirit. For there is no privilege of Christianity more characteristic than the gift of the indwelling Spirit, as seal of the Christian and earnest of his inheritance of glory. Nor is there any truth more feebly, if at all known, in Christendom; which glories in the first man and his science, not in the Second; as indeed they are, as the scripture shows, incompatible and mutually exclusive.

THE RESULT, — THEN AS NOW.

"And when they heard of resurrection of dead [men], some mocked, and others said, We will hear thee again concerning this. Thus Paul went out from their midst. But certain men clave to him; among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite. and a woman by name Damaris, and others with them." Acts. 17: 32-34

Resurrection once more aroused resistance and derision. Some mocked; and others said, "We will hear thee again concerning this." To hear the apostle again was more than man could insure. Mockers and doubters shall certainly hear the voice of the risen Jesus, when the hour comes for a "resurrection of judgment," which will vindicate the truth to His glory, and prove the worthlessness of the unbeliever, and his deeds evil in God's sight; as those who believe receive life eternal now, walk in obedience, bear good fruit, and rise to a "resurrection of life."

Creation is a standing witness of God to all mankind, did they but stop to consider. It was in its final shape complete before man (the head by God's appointment of all the earthly sphere) was formed, and formed in full vigour of mind and body to look upon it all around him and to hold converse with God without a cloud or suspicion. Creation was a vast miracle; but Adam was not there to see its several parts. He saw the effects in their beauty where all was very good.

Such is the testimony of the Bible as afterwards written by Moses, admitted to divine intercourse beyond others save the Son of man who could say when on earth that He was in heaven; Man but infinitely more than man, who cites Moses as giving God's truth as far as then revealed. And when we think out what we are told of man and every other on earth created not in embryo but in full growth, we cannot but feel how such an account approves itself to us as befitting both God the Creator and the creature.

The most pronounced Freethinkers, the Positivist Mill, and the Agnostic Spencer, admit that secondary causes fail to explain the universe, and that primeval causes (for they thus own a causa causans) must have operated before, behind and above all that men can apprehend. How much more is One who announces His death by lawless hands, and His rising on the third day, with the amplest evidence that so He did rise! Then seen, heard, felt by unimpeachable witnesses, manifestly not a result of natural causes, it is God's action for the worthiest reason and His own glory in the midst of this world's evil and unbelief.

But resurrection is a tremendous shock to the race as reversing all the system of causes and effects with which they are familiar day by day, which they call reflective life. Man is painfully familiar with death and tries to think it natural. But it is not, though appearing so now. God made man with provision to live, if he did not disobey Him. Man disobeyed, and death, as God warned, entered as a penalty through his transgression. But even then the LORD God appeared, convicted Adam and Eve respectively of their sin, traced it up to the enemy, the old serpent, and in sentencing the deceiver announced the triumph of grace in the woman's Seed, who, in His body however bruised, should crush the enemy for ever.

Thus was the Saviour's death to be turned to endless gain for all who believe, and to the glory of God who gave His Son to be born of woman that it might be so. But His death was followed by His resurrection, as it must be both on His own account as a divine person no less than from the Father's glory, truth, and righteousness, for the peace, joy, and blessing of His own. It is too the witness to His foes that, alive again for evermore, He is coming to judge the habitable earth, where men listened to the old enemy and put Him to death: the awful sin of man, and the wondrous grace of God as the propitiation for our sins. His resurrection and going up into His glory is a pledge that He died a sacrifice for all that believe, and that God has accepted the sacrifice on our behalf, and Him who offered it for His glory.

Christ's resurrection from among the dead is the witness of perfect deliverance from sin and all its consequences, and of entrance on a new life in imperishable blessedness. It is not only that the Heir of all things should be glorified; but He now acts in the power of that grace which will bring all who believe to share His absolutely new order of things, in our souls now by faith, next in our bodies, and in the inheritance itself, when He comes again in glory.

Some think like certain Athenians after Plato of the soul's immortality, but forget their responsibility for sin, and look not to God to be saved from their sins and His judgment. Man glorifies himself in that; yet the soul's immortality does not save from everlasting ruin, but "Jesus only." And resurrection then becomes our joyful hope founded on His; "Because I live, ye shall live also:" a life now for our souls, at His coming for our bodies; a life of victory over death and judgment, a life of heavenly and everlasting glory.

The hopes of man are through science, politics, education and the like to ameliorate the old and fallen creation. But they might see if not blinded by Satan that evil men and impostors wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. The fashion of this world passeth; yea, the world itself is passing, and its lust; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. Resurrection declares the unmistakable power of God in Christ vanquishing Satan. In Him Man has conquered to bring those who believe into His wholly new state according to God's counsels.

Whenever souls fail to apprehend this in the Spirit, they get occupied with man and the world, striving to amend society and improve the general state. Never did Christ any thing of the sort; nor did the apostles and prophets essay such measures. They taught that man is dead, that life is in Christ, that He only is the all and in all; that He is coming to take His own to the Father's house; and that He and they will shortly after appear in glory to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness, before the judgment of the dead.

But man, as he dreads God out of a bad conscience, either derides openly or politely puts off. Nevertheless God does His gracious work. A man of weight bowed to the truth and the grace he heard, Dionysius the Areopagite, as did a woman named Damaris and others. But the rest abode in their unbelief, and the apostle went forth from their midst with the message of God's good tidings for such as have an ear to hear.

How is it with you, dear reader, as you scan these lines? By man came sin and death; but by man, the Second man, came the resurrection. This points to the Lord as the Deliverer of those who believe on Him, and the Judge of all who are indifferent and turn away from Him. But why should you perish, when He is at hand, the Life and the Saviour for all that call upon Him? Remain as you are, and you are lost for ever. Receive Him, and you are born of God. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and none shall seize out of my hand. My Father who hath given [them] to me is greater than all, and none can seize out of the hand of my Father. I and the Father are one."

Babylon and the Beast.

Rev. 17.

W. Kelly.

There are two forms of evil and rebellion against God which the Holy Spirit brings before us in this chapter, two figures more prominent than the rest, instruments of iniquity in the world since redemption, which the enemy has used and will yet use against God and His Christ. The first, as we clearly see, is the harlot or "great whore that sitteth upon many waters;" the second is what is called "the beast." Now there need not be any uncertainty as to either in the mind of a true-hearted believer. God has been pleased to give us distinct marks by which we may discern and be sure of His mind.

It is not to be admitted that the intimations of prophecy are equivocal until they are accomplished. On the other hand there are prophecies unquestionably fulfilled which are still far from being plain. The difficulty therefore depends on other conditions than the question of whether they be already fulfilled or not. Take, for instance, the seventy weeks of Daniel. It will not be disputed by any intelligent mind that at any rate sixty-nine of those weeks have been accomplished. No doubt there has been, and there is, a good deal of debate as to the seventieth week; but there are difficulties about the previous sixty-nine weeks no less than about the last. In fact, it would be easy enough to prove that the obscurity which overhangs the last week is considerably less than that which still rests for many Christians on the previous parts of that short but most striking prophecy, as for instance on the starting point of them all.

The fact is certain that people very commonly make difficulties for themselves in the word of God. Constantly too that which is regarded as the chief or only adequate means of enlightenment, if it be a mistake, complicates the whole matter, and darkens the subject instead of ensuring clearness. The true key of all prophecy is the very same that applies to all the Bible; it is Christ Himself. Were there greater singleness of eye in introducing the Lord Jesus into prophetic scripture in His real relation in each case, I am persuaded there would be incomparably more spiritual intelligence and communion, more of that happy and united conviction which is the fruit of faith and of the Spirit's own teaching, than exists at present. It is clear however that this is but a particular case of the hindrance everywhere. The temptation for students of the Bible is to leave Christ out for canons of exegesis and I know not what; the triumph of faith is to bring Christ in. So it will be found in this particular case.

Thus in the present case the woman is a totally different symbol from the beast, but both the woman and the beast are only understood when we compare them with the man Christ Jesus. He too appears in scripture, and sometimes symbolically. For instance, in this very book the Lord Jesus is introduced in some prophetic parts. Take Rev. 12 as an instance, where He is viewed as the male of might or man-child, as He is called in our version. For man the true moral glory is dependence on God and obedience, the very qualities of the spirit and walk of Jesus here below. He came to do God's will, and lived, as He says, on account of the Father, perfect man, though infinitely more than man — complete contrast of him who, only man, sought to be as God in independence of will, and sunk into the slavery of Satan. Clearly therefore it is in relation to the Lord Jesus that we have another subject there described as the woman of whom He is born, who can therefore be none other than Israel. (Rom. 9: 5) She is not in the relation of wife to Him like the church, but of mother. No matter what number of men may say the contrary, the word of God is clear and decisive on the momentous difference. People are the more apt to confound the two, because the constant tendency throughout Christendom is to mix the relationships of the Jew and the Christian together, in standing and in walk, in doctrine and in hope.

In this case, however (Rev. 17), a corrupt woman is seen; as in Rev. 21 the bride, the Lamb's wife. I the more freely speak of it, because there are outward signs which place them in contrast, or lead us of themselves to compare the two women. One outward sign referred to is that the Spirit of God introduces the two visions with striking similarity. "And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters." Then in chapter 21: 9 we read, "And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." Who can deny that these two verses have a stronger analogy than any others in the book? You can find nothing that so answers (it is true, in the way of contrast), for chapters 17 and 21 in this respect suggest each other. We never hear of one of the seven angels coming to show any other object; nor do we elsewhere hear of another object introduced with, "Come hither, and I will show thee" — this or that. Why so? Because, as is evident, the woman in chapter 17 is the earthly counterpart of the bride in chapter 21.

If the holy city, new Jerusalem of the later chapter, be the bride the Lamb's wife, or the glorified church, it naturally indicates that the great city of the earlier chapter is the antichurch, that corrupt evil body which professes to be the church, puts herself forward with supreme claims, and takes the highest ground in the Lord's name. But there is this fatal brand on her: Babylon seeks the earth; her communion is not with Christ. She courts and lavishes her guilty favours on the kings of the earth. She is the channel neither of blessing nor of glory for the dwellers on the earth, but only makes them drunk with the wine of her fornication. Can any traits be conceived more aptly descriptive of her who claims to be the representative of Christ, not in grace and suffering, but for her own pride and advantage on earth? We shall see other features less obvious but equally characteristic. What I am now stating lies on the surface of the scripture; and any one who reads the word of God as it is intended to be read — not merely a verse here or there and now or again — will not be disappointed. The connections of scripture should be looked into, as that which is given us to be read as a whole with faith and diligence, relying on God's goodness and wisdom, whose Spirit will lead us into all the truth.

Thus then the woman of chapter 17 is unmistakably the earthly contrast of the heavenly bride; a religious system, but a counterfeit, claiming to be the spouse of Christ, but only vile and corrupt in His sight, expressly pointed out by the revealing Spirit, in order to guard His people from being in any way carried away by her seductions or overmuch surprised by her persecutions. We have therefore the prophet brought in presence of this system in the vision. There was as yet only the mystery of lawlessness at work. Although the time was not yet come for the display of the fact, the apostle was permitted to see Babylon in the vision. "Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore." God gives us next the stamp that is written upon her, and, more than this, the execution that will follow in due time. For she is one "with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication." Intellectual men, even those that might seem opposed, have often looked at this corrupt religious system with a considerable measure of satisfaction. They have admired the way in which she softened the barbarism of past times, and pruned away much of the asperity of savage tribes, whether of the heathen in earlier days or of men in the middle ages. But when the Spirit of God brings the prophet into his due place to regard this woman, we find only a wilderness. Babylon is seen where all was barren as far as divine enjoyment was concerned. No springs of living water were found there. "He carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness." Whatever may have been the civilizing effects of Babylon in the world, the Spirit of God sees in her only an object of divine judgment. It is so that she is pointed out to the prophet.

"And I saw a woman," says he, "sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." Here we have the other symbol. It is not one that pretended to be the spouse of the Lord, whilst really the basest of prostitutes. A "beast" is used for an imperial power in Scripture, but this with force indeed, but without intelligence or conscience, in plain contrast with Him who is called the "Lamb," the Lord Jesus viewed as the holy Sufferer; the same too who, in contrast with the beasts, will introduce the kingdom as the glorious Son of man. Jesus will hold the kingdom and openly administer it to the glory of God. This is its object as far as He is concerned — "that every knee should bow, and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

Not so the beasts. Whatever the powers so characterised may appear in the history of man, whatever may be their sphere or dignity, whatever the spread of art and science under any of them, whatever the nominal profession too of truth gathered from the Jews in former days, or from Christianity at the present time, — God represents them as "beasts." The reason is obvious. The essential difference between a beast and a man is, that the beast has no understanding of God, and is incapable of it, being only bent on its wants, or natural instincts: but there is no link of relationship with God in the conscience. Not so with man. He may be faithless; and so much the worse for him. He may reject the knowledge of the true God. He may be spiritually what Nebuchadnezzar became physically; that is to say, he may have a beast's heart given to him. Of course this was a miraculous judgment that was executed on the arrogant Chaldean; but it is morally applicable to every man who abandons the testimony of God, and gives himself up to the mere passing enjoyments of the moment.

In short then the beast represents an earthly power which owns not God, and has no thought beyond its own enjoyment, will, or passions. This was what stamped the beasts from the beginning. They were the powers that God raised up in His sovereign action when Israel became faithless. God then permitted the most cruel enemies of Israel to become world-kingdoms. There was Babylon first; there was Medo-Persia secondly; there was Greece or Macedonia thirdly; and, last of all there was the Roman empire. Imperial Rome had a most special place as well as ancient Babylon. For the Babylonian, being the first power that God owned, became typical of the last power in its judgment. In fact however the last empire had historically a most striking place in the providence of God. It was that power which in its servants or officials was guilty of the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord of glory. The Roman empire therefore had the most serious responsibility, little as they felt it; and you must remember, that in the government of God there is nothing forgotten. Who will not prove this true when he stands before the judgment-seat of Christ? There is nothing that can be hid. You will give an account of everything. Not that this should produce the smallest alarm in a child of God; but it is a solemn consideration. "We shall be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ." It does not matter as to this whether a person be a believer or an unbeliever: all done by the body will be made manifest.

On a similar principle in the government of the world, nothing is forgotten before God, — least of all the fact that an imperial power in this world which was set for just government rose up in its blind, guilty, folly, and allowed any reasons or excuses whatsoever to sanction the death of the Lord Jesus. And this the Roman empire did, though its representative in Judea well knew how wrong He was to suffer it. Under pressure of the people set on by the priests he did it, as a matter of public policy perhaps; certainly of expediency for himself as Caesar's friend, or to avoid possible trouble. It is often if not almost always so that the greatest crimes are winked at in this world, as far as its governmental authorities are concerned.

But there is another state of things in Babylon. For there is a great difference between the woman and the man, in the world of nature, now corrupted, not with a beast's heart only without conscience before God but even viewed as a beast. The empires ought to have served God like the Son of man, but in point of fact they were symbolically but beasts in pride of force and will without God. The woman (having the profession of being espoused to Christ, but really setting up to be mistress of all before the marriage to the deep dishonour of the future absent Bridegroom) has quite another position and guilt. She accordingly is seen in the vision "sitting upon the scarlet coloured beast full of names of blasphemy." She pretends to guide the beast or empire. This is the way in which the Spirit portrays her here.

It is plain that the time in John's day was not yet come historically for all this. When the vision was given, the believers were still persecuted by the empire, as he himself was an instance. John was "in the isle called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus." He was there no doubt as a sufferer, or, as he says, "a companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus." Hence it is plain that the world-power was a persecutor at that time rather than the woman. The vile harlot did not yet stand forth in her full-blown profligacy or her meretricious splendour. Even the Roman empire as it was then was not yet developed according to the form exhibited in the vision; for certainly neither had all the heads been yet realised, nor did the decem-regal division begin for long after in any sense. But all is carried forward in the power of the Spirit from first to last, when that which took the place of being the bride of Christ should rest on the Roman empire and seek to be its guide, no doubt directing badly, selfishly, and sinfully, according to her corruption; but still the picture drawn is that of the woman "sitting upon the scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." What a profanation of Christ's name falsely professed and abused to subserve the merest ambition and covetousness of man's dark heart!

Here let us for a few moments delay, because the question might be raised why the beast should be taken as the Roman empire. My answer is, that in all the visions of the imperial powers, in all the prophecies of Old or New Testament, you never find more than the fourth beast or Roman empire until the Lord Jesus introduces a new and everlasting kingdom, — until He brings in His own reign over all nations, tribes, and tongues of the world. We shall show how the difficulty of its actual disappearance from the world is met in this very chapter. The Roman empire has gone through various phases, and undergone extraordinary changes. Its course is not yet exhausted. All prophecy that treats of its close speaks of its existence just before it is extinguished by the Lord when He appears in glory. This very chapter proves not merely that all was open to God from first to last, but that He has made known to us in His word beforehand those singular revolutions that were afterwards to become facts. Some of these have been realised already; others remain to be verified shortly. But that this is the Roman empire is plain from the fact that it is always thus the fourth kingdom is described. A beast with seven heads and ten horns, the last empire before the Son of man takes the kingdom in power and glory, is the way in which Daniel 7 sets it out symbolically on the first occasion in which it was brought before any. There, closing the successive imperial powers, Rome appears, and is described yet more minutely than here.

On the other hand it is granted that there are features introduced into the description of St. John not found in the older prophecy. God does not introduce the subject without fresh reason and fresh light; but that it is the same imperial power, with added relationships as especially to the harlot, cannot be doubted in my judgment by any one subject to the written word. But the simplest and surest proof of all lies in the plain fact that, from first to last, we have four empires of the world, and only four, the last of which is destroyed by divine judgment, and followed immediately by the display of God's kingdom when Christ appears in power and glory. It must be quite evident, save to Romanists, or others almost equally ignorant or visionary, that the kingdom so described is not yet established in the world. I say "in the world;" for it is not a question of heaven. Glory on high we have also revealed to us in Christ the head of the church: of this the New Testament speaks in the clearest possible manner. But it is plain that these world-powers have the earth for their theatre; and, further, that what displaces the last of them is a kingdom that God will establish by judgment executed on the quick in this world. A very great comfort it is to look onward to the certainty that God has not given up the earth for ever into the hands of the adversary — the certainty that Satan's plans shall be overthrown when they seem most ripe — the certainty that, when the evil becomes intolerable, God will interfere, and this by that Man whom He has ordained to judge the quick and the dead, the Lord Jesus. These truths are taught in both the Testaments. For the present occasion Daniel 2, 7 may suffice to prove what has been just affirmed. I only refer passingly to clench the proof of what is meant by the beast here.

I say no more then of the beast than that it is beyond doubt the Roman empire: in what stage of its existence, and at what particular time will appear as we go on.

Next, the woman is described as "arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls." It is not the bride arrayed in fine linen, white and clean; it is the gaudy splendour of the world to attract the flesh, and this very distinctly in royal, yea, imperial colours, so as to found a primary claim of supremacy for her ecclesiastical pretensions; it is false glory, natural enough in the world as it is and adapted to its lusts, but altogether contrary to the express object of the Lord Jesus in having His spouse in this world. The bride of Christ was intended to be His epistle, and is called by faith to manifest Him here below among men, the constant witness of His glory, character, ways, and heavenly place. Hence she must expect at present to share His rejection and sufferings in this world. But this woman who usurps the name seeks nothing but fleshly pleasure and worldly importance, all that is naturally coveted and prized in the earth. This too and worse she ministers to others; for she has "a golden cup in her hand, full of abomination, and filthiness of her fornication." How awful when religion with the highest pretensions to sanctity only sanctions man in the lowest, guiltiest inclinations of a nature fallen from God and subject to Satan! Further, we are told that "upon her forehead was a name written." The first word is most significant — "Mystery." "Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth."

Such a blazon on her forehead from the Spirit teaches us that here it is in no way a question of a heathen city with any amount of political influence. Its real heathenism, or rather its ungodly antagonism to God's people now fallen, may very well be couched under "Babylon the great;" for such was Babylon of old to the ancient people. But "Mystery" goes deeper, and shows the need of spiritual discernment according to the divine revelation vouchsafed to us, in order to detect the true character of this gigantic yet subtle imposture. Neither pagan Rome nor modern commerce, nor a future city rising on the Euphrates, can possibly answer to such a designation. It well suits Rome nominally Christian. Her fall therefore has an interest and joy for heaven which attaches to no other judgment.

I may just observe by the way that "the great city," as far as the bride of the Lamb is concerned, is excluded by all persons who profess to give the best reading according to the most ancient authorities for the word of God. And this is very interesting to us, because it is not a question merely of what prophetic students prefer. They might be liable perhaps to the thought of bias; but critics whom I could easily name if this were the place for it, who had not the slightest prepossession in favour of prophecy, have come to the conclusion now stated on the ground of nothing but clear and full external evidence. In short the way they read Rev. 21: 10 is "showed me," not that great city, the holy Jerusalem, but "the holy city Jerusalem." It is not a question of greatness for her even when glorified, but of holiness; whereas what Babylon affects and wins at cost not merely of herself but of truth, grace, and Christ Himself, is present earthly greatness. "The great harlot" herself, she is the "mother of harlots," as we are told, "and abominations of the earth." Thus not only is she a corrupt system, but the parent of ecclesiastical corruptions outside herself yet akin to her.

Again she is the patron of what is most offensive before God — of idolatry in every shape. It is in vain to say that there never has been idolatry under Christianity; in vain to plead that the objects adored are only images for memory, not idols. The self-same excuse the old heathen philosophers used to urge. They sought to excuse their superstition by the assertion that nobody thought the idols were the gods, but only the visible tokens that reminded them of beings above and behind them. The apology of idolaters in Christendom is exactly similar to that of the pagans. The truth is, that to have such visible tokens or signs is the denial of faith, the destruction of the principle and power in which the Christian is told to walk. He is called to "walk by faith and not by sight." All efforts therefore to make people religious by palpable symbols of the sort is false and pernicious in principle; it is but heathenism christened. Every Christian person is bound to set his face against it. No doubt all this came in by slow degrees, with an apparent show of pious reasons: when have they been wanting for bad things? The truth is however that we are not competent to judge in divine things; and God therefore has revealed His will that we may be subject as children. Then, when we honour Him by subjection of spirit, we find out the excellence of God's will in Christ. We learn that there is nothing arbitrary but good, yea, the best in all the Lord lays on us. Although we accept it, not because we understand it but because He says it (and we accept it therefore gladly and simple-heartedly as His authority over our souls), yet, having done so, we learn that our God and Father is infinitely wise in all He says, and as good as He is wise.

The strange woman then not only corrupts herself and others, but is the parent of all religious corruptions here below. For there is not only a widespread system of ecclesiastical evil, but one pre-eminent, and others carried away and formed according to her pattern, though without her world-wide success. Further, she introduces and sanctions idolatry on the most prolific scale, and her idolatries have this peculiarly malignant brand in God's mind, that they betray departure from known truth for lies better loved. It may be presumed that every one here is aware that "abomination" is used for idol, according to language familiar to every reader of the Old Testament. The same style is found in Matthew, who cites the prophets, and in the Revelation, which habitually adopts Hebrew phraseology. And when the prophet saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, he wondered with great admiration — not of course that anything heathen should be opposed to Jesus, or should attack the servants of the Lord: there was no such great matter for surprise in that. Heathen persecution was becoming an old story, as was Jewish instigation through hatred of the gospel. John himself, experiencing at that time pagan opposition, could hardly wonder if it grew hotter. But that what would bear the name of Jesus, however falsely — what would arrogate the place and title of God's church — that this body should become the greatest engine of persecution and tyranny the world ever saw, turning the power of the empire especially against the saints and witnesses of Jesus, did fill him with amazement beyond measure.

I am aware of the usual pleas of Romanist theologians. But "God is not mocked." The constant self-defence is that the church never persecutes; it is the civil power that punishes delinquents. But God looks at those who are really guilty — not at the mere hand which does the deed, but at the mind and will which morally and under the penalty of damnation compels it. Be it the civil power that hangs, stabs, or burns — the instrument is of small moment: His eye is on the true culprit, the more it covers its insatiable appetite for the blood of heretics under a sanctimonious cloak, and perverts the name of the meek and crucified Saviour into a sanction of unheard of cruelties, sometimes against men ignorant of truth and given over to folly, but far more frequently against saints of whom the world is not worthy, the choicest of God's children here below. It is the woman therefore, not the beast, that is here charged with being "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus."

Then comes the angel's explanation; and this we shall find gives fresh information of the most important kind. It is always thus in the interpretations of scripture. Man's explanations are merely founded on the thing to be explained; God out of His fulness loves to give us more, and of even deepening importance. So here we are told "the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns."

"The beast that thou sawest was and is not" — a striking and singular fact. The Roman empire, unlike all the other previous beasts, must cease to exist and then rise again. It was, and is not, "and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit." It was to reappear with a diabolical character in the sight of God for its last phase. Thus the last of the imperial powers should have a history altogether different from its predecessors. After having flourished and sunk into decay and death, it should revive before its final and unexampled destruction at the appearing of the Lord Jesus. Now there is no maxim among men more settled than that the powers of the world are in this just like men. They begin and advance till they reach their height; then they decline till they vanish. But you may without fail reckon that the maxims of men are untrustworthy where they touch divine things. It is not in the power of man to discover or enunciate the truth. In this case illustration and illustrated are alike. Man having lived and died is to rise again — not merely his spirit, but concrete man; spirit and soul and body will reappear. So must the Roman empire. I am not now speaking about other nations, though it is far from being confined to one; but the Roman empire is here singled out for the reason already pointed out, that it has a character in God's eye because of the rejection and judicial murder of the Son of God.

The Roman empire is not done with. It may have died and passed away, speaking now symbolically. The beast may have come to an end long since. But scripture declares that the beast, which was and is not, "shall ascend" — yea, dreadful to say — "out of the bottomless pit." Even when it rose up against the Son of God, it was not said then to have ascended out of the abyss. The empire is yet to be clothed with a still more distinctively diabolical character on its final reappearance than it ever had of old. It "shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition; and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and shall be present."

You observe the change in the latter words. It has the amplest warrant. There is no Biblical scholar now that would presume to contest the better reading or its version. I am putting forward no peculiar view, but the best representation of the undoubted word of the Holy Spirit in the passage. All classes, Catholic or Protestant, Lutheran or Reformed, Established or Nonconformist, if only acquainted with the authorities for the word of God here, will admit that what has just been given is indubitably true. It is impossible for intelligent men to stigmatize this critical correction as the peculiarity of any school whatever. It is a question now of fact, sure in itself and confessed by all competent men, many of whom never stopped to consider the difference of meaning which results from the emendation demanded by excellent authorities of every kind, and consequently no bad witnesses, inasmuch as they had and could have no object in what they introduced. As it stands in the common text, the phrase looks a sort of riddle; for what is the meaning of the proposition that the beast was, is not, and yet is? From the correct text the darkness vanishes at once. Can one hesitate which should be regarded as the voice of the Holy Spirit? Internal evidence there is as conclusively in favour of the critical change, as is external testimony. The sense that is elicited from καὶ πάρεσται is simple and highly important; the only possible version of the vulgarly received καίπερ ἐστίν offers no just sense whatever, but a certain mystification which none would defend save prejudiced men who confound mist with mystery, and see scarce anything with certainty and clearness in the Bible.

There is no enigma then in what the Spirit really wrote. He expressly tells us that universal wonder will be excited among men when they see the beast once more which had been and then ceased to exist. When it reappears, they are filled with astonishment. Just as John wondered greatly at the persecution carried on by her who bore the Lord's name ever so basely, so the world will marvel when the long departed empire of Rome lifts its head once more.

Our own day has seen serious steps toward that consummation, or at least the way paved for it. Not at all is it meant that anything at present existing indicates that the beast has ascended from the abyss, or that it can till the saints now living on earth (with those dead before them) are caught up changed into the glorious likeness of Christ. On the contrary, I would rather seek to guard all the children of God from being carried away by a hue and cry about this person or that kingdom. Still we have seen events in the providential history of the world of no ordinary magnitude and of strange character. But nothing has been yet seen that answers to this kingdom ascending out of the bottomless pit according to the language of prophecy. I am far from saying that the Sardinian or Piedmontese progress, through overthrowing their southern adversary and swallowing up the lesser duchies and taking possession of the Papal dominions, can be fairly so interpreted. But it is impossible to avoid seeing that these extensive and profound changes in raising Italy to a great and united kingdom are not more fatal to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope than they clear the ground for the revival of the empire with Rome for its capital. In short the state of things so rapidly brought about in Italy and even Rome seems to my mind no small step towards a far deeper and still graver assumption which God will not permit till a day that is not yet arrived. Let us not therefore in any way indulge the dream that we are yet in presence of this most solemn reappearance of the Roman empire; but one can scarce shut one's eyes to the fact that certain steps or stages, which must necessarily have preceded it in the wisdom of God, have recently been taken, and that not a few things are in train towards that which remains to be done.

Nevertheless the turning-point can be shown to be in no way a fact as yet. There is nothing in the least degree therefore that would warrant any one to point to what is now in course of formation as if the beast were being actually formed. The chief antecedent condition does not exist.

"Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings." In this statement the Spirit of God deigns to give a mark of another kind for determining the woman. We have already considered what may be styled the spiritual mark as contrasted with the bride of the Lamb. Here we are in presence of what may be called the geographical mark. For the woman is said to sit on seven mountains. Who in the world could doubt where the seven-hilled city is? Still less could it have been doubted in the time of St. John. There was but one such city, and that one rose up before every person's mind instinctively. It was Rome, and none other.

Further, there is what may be called the political mark added in the end of the chapter. "The woman which thou sawest is the great city which reigneth (or hath kingdom) over the kings of the earth." There was only one city which had reigned over kings. There can be no question therefore that Rome exclusively is the city intended here by the Spirit of God. This is so true that a great many learned persons of the Roman Catholic communion have acknowledged the fact, even some of their most celebrated controversialists. Probably there are many here who have heard of the famous Bishop of Meaux, J. B. Bossuet, as others have heard of Cardinals Baronius and Bellarmin. These officials, of high distinction in the Romish system, acknowledge Rome to be intended. They have their own way of endeavouring to conciliate the fact admitted with their tenacious maintenance of Rome as the holy see. With this we need not concern ourselves. What we have to consider is not their way of reconciling their consciences, but their acknowledgement as far as it goes of the truth in the chapter. We have nothing to do with judging them; we can leave them in the hands of God. It is enough for me simply to use the concession, which has its importance in this place, coming as it does from those who have opposed to it the strongest possible interest if the reference were only carried out to the full. Let us beware of imputing bad motives — love of power, greed of money, pride of position in the world, or the like. These, I say, are questions for God to judge. I am only affirming now, that all the keenest prejudices of celebrated Romish ecclesiastics must assuredly be against acknowledging Rome as the city meant here; and yet, in spite of all, they have been obliged to own the fact, however they may seek to explain it away by limiting it to its ancient pagan phase.

It is certain therefore from the spiritual contrast with the bride, from the geographical place of the seven mountains, and from the special, that is supreme, relationship to the kings of the earth, that Rome and no other is the city aimed at by the woman Babylon in Rev. 17.

But we must distinguish between "the woman" and "the harlot." The woman is the city that is said to have sovereignty over the kings of the earth. The reason is manifest. Rome did not wait for her governing power till she became an ecclesiastical system. We see how perfectly the truth hangs together. It is not said, "the whore which reigneth over the kings of the earth," but "the woman" that does so. Beyond controversy her supreme authority was quite distinct from her assuming an ecclesiastical character. The latter was a change long subsequent. In virtue of its religious character, alas! false or corrupt, it is called a whore or harlot;* but "the woman" is in relation rather to her place as a certain system of power or authority in the earth, just as Tyre or Jerusalem are often each compared to a woman in Old Testament prophecies, with which we are all familiar.

* The Bishop of Meaux again and again reasons on "the harlot" as a decisive proof that Babylon is not an ecclesiastical body but a mere profane city of the world. He insists that "adulteress" must have been the designation of guilt in that case rather than "whore." (Oeuvres de Messire Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, (e., tome second, pp. 60-63, 310-312, 4to. Paris, 1743.) This is not fairly met by the allegation that the Spirit sometimes interchanges the terms "fornication" and "adultery" in the Revelation as elsewhere, though such an interchange does occur. For here, as Bossuet argues, the usage is too constant to be unintentional. The fact is however that, while Israel in the Old Testament stood in the relation of the married wife to Jehovah, it is not so with the church of God in the New Testament. There she is represented as in a certain sense the bride, but in truth espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ rather than as yet wedded. And this is necessarily and undeniably the image in this Apocalyptic prophecy, where beyond a doubt the marriage supper of the Lamb does not take place till after the destruction of Babylon, when the blessed bridal of the church is celebrated in heaven. The consummation is most fittingly when all are complete who go to make up the church. It is after the Lord shall have translated to heaven all who have been baptized by the Spirit into that one body, some fallen asleep, others alive and remaining till He come to change both into the likeness of His own glory. Thus the reasoning of the clever prelate rests on a premise which is the exact reverse of the truth; and all that is sound in it tells powerfully against his own aim. For when it is seen that the church while on earth is supposed to be espoused but not yet married, her corrupt counterpart, to be accurate, ought to be set forth as a harlot, not as an adulteress. The reference therefore in the great whore is precisely to a spurious church, and cannot but be fixed on Rome not pagan but ecclesiastical, on Rome professedly Christian.

But there is a great deal more. "There are seven kings," says the Spirit of God: "five are fallen; the one is, and the other is not yet come." It is hard to doubt that these heads or kings here brought before us refer to the various forms of power which succeeded each other in Rome. Other beasts were simply said to have one head. The Macedonian might become four heads, and these evidently concurrent, not successive; but in Rome we hear of seven heads, and these from the language of the interpreter not concurrent but successive. The figure refers to the complete variety of political power that should characterise that empire. "Five," it is said, "were fallen." These were the previous kinds of power in Rome. "One is:" the sixth head was then exercising its rule. Thus the five fallen heads pointed to kings, consuls, decemvirs, military tribunes, dictators, or the like, which had been in Rome before but had now yielded to the emperor. Although there was a shadow of consuls still kept up, as is notorious, yet the imperial head was universally known to be then in force. This is the one that "now is," as we are told. But it is added that another was coming. "The other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space."

Here I still stand to what I hold to be an important though negative principle in looking at the prophetic word: to understand it you do not require history. In general indeed the students of history applied to the interpretation of the prophets least understand prophecy. After all a conjectural opinion as to the meaning of these heads is no such great matter; nor does it really help in the interpretation of the chapter. Supposing the simple Christian believe that the five forms of power fell before the existing imperial one, what of importance can history add? He is not able to explain the details; he knows not the successive forms of power — what has he lost? Supposing he did name them accurately, what has he gained? He is assured on the word of God that there were five, though he may not know what their histories or their characters were. He does know what was of great importance — that a sixth form existed, the imperial line of the Caesars, as they are called and as every body knew in John's day. Then he knows further that there was to be a seventh. What the seventh head would be is not here described; save that when he came, he must continue a short space. And what should we gather from this? That further minutiae are of no importance to the believer.

Whatever is of real value and for His glory God explains. Whatever is of no account in this point of view God passes by with the slightest notice or none. And so it is with these different heads of power. They are none of them explained. We are told the few words we have seen as to the seventh: no more than this was of consequence; and therefore the Lord gives us this fact alone in the case. "And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven." Thus there was to be a most curious compound character in the eighth head. He would be, on the one hand, of the seven; on the other, he would be an eighth. This seems, to my thinking, to be explained by what we find in another part of the book: the wounded head of the beast was to live. The imperial power, as it was wounded to death, so it was to appear again. When it revived, it would be an eighth; but it was one of the seven, because there had been such a form of power in Rome once before.

Hence I do not admit that there is in general anything so difficult to understand in these symbols. The information given is plain enough if we are content with the word of God. It is when we leave the simplicity of scripture that we fall into the by-path of speculation. For indeed we are in a wilderness-world, and where to turn we know not. But God has a way, though the vulture's eye sees it not; and in His word He has been pleased to reveal it, even Christ; and our wisdom is to hold fast to the way which grace has thus given us. Do we not need a way, if we are going through the wilderness? That way God alone can make known to us, or keep us in. But the way for us in Christ He has fully revealed.

As this is of immense importance everywhere, so is it, be assured, even in studying prophecy, just as much as anywhere else. To go from scripture to history, in order to find the explanation of prophecy, is invariably an error. It may not always work out its worst effects, because he that wanders into history for this purpose may otherwise by faith keep fast hold of the word of God; and so far he will be preserved from evil. But the tendency of looking into man's account of the world to find the explanation of God's mind in prophecy is to abandon light for darkness.

Let me ask a question. How can history explain prophecy? It is evident that before history can be applied to the elucidation of prophecy, you must understand what the prophecy means; and when you know what it means, for what do you want history? Is it to ascertain that God knew or spoke the truth? You have already what God gave it for, and ought not, if a believer, to take the ground of an infidel. No doubt what you discover in history, as far as it is true, must exactly fall in with prophecy. And this may be interesting, — nothing more; but it must be evident to every one who reflects that, if we wish to be kept from fumbling in the dark, we must understand a prophecy before we can bring it into juxta-position with the particular event we regard as its fulfilment.

For instance, take the beast before us. Supposing it is the question with me to whom or to what the beast applies here, how can history decide this? Am I to ransack all the annals of all times and all nations first? Or am I not to weigh the prophecy with prayer that I may know of what God is speaking? One man says, perhaps it is the pope; another affirms Napoleon Bonaparte or his nephew. How am I to decide? First let me seek to understand the scriptures about the beast with their context, and when I do so by the grace of God in my measure, this is what God meant me to get without going farther and faring probably worse.

The truth is, that when God's mind is seized in scripture, it will be found incomparably larger than questions of popery or politics. He is occupied with the glory of Christ in heaven; if on earth, with Israel as the centre when the kingdom is established by judgments on the Gentiles who now are allowed to rule exceptionally during the Lo-ammi state of the Jews. Hence what is described here is irreconcilable with men's thoughts. Take once more as an example the pope. The papacy may come in for a certain analogy, but is in no full sense the beast. It is not certainly for me to apologise for the papal power: none can justly insinuate that I sympathize with that monstrous imposture in any way. But the word of God ought to be dearer than all controversial objects; and although some may be keen enough Protestants, nothing justifies one in departing from the word of God, nor can any end consecrate an error.

The endeavour to find out the hardest things that can be found in the Bible, and to apply them blindly towards an object that you justly censure, is serious moral wrong. Whatever then the demerits of the papacy, the apocalyptic beast from the sea is really a quite different evil altogether, being the imperial power of the west in its last phase. It will be hardly disputed that the pope is an extremely diminished power now: is this honestly the lot of the little horn of Daniel 7? Judged by an imperial standard, there is not much resemblance between the two, as in my opinion there never was. The papacy never was anything politically, or at least territorially, but an inconsiderable power; whereas the beast here described is regarded as a commanding empire in the earth, and this of course Roman. But it clearly was when the Roman empire sunk into nonentity, weakened by the Eastern rent and its own corruption, and afterwards extinguished by the barbarian hordes, that the papacy sprang up into a temporal authority no less than an universal episcopate. So far is the papacy from really answering to the beast, that it has only come in during the non-existence of the beast. For the beast that was is not, according to St. John. Such is the true place and time of that strange incubus. Indeed the papacy is far more connected with the whore than with the beast, though I do not deny a sort of partial anticipation also. For I am not disposed to differ from the great and excellent men who attached the solemn description of Babylon to the see of Rome during the latter part of the middle ages, and at the time of the Reformation. To my mind Luther and others who so used it were justified in the main. They were right in fixing the divine condemnation of Babylon on Rome, and this not merely as "the woman" but as "the whore," which involves other features of guilt as already pointed out.

But the beast is the imperial power of Rome, and here in its last open apostacy and rebellion against God. The other powers had disappeared as empires. The beast is the only one that will reappear imperially before final judgment, after having passed through these different states. "The beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." The last holder of that power, the last head, will display, I presume, the resurrection of the empire without and against God by Satanic energy, and in this condition it is doomed to perish for ever under the judgment of God.

"And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings." This is another most material point for understanding the chapter. "And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast." Now if we look back upon ancient and mediaeval European history, what do we find? First of all the Roman beast unbroken, without any division whatsoever into separate kingdoms. There was a breach that gradually widened after the setting up of Constantinople, as it was overtly occasioned by that rival metropolis. There were sovereigns who divided between them the Roman empire for a season, as we know, when that empire began to decline; but in the days of its comparative solidity and world-wide grandeur (as you are aware, at any rate during the scriptural account of the Roman empire), it was an unbroken power wielded by one emperor. In the days of the Caesars it was invariably so. There might be a difference, as we know there was in history, between the Augustus and the Caesar; but I am speaking now of the emperor; and I say there was but one emperor during the days of the Caesars. Such was the earliest state. Passing over the changes or modifications that took place until the barbarians broke up the Roman empire, we find all changed when the empire was gone. "The beast that was" ceased to be, the new condition being briefly told in the words, "and is not."

What was found then? The various fragments of the Roman empire were gradually settled into separate kingdoms. I am willing now to meet our historical friends as much as possible, and will not raise questions about "ten" by contending for nine or eleven. Let us suppose there were exactly ten in round numbers. If ten, we have ten horns or kings of the middle ages, but no such thing as the empire or the beast; that is, no corporate bond existed for these ten kings — no single power held a suzeraineté over them all, so as to direct their united forces, and make them all to be parts of the great Roman empire. Such a state of things had not begun to be. But, mark, in the time which the prophet contemplates there will be this exactly. "The beast that was and is not shall ascend," that is, the old corporate bond of an emperor to control and lead all that once formed the beast, or properly Roman part of the empire, in short the west or western powers. The east appears not in the beast, as here looked at, for reasons that need not be entered into now. It is the strictly Roman part of the empire. The gold, the silver, and the brass are not spoken of here, but only the iron and clay, if we may speak in the language of Nebuchadnezzar's vision.

Here then is a new state of things — ten horns as well as the beast; not the beast alone as in ancient days, nor ten horns alone as in the middle ages, but the beast and the ten horns. You who desire to be under history as the rule for interpreting prophecy, do you not hear history? Can it be intelligently said that such a state of things has ever yet been? This is the state, I feel no hesitation in affirming, that will be. St. John shows us most clearly what we are to expect for the future of this age, and more particularly in the west. Naturally this must be of so much more solemn interest to us, inasmuch as our country forms a part of it. The continental powers with ourselves, the western powers, compose the material of the future ten horns or kingdoms. The countries of Europe, which boast of themselves as the flower of civilization at the present time, are destined to be redistributed into ten kingdoms when the beast rises up from the abyss; that is, when an imperial power is allowed with Rome as the centre to become Satan's leader of the west. Such will be the beast, a Roman emperor with his satellite kings. When this future empire becomes established again, it will not be such an absorbing power as to blot out separate nationalities. There will be the combination of an imperial authority with each power acknowledged in its own quasi-independent state. I grant that there may be only a sham in such subordinate kings: still there has been usually no lack of vapour in the earth, and the future in question will be a day of shams. The grand point however will be this, that the chief who governs all will govern as firmly with iron hand as if the separate kingdoms belonged to himself exclusively. Such is the state of things described here.

It is not imagination: the word of God is perfectly plain about all. "These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast." And they "receive power as kings one hour with the beast." They have their kingly authority for one and the same time with the beast; not after nor before the beast, but contemporaneously and in association with him. How comes this to pass? It is explained a little afterwards. "God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will." It is not their own. National independence would refuse such servility. Is there anything for which a kingdom would be more ashamed of itself than to be merely the vassal of a grinding active power? But here they are absolutely subservient: it is the common lot of all the western powers that they for the first time in Europe do the bidding of one ruler. Who can say that such a state of things was ever known in the west? Under the Caesars there was no room for it, as there were no such divided kingdoms. Since the day that the German barbarians broke up the empire, since the Goths, etc., (our forefathers, as you know,) set up separate nationalities throughout the west, independence has been the ruling feature of all these little kingdoms. They have each had a will of its own; and all have fought most determinedly to have their own way. They have valued above all things their right to be governed as they liked.

A total change will pass over the west. When the redistribution comes (which will be as usual out of a revolutionary state; and a man must be rather blind not to see tokens of the storm brewing, not in our own country only but in every country where free thought and discussion have prepared the way); when all respect for what is ancient and has been in honour shall have passed away; when men are seized with a passion for destroying everything that used to exercise influence and hold in check; when the demon of revolution has acquired throughout the west full force, and broken up all that still survives, this is to be the shape it will take. There will be a dividing afresh into ten separate kingdoms of no great size; but what gives them importance is, that all will be under the central power which is here called "the beast." It is not of course a mere kingly power, which is styled a "horn" in the language of prophecy. The beast is the overruling corporate bond under which these horns range themselves as constituents and sinews of its strength. Accordingly there will be a novel unity unexampled in Europe or elsewhere. "They will have one mind, and give their power and strength unto the beast." And what use does he make of it? To what end does the beast lead the horns? "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them (for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings) and they that are with him, called, and chosen, and faithful."

In the midst of such a dreary future, what a comfort that we shall be with Him then! You, if you love the Lord, will be with Him. Whoever you may be, if you are Christ's, you will come with Christ in that day. He will appear from heaven, and so will you in glory. It will not then be a question of gathering His people to Himself. Not a hint of such a removal is given in this context. The faithful are already with Him. They had been therefore caught up to Him before. How this could be we know from other parts of scripture; but I do not enter into them now. Keeping myself to the passage that lies before me, I say that it is quite plain that the faithful, chosen, and called will be then with Christ. Further, these are not angels but saints. Angels are never said to be "called," nor are they ever said to be "faithful." It is not a question of the dealings of grace for an angel. The angels who are kept of God are holy no doubt, and, if holy, are "chosen" or elect. Such is the language of scripture about them. But an angel never is or could be said to be either "faithful" or "called." What is the meaning of "calling"? When man fell and went away from God, "calling" was the means grace used for bringing him to God by the faith of a Saviour of the world. This is not and never can be the history of an angel; it is only open to man. For he only of all fallen beings is called by grace — man when he calls on the name of the Lord Jesus — man visited in the infinite mercy of God, when His grace has shone upon him from on high, and brought him to Himself by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Such then shall be with the Lamb when the beast challenges the conflict which ends not in his perdition only, but in the ruin of the kings and their armies from these very lands. "But the Lamb shall overcome them (for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings)." It is no question of human resources in that day: the Lord shall be exalted, and we shall reign with Him.

Observe another thing. "The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." This beyond controversy distinguishes between the whore and all other religious systems; for where do you find anything corresponding to this save with "the whore?" No doubt there are many religious systems bad enough. I am far from meaning that Romanism is the only corruption of Christianity. But is there no tangible difference? Others may influence for ill in their own land; but the dreadful plague-spot of Rome is that she claiming to be the universal mother and mistress is the corrupter of every land. Her claim of ecumenical dominion is the thing that points her out as the city of confusion, which answers to the Holy Spirit's warnings in this chapter. Thus the very boast of universality with corruption and idolatry determines at once what she is. Babylon is the harlot of the western kings, the most corrupting influence religiously of all the world. Hence "the waters, where the whore sitteth, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." There may be, I repeat, grievous departure from Christ elsewhere; still this is a mere party, or at most a national blunder in religion; but, as for Babylon, she is according to scripture the common nuisance of all nations and tribes and tongues. The result will be that her lovers will all turn on her. The ten horns — those that she most of all sought to win and hold — will hate her in the end.

Let me mention at this point a fact in illustration which, as all may not have noticed it, it is as well to name now. A remarkable change has even now taken place over the nations of the earth. They are not getting better, but the form of their evil is changing. The last Ecumenical Council held at Rome is the only one which neither had nor invited crowned heads to send representatives. The time is not yet come for the ten horns to receive authority as kings for one and the same hour with the beast. But there are practically no Catholic powers at the beck of Babylon. They are no longer her vassals, if they are not yet the minions of the beast. This is another serious state. In that council the pope could count on no civil supporters, unless perhaps some petty ones which would have only made the absence of the great powers conspicuous. Hence the invitations were exclusively to Romish ecclesiastics. No representative of Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, France, Italy, etc. was there. Even Spain and Portugal sent no plenipotentiaries to declare their adhesion to the pope: those that always had proved most submissive were for one reason or another passed by. By Babylon's own confession the western powers though called Catholic could no longer be trusted. For the first time since they formed part of Christendom they were not called to an Ecumenical Council — none but ecclesiastics. It is not that the time is come for the horns to take their place with the beast and to devour Babylon; but certainly there seems to be somewhat of a preparation for it in so striking a sign of her actual mistrust in her old paramours.

"The ten horns that thou sawest, AND the beast," etc. It is not "upon the beast," as in the common text, — an unquestionably superior reading, which no critic would think of defending. The true text runs, "The ten horns . . . . and the beast." And this is of importance. Here one regrets that the strength of mere Protestant prejudice tends to make men false to scripture. Is it not disgraceful for any one, be he Catholic or Protestant, to keep up an error in what professes to be the word of God? Why should a Christian have an interest but in the truth? If we accept the best authorities, "upon the beast" must be rejected as unquestionably erroneous; if we are not swayed by the feeblest possible testimony, we cannot evade the overwhelming evidence that the true reading is "the ten horns . . . . and the beast." And why, think you, should any one be so anxious to perpetuate the blunder of "the ten horns upon the beast?" Because the true reading is fatal to the old delusion that the beast is the pope — a delusion completely refuted by "the ten horns . . . . and the beast," unless one can credit the pope with destroying his own city. It is too hard a saying even for that fanciful school that the pope should turn out so fierce a foe of his own capital. Yet the words are certain, "the ten horns . . . . and the beast, these shall hate the whore."

On the other hand it cannot be denied to be perfectly intelligible that the Roman empire with all the ten subject kingdoms in its sphere will burn with implacable fury against ecclesiastical Rome, the old object of their deepest, superstitious, and passionate devotion; as I believe they will. We see that the power which has possessed itself of the papal temporalities is naturally by no means palatable to the Pope; as it also has shown but little scruple in taking his goods, we could not expect love or respect between the two parties. We know that the kingdom of Italy that is growing up has enriched itself very considerably by the spoils of the "church" so called. When the day comes for the beast and the ten horns the spoliation of Babylon will be complete. The beast will first enrich himself and his followers, and then destroy her. All that ecclesiastical Rome has — earthly power, wealth, grandeur, rank, — will seem but lawful spoil for them.

It will be thus seen how important the various reading is in ver. 16; and when we speak of a "various reading" here, it is not meant that any want of certainty exists. There are often various readings which have no real value. No man ought to adopt a reading lightly or for a fancy. My own sympathy is strongly with the man who is averse to change; but there are some various readings so amply supported and certain in themselves that to hold out against them would be high treason to the word of God. The authority for "and the beast" is so preponderant that nothing but stubbornness can account for any man rejecting it, unless there be gross ignorance also.

Hence there cannot be the smallest doubt that "the ten horns . . . . and the beast" are to join against Babylon. This makes the meaning of the chapter substantially plain. After the closest links of religious attachment, we see the turning of the tide at the end. It is the day when the beast will no longer permit Rome in any way to guide the temporal powers, when the civil power, become proud of its imperialism, will turn and rend the harlot who was once the object of the most debasing affection and honour. But the greater the false love then shown to Rome, so much the more by and by will be the hatred with which the beast will turn and destroy what had been so extravagantly loved and honoured. "These shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." They execute God's destructive judgment in His providence. Such is the explanation: "God hath put in their hearts to do his will."

More I need not add tonight, considering the lateness of the hour. But the subject is commended to your prayerful attention; for the Lord would have you study not only His revealed will but His word, that you may judge rightly of what is working now by seeing the end disclosed with divine clearness and certainty. You will thus also prove by experience that the prophetic word is most practical, "whereunto ye do well to take heed as unto a lamp that shineth in a dark place." Instead of giving it up as precarious or unintelligible, you will learn increasingly how definite and interesting and important is every word for every child of God. May the present occasion stimulate you to read with confidence in His grace, honouring the word of Him who will strengthen and refresh you thereby for His service!

APPENDIX.

ROMANIST CONFESSION AS TO BABYLON.

It may interest the reader if I present him with copious extracts from two singularly intelligent writers of the Romish communion, both priests, one Spanish and the other French, who paid homage to the truth of our chapter far beyond the partial acknowledgment of those referred to in the lecture.

The first in order of time is from the famous Venida del Mesias en gloria y magestad of Juan Jos. Ben-Ezra (the nom de plume), or rather Emanuel Lacunza (his real name).

"Two chief things we have here to ascertain: first, who the woman seated on the beast is; secondly, what times are spoken of in the prophecy.

"As to the first, the doctors all agree that the woman here spoken of is the city of Rome, in other times the capital of the greatest empire in the world, and now the capital and centre of unity of the true Christian church. On this first point, which is not called in question, there is no occasion to tarry. In respect to the second, we find only two opinions. The first maintains that the prophecy was wholly accomplished in past ages in idolatrous and pagan Rome. The second confesses that till this day it has not been fully accomplished; and affirms that it will be accomplished in the times of Antichrist in another Rome yet future, and very much changed from the present.

"If we attentively consider these two opinions, and the obscure and embarrassed way in which their authors explain themselves, it is not very difficult to make out the pious end which they propose, and the true cause of their embarrassment. This point is the most delicate and critical which can be imagined. On the one hand the prophecy is terrible in all its circumstances: both the crimes of the woman, which are clearly related, and the chastisement denounced upon them, are innumerable. On the other hand, the respect, the love, the tenderness, the good conceit and estimation in which this very woman has been held ever since she abolished her idolatry, makes it incredible and improbable that of her should be spoken or in her should ever be verified such crimes and such a chastisement. In so critical a situation which side can we take? The truth of the prophecy must be sacred; for no one doubts its authenticity. But it likewise seems necessary to save the honour of the great queen, and to calm all her fears. As she is not ignorant of that which is expressed in the scriptures of truth, and which might or should lay her under great apprehensions, it has appeared becoming in her faithful subjects to deliver her entirely from this anxiety. Therefore have they said to her; some, that she had nothing to fear, the prophecy having been accomplished many ages ago upon pagan and idolatrous Rome, against which it is spoken; others, who have not been able to enter into an idea so repugnant to the text, have said to her, that she ought not to be afraid, because the prophecy is visibly directed to other times yet to come, and will not be verified upon the present Rome, upon Christian Rome, upon Rome the head of the church of Christ, but upon another Rome infinitely different, composed then of idolaters who shall have become masters of it, having driven out the Pontiff, and with him all his court and all Christians. In this Rome, thus regarded, will be verified the crimes and the punishments announced in this prophecy. Let us shortly examine these two opinions, or those two consolations, comparing them with the text of the prophecy . . . . The greatest crime of which the woman is accused is fornication, and, to shut the door against all equivocation, the accomplices of this metaphorical fornication are named, to wit, the kings of the earth; and as the kings with the harlot, so she with them lived deliciously.

"We ask then how this crime can be true of ancient Rome; which, according to all accounts given in history, was so far from this infamy, that on the contrary she even regarded all the kings of the earth with a sovereign contempt, nor was there any in the known world whom she did not humble and cast down under feet. Many times were they seen to enter by the triumphal gate loaded with chains, and to pass out at another to be beheaded or imprisoned. With what propriety then or appearance of truth can ancient Rome be accused of a metaphorical fornication with the kings of the earth? . . . . The second difficulty of this opinion grows out of the chastisement announced upon the harlot, which, if attention be given, will certainly appear not yet to have been verified. The expressions which St. John makes use of are all the most vivid, telling of a full and eternal extermination: consider them. Rev. 18: 21-23: 'And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.' Either this is all exaggeration, full of impropriety and falsehood, or it is not yet fulfilled and will be fulfilled in its time to a very tittle as it is written. Besides this, the whole context of the prophecy from the sixteenth chapter ought to be considered; where, after having spoken of the last plague in the seven vials, which the seven angels poured out upon the earth, in which is filled up the wrath of God, he proceeds immediately to say: 'And great Babylon came in remembrance before God to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.' . . . . . .

To all this ought to be added another very important reflection. If, as the author of this opinion alleges, the prophecy be wholly intended against the ancient idolatrous and iniquitous Rome, if on her be threatened the terrible chastisement whereof so much is spoken, when was that chastisement accomplished? They answer that it was accomplished when Alaric with his terrible army took it, sacked it, burned it, and almost entirely destroyed it. But in the first place it is certain that the evils which Alaric's army brought on Rome were not so great as those inflicted by the ancient Gauls, or those she suffered in the civil wars, or in the time of Nero, as we are assured by contemporary authors, and declared by Fleury, Miller, etc. Above all, they were not so great as those which are here clearly announced in the prophecy which speaks of total ruin and eternal extermination. Secondly, in the time of Alaric (that is, in the fifth century of the Christian era), what Rome did this barbarous prince sack? what Rome did he almost entirely burn and destroy? Was it Rome the idolatrous, Rome the iniquitous, Rome the adulteress and harlot for her idolatry? Certainly not, for at that time there was no such Rome. The only Rome which then existed and which continues till this day was wholly Christian, had already cast all her idols from her,* and consequently no longer deserved the name of adulteress and harlot; already adored the true God and His only Son Jesus Christ; was already full of churches in which holy offices were celebrated; for history tells us that Alaric commanded his soldiers not to touch the public buildings nor the temples. It was already Rome the penitent, Christian, and holy. This being so, does it appear to you credible that upon this woman, now Christian, penitent, and holy, should be accomplished the terrible chastisement denounced against the wicked adulteress? . . . .

* [This seems too strong, as we know that the heathen faction in Rome was strong enough during Alaric's siege to alarm men by the pretence that their troubles came because of neglecting the old religion, so much so that sacrifices were offered to the gods in the capital and elsewhere, Pope Innocent himself consenting to it! See Zosim. H. R. v. 14.]

"Considering the grave difficulties which the former opinion underlies, almost all the doctors have judged that it is not ancient Rome which is spoken of in the prophecy, but another Rome yet future, in which will be verified all the crimes as well as the terrible chastisement here denounced against her. And when is all this to happen? It is to happen, they say, and with good reason, in the days of Antichrist. But to reconcile this ingenuous confession with the honour and consolation of the sacerdotal city (to save which is the aim of both opinions), they make certain suppositions, and lay them as the basis on which their whole edifice may rest. These are as follows. First, the Roman empire is to endure until the end of the world. Secondly, that empire which now is (and for so many years has been) so dismembered that hardly a relic of it is to be seen, shall, toward the last time, recover its ancient greatness, magnificence, and splendour. Thirdly, the heads of that empire in those last times shall become, not only infidel and iniquitous, but even professed idolaters. Fourthly, they shall without much difficulty make themselves masters of Rome, establish in it anew the court of the Roman empire; and thereupon Rome shall resume that grandeur, wealth, profusion, majesty, and glory, which it displayed in ages past, as, e.g., in the time of Augustus. Fifthly, that impious race shall root out from Rome the Christian priesthood, and likewise all the faithful who will not renounce their faith: whereby Rome, being free from that great hindrance, will set up anew the worship of idols, and return to be as idolatrous as before.

These positions being all assumed, and as such requiring no proof, it is truly most easy to conclude whatever you affirm, and to affirm whatever you please. It is easy to conclude that, although the prophecy certainly speaks against a future Rome, yet not in any way against a Christian Rome, the latter, as incapable of these crimes, being likewise not obnoxious to those threatenings and punishments. By this ingenuity the truth of the prophecy is saved, the honour of the great queen is saved, and she remains comforted, quiet and secure, without anything to disturb her peace or interfere with her repose, because the very heavy indignation of the spouse neither is nor can be measured out for her but for her enemies only. Those enemies, or this new Rome thus viewed (continues the explanation), shall doubtless commit new and greater crimes than the ancient Rome; shall return to be proud, haughty, unjust, and cruel; shall again shed Christian blood, and be drunk with it; and these crimes shall draw down on this city, now infidel, the whole burden of the anger and indignation of Almighty God. . . . .

Is this mode of treating the subject, followed by the greater part of the doctors, also the most prudent in this other point of view; that it aims at not grieving our sovereign and common mother before the time? But this is the very reason why the pure truth ought with all humility and reverence to be spoken. For this very reason ought her true sons and faithful subjects to seek to afflict her and rejoice to see her afflicted, not because she is made sorry, but because she sorrowed to repentance. . . . Through the foreshowing of the danger, refuge may be sought and perdition escaped; but if by sparing sorrow the impression is given that there is no such danger, ruin will be inevitable, and, so much the greater, as it has been the less apprehended. It is very easy to remark the strange and singular conduct pursued in the treatment of this subject; I mean the great liberality with which many things are taken for granted which do not appear from revelation, and the very great economy with which others are withheld on which revelation is most explicit. No one tells us, for example, what is meant by the woman sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. Though the mystery be so great, novel, and strange, that St. John himself confesses he wondered with a great wonder at the sight of the woman in that state, yet they suppose it to signify no more than the figure by alliance between idolatrous Rome and Antichrist. One should think the beloved disciple had no cause for such admiration. What marvel that an idolatrous and iniquitous city should favour and help Antichrist! . . . .

We are not ignorant that many unrighteous men, out of hatred to the Roman church, have misused in a most monstrous and impudent way this passage of scripture. But what thing is there so true and so holy which they cannot abuse? Wicked children, in what they have said of Rome under the head of this prophecy, have uttered injuries, calumnies, and invectives, and have mingled some one truth or another with endless fables. But what has all this to do, or what can it have to do, with the present subject? Because some have obscured certain truths by mingling them with errors and fables, ought we therefore not to give our diligence to set forth these very truths in their clearness and purity? Ought we therefore to deny them wholly, and pass entirely to the other extreme? Are we therefore prevented from taking a middle path equally wide of fatal error and mischievous flattery? What we say of the crimes of this woman, we say necessarily of her punishment also. Rome, not idolatrous but Christian, not the head of the Roman empire but the head of Christendom, and centre of unity of the true church of the living God, may very well (without ceasing from this dignity), at some time or other, incur this guilt, and before God be held guilty of fornication with the kings of the earth, and amenable to all its consequences. And in this there is no inconsistency, however much her defenders may shake the head. And this same Rome, in that same state, may receive on herself the horrible chastisement spoken of in the prophecy; nor is it necessary thereto that she previously be taken by the infidels, that she should return to become the court of the infidel Roman empire arisen from the grave with new and greater grandeur, nor that the new emperors should root out of her the Christian religion and reconstitute idolatry." (Tomo i. par. ii. fen. iii. § 14. Londres, 1826.)

I do not cite this as entirely agreeing with Lacunza's impressions, and of course not at all with his insensibility to the real and most grievous idolatry which has characterized Rome for so many centuries in the worship of the Virgin, saints, angels, and the host. This is clearly her characteristic to faith as blasphemy will characterize the beast. But Babylon is the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth, instead of preserving her purity as the church, a chaste virgin espoused to one man even Christ. She who made herself drunk with the blood of the saints has guiltily courted the kings of the earth to the full, and has intoxicated therewith herself on the earth (not the heavenly-minded) with the wine of her fornication, for her golden cup is full of abominations, that is, of idols. Lacunza therefore deceived himself in overlooking much that is past and present in Rome; and he seems to me, however morally right in the main, less right prophetically than the doctors who see an apostate future for Rome, and judgment first providential, then finally and directly divine. But the description of Babylon as a whole is essentially idolatrous and so distinguished from the blaspheming beast, with which, strange to say, the most zealous Papists and Protestants alike confound her.

The second priest I summon is le père Lambert, whose Exposition de Prédictions et des Promesses faites à l'Eglise appeared in Paris in 1806. But I need not cite words which more feebly convey arguments mostly given already from Lacunza, save perhaps that Lambert regards the evil which would justify the prophecy in so depicting Rome as more in the distant future. Substantially however his chapter 18 (tome ii. pp. 327-347) coincides, as far as it goes, with the great Spanish work, and is even fuller in combating the reasoning of Bossuet. Both insist that the awful destruction of Rev. 17 awaits Christian Rome. "I demand now" (says Lambert, near the close of the chapter and after citing the end of Rev. 18 and the beginning of chap. 19), "is there any one hardy enough to declare, contrary to the most unquestionable monuments of history, that the woes predicted by John for great Babylon are fallen on pagan Rome? or rather is it not a constant truth and generally recognised as such, that Rome has experienced nothing of the kind, either whilst it worshipped idols or since it embraced Christianity? Alaric took it and carried off part of its riches in the first years of the fifth century; Genseric did the same toward the middle of that century. Under Charles V., that perverse faithless prince, and on other occasions also it experienced similar losses. But besides that it was Christian then and for a long time since; it has never been either destroyed or reduced to ashes. . . . There is then no middle ground: either one must boldly give the lie to the Apocalyptic oracle on the terrible catastrophe reserved for Rome, or accept in good faith that its threats look to Rome Christian, and that their execution belongs to a future for which we are waiting."

W.K.

In the Beginning,

And the Adamic Earth:

An Exposition of Genesis 1 - 2: 3

W. Kelly.

New Edition, Revised

Preface to the First Edition.

The volume consists of papers which have already appeared in the Bible Treasury and thus secured a considerable circulation. But it has been strongly urged that even those who read these successive articles desire to have them as a consecutive whole, not only for their own reconsideration, but as much or more for the help of thousands unacquainted with that periodical, and more willing to examine the exposition of Gen. 1 - 2: 8 in a convenient collective form.

The writer has only to express his growing sense of the perfectness and inestimable value of this scripture as of all others. He prays that the work, notwithstanding all shortcomings may be by grace helpful to all who (in a day of effort to resuscitate lifeless forms and of reactionary free-thinking, both of which schools of unbelief struggle for the mastery) would keep Christ's word and not deny His name. In faith and love they would also seek earnestly the winning of souls from the imminent and increasing peril of going back, from the true light of Christ in all its fulness, to the darkness of a world now rapidly becoming apostate; which, by wisdom even more dangerously than by folly, knew not God, and rejects as foolishness the wisdom of God in Christ and Him crucified.

London, March, 1894.

GENESIS 1: 1

The Old Testament is a revelation from God in view of His earthly people Israel. It was of the highest moment that they should have the truth authoritatively announced that the one true God is the Creator of all. Darkness covered the earth, gross darkness the peoples. Israel, in Egypt, as later in the land of Canaan, was ever prone to forget this truth and lapse into the delusions of men. Fallen like others, they wished to be like all nations in their polity and their religion. Hence the importance of their knowing and acknowledging creation in any real sense; it points to and is bound up with the unity of the living God.

A difficulty has been raised, why, if God created, it was not always. The answer is as simple as complete. Eternal creation, eternal matter, is untrue and impossible, a contradiction for thought, even if we had not the word of God to enlighten us. God of all power, if He pleases, creates: there only is the truth of it. To say that the self-existing One cannot create is to deny that He is the Absolute, that He is God. But that God, omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign and good, can crease when He chooses, flows necessarily from what He is. If He could not display Himself in this way, or even more gloriously, He is not God. If the display of creation or of anything else were always, He would not be free and absolute. His sovereignty is part of Himself (Eph. 1: 11). Suppose any display necessary, and you destroy in thought His divine essence and will. Necessity is at bottom an atheistic device to get rid of the true God. Creation, therefore, was perfectly free to God, but not necessary; it was when and as He pleased. And He was pleased to create. Creation exists.

Nor can there be conceived a more simple, sublime, and comprehensive opening of divine revelation than these few words: — "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It is the absolute commencement of creation, and in the most pointed contradistinction from the seven days. The question is solely about the true unforced meaning of the written word of God, not about Rabbis any more than the chosen people. What does the inspired record contain and convey? It may be of interest to examine what Philo or Josephus understood, as well as how the Seventy translated it into Greek long before Christ. One may weigh either the Massorah or the Jerusalem Targum, and the comments of Jarchi, Aben Ezra, both Kimchis, Levi Ben Gerson, Saadias Haggaon, Abarbanel, or any other learned Jew, to say nothing of others.

But without them there is God's word given to be read and understood, though not without the faith of Christ, not without His guidance Who communicated it originally. It was not given to teach science, and it is wholly independent of philosophy for its intelligence. Geologists, Botanists, Zoologists, Astronomers, Historians, etc., have His brief and clear account before them. Man's comprehension of what is communicated may be affected by the amount of his knowledge, and far more by his faith. This, however, is a question of our understanding and expounding it; but we must never forget that God is the Author, and the writers only the instruments. The Bible is a moral book, only the more striking in its unity because it consists of so many compositions of so many writers, stretching over a thousand years of the most varied circumstances if we limit ourselves to the O.T. The reader may be right or wrong at any given time in the idea he attaches to what we call "firmament," "plant," or the like; but the truth remains unadulterated and unchanging in scripture, for us to read again and again, and to learn more perfectly.

This indeed constitutes its characteristic and permanent value. It is not only a full and sure source of instruction in consonance with its moral and yet higher designs to God's glory; it is the sole standard of the truth, by which we are bound to test all else which professes to be divine. Let us ever search afresh in faith, and ever grow into a deepening knowledge of the revealed mind of God.

The philosophies, as well as the religions, of antiquity were wholly ignorant of creation. Of God, of the "beginning," they knew nothing. Dreams of evolution were the earliest folly, and, among the Ionic school, Anaximander and Anaximenes followed Thales, each differing, all blind. Anaxagoras let in with mere matter the idea of mind, but no creator. It is useless to name others; even Plato and Aristotle, rivals too, had no real light. They, more or less openly, all held eternal matter at bottom; and though the philosophers boasted, as they still do, of their knowledge and logic, they failed to see that they could not prove it, or even that it is to mere mind unthinkable. To the believer it is the simple yet deep truth, that a beginning was given to everything that exists; if God says it, he perceives that nothing else can be true. For it is impossible to admit an effect without a cause; but reasoning can never rise at best beyond, There must be a First Cause; it can never say, There is. This God alone can and does affirm: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." God brought the whole ordered system into being. The form, nature, and aim, are not here explained: such a detail had no proper place here. That He created all is a primary and momentous truth.

But there is not a word in scripture to warrant the strange and hasty assumption that the universe was brought into being in the six days of Gen. 1: 3-31, so often referred to throughout the Bible. Construe the six days as men will, it is out of the power of any on just principles of interpretation to deny that the first day begins with light, and that the first two verses are marked off in their nature, as well as by their expression, from the work of the six days. Nothing indeed but prepossession can account for the mistake, which the record itself corrects. "In the beginning" has its own proper significance, and is in no way connected with "the days," save as the revealed start of divine creation, and in due time (however probably immense the interval) leading to that measure of time only when the constitution of things was made for Adam, for the race.

The antiquity of the earth may be as great as the shifting schemes of the most enthusiastic geologist ever conceived: there is absolutely neither here nor in any other part of scripture the least intimation that opposes vast ages before man was created, or that affirms man to be nearly contemporary with the original creation. It is ignorance of scripture to say that Moses assigns an epoch to the earth's first formation, such as fathers or commentators (not without worthier remarks) have imagined and made current in Christendom. The philosophers who have spent their time in the study of geology and kindred sciences will act wisely in reading with unwonted care the beginning of Gen. 1. They will thence learn that they have been precipitate in the conclusion that the inspired writing is at all committed to the blunders of its interpreters, theological or scientific. However vast the periods they claim, even for the strata nearest the surface, scripture is the sole record which, while revealing God as the Creator of all things, leaves room for all that has been wrought before the Adamic earth. "The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary: there is no searching of his understanding" (Isa. 40: 28). While geology waits for its Newton, subjection to scripture meanwhile would be untold gain to its devotees as to all other men.

There was an epoch then in the infinite course of eternity when God created the universe. This is here stated with the utmost accuracy — " in the beginning." It is in view of man, primarily indeed of Israel, that the Pentateuch was written, the Second man and Last Adam being the, as yet, hidden object (and the church one with Him) of God's counsels. Angels are not spoken of, though we know from another ancient book of inspiration that they expressed their joy when earth's foundations were made to sink (Job 38: 6, 7). "In the beginning," accordingly, is severed from all the measures of time with which a man's existence is conversant. How admirably previous duration, unlimited by ordinary notation, suits the immense changes of which geology takes cognizance, needs no further remark here.

"God" in our version answers to the Hebrew Elohim, which, however, has the peculiarity of a plural substantive with a singular verb. Christianity alone in its own time cleared up the enigma, which still remains impenetrably dark to the Jews, as well to other men, who know not in Christ "the true Light."

Again, there ought to be no doubt among scholars that the word "created" in our tongue corresponds better than any other with the original. With us, as with Israel, the word admits of application to signal callings into existence out of actual material, as in Gen. 1: 21, 27, but only with a special ground and emphasis. And never is it used of any other maker than God. But if the aim were to speak of creation in the ultimate, highest, and strictest sense, the Hebrews, like ourselves, had no other word so appropriated. Here the context is decisive. "God created the heavens and the earth," where nothing of the kind existed previously. They were created out of nothing as men speak, perhaps loosely, but not unintelligibly. The heathen might worship, as all did, the heavens, or even the earth; the Jew sinned against the written word if he was ensnared of Satan after their dark example. The first words of God's law told him that those were but creatures; Israel was to hear if others were deaf, and bound to own, serve, and worship the one God, the Creator. The chosen people was quite as ready as any other to worship the creature, as all their history to the Babylonish captivity proves; but there can be no doubt what the Bible supposed, declared, and claimed from its very first verse — God created the universe.

Further, it is not matter created, crude matter to be afterwards fashioned into the shapely and beautiful universe of the heavens and the earth. It is not chaos first, as Greek and Latin poets feigned, in accordance with heathen tradition never wholly right, though often mixing up what was not wrong. It is not a nebula, as La Place conceived, a mere modification of the same rationalism, however refined it be. Lord Rosse, by his observations with his great reflector, has fairly disposed of this unbelieving hypothesis. For he has proved that many nebulae, considered even by the Herschels irresolvable objects, actually consist of agglomerations of stars. Surely, therefore, the only just presumption is that all nebulae are nothing more, and only need more powerful means to make manifest their true nature. God only has given the truth plainly, briefly, and after a way transparently divine in its simple and unparalleled majesty. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." How is it, ye savants, that this great truth is found here only in its pristine splendour, towering above your Hesiods and Homers, your Ovids and Virgils, your Egyptian and Mexican remains, your Hindu and Chinese fables? How is it that to our day the Lyell and Darwin, to say nothing of profaner men, are stumbling in the dark over a morass of hypotheses (to say the least), unproved and dubious? It is because God's word is not believed as He wrote it; and this, because men like not the true God Who judges sin and saves only through His Son the Lord Jesus. So of old when men knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. It is the more guilty now, because, the Son of God being come and having accomplished redemption, the darkness quite passes away and the true light already shines. Alas! anything is welcome but a living God, and least of all the whole universe created by and through and for His Son Who is before all things and by Whom all things consist. "By faith we understand (or apprehend) that the worlds have been framed by God's word, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear" (Heb. 11: 3).

GENESIS 1: 2

Creation then in ver. 1 is the great primary fact of revelation. It is all the stronger, because the Hebrew text ("In [the] beginning") has no article, any more than the Greek in John 1: 1. It is therefore undefined. Compare Prov. 8: 23. From the context, however, it is plain that the fourth Gospel rises beyond the first book of Moses; for it goes back to divine and eternal being (not ἐγένετο, but ἦν), and not merely divine origination, which in fact appears later (in John 1: 3), and this in a form all-embracing and exclusive. "All things were made (came into being) through him, and without him was not anything made which hath been made."

"In the beginning" is not a known fixed point of time, but indefinite according to the subject-matter; it here intimates that "Of old," or "In former duration" (expressly undefined), God created the universe. Undoubtedly there is no disclosure of the immense aeons of which geologists speak so freely; but the language of ver. 1 leaves the door open for all that can be proved by research, or even for the longest demand of the most extravagant Uniformitarian.

But the words do affirm a "beginning" of the universe, and by God's word, as in both O. and N.T. (see Ps. 33: 6-9, and Heb. 11: 3). This was everything to accomplish His design, and His design was to create the heavens and the earth, where there had been nothing. Whatever Atheists or Pantheists feign, science at length confesses there was a "beginning;" so that "created" stands here in its proper and fullest sense, as the context requires.

"There was a beginning, says geology, to man; and farther back, to mammals, to birds, and to reptiles, to fishes, and all the lower animals, and to plants; a beginning to life: a beginning, it says also, to mountain ranges and valleys, to lands and seas, to rocks. Hence science takes another step back, and admits or claims a beginning to the earth, a beginning to all planets and suns, and a beginning to the universe. Science and the record in Genesis are thus one. This is not reconciliation; it is accordance." So writes Dr. J. D. Dana, the eminent American Professor, in the "O. and N. Test. Student" of July, 1890.

The record declares that God created not a "formless earth," but "the heavens" (where at no time do we hear of disorder) "and the earth." But even as to "the earth," which was to be a scene of change, we are expressly told by an authority no leas inspired, and therefore of equal authority with Moses, that such disorder was not the original state. "For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens; he is God; that formed the earth and made it; he established it, he created it not a waste, he formed it to be inhabited" (Isa 45: 18). The Revised V. is purposely cited, as confessedly the more correct reflection of the prophet. Here is therefore the surest warrant to separate ver. 2 from ver. 1 (save, of course, that it is a subsequent fact), severed, it may be, by a succession of geologic ages, and characterised by a catastrophe, at least as far as regards the earth. Indeed it would be strange to hear of an ordered heavens along with a "formless earth" as the firstfruits of God's creative activity.

But we are not told of any such anomaly. The universe, fresh from God's will and power, consisted of "the heavens and the earth." Silence is kept as to its condition then, and up to the cataclysm of ver. 2; and most suitably, unless God's purpose in the Bible were altogether different from that moral end which pervades it from first to last. What had the history of those preliminary physical changes to do with His people and their relations to Himself? But it ought not to be doubted that each state which God made was a system perfect for its aim. Yet it was not formless materials only, but heaven and earth.

"And the earth was (or became) waste* and empty, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God [was] brooding upon the face of the waters" (ver. 2).

* "Without form" is hardly exact, for all matter must have form, but desolate or disordered it may be made subsequently. "To become" (not "be") is the force of the verb in some twenty places in this chapter.

The well-known and flexible particle of connection in the Hebrew text introduces the verse. Its meaning, usually and simply copulative, is often modified, as almost all words in every language must be, by contextual considerations. Hence the learned Dathe, in 1781, renders it here "posthaec vero," expressly to distinguish the state of things in ver. 2 from that referred to in ver. 1, and sends us to such instances as Num. 5: 23, Deut. 1: 19. Now there is no doubt that the Hebrew conjunction admits of an interval as often as facts demand it; but there is no need of departing from its primary force, "and" (though our conjunction is not so pliant); or it may readily have a somewhat adversative force as we see in the LXX. The true determination lies in what follows. For the usage of the past verb when thus employed is to express a state subsequent to, and not connected with, what goes before, but previous to what follows. Hebrew idiom does not use that verb simply as a copula, as may be seen twice in this verse, and almost everywhere; or it puts the verb before the noun. The right conclusion therefore is that Moses was led to indicate the desolation into which the earth was thrown at some epoch not made known, after creation, but prior to the "days" in which it was made the habitation for Adam and the race.

With this agrees the occurrence of the remarkable phraseology "waste and empty" elsewhere. There are but two other occasions: — Isa. 34: 11, "the line of confusion [or waste] and the stones of emptiness;" and Jer. 4: 23, "I beheld the earth; and lo! it was waste and emptiness." In both it is a desolation indicted, not the primary condition. So it is in Genesis 1: 2. It is the more to be noted, as in Jeremiah it is said of the heavens at this time, that "they had no light." Thus is confirmed, by each of the other occurrences, the conviction that our text describes a state which befell the earth, possibly long after its original creation as in the verse before. It is to this interval that the successive ages of geology apply. Here are undeniable facts, full of interest, and implying creation made existent and extinguished. One's confidence in the hypotheses reared on all this may be otiose or enthusiastic; but the exact meaning of Moses' words in this verse leaves all the room that could be desired for those vast processes which may be gathered from the observed phenomena of the earth's crust. There is nothing in scripture to exclude a succession of creatures rising to higher organization from lower as the rule, with a striking exception here and there, from the Eozoon in the Laurentian rocks of Canada to the Mammalia, which most nearly resemble those of the earth as it is. But all the brilliant ingenuity of Sir C. Lyell, with others of kindred view, fails to explain or evade the proofs of change at this very period, immense as it may have been, incomparably vaster and more rapid than since man appeared. No doubt the deluge had the deepest moral significance, and is thus unique, because the human race, save those in the ark, was then swept away. But physically its traces were superficial compared with those far more ancient convulsions so apparent except to those who worship Time and Uniformitarianism.

"We simply assert" (says the cautious Sir R. I. Murchison), "on the countless evidences of fracture, dislocation, metamorphism, and inversion of the strata, and also on that of vast and clean-swept denudations, that these agencies were from time to time infinitely more energetic than in existing nature  - in other words, that the metamorphisms and oscillations of the terrestrial crust, including the uprise of sea-bottoms, and the sweeping out of debris, were paroxysmal in comparison with the movements of our own era We further maintain that no amount of time (of which no true geologist was ever parsimonious when recording the history of bygone accumulations of sediment, or of the different races of animals they contain) will enable us to account for the signs of many great breaks and convulsions which are visible in every mountain chain, and which the miner encounters in all underground workings. . . . The case therefore stands thus. The shelly and pebbly terraces which exist are signs of sudden elevations at different periods; whilst the theory of modern gradual elevation and depression is still wanting in any valid proof that such operations have taken place except within very limited areas. Much longer and more persistent observations must indeed be made before any definite conclusion can be reached respecting the rate of gradual elevation or depression which has been going on in the last thousand years, though we may confidently assert that such changes in the relations of land to water in the historical period have been infinitesimally small when compared with the many antecedent geological operations" (Siluria, 490-1, fifth ed., 1872).

On the one hand the facts point to changes in earth and sea, and these repeatedly varied too with fresh water; to rocks igneous and stratified and metamorphosed, and (during the periods thus implied, and with a corresponding environment of temperature and constitution) to organised natures, vegetable and animal, from lower orders to high, short of man and those animals which accompany his appearance on the earth; to whole groups of these organisms in vast abundance coming to an end, and others quite distinct succeeding and extinguished in their turn. Would it not be a harsh supposition that God, in the fossils of the rocks, made a mere appearance of what once lived? that these petrified creatures never had animate existence here below? On the other hand, the principle and the fact of creation we see not more plainly revealed in ver. 1 than of disruption in ver. 2; and both before the actual preparation of the earth for Adam as described in the six days.

As the creation, announced in a few words of noble simplicity, is the first and most momentous of God's productive interventions, so the catastrophe here briefly described seems to be the last and greatest disturbance of the globe, the twenty-seventh or sub-Apennine stage, if we accept the elaborate conclusions of M. Alcide D'Orbigny (Paleontologie Stratigr., Tome ii. 800 - 824), a most competent naturalist. Then the Alps and Chilian Andes received their actual elevation, of itself (though with many other changes of enormous consequence) quite sufficient to account for universal confusion, with destruction of life on the earth, the deep supervening everywhere, and utter darkness pervading all. However vast, this state may have been for but a little while. The animals embedded ages before in the rocks had eyes; presumably therefore light then prevailed. Indeed some of the earliest organic remains had vision with the most striking adaptation to their circumstances, as the Trilobites of the Silurian and other beds, with their compound structure, each eye in one computed to have 6,000 facets (Owen's Pal. 48, 49, 2nd ed.). The language of ver. 2 is perfectly consistent with this, when compared with ver. 1, and in fact naturally supposes the darkness to be the effect of the disorder.

To confound the two verses is as contrary to the only sound interpretation of the record, as it is to the facts which science undertakes to arrange and expound. Nor can anything be more certain than the manner in which scripture steers clear of all error and consistently with all that is irrefragably ascertained, whilst never quitting its own spiritual ground to occupy the reader with physics. To reduce these gigantic operations of the geologic ages, in destruction and reconstruction with new living genera and species, to the slow course of nature and providence in the Adamic earth, the fashionable craze of the modern school, is "making a world after a pattern of our own," quite as really as uninformed prejudice used to do. It was absurd to deny that the petrifactions of the strata were once real animals and plants, and to attribute them to a plastic force in the earth, or to the influence of the heavens: but so it is to overlook the evidence of extremely violent and rapid convulsions before man was made, closing one geological period and inaugurating another with its flora and fauna successively suited to each in the wisdom and power and goodness of God.

Neither ver. 1 nor ver. 2 is a summary of the Adamic earth, which only begins to be got ready from ver. 3. There are, accordingly, three states with the most marked distinction: original creation of the universe; the earth passed into a state of waste and emptiness; and the renovation of the earth, etc., for man its new inhabitant and ruler. Science is dumb, because wholly ignorant, how each of these three events, stupendous even the least of them, came to pass; it can only speak, often hesitatingly, about the effects of each, and, with least boldness, about creation in the genuine sense, though some, I cheerfully acknowledge, with outspoken and ungrudging cordiality. How different and surpassing is the language of scripture, which has revealed all these things to babes, if they are hid from or dubious to the wise and the prudent! From the Bible they are, or ought to be, known on infallible authority, and this in the first written words God gave to man, when Rome and Athens had not emerged from barbarism if they existed as such at all.

Our ver. 2 then brings to view a confused state of the earth, as different from the order of primary creation as from the earth of Adam and his sons, in regard to which state the Spirit of God is said to have been "brooding upon the face of the waters." By His Spirit the heavens are beautified; and as to creatures generally it is written, "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the ground." Here it was to be for man's earth. This is the link of transition. All was to be made by God's word. Wisdom rejoices in the "habitable" earth, and has delights with the sons of men. A mighty wind might rage over the abyss. The Spirit of God, not the wind, could be said with propriety to "brood." What new wonders were at hand!

GENESIS 1: 3-5

Now comes the first point of direct contact with the habitable earth and its surrounding. We have had (ver. 1) the creation of the heavens and the earth, apart from date or definite time; we have had also (ver. 2) a superinduced condition of confusion, but the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters. Neither one nor other has to do with man's earth, though earth there had been under both those differing and successive conditions. Nor can it be doubtful to him who knows God, that even the latter had its worthy and wise aim as well as more obviously the former. But neither phase is connected immediately with man, though all was done to God's glory with man in prospect, and above all the Second man, as we can add unhesitatingly from the N.T. It is to the facts stated in these preliminary verses that geological observations and inferences would mainly refer. As the words are few and general, there is ample space for research.

The believer knows beforehand that theoretic conclusions wherever sound must fall in with the sentence of inspiration. The work of the six days has little if anything to do with geology. There may be a measure of analogy between the work of the third, fifth, and sixth days, and certain of the alleged antecedent geologic periods which the Bible passes over silently as being outside its range and object, while room is left for them all in vers. 1 and 2. But the effort to force the days, whether those three or al] six, into a scriptural authority for the successive ages of geology is mere illusion. If it be a harmless use of geology, it is anything but reverence for God's word or intelligence in it. That there are discrepancies between the record and any facts certainly ascertained, neither geology proves, nor any of the sciences still more sure and mature. But he who is assured of revealed truth can afford to hear all that experts assert, even when based on a partial induction of facts, as is not seldom the case. If, outside scripture, there is nothing a believer has to contend for; if scripture speaks, he believes, no matter what science declares to the contrary; if science confirms it, so much the better for science. Assuredly God's word needs no imprimatur from men.

If one appealed to any branch of physical science as to the first day, he could get no clear answer. Geology has confessedly, nothing to say. What can astronomy or optics do more? Science, as such, leaves out God — science, not scientific men, many of the greatest of whom have been true-hearted believers. Science, in itself, knows nothing of the power that originated, ignores the First Cause, and shirks ordinarily even the final causes which might summon heed to a first cause. It occupies itself with an established order in the world and with secondary causes, especially those at work before men's eyes or probably deducible from experience. The peril for the unwary is obvious, and real, and notorious. It would be much less if science were honest enough to acknowledge its ignorance of what is beyond its sphere. But often its interpreter says "There is not," where logically and morally he is entitled only to say, "I know not." This is not merely audacity without warrant, but sin of the worst kind. The fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God." It is exactly where science finds itself confessedly stopped by a blind wall that scripture proclaims the truth from God. As He knows, so He revealed as far as in His wisdom and goodness He saw fit. "And God said, Light be: and light was. lend God saw the light that [it was] good; and God divided between the light and the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, one (or, first) day" (vers. 3-5).

Now who but an inspired man would have so written? The more you depreciate Israel as an unlettered, if not rude and barbarous, people, the greater the wonder. Did Egypt so teach, or Babylon? did Greece or Rome? How came Moses to declare that the fact was as he writes? I do not speak of the sublime which Longinus so justly extolled, but of that which human experience never could have suggested; for living man, had he judged from universally known phenomena, had ever regarded the sun as the great source of light; so that if the writing had been his, he must naturally have spoken first of that bright orb. In other words, the work of the fourth day would more reasonably have taken the place of the first. That the philosophers taught for ages afterwards. But not so the truth; and, whatever the seeming and striking difficulty, especially then, Moses was given to write the truth. As the apostle says some fifteen centuries after, God spoke light to shine out of darkness (2 Cor. 4: 6). The darkness is not said to have been everywhere, but "on the face of the deep," and now that an earth for the human race was in question, there it was that God commanded light to shine. That it was "created" now is not said; that it had existed before during the geologic ages for varying phases of the earth and for a very long while for the vegetable and animal kingdoms, there is abundant reason to conclude. But this is science, not faith, though the scriptural account is the sole cosmogony that leaves room for it.

But what is affirmed is that (after utter confusion reigned over the earth and darkness on the face of the deep, yet the Spirit of God brooding on the face of the waters) God interposed and said, Light be; and light was. As far as the Adamic earth was concerned, the light-bearers were not yet set in their functions as now: this was the fourth-day work. The word was, "Light be;" and light was: language evidently consistent with that view of light which prevails in comparatively modern times against Sir I. Newton's theory of emanation from the sun. If the phenomena of light are allowed in general to be a result of molecular action, and dependent on fundamental qualities of matter as it is now constituted, so that it was not the creation of an element admitting of independent existence, as science now owns, is it not remarkable that the words of Moses avoid all error, without forestalling scientific discovery, and express nothing but truth in the clearest terms? At the word of God appeared instant activity of light, just before that time inert.

But science easily over-shoots itself in hasty generalisation. For it contradicts the inspired record when it ventures to say that the fiat as to light on the first day must have preceded the existence of water and of earth, of solid or liquid or gaseous compounds of every kind. Granted that light is manifested in the making of such compounds. But vers. 1 and 2 give the surest testimony that "earth" and "water" did exist, not indeed before light, but before that particular fiat of God which called it into action for the earth that now is, after the confusion and darkness which had just before prevailed.

It is all a mistake then, and distinctly at issue with the context, to assume that there was no "light" in the state of things intimated by ver. 1. And it is allowed that even the "earth" and "water" of ver. 2, whatever the then state of ruin and darkness, could not have been without "light" previously, if but to form them. Verse 3 was not therefore really the signal of creation begun, but of God acting afresh and in detail, ages after the universe was created, with its systems, and within them its suns, planets, and satellites. On the plain face of the record, after the mighty work of the universe, and after a disruption that befell the earth with most marked consequences, God puts forth His word to form the Adamic earth with its due accompaniments.

Hence we may notice anticipatively that on the fourth day not a hint is given of creating the physical masses of the sun, moon, and stars. It is there and then no more than setting them in their declared and existing relations to the earth. Their creation belongs in time to Gen. 1: 1; but of the rest more fully in its place. That on the first day light dissipated the then prevailing darkness is true, and of deep interest as God's first word and act for the earth of man. But this says nothing about the original creation of the heavens and earth. Nor is it quite comprehensible why "the waters" of ver. 2 should not be literal waters, because utter darkness veiled the deep or abyss. These are the inconsistencies that necessarily flow from the false start which confounds "in the beginning" of ver. 1 with the "first day" of vers. 3-5 and those that follow; as this again involves the extraordinary error of taking ver. 2 to be the original state of the earth in ver. 1, when it immediately came into being from God.

The hypothesis that the earth when creation began was a frigid chaos or frozen globe, strange as it seems, is hard to escape for such as deny successive states since creation according to God's will, or, which goes along with it, for such as affirm the "creation" of the sun, etc., only on the fourth day. The argument is that, if so, it must have been almost cloudless, well lighted, and well warmed — in short, an impossibility. But reasoning from things as they are to a condition so contrasted in the record itself with what God formed for man subsequently is fallacious. It is simply a question of what God tells us of the abnormal state supposed in ver. 2. Not a word implies frigidity, save that darkness was on the face of the deep, which may rather have been the effect of heat acting on the earth and the waters, a transient state after previous order, and before it was made for Adam.* The record in no way identifies the disorder with the earth when its creation was effected in ver. 1; but it assuredly distinguishes the dark dislocation of ver. 2 from the work of the fourth day when the earth and sun and stars became one in system as in their present constitution. In short, the dilemma appears to be quite baseless. The true scope of ver. 2 is not at all that the original creation was a scene of darkness, even for the earth, but that when the earth, not the heavens, was thrown into confusion ever so long after, darkness was on the face of the deep. Light is not an element calling for annihilation (which would indeed be absurd), but a state flowing from molecular activity which God could and did here arrest, as far as "the deep" was concerned. It acted all the same elsewhere; as it had over the earth till then during the formation of what some geologists call the Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary beds, to say nothing of what preceded: details for men to discover and interpret as they can scientifically, but as foreign to scripture as the detailed wonders and movements of the starry heavens.

* Without any pretension to dogmatise on science, it is curious to find how these oracles disagree. For the nebular theory in La Place's "Exposition du Système du Monde," the boast of modern science so vaunted against Genesis 1, supposes all the planets existing before the sun reached its actual condition. And Arago, Humboldt, etc., contend that the sun not only was but is a dark globe, with a luminous atmosphere simply. Dr. A M'Caul also refers to the discoveries of Kirchhoff in proof that the earth was before the sun and had a light of its own. Why attach weight to any speculation about the solar system before the preparation of the earth for the race? The proper domain of science lies not in what has long passed away, but in the accurate classification of facts grouped under general laws that stand the test.

Hence "creation" of light, first or second, in the universe is only the slip of philosophers. Scripture is more accurate than its most modern expounder, even when striving to show the accordance of science with the Bible. In the gloom that overhung the earth thrown into desolation God caused light to act, as the characteristic act of the "first day" of the week, the brief cycle that was to close with man its new master and representative of God here below. "And God saw the light that [it was] good; and God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." It presents to us God pondering and speaking in gracious consideration of the race He was about to create thereon, with a mind dwelling on realities about to open out for man far more solemn than the light or the darkness, day or night, literally. Yet the light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart, says the Preacher (Prov. 15: 30), and truly is sweet (Eccles. 11: 7), as God pronounced it "good." "And it was evening, and it was morning, first (or, one) day." Only we must guard against taking the previous darkness as the evening. It would appear rather that light shone; and then its waning into night, and brightening into day, constituted the first day. That the earth would revolve on its axis, before the light- bearing of the sun afterwards, and so have the phenomena of evening and morning, is easy to apprehend. The fact is certain; the "how" was no difficulty to Him Who spoke and it was done. Our place is to honour Him in believing His word, without which faith nothing is as it should be. Another first day was to behold a better light; there, too, still more conspicuously, if that True Light shone when all was profounder darkness, He too had been before the darkness.

If the preceding exposition be just, the day of the first week is plainly one of twenty-four hours. No one can fairly deny that scripture, like other speech, uses "day" where required in a general or figurative sense, which may cover a period of considerable length. But this need never produce embarrassment to a careful reader: as ever, the context gives the clue. In this chapter and the next we have the word variously applied according to the exigency of the case; in none ought it to be doubtful. Here "the evening" and "the morning" should exclude just question. It can only mean, thus defined, a day of twenty-four hours. Before (not "there was a sun," but before) the sun was set to rule the day (of twelve hours) as now makes no difference as to the length meant. The same phrase is carefully used before and after. Nor would any prolonged sense have been tolerated for this carefully specified week but for the error which muddles "the beginning" with the first and following days, makes the heavens and the earth at first to be a chaos, and in so doing effaces in fact the creation of both the one and the other. For where is either really "created" on such a scheme?

This will appear still more convincingly when we come to close quarters with the six days viewed as embracing the immense ages of geology. It might not be so glaring when taken in a dreamy poetic way as a vision in the hands of the late Hugh Miller. But when the simple dignity of the true father of history is vindicated for the matchless prose of Moses, the effort to make the days, or some of them, answer to the ages of geologic formation in building up the crust of the globe proves itself in so much more glaring and violent failure. Take the first day as our first test: are we told to imagine such a notion as that the outshining of the light in dispelling the immediately antecedent darkness occupied an age? And if not for the first day, or the second, or the fourth, how harshly inconsistent to claim it for the third, fifth, and sixth? Especially as the seventh day, or sabbath, should honestly put to the rout any such application. In every case the figurative sense is here irrelevant and unsuitable. We shall see in due time from scripture that the stretching out of the sabbath into an aeon is altogether unfounded.

An ingenious attempt is made in "Sermons in Stones" to show that the brooding of the spirit in ver. 2 means the creation of submarine animals (Zoophytes and Bivalve Molluscs without visual organs) before light; then of a higher class furnished with organs of sight after light on the second day; and lastly of Vertebrate Fishes on the third. All this is error opposed by the record, which admits of animated nature for man's world only after the fourth day. For this confusion we are indebted to the misinterpreting "days" here into ages. The truth is, according to the record, that the Spirit's brooding upon the face of the waters is quite general and admits of no such precision, as it was also before the first day. And if the days were simply days of the week in which Adam was created, geology can neither affirm nor contradict. Its main office is to investigate the evidence of the successive ages of the earth's crust before the human race. It is freely granted that the language employed by inspiration is that of phenomena; but this does not warrant the hypothesis of the medium of a vision. It was a divine communication to and by Moses; but how given we know not and should not speculate, lest we err. A vision in fact might have shown him the submarine animals, being beyond natural conditions; but the hypothesis is invented to foist in the creation of animals, not seen or specified in the record.

Further, we must banish the notion that the black pall of an unbroken night was the original condition  - a heathen, not a biblical, idea. It was not so before ver. 2, which describes a subsequent and transient state. The first verse supposes an order of the universe; the second, an interruption of no small moment for man; then in ver. 3 the week begins in which the earth was prepared for his abode who was made before that week ended. The geologic ages had passed before the human measures of time commenced. If the record had been duly read, the Inquisition might have avoided its unwise and suicidal judgment of Gal. Galiléi; for the first day, compared with the fourth, favours the Copernican theory as decidedly as it condemns the old philosophy of Ptolemy. It exactly agrees with the revolution of the earth round its axis for evening and morning, independently of the function of the sun soon after formed. Only we must take note that the profound darkness dispelled was neither primeval nor universal, as many men of science have hastily assumed. It had nothing to do with the heavens, any more than had the disorder which befell the earth, after ever so long lapse of time.

GENESIS 1: 6-8

Happily the second day's work admits of a notice so much the more brief because of the rather full remarks on the preceding verses. In these were discussed the original creation "in the beginning"; then the superinduced state of confusion; lastly the work of the "first day" that commences the week of the earth's preparation for the human race.

The evident immediateness of the first day's work applies throughout the other days. Whatever grounds there may be for scientific men to infer processes occupying vast tracts of time before the "days," there is no real reason to doubt, but plain and positive scripture to believe, that the work done on the several six days was not of long ages, but really within the compass of the literal evening and morning. How unnatural to suppose an age for light to act on the first day! And why suppose otherwise on the second day or any other? A long succession of ages may be true after "the beginning" and before "the days," which taken in their natural import have a striking moral harmony with man, the last work of God's creation-week.

In this way there is no contest between long periods of progressive character and successive acts of marked brevity. On the one hand, the record is so written as to leave ample space for the researches of scientific discovery over the evidence of successive states of the earth before man existed; on the other, details under the shape of divine fiats in the six days appear only when man is about to be created. There is thus truth in both views. The mistake is in setting them in opposition. One can understand, if God so willed it, immense times of physical action, with secondary causes in operation before man, not without the evidence of convulsion far beyond volcanoes or the deluge within the human period, which great geologists at home and abroad admit, contrary to the recent speculations of others. But there are those that feel the gracious (not belittling) condescension of God in deigning to work for six days and rest on the seventh, only when getting ready that earth where was, not only the first man to come under His moral government, but the Second man later to glorify God to the uttermost, give to such as believe eternal life, and prove the worthlessness of all who reject His grace and repent not of their sins; the true and intelligible and blessed reason why this earth, so insignificant in bulk when compared with the vast universe of God, has a position in His favour so transcending all other planets, suns, or systems, put together. If man was much to differentiate the earth, Christ is infinitely more: and He has yet to show what the earth and man on it are to be under His glorious kingdom, to say nothing of the heavens according to His grace and the counsels of God.

But a little must be said of the second day. These are the terms: — "And God said, Let an expanse be in the midst of the waters, and dividing be between waters and waters. And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters that [are] under the expanse and the waters that [are] above the expanse: and it was so. And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day" (vers. 6-8).

There is no more ground for conceiving this to be the first creation of atmospheric heavens than we saw in the case of light on the first day. The absolute language of creating is avoided in both cases. As there had been light in the long ages of geology when not only plants but animals marine and terrestrial abounded, suited to the systems that contained them, so an atmosphere was requisite and, no doubt, was furnished of God with every provision for their sustenance till a new condition succeeded by God's power. That which now girdles the earth may not have been altogether alike for the varying states of vegetable and animated being long before man existed, to say nothing of the azoic periods before either. They had each an environment adapted by the Creator of all. The remains in successive strata indicate an admirable suitability for the then flora and fauna, quite different from the Adamic earth and its inhabitants, in some of which it may be doubted if man could have lived, as he did not in fact.

The great difficulty for geologists, especially of late from the growth of infidel thought, is to allow such a revolution as ver. 2 intimates. Even Christians among them are afraid to be governed by its express declarations, and shrink from the ignorant mockery of those who boldly deny there ever was a breach of continuity between the original creation and the days of man on the earth. But on the one hand it is certain that the record maintains such a breach to have occurred (and this not on a circumscribed part of the earth, which some like Dr. Pye Smith have imagined in a spirit of compromise,* but for the earth wholly) as to require an entire re-ordering of it as well as man's creation, God's vicegerent then first made to have dominion over all here below. On the other hand, it is intolerable to assume that no convulsions could have effected such changes as the non-action of light, or the destruction of atmospheric conditions, etc. This is mere and narrow unbelief. "Ye do err, knowing not the scriptures nor the power of God." How little science can explain even of existing life and of its surroundings! How unbecoming of geology to dogmatise! Is it not one of the youngest of sciences, with much to explore and adequately weigh, and very far from the precision of chemistry for instance, though there too how much is unknown?

* Sir J. W. Dawson, in his "Archaia," rejects the views represented by both Chalmers and Smith, but seems himself obscure as to the bearing of ver. 2. He is a believer; where, and when, does he then assign the occurrence of that unparalleled disorder? That scripture places it before the Adamic earth, and after the original creation, is an undeniable fact. It is easy to object if influenced by some loud-voiced materialists; but what is the truth? What saith the scripture? Geology has much to learn. Our call is to believe God, not to humour the lispings of an infant science. That immense and violent upturning was itself absolutely requisite for man about to be created subsequently.

At a fit moment the question of the mammoth, etc., co-existing with the musk-ox and other surviving quadrupeds may be briefly examined. But on the face of the argument it is plain that there is no more difficulty in conceiving God might renew some previously existing plants and animals for Adam's earth, than in causing light again to act on the first day and the atmosphere on the second. The work of the first day, perfectly if not exclusively consistent with an instantaneous exertion of the divine will, illustrates and confirms that of the second day. Scripture places the description of ver. 2 at some time before these days commence. Light acted first after that disorder, and according to the earth's revolution on its axis. Next day the atmospheric heavens, so essential to light, sound, and electricity, to vegetation and animal life, were called (or rather recalled) to their functions after that confusion which destroyed them in ways beyond our ken.

Assuredly this renewal was no matter of a long age of gradual process, but a work to which God assigned a separate day, though to Him abstractedly a moment had sufficed. As it is, man's attention was impressively drawn to His considerate and almighty goodness Who then separated "waters from waters," which otherwise had filled space above the earth with continual vapour and without that due mixture of gases which constitutes the air essential to all life on the globe. To its machinery with other causes by divine constitution we owe the formation of clouds and the fall of rain as well as evaporation; to its refractive and reflective powers, that modification of light which adds incalculably to beauty no less than to the utility of the creation: a black sky had otherwise cast its constant pall over the earth. Even had dry land by another fiat been disengaged from the waters, without this encompassing elastic fluid, vapours would not have been absorbed nor have fallen as now; dew had ceased; fountains and rivers if formed had wasted away; water had enormously prevailed; and if dry land had survived anywhere, it must have been a dry arid waste with neither animal life nor a blade of grass. But enough; these are not the pages in which to seek the physical methods of creative beneficence.

It is now generally known, as it had long been laid down by the most competent Hebraists before modern science existed, that "expanse" is the real force of the original word, instead of "firmament" which came to us through the Latin Vulgate, as it seems due to the Greek Septuagint. Possibly these Jewish translators in the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus may have succumbed here as elsewhere to Gentile ideas or at least phrases. And a great Rabbinical scholar, a Christian teacher, has given his opinion that the Greek version employs the word (στερέωμα) in the sense of an ethereal or fine subtle orb, and in no way of a solid permanent vault as rationalists love to assume, basing it on etymology and figurative usage. The aim is obvious, the wish father to the thought. Excluding God from the written word as from creation, deifying nature and exalting fallen man (more especially of the nineteenth century), they gladly depreciate the text by citing "windows" and "doors," "pillars" and "foundations" as if meant literally. Now the usage of the word even in the chapter itself (vers. 15, 17, 20, 28) sufficiently proves that the word conveys the idea of the open transparent sky, whatever may have been the misunderstanding of the reader at any given time.

Hence it may be noted that the Authorised and Revised English Versions give "the air" as the equivalent of "the heavens" in ver. 28 as elsewhere. It is really the expanse, including the atmospheric heavens in the lower part of which birds fly. A solid vault is out of the question. The true derivation seems rather from a word expressing elevation, like the source of our own "heaven"; but even if drawn from the idea of beating or hammering out, who knows not that words may and do acquire a force etherealised according to the object designated, wholly above their material origin? The scriptures really present the heavens as spread out, and the earth hung upon nothing, nowhere giving countenance to the grossness of the stars fastened like brass nails on a metallic vault. Sceptical ill-will likes that it should seem so; but it is unworthy slander. Even Dathe who was free enough gives "spatium extensum," as did learned Jews generally long before and since.

"The waters above" consist of that enormous supply of vapour which fills the clouds and falls as rain, hail, or snow. "The waters below" covered the earth as yet, but were shortly to form seas, when the dry land appeared next day. It is ignorance therefore to say, in the face of a crowd of scriptures, that the waters above imply a permanent solid vault like a shower bath. The Hebrews could see the movements of many heavenly bodies instead of regarding all as fixtures. But even had they been as dull as rationalism is invidious, our concern is with the divine record, the accuracy of which irritates hostile minds who would hail the least flaw with satisfaction. Scripture abides; science changes and corrects itself from age to age. As to figures, "bottles" are used no less than "pillars," and a "tent" or "curtain" as well as "windows" and "doors." They are all strikingly expressive. Only the stupid or malicious could take any of them in the letter, to dishonour the scriptures.

GENESIS 1: 9-13

This publication is scarcely the suited place, nor does the writer pretend, to draw out adequately the wondrous and beneficent functions of the separated waters or seas and of the dry land, any more than of the light and of the atmospheric heavens, on which a little has been said. But a few words here may confirm, what was remarked as to the first and the second days, that the record speaks with immediate propriety of God's constituting the earth for the human race. By no means does it intimate particulars of the long periods before man when those successive changes are observable, which laid down vast stores for his future use and fitted the earth's progressively built-up crust, the rich field of geological research. One can admire the wisdom which did not encumber the Bible with the details of natural science. Rocks crystalline and stratified are before men's eyes, who can reason on the fossils they embalm. Scripture alone avoids the universal heathen idea of a primitive chaos, and the philosophic error of an eternal universe or even eternal matter. Scripture, on the contrary, has carefully enunciated God's creation at an undefined moment, "in the beginning," not merely of crude materials, but of the heavens and the earth, without a word about their denizens. It also makes known the fact that the earth was subjected to revolution so complete that before the Adamic state of things divine power was needed to cause light to act in a diurnal way, as well as to order the atmosphere, and from a previous and universal overspread of waters the appearance of dry land, on which God began the plants or vegetable kingdom for man.

Thus the work of these days wholly leaves out, because chronologically it follows, the vast operations both of slow construction and of destruction which give special interest to the geologist. Original creation and subsequent dislocation (which swept away in due time whole species and genera of organised beings, followed by fresh and different ones, and this repeatedly) it asserts distinctly; and both, before the days which prepared all for his life and probation under divine government who was created ere the week closed. The document itself furnishes the warrant to the believer for taking the first verse indefinitely before the six days, and also for affirming the state, possibly final state, of confusion into which the earth passed before it became the world as it now is.

There may indeed be some analogy between the days that concern the earth of the human race and those immense ages of ripening advance which preceded, so as to furnish a slight ground of resemblance on which not a few men of ingenuity and the best intentions have reared their various schemes for accommodating the days to the geological ages. Yet this hypothesis, even when guarded by the most cautious and competent aid of science, does not square with scripture. It is unjustifiable in every point of view to confound the disturbed state of ver. 2 with the creation of the earth described in ver. 1, which it really follows, disorder after order; is it not even absurd to identify ver. 3 with either? Each follows consecutively; and the long tracts of time, if filled up in a way that scripture does not essay, would come in after ver. 1, and before ver. 3, which wholly differing from what precedes, introduces a new condition where alone details are given to mark God's direct dealings with man.

Hence the days, from ver. 3 and onward, are wholly misapplied to the geologic ages. Where for this scheme have we the formation of the plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks? Where the upheaval of the mountain ranges and the tracing of the river systems? Where the succession of organic remains, marine and terrestrial, vegetable and animal, new ones following those extinguished, and mutually distinct, from the Laurentian beds to the Post-Pleiocene or Quaternary? The six days set forth the peculiar constitution God was pleased to establish for the existing or human world. What the geologic periods embrace is successive remodellings of the earth where sea and land have changed place, mountains were raised and valleys scooped, perhaps again and again, not only a sweeping away of old organic creation, but an introduction of new plants and animals, each assemblage confessed even by Lyell to admirably fit the new states of the globe; with singular varieties all pointing by harmony of parts and beauty of contrivance to One Divine Maker. These days only begin, when God, having closed the long undefined periods of progressive character, with repeated extermination of their correspondingly changed flora and fauna, forms, within the brief span of human labour, that system, inorganic and organic of which man is the appointed head, but enriched by all He had slowly deposited and rendered available to man's industry and profit by that dislocation which laid bare treasures so remote and manifold, so interesting and important.

The divine operations of the third day call for more detail than that which was last before us. They form a double class, as does the work of the sixth day.

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one place, and let the dry [land] appear. And it was so. And God called the dry [land] Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas. And God saw that [it was] good. And God said, Let the earth sprout grass, herb producing seed, fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which [is] in them, on the earth. And it was so. And the earth sprouted grass, herb producing seed after its kind, and trees yielding fruit, the seed of which [is] in them after their kind. And God saw that [it was] good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a third day" (vers. 9-13).

We have seen light (involving heat) caused to act for the Adamic earth, and that atmosphere which sustains an enormous body of waters above those that lie below: both of them results of essential importance for what was coming, and of course adapted by divine power and wisdom to the system in which the human race were to exist. It was needless and foreign for a divine revelation to explain how these and other works of God were effected. The important truth for His people, and for every soul of man, to know, is that He is both the Originator and the Maker of all. No student of geology doubts mechanical any more than chemical agency on the largest scale in forming the crust of the earth. Heat, water, and air have played their part under His hand in change, and waste, and progressive formation. But it is only the petty and pedantic unbelief of some who cry up such gradual secondary causes as are now seen, shutting out the evidence (which geology itself affords to candid minds) of repeated and enormous transformations, and all but entire revolution of organic life, in both extinction and new creation, with the corresponding change of the globe and its temperature which this implies, and each of these not for a brief space but for ages before the earth of man. Facts plainly enough point to these conclusions for those who occupy themselves with the natural antiquities of the earth. Nor can it be doubted that each successive tale inscribed on the fossiliferous rocky tablets of the earth shows on the whole distinct progress, in no way as mere development of the antecedent condition, but the fresh fruit of creative acts, even if some species seem renewed for the subsequent phase, and all with evident relation to the earth as it was to be for Adam, and as it will be when the Second man takes it with the universe itself for His inheritance. Unity of plan marks all from first to last.

But all this bygone succession of physical change is only left room for in the revealed word which dwells on man and Immanuel. Geological detail in scripture would have been as much out of place as any other science; but how can the room left for all, in what is said, be accounted for save as implying the knowledge of all by Him Who revealed His word? An original creation of the heavens and the earth without details, and unlimited even by myriads of years, "in the beginning," perfectly falls in with every ascertained fact; and a violent dislocation of the earth, of the highest importance for the race in its disarrangements, altogether different from and more thorough than any diluvial or merely superficial action, is also made known; followed by that "making" of heaven and earth which is historically described in Gen. 1: 3-31 and referred to solemnly in Ex. 20: 11.

It is pertinent to observe that the effort to interpret the days of the immense ages before man, separates Adam from his historic time as well as the creation placed under him as its head. For according to the long periods of geology what would the fossil-plants of the third day have to do with those that grew on the Adamic earth? And so with the animals on the fifth day, if not the sixth. On the contrary "the six days" were plainly meant to convey a realm of creation immediately connected with Adam, the various forms of organic nature being subjected and given to him. The sixth day is thus made geologic as well as historical. Surely this does not hang together; any more than our having a detailed account of fossil creation, and none at all of that which seems the express object of the several days — the creation in view of the incoming race. Now in a divine revelation it is easy to understand passing over all particulars of the fossilised stages of the earth; but inconceivable that there should be no account of heaven and earth and sea and all that in them is, in connected relation to Adam and his sons: especially as out of the thousands of organised species in the Secondary rocks, not a single species, says Professor Hitchcock, corresponds with any now living; and even out of the thousands in the Tertiary, but few seem identical with living species The natural and only reasonable conclusion is that, whatever the analogy with the divine action in past geologic time, the "days" speak solely of what God made in immediate view of Adam; not of fossils, animal or vegetable, but of the organic beings placed under Adam and his race, with their surroundings and suited system. To suppose both is nothing but confusion.

Returning to the day before us we see a fresh operation of God for man's world, the waters under the heavens collected to one place, and dry land consequently appearing. Not that such a separation had not existed before; but that the disruption, wise and benevolent for the earth of man, made it a necessary act now, as indeed in a general way everything had to be made afresh for Adam: a disruption wholly distinct from the vague and useless chaos which the heathen imagined.

Now God formed the earth and seas in the condition which substantially abides to our days. How momentous an act for the race needs few words to explain. That both earth and seas had existed previously no geologist disputes, any more than the various phases of both according to the plants and animals that prevailed from one geologic age to another. Doubtless also, save for dead-level Uniformitarians if there be such, the epochs of change that destroyed the older creatures and beheld new races modified greatly both the earth and the seas; for each period had its own proper system, with changes in inorganic matter, water, atmosphere, temperature, and the like, corresponding to each new set of organised beings.

The earth then was to have that form for the most part which God saw best fitted for His new purpose: vast continents and vaster oceans, islands large and small, lakes salt and fresh, swamps and torrents, mountains and rivers, plains greater or less, and valleys not merely effected by gradual erosion but often by deep and sudden dislocation. It is common knowledge what a part is played in the physical economy of the world by the "seas," (which in Hebrew idiom embrace all large collections of waters, oceans, seas, lakes, and even rivers,) as well as by the varied disposition of the land, high or low. To this the disarrangement of Gen. 1: 2 had directly contributed; as now in the separation of earth and seas after having been commingled for a time. Rapid extraordinary operations wrought, and of course slow and existing causes, in bringing about what was then done for man; but here we learn that God laid down the great landmarks which abide to this day. Gen. 2: 11-14 is enough to indicate that men attribute to the deluge or other changes more than can be proved.

God gave names too, as to the objects of His work on the previous days.

But there is a second part of His work to notice: vegetable nature for the earth that now is, that kingdom which mediates between minerals and animals. God commanded the earth to bring forth grass (or, sprout sprouts*), herb seeding seed, fruit trees yielding fruit after its kind, which has its seed in itself after its kind, as is said here most emphatically. This is the true origin of vegetable species for the Adamic earth. And as God pronounced good the dry land and the seas, so now the beautiful clothing of the dry land, and the abundant supplies for man and beast — at first indeed the exclusive food even for man.

* There may be a question whether the peculiar phrase here does not mean the general term "sprouts" expanded into herbs and fruit-trees, as some learned men have inferred. The substantive has a wider meaning than "grass" which it frequently signifies; but I am not aware of any other application so extensive as to justify that generic forge. If meant here it is peculiar.

How does the protracted scheme of the days as geologic periods agree with the vegetable kingdom on the third day, and the animal even in its lowest forms on the fifth? Is it really so with the evidence of fossils? The coal measures indicate vast brackens, ferns, etc.; but what of fruit-trees bearing fruit according to each several kind? Certainly it would seem that Zoophytes are as early as any vegetable remains, long before the Carboniferous era so paraded as the fulfilment of the third day, after a great abundance of marine animals far beyond plants, of which direct evidence appears in the rocks. If the days are taken simply in reference to Adam, there is no difficulty on any such score, as the provision for the world that now is appeared with no interval such as geology can appreciate.

How absurd, taking the third day before us as our example, for us to identify it with the Carboniferous age, or that which laid the basis for the coal measures! What real analogy between coal-plants, chiefly Acrogens, and the grass, herb, tree, so manifestly for the food of animals, above all of man? What with herb in general producing seed, and what with fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which is in them? This is evidently not provision for coal, but for the food and refreshment of man and cattle, of bird and beast. The analogy vanishes when looked into. For geologic eras it is a failure; for man's world it is the simple and suited truth. It was plant-life for Adam's earth. The Carboniferous era, when people have been content with facts, was the age, botanically of Cryptogams and Gymnosperms, in the animal realm of the earlier reptiles, Batrachian or Amphibian. Now does this truly correspond with the third day? With the formation of seas and the emergence of dry land? And this clothed with verdure, herbs, and fruit-trees, each propagating after its kind? Beyond just doubt Moses means herbs, not of the Carboniferous age, but solely of the earth for man, animal life for it not existing till the fifth day. Compare ver. 29.

But the geologic evidence points to plants and animals even in Archaean time; for as the simplest animal forms (Rhizopods) have been detected in the Laurentian rocks, so the enormous quantity of graphite, being carbon, implies abundant vegetation, sea-weeds, and lichens. The metamorphism of the rocks may account for the rare indications of organic life even in the Huronian beds which were subsequent; but according to what is generally averred, Paleozoic time goes farther back than even the Silurian age, Upper and Lower, the era of fucoids on the one hand and of marine invertebrate animals on the other (Protozoans, Radiates, Molluscs, and Articulates). Then comes the Devonian, or age of fishes (chiefly Selachian and Ganoid), and some insects, in addition to previous invertebrates; and, besides sea-weeds, Calamites, Conifers, Ferns, and Lycopods. Surely long ages with organic life, not only vegetable but animal, before the Carboniferous period, as all geologists accept, disprove beyond controversy the effort to make out the third day therein fulfilled. Hence Principal Dawson (Arch. 168) is obliged to own that the coal flora (consisting mainly of Cryptogams allied to ferns and clubmosses, and of Gymnosperms allied to the pines and cycads) cannot coalesce with the higher orders of plants called into being in our verses 11, 12. "For these reasons," says he, "we are shut up to the conclusion that this flora of the third day must have its place before the Paleozoic period of geology," i.e., when vegetation was incomparably lower than that of the coal measures! The true conclusion on the contrary is that the third day's work implies a flora for man and the creatures under him, long after the coal measures.

By the way, Dawson remarks that "the sacred writer specifies three descriptions of plants as included in it": the first he will have to be not "grass," but the Cryptogamia, as fungi, mosses, lichens, ferns, etc.; then seed-bearing herbs, and fruit-bearing trees. The Cryptogams may well be doubted: if tenable, it might be pleaded even more fairly that the Phaenogams, endogenous and exogenous, follow. However, it would seem that no scientific classification is intended, but a general division which all could observe into grass, herbs, and fruit-trees, each species none the less expressly and permanently reproductive. In point of fact it is not till the Cretaceous period of Mesezoic time that we find the first traces of Angiosperms (Oak, Plane, Fig, etc.); so that the reference to an age before the Paleozoic time is still less reasonable than the hypothesis of the Carboniferous era.

Doubtless geologists would, if they could, make verses 11, 12 subsequent to the great operations of the fourth day; for who can question the all-importance not of light only but of the sunbeam for herbage of all kinds, for fruit-bearing, and for timber? This is no difficulty for one who takes the days as "the evening and the morning"; but is it not insuperable for all who regard them as representing ages of untold duration? The Archaean rocks, we must bear in mind, are believed to be near five miles thick; the Silurian system considerably thicker, especially if we add the Devonian. Then come the Carboniferous and Permian formations of not far from four miles; and after the Triassic and Jurassic the Cretaceous, when it would seem that Angiosperms or Dicotyledons began to appear (Rose, Apple, Elm, etc.). In fact it was only just before the Tertiary or Cainozoic, if we include in it, as most do, the Nummulitic beds. Who can reckon the times of these formations?

There is another observation of importance to make. What scripture reveals of the third day's work points in no way to Archaean or Paleozoic times, but simply and naturally to the formation of the Adamic earth. Geology tells us that the continents while still beneath the waters began to take shape; then, as the seas deepened, that the first dry land appeared, low, barren, and lifeless; next that, under intestine and external action, the dry land expanded, strata formed, and mountains rose, each in its appointed place, till finally heights and continents reached their fullest development. Now the flora described by the inspired writer does not fit the geologic first appearance of dry land, when of the character above described, till the mountains rose ages afterwards and river-systems followed. To say the least, marked advance of state is involved in the flora described by Moses. How then identify it with the earliest geologic time when sea-weeds alone existed in the waters, along with lichens on the land, and even then the Eozoon Rhizopod?

Moses describes just such a vegetable kingdom in its main features as Adam had, and we have now. It was vegetation as he knew it; and God led him so to describe it, being the truth. Is there then contradiction between the more or less satisfactory conclusions of geology and unerring scripture? In no way. Distinguish the times, and clashing disappears. The third day speaks solely of the earth's last emergence from the waters by which it was submerged long ages after the original "outlining of the land and water determining the earth's general configuration." Dr. Dana on reconsideration should acknowledge that the idea of life expressed in the lowest plants and afterward, if not contemporaneously, in the lowest or systemless animals, the Protozoans, is doubly and hopelessly incongruous with the Mosaic record. Take it as of the Adamic week, and all is plain to the believer, if a few difficulties remain for the geologist. Why should any wonder, since it is confessed by the same competent authority that "a broken record the geological undoubtedly is, especially for terrestrial life" (Dana's "Manual of Geology," 601, third edition, 1875)? Not so with the Bible, which, being divine, is and most be true: plain for the wayfaring man, profound for the most informed and best cultured.

GENESIS 1: 14-19

The evidence which the record furnishes of the third day is express. It is dry lands and seas in view of man: in no way the varying phases of either in the geologic ages, but solely the result, after the last disturbance when the waters prevailed everywhere. Indeed a good deal of unfounded hypothesis is now exploded (especially since the recent deep-sea soundings) as to the alternation of the ocean beds and the vast mountain ranges east or west. For though the strata and fossils, marine, lacustrine or fluviatile, and terrestrial, point to repeated submergence and emergence of considerable regions, the continents have abode from Archaean time, the Atlantic flowing on one side, the Pacific on another. During the ages that followed, allow all that can be proved of change by upheaval, oscillation, dislocation, and rock formation, fragmental, or crystalline, eruptive or stratified, by means organic, mechanical, or chemical, by atmosphere, water, fire or aught else, there were elements of life vegetable and animal brought into being in the waters and on the land, but successively extinguished, and new ones created with the changed state of the globe, each period having its appropriate species in the new environment.

But none of these alternations, vast and important as they were physically, enters the scope of the six days. No geologist denies that the mountains, to take this one sample, were elevated substantially as they are, long before the human race; and on mountains depend the springs and rivers and even the due fall of rains, and striking equalisation of temperature between the extremes" climes, so necessary to man and beast and herb. Very much more indeed had been done by God in that immense preparation, not only in the partially hidden supplies (coal, marble, lime, precious stones, metals, etc.) for man's use, but in enriching the soil and beautifying the surface of the earth in countless ways, working, as He still does, now for instance by sudden volcanic action, and again for example by the slow process of innumerable polyps, yea, and mysteriously by their combined action (though the one be organic and the other not) in the accomplishment of His creative designs, from a time when there was no life here below, till every organised form was there short of man. Now it is exclusively of the human era and its belongings that the six days speak; and none more clearly than the third day, when the vegetable kingdom began, but solely in reference to Adam and those subject to him. The application to geologic time is impossible as proved by the record itself, and the mutual contradictions of all who essay it.

The evidence is no less plain and conclusive as to the fourth day, of which the more prudent advocates for the long-period days say little. But even here, though it be a question of the heavenly orbs, the record looks at them simply in view of man and this earth. "And God said, Let there be light-bearers in [the] expanse of the heavens to divide between the day and between the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; and let them be for light-bearers in [the] expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light for ruling the day, and the lesser light for ruling the night (the stars also). And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide between the light and the darkness. And God saw that [it was] good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a fourth day" (verses 14-19).

It is a mistake to suppose that during the long ages of vegetable and animal life up to the highest forms, one excepted, there had not been the shining of sun, moon and stars, as well as sea and land and atmosphere, though not always quite the same as ours. If geology can trace the proofs of life, and its progress in a typical system, which reveals unity of plan as distinctly as deep and comprehensive wisdom, be it so; yet they enjoyed sunlight, heat, air, and water throughout. But here we have everything successively ordered for man, after those immense eras of change were closed, when the last disturbance needed God's interference for a new system. Light was caused to act. The atmosphere as it is followed, Next, the seas were gathered to their own place, and dry land appeared, and the vegetable realm; the work of mountain-making and valley- scooping, shaping as well as storing, having been already, and it may be in long successive ages, effected. In each case of these "days" the result seems instantaneous. "He spoke, and it was done." The work stated here is quite distinct. "The evening and the morning" are the expression of God's considerate goodness to man, responsible to learn of Him and to do His will on the earth, as Christ did perfectly.

It is assuredly not the creation of the sun, etc. This the inspired historian does not say, but only that God now constituted the heavenly luminaries, after the plants and before the animals for the Adamic earth. Light had shone otherwise since the first day of the great week. Now He set the light-bearers of the heavens to do their assigned work, but it is for the earth, and indeed for man. Their creation was implied in ver. 1; for God did not create either empty; and what would heaven be without its host? And we saw that ver. 2 implies that the earth even had not been so, though so it became with other marks of disorder. What then hindered the functions of sun and moon was now rectified. Light independently had been proved to be under God's control. On the fourth day He gave the luminaries of heaven their unhindered relation to divide the day from the night. Now we can readily understand the plants (and these were for the use of man and his congeners) caused to spring forth on the day before without the sunbeam; but assuredly not so of a geological age of grass, corn, and fruit. Yet we see the fitness of the due ordering of light and heat, as we have it, the next day, if the plants were to flourish, as well as for the animal life that begins after that according to His word.

This is entirely confirmed if we inspect the context more closely. For where would be the sense of the light-bearers "for signs and for seasons, and for days and years," if it had been an age (thousands, myriads, millions of years) before Adam? If, on the contrary, God was not creating them, but, after that which had intercepted, only "setting" them to their ordained task in immediate view of man, all is clear and consistent. And to whom could this be of such interest as to Israel, the people of His choice, in whose history we have them acting as "signs" on critical occasions for His sovereign will? Without dwelling on His wonders in Egypt where light was in Israel's dwellings, darkness thick in all the rest of the land, or later at Sinai, we see what a sign it was to Israel when Joshua said in their sight, "Sun, stand still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon"; or in far other days when Jehovah spoke to sick Hezekiah, and gave him a sign in the shadow that went back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. And what a sign again where all was lost, as far as man is concerned, in the Cross of Messiah when darkness for three hours covered all the land! A mere eclipse was then impossible. Nor will whole clusters of signs be wanting when He comes in power and glory on the clouds of heaven. For "seasons" is needed no comment: man alone on earth understands and appreciates these fit and recurring times. As the same Hebrew word means "the congregation" and "the solemn feast," as well as the season or appointed time at which they kept it, "seasons" may have a sacred aspect; but the more ordinary sense seems confirmed by what follows. Very little astronomy is requisite to know how "days and years" are defined by them, but only for man. In the ages before him this were all irrelevant. In view of man, and Israel especially, it is as affecting as full of interest. The constant design is reiterated in "Let them be for light- bearers in the expanse of the heavens." It was their effect, not their structure, that is intimated. "And it was so."

Then we are told that "God made," not created, "the two great lights." The language is never varied without purpose. Rosenmüller the younger was an admirable Hebraist, and certainly free enough in his handling of scripture: yet he has no hesitation in his discussion of this question formally, but insists that the genuine force of the construction is not "fiant luminaria" (i.e., let lights be made), but "inserviant in expanso coelorum" (i.e., serve in the expanse of the heavens). He compares the singular with the plural of the Hebrew verb for being, and deduces the inference that the language can only express the determination of the luminaries to some fixed uses for the world, and not to their production. Further, it is solely relation to man on earth that demonstrates the strict phraseological propriety of "the two great lights." He Who created all and inspired Moses knew better than Newton or La Place the sizes of every orb in heaven; but for man's and for Israel's help on earth, to say nothing of every subject creature, what were all the rest, for light-giving by day and night, compared to the sun and moon?

This, again, as definitely excludes scientific preoccupation as it confirms the reference throughout. The stars only come in parenthetically. God made them too, if blind man deified them. But God gave sun and moon to rule over the day and over the night. They were His creatures and gifts for man's use dividing between the light and the darkness. "And God saw that [it was] good," not as if they were just created, but in the assigned work He gave to be done by them. "And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day." Here it cannot be fairly denied by any, that from the necessary effect of that day's work we have the ordinary vicissitude of night and day; and that a similar diurnal revolution followed for the fifth and sixth days, as for every day since, including the seventh. But this being so, surely consistency requires it for the three previous days. That light was supplied otherwise before the fourth day is no impediment. The daily course of the earth on its axis depends on gravitation, not on illumination, and would have gone on equally, had the sun been only and always opaque, or had its previous and its present action in light-bearing never existed.

And here it may be noticed that those who contend for nothing but the same agencies at worn from the first as act now before our eyes, and who go so far as to swell the time into incalculable ages by embracing the fond hypothesis of evolution, so that 300,000,000 years span an inconsiderable period of geological imagination, have now to confront an unexpected and veritable coup de grace from Lord Kelvin. For he has proved that if the earth existed at all only 100,000,000 years ago, it must have been on scientific grounds a red-hot molten globe altogether incompatible with life, animal or vegetable. The geologists in their loose and one-sided way reasoned from the deposition of the enormously deep strata at the present rate of formation. But Lord Kelvin founded his far more rigorous calculations on the acknowledged facts of the earth's tidal retardation, as well as of its gradually cooling state. Hence the recent disposition among the less prejudiced men to re-arrange the order and time of formations by the probable contemporaneity of unlike strata. They essay thus to reduce their egregious demands by the supposition that the Cambrian, for instance, may coalesce chronologically with the Silurian, the former lacustrine, the latter marine; and similarly the Permian with the Jurassic, etc. The groups thus associated would each owe their different phenomena to their respective conditions of deposit.

But those who accept the plain and simple interpretation of the record here offered will observe that, if all these shifting and precarious hypotheses are due to the dim twilight of the science, scripture is responsible for no error. What it asserts remains not only unshaken but indisputably true.

GENESIS 1: 20-23

We are now come to a fresh activity of divine power, when the Holy Spirit employs again the term "created" (ver. 21): not merely organisms, for these we have seen for the new vegetable kingdom on day third, but the first animal life for the Adamic world, to people the waters below and the heavens above. They are familiarly known to be the opposed but mutually dependent realms of life, far above inorganic nature, not only in growth and structural development, but in germs for the continuance of the species, both of which materialism vainly strives to explain or evade. For plants take in nourishment without an interior cavity or sac, and without digestive fluid, which animals have; and as plants imbibe carbon and give out oxygen, animals exhale carbon and use up oxygen: a provision worthy of divine wisdom for the well-being of the earth. Nor is this hard to appreciate; for plants are nourished by inorganic food which they convert into organic for animals, as they store up for their use condensed force from the sun's influence, starch, gluten, etc., for animal development with increasing power, and locomotive faculty, as well as a will. That their germs are chemically like, not only in elements but in their proportions, only brings out the total difference which results from their respective character of life. To originate animal life especially, even in its least form, justly calls for the term "created."

Thus God is not content with employing chemical powers to disintegrate and to reconstruct, as well us mechanical means chiefly by water, frost, and gravitation not only to enlarge the surface but to increase its fertility. The provision and satisfying of life is a part of His admirable plan even for a fallen world, the very volcano playing no small part, whatever its temporary terrors, in His beneficent hand. But all else would have been ineffectual without that great reality, of which science is as ignorant as those whom it most despises in its unbecoming scorn — that reality which would bring God face to face with every rational being, were men not hard in conscience and blinded by sin — that reality which meets every soul as the surest fact, yet the most inscrutable for any man; life, not vegetable only but animal, even if we regard it in its simplest range. It is life that directs the chemistry of plants or animals; it is life which produces the organisation appropriate according to its kind. Men may speak of protoplasm, and analyse into carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen; but these are the mere materials which God employs according to the limits He has imposed on species under the agency of life. When life is given, the activity of change goes on in the creature and its reproduction; when life is withdrawn there is a dissolution into the common stock for the fresh replenishment of the earth and its organized beings. Men may shrink from the Causa causans, and take refuge in "the laws of nature "; but after all they only succeed, if they do succeed, in retreating a step back from the Giver of ]life, and the Sovereign sustainer of nature. But this retreat is to lose God altogether.

Genesis 1 knows nothing of a primordial gas, or the nebula hypothesis, of an original spore, or of a monad. That God created the universe is its proclamation, with details of Adam's world. A nisus formativus is here unheard, and left only to the unbelieving fanatics of science. Men would have had ere this wings better than those of Daedalus if desires and efforts availed; nor would the peacock be left alone to expand his feathered glories in the golden light of the sun. The power and wisdom of God has made these countless creatures, plants or animals, out of a few elements; and these, as geology is compelled to own, repeatedly exterminated on the earth, and as often renewed, in systems ever perfectly suited to each, and as uniformly rising on the whole, when He was pleased to form a higher one, till He created man. Yea, at last He deigned to send His Son, the Eternal Word, to be made flesh, accomplish redemption, and unite to Himself those that are His for heavenly glory; as God will send Him again to bless Israel and all nations, to reign from heaven over a reconciled creation (for He is Heir of all things), but none the less to judge those who reject Him the Lord and Saviour to their own everlasting ruin, and manifestly so in "that day."

Further, as God created, so He perpetuates life within variations brought about by circumstances and especially by man's will, which, ceasing to act, leave plant or animal to revert to primitive type; when hybrids are forced, sterility also ensues. His will gave birth to the creatures that people the waters and the sky; and He abides to give constant effect to His will. We can see therefore the wisdom of His revelation of the day before us; for how many sages have dreamt and thought that the sun was the prolific source of life! The vegetable kingdom was formed when the sun was not yet set to do its all-important office for the earth of man. The humbler departments of the animal kingdom were called into being by God the day after. And how manifestly is contingency excluded no less than necessity? It is all the result of the Creator's will, Who upholds all that He has called into being. "For thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were and they were created" (Rev. 4: 11). Dualism, pantheism, eternal matter, and evolution are mere but wicked delusions.

"And God said, Let the waters swarm a swarm of living creatures (lit. souls), and let birds fly above the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens. And God created the great whales (or, sea monsters) and every living creature that moveth with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that [it was] good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day" (vers. 20-23).

Here it is to be observed that "sea-monsters"* is given by many modern translators, the Revisers among them; so as to include the huge creatures of large rivers, crocodiles, etc., as well as marine. Indeed "whales" may be here in view specifically by the accompanying epithet "great"; seeing that they exceed in size all other animals, not only of the Adamic period, but even of previous ages when characterised by creatures of enormous magnitude as compared with analogous ones in man's day. If the whale be here singled out, the description is justified beyond dispute; and all the more because the fossils, as the rule, disclose specimens larger of their kind than any now living, whether Protozoans, Crustaceans, or the Vertebrates in general. Even the birds then must have been gigantic, if we accept their supposed footmarks on the new red sandstone of Connecticut. Their fossils were much later.

* This must not be confounded with a shorter word, which would seem to mean jackals. When a land monster is expressed by the word in the text, it means a dragon or serpent.

In ver. 20 then God spoke into being the creatures that people the waters and those that people the air in terms the most general. In ver. 21 the result is stated with more precision, the great whales or sea-monsters being distinguished from every living creature that moveth (whether Protozoans, Radiates, Molluscs, Articulates, or Vertebrates), with which the waters swarmed, after their kind. Again we hear of "every bird of wing" after its kind. A correct version here, as the reader may see, explodes the error which commentators, Jewish and Christian, have tried to explain; for the sense is not that the waters produced the birds, but that God made them fly in the open expanse of the heavens. Compare Gen. 2: 19, which distinctly teaches that they were formed out of the ground no less than was the beast of the field.

But the important fact announced is that for Adam's world the waters were now peopled and the air likewise. It is in no true sense the Reptilian age, though no doubt such reptiles as belonged to the waters then were included; for land reptiles are distinctively of the sixth day, as is certain from vers. 24, 25, 26, 28. Hence the effort to make the fifth day's work correspond with the Mesozoic time of geology is an utter fallacy. During it, especially in the Cretaceous period, reptiles abounded, and many were enormous, Dinosaurs, Enaliosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, or Pterosaurs; for in contrast with the fifth day the earth had then its species, as well as the sea and the air. Jurassic Britain had its vast and numerous varieties, as their absence is the more conspicuous since Adam's day. But all that the cautious Dr. Dana says as to birds is, that they probably began in the Triassic, especially as the inferior tribe of Marsupials were then found; that in the Jurassic some if not all birds exhibited the long vertebrated tail which with other peculiarities allied them to reptiles; but that in the Cretaceous they were numerous, and most of modern type, though some were of the older form. To suppose all that now people the waters and air existed then is as baseless as that these verses really describe the Reptilian age. For "the great" sea-monsters and many birds had yet to be.

Now it is on the face of the record that the entire population of the waters and of the air, as Adam knew both, is meant; not that extraordinary era of the Secondary formation, with its prodigious denizens of earth and sea and air. Indeed it is notorious geologically that Protozoans, Radiates, Molluscs, and Articulates had been even in the Lower Silurian; and in the Upper S. fishes appear if only Sharks and Ganoids. Again, who does not know that the Devonian is habitually designated the age of Fishes? How then can it be fairly alleged that the day-period interpretation holds good? If the third day means the Carboniferous age, though this has been proved erroneous, how comes the age of Fishes to be before it? The record declares that the fish and the fowl of Adam's world were only and alike on the fifth day.

Is it not then extreme prejudice that has beguiled able and excellent persons into the thought that the record here speaks of the Reptilian age of geology? Hence one zealous advocate limits the swarm of the waters in ver. 23 to "the reptile," and for the same reason changes "that moveth" into "that creepeth" in ver. 21. The fact is that, though the former word often means "reptile," the context here proves it to be of far larger bearing, and in fact of cognate signification with the verb; so that to "swarm swarms" seems the literal force, and to "bring forth abundantly the moving" thing is a fair representation as in the A. and R. Versions. Again, in ver. 21 the right way is to interpret the Hebrew as "moving" in water and "creeping" on land; so any one may see who can intelligently use a Hebrew Concordance. In both respects Sir J. W. Dawson is more correct than the late Mr. D. M'Causland: but he errs in making ver. 21 say "great reptiles." It is either all the large creatures of the deep, or not improbably "the whales," for the reason already and appropriately implied in "the great." Perhaps we may fairly add that the Cetacea call for a special place as being the representative of Mammals, and hence are made to stand apart from the general population of the deep. Certainly they were of the waters.

The effect too of the periodic construction of the days is here quite plainly as unfounded as elsewhere. The fishes with which Adam and his race were familiar are thereby almost wholly left out of God's account of His creation. All we are told, on that hypothesis, is of fossil Saurians, the most anomalous in appearance of all the creatures whose remains have come to view, of which Moses knew as little as the children of Israel, however interesting to geologists in our day. Is it credible that the Holy Spirit inspired the law-giver to speak of wonders only intelligible in the nineteenth century, and to pass by without a word what they needed to know of the teeming creatures in the watery world?

As usual the hypothesis when considered seriously betrays its inherent unreality. The huge Saurians of the Mesozoic were not marine only, as they ought to be if the record spoke of them; many of them were Pterosaurs of the land, some species even winged, though we cannot count Pterodactyls as birds. The inspired text therefore conclusively puts them all out of consideration. Here we read solely of the creatures with which the waters swarmed, of every living creature that moved there, each according to its species, as well as of those justly designated "the great" among the multitudes of smaller sea-creatures; as also of "every winged bird" after its kind. The natural force and true aim of the revelation was to make known God's work in that lower part of the animal kingdom, which is none the less the object of His care; and if one portion be of vast bulk, none the less was it His creature. The Adam family were called to own His hand and goodness in the whole.

The evident intention was to impress, on all that heed the written word, that the fifth day's work embraced the entire circle of aquatic animals as well as all bird life known to mankind; not at all to acquaint them with a bygone system of animated nature, which sustained at the close of the Cretaceous period one of the most complete exterminations of species confessed by geologists. In fact too it is only in the Quaternary that Teliost Fishes as well as Birds find their culmination; of all allusion to which, though nearly affecting man, the mis-interpretation entirely deprives us. If on the contrary the inspired writer speak of what concerns man practically, with this agrees the expressed blessing of God, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." It also derives impressive confirmation from vers. 26, 28, where dominion over the fish of the sea is given to man, no less than over birds of the air, and beast and cattle and all that creep on the earth. The only detail in fact is in setting forth the origin of what was actually put under man's rule; which certainly does not apply to Paleozoic, or Mesozoic, or Tertiary times.

GENESIS 1: 24, 25

It needs few words to prove that in the fifth day's work we vainly look for an exact correspondence with the Secondary or Mesozoic period. Fishes, even vertebrated fishes, had been created in abundance in Paleozoic time, and so before the Carboniferous age; also the earlier reptiles, chiefly Amphibian, preceded the age when they arrived at gigantic proportions and in every sphere, earth having its species no less than sea and air: Does this agree with the record which distinguishes its denizens, as of sea and air, from those that were only called into being on the following day, — which declares that every reptile of the earth belongs to the sixth, and not the fifth? Dinosaurs (including Megalosaurs, Iguanodons, Hylaeosaurs) being land reptiles stand opposed. Nor is this all. The absurdity of the periodic interpretation is that we are compelled to leave out the fishes proper, such as Adam knew and we, in order to make it fulfilled in Labyrinthodonts, Ichthyosaurs, Pterodactyls, &c. Birds had in no way their culmination, any more than Teliost Fishes, or even the higher insects, and Mammals, till the Quaternary of man. The Cetacea ("the great whales") again resist this expository violence. Expressly specified in the text as created on the fifth day, being water-creatures, they according to geology ought to belong to a far later epoch, as being of a high mammalian rank, and in no way to be classed with even the small marsupials, &c., of an earlier day, though this again is not according to the record. The truth we have seen, in accordance with that of the four previous days, is that the fifth day's work contemplates the entire population of sea and air for man's world, and nothing else. Here as in every other case the ages of geology prove untenable when fairly examined. Apply the six days to Adam's time, and the balance is restored.

Exactly analogous for the land's inhabitants is the work of the sixth day. Does it really correspond with Cainozoic time before man, or the Tertiary age? The scripture gives manifestly and solely the land- creatures made for man and on the same day as man; geology is obliged to confess that "all the Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals of the Tertiary are extinct species" (Dana, 518). Take the equine tribe alone: there was the Orohippus of the Eocene, the Anchitherium of the Meiocene, and the Hipparion of the Pleiocene. All passed away before the Quaternary, when the Equus Caballus exists for man's service. Even those who contend most keenly for nothing but secondary causes operating all through cannot deny the general extermination of species that closed Mesozoic time any more than the great disturbances that wrought repeatedly and similarly in the Tertiary age. Indeed geologists of eminence, who had nothing to do with theology and alleged prejudice, are constrained to allow that the elevation of the great mountain chains of Europe and Asia, as well as of America, only attained its full height about the close of that period, as well as the larger part of igneous eruption, with the usual destruction of systems of life in being previous to God's introducing a new one adapted to the fresh conditions. "Chaos" is not a word any Christian need favour; but there was assuredly a fearful state of disorder that intervened, however brief the interval might have been. Do not geologists seem rash to deny that of which they are and must be ignorant? But all this was antecedent to the six days. The believer absolutely subject to God's word can calmly accept every ascertained fact, assured that every work of God agrees with His word. But hypotheses are another thing and open to criticism, especially where we see plain symptoms of infidelity open or underlying.

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creature (lit. soul) after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the field after its kind. And it was so. And God made beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after its kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. And God saw that [it was] good" (vers. 24, 25).

Where is the analogy even here with the age of Mammals, as the Tertiary has been well designated? If we add according to scripture the creation of man on that same day, the system is not only different but even in contrast. The simple truth intended is that we have in these verses the land population of all kinds for the period of the human race; as before we had that of the waters and of the air, after the vegetable provision, with the due establishment not of light only but of the heavenly phenomena.

To introduce the herbivores, the reptiles, and the carnivores into the text is to strain after a scientific gloss, besides failing to represent the sense in some respects if not in all. Compare Deut.. 28: 26 for the very first class. Reptiles again are too narrow, and so are the "carnivore," where "ferae" would express the truth more exactly. Nor is there real anachronism in giving "cattle" as the first named in verse 24, the domesticable if not yet domesticated animals, appropriate to the use of man. "Creeping thing" follows in its more literal application, whereas "moving" expressed more fully the action of the creatures that peopled the waters, so as to embrace not only serpents, etc., but insect life. "Animal of earth" designates the wild beast.

All of them are terms in constant usage where man lives and reigns; they do not distinctively define the age of Mammals where he was not, such as Anoplotheres, Chaeropotami, Dinotheres, Palaeotheres, Lophiodons, Xiphodons, etc. Pachyderms are no doubt included, but by no means so determined as to warrant a reference to the age in which they abounded. Indeed, at that time confessedly there was the almost total absence of the tribe of ruminants, which rose to prominence when man was made.

The language of the text does not really call up the period "when the brute species existed in their greatest magnificence, and brutal ferocity had full play," but the day crowned by the creation of man where material force fell into the shade before higher powers. In man's presence the greater birds and beasts that co-existed even become extinct; as notably the Moa of New Zealand, the Dodo of the Mauritius, and the Aepyornis of Madagascar; and again the Urus (or Bos primigenius) described in Caesar's Comm. de Bello Gall. 6: 26, the great Irish Elk (or Megaceros), the Megatherium, the Mastodon, and the Mammoth. For the evidence points to their co-existence with man, some for but a little while, others till recent time. The tendency has been to push man's age back on the assumption that only so could he have been coeval with them. But the facts are plain and sure enough, not only as to the first but even the last named also, that they existed with man for no inconsiderable time, and this if we accept the lowest reckoning of Biblical chronology. It seems the fashion just now to exaggerate as to time, placing the glacial season or seasons at an incredibly remote distance, and thus the gigantic creatures that perished then, and man also, judging from remains which indicate his hand. There is on the contrary strong and varied evidence, in the estimate of sober geologists, not committed to hypothesis, to show the recent date of the glacial period both in Europe and in America, and the sudden close of what is called "the drift," and the extinction of mammoths, etc.

The second part of the sixth day's work is too momentous to be touched here. This only may be remarked, how fitting it is that for Adam's time all animal and vegetable creation should arrive at the highest organisation, that the heavenly luminaries should do their regulative work in view of the race, that the seas and the land should be as a whole adequately settled, that the atmospheric conditions in supplies of water, vapour, dew, etc., should stand most favourably, with the bountiful and regular vicissitudes of night and day, for life more varied than ever before here below. Thus, if the geologic ages brought by divine power and wisdom a constantly rising state of the earth and of creatures suited to each new state, so, the six days connected with Adam and his world express rapidly succeeding divine fiats culminating in him, and in their combination of respective goodness characterising that period in which the human race was called not only into being, but into responsibility before God. Other ages might be distinctively azoic; or the system of life might be ushered in with sea-plants, then with marine life of low type, then with fishes when the Vertebrates were made. Next, when dry land was fitted, such plants grew as would flourish and adapt it for higher ones, and, again, for living creatures that live on herbage, as well as prey one on another. So in geologic ages we can talk of the age of Acrogens, of Invertebrates, of Fishes, of Reptiles, and of Mammals. But the human period is characteristically that of all, not in their utmost profusion or in their greatest physical magnitude, but as the rule in their highest forms and also together in their respective places under their appointed ruler, God's vicegerent here below. For example, the Cereals attach to the human period, and depend pre-eminently on cultivation. Compare Isa. 28: 28-29.

In each case we have God's word, the immediate and manifest result, and its excellence in His sight declared. Thus if the six days gave an immediate relation to Adam, the immense ages antecedent were on a vast scale preparatory; and geology, as one of its ablest exponents owns, "leaves wholly unexplained the creation of matter, life, and spirit, and that spiritual element which pervades the whole history like a prophecy, becoming more and more clearly pronounced with the progressing ages, and having its culmination and fulfilment in man."

GENESIS 1: 26, 27.

In day third we saw the distinct two-fold energy of the Creator; not only the waters gathered into seas, and the dry land appearing, and this seen to be good; but the earth caused by His word to put forth grass, herb seeding seed after its kind, and tree yielding fruit, with its seed in itself after its kind, upon the earth, and this seen to be good. On the sixth day there is also a double action, and the second still more strikingly distinguished, as human life is brought into being, the highest of earthly natures (not as before vegetable life, the lowest of organised creatures) here below. The spheres had been fitted in divine wisdom and in the unfolding ways of God for the living beings that were to clothe and fill them with beauty, food, and fruit, to be followed duly by higher beings to profit by all that His provident goodness had prepared, all endowed with powers of constant reproduction, whether vegetable or animal. In a general way God had in the vast ages of which geology takes cognisance so wrought in creative energy, but without man as the centre of systems which successively appeared and fell. The days we have seen have special reference to man, who, on the sixth, follows and crowns the highest animals set under his rule.

"And God said, Let us make men in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea, and over bird of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created Man* in his image, in God's image created he him; male and female created he them" (vers. 26, 27).

* The race, Man, which as it has the article in Hebrew, is thus distinguished from the anarthrous noun, has a name derived from the ground out of which man was taken. The context confirms the plural sense also.

Not only is man introduced with marked separateness from the previous creation of animals, even from those of the earth made on the same day, each "after its kind," and all seen as "good," but for the first time God enters into counsel with Himself for this great and absolutely new work. It is no longer "Let there be," or "Let the earth (or "the waters") bring forth," though man's body is in its due place expressly said to have been formed of the dust of the ground. Here the language rises into appropriate grandeur and solemnity, "Let us make men." Not a word about kinds of men, for there was but one; whatever people may have subsequently dreamt in their pride or in the selfish advantage they desired to take of their degraded fellows. Not a little was suffered afterwards in view of their hard-heartedness; but from the beginning it had not been so.

We shall hear yet more when we come to a fresh revelation, not of man's creation as its head simply, but of the moral relations in which he is shown to have been set; but here there is ample evidence of the dignity conferred on the race. "Let us make men in our image, after our likeness." Nothing is more opposed to the Bible than the anthropomorphism of Greek and Roman mythology, which degraded their deities to fallen males and females with like passions and lusts, and gave the sanction of religion to the basest immorality. And what philosophers of Greece or Rome ever ventured to claim so noble a prototype? Here Moses was inspired to give it as the holy declaration of the Creator. How far from the brute at length evolving man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalise the race! It is the simple yet wondrous truth: not God brought down to the human level, but men alone created after a divine pattern.

A frequent question is raised as to the force of the terms and their precise shade of difference; for those are not to be heard who hide their ignorance under the assumption that both mean the same thing. The usage throughout the O. and N. Testaments seems to indicate that "image" represents, and "likeness" resembles. Thus the "image" of the world-power in Nebuchadnezzar's dream represented the succession of Gentile empires from first to last: likeness could not be the point. So it is "image" in the plain of Dura (Dan. 3), the proportions of which exclude a human figure, or the resemblance of any living creature. Whatever it might not be like, it definitely represented what the monarch commanded to be an object of worship. Again, in the N. T. the denarius our Lord asked for had on its face the image and superscription of Caesar. It might have been a faulty likeness, but was an indisputable image of the Roman imperator. It expressed his authority and represented his claim over the Jews because of their departure from God, ill as they liked to own either.

So men (ver. 26) are said to have been made in God's image, after His likeness, as the former is emphatically repeated in ver. 27: not in His likeness, after His image. In God's image is the truth insisted on, though here also man is declared to be made after or according to His likeness. To man only was it given to represent God here below. Angels are never called to such a place. They excel in might. They fulfil God's word, they hearken unto the voice of His word. Yet no angel rules in His name, nor does he represent Him, as a centre of a system subjected to Him, and looking up to Him. But man was made to represent God in the midst of a lower creation dependent on him; though in order to be created in God's image, he was also made "after His likeness," without evil and upright. But even when through sin the likeness existed no more, he abode His image; however inadequate to represent God aright, he was still responsible to represent Him. Hence in Gen. 5: 1, 2, we read that God made man in His likeness; male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day of their creation But it is significantly added in ver. 3 that Adam begat in his likeness. Seth resembled his father, now fallen, as well as represented him. Again, when after the deluge animals were given for the food of man, blood was interdicted, and the most jealous care of human life insisted on; for in the image of God made He man. To kill him was rebellion against God's image, though a man was now anything but like God.

The N.T. fully sustains the same distinction far beyond Caesar's case already referred to. Thus the man in 1 Cor. 11 is distinctively called God's image and glory, as publicly representing Him; and Christ, the incarnate Son, is styled "image of the invisible God." His not being called "likeness" only confirms the truth. If so entitled, it would deny His deity. For He is God, instead of being only like God. Compare for the Christian now, Col. 3: 10, as well as 2 Cor. 3: 18; and for the glorious result, Rom. 8: 29, and 1 Cor. 15: 49.

On the other hand we must not confound the state of Adam unfallen with the new man which "after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth." This is descriptive of the new creation, not of the first Adam state where all was mere innocence, but the knowledge of good and evil along with the power by grace which abhors evil and clings to good that is implied in righteousness and holiness of the truth. This is not nature, but supernatural in believers, who become partakers of a divine nature (2 Peter 1: 4).

Nevertheless, though Adam's state was far from that of which Christ is the risen Head, be evidently was made to have a portion, though a creature, above all the creation that surrounded him, "in God's image, after His likeness." How utterly false in presence of the Bible are the speculations of evolution, an hypothesis logically at issue with those fixed laws of nature which the same philosophers cry up to the exclusion of God! For how reconcile invariable law with change of species? The truth is that real science depends upon the uniformity of results, and consists in discovering and classifying them. This does not hinder variation through circumstances, failing which the original type returns.

Again, as natural science is essentially based on the reality and continuance of species, so it can give no account of origins. If honest, it admits there must be a cause, and an adequate one; but here, as science, it is and must be wholly ignorant. God's word alone reveals the truth; and of all reveries, none viler than the ignorance which refuses to learn and dares to defy divine revelation, by conceiving man a developed ape, fish, seaweed, or aught else. The truth is that primordial causes are beyond science; which, instead of honestly owning its ignorance, pretends to deny the creation which scripture clearly reveals. God alone could create; and He declares that He has done so, and in what order. Science would gladly learn if not sceptical; for its province lies in investigating effects, and cannot reach up to primordial causes, which it is of all moment to know if revealed. But we can only know them from God's testimony, which is simple if we were.

How worthy of God and cheering to man, turning from these freaks of spurious science, to weigh once more His words! "Let us make men in our image after our likeness; and let them have dominion over fish of the sea and over bird of the heavens [the work of the day fifth] and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth [sixth day's work]. And God created Man in his image, in God's image created he him; male and female created he them." How emphatically, it will be noticed, Moses says that God created the race. It was enough to say so once of the vast universe in ver. 1, when it was brought originally into being. Again, it was said to mark the introduction of animated nature, or at least of the aquatic Mammals, into the Adamic world in ver. 21. But here of Man it is repeated again and again to enforce the attention of all who tremble at God's word. Not only was Man an unprecedented creature, but he had a place in God's mind altogether peculiar, not merely in time on earth, but for all eternity. For the unfolding of this we must await other declarations of God's mind. What is said here points to his creature place as originally set on earth by God. Even for the details of this we need chap. ii with its all-important supplement on the relations of Adam, where we have the key to the fact that Man was created "male and female," as we are told here: a single pair, and even so, formed as none other ever was, that Man might be differentiated from every creature in earth or heaven. For immense consequences turn on that fact, which God took care to make good, and only He in the nature of things could reveal.

What can science as such say on a matter so profoundly interesting, and morally so important? Is it logical to deny whatever it does not know? For science to confess ignorance is no doubt humiliating. But is it reverent to despise what God does know and has revealed? Alas! science knows nothing of faith any more than of piety or reverence. Were it content to assert only what it knows, and confess its ignorance of all beyond its own limits, it would do less mischief and speak more becomingly. Hewers of wood and drawers of water have a place useful if not dignified. Boasting is not seemly, save only in the Lord for all who trust Him.

GENESIS 1: 28

Thus we have seen Man, the race, created in God's image. No doubt, that this should be true, it was and must be after God's likeness in the absence of all moral evil. But it was emphatically a creation in God's image. Man was the last and chief creature here below, the only one in the heavens or the earth, whom scripture designates as made in God's image: a wondrously high distinction, with the grave responsibility of representing Him aright before others, as His delegated ruler. Not even the highest angel possesses such a place before the universe. Angels serve on account of those that shall inherit salvation.

But here, as we may easily stray, we need simple and entire subjection to the written word; and this we are most unlikely to have or court unless we have unwavering faith in it, as we certainly ought if we believe it inspired of God. This the apostle predicates, not merely of scripture generally as a known body of holy writings, but of everything coming under that designation, some of which had yet to be written. What can be conceived more precious and withal comprehensive, than πᾶσα γραφὴ, "every scripture," in 2 Tim. 3: 16? He declares it to be, not only useful for the various purposes of divine blessing to man, but before all God-inspired. All admit the human instruments; but if scripture be God-inspired in every part, it is certain that God is not a man that He should lie. And He has magnified His word above all His name.

Now there is a two-fold danger of misapprehending Adam's state and place while unfallen. We may exalt it beyond the truth by confounding it with what grace gives in Christ; or we may lower it by making it a question of such reasoning and conscience as man acquired by the fall. In his original state Adam stood in relationship with God in thankful use of all He gave, but liable to death on disobedience. It was in no way heaven held out if he obeyed, as will appear more fully by-and-by. The danger was of losing his first estate by transgression. But God imposed no such moral government as the law; nor had Adam the knowledge of good and evil till the fall. Man was not holy but innocent, and tested solely by prohibition as the simple test of obedience on God's part. It was a blessed creature's responsibility to obey with the threat of death on transgression.

By the fall man got the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the intrinsic perception of right and wrong apart from prescription; or as Jehovah Elohim said (Gen. 3: 22), "Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil!" In Adam fresh from God's hand the knowledge of good and evil would have been a defect, a moral inconsistency, and therefore an impossibility. Before the fall he had conscience solely in the sense of responsibility to obey, not at all in the way of accusing or else excusing self. Only when he sinned, and thus lost his innocence, did he gain the moral power of knowing good and evil of himself, hence forth his sad, painful, but most useful monitor. Before that, he was naturally enjoying divine goodness in its creative effects, under the test, not of resisting things intrinsically evil, but of a single restriction from God which made eating the forbidden fruit wrong: a state wholly different from ours. The fall changed for evil the whole ground of standing. Propitiation with life in Christ is a still deeper and higher change for good, even though in fact the old man yet abides and is altogether evil in itself. Christianity is no mere restoration of man, but eternal life in Christ and eternal redemption.

But unfallen Adam was in no way free in the sense of independence of God. He had indisputable title to act in what God subjected to him, but in nothing else. Obedience and dependence were due to God. All was good around him to enjoy: one thing was forbidden, and wrong because God forbade it, as a test of subjection to Himself. To act independently was to set self up as God, and thus in effect to set aside the true God. But this is sin, yea, apostasy from God, instead of walking as created in His image, after His likeness, the total opposite of Him, Who being God, became man, the image of the invisible God, come to do His will on earth where all else had failed.

And here it is that science, however interesting in its sphere and useful also, comes in so mischievously. At best it ignores man as God created him, because it only knows man as he is, fallen from his original relationship with God in nature; as it equally ignores man born anew, born of water and of the Spirit, because the new birth is supernatural. This ignorance falsifies scientific ideas and reasonings. For instance, that knowledge of good and evil of which scripture speaks as a consequence of the fall, or a moral sense as men call it, is assumed to be the highest ethical constitution that has survived the fall! But there was this immense difference that, while of course God knew good and evil, it was as One unassailable by evil and supremely above it in His own nature: man only acquired it by sin and in subjection to the power of evil, and thus having it now in himself. The Lord Jesus on the contrary was the Word made flesh, born not innocent only but holy, rejecting evil always even when tempted as Adam and his sons never were, and at the end as a sacrifice dying for sins and to sin, that we who believe might live in Him risen, the life-giving Spirit, the Second man and Last Adam.

Now faith only, not science, recognises either the fall of the first man as affecting all mankind and the entire scene put under him, or the victory which God gives all who believe in Christ risen from the dead. Science accepts fallen man's estate as the only one, because it alone is the subject-matter of ordinary experience. It is therefore involved in difficulties necessarily insoluble, because it knows neither the sinless and happy state in which God originally set man, nor the righteous deliverance which the Lord Jesus gives to faith in God's love; still less the glory, power, and incorruption to be made good even for the dead, and for the mortal body, when He comes. Philosophy is either openly infidel or vainly essays to conciliate, with a God of power and goodness, a world of sin, suffering, misery, and death. Were creation truly believed and the fall honestly confessed, the main difficulty vanishes; absolutely so, when God's love is read in the gift of His Son incarnate and suffering for the sinful world which crucified Him in its unbelief of His glory and rejection of His grace and truth. But science as such starts with the world and man as they are, ignoring his moral disorder and the effect of this on what was subjected to him; and cannot rise above the facts it discovers in the perceived course of nature, but may deduce its laws so called. God only could reveal creation. His word alone tells how man fell from innocence in first estate into sin and death, and dragged down with him all the inferior creation.

Science in its very nature is incapable of rising to this knowledge infinitely more important as it is than all it can make known or even discover, however ample the field in nature may be. For revelation speaks of three broadly distinct conditions: creation unfallen; creation as it is in guilt, and misery, whatever the resources of sovereign grace held out to faith; creation as it will be when all things are made new. Science occupying itself solely with the intermediate is in great danger of denying in dishonest pride what it cannot know scientifically, to the destruction of all who trust it, instead of the God Who gave His Son in love to save sinners who repent and believe the gospel.

But to return, we read, "And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over fish of the sea and bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that creepeth on the earth" (ver. 28). Man, as Prof. Owen said, is the sole species of his genus, and the sole representative of his species.

This is the second benediction of creation. The first was when God made the creatures that peopled the waters and the air of Adam's world, the earliest to enjoy animal life in that state of things. God has pleasure in blessing His creatures that have a life even of a lowly kind to appreciate the fruits of His goodness, and especially in view of their reproduction and multiplying within their sphere. Here, a second time, He blessed mankind, male and female, of whom alone it is said, though the detailed difference is reserved for a subsequent and more fitting occasion. In verse 22 we have only "saying," but here "God said to them, Be fruitful," etc. Man was the depository of God's revelation, as he ought to be His priest, and, as we have seen, His viceroy. This is more than the interpreter of nature, as one of our sages styled him. He had intercourse with God at once.

Language thus was in no way the slow invention of man's wit, but an immediate endowment of our first parents by God from creation. Here His word assures us of its reality from the first day of man's creation; and everything confirms in the chapters that follow. To imagine otherwise is to disbelieve the Bible and prefer one's own thoughts or the dreams of other men, as if we or they could know anything about the matter. He Who alone knows all has been pleased to tell us the truth through Moses. His word was valid for the unintelligent creation: how comforting for the human pair to hear Him say, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it! Even though man comes in as a creature with the rest, still he is introduced exceptionally as the crown of creation; and the higher creatures are pronounced good separately from man, who is blessed, male and female, in an address to them as at the head of all the rest.

Then comes the proclamation of the rule assigned them by God. Not only were they, like others, to multiply and fill the earth, they were to subdue, or bring it into subjection. Next He adds as before, "and have dominion over fish of the sea and over bird of the heavens, and over every living thing that creepeth on the earth." Thus from the outset was man, even when enumerated as a being fresh from God, set apart essentially. None other was to subdue the earth. He alone had the God-given capacity. He alone was called to have dominion. Development in the Darwinian sense is not only an illusion, but at plain issue with the word of God. A striking and practical proof of the reality of this dominion as far as every beast and every bird was given to Adam (Gen. 2: 19) when Jehovah Elohim brought them to see what their lord would call them; and whatever he called each living soul (or, creature), that was its name: a fact full of interest otherwise on which some remark will fall in its season. Be was owned by God in that place of authority which entitled him to give each subject creature its name.

For the present, however, we do not notice more than the singular evidence here afforded of real intelligible language communicated from the very first to the head of the race. Adam had it in perfection, like the other properties of full growth, the day he was created. Doubtless in this he differed from all that sprang from him in due time and to this day who have to learn. But here God created worthily of Himself; and even infidels own that there must have been primeval causes for all that exists, of which science can give no account. It can at most only say "must be," not "is." For its fixed laws are only gathered from the constant course of things; and such a course supposes the "things that appear" to have gone on long enough for men to observe the order of nature which they thus designate. An originating first cause is no less certain; also the phenomena need time for that regular course which they describe by "laws of nature."' Eternal self-existence belongs only to God, not to the creature; and none so negligent or perhaps rebellious as geologists, if they forget how often God intervened to create as well as to destroy in a way irreconcilable either with chance or with fate. But these are the characteristic mainsprings of Epicureanism on the one hand and of Stoicism on the other, the two chief opposing systems of ancient philosophy (Acts 17: 18) as of modern under new names. Without creation and the fall, man can account for nothing aright; but for knowing either we need faith, as well as their revelation, which some in their infatuation pronounce impossible. These men confessedly can make known their evil ideas to their fellows; but God, they argue, cannot communicate His good word! What is possible with men seems to their unbelief impossible with God! Could folly sink lower? Creation must be a miracle; but miracles must not be. Has not the nineteenth century settled it for ever.

Here also natural religion betrays its inherent insufficiency and falseness. For it never truly feels or acknowledges the fall, even if it borrow creation as a tradition from the Bible. If it estimated the ruin aright, it would own the necessity of divine revelation and of salvation by grace, yea of a Saviour able to meet God in righteousness, no less than man in grace. But it takes the ground of making out a righteousness of its own, supplemented by God's mercy to cover all faults and deficiencies. Impossible for any soul to find satisfaction thus. For on one side he acknowledges a Creator God of power and goodness infinite: on the other he faces a world and race of sin, evil, wretchedness, and death, to say nothing of a judgment he could not but dread. The strongest and clearest mind is lost in this labyrinth; and human efforts on the religious side of superstition are as vain to clear it up and present the truth and purge the conscience as the profane speculations and self-contradictory antinomies of philosophy. Human religion only hardens men in their naturally false thoughts of God as either austere or easy-going. Philosophy (in its struggles to escape the inconsistencies inevitable to a fallen estate, which is not confessed to God with a broken heart) only darkens more deeply what is already dark, and ends too often by the mental endeavour to deny the God Whom sin and unbelief have made unknown, save in the qualms of conscience.

No! man was made to look up, not physically alone but morally, in dependence on God the source and giver of all goodness. He sought independence by sin, and gained a conscience already bad, which made him look down, while his pride still pretended to everything. He had lost God and departed from Him, and (being wholly insufficient to abide self- sustained) set his mind on the creature below himself so as at length even to deify it. The Son of God emptied Himself by taking the form of a bondman, being made in the likeness of men, and humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto the death of the cross; where God was glorified as to sin by propitiation for it, and the ground laid for the righteous salvation of all who believe. A man-god was Satan's bait and man's ruin. The God-man dying in obedience and for redemption is the triumph of truth and grace.

GENESIS 1: 29-31.

The closing notice remains, the economy of the primeval creation, and the divine estimate of it all.

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb producing seed that [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which [is] the fruit of a tree producing seed: to you it shall be for food; and to every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, in which [is] a living soul, every green herb for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold [it was] very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day" (vers. 29-31). Man has still his distinctive place in God's commission and plan; but it is in the state of innocence. After the fall came in corruption and violence. Animal life was not permitted to man till after the deluge. Herbs and fruit were given at first to man, and to the subject creation every green herb. Death was not in the Adamic earth till sin. Granted that Rom. 5: 12-21 does not go beyond the human race as fallen under death through sin; but Rom. 8: 19- 22 looks at "all the creation" as ruined through the fall of its head. Neither scripture raises any question about states of the earth anterior to Adam. We have seen in Gen. 1: 1, 2, the general principle of a previous condition called into being and destroyed; which, as far as it goes, leaves room for death by one means or another among the then animals. In no previous conditions was there man existing, still less the great moral trial of Adam the first head, and the varied dispensations of God, till through the last, the risen Adam, God gives those who believe the victory. Whatever gradual approach may have been made before, the six days describe the formation of that platform where man would be tested in every way according to divine wisdom, and God was in due time to bring in Christ, His Son, become man to glorify Him, not only in obedience but in redemption, and a wholly new and everlasting creation only as yet come in the person of its glorious Head on high. The words of God here spoken are in view of man and earth yet unfallen.

Here experience is necessarily at fault. For only the Bible could give us the truth as to the primitive phase of man and the creatures around him. But it at once approves itself, when revealed, as being the sole conceivable state in which the Creator could have placed creation and its head suitably to His own goodness. Hence the force and moral beauty of His final survey in the last verse. "And God saw everything that he had made (i.e., in the Adamic earth), and behold, it was very good." So with the one exception of day second had He called each thing "good"; now as a whole it was superlatively so in His eyes.

Yet the unbeliever, scientific or not, is misled by his abuse of experience about a time where he cannot have a tittle of evidence to contradict scripture, and imputes to God, if he allow there is One, such a world as would be the production of a fiend, not of the Only True God. Even on his own ground it is the grossest assumption to assume that at the beginning (and science is now compelled to own there must have been a beginning) things were as they now are. It is illogical, as well as infidel, to take for granted that the present state is a normal one, or that God made men sinful, vain, proud, selfish, to say nothing of more abominable outbreaks; that He left men indifferent, so as to become heathen or Jews, Mahometans or Christians, of any religion or of none, without guidance or proof. It is evident that the state of the world is offensive to God; and that it has been so since man left records more or less credible. This is a fact, Bible or no Bible.

But the Bible alone, unlike every other testimony, gives us the simplest, clearest, and fullest explanation, in a few words, how all came to pass. God made man upright, surrounded by every thing "very good" yet under trial of obedience, as we shall soon hear definitely, but he departed from God through the wiles of the enemy in the face of solemn warning, He sinned and thus introduced death for himself and his posterity, and "subjected to vanity" the creation put under him. But God, when tracing the evil to its source, has proved His goodness by holding out the assurance of a Conqueror over the enemy, even while suffering Himself, to be born of woman too. And to this word all believers from the fall clung till He came Who made it good in His death on the cross and in His resurrection.

Thus does God from the first proclaim mercy rejoicing over judgment, though sin bore its sorrowful fruits in an outcast race and a blighted world, where no creature is as God made it. It is science, not scripture, which here as elsewhere, brings in difficulties even for believers.

But Sir J. W. Dawson in his Archaia, 217-222, raises questions which are certainly not solved, though brought by himself, a very competent geologist, "into the light of our modern knowledge of nature." He pictures Eden either cleared of its previous inhabitants or not yet invaded by animals from other centres! He supposes man created then with a group adapted to his happiness (Gen. 2: 19, etc., treating of them only), and these latest species of animals and plants extending themselves within the spheres of older districts, so as to replace the ferocious beasts of older epochs and other regions! He fancies that on the fall the curse that befell the earth would thus consist in the predaceous animals with thorns and briars invading his Eden. Most of my readers will have heard more than they wish of notions as irreconcilable with scripture as derogatory to it. How can the excellent Principal of M'Gill College have indulged in such speculations? Evidently because being sure, too sure, of his geological scheme, he accommodates scripture to it: a position not very wise scientifically where so much is continually shifting and so little is absolutely ascertained — a position most antagonistic to a Christian's faith in God's word. He is not entitled geologically to assume a mixture of the conditions of the Tertiary with those of the human period in the Quaternary. His theory of day-ages exposes him to these consequences, along with the recently adopted fashion of opposition to A D'Orbigny's careful and exhaustive proof in his "Prodrome de Stratigraphique Palaeontologie,"* that not a species of plants or animals survived the Tertiary, and that a distinct break preceded man's time as often before.

* Trois Volumes, Victor Masson, Paris; also his "Cours élém. de pal. et de Géol. strat." 2 vols. Perhaps no recent author has combined to the same degree mastery over both zoology and geology with the fullest scope of practical observation. Such a man's positive testimony is entitled to unusual respect.

And what is the alleged ground in scripture? "Man was to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the b'hemah or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion"! But this is distinctly refuted by ver. 30, which expressly assigns every green herb to "every beast " or animal of the earth. The same text proves that at this time "every animal in the earth was herbivorous," though it is boldly laid down that this cannot be meant. Nor should any believer question the past fact, if assured by inspired prophecy that the day is coming, when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard lie down with the kid, when the cow and the bear shall feed, their young lying down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. Here undoubtedly science will decry and scoff; but he who believes (as Dawson does) the unfallen state of Adam and his Eden, if not his earth, is inconsistent in curtailing his rule to a petty domain. The apostle, we have seen, interprets his headship of creation in general, whatever modern geology may pronounce to the contrary.

Philologically too, it is quite an error that b'hemah, though expressing "cattle," is limited as is here imagined. Any good Hebrew Concordance will show the most unlearned that it is frequently employed in the largest sense and rightly rendered "beast" in both the Auth. and the Rev. Versions. Compare Gen. 6: 7, Gen. 7: 2 twice, 8, Gen. 8: 20, Gen. 34: 23, Gen. 36: 6: Ex. 8: 17, 18, Ex. 9: 9, 10, 19, 22, 25, Ex. 11: 5, 7, Ex. 13: 2, 12, 15, Ex. 19: 13, Ex. 20: 10, Ex. 22: 10, 19. It occurs at least 25 times in this sense in Leviticus, 8 times in Numbers, and 7 times in Deuteronomy; so often in the historical books, in the Psalms and in the Prophets, where the sense of "cattle" is in fact rare.

This then is God's account of His creation, and in detail of the Adamic earth. No wise man will wonder that we are conducted silently over the vast and successive platforms of dead plants and animals, to say nothing of the debris of rocks, under water and heat. Here we have a system of life rising up, not by any necessity, but by divine power, wisdom, and goodness, to beings constituted chief of creation and made in His image after His likeness, before sin brought in death and every woe on the guilty and all subject to them: a system where our feeble eyes cannot fail, save blinded by wilful evil, to see it everywhere, above, around, below, filled with contrivances that disclose the omniscient designs and the inexhaustible benevolence of the omnipotent Designer, yet in no case absolutely, but with a view to moral government, the effects of which afford a handle of objection to those who refuse that divine word which reveals good then and still higher purposes of grace in Christ for all who believe. Even in the lowest point of view, well may we at this place exclaim with the psalmist, "These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give [them] their meat in due season: [that] thou givest them, they gather. Thou openest thine hand; they are filled with good" (104: 27, 28).

GENESIS 2: 1-3.

These verses are really the necessary supplement and close of chap. 1, if we divide into chapters on a sound principle. It is well known that such a division, save in the Psalms, etc., has no authority and is not seldom erroneous. The new title given to God, Jehovah Elohim, indicates consistently a new subject, as will be shown in its place. Hitherto it is simply Elohim, the abstract name of the Creator. Here as everywhere the name has nothing whatever to do with the question of authorship, as ignorant unbelief has suggested with misplaced confidence, but springs exclusively from internal reasons, as may be seen throughout scripture to much interest and instruction.

"And the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished. And God had finished on the seventh day his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that on it he had rested from all his work which God had created in making" (or, and made, lit. to make) (vers. 1-3).

The last is without doubt a remarkable phrase, falling in naturally with what we have seen in the opening verses, an original creation where man was not, succeeded by catastrophe, and by fresh creative energy, the details of which refer to the scene where and when man was to be brought into being. Here the work and the rest of God are in clear view of the race; and the seventh day or sabbath has immense importance. On its first mention it was unmistakably the witness of God's rest: His rest, not from weariness of course, but from the work of creation and making. This work was now ended for the life that now is. And as the six preceding days were literal, so is the seventh the closing day of the week.

This is amply and strictly confirmed by Ex. 20: 1-11. The sabbath is not a but the seventh day, the memorial of creation finished — of the Adamic world. "For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore Jehovah blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it." The language is precise. It is not said "created" but "made." This was the right phrase as a whole for the work of the six days, however well creating is said of parts within that work. It was not the original production but a special construction of divine will and power with man in view. That the seventh day is the sabbath is with equal care impressed in Deut. 5: 12-15, though the connection of heart here is with the deliverance from bondage in the land of Egypt rather than with creation.

Nor is there a commandment on which scripture laid greater stress, when the law was bound on the sons of Israel, than that of the sabbath. All the others were moral in a sense which this was not; for of their own selves they could not but feel and own the duty. But the hallowing of the sabbath was of God's initiation exclusively, and singularly marked out for His people that they should not even look to gather the manna on that day. His honour was pre-eminently identified with its observance; and so was His blessing.

For us, Christians, the first day of the week, and not the sabbath, is characteristic. That only is to us the Lord's day, as the day of His resurrection, and the witness of our accomplished redemption and of the power of His life as risen from the dead, and our life. It is accordingly as much marked by the new creation and grace as the sabbath day was by the six-days creation and the law. Yet, though we have to do with the Lord on the first day, as the N.T. makes plain in manifold ways, the sabbath is not done with but will assuredly re-appear, when Zion arises from her long slumber in the dust, and the light of Jehovah shines in Israel for the universal blessing of the earth and the nations, as it never did even in the days of David and Solomon; so the prophets proclaim, and scripture cannot be broken.

Ours meanwhile is a higher call and a brighter hope; for we are by the Holy Spirit united to Him Whom Jew and Gentile crucified, Whom God not only raised but set at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in that which is to come; we are the body of the glorified Head. Those who had the sabbath, as a sign between them and Jehovah, rejected their own Messiah, Who, slain by the bands of lawless men, lay in the grave that sabbath, "high" or great day as it emphatically was It was the sin and the death of Israel, the ground of a still more terrible scattering than that of Assyria or of Babylon; yet in God's grace the divine and only efficacious means to faith of blotting out that sin and every other; as we prove who believe the gospel, while hardening in part has befallen Israel. But all Israel shall be saved by-and-by; and when they are, from one moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Jehovah. We now by the Spirit sent down from heaven draw near by faith within the holiest, and this with boldness by the blood of Jesus. Of our peculiar blessing the first day, not the seventh, is the witness. Nor can lack of Christian intelligence be more decided than confounding the Lord's day with the sabbath.

But the seventh day is also decisively against the day periods. For what can be conceived more unnatural, save when we let a system of private interpretation carry us away alike from simplicity and from spiritual understanding? Till the days introduced Adam and his world, it could not be said that the heavens and the earth, still less "all their host," were finished. Previous states of the creation had their importance; but till man and his congeners, animal and vegetable, there was a great lack. Neither on earth nor even in the heavens was there a creature made in God's image or after His likeness. This was not a little in itself as bringing in moral ways of and with man, and room for God's manifestation in promise and government, till the infinite fact of Immanuel, the Word made flesh, the Son of God a man, and His work no less infinite of redemption, yet to be the basis not only of the church's blessedness, as also of all saints and of Israel to come, but of the new heavens and new earth through all eternity.

What possible evidence from scripture that "the seventh day is the modern or human era in geology" (Archaia, 235)? or as the author of "Footprints of the Creator" puts it, "God's sabbath of rest may still exist; the work of redemption may be the work of His sabbath day!" Does it need the words of any one to refute such a reverie of self-destroying fancy? The scripture before us points out His rest as cessation from work, not merely from creation, but from "creating to make." No doubt, if six immensely protracted periods of several thousand years each were certainly meant by the six days, analogy would claim a proportionately lengthened term for the seventh. But the doctrine of God's word even then would be thrown into confusion. For sin violated the rest of creation; and as God could not rest in sin, so He would not in misery, its effect. This is not our rest: it is polluted.

The argument of Heb. 3, 4 is that, even though Messiah is come and the work of propitiation wrought, and we that believe do enter into the rest of God, we are only as yet in the day of temptation in the wilderness. Hence we are exhorted to fear lest any might seem to have failed, and to use diligence to enter in. A sabbatism, then, remains to the people of God. It is not yet come. It is the day of glory and not before, when God has no more work to do, all being done so perfectly that He can rest for ever. So our Lord pleaded to those who indulged in somewhat similar imagination in His day, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." But work and rest are in contrast. Hence our Lord did on the sabbath what roused the enmity of the Jews implacably. God's rest was in no true sense come. He must work in grace, yea, the Father and the Son; and this has been done beyond all thought of the creature, and God is glorified thereby; yet the rest remains for another day.

But that work, infinitely acceptable and efficacious, is the very opposite of His rest, though the foundation of it. Meanwhile the heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ are being called; the delay, the long-suffering of God, is salvation; and the people of God must be by faith fitted to enjoy His rest. In due time they will enter in, in heaven and on earth. But it still remains; it is not yet come. The idea of a sabbath from Adam till now is a dream wholly antagonistic to all revealed truth. It will be at the end when God makes all things new, and the first things have passed away. This is in the fullest sense the rest of God, not the morning cloud that enveloped the entrance into Canaan, nor the dew that passed so early away in Eden. They were but shadows. The reality is to come, the true rest of God. There cannot be rest and work at the same time in the same sense. To view the sabbath or rest of God as contemporaneous with His work is to be in a mist and to lose completely the truth of both in strange fancifulness.

The absurdity which thus inevitably attaches to the age-day theory is proved by no consideration more clearly than by the seventh day or sabbath. That the natural day is meant is only the more evident from the fact that scripture leaves no room for a symbolic or age-lasting sabbath, after the Adamic world was made, but casts us only on its sure but still future dawn. It is "a promise left us" which the day of glory alone fulfils. Of this the sabbath, the natural day at the beginning, was the pledge, the blessed antitype, when God and the creature shall (by redemption and resurrection power) enjoy the communion of His own rest, sin, sorrow, and death completely effaced, and love, righteousness, and glory, triumphant for ever through our Lord Jesus. This the scriptures hold out abundantly and unambiguously; but an allegoric sabbath stretching over the fall and the deluge, the kingdom of Israel and the Gentile world-powers (to say nothing of the law, the gospel, and the church), is a mere fiction of some few geologists speculative beyond the rest, for which not a word of revelation has ever been truly advanced.

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Reviewing these papers attentively for reproduction in a small volume, I do not feel the need of adding many words. Scripture is to the believer absolutely reliable; and, in my judgment, it refuses to bend to philosophic speculation which is not true science, but the guesswork of some scientists assuming to theorise on what is unknown to science and therefore illegitimate. In such schemes generally proper creation is denied, and evolution of matter (perhaps eternal matter) takes the place of God calling the universe into being as in Gen. 1: 1. Next, the state of disorder, so necessary in its results for man when brought into existence, is shown in ver. 2 and connected with the statement of original creation, because both preceded man's world, and cover the enormous periods of geologic time, not only when fossil remains make their records recognisable in themselves and distinguishable one from another, but the more vague Azoic age which preceded.

Hence the least offensive of these schemes, as Prof. Dana's, is not only without, but opposed to, scripture in assuming an original nebula. For this disagrees with both the first verse and the second of Gen. 1, and conceives the third to mean the earth as a globe of molten rock, like the sun in brightness and nature, enveloped in an atmosphere containing the dissociated elements of the future waters and whatever else the heat at the surface could evaporate. Such is the first era of philosophic conjecture. A second went forward until first the earth became centrally solid. Long after, a crust was formed outside; and the vapours of the atmosphere were condensed, and a watery envelope made. A third age, or continuation, followed, so as to admit of the simplest forms of vegetable life, and of the crust increasing by contraction, aided by disintegration of the rock, by exposure, to the ocean; and so began the earth's supercrust — the only part of the earth's structure within the reach of direct investigation. As the first introduction of vegetable life is the fourth age, the display of the systems followed in the four grand types of the animal kingdom in the fifth; and in the sixth, Mammals, and Man.

Analogy, with the chief periods of geological time, is admitted. But it is only a measure of analogy as a whole. We have seen on conclusive evidence that the inspired record will not bend to the assumption, either that the first verse of Gen. 1 is a summary of the chapter, or that ver. 2 contains the original order of creation, instead of being a state of confusion into which, for the wisest purposes to come, the earth was thrown. He created it not a waste (compare Isa. 14: 18). Both verses are incompatible with the hypothesis, fashionable for the moment, that man's world like himself goes forward with a progress steady in the main and slowly advancing to comparative perfection. Nor is the periodistic reading of the days due to the text itself or any light of the Holy Spirit afforded by other scriptures, but to the overbearing influence of unbelieving geologists who take almost equal pleasure in parading the prevalent scheme of their science as absolutely settled among all the intelligent, and in perplexing Christians too easily allured or alarmed, who forthwith set about to adjust the language of Holy Writ to the alleged exigence of modern scientific results. Yet the enormous changes, not merely through the better ascertainment of important facts, but in the abandonment of fundamental principles by one so influential as the late Sir C. Lyell, ought assuredly to impress the need and the value of creation; especially as the change was a yielding to the sceptical spirit of the day, betraying animus against scripture, not to say contempt for all it teaches of man's comparatively recent origin, as well as the utmost self-confidence in that uniformitarianism which logically shuts out God and denies creation in any real sense.

Now, speculate as people may on Gen. 1 - 2: 8, it will scarcely be contested that God in the words of Ex. 20 did not adopt the language of poetry or philosophy but laid down moral principles in the most liberal and unambiguous terms. What then means His fourth commandment to Israel? "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto Jehovah thy God. For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day," etc. (vers. 8-11). The accuracy of the inspired word is so much the more to be noticed, as so many commentators wrongly refer to it as "created" instead of "made:" exactly agreeing with the remarkable phrase that closes the account in Gen. 2: 3, which combines, yet distinguishes, "all his work which Elohim created to make." Whatever particulars might properly be called creating within the six days, the comprehensive term which embraced the whole is expressly "made" in contradistinction to the equally proper term "created" in Gen. 1: 1. Can any nicety of speech more manifestly confirm the interpretation of the days in Genesis as meant exclusively in their ordinary and historical sense? The six days are God's work in view of man; on the seventh is His rest, the pledge of a better and enduring one, based on the redemption of the Second man, and issuing in glory for heavens and earth, and above all for those who by grace believe. Need one say more?

Blackheath re Ramsgate, A Letter.

For the Assembly.

9, Bennett Park, Blackheath, S.E., 28th November, 1881.

Dear Brethren,

We have been slow to speak of Guildford Hall, Ramsgate, and its allied meetings in Broadstairs and Canterbury, which have been pressed of late on the acceptance of assemblies often distracted by the question. This was from no lack of interest for Christ's and the church's sake. We had no urgent duty till recent steps in the neighbouring assembly of Lee practically drove out a large proportion of the saints there, who could not, as before God, accept Guildford Hall as it is. These saints, of whose faith and godliness there is no question, we were not disposed to reject. We do reject, as decidedly as they, the compulsory test of communion, which made their separation from the others at Lee inevitable, unless they could go on with a bad conscience.

Being asked to explain, we own our obligation at once and openly to avow our assurance that a fatal error has been made in not localising the matter, as in similar ruptures heretofore. The Lord might have been trusted to work in the adjacent meetings, when Ramsgate failed to solve the difficulty. But a distant meeting — instead of seeking to mediate in grace, having assumed to decide for itself on both Abbott's Hill and Guildford Hall in a way which many brethren believe to be foreign to Scripture — has increased the complication, by imposing the need of either refusing its decision as being out of divine order, or bowing to it as if it were in the usual course of the Spirit's unity: especially as there is ground to believe that the final position, or what is commonly called the third table, of Guildford Hall, — which that meeting professed to judge, and in fact sanctioned, — was not taken without the private encouragement of influence paramount in bringing about the public decision. It seems scarce possible to conceive a measure, — particularly in the present state of feeling among Brethren, — more calculated to rally partisans on opposite sides, and to force on a division, than the isolated action of meetings in London, openly violating that unity which has hitherto ruled even in ordinary things.

As to the merits of the Ramsgate case, we believe that Mr. Jull and the brethren with him were not justified in calling the assembly there and in the neighbourhood to judge forthwith the case of discipline pending before Kennington. London — directly concerned — was waiting, and the country meetings were patient, though equally concerned as these few Kentish meetings. The seceders were as wrong in going out as those who staid were right in refusing (not a godly judgment in the sphere of their duty, but) a groundless and therefore sinful division. The seceders on the 22nd August, 1879, deliberately left divine ground, if the mass of Brethren remained on it. This evil they greatly aggravated by setting up a new meeting outside, on principles opposed to those we have learnt from God's Word. For a few individuals rejected, among the souls up to that day in fellowship and seceding with them, such as they deemed unfit for communion in their new thing. In all this we fail to see a just (however feeble) expression of the "one body and one Spirit," — words too often cited to consecrate a perversion of their meaning. After careful inquiry we have proof that Mr. Jull, — who was allowed to speak for the brethren of Guildford Hall, far from confessing these sins of independency and party (which Scripture calls "heresy"), — claims that they acted for God and according to His principles at that critical time. Whatever else he owns, he carefully and strongly denies any sin of principle; and apart from him Guildford Hall has made no public confession of their common evil.

As Guildford Hall, then, has not at all cleared itself by known self-judgment from offences which we regard as fundamental against the only revealed ground of gathering for the saints, we are compelled, in fidelity to the Lord's name, to decline recognition of it; though we should indeed rejoice if unfeigned repentance opened the way for the godly reunion of the saints in Ramsgate. We are thankful, too, that there is, as yet, no question of heterodox evil against Christ, as in a former serious question. Hence the effort to confound the present controversy with that past one shows an unspiritual judgment as to both. To raise a personal and party strife, — though it did end for some in "heresy," — to the level of a stand for the doctrine of Christ, is to sink into a confederacy.

On the other hand, that the brethren now of Abbott's Hill failed painfully in not providing with care for the Lord's Table on the 24th August, 1879, as also in the haste and absence of warning with which they on the 31st declared outside the six leading seceders, we feel to be very grave. It is not just to accept extreme charges without proof: still the fact remains that many godly brethren have received strong impressions of evil against Abbott's Hill, and condemn alike its position and acts before-named and since. Under these circumstances we shall not accredit Abbott's Hill till godly confidence is truly and generally restored.*

*Dr. Woodman agreed to all the letter, save this sentence, as he believes that Abbott's Hill never forfeited its position as an assembly of God.

Gathered to the Lord's name, we gratefully own His presence in the midst, and our own responsibility to walk and act in the Spirit by the written word. But for this very reason we refuse the pressure of man, which disowns the most devoted and godly who cannot bow to it, as it flatters the least spiritual who do bow; demoralising the many who submit from a variety of motives, without faith or even heart, and against conscience.

Signed, after two meetings on the 24th and 28th Nov., 1881, on behalf of the assembly,

WM. KELLY, THOMAS STONE, E. S. EARL, WM. COULTAS, R. A. SAYER.

Dr. Kidd's judgment is carefully given by his desire in his own words as follows:

"Dr. Kidd could not agree to the letter; and was of opinion that Abbott's Hill should be rejected as not an assembly of God, and that Mr. Jull and those with him (who broke bread at Almorah, 24th August, 1879) committed the same sin as Dr. Cronin did it Ryde; in their zeal to condemn him, they, in fact, repeated his act. This sin against God and His Church has not been adequately confessed. Therefore as yet he could not accept Guildford Hall. He considered the common failure of those who broke bread at Abbott's Hill and at Almorah should be fully confessed before God, and that then they should all re-unite at the Lord's table at Guildford Hall. The gathering at Lee, in making this a test of communion, departed from the true ground of the assembly of God."

The Body, the Church.

W. Kelly.

Jesus had shed His blood, was risen, and by the right hand of God exalted. If God had been glorified in Him, He also glorified Him in Himself, and this straightway. The Son of Man ascended up where He was before. He was glorified with the Father's own self, with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.

Nor was His glorification without result to others. If on earth the Son of David could not disown the higher glories of His person, but rather led on the faith of a poor woman of Canaan to that infinite source of grace beyond, which, while it brought down to a real sense of the depth of degradation and woe, abounded but the more in streams of healing mercy; if on earth, "He could not be hid," what was the suited blessing that flowed down from the God-exalted Man, crowned with glory and honour in heaven? Were those He loved to taste no savour of His joy above? Was there to be no peculiar, no present, power of fellowship with Him, and worthy of Him Who was set at God's right hand "in the heavenly places far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come?"

On the contrary, it is precisely in this interval between His session on His Father's throne, and His coming to take His seat on His own throne, that the great mystery of Christ and of the church finds its place, development, and revelation. God, whose earthly purposes had been seemingly frustrated but really secured, though for a time in abeyance, uses the cross meanwhile as the basis of other and higher counsels (settled in His mind before the world was, but until now hidden in Himself), and thereupon exalts the crucified Lord of glory, and sends down the Holy Ghost, not only as the one and divine witness of what and where Christ was, but as the gatherer, by His own presence here below, of an assembly from among Jews and Gentiles, brought into the participation of the heavenly glory of Christ — in a word, as the formative agent of the church, which is Christ's body, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all."

Beyond just question, it is in reference to this new and heavenly assembly that scripture speaks of the closest identification with Christ, of oneness with Him as His body. By such a oneness, it is not merely meant that persons here and there, few or many, had been and are objects of love and quickening power of the Son of God. Life is not, nor does it produce, this oneness; abstractedly, it finds and leaves the recipients of it individuals still. Life did not set aside for this world, for those who possessed it, the remarkable characteristic and divinely sanctioned separation of Jews from Gentiles; much less did it sever externally believing Jews from their unbelieving kinsmen according to the flesh, whatever the mutual sympathies, hopes, and conferences one with another, of them that feared Jehovah. If there were devout Gentiles, (and there is little reason to doubt that God in His mercy raised up such, witness Cornelius, before the gospel of His grace could righteously be preached), they served Him and worshipped Him, but as Gentiles nevertheless. There was no fusion of these with the godly Jews. The faith of one might be admirable in the eyes of the Lord Himself-"so great faith He had not found, no, not in Israel:" still it did not hinder his remaining a Gentile.

Faith therefore in itself did not, and could not, alter that, as regards this life. It was reserved not for the gift but for the Giver of faith to work a wondrous, unlooked-for, and total reversal of the ancient order. So as to the Jews, though they had the gifts and calling of God, if any believed, the faith of individuals wrought without a doubt a moral separation, and sufferings were the consequence; and the new life has affections as proper to it as are depraved lusts to the old life; yet were not the faithful Jews formed into a manifested holy company here below: they lived as Jews, they died as Jews. It would have been sin in them to have relinquished their prerogative and standing as Jews. Even in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus, the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, was not abolished. It existed still — nay, had His sanction, when He forbade those commissioned in the days of His flesh to go into the way of the Gentiles, or to enter into a city of the Samaritans.

Now the doctrine of the Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 2, 3) is that, consequent upon the cross, an entirely novel and different work of God commenced: a work which, belonging to and awaiting its perfect display in the heavenly places, has an actual existence on earth, and most momentous effects in this present time. The point is not Christ dying for the Jewish nation, nor God thereby reconciling all things to Himself. It is not Christ's death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, nor for the blessing of any Gentiles who may be saved during His future reign; none of which things perhaps would be questioned by a scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven. But the doctrine there enforced is that God founded upon the cross, and accomplished by the Holy Ghost thereon given, a platform and structure wholly without parallel in the millennial age, when the old outstanding differences will be resumed, as abundantly appears from the Psalms and Prophets.

The apostle in Eph. 2: 11-18 thus contrasts the new thing with their previously existing relations, the one dispensationally nigh, and the other afar off:-

"Wherefore remember, that ye being at one time Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands — that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus ye who at one time were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments [contained] in ordinances; that He might make in Himself of the two one new man, making peace; and He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. And He came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and peace to them that were nigh. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father."

That is, in and for the church, such fleshly distinctions are done away. Beyond a doubt, in the church's glory accomplished on high, they will be unknown. But the apostle goes farther, and particularly insists that they are, and ought to be, unknown now. No man, not even Christ, known after the flesh, is the key-note of the church: "yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." The church can rest on nothing short of death and resurrection. She rejoices in her Head glorified in heaven, and knows herself even now one with Him there. Consequently she is raised alike above the high estate of the Jew, and above the low estate of the Gentile. "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour" (Phil. 3: 20).

But again, if the mass of those gathered into the church were dark, outcast Gentiles; if they could not say, we are "Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever," they received a better adoption and a more surpassing glory: not merely covenants connected with earthly things and presented by a Messiah (whatever His own personal dignity), as minister of the circumcision, for the truth of God to confirm the promises made unto the fathers; but the unsearchable riches of Christ freely given, which it was meet for the God of grace and glory to bestow upon the far-off penury and wretchedness of those who possessed nothing!

This was "the mystery" which was specially entrusted to the apostle Paul, made known unto him by revelation, "as I wrote before in a few words, whereby when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ; which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it was now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." It consists of Christ as well as of the church, she only by grace having oneness with Him Who is Head over all things.

In previous ages the Spirit had quickened souls: there was nothing strange in that. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," said the Son of God, not yet lifted up. The extraordinary thing was, that, when the Jews perverted their singular endowments to sin and insult the most aggravated against God, not aiding only but provoking and inciting the Gentiles to the crucifixion of their own Messiah, occasion was taken of the breach thus of necessity made between God and a guilty world, to introduce a secret hitherto undisclosed but now unveiled. The elect nation had consummated their corruption and violence. God's name was blasphemed among the heathen through those who were separated to be the grand depository of His oracles and the witness of His character on earth. What remained, if thus the earth and its choicest people were in rebellion ? Heaven; and so, in the depths of divine compassion and wisdom and love, God began to create a new body neither Jewish nor Gentile properly, though chosen out of either, both made one, both reconciled in one body, destined for a sphere as alien from the most exalted as from the most debased of earth.

"God be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to shine upon us," say the Jewish saints in Ps. 67, "that thy way may be made known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations . . . . . God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." Such is the order of blessing in the world to come: the Jews in the inner circle, and in the outer the Gentiles through them glad and singing for joy, for God will govern in righteousness. The blessing of the nations was an ancient and reiterated truth; proclaimed to Abraham (Gen. 12: 3), renewed in the Seed (Gen. 22: 18), repeated to Isaac (Gen. 26: 4), and to Jacob (Gen. 28: 14). It was bound up in terms with the promises so well known and cherished, which guaranteed the highest seat on earth to the seed of Abraham.

Is, then, a most certain and familiar pledge of Gentile blessing in the promised Seed, so often and not obscurely referred to in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, — is this the mystery which has been "hid from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to the saints"? Can that with propriety be said specially and absolutely to be hid, which was among the simplest and most frequently recurring household words of the people of God, from the time of the first promise to the patriarchs? There is no secret nor silence about that which was published from age to age, and declared from generation to generation. What was made known to the fathers, and indeed to all Israel, cannot be, for this very reason, the mystery of Christ — that peculiar mystery, "which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it was now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit."

Some, I am aware, through unbelief and a consequent lack of spiritual intelligence and heed to human tradition, have unwittingly sought to neutralise the speciality, and thereby the nature and being, of "the mystery," by the assumption that it had been revealed from the beginning, and that it was always, though dimly, understood by the Old Testament saints. The answer is plain and direct: the apostle Paul says positively that "it was now revealed." From the beginning of the world it was hid in God (Eph. 3: 9). To the apostles and prophets it was now revealed, and to none previously — ὡς νῦν ἀπεκαλύφθη τοῖς ἁγίοις ἀποστόλοις αὐτοῦ καὶ προφήταις ἐν πνεύματι. Certainly it is not to the apostles at the present and to the prophets at a former time. It was "now" revealed, and that to persons joined together as a common class to which the revelation was then made; as the structure of the words necessarily implies to any competent to judge of such a question, shutting out therefore the idea of any prophets being referred to before the Pentecostal mission of the Spirit. The prophets, alluded to in the text, were of the present economy as much as the apostles were; and therefore the words, far from weakening, tend directly to strengthen the distinctive character of "the mystery," as a thing wholly unrevealed in former times. It was a new revelation.

The character, also, of the Abrahamic blessing of the Gentiles is totally different from that of "the mystery." "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed," etc. (Gen. 22). All the nations are to be blessed in the Seed; but they are, and are here regarded as being, distinct from it. They are no more to be confounded with Israel, so as to form one common body, than are the enemies whose gate is to be the possession of Israel. It and the nations are assuredly to inherit a blessing. But if it be the same blessing, will any one maintain that it is after the same mode or in the same measure? If it be so-if the seed and all the nations of the earth are blessed indiscriminately and alike, where is the marked and characteristic prerogative of the seed of Abraham? Or is there, in truth, no peculiar privilege for his seed after all? If, on the other hand, it be not so, and the seed is to have its own proper promised place by divine favour, higher than all the nations who are blessed in Christ, then is the oath to Abraham most clearly distinguished from "the mystery" wherein no such differences exist, but the Gentiles are fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and joint-partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel.

Let it be repeated, that Ephesians 2 and 3 do not teach the permanent and unlimited setting aside of Jewish exaltation above the Gentile. To such a superiority in this world the Jews had a lawful title, until Christ, in rejection, ascended into heaven; and such a superiority will be theirs when He returns again. But there is the abolition of everything of the sort for that which spans the interim, in other words, for the intermediate calling of the church. Because the church is not a mere aggregate of units or of believing persons throughout all ages, but a special body gathered by virtue of the Holy Ghost, now present and dwelling in them as a temple too, for association with the heavenly glory of Christ; as the redeemed Jews in the millennium will be the nearest and most favoured objects of His earthly rule, when He appears in glory.

It is, then, the personal presence of the Holy Ghost, descended from heaven, which acts as the power of the unity established here below in the church: a unity not merely of life — of doctrine — of service, but of the Spirit; the unity formed and perpetuated by the Holy Ghost Himself (Eph. 4: 3). The disciples, like saints before them, were believers before Pentecost; but they were then, and not before, united to Christ in heavenly places as His body. That which unites to Christ, constituting us members of His body, as scripture so often declares, is not the faith which the Spirit communicates as He has ever done, but the Spirit Himself subsequently and personally given, as was the case at Pentecost.

Observe, it is not "unity of spirit." This is the theme pressed upon the Philippians (Phil. 1: 27): "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ; that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel;" and compare Phil. 3: 16. Nor has the apostle forgotten elsewhere to pray for the saints at Rome, that the God of patience and consolation would grant them to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus, that they might with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace as this surely is, the exhortation in Ephesians 4 is of a higher order. It is not so much the spirit of themselves, or of one another that they were to think of; it is the Spirit given, the unity of the Spirit. Moreover, the apostle does not tell them to form a society by community of object, agreement of opinion, or likeness of manners. Certainly it was not an optional alliance which they were called upon to frame. The Spirit present makes the unity. Their business is, "using diligence to keep (or, observe, τηρεῖν) it in the bond of peace." How humbling to man and exalting to God: how encouraging, wholesome, and strengthening for His saints!

To one who has entered, howsoever little, into the divine estimate of what the church is and will be in the counsels of God, or even of what the church originally was when, gazing into the heavenly face of Him Who loved her, she reflected by the Spirit somewhat of the light of God's glory which she had seen there — to the heart of such a one, grieving over the wreck of the deposit that was committed to the frail and treacherous hands of man, and humbled at his puny and ineffectual and proud efforts to repair the ruin which he can no longer disguise — to such, I say, oh! what a relief to know and feel that even here in the desert it is not "my flock," nor "our church," but the church of God, the body of Christ, the unity of the Spirit!

These are the living realities with which we have to do; and at all cost to repudiate in ourselves, or in others, corporately and individually, all that denies them. That single-eyed unflinching allegiance to the wideness of God's heart about His people must, in a time of general departure from Him, lead into an isolated path, I do not doubt, however paradoxical it may seem. That it may appear to be a severe exclusive narrowness, to those who are not weaned from the worldliness and unbelief of essays on a grand scale, is possible; but for the faithful there is no choice. "Let us go forth, therefore, unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach."

None of course would deny that, as men, as sinners, as Jews or Gentiles, there are certain things possessed in common with others. There is a unity of mankind, as such or fallen, as under law and without law. There is a continuity in the administration of the promises dispensationally on earth, according to which Rom. 11 views, first, the Jews as the natural branches of the olive-tree; then, some of them broken off because of unbelief, and the Gentiles, or wild olive-tree, grafted among them; and afterwards, upon the Gentiles not continuing in the goodness of God, the Jews grafted again into their own olive-tree.* Again, there is a unity which dates higher up than the olive-tree of earthly witness-that of all the faithful, who, in the acknowledgement of common sin, look to a common Saviour, as there will be a blessed and holy communion of such as have part in the first resurrection.

* In Romans 11 there is a cutting off as to the branches: in Ephesians there is nothing of the sort; it would be a dismembering of Christ, which is impossible. In Romans 11 the Jews were the natural branches, and the blessings were the blessings of their own olive-tree, into which, contrary to nature, the Gentiles are temporarily grafted. But in Ephesians those who were near and those who were afar off in the world were alike treated as lost sinners. The only character which either possessed by nature is that of "children of wrath" (such the favoured Jews were), "even as others."

But all these varied groups are demonstrably distinct from "the unity of the Spirit." With the redeemed, it is true, the Spirit had to do, inasmuch as He it is Who had given souls to believe God's salvation in Christ. This therefore was not, whereas the unity of the Spirit is, a new thing; for never before had He come to abide in sinners redeemed, and thus to make them one with Christ glorified on high and one with each other here below. Satan had his union of Jews and Gentiles in the cross of the Son of God; and in that cross the foundation was laid for God's union, effected by the presence and indwelling of the Spirit in those who enjoy the exceeding riches of the grace of God in His kindness toward them through Christ Jesus. "There is one body and one Spirit."

Another remark, connecting itself with the foregoing, needs to be made. Those who form the church, whatever may be their distinctive endowments, share many blessings with all saints who ever have been and ever may be. Election, redemption, faith, saintship, and heirship in the kingdom are doubtless our privileges; but they are not the exclusive property of the church. They are common to all believers. So true is this, that they may be traced in the spared and blessed Gentiles of the striking scene described in Matt. 25: 31-46.

Thus the Son of man is supposed to be already come and seated upon the throne of His glory, and He separates, among all the Gentiles (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη) gathered before Him, the sheep from the goats. The gospel of the kingdom had been preached, it may be observed, for a witness to all those Gentiles (πᾶσι τοῖς ἔθνεσι) before the end came; and the ground of the sentence is laid in the reception or rejection of those whom Jesus, as the King (for His royal rights are now enforced, displayed, and acknowledged), designates as His brethren, a class evidently distinct from, though coming in contact with, the sheep and the goats. To the sheep, set at His right hand, the King says "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." That these are believing souls, redeemed by the blood of Christ, none perhaps would dispute; and the passage affirms that the kingdom which they inherit was prepared for them from the foundation of the world: terms which differ indeed from those in Eph. 1 (which show how the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ chose us in Him before the foundation of the world), but sufficiently decisive of the fact that God prepared a special inheritance for these living Gentiles, whatever might be the small amount of their spiritual intelligence.

But if there are blessings common to all believers of every age, the Holy Ghost, on the other hand, could not personally come down, and abide in men on earth, according to the scriptural figure springing up in them as well as flowing out, until Jesus was glorified in heaven. But when He took His seat there as the exalted head, the Holy Ghost was sent down for the purpose of gathering a body for Christ. This and this only is called in the scriptures "the church of God;" and its unity, hinging upon the baptism of the Holy Ghost, is, as we have seen, "the unity of the Spirit." Matt. 16: 18 is the first occurrence of the word "church," i.e. assembly, in the New Testament. It is important to observe that there it is spoken of as a thing not merely unmanifested, and unordered, but not yet existing. It was not built, nor building yet: "upon this rock I will build my church." Secondly, the promise that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it hardly alludes to the indefectibility, much less to the infallibility, of the church on earth. Thirdly, Christ's church is mentioned as altogether distinct from the kingdom of heaven, the keys of which (not of His church) the Lord promises to give to Peter.

The unity of the church as Christ's body will surely be displayed perfectly for the administration of the fulness of seasons, when God will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. But does not this scripture teach, that the church, if for the time on earth to itself as the heavenly witness of the grace of God, will then form part of a common system? I answer, that the passage seems, on the contrary, to keep distinct the church in her own peculiar and pre-eminent seat of the affection and glory of Christ. For, first, the apostle speaks of the heavenly things and the earthly things being headed up in Christ, which is deduced (in Colossians 1: 15, 16) from His claims as Creator, though asserted by Him as the Firstborn of every creature; in which latter text we have His supremacy affirmed by right of creation over all things that are in heaven and that are on earth. Next, it is added, "In whom [Christ] also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will; that we should be to the praise of His glory who have pre-trusted in Christ: in whom ye also," etc. (Eph. 1: 11-13).

Just so we may observe, after the statement of His headship over all things, the Epistle to the Colossians turns to another headship. "And He is the head of the body, the church: the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre- eminence." Neither heavenly things nor earthly things are the church, though they are to be the inheritance she shares who is co-heir with Christ. God "hath put all things under His feet, and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body." Instead of being included in "all things under His feet," she enjoys and participates in His supremacy over all by virtue of being one with Him. Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, she looks for an inheritance such as becomes Him Who purchased it, and Him also Who is its earnest; such as becomes (may we not add?) the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, "to whom be glory in the church throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." See also Rev. 21: 2, 3.

But although it is for "the administration of the fulness of seasons" that the glory of Christ, shared by the church as His bride, will be revealed, so that the world itself shall know it, yet was there a testimony to it, produced and manifested by the power of the Holy Ghost in the one body on earth. When the apostle spoke of the saints being "builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit," was this unity a thing ideal, future, and only to be achieved in heaven? Or was it not an actual present fact made good here below by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven? Is it not true that "now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known, by the church, the manifold wisdom of God?" And the unity of the Spirit, which the saints should be diligent to keep, where was it if not on earth? Will the saints in heaven use their diligence to keep it there? Again, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers given of Christ (Himself ascended up far above all heavens), where were they, and where still are the gifts of Christ? Where and to what end is exercised the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ? Does the perfecting (καταρτισμὸς) of the saints, does the work of the ministry, does the edifying of the body of Christ, find their sphere in heaven? Is it there that we are in danger of being tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of men's doctrine? Is it not on earth that we meet with "sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive?" Is it not here that we "grow up unto him in all things, who is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. 4: 15, 16)? It was here, in the church, that each joint of supply wrought, contributing nourishment to the whole: it was here, according to the effectual working in the measure of each one part, that the body made increase. It is in this world, and in this world only, that "all the body, by joints and bands having nourishment ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God;" as it is assuredly here that the Spirit would have the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts, to the which also we were called in one body (Col. 2, 3).

In writing to the saints at Rome (Rom. 12), hitherto never seen by the apostle, and therefore in man's judgment at least connected in no peculiar way with him, as was the case too with regard to the Colossians, it is just the same: "As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same function; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." Evidently it is not a tie which was going to be established, but a relationship then and really existent. Membership is not with a local church but with the body of Christ; though, on the other hand, if one be not in fellowship with the assembly of Christ's members where one resides, there can be for such no fellowship with them anywhere else at the same time.

Nor can language be more explicit than that of 1 Cor. 12. "But all these worketh the one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of the body being many are one body; so also is the Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink of one Spirit" (ver. 13). The composition of that one body depends upon the baptism of the Holy Ghost. By Him are we baptised into the body of Christ, Jews, Gentiles, bond or free; it matters not. The great fact is, that Jesus exercised His heavenly rights. He baptised with the Holy Ghost; and they who were thus baptised became the immediate and the especial field of His presence and operations, the body of Christ, the body subsisting on earth, and acted on by the Spirit when the apostle wrote.

The diversities of gifts, of administrations, and of operations, will not be in heaven. Their province is the church on earth. It is here that the manifestation is given to every man (i.e., in the church) to profit withal. If any reasonable doubt could be harboured about the word of wisdom to one, the word of knowledge to another, and faith to a third, there can be no question in the believer's mind, that the gifts of healing, the working of miracles, divers kinds of tongues, and their interpretation, are not prospectively for heaven but for earth now. It is the one and selfsame Spirit Who energised all these, distributing to each. For the many members constitute but one body; "by one Spirit were we all baptised into one body."

The importance of these last words will be better estimated on comparing with them Acts 1: 4, 5; and particularly the clause, "Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." At the time the disciples were believers. They had life, and life more abundantly, we may say Jesus, the quickening Spirit, had breathed upon them and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," etc. He had also opened their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures. But none of these things is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Pentecost first beheld the accomplishment of the promise of the Father. Then, and not before, were believers baptised with the Spirit. But it is this baptism which introduces into, and forms, the one body; it is the Spirit, thus present and baptising, Who began and organises, as He recruits the body of Christ. Hence is it, that coincident with the baptism of the Holy Ghost, we first hear in the word of God of this new body, and of membership therein. Whatever the privileges (and there were many) which existed before, that which is distinctively called in the Bible the church of God appeared here below, as the consequence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, dwelling in the disciples, and baptising them, Jews or Gentiles, into one body, of which the ascended Christ is the Head. The church, His body, derived its being from His presence in heaven as the glorified Man, and from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit on earth.

''But, as it is, God set the members every one of them in the body, even as it pleased him. And if they all were one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. [And] the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee; or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary; and those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness while our comely parts have no need. But God tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to the [part] which lacked, that there might be no schism in the body; but that the members might have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with [it]; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with [it]. Now ye are Christ's body and members in particular." 1 Cor. 12: 18- 27.

When Christ's members are together in heaven, our mortal body changed, fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself, will any "seem to be more feeble?" Shall we think any to be "less honourable" there, and, "upon these bestow more abundant honour?" That this is a present care, flowing out of the sense God gives us of the exigencies and of the preciousness of Christ's body here below, is exactly what I am contending for. Does any one believe that such will be our employment when Christ presents the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing? But if not, these members were members of the body then on earth, for God had tempered the body together, "having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked, that there might be no schism in the body (in heaven there is no danger of schism); but that the members might have the same care one for another." "And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it: or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it," this is clearly not in heaven, but on earth. "Now ye are Christ's body and members in particular:" where and when is this? Surely then on earth. Heaven is not in question. It was a subsisting fact here, though in the spiritual sphere, and fraught with blessing and responsibility of the utmost importance to Christ's glory for every one of His members.

"And God did set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." Manifestly, these are gifts in the church-the whole church on earth. The apostle addresses, no doubt, the church of God that was at Corinth; while it is very clear that the New Testament frequently speaks of assemblies in this or that locality, that is, churches (compare Rom. 15: 1, 5; Gal. 1: 2, 22; Col. 4: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 1: 1; 2: 14, etc). But, besides this which is not disputed, as well as the application of the term in Heb. 12: 23 to the congregation of the firstborn which are written in heaven viewed as a completed thing, however anticipative faith might say, "Ye have come" to it, even as to the other components of the glory — besides in short the local and the future senses, 1 Cor. 12: 28 is clearly another sense of the most important bearing, as seen elsewhere in the Epistles of Paul: the church, as a body here below, in a breadth as extensive as the baptism of the Spirit. That entire society or corporation, wherein He dwelt and wrought, was the church in which God set apostles, prophets, teachers, etc. Certainly it is impossible to say that He had set all these in the Corinthian assembly; nor will it be maintained that He is to set them in the church universal gathered on high.

There is, then, another and large sense of "the church," in which unity is predicated of all the members of Christ existing at one time in the world, whatever might be the distance separating their bodies; and that in virtue of one Spirit baptising them into one body. The body of Christ, like the natural one, is susceptible of increase, as scripture plainly indicates. But as in the natural body the identity subsists when the old particles have given place to new, so the body of Christ is the body still, whatever the changes in the members particularly. He Who by His presence imparted unity at its beginning, conserves unity by His own faithful presence. He was given to abide with the disciples for ever.

In fine, by "the church" is meant not a junction of various co-ordinate (much less conflicting) societies but a body, the one body of Christ, possessing the same privileges and call and responsibility on earth, and looking for the same glory in heaven as the Bride of Christ. If a man were baptised by the Spirit, he was thereby constituted a member of the church; if he had a gift, it was to be exercised according to the proportion of faith for the good of the whole: not ministry, not membership, pertaining to a church but to the church; each joint belonging to the entire body, and the entire body to each joint (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 3, 12, 14; Eph. 1, 4; Col. 2; 1 Tim. 3: 15; Rev. 22: 17). If it be God's truth, it is for the believer to act on, to walk, serve, and worship in. Divine truth without corresponding faithfulness is the shame and condemnation of him who merely owns it. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

W.K.

Born of Water and Spirit.

John 3: 5.

W. Kelly.

Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, owned Jesus as come a teacher from God, and this on the ground of such signs as convinced him that God was with Him. It was a sound inference, based on good evidence and sure; but it was only intellectual. It was not conscience searched by divine truth, nor a soul crying to God because of his sins. "Rabbi, we know," etc. (ver. 2), says he vaguely; not, "What must I do to be saved?" He was unconscious of his personal ruin, and was what Scripture calls "dead in sins." The Lord takes higher ground than of a rabbi, and puts Nicodemus on lower ground than a disciple's. In a form extremely solemn, yet more than that of the great discourse on the mount in the first Gospel, He laid down the prime need of fallen man. His words breathe nothing short of divine authority. He speaks not as the scribes, nor even as a prophet with "Thus saith Jehovah," but as consciously God: — "Verily, verily, I say to thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (ver. 3).

As a distinguished rabbi, Nicodemus was familiar with the washing of a proselyte, and with the high-flown platitudes of its effect rife in the schools. But he was no proselyte any more than other Jews. Dull as he might be to the truth, and as all naturally are, he saw that much more was insisted on for everybody who was to see the kingdom of God. Figures were all well to elevate common-place; and to this he was used; but if a new and real quickening were meant, how to get rid of the absurdity for a grown man to be born again? The answer is in terms no less peremptory than before: — "Verily, verily, I say to thee, Except one be born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (ver. 5).

Now Nicodemus was no more converted to God at this time than the woman of Samaria when she first came to the well; he no more believed to life eternal than the crowd which came to Capernaum in quest of Jesus, or any others in their natural state of whom we read elsewhere. If the Lord in plain language invariably called on such to believe on His name, is it an intelligent interpretation that here only He prescribed an ordinance? Even when those who heard the preaching at Pentecost were pricked in their heart, and said, "What shall we do?" the apostle did not so interpret his Master's words. He said, "Repent, and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit " (Acts 2: 37, 38), a gift therefore over and beyond birth of the Spirit. But repentance toward God implies faith as surely as faith in Christ implies repentance. Compare Acts 16: 31 and Acts 20: 21. If it be an honest interpretation to suppose Christian baptism here set before an unrenewed Jewish teacher, it can only be in minds prepossessed by tradition and negligent of the unmistakable teaching of the New Testament.

Such men assume that "water" in John 3: 5 must be plain fact; but they overlook the mystic or allegoric style in which this Gospel abounds. What is the "water" in John 4: 10? Is the "water" plain fact in John 7: 38? Nor did the Lord Himself interpret the figure in these cases, any more than in the momentous teaching of John 13: 10, founded on His previous action. But in John 15: 3 He gives a key to His meaning, if any needed one: "Already ye are clean by reason of the word which I have spoken to you." We are expressly told that He baptized none (John 4: 2); but His words were spirit and life (John 6: 63); and they received Him, believing on His name (John 1: 12). They were thus born of God. Water is the figure for His word.

There is a difference discernible in the use of the figure. In John 3, as in 13, it is "water" to deal with the unclean or defiled. In John 4, and in John 7, it is "living water" to drink, as the power of communion in the one chapter, and of testimony in the other, the gift of the Spirit to believers. There it is not new birth in its cleansing power on him who only now believes as in John 3, or the grace of restoration founded on it as in John 13. It is the purifying power of God's word when received in faith, as we may see laid down in the plain words of Acts 15: 9; 2 Cor. 7: 1; Eph. 5: 26; 1 Peter 1: 22. Hence "water" alone, figuring the word, needs the addition of "and Spirit" to convey the Lord's mind fully as to new birth. The soul in bowing to Christ is born of water and Spirit. Had this divine work taken place in Nicodemus, he would have been by repentance a fit subject for Christian baptism, the sign of identification with Christ's death (Rom. 6): thereby were we buried to His death.

This is confirmed, as the genuine character of the birth here meant, by the earlier words of our evangelist in John 1: 12, 13: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He right to become children of God (even) to those that believe on His name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The possession of spiritual life everywhere in this Gospel hinges on faith, as may be seen not in chap. 1 only, but in John 3: 15, 16, 18, 36; John 5: 24, 25, 39, 40; John 6: 27, 29, 32-35, 40, 47, 51, 53, 54; John 7: 38, 39; John 8: 12, 51; John 10: 9, 10, 26-28; John 20: 31. What can be clearer than that the Lord attaches life eternal to faith in Himself without one word about baptism? So true is this, that it is merely the effort of superstition to bring baptism into John 3: 3-5 as it does the Lord's Supper into John 6, with the utmost violence to both chapters. Indeed it is a Gospel which avoids outward forms expressly, so as to lay the stress on Christ's Person and the gift of the Holy Spirit — its grand topics. If we misapply John 6: 54 to the Lord's Supper, the inference would be that every partaker of it has life eternal, and shall be raised up in the blessed resurrection at the last day. It is therefore manifestly erroneous. If one again misapply John 3: 3-5 to baptism, the words must shut out from the kingdom every unbaptized person. But the Lord, in the most touching and effective way, teaches us the contrary by the converted robber — a sample of many souls since that day.

Nor need we confine our view to those saved by the gospel since. The Lord tells us in Luke 13: 28 that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall be seen in the kingdom of God. Are we to doubt the same of Abel, Enoch, Noah, to say nothing of "so great a cloud of witnesses" after those elders, that time would fail to enumerate all? Yet not one of them was baptized.

In short, the truth of Scripture thus requires us to believe that all who are born of God shall inherit the kingdom of God. It is not a fresh New Testament privilege of which the Lord here treats, like "the hour cometh, and now is," in John 4: 21-23. On the contrary, it is for all time a truth of vital moment; it looks back as well as forward, it concerns every converted soul without a single exception. The Lord solemnly insisted on it to Nicodemus, not only as his then need, but because it was buried at that time under the darkness of Jewish self-complacency; as it is now under the corrupting sacramentalism, which the tiniest sect may share with the proudest and most prevalent that pretends to be the church.

The inevitable effect is to set up ordinances, dispensing saving efficacy, through officials arrogating a sanctity which is unreal, and mysterious powers which are not of Christ but a delusion of the enemy. For his aim is to hinder the sinner from finding life eternal in Christ, to Whom the Holy Spirit points in the gospel as its only source to faith, "The Son of man, who came to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19: 10). Yea, Satan's aim is to dishonour the Son of God, and to ruin man. Nor have any of his wiles been more mischievous than the antiquated lie that baptism is here meant as the divine means of new birth.

It has been already shown that to put baptism before one of ripe years, and still in the darkness of nature, is contrary to the tenor of all Scripture. The error and even absurdity of such a thought proves the impossibility of applying John 3: 3-5 to baptism. Besides, people forget that Christian baptism (not John's of course, nor yet the disciples', which was analogous) did not exist till Christ died and rose, which indeed gave the special force to it. Our Lord did not institute it until after His resurrection (Matt. 28: 19). "Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism unto death," etc. Not one of the disciples, neither John nor Peter, could have understood the truth of it in the least degree at that time. How strange then to imagine that a distinctively Christian privilege, the sign of Christ's death and of our identification with Him in it, was or could be set before an unreconciled Jewish teacher! Col. 2: 12 must have been still less intelligible then ("buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with [Him] through faith in the working of God," etc.).

Even Acts 22: 16, Gal. 3: 27, and 1 Peter 3: 21, though simpler perhaps, could only have mystified real believers till the finished work of Christ set them all in the light. But every scripture referred to furnishes its own special and overwhelming proof that John 3 speaks of divine quickening, the necessary work in every soul that ever was born of God. This is not at all the truth that is signified by the "one baptism" of water, the initiatory privilege of Christian profession. For baptism is nowhere made the symbol of the new birth, but of Christ's death; and thus it is said to be for remission of sins and of death with Him. In short it is a figure of salvation, as in 1 Peter 3. Hence we perceive the consistency of Scripture, singularly lost sight of in Christendom. For our Lord only instituted baptism to the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (the Trinity), when His mighty work of redemption was accomplished, not from the day of fallen Adam when grace gave believers to be born anew by faith in the woman's Seed.

Beyond controversy God uses His word in converting souls now as ever. So the apostle tells the Corinthian saints, "In Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4: 15). Not otherwise, but speaking of the source, James 1: 18 teaches, "Of His own will He begot us (or brought us forth) by the word of truth," not by an ordinance. 1 Peter 1: 23 lays down the same doctrine: "Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through God's living and abiding word." Nor is John less distinct in his First Epistle, declaring (1 John 5: 9-13) that for life eternal all turns on receiving the witness of God about His Son; while he that believes not God has made Him a liar, and has not life.

Now when God's word enters the soul by faith, it deals with conscience in a purifying way; it awakens to a sense of sin, and produces repentance toward God. Therefore Peter speaks of cleansing our hearts by faith (Acts 15: 9), and wrote to the elect sojourners of the dispersion what is equally true of all believers, that they had "purified their souls in their obedience to the truth" (1 Peter 1: 22). So the Lord told the disciples (John 15: 3), "Already ye are clean, because of the word which I have spoken to you." The atoning work was not yet done, nor was Christian baptism enjoined or even possible. It was God's word which wrought in His grace, being received not as men's word, but, even as it is truly, God's word, which also effectually works in those that believe (1 Thess. 2: 13).

In accordance with this the Lord spoke of being "born of water and Spirit." Thus the truth of a spiritual cleansing was presented in the most forcible way as the beginning of a new life not before enjoyed. "Water" was the appropriate figure of the word of God, which has always been and is and must be the means invariably used to quicken a dead and unclean soul. But this can only be when the Holy Spirit gives the word efficacy. The soul bows to God, recognising and hating his sins; there is faith no less than repentance. "I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight." This was always true in principle; but the gospel of God's grace adds, now that Christ is come, "Bring forth quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring forth the fatted calf, kill it: and let us eat, and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found" (Luke 15). A soul is justified by faith as well as born anew; and that, not this, is what baptism symbolizes.

The allusion in John 3: 5 is to such passages in the Old Testament as Psalm 51: 7-10, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.... Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." Again, Isaiah 1: 16, "wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes." So speaks Jeremiah 4: 14, "O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved." But fullest of all is Ezekiel 36: 25-27, "And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you," etc. Here we have beyond legitimate doubt "water" used figuratively, yet the Spirit is put with it in plain and direct terms as the divine agent in the work: the very objection raised to deny the true sense of John 3: 5. And this Old Testament scripture is the more pertinent because it seems to have been chiefly before the Lord in speaking. But He clothed the truth with a fulness and precision, proper to Himself, making it, as the first reception of divine life, absolutely requisite for all that enter the kingdom of God.

In verse 6 this is cleared and strengthened by His words, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Not a word is said about the remission of sins or any other fruit of Christ's death. It is a question of a new and spiritual nature from the Spirit as the source. Here water is left out. The object was to explain that the nature given is according to the character of the divine agent, as it must be to qualify sinful man, now believing, for God's presence and kingdom, His service and worship. Baptism has its importance, and the Lord's Supper yet more, as being the constant feast of the church. But neither one nor other could do what the Spirit effects in making the believer a partaker of the divine nature, as 2 Peter 1: 4, or born of God, as it is often said by John. A new nature is communicated by the Spirit, a nature similar to His own: the word, without the Spirit, could have no such efficacy.

Then the Lord exhorts Nicodemus, in verse 8, not to wonder that He insisted on the new birth as indispensable, not for heathen or Gentiles only, but for Jews like himself. "Ye must be born anew." A Jew might readily enough have acknowledged the necessity for some radical change in those that were aliens from the polity of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2). But was it not a hard saying of those whom Jehovah called His chosen and holy people, His peculiar inheritance?

In fact, Nicodemus was not so childish as those who fancy the Lord meant here Christian baptism. An ordinance would have been easy for a Jew to comprehend and to submit to even then, if prescribed by one he owned as come from God, a teacher furnished with credentials of power indubitably divine. His construction may be as wild as the view of the fathers is weak and heathenish; for they imagined it to be a religious ceremony, wherein the Spirit accompanied the water of immersion, pouring, or sprinkling (as the case might be), so as to make it the vehicle of life spiritual. One cannot say "life eternal," for the great majority of those who entertain that superstition deny its everlasting virtue, and are obliged to own that by far the most of their baptized live and die in their sins. Nicodemus, mistaken though he was, did not understand that any rite could meet the Saviour's words. He was so far not wrong in thinking that a supernatural operation was implied. He did not fall so low as to dream of literal "water" invested by God with quickening energy. His mind reasoned on being "born anew." What he suggested is quite short of what grace does effect, as it has ever done. For what work can be more evidently and exclusively of divine operation than for a sinner, in a true, living, and eternal sense, to be born of the Spirit — "born of God"? If somehow born again of his mother, it must be the same "old man" over again.

Yet that is the good work which God has been doing throughout, man's sad history, and in the gospel it was to be far more widely wrought than ever; and therefore the moment was most fitting for the Lord here to set it out in His own striking manner. Hence He adds in verse 8, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and its voice thou hearest, but knowest not whence it cometh, and where it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit." As the wind is above man's comprehension and control, so is the Spirit sovereign in His activity, and the blessing is thus not limited to any people or land. Open to everyone, it might be made good to any; as Paul claims for the righteousness of God preached in the gospel.

More and more perplexed by that which broke up the superficial and narrow system of Jewish tradition, Nicodemus in verse 9 asked, "How can these things be?" when the Lord answered, "Art thou the teacher of Israel, and knowest not these things?" Nicodemus as a Jew, and familiar with the Old Testament scripture, ought to have known "these things" of which the Lord had spoken thus far, and of which all that Nicodemus said proved his total ignorance.

Here again we have the plain and strong inference from our Lord's words that there was not the least allusion to the institution of Christian baptism, and that all which He had announced was no more than a learned Jew should have known. The law and the prophets say nothing of Christian baptism, but treat of the same need, and press it on Israel. Not even a Baptist would be disposed to own that God's sprinkling clean water on a defiled Jew means Christian baptism. He must own that it is a figure of a spiritual blessing promised to the ancient people of God, and not literal water; and he has to face the fact that the Spirit of God literally is in the same place connected with the figurative water.

But the Lord, not contented with setting Old Testament truth in a brighter light, next intimates a character of knowledge and testimony such as no prophet, however gifted, could propose. They were borne on by the Spirit beyond their comprehension. They had to confess their ignorance of their own inspired utterances (1 Peter 1: 10-12). They had to search what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them pointed out, even when they said, Thus saith Jehovah. But the Lord knew things as they are, being the Son, a Divine Person; He knew them in the communion of the Godhead, of which His becoming flesh had in no way deprived Him. He had seen and could testify what was above man's or creature's ken. "Verily, verily, I say to thee, We speak that which we know, and testify that which we have seen; and ye receive not our testimony. If I told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?"

Here again we have proof upon proof that the Lord had not passed beyond what was needed even for the "earthly things" of God's kingdom. Therein is Israel to be blessed and honoured pre-eminently on earth. But when God is thus truly "good to Israel," their own law carefully restricts it to such as are of a "clean heart" or pure in heart (Psalm 73: 1). Then only will they be received to (or with) glory (ver. 24). For then as surely as His salvation will be for them that fear Him, so will glory dwell in that land beyond every other (Psalm 85: 9). Yet will it be the day when, through Israel restored to favour and blessed, God's way will be known on earth, His saving health among all nations (Psalm 67: 2) Then, indeed, shall the peoples, all the peoples, praise God as they have never done; for the kingdom of God will have come in manifested power under the King of kings and the Lord of lords. His people at last are under the new covenant (Jer. 31: 31- 34), and will be all righteous (Isaiah 60: 21).

These predictions of the Old Testament are the "earthly things" to which the Lord here refers, and distinct from the "heavenly things" revealed afterwards to us in the Epistles. And the Lord insists that, even for the earthly things, to be born anew, born of water and Spirit, is an absolute necessity. How much more for the "heavenly things " now revealed to the Christian! He and He only was their suited witness, whether directly or through the Holy Spirit Whom He was to send them from the Father (John 15: 26; John 16: 7, 13-15). For, as He said, "No one hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, the Son of man that is in heaven" (John 3: 13). Thus, when the context is examined, it becomes certain and evident that the notion of Christian baptism here is untenable; as we have seen it to be refuted by the actual text itself.

Again, there is the moral impossibility that it should be set before one who is as yet treated by our Lord as of those not receiving "our witness"; and there is also thc actual impossibility that Nicodemus could know an institution only enjoined after our Lord's death and resurrection; whereas the Lord censures him for not understanding these things as "the teacher of Israel." For it would not only attach an exorbitant place to a form of the truth, and a meaning wholly different from what Scripture does attach, but it would assert what is confessedly false, which is not and cannot be in Scripture.

But if we now turn for a moment to what Scripture says of Christian baptism, the incongruity and the danger of impressing John 3: 5 into that service are transparent. Thus the apostle does not hesitate, when writing to his children in the faith (1 Cor. 1: 14), to thank God that he had personally baptized so few in Corinth, though no doubt all were baptized there (Acts 18: 8) as elsewhere. But how can we conceive such a thanksgiving if baptism be the means of new birth? Were it so, he that loved God and man must the more thank Him the more he baptized. He thanked Him that he had baptized none there save Crispus, Gaius, and the household of Stephanas, lest any should cry up his name in it. For Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Of the gospel he had no fear or shame; for it is God's power unto salvation for everyone that believes. And he declares later in 1 Cor. 15: 1-11 that the gospel of salvation was what he preached and they received — Jesus and His work — unless they believed in vain, without one word about baptism. What do these men know of the gospel or of baptism compared with the apostle?

We may also observe the plain fact that where our Lord does enjoin baptism, the order wholly differs from that which the misuse of John 3: 5 involves. Thus in Matt. 28: 19 He says to the eleven, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them, etc. Discipling the Gentiles was of course to precede their baptism. So in Mark 16: 16 He says, He that believed and was baptized shall be saved. The essential turning-point lay in the first; the due outward order in the second; which is strengthened by what follows, "and he that believed not [without a word about baptism] shall be damned." Baptism without faith only aggravates the condemnation. How easy and perilous it is to corrupt the word of God!

Take an instance from a tract on the New Birth, published by the author at Margate. The main point urged is a distinction between being "begotten" and "born," which he professes to draw from Scripture. One is begotten by faith (says he), as shown in John 1: 12, 13 (though John says "born"), 1 Cor. 4: 15, Philemon 10, James 1: 18, 1 Peter 1: 23, and 1 John 5: 1. But when he wants to prove that we were not spiritually "born" when we believed and were "begotten," he has only human reasoning. There is not a single word to show that we are born by baptism, nothing save the worthless tradition which so interprets the text in question, John 3: 5, 7. Physiology is quite out of court.

But let me tell the author that he is throughout under mistake as to the words and meaning of Scripture. For it is exactly the same word in John 3 translated "born" as in John 1: 13, where he deserts thc revised text for their margin. The Revisers knew, which he does not, that the Greek expresses no such difference. Hence in 1 John 5: 1 it is the same Greek word for "born" and "begotten" ("begat" being the active form of the same also). And so it is elsewhere. The alleged distinction is not the truth of Scripture. To be "born" or "begotten" is the self-same word and fact, at any rate in the spiritual realm; therein to pretend the difference argued for is deplorable ignorance.

The believer is, according to the New Testament, not only "begotten" but "born" by the same life-giving work of God's grace, or rather, the same word employed by the Holy Spirit demonstrates that the alleged distinction is a mere blunder to defend the heterodoxy that by faith we are only "begotten," but not truly "born" till we are baptized: a flagrant contradiction of plain Scripture. The author's own use of James 1: 18 ought to have dispelled the error, which is refuted alike by John, Paul, and Peter also. There is not a shadow of support from God's word. The divine truth is quite certain and clear, and so is the falsehood of men.

W.K.

The Bride, the Lamb's Wife.

Rev. 19 - 22.

W. Kelly.

In the O.T. the literal Babylon on the plain of Shinar appears in contrast with Jerusalem. In the N.T. we hear of a still more portentous Babylon on seven mountains, the great Harlot on whose forehead was written "mystery," which is in no way said or true of the Chaldeans' pride. No principle is more unintelligent and unfounded than to assume that the Revelation, in borrowing names of persons, places, or other objects from the ancient oracles, is bound to the letter and takes no larger views. To confound the new things with the old in that twofold treasure is to prove oneself a scribe un-instructed to the kingdom of the heavens. For in the new things, whatever the allusion to the old, the sphere is indefinitely widened, and the character deepened, as much as heavenly associations rise above earthly. To identify them, as do the pseudo-literalists, is to lose the special light of the N.T., the gravest, the highest, the most precious communications from God, whatever the subject-matter. It is to surrender the mind of Christ; and, what is more, out of the vain conceit of an unreal originality, in rejection of a testimony which men have not the spirituality to appreciate. Is it not sad when saints decline to opposing the word and the Spirit of God?

What can be more certain in its kind than that the glorified church is the Lamb's wife? Not less so is the World-church that sits on (or, by) many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed fornication, and she intoxicated the dwellers on the earth with the wine of her fornication. She was seen sitting on the scarlet Beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns, the peculiar and unmistakeable symbol of the Roman Empire. How absurd to fancy an ephemeral revival of the city of Bel in the east, even if God had not said of it while yet the golden city, It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation! In the fullest sense Rome alone has written on her brow, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS (idols) OF THE EARTH. She indeed rode the Western Beast, she as none other was drunk with the blood of the saints, and, to make it quite plain, with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: an object of great marvel to the prophet, considering her pretensions, which are preposterously impossible of a future Chaldean city. "Mystery" can readily apply to a corrupt Christian system, which would be a hard saying of a city in the east revived through commerce.

To suppose such a revival of Babylon on the plain of Shinar is indeed a heedless misreading of the Revelation. The relation of the Apocalyptic Babylon to the scarlet Beast ought itself to have preserved every believing reader from such a mistake. For that Beast can be no other than the Western Empire, which the guilty Woman of Rome rides for an indefinite term, haughty and cruel beyond example, and idolatrous. But at the end the Beast and his satellite horns shall hate the Harlot and desolate her, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. This is the doom of Rome only: strong is the Lord God that judges her. The East will according to scripture have a wholly different lot, ranged under the king of the north of Daniel (or the Assyrian of the older prophets), and finally under Gog when Israel shall be dwelling peacefully in the land. It is absurd, for anyone familiar with the prophets, to confound the Western powers with those of the East, being wholly opposed in policy. The AntiChrist in the land, who will then be in alliance with the Beast, brings all into collision, when the Lord judges each in power and supersedes all by His everlasting kingdom, long promised by the prophets.

The introduction of the Harlot-church in Rev. 17: 1 expressly and instructively answers to that of the Bride, the Lamb's wife, in Rev, 21: 9, who is identified with the holy Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. How any sober man, I say not spiritual, could conceive this applicable to the earthly Jerusalem, no matter how beautiful or blessed in the Millennium, passes comprehension. Does it not simply show the blinding power of an idea in contempt of the clearest scripture? The just and true inference from God's word is, that it is essentially neither of man nor of the earth like the Palestinian Jerusalem, but heavenly and divine and so having the glory of God, and described in figures altogether and purposely beyond the first creation, which will be ransacked to clothe the earthly metropolis with riches and beauty. Think of jasper clear as crystal, gold transparent as glass, and each gate of "one pearl!" It is all above nature; whereas earthly Jerusalem will be founded and built up with the best things of the earth. We must not think of material beauty in the heavenly city; it is a symbolic description.

This is confirmed in a simple yet important way by the opening scene of Rev. 19 where heaven rejoices over God's judgment of the great Harlot. It is immediately followed by a yet mightier outburst of joyful praise. The time came for the marriage of the Lamb, and His wife made herself ready; while others share the feast in heaven as the blessed guests at that scene of divine love and glory, which even John left undescribed, as Paul did that of our translation at Christ's coming in 1 Thess. 4: 17. Can there be a notion more incongruous and inept than to lower this wondrous heavenly vision to earthly Jerusalem? Yet so it must be if such is the meaning of the city in Rev. 21: 3, and 9.

But we are told that there are just "seven signs" that this is not the church. Let us hear, though seven thousand "signs" could not set aside the irresistible force of chaps. 19, 21, and 22.

(1) Christ is described as "the Lamb;" and this is called an essentially Jewish title, referring to the passover, and the daily sacrifice. The fact is that John's Gospel 1: 20, 36 and 1 Peter 1: 19 use the different word ἀμνός, the Revelation ἀρνίον in pointed contrast with θηρίον. But in no case is there a limited or Jewish horizon. What can refute this contracted view more flatly than the Baptist's words, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world?" So Peter lifts the believing remnant he addresses wholly above the nation and the earth and time itself, by pointing to Christ foreknown before the world's foundation. So does the earth-rejected "Lamb" of the Apocalypse (glorified on high while the Jews have lost their place and their nation) point to dealings of judgment far wider than the Jews, and to heavenly and earthly glories far transcending those secured to Israel according to O.T. prophecy. The true deduction is therefore quite adverse.

(2) The company is described as the Bride, the Lamb's wife. This sign again is no less invalid. For, though a wife is an O.T. figure, not so is the wife "of the Lamb," which the context states to be "of heaven," in the most evident distinction from the earthly Jerusalem, "the beloved city" of Rev. 20: 9. Jerusalem is authoritatively declared to be "the city of the great King"; it is a great honour that He will reign over it as nowhere else here below. But the church is the Bride, the Lamb's wife, who, suffering with Him on earth, shall be glorified with Him on high. To confound these relationships is to lose the key to their distinctive force as revealed in scripture.

(3) It is "a city," a holy city, which John is shown. This is thought to exclude the church, Christ's body. But God declares it to be the Bride, the Lamb's wife, which we have learnt to be the church, and nothing else. It is not even the city wherein the Bride dwells. The holy city is declared authoritatively to be the Bride; and scripture cannot be broken. It is vain to fly to Heb. 12: 22. The misquotation and the perversion are only fresh proofs of error, not without prejudice. "We are come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem," is a daring change from God's word to man's will. "And" is left out after "Zion," and before "the city." But it is essential for marking each new object. Zion is the highest point, as it were, on earth; then follows what is above it, "a living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem." This was Abraham's hope, the seat on high of the saints who shared his faith (cf. Heb. 11: 13-16).

But it was not the "church of first-born ones, enrolled in heaven," which is another object designated by the "and," though the A. and R. Vv. are here as dull as the commentators, swayed by tradition against the only sure word of God. The bride is neither Israel nor Jerusalem, but "new Jerusalem," which a tyro ought to distinguish. And how strange not to see that the heavenly city in Rev.  21 has "no temple!" whereas earthly Jerusalem will have the temple so minutely predicted in Ezek. 40-48. Can nothing clear such dim eyes? It may be added that "mother of us all" is a known bad reading, itself the parent of a great deal of bad theology ancient and modern.

(4) The city comes down out of heaven from God. How does this sign identify it with the earthly city? How does it clash with its heavenly character and glory? It is a necessary part of God's counsel for heading up all things heavenly and earthly in Christ (Eph. 1: 10) in Whom we also are allotted inheritance. We reign with Him, as He is Head to the church over all things. It is only when the new heaven comes that the new Jerusalem lights on the new earth in the eternal state, when the kingdom is given up to Him Who is God and Father. Earthly land, people, and city are no more then: God's tabernacle is with men.

(5) The city had "a wall great and high" (12), the figure of its perfect security. Think what the mind must be that confounds this with Eph. 2: 14, though, even so, obliged to blow hot and cold on it!

(6) The gates with the names of Israel's twelve tribes are next alleged. But the twelve angels might have guarded from such a blunder, and also (7) the twelve apostles of the Lamb. For God evidently in one way or another connects with the holy city associations of government, whether angelic, Jewish, or apostolic. It is the heavenly seat of the kingdom; and it will display in that day, what is even now ours to say in faith, that "all things are ours." Paul was not given to so describe the church's glory, but speaks of her as the heavenly Eve of the heavenly and last Adam. John, while expressly identifying the Bride, the Lamb's wife, with the new Jerusalem, develops here only the city side. It was needless for him to dwell on what O.T. prophecy so fully reveals, the blessedness of Israel in that day. It was of interest to mark, that the kings and the nations pay the most distinct homage to the glorified church, as they will also to the earthly city and people of God. The context requires "unto," not "into," for which the Greek had but one and the same word. But it ought to be familiar to all that the true reading is "the nations," omitting "of them that are saved," which is spurious and almost nonsensical.

Having dismissed the seven "signs" which are no signs, let me add that Rev. 22 is as clearly opposed, as we have seen its predecessors to be against the earthly view of the Bride, the Lamb's wife. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." Such is the constant aspiration and cry of the church as led by the Holy Spirit Who dwells in her. But it will never be the case with the earthly bride. For she will receive that great gift of the outpoured Spirit when the Lord will have appeared to her everlasting joy; and after that it will be too late to say, Come. It is ours in the power of the present Spirit to say, Come, while He is absent on high.

W. K.

The Broken State of Christendom

1 Cor. 3

W. Kelly.

There is no greater danger than forgetting the spirit that becomes those to whom God has shown His mercy in giving true understanding of what suits Him in the actual and broken state of Christendom. Is it not one of the things we need most to look to that the tone in which we use the truth should be becoming? The more we learn of God, the more we should cultivate lowliness of mind. This does not imply that you should have indecision in your convictions, but that along with this you have a just sense of your own weakness, and that you  are broken in spirit, remembering how the glory of the Lord has suffered by the failure of His people. We feel how far the church has fallen and whence also, but we ought not to be discouraged. There is no element of Christ in despair or distrust. The Holy Ghost never produces doubt. As there is sometimes a difficulty in minds about what is called the ruin of the church, a few words may be well on the present broken state of things among those who call on the Lord's name.

We must bear in mind the church in two points of view — the church or assembly as built by Christ; and as built by man, that is, by His servants. The assembly as built by Christ never fails. "The gates of hades shall not prevail against it." But that which has been built by the servants of the Lord is always liable to be injured by elements more or less worthless if not worse. It may suffer through worldliness, haste, carelessness, fleshly feeling, a thousand things according to nature allowed to act without being judged, and so leave results to shame and the Lord's dishonour. Hence we find among the Corinthians there were materials of which the apostle speaks in tones of grave admonition. They had let in what was not unprofitable only, but even corrupting: "wood, hay, and stubble." Yet also there might be a power of defilement with the hand of destruction there. He who built what was worthless might be saved while his work perished, but the man who defiled or destroyed, the house of God, would himself be destroyed by the judgment of God. All this is where men are the builders. Thus we see the two aspects justified. There is that in the assembly of God here below which is built of Christ, and so never fails, the stones of which are living, and in no case dead ones. On the other hand there is the bad workmanship, more or less careless service, as the case may be — either bad men doing what is according to themselves, or good men who are not in everything guided of God, and consequently there is an accretion of inferior material having no value for God, which sullies His temple, and so far incurs the charge of confusion, disorder, and weakness. It is in the last point of view that we see the springs of the ruin which soon overspread the church. These perishable things, ''wood, hay, and stubble," mean, I think, ill-put or light doctrine generating persons akin. It might thus easily mean both; it is in the first instance doctrines palatable to the flesh, and therefore attractive to persons in a fleshly state, perhaps unconverted or natural men.

Some no doubt think it a hard saying to speak of the church in ruins; but why so? There is no impeachment of God but only of man. God called Israel out of Egypt; yet Israel became a ruin. Why then should we wonder that the Gentile has not continued in His goodness? Compare Romans 11, where we may see how little the apostle could be surprised at such an issue. The principle runs through every dealing of God with man. The creature always fails, but all turns to God's glory. No doubt the church, like Israel, exists, but in a ruined state. Does not the Protestant own it when he thinks of Popery? the Romanist when he looks on Protestantism? Upright and spiritual men own it without reserve.

All these are but cases of a still more general truth. The first man fell and is fallen universally. But there is another great fact — the Second man is risen from the dead, and has begun a new creation which will never perish or even fail. Thus the same principle applies far and wide, as always; as far as we touch on the responsibility of man, we behold ruin and confusion. Everybody feels it; every godly intelligent person owns it, even though he might not be used to the expression, and so feel difficulty, fearing it might compromise the grace and faithfulness of God. Impossible to love Christ and the church without groaning. Doubtless I could easily name a well-known high-church leader who, occupying a zone ecclesiastically far removed from that of many, as a pious man, mourned over the present state of the church. Yet as we cannot doubt of real godliness there, so also a heart that loves Christ and those that are Christ's. Now it is impossible to have these divine affections of the new nature without feeling that the present state of things is contrary to Christ's glory. I confess that I have incomparably more sympathy with the groaning of such a man than with others who trumpet the onward progress of Christianity in the nineteenth and present centuries, and look for the triumphs of the millennium as the fruit of the church's labours. How can one sympathise with such insensibility to the actual dishonour done to the Lord? It is really though unconsciously, playing into the hands of Satan.

W.K.

The Call of the Bride

The Substance of a Lecture on Genesis 24.

W. Kelly.

We live in a time when everything is questioned; at least everything that is of God; and in reading this chapter to you this evening, I am glad to present the truth of God from that part of His word which, if it has been the object of especial attack, furnishes the simplest and plainest witness to the prescient wisdom and goodness of Him who wrote it for our instruction.

It would not be intelligent for anyone to look for the revelation of the church of God here. There is no intimation of the union of Jew and Gentile in one body. But, when the mystery was revealed, those who bow to Scripture can see how God had prepared its place and type, although its character was not yet revealed. Nor is this so merely in an isolated point, but there is a well-defined connection of truth clearly foreshown in what precedes and follows. What a testimony, then, if this be so, have we here to the absoluteness of inspiration! Some have looked at Scripture as containing God's word, but not as itself His word. An actual sample from the middle of a book like the present will be found to bespeak God in every word.

The portion to which I direct your attention now commences with Genesis 22. This is not an arbitrary beginning. The chapter is introduced thus: "And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham." It is a new set of divine pictures of the truth. The father is asked to give up his son, "thine only son Isaac whom thou lovest" — an unheard-of trial; to offer him as a burnt-offering on a mountain of Moriah. Under sentence of death the son rests till the third day; then, when the surrender was proved complete, and the hand stretched forth, and the knife to slay the son, the hand of the father is arrested, and a rain, caught by his horns in the thicket, is substituted. Thus did God provide for Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering; for no type can reach up to the height or go down into the depth of the truth: God's Son is God's Lamb.

Perhaps there is no child of God who has not learned that we have here a shadow of the offering of His Son. This every soul that values Scripture and bows to the corresponding light of the New Testament, must acknowledge. But this is not all. The Holy Ghost confirms it by signatures which show His hand and mind. The very order is instructive. Most, we know, are apt to be content with less. They see the love of God set forth in the sacrifice provided; they see the substitution of the ram answering to Him who died for our sins. And there they stop; but the New Testament does not. In Hebrews 11 the apostle Paul gives us most distinctly another step, telling us that "Abraham offered up his only-begotten, of whom it was said, 'that in Isaac shall thy seed be called': accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure." That is, it is intimated that in Genesis 22 we have a shadow, not merely of the death, but also of the resurrection of Christ.

But there is another allusion to this scene in the New Testament, to which we must turn for a little in the third place. It is found in the use the apostle makes of it in Galatians 3. He there lays the greatest stress on the one Seed as contrasted with many: a use of Genesis which is often a great difficulty even to believers. They cannot doubt the statement made, yet feel that they do not understand it. They know that "seed" in all languages may mean many, just as much as one; and so they are conscious that the force of the passage escapes them. Paul must be right, they are assured; why, or what he means, they know not. When men raise difficulties, they are apt to go farther and judge the word which is beyond them. They would do far better if they would look to God as well as into the word of His grace.

The point here I believe to be this: the angel of Jehovah called unto Abraham out of heaven, and, after Isaac was taken from under the knife (the figure of death), Abraham is shown the ram, and offers it: and then the angel of Jehovah called a second time, and said, "By myself have I sworn, saith Jehovah, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing, I will bless thee, and in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies." This sorely perplexes the hasty reader. How strange the apostle should lay the greatest stress upon "one seed," whereas the text seems to speak of very many! But read more, "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Now we come to the point in Galatians.

There are two kinds of blessing before us; not only two measures but two orders of blessing. The blessing of a numerous seed comes first; and here, where number is attached to the seed, the blessing is distinctly Jewish in character, down to possessing the gate of their enemies. By and by God will assuredly make this good; He means to bless as well as to deliver His earthly people; He will maintain the divine government of the world in Israel. He intends to make all good when Satan has made the worst of it. His purpose is to wrest out of the hand of the destroyer his seeming victory. And when His people are brought down to the lowest, then will be God's opportunity. He will lift them up, and set them at the head of all earth's blessing and glory. The prophets are full of this, but the earliest book pledges it, and this in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac in the figure.

But there is more to be noticed, and more closely. The same apostle lays stress on the one Seed; and with the one Seed presents another character of blessing; and this is the emphasis in writing to the Galatians. The enemy was trying to make the believers in Galatia become Jews (of course, in principle only, not in fact), in order to ensure the blessing, insisting on circumcision for the purpose. Thus they were in danger of surrendering all that was most precious in Christianity. The apostle seeks to recall them, and that in this way; where the one Seed is spoken of (without reference to number, not the numerous seed), there is blessing to the Gentiles promised, and to the Jew distinctively. This he applies to Christ risen, "and in thy seed (where there is nothing about the sand or the stars) — shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." It is not the gate of their enemies possessed by the Jews, but the Gentiles to be blessed; the former in relation to the numerous seed, the latter in relation to the one Seed. I repeat, this is the point of Galatians 3: 16. Our blessing is not even with Christ Himself as Messiah here below, but with Him who was crucified and is risen from the dead. In short, it is a character of blessing altogether new on the other side of death, with the risen Lord Jesus, the one Seed. "So we become Abraham's seed, not by being circumcised, which is on this side of death, but by faith in Him who died and is raised again. It is before God the complete blotting out of man in the flesh, and the introduction of a new man in the risen Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile. And faith acts on what is before God.

There is also another thing which is an immense difficulty to many in this connection. Sarah dies in Genesis 23. According to doctrine too common in Christendom, Sarah ought to be henceforth alive and vigorous. Such, I am persuaded, would have been the ordering of the type if man had arranged it, for such is the thought current in theology. But according to Scripture Sarah dies; it is not Hagar, the old covenant after the flesh, but the mother of the Seed of promise, who then passes away. What is the meaning of this? If Genesis 22 have its clear illustration in the Lord's death and resurrection, and His purpose forthwith to bless the Gentiles in Christ with a totally different kind of blessing from that of Israel, however true it also is to be in its season, what is the meaning of the death of Sarah at this point?

The Acts of the Apostles may make all quite plain. After the gift of the Holy Ghost the apostles presented the Lord Jesus to Israel as such, addressing them as "men of Israel," and pledging the truth of God to the assurance that, if they only repented and received Him they had put to death on the cross who was now risen by the mighty power of God, all His promises would be made good to them. This is very particularly marked in Acts 3. "The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our father hath glorified His Son Jesus, whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses." And again, "Those things which God before hath shown by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, and He shall send Jesus Christ which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the times of the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."

Is it not evident that here is the distinct proffer of God through His servant to make good all that was promised to Israel? But they refused. The consequence was, that His offer for the time entirely lapsed. Sarah dies. There is no more presentation of the covenant of promise. Thus it had been made in the close of Acts 3. "Ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed; unto you, first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities." Such was the offer; but the offer was rejected, the consequence of which we see in no further presenting the word of the Lord after that sort, in no subsequent overture to Israel on any such ground. Sarah dies. It is not that Sarah is not to rise again, and, as surely as she is literally to rise again, so shall the covenant of grace reappear, under the returning Son of man, for both houses of Israel.

What follows according to the Acts? An extraordinary apostle is called out, and fresh ground is taken; nay, it is too little to speak of the change so. The secret that was kept hid from ages and generations is told out by a new and suited instrument. Saul of Tarsus becomes the characteristic witness not to the mother of the Seed of promise, not to the accomplishment of what God has pledged Himself from the first to make good to the line of Abraham; but a bride is to be called out from the world, formed and fashioned and got ready for the risen Bridegroom. The apostle Paul becomes the special and typical "minister of the church." Thus do the Old and the New Testaments perfectly tally together.

Just so in our next chapter, Genesis 24, follows a wholly new scene, in the most significant way corroborating what has been said; and this I shall endeavour to pursue as God has given it. "And Abraham was old and well stricken in age, and Jehovah had blessed Abraham in all things, and Abraham said unto his eldest servant in his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and I will make thee swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but thou shalt go into my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac."

The Canaanites, as everyone moderately taught knows, were the future enemies of the chosen people, already in the land, Satan's instrument to exclude, if this were possible, or at least to expose and corrupt, those who were called of God. They typify, according to Ephesians 6, our foes, the world-rulers of this darkness, spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, with whom our conflict has to be maintained. Accordingly, it is, as all will admit, not from demons or fallen angels that God calls to the fellowship of His Son. It is from the world that sovereign grace is forming a bride for Christ.

This then is the charge of the father to his steward, servant over all that he had, "Thou shalt go unto my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac." The servant has his fears, at least he presents his difficulties. "Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest?" And Abraham said unto him, "Beware thou, that thou bring not my son thither again. The Jehovah God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again." There is no one point more insisted upon in the chapter than this: Isaac, the risen son, is to remain exclusively in Canaan; on no account is he to leave it.

Let us compare him with others. Abraham had been called out from Mesopotamia himself, and thence had he brought his wife. Afterwards Jacob goes back from Canaan, and far away he marries Leah and Rachel, and thence returns. But, while the call of the new bride goes on to Mesopotamia., Isaac must remain in the place which is the well-known type of heaven; at least, during that transaction, the bridegroom abides only in Canaan. The Son of the Father, while the bride is being called, has no relation with the world, and is seen exclusively in heaven at the right hand of God. And this is just as distinct as to Christ in the New Testament doctrine, as the injunction respecting Isaac is imperative throughout its type in Genesis. It is an infinite privilege to be blessed with Christ; to be blessed not only by Him but with Him, and not only with Him but with Him in heaven in the presence of God. But such is our blessing, who are in the place whence He has been ignominiously cast out; and our blessing is in Him now, while He is on the right hand of God.

Is not this the heavenly place of Christ which the Spirit of God shows Himself pressing with manifest care in the chapter just read? "Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me into this land; must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou, that thou bring not my son thither again." During the call of the church, Christ sustains no direct relationship with the earth; He is simply the glorified Head on high. Before this He had come to the earth; and it was here, and here only, although in Him lifted up from the earth on the cross, that God's mighty work of redemption could be accomplished by His son, whom the Father spared not but gave for us all. Here man had sinned, and here sin must be judged; but it is in heaven, and only in heaven, that Christ is viewed in relation to the bride. It is from heaven that the Holy Ghost comes down; it is for the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven that the bride is destined, and it is while the risen Bridegroom is in heaven that she is in process of being formed here below, before He comes to receive the saints to Himself and present them above.

This settles many a grave question. And it is Christians particularly who trouble themselves about the matter; for others count it fanaticism, and are not interested in it. Your association with Christ as the heavenly Head is, therefore, what Satan wants to frustrate; for if your strength and blessing depend on your seizing your true relationship to Christ and the reality of Christ's relationship to you, the effort of the foe is to sever all he can between Christ and the church; while the active working of God's Spirit is to put and keep the believer, and not only the individual but the church, in the living present consciousness of His and our relationship, for God is looking for conduct founded upon it. How, then, can the suited conduct be, unless you know the standing and relation on which it depends and from which it flows? The affection, and the intimate union, and the obedience which belong to the wife, are inseparable from her relationship. In another they would be most improper and the grossest sin. If the wife does not so walk, she utterly fails. But the known relationship is the ground of the duties that we owe.

In the midst of the then revealed scene which a Jew, perhaps some Christians, might regard merely as a domestic story, the Spirit of God has traced out the typical lineaments of our call and relationship to Christ, all-important to our souls now, the sweeter because one sees from Genesis how it was from early days before God; as indeed, we know from the New Testament, it was purposed in Christ before the world was. Here we see its shadow, and what seems to me of high value, in relation to the system of promise on the one hand and, above all, to the sacrifice of the Son of God on the other.

But we have to notice also other notable features that fill in the sketch, and befit such a scene. Let me again impress on you the great truth that even here we see the church is founded on the finished work of Christ, as an accomplished fact; yea not only on death but also on resurrection. Here the Son is risen and stands in a new place altogether. In this place Christ is found under the representation of Isaac, received from the dead in a figure, who, keeping himself entirely to Canaan, is in the acknowledged and undeniable type of heaven. When we think of the previous history of Abraham, or of that which follows in the case of Jacob, Joseph, or any other, the solemn restriction of Isaac alone is the more remarkable. We see what a tendency there was for the family likeness to repeat itself throughout, from father to son. This makes it all the more striking as a fact; how much more when we see its full meaning in Christ as our heavenly Head and Bridegroom now! Isaac had that typical place all to himself. There was no one of the patriarchs so remarkably seen in Canaan from first to last, so emphatically there alone in relation to the call of Rebecca. If God would set forth a Bridegroom exclusively heavenly, how else could He do it so effectually? Isaac is on no pretext and for no end to quit Canaan, whatever the difficulties of bringing home the bride.

The Spirit of God, we already remarked, brings out the same truth openly to us in the Epistles of the New Testament, and in substance too in the latter part of John's Gospel, where Christ is shown putting us in His own place above. Yet in the Old Testament Christ is often presented as the one who should reign over Israel, restored and blessed in their land; who should judge and rule all nations. And so without fail, He will, for Scripture cannot be broken; and if the Word of God could waver for the earth, who could trust it for heaven? The Psalms and Prophets are full of glowing visions of the day when the once humbled Messiah shall reign from sea to sea and bring the days of heaven on the earth; and hence the saints of old, though not without heavenly outlooks, as we know from Hebrews, regarded justly the earth as the future sphere of manifested blessing, though not of course the earth exclusively. Without doubt, then, Christ will ask, and Jehovah will give the heathen for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. But that day of asking and having them, and consequently of judgment on the quick (Ps. 2: 8, 6) is in contrast with what is true now (John 17), when He asks not for the world as then but for ourselves while He is on high. It is the true Isaac thus imprinting a heavenly character on souls on the earth; giving them not merely that their destination should be heavenly by and by, but withal, even now, a heavenly stamp from and with Himself while they are here as consciously belonging to Him there.

The time, too, was come for this wondrous display of faith. The Lord Jesus had gone down to the depths of atonement. He had also been utterly rejected by the Jews, and God had now rejected them and the earth's direct blessing as such for the time; for this depends on their reception, which will be to the world as life from the dead. Hence it is not on the earth which cast out the Righteous One, but in heaven that righteousness is seen now, where God has glorified the Holy One whom man despised and refused; and those who receive Him meanwhile are made God's righteousness in Him. Thus the actual grace of God is richer than any promises, for God never limited Himself to a promise. Could He indeed allow such a thought as that He, or His giving in grace, was exhaustible?

The grand fact for us, in the face of the devil who led the world to put Jesus to death, is that God has raised Him up from the dead after suffering for our sins, and set Him in heavenly glory, while He calls out from the world, not only individuals to be blessed with Christ, but forms them by His Spirit into His assembly, one body, the body of Christ, whilst He is there and we are here. And, if you really have the spirit of Christ now, that is your relationship. You are a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones, spite of your thoughts or of that which men have told you. And, as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. If you believe in Him, be not afraid of confessing Him, nor doubt your blessedness, nor be ashamed of Him or it in any way. What a sorrow to have to press this truth when the church should be living in the full joy of it! How sad that we have now to recall God's children to that which His grace gave them, to what is their own, but alas forgotten! God decides (it is not ours to choose) our relationship in Christ. I have heard one say, thinking it lowly, too, "I dare not ask to be a son of God; I am content to be His servant." Alas, it is real unbelief, not humility. For this does not mean measuring ourselves by ourselves or others, but seeing that Christ has suffered all, that God might bless accordingly, and bring us into relationships according to the work of redemption and the glory of Him who wrought it, in the fulfilment of the divine counsels for magnifying Him.

Is Christ, then, the "Heavenly" One now? "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." If there are heavenly ones, who are they? Not the angels. The good angels are not taken out of their position, and the bad angels are yet to be dealt with judicially. Grace acts to the full; and the last whom nature could suppose chosen are those to whom God vouchsafes the richest blessing. Such is the position of the Christian and the church, however little we may have done for His name. Our deliverance and our relationship are questions of Him and His work; not of those who reap the blessing through the grace of God. I do not say that you may not know your heavenly place individually, or with all saints, or your responsibility in both respects as God's temple. I do say you must seek to lay hold of your relationship before you can manifest the affection and the ways suitable to it. Who could expect the conduct of a son save from a child that knew his father?

It is precisely the same principle in the sphere of Christ and the church. The man, not the woman, determines her position and dignity according to his own. He was, He will be, on earth; but now He is in heaven, and so alone we know Him: yea had we known Him otherwise, so only now. The relationship is established, and for us, too, in this blessed way, through the Christ who has baptized us into one body by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. The cross made it possible, having cleared away sin by the judgment of it once for all; not by forbearance, though there was a time when God did forbear as to it, but now in righteousness, for grace reigns through righteousness, sin having been judged, so judged as it never will be in hell, and as it never can be again. Faith bows to God, and receives through and with Christ this heavenly portion; believing on the Lord Jesus, we are united to Him. On high the suffering Man was given to the church, Head over all things. He must go through death first; for, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." The word of God makes it perfectly certain that the Lord Jesus, only after redemption, became at the right hand of God the Head of His body, now in process of forming by the Spirit on earth. There was no such state of things when He was on earth. In no respect was He our Head until He took His place on high; nor could the body be so much as begun till Christ was there as Head, to whom the Holy Ghost could unite us. For it is neither an awakened conscience nor even faith which unites, but the Spirit given to us over and above as believers. I repeat, that I believe as an individual; and this is of all moment, and of the greatest value for the soul of each. If conscience be unsettled, there cannot be the right flow of divine affection; and it was part of God's way and wisdom to leave no questions before we are united to Christ by the Spirit.

We must distinguish between the new birth and the baptism of the Spirit. As sinners we are quickened; as saints we have the Spirit given to us, whether as individuals or for union. Suppose a woman, the most obscure you could find, whose only name was of ill repute; but one of the noblest of the land, of the most exalted character and position, was pleased to make her the object of his love, and, more than that, to give her his own name as his bride, what then? In an instant all is changed; no matter what she may have been before, all now depends on the new relationship, both for others and especially for herself. No unbelief of believers puts that blessing off until we get to heaven; but, according to God's word (and this alone is binding), it is true of us here, though the practical power, enjoyment, and testimony are lost now if we believe it not. We are of Christ's body now. There is no such doctrine as becoming members of His body in heaven. Because it is a question of Christ and His work made known by the Spirit sent down, there is nothing too good for the church in the mind of God, who is glorifying Him and blessing us in Him. It is here, too, that we are called to suffer with Him. All saints had to suffer, and Christians especially, not only for righteousness but for Christ; and this people do not like.

Unbelief likes the safe middle way of good common sense; it is afraid of extremes because it slights Christ. It courts ease and honour now, and hopes to have forgiveness and acceptance above. This is not Christianity, but the revival of a semi-Judaism, which destroys the true relationship and testimony of the church. The truth may sometimes be presented crudely and with looseness, and Satan would thus make it ridiculous to the natural man and its form repulsive to a spiritual mind. This is to be deplored, and should be owned, not justified by him who feels for God's glory. But we cannot pare down the truth, or make it palatable to the world or to the Christians who seek to walk with the world. Everything that is according to God must flow from faith; the faith of the saint (I say not of the soul in coming to God) is formed by its object, even Christ, now in glory, to whom the person is united and by whom he is more and more changed into His image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord, from glory to glory. Doubtless, till a man's soul has bowed to God in the sense of his own sinfulness, and has found redemption by the blood of Jesus, it is folly and wrong to talk of other and heavenly privileges. But, when all need of conscience before God is settled by faith, the Spirit seals the believer, who is made one with Christ in heaven.

It will be seen from Scripture, in fact, that without faith there is no union; but faith in itself never unites. There is no such idea as a person united to Christ in believing; but, when he believes, he is made one with Christ by the Holy Ghost, who has now condescended to take the place of serving the counsels of the Father for the glory of His beloved Son. As the Son became servant in doing God's will here below, so now the Spirit glorifies Christ in communion with the Father's mind and love. And this could only be when Christ went on high, after His finished work, and sent the Comforter to be in and with us forever.

One result we see beautifully depicted here is the spirit of faith in which the servant acts, and this showing itself in prayer according to the mind of God. "And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor. And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water. And he said, O Jehovah God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and show kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water; And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast showed kindness unto my master. And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder." Does not the case illustrate vividly "praying in the Holy Ghost"? It is prayer, not merely for this or that, but in the current of what is for the Son's glory and in the Father's purpose to bestow. It seems to be the liveliest anticipation in the Old Testament of asking the Father in Christ's name, by having whatever we thus ask. I speak of the spirit of the thing.

Is it then a casual circumstance that such passages should be found here? What a contrast with Jacob's vow in Genesis 28, or his cry of distress in Genesis 32! Indeed, it is not too much to say that there is not another chapter in Genesis where there is so much about prayer as here; and why? Is it not because now, during the call of the bride, the walking by faith is exemplified by Him who dwells and works in the Christian? Assuredly God looks for no less habits of dependence in those who bear the name of Christ. Of course, at every time from the beginning of God's ways with man, all prayed who had faith; and we see it admirably in Abraham and others. But I appeal to every discerning mind whether we do not find such a type in this respect here, as we find nowhere else in the book.

There is another feature, too; the Holy Ghost has come down in a way that never was made good before. As surely as the Son descended personally to the earth to take flesh, so the Holy Ghost came to abide in and with us now. He had come down to abide in the Son, He sealed, and without blood, Him who was the Holy One of God. But how could we, sinners as we were, have His Spirit in us? How could we be the vessels of the Holy Spirit of God? Only in the power, the perfect and perfecting sacrifice of Christ. After that, not before, the Holy Ghost came down to dwell in those who had been most wretched sinners; and He can dwell in us forever now by virtue of the blood that cleanses us from all sin. Has this no voice to us, beloved brethren? A most solemn thing it is for all Christians. We need, and should cultivate that spirit of faith and prayer which keeps us practically in the presence of God where flesh is judged, knowing that He hears us, and that we have the petitions that we desire of Him.

But this is not the only thing here. The same servant who represents the power of the Spirit acting in man now, shows also the wonderful faithfulness in which God not only guides him, but controls for him all circumstances: just as at the beginning of the chapter, it was not merely as Jehovah-God Abraham acknowledged Him, but as, "the God of heaven and the God of the earth." And so, yet more should the Christian feel now, according to the infinite largeness of the revelations of His glory as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, in Ephesians 4. He shows Himself to be above all and through all, as well as in us all. It is not only that we are brought into the utmost nearness by grace; but, despised as we may be and cast out for Christ's sake, we are, and should know that we are, as children in that intimacy which enables us to speak to Him who moves all things. Just as the man took a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels' weight of gold (vers. 22, 30), so to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. (Compare Eph. 4: 7-16).

Again, the heart of the servant instantly turns to worship. "And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped the Lord. And he said, Blessed be the Jehovah God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth; I being in the way, Jehovah led me to the house of my master's brethren." It was, no doubt, homage rather than worship in the proper Christian sense; that is, it was individual, not the praise of God's children or assembly. Still it is the figure of worship. Did it ever strike you that there is more about such homage or worship in this chapter than in all the other chapters of Genesis put together? Why should it be so? Can one doubt that it is because now God has made the way for true worshippers? According to truth, and according to love, God has now revealed Himself in Christ the Son. He is no longer groped after, if haply He may be found; but the God and Father of Christ has brought us to Himself, His Father and ours, His God and ours, having not only come down to us in Him here below, but brought us in Him, dead and risen and ascended, to be before Himself without a spot. How could we then but worship Him?

And so, as surely as souls enter into the place of the Christian and the church, worship in spirit and in truth flows forth. God is revealed in His grace, redemption is wrought, the veil is rent, and we are brought now as sons, and have God dwelling in us. The Spirit of God could not but lead the children of God to worship. The first Epistle to the Corinthians accordingly speaks to them of singing with the spirit, though we know what their state was; and in Ephesians and Colossians we hear of "speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," "singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." This supposes a relationship which cannot but thus breathe itself out to God in praise and thanksgiving. How different from occupation with self, important as this alas! may be in its place and season. There is a right time for all things, and for general humiliation, too; and a dangerous thing it is for a Christian not to judge himself and take a humbling review of his ways sometimes. But, whatever in us may call for self-judgment, let us never defraud our God and Father of His worship. Let us neither mar nor stint the praises of God and the Lamb. Therefore we find, "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup."

In our narrative, in full unison as far as the type could reach, we have the sense of God and His blessing filling the heart of Eliezer; and so the man bows his head and worships continually as God displays His grace. (Compare verses 48, 52.)

Notice again the way in which the calling of the bride links itself with the coming of the Lord. The question is put to Rebekah, "Wilt thou go with this man?" Nature might plead to keep her a few days, at least ten. But she who had only heard and believed the report has her heart made up, like the Christian toward Christ; "whom having not seen ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not," etc. Brother, mother, house, family, country, speak in vain. And the servant was true to his errand of love, to bring home the bride. It is the very pattern of the Spirit working in the new man and making Christ the all-absorbing object. "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." The servant is undistracted — has but "one thing" to do. "Hinder me not," he says, "seeing Jehovah hath prospered my way; send me away that I may go to my master." Do any speak of "resignation" to depart? Is it only in His heart to bring us home? His love truly known makes a true love; as here, the simple answer of Rebekah is, "I will go." The Spirit and the bride say but one thing: Come, come, Lord Jesus. Can you say this, beloved brethren? He is coming; wilt thou go? Isaac comes to meet her, and she who had left all behind is "gone out" to meet the bridegroom, veiling herself as not for others, but only for him. As the moment draws near, she realizes it increasingly in spirit.

May God Himself, by His own Spirit, fix upon us the truth of what Christ is to us! Unbelief is always trying to be what it is not; as believers, we never can exaggerate what grace has given us in Him; so blessed with Christ is every saint of God now, though as yet we have but the word and the Spirit of God, and the flesh despises and resists both.

Search God's word and see how far your position consorts with the truth we have before us. A main object in the Epistles of the New Testament is to reveal that which this type shadows in the call of the bride who crosses the desert under the conduct of Eliezer for the bridegroom in Canaan, the church espoused to Christ.

All that people boast of value and esteem among men, all you may have thought in your system good and helpful, you will find in the light of God's word to be but a hindrance to manifesting Christ — Christ our life. If an object on earth occupies you, it is clearly foreign to the Holy Ghost who is glorifying Christ. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." May you prove that your true business is now to bear testimony to Him as an earth-rejected, heavenly, and returning Christ! I leave this, which is God's truth, not the word of man, to work in your souls. Prove all you have heard about it; hold fast what is good.

On no occasion is the Christian free to forget his proper relationship, and it is as true of the assembly as of the individual. Is it so with you in both respects? If you know what it is to be heavenly in your affections and ways, you will not tolerate an earthly-minded denomination, and indeed a denomination as such, denies the body and bride of Christ as a present reality here below, which demands entire devotedness to Christ and continual waiting for His coming, not of the world, as He is not. A denomination is a voluntary society, or a system framed by worldly authority; neither of which can, in the nature of things, express or even contemplate, the one body of Christ. If we are His, we are so by the Holy Ghost who made us one, as the objects of His love and for His glory, at the same time separating us from the world which crucified Him. "Believest thou this?" May our God bless His own truth for Christ's sake! W. K.

The "Strange Doctrine" on Propitiation.

Mr. C. E. Stuart states his peculiar teaching in these words (Recent Utterances, p. 42):- "Where and when has propitiation by blood been made by Him? The answer is simple — in heaven and after death. Mr. Pinkerton [who laboured till his death in the East and only expresses in substance what saints hitherto have believed and confessed] affirms all was done in this world, not in heaven. If so, propitiation by blood the Lord has not made, nor can He make it. The doctrine we are asked to accept sweeps away all hope of salvation, for atonement is not complete without propitiation by blood, and this Mr. Pinkerton really denies that the Lord did and could effect. His doctrine is in flat opposition to the Word of God."

That a view of fundamental truth, unknown to scripture and opposed to the faith of God's elect, was asserted plainly and emphatically, is a mercy: no upright Christian can doubt its meaning. Hence, from its first coming to our knowledge in 1886, it was condemned in our midst, not with party spirit certainly but pain and sorrow; for many had sympathised with Mr. S. as a previously ill-used man. An open and full discussion took place at the Birmingham Conference of 1887; where one, seeming to lean toward the delusion, yet denying that he accepted it, excited censure and fears. When he avowed it soon afterwards, he was refused a place at the Lord's Supper in Kenilworth, but, profanely snatching the bread and wine, was forthwith put away. Afterwards two at Bournemouth were discovered to hold the same false doctrine, and withdrew as it was opposed. Only a few years ago one of inquisitive turn, in or near Swansea, came under the same sentence for the same offence against the Lord and His atoning work. All concurred in every quarter, as far as we know. No person known to hold it has been, or would be, tolerated in fellowship.

For this "strange doctrine" robs Christ's work on the cross of the efficacy scripture assigns to it, and attributes propitiation wholly to what Christ did "in heaven and after death," on which scripture is silent. The fable is owing, in part to a misconstruing of the type in Lev. 16, and in part to human reasoning on Heb. 2: 17, Heb. 8: 4, and Heb. 9: 12, which in no way bear out the notion, the last even refuting it. For there it is said that Christ entered by His own blood once for all into the holies, having found (not, to find) an eternal redemption. No doubt, Aaron necessarily had to go into the holiest, in order to put the blood there; as he had also to come out for the substitution, when he laid the sins and iniquities on the scape-goat. For propitiation and substitution were essential to atonement. The error lies in denying that both were fulfilled in Christ's work on the cross, and inventing a chimerical propitiation "in heaven and after death," which supplants the real one.

God set forth Christ Jesus, not exactly a propitiation (which of course is pre-supposed), but a propitiatory or mercy-seat through faith in His blood (Rom. 3: 25): not a word about fresh action for it "in heaven and after death." All hung on the redemption that is in Christ; and "death" took place for this redemption, as Heb. 9: 15 lays down: absolute silence as to a subsequent act of propitiation. For propitiation He had suffered, bled, and died. Hence 1 John 2: 1 declares that Jesus "is the propitiation for our sins, yet not for our sins only, but also for the whole world." 1 John 4: 10 adds that God sent His Son into the world (not took Him to heaven after death) as "propitiation for our sins." So on the cross He said, " It is finished," and delivered up His spirit. . . Then was the veil of the temple rent from top to bottom, and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were rent, and the graves were opened. Can any soul fail to recognise that all was in witness and honour of His atoning death, not of something done "after death and in heaven?" No believer doubts that its infinite value instantly reached heaven and lasts through eternity. But how false, evil, and blind to deny propitiation to Christ's sufferings and blood on the cross, of which scripture speaks continually! and to supplant that truth by that of which scripture says nothing, "in heaven and after death!"

"His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2: 24). This was both propitiation and substitution: was it "in heaven and after death?" Or wait we for His future work in this respect when He comes out of heaven? How perilous when Levitical type governs apostolic teaching! "Christ also once for all suffered for sins, just for unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3: 18). Not a hint of a further act for this: was it not a full atonement? Did He suffer in heaven, or (as others say) in hades, after death? Away with every dream that dishonours Him crucified!

On the cross Him Who knew no sin God made sin for us. Did not this include propitiation and more? Was it "in heaven and after death?" To the Romans Paul wrote (Rom. 5: 10), that "we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son": were we "reconciled" without propitiation? To the Colossians he wrote (Col. 1: 20-22), that "Christ made peace through the blood of His cross," to reconcile all things on the earth and in the heavens, as He will soon, but meanwhile "you . . . He reconciled in the body of His flesh," not when out of it. "through death." not "after it and in heaven," "to present you holy," etc. Was their reconciliation for so glorious a result without propitiation, or before it? Or is not the new doctrine evil and preposterous? Some, to help it, plead the distinction between the English words, "expiate" and "propitiate." It is baseless; for there is but one word in the Hebrew, as in the Greek. The verbal form is so used in Heb. 2: 17 (for such as we find in Matt. 16: 22, and Luke 18: 13 have no place here). It was for man before God in heaven; but no sign ever appears of a fresh work in Christ's case done there after death.

Nevertheless Mr. S. at least was frank and outspoken. He never pretended, like others, that this teaching was unimportant if true, or innocuous if unfounded. He boldly said that Mr. Pinkerton's view, which is beyond doubt that of saints hitherto everywhere, "sweeps away all hope of salvation!" Far be it from us to retort in like extravagance. But he is quite right in claiming the utmost moment for his view if true; and he is not the man to evade the consequences if false; as brethren also have given the strongest proof in united judgment of it. Long ago too we had learnt that, when fatal evil works, the enemy's most seductive and effective instrument in spreading it is the neutral. For the unspiritual fancy that, if one professes not to hold the error, there can be no harm, whereas the precise way to dishonour God and damage man most is to disclaim its acceptance, hoping thereby to escape, while doing all one can to persuade others that it is only a difference of judgment as to certain passages of scripture. So an Arian or an Irvingite, and especially one neutral to either, might say with as little soundness or fear of God. Evidently all depends on the gravity of the case. Here it is a question of the true propitiatian of Christ or of a fancied and false one.

W.K. December, 1899.

Christ: not Christendom, nor Judaism.

W. Kelly.

A reply to the author of a recent letter to the Bishop of Manchester.

(Wertheimer, Lea, and Co.)

Third Edition

Sir,

Though I have not read the Bishop's sermon to the Jews, I have a few words to say in acknowledgment of your letter, sent me by yourself or some other unknown donor.

You appear throughout to forget two things, which the scriptures you own do not fail to urge: the predicted and now fulfilled ruin of the Jews as a people before their final restoration and glory; and the sovereign grace of God equally assured to the Gentiles meanwhile.

1. The law, the Psalms, and the prophets, are unmistakable that Israel were to break down as God's witness so completely that He would disown them for a season. (See Deut. 28: 47, 48; 63, 64; Deut. 29: 26, 27; Deut. 31: 16-18; 29; Deut. 32: 5, 6, 15-20; Ps. 43: 1; Ps. 53; Ps. 68: 18 (19 Heb.); Ps. 106; Ps. 118; Isaiah 1: 9; 14, 15; Isa. 6: 9-13; Isa. 8: 14; Isa. 10: 22; Isa. 65: 2; Hosea 1: 6-9; Hosea 3: 4.) So Ezekiel shows us at the beginning the cherubim of glory gradually departing when the: first Gentile power executed judgment on Israel, and at the end the return of the glory when the last Gentile empire is judged and Israel are once more and for ever blessed.

2. The same living oracles are no less explicit that  divine mercy should visit and bless the Gentiles during  His disowning of Israel. (See Deut. 32: 21; Ps. 18:  43 (44), 49 (50); Isa. 8: 16, 17; Isa. 9: 1; Isa. 49: 6; Isa. 53: 14, 15; Isa. 65: 1; Hosea 1: 10 (2: 1 Heb.)

These scriptures (save where the entire chapter is referred to) I cite from the version of Mr. Isaac Leeser, who is regarded by his brethren as a learned and conscientious Hebraist.

Deuteronomy 28: 47, 48; 63, 64, "For the reason that thou didst not serve the LORD thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart while there was abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thy enemies whom the LORD will send out against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of everything; and they will put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until they have destroyed thee.... And it shall come to pass, that, as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good and to multiply you, so will the LORD rejoice over you to bring you to nought, and to destroy you; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it. And the LORD will scatter thee among all the nations, from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and there wilt thou serve strange gods which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone."

Deuteronomy 29: 26, 27, "And the anger of the, LORD was kindled against this land, to bring upon it the entire curse that is written in this book; and the LORD plucked them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and he cast them into another land, as it is this day."

Deuteronomy 31: 16-18, "And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and then will this people rise up, and go astray after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be in the midst of them, and they will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. And my anger shall he kindled against them on that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be given to be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall overtake them, and they will say on that day, Is it not because my God is not in the midst of me that these evils have overtaken me? But I will assuredly hide my face on that day on account of all the evils which they have wrought, because they have turned unto other gods."

Ibid. 29, "For I know that after my death ye will to a surety become corrupt, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you, and that the evil will befall you in the latter days when ye do the evil in the eyes of the LORD, to incense him through the work of your hands."

Deuteronomy 32: 5, 6; 15-20, "The corruption is not his, it is the defect of his children, of the perverse and crooked generation. Will ye thus requite the LORD, O people, worthless and unwise? is he not thy father who hath bought thee? is it not he who hath made thee, and established thee? . . . Thus did Yeshurun grow fat, and he kicked; (thou art grown fat, thick, fleshy;) and then he forsook the God who made him, and lightly esteemed the God of his salvation. They incensed him with strange gods, with abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed unto evil spirits, things that are not god, gods that they knew not, new ones lately come up, which your fathers dreaded not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou wast unmindful, and forgottest the God that had brought thee forth. And the LORD saw this, and he was angry; because of the provoking of his sons and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end will be; for a perverse generation are they, children in whom there is no faith."

Psalm 43: 1, "Judge me, O God! and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: from the deceitful and unjust man do thou deliver me." The godly ones confess here that not the Gentiles but the Jews are an, "ungodly nation."

Psalm 53: would have to be quoted as a whole. It speaks of the lawless enemy of God and his adherents, but this among the Jews: for what the law says, it speaks to them that are under the law, not to Gentiles.

Psalm 68: 18 (19 Heb.), "Thou didst ascend on high, lead away captives, receive gifts among men, yea, even the rebellious, to dwell among them, O LORD God!'' It is beyond doubt Israel, who are here owned as "the rebellious" before the Eternal dwells among them; and this consequent on the ascension of the Lord on high to receive gifts as man and for men.

Psalm 106 is throughout a plain statement of the ruin and dispersion of Israel, though it calls for the mercy of God to save and gather them from among the nations.

Psalm 118 shows Israel not only compassed by the nations but severely chastised by Jehovah, and no deliverance or joy till the rejected Stone, the Messiah, is become the chief cornerstone.

Isaiah 1: 9, 14, 15, "Unless the LORD of hosts had left unto us a remnant ever so small, like Sodom should we have been, unto Gomorrah should we have been compared. . . . Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are become a burden unto me: I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will withdraw myself from you; yea, when ye make ever so many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood."

Isaiah 6: 9-13, "And he said, Go and say unto this people, Hear indeed but understand not; and see indeed, but know not. Obdurate will remain the heart of this people, and their eyes will be heavy, and their eyes will be shut: so that they will not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor their hearts be understanding, so that they be converted, and healing be granted them. And I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until that cities be left waste without an inhabitant, and houses without man, and the soil be made desolate as a wilderness, and the LORD will have removed far away the men, and the depopulation be great in the midst of the land. And should a tenth part thereof yet remain, it will again be swept away; (yet) like the terebinth and the oak, which, when they cast their leaves, retain their stems, so remaineth the holy seed, its stem."

Isaiah 8: 14, "And he will be for a sanctuary; but also for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock to fall over unto both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem."

Isaiah 10: 22, "For though thy people Israel should be as the sand of the sea, (yet) a remnant (only) of them shall return."

Isaiah 65: 2, "I spread out my hands all the time unto a rebellious people, that walk in the way which is not good, after their own thoughts."

Hosea 1: 6-9, " And he said unto him, Call her name Lo-ruchamah [Not finding mercy]; for I will not farther have any more mercy upon the house of Israel; but I will give them their full recompense. But upon the house of Judah will I have mercy, and I will save them through the LORD their God, and I will not save them by the bow, or by the sword, or by battle, by horses, or by horsemen. Now when she had weaned Lo-ruchamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then said he, Call his name Lo-'ammi [Not my people]; for ye are not my people, and I will indeed not be unto you (a God)."

Hosea 3: 4, "For many days shall the children of Israel abide without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without a standing image, and without an ephod and theraphim."*

* Mr. Leeser admits "that the prophet describes here exactly our present state, as it has also been for many centuries — neither altar of God nor idolatry, no consulting by the true priests nor by idols;" but he adds, "while we still adhere to the LORD, notwithstanding our sins." In this last the annotator departs from his text, which distinctly supposes a departure meanwhile from the LORD, and a return of Israel in the latter days, when He will betroth the long faithless wife to Himself for ever. Is not this the truth, rather than the flattering illusion of the modern Israelite? Their return and blessing are subsequent to their present anomalous state, and in no way begun yet.

These passages are ample proofs that God was to cut off Israel as a whole from their place of privilege as His people because of their sins; what follows will show His purpose of mercy towards the Gentiles while Israel are thus disowned for a while.

2. Deuteronomy 32: 21, "They have moved me to wrath with things that are not god; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities; and I too will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a worthless nation."

Psalm 18: 43 (44), 49 (50), "Thou deliverest me from the contests of the people; thou appointest me to be the head of nations; a people that I know not shall serve me. . . . Therefore will I give thanks unto thee among the nations, O LORD!"

Isaiah  8: 16, 17, "Bind up the testimony, seal up the law among my disciples. And I will wait for the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope for him."

Isaiah 9: 1, "The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death — a light shineth brightly over them.''

Isaiah 49: 6, "And he said, It is too light a thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; but I will (also) appoint thee for a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach as far as the end of the earth."

Isaiah 52: 14, 15, "Just as many were astonished at thee, so greatly was his countenance marred more than any (other) man's, and his form more than (that of) the sons of men, — thus will he cause many nations to jump up [in astonishment]: at him will kings shut their mouth for what had not been told unto them shall they see, and what they had never heard shall they understand."

Isaiah 65: 1, "I allowed myself to be sought by those that asked not; I let myself be found by those that sought me not: I said, 'Here am I, here am I,' unto a nation that called itself not by my name."

Hosea 1: 10 (2: 1 Heb.), "And it shall come to pass that instead that people say of them, Ye are not my people [Lo-ammi], shall they call them, The sons of the living God."

Such scriptures as speak of the nations blessed when Israel is blessed, of their trusting in the Messiah when He reigns in peace and glory over the earth, of their rejoicing with His people Israel, are not cited now, but those that reveal the call of the Gentiles when Israel are Lo-ammi and under judicial blindness for a season.

These truths shine with light brighter than the sun in God's oracles; and the plainest facts answer to them. For on the one hand you, the chosen people, are expelled by God (none else could have done it) from your land, capital, and sanctuary, the only spot where you can sacrifice acceptably; and without sacrifice you surely know that your worship is at an end, as is your polity also while your land is ruled by the stranger. On the other hand those who were the vilest slaves of idolatry and moral corruption, who knew not the true God and only dreaded demons, now rejoice in your scriptures, not to speak of those which might be viewed as their own; and, while you groan, they worship and praise God as their very God and Father, having renounced the abominations of the heathen.

How comes this marvellous change? When your nation fell into revolting and persistent idolatry, not only in the people and in the priests but in the king of David's line, God justly indignant as He was swept you away into idol-loving Babylon for no more than seventy years. What sin is so much worse as to account for your actual dispersion during the last 1800 years? Do you not even suspect? What but rejection of your own Messiah, Emmanuel? The greatest of your prophets lays precisely these two counts of indictment against you: first, idolatry (Isa. 40 — Isa. 48); secondly, rejection of the Messiah. (Isa. 49 — Isa. 57) All is not exhausted yet; but it is obduracy itself to evade such a conviction of your sins. Yea, blinded by proud unbelief, you smote the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek — Him that was to be born in Bethlehem, yet to be ruler in Israel; and no wonder, for His goings forth were from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5: 1-3); and therefore has He given you up till the birth of God's final purpose of mercy and blessing for Israel. For the day comes, when they will repent and bow before the true Joseph who will then make Himself known to His brethren — that same Joseph, who even now sustains His guilty brethren, the sons of Israel, ignorant of Him yet famishing without Him who is exalted among the Gentiles, and there has a bride, His church. I am as sure as you that this Man, whom Jehovah owns as His Fellow (Zech. 13: 7) and whom you are yet to own as the Jehovah that you pierced (Zech. 12: 10),* will be the peace, and will fight against your foes as in the day of battle, King over all the earth. In that day shall Israel be blessed and exalted, and the Gentiles bow, and their kings minister to Zion, and your sun no more go down nor your moon withdraw itself.

* I am aware that certain Jews argue that "whom they have pierced" cannot be in apposition with "to me," because the next clause is, "they will lament for him," not me. But such a change of persons is not uncommon in scripture. See the very next chapter of Zechariah (Zech. 14: 5): "And then will come the LORD my God, and all the saints with thee," not with Him. Here indeed nearly 40 MSS and the versions generally read "with him," some even changing the text further into)" His holy ones," while certain of the Rabbis, etc., have tried to escape the truth by referring [this?] to Jerusalem. But in such cases, if  anywhere, the critical maxim holds true: proclivi lectioni praestat ardua. There was obvious motive to tamper with the difficulty, none to favour it. In Zechariah 12: 10 there can be no antecedent according to Hebrew idiom, but yachid. To escape this Kimchi interprets the connected words "because they pierced," leaving it open who was; but this is as opposed to legitimate grammar as Mr. Leeser's, interpolation of "every one." Its object is everywhere else expressed. It is well known that the Jews, who could not accept Kimchi's solution, changed the reading [...] ,  first giving it as the Kerl, afterwards introducing it into the text! But even the keenest of their controversialists (Abarbanel, Lipmann, etc.) either omit the fact or disown the daring innovation.

You cannot suppose then that I deny, enfeeble, or envy Israel's future glory on the earth under Messiah and the new covenant. How can one who looks, as every Christian ought, to be glorified in heaven with Christ? I have no sympathy with the conceit of Christendom which arrogates your blessings, as if you had lost your place and the Gentiles had gained it for ever. The Bishop of Manchester might be as slow to believe that Christendom is speedily to be judged for its apostasy, as you are that Israel suffer for theirs. The mass in Christendom now are no better than the mass of the Jews when Nebuchadnezzar or even Titus destroyed Jerusalem. But I see, in the scriptures we both acknowledge as divine, that your most fiery trial immediately precedes the deliverance of such Jews as are written in the book. (Dan. 12: 1) You are destined to receive as "the king" in Palestine the basest of impostors (Dan. 11: 36-39); and the last empire of the Gentiles, the fourth Roman beast of Daniel 7, will play its most guilty part in it, when it revives (as it will soon) for God's final judgment. You both refused the true Christ; you are both to receive the Antichrist, when the Lord of glory will appear to the perdition of the beast and the false prophet and all their adherents, but to the deliverance of such Jews and Gentiles as will have been kept from this audacious blasphemy and lawlessness.

It is a ruinous oversight of your own scriptures and of your history to say that God's anger "is appeased." Heavier punishment is yet in store for the Jew for his unbelief. And what evidence can be imagined lower than yours for pretending to God's favour as a people? "The gift of genius," talents, learning, distinction, and," last not least! the abundance of their wealth and prosperity!!!" And the Jew flatters himself that "these are stubborn facts that outweigh a thousand quotations!" So naturally does slight of their own scriptures follow slight of their own Messiah, with the loss of their place and nation, yea also of eternal blessedness: for if He sits at Jehovah's right hand, the true Melchizedek, what will it be for His enemies when He strikes in the day of His wrath? (Compare Psalms 45: 3-6, Ps. 110) His glory measures His judgments, and they are guiltiest who having the word of God fail to read and understand it aright.

Have you not forgotten the words of Moses in whom you trust? He does declare in Deuteronomy 28 the principles of the divine government of Israel; but the sum of all is the blessing of Jehovah in the land which He gives them, according to His oath to the fathers. But in this same chapter He warns Israel with yet greater detail and solemnity, that, if they should not hearken to His voice, Jehovah should send on them curses to consume Israel from off the land and to pursue them elsewhere, so that they should become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations. In Deuteronomy 29 He presents all nations asking why Jehovah had so desolated the holy land, and wherefore the heat of so great anger; and the answer is, Because Israel forsook the covenant of Jehovah for false gods, and so the curse fell, and they were rooted out of their land in great indignation. Further in Deuteronomy 30 Moses declares that, when Israel come to repentance among the nations whither they are driven, and return to Jehovah their God, and obey His voice, then will He return their captivity and in His compassion gather them back and bring them into the land, and not only bless and multiply them there but put all the curses on their enemies and persecutors.

It appears to me clear that you have read your law to but little purpose. Weigh Leviticus 26, its warnings, threats, and assurance of mercy when your uncircumcised hearts are humbled. Does God fail to keep His word? or is it not rather you who have not yet truly confessed your iniquity and accepted its punishment? When Israel's hearts are humbled, God declares He will remember His covenant and the land. Has He done so yet? If not, why not? Do you not see, then, in all this and much more, the plainest proof that you are still altogether impenitent, and with this brand of unblessed outcasts on your brow? Are you not glorying in your shame just like the Gentiles which knew not God, who like you boasted (and some of them with no less reason than you for more than two thousand years) of their arts in peace and war, their prowess, skill, learning, and letters?

Are you not, on the contrary, the merest moneychangers of the Gentiles, a people without a country, without a king or even a prince; and, what is the most awful of all, though no longer zealots of a false religion, without the true, and this the unquestionable sentence of your own holy prophet? O that you might ponder the words with which Hosea concludes his prediction of your present misery, "after that will the children of Israel return and seek for the LORD their God and David their king, and fearing will they hasten to the LORD and to His goodness in the latter days?" Alas! you are as yet far from seeking Jehovah, or the king Messiah: else would you be blessed and a blessing under His reign in your own land. Does He not say? "I am as a lion unto Ephraim, and as a young lion to the house of Judah; I, even I, myself will tear in pieces and go away; I will bear away, and none shall deliver him. I will go (from here and) return to my place, till they acknowledge their guilt, and seek my presence; in their affliction will they seek for me." (Hosea 5: 14, 15)

How can you then venture to affirm that you have a single mark of divine favour according to the law and the prophets? Is it not because you are not only guilty exiles by the fiat of Jehovah, but dead even to your wretchedness and degradation? So, under the symbol of the valley of dry bones, another of your holy men of old declared Israel were to be, as they beyond a doubt are, and have long been, dead and buried, till they hear the word of Jehovah, and live by His gracious power. Then shall they be saved out of all their dwelling-places wherein they have sinned, and brought into the land of Israel, where Judah and Joseph shall once mote be one in Jehovah's hand, and one king reign over them all, and they cleansed from all their idols and detestable things and transgressions, shall be Jehovah's people, and He their God. If you dare not say that Israel are thus dwelling in their land under the everlasting covenant of peace, at least have done with the vainglory you have learnt from the heathen, and confess that you are still suffering the just punishment of your obdurate heart. You own your sins in general doubtless, but not the great transgression, your past idolatries, but not the blood-guiltiness which rests on you till it be confessed in His presence: else surely He who is good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy to all that call on Him, were even now opening your graves, and bringing you into the land of Israel to plant and bless you there for ever. Ezekiel 37.

The Holy One of Israel, whom your fathers (by the hand of lawless men) nailed to a cross and slew, Himself prayed, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And therein is accomplished the type of the fourth book of the law; where the unwitting manslayer finds refuge with such servants of God as have no inheritance they call their own on earth (earthly-minded Christendom being the persecutor of the Jews), but abides outside the land of his possession until the death of the high priest who has been anointed with the holy oil. So with the Jews, who in their ignorance killed the Messiah, and remain kept from the avenger of blood but outside the land of promise, till Christ closes the priesthood He is now carrying on in the heavens for those who believe during the exile and Lo-ammi state of the Jew. See Numbers 35.

Of course the controversialists of Judaism seek to evade such a scripture as Isaiah 53. Instead of reading in it the future confession by Israel of their past sin in rejecting their Messiah, they try to apply it either to Jeremiah, or to the prophets as a body, or to king Josiah, or to Israel as a people. But even the rationalistic Gesenius and De Wette could not deny that expiation runs through the chapter, as it does through the Jewish system in scripture from beginning to end. Again, though the sorrows of Jeremiah may to some extent agree with the Holy Victim that Isaiah portrays, not so will either their vicarious character, or still less the glorious consummation which will be their result when kings shut their mouths before His exaltation. Applied to Messiah, humbled and suffering, but returning to reign in glory, all is plain. Certainly those who would drag Jeremiah or the prophets into the chapter are not entitled to rebuke others for neglect of the context: not a clause consists with either idea. Abarbanel's thought of Josiah is no less unfounded than that of Saadiah Gaon, who would have Jeremiah. But what shall we say of R. Isaac's, in the Chizzuk Amunah? He, with Rashi, Aben Ezra, and D. Kimchi, conceives Israel to be here. Nor do I deny that Jews do appear, but wholly distinct from the One who suffers for their sins.

It is not the Gentiles* but the Jews who say, "Who would have believed our report? .... Our pains he carried while we indeed esteemed him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. Yet he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and through his bruises was healing granted to us." It is Israel who thus speak, when repentant confessing their past unbelief. They had regarded Him as an utter aversion to God, when in truth He was making atonement for their transgressions. It is not only the language and the context, but the whole scope of the prophecy, that fix its real point to be Messiah, first bearing the sin of many, then dividing the spoil with the strong, when He is exalted and extolled and placed very high. And so Jonathan ben Uzziel interpreted in the Targum, and "the wise men of blessed memory," as Abarbanel tells us, in many of their Medrashes; so the book of Zohar (comment on Exod. fol. 95, col. 3), and even the Talmud Babyl. (in Sanhed. Perek Chelek, fol. 98, col. 2), and the Yalkat Shimoni on the passage. But the most remarkable of all perhaps is the fact that in the public prayers of the synagogue, both at the Passover and on the day of atonement, even the Jews of our day "allude to Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 as applying to Messiah, though the translator has tried to weaken the last of them by trying to bring in Josiah in defiance of the context.

* Dr. Phillipson strives hard to get rid of the truth here; as if Isaiah were declaring the present degradation of Israel to be necessary for the accomplishment of their mission, and their sufferings as borne by Israel to be the means of happiness for the nations! Is it possible that men who fear God, and tremble at His word, can fail to see that this would neutralize His solemn condemnation of Israel as guilty without excuse, and the moral glory of the Messiah as their only Saviour? Alas! those whom the prophet is here convicting of being doubly "wicked" wish to deprive of His praise Him who had done no violence, and in whose mouth was no deceit, the spotless, suffering, uncomplaining Lamb, on whom, Jehovah declares, the plague was laid "for the transgressions of my people." Who is He then? and who are "My people?" Surely not the same, but in the most marked contrast — Israel once unbelieving, now confessing; and one who was bearing their guilt, but is afterwards their highest glory and that of all the earth. Can any interpretation be more certain than this? Can perversion be more evident than that which is current among the Jews of our day? Let them weigh the section before God for their own souls. It is the old snare of every heart, Jewish or Gentile alike, the pretension to stand for oneself, instead of finding one's only safety in Messiah and His atonement of sins.

It is vain for you or any other to retreat from the testimony of God's word (and I have cited only what you must and do own) into questions of translation or interpretation — the constant resource of unbelief, of Rabbis on the one hand, and of papists as well as rationalists on the other. Any respectable version of your own is quite enough to convict you of defying God's warnings, as you now despise the lesson of your own disconsolate condition — not only without a king and a prince, but without a sacrifice, without an image or statue, and without an ephod and teraphim. The prophet supposes, that you are no longer worshipping a false God; but he unquestionably predicts Israel's abiding many days in this strangely abnormal state without the true God or His ordinances. Has it no adequate moral cause? Did God so cast off and punish His people (now Lo-ammi) without some sin far more flagrant than their far less punished idolatry of old? What was the sin? What does Daniel intimate in Dan. 9: 26, 27? You may speak of "solace and rules of conduct for this life as well as assurance and hope for the life hereafter." But if you have not hearkened to the Prophet from among the Jews like unto Moses, who was to speak all that Jehovah should command Him, Jehovah declares that He will require it of you. Your own Pentateuch thus demands that you should hearken under the penalty of divine judgment; and now that the judgment is on you, we entreat you to pause and consider. Even before God gave you up, when you were in the land under your own anointed king you were ever disposed to be refractory, disobedient, and idolatrous. What have you done worse? Will boasting of your "ancient and glorious religion" mend matters? So did they who perished under the avenging Roman.

Pardon me if I think that you talk with levity of the Messiah even in your sense, when you argue that, whether He has come or is yet to come, "it does not, in the slightest degree, affect the eternal truths of our religion.'' It would have been truer to have said that the eternal truth of God was independent of that law of Moses which was unknown even to your fathers who received the promises — promises only to be fulfilled when you repent, among your other sins, of that for which God drove out Ephraim from the land and some time after also drove out Judah, and worst of all of that for which He dispersed the remnant that returned from Babylon.

I grieve for you who can thus speak of such deadly unbelief. This did not Abraham. Before the writings of Moses or the law, he waited for Messiah. So did Abel, and Enoch, and Noah. All their hopes turned, on the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head, though the serpent should wound His heel. The common object of faith for all the godly before the law was not Judaism, but the coming Messiah. He was the centre of the promises and, I admit, of blessings for the elect people, Abram's seed, and in their land; but deeper than and above all He is the Seed in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Did you ever notice Jehovah swearing thus, after Abraham's only son had been under the sentence of death as a burnt-offering till the third day when he was raised up as it were from the dead by God's intervention? After the figure of death and resurrection the blessing to all the nations was then solemnly proclaimed. (Gen. 22)

That the Messiah is Son of God (Ps. 2) and Son of man exalted over all things (Ps. 8), that He is a divine person yet born of the virgin, God with us (Isa. 7, 8, 9), is certain. Hence it can be nothing secondary but vital to own Him thus come, as every Christian believes, including multitudes of your brethren since in every age. Further, a Messiah, suffering for sin and bringing in righteousness, gives the only worthy sense to sacrifice and offering, to brazen and golden altar, to Levite and priest. Not a rite but proclaims the sinner's need or the provision of grace in the Saviour. Not a glory but is a reflection of the Anointed who is dead, risen, and ascended to heaven. God come down to man, and man gone up to God, both united in His person, who is owned in His humiliation as the equal of Jehovah (Zech. 13), and who, when reigning as God on His throne, owns man as His companion. (Ps. 45) Do you not understand here that, if it be wicked to go after a strange god, it is yet worse to insult the true God when He deigned in love to become man and to die in order to save righteously and for ever those who believe? Do you doubt the justice of this? I reply that it is a question not of man's righteousness but of God's. Now if one man by sin ruined mankind, as the first book of Moses shows, is it not worthy of God that another man, His Son, should save all that believe in Him? His suffering for sins had made it a righteous thing for God thus to justify, to be a just God and a Saviour.

I bless God for every word of His that is revealed, from Genesis to Malachi, to speak now of nothing more; but I affirm that not one distinctive good in Christianity is derived from or is to be found in Judaism. Not the holy and the inspired writers you own, but the tradition of Judaism rejects a suffering Saviour, God and man in one person? Not faith but unbelief denies that the infinite sacrifice of the true atonement-day is already offered and accepted of God and efficacious for ever for those who believe on Him and rest on it. We have a great high-priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God: is this no good, or is it found in Judaism? We have an altar, which is so far from being derived from Judaism that contrariwise they have no right to eat of it who serve the tabernacle. So too by the Holy Spirit we were sealed after we believed the gospel, and in no way did Judaism give it us. Our relationships, with God as our Father, with Christ as our Head, what have they to do with Judaism? They are founded entirely on the Messiah, whom Judaism refused and crucified, as now raised up by God and glorified in heaven, which is our characteristic place of blessing as truly as Canaan was and will be for Israel.

If indeed you were sinless, one could understand the vaunt, "Judaism is all sufficient for us." But a Jew shows less conscience than the heathen if he conceives that he can have remission of sins without blood of a sacrifice acceptable to God. You know that you have no such sacrifice; you ought to know then that dying in your sins without blood upon the altar, you are lost. The third book of Moses declares that it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul. (Lev. 17: 11) Is not this a truth of your religion? Is it eternal or temporary? If temporary, why do you boast of that which is so transient? If eternal, where and how do you stand before God and His word which you own to your own condemnation? If you disown this cardinal truth of the law, what can save you? Without atoning blood, you are more miserable and more guilty than the most benighted of the Gentiles. Alas! rationalism possesses the Jew even more than Christendom.

It is a mistake however that the failure of Christendom arises from forsaking Judaism for distinctive principles of its own. As the apostasy of the Jews was by their abandoning Jehovah and His law for Gentilism and, its idols, so of Christendom by judaising. Christianity stands by faith of Christ dead, risen, and glorified in heaven, and the possession of the Holy Ghost now on earth thereby. But Christians soon grew weary of the cross here and glory in heaven with Christ. They preferred that place of earthly glory and power with the law as their rule which God had given to Israel; and so seeking they were ruined. It was salt that had lost its savour. I go farther than you, believing that, when Jehovah my God comes and all the saints with Him (Zech. 14), He will judge guilty Christendom no less than Judaism. This is more serious than perishing by its own dissensions or any other human cause.

Judaism then is insufficient to supply even the first need of a soul awakened to feel the burden of its sins. The Jew must either stifle his conscience by denying :that he has sins, or abandon the law of Jehovah by pretending to an atonement for his soul without blood. Thus the modern Jew really gives up the hopes and promises of his forefathers. He looks for no daysman, he trusts in no kinsman-redeemer, he requires no intercession, but, like any other unbeliever, he pretends to have direct access to God Himself. And no wonder; for they have refused in unbelief their own Messiah, who, though God over all blessed for ever, came in flesh to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. How then can you any longer say that yours was the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses, Elijah, and Daniel? (p. 8) You say, "Regard with religious awe our preservation and the preservation of our religion! Seek not to disturb it! Honour the religion of the Jew, if only because it was the religion of Jesus, whom you claim as the Founder of your religion." But as well might one be told to regard with religious awe Lot's wife when she became a pillar of salt. Doubtless the Messiah was born of the virgin, and of David's house; but how can one honour the religion of those who all cried, "Not this man, but Barabbas." . . . . "We have no king but Caesar"? The truth is that the law for sinful man is but a cavern, however magnificent, of darkness and death till Messiah (in hope or actual accomplishment) bring in light and life: then only is all lit up with a brightness which bespeaks itself divine.

You do not well to be angry if those who enjoy eternal life and peace in believing desire the same for others who are either insensible to their misery, or intensely sad, as I trust some of Israel are in their present desolation under the evident judgment of God. I admit that Jews might try to spread their Judaism or Gentiles their heathenism, and that Christians ought to compassionate efforts so futile for those who have faith. It is however no question of any right of ours, but of His authority who commanded His servants to preach the good news to every creature. It is one of the many points of contrast between the law and the gospel.

Nor are you justified in drawing from God's unchanging character that the Jew must remain what He was. Notwithstanding I myself believe there never has been a moment since God's call of Abraham that He had not in that line one or more faithful to His name. When the Messiah came and went out of the Jewish fold, the Jewish sheep followed; and so there has been an elect remnant of Jews outside Judaism ever since, without speaking of the Gentiles. I believe too that the day is coming fast when all of that people who refuse the true Christ will fall under Antichrist or otherwise perish for rebellion against Jehovah, and that then the nation all righteous, owning the despised Nazarene as their Messiah, yea their Lord and their God, shall be a blessing to all the families in the earth. But that day is not yet come; and whoever lives and dies hearing of the Lord Jesus Christ now but rejecting Him perishes for ever. What could the most decided Jew think of the Christian's charity who yet forbears to speak of the only One who, as he believes, can save Jew or Gentile? It would be far more reasonable to doubt the charity and indeed the faith of him who could be silent when man's salvation and God's glory are at stake. It is all well to instruct. and exhort and correct fellow-Christians, but this does not absolve from the duty of proclaiming the Lord and Saviour. Neither the law nor the constancy of the Jew can save his soul, nor that "boundless charity" which he proposes to the Christian's emulation — a charity which, I must say, is clean opposed to the principles and precepts of the Talmud, and which you must know, if you fairly traced it, to be directly and emphatically the spirit of the Gospel, though the synagogue tried to get the credit of it. But, leaving this, what is the Christian to do who is sure that the Jew is perishing for ever for the want of that Saviour whom God has given in their rejected Messiah? It is evidently a question of faith and love; and he who has them not can be necessarily no judge of the matter.

Yours, W. K.

G. Morrish 24, Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row, London.

The Judgment, not Reunion, of Christendom.

W. Kelly.

It need not surprise anyone that, in a letter to the Archbishop of York (in 1896), an experienced and able politician of the day has expressed the hopes of such as look for a reunion of Christendom. Some were unprepared for this, and are pained at a tone throughout very deferential to the Pope, to say the least. In fact, however, Mr. Gladstone is more consistent with himself than on most of the burning questions he has ever approached. Christendom has always been a cherished idol. In this he is unchanged still.

Now, if we believe the scriptures, Christendom spiritually judged is a ruin; and this by the confession of almost every conscience when probed. The Pope, to begin with, acknowledges it in his manifold anathemas; so in effect do Mr. G. and all that yearn after reunion. Were things according to God, there would be room for neither. Much more deeply do those feel the ruin who habitually in sackcloth and ashes confess the sins which caused it. By divine constitution all the saints since Pentecost had originally but one communion. There might be thousands or myriads that believed (Acts 21: 20); but they were "the church of God in Jerusalem," in Antioch, in Corinth, in Ephesus. So it was everywhere in apostolic days. Churches in distinct provinces or countries of course there were. But the gospel even then was preached everywhere, the Lord working with those who preached (Mark 16: 20; Col. 1: 6, 23); and the believers throughout the earth were builded together as God's house, a living God's assembly, pillar and base of the truth.

On a rough reckoning of Christian profession, there are said to be 216 millions of Romanists; but there are 137 millions of Anglicans, Lutherans, Reformed and other Protestants, and 97 millions of Greeks, orthodox or others, with Nestorians, Copts, Abyssinians, etc. There are at least as many that bear the Christian name outside as within Romanism, though itself containing far more than any other single denomination. But unity there is none. Can any claim be weaker in presence of the facts? It is equally certain, that holy unity in the truth ought to have ever been, and that it has for ages ceased to be. The claim therefore is now demonstrably false, its absence a sure proof of ruin. Catholicity of the visible church is a self-complacent dream. And if apostolicity in the historic sense count, it is plain that Rome cannot vie with Eastern churches, which, planted by one or other apostle, were ruled by St. John, the last. Rome never had apostles save as prisoners or to die; the assembly therein was planted or ruled by none of them. As to this scripture is decisive.

Much is argued in a human way for succession. But what faces the believer first to last in scripture is the vanity and breakdown of man, no matter when, where, or how tested by God, no matter what the privileges conferred on man. So it was with Adam, with Noah, with Abram, etc.! with Moses, Aaron, and Israel; with Saul, David, and Solomon; with Nebuchadnezzar or any other of the Gentiles. In nothing did God fail, but sustained faith, notwithstanding failure in His own; yet man failed under each and every trial. Meanwhile God pointed to the Second Man Who not only stood perfectly, but will in the end gloriously display all the titles which crumbled away in the first man and his sons: the Last Adam, First-born of all creation, Governor of the earth, Seed of the woman and of promise, Priest on His throne, King in Zion, Son of man Whom all the peoples, nations, and languages shall serve in the age and habitable earth to come.

But is not the church an exception to the law of human failure and misery? By no means. Hence the momentous caution (and to the saints in Rome notably in Rom. 11 by the great apostle of uncircumcision), that they should not be wise in their own conceits. If the professing Gentile did not continue in God's goodness, "thou also shalt be cut off," as the Jew had been. Are any so blind, hard, or high, as to say that Christendom has continued in His goodness? Will the Pope affirm it of half the baptised? Will the Protestant of the Romanist majority? Will the pious Anglican say it of his own community? Will a God-fearing Nonconformist plead, Not guilty, for his society or for any other? But if it be so, scripture (without a single qualifying word in any other passage, with many and even more solemn menaces elsewhere) lays down inflexibly, "thou also shalt be cut off."

Christendom, mother and daughters (Rev. 17: 5), falls under the universal sentence. God's ways with the faithful fail now no more than ever; God's purpose of grace will be established in Christ and the church on high beyond all the power of the enemy. But there is no difference from the Jew in the Gentile as to responsible profession on earth. The one exception is the Lord Jesus, Who will give effect to this as to every other design of God in the coming day. He, not the Pope, is the head of the body, the church; He Who is the beginning, first-born from the dead (for it is in this condition, not as incarnate merely, that church relationship begins), that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.

Let none deceive in any way. The day will not be, as the apostle assures, except the falling away, the apostasy, first have come (not reunion but apostasy, unless indeed the two coalesce) and the man of sin have been revealed, the son of perdition (2 Thess. 2). Those who believe with Luther and Calvin and Knox, with Cranmer and Jewel and Parker, with Baxter and Howe and Owen, that Romanism is the apostasy and the Papacy the man of sin, must profoundly regret the aged statesman bowing before Pope Leo XIII., and deprecating that which the power behind the Vatican will demand in their never-failing pride and the unslumbering thirst after universal domination for their chief. But while it is sheer unbelief to doubt that Rome is the harlot of the Apocalypse, a more audacious portent will be the issue of the baptised, including Popery and Protestantism and Jews too, in a more complete apostasy, and in the exaltation of the lawless one whom the Lord will destroy by His shining forth, and thus introduce the days of heaven on earth, as He alone is competent and worthy and fore-appointed.

With this agree all the oracles of the New Testament as of the Old. The darnel (Matt. 13) ruined the crop; but there is no remedy sanctioned till the Son of man judges in the consummation of the age (13: 27-43). As in the days of Noah and of Lot, so it will be when the Son of man is revealed (Luke 17), not reunion but judgment of the quick. 1 Tim. 4 and yet more strongly 2 Tim 3 prove non-continuance in God's goodness, and therefore the necessity for excision (as in Rom. 11). And what mean 2 Peter 2, Jude, 1 John, and the Revelation? Even 1 Peter 4: 17 declared the time come for judgment to begin at the house of God.

Individuals may be through grace delivered. But evil as a whole once insinuated abides worsening till divine judgment; which assuredly is nigh, as the Lord is ready to judge living and dead. The hope of reunion for Christendom is not only unwarranted by one word, but opposed to the uniform testimony, of the Lord and His apostles. It springs from fallen self; which first departs from God's will, and then neglects or defies His word, never abandoning vain trust in man. The prophets declare that God will in sovereign grace restore Israel. The New Testament is equally explicit that He will destroy, not restore, Babylon.

How can sober man expect her who says in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning, to quit her spurious throne, and to betake herself to the dust in repentance? Now especially, that they have set up an impeccable woman and an infallible man as their new calves of gold? Does her forehead yet blush for worship in one form or another to the virgin and the angels, to dead men's bones and clothes, to the crucifix and the wafer? Is she ashamed of a celibate priesthood with its auricular confession and other horrors direct and indirect? Does she repudiate her pretended transubstantiation, and her real enmity to scripture reading? Has Rome delivered herself from that lie in her right hand, the Mass? On her own showing it is a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. This would be, according to scripture, a sacrament, not of the remission of sins (as the Lord's supper announces), but of their non-remission. Is it not a sacrifice avowedly going on day by day, with just the same proof of inefficiency as in Jewish sacrifices, which the Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts with the offering of Christ's body once for all (Heb. 9, 10), and its result now to the believer? For where remission of sins is, "there is no more offering for sin." This the gospel proclaims, and the Mass contradicts: a different gospel, which is not another.

What then can one think of Anglicans listening to Rome, when their own Articles of Religion (xxxi.) pronounce that the sacrifices of Masses are "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits?" and (xix.) that Rome "hath erred not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith?" Has not the profound and progressive alteration of the last half-century in the Anglican body been a return not to "that which was from the beginning," but to the rites and doctrines of unreformed Christendom in East and West? Has it not led to this retrograde letter by Mr. G.?

If you value scripture, if you cleave to the gospel, if you have redemption in Christ, if you honour the Son as the Father, if you know that corporately you are God's temple and your body a temple of the Holy Spirit, beware of reunion with the city of confusion, doomed to destruction as God is true. Beware even of looking back, lest you become a pillar of salt. For God is not mocked, and the Lord may be provoked to jealousy.

W.K.

Since this warning was written in 1896, the outcry for the Reunion of Christendom has been continued in ever-widening circles and in ever-increasing volume and intensity by religious and political leaders alike. Scripture foretells that this coalition will be formed, and that it will flourish externally for a while, but that it is doomed to a spectacular destruction by the judgment of the Lord. Mr. Kelly's solemn warning is re-issued with an earnest desire that its readers may avoid all contact with this unhallowed scheme.

The upsurge of the so-called ecumenical movement, nurtured by the liberal and modernistic World Council of Churches, together with the call of Pope John for greater tolerance and prayers for a moving together of the Protestant and Roman Catholic bodies, make this challenging article even more relevant to our day.

Spring, 1963.

Christian Science: A Delusion of the Day.

refuted by W. Kelly.

(3rd. ed., Race, 1913. [B.T. N3: p.303.])

Many of our readers may not know of this new society, sprung up on American soil, already too fruitful in monstrosities, though not without votaries in Europe generally as well as in Great Britain and its Colonies. Unlike Mormonism, which appealed to superstitious feeling in the humblest class, the later delusion finds its prey among educated folk of easier means, whose ears are inclined to the bombastic phrases of philosophic scepticism, without conscience and without faith. As founded by a woman, Mrs. Dr. Mary Baker Eddy, we need not wonder that women predominate among its million-and-a-half with a sprinkling of men from all grades. For it is a day when the true God is daringly blasphemed; and "Christian Science" is not its least guilty form. "Metaphysical" (not faith-) healing is one of its marked characteristics; had it aspired to no more, one might have left it to perish as a craze among kindred vanities. For is there in Bedlam any mania more certain than the notion, as well as the reasons given for it, that "man is never sick, for mind is never sick, and matter cannot be"? "Sickness is a delusion." "There is no such thing as suffering in the universe of a good God." "Tumours, ulcers, tubercles, inflammation, pain, deformed back [a singular limitation among so many deformities], are all dream-shadows, dark images of mortal [!] thought that will flee away before the light." . . . "haemorrhage and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thoughts superinduced upon the body."

To state such wild vapourings sufficiently exposes them to any persons of sound judgment. The unsound may be left to the logic of facts as the best disproof. Nor should such verbiage have called for a notice in these pages, but that the vagary claims to be a religion! as well as a science, and not a new religion but the oldest Christian religion!! yea its clear and intelligible apprehension, according to the rules laid down by the Master Himself!!! Such a pretension, along with its suicidal basis of "NO PERSONAL GOD," calls for the sternest denunciation. Mind without a personal subsistence is the shallowest of delusions. The self-existent God has affections and will, no less than purity, wisdom, and power according to His own infinitude. He is love and light in the beautiful yet true figures of scripture. But to deny implicitly His creation of angels and men, as well as of the heavens and the earth, is to fly in the face of His holy writ. To say that there is no other mind but the One, and no other will but His, is to contradict the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, nay the surest and saddest facts before us every day.

Through one man, says the great apostle, sin entered into the world, and death through sin. When man fell, "dying thou shalt die" began; and Adam was only a father after he sinned. The race is a fallen one. Physical maladies are the symptoms and evidence of the mortality that is the portion of every child of Adam. Nor did he deny the sufferings of this present time, though he counts them not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed toward us. For we know, says he, that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now.

If this craze were consistent, it would deny death as well as sickness and pain. But its inconsistency is palpable and extreme. For if there be no reality in sickness, there can be no room for "healing"; which last they make one of the chief pillars of their system! Nor could there be reality in the miraculous powers which Christ both displayed and conferred on His servants at the first as a sign to unbelievers. How can "Christian Science" come like an angel of light to sick, suffering, and diseased humanity, if "sickness is a delusion," and "there is no such thing as suffering in the universe of a good God"? Is it not plain that "Christian Science" is the real delusion, not sickness or suffering? Christ healed them as real diseases; He will completely clear them away when His world-kingdom comes.

The truth is that this pretentious folly is only a revival of heathen Pantheism. In it Christ has not even the place allowed to Him in the Koran of the false Prophet of Mecca. For He in it is owned to be the Judge, if not the Saviour. But Mrs. Eddy leads her followers to deny a Personal God which the Moslems acknowledge, and consequently the everlasting judgment which remains for the unbelieving. An impersonal God must be indifferent, a mere abstraction incapable of either love or judgment. The True God is He that sent His Son into the world to save sinners, but only such as believe. All others who hear add to their other sins the crowning one of rejecting the Lord and Saviour, and of disbelieving God. Scripture is clear and decisive that He who is to judge the wicked is the same Jesus who once suffered for sins, Just for unjust. What an awful aggravation of their unbelief, when the risen and glorified Saviour sits to judge those who denied the true God as well as His Son! To say that "sin" is an illusion is to sink morally lower than an unbelieving Jew. The very heathen were not so false or audacious, though they had no adequate idea of what sin is in God's sight. "Christian Science" in denying its reality robs Christ of His moral glory as well as His grace, as the Taker away of the sin of the world.

Yet if there be no personal God, if He be but the mind of which we are part, it is a necessary consequence to deny Satan, sin, and judgment, incarnation and redemption; and the profession of believing Christ or the Spirit or the scriptures in any real sense: all must be unreal, and in time thrown aside as inconsistent with their own system. It is an antichrist, and neither "Christian" nor "Science."

Think again how such a system destroys all the highest relations, and duties of the Christian. It were absurd to worship a principle: one can only worship a living personal God. Our communion is with the Father and with His Son by the Holy Spirit. With an impersonal Being this cannot be, as indeed it is folly to talk of mind, will, or love in that case: "His" we cannot say, save improperly.

A living and personal God we are called to serve, and Him only, as the Word when become flesh did perfectly; and He is the truth. Further every form of Pantheism undermines responsibility which must be to a person. Adherence to a principle is quite a different thing. Pantheism or "Christian Science" is incompatible with relationship to God, and hence overthrows the foundation of morality; as it still more evidently shuts out grace, redemption, the new creation, and the new relations God forms in all who receive Christ the Lord by faith.

On "The Church" in a Place, City, or Town.

W. Kelly.

LETTER 1.

Dear Brother,

As you desire to have in a plain and printed form for yourself and others what, in common with those we have regarded as most truly taught of God, I gather to be His revealed mind on this question, here it is.

The principle flows from the great and precious truth that we are called of God to walk on the ground of the "one body" of Christ. If we do not so walk, we cannot certainly be zealous to keep "the unity of the Spirit."

If, as is often the case, the saints who in faith take this only divine stand, as gathered to Christ's name, are only one company in a place, all is clear. No one among us questions their title or their competency any more than their responsibility. If they were but two or three, the privilege abides. They are not the assembly and do not pretend to be so, in the present ruin of the church, where many members of Christ are scattered everywhere in the religious societies, established or not, great or small. But they are bound none the less to walk together on that principle according to the Lord in the blessed Spirit who abides for ever, encouraged and sustained by that gracious resource for the evil day — the assurance of the Lord's presence to validate their acts as truly as when the church stood as yet unbroken (Matt. 18: 18-20). They might have to wait on Him as in weakness, and surely in humility and patience, and love, but in the confiding expectation of His guidance by His word and Spirit. Impossible that the Lord could fail those who are thus gathered in dependence and faith. If will or haste work in leaders or led, there is no guarantee that mistake or even unrighteousness may not soon ensue to the sorrow and shame of all that love Him, and to the dishonour of His own name.

The question of unity is necessarily raised, not merely in a general way by the fact that Scripture recognises but "one body," the church, all over the world, but in a practical way by its never speaking of assemblies, or churches, in a city or town. Of churches in a country or province we do read, but of "the church" in Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus or any other. Even dissensions or schisms within are strongly denounced; still more solemnly "heresies" or sects, as Scripture calls parties without. Unity must be kept, and is of the highest price, provided it be not carnal or worldly but "of the Spirit." It is bound up with Christ's name and glory, not to speak of its rich blessing spiritually for the mind and heart and conscience too of the saints who so walk.

Now the circumstances of the earliest saints thus called put unity to the test in a very manifest way. For by the unexampled power of the Holy Ghost thousands were brought to Christ's name in a day, and in such a sort as to mark them out for the Lord beyond ordinary times, They could not, from the nature of the case, possess public buildings, even if they desired such means of congregating largely, indeed as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them rather, for distribution to such as had need. If they continued as yet in the temple, as being not quite delivered from their old associations, they broke bread at home — not "from house to house" as the Authorised Version says, so liable to give the notion of slipshod disorder. Rooms were available, often "upper rooms," of no inconsiderable size. But though they thus met, Jews now Christians from every nation under heaven, and doubtless they met in many different houses, the uniform language of the Holy Ghost is "the church" or assembly, never the assemblies. Indeed "the whole multitude" of the believers are expressly shown in Acts 6 to have found means of common action, though we are told ere this that the number of the men (ἀνδρῶν) came to be about five thousand. Is it too much to suppose that the believing women may have even then made it double?

I grant that the appointment of "the seven" was not an ordinary matter; and more extraordinary was the occasion which brought "all the multitude" together in Acts 15. I cite them as undeniable disclosures of that common action, by whatever means secured, of "the assembly" in a city, even when many thousands were concerned, which is the sanctioned practice of Scripture from the beginning.

Now if there be any duty which attaches to the assembly more inalienably than another, it is the reception, as we call it, or the exclusion, according to the word, of those who bear the Lord's name. Is it by an assembly? or is it on the principle of "the" assembly? I speak not of a place where all the gathered saints are actually under one roof, but of a city or town where they are numerous enough, as in Jerusalem, to break bread in ever so many different houses. Scripture never recognises church action save in unity. 1 Cor. 5 is not for Corinth only, but for "all that call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, both theirs and ours." I own and insist in the fullest way on local responsibility where the case occurs and is known, but not to the practical denial of unity in the town or city. Action to be of God must be really, and not in mere form, unless we allow local infallibility, of all the saints gathered on divine ground. If all thus take part, it would be unrighteous to share the responsibility of action without an opportunity of conscientious acquiescence, and the consequent liberty to enquire or even duty to remonstrate in a godly way.

But the isolated action of some saints, or "an" assembly without the rest in one city or place, is practical independency, and wholly opposed to both spirit and letter of God's word. In a province the assemblies here or there act each; and all saints prima facie accept the action of each. But there is from the nature of the case, according to the word, no common action. They are not "the assembly in Galatia," but the assemblies of that country. It is never so in a town or city, where, if a local company have the responsibility of the case and of proposing the scriptural act, all the saints have the privilege and duty of joint action. Otherwise it is no longer the assembly in Jerusalem or in London, but a human sort of congregational union after the act, which is in this matter a denial of unity.

I say no more now than that I am as ever,

Yours affectionately in Christ,

To R. A. S. W. K.

LETTER 2.

Dear Brother,

Objections of various kinds are made by those who more or less follow the traditions of Christendom. Under this head cannot be honestly classed the common action which flows from the unity which is so urgently of the Holy Spirit everywhere in the New Testament, and here kept up by that remarkable phrase of Scripture, "the church in Jerusalem," in Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, or any other. But reasons which even seem to be based on the word of God are entitled to a grave hearing. For Scripture must surely tally with Scripture, though one in no way pretends to solve, to the satisfaction of each objector, every difficulty that may be raised on this question or any other.

Thus it is argued that the church "at the house" (κατ᾽ όἶκον) of this or that person, of Aquila and Prisca, of Nymphas, of Philemon, is proof of "churches" in a city. Nay, rather is it, when duly weighed with other Scriptures, distinct disproof of any such divisive idea. It then becomes part of the evidence for unity; for, while no one denies "the church" in ever so many houses of a city, the saints there are notwithstanding invariably designated "the" assembly in (ἐν) the city. The notion of some Greek fathers, and of Calvin etc. since, that it means only a Christian household, strikes one as a mere evasion owing to their traditional prejudices. Neander, though right in the main, shows his inattention to the precision of Scripture by citing ὴ ἐκκλησία ἐν τῳ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ. Now it is never so written, though it might have been perhaps if all the saints had met in one house. The Spirit uses ἐυ only of all the saints in a city. It is always κατ᾽ οἶκον, absolutely as in Acts 2: 46 ("at home"), or relatively as in the four houses we are now reviewing.

It will not be questioned by any fair and intelligent enquirer that the church in Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia, had been planted before the first epistle to the Corinthians was written thence. Evidently too "the church at Aquila's" (1 Cor. 16: 19) existed then in that city. "All the brethren greet you," in verse 20, supposes souls gathered elsewhere, and the main body too. The active grace of God gathers freely and in all simplicity; but as the Holy Spirit is one and impresses unity on all saints here below, so is there care in a place like Ephesus, not assuredly to hinder the gathering of saints to the Lord's name in more houses than one, but also to guard them all in unity. There may be the assembly here or the assembly there; but the aggregate of the saints in the place were "the assembly in Ephesus," never the assemblies in it or of it. Unity is the governing truth according to the will of our Lord, the Head of the church. So runs His word, which cannot be broken. To have them all meeting under one roof is an earthly notion: the presence and power of the Spirit rises wholly and essentially above diversity of place. Only it is indispensable that as Christ's body they be all gathered to His name in the liberty and unity of the Spirit.

From Rom. 16: 3-5 it appears that Aquila and his wife were at Rome when the apostle wrote his great Epistle to the saints there from Corinth (A.D. 57 or 58); and here again we read of "the church at their house." It may be said doubtless that the saints in Rome are addressed as such throughout, and never in Scripture spoken of as the church in Rome. For my part I admire the perfectness of Scripture and the wisdom of God in so speaking. But it is at once a human and a weak inference that the saints were not the church of God there, because they are not so spoken of. Just consider those at Philippi or at Colosse, in which cities none would be so hardy as to deny them church character. Why then, it may be enquired, were the saints in those places not styled "the church"? Not because they were not; for such a denial would be ridiculous where we hear as at Philippi, of bishops or overseers and deacons — a fulness of order which many true assemblies might not yet possess (see Acts 14: 23, Titus 1: 5). The truth taught in the Epistle to the Philippians brought individual experience and Christian life into relief, rather than ecclesiastical relationship; as the subject-matter in the Epistle to the Colossians is not the regulation of the church, but the recall of the saints to Christ the Head when in danger of losing the true sense of His glory. So even the Ephesian disciples are addressed as "the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus that are in Ephesus," rather than as "the assembly" there, which last we are absolutely sure they were long before (Acts 20: 17, 28). The reason is, that, though the church is handled in this Epistle from the highest point of view and in all the extent of its privileges, the utmost care is taken first and foremost to treat of the blessings of the saints in Christ, which leads to the individuality of their title in the address.

Yet more obvious is the key to the address in the Epistle to the Romans. It is due to its character as laying down, not church order, but the broad and deep foundations of divine righteousness in the gospel (with the guilt and evil of man that requires it), its consistency with the special promises to Israel, and the practical life of the Christian that flows from it, suits and is due to it. The spiritual mind feels that to address such an Epistle to "the church" in Rome would be out of harmony with the truth in question. For Paul, apostle by call, to address all that were in Rome saints by call seems to be perfection; not because they did not compose the assembly or church there, but because the style adopted is in keeping, as "the assembly" would have been quite incongruous, with the drift of the Epistle. It would be indeed remarkable if the inspired apostle had written otherwise. That they were not the church in Rome is an unfounded deduction or strange doctrine. That there may have been several companies in that great city even then is in no way improbable: verses 14 and 15 seem to indicate groups; and there are, besides, many names recorded in the chapter, unconnected either with these verses or with 5, where we hear expressly of the assembly at the house of Prisc(ill)a and Aquila. Yet the analogy of Jerusalem, to speak of no other, would not only warrant but require the conclusion, that, whatever the number of companies meeting in Rome, all the saints in it formed the assembly there. Of course it was "the assembly" in this house, and "the assembly" in that; but the saints as a whole constituted "the assembly in Jerusalem," Ephesus, Rome, etc., as the case might be. All stood on one divine ground; and it abides for us. Had there been "churches" in Jerusalem without common action, it would have been not "the" but "an" assembly here and another there, not unity but independency, the most opposed of all principles to that of God's church.

Still more manifest and to the point is the evidence yielded by Col. 4: 15, "Salute the brethren that are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the assembly that is at his (or, according to some of the more ancient copies, their) house." It is in vain to assume that this was the only gathering of the saints in Laodicea. Properly viewed it would even of itself imply the contrary; for had this been the only company gathered to the Lord's name in the city, it would have been naturally called the church "in Laodicea" rather than "at Nymphas' house," (or according to the Vatican, etc., adopted by Lachmann, and by Westcott and Hort, Nympha's house). It might be argued of course that we are told in ver. 13 of "those that are in Laodicea," as if they were only so many individual saints not gathered at all. But there is really no room for such speculation; for in the next verse following (15) we read of "the assembly (or church) of Laodiceans," just as we might speak of the assembly of Londoners, meaning the assembly in London. "The" Laodiceans as in the Authorised and Revised Versions would be too much; and so with "the" Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 1: 1; 2 Thess. 1: 1. But the case is of moment, in that it shuts us up to a clear issue as to the unity of the church in a city, against the independency of the churches therein. The apostle does not at all identify the church at Nymphas' with the assembly of Laodiceans. Nor does he speak of the churches but of the church of Laodiceans, suggestive of common, not several, action.

Accordingly the "assembly of Laodiceans" expressly goes beyond those meeting at that house; while the unity of all the saints in Laodicea in no way hinders or denies the assembly at a certain saint's house. Does not this answer well to what has been so happily maintained among us hitherto, the unity of the saints in a city with local gatherings here or there in it? That they all met under one roof (save on extraordinary occasions), and that unity is only to be secured in this material way, is natural enough for those who do not believe in the unity of the Spirit; but it is really a crass idea and a delusion opposed to Scripture. Brethren may have assembled in this or that brother's house; but there was also the capital truth of the assembly "of Laodiceans" or "in Laodicea" (Rev. 3: 14, where the commonly received reading "of Laodiceans" rests only, as far as is known, on the Codex Reuchlini, which Erasmus used, out of some 110 MSS., 5 uncials and 105 cursives). Each meeting had no doubt its local responsibility: but none the less was there unity for all in the city. And who that knows what the church of God is could doubt that what appears in Col. 4: 15, 16, was equally true everywhere else, if there were more meetings than one?

Philemon 2 remains for brief consideration, "the church, or assembly, at thy house." By comparison with Col. 4: 9 and other corroborating evidence, it does not admit of doubt that Philemon's house was in Colosse. But it were an eccentric conclusion that this was the sole meeting of saints in the city. It was "the church at Philemon's house"; but it could not be, or it would have been called, the church in Colosse. Other gatherings, one or more, existed there. Here again, if we have proof of a local meeting and of course responsibility, we have not a word to weaken the unity of God's assembly in the city, but rather what distinctly implies it.

Thus every case of the church in a house fails as a solid objection, and rather tends to confirm by other connected facts (which the Holy Spirit carefully states as if to exclude independency), that unity along with local responsibility is of God, and to hold both is essential to all sound and spiritual conception of the church of God. One is far from referring to the late A. Neander as an accurate interpreter of God's mind, revealed in His word, on the constitution of the church. Still he honestly states, in general beyond others, what is found there, even if it condemn his own Lutheranism as well as the rest of Christendom. And thus, in the "History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles" (Book III. ch. iii, a chapter most damaging to traditional usages), he admits that while companies met in particular houses, without separating themselves from the whole, the "Epistles of the apostle Paul give the clearest evidence that all the Christians of one city originally formed one whole church."

Another scripture has been cited with some confidence, not indeed to prove assemblies with independent action in a city, but to destroy the force of "the" assembly in a city by a citation meant to show its application to provinces. The insinuation therefore is that, if "the church" can be predicated of a province as of a city, the phrase cannot carry with it such unity as leads to common action in a city, because this is clearly out of the question in a province. But is it true that there is any single instance of such equivalence? Acts 9: 31 is alleged, where the Authorised Version based on the received text says that "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria," etc.

Now it does not seem intelligent to plead in bar of this that the uncial MSS. E H L P with the great mass of cursives, two ancient versions, and some Greek and Latin fathers, oppose A B C and some dozen cursives, with most of the very ancient versions and several ecclesiastical writers. At least my judgment is that "the church," as it has the best and oldest testimony, so also ought to be frankly accepted as the true reading. It was probably changed, by scribes who were struck with its peculiarity and did not understand its force, into conformity with Acts 16: 5, where the plural is as right as here it seems weaker than the singular. "The, church, then, throughout (καθ with the genitive) the whole of Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace," etc. It is a phrase wholly distinct from what is wanted by those who advocate separate action in a city; and hence it is absolutely worthless for their purpose. For it is a simple intimation that the church viewed as a whole, wherever it had extended throughout these lands, had peace.

Had the phrase been "the church (or assembly) of Judea and Galileo and Samaria," or "the church in Judea" etc., it might indeed have been lawfully used to neutralise the language on which so much stress is justly laid by those who for truth and practice cleave to the written word. As it stands, the marked difference of phrase destroys the wished-for application; while its unforced sense falls in exactly with the truth of the facts and the interpretation just now given. It is the church as far as it then existed there, the church throughout the designated lands, the church as a unity in this quarter; a sense which none of us questions elsewhere, and of the deepest moment to hold fast, though not the point at present in dispute. Only ignorance could cite it to weaken "the assembly" in a city or "the assemblies" of a province. Unity in the comprehensive sense is conceded on all hands.

I feel thankful for this little research into the wondrous word of God, the perfectness of which ever grows on the Christian who digs into it in faith. May we use its every word to the glory of the Lord Jesus in deed and in truth.

Yours affectionately in Him,

To R. A. S.   W. K.

LETTER 3.

Dear Brother, — In this communication I propose to set out as clearly as I can the evidence of Scripture on the question whether the saints in a city were called to meet in the same room, in order thereby to maintain that unity, which in name is universally allowed in our midst, as it is in deed and truth asserted or assumed in the written word. There is a phrase of not uncommon occurrence in the New Testament, which has been supposed to imply the fact, and hence the duty, of the saints' assembling in one and the same company. Is this then the only scriptural way to express unity in a city?

Let us examine ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό in the Acts and the Epistles that we may gather whether the usage there necessitates the meeting in a single place for common action. On the face of the words no such restriction of meaning is taught; for their primitive or literal import is "for the same thing." Sameness of place is not expressed, but rather of object; though it is entirely allowed that the same purpose might be carried out in the same place, or at the same time, and this be implied contextually in the application of the phrase. Hence "together" is a legitimately derived signification, and indeed the most habitual sense in which it occurs in the New Testament. The nature of the case alone determines whether there was also the same time or place. Thus it is probable that it was in the same place when the Pharisees assembled "together" (ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό) to question the Lord (Matt. 22: 34), as it could hardly be otherwise with two women grinding "together." But this we shall see might or might not be. The words in themselves do not settle it, but the circumstances or the context. The phrase itself therefore in no way shuts us up to one "place" in the physical sense. A moral force prevails generally, if not always save in bare outward facts.

The first instance is Acts 1: 15, where the parenthesis informs us that there was a crowd of names "together" about a hundred and twenty. Now there is nothing here to hinder our supposing the 120 gathered into the same apartment; for that Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren was said just before, and immediately after we have his address. The natural inference is that they were all there to hear. But the true meaning of the words is a muster of names "together," and not their being "gathered," as the Revised Version puts it. — In the second occurrence, Acts 2: 1, I see no reason to doubt that the disciples were assembled in the same place together. But here besides we find ὁμοῦ (the critical correction of ὁμοθυμαδόν, "with one accord,") which is used properly of place, "at the same place," though it too acquires the meaning of "together," even where the notion of place is lost. The brethren were thus waiting for the promise of the Father, as the Lord had enjoined; and all the facts point to their being gathered in one place at this time, when they were baptised of the Spirit in the wondrous grace of God.

But the phrase occurs again in verse 44: "And all that believed were together and had all things common." Now we know the sudden and immense spread of the truth even on that day alone. Are we to conceive they were all gathered into one room? The Spirit of God is describing their habitual life in unity, not here their assembling merely, as it would appear. It is in verse 42 that we find the general fact and formal principle, as verse 46 states the particulars, which lent a bright and blessed character even to their every-day life.*

*Since writing this letter I have lit on the following note on the verse in the pious and learned Dr. John Lightfoot's Works (Pitman's edition, viii. 61); "This Greek word ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό is of frequent and of various use in the Septuagint. It sometimes betokens the meeting of persons in the same company; so of beasts: sometimes their concurring in the same action, though not in the same company or place; sometimes their concurring in the same condition, and sometimes their knitting together, though in several companies; — As Joab's and Abner's men, though they sat at a distance, and the pool of Gibeon between them, yet they said συναντᾳν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό. And in this sense is the word to be understood in this story; for it is past all imagination or conceiving, that all those thousands of believers, that were now in Jerusalem, should keep all of one company and knot, and not part asunder; for what house would hold them? But they kept in several companies or congregations, according as their languages, nations, or other references, did knot them together. And this joining together, because it was apart from those that believed not, and because it was in the same profession, and practice of the duties of religion; therefore it is said to be ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό, though it were in several companies or congregations." I have omitted the author's references, as they of course appear included in the much fuller list from the Septuagint, which is given elsewhere in this letter.

In the close of verse 47 we have another and more conclusive disproof of a mere gathering under one roof to which some would limit the phrase. It is well known that the true text of the last clause is: "And the Lord kept adding daily together those to be saved." For want of understanding this, τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ, "to the church," crept in as an explanation; and ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό  got relegated to the beginning of Acts 3. But, however taken, it is clear that the words do not mean "in the same place." The Lord was adding His own "together," quite apart from their being collected into "one place." That they would assemble together as much as possible and enjoy the fellowship of saints is beyond controversy; but these were practical results of what the Lord was then doing in His grace. "For there is one body and one Spirit." It is certain that the most solemn witness and sweet pledge of their fellowship as one, the breaking of bread, was not observed in one vast place capable of thousands participating, but κατ᾽ οἶκον "at home," in contrast with the temple. They took the Lord's supper in the houses of one and another of the saints. See again Acts 5: 42, where a similar contrast re-appears, though here teaching and preaching are the point rather than the Lord's Supper. They as yet had no public building suited to such a purpose, but just used their private houses throughout the city. Solomon's porch might be excellent as long as it was available for speaking and testifying to the mass of Jews who frequented it as a sort of religious lounge and promenade; but it is as unfounded as ridiculous to suppose that all the saints could or would have met there for meetings of the assembly. It is certain therefore that the context refutes the idea that "together" here has anything to do with their assembling in one "place." For if this had been sought, it must have been preeminently in the breaking of bread, and here we learn expressly that it was not so.

The fact is that the phrase is used adverbially in classical or ordinary Greek writers, just as we have seen in the New Testament, for "together." Thus Thucydides, though not using it often, does thereby express (1. 79, vi. 106) concurrence in sentiment or in falsehood without reference to place. For other purposes he with marked precision employs εἰς τὸ αὐτό, ἐν τῳ αὐτῳ, κατὰ τὸ αὐτὸ, ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ, κ. τ. λ. So Polybius (ii. 326) uses it for "together," Dionys. Hal. (Ant. Rom. iii.), Cl. Ptol. (Geogr. i. 12), and Plutarch frequently, not to speak of other heathen authors.

But it is evidently to the Septuagint, Philo, and Josephus, we must look for more direct and sure illustration of New Testament phraseology; and there the formula occurs freely, and habitually for "together," etc. Occasionally, of course, the place or time, may be the same; but, as in the New Testament, the usage is wider and often admits of difference in these respects where there is community of act or design. Compare Ex. 26: 9, Ex. 36: 13; Deut. 22: 10; Deut. 25: 5, 11; Joshua 9: 2, Joshua 11: 5; Judges 6: 33, Judges 19: 6; 2 Sam. 2: 13, 2 Sam. 10: 15, 2 Sam. 12: 3, 2 Sam. 21: 9; Ezra 4: 3; Neh. 4: 8, Neh. 6: 2, 7; Ps. 2: 2, Ps. 4: 9, Ps. 18: (Heb. 19 and so in the following) 10, Ps. 33: 3, Ps. 36: 40, Ps. 40: 7, Ps. 47: 4, Ps. 48: 2, 9, Ps. 54: 15, Ps. 61: 9, Ps. 70: 11, Ps. 73: 7, 9, Ps. 82: 15, Ps. 101: 23, Ps. 121: 2, Ps. 132: 1; Eccles. 11: 6, Isa. 66: 17; Jer. 3: 18, Jer. 6: 12, Jer. 46: 12, 1. 4; Hosea 1: 11; Amos 1: 15, Amos 3: 3; Micah 2: 12. Comment on these occurrences of the Septuagint is needless. Though they will naturally be of chief interest to the student of the Greek Bible, it is hoped that the English reader may find the search not without profit; as it fully confirms the fact that the phrase admits of sameness of purpose for several companies in as many places.

Here we might leave the question with its decisive answer from God's word; but it may help doubtful minds if we pursue it further. Acts 4: 26 is the next example: "The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together, ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό  against the Lord and against His Christ." Of this we have the revealed application in the next verses: "for of a truth in this city against Thy holy Servant Jesus whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass." Now it is very certain that this gathering ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό of Herod and of Pilate, of the Gentiles and of Israel, does not convey, or bear the inference that they were all assembled "in one place." Scripture declares that they were gathered "together," ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό. Yet Scripture expressly demonstrates, as every reader of the Gospels knows, that they met in quite different places. The chief priests and scribes led Christ to their own council, — indeed to Annas first and then to Caiaphas; the whole multitude of them led Him to Pilate and the Praetorium; then Pilate remitted Him to Herod; and finally Pilate chastised Him in his own place before the cross. The argument therefore founded on this phrase is a proved fallacy, and the deduction from it falls to the ground, as not only without reality but opposed to the sure teaching of Scripture.

1 Cor. 7: 5 also clearly disproves "in one place," and shows that the regular union of married life is there meant. They might even be "in one place," when they were not ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό. In every way the notion is wrong.

Hence there is no solid reason for drawing more from 1 Cor. 11: 20 than the Revisers say: "When therefore ye assemble yourselves together," etc. This would be true if the saints in Corinth met in more buildings than one, though it is assuredly addressed to all the assembly in the city, and not to a part in one place.

Another passage which has been impressed for the service of the assumption that all met in a single place is 1 Cor. 14: 23-25. But it seems surprising that any one should fail to see that the apostle is not describing facts as they were or ought to be, but only supposes a case where "the whole assembly" should meet "together" (ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό), and here by implication it would be in one place. If all were to speak with tongues, it would expose them to the charge of madness; if all were to prophesy, it would force, even on the unbeliever or simple man that came in, the conviction of God's being indeed in or among them. But as we know expressly from 1 Cor. 12: 29, 30, that "all" are not prophets, and do not speak with tongues, so this passage rightly understood would rather point to the conclusion that "the whole church" did not as a fact gather into a single place. Here only is it put, and this simply as an hypothesis to correct the unspirituality of the Corinthian saints in preferring the more showy sign-gifts to that really higher exercise of divine power which sets the soul morally in the presence of God under His grace and truth.

The same principle applies to 1 Cor. 5, save indeed that it is a weaker case. If the Corinthian assembly met in several houses, they none the less assembled themselves together, and none more than another put out from among themselves the wicked person. The church in Jerusalem had unity as much as the church in Corinth; yet it is certain that they met in many houses to break bread. So therefore it may have been in Corinth without the least prejudice to their unity. The unity of the Spirit is a reality for principle and practice, and not a mere hope for heaven as independency makes it; but it is quite superior to the accidents of time and place. Is it seriously supposed that for putting away they temporarily abandoned the various places of meeting, and that all met in one building for such a purpose as this, whenever a case of church action occurred? Scripture gives no indication of such a thing for discipline, but shows breaking bread at home distributed over a city. We have already seen in Col. 4 the clear proof, on the one hand, of more than one meeting in Laodicea, and on the other of the unity of all the saints therein as the assembly of Laodiceans. Local responsibility is of the utmost practical value; but it must not be exercised so as to swamp the governing truth of unity in a city or town. And excision is unquestionably laid down in 1 Corinthians 5 as incumbent on the "assembly in Corinth," not merely on the church in somebody's house, which of course was (or might be) but part. The local brethren would naturally occupy themselves with the details, and this neither jealously nor suspected, if grace wrought; but on the assembly in the city, it is as certain from scripture as anything can be, falls the duty of approving themselves to be clear in the matter. The isolation. of the assembly in such a one's house from the assembly elsewhere in the town never occurs to the apostle's mind; and we must bear in mind that the Lord had "much people" in Corinth (Acts 18: 10). It is the fruit of old habits or traditional error, strengthened by the growing self-will of the day, and claiming "the voice of God" from passing circumstances, as clericalism does for its party work.

Mere notification after the act of excision, for example, in no way meets the word of God, but is quite consistent with the congregational system. Scripture requires that the assembly in the city should put away, and not the local meeting independently of the rest. To notify it to other saints not concerned in that solemn duty is a subordinate point, and not what scripture demands; but scripture is imperative that the assembly in the city, and not the local meeting only, should clear the Lord's name. Of course, "the churches" of the province or country would in some way or another learn the fact and act on the decision, and so everywhere, unless unity were given up in every respect. But unity would be given up in a city, if the saints gathered therein to Christ's name (whether meeting in one room or in ten) did not take part as a whole in putting away the wicked person. The independent action of the meeting in somebody's house, where the offender might be, is not the injunction of the Holy Spirit, but his exclusion by all the gathered saints, as in Corinth. Plurality of meeting-places in a town does not change the divine principle, but makes the unity more impressive.

But here I must pause and remain, ever yours affectionately in Christ,

W. K. To R. A. S.

P.S. — As some readers of Letter 2 in the last "Bible Treasury" think I had overlooked the fact of disciples in Damascus (Acts 9: 19, 25), let them be assured that it is not so: the letter shows the contrary. But "disciples" do not necessarily mean "assembly" any more now than then. Even supposing however that the disciples in Damascus or elsewhere were gathered and walked ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ, this would only modify some words quite independently of the argument, but not shake the great substantial fact pressed, that the phrase is altogether peculiar as expressive of another thought. It in no way weakens the difference between the assembly in a town and the assemblies of a country, which a false view of unity will always be found to confound or destroy. That marked and weighty difference is not more indelible in Scripture than bound up with the essential nature of God's assembly on earth; and every saint is responsible at least not to oppose and thwart the Lord's authority concerned in it, even if he be not intelligent enough to comprehend and appreciate it duly. I am quite content to leave the expression in Acts 9: 13 as meaning no more than the assembly throughout these lands, i.e. the church thus limited; but the difference abides intact, even if the church were actually said, which it is not, to have then existed elsewhere.

LETTER 4.

Dear Brother, — The principle then, on which within a given sphere church action according to scripture takes place, is the unity of the saints therein. It is the assembly (i.e. of all the gathered saints) in the city, which is commanded to put away from among themselves the wicked person 1 Cor. 5 is conclusive as to this, especially as confirmed by Col. 4: 15, 16. In those early days to meet in private houses was even more common than in later times. The saints assembled, some here and some there, and the word notices this fact; but nowhere is there a hint of some in the city taking action and the rest not. Scripture, as we have seen is careful, while owning the saints gathered in this or that private house, to speak of the assembly as a whole in the place, and to mark that on the assembly as a whole devolves the obligation to purge out the old leaven. Nobody dreams of a central weekly meeting doing any work of the sort; its business is to facilitate, in a wise and godly way, the common action of all the saints in the place. Whether the saints in Corinth met as a fact in one room or in several is not intimated, as it is quite immaterial in principle; and it might be hazardous to affirm one way or another. Doubtless this very silence is to be respected, and we can turn the Lord's command to so much the more ready and universal obedience, because there is no notice of that circumstantial difference. It is the assembly in Corinth, and equally, whether the saints congregated in several smaller rooms or in one large enough. But if the saints met in several, it was not the particular meeting where the incestuous man went most frequently, which alone acted in putting the defiled person out, but all the saints in Corinth. To the assembly therein, and not only to the portion of the saints who might be more immediately concerned with the details of the case, was the charge given. The assembly as a whole is that which Scripture shows to be called and bound of the Lord to act in His name.

Here again unbelief is at work as of old; and after ruining the practical testimony of Christ in the church, it denies that you can carry out this Scripture or any other about the assembly, because in this time of ruin there are but a few here and there gathered to His name. Ecclesiastically, it is the old enemy of despair. But Matt. 18: 20 meets this objection fully and precisely. Before the church began, the grace and wisdom of Christ cut off all real ground for it, giving the authority of His presence to that which is done even by "two or three" so gathered. What tender mercy, and provident care! But this only where the saints are gathered to His name. They have just the same ratification of heaven, as if all the saints were there; for even then what can compare with the Lord's presence in their midst? And this He expressly declares to be no less assured to "two or three" if they are gathered to His name. To feel and own the ruin-state is of God; to enfeeble the word or its practical authority thereby is evil and of the enemy. It is not "display" that is wanted, or "organisation," but obedience in faith without which all is vain.

Far be the thought that His presence is made good at the expense of His word, or to the dishonour of His Spirit. To be gathered unto His name is the condition of the promised blessing; but they are not so gathered who meet on any other principle than the one body of Christ. Thus is all truth bound together. There is no licence either to scatter the saints or to be indifferent about such a sin or its effects. Those who walk heedless of the one body on earth cannot be keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Since ever in London various gatherings existed, it has been the known and invariable practice for all the saints there to act simultaneously in matters of the assembly, both in receiving and in putting away. When a local meeting agreed to present a name for fellowship, it was carried to the central meeting on the Saturday evening, and, if no valid objection appeared, it was entered on the notice paper, and copied for each meeting in London. After a week's delay for the satisfaction of all, if no godly reason held good to the contrary, the person was received, the name being again and simultaneously before all. Until recently the cases for putting away were named but once; the effect of which was to afford insufficient opportunity of enquiry or objection even to the brethren at the Saturday meeting, and none whatever to the mass of saints in London, who must nevertheless take common part in the extreme act. This, being a plain and injurious anomaly, was at length rectified; and as all were to join in putting out, so all had due notice a clear week before excision, and so could with less hurry and more intelligence and equity take the action required. But, even before this becoming opportunity was afforded, no meeting ever assumed title to act apart from all the saints in London gathered to the Lord's name. The acknowledged principle was that all on the ground of God's church joined in the act. His assembly there, not a part of it without the others equally gathered to the Lord's name, was called of the Lord to vindicate His will. It is not a correction in detail, nor even an innovation merely, but another principle, as opposed to scriptural truth as it is to our practice hitherto, to claim for each local meeting in London competency to act, apart from all the other gathered saints, in receiving or excommunicating. If brethren were rash enough to allow so radical a change, it would be no less than revolution. To restrict the Lord's presence to the local meeting, where a plurality of gatherings exists in a place, is assuredly not faith in, or sound understanding of, Matt. 18 and 1 Cor. 5. It is equally and divinely true, whether there be in a place one meeting, or thirty; and all believe it is "when" and "where" the saints, whether two or three, or whether two or three thousand, are gathered together to His name. To set up independent church-action for each local meeting, in a place where there are many, is to destroy the force of Scripture, which charges it on the assembly in the place, never on some but on all the saints gathered to Christ's name. It is to deny the assembly in a city, which is scriptural, and to imply assemblies of a city, which is unscriptural. It is independency, not unity, of man's will and contrary to God's word. "What! came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only? If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant." 1 Cor. 14.

It is true that for many years there was looseness as to the circle embraced by the Saturday-evening meeting in London. The desire after help and fellowship blunted the perception of brethren to the fact that Croydon, Barking, Buckhurst Hill, etc., are in no sense included in London. Still all the gathered saints in London did act together; and this was the great matter, even if some outside acted with them, which was a work of supererogation. Better knowledge corrected this comparatively small anomaly; and it was very properly left to the exterior gatherings to take themselves off. Then came a painful procedure — arbitrary interference backed by party, contrary to express understanding, to coerce certain meetings in Kent, notwithstanding the conviction in some or all that they formed part of London as legitimately as Notting Hill, Finsbury Park, or Clapton. No intelligent brother doubts that there is a limit ecclesiastically to London, as to Rome, Ephesus, or any other place; and if will did not work, the saints would have no great difficulty in coming to a sound judgment. Within it the saints gathered to the Lord are bound to act together, as they are equally in every other place according to Scripture.

Nor has any man of weight ever contended for either the weekly central meeting or the common paper as "the principle," as some imagine. Not so. The joint action of the assembly in a place is the vital point; and this seems to necessitate, in the judgment of the wisest and most spiritual who have ever been with us, both that meeting and the papers. After years of reflection none has suggested a better means; nor has any suggestion been made which would not infringe on divine principle. One has proposed the communication of what each local meeting has done to London and elsewhere! another who admits London unity would relegate all to the central meeting, which would make a clergy and deny the assembly! So little do those who desire change agree, save in excluding the vital responsibility of that common action of the gathered saints which is due to Christ and imperatively claimed by His word.

But lo! another voice breaks on the ear from afar. One must make allowance for men accustomed to places where only one meeting exists. They are apt to err in venturing to speak in an off-hand way of such a place as London. One of these invented the sneer of "paper unity," which others were not ashamed to echo. But what has this new voice to tell us? I do not wonder that the Editor of "Words of Faith" apologises, though mildly, for so fresh and bold a contradiction of the known judgment of their departed leader; nor that the writer claims "simply desire to edify!" by suggesting his rash thoughts, which will do nothing if they do not "raise questions." For, without denying the breaking of bread in various parts of a large city, counting many saints, as Rome, Jerusalem, etc., he insinuates that there was one place, marked out by the Lord, and recognised by all, as the centre or assembly! for all purposes of administration!! No more distressing assault was ever made by any one called a brother on the very nature, dignity, and responsibility of God's church; never greater though unconscious contempt — I say not for all we have hitherto learnt, confessed, valued, acted on, but — for God's revelation on a subject so precious to Christ. In the previous page he had gone so far as to speak of one place recognised as the gathering-place of the assembly, and all was connected with that, both for ministry!! and administration. God has taken care by Col. 4: 16 to refute this mischievous nonsense founded on the misuse of ver. 15, and of other like cases.

Thus we are in presence of two efforts of Satan to damage or destroy. One is the radical form of independency, which would abuse local responsibility to overthrow the true unity of the church as a present reality, always binding on faith and practice, whatever the departure of Christendom. But next we have, not merely a party falling into independent action, inconsistent with their own confession of unity in their eager will to carry division, but one of their avowed converts, and of course loud and bitter advocates, essaying to justify the giving up of action to one place in a large city, "as the centre and assembly for all purposes of administration." If this be not the clerical form of independency, adulterating Scripture for its ambitious and evil aim, it will be hard to find it in Christendom. The organs either of dissent or Anglicanism have never propounded a more aspiring scheme to draw the saints, and even whole gatherings out of their responsibility. What spirit can be at work to suggest such thoughts? Not the Holy Ghost.

It may surprise (as it should warn) some to learn that a line of argument similar to their own is adopted by Dr. S. Davidson ("Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament unfolded"), who went over to Independency from Presbyterianism. Not that one supposes the writers or speakers, for the separate action of each local assembly in a place where there are several, to have drawn their shafts from that quiver. It is a far more serious consideration, that it is the same root of unbelief as to the real unity of God's church for present and practical action. The Congregational divine, with the same strange misuse of Solomon's porch, equally urges that all were necessarily and literally together in one place, and equally deceives himself that the unity of the church consists with that human system. No wonder the imputation of independency is felt, which it would not be, if it were not the fact, though of course unconsciously. — Ever yours in Christ,

To R. A. S.  W. K.

LETTER 5.

Dear Brother, — It may be helpful in more ways than one if we now test recent proceedings of the gravest consequence by that unity of action, which we have all hitherto professed, and which I believe to be the only scriptural principle, whatever the number of meetings in a place. Some seem by no means alive to the import of what is at stake. In places where brethren are used to but one meeting, they might easily go wrong if they judged from their own circumstances which do not raise the question; as others may err who have yielded to feeling against that which touched them personally, or awakened their indignation. But truth is not learnt or kept thus.

In August 1879, the Park Street meeting shocked with a slight exception the spiritual intelligence and even the consciences of brethren generally by a Declaration sent out independently of the rest of the saints gathered in London. In that document they committed themselves to refusing fellowship, not only to a brother whose case was before another meeting, but to that meeting for what it agreed to do that very evening! and to all others, individuals or meetings, which did not clear themselves directly or indirectly from association with either the brother or the meeting in question!! They added that they disowned the present constitution of the weekly meeting as a medium of communication between the local meetings in London!!!

Now such an action as this taken in the Lord's name, even in itself (apart from the fundamental breach in sending it out as an assembly decision, without so much as seeking the acceptance of the saints gathered in London), was not only unheard of in our midst but opposed to what had uniformly been our bearing of old. It was not so as to Plymouth in 1845-6, though the evil there was beyond comparison worse than any thing alleged against the brother or meeting accused in London. It was not so after the Bethesda matter as to Bath, where a new meeting, outside that which had the previous sanction of G. V. W. etc., was begun with the sanction of J. N. D. etc. It was not so later still as to Jersey, whence saints from two meetings (till one collapsed), who had no intercommunion there, were allowed to break bread at the Priory, and so elsewhere, with the consent of the same persons who in the Ramsgate case denounced a less fault as the destruction of the testimony, etc. It was not so as to Newton Abbot, where a party outside the then and still acknowledged assembly were sustained vehemently in word and deed by the same elder brother who from the first would have no less than the expulsion of his still more aged brother; yet was the offence very like his own. It was not so as to Christchurch (N.Z.), where G. V. W. had stood with the meeting on the one hand, and on the other J. N. D., after hearing two sisters, wrote his sympathy with their seceding friends; yet nobody thought of declaring him out, though surely responsible. Such cases, two of them recent, prove how contrary to all our habitual forbearance with godly brothers in conflicting circumstances were the proceedings of Park Street. They were due to a fierce party-spirit rising up to a not undesired crisis of division, as against brethren who could not consent to such extreme courses, believing them to be alien from Christ and Scripture.

But even if the aim of Park Street had been consistent, righteous, and godly, we are now to see how the hitherto constantly practised principle of the assembly's united action in a place bears on the recent acts, and so on all who accept them.

The Declaration of the 19th August 1879 was sent out in all directions by Park Street, as if it had been the sole gathering to the Lord's name in London. Can any intelligent believer deny that this was in direct violation of the principle we owned? It is in vain to plead the fault of Kennington or any other. The saints in Park Street were bound, if they claimed (as they did) assembly character, to have submitted their proposal to all the gathered saints in London, even if they arrogated to themselves the sudden title to blot out with a stroke of their pen the intermediate weekly meeting, which no sober person could deem justifiable. It was really an act not only independent but revolutionary; unless it be assumed that the assembly even in a small corner of a city can do no wrong, or that the sin of independency is impossible among brethren because they do not call themselves Independents.

Never was a document from an assembly in fellowship so generally blamed and rejected as the Declaration of Park Street. Every one knows there were not a few nor inconsiderable circumstances tending to make anything emanating from that meeting acceptable to all brethren. Even from the least assembly a solemn act would on the face of it be received with the utmost respect. What then must have been the chagrin and amazement of the Park Street meeting, if they ever knew it from their present leaders, that (with scarce an exception beyond the not many daring and determined promoters of division, striving after "the reins" here and there) brethren throughout Great Britain, and Ireland, the Channel Islands, etc., not only rejected the judgment so peremptorily passed by Park Street, but hid away or destroyed the document, some even remonstrating with that meeting more severely than any other had ever experienced in our previous history!

Then followed before the close of August 1879 the notable second document from Park Street, dropping the Declaration, under the pressure of the same strong hand which forced the acceptance of the Kennington judgment on a most reluctant party. Yet it was that abandoned Declaration (in every way an error and an object of censure and shame both in its intrinsic contents, and in sending it out so independently, that it did not even claim to emanate from the assembly in London), which was the occasion of the Guildford Hall agitation, and in effect, though dropped, the policy of the Park Street party.

Turn we now, from the sorrowful and humbling details that intervened, to April 1881, when Park Street made the letter from Guildford Hall the reason for judging the Ramsgate case. Let us forget if we can the strong bias in favour of the Guildford Hall leader and his company, who had fallen into the ditch through zeal for their Declaration, and stuck to it as of God when Park Street itself was compelled to give it up. Let us ignore even the private encouragement given by chiefs of the Park Street party to Guildford Hall in beginning for the third time that phase of the meeting which it was their known resolve to accredit as God's assembly in Ramsgate to the rejection of Abbot's Hill, and so get rid of all who could not accede to such harsh and partial measures. Let us assume that the Park Street meeting had neither prejudice nor prepossession, was without will or plan, without heat or underhand ways, but all simple and loving, righteous and holy, as suits the Lord's presence. Let us conceive adequate testimony heard and weighed without effort to sway the saints, and the total absence of influence or threat first or last from high quarters.

Supposing then all otherwise to be unimpeachable both before the meetings and during them, there stands before all the solemn fact of independency reappearing once more, and if possible more widely, deeply, and unanswerably. For Park Street took up the Ramsgate question after another local meeting (Hornsey Rise) had gone into the matter and presumed to have the Lord's mind on one half at least (Abbot's Hill), though (strange to say) they did not broach the other half (Guildford Hall) for more than a month after.

What then can be thought of any one not only saying but printing, or allowing others to print, for the guidance of souls, that "it was forced upon them (Park Street), and they were obliged to go into it?" What is the meaning of London brethren circulating the statement that "the same thing might have happened at any other meeting in London or elsewhere, and we should have accepted their decision"? One may account perhaps for such words on the score of ignorance of the facts and the rash supposition of what was just the reverse; but what of those living in town or visiting (as many then did) to become conversant with what was going on, who know that all this is unfounded? They must be aware that our brother wrote under a delusion as to it all; and yet they allow positively false impressions to spread at home and abroad, without any effectual appeal to disabuse the writer's mind. Are Christian men fallen so low as to say not a word because such statements have been or may be useful in gaining the unwary? There are hundreds of his associates who must know that Hornsey Rise in part had judged the matter, as already explained. The statement evidently presents what ought to have been, not at all the fact as it was. If the case had been sound, vain repetition could not have ensued. When a matter is known to be judged as before God, no one thinks of reopening it. Bexley Heath, etc. were notoriously enthusiastic partisans of Guildford Hall. Nobody but enthusiasts heeded their judgment. What a sign of the state of the assembly then! Not even Hornsey Rise could be satisfied, else they would have "accepted their decision," instead of beginning judgment as they did and formally disowning Abbot's Hill. This again did not satisfy; and therefore up rose Park Street which discussed Abbot's Hill on April 21st and 28th, and Guildford Hall on May 3rd, deciding to refuse the one and receive the other.

But the extraordinary fact remains that not only did fruitless independent action mark the meeting in town or country that preceded the intervention of Park Street, but when Park Street did take it up, the same leaven of independency fatally betrayed its presence; for it was expressly given out that Park Street only acted for itself, and when its notice was with difficulty entered on the paper, it was said to be only binding on themselves, with information of this given to others! a thing absolutely unprecedented in our doings and sayings, again letting out the sad reality of independency. Now this was a subversion of the united action of God's assembly. There was no proposal to the saints all over London, still less any acceptance by them when it becomes truly the judgment of the assembly in London. It was Park Street only acting for itself, and getting it on the paper solely as notifying that fact to the rest after it was done! Unity of action was no longer the rule.

The saints in London who espoused Guildford Hall were thus betaking themselves pro hac vice to independent devices. It was the sin of Park Street in 1879 reproducing itself more desperately, yea, irremediably for the present, in 1881. An independent act had been cleverly, but without real conscience work, got rid of in 1879; it reappeared with portentous virus in 1881, and it never ceased its activity till the poison was diffused through all the meetings of that party in London. Think of thankfully accepting such a judgment as of God!

For so imaginatively incorrect is the picture, that not one local meeting throughout London simply accepted the Park Street decision. They each separately judged the matter, "resolving themselves into fragmentary independent meetings;" and each sent a separate decision in a way wholly unexampled to Cheapside for the notice paper.* And so it has been in many assemblies throughout Great Britain and abroad. Independency supplanted unity save with brethren who could not follow Park Street in this open departure, adhering to the ground on which brethren have hitherto stood by grace. And none more zealously impressed on the country meetings the duty of a fresh and conscientious judgment for themselves than emissaries of Park Street or men who had attended the judicial meetings there (in direct antagonism to such as the writer of the Harrogate Letters, who fear to face the facts, paint the case as it should be, and call on the saints to do no more than "thankfully to accept the judgment of our Brethren gathered at Park Street)." Witness the shameful proceedings at Birmingham.

* North Row, 15th May; Notting Hill, 22nd do; Battersea, do; Hoxton, do.; Stoke Newington, 5th June; Old Kent Road, 19th, do.; Westbourne Park, 10th July; Poplar, 27th do.; Clapton, 14th Aug.; Goswell Road, 28th do. Parts of meetings need not be noticed.

Every brother, however who in this serious trial cleaves to the truth as we have learnt and practised it, knows that according to the word a decision has no claim on the acceptance of the saints till it can be truly and in godly order the judgment of the assembly in a city, and not only in one part of it. He who employs Matt. 18 to justify independent action not only mistakes the Lord's promise, but has already in heart abandoned the divine ground of God's church for a unity which is only invisible, as Protestants generally make it.

The conduct of Park Street and of its followers among the other local meetings in London is the more strange, as the resort to independent action, though so aggravated and general, was simply in order to do this one business. As unity had ever prevailed before, so to unity they immediately returned, after employing independency to effect a purpose which, it is to be supposed, they despaired of accomplishing otherwise. Now I reject this playing fast and loose with a divine principle as unworthy of men of God. Is it not a plain undeniable warning for simple souls, unacquainted either with the details of Ryde and Ramsgate, of Kennington and Park Street, or with the rank and wild growth of party and personal feeling, which was the true source of the mischief and had long been seeking a plausible pretext for division? And I cherish the conviction that the mass of the saints, carried away by fear, favour, influence, companionship, and a crowd of other motives, do in their hearts detest as well as deplore this division; which stands in the most marked contrast with the separation from Bethesda etc., instead of having any analogy, as some have wantonly said.

Ever yours affectionately in Christ,

To R. A. S.  W. K.

LETTER 6.

Dear Brother, — When we come to the means of carrying out unity in a place, we must not be surprised that Scripture, though it knows no other principle, leaves open the means which must necessarily apply with some difference of form where the circumstances differ. How little is said as to the mode of receiving souls! Yet is this confessedly a most important question, and sure to test the intelligence and heart of all who love the church of God, especially in the actual state of Christendom, and the sectarian habits of many saints. But notwithstanding endless variety in the circumstances, whether of individuals who present themselves, or of places large and small where meetings co-exist, there are landmarks of divine truth, which must be jealously maintained, if we would avoid the rocks of sectarianism or the shallows of independency.

In the case before us it is evident that the extremes of independency, clerical and radical, tight and lax, meet in the dislike of a central weekly meeting intended to promote the common action of the saints gathered to Christ's name, as in London. It is not only leading men who are restive if their views are challenged. Quite as impatient, or more so, are those who, conscious of feebleness, ever tend to strive after results by dint of private pressure and the combination which diligently excited prejudice forms. Thence they fear to submit their proposals to the conscientious hearing of other brethren, though these have just the same interests and responsibility as themselves. If we have no confidence save in our immediate circle, the bond is already broken. No wise or faithful soul can trust those who only trust themselves.

Without grace it is impossible that this meeting or any other could flourish. When brethren are in a good state, it will be, as it has been, a great blessing; if they fall into the manoeuvres or violence of party, it cannot but suffer greatly, but proportionately no more than any other meeting. If there be not love actively working and guided by the word of the. Lord, the local proposals are sure to be faulty, perhaps worse; if brothers from the other meetings do not feel and act in the like subjection of grace, their suggestions can be of little worth, and may be mischievous. In both local and central meetings there are snares through unwatchfulness and other causes; as each if led of the Lord would contribute what the other might not so readily do to happy results. It is of all moment on the one hand that the exact knowledge of facts and persons which the local meetings should possess be fully appreciated; as on the other hand, if God has cast our lot where there are other meetings immediately concerned, the brethren are not to be envied who would forego the advantage of mature and close scrutiny that the decision be to the Lord's glory and the godly satisfaction of all who are called of Him to share it. He stands by His own order and is faithful to His promise. Were there but "two or three" in a place gathered to His name, they would in the sense of weakness wait the more on Him: but none the less would they count on His guidance and His full sanction. If they were two or three thousand, they would as truly need Him; but they would not slight His will that all saints in the city gathered to His name, whether in one or in twenty places, should carry out that will in unity according to His word. In order to do this not as a dead form but livingly, as all that concerns God's assembly is bound to be, suitable and sufficient means of knowing circumstances beforehand is requisite that they may act together, not in the dark but with holy intelligence.

A central weekly meeting is the only means as yet pointed out which ever commended itself widely to those who labour in the word and doctrine, or more generally to those who seek the edification and order of God's church. Other schemes have been proposed which seldom obtained credit beyond the originator or at most a knot of his friends. They fail, when examined, because more than one would involve sacrifice of divine principle, reducing common action from a reality to show if not worse; or else it would introduce a machinery even slower, more cumbrous, and less satisfactory, than that which, whatever the defects, has well served the interests of Christ and His saints for so many years.

There is no need to say more of the openly independent way, which denies simultaneous action in a place where several meetings co-exist. Brethren in general are most decided against this ecclesiastical error. In ecclesiastical action to ignore other saints in the place, alike gathered to Christ's name, is to sin against the Lord and His word in foundation principles. Think of the apostle's indignation, if the church at Nymphas' had alone acted without securing the joint act of the assembly of Laodiceans! To obey the word of the Lord it was for the assembly in Corinth, and not merely for some of the saints in a particular quarter of the city, to put away from among themselves the wicked person. Only to notify the facts afterwards gives up the practical unity of the saints in a place, and is quite consistent with the most rigid independency, especially if care were taken to make it known without the city as well as within. Nobody objects to notification outside if the reality and scriptural breadth of common action be maintained. But such a making known is mere information and apart from the question.

It has been suggested, however, to send all names proposed for reception or exclusion to the weekly central meeting, without bringing them before the gathered saints at the several meetings in the same city. But this, if a reality, would make the church unchurch itself, and invest the brothers' meeting with the authority which belongs only to the assembly having the Lord in the midst; and what could be more objectionable? It would thus supersede the church to constitute a clergy in the most dominant sense, if the brothers who met there, however wise or gracious, decided who should be received and who should be excluded. If they merely accepted without question the local proposals, where would be the value of such a meeting? For all in this case is really done independently; and there is not even the empty parade of notification to the saints at large, for it is to save this that the central announcement weekly to a few brothers is, supposed to take place. It is hard to conceive a plan more destructive of scriptural truth, whilst theoretically owing the unity of the saints in a city, and the advisability of a central meeting every week. We may dismiss this as (like its predecessor) a giving up of the duty of the gathered saints in a city to act in unity, but (unlike it) erecting a novel ecclesiastical tribunal, which if real would be a nuisance, and if unreal a nullity.

But next those who admit practical unity seek to meet or mitigate some objectors to the central meeting, by placing all the local meetings in direct communication, and acting in one without the intermediate meeting. How would this compromise work? Either as a show of unity without power, if there were no means of intermediate enquiry (and this it is the very design to extinguish); or if conscience were aroused by any self-evident irregularity, a dead-lock would be put on common action till a correspondence with the meeting that proposed the questionable course led to some satisfactory conclusion. The other meetings meanwhile would be kept in painful suspense, till they knew that the proposal was either quashed or corrected, if not carried out in its primitive integrity. In all probability, too, what excited doubts in one meeting might awaken anxieties in others; and so there might arise several distinct lines of objection leading to correspondence, to the great trial of the assembly proposing the action. The general tendency would be to foreclose questions and induce acceptance of dubious measures, to the very possible dishonour of the Lord and lowering of spiritual judgment all round, because of dislike to give trouble or of unwillingness to appear officious.

And why all this tedious, vexatious, and unsatisfactory beating about the bush? It is not only within the means but the only well-proved practice of brethren, for competent men from the various meetings in a place to meet matters face to face. There a fuller explanation makes evident in general the right or the wrong of the proposal. If wrong either in the substance or in the form, how happy for the local meeting to have not an alteration by authority, but a suggestion for revisal! For, if wrongly decided, a matter becomes dangerous, as it is a sin and shame. Defects are always possible. If mere clerk brothers come, or (lower than this) messenger youths to bring a notice and fetch the paper, whose fault is this? Of course one earnestly desires the wisest brothers, one at least or more, from the respective meetings (without hindering any); so as not only to state circumstances when a question arises, but to give grave and holy counsel according to scripture, and thus to promote the fellowship and godly common walk of the saints. Full blessing in any respect can only be where faith works by love; and in this central meeting wisdom and devotedness and humility are deeply called for.

It is quite a mistake that the central meeting necessitates any delay in reception or anything else. Thus, in places where there is but one meeting, it is usual to bring the name of one seeking fellowship before the brothers, whether at the close of the usual prayer-meeting or at a meeting appropriated to such matters, with adequate testimony of those who have visited the person. If no objection lie, the person is proposed on the following Lord's day and received on the next. The central meeting does not interpose one moment's delay; for it intervenes on the Friday or Saturday evening before the proposal to communicate the case to all the saints gathered to the Lord in the place, if there be ever so many meetings. If delay occur, it is (as the rule) in the particular meeting whence the proposal emanates, rarely if ever from others without the strongest reason which no upright conscience could despise, and therefore carrying general conviction as imperative.

Further, still less does the central meeting even seem to hinder the full and happy liberty of the saints at any particular meeting in according fellowship to such as desire to break bread if thoroughly commended as sound and godly, who may have no intention at the moment of severing their ties with their old associations (one does not speak of those that are heterodox). Such cases do not properly come within the range of the weekly meeting, which simply, as far as this is concerned, takes cognisance of those proposed for reception, and in no way interferes with such as may break bread passingly; a privilege which brethren cannot deny without gainsaying their practice from the first and really changing divine principle. Nothing more clearly indicated beforehand the division now come than the unworthy evasion of duty in this respect, which was growing up for years, chiefly of course among those who compose the new party, but, one grieves to add, not confined to them. It was either narrowness of heart or unbelief, wherever it was found, and, I am thankful to say, to none more odious uniformly than to the late J. N. D., whatever may be the thoughts or ways of those who profess to follow him.

Although familiar with the London Saturday evening meeting for many years, I never saw the least sound reason to question its propriety and value. Mistakes not a few naturally occurred in its course; and just corrections also followed as to composition, character, and working. Even in its least happy condition no local meeting ever repudiated it; and never was it in a more satisfactory and harmonious state than just before the recent party movement which was wholly independent of it, though availing itself of all it could for its own ends, after the vain effort of Park Street against it. For years previously it never forgot its due relation to the assembly, usurping no function beyond its own and acting alike salutarily and without assumption, in aid both of the local meetings and of the saints as a whole, to glorify the Lord in unity, where so many occasions arise to perplex or dislocate, especially in an area of Christians so vast as that of London.

But even then jealousy, which in this division exceeded cruel wrath and outrageous anger, regarded with green eyes the desire to turn the weekly meeting to the best account. Local self-importance was wounded at finding that the brethren from all other parts of London wished (not through suspicion but in love and fellowship) to know every case for reception or exclusion as truly as if arising in their own particular meeting. Thus unity of action became full of interest and vitality. Such as loved not unity but independency resented anything but a bare acceptance of names or notices. Hence they sought to ridicule any approach to a real acquaintance with each common matter, as if it were "a Methodist class for relating experience;" and they vented their dislike more undisguisedly and fatally on the willing ears of an honoured man abroad, that "certain people were having it all their own way at London bridge." The sound or suspicion of such a thing was intolerable; and confirmatory gossip soon prepared the way for the final effort. But the Saturday evening meeting resisted it, and would have done so longer, but itself got swamped by reinforcements, not only from the firebrands of the town rarely seen there before, but from the heated partisans of the country, in support of an independent and divisive course, due much more after all to the local meetings than to the central meeting even at its worst.

No argument then seems weaker, or less worthy of believers, than laying such a catastrophe at the door of the Saturday evening meeting. Given all manner of destructive forces, with a match for the train, and the explosion is sure. The fact is that the local meetings were far more defenceless and sent the inflammable material into the central one, and thus made the rupture inevitable. The Saturday evening meeting stayed the mischief for a long while, instead of precipitating it. And if there should arise anywhere such spirits at work with a similar end, and animated with a like will, division must ensue, with or without a central weekly meeting. An extraordinary crisis is no safe criterion: how did the meeting work habitually? I am satisfied that, for the ordinary walk of the saints with several meetings in a city, a central meeting, if duly supported from all parts, is of exceeding value for the godly solution of difficulties, with the least loss of time and the most effectual check on personal prejudice or local bias. If any can suggest a real correction on our past method truly and lovingly carried out, it will be welcome to none so much as those who feel that God guided in that meeting, and that the lack of it leaves a blank of great and real danger. Those who claim to go forward on the same divine ground as before can least afford to allow of change, natural as it is in a sect; and those who love and reverence the elder brethren who anticipated them in the path of Christ should beware of seeming even to their adversaries like a young and adventurous group of mariners at this time of day starting in quest of discoveries. By the grace of God I am one of those who dare not either retrograde or innovate, but would persevere, till Christ come, on the lines which I believe grace gave us to occupy for so many years, to the comfort and edification, the blessing and order, of the saints. — Ever yours affectionately in Christ,

To R. A. S.  W. K.

LETTER 7.

Dear Brother, — Having now stated the principle (1), met the objections professedly based on Scripture (2), disposed of the theory of more local unity (3), shown that the ruin-state in no way affects our duty (4), applied it to recent proceedings in proof of its vital importance (5), and examined every way one has heard suggested to carry out the principle, different from that which we have uniformly followed since the co-existence of several meetings in one place (6), I must now conclude with a few words of appeal to the conscience of brethren who object without giving a single ground of objection, solid or not. This is easy; is it wise, comely, or gracious?

Singular to say, these objectors are found among the nominal supporters of the Park Street test, which has laid the new ground of fellowship (however much some may seek to disguise or even deny it) for that confederacy. They cannot wholly agree with a central meeting: to their mind it savours of -ism. The principle of unity is divine; its consequent maintenance by a central meeting of brethren is another thing, and goes beyond Scripture. Such are their thoughts, and they are no more than thoughts. For what can be less true or even plausible than that a central meeting savours of -ism? In fact, all tradition in "the camp" stands opposed; and no christians wish for it, save those who believe in "one body and one Spirit." It is well to own that unity is a divine principle;. it is better still to carry it out faithfully; and how is unity to be made good in practice, where there are several meetings in a place, without a central means to help it? Why do our objecting brethren preserve so obstinate a silence on this head? If they had the least light, surely love would lead them to impart it. With Acts 21: 18 before me, I dare not say that a central meeting goes beyond Scripture. It looks like this at James's.

But the fact, which strikes a simple mind forcibly, they cannot deny: they are themselves at this moment sanctioning a central meeting of their own — the very one whose ways have brought discredit on the institution! Now if their company had accepted the Park Street Declaration, Cheapside clause and all, if they were really rejecting such a central meeting in London, Bristol, Edinburgh, or any other place where they had always carried it out before, we might give credit for present consistency, though lamenting their error, and believing it to be an unquestionable symptom of unsuspected independency, which with logical minds must work to "loose brethrenism," or the religious world. No upright person can in peace continue, saying one thing and doing another. What we practise has a graver character than what we merely profess in words and practically deny. It is an evident and habitual compromise, which tends to sap ecclesiastical honesty, as dishonourable to the Lord as degrading to ourselves and our brethren, from whom we really differ while publicly appearing to agree on so important a matter. For it is surely all over with us and the Lord's glory if we fail, not merely in spiritual apprehension and unworldly devotedness to Him and His own, but even in sincerity and truth, with which unleavened bread alone it is our bounden duty to keep the feast.

Yet I understand that abroad this unbelief prevails still more widely than at home, and that not a few brethren in France, Switzerland, Germany, etc., would thus evade the force of what has been in these pages and elsewhere pressed on their conscience. For they avow that they do not believe in the united action of the gathered saints in a city, and they consequently seek on this plea to justify the Park Street independent decision as a true assembly judgment!

It is hard to conceive that any accepted as guides, rulers or "chief men among the brethren" could be either so far behind in the truth, or so extraordinarily dull, as not to feel the self-condemnatory falseness of such a position. I do not speak of their presumption in thus openly contradicting the well-known convictions of those they always seemed to venerate when in the full and free and happy exercise of their spiritual judgment through a long life. Of whom is the judgment, if grounds be withheld, most entitled to respect? Of such as G. V. W., etc., who heartily and as before God stood by this meeting? or of those who in a crisis take up a dislike to it, and yet go on with it all the same? For its action is of course felt by and weighs with their adherents throughout the world.

But they too should learn, if they do not know, that the new confederacy which they espouse never now (any more than before the recent proceedings, even in the most ordinary question that concerns the saints) thinks of arrogating to Park Street, or to any other local meeting in London, the right of an assembly decision apart from all the other saints gathered to Christ's name in this place. They still maintain as before (and, as I believe, so far, rightly) the obligation that all the gathered saints throughout the metropolis should act together, in order to judge with the authority of the Lord and His word: a unity impossible without the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and only possible now for such saints as, gathered to Christ's name, believe in His presence and look for His free action by the word in the assembly. Matt 18: 20 does not treat of this unity, nor consequently in the least degree give it up; but it provides the great resource of grace for a day of ruin, certainly not an excuse for disorder nor for setting aside other scriptures equally needful in their season.

Either then, as I believe, the recent proceedings were a plain and flagrant departure from the divine principle of unity to bring about the wished-for division; or, as these brethren believe, the common action in unity by means of the central meeting (which always ruled before the Park Street innovation, and which has ruled since as it does now) is a mere tradition of man; and therefore not only devoid of claim as of God on any conscience, but to be eschewed as a sin against the word and Spirit of God. Why then, as honest men, persevere in what they do not believe? Yet, by this arrangement, merely human in their eyes, all in London etc. is regulated, which concerns the weightiest interests of Christ's name, among those whom they regard as guided by the Holy Ghost on the ground of the one body of Christ! Where is their faith or fidelity?

From either point of view their ground is indefensible; but of the two the lowest morally is the latter. For what can be less worthy of respect than the idea that brethren in London were never ecclesiastically right save during the two short fits of independency we have noticed already? First, in 1879, those in Park Street issued the strange circular called the Declaration soon afterwards dropped on the plea that Kennington had acted. Secondly, and still worse in 1881, they took up the Ramsgate case to decide for themselves apart from all others in London, who as the general rule followed in due course, each meeting separately concluding on this matter! Thus it went forth, to be accepted on the responsibility of Park Street, or to be independently judged, as the local authorities might prefer, all over the world!

The general character reported of the Park Street meetings, because many attended there from the rest of London as well as from the country, is utterly if not intentionally misleading, and chiefly due to female correspondence or to itinerant advocates of the party. They were expressly for Park Street alone, to decide for themselves, whoever might be present. Park Street accordingly cannot claim the force or name of an assembly judgment, unless brethren give up unity and sink into congregationalism. The whole affair was a disastrous blunder, fraught with bitter and humbling results; which none but "men speaking perverse things" would wish to be permanent, in order to draw away the disciples after them.

For my part I believe that brethren in London as elsewhere were guided by God during the past in maintaining unity as they have ever done, not as a lifeless theory but as a living practice, and by means of a central meeting where several co-existing meetings recognised it. And were this abandoned deliberately for independent meetings in the same place, I should feel as deliberately bound to abandon those who must be regarded by me as distinctly unfaithful to their trust, and no longer in heart gathered to Christ's name in unity; a mere aggregate of christian societies, and no more saints assembled on the ground of God's church in the place. To this by grace I adhere, assured that this alone is according to the word of God, and that the Holy Spirit is here to give it efficacy for Christ's glory in a true sphere, however circumscribed through the unbelief of Christendom and, not least of all, our own fault. But sense of failure is only the more urgent a call for all who fear God to cleave to Christ and the truth in dependence on His grace.

Ever yours affectionately in Him,

To R. A. S.  W. K.

W. Walters. Printer & Publisher, 26, Islington Row, Birmingham.

The Church of God,

Lectures on.

W. Kelly.

SYNOPSIS.

LECTURE 1. ONE BODY.

Difference of God's dealings with His people in the past and present dispensations, 1; Adam, 2; Abraham, 3; Israel as a nation, 5; death and resurrection of Christ introduce a new thing, 6; the body composed of Jew and Gentile, 7; the cross, showing the complete ruin of man removes the barrier to God's free action, 8; God's thoughts set upon the glory of His Son, 9; first shadow of the Church's union with Christ precedes the entrance of sin, 10; Eph. 1 is then adduced to show that God develops His counsels of grace before mentioning man's sin, 11; the cross not merely meets the desperate need of man, but unites in one body Jew and Gentile, 12; a new man thus created, 13; a habitation in which God could dwell, 14; Christ, God's true temple while on earth, 15; the truth of the one body claims the attention of all Christians, 17; human and divine relationships, 18; Satan's grand object to hinder the present operation of God in the saints, 19; and succeeds at man's weak point in that men likes to be something, 20; and so easily falls a prey to the working of the enemy, 21; the glory of Christ's Person as maintained by the Holy Ghost, the mainspring of the life and conversation of a Christian man, 22; difficulties met with in reasoning about the Church on old Testament analogy, 22; Christ Head of His body in resurrection, 23; consequently the body is heavenly as is the Head, 24; "Christian" means more than "Saint," 25; bearing of the Gospels and Epistles on the one body, 26; servants and children, 27; a Jew could never have put the Old and New Testaments together, 28; the cross the foundation of a new revelation, 29; What is the unity of the Spirit? 30; Christians act on this unity only when gathered to the name of Christ, 31; God's grace in reviving this truth in view of the Lord's speedy coming, 32; exhortation to younger brethren and sisters, 33; the word of God the only standard, 34; "the world," and "within and without," 35; my place as a Christian, 36; separation, 37; conclusion.

LECTURE 2. ONE SPIRIT.

Personality of the Holy Ghost, 39; work of the Holy Ghost in former dispensations, 40; Jewish and Gentile view of Christ, 41; disappointment of Jewish hopes, 42; Holy Ghost sent down from heaven is, next to Christ, the central truth of the New Testament, 43; disciples prepared for the doctrine of the Spirit, 44; Holy Ghost not merely a power, but a Person, 45; why He cannot be known by the world, 46; the Holy Ghost sent by the Father in Christ's name, and sent by Christ from the Father, 47; God glorified in exalting the Man Christ Jesus, 49; the righteousness of God, 50; Peter's boldness by reason of a purged conscience, 51; in the Trinity, subordination of Persons unscriptural, 52; the double relation of the Holy Ghost — to the world and to the saints, 53; communication of risen life by the Holy Ghost, 54; Holy Ghost on earth in the absence of Christ, 55; miraculous tokens of the Spirit's presence at the outset, 56; grieving the Spirit, 57; the testimony of the Acts to the working of the Holy Ghost, 58; the teaching of the Epistles as to His presence both in the individual and in the Church, 59; the opening of 1st Corinthians shows the perpetuity of the Holy Ghost's action in the Church so long as it is here below, 60; reason for the discontinuance of miracles, 62; God's wisdom in withholding them now, 63; the Spirit the pledge of God's delight in the work of His Son, 64; Christ's twofold reception of the Holy Ghost, 64; practical importance of these truths, 65; how the Holy Ghost works in the assembly, 66; duty of a Christian to be where the Holy Ghost is owned, 67; why the Church is so weak, 68; owning the Holy Ghost does not hinder individual ministry, 69; true reason of meeting is to please the Lord Jesus, 70; charge of bigotry weighed, 71; why ask people to come with me, while I do not go with them? 72; note on remarks in a recent periodical that "different denominations are no hurt but a great blessing to the Church of God," 73; search the word of God for yourself, 74; conclusion.

LECTURE 3. THE ASSEMBLY AND MINISTRY.

Assembly and ministry alike flow both from the accomplished work of Christ, 75; "Assembly" rather than "Church," 76; the Rock upon which it is built, 77; Christ the Son of the living God, 78; building of the assembly future in Matt. 16: 79; the baptism of the Spirit, 80; no Church till the Holy Ghost was sent down to give unity, 81; consideration of the term "invisible Church," 82; no Church till the death of Christ, 82; the congregation of Jehovah, 83; position of "such as should be saved," 84; critical remarks upon Acts 9: 31, 85; authority for the same, 86; the case of the trespassing brother, 87; grace in action instead of law, 88; a mistake often made about what love is, 90; the ordering of the assembly by the Holy Ghost, 91; tests — not as to who are Christians, but what is of the Holy Ghost, 91; two things maintained by the Holy Ghost — the glory of Christ as to His Person, and the Lordship of Christ as to His place, 93; assembly not dependent upon age or country, 93; the infant Church at Corinth, 94; their new-born exuberance, 95; how to use a gift, 96; the meaning of the term "prophesying," 98; all to be done to edifying, 98; unknown tongues, 99; a revelation not possible now, 100; the canon of Scripture closed, 100; the presence of the Holy Ghost in the assembly, 101; a member of the Church of God a member everywhere, 103; difference between a Church and the Church, 103; letters of commendation, 104; our duty not to form a new church, but to cleave to the old, 106; Jesus in the midst, 106; where were you last Lord's Day? 108; how God can bless even Roman Catholics, 108; what the faithful are to do who meet on God's principles, 110; unintelligence of those who have never felt the cost of separation from the ruin around, 110; duty of a Christian in the event of an assembly departing from the word of God, 112; action to be taken slowly, and with much waiting on the Lord, 112; Ministry, 114; the Lord calls, sends, and controls, not the assembly, 114; preachers sent by men an usurpation of the Lord's prerogative, 116; the case of Philip, 116; Paul and Apollos, 117; difference of judgment recorded without censure, 118; case of Barnabas and Saul, 119; co-operation in ministry allowed so long as there is no bondage, 121; subjection to chief men, 121; review of the two lines of truth sketched, 121; note on "the ecclesiastical polity of the Church," 122; fluctuation in the Church, none in Christ, 123; conclusion.

LECTURE 4. WORSHIP, BREAKING OF BREAD, AND PRAYER.

What is worship? 124; state of soul needed for worship, 125; sin and shame of man's interference with the worship of God, 125, our privilege to say "We know," 126; man, unless born of God, incapable of worshipping Him, 128; the great principle of worship shown in the word to the Samaritan woman, 129; under the law God hid Himself, 130; under grace He revealed Himself, 131; three things necessary to worship, 132; where ought men to worship? 132; God's title of Father not made known to Israel, 134; God the Father in quest of worshippers, 135; the Jewish lamp replaced by the brightness of the Father's glory, 135; do not forget that our Father is also our God, 137; what am I to do if asked to join in worship? 138; fleshly worship suits a fleshly state, 138; what happens when Christian worship is unknown or forgotten? 140; preaching the gospel not to be confounded with worship, 140; worship founded on Christ (dead, risen, and ascended), and carried on by the power of the Holy Ghost, 141; position of the unbelievers present where the assembly is gathered, 143; who can sing, and say Amen? 144; how many may take active part in the assembly? 145; on giving out hymns, 146; criticism, 147; breaking of break, 148; the Lord's Supper, 149; characteristics of the first day of the week, 150; prime object of the Supper is to remember the Lord's death, 151; when should the bread be broken? 151; strangeness of procedure to those habituated to rigid forms, 152; thoughts sometimes expressed by those who have broken bread, 153; what happened among the Corinthians through not duly apprehending the character of the Lord's Supper, 154; the practice of appointing particular officials considered, 154; the character of the Supper impugned if any official be appointed by man to administer it, 156; the Supper leaves no room for human display 157; what is the meaning of 1 Cor. 11: 29? 158; the Lord's Supper a sweet privilege as well as a solemn duty for all His own, 159; Prayer — Scripture does not speak of a "gift of prayer," 160; the apostle lays down as a rule, that the men pray everywhere, 161; conclusion.

LECTURE 5. GIFTS AND LOCAL CHARGES

Dryness of subject unless connection seen with Christ, 162; gifts are for the glory of Christ, not the aggrandisement of men, 163; indifference to this a deep dishonour done to Him, 164; "gifts of the Lord," not "gifts of the Spirit," 164; gifts consequent upon the ascension of Christ, 166; contraband ministry, 167; "He descended first," 167; "He ascended that He might fill all things," 169; the world can admire Christ and Christianity if altered to suit the age's taste, 169; Christ, only as risen, the Church's Head 171; gifts in Ephesians and Corinthians compared, 172; gifts in Corinthians became a snare, those in Ephesians are for perfecting 173; "apostles and prophets," 174; not prophets and apostles 175; character of ministry in the Church quite distinct from that which obtained while the Lord was on earth, 175; the mission of the twelve to Israel, 176; earthly glory of Messiah fades for the time to let in heavenly glory, 177; Who laid hands on the apostles 179; Saul's call when going, not to, but from Jerusalem, 180; Paul a sample of one whom the Lord calls to be a minister, 181; how God has made the great apostle the witness of non-succession, 182; the service of tables, 183; as far as the New Testament speaks, no one was ever ordained by man to preach the gospel, 183; Acts 13, 184; Archbishop Potter on Church Government, 185; the separation of Barnabas and Saul by the Holy Ghost for special work, 187; if Paul and Barnabas were ordained in the current sense, then the lesser ordained the greater, 188; what this laying on of hands signified, 189; the silence of Scripture respecting the laying of hands on presbyters, 190; the absolute necessity of having a real commission from the Lord, in order to appoint to office, 191; Christendom while fighting for its own order has missed God's, 192; qualifications for eldership, 193; an unruly house a disqualification for eldership, 193; the word of God nowhere hints at the continuance of an ordaining power, 195; the case of Titus, 196; man's ordination puts one off the ground of faith in, and deference to, the word of God, 197; foolishness of making a bad imitation of what was written exclusively to Timothy or Titus, 198; elders never mentioned as giving gifts, 199; deprecation of the thought that the Holy Ghost can be conveyed by ordination, 200; how to judge of the possession of a gift, 201; gifts to be proved by their power, according to the word of God, 202; gifts, sooner or later, sure to be recognised, 203; difficulties of one who has used a gift for a livelihood, 204; dissent is religious radicalism, 205; the value of the word of God for guidance as to ministry and Church office, 206; persons having qualification for eldership may still be found, 207; but no power to ordain them as such, 208; Scripture has provided for this defective condition of the Church, 209; exhortation to esteem those who labour, 210; elders not mentioned in the Corinthian and Thessalonian assemblies, 211; but those who possessed spiritual power in guiding and directing, found in both, 212; no new invention needed to meet the difficulties of the day, 213; fulness of blessing in Christ for the Church now as in Pentecostal times, 214; plenty of room in an assembly for numerous gifts, 215; gifts always sure, because Christ is the Head and source of supply, 216; conclusion. Note on Acts 14: 23, 216.

LECTURE 6. THE RESOURCE OF THE FAITHFUL IN THE RUINS OF CHRISTENDOM

Solemnity of the subject, 224; Christ's words of light require no tapers of man to make them more distinct, 225; dishonour to the name of Jesus in Christendom, 226; difference between owning the ruin and endeavouring to reinstate the Church, 227; the Church of God the greatest work, next to the cross, that God has ever wrought on the earth, 228; to slight it is worse than any evil of former days, 229; the days of Noah followed by the flood, and the days of Lot followed by the destruction of Sodom, types of the day when the Son of Man shall be revealed, 230; Christendom's danger seen in Rom. 11, 231; its non-continuance in God's goodness, 232; its excision, 233; its apostasy apparent from the first, 234; the man of sin, and the Man of righteousness, 235; Antichrist, 236; Cain, Balaam, Core, 237; he who defends Christendom, gives the Lord the lie, 238; deprecation of the apology, that the Lord will set all right, 239; unsparing judgment His action when He comes, 239; the Lord's provision for the faithful in the dark day, 240; the Lord's own weight of authority attached to "two or three" gathered to His name, 242; no wonder men shrink from Church discipline, seeing how it has been abused, 243; the duty of a believer, to renounce every tie not connected with Christ, 244; which is best, your rules or God's word? 245; how is it that the doctrines of men have taken the place of the word of God? 246; electing a minister, wholly at variance with Scripture, 247; evils resulting from the dissenting and parochial systems, 247; advice to saints taking their place with the "two or three," 249; how to detect and exclude what is not of God, 250; the great house, and who to separate from, 251; "He that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey," 251; "The Christian world," or evil with the name of Christ attached to it, 252; trusting the Lord for eternal life, and denying Him for a bit of bread, 254; what to flee and what to follow (2 Tim. 2), 255; Christ addresses Himself to hearts, grieved at the dishonour done to His grace and truth, 256; illustration of a rightly and wrongly constituted assembly, 257; Christ the centre and rallying point, 258; no ground for fear, if the Lord be the helper, 258; conclusion.

THE CHURCH OF GOD.

Lecture 1.

"ONE BODY."

Eph. 4.

The subject on which, with the Lord's help, I propose to enter tonight is the one body, the body of Christ; and this too not only as a great doctrine which the Holy Ghost has laid down with the utmost clearness, and throughout a considerable part of the New Testament, but also, as far as I am able in a short space, deducing some of its practical consequences, and showing its bearing upon the communion and the conduct of every member of it, that is, of every Christian.

But in order to develop the special characteristics of Christ's body, it will be necessary to explain how it differed from that which God revealed or set up in past dispensations; for there are distinctions, and even contrasts, between the past dealings of God and that which He is now accomplishing to the honour of His beloved Son. While there was of course always the only true God: while He had in times past those He loved upon earth; while He ever wrought by His Spirit; while there was necessarily faith at work in order to the blessing of souls; yet for all that there are essential and deeply important differences, which none can overlook without loss to himself, without sure weakening of his testimony to others, and, above all, without coming short of the just perception of what God Himself has nearest to His own heart — His own glory in Christ.

Now it is perfectly plain, if we take up the Old Testament, that when man fell into sin God gave certain revelations of blessing, all of which find their centre in the Lord Jesus. We see this from the very beginning of Genesis. When sin entered, not only righteous government but grace instantly followed. God was there; and in the presence of the guilty pair, and in defiance of the serpent, the mercy of God spoke of that same blessed One of whom we are about to hear further and deeper glories. In due time God brought out, in a distinct and personal manner, blessings in connection with Abraham and his seed. There we have the domain of promise — not only revelation of mercy, but distinct promise — to a given person and to his seed. This had not been the case in the garden of Eden. Man fell there; and it is evident that fallen man could not possibly be the object of the promise of God. There are promises for such: there could not be a promise to such. When Abraham received the promise, he was not a fallen man merely but a believing man. It was as one elect, called, and faithful, that God made him the depository of promise. But it was when Adam fell, before there was anything of the operation of divine grace in him; it was when he and Eve had completely separated themselves from God, that mercy, entirely irrespective of their condition or desert, held out a revelation of grace in the person of Christ. The woman's Seed was presented more particularly as the destroyer of him that had wrought this deep and, as far as it went, irreparable mischief — irreparable to the creature, but only furnishing the opportunity for God to bring out His own grace to the glory of Him who, bruised Himself, was to bruise the serpent's head.

The effect of the promise to Abraham was that a family was set apart unto God, and, in due time, a nation. Next, we find that, as this nation was full of confidence in its own powers, God was pleased, in the wisdom of His ways, to try them by the law, as we all know, given at Sinai. I need not enter into the details, but just state the general outline of the divine dealings for the purpose of clearing my subject. But the issue of that trial, however long God might delay, was not doubtful for a moment; for at the very mountain where God spoke, the children of Israel set at nought the authority and the glory of God, and bowed down to the work of their own hands: that is, the law, as a moral question between God and man, was overthrown from its very foundations at the outset. God lingered — long lingered — in patience, and meanwhile brought out His ways in every possible variety. The crowning experiment of all was the presence of Christ, the Seed of the woman, and the Seed of promise, too; for now came the person who answered to all the revelations and promises, the ways and types and prophecies of God. He came, in whose person was found all that was worthy of God, and that was suited to man. But the coming of Christ brought out the awful truth, not only that man is himself corrupt, depraved, and loves his own will, but that he hates goodness — yea, divine goodness — in a man. He is the enemy of God when manifesting Himself in the most blessed manner — in His own Son; when manifesting Himself, not only in power — for we can understand a guilty creature alarmed at holy power — but in perfect love, coming down in humiliation, putting Himself at the foot of man, beseeching man; for this is in truth not a figure or exaggeration of man's mind, but God's own word. Hear His description of it: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us," etc. His love beseeching sinners was the attitude of divine grace in the person of Christ. What was the result? That man proved there was no possibility of extricating himself by any means that God put at his disposal: that if it were a question of man's delivering himself, no matter what might be the mercy or the blessing, no matter how deep and full the grace displayed in a living person, man was too far gone — nay, so truly dead in sin, that, far from being won by God's love, he only took advantage of it, and when Jesus put Himself at the foot of man, he lifted up his heel and trod on Him, the Son of God. But if man thus, under Satan's malicious guidance, cast out and crucified Christ, God in the cross not only demonstrated His love (herein is love, indeed!) but wrought out redemption, a work suited even for those that crucified Jesus, capable of blotting out the foulest sin man was ever guilty of. God has triumphed where man did his worst against Him.

But this is not all. In the previous dealings of God, when He had given His law, God had separated the nation that was called out of Egypt — had marked them off in the most distinct and positive manner from all others. It was needful. Men might have complained that there had been no fair trial; the corrupt examples of others would naturally lead astray. God set Israel apart by their institutions, rites, ordinances, services, and His law; and by that law, and by those rites, He severed them from all others; so that it would have been sin against God for a Jew to have communion with a Gentile, no matter how godly and disposed to respect the law of God. No doubt there might be such a thing as being brought out of Gentilism, at any rate to a certain extent; but still, all through the system of God's dealings by His law with the Jewish people, there was the express and total severance of His people from all the nations. I do not speak of the abuse of it, working upon the corrupt heart of man against others — the pride of men's heart, who despised others because of their own divinely isolated position; but apart from the evil use that Israel made of their separation, faithfulness to God then required it, and His will was in the thing itself. God was proving before the whole world the painful and humbling truth, that let a nation have ever such mercies, ever such privileges, ever such wisdom directing their movements, outward and inward — nay, everything pertaining to them, the issue of all is increasing enmity against God Himself.

The death and resurrection of Christ introduced a new thing in every sense. Now, Christians admit this in general as to the work of Christ in its application to the need of the soul. There is no person of ever so little spiritual intelligence, who does not confess, with more or less clearness and thankfulness of heart, the all- importance of the cross of Christ for his need before God. There may be a scanty perception of the extent of the deliverance, an interrupted and feeble enjoyment of the perfect peace that has been made by the blood of Christ's cross; but there is no believer who does not in some measure hold it and enjoy it, and thank God for it.

But there is more than the sinner's need met in the cross; and I direct your attention to what the Holy Ghost gives us in Eph. 2, as showing the place of the cross in the ways of God — not merely in the salvation of the soul. At the 13th verse it is written, "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby." Now, it is evident from this scripture, that the cross is not only the basis of peace for the soul, but the foundation also on which rests the "one body" that God is now making of Jew and Gentile before Himself. And we see this most plainly if we only look back to our Lord's own presence on earth. He forbids His disciples going into the way of the Gentiles — forbids their entering any city of the Samaritans. Need it be said that it was from no lack of love? It was not that His heart did not yearn over the most reprobate of Samaritans; it was not that He did not appreciate the faith of a Gentile — He had not seen "such faith, no, not in Israel." Notwithstanding, they were to go only to the lost sheep of Israel, because to such only He was sent, and so were they too. Now, here we find at once that, while there was this perfectness of grace in Christ, the holy order of God was none the less fully maintained. Law claimed a state of things essentially different from what we have described in Eph. 2. There was a positive barrier even during His lifetime, the very thing being formally prohibited, which, after He died and rose, was not merely a duty, but the delight of love, the only adequate answer in the saints to that death and resurrection. (See Matt. 28: 19)

How comes this to pass? On what is so mighty a change founded? On the cross. It brings out the worthlessness of man, and most of all, the worthlessness of favoured, privileged, religious man — of man under God's law. For if man under that law failed, what other law could avail? The law of God was the wisest, the best, the most holy and just dealing that it was possible to bring to bear upon man's natural state. And here was the total failure of man; and God well knew it all from the first, for He took care that in the earliest book of Scripture, and all through, embedded in the very law itself, there should be plain words as well as shadows, showing that man would sin, and that only Christ, by His blood-shedding and His death could avail. The very first revelation of the garden of Eden is a witness of both. Faith had no other expectation. But nevertheless there was a full patient, long-suffering trial whether it was possible to get any good out of man, in the dealings of the only wise God with man. And now it was demonstrated in the cross that all was ruined in man, and that the highest advantages, short of God's saving grace, brought out the ruin most distinctly. Now there is room for grace to work; and, beloved friends, it is upon this that it is my joy to speak a little tonight.

We have come down the stream; we have seen what man was when it was a question of his working for God: we shall now look briefly at God when He puts forth His glorious power to work, not merely for man, but for His Son; for oh! we never get the full blessing until we see this great and glorious truth, that God has at heart His Son — that God is thinking, not merely of a blessing for you, for me, for any of those that love Him — yea, and in sovereign grace, for those who love Him not, if they repent and believe the gospel — but that He has His eye upon Him who did all and suffered all for His glory, and has bound up that glory of God with the fullest, richest, everlasting blessing of all who believe in His name. And now, then, as the fruit of the cross of Christ (where we have the weakness of God, where nevertheless we have the triumph of God — God Himself coming down lower and lower still in love, not merely, so to speak, beseeching man, but laying all the weight and burden of sin upon the Lord Jesus, thereby meeting the desperate need of sinners by His Son suffering for them,) what do we find? That in the cross He has given the death-blow to sin; He has "put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," as we are told. But besides, by it all the distinctions of Jew and Gentile pass away, and God brings out that to which He had always looked onward — that which was in His counsels not only from the foundation of the world, but before it, and which consequently He had shown before there was a question of law, and before there was a question of sin. For it is remarkable that the magnificent type, which the apostle applies in Ephesians 5 to the mystery of Christ and the church, was brought in before sin entered. (Gen. 2) In truth, it was a counsel that flowed out of what God was and is. It was God in His own love, even God working from what was in Himself. No doubt, the entrance of sin has given occasion for God to bring out His grace in blessed ways; but, for all that, we must ever remember that there were thoughts and counsels of grace in God Himself. There was that which He ever had in His own mind, for the revelation of which, no doubt sin might furnish the fit occasion. But sin was in no wise the suggestive spring any more than the measure. On the contrary, we see God indulging, so to speak, in the activity of His own perfect love; at any rate, we see Him thinking of, filled with, working for, His own Son. And I think it is of deep interest to observe the fact just referred to — the shadow of the church's union with Christ preceding the entrance of sin and the provisions of grace in view of sin.

And observe further, that as just seen in the type of Genesis, so it is in the epistle to the Ephesians. Where is it that you have the counsels of God traced out? Is it after man's sin has been portrayed in Ephesians 2? No; but in the earliest verses of Ephesians 1, where God gives the richest development of the counsels of His grace, entirely passing over and ignoring in the first instance all question of man's sin, shame, and need. This we have afterwards and in the profoundest way. There is perhaps no part of the word of God which shows us the depth of human evil more than Ephesians 2; but this is not at all the first thought. Hence we find in the first chapter, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." And then it is only just by the way that the apostle alludes to the fact of their sins, and in a single verse (the 7th), where we read, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." With the exception of that incidental notice of the fact of our needing redemption, the remission of sins, you would not know from the first chapter of the epistle that the saints of God, these blest ones, had a single evil, or a particle of sin connected with them. That is, it is God perfectly acting from Himself, in and for His own Son; delighting in Him, putting honour upon Him, giving Him what was suited to Him out of His own resources of love, and hence boundlessly to the saints, the body of Christ, as the end of chapter 1 describes them. It is thus that the Holy Ghost is pleased to introduce these astonishing counsels of grace.

Then, in the second chapter, we have man's state looked at most thoroughly. We see him weighed and found wanting as in no other part of Scripture. We have him here, not as an active being, alive in sin, but as all over with him, dead in sin — "dead in trespasses and sins." He is, therefore, hopelessly lost and utterly powerless in sins. The whole case is closed against him; and it is to this condition of manifest moral death and subjection to Satan, that the grace of God applies itself, in His quickening, raising, heavenly power in Christ Jesus.

But, again, we find that in the latter part of Ephesians 2 the cross of Christ is taken up, not merely in connection with God's counsels, as in chapter 1, nor even in view of their desperate need who are the objects of His counsels, as in the beginning of chapter 2, but in contrast to the previous ways of God upon the earth. He is addressing Gentiles. Was it not a suitable occasion for God to unfold to them the one new man, the mystery of Christ and the church, the body of Christ? They were hitherto ignored, evidently outside all that God had been doing of old. God had taken up a separated people and had tried them. The Gentiles were as non-existent, so to speak, before God. Not, of course, that the secret providence of God did not watch and work — not that the grace of God did not act as to individuals; but, regarded as Gentiles, they were outside. But now these are the very objects of heavenly grace; toward Gentiles the call goes out loud and large. Not that they alone were brought into the church, for it consists of Jews also; but it was Gentiles whom it seemed meet to God to bring into relief, in contrast to the condition in which they were once, so as to make more manifest the blessing which His grace now confers on both, in Christ the Lord. "Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one."

There we have another fact, not only that they are made nigh to God but both made one — Jew and Gentile that now believe made one body, as is explained more fully afterwards, the middle wall of partition broken down, the enmity abolished in His flesh, "even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man." It is not merely a new life, but Christ and the church form one new man, a condition of things that had never before existed — " one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh." Thus the Gentiles had been dispensationally afar off, the Jews were comparatively nigh; but now they were taken completely out of their old condition. It is not, you will observe, that the Gentiles who believed are raised up to the level of the privileges which the Jews used to possess, but that there is now "one new man," wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile. Both, consequently, quit their previous states for a new and most blessed position of oneness in Christ, which had never existed before save in the counsels of God.

Here then is the church, the body of Christ; this is what God is working out. He is not only saving souls, He is gathering; not only is He gathering into one, but He makes the believing Jew and Gentile, while they are on earth, though previously by His own command the most separate, now to be one new man in Christ, even His one body.

There is another truth connected with the church, revealed at the end of the chapter, which I merely notice by the way. Not only is there a body formed — one body in Christ, but there is a building upon earth, in which God dwells. Although it is not my business tonight to take up the subject of the dwelling or habitation of God, yet I cannot deny myself the joy of saying a few passing words on this wonderful place which God has given to His church.

And first of all it is to be noticed, in the Old Testament there was no such thing as a building or dwelling of God, until there was a type of redemption. No matter what might be His mercy or condescension to those He loved, He could not dwell with man until there was a basis of blood-shedding, by which He could righteously abide with him. Hence, all through the book of Genesis, for instance, God does not dwell with men; nay, He never speaks of it or promises it. But the moment the blood of the passover is shed, and you have Israel passing through the Red Sea — the combined types of redemption (one answering to the blood of Christ, the other to the death and resurrection of Christ, in which a complete redemption is set forth in figure) — immediately you hear of God having a habitation: God could now dwell in the midst of His people. It is not because the people were better: who could imagine that? Look at Israel at the Red Sea; what were they to be compared with Abraham or Isaac or even Jacob? Yet He who only visited the fathers can now dwell among the children, and put this word into their lips, "I will prepare him a habitation." How comes this? Ah, beloved friends, how little any of us estimate the mighty change and the wondrous effect of redemption? It is not a question of comparing men, or their faith, or their faithfulness. God's estimate of redemption is the point; and He shows that if there be only a type of redemption, He can come down typically, He can then dwell in the midst of His people. I admit this was only a preparatory thing. There was a visible token of it, suited of course to an earthly people; but still the great distinct fact is engraved on Israel's history, as the very centre of their blessing, that God Himself deigned then to dwell in their midst. (Ex. 15: 2, 13, 17; Ex. 29: 43-46.)

The same thing is found here far more blessedly for the church on earth. On earth — and mark, not before the cross but since — God is pleased to make His people to be His habitation. He came down in the person of Christ, but Christ abode alone as far as the dwelling-place of God was concerned. "Destroy this temple:" He was the only true temple. But when He died and rose, what then? Redemption was accomplished; and now God could descend holily, righteously, suitably to His own character, and could dwell in His people. It is not because the New Testament saints are more worthy in themselves than those of old. He that knows himself and redemption knows that such an idea is a fallacy and a falsehood; he knows that human nature is good for nothing as before God; he knows that, in His presence, there is no question of flesh, or what flesh can glory in, "but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." But this is not all; not only is there a Lord to glory in, but now we have actual redemption in Christ through His blood. How does God estimate the precious blood of His Son? What does He feel about those on whom that blood is put by faith — those who are washed in it? Does He not as it were say, "I can come now and take my place in their midst?" This is indeed one of the precious characteristics of the church. It especially is even now the habitation of God. In virtue of this it is that the church is called the "house of God," and His "temple," in different parts of Scripture. But I must not dwell longer on this, because my subject is "the body."

We find, then, in Eph. 4, that the Spirit of God presses this exhortation, "Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Next, He explains, "There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

Will it be imagined that this grand truth of the "one body" does not affect the judgment and conduct of the Christian as well as his affections? We have been brought, I will suppose, to the knowledge of Christ; we have found in Him the Son of God, the Saviour; we rest on Him as our peace before God; we call on Him as our Lord. But have I no relationship with others on earth? Am I left here simply and solitarily to look up to God? Have I to thread my way through the mazes of this world, only using the word of God with prayer? Let me ask, What are my relationships? Am I only a child of God with other children of His here and there? What am I to feel, as I look round upon those that name the excellent name — that call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, both mine and theirs?. The ONE BODY is the answer. God it is who forms it for the glory of Christ: it is united to Him. "We are members," as it is said, "of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." It is not for you, it is not for me, to define, even in our natural relationships, our brothers and our sisters. Thank God, we are not asked: God does it; He gives what suits Him, even if it be only in the domain of earth and flesh. He does not give us what we might choose: we know our folly in this respect, He assigns each man a place — puts the high and the low according to His own wisdom. And in that which He is doing for His beloved Son, has He less to do or less to teach us? Is God's will of less moment there than in the mere outward world? Nay, my brethren, nay: even moral men dispute not the will of God as to natural relationships. We know what human lust may do — how it may break through every line of demarcation; but still after all poor man finds even for himself, without thinking of God, the need and the value of owning the relationships which have been established in nature here below. Now, is it not a most solemn thought, and is it not a fact which ought to shame every Christian heart, that in the church which is so near to God, in that which is the fruit of His own perfect love, in that which He is creating for the everlasting glory of His beloved Son, what God orders, what God wills, what pleases God, is regarded as of infinitely less account to Christians than even their natural relationships to each other? Is it or is it not the fact? Is it or is it not a grievous sin?

How do you account for this? Whence the terrible triumph of the enemy? Why is it that there is such darkness over the whole subject of the "one body" now? Is it because God has not revealed His mind? What can be plainer in Scripture? Only a portion of the proofs has been produced from a small portion of God's word; but what can be clearer than that, founded upon the cross of Christ, a new condition has been introduced and established of God? that He is now calling out the Jews and Gentiles who believe, and forming them into "one body?" — that, as He owns no other body than Christ's, so this is His will about us, and our obligation to Him, even as it is the evident and only meaning of His word that speaks of His church? How is it, then, that such a truth escapes the thoughts of man — that you may search in vain to find it in writings new or old — that we have, some of us, long lived as Christians, and many of us once churchmen and dissenters so called, yet all utterly ignorant of its character? But if so patent, and with such a fulness of truth about it in God's word, how comes it to have been a forgotten thing among His children?

It is not because there has not been sincerity — "godly sincerity" if you will — among Christians. But whatever is near to God, whatever is the present operation of God, is always that against which Satan sets himself with all his might and subtlety. And this, because it is bound up with Christ, because it is the special actual will of God for His people. Therefore Satan seeks to thwart and mar. He does not now try so much to darken other truths, but he takes up that which most nearly concerns the glory of Christ as now displayed; whatever that may be at any given time, there is the battle-field, there the arena, where no means are untried to blind and hinder God's children from understanding and doing the will of their God and Father. When God is gathering out His church, then is the enemy's season of active unceasing effort, to oppose, confound, and obscure all the truths connected with it.

Besides, there is another question. How comes it that Satan finds it possible to succeed in the face of such evidence as the New Testament affords? Alas! the reason of this, too — the moral reason — is evident. The children of God may be the more readily deceived, because the doctrine of the church, the body of Christ, brings God too close to us — sets His grace too richly before our souls — makes us feel (if our souls believe, bow, and enter into it) the vanity of all things here. Alas! our hearts shrink from the feeling. We naturally love ease; we like position in this world; we are fond of a little reputation, it may not be perhaps in the vulgar world, but in the so-called church — something, at any rate, for self, something outside the portion of Christ and the cross. The body is only for the Head, for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. Man in nature disappears; his glory wanes and vanishes; his will is judged as sin. We do not like a doctrine and practice so peremptory, and withal so heavenly. Men like to do something, and to be somebody. Man has in himself, whenever this is allowed, that which exposes him to the power of sin, to the malice and wiles of Satan; and hence it is, that this great truth was no sooner revealed than it began to fade. There is no testimony to it whatever in the early fathers, and of course a position more and more distant and antagonistic as you descend. Take up any writings you please: — Papists and Protestants, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians — all ignore it. It is not that you will not find enough truth asserted and preached for souls to be saved by; but the bare salvation of souls is not the whole truth, nor that part of the truth which reveals the church of God. Were not souls saved before Christ? Was not salvation of the Jews? Were there not faithful souls before God had a people upon earth? Was it not so from the very beginning, before the flood and after it? Most clearly and certainly.

But there comes in another thing which was not true before, which God had not revealed or established till the rejection of the Messiah, and for which He had reserved the sending of the Holy Ghost from heaven. Now in the cross of Christ God has laid a foundation for this new work, and is gathering together out of Jews and Gentiles His assembly, made in Christ one new man. Man likes to be of importance to himself, and in this world. Just in proportion as he allows this, he falls a prey to the working of the enemy; and the more easily does he deceive himself, because up to the cross of Christ there was room left for man more or less. His total ruin, his enmity to God, his hatred of grace in the revealed person of the Son, were never brought out in their fulness until then. Till then God was not, could not, be known as He now is. But the only-begotten Son declared Him, and this in respect both of sin and of His righteousness — a new kind of righteousness, which, by all means and on every side, clears and blesses the guiltiest who now believes in Jesus.

Now, if there is to be a heart growing up into the revelation which God has made of Himself in Christ according to His grace towards the Church, the one body of Christ, there must be the judgment of nature, root and branch — the judgment of the world in which man arrogates some place to himself. The church of God is based on the proved ruin of man, and is for the glory of God in His Son, as maintained by the Holy Ghost. Now, this will show the immensely important place of this truth as a matter for the soul both in communion and in conduct. Away with what does not touch upon practice and the soul's relationship to God! But the fact is, that so far from the truth of the church leaving out heart and conscience, intercourse with God, worship and service, there is nothing which brings them out so much, and binds them so fast together, save only the truth of Christ's own person; there is nothing more commanding, comprehensive, and penetrating for the walk or conversation of a Christian man.

Take, for instance, all the difficulties men gather from the Old Testament: on what are they founded? I speak now of the legitimate difficulties — at any rate what seem to be legitimate and authoritative to the mind of an uninstructed believer. What, after all, is their gist? Reasoning founded upon Old Testament precept or practice. But is the analogy just? How can we reason in an absolute way, if there be this "one new man"? — if the church is a novel special thing which did not even exist then? It is evident that conduct (for instance, found in a David or a Solomon — in an Abraham, or an Isaac, or a Jacob) may not apply now, but, on the contrary, be out of harmony with the ways God looks for in His church. I am not speaking of those moral landmarks which always condemn falsehood, corruption, or violence: no Christian is supposed to produce the sin of any of these men to justify his own evil. I speak of what was right and according to the will of God as then revealed. The moment the doctrine of the Church, the body of Christ, is seen, all such reasonings and difficulties have no more a place. God has now His Son in His presence as the risen man. There could not be such a thing as the body of Christ till Christ was there, not only as the Son, but as man, the Head of the body; Christ could not be there as man till the work of redemption was accomplished. Of old He had the title of the Son of man given, looking onward to His assumption of humanity, when He who was God and the Son of God became a real man. But how could He take this place in Heaven? He was born a man on earth. He was not a man until He was born into the world. How take this place in heaven? Christ was not Head, still less was there the body, the church, till then. "The church, which is his body," assumes that Christ had become man, and, more than this, that He is Head, as the risen and ascended man. It is only after He died, as we know by His own figure of the corn of wheat, that He produced fruit. (John 12) But more than that: not to stand upon figures only, but to take any Scripture that speaks in precise terms upon it, what do we find? Read the end of Eph. 1: "What is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him, to be head over all things to the church." Thus He has been given to the church Head over all things; but it is after He was raised from the dead, and set at God's right hand. The risen man is Head there: even He never was head till after redemption. He took His place there and thus.

What is the consequence of that, beloved friends? The body of Christ is heavenly, as the head of the church is. Man does not relish this — nay, many a Christian man finds it too high and hard. If he is a heavenly man, where is the room for the pursuits and plans and projects of literature, of science, of politics? Where are all these things that fill the mind and the appetites and the desires of men? Are they in heaven? Are warlike schemes — are courtier dreams — in heaven? You hear no doubt of the battle against the devil, who is turned out of heaven, as the Lord wars by the angels of His power by-and-by. But I need not say there is no place in His body for the pride, ambition, or energy of man.

What then is the great idea of the church of God? It is the body of Christ, after He has accomplished redemption; and consequently, sin, as far as God's judging the believer, is completely gone, put away in such sort as to glorify God and justify the believer. Founded upon this, those who believe are consequently not only born of water and the Spirit, and justified from their sins by the blood of Christ, but united to Him, their blessed Head, at the right hand of God. The church of God accordingly does not consist merely of the redeemed or saints. A "Christian" means more than a "saint" — much more! I am aware there are many who think it means much less, and would count my doctrine strange; because they consider everybody in these lands a Christian, and but very few on earth a saint — perhaps none till they get to heaven. But it is to me most evident — nothing more certain — that a Christian is a saint, and a good deal more; and that good deal more is, that he is a saint after God effected redemption in the blood of Christ; that he is a saint united to Christ at God's right hand; that he is a saint who has God dwelling in him by the Spirit, for God now can dwell there. The atoning work is done: the blood has been shed and sprinkled. God can take up His abode there and does! How do I know it? Because God has told me so in His word. One may, alas! have poor enjoyment of it — that is another thing; but the enjoyment of the truth depends upon the measure in which our souls first rest upon it believingly: even then, unless we judge the flesh that hinders the realization of it, we cannot enjoy it either long or much if at all.

God shows then in His word, that the church is the union of believers — one with Christ, by the Holy Ghost, after He died and rose and went to heaven. The consequence is, that we must consult what God enjoins on the members of that body, if we would know how we are to walk and worship; how we are to act and feel towards the other members of Christ; and how to behave in "the house of God."

The New Testament occupies itself with these subjects, more particularly the epistles of St. Paul. It could not be formally or definitely in the gospels, because they are devoted for the most part to a living Christ, closing with the facts of His death, resurrection, and ascension. You may find there preparations for the new work and testimony — not a few intimations of what was going to be done; but all show that the building of the church was not yet begun. In the epistles, on the other hand, we have revelations altogether founded upon the great fact that the building was going on, the body was being formed. And mark another thing, which I hope to develop on the next occasion I address you, namely, that along with the body of Christ goes the presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. It is only just referred to here to show the connection: we shall find its importance afterwards. Those who have not examined fully the testimony of Scripture will feel the weight and value of the instruction there furnished, when that point comes more at length before us. But this at least is plain, that though it is a new work, entirely distinct from all that God had wrought before, there are great moral principles, as already hinted, which always abide. In every part of Scripture, in that which speaks of the times before the law, or during the law, as well as now under the gospel, God is the righteous, holy, almighty, faithful One, a God of longsuffering, and goodness, and truth: all this remains. Even here the difference is, that all these attributes of God shine out more gloriously, and, in consequence, deepen the revelation of God, in addition to other new ways and workings of grace which were not and could not be expressed before. What an accession of light when Christ, the true light, shone! What an infinite display of God Himself in His person! And what shall we say of the cross and death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus as the manifestation of God?

Hence, in this new man, all the moral glory of God of course abides; but now, in presence of that infinitely fuller manifestation, and the accomplishment of eternal redemption, is there to be no answer in the thoughts and hearts and ways of His children to what the God and Father of Christ is doing? If, for instance, God calls a person into the place of a servant, there are certain responsibilities that attach to a servant. But suppose these servants turn out thoroughly unfaithful and end in rebellion, and God says, "I will have no more of this; I will create a family and adopt children to Myself; I will bring people, according to My sovereign pleasure, out of the old condition into this new place." What then? It is evident that to go back to what was true of the servants might be a most misleading guide when it became a question of the children; and, in point of fact, it is and must be so. On that mistaken ground Christians meddle with the world, occupying themselves with those things that please the flesh and give importance to man. In contrast with it, God has given us the glorious truth that He has, as it were, but one man (the first Adam being done with, and pronounced to be ruined, and dead, and buried in the grave of Christ). We Christians belong to the second Man, the Lord from heaven. (1 Cor. 15) There is "one new man," not only in contrast with old distinctions, but as uniting all, Jewish or Gentile saints, in one body — His body; for that is the way in which it is presented in Ephesians 2.

The consequence is, that we need, and God gives us, a new revelation; He furnishes fresh instructions which had no place before. Supposing you had the New Testament in Old Testament times, what would have been (I will not say the worth, but) the effect of it then? Perplexing beyond measure! A Jew would not have known what to do with it. He might have been struck with the wisdom, beauty, holiness, and love of it all; but how to act upon it and reconcile it with the law given by Moses, it would not have been possible for him to know. He would have been commanded by the Old Testament to keep wholly apart from the Gentiles; he would have been told by the New Testament that they formed one body, and that they were all one in Christ — that both had access by one Spirit unto the Father. He could not have put these things together; and no wonder: they were not meant to be together. They belong to distinct times and to totally different states. The confusion of the two is one way in which Satan has triumphed in the professing church. Alas! it was not otherwise under God's dealings with the Jews. While He was standing by His law, they were breaking it; while He was holding up the unity of the Godhead, they were set upon idols and going after the gods of the nations. They were utterly unfaithful to their testimony; but I am persuaded that a Jew, dark as he was and little versed in the mind of God, would have perceived that the instructions of the New Testament were irreconcilable with his calling. But God never gave it thus. When the work of atonement was finished on the cross, God brought out these new revelations by degrees. Why? Because there was a new state of things — "one new man" — that did not exist before. Consequently, a new word of God was given, suited to bring out the due relationship of Christians to one another, and the working of God in the Church, the body of Christ.

Let me notice briefly, before I close, the practical effect — "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." What interest this has, if really applicable in the face of our divisions! Consider for a moment the case of a Christian; he is awakened, finds peace, but questions what he is to do. How truly it has been the fact that many of us have been perplexed in such circumstances! We may have known very little of the word of God; but still we found difficulties in reconciling that word with what we saw around us — especially such a word as this, "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit." But it is really a plain and humble path. I have nothing to do with making the unity; I have not to set up something, or join what others make. What then? I am to be diligent in keeping the unity of the Spirit. In other words, God the Holy Ghost has made a unity; and the business of the believer is to observe that unity — to keep it. What an amazing relief for a humble soul, that feels his liability to mistake, in danger of being either too lax on the one hand, or too narrow on the other!

What is the unity of the Spirit? Where does it begin and end? What is its nature and character? Scripture tells us that He has established a unity among men, yet apart from and above them. What is it? The answer is, It is in the church, which God has made the body of Christ. What a comfort it is for a believer that he has simply to judge by the word of God where the unity of the Spirit is! But how? I come to a place, and I am at a loss to know where to turn. Where shall I find the unity of the Spirit of God? How do I know it? God has left landmarks; He has given clear distinct light in His word. I search and see that He is gathering together the children of God into one; He gathers them unto the name of Christ, assuring them that where they are thus, He is in their midst. I never get the key to any spiritual difficulty without Christ. Do I merely look for the unity of Christians? It is a delusion and a danger without Christ. Christians — where shall I not find them? In what pit of error may I not discover some stray child of God? If I go in quest of the children of God, I may easily see them in this form of worldliness or in that; I may know them unattached here, close and bigoted there; I may find them gathered together according to human rules, and for entirely minor objects; I may hear them setting up the names of men, certain special doctrines, favourite views, as their centres of union. Is this the unity of the Spirit? What then is His unity, and how is it to be kept? It is that which He forms for the glory of Christ.

Christians of course are those that compose the unity; yet keeping it consists not in the bare fact that they are Christians, but that they are gathered unto Christ — gathered not to His bodily presence, but unto His name, now that He is in heaven; none the less, however, for that, but the more counting on His presence with them, though unseen, faithful to His own word. If I isolate myself where I may thus meet, I am indifferent to that which was an object of the death of Christ (John 11: 52), and I am setting at nought the unity of the Spirit; if I value the one and am diligent to keep the other, I shall meet on that ground and on none other. Many members of Christ no doubt are elsewhere now, who ought to be there, as truly as any that are gathered to that name; but am I who know my Master's will to hold aloof, because others see it not, or are faithless if they do? Am I to say His will cannot be done?

Therein lies part of the ruin of Christendom; there is the painful fact, that what Christ died for Satan has set himself to oppose, and has succeeded in it. Wonder not; for everything that God undertakes is first of all put into man's hand, who is responsible to use it for Him. Alas! there is but one issue — the utter failure of man; and there will be no reversal of the tale till Jesus comes again. Nay, even then will be another trial of man — to show whether he uses the coming and kingdom of Jesus for God's glory; and the end of the millennium will prove that, as it was before, so it will be then. Nevertheless, faith overcomes at all times. See that you hold the truth fast. Let none cheat you out of the blessing which God has given, and calls you to enjoy. Founded on the cross, united by the Spirit to Christ, waiting for His return, the church is the precious fruit of God's grace.

After His people departed from the power and even let slip the bare form of this great truth, He has brought it before them anew. I cannot doubt that its recovery, in any measure, is vouchsafed of God in view of the ford's speedy coming: else how do you account for it that God has been pleased to recall the bride to put herself, as it were, in readiness for the Bridegroom, signally bringing out again that mass of heavenly testimony which had been despised, deserted, and forgotten? Happy are they who not only bow and receive the grace of God in it but keep the treasure faithfully! "Behold, I come quickly; hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." Be assured, brethren, that we are in the same danger as men ever were in of letting slip that which God has given us; and that every engine which Satan can devise to drag us away — taking advantage of carelessness, difficulties, trials, or anything that can tax us to the utmost — will all be put in force, because he hates not only us but Christ and His truth.

But as the Lord has been pleased to raise up again a testimony to His person, work, and heavenly glory, so I pray and beseech you, especially the younger of my brethren and sisters who are here — all who may not have felt its force and preciousness — more particularly you who have been trained from your earliest perceptions of truth, brought in, as it were, rather than out, at comparatively little cost, and who have not known (as some others) the wrenching of many a tie, with a deep disciplinary work in the heart, realizing gradually the true condition of Christendom; — I call upon you all to beware lest Satan should, in any insidious way, lead you from the only solid divine rock in the midst of the rising surges of apostasy. Fully do I admit, that all who are brought into this glorious place, the body of Christ, ought to walk and carry themselves in a way suitable to such a position. It is a deep shame where there is no devotedness beyond what existed before this further measure of truth dawned on our souls; not only shame to us, but a serious hindrance to the truth, and a reproach upon the grace of God that revealed it and brought our souls into it, that after all there should be such an unworthy manifestation of its power. But how are we to deal with this? Are we therefore to slight or doubt the truth? Are we because of our unfaithfulness, to put aside the plain word of God that condemns us for a lower ground on which we can rest more consistently and comfortably? Are we to yield to that which the fleshly mind has often sought and fallen into — to set up other centres than Christ, other ministry than that of the Spirit? Are we to abandon the only place and principle which the New Testament allows for the members of Christ's body, on the unbelieving plea that, as to walking according to this heavenly light, it is a thing impracticable in such a world as this? There are beyond question difficulties and perils neither few nor small in maintaining it. There is constant need of self-denial most surely, if it is to be walked in with God.

But how are we to judge, if not by the word of God? Are we prepared to surrender His word as our only standard of judgment? Now, while that word of course condemns deeply the shortcomings of those who are thus privileged of God — not only brought into the unity of the Spirit, as all saints are, but brought into the conscious knowledge and faith of it; while the failure of such is in a certain sense more inexcusable than that of any others, yet at least such are justifying God and His word and Spirit against themselves in a humbling way. Taking our stand upon this, that no one should glory save in the Lord, we shall find (and painfully too) that we are brought into this place to learn our faults as we never knew them — the shortcomings of others as we never suspected them. We may be astonished at the manifold failures, trials, hairbreadth escapes, and deep occasions of shame; but how come these to be so seen and felt? Because it is not the ground of the church? Nay! but because it is. And one of the most comforting things to our faith in that which naturally might perplex is, that we learn the present and permanent value of the Scriptures as we never proved it before. Take all the ways of God in discipline: they did not apply while we were mixed up with the world-church; but how precious, profitable, and indispensably needed when we endeavour to keep the Spirit's unity! Take again all the warnings about the world: we hardly knew what it was. Is it not with Christians a constant question what the world is; or is not the answer that they give us the proof of an unsuspected blinding influence? They have something or other which they avoid doing, and this they call "the world." But the moment we see the body of Christ, the world acquires a plain meaning: if we realize what it is to be among those "within," those "without" are no longer a vague uncertain question.

Let us not fear then to quit all for the honour of God in this world; let us look to Him for grace that we may bear all rather than abandon it. There may be only two or three; but yet if they contemplate the body of Christ, shutting out none save according to His will, not for any feelings of their own, it is the only thing that is or ever was divinely large in this selfish world, as far as men are concerned. I do not mean that any who blaspheme Christ, or who make light of blasphemers in their deeds, if not in their words, should be sanctioned. "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united." It is vain to argue that the Spirit's unity can make so light of Christ and His glory. I say not that individually such may not be Christ's. We know what Satan may do even with one who really loves the Lord — how he may ensnare him into denying his Master, and denying Him with oaths too; but who would contend for justifying such sin or having communion with the guilty, till it was put away?

I repeat then, if there be only two or three, and they endeavour to "keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," with them is my place as a Christian. My heart should go out to every Christian, in whatever circumstances, whether nationalist, dissenting, or, if there be such, in popery; my heart should go out, spite of the error and evil — yea the rather because of these things in intercession. But then am I to give up diligent observance of the Spirit's unity? Am I to follow and join them in what I know to be unscriptural and sinful, because there is a Christian or many Christians there? Surely not! We ought to get them out with and for the Lord. How is this to be done? Not by plunging ourselves into the mud, but on the contrary by taking our stand resolutely on the rock outside of it; and there seeking grace from God that, by the manifestation of the truth in every man's conscience, and by holding out the light of Christ in the word — pressing too the responsibility of walking as Christ's body on His members, they may be turned from the error of their way. Never deny that they are members of the body of Christ; remind them of that very fact and of its gravity — that they are members of His body: why should they value any other body? If members of that "one body," why not own it, and own it always, and nothing else? If they belong to the unity of the Spirit, why not endeavour to keep it? God is now raising a question, not about Popery and Protestantism, but about Christendom's denial of His church, Christ's body. Our business is not to originate a church of the present or future, but to cleave to the church God has made, and consequently to confess the sin of all rivals — to repudiate them and come out from them. Let us put away every human invention in the things of God, and keep ourselves from idols. The word of God at all times calls upon His children to be subject to Himself and to His will. Are we so doing? On the one hand, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them;" on the other, "To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Surely, if there be one thing in which, more than another, human will is most evidently sin, it is in that place where God exalts the Lord Christ; where He has sent down the Holy Ghost that He may be a spring of power in His people's obedience.

Though this be merely an introductory lecture, and therefore I cannot be supposed to enter into all the proofs now — only laying down a kind of foundation for the subjects which we hope to pursue; yet I do trust that enough has been said to make plain, even to the least mature of those who hear me, the immense importance of their seeking from God to realise that they are not only saint but Christians, resting upon redemption, united to Christ, and responsible to act as members of His body, diligent in keeping the unity of the Spirit and none other in this world. This is a divine obligation superior too any changes in the church's state here below. It is no question of numbers, but a duty always binding, even though there were only two or three who saw the truth.

Lecture 2.

"ONE SPIRIT."

1 Cor. 12: 1-13.

My task tonight is that which I am persuaded ought to be the business of every Christian man, not in word only, but in deed and in truth — to assert the rights of the Spirit of God in the church of God. I say, "to assert His rights;" for I assume here the personality of the Holy Ghost. It is needless now to give any proofs of this any more than of His Deity. These truths can be taken for granted, not as if there were not abundant proofs in the word of God, but because they are at present uncalled for. But it is another thing, beloved friends, when we speak of the rights of the Holy Ghost — His proper sovereign action in the church, flowing from His personal presence as sent down from heaven. On this subject many find difficulties and obscurities; and great ignorance exists even among the children of God, and those too who may have been greatly blessed; in and by whom the Holy Ghost may have acted powerfully for the good of souls. Unless however we know this truth from God, unless we have it as a divine certainty in our souls, it is clear that whatever grace may do in giving us practical subjection, yet there must be much lost if we do not know the special ways in which it is the will of God that the Holy Ghost, present both in the individual and in the church of God, should be honoured. On this theme — a large one for a single discourse — I propose now to enter.

Here too, as in treating of the "one body," I would show from God's word that which was always true of the Spirit, and which therefore has no special connection with the present time, in order that we may the better discern in what God is now manifesting Himself, and how it is that Christians — for of them I speak — are apt to be mistaken as to this. A mistake here is so much the more serious a thing, as it is a question of duly recognizing a divine person. If we maintain the title of the Holy Spirit to act as He will in the church, no question is raised about His work in souls from the beginning. No person intelligently acquainted with the Scriptures doubts the fact or its importance; neither is there the least thought, wish, or motive to do so. The Holy Spirit has always been the direct agent in whatever God Himself has undertaken. If we look at creation, the Spirit had His part there. If we look again at the elders who obtained a good report through faith, no believer questions for a moment that it was only by the operation of the Holy Ghost that man believed then as now. He wrought in Abel, Enoch, Noah, and in all others whom the Scriptures testify as the line of saints. So again when God espoused His people Israel, if He wrought in any especial fashion suited to the display of His glory in their midst, it was the Spirit of God who was the energetic power behind and within. It was He that wrought, for instance, from a Moses down to a Bezaleel, from Samson up to David. When we come to the prophets, it need scarcely be said it was under the power of the Holy Ghost that holy men of God spoke; the Spirit of Christ made them to be witnesses beforehand of His sufferings, and of His glories that were to follow, little as they might themselves understand His sufferings. Thus, in those who stand for present privileges, there is no disposition whatever to obscure, but on the contrary to give the fullest value to all that the Holy Ghost has ever wrought; for in truth there never was anything of God in which He did not work.

But when we come to the New Testament, a new thing comes to view. A despised, crucified, departing Son of man was a strange sound. (John 12: 34) They looked for Christ to abide for ever, and to reign in glory and righteous blessing upon earth. But gradually, as man and Israel especially rejected Him, the truth — astonishing to the Jew — dawned more and more, that He, the Messiah and Son of God, was going to leave the earth. Gentiles, I am aware, think little of this; but do they therefore show superior wisdom? To the Jew it was a most startling announcement, and at first sight irreconcilable with the law and prophets. They had looked for Him, the promised One, and their hearts delighted in His presence: it was what kings and prophets had desired most earnestly. God had put the desire into their souls; but now that it was gratified in His coming, He is going to leave them, to sink down in sorrow and shame and death — the death of the cross! under man's, ay, and under God's, hand! And not merely this, but when He rose again — instead of maintaining His glory from the throne of His father David, and filling the earth with the blessedness that was foretold, and accomplishing, and more than accomplishing, all that their hearts had so fondly hoped was just about to dawn and for ever brighten this world — He was about to leave the world in its darkness; at any rate, He was about to retire again to the heavens whence He came. But if He was about to go on high, it was not as He came down; for as the Son of God He had come down to become man — "the Word was made flesh;" and now as man, risen from the dead, He was leaving the world to take His place at the right hand of God; and during His absence on high, He would send down the Holy Ghost in a way never before known. The Old Testament prepares the heart for a present Messiah, and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost as the needed appropriate meed paid to the reign of the Messiah over the earth; but the Messiah, on His death and resurrection, disappearing from the view of the world that had cast Him out, entering into a new and heavenly scene, and the Holy Ghost sent down personally in His absence to be here while He was there — all this was something wholly unexpected by the Jew. If Gentiles do not turn aside and wonder at the great sight, it is certainly not from excess of spiritual feeling or intelligence. We may find of course the wonder of stupidity; but there is such a thing as no wonder, just because there is no real thought about it. I believe this is the reason why, if there be on the one hand the wonder of men who are surprised, there is a lack of wonder in others because they are too engrossed in earthly things to be really concerned.

Now this, next to Christ, is the central truth of the New Testament; but so far from its being the solid ground on which Christians are now walking, in point of fact all is reduced in their minds to a mere continuation of the influence which the Holy Ghost has always exerted. The consequence is, that all men who reject His special presence in person on earth as a consequence of redemption are driven into the most painful expedients in order to evade the plainest scriptures. I may just mention one case: it will perhaps startle some that such assertions should be made, and especially by a person of large reputation for spiritual knowledge. It will show where want of faith as to the great truth of the actual presence of the Holy Ghost in a way never experienced before lands those who oppose it systematically. In order to escape the clear intimation of a new and incomparable blessing in the shape of the Comforter, they allege that the Holy Ghost (who had always been given!) departed from the earth when the Lord was here, in order that the Lord should give Him once more on His own ascension to heaven. Thus, the time of the Saviour's presence on earth would be, not a bright and happy feast, but dearth as regarded the Spirit of God! I just name the thought, in order that you may see the excessive violence, not to say worse, to which unbelief reduces even intelligent men of God. Need I say, on the contrary, that those who surrounded the Saviour and were blessed by His teaching had all the Old Testament saints ever enjoyed, and a great deal more? The Holy Ghost had quickened their souls, like their predecessors, by giving them faith in Christ. Besides, the disciples had the Messiah's presence and the manifestation of grace and truth in Him, and all His words and ways. No doubt there was much they could not then bear, as the Lord Himself told them; but still they were as truly believers as any had ever been before them. The fact is that such reasoning is the puny effort of man to escape from the solemn truth of God.

The New Testament is most explicit. Our Lord first of all brings out the doctrine of the Spirit; and this as fully meeting the need of man to be born of the Spirit and to have the Holy Ghost, in order that he should be able to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. But more than this, He prepares the disciples for the mighty work in spreading the truth and the grace of God. The Holy Ghost was necessary for this; and accordingly we have it in John 7 — a scripture which it is impossible to escape. The Lord had put it in a figurative way, that out of the belly of him who believed should flow rivers of living water. "This spake he of the Spirit," (which should not be given to a person in order to make him believe, but) "which they that believe should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given], because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Lengthy reasoning on such a scripture would be a dishonour to the word of God. Where there is an obscurity, we may try to explain and illustrate; but where the language employed is plainer than any that could be substituted in its stead, I feel that it is due to Scripture simply to press that plain meaning.

In the later chapters of the same gospel again we have our Lord bringing out, not merely the fact that after the glorification of Jesus the Holy Ghost was to be given, as He had not been before; but, besides, we have His personal action, when sent and come, entered into fully and definitely. Hence in John 14 He is spoken of as the Comforter. Mark the importance of this. We may reason about the Holy Ghost being given, as if it meant no more than a spiritual power, but we cannot thus attenuate the sent Comforter. Who is He but the Holy Ghost Himself? No one can say that "Comforter" means a miracle, or a tongue, or any operation you please. Doubtless He works in all these various ways; but it is a real person who replaces the Messiah when He leaves the earth. Just read a few verses of the chapter in order that it be made still plainer: "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." There again we have what is most evident. Miracles have been; tongues cease; prophecies and knowledge pass away; but here we have a divine person who abides with the saints for ever — "even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." The world was bound to receive Jesus, and after an outward manner it had Him there; but here we find One who, not having become incarnate, could not in any way be brought before the eyes of the world. I admit of course that the world does not really receive Jesus in a spiritual manner any more than the Holy Ghost; but still there is a pointed reference to the manner of the Holy Ghost's presence here below, which excludes Him from all apprehension on the world's part as an object either of sight or of knowledge.

Again in John 14: 26 we read, "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you." It is not a gift or power or influence merely, but one who is really sent — a person who teaches all things and brings all the Lord's sayings to their remembrance. Then in John 15: 26, "But when the Comforter is come." It is not merely in this case "sent" (because some might argue perhaps about the sending of an influence) but "come." "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth [in every way guarding this most weighty theme], which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." Assuredly we have the Holy Spirit's coming presented with solemnity and distinctness. In the former chapter the Father sends Him in Christ's name; in this Christ sends Him from the Father. In the one case He is said to bring all things Christ had spoken to their remembrance; in the other He comes down from the Son, and bears witness of Him. They had been conversant with Him upon earth, and were to attest it as witnesses; also the Spirit from Him in heaven comes down, that there should be as it were these joint witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then in the sixteenth chapter of John we have the truth still further unfolded, and, if possible, with increasing energy, as it is indeed of the deepest interest and importance. In John 14 the Lord had told them that they ought to rejoice because He went to the Father. He was leaving a scene of humiliation and suffering to be in the home of the Father's love and glory. Had their love been simple, had they been thinking of Him, not of themselves, they would have rejoiced because He was going to the Father. But now in John 16 He puts it upon other ground: "It is expedient for you [and not only as it were for me] that I go to the Father." What! expedient for those poor weak trembling disciples that He had watched over, in the face of all Israel who despised Him and would not be gathered to Him? Surely under His wing He had gathered those little ones, and sheltered them; yea, in the very hour of His own rejection He had turned His hand upon them. And now He must leave them. It was expedient for them that He should go to the Father. How could this be? There is but one answer; and it is the answer that the Lord gives. It is what in His mind made it expedient. Blessed as it was to have the Messiah, His presence (just because He was a man upon earth with a group of disciples around Him) was necessarily limited. He could not thus be as man everywhere throughout the earth. The Holy Ghost had not, like the Son, taken human nature into union with His person. But more than that, when redemption was effected, He could in the most intimate way bring into the hearts of the disciples all the value that flowed from Christ and His work — Christ exalted to heaven and estimated of God the Father there.

Thus then were the great foundations of truth laid. The Lord Jesus would not leave this world or go to the Father, until every question that God had with guilty man was settled for ever. When sin was put away by the sacrifice of Himself on the cross, when righteousness was established in Christ risen from the dead and exalted on high, it was not merely all pure grace as before, but now it became a question of God's righteousness through the work of the Saviour. The efficacy of His blood turned the scale in favour of man; for it was the man Christ Jesus who had thus glorified God about sin. No doubt He was His own beloved Son, the inestimable gift of His own grace; and man could boast nothing, for He was despised and rejected of man — hated without a cause. Still, there was the fact that God had so looked down upon earth, more especially upon the cross, to find the man who suffered all, that God Himself might be glorified. This truth changed everything. Now it became a question, so to speak, for God: what could He do for this blessed man? If He was God's Son, was this a reason why He should love or exalt Him less? He raises up from the grave the man Christ Jesus, and sets Him at His own right hand. That was not only a personal act in honour of Christ, but for believers it is the measure, in infinite grace, of acceptance which is now theirs in virtue of Him. All heaven was filled with wonder and praise at the sight of man, made a little lower than the angels, taken up in the person of Christ far above all principalities and powers to sit on the throne of God. Yea God Himself from that moment has made it His business and delight to show His value for the man who, in the face of sin and death and Satan and divine judgment, retrieved all His character, and brought glory to His name in delivering, by suffering for, the guilty to the uttermost. Before this, man had been the constant public agent in dishonouring God. Never was God so slighted, insulted, provoked by any of His creatures as by man. Satan, when he left his first estate, once and for ever forfeited his place. There might still be a more terrible judgment awaiting him; but there was no mercy — no beam of hope pierced through the darkness into which sin plunged a fallen angel. But now, after man had preferred darkness to light, after his manifold course of rebellion against God was run, the tide was turned in the death of Christ, and God was placed by His work under an obligation, so to say, to man to bless him by faith through and in Christ the Lord.

Hence that expression of which St. Paul is so full "the righteousness of God." If man was more than ever proved to be lost, God now had a debt to pay. As a part of His discharge of it, He sets the Lord Jesus as man at His own right hand; He justifies freely and fully every believer; and He sends down the Holy Ghost in order that He might be the divine link between that blessed Man in glory and those who believed in Him, even such as had trembled at the thought of His departure. What a change there is now! Not only was there spiritual intelligence now, but power also. Peter, who had denied the Lord, could now stand boldly forward and say, "But ye denied the Holy One and the Just." They were all dumb. His denial was completely gone, and I might venture to say with more glory to the Lord than if he had never uttered it. A positive strength and triumph glowed in his soul, a knowledge not only of his own weakness and worthlessness, but of God, of resurrection, and of His grace — a sense of what Christ was for him that was beyond all he had ever known before. I do not say beyond grace, unless Peter had done what he did; but surely there was immense force in his words. They knew well what he had done, publicly done, in the high priest's hall, and before people ready enough to see the faults of a disciple. Yet he who repeatedly and recently denied his Lord was, through abundance of grace, so full of courage as to stand forth and confront and tell them that it was they that "denied the Holy One and the Just." His conscience was purged; he had no more conscience of sins (Heb. 10): all was blotted out that could be against him before God. Yea he was justified from all things.

This was merely one fruit, precious as it was; and out of what did it grow? Peter had been a believer before, and was already born anew: what then was its spring? It was part of the result of the great salvation made good in the power of the Spirit of God come down from heaven, and thus working in Peter. No doubt, there was previous moral exercise, deep penitence for his sins, and the restoration of his soul; but more than all this followed, — the gift and positive power of the Spirit. It is here, though not here only, that the church shows its weakness through unbelief. To the believer it is not a mere negative question now, but one of real present power; as was said of Timothy — who needed to be reminded of the fact — that it was not a spirit of fear he had received, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

But now we must return to the great truth: the Lord Jesus, in John 14, 15, 16 shows what was to replace His personal presence upon earth — a real divine Paraclete — He whom we call the third person in the Trinity. I do not however admire the expression "second" or "third" person; and for this reason, that it tends to bring in a subordination in the Godhead where scripture does not. You cannot have a secondary God. You may bring human reasonings into the subject, and talk about a son, and his subjection to his father; but therein is the very thing which is so dangerous, and of which, to my mind, the devil has taken great advantage. The scripture shows that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; that they are one and all equally Jehovah. Subordination in respect of Deity is only a means of undermining the proper Godhead of the Son and the Spirit. The notion of subordination is true only when we look at the place of manhood the Son deigned to take, or at the office the blessed Holy Ghost is now filling to the glory of the Son, just as the Son served and will yet reign to the glory of God the Father.

To return, however — the Lord Jesus tells us it was expedient that He should go away; — "For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Any particular notice of this scripture is not the point now, but rather the general truth. This was the twofold purpose of the Holy Ghost in coming here below. He proves that the world was under sin; that there is no righteousness here, but only in the Just One with the Father; and that as to the prince of this world, he is judged — the sentence not executed, but he judged. There was hope for the world with the Jew; but now, from the point of view in which the Lord speaks of His own going and the Holy Ghost's coming, the world is evidently lost, and the Spirit here is but its reprover. Next, this same Holy Spirit should lead the disciples into the truth, taking of the things of Christ, and glorifying Him. There is thus a double relation of the Holy Ghost — to the world, as a system outside and condemned; to the saints, whom He leads, telling them of things to come, yea, of all things pertaining to Christ and His glory. Such is the plain doctrine of the Apostle John as to the Spirit.

Thence we come to the Acts of the Apostles: is there anything there that, as a matter of fact, answers to our Lord's promises? There need not be a doubt. In Acts 1 the disciples are with the Lord, entering but very feebly into that which had filled His heart before He went away. They were still looking for the kingdom with great things for the earth and for Israel. They were not, it is true, sunk so low as the unbelieving thoughts of Gentile Christendom — i.e., a millennium without Christ! the shame of those who boast so proudly in our day; but still they were not far raised above the ordinary thoughts of Jews. They did not yet enter into the precious Christian hope, and for this simple reason: the thoughts of the Christian are the thoughts of heaven. They are the communications of the Holy Ghost that suit the Father, because centring in the Son and His heavenly glory. Into that communion we are brought; and truly it is not merely with the prophets and with their blessed visions of coming glory for the earth, but "with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." But as for the disciples in Acts 1 the power of entrance was not yet there, for the Holy Ghost was not personally come; and yet they had not only life at this time, but life in resurrection. The Lord had actually breathed upon them the very day He rose, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Of course this was not the gift of the Comforter as such, the promised One that was to take the place of Christ upon earth; but rather the communication by the Holy Ghost of His own risen life. Therefore, I believe, did He breathe upon them: a clear allusion to the Lord God breathing on Adam. Of old it was the breath of natural life given to Adam. Here was One upon earth who was both Lord and God (as acknowledged by Thomas a little after), and also the risen man or last Adam, the quickening Spirit. Accordingly, He communicates this life, as life must always be communicated, by the Holy Ghost; and therefore it is said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." But for all that, we know from Acts 1 that the Spirit, the Comforter, was not yet come. Indeed, we ought to gather it from the simple fact, that the Lord was not yet gone. "And if I go not away, the Comforter will not come." He was seen there; and He commands them, when assembled together, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but should wait for the promise of the Father. Whatever the blessing, then, they had received on the resurrection-day, it was not the accomplishment of the promise of the Father.

The next chapter shows us the Holy Ghost acting on earth in the absence of Christ; and this in various ways. It records that extraordinary display of divine grace in the gift of tongues, which, without removing, surmounted the confusion that man's sin and divine judgment had brought into the world in the various nations and tribes and tongues, which have subsisted since Babel to this day. Now the Spirit was going out with the news of God's wonderful works of grace to all, just as they were proving that where sin had abounded, grace much more abounded. At the same time let us not forget that new tongues, although the magnificent fruit of the Spirit's operation, are not the same thing as His presence; they were an effect and characteristic sign of a crucified but now exalted Lord, the witness of gospel grace and its universal testimony in contrast with the law, but not the same thing as the gift of the Holy Ghost Himself. This is exceedingly important, because the unbelief of some has gone so far as to think and say that if the tongues exist no more, the Holy Ghost is absent. What blindness to the Saviour's promise! What a lowering of the Spirit's presence! What denial of Christianity and the church! The truth is, that the tongues, and the other powers in which the Spirit of God was pleased then to work, were but the miraculous tokens that befitted His presence, besides inaugurating the gospel and the church. It was all a new and unprecedented state of things. When the Son was on earth, miracles followed His steps and word, as it was only meet, and the accomplishment of prophecy. Another divine person being come, was it not suitable there should be proofs of it, more especially as He took no permanent form, as the Son of God had done, so as to be visible? It was therefore the more needed that there should be palpable effects and tokens arresting the mind, and causing the heart of man to weigh what God is and is doing, not only as displayed in the Son, but as witnessed by the Holy Ghost present upon earth.

This is the cardinal truth upon which all hinges that we find in the great body of the New Testament. There was now before men a fact without precedent, altogether unknown to the world, if it did not surprise even those that had been taught by the Lord Himself to expect it — the wondrous fact that the Holy Ghost had come down in person, making His presence known by a signature of gracious power, so as to be then known and read of all men. Accordingly throughout the Acts of the Apostles you have ever and anon the testimony not only to His action and its results, but to the glorious truth that He Himself was there. Look at the first outbreak of the world's religious rancour in Acts 4, and His answer to it in verse 31. Take again the first public sin and scandal, where Ananias and Sapphira were charged on the spot with lying not to man but to God. But how was this proved? They had lied to the Holy Ghost who was there. The standard of judgment was that dishonoured person who was in their midst. This measure of sin, let me say, is as true individually as it is in the church. Hence, in Ephesians 4: 30, it is not merely that you should not violate this or that command, but "grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." Let us note it well.

The more this is reflected upon, the more its immense moment will be felt by the children of God. Supposing you take the presence of one you most value and delight in, does not his or her coming affect all your ways and words just in proportion as you realize and love their presence? We might be ever so much at ease; but still, if there be one staying with us, who draws out our honour and esteem, the influence is felt deeply and at once except by a stone. Surely one does think of that which will give pleasure; one rightly fears to wound; the heart is on the alert and active, and it is a joy to do that which will gratify those we love. And so in virtue of redemption the Holy Ghost is here, because as regards each believer all is gone that was offensive to God; and the saint stands in divine righteousness before God — become this in Christ. How indeed could the Holy Ghost be away? He must have His part when that which was most precious to God and man was wrought. If the Father accomplished His thoughts in and by the Son, could the Holy Ghost be absent or inactive? And now God had done His greatest work — the atoning work of Christ. Where therefore the blood of the accepted sacrifice is, the Holy Ghost not only can work but must dwell. If Christ by His own blood has entered in once for all into the holies, having found an everlasting redemption, the Holy Ghost is come to abide with us for ever. All hangs on and is measured by this. Accordingly the book of the Acts is far more the acts of the Holy Ghost than of the apostles, important vessels of His power as they were, though not they only. We have seen, where it was a question of sin, He judges by His presence and acts upon this ground. We have seen that, when they were in danger of being alarmed by the threats of man, the Spirit gave cheering evidence of His mighty presence. It was not merely Peter and John, or anybody else; but the place was shaken where they were. Whose presence was this, or in whom particularly? It was the presence of the Holy Ghost, not merely in this or in that individual, but in the assembly of God. More than that, the Spirit of God in chapter 13 of the Acts takes an active place, and sends out Paul and Barnabas. "Separate me," He says, "Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." "So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed." I am now referring to the case only to show that it is not a question of miracles, tongues, or powers, but of a real divine person, who was the chief agent as present in the church of God; and that this personal presence of the Spirit in man was a new thing, previously unexampled in the plan and ways of God. (Compare also Acts 8: 29, 39; Acts 15: 28; Acts 16: 7; Acts 20: 23; Acts 21: 11.)

Now we come to the Epistles, passing by the scriptures which attest the Holy Ghost's presence in the individual. All-important as this is, it is not my subject, but His presence in the church. Hence we must omit the Epistle to the Romans, which takes up our individual relation towards God, and for the simple reason that there we are regarded as His children. We are brought out of the place of wrath and sin, made children of God, and if children, then heirs: the Holy Ghost gives the spirit of adoption, and fills the heart with hopes of the inheritance which is to follow. But in the Epistles to the Corinthians you have not merely the state of man and the revelation of divine righteousness, with their consequences in sinners and saints, as in Romans, but the church of God, in a grievous state of sin, shame, and disorder, but still the church of God. Accordingly the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as there dwelling is shown as in its capital seat. The portion read (1 Cor. 12: 1-13) develops His action in the church. What can be plainer? Here we have the Holy Ghost viewed as a real person present and working in gifts of outward sign, no doubt, as well as in ways of edification. But whatever might be the form of His action, the great truth was that He was there and at work in the many members of God's assembly. The question is, was all this a temporary display, or was His presence for ever the substratum of it all? Was that which we here read confined to a particular local assembly and a special epoch long past, or is there anything for us, for the church of God at large, for this time and all times? The answer cannot be doubtful, if we are subject to the word of God. Certainly our Lord had in John 14 laid down, in contrast with His own temporary absence, that the Spirit of truth was to abide with His disciples for ever.

But next the First Epistle to the Corinthians could not open without the Holy Ghost's giving it the most enlarged application. In the first verse of the first chapter we read, "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours". This is not said in the Second Epistle: indeed I am not aware that there is anything exactly like it anywhere else in the New Testament. Are we to suppose this was a mistake? Let who will be guilty of such a speech or thought, I trust there is no soul here that would not denounce it as a sin against God. A mistake in the word of God! On the contrary it seems to me to be the special wisdom and goodness of the Spirit who foresaw the unbelief of Christendom; it was the Spirit of God who knew that this Epistle would be treated as if it were of private application, as if it belonged to a bygone time and place, and did not appertain to all that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ — "both theirs and ours." This He has guarded against at the very threshold, and made such an objection to be plain fighting against the word of God. Thus it ceases to be a question of opinion. God has spoken and has written that we may believe Him; and this epistle has a purposely enlarged scope, so that unbelief as to the perpetuity of the Holy Ghost's action in the assembly, as long as He and it are here, should be treated as a sin, as a positive rejection of God's plain word. Is it not unbelief which makes null and void the Holy Ghost's personal presence in the church?

It is not at all contended that the Holy Ghost necessarily works in every way as of old, and still less in the same measure of power. In the latter part of the New Testament we do not read much about miracles — very little — less and less too as time passes on. We can understand that, in the opening of a new dealing of God, there should be, in His goodness, a wonderful working and display of these mighty powers to awaken the attention even of careless men. But, as the truth of His presence was established, and the new communications of God were gradually written, and there was thus not merely the evidence of outward tokens, but positive scripture committed to human responsibility, we can easily see that external vouchers were no longer so requisite, and that the Spirit of God (grieved, as we knew, by much found in those who professed the name of Christ) might gradually withdraw, not Himself, but the manifestation of mighty signs, and refuse to put outward ornaments upon that which dishonoured the Lord Jesus.

It is certain and evident, at least when we come to the churches of the Apocalypse, that we see or hear no more of the powers of the age to come. Not a doubt have I that there was the wisdom of God in thus ordering in view of the state of things that was fast coming in. I think we can readily discern by spiritual considerations why it would not have been suitable to the glory of God to continue those miraculous powers. Supposing, for instance, God were to work now in the way of miracle, is it not evident that in one of two ways it must be? Either He must work wherever the name of Christ is preached and known at all; and what would be the consequence of this? Miracles in Rome, miracles in Canterbury, miracles among Presbyterians, Independents, Wesleyans, Baptists, Paedo-baptists, Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans: Greek church and all sects and denominations in Christendom would have their miracles! There may be those who would enjoy the sight, but I envy them not. Every one here, I trust, would feel deeply the anomaly of such an outward seal on such a mass of confusion. On the other hand, supposing God were pleased to say that He could not give these tokens of His power and glory where the church was thus in disorder and rebellion, but must single out — whom shall I say? It could not be, it ought not to be: God forbid that we ourselves should desire it, as things are.

But let us for the moment imagine the Lord looking on any children of God anywhere gathered, and saying, "I see where My people are subject to My word; and where I find two or three here and there gathered unto My name, there I will work miracles." What would be the consequence? We should not know how to behave ourselves! So weak are we, so foolish, so apt to be full of ourselves, even now in the face of continual weakness, as well as hatred and contempt, that we should not be able to contain ourselves if we had these displays of divine power. Besides, what a slight to those we own to be as truly members of Christ, and as truly indwelt of the Spirit, as any of us!

I am persuaded then there is perfect grace and wisdom as to this in the ways of God. He no longer works thus. But here is the truth on which I take my stand this night: the Holy Ghost was given, not merely as a display of power in the earth, but, if I may so say, as both sign and substance of the divine value for the cross. God the Father gave the Holy Ghost as the seal of that redemption which is always unchangeably perfect and infinitely efficacious. I dare to say it, and yet I say it with all reverence, that if the Holy Ghost were now taken from the poorest and feeblest of His saints upon earth, it would not be a dishonour to him so much as to the Son of God and His atoning work. It would be virtually to say that the ruin of the church has made the blood of Christ less precious; but will God ever confirm a lie? And here is the stronghold of faith — in this we can be confident — not only that the Lord Jesus has expressed the mind and intentions of God, but that we through His grace can and ought to enter in measure into its ground, reason, character, and aim, as well as meaning.

All this we may by faith appreciate and enjoy, for He has explained it to us. Wherefore indeed is the word of God given, if it be not that we should understand His mind, feel His love, and be sure of His truth, wisdom and goodness? Hence we are aware that God, in sending the Spirit to abide always whatever may be the sorrowful condition of believers individually and collectively, did not give a mere token of approving them, but rather the only adequate pledge of His delight in the personal work of His beloved Son. The Holy Ghost, we know, descended on Christ when He was upon earth without blood, because He was always sinless, as perfect here morally as He was and is in heaven, no less absolutely holy as man than as God. It is not forgotten, of course, that He had yet to be made perfect in another sense, as becoming captain and author of salvation, and to be consecrated as heavenly priest. It is clear that there was a work to be done, and an official place of glory to be taken; but nothing ever did or could add to His moral perfectness. Hence, I repeat, He could and did receive the Holy Ghost for Himself as man without blood. But when Christ went up on high, He received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost. What amazing comfort, confidence, and rest should this give us! Had the Holy Ghost been given directly to us, we might well think that, if we did not carry ourselves as we ought, there might be a revocation. We can understand a soul troubled with such a thought; but, thanks be to God, the Father gave the Holy Ghost a second time to Christ. When He went on high, He received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, and shed forth that which was seen and heard at Pentecost. Thus the gift is entirely in virtue of Christ, after He had blotted out our sins and received it as a consequence. There we have the firmest and surest ground on which the perpetuity of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the saint and in the church rests before God — His love to Christ, and His estimate of Christ's work for us, not to speak of His immutable word.

And now for a few practical words on this before I have done. We shall have other applications and results of it in subsequent lectures, so that the less may be said now. If there be a divine person on earth who is now in each saint individually, and with all as the church of God, I ask, Can this be a secondary consideration? Is this a truth that can be subordinated to circumstances? Is it something that can be pushed aside for the sake of not disturbing oneself or others? Can men who so think, and speak, and act, believe in the reality of the Spirit's personal presence and present operation according to scripture? Do they know that the Holy Ghost is really in the church on earth? I am not now, of course, alluding to His divine glory whereby He fills all things, because it is always true, — as true before Christ came as it has been since, and equally true of all the persons in the Trinity. But as the Son came down from heaven and was here a man for some thirty or more years upon the earth but is actually gone, so now the Holy Ghost is come down personally to abide with and in us in such sort as was unknown before, save only in Christ. The Holy Spirit, I say, has come now to be in us personally; and just as Christ was God's only true temple, so now the church is the temple of God; for both these truths are taught in the word of God. But if this be believed, if it be received as God's truth, what can compare with it in importance as a present practical fact, as well as privilege, for the saint and for the church? Accordingly the responsibility of Christians, if we apply it to their meeting, is that their assemblies should be governed by the truth that the Holy Ghost is there.

But how does the Holy Ghost work when owned as there? This we have answered, if it were only in the scripture already read. He distributes, or divides, to every one severally as He will. Is His presence then not to be recognized? Is His working not to be respected? What do we find, if we test the present aspect of Christendom by the word of God? It is far from my desire needlessly to trouble any one, nor is it my wish to provoke controversy; but there are truths which manifestly admit of no compromise: indeed, all divine truth refuses such unworthy dealing. How, then, I would ask, is it with our souls in the feeling, in the faith, in the allegiance that we pay to this truth, so vital to the church, so essential to the right honouring of the Holy Ghost and of the Lord Himself? Do you doubt that the church of God is in disorder? Where is the serious-minded Christian that does not own it more or less? Is there a spiritual man who would maintain that the present state of the church answers to what we read in the New Testament? Am I not to feel and to humble myself before God for my own and the church's sin in this grave matter? Must I not seek to be where the Holy Ghost's presence is owned? It matters not where I have been ignorantly; I have doubtless been where there was not even the show of owning His presence and action according to the scriptures; I may have joined others in praying God to pour out again the Holy Ghost, as if He were not come and in the church of God. And do you call such prayer as this a scriptural recognition of His presence? What can be conceived a more decided or more evident ignoring of the truth that the Holy Ghost is here? Were it prayed that the Spirit of God might not be grieved, or that the saints might be filled with Him, it were scriptural. What would it have been for a disciple in the presence of Jesus to have asked the Father to send His Son? — to raise up the Messiah when the Messiah was actually there? Is it not the spirit of the world, which cannot receive the Spirit, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him? But we know Him — at least we ought to know Him. Well, if we do know that He is here, is it a light thing whether or not we are subject to His operation in the church? It is in vain to say, "I acknowledge the truth of His presence;" so much the worse, if I am not subject to the scripture, which leaves no doubt how He acts for Christ's glory. Mere words do not suffice: God looks for faithfulness, for subjection to His word, for practical recognition of the presence of the Holy Ghost.

We come together, it may be ever so few: what do we count on? We are weak and ignorant, but we have One in our midst who knows all things, and is the source of all power. Are we content with Him? Can we confide in Him in the face of dangers and difficulties? Why is it that the church is weak? Why is it that there is such want of power and joy and peace and comfort among the children of God? Can it be wondered at? What I wonder at is rather the mercy and astonishing patience of God, blessing as He does in spite of so much unbelief. Do you really suppose that it can be an indifferent thing to God? Does He not call for my unhesitating adhesion to His will, duly owning His Spirit's presence and free action? What about your bowing down to the great present fact, that in virtue of redemption and in honour of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Ghost is here personally in the church on earth? This puts the soul to the test; indeed, it seems to me the great test for Christians. Christ, of course, abides the practical touchstone for everything and every person; but still if He is known and valued by my soul as the way, the truth, and the life, is it nothing to Him that my ways in the church of God should be on the ground He has given me — faith in the presence of the promised Holy Ghost? Is it not the truth God Himself presupposes as the very soul, the animating spring, of the church?

This does not in the slightest degree touch God's working by individuals. He sends out one to preach the gospel to the world, He raises up another to edify the children of God. This is another branch of truth; and I refer to it now only to show that, when we contend for the church's inalienable obligation to own the presence of the Holy Ghost, this does not in the least interfere with the individual action of the Spirit in ministry. Granting this in all its integrity and importance, I would put the question to the conscience of each before me, Where is there an assembly of God's saints coming together, and His Spirit left perfect liberty of action that He may employ whom He will as the vessels of His power? Are there any Christians here present who never thus find themselves in the only assembly which God's word sanctions? If there are, I can only say, Ponder that word with prayer, and ask your soul how comes this? You, a member of God's assembly, yet you never know that assembly gathered according to scripture, or the action of the Spirit proper to it! You, a member of Christ's body, yet the Holy Ghost never allowed to use you, or other members of it, to the glory of Christ and the edification of your brethren! If it be so, how comes it? Why should you go on thus?

It is granted that there are serious questions here, and many obstacles; and I am sure we ought to pray much for those that are thus perplexed and encumbered. Let me not disguise from them what it costs in this world to be true to the Lord and the unerring word of God. It is not for any one (the Lord keep us far from it!) to look lightly or coldly on those who are in this grievous trial: we may have known some of its bitterness ourselves. What do we desire for God's children? Nothing less than their deliverance, yea, of every one. Do not all saints who rest upon the redemption of Christ belong to the body? Has not God set them as it pleased Him in His church? And what are we doing? Are we gathering together to improve on the Spirit's action in the church of God? God forbid: rather is it to honour the Lord in the assurance that He is in our midst. Our only true reason, if we have a divine reason at all, for meeting together in the name of the Lord Jesus, is that it is His own will and way; it is to please Him. And if it has been done at cost, God blesses this greatly, and blesses it too to the softening of the spirit quite as much as to the exercise of faith: if it is not so, there is something wrong with our souls. Am I, then, as the centre of my church-action, cleaving to the presence of the Holy Ghost? If I am not, I have not got Gods centre for mine, and am still under the dominion of tradition in some shape or another; carrying on either what my father did, or something else that suits my mind better: but where is God in all this?

You may be taunted, as we all know, with bigotry and exclusiveness. Did these censors ever weigh what either means? I call bigotry an unreasonable attachment, without solid divine warrant, to one's own particular doctrine or practice in defiance of all others. Allow me to ask, Is it bigotry to give up one's most cherished associations because of God's word, in order to do His will? Is it exclusive to abandon sects, one and all, in order to be always and only where I can meet all saints according to the word, and in dependence on the Holy Ghost, gathered unto Christ's name? I am not assuming this for any one who does not own scripture as the unchanging truth of God; but I ask you who do, are you to allow yourselves to depart from the known ground of God, no matter what may be the trial within or the temptation without you? There are often attachments of other kinds that create difficulty. Friends may ask you to go here or there for once at any rate; and it seems hard to refuse, especially as they understand not the force of a divine conviction, which they lack themselves. You invite them, perhaps, to come with you, and you decline going with them. Does it not look proud and unbrotherly? Well, it may seem singular to them, but it ought to be perfectly plain to you; it may be real humility, and love too, haughty and unkind as rash ignorance counts it.

Let us conceive a godly churchman or dissenter to put this plain question: "How is it that you, who are so free and hearty in receiving Christians in the name of Christ, will not come with me to my church or chapel?" The answer is, "On your own principles, as a Protestant Christian, you can come here with a good conscience, where we are sure the one desire is to be subject to the Lord and His word, in the unity of His body, and in the liberty of His Spirit! You surely acknowledge it is no sin to meet as we do, according to scripture, and therefore you can meet with us. But I, for my part, am clear that it is unscriptural to desert the scriptural ground for that of dissent or Anglicanism, and therefore it is not want of love but fear of sin that keeps me from going with you, who do not pretend to be meeting on the ground of God's assembly." Surely he is a bigot or worse who would urge or expect me to join him against my positive conviction, that in so doing I should sin against God. Sin is a man doing his own will, or another's, which is not God's. If you ask me to depart from what I know to be the will of God, it would of course be sin in me to comply. It is not only a thing that is sinful in itself, but it would be most especially a sin in me, because I know, if you are ignorant, that it is infidelity to the Spirit's operation in the church.

Be not moved, then, by reproaches, any more than by fair speeches. For there is no real love, save in obeying God. (1 John 5: 2, 3) Never swerve from what you believe to be His will. You may have come in at first little acquainted with the truth or with the solemn responsibilities it involves; perhaps it was on that slender reason that you were here converted: but how is it with you now? Have you been searching the word of God to ascertain His mind and will? Do you see the presence and action of the Holy Ghost in the assembly to be the truth of God? Is it not perfectly plain and sure that God has sent down His Spirit, and that this truth has to be owned and acted upon by you and all Christians? That truth* you cannot deny; you know very well it is of God; you may not value it as you ought, (who does?) but this is another thing. The Lord grant that we may all value it more and increasingly.

*That "the different denominations" present a state of things directly at variance with "one body and one Spirit" is too plain to call for argument with those who are used to bow to scripture, and to judge present facts by it. How painful then it is to read such sentiments as these in the recent words (June, 1869) of one whom I cannot but love and esteem for his work's sake! "I sometimes think that these will continue for ever. They are of no hurt to the church of God (!) but a great blessing (!); for some of them take up one point of truth which is neglected, and others take up another; and so between them all the whole of truth is brought out (!); and it seems to me that the church is even more one (!) than if all the various sections were brought together into one grand ecclesiastical corporation [who contends for this but a Papist or Puseyite?]; for this would probably feed some ambitious person's vanity, and raise up another dynasty of priestcraft like the old Babylon of Rome. Perhaps it is quite as well as it is; but let each body of Christians keep to its own work, and not sneer at the work of others." Alas! the word of God does not occur in all this reasoning of unbelief (though in a believer); but as usual the very publication in which it occurs is a witness that this justification of sin is as hollow as its profession of love and order. For a large portion is devoted to sneering at the only Christians who at this time are seeking to give practical effect to their faith in the "one body and one Spirit." With much, very much, of the paper on "Order Heaven's first Law" I go so heartily that I am the more grieved to notice, in however friendly a spirit, such flagrant inconsistency both in principle and in practice. Let us rather humble ourselves for our common sin, seek to walk in obedience and love while waiting for the Lord Jesus, but never abuse the grace of God to deny His truth which condemns our ways.

Search the Scriptures, examine the word of God for your own souls; by this means we obtain true spiritual intelligence, but this only in obedience, and we do not want it otherwise. The intelligence that is gathered in disobedience seems to me perilous and untrustworthy; to learn the truth, step by step acting it out, is a happier and holier path, and of simpler faith too. At the same time that we value intelligence, we must remember that there is another thing yet more important — single-eyed subjection to the will of God, even if we seem to be unintelligent about much. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." That scripture is not out of date; and I believe such is the divine and therefore the best way, as a beginning. There is blessedness in gradually growing up into the truth of God, above all looking to Him that we walk in that which we know.

For the present, I pray the Lord that the great truths of the "one body" and "one Spirit," which have been before us, may be brought home by His own power; so that all of us who know them may be cheered and confirmed, and that those who are ignorant may be taught them of Himself.

Lecture 3.

THE ASSEMBLY AND MINISTRY.

1 COR. 14.

The two subjects which are now to come before us may seem at first sight to be rather widely separated; but in truth, far as they appear to diverge, they equally flow from Christ. They are founded both of them upon His work, as an accomplished fact; they are derived from Him in His present place of exaltation at the right hand of God; they are established for the express object of magnifying the Lord Jesus, even as they are now called in a very direct way to subserve His Lordship. And this last point is one of immense practical importance. For whatever may be the power of the Spirit in ministry, whatever may be the privileges of the assembly, still the Lordship of Christ is a truth of elementary character indeed in the mind of God, but of exceeding moment for the practical working of the Spirit of God, both in the individual members, who are His servants, and in the assembly, the body of which He is the Head. Hence we can at once see that, whatever may be the different lines that either the ministry or the assembly may take, yet they spring from a common source, and they are both intended of God to be subject to, and the means of exalting, the same Lord Jesus Christ. Now it will be my business tonight to direct attention to the testimony we have in the word of God as to both these subjects, in order to show, as far as limits permit, wherein they differ; wherein also a common principle binds them together; and above all their common end, as well as the Christian's consequent responsibility.

First of all, as to the assembly, we may be the more brief, inasmuch as we have had already the "one body" before us, as well as the "one Spirit." But I may direct you to a few scriptures which prove what I have just advanced, that the assembly of God is founded upon the accomplished work of Christ, and His exaltation to heavenly glory.

Let me premise that the church has the same meaning with the assembly; hence the word "assembly" is often used in order to avoid misunderstanding. There might be many questions raised as to the meaning of "church:" it is hardly possible to create difficulties as to the word "assembly." Now the fact is that the church is the assembly. Assembly is the proper English word, rather than "church," which has become anglicized, no doubt, but it frequently conveys notions not only vague, but even opposite to different minds.

Now in the Acts of the Apostles, as compared with Matthew 16, we find clear light. The Lord, at a very critical point in His dealings with the disciples, tells Peter more particularly, but all His followers in fact, that He was going to build His assembly. "Upon this rock," says He, "I will build my church." The reason of this was that the unbelief of the Jewish people was complete, after He had given the fullest divine proof, both in miracles and signs, in accomplished prophecies, and above all in the moral power which ever hung around Him — a brighter crown of glory than anything in either miracle or prophecy. But when the Lord had, so to speak, exhausted all the means which even His goodness and wisdom could suggest in acquiescence with the will of God the Father, and the result of His patient grace was that the unbelief and scorn of the true Messiah became more and more decided, the spirit of hostility becoming more evidently deadly in its character, He brings all to issue by asking who men said that He was. The answer showed the total uncertainty of Israel; nay, rather the only certainty was that men, the best and wisest of them, humanly speaking; those that had seen most of Him, were completely wrong. He appeals then, not to some great one, but to a heart that was true — to Simon the son of Jonas; and from his lips falls that confession for which the Lord Himself pronounced him blessed — blessed because it was not of flesh and blood, with their mere weakness and opposition to God. It was the Father who was in heaven who had revealed to his soul the glorious truth, that underneath that despised form — that outcast, the Nazarene, was not only the Christ, but the Son of the living God. The Lord Jesus immediately lays holds of this confession, and, with especial reference to the latter part of it — His being not merely the Messiah or Christ, but the Son of the living God, He says, "Upon this rock I will build my church."

The Messiah, in shame and humiliation, was a stumbling-stone to Israel; but the Son of the living God confessed was the rock upon which the church is built. This was a fuller confession, and a deeper one — in all its fulness certainly new, and so treated of the Lord. Not but that, as we know, Christ was the Son of the living God from all eternity; but still for the first time He was so confessed by human lips, and by a heart taught of God the Father. The Lord Jesus, then, also for the first time, intimates that upon this confession His church was to be built; and immediately He forbids them to tell that He was the Christ, showing that it was no question now of being received and reigning as Messiah. He was to be rejected, and to suffer. Hence, on His rejection by the people, but the recognition of the higher glory of His person by the remnant represented by Peter, we have His sufferings and death at once announced. This it is which opened the door for that new work of God — the church that was to be built upon the confession of Jesus Christ, "the Son of the living God." Accordingly soon follows the Lord dying on the cross, determined to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, then glorified, and in due time sending down the Holy Ghost from heaven. The second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which shows the presence of the Holy Ghost, gives us for the first time the assembly as an existing fact on earth. This is worthy of all note. The Lord in Matt. 16 had spoken of His assembly as a thing that had yet to be reared up: "Upon this rock I will build my church." But now in Acts 2 we find the church is in process of being built; as it is said in the end of the chapter, "the Lord added to the church* (or, together) daily such as should be saved."

* It has been objected that some editors, as Lachmann and others, have omitted τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ here in deference to the Sinai, Vatican, Alexandrian, and Rescript of Paris, and a few juniors, with the Vulgate, Coptic, Aethiopic, and Armenian versions; but all the other uncials and cursives, with the Syriac, Arabic, and Slavonic versions, not to speak of early citations, accept the word; and these were followed by Griesbach, Scholz, etc., as well as Bengel hesitatingly. Tischendorf, who had at first rejected the common reading, replaced it in his later editions, though probably will now incline him once more against it. But it ought to be remembered that even the school of Lachmann, if they reject it, separate ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό from Acts 3: 1, so that the passage would make the sense substantially the same as if τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ, "to the church," were read; namely, "The Lord was adding daily together those that should be saved." Hence in Acts 4: 23 it is said of Peter and John, that when let go, they went to their own company (πρὸς τούς ἰδίους). There was now a new association to which they belonged distinct from the old congregation of Israel; and this beyond a question is formally called ἡ ἐκκλησία in Acts 5: 11, not as if it were then called into being, but most evidently as already subsisting and known. It is clear then that independently of the phrase in Acts 2: 47, "the assembly," in a New Testament sense, did in fact begin at Pentecost, as is confessed by Pearson, Whitby, and others.

This is a very important lesson, and full of weighty results. It proves that the church does not mean merely people that are saved, or in process of being saved. Salvation was true before the assembly. The Lord took such as should be saved, and brought them into the church. If there had been no assembly to bring, them into, this would not have negatived the fact that they were "such as should be saved."

What is the meaning of "such as should be saved"? It means those in Israel destined to be saved — those Jews whom grace was looking upon and dealing with in their souls. In the approaching dissolution of the Jewish system God reserved to Himself a remnant according to the election of grace. There was always this remnant, which a time of declension and ruin served but to define. Thus, during the Lord's lifetime the disciples were the remnant, or "such as should be saved." All those that were soon to confess Jesus as Messiah by the Holy Ghost were "such as should be saved;" but there was no such thing yet as the church to add them to. Now, at the time referred to in Acts 2, the assembly or church was there to which they might be added. Coincident with the Holy Ghost's presence, we have the church; and this agrees with 1 Cor. 12: 13, where it is said that "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body;" that is to say, the formation of the body depends upon the baptism of the Spirit. Acts 1 shows that the baptism of the Spirit had not yet taken place; Acts 2 shows that it had; and immediately the fact is apparent that the church was there as a thing actually found upon the earth, to which "such as should be saved" were being added by the Lord. That is, the Lord now had a house upon the earth. The stones were there before — living stones, but they were separate: there was no building, of God in this sense here below.

Now the Lord acts upon His words, "Upon this rock I will build my church." He brings the living stones together; He builds them into one and the same house — the house of God, and this not by faith merely, but by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. We know that, before they thus entered the church, there were at least a hundred and twenty names who are expressly mentioned in Acts 1. They too were "such as should be saved." And I do not doubt that there were considerably more who really were brethren. Thus, in 1 Cor. 15: 6, we hear of "above five hundred brethren" who saw the Lord after His resurrection. Therefore, it is plain, there were pretty many believers in the land of Israel. The "hundred and twenty" were those who, at or after the crucifixion, lived in Jerusalem. But whatever might be the number of the brethren throughout the land, or of the names in Jerusalem, there was no such thing, as "the church," the assembly of God, until the Holy Ghost was sent down to give unity — to form them into one existing corporation, whether you regard it as the house of God, or as the body of Christ. There are very important differences connected with these views of the assembly; but still it is the presence of the Holy Ghost which makes it either Christ's body or the temple of God. In 1 Cor. it is spoken of as constituted by the Holy Ghost, present and operating in it; there also it is called the body of Christ, as we see from the scripture just referred to: "By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body."

Obviously this is extremely important, because what people think and talk about as the "invisible church" — though scripture never uses the expression — was substantially in existence before "the church;" and, in fact, this invisible state of things is what the Lord was putting an end to, when He formed the church. In Old Testament times, we all know, there was a nation which God accounted and called His people, in the midst of whom there were isolated believers, as no doubt there were other believers among the Gentiles. Thus, there was Job, for instance, in early days; and every now and then, throughout the scriptures, we have one Gentile and another who evidently manifested divine life in them, and a looking for the Redeemer, outside the limits of Israel. For all that, there was no such thing as "the church" — no gathering together of the scattered believers into one, till the death of Christ. The children of God had been scattered abroad, but then they were gathered together. Henceforth disciples in Israel were not only destined to salvation, but they were gathered into one upon the earth. This is the church. The assembly necessarily supposes a gathering of the saints into one body, separate from the rest of mankind. There was no such body before. Hence, to talk of "the church" in Jewish times, or in earlier days, is altogether a mistake. The mixture of believers with their unbelieving countrymen (i.e., what is called "the invisible church") was the very thing which the Lord was concluding — not beginning — when He "added to the church daily such as should be saved."

The common error upon this subject is, that the aggregate of those that are to be saved composes the church. But the contrary appears from this scripture and many others. Up to this time "such as should be saved" were not in the church. Now the Lord takes and adds them day by day together, making up one assembled body. Thus, it is quite evident that "the assembly" is one thing, and the being saved is another. Of course, salvation is true of those that are in and of the church. The Lord does not leave "such as should be saved" in their old associations, but gradually builds them together into the church. But the two ideas are so totally distinct, that, all through the Old Testament, there were "such as should be saved," and yet there was no "church of God," in the sense we are now deducing from scripture. The assembly of Israel no doubt there was, and it is called the "congregation of Jehovah" — the "assembly," if you will, of Jehovah; but then that was merely the nation, the entire mass of the Jewish people. It was out of this very nation that the first nucleus of "the church" was taken; and the Holy Ghost having just come down to dwell in those that were already there, the Lord takes the others that were converted at Pentecost or afterwards, and adds them to the existing body — the church now in course of formation. Evidently, therefore, the first covenant state that was now ready to vanish away answers to what people mean when they speak of "a visible and invisible church." They would call the Jewish nation the visible church, and "such as should be saved" in their midst, the invisible church. Well, let them so speak, if they will; but all I now affirm, and wish to impress upon every one who is subject to the word of God, is that, as applied to what the New Testament calls "the church of God," this kind of thought and language is condemned by the clear and positive statements of God's word. I would not speak so strongly if scripture left the smallest shadow of doubt upon the point. But if the word of God is express, it seems to me criminal for a believer to speak doubtfully. Not only is he not doing all he should do, but he is really helping on the spirit of infidelity in the world. We owe it to our God to be firm where His word is plain; we owe it to Him to be uncompromising as well as obedient. If the word of God be thus explicit, that now for the first time we have "the church," formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost vouchsafed to believers, and that those who were destined to salvation, "such as should be saved," were taken out of Israel and added to that assembly, then I say that the church, in the New Testament sense of the word, never did or could exist before — that it began there and then — that it consists of saved people taken out of the Jews first, and then out of the Gentiles afterwards, as we know, but both brought into one existing body upon the earth. That body is, and is called, "the church," or the assembly of God.

In due time the Lord began to extend the work. Thus, in Acts 8, we find Samaria receiving the gospel, and the Holy Ghost subsequently given to the believers. We have afterwards the Ethiopian eunuch brought to the knowledge of Christ. Then the great apostle of the Gentiles is so converted as to be the fittest witness of grace, as well as of the church — one with Christ in heaven: as indeed in Col. 1 he styles himself not only minister of the gospel, but of the church. Only he treats of it as the body of Christ.

By the way, in passing, I would remark that Acts 9: 31 has its force impaired, to say the least, in the common Greek text and English version, "Then had the churches rest," we read, "throughout all Judæa, and Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." Now the best copies and most ancient versions give "the church," not "the churches." I admit fully there were churches in all these districts; but there is nothing peculiar in this. But that which, I am persuaded, the Spirit of God wrote here, was "the church." Minds were perplexed very early indeed. The idea of the church as a subsisting united society upon the earth is easily lost sight of, particularly when we look at different districts and countries, such as Judæa, and Galilee, and Samaria. The true reading at once leads us back to the substantial unity that belonged to the church, or assembly of God, here below. There might be ever so many assemblies throughout Judæa, and Samaria, and Galilee, but it was the church. I admit that we often hear of the churches of Judæa, and of other countries, as Galatia for instance. No one questions the fact of many different assemblies in these different lands. But then there is another truth which has not been seen for a long while by the great mass of God's children — not only that God set up a body which did not exist before, but that wherever assemblies might be, it was all the assembly. Not only did He constitute the church upon earth, susceptible of daily growth, but while He extended the work, while He formed fresh assemblies in this or that district and country, it was nevertheless one and the same church wherever it might be. This scripture, rightly read, furnishes a strong proof of it; and I will now just add that the best authorities leave no doubt on my mind as to this. The word churches supplanted the church at an early day; and probably it is due to the fact that very soon the copyists, like other people, began to lose sight of the unity which God was establishing among His children upon the earth.* It is so much more natural to conceive merely of distinct churches, than to take in the precious truth of the church wherever it is found upon the face of the earth. This may have led to assimilating the true phrase to another and more familiar one, especially when the sense of unity decayed and disappeared.

* The external authority stands thus. The Alexandrian, the Vatican, the Palimpsest of Paris, and the Sinai MSS. are documents of the highest value, which agree in reading "the church," not "the churches." In this they are supported by the most important cursive extant, now in the British Museum, along with a fair number of others. Of the ancient versions, there is not one of first-rate authority which does not confirm the singular — the Peschito Syriac, Coptic,, Sahidic, Vulgate, AEthiopic, Armenian, and the Erpenian Arabic. The most ancient Uncial which gives the plural form is that of Laud, in the Bodleian Library, of about the sixth or seventh century, supported by two others of the ninth century, with the mass of cursives, the Philoxenian Syriac, and an Arabic version. But even here it is to be remarked that the weightiest, or Laudean copy, is unquestionably wrong in reading "all the churches;" and the others may have been influenced by Acts 16: 5. It is certainly easier to suppose that the less usual form might have been changed by scribes to a common type, than that the very old authorities joined in an error, which the crowd of juniors escaped. Ordinarily the tendency runs in a direction, exactly opposite.

From the historical account in the Acts of the Apostles, let us turn to the instruction which the rest of the New Testament affords as to the assembly. First, the Lord in Matt. 18 had laid down the spirit in personal matters that was to actuate the assembly, beginning with one of its members. He had shown there, that the legal spirit is quite out of place. He had pointed out in the most beautiful manner how He Himself was the Son of man that came "to seek and to save that which was lost" — not merely that He was the Shepherd of Israel, gathering His own people, but that He was come in quest of the lost, in the pure and simple and full grace of God. Take a case which He knew might occur in the assembly He was going to build — the case of one brother trespassing against another: what was to guide? Not law, nor nature, but grace. The righteousness of man would say: "The man that has done the wrong must come and humble himself." "No," says grace, "go you after him." "What! after the man that did me this wrong?" "Yes, it is exactly what the Lord has done." That is, the Lord puts His own grace as the pattern, and spring, and power that is to govern the individual, and of course also to be the life-breath of the assembly. Consequently we find: "If thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone." He that was trespassed against becomes in grace the active party. He goes, and for what purpose? To tell his brother his fault. What a call for the painstaking and self-abnegation of love! And if his brother hear him, he has "gained his brother." What a requital, even now from the Lord! It would be indeed a sorrow to the heart that he should go farther astray. Thus it is that love, divine love, reproduces itself in those that the Lord is not ashamed to call His brethren. He calls them to be the witnesses, not of the servant by whom the law was given, but of Himself, who was full of grace and truth. Accordingly, then, grace is the energetic influence that works; but truth is not set aside for a moment. Still less can the Christian entertain that pride of heart and indifference that would say, "Well, he has acted wrongly; I am above it, and will take no notice of it." There would be in this a spirit of hard forgetfulness of Christ and His grace, as well as the world's indifference about one's brother. There is no allowance of either in our Saviour's words. Again, the legal principle, right as it is in itself, of dealing with a man as he deserves, is entirely excluded. Divine grace, as seen in the person and mission of the Saviour of the lost, works in the soul if we follow His voice. We know well how easily it might be forgotten, and how the heart might reason: "Because he is my brother, he is the less excusable — he ought to know better." There is truth in this: no doubt, he ought to know it; but if he does not, you may at least feel what is your place and privilege. "Go and tell him," etc. Thus the Lord does not lay down a law for the wrong-doer to find his way back, but calls the man that is in the right to go forth, not in the spirit of right, but of grace, to win him who is wrong; and if the latter hears, the former has gained his brother. If the wrong-doer refuses to hear, the thing is to be laid before others. "If he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established." There would be as it were a combined action of grace brought to bear upon the offender's soul, that he may hold out no longer. It was bad enough to refuse one: can he refuse one or two more? Well, but if he does neglect to hear them, what then? The whole church hear and speak; all the objects and witnesses of divine grace who are in the place are intent and occupied with the trespasser. Can he reject the church? If he does, "let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."

Brethren, what sentence so terrible as the sentence of grace and truth rejected? And thereby is seen the sad mistake that is often made when men talk about love, but I am afraid with little appreciation of it. There must be a love in deed and in truth from Christ Himself, to begin and go on with such a work as this. But observe, the very same delight in and submission to Christ which can carry one after a personal offender thus, not as a bare duty, but with fervent desire to win him back — the self-same spirit of faith regards him, if refractory, "as a heathen man and a publican." He may be really a converted man; but he who rejects the grace of Christ thus flowing out according to the truth, is no longer to be counted as a brother. No matter whether he is really a brother or not before God, he is rejecting the Lord, as it were, in those that represent Him on earth in His assembly. "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."

This, then, is the Lord's weighty and standing lesson before the assembly came into existence; but we are not left only to these preliminary preparations of the Lord. In 1 Cor., and more particularly in the chapter that was read, is a very full account of the way in which the Lord orders the assembly. Before calling your attention to this, let me refer first of all to chapter 12, where the subject of spiritual manifestations begins. There you find the Holy Ghost in active operation. He is at work in the various members of the assembly of God. For "there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal; for to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another, faith, by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit" — and so on. But if we have here spiritual acting in the assembly, observe that the subject opens by tests that decide between the spirits that were not of God, and the Holy Ghost. It is not a question of settling who are Christians and who are not, but of discriminating what is of the Holy Spirit from the spirits that are opposed to Him — the instruments of the enemy.

And what may these tests be? "No one speaking by the Spirit of God, says Jesus [is] accursed (or anathema); and no one can say Lord Jesus but by the Holy Spirit." Thus the Holy Spirit of God would never treat Christ as in His own person, or relationship to God, under a curse. This is a very simple and solemn test, and ought to be weighed by us — I think I may say, beloved brethren, by us especially. For in our own days a most audacious effort of the devil has been put forth. Have not men dared to assert that the Lord Jesus, in His own relationship to God as a man upon the earth, was under the curse of the broken law? — that He was under the effects, as between His soul and God, of man's distance from God? At once we discern what spirit this is. "No man speaking by the Holy Ghost calleth Jesus accursed." On the other hand, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." When an evil spirit works, he may utter many fine things; he may appear to exalt Christ and His servants, as we see in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles; but he never owns Jesus as Lord. It is the sure mark of an evil spirit to lower Jesus, by bringing Him in some way or other for Himself, under the curse. I am not speaking of His taking that place upon the cross by grace, but of His own place as man with God, apart from atonement. The pretence may be thereby to increase His sympathy towards us, or to enhance His triumph over the difficulty, and His extrication from it; but no one speaking by the Holy Ghost says Jesus is accursed. Then you have the counter-test, that those who own the Lordship of Jesus, own Him in the power of the Holy Ghost. This is no question of souls being saved, but a means of detecting what manner of spirit is active in the church. It is the scriptural touchstone for discovering those that are under the power of an evil spirit, and those that speak by the Holy Ghost. What is of the Holy Ghost really exalts Christ, and gives Him His due place as Lord. The spirit of error as surely seeks to debase His person and frustrate His work.

The Holy Spirit invariably maintains two things — the glory of Christ as to His person, and the Lordship of Christ as to His place: the one fitting for, and the other flowing from His work. Now this at once prepares the way for the important and practical truth, that the great object of the assembly of God is the recognition of Christ as Lord. We are, therefore, at once cast upon the question, Has the Lord given regulations for His assembly, or has He left us to ourselves? Have we no directing principle for the manner in which the assembly of God is to conduct itself in this world? Is the church wholly abandoned, as it were, to its spiritual instincts? Is it to be moulded by the particular age or country in which the saints may be found? I trust there is no person here who would endorse thoughts so evidently of mere nature as these. What! the Christian assembly dependent on age or country! Can those who so speculate or act really believe that the church of God is a creature of the world after all; that God has left it, like a foundling, to be one thing here and another thing there? Institutions such as these might be good or bad churches of man, but certainly one is at a loss to conceive what pretensions they can set up to be the church of God. It is of all consequence that, be it the simplest believer, his heart should understand and keep firm hold of this, so patent in scripture, that if there be one thing that is precious to God upon the earth, it is His church; that if there be one thing God is above all jealous of maintaining therein, it is the glory of Christ; and that it is not in the world yet, but in the children of God, that God Himself is now active by His Spirit, for the purpose of glorifying Christ. But, as usual in His ways, whatever is set up on the earth is always first tried here, and then it is put into Christ's hands, by whom the divine counsels are accomplished infallibly. Today is the time of trial. When Jesus comes, there will be no further trial in this respect. The church will then enter into the due place which is reserved for it in the purpose of God. The hour of our responsibility will be over. But now is the time when the children of God are being put to the test.

Remark, moreover, that one object of the First Epistle to the Corinthians is to show that theirs was an infant church, an assembly of persons not long gathered out of the world, and hence in much practical ignorance. You see them assailed by evils that in these days would not be ordinarily a trial among the children of God. There was certainly a very low state of moral thought and feeling, and, in one case at least, such grossness of outward conduct as was not heard of even among the Gentiles. It would seem that the devil had used particular pains to take advantage of the happy liberty of these young, Christians. They forgot all about the flesh, being so occupied with the power of the Spirit. They do not seem to have reflected upon their dangers. They did not walk in self-judgment. You must remember that they had few of the New Testament scriptures as yet, and that the apostle had not been long teaching them. Of course afterwards there was an amazing advantage gained through their very fall by the instruction which the Holy Ghost gave from it to others, and, we may trust, to themselves. Yet the epistle clearly shows that the infant church at Corinth had the responsibility of the church of God. It is the only one that is expressly thus addressed — "the church of God." At that time no apostles were there, nor it would seem elders either; but I shall have an opportunity of adverting to this more fully by-and-by. There was, however, no lack of gifted people; yet remark, spiritual order is not produced by such manifestations of power, but by subjection to Christ as Lord. It is not enough to be enriched in all utterance and knowledge. Few churches had gifts more abundantly than the assembly in Corinth. It was notwithstanding a most disorderly spectacle; and the reason was, that they were exercising those powers without reference to the Lord's will and glory, and so for their own ends. They were pleasing themselves — exalting themselves. In their new-born exuberance, they were giving the loose rein to all the spiritual energy that had been bestowed upon them, and the consequence was that there was the special need of bringing them back into the ways of God.

Whatever may be the power of the Spirit by and in men on the earth, it should always be made subservient to Christ the Lord. The Corinthians did not understand this, and they are reminded of it from the very beginning of 1 Corinthians 1 — "Those that call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." So all through the epistle you will find great emphasis laid upon His being Lord. We have it here in reference to the bestowal and character of these gifts. So again in 1 Corinthians 14 we have the exercise of these gifts regulated in the assembly. The church comes together into one place; there the saints meet as the assembly of God. Did they then speak in a tongue? It was in vain to plead that the Spirit of God undoubtedly enabled them so to speak. Again there is no question raised as to the quality of the unknown subject-matter: it might be all true, sound, and good; but the Lord proscribes what does not edify the assembly. As a general rule, in the absence of one who could interpret, the exercise of these tongues is forbidden in the assembly.

This is a most momentous matter for practice. No matter how truly a man has a power which comes from the Holy Ghost, he is not always to use it; more than this, he is bound to use it in obedience to Christ. There are certain regulations laid down to which he must submit himself. The apostle takes up prophesying particularly, because it was the highest form of acting on the conscience; as in mentioning the various gifts, he (1 Cor. 12: 28) put diversities of tongues in the lowest place. Thus he rebuked the vanity of the Corinthians; for what they made more of than anything else, the apostle reduces to the last rank. "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." Then after the most precious unfolding of love in 1 Cor. 13 (how needful in these matters!) he comes to the due exercise of gift in the assembly in 1 Cor. 14 "If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth." Observe the weight of the principle which the apostle here insists upon. God has formed the church, the assembly, as a testimony to Christ upon the earth — a testimony to His Lordship. The consequence is, whatever would give a false, or even a vainglorious testimony, whatever would prompt men to say "Ye are mad" is forbidden, no matter how certainly the power, thus misused, itself might be of God. The gift of tongues, for instance, evidently was of the Holy Ghost and not of nature; but its use is subjected to divine regulations, as we see here. And this has a wide scope: indeed, I hold it to be the grand criterion for every Christian man to apply both for his own conduct and for judging that of others. But when we speak of judging what others do or say, need I add that it becomes us to weigh all humbly and in love, seeing well to it that we are not thinking of ourselves but of the glory of the Lord? But I do say that we are always bound to think of the glory of the Lord; and therefore, no matter under what circumstances, no matter where, we are responsible to judge in subjection to Him.

Prophesying here, evidently, does not mean predicting, as some might suppose; nor, as others say, mere preaching. There is a great deal of preaching, which is not prophesying. Indeed, it might well be affirmed that the preaching of the gospel is never, rightly considered, prophesying; for this last is that character of teaching which lays the conscience bare in the presence of God, and brings God and man thus close together, if I may venture so to put it. Therefore this is what the apostle contrasts with the exercise of a tongue. The tongue was forbidden, if there were no interpreter; and for the plain reason, that otherwise it would not edify the church. The object of all that is done there must be "unto edifying." Whatever therefore does not edify is not fit for the assembly of God, and ought not to be allowed there. It may be well meant; it may be by the Holy Ghost, as regards power; but whatever is not intelligible, and has not the character of building up the saints of God, is not fit for the assembly. These things might be very well out of the assembly; nay, it was their proper place, as a testimony to unbelievers. But they had no business in the assembly, if their exercise did not tend to the instruction, exhortation, or comfort of the assembly; and edify the assembly they could not, unless there was one who had the gift of the interpretation of tongues, and could, therefore, turn them to present account in the building up the saints of God in the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ.

This then is the rule by which all is to be governed. "If any man speak in an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course; and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God." But suppose you are prophets; suppose you can speak to edification in this powerful way, "let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge." Here the apostle takes the example of the prophets in contradistinction to the tongues; for everything the prophet said was for the express purpose of edifying. While therefore he admits them to be in the first rank of the gifts of edification, there is this other important guard asserted, that, precious and profitable as prophesying may be, no more than two or three were to speak on the same occasion. Doubtless, they were to speak one after another; they were to speak in order and by course; mutually subject, but not more than two or three. Why so? Because it would not tend to the very edification which was the great object of prophesying; it would be overdoing, being more than the saints could really profit by; and therefore there are these defined limits. Granted that prophets give the highest character of Christian instruction; but only two or three were to speak, and the others were to judge.

"If anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace." There might be then that which no longer exists, any more than speaking in a tongue; that is, revelation. This must be carefully remembered. The truth of God may be brought, in the most powerful manner, by the Holy Spirit, to bear upon the conscience, so that even now, as then, there may be the firmest conviction conveyed to an unbeliever who might come in, that God was there. I do not doubt that this is perfectly possible, and may be now at any time; and I would to God it were always! But this is a wholly distinct thing from a revelation. God may use Christian instruction of a powerful character from the written word as a testimony to His own presence among His children on earth. But revelation cannot, ought not, to be now looked for. The apostle was instructing these saints before the canon of scripture was closed. All the truth of God was not then written; and therefore it seems to me to be the fact, that, according to the order of God, there might have been a positive revelation then given, while much of the word of God remained to be written. Whereas to pretend to revelation now would be clearly an impeachment of the perfectness of scripture, and I have no doubt would soon prove to be nothing but the fraud or folly of man, and a snare of the devil. Whatever might be the power of the Spirit of God at work now, it must be by means of truth already revealed — truth already in scripture. It is not something added to that which God has given, but the mighty use, in the hand of the Spirit of God, of what is already furnished and permanently given for the church's help in passing through this world. There may be a recovery of what has been hid by unbelief from the saints; but it is there. A new truth, revealed now for the first time, is incompatible with the scripture as the complete book of God.

If we have certain things, even in this chapter that clearly refer to what was then in existence and not now, the very fair question may be asked by a simple-minded person desirous of understanding the word of God — "Why do you maintain that such a chapter as this is meant to regulate the assembly now? It is clear that you have not these tongues, and that there cannot be any revelation of a new truth. If there are such modifications, why do you contend for this chapter as God's permanent rule for His assembly?" The answer is quite simple. The Spirit of God necessarily regulated what was there before Him; but then the great aim of all the instruction is not miraculous powers nor any other transient actings, which were evidently for the special object of testimony in the early days of Christianity. None of these things forms the centre of these chapters. What does? THE PRESENCE OF THE HOLY GHOST. To this one point all grave consideration and sober arguing of the subject must come.

Have we that one and the same Spirit still? Can we count upon His presence? Do we believe that He deigns even now to act in the assembly? How many, day after day, say, "I believe in the Holy Ghost;" but do they prove their faith by their works? I would ask you, and desire to ask every saint of God, Do you believe in the real presence of the Holy Ghost as a Divine person, who is with the church, who is in the saints, who is there expressly for carrying on the assembly according to the word of the Lord, and for maintaining the Lordship of Christ there? If we have the Holy Ghost; if He be in and with the saints still; if this be a certain truth, and not dependent for proof upon a particular part of scripture where miracles and signs are spoken of, but quite as clearly laid down where these have no place whatever, if He be positively promised to abide with us for ever, then I demand, how does He act? Does unbelief dare to make the Spirit no better than a dumb idol? Allow me to put a question or two: Has the Holy Spirit abandoned the word of the Lord as His only standard for our practice as well as faith? Or is it that men bring cunningly devised reasons for avoiding subjection to that word? But is it possible that children of God can content themselves with any reasons for disobedience? Alas! it is no want of charity to speak thus. They can quote continually, "Let all things be done unto edifying;" and, "Let all things be done decently and in order." But do they ever reflect that not even the Corinthians had so violated the order of God's assembly by their unbecoming displays, as they themselves do every day by a routine of their own (fixed or extempore), which does not resemble the form, any more than it embodies the spirit, of the divine order? There is the very chapter they quote on the one side; there are on the other the plain positive facts of their religious practice habitually.

You have the church of God no longer on the ground of one assembly — no longer holding to such a foundation-principle as liberty for the Spirit therein to edify by whom He pleases. You have different religious associations set up, often peculiar to different countries, and in no respect answering to either the assembly or the assemblies in the word of God. If a man belonged to the church of God at Jerusalem, he belonged to the church of God at Rome. It was merely a question of locality. He was a member of the church of God, and therefore, wherever it might be, he if there belonged to the church in that place, Scripture does not recognize membership of a church, but of the church. If the church of God was in a given place, the Christian, unless put away, finds his place within it. You never find, I repeat, in scripture, anything about membership of a church; it is always of the church. This is a most significant difference, as indicating the departure of Christendom from God's word. For in our days, if you belong to this church, you do not for that very reason belong to that church. Instead of your membership in the church of God being the ground why you are a member of it everywhere, on the contrary, so great is the change, that now the fact of belonging to one church is the best possible proof that you do not belong to another. If you belong to the church of Scotland, you have no such connection with the church of England; if you are a Baptist, you do not at the same time belong to the Wesleyan society, or to any other of the Dissenting bodies. Scripture knows nothing of the kind.

Thus the revolution of Christendom is complete. A state of things entirely outside the word of God, and contrary to the word of God, has come in. Religious societies, independent of one another, have sprung up. I am not now speaking particularly of what is commonly called the Independent or Congregational system, though there the principle is carried out more antagonistically than in any other to the unity of the assembly of God as scripture presents it. But take any or every one of them; they are all more or less independent. It is so even to a large extent with the national Establishment. On the contrary, in the times of those who laid the foundation of God's assembly, he who belonged to the church at all, of course belonged to it where he lived; but if he moved or journeyed to another place, he was received according to his place in the church everywhere. There might be in some cases a doubt as to his reality; for subtlety as well as violence assailed the early Christians. Hence they carried letters of commendation, or they were visited: that is, just the principle of what is now available can be shown in scripture. Thus, in the case of Saul of Tarsus, when Barnabas heard the news of his remarkable conversion, he did not like other disciples think such a work too hard for the Lord; but, being a good man and full of the Holy Ghost, he is quite ready to believe what grace could do, and goes and finds Saul, who is thus recognized of the church in Jerusalem. So now, if a stranger comes forward, professing to be a believer in the gospel, persons in whom all can confide visit him; and thus the church upon their representation, conscientiously and heartily accepts the confessor of Christ.

But we are not confined to any one rigid canon whatever. There is divine light in the word of God for every possible exigency, and if we have not that light, we had better wait on the Lord, and see whether the precious fulness of scripture will not be rendered without doubt applicable to the difficulty, by the power of the Spirit, without our presuming to add anything like a rule to meet the case. It is not meant that there may never be perplexity, and that we may not feel our weakness and lack of wisdom. Humility, patience, and faith will ere long prove better solvents than all the appliances of human art. God has undertaken to provide for us in His word; and spiritual power consists in the bringing that word, by the Spirit, to bear practically upon every case that comes before us.

The main point on which I insist, however is this — that, according to scripture, he who becomes a member of the church of God at all is a member of it everywhere. He might carry letters of commendation to the assembly where he went. But why? Because all through the world it was the church of God. Now I ask you, ought we to accept as God's assembly anything systematically different from the scriptural account of it? Ought we to allow another and contrary principle to rule its public services? If we do, are we really in this subject to the word of God? You may tell me of the obstacles which exist now, and that you have so many difficulties to contend with. All this is granted: only let us hold fast that here, as elsewhere, the will of God is paramount to all other considerations. If we find ourselves accrediting that which opposes scripture, our business is to cease from doing evil, and to learn to do well.

It is not our duty — far from it — to form a new church, but to cleave to that which is the oldest of all, and the only church that is true — the assembly of God as it is exhibited in scripture. Why do you hesitate? Are you not satisfied with the church of God? Whose church, what church do you prefer?

But you allege that times and circumstances entirely differ now; and you ask, with a sort of triumphant air, whether two or three Christians meeting here and there can be God's assembly? Undoubtedly, I reply, there is a sorrowful change; but the true question is, does God's will about His assembly change? Which is right — to accept man's change, or to go back to God's will, even though there be but two or three who meet together in submission to His word? If I am with them gathered to the Lord's name, owning the members of His body, waiting upon God to work by His word and Spirit, is not Jesus in our midst? And what so great comfort for our souls? I hope to prove, another evening, that this is the express provision of the Lord for these last days; but however this be, all I stand to now is, that the free action of the Spirit, among the gathered members of Christ, is the one principle of the assembly of God laid down in His word. There can be no other which He sanctions. Either I am acting upon it, or I am not. If I am seeking to be faithful thus to the Lord, blessed am I, whatever my sorrow for the state of the church. If I am not, at any rate let me confess my faithlessness. The word of God leaves no doubt what His unchanging mind about His assembly is. The Holy Ghost is come for ever to guide His assembly. All that is wanted is a spirit of repentance and of faith. There are hindrances; there are ties; there must be a high price paid in this evil world for obedience to the Lord Jesus. But am I His? Do I value His love? Is He more precious to me than all else in this world? Is His yoke a burden? Is His will sweet to my soul? Then, I say, there is but one pathway. It is vain to be loud in our profession of readiness to go with the Lord to prison or to death. This He may not ask of us; but He does in effect demand of every Christian whether he is true to His own glory in the assembly of God. It is not a question of rival institutions pertaining to different countries, or to different leaders; neither is it a question of a special school of doctrine, or of a peculiar plan of discipline and government. Is old habit, is tradition, is interest in this life, to keep me back from faithfulness to that which God shows to be His will for His assembly?

If you see the will of the Lord, do not hesitate another day. Do not wait till everything is clear. It is not faith, when God calls one out, to say, first show me the land. Put away what you know to be wrong; never go on in what is without doubt contrary to the word of God. "To him that hath shall be given." Have you renounced what you know does not agree with, but opposes the word of God? Cleave to nothing but the word. Let me ask, for example, what you did last Lord's-day. Were you found, as a Christian, where you could honestly say, "I was in my place in the assembly of God?" Did the various members of the body come together trusting to the Holy Ghost to guide them, with an open door for this or that believer, as each had received the gift, to minister the same one to another, as good stewards of God's manifold grace? or were you joining with others where the scriptural plan would have been regarded as disorderly? If the latter, the Lord grant you to see clearly that you are not within the scene of His will, and of His glory in the assembly! I say not that you are strangers to the grace of Christ, or outside the work of the Holy Spirit — far from it. I believe He blesses not only in Protestant associations, but beyond them too. Is this to be uncharitable? I believe that the Spirit of God acts, wherever He sees fit graciously to use the name of Christ, for the good of believer and unbeliever. I for one doubt not for a moment that God has used His word for the conversion and comfort of souls among Roman Catholics — ay, and Romish priests, monks, and nuns. It may have been in a scanty measure, as assuredly the opposition to the truth is enormous, and the opening seems small indeed; but yet has it been really so down to our own days, and still more largely and clearly in the past.

But enough of this. The question is not whether the Spirit of God may not cause truth to take effect in this denomination or that. The chief thing before our souls now is, are we honouring Christ according to the word of God? Are we subject to the Lord in the assembly? Are we carrying out His will as far as we know it? We may fail in doing so — surely we all do. When you are thus come together, you may find some restless, some that do not altogether what they should; you may hear individuals that had better be silent, and you may see sometimes those silent whom it would be blessed to hear. It may be that they are yielding to a morbid sense of responsibility, and fear of criticism, and many other things that hinder their utterance of what is in their hearts. All this may readily be. Nobody denies the possibility or the fact of failure. But how does this in the least degree weaken the truth of God, or the bounden duty of His children?

Let me put a case that any believer may understand. The Holy Ghost dwells in you, if you are a Christian; but are you always acting in the Spirit? No. Does not the Spirit always abide? To be sure He does. You are always the temple of God; you never can be anything else, if you are members of Christ; but you may for all that sometimes grieve the Holy Spirit. Your obligation, however, never ceases. It is just so with the Spirit in the church.

Let the assembly come together. We will suppose they are converted, and have received the Spirit of God, and really do, as an assembly, look to Him to guide. I use that expression "as an assembly," because it is not assumed that every member understands the truth about the Spirit of God. Some of them may be very ignorant. It is more or less a shame for them, but there may be such cases, and in point of fact such there are. Some saints have been attracted by spiritual instinct, who may have been trained up in dissent or nationalism, and who settle down with little progress in intelligence. These are apt to bring in the effects of the routine in which they have been brought up spiritually, so to speak; and I need not say that their experience will not help them to be always submissive to the guidance of the Spirit. Nor is this at all confined to these only; for we know what weakness may be found among those that have been inured to the truth from their infancy. Their being where they are costs them but little; they have not known any deep sense of the ruin of Christendom. Their souls have been exercised feebly. I am supposing them to be converted, but coming into the truth of the church's position rather through parental training than at the loss of all; and so there is apt to be a taking for granted, without any divine conviction, that things are all right. Need I say how desirable it is that there should be real exercised spiritual intelligence as to the working of the Holy Ghost in God's assembly?

But then, allowing these drawbacks, and all the rest that might be added, the great fact holds good, that as certainly as the Holy Ghost dwells in every Christian man, so sure it is that He dwells in the whole assembly — in the church of God. What we have to consider is, whether individually, or as an assembly, we submit to be guided by Him to the glory of Christ. Indeed I cannot but judge it to be really Antinomian in principle, where men deliberately rest in this, that to be Christians is the one great matter — that if the Lord has shown us His grace, we need not make much ado about His will or anything else. Is it, then, come to this, that the great body of God's people not only do not know, but do not care to know, His will about His assembly? Do you resent this charge? Then search and see what is your desire as to this. Is it to be subject to the Lord and His word? Can there be a more direct test for me as a Christian, or a more evident way of proving my loyalty to my Lord, than in this very thing? If I belong to the assembly of God, ought I not to renounce everything inconsistent with the scriptural account and regulations of that assembly?

Further, let me warn you that have taken this position, that wrong principles, false doctrines, evil ways, may slip in. We know the devices of Satan; but what some of us may have said before they were thus proved, this we may repeat with increasing emphasis now, that as God's Spirit is the Spirit of truth, so is He the Spirit of holiness also. When, therefore, the assembly refuses to bow to God's word, preferring to accept evil publicly rather than judge it for Christ's sake, what is to be done in this case? First of course full testimony is to be given, and warning, private and public perhaps, and patient waiting on honest slowness and fear, in order to bring all right. But suppose all has been rejected, and the assembly in any place deliberately prefers its own ease or will to the word of God, what then? The duty of separation is even more peremptory than from the ordinary ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom; for it is a greater sin in the sight of God for those that have known the truth of God, and seemed to be acting upon it in faith, to abandon it for any reason whatever. Ought not these, then, to be parted from with yet more gravity and horror in the sight of God, than one would turn from the meetings of those who have never known the value of the Lord's name for the assembly of His saints?

At the same time, when you find an assembly — let it be small, or let it be great — come together, owning their faith in the Holy Ghost's presence, we should not be quick in laying a sin to their charge. Surely there is to be slowness in judging an assembly yet more than an individual. Are we to assume that our thoughts, our feelings, are necessarily according to God? Hence we find the all-importance of waiting upon the Lord. But still the fact remains, that if the public sin be certain and clear, and all warnings be rejected, the more the assembly takes the position of being God's assembly, the more is its departure from Him to be lamented, and one's back is to be turned upon it, because it is now at least a false profession. God looks for truth in His saints, but He looks for it also in His assembly. It is the place where He expects the manifestation of His character before men, and not only where He makes good the edification of His saints. Everywhere He holds to the glory of His Son. I admit all the difficulties from the rising up of national systems after the great Romish apostacy, from the spread of nonconformist bodies subsequently, and from more recent attempts of all kinds. But let me press upon all who hear me that we do not contend for anything of ours, whether inherited from our fathers, or an invention of our own; we do not contend for anything because it is new, nor even because it is old — had it the green age of three centuries, or the hoary hairs of fifteen hundred years. We return to the ground which it was our sin — Christendom's sin — to have left; we return to a way which we know to be absolutely good and true, because it is God's way. We take our stand upon the only divine foundation for the church. We have no confidence in ourselves, but are sure we are right and safe in commending ourselves to God and the word of His grace; and therefore we may be of good courage. If the character of our difficulties, dangers, and trials proves how we need the scripture, we learn also how scripture applies ever fresh and mighty; and thus our hearts are encouraged to cleave to God more and more.

I have dwelt so long upon the assembly, that I shall not be able to say much as to ministry tonight. But I may be brief, more particularly as we shall have the subject of Gifts and Offices before us another time. Let me just make a few plain observations as to ministry before closing.

We have seen that the church flows from Christ risen and glorified by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven to bind together and form the assembly upon earth. This is the only assembly that God sanctions, and therefore which every member of it ought to sanction, until the Lord takes it out of this world. We have the words and workings of the Spirit of God in the assembly shown us in scripture already referred to. I come now to some general principles. And first of all, just as the church is a divine thing, so is ministry. It flows neither from the believer nor from the church, but from Christ, by the power of the Spirit.

Now this at once clears the way. The Lord calls, not the church, the Lord sends, not the saints; the Lord controls, not the assembly. I speak now of the ministry of the word. There are certain functionaries whom the church does or may choose: for instance, the assembly may nominate the persons it thinks fit to take care of the funds, and to distribute of its bounty. The church may employ its servants, selecting them according to its best wisdom; and the Lord owns this choice. So it was done of old, as we read in Acts 6, where the multitude chose, and the Apostles laid their hands upon those chosen to look after the tables. So it was where "the churches" (in 2 Cor. 8) chose brethren as their messengers; and so, again, where the Philippian church made Epaphroditus their messenger in ministering to the wants of Paul. (Phil. 2)

But we never find this kind of selection where the ministry of the word is concerned. Never! On the contrary, the Lord Himself once looked upon His poor disheartened scattered people, pitied them, and told the disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send forth labourers. (Matt. 9) The very next chapter shows that He was the Lord of the harvest, who accordingly sends them Himself. Afterwards He prepares His disciples for the full character of the Christian ministry when He should leave them. Thus in Matt. 25 where there occurs the parable of the Lord departing to a far country, we have the same truth — the Lord giving gifts to His servants. Now this really decides the matter. For the difference between that which the word of God acknowledges, and that which is seen now-a-days, lies in this, that according to scripture the ministry of the word, in its call and in its exercise, is more truly divine than that which is now substituted for it in Christendom. Hence also its proper dignity is impaired, specially the holy independence of man, which is essential to its due exercise, and, above all, to the glory of the Lord Himself. If preachers be sent by men, it is an usurpation of the Lord's prerogative, and the gravest detriment to His servants who submit to it.

What is the effect of ministry exercised according to scripture? The most perfect freedom for all that is given of God for the blessing of souls. Accordingly you find the universal doctrine of the Epistles fully confirms that which the history shows in the Acts of the Apostles. But I must refer to both as briefly as may be.

In 1 Cor. 12-14, we have already seen that it is of the essence of the church, as God's assembly, and the aim of the Spirit's presence therein, that He should have full liberty to use whom He pleases for the glory of the Lord and the blessing of all. The exhortation in 1 Peter 4: 10, 11, and the caution in James 3: 1, suppose the same openness and its liability to abuse. This may suffice for "those within."

As to "those without," the will of the Lord is equally clear. Thus, in Acts 8 we hear of persecution falling upon the church, and they were all scattered (but the twelve), and went everywhere preaching the word. Now, I do not call this necessarily ministerial. Of course some of them were ministers of the word, others not; but all went everywhere evangelizing. But it proves that the Lord recognizes any and every Christian man in going forth and announcing the glad tidings. (Compare Acts 11: 19- 21.)

But when we come to detail, we find Philip in Acts 8 preaching freely. "But," some will say, "he was chosen of the church." He was not chosen to minister the word. He was chosen, on the contrary, to leave the apostles, unembarrassed by serving the tables, to the ministry of the word. It was expressly for the purpose of relieving the apostles from the secular work, that the seven men were looked out by the multitude, and duly appointed over this lower task; the call of the church was for this only. It was the Lord that called Philip to preach the gospel; and the Lord blessed the word, which extended to and beyond Samaria. (Compare Acts 21: 8 for both.)

In Acts 9, we see a man on the highway to Damascus with a commission from the high priest to persecute the Jewish Christians. That was the only commission Paul received from man — an authority, not to preach the Gospel, but to extinguish it, if it were possible. But the Lord, in sovereign grace, not only converted Saul of Tarsus, but sent him out, direct from Himself, a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity. Paul thus becomes the standing type of Christian ministry. Apart from miraculous facts, he exemplified livingly the words, "we believe, and therefore speak." (2 Cor. 4)

We find the Lord after this introducing others into the work, more particularly Apollos, who was "an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures," but so very ignorant at first, that he knew nothing beyond the baptism of John (that is, the testimony which was rendered to Christ when He was living upon the earth). But if he was thus in the dark as to the Church and the full truth of Christianity, he was a converted man. Of course, there were souls converted before the coming of Christ. It is mere ignorance that sees any difficulty in such a statement. Apollos had received by the Spirit the early testimony to the Lord, but he did not know the work of Christ. This he is taught by a good man and his wife, who helped him in the fuller understanding of the Scriptures, and he comes out mightier than ever in the truth, and there is no hint about a human inauguration before he preaches. Yet the apostle Paul writes with all respect of Apollos, putting this unordained man between himself and Peter. (1 Cor. 3) Again, he tells them, in the last chapter of this epistle, that he had asked Apollos to come, but "his will was not at all to come at this time." Does not this indicate a very different state of things from what men dream of apostolic rule, as well as from what exists now? What it does truly illustrate is the way the Lord maintained His place. An inspired apostle gives his counsel to Apollos, who does not conform. This Paul himself records without censure; and, in fact, scripture does not say which was right: it may very probably have been the great apostle, but on this point we are left entirely in the dark. In any case, the record brings out the weighty truth that the Lord abides the absolute Master and Director of His servants. Man likes to regulate; but the Lord, to whom we are surely bound above all, exercises the hearts of His servants, and gives them in this word a guiding principle for all time. Is it true for your soul and for mine? Are we practically servants of the Lord — of the Lord only? or are we serving a denomination as its ministers? If we are only nationalist or dissenting ministers, I have nothing to say; but if we are really ministers of Christ, let us beware. "No man can serve two masters:" if we have been striving to serve Christ and the sect whose officials we are, which is to be held to? which to be given up?

Thus, along with the assembly of God, there is the ministry of the word, committed sovereignly to some of its members, not to all, yet assuredly for the good of all. Let the assembly respect the servants in their place, and let the servants respect the assembly in its place. None ever confound the two things without the most disastrous consequences: neither must be sacrificed. It is the place of a servant, no doubt, to preach or teach in subjection to Christ; it is the place of a servant, likewise, to counsel, guide, govern, according to his gift from the Lord. But whatever may be the servant's mind, judgment, or counsel, nothing dissolves the direct responsibility of the assembly to Christ. The same Jesus is Lord of the servant, but He is also owned as the Lord by the assembly of God.

Take the instance, again, which is shown in Acts 13. Barnabas and Saul go forth on a missionary circuit, directed by the Holy Ghost, and taking Mark with them. But Mark turns out an indifferent servant, and speedily returns to his home. They are going out again (Acts 15), but Paul insists upon going without Mark. Barnabas, who was related to Mark, did not like him set aside, and contends with Paul about it — good man as he was — and this so sharply, that it leads to a severance of these two devoted and tenderly attached servants of Christ. Then Paul chooses Silas, and they were commended by the brethren to the grace of God. The church, or the labourers, were, no doubt, convinced that Paul was in the right. Of Barnabas, nothing of the kind is said; the subject, as far as he is concerned, drops. Paul enters on a large and enlarging sphere, and Silas goes with him, supplying, as it were, the place of Barnabas. Now there we find not only an individual servant at work, but the joint action of two or more in the service of the Lord. Barnabas might be as wrong in taking Mark, as Paul was right in choosing Silas; but the principle is clear. Spiritual judgment is necessary in selecting a fellow-labourer. Forced association with one we do not believe competent or desirable, is clearly not according to the Lord's mind.

Thus, in His service, there is such a thing as association, but no bondage about it. Barnabas was free to preach the word as much as ever. There was no lack of saints, of course, to welcome Barnabas, and no want of sinners to be preached to. But Paul would not have Mark forced upon him, and chooses another; and this is an important example for us. How completely does scripture provide both for co-operation and for refusing it! The Lord Jesus keeps His due place, not only in relation to the assembly, laying down how it is to be ordered, but also in relation to ministry, showing how the work is to be carried out on earth. The word of God meets every need.

But there is another thing that is wanted for all of us. What is this? Simple faith in the Lord, in His grace, in His word. Where this is not, souls are apt to be cast down by difficulties. Then, when they see things looking other than what attracted them once, they begin to doubt everything. How different if our mind is made up for having to do with the Lord! Let us look well to it that we are subject to Him. Of course, I am not now denying moral subjection to "chief men" in the fear of the Lord; this may be a part of subjection to Him; but what we need to have settled is, that at all times, and under all circumstances, we must please the Lord. He will be with us; our circumstances may look critical and be trying enough; but we shall find infinite blessing to our souls — indeed, it is in times of trouble we prove the solidity of the blessing. Be assured that, as the Lord went through the cross to His heavenly glory, so we shall find His cross stamped upon every service; but then, it is the Lord, and it is His cross. Let our hearts, therefore, be of good cheer.

The two lines of truth here sketched — the assembly of God, and the ministry of Christ — you will find laid down in the word of God. Both flow from Christ, instead of being mere voluntary associations: as to both we lie under a responsibility which cannot be evaded. The church is bound to receive Christ's ministers, instead of having the right to choose.* From Christ the power comes; to Christ the servant is immediately responsible. If a man is called to serve, let him rejoice in, but bow to, the blessed truth, that he is to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. The consequence of carrying it out will be, that the world will drop off; it may be even that many of his Christian friends will look cold. The ministry of Christ was never intended to work in the system of the world, any more than the assembly of God; both were meant to exalt the Lord Jesus, and to be an exercise of faith for His saints and servants. It must be so still. More than that, it was intended that in the church and the world we should feel the difficulties and sorrows, as well as joys of faith. I do not doubt the triumph in Christ; but we can count upon trial and tribulation surely in this world. We may find differences as to the world. Sometimes too in the church of God there may be fluctuations. Every one who has served Christ knows something of this. But as to Him to whom the church belongs, and whom we serve, He remains "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." The question is, are we prepared to follow Him?

* The Congregational Lecture on "the Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament," by Dr. S. Davidson, may be compared with what we have seen in scripture. "Let us now take a church and trace its various proceedings. A number of believers agree to associate together. In a united capacity they resolve to confess Christ, to observe His precepts, and to follow His will. They choose pastors whom they judge to possess the qualifications described in the New Testament. In this way the believer chosen by them becomes an official person as soon as he accepts their invitation" (p. 269). "The compact entered into between the ruler and the ruled may be dissolved by one or both of the parties. The union formed between pastor and people may be severed" (p. 271). "A minister is either the minister of one church, viz., that by which he has been chosen, or else he is not a minister at all. When he ceases to be pastor of a church he ceases to be a minister of the Gospel, till he be elected by another. . . . . He is not made a minister by the act of ordination, but by the people's call, and his acceptance of it, by virtue of which a solemn engagement is entered into; and when the engagement terminates, he ceases to be a minister (!)" (pp. 252, 253). No principle seems to me more flatly opposed to God's word than religious radicalism.

Lecture 4.

WORSHIP, THE BREAKING OF BREAD, AND PRAYER.

John 4: 10-24.

The first and weightiest part of the subject now before us is worship. It most of all concerns us, because it most nearly touches God himself; and this, I am convinced, is the truest criterion, as well as the safest and most salutary for our souls. No doubt the breaking of bread may be included in worship, but it calls for a separate notice, as being of a complex nature and having a distinct aspect toward the saints themselves; whereas worship as such is essentially God-ward. Again it seemed due to its importance to give it a place of its own, as furnishing most impressively, and in an act which engages all hearts, that which brings before our souls the deepest and most solemn revelation of divine holiness and grace in the Lord's death, in presence of which all find their level, all recognize what they were without His precious blood, what they are now in virtue of it, and above all what He is who so died in atonement for them, that they might remember Him — yea, for ever — in thankful and adoring peace.

The scripture read tonight shows not only that worship forms a blessed, lofty, and most fruitful part of Christian life, but that the Lord Himself puts it in contrast with that which God enjoined in times that are past. As on previous occasions a consideration of God's ways of old helped us to see more distinctly the fresh revelations of God in the New Testament, so we shall find in the matter of worship.

First of all let me premise that there is a certain state of soul that is needed for worship. God looks for the worship of His children, and it is a duty in which all of them have a direct and immediate interest; yet there is a basis necessary both on God's part and on theirs, in order that there should be real proper Christian worship. So it was with regard to the one body, the assembly of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. If there be one domain more than another where the allowance of man's will is both a sin and a shame, it is in intruding into the worship of God. Yet is there anything more frequently done and with less conscience? Is there an act where man more exalts himself, and does greater despite to the Spirit of grace? Let none suppose that this is speaking with undue severity. Can one speak too strongly of an interference which deludes the world, defiles the Church, and destroys the moral glory of Christ? On a false foundation or rather without foundation man all the while is but actively dishonouring God, and this in the face of the brightest manifestation He has made or can make of Himself; for it is in His Son. If in truth God has so spoken and acted, then we have God fully revealed; and we must have one superior to the Son of God in order to find a brighter and fuller revelation than what we have in Christ.

This then is both the source of all our hopes and blessedness, and the basis on which Christian worship proceeds; nevertheless, though it is absolutely essential to Christian worship that there should be a perfect revelation of God in Christ, this infinite as it is does not suffice. There is a need on man's part which must be met according to divine glory. God has not failed to reveal Himself fully; He has left nothing undone; He has done nothing that is not absolutely perfect; and all this so that there need be no doubt or question about it.

There was doubtless a gradual unfolding of God's mind and will and glory: indeed I think we might say that He could not have brought out all His mind until He gave His Son. But now that the Son of God is come, we can as believers say without presumption — "He has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true." In fact, we should be deliberately slighting or guilty disbelieving what God has given in order that He should be known, if we did not say boldly "We know." Is it not a great thing in a dark world like this to have God preparing, even for His babes, such language as "we know"? Yes, and He would have us prove the truth of these words "we know," not only as to ourselves but Himself. It is much to have a divine book in which we can, as led of the Spirit, look back on the past, forward on the future, down upon the maze of the present, and say as to all "we know." It is infinitely more and better that we can humbly and truly say, "we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ." (1 John 5)

It is not a question of how far there may be intelligence developed in the child of God. There is such a thing as growth in knowledge; but along with it we must also stand up for the great blessing and fundamental truth, that every soul God has brought to Himself has an unction from the Holy One and knows all things. Now the possession of this divine capacity is far beyond any measure of difference there may be in practical development. Of course there are such differences, and there is thus room for the exercise of a spiritual mind, and the Spirit of God no doubt acts through the truth upon us that we may make progress. But then we may rest confident, as we think of the children of God, that, wherever they are, under perhaps the most untoward circumstances, God has given them a new nature, and this a nature capable by the Spirit of understanding and appreciating and enjoying Himself. All the time here below is or ought to be just the season for growth. It is the school where we are to learn truth in practice; but then it is the application and deepening in our souls of that which we have already in the grace of God. "I have not written unto you," says the apostle, "because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth." (1 John 2) This is the portion of every child of God.

But this very privilege indicates the great essential on man's side in order to be a worshipper. Man as such, unless born of God, is incapable of worshipping God — no more able to do so than a horse is capable of understanding science or philosophy. I deny entirely and in principle that there is any capacity in man, as he is naturally, to worship God. He needs to be a new creature in Christ; he needs to possess a new nature that is of God, in order to be able to understand or to worship God. Not that the simple fact of eternal life, which every soul receives in believing on the Son of God, alone qualifies for worship; but then God does not give it alone. He has provided other means of the greatest possible moment, and He has vouchsafed them not merely to some, but to all His children. In many cases however, lamentable to say, the appearance and the enjoyment of this great grace may be hindered. It may be hardly possible to discern either the divine capacity or the power of worship. But we are entitled always to reckon on the Lord, the unfailing truth of His word, and the fulness of His grace.

If God has given a new life to His children, and reconciled them to Himself by Him who has borne their sins in His own body on the tree, wherefore has this great work been done? No doubt for His own glory and out of His own love; but it is as a part of that glory and an answer to His love that He calls upon His children to praise as well as serve Him now. And we have before us the consideration of this very subject — Christian worship, which demands the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit quite as much as either the assembly or ministry can do — a part of the homage of the children of God, and a return of heart which God claims from all that are His.

The first great requisite then for man, in order to worship as a Christian, is that he be born of God as the object of His grace in Christ, and receive the Holy Ghost to dwell in him. The Lord teaches the principle of it in the answer He gives to the Samaritan woman — "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." There we have the kernel, as it were, of worship — "If thou knewest the gift of God." (John 4: 10.) It is not the law, were it of God Himself, though even that she knew not as one that was under it; for the Samaritans were a mongrel people, Gentiles really though partially Jewish in profession and form. But even if the law of God had been known in all its fulness, unimpaired and uncorrupted by man, it certainly would not have fitted for Christian worship. But the word was, "if thou knewest the gift of God" - His free-giving; if she knew God as a giver — that He is acting out of His free bounty and love. This is the first truth. But in the next place, "If thou knewest. . . . who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water."

All the time God sanctioned the law as a system, He dwelt in thick darkness; that is, He did not reveal but hide Himself, as it were. But when the only-begotten Son declared the Father, God no longer occupied the position of a claimant on man, which was necessarily the form in which the law presented His character. Of course this character was right and just and good, like the commandment itself; and man ought to have bowed to Him and answered His demand. But man was a sinner; and the effect of pressing the claim was to bring out more plainly the sins of man. Had the law been the image of God, as ignorant and perverse theologians falsely teach, man must have been hopelessly left and lost. But this was far from the truth. The law, though of God, is neither God nor a reflection of God, but only the moral measure of what sinful man owes to God. God is light; God is love; and if man is in the depth of need, He gives freely, fully, like Himself. Indeed it is what becomes Him, and what He delights in. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." It were strange if God were defrauded of that which is the more blessed of the two. According to the law He should have been a receiver, had not man broken down; in the Gospel He is unequivocally a giver, and what is more, a giver of His very best to those whose only desert is everlasting destruction.

But this is only possible through the glory and the humiliation of the Son of God, stooping down and suffering to the uttermost for sinners. How truly and beautifully then the Lord says, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water:" in other words, had she known God's grace and the glory of Him who freely talked with her, she would have sought and found all she wanted. Little did she suspect who the lowly One was whom she supposed to be but a Jew, though she did wonder that a Jew could be so tender and so bend down to a Samaritan woman. Little did she think that it was the Lord God of heaven and earth, the only-begotten in the bosom of the Father; had she known but a little of this, she would have asked, and He would have given her living water. It is the Holy Ghost that is meant by the "living water." Thus in a single verse we have the whole Trinity in one way or another concerned. God's own grace is the first thought, the source; then we have the glory of the Person of the Son, and His presence in humiliation among men on the earth; finally the Son according to His proper glory gives to needy thirsty souls the living water — the Holy Ghost. Is it necessary to say that none but a person supremely divine could impart such a blessing?

Here then you have testified by our Lord Jesus the necessary basis of Christian worship: first of all, God revealed as He is in the Gospel as contrasted with the law — God in His grace; secondly, the Son coming down in perfect goodness, and willing to be man's debtor in the least things that He might bless him in the greatest by a love which can win the most careless and obdurate; and thirdly, the gift of the Holy Ghost. What must Christian worship be according to its true character and object in the mind of God, if all these things are necessary in order that it should exist! It does in very deed suppose on God's part a full revelation of what He is in His own nature and in His grace to man. It does assume that the Son has come amongst men in love to make good that revelation in the thorough putting away of sin by the sacrifice of Himself. It also supposes that the heart, awakened to its real wants, has asked and received of the Lord living water, the Holy Ghost, not only as the agent of life and renewal, but as a well within of unfailing refreshment springing up into everlasting life.

Accordingly a little lower down in the chapter we have more developed instruction on the subject, although we have had the foundation of it in verse 10. The woman, when her conscience was touched, and she learned that she stood in the presence of a prophet, though not yet recognizing in Him the Messiah, put her religious difficulties before Him for solution, quite sure that He brought the truth of God — "I perceive that thou art a prophet." Remark in passing that the essential idea of a prophet, both in the Old and the New Testament sense, is one that brings the conscience directly into the presence of God, so as to have His light shed upon the soul. There were many prophets who predicted scarcely anything, but they were not the less prophets. Finding herself then in the presence of one who was able to announce the truth of God, she wants to have the questions of her soul answered. She turned to Him about that which at all times and everywhere has and must have unrivalled interest. The world itself, blind and dead, will fight for nothing faster than its religion. There were differences then as there are now. "Our fathers," she said, "worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." The Lord solemnly tells her: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father." He gives a rebuke too: "Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." It is clear that whatever hopes of salvation were held out to the Jews, they were founded on their belief in Christ. But while He vindicates the position (not the condition) of the Jews, He proclaims the dawn of a brighter day: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him." He could speak thus plainly and strongly because He was Himself the Son in the bosom of the Father, and was entitled, in virtue of the glory of His Person, to bring in worship suited to His own intimate knowledge and perfect revelation of the Father.

Thereon at once follows the full and distinctive character of Christian worship. God is made known as a Father calling and adopting children; nay, more than this, He is seeking children. In this is the fulness of divine love going out from heaven and for heaven. In Israel men had to seek Jehovah, and this with carefully prescribed rites and rigid ceremonies: thus only could even the chosen people in their worship come and appear before God. Notwithstanding the nicest care, not one could approach into His presence — nay not even the high priest himself; and if it had been possible for him to draw and stay near, it was not to God revealed as a Father. God was no more Father to Aaron, or Phinehas, or Zadok, than He was to the least member of the most obscure tribe in Israel. There was at that time no such manifestation of God. But now the hour was coming, and in principle come, when the Father was seeking worshippers. The Jewish system had been tried and found wanting, and was now doomed. Before God the worldly sanctuary was already fallen, and Christ was the true temple. The Son of God was come, and this could not but change all things — not only teach, but change all. No wonder then that there was, in and through His presence, a new and full display of God, a declaration of the Father's name. Here Christ makes known the new thing in this point of view; how earthly worship must vanish, not merely at the mountain of Gerizim, but even in Jerusalem; that it was a question henceforth of worshipping the Father, and this in spirit and in truth; for, wondrous to say, the Father was seeking such to worship Him!

What a truth! God the Father going out in His own uncaused, creative love in quest of worshippers! Of course, He was accomplishing this task by His Son, and in the energy of the Holy Spirit. Still, this was the principle, in direct contrast with nature and Judaism — the Father seeking worshippers. Not only was it an entirely new character of worship, suited to and demanding the new revelation of God Himself, but it necessarily and completely extinguished the old lamps of the sanctuary hitherto acknowledged in Jewry. Not only was the spurious worship of Samaria more than ever condemned, but the brightness of heaven, now shining freely, eclipsed the feeble rays which in Israel were meant at least to make the darkness visible, and to keep up a testimony to better light that was coming. What had been temporarily owned and used of God was now becoming a nullity and a nuisance; and God, as we might expect, brought in the vast change most righteously. Up to this time man was on his trial. The Jew, as the sample of chosen, favoured man, was being proved; and what was the issue of it? The cross and shame of the Lord Jesus. They rejected and slew their own Messiah little knowing too, that He was Jehovah, God over all, blessed for ever. Justly therefore and after long patience the Jews were put aside. Such was the moral development of the ways of God. There was nothing arbitrary, as every one who believes what God declares in His word as to Israel's rejection of the Messiah must at once see and feel. In the life and ministry of Christ was a manifestation of such grace and long-suffering as had never been witnessed or even conceived on the earth. But now the end was come before God. The Jews, by their conduct, were cutting the last ties which a people in the flesh could have with God. In rejecting their Messiah they rejected themselves. But when the cross was a fact, and redemption accomplished, when Jesus was risen from the dead, the grace and truth which had come by Him shone out in His work on the cross, and the plenteous redemption, not promised now, but accomplished, was made known by the Holy Ghost. Accordingly those who believed were in a capacity to worship the Father. It is not merely that they had faith in the Messiah, for this they had when He was here. But now that they had in Him redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; now that Christ made God Himself known as His Father and their Father, His God and their God (and this in the power and presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven), they could draw near into the holiest, and truly worship the true God; they could say, not only by, but with the Lord Jesus, "Abba, Father."

Not merely were spiritual life and redemption needful, but the Holy Ghost also; and accordingly here the Lord adds that "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Mark the difference of the language. When He speaks of His Father seeking worshippers, it is pure grace flowing freely out; it is He who is seeking. It is not merely that He accepts the worship of His people, but He seeks worshippers. Yet let us remember that our Father is God. It is a thing easily forgotten, strange to say; but this is mere fleshliness, and not from our privilege in infinite mercy of nearness to Him, which ought not in the least degree to dull, but to increase and strengthen our sense of His majesty. "God is a Spirit," He says; "and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." There is a certain moral necessity here, which cannot be dispensed with. The truth is, Christ creates, the law never does. The law kills; what else can it do or ought it to do for sinful creatures? It would be a bad law if it did let us off. If I deserve to die as a guilty man responsible to God, then, I say, the law is just, holy, and good in condemning me. It is the province of the Saviour alone to give me life, and not this merely, but to give me life by His death and resurrection, without sin, fruit or root, that I may stand in Him possessed of a new nature, wholly delivered by grace from the misery, guilt, power, and judgment of the old man.

This is the place of every Christian. These are the simple but most blessed elements of his life and standing before God; but then, as they are inseparable from the gift of the Holy Ghost, so is He absolutely needed that we may worship our God and Father; and for this purpose and others He is given. Thus we see what the living water means. "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." It is the Holy Ghost given by Christ to be in the believer; without Him there can be no such thing as the power of worship. But He is given, and the hour of true Christian worship is come in the strictest sense.

And you that are here assembled tonight, are you prepared to acknowledge, for any consideration whatever, worship which is not of this character? You, especially, who are young in years, and perhaps, also, little established in the truth of God, hearken. You may be tempted, not only through natural hankering after the world and its worship, but you have relatives, connections, friends, who think it hard you do not join them. In what? In Christian worship? Join them in it by all means. Whenever, wherever you find worship in spirit and in truth, fear not to join; seek it, yes, earnestly seek it. Rather would I ask, are you disposed to slight such worship for that which does all it can to return to the mountain of Samaria, if it cannot reach Jerusalem; for a religious service that is both untrue and formal; and an order that mingles some genuine worshippers in a crowd of false? How many there are now-a-days who, in word boasting of their heavenly liturgy, in reality hurry through it with such evident heedlessness as to show that the sermon is all they care to hear! One might fancy they were men who knew nothing, desired nothing, but to hear the way to be saved, instead of being God's children, called and capacitated to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. But this is the misery of being in a position which is bound up with what they value in the flesh and in the world; where worshipping the Father according to His word never was nor can be known.

I admit that even this is better than belonging to another class of religionists, nominally in the same sect, who, being ignorant of Christ's redemption, bear with an evangelical discourse for the sake of services, the darkness of which is to them delightful, because it answers to their own condition. Fleshly worship suits a fleshly state.

My charge is not about the slipping in of a hypocrite amongst the true — these no doubt may creep in anywhere. The main point insisted on is the error and sin of embracing the world in divine worship through a false principle, than which there is nothing in the present day more common, and in some eyes more desirable. Clearly this is not Christian worship; but still it is so styled; it is accepted and justified as such; and the refusal of it is branded popularly as the fruit of a harsh unloving censorious spirit, instead of being seen to be, as it is, simple-hearted desire to carry out the will of the Lord. Worship there cannot be, unless the ground of grace is taken: there must be life in the Spirit, nothing less than divine life and the power of the Holy Ghost working in the worshipper.

Again, it ought not to be very difficult to discern where there is Christian worship. One can easily say where it is not. How can it be where there is no recognition of the assembly of the faithful in separation from the world? where human formularies largely displace the divine word? where the Holy Ghost is not welcomed to work in the order laid down in scripture? where anybody may be in membership, and the evidently unconverted can join in or lead the most serious services? The invariable effect is that as you cannot raise the world to the height of faith, the believers who mingle all together indiscriminately must descend to the world's level. Hence, fine buildings, imposing ceremonies, exciting music, poetic sentiment, are apt to come in by degrees, where Christian worship is unknown or forgotten. Hence too the need of legal order, for it seems bold to trust the grace of God.

You may have Christian worshippers in such a state of things; for I have no desire to exaggerate; but Christian worship there cannot be. Do you doubt this? Perhaps the doubt is because you have never known what worship really is. So much is this the case at present — the thoughts of Christians are so vague, unformed, and dark — that to many the very meaning of worship is lost. How many call a building where they meet to hear preaching a place of worship; and when they go to hear, they think and say they are going to worship! Does not all this show that the very idea of worship is unknown? Nor is it to be wondered at. The truth is, there is a great deal of preaching of Christ in these days, much calculated to arouse and also to win souls; but where is there a full setting forth of the Gospel of God's grace? That Christ is preached at all is a matter for which we have to thank God. Souls are converted, and learn, as far as the usual orthodox testimony goes, what is most true of their sins and their danger; but we want the gospel of God fully proclaimed — the gospel as we see it set forth in the epistles — the glad news not only that the work of Christ has put sin away, but that the believer stands in a new life and relationship with God, of which the Holy Ghost is given as the seal. Where this is known, worship is the simple necessary fruit; the heart, thus set free by grace, goes out to God in thanksgiving and praise.

So in the chapter we began with, the believer enjoys not only a new life communicated, but a well of water within him, which springs up into everlasting life. Thus, by the energy of the Holy Spirit given to us, we possess, as a conscious thing, perfect, unbroken peace, and we cannot but breathe the joy of our ransomed souls to the praise of our Saviour God. As a fact this may not be found among the children of God, save few comparatively; because in general, where there is a perception of Christ, they put the law in the place of the Holy Ghost, and thus fall into the uncertainty which invariably, where there is conscience, flows from the law thus misused, instead of enjoying the light, and power, and peace in Christ and His redemption, which is the proper fruit of the Holy Ghost's testimony to Christ and of His indwelling in the believer. Here only can you have Christian worship. It is founded upon the full revelation of grace in Christ dead, risen, and ascended; and it is in the power of the Spirit of God that this is enjoyed by the believer. But not this only: for God is a Spirit, and the consequence is, that Christian worship repudiates formality. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." There we have the nature of God revealed, and thence is deduced the moral need of worshipping Him in spirit and truth, not according to earthly form or human will.

This then is the source, groundwork, and character of Christian worship. But we have one element more when we pursue the further instructions of the New Testament. In 1 Cor. 14 we find it connected with the assembly. We learn there on what principle, and by whom, worship is now paid to God. This is an important addition to our knowledge of God's will. No one contends for a moment that the gospel should not be preached, or that believers should not be instructed in the truth. These are duties confessedly according to scripture. There we have everything provided for, that can be needed for the good of the Church, and for the well-being of souls; we have both the principle and the fact of all Christian service most clearly laid down in the word of God. Among the rest there is no lack of testimony to the manner according to which Christian worship should be conducted. We have seen that none can render acceptable worship to God but Christians: from it the world is plainly shut out, according to the teaching of scripture. It is not a question of closing the door, or of excluding persons from the place where the faithful assemble. It is clear from scripture that unbelievers might be present where the assembly of God may be gathered; but they are incapacitated from rendering proper and acceptable worship unto God, because they have neither the new nature, nor the Holy Spirit, who is the only power of worship; they neither know redemption, which is the basis of worship, nor do they know the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who, with the Son, is the object of worship. Thus, in every point of view, the world is necessarily without the pale of Christian worship, and the bringing the world in is a large part of the sin and ruin of Christendom.

Again we gather from 1 Cor. 14 the place which the giving, of thanks has in the worship of God; and this connected, not with any one individual only, or a separate class, but with the order and operation of God in the assembly. Hence we read (ver. 15), "What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also." Important as singing is, its end is not, of course, the sweet sound: the essential thing, as we are told, is "singing with the spirit and understanding also." What a proof that the Lord is looking for the intelligent service of His people! So in verse 16 we read, "Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?" If in Christian worship there were the utterance of an unknown tongue in the giving of thanks or in blessing God, it would traverse the rules of edifying the assembly, because it would leave out those that could not intelligently join their "Amen." The passage is cited also to show that thanksgiving and blessing, like singing, and other constituents of Christian worship known to us familiarly, were found from the first in the Christian assembly.

But there is just the difficulty. Look right or left — look where you will, where can you find the Christian assembly? Where is there the gathering together of the children of God in the name of the Lord Jesus engaged in thanksgiving and blessing, praising and singing, as we read of here? Yet the assembly of God, meeting as such, is essential to Christian worship. There might be the best of men chosen to conduct the service, and the order of praise and prayer might be as faultless as existing liturgies are open to severe criticism; but what then? Would it be the worship of the family of God? If not, how could it be of really Christian character? God looks for the worship of His children in the Spirit. Do you say that after all it is only the slight difference of several taking part, instead of one? But grave as that might be, such a difference is not the essential thing, but this — that there be perfect openness for the Spirit's action by whom He is pleased to speak. It is not then a question of one man, or half-a-dozen. On some occasions the Holy Ghost might use one or two; on others, more than six in various ways. What scripture demands is, that there be faith in the Spirit's presence, proved by leaving Him His due right to employ as may please Him. It is not therefore a mere question of one, or few, or many mouthpieces to give thanks, or bless, or take part in acts of Christian worship. The real and essential feature is, that the Holy Ghost, being present, should be counted on, and His employment of this Christian or that as He will. In an assembly where there were many spiritual men, it would have a strange appearance if but one or two took an active part in the worship of the Lord. Still, whether few or many speak at any given time, the only scriptural mode by which acceptable worship is rendered is where the whole assembly unites in the liberty of the Spirit, with heart and mind, in the offering of their praises and thanksgivings to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost, acting in the assembly by its members may think fit to employ one or twelve to speak the praises suitable to His mind, and according to the condition of the assembly. And what can be sweeter to all, whether or not they be thus employed as the audible channels of worship, than to have the consciousness that the Holy Ghost in very deed so deigns to guide in one and all? The one point of value is, that He should be free to direct all for the glory of Christ.

There is another remark of a practical kind to be made as to worship. We must guard against bringing into the assembly our own thoughts of the worship to be offered unto God. An individual may give out a hymn to be sung in which he delights, and which may be not only beautiful but true and spiritual in itself; but it may be a mistake in him to give it out — a wholly unsuitable hymn for the occasion on which he desires it to be sung. Again, there may be some outside the assembly, known or unknown, who, out of curiosity, are come to see what the worship is like. Now are you, fearing that they might wonder at the silence from time to time, to read a chapter, or give out some sweet hymn? Need I say that such a step is indefensible, and beneath men who believe in the presence of the Holy Ghost? Some may think there is liberty to do this or the like; but who put such thoughts into the mind? Do you think the Holy Spirit is occupied with what those without may say or think of those within, or anything of the kind? Is He not on the contrary filled with His own thoughts of Christ, and communicating them to us? The becoming thing, therefore, for us to do under such circumstances is to look from ourselves, and those within and without, to God, that He, working by the Spirit, may give us communion with the present thoughts of the Spirit of God about the Lord Jesus Christ.

When such is the case, how simple is the flow of thanksgiving for His special mercies to us and all saints! how fragrant the sense God gives us of His delight in Christ! what praise of His grace! what anticipations of glory, and of Christ Himself there! All these and more are but ingredients; and they will variously predominate as the Lord sees fit. Even a lower character of worship, if it be but suited to a given state, is, in my judgment, a far more pleasing thing to God than any strain ever so high, which has not the real present energy of the Spirit of God connected with it.

Further, as to criticism: I cannot think the assembly of God is the right place for any man to stand up and show his superior wisdom in; on the contrary, therein, above all occasions, is the place for the greatest to show his littleness before God. There may be seasons and circumstances where a judgment of what is given out may not be amiss, but a duty; but the assembly of God is not the place for such a course. May I not take the liberty of applying to this what the apostle lays down as to another innovation: "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the assemblies of God"? How, where, could any one gather such a practice from the word of God? Nor do I confine myself here, or in these remarks generally, to a bare text, but I am speaking of the whole tenor, and texture, and object of all that is given us in the scripture. Accordingly, as it is unauthorised, so the result cannot but be pernicious. What can the effect of criticism in the assembly of God be but the sowing of discord and distraction where unity and concord should prevail? And yet it may be a thing too often done; against it I would warn my hearers earnestly. All are liable to make mistakes, and all deserve to be corrected occasionally; but, as a general rule, comment upon another is altogether out of place in the Christian assembly. There is a meet time and place for every real duty; and it never can be right to rectify one wrong by another, however godly the intention

Next, as to the breaking of bread, a few scriptures will suffice. The Lord's Supper, not baptism, was revealed of the Lord, we all know, to the apostle Paul, as it is brought out in the same epistle (1 Cor. 11) from which much has been already quoted. It is a holy institution, intimately linked with, and the distinct outward expression of the unity of Christ's body, which it was St. Paul's work especially to develop. We have the Lord accordingly there revealing it afresh to the apostle Paul. He had not sent Paul to baptize, as he says, but to preach the gospel. There is not the least doubt that he did baptize, nor that it was perfectly right in him to baptize. But baptism, so expressly charged on the eleven, after the Lord's resurrection, is not only a single initiatory observance — "one baptism," — but it is for each individual the confession of the foundation-truth of Christ's death and resurrection. The subject of it stands forth as a believer in Him who died and rose; he is no longer therefore a Jew, or a heathen, but a confessor of Christ. The Lord's Supper, on the other hand, belongs to the assembly, and forms an affecting and important object in the worship of the saints of God. It is primarily and strictly the standing sign of our only foundation; it is the witness of His love unto death, and His work, by virtue of which such as we can worship. No wonder therefore we have the apostle Paul showing the very solemn and blessed place which the Lord's Supper claims in the revelations of the Lord to him. "I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." It is evident, on the face of the statement, what a large and deep place the Lord's death has in His Supper. No joy, no brightness of the favour of God in heaven, no consequent communion, nor hopes of everlasting blessedness with Him, can be allowed for a moment to distract from, or overshadow, the death of the Lord. But the reverse is the truth; for the more the Lord's death has its own central value before the Christian, all these things shine out not only more brightly but also more sweetly and affectingly to the heart. And so the same man who was God's blessed instrument for developing the full extent of the Christian's privileges, is the very one who gathers us around our Lord's death as that which pre-eminently attracts and fills every heart that loves His name.

From Acts 20: 7, it is plain that the saints should break bread on the first day of the week, not of the month or quarter. But it is the resurrection day, not the day of His death, as if we were summoned to be there in mourning as for the dead. But He is risen, and therefore, with grateful, solemn joy, we take the Supper on the day that speaks of His rising power. I cannot but believe that the Holy Ghost records the day for our instruction, as well as the object that called together the believers primarily. No doubt the apostle, passing through after a short stay, discoursed to those assembled; but they came together on that day to break bread. Have we consented to other thoughts and arrangements? Or do we act as if we believed the Holy Spirit knows and shows us the best and truest, the holiest and happiest way of pleasing God and honouring Christ? The death of the Lord keeps constantly before the soul our utter need as once guilty sinners, proved by the cross; the complete blotting out of all our sins by His blood; the glorifying of God up to, and above all in, death itself; the manifestation of absolute grace, and withal the righteousness of God in justifying us; the perfect glory of the Saviour; — all these things, and infinitely more, are brought and kept before us in those simple but wondrous words — "the Lord's death!"

To take the Supper in remembrance of the Lord, and thus show forth His death, is what gathers us together as our prime desire. There can be no doubt about the meaning of the word of God which records this for our comfort and edifying; yet how could one infer that such was His will if one looked at the practice of Christians? Compare what they are doing Lord's-day after Lord's-day, with the obvious lessons of scripture, and intention of the Lord in so revealing His mind to us; and say whether for the most part this simple, touching memorial has not been slighted by real saints, and whether its character has not been changed universally in Christendom. I speak not of points of form, but of its principle — of such an interference with its mode of celebration as leaves hardly a single shred according to the Lord's institution.

Beware of thinking anything can be of equal moment with duly showing forth the Lord's death. The Supper of the Lord claims an unequivocal prominence in the worship of the saints. Not that one thinks of the mere fact of celebrating it, as to time, in the middle of the meeting. Indeed, it is remarkable how the Spirit of God avoids laying down laws about the Supper (and the same is true of Christianity in general) — a circumstance which the unfaithful may abuse, but which gives infinitely greater scope to the spirit of Christian affection and obedience. This however we may safely say, that it is not a question of the point of time when the act of breaking the bread occurs. The all-important thing is, that the Lord's Supper should be the governing thought when the saints are gathered for this purpose on the Lord's day; that neither the prayers of many, nor the teaching of any, should put that great object in the shade. In ministry however spiritual, man has his place; in the Supper, if rightly celebrated, the abased Lord alone is exalted. There might be occasions where the evident guidance of the Spirit brings it early before us, or postpones it late in the meeting, and thus any technical rule binding it to the beginning, or middle, or end, would be human encroachment on Him who alone is competent on each occasion and always to decide.

This openness may seem strange to such as are habituated to rigid forms, even where there are no written forrnularies; but that apparent strangeness is chiefly due to their habitual lack of acquaintance with the real presence and guidance of the Holy Ghost in the assembly. Where however the door is open to the action of the Spirit according to scripture, and where a just sense of what is in hand pervades the assembly, the Spirit of God, somehow or another, according to the truth of things in His sight, knows how to adjust the right moment as well as all else, and to give us the comfort of His guidance, if the Lord be but the confidence of our souls.

Again it may be that you sometimes go to the Lords table and return disappointed, because there has been no exposition of the word, or no exhortation. Is it possible that you have gone to remember and show forth the death of Christ, and yet have come back with feelings of dissatisfaction? How can this be? Is it not the morbid influence of the present state of Christendom? No doubt there is that in the natural heart which suits and likes what is now the vogue; and the excitement of Egypt's food is readily craved, where the heavenly manna is loathed as light food. Unquestionably we have that within which helps what is found outside; still it is humbling and afflicting to my own mind that a discourse should seem indispensable to garnish the breaking of bread, and that there should be a thought of want in the meeting where the Lord's death has been before the heart; when one has met around the Lord in His own name with those that love Him! Do you suppose that there is any service more acceptable to God Himself than the simple remembrance of Christ in His own Supper?

But, however that may be estimated, all this has been often and plainly forgotten, and the Supper of the Lord has not only been made, in many instances, a much rarer thing than scripture warrants, but its proper character has been tampered with, and the great landmarks that the Lord laid down have been utterly disregarded, so that the celebration is become anything men please to call it, except the Lord's Supper. Say that it is a sacrament, if you will; but one may perhaps doubt that, if so, it is the Lord's Supper. The Corinthians used to take a common meal together on the Lord's day; for in those days Christians strongly felt the social character of Christianity, and one may regret that it has been ever since so much lost sight of. After the meal they celebrated the Lord's Supper. The devil, however, contrived to bring shame and confusion among them at Corinth by license at this feast; some of them got intoxicated. No doubt it was a dreadful dishonour on the Lord's name; but it ill becomes those to speak harshly who are apt to utter the loudest reproaches. We must remember that in those days they had just been brought out of heathenism; and it used to be a part of the worship of false gods to get drunk in their honour. The Gentiles did not feel the immorality of it in the way that everybody knows now. It was thought no improper thing then to be thus excited and worse in their religious rites, and, indeed, at other times. It is probable therefore, that in this infant assembly at Corinth it was not counted such an enormity as we know it to be, that Christians should so far forget the Lord at the agape. What aggravated the sin was the mixing up the Lord's Supper then and there, it seems, with the love-feast. Such conduct was destructive of the character of His Supper. To eat and drink thus was to eat judgment. (1 Cor. 11: 29.) What had been begun in the Spirit ended in the flesh. I refer to this merely for the purpose of showing that, by bringing carnal feasting into such a holy assemblage, we lose or destroy its true nature and aim.

Thus, without confining oneself to the notice of any particular body, the practice of appointing particular officials, whose sole right and title* it is to administer the bread and wine to each communicant, is clean contrary to the teaching of Scripture, and flies in the face of the evident intention of God, quite as much as the distressing conduct of the Corinthians themselves. For what is the Lord's Supper? Is it not the family feast? When you derange the Father's order among the members of His family, or when you bring in those that are not of His family, its character is gone, it is the family feast no more. Let us then assume the least unfavourable supposition of a Christian company, and of none but Christians. Yet supposing that the administration, as men call it, of the Supper of the Lord is committed to a real minister of Christ, or to all who are His ministers, as the exclusive prerogative of such as minister only — I put the most favourable form which can be conceived for the popular notion — under any and all circumstances, it is a human invention, not only without the authority of Christ, but decidedly contrary to the doctrine and facts recorded in scripture. I admit ministry most fully; but the Lord's Supper has no connection with it. Make it a necessary function of those that rule to administer the bread and wine, and it bears not even an outward resemblance to the Lord's Supper. It becomes a sacrament, not His Supper; a manifest innovation, a decided and complete departure from what the Lord has laid down in His word. The very idea of a person standing apart and claiming to administer it as a right alters and ruins the Supper of the Lord. That Supper, according to scripture, leaves no room for the display of human importance in the pretensions of a clergy; least of all when the apostles were on earth. Blessed and honoured of God as these were at the celebration of the Lord's Supper, they were there in His presence as souls that were saved from sin and its judgment by the Lord's death. In the regulation of the churches, in the choice of elders, in the appointment of deacons, they had their own proper place of apostolic dignity. The word of God clearly and fully proves that the administration of the Supper by an official is a figment and tradition of men, wholly wanting the support of scripture.

* Let me give a few extracts from the famous work of an able and moderate man, John Calvin: — "It is here also pertinent to observe, that it is improper for private individuals to take upon themselves the administration of baptism, for it, as well as the dispensation of the Supper, is part of the ministerial office; for Christ did not give command to any men or women whatever to baptize, but to those whom He had appointed apostles. And when, in the administration of the Supper, He ordered His disciples to do what they had seen Him do (He having done the part of a legitimate dispenser), He doubtless meant that in this they should imitate His example. The practice which has been in use for many ages, and almost from the very commencement of the church, for laics to baptize in danger of death, when a minister could not be present in time, cannot, it appears to me, be defended on sufficient grounds." (Inst. 4, 15: 20.) "For the words of Christ are plain: 'Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them.' (Matt. 28: 19) Since He appointed the same persons to be preachers of the gospel and dispensers of baptism in the church — 'No man taketh this honour unto himself' (Heb. 5: 4), according to the apostle, 'but he that is called of God, as was Aaron' — any one who baptizes without a lawful call usurps another's office." (Ibid. 22.) Then, in chap. 17: 43 of the same book 4, after alluding to some ancient ceremonies in order to dismiss them, he proceeds to say, the Supper "might be administered most becomingly, if dispensed to the church very frequently, at least once a week. The commencement should be with public prayer; next, a sermon should be delivered; then the minister, having placed bread and wine on the table, should read the institution of the Supper, then explain the promise therein left us, and at the same time keep back from communion [excommunicaret] all those who are debarred by the Lord's prohibition. He should, after that, pray that the Lord, according to the kindness in which He bestowed this sacred food on us, would also instruct and form us to receive it with faith and gratitude of mind, and would make us worthy of the feast by His mercy, since we are not so of ourselves. Here either psalms should be sung, or something read, while the faithful, in due order, communicate at the sacred banquet, the ministers breaking the bread and conveying it to the people. The Supper being ended, an exhortation should be given to sincere faith and confession of faith, to charity and manners worthy of Christians. Lastly, thanks should be offered, and praise of God sung. This done, the Church should be dismissed in peace." How man loves to meddle and legislate! Now, it is instructive to observe that the fullest regulation of the Lord's Supper in scripture occurs in 1 Corinthians, that is, in an epistle written to an assembly where as yet elders were not. Such I believe to have been the case; but even if elders did exist there, the fact remains that absolute silence is kept respecting them, where modern thought would have called them in at once to meet the disorder by a proper administration of the Sacrament. This never occurs to the apostle. The whole assembly are admonished on moral grounds. Such is the divine remedy, not an appeal to the elders if they existed, nor a direction to have them appointed in order to correct the abuse if there were none.

But there is another point that often troubles souls, and might possibly harass, even where the bread is broken in a holy simple scriptural manner — the danger of eating unworthily, and so of incurring "damnation." Let me meet this at once by the assurance that, though one has to watch against a careless or otherwise unworthy participation, there is no thought of damnation, which would indeed upset for the believer all the comfort of the gospel and the general drift of God's word. But some may say, "Do not the scriptures assert as much?" I admit the English version does, but not the word of God; and we must not confound them. We have every reason to thank God for the English Bible, which, as far as I am acquainted with the subject, I believe to be as good a version, if not better than any other current in the world; but for all this, it is only a version, and therefore a work in which the weakness of man appears, and in which are found here and there defects which human infirmity has not been able to avoid. One of these errors is on this very subject (in 1 Cor. 11: 29). The apostle is showing how essential it is that we go to the Lord's table, which invites us freely as every week opens, our hearts filled with grateful remembrance of Christ's self-sacrificing love, who died in atonement that we through Him might be saved. What is the result of a light heedless state at the Lord's Supper? If we take the bread and wine at that holy feast as we eat the common food God provides in our own houses, not discerning the Lord's body — in other words, if we eat and drink unworthily, it is not the Lord's Supper we are eating, but rather judgment to ourselves. The Lord's hand will be on such, as the apostle shows by the case of the disorderly Corinthians; but even in that aggravated instance, it was expressly temporal judgment, that they should not be damned or "condemned with the world." On the other hand, there is no excuse for absenting yourself from the Lord's table. There is no escape from the hand of the Lord, save by humbling ourselves and vindicating Him by self-judgment, and then coming. The Lord's Supper is no more a sweet privilege than a solemn duty for all His own, save those under discipline; and when we think of the love He has shown us in the boundless sacrifice He has made for us — the deliverance wholly undeserved He has wrought for us in His own deep abasement and suffering under God's wrath on the cross, together with all the gracious encouragement He has therein brought before us for our comfort, admonition, and support in our conflict through the world, we cannot but regard the thankful commemoration of the Lord's death as a paramount obligation which under no circumstances ought to be neglected.

Another person's fault should not keep me away: if it rightly acts so on one, it ought to hinder all. Is the Lord then to be as it were forgotten because somebody deserves censure? Let the faulty individual be reproved or otherwise dealt with according to scripture; but my place is to "do this in remembrance of Christ." Again, a sense of my own faultiness should not keep me back. "Let a man examine himself, and so let him, eat" — not stay away. He who abstains from the Lord's Supper virtually says he is none of His.

This will suffice as to the breaking of bread, barely as the subject has been touched. A few words remain to be added in regard to prayer. There is very often a great mistake made as to this. We hear, sometimes about the "gift of prayer;" but where do you find it? Show me a passage of scripture which speaks of a "gift of prayer" in the sense in which people commonly use the term? What is the effect? It largely hinders conscientious modest simple souls, who otherwise would join heartily in public prayer. But they cannot give themselves credit for possessing the "gift of prayer." They are frightened by what is a mere bugbear — by what is really, if they but knew it, a blunder. The consequence of this for them is, that they hang back, and are silent, when the meeting would be greatly benefited by their help. Are there not some now present who know well that they have had many a time a desire to pray, and thus express the wants of God's assembly to Himself, but who have been deterred because they feared their lack of a "gift of prayer," and that they might not be able to pray long enough, or in a way acceptable to some whom they have heard insisting on the "gift of prayer"? Is it not a fact? I entreat you, beloved friends, to listen to them no more, nor heed your own thoughts and feelings.

Examine the word of God for yourselves, and you will find that the apostle lays down (1 Tim. 2), and even peremptorily, his desire that the men pray everywhere. Let them then commit themselves to the Lord without doubt, and at the same time remember, that scripture at any rate never even hints about a "gift of prayer." This brings us to another point connected with the one I have just endeavoured to explain. It is in my opinion a mischievous notion, that those who possess a ministerial gift should be regarded as the only proper persons to let their voices be heard in the assembly of God.

Lecture 5.

GIFTS AND LOCAL CHARGES.

Eph. 4: 7-11.

I should feel tonight that my subject was dry indeed and promised little profit to souls, if we had only to look at gifts and offices in themselves. It is thus that the subject is often regarded, and is therefore apt to become not only a barren speculative question for some souls, but also a snare to others — barren to such as, looking upon it from outside, think that they at least have nothing to do with gifts and offices, and a snare perhaps as often to those who conclude that they themselves are especially, if not exclusively, concerned in them. The truth is, these spiritual functions closely and materially affect both Christ and the church of God. Attached to Christ as their source, they (at any rate gifts) flow down from the same reservoir of rich grace on high, whence all the main characteristic blessings of the church proceed. They proceed from Him in heavenly places, and therein is the true answer to much, the greater part, of the aversion some feel to the subject, as if ministerial gifts were only a means of giving importance to their possessors. It would be hard to think that such a turn can be anything but a gross perversion of what comes from Christ or heaven. In truth they are of the deepest moment in God's eyes, as He deigns to use them for the glory of His Son; and surely the consideration of the light that scripture affords should be precious to those whose joy as well as responsibility it is to profit by them; and not least to those who have personally and most jealously to watch how the gift of Christ's grace is used, lest it should be diverted from the object for which the Lord gave it to some selfish or worldly account. It is evident, I think, that simply to state the source is, in the principle of it, to cut off all excuse for the earthly aggrandisement, in various forms, which the Lord's gifts are too commonly made to serve.

But then there is another remark to be made. Not only do these gifts of Christ spring from Him in heaven, and therefore must, if anything can, refuse to mingle with the vanity of the world and the pride of man (I speak, of course, of the gift itself, and not of the flesh's perversion of it); but besides there is another feature of these gifts, which is of immense interest to us as believers in the Lord Jesus. They are essentially bound up with Christianity, not on the contemplative side, but in what is equally needful, its active and aggressive character. But whether you look at the source or the character, all is founded on an eternal redemption that is already accomplished. The more these considerations are weighed, the more their importance will appear; the more also, it seems to me, the subject of the gifts of Christ will be seen to be entirely above that earthly and barren domain to which theology at least would consign it.

Further, is there not a wrong done to God and His saints, wherever that which the Lord deigned to make known to us in His word — that which constitutes, rightly applied, so essential a part of the blessing of the church — is viewed as but a secondary matter that can be taken up or laid aside at will? In point of fact, such indifference to His truth is deep dishonour done to Him, and a corresponding loss invariably to the souls of the saints who thus slight His will. It must be evident, if it were only from the scripture just read, that the Holy Ghost does not in any way banish the subject of gifts into some dark corner — if such there can be in the scriptures — whence we may, if we please, draw it forth from time to time, and wield it to the best account of our party. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, where the Holy Ghost has shown both heights and depths of blessing in Christ and in the church — in the very centre where He shows us too the Lord Himself in His own glory at the right hand of God — it is there beyond almost any other part of the New Testament, that we find the Spirit launching out into an account of the gifts' of the Lord to the church.

But, observe, I say the "gifts of the Lord," because so it is that they are regarded here, rather than gifts of the Spirit. Indeed it would be difficult to find such an expression in scripture. There is a passage which seems to say as much in Heb. 2; but it is properly "the distributions of the Holy Ghost." You will find also in 1 Cor. 12 that wisdom, knowledge, and the rest are said to be given by "the same Spirit." But still, in these things, the Holy Ghost, properly speaking, is not regarded as the giver, save mediately. The Lord is the real and proper giver; the Spirit of God is rather the intermediate means of conveying the gift, distributing or making it good, — the energy by which the Lord acts. And I conceive it to be of moment, practically, that we should see that the gifts which are used to call out and build up the church, and which are the only true basis of ministry, take their rise from Christ Himself.

Ministry then may be defined to be the exercise of gift, and therefore it is evident that these gifts of grace are bound up with it in the most intimate manner. There can be no ministry of the word (properly speaking) without gift by the Spirit from Christ.

But let us look for a moment at the development which the Holy Ghost gives to the truth that these gifts flow from Christ. "Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." It is not a bare question of qualities possessed; still less is it merely a matter of attainment, let it be ever so well meant to give honour to the Holy Ghost. It is a new thing given, the positive consequence of grace; it is the fruit of the free favour of the Lord, who in these things acts according to His own sovereign will and for the glory of God.

"And unto every one [or each] of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, [taking up Psalm 68] 'When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.'" Although the Lord Jesus was in His person, one need hardly say, competent at all times, still He was pleased, in the order of the ways of God, to wait for the great work to be done — and done too, not merely as regarded man in divine mercy towards him, but in view of the enemy who was to be dealt with; the power must be broken that had led captive the children of God. Hence the spiritual enemies were first disposed of, and the Lord is accordingly represented here as ascending up to heaven on the defeat, the total defeat before God, of all the once mighty unseen power of evil. Upon this foundation ministry is built. The Lord Jesus goes up into heaven. He has Himself confronted and defeated the powers of darkness. He has led captivity captive; and thereon "He gave gifts to men." How completely the door for man's energy and ambition is closed! How carefully God — alone able to teach us on this subject, and in His revealed word having, in fact, given us the perfect truth — shows us the Lord Jesus, from first to last, the one means of good to us, and glory to God the Father by the Holy Ghost! Do you view Him only as Saviour and Lord? The truth is, there is not a single seed of the Church's blessing, there is not a means of acting upon the souls of ourselves or of others, that is not, every whit of it, connected with Christ. Where we have not apprehended this vital all-embracing connection with Him, and where that which assumes to be ministry, for instance, does not flow from Him only, it is clear there is a something not to be held fast, but on the contrary to be got rid of; an object not to be fought for as if it were a prize, but to be suspected as contraband, brought into the light of God, and judged in His presence. For whose ministry is it if it be not of the Lord Christ? and for what are we contending if it be not for the gifts of Christ?

The Lord then is ascended on high, and from that height of bliss and glory He has given gifts to men, and the Spirit of God carefully turns aside for a little, and puts us in the very presence of the mighty work on the ground of which Christ took His seat there. "Now that he ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?" What grace in Him! What infinite love to us, that He might bless us — eternally bless us! He had, with the Father and the Spirit, a divine co-equal right to that place of supreme majesty. They alone were competent to fill it. But He descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He had the highest place above, if I may say so, naturally and intrinsically. It belonged to Him as the Son of God, who counted it not robbery to be equal with God; but He deigned to be made flesh; for, as a part of the counsels of God, it was needful that He should be man. Without the incarnation there could have been no retrieving of the universal ruin of man, and of the dishonour of God through sin; there could have been neither defeat of Satan, nor an adequate and righteous deliverance for man. But now He descends first into the lower parts of the earth. He takes upon Him the sorrow, the shame, the sin. To have condescended to become man, and to live as He lived rejected and abased on earth, would have been much; but what is this to the cross? He went down to the very uttermost, and in consequence of this humiliation, He is now as man exalted to the highest. In His death He retrieved all that was ruined — indeed, I may say, infinitely more. He "restored that which he took not away." He brought a new and better glory to God than had ever been thought or even prophesied of in any respect; for I fear not to say that, as all types and shadows are but the feeble heralds of His glory, so too there is, there could be, no prediction rising up to the height of blessing that was found in Christ, nor fathoming the depth of His moral glory in the sight of God. Himself was needed to come forth — Himself needed that the full worth of His sufferings and cross might be known. Before that there could be no sufficient expression of His glory. It was out of this descent into the lower parts of the earth that He went up — out of this thorough coming down by Him who was as truly God as man, in the very nature which before had borne such fruits of shame and disgrace to God.

But what a change! Humanity is a nature in which the blessed God could delight, as He looked upon it in the Lord Jesus. Now too He ascends; and this, not as He came down; for, descending simply as the Son of God to become the Son of man, He goes up, not the Son of God only, but also the Son of man. Indeed, it is especially in this very character of man that we find Him seated in heaven now. "He ascended up," as it is said, "far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." On this magnificent ground, whether one looks at the humiliation on the one hand, or at the exaltation on the other — on this twofold ground of a height of glory, consequent on a depth of abasement beyond all thought, is founded that ministry which is according to God, being the simple exercise of the gift of Christ. And yet could it be credited, if one did not know it, that there are men, and Christians too, who can look upon such a scene unmoved, if not moved only to spite and sneer and reproach? But it must be so. To work thus belongs to Him whom the world knew not. No wonder therefore that it recognizes not the gifts of His grace. Whatever can be made to merge into the world's greatness, whatever can be altered to suit the age's taste, the world can admire. Even Christianity and the name of Christ — perverted, no doubt, and regarded only in some partial way — may be adopted. Why even the heathen were willing to do it! There was an emperor, as probably many of you know, who would have been glad to put the Lord Jesus as a god in the Pantheon. And so it is now. Has not Christendom something akin for its success? It has taken up piecemeal this institution and that; it has made them the means of adorning the scene into which God "drove out the man," exiled by Him because of sin.

But we who believe are assuredly entitled to look above this world, and there to see, higher than all heavens, our Lord and Master. And what is He doing there? What is His present occupation, according to that which the Spirit of God tells us here? He is giving gifts unto men. Let us bless Him for it! He (Himself a man, for so it is that He has taken this place) is giving gifts unto men. From on high He looks round about upon this world, and His grace makes man to be the vessel of these precious gifts, which savour not only of the person who is there, and of the work He has done, but also of the glory from which He gives them. They are heavenly gifts. They will not, if He be consulted, conform to the world's thought or measure; nor were they ever intended to serve the world but the Lord Jesus, though surely for His sake serving any and every body.

Let us take care then that we truly are subject to Him in whom we believe. And let us beware of the evil heart of unbelief, lest we treat a word of His lightly. Let us remember how easy it is pretending to honour His word, to let it slip away from us, counting it something of the past — no doubt to look back on it with reverential awe, but still as a thing gone by. Is this the living word of a God that lives for ever and ever? Are you going to treat the Head of the church as if He were dead? Nay, He never was dead as the church's Head. Indeed! He only took that Headship as One alive again from the grave, and so giving life; He only took it when both raised from the dead, and gone up to heaven: and yet men act as if the Head of the church were a dead and not a living Lord! And if He is thus living, what is it for? Is it merely as High Priest, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews, to bring His people through the wilderness? There is some tendency in Christians to overlook the priesthood of Christ; but there is a far greater danger of their forgetting Christ as the living Head, who still stands at the fountain-head of blessing, ever in faithful love giving His gifts to man. No doubt it is all summed up as if it were a given thing here — "He gave;" and there is a very interesting reason for such a way of presenting His gifts. Assuredly the Lord would not Himself put the gifts of His grace in such a form as to interfere with the church's constant hope of His own return. On the contrary, He would fix the church in the attitude of expecting Himself from heaven. Accordingly not even the supply of ministerial gift is so put as to defer the fulfilment of the "blessed hope" from age to age. On high is the Head of the church, and as Head it is part of His work to vouchsafe all needed gifts for men.

Here then is the whole scene of His grace summed up in one — the Lord gave gifts to men; "and He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers." We have not a catalogue of all the gifts. It is not at all in the manner of scripture or of the Lord to furnish a mere formal list; for the truth is not written in the word of God so as to satisfy human curiosity or form a system of divinity. What is done is infinitely better. He has given us exactly what suited His wisdom in each particular part of scripture. Hence if we compare, for instance, what we have here with the first Epistle to the Corinthians, we shall find striking differences. There are some gifts found here, not there; and some found there which are not here. Now this is not a thing of chance, nor a matter in which the apostle used merely his own judgment and decided things after his own mind. Nobody denies that his heart and mind were deeply exercised. God forbid! But we may bless God that there was an infinitely wise mind directing all things, and that there was a judgment which knew the end from the beginning. We shall find, accordingly, that the apostle mentions these gifts according to that divine intelligence. Indeed, the reason of it, to some extent, may appear as we proceed.

First of all, the gifts (δόματα) here enumerated are in view of the perfecting of the saints, which is the great primary object, branching out into the work of the ministry, and the edifying the body of Christ, as connected with it. Now, there, at once, may be discerned the key, or divine reason for presenting here certain gifts and not others. Here we have nothing, for instance, about speaking in a tongue; neither have we any mention of miracles. Why so? What have they to do with the perfecting the saints? The reason seems to me clear and adequate. Those gifts for signs were of all consequence in their place; but how could a tongue or a miracle perfect a saint? We see, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, that, instead of perfecting, they on the contrary became a very great snare for the saints. No doubt the Corinthians were carnal, and therefore they were like children amused with a new toy — with that which was, indeed, an engine of power. And we know how great a danger this is, just in proportion to our unspirituality. We have the very solemn lesson, that even the greatest powers and most astounding manifestations of the Holy Ghost in man cannot give spirituality, and do not minister to the edification of the saints necessarily in any way; but, if there be a carnal mind, they become a positive means of the soul exalting itself, turning away from the Lord, losing its balance, and bringing discredit upon that which bears the name of Christ on the earth. In this Epistle, however, God is occupied with His counsels of grace in Christ for the church, beginning primarily with the saints as such. He always takes up the question of individuals before He deals with the church. And how blessed and wise is this! He does not begin with the body of Christ, and then end with the perfection of the saints. This would be, very likely, our thought, but it is very far from His. He first puts forward the perfecting of the saints, and then shows us the work of the ministry, and the edifying the body of Christ. Thus, the true explanation of the passage is, that it is the development of Christ's love to the Church. His eye is fixed upon the blessing of souls. It is Christ not only gathering in, but building up — causing them to grow up to Him in all things. Accordingly, He gives the gifts which are of grace suited to this end. "He gave some apostles and some prophets."

These are the two gifts which the second chapter of this epistle shows to be at the foundation, we may say, of this new building, the church of God. Thus, in the 20th verse, we read, "They were built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone." Evangelists, evidently, are not the foundation; neither are pastors and teachers; but prophets, as well as apostles, are. And we can easily understand this. We can see that, as God was introducing into the world a wholly new system when He set His Son at His own right hand — a new work of God in the church, so there was a new word which had to accompany this work, whereby He would act upon the saints so as to give them to grow up to the perfecting of His will and the glory of His Son in this unprecedented thing, the church of God. Accordingly then we have the foundation laid, and here not Christ alone. Of course He is, in the greatest and highest sense, the foundation — "Upon this rock I will build my church:" the confession of His own name, His own glory as the Son of the living God, is this unquestionably. But still, as the means not only of revealing the mind of God touching the church, but also particularly of laying down with authority the landmarks of His husbandry in the earth — the church of God, the apostles and prophets were thus used. To distinguish them the former were characterized by an authority in action, the prophets by giving out according to God His mind and will about this great mystery.

It is hardly worth while to disprove the notion that the prophets here refer to the Old Testament. The phrase "apostles and prophets" is strictly limited to those that followed Christ. Had there been the inverse order — prophets and apostles, there might have been some shadow of reason for this idea; but the Spirit of God, in His wisdom, has taken care to exclude the thought. The work spoken of is altogether new. The apostles and prophets seem to be expressly introduced in this order. But in the third chapter a decisive reason is furnished by the Holy Ghost. It is written in the 5th verse that the mystery of Christ, "which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;" so that we have there with the most perfect clearness not only the same order still preserved, but the positive expression "now revealed." The prophets of the Old Testament, therefore, are necessarily excluded. These prophets are of the New Testament as well as the apostles.

But more than this, let me make the remark before going farther, that this character of ministry was altogether new. When our Lord was upon earth. no doubt there was more or less preparative action for it. He sent out first twelve apostles; then He sent out seventy to carry a final message to His people. All this was a thing never found in any age previously. It was wholly without precedent on the earth — an activity of love that went out with a blessing to others. God Himself had not done it; for the solemn word by a prophet, and the secret action of His grace before, are too distinct to be confounded with it. Who had ever seen or heard such a thing as a Man on earth gathering men to Himself first, and sending out from Himself afterwards a message of love, the glad tidings (not yet, of course, in the fulness which was afterwards imparted when the great work of redemption was done, but at any rate the blessed news) of the King on God's part of the kingdom of heaven on the earth? This is what the Lord did on earth: He sent out disciples or apostles with the message of the kingdom. And no doubt it was in man's eyes a strange and to faith a blessed thing, suitable only to Him who had divine grace as well as divine authority, worthy of and reserved for the Lord Jesus here below. But it is remarkable that in Eph. 4 all the earthly part of our Lord's action is left completely out, and the gifts here spoken of are beyond controversy dated from the ascension of the Lord, and shown to hinge on it.

Do I mean to deny that the apostles were included — the twelve, or, strictly speaking, the eleven along with the one supplied to fill the place of him that was cut off? In no wise; but nevertheless their earthly call and mission are quite passed by. We can all understand that the Lord as Messiah might prepare a mission suited to Israel, as I have no doubt that "the twelve" had this distinctly as its reference; for the twelve apostles naturally answer to the twelve tribes. The sitting on twelve thrones, spoken of in connection with them also in Matt. 20, clearly confirms the thought. What hinders these same men afterwards from becoming the vessels of a heavenly gift? Thus we can recognize in the earlier apostles a sort of double relationship. There was a link with Israel which was conferred by the Lord when He was upon earth in the midst of His people, dealing with them; but a new place became theirs when the Lord ascended on high.

But besides the Lord took care to break in upon this Israelitish form and order, and the apostleship of St. Paul becomes an event of cardinal importance in the development of the ways of God, because therein all thought of Jerusalem, all reference to the tribes of Israel, is dropped, and that takes its place which is clearly extraordinary in all its circumstances and heavenly in source and character. More particularly this was plain, that the Lord made manifest what was really true with regard to the others, that they on the day of Pentecost received that gift of apostleship which was suited to the heavenly work which they were afterwards to have, in addition to their previous earthly call and work. Apart from and towering over the twelve stood the apostle Paul, bringing out into the utmost prominence the principle that his apostolic mission was a heavenly thing, entirely and exclusively such as far as he was concerned. Therefore he was the fitted person to say, as it was of course by the Spirit of God that he did say, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more." The glory of the Messiah on the earth fades away for the time in a deeper and brighter glory, the heavenly glory of Him who is now at the right hand of God. It is the same Christ, the same blessed One, without doubt, but it is not the same glory; and more than this, it is a better and more enduring glory. It is the glory that is suited to the new work of God in His Church, because it is the glory of its Head. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him."

Thus, the church being a heavenly body, and Christ Himself, its Head, being in the actual and fullest sense a heavenly person, ministry takes a heavenly shape: and these gifts which flow from Him are its first expression. Hence, then, we have the clear intimation from the scripture before us that these gifts from Christ on high are heavenly in their character and source.

Another thing also may be noticed by the way. If we take the bestowal of these gifts as dating from the ascension of Christ, where is there room left for the hand of man? Where can you insert that preliminary ceremonial on which tradition lays so much stress? Who ordained the apostles for their heavenly work? Who laid hands upon them, as authoritatively installing them in that high office? You will say that unquestionably the Lord called them when He was here "in the days of His flesh." He did call them for their mission to Israel; and when risen, but still on earth, He charged them to disciple the nations. (Matt. 10, Matt. 28) But what hands of man did He employ in setting them apart to their proper heavenly work? Will any believer breathe the thought that this was an imperfection in their case? Did the new work of God, based on a dead and risen and ascended Saviour, and carried on by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, want anything for its due commencement? If there is no appearance then of that rite of laying on of hands, which some count not merely desirable, but essential for all that minister from the highest to the lowest grade, how comes this strange omission? Who will venture to impeach the regimen of Christ? Will any zealots for "holy orders," as men speak, affirm or insinuate that the Lord did not know better than they what became His own glory in His chief ministers? Let them beware of their theories and their practice, if either lead them to become "judges of evil thoughts."

In truth, the Lord took care, now that it was a question of a new and heavenly testimony, not absolutely to abolish that ancient sign of blessing, but to break in upon and leave no excuse for the earthly order so easily abused by man. Hence, as if for the purpose of manifesting yet more distinctly the vast change which was come in the case of him who styles himself emphatically "minister of the church" (Col. 1), there is no derivation from the twelve apostles that were before him. On the contrary, from His own place in heavenly glory the Lord calls one who was not going up to Jerusalem but rather from it; one who had no connection with the apostles — nay, so much their enemy, that most stood in doubt of him, after he was arrested by sovereign grace in the midst of his determined systematic hatred of Christianity and persecution of all who bore the name of Jesus. What a proof that not only the conversion of Saul of Tarsus was of the pure and rich mercy of God, but that his apostolate sprang from the same source and bore the same stamp as the salvation which reached him! Thenceforward he becomes the characteristic symbol, as he was the most distinct and abundant testimony, of the grace that is now not saving only but choosing vessels and fitting them as instruments for the active blessing of mankind, and especially of the church of God. It was the Lord Jesus at the right hand of God calling and sending an apostle to the church, a chosen vessel unto Himself, to bear His name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel; but first taken out from both Jew and Gentile and then sent to them. (Acts 26: 17)

The same principle embraced the other apostles no doubt: because they on the day of Pentecost were made gifts of grace in the highest degree to the church from the now ascended Lord, its Head. But there is fresh and brighter light in the case of Paul, who was not more truly "as one born out of due time," compared with all those that went before, than he furnishes in the strongest colours the unmistakable intimation of the mind and will of the Lord as to the future.

But then it will be objected that after all there was a miracle in Paul's conversion and call, which takes the case out of just application to ordinary ministry. A miracle most striking and significant there was, when the Lord in glory revealed Himself as the Jesus he was persecuting in the members of His body. Notwithstanding it rested mainly on the apostle's testimony; and there were not wanting, even in the church of God and among his own converts, it would seem, those who questioned the apostleship of Paul. His call far from Jerusalem, his isolation from the other apostles, the very fulness of grace manifested toward him, the emphatic heavenly stamp imprinted on his conversion and testimony, all tended to make the case peculiar and irregular and unaccountable, wherever the old earthly order so prevailed as to cast suspicion on any display of the Lord's ways beyond or different from the past. Personally a stranger to the Lord during His manifestation here below, there was no question of his candidateship, like a Joseph or a Matthias, on the ground of his having companied with the twelve from the baptism of John till the ascension. There was no decision by lot in his instance, nor any formal numbering with the twelve. He was a witness of Christ's resurrection no less than the rest, yet it was from no sight of Him after His passion upon earth. He had seen the Lord, but it was in heaven. His was the gospel of the glory of Christ no less than of God's grace. Thus carefully was the great apostle made the witness of non-succession, that is of a ministry direct from the Lord independently of man! No doubt the highest expression of that ministry was in Paul, who thenceforward becomes the most illustrious exemplar of its source and character.

Allow me also to put another question. Who ordained the prophets of the New Testament? when and how and by whom were they appointed? who ever heard of hands being laid upon their heads? Search the New Testament through, if you wish the best proof that the notion is unfounded. Let me come to the point at once, and affirm further, that neither prophets nor any other of these classes were installed of man after that fashion. Here we have apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers: can you show me a single instance among these classes where the individual was called by human authority? Is it denied then that there was such a form of blessing as the laying on of hands in the New Testament? For my part, I accept the fact not only in its apostolic application to the sick and to those who had not yet received the Spirit, but also in its connection with our subject. The question is as to its scriptural use? Let me ask, When were hands ever laid on any save to confer a gift by the power of the Spirit, or to commend those already gifted to God's grace in a special work, or formally to assign men to the charge of secular work? It is clear, for example, that Philip, along with his six companions, had hands laid upon him; but was it for his work as preaching the gospel? On the contrary, he was one of the seven men chosen "to serve the tables," in order that the apostles might not be distracted from prayer and the ministry of the word. "The seven" thereon were ordained to be employed in the external service of the church. Apart from this, the Lord was pleased to send him forth in the proclamation of the word here and there; as an evangelist naturally would be a wanderer, not according to the meaning of the word so much as the exigencies of the work.

Hence, when the persecution about Stephen broke out and scattered those in Jerusalem, Philip had a new task which had nothing to do with his local duties as one of the seven. His diaconal service would station him at Jerusalem, to take care of the poor, for this was the purpose for which he was ordained; whereas his preaching Christ flowed from a gift of that character, not from ordination. In fact as far as the New Testament speaks — and it speaks fully and precisely — no one was ever ordained by man to preach the gospel. Hands were laid by the apostles upon Philip like the rest, after he was chosen by the multitude, and thus he was appointed to take charge of the tables; for the scripture, perhaps because of a certain peculiar state of things at Jerusalem, does not positively give the title of "deacon" in this case, though one does not deny its general justice, for there was something akin in their duties.

It is certain therefore that whether we look at an apostle, or a prophet, or an evangelist, or a pastor and teacher, or either of these last, there was no such ministry instituted for the church, which itself existed not, until after our Lord's ascension; and in none of these cases was there the laying on of hands as the initiatory sign or inauguration of these ministers. All admit the imposition of hands in certain cases, ordinary or exceptional. The exaggeration of clericalism should not hinder the Christian from being perfectly fair in dealing with this and every other question. There is nothing that will dispose of prevalent traditions so readily and conclusively as searching and submitting to scripture. There is full and clear instruction there, the effect of which is to confute all that tends to exalt man and lower Christ, whatever support men may try to extract from the word of God for selfish ends. It is outside the light of inspiration that all these errors live; once let that in, and it will soon be seen that the Holy Ghost is not providing for the worldly honour of man on earth, but for glorifying Christ in heaven.

What, then, is the genuine meaning and scope of Acts 13? It has long been the well-known stock passage which theological controversialists are wont to cite for ordination in general. Some insist on it as warranting their "three orders" of bishops, priests, and deacons; others allege it as decisive for parity of ministers, whether Presbyterian or Congregational. The Episcopalian points with triumph to Barnabas and Paul in the first rank; to Simeon, Lucius, and Manaen in the second; and to Mark in the third (as, after the dispute with Barnabas, to Paul, Silas, and Timothy respectively).*

* So Archbishop Potter, in the well-known text-book, "A Discourse on Church Government" (pp. 73, 74), if one may, without unkindness, specify a single defaulter out of the crowd. Yet the Archbishop evidently gave up the passage as bearing on ordination. "It cannot be proved that Paul and Barnabas were ordained at this time to be ministers. If they were ordained to any office or ministry, it must be that of apostles, not only because they are presently after this called apostles, before they received any farther ordination, but also because they were prophets before that time, as shown in one of the preceding chapters [chap. 3]. But this is very unlikely, because this rite of imposing hands, whereby other ministers were ordained [an assumption of the archbishop's without and against Scripture], was never used in making apostles. It was a distinguishing part of their character that they were immediately called and ordained by Christ Himself, who gave them [nay, but 'the disciples' and not apostles only, John 20] the Holy Ghost by breathing on them; but neither He nor any other is ever said to lay hands on them. When a place became vacant in the apostolic college by the apostacy of Judas, the apostles, with the rest of the disciples, chose two candidates, but left to God to appoint whether of them He pleased, to take part of the ministry and apostleship, from which Judas fell. Neither was St. Paul inferior to the rest of the apostles in this mark of honour; for he often asserts himself to be an apostle not of men, nor by man, but immediately, and without the intervention of men, to have been appointed by Jesus Christ, in opposition to those who denied him to be an apostle as was shown in one of the former chapters. But then it will be asked for what end Paul and Barnabas received imposition of hands? To which it may be answered, that this rite was commonly used, both by the Jews and primitive Christians in benedictions. Jacob put his hands on the heads of Ephraim and Manasseh when he blessed them; and, to mention only one instance more, little children were brought to Christ, that He should put His hands on them and bless them. Accordingly, it is probable this imposition of hands on Paul and Barnabas was a solemn benediction on their ministry of preaching the Gospel in a particular circuit to which they were sent by the Holy Spirit's direction. Hence it is called in the next chapter a recommendation to the grace of God for the work of ministering the Gospel to certain cities, which they are said to have fulfilled. So that this rite was not their ordination to the apostolic office, because the end for which it was given is here said to be fulfilled, whereas their apostolic office lasted as long as their lives. And therefore, Paul and Barnabas seem only now to have had a particular mission to preach the Gospel in a certain limited district, in the same manner as Peter and John were sent by the college of apostles to Samaria, to confirm the new converts and settle the Church there." — Crosthwaite's (or the Seventh) Edition, pp. 201, 202.

This is substantially true and sound, far preferable to Calvin's remarks (Inst. 55., 3. 14): "Why this separation and laying on of hands, after the Holy Spirit had attested their election, unless that ecclesiastical discipline might be preserved in appointing ministers by men? God could not give a more illustrious proof of His approbation of this order, than by causing Paul to be set apart by the Church, [?] after He had previously declared that He had appointed him to be the Apostle of the Gentiles. The same thing we may see in the election [?] of Matthias. As the apostolic office was of such importance that they did not venture to appoint any one to it of their own judgment, they bring forward two, on one of whom the lot might fall, that thus the election might have a sure testimony from heaven, and at the same time the policy of the Church [?] might not be disregarded." The truth is, as to the case of Matthias, it was before the mission of the Holy Ghost, and there was no question of the Church's policy or election either; but by the lot the choice between the two was cast, in the Jewish form (Prov. 16: 33), into the sole disposal of the Lord.

Only examine the passage, and the more closely you do so, the better will you be enabled to judge how little it countenances, how strongly it condemns, every scheme of ordination which men attempt to base upon it.

In the church that was at Antioch there were, it is said, "certain prophets and teachers, as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch and Saul." That is, we have these five prophets and teachers, while engaged in serving the Lord with fasting, made the object of an important communication from the Holy Ghost respecting two of their number. "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." Barnabas had been for years actively engaged in the work of the Lord; and so had Saul of Tarsus ever since his conversion. Not only was he set apart in the providential purpose of God before his birth, as we see in Galatians 1, but he was called by the grace of God from the time when he was struck down on the way to Damascus. But the Spirit of God now separates him to a special mission. It is clear that this is not an announcement of the ministerial call of either Barnabas or Saul: scripture is arrayed against scripture by all who say so. The previous part of the Acts proves that Barnabas was long blessed in the ministry of the word within and without, and that Saul especially was bold and mighty in the work. The latter, indeed, from the first, brought out the Sonship of Christ in a way which we have no reason to believe any other had done up to that time, as we learn from that very chapter which gives us his conversion. The notion therefore that ordination was the question in Acts 13 is most manifestly false.

But how comes it that the theologians fail to notice that their determination to see ordination here destroys their respective systems, as well as contradicts other scriptures? Who was it ordained Paul and Barnabas, and to what? These are called apostles in the very next chapter (Acts 14: 4); and hence evidently the notion of ordaining Paul and Barnabas is quite unfounded, unless those whom God has set second and third in the church can ordain the first. (1 Cor. 12: 28.) Again, the truth is that there is not the smallest reason to call Mark a deacon at that time. He accompanied them as their "minister" (probably to get lodgings, to invite people to come and hear the word, and in general to serve them on their missionary tour); but, as for his being their chaplain, it is mere illusion. John Mark preaching to Paul and Barnabas! The truth is that he then turned out an indifferent help in the work, because he soon tired and went home to his friends. However this only by the way.

But it is transparent, that those who turn the account into the ordination of Paul and Barnabas involve the consequence that it is actually the inferior class conferring the highest ministerial rank upon them! If they were not apostles before, they have nothing to allege in support of the dignity but the sandy foundation that the act of laying on of hands upon them at Antioch conferred the apostolate! In this case it was an equal, if not a lower grade, giving a higher rank to those above themselves. Thus, it is evident that the notion is altogether unfounded.

Is it insinuated then that there was no meaning or value in this laying on of hands? That would be indeed to treat the word of God unwarrantably. It was a solemn and precious act of fellowship with these honoured servants of Christ. It was an act not only valid then but valid now. But there was no pretence of conferring anything whatever. The real drift of the transaction is expressed in Acts 14: 26. It is said, that they "sailed to Antioch, from whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled." Such was the aim of the laying on of hands by their companions in labour at Antioch; for it may not have been the brethren generally, but only those engaged in the work, and I wish to make every concession that is fair to those who desire to draw the utmost from the passage. But the meaning of the act is neither more nor less than a sign of blessing or of fellowship with those going forth on their new missionary errand. It was probably repeated. (See Acts 15: 40.)

The laying on of hands was of the most ancient date in the Old Testament. Thus Genesis gives it in the case of a father or grandfather laying his hands on the children; and so in the New Testament we have the frequent use of it where there was no pretence of conferring any ministerial character. It was a sign of recommendation to God by one who was conscious of being so near to God that he could count upon His blessing. The Lord takes up little children, lays His hands upon them, and blesses them; and so with the sick too when healing some. It was not at all a question of ecclesiastical order in these instances. No doubt there were cases where hands were laid on for the purpose of inaugurating an office.

It is often thought that the same rite was used in instituting elders, as in Acts 14: 22, 23, where the apostles Barnabas and Paul were "confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God. And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed." But this is an assumption. It is not exactly said here or anywhere else that hands were laid upon the presbyters. This silence, if the fact were so, is remarkable. It may have been probably the case; but scripture takes care never to say it. We have the statement that hands were laid upon deacons. We know that an elder was a much more important personage in the church than a deacon. People may reason and speculate; but I have no doubt that the Spirit of God, seeing the superstition that was attached to the form of laying on of hands, took care never to connect the two things together in a positive manner. The passage which some conceive does so is in the first Epistle to Timothy (1 Tim. 5: 22), where Paul tells him to "lay hands suddenly on no man." But the object of this is too vague for a sure conclusion, the connection being by no means certain. There is no allusion to elders expressly after verses 17-19. Thus in the 21st verse we read, "I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things, without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality." How can one suppose elders in particular referred to there? I see a general description of his work in verses 20, 21, after which comes the exhortation on which so much has been built — "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins." It is possible that there may be included in this an allusion to the danger of haste and carelessness in accrediting an elder, but the language is so comprehensive as to take in, it seems to me, every case which might call for the imposition of hands.*

* Dr. Ellicott goes so far as to think with Hammond, as well as De Wette, etc., that the words refer to the χειρο θεσία on the absolution of penitents and their re-admission to church- fellowship. This seems to me too special in another direction.

But supposing that it did certainly refer to elders and that hands were laid on these functionaries as well as on deacons, the important and undeniable fact in scripture is, that elders were never ordained except by persons duly authorized, who had a real commission from the Lord for the purpose. Now many may imagine that this is a concession fatal to the free recognition and exercise of gifts. They may think it yet more strange to find that those who contend for the largeness of the action of the Holy Ghost lay the utmost stress upon a divine commission and a definite authority. But be assured that the two things go together, where they are held according to God. None will be found to be more tenacious of godly order than the very persons who plead most for the rights of the Holy Ghost in the church. My assertion is, that in this very matter of ordination Christendom has missed God's mind and will, and is ignorantly but not without sin fighting for an order of its own, which is mere disorder before God. If scripture is to decide, the common plan of ordination for all who minister to those without and within is a departure from the order of God prescribed in His word.

Undoubtedly in the case of "the seven" (Acts 6) you do find apostolic appointment. The great point in this case was, that there the congregation elected and the apostles solemnly appointed. But it was no more than the congregation choosing fit persons to take care of their poor, etc. Nothing could be more proper. It shows the condescending goodness of God towards those who gave of their substance and those who received it. If the church contribute, it is according to His will that the Church should have a voice in the selection of those in whom they have just confidence that they will distribute in God's sight not only with good conscience and feeling but wisely. Thus one sees here a conspicuous instance of God's wise and gracious care. The multitude chose such men as they deemed most suited to the exigency. But even here the mere choice of the believers did not give them that place in itself; for if all chose, none but the apostles appointed them over the business, secular as it was.

The principle tells in a directly opposite way with regard to the elders, and yet more as to the ministerial gifts of Christ. We have no such thought expressed as a congregation choosing elders — never in any part of scripture. On the contrary we have the fact that the apostles went about; and where assemblies were already formed, in which were persons possessed of certain spiritual and moral qualifications which pointed them out to their spiritual and experienced eyes as suitable for eldership, such they chose. Among these antecedents those who desired the office must be persons of good report, and who, if married, had only one wife. There were many individuals brought to the faith of Christ in those days who had several wives. This was a scandal and sure to be felt the more as Christian truth spread. Such a direction showed what was in the mind of God. One could not rightly refuse the confession of a man who had two or three wives, if he were converted; but he must not expect to become an elder or bishop; he could not be a suitable local representative of the church of God.

Again take the case of a man who had children brought up badly. Perhaps this neglect may have been before he was converted; perhaps after conversion he may have entertained the evil notion of leaving the children to themselves on the faithless plea that God, if He saw fit, would convert them some time or other. Such mistakes have been made, and miserable have been the results. Whatever the cause of an unruly house, its head could not be a bishop. No matter what might be his spiritual gifts, they could not countervail; no such man could be charged with the oversight of God's assembly. For such an office it was not so much a question of gifts as of moral weight. A man might be a prophet, a teacher, an evangelist — his disorderly wife or children would not nullify his gifts; but he ought not to be made an elder, unless he brought up his children with godliness and gravity, and himself walked with a good report among those without.

Thus the Lord stringently required in such an official these moral qualifications as well as spiritual capacity for his work. Even if one possessed all these things, he was not an elder because he had them unless duly authorized. He needed to be ordained; he must have a legitimate appointment besides. And in what did this consist? Manifestly the whole value turns upon a valid appointing power. In what consisted that competent authority? Are we to set up or to imagine one? It must be according to the Lord and His word. Now the Scripture allows of no valid appointing power except an apostle or an envoy who had from an apostle a special commission for the purpose.

Where is there such a delegate now that can produce an adequate (that is, an apostolic) commission for the work of ordaining? You never saw, neither do I ever expect to see, the like. The fact is, that the word of God nowhere hints at the continuance of an ordaining power. It demonstrates in the most explicit manner that, after the Lord set up churches here and there, when He established local functionaries in each church, apostolic appointment or choice and this only was what He stamped with His approval. The requisite qualifications are clearly laid down; but the fact is equally clear that none but an apostle or an apostolic delegate was warranted to nominate the elders to their office, and not a word about perpetuating that power of appointment after the apostles left the earth. We have an apostle writing, not to the church or churches to choose elders, but to one who was specially charged to do this task. Yet even to Titus there is not a word about another continuing the task; nay, not a hint that Titus himself was to continue it after the apostle was dead. Neither was Titus authorized to appoint where he pleased, but the apostle assigns him the sphere of his commission. Being a special envoy of the apostle, Titus was doubtless a teacher and preacher. But here there was a definite region where he had the duty of ordaining elders in every city. Titus was responsible to do this in Crete; but nothing is said of the establishment of elders elsewhere or at other times nor of his permanent continuance there. On the contrary — and this would be a strange direction for a diocesan — he was to be diligent to come to the apostle at Nicopolis. He was not to be left at Crete.

It is evident that such directions as these from the apostle to Titus afford no warrant for others to appoint elders now. This is pure assumption, whereas all depends on a valid authority. Titus was apostolically commissioned and could produce an inspired letter of instructions to him personally. Who can today do anything analogous? "It must be so" is a poor and vain reason to him who respects due authority. It is easy to settle matters after a sort where this is allowed to pass; but, beloved friends, we want the word of God. Let me ask for a plain answer to the question, Do you believe that the word is perfect? Do you doubt whether the Lord, who cares for His own order in the church, did or did not foresee all the need and difficulty? Do you insinuate that He forgot anything of real value to us now? Do you suppose that He omitted to take into account the death of the apostles? He did nothing of the kind. The apostle speaks distinctly of his death (and more than one apostle too). He speaks of perilous times and the importance of scripture after he was gone; but not a thought about a line of successors to appoint afterwards, not a hint about bequeathing his powers in this case. To you who are commended to God and the word of His grace, to you who tremble at His word, is that silence nothing? To my own mind it is a fact not more surprising at the first blush than increasingly pregnant with meaning the more it is weighed.

Popery, despising this fact, assumes the contrary from human reason and is built upon this contrariety. Not that one cares to denounce any one system in particular by name, save only to bring out the truth which shows the will of the Lord and proves the evil by the good. In truth every earthly system, no matter how opposed it may become to the word of God, begins by adding something of its own to that word. The power of ordination attaches not to bishops but to apostles and their delegates. The moment you allow men the principle of development after the scripture canon closed, the moment you clothe with apostolic authority a body of officials who never were authorized divinely for the work undertaken, you are off the ground of faith in and deference to the word of God. The present practice has not the smallest foundation in scripture.

Indeed one may safely go farther and affirm not only that the ordination, of which people talk so much, before preaching and teaching Christ, is not a thing to be coveted in the present shape in which it is found among men, but that it is now a disorderly institution, a grievous dishonour to the Lord who gives ministerial gifts by the Spirit. In short it is a mere and sorry imitation of what is recorded in the word of God. Examine well, and you will soon find it does not even resemble what we read of there. God's word remains true, sure, and plain: only there once was a positive personal commission, armed with a certain apostolic authority either direct or indirect; and this you ought to have if you pretend to ordain elders as Titus did.

Permit me now to press another question. Which is the most scriptural course — to do what was always becoming in a Christian, or to copy an apostolic delegate? Which commends itself most to your conscience, to your heart, to your faith? We will suppose now in this place an assembly of God's children. They see in the word of God that, beside the common privileges and duties of all saints, there were certain gifts for ministry, and that there were also certain offices which needed an apostle or his representative to fill them up. They would like to have them all of course; but what is to be done? Are they to neglect what was written to the assembly at Corinth or to the saints at Ephesus, and to ape what was not written to the church but to Timothy or Titus? Would it not be humbler to consult the word of God and inquire of Him, that they might learn what is His will concerning this matter? What do we see there? That as to the gifts of Christ they never required any sanction here below before their exercise; nay, they never admitted of human intervention. The only exception is where there was a positive power of the Holy Ghost conveyed by the laying on of the apostle's hands. Fully do I admit that there was an exception in such circumstances. Timothy was designated by prophecies beforehand for the work to which the Lord called him. (Compare Acts 13: 1, 2.) Guided by prophecy (1 Tim. 4: 14; 2 Tim. 1: 6), the apostle lays his hands upon Timothy and conveys to him a direct power (χάρισμα) by the Holy Ghost, suited to this special service he had to accomplish. Along with the apostle, the elders who were in the place joined in the laying on of their hands. But there is a difference in the expression the Spirit of God employs, which shows that the communication of the gift depended for effective agency not in any way on the elders but only the apostle. The particle of association (μετὰ) appears where the presbytery are spoken of, that of instrumental means* (διὰ) where the apostle speaks of himself. It was an apostle that communicated such a gift. Never do we hear of elders thus conferring a gift: it was not an episcopal function but an apostolic prerogative, either to communicate spiritual powers or to clothe men authoritatively with a charge. Hence it is admitted that in the peculiar case of Timothy there was by the laying on of apostolic hands a very special effect produced; but who can do this now? Were this the claim (however one might desire to view, not indifferently but with the patience of God, the prevalent and superstitious perversion of a sign, admirable in itself when applied and understood scripturally), yet if any man now presumed to convey a spiritual power like an apostle, should one hesitate to call him an impostor? A mistaken course in assuming the rights of an earthly sovereign is or may be treason. What is it to pretend falsely to communicate the Holy Ghost or a distinct power of the Holy Ghost in the name of the Lord?

* Dr. Crawford ("Presbyterianism Defended," pp. 34, 35, note) says that the distinction is groundless, and that the one preposition no less than the other often signifies the instrumental cause of a thing! The University of Edinburgh may blush for such a statement from its Professor of Divinity. In Acts 15: 4, μετ᾽ αὐτῶν means "in connection with them," not "by them," like δι᾽ αὐτῶν in verse 12.

Beloved friends, it is a grave thing to trifle thus with the Spirit of God. There are those in our day whose ignorant boldness fears not to arrogate the right of conveying the Holy Ghost and ministerial power in this manner; but, thanks be to God, they are otherwise known to be fundamentally unsound, so that their influence over the faithful is inconsiderable. Then we have alas! the Eastern and Western bodies of Christendom, which are hardly less guilty. But among ordinary Protestants and especially among men of average Christian respectability, such pretensions are regarded with pity or horror. Even where the formularies as in the Anglican Communion approach fearfully near the precipice, the excuse is that their godly framers intended no more than to impart fitting and scriptural solemnity to various offices in the church. I admit however, that the excuse is lame, and that it is hard to decide whether these most suffer in conscience who employ these very serious forms ecclesiastically without believing them, or those are most injured in faith who accept as divine pretensions which are doubtless more respectably connected and venerable but not better founded than those of a modern imposture.

But the important truth on this subject to be seen is that these ministerial gifts were given by the Lord without any form further than that He warranted and sent them. Beware of disputing His will and wisdom. How is one to judge of the possession of a gift? Undoubtedly by its due exercise which finds an answer in the conscience. Let me ask you again, How do you know a Christian? When people talk theoretically, or discuss polemically, there are always great and numerous difficulties in the way. But if you went for practical reasons to a godly clergyman or dissenting minister, he could give you ample means of judging who are Christians in what he calls his flock. Listen to many a man on his knees and, if he be a Christian, he will speak as a child to his God and Father; but hear him on his legs, and he will perhaps controvert, without knowing it, what he has been just saying in prayer, till on his perverse principle he cannot tell whether God is his Father or not. How happy that there are such seasons of devotion where people speak with simple-hearted truthfulness! Away from their systems let them speak to God, and their true characters and even condition will soon be manifest as a general rule. Thus the fact is that in practice Christians have little difficulty in knowing for the most part who are converted and who are not. There may be a certain number of doubtful souls of whom we need not speak now. Let a believer be sent for to a sick man; is he wholly at a loss how to speak? Does he not seek as soon as possible to gather whether the sick man has peace in Christ, or is anxious about his soul, or whether he has ever realized his lost and guilty condition? If the believer finds no sense of sin, he will solemnly warn of judgment and set before that soul the cross, imploring him to receive Christ; or he will exhort him to rest in Christ because he is assured of his faith.

If then so little haze really rests on the question who are and who are not children of God, think you that the possession of a gift is a question so obscure and doubtful? Some may have more gift than others. But the gift of teaching implies the power of bringing out the word of God and applying it aright. Again take the power of ruling — for there is such a thing as rule in the church, and I hope none here present imagine it is gone — he who has the gift of rule seeks to exercise it of course according to the word of God. Scripture knows nothing of a blind obedience. The conscience is awakened, the heart set free and attracted to Christ. To these is the appeal of Christian ministry. It is not the blind leading the blind, nor is it the seeing leading the blind, but rather the seeing leading the seeing. Christ gives liberty as well as life, and this withal responsible to do the will of God. Therefore it is that according to the intention of God His children do not well to contrive systems to escape difficulties; they need faith to go through them with God. Let them prove their gifts, if indeed they have gifts from the Lord, by real power. There may be severe trials and difficulties now and then. Even Paul himself had to do with doubters of his apostleship, and this within the church, and among his own children in the faith. What true-hearted man should be downcast if he is slighted? But the time came when the Lord vindicated His servant, and when the self-will and pride which refused a divine gift was utterly put to shame, if the heart was not brought back to lowly thankfulness. The chief mistake we are apt to make is in the way of impatience; we do not allow time and space for the Lord to work: and that lack of patient waiting only defers the wished-for solution, because it makes the difficulty so much the greater.

But as to the discernment of a ministerial gift for preaching or teaching, it is in general plain and simple. If a brother stand up to speak in the Christian assembly without a gift from God, he will soon and painfully find it out. If self-judging, he will learn much from his own conscience; but he may quite sufficiently soon hear from others that which will make him understand that he has not a gift in the judgment of his brethren. But where there is really a gift, is it not possible that prejudice may act, and this be refused? Certainly it may be so for a time. Perhaps the speaker thinks too highly of his gift; perhaps he mistakes the character of it, and the right scene and time for its exercise; perhaps he is too exclusively occupied with his line of things, and too urgent or anxious to assert his gift. All this may be, often is, and always creates difficulty. But the truth remains that what is of God approves itself in the long run. My own experience, as far as my limited range of observation and knowledge goes, inclines me to think that the children of God are prone to make too much rather than too little of gift. In the present state of the church there is but a feeble development of gift, and this is felt the more in proportion to spiritual intelligence and a true position. Do you wish to know your place fairly and fully? Look in confidence to God and search the word of His grace. Many things there are to hinder and to draw away: partly the effect of education, partly the difficulty of finding an honest livelihood, especially if a man has been a professional preacher. If he abandons (not preaching but) that profession as an unscriptural innovation, he for the most part loses everything, even his bread, unless he have private means of his own. Hence it is that the inducements for such an one to remain where he is are enormous; the difficulties of coming out at the word of the Lord are incalculable. The power of God alone can accomplish the change and sustain the soul in peace and praise, "steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord."

While we may be sure that the word and Spirit of God give us clearly the true position for the individual Christian and for the Christian assembly, we ought not (I think, as things are,) to expect a great variety and strength in the gifts of the Lord's grace. Of course He can work sovereignly, and assuredly we ought to be most thankful for what is given. No doubt also there are gifts distributed somewhere or other. There are gifts of Christ in members and ministers of the national establishments, I do not question; there are His gifts likewise in the dissenting societies; and are we to suppose there are none of His gifts of grace in Romanism itself? For my part I cannot doubt that there are. Who would, who could, reject the testimony of facts that there have been persons therein — such as Martin Boos, for instance, not very long ago — used for the conversion of sinners and for the helping on of saints in some degree? And are such men not gifts of Christ to the church — as truly gifts though in the false position as if they were out of it? Their being Romanists — ay, Romish priests — does not destroy His grace, whatever we may feel as to their faithfulness. The fact is that the Lord gives according to His own will by the Holy Ghost, and we ought to acknowledge these gifts wherever they are. If a man be a dissenter, whether a minister or one of the people, in either case I am satisfied he is in a false position. It is not a question of a feeling of dislike to dissent, if one believe its foundations to be unscriptural. I ask the forbearance of any dissenters who may be here in affirming calmly and solemnly my conviction that dissent is unsound in its distinctive principles; a thorough contradiction of the very character of the church as one body; and in the popular call and choice undermining ministry as a divine and permanent institution flowing from the Saviour's grace. Dissent is religious radicalism, which essentially opposes God's will as much as and perhaps more than any other principle. The proofs are too plain. Dissent substitutes the election of the people in the place of the sovereign choice of the Lord Jesus Christ whether immediate or mediate.

But how is the truth better secured in the national bodies? By patronage, clerical, lay, or governmental! And the painful apology for this systematic self-will is that the men nominated by the government of the day, or a landlord, or a college, or a corporation, have gone through the usual forms! Is there the faintest resemblance between this worldly machinery and the divine system of spiritual gifts from Christ set forth in Eph. 4? I see only One who has ascended up on high. Are you looking to any other person? to any other kind of ascent? to any other heaven for the favours you crave after? I appeal to you as Christians. Do you value the word of God? Do you cherish that word only for the salvation of your souls? or do you confide in the same word and Spirit for guidance as to ministry and church office? What subjects more simply belong to the Lord? For what do we need Him more? As a believer I surely feel the want of God's word for my daily walk, no matter what my circumstances or sphere or duties. And do you, can you believe that the word that lives and abides for ever does not concern itself with so grave, delicate, and spiritually needful a thing as the ministry of the word; or that, if it speak thereon, you are not bound to hear and bow?

The sum of what has been said is then that these two great principles are revealed in scripture and recognized by the early church: namely, the Lord giving gifts of His own grace which did not require human intervention; next also a system of authority which did require that intervention, as in the appointment of elders by the apostles or persons commissioned to do their work in certain cases. It is clear that we have neither apostles living on the earth, nor representatives, like Titus, charged by an apostle to do quasi-apostolic work. The consequence is, that now, if subject to the word of God, you cannot and do not look for elders in their precise official form. If any man allege these can be, it might be well to hear his grounds from Scripture. What has been produced is in my judgment amply sufficient to disprove it. You cannot have persons formally and duly appointed to this office, unless you have a power formally and duly authorized of the Lord to appoint them. But you have not that indispensably needful power to authenticate elders: this is your fatally weak point. You have neither apostles nor functionaries commissioned by the apostles to act in their stead; and therefore the entire system of appointment breaks down for want of competent authority. Dare you say of your elders that the HOLY GHOST has made them bishops? You have none really, i.e., scripturally entitled to appoint.

What then? Are there none suitable to be elders or bishops, if there were apostles to choose them? Thank God! there are not a few. You can hardly look into an assembly of His children without hearing of some grave elderly men who go after the wanderers, who warn the unruly, who comfort those that are cast down, who counsel, admonish, and guide souls. Are not these the men who might be elders, if there were a power existing to appoint them? And what is the duty of a Christian man as things now are in the use of what remains? I say not to call them elders, but surely to esteem them highly for their work's sake, and to love and acknowledge them as those who are over the rest of their brethren in the Lord. I ask you solemnly, beloved friends, do you acknowledge any to be over you in the Lord? — any living servants of the Lord to take the lead in Him? Do you imagine such a recognition as this an offence against the principles of God? Rather let me warn you against picking out certain favourite texts from God's word to which only you pay obeisance. If we do so, we are as far as in us lies building up a sect no less truly than our neighbours. On the other hand, beware of adopting that human invention — apostolic succession — to escape dilemmas. If under the fiction of succession we dare to call men apostles who are not, the Lord in due time will not fail to challenge our word or act, and demand, who entitled us to endorse such an unheard of thing as this? who gave us leave, without His word, virtually to acknowledge this or that as an apostolic man by accrediting his claim to ordain? It is evident that to ordain elders is, however well-meant, an imitation of what apostles did, and, if unauthorized, not only without validity but an unwitting usurpation of an authority which reverted and now pertains to the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Thus in the present state of the church, the difference between a true position and a false one is not at all that one has got a due ordination and the other wants it. In truth no body on earth possesses it now. Do you acknowledge the want? or are you trying to cover the humiliating but evident fact that you have not the only ordaining power which scripture sanctions? And yet you go on ordaining, though you have neither apostle nor apostolic deputy! Which course is most orderly? To do as you do; or to acknowledge our actual lack, and carry ourselves accordingly before God and man — to confess that we want apostles or their delegates, and therefore that we cannot have presbyters duly chosen and formally appointed? There are, I repeat, men endowed with such qualifications as would render them eligible, so far as we can pretend to say, if there were a competent ordaining power. And the general principle of Scripture (Rom. 12) manifestly is, that he who had the gift of ruling, or of taking the lead among the saints, is bound to use it with diligence (as the teacher, exhorter, and others, are responsible to discharge their respective functions), even if circumstances made legitimate appointment to a charge impracticable.

But subjection to the word of God discovers readily that a state of things substantially analogous to our own defective condition is provided for in Scripture. The Lord in His wisdom let such wants be felt in the early church. Thus the apostle was inspired to write epistles to churches where there were no elders; as for instance the epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Corinthians. The last was notoriously a disorderly church, and elders might have been thought useful there. Nevertheless not the least word or hint about elders there is heard from first to last. Had elders been then in their midst, would not the apostle have called them to account, and blamed their want of godly care and diligence in oversight? Of this there is not a trace. Further, we know it was not the practice of the apostles to constitute elders in an infant church Where Paul and Barnabas chose elders for the disciples, it was in assemblies that had existed probably for years, and thus there had been time for spiritual qualifications to be developed. But in a new assembly, where the saints were young comparatively, a certain time had to be allowed, so that those who were competent for such a work should be made evident. Accordingly it is rather a rare thing to read of the apostles choosing or appointing elders.

On the other hand, in the first epistle to the Thessalonians, we have in the last chapter very important instruction given to the saints. They, too, are a similar instance of a young church, yet they were told to own those that laboured among them. Hence all this may be where presbyters are not. Thus in 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13 the apostle writes, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." The presence of elders is not requisite in order to have and to own those who are over us in the Lord. There is much of importance for us now in that Scripture, for we have elders no more than they. I think we ought to lay its exhortations to heart. There are within and without, not a few ill-instructed souls who hold the notion that, unless there be official appointment, they cannot have anybody over them in the Lord. This is all a mistake. No doubt, when a man was officially appointed, there was a definite guarantee in the face of the church given by an apostle or an apostolic man; and there was thereby no little weight given to those who were thus appointed. Such a sanction had great and just value in the church, and would be of consequence among the unruly. But none the less did God know how to provide instruction for assemblies where there was not yet official oversight. How merciful for times when, for want of apostles, there could be no elders! But it will be noticed that the Corinthian assembly abounded in gift, though elders are seen nowhere among them. The Thessalonians do not appear to have possessed the same variety of outward power, while elders or bishops again are never hinted at. Yet at Corinth the household of Stephanas devoted themselves regularly (ἔταξαν) to the service of the saints; and the apostle beseeches the brethren to submit themselves to such, and to every one that helped and laboured. The Thessalonians he prays to know those who laboured among them, and presided in the Lord, and admonished them. Evidently this did not depend upon their being apostolically appointed, which could hardly have been in their circumstances as lately gathered. It is founded upon that which after all is intrinsically better, if we must be content with one blessing out of two. Surely, if it comes to be a question between real spiritual power and outward office, no Christian ought to hesitate between them. To have the power and the office combined is no doubt the best of all, when the Lord is pleased to give both; but in those early days we see that individuals were often and rightly engaged in the work of the Lord before there could be the seal of an apostle, as it were, affixed; and such the apostle encourages and commends earnestly to the love and esteem of the saints before and independently of that seal. How precious that we can fall back on this principle now!

Even at Corinth and Thessalonica then those were raised up in the midst of the saints who showed spiritual ability in guiding and directing others. That was the work of those to whom one epistle exhorted subjection, and whom the other epistle commended as "over them in the Lord." Such men as these did not labour only; because some might be actively engaged in the Lord's work who might not be over others in the Lord. But these manifested power to meet difficulties in the church, and to battle with that which was ensnaring souls, and so to guide and encourage the weak and baffle the efforts of the enemy. They were not afraid to trust the Lord in times of trial and danger, and therefore the Lord used them, giving them power to discern and courage to act upon what they did discern. This was part of what fitted them to take the lead in the Lord. There were such at Thessalonica as well as at Corinth, and yet there is not the slightest intimation that they were regularly installed as elders, but on the contrary the strongest evidence that elders as yet had not been constituted in either place. The regular practice was to appoint elders after a certain time; indeed it could only be when the apostles came round, or sent an authorized delegate to choose fit persons and clothe them with a title before the church which none but the bad would dispute.

Need I observe how God had been graciously providing for the wants of His children? This subject will come definitely before us on the next occasion on which it will be my lot to address you. I will not therefore do more now than draw attention to His far-reaching wisdom in meeting the difficulties of the day, when a valid authority to ordain as the apostles did is not left on the earth. Not that His children are left without help; they have the same Lord and the same ever-present Spirit. Hence there is no need of some change or new invention to meet the difficulties of the day, but the return in faith to what was and is the will of the Lord; and this with intelligence of the actual state of the church, and the feelings which become it.

We have seen that, as the rule, the Lord alone gave these gifts of ministry: it depends upon His love to His church, His faithfulness to the saints. Is the Lord Jesus one whit less tender and true now than He was on the day of Pentecost? Who would insinuate it? Neither can I sympathize with those who look wistfully back on the earliest times, as if they only afforded scope for faithful souls. No doubt a bright halo of grace surrounds the scene where the Holy Ghost was first poured out on men with a simplicity and power which carried all along; but who was the spring and whence the energy which produced fruits so much the more wondrous when we think of the soil once so hard, and stubborn, and cold? Was it not the Lord acting for His own name by the Holy Ghost after He took the place, in risen and ascended glory, of giving gifts to men? Is not His grace as equal to these perilous times as He proved Himself when ushering in the mystery that was hid from ages? Are there saints to be perfected and ministerial work to be done? Does the body of Christ need to be built up? Then assuredly His gifts cannot fail till the work is done and all are brought into the unity of the faith; and the many adversaries and subtle snares and increasing perils will only draw the more upon the faithful love of the Lord of all. There is fulness of blessing in Christ for the church now as truly as then. Would that we but confided in Him more for every exigency!

Are we then to disparage the truth or to doubt His grace by setting up some work of our hands, some calf of gold, as if we knew not what is become of Him who is gone on high? Far be it from God's children! Let me suppose you come together as God's assembly; you know not who is to speak, exhort, give thanks, pray. To unbelief this is but confusion. Certainly it looks unwise if I forget who is in the midst; it is unpromising if I do not believe that the Lord is there; but if assured that He, who has all power in heaven and on earth, loves and cherishes the church, and that the Holy Ghost, divine as He is, dwells with and in us, what need I fear? If this position is true for one saint, it is true for all. For my part I would not dare for a moment to stand upon any foundation which did not contemplate the whole length and breadth of the church of God, which did not in its faith and love go out to and embrace all the saints of God. Of course allowance must be made for exceptional states, as for persons guilty of sin that would require their exclusion (immorality, bad doctrine, and such like).

But then if I know that this is the ground of the church according to Scripture, and that there was no other from the first taken and acted on by the holy apostles, the question is, Am I upon it? If I am called to labour in the word and doctrine, the Lord points me out the way. He opens the door which none can shut, He shuts and none can open. He finds a path for the feeblest of His pilgrims, and gives them courage, and makes it plain if they have to serve Him. Let us never doubt Him.

But may there not be a number of gifts? So much the better. If there are five or twice five gifted men in an assembly, let us thank the Lord: there is room for all. God forbid that we should sanction the novelty of each minister having his own little flock! Is it not a degradation for those who so speak, and for those so spoken of? No one behaves himself — nay, he does not even know how to behave himself — who does not bear the sense in his soul that the saints are "the flock of God." But evidently men do not speak of God's flock, if the divine ground of the church be forgotten: then it is "my flock," or "your flock." There is always room for the exercise of His gifts, whatever and however many they may be. Besides it is a strange time to fear that any could be spared as superfluous.

The hour warns me that this subject must now be closed. My endeavour has been to expound and enforce the fundamental distinction between gifts and offices — the one, we saw, flowing from Christ on high, the other requiring appointment here below of men themselves authorized of the Lord for the purpose. As for gifts, they always remain sure as truly as Christ abides the head and source of supply. As for formal authorization, it is no longer possible because you have not a duly authorized power to appoint. All you can do in the direction of appointing, if you will do something, is to set up a paltry and rather arrogant imitation of the apostles and their delegates. But if you really love the Lord and value godly order, is it not your bounden duty in the name of the Lord to acknowledge all His gifts in a way you have never done? Acknowledge them privately and publicly in the work He has assigned them. If the gift be small, acknowledge the Lord in it as heartily as if it were a great one; and if it be a great one, acknowledge it as humbly and unjealously as a small one. On the other hand do not try to imitate what the apostles did; beware of pretending to do what ought not to be thought of unless there were apostolic power. And as to appointing deacons or choosing elders, scripture affords no warrant unless there was direct or indirect apostolic authority which does not now exist.

NOTE ON ACTS 14: 23.

This opportunity is taken to furnish clear and conclusive evidence against the notion that the elders were chosen by the votes of the churches. The word χειροτονέω, if etymologically viewed, means to stretch out the hand; hence it was applied to election, as we say by show of hands, and, generally, to choice or appointment without reference to the manner. Just so ψηφίζομαι starts from mere reckoning with pebbles, and was used for voting thus; then for voting in general, and lastly for the simple resolve or decision of the mind. The context, not the word in itself, shows which is to be understood. Hesychius explains χειροτονεῖν by καθιστᾳν (compare Titus 1: 5), ψηφίζειν ; as Suidas for χειροτονήσαντες gives ἐκλεξάμενοι. With all this accords the usage of Aristophanes, as well as of AEschines, Demosthenes, etc., both in the narrow and literal sense, and in the general meaning of choice or designation. Appian, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Lucian, and Libanius afford many examples where the word conveys no more than choosing. In these therefore the idea of popular suffrage with or without the hands stretched out is quite excluded.

But a few instances must be given from Hellenistic writers familiar with the Old Testament and contemporaneous with those inspired to write the New Testament. Thus Philo (περὶ Ἰωσὴφ) repeatedly uses χ of Pharaoh's appointing Joseph his prime minister, and of Moses in the place to which he was chosen by God, and in his selection again of Aaron's sons for the priesthood. So Josephus (Ant. 6. 13. 9) speaks of Saul as "chosen king by God," ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ κεχειροτονημένον Βασιλέα, and also (Ant. 13. 2. 2) represents Alexander as writing to Jonathan in these terms, χειροτονοῦμεν δέ σε σήμερον ἀρχιερέα τῶν Ἰουδαίων. "We constitute thee this day high priest of the Jews." This may suffice to prove what we are to judge of Dr. J. Owen's statement (Works, vol. 15. pp. 495, 496, Goold's edition) that "Paul and Barnabas are said to ordain elders in the churches by their election and suffrage; for the word there used will admit of no other sense, however it be ambiguously expressed in our translation." Indeed, Beza, Diodati, Martin, and others had committed themselves to the same thing. Dr. G. Campbell, however, Presbyterian as he was, repudiated this version of the text, and (in his Prelim. Diss. x., Part v. § 7) pronounced per suffragia in the Latin of Beza "a mere interpolation for the sake of answering a particular purpose." If one do not endorse so strong a censure, the only alternative is that the gloss sprang from inadequate research and strong prejudice.

The truth is that we need not go beyond the New Testament to demonstrate the error; for here as elsewhere, even when applied to the most rigid election, χ. never means choosing by the votes of others, which it must mean to bear the alleged sense. Wherever the word occurs technically, the person intended does not take the votes of others merely, or preside as moderator of the election, but is the voter himself. Now in this case the subject in question is beyond doubt not the disciples but Paul and Barnabas. If any voted by stretching out their hands, it was the apostles only. Hence the authorized version rightly dropped "by election," the sense given in some of the older English and foreign translations which had been too much influenced by the Genevese school and even Erasmus.

The true meaning is that the apostles chose elders for the disciples in each assembly (not the disciples for themselves). And this is entirely confirmed by Acts 10: 41 and 2 Cor. 8: 19; in one of which passages God is said to have chosen beforehand; in the other the churches are the choosers precisely as here the apostles. Neither God nor the assemblies gathered the votes of others: no more did Paul and Barnabas. But this is the sole testimony which has ever been imagined directly to favour the popular election of elders; and we have seen that the inference drawn is assuredly fictitious. For the matter in hand the usage of the word in the political or civil affairs of Greece is no evidence.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to add that χ. does not mean the imposition of hands, for which scripture supplies another phrase never confounded with the word in question. But this confusion soon began to show itself in ecclesiastical authors, who not infrequently employ χειροτονία where we might expect χειροθεσία or ἡ ἐπίθεσίς τῶν χειρῶν. This error occurs in the so-called Apostolical Canons, Chrysostom, and subsequent writers; and it may have led the authorized translators to give "ordained" rather than "chose" or "designated." Bishop Bilson, in his "Perpetual Government of Christ's Church," is guilty not of this confusion only but of the strange error that "the elders" included "deacons." (See chaps. 7 and 10) But really the discord of commentators is almost past belief, unless one have read extensively and proved the fact by experience. Thus Hammond tries to extract from this verse the appointment of a single bishop to each church or city; whereas one might have inferred (without appealing to such incontestible proof to the contrary as Acts 20: 17, 28) that the plurality of the presbyters with the singular distributive was as strongly against him as language could make the case short of an express contradiction. Had Hammond's idea been meant, nothing could have been easier than to have written πρεσβύτερον κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν or πρεσβυτέρους κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίας. On the other hand, if I may trust Mr. Elsley's report, Whitby opposes this ultra-Episcopalianism on the equally untenable ground that these elders were such as had miraculous endowments either directly from God (as in Acts 2, 4, 9, 10, 11) or through an apostolic medium (as in Acts 8), and who had the care at first of the churches; not fixed ministers, but nearer to the apostles in rank. Can any statement be conceived more random and unfounded?

The last and perhaps the worst specimen of this speculation I take from Calvin's Inst. 4. 3. 15, 16, where, according to the author, "Luke relates that Barnabas and Paul ordained elders throughout the churches; but he at the same time marks the plan or mode when he says it was done by suffrage. The words are χ. πρ. κ. ἐκκλ. (Acts 14: 23.) They therefore selected (creabant) two; but the whole body, as was the custom of the Greeks in elections, declared by a show of hands which of the two they wished to have." It has rarely been my lot to meet with a more glaring perversion of the facts and language of inspiration than this passage exhibits, the refutation of which has been already anticipated. The new translation by E. Beveridge is purposely cited to cut off cavil on that score; and the original is given underneath for verification.* It is consolatory however to find that so untoward a construction was destined to no long existence; for its own author smothers it though with reluctance in his commentary on the passage: — "Presbyterium qui hic collectivum nomen esse putant, pro collegio presbyterorum positum, recte sentiunt meo judicio." (Comment. in loc.)

* "Refert enim Lucas constitutos esse per ecclesias presbyteros à Paulo et Barnaba: sed rationem vel modum simul notat, quum dicit factum id esse suffragiis, χειροτονήσαντες, inquit, πρεσβυτέρους κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν. Creabant ergo ipsi duo: sed tota multitudo, ut mos Graecorum in electionibus erat, manibus sublatis declarabat quem habere vellent." (Genevae, 1618.)

But the close of the chapter is still more full of perplexity and error. "Lastly it is to be observed, that it was not the whole people, but only the pastors who laid hands on ministers, though it is uncertain whether or not several always laid their hands. It is certain that in the case of the deacons it was done by Paul and Barnabas, and some few others. (Acts 6: 6; Acts 13: 3) But in another place Paul mentions that he himself without any others laid hands on Timothy. 'Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.' (2 Tim. 1: 6) For what is said in the epistle of the laying on of the hands of the presbytery I do not understand, as if Paul were speaking of the college of elders. By the expression I understand the ordination itself (!); as if he had said, Act so, that the gift which you received by the laying on of hands, when I made you a presbyter (!), may not be in vain." That apostolic hands appointed the seven men whom the multitude elected for the service of tables is clear. But scripture is silent whether imposition of hands was practised in the establishing of elders; and to me that silence seems admirably wise, even if in fact hands were imposed, as a divine provision against superstitious abuse. But what can be meant by the reference to Acts 13: 3, connected with the allegation that Paul and Barnabas, etc., laid their hands on deacons? As for the notion that τοῦ πρεσβυτερίου (1 Tim. 4: 14) means not the elders as a body but eldership, and so is to be in sense dislocated from its evident and necessary connection with χειρῶν at the end of the verse and put in apposition with χαρίσματος at the beginning, I maintain that the grammar is not more harsh and unexampled than the resulting doctrine is strange. Eldership in scripture is not a gift but a local charge.

The modern defences of this system are of no more weight than those of older date. I have before me now Dr. Crawford's "Presbyterianism Defended," and Mr Witherow's Inquiry; but they seem to me neither candid nor successful. The insuperable difficulty is that presbyters in scripture were never the ordaining power, though they might be associated with an apostle even in conveying an extraordinary gift as to Timothy, who is never represented as an elder. Further, the minister is as distinct from the elders in Presbyterianism as he is from the deacons in Congregationalism, and is a personage of as high moment in both systems as he is unknown to scripture. Again, to say that elders are not as distinctly laymen as the minister is clerical among Presbyterians is inconsistent with the notorious difference as to style of address, and salary. Both their systems err in maintaining that the office-bearers were chosen by the people; only those were whose duty it was to disburse funds or its equivalent. And if there was a plurality of elders (who were identical with the bishops), there was the fullest opening for all the gifts of the Lord, instead of that invention of men, the minister. Elders never ordained elders, but only apostles or their delegates; and gifted men required no ordination before exercising their ministry. Nor does Acts 15 resemble a church-court, i.e. a representative assembly of ministers and elders from all parts of the sphere of jurisdiction. This scripture shows us the apostles with universal authority from Christ, and the elders of the Church in Jerusalem, with the whole Church joining in the decision. Hence the decrees were delivered to be observed far beyond the cities of Jerusalem and Antioch, in total discord with Presbyterianism.

Lecture 6.

THE RESOURCE OF THE FAITHFUL IN THE RUINS OF CHRISTENDOM.

2 Tim. 2: 11-22.

How many elements of solemnity are crowded into the subject now before us! It is solemn to look over Christendom and survey its ruins, now too palpable to be denied. It is solemn, on the other side, to think of the faithful goodness of God, who knew all beforehand, spread it out in the unerring word of His grace, and has shown us that, if He felt the evil that was about to cover the scene of the profession of Christ's name on earth, His loving wisdom descried a sure path — a path the vulture's eye does not see, which nevertheless He gives His people to discern, and by means of which they can have the happy certainty that they are pleasing God.

To those who for the sake of the Lord and the truth deplore and refuse to have fellowship with the current practice of Christendom, there may be a certain necessity to give as strong proofs as may be of those evils which now abound, and of which the word of God forewarned when they were but in the germ. Indeed there may be a kind of temptation to prove the evil, where we feel in anywise the need of a justification for the path of separation to God. But that tendency is corrected promptly, and the heart receives its due tone and its right attitude, when we think who after all is most concerned, and whose honour it is we have to justify. The Lord preserve us from thinking of ourselves! It is unworthy of those who belong to Christ. Be it our boast to justify Him alone.

It will be my business now to show, not that He needs aught from us, not that His words of light require the tapers of man to make them more distinct, but that divine charity seeks the blessing of every one, especially of those who are comparatively young and uninformed in the truth of God. I hope to give enough at least of the evidence to show most plainly what the will of the Lord is; how faithfully His word deals with us; how worthy of trust both He Himself is and that which He has put into our hands. This may encourage the most diffident of God's children to look up with confidence, seeing that the end was as plain to Him as the beginning, and that for us the only path is that of Christ, for there cannot be two. He is the way, and as there is but one Christ, so there can be therefore but one path that satisfies the heart and mind of Christ for those who love Him.

Am I going to produce strong reasons as if one needed to justify this? It will be enough to explain what He has pointed out. To those who know Him there will be the most complete justification and the strongest reason in the fact that it is His path for us, though His goodness has given, alas! too sure and abundant proof how deeply it is needed.

Further I shall have the opportunity tonight of slightly reviewing the ground over which we have passed on previous occasions, and of showing how all that is most precious has been secured to the faithful. Not that the Lord has not been pleased to take away much. Not that we ought to be unfeeling about anything that concerns the Lord's power and glory in the church. But if we rightly claim a higher place for that which concerns God in His moral ways; if we ought to feel that what brings and keeps before us the grace of Christ must be of deeper value than any displays of power before men; yet on the other hand, beloved brethren, it would be a wrong to the Lord if we looked with cold indifference on the utter weakness of this our day, and the dishonour thus put upon the name of Jesus in Christendom itself. Alas! there is no place among the outside strangers to the Lord Jesus where there is more daring enormity done than in the very scene where men are baptized in His name. When we look back at times long past, at the early days of the church's pilgrimage on the earth, and the power of the Holy Ghost then displayed, I am persuaded we ought to feel for the wounds inflicted in the house of His friends; we ought to be grieved that the bearing of the church was such that the Lord could not outwardly pour honour upon her, but was obliged to strip her as it were, and shame her before the enemies of His name.

Let us own all this, as also the far deeper sorrow that men so little prize the truth, so tamely feel for the honour of the Lord's person in Christendom, not to speak of the well-nigh universal want of feeling even what the church is in its barest and simplest forms, and still more the total forgetfulness of its bright portion as one with the Saviour, and of that which the church hopes for in the day to come. Be assured that if we do not thus feel with the Lord in our little measure, we are not in a moral condition rightly to act upon His word in present things. It is a lesson of no small importance to see that the Lord has not given us in scripture that which admits of bare imitation. It does not suffice to take up the epistles of St. Paul for instance, and set to work as if we were competent to put in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders here or there. It is one thing to fall back upon the word God has given us, and quite another to assume that we can reinstate the church now that it has been broken up and ruined. It is right to feel its low estate, but that we should now build up again that which is thus fallen the very thought proves that the heart in this has no communion with Christ; that there is a lack of due holy distrust of self; that there is such insensibility to the true state of things now as unfits not merely for authoritatively restoring the church, but even for the humbleness of faith that confides in the actual resources of Christ. For it is an unvarying principle of God, that when there has been a departure from Himself, it matters not under what circumstances or time or place or people — whether before the flood or since — whether in Israel or in the church — God insists upon it that the first step in that which is morally good should be the sense of our real evil in His sight. When this is the case, the presumption will be far from us that we can make good that wonderful display of divine power, grace, and wisdom — the church of GOD! It was the greatest work, so to speak, that God ever wrought upon the earth (next to the Cross, whereby alone such a work became possible).

God forbid that in thinking of what He has done, we should compare that which stands alone — alone throughout all eternity! But if we look at all that has ever been done upon the earth, or even the very making of heaven and earth, I say, that the work of God in His church — the church of God — was greater still. And now, we poor leaky vessels that could not keep the blessing, we that have been through our own weakness and unwatchfulness a prey to Satan's wiles, and let in the thieves and robbers that have spoiled the house of God, are we the men to set it up again? Is this the feeling of lowly faith? If it were bad for man to go away, if it were a grievous thing for Israel to dishonour the law of God, what must it be for the church to slight God the Holy Ghost? It is the epistle of Christ, the habitation of God through the Spirit, the object of His most perfect love, accepted in the Beloved, even in Christ, made the righteousness of God in Him. What is it then for that church practically to forego the glory of God here below — to prefer the work of their own hands to His word and Spirit — once more to bow down to idols graven by art and man's device? Oh! it is more loathsome than that which scripture or even history records of days and men infinitely less privileged.

Think not that I am exaggerating what Christendom has done or does. Nor do I wish to dilate more than is absolutely needful upon the painful failure of that which bears the name of Christ here below. In truth it is not so. But let us hear what the word of God says upon the subject. Who would allow, the thought that He speaks too strongly of that which He saw from the first, and told us was coming as He looked into the future?

Let us begin with the Saviour Himself and see what He intimated to His disciples should be found when He returns again to the earth, when He summons man to give an account of himself. In Luke 17. He tells us not that the world should become gradually changed from a wilderness to a Paradise, nor that the heathen should lay aside their false gods and the Jews their enmity to the true Messiah. On the contrary He gives the disciples the needed warning, that it was to be as in the days of Noah, and in the days of Lot. These were times of ease and worldliness, when all mankind was rising up against God; and yet they furnished comparisons for the scenes which are to meet the Lord as He appears from heaven to judge the world. "As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all." The self-security and love of ease will be substantially the same when the Lord is revealed as just before the flood. Then as of old men will be engrossed in the ordinary matters of daily life. Spite of the law, spite of the gospel, again is seen and will be continued that state of corruption and violence which brought the Deluge upon the earth no less guilty than utterly unconcerned. And Christ looks onward to the day of His return: no previous millennium of holy bliss awaiting Him; no happy rejoicing hearts characterizing the world generally then; but on the contrary the same moral condition, the same indifference to God's will and glory which preceded the flood.

After the flood when nations and tongues began there was another scene more appalling and degrading, which the same book of Genesis brings before us; and this also furnishes its sad complement to the picture of the days just before the Son of man comes again. "Like also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom" (most ominous words!) "it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed"

If we take up now the Epistles, we shall find the light shed by the Holy Ghost in no way weakens but confirms in every respect the testimony of the Lord Jesus; only that now we have naturally the Holy Ghost looking rather at professing Christendom, whereas our Lord made the Jews His starting-point and centre.

Thus in Romans 11, without dwelling at length upon the chapter, the Spirit of God anticipates the end of Christendom. "Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee." Such is the warning given to the Gentile professor. The Jews are meant by the natural branches. They had been the depositaries of promise of old, and had therefore the responsible place of testimony for God upon the earth. Hence they were the original branches of the olive tree, the line of promise and testimony on the earth which began with Abraham. But the Jews broke the law, went after idols, refused and slew the Messiah. There was a resource in the gospel; but they refused the gospel from heaven, as well as the Lord their King on earth. The consequence is, that the natural branches of the olive tree were broken off, and the wild olive, or Gentile, grafted into the old stock of profession. And this is the warning that is given: "Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in." Has not this exactly been the feeling of Christendom? Contempt for the Jews, astonishment at their wickedness, utter insensibility as to their own condition. "Well; because of unbelief, they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but towards thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness."

Let me ask any man that has the smallest fear of God, or even outward acquaintance with His word, Has Christianity continued in the goodness of God? Is there any Protestant, any Roman Catholic, who thinks so? Is there any person, no matter where, no matter who — a single soul who dares to say that Christendom, the professing Gentile, has continued in the goodness of God? The Romanist cannot think the Protestant schism continues in the goodness of God. The Protestant is assured that the Romish body is the fruit of clean departure from God in superstition; and so we might run through all existing systems. They may each plead for his own association; but who will say that even his own has continued faithful? They may believe that it means well, and would be admirable if carried out; but who would not acknowledge that it has not been carried out? that consequently no sect, no portion, no fragment even, has continued in the goodness of God? All agree that, as for the mass of profession outside themselves, it has failed to testify for the goodness of God. Consequently there rises up from men on every side the acknowledgment that the Gentile has not continued in it. Not that the failure is felt as it should be; not that there is adequate confession and renunciation of our common sin before God. Where sin is really spread out to God, it will not be persisted in. But at least there is an outward acknowledgment to a certain extent in the earth now, and quite enough to prove that Christianity has not continued in the goodness of God. What then says the word of the Lord? "Thou also shalt be cut off." The Gentile shall be cut off for his faithlessness, as surely as the Jew was.

This, remark, is not in some prophetic portion of God's word, which some might think ambiguous, though we do not allow the thought for a moment that any part of the word of God is so. But here in an epistle which every Christian allows to be one of the most fundamental and comprehensive, which takes up Christianity from its elements, and through which the Lord has established souls in peace, perhaps more than through any other portion of His word; it is in this epistle to the Romans that we have the solemn announcement of the sure cutting off of the Gentiles. Not merely one part or another but the Gentile profession is doomed of God, because it has not continued in His goodness; as truly as the Jew is now cast out from his heritage, a bye-word and a reproach to all the earth, evidently bearing his doom stamped upon his brow.

To examine many of the epistles would more than occupy my time. Suffice it to say, that as we travel down the stream from 2 Thessalonians, which was one of the earliest epistles written by Paul, to the latest, the Epistles of John and Jude, we have only an increasing testimony, growing more distinct and urgent and awful. As the evil grew, so the signs of judgment became more apparent. The Spirit of God sounds the trumpet with no uncertain note, and wakes up the faithful where there is an ear to hear. Christendom was gradually being undermined, and would become, in no long time, the engine of opposition to God — would be made the theatre of the grossest evil, taking up the abominations not only of the Jews but of the heathen themselves, and consecrating a system of Idolatry under the name of Christ and His mother, saints and angels, even more frightful and guilty than anything ever before found here below. For the very fact of praying to Peter, Paul, or the Virgin, proves that the light of Christianity must in some measure have been known, before it ended in so distressing an apostasy. Does any one think the expression "apostasy" over-strong? Allow me to tell them that the very phrase "the apostasy" is the expression of the Holy Ghost in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, where we are told "there is a mystery of iniquity which now worketh." Only there is now a hindering power. Consequently it would not burst out into its full development all at once; it was kept in check for a certain time by the good hand of the Lord for the purposes of His own grace. But the moment that this restraint was gone, then it would be no mystery any longer, but manifest lawlessness. It is called "a (or rather "the") falling away," or the apostasy. This must become ripe, and "the man of sin" must be revealed. Thus we have too plainly an uninterrupted succession of evil. This is the vista described in the scripture; a succession of evil that goes on always swelling in intensity and volume till at last when the restraint is removed, it bursts out into a yet more fearful issue — not "the apostasy" only, but "the man of sin." What a contrast to the Man of righteousness, when man dares to take the place of God in the temple of God!

This then is what Christendom is to the Christian watchman. It has not of course been realized in all its force, though I do not deny that there have been various and also growing manifestations of evil. As the apostle John tells us, "Even now there are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time." This is so much the more remarkable because he shows that the Antichrist was coming, the great token of which is that there were many antichrists then. They knew thereby it was the last time. The Spirit would not close the volume of the New Testament until the worst evil was actually there at least in its germ; and this being so and descried by inspiration, there was need of nothing further. The Spirit of God could, as it were, fold up the sacred roll. It was complete. The mystery of lawlessness is shown already at work, "the man of sin" is predicted; the mystery of Christ and the Church no longer hid but disclosed. Scripture had attained its full compass. There remains, not some fresh view of Christ, so to speak, but contrariwise the unfolding of that Christ whom they had already, the bringing out more intimately and appreciatively the light of the love of God that was in the Lord Jesus Christ from the beginning. This is the antidote of all Satan can bring — to the many antichrists, and at last to the Antichrist. I refer to it in order to give a kind of connection between the different states — the rise, progress, and final manifestation of lawlessness. Nay more the lawless one is to exalt himself against the Lord of glory. The last book of the New Testament shows the millennial reign over the earth, ushered in by the destruction of the beast and the false prophet with all their company, as Babylon had been previously destroyed.

Thus rapidly have we glanced without entering into all the proofs of the doom of Christendom. They are patent in the general epistles and in particular in the epistle of Jude where a most energetic sketch is given in the compass of a single verse (11). With that power which the Spirit of God only knows how to convey the shadows of Cain are sketched, then of Balaam, and finally of the gainsaying Core. Is there nothing for Christendom there? Is there no sound of sure if slumbering judgment there? "Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain" — that unnatural brother, that pretender to religion, who brought his offering to the Lord but slew the guiltless. Is there no presage in him who received the wages of unrighteousness — in the man who, spite of himself, prophesied glorious things of a people that he loved not but would have sold to destruction? Is there no solemn lesson in the wages received for teaching, it may be, the glorious things of God, without heart for His people, still less any care or jealousy for His word, for His will, for His glory? Finally, in the fearful rebellion of Korah, "the gainsaying of Core," in those who had the ministry of the sanctuary, in the proud Levites who coveted and arrogated to themselves the place of Moses and Aaron (the apostle and the high priest of the Jewish profession), is there no awful warning there? Have you never heard of men professing to be servants of Christ, and yet pretending to be priests strictly, officially, and exclusively — assuming to be authoritative channels of divine pardon empowered on earth to absolve from guilt before God? I do not speak only of such as claim in their heathenish darkness to offer a sacrifice for the dead as well as the living. Assuredly one thinks not with bitterness about such things as these, but we may all stand aghast as we survey the facts realized in Christendom. If it be a prophecy, it is a prophecy fulfilled.

All this may suffice to show how little Christendom has continued in the goodness of God. Details are needless. The godliest members of the various religious societies would be the first to confess the failure of their own. God's controversy is not with one only but with all, though doubtless the proudest will meet with a peculiar judgment. It is evident also that the word of God leaves it not to human experience or to spiritual judgment to infer His thoughts of Christendom; He has pronounced upon it Himself. Hence it is not presumptuous, but on the contrary the part of humble faith to believe God in this. How good He is thus to cut off the fear of forming a judgment so stern! For now he that does not pronounce after the Lord is ignorant of his Master's mind, or is false to His will. He that would defend or justify Christendom does not, in effect, fear to give the Lord the lie. From the scriptures enough has been given to show that the man who can look on Christendom and vindicate what is around us ignorantly or wilfully slights all the instruction that the Holy Ghost has given on the subject. Undoubtedly this is strong; but it is the Lord's goodness which makes the owning of it now to be a matter of sympathy with Him, and not of a proud claim to superior light.

God's word is open to all. By it we are all bound to see as He sees. The Lord admits of no vain excuses that we cannot judge. The Spirit of God, who judges and discerns all things, dwells in every Christian. He that says he cannot judge Christendom virtually denies himself to be a spiritual man; but if we do judge that Christendom has fallen into these predicted evils one after another, and that what was then but budding is now bearing the most bitter and baneful fruit, I ask, are we to partake of it? Are we to be insensible to our own share of the common sin? If the Lord graciously imparts the strongest warning, are we to satisfy ourselves with that flimsiest and most profane of apologies, that when the Lord comes He will set it all right? Yes, but it will be too late to set right my conscious Christ-dishonouring unfaithfulness; it will be to my shame to live till then indifferent to His word, careless of His glory, regardless of the Holy Ghost, who is grieved by that which I have been allowing practically. Am I, or am I not, to refrain from that which insults Him? If I know these things, am I to content myself without doing them. He who does puts himself in the guiltiest place of all. Do I know and feel the despite Christendom does and I have done to the Spirit of grace? Then let me look up in dependence on the Lord, that I may do it no more, nor settle down in a pretext so lame and criminal as that the Lord will set all to rights again. Is He not coming to judge every evil way? No doubt He will bring in good, and this from above! but He will judge all evil, and yet more than in times past. In vain then do I essay to shelter myself under the blessed truth, that the Lord is coming to display the kingdom of God upon earth. Assuredly, He will. From the heavens He will come, and fill the earth with the peace and blessing He brings with Himself, instead of finding it here below. A few poor broken hearts He will find in the world — a godly remnant, crying out, like the importunate widow in the guilty city where ruled the judge that feared neither God nor man. Such and worse will be the state of things, and in their midst shall He find faith on the earth? Yes, but crying out in alarm. And so He will clear the world with the avenging sword, before He establishes His throne of righteousness upon it. Of course I speak figuratively now; but the fact will be unsparing divine judgment; and therefore how blind for any to harden themselves in going on with sin under the plea that the Lord is coming to set the world and church to rights!

Allow me to say further, that the Lord has not left us to our own thoughts any more of the good than of the evil. He has given us His path, and this is what the heart desires to come to — the resources of the faithful in the ruins of Christendom. It were strange indeed if the word of God shed no sure light where it is so needed? Can we conceive such a thing as the Lord giving His view of the darkening future, and no provident care for His beloved and feeble and trembling followers? We began with the Lord's testimony about man's evil; let us see how He ensures good for His people in the midst of it. For Matt. 18 we may bless the Lord. Although He is giving instruction as to the animating spring of the assembly, which is grace, (as law was the governing principle of the synagogue,) the Lord provides what would be deeply needed, if they were reduced to a handful. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (ver. 20). Could one conceive more tender thought, or more evident wisdom than the Lord thus caring for His own in a dark day? To this the goodly flock might come — that assembly which once stood out so fair, with its thousands on whom great grace rested. How wise thus to prepare the hearts of His servants! How well He knew and guarded against the anxieties of His saints! We know what numbers are to the worldly spirit, and how apt we are to rest upon that which looks great in the earth. Yet nothing is more destructive of Christianity. He that has not a heart for the two or three must be only a dead weight if he were among ten thousand. It might be no doubt that he would be carried along the stream of happy multitudes; and that which was thus unfaithful to the mind of Christ might pass unnoticed in the strong current and new-born delight in the Saviour, transporting all around, as was no doubt the case on that bright day when the Holy Ghost came down from heaven to be the herald of the glory of the Lord, and to make believing men on earth the dwelling-place of God. We can understand that at Pentecost the tide of joy rose so high as to cover all such elements, sure as they were to appear later on.

And soon it came, too soon, when sounds of discontent were heard even in that blessed habitation of God. Alas! man was there; not God only in His goodness but man; and behind was the adversary ready to dishonour the one through the other.

The church, like man and Israel, has to be tried on earth. What is the declared issue? Never was there such blessing entrusted to man; but man is as faithless under the gospel as he was rebellious under the law. The Holy Ghost is slighted as the Son had been; and in the day when eternal realities are revealed man turns back to the shadows of Judaism, preferring them to the substantial truth of God. This is the history of Christendom. And the Lord, with it all spread out before His prescient eyes, comforts His followers, were they ever so few and weak, with the assurance of His presence where His name has its central place to their faith.

In the prospect of coming evil how gracious of the Lord to think, it may be, of some obscure village — of some solitary ship that travels across the ocean — of some comparatively desert island — yea, or of the vast and crowded city, where the very solitariness of discipleship is more realized sometimes than anywhere else! Wherever, however, whenever it might be, the Lord gives His own weight of authority to the two or three gathered unto His name. It is not merely His blessing — where could He not bless? Blessing He went on high, and never since — if I may so say — never has He laid down the hands which He then lifted up in blessing. It could not be otherwise till He come in judgment. His work was infinite. Who could limit the preciousness of His blood? Who could say that redemption, like the first covenant, was grown old, and ready to vanish away? Could any difficulty, danger, or need in Christendom turn that grace back, as it were, into its spring, or dry up those rivers of living waters which they that believe should receive? It could not be; but there is more than all that here. Not only is there blessing but there is also the weight of His authority guaranteed to the smallest real representative of His assembly. We know that men shrink back from church discipline; and he need not wonder at this who is aware how it was made under the fairest pretences the most abominable scourge of tyranny the earth ever beheld. One cannot, therefore, be surprised that Christians who had escaped from the weight of that iron hand should somewhat shrink back at the bare sound. But we must beware of mistrusting Him to whom we owe our every blessing, because Babylon, the world-church, has perverted His words. But if there were only two or three, there ought to be as much jealousy as if there were three thousand to maintain publicly and privately, collectively and individually, ways consistent with the character of Christ. This cannot be unless there be discipline. The obligation of an united pure walk is bound up with the very integrity and being of God's assembly. It ceases to be the church of God, unless there be the holy earnest solemn carrying out of that which the Lord has laid down. "Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened." No ruin can touch this responsibility for a moment. On the other hand the Lord takes care in his grace that blessing shall flow spite of failure.

But there is more than the sovereign action of divine grace, where responsibility may have been little felt and the will of God misunderstood. The Lord watches over those gathered together to His name, and is there present in their midst were they but two or three. What unfailing and inestimable comfort! Conceive for a moment some Christian awakened to feel that the place of a believer is not to be a member merely of the ecclesiastical system of the country or of particular views, but on the contrary that the only thing which suits and is due to Christ is that we should renounce — we cannot be too lowly, but neither can we be too thorough in renouncing — every tie that is not connected with Christ. Where we can obey Christ in the midst of those that are His — where the Holy Ghost is allowed freedom to work according to the word of God — there is God's church, and nowhere else. The liberty of the Spirit is to exalt Christ and this only. This is a universal principle, true of an individual and true of the assembly. It would be a miserable thing if the assembly were not a scene of true and blessed liberty; but such it is that God may be glorified by Christ Jesus. There will be also the consciousness of that which is offensive just in proportion to the spiritual power that is in the assembly.

A great or a small company makes no essential difference. The Holy Ghost is sent down to care for the interests of the name of Christ. The two or three weak and ignorant ones gathered to it at least know that they are His; that they ought not therefore to belong to man; that they ought not therefore to be under any other tie; that rules made by one or many or all — if they were the very best that were ever produced — are not entitled to bind Christians, seeing that God has already furnished the only perfect standard not only of faith but of church fellowship, and that to own another is to dishonour the word of God and the Holy Ghost who is here to make it good in power. The question is not whether we can do better than others: God forbid: that indeed were presumption. But this I ask, whoever you may be (and I trust that, if you are a Christian, you will agree with me), Which is best, your rules or God's word? If God, and not you, be the wiser, how came you to invent these rules? You thought the word of God insufficient, and you must supply the deficiency! What is the result? Take what is going on at the present moment, and in any society you like. The very newspapers ring with the scandal of what is done under the name of Christ. What do your rules avail? Neither you nor the wisest of men can construct a standard for all time; and why should it be attempted? God has given His own, and His children need no other.

We have already the only sure and divine rule. The only want is the faith to value and act upon it. True, the consequences are serious. Faithfulness to Christ costs much now as ever. But is it not a solemn thought that now, in this boasted nineteenth century after the Lord has accomplished redemption, we are only awakening, here and there, to feel that the word of God is better than the word of man? What a discovery! Yet it is great as it is humbling that it should be a new thing — a discovery which many of the children of God have not yet made. All admit that God's word is infinitely wise for the soul's salvation. Who, when it is a question of eternal issues, would trust his soul to the doctrines of men? Then is felt the value of that word which reveals the Saviour, and of the blessed Spirit who makes the word precious in the revelation of Him. But is it not daring to draw these distinctions in the word of God, and to put aside that which speaks of the church, ministry, worship, the breaking of bread, and prayer? How comes it that men should behave practically as if God's word had less decision and authority in these matters than the shifting thoughts of man? How comes it that men so seldom think of being guided only by the word of God? How comes it that believers resort as a matter of course to human ecclesiastical rules? How comes it, for example, that dissenters, the best of them, when they want a minister in the word, proceed at once to elect him without a syllable of scripture for that course? Who gave them licence to do so?

"It must be so; we have our own doctor and our own lawyer, and why not our own minister?" It is exactly this worldly principle that has done the mischief. Why is not God consulted in His word? How comes it that in scripture a church never elects a minister? Of course there must have been many who wanted ministerial help in those days as now; and God, who knew all that is good, must have known every want also. How comes it that there was never a man chosen by a Christian congregation to preach the gospel or teach the saints — not a solitary instance in the word of God? They cannot get rid of the difficulty. What are they to do? The fact is, the dissenting principle is broken at the very outset. They cannot step over the threshold. They cannot do without a minister, and they cannot elect a minister according to scripture. Let us look now, not at congregationalism, but at the two or three gathered to the name of Christ. They too want help, these feeble ones; and what are they to do? This is the word of their Lord, "Where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them." God forbid that I should disparage the advantages of ministry; but to be simply subject to the Lord, whether or not He sends, is the best of all. The fact is, as we are not authorized, so we have no need to elect any; for all are ours already, "whether Paul, Apollos, or Cephas." It is for God to choose and give. He has bound up and made all His ministers part and parcel of the church. They are members of Christ's body. They are His gifts to the church. It is ignorant and evil meddling for the church to elect. Besides, the moment you elect one to be peculiarly your minister, by that very act you defraud yourselves of all the rest. You are going out of the path of God in order to enrich yourselves in this respect; but that very act of selfish haste, like every other departure from the path of faith, brings, as the necessary result, the surest impoverishment. Suppose then people get their minister; he may be but young, and they may want to be nourished and fed up in truth. Unless he have all the gifts centred in his single person, they are reduced to his individual measure. Another again may be a pastor, and love the saints; but the congregation for the most part consists of persons needing to be converted, while he is not an evangelist but a pastor and perhaps a teacher. How evident that, if tested thus practically, man's ways always ruin God's work! The parochial system in the established bodies works as much or more evil. It may seem natural and prudent, but human wisdom in divine things is as foolish as it is fatal What else could be expected by those who know God and man from a departure from the rich provision the Lord has made?

Let us now look on the other side. The Lord is there. The "two or three" do not exactly see their way. They are in presence of a great difficulty. Perhaps they have heard the whisper of some dreadful doctrine, and they do not understand it, not being versed in these matters. What then? They wait upon the Lord — a wholesome thing for any of us — most wholesome to be obliged to feel that the Lord alone can avail. But He does love and care for His saints. He raises up and opportunely sends a servant of His. The latent evil is brought out plainly; and the moment the light of God by whatever means is cast upon it, the conscience of the saints answers to the call of the Lord, and they repudiate it heartily for themselves.

Again there is one fallen into what may seem a little evil, yet enough to render him indifferent to the Lord, to His word, to His grace. He refuses to listen to the warning of one, then of more, and lastly of the assembly of God. "Let him be unto thee as a heathen man." He is not a heathen, but supposed to be a brother; yet he is treated as if he were a heathen, because he despises Christ in the church. This in fact is the case here supposed. (Matt. 18) Such decision is trying to the heart, where will works among the saints. But it shows plainly that not their wisdom nor their experience guides aright, but the Lord in their midst; and He promises His presence if it were but two or three gathered to His name. Here then we have a clear and positive provision for the faithful in the worst of times. It is hardly possible to conceive of circumstances where there might not be "two or three."

It is well however to add that the essential point is their gathering to His name. It is not such a gathering unto Christ, where narrowness is allowed, or sectarianism, any more than in the grosser forms of letting in the world or tolerating evil. If any "two or three" were so happy together, as to look with suspicion on godly men outside them, they would forfeit their place of privilege, and be in a false position. Does the Lord so regard His disciples? Does He scrutinize them as if they were doubtful characters, or put them in quarantine as if the plague might be in them? I speak of saints where there is no suspicion of evil doctrine, direct or indirect, or of unholy walk. The Lord welcomes them, and so should we. His name has not its value where we are not large for His sake.

But there may be another case. A person comes of great repute in the world, who has been preaching and is universally respected; but alas! he betrays himself by a lack of heart and conscience where Christ is concerned. Him they refuse. Thus the same name of Christ, which is their warrant for welcoming the weakest that loves Him, is here exactly the same power for refusing the highest who does not love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption. What might is in that name to bring and keep together hearts otherwise alien, and yet withal what a delicate test for detecting and excluding what is not of God! If it be a question of truth, the name of the Lord is the only real touchstone; if it be a question of discipline, that name is strength to the feeblest heart; if it be a question between persons and principle, there only is found all needed wisdom and power both individually and as regards the assembly.

But let us look now at 2 Tim. 2. We have a picture drawn by the Holy Ghost of the professing body, the house of God. The first epistle duly cares for order and good government in the house of God. The second epistle anticipates the influx of evils to such an extent that the house is merely alluded to as a comparison. Still "the sure foundation of God standeth, having this seal" — on one side, "The Lord knoweth them that are His," and on the other, "Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." There are thus the sovereignty of the Lord on one side, and just responsibility on the other — two great principles which meet us everywhere. Then follows a more detailed application. — "But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honour and some to dishonour." Some would take the place of knowing the Lord whom He did not own, and who felt not the incongruity of His name with iniquity. Timothy must be prepared for the development of evil among those that confess Christ — not only "some to honour" but "some to dishonour." "If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work." Separation from evil is the invariable principle of God, modified as to the manner of course by the special character of the dispensation. So Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the prophets generally. Is Christianity less stringent? It is now on the contrary that it becomes more urgent and absolute. "If a man purge himself from these [the vessels to dishonour], he shall be a vessel to honour." Put away the wicked (1 Cor. 5); if this be no longer possible, purge yourself out from them. There is nothing man dreads and feels so deeply. You may protest, you may denounce, and it will be borne by the world as long as you walk with it in the main; but "he that departeth," now as ever, "maketh himself a prey." Act on your convictions, and the most honeyed courtesy turns sour; your desire to please God at all cost will be branded as pharisaical pride and exclusiveness. It matters not how gently and lovingly you purge yourself from the vessels to dishonour; the pain, the grievance, lies there, and nothing can sweeten it, above all in the eyes of those it condemns. Indeed it is more felt, the more graciously it is done, provided it be done thoroughly; for then evidently your motive is not disappointed feeling but desire to be wholly subject to Christ, with a heart perfectly happy in what they know nothing of and could not enjoy.

All this is an unpardonable affront in the world's eyes. Add to this, that separation is claimed in 2 Tim. from the religious or Christian world. "The Christian world!" what a phrase! what a contradiction! as if there could be the smallest possible alliance between Christianity, which is of heaven and Christ, and that outside world which crucified Him. No wonder that in this epistle we read of perilous times in the last days. What greater peril than, after they have known the truth, going back into substantially the same conditions of evil as were found in the heathen world before Christianity entered it. Compare 2 Tim. 3 with Rom. 1. How painful the resemblance! The difference is, that some of the grosser characteristics of heathenism have been replaced by subtler evil. The comparison is most instructive. In this state of things the Christian profession is indeed a great house; and, as in such a house there is that which is destined to the basest uses, no less than what is for the best purposes, so in that great house which bears the name of Christ — if you please, "the Christian world."

If there, what ought you to do? It is a solemn question for the believer. He has no hesitation about the profane world; but the world bearing the name of Christ is a difficulty to him. Seeing that the Christian profession is there, am I not setting myself up and virtually condemning the excellent of the earth? But will you name any evil thing that has not had a good name attached to it? I do not speak now of such fatal poison as Socinianism or the like; but take Romanism, or the Greek church, or even sects known to be heretical, and yet by the malice of the enemy and the subtlety with which he has concealed his work some children of God have been entangled. It is too plain therefore that, whatever good men may do here or there, the only real inquiry is as to the will of the Lord. It is not a question of making others walk in your light, but you must not walk in their darkness. This is the great point, not occupying ourselves with others, prescribing what they must do, but feeling my own sin, as well as the common sin, yet by grace resolved at all costs to be where I can honour and obey the Lord. Is not this a true plain imperative duty, an undeniable principle of scripture, that commends itself to your conscience? It may be that you do not act accordingly; but you cannot deny that it is a right thing and what you ought to do.

But you are tied and have difficulties. Perhaps you have a family and friends you cannot bear to grieve; perhaps you have hopes for your children if not for yourself. Can a heart purified by faith thus set aside the Lord's word? Do you think He does not know your wants and does not feel for your family? You know the Lord loves yourself: cannot you trust Him for a bit of bread? You, who are trusting Him for eternal life and for heaven, cannot you trust Him to take care of you in the face of these trials and obstacles of every day? Perhaps you are too comfortable, too anxious about what is respectable for yourself and your children. Let the Lord deal with you; I am sure He will not harm you, but only do what is most loving and tender towards you and yours. Impossible for any heart to be beyond the Lord's love and wisdom and generous considerate care. If you really believe in Him, why not cleave to His word without compact or condition, and come forth at His bidding? You do not know what the next steps may be. It is enough that you know you are doing contrary to the word of God now. In vain we talk of loving, if we are not prepared to follow His word. Do you say you do not know what next to do? The Lord does not ask you: it is not His way to show all at once. Act on what you see from the word, and trust the Lord for what will follow; He is worthy of your confidence, and will give you more when you have taken the first step. But leave for ever that which is condemned in God's word. "Remember Lot's wife," and look not back, but go forth at His word wherever it points, and you will find that "whosoever hath, to him shall be given." And as regards the way, to the Lord rough or smooth is alike, deep or shallow, great or small; it may make a great difference to you, but the greatest difficulties only become the means of proving what the God is that we have found.

But there is more in 2 Tim. 2. Not only are you to separate, or purge yourself, from these vessels of dishonour, but the word is, "Flee also youthful lusts; but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." Thus there is no excuse for isolation. Turn your back upon what you know is opposed to scripture. Have I to demonstrate to any Christian that what is unscriptural is unholy? Have I to urge that "to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin?" If then you abandon what has no warrant from scripture, but on the contrary is condemned by it, hear this word of God: "Follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace." Follow them, not solitarily, but "with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." What consolation, even if there were but two or three! Are you afraid because there are only two or three? God may act on hundreds or thousands: this is a matter for Him. You are to follow the Lord's path through His word, with chastened spirit yet not sadly, but full of joy and thankfulness, if you find ever so few who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. In other words, faith has a divine warrant to expect companions in its path, though it lie now through the ruin of the Christian profession. As it is imperative to turn away from all known evil, and there can be no valid excuse for refusing God's call, so there is enjoined companionship in following after righteousness, faith, charity, and peace, with such as call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. May no hindrances nor dangers alarm, but knowing that it is the Lord who has thus graciously thought of us, may you and I and every one that loves that blessed name have unbroken confidence in Him! He addresses Himself to hearts grieved in the midst of dishonour to His grace and truth, and He has taken care to mark most distinctly the path not of separation only but of association — the path of departure from evil and of pursuing what is good.

How clearly the great moral principles of God remain in spite of disorder! How the operations of His grace survive all ruin! Thus the principle of the assembly of God abides in, it may be, only two or three gathered to the name of the Lord. Thousands of Christians, in a national system or in a dissenting sect, could not redeem their fundamental error; members of Christ may be in them, but the principle of God's assembly is abandoned in their very constitution. Let "two or three" come out at the word of the Lord, making His name their centre, and owning the Spirit of God as in and with them to guide them according to scripture; these, and these only, are carrying out His mind in the real intelligence of the Holy Ghost. It is no question of numbers, but of being gathered together, few or many, unto the name of the Lord.

All here know what the House of Commons is. A hundred members of that House might belong to the United Service Club or the Athenaeum or anything else you please. These hundred members might discuss the measures actually before the House in their club; but this could never make the club to be the House; whereas in their true position with the Speaker in the midst a much less number would constitute a House. It is exactly the same principle here. What constitutes God's assembly? "Two or three" gathered unto the Lord's name. He has been pleased to bring it down to the point described, with the fullest possible stamp of His approval and authority.

On the other hand suppose ten thousand Christians meeting simply as Christians — is that enough? I can conceive an assembly of professing, yea, real Christians; and yet there would be no more reason to call them God's assembly than to consider any number of members at their club the House of Commons. It is not the fact of being Christians that constitutes God's assembly, but their being gathered unto the name of the Lord. The practical point for us is whether we are gathered to the name of Christians merely, or to the name of Christ. If the former, you must accept of any evil thing into which the enemy succeeds in dragging Christians. For if the man be a Christian, I must receive him, spite of evil he is doing or sanctioning. But no! the question is, Does he call upon the Lord out of a pure heart? The exclusion of this word of God has widely overrun Christendom to the incalculable injury of souls, and never more than now, when men practically put Christians in lieu of Christ, the consequence of which is confusion and every evil work.

Whereas if the Lord have His place and be the centre to which I come, I have then in His name a ground and rallying point to which I can claim, with the most entire humility, every saint in the world — yea, I could not and ought not to rest in my spirit as long as one that belongs to Him is outside. What! even those under discipline, or avoided for grave causes? Yes, every one; not of course to receive them with known evil upon them, but yet to desire themselves, what is contrary to Christ being judged and removed.

The Lord make us steadfast and give us to feel that the lowliest spirit becomes us! How can we boast of ceasing to do evil we ourselves have done? May we look to Him increasingly! He who has brought us out has compelled us to prove by our own difficulties the true state of the church; but He has turned to profit our very mistakes, though in a humbling way. He has used the storm, as it were, to purge the hazy air, and displayed more clearly than ever the central place of His own name for our gathering together no less than our salvation.

Thus we may leave all fears and anxieties. If the Lord be our helper, why fear? What will man do? Then, as for charges of sectarianism or presumption or disorder, it were easy indeed to show that those are really guilty who are quick to raise and scatter them. We know that scripture condemns every church association that is not based on and governed by the name of Christ. It is not a mere question of wrongs here or there; but are they Christians gathered to the name of Christ? Neither is it a question of the amount of evil? for what did not slip in at Corinth through ignorance and unwatchfulness? The refusal to judge known evil is no doubt fatal. But supposing the absence of everything gross, the true question is, Are we where the Lord would have us be? Then happy are we, if but "two or three" thus: were we ten millions anywhere else, all must be wrong, because Christ is not the acknowledged and exclusive centre ecclesiastically. He who is the only adequate and rightful object for all the saints on earth deigns to be the centre of but "two or three," as He says, that are "gathered together unto his name."

The Church.

Eph. 4: 4.

W. Kelly.

There is one body." This is the church. Not that it is the whole truth of the church, which may be viewed in other aspects. We are not merely Christians, but also members of one body. Now the thoughts of Christians in general are vague as to this. They are apt to take their notions from what they have ever seen around them. But there is one unfailing standard, the word of God. A thorough acceptance of the place that God has given us according to scripture is here as elsewhere all-important.

The Son never raised the question of the church till the individual need is felt ; and we find this too even in the epistle to the Ephesians He says nothing about the body of Christ till we come to the last verse of the first chapter; and yet this is pre-eminently the church epistle. He develops the full blessing of the saint first. Nor is any one able to comprehend the church safely and rightly till every individual question is settled. The soul needs to be consciously delivered, and to stand in the presence of God in the full confidence of faith. When all this is clear, the Holy Spirit begins to open out the character and relations of the church.

At Caesarea Philippi, the remotest corner of the land, Christ's assembly to replace Israel on earth is first brought before the disciples; but the truth concerning Himself takes precedence. The Lord gave Himself the name of the Son of man; and in that very character He will return and take all the world to reign over it. Peter confesses Him as the Son of God, which drew out His statement, "I also say to thee, that thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (or, assembly). Thus the soul must be in the light as to Christ before the church can be a seasonable truth. The Father in this scene gives fresh knowledge of the Son's glory; and the Christian like Peter, instead of being limited to believing Israel's faith, confesses Him as the Son of the living God. It is not what He became, what He will display or what He might do, but what He is in His intrinsic and eternal title, the Son of the living God. It is His proper dignity and personal relation in the Godhead.

Here we have a rock which cannot be moved. "On this rock," said He Himself, "will I build my church." Even when Israel shall bewail their own guilt and that of their fathers, they will not know or confess Him as the Christian does. Thus we find their type in Thomas, who was not with the rest on the resurrection day, when Christ stood in their midst as the risen Man, and breathed on them the abundant life from Himself. They were reconciled to God by His death; again, their sins were blotted out by His shed blood; and now He brought them into their new standing in Himself. Thomas was not with them till eight days after, confessing Him as "my Lord and my God." This is just what the Jews will do by-and-by, owning Him as their Jehovah God, rather than as Son of the living God. This as revealed by the Father suits those who were to be in relationship with the Father, as Christians now are characteristically.

Thus are prepared the individuals in order to form the church. There is a special revelation which lets the believer into that near relationship. Let us see to it that we have our thoughts formed from scripture and truly learn what is taught us by the Holy Spirit for our own place. First the individual should be peaceful and happy in the Lord. He is an object of heavenly favour; and only when he is consciously in that condition, is he fit to enquire what the church is. In the Catholic principle which prevailed before the Reformation, the first thought was always the church. So still, where it exists, the great thing for a soul is to be in the church, as many besides Romanists would say today. A Protestant on the contrary likes to say, It is not the church but justification by faith and an open Bible we are now to care for: there will be one body in heaven, but not here. How beneficial the denominations are to stir up one another! Alas, very sad are the devious paths of error on both sides.

Here the scripture gives the truth fully and without a cloud. According to it the individual, even if ever so moral and surrounded by Christian associations, is arrested in his sins, and by the faith of Christ through redemption set at rest in the sight of God. If not like the prodigal in evil walk and ways, he needs no less to feel his ruin, and to be met by the Father's grace. He has to do with God about his sins, and by receiving Christ and His work enters into deliverance. Alone in both as it were, he is not alone in the communion of divine love, which is the issue. Joy can sing.

No doubt there are many elder brothers in Christendom; and it annoys them to hear of joy over any thus blessed, especially if once wretched wanderers, rejoicing in the Father's presence. It is here and now that such murmurers are found. And here too begins the divine joy of love.

The Holy Spirit shows us the church on earth. Certainly and perfectly it will be in heaven also; but it is revealed as now on earth. Your faith is small if you give this up. Scripture is plain.

What or who then founded the body here below, this heavenly corporation on earth? He that first came down from heaven to accomplish redemption, and then went up on high when there was a. righteous ground, not for pardon only, but for so new and blessed a relationship. To effectuate it, Christ sent down the Spirit to dwell there as He never could before. The Spirit of God came to abide in Christ; and thus He calls His body God's temple; for the old temple was desecrated and soon to be left desolate. But the Spirit is come now to make the Christian's body a temple, and to form a body, the one body of Christ, on the earth. Believest thou this? If you doubt, search and learn. What is your standard of truth? Is it yourself or other men? It should assuredly be Christ: He only is the truth. The reason why the church of God is unknown or misunderstood is because self, in one form or another, takes the place of Christ.

By the one Spirit were we baptized into that one body. We are by Him brought as Christians into this new relationship now: and our new duties flow from that relationship. No rite could effect it, nor any act of human will. It is a divine, not a mere voluntary, society. As the Head is one and a living Head, so is the body formed by the Holy Spirit. It makes an immense difference to know whether we belong to it now; for right walk, service, and worship largely depend on that fact.

God has been blessing individuals since the day of Adam, but no such body existed then. Even Abel therefore could not be of Christ's body, nor was Abraham, David, or any O.T. saint. Let us cultivate subjection to the word, and give up popular as well as peculiar views. Is it not the path of faith to believe God's word? When our Lord was about to depart, He said, "Tarry in Jerusalem," etc. The same divine Spirit that dwelt in Christ dwells in His own, the same Spirit that anointed Him anoints them too. Gentiles or Jews, they are brought into anew and united position as the one body of Christ; for the Spirit sent down by the ascended Head baptized them into one. Faith in Christ beyond a doubt is the first question: till this is settled in your soul before God, you have nothing to do with the church; you are still in your sins till then; and no sponsor can believe for you. The Spirit was and is "given" to believers. Of course He first operates in and by the word to make us believers. How could the Spirit come and dwell in a man yet in his sins?'

Moreover, and as long as the Lord Jesus remained here, instead of ascending, there could not begin any such new and heavenly relationship. Nor could any basis be laid for it short of Christ's coming down to die atoningly before He rose and ascended to heaven. Hence we see the force of the well-known symbol of the Spirit in the oil that followed, first the water, and then the blood; as. is plain enough in Lev. 8, and also in Lev. 14. Thus Christ becomes the Head there; then only begins the body. As long as He is above, the body is here; and adding to it goes on by the Spirit given.

But the Lord is coming quickly not only to. receive us, but to judge the habitable earth; and all the convulsions that are and threaten around us point to this fact by the moral call for His intervention. God has revealed both beyond controversy in His word. Those that do not believe in His future are not to be depended on with regard to the past or the present. Him that does not believe in God's word you will soon find as unreliable on Genesis as on the rest of the Bible. But the Lord is coming quickly, and if we are profiting by Him in peace, other parts of revealed truth will by degrees fall into their proper places.

Are you members of that one body? Are you able through the grace of the Lord Jesus to say, "Abba Father," when alone with God? If it be so, He has fitted you to dwell in the light of glory; surely also to have communion with the saints on earth as members of Christ's body. Scripture shows us therein a clearly defined walk and worship. Never was such a unity, even while our Lord was here. It is a relationship founded on His death, resurrection, and ascension. Our Presbyterian friends like others confound the Head of the body with the King of saints" — itself a spurious reading and false idea. A King necessarily supposes a people governed by him and, however loyal, bound to keep their distance from him. But as members of the body united to its Head, you cannot insert the finest gossamer between; and this I fear is not really believed. It is a question of living faith in Christ and His word, whereby we understand the closeness of the tie, and live, as we are, a heavenly people, while still on earth. Let us first receive the truth as it is: then let it deal with our hearts and ways that we be not earthly-minded.

A body without a Head would be a monster; but Christ the Head gives by grace a suited character to His body, the church, and to each member in particular. Here we have the perfection, as of glory, so of grace, in meekness and humility; and God's call is that this be made good in every member of it while here on earth. No believer doubts that the Head is in heaven; but are you a member .of His body? For His own glory God has formed it, and the Spirit of God draws us out in obedient walk, as also in the expression of thanksgiving and praise; and this is worship.

Long before Israel is ready to sing the Psalms, God has these songs ready for them: they have not truly sung them yet; but they will do so in the days of the displayed kingdom, which will differ widely from this actual day. But the body must be completed first, and the Lord come. There are no Psalms written for us in the New Testament, but the church can sing her own "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs"; she is already in peace and happy; she has the Spirit to give requisite power. Everything is future for Israel. Meanwhile we come in, saved and blessed to the utmost, yet nothing but poor bankrupts in ourselves. For God has united us to Christ in heaven; and out of us flow rivers of living water, as it springs up in us unto life eternal: so the Lord promised in John 4 and 7.

Are you thus worshipping, and thus bearing witness to Christ on high? Do you know what it is now to share the Father's joy? to be in communion with the Father and the Son? If sorrow of conscience likes to get alone with God, nothing so fills with divine joy as that fellowship which grace gives in Christ. To know that we are members of the body of Christ makes all the difference for our souls and our ways. Now is the time of this responsibility. Sovereign grace alone gave us to be of Him.

W.K.

The Church, and the Churches.

W. Kelly.

A tract has been sent me of a departed Christian (A. J. Holiday), which it is far from my wish to criticise. As I told his friends who desired a judgment, though I should greatly prefer their judging his doctrine by God's word, I do not refuse to help as far as I am enabled.

Two points in particular seem to be the great aim: the necessity for the Christian, the member of Christ's body, to join himself to a company of disciples, a local assembly or church; and the oversight of elders as the necessary means of the due keeping of the flock.

No sober Christian doubts that in no long time after Pentecost there were local assemblies, not only in Judea and Galilee and Samaria, but among the Gentiles east and west, north and south. And the members of Christ from one local assembly were received in any other, only their identification needing letters commendatory. But all was grounded on their accredited relation to Christ as of His body. This was the foundation on which they originally had their place. Their brethren received them, because there was adequate testimony to their consciences and hearts that the Lord had been adding them together (ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ) (Acts 2: 47). He was building up His church; and these were living stones, members of the one body, even if the phrase "the church" only first occurs in Acts 5: 11. None did then pretend to any other membership. Others too bowed to Him only, even when all the twelve were there to rule with apostolic authority.

There are two divinely appointed symbols, which mark, one the individual Christian, the other the fellowship of the body the Church as in due time was clearly explained in 1 Cor. 10.

Both necessarily take place locally; but both are based on Christ the Lord. The baptism is not to the local representative but to Christ the Lord; and if we seek the details of the formula, "unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Just so with the church symbol; it is the communion of the body of Christ, not of any local body, though observed locally; "because we, the many, are one loaf, one body; for we, the whole of us, partake of the one loaf." There is no word or thought here or in any other scriptures to countenance a local source. The word of God speaks of no membership save of Christ's own body; just as not a word admits of any Headship of the church but His exclusively. The same act of divine grace which makes us members of Christ makes us also members one of another. Any other membership is human tradition, which, as the Lord taught and we may readily verify, never fails to make void the word, though men may think it a good, wise, and needed supplement.

Membership of a church is the vast error of Christendom. Rome, I presume, was mother of it, as of so much else incompatible with the truth of the church as God has revealed, though its Greek rival was no less keen for the same special membership: a thing totally unknown to the apostolic day when all the Christians on earth enjoyed but one communion. Hence when the apostle would correct local evils in one place, he wrote "to the church of God that is in Corinth, sanctified [ones] in Christ Jesus, saints called [or, by call], with all that in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours:" a remarkable and emphatic guard against the principle of ecclesiastical independency. With this agree his words against schisms in 1 Cor. 1; "everywhere in every assembly," 1 Cor. 4; his call to judge those "within" (not a but the church), as the "without" was everywhere also; his words "thus I ordain in all the assemblies" in 1 Cor. 7. Compare also 1 Cor. 14: 33-37.

The Reformation, though a blessed work for delivering from Rome's servitude, and giving back the Bible in our mother-tongue frankly, in no due way attested the church, but fell back on the State to resist the Papacy, and Babylon the corruption of the church, and the denial of its Head. As this was clearly unscriptural, the system of accredited sects followed to our day, the ignoring and negation of the one body on earth united to its heavenly Head by the Spirit's baptism (1 Cor. 12: 13)

So also the apostle teaches in the same chapter that there are distinctions of operations, but the same God that operates all things in all; that to each the manifestation of the Spirit is given for profit, and that whatever the different kinds, the one and the same Spirit operates all these, dividing to each in particular as He pleases. "For even as the body is one and hath many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ. For also in the power of [or by] one Spirit we all were baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all given to drink of one Spirit." People talk of Christ's mystical body where the scripture account does not apply to present practice. But it is plain as words can make it, that here is given the principle and way of the Spirit's action in the body on earth, not for heaven or a future time. Only unbelief can argue that it is obsolete, and not obligatory so far as God deigns to give power in the present scattered state of the saints so lacking in faith, undevoted, and worldly-minded. Further, we are told that as the case is, "God set the members each one of them in the body even as it pleased Him," surely not in a mere local body but rather in the body as a whole. Ver. 27 in no way weakens this truth, but applies it to the Corinthian saints as its local representative, to enforce their responsibility according to privilege, the very reverse of claiming independency. Again, he says, "God set certain in the church, firstly apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then powers" [or miracles], etc., putting lower down what carnal levity at Corinth raised to the highest. But without doubt all this energy of the Spirit was in the church now and here; and there remains in divine faithfulness all that is for His glory and our need in the day when the church was stripped of her ornaments.

Eph. 4 gives us the selfsame principle, not as a contrast of the one Spirit with the many instruments of Satan's evil work, but in view of Christ's glory on high and love to His body the church on earth. There too apostles and prophets share the first and the second rank; but we have also the evangelists to gather to Christ out of the world, and the pastors (or, shepherds) and teachers to tend and instruct the saints for their perfecting, unto ministerial work, unto edifying of His body. This was on earth, though for heaven where such working never was nor will be, but in His body here; and it was then the body visible, as the saints were responsible to continue. If it too soon became invisible, it was the church's sin in departure from its place as Christ's one body, its privileges, worship, walk, and ways in general, through unfaithfulness to God.

Is, or is not, the church responsible by grace to maintain this position, not merely "endeavouring" but giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit? Internal divisions (σχίσματα) practically opposed and misrepresented that unity; "sects" (αἱρέσεις) or external splits of self-will were its open denial in principle. If we believe in the one body of Christ as the spiritual fact on the earth, we are bound to judge its anomalous state since the apostles departed, as an ever-increasing offence against grace and truth, judging as the Head does by the word, and humbling ourselves. So holy Daniel did for the similar departure of Israel, instead of pleading God's providence and excusing the change. If we are taught by God of the church's unity on earth, bound up with Christ's love and honour, the present ruin is felt as deep shame and sorrow; and all the more, because of the Holy Spirit sent forth, not only to form but to sustain this divine unity in the saints, as He surely would, if they had not allowed the flesh and the world to darken and turn aside and set up other unities incompatible with that of the Spirit, which can only be in faith, love, and holiness according to God's word.

Now one of the first, and widest, subtlest and most permanent contributing causes is the assertion of a local church membership, or of the largest possible federation of churches, in opposition to the only membership known to scripture, the membership of Christ by the gift and sealing of the Holy Spirit. For it is not the new birth or faith in Christ (however essential preliminarily) which constitutes one a member of His body, but the gift of the Spirit. Compare Acts 1: 4, 5; Acts 2: 38; Acts 11: 16, 17; 1 Cor. 12: 13. At Pentecost it began; and so according to scripture the Spirit abides, as for other ends, to effectuate the one body of Christ now on earth, not a mere mystical union on high, any more than membership of a church on earth. If the unity had been mystical only, the scattered children of God needed not to be gathered together into one. It was to be here and now since Pentecost, not for heaven only where was no difficulty or danger, "a unity" as the tract says "which none can ever break." Here it was to be as a testimony "that the world might believe" (John 17: 21), excluding Augustine's invention of an invisible church, though it will only be "perfected into one" in the day of displayed glory "that the world may know" (vers. 22, 23).

Of this unity, whether of God's family as with John, or of Christ's body as with Paul, the Christian forms part. The Lord adds each to the church; and the church is bound to His act when ascertained suitably; but there was no thought of the believer being brought into its assembly "by his own act and the act of the assembly also." It was an act of God's supreme grace, above man's acts, though faith owned it in all concerned. A supplemental or sectional member is not only unscriptural but anti-scriptural, the parent error of no end of errors, and leading ultimately to congregationalism or independent churches, the antitheses of God's church here as Christ's one body.

On the other hand, the remedy of professing to be the church of God now, in the departed and broken state of Christendom is in principle as bad as the disease, a mere and false pretension. For in fact the members are here, there, and anywhere. Yea even if all the Christians in a given place were to re-assemble, they would belie the truth in claiming to be "the" church of God, while there is scattering over all the earth. But they are bound to give up every false unity, yet through mercy free to meet on the one divine principle, gathered to Christ's name its ever true centre, and having Him in their midst, were they but two or three, as the Lord anticipated in Matt. 18: 20, and the Holy Spirit enjoins in 2 Tim. 2: 19-22. It is the resource for those faithful to the Lord in the difficult times of last days.

Let us see the effect of this membership of a church, not in the Babel of sects great and small, but upon one so earnest and confident of his fidelity to scripture as Mr. H., shared by his associates now as from their beginning. "Joining oneself to a company of disciples called a church" is unknown to God's word, and purely human. He connects responsibility with this false membership, because man has to do with it, instead of the far deeper responsibility of our relationship to God and His Son, all the more as it was sovereign grace in its highest form. Now it is vain to talk about grace, if we offend against immutable morality. But even if fairly right here, scripture insists on what is due from us according to the grace given and our new relationship both as Christians and in the church of God as a whole. Nothing is more ruinous than to overlook or enfeeble our responsibility in this large and lofty respect, because the privileges are so transcendent.

Take his treatment of Matt. 18 (pp. 10-12). The action is in a local assembly, but it, if done in obedience, is not a binding or loosing there only: heaven itself sanctions this issue. Could any thought or word lift it more above mere locality? Yet the utmost violence is offered to dislocate the context in ver. 19 into a parenthesis, instead of the plain and sure fact that the Lord welds together, not only discipline but prayer, under the comprehensive assurance of His presence in the midst of but "two or three" if gathered together unto His name. The prayer of the agreeing has this invaluable privilege as truly as the rest, but even this is frittered away into individuality. When he says that "two of you" is the same word (or, construction) as in 7: 9, and can only be fully expressed by "from among," he is directly opposed to the truth; for this depends on ἐκ in the earlier chapter, which is wholly wanting in the later text. Either he did not consult the Greek Testament or he was quite ignorant of the language. Certainly the statement is inexcusably wrong.

In 1 Cor. 12: 27 "body of Christ" means Christ's body representatively, but not separately from the church, just answering to the opening words of chap 1 and demolishing the error of an independent assembly (p. 13).

The true rendering in Acts 20: 28 is also important, not "over which" but "wherein" or "in which," a quite different sense.

A perversion of the true text in Acts 9: 31 (p. 32) is due to the impossibility of squaring a local church membership with scripture, "the church throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria." This he makes out to be "the Church of Jerusalem!" preserving its local character even when scattered far away. But it is also quite an error that joining himself to the disciples in Jerusalem was Saul's wish to "join a church." They did not yet know that he was "a disciple." It was simply that Barnabas removed a false impression.

The church was God's organisation and prevailed everywhere in apostolic days. Churches afterwards organised in opposition to Him and to each other. Those who cleave to God's way eschew man's, instead of "forming a federation," as with some who do not believe in the one body here below, any departure from which is independency.

It is true however that the anomalous state of Christ's members leads too often to anomalies of expression. The welcome, as things are, of a godly believer to partake of the Lord's Supper (the special sign of church fellowship) involves the discipline proper to God's house, and should not be extended to any who opposed the teaching or fellowship of the apostles, simple as it was at Pentecost, or the prayers. The rules afterwards added, when faith was no longer living in the Holy Spirit's presence and free action in the assembly, and in ministry, were as unknown as joining a church. Further, it is quite true that "putting out" in scripture means removing the wicked person not only from the Lord's Table or Supper but "from among yourselves," and this because they were Christ's representatively, and valid as done in His name, wherever the church existed.

The last of these wrestings of scripture at which we look, flowing from the error of reception into a church, is the misuse of 1 Tim. 3: 14, 15 (pp. 46, 47). It seems incredible that any simple-hearted Christian could construe such words of the apostle into the narrow circle of a local assembly. The absence of the article on which he relies in no way warrants such an inference, but is required being a predicate, though applied to the church wherever it may be. No one questions that every true assembly represents it locally. But here the church is viewed in its unity as a whole, and the exhortation applies to Ephesus no more than to any other place, subject to and witnessing the revelation of God. Narrowing such words to a local assembly is the natural result of being carried away by a human idea which has no countenance in scripture, and is occupied with its own little sphere, instead of reading our obligations in all the light and height and breadth of God's mind.

But we must also point out the effect of the same system as to Elders or overseers. Now the apostles had a function of authority specially attached to their position as we can see in both the Acts and the Epistles. They could locally appoint, not only deacons for outward service, but elders in a particular church or city. See Acts 6: 3, Acts 14: 23. They were competent to act indirectly by a delegate, where they could not themselves go, as we see in Titus 1: 5. Never was this left to the church; nor could any one undertake the task save as definitely prescribed by an apostle. Hence the marked difference between "the gifts" for exercise in the body of Christ, wherever it might be, and those local charges, which required to be established by an apostle or his delegates for the occasion. As neither did or could go everywhere, scripture provides an invaluable resource for days in which we have neither apostle nor his definitely commissioned delegate; Rom. 12: 8, 9; 1 Cor. 16: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13; Heb. 13: 17. These were not said to be elders; but they were important men who had qualities fitting for eldership; and they were to be obeyed, and highly esteemed for their work's sake. This fully applies when there exists not the legitimate authority to nominate officially, as soon and now.

But unbelief is perverse, and calls for elders when their full title fails, while it dishonours gifts which the grace of the Lord does not fail to give. All true ministry is the exercise of gift. But as the truth of the church's unity on earth is no less lost and denied, we cannot wonder that so it is as to both gifts and elders. Mr. H. assumes eldership like the rest of Christendom where all is confusion, with the utmost pretension of being rich and having need of nothing, where it is wrecked as a living witness even of grace and truth, as well as of unity and order, as He set it up. Nor could any Christian show his lack of discernment more than this tract exposes in p. 7, that while most believers of intelligence know what the church, Christ's body, means, there seems to be the utmost confusion in regard to "the churches"! The reason why Christians are wrong as to the churches is because they and Mr. H. are utterly wrong as to the church, and make it compatible with independent churches. No doubt he is right enough in pointing out the spuriousness of the denominational language, as indicating ignorance of both the church and the churches; but he never suspects his own errors. None that holds the church doubts of local churches. It is a necessity for men living, but only a circumstantial necessity. But the essential truth lies in "the" church. One is welcomed locally as being of God's church. Its unity was manifested wherever saints were gathered to Christ's name. It was a true church as truly representing the Church. "But now God set the members each one in the body." No such thing is said of a local church.

No possible terms could more subvert the truth of the church than those Mr. H. employs in p. 7 "They had joined themselves to a company of disciples, called a church, and that church had received them to form part of itself. They had not made themselves a part of the whole church of God. God had done that when He saved them. Neither had the whole church of God received them; but the church that they had joined themselves to had received them, and all the privileges and responsibilities of that God-ordained fellowship became theirs."

This is at bottom the general error of Christendom, not only of the larger corporations of Romanists and Greeks, but of Presbyterians, Congregationalists (Independents and Baptists), and Methodists. One joins a company called a church, to form part of itself. But this is wholly unknown to scripture, which knows nothing of a local church membership, but solely of the church, Christ's body. By receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, sealing us as believers in the gospel of salvation, we become members of Christ and one of another, members of the one body. Romanism had darkened all the truth; and the Reformation was no recovery of the church, but of the Bible to learn how to be justified, and to escape the yoke of a human priesthood and perverted ordinances. Afterwards, not only bad men broke more freely into delusions, but good men into ever increasing denominations of their own members, their own doctrines, alas! too, of their own politics.

What we have learnt from God is that we ought to feel deeply the church's ruin as God's witness, shattered as it is, and in every way in departure from God's mind, glorying in man instead of being in the dust as to ourselves. The truth of the church taught of God would have kept us from the least pretension to set the church up again, or to imitate what the apostles alone did. But if we have sought to humble ourselves as having taken part ignorantly in this scene of ruin and owning our responsibility before God for the dishonour of His name, we have found that His word provides for this very state of disorder, as for instance in 2 Tim. 2, 3, 4. When leaven is allowed and covered up, when evil, doctrinal or practical, is sanctioned under the Lord's name, and scripture is perverted to excuse error, what is to be done?

God did not leave it to the saint's heart and conscience only, He revealed His own remedy. If after all godly effort to purge it is vain, I must at all cost purge myself out. Thus He arms the soul which might have trembled under fear of schism, or charge of pride, or of despising the excellent. But the Lord is nearer and far more than all, and the word is, "Let every one that nameth the Lord's name depart from iniquity." Now if assured that I am bound up as I am with irremediable iniquity, am I not to obey? It is all the worse if it be in the house of God: why it should be thus bound, and why saints are not troubled by it, one can leave to the Lord who knows them that are His; but I cannot shirk my own obligation in His name to depart from iniquity.

But this is far from all. He instructs us that "in a great house are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthen, and some to honour and some to dishonour." To a state so contrasted with the primitive church things were coming! What then is one called to do? "If therefore one purge himself from these ("the vessels to dishonour"), he shall be a vessel to honour, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared for every good work." What an encouragement to cherish a good conscience in the face of fears and frowns!

Am I to dread being left isolated and shut out from the blessed privileges of Christ's body? I am told to flee, like the one addressed, youthful lusts (for Timothy even was comparatively young), and to pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace "with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." We are entitled to expect fellowship according to God, if we have faith for His glory.

The Church of God and the Ministry of Christ,

with collateral points. In reply to the Rev. R. P. Carey's "Remarks."

W. Kelly.

(Published 1863, CBA/JRL/MU5597(8).)

The Rector of St. Saviour's renews the controversy opened by the Curate of St. John's. I thank him for his general courtesy, and for the opportunity of confronting another line of argument with Scripture; but I enter on the task with not the less pain, because I believe every point raised by Mr. Carey can be satisfactorily decided against him. For experience teaches that party-spirit is strong, and that, where one fails to convince, some at least are sure to be alienated. He who cleaves to nothing but God's Word and Spirit, stands on vantage-ground, from which he should not descend to questions of self; and a sorry advocate he must be, if he cannot disprove the title of a politico-religious institution adequately to represent the Church of God. Conscious, on the one hand, of no feeling inconsistent with esteem and love for adversaries on either side, I will not, on the other, compromise the truth by seeking to please men, nor withhold a warning voice, where, in my judgment, the devices of our great common enemy menace the unwary.

THE CHURCH OF GOD,

The nature of its membership, with its discipline as a consequence, is the first and very grave question mooted. Here, strange to say, Mr. Dobrée agreed with me in the grand essential point, that union of the saints,* separate from the world, is God's will; while I agree with Mr. Carey in the comparatively little point, that every well-conducted man, converted or not, may communicate in the Establishment, as far as its will is concerned. He tells us, that the Rubric enjoining communication "is a simple direction given by the Church to her members." This is certainly a mild way of reading it; but I must insist, that her members expressly comprise "every parishioner" (scandalous offenders excepted.) The recognition of the world as God's Church, with or without saints intermixed, is the groundwork of the Anglican body, and fatal to its claim of accordance with God's will, if Mr. Dobrée's principles and mine be true.

* Mr. Carey (pp. 7, 8) actually reasons from the undoubtedly lower sense in which the Jews are called "a holy people" in the Old Testament to "the saints in Christ Jesus" in the New testament! Does he not know that the Jew was only typically and carnally what the Christian is really and in the Spirit? To the Corinthian assembly, where appearances were as bad, if not worse than anywhere else, the Apostle writes, "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son." "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God! Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, etc. And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." If all this is attenuated to the unworthy idea that they were merely "set apart from the heathen world and dedicated to God's service in Holy Baptism" and that they were not saints personally, I need not say that here I discern a controversialist, but not "a sound exponent of Scripture." The object is as much as possible to lower the Apostolic churches and to veil the real features of the Establishment, so as to make out as near a case of equal guilt, if not of equal beauty of holiness, as may quiet disturbed consciences. There seem traces of compunction, in pp. 5, 8 and elsewhere, as if the author shrank from the unlovely task, still, it was the sole hope of excusing his own system; and all the sad catalogue of the iniquities which the Spirit then discerned, denounced and called on the saints to hate and judge, is made, in clerical hands, to serve the end of a party. No statement of privileges, set down by man, even approaches the bright roll of blessing which the Apostles treat as the common possession of "all saints," in the ordinary New Testament meaning of that term. How could any but those "believed to be saints," in the fullest sense, be honestly addressed, as saved by grace, rejoicing in Christ, quickened and raised with Him, accepted in the Beloved, sealed of the Spirit, sons, kings and priests unto God? Could this, and very much more, he truthfully said of men who were merely separate from heathenism and baptized? Saintship is a real, living relationship with God by the Holy Ghost's power, who reveals Christ to the soul, and is not a question either of a certain attainment or of a mere external dedication to God's service. A clergyman's difficulty is due chiefly to his own ecclesiastical atmosphere. If Mr. Carey would not predicate of "every parishioner" what St. Paul applies to all the saints in Ephesus or Rome, it is enough to show that the Apostle uses "saint," in one sense, while he understands it in another sense, which was common in Judaism, but is foreign to the Church.

But Mr. Carey questions the truth of these principles, and endeavours (in pp. 5-8) to prove, not that the Apostles received into Christian fellowship any decent man of the world, but that sins of uncleanness prevailed then, offences against unity and peace and order, and even false teachers and heretics. No doubt, the germs of these evils were there, in some cases the development too, on all sides danger and the need of urgent expostulation and warning. But the argument has no force for the purpose in view. For the evil ways, into which some or many professors of Christ fell after they were received, cannot prove that, these professors were not "believed to be saints" when first received. And, secondly, the instruction which the Holy Ghost furnishes for the judgment of these evils, far from helping mixed communion, is its emphatic refutation, and confirms in the strongest way the truth that none but "saints" are contemplated as fit and proper members of God's Church, though, we all admit, deceivers and self-deceived may slip in.

Let us take that epistle which most of all displays moral, doctrinal, social, domestic and ecclesiastical disorder. (1 Corinthians.) Surely, the reader may bless God, that however sorrowful and humbling the picture may be as regards the saints, He has converted it, in His grace, into an occasion not only of correcting the then evils, desperate and various as they were, but of affording permanent and perfect canons for the guidance of the faithful at all times. Oh how sad, that well-meaning men should pervert His mercy into the error that those grievous evils were tolerated! (p. 9.) The precise contrary is the truth: the Apostle enforces their judgment with all his authority in his first letter; and, in his second, he gives no obscure hint to any who remained impenitent, of that which the might expect when he came again. (2 Cor. 12: 20, 21; 2 Cor. 13: 2, 10.)

It is not enough borne in mind that the Corinthians were an infant church, highly endowed though they were with signal powers and gifts. They had been delivered by the knowledge of Christ from a corruption of morals which was a proverb even in the universally corrupt Pagan world. But these circumstances all conspired to leave them peculiarly exposed to the snares and temptations of the evil one, when St. Paul left them for other work. Divine wisdom and goodness, without excusing their sin, turned it in result to their good and ours; in no case tolerated evils great or small; but for the lesser forms furnished reproof and correction, and in the darkest shades made excommunication a matter of bounden duty-yea, on peril of becoming a leavened lump. The known guilt which was unjudged would attach to the whole body.

Mr. Carey will, I trust, pardon my thinking that his statements on the subject of discipline in pp. 9, 10, (and indeed wherever it occurs,) show undeniable want of familiarity with Scripture facts. Far from me be the thought that he suppressed evidence which he knew; but if he did not, what can the "Brethren" conclude? I say the "Brethren;" because he specially invites their attention to note the fact "that the evils then existing in the Church, many and grievous as they were, were tolerated and the offending members not cut off. To St. Paul and the other Apostles was confided the power of the keys. To them it belonged with the concurrence of the assembly, and perhaps without it, (and perhaps to the assembly alone,) to deliver over unto Satan unworthy members of the body. How did they execute the power? They saw the grievous evils with which they were surrounded, and they loudly bewailed them. They warned offenders, they rebuked, they entreated them, but there it would seem they stopped — they did not proceed to excommunicate them. There are but two instances recorded in which recourse was had to this  measure; one the case of the incestuous man, the other the case of Hymeneus and Alexander." I have given what I presume the author would desire to reach some eyes which may not glance over his tract; but I venture to say that there is perhaps not one among the "Brethren" who will not read or hear these words with astonishment. For they will see how inconsiderately a grave subject can be handled by an educated man, and what neglect of Scripture characterises most of those who seek to convert "Brethren" from the error of their ways.

The "Brethren" see as clear as light in God's Word, that what the mass of men desire to reduce the Church to, is the state of things which subsisted in Israel — a national body, which, in principle, embraced all the people who found their bond of religious union in the ordinances which attached to them as Abraham's seed after the flesh, with individual believers hidden among them. They see, just as clearly, that, according to the Scriptures, this state of things received its death-warrant in the death of Christ, whose resurrection was the dawn of a new day, in which comes to view Christianity properly so called, the Church of God. Hence, we read, from the day of Pentecost, "the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved." — not "well-conducted men" merely, but saints in the New Testament sense of the word, i.e., persons separated to God from the world by the Holy Ghost, not Jews from Gentiles by the rite of circumcision. In fact, one of the salient features of the Church, which it was St. Paul's line above all to bring out, was the union of the believing Jew and Gentile in one body: a thing impossible under the Old Testament, and in direct opposition to the law. But we are under grace, and not law, and are dead and risen with Christ, and hence enter, even while we are on earth, on wholly new ground, where God is now "gathering together in one His children that were scattered abroad." Children of God there were before our Saviour died; but one of the revealed objects of His death was to gather them in one (John 11: 52) to form the Church. Need I transfer to these pages the plain, reiterated, unvarying testimony of the Acts of the Apostles? The Holy Ghost's character of the constituents of the Church, in Acts 4, ought to preclude mere argument. — "great grace was upon them all." Yet, even then, in that one city of Jerusalem, there were no less than five thousand men, not to speak of women, who, in Scripture as in experience, are usually at least as numerous. If an Ananias and Sapphira conspired in a religious lie, was it not at once sternly judged as an insult not merely to the Church, but to the Divine Indweller who constituted them, who constitutes us, God's habitation? If a Simon Magus, spite of his baptism, betrayed by his words his unregenerate heart, he is then and there denounced as having neither part nor lot in the matter, and still in the bond of iniquity. These facts do not look like tolerance of evil; nor had the Church in those days a door almost as wide as that of a market. On the contrary, it was holy ground in the richest and deepest sense.

We might pursue that which "Brethren" read in this and other books of the New Testament. But St. Peter's plea for the recognition of the Gentile converts may suffice to show that here, as with the Jews, not good human conduct but divine faith was looked for. "Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as He did unto us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things they held their peace and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." Cornelius was a "well-conducted man," nay, was one that "feared God with all his house," before the visit of the great Jewish Apostle. But no servant of Christ, in those days, dreamt of a soul entering the Church unless on the ground of possessing the Holy Ghost. And this is the position of the "Brethren" now — by Mr. Carey's confession, not that of the Establishment, which must needs be content with outward decency.

But then the gross corruptions in doctrine and practice which crept into some of the assemblies! Fully, sorrowfully, is it granted. Nevertheless there were with them, there are with us, these essential differences from the religion as by law established: 1st, none received as components of the assembly save those believed to have passed from death unto life, and indwelt of the Holy Ghost; and 2nd, holy discipline maintained by the Spirit in the assembly according to the Word of God. It is a fallacy of the first magnitude to think that, if an assembly consisted of none but real saints, grave disorders and sins might not arise through the craft of Satan; how much more, as we freely confess, we, like those of old, must be content to receive those who on sufficient evidence, as it is judged, are believed to be such! On the other hand, to plead the record of the evils which appeared in the early Churches, as a licence for tolerating these evils then or now, will seem to "Brethren" equally weak in logic, lax in ethics, and unintelligent in Scripture.

Further, the record of the case is not at all given in its entirety; though I think the picture unwittingly overdrawn. Thus, there is no ground to believe that those of whom the Apostle speaks with tears to the Philippians, were then in their assembly or in any other. They had probably gone wholly outside the Church. It may prove terrible declension, but not the allowance of evil. Again, 2 Peter and Jude are decidedly prophetic of evil in its darkest dyes, though Apostles could then descry men who displayed evil enough to suggest the worst forebodings.

But the point most of all to be noted is, that if there were men found causing divisions and scandals, the saints are enjoined not to tolerate but avoid them. (Rom. 16) If others were forming cliques round their favourites, they are of course not to be put away, but yet they are reproved as carnal: (1 Cor. 3:) not, observe, as "natural men," which the mere "well-conducted" are, but as "carnal." If, through mixing the agape, or primitive love-feast, with the Lord's Supper, Satan had tempted some to cover this holy feast with the scandal of their own grossness, the Holy Ghost for ever separates the Eucharist from the accompaniment of an ordinary meal, and expounds its spiritual significance. But even so, the thing pressed is not, as with moderns, "worthy partakers," but the partaking worthily, which every believer, and only the believer, can do, if he come in a spirit of self judgment. A more heinous blunder can hardly be than the threat of "damnation" in the Communion Service, borrowed from the unhappy translation of 1 Cor. 11: 29, which may be natural in a scheme that invites "every parishioner" to "a means of grace," but is refuted by its own context; for even in the worst case, where the Lord judges and chastens careless Christians, it is expressly that they should not be damned or condemned with the world. It is as sure as can be, then, that the very Corinthians, who had been cut off for their gross failure by the Lord's judgments, were so dealt with that they should not be condemned with the world. That is, even they were saints in the real Christian sense, and not merely according to a shadowy, Jewish sanctity. Nay, more, the man who fell so horribly (1 Cor. 5) turned out, as we know from 2 Cor. 2, 7, to be much more than one dedicated in baptism; for if the first epistle commands the saints to put him out, the second calls for his public restoration, without a hint that he was first brought to God, though of course thoroughly broken down, in the interval. Mr. Carey's inference from the evils at Corinth is, therefore, most peremptorily set aside by the epistles themselves. And so it is elsewhere. If a man preached "another Gospel," Paul does not say, "you must listen, because he is your parish priest," (for in truth both parishes and priests were novelties unheard of in professing Christendom for centuries after,) but "let him be accursed." "He that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whose ever he be." "I would they were even cut off that trouble you." (Gal. 1, Gal. 5.) From every brother, walking disorderly, the saints are commanded to withdraw themselves — the very reverse of bearing with it. (2 Thess. 3) Granted that the early Christians, like ourselves, might discern a heretic in their midst; but then, the rule is, not warning, rebuking, entreating and there stopping, but "after the first and second admonition reject." (Titus, 3) Doubtless, every case of discipline does not call for rejection: but the necessary principle of God's Church, as a true witness on earth of Christ in heaven, is intolerance of evil in the power of the Spirit, instead of the pitiable imbecility which some commend and try, in vain, to justify. "Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear," (1 Tim. 5) is well known and acted on where Scripture rules, but cannot be in the Anglican body; which undeniably consists for the most part of men, (and not always "well-conducted men,") having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof: "from such," mark it well, the man of God, instructed in the perils of the last days, is charged to "TURN AWAY." (2 Tim. 3)

Moreover, the Holy Ghost does give us, in 1 Cor. 5, not merely one instance, nor ten thousand instances, of excommunication, but what is far better — the positive obligation laid on the assembly of God to exercise discipline, and to the last degree, if needed; the ground on which it is based; the object in view; and the sort of sins which demands rigour. And it is of the utmost moment to observe that, though the Apostle, in urging their responsibility, puts himself with them in spirit, yet would it not have been in any wise the same thing, had even he been present in body and done it all for them. The assembly must judge those within; they must have conscience and heart exercised for it was not a question of a mere court of law, dealing coldly with somebody's affairs, but a most afflicting thing that they, the saints of God, should have in their midst a deep dishonour done to their Lord. If it were only their families, how would they not grieve; how much more for such a scandal in God's family! Hence they were called on to put away from among themselves the wicked person  - to approve themselves clear in the matter. The action of a mere clerk would not suffice; for that would be on the principle of a kind of religious police. What God looks for in His assembly — what was effected even in the poor despised Corinthian saints, was sorrow after a godly sort: "What carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves; yea, what indignation; yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal; yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." And all this wrought in the body of the saints, chiefly through or in reference to one case of distressing discipline, as is plain from 2 Cor. 7: 12! The principle assumes that the Church is a holy company; ("ye are unleavened;") and on this basis practical purity is insisted on ("that ye may be a new lump.") For the foundation of the Church being God's most holy judgment and blotting out of sin in Christ's cross, who suffered as the true Paschal Lamb, we are called, as saints of God, individually and corporately, always and everywhere, to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth; and this, not in personal godliness only, but in refusing communion with any one called a brother who is of unclean life, covetous, or a railer, etc. What would become of a clergyman who would dare to cut off a covetous person or a railer! Assuredly the issue would be, not the excommunication of these offenders, common as they are, but the censure, at the least, of the innovating ecclesiastic. Scripture, therefore, is not the directory of their discipline. Besides, it is the Church, and not a minister only, that the Holy Ghost calls on to act; and this never was nor can be in Anglicanism. Thus, a minister's rights, or a society's rules, are not in question, but the assembly of God doing His will.

Indeed, the Lord had Himself shown, in Matt. 18, another principle which never seems to cross the minds of those who would lower and fritter away to their own level the holy order of the Church. For case which began in a trespass against a brother might elicit such heady self-will, that when all loving overtures closed in the offender's refusal to "hear the church," he is to be treated "as an heathen man and a publican." It is most striking also to note that the gracious Lord, providing, it would seem, for all contingencies in the break-up of the Church's external unity, was pleased to promise heavenly ratification to the discipline of but "two or three," if gathered in the true power of His name. What an encouragement to faith, were we ever so few and feeble! What disallowance of all evil! Will any clergyman venture to say that this is the mode or measure of Anglican discipline? "Tell it to the church!" "Hear the church!" Such directions are inapplicable and practically unheard of there; but they are the living words of Christ, where Scripture is the sole standard. Others may tell the Curate; they may hear the Curate; but, alas! there is with them no church either to tell or to hear.*

* I have read many erroneous notions on the Church and its discipline; but I remember few more painful than Mr. Carey's central paragraph in page 13: "Whether it be permitted to the Church at any time to enforce a sterner discipline that St. Paul thought fit himself to enforce,  - whether it would be advisable," etc, The words are quiet and calm and amiable; the sentiment is, in my opinion, pernicious and irreverent, as well as contrary to fact. We have just seen how comprehensive and holy the discipline was that "St. Paul thought fit himself to enforce," which some would reduce to more isolated points, so as to cover the unfaithfulness of themselves and their system. What is most of all to be reprobated is the light way in which it is even made a question, whether the Church should adopt another discipline. But this guilty bearing toward Scripture is the natural result of the presumption which dares to make a Church after man's own pleasure, and to form Services or Articles for a past day or the present. What trifling with the revelation of God! And what a degradation for the Church, whose real dignity lies in lowly, unqualified subjection to the Lord, above "these times of free inquiry," no less than those of blind medieval superstition!

It is a question, primarily, of what the Church of God is, and secondarily, of Scriptural discipline. I am at a loss to understand how a believing man can read the epistles attentively without the conviction that the character of the assemblies there described differs not only in degree, but in kind, from the promiscuous congregations of nationalism. Take Col. 1 as a sample; and what can be clearer than that the holiness of the Christian body is of another sort altogether from that of Israel as a people? Did Jews give, thanks to the Father who had made them meet to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light? Could Jews say that He had delivered them from the power of darkness and had translated them into the kingdom of the Son of His love? Had they individually redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins? I take this, without any particular choice, to show the sense Scripture attaches to "the saints" of the New Testament. Mr. Carey is quite mistaken, not only in his own retrogression to the Old Testament measure in Israel, but in fancying that I contend for "the mere ground" (!) that they (Christians) "have not reached a particular standard of personal holiness." Far from it — I hold what the New Testament teaches, that every true believer, conformist or not, is a saint of God; that he has eternal life and the Holy Ghost dwelling in him; and this through faith, before the question of his walk begins, and, therefore, before reaching a particular standard of personal holiness. The difference which separates my views from Mr. Carey's is deeper than a question of Church or discipline; we differ radically as to "what is a Christian?" There, Mr. Dobrée agrees with me; but it is passing strange that, agreeing with me in principle, he is united with Mr. Carey in practice.

It is utterly inconsistent with Scripture and fact, then, to describe the Anglican body as "a Church that follows the Apostles' guidance, that does what the Apostles did and abstains from doing what they abstained from." (p. 11.) For I have shown at considerable length, that it never was a church at all, if the Church of God means, as Scripture everywhere teaches, the assembly of such as were believed to be sanctified in Christ Jesus, subject to the Word and Spirit of God, and in known manifest separation from the world. No doubt, if Anglicanism were the Church of God in this country, it would be, "on my principles," a sin to separate; but so it would be yet more a sin to have separated from Romanism, which beyond a doubt had possession of the land before Henry VIII, if Romanism had been a church of God. But while I allow both systems to be parts of the wheat-and-tare-field of Christendom, it is evident that the Word of God, which is infinitely more important than Mr. Carey's principles or mine, convicts the English and Romish bodies of palpable, habitual, systematic departure from all the special features of the Church. It is no difficulty for me to give Scriptural reasons for disowning either one or other; but it is hard to see how a Protestant, who admits Rome to be a real church of God, can justify secession from it three hundred years ago, or at this moment; for no lapse of time can consecrate an error or a sin. So long as a body is recognised as a church of God at all, it is a sin to abandon it: but when you have the certainty from God's Word, that a body either never possessed that title or has forfeited it by such a departure in principle and practice as forbids all return, the way is clear; it is no sin, but a duty, to be separate.

It is instructive to observe that, when comparing Romanism with "the true Church of Christ," the Homilies abandon their own system and fall back on a very tolerable anticipation of the ground taken by the "Brethren." "The true Church is an universal congregation or fellowship of Gods faithful and elect people," ["the saints, or those believed to be such," is a rather more guarded statement,] built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. [not on the Jewish system of a holy people under the law,] Jesus Christ Himself being the head corner-stone [not a word about the Sovereign's supremacy in ecclesiastical estates, any more than the Pope's]. And it hath always three notes or marks, whereby it is known: pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments ministered according to Christ's holy institution, and the right use of ecclesiastical discipline." (Homily for Whitsunday, second part.)* Let the Anglican Christian weigh these words. They do not mean that singular invention of Augustine's, a Church invisible, but what I, with Scripture, call "the assembly," and what my critic calls "the visible Church." for they speak of that universal congregation which has the notes of sound doctrine, due ministration of the sacraments, and right discipline, all of which things belong to the Church as a known body on earth, not in heaven or invisible. Reference to Art. 19 puts the matter beyond doubt. But if this must be conceded, it is evident that, when testing Rome by the Scriptures, the force of truth led the Homilist from his own position to ours. Let Mr. Carey consider it; for, in truth, his argument is against the Acts and Epistles, and even the Homily, when defining the true Church, quite as much as against my view. (pp. 13, 14.) How strange to command or invite "every parishioner" to communicate; and then, after warning publicly and privately too, to call the act of coming to the Lord's table, on the part of any decent worldly man, a public profession of his faith in Christ! How miserably short of the faith of God's elect and faithful people! It is the faith of a creed, not of God's operation; and the result is the Church of England, in marked contrast with the Church of God.

* For my part, I cannot but think that the Homily on the Holy Ghost (written probably by Jewell) contains not a little that is "godly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," and that it would not he amiss if read "diligently and distinctly, that it might be understanded of the people." Probably, however, the Christians who ponder and pray might be startled, after being taught by the Homily that the right use of ecclesiastical discipline is a mark of the true church, to hear in Lent the painful admission, that, (until the restoration of the old godly discipline which is much to be wished, but as yet in vain,) they are obliged to content themselves with reading the curses of Deut. 27, and other places of Scripture.

RECONCILIATION.

Mr. Carey thinks "it is satisfactory to observe, that with all the desire to bring forward whatever he considers condemnatory of the Church [i.e., the English Establishment], Mr. Kelly can only attack six articles out of the thirty-nine." Now he ought to have known, without a word of further explanation, that, on my principles, there are at least four more articles (8, 20, 21, 24) to which I must take exception, no less than to the six explicitly named. For he is well aware that I object to the imposition of a humanly framed symbol of faith, and this for reasons which may appear by and by, though with the greatest respect for the so-called Athanasian creed, as a doctrinal statement. And that which is laid down as to the authority of the Church, general councils, and traditions, he could still less expect me to receive. This may satisfy him that he mistook both the fact and my spirit in the "desire" he imputed so hastily.

Besides, were it true that six articles only were considered to be unscriptural, because these alone were specified, what can be thought of the moral condition which treats even the smaller number as involving anything "satisfactory?" Thousands of Christians in our country, to speak of no other, whose orthodoxy and godliness no unprejudiced judge doubts, share my convictions fully. The solidity of their grounds of objection is not the question now. The fact is past doubt that very many Christians who would be welcome as members or ministers in the best of existing religious bodies, could not righteously abide in the national system, if it were only for this, that such membership in all honesty implies the uniform profession of all the articles, to the disallowance of the least difference. I should have thought one faulty article the reverse of "satisfactory." Had it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and the Apostles to lay down ninety-nine articles, absolute submission to which, express or implied, was bound on the conscience of every person who entered the Church, God forbid that any of us should raise the shade of a difficulty. But it is obvious to the reader of the New Testament, that the Apostles, etc., simply required from converts, repentance toward God and faith in Christ. Where there was living faith, the assembly of God became the scene of growth and knowledge; where there was not, such error or evil, sooner or later, manifested itself that in extreme cases excision or apostacy ensued. I leave the reader to judge, if this account of the Apostolic Church be true, how far the imposition of 39 Articles resembles the earliest and only authoritative practice. Is it not clear and certain, that if the Church was intended to comprehend all the faithful within its bosom, this divine object would be necessarily defeated by binding, as formularies of faith on all its members, statements which many of the faithful reject! To do so is to become a sect; it is not the Church; for every intelligent Christian will admit that a sect, as contrasted with God's assembly, is a society which upsets the scriptural terms of communion, by an unwarranted widening or narrowing of the basis which God sanctions. Were one expected to receive a single statement, which he believed, on scriptural grounds, to be erroneous, it would and ought to hinder a true man from joining those that exacted it. The sectarian character of the Establishment in this respect is as evident, as the defence set up is weak morally and in reasoning.

The next paragraph, (and indeed the rest of the section, pp. 15-20,) may well surprise, because of the inattention or insubmission to Scripture it discloses. As the point is of real doctrinal moment, I will state it as clearly and in as few words as possible. The objection was raised by me to Art. 2, that it represents our Lord as suffering and dying, in order to reconcile His Father to us: whereas the truth is, that God was in Christ reconciling (not Himself to the world, but) the world to Himself. Now Mr. Carey does not deny that I have given fairly the sense both of 2 Cor. 5 on the one hand, and of the Article on the other. I had also confirmed my opposition to the Anglican doctrine by a reference to Rom. 5 and Col. 1; and he does not question the sense I have given to these texts, as indeed he could not legitimately. And yet, in the face of three plain Scriptures, he seems to marvel:- "This is positively all he says. Not one word is added in proof." Now I should have judged that a Christian man, who trembled at the Word of God, would have thought that the fullest and most decisive proof lay in such unquestioned passages of Holy Writ, which expressly stated a view of reconciliation that differs from, and is the exact converse of, the Article. Mr. Carey thinks I ought to have maintained "so grave an accusation by cogent and convincing argument." Will he permit me to tell him plainly, that I know of no argument so cogent and convincing as a plain, direct Scripture, the meaning of which is accepted by both sides? He whose cause requires him to escape from the force of these Scriptures, may have recourse to "argument;" (whether "cogent and convincing," will soon appear;) but I am entitled to stand, without other support, on texts which teach a totally different doctrine from that of the Article, until other texts are produced which seem to contain the incriminated doctrine. Mr. Carey has done nothing of the kind, and what is more, he cannot. Let him cite one passage of Scripture which asserts the same thing as Article 2, nay, which resembles it, or could be conceived to be its source, and I will allow him the highest "credit as a controversialist and as a sound exponent of Scripture." He says, "I will not controvert the sense Mr. Kelly puts upon the passages he cites" (p. 16): why, then, does he not cite other passages, if such there be, which favour the doctrine of the Article?

Instead of this, he first of all betakes himself to an argument which is anything but cogent and convincing. "Reconciliation necessarily implies two parties" (p. 15:) nobody disputes it; but the question is, If man became the enemy of God, was God the enemy of man? This is precisely what I deny, and what the erroneous doctrine insinuates. In human things, even, it is not always true that where a breach exists, both are at enmity, or at variance as it is here put. In our case, it is the mere unbelief of man who, being himself an enemy to God, infers to his ruin that God is his enemy. If the word of God taught that He entertained the hostile feelings toward man which man undoubtedly has toward God, Article 2 might be argued out, and my assertion would seem unfounded and false. But as no such counter-proof appears, and such enmity is allowed to be hardly possible, (p. 18,) the Article remains under the unrefuted and irrefutable charge of false doctrine. "The passages," he says, "treat of reconciliation under one aspect, with reference to man. The Article treats of reconciliation under the other aspect, with reference to God." (p. 16.) Exactly so. but inasmuch as the Bible never treats of reconciliation with reference to God but only to man, I am greatly deceived if the Article is not thereby convicted of an unscriptural character. Scripture speaks of reconciling us to God, the Article speaks of reconciling the Father to us. They are absolutely distinct statements; and sound reasoning will never confound them. Imagination may cry, "Can they not be, are they not both true?" but faith says in reply, Where is your Scripture for reconciling the Father to us? How does the Article, enquires Mr. Carey, militate against the words of the Apostle? Doubly, I answer; because treating of reconciliation, it wholly omits what Scripture does say, and it only affirms what Scripture never says. The Article is not — indeed, it is not — the Apostle. There is some difference, after all, in the weight of their authority. The Article gives us the opinion of an English Bishop or Archbishop in the name of the Crown; the Apostle gives us perfect truth in the name of God. The clergy (unfortunately, as I humbly think,) subscribe the former; the "Brethren" unhesitatingly prefer the latter. Were there no Article 2, there is no reason to doubt that Scripture would suffice for the believer, and be all the better too, without the incubus of guesses at truth.

"Besides, is not our reconciliation to the Father implied in His reconciliation to us." (p. 16.) Now, I can understand reasoning from an admitted, indisputable truth in the Bible, and deducing consequences which may be considered fairly derivable, if not necessarily flowing, from it. But here the process is reversed, and the plea is set up, that an undoubted truth, expressed over and over in Scripture, is implied in the unproved statement of the Article. Assuredly this view of a "cogent" argument differs widely from mine; for I am satisfied that the framers of the formulary meant what they said, and that they fell into the same blunder which occurs in the works of old and modern divines; and this, because the tendency to darken the grace of God is natural to the heart, whereas the truth, being supernatural, demands very simple faith for receiving it. Of course, to find oneself bound solemnly to an error is painful; and in some cases, at least, God may use the circumstance to awaken consciences to examine, not only this Article, but the entire system, in the light of His Word only. And unfeignedly shall I rejoice, if my reply to the attacks of Low Church or High Church is blessed to that end. Meanwhile, who can wonder, that one who is thoroughly attached to the Anglican body, should do his best to soften down, and explain, and reconcile statements which, if believed to be untrue, must damage the character of formularies so important! But I ask any upright, unprejudiced person, whether it is a reasonable demand that a Christian should give in his adhesion to the notion that Christ suffered and died to reconcile His Father to us, when the doctrine revealed on this head is that God has reconciled us to Himself by the death of His Son?

Had the Article taught that Christ died that we might be reconciled to God; or were it said that He suffered to atone for us, i.e., to expiate our sins, either statement would be sound and scriptural. But, as it stands, it turns things upside down, and displays error and carelessness, to say the least. The object of an Article is to furnish a precise formula, avoiding all ambiguity; and the question is, whether it tells the truth of God, not what it may imply through the lips of an advocate. No frequency of repeating the phrase, "reconciling the Father to us," will stamp it with the superscription of the Great King. I thank God that the second Article is as far as possible from Socinian error, and that those who framed it were, doubtless, as opposed as the "Brethren" are to that destructive form of Antichrist, which basely abuses divine love to the denial of divine holiness. Still, it has been evident to me for some years, that the statements of many men, orthodox in the main, and notably of Art. 2, do very unintentionally expose the truth to assaults from those misguided enemies of the Lord, who derive their only semblance of strength from a mixture of error with truth on the part of His friends. This always weakens a cause, let it be ever so good in a general way; and justly so, in the righteous government of God, who has magnified His Word above all His name and claims for it, from His children, an absolute and hearty submission.

Mr. Carey thinks, mistakenly enough, that I confound the Father's love and His reconciliation with man. How often must one repeat that the Bible knows nothing of the Father's reconciliation with man? Till they can show Scripture for it, I take the liberty of treating it as a myth of the theologians. But it is quite certain, as will appear presently, that reconciliation has been confounded with propitiation or atonement. What I affirm is, that God's love, which sought to reconcile men, was not caused by the Saviour's death, as the Article to me implies, but rather manifested itself in sending His Son and triumphed over man's enmity in the cross, which became, by grace, an unfailing basis for slaying the enmity and reconciling His enemies to Himself. If 2 Cor. 5: 18-21 be weighed, it will be seen not only that God has reconciled His saints to Himself by Jesus Christ, but that He was in Christ when personally in the world, meeting sinners, not in the severity and distance of law, but with full and free reconciling love, not imputing trespasses but forgiving; for as He said Himself, "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." But they refused all and rejected Him; and by Him, made sin on the cross, atonement has been wrought eternal redemption. Evidently then God's reconciling love, though only complete and effectual in the cross, displayed itself in Christ before His death, which is not the impression that one could gather from Article 2, even by implication, if I may be allowed to form an opinion.

But Mr. Carey grows bolder in p. 17, and ventures to ask if it is not strictly true that Christ died to reconcile His Father to us! And what is the alleged proof from Scripture? 1 John, 2: 2, and Rom. 3: 25; that is, passages which do not so much as allude to reconciliation, but express the wholly distinct, though of course connected, truth of propitiation. "Rendering the Father propitious unto us," is not the true meaning, but expiating our sins for God sent and set forth His Son to be, in the one case: an expiatory victim or sacrifice, and in the other, a propitiatory, or mercy-seat, by faith in His blood. "It may be difficult," Mr. Carey justly remarks, "and no doubt it is infinitely difficult, to explain." But the more incapable we are of measuring the unfathomable depths of the cross, the less it becomes us to teach for doctrines the conjectures or the illative reasonings of men. A singular proof of the danger of slipping on the topic before us may be seen in comparing Rom. 5: 11 with Heb. 2: 17, as given in our own admirable Authorised Version. No competent scholar would now deny that the translation of both texts is faulty; for in Rom. 5 the true sense is "reconciliation" (as the margin supplies) and not "atonement," which last is the proper rendering in Heb. 2, and not "reconciliation." It is superfluous, perhaps, to add, that I would rather confirm than enfeeble by one word the solemn truth of God's wrath and judgment of sin, and the inevitable, endless doom of all that despise the Saviour. Entirely do I agree that there was a barrier in man's way to God, and a barrier insuperable save to Him who appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. But such is the force of the truth which I am seeking to clear from the shade, which, in my judgment, Article 2 casts over it, that even our ardent defender of that Article "can hardly conceive it possible, that this bar consisted in any feeling of enmity in the Divine mind towards man" (p. 18). Now, the distinction between "reconciliation" and "atonement," which is plain and positive in Scripture, but lost because confounded in Article 2, accounts for and harmonizes that which otherwise seems at variance. For if God simply displayed His infinite love in reconciling His enemies to Himself, where were His holy hatred and abhorrence of their sins? And if He only poured out His wrath in the judgment of their iniquity, where were His love? In Christ, and above all in His cross, all is fully and for ever established to God's glory. "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." We are reconciled to God; and God rests in the everlasting efficacy for us of His atoning sacrifice, who sums up the scope of all the offerings — yea, infinitely more — in His one offering.

From this precious theme, however, I must turn to notice passingly the argument (pp. 18, 19) founded on the term "reconciling" in Rom. 11: 15. Nobody contends that it means "the renouncing on the world's part of previous enmity to God;" but Mr. Carey goes much too far in his alternative that it plainly means "God's being reconciled to the world." There is not such an idea in the Bible as "God's being reconciled to the world." The Church, or the saints, are said to be reconciled to God, never the world. This is the first mistake. Next, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This was His aspect or attitude to the world in His incarnate Son. But it is nowhere the intimation of Scripture  - that the world is reconciled to God; and still less do we hear of "God's being reconciled to the world." It is evident that it is the unfortunate doctrine of Article 2 which hangs like a millstone round the neck, and seems to render the right understanding and expression of reconciliation impossible to one who is under its influence. The true meaning of the phrase in Romans 11 I take to be, that God is now turning the fall of Israel to the blessing of the Gentiles, and instead of winking at the times of heathen ignorance, He is now dealing with the world by the word of reconciliation. He is sending the gospel of His grace to all, and commanding all men everywhere to repent.

Now it seems to me that the pith of what I have just enlarged on was expressed in plain terms in the little sentence of which Mr. Carey speaks with such unusual asperity — "written in so dogmatic a tone that it would appear to be, in Mr. Kelly's mind, conclusive." (p. 19.) And yet reading it over and over again, with all the judicial sternness one is bound to muster against the accused, I am really unable to pronounce it guilty, either on the count of dogmatism in page 19, or of obscurity in page 20. Let the reader judge; for here it is: "God needed the atoning sacrifice, we (not He) needed reconciliation." If the sentence had been understood, the dogmatic tone might have disappeared in the solution of the enigma. Surprise is more my feeling than any other —  a surprise increased by the temerity of interpolating my text by a gratuitous parenthesis, which falsifies the first clause. If he did not understand my words, and of course, therefore, could not reply, it was singular, under such circumstances, that the sentence was not left as I wrote it, without an addition from Mr. Carey — God (not we), etc. — which mars the sense and suggests a ridiculous and fatal error. Let neither the author nor his friends misunderstand me. The fact is as I have stated it; but I do not believe that there was any wrong meant, or that the inability to understand was affected. The whole misapprehension sprang from his really not comprehending what is to my mind as clear as it is brief. By God's needing the atonement, was meant the necessity that His majesty and moral nature should be vindicated by the full punishment of sin in the cross of Christ, the aspect of expiation for our sins, being Godward; just as, in the Jewish type answering to it, the blood was put upon and before the mercy-seat, presented to God, not to the people, though most surely on their behalf. So, in the Passover, God says, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." Hence, I consider, that in Rom. 5 "we have received the atonement," (instead of reconciliation, as it should be,) is prejudicial to the truth, and might play a dangerous part in the hands of a God-dishonouring, sin-slighting Socinian, who teaches that the propitiation of Christ was towards man, not God, and that He was only the victim of man's wickedness, instead of being also, and in atonement exclusively, the Lamb of God. On the other hand, I hold it to be incalculably important to press, that the love being God's, who was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, it is not God but we, who, in Scripture, are described as receiving "the reconciliation." The sinner wants reconciliation for himself - not for his sins, which last, being a mistranslation of Heb. 2, I hope I am not presumptuous in stigmatizing as an absurdity, no matter what the number or the weight of human authorities which may have endorsed it.

But it will be satisfactory, instead of arguing, to see the entire testimony of Scripture on the question of reconciliation; lest the thought might rest on any soul that one view of reconciliation need not exclude another. It will be apparent, however, that no part of God's Word gives the remotest hint that Christ died to reconcile His Father to us. Many passages treat of the subject, and all of them speak of our reconciliation to God, not one of God's being reconciled to us. The passages are these:*

*Though I doubted about saying a word on the note to page 19, yet as the omission might encourage a thoughtless mind to impute to me the evasion of any portion of the counter-evidence, I must notice it. — The first thing, which it requires no great learning to see, is the very uncritical manner in which διαλλάσσω is impressed into the service of καταλλάσσω, contrary to the standing rule that, in all exact writing, (and I claim exactness in the most absolute way for the choice of terms in Scripture,) every difference of word implies a difference of meaning. I am aware the Rector of St. Saviour's may excuse himself that he is only in this following the learned Bishop Pearson. The canon I have laid down, however is too firmly established in the minds of accurate scholars generally, to be set aside even by his name. Indeed, the use of διά in composition for the sense of one with another is notorious, and of course recognised by all lexicographers of value. A few examples must suffice. Καταγγέλλω means to announce; διαγγ. to inform one another; καταγιγνώσκω to judge against a person; διαγιγ. to distinguish; καταδέχ. to receive back; διαδέχ. to receive one from another; κατᾳδω to sing to a person; δ. to contend in singing; καταλέγ. to recount, διαλέγ. to converse. The confusion of these forms is, perhaps, a relic of the old Dutch school (ἐν=εἰς, ἐκ=ἀπό, κ. τ. λ.), which never deserved the acceptance of a reflecting person. Thus, if we take Matt. 5: 24, and compare it with 1 Cor. 7: 11, it is clear that διαλλάγηθι has a delicate propriety in the former, and καταλλαγήτω in the latter. For δ. admits of a mutuality in the reconciliation, which it is not the object of κ. to imply. Hence κ. would have failed to convey what our Lord intended in Matt. 5; for the object here was not only to rectify my own part, but to meet what the brother had against me. It is not so in 1 Cor. 7, where the wife has done wrong, and it is a question of her getting back in peace to her husband who may have had no feeling but of love towards her throughout her separation. The same principle applies to the quotation from the Septuagint version of 1 Sam. 29: 4. This, if the criticism be well-founded (and I do not fear, if it be sifted by competent and candid scholars), turns the argument into the opposite direction and utterly routs that baseless phrase — reconciling the Father to us and us to the Father — which occurs in the Bishop of London's last Charge as well as in Mr. Carey's "Remarks." Had δ. been used in the matter of our reconciliation to God, there would have been reason; as it is, there is not only none for it, but the choice of the word κ. rather than δ. is against the notion, as well as the context in every instance. Besides, whoever may do it, there is no more glaring sign of weakness than neglecting the body of positive evidence, which runs one way, and trying to extract something different to set all this aside, by the help of texts which allude to an offended brother or an offending wife. In the case before us, I believe that a more thorough acquaintance with Greek would have shown that the comparison of κ. with δ. strengthens my view against Mr. Carey's. Further, the fallacy of the reasoning on such texts against direct doctrinal statements is the same as that which argues on the Sonship of the Lord Jesus to deny His co-eternity with the Father.

"For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God [not God to us] by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled [not he but] we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [not God but] we have now received the reconciliation." (Rom. 5: 10, 11.)

"For if the casting away of them [the Jews] be the reconciling [not of God, but] of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" Rom. 11: 15.

"And all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself [not himself to us] by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself [not himself to the world], not imputing their trespasses unto them  -  and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God [not God to you]." 2 Cor. 5: 18-20.

The word occurs also in a form somewhat modified by another preposition which enters into its composition; but this, too, confirms the case.

"And that he might reconcile both unto God [not God to both]." Eph. 2: 16.

"And having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself [not himself to all things] . . . . And you . . . hath he reconciled [not, him have ye reconciled]." Col. 1: 20, 21.

The reader has now before him a complete view of every Scripture which bears on this important side of Gospel truth. After such an induction, Mr. Carey may perhaps feel that, knowing the case before he wrote with as much certainty as now, on a ground which is incomparably stronger than any argument can be, I might be allowed to speak with decision and brevity. I greatly deceive myself if unbiassed Christians, be they where they may, who weigh in the sanctuary the evidence here given, will not agree with me that the Word of God is clear, full and overwhelming against the doctrine of Article 2 on reconciliation.

THE MINISTRY OF CHRIST.

Mr. Carey considers my language, in repudiating Article 23, "unmeasured." But it is going too far to insinuate that adequate Scripture was not given. There was no citation of texts, it is true, and only two chapters were formally named; but those who know the Bible will hardly deny that a larger amount of direct Scriptural evidence was compressed into one sentence (Matt. 9: 38; Matt. 25: 14 and seq,; Mark, 3: 14; Luke, 10: 1, 2; Eph. 4: 7-16; 1 Cor. 12: and 1 Peter, 4: 10), than he has spread, by the help of argument, over seven or eight pages of the "Remarks." 1 Cor. 14 was appealed to solely as proving the free exercise of spiritual gift within the assembly: as to free preaching without, other passages clearly demonstrate it, and none but the most ignorant would dispute it. "But I rather wonder," continues the writer, "that reference is made to the chapter at all, for it is nothing but a rebuke to the Corinthians for using their spiritual gifts in a disorderly way  -  and one verse [37] seems to imply that some believed themselves prophets and spiritual who were not so." (p. 21.) It is my turn now to impeach my critic's language as "unmeasured;" but there is this grave difference that, while my statement seemed to him unguarded, in speaking of a human document which I believe to be erroneous and sinful, I maintain Mr. Carey's statement, in speaking of God's Word, to be not only unmeasured, but contrary to fact. For 1 Cor. 14 rebukes abuse, as does almost every other chapter; and if it would be a libel to pronounce the whole epistle "nothing but a rebuke," so it is in the particular case before us. In truth, this chapter is the richest vein of instruction which the Word of God contains on ministering in the congregation. It is not surprising that Mr. Carey does not see it; for the Article, professedly treating of the same subject, passes all by in dead silence; and it would seem presumptuous for a dutiful son to allow for a moment that God's Word contains one line of regulation, and that the fathers of Anglicanism maintain another not only different but opposed and irreconcileable. And yet so decisive is the testimony to the original practice, that even Mr. Carey cannot but "readily admit that the Corinthians had spiritual gifts," and that they exercised them "within the assembly," though all confess that the way was such as to incur reproof.

The true question, evidently, is not whether the Corinthians were reprimanded, but what the order is on which the Holy Ghost insists. And I am bold to affirm, that disorderly as those saints may have been, and childish as their vanity was in setting such store on showy gifts, like speaking in a tongue, etc., their faults, bad and inexcusable as they might be, were a trifle compared with the deliberate dishonour, now alas! habitually done to God, in wholly ignoring His system of the assembly with the Holy Ghost present and operating according to His will by the various members of Christ's body. The Corinthians, through an unspiritual abuse of their newly tasted liberty, exposed the Lord's name to grievous reproach, and  - were in danger of bringing the powers of the Holy Ghost into contempt. Never was there a more fitting occasion to assert the clerical or, as some style it, the one-man principle, if it were of God. The very contrary is done by the Apostle. He blames their love of display, their anxiety each to do something, their disparagement of the most precious gifts for those of louder appeal to the senses. He lays down the true principle as to speaking and thanksgiving. He regulates when and how tongues might be spoken, and when not; he gives equally definite guidance for the ministry of the prophets: all being under the comprehensive rules of common edification, and of comely order. But so far from closing the door on the right of the Holy Ghost to use any brother, if it pleased the Lord to open his mouth, he distinctly lets the Corinthians know that they could all prophesy one by one, that all might learn and all might be comforted. And he who has never experienced the privilege may be assured by those who have, that it is a good and wholesome thing for any man, let him be ever so gifted of God, sometimes to be a learner in the midst of his brethren; and that the trial of grace and patience, to which upright walking in this divine path must call the believer, is abundantly owned of God and blessed on all sides. Further, I may add that St. Paul does not question the reality of the gifts at Corinth, as Mr. Carey seems to imagine. The evil lay not in the unfounded pretension of the ungifted, or ἰδιῶται, but in the fleshly display of the gifted. The only class forbidden to speak in the assemblies are "women" — the strongest possible proof that there was no barrier in the way of the men, always remembering that the question is not power of the Spirit to minister, but title if there be power. And I confess it is wonderful to my mind that a clergyman who hardly acts on a single direction of this chapter (save silencing women), nor even thinks of it, because he is in a system where it is all absolutely excluded, should quote, above all others, that verse which rebukes his own body with infinitely greater severity than it touches any individual at Corinth. For the real bearing of 1 Cor. 14: 37 is an appeal to those who claimed a high place there, that as surely as their claim was just, they would recognise what Paul wrote to be the commandments of the Lord. The Word of God has come out from Anglicans at least as little as from the Corinthian prophets; it comes to the Christian, wherever and whenever he may be. The question for our consciences is, how far we are acting it out in our church relations, and in an individual way. To treat 1 Cor. 14 as "nothing but a rebuke" to the Corinthians and practically as obsolete to Christians now as the rites of our Druid ancestors, would be a strange proof that a man is "spiritual," and that his exposition is sound. Liberty of ministry, regulated by God's Word through the Apostle, is the undoubted standing order for God's assembly — not, I freely allow, for the Anglican body. How can Christian men quote the last verse of 1 Cor. 14 and cast to the winds the obligation of bowing to the rest? Or will it be maintained, either, that we have no spiritual gifts for ministry yet remaining; or, if we have, that their exercise is not to be regulated by the Word that comes from God, but by the Canons and Articles which emanate from themselves? This were Corinthian, that incredulity.

Before entering on details, let me say that apostolic or quasi-apostolic appointment to the charge of elders in an assembly is fully allowed. The practical question that remains is, How, or whether, Scripture guarantees the continuance of this appointing power? There is, above all, the far larger question, which Mr. Carey has not even attempted to face: — Does not Scripture demonstrate, that beside the local charges which required a competent power of appointment, the Holy Ghost maintained, both without and within the assembly, the fullest right to work as He saw fit by the various members of Christ's body? If ever there was a time when the Church, generally, was in order, it was in the Apostolic days; if ever there was, in those days, a special case of disorder, it was among the Corinthians; and yet, in those days of order and in dealing with that very disorder, the principle of the free action of the Holy Ghost is not withdrawn but insisted on in 1 Cor. 12). and this principle, and no other, strengthened and regulated by the exquisite episode on love in 1 Corinthians 13, is applied practically in 1 Cor. 14: all in perfect accordance not only with what we read in Rom. 12; Eph. 4; Col. 2 19; 1 Thess. 5: 14, 19, 20; and 1 Peter, 4: 10, 11, but also with the Acts of the Apostles, where chiefly we see the working of the principle toward those "without" (Acts 8: 1-4, 5-12, 35, 40; Acts 11: 19-21; Acts 18: 24-28). If the Holy Ghost abides for ever with us, according to the Saviour's Word, if He still raises up men of God to preach to the world, or to teach and otherwise build up believers, is it to be owned practically now as then? If He works in Christ's members as of old, in every way which the need of souls and the glory of the Lord demand, has He abandoned the principle and the practice which these Scriptures intimate, for the traditions of yesterday, or the inventions of today? Are 1 Cor. 12, 14 and the other passages no longer applicable? At first, no doubt, there were those who laid down the foundation of the Church, and there were also gifts in the way of signs to unbelievers, which no longer appear. But has Christ ceased to act as Head of the Church in giving the gifts of evangelists, pastors and teachers? And if Scripture never speaks of a human appointment of these, any more than of apostles and prophets (Eph. 4), are we to give up the Word for the commandments of men, who would shut the door which the Lord has opened? Or are we to confess that He abides faithful, spite of the faithlessness of men, and that He graciously continues the supply of men endowed from on high for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ? If so, the ground of Article 23 is renounced; for it supposes that the free action of the Spirit no longer subsists, that immediate gifts from Christ are not to be found, and that now, contrary to the practice of the Apostolic Church, a human call must be the rightful prelude to ministering in the congregation.

Mr. Carey, however, cites Hey for the so-called Apostolic Fathers, Clement and Polycarp. But the question is not, whether there were men duly ordained as presbyters, which I admit fully, but whether the divine plan was not to leave the assembly open to the direct guidance of the Spirit, subject only to the Word. The same Paul who ordained elders, has legislated by inspiration for God's assembly. What Clement, or the early church of Rome, says to the Corinthians, has no such authority nor stamp of perfectness, as that which Paul wrote to the same Church. Is it not singular that the word of men seems to some more weighty, clear and decisive than the Word of God? And yet it is consistent if the object be to find an excuse for departing from Scripture. Next, it is more than doubtful that Clemens R means the laity, (1 Cor. 11) among Christians; for he has been just speaking of the Jewish High-priest, Priests and Levites. Professor Gieseler will not be accused of a Party object; yet he distinctly maintains that the passage refers entirely to the Old Testament, not to that class of thought which soon began to trace a close correspondence between the Levitical priesthood and Christian ministers. Clement of Alexandria seems to be really the first who uses the word clergy in the ecclesiastical sense; but this was a century after; and he is as loose a Christian writer as one could well conceive. Are these the men for whom we are to leave the commandments of the Lord through His holy apostles? Besides, Clement of Rome is an awkward witness for Mr. Carey for, in chapter 42 of the genuine epistle, he not only ignores the distinction, essential to Anglicanism, between the bishop and the presbyter, but identifies them as descriptive of the same person and office. In this, he follows the New Testament (Acts 20: 17, 28; Phil. 1: 1; Titus, 1: 5, 7; and 1 Peter, 5: 1, 2), which "the Consecration of Bishops" contradicts. Candid Episcopalians, like Deans Alford and Waddington, own the common mistake and allow that in Scripture the terms bishop and elder, or presbyter, were used synonymously and indiscriminately.

But Mr. Carey professes his readiness to meet me on what I must thank him for calling "my own ground" — Holy Writ only. My "assertions rest (says he) on the transparent fallacy, that because it is the Lord who calls, sends and gives gifts, therefore He does so immediately, and not through men empowered to that effect." But here we are again doomed to disappointment; for, instead of a Scriptural testimony, there is first an argument from human government to the Spirit's sovereignty in the Church! (pp. 22, 23.)

When Scripture is at length ventured on, these are the texts adduced: 2 Tim. 1: 6; 1 Tim. 4: 14; Acts, 8: 18, 19. But Timothy's case was not one of mere ordination, and there is not a tittle of evidence to show that he was an elder or bishop, though an "evangelist" we know he was. The Apostle, according to prophecies, and associating the presbytery with himself, laid hands on Timothy and communicated a positive gift (χάρισμα), and not a mere local office of eldership. Is it pretended that there is the faintest analogy between this and modern "orders?" If it be, the pretension is false, and the ceremony an imposture, unless there is the conveyance then and there of a proper gift; if it be not (as most churchmen allow), the argument is a sophism. The writer knew well that I never denied, in an extraordinary case such as this, that a gift might be conferred by an apostle. The true point is, whether, when the Lord gave an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher, man's appointment was also requisite in order to the lawful exercise of ministry. I denied this, which Mr Carey was bound to prove; but he does not seem to understand the question before us. Timothy's case has nothing to do with it, and comes under another category. Still less happy is the appeal to the gift of the Spirit in Acts 8, unless the argument is that every Christian was then of the clergy, as the Apostle Peter calls the flock. The matter in debate is not a special conveyance of gift, nor the common gift of the Spirit to all Christians, but the necessity of ordination for one who is already gifted of God before he can duly minister in the congregation.

As for the case of Matthias (pp. 23, 24), it has not one feature in common with ordination or appointment by men, though dissenters, and some churchmen, it seems, claim it for their respective ceremonies. Perhaps they are both misled by the words "ordained to be" (Acts, 1: 22) for which the English version has no authority whatever, as every scholar ought to know. A passage from another tract of mine is cited as "a curious commentary." because it drew attention to the casting of lots, and to the time of filling up the vacant apostolate, i.e., before the Holy Ghost was given:- facts, which distinguish the whole case from all those which can be fairly reasoned on as a precedent for ordinary appointment. This, I should have thought, must have commended itself to every intelligent Christian, and the more, as it is evident neither Churchman, Independent, nor Presbyterian casts lots for their ministers. Mr. Carey is inexcusably wrong in every point of view, and especially in implying that I think the Apostles were wrong. It is my critic only who is wrong, not they. For the Lord chose Matthias, and he was not appointed by man; and there was no mistake whatever, but God's solemn sanction. These confident statements are a mere tissue of error. The leading thought is that I regard ordination as an arbitrary usurpation of Christ's function; but this is the most complete misapprehension of my view. For I admit ordination, as an undeniable truth and a grave and godly distinction, in the elders or bishops appointed by Apostles or their envoys. As to Matthias, I have therefore neither "shift" nor "theory and if there was the least trace of ordination in the case, I should accept and repeat it with all simplicity, as one ought. But it is only the "theory" of men (chiefly dissenters) who have never properly investigated the circumstances. Was it too much to expect that Mr. Carey should be tolerably acquainted with his own best divines, not to speak of the early ecclesiastical writers? He sneers at a comment which I had held for years before I knew it was the judgment of Chrysostom, and adopted in the learned Bingham's "Antiquities of the Christian Church," book iv, ch. i. § l., from which I proceed to quote: "St. Chrysostom (Hom. v. in 1 Tim.) says 'they used this method [i.e. lots], because as yet the Holy Ghost was not descended on them, and they had not at this time the power of choosing by inspiration [Chrysostom thus lays himself far more open, than any word of mine is, to the offensive imputations of Mr. Carey]; and therefore they committed the business to prayer, and left the determination to God."' Is this like appointment by man? Bingham adds that "interpreters generally agree that there was something extraordinary in it." Am I not, then, justified in regarding the argument of pp. 23-25 as a "curious commentary" on Mr. Carey's judgment of Matthias' case, and on the fact that interpreters generally, including the ablest and staunchest Anglicans, agree with my conviction of its exceptional character against his perversion of it to appointment by men? I abhor the thought that either Jewish prejudice or usurpation characterised the blessed Apostles in the matter  - but I must insist that, far from choosing, they left the decision between Matthias and Joseph exclusively to the Lord. "Thou, Lord, which knowest the heart of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen." They did not vote, but after the solemn Jewish style, Prov. 16: 33, they left the whole disposal to the Lord; so that any peculiar or etymological stress laid on συγκατεψίσθη (which I presume is meant by printing the Greek) is fanciful and fallacious. If taken strictly for voting, it would point to election by the 120, and not by the eleven, as Dean Alford interprets verse 23 in opposition to Mr. Carey. But I am satisfied that the prayer and the lots prove "numbered with" to be the true rendering, as in the common Bible, and that interpretation, criticism, and argument are thus alike unsound.

Again, there is no difficulty to my mind in the Apostles ordaining elders (p. 25). But along with this fact, I have pressed other facts, which are often forgotten: first, that there were whole classes of gifted men, not elders, who actively exercised their ministry in and out of the assembly, the Holy Ghost maintaining the fullest opening to speak, by whom He would, even on the most solemn public occasions, when all came together into one place (1 Cor. 14); and, secondly, that though it was required for a bishop that he should be apt to teach, rule was the great object in the office, and public teaching only an accessory, however precious, which depended on a gift never demanded, and therefore might be or not in an elder. Mr. Carey cites 1 Tim. 5: 17, and gives us a version which he calls "more literal;" but I confess the aim of the one and the advantage of the other are beyond my comprehension. It is quite incorrect to speak of "two kinds of elders." (which is a Presbyterian notion, not an Anglican one). Those labouring in the word and doctrine are only special individuals among the elders who take the lead or preside well; just as in verse 8, "two kinds" of persons to be cared for are not meant, but among one's own, special heed is claimed for the members of one's household. It is mere oversight that I assume that among any group of elders you please, there was none that laboured in the Word. But it is pure imagination that "teaching elders" were one class distinct from "ruling elders." The truth is precisely what I have already stated; not that all rulers were elders, but that all elders were appointed to rule, and that some of these might labour in the Word and teaching, if they had a gift of this character in addition to their necessary capacity for ruling. All must be "apt to teach;" but not one was necessarily a "teacher."* In short, ministering in the congregation was open to every one whom the Holy Ghost so led; and an "elder" might never so minister in his life. Elders are never confounded with teachers. The former was a local charge to which competent authority appointed such as had the due qualifications; the latter is a gift in the unity of the body at large, and consequently entirely independent of that appointment which the former demanded. Many a man might be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and convince the gainsayers, who could not unfold the word consecutively in public, like a teacher; and yet he might possess other qualities moral and circumstantial which fit a man for eldership, and which many teachers have not, I appeal, as the proof, to all the Scriptures which treat of the subject. Elders are nowhere in the lists of gifts. Teachers, evangelists, etc., are never on the footing of appointment by men.

* Listen again to the same Dr. Gieseler, who will not be suspected of the slightest affinity for the "Brethren," save by those equally strangers to his views and theirs. "it was by no, means any part of the duty of the elders to teach, although the Apostle wishes that they may he apt to teach (διδακτικοί) (1 Tim. 3: 2; 2 Tim. 2: 23, [which last text is clearly inapposite]). The power of speaking and exhortation was considered rather the free gift of the Spirit (χάρισμα πνευματικόν) and was possessed by many of the Christians, though exercised in different ways (prophets, — teachers, — speaking with tongues, 1 Cor. 12: 28-31; 1 Cor. 14.) There was as yet no distinct order of clergy," etc. Text-book of Eccles. Hist. vol. i. p. 58. This witness is true, and may serve to show some that the existence of elders, even if ordained by the Apostles, has nothing to do with the question of a clergy; which last only sprang up in dark days, when the appointed local officers (irregularly appointed too, I believe) contrived to put down all exercise of gift in the assembly, save through themselves.

Hence, 1 Cor. 12: 28 is manifestly and wholly against Mr. Carey's object (p. 27); for it classes teachers with prophets, etc., whom nobody pretends to have been appointed by men but only by God. And as to the assumption that "governments" mean "ruling elders" or "elders," I ask him for his proof; or rather, I tell him calmly, he has none. At best," government" may have been a gift which ought to be in him who might desire to be an elder, as "helps" may have been for deacons. But it is against the context and the verse to import local charges here. Were gifts of healing or diversities of tongues ordained? The idea is absurd evidently, but not more really so than ordaining "helps" and "governments," which clearly mean gifts, χαρίσματα, and not persons nor offices either. It is false, then, that 1 Cor. 12: 28, "speaks of God's setting up in the Church 'ruling elders,"' and quite clear that the verse corroborates the general testimony of Scripture, that "teachers," who are never in the same class-list with "elders," were independent of human appointment like "apostles" and "prophets," with whom they are linked. Possibly Mr. Carey may, as I am sure others will, see his error on this head, when it is considered that, though "the seven" in Acts 6 were appointed only to serve tables, we find one of them teaching, in Acts 7, and another preaching in Acts 8, both with amazing power from God. Assuredly, though only ordained to an external or, as some would say, a secular work, they too were worthy of double honour; but who would endure the argument that there were "two kinds" of deacons, one preaching and teaching, and the other simply serving? The truth is, that the office of governing, or of service, was that for which the elder, or the deacon, was appointed by men, though of course on the perception in them, by proper judges, of suitable qualities from God. But whether elders and deacons taught or preached depended not on their offices but on the question, whether, beside these, they had received a gift to that end from the Lord. Every one so gifted was bound to exercise it — the elders no more than the rest; and the Church is equally bound, in Scripture, to receive all that comes from God. Accordingly, in Acts 21: 8, we read "of Philip, the evangelist, which was one of the seven." Human appointment gave him, no doubt very rightly, the latter office; gift from God constituted him an "evangelist," or messenger of glad tidings. For this is the true application of the term, not a writer of Christ's life, as Eusebius interprets it, and perhaps most men to this day. So little, indeed, are these early writers to be trusted for nice points of church-government, that they misstate the commonest facts of Scripture. For instance, the "father of Ecclesiastical history" (iii. 31; v. 24) actually confounds Philip, the evangelist, with the Apostle of the same name. The Latin interpreter tries to cover the blunder in both places, and translates Φ. τὸν τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων, Ph. unum ex septem diaconis! but what will not men do or say? Others before Eusebius, it seems, had fallen into the same error.

In the footnote to page 27, Mr. Carey considers it very fallacious to infer, as I have done, from the silence of Scripture, which shows an apostle, or his delegate, with an express and inspired letter of credentials ordaining elders, but no successor nor provision for one. As God arranged all, my argument is that the omission is not accidental but left thus by His intention. Mr. Carey thinks that the silence of Scripture as fairly implies the contrary. Now, the only fallacy here is his own. Does he not know that the burden of proof invariably falls on him who affirms?  He who asserts that adequate ordaining power was meant to abide, is bound to prove it; whereas no such obligation lies on him who denies it. The silence of Scripture, therefore, if real, is valid and fatal to a positive claim.

The sum, then, of what has been shown is, that Scripture presents the assembly of God, under the active guidance of the Holy Ghost, and maintains His right to use any or all the members of Christ, if it so please Him, in the various departments of public worship and ministry within (1 Cor. 12 — subject, of course, to His own regulations in 1 Cor. 14), and in preaching, etc., without (Acts of the Apostles passim); that these gifts from the Lord never needed nor admitted of human sanction, choice, call or ordination, in order to their lawful exercise, though an Apostle might be the channel of a gift; and that, over and above, there were, in Apostolic times, local charges or officers formally ordained or appointed by Apostles or their delegates commissioned for that purpose. The divine system of gifts is perfectly consistent with that of the local functionaries, who became elders or deacons, not by possessing a gift simply, but by virtue of due investiture. Man soon began to confound these two distinct but consistent things, by enlarging the sphere of ordination and excluding the exercise of gift without that form. On this error, and daring rebellion against the title of the Lord and the free operations of the Holy Ghost in the Church, rests the fabric of the clergy. As long as there was liberty (not for the flesh, which I need hardly say is not contended for, but) for the Holy Ghost to work by whom He would, the idea of a clergy is impossible: the elders or deacons, where they existed, fulfilled their office, of course, and if they had gifts for public ministry, they were like others to use them; but God was still owned as ever present, and present to employ the various members according to His own will. By degrees the truth on this subject faded and was lost in practice, and at last even in theory, when the officials, no longer even duly appointed, absorbed into their hands all ministry in the congregation; and this is the doctrine of Article 23, and the sole practice of Anglicanism, both in direct antagonism to God's Word.

Article 26, though it prescribes enquiry into evil ministers, has for its main object their official maintenance if the enquiry be neglected or fail. It employs the name of Christ, by whom they are supposed to act, as a justification for hearing the Word and receiving the sacraments from them. Does the Christian want proof that the recognition of such men, when their evil doctrine or conduct is certain, is a dishonour to the Holy Ghost? Here all is consistent error. By baptismal regeneration "every parishioner" is fictitiously made a member of Christ, faith being lowered in the Catechism to a stedfast belief of God's promises made to them (not in Christ, but) in baptism. So now, the only lawful call to the ministry being limited to those chosen and called "by men," the natural result is the exclusion of godly persons who are satisfied that ordination to preach or teach is unscriptural, and the acceptance of many who would sign any form and submit to any "orders" to hold a living. Spiritual instinct might preserve the simplest from owning as Christ's servant an unconverted person, who manifested no gift, and preached another gospel which is not another. But this Article does its best to hush all to sleep and to establish the unworthy equally with the true minister. The Apostle anathematizes such; but the Article says we may use their ministry. He tells Titus that deceivers' mouths must be stopped; but it declares that such do minister by Christ's commission. He warns the man of God to withdraw from such as consent not to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ; but the Establishment binds its members to cleave to them, if ordained, as lawful ministers. Christians must choose between God's will and man's — above all, let them beware of their own.

Passing by Article 35 let me observe that Articles 36, 37 bind on the consciences of Anglicans a headship, and a ministry no less foreign to the Word than the wholesale process of christianizing a population by baptism. The Ordinal says, there have been from the Apostles' time Bishops, Priests and Deacons. If it be meant in apostolic days, it is false; if afterwards, doubtless it soon crept in, but that it had divine or apostolic sanction is another matter. In Scripture, it is perfectly clear that bishops and presbyters are one and the same class. Deacons too did not constitute the unmeaning noviciate we see now-a-days. The office was a grave and useful one, with a definite and peculiar object, and requiring special qualifications, not a temporary stepping-stone for every clerical aspirant of three or four-and-twenty. In Scripture, even where the assembly might be small, we always read of a plurality of these officers — never of a bishop, or an elder or deacon; still less do we find a diocesan bishop governing a large district with all its assemblies. Philippi, for instance, had its bishops and deacons. Plainly, therefore, the Establishment does not even outwardly resemble the original in Scripture. Add to this the Sovereign's chief government in Estates Ecclesiastical, with the congé d'élire to the dean and chapter for electing a bishop designate, and the discordant picture is complete. Far be it from me, however, to enlarge on a subject so dismal: what has been exposed is the system on its own showing, without attention to a single page in the black book of abuses.

But another and more serious remark is needed. Much is said of the Apostolic and early Fathers, especially by those who are not very familiar with their remains. Now I do not envy those who despise such men as Athanasius, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Hilary, Augustine and Jerome, nor even Origen and Tertullian, spite of many wild views. Had the best of these followed close after the Apostles, the difference of inspired and non-inspired would have been obvious to a spiritual man. But in the providence of God no writer followed for a century, save of the feeblest calibre — none but men singularly deficient in power of the Spirit and intelligence in Scripture, or even in commanding human qualities, if we except Clement of Rome. To whom are we to turn from the Word of God for light and guidance? Is it to the Pseudo-Barnabas with his cabalistic trifles? Is it to the Shepherd of Hermas, with his worse than puerile visions? Clement adheres most to Scripture, and speaks of bishops and deacons, his sobriety contrasting favourably with the incessant exaltation of the three orders, particularly his own, in the letters of Ignatius. I do not wonder that some attribute Episcopacy, as distinct from the elders, to the president of Antioch: for his zeal in putting forward that new thing would be not unnatural in its inventor. What would be thought of an Archbishop or a Pope who urged the faithful to regard the Bishop in the place of God, the Presbyters as the Apostles, and the, Deacons as the command of God? What, if he gave such a voucher as this, "the Spirit declared to me these words, Do ye nothing without the Bishop?" His piety might be incontestible, his subsequent martyrdom always claiming our respect; but a new revelation from the Spirit in support of a dogma about the bishop, unheard of in Scripture and incompatible with teaching really inspired, can only have been at best a delusion, naturally in keeping with his one idea. Polycarp's letter to the Philippians is Christian in its tone, but it contains no decisive evidence on the point.

But we may go a step farther. There is no ancient ecclesiastical writer more worthy of credit in his place than Irenaeus. Yet thus he writes in his third book against heresies (chap. xiv. 2): "In Mileto enim convocatis episcopis et presbyteris, qui erant ab Epheso et a reliquis proximis civitatibus," etc. Now here we have the same inspired document (Acts 20) which was — before the Bishop of Lyons; and we know beyond controversy that he fell into a twofold error. For, 1st, the comparison of verses 17 and 28 proves, not that bishops and presbyters assembled at Miletum, but that the elders were bishops; and, 2nd, they were the elders or bishops of the Church in Ephesus, and not a conclave of bishops from Ephesus and the cities near it, each city yielding its own bishop. Is it insinuated that so true a saint deliberately warped the Word of God and falsified the facts? I think nothing of the sort; but that, on the most charitable supposition, the ecclesiastical government then existing blunted the writer's vision to such an extent that he was unconscious of his own distortion of the Scriptural account. Does any Anglican tax me with a theory that leads me to misjudge Irenaeus? They will forgive me for thinking that I have incomparably less to influence my judgment than a professional divine, dissenting or nationalist; but if they doubt still, let them hear their own Dean Alford's comment on the discrepancy between Acts 20 and Irenaeus. "This circumstance began very early to contradict the growing views of the apostolical institution and necessity of prelatical episcopacy." Then, after pointing out the double misrepresentation substantially as I have done, he adds, "so early did interested and disingenuous interpretations begin to cloud the light which Scripture might have thrown on ecclesiastical questions. The E. V. has hardly dealt fairly in this case with the sacred text, in rendering ἐπισκόπους, ver. 28, 'overseers,' whereas it ought there, as in all other places, to have been 'bishops,' that the fact of elders and bishops having been originally and apostolically synonymous might be apparent to the ordinary English reader, which now it is not."

In fact, after the canon of Scripture closes, so far is the primitive Church from being a safe guide, that its best lights contradict Scripture, one another and even themselves, and on this topic perhaps more than most others. Thus, Clement of Alexandria (Paed. iii. 12) regards the three orders as distinguished in Scripture; and so do Origen (in Matt. 19) and Tertullian (De Monog. 11, 12). On the other hand, the weightier names of Theodoret, Chrysostom, etc., expressly affirm that in Scripture bishops and elders are identical, and strive to make the bishop of their day answer to the apostle or apostolic deputy of Scripture. But even here all is confusion, and no wonder. For the association of the presbytery with the apostle in the so-called ordination of Timothy is no trifling difficulty to the Fathers, as it is still to Episcopalians; and the same ancient writers, who elsewhere identify the bishops and elders of Scripture, insist, in commenting on 1 Tim. 4: 14, that here the elders mean officials of apostolic dignity or bishops in the later sense! Theodoret also falls into an error which Chrysostom, as far as I observe, seems to have avoided the error of making a prelate of Epaphroditus, because he is called the messenger or apostle of the Philippians. But this is evidently unfounded; for he, and the brethren who are similarly styled messengers or apostles of the churches in 2 Cor. 8: 23, were in this the mere channels and representatives of the church's bounty — a slender basis for the episcopacy of any epoch. — I here conclude this part of my task. It is for others to judge whether the evidence does not prove, not only that Anglicanism, in its bishops, priests and deacons, has no real claim to Scriptural support, but that the Article, relative to this subject, insists on orders which thoroughly differ from the offices of Scripture, and render impossible, within its own range, the operations of the Spirit by the various joints and bands of Christ's body, according to the just freedom of Scripture. Reference to the Fathers will not justify the Establishment; but it does prove how early, and wide, and growing was the declension, not only from apostolic principles and practice, but even from the knowledge of what they were.

The silence of the Articles, as to certain weighty truths, while temporary points of controversy occupy no small space, is substantially acknowledged and unsatisfactorily explained. Nobody expects a full compendium of divinity; but, on the other hand, the Articles are orderly, and rise evidently from the foundations of the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, the Scriptures, etc., to the lighter matters with which they close, so as to indicate the design of an adequate confession. My charge is that they signally fail in this respect. Mr. Carey pleads that the Services, etc, may teach what is here omitted. Granted; but what of the truths omitted everywhere? The "dead and ominous silence" he has totally misunderstood. Far from insinuating that which he fancies, I agree with him that regeneration, for instance, is not defined in the more formal standard, because the view of the Establishment is expressed unmistakeably in the Baptismal Services. The sole regeneration of the Spirit they know is in and through that initiatory rite. If this was not "ominous" in my critic's eyes, it was probably because his doctrine is the same; but that a large section of the worthiest Anglicans, lay and clerical, pronounce that doctrine heretical, and resort to eccentric interpretations or practical indifference, so as to remain there with some colour of consistency, is too well known to need proof. What a relief it would have been to their consciences, had there only been an Article, or a clause in one, attributing regeneration, as Scripture does, to the Spirit's use of the Word! The dead silence of the Articles is ominous, precisely because the Baptismal Services are so explicit against the truth.

The citations from the Services prove what was not denied; but the truth comes out in page 29: "The reason why the 39 Articles do not dwell more on the Holy Spirit's operations, is, as I apprehend, simply this: that on this point there was no difference of opinion between the Churches of England and of Rome." Here we fully concur; but what an admission! Had I said that Anglicanism and Romanism differ in nothing as to the Spirit's operations, what an outcry on my bad spirit! I believe that it is true, however, and of most "ominous" import. The Establishment joins hands with Rome in the guilty recognition of an ordinance substituted for the quickening power of the Spirit, who acts on souls through the Word which reveals Christ, — joins with Rome in the guilty non-recognition of the Spirit's abiding presence in God's assembly, there to maintain the Headship of Christ (not of a Pope or a Sovereign), and there to distribute His manifestations to each member of the body as He will.

From my specimen of slighted truths, the promised kingdom, Israel's restoration and the blessing of the earth under Christ's reign are singled out, as to which silence is thought better than words. Now I do not contend for imposing these or other Articles; but I cannot sympathize with the feeling or the judgment which sees wisdom in omitting these and the other truths I had pointed out, and in insisting on such "doubtful disputations" as are found e.g. in Articles 34-38. Is the Queen's ecclesiastical supremacy so sure and momentous that it should be embodied there? Or is the Lord's assumption of the kingdom so questionable in Scripture and so insignificant in itself, that it should be thrust out privily if not beat openly uncondemned? The early Fathers, who differ more or less about episcopacy, are here unanimous till Origen; but what of that, if it does not fall in with things as they are? What a pity a still "wiser silence" did not prevail in 1661-2, not to speak of the London synod of 1552, with its 42 Articles, or that of 1562, with the 39 still extant! The Act of Uniformity (was it "wise?") drove out near 2000 devoted clergymen and created an enormous schism till this day, by forcing conscience on things indifferent, which no truth of God is. But, with too many, whatever is, is right.

On Baptismal Regeneration no more need be said, as Mr. Carey declines to enter on the subject (page 30) — no doubt for sufficient reasons. But he also fails to notice the strong charges laid against the priestly absolution and other parts of the Liturgy. The prayers for forgiveness he seeks to vindicate by the Lord's Prayer in Matt. 6 and Luke 11.* But the difference is, that the disciples, for whose closet-use the Lord gave this prayer, were God's children; whereas Mr. Carey will not deny that the Anglican Service, (as not I say merely, but Wheatly proves,) contemplates condemned penitent criminals who have not the Spirit of adoption. Were the disciples "tied and bound with the chain of their sins," as is said of worshippers in the Establishment? I cannot acquit pp. 30-32 of want of candour: for Mr. Carey had my words before him, that "I cordially allow the value to God's children of confessing their sins," etc. Why, then, should he reason at length as if I denied it? The true question is: Does God's Word authorize His Church to unite with the world in confessing sin in order to pardon? Of course, the Christian may sin, and if so, is bound to confess it — yet even here always as a child of God; whereas the true service for the world is to have the Gospel preached to them, instead of presuming to join in Christian worship. All this is huddled together in the Services of the Establishment, and it is evident that Mr. Carey does not feel the confusion. John 13: 10 maintains the believer's peculiar standing, while it also prescribes for his failures; but neither pertains to "every parishioner."

*The argument founded on the special design of Luke's gospel for Gentile converts, as compared with Matthew's gospel for Jews, is a total fallacy. For though it is clear that the Gentiles only came in after the descent of the Holy Ghost, it does not follow that it was meant for them to use the Lord's prayer formally. That gospel would equally instruct them, if it simply revealed how the  Lord taught His Jewish disciples to pray. The same gospel shows that the Twelve and the Seventy, when sent out by Christ, were forbidden to take purse or scrip. Does it follow that the converts, whether from Jews or Gentiles, after Pentecost, were to take neither on their missions? If it be said that Luke 22: 32 gives new directions in the one cue, I answer that John 16: 23-26 does as much in the other case. The accomplishment of redemption, and the gift of the Spirit to dwell in us, create new wants, and lead into a new ground and character of prayer; though all the Lord gave His disciples abides for the eternal profit of the Church.

THE "BRETHREN."

The answer to the second and closing part need not be long. Mr. Carey, not being at home in the subject, makes an apology (page 34) for possible inaccuracy, and complains that my former tract does not furnish enough information about "Brethren's" principles and their practical working but, strange to say, he does not even now indicate by a single question the particulars on which chiefly he desires to be informed. With every wish to gratify him, it is difficult to anticipate such vague wants within the ordinary limits of a pamphlet. These strictures, I own, are opened with every kindliness. Indeed, the author avows that, far from blaming the "Brethren," he shares the feelings in which their movement began, but laments that due heed was not paid to the prophetic parables of our Lord! Such a remark is a plain proof how little they, or their ordinary teaching, can be known to him who made it. Had he accused them of being carried away by overmuch attention to prophecy in general, including these parables, it might have seemed less strange. But those who are ever so moderately acquainted with spiritual workings in Christendom, and among the rest with the history of the "Brethren," or with their writings, will not say that any community has been so remarkable for diligent study of these very subjects, and, I may add, of the Word as a whole — it is not for me to say with what measure of success.

But curiously enough, the remark is as wrong in itself, as in its application. For we are told that our Lord has given us in these parables (the Tares, Drag-net, Virgins, etc.) "the picture of His Church" (p. 33). This I must flatly deny. They are expressly representations of "the kingdom of heaven." It is easy for any man who has never pondered the matter deeply, to call mine "a strange assertion" (p. 49); but it is the merest assumption to say that the kingdom is the Church, and an assumption which at the first step contradicts our Lord's own interpretation. How often must one repeat that the field is (not the Church but) the world? It is the world since it has been the sowing-ground of good seed and bad; the vast sphere of Christendom, comprising nationalism and dissent, in all their varieties, Popery, etc., as well as the intermingled believers, of course. But there is no reference to the assembly, or church, as such, in any one of these parables: let them who so say, attempt the proof, or rather let them enquire, and they may learn that they have none. These beautiful prefigurations of the Christian profession here below would be true, if the doctrine of the Church, as announced by our Lord, and the corporate development brought out by the Holy Ghost through the Apostle Paul, had never been revealed. The two things, therefore, are in themselves distinct. Indeed, we need not go so far; for Matt. 16: 18, 19 may suffice to convince a simple mind, that connected as they no doubt are, the Church and the kingdom are thoroughly distinct, and that all reasoning built on their assumed identity wants a foundation. "Upon this rock," says our Lord, "I will build my church . . . . . . And I will give unto thee the keys (not of the Church, which is a gross delusion, nor of heaven, which would be as bad or worse, but) of the kingdom of heaven," etc. Our Lord in the same context distinguishes His Church from that kingdom of which He had already said so much. It is contrary to every principle of sound interpretation to say, without evidence, that such different terms are equivalent. And this is yet more confirmed by Matt. 18 where we have "the kingdom" fully spoken of at the beginning and the close; and in the midst of it, "the church" is so introduced that you could not substitute "the kingdom" without ruining the sense. To tell a thing to "the assembly," and to hear "the assembly," Is very intelligible; but how tell "the kingdom?" The things differ no less than the names; and nothing can be less reasonable than this habit of taking for granted what ought to be proved from Scripture.

The next charge is only serious as evincing sad unbelief. Tradition is insisted on "as being subciliary (sic) to Scripture, and as fixing the true sense of Scripture. 'The Brethren,' I believe, reject Universal Tradition altogether. Have they ever considered that in so doing they leave us without a New Testament? Why do we receive the New Testament as the Word of God except upon the authority of this Universal Tradition?" (pp. 34, 35.) Now I can honestly say that I have sought to spare my clerical opponents, and that had any brethren in communion with us committed the errors which fill their pages, I could not have made allowances for them, because they enjoy incomparably better means of scriptural instruction. But I happen to know as a fact, that unpretending Christians have read this passage with horror, and I assuredly reject the reasoning as equally hollow and mischievous. For it quietly assumes that God is incompetent to make men responsible by His own testimony — the root of all scepticism, superstitions or rationalist. Now I take the bull by the horns and affirm that, whatever may be the value of testimony, from friends or foes during eighteen centuries, for silencing cavils, there is no living faith but that which is wrought through God's Word, received on His direct authority without any external warrant whatever. If received on the authority of Universal Tradition, it is not believing God but man. The Word of God proves itself to the conscience and puts man by itself under the responsibility of crediting it, because God cannot speak without morally binding man to know and hear Him, for none speaks like Him. And as to fixing the true sense of Scripture, it is the work of the Holy Ghost, not of tradition, which has produced nothing but ignorance, doubt and incredulity. I challenge any priest of Rome or England to show a single instance where Universal Tradition has fixed the true sense of Scripture. "Brethren" do indeed abjure a principle which, forgetting the essentially divine character of the Word, sets aside its sufficiency, no less than the Holy Ghost's faithful presence and power to use that Word. Tradition, as a necessary witness to prove the one and the agent of the other, I denounce as a rebel. None denies the transmission of the Old Testament through the Jews, nor of the New and Old through the various and opposed channels of Christendom; but it is as absurd to think that we receive the Bible on their authority, as to imagine that a letter to A. B. from the Queen is only received on the authority of the postman, who delivers it. The links of the postal chain may be honest or not; but the royal letter retains its own independent and inalienable authority. The consequence of the argument is, not that we are left without the New Testament, but that Mr. Carey is misled by his error of Universal Tradition to abandon a divine and accept a human ground for his faith, if faith in Christendom can be called faith at all. There is no error more characteristic of Rome or more perilous.

The third charge is a mixture of unsoundness and misunderstanding. Far from viewing human appointment as erroneous in itself, I hold, as strongly as our censor, that regular eldership required not only certain prescribed qualifications, but the seal of an apostle or of his duly commissioned delegate. Why does not a clergyman produce some such guarantee for his ordination? He cannot; he has no more than the peculiar ceremony and testimonial of his own sect. Why then pretend to what they have not! If you insist on the desirableness of rightly ordained elders, is it not at least as desirable to have apostles who might ordain elders, or authenticate a competent substitute to do the work? Neither Anglicans nor Papists have apostles or charges that depend on them, one whit more than the "Brethren." The difference is, that we are content, in the present distracted state of things, to walk as brethren, gladly and in love using any and every gift for mutual edification; whereas our opponents set up, without scriptural authority, to imitate apostles and ordain elders, because they or their envoys did. Which course is most comely, humble and obedient? We act according to what we are, they according to what they assuredly are not.

The Word of God furnishes ample guidance for godly order, where there were or could be no elders. The Patristic tradition, "no Church without a Bishop," is a flagrant unequivocal contradiction of God's Word. For, on the contrary, the Acts of the Apostles prove as a rule, that it was only after a lapse of time, and in general on a repeated visit, that the Apostles appointed bishops; as indeed the very requisites (1 Tim. 3) for the office imply time to acquire a known character for godliness, gravity and ruling power. Yet were the churches as truly owned by God and men before these officers were installed, as afterwards. So, in Romans (Rom. 12), we find exhortations which suppose the members in full activity, and among the rest that of the ruler; but not a word about elders or bishops. Indeed they could have had none; for neither apostles nor apostolic men had up to the date of the epistle ever reached the imperial city. Again, 1 Cor. imply just the same thing. Rich gifts were there, and plenty of ministry — too much, it would seem; but elders nowhere appear. The household of Stephanas devoted themselves in an orderly way (ἔταξαν ἑαυτούς)  to the ministry of the saints, though all the evidence clearly shows they were not appointed by men; and yet the apostle commends it in an inspired letter, and even beseeches the saints to submit themselves to such and to every one associated in the work and labouring. This is precisely what "Brethren" do, and what is now unknown to "the universal language of Christendom." The Galatians were exhorted that he who is taught in the word should communicate to him that teacheth in all good things. This may be and ought to be, elders or no elders; and in fact, none are named here. We have seen already the bright light cast on the subject in Eph. 4, whence bishops are necessarily excluded, though we know that in the church in that city there were several. In Philippi, too, there were expressly bishops and deacons; but this does not hinder the apostle from exhorting his true yoke-fellow (certainly not his wife, as Clemens A., Eusebius, etc., say, but probably Epaphroditus) to help (not "those women which," but) Euodia and Syntyche, seeing that they contended along with him in the gospel (not that they preached of course, but they unobtrusively laboured and shared the apostle's trials in its spread) with Clement also and his other fellow-labourers, etc. The ordination of some, even where it was most valid, in no way hindered the free circulation of spiritual gift in the service of the faithful or in the gospel. The Colossian epistle is equally plain and instructive in another way; for the apostle had not personal knowledge of the assembly there, and there is no intimation of local charges  -  yet, Archippus, far from being repressed, is enjoined to take heed and fulfil the ministry he had received in the Lord, without one word of sanction from man. Still more evident is the inference from 1 Thess. 5, where the saints were in the freshness of youth (as it was too the apostle's earliest writing) and no officials are hinted at. Does this preclude godly order and oversight? In no wise. "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." They had no appointment of men; but valuable as this was, where super-added by proper authority and according to God's Word, they had what always and intrinsically claimed respect, even where apostolic recognition could not be had.

I might add other testimonies, perhaps; but surely these may convince the most prejudiced mind, if willing to probe all to the bottom, that the provident wisdom of God, who dealt thus with the Church in early days, has not forgotten the difficulties of those whose desire is above all things to please Him by intelligent and lowly-minded obedience, now that self-will runs riot not only in the smaller parties, but in the larger and more ancient bodies in Christendom. Even where apostolically chosen elders were, there was no hindrance to the spiritual ministry of any brother in the assembly, subject only to the divine regulations. But God took take that the fullest account of church-economy, discipline, the Lord's Supper, the worship and ministry of the assembly, should be in an epistle (1 Cor.) where elders are ignored. Important as these charges were, they are in no way essential. If there, elders render their help; if not there, the loss may be felt surely, but they are not so indispensable that the Church cannot have discipline, the Eucharist, gifts, etc., without elders. On this ground plain, solid and scripturally certain, "the Brethren" act; and their very trials, without and within, confirm their conviction, that, few and feeble as they are, they are doing His will in the present ruin-state of Christendom. Real gift manifests itself, just as a real Christian does, though in both cases all admit there may be doubtful instances in which the ready and sure resource is prayer to a God who never fails. The true credentials are from the Lord and King of kings, not from the lady who sits as a queen nor from her daughters. The Church in Scripture is never the source of ministry; Christ is, and He gives gifts unto men, who win confidence by their reality and fruits.*

*Mr. Carey repeats the mistake (p. 36) that I am bound to prove that "appointment by men" is forbidden! Not so: it is his business to prove it, if he can, inasmuch as he maintains it. No one is bound to prove a negative. Suppose a R. Cath. said The baptism of bells is not forbidden, a Protestant would be entitled to reply, You mistake the nature of proof and of reasoning: if you affirm, you must prove, or own that you have no proof. At the same time, I have given the amplest evidence from God's Word, that the exercise of gift, without official nomination, in the congregation and outside, is an undeniable Scriptural truth. On the other hand my objection is not in proper cases, to "appointment by men," but to improper appointment by men not duly authorised.

The mission of Paul and Barnabas, in Acts 13, is dwelt on in page 36; but no sooner is there recourse to this forlorn hope, than page 37 warns, that the case must not be pressed "too far," and that even Mr. Carey does not maintain that it was "equivalent to what we understand by Ordination!" Why then throw dust in the eyes of the ignorant by such a reference? It is pressing it too far, if it is confessedly not ordination. I must, however, draw a stricter attention to the facts and words than my critic has done. For, 1, it was the Holy Ghost who directed and called. 2. Those called are said to be Apostles. Hear, ye men of order: what think you of prophets and teachers "appointing" their ecclesiastical superiors? 3. The inference that Paul was an apostle "by man" (which he must have been, if this was his appointment to that office by the teachers of Antioch,) is directly contradicted in Gal. 1: 1, 4. Commenting on "they sent him away," Mr. Carey has committed himself to the unpardonable offence of saying: "I need hardly point out that the word 'sent' is emphatic." I appeal to every scholar, Anglican or not: is it so? In verse 3, it is the general non-emphatic word ἀπέλυσαν, "they let them go," or "dismissed them. "I need hardly point out that it is the same word in Acts 4: 21; Acts 5: 40. If emphatic, Peter and John were "sent" by the Jewish rulers, elders and scribes. and Jason, etc, had their mission from the heathen rulers of Thessalonica! (Acts 17: 9.) The truth is, that it is a glaring mistake; for the word never has the emphatic force which is here assumed. On the other hand, in ver. 4 where the Holy Ghost (not man) is in question, the emphatic word ἐκπεμφθέντες is used. Their "mission," then, is said to be from the Spirit only; their "dismission," if you will, was from their "brethren just as in Acts 15: 33. What, then, was the meaning of this transaction? Mr. Carey will be surprised to hear that, while it is never in the slightest degree approached either in Nationalism or Dissent, the "Brethren" have acted on its spirit, and would doubtless act from time to time, where they believed it really to apply. It is generally forgotten that Barnabas and Paul had both ministered in the highest rank (Paul, certainly, being an Apostle by divine call) for years before. What the Spirit here called them to, was a special mission among the heathen; and the imposition of hands with prayer and fasting by their fellow-labourers was not in the faintest degree an act of derivative authority as proper ordination is, but — what the Holy Ghost describes it in Acts 14: 26 — a recommendation to the grace of God for this work. Acts 15: 40 shows that the recommendation was repeated on a subsequent mission of the Apostle, and not improbably also the same godly order of prayer and fasting with laying on of hands. "Brethren" have done the same thing, when God made an honoured servant's path plain for a peculiar work, some of his fellow-labourers commending him to God's grace, precisely as in Acts 13.* But nobody dreamt of conferring either gift or authority.

* 2 Tim. 2: 2 (p. 39) is constantly acted on amongst us by those, who are competent, which it is very easy to discern. Just as Timothy communicated the truth he had gathered from the Apostle, so a servant now, who proves himself to be enlightened in these same truths, commits them to faithful but less taught men, that they may spread them to others also. But it is the effect of prepossession to call this appointment." It has not one feature peculiar to ordination.

As to the imaginary case put in pp. 37, 38, there is one grand omission in the account; it is forgotten that the "Brethren" believe, as did the early Christians, in the real presence of the Holy Ghost to control, restrain, guide and bless; while all admit that there may be failure, as in the individual saint, so in the assembly. But even in comparatively large assemblies of 200 or 300 communicants, so deep and general is the fear of going before the Lord, that they have far more reason to think there is too much shrinking back, rather than the too great eagerness to speak which strangers to us might imagine. Besides, we know the goodness and faithful care of God, who surely raises up and brings in men of weight, proved godliness, spiritual power, and profound acquaintance with His Word; the effect of which qualities He means to be felt wherever they exist. That an assembly of Christians thus acting being open to the sovereign action. of the Holy Ghost, is liable now as of old, to be tried by forward men, high or low, poor or rich, learned or unlearned, is quite true; but then there are scriptural ways for rectifying every disorder. And God is trusted, not the assembly's concurrence or pleasure, nor a clergy either.

With us, if a man mistakes his place and ministers without power, it is soon found out by others and generally by himself. But in Anglicanism the mistake is fixed and irreparable; the misguided man goes on maintained in the error by the system, spite of every body and himself too. Which is most right?

The fourth point of objection is the "Brethren's" cleaving to Scripture, not Creeds or Articles of faith which Mr. Carey tries to find in 1 Tim. 6: 29; 2 Tim. 1: 13, 14; Jude 3: need I overthrow a conclusion so preposterous? No doubt, the truth — the faith — is a most holy deposit to be kept at all cost, and in the form furnished in God's Word; and so an Apostle enjoins on one and all. But is this a human Creed or Article? One reason why I object to Creeds is precisely because they are almost always inaccurate. Another is, because singling out certain truths, which are taken out of their living fulness in Christ, they give me mangled limbs, not the truth as in the Word. But the best reason of all is that with us it is a settled thing that God knows best how to provide for the wants of His Church; and if He gave them His Word and Spirit, not Creeds and Articles, we at least are not going to turn from His wisdom as displayed in the inspired Apostles and supplement it with the additions of the fourth and fifth centuries, not to speak of the sixteenth.

Mr. Carey suggests a practical view of the matter in pp. 40, 41. Be it so. The doctrine of Christ is assailed. Let him produce his Art. II.; I fall back "on my own ground" — Holy Writ only: which is safest and strongest? "The Son, which is the Word of the Father:" where do you find such language in Scripture? The feeble framework of man betrays itself here, as in the spurious clause of 1 John 5. The Holy Ghost always makes the Word and God, the Son and Father proper correlatives. Why should I sign an unscriptural error? What can a mistaken Article be if not a dead weight? Am I to trifle with conscience and sign, in the things of God, as an expression of my faith, that which I believe to be a blunder of the Reformers? Or are you to fence with bold words before people less instructed than yourself, and pretend that it is all one and the same thing? or, bolder still perhaps, are you to blot out this obnoxious expression in some new edition of the Articles, as the Guernsey clergy seem to have done with the other clause on reconciliation, on which so much has been already said? Thus, in the French version of the English Liturgy (H. Brouard, 1833), they say, "pour réconcilier nous avec le Père;" and so it is in that of De La Rue, 1815. The Latin is the same as the English, "ut Patrem nobis reconciliaret." Who authorised the change?

"Brethren" do not contend for unwritten Articles, but for the Written Word and its sufficiency by the power of the Spirit. Articles may fluctuate, as well as minds; they have done so already in Anglicanism, and they may again. but does God's Word change? This, I repeat, is our ground, our only and our perfect standard. Not a single use can be assigned mistakenly to the Articles or Creeds, which is not true, without a mistake, of God's Word. Have we not reason to be supremely thankful that, He has taught us to trust Himself and it? Strange to say, the unhappy person to whom Mr. Carey alludes (long repudiated by us as a blasphemer, p. 41), is the strongest instance we could furnish of the worthlessness of these formularies; for this individual, highly distinguished at Oxford and received by "Brethren" unsuspectingly, was a more diligent student of Confessions of Faith and a more strenuous maintainer of their value, than any man amongst us before or since. And I believe that his ardour for Creeds has grown since the detection of his fundamental unsoundness as to Christ's person and relation to God. Moreover, error, as in this case, assumes new shapes; so that the bulwarks reared by the doctors of the fifth century would be vain to defend the truth against the innovations of the nineteenth. The true question is, whether we have not in the Word an infinitely better armoury already provided for all emergencies? This, at any rate, is the thesis of "Brethren:" let those who will, betake themselves to the feeble, faltering, spasmodic efforts of human wit or strength. As to what is said of a regular ministry, and of creeds, allow me to say that "Brethren" contend for a ministry more regular, because more Scriptural, and for the sole creed which requires no remodelling, even Scripture; and as to safeguards for preserving the truth, I wonder conscience is not ashamed. With heaps of clergy teaching the dregs of Popery, and Rationalism worse than Socinus ever did, without the semblance of a real check, is it possible a quiet clergyman can breathe such a sound? It is certain that among no Christians is there such care in maintaining sound doctrine as among "Brethren," Vagaries are rebuked habitually among us, which in many a sect around us would be accepted as beautiful and good and true. Not one principle distinctive of "Brethren" was adopted by Socinus. The Word and the Spirit of God, as the authoritative directory and the living power of the Church gathered round the person of Christ — on these foundations we stand. How great the contrast! The ignorance as to both us and Socinus is complete. The very essence of his ecclesiastical system (to say nothing of dogma) was the right of man to change what the Lord instituted; and this right, or wrong, Anglicanism has freely used, not the "Brethren," among whom baptism, and the Lord's supper are observed with the utmost solemnity, as free from Socinian laxity as from Anglican superstition.

What principle of "Brethren," I demand, did Socinus ever adopt? The perfect sufficiency of the Word? The personal presence and power of the Spirit? The fact is, he opened his career by writing in defence of the Polish Unitarians, and he closed it by reducing their anti-trinitarian opinions to a system, and their scattered parties to a pretty compact body, with a clergy like their neighbours. His views of sin, justification, baptism, the Lord's supper, and ministry, not to speak of the denial of the proper Deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Ghost, were always and in every respect opposed to those held by the "Brethren." All flowed from his fundamental error of making reason both the standard of truth and the power of apprehending it. So, again, the reference to the Quakers can only be from unacquaintance with the subject. For in every normal meeting of "Friends," they have a bench of elders, and distinct and appointed ministers, among whom women figure not a little. Had Mr. Carey said, that there were a few points of coincidence between the old Waldenses and the "Brethren," he would not have been so wide of the mark. The reader can judge by the following extract from Gieseler (vol. ii., pp. 376 and seq.) "Like Peter de Bruis and Henry, the Waldenses were free from all heresies of opinion, and sought only to restore an apostolic purity of practice. About the year 1170, their founder, Peter Waldensis of Lyons, with a number of followers (Pauperes de Lugduno, Sabatati) began to preach the gospel after the manner of the primitive apostles. So far were they at first from any intention of separating from the church, that having been forbidden to preach by the Archbishop of Lyons, they applied to Pope Alexander III for permission (A.D. 1179). But having afterwards been excommunicated by Lucius III. (A.D. 1184), they thought it their duty to obey God rather than man, and separate from a church which prohibited that which they felt themselves called to do. At first they differed from the church only as to the exclusive right of the clergy to preach . . . . . Even where their name was not openly adopted, the influence of their example is seen in the newly-awakened zeal of the people to read the Scriptures for themselves."

The fifth and last of these objections (42-44) is a return to the first starting-point — the Church of God defined as the assembly of saints, or those believed to be such, separate from the world: a definition, be it observed, which in substance was accepted from Mr. Dobrée, and which, we saw, agrees in the main with the Homilies against Mr. Carey. But evil is surmised here: the "saints" and "the world" are to him in a mist. I do not wonder at it. The system, of which he is a minister, confounds them in principle and forbids discrimination in practice. But why should the discerning of either be a difficulty to Christians, acting in the Spirit by the Word which insists on a "within" and a "without?" Little did the author think, in penning these remarks, that he was the unconscious witness of the errors of his own body and the hindrances therein to practising, or even understanding, the Scriptures about the saints and the world! As to "Brethren," however, he is quite mistaken. If a person has been for years known as a true and faithful disciple of the Lord, all they seek, or ought to seek, is adequate testimony; and for this they would accept the word of spiritual men, clerical or lay, Anglican, Wesleyan, Congregational, Presbyterian, as really as from among themselves. If any teacher or ruler in the midst of "Brethren" spoke from personal knowledge, it would carry no more than the measure of the assembly's confidence in his judgement and opportunities. Similar deference would be due and paid to testimony of equal weight from whatever quarter it might come. If an untried person, professing to be just converted to God, sought fellowship, the assembly is entitled to be satisfied as a whole, directly or indirectly, that Christ has received him, as the ground for their receiving him. As to deciding about "the world," nothing is more simple to the believer who is not darkened and fettered by an evil human system: where Christ ends, the world begins. There may be the world, where there is much religiousness and orthodoxy.

To many it is repulsive to draw the line between the world and brethren in Christ. And some have not feared to indulge their dislike by denouncing it as despotic, inquisitional, disguised Popery, etc. Let me warn all such persons to beware of resisting and even insulting God's will as revealed in His Word. Not only is it part of our Christian holiness to be thus united in separation from unbelievers, but there can be no full flow of Christian love, where that line is not practically drawn. For how can we love as brethren those whom we do not duly accept as brethren? In the family, all is gone if I do not know who are my near of kin: and the love which is interchanged on the ground of known relationships, could not rightly exist beyond them. So, spiritually, the notion that we are not to judge in this case, fair as it may sound to the speculative, is mere want of faith, which directly opposes our Father's will, effaces the bright badge of Christian discipleship, and destroys the very love which it falsely claims to spring from and represent. All the self-styled love, which is not founded on judging, according to Scripture, who are and who are not our brethren, is but sentiment, party-feeling, or cosmopolitanism, and not divine affection. We must know the brotherhood on sufficient grounds before we can love them as such.

The "Brethren" are only safe and sure, as long as they walk in the Spirit, subject to God's Word: if those who are so called abandon the truth, let the true men purge themselves from such vessels to dishonour, as decidedly as from all others. "The foundation of God standeth sure."

THE PARABLE OF THE TARES

remains to claim a few words. With this the Donatist controversy has been mixed up for party purposes. Now I have not the smallest sympathy with either of the combatants. They were both violent, they both resorted to finesse as well is force, they both invoked the civil authority to judge of an ecclesiastical question; and blood was shed intentionally on one side as well as the other. The "Brethren," therefore, as to the main, are entirely apart from the Catholics and the Donatists alike; and so, I doubt not, would every intelligent godly Christian be, who may now talk about one or other without knowing the state of the case. But if it were allowed, which would be far from the truth, that the Catholics were thoroughly right and the Donatists thoroughly wrong as to all else, I must maintain, as the truth of God, that the application of the wheat-and-tare-field to the Church, and not to the kingdom, is false, and even an express departure from the Lord's plain words. Had the Catholics admitted the true and divinely given sense of the parable, they would have been all the stronger spiritually, and might have been saved from much which disgraced their side of the quarrel. Nothing is more common in controversy than for a bad cause to derive a show of strength from an assertion of truth which the good cause has misunderstood. This would be true if none but Donatists had rightly discerned the parable. But the case is stronger. I had already stated that the greatest of the Greek ecclesiastical writers, (who had not the smallest sympathy with Donatists, any more than the "Brethren,") not only explains the parable as we do, but, what is better, gives the strongest scriptural reason for that meaning and no other. Was Chillingworth too a Donatist? Really I can hardly conceive a more petty artifice of controversy.

But Dean Trench convicts his own view of plain error. He not only assumes, as they all do, without proof, that the Church and the kingdom are one, but he says the field is the world, "because the Church is contemplated as ultimately embracing the whole world!!" (p. 16.) I answer that, in its own nature, as an elect body out of all nations, the Church NEVER can embrace the world. One error always leads to more, and a false interpretation clashes with other plain Scriptures. This is to confound the present time, when God is gathering out a people, with one wholly different, when all people, nations and languages shall serve Him, and the parable of the tares will not apply. For the harvest is the end of this age; the period of universal blessedness for the world is the new age (not yet the eternal state), when the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all scandals, and them which do iniquity. The mingled state is now; the world-kingdom of Christ (Rev. 11: 15) will be another dispensation.

Those who raise or re-echo the cry of Donatists, do not know, probably, that the best of their forefathers had to bear the same reproach at the Reformation; as Owen and his friends had also at a later day. The pride and uncharitableness, not very humbly nor lovingly attributed to us now, were alleged against the Reformers when they seceded from what themselves had previously owned as "the Church Catholic." I defy these gentlemen to justify that great and righteous act of separation, if tares and wheat are bound to grow together in the visible Church. But the explanation is proved to be false by Mr. Carey's test — its inconsistency with other Scriptures (p. 49). For if, as they assume, without the least reason, the subject of the parable is church-fellowship, our Lord's word would preclude the separating a single wicked person under any circumstances. They might be incestuous, heretics, blasphemers, which are included in the tares of course; but "let both grow together till the harvest." The unholiness of the results, in the teeth of all Scripture which really speaks of church-communion and discipline, demonstrates that such an interpretation must be erroneous.

But Dr. Trench's notion is that "it needed not a special teaching to acquaint the disciples that in the world there would be a mixture of good and bad (p. 46)." Now every Jew who was not infidel looked for a state under the Messiah's reign here below, when His people shall be all righteous, and when the nation and kingdom that will not serve Zion shall perish. It was of deep moment, therefore, that the disciples should learn, that now, while Christ is at God's right hand, the wholly different order of grace, not earthly righteousness (as in prophecy), takes effect, and tares must be left quietly to grow together in the world with the wheat, instead of being destroyed as they will be another day. James and John show the need then (Luke 9: 54); and so does the history of Popery and even Protestantism since. Which of them has not employed, as long as they could, the pains and penalties at which Mr. Carey smiles? It was, however, a grim and cruel reality once and long; though the error would have been avoided by a due heed to this parable, which forbids the discipline of the Inquisition and the Dragonade, the discipline of the dungeon and the sword, of the fire and fagot. Was this not needed? Let those answer it who boast of being the lineal successors of priests, whose "acts of faith," bloody as the rites of Moloch, yet await the unsparing vengeance of God. Answer it, Oxford, Smithfield, — aye, Tower-hill! This, then, is the true import: the disciples in the kingdom of heaven were to exercise patient grace towards wicked professors, not judicial severity, which is reserved for the angels by and by. To apply the parable as the Dean of Westminster does, is wholly to miss this intended and most needed truth, to consecrate an error fraught with unholy consequences, and to silence the clear peremptory voice of the Holy Ghost in 1 Cor. 5, and elsewhere. In fact, too, the Donatists* seem to have been as deaf as the Catholics to the Lord's teaching in this parable, though they saw better what it does not teach. And as to applying Isa. 52: 1 to "the Church," both parties were unite wrong, if the strict sense is adhered to; for the passage speaks of the future blessing of Jerusalem. If the principle only was meant, Gal. 4, which applies Isa. 54 to the actual facts of Christianity, justifies the Donatists much more than their enemies. Certain it is, to my mind, that no great and good man more thoroughly lost his way than did Augustine in that controversy. Can people be aware that he who popularised the perversion of Matt. 13: 30 to screen evil in the Church, argued on such Scriptures as Luke 14: 23 ("compel them to come in") etc. to warrant religious persecution? They had better retire from the slippery path, while there is yet time and a warning from God's Word.

* If we are to believe Optatus, it was a mere quarrel begun by an angry turbulent lady, nourished by episcopal ambition, and strengthened by the avarice of those who had stolen the ecclesiastical treasures. And from a Donatist writer, quoted by Augustine, it seems that, except the point of baptism, there was really no difference worth naming between the contending parties. People who apply such a case to the present question betray great want of knowledge if not of conscience.

The truth is that the early Protestants, and the later Roundheads, were somewhat obnoxious to the charge of Donatism: not because they withdrew from a corrupt body which was not God's Church, but because, as in Africa so in England, the separatists contended in carnal warfare with those they abandoned. Neither the old party nor the new scrupled to avail themselves of the world's power, political intrigue, and even physical force to gain the upper hand: all of which things involve utter forgetfulness or rather ignorance of the prophetic parables. With "Brethren," all has been and is different. We repudiate all rivalry, all reference to the civil power about the things of God, and still more, all appeal in such matters to the arbitrament of the sword. We have ceased to do the evil, individual and corporate, of which we were consciously guilty; and we do not fear to trust God and the Word of His grace for the future. If we are now doing any thing wrong, we can heartily thank any one, be he Catholic or Donatist, who will show the error from Scripture;* for we, at any rate, are quite free and feel bound to correct all that may be amiss, and to follow the Lord more fully, being happily delivered from human systems where all is fixed by erring rules, and which ought to be left by those whose consciences judge them to be wrong. Mr. Carey considers the passing away of the Donatists to be full of warning; but it is lost, I fear, on those who believe them and their adversaries to have been almost equally mistaken. Still their disappearance was not wonderful after a merciless persecution, from about Dioclesian's close till the seventh century. If it proves anything, the argument goes much too far. True Christianity passed away from Rome in perhaps less time, unless Mr. Carey so regards the "abominable idolatry" (I speak with the Homilies) which, for more than a thousand years, has reigned there, and is but too vigorous still. Where is the Church of Corinth now? Where that of Philippi, of Antioch, etc.? Error is pertinacious enough and progressive too. It is the very consequence of the truth, that "Brethren " can only go right, as long as grace reigns in their midst; but this, according to Scripture, is sufficient for us: if it is not enough for our adversary, it is because his is a system of religious forms, so constructed as to look and sound well if there were no living power of the Spirit at work. As for "Brethren," their faults are great and manifold, and they do well to be humbled for them, because they are all their own: for their position, they cannot be too thankful and confident, because it is of God; and those who speak evil of it, will remember their sin another day.

*Only let, it not be such a sample of misinterpretation as satisfies Mr. Carey on 2 Tim. 2: 21 (pp. 50, 51), who fortifies himself with an unintelligent quotation from Augustine. "Go ye out from thence" (Isa. 53: 11) means from Babylon, not Jerusalem; and the present application would be departure from every such system of confusion. Equally unfounded is the remark on the "purging" which the Apostle enjoins, as a distinct thing from the inward, personal purity which he also urges in the verse that follows. Why confound these, but because the truth taught in verse 21 is unpalatable and involves bitter and costly consequences? But his objection to the only and obviously true sense is without an attempt at a reason. Is it not certain that "if a man purge himself from these" refers not to what follows but to what immediately preceded, that is, the vessels to dishonour in the great house? If so, what can purging himself "from these" mean but separation from ungodly professors? Exactly so Bengel "purgando sese, exierit de numero horum vasorum in dedecus;" and Dean Alford accepts the same view expressly. There was no need, in the Apostles' days, for the true-hearted to "form themselves into a separate community," because as yet they were able to purge the wicked out. But the principle is a large one and divinely provides for a time when the wicked might be too numerous and strong; and then if we cannot purge them out, we must purge ourselves from them, and follow the Christian path "with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart."

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

The Church of the Scriptures.

W. Kelly.

Dear -,

I am really obliged by your sending me "the Church of the Scriptures,"* which I have read with interest and attention. In much, though the ground and character differ widely, I agree, e.g., as to the unity of God's Church, the error of mere detached and voluntary societies, and in some respects even as to the order which God set up, and in a certain sense as to perpetuity also. But the accompanying brief paper on the Anglican Establishment† will explain some of the reasons which satisfy me that the institution, containing (I doubt not) many christian men and ministers, has no just claim to be considered the (or a) Church of God. The Athenaeum Club numbers in its ranks many members of both Houses, but it is not therefore the Parliament of the country. In fact, it was some of the principles contended for in the tract (especially that of the Church's unity) which drove me out of the National Body and which hindered my joining any form or shade of Dissent: for I am profoundly convinced that Dissent can never afford an adequate resting-place to a spirit that is awakened to feel what the Church was intended to be.

* London: G. Bell, 186, Fleet Street.

† "Is the Anglican Establishment a Church of God?"

One thing which struck me as unsatisfactory in the Tract is that it looks at England merely. This is too narrow a line for truth, and I am sorry to say that it is necessary to the writer's reasonings. For the same arguments which move him to belong to the Anglican body in England, would lead him, if born in Russia, to be of the Greek communion, and in Italy to be of the Romish system. And yet these three bodies have no inter-communion, but contrariwise oppose and anathematize each other. That is to say, the one visible Catholic Church of the author is a mere dream: it does not exist save on paper. The rivalry, the factions of the English, Romish, and Greek Churches in Jerusalem, for instance, (omitting all notice of Dissenting missionaries,) are the standing proof that the writer is, unintentionally, deluding himself and those who receive his statements. Each particular body has, of course, a unity of its own, but the Church of God, as a whole, has lost the unity on earth it once possessed — nay, the least semblance of it.

Some years ago it pleased the Lord to open my eyes in a little measure to the chaos and confusions of Christendom. To Rome I could not go, unless prepared, blindfold, to follow a tradition which nullifies the Word of God, and a systematic exclusion of the Holy Ghost from that action in the Church which Scripture describes in unmistakable terms. The Anglican communion was so evidently the mere religious system of a particular nation, and the prey of the secular power, that I soon felt it too absurd to attempt a serious defence of its constitution and condition. Strange as it may sound, it was Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" which proved to me how indefensible my position therein was. But you must not therefore suppose that I in the least coincide with the puritan adversaries of that day, any more than with modern Dissenters. For while the Anglican body seems to me essentially at variance with Scripture in confounding the world and the Church together through a misuse of the sacraments and an almost entire disuse of discipline, (in the face of one of the homilies, which declares this last to be one of the three notes of a true Church,) I believe the Dissenters to be fundamentally opposed to the New Testament in forming religious societies, some consisting of Christians only, some of a more mixed calibre, but all characterized by their points of difference and governed mostly by congregationally chosen presidents. These things, I am satisfied, contradict Holy Scripture, make man, not God, the founder of the Church and the disposer of ministry, destroying, of necessity, all practical manifestation of the "one body and one Spirit." As to this I may be permitted to name one simple fact, which flows from these convictions, that I stand entirely aloof from those religious societies, platforms, etc., wherein evangelical Churchmen and Dissenters alike join. And I have ever experienced more bitterness and less sympathy from Baptists, Independents, Wesleyans, etc., than from godly Anglicans.

What, then, was to be done? What step was a Christian to take, who was assured that professing Christendom is in a state of rebellion? Not surely to return to that Romanisrn, which, as I believe, with the Homilies, is "drowned in abominable idolatries;" not surely to abide in a communion which permits a sceptical premier to destroy or erect bishoprics at will, and which is subject to the decisions of a privy council in matters of fundamental doctrine and discipline; not surely to join sects which abandon every just idea of God's Church and reduce it, even if they were all Christians, to the principle and practice of mere human societies. Was the right course to remain an isolated individual, or to commence some new experiment? Nothing of the sort. All such procedure would be sin and the Christian is never compelled or at liberty to sin.

Suppose a family table deserted by all the sons and daughters. They abandon their father's house, or retire moodily and habitually to their own apartments, and they carelessly or capriciously choose their own company as they list. Two or three of the children begin to feel the dishonour done to their father: they return, confess their grievous wrong and humbly ask his leave (how gladly accorded!) to take their old place at his table. This is what, feeble and ignorant as I am, I have sought to do. As godly persons, slowly but at length, eschewed the Romish communion in the sixteenth century, because their abiding in that fellowship was really to continue in sin against God, on the same principle I am acting as to Protestantism no less than Popery. I am seeking, as God gives me light and grace, to take my stand on "the old paths" — the original and divine ground which God has never abandoned, which the Church, the professing body, has abandoned. In order, therefore, to get back to that ground, I must of course leave all that is contrary to it, confessing my own failure with all the rest. It is the guilty bodies (Rome, etc.) which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which we have learned. Such, therefore, I am commanded to avoid. From those who have the form of godliness but deny the power, whether individuals or associations, I am bound to turn away.

On the other hand, the Lord Himself has graciously made provision for those who fear to sanction what He hates by remaining in evil, and who fear to adopt a schismatic remedy. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." If I had only this word of the Lord Jesus, (Matt. 18: 20) I trust that I should not be afraid to commit myself in confiding faith, and I should be assured of His presence and blessing, during the present revolutionary condition of Christendom; but, I thank God, it is only one of the many words which His prescient grace has given for the guidance of the faithful in this dark and evil day. The analogy of Israel's history may illustrate the present duty of the Christian. I refer to what followed the breach of their national unity and the subsequent captivity even of Judah. Ezra and Nehemiah show us a little remnant returning to the land where the Lord's eye rested continually. Far more of their brethren remained behind in Babylon, and more still in the lands where the Assyrian conqueror had dispersed them. The shattered unity was never restored as a whole. A poor fraction from the two tribes came back, and infinitely less from the ton tribes. But the one question for those who valued the Lord and His promises to Israel was, What is the will of the Lord about His people? Israel had sinned and been smitten; but is the land still open? Is it open for us and our worship? They had not the ark with the cherubim of glory, nor Urim or Thummim. They had no Moses to smite their Gentile oppressors with the rod of power. There was no daily manna; there was no miraculous rock to slake their thirst with its unexpected streams. And what more despicable outwardly than this motley crowd of 42,360 persons with their menservants and maids? What more open to foreign scorn than that which they build? "If a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall." Yet these, and these only of all Israel were in the place of obedience and full blessing. Therefore the Lord thus comforts them by Haggai: "My Spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not." In spite of the captivity among the Gentiles, in spite of the dissolution of their own twelve-tribed unity long before, they still held to the relationships, and responsibilities, and hopes of Israel. They sought to put away from themselves, privately and publicly, all that was inconsistent with that position. There was much to remind them of their past sins and of the humiliation which God had put upon them. "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?" Nevertheless it was built in its due place at Jerusalem. It was furnished with the golden and silver vessels of God's house, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried to Babylon. The object was the same and the principles the same. The commandments of the Lord their God, and His judgments, and His statutes were owned to be as binding as in the days of King David or of Moses. Circumstances were painfully changed, and the old men justly wept while lighter souls shouted for joy; (Ezra 3;) but it was as deeply resented as ever when the holy seed mingled themselves with the people of the lands, doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. If any had taken strange wives, they gave their hands to put them away; and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass. Even if it were of long standing and they had children, still were they separated. Nay, the sin of Solomon was solemnly rehearsed as a warning, and the son-in-law of Sanballat found no shield for evil alliance in his near relationship to the high priest. The portion of the Levites was reviewed with care. The profanation of the Sabbath was stopped notwithstanding all gainsayers, high or low. In a word, great as was the distress and degradation, the law of God abode in all its force and integrity, and their obligations were not relaxed. By that divine standard was their practice tested, no matter how long it existed or how venerable the names that sanctioned it. Far from pleading the weak and broken state of Israel as an excuse for carelessness, the lack of a priest with Urim and Thummim forced them to put away certain, as polluted, from the priesthood, because the register could not be found, i.e., they were compelled to unusual strictness, not laxity.

All this is eminently instructive for us of the heavenly calling. The Church, in her sphere, has suffered an eclipse no less than Israel. The Church has sinned grievously, has rejoiced in and worshipped the work of her own hands, and has gone, by the righteous judgment of God, into another Babylonish captivity. But thanks be unto God, the captives need remain no longer in the land of their bondage, The Holy Ghost has been working variously, and of late more than ever, to bring Christians back to the unchanging Scriptural basis of the Church of God — to own themselves and each other as members of one sole body, Christ's body, and to meet together as at the beginning, in the name of Christ, not in the name of the secular power, which is the degrading Erastianism of the Anglican body, nor in the name of the see of St. Peter, which is the plea of the Romish apostacy, nor in the name of a favourite teacher, dogma, or discipline, which embrace the different and conflicting forms of Dissent. THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS is the sole and sufficient centre of His own people. It is to us what Jerusalem's temple was to the Jew. It is the only name entitled to gather round it all the Church of God. All the members may not gather, for true loyalty of heart is weak, and the difficulties, prejudices, dangers, enemies are many and strong. But the question is, not whether all the members of Christ are likely at cost of all to humble themselves for past lack of allegiance, and to let every association go which is contrary to the Lord's will for His Church, but whether I am ready to follow as He makes it known by His Word and Spirit. "Far above every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come," it is the name of Jesus which the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven, delights to honour. "He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you." He is seeking to exalt neither Himself, nor much less the Church, but Christ the Lord. I bless the Lord that this which I believe to be God's principle for His Church is through grace mine, viz., the  confession of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as the divine gathering-point for the faithful, even as He is the only Saviour of sinners. The question is one of truth and not of numbers. The principles of God's Word must decide, and not popularity or the reverse. These remarks will explain in some measure how I differ from the tract as regards the actual condition of God's Church. The author writes as if things were substantially in their normal state, at least in our country. I maintain that the rent Christendom of our day proclaims the ruin-state of the Church. Can he deny it honestly? How is it we have the struggles of Romanists, Greeks, Anglicans, Syrians, Armenians, Nestorians, not to speak of the almost numberless sections of Protestants? How is it we read and hear of their solemn denunciations of each other, more especially in the larger systems, but not wanting in the least? I affirm that the Lord intended one communion all over the world, that He sanctions this and nothing else, and that, consequently, the Church of God universally has been unfaithful to her trust and failed in her responsibility. For the Scriptural unity of the Church was not merely the coexistence of many independent bodies, as in the Churches of Rome, Greece, England, etc., even if they were ever so friendly, which they are not and cannot be, and if there were no dissenting communities rising up by their side among them. It was one body, animated and energized by the one Spirit of God — one body, not in theory only, but in practice here below. There were churches of Galatia and of Achaia, there were saints at Rome, there was the church in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus; yet was there but one holy catholic church in reality on earth, so that if I were a member of one, I was a member of all, and if a minister at all, I was a minister everywhere. Whereas, in our day, if I belong to the Greek Church, I am therefore not a member of the Church of England, and if I were an English priest or bishop, I should be ipso facto not even a member and much less a clergyman of the Church of Rome. Thus, as regards the earth, (not the counsels of God,) the unity of the Church is gone, alas! as the early dew, and all is divided like our Lord's garments by the Roman soldiers, and the seamless vest is as it were again cast lots for, while meanwhile He Himself hangs exposed and dishonoured, with perhaps a few, feeble faithful ones looking on with tears afar off.

It is easy to extol and natural to justify whatever religious system we have been born and bred in; but this is the order of the flesh, not of the Spirit. Neither is it wise nor safe to take for granted or to evade so serious a question, the glory of the Lord being concerned in the matter. What I desire for myself and for God's people, if it please Him to give it the least weight in the hearts and consciences of any, is, that we may feel more deeply the common sin of the Church, of that which here below bears the name of Christ, that we may confess it to God and to one another, and that we may cease from known evil through His grace, whatever may be the sacrifice. May we be kept from the common but unholy maxim of choosing the lesser of two evils, a procedure on which God never put His seal, and which faith never can accept.

My chief fault, therefore, with the tract, is, not that it goes too far in pleading for a return to "the Church of the Scriptures," but that it does not go far enough in that most true and godly direction. The cause was obvious. The author was merely looking at the English Church so-called and English Dissenters. Now this is no, longer the question. God is raising grave enquiry among His children over the world — in England, France, Switzerland, Germany, nay, in Italy and Rome itself. It is no longer a question between the voluntary principle and an establishment, nor even between Protestantism and Popery, but between Christendom at large and the Word and Spirit of God. As the Lord called His own outside the camp of Judaism when the Jewish polity, unfaithful to its office, was about to be judged, so I am persuaded all the virgins, wise and foolish, have been slumbering and sleeping, and the midnight cry is now being made, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet HIM." It is a time for earnest searchings of heart; for the time is short, and the lack of oil, of the unction of the Spirit, is fatal. But you will observe that the parable of the virgins (Matt. 25) teaches us the unfaithfulness of the whole professing body and the deeply interesting truth that they who have the oil leave the quarters where they had been shamefully taking their repose and again go out to meet the Bridegroom; that is, just before the Bridegroom returns in glory, a return by the faithful to the original and only right principles of our calling is intimated.

It would be easy to take to pieces not a few of the statements and reasonings of the tract, particularly of that part which treats of the application of his test to the Anglican body. I must be forgiven if I think that his pre-occupied mind has betrayed him into mistakes of the most palpable kind. But my aim in this letter is not the negative process of exposing a tract or such like views, but rather to state the true question which I believe God to be now raising, and some of the Scriptural principles which must be appreciated and maintained in order to a right decision. Thus I am of opinion that the author's proofs of the visibility of the Anglican body in p. 30* form a marked contrast-I scarce know whether to style it grave or ludicrous, but assuredly a contrast — with the visibility of the Church of the Scriptures. As to the "Church of the Scriptures," the million did not recognize her. Her temples, if indeed she had anything but "upper chambers" or similar obscure places, did not grace the ancient cities, nor beautify their rural valleys, nor decorate their fertile hills: if any did then, they were heathen temples. "Parishes" were unknown and "priests" too, save as persecuting the Christians. There were no "prelates," and the "councils of the state" bound, burnt, or crucified those whom even the author would call such. The idea of "a ship's crew being supplied with a chaplain" would have been, in Apostolic days, as novel a phenomenon as the thing and term, "Church of England;" and the scheme of "nationalizing a colony by a bishop" is a wonder reserved for our enlightened age. Not such was the visibility of "the Church of the Scriptures." The difference is in kind, and not in degree only.

*No person can plead in excuse for schism that the Church [i.e., the Establishment] is hidden. The million recognize her. Her temples grace our cities, beautify our rural valleys, and decorate our fertile hills. The inhabitants of every parish, whether rich or poor, find a home in her sanctuaries and realize the presence and offices of her priests. Her prelates sit in the councils of the state, her clergy sanctify the seats of learning, chasten our literature, and sustain the moral tone of society. Our ships' crews are incomplete until supplied with a chaplain of the Church of England, nor are our colonies permanently nationalized without a bishop." — ("The Church of the Scriptures," etc., p. 30.)

The alleged unity of the Establishment finds its refutation in the discordant tongues of its own spiritual Babel. There is not even that measure of united action, discipline, or doctrine, within its pale, which pervades the various unsatisfactory forms of Dissent. The rival antagonistic and sometimes litigating factions, though in one common religious fraternity, are so notorious as to be a grave and public scandal in Christendom. Where shall I begin, where end in enumerating them? It is enough to name the High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Tractarian and Evangelical parties, not to speak of a multitude who can scarcely be said to have any distinguishing principle whatever. Its catholicity, again, is contradicted by the very name (Church of England) it assumes. It has a system, more than a local sphere, peculiar to itself. Never in Scripture do we read of the Jerusalem Church at Rome, never of the Thessalonian Church at Colosse or anywhere else beyond Thessalonica. As to speaking of "the whole Church militant," "the Catholic Church," etc., in prayer, thanksgiving, or kindred exercises, the least sect might, and probably does, employ such language, no less than the greatest; but this is far from proving the universality of either. And what shall I say of the bold assertion that the Church of England is apostolical in her constitution and derivation, or that her perpetuity is apparent in her past history? Did the Reformation merely get rid of the Papal topstone, leaving the foundations and the edifice as a whole unchanged? Before that event, Popery had prevailed in the land for near a thousand years. But then occurred a revolution so complete, that if it were an Apostolical Church during those ten centuries, it was assuredly not that Church afterwards; unless a body can give up its distinctive characteristics, yea, can adopt what it used to denounce as schism and heresy, and yet remain the same body still. In short, plain facts overthrow every pretension of the Establishment to be the Church, or consequently a Church, of God.

But I must now close this letter, hoping that I have neither wearied you with undue detail or prolixity, nor grieved you with uncalled-for plainness of speech. However you may regard my convictions, which I feel assured are founded on and according to the ever-living Word of God, believe me to be, dear -,

Very sincerely yours, -.

The Church of God

W. Kelly.

A lecture on Acts 2: 41, 42.

As I shall have occasion to refer to not a few Scriptures, I merely take these verses as a prefatory notice of the general character and nature of the church of God. But even before these words could be used, another fact still more fundamental has to be observed, on which a few words seem desirable. "There is one body and one Spirit." These two truths are inseparably bound together. The one body (and the church is the body of Christ) depends on the presence of the Holy Ghost. Hence the great force of that expression, "One Spirit." It is the one Spirit who forms the one body.

It is by no means true that the Holy Ghost always acts thus; for in the Revelation (Rev. 1) we read of the seven Spirits of God. It is, of course, no question of founding the church then and there. On the contrary, the church was about to disappear from the world. Its decay had set in, and Christ appears as man, walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, not forming now but judging the seven churches. The first assembly is threatened with having its candlestick removed, the last with being spued out of His mouth, when a new state of things follows, where we have no more notice of the church on earth. It is apparent from Scripture that the church is not intended to go on to the end of the world (though it be a common idea that it will; and that through it the whole world is to be converted). Nor is this an unnatural idea, for those who love the church, desire, of course, to see it spread and flourish. But it is well and safe, and due to God, to be guided in our thoughts by Scripture, giving up our own theories, and letting God's word alone govern us. The apostasy and the "man of sin" (2 Thess. 2: 3-12) are what the apostle speaks of before the day of the Lord; and the church, so far from converting all the world even to profess Christ, is not then to be on the earth at all. In that day is the great harvest of blessing.

Scripture shews us then, that first the church is caught up to heaven; then the Jews are taken up again in divine mercy, though the apostates are cut off, and the nations get blessing through Israel; when, after a series of judgments, follows the millennium, and after the millennium the eternal state — the great white throne coming in between. During the period when judgments precede Christ's appearing (Rev. 6-19), the church is not seen on the earth, but in heaven, already glorified. Saints, there are to be, here below, both Jews and Gentiles, but distinct from each other and no longer united in one body. This will not be the church of God. For therein is neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christ is all and in all. All such distinctions disappear in Christ's body.

Indeed the object of God in the church may briefly be said to be that there should be a body on earth to reflect the glory of Christ in heaven. And who is sufficient to effect this save the Holy Ghost? Therefore is He sent down from heaven before and in order to what is described in the verses I have read in Acts 2. And the Lord Jesus is express that the sending of the Spirit could not be till He departed after dying on the cross for our sins as well as to the glory of God. The action of the Spirit of God is not human force, but compelling by the word: suasion, power in conscience and heart, but also new creation, as one must add. Yet it is never power coming in that peremptory way which obliges a man to utter this or that. It may be the case with an evil spirit, never with the Holy Spirit, who does not take him, in whom He acts, out of his responsibility to God. We ought to know how true and important this is; for now we are members of His church, and dependent on grace to carry out according to His word. Not only at the start, but all the way through, is this obligatory on the Christian, with constant self-judgment lest we grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

Man's 'High Church,' of which we hear so much, is low indeed, compared with the church according to the scripture. It is to God's church, as the most vulgar gilt compared with gold tried by fire.

The church, then, is founded on the accomplishment of redemption; on the Saviour's taking His place as Head in heaven; and on the descent of the Holy Ghost, to act in this special relation as the One Spirit to the one body; which action will terminate with the church's disappearance from the earth to meet the Lord in the air. Not that there will be no action of the Spirit of God after that; for as the Holy Spirit had always wrought with regard to man on the earth, so this will never cease so long as man is here below. But now it is the Holy Ghost giving one uniform character to the most diversified ingredients ever called into unity. "By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12: 13). Nothing like this could have been true of old; nor will it be so in the millennium. In Israel there were the displays of the varied perfections of God; but with that particular nation there was no blending of Gentiles, no forming of one body, but the strictest separation in obedience to God's law.

Doubtless there were no nations as such before the flood; if we go farther back, there was a fallen race, and certain individuals who loved the Lord looked for the Seed of the woman to bruise the serpent, and waited for His coming, as Enoch even prophesied of it. After the flood, God chose a particular man to be the depository and root of promise. To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. Look at the seed either in a natural or in a spiritual sense, and there is nothing in this which reveals or even involves the truth of the one body. I know some who cite for this, Psalm 139, "In thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them"; and Isaiah 26, "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise," as bringing it in; but to my mind there is not a notion of it in either passage. God takes pleasure in man's body even now, as He also means it to be very different from what it is. But the church was never a dead body at all, and never will be. The application of the phrase "dead body," to the church, is merely a proof of man's perverse ignorance. It is really ruined Israel that is meant, as the context proves. Of all bodies the church is most of all the one living body as baptised by the one Spirit.

But the solemn fact which the New Testament opens before it, is, without disguise — the total failure of all — be he Jew or Gentile; of which the simple and full proof is the rejection of the Son of God. Everything was buried in His grave; all the hopes of man were laid there for the time; and, therefore, the gospel that went out after the cross takes the ground that man is wholly lost. Doubtless, people do not like this, and those who do not, need it most; for though they may be always striving, they can never find rest or peace; and, therefore, it is given up in popular theology that every believer is entitled to enjoy certainty of salvation or abiding peace. No doubt there is a testimony which God in His grace keeps up; but this is independent of Christendom, and opposed by most. The testimony may be kept up here or there, even irregularly by a woman; and there could not be a greater condemnation of Christendom's vaunted order than that God's power and blessing should accompany such irregular preaching. Still more that there should be a greater amount of truth in this eccentric work than is found in the accredited teachers and guides. And whence was that truth got? From what it most of all feared, as well as disliked. I do not speak of conversion only, but of Christ better known; for if there be not a deeper knowledge of Christ, it is vain to speak about the church.

Now, the truth shows us Christ totally rejected by man, and further, forsaken of God on the cross; but on that very cross, where man, and Israel, and Satan did their worst, there even God Himself, in judging sin, seemed to do worst of all to Christ, if it were not a ground for atonement. But a work was done which laid the basis for God to dwell with men, making us His house and temple, as the Scriptures affirm. For this purpose Christ had come, to prove to the uttermost what man was in his sin, and what God is in His grace, delivering the believer according to His own perfection. For there is this ground-work for the gospel: the Son of God coming down in love to suffer for sin under God's judgment; and the Son of man glorified at the right hand of God, as having obtained the victory in righteousness. How blessed is the resulting message which God is now sending out!

There is indeed, much more in the gospel than forgiveness proclaimed. The nature is judged, the old man annulled; the believer has the comfort of counting himself dead to sin, but also the responsibility of walking accordingly. But how grievous to see that the evangelical mind has never recognised death to sin, and therefore has never known how to use the apostle's answer when branded by his antagonists with a tolerance of sin! Doubtless, this is false; but evangelical testimony is imperfect, falling immensely short of the gospel. They do not understand the privilege of the Christian that he has died with Christ to sin. Of course, those that hold it are called Antinomian! But if you affirm that Christ died for your sins, and do not hold yourself dead to sin, you must be at a loss to stand firm and clear; because, taking the ground of law as the rule of life, too often you are sinning, then making excuses for it, and thereon recurring to Christ for forgiveness. Is not this too much like practical Antinomianism? Is it not the teaching of Paul?

The truth is, that besides being washed from his sins at the start, the believer is dead with Christ to sin that he should not allow evil in any of his ways. Nor is there real power against sin practically, until we take our stand on the ground that we are thus dead, and alive in Christ to God. It is all-important, not to Christians only, but to Christ's glory and His work. And not merely is the Christian brought into this place of being dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus, but the Holy Ghost can and does dwell in those who are washed from their sins in Christ's blood; and, further, He imprints unity on all who are thus resting on Christ and His work.

Do any, to weaken all this, point to Abraham and the Old Testament saints as being in the same position? Such men do not know what it is to be Christians; I do not say they are not: but they do not know their own place and privileges. It is like a member of the royal family through some strange incongruity ignorant of his own lineage, and therefore in no way taking the relationship or acting accordingly. Such is the state of believers who deny the privileges of the Christian and of the church of God.

The Holy Ghost came down in a marked manner at Pentecost. "A rushing mighty wind" shews the permeating force of the Spirit of God. There was not one tongue merely, but cloven tongues. (Acts 2: 2, 3) The message is going out to Jew and Gentile, though there be but one Spirit. As long as our Lord was here below, no such thing was possible. There was no unity, any more than action toward the Gentiles. There were those that followed Him, but no binding in one. The Lord prepared them for what was to follow. "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things," etc. (John 14: 26) Union is by the Spirit given or sent, not merely by the faith He works in the soul.

As the effect of the Comforter's coming, He makes the church to be the dwelling place of God. He not merely does a divine work in and by chosen witnesses, but makes a divine institution of the assembly — they become the habitation of God through the Spirit. This looks at the church in its earthly position; the body of Christ is its heavenly relation. Hence there is the difference that the habitation of God may be entered by those not born of God, still less members of Christ's body. We know such did enter, in early days. But, viewed in its full privileges, the church of God is not only a question of life, but of the Holy Ghost uniting to Christ, and this as a body. "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit." By one Spirit we are baptised into one body. Therefore the idea that the unity of the church hinges only on Christ's becoming a Man is a total fallacy. Incarnation may be and is a step toward it, but is not our union with Christ; it is the union of humanity with Deity, which is not our union at all. When redemption was accomplished, there was a righteous basis for union. Had there been union before redemption, it would have been a slighting of sin. The scriptural place of the church of God maintains the moral claims and character of God with greater fulness than any other. Where the truth is not seen, the law may be talked of, but real holiness in separation from the world is sacrificed or unknown.

After redemption, then, we could be, and are, united to Christ. God could not unite lost man in his sins with His own Son. You will say, Is it not lost man who is united to Christ? Yes: but in the cross of Christ the old man is annulled for the believer; nor is man ever united to Christ till he believes.

Union is not by election, more than by faith, but by the Holy Ghost, "In whom, after ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." All sin is judged to the believer, and then the Holy Ghost takes up His abode in him. It is faith founded, not on promise, but on the mighty work of the Lord effected on the cross, and it is only after he believes, that union takes place; for the Holy Ghost is given to him because he is a son, on the ground of his being a believer, and not to make him one, which is a previous work. It is, therefore, when by redemption he is out of his sins, when sin in the flesh is judged according to the efficacy of the work of Christ — then comes the Spirit bringing into the one body, and the Christian is a member of it.

The church is not yet spoken of as in heaven. It is here where the Spirit is, who makes it one. Scripture avoids speaking of the body as on high. God foresaw that people would make excuses by saying 'We shall be one body by and by when we get to heaven; but, so many men, so many opinions — we cannot expect to be one body down here!' Thus does unbelief palliate existing divisions. Do they believe in the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven? It is gravely to be doubted. They believe in His person, Deity, and quickening. But do they believe in His special mission to form and maintain the church of Christ? If you are a Christian, if you are sealed of the Spirit, you are a member of that one body; but are you acting on this? Are you displaying it in your daily life ecclesiastically? Or, like the mass of Christendom, have you given it up as bygone, and slipped into one of the many denominations? The truth is not changed, and we are bound to walk in it as much now as ever.

What adversaries do, is to essay the wretched and unloving task of showing up the faults of those who are seeking to act on the principle of the one body. Instead of so degrading an occupation, should Christians come and help if they can. Let them prove their superior wisdom and strength by carrying out the truth better, not by staying in evil and error, while criticising those who leave it. There is nothing easier than to misrepresent and abuse those who stand for the truth of God.

"There is one body!" Now-a-days, alas! if you are a member of one church, so called, you cannot be a member of another, still less of all. The position of such is essentially sectarian. Ought I then to abide in what I know to be unscriptural? There is one flock. 'Yes,' says a modern commentator, 'one flock, but consisting of many folds'! Did one ever hear of such ingenuity of error? There is a flock, and no longer a single fold now, still less many folds, as he says. There is no such thing as the penning in of the sheep now; there is liberty to "go in and out and find pasture," but no liberty to do what is wrong. We are not under the restrictions of Judaism. If you have the Spirit of Christ, you are not merely Christians individually, but compose God's church; and if you are members of God's church, my advice to you is, Seek no other, and own it really. If there are on earth believers who want no other condition but membership of Christ's body in godliness and truth, with them is your place to worship and serve the Lord.

While souls, even if awakened, are hesitating about salvation, it is evident what they want is the gospel, not the church; but when you know Christ and His redemption, it is not then only as an individual, but as a member of one body that you have to act: churchmen, not Christians only, we should value only the church of God. Men may be met by all kinds of ignorance and differences; but this does not shake the principle. We learn best "within," not "without" the church.

On the other hand, remember baptism is properly and entirely outside the church (being a question of the individual), and, therefore, should be settled there. The church of God is on the ground that its members have all received the baptism of the Holy Spirit; yet I own, if people refuse to submit to water-baptism, they would be setting themselves in opposition to the institution of the Lord, and, therefore, should not be received as Christians.

It is plain, however, that the church always did assemble as such in early apostolic times. Disciples might go into the school of one Tyrannus to listen to a lecture; but this, important in its place, is not the church as such gathered in the Lord's name. In that assembly there are two main facts which call them together: first, the Lord's supper; and, secondly, the edifying one another when met together. (See 1 Cor. 11, 14) The Lord is remembered in the one, the Holy Ghost displays His gracious power in the other; though both may coalesce.

I have but drawn your attention to this great truth; but where is the use of being brought into such a relationship if you are unfaithful to Christ: it is a disgrace and a dishonour to it and to you, if, being member of that one body, you never act as such, but go on in a denomination. Do you ever, not to say always, come together as members of God's assembly simply ? Look well to it, that you do no despite to the Spirit in this matter. In order to be a valid assembly of God, it must be open to every member of the body of Christ walking after a godly sort. Refuse none but those who are disorderly in ways, or unorthodox. It is our duty to refuse all, no matter what their name, who are unsound or indifferent as to the humanity of Christ, no less than as to His Deity. So also indulgence in moral evil is intolerable — drunkenness or the like. The church of God is bound to steer clear of all alliance with iniquity.

Of course there are details in discipline; but discipline is only on the ground I have named. It goes on the same basis as receiving, at least, if we confine it to putting away.

There is room for all kinds of ministry in the church of God; and I should not feel it to be such, if there were any exclusion or enfeebling of a single divine gift. "There are diversities of gifts"; but whatever does not leave room for every gift that God has given is not the church of God acting as such.

Far from taking a high or haughty place, I acknowledge that we are very weak indeed; yet, is there not honesty of purpose in cleaving to what we know to be the will of the Lord for us? But we do not pretend to improve on Scripture, nor to assume an authority which neither we nor others really possess. We are bound to obey, but are not authorised to do all that apostles might, either personally or through chosen associates. The church is the place where the Holy Spirit abides and works for the glory of the Lord. God is dwelling there. Does this claim infallibility for it?

What folly in those who so speak! Are you a Christian? Then God dwells in you. Does this then make you infallible? It is just the same thing with the church. There is infallibility in none but God.

But if God dwell in the church, He is there to make known His mind, and to set right what is wrong. He is interested in it, faithful, too, and cares for all who trust Him. Discipline, in putting away at least, ought never to be enforced till every means short of this, acknowledged in Scripture and incumbent on the church of God, has been tried and failed; public rebuke, as well as private remonstrance, etc., from suited individuals, might justly precede. Putting away should be the last sorrowful necessity — an act not of any individual, but of the assembly: the reason is wise and good. The best and holiest individuals might, if opposed, have their own minds prejudiced or even their will at work. We ought all to know ourselves better than to desire it to be in the hands of any private individual. It is therefore a great safeguard that the extreme act should be in the hands of the assembly, after individuals, leaders, or other Christians, have failed to bring about repentance.

May the Lord then give you to look to Himself and His word, and to obey it. Do not allow trial of any kind to hinder you; else it is the destruction of faith. Do not allow the faults of those who are on the ground of the one body to hinder you. Love as well as faith should rather prompt you to help them. Bring whatever of strength or wisdom you can to aid their weakness and exposure. It may be that is just the very thing the Lord wants from you. However this may be, if it be God's assembly, it is the call of God to you. May you hearken to Him and obey! For such a truth, as indeed all revealed truth, is obligatory and practical, becomes a dead weight or a snare if you do not carry it out obediently, and will be a register to your reproof and loss another day. If a divine truth at all, it is a truth for all to act on. It repudiates anything of party, however few may be those who have faith to hold it fast and walk accordingly in this present day of expediency and unbelief. But if it claims all in the name of the Lord, it claims your adhesion most of all, if you know it to be of God. No difficulties about elders, etc., will excuse you from not acting as a member of the one body according to the word, or from going on with what you know to be a mere sect or denomination contrary to Scripture and grieving to the Holy Ghost, who blesses those who are faithful to what they know, and will clear up, if for Christ's glory, what they do not yet know.

W.K.

Behold He Cometh with Clouds

Behold He Cometh with Clouds

W. Kelly

"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen." (Revelation 1: 7.)

In Colossians we have the association of the saints with Christ very fully wrought out. (Col. 1 and Col. 2.) He is my life, and I am one with Him. Thus, the moment I find Christ my Saviour is dead to the world, I become dead to the world also. I find not only my treasure there, but the very religion of the world judged, because Christ was cast out by the world's religion. When He comes with clouds, every eye shall see Him. But this will not be the case when He comes to fetch His Church. God is gathering the friends of Christ around the Name of Christ now. The Church is a body which is called while Christ is not seen, and the Christian having his portion in Him now, is hidden with Him. "Your life is hid with Christ in God."

In this verse, then, it is not the Lord coming to meet His own and gather them to Himself in the air; but, "every eye shall see him . . . and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." When the Lord comes to meet His Church, it will be far different. God has joined us to the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven, according to all the efficacy of His death and resurrection. As far as the spirit is concerned this is true now, and will be true of the body itself when Christ comes. The resurrection of Christ calls me to live thoroughly unto God, as the death of Christ makes me as much dead in principle to the world as if I were already dead. In practice, alas! we have to own sad falling short. Still, says the apostle, "Your life is hid." It is the life of Christ you have in you. As long as Christ is hidden, you are hidden also.

But the time is coming when that will no longer be the case. "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3: 4.) When Christ comes to receive the Church, no eye will see Him but those whom Christ comes for. When the world sees Christ, it will be when He comes in glory, bringing His saints with Him — revealed from heaven with the angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God (the Gentiles), and on them that obey not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (the Jews). If the world were to see Christ coming alone in glory before the Church is caught up to Him, it would not be true that, "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." When Christ is hidden, you are hidden; when Christ appears, you will appear.

The world will never see Christ without the Church. It will not see Christ coming to receive the Church, because then they would have seen Him without the Church; whereas, the very first moment of His appearing is to be the moment of our appearing with Him. And this does not merely rest upon a word; it is the doctrine of the whole passage; and the same thing is shown and confirmed by other proofs throughout the New Testament. No person can ever go contrary to truth without getting into the very trouble he is seeking to escape.

In Christ's death we are dead to the world; in His resurrection we are risen, and are therefore to have our hearts set upon heavenly things before we see them. And more than that. Christ is not always to be hidden: He is about to be manifested; and when He is manifested, we shall be manifested also, along with Him. Christ and the Church must have been together before they are manifested to the world, if they are to appear together. In Revelation 19, we have this manifestation, where we are told (verse 11 -14), "I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse; and He that sat on him was called Faithful and True . . . and the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean."

The horse is the emblem of power; the white horse of prosperous, victorious power. It is the Lord Jesus Christ coming in judgment, which will be the time when He comes in the clouds of heaven. These armies that are seen following Him out of heaven, clothed in fine linen, are not angels. This very chapter says that the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And the remarkable thing is this: that when angels are described in Rev. 15 as being "clothed in pure and white linen," a different word is used. It is the heavenly saints who are thus spoken of in Rev. 19 as the armies of heaven. They were in heaven, therefore, before the way was opened for Christ to come out in judgment; and they follow Him from heaven when He comes. I doubt not that angels are in His train also, as appears from other texts; but they do not seem spoken of here.

There are two most important and different stages of the Lord's second coming. There is the coming of Christ to receive His people to Himself, and that is what the Church ought always to be waiting for; and there is Christ's coming to judge the world, when He has already taken up the heavenly saints, and wickedness thereafter comes to its head. Then, suddenly, the heavens will open, and the Lord Jesus Christ will come and the Church with Him, appearing together in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Is it asked, how? Israel was not told how they were to be delivered out of Egypt. The Lord was going to deliver them, but He did not explain it before it came to pass.

And the Lord is going to bring the church to heaven by the coming of Christ. After that, the Lord Jesus Christ will come and judge the wickedness of the world, and then the Church will come with Him.

The Coming and Day of the Lord viewed morally.

2 Thess. 2: 1, 2.

W. Kelly.

My object tonight is not so much to prove the certainty of the Lord's return as to endeavour to set forth its value, and to show how it connects itself with all that is most precious morally in God Himself, and therefore, like all other truths, bound up with Christ. I therefore shall not so much speak to souls that have never heard — or have not in some measure received — the general testimony of scripture to the coming of the Lord Jesus, as take a somewhat comprehensive glance, assuming that those who are now present have already to a certain extent made this truth their own.

One difficulty from which souls have suffered is this, that they confound two distinct parts of the Lord's coming. We have them both brought before us in the two verses just read. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him." Here it is scarcely possible to avoid some perception of the object of the Spirit of God in what He is applying to the brethren. He beseeches the brethren by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and their re-union with Him on high, that "ye be not soon shaken in mind." It is clear that the Holy Ghost used the presence of Christ and its effect in gathering the saints to Him as a motive of comfort and stay to their souls in the face of agitating rumours. They were therefore not to be "soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of the Lord is present" (or "come").

It seems superfluous to dwell particularly on what has been often done before. I need not now stop to prove that the reading is the day of "the Lord" rather than "Christ," or that the version is not "at hand," but "present," or actually arrived. I am entitled to both points as already ruled. No doubt this may be somewhat startling to those who have not examined the subject fully, but it is now conceded by competent scholars everywhere; even the last point is generally admitted by persons who were themselves originally and strongly opposed. It is simply a question in fact, first, of the actual title that the Spirit of God wrote, and next of our giving the last word its true and regular force. No critic of weight any longer hesitates to receive κυρίου for the vulgar Χριστοῦ. The meaning of ἐνέστηκεν has been more questioned. Certain however it is that what is translated here being "at hand" never means this in scripture, if indeed it ever means so anywhere else; but it is sufficient for my purpose to say that the Spirit of God never employs it in that sense. When He means "at hand," He uses a different expression.

The report spread was that the well-known day of trouble was already come. Of course those who spread abroad such a rumour must have taken the day of the Lord in some spiritual way, because it was very evident that the world at large abode much as before, and that judgment-day in a literal sense was not as yet. There were trials, persecutions, and troubles of various kinds at that time, which were taken hold of in order to make out that the day of the Lord in some sort was already arrived. Nor is this by any means an uncommon thing in the history of souls or of Christendom. There have been several epochs before in the world when people pretended that the last day was come. And we may find something that may help you in this point of view in the second Epistle to Timothy, where we learn those were not wanting who propagated the notion that the resurrection was past already. Clearly they must have taken the resurrection in some figurative way to set up such a pretension. But, understand it as they might, their doctrine is certain. However we may explain, or try to explain, the character and grounds of the errors which the Spirit of God guards against in both passages, we must own the fact and the plain meaning of the words. The false teachers in the one place insisted that the day of the Lord was arrived, and in the other they said that the resurrection was already past, or had actually come. The truth is that neither one nor other could be till Christ Himself had come; and this is what the Spirit of God pre-supposes more particularly in the very verse before. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of the Lord is present." Do not believe that it is set in. Do you not know that the Lord Jesus is coming to gather you to Himself first?

Now the Thessalonian saints were feebly aware of this, not at all clear as to it. They had been lately led to expect that the day of the Lord might somehow fall with its troubles before the Lord Jesus came — the blessed object of hope for the believer. That is, they did not know the right mutual relation between the day of the Lord and the coming of the Lord. They had seen in the Old Testament, where the day of Jehovah is frequently spoken of, that a special time of disaster on any nation is called "the day of the LORD," as for instance with Egypt, or Babylon. So here it would appear from the first Epistle to the Thessalonians that the believers were going through considerable trouble; for the apostle was afraid that Satan might tempt them because of their tribulation. The enemy did take advantage of this by a misuse of the Old Testament, and false teachers pretended that the day of terror and trial, of clouds and darkness, was already come. No, says the apostle, we beseech you by the coming of our Lord Jesus, and our gathering together unto him, that ye be not troubled by anything of the sort. That day is not come.

These false teachers, it is plain from what follows, were not merely deceived; some at least were deceivers. This is certain from the fact that they pretended to have a letter written by the apostle Paul to the effect that the day of the Lord was actually come. There are, or have been, Christians who apply this to the first epistle. They are mistaken. The language will not bear a reference to that epistle. If the apostle had meant his first epistle, he would have said, "By letter from us," or "by our letter." He on the contrary speaks after another sort, "by letter as from us;" that is, "by letter purporting to be through us." "As from us" does not mean that it really was, but that they said it was. In short, therefore, it was not a misunderstanding of the inspired Epistle to the Thessalonians, though they may have sought to extract some support from it; but what the apostle here warns against is, that they had gone so far as to present a pretended letter from the apostle to the effect that the day of the Lord was already come.

Then in the remaining part of the chapter, from the third verse, the apostle gives them another ground against this thought. In short, he says that the day of the Lord cannot come until there is the falling away or the apostasy, and the man of sin is revealed — two great stages of evil which must be fulfilled before the day of the Lord comes. For this there is a very simple reason. The day of the Lord supposes divine judgment executed on an evil state of things on the earth. In the Old Testament we find it also in a preparatory or providential way; but the New Testament only speaks of it in its complete form, when our Lord Jesus will Himself be the executor of that judgment. Now there was the point in which these deceivers were mistaken (for very possibly they were deceived while at the same time they were deceivers): the New Testament only points to the day of the Lord in its final and full sense. The attempts, therefore, to apply the scriptures of the New Testament in a preparatory or providential way were altogether erroneous. That day could not come, he says, "except there come the falling away first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." Then he develops the dreadful character of the man of sin, and explains that the ripe and manifest evil which is to be judged when our Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire is to be the result of what was already secretly at work. He says "the mystery of iniquity" (or lawlessness) "doth already work; only there is one who now letteth" (or hindereth) "until he be taken out of the way, and then shall the lawless one be revealed." I prefer the word "lawlessness" instead of "iniquity" in verse 7, and "lawless one" instead of "wicked" in verse 8, because the apostle means not so much the general evil that is in the world as a very special consummation both of the principle and of the practice of lawlessness, and then of a certain lawless personage that is singled out in the scripture as the object of divine judgment at the close.

Thus it is seen we have the connection of the mystery or secret of lawlessness which was already at work with that result. It was going on when the apostle wrote; and the hidden leaven of evil, the mystery of lawlessness, will continue to work until it issues in this person, the lawless one, when it will be no longer secret but an open manifestation, defying God and trampling on all truth in the world — a complete abandonment of all revelation, and a rising up in personal pride and antagonism against the Lord Himself. This is the lawless one or the Antichrist of St. John. I do not mean antichrists, but the Antichrist who is spoken of as the great object of divine dealing when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven. So he says here, "Then shall that lawless one be revealed whom the Lord Jesus" — for so it is written, the word "Jesus" having dropped out of the common Bible, "whom the Lord Jesus" — "shall consume by the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness" (or rather shining forth, ἐπιφανείᾳ) "of his coming."

Now I have read this because it makes plain a very important point for those who have not seen it before. "The coming" of the Lord Jesus is the general expression; "the day" of the Lord is a particular part of it. When the Lord is revealed in His "day," it is still His "coming;" but the Lord might come for purposes of grace before the arrival of what scripture calls His day, for this simple reason, that the day, as can be shown from various scriptures, always involves two things — manifestation and (if it be the world that is in question) judgment, which the coming of the Lord Jesus does not. The day of the Lord implies manifestation and judgment; but this is not all the Lord will do. The coming of the Lord Jesus therefore is what we may call the generic term; it is the broader and more general form of expressing the great truth; whereas the day of the Lord in the full sense is that particular phase of His presence in which He deals with what is opposed to God, and displays Him righteously before man. Thus in verse 8 it is the day, though not expressly so designated; but the shining forth of His presence is clearly judicial, as the context shows, and manifest by the force of the phrase itself, and hence means the day of the Lord. So does the presence or coming of "the Son of man," as in Matt. 24, where the phrase conjoined, being the παρουσία of the Lord as judge, modifies the sense and necessarily implies that day.

It is too often assumed that the coming of our Lord and His day are all one and the same thing; but where this is done, it is impossible to understand the proper force of scripture. Take this place, where the apostle beseeches them by the one that they be not troubled about the other. How could he beseech them by any thing that they should not be disturbed by the same thing? Where the sense or propriety of this? But we can perfectly understand that the day of the Lord is to be the time when evil must be put down, when there is beyond measure trouble and confusion among men, when solemn judgments press on and the Lord's hand is stretched out till the result is complete, that it is associated with images of human terror, and indeed with reality of divine judgment executed on the earth. The saints then are by the apostle besought, by that bright hope of Christ's presence which was full of comfort and blessedness to themselves, not to be troubled about the tremendous intervention of the Lord in His day, which was full of anxiety and trouble to those settled down in the earth.

Nor does this of course depend on a single particular scripture. I shall draw your attention to several parts of the word of God, and then show, as I trust, the immense moral principles of truth that are underneath this difference, so as to make it evident that we have no mere verbal distinction, but real and grave truths, which flow out of God's own nature and run through His word.

Here, however, it is easy to point out in the same passage the evident difference, and even contrast, between the two things. Before leaving the passage, you will observe that the latter part of verse 8 speaks of "the brightness of his coming." It is the very same word that is rendered elsewhere "the appearing," and hence would here mean "the appearing of his coming." If His coming always implied brightness or appearing, there would be no particular point, but tautology rather, in saying "the appearing of his coming." If on the other hand the coming of the Lord does not necessarily or of itself imply manifestation, then it would require " the appearing of his coming" to define that the Lord will then be made manifest to the world. And this I believe to be the simple truth.

Hence, therefore, we might affirm that it would not be correct to say "by the appearing (or the day) of the Lord and our gathering together then." On the other hand to say, "whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with his coming," would scarcely be according to the exactitude of scripture. In order to give precision to the thought, the Spirit of God was pleased to say that He shall destroy him with "the appearing of his coming." This no doubt is substantially the same thing as "the day of the Lord;" that is, it is not merely His coming, but His coming made manifest; it is the coming or presence of the Son of man when every eye shall see Him. Now, if He always be manifest when He comes, where would be the reason for saying "the appearing of his coming?" but if He can come and accomplish very important objects by His presence without appearing, then we can understand that it is necessary where there is also manifestation to say so.

This, then, I believe is what we really ought to gather from the expression of the Holy Spirit here. In short, in the first verse the Spirit of God speaks of His coming without a word about the appearing. In the eighth verse He speaks about not the coming only but the appearing — the manifestation of His coming. Now observe the difference. When the coming alone is spoken of, what is the connection? What the revealed effect of His coming? "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord Jesus and our gathering together unto him." The effect of the Lord's coming or presence (for such is the strict meaning of παρουσία), is that the saints are gathered to be with the Lord. Whether found sleeping or awake — in other words, whether alive or dead — the saints are gathered to be with Christ. "We beseech you by the coming of our Lord Jesus and our gathering unto him." The moment the Lord Jesus comes — not when He appears, but when He comes and instead of being absent is present — the saints at once are assembled to be with Him above. But the lawless one is not judged until the Lord not merely comes but appears. Therefore it is said, "whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the appearance of his coming." The manifested presence of the Lord is appointed and said in the word to deal with the adversary.

Hence therefore the coming of the Lord, and the appearing of His coming, or His day, are two distinct facts. He can come and receive His saints, and afterwards He will appear and put down the adversary. Perhaps the objection might be raised, and it is well to meet it at once, "But why should He not come and deal with the adversary first, and then gather the saints to Himself?" The answer is best met by the question, What saith the scripture? On such matters we can have no light but the Bible. But it would seem that this is in part the error the apostle combats. The false teachers were alarming the saints with the notion that the day of the Lord was already come. I grant you that they could only in this have meant the day in a kind of figurative way, perhaps believing that the day ultimately would be still more tremendous. Some, however, use figures to destroy realities. Otherwise if only a figurative day of the Lord filled them with trouble, surely the final day of the Lord would be still more tremendous if it could happen without their being gathered to the Lord first. Certain it is that by their sense of "the day of the Lord" before His presence to gather them to be with Him, they were shaken in mind and troubled: how much more if they had looked for that day in all its force with the saints left on the earth when the Lord will crush this kingdom and humble that, destroying the beast, the false prophet, as well as households, with his saints mixed up in so fearful a hurly-burly of this world! I need not say how unlike all this would be to the ways of the Lord with those whom He loves.

But we do not need to come to mere inferences. To tell you the truth, I always distrust any doctrine on any subject that depends on mere illative reasoning. If you cannot give me scripture for what you say, do not say it; and I would advise you, if I may so do, to beware of it yourselves. How can anything be of faith that is merely inferential or a development? You ought to have scripture; and these are times when we cannot afford to have anything less than the plain word of God. God, who is ever considerate of the simple, and graciously thinks of the wants of souls that do not know much, does give His revealed mind for whatever is to be believed, and therefore it is not a mere theory we want — a consequence drawn from something else — perhaps a theory built upon theory. Nothing of the sort is here, but the plain word of God for the believer.

In another Epistle the apostle lays it down as a doctrine bound up with most important consequences, that "when Christ who is our life shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory." This is the more important as he is contrasting two different states of Christ. He says that "our life is hid with Christ in God." Christ is now hidden. So long as He is thus, our life too is hidden. "When Christ who is our life shall appear," in contrast with being hidden, "then we shall also appear." If you give this full force, it would be thus: "When Christ who is our life shall be manifested" (which is really the full and proper word), "then shall we also" (then, not before, and not after, but at that time) "be manifested with him in glory." It is seen at once that the moment of the Lord's appearing is the moment of the church's appearing along with Him. The Lord, therefore, cannot appear a second before the glorified saints appear along with Him. When the Lord is manifested, the saints are so also, being already with Him. And this entirely agrees with the plain statement of symbolic scripture, where we have the times and the seasons more fully than anywhere else in the New Testament. If there is any book in the apostolic writings where we should expect to have prophetical measures, it is certainly in the Revelation. Now in that chain of predictions — the most important book of prophecy for the Christian — the day of the Lord of course has its place. We find the full statement of the Lord's appearing from heaven in judgment. It is given in detail in Revelation 19. "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire," and so on. In verse 14 we read, "And the armies which were in the heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean." Now there it is most evident that when the heavens open for the appearing in glory, they open not merely for Christ, but for those that are Christ's. "The armies which were in heaven" (the heavenly saints are no longer on the earth) "followed him on white horses clothed in fine linen, white and clean." I grant you that this retinue and dress might be supposed to be angelic; and it is not denied that angels follow the Lord. But it is plain that those who are described here are not angels, for this simple reason, that they are said to be "clothed in fine linen, white and clean;" and in the very same chapter (verse 8) the fine linen is said to be "the righteousness of saints" — not of angels. We know nothing at all about the righteousness of angels. They are never in the Bible spoken of as righteous. They are without sin, being sustained as in their original integrity and purity; but this is not the meaning of righteousness.

Consistency with our relationship is ever spoken of, as far as the creature is concerned, as either conferred by the Lord Jesus Christ, or as the fruit of the Holy Spirit's practical action in the soul. Righteousness therefore may be either that which we are accounted in Christ — what is commonly called imputed righteousness — when by faith the believer though unrighteous in himself is accounted righteous in the Lord, which is perfectly true, and a very important truth; or, on the other hand, it is that which the Spirit of God exercises us in practically day by day. I have not the slightest doubt that in this case the reference is to the latter. "The fine linen is the righteousness of saints." For this reason the word really means here "righteousnesses." It is a different form of word, and plural. If it were a question of what we are made in Christ, neither would be the case. The righteousness which we are made in Christ is the same righteousness for every one that is made it. As in sin, so in righteousness — there is "no difference." Here John is speaking about the righteousnesses of each saint, and the more as we find the saints spoken of as a whole. "Righteousnesses" is a phrase impossible to apply to what we are made in Christ; because, if this were the case, the result would be, one made one measure and another made another measure, which would be inconsistent with the revealed doctrine of divine righteousness. But when we come to look at the practical display of righteousness, of course there are differences. The exact meaning of the word is "righteousnesses of the saints," as in any accurate translation by such as profess to give the precise sense you will find it to be what I am here stating; for we are not now entering on disputed points. There are proper seasons for discussing delicate shades of meaning; but I am speaking now of what is commonly allowed by all fair enquirers, whatever their system may be.

This then seems a very decisive scripture. For thus the Lord Jesus, followed by the risen saints, comes from heaven for the execution of judgment on earth. It is the day of the Lord, the brightness or appearing of His coming when He destroys the lawless one. But when He so comes He is not alone. Others beyond angels are with Him — faithful, called, and chosen. (Rev. 17: 14.) He is followed by the armies that are in heaven. Of course these saintly hosts must have been caught up there before. The scene does not suit the separate spirits of the saints. They are never so described. They would not be seen mounted on white horses any more than on thrones: both, I grant, symbols of course; but not of saints in the separate state. They are saints already glorified. In short therefore we learn another fact — not only that the Lord Jesus comes and receives the saints, but that He takes them up to heaven; so that when the wickedness of the world completely develops, which may follow the translation in a very short time, then the heaven opens, and the Lord comes with the glorified saints attending Him. Any one who is acquainted with the structure of the book of Revelation will see that what I am now stating is only a reproduction of what the Spirit of God clearly reveals there.

For, only to say a few words more, what is it we find in the book? I should say this. First of all are the seven churches, — a complete view of the church state. After this we have churches no more. When the last of these Apocalyptic assemblies has been brought before us — the seven churches of Asia, though as I believe looking out prophetically — there is not a word more about churches on the earth. The true way of accounting for the fact so pictured here is, that the Lord comes and takes away those who are now in a church condition, waiting for Him according to His promise. For how is that state to close otherwise? It was not man that began the church at Pentecost, it was God; and He only will put an end to that condition; and this He will do by receiving to the Lord Jesus those that belong to Him, and are waiting for Him. Accordingly heaven is opened immediately after, or at any rate a door is opened in heaven, and the prophet sees a body never before seen in heaven — the twenty-four elders. Angels had been seen, seraphim and cherubim, the Son of man, and even the Ancient of days; but who had ever heard of elders in heaven before? How came they there? They were the saints caught up to be with the Lord. He had taken them to Himself on high. And this is entirely confirmed by the fact, that the elders are seen to be crowned and throned. As they are invested with royal dignity, they further have vials full of odours or incense. Thus they are both kings and priests. There can be no doubt therefore that these elders are not angels but glorified saints. For there is another thing to take notice of; that is, they are complete, they are twenty-four. Now that number most evidently answers to the courses of priesthood — the only twenty-four that I am aware of which is given in scripture. They are the heads of the priesthood; for afterwards we know there were others made priests, but there were no more heads of the priesthood. They were the chief priests, so to speak, of the heavenly hierarchy. These are no other, in my judgment, than the Old Testament and the New Testament saints caught up at the coming of the Lord Jesus to be with Himself. Afterwards others are seen in the vision put to death, martyrs at the end of the age during the time of unparalleled trouble, who become not elders but priests, not chiefs, if one may so speak, but simply priests. How blessed to be so! Yet they do not arrive at the dignity of the twenty-four. Thus the elders have a very special place; and accordingly there is never an addition to their number. Others may be called and blessed; but the elders remain twenty-four as before from beginning to end. It confirms this to see that from chap. 19, to which I have already referred, we do not hear a word more about the elders. They disappear. Why? Because the Lord Jesus will have come from heaven, whither He will have taken them up, and when afterwards spoken of, it is as His armies or hosts. Then comes the question of making war on a guilty world. Elders do not make war; but hosts do. Consequently the figure of the elders is dropped, and that of armies is taken up. There can be no solution, it appears to me, of the case other than this — at least I am not aware of any other that has even an appearance of meeting the conditions of the problem.

Further, all this is precisely in accordance with what we have seen to be the doctrine of the Apostle Paul. He urges on the saints to be always expecting the coming of the Lord. He teaches them that, while the Lord is hidden, they too must be; that when the Lord is manifested, they shall be manifested along with Him in glory. Consequently the coming of the Lord cannot at first be manifest, because if the Lord Jesus appeared when He came to receive the saints, He would appear in heaven and they would be still on the earth: He would be appearing in glory without the saints; whereas the doctrine of scripture is that when the Lord shall be manifested, they shall be manifested along with Him in glory. (Col. 3: 4.)

Thus, putting together what we have seen, nothing can be more simple. He will come again. Instead of being absent, He comes and the saints at once rise to meet Him in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. He takes them to heaven, to the presence of the Father. Afterwards the right moment comes for the Lord Jesus to appear; and when He appears, they appear along with Him in glory. Thus you see these various statements of scripture perfectly harmonize when the two different steps or stages of the Lord's coming are understood; whereas when they are not taken account of, many and serious difficulties rise up; one part of the word does not agree with another, which is always the effect wherever we have not before us the full and simple truth of God. Whenever you have only part of the truth, still more if you accredit a mistake, there is some other portion that will not agree. When you have received the truth in simplicity, then the different parts which seemed disconnected and opposed all fall into their proper places. When it is seen accordingly that the coming of the Lord first is brought before us gathering the saints to be with Him, and then that He not only comes but appears in glory, and the saints follow Him out of heaven and appear in glory too, all is made plain.

Further, the interval between the coming of the Lord and the appearing of His coming is the time that Satan busily employs to bring forward his great plot of the apostasy and the man of sin. It is the time when the mystery of lawlessness ceases to be a mystery, when the lawlessness that was working secretly issues up into its full development and the lawless one shall be revealed; and the revolt is so direct and complete that God, as it were, acts on the impossibility of tolerating it more. The Lord Jesus, therefore, as the Word of God then as ever, comes forth and judges this excessive and destructive rebellion against God where men boast most here below. But then His own glorified saints are with Him; and this, it will be seen, puts the whole case in a clear light as to the scriptures. Nor is this the only result. There is another remark or two to be made which will be found of importance.

We know that in God Himself there are two qualities that especially display themselves in dealing with His people. The first is His grace, the second His righteousness. In the cross of Christ the grace of God and the righteousness of God meet in perfect concord and join in the blessing of the believer. So in our daily walk with God, who does not find that His grace brings us into a certain position of blessing where, if we fail, the Lord has a righteous government in which He chastises us? This is the reason why you may find such an one so much more troubled, so much more in sorrow, affliction, and humiliation, because he is a child of God, if he have failed as a servant of God and grieved the Spirit. The Lord does not abandon His love — His grace abides, as does its fruit also. Grace has brought that soul to God out of the world. Does God repent of His grace because the soul needs to repent, as having fallen into what is evil, grievous, and humbling? Not so. Does God then say, As he is my child, I pass all over? No, He never passes over the faults of the Christian. There is where we learn the faithful yet holy provision of His love. His grace shall never be given up. On the other hand, His righteous government must always take its way. Hence it was with the Corinthians, who really were believers, as the apostle was told when he went to the city — that city of corruption and vileness. The Lord had much people there; though if there was a spot in the world where the holy apostle might have been afraid to put his foot and to live, it was Corinth. It was notoriously the vilest of the vile. But the Lord had much people there. At Athens He had comparatively few people. But at Corinth the apostle had learnt what he could not have gathered otherwise, and therefore went on; and even when many of them went sadly astray, falling into grievous disorder and sin, he did not give up his confidence that the Lord owned them as His people. But he told them, and told them in the most solemn manner, that if they did not judge themselves, they would be judged of the Lord; and that, when they were judged, they were chastened of Him that they should not be condemned with the world. For with the Lord sin must be judged; sin can never be tolerated where He is named. If we, therefore, through carelessness allow sin, one of two things is evident. If we have no portion in Christ, we must ourselves be judged for it everlastingly; and, if so, how can we be but lost? But if the grace of God has really brought us to Himself by Jesus Christ our Lord, He deals with us, sends affliction on us, and perhaps even takes away natural life (1 John 5), that we should not be condemned with the world. Thus the righteous government of God must take its course and do its work; and this no less in mercy to us than in vindication of His own glory.

As this is true even in our ordinary walk, as these two principles are most clearly united in the cross, are they absent from the coming of the Lord? Not so. Grace or righteousness is always found. How then can they be applied to the future according to God? As the coming of the Lord consists of the two parts already distinguished, it will be found on examination that, where scripture simply speaks of the coming of the Lord as such without any reference to manifestation or judgment, it is invariably the answer to the grace of God. And this may be seen readily by the simplest believer. For, let me ask, why does the Lord Jesus come again? and why are the saints gathered up to be with Him above? Because of His absolute grace. If it were not for grace, do you suppose that the Lord Jesus would leave the glory of heaven and the presence of His Father? Certainly not. And if the Lord Jesus could leave that glory to come, how could He gather up such as you and me to be with Him at once? How could we be taken into the presence of God in light and blessedness, in peace and joy and rest for ever? From no other principle than His grace. It is grace and nothing but grace that can adequately account for the coming of the Lord for us and our gathering to be with Him. Therefore we understand that this is the richest and fullest motive of comfort that the apostle Paul could bring to bear on the souls of the saints to dispel the injurious notions which the instruments of Satan were spreading.

For let me explain further, that there are two ways, in one or other of which you will find heterodoxy to indulge, and you may know teachers to be false by their indulgence in them. One of these ways of error is the effort to give a spurious, groundless comfort to those who rather need warning and conviction. The other feature of false doctrine is, that it seeks to rob of comfort those whom God fills with peace and joy in believing. In short, false teachers either strive to comfort those that are of the world as such while they still remain worldly, and are really unbelievers and unquickened by the Spirit of God; or, on the other hand, they endeavour to alarm and shake the confidence of those that have unfeigned faith in the Lord Jesus. It is for you to make the application; but to you it will soon appear, unless I am greatly mistaken, and the more it is examined with the fuller evidence, that into one or other of these two ditches false teachers habitually fall. Thus there never is the distinctness of revealed truth; there never is the sense of the authority of the Lord over the soul; there is never confidence in God for eternal life. Uncertainty Godward there is, and this on principle, which makes it so mischievous. There is the endeavour that, on the one hand, the believer should not be confident, happy, or thoroughly at rest in the Lord, which is surely of the devil. On the other hand, there is the endeavour that the worldly person should not be too much cast down, or really alarmed about his soul. "We must have charity. You do not know but that the Lord is dealing with that soul. Perhaps, after all, he may be a Christian: how can you tell? Be not presumptuous in believing yourself or in doubting him." Now all such thoughts flow from the same kind of deceivers as the apostle Paul was dealing with in his day; and the truth of God is clean contrary to the ways of the enemy in both respects.

Applying this to the present subject, we think of the believers at Thessalonica: What was the way of the Holy Ghost with them? To keep their minds bright, fervent, and happy in the constant expectation of the Lord Jesus. You cannot be too happy in Christ; you cannot too much confide in the truth and grace of God. You may be too confident in yourself; and there is the great and frequent mistake. You may be careless in your ways, but this you do not owe to Jesus. On the contrary, because you are a Christian, your heart should be exercised every day, whether you are growing in the Lord, whether you are advancing in the knowledge of Him, whether you are serving and glorifying Him according to what you know to- day, not excusing failure according to what was not known yesterday. We must not allow ignorance in the past to hinder us in the present. Our responsibility is always according to what the Lord has shown in our souls now. These Thessalonian believers then were assailed by false teachers whose great object was to take them away from their stable ground of comfort and rest in the grace of God, and to fill them with alarm because of the terrible day of trouble and judgment that is coming upon the earth, insisting that in some sort or measure it had already begun. "Not at all," says the apostle Paul, "you hold fast your bright hope. Do you not know that the Lord Jesus is coming Himself for you, and that then you are going to be gathered up to Him? Do not be troubled by all this talk about the day of the Lord. You are going to be with Christ. Granted that His day is to come; but it cannot come till the worst evil is fully ripe." The object of the day of the Lord is not the saints at all, but to judge the evil that is in the world, the lawlessness which is already at work secretly, and which is going to issue in the most open and appalling opposition to God. When that development has reached its height, then the day of the Lord will come upon it, the brightness or appearing of His coming.

Thus we see how this at once restores the balance of truth. The "coming" of the Lord Jesus is the display of perfect grace. The "day" of the Lord is the execution of righteousness; it is the dealing of the Lord with what is contrary to Himself. And I add, further, it is not merely that the world will be the object of righteous dealing, but even the saints themselves; and for this reason: not that they will be judged like the world — if they were, they must be lost too; but the Lord gives scope for His righteous ways, while at the same time He does not mix up the believer and the unbeliever in judgment. The believer shall not come into judgment. It is not merely that he shall not come into condemnation, but that he does not come into judgment, such is the express teaching of the Lord Jesus in John 5. How then does the Lord reconcile all this? Perfectly. When the believers are caught up to be with Christ, they will be manifested before His judgment seat; they will give to the Lord an account of everything done by the body. The Lord accordingly will vindicate His own ways with them, and they will appreciate all His dealings as perfectly as they will judge their own. Hence, therefore, when the Lord Jesus appears in glory, the saints that are already with Him — the glorified saints — will be displayed according to either their service rendered or their faithfulness under trial. There will be different positions in glory. And on what does difference of position depend? Upon the grace of God? Not so. If it were the grace of God, all would be in the same position. It is nothing but the absolute grace of God that could save a single soul; it is precisely the same grace of God that saves you and the apostle. There is no difference. If there could be a shade of difference in the grace, you could not get to heaven at all. The fact is there is only One who could bring you there, and that is Christ; but even Christ Himself — with reverence be it spoken — even the Saviour could not bring you there worthily of God, except by redemption. It is not the spotlessness and the perfectness of Christ — it is not Christ even perfect in all His ways here below — that brings you to heaven, though you cannot get there without all; but it is Christ suffering for you, "the just for the unjust," that brings you to God; and He suffered in the fullest way for every soul that is brought to God. In fact, it is the very same suffering of Christ on the cross that is applied to every soul that needs it.

Thus, then, we see that it is precisely the same grace displayed in and by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is only by His suffering as the crucified Christ that souls are brought to God. But when brought to God, then the Lord takes account of every difference. Certainly neither you nor I will have the same place in glory as the apostle Paul. For Christians in general have a sort of feeling — some may be a little more confused than others, but generally they have a just feeling — that there will be differences: only sometimes they confound things together, and often do not well distinguish between the grace that brings to God and His righteous government that arranges among those brought to God according to a just estimate of their service and suffering.

Hence, too, it is that failure will appear then. I do not at all mean by this that any one in the presence of God will not be thoroughly happy. I am persuaded that in heaven, and in the kingdom too, there will be perfect happiness for every soul that is brought to God; only the Lord will know how to reconcile the two things. The Lord will know how to maintain every glorified one in perfect enjoyment of Him, and at the same time to display each according to his faithfulness or his lack of it. All this, doubtless, will be ordered according to the unfailing righteousness of the Lord in the kingdom; only we must remember that we shall feel them perfectly according to God. We shall delight in another's having a better place than ourselves. There will be no envy, nor jealousy whatever. All will thoroughly overflow with divine joy, and each bow in submission, delighting in it, to the will of the Lord.

This seems to connect itself very manifestly with the great subject of which I am treating. All goes to show that the difference between the coming of the Lord and the day of the Lord is not in the least arbitrary, but necessary if our future is to reflect the ways and nature of God. Who can say that it merely depends on a text here or a word there, though this would be quite enough for a believing soul that knows no more? Nor do I put the smallest slight on the man — on the contrary, I admire him — who, though he does not understand why it is, cleaves simply to scripture. This is quite right. Every one has not the same spiritual intelligence. Few can clearly explain why things are as they are in scripture: to do so supposes a certain spiritual maturity. But understanding or not understanding, hold fast what God reveals. Nevertheless it is no small comfort to the heart when, having received truth as a simple matter of faith, we have a spiritual understanding of it given to us by the Spirit of God.

I trust that what has been advanced will help souls in this way; indeed I am persuaded of it. They will see that the coming of the Lord, when it is named simply as such, is always associated with the display of grace, and that the day of the Lord is always associated with the display of righteousness. A few scriptures may serve to make this plain.

Let me take you first of all to the first Gospel, and we shall find there somewhat that bears on the subject. In Matthew 25 we have the parable of what is called "The Ten Virgins;" and there we are told that they took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom. "And at midnight," while the bridegroom tarried, and they had all slumbered and slept, "there was a cry made, Behold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps." The foolish wanted oil: the wise had no oil to give them as they said, "lest there be not enough for us and you; but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage." And what is its character morally? Is it the display of righteousness? Certainly not, but of grace. Thus it is no question at all of faithfulness being manifested to the world; it is merely the intimate privilege of being with the Bridegroom. It is not the virgins appearing with Him; for they are not so shown. It is an inner scene. They go forth to meet the Bridegroom; the Bridegroom comes; and they go in with Him to the marriage.

It may interest some to know that the parable really closes with the words, "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour." The words "wherein the Son of man cometh" are an unauthorized addition to the parable. The words were no doubt put in because they occurred elsewhere in the discourse; but it is perfectly well known to those acquainted with these matters that the clause has no sufficient title to be there. Be it noted that there is not a word about the Son of man in the parable unless there. A spiritual mind would see that "Son of man" does not agree with the tone of the parable. The Lord is presented not as Son of man, in which capacity judgment is given to Him, but as Bridegroom. What has a bridegroom to do with judgment? It is plain that the whole scope of the passage is a certain scene of joy and blessedness into which the Lord will introduce those that wait for Him. He has called them from this world to wait for Himself; but while He tarries all prove unfaithful. The Lord, however, in His love causes a warning to go forth in time to them all; but those that had not the oil of the Spirit, the unction from the Holy One, lost themselves in vainly seeking it, and in fact were shut out. Those who had the unction were ready, and went in to the marriage. It is clearly Christians as distinct from those who were merely nominal professors; for if they had been true believers, they would not have wanted the oil. Can we rightly think of a Christian that has not the Holy Ghost? Is it not the distinctive privilege of all such? It might be needless to say so, but for those who have speculated about it, and argued that the foolish ones must have had oil. Why reason thus? The scripture says, not that they had a little oil, but that they had none. The teaching is perfectly plain, and it is only when men have a troublesome theory of their own that they find these difficulties. But you say that their lamps had been burning. True, the wick burned a little while, but it did not burn long without oil. There is really no difficulty if we believe what the Lord says, that they took no oil. Thus, taking the oil as always in the language of scripture for the Spirit, they had not the Spirit. "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."

But in the connection we have another view. Take the very next parable, where we have the different servants who are weighed and approved by the Lord Jesus according to their success or not in trading with the talents given them. There we find government, righteous government, taking account of the differences among them. Accordingly we find that one has made two talents, and another five. Differences are found here, no difference on the part of the virgins. All five wise virgins, all those that had oil, go in one as much as another. There was no difference among them: when you are on the ground of grace, difference is not the point; but when you enter that of righteous government, difference instantly appears. Then, we readily observe, there are differences not only between the faithful as compared with the unfaithful, but between the faithful as compared with one another. Thus scripture is perfectly harmonious.

Without wishing to notice every passage, let us look at the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 12: 35 we read, "Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." What is this? Righteous government? Not in the least. It is grace and nothing else. The Lord come forth and serve us! Have we any claim to this? We! Certainly not. It is a deeper blessedness, even that of such as we, to have the Lord the Son of God serving them in the fulness of His grace. "Blessed are those servants, then, whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching."

But let us look a little farther on in the chapter at the reply of our Lord to Peter, who asked, "Speakest thou this parable to us, or even unto all? And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom the lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom the lord when he cometh shall find so doing." The moment you come to our "doing," you involve righteous government, which estimates conduct displayed in practical facts. Of course differences are seen there; and there the lord makes the faithful servant ruler over his household. He gives one a position of rule here, another of rule there, and these are not the same; as we find in chapter 19 of the same Gospel, one is made a ruler over five cities, another is made a ruler over ten cities, speaking now parabolically, according to the language of the Lord.

Thus the first is the ground of grace, the effect of which is that you are found watching for Christ. Here it is not what you are to be; it is Christ Himself that fills the heart. You love Him, and therefore watch for Him. You do not even consider what position you are going to be placed in, which is another thought altogether, when every man receives according to his work. Here it is simply the heart fixed on an object that is dearer to it than all others, the effect of which is that you watch for Him; you delight in the Lord Jesus; and "blessed are those servants whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching." For then is the fulness of His own grace: He comes forth and serves them, as we have seen.

But if I am found faithfully doing whatever the Lord calls me to here, this is not forgotten. If you are a faithful servant, the Lord will make you an honoured ruler. If you have been faithful in a little, He will exalt you over much. Such is the order given, and such the manner of His dealing with us. But it is clear that here we are come to righteous government.

Thus we see then that these principles run through scripture, that it is not a capricious theory which first supposes a thing and then endeavours to squeeze other things into fit. Here we have what God Himself has written; here we have what does not depend on a mere word or two, but what is firmly rooted in the truth of scripture and in the moral principles of God Himself.

We come now to another scripture, to the Gospel of John. What do we find there? Righteous government? Not at all. It is not so that the coming of the Lord is ever presented — as far as I know, never — in his Gospel "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions." What has this to do with righteous government? What claim have I to be in the Father's house? None but what grace has given me. I have never done anything, I have never deserved anything, which would give me even the smallest plea why the Father should put me in the same house with the Son. How is it then that any could be brought into such unspeakable nearness and intimacy with the Father? Simply because of His own grace. "In my Father's house," says our blessed Lord, "there are many mansions." He would not have us think that all the scene of goodness was for Him alone. "In my Father's house are many mansions." There is room for us as well as for Christ. "If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself." It is not to make us rulers: there is no allusion to government or its awards here. It is purely the heavenly ground of divine grace, where all other considerations vanish.

No doubt when the saints come forth from the Father's house, and are brought before the world, then comes the question of showing how they have acted and laboured, how they have endured for His sake from a Christ-rejecting world. And the Lord Jesus will put down the thoughts of the world, and will vindicate what was of Himself in His own that suffered here below; for if we suffer, we shall reign; and if we have served Him, every man will have reward according as his own work is, as the apostle Paul teaches.

But the Father's house where Christ takes us raises no question of service, nor is there the reward of suffering here. There is not a question of anything but the grace of God shown us by and with His Son. There was only One in the universe that had a right to be there, and this was the Son of God; but sovereign grace shares the place of Christ with those that deserve nothing but hell. Thus therefore what we find here is the fulness of the grace of the Son of God that will bring us into the self-same place that He enjoys Himself. This can be no other than simply grace. I am not aware that the coming of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of John is ever connected with righteous government. Hence we never find here anything about the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven. We never find here His sending forth His angels to purge His kingdom. In the Apocalypse we do, because there we again enter the arena of righteous government. "Behold he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." But here is nothing of the kind; His word is, "Let not your heart be troubled." On the earth their hearts will be troubled indeed. Thus the difference between the Gospel and the Revelation is complete.

We come now to a few scriptures in the epistles, in which I shall show that the difference is one that runs through the word of God. In the Epistle to the Romans — just to take the first that comes to hand — "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." (Rom. 13: 12) We see that the day is for the decision and reward of righteous conduct. Those that look for that day are to walk suitably to it now, so that the ground of righteousness is maintained in the exhortation quite in consonance with the day that is brought before us.

Again, in 1 Corinthians 1: 6, 7 we read, "Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Ah!" I can conceive some one saying, "there you see it is His coming." And I grant you, if it were the "coming," it would be a great difficulty; but it is not. Looking at your margin you will find it is "the revelation of our Lord." What a remarkable instance of the perfect accuracy of scripture! Further it shows that the excellent men who made our version were loose as to the Lord's coming, and never departed from it without impairing the word of God. I say, then, that the text is wrong, the margin right, and this without the smallest doubt on the matter. If it were the coming of the Lord Jesus, it would be a question of grace, which would not suit the context. But we observe that he is speaking here of their being faithful in the use of their gifts, which they were certainly far from. Hence the words are, "Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," — corrected in the margin, as it should be, to "the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ." Such is the real meaning of the term. It is never translated "coming," except here. It is always translated "revelation" elsewhere. There can be no doubt therefore what it ought to be. And mark what confirms it in the next verse: "Who shall confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now "the day," "the revelation," "the appearing," are all of a kindred character. They are distinguished from "the coming." Where it is simply the coming, I repeat, it is regularly the action of grace. Where it is the day, or the Lord's revelation, or the appearing of the Lord, it always brings in the ground of righteousness, and not simply of grace. Here it is plain that it is a question of faithful conduct, and accordingly "the day" and "revelation" are the true words, and not His presence or coming.

And so again in the other parts of this same epistle you will find the same principle. Thus in 1 Cor. 15: 23 it is said, "Every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's." When? In His day? Not at all. "At his coming." Why? It is the resurrection, which is not at all a question of righteousness, and could not be a reward for faithful conduct. We are not to be raised from the dead because we have been good servants, but because we are Christ's. It is pure grace that gives us such a portion with Him. We in no way deserve it. Hence, therefore, when it is a question of the display of grace towards us, it is the coming of the Lord — "they that are Christ's at his coming."

On the other hand, where the day is spoken of, as for instance in the Epistle to the Philippians, we shall find that faithful conduct or endurance is always before the mind of the Spirit of God. He says there, "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it (or carry it on) until the day of Jesus Christ: even as it is meet for me to think this of you all." (Phil. 1: 6) So afterwards in verse 10, "That ye may be sincere and without offence, till the day of Christ;" again, in the next chapter (Phil. 2: 16) he says, "Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain." It is a question of faithful service. The day, we see, is connected with the display of how far an apostle or any other has been faithfully serving the Lord. The coming of the Lord will not do this. The effect of it is not to display us before the world, but to take us clean out to be with Christ. When the Lord returns and appears before the world, then He will display how far we have been faithful. The day therefore is bound up with the display of faithfulness. The coming of the Lord is the taking us out of the world to be with the Lord Jesus before His Father in undeserved and infinite grace.

Nothing therefore can be more distinct, as it appears to me, than the moral truth in this matter. Hence if we examine the pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus, we shall find exactly the same thing. There the apostle exhorts his faithful fellow-labourer, and tells him: "I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession, that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, till" — the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ? No; but "the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Tim. 6: 13, 14) For the coming of our Lord will not prove how far Timothy has been faithful or not; His appearing will do so thoroughly. The appearing of the Lord Jesus therefore is the right and proper word, and none other. Still more plainly do we see in 2 Timothy the connection between the responsibility of the servant with the Lord's appearing. Thus the apostle charges in 2 Tim. 4: 1, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom, closing this part of his exhortation with his own service and its results: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them that love his appearing." (2 Tim. 4: 8) Comment here is needless, once the principle is stated and understood. The coming of the Lord as such to receive His own would be out of place in this connection.

So again we shall find His day in the Epistle to Titus. "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." (Titus 2: 11-13) Now there it would seem that both are introduced. I think it is not merely the one but the other, the "blessed hope" being more particularly the accomplishment of our joy in being caught up to be with Christ, and the "appearing of the glory" being our manifestation before the world. This therefore is a remarkably full and rich scripture, if, as I suppose, it embraces both these truths.

Again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we have the day spoken of in view of responsibility. The Epistle of James presents the coming of the Lord in a rather general way. This we have seen is thoroughly correct. It is when the special side of responsibility and its results are pressed that we need and find "the day," "appearing," or some equivalent phrase for that side of the truth; as here "the judge standeth before the door."

Again 1 Peter 1: 7, 13, as well as 1 Peter 5: 4, falls under the usual rule: the manifestation of Christ connects itself with the exhibition of fidelity in trial, and service general or special. And 2 Peter 3 seems to my mind as exquisitely exact as any other, though to a superficial glance the terms might seem there interchangeable. But it is not so. The scoffers of the last days say, Where is the promise of His coming? Unbelief is as sure of a stable unchanged world as of man's progress. What is the answer of faith? Not the presence of the Lord but His day will come as a thief in the night. If they taunt as to the Lord's coming with its bright hope, the Holy Spirit threatens them with the solemn affirmation that His day will come with a power which will dissolve, not merely the works of busy man, but the heavens and earth before it closes.

It is obvious that, in 1 John 2: 28, 1 John 3: 2, 3, the appearing or manifestation of the Lord is intended to deal with conscience.

Jude 14, again, is no more an exception than 1 Thess. 3: 13; for His coming with His saints, or His presence with all His saints, is not His presence when He comes to receive them, but really coalesces with His manifestation or day, and hence links itself with their responsibility rather than with His pure and simple grace toward them.

But we need not now dwell more on this subject. What has been shown will set out, I trust, plainly and distinctly, and without too much heaping one scripture on another, the two lines of divine truth that meet in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, each having its own proper sphere and moral aim. The coming or the presence of the Lord is His grace towards us when it will have its full way. The same Jesus that died for us will come again and receive us unto Himself. He that is the object of our faith is no less of our hope. If He was the only One we could trust our souls to, He is the One that God would have us to be always expecting. It is due to Him: He deserves it at our hands; and our God would make none other than Christ Himself the proper, the worthy, the only, object of hope. But the same blessed Lord Jesus will take notice of all our works. There is no suffering for Him now which will not be remembered then. There is no service now that will not all be set in the light then. The day of the Lord Jesus, the day of Christ, will display the saints according to His own divine judgment of our ways.

Thus all the truth assuredly harmonizes in this great theme, and we see this when we see the two sides in their distinctness and their combination.

May our gracious God bless His own truth to His own children for Jesus' sake!

The Coming and the Day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 2: 1-8.

W. Kelly.

(Lecture 1 of 'Our Hope' and 'The Prospects of the World.')

There are various points of view in which it has pleased the Spirit of God to present the coming or presence of the Lord Jesus, and this partly because truth requires it (for there are different aspects of that coming); partly because the Spirit of God must apply the truth morally — that is, according to the need of those addressed, and as the occasion of unfolding the glory of God. Now as this is true of the Bible in general, and of every other part of the truth, so it applies equally to the great theme that I have before me this afternoon.

First of all, we may read in the word of God of the coming of the Lord Jesus as a broad general expectation. I speak of His presence now, or of His return. We have it thus presented in various parts of the New Testament. So it was preached by the apostles; so it was looked for by those who believed. The Thessalonians themselves are an example of this application of the truth. They, on their conversion, did not merely confide in God through the knowledge of the gospel, but they "waited," as it is written, "for his Son from heaven," even for their deliverer from the wrath to come. This clearly is the most comprehensive aspect of the coming or presence of the Lord Jesus. It defines nothing that He was to do. Whether He was to make this earth His dwelling-place, and bless here below those who believe in Him, or whether He was to take them away from the earth to heaven, was not therein explained. There was the certain and, in itself, most influential fact, that the great object of faith is similarly the object of hope; that we have not merely a scene of blessedness to expect by and by, but the return of the same Person who "died for our sins according to the scriptures," and who was raised again from the dead according to the scriptures — the one to put away our evil, the other to bring in the full exhibition of the blessedness that is the portion of faith, showing it above all in His own glorious person. They looked for Him to come back again, and establish us who wait for Him in the same blessedness in which He stands Himself risen from the dead. Such is the distinct expectation presented in the word of God. It is the counsel of God. It is worthy of His Son, and of the atonement wrought by His Son. Impossible to say more! Other passages may expand, and we may apply, the blessed truth; but to rise higher than that which was worthy of God and His own Son in the deepest work of His love is impossible.

Now the Thessalonians were led by the Spirit of God into this hope from their conversion. Clearly, therefore, it is not some recondite truth that a Christian can afford to do without, nor is it a matter of slow growth, or that needs deep research. I grant you that, being a divine truth, no state or time will ever exhaust it. This is true of all revelation. The word savours of the God who has given it. Hence it is open to. the simplest, and it rises above the deepest; and indeed there is nothing that more characterizes divinely revealed truth than this twofold aspect of it. It is the same in the highest degree with the persons of the Godhead; it is no less true of the incarnation, and of redemption. So it is with the hope.

Thus the Thessalonians are a beautiful sample of comparatively young believers who were led into the truth by divine teaching: not at all so as not to require more truth, but at the same time really taught of God, making it their own, and using it as all truth is meant to be used — practically; used for themselves in their relations with God — for themselves in their relations one with another, and, indeed, as to all men — the absorbing object of hope for the affections when the soul has been truly brought to God.

Indeed, this reminds me to say a word, my friends, to you who are here — I have no doubt very many children of God; but, it may be, not a few that have their doubts. To you, then, I would say with all love, to all who want this assurance, that not to have such a conviction is to lose after all an immense part of the blessing; and, therefore, if you do not know yourselves to be children of God, if you have not peace by faith in Christ Jesus, as far as your enjoyment is concerned, you may be even more miserably off than before your conversion. You cannot now enjoy the world as before; nor can you enter with your old natural zest into pleasures as you are. Nay, what ought you to enjoy? How can it be with the sad consciousness of a want so grave? How take your ease where God's word so solemnly admonishes of the danger of slighting your real need? And the more thoroughly painful to those who do know the truth, because the blessing is so real, and so near to every one of them; and therefore I do most strongly exhort any who have not this known rest for their souls to look to God now, that they may find it in the Lord Jesus; nay, if it be His will, even by a few words of His grace, that you may taste it now. For let me tell you in the Lord's name, that He has done and suffered what justifies God in blessing you, not merely according to your thoughts, but according to His own. And God's blessing in the gospel is to bring you completely out of your own condition, as a ground on which to stand before God, and to plant you in another, even Christ. Your condition is that of the first man, Adam; the man that fell having left God and abandoned the place of blessing in which he was put. But the Second man is come, and He it is who has triumphed; and the Holy Ghost is sent down from heaven now, not merely to dwell in the church, or to work in the way of spiritual gift, but to call out souls according to the riches of the grace of God, through the name of Jesus; and, therefore, the whole point of faith is this, that you call on the name of the Lord, abandoning all that you are, and confessing what you have done. This is repentance and the call of faith Repentance is when a soul pronounces judgment upon itself, according to the truth and character of God. It is a soul turning to God in the name of the Lord Jesus, and not merely receiving by faith the blessing which God can afford now to give to the very full through His Son, but also, and in consequence of' this distrusting nature, judging self, assured that what we are is altogether unfit for the presence of God.

Now the whole practical life of a Christian is the working out of these two things. On the one hand there is the judgment of self day by day, and, consequently, readiness to confess our failures, more particularly anything that is positively against the Lord, and, of course, against man too; but there is on the other the hearty acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus by faith, with the blessing into which He brings. The whole course, therefore, of Christian experience is just the power of the Holy Ghost bringing the truth and grace of Christ to comfort us and to judge self — the life of the Second to set aside the first man. Bad teaching may have obscured all this; but, certainly, if you have indeed received the Lord Jesus, believing in His name, this is your portion, however feebly you may know it; and this is what you ought to be living in and not merely be learning, though surely to learn if you have ill known it. But if you rest on Him, then comes the blessed hope, — the same Jesus who came into this world, and in His death and resurrection displayed what God is toward me and you, after having displayed what man ought to be toward God in all His life — the same Jesus who died on the cross to put away the body of sin, and to show in His resurrection an altogether new estate for believing man before God — the same Jesus is coming back again.

But then what is He going to do? Here it is that the presence of the Lord Jesus branches out into at; least two great parts. He is coming. But it is evident that the broad teaching of the Bible (taking in now the Old Testament as well as the New — and we ought to take in both), the general truth of the coming of the Lord Jesus is this: He is going to establish that blessed time for which saints and prophets ever waited, since man fell into sin. God has not absolutely consigned this world to His enemy; He does not mean to allow Satan even an appearance of triumph long. I admit to you that, all through, Satan has seemed to gain nothing but victory; but he never does really. He may ruin himself, and has done so; he may ruin others, too, but God will manifestly triumph; as He has already done in perfection to the eye of faith through and in His Son. Jesus has won the victory, and this by suffering and blood and death. Consequently He has made it not merely to be a question of God's mercy saving souls, though of course this remains true; but, besides, it is made the highest righteousness on God's part to save souls. It is no strain of the divine prerogative, but what God owes the Lord Jesus. The Son of God spent Himself for God the Father, who, now and for evermore, will repay this wondrous debt, which, singularly blessed to say, He owes to Him who is the Son of His love, but also the Son of Man as such. Therein lies the reason why man is destined to such a wonderful place, as it explains also why God passes angels by. It is not but that angels, in their own primary estate and personal qualities, may be superior to man. Assuredly they "excel in strength." Man, of the dust, is at best but a weak creature. But he is destined to reign with Christ, because the Son of God was pleased to become a man, and has accomplished redemption for him.

Therefore the incarnation is of all moment (besides being the very essence and substance of the orthodox faith), and, in order to our having part with Him to God's glory, Christ's death and resurrection. For man being fallen and guilty, Jesus, while the only holy and perfect man, nevertheless must suffer the consequences of all the ruin of man — must know the forsaking and judgment that came upon Him from God in the cross. Accordingly, having now risen above it, He is Himself gone — our life, righteousness, and peace — into the heavenly glory, but waits to come back again. All Christians professedly own this. All the creeds of Christendom acknowledge it — in general terms at least; and so far it is quite right. But then we shall find that the word of God, as must be the case, is always wiser, richer, and more profound than any forms of truth that ever were or can be drawn up by man — I care not who or what they are. Who will deny that God is incomparably better than man, or His word better than all the dogmas that have been founded upon it, or drawn from it?

The precious word of God I have in my hand shows us then, first, the grand but general expectation that He will come (or return, as we now say) to put down evil, and to establish good. Accordingly He will have a kingdom, not alone in an invisible way by the power of the Holy Ghost, but when He personally and visibly reigns over the earth I do not say living on the earth — this is going beyond scripture — yet none the less taking the earth in a most manifest manner under His direct power and government, and consequently meeting and accomplishing all the yearnings and expectations that were founded on Old Testament scripture; for the New in no way neutralizes the Old, but rather confirms it, while it also brings in "better things," and the mystery hid from ages and from generations. The Lord will thus, in the most complete manner, accomplish the hope for which His saints and people were waiting from of old. Christianity, whilst it ushers in new and heavenly things after a new sort, seals the truth of the old and earthly things according to prophecy.

But is this all that scripture tells us? By no means. We do find it in the New Testament. Thus, when the apostle Peter preached to the Jews (Acts 3), he told them to "repent and be converted, that their sins might be blotted out." What had been the consequence? "Times of refreshing should come from the presence of the Lord." And how? By a fresh outpouring of the Spirit? No, but by sending Jesus Christ, and so fulfilling the prophecy. It is the more striking, because, if ever there was a blessed season of spiritual power here below, it was then; and then was the time, if it was simply to be a spiritual reign to be brought in by preaching and like means, to have held it out. But what they had then was only a sample of what was coming by and by. Now such is not the expectation that Peter presses, although it is true that the Holy Ghost will be poured out a second time. Then will be the latter rain, as Pentecost the former; but such is not the stated way, nor was it then the moment or suited occasion for re-affirming that truth. What the apostle sets out is, that God will send Jesus Christ, who has been already fore-appointed. But alas! we find the Jews, instead of receiving the truth, immediately after reject this witness of it. When the enmity to the testimony of Jesus of Nazareth, risen and exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour to Israel, drew out Jewish hatred to the full, they displayed it in killing Stephen, another blessed witness of it. Thereon God brings out a remarkable change in His dealings — a turning-point in His ways. For the blessing, instead of now being found in Jerusalem, or presented to it only, flows away from it in strong tide. The church was scattered everywhere, and its members carried with them the seeds of eternal life. The apostle of the Gentiles in due course was called. Philip meanwhile is used in Samaria, in a way altogether unprecedented outside the favoured people, though God would not give the full distinctive blessing of the Holy Ghost in an independent way. The apostles Peter and John are sent down in order to link up the work, and make it practically one. There is no countenance given to human independency in the things of God.

We find, thenceforward, that the current of the blessing sets in towards the Gentiles — to the way that is desert, to the Ethiopian stranger, to Azotus. Still more conspicuously, the apostle Paul brings out in due time among the Gentiles the distinctive features of Christianity and the church. With this goes a most important difference in the way in which the presence of the Lord is presented. As long as it was a question of Israel, the prominent thought was the Lord Jesus coming, and in divine grace restoring and exalting the very people that crucified Him. And then will all the nations of the earth be blest; for they cannot as a whole know this, till Israel becomes by divine mercy the first of nations. Such is God's order.

Thus the rejection of the truth and of the grace of God by the Jews led to the call of the apostle of the Gentiles, and to that remarkable development of the truth of God, which we now know in what is commonly called Christianity. And this, as remarked, gives a very important modification to the truth we are now considering. For what is the essential outward peculiarity of Christianity as such? Is it not a Saviour absent on high, rather than a king governing His own people Israel, and others — the Gentiles — blest under His benignant sway? It is not the power of God putting down Satan manifestly in the world, and the earth yielding her increase, but the Holy Ghost giving victory over evil by faith, and saints separated from the world. All those expectations belonged to the hopes of Israel, and will be accomplished when Israel re-appears in the scene by and by. Christianity, I repeat, in no wise sets aside such a prospect, but rather seals its truth, however postponed for the present. At the same time it shows us what is altogether different, namely, the King rejected instead of being received by His people; and the messengers of the King, instead of finding homage when He went up to heaven, themselves likewise rejected. The proffered blessing was thus completely discarded by Israel for the time; and, during their interval of eclipse, the Gentiles became the direct object of God's testimony, and the channel of privilege in what is called Christianity. You see it yourselves. You know what the condition of Israel is, and the extraordinary fact that the people who have the Hebrew scriptures least of all understand their own best boon. They have an older history than any in the earth can really prove, — I do not say can boast of, — for of what will not man boast? and so much the more, because he has no sound foundation for it. But the Jews have a legitimate and most ancient history, and this, too, divinely guaranteed and proved. And, more than this, they have a future — a most sure and glorious future; but their future will be found, where they least look for it, under the shelter of His wings whom they foully scorned and crucified — even of Jehovah Messiah, the God of Israel.

During the time, then, of Israel's refusal of the Anointed One, Jesus is not only rejected by them, but He is exalted in heaven where He takes a new place. Never do you read in scripture, that when born of a woman and under the law He was born Head of the church; never do you hear God saying in His word that when Jesus lived and laboured on earth He was saluted even as priest. Never is it written there that He died Head of the church. Not so; but when He was raised from the dead and exalted to God's right hand, then and there He was given by God Head to the church. The epistle to the Ephesians furnishes the positive demonstration of this truth, the epistle to the Colossians just the same; and I need hardly say there is no scripture that has even the appearance of contradicting it. All contrary thoughts are mere human speculation, or the rubbish of tradition, or that dry heap of mummies, — scientific theology. With all evidence scripture proves that a new state of things came in with the descent of the Holy Ghost, consequent upon the death and resurrection of Christ, and His heavenly place of exaltation, where He is now in glory. For the Holy Ghost is personally sent down, as I need not insist, in a manner altogether unexampled; and Christianity exhibits, not only the gospel of God's grace, but the unfolding of these two great truths: — first, Christ Head of the church at the right hand of God; and, secondly, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven baptizing Jews and Gentiles that believe into that one body, the church. Never is there a trace of such a body before; never so much as a promise that any should be united as members to Christ. If one had talked about members of His body, even when He was here below, the thing would have been unintelligible. Nobody contemplated such a relationship. Not only no one thought of it, but God Himself did not reveal it. It was the mystery that was hidden from ages and generations. Now it is revealed.

As this has an immense bearing on all other truth, giving additional force to what had been known before, while it opens out vast tracts wholly unknown, so the hope of the Church is affected in the most intimate manner by so great a change, — Christ not received by Israel, and reigning over them and the Gentiles here below, but exalted to the right hand of God in heaven, and there made Head of a new thing. Hence the apostle Paul brings out, according to the Holy Ghost, the capital truth that, instead of the old people of God waiting for Christ to come and bless them and so all nations (Psalm 67) upon the earth, Christ will receive the Church to Himself above, so that, in the day when He appears and accomplishes the old hopes, He will be glorified in His saints and admired in all that believed, risen from the dead or changed into His own glorious likeness. Thus there will be no incongruous mixture of those risen and changed with men in earthly bodies. There will be the two immense, and at the same time simultaneous, scenes of blessing, — the earth with Jews and nations blessed under His reign, and the heavenly places filled with those that are then in a condition suited to heaven; for "as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." But that same Jesus who is the Head of heavenly glory will reign over all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues; and therefore Israel, who were promised the first earthly place, will have it in the mercy and faithfulness of God, — a people truly converted and prepared to receive the Lord "in that day."

It is plain that all would be confusion if these two purposes of God were both in operation at the same time. Supposing, for instance, a Jew converted now, if God were forming both an earthly and a heavenly people together, might he not say with reason, "These two callings perplex me sorely; I do not know which to choose. On the whole it seems to me that a heavenly place would be better than an earthly. At the same time an earthly place is what all my fathers have been waiting for; and so I am not exactly sure which I ought to close with." But in the wise goodness of God there is no such confusion; for now that the earthly calling is vanished, it is a question of heaven or hell. But, more than this, such a direction would introduce the utmost doctrinal ambiguity, because the manner in! which God calls the heavenly people to walk is on a different footing from that of such as are called with an earthly calling. You can understand it from your own households. You do not teach your children to do exactly what you tell your servants to do — at least I hope not. You do not put them under the same regime There is not only a difference of relationship, but a different line of conduct suited to each relationship. And let me lay it down as a weighty truth, which you will find verified in scripture and indeed in morality, that all our duties flow from our relationships. Consequently the first question is to find what is my relationship, because then I have to act accordingly. Precisely in this way it is that the earthly people, having rejected Christ and the blessing, have forfeited all for the time; and so true is this, that the Jews, notwithstanding all their wit and intelligence, — and they are behind no nation in these, and indeed in other great qualities, — yet afford the melancholy spectacle of being of all peoples within Christendom the most ignorant of their own sacred books. There is no Christian so ignorant of the Bible as the Jew; and this is not confined to illiterate Jews of our day or any other. I am not speaking of such alone. Take the best of Abraham's seed, and you will find the ignorance of scripture most remarkable in the very chief rabbins themselves. There are none more grossly in the dark as to the divine truth than their most celebrated writers. This shows us that blindness has passed upon them, and is a practical comment on the word of the Lord.

But now we poor Gentiles are brought in. There is then an evident change; and I refer to this in support of what I have been already saying, as far as it goes. The apostle Paul brings out with admirable fulness and precision, not only the call of the Gentiles, but the formation of those that belong to Christ into the church of God. It is not simply a people who have the gospel preached to them, or who confess His name and are baptized, but really united to Him as members of His body by the Holy Ghost who is given to this end. These are waiting for the Lord Jesus, but not to govern them on the earth; for this is not their relationship to Christ. They await Him to take them out of the earth to be with Himself in heaven. It is not denied that they will reign with Christ over the earth; but I say that their own proper home — the home of their hearts, and the sphere in which they will have their brightest glory — will be with Christ in heavenly places. Such is the teaching e.g. of Ephesians 1.

But this clears the way at once. Also, let me remark, that it is a very important point practically for all Christians; for there is nothing more common, for instance, than to speak of Christ as if He were the king of the church: even our fine and commonest hymns say so, — as "my Prophet, Priest, and King." Do I doubt that he was an excellent man who wrote it? I have not a word to say against him, but very much to urge against the thought. We must not consecrate grave errors under the shelter of the best of names: least of all does the time allow it now. It is a moment when everything is shaking, — when a great deal that is good is put in question by the bad, but (I am thankful to God) a great deal that is bad by the good. It is therefore a time when no soul can afford to treat slightly the truth of God. His children will soon require it all; they will need firm support for their feet. I repeat, then, that the relation of king is true for Israel, but is not true for the Christian or for the church. Christ is the Lord of the Christian — the absolute Lord of all He has bought. Therefore it is not in the smallest degree to weaken subjection to Christ; for, contrariwise, the relationship of a father with his child is a closer one than that of a king with his subject. Again, take the relationship of a husband and wife: what can be so intimate as this ? Such is the relationship of Christ and the church; and, therefore, to take the old notion of Christ being the King of the church is just unwittingly to be Judaized; it is to be drawn aside by a notion. It is that which is perfectly true for an Israelite, and so will be accomplished by and by; for Christ will not in the same way espouse them. In a vague general way Jehovah will be their Husband. It is used in this way in the Old Testament; but in no sense will it be true of them that they are "members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones." He who says so is merely imagining vain things. He has no scripture for it.

The word of God brings in, then, this near and blessed relationship, and along with this a hope suited to it. The hope is, that He who is our Head and our Bridegroom will come for His Bride, and receive those who are so closely united to Himself. Thus when He does come, it is not to reign over them as His people in their place, but to take them as His bride (and you can see, I may assume, that it is suitable, and must be so) to His place. Surely, when we think who Christ is, and what the home of Christ is in the Father's house, we can understand that more is due to the Son of God, than merely to beautify this poor world, or to banish the elements of evil out of it. That is all true, and will be for His people on earth; but He has got a home of love He has known before the earth was founded, and into the Father's house He will not be ashamed to bring those He is not ashamed even now to call His brethren.

Accordingly, the Lord Himself presents this very hope in John 14. It is not, therefore, an absolutely new thing; though there is a modification of it in the teaching of Paul. You will find, accordingly, in the two earlier gospels that He presents things in connection with the earth, and consequently with the Jews as well as the nations. Luke 12 brings in heaven morally. But in the gospel of John the Lord leaves out all about Jerusalem and Israel, and presents exclusively this blessed hope to the Christian — that, as surely as He went away to heaven, He is coming again from heaven, and will gather us to be with Himself there.

The apostle Paul brings out this precious hope in the first epistle to the Thessalonians. The occasion for it was this: these Christians were waiting for Christ with such simplicity, that they, in fact, fondly imagined that no Christian was ever to die. They were so filled with Christ's return, that they believed that the Lord might come while they themselves were living. It was quite right to be always waiting — quite wrong to suppose that no one could die. Accordingly the enemy took advantage of death having made an inroad among the Thessalonians; and inasmuch as they were totally unprepared for it, they were quite cast down. Instead of having peaceful confidence in the Lord's love, they sorrowed overmuch, fearing that those who died would miss some blessing when the Lord Jesus returned. We are not to suppose that they fancied that such would be lost; but they did conceive that not to be upon earth waiting for Christ at His return would involve those who died in a great and irreparable loss. Not so, says the Spirit of God by the apostle. The Lord Jesus Christ, when He returns, will first of all raise those that are sleeping. "The dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." That is, there will be a barely appreciable interval between the dead saints raised and the living saints caught up. Both shall be translated to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall be for ever with Him. Now, clearly this put an end to the notion that the saints who meanwhile fall asleep were to suffer particularly through their death.

But more than that. The apostle continues, and shows that when the Lord Jesus appears in glory, He will bring along with Him those saints that have slept by Him — not their spirits only, but themselves (body, soul, and spirit) glorified, of course. The way in which the dead saints, as well as those that may be till then alive, can thus come with Him is this: He is coming in person, first of all, to change them into His likeness. Whether asleep in death or still alive, they will be caught up to be with the Lord; so that when He comes in judgment of the habitable world (i.e. in His day) they will accompany Him in glory. In this we find the two great parts of the presence of the Lord Jesus. That is to say, He will first come for the saints, and in the second place He will come with them. Both are called "the coming, or presence, of the Lord." They are the two main aspects — if one may so say — of Christ's coming: the first, to gather the heavenly saints to Himself; the second, to bring them with Him when He appears in glory. It is the second part of the coming of Christ that connects itself with Old Testament hopes (as, for instance, with Zech. 14: "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee"). Clearly, therefore, as we now know, they must have been raised and taken up to be with Christ above; and, as we also know for certain, we who are alive on the earth waiting for Jesus cannot be changed and caught up with the raised ones, to be with the Lord above, unless He Himself have come to this end.

Therefore His coming must be in the first place for the saints — raising the dead, changing the living; and then there is, further, His coming with them all. But this does not determine the length of interval between the two. One cannot see in 1 Thess. 4 and 5 any sufficient reason why all this might not be practically at the same hour, as far as that scripture is concerned. We are dependent, therefore, upon other testimony. Let no soul receive anything without divine warrant for it. I beseech all my brethren and sisters that are here to beware of haste on a subject so important: God will surely give sufficient light, even for the simplest. Never be hurried into a conviction; never give up what you have — if, indeed, you have received it as the truth of God — until positive ground of scripture be shown to the contrary. On the other hand, holding fast whatever you know to be the truth, always have a mind open to receive more.

Again, the Second Epistle was written not to give the Thessalonians comfort about the dead saints, disabusing their minds of their needless sorrow, but to dispel a delusion brought in by false teachers about the living — themselves included. The first does not seem to have been a question of wrong teaching, but of their own erroneous notions — a hasty inference from what was most true and right. But in the second case the enemy was at work. The truth that had been blessed to their souls was being undermined by the confusion and false assertions of unscrupulous Judaizing teachers. Such were ordinarily the persons who ruined the church. Satan had used these Judaizers to shake and alarm their souls by confounding the coming of the Lord with His day. From these they seemed to have imbibed the apprehension, as they were at that time suffering grievous persecution (which had already caused anxiety to the apostle's mind about them — 1 Thess. 3), that these persecutions might be the predicted tribulation, and that this tribulation was, in some sense, "the day of the Lord." Thus everything was jumbled together in their thoughts. There were three errors joined in one. That is to say, they confounded the presence of the Lord with His day, and His day with the tribulation, and their actual troubles with that future tribulation. It is evident that all was a sea of confusion in their souls.

First of all then, the Spirit of God explains to them the moral character of that day. In the first chapter of our epistle He shows them that the Lord will certainly appear with angels of His might in flaming fire; but that the day of the Lord is to deal judicially with the enemies, and in no wise to let persecution fall on His own saints. It is now that the faithful are called to suffer persecution as a privilege, and be prepared for it, as he had previously intimated in his former letter; but the day of the Lord will be precisely the time when there will be no persecution more for the people of God. For, in fact, that day will display two facts — the saints of God in perfect rest and joy and blessedness with Christ; and their enemies under retributive dealings from God, who will lay His hand heavily upon them, bringing in death and destruction. No doubt a graduated scale will not be wanting, suitable to different measures of guilt; for God in judgment does not fail to take into consideration all circumstances. Even in His judgment of the living this will be in measure true; absolutely so in the judgment of the dead at the end of all.

This, then, clearly set aside a good deal that the false teachers had sought to infuse; but, in the second chapter, the portion I have read deals with the error in a very direct and full manner, besides giving us, as God's explanations always do, positive truth independently of the error that is dispelled.

First, the apostle beseeches his brethren "by the coming of the Lord Jesus." Here it is my conviction that our common authorized version is perfectly correct. I am aware that there are not a few scholars who will have it that it means "concerning," or "in regard to the coming." There is not the slightest doubt that the word (ὑπὲρ) will bear this; but there is no necessity for it everywhere — here rather the contrary. For there is an element in the matter, which those who so reason do not appear to have taken properly into consideration. It is manifest that you cannot decide on the construction of a phrase by looking at a single word; .you must look at its bearings, and weigh all that is connected with it. Now in this case the apostle beseeches them. He is beseeching by. Now, it is a regular usage, in the language that the Holy Ghost employed in the New Testament, to apply this very word in the sense "by," or "on account of," where it goes with a phrase of entreaty. No doubt, if there were not a connection of prayer or beseeching, the preposition would quite well bear the meaning of "in respect to," or "in behalf of." Such a meaning is as common as it is legitimate; but not so with a verb of entreaty. The English version is therefore, in my judgment, perfectly justified, while the proposed change is otherwise inadmissible. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him." Mark the forcibly expressed connection. The gathering together of the saints from the earth, which clearly takes in both the living and the dead (these raised, those changed) is dependent on the presence of the Lord Jesus. They are associated facts in the mind of the Spirit, who thereby entreats the brethren, by the apostle, "that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as by us, as that the day of the Lord is present." Here one is obliged to differ from the authorized version. For this I am sorry; but at the same time it is inevitable for the truth's sake.

* Not only is there no need to insert "by" in italics, but it seems to me an injury to the forge of one article for the two clauses. "Our gathering together unto Him" is intended to be set forth as consequent on the "presence of our Lord Jesus Christ," both forming one combined idea.

There are two points erroneously given: one in the common Greek text, the other in the common English Bible. "The day of Christ" is not the right reading in this place. All scholars, let them be who they may, Romanists, Lutherans, Calvinists, high, broad, or low church, in short, every competent person, no matter where he may be, acknowledges the truth of what has just been affirmed, which I state thus strongly that no one present may imagine that I insist on any word as a better reading, for which there is not the most satisfactory evidence. It is "the day of the Lord" in the best MSS., etc. Now the "day of the Lord," although closely connected with the "day of Christ," is not absolutely the same. Not that I propose to discuss such nice distinctions now, because this would involve details: I confine myself to notorious fact. "The day of the Lord" means the time when the Lord will deal judicially with this world, with nations, with living men, with the earth. The Thessalonians were misled into the strange idea — strange at least to our minds — of confounding the trouble they were then enduring with "that day." Of course, those who taught them so must have held a kind of spiritual day of the Lord; that is, they could not have meant that the Lord was personally to appear in order to bring in that day, but that the then time of great and sore trouble for the people of God might be justly called "the day of the Lord." This partial preparatory application of the phrase is common in the Old Testament, but it is not so used in the New Testament, which only employs it in its full and final sense.

Carefully observe, however, that what they taught was not that it was "at hand," or soon coming, but that it was really come. Such is the unequivocal meaning of the word (ἐνέστηκε). It occurs in the same form in about half a dozen places of the New Testament. I think it may be proved to a plain English reader that what I am stating now is certainly correct. Thus, in Romans 8: 38, "things present" (ἐνεστῶτα) is the same word. What makes it more striking is that "things to come" (μέλλοντα) is used also, and another word. Now if the former meant "things at hand," there could be no contrast; but this there is very decidedly between "things present" and "things to come." In short, who could set over against each other "things at hand" and "things to come," if the former word signified pretty much the same thing as the latter? In 1 Corinthians 3: 22, the same contrast occurs. In 1 Corinthians 7: 26, "for the present* necessity" is the same word: a necessity "at hand" is not the sense, but one already existing So again with Hebrews 9: 9, we have the same word, meaning the time then present, and certainly not a future season. In Gal. 1: 4 we read of "this present evil world" or age. The world to come will not be evil but blessed. The present age, and the present age only, is evil. It is abundantly plain that in these cases the word not only means "actually there," but it can mean nothing else. The meaning "at hand," or just coming, would destroy the sense in all these occurrences of the word. I do not recollect any other in the New Testament. I have named five instances, and this in 2 Thess. 2: 2 makes six.

* Dean Alford says, "Instant, already begun; for this is the meaning of ἐνεστῶσαν, not imminent, shortly to come." But is this sound English? He means what I do, but his expression seems faulty. "Instant" would be generally considered as substantially like "imminent," rather than as "present."

Another form of the verb appears in 2 Timothy 3: 1, where it is said that in the last days perilous times shall come. But even here, though future, not perfect, it does not mean "shall be at hand," but actually there. The reason why I do not dwell on this last is that the tense is not the same. The same force is found, as far as I know, in every occurrence of the word in other books, as the Apocrypha and the profane authors. I have gone into the matter the more because it used to be alleged, and may be still repeated, that in three or four cases in classic Greek the word has the sense of "at hand." But I have examined those instances carefully, and am prepared to show that there the word does not require, and I think will not even bear, the meaning "at hand" any more than in the New Testament. But it ought to be clear that the word of God does not demand such search into a few stray passages in Greek orators or comedians, even if doubtful, for the purpose of deciding its own meaning. The uniform sense in every other place of scripture ought to prevail, and must, I think, in an unbiassed judgment. Thus, then, as there cannot be a doubt that the true text is "the day of the Lord," so "is present" is the true translation of the last word.

But observe the importance of this. The apostle entreats them by the presence of the Lord, which was full of blessedness, as it was their gathering to be with Him and bound up with it, not to be alarmed about the day of the Lord as if it could be now come, as was pretended by some. Such is the genuine meaning and drift of his appeal to their hearts. You, who know that you are going to be caught up to the Lord Jesus at His presence, do not you be harassed by the false cry that the day of the Lord is come. It is all a mistake. The day of the Lord is not present yet. And as this is a motive drawn from their own hope and knowledge of His love against receiving that egregious error, so he strengthens it by a reason drawn from the state of the world and of the Christian testimony. They ought not to expect that day till there come the falling away. Such is the strict force — the apostasy; "a falling away" is feeble. "The apostasy" is the word. By this he means the public abandonment of Christian truth in the earth, and no doubt of more than Christian truth, but this peculiarly. Yet I doubt not that at the same time, when Christendom will abandon the Christian faith, the Jews also will fall into the dreadful snares predicted for the last days.

I admit that to men at large all this is unpalatable. Those who indulge in hopeful visions of the progress of society do not like to hear of the apostasy, unless it can be fastened on some dark corner of Europe apart from themselves, where this only or the like can be treated as the apostasy. They care not to weigh seriously the warning of God which limits it to no quarter of Christendom, whatever locality may be its central seat. But be not deceived. Do not heed those fair promises of men. My friends, as surely as God has written here of that which is before Christendom, the apostasy is coming, and rapidly. What means the fact that in our own day we see such an unexampled increase of atheistic teaching, and this not among the openly profane but in church and chapel-goers? Why, you can hardly take up a modern history, say of Greece, but you are flooded with infidelity. If you dip into a modern book of geology, incredulity fills its pages — the denial of active divine intervention. The anatomy of man is tainted with the poison, which infects also the natural history of beasts. These men industriously use every opportunity for spreading their denial, I might even say, of common conscience about God. Everything now is taking the form of rationalism or positivism, at any rate amongst those who pretend to be the party of progress. It is the same with metaphysics and ethics, as with the men of material science. And the most distressing symptom is not that you have a crack-brained philosopher in France teaching his fellows to look, at and worship God in a mother, a wife, and a child, but sensible and clever men in this practical age accepting his atheism. One can understand his formal worship of humanity, and his wretched trinity of man; but at the same time, while one can see the madman in every word and thought of the kind, the gravest sign to me is, that in a sober practical country like England, and among men of disciplined minds, who can scarcely ignore the Bible and might at the least have profited by the wicked folly of M. Comte to steer clear of it, this is, I believe, the popular philosophy of young England Such is the tendency at the universities of the favourite books even on logic and political economy. Those who used to be famous for their sound Anglicanism and old-fashioned conservatism are now publishers of this self-sufficient demoralizing trash. Hence, works of this sort, with poetry to match, are found on the tables of almost all educated England, — particularly, I am sorry to say, among the higher classes, though the poison trickles down to the bottom of the garment, through all the artisan classes of this and other countries.

No wonder the leaders of infidelity clap their hands at their successes high and low; they at least know very well what must be the result of the indifference and infatuation of those who might be expected to stand in the gap. They know well that youths cannot have atheism insinuated in text-books on logic, etc., without reaping by-and-by a whirlwind from that which is sown there. They know well that in every quarter men are drinking from sources different from and opposed to revelation, and they do not exaggerate the results. Nor is it confined to collegians or speculative men; it ramifies gradually all classes, and especially the shrewd hard-reasoning sons of toil in the north. Nay, it is found increasingly amongst those whose profession it is to preach the truth. I do not mean that these are open infidels: perhaps it might be safer for others and more honest in themselves if they were. I do not mean to say that they are prepared to go all lengths with their guides; but there can be no doubt that a great deal of value, admiration, and study is bestowed on the chief perverters of the public mind as "thinkers" by a growing mass of Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist divines. It has long been so with Romanists. No doubt there is very much more that Satan aims at bringing in; but the issue of what is even now at work will be what is here called "the apostasy."

Nor will this be all; there is another step — that the man of sin will be revealed. For just as God had a man of righteousness in the Lord Jesus Christ, so Satan will have a man of sin. Thus there is, first, the systematic abandonment, not perhaps of Christian forms, but of revealed and professed Christian truth: then will arrive a personal expression of man's will without God who puts himself at the head of it. There will not be wanting a man to lead the evil when the right moment comes. This is the true meaning and place of the man of sin; the Holy Spirit furnishes here a picture of him spiritually considered. If you want to see him politically, you must look at Daniel 11: 36, where the king that does according to his own will is the self-same personage here described religiously, if one may so speak of Antichrist. Daniel naturally treats the king in connection with the Jews, with the land of Palestine, which is clearly to be his habitat, and with the kings of the north and of the south and their conflicts. The apostle looks at the same person in connection with corrupted Christendom giving up the truth; and accordingly his description is of this sort: he "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."

I am aware that many of the old divines, some of them excellent men withal, used to apply all this to the Pope. I have not the slightest sympathy with the Pope, or anything in principle or practice that belongs to his system; at the same time I dare not be so false to the word of God as to allow such exaggerations. Not so: even the apostasy will be a more thorough and deadly departure from revelation, and will engulph Protestants and Papists alike. Does Popery, bad as it is, so deny fundamental truth, that a man who is trained in or even perverted into it cannot be saved? This I do not believe. Popery denies neither the Trinity nor mediation. I believe Christians have been found within its borders. So far from accepting the notion that the Pope is the antichrist, I believe that there have been Christian men in all grades of its priesthood, secular and regular, probably, among the Popes. At the same time I acknowledge that of all circles whence a soul can be saved, there is none to my own mind so horribly offensive to the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. That a man may there be converted and live and die is to me simply a proof of the immense mercy of God, not at all of anything good in the Popish system. But while thus stating candidly and explicitly my firm belief as to this, I say again that in 2 Thess. 2 looms a future system of yet more fatal evil. Finally a man takes the place of God, and is worshipped as such (not as the servant of His servants, or the vicar of Christ).

Thus the first overture of Satan is his last triumph apparently. "Apparently," I say; for it is never anything more on Satan's part; it is the last seeming triumph of the enemy before the Lord comes in judgment. What man was tempted by in the garden of Eden was to become as God, knowing good and evil. What Satan seems to gain in this worst development of the latter day will be the more openly taking and allowed the place of God; and so much the more because the law had run its course, and ought to have been respected; the gospel will have run its course, and ought to have been glorified. But if souls are not won by the grace of God, the worse they become by His testimonies rejected or depraved. The more you hear the truth and are in the midst of its profession, so much the more you show your own impenitent heart, if you do not bow to the God who surrounds you with such a blessing. Therefore the apostasy and the man of sin are not after Judaism only but Christianity, according to the analogy of His past dealings and the ways of men, no less than the plain word of God which unveils the end of this age.

This last is the ground which I take as decisive. It is according to His solemn declarations, that when His fullest testimony is definitively abandoned, there will follow the most awful time of evil and judgment of the earth. The unbelief and ingratitude of the world for the blessings of Christianity will have for its result God sending them strong delusion. Did they not bide with the truth, and despise His grace? Did they not go back to tradition, and philosophy, and, in principle to heathenism — in fine, on to the apostasy and the man of sin? Perhaps this may sound to some strange and strong. But the word of God is wiser than men. And, after all, why should you wonder? At the present time University folk, and many more men of intellect, are going wild about Plato and Aristotle, or their modern successors. What were those of old? Idolaters, indeed, but also Pantheists or Atheists. Tutors or parents may plead that it is only their philosophy that is sought after. Depend upon it, the connection between these things is far more intimate than people imagine.

Again, observe the revived tendency to the love of religious show in building, music, and ritual, with the most egregious pretensions on the part of the hierophants. I need not tell you that there is a vast deal of all this in London, and that a powerful impetus has been given to it quite lately. I do not speak of Popery, because at least some Protestants shame the Papists, going far beyond them in the absurdity of their doings in green and gold, in posture and imposture. But what I affirm is, that all these are indications of what is coming. Little premonitions they may be, in some eyes, but of unparalleled evil I assuredly count them. Even if positivism, for instance, were restricted for the present to those who are accepted as thinkers, be assured the hour is not distant — in the present immediate circulation of thought — when their blasphemous materialism will percolate by degrees through the lower strata of society. When this arrives, the final plans of Satan will follow rapidly — a dreadful day for Christendom, and not for England only. Yet what country has been such a breakwater against error as the favoured land in which we live? The upshot will be not superstition, nor idolatry alone, but the antichrist. How bitterly will the despisers of prophecy be disappointed! The devil, after all, is wiser than they, for he is using the most opposite parties to bring about that which none of them suspect — the apostasy and the man of sin.

In order that this should come, the restraint must have been removed. Hence the apostle refers them to this: "When I was yet with you, I told you these things; and now ye know what withholdeth." The predicted issue has been postponed and hindered by a mighty obstacle. It might have been, I suppose, soon after Christ went to heaven; for there was no lack of Judaism and Gentile philosophy, not to speak of evil and unbelief, in the world then. Why was it that their evil did not carry the day against Christians then? Because the power of the Holy Ghost hindered it. The Holy Ghost came down from heaven, and idolatry became at last ashamed to show its face, slinking behind imperial power and philosophic special pleading, but at length into holes and corners among the rude and gross, till the empire formally gave it up. It was thus overthrown in its high places; and the consequence is that Christianity has nominally prevailed in all the more civilized countries of the earth from that time to this. When the result which I have alluded to comes to pass, God will pour a spirit of judicial blindness over Christendom, just as He did on Israel, and of old on Egypt. A heart waxed fat characterized the Jew at the first coming of Christ. This will be yet more awfully renewed in Christendom before His second coming, and this simultaneously with the removal of the great restraint that God opposes to the uprising of the long working mystery of lawlessness. It will then manifestly reign without a check in the world. This is what the apostle mentions here, and in very remarkable terms "Now ye know," says he, "what withholdeth." Purposely, it appears to me, the Spirit of God did not explain; not through fear of the emperor certainly (whom it could in no serious way disturb), but with perfect wisdom, because the withholding power might not bear exactly the same form at one time as another. The ancient fathers in general conceived that the great let or hindrance alluded to was the Roman empire. Hence the early Christians used to pray for the empire with especial earnestness, because they believed that as long as it lasted, there could not be the apostasy, or the man of sin (i.e., antichrist). I believe they were substantially right, although, like many others, their view was narrow and incomplete.

When the Roman empire fell, I dare not insinuate that the apostasy came; nor do I believe, for the reasons already given, that it can be intelligently sustained that the antichrist rose up Yet the Pope no doubt did gradually claim ecumenical rights as a bishop in a wholly unscriptural and grossly ambitious manner. Only I deny that this is what the antichrist means. The Roman empire was, we know, broken up, and this gave occasion for the vaulting ambition of the Papacy with abominable idolatry and the cruellest persecution. But we are approaching times of radical change and farspread convulsion in the earth. Of this no thoughtful man has the slightest doubt; but it will not yet be the removal of the hindrance. This will remain, both while the church is here and as long as there is government sanctioned by God; for this last also I believe to be kept up by the Spirit. It is not true that the Holy Ghost only works in the salvation of souls, or in the; church. There is a controlling power exercised by the Spirit of God. There is a providential maintenance of government in the world. As long as this lasts, the apostasy cannot be — certainly not the revelation of the man of sin. The person may be there, but he cannot come out in Satan's unchecked power; but directly God is pleased to let go all divinely-sanctioned government, as well as the manifestation of His grace in the church, then the coast will be clear for the enemy to do his worst. Satan will immediately embrace his long-coveted opportunity: then will be the manifestation of the man of sin. So it is said here, "The mystery of iniquity [lawlessness] doth already work." It was working from the days of the apostles. "Only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way."

It is thus evident that there is a person who restrains, as well as a restraining power or system. I am not aware of any other to which this so admirably applies as to the Spirit of God. It must be remembered that the Holy Ghost is both a person and a power. You may speak of the Spirit of God figuratively, referring to His energy, operation, or character of action; or you may speak of Him as a Divine person. Here the apostle speaks of both a restraint and a restrainer: of what else could he adopt both these ways of speech ? The Spirit of God, then, appears to me to be a far larger and truer way of putting the matter — not necessarily Himself acting in the church, but also as controlling in the, world. Take it, then, as including His presence in the church and His power in the world, which acts up to a given epoch as a restraint upon the devil. Then, when the term of fresh striving, or rather of restraining, is exhausted, the church is taken out of the scene, and soon after government falls directly into Satan's hands. God is pleased to allow a mighty convulsion to take place; and as great political revolutions are apt to end in reaction, and a popular chief to seize the throne, so it will be in that day. The beast is said to emerge out of what is called the sea (Rev. 13); that is to say, an imperial power rises out of the political confusion. The proofs time will not permit me to state now; but this I cannot doubt to be the prospect before the West in prophecy.

This entirely falls in with the statement of the apostle here. "Then," says he, "shall that wicked one be revealed." I quite agree with those who take the word "wicked" as altogether too feeble. It should be "that lawless one." I grant you that all lawlessness must be wickedness; but all wickedness does not exactly take the shape of lawlessness. An unfaithful person might act ill in his ways, but still own a real authority above him. Lawlessness supposes not only evil but the entire rejection of all superior authority. It is the worst public form of wickedness, especially in those who used and were bound to own law. "Then shall that lawless one be revealed." We saw "the mystery of lawlessness" before. There is a link between the two, and a contrast: the lawlessness that wrought secretly is headed up in the openly lawless one, directly the letting power ceases, the letter being gone. "And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall reveal with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with" — what? His presence? Certainly. Yet this is not what is said, but "the brightness" — or the manifestation — "of His presence." Why say the shining forth of it, if His presence is necessarily seen by every eye? Where would be the accuracy of saying the manifestation of His presence, if it were, in its own nature and character, a manifest thing?

This points to what is so very important in the first verse of this chapter, where we have the presence or coming of the Lord. In the eighth verse we have not this, but the manifestation of it. Can you not understand that the Lord is to present Himself, without being seen by the world, making Himself visible simply to those for whom He comes, and whom He gathers to Himself? In due time, having sent out fresh testimony, but finally allowed the worst evil to ripen up into the last fearful head, He comes in judgment with His saints. This evidently falls in with what I have already shown to be the two parts of the coming of Christ. And the reason for the interval it will be observed, lies here. First, as long as the church is on earth, with the Holy Ghost acting in personal presence and power, there cannot be full development either in the apostasy or in the manifestation of the man of sin. This consequently is one obvious reason why the Lord — as it seems to me necessarily — gathers His own to be with Himself before the evil of man and of Satan rises to such a climax that He must come and judge it.

But there is another reason involved in what has been already said. The Lord has signified His purpose to have another witness. There is to be the preparation of an earthly people for Him, when the heavenly people are taken away to be with Himself. The Spirit of God — though not in personal presence as now — will not fait to seal for God a certain number from all Israel. He will also, I apprehend, deal with the consciences of countless Gentiles. (Rev. 7) If it were not so, the sad issue would be that, when the Lord Jesus comes in judgment of evil at the end of this age, there would be a universal waste, a wilderness scene, without a single soul to welcome its Lord — without even a nucleus for the millennial earth. But no; He will prepare a people for His appearing. He will not merely spare the dark and distant parts of the earth, but, as always, a remnant elsewhere; and so it is, then, that God will quicken, bless, and use a remnant of Jews. Some of them will carry the gospel of the kingdom to all nations. When the Lord Jesus gathers to Himself the heavenly saints, according to the first verse of this chapter — when He brings them to His Father's house, during the interval before they return with Him in glory, the earth's lawlessness will rise up to denial of God and direct worship of man. The Spirit of God in the midst of that wicked state will work, not in the way of communion and present blessing, but of prophecy or anticipated good to individual souls. The testimony, though true, is feeble; there may not be such power as to shut out the workings of Satan. It will be once more man's hour, and the power of darkness. But there will be a preparation for what is coming.

It may be well to say that I do not think the moment of the removal of the church will be that of the instant manifestation of the lawless one. Though generally true, I believe there will be an interval between the two; and it is especially in this interval — the early days after the Lord has taken His own to be with Himself — that He touches the hearts of not a few before the evil one has yet fully brought out his plans. There will be, in fact, a new testimony, suited of course to that time; and there will be extraordinary witnesses raised up and preserved, so that the devil may not be able to put them down till their hour is come. You see the two witnesses in Revelation 11. They are sustained of God to the hurt of their enemies. After an allotted time they fall, but not till their work is done. Do you suppose that the work is vain ? Do you imagine that no souls will receive the testimony of the two witnesses? I cannot agree with you. The Lord will use and apply it — will surely bring individuals to the knowledge of Himself, — feebly, perhaps, but suitably to the work He is going to accomplish. And thus, when the Lord Jesus returns in His glory — when it is not only His presence, but the manifestation of His presence, — then every eye shall see Him, and not only those that look for Him. These will have been caught up already; but when He appears with the clouds of heaven, and His saints with Him, then every eye shall see Him; and He will destroy the lawless one. He will cast the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire. There will be a judgment of the living or quick that must fall according to divine wisdom on man. There will be a gathering of the nations to be judged in their natural bodies and circumstances (I am not speaking of the final judgment of the dead raised up), and the millennium will take its course after all the process of judging those caught in open rebellion has been finished. This is the general scheme of the word of God on this solemn topic.

I shall not add more today, hoping, if the Lord will, on the appointed day, to address such as may be here on the elders in heaven I shall hope then to give some proofs as to the intermediate state of things, which I could hardly be expected to do fully in a single discourse.

The Comforter.

John 14: 26; John 15: 26, 27; John 16: 7-14.

We enter on a sensibly different province of truth, relative to the Spirit of God, in the chapters of which a few verses have been read. It is no longer a question of the new birth, nor yet of the Holy Ghost as the power of fellowship with the sources of grace — fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Nor is it, again, the Holy Ghost as a power that flows from within outwards, giving the true testimony of a world-rejected but heavenly Lord before the hour comes for Him to show Himself, and them along with Him, to the world. These are the three subjects, as far as the Spirit of God is concerned, of John 3, 4 and 7.

What? then? is the great commanding truth which our Lord brings before us in the chapters now read? What is it that most prominently strikes the mind subject to the word of God, as one hears or reads these passages? There may be differences, and there are, in every one of these communications; but nevertheless they have, whether the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth chapters, one grand truth in common, which has not been presented in any part of the gospel before, of such immense value in itself, of such immensity too, in its consequences, that we should in no way have been able to gather it from any of the previous communications of our Lord. The common principle in these chapters (14, 15 and 16) is this, — that it is not merely a source which imprints its own character on the new life that is given to the believer, nor a power working, whether inwardly or outwardly, and this in worship as well as testimony, but there is much more. We have the testimony of Christ strongly marked in these chapters; but there is another truth that rises above not only what we have had in the early part of John, but also which stands out in every one of these communications that come before us now. There is a divine person prominently brought before us. It is not merely a source or a power, but a person.

And the occasion evidently accounts for this difference. The Lord Jesus was leaving — that blessed person who had called them to Himself, who had been forming their hearts during His earthly ministry by revealing the Father to them. The scene was about to close in His death, wherein God should be infinitely glorified. As He says Himself, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God" — not merely the Father (the Father was glorified, but there is more conveyed in this truth, and another thought altogether) — "God is glorified in Him. " Sin was against and before God; consequently, it was impossible for God to overlook it. The moral nature of God must break forth in all its strength and indignation against sin. Jesus, the Son of man, the rejected Christ, takes the sin upon Himself, and becomes responsible for the iniquities of His people. Hence, in the cross, God acquired a glory which He never had before, and which it was impossible that He should ever receive again. God was glorified infinitely, and for ever. The consequence is, that, from that moment right out into eternity, the grand, and at the same time precious, task lies before God of displaying, in every possible form, His estimate of the infinite suffering in which Jesus has glorified Him. The immediate result of that work was, that Jesus, being raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, takes His place at the right hand of God in heaven. Nothing else would have been for Him an adequate witness of the value of the cross. There are results which shall be accomplished in their day; there is no blessing that God ever has given, or ever will give, apart from the cross of the Lord Jesus. But, at the same time, the cross has so perfectly met all God's justice, holiness, majesty, and love, all His character, in short, as well as His affections, that God now has simply before Him, as far as Christ and those who receive Him are concerned, the happy task of gratifying His own nature to the full in the blessing according to all that is in His heart. This it is that alone accounts for all that He is now doing. In virtue of this, not only does He put Jesus at His own right hand, but sends forth the gospel — a thing He never did before — sends it to every creature. Thousands of years had rolled over this world (and God is the same God), yet had He never sent out such a message to man. There might be this gospel or that, good news to Abraham or to the children of Israel; but there never was the glad tidings of His grace spread abroad to every creature before. It was not God began to be love: Jesus Christ or His cross never produced love in God. It is the distinctive character of love in Him, that it is increase, uncaused, and unmoved by that which is outside itself. It is in His own nature. Love would be and was there if there had been no object of it, for objects do not make love; but at the same time, in the sovereignty of God, His love goes out: and to the neediest, the most deplorably guilty, the most distant from Himself, the most hostile, He can afford to show love. It is the cross of Christ which vindicates Him in so doing.

But this is not all. Jesus disappears from the world. It must be so. The world was not good enough for Him. Not even anything that God could do in it, no accomplishment of Providence, no bestowal of the throne of David, nor yet the universal dominion of the Son of man over all nations, tribes, and tongues would have been a sufficient reward on God's part for the Cross of the Lord Jesus. Accordingly, God takes Jesus to His own right hand in heavenly glory; and this, it is evident, gives occasion to the wonderful teaching of John 14. First of all, our Lord presents the certainty of His coming back again: for if He was going there, it was no abatement of His love. He went to prepare a place for them. As surely, therefore, as He went to the Father's house, He would come again, and receive them unto Himself; that where He was, they might be also. He had manifested the Father to them; He had shown Him here. They had known, or ought to have known, not only that the Father was in Him, but that He was in the Father. He was a divine person; He was the Son. This, of course, was in itself independent of His work; but, at the same time, it gave infinite value to that work. Now, He goes farther, and shows that, during His absence in the Father's house, He makes a provision suitable to His love, and worthy of the cross — an unheard of blessing, transcending anything that had ever been known by man upon the earth before. He opens it thus: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." He would not have them spend their breath and affections in unavailing regrets for His absence, but prove their love in a real and substantial way — "keep my commandments." On the other hand, He would prove His love in a characteristically divine way. "And I," says He, "will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Farther down He adds what makes the personality so very evident — "The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name." Remark the words "will send in my name." It is not merely "will give;" for we can understand the giving of mere power; we can understand a divine source of blessing springing up within; we can understand infinite supplies of blessing flowing out. But here there is much more. It is unequivocally a divine person, "whom the Father," He says, "will send in my name; he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

On this let us for a few moments dwell. considering what it is, or rather whom, God has given to us — who the Father has sent in the name of the Son, the Lord Jesus. I do not deny that the Holy Spirit is sometimes presented under the figure of being poured out, or that which is shod forth. It is familiar to all and unquestionable. In such figures the thought is clearly the profusion of the blessing, the rich and lavish extent, if I may so say, of what God the Father is giving for the glory of His Son. But besides the riches of the gift, and the abundance of the grace, here we have an altogether different thought. Here we have distinctness and definiteness to the very last degree. And no wonder. It is a person — not merely power. It is no question of fulness of blessing only, but of a divine person. Accordingly the language employed seems intended of the Lord to enforce and point to this grand truth, which, alas! He knew would be so readily forgotten by the Church of God.

I admit also as certain, that by-and-by men here below shall receive another outpouring of the Holy Ghost. I admit the latter rain, even as the former. I admit the accomplishment of the beautiful type of Exodus 28, where the sound of the bells goes forth, not while the High Priest is within the holy place, not merely when He goes in, but also when He comes out again. And so, as one testimony was rendered when the High Priest went in, there will be another testimony of the Spirit when the High Priest comes forth once more. Just as when Jesus went into the heavens, there was the sound given forth by the power of the Spirit; so when He comes out again, there will be a new form and fulness of the Holy Spirit's blessing diffused upon all flesh, as it is said in the promise; the only difference being, that the future thing will surely not be for the same body that has received the first blessing of divine grace from the Holy Ghost, but, as we know, the ancient people of God shall be the object. God will re-visit Israel in grace; not, of course, confining the blessing to Israel, but even as God now has been pleased to seek out of every nation under heaven, so, only more largely, will it be in the days of Christ's second coming and reign over the earth.

In all this it might seem that we are only on vague ground; and if this were all, we should be far from clear light as to the Spirit of God. Even so I know not that it would be lawful to speak of the influences of the Spirit as some now do. We are in the presence of an infinitely greater and commanding truth, but it is the very truth of which the Lord Himself speaks here. For indeed it is not a question simply of influences for the good of the soul, nor of springs of divine favour, nor of powers that flow in or flow out to any imaginable extent. Above and better than all this is the glorious fact, that now for the first time, and, as I fully believe, according to Scripture, for the only time, the personal presence of the Holy Ghost is known on the earth — the Holy Ghost actually come down from heaven, and here below as the fruit of redemption and of the Lord Jesus Christ's departure to heaven.

It is admitted fully that, along with this personal presence, there is a plentiful dispensing of power, as we have said. Nor do I doubt for a moment that by-and-by, when the Lord Jesus comes from heaven, there will be a larger effusion, a still more extensive spread of God's blessing all around; but where do we read of His sending the Spirit for that time? Where do we read of the Father sending the Comforter in the name of Christ the Son? In no other period. It is here, and now only. I mean not that these are the only Scriptures that refer to it, but that these are the only times and circumstances and conditions in which the word of God puts not only the gift of the Spirit and His outpouring, but the mission of the Spirit. It is a question here, I repeat, of His own personal descent from heaven; and nothing can be plainer from our Lord's own words, as will be proved as we pass on

The key to all these statements lies in this — the presence of the Comforter. That personal presence of the Holy Ghost, which is here spoken of, is intimately connected with, as it is founded on, His own personal absence after redemption. On the other hand, the bright day of the Lord that is coming will be marked, not by Christ's absence, but by His presence; not by His being in heaven, but by Himself coming to reign over the earth; and it has no such personal presence of the Spirit attached to it. Greater powers there may be in a certain way, — larger, if not deeper; but it will be another state of things altogether, and one of the most striking differences is found in a fact which may be passingly stated here; namely, that the Holy Ghost in that day will not lead a single person to worship God in the holiest of all. This state of things ceases. The veil is no longer rent in the millennial day, when the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be over the earth. Possibly such a statement as this may sound strong, and interfere rudely with doctrinal prejudices. To some theologians what could be more shocking to hear than that, after the work of redemption, there ever could be a recurrence to an earthly sanctuary, and a separating veil, and a human priesthood, and outward sacrifices over again? But in my judgment nothing is more certain, if indeed we bow to the Psalms and prophets, than such a state of things on earth under the millennial reign of the Lord. Gentile doctors may explain it — or rather attempt to explain it away — as they will; but there the fact stands before them in the word of God imperishably, in the prophetic word evidently unaccomplished. It is in Scripture very particularly bound up with this mark, that when that day does come, and God renews His dealings with His ancient people Israel, there is no Pentecost among the renewed feasts. There is the Passover, as well as the feast of Tabernacles; but there is no feast of weeks. This evidently falls in with what I have been saying, that there will be a most copious effusion of the Spirit; so that even some outward gifts, communicated on the day of Pentecost and afterwards, should be designated powers of the world to come. Why are they called "powers of the world to come"? Because they are a sample of that energy which will work in unhindered effects then, making the vast universe to know the mighty deliverance which the Saviour has accomplished for "all things," as well as for those that believe. The powers that were conferred by our Lord through the Holy Ghost, after He went up to heaven, are rightly therefore called "powers of the world to come," such as healing diseases, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, giving the blind to see and the lame to wall, and the like, because they were expressions of that power which will be known far and wide in the great day of the Lord's reign, when He will heal all their diseases just as truly as He will pardon all their iniquities. Then He will bring in and unite both blessings. It is clear that this is altogether a different state of things from what we know now.

Accordingly, now there is this surpassing privilege that God gives to make known His exceeding value for and delight in the work of the Lord Jesus. How comes this? That work without doubt has in God's sight unending and infinite worth. How comes it that there should be now such an impressive and altogether divine estimate of it? The reason I believe to be this. The day that is coming will be the accomplishment of promise and prophecy. The time is arrived for making good what God positively brought out in that form of detailed blessing that was given to His people on earth. They were an earthly people; and accordingly the promises in their literal bearing regarded them as such. Hence it is, that when that day comes, it will be of that which God definitely put before them, it will be of the earthly people and the earth (and especially the land of Israel) as the centre of their fulfilment. But God never limited Himself merely to the accomplishment of what He has promised; and, in point of fact, so far from your getting at the depths of God's grace by grasping at the promises, as people say, on the contrary, one only gets to the limits, so to speak, of that which was suited to a man on earth, or a people on the earth, or the earth itself; but as surely as the heavens are higher than the earth, so the grace that lay, as it were, unmoved in His own bosom, that which never was measured out in promise nor defined in prophecy, must be according to the depth of the goodness of God Himself. And therefore it is on one side that He retained this blessed reserve; not, of course, for the purpose of hiding it always, but nevertheless it was hidden from ages and generations — "hid in God," as He elsewhere says. Now on the other side the secret is hid no more, and this because God can freely act now. He has the world-rejected Christ at His own right hand; and at the very sight of Him as He comes there, if one may so say, fresh from the cross, as there He comes bringing all the value of redemption into His presence, God gives not according to the measure of an earthly people's need, or according to that which is suitable to this poor world, but what was worthy of Himself and of Christ. He gives what would be au honour in heaven itself. What can attest or prove this more than sending down the blessed Spirit, who knew heaven so well, and could enter into and reciprocate all the feelings of God the Father about the Son and about redemption? Hence it is that we enter with such fulness into this infinite blessing.

Accordingly, therefore, with all this weight of truth before us, these depths that were as yet unfathomed of divine grace, the Lord Jesus Christ speaks to His disciples. He would lead them into the counsels and reveal to them the mind of God the Father, the grace of the Saviour-God; but the means by which He pledges His name, and promises on His Father's part to more than make up for His own loss to the saints, is by the presence of "another Comforter."

But I apprehend the word "Comforter" sometimes fails (perhaps to most fails) to give an adequate notion of what it is that our Lord Jesus really meant us to gather from thus speaking of the Holy Ghost. We might very naturally draw from it, that the term was in relation to sorrow, that it intimated a person who would console us in the midst of the distresses of this lower world. And, indeed, the Holy Ghost does console us and comfort us. But this is only a very small part of the functions here conveyed by the word "Paraclete." This is the expression, if one would give an English reproduction of that which is in point of fact the very word our Lord employed. But the meaning of that word "Paraclete" is not merely "Comforter," but one who is identified with our interests, one who undertakes all our cause, one who engages to see us through our difficulties, one who in every way becomes both our representative and the great personal agent that transacts all our business for us. This is the meaning of the Advocate or Paraclete or Comforter, whatever equivalent may be preferred. Manifestly, then, it has an incomparably larger bearing than either "advocate" on the one hand, or ''comforter'' on the other: it includes both, but takes in a great deal more than either. In point of fact, it is One who is absolutely and infinitely competent to undertake for us whatever He could do in our favour, whatever was or might be the limit of our need, whatever our want in any difficulty, whatever the exigencies of God's grace for the blessing of our souls. Such the Holy Ghost is now; and how blessed it is to have such an One! But remark here, that it never was known before. I have already hinted, and indeed plainly expressed the conviction, that it will never be known again, fully allowing that there will be, as to extent, a larger outpouring of blessing in the world to come. But the personal presence of the Spirit here below as an answer to the glory of Christ at the right hand of God! — such a state of things never can be repeated. While the High Priest is above, the Spirit sent down gives a heavenly entrance into His glory as well as redemption; when the High Priest comes out for the earthly throne, the Spirit then poured out will give a testimony suited to the earth over which the Lord will reign.

If we bear this in mind, what a solemn impression is given as we look over Christendom! I have no doubt of the fact; but if it be so, it is a pregnant one, and full of serious reflections. It is always the great first-truth, if I may so express myself, which is the first to disappear, and, I think also, the last truth to be recovered, once it is lost; for it is invariably what most reflects God's glory. What can be, then, dearer to the Spirit, who is here to glorify the Son in glorifying the Father? And what should be of deeper moment to the saints? Wonder not if Satan strains every nerve and practises all his wiles to blot and misrepresent, to pervert or corrupt where he cannot destroy. If I judge Christendom by such a standard as this, what must be the sad conclusion? If one thing more than another ought now to characterize the children of God everywhere, what should it be according to these words of the Saviour? The presence, the personal presence, of the Holy Ghost; the certainty that this divine person is come to replace Himself. Granted that sense does not see Him, and that mind cannot enter in, as it is said here of the world. :Evidently, if it were a question of either sense or mind, the world might be adequate. But contrariwise "the world seeth him not, neither knoweth him; nevertheless ye know him." We know Him, and know Him also to be present, first, on the simple word of the Lord Jesus; but, secondly, too, from the conscious enjoyment of the presence of the Holy Ghost.

I must begin by simply receiving Him on the word of the Lord; but when I do receive the truth into my soul, am I without the sense of His presence? Am I without the taste of the joy of the Holy Ghost being either in me or in the assembly of God? Surely our hearts can attest far otherwise. Therefore it is never confined simply to belief. "Know ye not," says the apostle, "know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? "That is, it is not merely a matter of faith. First of all, I do not doubt that a soul is brought into the blessing by the faith of Christ, and nothing else; but to leave no room for the enjoyment that is found in Him subsequently, to reduce all to a bare matter of acceptance on God's word of the Lord Jesus, would be indeed a poor witness on our part to the power of the indwelling Spirit, or to the revelation of the Saviour's grace. What would be thought of one who had nothing to assure him that his wife really was thus related to him, except the fact that her name was so entered in the registrar's office? It would be an extraordinary and a sorry pass to which things had come. And do you suppose that the Holy Ghost, a divine person sent down expressly to give us the power and joy and blessing and refreshment of the grace of God in the knowledge of Christ — do you suppose that this is less real for the new man, than the comfort of a companion that God has given a man for all that pertains to this present life? Far from us be such a thought; and therefore it is, I repeat, surely a matter to be noticed and weighed.

No doubt, if my soul, when awakened, only accepts the bare word of God in the gospel, and cares for, looks for, no more from Him who is here to glorify Christ, I must not wonder if I stop short of enjoyment which others taste; for the Holy Ghost resents such despite to His grace, such contentedness to know the least possible of Christ. There must be loss, if I will indeed be obstinate enough not to look for aught more. As far as it goes, it is in principle rationalistic, thus turning the very word of God into a mere letter; the heart refusing to go onward into the enjoyment of His blessed presence and power, simply because the gospel of salvation was believed on the word of the Lord. On the contrary, we find particular pains taken to show that individually there is a divine consciousness by the Spirit's power of our relationship to God; also, in the assembly of God, I am entitled not only to believe that He is there, but, believing, also to taste the sweet and mighty effects of His presence. Hence it is that in Romans 8, which refers to what concerns the soul's new standing in Christ, it is not said merely that the Holy Ghost dwells in me, a believer, but that He "beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." Does this mean no more than that a man believes the gospel? Matter of faith of course it is; and with this we must begin — with bare faith in God's testimony of His own grace to our souls — a faith that rests on nothing else, on not a single emotion or experience of any kind, but God's word in the glad tidings of salvation by Christ. But suppose I settle down that this is all to which grace now entitles me, is this not a mistake on the other side almost as bad as to confound faith with feelings, or with experiences? Where faith is real, it leads into a deep experience, both for the soul and in the Church of God. However; this may suffice for the subject on which I am now treating. It seemed to me the more incumbent to refer to it, because the return from the ordinary muddle of inward evidences to simple faith exposes souls to limit everything as to the Holy Ghost to the bare word of the Lord. This is true as a ground-work; but we should look for more. And we must beware, in avoiding one error, not to fall into another and an opposite one. That the Lord sends me the word of life, I accept entirely as the starting-point of the Christian. It is a blessed and admirable thing that the Lord gives us to know, when hard pushed, it may be, by the adversary — to take the gospel on His naked word. But as surely as He who comes down and really dwells in us is a divine person — to suppose that He does not give the sensible enjoyment of His presence in our souls, and in the assembly of God, is a very great mistake indeed, in my judgment.

First of all, then, the Lord prays the Father, as He says, (for He takes a mediatorial place in this chapter,) "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever." We are thus in presence of a grand truth as to. the Holy Ghost. Not only was He given, but besides, when He comes, He abides for ever, as it is said, "that he may abide with you for ever." There is not a word about anybody else; it is the Christian that is in question here. Throughout these chapters of John we have invariably, as the anticipated basis, redemption accomplished on earth, and Christ exalted in heaven. These are accordingly the limits of the blessing here. It is not so much redemption indeed, in any of its manifold applications, but that truth as the ground of Christ's glorification on high, and of the Holy Ghost's coming down to the e earth. Accordingly, here the Spirit it is promised, not to be a visitor for a time, as the Lord Jesus was, but, in contrast with that transient stay, "that he may abide with you for ever."

This at once leads one to feel how solemn is the sight which everywhere meets our eyes in Christendom. If there be one truth more than another that has been abandoned, it is this personal presence of the Holy Ghost. There is no adequate testimony to it whatever; and this is not said unadvisedly. I say it not merely of that great city which reigns over the rings of the earth, but of smaller cities that kings have built themselves to reign over, or those yet smaller cities their subjects love to reign over' as rivals and an improvement upon both. I Pay it of the Protestant bodies, no matter what, no matter where, national or dissenting. It is a remarkable fact, that if you look at their confessions of faith, many of which were drawn up when men, no doubt, were far more simple and thorough-going than they are now — at the time of the Reformation, or at any subsequent great crisis — if there be one truth more especially absent from every one of these confessions that has come under my own observation, it is the testimony to this truth. You will find other truths: the necessity of being born again, the value of the work of Christ, the glory of His person as God and man. Not that they deny that the Holy Ghost is a divine person — surely they do not. But I am not speaking of His personality, or deity either, but of His personal mission to the earth, and of His presence now with Christians, both individually and collectively — the presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Is it to be found anywhere acted on or confessed? Where is it set forth? I have never met with any approach to it, even in my reading; and of course, I do not wish to give anyone the impression that I have not read a good deal upon the subject. I have searched diligently for it, and I have desired to learn what is really held by Christians universally; but never, in any one confession, creed, article of faith, or rule, have I discovered the smallest expression of that which is evidently the great characteristic truth of Christianity — that truth which ought to be continually sounding out, and continually in practice within the Church. Is it not, then, a solemn consideration that this, the glory of the Christian, the strength of the Church of God, and the especial privilege for which it was expedient that even Christ should go away, is never attested in any one system of Christendom known to me'?

It will be said that there are excellent persons, and good preaching, etc., at any rate among orthodox persons. Is this denied? Does it supply the lack? Perhaps it may be urged by some that at least the society of Friends, or Quakers, as they are commonly called, do make a great deal of the Holy Ghost. They are the very class which, with all respect to themselves personally, are, in my judgment, and unwittingly on their own part, most ignorant of the truth of the Holy Ghost's presence. The reason is manifest why they are so thoroughly distant from, and so antagonistic to, the truth of the personal presence of the Holy Ghost. Their doctrine, which I surely ought to explain after having given so strong an opinion about that society, — Quaker doctrine is wholly inconsistent with the truth the Lord lays down here. They hold that the Spirit of God dwells in every man without exception; that, whether a Jew or a Turk, whether an infidel or a believer, not a single soul is without His indwelling. The consequence is, that they cannot believe in any special personal presence of the Holy Ghost; for they conceive that as it has always been, so it is the essential means whereby he who makes a right use of it can be saved. Thus evidently along with this error goes another: they make justification to be gradual and progressive, not complete by faith of Christ and His work, but in proportion as men follow the inward light. I do not speak of all the members of that society: no doubt gospel truth has penetrated among not a tow of them; and there are those (I do not care to name such now) who have lately preached without as well as within them, and are much to be respected, and have been somewhat used of God to the conversion of souls. But what they received for their own souls, and preached to the blessing of others, was not the proper doctrine of the Friends as set forth in the remains of their founders or Barclay's Apology, but a certain measure of evangelical testimony which pen' bated their enclosure, and was thence given out to others.

But as to this doctrine, the fundamental tenet of the Friends is, that the Holy Ghost is given to every man without exception, that he, making right use of that manifestation of the Spirit, may have his soul saved at last. Now is not this the very antithesis of the truth of God? For Scripture does not say that the Holy Ghost is given to every man in the world, but teaches that the manifestation of the Spirit is given only to every man in the Church. The Christian alone has the Holy Ghost. Not even the Old Testament saints knew this; nor will the millennial saints, as I believe, possess it as we do now, though there will be an outpouring on all flesh, we know. Even the people of Israel will not have Him as we now, blessed as they may be by-and-by, and endued with powers as extensive, and, indeed, outwardly transcending, I presume, anything ever known in the bosom of the Church. For the millennial day will see the most marvellous displays of divine power that has ever wrought among men permanently in this world. I doubt not at all that the efforts on which man so prides himself now, — his inventions, his electric telegraphs, his railways, his steamships, etc., will disappear from the world to give place to what will incomparably surpass them; for God will never allow that man is able to exceed Himself. He will not leave room for the delusion that a day of sin, self-will, shame — a day when Jesus is rejected and the Spirit slighted — is to furnish the due materials for the reign of His Son over a reconciled earth. Who that knows the character and word of God can admit the possibility that He will let Israel, under their Messiah, be indebted to the monuments of rebellious Gentiles, when He sets His people up, and causes the light to shine, and the glory of Jehovah to arise upon Zion? impossible, to my mind, that God should make use of these effete means of man in that bright day. Just as Jericho of old must fall, and all the ancient centres of the holy land must give place, and God would mark out new ones for His people, so in the day that is coming, I am persuaded, the Holy Ghost will teach man how infinite is the power that He will put forth in the earth; for this will be the peculiarity of it: the Holy Ghost will then act on the earth and for the earth. Of course there will be no suspension of what He undertakes; but the display of the power will be suited to the Lord as then reigning over the world, and the objects the Holy Ghost will have in hand.

Now the Holy Ghost works after a different way, and to other ends. There was a great manifestation of power in apostolic days; but the great starting-point was the Holy Ghost sent down by Christ glorified at the right hand of God, and giving to souls vital association with Him who is there. This, too, ever goes on while Christ is on high. It is the heavenly One making us heavenly by the Holy Ghost, the living link between Him and them upon the earth. This is what our passage speaks of here (and accordingly we have the believer contrasted with the world). He, says Christ, is "the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive." The false doctrine I have referred to insists strongly that the world does receive the Spirit, and that it is in no way peculiar to the believer in point of fact. Here, on the contrary, it is a special possession of the Spirit; it is His personal presence which only the Christian possesses, which the world cannot receive, "because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him.'' It is exclusively the privilege of the believer here below; "for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." Instead of merely giving them a transitory taste of blessedness, the Spirit dwells with them; and more than this, instead of merely dwelling with them, "He shall be in them." There is this double truth, the dwelling with and also the being in. These two things are of importance. From the time that He comes down He dwells; yet not merely does He dwell with them as One outside of them, which is true in an assembly of saints, but He was to be "in them." That He dwells with us is of immense moment for the believer to hold — that the Holy Ghost does not merely visit occasionally but really dwells with us, and that we may look to Him, knowing that He really is here. But besides, as the Lord adds, He shall be in you, intimating that there would be the closest possible presence of the divine Spirit "in" as well as "with" those He was coming to; and this "for ever."

The effect is next shown. "I will not," says He emphatically, "leave you orphans" (that is, by His departure from them); "I will come to you." "Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also." Is not the Holy Ghost forming us into a body, uniting the believer to Christ as the head? There is more than this. Community of nature is here taught; and not here the unity of the body, as we have in the epistles of Paul. "Because I live, ye shall live also." Nothing call be more intimate than this. Further: "At that day," says He, showing the manner of it, "ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you." But "that day" is come. This again shows how totally this presence of the Holy Ghost differs from His outpouring in the millennium. Will this verse be true of the saints then? It is clear that nothing of the kind will appear I do not deny that suited blessings will be given in the mercy and power of God; far from it. I do not deny that there will be divine goodness working in the people of God, the objects of His grace. Surely it must be so. But it is plain to me, that the state of things, taken as a whole, here described by the Lord, will be perfectly impossible in the millennium. "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." This is only applicable now. The basis on which it depends has been accomplished now, and now only. Christ has taken his place above, not merely in heaven, but, as He says, "in my Father." "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me" while He is shore, and, at the same time, "I in you" while we are here. It is evident therefore that this (verse 20) is the decisive proof that our Lord makes the wondrous gift of which He speaks here contemporaneous with His presence in heaven. Then only is made good our association with Himself on high by the Holy Ghost sent down. When our Lord Jesus Christ leaves heaven, and takes the kingdom, all these elements will be changed, and there will be a new state of things in accordance with the new position which our Lord is to take. The Holy Ghost acts or is given always in relation to the place of Christ. During His personal absence there is the personal presence of the Holy Ghost; and as His own personal presence characterises the age to come when Ho returns again, the action of the Holy Ghost is necessarily modified by that new and fruitful fact.

On the latter verses I shall not dwell, having wished, first, to present as distinctly as possible the truth, and to this end comparing what now is with what has been, or may be in the days that are coming, so as to bring out the peculiarity of our blessing. Faith always enters into the present mind of God, His counsels and ways, from looking at Christ. Therefore it is that, where Christ's presence at the right hand of God in heaven is kept steadily before the soul, everything falls into its place. Where this is not the great key-truth of our souls in relation to God as well as to the world, all is lost — I mean, all that is distinctive of us as Christians. Of course, there may be faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and for a measure of peace with God; but I am not speaking of the soul's comfort, nor even of our being brought through this world, and saved for ever and ever by Christ. My thought is of the glory of God, and of that which suits His affections; of that which is good and holy, full of strength and blessedness for the Christian in relationship with God. Assuredly none of these things can be, unless the eye of faith is guided, and continually fixed upon Christ where He is. To have the eye continually directed toward Him where He is secures the free work of the Holy Ghost in the soul; and hence it is you find that those who do not believe in the personal presence of the Holy Ghost here below have no right apprehension of Christ Himself as the Head of the Church in heaven. They do not deny, nor so much as question in the least, that He is at the right hand of God. They formally proclaim that they believe in the Holy Ghost, the communion of saints, and so on. But it is no question now of repeating the words of a formulary; nor am I confining my remarks to any particular system, because, in my opinion, the dissenting societies are every one of them founded with aims and views wholly irrespective of the Holy Ghost's presence and operation in the assembly. Thus the present state of Christendom, in every form of it, whether national or dissenting, is founded on unbelief in the main distinctive truth of the Church, as far as the Holy Ghost is concerned.

This is of capital importance to impress on the children of God. The question is not whether or where they may have got good for their souls. The Spirit of God blesses in the midst, and often in spite, of these systems. There are those dear to Christ in every one of them; there are in all not only living members but ministers of Christ, as I firmly believe, wherever the grand foundations of Christ's person and work are acknowledged in any measure. But it is another thing altogether to say, "Am I where the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven can act freely, according to the intentions of the Lord and the word of God? Am I where He is believed to be present? Is the meeting, the assembly, the which I form a part, the expression of the presence of the Holy Ghost?" I do not speak of preaching now, nor even of meetings for instruction, whether in the form of lectures, or of reading the word of God together. All these things have their place; but there remains distinct the great central occasion where the Church, the members of Christ, gather round the name of the Lord Jesus. Now, on such occasions, is this leading truth before our souls, that we have One who is competent for every difficulty; One who cares for the glory of Christ; One who (for the love He bears Christ, and the value He sets on this work, and His grace toward us who, by His own power, have received Christ, and rest upon His work,) maintains our interests, looks after us, gives all our joys, helps us in our sorrows, fortifies us against the wiles of the devil, enables us to be simple, lowly truthful, faithful, by His own grace, and deals with us by the word of God where we are letting slip either what is due to Christ's person, or to the truth of God.

Now, I maintain, that of all truths none can, as far as the Christian body on earth is concerned, take precedence of this for urgency and moment. The reason is quite simple. If men believed there was a divine person sent down from heaven, and that He was really present with us, to be looked to as directing the assembly, working by whom He would, do you think that this would not be the great prominent fact? I do not mean His merely operating; for the Holy Ghost may work in a Wesleyan Chapel, or by an Anglican clergyman. I entirely admit that, without the operation of the Holy Ghost, none could be converted or get any truth from the word of God. Thus the operation of the Spirit is like His own sovereign grace; or, as the Lord compared it, to the wind, blowing where it lists. This is altogether another thing from the recognition of the presence of the Holy Ghost, and His acting freely and sovereignly by such of the members as He is pleased to employ in the Christian assembly.

Do Christians believe that there is such a presence of the Spirit to be counted on? Surely the word of God is plain; and this is what the saints of God are called to own, and find their blessing in. Can this be fully known except where there is faith in it? I do not mean that every individual Christian has got a right measure of faith — perhaps not one of us has; we are all too feeble about this and every other truth. Therefore, of course, the assembly of God does not mean to claim all its desires for each of Christ's members. It is not that all have arrived at that fulness of confidence and simplicity of reliance on the presence of the Holy Ghost that becomes us, especially as this is, we may say, one of the highest truths, though after all a very simple truth; for, as is usual, the highest truths are apt to be most simple when seen. What, for instance, can be simpler than Christ at the right hand of God in heaven? Yet, after all, is it not the kernel of the mystery, the choicest blessing of God in Him? So I know nothing plainer, yet profounder, than the presence of the Holy Ghost on earth — the answer to that great truth of Christ at the right hand of God. At the same time, however simple it may be, it is most weighty. Every Christian, no matter where, should be instructed in this great truth; and I conceive we have a serious charge from God to labour for the instruction of the children of God wherever we meet them, as they have received Christ, that they should really believe also in the presence of the Holy Ghost on earth. But holding this, I do not admit it to be o f God that every one who is received should be required to possess previous understanding or exercise faith in His presence. There are many individual members of Christ who are but feeble in it, and do not enter into its preciousness in any appreciable degree. But so long as the meeting, as a whole, is guided by the Spirit; so long as there is a recognition of His presence, without any known, fixed, or sanctioned hindrance to Him, so long as there are no human devices or rules of men. or other arrangements which interfere with the action of the Holy Ghost according to the word, there, I am persuaded, all children of God are bound to be, and may be, thoroughly happy. Possibly, no doubt, mistakes may be made — we are all liable to err; but our comfort here is to know that we have One present who is alone equal to the correction of all errors, and who, in His own grace, has come down from heaven for the express purpose of seeing to the saints. 'Therefore, we need never despair, no matter what the difficulties; we should never give up our soul's confidence that the Holy Ghost, who is present with and in us, will see to every hindrance and danger. Let our faith only be towards Him; let us only call on the name of the Lord; let us only be sure that He is here for the purpose — I will not say of honouring our faith, but, what is surer and better, for glorifying Christ. This can never fail. At the same time, if there be faith in His presence, as that which after all is the great thought of the meeting as a whole, though not necessarily of every member of it, divine power will be there. Put unless the meeting be so far governed by this great truth, it is evident there may be all kinds of human rules brought in which contradict the action of the Holy Ghost there. Details as to this we find in the epistles, and some, at least, will come before us, as I trust, on another occasion. I only refer to the subject to connect it with John 14 passingly, as showing the all-importance of this great truth of the personal presence of the Holy Ghost.

Allow me to repeat my question here. Supposing a Protestant Christian, or any other you like, believed a divine person to be present, do you think all would not take shape and be governed by so immense a truth? If it were only an earthly sovereign among men, I should like to know whether you or I would be anxious to appear to take the lead in any place where the ruler might be there for the purpose? Is it too much to say, supposing the king passed through his dominions, or entered any scene of his government, that the duty of a subject, even the highest, would be so much the more to pay him honour? At least such is my opinion. And I think nothing temporally is happier, speaking as a man now, than for a people to feel, and own, and respect the rights of the sovereign. I fear to too many it is a mere name, and that every trace of authority, even revealed truth, is coming to little better in these days — everything, both outward and inward. But wherever there is the real understanding and the right feeling of what the will of God is in the matter of earthly authority, it is manifest that no man or woman who had the sovereign in their own house — mark, even in their own house — could overlook such a fact, and behave as if he was not there.

But, beloved, when we think of the Church of God, it is not our own house, but God's; and what is due there? Surely, if anybody may act there in full right, it is One who is God. Accordingly it is too plain and palpable to be mistaken, that there is not, nor can be, faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost, without giving Him the place of precedence and expecting His action in the various members according to Scripture. Indeed, this is rarely pretended; for it is argued that in former days in the Church there were miracles, and apostles, and so on, but that all is changed now; so that these Scriptures are practically obsolete. Thus, when these people talk of the Holy Ghost, mostly they mean such great powers and wonderful officers as once existed; but as for a divine person for the first time deigning to come down and to be present on earth, and to act in the midst of the assembled saints of God, — the assembly that comes together to worship the Lord, and take His supper, or any other of the acts of Christian worship or edification, it is not believed. And the proof that it is not believed is, that every arrangement is made by man to take care that the machinery shall work just as if He were not there. They hope that God will bless the means used, will work by the instruments they arbitrarily set up; but the object is to make all things go on thoroughly well to the evident ignoring of His own personal presence there. Now no man would act thus who had the thought even of an august human personage present. This would cause a change of tone. There would be a line of conduct entirely different from ordinary habits. No man would walk about his house so much at case, if he knew that the King was there; at least, I should not admire the man who would; he would seem to me uncommonly full of himself. At the same time it is evident, that if there was the sense of a divine person present, all reverence, all the sense of His love, all that could be done to be subject to His direction there, would be the simple expression of one's faith.

Therefore it is, I feel, that owing so much as we do to the Lord, we need look well to it when we come together, that we act as those who believe in the presence of the Holy Ghost. Let us try our ways and deportments. Even small things betray how far we have faith in His real presence. Still more let us take heed if we venture on a hymn, or pray, or say a word, or whatever the act may be. The Lord grant that we may not bring into disrepute that precious truth which He has given to our souls! I am persuaded that no attacks, no reproaches from without, no persecution of enemies, no detraction of false brethren, no scorn of the world, can ever cast down those who have faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost. But of this I am equally sure, that our own practical unbelief, our delinquencies, our frequent grievous shortcomings, may and do open the door for the enemy; and these things more than any other circumstances are used of Satan to stumble such as are looking on in the present agitated and chaotic state of Christendom, anxiously looking out here and there to find some haven of rest in the midst of their trouble. And I do strongly press it on my brethren — for we all have a part, and, I do believe, not brothers only, but sisters also. I beseech them then to remember to what a place of dignity and responsibility they are called. Let them look well to it that their spirit, their very looks, their behaviour, their words, if indeed they do say anything. may never be inconsistent with faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost.

A very few words before I close on the other two chapters. The end of John 15 presents the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, in a slightly different way from John 14. "When the Comforter is come" — again I call your attention to the strong impression that it is a personal Being who comes — "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me; and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." The particular point that I apprehend is taught here is this — the heavenly character of the Holy Ghost's testimony. In chap. 14 the Spirit brings to remembrance what Jesus said; in chap. 15 He testifies of Christ Himself, and they testify because they have been with Him from the beginning. What the disciples saw, when they were with Him from the beginning, was, of course, the earthly side, and the Holy Ghost comes and gives His heavenly supplement. Thus, it is the Holy Ghost who comes from heaven, who knows the place and the glory of Christ, and who is sent expressly, not merely to help them in the remembrance of what they saw and heard upon earth, but to bring down, for the knowledge and joy of their souls, what He alone could tell them of the heavenly glory of Christ. In a word, therefore, we have the Holy Ghost here regarded as the bringer of fresh knowledge — of a new and heavenly testimony of Christ, they, of course, not losing the previous earthly testimony, in which the Holy Ghost indeed also strengthened them to bear witness of Christ.

In John 16 we have still more advance as to the Spirit of God. Our Lord had told them in chap. 14, that instead of sorrowing because He was going away, they ought to rejoice; a word of wondrous grace, because it shows how highly the Lord thinks of our love, and how He counts upon our unselfish delight in His own blessedness and glory. Surely it was a blessed transition for Him to step from the deepest sorrows and sufferings of the cross into the presence of God the Father in heaven! No wonder, therefore, that the Lord counts on their sense of all, and that they would rejoice because He was going to the Father, though a great loss in itself to them. But now He takes up the other side, and says they ought to rejoice for themselves, too, as it were. Sorrow had filled their heart; He says, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away." Chapter 14 says it is expedient for Him; the sixteenth chapter shows it is expedient for them; and for this reason, that if He did not go, the Comforter would not come — clearly proving what has been already stated, that there is a necessary absence of Christ from the earth in heaven in order for the Holy Ghost to descend. "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." Thus, we find the personal mission of the Holy Ghost, though in different connections, common to all these chapters. "And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." Here we have, first of all, His relation to the world. The Holy Ghost, in most important respects, takes the place of the law. In the dealings with Israel the law was the great reprover; now it is the Holy Ghost, who, instead of being limited to a particular people, is come to reprove the world, no matter where, no matter in what state; it might be moral, or religious, or zealous for the law; but He reproves the world of sin — not merely of sins, but "of sin." It is the state here below of sin. Again, He convinces them, it is added, "of righteousness and of judgment." "Of sin" — not because they broke the law, but — "because they believe not on me; of righteousness" — not because I have kept the law for their righteousness, but — "because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." Righteousness now is inseparable from Christ; He is the only righteousness that is valid for a soul in the sight of God. One does not speak of what may be of social worth, what has its place on earth, or among men here below — all this, of course, has its proper place; but now eternity comes into view, and accordingly Christ is the only life, or way of life. Hence, not to believe in Him is fatal, no matter what else there may be. So, again, no matter what apparent righteousness there may be, there is no other righteousness at all for God. And even so it is not as displayed here below, but Christ glorified at the right hand of God the Father. This is righteousness, that the Father had put the earth-rejected Christ there. In Christ, who Himself receives honour from the Father on high, do we find the righteousness we are made by grace. (See 2 Cor. 5)

Then there is another and very solemn addition to the verse — "and we see me no more." The world has lost Christ. He came, and this not to judge, but to bring in blessing. He had all power, and could have introduced the kingdom, as far as His power and glory were concerned. But the state of the world in relation to God was such, that to have done so would have slighted sin, and slurred over the glory of God that had been totally compromised. Therefore, in point of fact, although the Messiah came, and there was no defect in Him — although man was responsible to receive Him, nevertheless, man being guilty before God, it was quite impossible, morally, that the kingdom could be established then. It would have been a denial of man's ruin and of God's glory, and neither could be on the part of Jesus. Therefore it is that Jesus never presents Himself, as has been observed in this gospel, as the Christ. Others may so speak of Him, but He never speaks of Himself as Messiah (save as acknowledging the truth when it was confessed); and for this simple reason, — in the gospel of John He has ever the consciousness of being a rejected Christ, yet withal God Himself, the Son. Hence, therefore, although He may be on earth, and accomplish prophecy, and others call Him Christ, the Son of David, and so on, yet He styles Himself the Son of man, who, in His own glory, is the only-begotten Son of God. There is everywhere the calm distinct sense of His own personal glory, which no rejection or shame could possibly interfere with for a moment. Accordingly our characteristic and proper blessings are built upon His rejected but most glorious person (see Matt. 16), and are the answer to His glory as the exalted man in the resurrection power of the Son of God.

Thus, then, the Spirit of God takes a function at this present time towards the world, suitable to Him to whom He bears witness, making the Scriptures, as it were, the text on which He preaches of Christ. The world accordingly, not believing in Christ, is convicted of sin; and such, too, is His demonstration of righteousness and judgment. The righteousness is out of sight, and so slighted; the judgment, too, is not executed here below, where the world has its own way; but the cross as well as exaltation of Christ is the standing proof that the prince of this world is judged in God's sight. This world, as such, has never been worth a believing man's heed since the cross of Christ. Up to that time there had been long and gracious patience on God's part: since then God regards it us His enemy; it is what the intelligent saint knows to be the deadly enemy to God; and just as flesh found its character, so the world also; both were decided by the cross of Christ. To the world the Spirit keeps up this testimony; and how? Not according to the doctrine which supposes all the world to have the Spirit, but by the express contrary, by being outside the world. If the world believed in Christ, the Holy Ghost would dwell there; but, being unbelieving, the Holy Ghost is outside it; and consequently He is a reprover of the world, and not one who dwells in it as a Paraclete. Such alone He is among the saints of God.

Accordingly another point follows — how the Spirit deals with the disciples. This, being wholly different, is described in a new manner: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." The Holy Ghost will bring all things to remembrance. It is not merely testifying to Christ in His heavenly glory, but now there is no limit; it is Himself personally come, with and in the saints, as we saw. Accordingly He leads them into all truth. Here Christ says, "He shall not speak of himself." Bear in mind, this does not mean that the Spirit shall never speak about Himself. I suppose there are many who imagine such to be the meaning of the clause; but I must assure them that they are mistaken. The Holy Ghost speaks a great deal about Himself in the epistle to the Romans, in the epistles to the Corinthians, in the Ephesians, in the Galatians. I may say, that in almost all the epistles the Holy Ghost gives us a vast deal of instruction about Himself'. This, then, is not the meaning at all, but that He does not speak from His own independent authority. He is acting in communion with the Father, and for the purpose of glorifying the Son. Accordingly this is what evidently falls in with the context — "He shall not speak of [or, from] himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak." He comes down to do honour to Christ: what He hears from the Father, as well as from the Son, this He tells us. He has on earth been pleased to take, if we may so say reverentially, a place subject to this design; even as the Son took a place here below subject to the Father. The Son was divine equally with the Father; nevertheless, He came simply to do His will as a servant on earth. So the Holy Ghost deigns now to be the servant of the Father's purposes and the Son's glory, even as the Son was the minister of the Father before.

Hence it is said, "Whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come." Nor is it merely to lead us into all the truth that Jesus had revealed before. There were things we could not then bear. Also, He speaks of "things to come" — an important word for souls that despise God's revelations of the future. It is not, I apprehend, merely that we have the revealed word of God, but, by virtue of His revelation now complete, and having the Holy Ghost Himself in us, the Church ought to be the interpreter of everything around in this world. There is nothing that the believer is not now competent by the Holy Ghost to understand, if he only use the word of God in the power of the Spirit. The Christian has, in a certain sense, a prophetic as well as a priestly place. He is called to discern the times; he may read what passes in the world, and ought to do it. His senses, no doubt, may not be exercised to discern good and evil; and so he may be dull of hearing, as the apostle reproached the Hebrews; but I speak now of what, by virtue of the Holy Ghost, we are regarded here as competent for.

"He shall glorify me," says the Lord. Here we find the prime object now made most apparent, — whether it be revealing the truth, speaking what He hears, or showing things to come; this is the centre around which, so to speak, all His offices and His functions find their full operation. "He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you." For this and other reasons, I believe, it is that we never hear, as far as I know, of the government or rule of the Holy Ghost. Among some it is a common expression, and commoner among intelligent Christians than any others; but I do not think the better of it for this. The fact is, we cannot coin or consecrate a phrase for the truth. The acknowledgment of the presence of the Holy Ghost is a truth of the gravest character; but presence and sovereign operations are not the same thing as rule. I believe I am subject to Scripture in this, as I certainly desire to speak also with all worthy respect of those whose language in this does not to my mind agree with the word of God. But I may observe that the reason seems to be, that the Spirit is making good the lordship of Christ: He is exalting Him, not glorifying Himself. Hence it is that the Spirit of God is never presented as ruling the Church. It is perfectly clear and sure He is the person who acts sovereignly. This I admit, and hold unqualifiedly; but when you speak of "government," you assert something else, which does seem to me not according to the exactness of truth, and which tends to displace the Lord from His rightful position, and to disorder the relation of the saints towards the Lord. The rejected Jesus is the one Lord in the official sense (for in another the Father and Spirit are, as being God). The Holy Ghost is present to maintain this, the will and truth of God. Hence He acts in the midst of the saints to exalt Christ before our eyes. The Spirit works in and with and by us; but the Lord Jesus is our Lord, and is so revealed of the Spirit to us, who, therefore, puts us in the position of subjection to Him. He has taken the place of glorifying Christ now, and imprints the character of His bondmen on us.

However, this is only by the way. My main object tonight is to leave the distinct, and, I trust, full impression that these words of the Saviour are intended to let fall on the heart, of the personal presence of the Holy Ghost sent down from Jesus Christ at the right hand of God the Father. May this precious truth not merely have increasingly a place in our hearts as individuals, but more than ever be prized in the assemblies of God on earth. The Lord keep a single soul from abandoning that truth, no matter what the difficulty, as well as from practically acknowledging any assembly where the Holy Ghost is not allowed His due place according to Scripture.

W.K.

The Coming and the Day of the Lord.

2 Thessalonians 2

W. Kelly.

(Section 2 of Three Prophetic Gems.)

Introduction and Background

The Jewish, Christian and Gentile portions have already been shown in the Lord's prophecy on Olivet. Let us now see what the Word of God reveals as to those (not born of God) who may bear the Christian name for the present, but will abandon it. No doubt “the world” comprises more than those who outwardly profess the Lord's name. It also embraces all the nations that are heathen, besides Israel. Scripture is not silent about any of these, and the light of God is as bright and sure on the future as on the past.

This is an important principle to hold fast in reading the written word. People are apt to judge of God by themselves. Since to speak with certainty of the future is impossible for us, man imagines that when God speaks about it, it also must be somewhat uncertain. This is the principle of infidelity. What difference does it make to God whether He is speaking about the past, the present or the future? He assuredly does not “think” in the sense of having to reflect, nor does He merely give an opinion. He knows all things. The only real question can be whether God communicates what He knows, or how far He has been pleased to do so. The prophetic word professes to do this! If God has communicated His mind about the future, as the Scriptures openly assert, it is simply faith to accept all. The moment our faith rests upon His Word, the light shines. What seemed confusion when we did not believe, turns to order when we do. The light was really there in Christ. It was our unbelief that caused the dimness and confusion.

The Word of God is the perfect revelation of His mind, no matter of what He spoke, or when, and God has been pleased to speak about the future. It is the special mark of His confidence. He told Abraham what He was going to do, what concerned not merely himself but others, even the cities of the plain. Abraham had no direct relation with those cities, though Lot had; yet not Lot but Abraham was told of the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot only learned it just in time to be saved, so as by fire. But Abraham knew it in peace beforehand and interceded with God for righteous Lot. Our portion ought to be that of Abraham rather than of Lot. Yet there are those of the future who will be saved just in time to escape destruction. They will be in the sphere of judgment and will pass through it in a measure, but will nevertheless be preserved. The mass will be destroyed for their lawless evil, along with others who are unbelieving: “remember Lot's wife.” But a remnant will be delivered, as the angels rescued Lot and his daughters. Theirs, however, will not be the happier portion: it is for those on high.

God has provided better things for us in every respect. He has given us the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Accordingly says Paul, writing to the Corinthians, “We have the mind of Christ,” the intelligence of Christ, the capacity of spiritual understanding. Of course, not even the apostles had the same measure as the Lord who had and was Himself absolutely the wisdom of God. We have nothing except in and by Him, and hence only in dependence on Him. However, we do not have only the mere mind of man, but of Christ, as Christians having the Holy Spirit.

The intelligence of Christ is given. This shows why what was true in principle of Abraham is distinctly and characteristically true of the Christian, for it could not said, in the full force of the term, that Abraham or any Old Testament saint had the mind of Christ. The Holy Spirit was not yet come, for Jesus was not yet glorified. Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished redemption and gone up on high, He has sent down the Holy Spirit to dwell in His saints, to make them the temple of God. Even the body of each believer is the temple of the Holy Spirit, just as His own body was: He on earth having His body perfectly holy and ever fit for the Spirit without redemption; we only in virtue of His blood. Hence never till the blood of Christ was shed could any saint here below become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the living temple of God; we are only so because our sin is judged in His cross and our guilt blotted out by His blood. Therefore the Spirit of God comes down to dwell in us, putting honor on Christ Jesus for the redemption that is in Him. Because of this we Christians receive a divine power by the Spirit opening (in our measure) into all that God communicates.

This, though a digression, is very important to the subject which we are examining. Few things more indicate divine intelligence than profiting by the communication of the future. The Old Testament makes, in the main, this challenge to the false gods, a challenge which could only silence them, even if they had pretended ever so loudly before to give out oracles. As long as it was merely a question of baffling inquirers, they might deceive by equivocal answers, but Isaiah in the most severe style shows their utter impotence to disclose the future. Now, a large part of the Old Testament consists of revelations of the future, not only of what was future then, but of what is future still. Even the historical part of Genesis is cast into typical forms of prophetic character, exhibiting throughout the mind of God. So does the intermediate poetical portion in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

The prophets inspired by Jehovah expand in blessed terms on the bright future that yet awaits the world Isaiah depicts the day of Jehovah when all that now obstructs the light of glory shall be removed, when all that thwarts the honor of the only true God shall fall, when Satan must lose his delusive power, when the nations of the earth, long groaning under oppression, shall be set free, and when the Jews (who ought to have been the leaders of all that is good and true) shall be delivered from unbelief's most withering thraldom and rise forever to the place that God's promise assigns them as the head of the nations then blessed, the priests of the world. They, converted and restored to Canaan, are destined to fill the foremost place when the earth itself is raised out of its long degradation. Jehovah has spoken it and His hand will accomplish all in due time. It is these prospects of the world on which the Old Testament prophets speak at great length and with graphic minuteness.

When the Lord Jesus came, on whom the accomplishment of prophecy depends for the realization of the kingdom of God, He was rejected. He was the King who brought in the kingdom in His person and presented it with final responsibility to Israel. Then in the cross came a mighty change of immense consequence to the world, when every bright hope seem blasted, when all expectation of glory for Israel was set in a deeper darkness than before. God made use of that moment of fallen hopes for the earth and for the earthly people, and for the nations of the world, for “some better thing.” He made the cross of Christ bring in a completely new state, when Israel vanished for a season. It was a state distinct from that which prophets prepared the minds of men of old to expect, for their great testimony is to Israel restored and repentant under the Messiah reigning over the earth, blessed beyond example, and all creations and the nations, in happy subjection.

The reason for so unexpected a change is simple, and the ground when once taken was plain. The rejected Christ was raised from the dead. Having ascended to heaven, He took His seat there to begin another and heavenly order of blessing. He is seated there until a moment unknown and undisclosed, before which God effects altogether new things. This is Christianity which is therefore essentially of heaven. The prophets did not speak of heaven except incidentally. Prophecy refers to the earth. Although there are here and there allusions to heaven, no prophet and no prophecy gives a detailed opening out of what the Lord Jesus is doing now as Head of the Church at the right hand of God.

It was not the object of prophecy to speak of the Church. Prophecy is a lamp to which those who love the Lord do well to pay attention, for that lamp shines in a dark or squalid place, and the earth for the present is so. Such is the revealed use of prophecy: Christianity recognizes it fully. But there is a brighter light, not the day but daylight, as the apostle says, “Till day dawn and a daystar arise in your hearts.” What does he mean by this? The accomplishment of prophecy? No, but more and better. Till the day of Jehovah comes for the world? No. He speaks of day dawning and a daystar arising in the heart, not of the day arising upon Zion and the world. This would be the accomplishment of prophecy, but he is intimating what the Spirit of God delights to bring into the heart of the Christian now.

The Jewish believer still was encouraged to use and value the prophetic lamp. More, the word of prophecy derived confirmation from what was seen on the holy mountain. Yet there ought to be through the gospel a far clearer light — the light of day, the brightness of heaven, not of the lamp. They as Christians were already to enjoy its effect. But it might now be so with those slow to learn more. Not only were Christians born of God, as all saints are; they were all sons of light and sons of day (1 Thess. 5: 5). They thus are exhorted not to sleep, but to watch and be sober, and here to have their heavenly portion made good in their souls. The person of our Lord Jesus is our hope, the daystar — not merely the general light of heavenly dawn, but the daystar arising in the heart. This is the dawn of the proper Christian hope on the new affections. Many, then as now, were lukewarm and came short.

The actual arrival of the day of the Lord is another matter. It will occur in its own time. It was, however, a good thing to hold fast the prophetic lamp until a better light comes. There are far brighter associations into which the Christian is introduced now through Christ Jesus, but prophecy does not speak of them. The prophetic word does not contemplate the arising of the daystar in the heart. There it is the very reverse of Christ. The daystar of prophecy is rather the title of the Lord's enemy (Lucifer) as seen in Isaiah 14. The daystar that the Christian ought to have arising within is Christ while He is outside the world in heaven, before He shines as Sun of Righteousness upon the earth. By the gospel day dawns, and the daystar or heavenly hope of Christ arises in the heart while the Christian is here, as he enters into Christian privilege by the truth.

In consequence of this present privilege we stand in a wonderful position. Believing in the Lord Jesus, we have a Savior who is already come and has accomplished the redemption of our souls and given us remission of sins. We have eternal life and the knowledge of our absolute cleansing by the blood of Jesus in the sight of God through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Yet the condition of the world is no better, but far worse. The world has been led on by its prince to reject its only true King, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the Son of God. We are in the secret of it; we know that the Anointed King has been refused, and we enlightened from above are with Him. We can afford to wait for the great day, but meanwhile we have daylight in the gospel before the day comes. The light cannot yet shine on the world, but it can shine in our hearts. So it is evident that we have more than the lamp of prophecy: we have the daylight and a heavenly hope in Christ. We are sons of the light and of the day.

Hence the Christian is to judge what is passing around, through God-inspired communications. According to the Word it belongs to our proper heritage. The Lord reproached the Jewish chiefs because they were unable to discern the signs of the times. We ought to be able not only to read what is before us according to God, but also to speak of the future with calm confidence because we believe the Word of God. We may humbly concern ourselves with all that God has communicated as having at heart the family interests, for if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. It would be unbecoming for the heirs not to make themselves acquainted with the inheritance. How strange, if Christians indwelt by the Spirit of God, could not understand! For this reason then, if we only knew our own privileges and depended on the Lord for it in living faith, we would be led into an immense field of blessing entirely outside the natural perception of man.

When the Lord was here below, He showed clearly what was to befall the earth. He says, “The field is the world,” and He has told us what will become of the world where people would be Christianized. From the first He has shown us clearly what would be the result and why so. Good seed was sown, but there was an enemy who sowed bad seed. He does not even suggest that the bad seed would be improved. He intimates that the servants were zealous enough to remove the bad effects, but He reproves them. He warns that their effort to correct the evils brought into the field, the attempt to use the name of the Lord for reforming the “Christianized” world, only results in rooting up the good as well as the bad, if not more so.

When that consummation comes, there will be a process of discrimination in judgment. The wheat will be removed on high, the darnel consumed below. Consequently, then will be the harvest, but this implies evil abounding up to the end of the age. Never will there be a time for this age when the preaching of the gospel or discipline can root out the evil sown by Satan from the beginning under the Christian name. This age will close by divine judgment on the lawless and on all the stumbling-blocks. The new age will be characterized by the Son of man's righteous rule over the earth in power and peace.

Therefore, those who expect the gradual removal of evil in this age are in opposition with the distinct teaching of the Lord Jesus. We are not saying this to repress efforts toward winning and building up souls. It is one thing to work in faith and another to expect the general and true blessing of the world as the result. Granted that this will surely come, but it is reserved for the Son of man. Should the bride of the Lamb be jealous? Such a result is not for the Church, which has been guilty from early days of being dragged down into the snares of the world, into its human activity, its politics, its ease, its honors, its gold and silver, and what not.

If Christendom is now suffering the buffets of the world, the world (once eagerly sought by Christians for its own things) is now turning against those who gave anything except true testimony to Christ and to what a Christian should be. But it will be worse and worse with the world. Ungrateful for whatever of God has been shed around by Christianity, it will turn again and rend her who abuses the name of the Lord for her own selfish and earthly interests. Evil was planted under the pretext of Christ's name, and this evil can never be rooted out until the judgment to be executed at the end of the age. It is presumptuous unbelief to expect or attempt it. The angels dealing judicially are quite distinct from and contrasted with the servants who sow and watch the good seed.

We repeat that the end of the age is not the end of the world. The phrase “end of the world” in Matthew 13: 39-40 in the KJV is an unequivocal error. Far from being the end of the world, the next verse proves the contrary. The Lord sends His angels and purges from the field (or world) what is offensive to Him. The lawless are judged, the scandals removed, the bad crop and the bad fish destroyed. In short the living wicked are punished and the righteous shine in the kingdom of their Father. The kingdom of the Son of man is the earthly part of the kingdom of God; the kingdom of the Father is its heavenly part, as the Lord explains. The heavenly things and the earthly things of the kingdom of God (compare John 3: 12) will be found then in undiminished brightness and harmony. In the Father's kingdom, according to His own counsels, the glorified saints shine to His own praise. The field or world which had been spoiled by Satan's wiles will be cleared of all its corruptions and their lawless agents. Thus, far from being the end of the world, the harvest which closes this age will be the beginning of the world's going onward in blessing under the displayed kingdom of the Son of Man and Son of God, the Head of the Church which will then be exalted and reigning with Him.

In the present age, Christ is on high and does not appear in glory or reign over the earth. There will follow another age when Christ, instead of being hidden, will be manifested to expel Satan and remove all that contaminates men and dishonors God. This connects itself with the Old Testament prophets. They all refer to the times of restitution of all things, the kingdom of Messiah over the earth, as the apostle preached to the men of Israel in Solomon's porch (Acts 3: 19). The mistake is in applying these things to the Church now. The principle often does apply in the New Testament: no one means to contest this, but there are limits. The fulfillment is another thing.

In the future kingdom both Jews and Gentiles will be blessed. Of this truth the apostle avails himself, pointing to the fact of both enjoying the blessings of grace, and this is sufficient to stop the mouth of the Jew. Thus we find the Old Testament applied in Romans 15: 10, “Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.”* How then could the Jew consistently object? Was it just to fly in the face of their own prophets? Did the Jew not affirm God's blessing on both to be contrary to the Bible? For the Gentiles are certainly blessed no less than the Jew by the gospel, and this the narrow and proud Jew could not endure. Yet the apostle never says that the prophecy is now therefore accomplished to the full or to the letter. The principle is true under the gospel; the fulfillment of the prophecy awaits another age and a different state of things when Christ appears and reigns in visible power and glory.

*But this principle the apostle does not call "the mystery kept secret since the world began; he only says that his gospel thus preached is according to the revelation of that mystery, which is but referred to, but opened out in the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Colossians. To say that scripture gives no grace to the church, except the mercy to the fathers and the oath to Abraham, is not only blank unbelief but flagrant contradiction of the apostle Paul.

In the prophecies we find intimations, not merely of the coming blessing for all the earth, but of the Jews treated as a rebellious people, while God is calling out those who were not a people. Take the beginning of Isaiah 65. The Gentiles are there designated as those who had not known Jehovah, while His people Israel are judged as disobedient. Compare again Hosea 1 and Hosea 2 with Romans 9. Thus the Spirit of God gives here and there hints, dim enough once, but now clearly interpreted by Him, which have a partial bearing on the present time. But none of these Old Testament Scriptures discloses to us the heavenly glory of Christ at the right hand of God as the center of union to saints on earth, and He the Head of one body to the Christians (Jew and Gentile alike). These things compose “the mystery.” None of them is ever developed by the prophets. It was then a secret hid in God.

We have the fact of the Lord sitting at the right hand of God in Psalm 110, but the great use the psalm makes of that fact is to show that He sits there till His enemies are made His footstool. There is not a word about what meanwhile is being done with His friends. The revelation of the counsels and ways of God with His friends now is Christianity. The psalm speaks of His sitting there till judgment is executed on His enemies. It tells us also that Messiah is Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, but it is silent about His present intercession there for the Christian. The psalm dwells plainly on the future executive of judgment when Jehovah sends the rod of Messiah's strength out of Zion.

What the apostle calls the revelation of the mystery is now verified. It is a secret which the Old Testament never brought out, though giving certain intimations that are accomplished, as for instance in calling the Gentiles. Moses told Israel, “The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the works of this law.” But the great central truth of Paul is that the mystery or secret that was of old hid in God concerning Christ and concerning the Church is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets* through the Spirit, as in fact it was made known to us by Paul himself.

*These were exclusively of the N.T., as they in fact composed the foundation on which the church was built (compare Eph. 2: 20, Eph. 3: 5, and Eph. 4: 11).

The character of the Church supposes that God abolishes at present the difference between the Jew and the Gentile, which the promises and the prophecies kept up. The grand fact of earth's future is that the Jew is exalted to the first place and the Gentile blessed, but subordinately. The old superiority of Israel will be maintained then, however blessed the Gentile will be. To deny this is to deny the truth. In the kingdom they each will be recognized and blessed, but in a different position, not as now when both are made one. The future millennial kingdom supposes the reinstatement of Israel in more than former favor, and the nations will rejoice, but in a place secondary to that of Israel.

In the Church of God all this disappears. The Church is heavenly, as Christ is, and according to the nature of things in heaven. On high people are not known by their nationality; on earth they are, and they will be in God's kingdom here. But, the Christian being essentially called on high or upward, all these earthly distinctions for him disappear. Hence there came a new state of things and a fresh testimony, for God has now revealed in the New Testament that which comes in between the first and the second advent of Christ which is as different from the future on the earth as from the past before redemption.

When the Lord comes again, the Old Testament prophecies resume their course. There is the additional confirmation of a small portion of the New Testament which refers to that time, in order to give a combined testimony, and all the more because so great a change had come to pass.

One may now see clearly what has been pointed out already, that the Lord Jesus prepared His disciples from the first not to expect the world to progress or end in joy and light and blessing. On the contrary, old evils were to go on and new evils begin and take root from early days by the crafty power of Stan, never to be done away with till the end of the age. This then is a great lesson taught in Matthew.

Luke 21 gives a further view of the world's course. It says, “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.” This distinctly points to the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, when it was invested with armies perhaps more completely than at any point of its eventful history. But not a word is here about “the abomination of desolation” or that “then shall be great tribulation” such as never had been, nor shall be. It only tells us “these be the days of vengeance”: two very different things. Here again we read, “But woe unto those who are with child and to those who give suck in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.” This was fulfilled in what befell the Jews when Titus took the city and “this people” passed into captivity for the second time. “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” So it came to pass. Jerusalem has been for many centuries trodden down by Gentiles. One national power after another was to have possession of the holy city. So it is still: that treading down yet goes on, for seasons allotted to Gentiles are not yet fulfilled.

Much more follows: “There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, sea roaring and rolling waves, men ready to expire through fear and expectation of the things coming on the habitable earth; for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” etc. These scenes did not take place when Titus took Jerusalem. We have had the capture of Jerusalem in verse 20, etc., after which Jerusalem is trodden down and must be till the seasons of Gentiles come to an end. But in the following verse we are transported into the final scenes. “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” The earth's destruction is not here intended, but the blessing that comes after the end of the age when God terminates the time of man's wickedness and misery and trouble and suffering. The coming of the Son of man is never coupled with the end of the world in any such sense, but with the close of Satan's misrule and the shining forth of the kingdom of God. For the world there can be no permanent general blessing till the Son of man comes in displayed power and glory to reign over it to God's glory.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 1-2

Now we turn to our primary scripture. The statement of the Spirit of God is most explicit. He beseeches the saints by the hope of Christ's presence, who will gather them together unto Himself, against the unfounded rumor that the day of the Lord, the day of judgment for the living, had actually arrived. The KJV wrongly reads “Christ” instead of “Lord,” and “is at hand” instead of “is present.” The day of Christ, as in Philippians 1: 10 and 2: 16 has different associations from the judgment of the living. However, the mistranslation of the verb is far more important because it falsifies the bearing of the passage, from which even those who correct it find it difficult to recover. The Greek means “is present” and nothing else. The true sense seemed so unintelligible if not incredible, to translators and commentators, that they gave the different meaning of “is at hand” or “imminent.” The same tense in the New Testament imports elsewhere definitely and invariably “present” (Rom. 8: 38; 1 Cor. 3: 22; 1 Cor. 7: 26; Gal. 1: 4 and Heb. 9: 9). In all these it unequivocally expresses the then present, repeatedly even in contrast with “at hand” as future, no matter how near.

Here are the two opening verses of 2 Thessalonians 2 according to the best text: “Now we beseech you, brethren, by (or, for the sake of) the presence (or, coming) of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in (or, from) your mind, nor yet troubled, either by Spirit or by word or by letter as though (or, from) us, as that the day of the Lord is present.” In verse 1 there is only one article binding together our gathering and the Lord's presence. The second “by” in the KJV must therefore disappear. Again, in the last clause of verse 2 “Christ” is read only in inferior copies and versions.

There remain the important questions of how to render ὑπὲρ in the first verse and ἐνέστηκεν in the second. As to the first, the connection with a verb of entreaty has not been adequately considered — that connection being the unique one of a motive from joy and hope to counteract a false alarm. As there is no other instance in the New Testament, it is not surprising that the rendering “by” or some equivalent should be unexampled there. “By” or “for the sake of” suits the sense.

As to the true and only legitimate meaning of ἐνέστηκεν, there ought to be no doubt. It was a common athenian word meaning something actually going on and not merely close at hand. “Present” seems the one and only meaning of the word in the known authors of Greece. There is not a single instance of “imminent”! It does not occur in the Septuagint except in the Apocryphal writings in 1 Esdras 9: 6; 1 Maccabes 12: 44; and 2 Maccabes 3: 17; 12: 3 where it can only mean “actually there,” nowhere “imminent.”

The American revisers here cleave to the misconception and render it “is just at hand,” but they cannot point to a single case where any correct Greek writer ever employs the verb in any other tense except “present.”

It is well known that there is a different phrase ( ἐγγύς ) for “nearness” in the New Testament and in all other writings, and if emphasis were sought, the verb in the perfect was used (ἤγγικε ), as also ἐφέστηκε (2 Tim. 4: 6). No exact scholar would sanction the laxity of supposing that the apostle confounds the meaning of two kindred words, each of which has its own precise sense: ἐνέστ. “is present” and ἐφέστ. “is close at hand.” On the face of it, the erroneous rendering makes the apostle contradict himself, for in Romans 13: 12 he tells the saints that the day [of the Lord] is at hand. How could the misleaders in Thessalonica be charged with error if they had only taught that the day of the Lord is at hand?

The false teachers of Thessalonica fraudulently alleged the apostle himself taught the untruth that the day of the Lord had actually arrived. This error was filling the saints, not with enthusiasm, joy or excitement, but with panic, especially as inspiration was pretended and the teachers supposedly had a letter from Paul himself. Its effect was agitation and trouble that the dread day was present, not over-wrought warmth about His coming as very near. Thus in every point of view the KJV rendering is a blunder which would set the apostle at war with himself, and also conceive a state among the deceived Thessalonians which disagrees with what is clearly described in the same verse.

SIGN OF FALSE TEACHERS

There is an unquestionable sign of false teachers which is here commended to the notice of all Christians, for we need it in these days and may need it yet more before the Lord comes. Observe that the false teacher ordinarily does one of two things, sometimes both. Either he lulls asleep those who ought to be roused, keeping them entranced in the deadly slumber of fallen nature, or he tries to alarm true believers by endeavoring to shake their confidence in the grace and truth of God, filling their minds with groundless fear. Not possessing peace himself, he is often deceived as well as a deceiver, for he does not know in his own experience the peace and joy in believing. The false teacher either injures the children of God by weakening their confidence in God, or he lulls with opiates those whom God would have to be awakened from their dangerous insensibility. In short, false teachers flatter the world or seek to alarm the true children of God. Very often they cause mischief in both ways.

The truth does exactly the contrary. Its effect is always to rouse people from their state of guilty indifference or their self-confidence, setting before them their fearful danger for eternity. It tells them of a divine Savior and a present salvation. There is also the comforting, establishing and leading on of believers into all their privileges and responsibilities, their proper joys in communion with the Lord and one another, and their growth in the knowledge of His mind and ways for worship and service.

BACK TO VERSE 1 AND 2: THE DAY OF THE LORD

The Revisers assume the apostle is entreating the saints in verse 1 regarding what he had just written and was about to teach them more, for which περὶ would be the correct preposition, as we may see in John 17 and elsewhere. But if he besought them, as I am persuaded he did, by their joyful hope of the Lord's coming against the false notion that the day of the Lord with its terrors as actually come, it is no mere question of the sense of ὑπὲρ in general, but of what is required in this context, of which there is no parallel known to me in the New Testament. In other words, what led to the choice of “touching” here was a wrong interpretation of the verse in which the preposition occurs. Had the real difference been seen, all would have agreed, if not in the “by” of the KJV with most translators till of late, in the nearly equivalent “for the sake of” which is its frequent usage.

What were those up to who misled the Thessalonians? They pretended to have the Holy Spirit and word for their cry that the day of the Lord was come. Growing bolder in their impiety they pretended to have a letter from the apostle, affirming that “the day of the Lord is present.” It is certain from the terms employed that the “letter” alluded to was not the apostle's, for he says “that ye be not soon shaken in your mind or be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from (or, through) us.” Thus is intimated, not the letter that he had written, but a letter “as by us” — purporting to be from us — with which he had nothing to do. It was a forged letter, not his First Epistle which we have.

The pretended letter was to the effect that the day of the Lord was already there. Now the day of the Lord, according to the Bible, is to be one of trouble and anguish, a day of clouds and darkness for the world. You may read this abundantly in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel and the prophets generally. On what pretext then was the cry raised by the forger? The Thessalonians were suffering great trouble and persecution for the truth's sake. Indeed the apostle had in 1 Thessalonians 3: 4-5 expressed his concern lest the tempter might tempt them somehow through the tribulation they were passing through, but he gives no license for calling it the day of the Lord. The false teacher seems to have used the existing fact of much trial to allege that the day of the Lord had actually arrived. In the Old Testament the “day of Jehovah” is repeatedly applied in a partial or incipient sense (Isa. 13, Isa. 19) etc. The saints indeed knew from 1 Thessalonians 5 that it would be a day of fearful trial, everything meanwhile growing worse and worse till the evil would finally be put down by the victorious power of the Lord.

Accordingly the apostle in 2 Thessalonians 1 points to the revelation of the Lord from heaven, with angels of His might, in flaming fire rendering vengeance to those who know not God (the Gentiles) and to those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ (wicked professed Christians or Jews, etc.), when He shall come [not to take up the saints for the heavenlies, but] to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered at in all who believed . . . “in that day.” Why fear it then?

THE LORD COMES FOR US FIRST

On this occasion the misleaders had contrived to excite considerable anxiety and trouble as if the day of the Lord had actually come. Not at all, says the apostle: how can you forget the bright hope that the Lord is coming to gather you to Himself?

“We beseech you, brethren, by (or, for the sake of) the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to him, that ye be not soon shaken in your mind nor troubled.”

He thus appeals in verse 1 to a known motive of joy and confidence in their hope; and from verse 3 he goes into the prophetic reasons which demonstrate its complete refutation. It is never said that the saints await the day of the Lord to be taken up and meet Him in the air. The coming of the Lord effects their translation before His day as we shall see. They are to be an object of wonder in that day when seen glorified with Him.

Thus “the presence of the Lord” and “his day” represent two connected but different thoughts often confounded by people — the one for the heavenly saints consummating grace, the other executing judgment. There is little reason why they should be confounded because the apostle had already clearly spoken on them both in his First Epistle. In 1 Thessalonians 4: 15-17 he describes the coming of the Lord, not His day.

“For this we say to you in the Lord's word, that we the living who remain (or, are left) unto the presence of the Lord shall in no wise precede those put to sleep. Because the Lord Himself with call of command, with archangel's voice and with the trump of God, shall descend from heaven; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then ( ἔπειτα ) we the living who remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in [the] air; and thus we shall ever be with the Lord.”

This was a new revelation, as he implies in opening the subject (v. 15). The day of the Lord was not a new revelation, for there is hardly any great topic more frequent in the Old Testament from Isaiah to Malachi. Even where this phrase may not be employed, it is involved habitually. But in no case did the Old Testament make known what the Thessalonian saints are here taught by the apostle. They are distinct truths.

Hence having finished the statement of the new truth of the coming of the Lord for His saints at the end of 1 Thessalonians 4, the apostle turns to the old truth in the beginning of 1 Thessalonians 5.

“But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that ye should be written to.” [What a contrast with the foregoing new revelation!]

“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. When they may say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall in no wise escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should overtake you as a thief,” etc.

Is it possible to conceive a sharper distinction? We see on its face what a mighty difference there is between “the coming of the Lord” and “the day of the Lord,” as the apostle describes them. At His coming for us, all saints until then departed, and we the living who remain, are caught up to meet Him in the air. “The day of the Lord” comes later. His presence is to our everlasting joy, our great triumph over death, whereas the day is His unsparing judgment of the living wicked. How astonishing that any saints should lump them in one!

This is confirmed by what was written some time after to the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52.

“Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all be put to sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

Paul does not call the resurrection “a mystery”* when he wrote of it in this very chapter. It was not a mystery, for the Old Testament had revealed it. The early book of Job tells us of the resurrection of man (Job 14); not only the privileged case of the just in Job 19, but that of “man” who must die and rise, yet not till the heavens be no more — in perfect accord with the two resurrections of Revelation 20. There is no “mystery” in the two resurrections. It was a truth for both just and unjust, which the Jewish adversaries also received, as Paul told them before Felix the governor. But the coming of the Lord to raise the dead saints and to change the living and translate both to Himself, is the fresh word of the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4 and the “mystery” of 1 Corinthians 15.

Thus the Lord's coming with His saints was a truth announced by Enoch and again by Zechariah (Zech. 14: 5). This thus was not a mystery any more than their resurrection. It is repeated in 1 Thessalonians 3: 13 and elsewhere in the New Testament. The “mystery” is in His coming for them as in 1 Corinthians 15: 51 and 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17 in order that they might come with Him, as well as for other ends.

One of these objects for the earth which required the rapture to heaven is the divine purpose to prepare a people here below for the Lord at His appearing. After the rapture God will work for a remnant from both Jew and Gentile during the frightful crisis when He fills the earth with His chastening judgments, which culminate in the Lord's personal infliction when He comes to judge and reign. The Psalms and the Prophets shed much light on especially the godly Jewish remnant. He works by His Spirit on their hearts before and during the great tribulation. The Revelation is as plain at the end of the New Testament as the Gospel of Matthew at its beginning, that there is to be a wave of blessing for Jews and Gentiles during that brief and awful time after the Christian witnesses are withdrawn and seen in heaven. Revelation 7 and 14 are distinct testimonies to this, along with the fact that there is no longer a hint of a Church on earth. Rather, a new sight is behold above — the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders who represent in symbol the saints of the Old and New Testaments in heaven around God and the Lamb. “The things which are” will then be over and “the things which are about to happen after these” will next be accomplished.

The sealed of Israel's tribes and the countless crowd out of all the nations (Rev. 5-7) are in different ways objects of divine goodness at that time of trouble. They are not joined together in one body as is the Church. They are separately blessed at this preparatory epoch as they will be in the millennial reign when Israel will form the nearest circle on earth. The nations will be blessed richly but will be willing and glad that the firstborn Son of Jehovah should have the first place in honor and dominion here below. What confusion it would make to conceive the Church co-existing with this! Take a Jew converted by the gospel of the kingdom and looking up for Christ's redemption by power. Consider his perplexity if he heard the Church with Jewish and Gentile distinctions removed, praising in the Spirit concerning a redemption by His blood already enjoyed, and for Christ in each the hope of heavenly glory with Himself on high. Which redemption, he would ask, am I to receive and confess? These heavenly glories with Christ the Heir of all things, and this union in one body so opposed to Law, Psalms and Prophets? Or my portion in distinction from the Gentiles and waiting for the Messiah to accomplish, for us the children, the promises to the father and the new covenant to both houses of Israel?

The book of Revelation clears all up since it presents the saints of the heavenly calling on high, and earthly saints, Jewish and Gentile, here below during the tribulation, alike awaiting the Lord's appearing for the glory to be manifested both in heaven and on earth.

THE JUDGMENT SEAT OF CHRIST

There is also another reason on the heavenly side which calls for the heavenly saints to be with the Lord above before He and they are manifested in glory. Each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God. We shall therefore all be placed, though in differing times and for opposite ends, before the judgment seat of God (Romans 14). It is to Christ personally that we shall then bow. We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ that each may receive the things [done] through (in) the body, according to those he did, whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5). This will take place for the saint in his glorified state (and what a comfort this will be), but before the Lord comes in His kingdom, for the respective place of each in the kingdom is determined by that manifestation of ourselves to Christ.

The glorified saints are shown perfectly at home above in God's presence from Revelation 4 to 19 during the sad season of earth's greatest darkness and abomination and misery. Only before the “bridals” of the Lamb come do we hear of His wife making herself ready! That judgment seat manifestation to Christ is needful for her! The marriage of the Lamb is followed by His appearing and His saints with Him (Rev. 19). They obviously had been caught up and in the Father's house long before.

RECEIVE US, THEN REIGN

There are three applications of the Lord's presence at three separate occasions — to the Christians, to Israel and to the Gentiles. Matthew 24: 31 wholly differs in context from Matthew 25: 31. The latter is severed from the former by a considerable interval of time. If Israel thus is dealt with before the Gentiles, it is the right order for the earth. But proof is at least as strong that the Lord's first and highest object is to receive to Himself on high those destined to be with Him where He is in the intimacy of divine love and heavenly glory, as well as to reign over those delivered earthly Jews and saved Gentiles.

The heavenly saints take precedence and are caught up to be with the Lord for the Father's house before these Jews or Gentiles on earth are converted. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so is Christ's taking His bride above. Christ's rejection by Jews and Gentiles on the earth gave occasion to God's highly exalting Him above after a new sort.

Those who identify the Lord's presence here with Matthew 24 and kindred Scriptures would do well to weigh what has satisfied their brethren that they refer to distinct acts and differ in nature, each with its own personal object — the latter for the earth and the former for heaven. There will be points of resemblance between them because their respective objects are to be blessed in a new and wondrous way above and below. But our blessing will be by a removal on high characterized only by grace; theirs by a judgment that overwhelms their enemies below.

In 1 Thessalonians 4 we see only the risen and changed saints who are to be with Him then and always. These are those who hear His call and, seeing Him as He is, are henceforth like Him, their bodies of humiliation transformed into conformity to His body of glory. In Matthew 24 it is a question of “flesh” being saved through the preceding perils, without a hint of resurrection or change when they see the appearing of the Son of man. Then shall all the tribes of the land mourn, which is foreign to 1 Thessalonians 4. “They shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” but nobody is said to be changed by it. Rather, after this He is said to send His angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect (of Israel) from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. This description widely differs from the heavenly saints changed and caught up to Him on high, as in 1 Corinthians 15, Philippians 3, and 1 Thessalonians 4.

Colossians 3: 3-4 goes farther and positively excludes Matthew 24 from the possibility of being classed with these Scriptures. It states that there is no appearance of the Lord to all mankind when He comes for His joint-heirs, till they are already changed and manifested with Him. “Whenever Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” Till then our life is hid with Christ in God. When He appears, we (are not caught up, but) appear with Him in glory.

In 1 Thessalonians 5 the apostle had explained the contrast of “the day” with “the presence” or coming of the Lord for His own. The latter was a new revelation which they had not known before. As to the former, they knew accurately that the day comes as a thief in the night. Whenever men may say Peace and safety, then sudden destruction comes upon them as the throes upon her that is with child, and they shall in no wise escape. The apostle's assurance is clear that this was for the sleeping world, not for sons of light and day as they all were. Hence it was inexcusable for the Thessalonian saints to listen to the fraudulent alarm of their misleaders that the day of sudden destruction had arrived. Likewise, it is inexcusable for others to confound the joyful meeting of the Savior and the saved above, and the terrible destruction on the men of the world. It is this confusion that underlies the mis-rendering of ὑπὲρ in 2 Thessalonians 2: 1, and of ἐνέστηκεν in 2 Thessalonians 2: 2.

Nearly all teachers take for granted that in the former the apostle alluded to what he was about to teach them. On the contrary, it is an appeal to the comforting hope of the Lord's coming and their gathering together unto Him, as a motive for rejecting the false teaching about His day. Further, from verse 3 he shows the prophetic grounds why that day, not His coming, could not arrive till the evils were fully out in the open which then were to be judged.

It is urged by some that the saints only go up into the air to meet the Lord there, and immediately come down with Him. Where is their proof? They may use Matthew 24: 31, but this verse clearly applies to the gathering of the elect of Israel after the Son of man is seen coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. In this connection there is no hint of the resurrection or of the translation above.

Colossians 3: 4 is plain and conclusive that the words of Matthew do not and cannot legitimately apply to the risen saints. The apostle Paul clearly states that “when Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also (not be caught up, but) be manifested with Him in glory.” Matthew 24: 31 thus cannot refer to the glorified ones spoken of by Paul because this Gospel considers elect Israelites gathered from all parts of the earth to the Son of man after His manifestation: Paul considers Christians manifested along with Christ in glory when He who is now hidden is revealed. Colossians excludes all question of Israel here, and considers only the saints changed into the likeness of Christ's glory: the context of Matthew 24 is occupied with the future saints of the chosen people on the earth and has nothing to do with the risen believers for their rapture or their manifestation with Christ. The earthly people are in view, and the Son of man coming to judge and establish His kingdom here below.

Further, in the latter half of Revelation 19 we have the beginning of the day of the Lord (or of the presence of the Son of man). It is the prophetic description of what the apostle briefly sketched in 2 Thessalonians 8 when the Lord Jesus shall destroy the lawless one with the breath of His mouth and shall annul Him by the appearing of His coming. Here we are not told of the saints being caught up to meet the Lord in the air, but of the armies in heaven following the Lord when He emerges to judge and make war in righteousness. Those armies are saintly and not angelic (though angels also are present then). This is clear, among other proofs of special association with Christ, from their garb of “white pure byss”* just previously interpreted as “the righteousnesses of the saints.” The glorified saints therefore follow the Warrior-King out of heaven: a truth which already had been implied in Revelation 17: 14.

Indeed, the scene just preceding those coming armies is the marriage supper of the Lamb which is in heaven. This proves still more strongly that the saints who form the Bride were already there. When the evidence is traced in Revelation, those saints in a glorified state are symbolically shown to be there from chapters 4 and 5. Who can think of disembodied spirits being seated on thrones?

The coming or presence ( παρουσία ) of the Lord is a wider term, embracing the day as well as what is just before the day. It may be qualified by “the Son of man,” that is, of the Lord in a judicial point of view, so as to coalesce with “the day,” and not simply imply His presence, but its display, as in the phrase, “the coming of the Son of man.” Thus His coming applies to His day, but the appearing, manifestation, revelation or day is fixed to the time when He comes with all His saints to set up His kingdom by judgments. The first object is to gather home those He loves. Love always secures the object of affection first. Taking vengeance is not the primary object.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 3

The coming of the Lord then is closely associated with the gathering of the saints, just as the day of the Lord is clearly associated with the judgment inflicted on His enemies here below. Hence we find here,

“Let no man deceive you by any means. For it [will not be] except there come the falling away (or apostasy) first.”

“That day shall not come” in the KJV is an insertion of the translators, marked therefore by italics, though substantially correct. The day was not to come till the apostasy had first arrived — the public abandonment of Christianity throughout Christendom. How men deceive themselves when they think that all goes on to progress and triumph for the gospel or the Church through existing means!

We will have the victory when Christ comes, not before. Scripture reveals a very different and more humbling prospect. “The day” will not come unless the apostasy comes first. The charger of modern infidelity is preparing the way for the apostasy. People are bearing the Christian name, yet giving up all the Christian substance. Leaders still carry on the dead forms while the spirit of real Christendom has fled. This will grow and extend. The outward and public recognition of the truth is being destroyed everywhere on earth. There will soon be no outward homage paid to Christianity. The governments of the world are gradually stripping off all real respect for the Bible as God's revelation, even if they yet keep up a formal connection with Christendom.

It was a most seductive evil when the Christians in Constantine's day accepted an alliance with the world, but it is a totally different and most solemn issue for the world when it casts off all its profession of Christianity. Deep was the Christians' loss when they sought the world's recognition, but what an awful day for the world when it is so tired of the union as to throw off the profession! The consequence will be that the slender tie which attaches people generally to the reading of the Bible or attending service will be broken. Granted that there is no reality, no divine life, no true or acceptable honor paid to the Lord, in carrying on a merely outward profession, but people who “go to church” (as it is called) hear the Word of God and Christ named with honor. When this is no longer recognized, they will give it up as an antiquated prejudice and go to shoot, fish, ride or drink on His day. They will occupy themselves in reading anything but the Bible. The most rapid moral decay will ensue. Not so with the elect of God. As the evil progresses, the real saints will become more evident. They will by the Holy Spirit rest only on the Word of God and such testimony of Jesus as is then rendered, but unbelievers will be engulfed in the apostasy.

This is what is before the world as its doom: the written Word says so. People prefer to look for a pleasant prospect because they dislike and dread the divine warning. But this unbelief only hastens the evil day.

First Thessalonians was the first written by the apostle; the second epistle was written shortly after. Thus, from the beginning of revealed Christianity, from the first communications of the Spirit of God to the churches, such is the solemn warning. Those who profess the gospel will abandon it before the end comes, for that day will not come “except there come the falling away first.” It is not merely a falling away here and a falling away there, but the falling away, the apostasy in the fullest sense.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 4

Further, “that man of sin will be revealed, the son of perdition.” There was once a man of righteousness, the Savior, but He was rejected. There will be a man of sin, the son of perdition, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.”

We are aware that many apply this to the Pope of Rome. Although we regard his system as a frightful delusion, even Babylon, how can people believe that “the apostasy” has arrived yet. No, the apostasy will be the result of despising the gospel, of trifling with the truth, of keeping up forms that are unreal and then rejecting them and all divine revelation in cold, proud, reckless and definite unbelief.

The apostasy will occur as far as Christendom extends. Wherever the gospel has been preached, or at any rate the Lord professed, the apostasy will be the issue. It does not mean the end of the Jews or of the heathen. The apostle is here speaking of that broad scene wherein the Lord's name has been professed. Christendom has not yet abandoned openly and avowedly the New Testament as a falsehood, and the Savior as an impostor. It is surely coming for Protestants as well as Papists, and all the rest. The day of the Lord cannot come till all is fully out. “Because [it will not be] except the falling away shall have first come, and the man of sin been revealed.”

The mystery of lawlessness still is at work (v. 7), which was working when the apostle wrote: so early had the principle of utter ruin entered. There is piety in all orthodox sects and even in Popery, where in spite of its corruption and idolatry, the fundamental truths of the Trinity and even of the atonement are owned more than in some Protestant sects. The present mixed state of truth and error is not what is here meant by the apostasy, any more than the Gnostic departure of “some” from the faith referred to in 1 Timothy 4: 1-3. It is a general, complete and open departure.

While we abhor the Papist system, the chapter before us with others, speak of a still more awful revolt from the gospel, the Church, the Christ, the Trinity and of God's revelation as a whole before the end comes, or even before the revelation of the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus is to destroy, personally appearing for this purpose as well as for other blessed objects.

The climax is the lawless one who “exalts himself.” Jesus humbled Himself and only exalted God, Himself God but become man, the Man of righteousness. Here is a man, “the man of sin,” pre-eminently the opposer and self-exalter against all that is called God or object of reverence. He is the personal adversary of the Lord Jesus. As the Lord said to the Jews, they would not have Him who came in His Father's name, so they will receive him who comes in his own name (John 5: 43). At the end of this age he will come. Accordingly, he is found as Satan's winding-up, not merely of apostate Christendom, but also of apostate Judaism. It is man, Jew and professing Christian, in revolt.

The connection with Christendom already has been shown. Now we may briefly touch on Judaism. This personage “opposeth and exalteth himself exceedingly above all that is called God or object of veneration; so that he himself sitteth down in the temple of God, showing forth himself that he is God.” As the true Church began in Jerusalem, the great result of the apostasy will find itself conspicuously in Jerusalem. It was this city which saw Pentecost; so far as the world could discern, it beheld on the earth the Assembly which belongs to heaven. Jerusalem will see the judgment of that which, long a counterfeit, will end in a manifestation of hell — the fruit of the amalgamation of Christendom with Judaism.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 5-7

The apostle speaks in verse 5 of what he had said of the coming apostasy and of the man of sin with his blasphemous assumption and defiance of God in His very temple. “Remember ye not that, being yet with you, I told you of these things.” It is after this, in verse 6, that he goes on, “And now ye know that which restraineth, that he may be revealed in his own season.”

He does not say that he had mentioned or explained the restraining power to them, but that they knew that by its action the man of sin could not be revealed till his own season. They may have gathered what that power was from the known place of the Holy Spirit as exercising power for good.

When that evil hour arrives, the powers that be, at least as far as the Roman earth is concerned, will no longer be ordained of God. The dragon will give its emperor its power and his throne and great authority (Rev. 13: 3). The ten horns, his satellites, receive authority as kings for the same hour with the Beast (the symbol of that Empire in its last form). They have one mind and give their power to the Beast (Rev. 17: 12, 13). Finally, the Beast and False Prophet perish awfully together, as do the kings and their armies. The Roman empire is long gone, but He who restrains is still here. And He will restrain till the moment comes for that very empire (which existed when the apostle wrote and ceased to be as now for so many centuries)* to emerge from the abyss. It is to be ordained of Satan on its revival, to its everlasting destruction.

While the Roman Empire was in power, God owned it, heathen though it was, and the restraint still wrought. But the Empire fell in the fifth century, and the man of sin did not rise. God's providence wrought, and He owned in His providence the Teutonic hordes and the kingdoms which took the shattered empire's place, as He did the Romans before, and does the powers that be still. The restraining power still works, and will work till the dreaded time when the Church joins her Head for heavenly glory. For a while after that event the Holy Spirit still will work and control, according to the Apocalyptic expression of “the seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth.” It is only in the latter half of the unfulfilled seventieth week of Daniel, the 1260 days of which the Revelation treats, that Satan plays that terrible game on earth when he sets up the Beast and the man of sin sits down in God's temple.

Now if this is the simple and sure truth of Scripture, we can better understand why the apostle was reticent. God may not have revealed to him, as He did through the beloved John, that strange quasi-resurrection of the fallen Roman empire, destined to rise again under Satan's power when the restrainer is gone. Yet it is to receive from the appearing Lord, its doom in the person of its eighth head in the lake of fire. The Spirit of God, as a spirit of government, has restrained all through and will till just before the end of the age. When the dragon is allowed to govern without check for a brief time, He will cease to restrain. To imagine (as some do) that the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the powers that be since the Papacy is as great an error as to overlook the Satanic reign of terror and blasphemy during its allotted “little while” before the Lord is revealed in flaming fire to destroy it and to bring in His own world-kingdom in power, righteousness and glory.

The truth of the Holy Spirit governmentally restraining may have been known to the Thessalonian saints in a general way, but not written down for wiser and better reasons than any dread of the Roman government. Daniel had already given the empire's destruction, as foreshown to Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2, 34-35, 40-44, and to himself in Daniel 7: 7-8, 19-26, as it was yet more fully shown in Revelation 13, 14, 16, 17, 19 after the death of the apostle Paul.

The Thessalonian saints, like others who believe in that unspeakably terrible consummation at the end of the age, knew that it will result from the allowed apparent triumph of the lawless one, the instrument of Satan to the last degree. They knew therefore that God, working by His Spirit as He had always done, and now especially to Christ's glory since Pentecost, alone could hinder that cherished aim of the arch-enemy. The Roman empire while it lasted might be and was an outward hindrance; and when it fell, other governors, ordained of God stood in its way. To have named only the Roman Empire would have been a mistake which divine wisdom avoided. The particular barrier, τὸ κατέχον, might vary, as it did, but ὁ κατέχων the restrainer, abides to use providentially “the powers that be” till the Roman empire rises from the abyss for the final crisis.

Further, being both a power and a person (i.e. spoken of as neuter as well as masculine) the Restrainer can not apply to an empire, but can apply to none so well as to the Spirit of God. He still, to sustain His testimony to Christ and for the sake of the children of God, continues to hinder the final manifestation of Satan's power. However, when the Church is gone up on high, it seems that the Spirit will act not only to convert people, but as a spirit of government (Rev. 5: 6) till God allows Satan to do his worst for his short time. The Spirit of God then will cease to restrain the working of the evil one, who will dare all things against the Lord.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 8

THE APPEARING OF HIS PRESENCE

“And then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall destroy with the breath of His mouth and shall annul with the appearing of His coming.”

The Lord Jesus is the appointed destroyer of this fearful “lawless one” who is elsewhere called the antichrist. Even now there are many antichrists, says John, but when the antichrist comes, he will be brought down by the Lord Jesus in person appearing from heaven. The addition of “Jesus” (to the KVJV) is certainly genuine. It gives more definiteness to the expression and thus excludes any mere dealing in providence.

Here recall the first verse. The apostle does not say the day of the Lord or the appearing of His coming, when Christ gathers the saints. “We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him.” These two wondrous events are so closely associated by one article in the Greek, that the second “by” in the KJV is an injurious intrusion. But, when the destruction of the man of sin is in question, Paul speaks, not of His coming merely, but of the appearing, the epiphany of His coming. If it were a display when the Lord comes to gather His saints, why should “the appearing” of it be expressed in verse 8 only? Why is its “appearing” avoided when He comes (v. 1) to gather together His saints to Himself?

Is it not manifest from the phrase itself that the coming of the Lord does not of itself imply His appearing? How else do you account for the indifference in the wording of verse 8? When His appearing was meant, it was necessary to say so, and this is when He judges. When it is the dealing of His grace in translating us to heaven, His coming or presence is named, but not a word about His appearing. When the lawless one shall be destroyed, it is not merely His presence or coming, but the appearing of it. He could not appear without coming; He might come without being seen beyond a select company, but now we hear of the display of His presence. When He comes to take up His saints, what will the world have to do with it? It was His own love which saved them. They belonged to Him, not to the world. He comes to claim His own. He does not make the world a spectator of His actions before He appears in glory for the destruction of the antichrist.

Where is, or what implies the world here? The apostle is showing how God will bring the departed saints with Christ. The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a call of command κελεύσματι, with archangel's voice, and trump of God. It is exclusively to raise the sleeping saints and change us who remain alive for His presence, when both are caught up together in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Not a word implies that the world hears at that moment; not a word that earth and heaven are shaken. Not only is there total silence as to these bold importations, but we are expressly taught by the same apostle that, “when He shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory” (Col. 3: 4). We must therefore have been caught up before the common manifestation of Him and His in the same glory.

We have seen how different it will be when the Son of man comes on the clouds o heaven with power and great glory to gather together His elect of Israel from the four winds. Here the rapture on high is not hinted. It is His presence for the earthly people, and therefore for all on earth to see (Rev. 1: 7).

The distinction therefore of 2 Thessalonians 2: 1 and 8 (the presence of Christ simply, and the appearing of His presence) is precise, instruction and undeniable. The one is to gather together the saints to Christ above; the other is for Him (and for all His saints thus gathered, to appear with Him) to crush His enemies. It is then that every eye shall see Him, as His appearing concerns every person on earth. Timothy was solemnly charged in the First Epistle to keep the commandment spotless and irreproachable till the Lord's appearing because responsibility always refers to that day. The rapture is grace to all the saints equally caught up to Christ on high. The appearing will manifest the fidelity or the failure of each saint. Hence the apostle still more narrowly charges His appearing and His kingdom on Timothy in preaching the Word and in all his other service. Paul connects the crown of righteousness which the righteous Judge will render “in that day” (not at His presence simply) with His appearing, to those who love it.

The epiphany or appearing of Christ is not secret. The Spirit of God draws a plain and sure distinction between the presence of the Lord to gather His own and the appearing of His presence to destroy the lawless one and his adherents. If His presence necessarily conveyed appearing, how could the apostle write both 2 Thessalonians 2: 1 and 8 in the same context? If he meant us to learn the distinction, how could he have intimated it more exactly?

The world will have bowed down to the antichrist. Gentiles as well as Jews will have accepted him. Just as the blessed Lord Jesus is both the true Messiah and the God of Israel, so this lawless personage, the man of sin, will set himself up to be both Messiah and Jehovah of Israel. Kings, classes, and masses will be led away by the fatal delusion. The same unbelief which rejects the true will cling to the false. It is Satan's woe for the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea — for men under settled government and for those in a revolutionary state. These are the dismal prospects of the world according to the Scriptures. A far different future fills the imagination of men generally. Why wonder at this? How can they truly predict what is to be? No man can discern the future unless by faith he profits from the light of God's prediction and declines going beyond it.

2 THESSALONIANS 2: 9-12

What is particularly awful for that day is the intimation in verse 12 of our chapter, in connection with the lawless one.

“Whose presence is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to those who perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this reason God sendeth them a working (energy) of error, that they should believe the lie, that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Here we see that Satan will work in imitative counteraction of God's power that wrought in Christ. It is no trickery of priests or monks, no winking Madonnas or liquefying blood or profane fire ostensibly of the Holy Spirit. The same terms are here used for Satan's energy in the man of sin, as Peter employed in Acts 2: 22 of the Lord Jesus as demonstrated by God to the Jews. On the other hand God will give up people by a judicial blindness to believe the lie of Satan that especially this man of sin is supreme God, so that he even dares to sit down in the sanctuary, showing that he is God. It will be divine retribution: people had rejected the truth: they had no love for it that they might be saved. They imputed the undeniable works of power and wonders and signs of the Lord Jesus to Beelzebub: they ascribe to the only true God those works of Satan by this minion of his, the man of sin. As the Jews were at last given up to blindness for their unbelief, so will Christendom be given up. Jews, professing Christians, etc., will combine to worship the son of perdition, as Jews and Gentiles united to crucify the Lord of glory. The last will be worse than the first. “I am come in My Father's name and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

At this very time among the distant and till then heathen nations, there will be a great and true work of God's mercy. Godly Jews, forced to flee from the antichrist in Jerusalem, will be used of God to win a countless throng of Gentiles by preaching the gospel of the kingdom, as we learn by comparing Matthew 24: 14 with Matthew 25: 31 to the end, also with Revelation 7: 9 and Revelation 14: 6-7. It is an “everlasting gospel.”

The lawless one here depicted must await the dreaded hour when God sends judicial darkness and when the wetsern powers and the Beast (animated by Satan like the False Prophet) combine against Jehovah and His Anointed. But the Lamb shall overcome them (for He is Lord of lords and King of kings) and those who are with Him are called and chosen and faithful (Rev. 17: 14, Rev. 19: 14).

God alone knows and can tell the future. But God has revealed it, and we have the responsibility of believing or of being infidel. A man cannot truly believe these things without their leaving a divine impress upon his soul. If you have Christ the hope in your heart, show it in your hand and on your forehead by seeking to stand true to Him whom you believe. The Lord Jesus is coming, but He is to appear also. He is not merely coming to receive His own, when the result will be in a moment, in the twinkling on an eye (1 Cor. 15: 52).

The Lord has many ways of taking His own to Himself without death. Suppose the Lord were to cause a tremendous earthquake. The wise men of the world would say that the Christians had been swallowed up in the earthquake. It is easy enough to conceive a way in which the Lord could conceal the matter, but He does not conceal from us, nor will He from men, what He will do to the misleader of the Roman world. He will not conceal His judgment from the world, or even the various forms and times in which it will fall. Then certainly He will be manifest to every eye. Hence we find that, whenever judgment is in question, manifestation characterizes it.

When the Lord Jesus in His sovereign grace called Saul of Tarsus, his companions were allowed to feel the tokens of some extraordinary action going on, though they knew nothing about it. There were many going to Damascus, yet only one man saw the Lord Jesus. All the rest heard only an inarticulate sound. They did not heart the words, but Saul of Tarsus did. Then, again, we find Philip caught up and carried to another place, but what did the world know of all that? There was a subsequent occasion when the apostle Paul was caught up into the third heaven. But this was so far from being divulged for the sake of the world, that the apostle says only “whether in body or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth.” Nothing, then, is easier than for the Lord to conceal or show things partially on these occasions, but He will display them on the grandest scale when the judgment of the world comes, after previously His people.

SERVICE AND THE LORD'S APPEARING

There is a bearing on service. Timothy was to keep the injunction, laid on him, spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 6: 14). There is a pressure of responsibility, and responsibility in Scripture is connected with His appearing, as sovereign grace is connected with His coming and receiving us to Himself for the Father's house. But it is false to conclude that our abiding on earth till Christ's appearing is implied in keeping the apostle's injunction, any more for us than for Timothy. Neither departure to be with Christ nor being caught up to be with Him at His coming hinders like fidelity on our part or on his.

In 2 Timothy 4: 1, 8, responsibility is again stressed, not only for Timothy but for all saints who love His appearing. The verse is as plain as it is solemn and important. “Henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge will award to me in that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved (and do love) His appearing.” His coming for us would here be quite inappropriate because it would simply imply being caught up to be ever with Him. But His appearing is the day when faithfulness will be revealed publicly, and the work of each will be made manifest. If the work abide the test of that day, each shall receive reward according to his own labor. Besides, even now to love the appearing of the One who will judge every evil thing and set right the world long disordered by the Serpent, is the deepest joy because all will be to His praise whose appearing will alone bring it to pass. Were one filled with earthly care or courting wealth and honor of men, how could one love His appearing who will judge it all and establish His righteous reign? It is indeed a “blessed hope” (Titus 2: 13), though it will be much greater to be with the Lord Himself in the Father's house, beholding His glory outside and above the world (John 17: 24).

REVELATION 17 AND 21 CONTRASTED:

THE HARLOT AND THE BRIDE

In Revelation 17, two evil objects of judgment are set before us; one called the great Harlot, the other the Beast. The unclean one is seen sitting upon many waters “with whom the kings of the earth,” etc. (vv. 1-6). At first the two are together: the corrupt woman is seated upon a well-known and remarkably characterized Beast — the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. Much may be gathered by comparing verse 1 here with Revelation 21: 9-10. “And there came unto me” etc. Is it not plain from the comparison that the one is the counterpart of the other? Babylon, the harlot, is Satan's sad contrast to the bride, the Lamb's wife! The bride of the Lamb is the holy city having the glory of God. Babylon corrupts herself with the kings of the earth, to their corruption also. This explains why she is called “Harlot.” She likewise is the great ruling city of the world, which has her kingdom over the kings.

It is not so with the Church glorified, the body of Christ, the Lamb's wife. “And the nations shall walk by her light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory unto her” (the heavenly city). The bride is said to be “the holy city, Jerusalem,” that comes down out of heaven from God. This, then, is the holy (not the great) city — a known error in the KJV. The fact that the holy city, Jerusalem, is the Church glorified, helps us understand Babylon. What is the religious body which under the shelter of Christ's name, pretends to be the mother of all the churches? Can anyone hesitate? Was there ever a system of such varied idolatry, hypocritical corruption and atrocious cruelty in the Savior's n name.

There can be no reasonable doubt about the meaning of Babylon, but, as if to preclude the possibility, we have several marks. First, the once dominated the Beast as none else ever did, arrayed in all the world's splendour and earth's richest ornaments. Next, she abandoned herself to illicit union with the kings of the earth for their gifts of patronage. Then, her golden cup was full of abominations, and “the unclean things of her fornications” was beyond all rivalry. Lastly, she is a vindictive claimant, the most unrelenting of persecutors, drunk with the blood of the saints. So clear is her identification that one needs not even to mention her name. Surely the truth must be very evident when it is unnecessary to say who she is to the most unlettered, where the Bible is read.

THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Nor is this all we are told here. The last verse says, “The woman is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” There is a distinction we may now note. The chapter does not confound the harlot and the woman. It is the woman that is declared to be the symbol of the ruling city. The better history is known, the more it will be felt that Rome is meant. This one city ruled more and longer than any other since the world began. Everybody in the apostle's day would know where this city, built on the seven hills, lay and what was its name.

This city was to become the harlot, and to exercise power over the Roman beast (empire), the Beast of seven heads and of ten horns. At first sight, there is a difficulty here, for the Roman empire has disappeared. It existed and has fallen. How then are we to understand the chapter? The historian tells us that the Roman empire long ago declined and fell. There he stops; he could not lift the veil because he didn't believe in God's revelation. History doesn't explain prophecy, but prophecy explains history. Prophecy is the true and divine key to the prospects of the world. Accordingly, here is the explanation: the Beast that then was, the Roman Beast, would cease to exist. “The Beast that thou sawest was, and is not.” Its vast power was to perish: the unsaved historian has recorded that fact. But behold in the Word another thing which history could not know! The Roman Beast is to revive! Diabolical power will revive the Roman empire. And those who dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the Beast that was, and is not, and “shall be present” — the true reading and sense. Here we have the clearest intimation that the Roman empire is to be reconstructed, under the most terrible influences for a little, before the age ends and the Lord appears in judgment.

Let us look back for a moment at the history of the world and compare it with the present and the future. In the time of John, the Roman empire ruled the known world. The empire had one governor or chief. Gradually the power began to weaken and wane. First came the division into east and west. Then some time afterwards the Germanic barbarians broke up the Western empire and founded those separate kingdoms of Europe, which, after feudalism, passed into the constitutional monarchies of modern times. Such has been the result of the breaking up of the Roman empire. Here we find the two conditions: the Beast that was, and the Beast that is not. But it “shall ascend out of the abyss (or, bottomless pit.” This will be a new power in the world's history. The worst of powers is better than anarchy; the most grinding tyrannies are safer than no authority at all. But a new state is to rise absolutely without God and under Satan's unhindered agency, drowning men in perdition.

Whatever changes may have occurred in the world's affairs, there has never been a power without the sanction of God, bad as its exercise of authority may have been. The letting loose of the power of Satan has not yet occurred, because there is One who still withholds (2 Thess. 2), but when He withdraws the hindrance, the Beast ascends out of the bottomless pit. Here John speaks symbolically of the Roman empire in its last Satanic uprising to power. In the end of this age Satan will be allowed by God to re-establish that great object of human ambition. Men are even now yearning after an energetic central authority in the West. It is plain fact that the kingdoms of Western Europe have no political coherence. One of their marked features has been that they are constantly in danger of war with each other. They have sought, by what they term “the balance of power” to maintain a measure of mutual understanding, peace and order. But in consequence of this arrangement, no one power has been allowed to get the upper hand.*

At the appointed time the Beast will be reconstituted. There will be unity, one central authority, without extinguishing the separate kingdoms, except that the little horn acquires three. Thus there will be the revived Roman empire with distinct kingdoms. The future state will consist of the imperial headship along with the subordinate kingdoms of the once united western empire. The so-called balance of power then will be required no longer in the West. In the East and North there will be mighty adversaries. One will besiege and the other be besieged. And the day is coming when Satan will deceive the world. God also will accomplish His own purpose of gathering out His saints to Himself. Then the world will be allowed to have its little moment when Satan has consummated his power on earth. (Rev. 17: 12-13)

The state here described never occurred before or since the fall of the Roman empire. Here the principle of national independence will have disappeared. The time will have come for a vast change in the world: a great imperial power will arise, called the Beast. It will not absorb all the nations, but will control and use the separate powers of the West. The Beast is a symbol of strength, but absolutely destitute of reference to God. The western imperial system will have thrown off all owning of God or thought of Him: yea, it will defy Him. Apostasy will have prepared the way. This imperial power will have the direction of the distinctive Roman dominion, the western nationalities of Europe.* The kings will be flattered with the idea that they each have a separate existence and will. But they are only as the muscles of the strong head who uses and controls them all. That follows their destruction of Babylon? “These shall make war with the Lamb.” What a difference from the blessed reign of peace and righteousness, and from what men dream to be the optimistic future!

*This is plain from Dan. 2, etc. For though the final blow falls on the feet of iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, will have representatives in a separate though feeble form, to share the common irreparable ruin.

THE COMING SAINTS

The saints then come from heaven, being with the Lamb when the conflict arrives (compare Rev. 19: 14). Being changed, they are to be forever with the Lord and thus follow Him out of heaven. So, when the final contest arises between the Lord Jesus and Satan (represented by the leader of the West) the Lord is accompanied by His saints. They are here styled as “called and faithful and chosen.” Some have thought these are angels, but angels are never called “faithful.” Further, they are said to be not merely chosen, but “called.” How could an angel be “called”? Calling is an appeal of grace which comes to one who has gone astray in order to bring him back to God. This is never true of an angel. The gospel is God's calling of fallen and guilty man to give him, through faith and because of redemption, a place with Christ in heaven. Those who believe on Him are here shown to be with Him, and they are “called, and faithful, and chosen.” They have been above from just before Revelation 4.

THE HARLOT'S FATE (REV. 17)

What about the woman? We hear about her also in verse 15, where we discern her vast quasi-spiritual influence. It is not a national body, but an idolatrous, persecuting, pretentiously religious system, claiming to be the spouse of Christ, but really an unclean harlot that extends her corruption over all the world. Although Rome is her center, she sits upon the many waters — peoples and crowds and nations and tongues. How easily seen who and what she is! There is only one such in Christendom, though she has daughters too.

Further notice (as in verse 16) what a change takes place! Instead of these “horns” or kings of the West being any longer subjected to Babylon, they, with the Beast, turn furiously against her. Would it not be an incredibly strange thing for the Pope to turn against his own church or city? Hence the Pope is not the Beast and has nothing directly to do with destroying Babylon. Rather, the Beast is the symbol of the empire in its last phase, when the Beast from the abyss is thus joined by the various leaders of the different kingdoms of the West against that impure and most guilty religious system.

Babylon had long intoxicated men, persecuted the saints and dallied with the kings of the earth. Now the turn of the tide comes: Babylon was not of God, but a corrupt idolatrous impostor. Yet, there is nothing of Christ's mind in her destroyers. It is Satan against Satan, and his kingdom shall come to nought. The end of the haughty world-church is come, and soon after comes the end of her destroyers. The Beast and the ten horns _ the whole Western empire — have their one mind in this revolt from the Roman harlot. They strip, eat and burn her, according to the language of the prophecy.

The Beast will be steeped in blasphemy. He and the horns will be given over to the hatred of God, while at the same time they will at last hate the Harlot which had deceived them so long. It is a violent reaction against the vileness of Babylon, but no less a rejection of divine truth.

Do men call it “the Eternal City”? Alas! the Romish priests keep it hidden from their hearts that Babylon, the great city of the West, is doomed to be thrown down and found no more at all. Her smoke is to rise up unto the ages of the ages like Sodom and Gomorrah, when the Lord reigns over the earth and the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.

SUMMARY AND REVIEW OF 2 THESSALONIANS 2

Coming to take vengeance is not the primary object of Christ's leaving heaven. Such though is flagrantly opposed both to 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17 and to 2 Thessalonians 2: 1. God's Word proves the importance of distinguishing between “that day” and “the presence of the Lord” which has for its primary object the gathering of His saints to Himself above! Not a hint is breathed in 1 Corinthians 15: 56 of vengeance or judgment in any form or degree, but of “a mystery.” Raising the dead saints was not a mystery, but an Old Testament truth. But the apostle adds the new revelation that “we” (Christians) “shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet, for it shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 1 Thessalonians 4 says, as an equally new revelation, that after the dead saints rise, we the living who remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and thus we shall be always with the Lord. These verses are the divine expression of grace and of nothing but grace.

Some confound this heavenly gathering together with the wholly different gathering together of the “elect” of Israel in Matthew 24, where not a word implies any catching up to join the Lord. The Jewish elect are scattered to all quarters and thus need to be gathered when the time comes for the Son of man's presence on the earth. They are expressly called His “elect” in Isaiah 65: 9, 15, 22, as well as in Matthew 24: 31. As (in the same verse) “a great sound of trumpet” summons the elect of Israel, so in that day (Isa. 37: 12-13) a great trumpet shall be blown summoning them to worship Jehovah in the holy mount at Jerusalem. The Lord clears and confirms this in Matthew 24.

The context decides whether the elect are of Israel, of the Church or of the Gentiles, for it is true of all three as the different parts of the Lord's prophecy on Olivet prove. As blessed as the elect of Israel and the Gentiles are to be on earth, it is quite distinct from those caught up to meet the Lord for heavenly glory. For these, all thought of vengeance is excluded. Israel's deliverance is accompanied by the destruction of their enemies. Our rapture to the Lord is entirely and exclusively a question of sovereign grace. Our being thus ever with Him, is our best and brightest privilege. Even His presence for the earth, though necessarily involving vengeance on the wicked, has for its “primary object” the deliverance of the sorely tried and scattered or beleaguered Jews, and the gathering of His elect of Israel.

By not distinguishing things that evidently and profoundly differ, the whole truth on this subject is thrown into confusion. The kingdom of God embraces earthly as well as heavenly things. How sad to misuse the less to darken or deny the greater! There is to be the Father's kingdom where the righteous are to shine as the sun; there is to be the Son of man's kingdom where His earthly people shall be blessed and honored as never before, but for this to occur the sword of divine judgment must clear the way for the Lord's righteous scepter. However, no earthly dealing applies to the heavens or on our behalf before going on high. There, the Lord went up triumphantly and in peace; there and thus at His call shall the heavenly saints be caught up. How can saints overlook the contrast or fight against it!

2 THESSALONIANS 1 SUMMARIZED

Again, let us consider the testimony which 2 Thessalonians 1 renders. Here is the execution and display of the Lord's retributive judgment. The apostle's aim was to make known the general character of the day before taking up and refuting the false teaching that the day of the Lord had arrived, as in 2 Thessalonians 2. The apostle boasts in them in the churches of God, for their endurance and faith in all their persecutions and tribulations. He calls this a manifest token of God's righteous judgment to the end of their being counted worthy of His kingdom, for the sake of which they also suffer, “if at least it is a righteous thing with God to award tribulation to those who trouble you, and to you who are troubled, rest with us [who were no less fellow-sufferers] at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven.” This of course implies His presence, but it says more. It will be His unveiling after being hidden from view, His heavenly saints being already with Him.

His revelation is described as with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on two classes — those who know not God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, “who are such as shall pay as penalty everlasting destruction from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might, when He shall have come [not to receive His own to Himself, but] to be glorified in His saints and wondered at in all who believed (for our testimony unto you was believed) in that day.”

Such is the character of “that day”: not sovereign grace in associating saints with Himself for heaven and the Father' house, but righteous requital of friends and foes; to the wicked trouble, and repose to saints whom they once troubled. The trouble now would bring vengeance of flaming fire on unbelieving Gentiles and Jews, excluded forever from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might. But at the same time the Lord will have come to be glorified in His saints and to be wondered at in all who believed. His saints, all who believed, come with Him.

It is not said “in all those who believe”: this is a serious error. A great harvest of blessing would begin on earth after the rapture, not for Israel only, but for all the nations. However, here it is only the saints who come with the Lord in that day. Henceforward it would be for the world to “know” that the Father sent the Son and loved those heavenly ones as He loved Christ (John 17: 23), for the world would see Christ and His own in the same displayed glory.

2 THESSALONIANS 2 SUMMARIZED (VERSES 1-4)

2 Thessalonians 2: 3-12 gives us the awful introduction which brings on that day of judgment and manifestation, for this was the subject, not the Lord's coming which was a motive to cheer. This display of judgment coalesces with the narrower application to Israel given in Matthew 24. It is about the same time. It is “seen” as the lightning. 1 Thessalonians 5 pronounces it “sudden destruction.” It will be both “sudden” and “seen.” But it completely differs from 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52, 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17 and Jude 24, where we plainly are given the previous dealing of the Lord's grace (the rapture), that when He will thus come in public judgment of His living enemies, the heavenly saints might accompany Him in manifest rest and glory before all eyes. No one is entitled to imagine lightning or flaming fire when the Bridegroom comes for His bride. Any such judicial terms or thoughts then are entirely absent.

The apostasy means the coming abandonment of all revealed truth. It far exceeds the departure of “some” “from the faith,” as we read in the earlier verses of 1 Timothy 4. This was realized first in Gnostic folly an d yet more in the systematic departure of Romanism. 2 Timothy 3: 1-9 was still far short of the apostasy, when all form of godliness will be discarded with scorn.

The man of sin, the son of perdition, issues from the apostasy and is its crown of shame. He is John's antichrist, though most confound him with the first Beast of Revelation 13, the head of the civil power in defiance of God at that day, whereas he is clearly the quasi-religious (but really most irreligious) Jewish chief who rivals Christ's position, no longer as Priest, but as Prophet and King. Accordingly, he does not have seven horns and seven eyes (the seven Spirits of God), nor even three, but “two horns like a lamb.”

We shouldn't be surprised at the common confusion, for these two Beasts of Revelation 13 equally cast off God and slay His saints and are as closely allied as their great enemies, the final Assyrian or king of the north and Gog, Prince of Rosh, Meschech and Tubal (Ezek. 38-39), who sustains his ally. These two are foes to the emperor of the west, and to the willful king who is to reign in the land of Israel.

Babylon, the corrupt, cruel and idolatrous religious system is expressly called “a mystery,” the loathsome counterpart of Christ's bride, and quite distinct from, though long associated with the Beast or imperial power and its vassals. They at last turn against her in hatred and strip, devour and burn her. It will be no longer the mystery of lawlessness then, of which she, when she sits a queen, is so great a part. The man of sin will next be revealed, with the Beast and the willing kings, of whom the False Prophet is the director in that day.

The distinctness of this person is confirmed by the words of 2 Thessalonians 2: 4, “That opposeth and exalteth himself against (or, above) all that is called God or object of veneration, so that he should himself sit down in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The lawless one is to be a sinner beyond sinners, the man of sin, and desiring to be God, claiming the honor of the Supreme on earth, in His temple, not in mere earthly things or personal vain glory like Herod in Acts 12. The Christ who was God, became on earth a bondman to glorify His God and Father at all cost. It is a mere imposture for the Pope to dub himself vicar of Christ and head of the church on earth, while acknowledging formally the Lord in heaven. But for this reason he does not fulfill the arrogant self-exaltation of this future adversary who raises himself above all that is called God or object of religious veneration. The temple of God, literally in Jerusalem before the age ends, will be used to support his blasphemous claim. Many of the Jews will be back there in unbelief and will receive him, while a godly remnant flee as the Lord directed.

Though the apostasy is the starting-point, the man of sin revealed is a great advance of an audacious and unbounded impiety under Satan's power, to which the total abandonment of the Christian revelation leaves the door open. Grace scorned,. and Christ the gift of God for sinful men utterly derided, the man of sin follows; man not only without God, but ignoring and spurning all divine restraint. It is atheistic lawlessness, denying sin and wallowing in it without shame or fear. As God was Himself in Christ, the image of Him who abides invisible, the man of sin will be His personal adversary, exalting himself above all that is called God or object of veneration. “Who is the liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2: 22). Though beginning as a false Christ, at last he will flout the hope of Israel and the Christian testimony. As the culmination of extreme defiance in claiming to be God supreme he seats himself in the temple of God. Thus apostate Judaism amalgamates in that hour with Christian apostasy, and the first temptation for man to become as God in Eden ends in the lie of man ousting God and showing forth himself to be God in His very temple.

As for the alleged difficulty raised on the sitting of the man of sin in the temple of God on Mount Moriah at the end of the age, it is essential to bear in mind that the apostle here incorporates the testimonies of two prophets who speak of Jewish iniquity at that very time. The first of these, Daniel 11: 36-39, explicitly defines the place as the land of Judaea. The second, Isaiah 11: 4, is equally clear that he is the “lawless one” destined to his awful doom at the breath of the lips of Jehovah Jesus. Into neither Scripture can one put Christendom.

Haggai also enables us to see that, whatever is the iniquity, destruction or renewal, the house of Jehovah has its unity to the ear of faith. “Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith Jehovah; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. . . . I will fill this house with glory, saith Jehovah of hosts. The silver is mine and the gold is mine, saith Jehovah of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts” (Haggai 2: 3-9). Neither the hostile Antiochus IV, nor the evil patronage of the Idumean Herod nor the blasphemous self-deification of the antichrist, destroys God's title and rights. It is His house throughout, whatever the faithlessness of His people and the seeming triumph of Satan.

Thus, in 2 Thessalonians 2, the apostle predicts a time when the Church will have been gathered on high, the Jew and the once professing church becoming alike apostate, and the man of sin revealed. He is the awful contrast of Jesus' revelation, who, though true God, became the most humbled bondman for our redemption to the glory of God. Thus there is no real difficulty in the lawless one seating himself in the Jewish temple to show off as God. There have been many an d various antichrists, but they all point to one individual at the end who as here written will surpass every person who preceded in impious and audacious setting up to be God in God's own house. Jew and Gentiles will unite to worship him as they did of old to crucify the true King of Israel, yea the true God incarnate.

VERSES 6 - 8

From apostolic days the germs were sown and actually there, which were to bear these fatal fruits when the divine restraint (vv. 6-7) should be removed and the season come for their full display. The departure in the churches of Galatia from the sovereign grace of God that saves sinners was an early stage in declension. So was at a later day Satan's effort at Colosse to interpolate philosophy — the principle of Gentiles — and religious ordinance — the principle of Judaism — between Christ the Head and the members of His body. Both principles struck a death-blow at Christ's union with the Church.

Other evils already noticed in the two Epistles to Timothy contributed their quota, as did that slipping back or away, of which Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 treat; which, if yielded to, could only end in apostasy and irremediable ruin. How could it be otherwise, if those who had in any measure enjoyed the effects of the Holy Spirit's presence or who had owned Christ's sacrifice and eternal redemption, renounced that salvation of God's grace and power? All this was the mystery of “lawlessness” at work, which when the apostles were gone, went on to greater ungodliness, with tradition, human and angelic mediators, Mariolatry, transubstantiation, earthly priesthood, the mass, the confessional, relics, Papal assumption and all the other heterodoxies and horrors of Rome.

The end will be still worse. It will be bold and open rebellion against God, as our chapter (2 Thess. 2) intimates. The Restrainer, the Holy Spirit, will be out of the way only when the saints are translated, in whom He dwells individually and collectively. Then the temple of God will be no longer on earth in a spiritual sense. Soon after that, the Holy Spirit ceases to act in ordaining the powers that be. Satan's brief season will then come — the season proper to the revelation of the lawless one, the man of sin. Daniel 11: 36-39 is plain and positive proof that his field of operation is “the glorious land.” It is no less plain that the apostle applies that prophecy to the personage he here describes for his blasphemous self-exaltation and self-deification above every object of reverence or worship, real or false. It is also equally plain that he applies Isaiah 11: 4 to the Lord's slaying him with the breath of His mouth, the true reading of verse 4. This again confirms the locality of this wicked person.

Neither text has to do with the Church or professing Christendom, for all that either will be gone to glory or have sunk into the apostasy and the blasphemous worship of man as God. All these texts explain why the daring man of sin will be in the temple of God in Jerusalem. There, the blessed Spirit came down and filled all the confessors of the Lord Jesus. At this time He will be gone, and Satan will have possessed his minion, the antichrist, who will be worshipped as God in the temple by both Jews and Gentiles.

Though it cannot be drawn from the words of the text that the apostle had explained to the Thessalonians the details of the restraint and the restrainer, yet it is not improbable that he told them of these things. What he says is, “And now,” i.e., since things are so, as he had set out in verses 3-4, “ye know that which restraineth as to his (the man of sin's) being revealed in his own season.” God raises a barrier meanwhile. “For the mystery of lawlessness already worketh: only [there is] He who restraineth at present, until He be gone out of the way.” Every saint ought to know who that mighty agent is, now here below to resist the overflow of Satan's power. It may be that the apostle taught those young believers who He is in a general way. Assuredly, they to whom “our gospel” came, not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, should of themselves be conscious that neither the Church nor any world-power could avail to keep down the frightful energy of Satan if let loose to do his worst, as it will be.

The Church has a chief place as an instrument of that restraint. As long as such a witness of the mystery of godliness bore up, Satan could not force his scheme to efface or trample down the truth and set up his undisputed lie.

The Roman empire too had its authority from God, as the apostle Paul in particular and all the apostles were careful to affirm, whatever its abuse in the hands of its head. Never did it have a more extravagantly wanton head than when the Epistle to the Roman saints laid subjection down as the Christian's duty (Romans 13). But even then Romans 13 is written in terms so broad as to cover all change in the form of government. “Those who be” are set up by God. As long as this authority from God continues, believers are bound to respect and be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience. It was not merely the empire, but any government divinely sanctioned. They knew that Satan could not set up his man of sin as long as there were rulers in God's providence. It is not likely that these young Thessalonian saints were instructed in the possible control of the Spirit, governmentally, for a while after the rapture of the saints, till the last half-week of the seventieth week of Daniel, when all restraint ceases. Then the dragon, in a great rage and knowing his short season, begins the final campaign of this evil age on the earth, given up to his worst (Rev. 12).

There is an element in the restraint far more direct and influential as well of nearer interest. The Spirit of God has in the Church a most special and congenial sphere of loving care and continual action personally in connection with the Father and the Son. To the Church He has imparted unity, constituting believers, Jew or Greek, the one body of Christ. Also, by His indwelling He makes it God's house or habitation. No factor in the barrier against the antichrist is so decided as this.

The Spirit is here acting in power according to Christ's victory over Satan, not only in life, but in redemption. Who but the Spirit could adequately restrain Satan? He made us of an earthly government and yet more of the Church, yet who but He, working on earth, could be the real restrainer? Of course the Holy Spirit has no such close or intimate relation to any world-power. Yet when the Roman governor talked of having authority to crucify as well as to release, the Lord told him, “Thou hadst no authority against Me except it were given thee from above.” The powers that be are ordained by God, and the Spirit is the agent in their unsuspected control so that, however godless the nations or their rulers may be, the issue is by His determinate counsel and foreknowledge. Both the Jews and their rulers, because in unbelief they didn't know their own Messiah, fulfilled the voices of the prophets by condemning Him.

The Spirit's presence in the Church then, as long as it is here, is the greatest part in that restraint. Satan thus cannot go beyond “the mystery of lawlessness” while the other great mystery of Christ and His Church is being carried on. Hence the man of sin cannot be revealed till his own season shall have come: the Restrainer forbids it. When that heavenly work is completed on earth and the last member of Christ's body is in his place, the Lord will come and receive to Himself not only them but all who were His from the very first. Though the rapture will close that unique association here, the Holy Spirit will still act for a time as He did before Pentecost, both spiritually and governmentally. Both Jews and Gentiles, not then joined in one body as now, will still be brought to a saving knowledge of the truth, as is plainly taught in the Revelation. This book also discloses the later epoch, when for the first time in the history of man, Satan, no God, ordains the Roman empire in its last and fatal form, and empowers the False Prophet who shall reign as king in the holy land (Dan. 11: 36-39). He does his own will, as Christ ever and only did His Father's will.

These are the proofs and marks that the Restrainer then will be gone. Almost all versions unwittingly add to the Word here. The Greek does not say “taken” as might well be of an earthly power that does not vacate, but is forcibly removed (ἀρθῃ). Not so the true Restrainer, who is behind all the visible and varying forms of the restraint. He goes of Himself. He leaves the scene, judicially leaving it open for a while to Satan's abominable pride and mischief. Rather, the Greek says, “till he become out of the way,” which precisely suits the Holy Spirit.

VERSES 9 - 11

In verses 9-11 the true force points to an evil not yet accomplished and far more tremendous in the personal antichrist. “Whose presence (or, coming) is according to the energy of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness to those who perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.” It greatly weakens the truth of that awful fact then allowed to Satan in an exceptional way, to think of the works of that evil man as simply tricks of a deceitful priesthood or “lying wonders” as in the KJV.

As the Lord will manifest His presence in overwhelming power and glory, so will the presence of the lawless one be according to Satan's energy in every form of power and signs and wonders of falsehood to deceive and destroy. The same disbelief which refused the evidence of God's power and truth in Christ will fall under Satan's lie in these powers and prodigies. They are superhuman. Wonders were wrought to a certain point by Pharaoh's magicians. In another way we see surprising effects by natural agents in Job's trials. But here similar language is employed about the man of sin as the apostle Peter used about the Righteous One (Acts 2: 22). They will be real miracles to promote falsehood, not pretended ones. The issue will be, not only his own perdition, but the deceiving of all his followers to everlasting ruin because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. His lie, the deceit of unrighteousness, will be incompatible with salvation by Christ and the truth. They all perish.

The apostle then gives the moral reason for so stern a judgment. “And for this cause God sendeth them a working of error that they should believe the falsehood, that all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (v. 12). God's sending a working of error is judicial hardening. Satan follows with his deceiving marvels of power to drag down all its followers to perdition. It is divine retribution. They renounced the truth and salvation with it; they loved the lie. They must perish. The elect of that day escape solely by divine grace, as is true of all the elect in any day.

How strikingly portrayed, in contrast with the perdition of that awful time, are the position and privileges of the Thessalonian saints! “So then, brethren, stand, and hold fast the traditions ye were taught, whether by word or by our letter” (v. 15). As all Scripture was not yet written, they were called to heed what they had been orally taught as well as by the apostolic letter. They were beloved by the Lord, chosen of God unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and faith of the truth, whereto He called them “by our gospel” to obtain our Lord Jesus Christ's glory (vv. 13-14). “Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father who loved us and gave everlasting comfort and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish [them] in every good work and word” (vv. 16-17). The judicial hardening, the energetic action of the enemy and the day of the Lord were to fall exclusively on those who despised Christ and renounced the gospel. Everlasting comfort and good hope through grace, were the portion of those who believed, so present establishing in every good work and word were besought on their behalf.

OPPOSITION TO THE RAPTURE: THE PARABLE OF THE WHEAT FIELD

We now will look at a Scripture which is used more frequently than any other to oppose the rapture, at least before the day of manifestation. We refer to the parable of the wheat field and the Lord's explanation in Matthew 13. We refer to the only similitude in the chapter that is historical (ὠμοιώθη, “likened,” not merely “is like”). The bondmen of Him who sowed the good seed proposed to root up the darnel of the enemy's sowing. He said No: their work is of grace. “The field is the world.” It is not the Church where discipline is essential, but the kingdom where they must be left for judgment at the end, when the kingdom is no longer in patience, but come in power.

“Suffer (permit) both to grow together unto the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers (or harvesters), Gather first the darnel and bind it in bundles to burn it, but the wheat bring together into My granary.”

The crop was spoiled. There can be no effective remedy until the end of the age arrives, with its judgment.

The harvesters, unlike the bondmen, are angels. The angels bind in bundles the sons of the evil one at the fit moment for their activity and as their first revealed act. The angels are instruments of divine providence, and at that season they will be employed in a measure, even before the sons of the kingdom are translated to the granary above. The wicked in the field will, by this means, be brought into close association, with a view to burning them ( πρὸς τὸ κατακαῦσαι αὐτά ). It is not yet hell that awaits them, but the preparatory act of God's providence which disposes them suitably for their doom. Nobody can conceive such a work by visible angels before Christ takes to Himself the saints on high.

At present real Christians are mixed up in fleshly and worldly combinations. But when the harvest season begins, it will not be so. The bundles will be made up exclusively of the guilty objects for His judgment. None but the wicked will be collected and bound.

The wheat, the sons of the kingdom, are not left like the darnel on the field, but next brought together into Christ's granary. This means to meet the Lord in the air when at His call all the saints, dead and alive, are changed in a moment and caught up to join Him, “and so shall we always be with the Lord.”

The Lord's explanation adds to the original parable. Here, information is given of what will be manifest to all eyes. In the providential action the bundles were not said to be removed from the field. They were left there to await their awful end. But later on during harvest

“the Son of man shall send His angels and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses and those who do lawlessness, and they shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.”

The other side of glory is equally clear:

“Then (not before) shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who hath ears to hear let him hear.”

This is not the rapture to heaven, but the revelation from heaven. It is the display of His presence, the appearing of His coming, His day, when the saints are beheld with Him in the heavenly glory. Christ and they are manifested together: they are already with Him, not He alone before them, nor coming for them.

Thus, everything here is consistent with that later word which the apostle divulged in the Lord (1 Thess. 4: 16-17). As both are parts of the truth of God, they harmonize perfectly, while each contributes its own portion suitably to the divine purpose on the appropriate occasion. We await the future in a perfect peace that rests on the blood of His cross. We also await it in a fullness of joy created by His love which is as rich in grace and glory as it is altogether beyond the mere creature, and as sure as God's Word can make its revelation.

PARABLE OF THE NET

In the parable of the seine or sweep-net (Matt. 13: 47), we have the distinction kept up between the angels who executed the judgment and the fishers who drew it to shore and sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast out the worthless — a work uniquely suited to closing scenes. The Christian laborer is occupied with the good; he is an agent of that grace which saved himself. He leaves the worthless aside for those angels who excel in might, whose function it is to deal with them individually. It is no more a question of discipline with the fish than with the darnel. Any thought about wheat becoming darnel, or vice versa, is outside the Word of the Lord. There is no question of a good fish turning worthless or of the worthless rising to good. The bondmen like the fishers have a charge only to secure the good. This was a right and intelligent work, and in contrast to the bondmen's readiness, ignorant of self and of God's way, to uproot.

Here, it is again the kingdom, not the Church. Who can fail to see that they are plainly distinct? The kingdom was a familiar truth, though it took the form of “mystery” now. The Church is first announced in Matthew 16: 18-19. The confusion of the two is a doctrinal blunder which has wrought great practical havoc in all ages to this day. In the Church we are bound to judge evil (1 Cor. 5); in the kingdom we are forbidden (as in verse 30 of this chapter). Punishment is a work for angels' hands, not for Christians. Christian are not called to resist evil, but to suffer, giving God thanks.

Here again we find that “in the end of the age the angels shall go forth and sever the wicked out of the midst of the righteous and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.” As there was a providential gathering of the darnel before the execution of the judgment, so there was a spiritual work by saintly men in sorting the good into vessels before the execution of the judgment to clear the wicked out of their midst. There is the great common principle that this judgment belongs to the angels, not to the saints, but there is a marked difference in that the gathering of the wheat was immediately into the heavenly garner, but the darnel were subjected to a longer process, with the same sad end as the worthless fish. It is the inverse here, for these wicked ones are severed from among the righteous there, as the worthless were taken out for the terrible judgment of everlasting fire.

Not a word implies any visible act in the binding of the darnel into bundles first, and then of the sons of the kingdom, the wheat, gathered at once into the garner. True, the Lord comes down into the air and the changed saints are caught up to meet Him there. The garner is not on earth or in the air, but in heaven. Then in due time, the saints follow Him out of heaven (as Rev. 17: 14; Rev. 19: 14 distinctly teach), for the day of the Lord and His judgment of the Beast and the False Prophet, the kings of the earth, the darnels too, and every other object of divine retribution, and the judgment of the living, is come. This easily falls in with the added explanation of both parables: on one side the display of the glorified saints, shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father; and on the other, of the Son of man through His angels clearing out of His kingdom all offenses and those who work lawlessness, into the furnace of fire.

The day of the Lord is the open introduction of the age to come by terrific judgments, and is never in Scripture mixed up with His coming to receive His saints to Himself for the Father's house. Hence we saw that the apostle appealed to His presence to gather the saints to Himself, as their bright hope, against the false and foolish notion, introduced by fraud and calculated to agitate and alarm, that the day of the Lord had actually arrived. Its imminence was not the error, for its imminence is an indisputable truth, which is important practically for souls.

1 TIMOTHY 6: 14

A favorite argument is that the Church must be on earth till the Lord appears, because Timothy is exhorted to keep the commandment spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord. This is misinterpretation! Scripture connects responsible service and also the walk of all saints with the day or the appearing, never with His coming as such or our translation to meet Him on high, which is a matter only of sovereign grace. Responsibility attaches to His appearing because, when we come with Him, our place in the kingdom is decided according to our measure of previous faithfulness. To confound the two things is to lose the distinct truth and the special blessing of each. We are called to wait for Him with unclouded joy, but we are also bound, each to his particular work, and all of us to watch, abounding in mutual love, in order that we be confirmed blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus.

It might have been hastily anticipated that this confirmation takes place when He comes for us. Such however is not the teaching of 1 Thessalonians 3: 12, or any other Scripture. It will be at His coming with all His saints. Infinite love gave us the holy nature capable of proper walking. In giving us Christ as our life even now, we are to walk in love accordingly. This will have its consummation in that day, and in the communion of all who share it when the Lord comes to be glorified in all who are His in the fullest and most evident way. The establishment in holiness by love of the saints toward each other would go on and not stop short of that glorious day when the Lord is wondered at in all who believed, and this is only by their manifestation with Him in glory. How admirable Scripture is in thus binding up every day's walk as saints, with Christ's appearing in glory and of us together with Him in it!

Asleep or alive when He comes, Timothy and all other people of God will have their due place in the day of His appearing. In no case does it imply remaining on earth till that day, which would directly contradict Colossians 3: 4 and is inconsistent with other Scriptures that reveal the glorified saints accompanying Christ, and out of heaven too.

It is the grossest error to look for the resurrection of those who compose the Church, or of the Old Testament saints in Revelation 20: 4. Both are there, but already changed, in those seated on the thrones to whom judgment was given. The raising from the dead which then follows is exclusively of the Tribulation sufferers, slain after the first general class of the glorified saints were caught up to be with the Lord. The two classes of Revelation-martyrs are now seen to be raised in order to share the reign with Christ for the thousand years.

The Coming of the Lord

W. Kelly.

''Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, that the day of Christ is at hand" (2 Thess. 2: 1, 2).

There are two great parts in the future advent of our Lord Jesus Christ which need to be carefully distinguished. They are both of the greatest importance, but they have each a very distinct character; and the confusion of that which is distinct always leads to the enfeebling, if not the destruction, of the truth.

It is so with every truth of God. If I look at the person of Christ there are two great sides to it. There is His deity and His humanity. If I confound them, or use one to neutralise the other, I have lost the truth about Christ. It is not true that He is God only, nor that He is man only. Nor is it true that it is a confusion of the Godhead with the humanity of the Lord. There is His person, but most assuredly there is a Divine nature and there is a human.

So, again, if I look at the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ; there is the very fullest grace, but there is righteousness. If I forget the righteousness, undoubtedly I shall use the wondrous self-abandonment of the Son of God, who suffered for our sins, in a selfish manner. If I only see love in it, I shall make light of sin; and if I do not see love and the fulness of love in it, I shall never have peace with God. So that the confounding of things that differ — no matter what the theme you take up, or the test by which you prove the truth of it — the confounding of things that differ is one of the most dangerous ways of losing the power of that which God reveals for the blessing of our souls.

It is not otherwise with the Second Advent, as it is called, of our Lord Jesus. There is one side of it which is the expression of the fullest love and sovereign grace. There is another side — that there will be the execution of the most solemn judgment. Here the distinction is even more marked, if possible, than in the atonement, or even in the person of our Lord, because the expression of judgment falls upon man objectively, whereas the Christian is now and ever safe in Christ. As to the person of Christ it is the same principle. One needs to be subject to the truth of God as to the deity and humanity of the Lord. In the atonement, it is just the same thing. It is the believer who reaps all the blessedness of God's unsparing judgment of sin; and it is the believer who enters into all the fruit and perfect results of God's perfect love. But in the second advent of our Lord Jesus there are different objects. It is not only that there is the twofold side of the truth, but the sovereign grace which is manifested in the coming again of our Lord Jesus will give to those who know Him a definite, distinct, and intimate relationship with Himself; whereas the execution of judgment is on those who abide His enemies. To confound these, therefore — to suppose they are bound up together in one and the same transaction — we shall find to be a mistake fraught with consequences wholly destructive of spiritual intelligence. Whereas, when we discriminate between these two things so different, then I am persuaded we are on the way to find that a great deal of the Word, otherwise hidden from the believer, will become more and more plain to him. Therefore I press very much the distinctness of these two doctrines as an important element — as important as any other — for those who believe the Word of God.

And, one must add, it is the more necessary to do so, because the confounding of these two things is rather common — in fact, a natural tendency of the heart. I have not the slightest doubt from the translation that is given in our ordinary Bibles that those who made it — excellent men as they were, and learned — did not distinguish between the two. To me that is manifest from the mistake into which it led them — a mistake which I have not to combat now, I am thankful to say. You have all got the Revised Edition of the New Testament in your hands, I suppose, and anyone who takes the trouble to compare the Revised Version with the old, will find that what I have often insisted upon — very probably in this town — has now been effected. Undoubtedly the Revisers did not make that alteration because they believed in what I am going to set before you to-night. They did it very much as a question of language. I suspect that very few of them knew the truth in respect to the question. I say this not in the least out of a disposition to slight their knowledge of languages; and I am persuaded that they themselves would allow that this is the case — more particularly, also, as there appears to be a mistake in the way in which they translate the first verse. But they have been faithful in this, that they let you know that the true meaning of the last clause of the second verse is that the day "of the Lord" (for this is the true reading of the best copies) is (not "at hand," but) "present."

It is not a question of translation — in the day "of the Lord" rather than "of Christ" — it is a question of text, and their text is better there. But the last word is a question of translation. They say, "is now present." I need not tell you that this makes an enormous difference. To say that the day is "at hand" represents the day as future. To say that the day is "now present" is in contrast with the future. Now, there the main error lay. What our Authorised Translators say — that the day of Christ is at hand — was really true; whereas, to represent the apostle as combating its nearness is not true. It is a most serious mistake. The false teachers were preaching that the day was already come, but the Authorised Translation makes it appear that the apostle denies this to be true. Elsewhere, in the thirteenth chapter of Romans, the apostle says — "The night is far spent, the day is at hand." He could not possibly say in chapter thirteen of Romans it is true, and that it is false in 2 Thessalonians 2: 2! That is what the Authorised Translators really involve — that the apostle contradicts to the Thessalonians what he affirms to the Romans. That could not be; nor is it true. Any scholar knows that the word is quite different, and that the word "at hand" is perfectly right in Romans 13: 12, and "at hand" utterly wrong in the A.V. of 2 Thess. 2: 2.

The Revisers are here right. What the false teachers taught was that the day of the Lord was now come. You would naturally ask how that could be. It seems such an egregious thing to assert that the day of the Lord was already come. They clearly had a sort of figurative understanding about the day of the Lord. They knew the day of the Lord to be an outburst of trouble and perplexity — a time of darkness and thick clouds, according to the Old Testament prophets; and they pointed to all the trouble the Thessalonians were suffering and said — "The day of the Lord is come." The apostle says, "No; it is not arrived. It cannot come yet. There are tremendous evils which must take place before the day of the Lord can deal with them."

The important theme to-night is not "the day of the Lord." I merely make these preliminary observations to show you how mistaken it is to conceive of the coming of the Lord as the same thing with the day of the Lord. Beyond controversy, it is evident that the Thessalonians would not have allowed for a moment that the Lord was come. That was contrary to the sense of all — contrary to every appearance of the truth. They knew that when the Lord comes — the apostle had shown them that carefully — the dead in Christ should rise first, "and we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord." All this was not come — therefore the Lord could not have come. There was some figurative meaning given to the day of the Lord, and that was exactly where the folly of the false teaching showed itself.

The apostle elaborately enters into this, for the purpose of putting both truths in their right relation the one to the other. "We beseech you, brethren" (not here in regard of, but) "by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." The word the Authorised Version has translated "by" — and, I think, not improperly — is the word referred to first, and I believe we do not get so good an equivalent in the Revised Version. Thus what betrays that the Revisers did not understand the argument of the apostle is that they say "in regard of" or something equivalent. Now, by this they show that they conceived the coming of the Lord and the day of the Lord to be the same. They thought that the subject which the apostle was discussing was the coming of the Lord. Now, this is not so. The subject under discussion is the day of the Lord. The error was that the day was present. The false teachers did not trouble themselves about the coming of the Lord; but they were very full of the day of the Lord, and they took advantage of the circumstances of the Thessalonians to say that the day had begun — that that day had actually arrived.

For what, then, does the apostle bring in, in verse 1, the coming of the Lord? To lift up their eyes from their circumstances, from their troubles, from their persecutions, from the darkness and clouds of the earth, to heaven. Do you not know that the Lord is coming — that He Himself is coming in person? No one could say that the Lord was come. This would have been so utterly to contradict common-sense that they would themselves have repudiated such an assertion. But the apostle recalls them to the great and blessed hope of the Christian. We all know — all of us who are familiar with the New Testament, with the First Epistle to the Thessalonians more particularly — that the bright hope of the Christian is that the Lord is coming. What is He coming for? Not to put away our sins: He has done that already. Not merely to bless the earth, because this is not our hope, although we expect it. There are many things we expect that are not our proper hope. What is our spiritual hope? Himself; He Himself, to take us to the Father's house; Himself, to present us in His own beauty and glory to THE FATHER; Himself, that as He has gone into the Paradise of God He will come to fetch us there — not even leaving it to the highest angel in heaven to bring us there, but Himself will come, that the objects of perfect favour may enjoy it where there is nothing inconsistent, where there is glory, where there is the absence of all that can grieve or distract the heart, where there is everything to promote the enjoyment of His love, and where all will be according to that love. Glory is not the highest thing, but love; and, therefore, in the seventeenth of John, our Lord Himself tells us that the glory will be the proof to the world of the love that is set upon us. But a proof to the world never can be so deep as the thing itself. We all know, supposing a subject were arrayed by his Sovereign in the most gorgeous robes, and put in a position however high, it would not be the same as enjoying the love and confidence of the Sovereign in the most intimate way. And what is a Sovereign's love compared with that of Christ? Remember, too, that it is not a love that is for a little season only, but full and for ever.

Well, then, this is the hope of the Christian; and it is of the greatest importance that you should remember this is our true hope, that the Lord Jesus will come to take us to be with Himself, and like Himself, and this where He will be for ever. It is not merely going to heaven, and still less is it reigning over the earth. I fully allow that both these things are true. God never made the earth to be merely a football for the devil. He will not allow the earth to be a place for His enemy to harass His creatures and put dishonour upon Himself. He means to make this earth a part of His glory. It may be the outer circle of it, but this earth shall know the glory of Jehovah. It is not only the knowledge of His glory, but the glory of Jehovah shall fill the earth; not merely the heavens, but the earth. The heavens are higher than the earth, and so the glory unveiled there will be of a superior character to that which will embrace the earth. Accordingly there is where the Lord will give us this blessed hope in all its fulness and in the depths of its power; when the Son of God will come to receive us unto Himself, and present us with Himself on high the objects of God's love — the love that rests upon Him resting upon us, and ourselves brought into a suitable relationship to God. Now we are members of His body; then we shall be His bride. Of course I know, and you know, that these are but figures; but the figures of Scripture are not the flourishes of rhetoric, nor are they to be regarded as words that signify nothing; on the contrary, they signify everything that they express — that is, they are vivid images of the truth, which God will most surely make good in that great day.

But there is another thing of very great moment. You will see why it is that if Christ personally be the centre of our hope, as He undoubtedly is, it exactly falls in with all truth. What is it that makes any part of divine revelation vague or indistinct? I will tell you, separating it from Christ. If you are a believer, yet if you allow the very smallest separation of any truth from Him, if you do not see all truth in Christ and with Christ, you will be, comparatively speaking, feeble in the faith. That is the reason why, if you take up a book on theology or divinity, as it is called, it is all so cold, and has so little in it which attracts the heart. It is only a skeleton. It is not really the living Christ. Everyone feels this who has any kind of spiritual sensibility. Therefore it is that when persons draw their views from books of divinity rather than from Christ, as revealed in the Word of God, the effect on their souls is to make them cold. There may be power of reasoning, order, or even imagination in the book; but imagination is more like the coruscations of electricity than the real, true warmth of living power. Nothing but Christ has life. Christ is our life, and the Holy Ghost will never act except in view of Christ and for Christ. The Holy Ghost has been sent down from heaven for the express purpose of glorifying Christ. He does not glorify Himself, and He certainly will not glorify any mere article of faith, although it may be true.

I do not condemn articles of faith. For my own part I rather admire the Articles of the Church of England; I don't mean the ecclesiastical or political, but the doctrinal. I consider them very fair; sound, for the most part; and certainly moderate in their statements. Even the Athanasian Creed, which many clergymen are anxious to get rid of, I consider to be the best of the three Creeds. As to the Apostles' Creed, it is a very poor affair; and I suppose you know that no apostle had ever anything to do with it. This is merely one of the frauds of the early Fathers. Then the Nicene Creed is anything but a successful production. The great point in it is, "I believe" — not in the church — "I believe the . . . church;" which has tended to set the church up as a teacher. But the church is nothing of the kind. It is all a mistake. God is the source of teaching. The instrumental means by which the church is taught is through His ministers, but the church does not teach. It is all an error of Popery, but it is an error that has got into all kinds of bodies very far removed from Popery. I only now refer to it to show the importance of the truth, and I say again that, while allowing the value of these articles of faith where it is set forth in creeds, still there is no life in them. They may have their value in guarding against error, or in being a kind of bulwark; but we want something more than that. It is not enough that the house be empty, swept, and garnished. Far from it. We don't keep out error merely by an abjurement of error. We need the power of the truth. We want a living power to preserve our own souls individually. There is that which tends to death, because it tends to corruption, and there is but one thing which counteracts it all; the Holy Ghost working through the Word, and through the Word revealing Christ to men.

I say, therefore, that exactly as we see the true grace of God in all Christ's fulness of glory — because the grace of the Lord depends upon the glory of His person — so exactly is His grace efficacious and effectual. A man dying on a cross is nothing, but a Divine Person dying there is everything for God and man. A mere death on the cross, what would that be? Why, there were two men died along with Christ, and what did their death signify so far as others were concerned? One of them died an impenitent criminal. The other, through the grace of the Divine Sufferer beside him, died a blessed death. We want the death of One who can turn death into infinite and endless bliss. That is what the death of Christ effects. As the person of Christ is everything in every truth of God, so there is nothing which contains real living power apart from His person. In the future the same thing is true. Take away Christ's person, and make it merely a going to heaven, how cold a thing it will be! It is blessed, no doubt, to go to heaven; but people begin to doubt about going to heaven unless Christ is before them. They sometimes say they have doubts and fears in forgetfulness of Christ.

Who could look in the face of the Lord Jesus and say they have doubts and fears? Certainly the penitent thief had not. He had been a sinner up to the last moment. He had not been brought out of his sins till then. What was it that delivered him? The hearing of faith, the believing in that Blessed One who was dying beside him. No doubt there must have been a lighting up of every atom of the revealed Word of God in his soul. Messiah he had heard of before only as in Scripture. But when he put the person of Him who was dying along with the Word of God, when the Holy Ghost connected the two, when there was a spark, as it were, put to the coal — what a change! This is what is needed. Faith does bring in Christ, and that is what the faith of God's elect has always done. The Old Testament saint had Christ before him as truly, though not so fully, as we have. Abel rested in Christ, as did Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of the Patriarchs. Did not Abraham rejoice to see His day and was glad, as the Lord Himself tells us? And so with all the other Old Testament saints. You may depend upon it that this is a universal truth, and that no soul will be in heaven along with Christ that has not seen Christ by faith. But now that He is come, and now that He has done the infinite will of God His Father on the cross, there is a tendency to rest upon the work without the Person, and the consequence of this is that you deprive the Word of half its value at the least. You deprive it of all that gives force and fulness to it if you separate the person for a moment from the work; which is just the tendency of some teachers about the matter.

Do not suppose I am pleading for any looseness of dogmatic teaching. On the contrary. Perhaps one may be a greater stickler for orthodoxy than many persons who think themselves more orthodox. Assuredly I am pleading for carefulness about the great foundations of the church of God, and I thank God that these have been maintained. Even in the Romish Church it is one's comfort to think that after all they have the doctrine of the Trinity — that truth which never can be touched for a moment without danger — and that they believe in the reality of the Deity and of the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are other views that tend to destroy the force even of these truths. I mean the exalting of other beings; the multiplying of mediators, and the bringing in of the sacrifice of the Mass, to the destruction of the power of the one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.

I return to the great truth before insisted on, that is, how essential it is that the person of Christ be a prominent point in the Christian hope, as in all other truths. Just as for our souls, it is not merely a salvation, but a Saviour. "Believe" not in the blood, not in the work, not in the cross — that is not the message of the apostle Paul to the enquiring jailor — "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." That Blessed Person brings in His blood, brings in His work, brings in His death and resurrection; but if I merely put forward the work, I may dwell simply upon the fact and not upon the person. But there is another effect of it too. A person draws out my affections towards him. Christ draws me to His feet to worship Him. The faith of a man is small if it does not produce a worshipping spirit.

Just so as to the coming of our Lord Jesus. It is not my going to Him. It is not your going, or any other person's going, or all the persons in the world going, divided as they are in place and in circumstance. Such is not our hope. Our hope is one; not this split up and quite diversified hope. Our hope is bound up with Himself coming for us. If you are the children of God, do not suppose that I mean that you lose nothing meanwhile if this is not your hope. I have no sympathy with the modern attempt to revive the old patristic notion that the believer in dying goes into some prison or safe-keeping where he is until the morning of the resurrection. You may ask, Who teaches such nonsense as that? Very respectable persons indeed. Perhaps you are not so much used to it on the north side of the Border; but I hear a great deal too much of it in the south, and it is not confined to mere objectors, but, I am sorry to say, even in some Christian societies this obnoxious denial of the fruit of redemption is taught. For what does it all turn upon? That it is essential to your enjoying the true hope that your soul be founded upon the truth of the first coming of the Lord Jesus. Have you entered into that which Christ has brought near? Do you know yourselves to be whiter than the snow, in the sight of God? That is what the blood of Jesus accomplishes. It is not merely a temporary cleansing. This was what the Jew got. The Jew had cleansing of the flesh, but it was just as long as the particular atonement for the sin lasted. Thus there was a frequent renewal, a constant repetition, just because the whole thing was imperfect. The perfect work of our Lord Jesus is contrasted with that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The whole point there is the many sacrifices of the Jews because of their imperfection — the one sacrifice in its abiding perfection and in its efficacy for you, for me, and for all who are believers in Him.

It is of importance that you should enter into this view of the subject, and I shall tell you why. How can you glorify God and His Christ if you do not know that all is clear between yourself and God, and clear for ever? You may tell me of the danger, and I admit it. There is nothing that the Wicked One will not pollute — nothing he may not turn to licence, unless the Christian uses in faith the guards that the Word of God supplies. But nothing can atone for enfeebling the truth. Is it the truth that by one offering Christ has perfected for ever them that are sanctified? Then make that truth your own. But do not fall into the Methodistic, or Quaker, or Pearsall-Smith idea of sanctification — all of which are substantially the same. The true Scriptural meaning of sanctification is that you are set apart to God. It is not at all a question of whether there is no evil in your flesh, for there is a great deal. Why, that is all fallen nature is made of. But yet you are sanctified. Sanctification has nothing whatever to do with the extinction of evil in the flesh. That idea, begun with Pelagius, revived by Thomas à Kempis, handed down through Jeremy Taylor, the French and Dutch mystics, W. Law and John Wesley, has passed into other communions where they have no notion whence it came.

Beloved friends, the old doctrine you ought not to have forgotten in Scotland, and I trust you have not, and I do not mean to say you have, but, still, I know it is forgotten in a great many places — namely, that the believer has two natures and not one. All teaching that sets forth the nature improved is false. The old man in the saint is always bad. While we are living men here below, the will of the flesh is opposed to God: there is that which God does not improve, and which does not in the least degree admit of improvement. Our old man is not extinguished, but crucified. "Let not sin, therefore, reign over you." It is not gone, but the allowing it to reign over you is exhorted against. It is like a wild beast which you are to keep under lock and key; but the wild beast does not become tame by merely locking it up. And the overlooking of that point quite accounts for a Christian falling into what is wrong. He sins when he is careless or off his guard. There is in the believer on the one hand, that old nature of the flesh which is always prone to evil; and on the other the new man, or the new nature — that which loves God and His will; and it is in virtue of this that the man is said to be sanctified. He has got a nature he never had before. He is set apart to God, and, being brought by faith under the power of Christ's work, he is said to be washed, sanctified, justified. Don't you allow the idea that justification is in the wrong place there. Nothing of the sort. God does not make mistakes in that way, and, depend upon it, the apostle Paul knew quite as well as you or I what he was writing. There are no mistakes in Scripture; for this is what God has written. "Washed, sanctified, justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God."

You may ask, what has that to do with our hope? It has this to do with it, that you will never fully get the true hope until your heart is resting simply on Christ alone. If you are not submitting to what the apostle calls "the righteousness of God," in His redemptive work, you will shrink from Christ's coming, and want to put it off as long as you can. You are afraid of Christ then, and regard Him as a judge. I quite admit He is judge of all men as such. He will judge the world. But to say that He is judge to His body, the church, is all wrong. Such is not His relationship to the church at all. He is the church's Bridegroom. Do you think, when a woman is to be married to a man, that she could look upon him as a judge? Even though he were a judge officially, he would only be a judge to others and not to her — a judge to prisoners, but not to his wife. What confusion of thought! And yet it is confusion made by highly respectable persons in all ages. Hence I wish to press this upon you, that the source of difficulty and doubt about our hope is the failing to grasp the full truth about what Christ has already accomplished for us. Therefore, the first requirement of every soul is to search and see what the Bible says on that head. Are you set free (Rom. 8: 2)? It is not enough that you should be merely converted or quickened. This, of course, every believer must be. But you will find a great many truly converted persons who are not really at ease. They are not quite at liberty of heart. They have got their anxieties in their relationship to God. When they are in that condition, how can you expect them to welcome the Lord Jesus? Clearly the reality of waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ has never taken possession of them.

I remember a celebrated author, a servant of Christ, who wrote the biggest modern work upon the Book of Revelation. I once had some correspondence with him on this subject, wherein he conveyed — "If I could think of the Lord possibly coming tomorrow, I should be much afraid and agitated!" This showed, surely, that his heart was not resting, as a Christian man is entitled to do, on the perfect love of Christ his Saviour. You can readily understand the expectant bride waiting to be married to her future husband, and you might say that she was agitated. There might be no little excitement, one could understand; but, surely, when there was true and confiding love between the two, it would not savour of alarm. It would not be the agitation of fear. Now, that is exactly what my departed friend acknowledged. And what did it betray? Very likely what is at work among some here, a want of conscious liberty of heart, because of everything being clear between the conscience and God. And the source of that bondage of fear is the want of simplicity of subjection to what God tells us in His Word that He has found in the blood of Christ for us. The death of the Lord Jesus is of perfect and everlasting efficiency, and it ought to be a point of honour, if I may so say, that believers never should allow anything to overcome their resting in assurance on Him.

May a person, then, not be overcome? Yes, But treat it as a sin; do not nurse doubt; do not allow it to master you. Treat it as evil — not because you do not deserve to be troubled, but because God does not deserve to be doubted. That is the point. When the Son of God has wrought a perfect work in glorifying God about sin, it is a disgrace to Him as well as to me if I allow anything to cloud confidence in His love. "Be strong," says the apostle Paul to Timothy, "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." This is beautifully shown in the case we have already referred to — namely, the robber on the cross, the penitent and believing one. It is very difficult, especially amongst those who reason a great deal, constantly to maintain an unclouded sight of Christ; and I have observed that much controversy on religious questions has a very injurious effect in that way too. No man ought ever to read controversies unless his duty compels him to do so. Don't read them for the purpose merely of knowing all the great questions and the great answers that have been made in this world. There is a far more blessed thing. Acquaint yourselves with God Himself. Acquaint yourselves with Christ. Grow in grace and the knowledge of Him; and the effect of this will be that all objections of Satan will fall before Christ, and your soul will be kept in the unclouded favour of the God of love.

Where this is the case, the waiting for Christ is simple and certain. He that rests upon Christ only and His redemption, waits for Christ alone. There will be many other elements. Sweet and blessed to think that we shall be with all the redeemed; that we shall know them as they will know us, and that there will be the joy of life and the joy of companionship. Not merely the blessed fellowship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amid all the delights and songs of heaven — we shall have every kind of joy. Not a single element of holy joy shall be wanting in the heavenlies. All these things, we know, we shall have by the grace of God; but there will ever be one commanding object, and that object is Christ.

Therefore now we may come back to Christ Himself. And look how the truth binds these together. The moment He comes, every saint that has ever been, rises to meet Him. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, from every land and of every tongue, from every age and people at once not a few selected ones, but all the saints shall rise and meet their Lord. Banish from your minds those ideas that are found rising up again to pollute the air for God's children — that it is only those who know more than their fellows that shall be caught up, and that other Christians shall be left to pay the penalty of their want of intelligence at this time. Where do they get that? There is one black spot upon all these theories, and naturally, that the people who preach that a selected class shall be caught up to meet the Lord always have the misfortune to mean themselves. If I came to tell you that none but my co-religionists, as they are sometimes called, although I entirely repudiate that expression, desiring no religion but Christ — but if I came saying to you that only those who share my views, whatever they be, on this or any other matter, are the favoured few that are to be caught up to meet the Lord Jesus, you might well hiss me out of your town, as I should deserve to be rejected as a false teacher, at least as one merely crying up a party. No, the saints of God shall all share it. It is not merely what strictly is the church of God — not merely those who are indwelt by the Holy Ghost, and have been since the day of Pentecost — but all saints that have ever been in this world, that will answer to the call of the Lord Jesus.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout. Did you ever learn that this word "shout" only occurs this once in the New Testament? There are words for shouting found elsewhere, but this word is quite peculiar. What is the peculiarity? The word thus employed is the technical word for an admiral's call to his seamen, or a general's to his soldiers. It is, to put it more broadly, any special call of command to those who were in special relationship to him that commanded them. And thus you see the bearing of the word on this great topic. It is not a call to the world — it is not a call to everybody. The gospel is that, and thank God for it; but this shout is only for those who know His voice, who have heard Him already — those who are familiar with His love, those who are His own, those who have learned to obey — those, therefore, that know that it is the great Captain of Salvation who is calling from on high, who is calling His own to be with Him on high. The word "shout" has nothing to do with the question of loudness, any more than it has to do with universality — the very reverse, it rather excludes it. It is exactly what would not be used by even a scholarly man in a vague general way — how much less by an inspired apostle. "The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout" — it is a word of command; it is an assembling call — "with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God." All these, you see, are entirely unconnected with the world. They have to do with God's own people, for "the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord."

There is another point I should like to say a word upon in connection with it, because it helps to make plain a saying of Christ. In the fourteenth chapter of John there is a very beautiful setting forth of this blessed hope. "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me." At first it sounds very peculiar that the Lord should here tell believing disciples to believe in Him. I do not think it means that they were merely to increase their former faith. i.e., believe in God, believe also in me." I take it that the force is this: You believe in God though you have not seen Him; believe in Me, who am going to become invisible to you. I, who have been your visible Master, your Teacher in your midst, am going to leave the world. I am going, therefore, to enter a condition of invisibility as far as you are concerned, because I shall be no longer on earth, but in heaven. This follows most simply and naturally from the words of the next verse — "In my Father's house are many mansions." It is not that the Lord was going to have done with His body; He never will do that to all eternity. In that sense, therefore, it will never be a question of absolute invisibility, but only relative — to those disciples certainly so. And this is necessary for Christianity. If I were asked to give in very few words one specific difference between Christianity and Judaism, I would say that Judaism was a religion of sight; Christianity of faith. We walk not by sight, but by faith. Here then, now, to test the truth of it all, the Lord enters that condition, but not by becoming a spirit. The Lord is not a spirit; He has a spiritual body. An angel is a spirit; but the Lord Jesus is not. "A spirit hath not flesh and blood." We must not at all allow such a notion as that the Lord Jesus, in His risen condition, has not flesh and bones — of course He has. He has no longer a life in the blood, because this is a life in connection with earth, a life which lives by food, air, etc.

The Lord is capable of taking food. He partook of a piece of honeycomb and a fish; but this was not because He required them, but because they required to learn that He was truly risen from the dead. His, we know, is a spiritual body glorified in heaven. And so shall we be; but the Lord here speaks of our faith meanwhile. "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." Although He had taken a body, and although He was to take that body after the resurrection, still He would be invisible by going to heaven. It is the Christian's faith contrasted with Jewish sight of the Messiah reigning visibly over the earth. "In my Father's house are many mansions." He was going thither. Observe the statement, "there are many mansions," signifying that there is room for you as well as for Him. Room enough and to spare — room for all the faithful. "If it were not so, I would have told you." I would not implant in you a desire that could not be realised. "I go to prepare a place for you."

Now, the Chiliasts were quite wrong in thinking that heaven would be merely this earth in a renewed condition. Perfectly true that the earth is to be renewed — perfectly false that we are not to be in heaven. Thus to be with Christ in heaven is true, and is the truth which is taught here; and there is where our hope should be resting. Only it is wrong to disconnect heaven then from the earth. This will be the peculiarity of the kingdom, that it will not be as now — the heavens separated from the earth by the sin of man, but heaven and earth both put under the Lord Jesus Christ, the glorified Son of God, the Head of both heaven and earth. Those who now believe in Him, those who have believed in Him from the beginning — we shall all be with Him. "In my Father's house are many mansions. . . I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again — (not you will come to me, but) — I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."

Death is never the hope of the Christian. There is the hope of the resurrection of the body; but the turning-point is Christ's coming. When the Lord takes the rule, we shall share along with Him. When the Lord comes in judgment to the world, we shall follow Him out of heaven, but we shall always be with Him — "For ever with the Lord." There is our proper place. Where He has now gone — where He is now in the presence of the Father — there we shall be. How simple! Would not a father love to have his children near him? So we shall be. But is there not One above all nearest to the Father? It is He, the Son of God, and He will introduce us there — the fruit of His infinite work, and the objects of His Father's love, even as He Himself is.

Now that is the hope of the Christian, the coming of the Lord Jesus — that, and not changes on the earth. There is to be great glory to God, and, let me tell you, there are to be evil and judgments first. I quite admit that truth will surely prevail in the end; but "the end!" that is a serious word. And, further, I quite admit that the Lord is to bless the world. There will be the power of the Holy Ghost, and on the ground of Christ's redemptive work all the earth will be blessed. But, still, it will be the reign of Jesus. How infinitely more blessed that will be than if we could do it ourselves I As the apostle says — "Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." He would not like anything that detracted from the Lord Jesus. And is it not most suitable and worthy that He who was crucified should be exalted? that He who was rejected should be glorified in this very scene of His shame and suffering? This is our hope, and surely it is one not to make the Christian ashamed, although it may well shame those unbelieving believers who put proud aspiring man in the place of Christ. Amen.

W. K.

Covenant or Testament — Which?

An Address on Hebrews 9: 13-17.

W. Kelly.

We have seen three grand connected and essential truths of Christianity from the point of view which the Holy Ghost is bringing before us in this Epistle. The first is, that we draw near at once and immediately into the presence of God. I mean "at once," because it is entirely dependent upon the work of Christ; it has nothing at all to do with any measure of attainment on our part, but by the simple faith of the gospel; and I call it "immediately," because there is nothing between God and the believer, as was the case under the Levitical system. It is a cardinal truth of Christianity, in short, that there is no veil between God and him who believes in Jesus Christ. And this is no question of a privilege enjoyed at rare intervals, or under specially happy circumstances; it has nothing at all to do with progress; it is the fruit of Christ's work, and nothing else, except that the Spirit of God has brought a soul to own its sins as well as the Saviour. It is to confess the Saviour in the faith of what the Saviour has done; for it is very possible for a soul to look to the Saviour and still to keep, like the publican in the parable, afar from God, in the consciousness of his failure, beating his breast, and calling upon God to show His compassion to him, the sinner. Now there are a great many souls — perhaps the great mass of those that are born of God — who are in this condition now; but it is not Christianity. I do not mean by this that they are not Christians, but it is not Christianity. Christianity supposes immediate access to God Himself, a privilege which evidently cannot be without the complete removal of every hindrance. This is precisely what the death of Christ on the cross has effected, and now the gospel comes to bring the believer into the confession and enjoyment of it. Till a person therefore enters into that enjoyment it is not really and properly Christianity, although the man may be truly born of God. This then is one thing; but there is another blessing connected with it, that it is not for a time, as it does not depend upon anything transient: Christ obtained eternal redemption. It is in contrast with the temporal deliverance of Israel. It was pointed out last Wednesday that the words "for us" venture to say what no man ought to add. As God has not done so, it is presumptuous for man to insert them. They are not only not necessary to fill up the sense, but introduce another thought which overlays what is meant. For the chief of all requirements is that God should be free to deal with man, and this Christ has amply secured. He entered into the holiest having found eternal redemption. God's rights were upheld, and this for ever. There is a third truth connected with it all, and that is the purging of our conscience.

Under the Jewish system it was a question of flesh being sanctified. A man defiled himself by touching a dead body; a dead man in a tent, or anything that was not according to the exigencies of God's law. Unquestionably there was provision to meet the defilement; but while he remained defiled, he had no right to argue about matters, or reason as to how this could affect God: there was the plain fact that God pronounced him a defiled man, and if he ventured to despise Him, death might have been his portion in a moment. They were under the direct government of God, till this terminated with God's writing Lo-ammi on His people, as we all know. God even removed the last sign of it at the time of the Babylonish captivity. Then every vestige of theocracy was completely swept away, and never since replaced, as it never will be until our Lord returns to govern the earth. There was no doubt the still more wonderful presence of God when our Lord Jesus came down here below, but this was for a still more wonderful purpose, namely, the accomplishment of righteous access to God in all its immediateness: the perfection of redemption in all its eternal character; and, finally, the purging of the conscience by Christ's blood. For if a man has a bad conscience what good end could immediate access to God serve on his behalf? And where would be the value of redemption as eternal if the man abode miserable in his soul? What would take away that misery but the certainty that all his sins were completely remitted, and that his conscience was perfectly purified by the blood of Christ? This was quite a new status for a soul.

"If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean . . . . ." There are two things — "the blood of bulls and goats" on the one hand; and "the ashes of an heifer" on the other. The distinction was briefly pointed out on the last occasion, and a few words upon it may be well now, because it completely disposes of the common idea of a frequent recurrence to blood, which is one of the tests of a human gospel instead of a divine one. A human gospel always imagines that a man must, when he fails, begin again: that the believer, whenever he may have sinned, must as often go back to the blood. Certainly, if he has lost the blood; but is this true? What sort of a gospel is that? The Christian is eternally redeemed then, which is really the fact. Eternal life is very little believed in by God's children, and eternal redemption, if possible, less. Now it is one of the striking contrasts of Christianity with Judaism that in Judaism all was tentative and experimental in the sense of its being a trial: all was of a temporary character and conditional on the good behaviour of the person; whereas now that Christ is come, all is changed, and all blessing depends upon Him. And what is more, Christ our life produces fidelity toward God no less than self-judgment, and hence humility in presence of His grace.

This it is which draws out affection by letting in what we can hardly call affection, but divine love — the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost given to us. Faith in Christ sets agoing the affections of the new man, the Spirit of God giving him power all through his course. Thus you must have your soul settled and established in God's perfect love (1 John 4); for if there were a suspicion whether or not it rested on our souls, would not love be fatally wounded? Now God leaves no room for that because the blood of Christ, according to His word, meets perfectly every lack spoken of. Whether it be approach to God, this is perfect; whether redemption, for securing God's rights also, it is eternal; and now our conscience is brought up to the mark suitably for drawing near to God, and for resting upon this eternal redemption. Consequently here follows the practical effect of it: "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God." There you have the religious service of the believer. I do not mean the rendering this or that to a man, which is here entirely excluded by the character of the word used.

Here again is a remarkable instance how the thoughts of men differ from God's word. His thought in giving man such an infinite blessing is not primarily to set him about working for others. In fact, when you do this, you assume a measure of superiority over the person you work upon. As we all know, he who even in a small way is ministering the word, speaks with authority to those who may not know the word. Now this gives the preacher a certain measure of importance in the eyes of others, and, sad to say, sometimes in his own. But here we have another thing: it is serving God; it is not only gospel or church service, to win or to help souls; it is connected with the worship of God. This seems the kind of service, instead of being merely what people call ministry. As you know, scripture has more than one word for service; and this has to be borne here in mind. No doubt ministerial work is excellent in its own place, and of very great importance; but it is of immense moment that we should always recognise God's rights; and were this really before God's children, do you think any person would make it a sort of open matter what they did, where they went, whom they served, and how they worshipped? Certainly not. The blood of Christ is for this express purpose. See what it undertook to do, and does. Of Christ we are told that He "through the eternal Spirit, offered himself up without spot unto God." It is the only place in scripture where "eternal" is applied to the Holy Ghost; and it is introduced here as the qualifying term of the Spirit — in order to show the absolute way for everlasting issues in which the Offering was then presented to God: a Man, but with this truly divine character of never-waning value. Certainly if there be anything which marks the difference between God and the creature, it is this quality of "eternal." Here a man on earth presents Himself in this wonderful character.

Again, He "offered" Himself without spot to God. It is not the word for bearing our sins, strictly speaking. There were two parts always in sacrifice: the one is the victim simply, presented as an offering; the other is the sins laid upon the victim. Now this word expresses only the former element, which, by the way, detects the wrong use of that term in Peter, where it is said that "he bore our sins in his own body" — as the margin and some others say — "up to the tree." Now the usage is strictly limited to the textual sense "on the tree." If it had been the word here called "offered" there might have been some show of reason for it, because "offered" has reference to the presentation of the victim when the sins were not yet laid on it. The fact is that the phraseology excludes a continuous action and asserts a subsequent and transient fact, contradicting the whole idea; in short, the notion confounds the offering of the victim first, with the laying the sins upon him afterwards. Now the passage in Peter speaks expressly of the final moment when the sins were laid upon Christ. Consequently the teaching is as utterly false as it is possible to be. The "offering" is distinct from the bearing of the sins, and each of the two parts has its own moment.

The first thing God looks for in the sacrifice is its perfect acceptability, but if the sins were already laid there, where would be the manifestation of that? It would be merging in one two things wholly distinct for an offering to have already the sins attached to it. In our Lord's case the first was the evidence that He was "without spot." If He had had all our sins ever on Him, could this have been the case? At the last no doubt they were imputed, and this was essential of course. The second part of Christ's work is His perfect identification with our guilt, without which our sins could not have been taken away. But God's making Him sin for us at the end supposes all His previous life when there was no imputation of sin whatever, and our Lord appeared in all His perfection before God. Thus He, "through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God." This being done, Jehovah "laid upon him the iniquities of us all." It is certain that the passage in Peter refers only to the closing scene. The fact is that the true sense turns not merely on the word "up to," or "upon," but on scriptural usage generally as alone perfectly revealing the truth; and we have seen that the general truth refutes the idea. Undoubtedly one might go a little farther into detail; only this would take us into critical nicety of words, which I do not desire to discuss on such an occasion as this. However, it can be easily shown from the Sept. Vers. of Leviticus and elsewhere, that the word which is rendered "up to" by those who are so anxious so to translate the text, is never used in such a sense in the matter of sacrifice. In such a connection the preposition always means "on," as here, "on the tree," and never "up to" it.

Returning, however, we see here One who acts in entire dependence on God; One who in all the perfectness of a man would not do even this, although He came for the purpose, without the Holy Ghost. This was the perfection of our Lord in presenting Himself. He never acted simply from His own person, but in the power of the Spirit of God, from the time when, to commence His public ministry, He received the Holy Ghost; for scripture is express that our Lord did receive, and was anointed by, the Holy, Ghost. It was not only that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost in coming into the world, but He was scaled by the Holy Spirit, as we know, at the time of His baptism. He is thenceforward the dependent Man; whatever He did, all was done in virtue of the Spirit, even this act of His offering Himself up as a spotless victim. The aim and the effect are eternal redemption. Thus is our conscience purged by His blood, "from dead works" which everything must be until redemption is made good for us, "to serve the living God."

"And for this cause He is the Mediator of a new 'covenant.'" Whoever heard of such a thing as the mediator of a "testament"? "Testament" means a will, and a mediator is entirely out of place in the matter of such a disposal of goods. Let me just take this opportunity of showing that you do not require to be a scholar in order to be perfectly certain when it ought to be "covenant," and when the right meaning is "testament." Each case admits of proof. The men who made the Authorised Version were as learned persons as ever perhaps were found together in this country; yet they only made confusion in the matter. This demands no effort convincingly to show, though I yield to none in respect for themselves and their work. And although there may be none here present as much versed as they were in all of erudition, it seems to me practicable to put the most unenlightened Christian in a position to decide with certainty where they are right and where they are wrong in dealing with this term. How comes this? By the written word; for the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword. It is so little a question therefore of learning that every Christian man may have the absolute certainty where the word should be rendered "testament," and where "covenant." Both words are true according to context. Such is the peculiarity of the term; the same word means either, but it cannot mean both in the same sentence. This would be to blunder, not to communicate the truth.

There are certain landmarks in every sentence which determine which of the two senses is meant. The case occurs where it must mean "testament"; there are other instances where nothing will do but "covenant." When the different passages in the New Testament are set out, it will help to ground every believer's trust more and more in the perfectness of scripture. Begin with this very verse, "And for this cause he is mediator of a new covenant." Our translators ought to have seen their error, and that here the word could not possibly mean "testament," because such a functionary is unknown to testamentary business, instead of being universally recognised. Besides, "new" contrasted with "the first," cannot point to "testament," but "covenant." Now the apostle, for I have no doubt he was the writer of this epistle, writes, using a figure that would be known in every country under heaven, and be perfectly familiar to any intelligent persons such as the Jewish believers were. Indeed, there are few things that even ignorant men know more about than "a testament," or "a will." It comes home to men's bosoms and business notoriously. Sons inherit from father or mother, and sometimes they derive from other relatives or friends besides their parents; and as such a thing awakens interest in the dullest, they understand that "a will" only comes into force when the one that devises the property is no more.

That is what the apostle reasons about in vers. 16, 17. He wants to show, both the necessity and the importance of death previously (not here, you observe, of "blood," but of "death"). Hence the figure is so far changed from what preceded. It had been "the blood of Christ" about which he was speaking before in ver. 14. Now, in ver. 15, we have the transition — "for this cause he is mediator of a new covenant, that by means of death," etc. We can all perfectly understand this. "Death" is a larger thought, and this begins the link, though he still speaks only of covenants. But from the idea of "inheritance" he slides off from the meaning of "covenant" into that of "testament." The same word is susceptible of either signification, but the context never leaves it a doubtful thing whether the word means the one or the other. The decisive point, which shows that in this verse it must be "covenant," is not the word "mediator" only, but the contrast of "new" with the "first" covenant which created transgressions. Every one must surely confess that a mediator is most intelligible with, and essential to, the new covenant; but mediator of "a testament" is a relationship that nobody ever heard of at any time, or in any country on the earth. You may find a lawyer, a testator, an executor, and the heirs, which are familiar enough. All these may belong to a testament, but there is no such personage as "mediator" of a testament.

"Mediator of a covenant," therefore, is alone meant or possible in ver. 15; although he does purposely bring in "death," and afterwards an inheritance, to pave the way for the idea of "a testament," in vers. 16, 17. As yet, however, in ver. 15, he adheres solely to the notion of "covenant," because he is speaking of a mediator. "For this cause he is mediator of a new covenant, that by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first," etc. First what? "Testament" is said here, but it is clearly wrong. How speak of "the transgressions of the first 'will'"? What legitimately could be made of such an expression? Whenever there is a second will, the first is of course annulled; whereas here it was painfully efficacious, for it produced "transgressions." A second will renders the first one entirely invalid. You could not therefore have the transgressions of the first. Besides, what have transgressions to do with "a will"? The moment you bring in "first covenant," all is quite easy, plain, and forcible; because the first covenant was the law, and what the law brought in was transgressions. Therefore the immediate context is decisive; as beyond controversy it is the unfailing criterion where we have to judge of the questioned force, not only of any general teaching of the word, but even of the propriety of a single word; or when, as here, the ambiguity admits of two meanings. So perfect is the context of scripture for giving the believer to decide with certainty which of the meanings is the proper one. Both the "mediator" shows that it can only be a new "covenant," and the "transgressions" prove that it was the first covenant, and not a will or testament, that preceded. Where is the law ever styled a "testament" in O.T. Scripture?

"That they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." It is this last word, evidently, which furnishes the transition to the notion of a will. The moment we come to an inheritance the suggestion of a will is simple. It is the common way of inheriting; and the Jews knew this as well as others. It was possible, doubtless, to inherit without a will, Jewish property — if you can call the land property which was all in the hands of God, being arranged by God to go regularly without any such intervention. Therefore, as far as I recollect, the word for "will" is not once mentioned in the Old Testament, as we all can readily understand. There was God's law, which dispensed with the necessity of a testament, because it was all settled successionally for His people. But the Jews had long been in an abnormal state, and some had houses and land that had nothing whatever to do with the original disposition of things by God; and of these could dispose as they pleased. And so it was perhaps universally with the Gentiles. So that inheriting by "will" was a most familiar idea.

Before entering on this next rather peculiar passage, take notice that as we had "eternal Spirit," so here "eternal inheritance" follows. The Jews were peculiarly sensitive on the subject, for alas they knew to their cost that their "inheritance was most transitory. They had been turned out of their land for many years, and afterwards never got properly into the land again: only a poor remnant and in poor circumstances indeed. And now they had been guilty of such unpardonable sin against God and His Christ and the Holy Spirit, that they were going to be outcast from the land once more, and for an incomparably longer period. They could therefore understand how little they could boast of an "eternal" inheritance. But this is precisely what expresses adequately the promise received by Christians. As it is, "eternal salvation and "eternal" redemption, so is it eternal" inheritance. The privileges peculiar to Christianity are characterised as everlasting. Therefore there is no force whatever in persons reasoning to us from the conditional state of Israel: no doubt such was Judaism, but Christianity is in contrast. The reason is plain: one depended on man, and what is he to be accounted of? The other depends on Christ, and what is He not to be accounted of? There is the sure and blessed difference. Christ, both by the perfection of His person and by the everlasting efficacy of His work, brings us into the blessing which only He deserves, and which is of faith that it might be according to grace, wholly independent of our deserts or failures. Not that we lack provision for failure, as typified even of old and noticeable in verse 13. There is first of all the blood; then the ashes of an heifer. The ashes of the red heifer were for meeting the passing defilements of the one who had been cleansed by blood. The blood remained in all its value; but the ashes of the heifer counteracted defilements by the way. Alas! that distinction has slipped entirely out of the minds of God's children generally, and to their great loss, because to mix them up is to lose the truth. Thereby is weakened the everlasting efficacy of the blood, in order to gain a means of clearing the difficulties of the way.

Let us now pass on to the promised illustration, so as to bring out in a few words the special force of verses 16 and 17; the only instances, we may once for all remark, in the whole of scripture where "testament" has a right to stand in our Bible. This is easily remembered, if not so easily proved. For this reason I shall endeavour to make the truth clear, because scarce anything is worse for God's people than vague uncertainty fostered by such as seem to have no other knowledge than of some people saying this and of others who say that, whereby souls are reduced to utter unbelief of the truth and live in a mere see-saw between conflicting opinions. What can more effectually deprive men of the power and happy certainty of the word of God? Uncertain one may be, but is it not my fault? Do not cast the blame on the word or Spirit of God. Never admit that we are doomed to doubt. Assure your soul, scripture is so written as to make it our unbelief if we do not receive and enjoy the true meaning of God's word. Perhaps for want of having that conviction, our translators seem to have thought that the word might be "covenant" or "testament," just as they pleased. They were too fond of change elsewhere. Here it was worse than usual. In every part of the New Testament where the word often occurs, I hope to show that it is "covenant," save in vers. 16 and 17 of this chapter, where it is rightly "testament," and not "covenant." In every other passage it ought to he "covenant," and not "testament."

Begin with the first in Matt. 26: 28. Can there be the shade of a doubt here, or in Mark 14: 24 (substantially equivalent), about the matter? Our Lord is speaking of the cup that He gave the disciples, saying, "Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new covenant." First, Where would be the propriety of "new" applied to a "testament" or will? Nobody ever talks about a "new" will. But, secondly, there is another and stronger objection. What has "blood" to do with a testament or will? The moment we turn to the new "covenant" all is in place. The blood of Christ is exactly its foundation. The first covenant may have had the blood of victims connected with it, as its sanction, threatening death on those that proved unfaithful. This is the meaning of the blood in the first covenant (Ex. 24), which said as it were: If you fail to obey the law, you must die, as these victims died. The blood of the new covenant has an altogether opposed character. Christ's blood, as a starting-point, secures a perfect clearance for every soul who believes in Him. So the Lord, in giving the cup to the disciples, says, "This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins." What has a "testament" to do with "remission of sins"? What has a will to do with blood? These constitute the strongest proofs that covenant" is the thought, and that "testament has nothing whatever to do with this place.

In Luke 22 you will find similarly, where our Lord is speaking on the same occasion; therefore we need not dwell on it. "This cup is the new covenant," etc. The expression is different, but the same truth appears. It is the "new covenant in my blood which is shed for you." The idea of a will is wholly foreign to the place. If we said, "the new will," what would he the meaning of this? How could there be a "new will" in His blood? "Covenant in His blood" is perfectly intelligible, and is in fact the chief distinction of the new covenant in contrast with the old which sought but found not man obedient. The old had for its sanction the threat of death; the new on the contrary is based on the "blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, which cleanseth from all sin." Compare also 1 Cor. 11, where the apostle gives language similar to the words in Luke, and therefore calling for no other notice than that "testament" is wholly inappropriate there for the reasons given.

There are places where the Authorised Version gives "covenant," and which we of course pass by, because they are quite right. But we may turn now to 2 Cor. 3, which is the first that occurs in order after these, where "testament" is wrongly given. Ver. 6 says, "Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament." As we have already seen, "new" is out of place with a will. It ought therefore to be "covenant." It may be observed that there are two words for "new," one of which means "freshly made," which might in some cases have been applied to a testament. The other means "of a different character entirely"; new in principle, whether recent or not. Now this last is the word employed here. What has it to do with a will? "Freshly made one" might sometimes apply; but "one of a totally different character" does not apply to a will, but admirably to contrasted covenants. What the apostle implies is that, although the new covenant is not yet formally brought in to the houses of Israel and Judah, the Christian anticipates the blessing, as the Christian servant is characterised by the new covenant, not in letter it is true, but in spirit. We come under the power of the new covenant before it is actually brought to bear on the two houses of Israel. Oh! what a comfort this is. Thus the notion here, too, is "covenant," and not "testament." In this same chapter he says (ver. 14), "For until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament." A great many, no doubt, fancy this means the Old Testament scriptures, and so men have adopted that very term as their title. But what really is the "old covenant" here? The covenant of law that condemned Israel. Here again there would be no good sense in reading the "old will." It can only mislead, whereas if we say "old covenant" we can all understand this, which is exactly what the Jews had to do with.

There is only another passage outside Hebrews — in Rev. 11: 19. "And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in the temple the ark of His testament." And here the Old Testament affirms what one might argue out. "Ark of the covenant" is scriptural; but what is the "ark of a testament"? Has the ark of a will any just sense. As far as my memory serves, I do not recollect any other instance of "testament" employed, excepting in Hebrews, where it has been once or twice before us, and therefore to these I turn to finish the subject, even if it seem a rather minute examination, which I hope may prove a good confirmation of your faith in the word of God as well as in learning how necessary is the Spirit of God to give certainty of understanding the word. Had it not been for these considerations I should not have occupied your time with the matter. In the Authorised Version of Hebrews 7: 22 we read, "By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament." There again, Is not surety of a testament" strange language? Surety "of a covenant" is as important as intelligible, as even the Authorised Version uniformly renders in chap. 8 following. Therefore the inference is unavoidable, that the context in every case indicates the right counterpart, whether "covenant" or "testament." But if I am right in interpreting the context in detail, you may rest assured that in the Bible wherever the word "testament" occurs, it ought to be "covenant," except in the two verses immediately before us, Heb. 9: 16, 17.

To these, then, let us turn. Can anything be plainer than their reference to a will in order to illustrate the death of our Lord? "For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of the testator." This is sufficiently evident. Were "covenant" said it would not even be true. Where men make a covenant, is it in the least necessary that either of the contracting parties should die? Jacob and Laban made a covenant between them; but did it at all demand, in order to its validity, that Jacob or Laban should die? If either had died, there would rather have been an end of it so far. But when he who makes a testament dies, then only can the children, or others to whom he has devised his property, receive the benefit by virtue of the will. "Where a testament (or will) is, there must of necessity be the death of the testator, for a testament is of force after men are dead." In wills only, and not in covenants, is such a necessity universally found. A man makes a will, but it does not come into force so long as he lives — only when he dies. On this hinges the apostolic illustration, which is as apt as it is undeniably evident. The effect of a will is only after the death of the testator. Perhaps something may be contingent upon the death of another; as a man leaves to his children upon the death of his wife. But in any case death must intervene, if any are immediately concerned in the property. It is only after one or more are dead that the living heirs inherit. "Otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." Nothing can be more telling or simple. In the case of a covenant, is there anything of the kind? A covenant comes into force while people are alive. Take Jacob and Laban, where neither was called to die. Take an earlier covenant, where God makes one between Himself and the earth, as revealed to Noah.

I am aware that some try to slip in the death of sacrifices here; but the word means not a covenanting victim, but a "testator"; and all efforts are vain to upset or change the idea. It is the death of the person who made the testament. It is not necessary to insist on more than the principle generally, but if the application be pressed personally, how does this apply to the Lord? Very exactly indeed; for the Lord became a man in order that He might die, to give us (a vast deal more, but also) an everlasting inheritance. He that had spoken at Sinai is the selfsame One that came to die. The figure, therefore, of a testator applies in all its force. He was pleased thus to die, although One who in His divine nature could not die. He therefore deigned, in the infiniteness of His grace, to partake of blood and flesh that He might die. Therefore, nothing can be simpler, nothing more certain, than His death, in virtue of which we inherit the richest blessing evermore.

Beloved brethren, what wonders in the word of God! and how He delights in conveying the truth in the most striking way to help feeble souls. All turns on the death of Christ. There was no Christianity without it. As long as our Lord was here in the body, it was as the corn of wheat that abode alone by itself till it fell into the ground and died; but after death, "it beareth much fruit." There Christ's own words set forth the effect of His death. As long as the Lord lived, the middle wall of partition stood firm. Neither the Jews could draw near to God, nor the Gentiles be joined with the Jews, who were expressly kept apart. But when our Lord died, the veil was rent, the partition fell; and it was not merely the Gentiles coming into the place the Jews had occupied, but believing Jews and Gentiles entered alike into immediate nearness to God. Along with this, the conscience was purged perfectly, in order to serve the living God in thanksgiving and praise, as well as every other service, and furthermore, every blessing eternally secured. Oh! how wondrous is that which God has given us through the death of His Son!

W. K.

Brief Notice of G. Cox's Thirty-six Reasons Against the Immortality of the Soul.

W. Kelly.

(ex CBA/JRL/MU)

1. God's word nowhere teaches nor hints that the soul of man is, as his body now, mortal through sin. We read of the ''mortal body,'' never of the mortal soul, though God only could be said to have immortality. Man's soul is only immortal through God's will, who was pleased to constitute Adam a living soul by breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. The lord Jesus is never said to confer on his people an immortal soul, but eternal life. This the believer has now in him, as he will have it for the body when Christ comes to change it into his glorious likeness.

2. It is neither his immortal soul nor original sin which involves man in endless misery and torment, but his own sins — above all, his unbelief and rejection of Christ.

3. The immortality of the soul is perfectly consistent with the death of man through sin.

4. Nothing can be more tremendous and humiliating than an endless duration of exclusion from God, with the accompanying punishment of self-reproach.

5. Scripture teaches not that death is the whole wages of sin, but that judgement must follow (Heb. 9: 27), when the wicked are raised and cast into the lake of fire — the second death — where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

6. "By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin." The creature thus falling was the author of sin, not the immortality of the soul, still less God, though He will justly condemn man's guilt the more because of his privileges and His own mercy despised.

7. Lev. 17: 11 does not refer to the human soul, but to the animals through the blood of which atonement was made in the ancient sacrificial system. Adam's soul had a wholly different character and an infinitely higher source, according to Gen. 2: 7. His death closes his present existence in this world, but is as consistent with the immortality of the soul as with the resurrection of the body.

8. If soul and body joined in sin, to think of the death of the body only is not the way to give full value to the cross of Christ, who "once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." It was the divine glory of his person that gave infinite efficacy to His blood, who, for us, knew what it was to be forsaken of God in bearing the intolerable burden of sin.

9. It is untrue that the immortality of the soul make's only a human sacrifice of Christ's death. The inward soul-sufferings of His atoning death were as much beyond His outward humiliation and agony as the soul is deeper and higher than the body; but the divine value of His sacrifice flows not from His soul (for He had a spirit, soul and body as man) but from His Deity, who was the eternal Word and only-begotten Son before He was pleased to be born of the Virgin. Is it really meant that in His death His soul died? May God preserve G. Cox and his readers from blasphemy!

10. Undoubtedly Christ has annulled death and brought life and incorruption to light by the Gospel, these blessings being but dimly seen before. But how is all this destroyed by the immortality of the soul, which adds to the horror and the doom of those who believe not? It is folly to say that the Gospel is a delusion if a soul exists for ever in misery for rejecting it.

11. The immortality of the soul is not responsible for all that its advocates say, but thoroughly consistent with every literal and figurative description which Scripture gives of lost souls in hell. But it is a mistake to apply Ps. 31: 17, 1 Sam. 2: 9, Ps. 63: 11, Matt. 22: 13, to souls in torment.

12. It is not the souls immortality which contradicts itself, but G. Cox, who seems to quarrel with the Scriptural employment of imagery drawn from the present life to convey a vivid impression of anguish or bliss in the future, and even the separate state, as in Luke 16: 23-26.

13. The soul's immortality is in no way the cause or even occasion of the wicked notation of saving ordinances; for sound men holding it believe that by Christ's grace all infants will be saved through redemption. Catholic theology is the true culprit.

14. It is Christ who (before He commended His spirit to the Father's hands — so little did death touch it) teaches that the soul even of a converted robber was to be with Him in Paradise on that very day that the man died on a gibbet; so Stephen (Acts 7: 59, 60), and Paul (2 Cor. 5: 8, Phil. 1: 23). Nor does this heavenly blessedness of the separate spirit do away entirely or in any measure with the necessity for the resurrection of life; for Christ, the firstfruits, is a Saviour of the body as well as of the soul. This we have (1 Peter 1: 9); that we wait for (Phil. 3: 20, 21).

15. Our Lord Himself shows that the wicked not only wait for their resurrection to judgement, but are at once after death "tormented in this flame" (Luke 16: 22-25). Doubtless their lot will be still more awful when the resurrection of the unjust arrives, and eternal judgement has consigned them, soul and body, to perdition. This is no question of argument, but of divine revelation.

16. Scripture teaches man's pre-eminence over other animals, not in death (for all alike die), but, among other respects, in the nature of his soul and spirit. Even Ecclesiastes, which most assimilates them (Eccles. 3: 19, 20), in the same passage points out their all-important distinctness (Eccles. 3: 21). Man in virtue of his soul and spirit — man alone of animals — is responsible to God. His spirit goes upwards, not downwards to the Earth like a beast's though man's body was made of the dust of the ground, and so far, has nothing to boast over a beast or a bird. (Gen. 2: 7, 19).

17. While ''soul'' and "spirit" then are used both of man and of beast, it is false that they are used ''indiscriminately,'' even as the origin has been shown to be distinct for only into Adam's nostrils is Jehovah Elohim said to have breathed, not into the beast's. Hence creatures can only kill the body; they are not able to kill the soul. God only is to be feared, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Matt. 10: 28). If this does not prove the immortality of the soul, it is hard to say what could, as every upright reader of the Bible will soon learn that "destruction" there never means annihilation, but an existence of utter ruin and misery in separation from God. Mortality is never predicated of the soul, save as it means a living man in this world who dies. To argue thence to the separate soul after death is sophistry, and beneath an honest man. Thus "the soul that sinneth, it shall die," means, according to the style so familiar in the Old and New Testaments, that the living man who sins shall die, it is "the soul (i.e. the person) that sinneth," not the soul of him who sins, as it is assumed falsely by those who argue against the immortality of the soul. So, in our ordinary language, when people talk of "a kind soul," or "the poor soul," they speak of a living person, not of the question of an immaterial principle, however true this may be.

18. There is no doubt that God's moral character is at stake; but whether those who affirm or deny the immortality of man's soul compromise it is another matter. I am sure that His truth is everywhere harmonious and plain against those who debase man to the level of a beast, even as to his soul.

19. The immortality of the soul does not necessitate an antedating of the judgement-seat of Christ, as has been shown already; but G. Cox wrongly puts all off after death till that day.

20. The soul's immortality flows from God's constitution of it. Scripture nowhere attributes it to God's gift of grace through faith in Christ. Eternal life, either now or at the end, is wholly distinct. The only passage which can be alleged is 2 Tim 1: 10, where "immortality" should unquestionably be "incorruption," and refers to the body raised or changed.

21. Scripture derives the soul of man, as man, from the inbreathing of God, apart from the dealings of His saving mercy in Christ. In this sense, as the apostle applied it (Acts 17: 28), all men, even the heathen, are His offspring. In Him all live. He is the God and Father of all, though He be only in all His saints (Eph. 4: 6).

22. Those who hold the soul's immortality equally insist on God's power to destroy soul and body in hell, not those who imagine the soul's dying with the body.

23. Man's spiritual nature makes him capable of eternal misery if he persist in refusing God revealed in Christ and His redemption, as it exposes him to the wiles of the devil in spiritualism, superstition, infidelity, and every other snare. This however, is not remedied by Sadduceanism, complete or partial, but by the truth of God and His grace.

24. Purgatory may be another perversion, but even that unbelieving fable is scarcely so disastrous as the debasing denial of the soul's immortality.

25. So with the unholy dream of Universalism. Slighting sin and loving it have more to do with it than even the abuse of the soul's immortality.

26. So with infidelity, or the more open profane form of scepticism. Refusal to believe God where his truth clashes, as it must, with man's thought's and will, is it's root, not the soul's immortality.

27. It is well to avoid terms not found in Scripture, but it is fatal to reject the truth — say of the Trinity, because it is not so expressed in the Bible. So with the soul's immortality. Everlasting punishment or fire seems to me quite as strong as ''endless torments'' or ''eternal pain.'' What is gained by captiousness like this?

28. Not the doctrine of an immortal soul, but tradition, as such, tends to non-natural interpretation of scripture. This might be urged by any opponent of the world-church, and has no just application to the point in hand, though it may apply to some defenders of it.

29. The charge of paving the way for Secularism is only another form of reason 26; as, indeed, several of those statements are, at bottom, the same objection over and over again.

30. So the repetition of 14 and 19 re-appears substantially here. The answer is, that the believer's spirit does depart to be with Christ immediately after death; while we also expect to appear with Christ when he appears in glory, and to reign with him. Both are true. Traditionalism abuses the former to lose sight of the latter; while G. Cox's unbelief abuses the latter to deny and deride the former. Both are bad; but the denier of the soul's immortality is, in my judgement, much the worst.

31. Does G. Cox mean to insinuate the extinction of the devil's existence, or that of his children? All Christians hold that the Son of God is the destined destroyer of Satan's works; but that this means the annihilation of the enemy, or his hosts, or his instruments, human or angelic, is an unscriptural figment, of which no proof is even attempted.

32. When the results of the redemptive work of Christ are complete, in the view which God's word gives of the eternal state (Rev. 21: 1-8), we see evil, not extinguished, but separate from good and punished for ever. Scripture gives no prospect of and ulterior change. All the enemies are destroyed; but they exist, not rampant, but tormented in the lake of fire.

33. The soul's immortality involves no such consequence as men becoming angels, demons, or any other order of beings; on the contrary, it is the basis of personal identity, when the resurrection arrives, the soul lasting unchanged through the various stages of man's existence — living. dead, and risen — makes him to be the same being. If the soul perishes at death, it is not the same person, but two different men, even if the absolutely same materials were used. We have already seen that the passage cited from Eccles. 3: 19-21, to prove a dissolution of man's whole being into dust, really teaches, in the spiritual part of his being, a contrast with the beasts; for man's spirit goes upward. The Gospel, too, brings life as well as incorruption to light. Dead saints do not lose life eternal any more than their spirits; they await the Lord's coming again to raise their bodies.

34. The soul's immortality is a truth common to Jews and Christians — a question for the moralists among pagans — a certainty for the believer in the divine oracles. The denial of it, far from being true or godly, puts all who take up so dismal a notion with the sensual and sceptical of all ages, including Papists and Protestants, priests and popes themselves, who had not the fear of God.

35. This, again, is scarce more than a rehearsal of the stale charge, unfounded and contrary to the evident facts, that the soul's immortality gives ground to doubt the authenticity of the revelation, etc. On the contrary, the assumption of the soul's immortality directly tends to undermine the fear of Him who has far more that He can do beyond killing the body. "The soul that sinneth it shall die" does not so much as touch the question of the soul's separate and continued existence after death. No more does Rom. 6: 23. The separate state is neither denied nor affirmed. But I have shown it certainly proved by Luke 16 and other Scriptures.

36. The longest objection requires but a few words. It is abuse of God for casting unbelievers into hell; the sting is in the tail. There will be differences of punishments as of reward. But most miserable will he be who has calumniated God's truth and weakened His fear, to the emboldening of sinners, already, without such help, careless enough about the Lord and their own souls.

The Creation

Genesis 1, 2.

W. Kelly.

There are truths which concern external nature, for which we are indebted to the revelation of God. Creation is one of these. That we are warranted in treating this truth as one which man could only guess after, without a divine revelation, we cannot but infer from the fact that mankind in general doubted about it — nay, even those who had the reputation of being the wisest and greatest of men denying it. There was no country where philosophy had such brilliant names and such extensive cultivation as in Greece; yet perhaps nowhere else was unbelief of creation more prevalent, especially among the philosophers. Aristotle denied it; Plato never understood it. To say who did comprehend, or even so much as conceive it, would be difficult. I deny not that there were those who spoke of it, but with singular darkness, and with evident confusion of mind. And yet it is a truth which, when once it is revealed, man's mind feels that so it must have been, if he really weighs the facts, and submits to their force.

The reason why man, without a revelation, cannot reach up to creation as a certainty, I suppose to be this, — that man, as such — apart from a higher being — cannot rise above that which he is himself. He is but a creature. He may reason as to the effects of creation around him; he may arrive at inferences and convictions — and so he has, as the Apostle Paul shows us — of God's eternal power and Godhead. At the same time, as creation is clearly out of the sphere of sense and demonstration, so there can be no certainty of it unless God reveal it. When revealed, it at once accounts for and explains that which is before the eyes of all.

Men have raised many difficulties about creation. There is nothing so easy, even for a child, as to put questions hard to solve; but, after all, the difficulties and objections of speculation are generally trifling, when looked into with candour, and fairly confronted with the light of divine truth.

Thus men have asked why creation should be at a certain point of time, why not always. I answer that to say always is to deny creation. You assume by your doubt the denial of that which God's word asserts, and which even your reason can find the only key that really unlocks the universe. More than this, creation necessarily implies an exertion of the power of God; for it means that God was pleased to put forth His energy, and to give being to that which had no previous existence. And clearly it belongs to a personal being, as God is, to have a will — consequently, to create when He pleases, how He pleases, and as much or as little as He pleases.

Creation, therefore, is the action of sovereign will to call into being whatever seemed fit to His wisdom. If one used "time" of this, it must be in a large sense; for, strictly speaking, what we call time ordinarily is duration measured by created objects, after they have been caused to exist by God's power. In ancient times the philosophizing Jews found considerable difficulty in bringing in measures of time into their thoughts of creation. Their difficulty was precisely the opposite of that which the Gentile philosophers feel now. The modern schools of science demand enormous tracts of time; but they themselves must admit they have made profound mistakes — their own books prove it. They differ not only from their predecessors, but from one another; not only from one another, but from themselves. Give them only a few years, and we find the most confident statements made — by geologists more particularly — refuted, not merely by other writers, but by their own subsequent investigations.

Again, in general it is not a question of disputing their observations, or well-attested facts. These may be interesting and important, as well as solid; the use made of them is another thing. We are entitled to judge their conclusions: they assuredly have done so themselves, with no little freedom; we are entitled on incomparably better grounds, if we have confidence in the word of God, which they have not. Only let us take care, lest we bring, by our own haste or unskilfulness, unmerited blame on that word which we seek to expound. If they have let it slip, if they have dared to despise it, so much the worse for them both now and evermore.

The truth is that Scripture is infinitely larger than the systems of men. I shall hope to prove, this afternoon, two things: — that after the beginning there is room for the longest successive lapses of duration; next, that the ordinary divisions of time are expressly introduced, and this precisely when it suits the character of God's revelation, and His dealings with men. Consequently the word of God leaves ample space for all that is true in the systems both of the ancients and of the moderns. Here, then, as ordinarily, and I dare to say always, it is only ignorance of Scripture, and inattention to it, which have created the difficulty, as they are apt to do.

In short, the portion that has been read gives two great facts: creation at first, apart from those measures of time which belong to the present condition of the heavens and earth; secondly, the introduction of the common course of time, when God is undertaking to prepare an immediate abode for man on the earth. Thus, then, is met the Alexandrian theory, as of Philo, who thought it derogatory to God to suppose literal time in creation.* His conception of the divine energy was an instantaneous result. The moderns have reduced God to a being rather more like themselves. For man undoubtedly would be a long time making such a world as this, and so is ready to imagine that God must have been a long time too. I do not say that there is much to boast of, either in ancients or in moderns; but the fact is that there seems to be a true element in both these suppositions. The mischief is that neither has been rightly understood, and that one has been set against another; whereas both, duly applied, have a solid existence in fact, and in the revelation of God's word. But we must distinguish and not confound them.

* Philo, in his treatise on the Mosaic account of the creation, does not go farther than saying that the six days were said for the sake of arrangement, to which number is allied, of which he curiously thinks " six " is perfection. But in his first book of Allegories, he will have it that Moses wrote Gen. 2: 4 to leave the time undefined, and so to exclude the idea that the universe came into being in six days.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." If God had been bound to create at any moment before that in which He was pleased to call into being the heavens and the earth, His character must have been denied; He would not thus be the Absolute after all. For absolute means that He is not tied to conditions. That He was pleased, therefore, to exert His own divine energy at the particular time when He chose flows from the very fact that He is God. Even a man has a will. Is God to be deprived of His will? What sort of a God would that be?

"In the beginning," then, "God created the heaven and the earth." Observe the careful abstinence here from measures of time that belong to man. It is now well known, that not the heavens only but the earth had an existence and suited condition when man was not upon it — when it might be utterly impossible, according to the facts that we know about its circumstances, for man to be there, or for any animated nature to subsist — followed by vast and gradual changes, as well as sudden convulsions destructive of such living things as did afterwards exist. For such crises and changes there were, if there be anything ascertained in the "uncertain science," as one called it who was himself one of the chief contributors to the riches of physical knowledge. And an uncertain science it truly is. Humboldt, we may be sure, did not mean to slight any real fruit of man's mind. If there be, then, anything certain in the uncertain science of geology, it is this, that there were immense tracts of duration when man did not exist upon the earth. God's word leaves ample space for them. "In the beginning " fixes the commencement of the universe indeed, but admits of eras of indefinite extent, and this before the confusion described in the following verse, still more of course before the six days, whose course begins with verse 3.

To what use He applied them — what were the particular constitution, phase, and denizens of the earth during one space or another, God has not seen fit to lay before us in His word. This is no defect in Scripture: that it lies open to such a charge flows from one of its excellences. The word of God was never meant to be a book of human science. Nevertheless, when science ceases to be uncertain, when it is no longer a heap of hypotheses, one displacing and destroying another, in the measure in which it becomes really entitled to the rank of science, and attains any degree of consistency as a branch of knowledge, it never fails to pay homage to the word of God. I do not speak of every individual who cultivates it. Far from that. But it seems to me true of science itself. And unquestionably men who have largely advanced its domains in all directions have not been the least loud in their acknowledgment of God's word, when it speaks of that which they are generally considered to know best. There are none in this room who would dispute the place of a Newton or a Cuvier. They were not backward in owning the value of Scriptural truths. Remember, I do not bring in the names of these great men as if it could be any triumph for the cause of God. It was their gain to bow to His word, which really cast lustre on them, not they on it.

So always it is. There is no man but what derives all his blessing, if he be wise, through God's word from God Himself. Sir Isaac Newton, for instance, did not degrade the science of which he was one of the most illustrious ornaments by denying God or dishonouring His word. Not that the prince of natural philosophers understood the word of God well — I do not think he did. It was not given to him to sound the depths of Scripture to any remarkable extent. He can scarcely be deemed correct as to his views of creation; for his idea was that God in the first place created crude masses of matter.* Very likely such is the notion among many to this day; if so, it is a serious error, which derives no countenance from the word of God. What Scripture says is that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Do these latter terms mean masses of matter? Heaven is not masses of matter, nor earth either. When Scripture says God created the heaven and the earth, it means what it says. God did not create a mass of undigested materials. We may presume Sir Isaac got this from Ovid, certainly not from the Bible. Most school-boys have imbibed the same idea; for even the greatest of men may sometimes be affected by that which influences the child at school. Few of us sift our sources of thought enough to discern how much we are tinctured, especially by heathen poets and philosophers. There is no man necessarily above such an influence. It would be only flattering ourselves to fancy that any man here could pretend to such an immunity. I should be sorry, indeed, to give the slightest ground to suppose it to be a question of man against man. My present task is to vindicate God's word, no matter who the person is that ventures to oppose it. Let his reputation be what it may, God is above him, and His word is infinitely wiser than that which any man has written without inspiration. Scripture never knows what it is to correct itself; it corrects all others and their words, let them be the greatest philosophers or who they may.

* "It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which He formed them.

"By the help of this principle all material things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid particles above mentioned, variously associated in the first creation by the counsel of an intelligent Agent; for it became Him who created them to set them in order. And if He did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of the world, or to pretend that it might have arisen out of chaos by the mere laws of nature; though being once formed it may continue by these laws for many ages.

"Space being infinitely divisible, and matter not being necessary in all places, it may be also allowed that God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures, and in several proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the universe. At least I see nothing of contradiction in all this." — Horsley's Newton, vol. iv., p. 260, etc.

God's word then asserts, that in the beginning He created the heaven and the earth. I admit that it was not the heavens in the sense in which we afterwards read of them, in the course of the second day (verses 6-8). It was not the earth in the state in which, when the waters were finally gathered into seas, man was to live on the dry land. Nor is there any reference to man or even to any other animal in this primary mention of the earth (verse 1). All is left strikingly open. If science has made discoveries here, let her humbly seek to prove them. Let her remember the cosmogonies of olden time and not be too hasty. Above all, let her not be in a hurry to contradict the Bible. She will be wiser if she curbs her spirit and seeks a docile mind; otherwise she will find out her humiliating mistake before long. When things get settled down into their places, and the various discoveries acquire shape, and are generalized into laws that carry conviction everywhere, like the principle of gravitation; when geology arrives (if ever it should) at such a place as its far more exact sister, astronomy, I do not doubt that her obeisance to the Bible will be more complete than it is now. Not that I expect such progress; yet it is not for any one to predict what may be in reserve. But this is certain, that Scripture asserts the grand truth that God gave being to the heaven and the earth, without connecting this with time as measured by man, still less of course by history.

Consequently the common idea of putting the creation of the world some six thousand years ago is a mere blunder. The Bible is in no way responsible for it. Where does Scripture say so, or anything approaching to it? It is only the annotator at the beginning of the Authorised Version who joins B.C. 4004 with Genesis 1: 1. I do not doubt that the margin was thus supplied by men, excellent, learned, and with pious intentions. But it is only man, not God, who dates creation from Tisri or September 1st. And this is the blessedness of the Bible, that we have in itself that which corrects the best of men who laboured on it with the best means and desires.* Is this a loss? To my mind an immense boon, especially to those who boast of no wisdom except that which the Bible gives them. The Bible — and this is its boast and ours — is the book for all, be they the simplest or the most ignorant. The Bible — and where is there the appearance of such another book — can correct the best wisdom that man has ever laid up, not merely outside, but from the Bible itself. The Bible, then, nowhere puts creation in connection with Adam — expressly not; nor is it in connection with animated being, with beasts, or birds, or fishes, or reptiles, nor even with the grass and fruits of the earth. It simply affirms what man never knew as a certainty without the Bible, that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

* Thus even Bishop Horsley writes, in his Biblical Criticism, i. III: "The creation of the world, as it is described in the first chapter of Genesis, was not a single instantaneous act, but a work performed by gradual stages in the time of six successive days or entire revolutions of the globe of the earth upon its axis."

Then the second verse puts us in presence of another great fact, which has been, no doubt, illustrated by geologists, but in no way are we indebted to them for ascertaining it. Here it is in the Bible without them and before geology was heard of: "And the earth was without form, and void." It is clearly a condition totally different from the first verse. Not a word about the heaven being without form, and void; the earth alone was so. Some, no doubt, have found a difficulty because of the word "and" (!) being introduced, as if it linked the second verse with the first in point of time; but this is all a mistake. If the word "and" had not been here, the first verse might have been taken for a sort of summary of all the rest of the chapter; and thus hasty readers, and preachers, and commentators have been too disposed to treat it in expounding the chapter. They imagined that God's creating in the beginning was set out in detail under the various days that afterwards follow; but that little conjunction precludes such an interpretation. Compare such statements elsewhere, as for instance, in Genesis 5: "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made be him.'' There we have the absence of the conjunction. The reason is that the first words are an abstract of that which the rest of the chapter brings before us. Had there been no "and" at the beginning of the second verse of the first chapter, the common (or at least what used to be the common) construction might plead some show of reason for itself, as far as the language of Moses is concerned. There might have then been an impeachment of the accuracy of the divine record. As it stands, there is thorough and manifest correctness. The only persons that have made mistakes are either Christians with upright wishes, who have merely attached their own erroneous notion to the scripture, or men of science who similarly mis-reading it have forthwith sought to malign it. There was no just ground for either; the fault was in both, not in God's word.*

* If the LXX. meant "and" in an adversative sense, as many have done since, I believe them mistaken, and that the conjunction is simply a particle of connection. The true interpretation is confirmed by the substantive verb which in Hebrew is never, as often in English and other tongues, a mere copula. The facts, therefore, of verses I and 2 are connected; the times are kept expressly separate. In the beginning (let it be ever so far back) was the creation; subsequently — but how long after is not said — was the chaotic confusion of the earth. Here Dr. Kennedy (Donnellan Lectures, ii. 12, etc.) seems to be in evident error.

"And the earth was without form, and void." This is a second fact. There is no limitation of the space that intervened between the original creation of heaven and earth in verse 1, and the dreary ruin depicted in the earlier clause of verse 2. We are not told what were the grounds on which God dissolved the fabric of the earth He had created, and brought it into the chaotic condition so strikingly set forth. But I repeat my assertion that the creation of a chaos, or the existence of a chaos as a primeval state, is a heathen and not a biblical thought. What the Bible says is quite inconsistent with such an idea. "Heaven and earth," we have seen, does not mean chaos, but a state of things with an order necessarily distinguishing them. What use God may have made of the earth as it originally came from His fiat is another question, and our curiosity is not indulged by the Bible. The fact, however, is certain; and it is a fact of the utmost moment, and of very great interest in its place. All the facts that have been discovered of the earliest conditions of the earth fall in with it; that is to say, they point to a time when the animal, or even vegetable kingdom, when life in its lowest forms as yet had no existence on the globe. Is there no difficulty then? I grant you that man has the utmost possible difficulty in arriving at anything more than a First Cause. What the nature of that First Cause is, how can he tell? The very same principle that leads him to feel there must be a First Cause forbids his understanding it. The reason of this too it is not hard to see. Man himself infers a first cause, but he, a caused being, never can per se understand a first cause that is not caused. It is outside and above the sphere and nature of his own being. There man feels, and, alas! would hide, his own ignorance. But here in Scripture all is plain. We are told that all things above and below had a First Cause, and that He who caused them to be was God, who by the absolute act of His own will was pleased so to create (verse 1). Then (verse 2) follows another fact — all the earthly part of the creation completely dissolved, and in hopeless confusion. I shall prove that Scripture refers to the same words elsewhere; never as the original state, but a state to which God was pleased to reduce the object in question. The importance of this cannot be over-estimated in such a theme as the present.

Thus in Isaiah 34: 11 we have these same expressions once more. In describing the judgment upon the land of Edom, we read, "The cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it; and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion (tohu), and the stones of emptiness" (bohu). No man can say that this is a description of the original state of the land of Edom; it is a condition to which God's judgment brought it down. This, then, confirms the interpretation already given of Genesis 1: 2. The second verse is brought in as an additional statement to the first (not an exhibition of the state which was before us in the first verse). But, further, the use made of the terms elsewhere (as Isaiah 34) shows that they suit there a condition to which God consigned what He had made, and certainly do not describe that in which He made or created it.

Again Jeremiah 4: 23 refers to these same terms, and clearly in allusion to Genesis. There the prophet writes in view of the land of Israel and the judgments impending — "I beheld the earth" (it was a prophetic vision), "and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled." That is, it is not at all a vision looking back to a primeval condition, but one that looks onward to the utter desolation with which God would visit a particular land, the terms being pointedly chosen from the second verse of Genesis 1. What I gather is very simple; that there is an analogy in the use to which the Spirit of God applies His own words; that Genesis 1: 2 is a description of the state, not in which God made the earth, but to which He was pleased subsequently to reduce it.

I may be met by the objection that this represents God as capricious. Far be the thought! Was not, is not, He that made the heavens and the earth all-wise? Ah! it would have been a poor thing for man, as he is now, if God had not broken up the earth; an imperfect provision, if He had not convulsed it, and many a time too. I am not prepared to endorse, still less to oppose, what men of science, who had, as far as I am aware, no thought of illustrating the Bible, have affirmed as to the number and character of the pre-Adamite convulsions. There is one that I could name among the most exact and comprehensive of modern writers on palaeontology, and he, if I recollect aright, affirms that some nine and twenty times the crust of this earth was broken up, before man was made to dwell here below; that nine and twenty times there have been successive acts of God's power, in bringing in what was new on the basis of the breach of the old. And suppose you that all this was arbitrary? Certainly I am not going in anywise to bind my faith or yours to that which M. D'Orbigny says, however competent he may have been to give a grave and ripe judgment. Convulsions may have happened nineteen times, or nine and twenty, or thirty-nine.

To my mind it is rather a precarious affirmation, the exact number on a point so delicate and difficult to ascertain with precision. Nevertheless, the general outline I cannot but hold to be as sure a series of facts as any other in geological science, that God was pleased to form successive deposits, and after each, or at any rate at intervals, violently to break up the surface that He formed. And so far from this being without a worthy purpose, it was the evidently wise course of things, if He destined the earth, after these vast geological eras, to become the home of man, or at least the sphere for man's activity and responsibility in such a world as this. How else would man have reached what lay in the bowels of the earth? How else could he have availed himself, for instance, of the buried coal measures? How else could he have turned to account the minerals deposited in its depths? How else could he have quarried the lime, the marbles, and other stones concealed there? On the one hand, all this chain of successive convulsions was requisite for man, when formed on the earth; but, on the other hand, it was entirely incompatible with man, or indeed any other being, when living on the face of the earth; because these violent disruptions, of course, would have been fatal, as they were when various genera and species of living creatures did exist at each epoch when the crash took place; and consequently the tale is told by the vast beds of fossilized objects, as we all know — when God laid down not merely unstratified formations, but strata with an ascending scale of organic being, before the Adamic earth.

But all this was not without a beneficent design marked with the utmost wisdom and goodness too, as all that God does and says must be. So that although He was pleased here to pass over these geologic eras silently, leaving it to man who was about to avail himself of means to discover such facts by his observation, and by that mind with which God had endowed him, yet He has left ample verge for all in verse 2. It was natural that man should survey that world on which he was made, and of which he was constituted the lord. One can understand that man goes forth and enters with interest into the conditions of the world that was put under him; for things here below were his proper domain. Naturally, therefore, man seeks to understand the world which has been set in his heart (Eccles. 3: 11), where he finds himself now an inhabitant. It is perfectly certain that all the previous states differed more or less from each other, as they were totally different from the conditions in which man was made and tested in Eden.

Let me here state another patent fact. It is after all this that the days come in. It is quite a mistake to count them long periods. They are nothing of the sort. I see no reason to doubt that they are simple cycles of twenty-four hours. If long periods had been meant, do you think that God would have spoken about "the evening and the morning"? Such a phrase would be an extraordinary formula for introducing any other than a natural day. That there were long periods may be quite true; but then they are left room for, and not described. They would come in before if not after the state described in verse 2 — once certainly, and perhaps twice. There might be suites of long periods for aught we know. It does not appear, as far as my reading goes, that there is anything of real trustworthiness as to these periods except the general fact, which is a matter of fair inference from what has been turned up here below. But here it is, and here only, in my opinion, that you must insert these long eras. Grant that there may have been forty thousand years for one period, what is there to alarm in that? Be it so: I care not how many millions of years you claim. Supposing that scheme true, there is room for the geologic ages; Scripture says nothing to the contrary, but leaves abundant space for all, and so much the more remarkably because at first sight such interstices might be easily passed over.

It is not the part of wisdom for a Christian to deny facts. Why reject the phenomena which indicate states not only of the earth, but of living creatures there before Adam was made, that is, before the six days? Otherwise, how can we escape the supposition, that God was pleased to make vast quantities of fossilized objects, giving the appearance of having lived on the earth, which never did? Are you prepared to accept the notion that God studiously gave a semblance of that which was not true? There are remains of animals, and animals too that were evidently made with distinct objects and with characteristics altogether different from those of any animals to be found now, and supposing a correspondent state of things (as for instance, when the world was a vast marsh and enormous heat prevailed). There is no ground whatever to doubt these facts. I do not see that a Christian shows his wisdom, or his faith either, by denying anything of the sort. Granted that being unrevealed it is not a point for faith; it is a thing that man must ascertain and prove if he can, and thus it is a question of knowledge or ignorance. One cannot talk correctly about faith in science. Faith has nothing to do with science, nor again has science with faith. What the scientific men have to do is to collect and marshal their facts; then let them and others judge their conclusions. This does not appear to me at all arrogant — but what every soul who can ought to do — every one who takes the trouble of making himself master of the facts they present. It does not follow that the most diligent and successful collectors of facts are the best deducers from them. This may or may not be. A wise man has not a word to say against science itself or known facts. I do complain of the precipitancy and evident animus with which many men have chosen to use what they could in an unformed and crude state of science to contradict the word of God. Neither wisdom nor reverence appears in such ways.

Thus, we have now had the two grand facts with which the chapter opens — the original creation, and secondly, another separate fact, but the next that is stated, — the chaotic condition into which the earth was reduced, and, as far as the analogy of Scripture shows by God's act — by His judgment — for wise reasons.

But there is more evidence still. There is a passage in Isaiah which seems to me formally to contradict the notion that God created the earth in a state of chaos. As to heaven it is not pretended; it is only a question of the earth. We shall best see the importance of this by-and-by. Now, in a well-known passage of Isaiah (45: 18), the Spirit of God is explicit that God did not make the earth in the chaotic condition which is familiar to all the readers of ancient mythology. It is a statement which made a considerable impression on my own mind, because in it the Spirit of God seems distinctly to contradict the idea that the earth was created in emptiness or confusion. "For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it; he created it not in vain: he formed it to be inhabited." Our translators in using the expression "in vain " evidently turned tohu aside from the literal import. The fact is, it is very much more forcible when taken in connection with the passage in Genesis 1, 2. One of the terms Moses employed in verse 2 is used by Isaiah, who declares that Jehovah did not create the earth so. What conclusion can one draw but that Moses described an after state, and not the primary result of God's creation! The traditional interpretation sets the legislator at variance with the prophet, and must be abandoned for the view already given, which maintains their perfect harmony. When created, God did not create the earth a waste; when it became such, it was a subsequent state.

There is another fact also on which I would just desire to say a word — the remarkable precision of the terms that the Spirit of God has used on this subject. Hebrew is not by any means a copious language, but is comparatively poor. It is not at all equal to our own in possessing shades of synonym; but for all that it is worthy of note that, as to the matter now in hand, which was to be conveyed by revelation to man, the language that the Holy Ghost first employed has materials which, for precision, as far as I know, are found in none other. Consider how the terms which we translate "creating" "making" "forming" or "fashioning," here and elsewhere, are used — with what force and appropriateness — in the word of God.

It may help to put this in a clear light before those ignorant of it if we turn to Exodus 20, which, perhaps, may be in the minds of some as bearing out the common notion that the earth was created in six days. In the eleventh verse of that chapter it is written, "In six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." No doubt a great many people, in the habit of hearing this, have confounded it with the opening words of Genesis 1. But there is a marked difference, instead of any such confusion. If Scripture said that Jehovah created heaven and earth in six days, there would be reasonable ground for the thought. Nowhere is such an assertion to be found in the word of God. What we do find is the creation of heaven and earth in the beginning; but when you come to the six days, it is the making of heaven and earth. So manifest is the difference at once. "Create" (bara), if we are to distinguish the words, refers to the efficient cause; "make" (asah) points to the formal cause; and they have another word (yatsar), which brings in the material.

It is very evident, therefore, that Hebrew — poor a language as it may be in some respects — is exquisitely precise in these very particulars. No doubt the reason is obvious. It was God's pleasure to reveal His mind as to the outward creation in the Hebrew tongue. And what makes it the more striking is, that Greek — which is such a finely expressive language in most other respects — seems to fail not a little in this. They had no words at all competent to express these shades of meaning. They were driven to other ways of putting the idea. There is always a possibility in every tongue of expressing thought; but this may, in some cases, require a circuitous method. In John 1: 3 we have creation alluded to. In the first verse we read: "In the beginning was the Word" — clearly this ascends, as often noticed, before Genesis 1: 1. In the one beginning God acted; in the other the Word was, the uncreated expresser of God, before His power was put forth to call anything or one into being — the Word that was with God, and that was God. "The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him." There is a beautiful exactness in the Greek expression, that is not found in the English. Egeneto is not adequately answered either by the Hebrew or the English "made." Properly speaking, it does not mean anything of the sort, but "caused to be." The Word gave to all things existence. This seems to be the best Greek method of expressing creation, if it can be expressed in that tongue by one word. "All things were brought into being by him; they began" — or, rather, "were caused to be" — "by him." Such is the force of the term. But this does not at all match the admirable excellence of the Hebrew tongue, where we have God's own absolute act referred to. Such is the essence of the word "create" and consequently it is invariably attributed to God. We never read of any created being of whom it is predicated, unless in a figure or evident accommodation. It could not be applied to the act of a creature. Not that it always means created out of nothing. It is the word for this, but not for this only. Hence it is applied to the fifth day's work — the first production of animal life for the Adamic world (verse 21), and still more emphatically to the latest task of the sixth day, when God gave being to the chief of this lower creation (verse 27). We ought always to gather the value of a word from its usage; to the use that Scripture makes of it we may wisely, and must implicitly, bow.

Thus, without going farther, this very chapter of Genesis shows that, while the word here translated "create" is proper to describe God's origination of being where there was none before, at the same time it may express a particular act of God's will where there existed materials of which God made use. For instance, where He created the sea-animals, and where He created man in the image of God, it is evident that in neither case does it mean without pre-existent materials. Here we know from the account that such there were. The statements of Scripture are inconsistent, therefore, with the notion that the word create invariably means creating out of nothing. At the same time, while this modification of the word's meaning is allowed, it remains true that, if God would express creation in its full import where there was nothing before, this is the word and none other. Where is the word beside so admirably suited to convey it?

If some suppose it a defect that the same word is used with such shades of difference, let me tell them that their objection makes a demand on Hebrew which is not met by any other language — which, if it could be met, would involve mere barbarism even if practicable to be remembered and used; in fact, there is no language where words do not express varieties of meaning. If the most precise of tongues did not admit of some modification in the use of its terms, such a catalogue would be an intolerable burden. If one were bound to use a new word for every new thought, how cumbrous would human speech become! Man would sink under the weight of that which he had to carry in his mind, and utter in its proper time and place. But enough of this, which I merely notice to guard the unreflecting from a common misapprehension.

When God, then, expresses not the first origination of the universe, but the constituting of the earth an abode for man, we find the plain fact, that in the six days Jehovah, the God of Israel, is said to have made all things (according to the fourth commandment, which views the whole scene as we have it now, not as primarily created). Accordingly, after the Spirit of God has been brought in as moving upon the face of the waters, we are shown in the six days' work the making of the earth for man as formed by the hand of God here below.

Let us briefly trace their course. "And God said, Let there be light." Here, again, it is well to direct your attention to the words. A well known critic of antiquity singled out the sentence as a fine instance of the sublime. But there is far more in it. Probably many of my hearers are aware that there have been conflicting theories about light, and that the men of science have not quite settled the question yet among themselves (that is to say, whether it depend on emission from a certain point which you may call the fountain, or whether light be caused to act by vibrations). There is thus a wide discordance between the corpuscular theory and the idea of an undulating ether. Further, it is known that most scientific moderns have been disposed to give up the Newtonian theory of corpuscles in favour of the vibration theory of a later date. It may be remarked here that the manner in which God's word introduces the action of light suits the more refined view. For certainly there is a careful abstinence from making an entity of light. It is not put forward as some material thing created, but in such a way as to express a power, whatever its seat might be. Thus the peculiarity of its mention makes it perfectly consistent with the supposition that it is merely produced by undulations of ether.

This is the more remarkable, because no one can pretend that the theory was known. I am aware how scholars have permitted themselves to look down on the sons of Israel. I am aware that to your Tacituses and Gibbons they were the most contemptible of mankind. I am aware that poets cannot conceal their bitter scorn. Nevertheless, how comes to pass the startling fact, that there have been heaps of philosophers before and since these scornful poets and historians, ancient or modern, but the only account of creation which survives is found in the simple yet sublime words of the Hebrew Moses? Many of them, if not all, wrote of the universe since Moses; but where will you put Cl. Ptolemy — one of the greatest names — now? Here shines day by day the same majestic statement in the word of God. The more you seek to degrade the Hebrews, the more you really, though unwittingly, exalt the God who employed them to be the vehicles of communicating what none else knew. Where is any other document of the kind that stands its ground like Genesis 1? If there be, show me it or the man that wrote it. Where is the theory of the earth, up to this year of grace, which has yet given such a graphic, comprehensive, or exact statement? And this is the more admirable, because it is given in a book meant for men, women, and children; in a book expressly designed to cast the light of God on a world involved in moral darkness; in a book capable of being understood from the first day it was written, yet at the same time so written that nothing shall ever be found to contradict it up to the last day.

This is what I claim for the Bible. That anything has ever really contradicted it, on grounds that will bear investigation, I have yet to learn. It has not been for want of will or effort; it has not been for want of learning or science. I do not pretend to be so ignorant as not to have looked into what men have written against the Bible. I have examined what has been said in ancient as well as modern times. But I have not seen — and I challenge any other person to show me — an account of creation that carries on its own face such an admirable combination. There is a statement of facts that does not go beyond what men in olden time could profit by and understand; and yet not only does it survive all the changing thought of mankind, but it gathers fresh illustration of its truth from the advance of science, wherever the later becomes so mature and fixed as to carry general conviction along with itself.

That a man living at so very early a day (as Moses unquestionably did) has written in the same brief sentence that which one of the greatest wits of antiquity, and finest critics of style, cites as challenging universal admiration for its simple sublimity; and that he has at the same time given his account with an exactness that surpasses what the illustrious Newton displayed, only within a comparatively short remove from our own time — to me is the more gratifying, because it came from the remote history of a very little people in an obscure corner of the earth. It is no use to tell me that Moses was learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians. The wisdom of the Egyptians in these matters would have only misled him. Produce me such a testimony of their wisdom, show me from their hieroglyphics, or from any other source you like, that they understood the course of creation as Moses did. There may have been some points common; but they were points common to many others besides Egyptians. They were relics of current tradition, in some way or other generally received. But were the special salient points of Moses ever endorsed by the philosophers of Greece, Rome, or Egypt? The Egyptians held eternal matter, primeval night, and the origin of their gods from earth and heaven, not the God who in the beginning created them and all things.

It seems to me, then, that the scorn of incredulity is, as usual, exceedingly misplaced; and that Moses must not be viewed as a genius who had by depth of intellect penetrated into nature's secrets. They are not to be rifled thus. Genius may develop itself in poetry; it may happily blossom and bear fruit in a waste of seemingly barren facts. But the facts of creation are an impossibility for mind to conceive and calmly state without exposing itself to successful attacks from all sorts of shafts of a hostile world. Not so! There is One above all the geniuses, scholars, and men of science, who gave them life and breath and all things; He it was who wrote by His servant Moses.

We must take note of another fact also. Why is it that light is introduced here? It is no use to say that it is all according to phenomena. It is not natural to have spoken of it here, unless the allegation were the simple truth. Moses surely had done otherwise had he been writing according to observation. And you know that this is the boasted but really base philosophy of the hour; you are aware that men are now making experience everything, and that what Hume put forth in his scepticism of a former day is now the fashionable empiricism of this day. They call it positivism. No more degrading system ever dragged down men's minds since the world began; nothing will more thoroughly corrupt the hearts. Such was the fate of the early positivists in heathen times. It will be more deadly now.

But however this may be judged, here we have a fact not discernible by experience at all. And if it be a truth, how was it learnt? Who, that merely gathered his thoughts from the world around and above, would have brought in light before the sun, moon, and stars? Why then did Moses burden his account of creation by that which was not at all a fact derivable from observation, but rather a difficulty? It is a strange statement at first sight. If it really set forth the truth, it is easily accounted for. Nor am I in the least denying that light may have been caused to act at previous states of the world. It is vain, therefore, to object to Scripture, that there were animals before man which had eyes, and consequently saw; that even those little animals (I need hardly say I mean the Trilobites) that have been discovered soon after the first traces of animal life, noticed in the formations of the Silurian epoch, are remarkable for their singular and powerful structure of vision. There is no doubt of the facts, and I would not weaken their force in the least. Their ocular provision indicates fulness and power. Some of these must have been able to look round about in a way beyond most beings now on the earth. At the same time, all this is not at all inconsistent with the statement of Moses. It is evident that a state of chaos might cause totally different conditions from what had existed before, and might forbid that vibration that was necessary to call out light. But here we find that, after this utter confusion, light is caused to be. If animals existed before those described for the Adamic earth, there may have been light before also. What is said under the six days is about the earth as it was to be placed under man.

Another thing may be observed. A certain analogy may well have been in part, if not wholly, between the great geological periods, and these six days. You are aware, of course, that Hugh Miller is the popular advocate of this idea, carried out so far as to identify them by making the days mean these vast successive eras. Now it is not for me to speak slightingly of such a man; at the same time, I believe he was mistaken. Do I deny the long periods? Not at all. Do I reject the analogy between them and these days? In no wise. Can we not understand vast periods characterized by God's building up this globe gradually and in successive exertions of His power, and that the six days should go over the work again after the last great catastrophe, before man, only on a circumscribed and very brief scale, for our race to dwell on the earth — yet similar, in certain grand outlines, to that which had occupied God in the immense tracts of duration which preceded Adam? There appears to me not the slightest ground for setting the one thought against the other. Both may be perfectly true, and in point of fact I believe that so it was.

Doubtless you are aware of a comparatively new set of philosophers, more daring in their speculations than the old heathen.* They assert that everything has grown up from a nebula; but what the nebula grew out of no man can tell — not even these experts. Of this only they are sure, that they owe their origin not to God but to a nebula, unless this be their God. I hope to show, before I have done with this chapter, that the scheme is as false as the facts of science are true; that God's word makes all plain, and, in point of fact, falls in with the most thorough and comprehensive observation, as well as with conscience; for conscience has a good deal to do with these matters, though it may not appear so at first sight. There is a will in all this restless speculation. There is a willing ignorance of that which does not suit. There is a desire to get rid of God, and consequently of creation.

*See Appendix.

As to the notion of development, let me tell you that God has taken pains, both above and below, to expose the falsity. As a general fact, it is quite clear that from the lower classes of being there is an ascending scale. But the moment you make it absolute and exclusive, you contradict facts. I deny the assumption first from this, that God made angels before He made man. I suppose you will not dispute the fact that angels are a superior class of beings. Now we know for certain, that when the foundations of the earth were laid, "the morning stars sang together," as Job says, "and all the sons of God shouted for joy." God has taken pains, therefore, to guard against such a system.

This, by-the-bye, illustrates the remarkable ways of God in the Bible. It is not arranged as a mere book of geometry, where one proposition depends on a preceding one, and all form, so to speak, a regularly connected chain. The Bible must be read, and read again and again as a whole; and one grand reason why many make so poor a use of it is, that they cherish favouritism so much as to neglect the greater part of Holy Writ. And those who teach are apt to have their favourite texts, so that it fares ill with the Bible among both teachers and taught. I do not say that God does not bless the most partial use of His book; but I am sure that it will most amply repay every Christian who reads it as a whole. And let me assure you that the best recipe against infidelity is thus to read the Bible. How many of those who disbelieve it have so read it? That they have read parts of it I can suppose, as well as those who have feebly endeavoured to upset their statements. But it is a rare thing to meet with souls that read all the Bible with a spirit of faith. Many read it as a duty or religious task. Can such a study thus expect to enter in and enjoy? There is a numerous class of persons who get through the Bible in a year, or something of that kind; but this is far short of what I am now urging. Seek to understand the Bible: it is only possible by faith. There is no other way. Not by understanding do we believe, but by faith we understand as well as set to our seal that God is true.

Again, for the dissipation of the dismal idea of development, take the fact of the superiority of the early remains of the Saurian order above existing objects of the same kind. Can they gainsay this? They know it is true. They are perfectly aware that the idea of development in the Saurian order is a fiction, that the superior objects of that family are not those that in point of time followed as the theory would require. A single, positive, and well-defined fact of the kind suffices. No doubt there are others. Without pretending to any minute acquaintance with the subject, I know this much at least, and on their own authority, or rather on facts which cannot be disputed. Will they say that we should not bow to facts? I do not dispute them, whether it be facts of criticism as to the text of Scripture, or ascertained facts in the outward world of science. I do not question that facts have a meaning; but the hypothesis some seek to build upon those facts ought not to be too readily accepted.

We may now pass on to look briefly at the following days. "And God said, Let there he a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven."

How comes this? It is another difficulty at first sight. Did we not hear of heaven in the first verse? To be sure we did; and here we are told of heaven again. What then — contradiction? Not in the least degree; only another heaven — that is all. And is this, then, not true? Why this other heaven? Because man was about to be made. The circumambient atmosphere, extending upwards too, was essential not only to man's existence here below, but to vegetable life, to the due activity of light and heat, as well as to all forms of animated existence.

We find under the second day, then, the lower heaven. And that this is not a merely Jewish idea, but of God, is perfectly certain from the New Testament; for there we read how Paul was caught up (at any rate "a man in Christ," who, I have no doubt, was Paul) into the third heaven. We can easily understand, therefore, that at the beginning God made two heavens, and that in this case He made the lowest one. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here we find He made another, man being about to be made. And this is called heaven too. They are all called the heavens. There is the heaven of His presence; the heaven of the stars, planets, and other astronomical objects; and the atmospheric heaven necessary for man and living things here below.

Again we find, as that which occupies the third day, that the waters under the heaven are gathered together to one place, and the dry land appears. "And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas." And then the earth is made to bring forth grass — that lovely array, as it were, for the earth — full of beauty as well as beneficence. "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind."

I grant you that modern science denies genera and species everywhere. Development is in effect a denial of this. The Lamarckian notion, of which we have a representative in a rather celebrated living Englishman, sets it all aside. Do they realty gain much by it? I do not see that the blotting out of kinds in fruit-trees or herbs is a great acquisition of science. To me it seems to be a blotting out of the landmarks, not of science only, but of distinctions that date from the workmanship of God. It seems to be thoroughly spurious — merely one of those dark clouds that for a season flit across the horizon of science as over other worlds. It may be fashionable, but this does not make it the better. Here we are told, for God has written, that the different herbs had their kinds. And this is one of the great facts of the vegetable kingdom. The simplest gardener, that thinks as well as labours, knows this. Since man observed facts on the earth, when was it seen or heard that an apple-tree brought forth pears, or that a pear-tree bore apples? They can prove nothing but the liveliness of their own imagination. These dreamers contradict not only Scripture and science, but the facts gathered by observation in every land.

Again, on the fourth day we hear of the luminaries. And here mark the consistency and propriety of the language. It is not said that God then created them, but simply, "Let there be lights in the firmament." It is not light now, but "lights," or light-bearers, "in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night (the stars also)." These last are just referred to, and it was the more important because, as is generally known, many of those that had the greatest weight in the ancient world adored the stars. Even Plato, although a western, was sufficiently tinctured by orientalism to yield to the monstrous figment that the earth is a sort of living creature. As the philosophy of Aristotle directly tended to atheism (for it was low-minded empiricism), so the philosophy of Plato led into, if it was not downright, pantheism. Such was the difference between them. Pantheism, though in sound opposed, is really near akin to atheism.

God here cuts off the ground of all these delusions, as well as the objection of moderns, who too hastily assumed that the stars are said to be created at this time. It is not so. No matter how long the space required for the light from more distant stars to reach the earth, it is evident that room is left for all by what is said, and not said, in verses 1, 14, 16. Had Moses written that they were created on the fourth day, it would have contradicted the facts; but as it is expressed, not only is there no contradiction, but obviously the Bible is wiser than either the friends or the foes of revelation. Compare what Moses wrote with any philosopher you please in the ancient world. Whose writings have failed to contradict the facts of modern science? How comes it that Moses did not? Whose care was it that preserved him from here implying — as many divines have been too hasty to say for him — the creation of the lights?* A Scotch university professor not long since insisted to me that Moses affirmed it. He was so ready to believe that Scripture contradicts science, that he had not even weighed these few words with care. Had Plato or Aristotle written as Moses did, how loud the boasting, and how close the scrutiny, not to "hint a fault," but to set forth the excellence of their philosophy! Scripture needs no apology. All I ask is a more exact attention to the word of God on the part of those who venture to assail it. It would be wiser at least to read it first.

*Thus Horsley (Biblical Crit. i. 4) says, "Neither the sun nor any of the celestial luminaries were in being when light was produced. For light was the work of the first day; the luminaries of the fourth." Also (p. 5), "The celestial bodies were set in the firmament in their respective places, when they were first created; and they were at the same time appointed to be for lights, to give light upon the earth; and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years."

You see where those are that speak about the enormous length of time necessary for light to be transmitted — though this again is more than they ought to assume — at any rate for the action of light by means of the heavenly orbs. But there is no difficulty whatever. When God created the heavens, did He make them empty? Did He not create also the host of heaven? What about the sun, and moon, and stars? He created them some time. That they were made we find elsewhere in this chapter; not, I presume, the absolute moment of their creation, but of their being made to serve for the use of man on the earth. What other uses they served we are not there informed. That they were God's handiwork, and for man's use, as creatures of God here below — not objects of worship, as in heathenism, He does explain. Surely there was wisdom in saying this and no more. There was considerate goodness in what He said, and in what He withheld.

On the fifth day the waters were to "bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." Here, too, a contradiction, I must tell you has been discovered by certain critics. Chapter 2 shows that fowl were made out of the earth; but Genesis 1: 20, they say, intimates that fowl were made out of the waters. Superficial cavillers! Genesis 1 says nothing of the sort, but is perfectly consistent with Genesis 2: 19. Look at the margin, not the text, of 1: 20 in your common English Bible. The objection is exceedingly illustrative of the danger of reasoning not from Scripture, but from a mistake that has crept into a translation of it. The first thing we have always to do is to ascertain the word of God and its meaning as accurately as possible. What this verse teaches is not that the waters were to bring forth fowl, as it appears to do in our English version; but "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature, and let fowl fly about the earth in the open firmament of heaven." The flying of the fowl in that sphere is the point, and not the statement that the waters gave birth to them. There is no such intimation in Scripture. What men have reasoned on, therefore, is merely their own misconception, and nothing more.

On the next and sixth day we have the land animals produced, and finally, man made in the image of God, after His likeness, with dominion over the lower creation assigned to them, and God blessing them. But mark the difference. It is only when man is thus about to be made that God says, "Let us." Oh, can you not appreciate the spirit of such a word as this? Can you not admire the way in which God, as it were, sits in counsel on the creation of man? Can you not judge between the physiologist that would make an ape his progenitor, and the Bible that reveals God thus creating man in His own image? Which is the more noble? Which is the more degrading? Of no other creature is it said, "Let us make," when it was a question of the earth, the sea, nay, of light itself — nothing of the sort. "Light be," said Elohim, "and light was." But as to the others, He wrought, but with no such preface as "Let us make." Here it is for the first and only time, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion." What can be farther from development? Such an idea is altogether foreign; and, indeed, the existence of different races and kinds has been engraved by God most legibly on the world of nature; for although man by his wicked ingenuity may cross the breed, as for example, of the animals that were put under his dominion, the result is always to induce sterility — the standing witness, on the one hand, against man's meddling, and, on the other, for the order in which God meant His creation to proceed. Thus is set before us succinctly, but plainly, the general course of creation.

A few remarks I would make on chapter 2 before I close.

The Sabbath-day is introduced at the beginning, though in truth the first three verses of chapter 2 belong properly to chapter 1; that is, they form a part of the great week of God's work and its rest. And there is a very beautiful connection with this which meets an objection of modern times on which a word may be well bestowed. You are aware that German authors have insisted loudly (whether the idea was originated by them is more than I would say) that we are indebted to different writers for the first book of Moses (just as it used to be the fashion of the Wolffians to divide Homer among I know not how many rhapsodists, though, in point of fact, this created far greater difficulties than it was supposed to remove; for it is far harder to imagine half a dozen Homers than one). One thing is very certain, that Moses, according to these sages, must have been a weak, foolish man, who adopted at least two different accounts, without a suspicion of what to them is obvious, that the one writer contradicted the other. Such is the discovery of modern criticism. Let me say what I am sure is the truth on this: I dare not venture to put it forward as an opinion. It seems to me a sin to state anything that rests on the clear testimony of God's word as open to a doubt. If it is a mere question of your judgment of this fact or that, or your individual estimate of the person putting it forward, or your comparative view of the circumstances passing around, it is an opinion; and of what value can it be? You are yourself the measure of it — your ability, with your special opportunities, or general experience, and nothing more. But when we come to the word of God we should pass from the region of human opinions. What distinguishes it is that therein God speaks, and His people, yea, every soul, is bound to hear. For my own part I am convinced, and I trust you are no less than myself, that God has written His word intelligibly. By this I do not mean that any part of it is according to the measure of man; but that it is all written for man to God's glory, and in His wisdom. Thus, what God has been pleased to put in the plainest possible language may be beyond our fathoming; but at the same time it is not beyond our understanding and enjoying, according to our measure of faith, though we may also find out that it is unfathomable. But ever so deep as it is, and infinitely exceeding man's plummet to reach the bottom, it is as clear as it is profound, and not the mud or shallows of the creature.

I am persuaded, then, that these erudite writers have never gone below the surface of the wonderful introduction of Genesis, and that their speculations are not only idle, but ignorant. They tell us that the author of chapter 1 was a man that knew, and only knew, Elohim; and consequently they call this the Elohistic document. Then, from chapter 2: 3, because Jehovah-Elohim occurs, they will have this to be the Jehovistic portion, or a sort of mingling of the two — the Elohistic-Jehovistic. The fact is, that up to Genesis 2: 3 we have God (Elohim), and from verse 4 we have the LORD God (Jehovah-Elohim). But that there were two different and inconsistent writers is gratuitous and false. It was one and the same writer throughout; and, so far from inconsistency, each feature is perfection for its own object. Why, then, the difference? The reason is plain, sure, and instructive. When God presents Himself in contrast with man, or the creature, as the originator of all, the invariable term is God (Elohim). It is the proper word, and always so used throughout the Scripture. Consequently, if the term "Elohim" had not been used by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, it would have gone to prove that Moses could not be inspired. Exactness of thought requires that the Creator should be presented thus in the broadest form of contrast with the creature. On the other hand, besides being the self-existing originator, the Mighty One that caused to be what was not, God is pleased to enter into relationship with man, and indeed with creation. Now the special term in the Old Testament for relationship is Jehovah.

Besides, there was something peculiar in the manner in which God was pleased to enter into relationship then with man and creation, because all was unfallen. The consequence is that it is neither Elohim alone nor Jehovah alone in Genesis 2 and 3, but Jehovah-Elohim. Proofs will appear presently (and they might be increased) that this is precisely what it ought to be, and that any other form of presentation would not so exactly have suited the context. If we suppose (what the chapters themselves assert) that the God of creation was pleased to enter into relationship with man, and this at first in an exceptional way before sin entered the world, the writer ought to have adopted one title in chapter 1 (and none other than Elohim), and another in chapter 2 (and none other than Jehovah-Elohim). No doubt a revolution is stated to have come soon afterwards, when God accordingly changes His name in order to suit that altered state. After the Fall He simply calls Himself Jehovah. Thus the writer, being inspired (and probably far beyond his own measure of understanding the force of all he wrote), does not present the combined form in the way that is found in chapters 2 and 3 where we have first the relationship and then the test and Fall.

Consequently it is evident that the true key to the use of these terms is not the supposition of two or three different writers or documents, followed by a stupid compiler who did not perceive their mutual inconsistency. The very reverse is the truth; Moses — wise as he was — had an infinitely higher than human or Egyptian wisdom to guide him in all he wrote. None but God could have so furnished and so guided him. With all the advantages of observed facts on every side, with the incomparably greater privilege of the fullest subsequent revelation, we are but learning better in our own age the unspeakable value of what Moses wrote in that early day. I do not believe that this is because Moses rose in stature so highly above all men, from his day to ours, but because the only true God inspired Moses and all the other writers of the Bible.

The truth then is, that in this chapter 2 you will find everything savours of, or chimes in with, the establishment of relationships. "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens." Observe that there is creation, and also making. This is precisely right, creation having the first rank, and making the subsequent place. "And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Why is this introduced in chapter 2 rather than in chapter 1? For I affirm that you could not transplant this into the first chapter, and that the true cause depends, not upon a different writer, but upon quite another object and line of truth. The design here is not to show man made a creature, though at the head of creation. This is the subject-matter of the first chapter; and there his dominion is fixed by God, and pointed out by the sacred historian. But in the second chapter the aim is not merely to bring out that God made man, as He made every other creature, out of the dust of the ground (reminding him of the humility of his origin), but that he had that which came direct from God in a way no other animal had.

Into whose nostrils did Jehovah-Elohim breathe the breath of life? Into man's, and man's alone. We have no reason to think it was so with angels even. The man who was made out of the dust of the ground was not in full proper relationship with God until God breathed the breath of life into him. On this depends the immortality of the soul; and all who dispute or doubt this truth* fritter away its singular weight. Nor is it confined to such errorists. Those who have read Bp. Jos. Butler's works know that the great moralist failed to solve the difficulty of man's partaking in the resurrection, while other animals do not. There lies the secret. God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and thus it was he became a living soul. Every other animal became a living soul materially and without this. Man alone of all that live on the earth stands in immediate relationship to God. He may sin against Him, and he, consequently alone of all on earth, will be lost for ever. Thus the very fact that he has the breath of the Lord God in his nostrils will be the ground of his misery consequent on eternal exclusion from God. That God breathed into man, and he thus became a living soul, constitutes man's capacity for blessedness through belief of the truth, and for being so brought into the presence of God; as it is his misery when banished from Him for the rejection of Christ into the blackness of darkness for ever.

* Their arguments are for the most part the unintelligent misapplication of Old Testament texts that treat of the present life, or death, to that which is outside the world and everlasting. Thus, "Thou shalt surely die," and "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," are applied by them to deny the soul's unceasing existence; whereas they speak solely of God's government in this life. The New Testament has brought to light not only life and incorruptibility, but the second death and eternal judgment. The wages of sin is death, but not death only; for after death comes the judgment.

Thus when we are informed simply about creation, we hear of Elohim; when it is not Elohim, but Jehovah-Elohim, we have moral relationship; for Jehovah, I repeat, is the characteristic name of relationship in the Old Testament, as Father is in the New. In the New Testament, indeed, it is not only a God who has a people, but a Father who has a family. That His Son became a man to die and rise again has made it possible for God, by redeeming grace, to bring us into the place of children and sons; and consequently our proper term of relationship to God is children, as His relationship to us is that of Father. But in the Old Testament Jehovah was the term revealed in due time.

Mark how all the chapter carries out the leading idea. First, we have his relationship to God in the matter of the garden, which was to be kept; but, besides, there was a moral test — he must not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and. evil. Why (let me ask) was not this given in the first chapter? Because that chapter does not enter into moral relations; the second has it, because it does. Here we are in the presence of the solemn truth that God is Jehovah-God; that He is not merely a Creator, but establishes the creature, man, in relationship with Himself. Thus it is not only the Absolute, but He who is absolute chooses to form relationships between the creature and Himself. Not in the first chapter, but in the second, is this spread out before us livingly. The whole chapter proceeds on this ground.

Next we have here, and here alone, the animals brought for Adam to name. Thus is shown his relationship to those inferior to himself. He was the one to whom they belonged. There is nothing like this in the first chapter — no bringing of animals to receive their names from Adam; yet we see how consistent it is with the grant of dominion from Elohim recounted in that chapter.

To my mind this, as far as it goes, is just perfection as the word of God must be, instead of the hotch-potch of blunderers who strung together the inconsistent traditions of their own dark days. Such is what self-complacent unbelief has made of it. It appears to me that these critics are alike objects of horror and of compassion, and that what the Christian would desire for them is forgiveness from Him whose word they defame, because their incredulity has rendered them incapable of comprehending it. There is another, and only another, relationship that I will speak of, and this is the one that is last brought before us in this chapter. Relationship to God we have seen tested by the tree. Adam was to till the garden, and keep it, using all freely, but with his obedience tested by a single restriction. Then relationship to the creature is seen, where the various animals were brought before him to be named. But there was a help-meet wanted. How did God meet this need? In a way admirably wise, not by an absolutely fresh creation, but by forming a portion of the man into a woman, thus reminding him what the woman was and should be towards him — that she was part of himself.

Who, beforehand, could ever have thought of such a way? Who does not feel the beauty and appropriateness of the work and the word of God? How vain and unworthy the notions of the heathen as to all this! Alas! I know that some have sunk so low as to mock at this very fact, and the record of it. Perhaps they may never have known their duty toward the woman dependent on them (and if so, sure to be degraded by them). But the word of God puts everything in its place, and reminds the man, and the woman too, of that special relationship; for there was but the man and the woman — not one man and two women, but only one man and one woman. From the beginning it was so; to the end it ought not to have been otherwise. Thus it was God made them; and this the Son of God cited to vindicate His Father, putting guilty selfish man to shame. But He also made the woman out of man, and man discerned the fact at once. Though he had been in a sleep, he had an instinctive sense how matters stood.

Thus everything was in chapter 2 put in its proper place — the relationship of man with woman, as before with the inferior creation, and with God Himself.

May the Lord bless all His word, and give us unfeigned confidence in all that He has written, without losing the sense of being learners! If God has given us power to teach in our little measure, may this never take us out of the place of discipleship! It is only "in part" that any of us know; and I am sure that we ought to abound in forbearance — forbearance in everything short of dishonour to Christ, yea, even this where it may be done ignorantly, provided it be not deliberate persistent rejection of the testimony of God. May that which has been just brought before you contribute, however little, to the help of the children of God; and may it win the confidence of those that are not children of God, exposing foolish speculation under the garb of wisdom, but a wisdom that is as hollow as man himself is without God!

APPENDIX.

I ought perhaps to except the Phoenician theology of Sanchoniatho. Is it not striking that he who is considered to be the earliest writer of the heathen world should be approached so closely by the most recent form of the apostate philosophy of Christendom? that at least modern geology shows such strong tendency to relapse into ancient cosmogony — philosophy in general into naturalism? It need hardly be said that the original we have not, but only some fragments of the Greek translation executed by Philo Byblius, for which we are indebted to the citation of Eusebius. (Praep. Evang. i. 10.) "He supposes the beginning of the universe was a dark and windy air, or a breeze of dark air, and a turbid Erebus-like chaos; and that these things were infinite, and for a time had no bound. But when it fell in love with its own principles, and a mixture took place, that embrace was called longing. And this was the beginning of the creation of all things. But it knew not its own creation. And from its embrace with this wind came Mot. This some call mud; others the rotting of a watery mixture; and from this came all the seed of creation, and the generation of the universe." Wagenfeld gives us just the same in his edition of Sanchun. Hist. Phoen. 1. i. p. 9. It is unnecessary to quote the still wilder details that follow on the animals without sense, out of which come intelligent ones called Zophasemin (i.e., spectators of heaven), moulded in the shape of an egg, when Mot shone out, and sun and moon, and stars small or great.

If the Hermetic creed, transcribed by Jamblichus, and popularly known in I. P. Cory's Ancient Fragments, could be depended on as the theology of Egypt in days as early as those of Moses, the contrast between Genesis and what we can gather of Egyptian lore would be less striking than it is. But there is strong reason to infer that this, like other productions attributed to Hermes, is due to the Neo-Platonists, who garnished the reveries of the heathens with ideas borrowed from the apostolic writings, in order the more effectually to oppose Christianity. The writings which reflect the real opinions of the ethnic world have but a negative and melancholy interest for the believer. They illustrate and confirm the truth of St. Paul's account in Romans 1. But they have as little solid value as the assaults of our own day on the word of God.

The Higher Criticism.

W. Kelly.

"The Higher Criticism" [Second Edition]: Three Papers by S. R. Driver, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Prof. of Hebrew Oxford; and A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D., Master of Selwyn College, and Lady Margaret's Prof. of Divinity (sometime Reg. Prof. of Hebrew), Cambridge. London Hodder & Stoughton, 27 Paternoster Row. 1905.

Dr. Kirkpatrick opens the first of these papers with words which sound well:- "The aim of the Christian student is truth; and the aim of the Christian teacher is to bring that truth to bear upon human character and life. The Old Testament forms an integral part of the Bible. It was placed in the hands of the Christian Church by its Founder and His Apostles as the record of God's revelation of Himself to His chosen people and the manifold preparation for His own coming; as the source from which instruction in conduct was to be derived, and as the means by which the spiritual life was to be fed. We cannot therefore treat it as any other book: it is sacred ground: reverence is demanded of us as we approach it. But it is no true reverence which would exempt it from the fullest examination by all legitimate methods of criticism" (p. 3). Textual criticism as applied to Scripture has for its aim to set out the very words of the original, and the rejection of every intrusion, omission, or change through the copyist whether unintentional or designed. Such was the recognised task of the orthodox critic from the first; and the MSS., the Versions, and ancient citations furnished the materials which the critic employed to give, in his judgment, the most exact approach to the deposit of faith: a difficult and delicate work, which demanded spiritual discernment at least as much as patient research and multifarious learning. Such is the criticism alone considered "legitimate" till of late.

But this is not "The Higher Criticism," which as a system is of comparatively recent date, and under cover of literary problems has raised fundamental doubts incompatible with divine inspiration in any real and honest sense. Individuals or parties may have indulged from early days in similar incredulity and on a small scale; but neology did not then spread, being reprobated by men of simpler faith, even if not very intelligent. Nor would Dr. K. dispute this, as one may gather from his page 5: "Now, what is the position of students and teachers of the Bible today? They are face to face with a treatment of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, which half, nay, a quarter of a century ago, would have seemed utterly irreverent, subversive of the foundations of the faith; and which still seems to many (it is not to be wondered at) irreverent and mischievous."

In a note to page 14 (his last), he acknowledges, not the energy of the Holy Spirit acting on pious and prayerful souls distressed by the revived superstition and infidelity of our day, but "the influence of contemporary methods of study and modes of thought; and, in particular, how modern methods of examining literary and historical documents and the doctrine of development compel us to revise many of our traditional ideas in regard to the Old Testament." Yes, there you have the impulse which has carried away in its sceptical current the crowd of literary speculators. It is not God's grace, but the spirit of the age, applying the fashionable craze of development without faith or even fear of God in owning His word, but boasting of present-day methods of criticism, where we have no authentic history save what He has given by His servants the prophets, whose limbs they would rend into the galvanised factors of their unbridled imagination. Did not the Lord of glory, the "before Abram came into being I am," know all the truth about the Bible? Did not the inspiring Holy Spirit? If both declare and sanction the common faith of God's elect against the revolutionary scheme, where and what are the new critics?

The real position of the party represented by these two distinguished leaders in Cambridge and Oxford is, on their own showing, presumptuous to the last degree. It is a conspiracy against the confession of all the Christian martyrs and saints who have lived and suffered for righteousness and the Lord's name for some 1800 years. It is rebellion against the plain yet profound and divinely inspired revelation, which the church of God received admittedly from its Founder, the Truth itself, and through Apostles, assured by Himself of the Holy Spirit's power to guide them into all the truth. During many centuries were prophets of old raised up by God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, children of no faith, but perseveringly addicted to idolatry. They warned Israel from the beginning of their national history; even the greatest of them before they entered on the promised land predicted their ruin for a while, His hiding His face from them because of their abominations, and also His moving them to jealousy with a no-people, and provoking them to jealousy with a foolish people (Deut. 32). And we Christians have the greatest of apostles interpreting these words in Rom. 10: 19, as that which Moses said of the rejection of Israel and the present call of the Gentiles; yet looking onward in Rom. 11 both to the Gentiles cut off because of their unbelief, and to the restoration of Israel in sovereign mercy, by an everlasting covenant never again to rebel nor be defiled, when Jehovah's sanctuary shall be in their midst for evermore.

It is too evident that these sponsors for the revolt against the Bible, as the Lord and His apostles undoubtedly taught, and the faithful in their measure have accepted with all confidence in Him and them (the foundation on which the church is built), have in no way profited either by the prophecy of Israel's ruin or by the brightness of their glorious recovery, when Christendom falls under the unsparing judgment of its unbelief in yet richer privilege. But there is another warning still closer and more serious. The same Lord and His apostles solemnly assure us, that the Christian testimony would be corrupted as certainly as the Jewish one had been; that the evil was active even in the apostolic days, and that so far from being extirpated, it would surely work up to a head of entire revolt from God, the apostasy and the man of sin, the full and foul contrast of the righteous Man who never did but the will of God.

In presence of the many words of God pointing to this awful consummation before the present age ends, it were wise for the leaders and the followers of the new movement to weigh the Lord's question, "When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18: 8.) He goes far beyond the Roman sack of Jerusalem and dispersion of the Jews, and the city trodden down by nations still later till times of nations are fulfilled, which is clearly not yet come. He tells us of signs of sun, moon, and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity, the roar of the sea and rolling waves, men ready to die through fear and expectation of what is coming on the inhabited earth, for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. If the moral end for man was his iniquity in crucifying the Messiah, God's Son, He will come as the glorious Son of man to judge mankind and establish the world-kingdom of God which neither the gospel nor the church could do. He alone is competent and worthy (Rev. 11: 15); but how overwhelming the judgments whereby the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness!

We know how little the new school cares for traditional views; and there in principle I cannot blame them. But few tradition-mongers are so ignorant of prophecy as they. It is well then before they fall into the same destructive criticism as to the New Testament, that they should lay to heart that the Lord's approaching judgment of Christendom as well as of the world generally is the uniform testimony of the apostles and prophets. It is a day of Christ's manifest triumph for faith, but of ruin for unbelief in teacher or taught.

"The night is far spent and the day is at hand" (Rom. 13: 12). "Waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1: 7). "For indeed we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not that we would be unclothed but clothed, that the mortal might be swallowed up of life" (2 Cor. 5: 4). "For we through the Spirit by faith wait [not for righteousness, being already justified, but] for the hope of righteousness," i.e. glory with Christ (Gal. 5: 5). For God's purpose is to head or "sum up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth; — in Him in whom we also obtained inheritance," we being not the heritage, but heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (Eph. 1: 9-11). "For our citizenship is in [the] heavens, whence also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour who shall transform" etc. (Phil. 3: 20, 21). "When the Christ, our life, is manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory" (Col. 3: 4).

So we are told that from the very first the Thessalonian believers turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to await from the heavens His Son, whom He raised from out of dead [men], Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath (1 Thess. 1: 9, 10). If more were needed, much more could be added in proof; that as tradition has never known or kept up the true faith and hope, so none in Christendom could more thoroughly renounce revelation in this respect than this self-vaunting new party. Who ever heard of so much as one neologist absorbed, as all Christians ought to be, by "the blessed hope," of any devoted, as not of the world, to the indisputably primitive and faithful attitude in awaiting Christ's coming as our constant hope? Who can tell us of one new critic separate from the world, enjoying grace, suffering from Christ's reproach and withal filled with joy?

But there is the dark and awful side which follows that hope, the day of the Lord's judging the inhabited earth (Acts 17: 31). His day for the everlasting downfall of all man's worldly and fleshly glory (Isa. 2, 1 Thess. 5). It is grievous to say that the New Testament speaks unambiguously on the special guilt of false teachers in Christendom, whether sanctimonious like the traditionalists, or audacious and profane like most of the new pretenders to know the Scriptures better than the Lord and His inspired ambassadors, who in effect make Him and them to err in declaring, for instance, that Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel wrote what they did not write. It is nonsense to talk, as rationalists habitually do, of the superiority of their own day, of modern progress, of new modes of thought and more searching methods of literary and historical investigation; as if God's Word did not stand on ground peculiar to itself, and not therefore to be treated confessedly, "as any other work."

Inspiration in any proper sense, and allowing for errors of copyists, etc., is essentially superior to the advances of knowledge in material things or in human experience. It is therefore unreasonable to expect that any increase of such knowledge should affect the truth committed to the church; so distinct are the things of man from those of God. As man's spirit knows the things of man, and of the lower creation set under man, so the things of God knows no man but the Spirit of God. Are the leaders of this new movement, abroad or at home, such as could uprightly say, "Now we received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is of God, that we might know [consciously know] the things freely given to us by God?" I do not allude to the wilful disputers of this age, if men of this stamp ever were; but would the few reverent ones avow that they have the anointing Spirit abiding in them, which another apostle declares that the very babes of God's family received from the Holy One? If they would not (and I have sure ground for saying that they venture not), are these, whatever their ability or acquirement, entitled to the least weight where angels would fear to tread? They are as a class restrained by no such scruple; for they have never learnt from God their own nothingness in His things; yea, if not renewed and indwelt by His Spirit, that they have only the mind of flesh which is enmity against God.

Hence, because they know not God by His teaching, they shrink from claiming life eternal as a present possession, and have never faced their sins before God so as to know themselves become His righteousness in Christ. They talk of His revelation as progressive. Now, the revelation of God is itself, and does not admit of that progress which man boasts. Take the grand intimation of deliverance from the serpent's malicious and deadly power in man's fall. Expressly was it not to be through the merit of virtue of fallen man; it stood in Another. And in this first announcement after sin and death entered, we cannot but see, unless we be blind, that the Deliverer is human because He is the woman's seed, and that He is divine, for He will utterly crush the mighty angelic rebel, the liar and murderer from the beginning. If the Oxford and Cambridge Professors know of a revelation in the O. T. progressive beyond this, who would not hail the discovery with joy?

There was a very different revelation of divine wrath, recorded early in the same book of Genesis, which swept away all mankind, save eight persons, the family of Noah, whom grace preserved for the righteous man's sake who believed. Do they count this progressive as compared with God's announcement of the bruised Deliverer from the coming wrath? It is hard to conceive that any could so reckon who know God or themselves. Again, we have the self-centring pride of man judged at Babel, and the hitherto united race confounded by the difference of languages and nations, but (as we learn from Joshua 24) serving other gods. And the God of glory appears to call Abram to Himself from the strange gods of which we then first hear (a call of grace so absolute as to separate him from country, kin, and father's house), the depository of promise for a seed both fleshly and spiritual (see Rom., Gal., and Heb.), the grand result for heaven and earth being not yet seen. But can even that or its repetition to Isaac and Jacob be rightly deemed progress on the woman's Seed and, after suffering, His triumph over the power of the wicked one?

Then long after, the law-giving at Sinai, so awe-inspiring and terrific as to make Moses its mediator "exceedingly fear and quake," was a revelation of God to all Israel which every true Christian accepts literally as recorded in Ex. 19, 20. Is it the fact that the new school are as incredulous of the display at Sinai as of the creation recorded in Gen. 1, 2? Are not their German leaders as scoffingly infidel in regard to both as the French Encyclopaedists, T. Paine and G. Bradlaugh? Do the best of the British guides differ at heart, or is it only in decency of tone, whilst equally unbelieving? But as to progressive revelation, was the law at Sinai an advance on the woman's Seed? or even on the promises to Abraham and to his seed? On these the apostle argues with care and energy to show their precedence by 430 years, and the unconditional grace they held out to the believers, in contrast with the law which was added for the sake (not of sins, but) of transgressions until the Seed came to whom the promise was made. Does not the apostle Paul thereby refute this progressive theory? The promises assuredly were the support of faith through the ages; as the law, right, wise and needed in God's ways with man, could only condemn the guilty and destroy all hopes of a standing or escape on that ground.

It is needless to enumerate the divine interventions that studded the history of the chosen nation, which equally refute the progressive assumption. God had taken care that grace on His part should precede law, not only from the lost paradise of Eden but in the world that now is from the call of Abram; and whatever was vouchsafed in fresh revelations only confirmed both the one and the other which met in Christ. Then when the people were ruined and driven out of His land for their idolatry, and the unbelief of the returned remnant to still greater sins and severer punishment rejected His and their Messiah, it was not only revelations from God but God Himself revealed in His Son Jesus our Lord, in His person, His life, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension to God's right hand and throne in heaven.

This, no doubt, is beyond comparison. It is not promise merely but accomplishment, the ground of God's glad tidings of grace and of Christ's glory, the soul's redemption secured to God's glory, the church united by the Spirit to the Head, in readiness to save the last member of the body for Christ's coming and His subsequent revelation before the universe manifestly put under Him. Does the new school truly believe in this glorious issue as God reveals it? Does it accept in God-fearing simplicity any one of these revelations past, present, or future? To think of progress, since the fulness of the Godhead dwelt and dwells in Christ, is such presumptuous unbelief as to be no less than blasphemy against the necessarily complete and final revelation of God in His person. May they be preserved at least from that revolt! what can one think of any one so deceived by the enemy? Christ is not a divine dealing or a doctrine merely, but a divine person in manhood fully revealed for life eternal, redemption, and glory.

Some, we know, speak of their faith in inspiration; and personally one may have clung to hope against fear that the faith might be living under the wretched incubus of their complicated cobweb on cobweb, woven by the brains of Teutonic legendmongers, without a single solid fact. A most amiable apologist puts it thus: — Jehovist1, J2, J3; Elohist1, E2; J E combination of Jehovistic with Elohistic; D Dh Dp, the author of the Urdeuteronomium with two later redactors; J E D, combination of J E with Deuteronomy; P P1 P2 Px, the author of the priestly code with its later editions (Px=P3 P4 P5 etc.); Rj, the editor who combines J and E; Rd Rd2, two authors or editors, the first of whom combines J E with P, contributes to Joshua and Judges, and writes most of Kings, while the second is a later redactor of that work; Rp, the editor who combines J E D with P!

The credulity of the incredulous is proverbial. When did inspiration enter this extravagant patchwork? Was it with the first or the last? or were all these cobblers inspired? He who cites gravely such speculations from another's scheme tells us that this critical apparatus goes up to the furthest limits "as yet reached." He may be assured that so wild an appetite must grow without end. He speaks of the "enormous amount of labour which will be apt to seem wasted;" but such minds as leave God out of labour, "accurate" as they may think, must always waste it. Only he who does God's will abides for eternity; and was any thing farther from God's will than this nothingarian quest? He magnifies His word above all His name, and will avenge the insult done to Scripture on all the guilty. He may warn those that add to or take from the things in one book, peculiarly the scorn of erudite unbelief; but His indignation is not limited to that book. It is deplorable to look to any specialists who trust in themselves and each other but not in the word and the Holy Spirit who imparts it, and alas! "our own scholars!" "to decide judiciously." "Thus saith Jehovah; Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from Jehovah." May the Christian profit by Israel's danger, a danger never more real than now. It is the precursor of the apostasy (2 Thess 2: 3).

Prophets wrote the O.T. books; prophets authenticated the original drafts, and added as they were led of the Spirit such confirmations at a later date as were called for in the days of the kings, and the still more factious time of the return from captivity when the Jews were subjected to the Persian, Greek, and Roman powers. But the crowning mercy was the presence of Messiah, the Son of God, not only to suffer for our sins but to give to believers understanding to know Him that is True. Hence the all-importance of His pronouncement on the O.T. and promise of the Holy Spirit for the apostles and prophets as to the final scriptures in the tongue of the Gentiles. No moment was so wise and necessary or auspicious. Never was the O. T. so verified and honoured, as when the so-called N. T. was to follow, all given before the first century A. D. closed.

For the Lord did strikingly seal the truth of the law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, not only in the days of His flesh but in His risen state (Luke 24: 44). Even His own when raised shall be superior to the prejudice of time and sense and shall know as they are known. Both He and His inspired servants alike bear the testimony of divine authority to all, and particularly to Moses, David, Isaiah, and Daniel, the most assailed by vain and empty sciolists, the last men in the world to trust for origin, date, literary structure, character, or meaning of scripture, because their system does its worst to unsettle for themselves and the faithless world godly heed, and find pleasure in doubt. As a Christian student, I may be allowed to say that I have been tolerably familiar with the arguments of the new school long before these Professors of Oxford and Cambridge; and I fail to recall a single service of value any one of them has rendered to revealed truth. How could it be otherwise? Since it is the essence of rationalism to deny God's authority and mind in scripture as a whole, not one of them can rightly estimate any of its parts. Is anything more "settled," as the first article of their unbelief, than that there is not nor can be for most of them true miracle or prophecy? Yet every Christian knows that scripture itself is both miraculous and prophetic, to say nothing of the many miracles and prophecies it attests.

But the extraordinary and distracting phenomenon presents itself of a crowd of speculators who still claim the name of Christian and busy themselves, not on the Koran or the Hindu Vedas or the Parsee Avesta, but on the O.T., and represent "an enormous amount of labour, which will be apt to seem wasted" if on fabrications and priestly impostures. Does it not rather seem the homage which infidelity pays to the truth they dislike, dread, and fain would destroy, yet in vain and, alas! to their own destruction, unless they repent? It is the more extraordinary that the people whom the critics despise as so prejudiced transmitted to us as sacred those very prophecies which denounced their disobedience, corruption, and idolatries, and predicted their consequently present anomalous state. "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod and teraphim." Who but an infidel can deny that Hosea 3: 4 is fulfilled? Which of the new school believes that his ver. 5 will as surely be to the joy of all the earth? "Afterward shall the children of Israel [mark, Israel] return and seek Jehovah their God and David their king; and shall come with fear to Jehovah and to his goodness at the end of the days." Blinded as the Jews are judicially, they are not so unbelieving as the neologists.

Let us now come to the earliest charge of "false science" in Gen. 1 laid by the Lady Margaret's Prof. of Divinity, Cambridge. "It was once as easy as it was natural to regard the first chapter of Genesis as a literal account of the way in which the universe was brought into being; now that we have read the records of the rocks, and learnt some fragments of the mystery of the heavens, we know that it cannot be regarded as literal history" (p. 4). Dr. Driver (Regius Prof. of Hebrew, Oxford) is if possible more curt and peremptory (p. 52), and alludes to Gen. 1 as "this imperfect and in many respects false science." Is such language becoming from professing Christian teachers about God's word? It is calm and deliberate, and therefore far more guilty than from an avowed enemy of revelation. Now I distinctly affirm that these two Professors do not understand the chapter. There is no collision whatever between it and the ascertained facts of geology. It is ignorance in both to affirm any such contradiction. Room is left for the geologic ages of science, with the strata and their fossils before the six days; but scripture is silent thereon. There is therefore no excuse for the evil insinuation, invented by infidel scientists, and repeated by these D.Ds.

The chapter starts with the grand truth of creation, of which many geologists really are as ignorant now as the ancient philosophers of every age and school: a truth which idolatry of old as willingly ignored as modern science in its desire to forget and exclude God. From neither was it learnt. "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear."

Thus it was, even before Moses wrote, known from Adam downward among the faithful. And from Rom. 1: 19, 20 it appears that creation was not doubted for a long while afterward. For we do not hear of idolatry till after the deluge. But when Moses wrote by God's inspiration, details were added of the deepest import, far beyond the general truth. What was the testimony on which faith rested? Mainly and literally on these opening words of the Bible: a truth subversive of heathenism and immeasurably nobler, higher, deeper, and more spiritually instructive than all the discoveries of astronomy, geology, and of other sciences put together.

No science, ancient or modern, ever taught this great truth, any more than later Gentile tradition. The heathen oracles assumed and gave out falsehood on eternal matter which issued in atheism and pantheism, or what Gibbon, ever heartless, called the "elegant mythologies of Greece and Rome," the basest and most demoralising of all, reducing their divinities to very wicked males and females like themselves. Here the oracles of all science are dumb now as ever. For science as science knows nothing beyond its own subject matter and cannot speak aright of God. Hence men the most disposed to cry up the triumphs of science are compelled to allow its total failure in this respect. J. S. Mill (Logic, 8th ed., 398), owns that "we can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes themselves" [such as the earth's rotation]. So H. Spencer says of science, "It conducts us to a blank wall by a method which is wholly powerless to penetrate the mystery which lies behind." How strange that the professedly Christian teachers should not acknowledge where geology and every other science failed! Moses was inspired to communicate this fundamental revelation, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": a sublime truth, stated in as noble simplicity, to begin the Bible, as God alone knew and made it known through His servant by the Holy Spirit.

Ver. 2 is most important in its way: for it reveals without limitation of date, yet as a subsequent fact, that the earth was made waste and empty, with darkness upon the face of the deep. Not only does the expression of the Hebrew verb in the 1st clause lend itself to this (for so is it used often even in this chapter as elsewhere), but Isa. 45: 18 is to my mind decisive in its favour. "For thus saith Jehovah that created the heavens, He is God; that formed the earth and made it, He established it, He created it not a waste; He formed it to be inhabited." He did not create it in the chaotic state, but for good and wise reasons threw it into that state. We can readily understand that only so could man when it was inhabited get at the coal, the marbles, and the metals, etc., so useful afterwards. For as the chapter itself shows that acts of creating followed the origination, so there may have been of destructive and temporary breakup as the strata sufficiently indicate to the geologist. It is here that the geologic times would come in, but this could be no matter of revelation. That science like others was left for man. But room is left for it, before the "days" of getting ready the earth as it was to be for Adam and his race. These begin with ver. 3; and "the evening and the morning" point to literal days, so suited to and connected with man on the earth, not with the vast periods when other conditions prevailed, and man was not. And this is corroborated by the sabbath that followed man's creation, which a prolonged geologic age would not.

Is it not plain that this is the genuine meaning of Gen. 1 - 2: 3? Does it not refute the hasty misinterpretation, not confined to mere men of science, but common among the theologians of Christendom who read this scripture without sufficient waiting on God to apprehend its comprehensive scope and the exact bearing of its distinct parts? Yet not a few have thus seen and taught for more than the half century of a modern Gothic irruption, which may damage romancists, but is powerless against the word of God. British Darwinism, like the kindred metamorphosis of Lamarck, is no doubt set aside as an unbelieving dream by the distinct species attributed to God's will in Gen. 1 to both the vegetable and the animal kingdoms with which the human race is conversant. Yet there are men of science apart from faith who refuse the fashionable decease which undermines the fixed laws that God has thus impressed, without which science could not be, with a decision which puts to shame these higher critics so ready to believe it, and not God. Development to that extent is absurd and would destroy science. What scheme more unworthy of God or even man ever was invented by his feverish brain?

Take only the swamping of the human race with the brute in contrast with the affectingly solemn and self-evidently true place assigned to man, as the chief ruler of creation in Gen. 1, and in moral relation to God as well as the creature in Gen. 2 where we hear of Jehovah Elohim inbreathing his soul alone of all beings on the earth. Is this nothing? or is it "false science?" The fact is that it is not science at all; and the exactest science could not attest it. It is the revealed light of God, which is the truth, and immeasurably above all science. One can only grieve over professing Christians beguiled by such conundrums; but we must be indignant that they claim to be Christian ministers, seeing that they slight the scriptures though divinely inspired, and bow to the passing delusions to which scientists are notoriously liable like others. Never has any savant of any land or tongue produced an account of creation to compare with Gen. 1, still less with its profound and necessary supplement in Gen. 2.

Gross ignorance of and positive fall from the light of Christianity appear on Dr. K.'s own showing: "Times of change must be times of trial. They call for faith, courage, patience, sympathy: — for faith that God is still teaching His Church, as He taught it of old, πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως, 'by divers portions and in divers manners' (Heb. 1: 1); for courage to go forward trustfully, following the light of the reason which God has given us," etc. (pp. 4, 5). Now the scripture cited contradicts the sense for which it is cited. Of old God spoke thus to the fathers in the prophets; at the end of these days He spoke to us in a Son. There had been revelations from God on a deliverer, on the deluge, on promise, on law, on a kingdom in Israel, on Gentile dominion; prophecies fully while Israel so existed; prophecies sufficiently when Israel became Lo-ammi. Now it is Himself revealed in the person and redemption work of His Son: a revelation absolutely perfect, of which it is not only false but blasphemous to think that it admits of development. Those who pretend to progress after this are apostates, even if they call themselves Christians. Nor is it the great apostle only who taught so, but the Gospel of John (John 1: 18), and emphatically his First Epistle (1 John 2: 24-27), as also 2 John 3. Equally does Dr. K. offend when he substitutes for the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit the characteristic power of the Christian and of the church, "following the reason which God has given us;" as if we were no better off in this respect than the most benighted heathen! Could any one ask clearer proof that Higher Criticism leads even its ablest guides into the ditch of infidelity?

Next we are told whereby these moderns trust to subvert not merely what the church has believed for many centuries, but what the Lord and the apostles taught of the scriptures. 1, Textual criticism, which is in no way their province. 2, Linguistic criticism, which surely belongs to competent Christian students. 3, Their pet "higher criticism," the most visionary attempt to imagine a variety of interpolators instead of the alleged author. 4, Historical criticism, sought to be distinguished from the Higher, it is hard to say why. 5, Archaeology and comparative religion. In these and other ways they hope to revolutionize men's thoughts of the Bible, and urge the clergy to understand their methods, to estimate its results, and to consider how these affect their teaching (pp. 5-7).

Now in the face of this conspiracy of soi-disant experts to shake the O.T. to its centre and cast the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets avowedly into a sea of uncertainty, we have the sure fact of infinite comfort to every believer that the incarnate Son of God ruled the divine authority of these very scriptures, and that, risen from the dead, when prejudices disappear from the weakest of saints. The Lord authenticated them as testimonies to Himself in the flattest contradiction of modern criticism. So did the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven from Him glorified, and this both to such ecclesiastical rulers as Timothy and Titus, and with no less freedom and fulness to the mass of the faithful in the Epistles, remarkably anticipating the sceptical attacks on Moses and David, Isaiah and Daniel, by declaring each the writer of the books attributed to them, as for instance of the latter part of Isaiah no less than the former. "He [Moses] wrote of Me."

To faith this is and ought to be the end of controversy. Splitting such investigation into higher and historical or others makes no difference worthy to speak of; nor does calling it "literary" mitigate the awful presumption of giving the lie to the Son of God, or of the unbelief that attributes ignorance of what must have been known to a divine person. Think of Him who is to judge quick and dead, and who searches the reins and heart of every child of man, not knowing who wrote the Pentateuch! Think of those who call themselves Christians and Christian teachers denying to His face that Moses wrote of Him, and seeking by all sorts of vain perversions to make it seem a patchwork, contributed by a rabble of nobody-knows-who; and this last pretended largely to be Jehovah's words spoken to Moses for His people, yet designated as "the God-given record of God's special revelation of Himself through Israel in preparation for the Incarnation, and as such of permanent significance for the Christian Church" (p. 7)! Is not this to betray with a kiss?

That the world hearkens to these men in our day, beyond the old Encyclopaedists or individual freethinkers who preceded them, is true. They are, therefore, encouraged to dare greater things. Believers on the contrary are all the more distressed, both for the dishonour done to God's word, and for their guilt who are not only misled but misleaders. In 1 Timothy 4 the apostle referred to the ascetic and legend-loving spirit which early led some to apostatize from the faith; but in 2 Timothy 3 he speaks of a later and more prevalent departure from God, when men having a form of piety should deny its power, and advance in evil. In 2 Tim. 4 he says that the time shall be when they will not bear sound teaching, but according to their lusts will heap up to themselves teachers, having an itching ear; and they will turn away their ear from the truth, and will turn aside to fables. In fine, as he wrote in 2 Thess. 2: 3, the apostasy will come, the rejection of Christian truth by Christendom itself. Can any means be conceived more suited to bring this about than the modern criticism? Their denial and despising of prophecy will blind them so much the more to the godless movement. For this is what will characterize the consummation of the present evil age, and bring on not only God's preparatory dealings in judgment, but the Son of man's appearing in the clouds of heaven to trample His enemies under His feet. The universal establishment of God's world-kingdom follows (Rev. 11: 15; 19, 20).

In p. 10 Dr. K. admits that "The results of literary [or Higher] criticism are at best only probable, though in many cases the probability amounts to practical certainty" (!); but literary criticism has been pushed to the wildest extremes, as for instance when we are told that we have "no genuine writings of the prophet Jeremiah except," etc. Now this discloses in its confession what we know from the entire spirit and language and aim of the school, that, like Romanism, modern criticism has no divine faith. Its results are at best only "probable."

The school of literary criticism comes to the same result in principle as the school of ecclesiastical tradition. The faith of both turns out to be without absolute truth to rest on. Such only is scripture, the word of God who cannot lie. This was what Cardinal Newman laid down in his Grammar of Assent when a full-blown Romanist, confounding the church "probability" men must act on with the certainty of a divine testimony to faith. As begotten of God I believe Him because He has written, and believe neither the church on the one hand (for how often has it erred!), nor these modern critics who believe in man's disproof of what the Son of God authenticated, as well as the apostles and prophets inspired by the Holy Spirit. If as a Christian I am bound to reject the church intervening between God and my soul as to His revelation, how much more to reject men who evince their unspirituality by their ignorance of His mind in scripture, and flee to Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian, and other heathen sources of the flimsiest kind for that external knowledge of which they never weary of boasting!

On his three points wherein modern criticism, he says, affects theology, we need not dwell now: the mode of revelation, the character of prophecy, and the nature of inspiration. The use of "revelation" is a blind; for, in the growth they contend for, God is really excluded, as really as in the imaginary development of nature with which it is compared. In both the believer owns divine design — in scripture, and even in creation defaced as it is by sin. But it is an utter mistake that the Lord taught us anything inconsistent with its divine authority. He was, as befitted His person, introducing the heavens' light with His Father's name for those destined to the Father's kingdom; but He insists in the plainest terms on its divine authority for God's end in it. "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to complete. For verily I say to you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments shall be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of the heavens" (Matt. 5: 17-19). If God spoke in the scriptures, woe to those who say I must judge them first! His word will judge them at the last day. It is not so that any man was ever brought to God; he believes God and is blessed; as those who set up to first pronounce on all the canon are going the direct road to lose their own souls. The enemy lures these to hope that the way of "modern criticism" is to have "our theology" liberated, deepened, and strengthened. The more they seem to succeed in their blind glorying in man, the sooner will fall divine retribution on their inventions against the word which abides for ever. You might challenge the entire multitude to produce a single truth of God which the Higher Criticism has rescued from the darkness of unbelief. What future can rationalism have but judgment for despising God's word and God's Son? Unbelief may destroy as far as God allows, but can produce nothing.

It seems bold to speak of "prophesy" as Dr. K. does; for he knows well that scarce any conclusion is more "settled" and accepted by the great majority of his school than that there is neither prophecy nor miracle in any real sense. A few like himself admit prediction to a small extent. But all reduce it more or less to what the apostle Peter stigmatises as of "private interpretation" i.e. its own particular solution, instead of each one forming part of the divinely given scheme of predictive testimony to God's glory in Christ, which is to sum up in Him, the head, all creation in heaven and on earth (Eph. 1: 10). Is any one of his company, even of those who shrink from applying the knife to the N.T. as they do to the O.T., really living with that divine purpose of glory for Christ before his soul as his living hope? Is one of them truly waiting for His coming again to reign over the universe heavenly and earthly to God's glory?

Now no system, Patristic, Papal, or Protestant, however short of what scripture contemplates, is so directly opposed to this purpose of God in the written word as that of modern criticism; for it is essentially infidel. God's word is incompatible with the assumption of human growth or patchwork. Disbelieving in any real unity given to all scripture by the inspiring Spirit, they exclude the governing counsel of God in its every part, and thus lose every true conception of His mind, and only deceive themselves in calling their motley aggregate "a message from God." The liberation claimed is from divine authority, which leaves no room for man's wisdom and will; the deepening is but in external research which swamps all seeking for and delight in the Christ of scripture; the strengthening is in value for the dust and dry bones of heathen history. The effect is departure from the fulness of God in Christ so richly revealed as to leave no room for development, save in the imagination of those who say that they see; whose sin therefore remains.

How far the school is from believing that "the one" — not — "far off divine event" — the establishment of His kingdom, over the world and all the universe, must be preceded by the day of the Lord in unsparing judgment, not only of Israel and the nations, but of Christendom yet more sternly because of its greater privilege, as man will share the apostasy, to which sceptical criticism of scripture is one of the guiltiest incentives and ingredient.

II — THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE LIGHT OF TODAY.

But let us turn to what Dr. Driver says as to this. He is most jubilant over the spirit of the age and its successes. "A great intellectual awakening" he claims for it, as well as "great discoveries"; sciences new, yet "arrived at a vigorous and independent manhood"; and the older branches worked as never before by better methods "to startling and unexpected results." It is not so that their best living representative, Lord Kelvin, spoke at his jubilee in Glasgow a short time ago. And as he is neither pessimist nor optimist but known for his sobriety, no less than his depth and extent, for his own discoveries as well as his practical power in turning them to every day use, such a testimony on what has been the most ardent and distinguished work of his life outweighs a host of men comparatively in no way his equals. "One word characterises the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly for fifty-five years, and that word is — failure. I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relation between either electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew fifty years ago."

But if the progress in natural and experimental science were ever so immense (and I should not wonder at it where God is forgotten or made light of), what is the worth of any such or of knowledge morally even? God's revelation stands on wholly different ground, has a character necessarily peculiar to itself, and is for the end of His glory in the spiritual blessing of the soul, with an eternity of bliss or of woe, the issue for every child of man who believes or who does not. This must differentiate scripture from all else that is written or spoken, or in any way appeals to man. The inspired word of God, first in trying man by a commandment, and then by His law and every help of ordinance, and priest, etc. in the O.T.; next by revealing Himself in His Son in the N.T., with the Holy Spirit given to the believer as never before, with suited words to explain and yield power and enjoyment as well as an answer to every other want. To argue from the natural to the supernatural, from man to God, is not only false but unbelieving to the last degree. Though it is sought to conceal the impiety of putting in question the written word of God, by the plea that it is only the exterior that is challenged on literary grounds, and historic investigation, or the like, no book has ever been subjected as the Bible to such extravagance of imagination as to its construction. Where is one solid fact to countenance such a manipulation in denial of the writings and writers accepted by faith, and with blindness to the effect of obliterating all its just claim to be God's word, inspired by Him, and possessing His authority no less than if He directly addressed each as from heaven?

There is another awful consequence of this baseless pride of knowledge, that it involves the destruction of confidence in the Son of God and of His inspired servants, who are beyond doubt and thoroughly committed to the honour and certainty of scripture, both O.T. and N.T. So radical is the opposition of the sceptical criticism, that its more open advocates do not hesitate to say, as the necessary inference, that they know the growth of the Bible as did neither the Lord nor His apostles! Such daring unbelief and irreverence ought to alarm the feeblest saint, as every intelligent Christian must abhor it as an exhalation of the bottomless pit. The last writer of the N.T. is he who insists most on this safe-guard in the last hour of many antichrists, "Let that therefore abide in you which ye heard from the beginning" (1 John 2: 24).

From the beginning our Lord decided beforehand against the modern imposture, which is quite independent of Hebrew or Greek erudition, and springs out of real ignorance of the truth of God. It is due to reckless fancy in perverting the divine names and their accompanying difference of thought and expressions, into supposed difference of legends, compiled very late, they say, and in times really unsuitable to the O.T. as a true history. Confessedly the Lord and the apostles sustain the faith in scripture which all the saints and martyrs of early Christian times confessed, and leave no room for the wild insinuation of Astruc, which modern Germans have sought to swell into the most gigantic of fables. The believer's safety and joy is to depend on Christ, who came at the interval when the old things came to an end, and the new had to be ushered in on divine authority. And He has taught us with divine authority that the scriptures even of the O.T. are to be received as they then existed with simple trust. So more than one apostle vouched no less for the N.T. Thus "the light of today" in its presumptuous unbelief was anticipatively condemned and excluded. The modern theory by their own showing was unknown as having the smallest credit "from the beginning"; but room was left for it as a "fable," which men love who are weary of the truth, and delight in the fruit of man's ingenuity.

Thus in p. 20 says Dr. Driver. "I may assume on the part of those who hear me a general familiarity with the new light in which, to those who do not refuse to open their eyes, the Old Testament appears today. The historical books are now seen to be not, as was once supposed, the works (for instance) of Moses, or Joshua, or Samuel!" Not a few who read the new brochure have examined for half a century the new criticism, and are assured that it is the darkness of the natural mind, yielding to speculative fancy on the surface of the scriptures, and destitute of the Holy Spirit's guidance, because they evade and despise the authority of Christ who pronounces against them, root and branch. He and His apostles accepted the scriptures as written by Moses and David, etc., to Isaiah, Daniel, and even to Malachi, as Christians have held for many centuries, and leave no room for this development of scepticism. "Have ye not read (said He) in the book of Moses," etc. (Mark 12: 26)? "And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah; and when he had opened the book, he found the place (Isa. 61) where it was written, The Spirit," etc. (Luke 4: 17). To Luke these men dare to give the lie, pretending the writer to be unknown. "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them" (Luke 16: 29). "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead" (Luke 16: 31). "Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning (not an "ideal" sufferer, but) the Son of man shall be accomplished" (Luke 18: 31). "David himself saith in the book of Psalms," etc. (Luke 20: 42). "Had "ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me" (John 5: 46). "The scripture cannot be broken" (John 10: 35). So in John 12: 38-41, Isaiah is quoted as such from Isa. 53: 1 no less than from Isa. 6: 9, etc., as is also "Daniel the prophet" in Matt. 24: 15.

How is it then that these critics reject the positive testimony of the Lord and His apostles? If believed, it overthrows their system. But they far prefer their own thoughts to scripture. Alas! they do not believe the Lord. To them applies as to sceptics in His day, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God" (Matt. 22: 29). Nor does anything strike one more than, with indefatigable research on external appearances easily misapplied, they seem wholly insensible to God's mind, and thus sink into the ready service of the enemy for defaming and seeking to destroy divine revelation, though they think the contrary.

For there is scarce anything in which the new critics more generally agree than in finding not a few Elohists and Jehovists in the Pentateuch and elsewhere. Now this depends mainly on the repeated occurrence of one or other of the O.T. divine names of God with a corresponding difference of words and subjects, out of which they invented the notion of different documents. This was mere ignorance flowing out of unbelief. For the names have respectively an exact propriety, which demands their usage for the different truths intended, and moreover requires other thoughts and words suitable for each. Elohim is God in the history, and in His sovereign operations, as in creation; Jehovah is His name in relationship and moral dealings. So it is in the Psalms, and Prophets, where differing writers would be out of the question. But these critics trust themselves and do not trust God or His word, and hence are of all schools the most pretentious and the most superficial; as all must be who fail to see one divine mind, which amidst wonderful variety impresses a general design on the scriptures as a whole, and on each particular as contributing its special design in its own part. But their system ignores and denies both a general and a special design, quite above the understanding of the writers generally if not universally. It is a dream no better than of a fortuitous concourse of atoms which others imagined for the universe. The reality of God actually moving in every part of this spiritual creation is foreign to their minds and incompatible with their reveries. Theirs is the characteristic principle of infidelity; and they even call the product of so many cobblers inspiration, scripture, and God's word! Does this improve matters? It enables them to retain their chairs, canonries, etc.

Hence one must deny, not of course different groups of laws in the Pentateuch, but that there is the least solid basis for insinuating different strata at widely different periods of the national life. The attempt to vilify Deuteronomy as an invention of Josiah's day, instead of being the closing book of Moses, is in itself a fraud of which no mind could be capable but of an enemy to God and His word. It is remarkable as the book which our blessed Lord honoured at each of His temptations by Satan; and even this was as due to that inspired book of Moses as to His own position when tempted. Of both this system incapacitates for seeing, because devoid of faith it cannot please God or know His word.

"The Old Testament in the Light of Today" is the title of Dr. Driver's First Paper. It shows clearly enough where the new school is. Their eyes are turned away from the light of God, from Christ the true Light to the darkness of man to-day, the darkness of "this present evil age" which He is soon coming to judge and punish. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!"

When God spoke in His Son, what the believer knows to be the Light shone not only on the O.T. but on every person. Indeed every thing was thus manifested as it is. He is the truth objectively, as the Holy Spirit is in power for the believer (1 John 5: 6), who therefore becomes light in the Lord. Never does scripture treat man's thoughts or discoveries as anything of the kind; still less to allow the least comparison with Him that speaks from heaven (Heb. 12: 25) and will speak "once" more in a judgment which will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. Hence for the Christian all is out in the light of God through His word. Flaws there are through man's weakness or wrong, both in text and in translation, and intelligence may be at fault. But the truth is completely revealed as to both God and man, and this right on to "the day of God, by reason of which heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and elements shall melt with fervent heat. But according to His promise we await new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Peter 3: 12, 13).

Where is Dr. Driver's faith of God's elect and knowledge of truth which is according to godliness? Far from me to judge him personally. His heart one leaves to the blessed God. We would speak only of his testimony as to revealed truth. What we have throughout his paper is but glorying in man, and especially the men of this day. They if modest and wise must see their nothingness, and measureless need of God's pity and grace, instead of repeating the old folly which Job reproved in his friends, "No doubt ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." Alas! indeed men now look for indefinite progress. But what a shock to Christian conscience, when scholars bearing the Lord's name, and in the position of clergymen as eminent and influential as they could well attain in great seats of learning, boast of things, compared with the grace and truth of Christ, as the advances in our experimental science, and their dependent mechanical arts, in Anthropology, Archaeology and other such sciences, as with other branches of human knowledge! These investigations may well be left, like the hewing of wood or the drawing of water to those who enjoy not the title of entrance into the holies; but they are beneath those who by grace are made kings and priests to God.

I do not think the slight of the A.V. as compared with the Revision in our day justified. It is true that there were singular mistakes and shortcomings in the old version, and more correctness in some respects in the oldest English translation of W. Tyndale. But there are not a few errors of such deep import in the Revision that one can only thank God that as yet so great a failure has not gained general acceptance. At any rate crying up our own day in this respect seems strangely uncalled for. Even Bishop Lightfoot to whom Dr. Driver refers, great scholar as he was, proves that a deeper knowledge of Christian truth than he possessed is essential to guard from e.g. the evident and serious blunder he made, followed by the Revisers in 2 Cor. 5: 14, 15. For he translates it so as to favour a sense not only false in itself but contrary to its own context; for it contrasts the universal death of man outside Christ, for whom He died, with those who live to Him who also rose to this end. It is therefore the death of all in their sins, not death with Christ which is the portion only of those who live to Him, as they live in Him, which "all" are very far from.

Take further, if we only glance at the beginning of Luke, such plain error as the Revisers adopted in Luke 2: 14; and their failure to see that the true parenthesis in Luke 3: 23 is "being the son as was supposed of Joseph," leaving the genealogy to begin with "of Eli" (etc.) whom even the Talmud admits to have been father of Mary. This line is here given, not Joseph's in the Solomonic branch which Matt. 1 requires, each suiting its own Gospel according to that specific divine design which the books of Scripture possess by inspiration.

Again what ignorance and presumption to omit the amply supported "second-first" in Luke 6: 1! No doubt its singularity made it unintelligible to most, and led to its omission in some MSS. and versions. But it has an important sense, if any intimate with that season would feel for Jewish hearts subject to the law. It is unaccountable unless genuine. Again in ver. 35 can one conceive anything more beneath scripture than their rendering "never despairing"? May it remain alone in its shame among all versions, good, bad and indifferent! In some of these and many more, such as Rom. 3: 22, in the Epistles, the Revisers have changed the more correct readings and renderings of the A.V. for the worse. The vaunt of present-day exactitude is unbecoming.

It is hardly necessary to say that one regards with horror what is said in p. 23, that "the tablets brought from the library of Asshur-banipal have disclosed to us the source of the material elements upon which the Biblical narratives of the Creation and the Deluge have been constructed." That the Gentiles had widely spread traditions about the earth's origin and man's, and of the deluge, is true and long known, but withal corrupted everywhere with their false gods to whom they were adapted. But that fabulous traditions, such as Asshur-banipal's tablets represent, disclose the source of the Biblical account is a slander of which infidelity is alone capable. The fact is that as far as I am aware not one Gentile first or last can be proved to have believed that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It is a truth which faith alone receives; and I fear that the new school no more believe it than Asshur-banipal did; for it is avowed that the doctrine of development goes along with the new literary method. It is an abuse of language for a Darwinian to speak of crediting creation, as it is for the new critic to say that he believes in inspiration. In both cases it is a growth, not God's work.

It is painful in the extreme to read the words of professed teachers of revealed truth; a glorying in man which is natural to an unbeliever who lauds the progress of the age and claims for the present generation an advance beyond parallel. "It may have been most conspicuous and brilliant in the physical sciences, and in the great mechanical arts based upon them; but it has been not less real in many other branches of knowledge, in language, in history, in archaeology, in anthropology. How much, in all these departments of knowledge is known now, which a century ago was unknown, and even unsuspected! . . . But the same spirit of scientific study and research which has inspired new life into so many other departments of knowledge, and even in some instances created them altogether, has also pervaded Biblical and Oriental learning; and there is hardly any branch of these subjects, whether language, or literature, or antiquities, or history, in which the stimulus of the nineteenth century has not made itself felt, and in which improved methods of investigation have not conducted to new and important results" (pp. 18-20). Are not we today the world's wonders?

Is this the mind of one delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's love? Could one consciously so blessed put these accessions of human knowledge, supposing it ever so real and great, side by side with that of scripture imparted by the operation of the Holy Spirit? Yet who in it cries up the letter that kills? Is it not the Spirit that quickens? The world's knowledge which the natural man can acquire leaves sin unremoved and judgment with its dread issue awaiting its votaries. Did not God in the cross of Christ make foolish the wisdom of this world? "For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those that believe" (1 Cor. 1: 21).

To lump, after this fashion, the Bible with such acquisitions is blindness to the truth of God, and a heinous offence against grace and truth. It is well to have the word in its integrity and freed from accretion; but the incomparably more momentous thing is to have and enjoy the fruit, which all this external activity does not enable a single soul to taste. "For who of men knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we might know the things granted to us by God" (1 Cor. 2: 11, 12). As a dog, no matter how sagacious, cannot understand a watch, which as a human work a man can; so a man is incapable of entering into revealed truth save by the Spirit of God; not only born anew, and redeemed, but needing and having received the Holy Spirit to this end. Not all the possible human progress in profane or sacred departments avails. One must be "taught of God" wholly above man, as the Lord declared according to the prophets.

Nor can there be a more superficial or unbelieving inference than what is drawn in p. 22: "The net results of these discoveries is that the ancient Hebrews are taken out of the isolation in which, as a nation, they formerly seemed to stand; and it is seen now that many of their institutions and beliefs were not peculiar to themselves; they existed in more or less similar form among their neighbours; they were only in Israel developed in special directions, subordinated to special ends, and made the vehicle of special ideas." Even Balaam, wicked man and false prophet as he was, uttered under the compulsion of God's Spirit the truth which flatly contradicts such Gentile pride. "Lo, a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations'' (Num. 23: 9). Nor is God's thought about Israel only separateness to Himself, but in ver. 21 their justification in sovereign grace; in Num. 24: 5-7 their given beauty; and in 17-19 their glory when the Star out of Jacob shines in power. Doubtless this seems strange, as the O.T. is the history of their failure under the law. But they are kept for Messiah and the new covenant, when the Unchanging One, to whom they are still blind, shall change all things in their favour. And the mind of God regularly looks on to that day in His love for His people.

Alas! the next p. 23 is daring infidelity. "The monuments of Egypt and Babylon combine to establish the presence of man upon the earth, and the existence of entirely distinct languages, at periods considerably more ancient than is allowed for by the figures in the Book of Genesis; and the tablets brought from the library of Asshur-banipal have disclosed to us the source (!) of the material elements upon which the Biblical narratives of the Creation (!) and the Deluge have been constructed"!! Thus openly does the Hebrew Professor of Oxford dare to avow that he believes the vain monuments of men, and gives the lie to God's testimony. The Confusion of Tongues, as well as the accounts of Creation and of the Deluge, are fables constructed out of the heathen tablets of the noble Asnapper's library! What French or German has defamed scripture more daringly?*

* The note from Dr. F. Watson at the bottom is an instance of these slovenly perversions; for the Bible does not describe the plain of Babylonia as "the aboriginal home of the human race," but as the land to which they journeyed some 1500 years after the aboriginal home, and some time even after the Deluge.

It is an assumption without the smallest proof save of ill-will, and no indication whatever "that in the early chapters of Genesis we are not reading literal history." The Lord and the apostles have decided otherwise, and as Christians we believe them, not in the least degree the Higher Critics, whom we can only regard as infatuated enemies of revelation.

So also we regard the speculation on the poetical books and prophets, as abandoning light for darkness in all spiritual respects. The divine who defined prophecy as "the history of events before they come to pass" was celebrated for his metaphysical power and his evidential prowess against Deism, in no way for his knowledge of scripture,* which gives a larger and deeper thought of prophecy, and was so recognised by intelligent students quite apart from the neologian school. Indeed it is evident not only in the O.T. but also in the N.T. So the Samaritan at Sychar when she told the Lord, who had then said not a word about the future, "I perceive that thou art a prophet." Yet immediately He told her of the profound change which no man on earth knew, when Jerusalem and its national worship of Jehovah should pass for the incomparable blessedness of Christianity, and the true worshippers to worship the Father in spirit and truth. Crasser ignorance spiritually cannot be than to learn that "the materials afforded by the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia," whatever their trifling use externally, yielded one ray of light on the prophets. The prophets' writings are the only and the full proof that they dealt morally with their own generations on God's behalf, but with the richest certainty of the future, when His intervention by the Son of man, the rejected Messiah, shall put down all evil and enemies, establish His righteous reign, and fill all the earth with His glory. The first intimation is announced in Num. 14: 21, quite as clearly as in the varied forms of Isaiah 11: 9, and of Hab. 2: 14. Not one sprang out of the circumstances of the then age, but out of God's purpose, whatever might be the occasion: it is worthy of God, in contrast with all those varying times of evil, and suited, but no natural reason.

* Bishop Jos. Butler never realised even the gospel of salvation for his own soul till he came to his dying illness, having been up to that a prey to doubts and fears.

Hence the Jews, dark as they were, were not so depraved as these modern pretenders, and justly called the writers of the O.T. historical books "the early prophets," as distinguished from the later where there is little or no history. Again the prophetic element is still more manifest in the poetical books; but they all have the predictive in plain words, in type, or expressive figures, with its glorious issue, wholly independent of anything then visible or at work, and only possible for God to declare and insure. Nothing more opposed to the empty ideas of the new school, whose knowledge is human and sets up nature, not God and His word.

It is plain too that the apostle designates the Epistles in Rom. 16: 26 as "prophetic scriptures," not "the scriptures of the prophets," which is the strange and certain blunder of the Revisers no less than of the A.V. The context is no less incompatible than the phrase itself. For a mystery or secret is in question which "had been kept silent, but was now manifested and by prophetic scriptures made known, according to the eternal God's commandment, for obedience of faith unto all the nations." This was done pre-eminently afterward in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. It clearly gives "prophetic scriptures" a wider and deeper scope than is usually seen. Now the mystery of Christ and of the church is inseparable from the exaltation of Christ and His joint-heirs over all the universe in the day of glory. It includes the bright future according to God's own grace and power.

But the error comes out plainly in the discussion of "inspiration" that follows from p. 26. The Oxford Professor could count on a pretty cordial appreciation of his own unbelief from his congregational audience. It is not true that among believers there is any haze on that essential truth. Explanation of literary structure is academic guess; prying into the manner of God's communication is irreverent, even if possible beyond the inspired. Faith is demanded to the exclusion of theory. But there is the divine dictum: "every scripture [is] God-breathed," or "being God-breathed [is] . . . profitable" etc. (2 Tim. 3: 16): in the first rendering asserted; in the second, assumed; so that the main truth remains intact either way.

This too is confirmed by the facts of its own statement throughout. That the inspired drew their narrative from the heathen, out of whom they were separated at all costs as the first of duties to Jehovah their God, is an abominable and baseless slander; that the heathen had traditions of Creation and of the Deluge which they clothed with their idolatries, is true. But take the law and its stages in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and the equivalent in Deuteronomy. The constant word generally is, "And Jehovah said to Moses." To deny its possibility is clearly infidel and irrational. Is it true or false? Take again what David says (2 Sam. 23: 2), "The Spirit of Jehovah spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me," etc. Law or Psalm, it was God's word, and scripture; and this is what inspiration means, and what the faithful believe. Is it necessary for every writer to present himself as in the opening of a play of Euripides? Would this suit the simple dignity of God's messengers to His people "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for Jehovah hath spoken," says one of the greatest of prophets. "Thus speaketh Jehovah of hosts" says Haggai, one of the least, as the very last opens with the "Burden of the word of Jehovah." Was all this a flourish, a literary fiction, or the solemn truth of God? It is a theory, and a theory of unbelief, that God inspired His servants, and withal left them like other men to write mistakes, instead of its resulting essence to be the perfect communication of His mind. If God's Spirit moved in the work, was it to effectuate God's will? or to leave it after all imperfect and misleading? The human element was in individual style; not in error, which could only frustrate the express aim and object of scripture. There had better be no inspiration than to give divine authority to what was man's erring word, not God's. The scripture, and every scripture, is God-breathed authenticity and authority as His word.

So in what follows in p. 25 on the Prophets and the Psalms, the effect is to reduce to man's mind and circumstances, and exclude the supernatural energy of the Holy Spirit. No one denies that there was, or may have been, a present experience, as the occasion. As the rule, it was Israel's growing wickedness and ruin. This the prophet was raised up to judge, but also to disclose both God's final dealing and a partial one nearer then, the pledge of the complete, when the glorious hope of Messiah's Kingdom will be realised without a word of exaggeration "in that day." No doubt the Fathers, the Romanists, the Reformers, the Puritans, and the divines of Christendom who followed, Nationalist and Dissenting, have applied to themselves what really awaits repentant Israel at the end of the age. This the new school in a slight measure see. But do any of them truly believe in the revealed purpose of God to set the Lord Jesus as Head over all things heavenly and earthly, with the glorified saints on high, and Israel here below with all the nations in subjection and peace with universal joy even for the long groaning creation? They write vaguely if such be their living and assured hope, perhaps unwilling to wound the great mass of their incredulous associates who believe in prophecy no more than in miracles, seemingly little more than dead men. An ideal vision is not a real prophecy. Many were the true and even minute predictions of Christ's first advent; very many more and on the largest scale await His second. Do they frankly believe this? So at least say the scriptures.

The question is then raised, (1) How do the facts bear on the inspiration of the O.T.? (2) How do they affect our estimate of its moral and doctrinal value? (3) What practical conclusions may be deduced? 1) But to my mind, they are not facts but flimsy speculations on the surface of scripture, and total lack of God's teaching by it. 2) The effect is to lose, in contrast with the first man, Christ the object of the Spirit throughout. 3) The practical result, is to turn from the light of God's word to fill souls with the darkness and vanity of man's records, as if these shed light on scripture. Even when they cannot but fully confirm the revealed word, how can one call this "light"? It may prove the folly of unbelief, and silence an objector. But Christ only, the word of God, the truth, sheds divine light.

Before his own answers, Dr. D. emphasises a double element in scripture, a human not less than a divine. No intelligent Christian denies but recognises it. Only he means the human element left to its weakness and mistakes, instead of the divine sustaining it against error. As it was in Christ's person, so it is in scripture. Nothing short would have weight with a believing soul. But these critics lower Christ as much as the scriptures; for they regard Him as knowing no better than the scribes, or, if He did, accommodating Himself to the ignorance of His day! He cites in a note 2 Tim. 3: 16, 17, not from the A.V. but the R.V. which is far from being accepted as the true construction*. What unbounded presumption in themselves! What blind confidence in petty knowledge of any in what is not God's word! "The use of the word will not guide us; for it occurs only in the passage referred to. Clearly the only course open to us [i.e. granting the misconstruction] is to examine, patiently and carefully, the book which is termed inspired, and ascertain what characters attach to it" (p. 28) Now inspiration, though equally divine, did not always assume the same form, though we are told little, and perhaps could not learn more, about it. Why should we? Let us hear then the scriptures.

* The Revisers say, "Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable," etc. They turn a plain construction into one not only awkward but ambiguous. For their rendering might mean "as being inspired," and thus it would only differ in assuming what the A.V. gives as asserting; which would not help the desired end. But taken to mean "if inspired," it contradicts the N.T. norma loquendi of γραφή which is appropriated therein to no writing but God's inspired word. Not so γράμματα in ver. 15, which required ἱερα; to designate the O.T.; πᾶσα γραφὴ here means "every scripture" old or new. Every such is inspired.

If we take the central book of the Pentateuch, what does it distinctly claim? "And Jehovah called unto Moses, and spoke unto him" etc. "Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man" etc. And so, with slight historic exceptions the book of Leviticus attaches to itself the character of direct dictation from Jehovah throughout. But these critics flatly refuse to believe. Faithful men accept it as literal truth, the law given through Moses. This is surely inspiration; and He who revealed it empowered the human medium to communicate it, not only piecemeal by the way, but written as a whole.

Would it not be an eminently human way to expect every or any book of scripture to open with "I am inspired" or its equivalent? No creature witnessed creation. None but God could vouch for it. Adam and his sons were called into being long after. Legends could but guess unless God made it known, as He assuredly did to Moses, if we believe our Lord. Was this so wonderful as to give him to write of Christ? The first of his books presents the far simpler and nobler words, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": a truth which had been utterly forgotten and denied long before the days of Moses. Where is its truth in one of those boasted monuments of Babylon, Nineveh, or Egypt, which professing Christians, and Christian teachers in the highest position, are not ashamed to allege against the word and authority of scripture? They of the monuments, one and all, worshipped idols or strange gods; and so the error was not secondary but fundamental. Their religion was based on a deadly falsehood which vitiates all possible reliance on them for truth or holiness. What can one think of men so infatuated; as to impute the Bible to heathen trash? Is not this what all neo-critics do without a blush? Can it be denied with the least appearance of candour? Now who could speak as Moses writes authoritatively, of creation but the Creator? That Babylonians and others borrowed and corrupted the tradition is the homage that lies pay to the truth. Wickedness alone would make their forgeries the source of scripture.

But even Genesis is full of prophecy from the beginning, as well in direct terms (partly fulfilled, more to be so, and not to faith only but manifested to every eye), as indirectly yet more largely in its types throughout, save to blind eyes. Who but God could have thus revealed? Where is its reality outside scripture? Here most of these critics are as sceptically depraved as D. Hume and E. Gibbon, or as frivolous as J. J. Rousseau and A. de Voltaire.

Next Exodus attests stupendous miracles on which the monuments are as dumb, as they ignore and defy the Ten Words, and the judgments of God on Egypt's king and people; and the annexed copies of the things in the heavens shown to Moses inspired for communication to Israel for their worship and our still deeper instruction. Here the records of all the monuments are silent; but these critics grow bolder in their unbelief. For they dare to speculate, on the simple finding (after much disorder and idolatry) of the long-neglected book of the law in Josiah's day, that it must be a fabrication then got up, pretending to a Tabernacle after the Exodus, if ever there was an Exodus. Can they believe that the true God gave no better revelation to Israel than a bundle of lies, which contradict each other? or that Israel (yea — the Lord) had to wait for German sceptics to find it out?

Then in Leviticus, which is almost entirely characterised by the words, "And Jehovah spoke to Moses," and ends with "These are the commandments which Jehovah commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai," how daring is the impiety which allows a doubt! Here they have not the plea of heathen writers for confirmation, whom they venerate as they distrust the scriptures. It is the love of doubt which they confound with the love of truth, the assurance of systematic self-will and independent speculation, and not the faith of God's Son and God's word.

Numbers seems to be equally impossible to be attributed to any other than Moses, making allowance for an inspired editor's slight additions. For it presents the circumstances of the march through the wilderness with the suited commandments of Jehovah, It has (if we believe the apostle in 1 Cor. 10) a spiritual bearing on the Christian pilgrim which only divine wisdom could have combined, yet characteristic of the prophets, and of one only inferior to the highest, who had ample leisure and conferred power to indite as God enjoined, with love for Israel and yet more for Jehovah. This spared neither the people nor the misleaders, neither Aaron, nor Miriam, nor himself. Is not this as edifying as it contrasts with any pretended sacred book of man?

Deuteronomy closes the law, and is so self-evidently Mosaic with its personal pathos, that one may wonder that any man of spiritual perception could fail to recognise that none but the saintly legislator could have written it, as he intimates himself with death immediately in view, yet with undismayed spirit, and natural force unabated, and all his profound affections for Israel just about to enter the land of promise from which he was debarred. This and more necessarily gave a peculiar solemnity, adapted to the new generation who had not personally shared the departure from Egypt, the law imposed at Sinai, and but little of God's discipline through the wilderness, which form its wondrous rehearsal for instruction, encouragement, and warning, quite unexampled in the O.T.

1. "God-breathed," then, is ample to convey the source, character and authority of scripture to a believing soul. As to the manner in which the Divine will was communicated to the writers, the Church, as it could say nothing reliable, was still less authorised to speculate presumptuously. And what more inconsistent with reverence than to propound "a theory" on "its literary structure"? or the stages by which historically inspiration proceeded? But the same apostle long before his last Epistle had given light from God, which it is seasonable to recall. 1 Cor. 2 lets us into much of the deepest interest and importance, (which the Higher Critics gloss over,) in impressing on the light-minded Corinthians the fulness and variety of the Holy Spirit's operation in this respect and in others for the blessing of the faithful. Even what Isaiah confessed to be hidden from man's eye, ear, and heart, is now revealed to the Christian since Christ's redemption, and the Spirit's descent (vers. 9-12); "which things also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom; but in those taught by the Spirit, communicating (or expounding) spiritual things by spiritual" [words]. For it is evident to any who inspect with care that the apostle is here treating of the further stage of communicating the revelation in ver. 13, before carrying it on to the reception of the inspired words in vers. 14, 15; where the reception by the Christian is declared to be by the same Holy Spirit in contrast with the inability of the natural man. "Comparing" therefore, though quite right in the different context of 2 Cor. 10: 12, does not give the sense of συγκρίνοντες here as the intermediate act. Nor does "combining" which is here without any intelligible force, but "interpreting" as in the Revisers' margin, though the simpler "communicating" seems in so peculiar a connection the fittest of all.

This being the apostle's pronouncement, how can any professing Christian doubt "that an inspired writing must be absolutely consistent in all its parts, and free from all discrepancy or error"? The Bible both makes and satisfies these requirements. This is inspiration's account of inspiration. The "words" are Spirit-taught no less than the ideas. But the gift of the Spirit is essential to receive them. The lack of the Spirit is the true reason for insubjection to the truth, and the invention of such terms as "Bibliolatry," "verbal" inspiration or other such slurs. No intelligent believer denies but asserts individuality of style: what he abhors is that God's Spirit sanctions or allows error. There is nothing in the plea that it is "man's word," with which the apostle contrasts it expressly in 1 Thess. 2: 13: "when ye received from us God's word of message (or, report), ye accepted not men's word but even as it is truly God's word which also worketh in you that believe." But these critics do not so believe God's revelation. They believe in themselves and their unbelieving leaders; and so continuing they "shall both fall into a pit."

It is false therefore that "the inerrancy of Scripture . . . is a principle which is nowhere asserted or claimed in Scripture itself" (p. 31). "Theologians" on the contrary, as the rule, are habitually weak from the beginning, like Origen, the most learned of the Greek Fathers, who read allegory, and not history in the fall of Adam and the primitive state. It is no question of à priori any more than à posteriori, but of faith. Before Scripture and doctrine claimed to be in Spirit-taught words, no one put such honour on it as the Lord of all when He set it as authoritative testimony (John 5: 47) above His own oral words, though they were of life eternal, spirit and life as He Himself asserted. And what means His declaration in John 10: 35 that "the Scripture cannot be broken"? Does this imply that man's infirmity could enter to vitiate it? or does it not mean that the Holy Spirit wrought to make it absolutely true? Nor is it so, as the Prof. says that "it is the facts which force upon us the necessity of a revision of current theories of inspiration"; for as to "current theories" of it, a Christian is entitled to disregard them all. The age is full of unbelief, and therefore abounds in fables on this head and almost every other. But the very passage in 2 Tim. 3 which these men seek to weaken is the great safeguard in the grievous times of the last days, against those who deceive and are deceived; and therefore the effort to annul its weight and meaning! The neo-critical principle is not only arbitrary, unbelieving, and excessively artificial, but at direct issue with the Lord and His apostles, and scripture itself, which all join to prove that the foundations of faith are undermined by the blasphemy that God's word contains error in its Spirit-taught words.

2. To say that "the vital truths declared in the Bible appear . . . wholly unaffected by critical inquiries or critical conclusions" may seem natural to their zealous propagandist, but it is egregious to a believer. If the words are God's; as they so often claim to be in the O.T., if the greatest apostle in the N.T. declares that they and not the thoughts only are Spirit-taught, do they not compose "the external form . . . . in which these truths appear"? It is not sense to say that "the truths themselves lie beyond its range." The apostle as we have seen asserts that the Spirit of God is the true author of both. How can the truth be untouched if you touch the form? And what presumption for any man to meddle with the Spirit-taught words! Dr. D. is obliged to admit that some of the leading spirits are plainly unbelievers (avowed Unitarians, etc.), but covers such infidelity as ''some anterior philosophical principles." No wonder that "evil communications (or, company) corrupt good manners." Ought not others if they fear God to awake up righteously? If they believe with heart, why join arms in divine things with such as have no knowledge of God? As to "different degrees" of inspiration (p. 33) it is unknown to scripture, which does state difference in form.

But "every scripture" is asserted or assumed to be God-breathed. The revelation of God in His word differs essentially from the testimony of nature fallen as it is. As we own in Christ a "human element " as well as the "Divine"; but as he who abuses this union to lower the perfection of Christ's person is fundamentally heterodox, so is he, if only in a less degree, who thus degrades God's written word (p. 34). It is a Psalm of David (Ps. 19) which declares that the law (the O.T. word) of Jehovah is perfect, converting or restoring the soul as nothing else can do; His testimony trustworthy, giving wisdom to the simple (what else does?); His precepts upright, rejoicing the heart; His commandment pure, giving light [spiritually] to the eyes. Yet the law, as Heb. 7 says, perfected nothing. This was from no defect in God's word, but because the Lord had not yet come to give life eternal and to accomplish everlasting redemption for such as believe; who thereon are anointed of God and receive the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts. Even Dr. D. is obliged to own "some special charisma of supernatural insight into the ways of God" granted to the O.T. religious teachers (p. 36). Scripture claims immeasurably more.

3. On the practical suggestions of pp. 37-43 I would say little, as one cannot doubt that his first is sound: that a first-hand knowledge of the Bible itself is the basis for a Biblical scholar. But that the young should be impregnated with the critical notions against the text of scripture is an advice which comes only from one who knows not the scriptures as taught of God, but as perverted by incredulity. What he calls "a natural consequence of the condition under which the authors [of the O.T.] wrote" (p. 43) flows from his unbelief in the power of the Holy Spirit, the true author of all scripture. This is the first and last requisite.

But his error, the ordinary false assumption as to Luke, calls for a more particular notice. "No historical writer ever claims to derive the materials for his narrative from a supernatural source (cf. Luke 1: 1-4); and so far as we are aware, it has not pleased God in this respect to correct, where they existed, the imperfections attaching to the natural position of the writer" (p. 44). This passage was long the refuge of open infidels in Germany, England, etc., to make believe that a so-called inspired Evangelist disclaims anything supernatural in writing his Gospel, and that he founded it like any other literary man from eye-witnesses in all care and diligence for its accuracy. The Oxford Reg. Prof. of Hebrew uses it for the self-same purpose, as others much less carried away, like the late Dean Alford and many more.

This however is not to read Scripture aright, but slovenly misinterpretation through evil influence. Let us heed what is written. Of the Four, the third is the one inspired to present the Son of God as man in the walk of every day, surrounded by all sorts and conditions of men, the perfect manifestation of grace, finding utter weakness and alienation, with enmity from those who trusting in themselves despised others and hated the Holy One of God. He gives all that exercises the conscience, purges the heart by faith, and strengthens disciples in a walk of love, patience and holiness without anxiety, blessed in being found watching for Christ's coming, and also working for Him as His faithful bondmen. Accordingly Luke alone tells from the outset John the Baptist's birth, and Christ's earliest and youthful days in this aspect; alone tells of the Lord's genealogy up to Adam, of the initiatory scene in the synagogue at Nazareth, of Simon searched yet drawn by faith at the lake; of the widow's only son raised again at Nain; of the sinful woman forgiven and sent away in peace, of the seventy and their final message, of the good Samaritan, of Martha and Mary discriminated, and, to cut short the list, of the prodigal and his father's love, and of the robber following the Lord from the cross to Paradise the same day. He is the great moralist but in a divine way, as beseemed such a life of Jesus; man's heart detected, God's heart revealed in grace. He alone with the same divine design writes a preface with his motives to a fellow-saint. And this furnishes the occasion for free-thinking malice to deny his inspiration, of which divine power the book itself is the best witness, like the other three, though not one presents it as Luke does.

Hence at the start our Evangelist shows his heart drawn out to one begotten of God that needed the truth fully, a Gentile of rank if not actually a governor, with "his excellency" dropped in Acts 1: 1, as no doubt he would prefer when more matured. This marked personal dealing would appeal all the more to other hearts, Jews as well as Gentiles. "Whereas many undertook to draw up a narrative concerning the matters fully assured among us, even as they that from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having closely followed up from the outset all things accurately, to write to thee in regular order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest fully know the certainty concerning accounts (words, or things), wherein thou wast instructed." These words distinguish the statements of many, though founded on what eye-witnesses and ministers of the word delivered to us. For instead of referring Theophilus to what they had drawn up, he tells us that it seemed good to him also, as having followed closely all things from the very first (ἅνωθεν) and thus having thorough acquaintance of all, to write accurately to him in regular order, that he might fully know the certainty concerning accounts in which he was instructed. He does not, like a literary man, explain his sources or authorities. Far from saying that he compiled his Gospel from eye-witnesses as others had done, he simply avers his own careful perfect acquaintance with all from the outset, and his writing accurately and in order, that the one addressed might fully know the certainty respecting the accounts wherein he was instructed. The narratives he refers to might be correct and interesting. But they could not give God's mind and specially as his who was inspired. Only instead of asserting inspiration, he like the other three leaves this to prove itself by its character. But unlike them he adds the loving desire of his heart to help his brother young in the truth in accordance with the spirit of his Gospel pre-eminently.

Many who had taken it in hand did not satisfy him; and therefore he wrote to supply the lack. But he goes into no details of his own work, unless to affirm its thoroughness and accuracy more than any did. Hypothesis is vain here. Far from apologising for "imperfection," all he says is to inspire perfect confidence, for which nothing can account to a believer but "a supernatural source."

It is admitted that God did employ eye-witnesses, as for instance two such in Matthew and John as to their Gospels. But He employed two who were not, Mark and Luke; and who can deny that they are minute and graphic? Yet even in the case of the apostles themselves we find them rising above eye-sight by divine power, according to the design He impressed on the particular writer or the book written, which quite overthrows the unbelieving theory. Take John 18 as the proof. John alone recounts the Lord's answer to the armed band that came to arrest Him, "I am [he];" which caused them to go backward and fall to the ground. Yet Matthew who beheld it says about so striking an event no more than Mark or Luke. It did not come within God's design for their Gospels, but distinctly for John, who accordingly attests it. On the other hand, John is totally silent on the same occasion as to the agony in Gethsemane, on which the other three dwell, though he alone was of the favoured three whom the Lord took apart from the rest to be comparatively near in that hour of deep sorrow and bloody sweat. Yet it was given to Matthew, and even to Mark and Luke to record it, as dwelling not on His deity but His human sufferings in accordance with the design in each of their Gospels. But God is not really in the thoughts of these critics, but man; and this incapacitates them from seeing the truth, as the Christian is entitled to do.

Then is repeated the wholly fanciful notion of "two writers" in the opening chapters of Genesis, and the absurd assumption that "the Hebrews" thus pictured the beginning of the world and the early history of man: a task immeasurably above the Higher Critics or any that ever lived without God's inspiration most absolutely; and the shameless invention that, even as to this, "borrowing their materials in some cases from popular tradition or belief, in others, directly or indirectly, from the distant East, they had breathed into them a new spirit, and constructed with their aid narratives replete with noble and deep truths respecting God and man;" etc., etc. How any with the fear of God could thus speak is past comprehension if one did not bear in mind the blinding, defiling, and deadly influence of scepticism. No doubt the history of Israel is rife with their readiness to depart from Jehovah and to adopt the loathsome idolatries of the nations, which the true prophets resisted till there was no remedy. But that the Bible denounces any such importations as the worst sin against the One True God is as plain as words can speak from Genesis to Malachi. In pp. 44-46 is nothing but human fancy and indifference to God's majesty and truth in the O.T. Nor can one conceive less moral feeling than to impute to the inspired word His breathing a new spirit of holiness and truth on narratives drawn from the lying productions from wicked and rebellious heathens and the unclean spirits which misled them. Compare Deut. 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 17, 29.

"These things hast thou done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before shine eyes" (Ps. 50: 21).

III. THE PERMANENT RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE O.T.

The closing paper is, like the second, by Prof. Driver, D.D.

The less may here be said because it has been already reviewed briefly when it appeared in the Interpreter for January, 1905.

In pp. 51-56 Dr. D. lays down that the "first and primary claim, then, to permanent and religious value which the O.T. possesses, consists in the surprisingly lofty and elevated conceptions of God which prevail in it," more than can "be found in any other literature, save only in that of the N.T." But no such elevated conceptions can long bear the strain put upon the O.T. if it fails in real truth, and is only "an accommodation to the immature stage of religious belief," colouring the narratives and even the prophecies with "'particularistic' features" unworthy of God. Here he begins with the "imperfect" and even "false" (!) science of Genesis. How can godly souls regard such an unholy alliance as emanating from God Himself? Where science might come in for describing the great geologic successions, there is silence. God left this to man to find out as he has done, in a general way at least. In the first two verses we have the principle of God creating, and then of a chaos that followed. Some of the best informed experts have given excellent reasons for inferring that these changes in the crust of the earth have recurred some twenty-nine or thirty times, of great moment for the race that was to be, and demanding great differences as well as almost equally indispensable destructions, from which man was to derive profit as he discovered the rich provision made for him, and more or less laid bare by the violent upheavals which occurred from time to time. In these two verses we have only the principle. Had details been given it would have been science taught by scripture; but this is exactly what the Bible avoids. Nevertheless room is here left for all those great changes which followed the primary creation of the earth.

Verse 3 opens the work of God after the geologic ages, and dwells upon what God created with a direct view to man, account of whom also is given within the six days. But it is revelation and not science given us in the verses that follow to the end of the chapter: the earth formed for the immediate appearance and dwelling of man upon it. This is what scripture supplies for our instruction. It has moral roots which could not be where the work was purely material. God would have every man to understand in a general way that form of creation of which he is the head.

Is it not striking that mere scientists and philosophers who are avowed rationalists are more intelligent as to this question than the new critical divines? I refer again to two eminent philosophers who do not pretend to derive anything from scripture, but allow and even insist on that which overthrows this first example which the new critics of all lands pervert to disparage the Bible.

John S. Mill and Herbert Spencer little knew or even suspected that they laid their axe to the root of theological scepticism as far as Gen. 1 is concerned. They and others who differ from them acknowledge boldly that science can give no account of permanent and primary causes of the universe as it is. Science begins where creation ends. Science can investigate the effects of creation but can give no account of the wonderful powers which wrought in creating. Science is the discovery of the movements, the cause of which it knows not, from the facts before man's eyes; however governed by general laws, — fixed laws as they call them. But it acknowledges that it can give no account of these primeval causes. So Mill declares in words already cited; and Herbert Spencer (of a distinct school of philosophy) cites his words with approval and adds that the only thing science can do is to conduct its students to a blind wall, on the other side of which lies the solution wholly outside science. This it is which, not science but, the Bible reveals with a simplicity and majesty and truth peculiar to God's revelation.

How strange that these scholarly divines seem so unacquainted with that which the philosophers admit of the limits of science, and its essential inability to explain what God's word makes plain to every believer. Of creative power and ways they confess that science knows nothing and can say nothing. They confess that there must have been such powers, to produce the facts which, carefully observed and adequately generalised, are the fixed laws, so called, of science. These necessarily only began to exist, long after that to be adequately generalised into various departments of physical science.

But even the most extreme materialist sage acknowledges that science knows nothing of that creating of which Gen. 1 treats. Yet here we have these learned divines boasting of what science wholly ignores and cannot possibly reach. For on the assumption that true science does know better than Gen. 1, they manifest their own lack of acquaintance with the confessed ignorance of science, and venture to ground on that ignorance the charge of false science on God's word. They are therefore guilty of setting up science against scripture which the experts of science admit to be unfounded. The higher criticism was too eager to impute mistake even to the first chapter of the Bible. Nor does it require science to see that these theologians are less candid and less intelligent than the experts of rationalistic philosophy. It is false that "the science of this chapter is antiquated." There is no science in the chapter. There is divine light on God's work which must precede all science. This the scientists themselves, however sceptical, confess as a necessary principle. It is the divines in their hurry to disparage scripture who assume that science explains creation differently from the Bible. Whereas the fact is that science confesses its total ignorance, because it lacks the faith to believe the word of God. How sad that these professedly Christian teachers should assume a triumph for science which worldly rationalists admit to be absolutely non-existent!

The truth however, is that these men explain away the second and third chapters of the same book as an allegory rather than a history, and talk of anthropomorphism, instead of seeing the beautiful simplicity in describing God's ways where His special interest in man is thus expressed, however real the facts.

We need not follow Dr. D. to the inspired prophecies. He is obliged to confess that Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah represent the God of Israel (however long-suffering to the people of His choice) as the God of all the families of the earth, the contrast of Jewish narrowness, and looking onward to the day when He must expel Israel from the land because of their iniquity, and open wide the day of grace to the Gentile; who in their turn shall forfeit His favour, for the full and final restoration of penitent and believing Israel. Then also He will bless all the nations of the earth when Messiah shall reign over it and fill it with blessing and glory.

II. Dr. D. claims for the O.T. permanent value on account of the clearness and emphasis with which it proclaims the duty of man both toward God and toward his fellow-man. Here again if the Bible be not the truth of God, a clear statement of duty will never preserve its authority over the conscience.

III. Any religious sanction of the more general duties also must fail for the same reason.

IV. How can examples of high character in the O.T., which is candid as to their failures also, sustain absolute authority over the conscience, if the word of God be stained, as these divines insist, with mistakes and falsehoods attributed to God Himself?

V. The same remark applies to the devotional portions like the Psalms, etc. Wonderfully as they may express the heart's feelings in distress, confession, supplication, confidence and faith, as well as thanksgiving and praise, to set scripture against scripture is the work of the enemy and still more to insinuate falsehood against the God of truth, as represented by the O.T.

VI. Still less can the great idea of human life and society in the O.T. redeem itself and the God who speaks throughout it from the libels endorsed by the higher critics. No doubt the grosser pollutions of heathenism are, since Christ, ashamed to be seen in the light, and retreat into congenial darkness. But as to real advance for the world, the N.T. does not flatter any more than the O.T. Both show that the end of this age will be profoundly wicked and utterly godless save for little remnants of Jews and Gentiles; and divine judgment will surely be executed upon the whole earth, on Jerusalem especially, on the Beast and the False Prophet, as well as on the N.T. Babylon. It will be the apostasy and the man of sin, the lawless Beast of Rev. 13 and his religious associate the antichrist, or all civil and religious iniquity. This is the consummation which both Testaments announce by the holy Prophets. It is direct contradiction of scripture that human endeavour shall ever realise the restitution of all things; for it is reserved only for the one Man, the glorified Son of man, to make good the kingdom of God in manifest power and glory. All others have failed and have been saved wholly of grace. He only is the worthy One, the power and the wisdom of God. For Him at His coming again is this glory here below reserved, and then, as now in the heavens. Only then do we see power exercised and glory displayed. Man as such is to be brought low, and judgment on the quick take place, before the times of refreshing shall come from God through our Lord Jesus for the long guilty, weary, and misled earth.

VII. The stress laid upon a pure and spiritual religion did not avail of old any more than the gospel now to make good the glory of God here below. No believer doubts its reality and especially in that which Christ introduced for the N.T. when the hour came for Jerusalem and Samaria alike to disappear, and the worship of the Father in spirit and truth was revealed. It is man that fails, the first man. The grand change awaits the Second Man to judge the first as living on the earth and to maintain God's glory in the highest and peace on earth. This He will surely accomplish. But even His kingdom on earth will be followed by an uprising of rebellion which God will destroy by fire from heaven. Then will come His judgment on the great white throne, when all the wicked dead since the world began shall be judged, and eternity issues with a new heaven and a new earth in the fullest sense, as well as the lake of fire for all the cowardly, unbelieving, false, corrupt, and wicked. No qualities can condone lack of truth.

W.K.

The Scripture of Truth

Daniel 11, 12

W. Kelly.

The Bible Treasury, New Series, 1: 163, etc.

Daniel 11 One of our sages, the founder of inductive philosophy, distinguishes between divine prophecies, and such as have been of certain memory and from hidden causes. These were no better than probable conjectures or obscure traditions that many times turn themselves into prophecies. Lord Verulam undoubtedly was a man of profound thought, and (whatever his sad failure) a great deal wiser than those who now in effect deny divine prophecy altogether, and merely show themselves out as unbelievers. Now unbelief is an insult to God and His word and not merely so, but along with it goes as the rule ignorance of Christ and of redemption. Everything is shaken thereby; for the moment you begin to cavil at Scripture, where is the line to be drawn? It is no better if you question the beginning. You may begin with Genesis; for the same principle is apt to carry the mind in doubt throughout the Bible to Revelation. There is abundant evidence for Scripture, more by far than for any books of antiquity; but evidence of an external sort never raises you to faith. Scripture claims to be the written word of God and carries its own evidence as light to the conscience. Unless received on its own divine authority, men do not really believe it savingly. They may readily allow that it has a character intrinsically superior to other so-called sacred books. But this makes it only a question of old Hebrew sages or of those who wrote in Christian times, who were better or abler men. THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH In the prophecy which now claims our attention we have as nearly as possible the language of history. We have seen the symbolic style in the earlier visions of the book. Dan. 9 is transitional, the weeks being in a measure enigmatic; the rest plain language with figures interspersed, as in all the interpretations. The peculiarity of Dan. 11 and 12, like Dan. 9, is in leaving symbolic form for the language of every day on historical matters. Thus we have a succession of kings in a double contemporary series, north and south of the holy land, which was beyond controversy God's centre on the earth. We must therefore look up or down from that fixed point.

Here we find a striking introduction before we hear of kings of the north and the south. "And now will I show you the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia." Cyrus was then the great ruling personage. Darius was in honour only as a sort of complementary king; the conqueror of Babylon put him forward in recognition of the Medes who joined his standard, whatever may have been the exact family tie which bound them together. For scripture is silent, and the facts are by no means cleared by the profane writers of history. As Ctesias says that Cyrus made his own grandfather, the dethroned king of the Medes a satrap, it is not improbable that he is Darius the Mede of the prophecy. Probable it seems that Astyages' daughter Mandane married Cambyses II., father of Cyrus, whom Herodotus mentions as a Persian noble, the monuments as the king, which appears to have been the fact. However this be, Cyrus was a man of real and widely extended power. Thenceforward Scripture proof of the succession appears in Ezra 4.

First we have Ahasuerus, the unworthy son of a great father, here (Ezra 4: 6) called Ahasuerus, or Cambyses as he is named in ordinary history. It was not he that disturbed the Jewish remnant, after their restoration, but the usurper who followed him when the Samaritan enemies of Israel appealed to stop the work of rebuilding the temple and the city. This work Artaxerxes (Smerdis Magus) (Ezra 4: 7-23) was the more ready to thwart, as he being a Mede paid no regard to the policy of Cyrus, whose son, Cambyses, did; he would be disposed naturally to reactionary measures. Darius Hystaspis became king on the revolt which set aside the pseudo-Smerdis; and he is the king of Persia who confirmed the decree of Cyrus. See Ezra 5: 5, 24, and chs. 5, 6. This Darius H. is the third in Dan. 11: 2, that is, the third after Cyrus the Great.

"The fourth," it is said, "shall be far richer than they all." This proverbially rich king of Persia was Xerxes, who tried to follow his father's enmity to Athens (defeated at Marathon, B.C. 490), and strike the Greeks a death-blow. "And when he is waxed strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." He likewise was defeated at the famous battles of Salamis and Platæa, B.C. 480, 479. How exact and terse is the prophet's sketch! "By his strength through his riches." It was not skill or force of arms, but wealth that mustered the vast hosts of barbarians. But his enormous armies, far greater than those of his father Darius, were unavailing. Luxury had enervated those once hardy warriors. And now also they had overstepped their limits. Whilst they pushed their dominions through Western Asia, God in His providence was with them; but when they sought the sea and Europe, by rushing into Greece, they laid the foundation of that enmity which found its vent in Alexander the Great, who led the Greeks and his own Macedonian forces against the East. The great battles at the Granicus, and at Issus, and at Arbela resulted in the total overthrow of the Persian empire. See how clearly this is set out in a few words in Dan. 11: 3: "And a mighty king (Alexander) shall stand up that shall rule with great dominion and do according to his will." But what about his own dynasty? "And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; but not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion wherewith he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, even for others besides these" (Dan. 11: 4). This was all verified to the letter.

Thus are we brought to the desired two out of the four parts of Alexander's kingdom — Syria in the North, Egypt in the South. And a most characteristic sketch it is. Gibbon, the sceptical historian, says in his sneering way that Daniel "is too exact for a prophet." "The four empires are clearly delineated: the expedition of Xerxes into Greece; the rapid conquest of Persia by Alexander; his untimely death without posterity; the division of his monarchy into four kingdoms, one of which, Egypt, is mentioned by name; then various wars and inter-marriages; the persecution of Antiochus; the profanation of the temple; and the invincible arms of the Romans are described with as much clearness as in the histories of Justin and Diodorus. From such a perfect resemblance the artful infidel would infer that both alike were composed after the event" (G. to Hurd, Works, v. 365).

Certain it is that the Lord does authenticate "Daniel the prophet" to every believer, who finds here in short compass a sketch more simple, consecutive, and correct than in all the historians put together, and with slight exception in the common style of history. This is admittedly a feature unusual in prophecy; and because of this some have rashly yielded to incredulity. Dr. Arnold was thus misled; for no piety can quite undo the poisonous effects of unbelief.

But no Christian can doubt that it is as easy for God to give a consecutive anticipation as a single luminous picture. It is the general way of prophecy, no doubt, to hurry on to the judgment, and the blessing that follows the Lord's intervention at the close, as being of supreme importance. But there was good reason in His eyes to give at this junction an account of the kings, north and south of Palestine, and their mutual struggles and alliances, sometimes sought to be cemented by marriage. We have these movements traced with precision; nothing in history can be more exact. Name if you are able any great writer on that time, who gives facts with as great accuracy, simplicity, and clearness, as this chapter.

Take the following curt summary: Dan. 11: 5 presents Ptolemy Lagi, one of Alexander's chief captains, in remarkable strength; yet another about to be stronger than he, and to have a great dominion, the first Seleucus surnamed Nicator. In Dan. 11: 6 after an indicated space we hear of an endeavour to patch up the jealousy which from earliest days had arisen about the land which lay between these powers, when Ptol. Philadelphus gave his daughter Berenice to Antiochus Theus. But Laodice, the injured first wife, brought all to nought and worse than ever by restoration to the northern king's favour, when she poisoned those from the south as well as her husband and Berenice's son. Dan. 11: 7 and 8 tell us of "a shoot" from Berenice's roots, Ptol. Euergetes, avenging her wrongs, when Sel. Callinicus reigned in the north, and gained great successes over the north, surviving his adversary and returning to his own land (Dan. 11: 9). Then in Dan. 11: 10 we have the efforts of Sel. Ceraunus and Antiochus the Great against the south, the latter of whom alone recovered Seleucia; so that even Ptol. Philopator, inert as he was, got enraged (Dan. 11: 11), and Antiochus after various successes sustained an utter rout at Raphia (Dan. 11: 12). But no fruit remained to the Egyptian king, especially as he oppressed the Jews; but Ant. waited till he could fall on his infant nephew when the Jews revolted (Dan. 11: 13, 14), and he took Sidon (Dan. 11: 15), notwithstanding all Egypt could do to hinder (defeated at Panium), and he visited the land of beauty (Dan. 11: 16). In Dan. 11: 17 we hear of his fair words but foul intrigues through Cleopatra, who thwarted his craft; as in Dan. 11: 18 his invasion of the isles of Greece was stopped by a Roman chief in the person of Quinctius the Consul at the Isthmus. Inglorious defeat sealed his stumble and fall (Dan. 11: 19). Dan. 11: 20 briefly tells us of his son Sel. Philopator, overloaded with tribute, as is here strikingly noticed, who fell through his "exactor," Heliodorus. From Dan. 11: 21 to 32 inclusively follows the account of his brother Antiochus Epiphanes with a detail beyond all before, as being the foe not only of the Jews but of their God, the living God. Demetrius was the true heir. "A person vile" indeed was their supplanter. His deceit was as great against his nephew of Egypt as against his brother. At length "ships of Chittim came against him" (Dan. 11: 30), as against his ancestor. The Romans compelled him to retire from Egypt; and he vented his indignation on the Jews; as later on by his order "the abomination that maketh desolate" was set up in the temple through apostates that helped him, though valiant opposition was not wanting.

If one ventured to enter into the details of those successive kings, it would take considerably more space than can be now given. But the last king of the north stands out from all the rest.

Many were bad enough, violent or corrupt. Sons did not mind marrying their sisters or other nearest relations. Some led deplorably abominable lives, and were a curse to their subjects and neighbours, even more than to their enemies. God had said that Egypt was to be a base kingdom, and no ruler of their race was to reign any longer. No wonder that those kings of the south failed; for instead of raising up Egypt to their own fancied superiority as foreigners, they sunk it to the uttermost, naturally turning to most unnatural evils. Such was the race of Ptolemy.

The worst of the Seleucidæ was Antiochus Epiphanes, called by others Epimanes or the madman. This man went far in his endeavours to stamp out not only the Jews but also the Jewish religion. He placed a statue of Zeus Olympius in the most holy place, and did what none but the most profane men would have thought of — put swine's flesh and blood in the sanctuary of God. The consequence is that his history is dwelt on with greater minuteness than anyone's. But the resistance to his aim at the close of his history led to a famous revival amongst the Jews. The Maccabees, as the Jewish heroes were called, resisted his generals, which is what is meant by "arms shall stand on his part" — a sufficiently definite way of describing a general acting for him against the Maccabees. Their history is given among the uninspired books that compose the Apocrypha. These Maccabees were no models of piety or long-suffering; but, as Daniel says, they were strong and "did [exploits]." No phrase could more accurately characterize them (Dan. 11: 32). "The people that do know their God shall be strong and act." They were far from possessing the martyr spirit in their ways, such as will be found in the godly remnant by-and-by at the end of the age. Then indeed none but those willing to lose their lives for the truth's sake will be owned by the God of Israel. Their strength will be in their weakness, they themselves ready to suffer — yea, even unto death for Him Who died and, little known by them, is now in glory. It is needless to say that such suffering is a far harder thing, and entails more blessing from God than anything of power displayed in the theatre of the world.

Here then we have those that were persecuted by their enemy — Antiochus Epiphanes. "And they that understood (or, are wise) among the people shall instruct many" (Dan. 11: 33). The phrase means "the" many. It is to be regretted that the article is not conveyed in English where it stands in the Hebrew. For there are the two varieties: the word "many" sometimes with, and sometimes without, the article. The Revisers have taken no notice of the difference, any more than the A.V. "And they shall fall by the sword, and by the flame, by captivity, and by spoil, [many] days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help; but many shall cleave to them with flatteries" (Dan. 11: 33, 34). So it came to pass that Antipater, the Edomite father of Herod, got in. For the family had not a shadow of right to reign over the Jews. Only he stood with the last unworthy scion of the Maccabees, and through Roman help also slipped into power. But such retributions were allowed in God's providence, in order to the humiliation of His guilty people.

"And [some] of them of understanding shall fall, to try them and to purge, and to make [them] white, [even] to the time of the end; because [it is] yet for the time appointed" (Dan. 11: 35). Just here it is where the text itself shows an interruption of the history till we come to "the time appointed" — "the time of the end." Throughout the prophecy will be found a similar break. Even this remarkably successional chapter discloses such an interruption both at the beginning and at the end. The first undeniably occurs at the end of Dan. 11: 2, after the defeat of Xerxes, and before Alexander the Great. What left room for it is Xerxes stirring up all against the realm of Greece. After a century and a half this entailed the return blow by Alexander. All the intervening history was passed over.

In the same way the Spirit of God has brought us down to the time that follows Antiochus Epiphanes. No notice is here taken of the successive kings that reigned in the north and south; for the next we shall see to be king in the land between the two countries, a king who had not yet come to the throne. After Antiochus Epiphanes we do hear of certain Jews making a bold stand to maintain their law against the apostates, and with trials of all kinds till "the time of the end." That time is still future; but it shall assuredly come, the great crisis for the Jew, which the wise and prudent ignore, and therefore count all the rest of the chapter "too fabulous for a contemporary historian." The truth is that it is all future, but will surely be fulfilled in its season. There is a perfect answer in the past history to all we have seen up to Dan. 11: 35, but to nothing more.

Yet it is not to be allowed that the words from Dan. 11: 36 are indeterminate in the least degree. The only appearance of it (and this is intentional vagueness, if such a phrase be permitted here) is in the words, "until the time of the end." It already covers an intervening space of something like 2000 years. The blank at any rate occurs there.

In Dan. 11: 36 we read, "And the king shall do according to his will." This is no king of either north or south, but quite another monarch who is called simply "the king." No other designation was required. Every intelligent Jew would at once know, as every Christian ought to know, who that portentous ruler is. O.T. prophecy prepares us for an awful time that is to befall the nation before the Messiah comes in power and glory. They boast much about their boundless charity to their own people; but how little they enter into what David calls the "kindness of God!" Christians are called by their Saviour to love their enemies. I wonder if every Christian here loves his enemies, no matter how unjust they may be? It is just our opportunity of showing that grace makes us to be above spite and evil. Should we be able to sing at midnight in prison, with our feet in the stocks? What can be done with such people? The world finds them invincible. No wonder that they are to reign with Christ by-and-by, seeing that by His grace they now conquer in the irresistible might of weakness. Exploits are all well for Puritans as for Maccabees; but they suit not the Christian. Stonewall Jackson in America and Havelock in India were too like the Maccabees. They had an imperfect idea of the true place of the Christian. They had not learnt to bear all, and endure all, not only in passive obedience to their earthly rulers, but in grace to such as shamefully injured them. THE ANTICHRIST Here it is supposed that the readers know there is to be at the time of the reigning in Judea an apostate potentate. Having rejected the True Light, the Jews do not realize that they are the very people to be governed by this self-exalting enemy of God. They would not deny that there will surely arise an audacious and wicked king in the land of Israel; but they forget that they are to be his subjects, accomplices, and victims. So far from being king of the north or of the south, we see here that he is attacked by the then kings of both those lands. He is simply called "the king," as neither of those powers is ever called. He bears that name, as being then king of the land between the north and the south. The text affords demonstrable proof of this. "The king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself." This may be no uncommon quality; but he manifests it to an unheard of degree: "He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god." What pretension! Did he not then require to eat, drink, and sleep like any other poor creature? Surely this ought to have convinced him how far he must be from God, or even an angel, had he not been blinded by Satan's power. Nay, he shall "speak marvelous things against the God of gods." Not this only, but we are told that which gives astonishing evidence of long-suffering till judgment come; we are told that he "shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that which is determined shall be done." What a solemn way of God it is to let one go on in blasphemous pride, that wickedness may fully come out, and its downfall may be all the more just and complete! God is righteous. But what is man? What are the Jews, and particularly then?

How came such a king to reign over Judea? They refused Him that came in His Father's name. They will then receive one that comes in his own name. Here we read what he is and does. "Like king, like people" we may say, as one of the earlier prophets said, "As the people, so the priest." They will be in that day one evil lump. The difference is only in degree. Lawlessness will have reached its height. "And he will not regard the God of his fathers." This shows, according to scripture language, he is a Jew. Nobody but a Jew can correctly be described thus: a simple, but incontrovertible proof for such as know the Bible. Where do we find anything like it?

An Englishman who believes may speak of God as his Father; but he cannot talk of "the God of his fathers" except as imitating the phrase of a Jew. This reference of course is to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are the true fathers whom God chose to be the depositories of promise, on behalf of their seed and land, yet to be verified under Messiah: a most happy time for the world, after its hitherto sinful and sad history. I do not of course speak of the gospel, founded on Christ's cross and calling us as the church to heavenly glory. But there is a bright and blessed time for the earth when Israel shall be truly the people of Jehovah exalted above all nations and a blessing to them. The church will have a glorious place in heaven, and will reign over the earth, but not on it. This is the mistake often made in rendering Rev. 5: 10. It ought to be not "on" but "over." There is an idiom in the construction which bears this out. Why it should have been over looked by many excellent scholars seems strange; for the usage is plain enough.

Neither shall this king, to take the next characteristic, regard "the desire of women." The phrase alludes to the well-known expectation that a maiden of Israel would be the mother of Immanuel (Isa. 7). "Nor [will he] regard any god, for he shall magnify himself above all." So excessive is his lawless self-exalting presumption that prevalent idolatry he repudiates in his self-assertion. Yet he is an idolater after all — this man who pretends to be the Most High God. "In his estate shall he honour the god of forces." We can readily understand how everything at such a time will turn to the worship of material force. Never has there been such a rage for arming to the teeth as at the present moment. There have been many epochs when a countless host of barbarians has swept over the civilized world, but never a time when such vast armies stood confronting one another, though their own lands groan under the necessary taxation, afraid of breaking the peace, but ready for war if they saw the opportunity to seize the coveted prize.

Such is the strained condition west and east. Not only is it the fact, but the very powers which thus arm excessively are confessedly perplexed and most anxious under the ever increasing burden, which they necessarily incur on all sides through these bloated armaments. It is the unwitting preparation for the changes and conflicts which precede the great day when the self-exalting king in the Holy Land is worshipped, yet worships "the god of fortresses." People do not worship what they do not prize or covet. The most audacious in pride knows his own nothingness and bows down to some unworthy superstition. Such a secret but enslaving power is unbelief. The wilful one that sets up in Jerusalem and the temple may so far remind us of Napoleon, who, however inordinate in his vanity, unscrupulous in conscience of heart, and insatiable in his ambition, worshipped his own star. The anti-Messiah will worship the god of fortresses.

"Thus shall he do in the most strongholds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory, and he shall cause them to rule over the many, and shall divide the land for gain" (Dan. 11: 39). There again we see the unmistakable marks of a Jewish king in the land. We recognize in "the many" the technical word for the mass of the Jews; as "the land" in Daniel can legitimately be no other than Palestine. THE CLOSING SCENE "And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships" (Dan. 11: 40). Can there be more positive proof sought that "the king" in these verses is quite distinct from the two contending lines hitherto described? Here it is beyond doubt that on the contrary the kings of the north and of the south attack him. How could he be the same as either of the assailing parties?

But there is a yet more important series of details to point out now, about which there have been often great disputes in the minds of Christians, simply because they have looked at the wrong time and place. The Spirit of God says a little more here about this lawless king. We learn that the king of the south appears to be the first in opposing him. This is resented by the king of the north who comes down with still greater resources, indeed, as it is said, "like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships." From this point to the end of the chapter the account is of the king of the north. Impossible to ask fuller proof that it is no longer the wilful king in the land, but the king of the north that is described henceforth, ravaging but destroyed beyond help, as in the end of Dan. 8.

One may be asked why "the king" should be dropped here without telling what becomes of him. Great pains had been taken elsewhere to mark him out as devoted to destruction when the Lord shines from. heaven at His appearing. Of course one does not heed the disgusting fiction, with which the Talmud speaks of Armillus. But the Jews, apart from traditions, were aware they will have to do before Messiah comes with a terrific and lawless chief in the land. Whence did they get the ground of their ingrafted fables? Isa. 11 clearly reveals him, and his end at that time: "With the breath of his lips shall he (Messiah) slay the wicked (one)." This is the man. The text is referred to and applied by the apostle in 2 Thess. 2: 8, "And then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the appearing of his coming." The king is the same person who is designated "the wicked" in our version of Isa. 11 and "the lawless one" in the R.V. of 2 Thess. 2. It is a single individual, and "lawless" more precisely describes him than "wicked." He is the man who defies all law, all authority of whatever sort, every object of reverence, every heathen god, yea the true god, in order to set up himself above all. Not merely does he trample upon law and gospel, but on God Himself, and his image he sets up in the temple of God. As he reigns over the Jews, it is natural that for this he should choose the holy place in Jerusalem. "The prince that shall come," or Roman emperor in the coming day, of whom you were hearing in Dan. 9 is not referred to in this passage. But the prince of Rome in the latter day is to support the lawless king of the Jews, as its chief had the guilt of gratifying the Jews in crucifying the true King. The Roman prince or emperor of that day will be a strong ally of the Antichrist that reigns over "the land." Rome will then have got clear of the Popes; but instead of being better, it also will rush to perdition. The Roman emperor with his satellite kings will have turned upon Babylon, consumed her flesh, and destroyed her with fire.

Here evidently the Protestant school are at fault; for they cannot deny that it is absurd to suppose the Pope would lead his vassals to destroy Babylon, whether as "city" or as "whore." Yet it is certain that the Beast and his horns are to do so. This is intelligible and plain when we believe that the Beast is the revived Roman empire, to which even the most corrupt religious power is obnoxious. The Beast in Rome is as wilful as the king in Palestine, and will not brook the harlot's interference. Babylon is therefore destroyed by him and his horns. The Beast is the coming Roman prince. The empire will be reconstituted, as surely as anything, little as politicians expect it; and Dan. 7: 8, lets us know somewhat of the progress to supreme power of a king with a small beginning, before whom three of the first horns were rooted up. It is not for any man to say which these are to be: least of all should we prophesy, who simply believe the prophets. Setting up to prophesy is a great sin, unless you are a prophet in the inspired sense. But it is a shame for a Christian not to believe those whom such a man as king Agrippa durst not say he disbelieved.

Here, however, we have divine ground to know that the "little horn" of the west is at first to be a small power among the other ten; and that he only becomes great by destroying three of his contemporary powers. He becomes at last not only the possessor of these three kingdoms but the suzerain of all the rest. This is the form in which he becomes emperor of the western powers. It is not a profitable even if a hopeful inquiry, to conjecture the special power which thus from little becomes so ominously great. How sad for Italy if the bad pre-eminence is to be hers! But in that verse in the progress as clearly as the facts can make it is the future, as far as God has revealed in His wisdom. There will be, it would seem from Rev. 13, a sea of confusion for the powers, out of which the Roman empire will reappear.

In that day will be the startling new policy of the latter day, when the western powers will no longer be, as now, striving after a balance one against another. We are sufficiently familiar with the balance of power that has ruled in Europe for many hundreds of years, some trying to unite with others in order to hinder predominance. By-and-by that will be abandoned. God will allow Satan to have his own way for a short time; and all authority and power will be at the back of this chief, the emperor of Rome. At that time he is allowed to dictate to the whole of them. He wields the forces of all the western powers, among the rest, sad to say, of Great Britain. This country once came under that empire. When that empire will be restored, all the divided kingdoms will have their share in the awful catastrophe.

When the Roman prince shall go to support the Jewish king, against the king of the north, they must march at his bidding. It will be, in effect, with the Lamb that they have to fight, as Rev. 17 and 19 make plain. The king of the north is the leader of the north-eastern powers, though there appears to be another behind, which (Gog) is still greater than he, that comes up afterwards to his own destruction. The king of the north is so angry at the king of the south meddling with Jerusalem, that he leaves his campaign unfinished to punish the land of Egypt and its supporters. Half of Jerusalem shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city, as we have it stated in Zech. 14: 2. It is expressly the coming of Jehovah's day when all nations gather against Jerusalem to battle. But there are very distinct events which occur within the compass of "that day." "For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city." A third part in all the land had been spoken of in Zech. 13: 9, as brought through the fire, refined as silver and tried as gold; who call on Jehovah and are heard. He will say, Thou art My people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God. Thus while we find extreme trouble, no less clear is the work of God in a remnant.

It is the Assyrian or King of the north who acts as the overflowing scourge from without, and at first is successful against the wilful king and the apostate mass of the Jews. But God shields the righteous remnant. While the king of the north goes down to deal with the king of the south, the Lord appears to the destruction of the wicked king, now reinforced by the beast from the west and his kings and their armies, which is described in Rev. 19. But it is omitted in Dan. 11, in order to pursue the conflicts of the north and the south about the land and its chief, and then to give the return of the king of the north into the land to find his dismal end, as the others had before.

"And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him [the wilful king]; and the king of the north shall come against him [the same] like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through. He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown. But these shall be delivered out of his hand, Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon" (Dan. 11: 40, 41). Beyond question he is not king of the glorious land, because be enters it as an enemy. Demonstrably it is the king of the north, and not the wilful king who is here before us. "He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape" (Dan. 11: 42). This proves he cannot be the king of the south, because he attacks Egypt and spoils it. "But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps" (Dan. 11: 43). The conquered are compelled to fight under his banner. "But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him," that is, out of his own country. I have little doubt that the tidings are about the movement of the ten tribes, in whom God is working to return from these parts to the land of their fathers. They were transplanted by the king of Assyria of old. And now the last holder of that power is on the alert to oppose their return. Much may be found in Isa. 10 which looks onward to the Assyrian in what Daniel calls "the last end of the indignation." Sennacherib was but a type.

The dealings of God with the ten tribes come out in a very remarkable way, as we may read in Hosea 2 and Ezek. 20. It appears that God is to bring them through the wilderness again; where they are purified by a process of spiritual discipline through which the Lord will put them in those days.

Certain it is that tidings trouble the Assyrian out of the north and east, and he hurries back to Palestine. "And he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many." Already the proud powers of the west had gathered there for their doom, but this he does not consider if he knew it. Men are easily blinded by their passions; and there will also be the special delusion of Satan. The Lord shining from heaven will have destroyed Anti-Christ or the wilful king of the land, as he also destroys the beast solemnly, slaying the kings and their armies that came up to support him. The emperor of the west and his ally in the holy land are both cast alive into the lake of fire, called in the Revelation "the beast" and "the false prophet," for this king in the land pretends to be a prophet as well as to be Messiah and God. Those at the head of the western powers as well as their armies that follow them are slain on the spot, to be judged another day when raised.

After this comes up the king of the north at the head of a vast force. Then shall the Lord go forth at the head of His people "as in the day of battle." So we find it stated in Zech. 14: 3. Before that it was the Lord coming from heaven that dealt with the beast and the false prophet. Now He will have taken up His people Israel. It is the rod of His power from out of Zion, as Ps. 110 expresses it, dealing with the head of a great country, who comes to the same end as the beast and the false prophet before him. This is described in the end of Isa. 30. For the king also [not "yea"] it is prepared, that is, for "the king" in the land as well as for the Assyrian. You will see that from the beginning of Dan. 11: 36, it is entirely a future time that is referred to. Never has been anything like it; but God here reveals that it must be.

Daniel 12

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people [the Jews without doubt]; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered (v.1). But notoriously since the time of the Babylonish captivity, no matter what trouble may have come upon them (and how many and varied their trials!) they have never been delivered. Nebuchadnezzar's blows were heavy, and at length he carried them into captivity. Still more severe was it when Titus the Roman destroyed the city and sanctuary, and sold or scattered over all the western world in particular those whom he was weary of slaying. From another authority we have the retributive fact that Titus crucified the Jews (who had crucified their own Messiah), until there was not wood left capable of torturing another Jew. Then indeed they became the dispersed of Judah to the four corners of the earth. They attempted a stand in the days of Hadrian the Roman emperor and again they were slaughtered without mercy, instead of being delivered. And so it has been since. But it remains to be verified in their last and sorest tribulation, "At that time thy people shall be delivered." Can there be a doubt to any believer that Daniel reveals a deliverance never yet accomplished? Not, it is true, for the mass but for the godly remnant, "thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." This is assuredly before them. There may be only a little remnant left; but "the little one shall become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation: I, Jehovah, will hasten it in its time," according to the words of Isaiah. The word of God ought to silence all difficulties. It is only the righteous who will then be delivered. But it is a deliverance by publicly displayed power in the earth, and in no way by the gospel, when the mass of the Jews shall be destroyed, only those delivered, who are then under the holy banner of God's Messiah. At that time, as God says by Isaiah, "Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever." Is this not Israel?

But we have more of detail here. The Jews in the land are the persons spoken about hitherto; but what about their brethren that were away and lost to their knowledge. Here we have a striking description of them — and an end put to that anomalous state. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." It appears that up to that time their resurrection as a nation had not taken place. From the days of Hosea, and Isaiah, the figure of death had been used, and their rising again promised. So we find it elaborately in Ezek. 37. Many have applied this to the literal resurrection of the body, but when viewed in its connection, it will be found to be only a figure of Israel re-appearing after a long slumber of death. In Ezekiel we hear of the valley filled with dry bones, and of the graves being opened, with other metaphors. It is the same truth as here; not the literal dead raised, but Israel coming up again and standing on their feet, an exceeding great army, whom Jehovah brings into the land of Israel. How could all this describe men rising from the dead? God will bring them out of their utter inaction and impenetrable obscurity.

"And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Those who learn of God, and such as labour for God, shall not lose their reward. They shall shine as the stars, instead of changing like the moon. But it is "the many," or wicked Jews, that are here intended, who are not really turned to righteousness. So that the true fact is, "they that instruct the mass in righteousness"; and they are rewarded for their fidelity, whatever the result may be.

In conclusion let it be observed, that it was the eleventh verse of this chapter our Lord referred to in Matt. 24: 15: not Matt. 11: 31 which had long before been accomplished, but a future act of similar kind which will bring down divine judgment signally, "And from the time that the continual [or daily sacrifice] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand, two hundred, and ninety days." The days here are, I believe, so many literal days. Three times and a half, or one thousand, two hundred, and sixty days, had been spoken of in Dan. 12: 7, and in Dan. 7: 25, as occupied with the evil wrought by the Beast or Roman Prince. To this thirty days are here added. The Lord draws particular attention to the facts as calling for understanding on the part of the reader. It is not the Roman siege already accomplished according to Luke 21 as far as v. 24, though the times of the Gentiles are not yet exhausted. From v. 25 all is future. And the final siege will divide into two parts. The first shows us the king of the north partially successful. The second is marked by utter destruction; and no wonder. For the Lord will have taken His place at the head of His people, and sends the rod of His power out of Zion. "Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand, three hundred, and five and thirty days" (Dan. 12: 12).

This is blessing on the earth; but at the same time there is better still. For those saints like Daniel that have fallen asleep are not forgotten in that great day. "But go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." Daniel, like all the dead that are Christ's, will then obtain "a better resurrection." "He hath swallowed up death" for ever. Christ's victory is ours, for the heavens, as His victory triumphs over Israel's enemies for the earth.

Nebuchadnezzar's Dream and Daniel's Vision.

Daniel 2, 7

W. Kelly.

The Bible Treasury, New Series, vol. 1: 4, etc.

It may be well here to notice that the book of Daniel is divisible from its nature into two nearly equal parts. The first six chapters may be regarded as the first volume, the last six as the second. This is not at all an arbitrary division. It is one founded on the contents of the book. For the early chapters consist of visions which the Gentile king saw, or facts of a moral kind that befell one or other of the monarchs of Babylon vindicating God's mind and sure judgment; whereas the last half of the book communicates visions which the prophet saw. Accordingly there is a marked difference between the two portions, even when they treat of the same subject matter. We see this clearly by comparing the seventh chapter with the second. They go over the same ground precisely, but in a different way. The earlier of the two gives the public history of the world as made known to the first man whom the God of heaven made monarch of all mankind, as well as of the lower creation (Dan. 2: 37, 38); in the later (Dan. 7) we have a presentation of it to a saint, and details in relation to the Lord and the saints at the end of the age.

Nebuchadnezzar was not able to enforce his sway universally — man never is. But as far as the sovereign gift of God was concerned, it was wheresoever the sons of men dwelt. Cyrus, the Persian, extended his sway somewhat more; Alexander of Macedon, a great deal farther still (v. 39). But it was the Romans who did more than any before them. This was the last empire of the four, to which God gave to conquer and rule the then known world, leaving outside of it races that were then uncivilized, our own included, but afterwards to become the most important peoples of modern times. The Britons up to the Christian era were rude and undisciplined. So were the Germans as wild and fierce as the Britons, and the Gauls little better, though successively more or less reduced by the Roman arms. You all perhaps know the famous Julius Ceasar visited our country in the south; as others followed and tried to conquer the Caledonians; but the mountains protected those hardy warriors, and the Romans had no particular sway beyond the well-known limits that sever the Highlands from the Lowlands.

However that may have been, here we have God giving in the first part of the book a comprehensive view of the great imperial powers in the history of the world. There was first the vigorous and splendid empire of Babylon. Man had sought and contended for undisputed and supreme power; but it had never been seen before. Thus we see in scripture the haughty ambition of the Assyrian power; and, even after its fall in the destruction of Nineveh, the rising up of the Egyptian, till Nebuchadnezzar overthrew it at Carchemish. Babylon had been but a subject province of Assyria till the Chaldees gave new courage and strength against its suzerain. For they were among the active enemies that destroyed Nineveh, combining with their Median and Persian allies. Whatever the pretension, the Assyrians did not succeed in getting a universal empire. Egypt sought the same thing afterwards, but Nebuchadnezzar crushed any such aspiration. God had decided to exalt a hitherto inferior kingdom. Who on earth then would have thought of Babylon? Yet was it chosen of God to hold this new place of imperial power. It had under Merodach Baladan become independent no doubt, but it was soon put down again and made tributary to Assyria. Hitherto they appear to have been chiefly of Hamitic race; but some time before the Chaldees gave them a new impetus, coming down from the northern mountains, being of Japheth, from which source were the races that overspread Europe.

But whatever the providential course that wrought, the empire of the world depended on another and all-important turning point. Israel, Judah even, had proved utterly unworthy to be the leader of the kingdoms of the earth. They ought to have been a central witness as a people to all the surrounding kingdoms, a pattern of righteous government under the law of God that all the nations might take heed and see the blessing of having the Lord Jehovah for their God. All this, however, had completely and shamefully broken down before God allowed Babylon to be anything but a power aspiring to independence, but not yet succeeding even in this. When it rose for a little, it was friendly toward Judah, as we may learn from Isa. 39.

You remember how, after recovery from his sickness, Hezekiah the king displayed his treasures to the ambassadors from Babylon, and how the prophet was promptly sent to announce that all should be carried to Babylon without a remnant, and his own sons captives and eunuchs there. No such destiny had God allowed to the Assyrian, who on the contrary fell under an immense disaster, even the destruction of a mighty host of them, through the angel's intervention. A hundred and eighty-five thousand in their camp were left dead corpses in a single night. Do you ask how these facts were not acknowledged by the ancients? How could you expect a vainglorious and idolatrous king like Sennacherib to publish his own shame under the evident interposition of the living God?

These ancient despots were ready enough to blazon their successes on enduring pillars or other monuments of pride. Who ever heard of people disposed or ready to acknowledge their own defeats, especially when the defeat was of divine origin as in this instance? And if such be the might of Jehovah's angel, what of His hand? In fact, God then held things in the balance, until first Israel and then Judah proved altogether failing to present the picture of a righteous people here below. Had He continued to keep Judah after Manasseh and others, it would have been God supporting His own in the wickedness of the kings and the people. He cannot deny Himself. For those who know His nature and ways, it is impossible to conceive His doing otherwise than He did in their case; and so He warned them early. "Hear this word that Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities" (Amos 3: 1, 2). Who finds anything like this in the Vedas or the Sutras, in the Zend-avesta or the Yih-king, the Koran or the like?

The spurious sacred books of men rather flatter and puff up their votaries, while they harden their hearts to destroy better men who refuse their impostures. God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hold the truth in unrighteousness. He will not sanction but punish those who couple His name with their own evil; and is it not most just? The Epistle to the Romans declares His grace to the ungodly, who, when they confess the name of the Lord, are brought into the richest spiritual blessing. But if they insult the God Who blesses them, what can be before them but righteous judgment? God is not mocked. So the gospel declares. But Israel is still kept as a people to be blessed of God. They are in a truly abnormal state, having been for many centuries without a king and without a prince, and without a sacrifice and without a pillar, and without an ephod and teraphim. What is there that remains to Judaism but dry and empty form? All they can do in Jerusalem is to wail. But this is not the spirit or language of those who have the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. These may and ought to confess their sins; but if they be not happy, there is something wrong with their faith or their state. They who believe the gospel have the deepest, highest, and simplest grounds for rejoicing in the Saviour. "Rejoice in the Lord always," said the prisoner from Rome; "again I will say, Rejoice" (Phil. 4: 4); as he said of himself, "Yea, and if I be poured forth upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all" (Phil. 2: 17).

Those that in faith of Christ read the New Testament, or the whole Bible (for one likes it as a whole and not merely its latest part), cannot but glean from it very considerable good. But if they practice what is contrary to the word, the Holy Spirit of God is grieved and therefore makes them miserable in the sense of their unfaithfulness; for He witnesses against their faults till they judge themselves before God. But their regular state is of one of peace and joy in believing.

When the children of Israel not only fell into wickedness against God, but their wickedness became systematic and complete as apostates from His name — not merely the people and the priests, but also the prophets and the kings such as we see them at the and of Kings and Chronicles, God gave them up to one of the most idolatrous of the Gentile nations; and Nebuchadnezzar by His appointment became "the head of gold" (Dan. 2: 38). Undoubtedly Babylon was a great city from the earliest days, and "mad on her idols" (Jer. 50: 38) as time went on. You may be aware that there was no idolatry in the antediluvian world. All flesh on the earth had corrupted its way, and the earth was filled with violence; but there was as yet no setting up of false gods. When, however, the heavens darkened against them and the waters of the great deep swept them away from before God, after this it was that Satan induced men to worship the hosts of heaven and deprecate the avenging powers of death. They thought nothing so reasonable as to propitiate the heavens that they might ever shine favourably, and the waters that they might no more overwhelm them in their resistless flood. Therefore religion took the form of paying honour to the higher powers of nature as well as of satisfying those lower. All immorality followed, and even contrary to fallen nature itself.

But God called His people Israel to bear witness to Himself as the One living God; and when departed into idolatry, He handed them over as captives to the vilest of men, setting up Babylon as the first of the great world-powers. It did not matter that they pretended to honour Jehovah along with their false gods; indeed such an alliance made things worse in His sight. However solemn might be their zeal for His feasts, their tampering also with idols only heightened their guilt and His indignation. But the fact was undoubtedly, that they often showed themselves more zealous for the false gods than for the true God; as Christians now, when they take up bad doctrine are absorbed with the error, and seem to lose the very truth they once professed.

God then chose Babylon to be the vessel of supreme earthly power for the punishment of His guilty people. Its ruler was not only a king but a king of kings, an emperor in the fullest sense of the word. Such was Nebuchadnezzar. His thoughts, we are told, came upon his bed what should come to pass hereafter; and God was pleased to reveal the secrets of futurity. But this He did, so as to impress on the Gentiles that true intelligence is only with those that fear Himself. In vain had the king applied to the ordinary means of his empire in order to recall or understand the vision. He asked, as his wise men told him, what no king had ever asked before. By their confession none but He whose dwelling is not with flesh could give the answer. In his imperious style he demanded it on pain of death, and when his minister was about to put the cruel decree into execution, where did God raise up a witness? Among the captives of Judah. If power was vested in the Gentile who scourged a people more guiltily offensive to God, the light of God was vouchsafed to Daniel the captive. God prepared for others too a deliverer from the king's wrath out of the king's palace. Daniel was morally prepared, as we see him in Dan. 1 refusing the king's dainties, which were invariably offered to idols. He was willing to die rather than dishonour the true God, Who gave him favour with his guardians, so as to abide faithful. For "them that honour Me I will honour; and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed" (1 Sam. 2: 30). The great principle here is that, if you are to have the secret of the Lord, you must look to Him and stand clear of the world, and especially of its religion which never is nor can be the truth. Do not expect to enjoy the holy light of God if for your ease or honour or safety you conform to what is of the world.

Accordingly Daniel was blessed remarkably. The king, though he had let slip the dream, was conscious of something altogether extraordinary in it, and in the furious haste of his rage apparently overlooked Daniel. Nor was it till the last moment that he went in and desired of the king that time be allowed him. This given, he betakes himself with his three pious friends to prayer. And God heard. "Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision" (Dan. 2: 19). How cheering and beautiful the dealings of God! As Daniel in faith took the initiative, though all four joined in prayer, God singled out Daniel. What happens thereon? Does he at once rush off to the king? He turns to God in thanksgiving. "Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven" (v. 19). As he had looked to Him alone, so the glory he renders to God only. "Art thou able," said the king, "to make known the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof?" (Dan. 2: 26). "There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days" (Dan. 2: 28), answered the lowly prophet. And he adds, "But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living" (Dan. 2: 30); yet was he the wisest then on the earth. But God was in all his thoughts, to Whom be glory. It was a wonderful revelation for king Nebuchadnezzar; but think, my friends, what we have given of God in the whole Bible.

If you say that we have not Daniel, do not forget that we have a better than Daniel. A wiser and better than Daniel? Yes, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, that other Paraclete, the gift of Christ's redemption. The Holy Spirit had indeed wrought always, notably in Daniel and his companions; but there is now more, the personal presence of the Spirit of God to dwell with and in the Christian for ever, and in the assembly or church of God. See John 14: 16, 17, 26; John 15: 20; John 16: 7-14. He abides, among other privileges of the utmost value, enabling the believer to enjoy all the revelation of God in the measure of his faith by grace. Oh! I what a wonderful boon for the Christian and for the church of God. See that you sink not below your privileges, but enter into them by faith; for it rests not on your own opinion or the authority of other men. There is much blessing in the communion of saints; but God's teaching must be individual. "They shall be all taught of God" (John 6: 45).

Remember that the Lord lays down what has just been stated in His remarkable series of parables (Matt. 13). They represent the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and we are in it now. With the kingdom as here made known we have to do now on earth, while the Lord is exalted and hidden in heaven. Yet, though embracing so large a sphere, the Lord says in ver. 9, "Who hath ears to hear let him hear." In the Old Testament the call was to all Israel, to all the people; but now it is to each of us, to a Christian individually. Whatever comes, this responsibility in hearing and receiving the truth of God is inalienable; and woe to such as deny or weaken it. You will do well to lay it to heart.

Daniel then repeats and interprets the dream to Nebuchadnezzar: a gorgeous image with golden head, with breast and arms of silver, with body and thighs of brass, and with legs of iron, ending in feet of iron and clay, smitten by a little stone which reduced the whole to powder; after which the stone that smote the image became a great mountain which filled the whole earth.

There is also evident deterioration, as the power is distant from its source, and becomes characterized with more of man lower and lower. It has nothing to do with the extent of empire, which, on the contrary, became greater successively. But Nebuchadnezzar in his imperfection acts absolutely, as only One can perfectly to God's glory. In the Medo-Persian empire, wise men counsel much; as in the Greek soldiers of fortune. Rome goes down to the dregs, and is governed instead of governing, so that power from God is swamped by the people as its source.

Not a word of Christ's suffering for our sins, nor of the gospel going forth in consequence to every creature; not a word of Christ's sitting as the rejected but glorified Lamb on the Father's throne, and of our meanwhile suffering with Him while He there waits. It is Christ coming judicially in power and glory, dealing with the fourth empire in its last divided state, as well as with all that remains of its predecessors. Only after this destruction does God's kingdom fill and rule all the earth.

When Daniel had the vision of these four powers as it is given in Dan. 7, they are presented to his eye as four ravenous beasts. The vision as dreamt by Nebuchadnezzar was comparatively external, as man's eye might see; but the same objects seen by the prophet were according to what a spiritual understanding could enter into. The reader may find an analogy in the parables referred to, first some before all in public, then others to the disciples within the house (Matt. 13).

In Dan. 7 the prophet sees the four powers emerge from the sea or ungoverned mass of peoples: first, a lion with eagle's wings, which ere long is humbled; secondly, a bear which raised up itself on one side and had a measured voracity; thirdly, a leopard with four wings, and eventually four heads, which none of the preceding had; lastly, a beast to which none in the realm of nature answered, beyond all dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, with great iron teeth, devouring and destroying with contempt, diverse from all before, and at length with the peculiarity of ten horns, etc. And here, answering to the little stone of Dan. 2, we have the Son of man before the Ancient of days, receiving dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him: an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. Here we have the internal view according to God's mind, with yet more added to the interpretation.

But it may be remarked in passing, that the intervening chapters are as valuable for the world-powers, as Dan. 1 we have seen to be for the moral state of Daniel. Dan. 3 shows that the first recorded act of Nebuchadnezzar was to enforce the most senseless idolatry, on the king's authority, as a means of binding together the peoples, nations, and languages; which only brought out fidelity at all cost on the part of the three Hebrew youths, the remnant, and the Gentile king's recognition of God their deliverer. Dan. 4 points to the Gentile power, after the seven times of a beast's heart, restored to praise the King of heaven. Dan. 5 is plainly the profaning Gentile judged in the destruction of Babylon; as Dan. 6 attests the Gentile that took the place of God (according to the law that passeth not) confessing the living God Who alone rescues from the power of the enemy, and His kingdom what shall not be destroyed and His dominion unto the end. It is in the then facts the prefiguration of Gentile power abased and of Jew saved at the end to God's glory and the triumph of His kingdom. For no prophecy of scripture is of private (of its own, its isolated) interpretation. Every one bears, all converge, on the grand object of God in the exaltation of the Anointed, at the close of man's busy restless day. The Holy Spirit in what is written never stops short of that conclusion, so worthy of God and His Son, so blessed for the universe and every creature in it, save those that have rebelled persistently against His will. No accomplishment in the past, even if true and important, exhausts the meaning or satisfies the divine end.

If ever man tried to govern the world of his day by his own will absolutely, it was "the head of gold"; and as he sinned in giving the glory not to the Most High but to himself, he was abased personally as no monarch or man was before or since. But mercy intervened in due time, and presented a hope "at the end of the days," which shall not make ashamed; when the nations shall be gladdened with His people and hope in Him Whom they together slew on the tree.

When the monarch took counsel with others, nobles or military chiefs, it was not really better. And when it was avowedly the people with or without an emperor, no tyranny so selfish, none so oppressive, nor so presumptuous against the true God. Never will the divine ideal be realized till He come again to reign, Whose right it is in the fullest way, divine and human, the Father of the age to come, the Prince of peace. All governments meanwhile are imperfect and provisional in His providence, though every soul in Christianity is bound to be subject, as unto higher authorities of this world. The existing authorities, whatever the form, are ordained of God; and he that ranges himself against the authority is a resister of the appointment of God. Yet consisting of sinful men, not one of any sort but has failed and sinned. How blessed to know that He, Who is coming to be King over all the earth, here lived and died and rose and ascended, not only the Lord but the Servant of all, and the Servant of God in serving all others not in love only but as the propitiation for our sins.

For indeed there is one Man, and one Man only, Who never thought of any other object but doing or suffering the will of God. It was therefore and necessarily one course of ever deepening humiliation, though moral glory, till He reached a, depth unfathomable save to Him. He it is Who, when He returns in power and glory, will take the whole world, as scripture fully shows. Meanwhile the Lord Jesus is very far from now governing the world. If He were, would He suffer Satan to be god and prince, as God's word declares he is, even since Christ took His seat on the Father's throne?

God's providential care does not fail of course, but what occupies Christ now is His loving ways with the church, and saving sinners to serve God and wait for Him from heaven. They are not of the world as He is not, and He is coming to receive them to Himself in the Father's house. This is far better. No matter how effectual and glorious the government of the world by-and-by when Christ reigns, it is not at all comparable to union with Him even now, and suffering with Him here below, and enjoying His love as Bridegroom for ever in heaven. This is what Christ is now carrying on in God's children, that, when He shall be manifested, we may be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.

But returning to the first vision, we note that it was a great image, whose brightness was excellent, and the form thereof terrible. So it was seen by Nebuchadnezzar; whereas Daniel was given to behold the self-same first empire as a lion with eagle's wings. This power was not to endure long, because its continuance was measured, as Jeremiah (ch. 25: 11, 12) had already predicted, by the captivity of Judah — in round numbers about seventy years. It was a power of peculiar majesty and splendour, Nebuchadnezzar being called "the head of gold," as it appears to be in part, if not mainly, from receiving his power as king of kings direct from God in a way that none else of these empires did afterwards, and allowing no human element to enfeeble his acting as so constituted. It was not won by conquest merely; it was God's immediate gift in his case, instead of being derived successively from others put down. Thus Cyrus was in many respects a greater man, and employed to do God's will on behalf of the Jewish remnant typically. Even Nebuchadnezzar was not a ruler to be despised, being (I suppose) the greatest city-builder the world ever saw. There are to be seen countless bricks with his name on them still, although thousands of years have passed since they were made. There they remain, strong and recognizable as ever almost, circumstances being no doubt peculiarly favourable for their preservation. Nebuchadnezzar also had much energy and practical wisdom in many other respects, as in seeing to the water-ways of the great rivers, and the irrigation of his fruitful plains, in order that the country might flourish and the people be prosperous as it never was before.

Under his reign Babylon became by far the most powerful and celebrated city of that age on the globe. The country was watered by two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, rivers having their rise in Eden, where was the original Paradise of man; a remarkable proof that the deluge which left neither man nor beast on the earth did not blot out so much as some think. And as this great king actively provided work for the people, so also did he promote immense foreign trade. We read of "the cry of the Chaldees in their ships," and their ports then became a source of enormous wealth and led to enterprise without end. Yet when the allotted hour struck, the golden city was razed, and, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, became in due time as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor was there in all history so tragic a scene, if so righteous a fate, as that which is portrayed in Daniel's account of her last night as an imperial power.

Then followed the second empire of the Medes and Persians, the captors of Babylon, set out by the image's breast and arms of silver, and by the bear that raised itself on one side: a kingdom of larger extent, but inferior in vigour and splendour, which lasted some 200 years before it fell before Alexander the Great, the founder of "another third kingdom of brass, which should bear rule over all the earth." Who could have conceived of an empire so much wider than its predecessors, from the vain and contentious Greeks, led by the despised race of Macedonia, and their boy king? Up to that time what did they present but a cluster of jealous factious states, if one except Sparta, struggling for leadership, whatever their skill in arts or letters? The attacks of Darius and Xerxes at length united them for a while in patriotism with a humanly brilliant result. Only God could have led the king to dream, and the prophet to interpret, the Greek or Macedonian kingdom. Yet there is the living picture, the details of which cover the beginning of Dan. 8.

There is more particularity as we descend the stream of time; so false is the maxim of the rationalists who leave out God, or count Him such a one as themselves. How plainly does He put contempt on their assumption that a prophet anticipated no more than the imminent future! They are given as God pleased, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The first or Babylonian no doubt was there before men; but which of the rest could have been foreseen even plausibly by a single soul on earth? Least of all would Nebuchadnezzar have conceived changes so beyond calculation.

We have seen the extreme improbability of a world-wide empire from Greece or its rude neighbor Macedon. What is the fact as to the Rome of Nebuchadnezzar's day? The philosophers count its annals as for the most part uncertain if not fabulous. Yet we need not doubt the city was then ruled by such petty kings as Italian towns could boast of old, kinglings indeed. Long before, we see a sort of analogy in the numerous kings whom the sons of Israel smote under Joshua (ch. 12), more than thirty. The kings were succeeded by consuls; dictators too ruled occasionally; decemvirs; and consular tribunes; till the chaotic condition morally and politically gave opportunity for an emperor, though still employing republican forms. Rome yet for hundreds of years had been engaged in constant struggling with its rival neighbours. Sabines, Volscians, Veientes, and the like. Finally they had their city taken and burnt by the Gauls; they further had to fight for their very existence with another competitor. And what think you, was the power that rose up to dispute in a life and death conflict with Rome? It was Carthage, an active mercantile city, exceedingly ambitious and aspiring, planted and colonized by the accursed race of Canaan.

From early days God had pronounced against that son of guilty Ham, who had indeed many sons; so that we may admire the mercy that all were not involved in similar ruin. It was righteous that God should mark His displeasure. Is there not a moral necessity to deal with men guilty of signal wickedness? Even an infidel husband would not condone his wife's dishonour, or his son's stealing the family's money. If God must not punish iniquity, to let man off, what is it but desiring God to be less holy and righteous than the most worthless of mankind? If justice is not only free but bound to render according to the due desert of human deeds, is God alone to be debarred from that prerogative? In the three Carthaginian or (as they are called) Punic wars, the two cities fought for supremacy, and so for life. Rome fought in Sicily, in Spain, and at length, after desperate defeats on her own soil, in Africa. In the last of the three Rome's stern determination was to destroy Carthage. The senate felt that thence emanated an enemy that would entirely frustrate all their hope of progress and conquest; and so the cry that Carthage must be blotted out arose accordingly. These wars stretched from long before Christ; but they were still longer from the time of Daniel who died an aged man more than five centuries before our Lord's birth. Yet even then all that so deeply concerned the last of the empires was made known and written down by God's inspiration. Here we have, from two separate aspects, a complete sketch-map of the world-powers that were to govern from first to last until the Lord appears in power and glory. Even so it is given clearly in the brief space of a few paragraphs.

Does any one object that there are few particulars? If time permitted and such were my present object, it would be easy to prove that they are many more than hasty men imagine. And is it observable that, just when we are brought down to the fourth empire, then these details are supplied in most abundance. What a rebuke to rationalism! And why was it so? Because the Roman was the empire in which Christ was to be born and be cut off; as that empire is to rise up again by Satan's power when He will shine forth in judgment from heaven. The Roman empire was to be expressly different from all its predecessors. The Babylonian lost its imperial power; so did the Medo-Persian; as well as the Macedonian or Grecian, never to rise again. Yet they were all to exist, and so they do still; but their dominion was to be taken away, as it is laid down in Dan. 7: 12. There was to be no revival of their imperial character, though a prolonging in life was given them, when their dominion was lost. Rome and Rome alone is the empire which must rise again, as we learn in Rev. 13 and more awfully than of old, quite falling in with what Daniel predicts of its end in chs. 2 and 7.

A great many Protestants think all this refers to the papacy. But the Pope essentially differs from a Roman emperor. The Popes have played a shameless imposture in Rome under the abased name of the Lord. Babylon is much more like their evil in pride and corruption and persecution than a Roman emperor. It was the Roman power that was responsible for the crucifixion of Christ under the apostasy of the Jew long before the first budding of the papacy. Pontius Pilate who condemned the Lord was the local expression of Rome in Judea. God as well as man always holds the governing power to be responsible for its public, deliberate, unrepudiated acts; as we see sometimes in international affairs. In the face of his conscience, of his conviction of Jewish unrighteousness, and of solemn warning, the governor condemned the Just; the Roman empire far from repudiating it accumulated its acts of enmity. This is the power whose head was wounded to death but healed to universal astonishment on earth; and it emerges not only from the sea but from the abyss, the historical fact being given of the little horn in Dan. 7 as the character is in Rev. 13, 17. It "was, is not, and shall be present."

Nothing so wonderful in all past history as that which is predicted in the Book of Revelation, as for instance this three- fold condition and its moral source at the end, as well as God's judgment of it: "the beast that was, is not (which we can now say still applies), and shall come forth out of the bottomless pit" (as Christ Who died and rose will be present from heaven). The first points to a condition of past existence, then to its non-existence (we know it was destroyed by the Goths and other wild races, chiefly the Teutonic tribes of that day), and lastly to its future re-existence. The moment of its revival surely hastens. Already a great step is taken toward the re-appearance of that empire. Italy has become a kingdom; and not only so but a great power is Italy now considered. I cannot doubt that it is destined to become still greater before the sure execution of God's judgment on the peculiar iniquity of the empire. Scripture cannot be broken; and we find that which has been said fully proved in Daniel and the Apocalypse. The outline was manifested clearly enough in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and yet more in the vision of Daniel. Then above all in the Revelation our attention is drawn to a principle of the greatest moment. Most is said throughout on the fourth or Roman empire. Thereon the Spirit of God dwells most, because of its collision with the Lord Jesus. That would have seemed most difficult, humanly speaking: to deal most fully with the most distant is not the manner of man, who would have naturally said as much as possible about Babylon; then, if at all, more hazily about Persia, and not a word could have been said of the two western empires.

Again, how could man prognosticate that only four world-powers were to rise? There was ample ambition of founding more. Even in the middle ages Charlemagne tried to set up such an empire and failed, with the strongest desire to succeed. Then a military genius arose in this century no less ambitious, and never scrupling at violence or corruption to effectuate his schemes; Napoleon Bonaparte essayed it. He sought, if ever man did, a universal empire, but notwithstanding all means, skill, and opportunity, he broke down utterly in the attempt. God employed Britain to smash all Napoleon's hopes. Nelson with his fleet completely crushed his navy, and on the field of Waterloo Napoleon saw his star set forever. There was to be no new world-power, though all know of course there are those who style themselves emperors in a quite subordinate sense.

But now what is the "little stone cut without hands," which at length becomes a mountain? Perhaps all my readers are accustomed to hear this referred to the Lord gradually making good the kingdom of God. Undoubtedly He will come in that kingdom of God when the hour strikes. But take care that you understand its true force. Excellent men will tell you that it will be through the gospel — the kingdom of God introduced by the Spirit. Allow me to ask this, Does the gospel smite kingdoms of the world? Does the Holy Spirit by the word destroy powers that be? The first action of the "little stone" is to fall upon the feet of the great image, and the effect of that decisive blow will be to scatter its fragments like chaff of the summer threshing-floors.

You know God's gospel is the revelation of Christ applied by the Spirit of God to save sinners, Jews and Gentiles that believe. But the "little stone" on the contrary symbolizes a power, small in appearance, which at once deals destructively with all that is high, great, and strong on the earth, at the first blow reducing the entire imperial system to powder. Consequently the attempt to make the gospel out of it wholly fails. The word of God is by the Lord compared to the seed that, sown in the good ground, bears fruit more or less abundantly, as a germ of life by the Holy Spirit. It is plain that the "little stone" is not the gospel or the church, but the kingdom of God which Christ enforces when he returns. Conclusive and clear is the proof of this from the comparison of the closing scenes in Dan. 2 and the corresponding part of ch. 7. It is not only an intervention from on high, but of a judicial and even executory character. The gospel is no doubt of God, but it is His sovereign grace based on the cross of Christ. Whereas the "little stone" smites the powers of the world, the mightiest then reigning no less than the remnant of all that preceded, and at once crushes them to atoms.

What can be more in contrast with the gospel? After this the "little stone" grows and becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. The gospel never smote any earthly power, never will destroy a single king or kingdom. God's work in the gospel is to reconcile the sinner to Himself and render him meet for heaven. Can one conceive things more different? All Christians profess to believe the Lord Jesus is coming again. What to do? Is it not to judge the quick and the dead? Even the common creeds of Christendom admit that; Copts and Jacobites, Nestorians and Greeks, as well as Latins and Protestants of every variety, confess this truth. They read, say, and sing that Christ is coming to judge, not the dead only but the living also; and these before the dead, we may add.

It is easy to theorize, but scripture shows Christ to reign a thousand years, and to judge the quick. The judgment of the dead follows, as Rev. 20 teaches, and this after the heavens and the earth flee away; whereas the quick He will judge on this earth. Will not Christ's feet stand on the Mount of Olives? and when He stands there, will not the mountain be split in two? So Zech. 14 declares. Yet there it is still, as solid as ever; but it will be cloven yet, giving testimony to its Maker and to the word of God. Who can wonder when the Creator stands there in power and glory? When He came the first time, it was in grace and humility, bearing all and enduring all, when He deigned to die a sacrifice to God, yet at the hands of His own creatures, that their sins might be blotted out. Then it was all pure and sovereign grace, in which He bore God's judgment of our evil that we who believe might be delivered from wrath. But when He comes again, it will be in judicial power and glory. And will He come alone? His own glorified hosts will follow Him — they that are Christ's (Rev. 17: 14; 19: 14).

Carefully avoid the new-fangled notion that seems to please some in the present day, that none are with Him but "superior Christians." I have generally found those men when weighed sadly wanting. They and their set are no doubt excellent in their own eyes; but God forbid that a true-hearted saint should regard Himself as better than others. We are debtors to God's grace in Christ alone for salvation; and we have abundant reason to humble ourselves before God while here below. There is doubtless power in the Spirit of God to keep us; but as a matter of fact, in many things we all stumble. Let us look to Him Who alone can keep us from falling. It is a strange delusion, by way of what is called "deepening the spiritual life," that any can jump into holiness practically; and why connect this idea of themselves and the like with the translation of the saints to heaven at Christ's coming?

For such self-flattering expectations scripture gives no warrant. "We shall not all sleep," says the apostle, "but we shall all be changed in a moment," and the same moment. The living saints found when our Lord comes are not to die. The dead in Christ shall rise first; then we, not some of us but all, shall be caught up together with the risen to meet the Lord. This is the mystery as it is called, or New Testament truth, added to that of resurrection revealed in the Old Testament.

When Christ comes and those that are His along with Him from heaven, He will smite the powers in open blasphemous rebellion (Rev. 19), and call all the nations to account, as He will in Matt. 25: 31-46. The two leaders civil and religious will be thrown living into hell. Their followers and kings and armies will be slain on the spot. Did you ever realize who these will be? The flower of the civilized world, the rulers and hosts of the then kingdoms of the west. They will have hastened at the Emperor's demand to protect the Jews and their king in Jerusalem. The Jews who rejected the true Christ will then have received the Antichrist. Then will all the powers of western Europe be involved in the same sin. Balance of power is long gone. The satellite kings "have one mind, and shall give their power and authority to the beast. These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him (the glorified saints) are called, chosen, and faithful." "For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (Rev. 17: 13, 14, 17).

There will remain for divine judgment the last king of the north (Dan. 11: 40-45); and after him Gog from the land of Magog, Prince of Rosh (Russia), Meshech (Muscovy), and Tubal (Tobolsk), the power that makes the king of the north mightier than his own strength could command. These shall all perish in due time after the Lord has appeared: all must receive the due reward of their deeds. Is this not as far as can be from the kingdom of God in spiritual power such as we know under the gospel? But it is in full accord with that which is the true meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and of the prophet's interpretation, as well as of his own visions in ch. 7 and elsewhere. The destruction of "the beast" and other powers which will then be in a state of rebellion must be fulfilled at the end of this age.

And what is preparing for an end so awful? The superstition and the infidelity of the day: each provokes the other beyond measure. Where are these men so different in appearance and pretension, yet alike unbelievers, the one sanctimonious, the other profane? They are everywhere; their name is Legion. You have them both here in your quiet little town, lively and strong. But it does not matter where they may be: God is not mocked, and they are His enemies. How they swarm in the great city, the metropolis of the kingdom! It is not so strange that they often join arms, sometimes are combined in the same persons. Such are those who dare to say that God did not inspire the Bible, and deny him who wrote this book to be "Daniel the Prophet," although the Lord declares so it was. They would make it a romance written hundreds of years after his death. Whoever so speaks, and whatever he pretends to be, no orthodox believers should shrink from denouncing such a man as infidel. They are corrupting this country and America, as others have Holland and Germany.

But let it be understood that no mistake is greater than to suppose Roman Catholic countries free from scepticism. No country more abounds in infidelity than France and other Popish lands. The women may go to mass and confession, and some of the men may follow occasionally; but this is no disproof of their infidelity. And the issue will be (spite of all forms, and processions, and what not) the falling away or apostasy, as the apostle told the Thessalonians. The open abandonment of the gospel is at hand. Then man under Satan's power will become the object of universal admiration and worship to the exclusion of God; and this will bring down the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven. So He in Dan. 7 answers to the "little stone" of ch. 2. He is seen coining to the Ancient of days, and receiving dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. It opens with the execution of consuming judgment on earth, and most unsparingly where most light had been given and given up.

Is it possible to find a scene in stronger contrast with grace? The gospel of God's grace is founded on Christ's first coming, and on His death, resurrection, and ascension; for His object was atoningly to suffer to God's glory for sins. When He comes again, it will be as the "little stone cut without hands," wholly apart from human means to destroy the kingdoms (then apostate), and to establish God's kingdom in power, righteousness and glory over the earth. He will appear from heaven, and (falling, as we see in Dan. 2 and 7, on the Roman empire) will efface all the authority set forth by the image or by the four beasts. The beast (or he who then shall wield the power of the fourth empire revived) and the false prophet are to be consigned to the burning flame. That is, the imperial as well as the religious chiefs are to meet this unspeakably frightful doom, while their adherents are slain (Rev. 19: 19-21). Besides, judgment falls on all the other elements. "Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together." So too is it in Daniel's vision of the beasts whose dominion had been taken away and their lives prolonged (Dan. 7: 12). There is no sparing of evil longer. Jehovah reigns, and the earth rejoices. It is the Son of man Who makes good the kingdom over all the earth, as His first advent gave grace its scope for heavenly glory, which the Christian and the church should enjoy now in faith.

The Eastern Little Horn

Daniel 8

The Bible Treasury, New Series 1: 86, etc.

W. Kelly.

We have had before us most prominently the West, which among the earthly powers was the chief object for the prophet's contemplation as unveiled by the Spirit of God in the second and the seventh chapters of Daniel. This is the fourth and last Empire of man, and its revival under Satan's power, the occasion which will bring the Lord Jesus from heaven (2 Thess. 2: 8, Rev. 17, 19) to the judgment of the world, and to the setting up of what is called in the Revelation, "The world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ" (Rev. 11: 15). Thence we see the Christ has not yet received His world-kingdom. It is clear that the state of things proclaimed under the seventh trumpet has not arrived, but assuredly it will in due time. It is plainly to be at the end of the present age or dispensation, which is followed by a new "age to come" before the everlasting state.

Now you will find in all these visions of the Book of Daniel, whether made to Nebuchadnezzar or vouchsafed to the prophet, that they look forward to that epoch or what is called in a later chapter, "the time of the end." As the additional visions are given, further light is afforded or there would be no reason for giving them at all. They all, more or less, evidently end with divine judgment on the power to which they refer. Further it is clear that the vision of which we have been reading in Dan. 8 is of a comparatively limited nature. There is a preliminary review of the second and third empires; and you may wonder why a branch of the third should stretch away to the still future time when the Lord comes in judicial power and glory. But the reason of this will appear presently. You will do well to remember the truth already stated, that these successive world-powers or empires were superseded by one another; but there is no intimation that they lose their existence when they lose their supreme power. They retained a subordinate place after they were subdued; but they are shown to have a continued existence still. This indeed is distinctly stated in Dan. 7: 12: "As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time."

Here then we now hear of the Persian empire; where we would draw attention to the fact that Persia is no longer as in Dan. 7 shown as a bear. There the moral judgment of the Holy Spirit expressed itself symbolically about it and the other powers to Daniel. Nor is it either the arms and breast of silver, such as Nebuchadnezzar saw. The glory of Persia is somewhat diminished in comparison with the kingdom of Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar; but still it was a kingdom of great energy and conquest, especially at first. But why is it here changed from the bear of Daniel in the seventh chapter to be the ram as portrayed in Dan. 8: 2. It would appear to be for a very interesting reason. The second and third kingdoms were friendly to Israel in a way that neither Babylon nor Rome could pretend to be. Rome has hitherto and always been the enemy of the Jews. It was Rome that also razed the city and the sanctuary of Jerusalem to its foundations. None save the Edomites have been such unrelenting persecutors of the Jews as the Romans. And so the Rabbins identify Edom of old with Rome in modern times as the unsparing enemy of God's earthly people repudiated for a while for their sins.

No doubt the guilt of Israel was inexcusable and shameless, but God has not for ever cast off His people whom He foreknew; He may be indignant, but always has pity for them; and He is looking onward to the day when He will gather Israel out of the lands from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. Whatever God gives, He stands to it; and sooner or later, when the day comes for His grace to work according to His promise, His call will indeed be effectual. The Jews are enemies now as regards the gospel, and grace brings Gentiles meanwhile to God. But as regards election, they are beloved on account of the fathers. For as the Gentiles once were disobedient to God but now become objects of mercy through Jewish unbelief, even so these were disobedient to your mercy, that they also may become objects of mercy. For God shut up all unto disobedience that He might have mercy on them all. And so, when the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, all Israel shall be saved {Rom. 11: 26}. There ought to be no doubt that their call was from God and in the end sure. Every Christian knows it for himself and for the church; but he ought in no way to question it for the Jew. Rom. 11: 29 is said by the apostle himself expressly about Israel, though the principle is no less true of ourselves, who should never forget His people, and God's mercy yet in store for them.

Now there was exceptional kindness on the part of Medo-Persia; and this is seen from the first in the conduct of Darius, who was the first actor of that empire recorded in this book (Dan. 6). If Babylon was the power which became the enslaver and jailor of the Jew, Cyrus was the characteristic restorer of the Jews to their own land; and this in the very first year of his reign. It is clear that the prophecies of God had a powerful influence on him. It is true he did not know God; but God knew him, and this struck him immensely. He was not disobedient to the vision, as some men nominally Christian are today. Isaiah wrote not his chs. 44, 45 in vain even for him. Daniel too was famed among Jews and Gentiles before that day; as the prophets were acquainted one with another, and cherished the highest reverence for such as had gone before. It is only a conceited age that raises up its petty head, and shakes it at the word of God. But what opens the door of true intelligence in the scriptures is on the contrary faith, and as a consequence love for everything of God.

Christ personally is the living bread that came down out of heaven that the eater might live for ever; and such is His written word, the sustenance of that life: not bread, but God's word; and in such a way as cannot be destroyed, though in detail it may by man be injured as other things. How perverted has Christian baptism been! and the Lord's supper, in what divergent ways, how deeply! And what shall we say of priesthood, ministry, the church itself, from early centuries? So the word of God may be perverted through either ignorance or craft; not only if truly rendered, it stands, but nothing can be conceived so admirable. Even the scholars of the world cannot rest without being occupied with it. Who in Christendom but literateurs care about the Vedas, or the Avesta? the Yik-king, the Shooking, or the She-king? or about the Koran if we come later? Yes, the remarkable fact confronts us of mere rationalists, who believe in nothing of the Christian truth, spending their lives on the Bible, Old Testament and New. A few scholars may look into the heathen books to see what were the beliefs of ancient races; but think of the many baptised sceptics who give themselves up to the life-long study of the Bible! No doubt they do not lack boldness in treating of the holiest themes; nor are they indisposed to show by their peremptory decisions what wonderful critics they are, as well as the strange shortcomings of others who differ or are opposed to them. What a contrast with the inspired, both in communicating their messages and in estimating the prophets of old!

However, be this as it may, Dan. 7 sets before us a bear and a leopard as the symbols of the Persian and the Macedonian empires, which Dan. 8 represents under a ram and a he-goat. The reason for this change we take to be the close bearing of the latter chapter on Israel, and the kindness shown by those empires in their early days. Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes stand out prominently as their benefactors; and Alexander the Great paid them marked honour, as is known, whether or not we receive the account Josephus gives of the High Priest meeting Alexander and the reverence paid him by the conqueror.

Although viewed before God the Medo-Persian and the Macedonian were but "beasts," and no better than the Babylonian before and the Roman after, still God did not fail to appreciate kindness done to His chastened people. Hence the change of the symbols in Dan. 8 compared with 7. In this special aspect they are presented as clean animals. First, Medo-Persia is now viewed as a ram, and, secondly, Greece as a he-goat. Whatever might be their consideration of the afflicted Jew, there was no mercy, nor lack of ambitious will one toward another. We have the ram as remarkably described now as the bear had been in the preceding vision. It was necessary to intimate a composite power. In Dan. 7 the bear raised itself on one side. In Dan. 8 the ram had two horns, both high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. Nothing like this was the case with the eagle-winged lion of Babylon. Notably distinct was the Greek he-goat, first with one conspicuous horn between his eyes, and later, when it was broken, four of mark (answering to the four heads of the leopard) toward the four winds of the heavens. Still more different was the Roman beast, with its ten horns, and a little one that subsequently overthrew three of the first horns.

Plainly then we herein see the peculiarity of Medo-Persia thus described as a twofold imperial power, and so contrasted with the one before, and the rest that succeeded. This quality belonged to it only. Nor this only: for, as we have read, it is stated carefully that one of the high horns came up after the other, and that the later one became the higher. This was the Persian element, which, though later, surpassed the previous Medish state. There was nothing similar in any other of these world-powers.

Care is taken that one cannot among the nations and kingdoms of the earth find anything really analogous but the Medo-Persian kingdom, thus assailed and superseded by Alexander the Great. He of course is the he-goat's notable horn. All is contrast. No other horn comes up to dispute with that conspicuous horn. Yet was it broken, as neither Nebuchadnezzar was, nor Cyrus. Alexander did indeed come from the west as one that touched not the ground, and in the fury of his power ran upon the hitherto mighty Persian power that pushed westward, and northward, and southward. Yet in the strangest and saddest way Alexander's course was cut short as a young man of thirty-two, in the midst of far-reaching plans beyond all his predecessors. And his generals began, as they often do, to fight one with another, if one could not inherit all, which should have the largest possible share of the broken Macedonian or Greek empire. After a few years' conflict emerged four kingdoms, four notable horns. Give if you can, out of any history, anything that so clearly answers to the vision. The facts are notorious and exactly correspond with the prophecy, and as contrasted as can be conceived with other conquerors in the East.

But two of these four horns are specified, and in a continuous manner beyond example in Dan. 11, whereas in this ch. 8 one only is selected. Why? Because of its bearing upon Israel and their worship in contempt of their God, Who at the set time ("the end of the indignation") will surely judge it. It is not at all here a question of Christianity but of the ancient people, already captive and scattered, a revelation for whose instruction and consolation was given to the prophet. There was then no such thing as the church as we know it now. Only one people had the law of God, yet broken and unhappy, because they had been guilty and even apostate people, priests, and kings. But still they had most of the Old Testament scriptures; and God looked on them with matchless patience. So He is still doing with fallen Christendom in spite of those men whom it ill becomes to fight against Him and His word. And while the Gentiles are being called by the gospel, God has not done with Israel, who are, spite of all, beloved for their fathers' sake. "The last end of the indignation" is an instructive statement in this very chapter, which shows how God, while cutting off the transgressors of Israel, will yet assuredly accomplish the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For God cleaves to His word and His oath, though we may have to wait for the set time. Israel will yet awake to far greater love than that of the fathers, and on a deeper basis. They are beloved of Christ, and will be brought into living relationship with Jehovah under the new covenant.

It is clear that this time is not yet come. But all these visions bring us down to the border of that wondrous change, if they do not prepare the way for it. Accordingly, toward the end of Dan. 8 in the interpretation given to Daniel, we find not the date named in the vision, which appears to be already verified under Antiochus Epiphanes, the type of the coming foe, with details about this closing personage. The main interest centers in what is still future. There is no excuse for turning back on the past after so close an intimation from Him Who knows. Full information is given immediately after from verse 19, where we read "Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the latter time (or end) of the indignation." What was the beginning of the indignation? What does "the indignation" mean? It is first employed, similarly applied as far as one knows, in the prophet Isaiah, as you may verify for yourselves in Dan. 10 especially: God's holy displeasure at the persistent idolatry and corruptions of Israel. Therefore did He at length let the Gentiles not only master them but use their victory to expel them from the land. The "end of the indignation" will terminate in their restoration inwardly and outwardly, as all the prophets testify. It has nothing at all to do with the Christian or the church.

Christian interpreters rack their wits in vain to bring in their own relations with God and His Son; and as the Papist tries to fasten on Luther or Mahomet, so do Protestants on the Pope. But this controversial style is a wholly unintelligent way of reading prophecy. Besides, it panders to the selfish and schismatic leaven which alike produced, and is perpetuated in, the anomalous sections of the Christian profession. We surely ought to search and understand the scriptures, having the Holy Spirit to this end among others; and we are bound not to force or twist them, either for outdoing others or for our own comfort. In the gospel we have got good measure, well pressed down, and running over. Being thus blessed as we are in the Lord Jesus and by His perfect work, we ought to be under no temptation to take anything away from Israel. There they are through idolatry first, and rejecting the Christ last, in the worst plight possible, scattered and banished till the latter day, when they must pass through a tribulation unparalleled; and for what could it be but because of national apostasy? They will once more return to idols, little as they think it, and set up "the abomination of desolation" in the sanctuary. They refused the Christ; they will receive the anti-Christ as the retribution. God never chastises nor does He ever give His people up to their enemies, except they flagrantly depart from Himself. Then His aggrieved love proves that He is a jealous God, and has indignation against the enormities of His people. Judgment begins there.

What has all this to do with the Christian or with the church? It was through Israel's fall that salvation came to the Gentiles, but even thus ultimately to provoke Israel to jealousy, and to display at the end the saving unfailing mercy of God. You may tell me Christians are often unworthy in their ways; and so they indeed are. You may tell me the church has been quite as guilty as ever Israel was in the past; so much, that one, who knew what it was to be alternately a Protestant and a Papist and a freethinker, ventured to say, "The annals of Christendom are the annals of hell." He who so spoke never knew the Lord in any of his phases; yet his words do not misrepresent Christendom. He was a brilliant historian, but not having the Son of God, he therefore had not God. He could see evil, but knew neither grace nor truth. Thus and there it is, that man's judgment comes into such collision with everything divine, while believers are bound to judge the wickedness of a hollow Christian profession. "Everyone that is of the truth heareth My (Christ's) voice." The only true God is faithful and true, and having given us grace and truth in the Lord Jesus, He calls us to be decided and uncompromising before the world. Begotten by the word of truth, it becomes us to be ever careful about the truth; but where we are not assured of it from God, it were well to wait in silence, yet earnest to learn and confiding in His love.

To resume then, this power that stood up (one of the four from out of the broken Greek empire) has its representative at the end of the indignation. "The ram which thou sawest having two horns; they are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Greece (Javan); and the great horn that was between his eyes is the first king," Alexander of Macedonia, surnamed the Great.

Now that being broken, whereas four stood up in its stead, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not with his power. And at the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors shall have come to the full, a king of bold countenance and understanding dark sentences (or riddles) shall stand up. Who are "the transgressors" in this or in other scriptures? The reprobate among the Jews; and why? Israel only had the law of God given direct to themselves, the violators of which are therefore termed "transgressors." How does scripture describe Gentiles? "Sinners of the Gentiles," not transgressors. We of the nations were led away to dumb idols, howsoever we might be led, as the apostle describes it; and by the gospel we were brought straight from idolatry to Christ. Gentiles did not pass through the kind of legal apprenticeship which the children of Israel knew. It is plain that the correct designation of our once heathen state is therefore "sinners of the Gentiles." Scripture is more accurate than theology or any human authority; and to unlearn current phraseology in divine things is an invaluable Biblical exercise.

The text intimates here that the Jews are at the end of the age to become worse than even now. So said Isaiah and the prophets generally; as our Lord also in the parable, as we may call it, of Matt. 12: 43-45. The unclean spirit, which had gone out of the man, but returns to his house, empty, swept, and garnished, takes with him to dwell there seven other spirits worse than himself, and thus the last condition of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be to this wicked generation also. "Empty, swept, and garnished" had been, was then, and is now the condition of the Jews. In striking contrast with their ways of old, there has been no idolatry among them for more than 2,000 years. God's discipline in sending them to Babylon suppressed their inveterate love of strange gods, which were no gods but demons. As a clever Hebrew apologist admitted in the Quarterly Review some few years ago, the Jews that forced Pilate to crucify our Lord, Pharisees, priests, and all, were just like the Jews of the present day. Granted; and therefore did our Lord characterize them as "this wicked generation"; but as He said elsewhere, "This Generation shall not pass away until all these things shall be fulfilled." It is still the same moral state, till all that the prophets predicted of "the end" be accomplished. This Christ-rejecting generation that crucified Him is going on still; there is the same self-will, the same enmity, against Him Who came to die sacrificially. There is no change for the better, no repentance to believe. The house is still "empty, swept, and garnished." The Holy Spirit does not dwell there. Consequently the Jews, though fairly moral and clear of idolatry, have no life Godward, and lie open to the final delusion. So the Lord declared there is a sad change coming at the end; and that change is parabolically described by the old unclean spirit accompanying the seven spirits worse than himself, when he returns for the close. How little the Jews believe they are going to establish idols again! Yet this is as certain from various scriptures as anything can be, notably Dan. 9: 27, and Dan. 11: 38, 39, which await their fulfillment. Thus the last state will be worse than the first. But only at that time will deliverance come, as well as destructive judgment for "the many."

So shall it be also to that wicked generation. Here the transgressors shall come to the full, and God allows the Gentile scourge in "a king of fierce countenance and understanding dark sentences," who shall stand up.

And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power; and he shall . . . corrupt the mighty ones, and the people of the saints. Scripture describes Israel according to their privileges and moral responsibility, even when they are as far as possible from answering to them. And through his policy also shall he cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he will magnify [himself] in his heart; and by peace (or prosperity) will corrupt many; he will also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand (Dan. 8: 19-25). This evil agent is not the wilful king or Antichrist who is to reign in Palestine in that day. It is another king that from without opposes Antichrist, is no less wicked, and perishes as awfully. He is the same who in the last prophecy of Daniel (11: 40-45) is called "the king of the north." Many no doubt are aware that out of Alexander's broken empire arose the kingdom of Syria which fell to Seleucus Nicator. Of that line Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 11: 21-32) persecuted the Jews and insulted the God of Israel beyond all others, and sought to destroy the Jews and their religion. Who was raised up as a stay in that day? A great empire? Nothing of the kind; the Maccabees who knew their God and were strong and active. This movement among the Jews, mingled as it was, is described in Dan. 11: 32-35; but we need no more now, as it will come before us later.

The Only Key to Daniel's Prophecies.

(By W.S. Auchincloss.)

The Bible Treasury, New Series 5: 237

An examination by W. Kelly of a book of that name.

This is a bold title, but such a thing is not so uncommon across the Atlantic. Dr. Sayce counts it "a great advance on previous interpreters" to make these prophecies "end with the beginning of the Christian Church, instead of lengthening out into a still unknown future." Most Christian students in Europe and elsewhere will agree that neither Mr. A. nor the Assyriologist know anything of value about the matter. If it were not that Mr. A. sincerely believes that the book is "a most important part of the word of God," his "only key" should have no notice here; if he really understood Daniel, he would find it incomparably more important than all he sees of it as yet.

Perhaps his strange omission of Dan. 2 accounts for much. Nebuchadnezzar's first dream, to say nothing of the second in Dan. 4, is of immense moment. There the four Gentile empires or world-powers, according to the prophet's interpretation, are Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome; paralleled by Daniel's own vision of the same powers, as beasts out of a great sea: all at the end of the age rising up into collision with the Son of man coming in power and glory to establish His kingdom universal and everlasting. By attempting to squeeze all this into near about the First Advent, the book is shorn of its chief value. Every vision goes on to that future judgment of the quick. It is the Lord's judicial dealing with the last phase of the powers, which as God's first act shall be destroyed, and then "the whole earth" is to be filled forthwith with His kingdom.

Neglecting Dan. 2, Mr. A. makes a false start with Dan. 7, in taking the lion as not Babylon but the Medo-Persian empire; then the bear as Greece. What a blunder! In the leopard he gets right as the Macedonian or Greek. But his notion about the ten horns of Rome how grotesque! 1 Marius, 2 Sylla, 3 Pompey, 4 Crassus, 5 Julius Caesar, 6 Brutus, 7 Casaius, 8 Octavius, 9 Antony, 10 Lepidus. For the ten horns are concurrent vassal monarchs supplanted in part by a subsequent little one who becomes sovereign of all, and by his audacious wickedness brings down final and fiery destruction on all, and makes open the way for the public kingdom in righteousness of the Son of man, when the saints of the high or heavenly places shall take the kingdom. For the saints are to reign with Christ. To apply this to the First Advent, or to events since, is preposterous. It is the same fourth or the Roman Empire, which played its part in crucifying the Lord of glory, which (Rev. 12; 13; 17; 19) is to rise again by Satan's energy, but for perdition. Then the Lord will take His great power and reign, instead of the kingdom of God to faith as now, when all enormities are done in the world unjudged of Him. To make this accomplished A.D. 70 or so is to bring Daniel's prophecy and all others into contempt. It is to be carried away by a human idea. See p. 20.

Mr. A. is less astray as to Dan. 7 in the preliminary part; but he is wholly wrong as usual in the most momentous conclusion of the matter, of which Antiochus Epiphanes was but a type of "the king of the north" in the latter day, the antagonist of the Roman Emperor about Jerusalem and its sanctuary. Both are to perish with their adherents, successively, at our Lord's coming again. What in the past can compare with this? Then, and not till then, will come the days of heaven upon the earth. Earthly judgments precede them; for "when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" (Isa. 26: 9).

The latter rain of the Spirit will as it were fertilize it. The gospel does not, nor is it its nature to, govern the world; and the so-called church (no matter which) has made an awful mess in attempting it. Its true work is to gather saved souls out of it for Christ and heaven.

Similarly Mr. A. is entirely ignorant of the true bearing of the last of the seventy weeks. For the Roman siege and subsequent trials are supposed to have taken place before v. 27. After the 69 weeks began a great gap created by Messiah's cutting off; and the last verse (Dan. 9: 27) is about "a" (not "the") covenant for seven years, which the future chief of the Roman empire will make and break, depriving the Jews of their rites; whereon the great catastrophe follows (Dan. 9).

The prophecy in Dan. 11 is similar: only it is not the western power that figures; but the wilful king, the Antichrist in Palestine "in the time of the end," and his enemy, "the king of the north," the then monarch of Turkey in Asia, as "the king of the south" is of Egypt. It is the hour of judgment for all powers, the last of which is Gog, the lord of all the Russias; after which Daniel himself is to appear and stand in his lot among the risen saints of the high places. Thus there ought to be no such mistake as men make in foreclosing prophecies, which all end with the Lord's appearing, and then only.

Mr. A. ought not to have confounded Darius the Mede, the ad interim and complimentary king after Babylon's fall before Cyrus succeeded, with Darius the Persian, who was conventionally chosen after Cambyses and the impostor Gomates. Ezra 4 makes this certain, Ahasuerus answering to the former, and Artaxerxes to the latter. Then comes Darius (Hystaspis) King of Persia.

The Day of the Lord.

W. Kelly.

"Now, we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand" (2 Thess. 2: 1, 2).

I showed last night the importance of not confounding the day of the Lord with the promise of His coming. On the other hand, we must take care also of confounding the coming of the Lord with His day here spoken of. That is, we must keep each separate; each in its own distinctness. The coming of the Lord, I have endeavoured to show, will be the consummation of the Lord's grace. The day of the Lord will be the execution of the Lord's judgment. Hence, if we mix up the coming of the Lord with His day, we weaken the solemnity of judgment, just as if we mix up the day with the coming we lose all the freshness and fulness of His grace. In short, grace and judgment must each have their due expression, and as the coming of the Lord Jesus is that which Scripture employs to express the Lord's return to earth to receive His own people and present them arrayed in His glory in the Father's house on high, so the day of the Lord embraces His intervention with men on earth, putting down all the pride, malice, and unbelief of men, and bringing in a new system of divine government, where all things shall be subjected to His authority. I do not say all men converted, but all men brought under His rule. There will be a feigned obedience rendered during that day of the kingdom here below. You cannot be surprised that it should be so, because not only will there be a spared remnant of men at the beginning of that day of the Lord, but its course will embrace not less than a thousand years, and during that long period of unbroken prosperity, with every mark of divine goodness lavished upon the men that are living here below, there will be millions of persons born to those who were spared from the beginning. Of these millions Scripture nowhere teaches that they will be born of God. They may or they may not be, but even those that are not born of God will have no longer the evil to contend with that man has now. No more will there be want; no more oppression; no more the temptation to open wickedness; no more wars or fightings; no more disease or pestilence; no more Satan even allowed to tempt men, for he will be under restraint during the whole of that time.

You who read the Scriptures cannot be ignorant of these things; and, happily, in this country, at any rate, most men read the Bible, and you must know that I am referring to plain positive Scripture in what I have been saying. The Bible is an open book in Scotland, and the children learn to read it, even though sometimes their elders do not explain it to them as it might be looked for. But there it is, and in very plain terms in the last book of the New Testament. Further, it is quite a mistake to suppose that it is only the last book of the New Testament which speaks of that day. On the contrary, all the Old Testament prophets are full of it, though they do not define it as a period of a thousand years. This was hidden from them. It awaited a prophet still greater than they. It was suitable in God's wisdom that John the Evangelist should be also John the Prophet, and that he should remove the veil off those times and seasons which the Lord would not allow His disciples to occupy themselves with when He was going up to heaven. It was enough for them to know, not the times and seasons of the redemption of Israel, but that now God the Father was about to accomplish the promise of the Holy Ghost, and to make them witnesses for Jesus throughout all the earth; and this is going on now. Witnessing to the Lord Jesus by the Holy Ghost is now proceeding. That is what we commonly call the gospel, and very rightly. But along with the gospel you must always remember there goes the church — the gospel being the testimony of God to every creature, and the church being the gathering together of those that receive the gospel and acknowledge the Lord Jesus, baptized by one Spirit into that which is called in Scripture the body of Christ.

Now, I have a little to say in explaining this matter more fully — that is, the day of the Lord; and I shall still keep up the contrast between the coming of the Lord and the day of the Lord, because as to these the most important point is that you should be clear about your own position as believers; that you should know your own portion in the day of grace. The coming of the Lord Jesus to make good all that His love has secured to faith is of prime importance. The day of the Lord, although it be of great interest in a positive way, is, as far as we are concerned, more negative, and we must not mix up the bearings of judgment with the dealings of grace, if we would avoid serious dishonour to the truth. This confusion was evidently a danger from the beginning. Here we see it in these verses — "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and [by] our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand." The word "by" has no business there at all. It is printed in italics to show you that it is not in the original, but there is even more than that: the original excludes the word, and, therefore, it was really a mistake on the part of our translators to introduce it. The particular form of phrase employed by the Holy Ghost brackets the two ideas, and makes them to be one connected whole. The coming of our Lord Jesus and our gathering are the two parts of one great transaction. Now, if you bring in the word "by," it separates them, instead of combining them together. It is remarkable that the translators, who were real scholars, should have overlooked the point; but any person to whom it is pointed out, who knows the Greek language, will see in an instant what I mean. It is one of the peculiarities of that language that one article is used when it is intended to bring in two things. If they mean to separate the two, they bring in a second article. There is no second article in this case. For instance, where it is said "Our God and Father" there is one article used, because the same person that is God is also Father, and in order to combine the two the one article is used.

This, however, is by the way, but it strengthens what I have already referred to, that the translation of the Christians that are now here below, as well as of the Old Testament saints, is the necessary and immediate consequence of our Lord's presence in the air. The moment He comes all that are His instantly rise in a changed or glorified state to meet Him on high, and these two events are bound up together in the one phrase. Thus the force of the first verse is this: We beseech you by your blessed hope, by that which is full of comfort and joy — His presence to gather you to Himself on high — do not be alarmed by the false rumour that the day of the Lord has already come. It has not come, and it cannot come until certain terrible evils are accomplished, which are future.

Now, you must carefully notice that the apostle does not say that the Lord cannot come first. That "day" it was on which they were so entirely mistaken. To use a vulgar phrase, the cart was put before the horse. That is to say, they put the day of the Lord before the coming of the Lord, whereas the apostle implies that the true relation of these events is the Lord's coming first of all, not to be occupied with His enemies, but to assemble His saints in His presence. He has a much nearer object. He has a loved object. The first thing the Lord does when He comes from heaven is instantly to gather to Himself all that are waiting for Him. We must always bear in mind that all children of God are supposed to wait for Him. Don't allow yourselves the thought that persons who may be somewhat unenlightened about it do not wait for the coming of the Lord. The truth of it is, that all saints do so more or less, though some of them have got erroneous notions. Some suppose that there must be intervals and terrible events between the present and the coming of the Lord; others suppose that there will be a long period of blessedness. They are both untrue.

Let me tell you, however, that what is commonly said by some to be the coming of the Lord (namely, when the Lord takes His place on the great white throne to judge all the dead) is not the coming of the Lord at all. If you look at the twentieth chapter of Revelation, you will see it is not His coming. When you talk about the Lord's coming, you ought to mean that the Lord is coming back here — coming from whence He has gone. This is the true meaning of it — He that is absent will be present. We are not told where the great white throne will be, and the reason we are not is very simple. Always in judging of distance we naturally judge from the earth, where we are. Such is the point from which all distance is naturally measured by man. It follows necessarily from his situation, and quite rightly so. Now, when the great white throne of judgment is set, the heavens and earth that now are will have completely passed away. There will be, for the time, a total dissolution both of heaven and earth.

There can be no question of coming in that case. There will be everlasting judgment. All the dead shall go and stand before the great white throne, but where that is, no man can tell. Only God knows. The reason is, that the heavens that now are, vanish, and the earth likewise, and where it is, it is impossible to say. Its elements will be in space somewhere, and we can perfectly understand that, when the wicked dead stand before the Judge of all, it is not of the least importance to say where. We know also the accompanying fact, that the heavens that now are will have completely disappeared. Therefore it is too late to speak of coming. The coming of the Lord must be before this universe disappears. That is plain; and it is what every one who speaks about the coming of the Lord must mean. He who once came in humiliation is coming again in glory; not said to be coming to the new heavens and the new earth, although I have no doubt He will be there also; but this is not what is meant by the expression, the coming of the Lord.

All creeds acknowledge that Christ will come to judge the quick and the dead, and that the heavens must receive Him till the times of the restitution of all things. This means that everything that is now groaning will be put right; that this poor world, which is now a scene of travail and sorrow, will be changed; and that this mighty change will be brought about by the intervention of the Lord in power, not by the nostrums of men. All the physic that learned men might give the world would not make a bit of difference on the earth, nor would it change the nature of the race. This mighty change is to be effected by a greater than man, and the greater One is the Redeemer. That is essentially to be the glory of the Lord Jesus. Even the Holy Ghost will not effect that change. The Holy Ghost did not become incarnate; nor did He suffer for our sins. It is the Saviour who is to be glorified in the sight of all men — not merely in heaven, but on earth. Now is the Christianity that is founded upon the cross. The Lord is now glorified, and we, who walk by faith and not by sight, enter into that. Unbelievers in this day know nothing about God; nothing about themselves; nothing about God's Son. I do not upbraid them; God forbid. I feel most deeply for their carelessness, prejudices, and guilt, because if any man reads the Word of God he will find there the most powerful body of testimony to its truth. It is not merely the reasonings of men. These will never really satisfy the soul — can never set one heart right. Christ alone can do this by the power of His redemption; by His infinite love; by grace and truth, by a life of holiness and righteousness. There is no other object that one's heart can rest on. Even the wisest king that has ever lived became a fool at last. I know no person in a more pitiful position than old king Solomon giving in to the follies of his Egyptian wife, of his 700 wives, and 300 concubines. That is a sad and evil history, and yet Solomon was the son of the great king David. We want great David's greater Son. That greater Son is the Lord Jesus; the true Son of David, the one specific for the good of men; the only One that shows the perfection of holiness, but who nevertheless died that He might win the most unholy to God. There is the Person to transport the heart and bind it for ever to the God which it had hitherto traduced. We had thought Him some hard taskmaster, and people talk very often to the great dishonour of God. They think it an awful thing that God should condemn a man for eating a thing so small as an apple. This is not the true way to put it. Adam sold God for such a small thing as an apple. Is not this the humbling truth? It is Adam giving up God — the woman first, I am sorry to say. She worked upon him through his affections; the man would not be severed from her even in sin. It is well when a man is not too proud to follow his wife in what is good — sometimes they do not; but to follow a wife or anybody in what is bad is a sad piece of folly as well as sin. Therefore, one wants not merely God to show Himself as He is in grace to all man's wickedness, but God in the person of a man, the Son of man that God might be glorified thereby.

All the talk of those who love to speak about the perfection of man and the glory of man is put to shame by the name of Jesus, because, after all, what does their talk come to? They are great on the theory of evolution. They think their fathers had been monkeys at one time, but all that, I need not say, is as contrary to the truth of God as it is contrary to all science, because nobody ever saw the leg of a monkey merge into the leg of a man. There is nothing of the sort in any fossil remains, not to speak of present phenomena. All true science goes upon fixed principles and observed facts. No doubt there are variations of species. Everyone knows and fully allows that. There may be a very wide variety in every species, but still you never find one species turning into another. Nobody ever met an apple that was becoming a pear. Is it not an extraordinary thing that clever men should produce such fancies as science?

Returning to our subject, here we have the apostle exhorting from the blessed motive of hope, and telling the Thessalonians that they should not be alarmed by the false fear.

And let me tell you that a favourite weapon of the devil in injuring God's people lies in fear. Very likely he draws them into something wrong first. He entices men, perhaps, into sin. That is one fault; and then he distracts and overthrows their conscience, and makes them judge God according to their own notion of what they deserve. On the other hand, he works also by falsehood, and makes even the believer stand in doubt of God. But his great weapon, in many ways, has always been terror. What is the weapon of God? What is His way of drawing men from Satan's power, and from evil of every kind? Faith — not fear; faith of God's grace and truth as revealed in His Son; not only in the person, but in the infinite work of the Saviour. His person alone would not suffice. But, on the other hand, His work could not have sufficed without His person. I am not called to worship grace, but to worship Him who died upon the tree. It is an easy thing to slip away from the truth, and turn the work of the Lord into an object of idolatry, as we see in the Roman Catholic system, where the Lord's Supper is converted into one of the most hideous forms of idolatry. One can understand that men should get on by slow degrees to idolise a wafer. One might reason about it, of course, as being almost incredible, but there is the fact. Our forefathers all worshipped it; all Christendom worshipped it once, with a very slight exception — a thin line of witnesses whom the Lord raised up, but who, for the most part, were spoken of as the vilest of the earth; and remember it was not merely bad men who persecuted them. The best of the Popes encouraged the persecution of the Waldensians. Through their vain traditions and their unholy prejudices they really played a most evil part in persecuting these true children of God who stood up against that corrupt woman — that great city Babylon.

As the enemy works by fear, the Lord does by faith. You see that is exactly what is brought out in these verses. What is the great object of hope in the words before us? It is the coming of the Lord. Behind His coming to take us up to heaven I see dark clouds and coals of fire. I see that the wrath of the Lord is to break forth — for let us not forget the wrath of the Lamb. But, surely, we must not mix these things up together, and make a mere medley of grace and judgment. This is precisely what faith disentangles. Faith lays hold of Christ as the true object of the Christian's hope. Judgment is for unbelievers. Never allow the thought that a man is not responsible for his unbelief. Grace gives a man faith to believe; but a man is truly responsible for his unbelief. He knows very well that he is fighting against the Word of God.

Take, for instance, those men who say that there never was such a character as the Lord Jesus Christ; never anything so humble, so loving, so holy, so sublime. I admit freely and entirely that if the Lord Jesus was not the Only-begotten Son of God He was not holy or sublime. People who tell lies are not very admirable folk; and I say if Christ was not God He was not good, because it is impossible that One who was good should pretend to be other and better than He was. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ does constantly leave the impression upon the soul, indirectly as well as directly, that He was God. Take, for instance, these words "Before Abraham was, I am." Before Abraham came into being I am — not "I came into being." He was the self-subsistent One before Abraham was in existence. Abraham was born; the Son of God never began to be the Son of God. He was born as man; the Word was made flesh, but He was the Only-begotten and the Eternal One before He ever came into the world. That is what lies at the very bottom of all truth as to Christ; and, therefore, if persons object to this and try to overthrow it, just look at the insult to God. Think what God feels about the rejection of His infinite love — of the One that all heaven worships! Think of poor puny men pouring contempt upon the Lord!

I suppose there never was a time in the history of the world when so many respectable baptised persons rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not so very long ago since a Bishop on the other side of the Tweed preached a sermon urging the Jews to become Christians; and a clever Jew replied to his Lordship, telling him that it was a very inopportune moment to ask the Jews to become Christians, when so many Christians were ceasing to be Christians. This was a very painful thing to hear; but I am afraid the Bishop could not well get out of the scrape. That is, he could not fairly deny the fact that many nominal Christians are abandoning nominal Christianity, particularly among educated men. I daresay the working men of England are rather disposed in that way too, at least they were some time ago. But on the opposite hand, the teachers, the barristers, the medical men, and the clergy have shown them a remarkably bad example. Why do I say this? Just that we may, at any rate, have the truth before us and not be left in a foolish paradise of our own ideas; that we may truly realise the solemnity of the present moment, and that we may personally cleave to the truth with full purpose of heart. The truth is found inseparable from Christ.

That which the Holy Spirit brings up to meet the lie of Satan is the truth. Faith lays hold of the truth, and the truth as to this matter is that Christ Himself is coming to gather all that are His to meet Him on high, changed into His glorious likeness. The apostle presents that hope to neutralise the fear of the "day." The fear which the evil one was creating amongst the Thessalonians was that the day of the Lord was come. Perhaps many of you recollect the time when a person in America named Miller produced a fearful condition of things. He pretended to fix the date when the day of judgment was coming — the day of the Lord on the earth — and the consequence was that numbers of persons gave up their business, shut up their shops, abandoned their farms — they were chiefly persons in that class of life. The day came, but there was no such thing as the day of the Lord; and it was not merely that the faith of the great mass of the people was shaken to its centre, or that a good many lost their businesses and were ruined, but numbers of them from the shock lost their reason. That, however, was not at all a new thing in the world. In the year 1000 there was a great time of alarm. Ignorant people thought that there was a fatal charm in the word thousand, and, according to the reckoning of the doctors, they were taught that the day of the Lord would be then. The day came and passed, and there was no appearance of the day of the Lord. Before that time, in the year 600, there had been another but perhaps milder shock of that kind of earthquake. These all passed away, and what was the effect? People got hardened more and more in unbelief. Why was this? Because it was not the truth. They had no right to talk about the day of the Lord in that way. They were puzzled and alarmed about the day of the Lord, because they did not realise the apostle's motive of comfort in the coming of the Lord.

There is a true order of events. The Lord is coming — that is the first thing — coming to gather His own together; and, therefore, they need not trouble themselves about the alarming cry that the day of the Lord was there, for even, when it does come, it will not affect them. It will fall upon those that know not God, and those that obey not the gospel.

I may direct the attention of any of you who wish to understand the subject to the chapter before this. You will find that there is a most careful preparation for the due understanding of the day of the Lord. The apostle presents the truth to them in the previous chapter, showing that they were quite mistaken in their anticipations of the nature of that day, because they feared that it would fall upon the saints. Not at all. When that day comes, you will arrive with it. Who, then, are the people that will have trouble in that day? The people who are troubling you now — your persecutors. The day of the Lord is a day of trouble, not for God's people, but for God's enemies. They were all wrong in their thoughts, and he sets them right about the nature of the thing before he brings in the elaborate refutation in the second chapter.

I now turn to this, for it is very full of spiritual instruction for our souls. Observe, first of all, the careful preparation of the ground, and, secondly, the careful setting right of the heart. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of the Lord" — that is the motive for the sake of (ὑπέρ) which he entreats them. It is not the subject-matter that troubled them. Here the Revisers of the New Testament have done harm, I think, because their version connects the coming of the Lord with the day of the Lord. They take it to be the subject of which he is speaking in the first verse; but it is not. It is the motive against the rumour, the fear of which had taken possession of and troubled them. Clearly the "day of the Lord" is the subject, and the coming of the Lord Jesus is the motive of comfort against the false representation and the fear that it was come. To confound the two is fatal; and I have no doubt it was that which led to the mistranslation, and to the day of the Lord being understood to be "at hand," and not to have actually come, as the heterodox said.

I remember glancing at a book by a certain Regius Professor of Greek upon the Epistles to the Thessalonians. You would expect a Greek Professor of Oxford to understand Greek; but the extraordinary thing was that he continued the same mistranslation as is in the Authorised Version. There is no ground to doubt that the closing verb means "is present," not "at hand:" an error alike of rendering and of doctrine, which would contradict the apostle's own teaching in Rom. 13: 12, that the day is at hand. Certainly the false teachers did not anticipate what the apostle taught; they pretended to have his authority for saying that the day was come, to the alarm of the Thessalonians. There is no just reason for questioning the regular sense. What is now admitted by every Greek scholar worth consulting eluded the Professor. How do you account for that? People go to the New Testament with their own ideas of what it ought to be, instead of to receive what God says. This is the way that people do when they rise up against the plainest truths that are in the Bible. It is because their minds are preoccupied. They have got a certain pre-conceived idea, and because of this they make the greatest blunders. Remember I do not say that the person who is addressing you is not liable to as great a blunder. I am sure we all are if we go to the Bible in that spirit. You will not, therefore, suppose I mean to speak disrespectfully of any person, but to press positive facts. We ought to have far more homage for the truth than for persons. I do not understand a man writing to keep back the truth. It may seem a wonderful thing to find a person who has the just reputation of being a scholar misinterpreting plain Greek. But he did so; and it was entirely owing to the fact that he had got a system in his mind which falsified his views of Scripture and the translation of Scripture. The only way in which a man can get rid of that is when, by grace delivered from prejudice, he looks to the Lord and approaches Scripture with the desire to learn what God says.

The apostle, having given the motive of comfort why they should not be agitated about this report which had so alarmed them, lets them know that the people who had spread that report were no better than they should be, because they had actually given out a letter of their own as if it were a letter of the apostle's! You must not suppose that it is his First Epistle they had misinterpreted. What he says is — "That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us." He does not say it was his letter. If he had referred to the First Epistle, he would have said, the letter from us. He would have referred to it as a well-known letter. If he had referred to it vaguely, it might have been any letter, but he would not have said "as from us." but ours. What he meant was that it pretended to be what it was not. The worst morality is shown particularly in implying what is not true was inspired. Forging is a great sin. It was not merely that they pretended to a revelation, or to a word spoken in the assembly, but they really pretended it was Paul's letter. When the truth is lost, how often men cease to be truthful!

And now the apostle goes into the facts of evil, which must precede the day which is to judge them. He says — "Let no man deceive you by any means; for [that day shall not come] except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." I do not recollect the Revised Version, but I have no doubt you will find it is "the falling away," which is the regular word for the apostasy. It is not merely an indeterminate expression — "a" falling, as in the Authorised Version. Next, the man of sin. The apostasy referred to what was already known among the Christians and even among the Jews. In the eleventh of Daniel we hear of a king that should do according to his own will, that was to come by-and-bye; and this king is described in very characteristic colouring. He rejects false gods, he refuses his father's god, he would not have what is called the desire of Israel, that is, the Messiah; and he rejects the true God. Yet, for all that, he falls a victim to a god of his own device. Like Jeroboam, he sets up a new religion in order to accomplish political ends. It is not merely an ambitious prelate who sets himself up — this would be bad enough — but it is one who claims the honour due to God. He makes no hypocritical pretence to be a servant of His servants. He claims for himself supreme and exclusive divine worship in the temple of God.

I think that it is unjust to say that this has ever yet been realised to the full. I have as bad an opinion of Popery, I suppose, as anybody here; but I do not believe that Popery is the apostasy. The apostasy is a great deal more, and a great deal worse. I believe that a man might be saved who is a Roman Catholic; I believe, in the midst of the terrible corruption and superstition of the Romish Church, there is enough of the word of God read, enough of Christ, for a poor soul to lay hold of the great truth of a Divine Person who became man and died for sinners. Hence, I believe that there have been not only Roman Catholic laymen, but Roman Catholic priests saved, and, what is more, Roman Catholic Popes. I believe Pope Leo was a good man (although he was ambitious), as also Pope Gregory the First. Alas, Gregory the Seventh was a very different man. I only refer to these as two occurring to me that seem to have strewn a fear of God and a love of His truth in the midst of abounding darkness and superstition. We must not allow ourselves to be carried away too strongly by controversy. We must bear in mind that there are persons who may be objects of divine grace under most untoward circumstances. I can conceive of a Roman Catholic being saved, but who can conceive of a Unitarian being saved? The latter denies the divinity and atonement of Christ. Indeed, anyone who denies even the true humanity of the Lord is worse than a Roman Catholic. The falling away or apostasy means the rejection of all revealed truth.

The apostle then tells us that the day of the Lord cannot come until the apostasy, and the revelation of "the man of sin." That is perfectly plain. The Lord told Abram, as a reason for not judging the Amorites, that the cup of their iniquity was not yet full. The cup of Sodom and Gomorrah was filled, as we know, but that of the Amorites was not. They were allowed to follow their evil courses until the earth was ready to spue them out, and then the sword of retribution fell upon them at God's command. It is always a principle in God's dealings that the iniquity which He judges must be thoroughly out. The lawlessness of Christendom is not thoroughly open. There is still, in the midst of a great deal that is very sad, a great deal of conversion going on. There is also not a little of devotedness to Christ. The forms and the reality of truth are yet apparent, and it is as yet "the mystery of lawlessness." It will be a totally different thing in that day.

Thus we come to what I am now to dwell on — that from the coming of the Lord differs the day of the Lord, not only in character but in time. There is an interval between. How long that interval is must be learned from other scriptures, where the times and the seasons are taken up — namely, in the Book of Revelation. Where would you look for prophetic seasons so readily as in that book? What do you find in it, looking at it as a whole? You have the epistles to the seven churches, giving a prophetic view of the church as long as she should be here below; and at the end of the last of the seven churches — the church of Laodicea — a door is opened in heaven, and the prophet is permitted to look in, and he sees a new company in heaven, never, in fact, seen there before — twenty-four elders round the central throne of God, themselves seated on thrones.

Who are these crowned elders? In my judgment they are symbolical of the Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints — the great company of the heads of the heavenly priesthood. This is the reason why they are said to be four-and-twenty — which was the number of courses of priests under the Mosaic dispensation. You must not suppose that the twenty-four means twenty-four individuals — there might be thousands, possibly millions of saints. The great idea of the symbol, I take it, is that the twenty-four are the heavenly priesthood — the chief-priests of glory. God is to have other priests and kings besides these. Who are they? Persons who are called to the knowledge of God after the elders are taken to heaven. For, remember, the elders are never added to; you never find twenty-five or twenty-six — still less have you thirty-six or forty-eight. There is no addition. It is a complete body. Now, that is a very important fact. Others will be objects of divine grace, but they are not added to the four-and-twenty elders — they are grouped by themselves. They are a company blessed of God — glorified, no doubt, in due time, but not added to the twenty-four.

We must leave room for the dealings of God. God is sovereign; and if I can believe in the sovereignty of God now in one form, I can believe it in another. The Book of Revelation shows particularly this very principle. Later on in the book, for instance, you have a company seen standing on a sea of glass; and, what is very remarkable, on a sea of glass mingled with fire. In the fourth chapter of Revelation there is a sea of glass, but no fire. In the fifteenth chapter, where you have this fresh company of conquerors, it is a sea of glass mingled with fire. What does this mean? They have passed through tribulation. The others, you see, have gone up before that terrible tribulation. In their case the symbol of fire would have no meaning.

Perhaps I ought to explain what is meant by this symbol of a sea of glass. Whether in reference to the first company or to the second, the sea would be a natural thought. A sea of water would be for washing us from the defilements we acquire in our passage through this world. The priests, you know, used to be first washed all over; but afterwards, whenever they went to do service in the Temple, they washed their hands and their feet. In the heavenly sea there is no longer water but glass. Why? Because it is no longer a question of getting impurity removed. Theirs is all gone. It could never have an entrance to heaven. Therefore, you see, first of all, when the elders are caught up to heaven at the coming of the Lord — nothing else could take them up — there is a sea of glass, but no mingling with fire.

Then, in the central part of the book, you have this great tribulation — the most awful judgments of God upon man's wickedness. The tribulation goes on; and in the fifteenth chapter you have the new company standing upon the sea of glass, with harps of gold in their hands, and singing the song, not of the Lamb merely, but of Moses and the Lamb. The twenty-four elders sing the song of the Lamb merely. We do not sing the song of Moses. It will be all very well by-and-by for the converted Jews to do so, and so they will; but we have learned, by the grace of God, the surpassing glory of the Lord Jesus. On the mount of transfiguration the apostle asked to be allowed to build three tabernacles — one for Moses, and one for Elias, and one for Christ. No, says God the Father; "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." He is the one surpassing and exclusive Object in this new song. Don't let anyone suppose that I mean the smallest disrespect to Moses as a servant of God. Far from that. I hold every word Moses has written to be inspired. The Lord Jesus never was called to write anything, because He was the Word, and it would not have been suitable to His glory that He should have written a line. He was above all that. It is not a question, then, of His writing, but of the Holy Ghost leading others to write about Him. Thus, you see, in the sixth chapter of Revelation, the elders sing merely of God and the Lamb, whereas this new company that come through tremendous tribulation will sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. It is not called a new song at all. It is very important to lay hold of these differences in Scripture.

Now, then, apply this to what we have before us. The Lord will come, and, as the instant effect, will gather all His own to be with Him in heaven. The Spirit of God will begin the work of converting souls by the word, particularly amongst the Jews, but it will not be confined to them. He will work a work both in the Jews and in the Gentiles; only they will not be brought into one body. That remarkable property, that exclusive quality, of the church of God, the obliterating distinction between Jew and Gentile, will no longer characterise the work of God; but the Jews will be converted as Jews, and the Gentiles as Gentiles. In the seventh chapter of Revelation they are seen as two distinct bodies — first, out of all the twelve tribes, and then all the multitude that no man could number.

I am aware that there are learned men who say they are the same; but, really, their mode of interpretation is a matter of constant wonder to me. No simple man could believe they were the same. Sometimes it requires a deal of reasoning to make one receive such a thought as that. When people get completely occupied with a thing, it is astonishing how they can persuade themselves and others to believe it. To my conviction, there will be two companies. I think this lies clearly upon the face of the statements of Scripture — not only for the simplest reader, but for the most profound theologian. There will be a company out of all Israel that are sealed, and an immense company out of the Gentiles. Over these, during the millennium, the Lord will reign when He comes again. But, besides these, there will be a number of persons who are killed. They do not live to be under the Lord's reign; and thus, if the Lord did not work something very blessed for them, they would lose both the heavenly glory of the church, and the earthly joy of those who are to people the earth when He comes to reign in glory. What does He for them? He waits until the very last man has suffered, and then also He brings them risen from the dead into heavenly glory.

I know there are those who manifest a great deal of confusion about that. They fancy that everybody must be raised exactly at the same moment. It is perfectly true that we shall be raised at the same moment; but why all others should be raised along with us seems to me peculiar. I do not see any necessity for it at all, but the reverse. The fourth verse of the twentieth of Revelation bears very distinctly on the importance of distinguishing between the coming of the Lord and the day of the Lord — "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God; and those who worshipped not the beast, neither his image, neither received his mark on their foreheads or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

Who were these? The first were the elders that came out of heaven. These were the persons who had long been in heaven, and consequently in their case, you observe, they had their seats upon the thrones already, and judgment was given unto them — not judgment executed on them. The very reverse. They were to judge the world, to judge the angels, as we are told by the apostle Paul in First Corinthians.

Next, "And [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God." I saw the souls — not the bodies. There, clearly, you have a company of people that had suffered after the elders had been taken to heaven, and they were still in the separate state. He saw the separate spirits or souls of those that were beheaded. Do not be carried away with the idea that souls sometimes means persons. Of course we know that; but it is easy to discriminate whether separated souls or living persons are meant. "Seventy souls went down into Egypt." That is very intelligible. They were not separated souls, but persons; but if I said seventy souls of the people went down into Egypt, this would be another thing. In short, a different form of phraseology would have been used. Scripture is always most precise. I entirely deny what unbelievers say, that things are loosely expressed there. Had it been — "I saw seventy souls that had been beheaded," it is evident that it would be so many persons that were meant.

Lastly, "And which had not," etc. There is here a slight but unfortunate mistranslation. It should be, "and those who (or, such as) had not worshipped the beast" — a third class of persons. This is now generally conceded. I do not think that any scholar has any doubt about it. Dean Alford, who was a good scholar, takes it as here — a third class. The late Mr. Elliott does the same. I mention them, because they do not agree with me in many respects; but I agree with them and they with me in this, that there are three classes. The first is those already glorified, and not a word, therefore, about their souls; whereas, in the second and third classes, we find the souls — first, the souls of persons that had been beheaded for the word of God, and then those that would not accept the mark of the beast, in the last part.

If you want to find confirmation of this, you will find it in the sixth chapter of Revelation, where the souls were seen underneath the altar — in a separate state, of course — and they were told that they were to wait till the number of their brethren that were to be slain as they were should be fulfilled. There is the second class. There were to be two bodies of sufferers — the first body in the beginning of Revelation, and the second body in the fifteenth; and now both classes are here before us. But before we hear of these two in their separate state, we have the elders in their glorified state. (1) "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them . . . and (2) I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus . . . and (3) those that had not worshipped the beast . . . and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." Why is it said that the two last classes lived? Because till now they were in the separate state. It is not said of those who sat upon the thrones, as being needless; but it was necessary to tell us that those were to live who had been martyred in the Apocalyptic crisis.

When did all this beheading take place, and this sealing of those that would not accept the mark of the beast? During the time of the great tribulation. So you have those who had to pass not merely a sea of glass, but a sea of glass mingled with fire. The coming of the Lord involves the translation of those, now waiting for Him. Then comes an interval of tremendous teal, through which souls are to be born of God, many of whom will have to suffer; but they will have their sufferings made up to them by being raised up when the Lord appears in glory, and they will all reign together — they that had been already caught up, and those that now rise; while they that are still alive are the blessed people of the millennium, who will form the nucleus of that great scene of blessing which will fill the whole earth; for surely Jehovah Jesus will reign in that day.

I have now presented to you as clear a sketch of this important subject as I could in a single lecture. But the great point I press is the essential difference between the exercise of grace in the coming of the Lord to take His own to be with Him, and the exercise of judgment when it is the day of the Lord. That is the distinction you have to bear in mind — the christian characterised by a grace that takes him up to heaven; the Jew characterised by the Lord's appearing to exercise judgment, which will leave him unimpeded by his enemies here below. Our blessing does not depend upon the execution of judgment. Our blessing is of pure sovereign grace. We had no claims, no deserts, not even pleas in support of our case; and when the Lord comes to receive us, there will be no execution of judgment on the earth whatever. But it will be different when He appears to save the poor Jews. They must go through a retributive time of tribulation; and then the Lord, at the last moment, when they seem about to be swept away, comes down on their enemies and delivers the godly remnant.

In this you have, I believe, an outline, and it is for you to make the truth your own. Search the word, and you will find abundant proofs crowding upon you as you read with faith; but you never will so read, and never get full profit, unless your souls are thoroughly clear as to your own redemption. This is the indispensable condition of growing in the knowledge of Christ, and of real intelligence in the word of God. If you are not clear about the gospel, where is the good of talking much about the second advent? And, therefore, I press upon you to take care your souls have shared in the blessing of the first. Amen.

The Day Star.

2 Peter 1: 19.

W. Kelly.

(Pub. Weston, Chapter Two Archive.)

Many Christians are averse to God's revelation of the future. This is to be sadly prejudiced. Having known countless theories made and explained away, they consider it wiser to seek simply the blessing of their own souls. They may be right, if they have not yet peace and liberty, as Christians are entitled to by grace. But if they are Christians, they have Christ ; and all things are theirs. It is not wise or well to turn away from Him that speaks concerning the future, because men have often made mistakes. If I am to give up all that has been perverted, I am in danger of turning away from almost all the Bible.

Beyond controversy, on the other hand, not a few, being really unestablished in Christ, are apt to be taken up with prophecy in a light manner. They seem on the alert for things to suit their preconceptions. They start in quest of the Buonapartes, of the "last" Pope in their own day, of their country's destiny, etc. They are thus liable to deceive themselves as well as others. But, if we have confidence in God, and Christ be before our hearts, we shall not fail of the Spirit's guidance, through Whom, bowing to the word, we shall get the truth of things. When we have Christ as our object, the truth shines; for He is the true Light which makes all things manifest. Self only darkens everything. The love of God and of his neighbour was put clearly before the man that asked the Lord who his neighbour was. Our neighbour is whoever wants us and our help. If our eye be single, we shall soon know; then too we have a heart for God's will.

There is a great difficulty in becoming a fool in order to be wise; and this we must learn if we would go on in the things of God. No small quantity of dead matter may be unjudged, which hinders the Spirit of God. Not happiness only but every other good depends on our having Christ as the object and the standard whereby to judge. How am I to know the world? and why are people's minds so diverse with regard to it? Is it not because they have not taken their place as disciples, as learners, at the feet of Jesus? There is divine light in the Bible which stretches into eternity itself; and the simple soul can see it. But we must receive the word of God to learn of Him, instead of bringing our thoughts to it.

The world is not Christ's object at present, but those who are not of it. "I pray not for the world," etc. The Lord Jesus was born King of the Jews; but, being rejected He has since risen and gone to heaven, as truly man as God, the Beginning the First born from the dead. While He is at the right hand of God, He is also the Head of the church. The so-called Apostles' creed had nothing to do with the apostles; and it is moreover vaguely and loosely enough put together, while the Athanasian is too scholastic. The Nicene bids us believe the church instead of God. We are always called as Christians to confess the Lord Jesus; which is far beyond the merely formal way when men rise to say the creed, whether they believe on Him or not.

The Bridegroom is outside the world, while His bride is being formed from out of the world, and about to meet Him in the air. What a solemn yet blessed fact was Enoch's translation! Yet Christ's coming will be immeasurably more so. For all the saints of every age and from every land and tongue will be caught up to join the Lord Jesus. The last trump does not mean the end of the "world," but of the "age." The world will be outside its sound when He comes for us, as it will have nothing to do with Him. When the New Testament was written, the Roman army was familiar to every one in the civilised earth. According to their order, several trumpets were sounded; but the "last" summons they gave was for immediate departure. This illustrates "the last trump" of our subject. God is going to take all His children to be with Christ Who will come in person to receive them to Himself. It is not the dead saints only, nor merely those who may be then alive, but both.

Christ's "shout" in 1 Thess. 4: 16 is a peculiar word. It was used for a general's call to his soldiers, an admiral's to his seamen, or even a huntsman's to his dog. The Lord will give this shout (κέλευσμα) to His own; and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we, the living saints surviving, will be changed, and all caught up to meet Him. The creed of Athanasius (so-called) did not enter truly into the blessed hope, which was practically lost long before his time; indeed this creed was probably centuries after him. While the primitive Christians were hated, persecuted, and slain, the hope was bright in their souls; but truth rapidly declined till in the time of Constantine Christians were given the place of honour in the Roman empire. The world seduced them from the truth; and the desire grew to remain here and enjoy earthly things. It, was no longer the patient waiting for Christ. The world we are bound to view as rejected and guilty of the death of Christ. Although the outward sign of the cross meets us everywhere, what is it but profession and even profanity? For God still views the world as the place from whence His Son was cast out. When delivered, a soul begins to find what a ruin all is.

A man naturally wishes to make a figure in the world and to found a place for his children; but the Christian is only to be as a pilgrim and a stranger, like a man in a passenger ship passing from one country to another. If we belong to Christ, we belong to heaven and are not of the world. John gives the character to the world all through his writings; Paul, the church according to God with a heavenly stamp from the beginning. For Christ is the Head of the church; and the saints should be ever expecting Him.

But now, as of old, clever and learned people encourage one another to say that the early Christians erred in their hope. Alas! what is the good of abilities that leave the possessor banished from the presence of God for ever? The church ought always to be singing the songs, not of grace only, but of glory. Even Christians can be deceived by the infidel expectation of the world's improvement if not perfection. A smattering of divine things is not profitable. They who fix a date for the Lord's coming are entirely wrong. It is a matter of the Father's will concerning His Son to keep the Christian always waiting, certain that He is coming soon, uncertain when. If worldly-minded, we shall dislike waiting thus. But the Bride in Rev. 22: 17 says, "Come;" and again "he that heareth" is invited to say, "Come."

So the Lord in Luke 12 would have His servants on the watch, that, when He knocks, they may open to Him immediately. Figures are meant to be not loose but vivid expressions. The faithful should be as it were behind the door; that, when the Master's knock is heard, it may be opened forthwith. If Martha served, Mary waited at His feet. Martha was energetic in her way; but the work He prizes most is to begin and go on learning of Him, and in His absence to be waiting for Him. Only love can make a good servant; so Christ came in love and will return in victory. Love is intent on the good of another without a thought of self-seeking; and we best know what that is by seeing it perfectly in Him. But next to waiting is working; for love must for Him serve others in a world of sin and misery, as He did.

But it is of the greatest moment to believe that not the church merely, but "the Spirit and the Bride say, Come." It is the Holy Ghost Who leads the church to welcome Christ. Whatever one's love to souls may be, Christ ought to be the first object. Can "the Spirit" ever make a mistake? Alas! those that expect progress and victory in the absence of Christ dishonour the Spirit, when He so distinctly inspires the Bride to say, "Come." It is not enthusiastic fancy, but the true hope, to be always saying, "Come." "The Spirit" and the Bride say so; the newly converted one also, he that hears, can and is called to join in the cry, "Come." For he has nothing to fear from the Saviour. Again, the waiting one aught assuredly to be the most zealous in serving. Hence the invitation in the same verse to any sinner to "come and take life's water freely." It is a just reproach, if our hope of His speedy return does not make us more in earnest for souls than we should have been without it.

But it is not yet a question of the world. The Lord Jesus will ask the Father for the world (Ps. 2) and will then come to reign. Israel repentant shall in due time be restored to their own land. Hence, as we read in Num. 34, when He closes His present priesthood, He will surely cause the manslayer (typifying the Jew) to come before the judge, and then be reinstated in his inheritance. No Christian should be so ignorant of scripture as to think that this earth must ever abide as it now is groaning in its ruin and misery.

Yet the apostle (2 Thess. 2) is explicit that, ere deliverance comes, all these lands which boast of their light will unite to abandon revelation and Christ in "apostasy" or open rebellion against God. Thereon shall the Lord be revealed from heaven in flaming fire to take vengeance on them that know not God and on them that obey not the gospel. The old Roman Empire is to be revived (Rev. 17: 8): present changes are but preparatory to that crisis. Italy is not only to be an united kingdom, but will play a greater part than men look for who believe not the prophecies of God. Alas! the lands that have been signally favoured, ungrateful as they are, must become the darkest and most daring. Thus things will become worse and worse, as the apostle warned in 2 Tim. 3, till there is a godless and total wrench from the confession of Christianity.

Where did the church begin? Where was the central seat of empire when the Son of God was rejected and crucified? Apostasy will develop itself at Jerusalem, and the Beast at Rome will sustain the Anti-christ, or wilful king, in Jerusalem. Both will yet unite, as they did of old, against the Lord and His Christ. (See Rev. 13, Rev. 19).

The true value of prophecy is to believe, before, not after, it comes to pass. If you wait till its accomplishment, this will be your ruin. Do not occupy your mind with individual Jews returning to their own land; which is but to prepare a people for the Anti-Christ. Give the Jews the gospel. The Russian power covets the Holy Land. But we find in Ezekiel 38, 39 that, instead of succeeding, its ruler is to perish there. The Western powers will have been destroyed by the Lord Jesus even before Gog falls.

On the other hand, our place and privilege as Christians is to look for His receiving us to Himself for the Father's house, before He appears for the destruction of His foes wherever they be. The Jewish saints ever had the "lamp" of prophecy; and it is still a good light for the squalid place of this world, warning of judgment. But there is now a better; for daylight dawns in the gospel; and the hope of Christ's coming to fetch us on high is the day-star before the day. Has that hope arisen in your heart? This was what the apostle yearned to know in the saints he addresses, leading them beyond the old into the new things.

Deliverance.

Being notes of a lecture on Romans 8: 1-4.

W. Kelly.

The beginning of Romans 8 is the full answer to the cry of wretchedness in Romans 7: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" There are three great parts in the deliverance: first, the setting free of the soul at the commencement of its career; then, practical freedom in its course; and, finally, ultimate deliverance for the body in resurrection at the coming of our Lord. What concerns souls pre-eminently, in the first instance, is that spiritual freedom, without which there can be no practical power, any more than in the service of the Lord, or in worship. Hence it is this first part of the deliverance that it will be my main business to dwell on at present. Not that the application to practice is not of the highest moment; but we should remember that practical freedom and power depend on this primary deliverance. Again, final deliverance must not be supposed to be forgotten; but that is a question of the Lord's intervention by-and-by, when there can be no possibility of a flaw. Now there may be failure, first, in appreciating the soul's deliverance, as in verse 2; and, secondly, in turning practical liberty to the Lord's account in walk. But when the Lord comes to quicken these mortal bodies — and they are called mortal in contradistinction from the soul — no failure will be possible. It was not necessary to call the soul immortal, because immortality is essentially bound up with its nature.

Let us, then, turn to a little consideration of the first grand truth, the setting free of the soul. And this remark may be made at the threshold, that the deliverance in question is quite distinct from quickening. Romans 7 is the strongest possible proof of this; for we have, from verse 7 onward, exactly the experience of a man quickened, but not delivered. We see there a soul going through much painful exercise inwardly ending in the cry, "O wretched man," etc. It is not a careless or unawakened person, but neither is it one delivered. There are two errors to be avoided here, over-rating and under-estimating the condition of the case in Romans 7. These two mistakes carry away far the largest part of Christendom, and perhaps of real Christians. There are those who consider that the soul in this distress is unconverted; and one reason why they do so is, because in the progress of its exercises it says, "I am carnal." But such an inference is unwarranted, and arises from confounding carnal with natural, which is ignorance of scripture. For it speaks of three classes, and not two only; there are natural, carnal, and spiritual men. Now Romans 7 describes the intermediate class; the person there is neither natural nor spiritual. This is where the great mistake is made, and by none more than by the theologians. They confound a carnal with a natural man, supposing that "carnal" means one dead in trespasses and sins. But in 1 Corinthians 2, 3 this distinction is plainly drawn.

In chapter 2 the apostle, speaking of the natural man, declares that he "receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." In chapter 3 he takes up the other term, and distinctly tells the Corinthian believers that they were carnal; not, of course, natural, but "carnal." They were believers, but in a wrong and low condition. They ought to have been, but were not, "spiritual."

Thus every believer is not by any means a spiritual person. For this reason the apostle, in addressing the Galatians, says, "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness." He did not mean by this that every believer is a spiritual man, but, on the contrary, distinguishes certain believers more fitted than others for the delicate work of restoring a man who has slipped aside. And who are they? The men who know best the hateful evil of flesh, as well as, what is of far deeper moment, the grace of God. These can therefore feel for souls ensnared and drawn away from the Lord. A carnal man knows God and himself so partially, that he is unfit for such work. He would err, either on the side of easy-going amiability, which would slip over sin, or in overwhelming harshness. The spiritual man, by grace, holds the balance even. He would condemn the wrong, but also meet the soul in restorative grace.

This distinction appears everywhere. Among believers, who does not know some spiritual, with not a few carnal? As believers, they are no longer natural, but they are not therefore necessarily spiritual. Not that they have not the Spirit, but that they do not walk or judge in the Spirit. The possession of the Spirit does not necessarily make a man spiritual. The Corinthian saints clearly had the Spirit, but there was unjudged activity of the flesh in many. There is a shade of difference between the word (and the sense, I also think) in Romans 7, compared with 1 Corinthians 3: 8, which calls little for notice now. It is only one letter, and; the Auth. Version (though not always) translates both as "carnal." Do not suppose that we are going into critical points now; but it surely is of interest and importance to apprehend the difference between being born of the Spirit, and having the Holy Ghost dwelling in me. A man may be born of the Spirit, and yet may require to have the Holy Ghost given to him. Now the word in Romans 7 does not decide that the Spirit dwells there, the word in 1 Corinthians does admit of it. However this may be, we may now turn to the fundamental Christian truth of present deliverance.

In Romans 7 a struggle is described, and fully argued out; but this conflict supposes life. While a man is dead in trespasses and sins, there is no such conflict. Mark the language of this soul. He has a hatred of evil, and yet falls into it; he loves what is good, and yet fails in doing it. It is a state, not of natural wickedness, but of spiritual powerlessness. At Corinth the fleshly activity of the intellect overruled the mind of the Spirit in too many saints. Here it was a dead weight of evil within, that always dragged him down when he wanted to do the will of God. He is like a person in a quagmire, not drowned, but sunk deeply, and struggling; yet as soon as he gets one leg out, the other is more deeply in. And so his state is most miserable. This increases, though with growing discernment of himself, until he rests in Christ. It is not a man who has not seen Christ, but one who, looking to Him, thought it was enough for all need, and never expected as a believer to find evil continually within him. He wakes up at length to the humbling fact that there is this constant inward evil ever seeking to break out, and that having the blood of Jesus for his forgiveness does not fully deal with the case. It is a question, not of pardon only, but of deliverance. "O wretched man that I am I who shall deliver me?" He has life, and the law has probed him as born of God, and killed him in conscience. It is far from true that he is dead in trespasses and sins; but an awakened conscience has given the law killing power, and he is slain in the conviction of sin, which he had not been; if an unconverted man. The unconverted soul knows nothing of this inward exercise and trouble. Here I am obliged to part from my Arminian friends, who generally regard this latter part of Romans 7 as a description of the natural man. "I am carnal," says the apostle, not natural. They are wrong.

The truth is, that the effect of sin is far deeper than even Christians suppose. Life and forgiveness are not all that is wanted. Both are given in the gospel: but besides there is present deliverance. And this deliverance comes after there has been practical proof, not merely that we are sinners, but that we are without strength, which is a deeper thing. Here the soul is brought to the pass: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" He looks out of himself, there was the turning-point. He had looked to the Lord to find life and forgiveness; but when he had Christ he thought. "Surely I shall be able to go on now, happily glorifying the Lord." He discovers his weakness, he struggles and strives, but finds it out more and more. At last he looks about himself, and not his past sins only, to Christ risen after the flesh was fully judged in the cross; and this is the consequence, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."* (Ver. 1.)

* The vulgarly received text adds a clause to the Greek which is rejected by the Sinaitic, Vatican, Rescript of Paris, and other MSS, the Coptic and Aethiopic versions, and some of the best Greek and Latin commentators. It is easy to account for the supplement from verse 4, where it is appropriate and certain; but here it confounds practice with standing. Even so the A.V. is a mistranslation. as one may show presently.

The first part here stated of this deliverance is, that grace puts us in a new place or standing, in which there can be nothing against us. At once we see the contrast with Adam. It was not merely that the first man fell, and that his children were sinners, but the very nature and place involving them in condemnation. In contrast, then, with fallen Adam stamping the fall on all his family, there is another or "second Man" and "last Adam." What is His position? Risen and in glory, after having died not for sins only but to sin, and both for us, that grace might through Him reign through righteousness to eternal life. The apostle does not pursue all the consequences here, but particularly presses this, that Christ is dead and risen. He is not merely an expiatory sacrifice, but a dead and risen Saviour. And thus He is applied to the condition of the man who believes in Him. Nothing so frees from claim as death. Have there been debts? Death cancels them. Claims? Death comes in, and dissolves their force. Do I deny, then, the responsibility of the Christian? The very reverse. But his responsibility is not that of a man naturally, which comes to an end in death (not his own, but Christ's, and the believer's with Him); and where man ends, the Christian begins. The Christian, therefore, is baptized to Christ's death. It is thus a dead and risen Christ that characterises Christianity. A living Christ was what the Jew wanted. They would have liked a mighty Messiah born in the world to lead them on to victory and supremacy. And this is very much what many Christians think and crave after. But it is not Christianity, which is founded on the death of Christ and closes the old man; and He is risen, which brings in the new creation for faith.

Therefore it is that the Christian now is not merely forgiven, but identified with Christ who died; and the consequence is that he is dead to sin. Such is the argument of the apostle in Romans 6. The Christian is likewise dead to the law. I know there are those who tell you that the law is dead,* but they are quite wrong. The law, far from dead, is a living and killing power; and you must therefore pronounce death, not upon the law, but upon yourself. (See Gal. 2) God gives the believer in Christ to take the place of being dead, both to sin and to law: but is this all? Surely not; it is only negative. No, he is in Christ Jesus, the One risen from the dead. The Christ that the believer possesses is One who, after His death not only for our sins but for sin itself, passed into resurrection life, and that, too, as a life-giving Spirit. Who receives this life? The Christian. As a believer in Christ, and submitting to God's righteousness, he has received new life and the Spirit, and consequently his position is in Christ Jesus. Therefore he partakes of all that Christ is, as risen. All His blessedness — not speaking of Him as a divine person, the eternal Son of God, but as Man risen from the dead — now attaches to every believer in Him. And for this reason it is that the apostle says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." You might as well talk of condemning Christ as of condemning the Christian. Since Adam's fall, the curse rested on him and on all his seed. So now, since His death and resurrection, the favour of God rests just as thoroughly on Christ and all who are His. For in point of fact they are in Christ as men naturally are said to be in Adam. No doubt it is a mystical way of speaking, but it is a true thing. The expression is a figure, but the fact is certain. Are the effects of connection with Christ less real than of connection with Adam?

* The sole apparent authority for it is Beza's daring conjecture of ἀποθανότος, followed by the A.V. but corrected in the margin of Romans 7: 6.

What a blighting thing is the unbelief that despises and distorts, or destroys, the force of such deep realities! Do you say they are not facts? Are the only facts things that you can see and feel? Are you a positivist? Is there nothing real but sin and misery? Is God nothing? or are you as unbelieving, or worse, than a Jew or a heathen? Is not Christ as real as Adam? I admit the reality of sin. Alas, we know it too well! We know it even as natural men, and we felt it even when we were carnal — if indeed we are spiritual now. Let us search and see how far our souls have passed out of human thoughts, for this is carnality in a Christian. The Corinthians were in that state; they allowed the thoughts of men to sway them. We are called, on the contrary, to enter into the revealed truth of God. We are said to "have the mind of Christ." The Corinthians, as all Christians, had the title to this, but did not make it good; they had the ground, capacity, and even power; but they did not use what they had, through value for the world's wisdom — surely an important distinction, and a common danger.

Here, then, is the first clearing of the Christian position. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." It is not merely no condemnation for this or that — for particular acts or things — but no condemnation whatever; it is absolute. Were there no faults or blemishes? Too many and grave; but for what did Christ die? And Christ is risen, and there is no condemnation. Are you still afraid to rest in Him? Better not be distrustful of Him or the word of God; far better to believe it, and be afraid of ourselves. This is both wiser and humbler. I know there are many who read the word of God, and hesitate to accept the clear and absolute language of scripture. But we ought, in this respect at least, to be calm and confident. Remember that I am not now resting on an isolated bit of scripture, though a single text is stabler than heaven and earth; I refer to what is the very back-bone and substance of this epistle. I am not pressing you with a mere fragment of scripture. torn out of its mace and context. I leave that to others; and there are plenty who preach thus on scraps. Beyond controversy, the apostle is showing that believers have an entirely new position in the dead and risen Christ. They are as truly partakers of the acceptance in which He stands risen from the dead, as men naturally inherit the condemnation of the first man. No condemnation can any longer touch His person who secures the Christian. We are in Christ.

The apostle gives two conclusive reasons for this. "For," says he, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

Before saying more, perhaps one ought to explain why the last clause of the first verse is quite ignored. Here it is not scripture. The same clause is scripture in the fourth verse, but not in the first. It is as perfect and divine in the one case, as it is wrong and human in the other. But the monastic scribes who copied for us the writings of the apostle seemed to have thought the first verse as it stood meagre, and rather dangerous too, and so did their best to improve and guard it by additions. Was not this rationalistic, Rationalism does not mean conscience judging what is wrong, but man presuming to judge where he should believe and learn of God. Any attempt to mend the scriptures is about as bold and bad rationalism as can be. You may find it in a monk just as much as in a monkey-loving professor. No doubt the monks included many a rationalist of the middle ages; I leave you to judge who are such now. In the first verse there cannot be a question that the words referred to are a mere human accretion. Ask any one entitled to speak: Mill, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf or Tregelles, will tell you that the clause is an interpolation. They rejected it, not because all, or any of them, liked the truth resulting from the true text, but because they were honest men, and competent scholars, who stuck to the best witnesses. In the Catholic Greek Testaments of Munich, 1847, and of Dublin, 1860, you will find the same thing; the clause is omitted, and quite correctly, spite of the Vulgate. So also Bishop Wordsworth and Dean Alford, in their editions of the Greek New Testament, omit it.

Do not mind what people say about "peculiar views." For that is just what I eschew, at least as much as they. I want to help souls more fully into the truth, which surely ought not to be "peculiar." I call human views, old tradition or modern speculation, peculiar, if not wicked too. But I do not call it peculiar, and I hope you do not, to adhere uncompromisingly to the words of the Holy Spirit, and to seek the genuine, simple, and sure sense of God's word. The true form of the verse, then, is, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." The apostle so speaks without the smallest qualification. If you add, "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," and if you translate it more correctly as not "who" but "if," "when," or "because they walk not," etc., you bring in another idea — walking in the Spirit, not standing. It would amount then to this: that there is no condemnation to them since they walk in holiness. But this were to mix up the walk with the position, the effect of which is that you can never be sure of your position. All is plunged in uncertainty. Place in Christ and walk in the Spirit are two distinct things. I do not know what a man's position is by looking at his walk, for he may often shift and move. The walk is surely of the utmost importance. But the first verse of the chapter speaks only of position, and if you bring in walk there, the position is unsettled, and the truth is spoiled.

When you speak of walk, you bring in Christian responsibility (which I entirely admit); but if the apostle is teaching "no condemnation," how can our conduct, our desert, our possible faults be introduced? Do not faults deserve to be censured? Whose walk is such as to claim "no condemnation?" If the walk is mixed up in the question, it is impossible for one ever to know it. The word is thus made void, the apostolic comfort is also nullified, and people get into a religion of doubt, in consequence of this confusion. They find themselves on a quicksand instead of a rock, and miscall it Christianity, whereas it is so far a mere consecration of naturalism. The object of the verse is to show the firm ground on which God has placed His children.

Surely there is a walk that suits those that are in that position, and scripture furnishes abundant instruction as to it. But the first need is to know that I am placed by the grace of God where no condemnation can reach us. This gives solid peace, and becomes the means of power to the believer. Do we want to know the ground of it? The answer follows: "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Mark the precision of the language. It is "the law of the Spirit of life," meaning that fixed principle. Let others boast about the law of Moses; the apostle says, this is the law for me, a Christian. Has Moses delivered you? He could only condemn: "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." But here is the proper starting-point of the Christian — the soul set free. It is a place of deliverance that nobody ever had till Christ died and rose again. And it is a remarkable fact that our Lord acted on this truth on the very day He rose from the dead. He never did so, before, coming into the midst of His disciples, He breathed on them the breath of His own resurrection-life. His own people were plunged into the deepest distress by His death on the tree; but He imparted to them life more abundantly than before His death. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." While He was here, He was no doubt the life of the believer; but risen from the dead, He gave life more abundantly.

It is familiarly known that some apply His inbreathing as if it meant inspiring the disciples to write the scriptures, as others take it to be power to work miracles, and so forth. The truth however is that it means neither one nor other, nor anything but what is said here: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Therefore it was that He said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted," etc. They were to go forth, as in Christ, in the power of the Spirit. They were to take Christ's place in this world; dead to law and sin, and alive from, yet among, the dead. The world outside is the place of death, not of life. The believer owns this, but thanks God that there are some living among  the dead. And whence comes this life? From Christ risen — the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It was not a life breathed into any before He rose from the grave. If it had been before the cross, it would never suit a sinner to receive it, any more than God to give it; nor could it be a guarantee of deliverance. But when the Lord Jesus went down into the fight, the rule of that war was, that those who tarried with the stuff should share just as much in the spoils as He that went down to battle. Such was the law of David; and it is the way of a greater than David. He alone fought the fight; but we reap the full fruits of His victory. Grace has set me in this position, so that sin and death are no longer a law to me.

Sin is not a law, because I am no longer sold under and in bondage to sin; I am inexcusable if I do sin. There is no such necessity if I come under grace. If I fail in prayer and vigilance, I am sure to sin; but I ought never to be unwatchful, and so never to sin. No Christian should deny this. A Christian may sin, and a Christian does, if he is not walking in dependence on God. He is only kept so long as his life is practically one of faith. "The life that I now live in the flesh," says the apostle, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." Where one walks in the Spirit, the believer does not sin.

Sin, then, is not a law to the Christian, but what about death? Must not we all die? This is exactly what unbelief says — that we must all die. "Surely," some untaught soul cries, "you have not the face to say that we are not all to die." Men are so appointed, but not Christians. We shall not all sleep, but all be changed: I believe because God says it. "We shall not all sleep." The moment Christ comes in bodily presence, not a Christian falls asleep; on the contrary, those asleep arise. We are changed without dying. I say therefore that death is not a law to the Christian. He is not doomed to die like a man naturally. It is quite true that death is the common portion of humanity, as such, but not of God's children. "It is appointed unto men once to die. But, as said before, a Christian is not a mere man. He is already delivered, taken out of the lot of sin and death in which all mankind are naturally. We enter in Christ a supernatural state. Do you shrink from the supernatural? If you believe in Christ, the Son of God, you must accept its fulness, for surely He is so. And on all who are His He imprints His own incomparable blessedness, as He is their life and righteousness. I quite admit that we may die, just as we may sin. But I deny that either the one or the other is a necessity for the Christian. When life in the Spirit was given, there was power against sin; and when Christ comes, death shall disappear for all that are His. It is the effect of life in Christ, the life-giving Spirit. When my soul sees Him, my soul gets life; when in my body I see Him, my body will be immortalised and transformed. Such is the Christian's portion, and he should enter by faith into the blessedness of Christ's triumph now. Consequently we are entitled to have peace, joy, power, and conscious victory now, and this righteously by the cross.

But along with it must be kept up the exercise of self-judgment; for if we are in Christ for no condemnation, Christ is in us for the continual detection of the flesh already condemned by God, that the walk should be truly in the Spirit. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, and the Spirit is life because of righteousness." As surely as Christ is ascended and the Holy Spirit now given, the two sides for the Christian are inseparable for privilege and responsibility. Even as our Lord said, "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you;" and what God has joined, let not man put asunder.

This deliverance has a great deal to do with a man's being spiritual. One may doubt that a person can be truly spiritual, in the scriptural sense of the word, before he is delivered. Not that a delivered man will necessarily always walk as such, because we are liable to be off our guard, and turn aside. What may not a Christian be dragged into when he forgets the Lord? But certainly the consciousness of deliverance by Christ's death and resurrection is a weapon of great power. Like Goliath's sword in David's hand, none is like it. Nevertheless, one needs dependence, as much after being delivered as before.

Could God condemn the life that is in Christ? But this is the life the Christian has. Do you suppose Christ's grace shown in that act was limited to those who lived then? "Because I live, ye shall live also." Was this true of the disciples alone? It was a sample of what He has done for and gives to every Christian. I speak not of walk, but of what is at the bottom of it, when I say it is life in Christ. In Adam I have the natural life, which is alas! depraved, proud or vain, wilful and selfish. And where do I get the life that hates these and all evils alike? From faith in Christ. It is no credit to the receiver. It is all and solely of the grace that was in our Lord Jesus. The risen Saviour has a family instinct with the same life that was and is in Himself. And the life is that of One risen from the dead after all judgment was undergone. This last is the point the apostle adverts to next. "For, what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh." (Ver. 3.) God has already executed sentence of condemnation, not on us (else we should be lost for ever), but on Christ.

The cross of Christ was not merely blood-shedding as the final answer to the various sacrifices; the explanation, after long waiting, of why it was that God attached such importance to the offering of a bullock, a lamb, or a goat. Surely it was not with slain beasts that God was occupied. He was giving sensible signs of the One sacrifice — presentiments of His Son that was coming. He was setting plainly and distinctly before the eyes of a dull people that One who was to shed His blood for the sins of men.

But more than this: that One was to bear the judgment. There are two things appointed of God to men because of sin — death and judgment. Christ bore judgment as well as death; and the consequence is that the believer now receives a double blessing. Not merely has he life, in contrast with death, and pardon through that blood shed for the remission of the sins of many, but also deliverance in Him risen, and no condemnation, through the condemnation having fallen wholly on Christ. This the law could not do. It could condemn the sinner, and nothing else, because it was a good law. If it had been bad, it might have let off bad men. The law was therefore powerless to deliver; it condemned, and could only condemn, the guilty. Had this been all, we were hopelessly lost. But sinners were the very people that God intended to save by grace. In Christ He would save sinners, but condemn sin. The law could not deal with sin apart from the sinner. It dealt with a sinful man for his sins, and the end could only be death for him. But it could not execute judgment on the nature, any more than extricate the man himself. Whereas "God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin [that is, as a sin-offering] condemned sin in the flesh." The Son was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in sinful flesh; else He must have suffered for Himself, and could be no unblemished victim for others. It was not in the likeness of flesh, but really in flesh, He came.

How guarded is scripture! How much better than any formula, even the so-called Athanasian! What a meagre effort at symbol is the vulgarly styled Apostles' Creed! No wonder Whiston and other Arians could admire and use it. But the word of God is divine light to deal with man's heart and conscience.

Look, then, at the truth of Christ as presented here. God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin. He was the Holy One, and yet became a man  - as truly man as He was God. He, ever Son of God, came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was born of a sinful mother, so that none could have known, except by the revelation of God, that there was not the same state of humanity in Him as in her. It was a revelation, distinct and positive, that He was the Son of God incarnate, not the son of a human father. He was the Son of God and the Son of man as born of Mary, but certainly not Joseph's son, save legally. The Gospels,. though some with more particularity, affirm distinctly, making it blasphemy to deny it, that He was Son of God in the supreme sense.

That Blessed One came "in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin." Mark this last, for it means as a sin-offering. "For sin" is its technical expression in both Old and New Testaments. It was to deal with "sin," not merely sins, that Christ was sent; to meet and remove that dead weight which, in Romans 7, the believer discovered; to have the root, as well as fruit, wholly disposed of. The burden of all fell on Christ. Sin in the flesh God condemned in His cross. It is not pardon that is wanted for an evil nature, but condemnation. Pardon for sins one does want, but condemnation, unqualified judgment, of the nature that produced them. And in order that you or I should be saved, that condemnation must fall, not on us, but on the Saviour. This is exactly what God has done. The condemnation of sin in the flesh, and by an offering for sin, fell on the only One who had no sin in Him. If there had been sin in Him (I say not done by Him), then condemnation must have fallen on Him for Himself. Such a falsification of His person was the peculiar and fatal error of Irvingism. In that system, in order to make the Lord Jesus sympathise with us as much as possible, He was made to have fallen humanity. It was taught that He had taken into union with the divine nature, not merely human nature, which is true, but fallen and peccable, which is a ruinous lie. If it had been so, Christ could not have suffered for us, but for Himself. But being the Holy One of God, the only One in whom was no sin, He could suffer, not only for sins, but for sin. Consequently, in executing judgment on Him crucified, God condemned sin in the flesh.

And what was the moral end of it, as here shown us by the apostle? "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who* walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Ver. 4.) Here comes in the walk of the Christian in its proper order and only true place. When the Christian's standing by grace in Christ is a settled fact, when consciously delivered with a new life by the Spirit, when he knows his nature judged in the cross, then his walk according to the Spirit follows. And do you not know how, when you are not happy and free, everything goes wrong? You are tried with this and that, vexed with circumstances and with other people, and, most of all, if you told all out, with yourself. Such is the condition of the soul in Romans 7.

* The reader of the Greek Testament will observe that the true text of verse 4 differs from the spurious clause of verse 1. It is not the anarthrous περιπατοῦσιν, which would import a condition ("if walking"), but τοῖς π., which means the fact or character — "those that walk." The dominion of sin is broken.

But now see here the efficacious excellence of what God has wrought and gives in Christ. Not only are sins forgiven, but the evil of flesh is already dealt with in His death. So that one has not to wait for one's own death for deliverance. To faith the believer died with Christ, is alive in Him to God, and is therefore entitled to be no longer a self-tormentor because of the total ruin and corruption within. The old man is as surely condemned in the cross, as the sins of the believer are washed away by the blood of Christ. He submits to the humbling certainty that the nature is hopelessly evil but accepts the blessed truth that it has been already condemned by God in Christ's death. No part of scripture, no rite of Judaism, ever taught that man's nature gets better; Christianity sets forth, even in baptism, that it is judged and set aside for ever in Christ. It is only the fond fancy of a Brahminist, or of others hardly less dark in principle — this notion of improving the flesh. It is the religion of human nature all over the world. But any effort to deliver myself, as it begins, so can end, only in a religious imagination. It is by righteousness and in Christ, not by power, that victory comes over self. To trust oneself is not to be delivered, but only deluded. Whereas, in the sense of total weakness, and ruin, and evil, to rest on Christ dead and risen, is to find myself in Christ, and "no condemnation" my portion.

But we do well to mark the ground of "no condemnation." First, God has given me a perfectly new life, the life of Christ risen from the dead; and this He cannot surely condemn. The life of Christ is the Christian's life, to which no condemnation can attach. But what about my old and evil nature? God has already dealt with it, having executed sentence of death on it in the cross of Christ. Thus God gives the believer a new life, which cannot be condemned, having condemned the old man, out and out, in Christ's death. Therefore now no condemnation falls on those that are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8: 1-4 is the truth for the soul to seize, a spring of confidence for going on with God; Romans 7: 7-23 looks back at a wholesome, but painful, discipline, a transition state, during which the soul, desiring what is good, because converted, learnt its utter powerlessness, because it was under law, and did not yet submit to the sentence of death. Now it bows experimentally, and sees itself by faith delivered according to the import of Christ's death in His resurrection. Thenceforth all is clear as to present as well as past, as to what you are, no less than as to what you have done; and this, not at all because of what you were or are, but on account of Christ, whose death settled all questions for you, and in whom you now live — alive from the dead to God.

Hence the righteousness of the law, instead of being a claim against you, and so condemning you, is now fulfilled in you, which is more intimate than by you. Knowing God thus, you cannot but love Him; and, loving Him, you love your neighbour also, and even your enemy. By the grace of God you are able to rise above the evil to which you once succumbed. If the believer loves God and his neighbour, is not the righteousness of the law fulfilled in him? I do not admit such a thing as a Christian, in whom the righteousness of the law is not fulfilled. The grace of God has wrought this immense change. The vain or proud man, who made himself his centre, but now a believer, and in Christ, has his heart drawn out in true love to God and in love to his neighbour. And no wonder, when one is by grace so blessed! There is nothing that tends to practical holiness so much as being, not pardoned only, but made perfectly happy by and in divine love. One does not become holy first, and then happy, but if he is made happy, practical holiness follows. I speak now of what is wrought by God and His grace in the believer. But Christ is all — not only He dying for us, but we living in Him risen.

Thus, as we see, this subject has its practical side. Grace has wrought in Christ for us "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." It is carefully added afterwards, that, though one be delivered, he may not always walk in the Spirit. He may yield to the flesh, and prove its bitter consequences. Who knows sorrow so humbling as that of the unfaithful Christian? His is not the same wretchedness as that of Romans 7 but of a still deeper kind. What anguish, after such mercy and grace, after knowing such a God, to have forgotten and dishonoured Him, grieved the Holy Spirit of God, and brought shame on the name of such a Saviour! How exceeding sinful does sin then appear in one's eyes, and what self-reproach for having yielded to it! Chapter 7 describes the exercises of one quickened, but not delivered; in chapter viii. ho is delivered, and consequently knows far deeper affections, normally in good, but it may be as to evil, if he sin.

There is thus and thenceforward the constant necessity of discerning between flesh and Spirit. The flesh is the old stock, but there is a new graft inserted. The old stock was nothing but a crab-tree, which, no matter how cultivated, would only bring forth crabs. Its nature is not changed, but a good tree is grafted into it. Still, if the old stock is allowed to bear at all, its fruit is, and must be, bad. The point, then, is not to tolerate the least sprout of the old stock. Cultivate the new graft, and let it bear freely, but do not spare a single bud of the crab. This is just what we have to do with the old man — the flesh. Walk after the Spirit, and not after the flesh. They are contrary to each other, that ye may not do the things ye would, says Galatians 5.

* It is ἵνα, not ὅπως, and the sense "in order that," etc., just the contrary of the A.V., which confounds the case with Romans 7 and might act as an Antinomian excuse for sins.

And this principle is practically carried out by applying the blessed truth, that I am entitled to reckon myself dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ. It is a part of what grace teaches, and enables me to hold fast, being, we have seen, involved in the declaration of baptism. Otherwise what means it? Is it merely the application of the blood of Christ that makes a Christian? Did not Christ come by water and blood? We are baptized in water, not in blood. We needed not only His death for us, but ours with Him. Faith in His blood gives remission of sins; while His death writes God's sentence on the flesh, treating it as a thing done with to faith. But Christ is risen, and we are in Him accepted according to His acceptance. Is this what men present or believe? Is Christianity short of it? Is not Christendom as a whole? and even most of the real Christians in it? Can one wonder that where deliverance is ignored, everything else is lowered, and even more or less falsified — experience and hope, walk and worship?

W. K.

The New Development 1890

W. Kelly.

Urged from all sides to say a little on this painful question, I hesitate not to speak plainly. Had it been dealt with in the Spirit and not without righteous indignation, when it first oozed out, it might as it ought to have been judged and repudiated. But seeing that souls are everywhere perplexed and grieved by the long tampering and diligent debates of partisans, and even by the palliation of some who were at first as shocked as any; and yet more, now that a world-wide separation ensues of those who refuse a lie of the enemy, it is charity to speak out the truth for the Lord's sake and His own. One can sympathise with unwillingness at first to suspect ill, especially as the language (from whatever motive) was obscure, and many a reader wholly ignorant of oral statements less guarded which helped to disclose a system of error underneath. Indeed one of the unhappy moral features of the case, which soon appeared even to those not directly conversant, was the dropping of offensive clauses without the least acknowledgement of error, any more than adequate grief felt and expressed.

To a Christian nothing is so near the heart as Christ, nothing so offensive and evil as His dishonour. Where then are those whose speculations led them to say in substance, whatever the variation of phrase, "Fancy a helpless babe an expression of eternal life?" The unbelief and the irreverence of such a speech seem to have been by no means confined to one; but it was laid, not without ground at the door of perhaps the boldest in the new school. The coolness with which he denied the imputation made one tremble for the zealous brother, who characterised the affront to our Lord as it deserved. But it comes out long after, without confession or apparently intention but by the evident hand of God, that the actual words were "Think of a helpless infant being the exhibition of eternal life."

Now the former report (avowedly hearsay) imputes pretty much what in fact was written. Yet the writer, when appealed to, said he was satisfied he never used these words! Was this Christian candour? or even common honesty? But so it is ever: the truth of Christ lost for one who bears His name is the loss of truthfulness. Nor this only: the brother who resented the reported dishonour of Christ was challenged to produce the letter containing it, in the very place where the letter was, and was known to be unless destroyed! Now what can one think of concealing it deliberately, not only to shield the evildoer, but to subject the brother jealous for the glory of Christ to the charge of unrighteousness, and to threats of more or less discipline? Shame on such as conspired in the Name against that Name! If honest once, to what have error and party spirit and a bad conscience degraded them? Is this the holiness of God's house? It is not Greenwich only: the same fellowship was at work to the same ends at Ealing, and in how many other spots we know not. It is Christ flouted by all such, with moral wrong flowing directly from it as flagrant as the doctrinal error, leaven in both ways.

Did Park Street then stand for Christ? It has been forward, in the face of the most solemn protests from without as well as within, not only to excuse or explain away, but to accept as its own what has drawn out the holy abhorrence and gravest warning of many choice servants of God (one may say perhaps) all over the world no less than in Great Britain. After indulging throughout London and elsewhere in grievous discussions about the person of the Incarnate Word, utterly inconsistent with faith in or at least true reverence for His inscrutable glory, they are not ashamed to turn round and claim credit for charging those already compromised to beware of this unworthy prying and profound disrespect. Alas! the worst mischief is done, and by none outside Greenwich and Ealing more decidedly than by Park Street, so as to influence similarly all it can in town and country. No scruple hitherto where the unhallowed analysis of the Holy One could win light and daring spirits. As this was known to repel the pious and godly, souls are now gravely dissuaded from it! It is high time indeed, after so long and incessant and rude handling, but rather strong that it should be by the same guides. Is there then repentance at last? Sad to say, each step seems but a turn for party and a fear of further losses; whilst some appear grieved and ashamed, who if truly so, will allow of no excuses or shams.

It is no mere fault of expression, however serious. The life, the service, and the testimony of Christ are no more spared than His infancy. It is His Person that has been so wantonly divided. Will it be believed by sober saints that Jesus at the well of Sychar was denied to be the manifestation of eternal life? It was said "that eternal life never wept," "never eat nor drank," nor "commended His mother to the care of His loved disciple," etc., etc.

Let us weigh these flippancies in the light of the scriptures referred to.

The total absence of spirituality and holy intelligence is apparent in thus treating the Lord at Sychar. It is as a whole the most striking opening out of the new thing thus far in the Gospel of John. Hence His Person shines in it peculiarly to all save the blind. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and Who it is that saith to thee, Give Me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water," not eternal life as in the chapter before, but the Spirit as its power, a fountain of water within, springing up into eternal life. But this school, bent on self-justification, will say that they do not deny He expressed eternal life in some things He said to the Samaritan; they only exclude it from His sitting wearied with His journey at the spring, and saying, Give me to drink! Thus they take the line, not of open infidels, but of the rationalistic sceptics who allow Divine inspiration in the theological element, but can see only what is human expressed in history of facts, etc. Now, if we scout such dishonour on the unity of holy scripture, how much should saints resent this base and perilous handling of our Lord. Undoubtedly there was infinite grace in stooping so low as to ask the woman (and such a woman!) for a drink of water in His thirst and weariness; but oh! the infatuation that severs from that act and those words the Son of God thus expressing the Father and seeking a worshipper in spirit and truth, even in one so untoward and far off.

Again, kindred blasphemy (for another person figures) lays its defiling hands on that most touching scene, the Creator a Man, weeping at the grave of Lazarus, just after uttering the words "I am the Resurrection and the Life," and about to express Himself in the deed of raising the dead and buried man. It was a scene, as even the Holy Spirit says, for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Yes, it is our solace and joy and thanksgiving that the Saviour Son of God did shed tears; but what were these not with His sighs and groans to God! They were not the expression of eternal life, says this unworthy school. Ah! let them weep over their sin, and hate themselves for putting the Son of God to shame, where trueness of heart would have been the more at His feet. God forbid that any should think their purpose was to dishonour the Saviour any more than E. Irving so meant. But they have been so inflated that they have blindly fallen into the fault of the devil. And where are they that allow unity, or the fear of division, to quench their hatred of this evil? or even to apologise for it, as three or four Irish brothers have done, to say nothing of English partisans? Yet I give them credit for better feelings in their hearts, or privately expressed. But how then their printed essays to defend what is indefensible? Was this in the faith and love and honour of Christ?

Alas! even now, we have not done with all the vileness of some in their eagerness to push their "high truth." For they have dared to say (what one shrinks from repeating even to refute its shallow irreverence) that "eternal life never eat nor drank." Let those guilty of what is either silliness or the grossest carnal licence with the Son of God read their own censure Luke 24: 42, 43, Acts 10: 41. Our Lord partook of food expressly in the risen state, where He was manifested as the Eternal Life even as to the body, the Firstborn from the dead "exhibited" in that final and blessed condition which is according to God's everlasting counsels. Yet this libel on Christ is said to have come first of all from a chief man who is not known to have repented in dust and ashes.

Need one recall the reality of Jesus from the cross entrusting to John His bereaved mother? For here too the new school pursues its heartless way. We know that some of them have taught, and taught falsely for many years, death to nature. Does that unjudged error induce them now to think and speak so slightingly of His perfection? of His filial feeling, and of His confidence in the beloved disciple? How can they overlook in that very same action His infinite superiority to all the circumstances which would have absorbed and governed all others but Himself? Avaunt, spirit of error: no longer darken God's children. Let them learn what they ought to have known, and to have ever held fast, that Jesus is never more manifestly God than when He shows Himself the perfect man. Distinguish, if you can, rightly; but dare not split asunder that holy and indissoluble union. These evil speculations tend to divide His person recklessly.

But another of these errors it is well to expose for the sake of the weak. It is alleged that John, among the Gospels the great witness of eternal life, does not give the Lord's birth or early days. In vain the argument. Mark does not any more, though each for reasons wholly different from the insinuation. But the fact is that of all the Evangelists none makes so much of the Incarnation as John, and so in the First Epistle too. This we see in John 1: 14 ("The Word was made flesh, etc."), in the Sent One often, above all in John 4: 33-51, Luke gives the wondrous birth fully as a fact.

Indeed the theory traverses the truth of both Old Testament and New. For nothing is laid more deeply in the structure of both than the jealousy of the Holy Ghost, when treating of His Deity to bring in His humanity, when treating of His sufferings to introduce unmistakably His divine glory (see Psalm 45: 6, 7; Psalm 102: 23-27; Isaiah 9: 6; Isaiah 50: 3, 4; Zechariah 13: 7). Of the New Testament something has been said already. But it may be added here that, although Matthew has it for his allotted province from God to present Jesus as the Messiah, the utmost care is taken from the first chapter to show that God's Anointed (whatever fallen Jews might dream) was God, Emmanuel, yea Jehovah. Mark, again, though presenting Jesus in His service, was led to give us the healing of the leper ere chapter 1 concludes: "I will; be thou clean." Now, Who could say "I will," if He was not "I am?" And the Man who was the true God was also the Eternal Life: in Him they are together inseparably. The reasoning from the absence of any description of His birth in John is good for nothing save to deceive oneself, and to mislead the unwary.

On the same principle eternal life, or rather the exhibition of that life, must be eliminated both from Christ's birth and from His death! Where then is His person? Where is His work? It is only made manifest for the first time as such to human eyes in resurrection! as a northern victim of this heterodoxy has the hardihood to affirm. It is a grief to answer that these are not "the teachings of wisdom" but the depths of Satan. Indeed it would be difficult to show where there is a brighter manifestation of Eternal Life than in the birth of God's Son if it be not in His death and resurrection. Before that the life was in the Divine Word, but it was not manifested till He partook of blood and flesh. Then and there according to 1 John 1 the manifestation was made And manifestation to chosen witnesses is added, in order to authenticate the truth to others. But even the apostles, how far did they spiritually discern till He died and rose and ascended, and the Holy Spirit was given? As to all this there seems nothing but confusion through overlooking what is written and importing what is not. His very "emptying" and "humbling" Himself was the manifest witness of Eternal Life, as was His laying down His life to take it again. He and He only is or could be said to have "delivered up His spirit" as in John 19: 29.

In the destructive departure from truth we had to face more than forty years ago it would be hard to find any more insolently false, though one forbears to repeat what is still more outrageous because now "withdrawn," as was also done then. But "withdrawal" under pressure and with some shame cannot inspire confidence. One looks for sorrow, self-judgment, and even horror at thus pouring contempt on Christ's glory. Is the root yet reached? Which of them will affirm this? If not, it will assuredly spring up again, and worse than has yet appeared.

It is said that more than one have given utterance to these varied aspersions of Christ? This is exactly what proves the active working of the leaven, the energy of an evil spirit. They have a common source and character, and not so recently heard of. No one imputes to them the intention of wounding our Lord afresh; but what does it all mean? How did Satan gain such opportunity to do what he meant? He intended, and succeeded, in using them to Christ's personal dishonour.

Humanly it is a highly pretentious school, as fully confident of their own intelligence as scornful of others. The form the evil has taken is systematic slight of the Lord of glory, under the plea of asserting the dignity of eternal life. For the substantive and distinctive truth of Christianity evaporates for this school in their utterances. They have lost the constant objective fact of the Eternal Life manifested in Jesus, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us. They will have the manifestation or "exhibition" only occasional. This is in effect to give up and do away with the plainest scripture.

How refreshing to turn to the grand safeguard against the antichrists of the last time! "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we contemplated, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the Eternal Life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us)" (1 John 1: 1, 2) Observe that the Holy Spirit carefully begins with the infinite truth as it really is, an actually subsisting fact here below, before a single chosen witness had heard or seen. This is of the utmost importance; because it lays as a foundation the reality concerning the Word of Life in this world before John or any other apostle heard Him. Here is the foundation; not Adam, but Christ. It is the Word made flesh, the Person of Christ. His work comes in afterwards, vindicates God as to sin, lays the ground of reconciliation (though for this we have to hear the testimony of Paul), whether of things or of persons, and displays His righteousness toward all and upon all that believe. But the Person was there on earth in all moral and divine perfection, yet true man, to be attested (as was meet and as sovereign love willed) in the fullest and most familiar way. It was Jesus Christ come in the flesh.

It may be noticed too that in verse 1 "that which we have heard" precedes "that which we have seen." This cannot be said to be the order of the senses; and it strikes the more, both because we are just about to have minute witness in this kind detailed to us, and because the latter is the order followed in verse 3 ("that which we have seen and heard"). The reason I apprehend to be, that the Spirit would give the basis of divine authority as the starting-point, not their sight, but His words (and they were the words the Father had given Him) for them to hear. Thus was it hearing the Good Shepherd's voice and believing, as we read in the deeply interesting latter half of John 1. But then they did see, contemplate, and handle. This it is which the petty activity of man's mind would now sever from the manifestation of the Eternal Life, to the unutterable loss of those that allow it; what is such unbelief in the Father's eyes and in Christ's? What to Him Who is here to glorify Christ?

Again, it is to be remarked that in verse 2, where the manifestation of the life is asserted (and I trust that here at least there will be no sickening equivoque, but an unhesitating acknowledgement that "eternal" life is in question), the hearing of faith found in verse 1 is not stated, but simply "and we have seen and bear witness and report." No doubt there was good reason to speak only of the great personal and apostolic witnesses in the context. But there is no ground to limit ἐφανερώθη, as in fact it is stated even here absolutely. It is just what Incarnation covers. It applies to the Person of Christ right through His course on earth, and gives the flattest negative to the statement "that life was manifested by overcoming death." Had it been said defined in power by resurrection, there would have been truth. It is not "having suffered death, He appeared among His own;" nor does the Holy Ghost add in the first instance "manifested unto us." In the beginning of the verse He says and means only that the life was manifested; He adds at the end the manifestation "unto us" after the momentous clause that precedes, and before verse 3. It is not at all the mistake of confounding "appearing" with manifestation (though who really is guilty of it?): what strikes one is the shutting of the eyes to scripture, the missing and perversion of God's mind apparent in this dear brother's "Brief Account". He certainly is not the originator of the evil. Yet it is an awful proof of the havoc wrought by a theory not only unwarranted by God's word but directly antagonistic. And notoriously it was here as elsewhere put forth as new and higher truth, an advance on all; till the manifest errors made the defence necessary that it was the old truth (!) we were familiar with, notably in the writings of J.N.D. — a defence which is as unfounded as the previous boast.

It seems plain that "manifestation" is misunderstood by all who defend these speculations or deny their heterodoxy. They confound it with faith's apprehension and hence would restrict it to believers. Now its true force is simply that what existed but was hidden has come to view. Faith of course profits by it, and in some cases for testimony to others; but the manifestation is complete independently of its effects. This is true even where the object is expressed to whom the manifestation was made, as is certain from John 1: 31. For our Lord was manifested to Israel; yet they, His own, received Him not. God brought Him to light for the very people that refused Him.

So it is with the great standing fact of God's righteousness by faith of Jesus Christ. It has been and is manifested. Rom. 3: 21, 22 It is apart from law, and being God's, not man's, it is for all, though it only takes effect upon all those that believe.

"Who saw it" is not the question in manifestation but is implied in "appearing." Still less correct is the confusion which these misleaders make of "revelation" with "manifestation." Everyone, however, cannot be expected to understand delicate shades of expression like these. Only such utter ignorance is not of God's Spirit, especially when combined with great pretension and self-complacency. Manifestation may be absolute on God's part in Christ. Discerning is by faith and in the power of the Spirit in us. Still more distinct is my being able to say in truth of heart and ways, "for me to live is Christ.”

Note also that, whatever the different views of commentators old or new, nobody of weight among orthodox men denies that the preposition πρὸς is intended to indicate the distinction of the Persons. But it is quite a fallacy that this would make the Eternal Life all that the Son is, any more than that the Spirit is no more than the Comforter or Paraclete. This seems to be the favourite plea; but it quite fails. Christ is also once called Paraclete or Advocate, so that infrequency does not disprove or even render doubtful. Nor is it more personal than the Eternal Life in 1 John 1: 2, as to which some affect strange difficulty. There is difficulty where there is will.

Nor is it John only who is so distinct and full and peremptory on the Divine personality of our Lord, and the Eternal Life in Him which is bound up with it. Not only had the apostle Paul for his work to bring out the righteousness of God and His purpose and counsels in Christ, but none was more jealous of His intrinsic glory, none more unsparing of those that lowered His honour. I am not prepared to accept the late Dean Burgon's decision on the disputed reading of the received text in 1 Tim. 3: 16. But, even if that preferred by most stand, how bright is the witness to Christ! "He Who was manifested in flesh." His Deity is pre-supposed, if not asserted; and what can be stronger than that? No mere man could with propriety be described as manifested in flesh. To be a man is necessarily to be so born, or made like Adam. But a Divine Person is not so conditioned. The Son might, if He pleased, have been manifested in angelic guise or otherwise. In love, and to accomplish redemption, He became man, He was manifested in flesh; but He Who was thus manifested was God, even if here it be only implied and not expressed. And He Who was manifested was manifested in flesh: so it is written absolutely. He, in love beyond all thought of man, deigned to become incarnate. Before Incarnation He was not manifested thus. And if He the true God was manifested in flesh, assuredly eternal life also. For scripture binds the two together in His Person, and in the most unrestricted way. It is true that in resurrection He was seen and heard, touched and handled; but he who so reads 1 John 1: 1, 2, misinterprets God's word and risks the subversion of foundation truth to sustain his heresy.

Not that there is the smallest ground to think that the Greenwich doctrine was meant to oppose Mr. Darby's writings. On the contrary, the tracts or letters which have issued thence are a manifest cento of Mr. Darby's words. But the Spirit of truth characterises the one, as that of error distinguishes the other. It would be difficult to match these papers in the absence of unction, simplicity, reverence, and edification. Cold and lifeless, they abound in errors on the most fundamental truths, while pretending in a degree most unusual, to minute accuracy. The very broaching of such and so strong statements on the nicest and highest matters of Divine revelation was highly unwise and presumptuous. The strange doctrine at Witney, subsequently modified and dropped, ought to have been a danger-signal to himself and his friends. But what has been disseminated, in papers written and even printed pieces, proves that the evil spirit is in no way exorcised by prayer and fasting, but that there is a root of deep and systematic evil, which (every now and then, and all over the land in persons who may have no direct communication) breaks out in profanity, even as to Christ Himself. It is idle to imagine that this open antagonism (all the worse because unconscious and of course unintentional) to Christ's glory has no source in error and falsehood. It appears plainly to spring from unhallowed speculation as to eternal life, the more confidently followed up because the faith of these men, assuming to be and accepted as intelligent teachers of the first water, has been founded on J.N.D. (what horror this would have been to him!), not on a Spirit-taught subjection to God's word.

And it is quite a dream that one is safe as to the doctrine of Christ, if kept from speculating on the union of the Deity and the humanity, like Nestorius and Eutyches of old, or before them like Apollinaris, friend though he was of Athanasius. A prophetic theory drew its devotee into anti-christian error, without any direct assault on the truth of the Person; for it was rather an overthrow of Christ's true relation to God. In that which now troubles saints of God, the error is nearer still, quite as subtle, and no less real, as is now evidenced by the slights, according to common report, put so widely on our Lord, mainly, if not altogether, flowing from the mist and malaria of the novel system as to eternal life.

An effort has been made by more than one to relieve the heterodoxy, and indeed to place the seceding protesters in the wrong, by extracts from Mr. D's Synopsis on Joshua 3, especially in its latest edition. Now the distinction of pilgrimage on earth from the heavenly communion and warfare with spiritual wickedness is certain, and, though by no means seized by all saints, of great moment for the Christian to enjoy, as not of the world. But Mr. D., while thus wholly separating them in character, as is necessarily true, carefully said that Christ's life among men, however distinct, was the ever perfect expression of the effect of His life of heavenly communion and of the Divine nature. Obedience and suffering here below are wholly different from the outflow of grace and truth, and the display of Divine love to man and the like. What we repudiate is that the Eternal Life was not always exercised in the earthly lines as well as the heavenly. But this, though the clear truth of scripture, is forbidden by this anti-christian theory. That heaven is the congenial and destined "sphere," is true for the Christian: how much more for Christ! But there He (the Son) might have been for ever, but for the love of the Father that sent Him, and His own grace that came down at all cost. Otherwise there had been no such Divine manifestation.

But He was manifested in flesh. The Eternal Life that was with the Father was manifested: how this was, the preceding verse carefully declares. No one denies that Christ is the true God and Eternal Life in resurrection glory. But it is false that 1 John 5: 20 limits to this, or even gives that condition prominence. He was so always, equally from His birth till He rose from the dead and went on high. Indeed the emphasis of John is on His manifestation on earth: so utterly opposed to the current of the word and the Spirit of truth is this system of error. And the apostle Paul, as we have seen in 1 Tim. 3: 16, though habitually presenting Christ in heavenly glory, declares that the manifestation was in flesh, not in the risen and glorified condition, not therefore in heaven but here below. No one says He was manifested to be the Person save to faith. Still He was manifested in the broadest and most absolute manner, if we believe the Word. Mr. D. treats of quite a different truth in Notes ii. 386. He is opposing the prevalent error of a spiritual second coming of our Lord, and labours to prove that, rightly viewed, His first coming was really the spiritual one, i.e., the Son seen then in moral fact only, as we see Him now; whereas every eye shall see Him personally returning in power and glory. What has this to do with the question of His true manifestation in manhood, true God and the Eternal Life as He was? It is well for dear brethren to understand before catching at quotations.

On the other hand, even when dealing with a system of exaggeration and one-sidedness, it is well to steer clear of exaggeration. "The life to which sin attached" is a phrase of J.N.D's and only distinguishes His life in flesh from that in resurrection which can have nothing to do with death for sin.

Take another of those audaciously false statements — "to talk of a person having eternal life without the Spirit is absurd." Is this "substantially the truth as to Christianity in its proper heavenly character?" Our blessed Lord is in His own person its refutation; for while undeniably He was ever the true God and Eternal Life, yet even He on earth was not sealed till, baptised of John, He entered on His ministry, the Father Himself bearing witness of Him. And so it was with the apostles as well as the disciples in general. They had been children of God but were not baptised with (ἐν) the Holy Spirit till Pentecost. That this gift was sure is true; that the former precedes the latter is no less true; and therefore so scornful a denial is a fresh proof of opposition to revealed truth. John 4, 5, 20; Rom. 8; and Gal. 5 lend no support to the error, but are quite consistent with the rest of scripture. This perhaps may be said to be now dropped. But the prefatory reason assigned for omitting the last paragraph is anything but an honest confession, and nothing seems said why the questions and replies disappear. Further, it is too strong to volunteer that F.E.R. holds firmly that Eternal Life is Christ, when he notoriously has changed all this, and emphatically denies, as do most of his supporters in England, what J.N.D. did not scruple to write (Letters iii. 171). Was he inaccurate? or did he in this slight the Deity of Christ? No believer holds that Christ was not more than Eternal Life.

But again, in the part reiterated, what is the meaning of the hazy, ambiguous clause, "he [the believer] having been born of God to receive it"? The testimony? or the life? One or other it must be; and either is flagrantly false. It is the testimony God has testified of the Son which gives life. To be born of God to receive one or other supposes another life from God to prepare the way for eternal life. If this is not really meant, though it seems also fully confirmed in the last existing paragraph, can we escape the conclusion that there is the most painful inability to convey what is even intended, right or wrong? One, not less self-confident, ventured to pronounce that on this issue of eternal life God is with him who is now before us; but he had soon to acknowledge himself no true prophet. Would that the evil were really discerned and judged! It is to deceive oneself, and perhaps others, to speak of an unguarded and unbalanced way of writing, or to take advantage of the fact that some things obscurely said have been misapprehended. Further, is it not false in the face of 1 John 5: 11. ["God hath given to us eternal life"], to state that "Scripture does not, I think, speak of our having had eternal life imparted to us?" If God has given it to us, we surely have had it imparted to us. It is fully owned that we have life only in the Son, and the all-importance of not severing the stream from the source. But woe to him who enfeebles that we have what God has in this way given to us. Not a word in the verse about "life in the power of the Spirit," "a well," etc. God declares positively what we hear now, not so positively but withal daringly, denied. Conscious enjoyment is in the Spirit, but this is an added privilege. Life, eternal life, precedes that gift, as does known remission of sins.

Indeed there is a fatality of error in what is laid down ever so guardedly on this subject. Thus, in one letter it is said, "He gives the Spirit as the capacity;" whereas eternal life is the capacity, and the Spirit given is the subsequent power. In a much later one (March 20, 1890), "power is an essential of life," which is essentially erroneous, for "life" exists in dependence and conscious weakness: "power" is in the Holy Spirit given (2 Tim. 1: 7, and indeed all scripture). And when the writer said in his earlier letter, "the Spirit in the believer is life," what can one hope at best but that this was blank ignorance on a question of eternal life? For the allusion must have been to Rom. 8: 6 But this is "life" solely in the practical sense, as the connected "peace" is of the heart, not of the conscience with God as in Rom. 5: 1. It was therefore lack of intelligence, if not sophistry. Where was and is divine teaching? John 6: 45.

Every unbiased mind may see that there is of set purpose only a single truth, but of the deepest account, here pressed. It would have been easy to have exposed a vast deal more of important bearing both for the truth and to the saints; as the title of believers now to divine righteousness as well as eternal life. So too the unsettling of faith's absolute language because of our mixed condition is an inexcusable error, which no tinkering, on the part of the maker or his journeymen, can mend, still less justify. Nothing is further from the mind of the Spirit in 2 Cor. 5: 21, than qualifying His absolute statement of grace in Christ, because of the believer's mixed condition for the present. Nor is it in the least true that future glory is here spoken of. Efforts at explanation are but a cloak of pride, where humiliation in the fear of God is due and befitting. And the mitigations of others who know better are conscienceless party-work. There might be said not a little on the weakening of simple subjection to the word. One simply warns souls against a thrust at the foundation which no added truth can alter, but rather make the error more insidious, though one may mourn over men of God drawn by one means or another to apologise for error which may soon inveigle them, even if quite free now and only blind to its virus.

B.W.N. was no less full of his recognition of Christ's deity, and of other truths. But like him the new school insinuate what saps it, and is incompatible. To all such the Christian must say that "no lie is of the truth."

How then can any spiritual mind venture to say before the Lord, on weighing all this on one truth only in question, that he sees nothing beyond what might have been profitably discussed in brotherly confidence? Research had better not be shirked if this were that "pretending to accuracy which destroys reverence and leads to infidelity." The Holy Spirit can and does give an accuracy in heart and conscience that deepens reverence and strengthens faith; and Mr. Darby was a bright sample of it. The fact is, one of the most offensive and unfailing traits of the new school is this very pretension; yet, strange to say, along with it goes a solemn and misplaced deprecation of criticism! This one does not wonder at. They have every reason to dread criticism, and they have had it honestly and ably, and in general fairly, from some who ought to be above suspicion on the score of either hostile or unworthy feelings. On the other hand, it cannot be said that a single defence which has been set up faces the real question at issue.

The system before us, in my judgment, so clouds, lowers, and undermines the truth of eternal life (and thus far Christ's person) that it is to me inconceivable for any child of God to learn the truth from the Greenwich papers or those akin. Even those who have known the truth more or less fully can only have the eyes of their heart darkened by accepting them. They can but mislead, defile, and destroy. Can one doubt that the righteous souls among the five hundred brethren who met on the 7th Oct. at Park St. loathed the profanities so strange and startling among Brethren? But their resolution betrays too much irritation against such as have served the Lord in exposing sad and shameful evil long trifled with, and too little willingness to believe that so malignant a symptom implies a deeply seated malady or an active poison. It will soon be seen whether the meetings holily judge the more open offenders. If common rumour be true, they are far too many, and not far to seek. Not a few of the most prominent men are more or less so committed that it is difficult to suppose the local meetings will purge out the evil. Only one of the five hundred is reported to have spoken with a just sense of what is at work; and he, it is said, is not actually breaking bread: who can wonder, save that he was there? For they have dealt pretty summarily with a poor man who protested, and boast of no charge even before Greenwich! Mr. R. yielded to the entreaty to withdraw in a way the sentence that most shocked his brethren; but he reserved the latter part! so much so, that he would go out of fellowship rather than give up that! And a colleague protested against giving up the first part, as this would compromise the truth! Another again denied any root of error to all the profanity! allowing no more than a low moral state. The low state is true, of course, and the most distressing highmindedness to boot; but not to see Satan in this wide and deep stream of unjudged evil, some of the worst kind against Christ, is spiritual darkness. I have only glanced at the report since this tract was written and in type. The good Lord guard and guide His sheep.

W.K.

The Doctrine of Christ, and Bethesdaism.

W. Kelly.

We are bound to receive one another, but only, as Christ received us, to the glory of God. Rom. 15: 7. Does this mean to receive one who brings not the doctrine of Christ, or those that receive such an one to the dishonour of the Father and the Son?

The principle of welcoming every christian, walking as such, is consistent with the resolute refusal of all who dishonour His name, whether morally, doctrinally, or by association. 1 Cor. 5 is no plainer for rejecting an immoral professor, than 2 John is for refusing those that do not hold a true Christ. Their alleged good qualities ought not to accredit them: the word of God as clearly bars it, as Christ's person and work demand our subjection. To be neutral where the truth is at stake is to partake of the evil deeds of His adversaries.

2 John is decisive that it is not enough to be sound personally in the faith. Even a woman, the elect lady, and her children, are carefully warned by the apostle of their direct responsibility, if they received one who did not bring the doctrine of Christ. "If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting; for he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works" (ver. 10, 11, R.V). Thus distinctly is the principle laid down by the Holy Ghost, that the simplest saints who countenance the confessor of a false Christ partake of his evil deeds, even without imbibing the evil doctrine. A spiritual mind would feel that, dreadful as it is to fall into such heterodoxy, in a certain sense more guilty is he who, professing the truth of Christ, consents to fellowship with one that denies it. "Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth." Neutrality in such case is heinous sin, and this proportionate to knowledge.

Thus 2 John proves that absolute refusal of this worst evil is due to the Son of God. The evil admits of no hesitation or compromise. Had the elect lady, spite of the apostolic warning, obstinately received into her house one who brought not the truth of Christ, she must have identified herself with the deceiver and its consequences. Vain the plea that she had been a dear child of God, both in faith and walk: the written word nevertheless pronounces her a "partaker of his evil deeds;" and God's word is better than all our reasonings and all our feelings. Whatever the motive, she had knowingly disobeyed and committed herself and her house to high treason against Christ. She had more or less sanctioned that which to the last degree denied and dishonoured the Lord of glory. Hence, till she cleared herself from the sin, in the sight of God and His saints, she had sunk morally into complicity with it. The better her light, the worse to behave as if she had none. To receive her in such circumstances would be to participate in similar wickedness, however men may ridicule it to their own foul shame. Indeed to receive her thus would be receiving her not to God's glory but to His shame, because it is barefaced indifference to the affront put on His Son. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." "He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which sent Him."

From the first those called "Brethren" have proved that they do not make light of ecclesiastical evil, by separating from all unscriptural associations, even if christians join. But they have hitherto refused to put indifference to the Christ of God in the same category with offences against the unity or the discipline of the assembly. Party spirit on either hand may seek to class all together. But it is as unscriptural as it is unholy so to exaggerate ecclesiastical offences (of which all sects are guilty), or so to extenuate deep and damnable denial of Christ, which characterises only the worst antagonism to God. His word warrants and demands this distinction, which no sober saint used to doubt, and none would now unless carried away by worthless theory or straits of false position.

The evil doctrine against Christ, which has given us most trouble for thirty years, is that, apart from imputation or vicarious suffering, Christ came as a man and an Israelite into a condition of distance and inflictions from God, in which "He was made experimentally to prove the reality of that condition in which others, but more especially Israel, had sunk themselves, by their disobedience to God's holy law, a condition out of which He was able to extricate Himself, and from which He proved that He could extricate Himself by His own perfect obedience" (B. W. Newton's "Remarks on the Sufferings" etc. p. 12). "And Jesus, as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was, and He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet Him as having finished His appointed work — glorify Him and set Him at His own right hand, in the heavenly places; and that point was death — death on the cross — death under the wrath of God" (ib. pp. 31, 32). "He was exposed, for example, because of His relation to Adam to that sentence of death, that had been pronounced on the whole family of man" (B. W. N.'s "Observations" etc. p. 9). "The mission of John must be regarded as an all-important era, not only in the life of the Lord Jesus, etc. . . . . . Indeed unless grace be the same as law, and destruction the same as salvation, the infinite importance of that era cannot be denied" (lb. pp. 10, 11). "Moreover, the exercises of soul which His elect in their unconverted state ought to have . . . . . . such exercises, yet without sin, Jesus had" (ib. p. 26). "The anointing of the Spirit would never have come on Him at Jordan, unless He had been fore-ordained and certainly known as the victim to be slain at Calvary" (ib. p. 32).

It is true that, when this deadly poison was analysed and the godly stood aghast, Mr. N. printed an "Acknowledgment of Error" in applying Rom. 5: 19 (first clause) to Christ. But this did not satisfy even his most trusted associates, who owned solemnly in print that it was an elaborate system, permeating their views of scripture generally, and quite as fatal as any one had charged on them. One indeed warned that souls resting on what they had taught for years could not be saved. For Christ was thereby made by birth to be in man's distance from God, and especially in Israel's by a broken law! obnoxious therefore to the two-fold penalties, not vicariously, but by association as one of them!! But He extricated Himself by obedience, faith, and prayer, out of some of those inflictions by which He was threatened, passing by baptism into grace — from Sinai to Zion! But the exercises which the elect when unconverted ought to have (!) if possible were His!! Yet He had, notwithstanding, to find His way to a point where God could meet Him — death under God's wrath! If this be not a systematic and complete overthrow of "the teaching of Christ " in scripture, words are meaningless. No heretic more thoroughly or subtly debased Christ; some like Irving taught more truth than B. W. N. It is a denial, not a confession, of Christ coming in the flesh: which truth does not mean the bare fact, but the divine person of Him who came in flesh. He, and He alone, born of woman, might have come otherwise; but thus He was pleased, for God's glory and the reconciliation by His death of man and all the universe heavenly and earthly, to come in flesh. Had Newtonism been true, Christ must have died for Himself — could not for us, for creation or for God's own glory. Again, if He be supposed to extricate Himself by good works and ordinances, the truth is overthrown in this way too. And if His death were still needful for Himself to be saved (error usually being incoherent), as well as to get the anointing of the Spirit, His person is denied, and all hope of saving others wholly and necessarily destroyed.

I am grieved to add that the blinded author of this fundamental heterodoxy printed "A letter on subjects connected with the Lord's Humanity;" in which, after the so-called Acknowledgment of Error, he re-affirmed the principles of both the "Remarks" and the "Observations" which had horrified even his own oldest friends and most of his partisans. Arianism etc. on the one side, and perhaps Irvingism on the other, deny the Lord's glory more openly; but does any false system more thoroughly than his make Jesus anathema? Compare 1 Cor. 12: 3.

When the meeting at Bethesda (Bristol) admitted several partisans of Mr. N. and thus occasioned a separation far and wide among "Brethren," it had been for years fully owned as enjoying intercommunion. Hence, there is no honesty in comparing that meeting with individuals coming from the national body or from dissent. How far Bethesda really coalesced, it may be hard to say: still it was an accomplished fact, and no question was raised till the crisis of 1848 came, when reasons were sought to palliate the fatal deed of receiving the known followers of a convicted heretic. Now we have always excepted cases of real ignorance. But what could justify receiving persons of intelligence who came straight from his party, eulogising and circulating the very tracts which contained the anti-christian doctrine already described? Bethesda received them in the most determined manner, driving out not a few souls, some of them among the most enlightened, spiritual, and devoted there, who refused to sanction such indifference to a blasphemy at Bristol, from which at all cost they were apart at Plymouth and elsewhere. Not satisfied with letting these persons in, ten of the leaders at Bethesda put forth a too famous document, in which they laboured to defend their refusal of investigation before receiving the incriminated. The first thing insisted on was that the Bethesda meeting should clear those who signed it: else they would minister no more in their midst! Was it surprising that the mass fell into the snare, and consented to vote the leaders right, before the tracts were read, or comments allowed, in presence of the meeting? After the breach was consummated! they held meetings in which Mr. N.'s doctrine was condemned, especially by Mr. M.,* as strongly almost as by any outside Bethesda. God however took care to test its moral value ere long, if a few were deceived at first.

* As much is made of J. N. D.'s visit to G. M. after these meetings, it may be stated that Mr. D.'s hopefulness was not shared by his brethren, who knew that Bethesda never owned its sin in receiving Mr. N.'s partisans, and never repented of the false principles in the Letter of the Ten (adopted by a formal vote of its constituents). It never so much as noticed the sin, after the seven meetings, of receiving back two of the Ten who had gone out and publicly supported Mr. N. before all Bristol! In the face of grave facts like these, what was the value of theoretic censure of the doctrine? Mr. M.'s rude repulse only compelled Mr. D. to feel, as others felt, the hollowness of Bethesda throughout. Mr. D's power lay in expounding the word, not in disciplinary action, as he used to own freely throughout his life. As he once said to me long ago, "my favourites turn out scamps." This was never more applicable than in his later years, when they carried him away.

Partly by this, and partly by other means, Mr. N.'s partisans were got to retire from Bethesda, expressly not waiving their claim to be there, but desiring to release the leaders from some of their difficulties. Could this yield a moment's satisfaction to a sober christian? Bethesda was bound to clear itself openly of a sin of the gravest kind openly done: mere words would not avail, nor getting rid of souls in an underhand way. Subsequently a party was formed, a public building was taken, Mr. N. was had there, two of "the Ten" (Messrs. A. and W.) being found in their midst. The movement failed; and these two leading men, to speak of no others, after Bethesda's loud denunciation of the Newtonian blasphemy and after their own public association with Mr. N., were permitted to return to Bethesda, without the smallest confession of their notorious and flagrant sin! All they owned was the wrong of leaving Bethesda; but they were not asked, nor did they give, an expression of sorrow for the wickedness of fraternising with one who still retained the main parts of his heterodoxy as to Christ. And this after the seven meetings!

Now because we renounce all fellowship with such ways and persons, we are covered with the bitterest reproaches possible! We are taxed with "new tests," and I know not what. Whereas, on the face of the matter, it was the beloved apostle, not we, who wrote 2 John. And if he introduced no new test when he insisted on uncompromising rigour wherever a false Christ was in question, how charge us with it who are very simply carrying out the word of God given through him? Those who plead for laxity in such a case, would be more consistent if they denied the authority of this Scripture altogether.

This then was the origin of the Neutrals, or Open Brethren as some of them prefer to be called. They more or less sided with Bethesda, some going farther, others not quite so far, but all on substantially the same principle, if not of receiving the partisans of an antichrist, certainly of palliating those who so received and making "one lump" with them. Not one meeting ever ventured to reject the most guilty leader in that neutral result. To refuse such an one would be to give up their evil line of things.

For it is no question of receiving christians in Christ's name, graciously dealing with ecclesiastical ignorance. This we have always held (save a few who played an unhappy part in the late disasters) to be thoroughly of God; and I trust we shall ever so continue, believing and acting on it as due to Christ. With Open Brethren it is a wholly different case from welcoming a godly person, in spite of his sect. For they were once with us on common ground of scripture; they owned the "one body and one Spirit," as gathered to Christ's name. Their origin, the reason of their existence, was to defend and maintain the reception of men tainted with the worst sin — indifference to the truth of Christ. That they may have liked independency before, that they walk in it and enforce it since, is true enough; but he that puts forward independency of principle, as the plague-spot of the O.B., is blind to their characteristic and most serious evil. And if he goes so far as to reject individuals for independency, he must, to be consistent, abandon all the largeness of heart which marked Brethren from the first, and the principle which their best and wisest leaders cherished to the last, — our title of grace to welcome godly saints out of an orthodox denomination, though independency is stamped in various forms on all. No denomination, as such, great or small, does or can stand on the "one body and one Spirit" of scripture for principle and practice alike. It demands living faith ecclesiastically, and an entire superiority to the world and flesh, which must have independency open or latent but real.

We have ever allowed that in the ranks of Open Brethrenism there might be individuals wholly and honestly ignorant that it is founded as a society on indifference to a true or a false Christ. Where this is certain, one would seek to deal pitifully with them; and no one was freer to receive such with a grave caution than the late J. N. D., as almost all others of weight have done. Timid men, ever prone to sectarian barriers, have alas! refused even such. But no upright neutral brother would seek, wish, or submit to, such terms: only those who have neither faith nor principle, who are ready to break bread at Bethesda, and at Park Street, and with us too who refuse both systems, if they were allowed. These are the worst of all and can only corrupt, as they are already corrupted.

Is it asked, How do Open Brethren stand now? The answer is, As they began, or rather worse. Indeed evil may grow or spread, but does not get better or die. Scripture requires that it be judged, which is its doom, if we are faithful to Christ. Not only did Newtonians get in and were never put out, but some are known as Mr. J. Beaumont can testify, to play fast and loose with the denial of everlasting punishment, in as respectable a company as they have in England. The conduct of the leaders and meeting was flagrant; but no meeting nor even individual seemed to mind it, beyond a protest, which was put in the fire, and all went on together — in love so called! but where is the truth? Where is Christ?

Granted that in some places under strong pressure they put away a clique of these offenders; such vigour may be now and then, here and there. But, where it is not so (and nothing is harder than to get necessary care against error), they maintain intercommunion all the same. They are on a free-and-easy ground, which admits of every one's will and tries nobody's conscience. An "assembly-judgment" there too over-rides truth and righteousness, to the deep dishonour of the Lord and His word.

In one of their recent "Appeals" C. E. argues that a true platform contemplates all the saints of God, as we have often said and still say. But the O.B.'s abuse of this godly plea is to accredit, not only christians guilty of sin, but yet more their society got up by the determination to shelter such from scriptural judgment. This was not the case with any orthodox sect known to us; and therefore O.B. have no title to the same gracious consideration. Others began for good according to their light. Open Brethren began by palliating evil or screening evildoers, in departure from the light they once had. To receive saints in Christ's name was never meant to let in such as dishonour His name; which is as mighty to detect those who treat Him lightly, whatever their pretensions, as to encourage the godly who may be ever so ignorant. An honourable man among O.B. ought not to wish fellowship with us, if he believe in his own policy, and ought to resent the plea of ignorance, which, when ever true, would not be used in vain. And as to "thirty years," what difference does this make, if the same old principle abides?

That it does abide is plain from J. R. C's "Exclusivism" (Glasgow, 1882); who, though wholly unknown to me, is reported to be as sober and conscientious a representative as could be desired. Here we have the error as lively as ever. 1 Cor. 5: 6 is perverted (p. 8) just as of old. He mocks the idea that the whole Corinthian church was leavened, and seems to think it absurd, if it were, to call upon them to purge out the leaven. Thus does he convict himself and his party (for in this they have always been alike) of guilty opposition to the word of the Lord. It was exactly because they were as a whole leavened by the little leaven allowed in their midst, that the apostle commanded them to purge out the old leaven that they might be a new lump, "even as ye are unleavened.'' This was their standing in and by Christ; and, because they were thus unleavened before God, they must purge the leaven out; for it leavens, not the one offender only, but the whole lump. The reasoning of Mr. C. is wholly false, but it betrays the unholy principle common to them all. It is a question not of every individual in the Corinthian church becoming incestuous, etc., which is truly absurd, but of the whole assembly being defiled by the evil they knew and did not judge. Hence the restoration was, not merely through discipline nor only self-judgment of the wicked person, but by a deep work in the assembly also: "in all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." (2 Cor. 7: 11.) The Open Brethren are thus fundamentally at fault. Their distinctive difference is corruption in principle now, as more than thirty years ago. I should not, I confess, turn to an Anglican divine to find spiritual instruction on such a theme, considering how the National Establishment stands condemned in practice by its own Homily for Whitsunday (second part). But it is painfully instructive to see how Dean Alford disproves and rejects the same unholy lack of intelligence as in the Open Brethren's argument for their party. "Are you not aware that a little leaven imparts a character to the whole lump? That this is the meaning, and not 'that a little leaven will, if not purged out, leaven the whole lump,' is manifest from the point in hand, viz. the inconsistency of their boasting: which would not appear by their danger of corruption hereafter, but by their character being actually lost. One of them was a fornicator of a fearfully depraved kind, tolerated and harboured: by this fact, the character of the whole was tainted." (The Greek Test. ii. 507, fifth ed.) What Mr. C. assails unwittingly through his false position is the apostle's "theory" as well as practice as to defilement. Equally below the Anglican are his unfaithful remarks on 2 John. We do not say that the lady, if she had received him who did not bring the doctrine of Christ, was to be treated "exactly as you would treat" the anti-christian teacher himself, but that she thereby became a partaker of his evil deeds. So Bethesda and the Open Brethren have fallen in similar cases.

Their point of departure is so anti-scriptural, that their most recent and cautious apologists cannot but expose their party badge to the withering condemnation of scripture. Having left God's word, their prudent course (humanly speaking) would be, like their delinquent antipodes, to attempt no self-defence but wrap themselves up in silent pride.

Scripture is not silent as to their great sin. "Come out," therefore, brother, that you partake not of the sins and so receive not of God's strokes.

Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World."

W. Kelly.

The object of this paper is not to introduce a book which is understood to have already a circulation of at least 30,000 copies in a comparatively brief space, but to point out its character, as accounting for popularity so marked. It is written with force and clearness, with liveliness and geniality, rising to eloquence when the occasion calls for it; and there is a fair presentation of fundamental truth, such as new birth and the atonement, with wholesome and clever exposure of the one-sidedness of revivalism (indeed, one may say of the evangelical system), as well as of sacramentalism.

Yet it is not, in my judgment, the good points of the book but the bad, and, from a christian stand, its unworthy and dangerously corrupting peculiarities, which have made it so palatable, at a moment when men crave the exciting food which it supplies, conceiving that they stand well abreast of the science of the age.

Mr. D. is a Christian. But his enthusiasm evidently goes in the direction of natural science; and so blinding is its influence that he seems completely under the spell of the fashionable evolutionist reveries of the day. His ardent effort throughout is to conciliate his argument and illustration as much as possible with the principles and even language of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the acknowledged chief of British Agnosticism! The assumption of modern infidelity, in a small knot of bold materialists who have got the public ear, is so overbearing, that those who value their good opinion, or dread their contempt and that of their followers, fail to see that this vaunted theory, if logically carried out, is incompatible with Scripture, denies creation in any genuine and full sense, and threatens to end, like Pyrrhonism of old, in the destruction even of science itself. For evolution is supposed in time to efface those fixed laws by which objects animate and inanimate are governed, the ascertainment of which constitutes science. At best evolution attempts to account hypothetically for the origin of things; natural science is based on observed and permanent facts since creation.

But let us hear our author's own narrative (pp. 6-7) of what he fondly regards as his discovery, and what we cannot but mourn over as a delusion, by which no believer ought to have been taken in.

"It has been my privilege for some years to address regularly two very audiences on two very different themes. On weekdays I have lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, and on Sundays to an audience consisting for the most part of working men on subjects of a moral and religious character. I cannot say that this collocation ever appeared as a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends it was more than a problem. It was solved to me, however, at first, by what then seemed the necessities of the case I must keep the two departments entirely by themselves. They lay at opposite poles of thought; and for a time I succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut off from one another in two separate compartments of my mind. But gradually the wall of partition showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly began to overflow and finally the waters met and mingled. The great change was in the compartment which held the Religion (!). It was not that the well there was dried; still less that the fermenting waters were washed away by the flood of Science. The actual contents remained the same. But the crystals of former doctrine were dissolved (!); and as they precipitated themselves once more into definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline system was changed. New channels also for outward expression opened, and some of the old closed up; and I found the truth running out to my audience on the Sundays by the weekday outlets. In other words the, subject-matter Religion had taken on the method of expression of Science, and I discovered myself enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics.

"Now this was not exactly a scientific colouring given to Religion, the mere freshening of the theological air with natural facts and illustrations. It was an entire re-casting of truth (!). And when I came seriously to consider what it involved, I saw, or seemed to see, that it meant essentially the introduction of Natural Law into the Spiritual World. It was not, I repeat, the new and detailed analogies of Phenomena rose into view — although material for Parable lies unnoticed and unused on the field of recent science in inexhaustible profusion. But Law has a still grander function to discharge towards Religion than Parable (!). There is a deeper analogy between the two kingdoms than the analogy of their Phenomena — a unity which the poet's vision, more quick than the theologian's (!), has already dimly seen."

Of this vision Mr. D. assumes to be the Seer; and by his own acknowledgement, when his mind had for some time being paying weekday homage to Science, Sunday homage to Religion, he found the wall that parted them giving way , but "the great change was in the compartment which held" not the Science, shifting and at best but growing as it is, but — "the Religion!" How came a child of God and a minister of His revealed truth to write such a sentence without shame? For what is Religion but the answer in heart and mind and walk to "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and to day and for ever"? Of course it is admitted that "the actual contents remained the same." "But," he affirms, "the crystals of former doctrine were dissolved." God be thanked! it is not so with any servant of Christ loyal to his Master or the truth.

In early days a similar effort was made by the enemy, and not by forms of Science so beneath and remote from the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ as Biology and Physics. Men then bearing the Lord's name sought to enunciate Spiritual Law in the exact terms "of ancient metaphysics." But the apostle resented the insult to God's word and Spirit, which alone and perfectly. make Christ known, as leaving the saint a prey "through philosophy and vain deceit," as he calls the falsely so named knowledge or speculation. On the other hand he insisted on holding fast the form or pattern of sound words, which [words] Timothy as others had heard from him, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Hence the duty of keeping the good deposit that was entrusted to us through the Holy Spirit that dwells in us: for as the pretension to the Spirit without the word breeds fanaticism, so is rationalism the result of using the word without the Spirit working in us to Christ's glory. Natural Science is the idol of Mr. D. Nor is it that he means to exclude Christ, any more than Aaron when he made the golden calf to please the people. But the fact is the deep dishonour of this book to divine revelation. Alas! the worship of the weekdays did dissolve that of Sunday. "The Crystalline system was changed." "It was an entire re-casting of the truth!" Truly we find ourselves in the difficult times of the last days, when one who yet owns Christ and the written word can dare so to think and write and print to the grief and shame of every thoughtful christian. And what pleasure (not without ridicule) to Messrs. Huxley and Tyndall and their companions, when they see the professing crowd carried away from the truth in their direction by this novel wind of doctrine! None can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will hold to the one and despise the other. Scripture repudiates Science not only as a co-ordinate but even as a subordinate authority in spiritual things. The process of ruin may seem slow, but is sure. To faith divine truth must be paramount; for the word of the Lord abides for ever. They cannot mingle their waters save to the loss of the well undefiled.

Science in its own "compartment" is or may be all well; but the truth (and "religion" must be this or a fable) refuses the banns which Mr. D. would proclaim between it and Science. One may not any more than the author respect "the theologian's" insight into God's mind in Scripture. For the effort to make the truth "scientific," common to the theologian in an intellectual way and to Mr. D. in the lower depth of naturalism, is ruinous to the spiritual intelligence of revelation: which is little and powerless indeed, if it carry not divine authority over the conscience, as it reveals Christ in grace and truth to the heart. But think of a Christian gravely bowing to "the poet's vision," even though its comparative dimness be recognised in honour of the great eureka What pandering to sentiment, not to say to self!

"The effect of the introduction [not of Christ, as Revealer of God and Mediator between God and man, into a lost world, but] "of Law among the scattered Phenomena of Nature has simply been to transform knowledge into eternal truth! The same crystallising touch is needed in Religion (!). Can it be said that the Phenomena of the Scriptural World are other than scattered (!!)?" p. 9. Yes, Mr. D.: God has from the beginning perfectly done in and by Christ, for what you call "the Spiritual World," that which you vainly pretend to do by your book; and He has given the full and unchanging record in His Book. He and He alone has revealed the truth. He that pretends to furnish "eternal truth" at this time of day he that denies that God has united the once scattered "Phenomena of the Spiritual World in His Christ, made known in Scripture by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, is no true prophet. It is not "Reign of Law" we need: for we have already grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

In sober sadness the author has lost himself in this dream of identical Law. The nebula, from which the evolutionists deduce the universe, in the teeth of the calm majesty of Genesis 1, never fails to envelop the minds of all who confound that mythical hypothesis with true science; but of all these evolutionists (for they have their widely differing sects), none logically as well as spiritually less consistent than such as still profess faith in Christ and Scripture.

That this is no exaggeration of Mr. D.'s thought will be apparent yet more from what he says in p. 10 "My Spiritual World before was a chaos of fact; my Theology, a Pythagorean system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart from the idea of Law." It never seems to occur to the devotee of Science any more than to the theologian of the old schools, that not "the idea of Law," but the truth of Christ in Scripture, is by the Spirit's teaching the one centre of order in what is otherwise uncertain as well as chaotic. But He is this, and infinitely more, in the spiritual realm, to the exclusion of the vain key which Mr. D. commends.

"I make no charge against Theology in general, I speak of my own" [as if he had not been trained like other young men in the ordinary curriculum]. "And I say that I saw it to be in many essential respects centuries behind every department of science I knew." Christian reader, is not this perplexing language from a professed believer? the speech of Egypt, not of Canaan? If by "Theology" he means the revealed faith of a christian, as it surely ought to be, what means its being centuries behind any department of Science? Is not Scripture a revelation completely out and divinely perfect? Science how different!

Then how absurd and worse to add, "It was the one region still unpossessed by Law"! Our measure of appropriating the truth is our measure of knowing and applying Christ. That region is wholly possessed by, and instinct with — not Law, but — Christ. It is "the great exception," and distrusted by such men of science only and by all others as do not by the Spirit look to Christ and have life in Him. And what will Mr. D.'s book do for such adversaries? It may harden those who make Law their god; it will corrupt every christian who admires and yields to its distinctive system; it is a positive wrong to Christ and Scripture; and the more sorrowful, as the author is, I doubt not, at bottom, a believer.

Even his apology in p. 11 is most objectionable and false "We have Truth in nature as it came from God." How different the voice of revelation in Rom. 1: 19, 20! There is a real testimony to God's everlasting power and divinity (Theotes, but not Theotes which is only known in and by Christ, Col. 2: 9). One learns justly that God must be; but Who and what He is can be known only through His Son, by and in whom it is eternal life to the believer. He is objectively the truth, as the Holy Spirit is the power by whom alone applying God's word He is made known.

But "Truth in nature" even "as it came from God," which Science ignores (being occupied only with nature fallen as it is), we have not; nor has such language any just sense. For Truth even in its least application means a thing or person made known as it is. Hence Nature could not possibly make known truth, unless a poet's vision be preferred to Scripture. Nor is God Himself ever called truth there, but Christ in one way and the Spirit in another, as revealing God and making known man and all else in the spiritual realm. No! "Truth in Nature" is only another part of the delusion, which Mr. D. shares with remarkably bad company, who begin with claiming "the same reverence" for Nature as for "all other Revelation," and are in danger of ending with the abandonment of Scripture, the only revelation of God for a sinner or a saint.

There are many excellent and true remarks up and down the volume; but less than what is here said would be unfaithfulness in him who writes this notice, whether or not he may examine it beyond the Preface in which its aim is explained.* It is only incidental statements which are at all wholesome. The prime object is here shown to be false and evil. Hence the book is calculated to expose the unwary to that vast and complicated network of error in our day, which prepares the way for the apostacy or "falling away" which is at hand. Even the author would confess that, if his main design is fallacious, the book as a whole must be worse than worthless, as grace can employ anything.

* Another is now examining the book with more detail in the "Bible Treasury" for May, etc., of this year. (1885)

The Elders in Heaven.

Rev. 4, 5: 1-10.

W. Kelly.

There is a plain and simple fact which ought to strike any attentive reader of the Revelation: — the churches are no longer in view after Revelation 3 as subsisting and the province of the dealings of the Lord here below. I do not say that they have ceased absolutely to exist; but they are not before the Lord as the objects of His care or even chastening. They are nowhere taken account of after the seer's prophetic visions begin. They are alluded to in the concluding observations of the book, Revelation 22, when the whole course of the prophecy is closed, and the Spirit of God is merely giving, as a final exhortation, the use to be made of the book. But the fact that claims our consideration is, that from the beginning of the fourth chapter we have no longer the churches brought before us as subsisting on earth, and under the disciplinary action of the Lord.

For this reason, as well as for many others of a detailed kind which have acted on the minds of children and servants of God from early days, I have no doubt whatever that the seven churches have a mystic as well as a literal aspect. I believe that the Lord Jesus, in short, chose those seven particular assemblies in the province of Asia, because there were circumstances in them which at that time called for His particular notice. But this is not all. Along with this it was so ordered that His letters to the angels of the churches on their state should be the occasion of giving a prolonged special instruction as long as the church of God was to be the object of His dealing here below. That is, the epistles to the churches had a past historical application in St. John's days; and from that epoch they were intended also to give a kind of prophetic outline of the chief salient points in the course of the church as long as it should be left in this world.

Thus Ephesus shows us the declension from first love which led the Lord to threaten the removal of the candlestick.

In Smyrna we can plainly see persecution from the heathen powers, but along with this the rising up of Judaism formed as a systematic body in the Christian church. It is at this point that we have the "synagogue of Satan" — those who say they are Jews and are not, but a synagogue of Satan. In the days of Paul individuals had been always endeavouring to drag the church of God back into ordinances, or other misuses of the law; but now it was become a compactly framed system — the greatest internal enemy the church of God ever yet had to contend against. Other things there were, some grosser and some subtler. Antichrist, too, had gone out from the family of God; but I am speaking now of that which has often deceived saints. Even as a Barnabas and a Peter (we are informed for our solemn warning) were drawn away at the beginning, so much-more, during the course of the church, godly and orthodox persons have been constantly in danger on this side.

In Pergamos we behold the church where Satan's throne is, not persecuted but exalted, acquiring power and influence under the patronage of the world.

Next we have Thyatira with the portentous figure of Jezebel, that murderous queen and false prophetess, the most relentless slaughterer of the saints of God in all ages. It does not require much of the prophetic ken to understand where the reality that answers to the picture is found. Thus you see it is no longer simply Balaam, or the teaching for hire, but Jezebel, an incomparably more advanced system of evil, and accordingly children born to her. It becomes a perpetuated race of iniquity in that which bears the name of the assembly of God here below.

After this comes Sardis, where there are no longer horrors of the kind that were contemplated under the preceding; yet, while there is profession of the truth, the Lord tells them that their works were not found perfect before His God. Worldliness, accordingly, is the great snare that is found here. It is not simply the patronage of the world, nor is it only, nor so much, the endeavour to govern the world under the name of the church (this was Jezebel); but now they boast of orthodoxy and correct morals, but, nevertheless, are no better than a name to live with death working largely.

Then we find Philadelphia, which I do not doubt has found its counterpart in the amazing liberty that the Lord has given for the spread of the Bible; in the active going forth of the gospel far and wide; in the recall of Christians, not only to the love of the brotherhood, but to their own proper portion, to which their blessed relationship with the Lord entitles them, and this in the revived prospect of the speedy return of the Lord Jesus.

Lastly there comes Laodicea, a picture of indifferentism, after truth had been largely propagated and known, — but where conscience altogether fails, where the one thought is the people of God and their rights, but alas! without heart for the glory of God. It is merely man under a new form; not man in the world; but man bearing the name of Christ, obliterating in his self-complacency all just thought and feeling for the glory of Christ; — a state accordingly of great boastfulness and pretension, — a state of satisfaction with the progress that has been made, and the largest expectation of that which is to be done. But the Lord counts it all lukewarmness, that indifference which, in His judgment, is more offensive and contrary to His mind than if one were honestly led away by error or evil for a time. It is a heart for nothing; it is lukewarmness to everything, even to Christ Himself. So it is the condition which is above all things loathsome to the Lord, and which He resents; so that He pronounces not merely the removal of the candlestick, but the spueing it out of His mouth, as most nauseous to Him.

Solemn to say, it is here that the curtain drops upon the churches here below. We hear no more about them, save only that in the conclusion, as already said, there is a call to hear the book in general. But as a history under the mysterious protracted form of the seven golden candlesticks and the Lord's messages to their angels — a kind of prophetic history of the church as a whole from that epoch till He comes, "the things that are," — there is nothing more to add.

The scene therein is changed. A door is seen by the prophet opened in heaven, not yet for the Lord Jesus, followed by His saintly hosts, to come out of heaven (which remains for a later date), but for John to go up and see in the Spirit. "After this I looked, and, behold, a door opened in heaven." It is not for drawing near into the holiest by faith: the Spirit of God never calls this the opening of a door. In Hebrews 10 the veil is shown to be rent, and the believer even now by faith draws near through the value of the blood of Christ. But here we have the ordinary figure of that by which one enters in; and accordingly, lest there should be any doubt about the meaning, the first voice which the prophet heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with him, and saying, "Come up hither, and I will show thee" — not exactly "things which must be hereafter," as if it were left vague and distantly future, but "the things which must be after these." Simple as the change just suggested is — and I apprehend there is no question of the correctness of it; I do not think any unbiassed person familiar with the language would doubt it — the importance of it is this, that it binds what is to follow in the book with the termination of the history of the seven churches. If it meant "hereafter" in a loose general way, you might suppose the seven churches terminated a possibly long interval, and then "things which must be hereafter;" but if we have the seven churches or "things that are," and then "the things which must be after these," there is a close link formed between the end of the church's state and the prophetic visions following as immediately consequent.

Now this will prove of some importance, though I do not wish to press the thought beyond that which would commend itself to any simple and unprejudiced mind But what man of reflection can avoid seeing that the very next fact brought before us after Rev. 2, 3 is not churches on earth in any shape, but the prophet entering in by the open door in heaven? The immediate object, of course, was for the vision of that which he had to write yet further, the power of the Holy Ghost giving him to behold what was seen in or from heaven and about to be on earth. And what he sees there first of all was a throne set, and One sitting on the throne. It was the throne of God on high. It is not said to be a golden throne, as in the most holy place, whether of the tabernacle or of the temple. Such was the propitiatory seat of gold where blood was sprinkled as a means for men to draw near through sacrifice, priesthood maintaining consistency with it spite of failure. But this is in no way the object of the throne in Rev. 4. The golden throne, with atoning blood upon and before it, is one of grace; it is the expression of what God can be and is to man, where grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The throne that was now seen set in heaven was judicial, not the witness of divine grace, though it be always, no doubt, the throne of divine majesty.

"He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone." The jasper, as we know, is used as symbolic of the glory of God in connection with the heavenly state. In Rev. 21 it is said, "He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone." I consider therefore that the jasper is used here, and no doubt the sardius also, as symbolic of God's glory, as far as it could be manifested to the creature. There is a glory of God that is entirely above creature contemplation; there is a glory which may become visible to the creature. God has at various times permitted that His glory should shine on men, even on earth; but more so when rapt in the Holy Ghost, into His presence above. At the same time, I say again, it is not, of course, the essential glory of God "to which no man can approach," but as far as God is pleased to make it visible to the creature. It is His glory in government, in the maintenance of good against evil by power.

Round about the throne was seen a rainbow, the sign of God's beneficence to the earth, and at the same time the pledge of a limit put to judgment; but it is not as ordinarily seen among men. (Gen. 9) It recalled that covenant with the earth; but there is no question of rain here, as even in Ezekiel 1: 28. It is simply the divine idea It is not the circumstances of its use or application, but the grand truth that was represented there — the faithful sign of God's covenant with the creature. Hence it was shown in a form which was particularly refreshing to the eye; it was "in sight like unto an emerald."

"And round about the throne were four and twenty — not merely seats, but — "thrones." Every throne is a seat, but every seat is not a throne. These were not bare seats, but thrones for those on whom royalty was conferred It was, no doubt, a heavenly kind of royalty; but still the thrones were for certain to fill.

This is a remarkable feature. We never hear of angels seated on thrones. Angels never govern; they were made not to reign but to be servants. They never rise above the character of service. Man was made to rule, though, of course, in subjection to God. Even the first man was made to govern. When God made him He said, "Let them have dominion." It was not merely to do His will. As servants, all are necessarily bound to do the will of God; and all the blessedness of dominion, as of everything else also, depends on its being the will of God. No male governs aright that will not serve. No man will reign righteously that has not a just view of what obedience is to one that is above him. How can he possibly impress the necessity of subjection upon those that are below him? But then, when God made the first man, he was not looking merely at Adam, or the race: the Second Man, the last Adam, was before His mind. Other men were not worth counting. One man, the first man, was enough to comprehend all the Adam race. That one brought, oh! what ruin upon all that followed him. And God passes quickly from the ruin, and hastens to the day when the Second Man appears, the Lord from heaven; and that man is the last Adam. There is no improvement upon Him; there is no progress after Him. The Second Man is the last Adam; and He is the one that is to govern — the destined Ruler of all, God alone excepted. For you must remember we speak here of His reign as man; and a wonderful thought it is, that every creature of God will be put under the God-exalted man — the man that never exalted Himself, the man who first showed His special and wondrous glory, not by the great deeds He did, but in obedience. Others might do exploits. His servants were to do greater works than He did. But there was one thing in which no servant approached Him — the last thing that you might expect in a divine person; but in a divine person who was a man obedience was the moral perfection of the place He took. Such is the one for whom the kingdom is reserved. He justly takes the throne. He is set, according to God's glory, over all the works of His hands; not, I repeat, simply as God, though He was God from all eternity, and never could cease to be. But He acquired, as man, universal dominion; and He acquired it, not simply by doing the will of God: had He taken it on the ground of what He did, He had taken it alone. He alone deserved it — but He took it, as we shall find, on a far deeper and infinitely more blessed ground — the ground of redemption; and thus others are associated with Him. For that redemption was not for Himself, but for us; and it is on this footing alone that He could have the children of God associated with Him, by redemption, in that glorious kingdom for which He waits, and for which we ought to be waiting.

Here, accordingly, we find round the throne of God twenty-four thrones. What is the allusion in the number "twenty-four"? Numbers in scripture are never without meaning. Do not listen to the men that tell you it merely means a greater or a smaller number, that it is merely a sort of poetic figure. Why even you do not use language so capriciously as that! When you say twenty-four, you do not mean a mere random number, though you are certainly far from the deep wisdom of God in its symbolic use. But if you are a sensible man, you have some sensible idea. Certainly God will never be below man in the expression of His mind. Now, "twenty-four" is used in scripture; and, as far as I know, the only point with which we can compare our number was when the king divided the priests into so many courses, of which courses there were chief priests. I do not merely mean the high priest: there was but one in such a position. As there was only one among the earthly people, so there is only one for the heavenly. But here we are speaking of the creature, and it is notorious that there were chiefs of each course of priesthood; and as there were twenty-four courses of priests, so also with the singers. It was connected therefore, you will observe, with the ordering and arranging of the priestly service of God. Now this, I have no doubt, is the allusion here.

These twenty-four thrones were not empty. "Upon the thrones I saw four and twenty elders sitting" What is the idea conveyed by the term, "elders"? Clearly the possession of wisdom — in this case, of course, heavenly wisdom. The elders were seen round God's throne, sitting on thrones, "clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold." This is another point which separates them, but at the same time assuredly confirms what has been already remarked of their separation from angels — from the highest beings of a spiritual sort suited to heaven —  the only inhabitants indigenous to heaven, if one may so say.

The elders had never been seen there before. Visions of heaven have past before us in the Old Testament: why were no elders seen then? Why was there no such group of surrounding thrones? The apostle Paul was caught up to heaven, but not a word about elders in heaven then: why now? Surely there were the spirits of the blest in heaven; but spirits are never said to be enthroned; spirits are nowhere in Scripture described as glorified. They are with Christ; they are in paradise; but they are never spoken of as already crowned. The crown is always represented as a future glory. Why so? Because God does not mean to bring any of His people into the full result of heavenly blessedness until He brings them all in. The same moment is destined for the heavenly gathering together of all saints changed into the likeness of Christ. It matters not at what time they lived or died, or if they survived till He comes. I speak, of course, now, of heavenly saints — of those that are to be above. I do not at all exclude the fact that God afterwards begins to form a people upon earth; but I say that those who are destined for the same common heavenly blessedness are caught up together, and that the point of time when they are caught up — the turning-point on which their translation to heaven depends — is the presence of the Lord Jesus for them.

Proofs abound. "We beseech you, brethren, by the presence (or coming) of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him." Any scholar knows that the presence of our Lord Jesus, and the gathering together of the saints to Him, are here represented in a remarkable manner as one combined idea. There is only one article, which therefore acts as a kind of bracket, and binds together the two thoughts. That is to say, the gathering of the saints is not before the presence of the Lord, nor is it left for a separate act after He comes to meet them. The force is, that the presence of the Lord at once gathers all the saints: whether the dead, by raising them; or the living, by changing them into His glorious likeness.

The result is apparent now. Here they are seen on high. Here they are found in the presence of God in heaven; and they are there enthroned, and crowned with "crowns of gold." They had practically manifested righteousness; but divine righteousness alone had brought them there and thus dealt with them. It is not that they lacked the witness of righteousness in their ways and daily conversation on earth, or that they were without the answer to it now in heaven; for they are seen also to be clothed in white raiment — a full acknowledgment of saintly righteousness, as the gold is of God's righteousness. The moment you get righteousnesses, you get differences among the children of God. It is known afterwards, from Rev. 19, where the white linen is explained to be the righteousnesses of saints. That is, each has a righteousness which divine grace has produced in them and by them, and this is recognised above. It is a falsehood that God does not own that which His Spirit has produced here; but it is a still more dishonouring and destructive falsehood to suppose that the righteousness of the saints could bring any to God. The only righteousness that could fit a sinner before Him in heaven is the righteousness of God, founded on the Lord Jesus and His infinite redemption. But then, although grace works through righteousness in the redemption that is by Christ Jesus, full room is left for whatever the Spirit of God may have wrought in and by the children of God. Thus all truth is kept unimpaired. The people that deny the righteousness of the saints are wrong; and the people that deny the righteousness of God are still more fatally wrong. The fact is, that you will find in this, as in all other controversies about scripture, that there is a great deal of truth apt to be sometimes forgotten on both sides. I am alluding, not to anything particular of late years, but to the invariable course of controversies — no matter what the occasion may have been — in Christendom.

In this case then the twenty-four elders on thrones are for the first time seen in the presence of God. Scripture emphatically marks this. Indeed it is clearly the grand distinctive feature that caught the eye of the prophet, next to the throne of God Himself. There were thrones  - associated and subordinate — no doubt; but still there were thrones around the great central throne of God; and those seated on them embrace in the most distinct manner the heads of the heavenly priesthood. I say the heads for this reason; that after these saints are shown us as elders crowned and enthroned in heaven, we find the clearest reference to others that were about to be kings and priests. That is, we find certain persons who suffer and are glorified after this. The very last words that I read today show another body of saints. It is said there, "Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed [us] to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made them unto our God kings and priests; and they shall reign," etc. This is the critical reading. I have bracketed a disputed word, and changed where there is no doubt. And where, let me ask, is the reverence of cleaving to a reading that is undoubtedly an innovation? I hold, with due consideration of the context, to more ancient authorities. Who will deny that the nearer you get to the source, the better the reading as a rule? Of old as now many mistakes were made in copying. The scribes that followed the apostles were not inspired any more than printers or editors in modern times. We have therefore to examine everything; and the only sound principle in these matters is to look at all the evidence, and thence to form the result.

Now, I am of opinion that both external and internal evidence would lead a competent judge to the conclusion that the word "us" should be absent from the ninth verse. It would seem probable that copyists inserted ἡμᾶς ("us") there — not that this is at all necessary or peculiar to any views I hold.* The most competent enquirers who have no settled interpretation of the book or schemes opposed to mine, agree in omitting it. Thus the most famous editor of the day holds it — the Lutheran Tischendorf. Another excellent scholar, who was when living rather more of a rationalist, holds the same thing — I allude to Lachmann. Again, Dean Alford, of this country, and many more, accept the same reading, agreeing as far as this is concerned. I refer to these various well-known names openly, that none may allow the groundless thought that there is anything peculiar or individual in this judgment. These matters are the common heritage of the church of God; they rest on facts that cannot be gainsaid by anybody except the ignorant.

* Some years singe Professor Tischendorf reported to me, among other Apocalyptic readings, that the Sinai MS. omitted the pronoun ἡμῦς in Rev. 5: 9. This I printed on his authority, which was followed by Dean Alford and others. But when the great uncial was published, I immediately perceived either that the printed text was here wrong, or that the discoverer had led me into an error, awkward to many more though to none so painfully as to me. But he had the candour immediately to re-examine the MS. on my appeal to him, and to confess frankly that he had misled me. Very different was the feeling of a scholar in this country from whom better things might have been expected. He had the temerity not alone to charge me with the fault but to mix up with it the doctrine of the rapture of the church, as if this had influenced the erroneous report. The truth is, that the weighty evidence lies in the fact that, according to the best authorities followed even by my censor himself, it should be "them" and "they' in verse 10 (as required by the true Greek text). The elders and living creatures are praising the Lamb in that verse for others made kings and priests, not for themselves. This is incontestable. The point debated is whether ἡμᾶς should or should not be read in the preceding. Even if it ought certainly to be read, it would rather strengthen the distinction between the saints represented by the elders and living creatures. But I was willing to waive what would rather fortify my position, as honestly believing with the best critics that it is a most suspicious reading, if not certainly on external evidence an intruder. And I was convinced, as I am still, that its insertion presents a sense (when the two verses are taken together) so strange that nobody has yet offered a tolerable explanation. It is therefore still more objectionable on internal grounds. But the question is really independent of doctrine, and is much more one of critical acumen and of spiritual judgment.

There is another point far clearer, and, it may be boldly said, indisputable. Any one who knows anything about the sacred text must be aware that in verse 10 "them" and "they" should take the place of "us" and "we." I do not deny that this is a considerable change of sense; but the evidence is so overwhelming that no one who respects the witnesses God's providence has preserved can hesitate. The sense resulting is excellent, save in the retaining of "us" in the verse before, which would present a harsh and unprecedented change of persons, which nobody, as far as I know, pretends to understand or account for. Here, therefore, one ought to speak with still greater assurance than as to verse 9; though I believe that the change required in verse 10 makes verse 9 uncorrected to be hardly intelligible, and adds much internal force to the few witnesses for its correction. The tenth verse would run thus: "And made them to our God kings and priests: and they shall reign over the earth." A distinct party is in question from those who are singing. The elders, and I suppose also the living creatures, are singing of others. They celebrate the worthiness of the Lamb that was slain and brought to God by His blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, etc. Whether the word "us" should or should not be in verse 9 is not the point on which we are now reasoning. Certainly there is no room for doubt as to the tenth verse — "and made them," not "us" — unquestionably not "us." The Lamb "made them [that is, some others previously described or at least alluded to] unto our God kings and priests: and they shall reign over the earth."

The importance of this, the true text, is very great, because it shows that besides the twenty-four elders who have this glorious and heavenly place as chiefs of heavenly priesthood, there are others bought by His blood who, although not in the place of such exalted dignity, either now or at any later time put among the twenty-four elders, are celebrated as made kings and priests, and shall reign over the earth. Thus they are not only to be spared during the judgments that follow, but they are even to share as royal priests in the great millennial kingdom of our Lord Jesus. Nothing can be simpler and surer than this, which is conclusively established by Rev. 20: 4, where the sitters on the thrones are the first class, corresponding to the elders (i. a. the Bride, and those called to the marriage supper); then the early sufferers during the seals (after the elders were seen in heaven); and, thirdly, the latest sufferers under the beast in the last efforts of the Antichrist. All share the millennial reign with Christ. The assumption, therefore, that the only persons who will be found in heaven and reign with Christ are these chiefs of heavenly priesthood, is an evident mistake. Saints in a somewhat different position otherwise are to reign with Christ as well as the elders. The twenty-four, when they are seen in heaven, sing of the grace that the Lord was showing, not to themselves, but to others, and this not merely in making them blessed under His reign on the earth, but with Him and them to reign over it.

By the way it may be just observed that the rendering to "reign on the earth" is also erroneous. When the verb "to reign" is put along with the preposition ἐπὶ, it invariably means the sphere of the reigning and not the place where those who reign dwell. There is another word (ἐν) that is used invariably for the latter idea.

Scripture is really the most exact book in the world, it matters not what author you select for a comparison with it. If you take the finest effort of Attic Greek, it will be found that there is an accuracy about Biblical language, when people once get into its spirit and understand it, which is beyond Plato, Sophocles, Thucydides, Demosthenes, or any other master of that refined and versatile tongue. Do you allege the solecisms of New Testament Greek? They are far less numerous than pettifogging, combined with ignorance of the truth, used to affirm. But let me tell you that even those authors are not free from words, turns of phrase, and constructions which offend against rule, not only bold rhetorical terms, but structures of sentence that will not bear strict analysis. For instance, it is a fact, although it may seem somewhat odd to many, that the most celebrated of the classics not infrequently make bad grammar in the best of their few extant compositions. It is not insinuated that they did not know it was unusual; they wrote as they did because it added energy to the style. It is only dull men who occupy themselves in fiddling about grammar, and think that there must be always an adherence to technical rules of common language and every-day speech; but the best writers defy such conventionalities whenever it is necessary to give emphasis to what they wish to communicate.

It is not otherwise in the word of God. There is no doubt in scripture, as elsewhere, an occasional departure from the strict rules of ordinary syntax. Let nobody by this suppose my meaning is that it is of no importance to know how to use human speech — our own as well as the language that God used especially, or any other tongue we may be acquainted with. But it needs to be borne in mind, at the same time, that there is for the Spirit an energy of truth, as well as rhetorical skill among men, which does not hesitate to set at nought a mere grammatical point for some higher end. This falls in with what is claimed for the word of God — the most perfect form of revealing to men that which God would convey to him. Hence it is, that what some are quick to count blots or blemishes of style are all sanctioned and intended by God's Spirit; and that what sounds at first abrupt, harsh, or strange, spite of that peculiarity whatever it may be, conveys the idea more justly than anything else could. Yet, claiming all this for the word of God and for every line of it, we must not go beyond our text, but hold that the writers only used what can be proved by the best evidence of every kind, external as well as internal, to be the very words of the Holy Ghost.

In this case, then, we have the four and twenty elders round the throne, and besides, as already said, the intimation in the next chapter that others from all quarters are not only to be saved but to reign with Christ over the earth as well as themselves. This is of the highest interest. It shows us plainly that we must not adhere to those systems of doctrine that never can bear an infringement of a view that is held popularly. For instance, perhaps we have all been brought up in the notion that all the children of God, in all ages, compose the church of God. Now it will be found on closer research that this is not supported by the word of God. While fully granting the pre-eminent place in glory to the church, scripture shows there are others to be blessed in heaven as well as on earth who are not included in that particular company. And this is proved, not only by the prophetic word, such as this, but by the plainest doctrinal teaching of God. Take for instance Heb. 12, or again Heb. 11. In the end of the latter chapter we are told that God had "provided some better thing for us, that they [the Old Testament saints] without us should not be made perfect." Here you have clearly a distinction between them and us, as those who sing differ from those sung of in Rev. 5. The nature of that distinction is another matter. We may be more or less exact in our appreciation of the difference, but differences there are, past, present, and future, expressly laid down by the word of God. Take again the next chapter, where it is said that we "are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem;" and more than this, "an innumerable company of angels;" then "God the judge of all;" then the church of the firstborn." It is impossible fairly to overlook a distinction here drawn (to speak of no more) between "the spirits of the just made perfect" and "the church of the firstborn." You have clearly the assembly of the heirs or firstborn — who are viewed elsewhere as the one body; and you have the spirits of just men made perfect — another company quite distinct. This is enough to show that the word of God does distinguish where a great many excellent people confuse.

I do not pretend to go into all at once, but I am bound to produce from elsewhere support and illustration of that which is before me in the chapters we are now considering. Let it suffice to say then that the twenty-four elders are beyond doubt in a singular and conspicuous place of blessedness — saints glorified in the presence of God. Yet it is clear that, when there, they anticipate others who are to reign with Christ as well as they. These others are so much the more important, because the great object of the book of the Apocalypse is to show us the destiny, and the circumstances through which they pass in order to arrive at that destiny, of these other saints.

Let us, however, go on with our chapter. "Out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices." To this I call your particular attention. Is this the aspect of God's throne as now revealed and known? Do thunderings and lightnings and voices proceed from the throne of God at this present time? And is this the way in which the throne of God — the action of His throne — is or would be qualified? Certainly not. The throne of God now is a throne of grace, to which we come boldly. (Heb. 4) Impossible for man here below to come boldly to a throne out of which proceed thunderings and lightnings and voices. This would indeed be presumption; for we must then defy, as it were, that which the throne itself manifests and proclaims. Clearly the thunderings and lightnings and voices are the expression of God's displeasure and judicial feeling, so to speak, towards things and people upon the earth.

Is it demanded, then, how the elders come to be seen around such a throne? For this simple reason — they are in the resurrection state; they are in heaven glorified. How did they get there? They were gathered to the presence of the Lord who entitled them to stand there. How is it, then — and this is a very fair question — that the presence of the Lord which is to gather His heavenly ones to Himself is not here described? My answer is, as it is set forth nowhere in the Revelation (if so, where?), the objection is entirely invalid. It is not the fact that it can be shown to be described elsewhere. In short, you must insert it in some place where it is rather implied than described. The only question is, where is the best place to suppose it? I answer, here assuredly, and nowhere else; and here for this reason — that you have the chiefs of the whole body, and remember, not twelve, not twenty, not twenty-one, but twenty-four. They are the heads of the entire priesthood — the whole of the glorified or heavenly priesthood viewed in its chiefs; and in its chiefs, because there are others to be priests afterwards. Therefore you could not have more than the chiefs seen here. If they are gathered to be with the Lord in heaven, not in spirit, but in body also — glorified there if they are crowned and enthroned there, all this cannot be without the Lord having come and gathered them unto Himself. If so — how? How possibly conceive such a thing as the full number? Bear in mind that there is no addition to those thrones afterwards, not even one more; never but twenty-four thrones — never more or less than twenty-four elders. If it were merely the estate of separate spirits, there would be afterwards an addition. Room must be left for more at a later epoch. But no; the same unvarying body is found until a certain defined moment, when this symbol of elders disappears and gives way to another — when the time is come for what is called the bridal or the-marriage supper of the Lamb.

At that time of joy it is no question of elders: the Lamb does not marry people as elders, but as the bride. It is the very same body, but viewed no longer as invested with the wisdom that God conferred through our Lord Jesus; no longer viewed, in short, as elders, but as one corporate company, the bride. This is in relation to the marriage just then celebrated, which is the consummation of the hopes of the church. It is the full expression of our communion with Christ.

Then, again, when the Lord Jesus is about to execute judgment on the beast, and the false prophet, and the armies of the earth, He takes the place of a warrior, and so do they. They are at that point seen not as elders, of course, nor even as the bride; for what business has either in battle? They are seen in what is far more admirably suited to the case: they come out of heaven as, the hosts on white horses, like the great Leader they follow.

Thus, it is readily seen, we have very clearly symbolic language used with the greatest possible precision in the Revelation. Of course I admit there are difficulties in this book, as there are in every other; but the man who talks about the difficulties of the Revelation I should like to see taking-up Genesis. Very likely he imagines he understands the first book of Moses well; but it can easily be proved that understanding one part of the word of God generally goes with understanding another, and the people that do not profess to understand the end of the Bible, you may depend upon it, do not know much better about the beginning: at least, such has been my experience in these matters. The word of God gives us the truth; and one part of revelation makes way for another. It is a living organism. It is not a mere science that you may master up to a certain point, and not understand the rest; it is a thing of life and power. These words are spirit and life, as given by the Spirit of God; and although undoubtedly there may occasionally be one that has been blessed in directing his attention to a particular part, it is the exception rather than the rule. In general, the man that understands the Bible best is the man that reads it all, valuing it as given of God to be understood by the Holy Ghost; consequently, he does not pretend to have fathomed or exhausted any part, but he, by grace, understands a little here and a little there, and so on, right through the whole Bible. This is generally true of Christians who have faith in the word and Spirit of God; and I believe it the safest and wisest way. It is a dangerous thing to have your hobbies in scripture — your favourite subjects, which exclusively occupy your mind. Those who so read get exaggerated, unhealthy notions by that means. I would urge my brethren to seek earnestly a real and large entrance into the mind of God. In order that it should be deep, be assured that this depends to an immense extent on the measure in which self is judged, and the Lord is looked to; for you cannot separate intelligence in the things of God from spiritual state. It is not genuine, wholesome, or savoury, without moral power; and it is a great mercy that so it is.

As far as concerns the subject before us, the general result seems to me to be sufficiently plain — plain enough to the simple; and the main point is to become simple, in order that we may really enter into the revealed mind of God.

Returning to our chapter, we may remark that beside the issuing from the throne of lightnings and thunderings and voices, we find "seven lamps [or torches] of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God." It means the Spirit of God. He is not now described as baptizing into one body. Such is the way in which God acts in the church. But here it is in the retributive dealings of God. It is that Spirit which perfectly discerns, detects, and judges — seven torches therefore — that which does not fail to make manifest morally before itself. God will act to this end when His throne assumes a judicial character. The evidence is abundant that it is a different state of things from what exists now. This confirms therefore what has been said before. The churches are done with. There is no such thing as the Lord dealing with Christian assemblies on earth He is no longer in that form of relationship when the fourth chapter begins to apply.

But, further, "before the throne was a sea of glass like unto crystal." Now, in the temple there was a sea, no doubt, but it was a sea of water, not of glass (as in the tabernacle there had been a laver). Here then we have a sea, but it is a sea of glass. Why so? As long as there was one member of the body of Christ who required to be cleansed in passing through this defiled and defiling earth, so long the figure of the application of the water by the word is necessary. Why is it here a sea "of glass"? Because it is no longer a question of the word used to cleanse the defiled. Their course was over. They had passed out of the scene of defilement. Those who are here viewed in the presence of God are no longer subjects of defilement. As long as they were in the world, of course they needed to have their feet washed. He who says that, because one is washed in the blood of Christ, he does not require to confess his sins day by day, understands no more than half his Saviour, and evidently sets one part of God's mercy and blessing against another. It would be most miserable, if it were otherwise possible, with new and eternal life, to be left under the consequences of daily defilement. It is granted that if all you care for is just that your sins should be forgiven, you may have a scanty sense of God's holiness, or of what becomes His child; but if you feel the value of communion with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, if you prize the blessedness of sharing the Lord's thoughts and feelings, you cannot but be sensitive to such defilement which grieves the Holy Ghost whereby you are sealed till the day of redemption. This is precisely why God works in you by His Spirit. He sees and feels what is wrong; He acts according to God's nature as displayed in Christ, and brings you to feel evil and to confess it before Him. Such is the effect of Christ's priesthood. We require not only a Saviour to die for our sins, but a priest to live for us, and to intercede for us though we are Christians, because we are still on earth in weakness, need, and alas! too often failure. Accordingly, it is not denying His sacrifice that will mend matters, nor will nullifying His priesthood establish souls, but simply dry them up into mummies.

The blood of Christ remains the one sacrifice; and it is of the very essence of the truth of Christianity that there is but one sacrifice, and that Christ's sacrifice has done this work perfectly and for ever for the believer But then, instead of a man merely looking back at the sacrifice of Christ, when he falls into a sin, he has, while holding this fast, to humble himself before God; for the Holy Ghost uses the word of God to deal with him founded on the sacrifice of Christ, but never renewing it. The sacrifice of Christ abides in its efficacy; but, so far from this being all we want, because of it there is a necessity for "the washing of water by the word." "He that is washed [bathed] needeth not save to wash his feet." For this is he that "came by water and blood, not by water only, but by water and blood." The Lord Jesus has provided for all. Out of His side, as we know, flowed both; and so it is, that as the blood of Christ expiated our sin as guilty sinners before God, so the water not only gives us new birth, but also, in answer to His own intercession, carries on the cleansing of the feet when they are defiled in our own passage through the world.

This is no longer the case with those connected with the sea of glass; that is, it is no longer the want when saints are glorified; and so this vision intimates. Not, of course, that the Lord will neglect any of His people who may afterwards be called. The vision to which we are here introduced simply gives us a complete picture of the change that will have taken place when it is fulfilled; and one of the new elements we see is that, instead of a laver of water to wash the feet of those exposed to the soils of earth, the saints are now seen in glory — elders in His presence, assessors on thrones round God's throne. The whole work was done, not of atonement only but intercession also, as far as they were concerned. As they had thus passed out of the sphere where they needed the cleansing operation of the Spirit, the symbolic sea in this vision consists not of water but glass. It is fixed, not active, purity. It is the witness therefore that no defilement remains. As they had passed out of earth, and sit enthroned in the presence of God in heaven, we can readily understand that it could not be otherwise.

There is a subsequent vision, affording an interesting point of contact, or rather contrast, that may be called to your attention. As is easy to be seen, there are others who are called by God's grace after these; but they go through a storm of suffering; they go through a sea of awful temptation, tribulation, and everything else that can harass mind and body. And this will fall, I have no doubt whatever, as a scourge on the guilty world — God's retributive dealing, because of the despising of the gospel, as well as the unfelt unjudged rejection up to death of His own Son. You know that Jews and Gentiles both put to death the Son of God. Certainly the disciples did not. Afterwards they acquired a heavenly character, and, by Paul's ministry, pass out of the earthly scene. Christians as such were not guilty of Christ's death Whatever was their guilt, it was atoned for by that precious blood; but they were not called as yet, and so not guilty of the dreadful deed. Jews and Gentiles were.

Accordingly, it needs no great intelligence to see thoroughly the moral reasons why the church, being called out after the cross, should be now taken out of the scene, and why the Lord begins to work on Jews and Gentiles. They go through this retributive chastening; they are the direct proper objects of this special tribulation; and when at the close some of them are seen as conquerors — for the Lord will surely work by grace in a certain number — when those who had won the victory over the beast, etc., are seen in Revelation 15, they are found on "a sea of glass, mingled with fire." There is no mingling with fire in Rev. 4. The fire is the heat of tribulation; and when the saints that pass through the tribulation — those that died, and were brought by grace into heavenly glory — when they are seen at a subsequent epoch, they have on them the marks of having crossed that sea, the tribulation through which they passed. It is not so with the elders. The reason is, that the tribulation was not even heard of yet. The tribulation, the great tribulation, was long after they were gone to heaven.

On the whole, therefore, the general bearing of the chapter is not so obscure as to hinder the simplest mind in Christendom that is subject to God through the teaching of the Spirit from understanding it.

"Before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four" (not "beasts," as is well known, but) "living creatures." These living creatures show us the various qualities of God's power; they represent it in a symbolic form. The heathen, as we know, who did not know God, exalted the attributes of God into idols which they worshipped. Here we know not merely the living creatures that are round about the throne, but Him that sat upon it; we know the one and only true God the Father, and we know Him by the Lord Jesus whom He has sent. But God does in this symbolic way teach the characters of His power in which His judgments are going to be executed.

First, we may observe the four living creatures were full of eyes before and behind. It is remarkable that, although we have the cherubim described in the Old Testament, they are not so spoken of there. They are here described as having not only eyes, but eyes within, as stated in verse 8. This is peculiar. They may have eyes, but "eyes within" seems to show an intrinsic power of discernment that is characteristic of the New Testament. Thus all the description here, while it resembles the Old Testament, gives us progress and so far difference. In short, the living creatures are somewhat like the cherubim, and in other respects like the seraphs of Isaiah vi. Besides, they have their own peculiarities, resembling the cherubs of Ezekiel. The first is like a lion, the second like a steer or young bull, the third living creature had a face as a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. That is, you have power in its majesty, power in its patient labour and endurance, intelligent thought in that which was like a man, and rapidity of execution shown forth in the flying eagle. Again, these four living creatures had each of them six wings about him, just as the seraphs had in Isaiah; and they had not the wheels, a point that distinguishes them from the vision of Ezekiel. "And they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."

It is worth while to pause a moment and look at the great moral principles of what we have here. There are two relative qualities in reference to which may be traced a remarkable difference in the elders — I mean righteousness and holiness.

Now what is the effect of the direct presence of God on the saints themselves displayed in righteousness before Him? Revelation 4 shows more than this, the exercise of His throne being judicial dealing with the earth. There are lightnings and thunderings and voices. But the remarkable feature disclosed is, that whilst the elders are enthroned before God thus revealed in righteousness, they sit peacefully in His presence. There is not the very smallest symptom of alarm. There is not even a movement discernible, so truly are they made God's righteousness in Christ.

On the other hand, when God in His holiness is celebrated by the four living creatures according to His own nature — when they praise Him as the "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty," the elders are at once in movement. Thus before judicial dealings the elders show us the most perfect rest in the presence of God. As a question of judgment there is not one demand of righteousness that was not satisfied by the cross. If there had been any sin unremoved, oh, what trouble had been among all the twenty- four ! But no; they sit in perfect peace on their thrones. But when His holiness is in question, they fall down before Him; they do homage to Him that lives to the ages of ages; they cast their crowns before the throne. Their hearts are swallowed up in the delight of what God is. What He is in His holiness draws them out. It is the attractive power of His holiness, not the (to others) alarming power of the righteous judgments of God, which kindles their spirits and engages them in adoration. In the presence of righteousness there is nothing but rest; in the presence of the celebration of His holiness there is activity of worship.

Such is, then, the scene that is presented in Revelation 4. I shall say a very few words on Revelation 5 before I close.

Hitherto we have simply had the Lord God Almighty — Jehovah Elohim — that was, and is, and is to come; God, as He had made Himself manifest in His dealings with men here below, especially with the fathers and Israel, but now seen on the throne. And why so? How comes it that He is not here presented as the Father? You know very well how constant in the New Testament "the Father" is. It is notorious that we never hear such a thing as grace and peace from the Lord God Almighty — from Jehovah Elohim, or any other Old Testament designation. And when the apostle Paul employs this his customary formula, never does he couple it with Shaddai Jehovah, or Elohim. The same is true of the apostles John and Peter and Jude. Nor does even James, though Israel is addressed, and there are texts throughout relative to Jehovah; but never does he give a salutation from Jehovah as such. Why is the old style and title found here? Because a change of great moment is come in; because God is no longer revealing Himself in the formation of the heavenly family. He has taken them out of the scene, which can only be by the coming of the Lord Jesus personally to receive them. (John 14; 1 Thess. 4; 2 Thess. 2: 1.) But this is not brought out in the book of Revelation; it does not fall within its revealed object; because the aim of the prophecy is to set forth the judgments of God, and not the secrets of His grace Consequently, as the coming of Christ for His own is an event that does not at all directly affect the world, but is intensely a matter for Christ and the church, there is a veil naturally and fittingly drawn over it here. "Behold," says the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 15), "I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment," etc. This mystery will have taken place when Christ comes to meet us in the air; but the object of the Revelation is not to reveal the mystery of God's taking us on high, but rather of His not judging evil on the earth. Besides, it had been revealed fully already, and therefore was uncalled for. It was the appropriate object and function of the apostle Paul to show what was secret and heavenly to the church blessed with Christ in the heavenlies; but the object of John the seer is, above all, to show what would take place on earth after the church disappears from the scene.

Consequently, all this double scene of worship on: high is only preliminary to the great body of the prophetic visions. The object of the book is to unveil the series of judgments that are to fall on the earth, not the gathering of the saints to Christ in heaven. At the same time, you have the fullest confirmation of the doctrines of St. Paul, because, before the blows of divine displeasure fall, the prophet is taken up, he beholds and records the heavenly saints as already gathered in a glorified state. He notifies to us thrones that never were seen in heaven before, filled already with men risen or changed. In chap. 5 the elders and living creatures join in worship, and sing, "Thou hast redeemed [us?] to God by thy blood." Supposing we do not accept the reading ἡμᾶς or "us" (which I am quite willing, with Lachmann, Tischendorf, and others, to allow may not be genuine), still they are clearly saints who thus address the Lamb. The position of the elders on thrones, their clothing, their functions with the bowls full of odours, &c., prove their redemption, even if they only sung of others expressly, or of the abstract truth. There could be no such ornament as the crown of gold, no such place of dignity for the creature as a throne in God's presence, without being bought by the Lamb's blood. No created being whatsoever could have such a royal and priestly rank on high, except in virtue of such a purchase.

It is to be remarked that here (chap. 5) we have some advance. A seven-sealed book appears in the hand of God. The praises of the last chapter did not go beyond creation and providence; but this in no way exhausted what God had to make known to His own. He was about to reveal quite a new thing — the special process by which He will put the Lord Jesus in possession of the inheritance of creation. Such is the object of the book here seen in the vision — the different forms of judgment that the Lord will apply, eventually issuing in the taking of the kingdom by the Lord Jesus, and His heavenly ones reigning along with Him. "I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne, a book written within and on the backside:" that is, it was full to overflowing. It was not written as an ordinary scroll, within only. There was so much to say, that it was written on the back. So in Ezekiel 2: 9, 10 the Jewish prophet had a roll of a book shown; "and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without." It was "sealed with seven seals" — shut up impenetrably therefore, as far as the creature was concerned. "And I saw an angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?"

No one was found, no one able, it is said, — to open the book; and none able, because not one was worthy. But if John weeps much because none was found worthy, one of the elders — for they enter into the mind of Christ — consoles the prophet, saying "Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed (or conquered) to open the book." And Jesus opens the book, not simply as a divine person; not simply as the perfectly obedient man; but by overcoming — by the all-prevailing efficacy of His precious blood. He was worthy and able. But He took it on the ground of the price He paid, and not on personal worth or strength. Had He done it out of personal title alone, where were we? He did it on the ground of the price He paid — all our boast and joy except, indeed, that the best of all that His purchase brings is to delight our souls in Him who thus bought us — not merely in the blessings He has bounteously given us.

Jesus, then, is conqueror; but when He comes forward it is not as a lion, but as a Lamb. He is proclaimed as a Lion, but when beheld, it is a Lamb as it had been slain. The One who asserts this mighty and majestic power of God, and especially in connection with the hopes of Israel — that Blessed One — is seen to be the earth-rejected man, the holy sufferer whom the world would not have or suffer to live. Was it worthy of Him? It rejected Him, but rejected Him into the home and glory of God, where He is now seen as the Lamb. And mark, it is not as He descended: He came down the only begotten Son — I do not say leaving His Father's bosom. Oh, no! He never left it: how could He leave it? He was a divine person, and, therefore, even if looked at as a man, it could be said, "the Son of man which is in heaven" — not merely, who was, or, who was to be, but "who is in heaven." None but He could say this, and, therefore, however much you hold fast — (and you cannot too tenaciously hold fast — the reality of His manhood; and whoever does not hold it fast, is no Christian at all) — let it never disparage His deity; I do not say merely His divinity. We talk about the divinity of this book, the Bible, but not so rightly of the divinity of Christ as of His "deity" or Godhead.

Here then He is spoken of as the Lamb, in particular as the slain Lamb contrasted with the world-powers or ravaging beasts of prey, and especially the one yet to rise and trample down for the last time the people of God on the earth. The Lamb sits there, but rises and takes the book out of the hand of Him that sat upon the throne, and then all heaven is filled with the praise of the Lamb as well as of God.*

* It is well to note that Rev. 5: 14 ends, according to the best authority, with "worshipped." "Him that liveth for ever and ever" is a spurious addition. In fact, the elders worshipped both.

If He took that book, it was not merely to read it Himself; it was in love to make all plain for us. What could make it plainer to Him? He opens the seals, and tells us the contents. He unfolds the mind of God. Oh, may we heed it!

This sketch necessarily could not be very complete but in it I have designedly passed over nothing of importance, as it has occurred to me in glancing over the portion of the word of God before us. I trust it is at least clear to those who have given me their hearing, that the elders were beyond doubt men; that they were men no longer on earth, but in heaven; that they constitute a new class seen for the first time above. Who compose them? I have not as yet sought to answer.

For my own part I strongly suspect that the twenty-four elders include the Old Testament saints as well as the New, up to the moment of the Lord's coming to receive them to Himself. I make this remark, because we find afterwards that when the change takes place, and the elders as such are no more seen, a new symbol is seen to take its place (Rev. 19). You have the Bride; but besides her you have certain persons that are said to be blessed — guests invited to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. It need scarce be said, that nobody thinks of inviting a bride to her own marriage feast: others may be invited there of course. It seems to me, therefore, very plain that others are to be at the marriage-supper of the Lamb besides the bride.

Hence nothing is more easy than to understand that the twenty-four elders might include both Old and New Testament saints, from Revelation 4 to chap. 19, when the Bride and the guests are substituted for the elders. Then it becomes a question of the church in her own proper character of communion with Christ; and you find under the twenty-four elders a twofold company — the Bride, with others who were united for a certain end, but not in everything. This is merely a question of spiritual judgment, and depends on a great deal of scripture to decide it.

I do not therefore throw out more than a suggestion now. I have endeavoured to keep to the grand landmarks of the subject, which are especially necessary for all the children of God. What I have been saying makes this plain to any one. We see the wisdom of God in arranging this mystical history of the church. Had it been a literal history of the church, a prophetical mapping out of all with great plainness, the consequence would have been that people would have ceased to look for Christ's coming; but inasmuch as the seven churches were there before the apostle's mind at the time when this book was written, there was no check on the continual waiting for Christ. On the other hand, if the church tarried here below, these seven churches would expand, as it were, into a larger bearing; and as long as the church was continued, it would be always adding more and more completeness, more filling up, as it were, the previously unseen points which would then become obvious and salient.

This is the true way for faith; it is so that all the New Testament is written. If the Lord represents the ten virgins as showing Christendom waiting for Christ, it is the same virgins that went forth originally and fell asleep afterwards, who go in with the Lord. No doubt we (looking back ex post facto, as people call it,) can see (when the history is behind us) that it was designed to take in the various generations of Christians. But as far as the parable is concerned, it contemplates only that one generation which was existing at the time the parable was put forth. In this I cannot but see the deep mind of God. Does it not seem to you to be consummate wisdom for Him so to write His word that there should be in it nothing at variance with the hope of the Christian in always expecting Christ, and yet that, when the delay takes place, you can see that He knew of the delay perfectly well, but that He did not open it out in word so as to hinder saints from always waiting for the Lord Jesus? Thus manifestly all is true, holy, good, and wisely ordered.

May the Lord bless His truth! May there be one desire given to the children of God, so that knowing Him as our life, having Him as our righteousness, we may wait for Him as the hope of our hearts!

W.K.

Elements of Prophecy

Answer to Historicism

The Second Advent

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The True Principle Compared with Current Maxims

Chapter 2: Alleged Presumptions for Historicalism

Chapter 3: The Four Empires

Chapter 4: The Vision of the Ram and He-Goat

Chapter 5: Supplementary Observations

Chapter 6: The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9

Chapter 7: The Scripture of Truth. Daniel 10-12

Chapter 8: General Conclusions

Chapter 9: The Lord's Great Prophecies in the Gospels: Matt. 24; 25; Mark 13; Luke 21

Chapter 10: The General Design of the Apocalypse — Objections Met

Chapter 11: The General Design of the Apocalypse — Direct Arguments

Chapter 12: On the Year-Day Theory

Chapter 13: The Year-Day Theory Continued

Chapter 14: The Year-Day Theory: The Apocalyptic Numbers

Chapter 15: The Year-Day Theory Concluded

Chapter 16: Concluding Observations

Appendix A: {Prophecy: Its Classes, Purpose and Study}

Appendix B: The Jewish and Christian Expectation of  Christ Briefly Contrasted

Appendix C: Remarks on 1 and 2 Thessalonians Connected with the Revelation

Publisher's Note (Present Truth Publishers)

Elements of Prophecy, by W. Kelly, appeared in The Bible Treasury, and then in book form, with additions. What the reader has in his hands is a freshly typeset copy of the 1876 Morrish edition of this work.

Items in braces { } have been added. Thus, for example, Scripture references have been inserted so that they may appear in the Scripture Index; and notes in brackets { }, including some footnotes in brackets, have been added.

Preface

The work now before the reader is the examination of a book which appeared many years ago from the pen of a certain professor of Moral Philosophy and was regarded at the time by not a few as conclusive against Futurism. Even then, as some know, it was my intention publicly to test how far its principles were scriptural, and its reasonings valid; and it seemed to me none the less a duty because of the deliberate and strong conviction, whatever the delinquencies of the Futurists, that its tendency was retrograde, to the dishonour of Christ and the injury of the church of God. The professor however having since then divulged views on the punishment of the wicked which shocked all orthodox men, including of course those of his own party, I have judged it best not to give his name, nor to cite formally from his book. Hence such as have not read it might scarcely gather that my work is controversial; while those who do possess it will see that, however briefly, I have endeavoured to follow up with conscientious care his use of scripture and his argument, as well as his plan, so as to leave nothing unrefuted which seemed worth noticing. The Christian will perceive and I hope learn from God how much larger and more exact and profound is revealed truth than either the Historical scheme or the Futurist. This is the fruit I desire by grace to the praise of the name of the Lord Jesus. London, December, 1876.

Introduction

Prophecy is the revelation of the thoughts of God as regards the future, and His glory in Christ is the one blessed end of the prophetic word, as well as of all the divine actings. Make man, make self, the end, and singleness of eye is gone; darkness ensues by the just judgment of God — a result as sure in the domain of the spiritual understanding as in that of the spiritual conscience. It is true we may say of the prophetic part what the Holy Ghost says about the whole written word, that it is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. Still, the revealed acts are the expression of the principles of God's government of the world, and therefore the accomplishment portrayed in His word is the place where we learn these principles fully. This is surely what we have to ascertain. Otherwise we form our own notions of that which God has given us, prophecy, whereby to know His thoughts. Our business is to gather of what God speaks; and though all scripture is given for our profit, it is in no way necessary that all should be about ourselves. The glory of God in dealing with Jews is, in its place, as much the object of our faith as His dealings with Christians. And the apprehension of the distinctions in His ways, that is, real understanding of His word, depends on our knowing to whom it applies.

Is not this taking away scripture from the church? Quite the reverse. There is no instruction in the past or future history of Israel, as revealed in the Bible, which is not for the church, but it is not about the church. That such passages are so written as to bear an analogous application to the Gentile body, now grafted into the olive-tree of earthly testimony {Rom. 11}, I do not deny — an application which calls for the utmost caution, and a right division of the word of truth, because each dispensation has its own peculiarities, and in some cases there may be, and are, points of decided and intended contrast. Still, the church is not the subject treated of under the names of Judah and Israel, Zion and Jerusalem; and the effect of the unrestricted accommodation of such passages, to which we have been all accustomed, has been not only to rob the Jews of their promises, but to lower and obscure incalculably the privileges of the church, so far as present realization is concerned.

There is now, however, a considerable class of persons who admit that the only complete fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy involves the restoration of the literal Israel to their own land, and their national blessing and peace there, according to the new covenant, in the presence and personal reign of the Messiah. Hence, as a whole, they rightly refer the prophecies of future glory to the same people whose sins and judgments are therein detailed. They acknowledge that the reign of Christ over the converted Jewish people in the millennium is a very different thing from the secret counsels of grace which, through faith, have saved souls from the beginning. So far there is a step, and an important step, in the true direction. But here is a stopping short. It is not seen that the rejection of Christ by Jew and Gentile on the cross, and His consequent exaltation at the right hand of God, and the intermediate mission of the Holy Ghost here below till the Lord returns again, have made way for the accomplishment and revelation of an unique work of God, which had been kept secret from previous ages and generations {Col. 1: 26}. This work is the church, Christ's body.

It is not merely an increase of light as to the counsels of salvation, on which the entire line of the faithful, from Abel downward, had reposed, but there was a hitherto unknown and hidden mystery respecting a body destined to be the consort of Christ in heavenly glory at His coming, and meanwhile called into manifestation and enjoyment of its privileges by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, who was to commence, sustain, and guide it here below, while waiting for the Bridegroom. The Holy Ghost had acted, He had given faith, He had quickened, He had wrought efficaciously and savingly from the first; but there was no baptism of the Spirit till Pentecost. He was not (that is, in this new way) till Jesus was glorified (John 7: 39). So the Lord teaches us in Acts 1: 5 "Ye shall be baptized of the Holy Ghost not many days hence." When just about to ascend He said this to the already believing, regenerate disciples. On the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost did baptize them. He imparted many miraculous gifts, "the powers of the world to come"; but besides this He baptized them on that day, never before. Now it is certain that the formation of the body, the church, hinges upon the baptism of the Spirit, for "by one Spirit (as we are told in 1 Cor. 12: 13) are we all baptized into one body." You cannot, therefore, have the body of Christ before the baptism of the Spirit; they are simultaneous and inseparable things. Accordingly we there find for the first time "the church" spoken of as an existing corporation (Acts 2: 47). The Lord Jesus, it is true (Matt. 16: 18), had already said, "Upon this rock I will build my church"; but these words themselves prove that His church did not yet exist, save in the purpose of God. "Upon this rock I WILL build my church. It was not yet building. The foundation had to be laid; in death and resurrection alone could it begin. It was essential, as a condition of the existence of the church, that in the cross the middle wall of partition should be broken down, and Jew and Gentile be made one new man: in the next place Gentile and Jewish believers were builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2: 14, 15, 22).

For the Comforter was now come, the promise of the Father, to be in and with them for ever — that Comforter for whom it was expedient that Christ Himself should go away. The old Judaic order was nothing now before God. There was another and better temple, where God's presence was. There was one body, wherein Jewish and Gentile distinctions were absolutely gone, the church on earth, and one Spirit who resided there. It is not a mere continuation of a believing people who looked to promise, but established on accomplished redemption, an entirely new body appears, brought into union with Christ in His heavenly honours, between the first and second advent, while He is absent above. The latter terminus is admitted now by many who would dispute the former. It is confessed that the church is the bride, the Eve of the second Adam, and that the millennial saved people, though just as much saints, as truly redeemed by the blood of Christ, as we are, nevertheless answers to the type of Adam's children, and not of his wife. That is, it is an acknowledged principle that saintship, as in those who succeed the second advent, does not necessarily constitute membership of Christ's body. But as to the former terminus, even a far plainer proof has been here produced as regards the saints who preceded the first advent. Whatever may have been their many and precious promises, they are never in scripture called the church of God; nay, it has been shown that they could not consistently be so termed, because they were not baptized of the Holy Ghost into the one body, and there is no other introduction therein than by that baptism, which did not then exist. The true, the scriptural, limits of the church are the cross and the coming of the Lord Jesus {at the pretribulation rapture}; founded upon the one, and waiting for the other, is that body, one with its Head on high, in which God dwells by the Holy Ghost; a new and unearthly body, having a path here below traced out for it, in many and important respects, quite distinct from what characterized the Old Testament saints, or what will characterize the millennial saints.

If these principles be admitted, their bearing on the faith, affections, worship, and service of the children of God, will soon be felt and seen. But of such consequences this is not the place to speak, though I would here advert briefly to the way in which they affect our apprehension of the prophetic word.

The disciples, though subsequently forming part of the church when it began, were nevertheless not of it during our Lord's ministry on earth. They believed in Christ, they followed Him in His temptations, they were instructed by Him, but were not yet of the church, nor could they be till Jesus was glorified on high, {Acts 2: 33} and the Holy Spirit baptized them here below {1 Cor. 12: 13}. Their position was thus a peculiar one during that transitional order of things which began with John Baptist, and terminated with the cross, the proclamation going out meanwhile that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. If Matt. 10 be examined, it will be seen that the Lord gave them directions, some of which suited them only in their then state, as in Matt. 10: 5, 6, some of which might well apply when the Spirit was given, as Matt. 10: 16, 20, 24, 42, and others, which evidently look on to a future resumption of the testimony among the cities of Israel before the Son of man comes. Compare especially verse 23. Throughout this chapter — and it is not the only one of the kind — the disciples are addressed as having a peculiar connection with Israel, and in no way as being the church, or as representing it. No one denies that much of the chapter was fulfilled after the descent of the Holy Ghost to form the church. It was then, and in Judea, that persecution fell upon them. Still the chapter does not contemplate them as the church, but as Jewish disciples carrying out a Jewish mission, and awaiting, in the difficulties and sorrows of their testimony in that land, the coming of the Son of man. In Matt. 17 we find Peter, James, and John, the evident types of the spared and converted Jews in the millennium, and in the same scene Moses and Elias, the types of the glorified saints.

It is upon similar Jewish ground that our Lord speaks in Matt. 24. His disciples had heard Him pronounce desolation in the preceding chapter. But it was a judgment mingled with mercy; for He distinctly intimated that if the Jews should not see Him henceforth, it was not unlimited; it was till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Vengeance must fall upon the unbelieving generation, such as the mass then were and are. But the time is coming when the nation, or at least a remnant of it, shall bless and curse not; wise ones who understand shall at length with joy welcome Him whom they crucified on the tree.

And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily, I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world [age]? (Matt. 24: 1-3). Now it is not doubted that the church may have used, and may still use, the general principles of this chapter. All belongs to the church, for profit, instruction, reproof, or comfort; but most decidedly Matt. 24 is occupied not with the church, as such, but with Jerusalem and the temple, the consummation of the age, the clash of nations and kingdoms, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, persecutions, and trials, similar to Matt. 10, and a preaching of the gospel of the kingdom to all the Gentiles throughout the habitable world. Such is the general picture to verse 14. After that, the scene becomes more specific, both as to time, place, and circumstances. Precise interpretation must confine verses 15-31 to a period still future, though Jerusalem is still the foreground. "When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth let him understand); then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains" (Matt. 24: 15, 16). Now what has this to do with the church as the church? What has she to do with that holy place? (Compare Acts 6: 13; Acts 21: 28). And how could the setting up of the abomination in the Jewish temple be a sign to the church to flee? But no! the passage refutes the idea. "Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." Accordingly they are directed to pray that their flight be not on the Sabbath-day, nor in the winter, for either might impede their flight and expose them to imminent peril. It is to be a brief though terrible trial: "except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved" {Matt. 24: 22}.

That these elect are Jewish elect (see Isa. 65: 9, 15, 22) is confirmed by the Lord's warning the disciples about false Christs who shall arise. Could the church, who knows that she is to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air — could she, I say, be in danger from the cries, Lo! here is Christ, or there; behold, He is in the desert, or in the secret chambers? But a perplexed Jewish remnant, whose hope is a Messiah on earth, might well need such monitions as the Lord here supplies. The coming of the Son of man (for it is Christ coming judicially which the chapter contemplates) shall not be secret, but as the lightning shining from east to west. They were not to be enticed by a "Lo, here or there." Other unmistakable signs should be granted. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken" (Matt. 24: 29). Here again it is manifest that the Lord is not describing the translation of the elect church, but the gathering of His elect Israel, and for a plain reason: "When Christ our life shall appear," says the apostle addressing the heavenly saints, "then shall ye also appear with him in glory" {Col. 3: 4}. Christ will not be manifested first, and the church be caught up subsequently; both are to appear together and at the same time in glory. But with the elect Jews the case widely differs. "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other" (Matt. 24: 30, 31). They are delivered and gathered after the Son of man has already appeared. The church had not only been caught up before, but had come out of heaven along with Christ preparatory to His appearing (Rev. 19: 11-14). This prophecy, then, in any full sense, for I do not deny a partial historic accomplishment, looks to a future state of things, and directly concerns a believing Jewish remnant, quite distinct from the church.

Is it in Matthew, and other Gospels only, where we read of such a converted remnant? By no means. Matt. 24: 15, 21 evidently refers us to Daniel for other particulars of the same scenes and times. If therefore it be clear that Matt. 24: 15-31 concerns a future converted body of Jews, and not the church, have we not here also a divine help for interpreting Dan. 9: 27; 11: 31; 12: 1, 7, 11, and the connected parts of the same? That is, the saints spoken of in Daniel are Jewish, saints, and not the church, properly so called. Daniel's people, or at least the understanding ones (compare Matt. 24: 15) of that prophet, are those whom the Lord further instructs in the prophetic discourse of our evangelist. Again, it is admitted very generally that Daniel and the Revelation are so linked that, when you have determined the bearing of the one, you necessarily therein involve the general interpretation of the other. The beast of Dan. 7 is the beast of Rev. 11; 13; 17; and the time, times and a half, in that same chapter answer to the same period in Rev. 12, Compare the image in Rev. 13 with the abomination of desolation in the Gospel. Plainly therefore, while the Apocalypse has many subjects besides those treated of in Daniel or Matt. 24, while it admits of a far closer application than either to the providential history of the empire, etc., since the days of John, the grand final accomplishment of the book cannot be dissociated from the prophecies of Daniel and of the Lord Jesus Himself, which, we have seen, specially regard Jerusalem and the Jews at the end of the age.

Turning to the Psalms we find this truth confirmed. Let us first take Psalm 79, and assume what to many readers appears self-evident, that in its full import it tells of a day not yet come. The Holy Ghost there provides an utterance for a suffering people. But for what people? Clearly they are, and speak of themselves to God as His servants, His saints (Ps. 79: 2). Now is there a single sentiment which is characteristic of the church of God? Or is there one which does not breathe of Jewish affections and hopes? If the heathen invade Judea, if they defile God's holy temple in Jerusalem and lay the city in heaps, we can understand how these things may, and will deeply affect the heart of an Israelite. If the Gentiles shed the blood of God's saints like water round about Jerusalem, and give their flesh to the beasts of the earth, rightly may he pray, "Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name. For they have devoured Jacob, and laid waste his dwelling-place." But is this the language of the heavenly bride? Is it suitable to her standing to say, "We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us. How long, Jehovah, wilt thou be angry? for ever? shall thy jealousy burn like fire? Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is their God? let him be known among the heathen in our sight, by the revenging of the blood of thy servants which is shed" (Ps. 79: 4, 5, 10). Is it for us to pray that God may be known among the heathen in our sight, by revenging the shed blood of His servants? "O remember not against us former iniquities: let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us: for we are brought very low" (Ps. 79: 8).

Is there not another body of saints of whom these words will be far more emphatically true? Not that the church may not blessedly use such a psalm; not that she may not discern what is essentially applicable to herself: but plainly the circumstances, the experience, the cries, are all characteristic of Jewish saints passing through the fire, and not of the church of God. That they are owned servants of God, who suffer in and near Jerusalem before the Lord appears for their deliverance; that in the next psalm they call on Him that dwells between the cherubim to shine forth; that they acknowledge their sins, and the righteous retributive dealings of Jehovah therein; that they deprecate His anger and jealousy, crying, "Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved; O Jehovah God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?" that they appeal in faith to the God of hosts, cleaving to the link which binds Him to His people, howsoever failing, and entreat His hand to be upon the man of His right hand, "the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself"; that they are saints is plain, but it is equally evident that the whole current of their prayers, sanctioned by the Holy Ghost, and answered by the Lord in person, is quite inconsistent with the calling of the church. Forgiven all trespasses (Col. 2: 13), I admit that it becomes us, individually conscious of sins, to confess them, in the assurance that God is faithful and just to forgive us, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness {1 John 1: 9}. But this goes upon the ground that we are forgiven (1 John 2: 12), that we are already accepted in the beloved (Eph. 1: 6), and that as He is, so are we in this world (1 John 4: 7); whereas in the Psalms it is plain that the believing remnant have still to cry, "Show us thy mercy, O Jehovah, and grant us thy salvation," etc. Full known acceptance is evidently not enjoyed until Jesus appears (compare Zech. 12: 10-14; Zech. 13: 1; Joel 2, 3, etc.).

As to Ps. 81, it needs little proof that a joyful noise to the God of Jacob, the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery, the blowing up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on the solemn feast-day, that all this is no statute for the church, though it is for Israel; nor are we ever told to look for the finest of the wheat and honey out of the rock. Again, what relation to Christianity have the earthly tabernacles and glory in the land, beautiful as Ps. 84 and 85 may be? So also the fitting supplication for those who hate us is certainly not the language of Ps. 83: 9-18; but it is the right utterance of faith in Jewish saints, who are looking to God to arise and judge the earth. "Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kison; which perished at En-dor: they became as dung for the earth. Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna: who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession. O my God, make them like a wheel: as the stubble before the wind. As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire; persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, Jehovah. Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame and perish: that men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth."

While the church is being called, God is interfering in no such way. He is proclaiming salvation to the world that rejected and murdered His Son, who is still, so far as man is concerned, the outcast One, though crowned with glory and honour upon the throne of His Father. Hence the church's calling is governed by the present patience of God toward an ungodly world. Suffering, therefore, is her portion meanwhile, and grace, not judgment, her cry to God about her enemies. But the time is fast coming when God's dispensational displays will change, and, instead of making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sending rain on the just and on the unjust alike, "it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come out, that have no rain, there shall be the plague, wherewith Jehovah will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles" (Zech. 14: 17-19). When that time comes, there will be another and a suited witness here below; not the church, (whose calling was during the time when the riches of His grace knew no measure, namely, between the cross and the return of the Lord Jesus), but His people Israel, the righteous remnant become a strong nation on earth. "Jehovah said, I will bring again from Bashan: I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea; that thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same" (Ps. 68: 6. See all Ps. 94). "Remember, Jehovah, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones" (Ps. 137: 7-9). "Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye Jehovah" (Ps. 149: 5-9). I might thus comment on all the Psalms, save the few which describe the atoning sufferings of Christ personally. In all of them it is the Spirit of Christ in special sympathy with Israel, though the Holy Ghost applies to the church in the New Testament many truths which are equally true of us and of them (cp. Ps. 44: 22, with Rom. 8: 36). But this in no way sets aside their proper and prophetic bearings, any more than Hosea 11: 1 is denied to contemplate specifically the literal Israel, because in Matt. 2: 15 it is referred to Christ.

If then the Psalms are the outpouring of the souls of Jewish saints, if the Spirit of prophecy breathes in them from one end to the other, is it wonderful that the prophet, who especially presents us with the times of the Gentiles, should speak of the trials of the same Saints in the last terrible crisis of suffering? Other prophets dwell much upon their ultimate triumphs, in a state totally different from that in which the Jews are now, namely, under Messiah at His coming, and the new covenant. Daniel describes the four great beasts, and more particularly the last with its little horn, before whom three of the first ten horns, or kings, were subdued. "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the high places, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time. But the judgment shall sit, they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the high places, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him" (Dan. 7: 25-27). If Daniel in chapter 7 is occupied with these future Jewish saints and not with the church of God, who does not see that this goes far to decide the just and complete realization of Rev. 12, 13, and of the prophetic portion generally? For it is confessed by most that the Apocalypse is, to a great extent, an expansion of those parts of Daniel's visions which were still unfulfilled; and those who trace as the grand lesson of the former, the corruptions, persecutions, and judgment of the papacy, are sure to bend a considerable portion of the latter to the same point. On the other hand, if it be clear that Daniel bears decidedly, in the most literal and important aspect of the book, upon the Jewish remnant during "the time of the end" or closing scenes of Gentile supremacy, the Apocalypse is necessarily fixed as having (I do not say its exclusive, but) its main application in the same eventful epoch.

It is in the final results that God proves His judgment. Morally, I admit, we should say that even now there are many antichrists. One might think to hear some reason, that this showed that the Antichrist should not come. But this is not what we have heard in scripture. Neither is it that we deny local events to which many Old Testament prophecies apply. Only it is quite certain if the word of God is to be listened to, that the vast body of the results of prophecy in Old and New Testaments will have their accomplishment in a state altogether different from that which exists at present; when the church will be no longer represented as seven candlesticks on earth, but under the symbol of twenty-four enthroned elders in heaven, and God begins to resume His old associations with the Jews, chastening them in a special way, and judging their proud and blaspheming Gentile oppressors. To leave the Jewish part out, to slight it, as is commonly done, is folly and presumption. It is presumption, for God will finally prove by judgment what He really is, and the truth of all He has said of man, His hatred of sin, and His faithful mercy enduring for ever. He will demonstrate publicly and irrefragably that there is a reward for the righteous, and a God that judges in the earth. To prefer the protracted period {historicism} is to prefer the moral judgment of man to the perfect manifestation of the almighty judgment of God. It is folly, because the peace and rest which follow God's judgment in power cannot follow our detection of the moral character of what leads to it. The consequences are spiritual vagueness — a condition of soul, in this respect, hardly beyond that of many a pious Israelite who fully acknowledged God's providence, foreknowledge, and wisdom in controlling earthly events. Nay, the judgment and full manifestation of God therein are even less seen in this scheme than a godly Jew might have known before the first advent of Christ.

Dan. 9 may briefly illustrate what I have been seeking to explain. It is clear that this prophecy directly contemplates the Jews and Jerusalem only. "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people (Daniel's people, the Jews), and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgressions, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy" (Dan. 9: 24). I do not doubt that this entire period brings us up to the end of the age {up to the appearing of the Lord in glory}. The terminus a quo {starting point} is equally clear, and, in my opinion, furnished by Neh. 2. From the command to build the city "unto Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks," the briefer period being occupied probably with the building of the street and wall, and the longer period, added to it, carrying us on to the cutting off of Messiah: "After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah (not be born, or enter on His ministry merely, but) be cut off, but not for Himself." He is rejected; His own received Him not. He died for that nation, though not for that nation only {John 11: 51, 52}. Now this is most important to note. The death of the Messiah is after the sixty-nine weeks expire, and has nothing whatever to do, so far as the text informs us, with the seventieth week. Between that death and the last week an evident gap appears, not measured by dates, but simply filled up by the revelation of disasters upon the city, sanctuary, etc. In this interval we hear of another prince, not the prince who had already come to bless the city, and who was Himself cut off, but "the prince that shall come." It was not foretold that this coming prince was to destroy the city and sanctuary, but that his people should. What people are they? Unquestionably, the Romans; and they did thus destroy. Then follows a general picture of woe to the last. "And the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined."

But what of the last week? It remains entirely apart, and the particulars are given in the closing verse. "And he shall confirm covenant (not the covenant) with many (or the mass) for one week." It is the history of the seventieth week. We have seen Messiah already out off after the sixty-nine weeks; we have heard of another prince coming, whose people, not himself, destroyed the city and the sanctuary {AD 70}. It is of this future Roman prince we are now to learn. He covenants {confirms} for one week, for seven years, with the mass of the Jews (cp. Isa. 28: 14, 15, 18, 22). The covenant of Christ is an everlasting covenant, and never marred. But this is an evil covenant, and it is by-and-by broken. "In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that, determined, shall be poured upon the desolate." This seventieth week again is taken up, though perhaps not this period only, in the Apocalypse viewed in its future application; the last half of {the seventieth} which are specified in the period of 1260 days, during which {time} are the witnesses (Rev. 11), as well as in the time of vengeance, during which the beast has power given which he uses in warring with the saints and overcoming them (Rev. 12, 13; Dan. 7). These saints, as we have seen before, are not the church, which is nowhere found on earth from the end of Rev. 3. Its earthly pilgrimage and testimony had closed before the [seventieth] week began: from Rev. 4-19 the church is seen symbolically in heaven, and in heaven only.

Thus is shown the peculiarity of our position, upon whom the ends of the ages are met. It is a novel, unprecedented and heavenly place, in no way interfering with the vast scheme of God's earthly government: on the contrary, in this latter, room is purposely left for another field, which was entirely hidden of old, namely, for the development of the glory of Christ as the exalted Man. It is with a Christ on high the church is associated. Of course I do not speak of His incommunicable divinity, as the Son, but of a peculiar heavenly glory shared with His bride, and unknown to the Old Testament writers, who dwell so largely upon His Messianic rights. The church then began after the cutting off of Messiah, and goes up to meet the Lord in the air before the seventieth week commences with the Roman prince and his covenant. With the cross the earthly people fell under judgment, how long soever it might linger, while God was gathering a remnant to the Saviour. That same cross becomes the foundation of Christ's heavenly body, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. When this work is concluded, the church will be borne away to join the Lord in the air, and renewed dealings will begin with the earthly people once more. The church has, no doubt, committed to her the more complete revelation of these judgments on the Gentiles which precede the good things in store for Israel, but the strictly prophetic part of the Apocalypse is not therefore about herself. On the contrary it reveals, throughout the chief contents of it, the glorified worshipping in heaven, and the blows of divine judgment falling with a deepening intensity, till Christ and the saints come out of heaven and appear together for the destruction of the beast and the false prophet with their armies.

Chapter 1

The True Principle Compared with Current Maxims

Christ is the centre of the counsels of God, and hence of prophecy, which treats of the earth and of His government of it for His own glory. Hence the importance of Israel, of whom, as according to the flesh, came Christ who is over all, God blessed for ever. They are His people by a choice and calling which cannot fail in the end, though there may be and has been a fall and a long continued disowning of them in God's righteous judgment of their apostasy. But mercy will restore them ere long, humbly, joyfully welcoming the Messiah they have so long rejected.

This had been feebly seen, nay, generally denied, throughout Christendom for ages. Scarcely any error is more patent throughout the Fathers than the substitution of the church for Israel in all their system of thought. Every Father, whose remains have come down to us, is a witness of the same allegorizing interpretations; not only the Alexandrian school of Clement and Origen, but Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the Pseudo-Barnabas. The Latins followed in the same wake, not Augustine and Ruffinus and Jerome only, but Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius. Not one held the restoration of Israel to their land, converted nationally; the millenarian portion expected that the risen saints would reign with Christ in Jerusalem rebuilt, adorned, and enlarged, not that the Jews would be restored and blessed in the land. The medieval writers naturally adopted the same view: so did the Reformers, as far as I am aware, without an exception. All fell into the error of putting the church into the place of Christ, and so of leaving no room for His earthly people, besides His heavenly saints and glorified bride. They neglected the warning of the Apostle Paul, and assumed that the Jewish branches were broken off that the Gentiles might be grafted in, and take their place gloriously and for ever. They did not pay heed to the prophetic word, as Peter exhorts, but applied systematically the predictions of Israel's blessing in the last days to the Christian church: still less did they appreciate the day dawning or the daystar arising in the heart. Catholics, papists, Protestants, had no real light, no spiritual intelligence, as to the hopes of Israel as distinct from those of Christians.

Is it not as solemn as it is startling to see thus beyond just question the immediate, universal, and lasting departure of the Christian profession from prophetic truth? But so it is and must be. For the divine glory in Christ as the center for all things in heaven and on earth being the revealed purpose of God (Eph. 1: 10), when this is forgotten, false hopes spring up. Man, self, becomes the end, instead of Christ; the true light is lost, and darkness ensues in the just retribution of God. The effort to make the church all, instead of preserving the real dignity of the church as the heavenly spouse of Christ, lowers her to the position of Israel, a people reigned over, not reigning with Him, His inheritance, not heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

The future actings of God as revealed in prophecy are the expression of the principles on which He will govern the world; and so His word is the means by which alone we learn these principles fully. If we fail to ascertain them thus, we form our own thoughts of that which God gave us prophecy whereby to know His mind. Our business is to gather of what and whom God speaks; and no greater delusion can befall us than to imagine that, because all scripture is for our profit, all must be about ourselves. The purpose of God as to the Jews is in its place as truly the object of faith as His counsels respecting the church. Thus, the apprehension of His various ways for glorifying Christ is essential to real understanding of His word. Here, as everywhere, a single eye is needed. With Christ before us the whole body will not fail to be full of light.

Is not this to take away scripture from the Christian? Quite the reverse. To understand it according to God is the truest and richest gain; to misapply it to ourselves in Gentile conceit is ruinous. Yet there is no instruction in the past or future history of Israel as revealed in the Bible which is not for, though not about, the church. That such scriptures concerning the Jew may have been written so as to bear an analogous application to the Gentiles is not denied; but the application calls for the utmost caution and a right dividing of the word of truth, because each economy has its own peculiarities, and in not a few things there are confessedly decided and intended contrasts. It is an error therefore to read the church in Judah and Israel, Zion and Jerusalem; and the effect of this alchemy, which the Fathers originated and handed down to popery and Protestantism alike, has been both to rob Israel of their proper hope and to lower that of the church incalculably.

Yet no maxim of interpretation can compare with this most misleading identification for importance, antiquity, or widespread reception. Since the apostles, perhaps beyond every other tradition, has this been accepted always, everywhere, and by all. Fathers, Romanists, Reformed, have alike applied it habitually in their comments, as well as in practice.

Few sober minds doubt that the visions in Dan. 1 2, 7 start from the times of the prophet; that the Revelation applied in some sense from John's day; that the fourth beast sets forth the Roman empire; that the little horn in Dan. 7 denotes its last ruler; that Babylon in Rev. 17 represents Rome; that the prophecy in 1 Tim. 4 was fulfilled long ago; that the man of sin relates to the Antichrist, and is rather the ecclesiastical or false prophet power of Rev. 13 than the imperial chief or first beast; that the two woes in Rev. 9 are strikingly illustrated in the Saracens and Turks, and that the days, times, etc., may have had a symbolic force.

But these are points of detail, all of which together are a trifle compared with the one grave principle which effaces Israel from prophecy and installs the church in their stead. What then can be thought of the judgment that could overlook an error so transcendent, vitiating all sound exposition of both Old Testament and New from Genesis to Revelation? One can account for it by two considerations: first, a quite superficial estimate of the evil involved in this old and general error; secondly, a very exaggerated feeling against those who looked for a personal Antichrist among the Jews and a future revival of the Roman empire before the age ends, lest it should weaken Protestantism in the face of the popish re-awakening in our day. There is no adequate sense of the wrong which has been already done the truth for nearly eighteen centuries, and the darkening influence which Judaizing the church has wrought far and wide in Christendom, among the Orientals, Greeks, and Latins, as well as Protestants more recently, throughout all its history save the first century. The feverish doubts caused by a few fanciful essayists like Drs. Maitland, Todd, and Burgh, Messrs. Tyso, Dodsworth, and the like, were slight indeed compared with the original paralysis which destroyed all true power in the body of Christian profession, whether in the distinct perception of the Christian's heavenly privileges in union with Christ on high, or in the just recognition of God's fidelity to Israel.

To my mind the way in which Protestant compromise has played into the hands of Romanism is very serious (and this in many ways more than the prophetic speculations which palliated popery); but I speak of an error far older, deeper, more withering, and less suspected, which seems not to cross the vision of him who would defend the Protestant interpretation of prophecy against the futurist assailant.

The fact is too that it has been the common view of Protestants as well as futurists to take for granted the natural if not necessary clearness of fulfilled prophecy; to make much of general consent among interpreters; and to decry that view which could not plead antiquity or what was held by alleged heretics. Protestantism has ever made much of history, as if time were the interpreter rather than the Spirit of God leading souls into the truth. Hence Protestantism has sought to maintain that prophecy extends in nearly equal proportion over all ages down to the future advent of our Lord. This naturally excites the desire to find what answers to it up to and in our own day. And it is vain to deny that the ablest of Protestant interpreters have themselves laid down that the main use of prophecy is to convict, if not convince, unbelievers. Futurists have in this simply turned Protestant batteries against the Protestant system of interpretation.

The Christian, if wise, will eschew party spirit and narrowness here as elsewhere. He need not be a mere futurist because he cannot be a mere Protestant; and if anything ought to deter him from such systematizing, the contractedness of the one, and the virulence of the other, ought to serve as an effectual beacon against both. That half-a-dozen men in their zeal for what they saw to be unfulfilled pushed matters to extremes against the Protestant school which had misled them is clear; but to say that the system of the futurists in its very foundations directly contradicts the early writers is the last degree of controversial blindness if not asperity.

I am sure that it is a poor thing to court or reckon up the suffrages of the more ancient Fathers who wrote on prophecy; but it is absurd to deny that, right or wrong, they stand in the main with the futurists against the historicalists. They held that the end was nigh; they held that the Antichrist was an individual, not a succession; they held that he would take Christ's place, not His vicar's; they held that he would set up to be God in the temple of Jerusalem, not as the Pope in Rome; they held that the days are days, not years, so that the times of Daniel and of the Apocalypse would be but a brief crisis. Now these are the capital points of futurism, as opposed to Protestantism; and how the earlier Fathers thought is beyond controversy. Their foundations are those of the futurists. What has been alleged by special pleading consists of mere individual eccentricities, exaggerated into its very foundations, in order to ensure (or at least yield the semblance of) an easy victory.

Thus the great mass of futurists have ever held that the visions in Daniel start from his own time, if not from a defined point not far distant as the seventy weeks {Dan. 9}. But then they suppose a gap in the fourth or Roman empire, which, after extinction, is to revive for the time of the end; and of this they have unquestionable proof from scripture. A few persons attacked were excessive in their sentiments. It was apparently from not knowing how much there is common to intelligent minds both futurist and Protestant, as well as to Christians who have larger views than either. It was ignorance probably; if not, it was worse. Such strokes of strategy may suit polemical objects; but they retard the truth, and injure those most who deign to use them or are misled by them.

Not the least hurtful of influences in the Protestant system is the assumption that history is the interpreter of prophecy, and the undue place thus given to it. Prophecy explains history, never the converse. No matter how the facts answer to the prediction, they are but the least and lowest part: God's mind in the revealed facts is the lesson, and of this the Spirit is the only teacher, not history. Now He can and does lead the believer into the divine mind as well as the outward facts before, no less than after, fulfilment: so utterly do I reject the alleged futurist principle that fulfilled prophecy is plain as distinguished from the obscurity of what is unaccomplished. Not so: scripture is only understood aright by the Spirit, who is independent of time or history, and gives divine certainty by and to faith, whether the word of God be about the past or the present or the future. On the face of it the theory is false; for we must understand the prophecy before we can apply it truly, and when we do understand it (which is quite independent of its being fulfilled or not) we have what God meant. The proof of its application to events (that is, of its accomplishment) may be interesting to believers, and useful to meet (or stop the mouths of) unbelievers; but this is not the primary and ordinary intention, for it is in general given to instruct, cheer, and warn the believer, not merely to prove that God knows and speaks the truth beforehand as in some few exceptional instances.

And just think of the state of mind which could cite Deut. 4: 32, and Psalm 28: 5, in proof of the duty of studying history for the interpretation of prophecy! The first passage reminds Israel of the great and terrible fact that God spoke to them out of the fire. Moses appeals to them if ever man had heard the like. What is this to the purpose? Still less, if possible, is the second: the works of Jehovah and the operations of His hands are anything but man's account of man's doings. Nobody doubts that history, as far as it is true, must confirm a prophecy which really speaks of the same events: the question is its use in interpreting.

Nor are notorious facts justly to be styled history. In facts of the kind God acts in known public judgment, of which all the world can take cognizance. The fatal flaw here again is the leaving aside His public government for providence secret in its ways, which is not really the subject of prophecy as the general rule. In short then the use of fulfillment in reasoning with infidels is one thing; quite another is interpretation, which is our question.

It is in vain to deny that prophecy in general, even the visions of Daniel which take in the rise and progress of empire very cursorily, converges on the close of the age. Nor is there the least inconsistency in one who sees this, which it is utter prejudice or dishonesty to evade, complaining of that exaggeration of past or passing events to which the historicalists are notoriously prone. Take Dan. 7 for instance: is it not plain that the early verses as to the first three beasts are only introductory to the object of the Spirit? and that His object was meant to act as a present thing on the conscience, as well as to guide the feet of the saints when the circumstances appear? The confusion arises from the supposition that God's moral government as such has its results now, which it never can have till Christ be manifested, in view of whom all has been carried on.

To the historicalist, Christ or His glory is not the key of God's government; he is occupied with the past or present, which is but a parenthesis of secret providence between God's immediate government of old on earth and His resumption of it in the midst of Israel when the beasts and the Gentiles at large are judged. He makes a Ptolemaic theory, instead of seeing facts as they are with Copernicus; he views Christendom meanwhile as the central object, instead of Christ the true centre of the divine system. Hence, during that period of which history ancient or modern is so boastful, the great actors are regarded but as "beasts"; and all is passed over lightly till the conclusion of their history when judgments crowd into a brief space, and the Lord Jesus closes them all by His own personal appearing to judge and reign. Of these "times of the Gentiles" God has not lost sight; and hence they are noticed in Daniel, Zechariah, and the Revelation; but it is mainly to show how Christ will displace all and take the reins of God's kingdom.

Now that God has brought in fuller light, the historicalists are those who oppose it most keenly, because it corrects a vast deal of their visionary interpretations, and they are not prepared for that which makes little of man as he is in order to exalt the second Man. Like the masses in Christendom, they had lost sight of the proper hope of the Christian. Neither did the so-called futurists deliver minds from the prevalent confusion, being occupied themselves with the solemn events of the last crisis of the age or with the reign of Christ manifested in glory that succeeds. They had, none of them, any adequate hold of the heavenly hope as a distinct thing from prophecy. They might be thought to heed the prophetic word, but enjoyed little, if at all, the day dawning and the day-star arising in their hearts. All was confounded for both.

Chapter 2

Alleged Presumptions for Historicalism

The historical school allege in favour of their view certain presumptions, such as these:

1. That it is the nature of scripture prophecy to occupy a continuous range of divine providence, and that this must be especially true of such detailed and symbolic visions as

those of Daniel and St. John;

2. that the writers of the primitive church almost unanimously contradict the theory of a future crisis, and agree with the Protestant interpreters on the most material points; and

3. that the discordance of those who contend for a convergence on the end of the age is fatal to the alleged superiority of their interpretation in point of simplicity, harmony and clearness.

I.

The following scriptures have been produced to prove, not only that the inference is unsound, but that the allegation is entirely false. The test chosen is to take the leading prophecies in order from the first and to observe the length of the continuous period over which each of them extends.

1. Gen. 3: 15 is supposed to denote a continuous period of seven thousand years from the death of Abel to the judgment. But surely this is an arbitrary view, and though in the scripture there may be included the enmity between Satan and man, no spiritual mind can fail to discern that according to God's word the grand bearing of it is found in the two great crises of the cross and the appearing of the Lord Jesus.

2. Gen. 6: 3. No one doubts the striving of God's Spirit (or, at least, the days of man) an hundred and twenty years; but, again the interest is concentrated on the judgment which closes all rather than spreads over that interval.

3. Gen. 9: 25-27. The curse on Canaan B. C. 1451 (Zech. 14: 21), a period of three thousand three hundred years; but here too one looks onward to the future intervention of Jehovah rather than to any partial dealings meanwhile. And so with the blessing on Shem, and the enlargement of Japheth. To treat John 4: 22 as the fulfillment of the former, and Acts 9: 18 (? 15), 28: 28 as the fulfilment of the latter, seems most inadequate. It confounds the earnest, which may be more or less continuous, with the fulfilment, which is yet future, and far from an unbroken line.

4. Gen. 13: 14-17. The possession of Canaan BC 145-AD 70 for 1500 years would be a poor answer to the rich words of the God who gave promises to Abraham. The true accomplishment is still future, and will only be under Messiah and the new covenant.

5. Gen. 15: 13-16. No doubt the Israelites were afflicted 400 years by the stranger; but the point of hope was the judgment of that nation, and Abraham's seed coming out with great substance.

6. Gen. 22: 16-18. Gal. 3 shows us that no long period is the point meant, but Christ the risen Seed of Abraham through whom blessing comes to all the nations. The Jewish promise of supremacy for the countless seed of Abraham is as yet unfulfilled. There is no question here of a space of 4000 years, but of the consequences of Christ's first coming and of His second.

7. Gen. 49: 3-27. Here too, in the scattering of Levi, we think not so much of a space as of a fact. There is more ground to speak of continuance in the case of Judah; but it is to me clear and certain that the gathering or obedience of the nations to Shiloh is yet future. It is the kingdom, not the gospel, which is before us here, and a future crisis, not past or present history.

8. Ex. 3: 7-12. The sign is not the space of 40 years, but the final token of bringing Israel to Horeb.

9. Lev. 26. No doubt the chapter speaks of past sorrow and desolation; but the remembrance of Jehovah's covenant and of the land, when Israel repent, is absolutely future.

10. Num. 24: 17-24. Here also I cannot doubt that the Star's smiting Moab and Edom refers to the great future epoch, not to any bygone period, though there may be a past application of "the ships from Chittim" etc.

11. Deut. 32: 7-43. I see nothing properly to be styled a history of Israel in their own land in verses 7-20 extending over a long period, but rather Jehovah's blessing, Israel's rebellion, and then His judgment, morally pronounced, followed by its execution; then the day when Jehovah's hand will take hold on judgment to render vengeance to His enemies. Is not this crisis rather than the continuous range of events regulated by providence?

12. Deut. 33: 5-11. Past discipline appears here and there, but the prophecy points to the known and final crisis. What we see in the Pentateuch is abundantly confirmed in the rest of the Old Testament. Hence we may conclude that, with few exceptions, the nature of prophecy is to deal in crisis rather than to occupy a continuous range of providence. At another season we may look into the symbolical and detailed visions of Daniel and John in detail.

II.

It is supposed that a full induction of facts proves that the writers of the primitive church agree with the Protestant interpreters on the following points:

1. That the head of gold denotes the Babylonian empire, not the person of Nebuchadnezzar, or Babylon and Persia in one.

2. That the silver denotes the Medo-Persian empire.

3. That the brass denotes the Greek empire.

4. That the iron denotes the Roman empire.

5. That the clay mingled with the iron denotes the intermixture of barbarous nations in the Roman empire.

6. That the mingling with the seed of men relates to intermarriages among the kings of the divided empire.

7. That the lion denotes the Babylonian empire.

8. That the eagle wings relate to Nebuchadnezzar's ambition.

9. That the bear denotes the Medo-Persian empire.

10. That the rising on one side signifies the later supremacy of the Persians.

11. That the leopard relates to the Macedonian empire.

12. That the four wings denote the rapidity of Alexander's conquests.

13. That the fourth beast is the Roman empire.

14. That the ten horns denote a tenfold division of that empire, which was then future.

15. That the division began in the fourth and fifth centuries.

16. That the rise of the ten horns is later than the rise of the beast.

17. That the vision of the ram and he-goat begins from the time of the prophecy.

18. That the higher horn of the ram denotes the Persian dynasty beginning with Cyrus.

19. That the first horn of the he-goat is Alexander the Great.

20. That the breaking of the horn, when strong, relates to the sudden death of Alexander in the height of his power.

21. That the four horns denote four main kingdoms into which the Macedonian empire was divided.

22. That the three kings (Dan. 11: 2) are Cambyses, Smerdis and Darius.

23. That the expedition against Greece is that of Xerxes, BC 485.

24. That the mighty king (v. 3) is Alexander the Great.

25. That the king's daughter of the south is Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

26. That the one from the branch of her roots is Ptolemy Euergetes.

27. That the sons of the king of the north are Seleucus Ceraunus and Antiochus the Great.

28. That the battle (ver. 11) is that of Raphia.

29. That the battle (ver. 15) is that of Panium.

30. That the daughter of women (ver. 17) is Cleopatra, daughter of Antiochus the Great.

31. That the expedition (ver. 18) is that of Antiochus against Greece.

32. That the prince (ver. 18) denotes the Roman power.

33. That the death of Antiochus is predicted in verse 19.

34. That the raiser of taxes is Seleucus Philopator.

35. That the letting person or thing (2 Thess. 2) is the imperial power of Rome.

36. That the Apocalypse begins from the time of St. John.

37. That the first seal (Rev. 6) relates to the early triumphs of the gospel.

On the other hand it is allowed that the early Christian writers are opposed to the Protestant school as to the following weighty points:

1. That the ten toes denote individual persons.

2. That the ten horns denote the same.

3. That the little horn (Dan. 7) is an individual king.

4. That the times, time, and a half of Daniel are three and a half years.

5. That the period of Dan. 8. consists of literal days.

6. That the 1290 days, and 1335 days in Dan. 12 are to be taken literally.

7. That the man of sin (2 Thess. 2) is an individual.

8*. That the 42 months are three and a half years literally.

9*. That the 1260 days are literal.

10*. That the two witnesses are individuals.

11. That the beast and the false prophet are two individuals.

12. That the ten kings (Rev. 17) are individuals.

The points are marked with asterisks where concurrence is but partial. Thus some at least of the ancients apply the toes of iron and clay, or divisions of the empire, not to the barbarian kingdoms which sprang up in the 4th and 5th centuries, but to the kings of it at the very end, whom the Lord will find and crush at His second advent; as they also interpreted the little horn in Dan. 8 of Antiochus rather than of Antichrist, and some of the periods indefinitely.

But it is a total mistake that any, save a few extreme futurists who never exercised influence on serious souls in general, differ from the former list, save as to 35 and 36 in part. Thus the letting {restraining} power {2 Thess 2} is, I believe, the Spirit of God, and this not merely as dwelling in the church, but yet more distinctly as acting governmentally in divine providence. Hence the ancient reference was imperfect rather than false. Corrupt as Babylon is, it is not yet the apostasy nor the man of sin revealed. He who letteth acts still, though imperial Rome is long gone. The Holy Spirit is that power and person who hinders as yet the display and working of the lawless one, whatever governmental means He is pleased to employ for the world's good order. Again, I do not doubt a general application of the Revelation since the time of St. John, viewing the seven churches as past, instead of as "the things which are" followed by the rest of the book as converging on the great future crisis. Of 37 the less may be said, as almost every person of intelligence has now abandoned the old fancy of early gospel triumph and among them (if I mistake not) the very person who first drew up this list.

But it must also be repeated, that among sober Christian inquirers the long first list is accepted on all sides; so that the second tells against the historical interpreters with unbroken force. This demonstrates how far any are justified in affirming that the Protestants have the warrant from antiquity tenfold on their side. The truth is that in all their distinctive features they stand wholly unsupported, yea opposed.

Yet one must frankly allow that no importance whatever should be attached to early tradition. Scripture, and scripture alone, is the only sure arbiter, the sole reliable source of the pure truth of God; and the children of God should be the more jealous on this score, as we see around us the unmistakable results of recurrence to tradition in the revived Judaism of our day. It is ridiculously ignorant however to suppose that the mass of Christians who look for the brief future crisis of a personal Antichrist in Jerusalem and a revived Roman empire to be destroyed by Christ in person have ever questioned these thirty and more points any more than the dozen which follow. The representation to the contrary is a mere sleight of hand trick of controversy, unless indeed those who made it knew very little of the real thoughts of those who have most studied prophecy in our day.

III.

The last head remains to be noticed, the discordance of such men as Drs. Maitland, Todd, and Burgh, of Messrs. Tyso, etc. The believer is in no way concerned in defending the discrepancies of all, any more than the desire on the part of some to palliate Romanism. They were none of them men who took their stand in simple faith on the word and Spirit of God. Nevertheless, faulty and rash as their interpretations may be, and in points of detail often at variance with one another, they did service in recalling attention to the neglected and imminent end of the age, "the time of harvest," as in other senses, so for prophecy also. There would be little edification in occupying the reader with a collation of their mutual contradictions or with those of the Protestant school, which simply show how far both are from deserving confidence. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light (no morning)in them." The Christian has no interest save in God's communications, which are very sure, and make wise the simple. In keeping them there is great reward.

Here too appears the importance of seeing that the manifestation of God's glory in Christ is the proper object of prophecy. Had this been seen and held firmly, men could not have lost themselves in vain efforts to find in the past or the present what answers not to it save in scanty measure. Before Christ God was proving in every form the first man: since His rejection and the accomplishment of redemption on the cross, the Holy Spirit is revealing the mystery hidden from ages to the church, as well as publishing the gospel to every creature. It is of the scenes called the consummation of the age, συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, as well as of the subsequent kingdom when the Son of man is manifested in power and glory, that prophecy treats, whether in the Old Testament or in the New. Rarely does the Spirit touch on any circumstance of guilt on man's part or of judgment on God's, without going on to these solemn times which introduce the days of heaven on the earth; and this is just as true of the symbolic visions of Daniel and St. John as of the rest, although there is no doubt expressed in the last a more systematized series.

But other dealings of God at the time of the prophet were but inchoative and germinant: the crisis is, as the rule and with very few and slight and evident exceptions, the plane of incidence where prophetic words and visions and types meet in Christ, then revealed and no longer hidden as now, the centre of all things in heaven and on earth. To stop short of this, and arrest the mind meanwhile on analogies supposed or even occasionally real, is not only an error fatal to the true understanding of prophecy but bears evidence of a heart not in accord with the mind and purpose of God in glorifying His Son. For special reasons there might be revealed a chain of comparatively ordinary events in providence, as for instance from the first and through the greater part of Dan. 11, where in scripture historical account fails. But even there it is but introductory, as invariably, to the great principle of crisis. For we are only brought down continuously on the one hand to Antiochus Epiphanes and his iniquitous efforts against the Jews, the temple and the law, with the disastrous issue for himself, his instruments, or his victims, and the Maccabean stand on the other hand. Then follows a vast break, and we are abruptly landed in presence of the last wilful king in the land of Judea, and the final conflicts of the kings of the north and the south, terminated by divine intervention and the deliverance of the chosen people. It is plain to any upright and intelligent mind that, whatever be the importance of every word (and this it is not for me to deny or weaken), the grand point of the Spirit is to direct all hearts to the tremendous catastrophe of the close, which follows, not the merely introductory thread of continuous facts, 2000 years past, but the vast gap, after Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees, till the personal Antichrist reigns in the land, the old jealousies of the north and the south reproduce themselves round devoted Palestine and the Jews, and the power of God interferes to put down all rebels within or without, and establish the wise and holy in peace under the reign of Him who is Ancient of days no less than Son of man, and who must yet be honoured on earth as well as in heaven to the glory of God the Father. "And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation." The risen saints will reign along with Him over the earth, but from their own proper heavenly sphere: He is head to the church over all things.

Chapter 3

The Four Empires

It has been already shown that the clearness or the obscurity of prophecy is independent of its fulfilment, and that Protestants and futurists have been almost equally guilty of mistake as to this. For many among both have assumed its necessary obscurity when unaccomplished and its clearness when fulfilled. Both also have been eager to avoid the objection of novelty against their own system, and anxious to claim the consent of antiquity, not knowing that the Fathers were serious offenders against the truth and particularly ignorant on the subject of prophecy.

Nevertheless it ought to be not a matter of litigation but certain that the Protestant exposition in all its peculiarities is at direct issue with the early ecclesiastical writers who stood on the main foundations of futurism, except indeed as regards the restoration of Israel to their own land, which many Protestants allow no less than futurists. In this at least no instructed mind can agree with the Fathers; and the difference enlarges according to knowledge. Of the other presumptions for or against their respective systems, enough has been said already. As to such a protracted application as Protestant writers conceive, the Fathers knew nothing, expected nothing, of it. Some of the earliest held with the futurists that the prophecies of scripture are mainly occupied with the grand crisis at the end of the age; but the fact is however that very few appear to have known anything worth notice about these subjects, even in principle, not to speak of details.

We may now enter on a direct examination of prophecy, at least of that portion which is most in debate. And here it may be well to bear in mind its distinctive character. Prophecy is not, like Christianity, the revelation of God's counsels but rather of His kingdom or of His ways in bringing it in. It is occupied, not with heaven and the sovereign grace that gathers to Christ there, but with the earth, and hence with the judgments of God which put down evil in order to the reign of righteousness. No mistake can be more profound than the notion that its main subject is the outline of secret providence during the last two thousand years and more. Daniel in the Old Testament shows us the rise and fall of the four great Gentile empires, the Revelation in the New Testament adding much light on the last phase of the fourth; but this is an episode rather than the direct subject of prophecy, which necessarily has Israel in view as the central people in the plans of God for the government of the world. Only their history branches into two divisions: Israel under the first covenant, failing at every point to the uttermost; by and by Israel under the new covenant met, delivered and blessed in divine mercy, and then used for His glory among all nations here below. All turns on Christ. There was idolatrous apostasy of old, which was judged in the Babylonish captivity; but when He was rejected by them as a nation, what could there be but misery and ruin? When He is by grace received, there will be abundant fruits of mercy and goodness. The interval between His rejection and His reception by the Jew is filled by "the times of the Gentiles," under the fourth empire the gospel also going out and the church of God coming in. After this last empire in its last condition is judged at the Lord's appearing from heaven, the regular order of prophecy resumes its course, and Israel becomes the head and centre of all nations, the Gentiles the tail.

The Jews, no doubt, were blindly ignorant, and did perversely distort the word of prophecy; but it was a worse error which brought on their final catastrophe and dispersion. It was their insubjection to God, their self-righteous refusal to repent, their rejection of the Messiah and of the gospel. All through their history they only who looked for the Messiah served God according to His law; and, when the Messiah came, those who received Him not were alien from all His will and ways, no less than from the object of faith that grace then presented to them. So now it is evil to slight prophecy, but it is not wise to exaggerate that evil; for there is one still deeper underneath, the evil that slights Christ and consequently resists the Holy Ghost as well as the authority of the word of God in general. Faith in God is the great want of souls. How solemnly the Lord has the lack of it before His Spirit when anticipating His return to the earth! I see no room for boasting in Protestants against futurists, or in futurists against Protestants. Mede, Vitringa, and Bengel were men of piety, seriousness, and learning; but it is impossible to have the requisite spiritual intelligence for apprehending prophecy, or the word of God generally, till the Christian calling on high is discriminated from the earthly calling of Israel, and this intelligence is equally and conspicuously absent from both schools. It is a mistaken thought that any but a very few futurists ever doubted the ordinary meaning of the four Gentile empires, or of the other prophecies in Dan. 8, 9, 11. The mass of futurists agree with the mass of Protestants as to these elementary outlines. They may differ a little as to Matt. 24, and still more as to the prophetic visions of the Apocalypse. On the other hand there is no doubt that, as to an alleged succession of the horns and the little horn of the fourth beast, the abomination of desolation, the man of sin, Babylon, etc., the historical school departs widely from the ancients.

But, as to the four empires in general, there is no real discrepancy among grave and thoughtful Christians. When we come to the details of the fourth or Roman empire, the divergence is considerable. A few eccentric individuals in modern as in ancient times have indulged in doubts and broached strange theories; but all sober persons apply the visions of the great image (Dan. 2) and of the four beasts (Dan. 7) to the empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. The broad truth of this is indisputable. They were successive kingdoms, to which God allowed universal supremacy from the ruin of the Jewish state by Nebuchadnezzar till the Messiah. But this advent, as it was a perplexity to the Jews who looked for His glory and not His sufferings, seems scarcely less enigmatic to Christendom, which looks at His sufferings, not at His glory as returning to judge it — one knows not how soon. It is particularly in view of this last point that difficulties are felt and found among interpreters. The soul that does not judge the present state of Christendom will no more understand prophecy than the Jew who failed to judge according to God the Jewish condition when Messiah first presented Himself. Without faith it is impossible to understand the word, any more than to please God in our ways. Accurate statement, sound reasoning, gravity and reverence are excellent; but, without the faith which applies the truth with a single eye to judge oneself and all things else in relation to God, they are wholly unavailing.

Further, not only are the four empires acknowledged to be successive in their rule, but they correspond respectively in each vision. The head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar's dream answers to the lion, the breast of silver to the bear, the middle of brass to the winged leopard, the lower extremities of iron and clay to the unnamed ravening beast of the prophet's vision. Only the great image was the more comprehensive of the two, that of the four beasts much the more detailed. The Son of Man's kingdom is evidently that which answers to the vision of the little stone which becomes a great mountain. The doubts of the late Drs. Maitland and Todd, as of Grotius and others before, are mere incredulity. They never exercised the slightest influence among spiritual men. It is as to the course and conclusion of the last of the beasts or empires that we find the greatest disagreement. But there ought to have been no hesitation that, as the third means the rapidly acquired Macedonian kingdom of Alexander the Great, so the next is the Roman. Its place as the fourth (recognized in the New Testament as then in power), its strength, its subsequent division, its mingling with the seed of men, its sudden and utter destruction at the Lord's second advent, point unanswerably to the same conclusion.

Here the Revelation supplies the most weighty intimations to help us out of difficulties; for it tells us of the fourth beast that "it was, and is not, and shall be present"; and, further, that its future re-appearance is to be "from the pit or abyss." One can understand the ruin of that empire which played its part in the crucifixion of the Lord, and which will revive by diabolical energy in the last days to oppose Him when He returns from heaven to restore the kingdom to Israel.

Here is the statement of the man who did most to lay the foundation of the Protestant school {J. Mede}:

Nebuchadnezzar's image points out two states of the kingdom of Christ, the first to be while those times of the kingdoms of the Gentiles yet lasted, typified by a stone hewn out of a mountain without hands, the monarchical statue yet standing upon his feet, the second not to be until the utter destruction and dissipation of the image, when the stone, having smote it upon the feet, should grow into a great mountain which should fill the whole earth. The first may be called, for distinction's sake, regnum lapidis, the kingdom of the stone, which is the state of Christ's kingdom which hitherto hath been; the other, regnum montis, (that is of the stone grown to a mountain, etc.) which is the state of His kingdom which hereafter shall be. The intervallum between these two, from the time the stone was first hewn out (that is, the kingdom of Christ was first advanced) until the time it becomes a mountain (that is, when the mystery of God shall be finished), is the subject of the Apocalyptical visions.

Note here, first, that the stone is expounded by Daniel to be that lasting kingdom which the God of heaven should set up; secondly, that the stone was hewn out of the mountain before it smote the image on the feet and consequently before the image was dissipated; and therefore that the kingdom, typified by the stone while it remained a stone, must needs be within the times of those monarchies, that is, before the last of them (namely the Roman) should expire. Wherefore Daniel interprets that in the days of these kingdoms (not after them, but while some of them were yet in being) the God of heaven should set up a kingdom which should never be destroyed, nor left (as they were) to another people; but should break in pieces and consume all those kingdoms, and itself should stand forever. And all this he speaks as the interpretation of the stone. "Forasmuch" (saith he) "that a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver and the gold." Here make the full point; for these words belong not to that which follows (as our Bibles by mis-distinguishing seem to refer them) but to that which went before of their interpretation. But the stone becoming a mountain he expounds not, but leaves to be gathered by what he had already expounded." (Mede's Works, pp. 743, 744, 4th edition, London, 1677). But the little stone is plainly the kingdom of God in Christ, which was only seen to come after the image was fully out, even to the toes; and its first action was to smite the feet and toes, reducing the whole statue to powder, after which it grows into a mountain and fills the whole earth. That is, the gospel, or the kingdom of God now known to faith, is wholly excluded from the prophet. The vision looks at nothing but the second advent in power and glory, beginning with the judgment of the imperial system in its last form, and then the kingdom of God diffused to the blessing of all the earth and to His own glory for ever. The Protestant idea of a "regnum lapidis" going on from the incarnation of Christ through the whole course of ancient and modern history is a mere interpolation. Even Theodoret had better light. One can have no sympathy with the unbelief which overlooks the solemn place of the Roman empire, past or future; but why should one countenance the fable of a "regnum lapidis" meanwhile? It is possible and the fact that more than one untoward futurist denied the fourth kingdom to be the Roman empire, and this to relieve the papacy as well as to shake confidence in Protestant views. The truth is that there is no vitality, nor sanctifying power, save in the word received in the Holy Ghost. To slip away from this into the study of the elder commentators, especially of the Fathers, does pave the way for a relapse into the idolatrous embraces of the mystic Babylon, which might well turn to her own account the fable of the "regnum lapidis." For she at least desires to reign now as a queen without sorrow, instead of being content with the apostles and saints to wait, apart from the world and in present rejection, for the Bridegroom, that we may reign together with Him at His coming.

I am not disposed to deny an application of prophecy, especially of the Apocalypse, throughout the middle ages; but it must be owned by fair minds that the resemblance between the prophetic visions and the historical facts is slight and vague. Who can wonder then that the injudicious efforts of most commentators known as Protestants, who sought to prove the most punctual fulfilment in the past, led to that reaction which is commonly called futurism? The Christian will do well to study the written word in peace, undistracted by controversy, profiting by every real help God vouchsafes him, but holding firmly to dependence on the Lord to open His word to him, whether prophetic or any other. It is the Holy Spirit who alone can, who will do so only where grace makes one true to the glory of Christ. For this He is sent down; and He at least is true to the divine purpose.

But on the other hand one may ask of those zealous for the past application of Dan. 2, 7, where is the complete and exhaustive likeness they profess to find between hordes of barbarians breaking up a long sick and expiring empire into some (say ten) portions in which they establish themselves, in the course of a century and a half, and a power of extraordinary vigour with ten kingdoms as the expression of its strength, swayed by one mind, which gives all unity, whether first to wreak God's vengeance in idolatrous corruption, or finally to conspire against the Lamb to their own destruction?

In fact, even when one looks into the prophecies which deal with the times of the Gentiles, it is not true that their object is to enter into the details of succession (Dan. 11 being only in part an exception for peculiar reasons), but the Spirit is content to give the broad general facts with distinct light converging on the solemn crisis when God displays and establishes His kingdom on the rebellious ruin of man's. The reason why people prefer to apply it historically is, because this transfers the mind's attention to what the world has written and gives a certain scope to human ingenuity as well as research. But it weakens the impressive lesson of divine judgment on that which is highly esteemed among men. The true view recalls the conscience to God and His word, concentrating our attention on the evil and ruin of the first man, and on the sure coming and reign of the Second.

Chapter 4

The Vision of the Ram and He-Goat

The dream of Nebuchadnezzar, as the vision of the prophet in the first year of Belshazzar (Dan. 7: 1), embraced the entire circle of the four world-powers. The vision of Daniel 8 stands strikingly contra-distinguished in this that here we have only to do with the second and third of these empires, though (as it will be shown) we are brought down to the time of the end in an off-shoot of the third empire. No grave Christian doubts what every dispassionate reader of the prophet must see, that the ancient Medo-Persian and Macedonian powers are set before us.

It seems surprising that any one should make more than their worth of the singular speculations of the late Dr. Todd. For who can fail to see the unusual distinctness in the interpretation supplied by the Holy Spirit Himself? One need not reason on the date or the scene of the vision: verses 20, 21 are decisive to any simple mind. On the one hand the final superiority of the Persian over the Median is evident when we compare verse 3 with verse 20; the eastern source of it on its course of conquest westward, northward, and southward, being marked in verse 4. On the other hand the Macedonian conqueror and his overthrow of the great king appears most graphically in verses 5-7 as compared with verse 21. History may and does illustrate; but no believer needs more than is here given to have a clear intelligent certainty of conviction as to the prophecy and its application. Verses 8, 22 plainly point to a fourfold division after the death of Alexander the Great (not by defeat or when internal discord dissolved the kingdom, but contrariwise "when he was strong, the great horn was broken"), "four notable horns"; and so there were as is commonly known. It was absurd therefore to argue from verse 17 in Gabriel's explanation that all the vision related to "the time of the end," or that the powers represented by the ram and he-goat are future.

But it is a characteristic and an all but universal error of the historical school that they enfeeble and lose sight of the truth that the main object and interest of the vision hinges on "the time of the end," the end of the indignation which rests on the Jewish people. There ought to be no need of proof that the end of the divine displeasure with the ancient people is certainly yet future. It is in vain to refer to Dan. 9: 26, or 1 Cor. 10: 11, to turn aside the phrase from its bearing on the end of the age. For the prophet in the one expressly limits the end to the city and the sanctuary, and brings in a definite subsequent period before the way is open for blessing; and the apostle means in the other that the ends of the ages are come, or met, on us, Christians. Matt. 24: 14, which is also appealed to, really confirms the future view; for "the end" there spoken of is assuredly not yet come.

It may be added that there is no great difficulty in the way of applying the host of heaven and the stars to the Jewish system and its rulers, though at this time supposed to be subject to the Gentile beasts politically. The people may be Lo-Ammi; but such a designation, though it be not a figure from the day of Jehovah but rather from the night during which they feebly shone, was at any rate a testimony to their hopes whilst it acknowledged their true estate meanwhile. The last king of the north finds himself in collision with Christ, the Prince of princes, and perishes by divine judgment. But this king of the north is as distinct from the wilful king who will reign in Palestine as from the last head of the Roman empire, though all of them daring enemies of the Lord at the same epoch, as will be shown presently at greater length. Ancients and moderns have generally confounded all three.

Observe again the fact that the very language is changed, which from Dan. 2 was Chaldee. Now from Dan. 7, as bearing on that which, while connected with the Gentile powers, specially touched the ancient people of God, Hebrew is employed. Were it the design to draw particular attention to Cyrus and the details of that victorious career in which he had just entered when the vision was given, the propriety of this would be by no means apparent. Nor is it at all convincing that the reason for representing the second and third empires by the ram and goat (that is, not beasts of prey, but animals of sacrifice) is their favouring Israel, when both had been represented in the chapter before to the same prophet under the symbol of the bear and the winged leopard; yea, when in this very chapter the grand point is a king mighty, but not by his own power, who shall destroy the Jews, but himself be broken without hand — a vision which affected the seer yet more deeply than that of Dan. 7. No one denies the admirable symbols employed to depict the comparatively slow and heavy aggressiveness of the Medo-Persian, and the amazing rapidity and impetuous force of the spirited Greek; also the subsequent division of the Syro-Greek kingdom of the north. But all this, however full of interest, is preparatory to the main design for the latter day when a mysterious king shall meddle with the Jews to the hurt of many among them, but to his own destruction. That Antiochus Epiphanes answers in part to the little horn in the vision (Dan. 8: 10) I do not for a moment doubt.

Only it is well to remark three points: first, the parenthesis consisting of verse 11 and the first half of verse 12, in which "he" takes the place of "it," apparently looking onward to the great personage of the close rather than to the horn of the goat that typified him; secondly, that verses 13, 14 do not necessarily go beyond the defilement which has already taken place; thirdly, that the interpretation concerns itself with the crisis at the end, only linking on the proximate Medo-Persian and Greek empires with that tremendous issue, but with an enormous gap manifestly between the circumstances then at hand and the last end of the indignation of God against Israel. To deny the all-importance of the crisis in order to eke out a case of continuity here would be mere infatuation, the effect of a blinding system.

Chapter 5

Supplementary Observations

There are two matters which it seems desirable briefly to meet before passing on to fresh matter, as the true solution may confirm what has been already urged, and clear the way for what is to come. One is the question as to the identity of the two little horns of Dan. 7, 8; the other the use of the word "kings" as equivalent to kingdoms. These are handled in this order.

The Two Little Horns

The tendency of ancient as of modern times has been in prophecy, as everywhere else in scripture, to confound things that differ. Thus, on a large scale, the trials and hopes of Israel have been merged in those of the church, to the enormous loss of intelligence in the mind of God as revealed in His word; on a lesser {scale}, we see a similar confusion as to the great actors of the latter day, which inevitably narrows the scope of prophecy and spreads a haze over the solemn issues of the final conflicts of good and evil. From this the futurists have never fully emerged, for they in general make the Antichrist of the end to be the last enemy of the church instead of being the head of the Jews and Christendom apostate, and they leave no room for the other foes of the Lord, making all the prophecies of evil powers at the end concentrate in that great adversary. Now though it is natural for us to feel a special interest in the West, we ought not to lose sight of the East if we would have an adequate view of the field.

The truth is also that obvious uncertainty surrounds every school of interpretation as to the little horn of Dan. 8. Thus, while the ancients with almost one voice conceived that it presents the character and persecutions and end of Antiochus Epiphanes (some also maintaining a future reference to the wicked or lawless one, the Antichrist of St. John), Sir I. Newton (followed by his Episcopal namesake) and not a few others applied it to the Gracoe-Roman empire; but far more since view in it the Mahometan power, some of them interpreting it of the Turk. Others refer it, like Dan. 7, to the Papacy. No reader will be surprised to hear that the latter theories were not held of old, but that men, Jews and Christians, held then that Antiochus Epiphanes was meant, though many felt that more was included in the prophecy and regarded that enemy of the Jews as typical of their final adversary. Sir I. N. reasons thus against the view so long prevalent:

This horn was at first a little one, and waxed exceeding great; but so did not Antiochus. His kingdom on the contrary was weak and tributary to the Romans, and he did not enlarge it. The horn was a king of fierce countenance, destroyed wonderfully, prospered and practiced (that is, he prospered in his practices against the holy people); but Antiochus was frightened out of Egypt by a mere message of the Romans, and afterwards routed and baffled by the Jews.

The horn was mighty by another's power, Antiochus by his own. The horn stood up against the prince of heaven, the prince of princes; and this is the character not of Antiochus but of Antichrist. The horn cast down the sanctuary to the ground, and so did not Antiochus: he left it standing. The sanctuary and the host were to be trampled under foot until two thousand three hundred days, and in Daniel's prophecies days are put for years. But the profanation in the reign of Antiochus did not last so many natural days. They were to last until the time of the end, till the last end of the indignation against the Jews; and this indignation is not yet at an end. They were to last until the sanctuary which had been cast down should be cleansed; and the sanctuary is not yet cleansed. The utmost then which can be allowed is that the prophecy had only a precursive and partial accomplishment in Antiochus. Its proper fulfillment is future.

On the other hand, they are wholly mistaken who, futurist or historical, identify the little horns of the two prophecies (Dan. 7, 8). No doubt there are points of resemblance between them, as there are between all men; but how absurd to deny their distinctness!

It has been well shown that there are at least ten particulars predicted of the first horn:

þ its rise from the fourth beast;

þ its co-existence with ten kings,

þ and its subjugation of three;

þ its eyes as of a man, and a mouth speaking great things,

þ and its judgment by the Ancient of days;

þ diverseness from the other kings;

þ blasphemy against God;

þ persecution of the saints;

þ changing of times and laws;

þ and continuance for a time, times, and the dividing of time.

Again, at least twelve points are given as to the second horn:

þ its rise from the he-goat or Grecian empire in one of its five divisions;

þ its great increase of size and power,

þ and the three directions of its conquests;

þ its trampling on the stars of heaven;

þ opposition to the prince of the host;

þ removal of the sacrifice and casting down of the sanctuary;

þ the time (two thousand three hundred days) of continuance or of some related events;

þ its might not by its own power;

þ its fierceness of countenance;

þ its understanding of dark sentences;

þ its triumph by policy;

þ and destruction without hand.

The truth is that the marks of likeness between these two powers are of the most shadowy character, those of difference sharply defined and numerous. They agree in being enemies of the Lord and of His people, well as in their awful end under His judgment when He appears and reigns; but even here the form, circumstances, and precise epoch differ widely. The question is in no way one between the historical school and futurists, for a few of both see aright, the mass of both indistinctly, and some who reject both see at least not less clearly than any of either party.

The Prophetic Significance of Kings

On this one may be brief, as scripture shows that while "horn" means a kingly person or power, it may according to the context mean a succession and not merely an individual. It cannot be assumed that a succession is always meant, for it more frequently refers to a single person. But in Dan. 7: 17-23 we have the decisive proof that a king may mean morally a kingdom. To treat this however as a license for so interpreting it universally in these prophecies is unwarrantable.

Chapter 6

The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9

The main defect in the historical school here is one which vitiates almost every writer pertaining to it — the assumption that the seventieth week terminates, either with the death of the Messiah and its immediate results, or at most with the destruction of Jerusalem under the Roman power. There are not a few varieties of exposition among moderns as among older writers; but the error named has been and is an insuperable hindrance to a real understanding of the vision as a whole.

They all shut out the future from the last seventieth week, which nevertheless can be demonstrated to be its true force unfulfilled. Most of them deny a break or interval in the chain which nevertheless can be proved to be required on any right view of the prophecy. They thus destroy the analogy between this and all the other visions of Daniel, which from first to last bring us down to the point when the guilty Gentiles vanish under the judgment of God and give place to Him whose is the kingdom, and whose reign shall not pass away.

Further, those who regard every vision in the book of Daniel as going on to the future, that is, to the end of the age (though for this very reason not continuously, but with a broad and in general a well-defined gap) in no way deny truths common to almost all who have studied the prophecy. For instance, it is maintained by all, save three or four pseudo-literalists of no spiritual weight, that the first advent and death of Christ is foretold here, as well as the overthrow of the Jewish polity; secondly, that the weeks or sevens are to be reckoned as of years and not of days; and, thirdly, that 7 + 62 (= 69) such weeks were to elapse from the Persian decree to build Jerusalem before the cutting off of the Messiah. Rightly understood this, like all the visions in Daniel, goes on to the end of the age.

It is interesting by the way to note that the oldest extant exposition of the book approaches more closely to the truth than most of the works written on the prophecy since. For Hippolytus of Rome is distinct in this at least that the last week is occupied exclusively with the future immediately before the appearing of our Lord in judgment of the quick {the living on earth}. There is not only mistake as to the starting point but the ordinary confusion of the Antichrist with the two little horns of Dan. 7, 8, the first beast of the sea, and the Assyrian or king of the north. This however need not surprise any one acquainted with the views which have prevailed and still prevail. It is the common state of all, whether historical or futurist. The good bishop's chronology seems defective enough in thinking that sixty-two hebdomads {sevens} of years (even adding the previous seven) would cover the space since the return from Babylon to Christ's coming; but there can be no doubt that he interpreted the last hebdomad {seven} of the future, as indeed Primatius was disposed to do. Compare Hippol. R. Opp. ed, De Lagarde, pp. 23, 104, 108, 114, 166, 187.

There is the manifest and striking difference in this prophecy from the previous ones, that it is occupied mainly not with the Gentile conquerors so much as with Jerusalem, its sanctuary, and Messiah, with its glory and spiritual blessedness at least at the close, but with disasters and ruin to the last degree, not only during the last week, but for a term unmeasured before it.

From the beginning of the chapter {Dan 9: 2} we learn how unfounded it is to wait till a prophecy is fulfilled before profiting by it. This did not Daniel, who understood, not by a special intimation to himself but "by books," the number of the years whereof the word of Jehovah came to Jeremiah the prophet. Himself a prophet too, he shows us the importance of weighing the prophetic word already given. Babylon was taken punctually: were not the same seventy years to issue in the return of the Jews from captivity? No sign of this favor of God had yet been given, save so far as the fall of the captor city might be its earnest. Daniel, not doubting but believing, sets his face to the Lord Jehovah to seek by prayer and supplication with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. Such was the effect on one who judged the present in the light of the word and of prophecy among the rest: not occupation with political speculation, but confession and humiliation and intercession before God. Daniel identifies himself with all Israel. "And I prayed unto Jehovah my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him; and to them that keep his commandments, we have sinned and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled even by departing from thy precepts and from thy judgments; neither have we hearkened unto thy servants the prophets which spoke in thy name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land." There is thorough vindication of the Lord and condemnation of all Israel (Dan. 9: 7, 8). There is a pleading of His mercy and forgiveness (Dan. 9: 9), but a renewed acknowledgment of disobedience and transgression on the part of all Israel, to which the curse written in Moses, under which they were groaning, is imputed (Dan. 9: 10-12). It is owned that, though the Lord had smitten them, they had not entreated His face that they might turn from their iniquities and understand His truth (impossible otherwise); and therefore the Lord could but watch to inflict more and more (Dan. 9: 13, 14). Reminding the Lord of His mighty dealings for Israel from the beginning, the prophet renews his confession but beseeches that His anger and fury be turned away from Jerusalem, and this to the removal of the burden and reproach of their sins (Dan. 9: 15, 16), and begs in answer to his own prayer that His face may shine on that long desolate sanctuary, and His eyes may behold their desolations and the city called by His name for His great mercies' sake (Dan. 9: 17, 18), winding all up with a succession of most brief and earnest appeals. "O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name" (Dan. 9: 19).

Nor did the answer tarry. But it was strictly and exclusively in reference to what the holy prophet had besought the Lord — Jerusalem and the Jews. "And whiles I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before Jehovah my God for the holy mountain of my God; yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly touched me about the time of the evening oblation. And he informed me, and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision" (Dan. 9: 20-23).

Then follows the prophecy, "Seventy weeks have been set [divided] upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish {or close} the transgression, and to make an end of [or seal up] sins, and to atone for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the holy of holies." This is the consummation of grace — the establishment of Israel at the end of the seventy hebdomads {sevens} specified; for it will be observed that it is not simply the accomplishment of the efficacious work of propitiation and its consequences, but its application to the Jewish people, which alone can meet the prophet's desires and God's message in reply. Chiefly then to provide for the steps in the fulfillment of the prediction, and to mark where the interruption comes in, and to warn of the awful trouble which precedes the final blessing, we have the seventy weeks, not only summarized or viewed in their completion in {Dan. 9} verse 24, but next also broken into portions in the verses following.

Know therefore and understand: from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince [shall be] seven weeks and sixty-two weeks: the street and wall shall be again built, and in times of pressure. And after the sixty and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off and shall have nothing; and the city and the sanctuary shall the people of the coming prince destroy; but the end thereof shall be with the flood; and until the end war [and] desolations [{are] decreed. If interpreters had looked into scripture for the decree which exactly answers to that which the prophecy describes, it is hard to see how there could have been hesitation or even delay. At least it is plain enough that it was neither Cyrus nor Darius, but Artaxerxes who issued such a command first in his seventh year, and then later in his twentieth year {Neh. 2}. But of the two a close comparison will soon show that the first, like the decrees of Cyrus and Darius, had regard to the temple, theirs for its rebuilding, his for providing its due order and service; and this was naturally entrusted to Ezra the priest (Ezra 7). But the later one was just as characteristically entrusted to Nehemiah the Thirshatha, and it is patent that his commission, as it grew out of his complaint that the city of his fathers' sepulchres lay ruined and its gates consumed by fire, so was the decree, {Neh. 2} distinctly for the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and its restoration in general.

It would seem that most have been turned aside through their adopting the vulgar reckoning (B. C. 445) of the date of Artaxerxes' accession, and consequently of the twentieth year of his reign. But the fact is, that Bishop Lloyd here departed from Archbishop Ussher's correction, who very deliberately records it as his judgment that the common reckoning places the first year of Artaxerxes nine years too late. The grounds of this the reader may see in his Ann. Vet. Test. A. M. 3531 (Whole Works, 8: 292). People could not reconcile the dates of the prophecy with those ordinarily current, and hence have been disposed to adopt the seventh year instead of the twentieth. But I shall presently show that this view does violence to the sacred text and therefore must be discarded, for it brings in the last week wholly, or in part, to eke out the reckoning, whereas it is certain that the last week remains to be fulfilled.

It is plain on the face of Gabriel's message that the division into seven weeks and sixty-two weeks had a special meaning: as otherwise such an arrangement would never be made, especially where the style is so singularly concise and pointed. The seven weeks or forty-nine years, then, embrace the restoration of Jerusalem; and the book of Nehemiah shows us in what times of trouble the work was begun and continued. To these add the sixty-two weeks of years already named, and the next announcement after that term is one of the strangest sound and most solemn import, not the birth, nor the reign, but the cutting off of Messiah. No wonder that Jews wince, and avoid or wrest such a prophecy. Yet was it no Christian who wrote the startling prediction but their own prophet Daniel, a man greatly beloved. Why should the Talmudists or others slight the writings of one so singularly honoured by his inspired contemporary Ezekiel? If it be the fruit of an evil conscience, it is intelligible. For nothing can be plainer than that he who predicted without a date the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, when it is a question of His kingdom in power and glory, predicts here, after a chain of sixty-nine weeks of years the Messiah cut off and having nothing (that is, of the kingdom that should have been His among the Jews). It is just as in Isa. 49. Christ had spent His strength for nought and labored in vain, as far as His ancient people were concerned. Only the earlier prophet shows His confidence that His cause was with Jehovah and the recompense of His work with His God; and the answer is, that it is a light thing to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel: Jehovah appoints His rejected but accepted Messiah for a light to the Gentiles that His salvation may reach to the end of the earth, as the gospel now testifies. Whereas the later prophet abides the herald of captivity and of sorrow for the returned captives, who should know a flood of desolations after Messiah was to be cut off.

The Vulgate understands the clause following to mean, "and shall not have his people who should deny him." This is not only an intolerable paraphrase rather than a version, but it narrows the sense unduly of

to His people as no more His; whereas it means very simply "there is not (or shall not be) to him." Its object is to show that, as the consequence of excision, He was to have nothing of all that might have been looked for according to promise. Every Jew would naturally anticipate all blessing to themselves, all glory to Messiah, at His coming. Who could have foreseen that He should be cut off and have nothing? Yet the spiritual man feels that it could not be otherwise; for sin was there as everywhere, and not even adequately confessed, still less judged according to God. Here (Dan. 9: 26) it is not the efficacy of His death for others that is taught, as our English translators seem to have conceived, but the guilt of it on those who cut Him off out of the land of the living.

Hence follows a flood of sorrow and overwhelming desolation, at first and precisely under the Roman people who should destroy the city and the sanctuary. But this was not the end; for a vista opens of war and desolations to the end, and that by God's determinate decree (compare Isa. 10). The indignation of Jehovah against His people is not yet complete. How amazing that men, pious men too, should have overlooked the broad and plain signification of a timeless interruption after this, including the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and all the long line of humiliating trouble on the Jew since, especially on Jerusalem and its temple! For beyond controversy the chain of weeks is here broken, as (to be exact as well as just) it ought to be. The series was unbroken from the Persian decree to restore Jerusalem till the sixty-ninth ran out, after which Messiah was cut off. How could this bring aught from God righteously but a breach and woes on those who by lawless hands had slain such a prince?

It is in vain to drag out of {Dan. 9} verse 27 the cessation of sacrifice in order to put it into verse 26. The true connection is thus destroyed, and a meaning is given by such a transposition to that suppression of Jewish worship which differs wholly as we shall see from that which is really attached to it where God has put it. And this also disturbs the true chronology by bringing in the last week, wholly or in part, and tacking it on to the sixty-nine weeks. Not that the cutting off of Messiah is said to be at but after the sixty-ninth week. This leaves the date somewhat open; it could not be before, it might be a little after. But with the seventieth week, as far as the prophecy teaches, it has absolutely no connection. On the contrary, events are named as posterior and evidently judicial consequences, although different in character, at the hand of Gentile oppressors, which are by no fair means within the course of the seventy weeks, but rather when the gap came following the cutting off of Messiah.

How long that interruption was to last, Gabriel had not come to declare. But the picture disclosed in the latter part of {Dan 9} verse 26 naturally includes all the woes of Jerusalem since the Romans took away their place and nation. The disastrous end is not yet come. For it is remarkable in more respects than one that the destruction here is attributed not to the coming prince but to his people, the Roman people; and so it was beyond controversy. They came and destroyed {in AD 70}. But their prince {a Roman} did not yet come — I add, is not even yet come. We shall hear of him in the verse following when the seventieth week begins.

For on all just principles of exposition the last week remains till the Jews are once more back in Jerusalem and their sanctuary rebuilt. This is implied in what follows, however it may grate on those who slight the prophetic word through their confidence in present appearances. Alas! the Jews will be again there, the mass, not many only, of them (for this too the last verse teaches, as in many another word of the prophet elsewhere) in unbelief and ready to apostatize. And herein is found the true bearing of him who strengthens a covenant with the many for the one week (Dan. 9: 27). It is the coming prince, a prince of that people which after the death of Messiah destroyed the city and the sanctuary. It is the Roman chief, the little horn of the revived fourth empire {Dan. 7: 8}, who is to confirm a covenant with the multitude of the Jews at the end of this age.

This is the simplest reference grammatically, as none can deny, not to the cut-off Messiah, who in no sense ever did or will make a covenant with any for one week, still less with "the many" or mass of the Jews, in this book bearing no good character (compare with this verse 27; Dan. 11: 33, 39; 12: 3: the more strikingly because of a different sense in Dan. 11: 34, 44; 12: 2, 4, 10, where the article is not used). It is in no way the covenant, still less the everlasting covenant, but a covenant. It is mere assumption to say (what the context explodes) that it must be a covenant with God. Have men never read Isa. 28: 15, 18, that they so pertinaciously cling to the violent perversion of this verse to Messiah, overlooking the explicit teaching that Messiah had long before come and been cut off, and that we were told afterwards of a coming foreign prince, whose people destroyed Jerusalem? It is a future Roman prince who is to confirm a covenant for seven years, not with the godly remnant {of the Jews} but with the mass of the Jews, before the new age arrives when Messiah, even Jehovah of hosts, shall reign gloriously in Zion.

But the strongest hopes of man are weakness itself if God sanctions not. And how could He sustain what put His people into alliance with death and hell (Sheol) {Isa. 28: 15, 18}? The confirmation of the Roman empire no more stands for the Jews than its seal of old could hinder the resurrection of the buried Messiah. Hence we read that in the half or midst of the week he will cause sacrifice and offering to cease. This suggests the scope of the covenant named. It appears that it will be a solemn engagement to permit the Jews to carry on their temple ritual. This he now terminates. But there is far more than this shown us. "And because of the protection [literally, "wing"] of abominations, a desolator [shall be]." So I understand this phrase. No one can dispute that it is quite as good a rendering as the unmeaning "on the pinnacle of abominations a desolator." For the Hebrew word is used for a wing, and hence protection, as decidedly as for a wing or pinnacle of a building.

The desolator is sent retributively by God because this Roman prince breaking covenant with the mass of the Jews is allowed to suspend their legal worship and enforce idolatry. (Compare Matt. 12: 43-45 and 24: 15 with Dan. 11: 36-39 and Rev. 13.) So we saw in Isa. 28: 18. The overflowing scourge there, is the desolator here, who will tread down the Jews once more for their guilty yielding to Satan's wicked triumph in the latter day. No doubt the Jews would scorn the imputation and count such a concession to the Gentile who once destroyed them an impossibility. So would they have said beforehand of the rejection of their own Messiah. But unbelief of danger is the path of ruin, not of preservation. And those who refused the Christ who came in the Father's name are yet to receive him who comes in his own name, that is, the Antichrist, the wilful king of the Jews {Dan. 11: 36; 2 Thess 2; 1 John 2: 18; Rev. 13: 11-18}, who, in league with the Roman beast {Rev. 13: 1-10}, alike wicked instruments of the idolatry and evil still worse in the temple of God at Jerusalem {Dan. 12: 11; Matt. 24: 15; Rev. 13: 14}, shall bring down the overflowing scourge or last desolator, the Assyrian of Old Testament prophecy, "and that until decreed desolation be poured on the desolate," that is, on Jerusalem thus righteously wasted till He come and reign whose right it is.

It is no wonder then to my mind that the confusion of {Dan. 9} verse 27 with 26, common to most of the christian commentators, should expose their interpretation to the lawless attacks of rationalism. The view here presented however maintains all that is certain as to the past (whether in the restoring of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, or in the cutting off of Messiah, as in the subsequent, though undated, destruction of the city by the Romans, with its disastrous history up to the present), whilst it preserves the natural meaning of the last week for the end of the age, when the Roman chief {Rev. 13: 1-10} of that day will meddle with the Jews again in Jerusalem and their worship, to his and their destruction under the Lord's judgment when He appears and we with Him in glory {Col. 3: 4} Other scriptures show that a righteous remnant will be kept, and that they will become the nucleus of restored Israel who are to be gathered into the land {Ezek 20, etc.} from all the countries of their dispersion, and blessed under the Messiah reigning in glory over the earth.

Chapter 7

The Scripture of Truth:

Daniel 10-12 This prophecy differs from all the preceding visions in the minute consecutiveness with which it presents to us, not so much the succession of the Persian empire down to the struggle with Greece, as the conflicts of the Syro-Macedonian kingdom with Egypt. But even here the historical thread is interrupted, partially in the prefatory part as we shall see, still more conspicuously at the epoch of Antiochus Epiphanes, the close of whom furnishes the point of transition where an immense gap occurs, and we soon after find ourselves in presence of the wilful king in the holy land {Dan. 11: 36 — the Antichrist} with the last embroilment of the last kings of the north and south. If the futurists are inexcusable in caviling against the fulfillment of Dan. 11: 1-32, they of the historical school may find it convenient to slip out of all reference to {Dan. 11} verses 36-45, not to speak of chapter 12 where their own erroneous interpretations are no less palpable, though in the opposite direction of applying to the past what is wholly unaccomplished because future.

The barest outline must here suffice to set forth the true object of the Spirit, how far the prediction has been fulfilled and what remains for the great crisis at the end of the age; for this will be found to be the common issue and meeting-place of the great closing scenes in the book of Daniel, and we may say in the prophets generally. The revealing angel declares (Dan. 10: 14) that this vision refers to the Jew and the latter day — not of course its starting-point of sorrow and trial, of weakness and shame, but its bright end when God will bless His people and land with power and glory.

Very briefly is the Persian sketched in the three successors to Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, and Darius Hystaspes, till the fourth, Xerxes, famous for his "riches," attacks the realm of Grecia. The "mighty king" that stands up is Alexander {the Great}, the great horn of the Grecian goat of Dan. 8: 5-8, 21, whose sole kingdom breaks up, followed by four notable horns, two of which are thenceforth described in these wars, intrigues, alliances, with Palestine between them, often their field of battle, oftener an object of their strife. Here we see Ptolemy Soter and Seleucus Nicator; Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Antiochus, and the tragic end of that business; Ptolemy Euergetes and his successes over Seleucus Callinicus, who afterwards came against the kingdom of the south {Egypt}; then, after the death of his brother Seleucus Caraunus, the antagonism of Antiochus the Great and Ptolemy Philopator at considerable length, as the Jews figure in it; the failure of his policy in giving his daughter Cleopatra to Ptolemy Epiphanes, and his defeat by the Romans; then the tax-burdened reign of his son Seleucus Philopator, murdered by his treasurer Heliodorus; and lastly Antiochus IV, his brother, surnamed Epiphanes but called Epimanes by his own subjects in derisive resentment. The Maccabees record his impious and sacrilegious madness.

But need we dwell here in the details of the Lagidae and Seleucidae? No sober Christian doubts the application of these continuous predictions from verse 5 to 32. Even the infidel is compelled to take refuge in the hopeless theory that they must have been written after the event! being as perspicuous as the histories of Justin and Diodorus. One might go farther and affirm that no history contains so exact, concise, and clear account of that period, the Spirit of God dwelling with especial fullness (Dan. 11: 21-32) on the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, as the last of these kings in the past; and this, because he defiled the sanctuary and sought the apostasy of the Jews, thus becoming of all these the only remarkable type of their enemy at the end of the age.

It is here that historicalism betrays its inherent weakness, especially when it forces scripture to comply with its presumed law of unbroken continuance. Every other vision in the book refutes this presumption; and if there be in this chapter an unusual and double line of kings traced, even here the beginning and the close protest against those systematizers who refuse to learn from the chapter itself its own contents. Verse 2 leaps over several kings from Xerxes to Alexander the Macedonian, who overthrew the Persian empire in the person of Darius Codomanus. But a far greater gap is apparent at verse 35. In the former there is no intimation of it; in the latter room is left expressly and indefinitely for all intended. Indeed it is evident that the transition extends through two or three verses, "And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, [many] days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be helped with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries. And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed" (Dan. 11: 33-35).

The last clauses of the quotation can leave no doubt that here we are transported from the Maccabean struggle to "the time of the end," wholly passing over the first appearing of the Lord and the gospel state of things. Suddenly in {Dan. 11} verse 36 we look on the wilful king of the last days in the holy land, with the kings of the north and south once more. Of this there can be no question for any intelligent and unbiased mind. In the course of the description of the conflict it is positively declared to be "at the time of the end," and the connection with the succeeding chapter ("at that time") is alone consistent with such an epoch and character of events; but it is the end of the age, not of the world save in that sense. It is immediately before the time of reward for the righteous on earth, the time when waiting melts into blessed enjoyment for the saints in the kingdom of God.

Evidently therefore the effort to find here the Papacy or even Mahometanism is a delusion; as also still more the old empire of Rome in the east. It is a feeble interpretation that finds in the Gospels and Acts "such as do wickedly against the covenant," or in the language of the chief priests to Pilate, the promise of Pilate to release whom they would, the address of Tertullus to Felix, and the wish of Felix and Festus to do pleasure to the Jews, examples of corrupting "with flatteries." And we need to look in quite another direction, beyond the Acts and the Epistles, for the just application of the words "the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits." It is the glory of the Christian to suffer; the Maccabees really did exploits. So too the Maskilim were among the people, the Jews; and "the many" in {Dan. 11} verse 33, not in 34, is a technical phrase meaning the mass of that nation. Their troubles are plainly set forth, and a persecution which was to have a sifting effect then, and up to the time of the end. And I have little doubt that there will be an analogous state among the Jews in the land when the time of the end comes — analogous, not in heroism, but in tribulation. The mistake is in applying all this to the intermediate Christian state.

Once "the king" {Dan. 11: 36} is introduced on the scene, we recognize the great personal rival and usurper of the rights of Christ in the holy land. So interpreted, and only so, the prophecy flows on clearly and smoothly. It is St. Paul's Man of Sin, as opposed to "Jesus Christ the righteous" who according to 2 Thess. 2 is to sit in the temple of God showing himself that he is God; it is he who coming in his own name {John 5: 43} is to be received by the Jews that rejected Him who came in His Father's, the Antichrist of St. John {1 John 2: 18}. Here he is "the king," an expression borrowed apparently from Isa. 30: 33, (cf. Isa. 57: 9) where he is really distinguished from the Assyrian, as here from the king of the north. The article does not necessarily imply a reference to some person or power already revealed in the context, but one so familiar to the Jewish mind that they at least should be in no danger of mistake who believe the prophets.

We have seen that it is not Antiochus Epiphanes, but a king after the great gap and in the time of the end. No doubt it will be before the judgment of the fourth or Roman beast, which is to revive once more by a sort of resurrection power of Satan before going into perdition (Rev. 13: 2, 3, 5; Rev. 17: 8). But the wilful king's rule is in the land of Israel, as his blasphemous self-exaltation is pre-eminently in the temple of Jerusalem, and his prosperity is till God's indignation against Israel is accomplished. It is arbitrary, yea contrary to the scope of the passage, to transport the wilful king to Rome, or to conceive that the proper seat of his power is in the west or anywhere but in Palestine: {Dan. 11} verse 39 is as decisive for this as verse 37 that he is a Jew, though apostate; and this is confirmed by {Dan. 11} verses 41, 45, though the subject be no longer the wilful king, but his enemy the last king of the north. Everything however fixes the scene as in the holy land just before the final deliverance of the Jews. This king of the north is the little horn of Dan. 8, the king of fierce countenance, who shall stand up against the Prince of princes but be broken without hand. So here he comes to his end, and none shall help him.

Dan. 12 repudiates every effort to turn away any of its parts from the last great crisis for Israel. Daniel's people shall then know the tribulation that is without parallel even for them; and they have tasted bitter times enough under Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, and Titus. But after the future and worst they shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. God will make it a means and occasion of purging them. It is true that the resurrection in Dan. 12: 2 is figuratively spoken, but it is of the Israelites, and not confined to those "of a clean heart," who now lie as it were dead and buried among the Gentiles, but who then shall come forward, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. It is the time of the judgment of the quick {the living}, when evil men are no longer tolerated, and intelligence and zeal for the Lord meets its recompense (Dan. 12: 3).

Again, the sealing of the book (Dan. 12: 9) points to the end of the age among Jews, in contrast with the portion of the Christian in the truths now revealed, as we see in Rev. 22: 10. So too the three years and a half (Dan. 12: 5-7): apply as people may to others after a protracted scale, there can be no doubt that it is expressly said of the Jews at the end. A fuller revelation comes by John to us, not to Daniel (Dan. 12: 8, 9).

The brief period of the crisis is strongly confirmed by Dan. 12: 11, 12, in the former of which it may be observed we have the true source of the Lord's reference in Matt. 24: 15: not Dan. 11: 31, which is exclusively past in the days of Antiochus, but Dan. 12: 11, which is wholly future and speaks of Antichrist only though no doubt sustained in it by the fourth beast or Roman empire. Compare Dan. 9: 27, and 11: 36-39.

We have thus taken, not a collection of extreme views, but what is set forth by an advocate of historicalism who is more than ordinarily alive to the future, in order to show that the system in its best shape fails in representing the true scope of prophecy. The main error is preoccupation with ourselves, instead of seeing that Christ's glory is the true object of God in scripture, which accordingly shows us Him in heavenly places as the head of the church, but Him also about to appear as the King of Israel and as the Son of man to reign over all nations.

Chapter 8

General Conclusions

Maxims have been drawn from traditional views of Old Testament prophecy, applied to Daniel in particular, which it seems well to notice before passing on to those of the New Testament.

I.

The law of departure, which has been thus stated: every detailed prophecy must be viewed as commencing with the chief present or next preceding event at the time when it is given, unless direct proof to the contrary can be brought forward.

II.

The law of continuity, which supposes that each prophecy is to be viewed as continuous, unless when there can be assigned some strong internal proof that the continuity is broken.

III.

The law of progressive development, which conceives each prophecy that is added to give a fuller expansion of what was seen more briefly before.

IV.

The law of prophetical perspective, or the notion that distant events are described more briefly in comparison with those near at hand.

1. Now no sober believer will be disposed to doubt the general truth of the first principle, though he might not think it reverent to treat the word of God as one speaks of creation around us, and to formulate canons of interpretation in prophecy as theologians have done to the great detriment of revealed truth in general. As the rule prophecy, especially detailed prophecy, starts from facts present or imminent. It supposes failure in what is actually before us, the judgment of which God pronounces, in order to make way for "some better thing." But herein lies the fatal defect of the first "law," that it is a mere intellectual deduction, even if true, which is not always apparent, leaving out man's sin and God's judgment, as well as His intervention another day. The moral side is thus overlooked, as well as the divine glory; that is, all that is of chief moment for God or man. But it is plain that in this cold, scientific, dissection of the prophetic Word the alleged law cannot be justly applied to the famous Seventy Weeks. If the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem was only in the days of Artaxerxes Longimanus, the terminus a quo of the series, this can scarcely be said, without extreme harshness, to have been either the chief present event, or one preceding the prophecy which followed immediately after the fall of Babylon. The object of all this is mainly to involve the reader in a preconceived theory of the Apocalypse, as well as of the Lord's prediction on Mount Olivet, which evidently are each as distinct from one another, as both are from the book of Daniel with its distinct visions going down from each respective starting-point to the end of the age.

The Apocalypse alone contemplates not only the millennial reign from first to last, but the events which follow, and even the eternal state. How groundless then to frame laws from the book of Daniel for what is so obviously different!

2. Then we have seen that, though there may be a measure of continuous order, every vision of Daniel from which the law is avowedly drawn shows a break more or less distinct; and the same principle is certainly true of the Lord's prophecy. It is confessed that there is one apparent break in the last. It would be truer to say that they all exhibit, after a certain continuity, a distinct gap, before resuming the connection of each with its results in divine judgment at the end of the age.

3. If it be merely meant that each successive prophecy adds more light to what was already vouchsafed, the third maxim would be true enough, and almost a truism.

4. The alleged "prophetical perspective" seems to be as purely imaginary as can be conceived. The fourth empire has far more details than any of its predecessors in Nebuchadnezzar's reign, as it has also in Daniel's vision of the beasts. So have the little horns in Dan. 7,

8. On the Seventy Weeks the law does not in the least bear; and it is reversed by the enormous disproportion given to Antiochus Epiphanes in the last vision, and still more by the space occupied by the final struggle (Dan. 11: 36-45; 12).

But further, to reason from the state before Christ to the eighteen centuries under the gospel, to assume that now we ought very plainly to expect a peculiar fullness of prophetic revelation, and this respecting the ordinary events of God's providence, proves nothing but the extreme pre-occupation of a special pleader. We must weigh the predictions of the New Testament themselves, without drawing rules from the visions of Daniel, so obviously different, in order to control their application as men desire. It is as true in prophecy as in the truth as a whole, and in practical conduct, that "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

Chapter 9

The Lord's Great Prophecies in the Gospels

Matthew 24, 25; Mark 13; Luke 21 It is allowed by the historical school that there is a real difficulty in every hypothesis, so as to make caution peculiarly needful in treating of this prophecy; and indeed that many who differ from the futurists elsewhere seem almost ready to adopt their exposition here. The prophecy begins with troubles in the apostolic age; it closes with the second advent of our Lord; yet there are express words in it, besides the apparent connection of its parts, which seem to confine it within the limits of one generation. But these considerations being inconsistent with each other, which of them must be modified or abandoned?

Three answers, it is alleged, have been given. That of Bishop Newton and others, who adopt a figurative construction of the closing scene, and thus cut it off from all immediate or direct reference to the Lord's personal return; that of the futurists (Burgh, McCausland, Tyso, etc.), who sever its beginning from apostolic times, and regard all as converging on the end of the age; that of Bengel, Horsley, etc., who would trace a continuation from the siege of Titus to the second advent. As the moderns confess the untenableness of the first view, which chiefly rests on an unfounded restriction of "this generation" to the apostolic age, we must look a little more closely into the other two.

The truth really is, that Luke 21 furnishes, not a parallel to Matthew 24 or Mark 13, but a most important supplement. This is lost, if one regards his verses 20 et seqq. as an inspired paraphrase of the two other Gospels, and thus miss the true force of "the abomination of desolation" on one side, and of "the days of the vengeance" on the other. The parallelism of the prophecy is admitted; but this is perfectly consistent with the belief that the Lord uttered truths, some of which the Spirit led one to omit and another to record, and vice versa. No parallel in the Gospels is absolute, nor indeed in any part of scripture. The measure of correspondence depends on the degree in which the divine design in each permits or opposes it. It was the same occasion, and substantially the same discourse; but the design of the Holy Spirit working by each writer accounts for the difference in each reproduction of the prophecy. Inspiration is characterized by the Spirit's selection in accordance with His special object by each instrument. This is the true key, not the notion that Luke 17 is the real parallel to Matt. 24.

Again, the point of departure in no way decides this question. Granted that in all three Gospels the prediction starts from times close at hand, instead of pointing at once to the end of the age; but how does it hinder the Spirit from vouchsafing the true link of transition in one Gospel, while the other two pass this and converge on what precedes the close which it omitted? It is the less reasonable to reject this solution; as it is confessed that between the first and second Gospels there is a very general agreement in the words of the prediction, while in the third there are much more numerous deviations. To assume that a marked deviation in Luke is a comment on Matthew and Mark is of all explanations the least satisfactory; that it should supply what is lacking in the others, because in accordance with its own design, is as simple as sure, and worthy of the God who gave them all. The meaning of the "abomination," etc., in Matthew or Mark is not therefore to be explained away by the compassing "with armies," any more than "the holy place" points to the mountain on the east, or the "desolation" is that which has now lasted almost eighteen hundred years.

But it is a total misconception that the denial of the absolute parallelism of Luke with Matthew and Mark involves the thought that no part of the prophecy relates to that destruction of the temple which was then imminent, for this never should have been a matter of hesitation to any believer. Further, it is puerile to say that the abomination (or idol) of desolation corresponds in identity with our Saviour's words a little before, "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." This is no better than verbal trifling. Nor does the historical fulfillment of Luke 21: 20 afford the least evidence as to the true and proper meaning of Matt. 24: 15; for this is the question — its meaning rather than its fulfillment.

It is a plain error that our Lord's prophecy is professedly an answer to the specific inquiry about the destruction of the temple; for they say, "Tell us, when shall these things be, and what the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the age?" For larger and more remote events were thus in question. It is not a choice therefore between the views which look only at the next ensuing generation, or at the last generation before the second advent; for the truth is that, while all three Gospels start from events at hand, and all close with the presence of the Son of man in power and glory, only Luke 21: 24 gives us the transitional "times of the Gentiles," during which Jerusalem is trodden down by them.

Again, it appears to me demonstrable that, as Dan. 11: 31 refers to the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, long passed when our Lord prophesied on Mount Olivet, so the reference in Matt. 24: 15, Mark 13: 14, is exclusively, as well as certainly, to Dan. 12: 11, and therefore an event not only not accomplished at the siege of Titus, but wholly future and bound up with the final tribulation and deliverance of Israel. It is ridiculous to identify, as some of the historicalists do, Dan. 11: 31, 12: 11, for one is wholly past, and the other absolutely future, and neither of them in any way connected with Titus. It is allowed that the phrase, "in a holy place" (ἐν τόπῳ ἁγίῳ), is not so precise as those in Acts 6: 13, 21: 28; but the other part of the clause is not "an," but "the abomination of desolation," and means that idol which brings desolation on the Jews, their city and temple.

The true place of transition is then indicated in Luke 21: 24, but this is an added statement, owing to the peculiar design of his Gospel, and in no way a comment on one word in Matthew or Mark. But the great and unparalleled tribulation in these two Gospels is clearly proved by Dan. 12: 1 to be not a past but a future event, just before Israel's blessing at the end of the age, and far more precise than the mere "days of vengeance" in Luke 21: 22. His comparatively moderate terms, in verse 23, "there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people," were historically verified, and are in the clearest contradistinction from the statements of Matt. 24: 21, 29 and Dan. 12: 1, which, beyond doubt, are future, and as yet unfulfilled.

It has not been adequately considered how completely Luke 21: 32 settles the real bearing of those much-debated words, "This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled." As long as they were regarded only in the light of Matt. 24 and Mark 13, there remained room for doubt; and certainly there could not but be doubt without a just and sure understanding of their context; and this was the very thing most contested. Those who restrained the chapters to the apostolic period, or to the end of the age, interpreted the clause according to their respective theory. But the truth is larger than either of these human views; and when its extent and precision withal are seen, the light which flows from these words of our Lord is no longer hindered or perverted. To this end the third Gospel contributes invaluable help, not certainly by swamping the other two, but by the fresh wisdom of God communicated by Luke, making us understand each so much the better because we have all, and thus furnishing a more comprehensive perception and enjoyment of the entire truth.

Here then God has taken care for the first time to introduce "the times of the Gentiles" still going on after the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. Then from v. 25 we have the signs of the last days, and finally the Son of man seen coming in a cloud with power and great glory, proving the futility of the scheme which would confound Titus capturing Jerusalem (Luke 21: 20-24) with the Son of man appearing in verse 27. But it is after this that we read in verse 32: "Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled." It is not till they "begin to come to pass," of which we do read in verse 28, and a call to the faithful when they see it to "look up and lift up their heads." This generation is not to pass till ALL be fulfilled (γένηται). No language can be more accurate. This Christ-rejecting, unbelieving, stubborn and rebellious generation of the Jews should not pass away till then. A new generation will follow. The expression has a moral, and not a mere chronological, sense. Compare Ps. 12: 7 (Heb. 8) in contrast with the generation to come. See Ps. 22: 30 (31), 31, (32). The clause therefore seems to be meant in its unlimited strength, and so put by the third Evangelist as to render all other applications impossible. Nor is there the least ground for taking it otherwise in the corresponding places of Matthew and Mark; but Luke demonstrates this.

The case then stands thus. On the one hand Matthew and Mark do not notice the times of the Gentiles, which Luke was inspired to present very distinctly as well as the successes of the Gentiles, not only when their armies conquered Jerusalem, and led the people captive into all nations, but also during their continued occupation of that city as in fact has been the case for 1800 years. On the other hand Matthew and Mark, but not Luke, notice distinctly the setting up of the abomination of desolation and the unequalled time of trouble just before the Son of man comes for the deliverance of the elect in Israel at the end of the age, passing at once from the early troubles in the land (while Jerusalem was still an object of testimony) to the last days, when it re-appears with its temple and the Jews there, but alas! the deceived of Satan and his instruments till the Lord appears in judgment. Hence it will be observed that there is no question in Luke 21 as to "the sign of His coming and of the end of the age." In all this I see, not confusion, but the perfect mind of God giving what was exactly suited to each Gospel. It is the comment which confuses the truth, instead of learning from each and all. In Matthew and Mark the future crisis follows a preliminary sketch of troubles put so generally as to apply both to the apostolic times and to the earlier epoch when the Jews return and rebuild their city and temple in unbelief before the age ends: Matt. 24: 4-14 (Mark 13: 5-13) being the general sketch, and Matt. 24: 15-31 (Mark 13: 14-27) the crisis at the close or last half-week of Daniel's unfulfilled seventieth week. Luke alone gives us anything like continuity in the very brief words of chapter 21: 24, as he alone gives us distinctly in this prophecy the past destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, as he does also in {Luke} 19: 43, 44. {Luke} 17: 22-37, I do not doubt, also refers to Jerusalem, but exclusively the latter day, when the Son of man is revealed, not when Titus sacked it. In that day there will be a perfect discrimination of persons in the judgment, which proves it to be divine, not a mere providential event however awful.

Chapter 10

The General Design of the Apocalypse — Objections Met

From early times scarce any consent has been more general than to view the Revelation as a comprehensive prophecy which extends from the days of the apostle to the end of time. A few, chiefly since the Reformation, would confine most of it to the fall of Jerusalem; a few more began to apply it to the end of the age, as the early fathers did. It seems desirable however to examine the question afresh with all brevity. There can be no doubt that faith in the future application has spread much of late years. It is the more incumbent therefore to examine what is urged by such as plead for the more extensive range of the prophecy throughout the times of the Gentiles since the days of the apostle. The objections usually pressed against historicalism appear to me of little weight.

I.

The variety and even discordance of the popular expositors I have already allowed to be a feeble disproof. The truth might be in a few without being apprehended by most men or even by all true Christians. Spirituality of mind is needed to discern truth, nor is it difficult to muster objections to that which is most certain. How many saints are cloudy in their views even of grace as well as righteousness! How many fail to see intelligently the return and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus! Besides, the variety is not small among the futurists themselves. To be distracted by such clashing of opinions on either side is really to give up certainty as to all truth.

II.

The adherence to a literal interpretation is necessarily absurd where the language of the book is beyond doubt figurative or symbolic. Now of all books of scripture, certainly in the New Testament, none so abounds in symbols as the Revelation. To insist upon a rigid literalism here must end in continual straining, disappointment, and error.

III.

The same exaggeration is apt to appear in looking for events of a character wholly transcending the past. That such wonders do appear in certain parts of the Revelation is clear. It is unfounded to expect them everywhere.

IV.

The attempt, not to run merely a parallel, but to assume identity between the prophecy on the mount and the seals, etc. of the Revelation, is unfounded. An analogy may be allowed, but no more. Such reasoning altogether fails to fix the time when the Revelation will be fulfilled.

But there are weightier grounds of a wholly different nature which may be now advanced. The Lord Himself in opening the book to John distinguishes "the things which are" from "those which must be hereafter" (or after these things" {Rev. 1: 19}). "The things which are" comprise the messages to the seven churches. It is the church-period {Rev. 2 and 3}. "The things which shall be after these" {Rev. 4ff} are the visions of God's dealings and judgments on man's ways in the world which follow that period till the end of all things. But "the things which are" may be viewed in two ways. They are either the churches viewed as exclusively in John's time, and hence now past — after which would begin to apply the prophetic visions of the rest of the book. In this point of view the historical school of interpretation ought not to be discarded as untrue or unprofitable. On the contrary I believe that God was pleased to use the book for the comfort of His saints both in their early trials from the hostility of heathen Rome and in medieval as well as later times from the persecutions of Babylon, the meretricious antichurch of the Apocalypse {Rev. 17}. But in this point of view the prophetic visions must be allowed to be vague; and no wonder should be felt that discord abounds among the interpreters.

But there is a second point from which we may view "the things that are," or the messages to the seven churches {Rev. 2 and 3}. They have a prolonged and successive application whilst God owns anything of a church condition on earth. This He clearly does as yet; and according to this view chapters 2, 3, of the Revelation give the things that are still, and are not passed but rather fulfilling before our eyes. Till they are past, "the things which must be after these" {Rev. 1: 19} cannot even begin to be accomplished. Then only will commence the making good of the prophetic visions in their full sense and application to the crisis which closes this age and introduces the kingdom. Of these seven, the first indicates the declension from first love which characterized the day when John saw the visions of the book; the second, the outbreak of heathen persecution which followed not long after; the third, the exaltation of the church in the empire under Constantine and his successors. Thyatira is marked by more tokens than one which prove that this state, which was fully out in medieval times, is the first of those which thence- forward go on not merely successively but contemporaneously from their rise to the Lord's coming. As Popery, though far from Popery alone, was therein found, so Sardis presents Protestantism; as Philadelphia, the reviving not only of the brotherhood with its love but of separateness to Christ's name and word, while waiting for Him, so Laodicea concludes the seven with the self-complacent latitudinarianism of our day which takes shape and position, more and more as time goes on.

But it is all-important to the understanding of the general scope and design of the Revelation to see that, after these {starting with Rev. 4} there is nothing of a church character recognized in the book. "The things that are" will be then terminated. An entirely new state of things follows, visions chiefly of judgments on earth, or saints suffering, with testimonies and warnings from God, but never any instance assemblies or churches here below.

Indeed the case is far stronger than this. For "the things which must be after these things" {Rev. 1: 19} (that is, after the church-state) open with a prefatory scene of the deepest interest in heaven, wherein is seen round the throne of God {Rev. 4} (which is neither that of grace as now, nor that of millennial glory, but of a judicial character suited to a transitional space between the two, the end of the age) the symbolic circle of the crowned elders in heaven and this in their full complement, which is never added to till the heavenly hosts follow Christ from heaven when the day of Jehovah dawns on the earth and the reign for a thousand years is begun. That is, the elders thus seen above show us the heavenly saints translated, and enthroned round the throne of God, evidently corroborating and following up the previous fact that the church-state was done with and a new condition entered on, preparatorily to the kingdom of God in power and glory.

Entirely in keeping with this we hear henceforth of thousands sealed from the tribes of Israel {Rev. 7: 1-8}, and, separately from these, of countless Gentiles brought out of the great tribulation (for so it is, not out of great tribulation as a general fact or principle, but out of that special time of trouble which we know from many scriptures will be at the close of the age) {Rev. 7: 9-17}. There is no gathering more from among Jews and Gentiles into the church where these distinctions vanish. The seven churches in their protracted application had given that condition up to their last, seen on earth {Rev. 2 and 3}. God thence-forward works among Jews or Gentiles as distinct and with a view to putting the habitable earth under the rule of the glorified Son of man, the risen saints being on high, and some from Israel and the nations spared to enjoy the blessings of that day on earth; as He executes judgments first preparatorily though with increasing intensity under the seals, trumpets, and vials, till Christ with the translated saints appears in glory and reigns, judging the quick first, then the dead, after which is the eternal scene. Such is the general outline of the Revelation. In anything like a clear and comprehensive view of the book the futurists seem to be scarcely better than the historicalists. Neither party knows what to make of the vision in {Rev.} 4, 5, which follows the seven churches and introduces the strictly prophetic unfoldings of coming dealings with the world. Hence their views are almost equally uncertain. The key to the intelligence of the book lies in a right apprehension of this vision.

Chapter 11

The General Design of the Apocalypse — Direct Arguments

It must be owned that the actual state of Apocalyptic interpretation is humiliating. The book has been treated with silent slight or turned into an arena for busy conjecture rather than found to be a rich source of blessing according to the promise of the Lord. Not that God's grace or truth have failed, but that most had lost the blessing through mis-reading it. In the midst of unbelief, however, God has vindicated the value of His own word for those who have clung to it, eschewing either historicalism or mere futurism. They have read it in faith, using not only the lamp of prophecy but the still brighter light to which the Christian is entitled as blessed in heavenly places in Christ. It is well then to bring to the test what men allege as to its character, and to examine fairly and fully whatever evidence scripture affords for a decisive judgment. It will be found impossible to have either a comprehensive view of its scope or a correct application of its parts, without a solid establishment in the gospel and an adequate understanding of our own special relationship as Christians individually or as the church of God. As being the closing book of the New Testament canon it naturally supposes acquaintance with the rest of revealed truth. None can truly appreciate the Apocalypse who has been used to misapply the Old Testament prophecies of Zion and Israel to christian subjects, any more than such as fail to see the entirely new character of the body of Christ, now that redemption is accomplished and the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Every one knows that the Fathers, so-called, entirely broke down, and most of them in this way, both in the mass of the older catholic bodies and in those which followed in their wake. No less have Protestants in general failed to recover the true character of the church, in consequence of confining their attention for the most part, even when orthodox, to truth for the individual, such as justification by faith and ordinary christian practice.

Let us turn then to certain arguments which are supposed to determine the true direction of the book. Does it spread over the entire period since the apostles {to the present, and even beyond} in its prophetic visions? or does it bear most strictly and fully on the closing crisis before the Lord appears in power and glory, though embracing this too and carrying us forward even into the eternal state?

I.

The title of the prophecy, it is thought, points to the right conclusion — "The Revelation of Jesus Christ." Some have imagined that these words denote simply the second coming of Christ, and would therefore limit the book to that great event, its antecedents and consequences. But this view is not more erroneous than to interpret the words as a removal, for the instruction of the church, of the veil which conceals the Lord now that He is ascended to heaven. Nay, of the two, the latter is much the most misleading; for the characteristic truth of the apostle Paul even as a part of God's righteousness is that the Christian sees His glory with unveiled face. It was no insignificant fact that at His death on the cross the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The Christian walks in the light even as God is in the light. He is brought nigh by the blood of the cross; and God looks for the fruits of light in all goodness and righteousness and truth. To make the Revelation therefore to be the unveiling of Jesus Christ in person would really be to deny that the veil was completely gone and known to be so ever since the cross and His ascension to heaven. The title then does not mean the removing of the veil from His person, but rather that unveiling of what is coming which God gave to Him, and which He communicated to His servant John and through him to us. But this leaves the question of the time still to be solved, save indeed that the closing words of the preface declare that "the time is at hand," and not in course of fulfillment. The examination of the prophetic visions too confirms this; for each of them presents to us some distinct view of our Lord in heaven, and some fresh aspect of God's providential dealings here below, but wholly different from what is found in the rest of the New Testament which directly applies to the church in its passage through the world. Further, we have already seen that Rev. 2, 3, does not suppose a chasm between the apostle's day and the future crisis of the world, but rather bridges it over by a most instructive transition which furnishes light increasingly as God lengthens out "the things which are" — that is, the seven churches or the epistles to them. They are not yet past.

II.

The analogy of Old Testament prophecy tends rather to mislead than to fix the true character of the Apocalypse, for the people of God then had to do with times and seasons in a way wholly different from us. There is contrast therefore really, rather than analogy, though one would not deny, as often remarked, the bearing of principles and help from them for christian sufferers from the Apocalypse. But the fact that the Lord has accomplished redemption, sent down the Spirit, and is ready to judge the quick and the dead, shows the total difference from the state of things before His first advent. The analogy therefore wholly fails instead of being full or complete.

It is easy to assert that the church has derived such light from the Apocalypse as the early triumphs of the gospel, the downfall of Rome, the troubles and temptations which intervened to the church, and the final triumph of Christ's kingdom. But such instances as these rather disprove than demonstrate the assertion. He who could apply to gospel triumphs the first seal, for instance (the white horse with its rider going forth conquering and to conquer), {Rev. 6: 1, 2} has certainly derived little true light from the Apocalypse. And as to Rome, though Babylon {Rev. 17} be unquestionably its symbol, there is much to try and exercise the heart for those who are occupied with outward circumstances; for that "great city" is far from fallen yet, though fail it must in due time. One has no wish to doubt that more or less may have been gathered from the book as to intervening troubles and temptation in principle at least; but I fear that those who drew from it the final triumph of Christ's kingdom have fallen into interpretations as unworthy as those of Eusebius, and this as time advanced, no less than in earlier ages. It would be easy, in fact, to show that the effort to apply the book, in its prophetic visions, to the course of the church on earth has led to little more than mistake in detail as well as wholesale. The church of God was meant to be from day to day expecting Christ. "Known to God are all his works from the beginning"; but He has carefully abstained from revealing to us that which might set aside the constancy of our hope. This was not at all the case before redemption. Even the rejection of the Messiah was a matter of prophetic date. Those who overcome during the various stages of the church on earth are seen translated to heaven and glorified there in Rev. 4, 5 before the properly prophetic visions begin to apply.

III.

The special analogy of the visions of Daniel breaks down when examined closely. For though there be in his visions a scarcely broken succession from his day to the first advent, it does not follow that the visions of St. John must reach from the apostolic age {down to today} without break. In none is this more conspicuous than in the seventy weeks {Dan. 9}, where we have continuity up to the death of Christ, but a distinct gap after it. The destruction of the city and sanctuary no doubt is recorded as subsequent, and a vista of desolation and war follows to the end; but otherwise it is all vague and unconnected with any date whatever. That it is after the sixty-nine weeks, and before the seventieth, is all one can learn from Dan. 9. There is no hint of time between; the last week remains to be fulfilled. Eighteen hundred years have already elapsed within that gap.

So it is with the Apocalypse. Its prophetic visions converge on the great future crisis, the accomplishment of the seventieth week, within which fall also "the time, times, and half a time" of Daniel. The resemblance between the Revelation and Daniel is found here only. That is, they do not resemble where the visions of Daniel are continuous, but coalesce after the gap for the end of the age. The analogy is that, while Daniel only gave succession up to Christ, both converge on "the time of the end."

IV.

The prophecy of our Lord must be perverted in order to apply the Apocalypse continuously from the Apostles' day on to His coming. For in Matt. 24 the grand question is as to the consummation of the age and not the sequence of events before it. And in Luke 21, where alone we hear of the "times of the Gentiles," we have no more information than the general fact of Jerusalem being trodden down by the Gentiles till then. We are next plunged into the signs external and moral which mark the end of the age — "signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." It is after revealing all these events that our Lord solemnly declares, "This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled." This generation therefore lasts till after the second advent no less than the fall of the temple. It is a mistake that there is a twofold affirmation with regard to the times: the first, that all the events predicted concerning the fall of the temple should certainly be fulfilled in that very generation; and the other, that the day and hour of the second advent was at that time purposely concealed. One has only to read carefully our Lord's own words in order to see that there is no such distinction and that the Christ-rejecting generation of the Jews was not to pass till all was fulfilled, including the second advent — not merely till the temple fell. Scripture teaches nowhere that that day and hour are now revealed.

1. Hence there is no continuity in the Lord's prophecy, any more than in the visions of Daniel, which justifies the name of a "law" and affords a presumption that the prophetic visions of the Apocalypse must stretch over the last 1800 years.

2. The Lord's prophecy in Matt. 24, 25 consists of three main divisions: first, the Jewish part in Matt. 24: 4-44; secondly, the christian part in Matt. 24: 45 to 25: 30; and, thirdly, the Gentile part in Matt. 25: 31-46. The disciples who were then instructed by the Lord could fittingly represent the future Jewish remnant, as this they were at that time themselves before they were brought into church standing by known redemption and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Hence the argument founded on their christian character to insinuate the propriety of prophecy about Christians and their circumstances all through entirely fails.

3. The mention of the "times of the Gentiles" in Luke 21 seems a slender ground for assigning to the Apocalypse an application to so many centuries instead of to the last week of Daniel.

4. Nor does the resemblance between Rev. 11: 2 and Luke 21: 24 blot out their differences, still less warrant the conclusion that the Apocalyptic visions are the expansion of the earlier prophecy.

V.

The presumption from the prophetic notices in the Epistles is equally slight. Thus, though the mystery of lawlessness already wrought, there was nothing in 2 Thess. 2 to indicate that either the apostasy or the manifestation of the lawless one will be before the time of the end; other scriptures prove that they will be then exclusively; with which the notices of this chapter quite agree. Still less force is there in 1 Cor. 10: 1-10, where we have Old Testament facts used as types, which no doubt might apply then or at any time. But this is moral admonition, not continuous prophecy. Again, 1 Tim. 4 speaks only of "some" and "in latter times." It is no more the end of the age than a prediction ranging over all the times of the gospel. Solemnly true and needed as is the warning of 2 Peter 2: 1-12, there is nothing here to decide the application of the Apocalypse all through.

VI.

The distinctive character of St. John's writings is alleged to point to the wider application rather than to the crisis. Undoubtedly the choice of the penman was in the fullest harmony with the message to be conveyed; but there is also variety as well as a common principle. The Gospel {of John}, the Epistles {of John}, and the Revelation do not only come from the same writer, but manifest character of truth peculiar to themselves. To call his the spiritual Gospel (as by the Greek Christians of old τὸ εὐγγέλιον τὸ κατὰ πνεῦμα), as contradistinguished from Luke's, Mark's, or Matthew's, seems far from precision and rather derogatory to the others; quite as much so to contrast his Epistles with those of Paul. The Gospel of John shows us really eternal life in the Son of God, the glory of the Only-begotten who reveals the Father; the Epistles show us the effect of this revelation where faith received Him, "which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness passeth and the true light already shineth"; the Revelation, the results not only in the overcoming and glory of those who are His but in the iniquity, lawlessness, and judgment of those who believe not, that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father. Hence it is that, while He is God and man in one person throughout all John's writings, He is more prominent as Son of God in the Gospels and Epistles, as Son of man in the Revelation. Authority to execute judgment is therefore given to Him {John 5: 22, 23} on those who would not come to Him that they might have life; and thus there are two resurrections, of life for those that practiced good, of judgment for those that did evil, the turning-point being faith or unbelief in His person who is the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. The crisis therefore falls in far more with this, the evident object of the Revelation, than any mere course of providential judgments spread over the continuous history of Christendom.

The opening verses of the book correspond with this; for if John is said to bear "witness of the word of God and the witness of Jesus Christ," it is qualified by "whatsoever things he saw." That is, it is not the person of the Son as in the Gospel nor our possession and manifestation of the life that is in Him as in the Epistles, but visions. And when in the course of the prophecy Christ is named The Word of God (Rev. 19), it is evidently in destructive judgment whilst in the Gospel we see Him in the fullness of grace. With such marked distinctness does the Spirit guard us against wrong inference from the rest of John's writings, and condemn those who would foist in the miscalled spiritualizing of the Revelation. Details only confirm this, if we bring each distinctive mark of the Gospels and Epistles to test the prophecy.

1. To argue that, because the Gospel and Epistles dwell not on the external and transient and earthly but on eternal truth, therefore the Apocalypse cannot disclose outward signs and wonders from the end of the age onwards till eternity, is to fly in the face of the evident scope and contents of the book. It has been already pointed out that its character is judicial (not the revelation of life in Christ), and this also enjoyed by and manifested in the saints. In the Revelation we have first the churches judged by the Son of man; and this state of things being closed, the world judged first preparatorily and with increasing intensity till (with the risen saints) Christ appears to judge in person, first the quick in the reign for a thousand years, then the wicked dead at the end before the new heavens and earth in the final and fullest sense. It is admitted however that, as in 1 John 2 {: 19} we hear of many antichrists even now, the forerunners of the Antichrist of the close, so the Apocalypse may afford light in a general way now, while it shines most distinctly on the great future crisis; and thus it is larger, as well as more exact, than either historicalists or futurists can see.

2. If both Gospel and Revelation open with the Lamb, each strikingly employs a different word, though it be about the same person: the Gospel, ἀμνός as expressive of God's grace in all its extent and in relation to sacrifice; the Revelation, ἀρνίον as the holy earth-rejected Sufferer, whose blood indeed has bought believers to God, but whose wrath is about to fall on a guilty world and the still guiltier apostates at His appearing till Satan himself perishes for ever.

3. The Gospel and the Epistles do suppose the Jews disowned for a new work of God {going on now}; but even so not without distinct pledges both in type (John 1: 45 to 2: 21; John 21: 24-29) and in direct terms of mercy reserved for them (John 11: 51, 52). The Revelation unveils the fresh working of God on their behalf when the {present} church-state is done with; and this both in Israel (Rev. 7) and in Jews (Rev. 14). It is as false to restrict it with the futurists to the narrow limits of Judea as to efface the Jews from a distinct and precious portion in its predictions, as most historicalists do.

VII.

The date and place of the prophecy are supposed to yield further and very distinct signs of its true meaning. It was revealed to the last of the twelve apostles, as the fullest evidence shows, under the last of the twelve Caesars. The first century was closing, the temple and city of Jerusalem destroyed, the Jews dispersed. The gospel was in all the world, bringing forth fruit, and growing. The church gave its testimony to Christ in the various lands and tongues of the known habitable world. The Old Testament had borne witness to the rebellious iniquity of Israel and Judah, not merely in the worship of idols, but in the rejection of the Anointed of Jehovah, and had pointed out sufficiently the consequences, not only to the chosen people in judgment, but to the Gentiles in grace. The time was now come for a final revelation, which, first of all showing that Christendom would be equally faithless to its responsibility, next hides not the dealings of God which should succeed, whether preliminary and partial before Christ appears, or completed when He executes judgment in person; and this, not only on the quick {living} throughout the thousand years' reign, but on the dead who had not shared the holy and blessed "first resurrection," the wicked dead raised after it {Rev. 20}. That John stood in a relation toward the church similar to that of Daniel toward the Jews is plain, the latter having been a captive of the first Gentile empire [the Babylonian], as the former of the fourth [the Roman], neither of them occupied himself with the details of providence, both with the end of the age, as ushering in the rule of the heavens wielded by the glorious Son of man. Only as Daniel was given to predict the ways of God consequent on the ruin of the Jew, so John what was to follow Christ's spewing out of His mouth the last of the seven churches {Rev. 3: 16}. As the privileges of the church far transcended Israel's, and the testimony for which the Christian is responsible was limited to no race, land, or tongue, instead of being cooped up in one narrow country and people, so doubtless the issues from God's hand are incomparably graver, and proportionably extended; and these, therefore, it fell to John's lot to have unrolled before wondering and aggrieved gaze.

If all the circumstances indicate a reference to the new economy rather than to those special Jewish relations which had been suspended, no less do they suppose that God is judging the failure of man under the gospel, and disclosing how He will take up all under Him, the second Man, who never failed. The prophecy therefore no more shows us Christendom the direct object of God's dealing, than its Jewish prototype did the Jews. It points out what will follow, and as the future crisis was the main airs of Daniel, so it is yet more effectually and fully of John; only John expands, as Daniel does not, not only into an incomparably vaster sphere, but also into the endless ages which follow the Lord's return. Such in fact was the uniform character of prophecy in the Old Testament. There was a series undoubtedly, and each wrote from his own time as the starting-point; but not one of them was limited in his predictions either to events which occurred during his lifetime, or to the next main event of Jewish history. They all looked onward to the coming of Messiah, and most fully indeed to His coming in power and glory. So did our Lord at the close of His own ministry. It is a total mistake that He merely took up the end of their thread, and prolonged it to the fall of Jerusalem, leaving it for John to carry it on continuously throughout the centuries which have elapsed since. One can understand such theories where the heart is in the world as it is, and man therefore as he is possesses our admiration and our interest. Doubtless there is light for the faithful at all times, and especially in an hour of ruin, through the Spirit of prophecy; but being the witness of Jesus, that Spirit hastens the grand consummation when evil shall be judged righteously, according to the light given but despised, and the Lord Himself shall take the reins. If Christianity superseded the finally proved antagonism of tho Jews to their Messiah, the corruption of Christianity gives occasion for God to indicate how He will replace the apostasy and man of sin by His kingdom at Christ's coming, and the eternal state, when God shall be all in all. This widely differs from the Protestant scheme of the Apocalypse.

VIII.

A guide or mark to determine the general scope of the Revelation has been drawn from the parties to whom it was first sent. It was given to John, and through him the seven churches of Asia were addressed. It has been argued therefore that, if the Apocalypse records the history of the church, the address to the Asiatic churches {Rev. 2 and 3} is most suitable, and in full harmony with the precedents of scripture; but it is equally incongruous if the main reference of the work be to a Jewish remnant alone during a few years at the end of this dispensation. The truth is, however, that the epistles to the seven churches are but introductory to the strictly prophetic part of the book, or "the things which shall be after" the things which are {Rev. 1: 19}; and "the things which are" exhibit the churches coming under the judgment of the Son of man. Thenceforward we have visions of the world judged, and the most conspicuous absence of a church; nay more, the presence of Jews and Gentiles {who are} objects of divine grace, and this separately, instead of being united in one body. That is, the book, as a whole, in its predictions contemplates an entirely new state of things, as the result of the faithlessness of Christendom, and the removal of the faithful to heaven [at the pretribulation rapture], paving the way for the reign of the Lord and the glorified saints {when the millennial kingdom is established}. That state, however, is no return to a mere Jewish remnant, though such a remnant be one of its elements; but on the proved ruin of Christendom, as of Judaism, the visions show us God's measures for investing the Lord with the world as His inheritance. We hear the first church threatened with the removal of its candlestick {Rev. 2: 5}, we see in the last its setting aside with abhorrence as the Lord's resolve {Rev. 3: 16}; and this in order to make way for the visions of woe, not without testimonies of mercy, the process which introduces the First-born in judgment of the whole earth. Clearly it was meant that those in the churches, or a church position, should profit by all the communications of the book; but the book itself is the strongest proof that churches, or even Christians properly so-called, are nowhere contemplated in the scenes of its predictions. Its object is to reveal what follows in the world when those that overcame in the church-state are no longer on earth.

IX.

The direct statements with regard to the time which begin and close the prophecy are another evidence of its true application. It was sent to show God's servants "things that must shortly come to pass." "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear, the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand." The motive is neither that the things are in course of fulfilment, nor that they are about the church. Compare Rev. 22: 10. And this last is the more striking, because Daniel was told to seal his book even to the time of the end; whereas John, receiving still further and deeper details, was told not to seal the sayings of the prophecy of his book. The true inference is, not that there was a merely human or ordinary scale of time applied to either, but that since redemption and Christ's session at God's right hand, ready to judge the quick [living] and the dead {2 Tim. 4: 1}, the end of all things is at hand to John and the Christian, as it was not to Daniel and the Jew. Having the Spirit meanwhile, the Christian has divine capacity to understand all that the word, prophetic or not, reveals. It is no question of comparative distance or nearness merely, but of the immense change effected by Christ, who has brought all things to a point before God; so that the same apostle, John, could say, "it is the last time," or "hour" {1 John 2: 18}. This was neither manifest nor true when Daniel lived. {For Daniel,} A revealed series of events necessarily intervened. It was otherwise when John wrote. In both prophecies the Spirit had the crisis in view. None can conceive that the earlier events predicted by Daniel belong to the time of the end, or were for many days. "The last end of the indignation" has no reference to the siege of Titus, nor will it fall within the limits of the so-called christian dispensation. "The indignation," it appears from Isa. 10, etc., is evidently God's anger against idolatrous Israel; and "the abomination of desolation," in Matt. 24 and Dan. 12, will not be till the end of the age in the sanctuary of Jerusalem. These allusions are demonstrably outside the times of the gospel; but the Christian is entitled to comprehend what the Jew must wait for. To us, therefore, it is always morally "the time of the end"; and nothing, accordingly, is sealed or shut up from us. It is an evident mistake that 1 Peter 1: 10-12 refers to these texts in Daniel, but rather to such as Dan. 2: 34, 35; Dan. 7: 13; Dan. 9: 26, "the sufferings respecting Christ, and the glories after these," which are now reported more fully still in the gospel, as some of them will be fulfilled only at the revelation of our Lord. Thus the contrast of the words in Revelation with Daniel's lends no support to the hypothesis that even the seals apply to gospel times from John's day.

X.

The character of the opening benediction {in Rev. 1} bespeaks the true references. It is not from God, as such, or from the Father, as such, His special revelation in grace and relationship which we know as Christians. It is rather His name of Jehovah, hitherto made known to the children of Israel, now for the first time translated from the Old Testament idiom into Greek, but Hebraistically. This surely suits a prophetic book which was intended to unfold, not christian privilege or duty, but judgment on a world guilty of rejecting as well as corrupting Christianity, where God begins to prepare an earthly nucleus for the returning Lord, and this from Israel, as well as all nations, but expressly distinct from each other. There is a difference between the form of the name in Rev. 1 and in Rev. 4; but on this we need not enter, as being beside the present argument and purpose. It is undeniable, however, that He is not in either revealed in christian or church relationship, but in a form and character suited to One who is to act thenceforward as governor, not merely of Israel, but of the nations. In accordance with this, we do not hear of the "one Spirit," as in 1 Corinthians or Ephesians, nor yet as the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, but with a difference no less striking, "the seven Spirits which are before the throne," a phrase which suggests His fullness governmentally, and refers to Isa. 11, but is never used when Christian standing is in question. So the characters of Christ Himself pointedly leave out what is heavenly and in church connection. It is neither priesthood nor headship; but what He was on earth, and there in resurrection, and will be when He returns. What He is displaying now on high is left out. Continuity is not in the least expressed; but rather a break from His resurrection, till He takes His great power and reigns. So with the associated title, "I am Alpha and Omega"; it may be of Gentile source, joined with one familiar to Jewish ears, and thus together most suitable to a prophecy which lifts the veil from the future crisis, when it is no longer that body wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile, but Christ is all and in all. Here we have only Jews and Gentiles after Rev. 6.

As to Rev. 1: 7, it is in no way to be limited to Jews, whatever the resemblance to the Septuagint version of the words in Zech. 12. Indeed this is but one case of the general principle, that the Revelation, like the New Testament as a whole (save in application of fulfilled prophecy) enlarges the sphere, and deepens the character, of what is borrowed from the older oracles of God. But allowing that "all the tribes of the earth" should be here meant, rather than "of the land" merely, and as distinguished from "those who pierced Him," it seems strange that the bearing of "every eye shall see Him" should be overlooked. For if the object had been to guard the reader from the vague providential line of interpretation, and to fix our attention on the Lord's coming again to the earth, it could hardly be secured more plainly than by such a text. There is a larger and more comprehensive scope than in Old Testament prophecy; but it is in relation to the world, not to the church, and to the visible display of glory, not to the kingdom of God viewed spiritually. We walk by faith, not by sight. The book is for, but not all about, the church.

XI.

The special occasion when these visions were revealed is supposed to be very significant of their bearing on the church rather than the Jews. For the apostle "was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." Domitian was persecuting; the conflict was begun between the witnesses of Christ and the idolatrous power of Rome; John's exile exemplified the warfare and suffering which was to continue for ages; as Rome is seen, near the close of the prophecy, drunk with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. Thus the book traces the moral war from first to last without token of any abrupt transition. Such is the reasoning. If the extremes are fixed, and the intermediate links many and various reasonable doubt of the continuity of the whole?

The truth, however, is that John is seen throughout as a "servant," rather than a son or "child," as in his Gospel and Epistles; and the word of God and testimony of Jesus are narrowed to visions ("all that he saw," Rev. 1: 2) to prepare the way for taking in as servants those saints who could not be placed on the same ground as the members of Christ's body. They will follow us on the earth, and will be His servants, having the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, when the Lord will have taken us to heaven. The Christian, like John himself, should seek to read the Revelation from his own stand-point of association with Christ risen; but the book clearly makes known other saints on a quite different footing throughout the prophetic periods. The inference drawn is therefore unsound. Rev. 4, 5 show us the church as a whole, glorified; and Rev. 6-18 others on earth who, though saints, are quite distinct from the church.

Doubtless the attempt to interpret "the Lord's day" {Rev. 1: 10} as the day of the Lord is mere ignorance, though men of learning have so argued. The force of that day really is, that, though John was speaking as a prophet of what is coming on the world, he did not forfeit his proper portion as a Christian. He was in the Spirit, and saw the visions "on the Lord's day," as the first day of the week was now called in virtue of Christ's resurrection. But is it not almost equal ignorance to apply the sabbath in Matt. 24: 20 to the past? It clearly refers to the future crisis, when Jewish saints must pray that their flight be not on that day nor in the winter. At that time the abomination of desolation will be their signal to escape from Jerusalem, according to the Lord's warning {Matt. 24: 15}.

XII.

The emblems of the opening vision are supposed to be a further key to the nature of the prophecy. The first, expounded by our Lord Himself, is the seven golden candlesticks {Rev. 1: 12, 20}, denoting the seven churches of Asia: a type borrowed from the Jewish sanctuary, but without a local centre or a visible head, so as to suit the wider character and greater liberty of the church. If the candlesticks be symbolic, why restrain the ark, altar, and temple, with its outer and inner courts, to an outward sense? And so with the stars in Rev. 1. If used to denote living intelligent persons, why should the star of the third trumpet, for instance, denote merely a meteoric stone? Why not those spiritual realities which belong to the whole church of God?

The answer is plain and decisive. The Lord Himself draws, in Rev. 1: 19, the line of demarcation between the opening vision, with the connected "things that are," and the "things which are about to be after these." Hence it is a rash assumption, at the very least, to say that the symbols abide the same in parts of the book so distinguished. If churches and their angels are found only in Rev. 1-3, disappearing absolutely from the prophetic visions which follow, it is natural that so vast a change must modify in a corresponding way the application of the symbols, though of course the essential idea remains. They cannot describe these spiritual realities which belong to the church of God, when it, as a whole, is no longer seen on earth. And, confessedly, quite different symbols denote the church in heaven. But we are not driven to the pseudo-literal alternative of two Levitical candlesticks in Rev. 11, any more than to one meteor in Rev. 8. We must interpret them in congruity with their context, not therefore in reference to the church, which is gone, but to the world, with which God is then dealing, whether among Gentiles or Jews. The star here means a fallen ruler, and in the western Roman earth, not supreme, like the sun, but subordinate; as the two candlesticks may be an adequate testimony to Christ's priesthood and royalty among the Jews. But one need not dwell on details.

XIII.

A similar remark is true of the allusion to the "Jews" in the first chapters when used to govern the application in the rest of the Revelation. Certainly the seven churches (viewed either literally as the past assemblies in proconsular Asia or as foreshadowing so many phases of Christendom till the faithful are caught and the Lord utterly disowns the last outward state) suppose the title of Jews ("those that say they are Jews but do lie") misused by those in Christendom who boast of antiquity and not present power in the Spirit, of succession and not grace, and of ordinances and not Christ; and just as certainly such a phrase could only be used during the Lo-ammi time of Israel's rejection. But it is a hasty inference thence to interpret the prophetic visions when God begins to seal a people out of the twelve tribes of Israel, after the church is withdrawn from the earth.

XIV.

It is in vain for the same reason to argue from the general character of the Epistles to the seven churches, for they stand in evident contrast as "the things that are," or church-state, with the succeeding visions of the future, though no doubt a moral preparative for them of the highest value.

1. Thus the season of trial in the epistle to Smyrna might be blessed to the saints similarly tried during the prophetic periods later on; but there is the strongest possible internal reason why we should not apply these as the true meaning of prophecies which suppose the church no longer existing on earth, and new witnesses, Jews or Gentiles, succeeding who are expressly in a different relationship.

2. As little does the reference first to "the doctrine of Balaam" in Rev. 2, compared with the false prophet in Rev. 13: 14-17; Rev. 16: 13; Rev. 19: 20, warrant the conclusion that the marks of a regular connection and sequence are herein given. Similar evil, though modified in form, is all that can be fairly drawn from the earliest and later passages. So it is with the types of the wilderness. It applies to us now; it will be as true, though in greatly altered circumstances, of others after we join the Lord above, before the kingdom be established in power and glory.

3. The mention of Jezebel in Rev. 2: 20 and of her great counterpart in the prophetic vision (Rev. 14, 16, 17, 18) stands on just the same ground.

4. So does the local fulfillment of the opening predictions. They may be of profit at all times; but we cannot intelligently apply to the church what God predicted of His government of the world, or of witnesses raised up for that state of things.

XV.

The nature of the prophetic scenery as described in the following chapters (Rev. 4, 5) yields abundant and irrefutable disproof of the notion that the prophetic visions of the Apocalypse contemplate the church or its history on earth. For the purpose in hand there is no need of entering into the details of specific interpretation; but a few broad features may be briefly pointed out which are decisive against the notion in question — a notion entertained by not a few futurists as well as by the Protestant school generally.

1. It is perfectly true that the opening of the visions is eminently symbolical. The living creatures, the lamps of fire, the elders, the Lamb and the sealed book, the vials and the odours, all have this character, not to speak of the voice of thunder, the four horsemen, etc., in what follows. But it is a mistake that either the heavenly calling of the Christian claims especially such a veiled or emblematic mode of instruction, or that the end of the age must through all its extent see the cessation of silent mystery and the commencement of visible and material wonders. It is plainly enough revealed that it will merge gradually into a brief period in which the western powers will adopt a peculiar political order and partition with its suited chief, the north-eastern will advance for a final struggle, the Jews in their land and under their king {the Antichrist — Dan. 11: 36; 2 Thess. 2} be a main object of defense and attack, and Satan avail himself of the apostasy {2 Thess. 2} he has effected to reveal the lawless one in all power and signs and wonders of lying, God Himself sending those who believed not the truth a working of error that they should believe the lie. But these horrors do not begin at once, and the worst of them will steal over men by degrees. There is no such abrupt change as is conceived by such as oppose. On the one hand Jerusalem and the temple will be the scene not only of renewed and strange idolatry but of man arrogating the glory of God; on the other God will not leave man throughout the world without suited testimony and solemn judgment, increasing in intensity till the Lord appears in glory.

Let the reader remark the total change of scenery at this point. It is no longer the Son of man in the midst of seven golden candlesticks, nor the successive messages to the angels of these churches, but a throne in heaven, the prophet being called up to see and hear {Rev. 4}. The actual or church state exists no more, giving place to "things which must be after these." It is a question of government from heaven, and the throne one of judicial glory, not of grace as we know now; and hence out of it lightnings and voices and thunders, not the message of peace and salvation; and the saints now glorified surround it as the heads of the royal priesthood, no longer on earth as in Rev. 1: 5, 6. It is a company, be it noted, complete from first to last (Rev. 4-19), so that for this as well as other reasons it cannot be separate spirits but glorified men. The seven Spirits of God, or the fullness of the Spirit in attributive power, are seen as seven lamps or torches of fire burning before the throne. There is no altar, as it is no longer a question of coming to God; and, instead of a laver with water to cleanse the defilements contracted by the way, there is a sea of glass in witness of perfect and fixed purity. The cherubim, or living creatures, are no longer two but four, and seraphic as well as cherubic, characterizing the throne in executory judgment according to the holiness of God. If the aim were to reveal a new state wholly distinct from the present, and a transitional relationship, before Christ and the risen saints come out of heaven to reign over the millennial earth, it would be hard to say how it could be made more apparent or unquestionable. In full keeping with this Christ is seen after a new sort as the Lamb in the midst of the throne, yet the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David: the holy earth-rejected sufferer, slain for God's glory, who had bought a people to God by His blood, who alone could and does open the otherwise sealed book of divine purposes and plans for the deliverance of the world and reign of God; and the elders fall before the Lamb with vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints {Rev. 5}, clearly not their own but of others on earth in a different position from themselves in glory, as the visions that follow will confirm.

2. Equally true is it that the action of the prophecy is derived from the opening of the sealed book; and that the taking and opening of it is grounded on the personal power, worth, and victory of the slain Lamb. But on the face of the scripture the scene does not follow His ascension. It rather awaits the close of the church-state and our translation to heaven, when the present work of gathering the heavenly co-heirs with Christ is finished. This in no way treats the atonement of our Lord as for eighteen centuries idle and powerless, unless the forming of the bride of the Lamb be nothing; it shows on the contrary, that, so far from exhausting the virtues of His blood, fresh counsels of God, to us long revealed, are all in His hand and for His glory who will take the earth as well as heavens under His headship, and who, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believed {1 Thess 1: 7, 8}, will take all peoples and nations and tongues as well as Israel in chief under His sway. No Christian doubts the truth and importance of Matt. 28: 18 or Phil. 2: 8, 9; but the character or time of application is another question. And we may well doubt that these or any other texts determine that the Revelation sets forth in its visions the triumphs of the cross while the church is on earth, called as she is now to be the follower of Christ in His earthly shame and suffering.

3. Further, it is said that there is no event between the ascension of our Lord with His solemn inauguration in heaven and His visible return in glory, and especially now in the last days, which can claim to be the true commencement. But this leaves out the vision of Rev. 4, 5 in its evident import, especially as following up the sevenfold message to the angels of the Asiatic churches or the mystery of the seven golden candlesticks, and as introducing the predicted dealings of God with the world in the rest of the book. The throne of God assumes a relation notably distinct from that of grace as we know it, and even from that of glory as in the millennial day; it is clothed with a judicial character akin to that which Ezekiel beheld when Israel was judged and carried into captivity, but with special features as must be in view of Christendom's ruin and God's judgment of the earth generally, and in particular of what had been faithless after such unexampled favors. And the absolutely new object seen on high is neither God's throne with the cherubim or seraphim nor yet the Son of man long before ascended, but the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders. It is strange that men should have all but universally overlooked so patent and grave a fact corroborated by circumstances already pointed out, which furnish a very defined starting-point from which the succeeding visions begin. To neglect this is to act the part of a voyager who should take his departure not from the main shore but from a floating bank of mist into uninterrupted fog.

For what worthy point of departure follows the seven churches of John's day? It is wholly incorrect, as is thought, that till the return of our Lord (that is, to reign) all is one continuous dispensation — one ceaseless progression of Divine providence. The translation of the saints to meet the Lord and be presented to the Father in His house before they appear with Him in glory for the government of the world is assuredly a fact and change of amazing interest. It had been not only disclosed by our Lord, but fully opened out by the apostle of the Gentiles in his earliest Epistles; and it is now put into its relative place by John in the grand systematic prophecy which winds up the New Testament.

The peculiar mode in which the Spirit here records it is worthy of all note as flowing from His own consummate wisdom; for there is no vision of the actual rapture of the saints to heaven when the Bridegroom meets them, as if it were one of many prophetic events like those under the seals, trumpets, or vials. It is the accomplishment of the Christian's hopes, and in no way confounded with the subject-matter of prophecy, such as the appearing or return is, when every eye shall see the Lord and them in glory. It is a preliminary vision of the saints already in heaven after the church-state on earth is ended, and before the special judgments and transitional testimonies begin which terminate in the Lord's coming out of heaven followed by the saints (Rev. 17: 14; 19: 14) already there since the end of Rev. 3 as proved by Rev. 4. His "coming" or presence (παρουσία) thus embraces and overlaps the day of the Lord, as it leaves room for the gathering of the saints risen or changed to Him with an interval in heaven, which the Apocalypse shows to be filled up by solemn dealings of God on earth mainly judicial but not without special mercy to saints on earth, both Jewish and Gentile, some of whom suffer to death as others are preserved for the kingdom when Christ and the glorified ones appear in His "day" to execute judgment and reign over the earth for a thousand years.

If "the second advent" be restricted, as it commonly is by almost all schools, to the day of the Lord, it leaves the fact of our seeing the heavenly redeemed under the complete symbol of the twenty-four royal priests from Rev. 4 entirely unaccounted for. Distinguish His coming for His saints and His coming with them, and all is so far plain; though it is easy to see difficulties and conjure up objections to the surest truth of revelation, or even of our being, and of the world around us. But the word of the Lord abides for ever. One may add too that the prophecy nowhere describes near its close (that is, in Rev 19 or 20) the removal of the saints to heaven: they follow Christ to the judgment of earth {Rev. 17: 14; Rev. 19: 14}; but how they got there so as to be in His suite in His day is not described.

It is evident then that the translation to heaven of the co-heirs, witnessed as a fact from the beginning of Rev. 4 is a fixed and clear point of departure, which the ordinary schemes of Apocalyptic students, Protestant or futurist alike, have failed to observe. It becomes then not only possible but easy to test the alleged fulfilment of the book. Before the seals or trumpets which prepare for the investiture of Christ with the inheritance, there must be in heaven an adequate answer to the plain facts, that churches are thence-forward seen no more on earth, and that a new company appear in heaven, never before seen there, under the symbol of the twenty-four elders. If men explain away or pass over so important an introduction as Rev. 4, 5 to the strictly prophetic portion of the book, they naturally confound our gathering to the Lord on high with the day of the Lord on the earth, and a moral or partial application of its contents with its proper meaning, to the utter lowering of the church's calling, place, and walk, as well as hope.

XVI.

The oath of the mighty angel is imagined to furnish another not less decisive mark of the historical acceptation of the prophecy: "in the days of the voice of the seventh angel the mystery of God shall be finished" {Rev. 10: 7}. What it really says is that there should be no more delay, but under the last trumpet, which ushers in the end of man's day, God would bear with evil no longer in the grace which works meanwhile for higher purposes. He would bring in the manifested kingdom of the Lord forthwith. Israel's rejection and the times of the Gentiles may fall within "the mystery of God," as well as the calling of the church; but not a word implies that the church was still on earth during the trumpets. Doubtless the trumpets are accomplished before Israel's restoration, but not before Jews return to their land in unbelief, set up their king, and other awful scenes of the latter-day wickedness ensue. Nor is there anything to intimate that the seals and trumpets measure the mystery of God, but simply that it closes with the seventh trumpet, as one sees in the latter part of Rev. 11. The world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is come. It is no question of secret providence then, as it was during, and had been before, the Apocalyptic period.

XVII. Concurrence for sixteen centuries, even if universal, is but human opinion; and what is this worth in divine things? It is but the recent tradition of the multitude; and in these ages of declension, what can the maximum of such agreement yield but the minimum of truth? It is the refuge of unbelief at all times, and can never be right since Christendom went wrong. One need not wonder at lack of intelligence during many a century when even saints had lost the sense of eternal life, of accomplished redemption, of standing in Christ, and the varied energy of the Holy Ghost, not to speak of the church as the body of Christ and the house of God. The notion of a continued advance, slow at first but afterwards steady and discernible, is a dream, more worthy of a mere humanitarian progressionist than of one who looks for Christ to receive the saints and judge the world and above all favoured but guilty Christendom. A symbolical history of the church on earth might be founded with some show of truth on Rev. 2, 3, not on what follows, which is expressly not "the things that are" or church-state, but what must be after these things, when the overcomers are all and "ever with the Lord."

If people only saw the special calling and heavenly character of the church, the Apocalypse from Rev. 6 (and indeed Rev. 4, 5) to chapter 19 never could have been supposed to predict its course or circumstances on earth. Men have not distinguished the various dealings of God; and hence, as some scrupled not to apply Israel and Judah, Zion and Jerusalem, in the Old Testament prophets, to Christianity or the church, so still more fell into the kindred error of tracing it here below throughout the prophetic visions of John. But it is hard to conceive a fuller combination of evidence than that which the book itself has just afforded us against the common hypothesis, and in confirmation of our being on high while the providential judgments of the seals, trumpets, and vials intervene, till we follow the Lord from heaven to reign with Him over the earth.

{Concerning the book of Revelation: }

þ Its preface and its conclusion;

þ the analogy of former prophecy and, most of all, of that book which it resembles so closely;

þ the season and the place and the writer;

þ the churches to whose angels messages were sent;

þ the repeated declaration of the nearness of the time;

þ the whole character of its introduction repeated often and in the most various forms;

þ the plain contrast between the churches as the things that are" with those "which must be after these things";

þ and the intermediate vision of the elders in Rev. 4, 5 respecting the heavenly redeemed in their complete and glorified state around the throne above, seem to leave little question as to its scope to the believer, unless he sacrifice the authority of scripture to the general consent of Christendom during the very centuries when it had lost even a clear and full gospel for the world and forgotten its own privileges as well as responsibility to the grief of the Holy Spirit. In truth no one is fit to form a sound and spiritually intelligent judgment of the bearing of the Apocalypse who is not clear as to salvation and the church, as well as prophecy; and where were such to be found since the second-century remains disclosed the early and utter ruin of the christian profession? Neither antiquity nor consent, if universal, can sanctify error, though they may expose to the charge of rashness or even innovation such as go back to the once-revealed truth. But wisdom is justified of her children. Far from being self-evident, the mind of God in His word cannot be severed from our practical state in fellowship with Him. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light," is a principle as true in scripture study as in walk; nor could one wish it otherwise: it would be a premium to unspirituality.

Chapter 12

On the Year-Day Theory

It has now been shown that, though there may be special characteristics in the symbolical visions of Daniel and the Revelation, there is no ground for the notion that they relate to gospel times, still less that they present the church's predicted history on earth from the close of the Jewish dispensation to the second coming of our Lord. There is a transition of the greatest importance on which the details of these visions converge — an interval which has for its main object to disclose the consequences, on the one hand of Israel's evil and ruin, and on the other of Christendom's. God has taken care that the church should not be without divine light on its path, but He has done so with perfect wisdom so as not to interfere with its own proper and peculiar privileges; whereas the interpreters of almost every school have sacrificed them to their theories, overlooking the true scope of the book.

It is quite true then that the difficulty is due, not so much to the various and complex nature of the symbols themselves, as to the spiritual condition of the readers and the moral character of scripture itself, judging as it does the degeneracy and corruption of Christendom. It carries the war at once into the strongest fortresses of ecclesiastical pride and christian worldliness. The scriptures, predictive or not, which reveal Christ rejected on earth and glorified in heaven, are as obnoxious to professing Gentiles as those of His humiliation and cross were to the unbelieving Jews. In either case faith in God is called for; in the gospel especially unsparing judgment of self and separateness from the world. This is so distasteful to flesh that one need not wonder if souls shrink back from the truth which exposes their unfaithfulness, and either neglect the Apocalypse or take up schemes which allow more room, for human energy and distinction on the one hand, or for earthly ease on the other. If Christ's glory were the one object, there, would be more simple subjection to the truth; and it would soon be seen that, as Daniel unfolds the times of the Gentiles on the proved downfall of the Jews, so John gives us the judgment first of Christendom, next of the world, though not without dealings of rich mercy toward the faithful at all times, to His glory who was cast out from the earth, and is now in heaven.

I.

Let us proceed however to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the hypothesis called popularly the year-day theory, as one not only long held by Protestants but claiming of late to have its basis made sure and simple by scripture proof. It is supposed to rest on these maxims:

1. That the church was intended to be kept in the lively expectation that Christ who had ascended would speedily come again.

2. That in the divine counsels a long period of near 2000 years was to intervene between the first and second advents and to be marked by a dispensation of grace to the Gentiles.

3. That, in order to strengthen the faith and hope of the church under the long delay, a large part of the whole interval was prophetically announced, but in such a manner that its true length might not be understood till its own close seemed to be drawing near.

4. That in the symbolical prophecies of Daniel and St. John other times were revealed along with this, and included under one common maxim of interpretation.

5. That the periods thus figuratively revealed are exclusively those in Daniel and St. John, which relate to the general history of the church between the time the prophet and the second advent.

6. That in these predictions each day represents a natural year, as in the vision of Ezekiel; that a month denotes 30 {years}, and a time 360 years. Such is the general nature of the theory and of its foundations. Its statement is supposed to remove at once the main difficulties that have been felt; as for example concealing the length of the delay when the knowledge might have been injurious, and revealing it when once it became a help to the church that it should be known.

The answer however is that, as Daniel contemplates manifestly only the Gentile powers of the world and Jewish saints, with the mass of the people apostate, so the Revelation does provide for the church's direct instruction as such in the seven epistles of Rev. 2, 3 — epistles which applied at once to the seven literally addressed assemblies of St. John's day in proconsular Asia, but surely also meant in a mystery to embrace the successive need of saints on earth as long as the Lord has any here below possessed of similar privileges and with like responsibilities. It is only when these seven states could be looked back on as fairly developed that God permitted the evidence to be at all distinct and complete; that is, when the light derived from the messages would strengthen rather than weaken our waiting for Christ day by day. In this point of view we see that the direct bearing of the prophetic visions is on the same elements as in Daniel, Israel and the nations, with the aggravated guilt of having despised the grace proclaimed in the gospel as well as exemplified in Christ and even in the church while here below. The times and the seasons are, or ought to be, well known to us, but about the earth and the earthly people. Those who belong to heaven are not so regulated. The prophetic dates therefore are about suffering Jewish [sic] or their Gentile oppressors. Those who apply them to the church ignore its heavenly title, and the fact that, when they apply, the heavenly redeemed are demonstratively on high, not here below. We may dismiss the clashing of swords between Mr. Mede or Dr. Maitland, their defenders or their assailants. Protestant or Romaniser, neither of them really understood the nature of the church as distinct from the Jew and the Gentile, and consequently they are almost equally dark as to the prophetic word.

II.

On the nature of the evidence to be expected we need not dwell. It is freely granted that there may be a literality in interpreting no less spurious than the so-called spiritualizing. We have to weigh on the one hand whether the form be simple or symbolic; but we have to discern on the other whether a particular part belong to the vision or its divinely given interpretation, bearing in mind the fundamental fallacy of expecting no more from the words of God than from the writings of any man as such. Whatever is conveyed in a specially mysterious form should be weighed proportionately. The least change in scripture intimates an adequate design on God's part.

III.

The general character of the passages themselves has next to be considered. Do they occur in the explanation or in the vision to be explained? Are they worded in the most simple, equal, and natural terms; or do they bear plain marks of a singular, uncommon, and peculiar phraseology, perhaps even prefaced by words importing concealment?

The following are all the passages in Daniel and St. John to which the year-day principle has usually been applied:

þ Daniel 7: 24-26

þ Daniel 8: 13, 14, 26

þ Daniel 9: 24-27

þ Daniel 12: 5-9

þ Daniel 12: 10-13

þ Rev. 2: 10

þ Rev. 9: 5, 10

þ Rev. 9: 15

þ Rev. 11: 2, 3

þ Rev. 11: 9-11

þ Rev. 12: 6

þ Rev. 12: 14

þ Rev. 13: 6

That a mysterious character attaches to all or almost all these expressions of time naturally insinuates something more than the barely literal dates. The general application then of the longer computation may be allowed; but one must not thereby set aside the brief and definite periods of the closing crisis.

IV.

The general symmetry of the sacred prophecies is supposed to yield a presumption as strong against the shorter acceptation of these numbers as in favor of the longer view. It is urged that, when a declaration of future events is attended also with one of definite seasons, one expects some degree of correspondence between the two parts of the revelation; and that scripture precedent confirms this; as in the one hundred and twenty years' delay of the flood, the four hundred years and four generations of sojourn in Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the sixty-five years before Ephraim's captivity, the seventy years' captivity of Judah, the forty years of Egypt's desolation, the seventy weeks before Messiah's kingdom with its minor terms, the three days of our Lord's burial, and the seven years to follow on Israel's restoration (Ezek. 39). In these an evident proportion is held to exist between the time predicted and the event announced; whereas it is argued that in the twelve or more specified seasons which extend from Cyrus to the second advent, on the shorter reckoning all proportion is lost between the range of the events and the periods entering into the predictions: especially as features even on the surface suggest more than the letter. The answer is that, besides the principle of the break or interruption already seen to obtain in Daniel regularly, which leaves us free to take the times in their strictest force at the end of the age, there is no need to deny the Christian's title to gather help all through from the great prophecies of Daniel and John which contain them.

V.

The presumption drawn from the symbolical nature of the books is of a similar kind. Since the prophetic dates are found exclusively in those two books which possess, also exclusively, a symbolical and mysterious character, it is a sufficiently natural inference that those dates have themselves a covert meaning. This may be allowed if one do not get rid of the short reckoning which finds its limits within the last or seventieth week of Daniel. The reserve of that period (seven years) is surely significant.

VI.

Again the dispensation as being one of mystery is pleaded. But the comparison of Dan. 12 with 1 Peter 1: 10-12 conveys no thought of the peculiar reference of the times to us. "Prophets that prophesied of the grace toward us sought out and searched out concerning salvation, searching what or what manner of season the Spirit of Christ which was in them was declaring, while testifying beforehand the sufferings as to Christ and the glories after these; to whom it was revealed that not to themselves but to you they were ministering the things which now have been announced to you by those who preached the gospel to you in the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven." Here is no distinct assertion whatever that the times fall within our lines. As often noticed, there are three things: the predictions of old; the gospel now preached in the power of the Spirit; and the future manifestation of the Lord Jesus, when the promises shall be accomplished. It was revealed to them, not that the prophetic dates belong to our day, but that to us, Christians, they were ministering the things now announced by the gospel, not yet the glory in which Christ and we shall be manifested together.

To confound the mystery of God in Rev. 10 with Eph. 3 or even Rom. 11 is to display singular lack of discrimination; and this confusion is the reason for the hasty conclusion that the six trumpets and all the numbers connected with them must be contained within the limits of this dispensation.

VII.

Their mysterious introduction is the last of the presumptions that the various forms of date in Daniel and the Revelation are not designed for the shorter periods, but in some analogical meaning which may restore their harmony with the wider range of the prophecies they belong to. But we have already conceded that a larger reference may be admitted if the distinct application to the future crisis be kept intact.

Chapter 13

The Year-Day Theory Continued

The general indications of a figurative meaning having been briefly discussed, let us now as briefly notice the special evidence for the year-day system.

I.

The prophecy of "the Seventy Weeks" has always held the foremost place in the direct arguments for that view. It is clear that the Weeks in this case are not of days but of years; and it is hence inferred that, since all such predictions of time bear one common character, occur in the same prophets, and have the same general object, they ought to be explained by one common rule. But theoretic consistency has its snares as much as the inordinate love of variety; and it is dangerous in the revelations of God to reason from a special prophecy to others before and after wholly distinct from it. Were the supposed key given in the first of Daniel's prophecies where dates occur, there might seem reason for it: or if it were given at the close, where dates abound, as an appendix of instruction. Whereas it is plain, on the face of the visions, that Dan. 9 has a remarkable isolation in its nature, and might therefore have a special form in this respect, as it certainly has in others. Were the time, times, and half a time, expressed in that way, the argument would be more plausible. It is rash to draw an analogy of sameness, from a single instance differently situated and characterized, to all that precede or follow. There are grounds in the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks which forbid the shorter reckoning; but this is not at all the case in any of the others. Hence the resemblance fails, and the reasons which determine in the case of Dan. 9 do not appear elsewhere.

II.

The sentence of Israel in the wilderness is habitually cited as another testimony (Num. 13: 25; 14: 33, 34). It is plain that a retributive dealing with Israel in the desert is a slender ground for interpreting symbolic prophecies given many centuries after.

III.

The typical siege of Ezekiel is another witness called to sustain the system (Ezek. 4: 4-9). Here again we have to note that an argument is based on this, not for the dates in Ezekiel's prophecy, where it is recorded, but for Daniel and John, where it is not. From such special instances, so carefully explained, it would seem safe to conclude that a day not so applied was to be taken literally, especially if given in the explanation and not in the symbolic form only. IV.

Another argument has been drawn from the words of our Lord given in Luke 13: 31-38. But it must be owned that the colour for giving this the definite meaning of three years is slight indeed.

Let us turn to the prophetic dates themselves which are in question.

V.

The "time, times, and dividing of time" (Dan. 7: 25), may be first considered, as it is thought to contain many distinct proofs to confirm the year-day theory, and to refute the shorter reckoning. The peculiarity of form is due to the prophetic style, which loves to arrest the attention of the reader, and to suggest matter for reflection, instead of limiting itself the phrases customary in common life. The comparison of the different phrases for the same period in Revelation makes it perfectly certain that three years and a half were meant, even if there could have been a doubt before, which there was not: Jews and Christians alike accepted the phrase as comprehending that space. It has been already intimated however, that there is no objection to allow of a protracted application in a general way, provided that the crisis be not set aside, as is done almost always by the historical school. And it may be that such a twofold reference accounts for the enigmatical appearance of this date.

VI.

The dream of Nebuchadnezzar stands on exactly similar grounds. The seven times were assuredly accomplished in the seven years' humiliation of the great Babylonian chief. It is possible that there may be a prolonged application figuratively to the times of the Gentiles from the beginning to the end of the four great empires.

VII.

Without doubt the phraseology is unusual; but Mr. Mede, the greatest advocate of the year-day system, here allows that the vision applies to Antiochus Ep., and consequently views the date as a brief period only. It seems scarcely worth while to dwell on such assumptions as that the vision is of the restored sacrifice! before a fresh desolation!! including several centuries!! not only without scripture but against the text commented on. Such proofs might be multiplied, but where is their worth? I believe myself that the "many days" are not before, but after, the numeral period, and that here, as elsewhere, the vision concentrates on the close, though not without the accomplishment of grave facts comparatively close at hand.

VIII.

The oath of the angel in the last vision, and all the attendant circumstances, are supposed to be in favour of the mystic view of the historical school, and against the brief crisis at the end of the age.

But why the solemnity of the oath should require the lengthy application to the past, and not the awful lawlessness of the future, seems hard to understand. That the deepest interest should converge on the out-burst of evil which brings the Lord judicially and in glory into the scene is most intelligible, and the desire be expressed to know how long such horrors are to last before the end come. To the prophet, intensely feeling for the Jews in their sorrow, and wholly ignorant of the present calling from among the Gentiles (not to speak of the one body wherein is neither Jew nor Greek but Christ is all), can anything be conceived more suitable? We may rest assured that 1 Peter 1: 12 does not refer to this passage, for the apostle speaks about inquiry among the prophets, not, as here, the celestial beings whom Daniel saw and heard. Nothing can be clearer or more certain than the convergence of the thought here on the end. It is of this only that Daniel inquires, and learns that the words are sealed till then. The point is not the immediate history.

IX.

The supplementary dates have been pressed into the same service, and with as little result in favour of application to the past. For, however sorrowful it is to see men so occupied with the world's doings and sayings as to overlook the abyss that is opening, not only for the Jews but for Christendom, the Lord Himself directed attention to this part of Daniel in such a way as to make argument of small moment to the believer. Compare Matt. 24: 15, etc., with Dan. 12: 11. Whatever Antiochus Ep. may have done similarly (Dan. 11: 31), it is certain that there is to be a future abomination of desolation set up in Jerusalem's sanctuary, that a brief but unexampled tribulation will ensue, and that the Son of man will immediately after appear to the deliverance of His elect. The Lord does thus supply the amplest proof that the theory which shuts out the crisis is false, and that the end of the age is precisely the era when these things are to be fulfilled.

X.

Of the cyclical character of the prophetic times I would rather avoid speaking. The truth needs no support from science. To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Even the sturdiest advocates of the protracted and intervening application have to own here the literality of the specified times, where explanation too had been sought. The mention of so many days does not convey any necessary thought of a prolonged period, but of God's gracious counting up the daily sorrow that must befall those who bore His name, and of the dishonour put on His own sanctuary and sacrifice, after they had too hastily assumed that He could own them as they will be then. The wicked will not care for this, but hail the abominations then to follow; the wise will understand and confide in the word of God which deigns to reckon up the time before deliverance comes day by day. An immense series of years would be cold comfort at such a time.

No doubt the two periods of thirty days, and of forty-five {Dan. 12} added to the thirty, are a supplement to the times already mentioned, but they are really connected directly with the date in Dan. 7, without any reference to Dan. 9 (though less obviously, I presume there is a bond between all, namely, the last half week of the seventieth, which is identical with the time, times, and an half, overlapped doubly by the supplemented twelve hundred and ninety and three hundred and thirty-five days, as we have seen). But there is no hint of a long period when these dates proceed, whatever the interval before they begin. Indeed our Lord appears to intimate the express contrary, when He says, "Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved, but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened; "and it is in reference to the same period that, in the Revelation, the devil is represented as come down in great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time. Does this look like more than a thousand years? Finally, the assurance that the prophet should stand in his lot in the end of those days does not imply that those days are themselves of a longer continuance than might appear from the letter of the prophecy. The long delay was before the days commence, not in their long continuance. The prophet knew well that he lived (then a very old man) at the beginning of the second of those four empires, though he might have no knowledge of the strange vicissitudes of the fourth, and of the mysteries which the New Testament would reveal in due season during its continuance and disappearance, before its revival, and the portentous crisis, terminating in its judgment, when these days have run their course, after which the prophet should stand in his lot.

Thus, even in the symbolic prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation, the point is not at all the course of secret providence in history of which men love to weave systems, but the announcement of divine judgment, when the overt unrestrained blasphemy of the powers makes it morally imperative on God's part. This is the reason why scripture passes so curtly over the long periods of which the natural mind is so boastful, in order to fix attention on the closing scene when the responsible holders of authority come into collision with the God who originally delegated the authority. No one doubts the importance of what God works secretly; yet it is not of this that prophecy treats, but of His public inflictions when man's evil becomes intolerable by openly denying God and setting up himself instead. And as secret providence is thus excluded from prophecy, still more is the church, whereby God now displays His manifold wisdom to the principalities and powers in heavenly places (Eph. 3: 10). Even when He does deign to furnish light as to His working in the church during a day of decay, till the spewing out of its last form, He chooses seven existing assemblies, "the things that are," as the means of it, so as not to falsify His own principles in the Christian's constant waiting for Christ, and in our having a heavenly position in Him, instead of being an object of prophecy on earth. When the properly prophetic part of the Revelation commences, "the things which must be after these," those who had enjoyed the church's relationship with Christ are seen already glorified on high, and we return to Jews or Gentiles, unjust or righteous, filthy or holy, on earth. The bride is above during the visions of judgment, or at least their execution.

It is no question then of speculating about God's ways, but of submission in thankfulness, to His word who tells us the end from the beginning, and dwells not on the mere intervening stages which are noticed — if at all — in the most passing way, but concentrates our gaze on the closing conflict between good and evil, when Satan fights out his last campaign against the Lord and His Anointed, and we can the better discern by such an issue the frightful character of wiles which looked specious at an earlier day. The real difficulty to a spiritual mind would be to conceive the Spirit of God occupying, not merely the Christian now but even the godly Jew of old or by-and-by with Gentile politics and the details of their godless history. It is quite simple to under-stand that all the blessing is not introduced, when judgment intervenes first to destroy the beast and the false prophet, other enemies needing to be put down, other measures necessary to clear away evil and its effects, and that two or three months more beyond the three and a half years are added in this way. But that so seventy-five, or even thirty, years should follow the destruction of the beast and the anti-christ, before the full blessing of the millennium comes in, is a most unnatural supposition; yet it seems inseparable from, and therefore destructive of, the system which interprets these days as so many years.

Chapter 14

The Apocalyptic Numbers

Having briefly examined the reasoning of the historical school as to the numbers in Daniel, we may now consider those contained in the Book of Revelation. The same principle really applies to both; but it may be more satisfactory if we notice what is attempted to be drawn from them in detail.

I.

The ten days' tribulation in the message to the Smyrnean angel comes first in order. Here it is felt that caution is needed; for men like the late Mr. E. B. Elliott* would carefully eschew such evidence. It is well known that they deny the seven Apocalyptic assemblies to be types of the main varying phases of the church on earth [Rev. 2 and 3] till the Lord takes His own on high. Here therefore is a rent among both futurists and historicalists, some on the two sides owning, many rejecting, the larger view of these churches. Yet there are those even of the latter school who, in accordance with the acknowledgment of their application to distinct stages in the church's history, interpret these ten days {Rev. 2: 10} of the ten years' persecution under Diocletian, the most remarkable in the early times of the church. So, after speaking of the Seventy Weeks, the late Mr. G. S. Faber says: "We find likewise that the Apocalyptic ten days' persecution of the church of Smyrna has been similarly proved by the event to mean, not a persecution of ten literal days, but a persecution of ten mystical days; that is to say, the persecution of ten years which is recorded by Eusebius, and Lactantius, and Orosius." (Sacred Calendar, 1. 45, 46). Homogeneity is supposed to require a similar construction of the various other numbers of these two prophets. It is notorious however that many, even in early times, interpreted the ten days of the ten persecutions down to Diocletian, as others recently in more general terms. The real thought appears to give the persecuted the comfort of knowing that it was limited, a meaning familiar to the reader of scripture from Genesis to Daniel. But on the prolonged scheme one need not set aside the general facts more than this.

* The protracted view of the seven churches neutralises Mr. E.'s primary objection to futurism — the supposed instant plunge of the Apocalyptic prophecy into the distant future of the consummation. . . .

II.

The time of the locust-woe has next to be examined. Here the most natural allusion appears to be the ordinary period during which locusts live to ravage: so should the scourge symbolized by them last, and no such space as to wear men out. It is but a preliminary infliction, tormenting but not prolonged excessively. Greater judgments must follow: this is the first woe.

III.

The time of the second woe, or Euphratean horsemen, is thought to afford another proof, though involved in greater difficulties from the various readings or versions.

The true text is that attested by the Alexandrian and Porphyrian uncials, supported by many cursives, versions, and patristic quotations: καὶ ἡμεραν, and the cursive Cod. Reuchl. omit these words, as does the Complut. Pol., most probably by oversight. The Basilian uncial however, and more than twenty cursives, before ἡμεραν intercalate εἰς τήν, and six cursives (28, 38, 49, 79, 91, 96) τήν only.

Hence Mr. Faber says in a note to page 420 of his Sacred Calendar, ii., The many erroneous versions of this passage have arisen entirely from improper. punctuation. I read the original Greek, pointed as follows: Καὶ ἐλύθησαν οἱ τέσσαρες ἄγγελοι, οἱ ἡτοιμασμένοι εἰς τὴν ὥραν, καὶ ἠμέραν καὶ μῆνα καὶ ἐνιαυτὸν, ἵνα κ. τ. λ. The accusatives, ἡμέραν and μῆνα  and ἐνιαυτὸν, I consider as denoting continuance of time, and as depending, not upon the preposition εἰς, but upon  the verb ἐλύθησαν . Hence he would render, "And the four angels, who had been prepared unto the appointed season [which would require, rather καιρόν than ὥραν] were loosed during both a day, and a month, and a year, in order," etc. Another author of the same school prefers: Matthaei's text, framed on the comparatively later, or Constantinopolitan, authorities, and would translate, "the angels prepared for that hour, and (for) that day, were loosed both a month and a year," evidently to fit in to the supposed period, so as to agree with the three hundred and ninety days of Ezekiel. However it is the less needful to refute this fanciful analogy, as the author himself appears to have abandoned it, and in a more recent work returned to the ordinary text and the common rendering. But it will be observed that all this shows the extreme precariousness of the historical application, and of the effort to extract a chronological period for the Turkman woe, as we may see in the former case, where the school divides into the classes which see either one period of a hundred and fifty years, or two such periods in the same Saracenic woe.

The truth appears to be that in the vision the angels were loosed that were prepared against the hour, day, month, year fixed of God — that is, it is an epoch rather than a period; and this is secured by a single article {the word "the"}, which brackets all together. As another remarks, had the article been repeated before each, the ideas of the appointed hour, day, month, and year would have been separated, not, as now, united; had there been no article, we might have understood that the four were to be added together to make up the time, though even thus the εἰς occurring once only would have made some difficulty; for the natural way of expressing such a meaning would be εἰς ὥραν, καὶ εἰς ἡμέραν, καὶ εἰς μῆνα, καὶ εἰς ἐνιαυτόν. If this be so, we must conclude that this phrase in the second woe has no more bearing on the year-day question than the five months in the first. It may be added that, if an aggregated period had been meant, the natural order would have been the inverse of the actual one, for a year, and for a month, and for a day, and for an hour.

IV.

The treading down of the holy city, and the related numbers, we have next to consider.

But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth" (Rev. 11: 2, 3).

1. It is true that two distinct phrases are used to denote the time, and that neither is the usual phrase in common life. But that this points to the mystical interpretation desired, or accords with it only, is more than should be affirmed. One can understand the time presented in a different light from spiritual motives, and wholly apart from any question of disguising continuance of time. Indeed, if the object were simply the acting on the year-day principle, it would seem more natural to adhere solely to so many days, which is exactly what the Holy Spirit avoids. The variety of forms is therefore adverse to what is sought as evidence. Whether one apprehends justly or not the aim that underlies each variety may be questioned; but it is not a sound judgment that any, or all, of them can be counted inconsistent with the space of three and a half years. The usage depends on other and higher considerations than concealing a long space under an apparently brief one, though this be not absolutely denied. But who does not feel the propriety of telling us how His witnesses prophesied in sackcloth "a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days?" and so of feeding the mother of the male of might in a place prepared of God in the wilderness {Rev. 12}, though it be the same space which is styled "a time, times, and half a time" when she is said to flee there, and be fed, away from the face of the serpent? Within these extremes we have the forty two months, during which it is given to the Gentiles to tread down the holy city, and to the beast to practice or pursue its career.

2. Again, what is there, in the comparison of Rev. 11: 2 with Luke 21: 24, to prove, or even insinuate, that, because the treading down of Jerusalem stretches over the times of the Gentiles, therefore the treading down of the holy city in the Apocalypse must be equally spun out? It would seem more pertinent, on the contrary, to infer, from the limited terms of the Revelation, that the latter must be a brief space as compared with the former. The historical treading is as long as the times of the Gentiles, the symbolic and future is restricted to forty-two months.

3. Is it not weak to argue from the allusion to Elias, in the account of the witnesses {Rev. 11}, that the period is presumably twelve hundred and sixty years? Undoubtedly the time of famine in that prophet's day is twice mentioned in the New Testament as lasting "three years and six months"; but the same term need not be used in a prophetic book if the time here were identical: other reasons, as we have seen, might operate to modify the expression. And, granting the typical character of his history, it is straining matters to infer that the time of the witnesses must be an immensely larger, as well as analogous, period.

4. In the gospel of Matthew three days and three nights are predicated of the Lord's burial. This style of speech was according to Jewish reckoning, which counted even a small fraction of a day before sunset, or another after it, as a night and day respectively. The principle involved was that of a full witness to His death. In the Revelation it was no longer a question of this, but of such a computation as suits and is intelligible to men at large.

V.

The wilderness abode is of the mother, not of the bride; of Israel, not of the church (Rev. 10: 12).

1. The symbolical teaching therefore points away from the church to the ancient people of God, when they once more enter the field of divine dealing in the latter day; and thus the presumption is rather against, than for, the year-day.

2. The woman is no doubt a miniature, but of Israel at the end of this age; and thus the plainest consistency with facts demands that the time should be taken in its literal import. See Dan. 7, 12.

3. The distinctness of the phrases denoting the same time in no way betokens a prolonged mystical period, their unusual form being due to reasons of a spiritual, and not merely a chronological, character.

4. Further, there is a most express intimation in Rev.12: 12, which seems to forbid the lengthening out of the times into a very considerable portion of the world's history. The reason for the great wrath of the dragon is said to be because, when cast down, he knows that he has "but a short time." It would require strong proof to show that this means, not three years and a half, but twelve hundred and sixty. There is nothing in the Old Testament predictions about Israel which could lead us to gather that there will be again a delay of even forty years, as of old, in the wilderness, though we know from Ezek. 20 and Hosea 2 that God will plead with them there once more. There is quite a different object in such scriptures as 1 Cor. 10 and Heb. 4, which refer to the Christians apart from time, and not to Israel in the future crisis (as in Rev. 12), subject to times and seasons. To say that there is a designed coincidence between this chapter and the texts in Numbers, Ezekiel, and Dan. 9, usually cited for the year-day, shows a warm imagination in quest of constructive evidence: what else? It is in vain to eke out an appearance of proof by alleging that, as the unbelief of Israel turned the forty days of search into forty years of wandering, so the similar unbelief and corruption of the church has turned the twelve hundred and sixty days expressed on the surface of the prophecy into those twelve hundred and sixty years of actual delay and desolation which lay couched beneath the expression, and have been slowly fulfilling into the course of divine Providence. This is rhetoric, not even logic, still less scripture. For the woman, mother of the glorified Man in Rev. 12, is beyond doubt not the church but the Jewish people — first, as seen in God's mind and purpose; then in the latter-day trouble through which she must pass, though strong and rapid means of escape from Satan's murderous malice be provided of God. In short, the argumentative or rather fanciful application to the church is the merest and most fatal mistake, not of details merely, but of the entire object of the chapter.

VI.

The close of the mystery of God, and the oath that announces it in Dan. 10: 5-7, are supposed to supply another proof, less evident perhaps at first sight, but which on examination is said to be of the strongest kind, when compared with the parallel text in Dan. 12 {5-8}.

1. It is true that this oath, in the most general view of its meaning, denotes the shortness of the delay, and the impending close of the mystery of God. "There shall be delay no longer." But it is a mistake to think that this implies the six trumpets to have been really a time of long-suffering, still more that the previous delay in the course of those trumpets had been of long continuance, and, most of all, that this of itself can accord only with the larger interpretation of the times. Nothing hinders our believing that the time of longsuffering preceded the Apocalyptic judgments, that these follow in quick succession, but that the last introduces the reign of God when evil is set aside for the world finally.

2. The oath in Rev. 10 unquestionably resembles that in Dan. 12, though each has its points of grave distinction. But the more August and peremptory is that in the Apocalypse, the less does it lend itself to affording evidence of a chronological sort.

3. This conclusion is refuted by the words themselves. It is well known that the Authorized Version of the clause is untenable, suggesting an unfounded contrast of "time" with eternity as if instantly to follow, whereas a whole millennium and more must intervene. Besides, χρόνος is not used in this abstract way, but for a long or short space, a lapse or interval, and hence delay; and this as pointedly is contrasted with καιρός in Daniel, which means not mere duration of time, but a set time and hence "a year." It is in evident allusion to Rev. 6: 11, where it was told the earlier martyr-band that they must rest ἔτι χρόνον [μικρὸν], a while, or space "longer"; whereas the oath now runs that χρόνος οὐκέτι ἔσται, "there should be no longer delay." It is strange that Dean Alford, who agreed in this correction, should nevertheless have given, even in the third edition of his Greek Testament (1866), the same erroneous version as the Authorized; but he sets it right in his small Testament, compared with the Greek (1870), "there shall be delay no longer." It has been objected indeed, that this does not convey the full meaning of the oath, and for two reasons: first, that the narrative in the following chapter implies some measure of delay, even after this announcement; and, secondly, that the analogy with the oath in Daniel is almost entirely destroyed. But the answer is, first, that the terminus a quo of no delay is the days of the voice of the seventh angel when he should sound the trumpet, as he was about to do, whereas the main part of the following chapter precedes the third woe, as any one can see by inspection; and thereon, when the second is past, follows quickly the seventh trumpet, which does introduce the closing scene forthwith; secondly, general scope and minute phraseology stand here in marked contrast, not analogy, with the oath in Daniel, as already noticed. A more correct and consistent version therefore cannot be looked for.

4. With these convictions we cannot but discard the strange rendering of "A TIME no longer," a version which is contrary to all scriptural usage, and satisfies not a single condition of the text.

5. The use of the word in Luke 1: 57; Acts 1: 7; Acts 3: 21; Acts 7: 17; Gal. 4: 4; 1 Thess. 5: 1, is too obviously different to require detailed argument. Nor can any words either sanction or disguise the confusion of it with καιρός, as if they could equally bear the same interpretation. Even the very few who contend for the interchange evidently feel the difficulty, which is in no way removed by their reasoning. For the contrast with the Apocalypse is evident in what follows: compare, Dan. 12: 9 with Rev. 22: 10. And the comparatively narrow compass of the oath in the Old Testament prophet is as noticeable as the breadth and depth of that in the New. The strict correspondence of the two oaths is therefore fallacy, so transparent that perhaps overzeal in controversy can alone account for the assertion. Nor again is it true that χρόνος and καιρός are so nearly allied in their meaning that the difference vanishes in a correct version. It is only to deceive oneself if one reasons from the four places in the New Testament where our translators have loosely given season for χρόνος, as in every one it should be while, or time, or space; equally so to infer from the sixty places where they translate κ. by time, that the distinction between them is evanescent. No scholar who has weighed this usage would deny their distinctive propriety in every instance, as the Christian ought to believe it, because he is certain of God's wisdom in every word He has written. It is only a lax rendering therefore which seems to assimilate the two words.

6. But the absurdity of the effort will be made apparent if one were to give to Rev. 6: 11 the sense sought to be imported into Rev. 10: 6; and the stance ought to be the fairer test, inasmuch as the one may be justly reckoned to refer to the other. What would be thought, then, of imposing on the earlier text the meaning of resting longer for a year, be it of days or years, until both their fellow-bondmen and their brethren, who were about to be killed as they, should be fulfilled? Every intelligent mind would scout such sense of Rev. 6: 11; yet there is as much, or as little, ground for so understanding Rev. 10: 6. Not a single instance of χρόνος occurs in scripture approaching the desired meaning. The demonstration is complete therefore, that χρόνος lends no help to the scheme which denies the future crisis of three and a half years, and makes of it an interval of many centuries.

VII. The duration of the sixth, or rather seventh, head of the beast (Rev. 17: 6-11) has long been thought to furnish another reason for the longer reckoning. But the argument is a mistake. The sixth king, or form of Roman government, was the then existing imperial, as distinguished from the five already fallen; the seventh, when he came, was to remain but a little while, that is, as compared with the previous state. The eighth, who is also of the seven, is characterized, not by remaining a little while, but by going into perdition; let his remaining be ever so short is not the point, but his coming out of the abyss and going into perdition in a way altogether characteristic. What is there, then, in this really to confirm the year-day theory? The seventh head has a brief continuance, as compared with the preceding heads, and certainly the sixth or imperial; or with the eighth, and its awful source and end peculiar to itself! There is not a word implying that the time of the last must be greater than a few natural years.

This may suffice to show how little real ground there is to boast that the evidences for the year-day theory are full, clear, and unambiguous. The presumption is arbitrary that the dates have some secret meaning; and there is no such thing as a plain and certain key of interpretation appointed of God, which explains the transactions of modern history. When we proceed to look more closely into the particular passages where the dates occur, they appear to yield decisive opposition to the system which denies the brief crisis at the end of the age, and sees only the protracted history of Christendom, in their occurrence.

Chapter 15

The Year-Day Theory Concluded

The direct arguments for the denial of the future crisis, in order to make out the protracted historical reckoning of prophetic times as the true meaning of scripture, have now been briefly met; and many of the usual pleas have been shown to be groundless. But there are a few others, differing from those we have just noticed, which call for a short examination, especially as one cannot but reject the pseudo-literal narrowness of the futurists quite as much as the vagueness of their adversaries.

There is no need to dwell minutely on the conflicting theories on either side, which owe their rise to ignorance of scripture and of the power of God. A few remarks may suffice for the review of what remains to be noticed.

I.

The uncertainty about the ten kingdoms does not seem so small a matter as the historicalists like to think, but the allegation against it of their adversaries is not an objection of much weight. It is plain and has been reasoned out, that the prophecy itself points to temporary changes by marriage or alliance in Dan. 2, and by uprooting of no less than three horns before the little horn which came up among the ten in Dan. 7.

There is a far graver obstacle to the providential scheme in the fact that, in the prophecy, the ten horns compose the instruments of the power of the fourth beast in its last phase; whereas in the history, which some regard as its fulfillment, they are the separate kingdoms which the barbarians, enemies and destroyers of the Roman empire, erected on the ruins. This is strengthened by the intimation of Rev. 17: 12 that the ten horns of the close receive authority as kings one hour with the beast — not especially at, or merely so, which would require the dative, but the accusative, for one hour (μίαν ὥραν). They have received no kingdom as yet: when the beast or Roman empire revives, they will. When the beast originally had its way, there was no such division. The Caesars governed an undivided empire. When the Germanic and other kindred hordes broke up the empire, they may have formed some ten kingdoms, less or more, in the West; but the empire was gone, save in name. There was no such thing as the co-existence of an imperial system with its head, and of these ten kings animated with the one policy and purpose of giving their kingdom to the beast. It will be so when "the beast that was and is not" "shall be present," before he goes to destruction, God putting it into the heart of the no longer jealous Western powers to do His mind, and to do one mind, till His words shall be finished.

But this future condition is as far from the present or medieval division into separate kingdoms as the old undivided Roman empire differs from both. Now the Spirit of God in Daniel clearly contemplates as the full meaning of the prophecy the same state of things as John does in the Revelation, where there is an imperial chief directing the united energies of the ten kingdoms of the West, which, in any proper or full sense, is in neither the pagan times nor the papal, but in the future only. The utmost which can be allowed is, that the papacy may have shadowed in part the enormities of the little horn in Daniel, and of the beast in John; but assuredly the complete fulfillment awaits the final crisis, when that empire, which smote the Lord Jesus of old in humiliation, will rise again from the abyss to oppose Him as He comes again in glory {Rev. 13: 3, 4; Rev. 19: 19}, but must go into perdition. This is a far more serious objection to the system which sees only an immense web of providence, in past history, and it is riveted, not removed, by the most exact review of the prophetic word. Nothing that has already been exhausts the vision.

II.

Much has been said of late for and against the true terminus a quo of the twelve hundred and sixty years. But some, who reasoned from its uncertainty to overthrow the historical school, seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the prediction. Thus, if the saints have been for ages given over to the blasphemous little horn of Dan. 7, it was thought incredible that the church should be at a loss when and how the change happened. Many, it was urged, assert that it is; others are as fully convinced that it is not; and nine-tenths stand silent, avowedly unable to give any opinion on the subject. "They may, or may not, be in the hands of the little horn, and he may, or may not, be wearing them out, for anything they know. They hope and believe that they are the saints, but whether the beast is making war with, and has overcome, them, they cannot tell; it is a deep, curious, and litigated question, and one on which, among so many conflicting opinions, they never pretended to form a judgment for themselves." Dr. Maitland's retort has embarrassed not a few. The fact, however, is, that the prophet means that not the saints, but the times and laws, were to be given into the hand of the little horn. God does not let His people out of His own hand. On the other hand, the giving of the times and laws into the hand of the little horn is a very different thing from the pope's perversion of the prophecies, and wresting the promises of the future glory of the kingdom to the present grandeur and dominion of Romanism. And, whatever be the guilt of forbidding marriage to the clergy, or, yet more, of annulling the rebellious sin of idolatry by what we may call christening images, of heterodoxy and lying pretension in the Mass, of refusing the cup to or shutting up the Bible from the laity, and of sanctioning troops of false mediators in the worship of saints and angels and Virgin, it is not true that every feature of the prophecy finds its counterpart in the Roman papacy. It is in vain to say that the little horn claims the office of a seer, who has full insight into divine mysteries; and of a prophet, as infallible interpreter of the divine will. This is a true description of the pope, not of the little horn, which symbolizes a king, or rather emperor, not a bishop — a king, small at first, but not always, before whom three of the ten fell, and who wields the force of all the rest, rising up to the greatest height of his power before he is cast down for ever by divine judgment, and the beast given to the burning flame. "Eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things," in this horn, do not warrant the notion of an episcopal any more than of a prophetic dignitary. The symbol attributes high intelligence to this Roman chief {the coming Roman prince of Dan. 9 and the first beast of Rev. 13}, as well as audacity of speech, which takes the character of blasphemous pride against the Most High. (Cf. Dan. 7: 11, 25.) He assumes the power of changing times and laws {Rev. 13}, like Jeroboam (1 Kings 12). Only this will be done by the emperor of Rome dictating to the Jews in Jerusalem, and changing the divinely-enjoined feasts and institutions given to that people. One may compare with this the last verse of Dan. 9, where he is said to cause sacrifice and oblation to cease "in the midst of the week," which would coalesce with the beginning of "a time, and times, and the dividing of time."

Nor is it faith to plead the superior reasonableness of giving these predictions for many generations, rather than for one only. This is to make the actual circumstance outweigh the communication and enjoyment of God's mind, and is opposed to all that is really spiritual. Our notion of utility is apt to mislead, guided as it ever is by mere reason. The question for a believer is the true meaning of the word, the intention of God Himself, which the Holy Spirit will surely unfold to those whose eye is, by grace, single to the glory of Christ. It does not commend itself to the ear of faith, when the effort is not to vindicate the prophecies from the guesses of men, but to reduce them to the same uncertainty as the twelve hundred and sixty days among historical commentators. Such reasoning ought to warn souls that it is the spirit of man which is at work, and not the Holy Ghost.

III.

Of the repeated failures in the predicted close of the twelve hundred and sixty year-day system others have said enough. They are notorious. Yet they have found an apologist, who argues that these successive interpretations, mistaken as they were, are just what it was reasonable to expect. This might be, if prophecy were no such thing as God's word, or if we had not the Holy Spirit of God to give us the truth of it. In human things man progresses gradually, and the sense of past failure stimulates to future success: is it so in divine things? Is it true that, only by such failure and men's gradual approach to a correct view of the times and seasons, could the two main purposes have been fulfilled — growing knowledge of the prophecy, with a constant and unbroken expectation of the Lord's coming? To the Christian who repudiates the jarring schools of men it does seem no light instance of the irony observable here below, that Protestants should boast of a year-day theory, as applied to the time, times, and a half, which confessedly appeared about the year 1200; that they should avow the uncertainty of the ten kingdoms; and that they should cry up a few apparent successes, spite of a thousand mistakes, in their application.

The effort to retort failure on those who, from apostolic times, have been awaiting the Son of God from heaven, is as unworthy as it is baseless. For, while the apostle Paul, for instance, taught the saints to be, with himself, ever looking for Christ, there was the most complete care never to connect Christ's coming for us with a single date. The times and seasons are, without exception, bound up with the trials and deliverance of the Jews, never with the church.

This, it will be seen and felt, goes to the root of the year-day system, when it takes the place of being the true and full aim of the Spirit in the prophetic visions. Hence, the more closely Daniel is searched, the more it will appear certain that the church is never contemplated as the object directly concerned in the scenes there disclosed to the view of faith. Again, the Apocalypse affords still more positive instruction, because therein we have a protracted scheme of the churches here below as "the things which are"; after which no such state is known any more, but a new company is seen for the first time in heaven, and the old distinction of only Jews and Gentiles follows on earth, with the most marked absence of the churches. Yet, singular to say, total failure in apprehending this, the broadest and weightiest lesson of the Revelation, pervades the opposing parties of futurists and historicalists alike.

Nor is it here only that they are almost equally mistaken, but also in confounding the christian hope with the prophetic word, a distinction which runs through the New Testament, from John's Gospel, and before it, to the Revelation, but formally distinguished in 2 Peter 1, as in fact the apostle Paul does in 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2; for he beseeches the Thessalonians by the coming of our Lord, which is to gather the saints on high, not to be soon troubled, as though the day of the Lord were present — that day of solemn judgment for the earth, and men on it, of which the prophets had very fully spoken. So the apostle of the circumcision reminds his brethren that we have the prophetic word more firm (that is, confirmed) by the scene witnessed on the holy mount of transfiguration, to which they were doing well in paying heed, as to a lamp or candle shining in a dusky place, till day dawn and the day-star rise in their hearts {2 Peter 1: 16-20}. Those who knew Old Testament prophecy were thus encouraged in holding it fast; but it was at best a light for this scene, now wrapped up in gloom, but soon to enjoy the reign of Him whose right it is; and they should desire another light, as much brighter as that of day exceeds a lamp however excellent, and that too shining from, and centering in, Christ above, the day-star, whom we look for from heaven before the terrible day of the Lord come upon the world. The heavenly hope rising in the heart is thus wholly distinct from prophecy which tells us of the judgments which usher in the day of Jehovah on the earth. But of this most sure distinction, momentous as it is, not only for the affections but also for true intelligence, it would be hard to say which of the two contending schools is farthest from the truth. In general they are on the same ground of confusion in this respect, though most evidently wrong are they who are the boldest in saying, My Lord delayeth His coming. May neither of them say it in the heart, whatever be the faultiness of their systems!

Where is the scriptural intimation of gradually increasing light from prophecy to sustain the lively expectation of the Bridegroom's coming for us? The analogy of providence has nothing to do with what is a matter of His word addressed to hearts animated with divine love and hope. To unbelief, no doubt, this may seem general and vague; not so to those who, with bridal affections, have the Spirit prompting the cry, Come {Rev. 21: 17}. If it is a mere question of reasoning from a literal sense of the words, hope must wane away, and each succeeding generation feel less and less warrant for inferring the nearness of the advent. Hence the theory is that prophetic dates must dawn with a gradually increasing light in order to quicken the church's hope, which had otherwise lapsed into more and more indifference; and it is confidently affirmed as a fact, that ever since the reformation those who have most studied the prophetic dates, as an actual chronology of sacred times, have been the main instruments in awakening the church to a lively expectation of the coming of Christ.

Very different is our Lord's own representation. The virgins who at first went out with their lamps to meet the Bridegroom, while He tarried, all slumber and sleep. Surely this condition of slumber, as regards the hope of our Lord's return, characterized Christendom long after the Reformation, and down till our own times. However this may be, at length follows (not prophetic research, but) a cry at midnight, Behold the Bridegroom! go ye out to meet Him. It is this really which accounts for the present activity of wise, and even foolish, virgins. The cry is gone forth, but it is at midnight, not the flattering notion of a time of increased light, gradually bringing in the day.

Certainly the prophetic word, when studied in faith, gives one to judge principles now at work, it may be hiddenly, by God's revelation of their full fruit and of His public dealings at the end. The effect is to separate one to Himself from the scene ripening for judgment. But the coming of the Lord for His own is associated with His love, and the highest enjoyment of His glory with Him in the Father's house, with moral feelings and practical effects of another character, higher and more intimate, far above the prophetic word and its solemn announcements, however right and glorious. To confound the Christian's hope with prophecy, to supplement the state of the apostolic church with the fuller light of the present, to assert that the history of the year-day expositions accords in the closest way with these truths, like successive steps towards the just apprehension of the course of divine Providence, seems as distressing in its ignorance as in its presumption. It was a false alarm as to the day of the Lord, not excitement about His coming, which shook the Thessalonians. There is in scripture no protraction of His coming, always and only a lively anticipation of it contemplated, and this up to the last chapter of the Revelation, though we have there plenty of times and seasons revealed before His day. It is the year-day theory which tries to conciliate errors and simply misses the truth.

The supposed successes of Protestant interpreters call for few remarks here, though open to not a little assuredly. Suffice it then to say, that the chosen anticipations drawn from prophecy, which have proved so singularly correct in their main features, are these:

First, about the year AD 1600 Brightman calculated in his commentary that the overthrow of the Turkish power would occur AD 1696. In the year 1687 Dr. Cressener renewed the prediction, placing the time a year earlier, but restricting it to the close of the year of the "Turkish encroachments," or the last end of their "hostilities." This is caught up as in almost exact accordance with history, because the year 1697 was marked by that most signal victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, which has proved the final limit to their aggressions upon western Europe. Bengel and Fleming are brought in to swell the train.

Here are the words of Brightman (p. 171, ed. Amst. 1611): "The execution of the commandment lighting upon the year 1300, by due consent of all history-writers; when their domesticall dissentions being appeased, and all consenting to the empire of the Ottomans, they might freely bende themselves with all their power to enlarge their borders, and some time at length creape out of their narrow straightes. How long time this power given to the Turks should continue is declared in the next words, prepared at an houre, and a day, and a month, and a yeere, which so exact description perteineth to the comforting of the godly whom the Spirit would have to know, that this most grievous calamity hath her set boundes, even to the last moment, beyond which it shall not be continued. Which indeed seemeth to be the space of three hundred ninety and six yeeres, every several day being taken for a yeere, after that manner which was interpreted the mouthes before. Thus he makes it out: from AD 1300 + 396 AD 1696; or as he says on Rev. 20: 3 (p. 650), if we follow the reckening of the Julian yeeres, the impious kingdom shall not be prolonged beyond seven yeeres; then utterly to be abolished without so much as the footsteps of his name after him. It will be judged hence how far it is candid to say that Brightman's anticipation was verified. Was there indeed such an extirpation of the Turkish name (not to speak of 1696, but) in 1697? Was it singularly correct in its main features?"

The fact is that Brightman taught that the thousand years' reign began in the year A.D. 130, and that the first resurrection belonged to the nations of Europe (p. 656); that three hundred years had then passed since that resurrection (p. 657). "We must also yet tarry some short space before that our brethren the Jews shall come to the faith. But after that they are come, and Christ shall have reigned some ages most gloriously on earth by His servants in advancing His church to most high honour above all empire,* then also all nations shall embrace true godliness," etc. (ib.) Hence Brightman was expecting the papacy and the Turk to be utterly abolished shortly. "Until this victory be gotten, the church yet is in war, liveth in tents, and sigheth with many adversaries. But after this war is finished, she shall keep a most joyful triumph, and shall rejoice with perpetual mirth. . . . The truth shall yet reign among the Gentiles for seven hundred years: how long afterwards among the Jews no declaration doth declare (p. 658). Is this the Protestant way of keeping the expectation of Christ's coming lively? It may be added in illustration of this chosen expositor's skill in prophecy, that he interprets the destruction of Gog and Magog in Rev. 20 of the overthrow spoken of in Dan. 11: 45; Dan. 12: 12; Ezek. 38: 8, when the hour, day, month, and year of the Turks' tyranny shall come out, to wit, at the year a thousand six hundred ninetieth more or less. Finally, Brightman held that the rising of the dead small and great for judgment before the great white throne means: "the full restoring of the Jewish nation" (p. 664).

* One sees by this the worthlessness of Protestant pretensions to spiritual intelligence, or to the least right apprehension of the church's calling here below. Instead of being content to suffer with Christ, waiting to be glorified with Him by-and-by, Brightman covets for Protestantism what the popes won for Romanism. And is it to such blind guides as these in prophecy or the church's hopes that some would lead back our souls under cover of attacking futurism?

But the strangest thing of all is that the very advocate who cites Brightman's deduction from Rev. 9: 15, as a conclusive answer to such as have declaimed on the total failure of these prophetic times, had himself rejected the reading, and of course the translation, of the text on which this anticipation was based. Thus while Brightman adopted the common text in that verse, which is essential to his calculations, his advocate, at the time when he commended this calculation as an instance of a distinct and accurate insight into what was coming on the earth, adopted as preferable Matthaei's reading. This ought to have made no small difference if it was a date. But we have already shown that it is not, Brightman and his advocate being alike wrong.

Further, Dr. Cressener, like Brightman, looked not merely for a grave check or severe defeat of the Turks, but their then total overthrow, or as Cressener says in the preface to his Demonstration (p. xx, London, 1690), "the last end of all Turkish wars." Was this a just estimate of the battle of Zenta?

Secondly, Cressener in 1687 anticipated "that the true religion will revive again in some very considerable kingdom before the general peace with the Turks or eight years at furthest." "The next year seems in all probability to be a year of wonders for the recovery of the church." Will the christian reader believe that all this is thought to have proved singularly correct in the revolution of England, AD 1688, and the peace of Carlowitz, 1698? Again, Cressener conjectured that before 1800 Rome would be destroyed, and soon after its chief supports, ecclesiastical and civil? Is this correct too?

Further, R. Fleming, jun., in 1700 predicted that the French monarchy, after having scorched others, would itself consume before 1794; as Bengel thought that the papacy would close its chief dominance in 1809. But surely, whatever the coincidence in appearance, our minds must feel that the grounds were as weak as the fulfilment was imperfect.

His Apocalyptical Key, or "Extraordinary Discourse on the Rise and Fall of the Papacy" (my copy is the reprint in 1793 of the original published in 1701) pretends to no more than "some conjectural thoughts on this head; for I am far from the presumption of some men to give them any higher character." It may be added that in the same work the author conjectured that a divine judgment to be poured on the dominions belonging to the Roman See would begin probably about 1794, and expire about 1848, which has been regarded as no less strikingly verified than the former thought. But what is the ground of these anticipations? His view of the vials, which, according to him, suppose a struggle and war between the papist and reformed parties, every vial being regarded as the event of some new periodical attack of the former on the latter, but the issue proving at length favourable to the latter against the former.

Hence Fleming considers that the first vial began with the Reformation, and continued about forty years (that is, 1516-1566); that the second ran on thence about fifty years (1566-1617) to the confusion of Spain and partially of France; that the third closed with the peace of Munster in 1648 after Germany was humbled; and that the fourth expired with 1794. "The reason of which conjecture is this; that I find the pope got a new foundation of exaltation when Justinian, upon his conquest of Italy, left it in a great measure to the pope's management, being willing to eclipse his own authority to advance that of this haughty prelate. Now this being in the year 552; this, by the addition of the 1620 [really 1260] years, reaches down to the year 1811, which according to prophetical account is the year 1794." And this involves his idea that the state of Protestantism is what is set out in Rev. 16: 10; namely, "Atheism, Deism, Socinianism, irreligion, profaneness, skepticism, formality, hatred of godliness, and a bitter persecuting spirit continue and increase among us." But is it really the fact that the French monarchy, after scorching others, did itself consume by doing so, till it exhausted itself towards the end of the eighteenth century, as the Spanish towards the end of the sixteenth?

For my own part I cannot but agree with the more weighty commentators of recent times, that, if we are to apply the vials historically, the scheme of Fleming is a mistake, and that the vials, in a partial way at least, begin with the French Revolution instead of the fourth ending there and then. Napoleon answers thus to the scorching agent, and the blaspheming sufferers who repented not are chiefly the papal nations of the European continent. Further, it seems superficial to cry up his applying the fifth vial to the years 1794-1848; for unquestionably it is rather since than before that the pope has been so signally ruined in his temporalities, and this by Italy spite of France, of which the conjecturer had not the most distant notion. He had pitched on 1848, reckoning the 1260 years prophetically from 606 when the pope received the title of Supreme Bishop. Then would follow the sixth vial on Mahometanism or the Turks up to 1900, as the seventh up to 2000 by Christ's appearance (though not personally) bringing in the total judgment of Rome, etc., with the millennium afterwards. The first and inevitable result of his system is to set aside the waiting for Christ and to make death the necessary expectation of the Christian. "Though we are not to live to see the great and final destruction of the papacy, the blessed millennium, or Christ's last coming to judge the world, yet seeing death is the equivalent of all these to us," etc. (p. 82). Is it not strange to hear such a conjecture cited as a witness of the value of the Protestant system by one who avowedly rejects his basis?

Is it right again, to notice the last instance, that one who was perfectly aware of Bengel's chimerical system of Apocalyptic chronology, to which it may be doubted that he converted a single individual of sobriety, should deign to use an example which had no more solid basis than the prognostication of an astrologer?

Pious and learned as the prelate may have been, no one will think that such remarks are too stringent on his prophetic dates, when it is remembered that he started with the assumption that the famous number of the beast 666 in years = his allotted term of forty-two months. Hence a καιρός = 222 and two ninths years, and of course 3.5 καιροί = 777 and seven ninths; the little time of Rev. 12: 12 (ὀλίγος χρόνος) = 888 and eight ninths; what he oddly calls the non-chronus (or as he thinks in better Latin — which may be doubted — the ne chronus) of Rev. 10: 6 = 1111 and one ninth; the μικρὸς χρόνος of Rev. 20: 3 = half a καιρός, strange to say, or 111 and one ninth; the millennium, or χίλια ἔτη (though Brightman indeed makes two, the first of Satan bound, the second of the saints reigning) = 999 and nine ninths (sic); the χρόνος = 1111 and one ninth; the αἰών = 2222 and two ninths, of which he gives 3.5 to the world, 7777 and seven ninths or 490 of his prophetic months. As the result, Bengel in his eagerness for dates finds a chronus in Rev. 6: 11 (that is, 1111 and one ninth years) from AD 98 (a rather early beginning) to 1289 or Innocent III.'s crusade against the Waldenses. The first woe, with its five prophetic months = 79 common years, dated from AD 510 to 589; the second, with its hour, day, month, and year = nearly 207, from AD 634 to 840; the non-chronus from AD 800 to 1836, within which are placed the interval after the second woe (84-947), the 1260 days of the woman after the birth of the man-child (864-1521), the third woe (947-1836), the time, times, and half-time, with the beast and his number (1058-1836), the everlasting gospel 1614, the end of the 42 months 1810, the beast from the pit or abyss 1832, the general dates closing with 1836 when the mystery of God is finished, the beast destroyed, and Satan bound.

Apology is due for presenting such a mass of crude and unfounded or rather ill-founded speculation; yet this is the expositor whose opinion that the chief period of papal dominance would close in 1809 is not only cited for the censure of those who objected to the historical system, but said to have distinct grounds! The charge of delusion and falsehood brought against these estimates of the prophetic dates, unless advanced with important limitations, is said to be itself false and delusive. This is bold; when it is known that he who thus dogmatizes did not differ from but agreed with his adversaries that Bengel's entire system of Apocalyptic dates has not an atom of truth in it. The Christian will judge from such specimens, which are no doubt the best that could be produced to commend the popular scheme of prophetic chronology, that, if there is little to attract or reward in the expositions of futurists, there is nothing to trust for candour or correctness in the defence of historicalism. One may not look for depth or breadth of truth where the heavenly headship of Christ and the distinctive association of the church with Him are ignored if not denied; but it is painfully instructive to see how special pleading destroys common honesty, and not least in the things of God.

Chapter 16

Concluding Observations

We have now briefly examined the leading assumptions of the historical school; we have tested what is peculiar to the system, and have given sufficient evidence to show its lack of spiritual intelligence, even when, as of late, reasserted with considerable confidence to oppose further light which God has caused to shine afresh from His word. The objections urged by the futurist party may not be always well founded; but a really close search into scripture will prove that they both err by their narrowness: futurism by slighting the prophetic light cast on the past; historicalism by still more serious oversight of what is coming; both by overlooking the heavenly glory of Christ and the church's union with Him in it, as distinct from the past as from the future ways of God on the earth. The extreme advocates on both sides lead equally to unbelief through their one-sidedness. We have seen that the crisis at the end of the age, closed by the Lord's appearing in glory, is the grand point in Daniel and the Apocalypse, as well as our Lord's own prophecy; though there is also a passing notice of the older Gentile empires, to which the world-power was successively assigned by God, when the Jews had proved themselves unworthy by idolatry, as at length by the rejection of Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God. Finally, the year-day theory, when applied definitely and in detail now, we have seen to be as superficial as might be expected from its source in the dark ages.

It is in first or fundamental principles that these schools betray their character. Not only are they narrow, and thus short of the full sphere, but they ignore the divine center, and fail to distinguish the heavenly circle from the earthly one, the body and bride of Christ on high, from His people and kingdom under the whole heavens, though embracing all peoples and kindreds and tongues. No prophecy of scripture is of its own interpretation; isolate it, as the historical system in general does, from the future coming and kingdom of our Lord, the gathering point of the prophetic word in Old and New Testament, and the Holy Spirit's object is missed, the key lost. You are no longer in harmony with His line and aim who inspired all. Judged by this divine criterion (furnished by the apostle Peter) historicalism is most faulty, though its rival is blamable enough for denying the use of the lamp throughout the night. The spirit of the world, ever magnifying man and the present course of the age, is the main hindrance; as the Spirit of God, who searches all, even the depths of God, alone gives us to know, by and in and with Christ, what has been freely given us of God, and this spoken in words taught, not by human wisdom, but by the Spirit, spiritual things being communicated in spiritual words.

Now Christ and His glory are ever before the revealing Spirit; and as His kingdom over (not Israel only, but) all the earth is what all the prophets attest, so the apostles point to His heavenly exaltation and His bride's along with Him.

The obstacle to the truth, then, is far wider and deeper than any party question of polemical divinity; though no doubt, as some few of the futurists have been swayed by the (perhaps unconscious) desire of palliating popery, so many of the historicalists no less by their scarce too strong abhorrence of that soul-enslaving and idolatrous system. They seem both to have forgotten the maxim which the apostle John impresses on the little children, or the very babes of God's family: "As ye heard that antichrist cometh, even now are there arisen many antichrists, whence we know that it is the last hour" {1 John 2: 19}. The futurists think only of the coming antichrist, the historical school are absorbed with the many antichrists. The Christian should not forget, on the one hand, that even now there are many antichrists in being (antiquity being the worst possible disproof of opposition to Christ); on the other, that a great personal antagonist of the Lord is surely coming, of which the many that have been and are should be regarded as signs and precursors, rather than as the fulfillment.

It is confessed, even by the apologist of ordinary views, that there was in the mind of many Christians an exceeding jealousy of all discussion on unfulfilled prophecy. It was thought to be speculative and uncertain, adapted to produce and foster a vain curiosity, and to divert the mind from the duty of practical religion. Hence arose a tendency to dwell only on unfulfilled predictions, to consider evidence as the main benefit to be derived from the study, and to proscribe all investigation of the future as unlawful and pernicious. It is owned that these notions were too defective, and too plainly opposed to the statements of scripture, to endure the test of a prolonged inquiry; and that thoughtful minds, however cautious and devout, could not fail to see that other purposes of equal or greater importance were to be answered by these sacred predictions, warning to the careless, instruction to the faithful, instruction in the nature and outline of coming events, spiritual preparedness, etc., being real objects recognized by scripture itself, and only to be answered by unfulfilled prophecy. Thus evidence was seen to be only a secondary use for the conviction of the incredulous, while the purpose was the help of the believer to enjoy the confidence of Him who revealed all in His love.

Hence, as has been supposed, a natural recoil from the prevalent doctrine which had proscribed the study of unfulfilled prophecy as useless and dangerous, to the opposite extreme, which treated fulfilled prediction as powerless for instruction or profit; and hence also a tendency to transfer as many predictions as possible into the class of unaccomplished prophecies, which might thus be still available for the guidance of the church.

Far from any believer be the thought that the prophetic word has not a decided bearing on the divine side, as revealing God's glory and ways, besides its reference to, or use for, the personal wants of man. All scripture has this twofold character, and prophecy among the rest. But it is not in general seen, whether by futurist or historicalist, that the prophetic word treats of judgments and earthly blessing by God's power and goodness, but does not as such unveil the depths of God now revealed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. (See 1 Cor. 2; 1 Peter 1.) It was the prerogative of Christ the Son thus to communicate to His own, in contrast with a prophet or even the greatest born of women, who could not rise above the earth wherein he had his origin, while the Lord Jesus, coming from above, is above all, and testified what He had seen and heard, and the Holy Ghost taught all things about the truth which they could not then bear, besides bringing to remembrance all that Jesus had said. In the communion of this precious and special intimacy stands the Christian and the church; and hence their exceptional place in relation to the prophetic word, as we have seen in the end of 2 Peter 1, where the apostle shows that the believers addressed should heed that word for this dark squalid scene, till daylight dawn and the daystar arise in their heart. Prophecy is an excellent lamp, but there is something yet brighter, the daylight of our heavenly association with Christ Himself on high, source and centre of all, (daystar as He is here called), which is far better.

It is this which exempts the Christian from the system of times and seasons, though he is entitled to know them, but to know them as bearing on the earthly people, not on those whose portion is with Him whose light is brighter than the sun at noon. With this accords the fact, that, when we look into the saints contemplated in the details of Daniel, they are found to be Jews, and so are those in the Saviour's prophecy of the dealings with Jerusalem in the end of the age; only that we hear then of Jews and Gentiles now on earth, but at that crisis not of the church or heavenly saints, who are previously seen in the Apocalyptic visions glorified, and with Christ above, whence they come with Him in the day of His appearing.

No thoughtful Christian then denies the value of fulfilled prophecy as evidence of revelation. It was really in no small measure the forcing of prophecy to bear on what was not its object, and the popular effort to make it speak of the past and present in gospel times, which largely led to the reaction expressed in Dr. S. R. Maitland's words:

We point the infidel to the captive Jew and the wandering Arab, but who challenges him with the slain witnesses? We set before him the predicted triumphs of Cyrus; but do we expect his conversion from the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon? We send him to muse on the ruined city of David, and to search for the desolated site of Babylon; but who builds his arguments on the opened seals of the Apocalypse? And why is this? I do not speak hastily, and I would not speak uncharitably, but I cannot suppress my conviction that it is because the necessity of filling up a period of twelve hundred and sixty years has led to such forced interpretation of language, and to such a constrained acquiescence in what is unsatisfactory to sound judgment, that we should be afraid, not only of incurring his ridicule, but of his claiming the same license which we have ourselves been obliged to assume. I firmly believe that the error lies in adopting an interpretation which requires us to spread the events predicted respecting three years and a half over more than twelve centuries, and which thus sends us to search the page of history for the accomplishment of prophecies still unfulfilled (Enquiry, pp. 84, 85. 1826). It is not that one cites this futurist leader as laying down principles of sterling value; for his work was much more negative than positive, and he was as much as his adversaries under the idea that the main end of prophecy is to convict unbelievers.

The error lies in two things: first, unbelief of the authority of God's word; and, secondly, ignorance of our privileges as Christians in the perfect favor of God, and unwillingness to accept the truth that the world is awaiting the suspended judgment of God at Christ's return. Those who, justified by faith and in peace with God, stand in His grace and rejoice in hope of His glory, do not need evidence that the word of their God and Father is true, or that the providence of God orders all the varying plans and thoughts of men to the fulfillment of its own deep and wonderful counsels. And for him who knows what it is to walk in the light as He is in the light (the place of every Christian), it is strange doctrine to hear that fulfilled prophecies lend great help to our thoughts in seeking to attain this holy and divine elevation. It is really by faith of Christ, as possessed of His life and cleansed by His blood. What a descent from His presence thus to history, or the account of all the events of time under the light of the prophetic vision, good as it is; and how painful the effort thus to christen, if one may so say, all the main subjects of classical study and pursuit!

Again, to talk of the sure progress of all history towards its consummation in the kingdom of Christ is very apt to blind men to the fact, that "the times of the Gentiles," under which we live, are really an interruption in God's ways with men on the earth, a parenthesis rather than the orderly course of things, though a parenthesis since redemption during which a mystery of the deepest grace and richest glory is revealed, a mystery great indeed as to Christ, and as to the church. When our Lord returns, the world will pass under the direct government of God, when Israel and the nations shall be blessed under the glorious Son of man, as of old all fell to ruin which stood on man's responsibility. To blend in such prospects of glory with the whole range of history, to make all the events recorded by profane historians, and by the orators and poets of Greece and Rome, so many pledges to us of the everlasting kingdom, is to confound clean and unclean, and to verge on profanity itself, if it have any definite meaning.

In all this reasoning it is plain that the Protestant is no less dark than the Catholic in seizing the true and special nature of the church. This misleads both the conflicting parties; and it is hard to say which errs most from the truth. Thus we are told by the historicalist that there is in the full provision of divine truth in these fulfilled prophecies an unspeakable exhibition of God's wisdom and love, who, knowing the weakness of our faith as to all the great blessings He has promised, by these connected and continual visions converts every event of providence when fulfilled into a new and fuller pledge of the mercies still only in prospect; and Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome, Cyrus and Alexander, Antiochus and Titus, the powers that have oppressed or the conquerors that have wasted (not Israel or even saints among the ancient people of God but) the church! become tokens of the approach of Messiah's triumphant kingdom. None can be surprised if there be the widest divergence in general doctrine, in worship and walk, in communion and hope, seeing that there is such total ignorance of the church in fact and character. The effect is disastrous in the extreme. As our special relationship to Christ at God's right hand is unknown, so perpetual interest in all the events of past history takes the place avowedly of setting our minds on things above; so too boasting of the whole deposit of revealed wisdom successionally unfolded from age to age forbids the sense and confession of our actual fallen estate, and the foreboding of the troubles (not of the Jews and Gentiles at the end of the age, but) of the church eclipses the continual looking for the Bridegroom as our proximate hope.

It is indeed solemnly true that there will be a judgment of the quick {living} as well as of the dead {2 Tim. 4: 1}, and that the kingdom over the earth covers the space between for a thousand years; that the past is not something extinct and perished for ever, but that every actor shall give account, and every work be manifested before the Lord; but how this teaches us the perpetual interest of the church of God in all the events of past history seems an inference very wide of the premises. The value of Old Testament facts, as well as testimonies, we are best taught in the application of them by the Holy Ghost in the New; but this is a thing very different from our busying ourselves with all the events of past history, or the records of bygone days, as such.

We may notice too that, where the church of God is relegated to history for its moral lessons, the whole of revealed truth is classed under the law, the gospel, and the word of prophecy, ignoring those writings of the apostles which make known the mystery hidden from ages and from generations {Col. 1: 26; see also Rom. 16: 25, 26; Eph. 3: 9}. Promises and law, gospel and church, might each and all be distinguished from the displayed kingdom of which the prophetic word speaks so fully. The Old Testament gives us the promises and the law; the New Testament, consequent on the work of the Son and the mission of the Spirit, gives us the gospel and the church; while prophecy is found in both, more largely in the Old Testament, when all blessing was future, more profoundly and completely in the New, where what is coming is treated systematically till the eternal day.

As in the New Testament we have the truth in Christ for the individual and the body, so we have not merely this evil or that, but all that opposes itself against the will of God, and this from the first to the last. Hence, whatever be the iniquity of the popish system, the Spirit testifies against all the forms of departure from God and His grace. Thus, in the seven Apocalyptic churches, not to speak of the apostolic epistles, there is a word from the Lord bearing on all which He judged it of special moment to notice; and the prophecy, strictly so-called, discloses the second beast as distinct from the first, and Babylon so different from the beasts, that she becomes at last the object of destructive hatred to one, if not both. There the varying and opposed evils of men are seen successively, or together, falling under the righteous wrath of God and the Lamb; while the saints are seen as variously blessed according to the Father's gracious wisdom, of whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named.

Yet will it be found in practice that no one will be found intelligently to profit in any full measure by the Apocalyptic visions as a whole, who is not established in the riches of grace and the counsels of glory, and, above all, in that present sense of association with Christ in heavenly places, which is the central truth of the Pauline testimony. To those who by grace are thus fitted to weigh the book of Revelation, its visions are invaluable, and as instructive as they give solemnity to the spirit and joy to the heart. If the visions were fulfilled, they would be no more effete and worthless than the books of Moses or of the prophetic Judges that followed, which, if read in the Spirit, repay quite as richly, or more so, than the predictions of Isaiah or Ezekiel which remain to be accomplished. But they are, as we have seen, "at hand" in any full sense, not yet accomplished, and so in every way invite and will reward the reader with a double blessing from Him who promised it to such as read, hear, and keep the sayings of that book. To His name be all the praise and glory.

Appendix A:

{Prophecy: Its Classes, Purpose and Study}

The prophecies of holy writ may be divided broadly into these two classes: those like Isaiah's, which were addressed to the people of Israel while standing in recognized relation with Jehovah as His people; and those like Daniel's, which suppose the Jews disowned for a season till grace restore them in the latter day, placing them under Messiah's reign and the new covenant. Of old God had governed Israel as His people, and the pavilion of His presence in their midst was its sign. The present interval, humbling to conscience and solemn to faith, is marked by the departure of the Shekinah till its final return never more to leave the city and sanctuary where the eyes of Jehovah rest continually; and during that space imperial authority is confided to four successive and well-known world powers, the great Gentile empires. This is "the parenthesis," as it has been justly designated; and the term is so suited to maintain a true sense of the peculiarity of the interval, and to hinder forgetfulness of its total difference from the ordinary course of God's direct government of the earth according to the great and regular scheme of prophecy, that it would be most unwise to forego its use because some do not, and others will not, understand it. The "times of the Gentiles" span this remarkable interval, begun by the captivity of Judah under the head of gold, and closed by the destructive blow which the returning Lord, the Little Stone cut without hands, will inflict on the iron-clay feet, reducing the entire image to powder, before the Stone itself expands into a great mountain and fills the whole earth. Then and not before will have come the world-kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ (Rev. 11: 15-18; 19; 20).

It is very intelligible that the professing Gentile should revolt at the fact, plainly as scripture reveals it, that, whatever the deep ways and heavenly counsels of grace revealed since Christ came (the whole New Testament indeed), the Gentile empires have merely and precisely the function, under God's sovereign will, of filling up the gap between Israel's fall and their rising again. It is offensive to such as glory in the arts and letters of Greece and Rome, in the sciences and discoveries of modern civilization. Hence wounded feeling proceeds to worse daring, and profanely mocks at this view of the parenthesis, which is the sure representation of God's word, as if it were no more reasonable than a dream of Arabian or Hindoo mythology. But it is foolish to kick against the goad: the fact, humiliating to Gentile conceit and call it as we may, is written indelibly in letters of light.

It is alleged however, in order to reduce the sharpness of the truth and its moral lesson, that, in a sense exactly similar, the whole Mosaic dispensation is itself a parenthesis between the times of the patriarchs and of the christian church; while the millennium is another parenthesis between the dispensation of the Spirit (the reader must overlook so unintelligent a phrase) and the final glory, when the redemption is complete. Now, while in a limited sense this may be allowed of all economic or mediatorial dealings as compared with the boundless infinitude of eternity, the parenthesis was spoken of as such in respect of God's government of the earth, whether partial or complete, past or future; which government all the faithful surely believe to be the only normal condition for the world since God deigned to make it His plan. Not only before the deluge but after it, till the call of Israel out of Egypt, God did not govern the earth in this way. Men previously had only to maintain His honour, as we see in Job 31: 27, 28; but this was soon lost through idolatry, and Abram was called out, the nations being abandoned to walk in their own ways. Hence evidently the patriarch's call was not God's government of the world. On the contrary God, though He left Himself not without witness, as we see in the destruction of the guilty cities of the plain, would not then interfere because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full {Gen. 15: 16}; and the wandering patriarchs, so far as they were faithful, had in the land of promise not so much as to set their foot on, though we cannot but discern also, how God suffered no man to do His prophets harm, rebuking kings for their sakes.

But at the Exodus, as is known to all, God judged the nation that oppressed the sons of Israel and brought themselves out of the house of bondage as His people, in whom His government was to be exercised and His ways displayed. And so they were (not merely that secret and ceaseless providence of His which never fails), till by their persistent hopeless apostasy from Himself for idols, subsequently fixed yet more by their rejection of Himself in the person of His Messiah, they were in the just dealing of God, after unwearied patience, set aside as no longer His people, though still providentially kept apart, until He resumes at length His immediate government of the earth {in the millennium}, He will in Christ returning to reign in the last days.

The gap then, since Israel became Lo-Ammi {Hosea 1}, till they are restored again and for ever as His people to His land, as the central sphere of His earthly government, is filled up by the four successive beasts {Dan. 7} or imperial Gentile powers {Dan. 2}. The regular course of earthly dispensations supposes the throne of Jehovah in Jerusalem; the removal of it when power was committed to the Gentiles is exactly a parenthesis as to His earthly, government, which is true of Israel's history neither before nor after these "times of the Gentiles"; for Israel is the exhibition, in the past of failure under law, in the future of power under the Messiah, in respect of God's proper and immediate government of the earth, whereas the intervening Gentile period is its interruption, whatever the wonderful works of God in His grace meanwhile. Yet God has not lost sight of these parenthetical times, abnormal as they are, but inspired Daniel particularly in the Old Testament, and, John in the New Testament, to write of them, though in view of the blessing at last of the people still under rejection, as well as of the higher and larger things for which that rejection furnishes occasion. It is our Lord too, who in Luke 21 vouchsafed to us that very term "times of the Gentiles," which is only another way of describing the parenthesis; though Christians, like the heathen, turn it into pride, overlooking its real nature and denying its importance. Nothing but this can account for their designating this period "the sacred calendar and great almanac of prophecy," wholly slighting the fact that far the greater part of the prophetic word bears on the time when God governs the earth immediately from within His people restored and blessed {in the millennium}, instead of merely confiding authority meanwhile to powers which from first to last He calls "beasts"{[Dan. 7}. The axe may boast against Him that heweth therewith; but saintly minds ought to know better than encourage it.

But it is not true that Dan. 2, any more than Dan. 7, contemplates, as the learned J. Mede fancied, a regnum lapidis, as well as regnum montis (Works, iv. 743, 744, ed. 1677, folio.) It would be strange indeed if the dream of the heathen monarch had a spiritual view presented which was not vouchsafed to the holy prophet. The idea however is quite unfounded. The first action of the Stone (or in the kingdom of God in Christ) was not to accomplish redemption or to found a spiritual kingdom, but to crush to atoms the imperial Gentile system, especially dealing with the Roman empire in its last shape, after which itself spread and filled the whole earth. Not the gospel but divine judgment effects it. See also Isa. 2, 11, 25, 65, 66, and a crowd of other scriptures. Does it not seem odd, by the way, to find Tobit quoted here as an authority, and at yet greater length in iii. 579, 580?

Within this parenthesis, and inside the bounds of its last clause (the fourth empire of Rome), the gospel or Christianity and the church come in. And just as the ruin of the Jews gave the signal for Daniel's prophecy, so did the failure of the church here below, {give the signal} for the book of Revelation, which, after its seven epistles {Rev. 2 and 3} and the heavenly episode that follows immediately {Rev. 4 and 5}, shows us judgments on the world summed up at length, in its two chiefs, the apostate first and second beasts {Rev. 13} the Roman empire in its last phase, and the false prophet power in the land, with Babylon the great harlot of Christendom {Rev. 17}.

It is here that men, and even the pious if committed to things as they are, find no little difficulty. Men's will can resist stubbornly, their mind easily raising objections to the truth which condemns them. It is this much more than the symbolical style of the predictions which made Daniel's visions unpalatable to the Jew, and the true scope of the Apocalypse unwelcome to many a Christian. They would like to think present circumstances and that history with which they are most familiar {to be} the direct object of God's prophetic survey; they fail to see that its real fulfillment is in the great but brief crisis, after the overcomers (Rev. 2, 3) are taken to heaven, till Christ and they appear in glory to reign, whatever be the light thence derivable for discerning the principles at work all through our earthly pilgrimage before their full manifestation at the close when judgment comes.

The case was complicated too by a few more or less disposed to palliate Rome, who could detect error in the popular view, and facts as to the future not generally recognized, but who availed themselves of all to undermine truths still more important for their moral bearing on souls as well as on the Lord's glory. With the evil principles of Drs. Maitland, Todd, Burgh, etc., one has far less sympathy than with the honest but imperfect and, to say the truth, far from intelligent testimony of Mede or Daubuz or their representatives to this day, able and learned as some of them were in other respects. It is forgotten perhaps equally on both sides, that the church, since apostolic days till the Reformation at least, was not in a condition to use the Revelation in general. Certainly the earliest Fathers applied it substantially as the futurists do.

The great pre-requisite for a safe and wholesome study of the prophetic word is a clear apprehension of the difference between the church called by sovereign grace for heavenly places in Christ and the immediate divine government of the world of which the Jews form the nearest circle on earth round the Messiah, according to the purpose and ways of God (Deut. 32: 8). God has set aside the Jews for their rebellious idolatry and at last their rejection of the Messiah; but He will resume His government of them again, an immediate rule on the earth wholly different in nature, character, and results from the powers that be now, entitled though they are to our submission and honour, however little able to deal with the misery and corruptions of mankind.

Adversaries may talk of wire-drawn abstractions and baseless hypothetical systems; but they are themselves blinded by tradition and self-confidence to a change of the profoundest interest and of incalculable moment, against which no sophistry can prevail for those who bow to scripture. It is the more apt to deceive themselves and others where such unbelief works in men who deny not but hold Christ's future reign over the earth in personal presence and power and glory. For this is the government of the earth or "the kingdom," of which both Testaments speak, as distinct as possible from the calling of saints from among Jews and Gentiles to be the body of Christ, not of the world even now as He was not, while the anomalous bestial rule still goes on here below.

The truth of the {earthly} Gentile parenthesis {of judgment on Israel} does not make the scheme of God's moral government a piecemeal and fragmentary thing; but a mass of confusion at issue with all scripture they make it who do not discriminate God's calling of the church to heaven from His government by law on earth. Nor can any sentence be worse both in ill construction and violation of truth, than that which assumes one uninterrupted chain of divine government, and ignores the revealed facts of God's rupture of His regular earthly government {i.e., the times of the Gentiles}, of an immense interregnum while the beasts rule, and of God's final resumption of that government at the return of our Lord.

But if we limit ourselves to considering God's moral government, its scheme is perfect. Part of it was to blind Israel, while another work proceeds in the richest mercy to the Gentiles. And prophecy reveals the judgments by which the whole result will be brought about according to God. Meanwhile His providential wisdom and power order all, whatever be the anomalies in the phases of the world's history for nearly 2500 years; and we by His word and Spirit make good His will in the measure of our faith, while evil is not yet put down by the intervention of that power which will bring in the sabbatism that remains for the people of God. The confusion of thought, generally prevalent as to this arises from the supposition that God's government has its results now, which it never can have till the manifestation of Christ, in view of whom and for whose glory all has been carried on. To look for its accomplishment in the absence of Christ is a fatal mistake. God's people are not the sun in the solar system of His truth, or of His government; but Christ is. To substitute the first man for the Second is the constant effort and error of the natural mind. It is to prefer guesswork, founded on first appearances, to demonstrated truth; and to conceive the church to be the center of movement, instead of knowing it in the true Sun, Christ the Lord.

Undoubtedly the work which God has now at heart in the calling of the church, founded on the accomplished redemption of the Son, and accompanied, nay, effectuated, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, while the gospel goes out to every land and in every tongue, transcends all that ever preceded in His ways. But this in no way interferes with the fact that, as the calling of the church is a heavenly parenthesis, so also are "the times of the Gentiles" a still wider earthly one, which fills the blank in the earth's history since God governed in the midst of His people under law, as He will by-and-by when they are under the new covenant.

This is so true, that we hear of the mystery as to Christ and as to the church, hid from ages and generations {Col. 1: 26} — hid in God {Eph. 3: 9, 10}, not in scripture — not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. It is also said be made known by prophetic scriptures (Rom. 16: 25, 26), but these are of the New Testament, and not of the Old — a notion obscured by the English version — "the scriptures of the prophets," which is unequivocally incorrect, and naturally points to the well-known Old Testament writings and writers,* contrary to the express drift of the context. The apostle constantly cites the Old Testament prophets to vindicate what was not made known there, but what illustrated the truth when the mystery was revealed. Thus proofs of Israel blinded, and of Gentiles called, he does cite as accomplished in the mystery, but in no way as the revelation of it. How do they reveal Christ as the heavenly Head of all creation, and the church, Jews or Gentiles alike, as the one body, His body? But reasoning is needless; scripture is express that the mystery has now been manifested.

* Rom. 1: 2 does prove that the gospel was promised before by God's prophets; but the difference of phraseology answers to the difference of the subject-matter in Rom. 16: 26. The mystery was hid, not promised, though now manifested by prophetic scriptures, and according to the commandment of the eternal God made known for obedience of faith to all the nations. It is ignorance to confound them.

But it is no slight error that the church is connected with earthly arrangements as Israel was, and self-delusion to confound this, with trials, helps, hindrances, and temptations here below, on the one hand, and on the other hand with preaching the gospel, going out to the heathen, social ties and duties, etc. When and how did God connect His church with the earth? Education and habit may account for such a statement; to faith the word of God never gave it. That historically the church thus fell is true; that Satan so sought, and succeeded in doing so, is plain; that in a measure of accomplishment it was predicted as the fornication of Babylon with the kings of the earth {Rev. 17} is not denied; but is the sufferance of such corruption to be regarded as His sanction? Is it the form of things produced by His will as that which He would thus make to answer His mind? The connection of Israel with the earth is God's institution: is Babylon His institution?

Nor is our hope the second advent of the Lord to the earth, as Israel's was His first coming; it is going up to meet the Lord in the air, and so being ever with Him {1 Thess. 4: 15-18}. To be with Him in the Father's house {John 14: 1-3} is no question of dates or prophetic messages. How anyone could mistake the character of Rev. 1: 7, for instance, would be a marvel if one did not know the power of prejudice. It is beyond a doubt the coming again of Christ in judgment, His appearing to the world, to the Jews that pierced Him, and to every eye, in contrast with chosen witnesses and the day of faith now; so that all the tribes of the earth (or land) mourn because of Him. Is it not strange to hear so solemn a warning styled the main object and desire; and that the apostle contemplates His coming as a whole but with especial reference to his own hope and that of his fellow-christians?

It is an ineffectual effort to reason from an assumed similarity where there is a real contrast. The heavenly character of the Christian and the church is unknown, yet the ascension of Christ and the descent of the Spirit do surely now make that character good to faith. God's providence, though a very different thing from guidance in the Spirit, is most real now, as of old; but that secret control of all circumstances, so that all things work together for good, is quite distinct from the public display of His power of which prophecy treats. Some may have blundered as to the true bearing of 1 Peter 1: 10-13; but it is well to heed the distinction there drawn between the predictions of the prophets, the gospel meanwhile declared in virtue of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and the full accomplishment at the appearing of Jesus. Receiving soul-salvation now, we await salvation for our bodies and the fulfillment of the glories predicted when He appears.

And this helps to the right understanding of Luke 2: 32, as little understood by the Protestant {historicalist} as the futurist. It is a question, not of the church, but of the Gentiles, who were of old in the dark, as Israel now are, while Gentiles are brought to light. They have Christ now a light for their revelation, as by-and-by He will be the glory of God's people Israel. He had overlooked the times of ignorance hitherto, but now enjoins men that they should all everywhere repent.

But it is urged that the church has come into the place of Israel, and that as an election was taken out of them, so now from among the nations of Christendom. This idea, however, in both its parts is erroneous. Secretly there was an election, not only from Israel, but from the Gentiles, as Heber, Rahab, Jonadab, etc.; but Israel was an elect nation governed and owned by God as His people. "My people" never means hidden election; it is the nation in speaking of Israel. But Christendom is not a nation elect or otherwise; in the greatest part of it is Babylon, even for Protestant opinion. Is Babylon elect as Israel was? Whatever might be the stranger spirit of pious Israelites, the elect people had their home on earth. It is a mischievous error, lowering to all christian life in worship and service, to confound our calling with theirs.

Nor is it the church, but the Gentiles, which are grafted into the tree of promise with the true of Israel. For, first, the church is not the "own olive-tree" of Israel; and, secondly, the believing Jews entered the church (see Eph. 2; 1 Cor. 12), as did the believing Gentiles, whereas they abode in their own olive-tree. See Rom. 11, a chapter which proves continuance in promise, but parenthesis in government, and quite distinct from the revelation of Christ's body, where all is alike of grace and heaven, and above nature — one new man {Eph. 2: 15} as new to the Jew as to the Gentile. Blindness in part is happened to Israel until — there the parenthesis ends; and so all Israel shall be saved {Rom. 11: 26}. For there shall come forth a Deliverer out of Zion. We look for God's Son from heaven {Phil 3: 21} who will receive us to Himself where He is {John 14: 3}. For our blessing characteristically is in heavenly places, as we are told in Eph. 1: 3.

Indeed it is vain to reason on prophecy when it is taken as a basis that Christendom is God's covenant people, and therefore that, as the earlier prophecies all centered around Israel, so do the later ones round the visible church among the Gentiles. Israel were then the covenant people, and so long as they thus remained, all divine prophecy clustered around them, from Moses to Malachi; but it is urged that ever since the days of St. John this privilege has been transferred from them to the visible Gentile church. The kingdom of God, as our Lord assured the Jews, has been taken from them and given to others. Hence the very same principle, which made all Old Testament prophecy center in the Jewish nation, requires that all New Testament prophecy should center around the Gentile church, the actual people of the covenant, who have been ingrafted in their stead, and the appeal to the Old Testament prophets to support an opposite conclusion must be utterly vain. Setting aside a main principle of God's moral government, and destroying a law of His revelation, to sustain a mere circumstance, it infers that God will leave His covenant people for near two thousand years without any distinct light of prophecy, because they always enjoyed that privilege in a dispensation of dimmer light and less abundant grace. Such is the argument in its most plausible shape.

But what proof, what sign, what appearance of truth, is there in such an hypothesis, traditional though it may be? When did God enter into covenant with the Gentiles? God has given Christ, the rejected Christ, for a light to the Gentiles, that He may be His salvation to the ends of the earth (Isa. 49: 6); but He is (ver. 8) a covenant of the people, not peoples. Hence the Gentiles are never said to be grafted instead of the Jews. Generically they are grafted in with the Jews left there in the inheritance of promises, of which Abraham was the stock planted by God in the earth; and they are responsible for the maintenance of blessing. But no covenant was made with them. Even if Matt. 21: 43 be certainly applicable, it is only to fruit-bearing, not to covenant, that it applies. And how can this be said of Christendom, unless Rev. 17, 18 be such fruit? But the fact is, that neither it, nor Deut. 31: 21, nor Rom. 9: 21-25, nor Rom. 11: 11-15, say a word about the church coming into the place of Israel, nor of the church as such at all.

Again, it is beyond controversy that the church-state in the Revelation {Rev. 2 and 3} does not go farther than "the things which are," in contrast with the future visions, or "the things which shall be after these," and that its prophecies therefore do not center round any church or people of God whatsoever, but are occupied with judgments on the world, whatever may be the pledges of mercy to the sealed of Israel, or to an innumerable crowd out of all nations and tongues {Rev. 7}. There is no judgment (and the Apocalypse treats of judgment) on a covenant people of God; nor does a people of God on earth, in any case or way, form a center there. It is absurd to contend that the twelve tribes of Israel in Rev. 7 are Gentile, contrasted as they are with a great crowd out of every nation; and it is inadmissible that Christendom is God's covenant people, unless Babylon be such.

Further, not only do Christians possess all the prophetic word, but they have ample and clear and direct light in the Gospels and Epistles (especially 2 Thess. 1 and 2 Timothy, and Jude) supposing the Revelation did not at all apply (which is not affirmed) beyond the wonderful messages of the Lord Himself in the seven Apocalyptic epistles. No one doubts for a moment the sovereign and moral government of God: but to identify this with His ways in Israel, as the popular argument already cited does, is just confusion and ignorance, whatever be the confidence of such as put it forward. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities" (Amos 3: 2). All agree that Old Testament prophecies not only left room for the parenthetic interval or blank for Israel when they were Lo-ammi and Gentiles are called, but used pregnant phrases, whereby God's ways might be confirmed when this state of things arrived; but they never revealed the mystery, which Paul did, while it was made known to all God's holy apostles and prophets.

And here let me say, though it be only in passing, that the grave point in Eph. 2: 20, Eph. 3: 5, is, not that the apostles and prophets were necessarily the same individuals, but that they are here viewed as one common company, though distinguished in Eph. 4: 11 and 1 Cor. 12: 28, 29. The criticism that would separate them here is as erroneous as the interpretation that makes the prophets to be of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New, the one article expressly forbidding the notion of two distinct classes. So far is the church of God from being anterior to redemption, that its foundation is of the New Testament apostles and prophets. The mystery was hid from ages and generations previously. No prophet in Old Testament times revealed it. A blank was left for St. Paul to fill (Col. 1: 26).

As to the utilitarian argument which has been applied to decide the bearing of the Apocalypse on history since St. John's day, as against the crisis, it hardly deserves the notice of serious men. But as some may be influenced by what appeals to natural feeling, without an atom of spiritual weight, one may reply that, in pleading for a more exact fulfillment in the latter day, it is not denied that the book has been accomplished partially all through.

It is in vain to deny that in Protestant hands prophecy was valued chiefly as evidence by its fulfillment to convict the unbeliever, and that this disposed men to enlarge as much as possible the field of fulfilled prediction, in order to increase their arms against infidelity. Now no sober Christian denies this to be a use of prophecy, or its importance for its own end. The reasoning directed against the use of prophecy after its accomplishment was only against this use exclusively. People used very generally to say, as some do still, that prophecy was mainly, not to say only, useful as proof when fulfilled. This was false ground, injurious to saints, and dishonouring to God. "The design of God was (to cite Sir Isaac Newton's applauded sentence), when He gave this book and the prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men's curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but to the end that, after they were fulfilled, they might be interpreted by the event."

Alas! how foolish in the things of God are the wise. The vast mass of prophecy warns of God's final judgments as ushering in the reign of the Lord. The event will prove their truth, no doubt; but it will be to the ruin of those who did not foreknow and heed the warning. Thus the antediluvians may have argued, and perished in their unbelief. Not so Noah; by faith he, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. Not so did Jehovah deal when He said, "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" And if he was the friend of God, what are we? and why has Jesus called us His friends? (See John 15). Did this include the apostles only, or has not one of these "friends" of Jesus, when treating expressly of the coming of the Lord, of the destruction of the world that now is, and of the new heavens and earth, said to us, "Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware . . .?"

The men of those days, who had precious faith, did not wait for the events before believing; they did not use the prophecy as a mere confirmation of Christianity; they read, understood, and profited by its warning. The Spirit of truth, according to the Lord's promise, showed them things to come; and they found the blessing of that sure word which shines as a lamp in a dark place. Sir Isaac Newton was not the least sagacious or sober of Protestant interpreters; yet even he asks us to abandon the gracious purpose for which God gave prophecy to His children, for the lowest application for which human incredulity can require it. Unquestionably prophecy is a weapon of divine temper to confound and, if grace work, to convince the sceptic (though we may question such an effect from the jarring notes heard on the seals, trumpets, and vials); but surely it is its humblest office, instead of being the only wise and all-absorbing one. May we not ask, "Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

Again, when we find Tertullian applying the fifth seal to martyrs, as then in course of slaughter under pagan Rome, surely we may think that he did not understand its full bearing, without saying that such an interpretation was a delusion, destitute of one particle of real truth. Nor would one question that God honoured the German reformer's testimony against Babylon, founded on a later portion of the Revelation. Does this prove that Luther knew, or that we ought not to learn, a fuller development of the great whore, for which no room is left in the ordinary interpretation?

Singular to say, some who narrow to a single line the Revelation (the deepest and most comprehensive of all prophecies) think it certain that elsewhere, as in Isa. 2, for instance, the Spirit of God intended one reference as well as the other — first, an incomplete and figurative, then a complete and literal fulfillment; and yet they would repeat for the Apocalypse the error of the Futurists, though in an opposite direction. Thus the soundness of the principle is admitted by some on both sides. Apply it to the Apocalypse, and not only are men who stand for the future crisis, without denying the protracted accomplishment, justified by their censors, but the mere Protestant interpretation is condemned by the very reasoning meant to establish it on the ruins of futurism.

Doubtless it is a canon with some whom Mr. G. S. Faber represented, that no single link of a chronological chain of prophecy is capable of receiving its accomplishment in more than a single event or period. But this is not true even of Daniel, who, as almost all antiquity saw clearly, makes Antiochus Epiphanes the type of a still worse personage at the end. And it would be strange indeed to contend that the final prophecy and profoundest of all should have a scope more confined than a Jewish one. Mr. Mede saw at length that the seven 'churches' {Rev. 2 and 3} had a double reference; he might have learnt to his profit that the prophetic portion is not less significant.

Nor is this the only inconsistency in such special pleading. For if the principal use in all cases is the manifestation of the divine glory in the foreknowledge, wisdom, and providence of God, whether before or after the fulfillment, if the use, whether of warning before, or of evidence after, fulfillment, is always secondary and subordinate, the utilitarian argument sinks into little. On this showing its grand object was as much attained during the seventeen centuries the book did not apply (if that ground be taken) as when it did. And is it not strange that the manifestation of the divine glory should be lowered to the foreknowledge, wisdom, and providence of God? One might have looked for some regard to His government in such a question, if righteousness and grace were too much to expect. Yet the reason of their absence is evident: they would suppose contrast of dispensation in principle, and intervention in power; and the wisdom of this age likes and bows to neither.

But, granting the divine glory, in an infinitely richer way than has been before alleged, to be the end, as of all God's word and ways, so of prophecy which reveals the result of all and the judgment by which it will be effected, still it is so evident as to need no reasoning for the spiritual mind, that God's direct practical aim in prophecy was the warning, instruction, and comfort of His own before fulfillment; and all Christians should be thankful to be recalled to this precious privilege, of which they had been long deprived. And assuredly the Futurists, spite of defects and one-sidedness and even errors, contributed to this end incomparably more than the Protestant school {historicalists}, engrossed as it used to be, and even now is almost entirely, with fulfilled prophecy.

It is plain that, if the early Christians had regarded the twelve hundred and sixty days as so many years, they must have anticipated such a lengthening out of the ages as the Protestant scheme contends for, which it is certain not one did, so far as we know. Does this, as far as it goes, tell in favour of futurism or historicalism? It is no less plain that the times of Daniel in chapters 7 and 12 (taken up in the Revelation) suppose the Jews in their land and carrying on their worship, but hindered by the little horn — that is, not the long ages of their scattering, but when they return, though not yet owned as a nation by God. Confessedly the early writers on prophecy expected two actual witnesses, and a personal Antichrist, an infidel domination and a fiery persecution of at least three and a half years, and this in Jerusalem at the end of the age whenever it might be. The soundness of all this may be questioned; but it is absurd to argue, as some do, that in these points (wherein, more than any others, they agree) the Fathers substantially approximate to the protracted {historicalist} view of the prophecy. The earlier and central chapters, not to speak of the closing ones, they applied in general as the Futurists do. Even if we confine ourselves to the future literal application, one cannot allow that it was useless. Was the blessed hope put before the Philippians, "The Lord is at hand," of no use because it is still unfulfilled? Did the Christians then expect it not to occur till after so long a time? Has it been wholly useless? or is the imputation deplorably unbelieving?

Assuredly it is a mere reverie that the Apocalypse announced to every age of the church, and to each generation of believers, events that were really near at hand, or that in every later age it also contains many predictions already fulfilled, the fulfillment of which has been more or less clearly discerned by thoughtful Christians. The early writers, we have seen, applied the prophecy to a brief and terrible tribulation at the end. Then the whole mass fell into deep and deepening darkness. In the middle ages, when the Apocalypse was used, it was never an intelligent application of earlier parts of it, but, conscience being shocked and alarmed, an imaginative apprehension prevailed that Antichrist was come and the end imminent. It was the dread of being at the consummation which appalled men. That the church used it suitably from age to age, as it was developed into history, is a mere chimera, which can deceive no one acquainted with facts but only those who accept just what they like. If it be meant that the church ought to have so discerned the prophecy, it is a circular argument which amounts to something of this sort:- If the church had held my view (which is demonstrably untrue), they would have profited by it as warning from age to age, and as evidence of things past and fulfilled. Since my view is right, it has been at least possible, and indeed highly probable, that many believers in every age should have been warned by it of imminent changes, and have had their faith in God's word confirmed by many glimpses of its actual fulfillment. Is this serious either as history or as logic?

Test the facts. If any part of the visions is fulfilled, the seals must have been according to the historic view. Is there a tittle of evidence that the seals announced to any age of the church any one imminent change therein supposed to be predicted? What single individual correctly interpreted a single seal beforehand? To this day the utmost variety of thought exists among the leading Protestants {historicalists} themselves, not in detail merely but as to their general bearing. Can none gainsay the conclusions of Mede or Vitringa, of Faber or Cuninghame, of Elliott or Keith? Can it be said that these men were captious and speculative like the Futurists, who rejected evidence, real and sufficient, if not of that sort which compels assent? Are they not all among the most trusty and familiar of the historical school, and as notoriously discordant in their views at the threshold? Yet of all parts of the book one might, on their principles, expect here the most of agreement, if not unanimity.

But enough. The grand fault of the considerations here examined is that, whilst God is at work to help on His children, they are an effort to lead back believers from that knowledge of the church's true relation, as united by the Spirit, to Christ on high, which is the key to real intelligence in the Christian. It is not merely human reasoning to support what is partial at best, and often erroneous; it is decidedly antagonism to truth of the deepest moment for God's glory, as well as the blessing of His saints. It is also ignorance of what scripture treats as the proper government of God in the midst of His people on earth when He will arise and inherit all nations. The importance of such prophecies as those of Daniel and John is great; but they must treat for the most part, even the latter, of the times of the Gentiles, not of the "kingdom" in any sense. To lose sight of this as Fathers and Protestants {historicalists} alike have done is fatal to spiritual intelligence on this subject.

The question here, as everywhere, is to whom the prophetic revelations apply, not to whom they are given. The revelation of what happened to Lot was given to Abraham, whilst the communication was made to Lot in time to deliver him out of the judgment, and this with precision as to the execution of it. So the Revelation says, "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear, the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand." The book was given, as all the scriptures, to the church of God, without distinction of Jew or Gentile — there was none such in the body of Christ; and it could be given to none else.

On the other hand, there is this observation to be made respecting Daniel and the Revelation: that they are the revelation of the consequences, the former of Israel's failure, the latter of the church's failure, as witnesses of God here below. Hence we have a far more direct interest and more solemn responsibility, as to the contents of the Apocalypse than as to Old Testament prophecy in general, or even as to Daniel; while, as to times, scenes, and personages, there is doubtless much in common between the two books. But the Babylon on the seven hills [Rev. 17], which the apostle saw drunken with the blood of saints, is to us a thing of nearer and graver import than the great city which Nebuchadnezzar built on the plain of Shiner.

Furthermore, the time is said, and said repeatedly (Rev. 1, 22), to be at hand; and this as a reason why its sayings were not sealed to John as they were to Daniel {12: 4}. The work of redemption being done, Christ gone on high, and the Spirit sent down to be in the Christian and the church, the time of the end is always near to us, as the Lord is ready to judge the quick and the dead. Still the ground taken from first to last is, not that we are in the scenes of the prophecy, but that "the time is at hand," not present. It is very possible that the prophetic warning it contains may be the divine preservative against the sins which at length draw down the closing strokes of God's wrath on the apostasy of Christendom. Into this worst, this rebellious, corruption the professing mass sink during, if not before, the hour of temptation {trial} which is to try them that dwell on the earth {Rev. 3: 10}. Out of this hour the Lord has pledged Himself to preserve such as keep the word of His patience. The faithful, His church, will not be in that hour or scene. The Lord keep this promise, full of comfort, before our souls!

Appendix B:

The Jewish and Christian Expectation of Christ Briefly Contrasted

I am not without hopes that, under the gracious teaching of the Spirit, the simple statement of the distinction we are going briefly to examine may be blessed to souls. Happy is it when we are brought to ponder on the riches of grace which God has lavished on us, and that in the spirit of children, not desiring to prove our own notions, but to learn the thoughts, purposes, and ways of God; happier still when, in the communion of Him who dwells in us, our delight is to be shown, and to adore the Lord Jesus Christ in His various glory.

His various glory, I repeat; for this the natural mind relishes not, but it is exactly what the Spirit loves and leads into (John 16: 13-15). Hence it is that to unbelief the scripture is a blank without heights, without depths. The purity of its sentiments, and the simple grandeur of its style, may be allowed and admired. But there are no landmarks, no chart, no star of Bethlehem to direct and cheer the unbeliever's way. His conscience is not in the presence of God, and therefore there is no true Christ in his heart. The Bible to him may be a very wonderful book, but this is all: if it seem to be owned practically as that which reveals the divine way of salvation, almost everything in it is made to bear on this one point. Warnings, threatenings, exhortations, invitations, instructions, commands, prayers, ordinances — nearly all that Old and New Testaments utter is made to converge on what, to the flesh, really amounts to this — God helping us by His Son and Spirit to save ourselves. From this quagmire God has mercifully extricated all His people; He has taught all His children, with more or less intelligence, to rest upon the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then it is that the vast field of the written word opens apace, the different displays which God has made of His character, and the effect of these dealings upon believers and unbelievers in the several dispensations, summed up in the person of Christ, whether viewed once here below, now in heaven, or by-and-by returning again. Thus the child, led of the Spirit, grows in knowledge, and begins to see the revealed past, present, and future, in their just proportions, because he begins to learn all in Christ, whose mind he has (2 Cor. 2). In few words, he is learning to prove the things which differ.

Now it may be a narrow, but certainly it is an important, part of the things which differ that is suggested by the title to this paper. Nor would I pretend to sketch minutely the ways in which the estimate formed, by a godly Jew respecting Christ's advent is distinguishable from the hope set before the church in His future presence. Let us content ourselves with certain, broad essential differences, which are nevertheless often confounded by Christians to the obscuring of their proper portion, and so far to the detriment of their souls. The testimony of scripture is so full and distinct, that little reasoning is necessary; still its importance may well demand ample quotations.

The advent of a glorious Messiah to the earth was characteristically a Jewish hope. I speak not of traditional fables, but of the truths which the Jews saw and held fast in their scriptures. To such believing Jews Messiah was the centre and security of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He was the accomplisher of all righteousness, blessing, and peace in their land — Immanuel's land. By Him they expected to be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all that hated them; that so they might serve Jehovah without fear all the days of their life {Luke 1: 68-79}. He was to cut off all the horns of the wicked, and to exalt the righteous; to save Zion, and build the cities of Judah, that they might dwell there, and have it in possession, and thus the seed of His servants should inherit it, and they that love His name dwell therein. This, as is plain in the Psalms, is the character of the deliverance pleaded by the Jewish remnant — not a rapture out of the earth, but a destruction of their enemies in it; a divine vengeance upon their enemies here below, not a gathering to the Lord in heaven. They looked, and will look, for Jehovah to go forth and fight against the nations He will gather at the latter end against Jerusalem; they will look for His feet to stand upon tho Mount of Olives, and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. There, with David their king over Israel, restored, as it were, from the grave, and Ephraim and Judah united perfectly and for ever under the rule of the true Beloved, they expect to dwell in their land, and the heathen shall know that God Jehovah sanctifies Israel when His sanctuary shall be in their midst for evermore. They might read of a Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, but their hope was the presence and reign of the Messiah here below, in special connection with the Jewish nation and land. The following texts will still more plainly show the truth we have been stating:

Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel (Ps. 2: 6-9). "For Jehovah most High is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet" (Ps. 47: 2, 3). "Great is Jehovah and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion: on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge" (Ps. 48: 1-3; 65; 67; 68). "He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence; and precious shall their blood be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba; prayer also shall be made for him continually, and daily shall he be praised. There shall be an handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon, and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be Jehovah God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things and blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and amen" (Ps. 72: 4-19). I need not go more minutely through the Psalms, beyond directing attention to Ps. 128, as evidently in accordance with the remarks already made. So also Ps. 132: 13-18. The inspired praises of Psalms 146-150 will then have their literal fulfilment. It is earthly joy under Messiah's dominion, and all is in unison with the thoughts, feelings, associations, hopes, and triumphs of His people Israel.

The prophets are equally explicit. "In that day shall the branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: when Jehovah shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And Jehovah will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain" (Isa. 4: 2-6).

"For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth, even for ever. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this" (Isa 9: 6, 7).

One might transcribe almost all Isa. 11. "But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together; they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey them. And Jehovah shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out the land of Egypt (Isa. 11: 4-16).

"And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when Jehovah of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously (Isa. 24: 21-23). "And in this mountain shall Jehovah of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and Jehovah God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is Jehovah; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of Jehovah rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill (Isa. 25: 6-10). "He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship Jehovah in the holy mount at Jerusalem (Isa. 27: 6, 12, 13). "Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off. Thine heart shall meditate terror. Where is the scribe? Where is the receiver? Where is he that counted the towers? Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of deeper speech than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue, that thou canst not understand. Look upon Zion, the city of our solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But there the glorious Jehovah will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For Jehovah is our judge, Jehovah is our lawgiver, Jehovah is our king: he will save us (Isa. 32: 17-22).

"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom, abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of Jehovah, and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a feeble heart, Be strong, fear not; behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35: 1-10).

The whole of Isa. 60, 61 and 62 are closely in point, but can only be referred to now. "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of Jehovah, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock; and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah (Isa. 65: 17-25). "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her; that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you: and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. For, behold, Jehovah will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh: and the slain of Jehovah shall be many (Isa. 66: 10-16).

Jeremiah, the prophet of affliction, speaks no otherwise. "And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah; neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers (Jer. 3: 16-18). "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, JEHOVAH OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that they shall no more say, Jehovah liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but Jehovah liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land (Jer. 23: 5-8). To this we may add, as most express, Jer. 31-33.

For other prophets we need not cite express words: the following selected references may suffice. In Ezekiel the reader may consult chapters 16, 20, 36, 37, 39, 40-48; also Daniel 7, 8, 9, 12; Hosea 1-3; Joel 2, 3; Amos 9; Obadiah; Micah 4, 5; Habakkuk 3; Zephaniah 3; Haggai 2; Zechariah 2, 8-10, 12, 14; and Malachi 3, 4.

Another distinction which may be briefly noticed is, that the Jews had the revelation of outward circumstances and ordered dates whereby to regulate their expectations. We need do little more than refer to the communications of God made to Abraham in Gen. 15, as well as others subsequently, for illustrations of this. "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterwards shall they come out with great substance (Gen. 15: 13, 14). Now it will not be disputed that the father of the faithful rejoiced to see Christ's day, and he saw it, and was glad (John 9: 56); but it was through, and at the end of, a long course of years and trying vicissitudes as regarded his seed. Abraham was in no way waiting for that day as if it might happen in his own life, or shortly after. He was perfectly certain that the day of Christ could not come for some centuries at least. Full well he counted upon that day bringing in deliverance to his family, and hence his joy. (See also Gen. 49: 10.)

Again, passing over intermediate predictions, the word sent by Gabriel to Daniel is even more detailed, and with chronological points of a very defined character. "Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself; and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined (Dan. 9: 25, 26). Hence it is plain that, if we suppose a godly Jew of that age to have understood the prophecy of the seventy weeks, he could not expect Messiah to come and be cut off till the expiry of nearly five hundred years. Ignorance might seek the living among the dead, but no believer with intelligence of this divine prediction could possibly look for the arrival and cutting off of the Christ previously to the revealed epoch. It would have been faith in him to have said, "I expect the Messiah after so many years, not before; for so hath the mouth of the Lord spoken."

With the church, on the contrary, the case is wholly different. Her hope is not the times of restitution of all things, but to be with the Lord in heaven as His bride: and as her hope is unearthly, so is it wholly unconnected with the times and seasons {Acts 1: 7} which characterized the expectations of Israel. Not that we are ignorant of these dates and epochs; but we know perfectly that the day of Jehovah so cometh as a thief in the night {1 Thess. 5: 2} — a day of destruction whence there is no escape. But we are not in darkness that the day should overtake us as a thief. We are already children of that day, and when the day arrives we shall come with the Sun of righteousness {Mal. 4: 2} who ushers it in. We shall have been with Him before the day breaks, for we know Him as the bright, the Morning Star {2 Peter 1: 19}, and the morning star He will give to him that overcomes {Rev. 2: 28}.

Certain times and seasons, we are quite aware, must precede the restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1). Thus we know that one week remains out of the seventy of Dan. 9, when the prince that shall come — a Roman prince — shall confirm covenant with the mass of the Jews for seven years. But, like another traitor and son of perdition, he shall put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him; he shall break his covenant (Ps. 55: 20). The covenant with death shall be disannulled (Isa. 28). "In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." This is followed by the abomination of desolation for the allotted term, "even until the consummation." (Compare with Dan. 9, 7: 19-26.) "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be (Matt. 24: 21). "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it (Jer. 30: 7). "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book" (Dan. 12: 1). The church knows these revealed periods, but knows them as connected, not with herself, but with Jerusalem and the Jewish people, Daniel's people.

The church does not wait to be gathered under a Messiah on earth, but to be caught up to meet Him in the air, and be ever with the Lord (1 Thess. 4); with Him in His Father's house; with Him when the successive judgments (symbolized by the seals, trumpets, and vials) are falling on the earth; with Him when the marriage-supper of the Lamb is celebrated above; with Him when He wars with the beast and the false prophet; with Him when we reign together for a thousand years; and with Him in the subsequent eternal state. "So shall we ever be with the Lord." Surely it is a blessed hope that the appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ is to set to rights all things here below which are now out of course. Creation shall be delivered into the liberty of the glory of the children of God, and Israel no longer blinded but seeing. All Israel shall be saved when the Redeemer comes out of Zion, and turns away ungodliness from Jacob {Rom. 11: 26} And if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness? If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?

Yes, and if we look above, the long usurped possession of the air (Eph. 2: 2; 6: 12) shall be rescued from Satan and his angels; no longer shall he be permitted there to accuse the brethren of Christ in the presence of God (Rev. 12); no longer will there be conflict with wicked spirits there. That old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, shall be bound, and cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, before the last vain struggle when he is cast into the lake of fire.

But not any nor all these things are our proper hope, which is to be caught up and to meet the Lord Himself {in the air and to be taken to} in heaven. As it is said in John 14: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also." Is this on earth, or in heaven? Is it merely the honours of a displayed kingdom? or is it not nearer and higher intimacy with the Son of God in the home of the Father on high? The disciples did not ask, nor did the Lord indicate, when these things should be.

But in Matt. 24 He does give the sign of His coming, and of the consummation of the age. He is meeting the inquiries of the disciples from their own Jewish point of view; He enters into full particulars respecting Jerusalem, Judea, the temple, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, etc., which were but the beginning of sorrows. The end was not yet, nor should it come before the gospel of the kingdom was preached in all the habitable earth for a witness to all the nations. Then He describes minutely the particular marks of the closing crisis, up to His manifestation to all the tribes of the earth, or land, and the complete ingathering of His elect (Israel) from the four winds.

Of His elect earthly people this gathering must be; because when Christ, our life, appears, then shall we also appear with Him in glory {Col. 3: 4} — the church and Christ are manifested at the same time in glory; whereas the elect described in Matt. 24 are only gathered after the Son of man's appearing, and cannot therefore be the church. All the context, the more it is examined, proclaims them to be Jewish disciples, who, at the signal of the setting up of the abomination, flee, and so escape the unparalleled tribulation of these days and scenes of the end; for their simple trust is in the man of God's right hand, "the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself" (Compare Ps. 79, 80).

But the passage in John's Gospel has nothing to do with Jerusalem, nor the earth, nor earthly circumstances. John never speaks of a special tribulation for Jewish disciples at a particular time and place, but of the constant tribulation we should count upon in the world at all times (John 16: 33). So the coming is not merely deliverance to a persecuted Jewish remnant on earth, but to receive us to Himself in heaven, without one hint of time, place, or circumstance.

Doubtless the church is to reign over the earth, the bright witness of the Father's love; for the world shall then know that He loved her as He loved His Son, both being displayed in the same glory. And how blessed the ministry of the church in that day, serving the gladsome earth according to the grace which has called, kept, and glorified herself on high, the bride, the Lamb's wife! We shall inherit the earth; we shall judge the world and angels too, in that administration of the fullness of times, when all things shall be gathered together in one in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth [Eph. 1: 10]; even in Him in whom we also have obtained an inheritance. Joint-heirs with Him, we share all that He will rule as the exalted Man. And God has put all things under His feet. Though we do not yet see all things put under Him, we do see Himself exalted; and when the day arrives for Him to take the dominion, it will be manifested that He is head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all {Eph. 1: 22, 23}

The Old Testament prophecies are full of the earthly glory. In the New Testament we have the mystery of God's will made known to us, involving the inheritance of things in heaven, as well as things on earth, and the church co-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ, as His body and God's children (Eph. 1: 9-14).

No prophets of ancient times had ever uttered such thoughts. It is not merely that such a portion was not understood, but it was not revealed. It was kept hid in God, and now revealed {Eph. 1: 9, 10}, we are told, unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The old prophets had spoken of times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, when Israel, or at least a Jewish remnant, repent and are converted; they had largely depicted the times of the restitution of all things, when Messiah comes from the heavens which now receive Him (Acts 3). No doubt they foretold the rule of the heavens (Dan. 4), and anticipated the joy and peace of the world under that kingdom. But they never predicted, much less did they know, that Christ will have a heavenly body and spouse associated with Him, and enjoying all His love and glory in the heavenly places; though they did celebrate the time when the land shall be married, and Jehovah shall make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The bride they sing of in the Canticles {Song of Solomon} and the Psalms is an earthly bride. Very different is the church of which Paul speaks in Eph. 5. Very different the marriage of the Lamb of which John tells in Rev. 19, as far above the espoused one of the Old Testament as the heavenly glory of Christ exceeds His earthly, though all be perfect in its place.

Further, be it noted that, whether it be deliverance in mount Zion and Jerusalem (Joel 2), whether it be judgment of the Gentiles in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3), with both we find wonders displayed in the heavens, and in the earth blood and fire and pillars of smoke: the sun turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come. Nothing of the kind is ever connected in scripture with the catching up of the church, whose only sign is the descent of the Lord Jesus to summon her into His presence in the air. His descent, and her consequent rapture, are nowhere described as events which the world is to behold. To them that look for Him, Christ appears, but to none else, so far as scripture shows, until He is revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ {2 Thess. 1: 7}. His public revelation, in order to judge, is called "the day of the Lord," "the appearing," etc.; and it is certain that many signs will precede that day, and manifestation to every eye. The apostasy must be ripe, and the Lawless One manifested without hindrance; and the great tribulation out of which comes the innumerable Gentile multitude of Rev. 7, as well as the future unparalleled tribulation in Judea.

Outward signs precede. But this is not all. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24: 29-31).

But I would not dwell further upon these points of contrast, only praying that we may remember, day by day, that our place, the church's only right and befitting place, is to wait for Christ from heaven. It is not judgments that we expect to be in; it is not the hour of temptation we have to await and dread (Rev. 3: 10), for we shall be kept out of it in the grace of Christ. Our business is to wait, as a heavenly bride, for our heavenly Bridegroom. Those who link the church with earthly circumstances will be misled in their ways now, and at times pass on miserably disappointed. Not so the hearts which the Spirit directs, animates, and sustains in the longing cry, Come, Lord Jesus. May it be so with us, beloved, increasingly as the moment, unknown to us, draws nearer! Amen.

Appendix C:

Remarks on 1 and 2 Thessalonians

Connected with the Revelation As further evidence of the immense importance of rightly seizing the christian hope, not only for the soul's fellowship with the Lord but for the due intelligence of prophecy, I present to the reader two letters I had from the late Mr. E. B. Elliott in 1851. From them it is plain enough how very defective were his views, not merely in detail but fundamentally; yet was he the acknowledged leader of the Protestant {historicalist} school in our day. But the reader will judge for himself, perusing first the paper which was given him to read, and his remarks with my comment; for I regret that I am unable to furnish the answers sent at the time.

There are few simple-minded Christians who, in searching into the prophetic word, have not felt the difficulty of reconciling the undoubtedly normal posture of the church in daily waiting for Jesus with the long train of successive events presented in the Revelation. The principle, if not the measure, of the difficulty is the same, whether you understand the Revelation to be fulfilled in a brief eventful crisis, or to extend over a course of many hundred years. In either way, I cannot truthfully expect Jesus from heaven from day to day if I am looking out for a series of numerous, and some of them unprecedented, and all of them solemn, incidents to occur on earth, the gradual and accumulative evidence of His approach.

But it is certain that in the apostolic times, when the grace of God was proclaimed in its real power and freshness, when His word was most prized and best understood, and when it produced its loveliest effects, the saints were habitually expecting Jesus to come. In Him they had redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, and they knew it. They were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise {Eph. 1: 13}. Were they therefore satisfied? Was not the Spirit Himself, blessed divine Comforter though He be, yet was not He the earnest of still greater blessings? Doubtless they received Him as the Spirit of sonship, and not as a spirit of bondage unto fear (Rom. 8); but, instead of His leading them into rest and contentedness here below in the absence of Jesus, in the same chapter it is said: "Ourselves also, (besides the groaning creation) which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." It is the groaning of those who are justified by faith and have peace with God. It is the groaning of those who have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them, and bearing witness with their spirit that they are the children of God. It is the groaning of the adopted, earnestly yearning for the full results of adoption: of those who, because they have known God's grace in redemption forgiving their sins, look for more, for all, — for the redemption of the body in the actual presence of the Saviour, that they may be like Him and with Him for ever.

The aim, however, of these remarks is not to prove that the personal coming of the Lord was the hope of the church — proofs easily found elsewhere. My desire is rather to convince those who know what is and was meant to be the hope of the church, that God by no concurrent or subsequent revelation ever interfered with the practical power of that hope. That He might give fuller details as to the growing iniquity of man, of the Jew and especially of the outward professing body, and as to His own judgments upon each before the millennial reign; that He might describe in greater minuteness the circumstances of that reign and the events that succeed it, is not only possible but that which He has done. But that He, on this or any other theme, corrects in one part of His word what is affirmed in another, is that which every Christian ought surely to repudiate from the bottom of his soul, in whatever modified form it may be insinuated.

The word of our God needs no apologies from man. Unhesitatingly believed, every part of it will be found to be perfectly true, though (from the narrowness and imperfection of our apprehension) patient waiting on God is necessary to avoid the systematizing of the human intellect, and to discover in what order God puts things together. Haste in deciding such questions only leads to forcing scripture, which will not yield; and hence the danger of framing one-sided hypotheses, which are only tenable by shutting the eye to the plainest scripture which contradicts them as hypotheses, though there may be elements of truth in them.

To apply this to the matter in hand, it is undeniable that the apostle Paul (to say nothing of others) invariably speaks of the coming of the Lord to take the church to Himself as that which might be at any moment, however Jesus might tarry; but no necessary detention — no chain of occurrences involving a period virtually — no certain lapse of time — is ever presented to the church as keeping Him in heaven. On the contrary, if he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15), it is: "Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Admitting that "we" is a representative word, not the persons addressed merely but those standing in the same privileges: still, will any one say that the apostle or the Corinthian saints knew that the moment would be deferred till they had fallen asleep? Was it not calculated, beyond all cavil, to keep them in simple constant expectancy of the Lord? And the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 1), who were trained, from their birth to God, in looking for their Deliverer, were they mistaken enthusiasts? Or did not the blessed work of the Spirit in their case consist in turning them from idols, not only to serve the living and true God, but to wait for His Son from heaven? Did that wise and faithful servant, who knew what it was to mingle the service of a nurse with the affectionate care of a father — did he consider that blessed hope to be unsuited food for such babes? So far from it, that when he writes to them supplying some things that were lacking, the Holy Ghost impresses this great doctrine in so repeated and different modes as to demonstrate how cardinal a truth it is in the mind of God, and how influential as regards the walk and communion of His saints. It ramifies both epistles, being not only found at least once in every chapter, but in some chapters occupying the most conspicuous place. (See 1 Thess. 1: 3, 10; 1 Thess. 2: 19, 20; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 1 Thess. 4: 13-18; 1 Thess. 5: 1-10, 23, 24; 2 Thess. 1: 5-10; 2 Thess. 2: 1-12; 2 Thess. 3: 5.) They had rejoiced in this hope of our Lord Jesus Christ from their earliest christian career; they had patiently continued it through the Spirit, and the blessedness of such patience was sweet to the absent apostle, even as their work of faith and labour of love. True, they needed further light as to its circumstances, and the Lord granted it. So immediately were they awaiting the Lord, that the decease of some of their number plunged them into sorrow — not, I apprehend, that they for a moment doubted of the salvation of those who were gone. No one knowing the gospel in word only (much less knowing it in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as it came to them,) could have such a doubt. But they feared that death had severed their departed brethren from the glorious hope they had so brightly burning before them, of being caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. They were gone — doubtless were happy; but would they not be absent from that crowning joy for which they themselves were waiting? Here was the place, if they had been mistaken in so waiting, to have corrected it. Here was the place for the apostle to say: We have been all wrong in living with our eyes heavenward till the Son of God comes to take us to Himself. He is not coming soon. We need not expect Him, for many ages must expire before He comes. Besides He has already given you some, and He now adds more signs of His advent. You have not seen these signs yet. You must wait for them, and not for His Son. But there is the exact reverse. The Holy Spirit deliberately keeps them in the same attitude of waiting which He had previously wrought, and sanctioned in them, though He gives them a comfort of which they were ignorant as to their brethren who had been put to sleep by Jesus. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [that is, go before] them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

But it may be said, If the Holy Ghost did not here correct the excited notions of the Thessalonians, He did in the second chapter of the second epistle. I answer that the true question is, Does the Holy Ghost correct Himself? He may supply that which is suited to correct the undue sorrow of the believers in one epistle, or their fears in another epistle; but I insist upon it in the strongest manner, that, if the church is set in the position of waiting for Christ's coming in one part of scripture, no other part can possibly alter such a position. It is necessarily right, whatever increase of instruction may be given. Let us only be well assured in the perfectness of every word of God, and we shall soon see how little the passage warrants the notion that the apostle Paul, in the second epistle, dissuades them from expecting Him, whom the first epistle had confirmed them in expecting.

In the first place, it is generally assumed that the day of Christ (or "of the Lord," for this is the true reading ) is identical with "the coming (παρουσία, presence) of our Lord Jesus Christ" in the verse before {2 Thess. 2: 1, 2} But it is a groundless idea. If it be affirmed, let proofs be adduced. It is quite clear to me that the day of the Lord is a distinct though connected thing. In its full, ultimate sense, and no one disputes that such is its force here, it supposes the presence of the Lord; it is the judgment consequent upon that. But the presence, or the coming of the Lord, by no means necessarily supposes judgment. Is there a word of judgment, or wrath, or destruction, expressed or implied in the full description given in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's coming for His own? So when the apostle says, "what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy" (1 Thess. 2: 19, 20). Where is the word of judgment on evil? On the other hand, when the day of the Lord occurs, it is, whether used in a full or limited application, habitually connected with judgment and its consequences (compare 1 Thess. 5: 24; Zeph. 1-3; Zech. 14; Mal. 3, 4). I conclude therefore that, though the coming of the Lord may include the day of the Lord, as the whole includes a part, the coming of the Lord {1 Thess. 4: 15-18; 2 Thess. 2: 1; etc.} is in itself presented in an aspect of grace, not of judgment, and that the terms and things are not be confounded.

In the second place, while it is true that the day of the LORD cannot come before the apostasy and the revelation of the man of sin arrive {2 Thess. 2: 3}, which are to be judged in that day [of the Lord, at its beginning], yet is there a serious error in the English rendering of the last clause of 2 Thess. 2: 2, "is at hand." The word usually rendered "at hand," "near," or "nigh," is  ἐγγύς or  ἐνέστηκεν, as is known to scholars. The present word åç æ , on the other hand, is never so rendered in the New Testament, save in the passage before us. On the contrary, occurring several times, it is used invariably in a way which excludes the possibility of such a rendering (more especially when it is, as here, in the perfect tense). Let us briefly examine.

1. The first occurrence is in Rom. 8: 38. It is evident that here ἐνεστῶτα cannot mean things at hand. It is contrasted with  μέλλοντα, that is, "things to come." It signifies only and emphatically "things present," and is so rendered in the common Bible.

2. See the same words and the same contrast in 1 Cor. 3: 22.

3. Again, in 1 Cor. 7: 26, διὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν ἀνάγκην is properly translated "for the present distress." A distress not actually come, but only at hand or coming, would spoil the meaning.

4. The next is Gal. 4, "this present evil world," the only possible meaning of the word here. The next world, or age, will not be evil, and therefore "at hand" or "imminent" is shut out.

5. Compare also Heb.9: 9, εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα "for the time then present," not "at hand," which cannot be the true force. All these are instances of the same tense as 2 Thess. 2: 2.

6. The only other occurrence is 2 Tim. 3: 1, ἐνστήσονται, in the future middle. Here the English version renders it, "shall come." Still the meaning indubitably is not "shall be at hand," which could have no point, but "shall be present." To be impending merely was little: the grave thing was, that perilous times should be actually there in the last days. It may be concluded therefore, from an induction thus complete, that in all the other instances the Authorized Version is right, but in 2 Thess. 2: 2 it is wrong. It is not conceivable to uphold both; so that, if right in 2 Thess. 2: 2, the version must be wrong everywhere else. But we have seen, from the intrinsic meaning of the word, as well as from the sense imperatively demanded by the context, that in all the other cases the translators are justified. They are therefore mistaken here, and the proper rendering, in conformity with their own translation of the word in the same tense elsewhere, ought to be "as that the day of the Lord is present."

The Thessalonian saints had from the first known much affliction. They had notoriously suffered from their own countrymen, and this to such a degree that the apostle, in his earnest and watchful interest about them, sent Timothy to establish and to comfort them concerning their faith, that no man should be moved by these afflictions. They knew that "we are appointed thereunto." Nevertheless, they needed comfort. The apostle had warned them before, that "we should suffer tribulation, even as it came to pass, and ye know." "For this cause when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain." But Timothy brought good tidings of their faith and love, and the apostle could break out into thanks and joy for their sakes before God, and he lets them know it in his first epistle.

The tempter however was not to be discouraged nor diverted from his wiles. They had been already taught that the Lord Himself was to come, and the saints, sleeping or living, were all to be changed, and be caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so to be ever with Him. They also knew that the day of the Lord (or Jehovah) was one of destruction and terror, unlooked for by the world: "Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night" {1 Thess. 5: 2}. Accordingly he appears to have distracted the saints by the harassing statement that the day of the Lord was actually there {2 Thess. 2: 2}, thus seeking to rob them of all profit and joy in the persecutions and tribulations which they were then enduring. Nor let any think it strange, if, in a time of perplexity for the world and persecution of the church, the fears of saints might be wrought upon; particularly as they knew that the day of the Lord in the Old Testament by no means necessarily implies the personal presence of the Lord, though it looks onward to that anticipatively. (Compare, for instance, Isa. 13, where God's judgment of Babylon and the Chaldeans is so designated:) "Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty," etc. (See also Joel 1: 15; Joel 2: 1-11; Amos 5: 18, 20; Zeph. 1: 7, 14, 15, etc.)

In the second epistle, the Holy Ghost conveys the needed instruction. "We ourselves," says the apostle, "glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer; seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day" {2 Thess. 2: 4-9}. The time of retribution is not when Jesus comes {for us}, but when He is revealed. For though at His coming the church is caught up, there is nothing yet of a retributive character. It is favour, not a process of judgment. Whereas the revelation and the day of the Lord are, as is manifest, associated with judgment, and hence there is the public award of God then for the first time manifested to the world; "seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you, and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed." Doubtless there is a tribulation, and even the great tribulation, in the time of Antichrist, previous to the revelation of Jesus; as obviously there is rest to those who sleep in Jesus now, and there will be rest in a fuller sense when our bodies are changed, and we are caught up to be with Him. But both are wholly distinct from the divine retributive tribulation and the rest here spoken of. It is the day of punishment with everlasting destruction to the adversaries, as it is the day when Christ comes, not to present the faithful to Himself, nor to take them to mansions {abodes} in the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believed. For when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory {Col. 3: 4}. It is the public judicial dealing (not the hidden joy or blessedness before then, or afterwards), which here enters into the scene.

Next the apostle turns to the source of their agitation. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled." Assuredly, the consolation administered here is not that Christ's coming was a distant thing! Can it be that theologian upon theologian has desired to make of this fancied long and far-off absence of the Lord a balm for the tried and fearful? Can it be that the poor church has but too willingly sipped the cup, and, heedless of His words, cheers herself on the delirious career of worldliness and folly, and of faithlessness to Him? "Lord, how long?"

Not so the Thessalonians. Full well they knew that His coming was to end their sorrows and crown their joys. Under apostolic guidance they had looked, and the Holy Ghost had commended their looking, for Christ. Was it not the part of the evil servant to say in his heart, My Lord delayeth His coming? {Matt. 24: 48}. But Paul was a blessed faithful servant, and never says anything of the sort. He uses the fact of the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him as a comfort against the anxiety created by the idea that the day of the Lord was already arrived — nay more, as a proof that such an idea was false. His ground of entreaty is twofold. He urges a reason connected with the Lord and heaven, and a reason connected with earth and the man of sin. There must be our gathering above {2 Thess. 2: 1}, and the falling away below {2 Thess. 2: 3} In the first place the Lord was to come, and they were to be gathered together unto Him, in order that He and they might bring in the day and appear together from heaven. This had not taken place, and therefore they were not to be disturbed as if that day had come, or could come, previously. In the next place he presses the point that the evil must first be developed completely which that day is to judge. "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come the falling away (or the apostasy, αποστασία) first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth, and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or object of worship; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" {2 Thess. 2: 3, 4}. But the apostasy was not then come, nor the man of sin revealed, and therefore the day of the Lord, the day of vengeance upon these evils, is yet to come. "And now [if one may translate the apostle's word a little exactly] ye know what hindereth that he might be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that now hindereth till he be taken out of the way. And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the appearing of his coming" {2 Thess 2: 6-8}.

No! the Thessalonian believers were not mistaken in waiting for the Son of God. It is not wrong to believe that "the Lord is at hand," (ἐγγύς) as the apostle pressed upon the Philippians when drawing to the close of his career. It is not wrong to stablish our hearts because the coming of the Lord draweth nigh ἤγγικεν, James 5: 8). Nor does the language of the Spirit in the passage before us depict excitement from a too eager anticipation of this glorious event — alas! that Christians should suppose we could too earnestly desire it. The expressions in v. 2 denote fright and agitation. The enemy sought to instill the idea that the day, the judgment, was come, and that they were obnoxious to its terrors. Where then was their hope to be caught up to the Lord and to come along with Him? Would it have been sorrow and fear if Christ had come and they had been translated to meet Him in the air? Rather would it have been their chiefest joy, as it had been the object nearest their heart since their conversion. Their faith was growing exceedingly, and the love of every one of them all toward each other abounded; and, far from weakening that which he had already taught, the apostle prays for them in the last chapter of the second epistle, that the Lord would direct their heart into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. That is, he confirms them in their expectancy of the Lord.

But the deceiver had affrighted them, not of course by presenting the coming of the Lord as an imminent thing, which was what the Holy Ghost had done, and which is for the church a hope of unmingled comfort, but by the report that the day of the Lord was actually present — "a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness." The apostle had already told them (1 Thess. 5) that they were not in darkness, that that day should overtake them as a thief. The tempter disturbs and confounds them with the thought that, as a thief, it was really come upon them; using it would seem some false spirit, or word, or letter {2 Thess 2: 2}, to give to it the colour of the authority of Paul himself. And how does the apostle defend them from such assaults of others, and fears of their own? For, let it be repeated, it was not high-wrought feeling as though Christ were at hand, but terror arising from their giving heed to the false representation that the day of the Lord was present, and they in tribulation on earth, instead of being caught up to Jesus above. The apostle at once brings them back to the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him {2 Thess. 2: 1} as their ground of comfort and protection against the alarms of the day of Jehovah. As if he had said: the Lord Himself is coming, and you will be gathered to Him. When His day comes, you will be with Him. You are the children of the day: you will come along with it, for you will come with Him who ushers it in. You therefore need not be troubled; be rather in peace. That day is not come. You will go to meet Him whom the church knows as the bright, the morning star (Rev. 22: 16, compared with Rev. 2: 28); so that, when the day breaks and the Lord appears, you too will appear with Him in glory. You will introduce the day together — that day of retribution, when those who trouble you shall have trouble, and you, the troubled, shall have rest with us, when Jesus is revealed from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance.

In harmony with this, it is written in 2 Thess. 2: 8, that the lawless one will be destroyed, not simply by the coming of the Lord, but by a further step of it, by the appearing or manifestation of His coming. This scene is given at length in Rev. 19: 11-21, where the seer beholds, in the prospective vision, the heaven opened, and the rider, the Word of God, upon the white horse, issuing to judge and make war. "And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean" — the righteousnesses, not of angels, but of saints (compare Rev. 19: 8). The saints are already with Him. They follow Him out of heaven, as His army. Christ therefore must have come before this to take them to Himself, for they have been with Him in heaven and leave it together, preparatory to the battle with the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies. This then is not merely the coming of Christ. It is Christ appearing, and we with Him in glory. It is His revelation from heaven, taking vengeance. It is the day of the Lord, when sudden destruction comes. It is the shining forth of His presence, or the brightness of His coming, which destroys that lawless one.

Matt. 24: 23-31 falls in with this view: "For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." It is His coming in connection with His earthly rights. Rejected of this generation as the Christ, He comes as Son of man (in which capacity He is never presented as coming to take the church). "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." The elect, here gathered together by the angels of the Son of man from the four winds, are demonstrably not the church, because they are gathered subsequent to His appearing.

The church, on the other hand, had been translated before. For when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory {Col. 3: 4}. Our manifestation in glory cannot be after His manifestation. Christ and the church are manifested together. Hence the signs specified in this chapter {Matt. 24} are to elect Jewish disciples indices of His appearing. They are not to be regarded therefore as interfering with the posture of the church in continually waiting for the Lord from heaven. They are signs for a remnant in special relation with Judea, who will be awaiting the coming of the Son of man. No signs of this or of any other description were ever put before the church, as such, whereby to judge of the near approach of Christ to take her to Himself. On the contrary, what the Holy Ghost taught the church is, to a simple mind, inconsistent with such indications: she was to be expecting always because she knew not the moment of His coming. The apostle (1 John 2: 18) would have even the babes to know that it is the last time {hour}; and this, not from the spread of the Spirit of Christ, but from the presence of many antichrists. But, although they had heard that the antichrist should come, no signs to be seen, no evil to reach its climax, no specific tribulation, are ever put before them, as events necessarily retarding the coming of the Lord to take the church. For the bride, the one heavenly sign is the presence of the Bridegroom Himself. But for a converted remnant of Jews, of whom the Lord has graciously thought in the instructions of Matt. 24, there are signs which will be given before the coming of the Son of man.

Now it is precisely here that the Revelation affords so distinct a light, showing us the position of the church in heaven, Christ having come and taken her to Himself, and afterwards, during the interval of her absence in heaven before she appears along with Him, God's dealings, testimonies, judgments, and deliverances, on earth. The epistles give us simply the fact of the rapture of the church, but did not inform as to the length of the interval before the appearing and the kingdom. That such an interval existed might have been gathered; but whether long or short, or how filled up, does not appear in the epistles. The Revelation furnishes that which was lacking upon the subject and connects, without confounding, the church caught up to the Lord on high, with certain witnesses to be raised up during the closing term of the age on earth before He appears in judgment.

As for the relative bearings of the different portions of the New Testament, it may be said in general that the Gospels have a character peculiar to themselves. It is not certainly an exclusively Jewish condition, neither is it a proper church condition, but a gradual slide, in John more marked than in the others, from the one to the other. The Lord Jesus, rejected, was with His disciples here below. The Holy Ghost, who of course was then, as ever, the faith-giving quickening agent, was not yet given, that is, in any new unprecedented way, because that Jesus was not yet glorified {John 7: 39}. Hence the disciples, although possessing faith and eternal life (John 6: 35, 47, 68, 69), were not yet baptized by the Holy Ghost into one body (compare Acts 1: 5 with 1 Cor. 12: 13). In a word, the church was not yet built nor begun to be built: "Upon this rock," says the Lord, "I will build my church" (Matt. 16: 18).

But the Acts historically, and the epistles doctrinally, point to a different state of things as then existing: Jesus absent and glorified in heaven; the Holy Ghost present and dwelling on earth in the saints, who were hereby constituted the body, the church. Christ had taken His place as head of the body above, and the Holy Ghost sent down was gathering into oneness with Him there, into membership of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. Such is the mystery of Christ which it was emphatically given to the apostle Paul fully to make known. And as the Gospels may be regarded as the preparatory transition out of Jewish relations to the blessed elevation on which the church rests, the Revelation answers as the corresponding transition from the church one with Christ in heavenly places, by various steps or stages, down to those Jewish relations which for a time dropped out of sight in consequence of the calling of the heavenly body.

The doctrine of the church is clearly at the root the ONE HOPE, which is found in the intermediate part of the New Testament. For along with the truth of the peculiar calling of the church, as the body commenced by the descent and indwelling of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and thenceforward guided and perpetuated by Him — along with this truth, it will be found that the peculiar aspect of the coming of the Lord, for which I have contended, stands or falls. None of the school of interpreters commonly called "the Protestant school" {historicalists} understood by the church anything more, at best, than the Augustinian notion of an invisible company from the beginning to the end of time. None of them therefore has an adequate idea of the new and heavenly work which God began at Pentecost by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The consequence is that, if they read of saints in Daniel, in the Psalms, or in the Revelation, they are at once set down as of the church. If they read of "this gospel of the kingdom" in Matt. 24, or of "the everlasting gospel," — it is to their minds the same thing as what Paul calls "my gospel," the gospel of the grace of God preached now. Hence follows, and quite fairly too, a denial of any specialty in the walk and conversation of the saints since Pentecost, and a general Judaizing in doctrine, standing, conduct and hopes. It is also a simple and natural result of this, that all Protestant interpreters [historicalists], if they admit a personal advent at all to introduce the millennial reign, present as the hope of the church that which is, in fact, the proper expectation of the converted Jewish remnant, namely, the day of Jehovah, the Son of man, seen by all the tribes of the earth, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Nor is the truth of the church unknown to the Protestant interpreters only; it is equally an object of dislike to many of the Futurist school. And it is my conviction that the two baleful heresies which have brought such shame upon the revival of prophetic study towards the beginning and the close of the last twenty years, are intimately connected with the rejection of this grand truth. For an error touching the church cannot but affect Him whose personal presence is what is so essential to it; and that which dishonours the Spirit goes far, in the long run, to disfigure or deny the person and work of Him of whom the Spirit is the vicar.

In the epistles, it is beyond doubt that the church is continually addressed, as if there were no understood, and fixed or necessary, hindrances to the rapture at the coming of the Lord. How could this be if the church be the same body as those saints who are described in Daniel, the Psalms, etc., as being destined to certain fiery trials still future from a little horn and his satellites who are yet to appear? How comes it that the apostle Paul, when he speaks of the coming of the Lord, never hints at this tribulation, as one through which the church must pass; but always presents the advent as an immediate thing which might occur from one unknown moment to another? That the apostle Paul understood the just application of these prophecies, better than any since his day, is that which few Christians will question: they were scriptures long revealed and familiar to Jews; and the Lord Jesus, in Matt. 24, had very significantly linked His fresh revelations upon that occasion with the predictions of Daniel. Yet the Holy Ghost, in His constant allusions in the writings of the apostles to the anticipations of the church, never once refers to these terrible circumstances as a future scene wherein the church is to enact a part: on the contrary, the way in which the coming of the Lord is put before the church, as a thing to be constantly looked for, seems incompatible with it. We have examined the only statement in the epistles which might appear to interpose such a barrier, and we have seen that, so far from contradicting the thought of immediateness, the apostle seeks to relieve the Thessalonian saints from all uneasiness about the day of the Lord and its troubles, by the blessed hope of His coming and their gathering unto Him, which are in his mind indissolubly bound together: a gathering unto Him which must be before He appears to the world, and judges it, because He and they are to appear together. It is certain, moreover, that there must arrive the apostasy and the revelation of the man of sin (not before the coming, but) before the day of the Lord.

The prophecy of Daniel had already revealed the leading features of the interval during which "the prince that shall come" plays his terrible role. "And he shall confirm a covenant" (see margin and compare Isa. 28: 14) "with the many" (that is, of Daniel's people, the Jews) for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations there shall be one desolating, even until the consummation" (or consumption, as in Isa. 28: 22), "and that determined, shall be poured upon the desolate" (Dan. 9: 27). That this prince is not "the Messiah the prince" is manifest, not only from the fact that the former is described as one "that shall come," after the latter has already come and been cut off, as is plain from verse 26, but also from the certainty that "the prince that shall come" is the prince of the Roman people: his people "shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." We know who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple — the people of this future prince. The latter part of verse 26 does not continue the thread of the history, further than the general expressions "and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." In the last verse we are transported to the epoch of "the prince that shall come," and his actings during the last week of the age. This period is shown to be broken into two parts, during the former of which, according to covenant, Jewish worship is resumed, but "in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease."

If Dan. 7 be consulted, it will be seen that there is a certain little horn rising after the ten horns of the fourth Roman beast, before whom three of the first horns fell — "that horn that had eyes and a mouth, that spoke very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows" (v. 20). "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High [or of the high places] and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time" (v. 25). Is it not evident that in Dan. 7 is a horn or king whose blasphemous pride brings judgment upon the beast, or Roman empire, and whose interference with times and laws, that is, with Jewish ceremonial order, continues for three years and a half? and that for the same space of time, or the last half week, "the prince that shall come," the Roman prince of Dan. 9, overthrows this ceremonial worship?

But the Revelation not only takes up the last half of Daniel's week (Rev. 11-13) but shows what is the place of the church during this period — a truth which it was not given to the Jewish prophet to reveal, because it was that which supposed and fitly followed the revelation of the mystery hidden from ages and from generations. Paul had shown us the church waiting for the presence of the Lord. What is it that the Holy Ghost adds by John? What is the great outline given in the Revelation?

After the vision of the Lord Jesus, in Rev. 1, we have "the things that are," epistles to the seven churches {Rev. 2 and 3}, so conveyed as to apply not only at that time but as long as the church subsists on earth, and then the properly prophetic part, the things which should be after the church-condition had passed away. Throughout the prophetic portion of the book the church is never described as being on earth. At the close of Rev. 3, it altogether disappears from earthly view; and, instead of its course being any longer traced here below, a door is opened in heaven and the prophet is called up to see the things which must come to pass after these, that is, after the things which are, or the church regarded in the completeness of its varying phases on earth. Besides other things (the throne and One that sat upon it being the centre of the vision), John sees, not seven candlesticks, but, suited to the new circumstances of heaven, four and twenty thrones, and upon them four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment and upon their heads golden crowns {Rev. 4}.

Here we have, in vision, the place and functions of the church after it shall have been taken up to meet the Lord, and before its manifestation with Him in glory. And for this simple reason, that the way in which He and they are here represented emblematically is totally different from what is revealed as connected with either, when the moment comes to leave heaven, for the purpose of judgment upon the beast, etc.; or from what is revealed touching the reign for a thousand years subsequent to that judgment: that is, in Rev. 19: 11 and 20: 4-6. Nor can the scene in Rev. 4, 5 be interpreted consistently with any view, save that of the church being actually caught up and completed in the presence of God. It is quite a distinct thing from our sitting in heavenly places in Christ {Eph. 2: 6}: this is the subject of the epistle to the Ephesians. Neither is it the same thing as the boldness which the partakers of the heavenly calling {Heb. 3: 1} have even now to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh. Such is the subject of the epistle to the Hebrews, where the high-priesthood of Jesus is dwelt on at length, and the liberty which we have in consequence to draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith; for it is still faith, and not actual possession, however it may be, through the power of the Holy Ghost, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The purpose of Revelation is to disclose the dealings of God, whether the facts be expressed or understood, but dealings which involve a certain condition of things, which was future if considered in relation to the circumstances looked at in the epistles, as actually subsisting at the time — the things in short which must be after these. Nor can this chapter {Rev. 4} be supposed to describe the blessedness of the spirits of the saints previous to the coming of Christ for the church, because the departed who are with Christ could not be symbolized by twenty-four elders; that is, by an image evidently borrowed from the full courses of Jewish priesthood. The whole church, and not a part only, is comprehended in the symbol. But this can only be after the dead in Christ rise first, then we which are alive and remain, are caught up together with them in the clouds, and so are ever with the Lord. Accordingly here they are represented in heaven, the Lord being also there, and although made kings and priests even when on earth, still the time is not yet come for the exercise of government. In beautiful harmony, therefore, with this peculiar and transitional period during which they are removed from the world, they worship above. But the saints below are not forgotten. Those above have golden harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sing a new song, celebrating the worthiness of the Lamb to take the book and open the seals, not only because He was slain and had redeemed themselves, but had made them, that is, these saints, to their God, kings and priests. They should reign over the earth. The fulfillment is seen in Rev. 20: 4-6: the reigning with Christ not merely of those symbolized by the elders, but of the Apocalyptic saints also.

Moreover, it is clear on the one hand, that the lightnings and thunderings suit neither the day of grace nor the millennial state. Earth is certainly not yet brought under the power of the blood of Christ, when these symbols will find their accomplishment. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are saints on earth, while the twenty-four elders are before the throne above. That is, it is neither the millennial nor the present state; but an intermediate period of peculiar nature, in which we have the throne, not of grace as now, nor of displayed glory as by-and-by, but clothed with what has been justly termed a Sinai character of awful majesty attached to it.

But those above exercise their priesthood in the presence of God as the full completed church. Hence the symbol of twenty-four elders round the throne, at a time when, as all confess, earth is still unreconciled, however there may be, in the next chapter, the anticipative song of every creature. If this be true, it follows that the Lord's coming to meet the saints takes place between Rev. 3 and 4 (if the thought be pursued, which I doubt not, that chapters 6-19 will be fulfilled in a rapid crisis), room being left there for the coming described in 1 Thess. 4 and elsewhere. Then the main action of the book goes on subsequently to the removal of the church, and after this another character of testimony from that of the church properly is announced, and God Himself is revealed in ways different from those which He is displaying now; that is to say, not as showing the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, but in the chastening judgments of the seals, trumpets, and vials, preparatory to the great day of the Lord which Rev. 19: 11 ushers in. On this state of things Daniel compared with the Revelation will be found to cast and to receive much light, for it seems plain that the saints of the Most High, or heavenlies, of whom we read in Daniel 7, identify themselves with the saints who suffer under the beast, after the rapture of the church and, before the Lord's appearing. They keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, which, be it noted, is the spirit of prophecy, and though they are not of the twenty-four elders, they will have their blessed and holy part in the first resurrection. And here let it be remarked, that the term has nothing to do with the question whether all are raised at the same time; it simply describes the condition of those who rise and reign during the thousand years, as distinguished from those who do not rise till that period is ended. How true this is, is manifest from the fact that Christ has part in the first resurrection, who nevertheless rose before the church more than eighteen hundred years {ago} at least. Hence the thought is not forbidden of certain saints being raised who stand and suffer after the church is gone.

The symbol of the twenty-four elders continues unchanged throughout the course of the book, till Rev. 19. They enter into God's ways and judgments, as interested in whatever affected His glory, as may be seen in Rev. 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 19.

But in Rev. 19 there is a striking change. After the opening scene of the rejoicings over Babylon the elders no longer appear, but the time for the marriage being come (and how evidently the church therefore is still viewed in the Revelation as unmarried), the bride, the Lamb's wife is announced as made ready.

The heavenly joy and the Bridegroom and His bride being thus incidentally glanced at, He takes a new aspect, for the day is about to break upon the world; and so do we, for we will have gone long before to be ever with the Lord, and if He is about to appear, so are we along with Him in glory. Hence, in Rev. 19: 11, the prophet sees heaven opened, and a white horse, and He that sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. In unison, therefore, as He thus comes to smite and rule, the armies which are in heaven follow the Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called and chosen and faithful, which expressions are sufficiently clear to determine who are meant by the armies, if any one should have a doubt. It is the church which was in heaven following Christ in the capacity of His hosts, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. Contrasted with the marriage supper of the Lamb, all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven are invited to the great supper of God. The prophet sees the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and His army. The result all know.

Next follows the angelic binding of the dragon for a thousand years, and the parenthetic revelation of the sitting on thrones, or at least, of the living and reigning with Christ during that period, of such as had part in the first resurrection. They will not cease to be priests of God, though their office may be discharged in a different way from what we saw as to some of them in Rev. 4 and 5, but they all reign with Christ for a thousand years {Rev. 20}.

It is a prominent feature of the book, that in it is traced the sovereignty of God, not only in His purposes regarding the church properly so called, but in His gracious ways with an election from among Jews and Gentiles subsequently. Thus, after the church is seen in its completeness in heaven, under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned elders (Rev. 4, 5), we hear in Rev. 6: 9-11 of saints suffering, yet crying for vengeance; and the announcement to them that they should rest yet for a little, until their fellow-servants and brethren, doomed to be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Vengeance should not arrive till then. These are evidently not the church, but saints on earth after the church is in heaven, whose sufferings and cries to the Lord accord much with the experience detailed in the Psalms. Still, whether Jewish or Gentile, they are not named here.

But in Rev. 7 we have distinctly brought before us a numbered company out of all the tribes of Israel sealed with the seal of the living God, and after this an innumerable multitude out of all nations, etc., who are characterized as coming out of the great tribulation, and as having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. These bodies are evidently distinguished from, if not contrasted with, each other: and they are still more markedly shown to be different from the church; for we have the facts not only of a certain defined tribulation out of which these said Gentiles come, but of the elders, that is, the confessed symbol of the glorified being still represented as a separate party in the scene (ver. 11).

Under the trumpets again we find the prayers of saints alluded to, who are of course supposed to still be on earth (compare Rev. 8: 3, 4, with Rev. 5: 8), and an implication of the sealed Jewish remnant being in the sphere, though saved from the effects of the fifth trumpet (Rev. 9: 4).

In Rev. 11 are seen the two witnesses, prophesying in sackcloth, and killed. In Rev. 12 the woman is persecuted by the dragon, who wars with the remnant of her seed that keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, which is accomplished in the beast of Rev. 13 who makes war with the saints and overcomes them.

Rev. 14 is clearly a sevenfold sketch of the dealings of God, which brings the crisis to a conclusion: the hundred forty and four thousand associated with the Lamb on Mount Sion; the everlasting gospel summoning all to fear and worship God because of the proximity of His judgment; the fall of Babylon; the declaration of torment to the bestial worshipers; the blessedness from henceforth of those dying in the Lord: the harvest of the earth, out of which were redeemed the one hundred and forty-four thousand, as the firstfruits unto God and the Lamb; and lastly, the vintage of the earth. The reader has only to weigh verses 12, 13, in order to have the foregoing remarks confirmed. Even here we have the patience of saints described just before the harvest; the portion, too, not of the church (for we shall not all sleep), but of a special class of saints here below, while the church is hidden above.

In Rev. 15 (preparatory to Rev. 16, that is, the seven outpoured bowls of the wrath of God), is heard the song of the conquerors of the beast, celebrating the works of the Lord God Almighty and the ways of the King of nations. Compare also Rev. 16: 5, 6, 15; Rev. 17: 6; Rev. 18: 4-6. To those who kept the word of Christ's patience (Rev. 3: 10) the promise was to be kept (not in or during, but) out of the hour of trial, out of that fearful tribulation which is in store for the dwellers upon earth.

In the preceding scriptures it is clear that after Christ has fulfilled His promise in the translation of the church to heaven, there are saints on earth, both from among Jews and Gentiles who suffer throughout the tribulation. And these Apocalyptic sufferers are described in Rev. 20: 4, as having part, equally with the church, in the first resurrection. For that text discloses first, the general place of the glorified in the millennial reign, "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them"; secondly, those killed in the earlier persecutions of the book (Rev 6: 9-11), "And I saw the souls of those that were beheaded because of the witness of Jesus, and because of the word of God"; and thirdly, the later witnesses for God, "and those who had not worshipped the beast," etc. (Rev. 15: 2). Those saints who were called and suffered after the rapture of the glorified, are emphatically mentioned, because it might have appeared that they had lost all by their death. Not members of Christ's body before He comes for the church, they share not in the rapture; not protected from death during the prevalence of the beast, they cannot be the living nucleus of Jews or of Gentiles, saved to be the holy seed on earth during the reign of Christ. They suffer, are cut off, but are not forgotten. "They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

Thus the truth brought to light in the epistles to the Thessalonians, is assumed in the view which the apostle John was the honoured servant to enunciate, namely, the blessed condition and holy employ of the church round the throne and the Lamb, after the removal from earth, but previous to the appearing with Christ in glory.

The central part of the Revelation then appears to corroborate on an irrefragable basis, the truth that the church will be taken away and fulfil the symbols we have been noticing, previous to the day of the Lord, during the same time that other saints are still groaning and shedding their blood like water here below (Ps. 74, 79).

Such seems to be the main key which unlocks an important portion of the book and confirms the view, so sweet to the renewed mind, of going to meet the Lord without one earthly obstacle between: keeping unblunted the point and energy of a truth only revealed in the New Testament. For the Old Testament spoke of His coming with all His saints, not for them; of His appearing in glory to the confusion of His enemies, and not of His descending to meet His friends, when we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed and caught up together in the clouds. And hence it would seem, the emphatic language of the apostle, conscious that God was by him revealing a new thing to faith. For in 1 Cor. 15 he says, "Behold I show you a mystery"; and in 1 Thess. 4, "This we say unto you by the word of the Lord."

How sweetly do the closing appeals tell upon the heart of him who has an ear to hear! "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come." It would be to lose the blessedness of keeping the prophetic sayings of this book, to have any other thought than that Jesus is coming quickly (Rev. 22: 7). It is well to read in their light the signs of the times: knowing the closure, we can thus detect the principles now at work. But it is a mistake and a misuse to construe of such signs obstacles to the coming of the Lord: to say, until I know the arrival of this or that precursor, I cannot in my heart expect Jesus. Blessed be God! such is not the language of the Spirit. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." Are these the words of mere feeling, unguided by spiritual understanding of the mind of God? As a fact, we know that the Lord has delayed; but He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But who will say that it is conceivable to be looking for the Lord, wholly uncertain of the time of His advent, and at the same time have the revealed certainty of a number of events which determine the year, or, it may be, the day?

That Jesus will arise, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His wings (Mal. 4), is clear, and we know that the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13). But this same Jesus is more than the supreme power of righteous government on earth. He is known to the church, at any rate, as the bright and morning Star. Blessed light of grace, ere the day breaks, to those who watch for Him from heaven during the dark and lonely night! "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come."

"He that testifieth these things saith, Yea, I am coming quickly. Amen! come, Lord Jesus." Here are the letters with remarks on each:

[Letter I., Sept. 1, 1851.

Dear Mr. Kelly,

I have read your paper on 2 Thessalonians 2. I cannot but think that it would be advisable to express your views more simply and plainly for uninitiated readers like myself. If I rightly understand you, the sum and substance of your view and argument is to the effect following: — The Thessalonian Christians could not be distressed or affrighted at the thought of their Lord's coming being at hand. It was the chief object of their hope. Nor does the passage in question imply anything of the kind. First, "the day of the Lord," spoken of in it as ἐνεστως, is not identical in sense with the παρουσία, or coming of the Lord, spoken of in the verse preceding, being only that part of the era of His coming which is devoted to judgment, a previous epoch and act of it being that of His gathering of His saints to Himself. Secondly, ἐνεστηκεν does not mean, and may not be explained in the sense of being near, or at hand, but only in the sense it bears elsewhere, of being actually present. Hence, and from these two premises, it is to be inferred that the trouble of the Thessalonian Christians arose out of the idea of the latter part of the era of His coming, that of judgment, having come, and consequently of their having not had part in the previous gathering of His saints to Him.

Supposing this to be your meaning, it of course follows that they thought St. Paul, as well as themselves, to have been similarly overlooked by Christ, and left to the trials of the judgment-day. Is this credible? Is it not enough of itself to set aside the interpretation?

But what, then, of the ἐνεστηκεν? Is not its proper meaning, "is present."? No doubt, just as παρεστι, and such similar words, mean "is present." But they are words which, in every language that I am acquainted with, are susceptible, if the context requires it, of the meaning, close at hand. I have little doubt that my friend, Mr. Kelly, when looking out from some height in Guernsey [where we both of us were at the time of the correspondence] for the steamer, in which he was expecting a friend, has sometimes, when he saw her steering into port, made use of the common exclamation, "Here she is!" And what would he have thought, had a friend who heard him looked carefully at every part of the ground within twenty yards of the speaker, and said, "She is not here?" "The Master is here" (παρεστιν), said Martha to Mary, in John 11: 28; and yet, adds verse 30, "Now Jesus had not yet come into the village," that is, the village where Martha spoke to Mary.

Thus our translators seem to me to have been perfectly right in translating the word ἐνεστηκεν as they have in 2 Thessalonians 2: 9, the day of the Lord there spoken of being clearly that epoch of time which would be marked by two grand events — one of mercy, one of judgment, the gathering of saints to Himself, and the destruction of the man of sin — as may undoubtingly be inferred from comparison of verses 8 and 1.

As to the words, σαλευθηναι ἀπο του νοος and θρεισθαι, they are surely most naturally to be explained, not as meaning "frightened," but of that agitation of mind and feeling which would indispose them to the calm and proper discharge of the common duties of life. Compare, in Matthew 24: 6, the μη θροεισθe. I see nothing whatsoever in this inconsistent with the looking unto the coming of the Son of God. And I am sure I should feel somewhat of its indisposing effect to the common routine of daily duty, had I the fixed persuasion that the Lord had appointed to take me to Himself on the morrow of the present day, whether by the stroke of death, or by His own personal advent.

Yours very faithfully,

E. B. Elliot.]

Is it not singular that a paper which many comparatively unlettered Christians have found clear and helpful should have been unintelligible to, and misunderstood by, a man of Mr. E.'s caliber and attainments? Why was this? In my opinion his own erroneous system of thought, along with the lack of the habit of expecting in the word of God perfect accuracy and nice shades of difference, apparently made not the style only but the subject and the evidence difficult to his mind. It is well to note this, the blinding effect of error, even on a saint, as I do not doubt my friend was. How many suffer thus, as little as he suspecting the true cause!

If the words of the apostle in the text most under examination are to be accepted simply and fully, it is certain that the source of agitation and trouble for the Thessalonian brethren, alleged by the Holy Spirit, was the statement, imputed to the apostle himself, not that the Lord's coming was at hand, but that His day was actually there. This is as unequivocally the sense of the apostle's very precise language, as it is the certain truth of God. He is not conjuring them by that concerning which he was about to teach them, but, on the contrary, he entreats them, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him (which he presents, not as two distinct objects, but as a united idea before the mind by the one article, τῆς), that they should not be soon shaken in mind ("from their mind" may be literal, but is not idiomatic English), nor yet troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as by us [that is, as if it were by us], as [or to the effect] that the day of the Lord is present. That is, he entreats them, by or for the sake of our blessed hope in Christ, who will gather us to Himself on high, that they should not be soon disturbed, or thrown off their balance, nor yet alarmed by the report, falsely attributed to him and a higher than him, that the day of the Lord, the day of judgment for man and the earth, was actually come.

This I believe to be the only possible sense of the verses, which also maintains the force of each clause and word as precisely as it exhibits a wise and worthy aim in the sentence as a whole. Mr. Elliott's view confounds that hope by which Paul is beseeching the brethren with the dread scene of judgment, which had been misrepresented and misunderstood as {if it had} already arrived. The true view sustains the Authorized Version of ὑπέρ, "by," which is not only grammatically tenable but exegetically demanded here, if not elsewhere, in the New Testament. It was not the παρουσία but the ἡμέρα τοῦ κυρίου, which had been misused; and the comfort of the Lord's coming is employed as a motive and means for counteracting the uneasiness created by the false representation that the day was there.

No doubt the preposition may, and does often, mean, "in regard to," or "on behalf of," a little stronger than περί. But the question is the meaning of ἡπέρ, neither in itself, nor in other constructions, but with such words of entreaty as ἐρωτάω as distinguished from ἐρωτάω περί, where the sense of "in the place of," or "instead of," is excluded, as here. To me it appears that the precise meaning of ἐρ. ὑπέρ, in such a case as the present, can only be "by reason of," or briefly "by,"' and, if motive be made more prominent, "for the sake of," or briefly "for."

Now the apostle had been setting out in 2 Thess. 1 that retributive hour of God's righteous judgment, when He will render tribulation to those that trouble the saints, and to the troubled saints repose at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of His power, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that know not God, and on those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. It is His coming, not to receive the saints, and present them to the Father in His house above, but to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believed in that day. It is, beyond question, that day of ever-lasting destruction from the Lord's presence and the glory of His might, the day of the Lord, which was said (on the Spirit's warrant, and not a revelation only, but a pretended Pauline epistle) to have even then set in {arrived}, so that the saints in Thessalonica were shaken in mind (which is the true English idiom, as ἀπὸ τοὺ νοός  is the Greek), and troubled. Clearly therefore the contradistinction comes out more and more plainly. It was not the excitement of a premature hope, but the agitation and fear produced by the rumour, and on quasi-apostolic authority too, that that terrible day had really begun. The apostle beseeches them, by the comfortable hope of the one, not to be soon shaken and troubled by the false cry that the other, the day of judgment on the quick {the living}, was come.

Mr. E. reasons against his supposed necessary but inadmissible consequence, that the Thessalonians must in such a case have thought that they, and Paul too, had been left behind by Christ at the first act of His coming, and exposed to the horrors of the second. But it is entirely a mistake, and his own solely. The Thessalonians had no adequate light up to this second epistle on the relative order of these events. From 1 Thess. they knew of Christ's coming (1 Thess. 4), and of the day (1 Thess. 5); but they may, till they got the second epistle, have thought, as so many Christians do even in our day, and did in all ages, that the tribulation of the last times precedes the translation of the saints, and that His day therefore accompanies, if it too does not precede, His coming. Even Bengel affirms the whimsical idea, refuted by this very chapter, that the appearing of our Lord's coming may happen before His coming itself. Now the nature of the thing, as well as its accompaniments, bear a testimony exactly opposed. For the Lord might come without appearing to every eye, but He could not appear without coming. Just so we read in the first verse of this chapter that He will come and gather unto Himself the saints; whereas it is not His coming, but the revelation or appearing of His coming, which is to destroy the lawless one or man of sin. Such is the true moral order, and proved by other scriptures also, as Rev. 17: 14; 19: 14. He first receives His own, His friends, to Himself by His coming or παρουσία; He afterwards executes judgment on His enemies by the appearance of His coming, τῃ ἐπιφανείᾳ τῆς παρουσίας αὐτοῦ. The glorified saints are with Him when He brings in the day, following Him out of heaven as His hosts or armies (Rev. 19: 14), before the judgment of the beast and the false prophet, instead of being caught up coincidently with it or after it. Hence, when Christ our life is manifested, it is written that then shall we also be manifested with Him in glory {Col. 3: 4} (not translated to heaven then or subsequently).

Plainly then the Thessalonians had not the least suspicion that Christ had come and taken up the apostle or any one else, nor is this at all the delusion which the apostle is refuting, but what was not at all unnatural for any like them ignorant of the mutual relation of His coming and His day. They feared that that day of darkness and clouds had dawned; and the agitating influence of this the false teachers sought to bring on their souls, availing themselves of a pretended communication of the apostle. We can readily understand that the Christians then were troubled by a panic which has often repeated itself since, even to our own day. One sees in the Old Testament the judgment of a city or land (as in Isa. 13 or 19) called the day of the Lord on Babylon or Egypt. So might these unscrupulous teachers seek to use the afflictions of the Thessalonians, which even in his former epistle the apostle feared might furnish an occasion to the tempter. And this apparently they did. See (they might have said) what troubles overwhelm us! It is the day of the Lord already begun. The apostle corrects this — first, by the motive of our hope, the Lord's coming to gather us unto Himself; and, secondly, by elaborate proof, not that His "coming" may not be at any time, but that "the day or appearance of His coming" cannot be till the apostasy (for it is much more than "a falling away") and the man of sin be revealed, which that day is to judge. It was now for the first time to be inferred that the coming precedes the appearance of His coming, as it was afterwards still more manifestly shown in Rev. 4 compared with Rev. 19, 20.

And this is corroborated by every word in detail, as well as by the general issue. See the violent but ineffectual effort to get rid of the force of ἐνέστηκεν, the word so unfaithfully rendered "is at hand" by our translators, and even so inconsistently with their own rendering of it in every other occurrence of the same form. Indeed Mr. E. is obliged to own its proper meaning to be "is present" But, argues he, so it is with πάρεστιν, and such similar words. "They are words which in every language that I am acquainted with are susceptible if the context requires it, of the meaning, close at hand." And then he illustrates the case, with his usual ingenuity, from the language of common life, which he endeavours to confirm by John 11: 28-30.

But it is not true that the meaning of "presence," is interchangeable with mere "nearness" in any language; they are different ideas, and are expressed by distinct words. We have seen that the New Testament occurrences of the word ἐνέστηκεν do not sustain this notion; nor do any in the LXX, any more than the instances in Liddell and Scott's Lexicon, as the Dean of Rochester has allowed to me. It is wrong therefore to give pending, save in the sense of present, begun, if "pending" will bear it. It is time present, not instant. And so of all exact versions now, German or of English, as of Meyer, Dean Alford, Bishop Ellicott, etc.

But what strikes one as peculiar is, that Mr. E.'s illustration and use of John 11 proves nothing, save against his argument. For, according to his own showing, the person or thing had actually removed from the place where either had been, had traversed the space that separated, and had arrived at the place where the person was whom it was proposed to reach, though not to the precise spot on which he stood. To take the case used, my friend would have really steamed from England (or France, as it might be), crossed the sea, and entered Guernsey roads, when one might exclaim of the packet {ship}, Here she is! So in the scripture cited: our blessed Lord had left where He stayed two days after receiving the message, had traversed the way which constituted the distance thence to Bethany, and had reached the locality or district, though not yet in the village.

Now it was precisely the error of those who were then misleading the Thessalonians to say that the day of the Lord had thus come, ἐνέστηκεν. Mr. E. wishes to show that they taught it would soon be coming, or was impending, a sense in which neither πάρεστιν nor ἐνέστηκεν is ever used in any correct writing, sacred or profane. A vast change is supposed to have taken place in both cases, which it is his thought and aim to deny. There is therefore not the least ground for his reasoning in the text or the illustration. They destroy his own argument, and leave our translators wholly unjustified in rendering ἐνέστηκεν "is at hand." Even if the laxity of common life allowed of our saying, Here he is! when he had not begun to move from a distant land (which is the true way of stating the question, not when he had come to the immediate neighborhood though not the exact spot), how strange that such looseness of language should be transferred to an apostle's inspired repudiation of an error!

Nor is there, so far as I am acquainted with the subject, the smallest ground from scripture to affirm that the day of the Lord includes the gathering of the saints to Christ, though Mr. E. ventured to say that clearly it is thus marked. Not so; the day of the Lord brings judgment on man's evil on earth, and is never said to gather saints to Christ in heaven; and the comparison of 2 Thess. 2: 1 and 8 proves the difference of "the coming" from "the manifestation of the coming" or day of the Lord. Where are the scriptures which connect the gathering of the saints to Christ with the day of the Lord? I know of none. It is assumption and error.

Again, it is unfounded that σαλευθῆναι ἀπὸ τοῦ νοός and θροεῖσθαι have the most distant reference to the excitement of hope, as the ordinary misinterpretation implies; they mean just such disturbances of mind as in Matt. 24: 6; Mark 13: 7. Mr. E. says "not as meaning frightened"; but far better scholars than he say the express contrary. "The verb θροέω, derived from ΘΡΟΕΜΑΙ, and connected with τρέω; compare Donalds. [Cratyl. sec. 272] properly implies 'clamorem tumultuantem edere' (Schott), and thence by a natural transition that terrified state (ταραχίζεσθαι Zonaras), which is associated with, and gives rise to, such kind of outward manifestations" (Bp. Ellicott's Comm. in loc.). To suppose the Christian's joy in the anticipation of meeting the Son of God, the Bridegroom of the bride, to be expressible by the same terms as those of perturbation or alarm which might be produced by hearing of wars and rumours of wars, affliction, tribulation, etc., is not to me the evidence of a sound judgment in divine things, but of the reverse. And I trust the Lord was better to my late friend ere he was called away than to leave him under that lack of peace and happy expectation and rest in His love, which his last sentence discloses. Indeed it is the conviction that this confusion of the day with the coming of the Lord is as destructive to the soul's enjoyment of the Lord, as it is to real intelligence in scripture and notably in the prophetic word, which makes one feel the importance of showing how it wrought even in so pious a soul as the late Mr. E. B. Elliott. Need there be any delicacy now in using his words for the profit of the living?

[Letter II Sept. 5.

Dear Friend,

You ask, with the emphasis of italics to the question, where are "the scriptures which connect the gathering of the saints to Christ with the day of the Lord?" I should suppose 1 Cor. 1: 8; 2 Cor. 1: 14; Phil. 1: 6, 10; 2: 16, may be regarded as obvious examples in point. It is to the day of our Lord Jesus Christ that the Corinthians are to be preserved blameless. It is at the day of Christ that the Philippian converts are to be the boast of the apostle Paul. And so on.

Thus I see nothing in your remarks to alter my opinion as to the παρουσία of Christ, the day of Christ or day of the Lord being used with reference to the same era in 2 Thess. 2.

Nor, again, do I see reason from your remarks to doubt of the parallelism of παρεστι and the ενεστηκεν, or of the θροεισθε in Matt. 24 with the same word in 2 Thess. 2: 2. And the argument you urge, from the fact of unstable men having been drawn by heretical teachers into heresy, to the fact of faithful believing men, like the Thessalonian Christians, being seduced into grievous heresy, seems to me unmaintainable.

Thus, on the whole, I remain in the clear conviction that the usual view of the apostle's meaning in 2 Thess. 2: 2 is the correct one.

But, dear friend, I like to dwell on the points in which we agree rather than on those on which we differ. I trust I may be found united with you in "the day of Christ." And in that hope I beg you to believe me

Yours very sincerely,

E. B. Elliott.

We leave to-morrow morning. I write this, as I may not find you at home when I call to take leave. I return the books you were so kind as to lend me, with my thanks, retaining what I think you kindly allowed me to retain.]

* * * * * My remarks on the second letter need not be long. Not a single word in a single text referred to by Mr. E. connects the gathering of the saints to Christ with the day of the Lord. We have in 1 and 2 Cor. 1 their manifestation as unimpeachable in that day, and the apostle's joy in them then, whatever the exercises and need of patient grace now. Still less does Phil. 1: 6, 10 touch the question, which is rather Paul's confidence in God's completing in them the good work begun unto (or, as we say, for, and even against) that day; but not a hint of "gathering" them to Christ then. Again, Phil. 2: 16 is the earnest desire of the devoted servant of Christ that the saints at Philippi should be a boast for him in Christ's day that he had not run nor laboured in vain. In short, the manifestation of our responsible walk and services, and hence the joy and reward of faithfulness will be in that day; but of our gathering to Christ in these texts (no doubt the most apt Mr. E. could find) not a whisper. To my mind the serious thing is the insensibility of such a man to their force. For the same confusion which made him imagine that these texts connect the gathering of the saints to Christ with the day of the Lord prevented him from even comprehending the bearing of 2 Thess. 2: 1, as distinguished from 2 Thess. 2: 2 and 8.

The argument I urged on Mr. E. from 2 Tim. 2 must have been somewhat to this effect. It is evident that later on Hymenaeus and Philetus, and the like, had, as to the truth, so far missed the mark as to say that the resurrection had taken place already. They probably resolved it into resurrection with Christ (or possibly "higher life") as a present state, denying the true and blessed hope, and so had settled down into a life of ease, a millennium now, instead of awaiting Christ from and for heaven in suffering and testimony meanwhile. Thus was the faith of some overthrown. And so, in all likelihood, it may have been in Thessalonica. The misleaders were really bolder there, since they alleged the Spirit, nay, a word, and even apostolic letter, for the alarming impression that the day of the Lord had arrived. But it is as easy to conceive a quasi-spiritual or figurative force given to that day as to the resurrection, and real believers being upset by either. I can only suppose that Mr. E. did not take in the idea; else he must surely have admitted that the analogy is plain, and not maintainable only but rather irresistible, unless I greatly deceive myself.

One thing is certain, that, even among real scholars, not to speak of enlightened Christians, "the usual view" of the last clause of 2 Thess. 2: 2 is now abandoned generally as incorrect and untenable in every point of view, Mr. E. being one of its latest defenders among men of any weight. The "usual view" had so filled my friend's mind, that he never could get a clear apprehension of the overwhelming weight of proof against it. Another "usual view," endorsed even by Hammond, Bishop Newton, Paley, and others, that the clause before the last means that the Thessalonians were misled through a misconstruction of the first epistle of the apostle is of less consequence but equally mistaken. It was a suppositious epistle, forged to convey the error that the day of the Lord was present. Such is the only meaning fairly deducible from the words, ἐπιστολῆς ὡς δἰ ἡμῶν : and so even Chrysostom, πεπλασμένην [not πρώτην ] ἐπιστολὴν ἐπιδείκνυον ὡς ἀπὸ τοῦ Παύλου. (Comment. in Epp. Pauli, Hom. iii., v. 465, ed. Field.) As to this point the late Mr. G. S. Faber is quite right, I see, in his "Sacred Calendar," iii. 436, 437.

Our proper hope is the Lord's coming to receive us to Himself, and to be with Him in the Father's house. We shall also appear with Him in glory, and reign with Him over the earth. But, in order to appear with Him when He appears in glory, scripture shows that we shall be caught up to join Him above. Then that a very grave work in judgment, but not without mercy, for Jews and Gentiles, proceeds on earth, while we are with Him there, is taught in Rev. 4-19, before He appears, and we with Him, in glory and to judgment.

Part Six:  Miscellaneous Texts and Subjects

Israel's Millennial Temple

(Ezekiel 40-48) In the last section of the Book of Ezekiel the orderly arrangement of the restored nation of Israel is foretold along with a view of the sanctuary of Jehovah in the midst of the holy city, Jerusalem, then to be seen in all its millennial beauty and holiness. And I think there is no reasonable ground whatever for assuming that hitherto these prophetic chapters have in any degree been fulfilled. I deny entirely that they have any direct application to the Christian Church. I also deny altogether that the chapters may be understood to have what is called a spiritual significance. In these denials I am not referring to the whole of Ezekiel's writings. Truths having a general application are found in previous chapters. For example, Jehovah's promise that He will sprinkle clean water upon the house of Israel, give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them (Ezek. 36: 25, 26) is of wide application, including the present day. Indeed, I have sought to preach the gospel from it, although I have not attempted to do so from the valley of dry bones! As to these closing chapters of Ezekiel, I am convinced that there is no possible way in which they can be applied to the spiritual blessings that by faith we have found to be embodied in the church, that is, found to be in Christ Jesus for the possession of the church. And I will give reasons to support this view. Jehovah's New Temple in Jerusalem. The central feature of these last visions granted to Ezekiel was the return of the Shechinah of Jehovah to dwell again in the midst of His people in Jerusalem (Ezek 43: 1-6). As related in his first chapters, the prophet had seen the abandonment of the city of Jerusalem as the abiding-place of that glory on earth. Now he beholds the return of the glory-cloud of the God of Israel "from the way of the east," a sight never known in this world since the day of the captivity of Jehovah's people in Babylon.

The prophet began to see these "visions of God" when among the captives by the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans (Ezek. 1: 1-3). Ezekiel says that in these visions "brought He me into the land of Israel," that is, Ezekiel was merely transported there in spirit. The apostle John speaks similarly in the Revelation: "I became in the Spirit on the Lord's day"; "he carried me away in spirit to "a desert"; "he carried me away in the Spirit, and set me on a great and high mountain" (Rev. 1: 10; Rev. 17: 33; Rev. 21: 10). So we may say that it was the power of the Spirit of God that brought Ezekiel from the land of the Chaldeans to the land of Israel (Ezek. 40: 2).

Then we learn that Ezekiel was shown a man who measured the various parts of the buildings the prophet saw. He names the outer court and the inner court, the wall and the windows, and the chambers, with which the structure was abundantly supplied. We have also the porch with two tables on one side and two on the other for slaughtering the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, and the trespass-offering, with other tables, making eight in all. Details are also given of the apparatus for other sacrificial service (Ezek. 40: 5-43).

At the close of this chapter, we learn of the accommodation in the building made for the priests who had charge of the house and of the altar. There were two chambers or cells, one at the north gate and one at the south gate. The prophet was told what branch of the Aaronic family will occupy these cells for the millennial temple-service.

The sons of Zadok will be chosen in that day for approach to Jehovah in ministry (Ezek. 40: 46; Ezek. 43: 19; Ezek. 44: 15; Ezek. 48: 11). This was the branch of Aaron's line that came forward in the day of David (1 Chron. 12: 28). For hundreds of years the wrong line had usurped the high-priesthood. Eli belonged to the younger branch of Aaron's family which unlawfully possessed themselves of the high-priesthood in spite of Jehovah's solemn promise to Phinehas (Num. 25: 12, 13). But there was a restoration in the person of Zadok in David and Solomon's time, for Jehovah is faithful in spite of man's failure and enmity. And in the latter day of which Ezekiel speaks, we find the sons of Zadok will reappear in the priestly line, and Jehovah's original "covenant of peace" with Phinehas will be maintained (Ezek 40: 44-46). Is this merely a Symbolic Vision? Now I take it the language of this chapter is not merely figurative in meaning. There will be literal priests of Aaronic descent who will offer literal sacrifices as stated. Whether people understand it or not, the word of God on this matter is perfectly plain. Difficulties only arise because so many reason solely from the Christian thoughts and Christian truths. But is God to have none but Christians in His purposes and future dealings?

Further, is not God to be allowed the liberty of acting according to His own counsels and plans for His own people, whether earthly or heavenly? Is it not possible for Him in the future to accept sacrifices and offerings in an appointed place? I am convinced that it would be rank apostasy for a Christian to offer sacrifices and burn incense. On this ground, many feel that those chapters in Ezekiel ought not to be taken literally for the church, the Christian body. This is true; but why should they not be for the nation of Israel when converted and settled in the holy land?

When the nation repents and receives the Messiah Whom they crucified, but Whom God has glorified, they will no longer pervert but obey what God has established by His word. The sacrifices to them will be memorials of Christ's one sacrifice, the burnt-offering from one point of view, the meal-offering from another, the sin-offering another, and so on. I take it, therefore, that these scriptures in their strict literal import apply not to the Christian assembly, but to Israel in the future, and indeed to the Gentile nations of that day also.

The New Testament scriptures that are often used to deny this interpretation are those addressed exclusively to present day Christians. They say that the Bible says, There is no more offering for sin (Heb. 10: 18, 26). But this scripture applies to Christians not to the Jews. The Jews will have the remission of their sins, but they will have also sacrifices appointed as reminders of the one effectual sacrifice, of Christ, offered and accepted once for all.

I know it has been said that the offering of millennial sacrifices would be a going back in the ways of God. But this is not true. The sacrifices of Israel in the future will differ fundamentally from those in the past. Those of old were types of what Christ was coming to do sacrificially, but in those future days they will be the appointed types of what Christ has accomplished by His single sacrificial offering and death.

Thus, the establishment of sacrificial testimony to the atonement made by Christ through His crucifixion and death will ensure a continual tribute of praise to the Messiah of Israel throughout His millennial reign. The revival of sacrifices and feasts in Jerusalem will not be a retrograde step in the divine dispensations for this earth, but will rather mark the climax of His dealings with the present heavens and earth, when "all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto Jehovah" (Ps. 22: 27).

Then, after the measurements of the court and the porch (Ezek. 40: 47-49), dimensions of various parts of the temple and the sanctuary are given in the next two chapters (Ezek. 41, Ezek. 42: 20). Much silver and gold were used in the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness, and of the temple by Solomon; but both metals are absent from Ezekiel's description of the future temple. This absence, however, does not absolutely imply that neither metal will be used.

In Ezek. 41: 22, it is said of the table of wood upon which the showbread was displayed before Jehovah, "This is the table which is before Jehovah." (This designation also occurs in Mal. 1: 7, 12). In Ezek. 44: 7, the fat and the blood of the sacrifices are spoken of as Jehovah's "bread."

In Ezek.  43, Ezekiel records his vision of the return of Jehovah to the earthly city of His choice. Having described his sight of the temple-buildings (40-42), he now describes the glory of God coming to fill them. "And behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east . . . And the glory of Jehovah came into the house by the way of the gate whose front was toward the east . . . and behold the glory of Jehovah filled the house" (Ezek. 43: 2-5).

Moreover, the prophet learns that this restoration of Jehovah's presence will not be of temporary duration, but will last for ever: "Son of man, this is the place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever; and the house of Israel shall no more defile My holy name (v. 7).

Details follow of the "law" of the house, as well as of the altar and its ordinances. It is confirmed that of the Levitical priests, those of the seed of Zadok will be chosen by Jehovah to draw near to Him and to minister unto Him (v. 19). For the sacrifices and consecration offerings will be required before the burn-offerings are offered and blood sprinkled upon the altar for seven days. "Upon the eighth day and onwards the priests shall offer your burnt-offerings upon the altar, and your peace offerings; and I will accept you, saith the Lord Jehovah" (vv. 8-27). A Prince of the House of David At first, the prophet saw the gate open, but now he sees it closed. And he brought me back toward the outer gate of the sanctuary which looked toward the east; and it was shut" (Ezek. 44: 1). By His own sovereign right Jehovah, the God of Israel, had entered the sanctuary to dwell there. And the glory of Jehovah filled the house of Jehovah." By Jehovah's command, the gate was to be shut, and no one was to enter by it, save the prince, who should sit in it to eat bread before Jehovah; "he shall enter by the way of the porch of the gate, and shall go out by the way of the same" (Ezek. 44: 2, 3).

It is important to observe that Israel in the millennial kingdom will have a prince upon earth who will go in and out of the sanctuary. Who is this prince? Certainly not the Lord Jesus, the Messiah Himself. He will be the earthly representative of Jehovah and His Christ, and of Him we learn more in Ezek. 45 and 46. Doubtless he will be a direct descendant of David, God's chosen king of Israel. In ch. 46, he is associated with the people in their sacrificial offerings to Jehovah.

This chapter to the end (Ezek. 44: 4-31) deals with the ordinances of the house and the priesthood. The Lord Jehovah rebukes the iniquities of the past in connection with His sanctuary where above all other places on earth His holiness should have been upheld. The past failures of the Levites and the priesthood are recounted as a solemn warning for the future. Sundry regulations are also given for the conduct of the priests, the sons of Zadok, who will be chosen to present Jehovah the fat and the blood of the sacrifices (vv. 15-31).

Ezek. 45 introduces a feature in the division of the holy land during the millennium, which will be a new one. "When the land is divided by lot for inheritance, a portion shall be presented to Jehovah for a heave-offering. This will be the "holy portion of the land." It will be reserved for the service of the priests who do the service of the sanctuary (Ezek. 45: 1-4).

Further details follow of the future agreements to be observed for the various services of the sanctuary (Ezek. 45: 5-17), and these are followed by details concerning the sacrificial offerings to be made at the various feasts of the year (Ezek. 45: 8 - 46: 24). There were to be offerings on the first day of the first month in the year to purge the sanctuary. On the fourteenth day of the same month they must keep the Passover, a feast of unleavened bread for seven days; and the prince also must offer the appointed sacrifices (Ezek. 45: 8-24). On the fifteenth of the seventh month the feast of tabernacles was to be kept with the appropriate offerings (Ezek. 45: 25). No reference is made to the day of atonement on the tenth of the seventh month.

It is remarkable that no mention is made of the feast of weeks or Pentecost. Its absence from the list of feasts seen in Ezekiel's visions is an indication that it relates to what will be Jewish and not to what is Christian. The result of the Spirit's descent at Pentecost was that believers from every nationality were baptized into one body, national distinction disappearing. But in the millennium, though the Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh, Israel and the Gentiles will retain their separate nationalities. This is beyond question, but the absence of the feast of weeks from Ezekiel's list is often overlooked.

In Ezek. 46, the visions seen by the prophet relate to the prince, to the people, and to the priests in their worship. The ritual for the new moons and the Sabbaths is also revealed.

The rules applying to the prince are noticeable. In Ezek. 44: 3, he has the right of entering and of leaving by the gate of the sanctuary, and also of sitting there "to eat bread before Jehovah." No one else uses this gate but himself, for he is the prince of the house of David (cp. Ezek. 44: 2-3). But on the feast days he goes in for worship with the people in order that he should not exalt himself overmuch. "The prince shall enter by the way of the porch of that gate . . . and he shall worship at the threshold of the gate" (Ezek. 46: 2). He thus takes his place with the people of Israel in rendering homage to Jehovah.

It is evident that we could not apply this regulation for the prince to the Lord Jesus without irreverence. But the prince is His delegate, and in that office he is alone, yet as one of the chosen nation of Israel he takes his part in the offerings and sacrifices of the people.

Then again, the same distinction is observable in the regulation for any disposal of the prince's property (Ezek. 46: 16-18). The prince's inheritance shall be to his sons, and shall remain in the family. If he bestows any property to his servants, it must return to the family in the year of jubilee. It is impossible to think of such a rule applying to the Lord Jesus. It applies, however, throughout the millennial kingdom to His representative on the earth, who will be a scion of the house of David discovered and brought forward by Jehovah, as He discovered the sons of Zadok in the Aaronic line, and rewarded their faithfulness to Him (Ezek. 48: 11).

Lastly, the prophet sees the cooking places or kitchens where the priests will boil the sin and the trespass offerings, and bake the oblations for the sacrificial meals of the people (Ezek. 46: 19-24). The Flow of Healing Waters Ezekiel is next shown a remarkable phenomenon in the land of Israel which will characterize the introduction of millennial blessedness with its mitigation of the primeval curse (Ezek. 47: 1-14). The prophet sees a miraculous stream of waters issuing from the threshold of the house and flowing eastward towards the Dead Sea, changing the face of the countryside from barren desolation to luxuriant fertility (Ezek. 47: 1-9).

Previously to Ezekiel's vision, the prophet Joel had foretold the coming of these miraculous waters: "a fountain shall come forth from the house of Jehovah, and shall water the valley of Shittim" (Joel 3: 19). A later prophet also spoke of the same millennial marvel: "It shall come to pass in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the eastern sea, and half of them toward the hinder (western) sea: in summer and in winter shall it be" (Zech. 14: 8). Like material blessing will of course spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. The Dead Sea and its neighborhood represent symbolically the utter ruin which man by his sin brought into the world bestowed upon him as his dominion (Gen. 1: 28-30). But "the wages of sin is death."

However, then "it shall come to pass that every living thing which moveth, whithersoever the double river shall come, shall live" (Ezek. 47: 9). The fish of the sea shall also be multiplied. But not every part of the earth will be fully restored by the "healing waters." "Its marshes and its pools shall not be healed; they shall be given up to salt" (Ezek. 47: 11). The fullness and absolute perfection of the new heavens and the new earth in the eternal state will not be realized during the millennium. Here we read of the "great sea" and of "the great multitude of fish"; but no sea will exist in the eternal state when God will tabernacle with men; the present earth with its land and sea will then have passed away for ever (Rev. 21: 1-3). A New Distribution of the Tribes The close of the Book of Ezekiel describes a fresh division of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel (Ezek. 47: 13 - 48: 35). In the millennial kingdom, the tribal inheritances will be arranged in parallel strips of territory extending eastward from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan. The whole land from north to south will consist of twelve belt-like portions, divided in the neighborhood of Jerusalem by Jehovah's portion, called the holy oblation or heave-offering which will be for the prince, the priests and the Levites, the sanctuary being in the midst (Ezek. 48: 8-22). In the allotment of the land among the tribes, Jehovah said, "Joseph shall have two portions" (Ezek. 47: 13), that is, one for Manasseh and one for Ephraim. Levi is not included with the twelve, but has his share in the sacred heave-offering, of land devoted to Jehovah's service (Ezek. 48: 13, 14). The land of Gilead and Bashan to the east of the Jordan, originally occupied by the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh (Joshua 22) is not included by Jehovah. These tribes made a mistake originally in seeking a premature settlement outside the Holy Land. Their error will be rectified when the millennial kingdom is established.

The centre of that kingdom will be the City of Jerusalem with its twelve gates. But the city will have a new name in that day of righteousness and peace. It will be known as Jehovah-Shammah, the LORD is there (Ezek 48: 30-35).

Note on the Same Subject The future temple will have double-leaved doors instead of a screen, and a veil then renewed. Yet the sons of Israel and even the prince have no entry into the house only the priests. There is no question of going within. Still the differences are marked and instructive. There will then be no evening lamp; for Jehovah their light is for ever risen upon Zion. No candlestick is needed any more, but the altar within is Jehovah's table; and no high-priest ministers. There is no Pentecost any more, for it is already consummated in the church. There is no feast of trumpets, for the earthly people have already been summoned and gathered; and there is no longer an atonement day for the work was done, and the people had afflicted their souls when they looked to Him Whom they pierced. The Red Heifer disappears. But the Passover abides as the memorial of redemption, and the feast of Tabernacles will mark their place and blessing. The altar of holocausts or burnt offerings has an absolutely central place, though of course outside the sanctuary; for seven days atonement is made for it; and on the eighth onward the priests offer Israel's burnt offerings and peace offerings. Sabbaths and new moons are still celebrated as witnesses of rest come and of Israel's regaining their place. No table with the twelve loaves is seen, for Israel's tribes were them selves before Him; no candlestick, for the True Light was seen. In the Holiest is no sign; no ark is needed; Jehovah fills the house alone. From unpublished MSS. Taken from The Bible Monthly, vol. 26 (1952).

The Little Horn of Daniel 7

Q. — Can the little Horn of Dan. 7 be the last Roman Emperor? Is he not rather the Jewish Anti-Christ? On the one hand the ten Horns are not the beast, nor is the little Horn which comes up among them, and destroys three of the first Horns. And as the Beast was destroyed because of the great words the Horn spoke, their distinction is clear on the other. Taking the little horn as the Wilful King, or the Anti-Christ, he is the Beast's minion, and corresponds more with the Second Beast of Rev.13. He has. all cunning (eyes like those of man), pleases the Beast, and represents him, though a distinct personage.

(condensed from) L.P. A. — It is quite true that John's Anti-Christ (or wilful king of Dan. 9: 36 et seqq.), being the subordinate of the Beast as to earthly power, is the Second Beast or false prophet {of Rev. 13: 11-18}, the highest pretender to spiritual eminence and energy, answering to the man of sin in 2 Thess. 2. They are, one no less than the other, worshipped, and they perish together in the lake of fire (Rev. 19). But the Roman empire, or first Beast of Rev. 13, has a chief; and this clearly the little Horn, which came up after the ten, dispossessed three, and became the dominant power, to which the rest gave their kingdoms as vassals. Dan. 7 alone gives the historic details. It is the once little Horn become great, whose pride and blasphemies brought judgment on the imperial Beast as a whole. In the Revelation, which gives character rather than history, it is the Beast that said and did what its last ruler said and did. Compare Dan. 7: 8-11, 20, 21, 24, 25, with Rev. 13: 4-7. This solves the difficulty. The Revelation therefore does not distinguish this last Horn as such like Daniel, but attributes to the Beast in its last form what Daniel predicated historically of the little Horn. So true is this, that Rev. 17: 11 identifies the Beast or Roman empire with the eighth resurrection head, which answers to Daniel's little Horn; and in v. 12 takes no notice of the then fallen Horns. John speaks of the characteristic ten Horns. There is the clearest guard against confounding him with the second beast, the lawless king in Judea (Anti-Christ).

There is no doubt that the Roman imperial Horn is said to have "eyes like the eyes of a man"; but this only symbolizes his extraordinary intelligence and insight humanly. The second Beast pretends to give breath and speech to the inanimate, as well as to call fire from heaven in the sight of men — the crucial proof of Jehovah as God against Baal in Elijah's day. Again, it is certain that the Roman prince in Dan. 9 causes sacrifice and oblation to cease in the temple; so that his thinking to change times and laws was quite consistent with Dan. 7, instead of bringing the Anti-Christ into what belongs to the Roman power. But as they are confederates, it is easy to identify them mistakenly.

We must also beware of the still more prevalent confusion of the little Horn of Dan. 8 with either the Emperor in Rome or the Anti-Christ in Jerusalem. He is the enemy of both, being "the Assyrian" of the prophets in general, and the "king of the north," whose last doings and end we read of in Dan. 11: 40-45. He is destroyed no less signally than the Beast and the False Prophet soon after their awful catastrophe.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 32.

Daniel 7: 1, 6, 17, 24 The book of yours which I have by me is, Lectures on the Book of Daniel, second edition.

Q. 1. I cannot reconcile some passages in it with Scripture. On page 103 I read: "The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings." There, beyond question, we have the empire of Babylon (and on page 33) Babylon was first made an empire of in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, who here includes, as it were, those that were to follow. Surely the description in Dan. 7: 2, 3, ". . . behold the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from the other" in no way applies to Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne of Babylon. Was not his father Nabopolassar king of Babylon before him?

Q. 2. In pages 106 and 107 Alexander's (the Grecian) kingdom is represented (you say) in the vision by the Leopard which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads. [You add] There you have not so much what was found in Alexander himself, but rather in his successors. Why do you say so? The scriptures must be correct. The leopard appeared with four heads, not with one which was replaced by four, like Alexander's one kingdom which was divided into four! The interpretation of this vision in Dan. 7: 17 ("These great beasts which are four, are four kings which shall arise out of the earth") was given within some three years of the fall of the Babylonian empire. And yet you say, "The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings." There beyond question we have the empire of Babylon (p. 103). The interpretation given to Daniel says "shall arise," while the Babylonian empire began (p. 33) in Nebuchadnezzar some (?) sixty-six years before.

J. S. O. A. 1. The book of Daniel is itself the nearest and weightiest help to explain the difficulties of its several parts. Thus Dan. 2 and 7 reflect light one on another. There is a manifest unity in the colossal image seen in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which has its answer in "the four great beasts" that "came up from the sea" in Daniel's vision during the first year of Belshazzar's reign. In the visions all were thus seen at once, though in historical fact they were to succeed each other; as the rest of the chapter would plainly enough indicate. It was not a question of what Babylon had been, or of Nebuchadnezzar's succeeding Nabopolassar, but of God's gift of world-empire to these four successive powers. They begin with Nebuchadnezzar, and are terminated by the judgment to be executed on the final form of the fourth or Roman empire by the Stone cut without hands, i.e. God's kingdom wielded by the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven. Nabopolassar was doubtless king of Babylon; but in no way head of the image or imperial system which commenced with his son Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God gave this place expressly. He, not his father, could say though arrogantly, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built?" as he built enormously besides. His foreign conquests were great, yet less momentous than his energetic home policy. But his overthrow of the Jewish kingdom in its last stronghold was the turning-point, and in him the Gentile imperial system began. Dan. 2: 37, 38 affords light clear enough for beginning with Nebuchadnezzar and excluding his father or any other before him; as no reasonable mind doubts the parallelism of the two chapters. Compare Jer. 27, Ezek. 12, 17. A. 2. Here the comparison of Dan. 8: 21, 22 simply and fully solves the difficulty as to Dan. 7: 6. So one must say because scripture so explains. The later vision of Dan. 8 beast on important details of the second and third powers, laying aside all reference to the first and fourth in Dan. 7. "It is written again" is of the greatest moment when "It is written" is misapplied. Scripture is everywhere consistent as well surely correct. The fourth beast appears with ten horns; yet we know from other scriptures that these mean ten kings at the very close of the last empire, in no way that they were so found when that empire first began. The same remark applies to the four heads of the leopard or Macedonian empire. Each vision gives characteristic differences without in the least implying that they all appeared from the start. Other or subsequent statements correct such an inference as unfounded and contrary to fact.

So "shall arise" in Dan. 7: 17 must in fairness be taken as a whole, connecting the three powers to come with the Babylonian though already in being and tottering to its fall. To construe the words with such rigid technicality as to exclude the Babylonish empire from answering to the lion with eagle's wings is, not a difficulty for my exposition, but really a setting of Dan. 7 in opposition to Dan. 2 and a groundless upturning of the plain fact. From a full consideration of these scriptures I hold that truth calls one to interpret the "four kings" which "shall arise" as comprising the beginning to the end of these earthly bestial systems, but not so as to exclude the first beast from Nebuchadnezzar's day; for this would set scripture against scripture and thus disproves itself as erroneous. "These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth." One cannot fairly use this to deny retrospect, but must include Babylon from Nebuchadnezzar. For the object is to give the imperial system relative unity; whilst "the first" and "another," etc. in vv. 4-7, gave also succession adequately, as indeed had been done yet more plainly in Dan. 2. Dan. 2: 11, 12 contrast a prolonging of the three previous beasts after the loss of dominion; whereas the fourth is utterly destroyed when it ceases to be an imperial power at the close. Scripture therefore sustains the statements questioned, without meddling with the ordinary version of the passages; it shows that the difficulty lies rather in divorcing one text from another, instead of receiving all. Scripture cannot be broken. The prophetic manner also must be borne in mind. A priori expectations of what or how God should reveal are sure to be disappointed. Our blessing is to own His wisdom and goodness in what He gives or withholds. The Holy Spirit, as He wrote all in view of Christ's glory, so works in giving us to expound aright just go far as we have His glory in view, the true safeguard of explaining aright.

Even the incredulous Gibbon in his Letter to Bp. Hurd (Hurd's Work, V. pp. 365, 366) says, The four empires are clearly delineated, the expedition of Xerxes into Greece, the rapid conquest of Persia by Alexander, his untimely death without posterity, the division of his vast monarchy into four kingdoms, one of which is mentioned by name, their various wars and intermarriages, the persecution of Antiochus, the profanation of the temple, and the invincible arms of the Romans are described with as much perspicuity in the prophecies of Daniel, as in the histories of Justin and Diodorus. From such a perfect resemblance the artful infidel would infer that both were alike composed after the event. He argued that the author of the Book of Daniel was too well informed of the revolutions of the Persian and Macedonian empires, supposed to have happened long after his death; and that he was too ignorant of the transactions in his own times: in a word, that he was too exact for a prophet, and too fabulous for a contemporary historian.

It is enough to reply that the book is no less distinct in Dan. 9 about Christ's death and the destruction of Jerusalem; and that the alleged contemporaneous history is declared to be at "the time of the end" when Israel are to be delivered, and therefore, as future, necessarily unfulfilled prophecy. Hence, to say "fabulous" is not only premature but ignorant, as it will be surely proved to be the baseless scepticism of Gibbon, in the wake of Porphyry. But even they took no exception to the Four Empires as laid down in Dan. 2, 7, and saw no such force in Dan. 7: 2, 3, 6, or 17, as to enfeeble that interpretation. Now there was no empire of Rome until long after the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, where it pleases unbelief to imagine the writing of the book of Daniel. Yet the book not only speaks of a fourth or Roman empire, but dwells with peculiar fulness on its last phase, not yet accomplished, when its blasphemy is to draw down the holy vengeance of the Son of man. Then will follow, not the white throne judgment when the wicked dead shall arise from their graves for judgment, but the kingdom which He shall previously exercise over all peoples, nations, and languages. This therefore clearly presupposes the earth, when it shall be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. Indeed even before that kingdom the latter part of Dan. 11 shows us "the time of the end," in which Antiochus Epiphanes has no place whatever. But three kings figure: "the king" (Dan. 11: 36-40) in the land, who will be so distinct from the then "king of the north" and the "king of the south," that they will both attack him at the same time. Dan. 11: 41-45 are occupied exclusively with "the king of the north" in that future. day, who becomes an especial object of divine wrath as "the king," we know from elsewhere, will have been before him. Thus minutely writes the prophet on the solemn crisis at "the end of the age," which future detail is clearly after the gap where Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabees are done with.

The Bible Treasury 15: 367, 368.

The Little Horns of Daniel 7 and 8: Not the Same

Q. — J. C. asks whether the little horn of Dan. 8 is distinct from that of Dan. 7.

A. — First, the very language differs. The prophet, who wrote in Aramaic from ch.2: 4, returned to Hebrew after ch. 7. The course of the four world-powers is given in a most instructive two-fold form, one Nebuchadnezzar's vision (2), the other Daniel's (7), with corresponding differences, in the language of the first empire, the captor of Judah. The chapters between contribute important moral features needed to fill up the divinely given picture. From Dan. 8. we receive special details which concern the Jews, which are a accordingly given in Hebrew.

Secondly, Dan. 8 deals with the second and third of the world-powers, Med.-Persia, and Javan or Greece the first great ruler of which was to have his vast kingdom broken into four in due time after his death, and of course with inferior power. One of these was to meddle disastrously with the Jews and their religion and worship above all, whether in the type that is fulfilled, or in the antitype of the latter time "when the transgressors are come to the full.

Thirdly, the empire of Babylon, the lion-like beast with eagle's wings, had a unity peculiar to itself. The Medo-Persian ( a bear in ch. 7, a ram in ch. 8 with two high horns of which the higher came up last) answers truly and solely to the second of these world-powers, which, fierce and devouring in general, was mild and generous toward the Jews, as indeed was the notable horn of the Macedonian power, Alexander the Great. In this third empire the marked and settled partition after its founder's death was four-fold, which no historian can question.

But the no less marked division of the fourth or Roman power is into ten horns, of course contemporary, with one small at its rise which plucks up three by the roots, as remarkable for its intelligence as for its pride and blasphemous audacity. Here however we are in presence of that which awaits its fulfilment, even admitting a partial application to past history. For that horn by its lawlessness brings on, not providential loss of dominion as in the case of the earlier beasts, but direct, distinctive, and divine judgment at the appearing of God's kingdom in the person of the Son of man. How can these things be? The Revelation answers by the rising again of the fourth or Roman empire, when its imperial head (slain unto death) is healed to the wonder of the whole world (Rev. 13: 3), the beast that was, and is not (its present negation), and shall be present, having emerged from the abyss. For it will be the brief destined hour of the dragon's wrath, power, and authority. Here also is shown that the Roman beast had distinctively seven successive forms of government or heads, besides (at the close, if not before also) ten contemporaneous horns or kings. Cp. Rev. 17: 8- 12 with Dan. 7.

Clearly then it is no question in Dan. 8 of the Roman power of ch. 7, whose last horn, little at first, greater afterwards, is to wield and direct the whole force of the empire, so as by his blasphemies to meet destructive judgment from God. He will be the immediate precursor of the Son of Man's coming in his kingdom. Even the unspiritual Josephus could not but see this, though he was prudent enough to be reticent on a future so repulsive to his Roman patrons. But Dan. 8 speaks not of the west but of the east, even of the Graeco-Syrian king dom and its persecuting profanation in the person of Antiochus Epiphanes, of whom we have ample details in Dan. 11: 21-31. Indeed the prediction is so exact as to surpass what. any ancient historian extant furnishes; so much so that the heathen Porphyry betook himself to the same refuge of unbelief which the destructive critics of late days affect — the pretense of a writer in Maccabean times, who personated Daniel in Babylon! The vision in Dan. 8: 9-14 dwells on what is now history; the interpretation, in 23-25, mainly on what is yet to be fulfilled.

It is well to observe that Dan. 8: 11 and the first half of 12 are really a parenthesis. The change of gender "he," faithfully owned in the A. V., is slighted in the R. V. Its aim seems to have been to make the personality stronger, and here therefore to refer rather to the antitype than to the historical horn, which before and after the parenthesis is called "it." In the interpretation nothing is said of the "2300 evenings-mornings," or 1150 days, and of treading down the sanctuary, which may therefore be accomplished already. This period is known to be approximately near: none can deny its absolute exactness, of which the believer is sure. Prophecy interprets history, not the converse. The one is absolutely reliable, as from God; the other imperfect at best, often partial and prejudiced, too often adverse to the truth. The historical horn did not play the Solomonic part of "understanding dark sentences" to deceive the Jews, reserved for the antitype, who is also to be "mighty, but not by his own power." This can hardly be said of Antiochus Epiphanes. The future apostate ruler of Turkey in Asia, the enemy of Israel, will be sustained by a mightier monarch still farther north. See Ezek. 38, 39.

As to unfulfilled prophecy, superstition (slave of tradition) is dull and dark, rationalism is blind and hostile to God. Superstition is not faith and therefore incapable of understanding beforehand; rationalism is in principle antagonistic to the truth, for it denies that prophecy is ever specific, and especially on the remote future. Hence, as superstition is unbelieving and unexercised, so rationalism offers nothing but futile interpretations to blot out the glorious future of God's kingdom by any little earnest in the past. But this falls so short as to give the willing impression that the prophets exaggerated or lied, like the poets or politicians of the day. Who but the unintelligent could confound the little horn of Dan. 8 with that of ch. 7? or either the western or the north-eastern chief with the wilful king, to reign at the time of the end in Palestine, described in Dan. 11: 36-39? The last no doubt is the Antichrist, here viewed politically, in 2 Thess. 2 religiously as the man of sin opposed to the Man of righteousness, Who will appear from heaven to destroy him. There are many antichrists; but this does not justify the pretentious ignorance of scripture, which jumbles all three into Antiochus Epiphanes. For he was but a type of the final representative of that power, the enemy of the Antichrist whose ally is the last chief of the Roman empire: all to perish for ever in the day of Jehovah.

The Bible Treasury 19: 207, 208.

Daniel 8: 14

Q. — Dan. 8: 14. The meaning of this verse is enquired; and the question is raised if the "2,300 evenings-mornings" apply to the desolation since the Roman destruction of Jerusalem under Titus. F. F. T. (Dublin).

A. — It helps to clear the book and its particular visions if we observe that the last Beast in Dan. 7 is the western Empire; and Rev. 11-13, 17 enables us to say the Roman Empire revived but pointedly distinguished from Babylon the Harlot, viewed as a great city as well as the great corruptress of Christendom. Here the Beast and the ten horns, his vassal kings, unite to destroy; but they are themselves destroyed by the Lamb when He returns with His glorified saints from heaven (Rev. 17: 4, 19: 14). No ingenuity can make these revealed facts fit into the Protestant interpretation, as I showed many years ago in reviewing the last edition of Mr. Elliott's Horae Apoc. before he died.

One main defect of that hypothesis is that it neglects the final future crisis for the Jewish people and the land before the Lord appears in glory and judgment. Another is that the proper Christian and church hope is not appreciated by this school, but mixed up with the Jewish. The times and seasons, which wholly pertain to the earthly people, are misapplied to Christians. These are not of the world and are called to be ever expecting the Lord Jesus, to take them to Himself and the Father's house, before the unaccomplished measures of time begin to apply to the Jews and the powers of the world at the end of this age.

This chapter however brings to light a power in the east, not Roman, but from the Seleucid quarter of Alexander's divided empire. And we have to distinguish the general vision of which v. 14 forms the close from the interpretation which deals with the future catastrophe and goes from v. 19 to v. 26. For the interpretations given by scripture add fresh light, and enable us to discriminate the part accomplished in Antiochus Epiphanes from the final enemy of Israel in the N.E. Of him we hear much in Dan. 9, "the king of the north" at the end, who is to be judged no less awfully than the Roman emperor of that day, and his antichristian colleague, the false prophet-king in the land. This N.E. power is the same predicted by "the Assyrian" of Isaiah, Micah, and other prophets.

There are no dates attached to Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the four great Gentile empires raised up successively on the apostasy of the Jews, and set aside by the kingdom of God figured by the little Stone. But in the corresponding vision of the four Beasts, judged and superseded by the universal kingdom of the Son of man when the saints of the heavenly places appear, and the people of those saints, we have the well-known formula of "a time, times, and half a time," i.e. three years and a half, during which times and laws will be given into the hand of their western enemy. Dan. 8. is occupied with the east, and "the daily" is taken away "by reason of transgression"; and the peculiar term occurs of "2,300 evenings-mornings," which I see no reason to doubt was literally accomplished in Antiochus Epiphanes of whom we hear so much, in Dan. 11: 21-32. But the special object is the enemy "at the last end of the indignation." In Dan. 9 we have another sort of computation — by "Weeks," or periods of seven years; and there the Roman capture of Jerusalem is plainly set out, though in the general interval without date after the cutting off of the Messiah. But the last week, severed from the chain, awaits its completion in the doings of both the Western emperor and his eastern antagonist at the end of the age. In Dan. 11: 36-39 the Antichrist (who is to reign over the land and be the object of attack "at the time of the end" to both the king of the south and the king of the north) is seen. And the last chapter gives a variety of dates but all bearing on that future crisis, our Lord in Matt. 24: 15 directing particular attention to verse 11.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 1: 319.

Translation of Daniel 9: 26, 27

Q .- Dan. 9: 26, 27. Is Young's version correct, or that of the A. and R. Versions? The latter substantially agree; but Young changes the sense by confounding Christ with the one who confirms in v. 27. Have the English translators forced the Hebrew? or is Young without warrant? I greatly desire information. G .A .S. — N. J., U. S. A.

A. — There need be no hesitation in accepting the general sense of the A. V., modified by the Revisers. The article of reference is due to "sixty-two weeks," after which Messiah was to be cut off and "have nothing," as the Genevese E. V. had already rightly said. But the force of the next clause is utterly missed by Dr. R. Young. It really means, "And the people of the prince that shall come [in contrast with Messiah the Prince already come and cut off] shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood [or overflow], and even to the end war — desolations determined. And he [the coming prince] shall confirm a covenant with the many [the apostate mass of the Jew] for one week; and in the midst of the week he shall cause sacrifice and oblation to cease; and because of sheltering [lit. wing of] abominations [or idols] a desolator, [shall be], even until the consumption and that determined shall be poured out upon the desolate." So in fact the Roman people (not yet their coming prince) did come, and destroy the city and the temple [or holy place], followed by a flood of desolations on the guilty people and on Jerusalem for ages. But the time hastens, when the thread must be resumed and the last or postponed week of the 70 be accomplished. Then the coming Roman prince, in his incipient form, shall confirm covenant with the ungodly majority of the Jews, "the many," but break it by putting down their worship, and protecting idolatry and the Antichrist as we know. from elsewhere. This will bring on the closing scenes of the Assyrian, or king of the north (Isa. 10, 28, 29; Dan. 11: 40-45), "the desolator"; and the last word of predicted judgment will be accomplished on Jerusalem. The death of Messiah broke the chain; but that closing link has yet to be joined, and all will be fulfilled in due season. The attempt to foist in the gospel is baseless. To translate the last verse, as Wintle does, following ancient versions, may be grammatically possible, but is unaccountably harsh, if not absurd: "Yet one week shall make a firm covenant with many, and the midst of the week shall cause the sacrifice and the meat offering to cease" etc. With what propriety or even sense could "one week," or its half, do these remarkable things? The coming Roman prince is to confirm a covenant with "the mass" of Jews for seven years; and then breaks it when half the time expires. How strange to attribute either to the Messiah! "The many rejected Him and shall receive the Antichrist. "Many" and "the many" are by no means to be confused in Daniel, any more than elsewhere. Translators (the Revisers among the rest) have not heeded the distinction, nor have commentators generally. It is the few, or the remnant, who receive the Messiah in faith, and in due time (when their wicked brethren, "the many" meet their doom) become the "Israel" that "shall be saved" {Rom. 11: 26}. This plainly and powerfully refutes the assumption that the last verse alludes to Christ's covenant. It is rather a covenant with death and hell; as Isa. 28: 15 also lets us know. This will be fox seven years, but broken.

The Bible Treasury 20: 255, 256.

Daniel 9: 27 I believe that it is impossible legitimately to connect the death of the Messiah with the Covenant confirmed with the mass, or many, for one week (i.e. 7 years) in this passage; and that for several reasons. First, the Messiah was already regarded as "cut off"' at the close of a previous division of the weeks, viz. after the first 7 + 62 = 69 weeks = 483 years. Secondly, the disastrous end of the city and the sanctuary is supposed to have come before the seventieth week begins. (Compare the conclusion of v. 26.) After the Messiah was cut off and before the last week, it will be noticed by the careful reader that there is an interval of indefinite length, filled up by the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and a course of war and desolation which is not yet terminated. Thirdly, after all this, comes the last or seventieth week, which has to do with Antichrist as clearly as the first 69 weeks bring us down to Christ's death, the interruption of the chain being left room for, and supplied in the latter part of verse 26. Fourthly, it is clear that when the Messiah has been cut off, another personage is spoken of as "the prince that shall come, whom it is absurd to confound with the Messiah, because it is His people who ravage the Jewish city and sanctuary: that is, it is a Roman prince, and not the promised Head of Israel. Fifthly, as this future prince of the Romans is the last person spoken of, it is most natural, unless adequate reasons appear to the contrary, to consider that verse 27 refers to him, and not to the slain Messiah: "and he shall confirm covenant" (not "the" covenant, as the margin shows). Sixthly, this is remarkably strengthened by the time for which the covenant is made {confirmed}, namely, for seven years, which has, in my opinion, no sense if applied to anything founded on the Lord's death, but exactly coincides with the two periods of 1,260 days (Rev. 11) and 42 months (Rev. 13), during which the Roman beast acts variously in the Apocalypse. Seventhly, it is yet more fortified by the additional-fact that, when half the time of this Covenant expires, "He shall cause the sacrifice and oblation to cease," just as might be gathered from Rev. 11 and other Scriptures.

Christian Annotator 4: 71 (1857).

The Antichrist

Daniel 11: 36 "The king," in Dan. 11: 36, is, without doubt to my mind, the political side of the same Person whom St. John designates religiously or irreligiously as "the Antichrist." It is clear from Daniel that his seat of power is "the Holy Land" the object of attacks at the close from the powers of the South and of the North (i.e. Egypt, Syria or Turkey of our days). However, his destruction is reserved for the Lord Himself, appearing from heaven (2 Thess. 2: 8, Rev. 19: 20). It is of the Syrian power (whoever then may hold it) that the last verses of Dan. 11 speak. He also falls by Divine judgment (see Dan. 8: 25, 11: 45).

The relation of Daniel to the Revelation is a wide subject; but this I may briefly say, that, as Daniel reveals the results of the failure of the earthly people Israel, so Revelation presents the consequences of the failure of the heavenly testimony through out Christendom and the world at large. This remark may help to show the analogy and the difference between the two prophecies. What the former was to the Jew, the latter is to the Church.

Daniel 12: 11, 12

I do not think that this passage has the slightest reference to Antiochus Epiphanes; but I am of opinion that Dan. 11: 31 was accomplished then, and of this the first and second books of Maccabees treat. Of course there is a strong analogy between the two texts and the evil described, as there will be between that which Antiochus did and "the king" who is to perpetrate even greater abominations in the latter day. It is of this last only that Dan. 12: 11, and to this text, not to the former, our Lord referred, in Matt. 24: 15. For, clearly, a future scene of iniquity is predicted in the gospel; and this, necessarily, sets aside reference to a monarch who died more than a century and a half before the Lord was born. May I add to Mr. E. B. Elliott's remark about the absence of the article in Dan. 12: 11 , while it occurs in Dan. 11: 31, that there is this difference also: the text in ch. 11 strictly means "the abomination of the desolator" (polel. part.), whereas in 12 it is simply desolate, making desolate, or, of desolation (kal. part.). Both forms occur in Dan. 9: 27, which strictly runs, I suppose, "and for the wing (i.e., protection, or overspreading) of abominations (idols), there shall be a desolator, even until the consummation, and the decreed sentence be poured upon the desolate." It is quite impossible to maintain that this was accomplished in the siege of Jerusalem by Titus; for in no sense were the 1290 days (taken either as days or years) followed by the final and eternal blessing of Israel, which the prophecy imports. It is to a future crisis, then, that the prediction applies; and even Mr. Elliott, keenly opposed as He ordinarily is to futurism, allows that these dates may be, as I am entirely persuaded they will be, literal days. The symbolical adjuncts of Dan. 7, 8 are wanting: all here is conveyed in plain and unfigurative terms. Compare with this Matt. 24: 22, and indeed the context before and after, which, though partially accomplished, awaits the same times for its fulfillment. The 30 and 45 days, in addition to the 1260, may refer to the ingathering of the Jews and Israel, or, to other changes, after the power of' evil is overthrown, preparatory to complete blessing

Christian Annotator 3: 272 (1856).

Many:

Daniel 12: 2

Many Christians . . . apply this passage to a literal resurrection. But they are involved in difficulties, from which ingenuity essays in vain, as I think, to extricate them. Instead of commenting on what appears to me mistakes, let me state my firm conviction that a national resuscitation of Daniel's people, i.e. Israel, is in question here, as in Isa. 26 and Ezek.37. This being understood the entire context is plain. It is at the time of their deepest distress that Michael stands up, and not merely are all those elect Jews delivered who have been glanced at in the previous parts of this prophecy, but many who are dispersed, as it were buried, or at least slumbering, among the Gentiles, awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Compare Isa. 66, sub finem.). Then follows the peculiar blessedness of the "Maschilim," i.e. the understanding ones, that instruct the mass in righteousness, who, instead of going out like the moon, though it may appear again, shine as the stars for ever and ever. This figurative application of a resurrection to Israel's circumstances at the close of the age, is of course perfectly consistent with a real bodily resurrection of saints before, and of the wicked after, the millennium, as in Rev. 20: 4-12.

I am aware of the assertion that the phrase — is never used elsewhere in Hebrew as distributive of a general class previously mentioned. But I believe it to be unfounded. The reader has only to examine Joshua 8: 22, and he will see that the pronoun is used in a similar way, Israel being the general class, and the same expression as here taking it up distributively. Accordingly, our English Bible in both cases, and in my judgment rightly, translates "some and some." Of course, it is not denied that in certain circumstances "these" and "those" would well represent the meaning. My opinion is that the other is an equally legitimate rendering, wherever required by the context, as I conceive it to be in both the texts cited. And such, I find, is the view of the Vulgate and Luther as to Dan. 12: 2.

Again, I have no sympathy with those who apply this verse to mere temporal deliverance. But it is not a necessary inference, on the other hand, that the words "everlasting life" imply a resurrection-state. People forget that the saved Israelites in question are supposed to possess eternal life, which certainly may be before any change as to the body. It may help some readers to notice a somewhat parallel case, both in good and evil, as respects the Gentiles in Matt. 24: 46.

Plainly, they are the nations at the beginning of the millennium discriminated as sheep and goats, and dealt with by the king without delay. "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." So, when Israel reapears in that day, sad examples are to "whose worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh"; while others are to be brought an offering to the Lord, who shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. These awake to everlasting life; the others are abandoned to shame and everlasting contempt, apart from the question of {literal} resurrection. It will be a time, not of national deliverance merely, but of signal mercy and judgment from God; and this for Israel after their long sleep among the Gentiles, as well as for such Jews as will have figured more in the previous crisis in the land. The Maschilim seem to be a special class still more distinguished (Dan. 12: 3).

Christian Annotator 2: 378 (1855).

Zechariah 12 . . . The "idol shepherd" is Antichrist, whom retributive judgment is to raise up in the land of Judea in the last times. "If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." He shall in the end suffer the sternest vengeance of God. This is no modern opinion. . . .

There is no reason that I see for identifying the stone in Zech. 12: 3, with that in Matt. 21: 44. The former evidently means Jerusalem itself, the latter the Lord Himself in two positions answering to the two advents. First, in His humiliation, He is a stone as it were in the ground, and "whosoever shall fall on it shall be broken," verified in all unbelievers, but especially in the Jews; next, He is exalted to heaven, and coming again in power and great glory, He will execute destructive judgment — on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." (Cf. Dan. 2, 7; Rev. 19). "A burdensome Stone" is another idea, and will be true of Jerusalem in the latter day, when the Assyrian heads a great Gentile confederacy after the Antichrist is disposed of, which is the subject of Zech. 12: 2-6, 14: 1-3: also Isaiah, Micah, Daniel, and other prophets, treat of this closing king of the North.

There is no intermingling of the Church or Christian body with the subjects of this prophecy. There may have been some partial application in the past, as there will assuredly be a complete fulfillment in the future; but it is Judah and Jerusalem that are in question, whatever profit the Church or Christian may and ought to draw from this as from all Scripture.

The double reference of John 19: 36, and Rev. 1: 7, is simply to link both advents into the prophecy, which mainly bears on the second, but presupposes the first, "They shall look on me whom they have pierced." But Rev. 1: 7 is so far from intimating a general conversion of mankind previous to the return of the Lord, that it plainly enough insinuates their then unbelief, for "all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." He will be unwelcome to them.

The mourning of godly awakened consciences, when Jehovah-Jesus is seen, to the final deliverance of Jerusalem, and the total overthrow of all their Gentile foes, is most strikingly described in verses 10-14, but it is in terms which exclude the revival in Ezra's time, save as being a feeble earnest. Each felt alone with the Lord; and those families are specially named who represent prominent classes in Israel from the beginning, and throughout their history.

Christian Annotator 3: 76 (1856).

Matthew 13 and the Present Hope

Q. How may Matt. 13 be reconciled with 2 Thess. 2, upon the following points? In the prophetic teaching of the Lord Jesus, when on earth, in Matt. 13, there is no present hope, but a prolonged exhortation, at the end of the age, when the wheat is gathered into the garner; whereas, in the teaching of the Holy Ghost from the ascended Lord, the Church is besought "by the coming of the Lord and our gathering together unto him," as a present hope. Were the Thessalonians "wheat"- or rather are Christians, as such, in Matt. 13 as well as in the epistles? If so, how can the same persons have a present hope, and a protracted one?

B. A. I am not aware of anything that justifies the contrast thus drawn between the parable of the wheat and tare-field, and the instruction in 2 Thess. 2 and elsewhere. The angelic intervention under the authority of the Lord is to gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles with a view to their yet future destruction, before the wheat is gathered into His barn. but why should this be styled a prolonged expectation? Why should it interfere with the constant hope of the coming of the Lord to receive us to Himself? This parable, like all others, is constricted, as it appears to me, expressly to keep up the habitual looking for the closing scene. One could not collect from it anything to forbid that first generation of disciples expecting to be called away to their heavenly mansions. Of course, the same thing applies to all that followed. Thus I see no reason to doubt that the wheat includes the Thessalonian believers with all other Christians. "In the time of harvest" is not a single point of time with previous events protracting the hope, but the general season of gathering in the saints, executing judgment on the tares already disposed by the angels with a view to it, and then the appearing of the saints in glory, which closes this age and introduces the new one.

The Bible Treasury 7: 64.

The Ten Virgins

Matthew 25: 1-13

Mr. Weekes's interpretation appears to me not merely to rest on insufficient and misapplied evidence, but to contradict the general teaching of God's Word. Whether the lamps had gone, or were only going out, makes no real difference as to the grand teaching of the parable; and, as far as this goes, either the one or the other is quite compatible with the absence of oil. Mr. Weeks's statement that the foolish "have some oil" is most objectionable: not a word implies it; nay, what is said both by the wise virgins and the Lord would imply the reverse, even if we had not the plain and positive declaration that the foolish "took their lamps and took no oil with them." Why might not wicks be lit, and relit, without oil? I agree with Mr. W. that "are going out" is a more correct rendering than the ordinary version; but it in no way shows that the virgins had oil, or that they were more than professors without the Holy Ghost, though responsible for and designated according to the position they assumed. As to the unconverted being called "virgins," there is no more difficulty there than in the "servant" of the preceding parable. In either ease they took that place, and were judged accordingly. There are Christians who love Christ's appearing in the midst of much ignorance as to its details There are professors who talk much of the Second Advent, and hold it to be premillennial. But I assuredly believe that the former, if they are alive and remain till the coming of the Lord, will be caught up to meet Him, and that the latter, if they abide unregenerate, must have their portion outside, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

As unfounded is the idea that ταγματι in 1 Cor. 15: 23, means "company," "band," "regiment," while fully admitting of course that such is a frequent signification in profane authors. But here the context is decidedly adverse, whether το τελος be applied, as by Mr. T. R. Birks, to the wicked dead, or, as by Mr. W., to Christians instructed in the Lord's second coming and kingdom. All or most of the versions at all known and accurate (as the Syriac Vulgate, Beza, Luther, De Wett, Diodati, Martin, Ostervald, the Lausanne, etc.) seem to agree with the authorized version in giving "order." Indeed, the way in which our Lord's resurrection is introduced appears to me of itself to exclude such a translation; for His resurrection is the first step, which perfectly agrees with "order," but not with "company." Again, such a view necessitates the harshest possible construction of "the end" (το τελος), which, by a figure, must be tortured to mean the good (or bad) who are raised then; whereas, in truth, it is most plain that "the end" is really after the kingdom is given up, and, à fortiori, subsequent to all judgment. The white-throne judgment of the dead is one of the closing acts of the kingdom, after which cometh "the end." Lastly, it would be incongruous to suppose with Mr. W. that after "they that are Christ's" rise, another regiment of Christ's should remain to rise. Not a class, but an epoch, is meant by "the end"; an epoch subsequent to the resurrection of the wicked and their judgment.

Christian Annotator 3: 174

Does the Parable of the Ten Virgins Refer to the Jewish Remnant?

Q. Matt. 7: 22, 23; Luke 13: 25-28. Do these texts warrant the inference that the parable of the virgins (Matt. 25: 1-13) refers to the Jewish remnant, rather than to Christendom? J. D. B.

A. — It is a mistake in interpreting scripture to conceive that similarity in one point or more establishes identity, many of which however striking would be of no weight against a single irreconcilable difference. The context (and not verbal analogies even if far stronger than in these instances) is alone decisive. It is worth remarking, just to shew how precarious this ground is, that a well-known living commentator and critic contrasts Matt. 7: 23 with ch. 25: 12. The truth is, that in the day of the Lord all will be judged who have not been saved, and on similar though not identical grounds; for the Lord will deal with Jew, Gentile, or Christian profession on their own footing, but in His light. The passage in Luke is proved by the context to be the judgment of the Jews who refused the urgent proffers of Jesus. The passage in Matt. 7 need not be so restrained, though no doubt applying there and then. But the parable of the virgins, both contextually and in its own statements, applies not to the Jews (who have already been fully treated of in the preceding two chapters, nationally and as a remnant), but to professing Christendom consisting of disciples real and unreal. The Jewish remnant will be rather the earthly bride than virgin going out to meet the Bridegroom; neither will they from the first possess the gift of the Spirit (the "oil in their vessels") like the wise virgins; nor will any of them be "foolish" like these, but "the wise"; nor will they go to sleep during their awful hour of trial.

The Bible Treasury 7: 64.

1 Corinthians 6: 9 and Partial Rapture

Q. — Does not 1 Cor.6: 9 with many like scriptures warrant the inference that Christians who fail in faith or fidelity will be excluded from inheriting the kingdom of God, though saved at the end from the second death?

Mathetes. A. — In no way is this true, but wholly opposed to the mind of God in His word, and productive of nothing but confusion like any other serious error. On the face of this text itself, how can any taught of God allow that one born of the Spirit is to be classed among the ἄδικοι or unrighteous? Compare also the rest of the verse and the following verses, where not failure in a believer is in question, but unqualifiedly wicked characters are denounced, with the very different statement that "such were some of you, but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Take one of the strongest apparently for such a construction, Luke 12: 45, 46, "But if that bondman should say in his heart, My lord delayeth to come, and begins" etc. We may see from the corresponding parable in Matt.24: 48 that it is no case of a believer excluded but of an "evil" servant, a hypocrite. Nor indeed need we travel beyond the further words of Luke to arrive at the same fact; for his lord is said to cut him in twain and appoint his portion with the faithless (ἀπίστων). Will the Lord so deal with any born of God? It is indeed a far other lot than missing the reign though blessed for eternity, a portion assigned to not a single Christian in a single scripture. That the language of our Lord, and also for the apostle in this Epistle and elsewhere, implies it of professing Christians is true and solemn. "That bondman," in fact, seems expressly intended to warn of this tremendous issue.

But Christians in the genuine sense, as the query supposes, stand on other ground. If they discerned themselves, they should not be judged. If they grow careless in self-judgment, the Lord does not fail to deal with them. Yet when judged in this way, they are chastened by the Lord, that they should not be condemned with the world, as say the scriptures in the text queried. The doctrine behind the query is wholly false and evil.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 1: 352.

Saints and Believers

2 Thess. 1: 10

Q. — 2 Thess. 1: 10. What is the difference of saints and believers? and why is the Lord to be glorified in the one and admired in the other? I have asked a good many, and all see the difficulty: if you could throw a little light on it, I should be very thankful. E. C.

A. — The careful reader will note that two classes of enemies are brought before us in v. 8: those that know not God, Gentiles; and those who, if they could not in the same way be said to be ignorant of God, do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, Jews. They were both such as should pay the penalty of everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His might, when He shall have come to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all that have believed. It is not the moment of the translation of the saints to heaven, but of the appearing or day of the Lord, when He shall come, not to receive them to Himself, but "to be glorified in his saints." This, however, being comparatively vague — for He might be glorified simply in their glorification, and this wholly outside the ken of the earth, — we have greater precision in the next clause, "and to be wondered at in all that have believed." Here display to others is more prominent. It is no question of those who shall be brought to know His glory on earth after He is thus come, but of all those that have believed previously; and as "the saint" in whom He is said to be glorified would fully apply to those of the Old Testament, so I think , "all that have believed" more properly belongs to the present time, when faith has its largest exercise and fullest development. Those of old were separated to God, and though they had faith practically, yet the especial character in reference to God and Christ was hope or trust. Now that redemption is accomplished, it is in the strictest sense faith. And this seems to be confirmed by the appended parenthetic application to the Thessalonians: "for our testimony to you was believed." "In that day" belongs, of course, to their manifestation with Christ in glory.

The Bible Treasury 6: 336.

The Catching Up of the Man-child

— Revelation 12: 5

Q. — Rev. 12. Is the man-child caught up to God and His throne yet future? If so, how do we account for no mention of death and resurrection?

C. R. A. — From Rev. 11: 19 is a fresh start in the book, as the seventh trumpet in a general way brings us down to the end. This closes the first volume of the Revelation. The second, beginning with that verse which should introduce ch. 12, tells us, not of "a door opened in heaven," but of "the temple of God that is in heaven opened." God's ark was seen now, the ark of His covenant, though there followed, not only lightnings and voices and thunders, but an earthquake and great hail also. Then were seen signs in heaven: the mother, not the bride, (with supreme government, reflected authority subordinate, and full power in man) yet in travail; and the dragon, wielding the power of the Roman empire, and seeking to devour her child destined to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But the vision omits that work which is the basis of redemption and divine right, and at once shows us Him caught up on high, whilst the woman flees into the wilderness for 1,260 days. It is a mystical presentation of Christ with Whom the church is hidden, as in O.T. figures, caught up to heaven, without date, save that the woman's flight into the wilderness is measured out, during which she is protected but has in no way the glory and power on the earth that is to be her portion. But heaven meanwhile is cleared of the great enemy and his angels; which is plainly future, and cannot be till after the rapture of the saints on high. The accuser of the brethren is not yet expelled. For the N.T. recognizes that our wrestling is against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies. But Satan and his emissaries shall surely be cast down, never more to regain access there as now; and the contest for the earth is decided in due time, when He Whose right it is shall unite heaven and earth and all things under His away. Thus the ascension of Christ is mystically identified with that of the heavenly saints; just as what is said of Messiah in Isa. 1 is applied to Christians in the later verses of Rom. 8. Still more easily is this understood in the symbols of a prophetic book like the Revelation. The signs being seen in heaven does not mean that the object in view is heavenly for the woman any more than for the countless crowd of Gentiles in chap. 7. The mother is as clearly the earthly people, as the heavenly bride is the church.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 287-288.

The Fall of the Dragon and His Hosts

— Rev. 12

Q. — Matt. 24: 29. Is there any ground to identify the shaking of "the powers of the heavens" (or, as in Mark 13: 14 the powers that are in the heavens") with the fall of the dragon and his hosts from heaven in Rev. 12? The time does not at all agree. If not, what is meant? C. L.

A. — The difficulty suggested as to the date can have no place whatever. Other questions may arise as to the force of words. In Rev. 12 Satan is cast down, clearly before the last great tribulation, greatly enraged, because he knows he has but a short time, and persecutes the woman for the time, times, and half a time. In the passage in the gospels, where the mark of time seems precise (Matt. 24, Mark 13), the shaking of the powers of the heavens is after the tribulation. That is, the casting down of Satan in Revelation 12. is before, and introductory to the last tribulation; in Matt.24 and Mark 13 the shaking of the powers of the heavens is after the tribulation.

Thus, as events, they have nothing to do with one another. In Luke 21 the expression is vague and gives a general ground for what happens.

The enquiry then is simply, without any reference to the fall of Satan from heaven, what these terms mean.

It seems to me that in Luke there is mixed metaphor; in Matthew and Mark it is more in the style of O.T. prophecy. I have little doubt that the scene will be as mixed as the metaphor — terrible signs actually given (compare Luke 21: 11); and, besides that, an actual disruption of all existing powers, and terror on every heart, with the tumultuous swellings of peoples. Compare Ps. 93 where I do not believe it is mere literal waters. Further, I find in Dan. 8: 10 the host and the stars clearly refer to rulers (Jewish priestly rulers) on the earth. Now I do not doubt the shakings and subversion of the future (before the great and terrible day of the Lord) will be much greater and more terrible than what is in Daniel 8; but this gives an inlet into what those expressions mean. I would not confine this tremendous breaking up of existing powers and rule to Jewish ones there, though it is in Dan. 8, because Gentiles and Jews are all mixed up together, the sacrifice taken away, and idolatry come in. But there will be more than a revolution — a subversion and upsetting of all manifested and organic powers. There is an analogous upsetting of all powers in Rev. 11, supposed by the inhabitants of the earth to be the great day of the Lamb's wrath, which it is not, but only a precursor of it. I refer to it to show that such subversions of all constituted powers are so spoken of, without any raising of the question whether Satan is cast down from heaven or not. This is before the trumpets and the vials; the end of the last tribulation comes after it — somewhere at the end of the second woe-trumpet, and then God's judgment by Christ Himself. The beast and the final tribulation are a special subject, besides the general government under which these, shakings come; and they are so given in the Apocalypse. The general government of God applies to the nations at large; the beast is in connection with the rejection of Christ and enmity to Him. They go on concurrently, but the latter is a special matter.

The Seven Heads and the Seven Kings

— Rev.17: 9-11

Q. Rev. 17: 9-11. How are we to understand "the seven heads" and "seven kings?" Is it legitimate to take "the seven heads" as 1, Egypt; 2 Assyria; 3, Babylon; 4, Medo-Persia; 5, Greece; 6, Rome; 7, Israel in its apostate state? And is it correct that "the seven kings" can be, 1, Pharaoh; 2, Sennacherib; 3, Belshazzar; 4, Antiochus Epiphanes; 5, Herod; 6, Nero; 7, Napoleon; 8, anti-Christ? F. R. G. S.

A. — One of the most important helps everywhere for right interpretation is a firm adhesion to the context. In the present case the object before us is the Beast or Roman Empire, which the Holy Seer beholds in its last form before it goes into perdition. The seven heads are doubly interpreted. They are seven mountains (or hills), whereon the woman sits (cp. v. 18). Rome is the seat geographically, not Jerusalem, nor the plain of Shinar. But they are seven kings, or differing forms of ruling power. The Beast is thus distinguished. There had been, 1, kings ; 2, consuls ; 3, dictators ; 4, decemvers; 5, military tribunes; who held successively and constitutionally the imperium. And these five were fallen. The sixth was actually then in power — emperors. The seventh had not yet come; and it was to be transient. "And the Beast that was and is not, himself also is an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition." Thus the context fixes the heads, not only in connection with a Roman seat, but to the peculiar and complete changes of its ruling powers, explaining that the last is an eighth, and yet one of the seven. It is the imperial form, which had been wounded to death (Rev. 13: 3), revived by the dragon as the resurrection-head of the empire rising up at the close against the risen Lord of glory. The introduction of other kingdoms or empires, south, north, and east, long before the Roman empire began, is out of the way imaginative; still more so the strangely unconnected episode, as that of the queried list of kings. Even in the heads, as here mistakenly separated from the kings, to make apostate Israel the seventh head of the Roman empire is a singularly wide if not wild conjecture. Hengstenberg followed by the late Dean Vaughan so took six of the heads, but the seventh to be the ten horns in a cluster! a not much happier guess than Israel, though somewhat more homogeneous. The context suffices to correct all such thoughts. The proposal was to explain the seven heads, which we have in vers. 9-11; then the ten horns, which follow in vers. 12-14.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 15-16.

Fine Linen

Rev. 19: 8

Q. Rev. 19: 8. What is the meaning of the inspired explanation of the symbolical "fine linen?"

B. A. Observe, first, that it is said to be the righteousness "of saints," not of God, but of His people. Secondly, it is not exactly their righteousness, but their "righteousnesses" (δικαιώματα). This it is impossible in any just sense to understand of the righteous standing which is made ours in Christ. God's righteousness in Him is the same for all saints. But each saint here will have his or her own righteousness. Hence it is no question of taking up the saints to heaven, which will be the crowning act of grace, nor of our presentation in the Father's house way suitable to His grace. We must therefore distinguish between the white raiment of Rev. 4 and the fine linen of Rev. 19. The one was the clothing of pure grace, the fruit of divine righteousness in Christ. But in ch. 19. it was given to the bride to be arrayed in "fine linen" which is expressly said to be the saints' righteousness. It is in view of our appearing with Christ before the world, and consequently when all the righteous results of the ways of the saints shall be manifested.

The Bible Treasury 7: 160.

Translation of Revelation 20: 5.

Q. T.C.J. (N.Y.) sends Zion's Watch Tower, Vol. 4, No. 12, and asks whether the following paragraph (p. 2, col. 2) is true. "It is an important scripture; and a line on the subject would be appreciated by many of us."

"Rev. 20: 5, first clause, which reads, "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished" is the subject of dispute. We showed conclusively that the above text has no support from any authority older than "the middle of the fifth century." It is not found in any of the older MSS. — it is not in the Syriac — and the confessedly oldest, most complete, and best of all Greek MSS. of the New Testament, the Sinaitic — does not contain those words. It is wanting too in several of the more recent MSS., among which is the Vatican, No. 1160, a MS. of special clearness and harmony with the most ancient ones."

A. The criticism, there need be no hesitation in saying, is unfounded; of which there can scarce be conceived a better proof than the fact that out of more than 500 editions of the Greek New Testament not one known to me exhibits the text desired. All present the clause which these manuscripts and the Syriac V. omit. Every editor of the most ordinary information knew of the various reading in question; yet not a single man of judgment has ever doubted that the omission is an error owing to one of the most fertile sources of variants, homoeoteleuton, as it is technically called. The clause before (end of v. 4) closed with the words χίλια ἔτη; and so does the first clause of v. 5. This naturally misled the eyes of weary scribes. So the critical editors in all lands and times have judged. But it "has no support from any authority older than 'the middle of the fifth century'"! Can the Ed. of Z.W.T. have weighed his own words? There is but one MS. of the Revelation older, the Sinaitic; which is often and notoriously faulty, and no where more so than in this Book. Thus in Rev. 20 only, ἐκ τοῦ οὐρ. in v. 1 is omitted; the precisely same sort of error as in 5 occurs in its form of v. 2, 3, from αὐτόν to αὐτόν being omitted. In v. 6 it adds καί in error. In v. 8 it omits wrongly τῆς γῆς τόν; and it wrongly adds πάντα, and καί after M. In 9 there is the corrected insertion in error of ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ, and in 10 ὅπου is falsely repeated. In 11 there is the mistake of ἐπανω for ἐπ , as the article is wrongly dropped from 12, with ἐπί for ἐνώπιον, with the absurd correction of both inserted later. In 13 is the misreading against all authorities of κατεκρίθησαν. In 14 καί is added wrongly and ὁ is wrongly left out. In 15 the future supplants the aorist. Now large as this list is, all the blemishes of the Sinaitic text of this one chapter are not here registered, but enough surely to prove how little the real character of that document is known, and how precarious it would be to demand support from authority older than the middle of the fifth century.

Next, though the Peschito Syriac was made in very early days, we have no MS. of any great antiquity; and even if we had, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, with Jude, are supplied from a later version, and the Revelation from a copy in the Leyden library, whose age is so uncertain, and character of text so doubtful, that it ranges very low indeed in a critical point of view.

The Alexandrian Uncial (A) is a capital authority as to the Rev.; and so is the Eph.. Reser. of Paris (C), but here we do not hear its voice after 19: 5. But the Alex. is, like it, of the fifth century and is supported by the Basilian Vat. 2066, a MS. of far greater weight than the cursive 40 (=Vat. 1160), by an adequate number of cursives of which more than twenty have the same defect here as . All the ancient versions, save de Dieu's Syriac, confirm the clause, as well as the early commentators, Greek and Latin.

Further, the clause is so entirely in keeping with the context that, if we had not these words at the opening of v. 5, the same truth is conveyed, or supposed, by the first resurrection of the righteous who reign with Christ for a thousand years (vv. 4-6), followed by the little while of Satan's last deceit and war of the external nations, and the standing before the great white throne for eternal judgment of the dead, who had had no part in the resurrection of life and glory.

The Bible Treasury 16: 96.

Where Will the Heavenly Saints Reign?

Revelation 20

Q. — A friend of mine says that the living and reigning with Christ refers to those beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and cannot apply to a reign on earth. It is, he says, a vision in heaven. Would you kindly refute this error in "The Bible Treasury" for August? Yours truly, A SUBSCRIBER.

A. — The reign of Christ and the glorified saints is heavenly, but over the earth. Only the old Chiliasts, and their modern followers, treat it as "on" the earth, as is wrongly said in the Authorized and even the Revised versions of Rev. 5: 10. The local dwelling is properly ἐν, the sphere of rule is ἐπί, a distinction maintained in Hellenistic Greek, as in the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. The vision being "in heaven" determines nothing as to actual place, as we may see from Rev. 12 and elsewhere. Nor is it confined to those beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, but comprehends, first the general body of saints in those seen seated on thrones, then those beheaded, and lastly such as refused the worship of the beast and his mark. The first general class was already risen; the two other companies only now lived, in order to reign with Christ, as all of course are to do. "Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6: 2, 3).

The Bible Treasury 16: 128.

Application of Revelation 22: 17

I do not wonder that Mr. Haskins finds difficulties in accepting the interpretation of those who apply this verse exclusively to the Lord, or to sinners. The truth is, that the former portion refers to the one, and the latter to the other. Nothing can be sweeter nor clearer, when seen. Jesus had just announced Himself as not merely the root and the offspring of David, but the bright and morning star. Immediately the Church, with the bridal affections, says, Come. It is the Bridegroom that thus awakens her desires that He should come. He is the first object of the heart, and lest it should be thought to be a thought to be a mere human, unsanctioned longing, it is added, "the spirit and the bride say, Come." But there are many who have heard His voice and been washed in His blood who yet feebly know their privileges in Him; they little if at all appreciate what He is as the Bridegroom, what they are as His bride. Are these to be silent? Nay, "let him that heareth say Come." They may know His love but imperfectly: but let them not fear to say, Come. But does not such a hope, such a waiting of the heart, hinder one's yearning after poor souls? Enemies have said so; mistaken friends may have thought so; but God links the two most blessedly together. If the bride, if the individual saint, owe the first love of the heart to Him who is coming to meet us in the air, so much the more can we turn round to the needy world and invite him that is athirst to come (not to say, Come, which to him, indeed, were but judgment). Nay, even if I meet a soul who perhaps has not yet known deep soul-thirst, yet is willing, I can bid him freely welcome, "whosoever will let him take the water of life freely." It is a perfectly beautiful scene, which the Lord grant us better to know and enjoy by the Holy Ghost!

Christian Annotator 3: 51 (1856).

Will the Church Escape the Great Tribulation?

By E. Shackelton. Sec. Ed. With Suppl. London: J. F. Shaw.

As this pamphlet has been sent for notice, it is almost enough to say that it is Newtonian {B. W. Newton} prophetically, with the ignorance of the distinctively intimate as well as heavenly relationship of the church to Christ, which characterizes that school. The author must be strangely unacquainted with "Dissenters," if he believes that what he calls "the secret-rapture view" originated among people most of all indifferent to the church and its hopes, as well as to prophecy; perhaps he only means persons who left the English Establishment, or, who, at any rate, were outside it.

He is also surprised that truth so important should only of late have been learnt from scripture. How could Mr. Shackleton expect such a thing in the early fathers, if he is really acquainted with their writings? Which of them escaped the Galatian leaven? Now it is remarkable that this Epistle {Galatians}, which aims at clearing the churches of that country from a misuse of the law — the bane of the patristic writings generally, is precisely that in which the apostle never speaks openly of the Lord's second coming. What was the use to those who had lost the virtue of His first coming? The Reformers were too absorbed in contending for justification, as well as against Popery, to search into prophecy or the church. And what real advance has been made since? I fear there has been in general a departure from much that was then recovered. Our appeal must therefore be to scripture only. The fathers invented the miserable system of expunging Israel and Judah from O. T. prophecy: for them, all was "the church"; and so with most Anglicans, and almost all "Dissenters," to this day. Their lucubrations therefore about the Antichrist and the great tribulation are worthless. The Protestant scheme went farther astray in denying the individuality of the Antichrist, as well as his literal place in the temple at Jerusalem in the consummation of the age, and converting the days into nothing but years. But both alike Judaized the church by blotting out Israel's true hopes, through misappropriating Jewish scriptures; and Mr. S. is not clear of this error, through which he is bitter against those who would distinguish what is Christian from Jewish.

In vain you adduce some absurd individual, who counted 2 Timothy Jewish, and only Eph. and Col. applicable to the church. After knowing the Christians to whom he seems to refer widely and well for more than forty years, I can affirm that no such folly has ever existed among them to my knowledge, without denying the fact of Mr. S.'s unhappy experience. The only writer I ever heard of that applied all the Rev. to Jews was an English clergyman. Mr. S., one presumes, allows that Israel and the Jews as such have a large place in the book. Does he hold that God carries on the church on earth at the same time that he works savingly in that nation as a distinct object? Surely this were confusion and error. That God should save Gentiles as such, simultaneously with His renewed dealings with the chosen people, is exactly what the Rev. attests; whilst all this time the church is never spoken of as on earth, but its symbol is seen in heaven. Here all is harmony, yet so little does Mr. S. understand the matter, that he cites Mosheim and Milner against Origen's allegorising; whereas be ought to know that, whatever their differences in detail, all three (with the mass of medievals as well as moderns) agree in the blinding error of putting the church, instead of Christ, as the object of the divine counsels in scripture. Take Christ as the true center of all, and room is left for the Jews, and the Gentiles, as well as for the church of God, each in its own time and true relation to Him. Then Zion is Zion, and the church is itself. None more opposed to the vicious spiritualizing of Mosheim, Milner, Origen, and the theologians generally, than those he combats.

If Mr. S. desires to read an anticipative answer to almost all his arguments in his pp. 15-83, he can find them in the B. T. 1 (second edition) 203, 218, 231, 232, 243, 249, 259. Let me, if I may, recommend to him, however, and others also, the only satisfactory course: instead of arguing, to read, with prayer and care, scriptures which treat of the future tribulation, with this question throughout before God: — Of whom in each passage does the Holy Spirit clearly speak? After all, the texts, as has been shown in this journal already, are neither many nor obscure: Jer. 30: 7; Dan. 12: 1; Matt. 24: 21; (and Mark 13: 19); Rev. 3: 10, and 7. Now, beyond controversy, the first four treat only of the Jews, and the sixth expressly of the Gentiles; whilst the fifth, which alone certainly speaks of the church, gives the promise of being kept, not in or during, but "from the hour of temptation," which no doubt includes the last tribulation.

Let Mr. S. shake off his new bias and face these scriptures with simplicity. He will not then misapply John 17: 15, to deny the plain force of Rev. 3: 10; nor will he confound the sheep and the goats with the brethren of the King {Matt. 25: 31-46}, still less with the glorified saints; and he will get to understand the translation of 2. Thess.2: 2 exhibited by the Revisers and all scholars, instead of giving it up as "almost unintelligible." The apostle beseeches the saints for the sake of (ὑπέρ) the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him (Whom they were waiting for, as the bright object of hope), to the end that they should not be quickly shaken, nor yet troubled, by any kind of influence, as that the day of the Lord had set in (or is already come). This, and this only, is the true meaning; which Mr. S.'s mistaken theory prevents him from even apprehending. It is the effect of error to exclude the truth. Where God's word is thus made null and void, it ought to raise in a grave spirit the fear of being under some withering tradition of man.

The Bible Treasury 16: 223, 224.

The Two Parts of the Lord's Coming

Q. — Can the Parousia (Coming in Person) of the Lord be separated from His Epiphaneia (shining upon); or from His Apokalupsis (Revelation)?

A. — Without doubt, the first is distinct in character and even in time, if scripture is to decide, as it surely ought. Add two other words, Hemera (day) and Phanerosis (manifestation), to give a substantial form to the verb often used in this connection. For the truth is that "coming" or "presence" (π.) as applied to the future of our Lord does not involve display {in glory, at the appearing}, unless modified by other links such as "Son of Man," (as in Matt. 24: 27, 37, 39), or by a term which openly adds it (as in 2 Thess. 2: 8), or by facts like 1 Thess. 3: 13. These accompaniments unquestionably intimate not "presence" {parousia} only, but its display. Now such texts as 1 Cor. 16: 17; 2 Cor. 7: 6, 7; 2 Cor. 10: 10; Phil. 1: 26; 2: 12; as well as the 2 Thess. 2: 8, simply prove the general fact of a personal arrival or presence; and 2 Peter 3: 12 is not exactly our Lord's own coming, but that "of the day of God," though no doubt our Lord will then have come also.

It is not contested that Parousia is applied very frequently to our Lord's corning again, as in both Epistles to the Thessalonians, in the First to the Corinthians, and in those of James, Peter, and John. And all admit that Epiphaneia means "appearing" (as it should be in 2 Thess. 2: 8), and apokalupsis "revelation," both applied often to the manifestation of the Lord, like φανερόω, in His "day." But how do these scriptures prove to a demonstration that Parousia is not distinct in character as well as time from the words indicating display? Mr. B. assumes, but never even approaches, the proof. He marshals the various occurances, and forthwith states his conclusion without a reason. What is the worth of this ?

The intelligent reader sees that, where grace is in question, the coming, or presence, of the Lord is set out; where responsibility and its results, it is "the appearing," "day," etc. This disposes of Mr. B.'s first effort at an argument in p. 15, whilst the revelation of Christ will still be the full favor of the saints in its display. Instead of confounding Christ's Parousia and the connected gathering of the saints unto Him in 2 Thess. 2: 1 with the Epiphany of His Parousia which annuls "the man of sin," the pointed difference of the phrase ought to have led him to distinguish them. If His coming to gather the saints together to Himself were necessarily visible, where is the force of adding the appearing of His coming {2 Thess 2: 8} when it is a question of destroying the Antichrist? But there is much more when we take in the light afforded by the second verse, and the context generally. For the error which the Thessalonian misleader taught was that "the day of the Lord was actually present." This the apostle dissipates, first, by beseeching them by, or for the sake of, the Lord's coming (παρουσία) and our gathering together unto Him; secondly, by the declaration that that day was not to be unless the apostasy first came and the man of sin were revealed, whereas a hinderer acted as yet till he should go. Mr. B.'s confusion not only makes the added epiphaneia {v. 8} meaningless, if Parousia in itself is a display, but it renders the motive, urged in v. 1 against the delusion of v. 2, not only powerless, but unintelligible. For if the Lord's coming and His day coalesce, as they do absolutely in Mr. B.'s view, there is no sense in the passage; whereas to recall the saints to their hope was calculated to guard them from the false rumor that the day had set in. Then we have the plain disproof that follows: the cup of Christendom's iniquity was not yet full, as it must be before the Lord Jesus judges it (not at His coming, but) at the appearing of His coming. What he calls "the secret rapture" deserves to fall, if assumption, and arguments like these {of Mr. B.}, dispose of it completely.

Mr. B. has to learn that Matt. 24, 25 is a large prophecy, which deals with the Jews first, with Christendom in the central parables, and finally with all the Gentiles alive in that day. Hence "Son of man" (Christ's judicial title) is His title with the Jews and the Gentiles, but disappears in the part that relates to the Christian profession. The critics. (Tregelles, like the rest) little knew the service they were rendering to the truth in striking out the spurious clause at the end of Matt. 25: 13. The Parousia of the Son of Man is judicial for the earth; the Parousia in 1 Cor. 15: 23 is to raise the saints that sleep for heaven, though all admit they will be manifested with Him in glory at that day. Mr. B. also ignores the fact that the "shout" of the Lord in 1 Thess. 4 is word quite peculiar and of special relationship, as of an admiral to his sea-men, or of a general to his soldiers. There would be no propriety in employing such word if it were a shout for everybody. It is no question of shaking earth and heaven, though this will be also; and it is amazing to see Ps. 50: 4,5; Jer. 30: 30; Hosea 11: 10; and Rev. 1: 7 classed with so wholly different an aim. Those that come out of the great tribulation in Rev. 7 are expressly distinguished from the elders and the four living creatures, who symbolize (one or both) the saints seen glorified in heaven from Rev. 4 and onward. And Rev. 20: 4, in the grand description of those saints who share the First Resurrection, gives three classes: those already enthroned (embracing the O.T. saints, and the church), who followed Christ out of heaven; the early Apocalyptic sufferers (Rev. 6: 9); and their brethren who were to be killed as they, after the Beast and the False Prophet ravaged beyond example, as we see also in Dan. 7. "The consummation of the age," in Matt. 13, is not an epoch, but a period or season, in which distinct operations take place, beginning with the severing of the darnel and the gathering from the field of the wheat, and ending with the burning of the darnel, the lawless ones, when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, that is, in the heavenly sphere which sovereign grace gave them to share with Christ. The just application of Luke 21: 25-36 will be manifest from the context, and is in perfect accordance with the title of the Son of Man seen coming in a cloud with power and great glory. If we fail to distinguish things that differ, only confusion and error can ensue.

The Bible Treasury 16: 222, 223.

When Will the Saints be Caught Up?

Q. — Will the saints be caught up before Lord comes in glory and the tribes of the earth mourn because of Him?

A1. Matt. 24. Here there is no hint of the Church's escaping the great tribulation, except by sudden flight; nor of any other παρουσια except that which we are to expect after the tribulation. (See vv. 23, 27, 29.) Nor of any gathering of His elect unto Him except in v. 31, after the great tribulation. In vv. 32, 33 we are directed to "know that it is near, even at the doors, when we shall see all these things," i.e., those which are described in vv. 7-29.

A2. 1 Thess. 4. The living will not be changed before the dead in Christ are raised (v. 15); then (1 Cor. 15: 51) we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump (literally, for the trumpet shall sound) — all, not same only, of those who believe. And the trumpet mentioned in Matt. 24: 31, when all the elect are to be gathered together, cannot be subsequent, or the other would not be the last trump.

A3. The caution of 2 Thess. 2: 1-12 seems to imply that the Church must witness the full revelation and ενεργεια of the wicked one, and then expect the immediate coming of our Lord.

Q. It is true, we are to be continually looking for the coming of our Lord; but is this inconsistent with the expectation of a previous tribulation? Q.Q.

A. — The Old Testament saints and the Church, which is being now formed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, will be caught up to meet the Lord before His coming as Son of man in power and great glory, when all the tribes of the earth (or the land) lament. This necessarily follows from the doctrine laid down in Col. 3: 4 compared with 1 Cor. 15: 23, 1 Thess. 4, 2 Thess. 2, and other scriptures, and from the prophetic intimation of Rev. 4, 5 compared with Rev. 17: 14, Rev. 19: 14. For if Christ and the glorified saints appear together at the self same time in glory, it is evident that the saints must have been caught up, changed into His likeness, before that common manifestation of Him and them. Besides, the Revelation indicates their presence above, after their translation there, and before their appearing along with Him, under the symbol of the crowned and enthroned elders, who are seen in heaven when the seven churches disappear (Rev. 2, 3), and before the pre-millennial judgment of Rev. 19, and the millennium of Rev. 20. This interval is occupied here below by God's preparation of Jews and Gentiles (separate from the glorified) who will be to His praise on earth, as the Old Testament saints and the Church will be in heaven when the administration of the fulness of times is put under Christ, the Head of all things heavenly and earthly.

1. This helps to render Matt. 24: 15-41 perfectly plain. Certainly there is no hint of the church's escaping the tribulation by sudden flight here; for those spoken of are a remnant of converted Jews who will be found in Jerusalem, in connection with the temple and the Sabbath in the latter day. What possible ground is there to predicate this of the Church of God, which is neither Jew nor Gentile, and which, save at its first origin, is found everywhere under heaven? What reason to take it away from the last days of this age, when God will again be savingly at work among the Jews in their land, protecting a remnant from the last fiery tribulation which the Antichrist will occasion, and fitting them as a people for the Lord, when He comes for their deliverance in the clouds of heaven, and the mass being apostate will be filled with terror and mourning and shame at His sudden glory which flashes on the world? That the elect of Matt. 24: 31 cannot possibly mean the Church is evident, if it were only from the passage itself; for the sight of the Son of man appals all the tribes before He sense His angels to gather these elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now if you apply this to the same scene and persons as Col. 3: 4, you set one scripture against another — the unerring proof of error. Distinguish between the saints already caught up, to be glorified with Him on high, and these elect gathered from all places of their dispersion here below, to be blessed under His reign here below, and the balance of truth is preserved. No doubt, the gathering of the elect here, then, is after the great tribulation, but it is also after His appearing. It is therefore not the Church which appears with Him when He appears in glory, and which is promised (in Rev. 3: 10) exemption not only from the place and circumstances of the great coming temptation, but also from its hour. The signs are, as usual, for the Jewish saints, who were wont to ask such things as evidence of the approaching accomplishment of their hopes.

2. 1 Thess. 4. No one contends that the living will be changed before the dead in Christ are raised. It is clear that, the latter being raised, and we who are then alive being changed as they, all together will be caught up to the Lord. The "last trump" of 1 Cor. 15 is an allusion to the final signal of the break up of a Roman camp for its March. It has nothing whatever to do with the loud sound of trumpet in Matt. 24 (with which cp. Isa. 27: 13), any more than with the seven trumpets of Rev. 7-11.

Undoubtedly when the Lord at His coming or presence (παρουσία) gathers the changed saints to Himself in the air, it is all, not some only, of those who up to that time have believed (compare πᾶσιν τοῖς πιστεύσασιν in 2 Thess. 1: 10. But how does this present a difficulty to such as see from Scripture that others subsequently are to be converted, kept through the tribulation and blessed in the millennial kingdom of the Lord? It is the querist's system which is at fault, not leaving sufficient room for all the elements, and of course therefore both leading to confusion in the various parts, and presenting a defective result. 1 Cor. 15 presents (and so I may add 1 Thess. 4) our last trump, because the question is of the risen saints; Matt. 24: 31, presents, if you will, the last trump of the Jewish saints then scattered over the earth. How does this identify the two, even if the trumpet in Matt. 24 had been styled the last trump, or "his elect," were called "all the elect," neither of which is the fact? Is it a contradiction if the historian speaks of the last trump sounding for the tenth legion in Gaul, and of the trumpet gathering the twelfth legion in Syria?

3. 2 Thess. 2: 1-12 cautions us against the error of those who confounded the coming of the Lord to gather His saints on high with His day upon the lawless one. The misleaders of the Thessalonian believers sought to alarm them by the false cry that the day of the Lord was already present (ὡς ὅτι ἐνέστηκεν ἡ ἡμέρα τοῦ κυρίου). This the apostle dispels, first, by a motive of consolation for the heart, as well as, secondly, by an express prophecy. First, he beseeches them, by the coining of the Lord and their gathering together to Him, not to be shaken or troubled by this pretense (for which they feigned a revelation and even a letter of the apostle). The first act of the Lord, bound up with His very presence, is the translation of His own beloved ones to Himself. But, secondly, that day (mark, he does not say the Lord's παρουσία, but His day) should not come till the full development of the evil which His day is to judge. The mystery of lawlessness is now restrained: when he who hinders its outburst is withdrawn, then shall be revealed the lawless one whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by the breath of His mouth and annul by the appearance of His coming. Observe the striking difference between the terms in vv. 1, 8. When it is a question of gathering the saints, the phrase is simply His coming or presence; when it is a question of His day or dealing in judgment with the lawless one, it is the shining forth of His coming — not παρουσία only, but ἐπιφάνεια τῆς παρουσίας αὐτοῦ. The real caution of the chapter would have preserved the querist from an error kindred in principle, though not in form, to that which wrought among the Thessalonians. We are then to be continually expecting the Lord, apart from either external signs or the final great tribulation, which Scripture connects with others, not with us, after we have been translated to heaven.

The Bible Treasury 6: 159, 160.

When Are O.T. Saints Raised?

Q. — When will the Old Testament saints be raised ? Are they included in "them that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Cor. 15: 23), and raised when the Church is caught up? (1 Thess. 4) in which case they would be said to "sleep through Jesus," and to be "the dead in Christ." Or, do they wait some little time longer, and only raised on the sounding of the seventh trumpet (Rev. 11: 15-19), where "thy servants the prophets" are spoken of together with others (the seventh trumpet being the final one of this dispensation, and thus in keeping with the word to Daniel in ch. 12: 13, "Go thy way till the end be; and thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days")? And still more striking is that which Job says (Job 19: 25-27), "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth . . . in my flesh shall I see God." Was not this expecting Him on the earth, as Christ will be in the millennium? (Zech. 14; Acts 1). H. W. T.

A. — I see no reason to doubt that all saints who have died will be raised up when Christ comes and changes us, the living, that remain to the moment of His presence, and both shall be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. "Those that are the Christ's," in 1 Cor. 15: 23, seem to me a category put in an expressly large style so as to embrace the saints before the Church as we as such as compose it. Compare Heb. 11 {: 40}. And this is confirmed by the special communication which begins at 1 Cor. 15: 51; "Behold I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." Here there is a secret beyond the Old Testament which revealed no more than the resurrection and the coming with the Lord in the day of' His appearing. (Job 19, Zech. 14). But the apostle was inspired to add both the manner of raising the dead saints and especially the change of us, the living, then found here below, who shall all be alike changed, and, according to 1 Thess.4, caught up to meet the Lord above. Hence in this latter scripture "those put to sleep through Jesus" may be said of dead Christians (the occasion of the need of comfort to the living), while the next verse speaks with greater comprehensiveness of those fallen asleep in general. Again, "the dead in Christ" need not be restrained to those since redemption; it is in contrast with the dead in Adam or after a merely natural sort.

There is nothing said of raising saints from the dead under the seventh trumpet, though I do not object to the conclusion that, as it is the winding up of God's appeals to the world and the introduction of the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, so it announces the judicial recompense in broad terms up to the end. The time of award to His servants the prophets, and to the saints, etc., does not fix it as the moment of their resurrection — they may well have been raised before, At any rate nothing of the kind can he built on a passage which is silent as to that for which it is alleged.

Nor is there the least warrant to connect "the seventh trumpet" with "the last trump" of 1 Cor. 15, nor even with the "great sound of a trumpet" in Matt. 24. "The seventh" is of course the closing one of the Apocalyptic series and of the general course of the book up to the kingdom. "The last trump)" of 1 Cor. 15 means simply the final summons when the heavenly saints leave their earthly sojourn to join the Lord — a figure, like others in the chapter, taken from familiar military matters. The trumpet in the gospel is rather connected with the divine call to gather Israel from all lands according to the prophets. There is no doubt that when this point is reached all the departments of the kingdom, heavenly and earthly, will be occupied and displayed by Christ, the risen saints, and the people of' God, nor will it cease till every creature, even of the lost, bows and confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Daniel and Job will be there, of course, among the rest.

The scripture which is most to the point (of proving saints raised just before the millennial kingdom begins) is Rev. 20: 4; but I see no reason to doubt that the first class already enthroned includes the Old Testament saints with the Church, while the two classes particularly described and then raised in addition to the foregoing are only the apocalyptic confessors. This then gives no countenance to the view that the Old Testament saints are reserved till then. The sufferers at the end of this age are specified as then made to live and reign with Christ: else they might seem to have lost all, as regards the kingdom. No others are said to be raised at that time.

The Bible Treasury 7: 80.

Looking for the Appearing

Q. — If the Church is with the Lord, caught up to Him at His coming, how can any Christian love or look for His subsequent appearing? 1 Tim. 6: 14; 2 Tim. 4: 8; Titus 2: 13. So 1 Thess. 2: 19, 23 seem to teach, not a secret previous coming for Christians, but the same as 1 John 2: 28; Rev. 1: 7; Mark 8: 38. So that revelation, appearing, and coming seem to me synonymous and synchronical. A resurrection from out of the dead and a change of the living saints visibly going up to meet the Lord seems to me a more sober idea, if I may speak, and to do less violence to ordinary scripture statement, than a secret rapture, which seems to be both unnecessary and based on a very few and not very distinct scriptures. They are all (as I think) the same event, though many acts are folded up therein. J. L.

A. — The presence (παρουσία) of Christ is His coming, or rather state of being present, in contrast with His absence, and is in itself equally compatible with being visible or not at His pleasure (as we see after His resurrection). The solution of the question depends on other scriptures and cannot be decided by the bare word "coming" or "presence." One of these scriptures is the comparison of 2 Thess. 2: 1 with v. 8. On the face of it, verse 1 binds together His coming or παρουσία with the gathering together of the saints to Himself. This is the motive for comfort against the terror of the day of the Lord, which the false teachers were seeking to bring on the souls of the Thessalonians. The false rumour that His day was actually arrived, or present (ἐνέστηκεν), was effectually dispelled by the sweet information that that day of awful associations for the world should not be there before the full development and open display of that lawlessness, which was already at work in secret ways. For the day of the Lord is ever the predicted period of judgment on man's evil, which it is to put down and cleared away, in order that the good of God's kingdom may be no longer hidden or hindered but shine out to His everlasting praise. Hence it is said that the lawless one (for so it will end) shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the breath of His mouth and shall destroy, or annul, by the appearing of His coming with the Lord's presence to assemble His saints to Himself, but with His judicial action on the Antichrist.

Plainly, the coming or presence of the Lord is the great general truth. It embraces indeed His appearing as one of its acts or characters, but it includes much more. Hence, when precision is sought (as here to counteract a false impression, which the enemy sought to endorse with the apostle's name), we have the παρουσία distinguished from the epiphany, or shining forth of that παρουσία. Now it is evident that, if the coming of Christ necessarily implies visibility to all the world, there is no force in the distinction; if, on the contrary, He might come to gather His saints without appearing to any beyond themselves, and then subsequently cause His coming or presence to be manifest in the destruction of the lawless one, nothing can be more appropriate or exact than the phraseology here employed.

There is no difficulty, accordingly, in apprehending how Timothy or others could be exhorted in view of Christ's appearing, spite of the gathering of the saints on high previously. The act of translating the saints above is no open vindication before the world either of Christ or of themselves; the appearing, revelation, or day of the Lord is this precisely. Not till then will be seen the consequences of faithfulness or the lack of it in His service; not till then will the madness of the world's hostility against Jehovah and His anointed be proved. Hence, when it is a question of exhorting to earnest, devoted, holy labor and endurance, scripture habitually speaks not of the coming simply but of the appearing of Christ. Then will be the reward of toil and suffering; then must the haughty world be humbled, apostate Judaism and Christendom be judged, and righteousness be established over the earth, the glorified saints reigning with Christ over it, and the Jews restored to their promised supremacy and blessedness here below. This makes evident the reason why the hearts of the saints, in present sorrow and shame, feeling their own weakness and the temporary triumph of the enemy in the world, are always urged to look on to the appearing of Christ. Their own removal by His coming does not, could not, satisfy the desires of those who are bent on the making good of His glory universally, and the final total overthrow of Satan, and the blessing of all creation.

This, then, in my judgment, entirely and simply meets the scriptural statements which speak both of the Lord's coming and of His appearing, etc. Timothy is enjoined to keep the commandment, laid on him by the apostle, spotless, irreproachable, until the appearing of our Lord, which in its own time the blessed and only Potentate shall show (1 Tim. 6: 15). It is a question of responsibility in service; and this attaches, not to the rapture of the saints at all, but to the manifestation of Christ. When the Lord appeared the first time, God's grace was made manifest, and life and incorruption were brought to light by our Saviour. When He appears again, glory will be revealed; fidelity during His absence will be no longer a matter of denial, detraction, or debate, and evil will hide its head. A faithful royalist could not be satisfied till not merely the arrival of the exiled king, but his coronation and the public exercise of his prerogative. Still more evidently does this principle apply to 2 Tim. 4: 8: "Henceforth the crown of righteousness is laid up for me, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me in that day; and not only to me, but also to all that love (τοῖς ἠγαπηκόσιν, characterized by their love for) His appearing." That this demonstrates the justice of what has been already remarked, I need scarcely say. The coming of Christ to receive us to Himself and be with Him in the Father's house would not at all suit the requirements of the passage; because that is the pure fruit of His own grace, removing us into the scene of His Father's love and glory, but in no way vindicating His servants, by a just requital of all faithful there is a reward for the righteous; verily He is a God that judgeth in the earth. Rapture to heaven previously would not meet this exigency, though, of course, perfectly consistent with it. We must believe all that is revealed, not a part only; and a main point of real progress is that we learn to distinguish things which differ.

Titus 2: 13 quite falls in with the two texts we have examined, the only question being whether "that blessed hope" does not look rather to the point of personal joy when we are caught up to be with the Saviour, and "the appearing of the glory" to the later and public display. If so, this scripture would connect the two things, as one combined object in the mind of the Spirit, leaving it to be decided by other testimonies whether the two things happen at the same time or with some interval.

In 1 Thess. 2: 19 and v. 23, it is simply a question of Christ's presence or coming, entirely independent of manifestation. The first scripture is the expression of the apostle's affections for the objects of his devoted labours. Circumstances might and do separate them now for a little in person, not in heart; but they should be together before our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming, "our glory and joy. This would not cease but, on the contrary, appear when Christ is manifested, but the fact is before the apostle; and this is true at the coming of Christ and even before His manifestation, of which nothing is said here. So in 1 Thess. 5: 23, he prays that their whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, if verified then, this would be also true at His appearing; but the other sufficed and indeed was more comprehensive. On the contrary, where it is a question of the world being judged (as in the beginning of the same chapter), "the day of the Lord," and not simply His coming or presence, is spoken of; for that necessarily supposes judicial action and display. So even in 1 Thess. 3, where we have the coming of our Lord with all His saints, not them caught up to Him, as in 1 Thess. 4, in order to God's bringing those who sleep with Him.

But John 2: 28, Rev. 1: 7, and Mark 8: 38 are wholly distinct in tone from the simple presence of the Lord and His saints. In the first of these texts, manifestation is express. It is a question of the workman not being ashamed before Him at His coming, through the souls they laboured for abiding in Him now. The coming of the Lord alone would not decide this, and therefore manifestation is added. Again, Rev. 1: 7 has nothing to do with the translation of saints to heaven but is the solemn threat of impending judgment for the world, especially for Israel (i.e., those who pierced Him). "Every eye shall see him," defines the character and time most fully. So Mark 8: 38 describes the Lord coming with His holy angels in His quality of Son of man which notoriously attaches to Him as executor of judgment (see John 5).

I cannot doubt, therefore, that coming or presence is never in itself synonymous with appearing, revelation, or manifestation. This does not decide the question of their agreeing or differing in point of time. But it tends so far to maintain the definiteness of scripture language, which is indispensable to all real intelligence and progress in the truth.

That the removal of the saints from earth to meet the Lord does not synchronize with their appearing in glory along with Him, is, to my mind, certain from a variety of scriptures. First, Col. 3 declares that when Christ, our life, appears, "then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." The context would convince any fair mind that rigorous precision is here intended. The basis is the identification of the Christian with Christ. Is He dead and risen? So are they. Is He now hid with God? So are they now with Him. But this will not be always. He is about to be manifested in glory: when He is, then shall they too be manifested in the same glory with Him. This is decisive against the hypothesis of Christ first appearing, then translating the risen and changed saints, and bringing then and thus His day on the world. For in this case, Scripture must be broken, as Christ would have appeared in glory without His saints and before them. Their rapture (to use a word which used to be more familiar with divines than it seems to be of late) cannot then be when He is manifested; for they are all, Christ and the saints, manifested together.

Besides, the same result follows from the scriptures which speak of His coming with the saints. They must have been, then, caught up before in order to come with Him.

Further, the great book which puts together in an orderly way so many elements scattered over the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, the final prophecy of the New Testament, has it no light for us on this vexed question? Much every way, but this chiefly — that thence we learn how the saints are seen glorified in heaven under the symbol of twenty-four elders not to speak of the four living creatures from Rev. 4; that they are seen there kept out of the hour of temptation which comes on all the world to try them that dwell on the earth; that during this hour God works in Jews and Gentiles, who alone are spoken of as being on earth, without a hint of the Church or churches after Rev. 3 (save in the exhortation at the end when the prophetic part is concluded); and that when the Lord does come to judge, the saints are with Him, and come out of heaven, not from earth, for the closing scene, when executing vengeance on them that know not God and them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus, He comes to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that have believed in that day. Then and not before, will be the public retributive dealing of the Lord, when His saints shall be vindicated and their enemies shall be troubled worse than any tribulation they inflicted on the faithful. The Lord's coming simply to receive the saints to be with Himself above is no doubt the joy of grace; but it is not all, and does not supersede the importance of the scene of manifestation (which is itself a part of His coming or παρουσία), when all questions of responsibility in good or ill will be solved and made apparent.

The best sobriety of the saint is to believe the scriptures — not some, but all; sacrificing the truth neither of our manifestation and reward when Christ comes in judgment, nor of the scenes of horror, when God will give the Jew and man in general to taste the result even in this world of rejecting the true Christ and receiving the false one; but when He will make ready once more, by an Elijah testimony, a people prepared for the Lord on earth, that when He does appear in glory, He may have not only a risen glorified Bride with Him, suited to the heavenly places and the Father's house, but also an earthly people, the nucleus for the blessing of which will follow the execution of judgment on all His enemies. It is the same παρουσία but ἡ π. as such, and ἐπιφανεία τῆς π. are quite distinct in character and time.

The παρουσία of the Lord, then, is not a mere act of coming, but the state of being present in contrast with His absence. The epiphany or shining forth of His παρουσία most naturally intimates that this presence in itself is not necessarily visible.

The Bible Treasury 6: 239, 240.

The Bride

Q. 1. — Was not the truth of Christ and His members — one body — the mystery hid in past ages and revealed to Paul? 2. — Was the truth of "the Bride" a mystery? Was it hid in the Old Testament? Is not Rebekah a type of "the Bride"? Was not Eliezar forbidden to take a Gentile bride for Isaac? 3. — Where is the Church — the body — ever spoken of as "the Bride?" I. W. S.

A. 1. — The mystery hid from ages and generations consists of two parts:

(1), the supremacy of Christ over the entire universe of God, of all things, whether in heaven or on earth; and

(2) of the Church, His body, composed of Jews and Gentiles baptized by the Holy Ghost, united to Him as head over all. It was revealed to the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, but in fact revealed by Paul to us. 2, 3. — It is evident from Eph. 5, Rev. 19, 22, that the figure of the Bride, the Lamb's wife," equally applies to the Church. Eve, in Gen. 2, and Rebekah, in Gen. 24, etc., revealed nothing of the mystery. They told their own profitable tale of old, but nobody ever did or could draw from them alone the union of the Church with Christ in heaven. When the truth of the Church, Christ's body and bride, came to view, then these scriptures yielded a further deeper meaning in God's wisdom, though even then the union of Jew and Gentile in one new man, the body of Christ, the head of all things in heaven and earth went far beyond any or all these types. But the reference is distinct in Eph. 5 to Adam and Eve on this point. "It is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church." The point forbidden in Gen. 24 is not a Gentile bride, but a daughter of the Canaanites (i.e., the type of a wicked spirit in the heavenlies). In Eph. 5 the point is the wife or bride as much as the body.

That there will be an earthly bride, according to the Psalms, Prophets, and Canticles, does not clash with the truth that there is a heavenly bride, married to the Lamb before the appearing of Christ and distinct from the blessed guests who are to be at the supper (the Old Testament saints, I suppose). Rev. 22: 17 is conclusive to my mind that "the bride" of the Apocalypse is none other than the Church, now waiting for Christ with the Holy Spirit dwelling in her and prompting the precious word, "Come." Far different will be the relation and attitude of the Jewish remnant, before the Lord appears for their deliverance.

The Bible Treasury 5: 320.

America, Australia, etc., in the Coming Crisis

Q. — What will be the position of the Continents of America, Australia, etc., with their populations in the coming crisis? Will they be under the Roman Beast?

A. — I am not aware of any distinct reference to the continent of America in the scriptures. But in a general way it appears to me that "the waters," on which the great Harlot Babylon sits (as in Rev. 17), include its population on all sides of the world. It was, we do not doubt, peopled not only by migratory hordes of Chinese, etc. across Behring's Straits, but by Icelanders, Norwegians, etc., who are believed on sufficient grounds to have made their way there little after A.D. 1000, and therefore many centuries before its discovery by Christopher Columbus, who opened it to the enterprise of Europe.

But it seems plain that the American or the Australasian lands and races cannot find themselves under the Roman Beast. For it, as I understand, is exclusively western, and does not comprehend even Greece or Macedonia, still less the properly Medo-Persian or Babylonish empires. Hence in Dan. 2 the gold, the silver, and the brass, are seen at the end when Judgment falls, no less than the iron and clay, the symbol of the Roman empire. Cp. also Dan. 7: 12. It is an error to make the range of the Beast, and of his Jewish ally, the Anti-Christ, universal. We must leave room for a great adversary in the king of the north or the Assyrian, and for Gog, the chief of the Russian races, behind that king, and after him.

It may however be well to add that the late Mr. E. B. Elliott (in the Horae Apoc. ii. 73, fifth edition) imagined that there is a more direct allusion to the discovery of America, if not of Australasia, in Rev. 10: 2 (latter clause). He naturally says little, and is somewhat indefinite, but as usual confident. It is the end of footnote 3, though the reference in the General Index might lead one to expect more. "Dr. S. R. Maitland thinks it strange that no notice should have been taken in the Apocalypse of the discovery of America, supposing it a prophecy of the history of Christendom. (Remarks on Christian Guardian, p. 120). If I am correct in my understanding of the vision before us, the supposed omission does not exist." This is all the notice I can find in his four large volumes.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 47-48.

Abraham and Christians

Q. — Will you do me the great favour to direct me as to the reconciliation of your views of the parenthetical nature of the Christian Dispensation with the passages in the New Testament which seem to teach that Abraham and Christians are one in relation to all the benefits that flow from the mercy of God through the Redeemer? If the Scriptures alluded to did not seem so plainly to contradict your distinction of heavenly and earthly, I could adopt your view. But with only the light I have now, there is nothing for me but painful uncertainty. Lexington, Va., Dec. 30, 1881. F. P. M.

A. — The passages of the New Testament to which our correspondent refers are doubtless such texts as Rom. 4: 11, Gal. 3, and Heb. 11. The reason why they are supposed inconsistent with the special privileges of the believer now, is that the distinctive place of the Christian, and yet more the church, is not apprehended. People seem that to be born of God, and to be justified by faith, are the sum and substance of present blessing. But it is not so. All saints are necessarily born of the Spirit. The baptism of the Spirit was never enjoyed till Pentecost; and on this depends the body of Christ. Compare Acts 1: 2 with 1 Cor. 12: 13. And the gift of the Spirit, as thus over and above the new birth, as it could not be before redemption, was to be the permanent privilege of the Christian. The comforter or Paraclete was to abide with the disciples forever. Even as to justification by faith, Rom. 4 makes this difference between Abraham and us: he believed that God was able to perform His promise; we believe on Him that raised up from the dead Jesus our Lord, after accomplishing His work in death for our offence. The Old Testament had promise; we rest on accomplishment; so that there is a grave difference at the threshold. Then Gal. 4 shows that even the true saints of old were in servitude; but that now it is a question of the adoption of sons, the Spirit of the Son being sent forth into the hearts of the sons, crying Abba, Father. The inheritance of promise is common ground; but this quite consists with fresh and inferior {sic, superior} blessing consequent on redemption. If we think not of the individual, but of our corporate relationship, the difference is at least as marked. The olive tree of testimony according to promise is not at all the same as the house of God, or the body of Christ. There is continuity in the olive tree, even if some of the natural branches were broken off for unbelief to let in the Gentile wild olive graft; and the Gentile, if not continuing in goodness, is to be cut off, that God may ingraft again the natural branches no longer abiding in unbelief. "And so all Israel shall be saved" {Rom. 11: 26} in the depth of God's wisdom and mercy. But this is quite distinct from Eph. 2, where the two are formed into one man, in which is neither Jew nor Gentile; and we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone. During the Old Testament the middle wall was not broken down, nor were both made one. Even in the Lord's ministry here below, "Go not," said He, "into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not": dead and risen, He sends them to any or all. How could the house be even began before the foundation, not of prophets and then apostles, but "of the apostles and prophets" whom the ascended Head gave as gifts? And the body is formed in union with Him by the Spirit sent down from heaven.

Thus, if there are benefits which all saints enjoy from God's mercy through Christ, which is thankfully owned, there are fresh and unspeakably great privileges which flow from redemption, and the presence of the Holy Ghost, who associates us in unity with Christ on high. In these last lies the peculiar blessings of the Christian and the Church. When Christ comes, the worthies of faith will, no doubt, receive the promise; but God has none the less provided some better thing for us {Heb. 11: 40}, though we and they shall together enter on glory in that day.

The Bible Treasury 14: 32.

Earthly and Heavenly Spheres During the Millennium

Q.- It is acknowledged that the Lord will reign in Zion (Ps. 2, 99; Isa. 2, 8, 12, 24, etc.; Zech. 2, 8, etc.). Yet it is drawn from the N.T. that His or our especial scene of glory will be in heaven. How can this be? R.

A. — Few truths are more important, whether one thinks of Christ or of the church. It is a question of the purpose of God, hidden in the ages and dispensations, but now brought to light formally and fully by the apostle Paul. Take Eph. 1: 9-11 as a grand unfolding of it, where we learn that for the administration of the fulness of the times (or seasons) God will gather together (or head up) in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; in Him in Whom also we obtained (or were given) inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will. This rises incomparably beyond the kingdom in Zion, or the yet larger dominion of the Son of man, both of which will assuredly be accomplished "in that day." It is even beyond all the promises to which the O. T. saints have just claim, and wherein no disappointment shall ever be. But grace gave to the apostle to reveal the divine counsel of setting Christ at the Head of all creation, the Heir as the Creator of all, now His (as the Epistle to the Colossians shows) on the ground of reconciliation. He is thus constituted the glorified Head over all, as we now know by faith. And "that day," which proclaims Messiah's reign over the land of promise with Israel renewed as His people, and all nations and tribes circling round Israel and subject to the Son of man, will make known the still more wondrous glory of our Lord over all things heavenly, angels, principalities, etc., with the church in the same glory His bride as now His body.

When this characteristic truth of the N.T. dawns on the soul, a crowd of scriptures confirm it. Thus in Matt. 6 our Lord taught His disciples to pray for "Thy" (i.e. the Father's) kingdom to come, as well as His will to be done on earth. The Father's kingdom is as distinctly heavenly as the Son of man's is earthly: so Matt. 13: 41-43 clearly proves. The risen saints shine as the sun, which is not earthly, in their Father's kingdom; whereas the Son of man by His angels executes judgment on all offences and unrighteous persons in His kingdom as manifestly on earth. But it will be the day for His exaltation manifested on high as well as here below, being the Son of the Father and set by God over all things heavenly and earthly.

Then John 14 is unmistakable that our special hope of blessedness is not merely reigning with Christ, as all suffering saints shall, but that He is coming to receive us to Himself in the Father's house where He now is. And the great N.T. prophecy shows us (Rev. 21: 9 to the end) the bride the Lamb's wife the centre of heavenly and universal glory; as the O.T. is equally clear that Zion will be for all the peoples of the earth, then owning Israel to be the seed which Jehovah has blessed and set at the head of all nations under the Great King, Himself Jehovah-Messiah.

So Rom. 8: 16, 17, designates the Christians as God's children. "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." This goes far beyond the earth; as Rom. 5: 17 cannot be limited to the millennial reign.

Again, 1 Cor. 6: 2, 3, teaches that we shall judge the world — nay more, judge angels. And 1 Cor. 15: 48, 49, distinctly calls us even now "heavenly" in title, after the pattern of the Heavenly One, and points on to our bearing that heavenly image, as we have now borne the image of the earthly (Adam's). But instead of gathering up other intimations, look at the glorious type of that day furnished by Gen. 14 where Melchizedek meets Abram victorious over the foe in the hour of their short triumph and pronounces him blessed of the most High God, possessor of heaven and earth; as he blesses the most High God Who had delivered his enemies into his hand. Christ is even now, as the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek; but He will exercise its privileges in the blessings of that day of blessing. One might add many a glimpse in the types of Joseph, and of Moses, as well as in that of the sanctuary. But enough is said to show the blank left by looking no higher than the earth for the Lord in that day. If nature abhors a vacuum, the Christian in hope awaits glory in the heavens for Christ and the church, while fully assured that glory of Jehovah and the knowledge of it shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 79-80.

Millennial Conversion

Q. — Where in the Psalms or Prophets is justified the belief that there will be conversions in the Millennial age? J. C. J. (U. S. A.).

A. — Almost every where that we find the work of divine goodness contemplated. Take Ps.2: 12: "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry . . . Blessed are all they that put their trust in him." All conversions past, present, or future, are in this way and no other. They alone are the righteous who fear God then as now. The gospel, which actually goes out in indiscriminate grace, the apostle vindicates to the Jewish objector in Rom. 9, 10 by testimonies from the Law, Psalms, and prophets which anticipate that day. It will be the harvest. We are but a sort of first-fruits, though called to "some better thing," as Heb. 11: 40 speaks, as compared even with "the elders." But the ingathering great as to extent awaits that day. All must bow to the Lord, "King over all the earth," as well as "Head over all things"; but all are not converted even then, as Isa. 65 shows, and on a large scale Rev. 20: 7-10. They will previously have rendered but a feigned obedience. Cp. Ps. 18: 44.

The Bible Treasury, New Series 2: 240.

The Separate State And the Resurrection

When we have learned a truth, even in power from God, such is the narrowness of the human mind, that we are in serious danger of making it a shut-door against other truths, and thus of stopping short of the largeness of God's thoughts. Indeed, the more important a truth, the greater is the peril of its becoming all-absorbing. "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, (blessed, divine remedy!) whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" {John 14: 26}. "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth" {John 16: 13}.

Thus, when Jesus, after speaking of the many mansions in His Father's house, and of going there to prepare a place for His own, said: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there may ye be also" {John 14: 3}, it is clear that He did not mean death, nor the end of the world, nor the destruction of Jerusalem. He who was going away promised to come again: if it was a real, personal departure of Jesus, it was to be as real and personal a return, not to reign over them in their place, but to take them to His place, that He and they might be there together. Right, therefore, it is, that our hearts should feel that our going to Him is a thing very distinct from His coming to receive us unto Himself in such sort as this.

Again, our souls may have drank somewhat into the triumphant strain of the Apostle, when he cries: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" {1 Cor. 15: 55}. Hades is not our joy, but He who has won the victory-He that liveth and was dead, and behold He is alive for evermore, and hath its keys! It is true that the Christian can say that all is his, life or death; still, death is not, and ought not to be, the object of his affections. Christ is the Bridegroom; not Christ known after the flesh, for henceforth know we no man thus: we know Him the risen man, the Lord from heaven. And by the energy of the Holy Ghost, knowing Him risen, we long for that which will but speak His worth, His power, His glory — above all, His love. We long for His coming and for the resurrection — the resurrection of them that are Christ's, at His coming. Happiness, no doubt, it is to be rid of this clog and burden, this body of sin and death — happiness far deeper is the assurance that we depart to be with Christ; but, led of the Spirit, we long for His triumph, for His joy. Our death and consequent separate state, however to us "far better" through His grace, is far from being His triumph No! it is "when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory" {1 Cor. 15: 54}.

Nevertheless, let none depreciate the blessed portion of those who, absent from the body, are present with the Lord. When the word of truth in its fullness and simplicity is respected, this may not be touched. To the dying thief, who prayed the Lord to remember him when He should come in His kingdom, Jesus said: "Verily, I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise" {Luke 23: 42, 43}; that is, He proffers something beyond and better than he asked, something which, to the renewed mind, is more prized than any outward governmental display, however glorious — the joy of being with Christ Himself, and that very day too, without waiting for His coming in His kingdom. I do not mean, nor believe, that, in the kingdom, the element of the presence and companionship of Christ will be wanting, nor can it be supposed that we shall be less able to appreciate this blessed association, when that which is perfect is come. Surely not. Yet, strictly, it is not what constitutes the character of the kingdom, for it existed, as we have seen before the kingdom, and it will continue after the kingdom shall have been delivered up. But when one has felt even a little of the affections of Christ, it needs few words to show that no conferred honour, no recompense, however right, (and God forbid that we should disparage the recompense of such a Lord!) can approach the joy of being near Him, and with Him, and, blessed be God, for ever!

The saints, then, which sleep in Jesus, (or rather who were put to sleep by Jesus, τοὺς χοιμηθέντας διὰ τοῦ  Ἰησοῦ — 1 Thess. 4: 14, ) death shall not be able to separate from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. so Stephen, stoned, calls and says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" {Acts 7: 59}; and Paul could say "to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." ". . . For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better" {Phil. 1: 21, 23}. There was not, and could not be, a doubt, whether to choose death or resurrection. The hesitation was about "living in the flesh," not about resurrection, which was incomparably more blessed than either to live or to die: "if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead." To abide in the flesh might be more needful for others; but as far as the servant of Christ, individually, is concerned, to depart and to be with Christ is far better. (Phil. 1.) Nevertheless, the third chapter of this same epistle declares that we have another and sweeter hope. We look for the Saviour from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ; who, instead of giving to our spirits only the joy of being with Him, shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself. And the Apostle, in 2 Cor. 5, speaking of Christian position and judgment as to these things, utters our confidence and willingness to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, though, even here, he shows that there is another thing closer to the heart. "We groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven . . . For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed (i.e., death and the separate state,) but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life" {2 Cor. 5: 2}: the result and complement of the resurrection of Christ. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies because of His spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8. 11-23).

The Prospect 1: 16.

Enduring Temptation and Entering into Temptation.

James 1: 2, 12; Matt. 26: 41

W. Kelly.

There is manifestly a vast difference between "falling into temptation," or "enduring temptation" (James 1: 2, 12), on the one hand, and " entering into temptation " (Matt. 26: 41), on the other. We do well therefore to have it clear and settled in our souls; for, as the one is blessed, the other is the utmost possible danger for the soul. There is nothing more strengthening than to "endure temptation"; nothing more perilous than to "enter into" it. There seems little difference in the words, and people might easily slur over the difference in their thought. But the difference is complete; for in the one case it is an honour that God puts upon us, and in the other a snare that Satan presents to us.

Which of these two things do we know best? How far do our souls that are here round the table of the Lord Jesus know what it is to fall into divers temptations, or to endure temptation? For blessed are we if we do. Falling into temptation, or enduring it, is that which God delights in. In Gen. 12 we find that Abraham was in a condition in which God could try him; and He loves that we should be in such a condition that He can try us. But this is not so when we are not governed by the sense of the presence of God, as well as happy in Him. It is not so where flesh is not judged. Are we then brought to this point in the ways of God? For it is this that He looks for from every saint of His. Are we then brought into communion with the Father and His Son in our Lord Jesus (1 John 1)? Have we not the same Saviour, and the same salvation of God?

Still, in Christ salvation is not merely an incomparable favour such as God has shown to us in the depths of our need, but it is also assuredly inseparable from the dealing with self in the presence of God; so much so, that where this is not learnt at the beginning it must be more painfully taught in the course. And then what dishonour to God! how grieving to His Spirit! Such failure, to teach us what we are, is not enduring temptation, nor is it in the least the same as God's trying us. In such a state the Lord has rather to buffet us for our faults, as those who bear the name of the Lord Jesus after an uncomely sort.

How grievous that those who have in the Saviour such a salvation, based on the utter judgment of the flesh, should so little have used it to deal with self, the most hateful of all things to God; for so one need not hesitate to call it. I admit there is a greater daringness and pride and subtlety in Satan; but it seems to me that for that which is low and base and mean, there is nothing so bad as self; and yet this is the very thing that every one of us carries with us. The question now is, How far has grace acted upon our souls to lead us to judge it out and out in the presence of God? Where this is the case, the Lord can try us; that is, He can put us to the proof by what is not at all a question of evil of any kind, because God does not tempt by evil any more than He is tempted by evil things.

When God then was pleased to ask Abraham to give up his only son, this was in no wise evil, but a most blessed trial. It was proving whether Abraham had such perfect confidence in God that he would give up the object that was dearest to him, in whom were centred all the promises of God. And by grace Abraham could. Of course he did it with the perfect certainty that, if Isaac were then to die, God would raise him up; for Abraham perfectly well knew, before the sacrifice was asked, that Isaac was to be the child of promise; and he knew that it was to be that Isaac and nobody else — not another son — so that he was certain, if Isaac were offered up, God would raise him again from the dead. It was therefore really the good of God's own heart that was reflected in what He asked of Abraham's heart; and Abraham was brought into greater communion with God in that which was in its measure the counterpart of the gift of His own Son.

Just so it is with the trials that God is pleased to try us by, speaking now not of our bad trials, but of our good ones; not of such sorrows as Lot passed through, but of those like Abraham's. It is a proof of the greatest confidence on God's part if there is in us such a groundwork of walking before God, and in the consciousness of His presence, that He can try us with something that is like Himself — some prize to give up, some suffering to endure in grace — whatever it may be that is according to His own mind. It is in this sense that temptation is spoken of in James 1: 2, 12.

After this (James 1: 13-15) we immediately turn to temptation spoken of in a bad sense, and this connects itself with the verse I read in Matt. 26. I shall not dwell long upon either, though both are words of most salutary character for our souls. The Lord had looked for His disciples to watch with Him. Alas! He had not found it. And the Lord had gone Himself alone, and had prayed to His Father in deepest suffering. Then He comes back to the disciples, and, finding them sleeping, He says to Peter, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" No, they could not watch with Him one hour! The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

Now it would be very unworthy for us to take this as an excuse for our own failure; this would be reading scripture to the positive injury of our souls and the dishonour of God; yet I am afraid there are many who do so. But we must remember there is this difference between our standing now, and that of the disciples. Flesh had not been thoroughly exposed and judged at that time; it was before the cross of Christ, and so before the Holy Ghost was given. There was divine life, but divine life, in itself, always goes in weakness.

It is the Holy Ghost that acts in power; and you never can have power without Him. But we are always responsible for the power of the Holy Ghost, because He is given to the believer, and for ever abides in him. This time was not yet come; but the Lord does say in view of it, as well as of the state in which they then were, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." For remember this, it is not any power conferred by the Spirit of God that keeps, even though He be the Spirit of power — it is not energy in this or that which keeps, but dependence; it is the sense of weakness that watches and prays, and thus has the power of Christ resting on us. His strength made perfect in weakness.

There is nothing that so tends, where it is severed from Christ, to destroy dependence, as a large knowledge of the word of God. And that is where our danger lies. The greater our knowledge of the word of God, where it is separated from the sense of utter weakness, and consequently from the need of watching and praying, the greater the danger. This is a solemn warning for our souls. There is no doubt plenty of knowledge of Scripture, and of what is called intelligence of truth; but do our souls keep up this sense of our need and weakness, and the expression of it to God? "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation."

What does our Lord mean by "entering into temptation"? The will that goes into a scene where nothing but a judged will in one who goes at the bidding of God and leaning on Him can be kept; that is, the will goes in where failure is inevitable, just because it is will at work. So Peter himself soon proved. He went where Peter could not stand, unless the Lord had called and kept him by faith. He entered into temptation. He did not suffer. There was no such thing as enduring temptation; but he entered into it, and fell.

And let me just say that it is all well in the midst of the saints of God to confess our Lord Jesus Christ; but it is not so easy to confess Him truly and humbly where, instead of saints sympathising with us, shame and contempt, or death even, may be the consequence, as in Peter's case. He would have endured, had he gone in by grace, obedience, watching and praying, instead of trusting in his own willingness to go to prison or even to die for his Master. When our Lord says, "The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak," He is looking at nature in man; and nature is incapable of such a trial. None but God can sustain, and therefore it would require God's will expressed in His word to lead us rightly into such a scene of temptation, and His grace sustaining in faith to keep us in it; otherwise it would be but our own will, and we should fall.

It would have been an abomination in Abraham to sacrifice his son, unless God had spoken the word. But faith, where self is judged, strengthens the soul to endure temptation. One enters not into temptation where one abides in dependence and self-judgment. Then when we fall into various temptations, we count it all joy; and as we did not enter of our own will, so we do not fall in them, but by grace endure.

The Lord give us to watch and pray, so much the more because He has blessed us with such a knowledge of His word and of Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ.

W. K.

Exodus 1-3: 22

W. Kelly.

INTRODUCTION

There can hardly be a greater contrast than between the first book of Moses called Genesis, and the second called Exodus. For the former is the book of beginnings, and hence exhibits the most striking variety, so as to present the germs of almost all the truths or topics expounded in other books of scripture-creation, relationship with God and one with another, temptation and fall of man, revelation of grace and the enemy's defeat, sacrifice, and sonship in faith and without it, the world, etc. It is needless to pursue here what is manifest, and fully explained in its own place.

But in the abundance of Genesis one vast truth is not included, redemption. It is the characteristic subject which fills the book of Exodus: first, the evil and wretched state of God's people which called for it from God; second, the accomplishment of it, as far as the type went; and, third, the blessed consequence of it in God's dwelling in the midst of the redeemed.

In the earlier chapters we are told of the oppression which befell Israel at the hand of Egypt, ever harder as they grew and multiplied (Ex. 1). God meets the faith of the parents of Moses, and preserves the life of the destined deliverer, when exposed, by the daughter of the king who was bent on their destruction. But even Moses must learn to wait on God for His time and way when his own energy proved abortive (Ex. 2); yet, even then faith is proved superior to providence which gave what looking to God gave up. And Moses learned in the desert what the wisdom of Egypt could not teach. There appeared to him Jehovah's angel in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bramble bush, and announced His coming down through him to deliver His people out of Egypt (Ex. 3). As distrustful now as before bold, Moses receives the signs of the serpent-rod, the leprous hand, and the river's water become blood, as his signs of divine commission, with Aaron as mouthpiece, and gets Jethro's consent for his return to Egypt with his wife and sons (Ex. 4). But Pharaoh vents his pride and unbelief in the rudest rejection of Jehovah's demand through His envoys; and the oppression is made cruelly heavier: no straw now, yet the tale of bricks undiminished, so that they were worse off than ever (Ex. 5). On the remonstrance of Moses, the God-Almighty of the fathers reveals Himself by His covenant name of Jehovah to their sons, though they listened not through anguish; and Moses confesses his despair (Ex. 6).

Pharaoh's obdurate heart was made harder still, and the plagues begin. Their boasted river and waters everywhere are turned into blood (Ex. 7). The frogs emerge from the smitten waters and cover the land and their dwellings everywhere (Ex. 8). But the respite given only hardens the king more. And Jehovah turns the dust under the staff of Moses into gnats on man and beast, so that the scribes own the finger of God; but Pharaoh still rebels. Then dog-flies sent everywhere save in Goshen become a yet plainer judgment, and Pharaoh yields for the moment, but hardened his heart when the pressure was withdrawn. Next was sent (Ex. 9) the grievous murrain on Egypt's cattle, not on Goshen's; but Pharaoh's heart was stubborn, and he did not let the people go. Then the dread boil with blains fell on man as well as cattle throughout Egypt, yet in vain. Next came such a violent hail and lightning and thunder as Egypt had never known, yet none befell Goshen. Pharaoh owned his wrong, but only for the moment. After this were sent locusts beyond precedent, so that Pharaoh's bondmen entreated, and himself called Moses and Aaron in haste to ask forgiveness. But darkness to be felt for three days in Egypt, while Israel had light in their dwellings followed his impenitence (Ex. 10), and one more plague must come, the death of every firstborn of man and cattle (Ex. 11) from Pharaoh to his meanest slave.

But this night of passover had quite another character for Israel. It was the foundation of their redemption through the blood of the lamb sprinkled on their two doorposts and the upper lintel. Within these they feasted on its body roast with fire and unleavened bread, eaten in haste with loins girt, sandals on feet, and staff in hand, on the month of Abib, once the seventh of the year, now the first of the sacred reckoning for Israel. It was an ordinance for ever on the fourteenth day at evening, with a feast till the one and twentieth, which forbade leaven on peril of cutting off. At midnight Jehovah executed judgment on man and beast and the gods of Egypt; and a great cry arose, for there was not a house in which there was not one dead (Ex. 12). And Pharaoh and the Egyptians rose to bid Israel depart, long since, as now, laden by the favour of their neighbours with raiment, and silver and gold utensils abundantly. Then most impressively did Jehovah lay it on Israel to remember that day of death for Egypt's firstborn, and therefore sacrificing to Him every firstling of males, breaking the ass's neck, unless ransomed with a lamb, and ransoming their own firstborn (Ex. 13).

Yet God led His people about lest they should be discouraged; and Jehovah went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, so that they could go day and night. Not even then did Pharaoh bend to God. Redemption would have its type of power in the final destruction of the foe, as well as by atoning blood which is the deepest for the soul before God. This was not for the Egyptians but for Israel. It was a question for sin before Him; and the lamb's blood alone secured him that was within the blood-sprinkled door. If they partook of a lamb's body, it was eaten with bitter herbs and with unleavened bread. Self was judged. Repentance accompanied faith. Jehovah saw the blood, and passed over according to His estimate of its worth which is perfect for each, as ours could not be: we rest therefore on His value for it, which is the essence of faith.

Exodus 14 typifies not Christ's blood sprinkled for Jehovah's eye on the night of judgment, but His death and resurrection for the deliverance of the redeemed, who now sing of His salvation and the destruction of His foes. Thenceforward is the proper journey of His own across the desert for the mountain of His inheritance, the place that Jehovah has made His dwelling, who shall reign for ever and ever, but guided already to the abode of His holiness, the fruit of redemption. Yet they prove the trials and the mercies of the way, three days without water, and the water, even when found, too bitter to drink; but the wood cast in by Jehovah's direction makes it sweet; and is followed by the ample refreshment of twelve wells and seventy palm trees (Ex. 15). In Ex. 16 the bread from above is shown to precede and mark the sabbath; as in Ex. 17 the living waters from the smitten rock strengthen for conflict with Amalek, wherein the victory depends on the uplifted hand of the mediator. Grace meets every fault, which at other times called for judgments. This closes in Ex. 18 with the picture of divine government which is only realised when Messiah reigns.

All changes in Ex. 19. where the people, heedless of such grace and confiding in their fidelity, accept the condition of law to their ruin, whilst its terrors begin with darkness, and lightning, thunder, trumpet, and the voice more terrible than all to the sinner. And God spoke His ten words (Ex. 20), and set out His judgments (Ex. 21-23) not without better things in type. Yet in Ex. 24 the legal covenant with death as the penalty was sealed with the sprinkled blood; and the elders ate and drank before Him. But Moses draws into higher access to see the pattern of the sanctuary, pledges too of the good things to come. After the heave-offering of the material, we have the ark with the mercy-seat prescribed, the table, and the lampstand, and their appurtenances in Ex. 25; the tabernacle itself with its curtains, loops and clasps, its coverings of goat's hair and of ram's skins, the boards too and the bars, with the veil of the innermost and the entrance curtain (Ex. 26). But we may remark for our profit that Ex. 27 closes this portion with the great altar of burnt-offering and the court around it, and the command to bring oil for the lamps continually.

Then follows in Ex. 28, 29 the order of consecration of the priesthood, Aaron and his sons; and only then in Ex. 30 the golden altar of incense figuring Christ in His sweet savour in the light of the Spirit manifested perpetually, and the people identified by redemption with it, though unable to enter the holiest as we can; and next the laver for purification if there was failure, the washing of water by the word; the holy anointing oil, and the fragrant drugs for the sanctuary. These were all associated with the priesthood for maintaining feeble man in accordance with His relationship to God; whereas the types preceding the order for consecrating the priesthood were to manifest God in Christ for man's blessing in the knowledge of Him.

In Ex. 31 we have Jehovah calling and qualifying men for the work; and the sabbath anew associated with it; and the tables of stone given to Moses. But who can adequately tell the horror of Israel's departure from God in Ex. 32! who the guilty weakness of Aaron, saint of Jehovah, or the anguish of Moses! The broken tables declare it, and the avenging sword of Levi's sons, and the intercession of Moses, willing to be blotted out for Israel. Nor will he let Him go (Ex. 33) without His presence; as he had already pitched the tent outside the camp and called it the Tent of meeting whither every one that sought Jehovah went outside the camp. And Jehovah asked for fresh tables (Ex. 34), and came down before Moses' face, revealing Himself as Jehovah governmentally in mercy and long-suffering but by no means clearing the guilty, under this mediation of Moses, and not under law simply as such. How much goodness was here added! Yet this is what 2 Cor. 3 treats as the ministry of death and condemnation! Privileges of divine goodness aggravate our guilt if we are under law but cannot deliver us from its curse.

In Ex. 35 the sabbath is again enjoined; and the work goes forward in Ex. 36-39, till on the first day of the first month (in Ex. 40) all is set up in order, and in every part of it, and Moses did all "As Jehovah had commanded Moses." The oil anointed it wholly. It was thus not only the fruit of redemption but in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in figure God's habitation.

"And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went forward in all their journeys. But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day when it was taken up. For the cloud of Jehovah was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys."

It is a redeemed people's privilege and responsibility to look up for, and act under, the guidance of God in their walk through the wilderness.

CHAPTER 1.

ISRAEL IN EGYPT

Ex. 1: 1-7

It was a wondrous act of grace when the God of glory called Abram in Ur of the Chaldees to Himself. The fathers of the chosen race no less than the accursed of Canaan then "served other gods:" a then new and destructive evil, striking directly at God's truth and honour, of which we never hear in scripture till after the deluge. In the early days of Seth, particularly from the birth of his son whom he called Enosh with a due sense of what man is now, frail and mortal, we know that people began to call on the name of Jehovah. Eminent among those who believed later were Enoch and Noah; but all these walked with God where they were. Their spirit was separate to Him whom they knew by His word and Spirit, and they looked onward in confiding hope for Him, the mysterious Seed of the woman who should crush the enemy of God and man. They, or some, called on Jehovah's name with a reality which a new nature alone gives.

But idolatry as an open affront to God could be met by nothing less than His call to open separation unto Himself, not only from the nearest ties of kin and nature but also from the providential order He had Himself lately set up in tongues, countries, and nations. His call was sovereign grace but imperative and paramount, with promises to an earthly seed and to a spiritual, only to be fully accomplished in Christ's day above and below. Oh how feebly realised meanwhile by faith!

As Abram went down into Egypt under natural pressure, so he was given to know in prophetic vision with a smoking furnace and a flaming fire, that his seed should be a sojourner in a land not theirs, and be in bondage and affliction four centuries, to emerge with great property and divine judgment on their oppressive masters, when the time approached to deal with Amorite iniquity (Gen. 15). Having come down under the prestige of Egypt's greatest governor and the warmest royal favour, Israel might have looked for nothing but ease and honour, settled as they were in the best of the land, in Goshen, the extreme province of Egypt toward the south frontier of Palestine. But spite of appearances Egypt in Jehovah's eyes betokened servitude and affliction; and so it came to pass when Joseph's bulwark no longer subsisted. The word of God abides, and cannot fail, whatever the weakness of man, or the pride of unbelief. For the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, and His word is the proof of His goodness toward man, and of counsels of grace and glory unfailing when man comes to the end of his folly and sin, and the divine judgment is proved as sure as is His grace.

"And these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt: with Jacob came they, the man and his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphthali; Gad and Asher. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls; and Joseph was in Egypt [already]. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and became exceeding strong; and the land was filled with them" (vers. 1-7).

Egypt was the providential nursery provided for the chosen race whilst growing up from a great patriarchal family, the sons and sons' sons of one father, into a people for their destined inheritance. They were sheltered mercifully for a season, that they might grow all the more under adversity when it came, as it must, under man's antipathy to any who claimed relationship with the true God, not without dread as we shall soon find.

Let none deem it carping or unkind criticism, if I cite the words of so excellent a Christian as M. Henry in order to save souls from following him where he shows his utter ignorance of God's church, which he confounds, one while with the saints before or during or since Israel, and as here with Israel as such. This is to ignore all the N.T. light on what is found exclusively there, and impossible to exist alongside of Israel, which supposes the middle wall of partition to have God's sanction; whereas He took it down as an essential act for the being of the church, wherein is neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all and in all. The family of faith again was a fact throughout the world's history, and independent of it with increasing degrees of light from God. But the church of God was a wholly new thing, which only began with the Jew's rejection of the Christ, whom God raised and exalted to His right hand, and then and there gave Him to be Head over all things to the church which is His body.

Judge then the profound lack of intelligence in these words which open his Exposition of Exodus, "Moses . . . , having in the first book of his history preserved and transmitted the records of the church (!), while it existed in private families, comes in this second book to give us an account of its growth into a great nation (!!); and as the former furnishes us with the best Economics, so this with the best Politics." It is not that other divines of any school are more reliable: they all agree in the display of the same misconception. Nor is it a question of an idea or a theory. The truth of the church is bound up with Christ's glory in heavenly places, and immediately acts on our judgment and our affections; because this is what God is now occupied with, along with the gospel sent to all the creation. Now we, without right understanding of our church relation and of God's revealed will as to it, cannot but drift helplessly from what is of the deepest importance to His glory and the blessing of all concerned. The misunderstanding is through the like Judaising that was the earliest and widest spread of all the forms of unbelief with which the apostle Paul had his life-conflict. It is no less persistent and ensnaring today, blinding not a few of the excellent of the earth against our highest privileges.

Here we have exclusively the sons of Israel brought before us under circumstances favouring an extremely rapid increase to which ver. 7 directs our special attention. There is not the most distant allusion to the church throughout.

CHAPTER 2.

ISRAEL MADE TO SERVE WITH RIGOUR.

Ex. 1: 8-14.

So rapid an increase in the population of Israel did not fail to arouse the attention and the fears of the Egyptians, when the memory of Joseph and of his services had passed away.

"And there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said to his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel [are] more numerous and stronger than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, if war occur, they take side also with our enemies and fight against us, and go up out of the land. And they set over them task-masters to oppress them with their burdens. And they built store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread; and they were distressed because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigour; and they embittered their life with hard labour in clay and bricks, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service with which they made them serve [was] with rigour" (vers. 8-14).

The wisdom of the world over-reaches and defeats itself. It was bad policy for the Egyptians to live in idleness and luxury, and to leave their works of hard toil and skill as an oppressive burden on their servants. It was a good apprenticeship for those who were to be mighty as well as populous, and to possess the gate of their enemies. In any case the righteous Lord loves righteousness, and is indifferent to injustice nowhere, least of all when done to the family of "the friend of God." None shall prosper who are unfair or cruel to his seed. "I will bless them that bless thee," said Jehovah to Abram, "and curse him that curseth thee."

In the present case it was a breach of the friendly understanding which set Israel and his sons in Goshen. There had never been hostility. The sons of Israel were in no way prisoners of war or captives in any way. They had given no reason for suspicion of seeking dominion over Egypt. They had never abandoned the hope of returning to Canaan as their land of promise. The burial of Jacob proclaimed this loudly; the unburied coffin of Joseph, still more loudly. Yet did the king who knew not Joseph dread the increasing number and strength of a people which served now as if due for a long while. Nor this only. Come, said he, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, if war occur, they take side also with our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land. Was this in any degree just? And is an unjust policy "wise" in the long run, or in itself justifiable?

No doubt it is so that the kingdoms of the world have ever acted. God is not in their thoughts, even if He be on the lips of any. Selfishness reigns publicly as it governs individually. So it was increasingly when kings ruled over Israel and Judah with a slight exception. So it was when Babylon followed and the other world-kingdoms of Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. So it will not be when He comes whose right it is beyond every other ruler. But before that King reigns in righteousness and princes rule in judgment, a dark page of prophecy must be fulfilled not in blood only but in burning fuel for fire, and such overturning of things above and below as the world has never known. Out of that hurly-burly Israel shall emerge as Jehovah's people, His Son reigning in Zion, and they shall dwell in the land that He gave to His servant Jacob, when He shall have executed judgments on all those that despised or spoiled them near and far off, and they all shall know that He is Jehovah their God.

Meanwhile man's will had its way; as Israel built store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom, and Raamses (or Rameses). But God's providence acted also; for the more the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites, the more these multiplied and spread. Therefore were their masters vexed with fear and horror, and hardship was added to their bondage. The Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigour; or as is so graphically described in the text, "they embittered their life with hard labour in clay and bricks, and in all their manner of labour in the field: all their labour with which they made them serve was with rigour." It was quite different from the conditions of slavery once in the West Indies, and later still in the Southern States of America, where such malice was the exception, yet with a race never in honour but degraded grievously. But the face of Jehovah is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth, even in a day when the moral foundations are out of course. His eyes are upon the righteous, and His ears unto their cry. But the furnace became hotter still, and the divine intervention took a more definite and impressive shape.

CHAPTER 3.

PHARAOH'S MALICE AND GOD'S BLESSING.

Ex. 1: 15-22.

We have seen from ver. 13 that it was not only a new king who regarded the rising strength of Israel with fear and jealousy: "the Egyptians made the sons of Israel serve with rigour, and embittered their lives with hard labour," in town and country. It was not merely service but harsh bondage, as complete a contradiction to their original tenure of Goshen as could be.

The oppression became more cruel still, and stopped not short of plans of the most cowardly kind and in a crafty and perfidious way.

"And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one [was] Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah; and he said, When ye do the office of a midwife [or, help in bearing] to the Hebrew women, and see [them] upon the birth-stool, if a son, then ye shall kill him; but if a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. And the king of Egypt called the midwives, and said to them, Why have ye done this, and saved the male-children alive? And the midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women [are] not as the Egyptian women; for they are strong, and they have borne before the midwife cometh to them. And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. And it came to pass because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, but every daughter ye shall save alive" (vers. 15- 22).

Such an instance as this, and as Herod's in dread of Messiah's birth, could so exceed the ordinary evil ways of man as to remind one of the hidden wicked one, the old Serpent and the Devil, and his enmity to the woman's Seed from first to last of man's day; whose blindness becomes the deeper because he ignores the secret power that works behind the scenes of the world's sad history. How little its rulers, any more than its classes and masses, believe that he is the spring that actuates the sons of disobedience, slaves of a mightier rebel than themselves! For here is a conflict unceasing between the arch-enemy instigating to destruction the first man against the Second and those dear to Him, till the last war whether above to clear the heavenly places (Rev. 12), or the earth enters for the displayed kingdom (Rev. 19), or the final judgment and eternity (Rev. 20, Rev. 21: 1-8). All other wars generally are petty in comparison, springing from ambition, revenge, or other depraved lusts. We may except such as may have typified on a small scale those immensely momentous events for the deliverance of man and the creation from Satan's thraldom, for God's glory in His purpose of exalting the Christ and all that are His in the heavens and on the earth in the highest, largest, and richest way, and alas! too in the destructive punishment of all His enemies.

Here it is but a dastardly and diabolical effort to thwart what God was doing with the sons of Israel, even through the midwives for the male-children. But it was frustrated by the fear of God in the midwives, whom God established in their houses, as they refused the perfidy and the murder the wicked king commanded.

CHAPTER 4.

MOSES BORN UNDER INTERDICT.

Ex. 2: 1-10.

Man proposes, God disposes. It appears from the facts stated, that, just after Pharaoh's edict for exterminating the sons of Israel, God ordered the birth of their deliverer. For Aaron was born three years before Moses, and was untouched, Miriam being several years his senior, as the history even here implies.

"And a man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bore a son. And she saw him that he was fair, and hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of paper reeds, and cemented it with bitumen and pitch, and put the child in it, and laid [it] in the sedge, on the bank of the river. And his sister stood afar off to see what would happen to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe in the river; and her maids walked along by the river side. And she saw the ark in the midst of the sedge, and sent her hand-maid to fetch it. And she opened [it] and saw the child, and, behold, the boy wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is [one] of the Hebrews' children. And his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call thee a wet-nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the damsel went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give [thee] thy wages. And the woman took the child and nursed it. And when the child was grown, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses* and said, Because I drew him out of the water " (vers. 1-10).

*Josephus (Ant. ii. 9. b), accounts thus for the Greek analogue in the Sept., Μωυ>σης "for the Egyptians call the water 'Mo' and those who are rescued from the water 'uses'."

The mother's heart regarded the beauty of the babe as a sign from God to preserve him from the murderous fate intended by the king. But there was more than natural feeling. "By faith" Moses when born was hid three months by his parents, because they saw the child fair; and they did not fear the injunction of the king (Heb. 11: 23). A deliverer was ever before those who believed, not only the woman's Seed, but Abraham's Seed also. To have taken absolutely that life was a Satanic attack on God's counsels. At the risk of life perhaps they preserved their child three months. We are not told more of the circumstances, why it was impossible to hide the child longer. But obviously he who devised the death of every male child would use means too for due inquisition to ascertain from time to time that his decree was carried out. It is legitimate to infer that the moment was at hand when their concealment could last no longer, the child must be committed to the Nile, and themselves punished also for their contumacy.

Hence the mother was led by a wisdom above her own to commit the baby to an ark of papyrus reeds, well plastered with bitumen and pitch, and to await divine interference. The sister, who was afterwards known as not Miriam only but the "prophetess," watched at a distance, but near enough to see how her little brother would fare on the bank of the river. And who should be the first to come down to bathe near the ark but Pharaoh's daughter, she and her maids? She in God's providence saw the ark, and sent her handmaid to fetch it, and opened it and saw the child. Here again God wrought; for, "behold, the babe wept." His tears, to say nothing of his beauty, touched the heart of the princess. "She had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children."

Miriam had now joined herself at the critical moment to the group; and with wit quickened by affection availed herself of the evident compassion to say to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call thee a nurse of the Hebrews, that she may suckle the child for thee?" What could the princess say to so sensible and timely a suggestion, but "Go"? "And the damsel went and fetched the child's mother [her own too]; and Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give [thee] thy wages."

This was no miracle, any more than the preservation of the child. But it was the living God's working in the various persons concerned, to rescue from a watery grave the one who was to rescue His people from a bondage to many more bitter than death in the Nile: the type of the Deliverer from sin and wrath, not for Israel but for every believer; the prophet too and mediator of God's law, like but beyond other men, though immeasurably inferior to Him through Whom grace and truth came, the manifestation of God's light and love as none but Himself.

"And the woman took the child and nursed it." Say not, believe not, that God gives the believer divine life only, to feel his sins, or pardon through His mercy in forgiving them. Here it was not yet the divine Saviour. But what a joy to the parents to have the doom so simply and surely set aside! and the child brought up where it ought to be rather than anywhere else in the world. Even then it was capable of forming impressions which grace would strengthen and deepen another day, to fortify against the unholy influence of a heathen court, whatever the kindness personally of the princess. "And the child grew, and she (the mother) brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, and said, "Because I drew him out of the water." How vain to faith what cavillers say in this day or any other! This was the childhood of him whom God inspired in due time, among other great things, to write the Pentateuch, greater than all his great deeds for God and for man. And it abides as a divine monument in face of all the vain efforts of unbelieving detractors, who really possess no more weight than noisy boys blowing against a mountain; but they cannot shake off the guilt of unbelief.

CHAPTER 5.

MOSES QUITS EGYPT AND FLEES TO MIDIAN.

Ex. 2: 11-25.

We have seen faith blessed in the saving of Moses, and providence at work in the king's daughter, who made his own mother his nurse, and adopted him as her son and had him instructed, as Stephen said, in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, mighty as he was too in his deeds and words.

Now we are about to hear of his own faith, rising above the elevation which providence gave him at the court of Pharaoh, and enabling him to sacrifice all to God's glory and His promises to Israel in their most despised and distressful circumstances.

"And it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he turned this way and that way, and when he saw that [there was] no man, he smote the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And he went out the second day, and, behold, two Hebrew men were quarrelling; and he said to him that was in the wrong, Why art thou smiting thy neighbour? And he said, Who made thee ruler and judge over us? Dost thou intend [say] to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared and said, Surely, the matter is known. And Pharaoh heard of this matter and sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from before Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian. And he sat by the well. And the priest of Midian had seven daughters; and they came and drew [water], and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses rose and helped them, and watered their flock. And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, Why are ye come so soon today? And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew abundantly for us, and watered the flock. And he said to his daughters, And where [is] he? Why then have ye left the man behind? Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses consented to stay with the man; and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. And she bore a son, and he called his name Gershom [a sojourner there]; for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.

"And it came to pass during these many days, that the king of Egypt died. And the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and cried; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. And God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God took notice" (vers. 11-25.).

It was characteristic of Moses' faith, that he believed God's love to His people because they were His, however deplorable their state through their unbelief and the world's oppression and contempt. The providential circumstances which had lifted him above the low estate of his parents and set him, distinguished by his abilities, his acquirements, and his character in the nearest position to the royal family, gave him the stronger reason to treat all as nought compared with identifying himself with down-trodden Israel. Natural gratitude might plead her claim who had under God's hand delivered him from death. Reason would not fail to argue the prudence of using his nearness at court to gain and seize opportunities for its favour toward his suffering kinsfolk. In the face of all adverse appearances the faith of Moses rested on two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, His promise and His oath to the father of the faithful, that of Abraham's seed He would make a great nation, and that in his Seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed.

Moses was no enthusiastic stripling, but then, as Stephen lets us know, a man about forty years of age. His words, his deeds, his mind, his affection, all point him out as one of the leading spirits for all time. But by faith he deliberately turned his back on Egypt's ease, power, and honour, to take his place among the chosen people of Jehovah, slaves though they then were and strangers in a land not their own. He knew from what we read in Gen. 15 that the end of their affliction must come ere long; for had not Jehovah said hundreds of years before, that He would judge the nation after it had reduced them to servitude? and was not the fourth generation arrived, when they should quit their oppression for the land of promise? "By faith Moses, when become great, refused to be called son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to have temporary pleasure of sin, esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked off to the recompence" (Heb. 11: 24-26.).

The history gives the facts as they occurred. His brethren under their burdens lay on the heart of Moses; and as he looked, he saw an Egyptian smite one of them. Roused to indignation, "he looked this way and that way," and seeing no witness, he took the law into his hand and slew the offender, hiding the body in the sand. The love to his brethren was a right and holy feeling; but his inflicting death on the Egyptian was unjustifiable, and led to his long exile to escape the king's resentment. He acted on the impulse of his heart, and in no way as consulting God or obeying Him. Had he looked to Him, he would not have "looked this way or that way." He tarnished his testimony for God by his efforts to escape any witness of the deed or of his concealing of the corpse, and the consequences.

The very day after, he had to bear the keen wound indicted not by an Egyptian nor the king but by an unworthy brother. For when he reproved the sad quarrelling of Hebrew with Hebrew, he that did the wrong was the one to raise the insulting cry, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge"? and to clench it with the stab, Intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?" The conscience of Moses was bad: "surely the matter is known." The king too was roused by his act; and Moses fled from his vengeance into the land of Midian. Moses was not brought to nothingness in his own eyes. He was playing the hero rather than the saint who waits on God, not only for the revealed end, but for each step of the way. Hence we walk by faith, not by sight. It is a path of constant dependence on God, guided by His word. And Moses had as it were to unlearn for as many years in Midian as he had been learning the wisdom of the Egyptians. What a change from the court of Pharaoh to lead Reuel or Jethro's sheep "in the back end of the desert," not far from "the mount of God." To this discipline the solitude of the wilderness and the lowly life of a shepherd gave the needed sphere, that his impetuous spirit might be broken down, and himself become "very meek, above all men that were upon the face of the earth."

As he sat by the well, came the seven daughters of Reuel with their father's flock. But the shepherds drove them away from the troughs they sought to fill for watering the sheep. Moses interposed, and so helped the maidens that they returned soon enough to excite their father's inquiry how it came to pass, and a message sent that the stranger should partake of his hospitality. The gift of his daughter as wife followed, and the birth in due time of a son, whose name expressed the father's sense of strangership in a foreign land, in striking contrast with Joseph's forgetfulness of all his toil and all his father's house, under similar circumstances.

During those "many days" died the king of Egypt. But no relaxation of the cruel strain as yet appeared for the sons of Israel. Their bondage drew out sighs and cries. But their cry, as we are told with touching simplicity "came up to God because of the bondage; and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; and God looked upon the children of Israel, and God took notice." O ye that boast of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, produce any sentence from those classic historians, or from any since down to our day, for words approaching these for tenderness, soon to be rendered into undying facts, now for everlasting principles of truth and righteousness in earthly things which test the soul whether we care for the living God or are in heart His enemies!

CHAPTER 6.

THE BURNING BUT UNCONSUMED BRAMBLE.

Ex. 3: 1-5.

The moment so long desired by Moses came. The term, however considerable, of learning the wisdom of the Egyptians did not accomplish it; and an equal length in the desert for unlearning must as it were run out before God gave him the effectual call.

"And Moses tended the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock behind the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. And the Angel of Jehovah appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bramble; and he looked and behold, the bramble burned with fire, and the bramble was not consumed. And Moses said, Let me now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bramble is not burnt. And Jehovah saw that he turned aside to see, and God called to him out of the midst of the bramble, and said, Moses, Moses! And he said, Here [am] I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither; loose thy sandals from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (vers. 1- 5).

There had been significant tokens of the divine ways at great crises vouchsafed by God from the beginning. What more solemn than that which closed paradise to the disobedient pair, from whom the fallen race was to spring? A bad conscience led them to hide themselves from Him who had surrounded them with nothing but good, before He "drove out the man"; and the race thenceforward is by nature in exile from the garden of delights. Cherubim proclaimed God's rights and made re-entrance into Adam's paradise impossible. Innocence once gone is irreparable. Yet God's grace cannot fail in the Second man, the bruised Bruiser of the old serpent, held out to all that believe even before the guilty were expelled.

Again, when the post-diluvian earth began, and Noah offered to Jehovah his burnt-offerings of every clean beast and every clean fowl, so that all should stand on sacrifice, God (Elohim), for this was the right word in each case, set His bow in the cloud, as the token that a deluge of such destruction should never again destroy all flesh.

Further, when Jehovah pledged Himself to childless Abram in Gen. 15 to make his seed numberless as the stars, not only were special sacrifices prescribed, but a deep sleep and horror of darkness fell on the patriarch, and at sunset a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed, to his vision, between the divided animals as they lay slain: the sign of affliction and service to befall his seed before they should enter the promised land.

It was fitting that there should be given now to Moses with his commission a suited sign. And can any be conceived so meet for the deliverer to see as this great sight when he led the flock of Jethro behind an intervening wilderness, and came to what is significantly called "the mountain of God." It was the precisely significant mark of Israel under the covenant of law, utterly failing yet not destroyed. "For I am Jehovah, I change not: therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed" (Mal. 3: 6). The law given through Moses they presumed to obey, forgetting God's promises to the fathers, which Jehovah never forgot. Spite of their self-confidence, the bramble-bush went on burning, but unconsumed, because He, the Eternal, had promised. And they remain still insensible to their real state and its cause. For they in every way broke the first covenant and added to that sin, for which they were led captive to Babylon, the still worse sin of the returned remnant in rejecting the Messiah, even to the death of the cross, and were scattered by the Romans as they remain to this day, as indicated by Isaiah the prophet.

Even when there shall be a future righteous remnant repenting of all their sins and unbelief, the mass or "the many" as Daniel calls the apostate Jews, by compact with the Roman Beast will strive to set up the nation as Jehovah's people and their lawless king in the land (Dan. 11: 36, etc ). But Jehovah will come, as Isaiah says (Isa. 66: 15, 16), "with fire and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh, and the slain of Jehovah shall be many." Such will be the return of the Lord Jesus when He takes up again His ancient people, and deals with the enemies, Jewish or Gentile. Hence it essentially differs from what Moses saw to encourage him then, though there is the common principle that God's judgment of evil is ever unsparing; and privilege is vainly pleaded, either by Judaism or by Christendom, on behalf of their iniquities.

Here Jehovah manifests Himself as judge of evil in Israel who shall be sustained because of what He is to them, and in no way for their deserts: a greater fact than its wondrous sign. "And God," the Supreme, "called to Moses out of the midst of the bramble, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here [am] I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither; loose thy sandals from off thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest [is] holy ground." His presence is the true power of sanctification. Forms He could and did use under the law, in tabernacle and temple. But He Himself is more than any or all. What a support for Moses in going in to Pharaoh, and in leading His people out, and bearing their frowardness in the wilderness where all perished save the two witnesses, Joshua and Caleb; yet Israel remained unconsumed to enter the land in the generation to come.

CHAPTER 7.

THE DIVINE COMMISSION TO MOSES.

Ex. 3: 6-22.

But definite words were added to the sight.

"And he said, I [am] the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And Jehovah said, Seeing (or, Surely) I have seen the affliction of my people that [are] in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good and large land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. And now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me, and I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. And Moses said unto God, Who [am] I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this [shall be] the token to thee that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said to God, Behold [when] I come to the children of Israel, and shall say to them, The God of your fathers hath sent me to you; and they shall say to me, What [is] his name? what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I AM WHAT I AM; and he said, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me to you. And God said moreover to Moses, Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me to you; this [is] my name for ever, and this my memorial to all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say to them, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared to me, saying, Visiting (or, Surely) I have visited you and [seen] that which is done to you in Egypt; and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey. And they shall hearken to thy voice; and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt, and ye shall say to him, Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us; and now let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God. And I know that the king of Egypt will not give you leave to go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will put forth my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof; and after that he will let you go. And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty; but every woman shall ask her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put [them] upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians" (vers. 6-22).

It was a blessed intervention of Jehovah on behalf of His enslaved and cruelly oppressed people. The name He gave Himself was not new in the sense of never having been heard before. But now He was about to act on its reality and present value. There was to be accomplishment up to a certain and evident point, and not promise only. Hence stress is laid on "the God of thy fathers," and this expounded as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Moses realised the fact and hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. Most reassuring were the words, " And Jehovah said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows: and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good land and large, into a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. And now behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me; and I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt" (vers. 7-10).

Yet would it be partial and temporary; for what could be more that depended on the first man, a people in the flesh? The fulfilment for everlasting can only be when man truly renounces self, owns his ruin before God, and has Christ, the Second man, as the present and abiding ground of blessing. There was to be shortly a typical redemption; and a typical entrance into the land of abundance, not of corn and fruit only, but flowing with milk and honey. Nothing abides for ever but God, and God now has wrought for sinful man in the gift of life eternal and everlasting redemption. So it will be really for Israel when they have their own Messiah present and reigning over them. Till then it could be no more than provisional for Israel, who must learn what it is, after sowing to the flesh, to reap corruption.

Moses is as distrustful now, as he was confident in Egypt; he asks "Who am I" to go unto Pharaoh and bring out Israel? But Jehovah vouchsafes His presence and gives the token of serving God "on this mountain." Then, to Moses asking a specific name of His presence, He says, "I AM WHAT I AM," His essential and abiding being; and bids Moses say to Israel, "I AM hath sent me to you." All else was but creature. He was the only and ever existing One. But he was also to say, The Jehovah God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, had sent him to them. "This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial to all generations." A wondrous declaration to be infallibly verified, when the Lord Jesus vindicates His every word.

God therefore calls on Moses (ver. 16) to "Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared unto me saying, I have surely visited you and seen that which is done to you in Egypt: and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanite and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, to a land flowing with milk and honey. And they shall hearken to thy voice; and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say to him, Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, hath met with us: and now let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to Jehovah our God. And I know that the king of Egypt will not give you leave to go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will put forth my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go. And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: but every woman shall ask her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put [them] upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians" (vers. 16- 22).

He was to ask at first leave to go ''three days' journey into the wilderness," but would ask more as the obduracy of the king appeared; and God lets Moses know the king's sure defiance, tells of His wonders to be done in reproof, and directs His people not to go empty after their long unrequited labour, and that every woman should (not, 'borrow,' but) ask for jewels of silver and of gold, and thus spoil them, as it was righteous retribution. The word "borrow" is only a secondary sense, and here misappropriate. "Ask" is the direct and primary sense, and therefore right to be preserved.

[Thus far only had the Author written when he passed away.]

The Feasts in Deuteronomy 16.

W. Kelly.

1. THE PASSOVER, IN VERSES 1-8.

The three great feasts of Jehovah here specified were instituted by Him for the express purpose of filling the hearts of His people with the enjoyment of Himself revealed in distinct blessings. If it was so in the letter for Israel, what is taught and conveyed to us, who have the substance of these earthly shadows! For all that God wrought or gave in the times that are past is but a little thing, compared with what the incarnate Son of God presented to Him in His person, and accomplished in His death, resurrection, and ascension, that the Holy Spirit might testify to the believer a blessedness worthy of the Father and the Son. Yet who could deny that these feasts were full of rich remembrance and rich promise of mercy? What a magnificent putting forth of divine power it was to bring Israel, a then nation of slaves, from under the greatest power at the time ruling on the earth! Nor in that deliverance was it merely power. There was a far deeper question before God. Israel, no less than the Egyptians, were a sinful race. How could God make light of their sins? Against all the gods of Egypt Jehovah was about to execute judgment. Pharaoh, who denied His title to claim Israel, must be publicly humbled and punished. But withal what about the sins of Israel? Therefore, while closing His preliminary blows upon guilty Egypt, God directed the last of them to fall on the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, from the king's down to the maid's behind the mill. How then was it with His people? Were they not as real sinners as the Egyptians? And would God make light of sin because they were His own? Is not Jehovah sanctified in those that are near Him? Does it not add immensely to the horribleness of sins in His sight when they break out in one that He chooses to Himself? He had favoured and blessed their fathers, marking them out clearly for hundreds of years while growing up to be such a people as they then became.

Accordingly, He instituted the Passover, and made it the more striking, for a new reckoning commenced from that fact as a foundation for Israel. Abib was the seventh month of the civil year; "for in the month of Abib, Jehovah thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night" (ver. 1). It now began the holy year. Jehovah was dealing judicially beyond all that had gone before; and the lamb's blood alone could shelter guilty Israel. It was a whole people confessing their sins and His righteousness in the same solemn sacrifice applied to every household and every soul who entered that night the blood-sprinkled doors. So we read in Exodus 12. Only observe that in Deuteronomy 16 it is simply the passover sacrificed. Nothing is said here of the blood put upon the door- posts. "And thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock and the herd" (ver. 2).

The reason is plain. The use of the blood as on that first celebration was made but once. This intimates a great deal for the effectual reality, as well as in its typical significance, — as we may read, over and over again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. How much on the other hand among men depends on repetition! Only thus is it that ordinarily, they attain an approach to what they consider worthy. With God Who cannot fail, any more than lie, it is quite another thing. Repetition in His institutions imposed on man means that the end is not reached. But there was only one paschal sprinkling of blood on the door-posts; nor was there failure in the then result. It was not repeated at any subsequent observance of the feast. Attention was thereby drawn to the unity of the blood-sprinkling when judgment was proceeding as never again in Israel's history. But "sacrifice" must always be, as it is, the ground of righteousness for man as he is. And whose righteousness was it? Not man's certainly but God's righteousness. So in the cross of Christ God would lay such a foundation that He might not only judge the evil, but justify the ungodly who had wrought nothing to deserve protection. It was grace therefore, but God's righteousness according to His word. It is His appreciation of Christ's work on behalf of those whose works were only evil.

All are aware that the Passover was before the law. The attempt therefore to bring in the law is plainly and absolutely excluded. Had that feast only come in after the law, there might have seemed some little ground for such an inference. Men are ready enough to catch at this or that appearance in order to lay down what pleases them. And the reason why the law pleases is because it necessarily is addressed to man himself and his works. He therefore likes it; man is somebody, and can do something. Yet the law was God's claim on man; but what He taught by it was the impossibility of pleasing God on any such ground. Here too He was showing by the passover, before the law was, His way of sheltering from judgment a guilty people by the blood He directed them to put on their door-posts. Be it that they were Israel; but their sins He could not ignore, as if they were nothing; nor must they be borne with, because they were the sins of His people. No, He found a way of righteousness, His own righteousness in the lamb that was slain; and only once was the lamb's blood put (yet in a way that brought the ground of their exemption from judgment home to each Israelite,) on the entrance to every house. No one that was there could enter save under the lamb's blood which was put, not within but, outside the house.

And what could show so clearly that it was for Jehovah's eye, not for man as a matter of sense, or mind? It was put on the two side-posts, and on the lintel for his faith simply, but all the more for the profoundest feelings of his heart. Had it been inside, it would have naturally awakened the suggestion that they were to gaze at the lamb's blood, to which they owed their security. But there was nothing of the kind, the lamb's blood was put outside; within they eat the flesh roast with fire. What makes the force of that which has been said the more evident is the fact that it was "night." There was no natural light to enable the blood to be seen of men. Only the divine eye could see the blood on the door-posts. And He was the One concerned; sins refer to His judgment. He might work by a destroyer; but it was Jehovah Who smote Egypt, man, beast, and gods; it was Jehovah Who saw the blood, and passed over Israel sheltered by it. There was the blood for the eye of Jehovah Himself to discern. "When I see the blood, I will pass over you." Thus and thus only could the people be screened from the destroyer.

This was the foundation of all. Man had lived upon the earth long before; he had tried his own way in every possible form. Jehovah's people too had shown what they were; as His own fidelity and goodness had failed in no way. But never before had anything for His people been wrought as a righteous groundwork till the Passover.

Here however we see in this chapter, as the people were about to enter the land of promise, the same blessed truth is recalled to mind when Jehovah gathered Israel round Himself. If the application of the blood to the door-posts, so striking and instructive on the original occasion, is left out here, even this is quite appropriate to Israel then and to the believer now. No doubt when a man is first awakened and receives the glad tidings of redemption in Christ Jesus through the shedding of His blood, imminent danger from the wrath to come clearly appeals to the soul. But after he has bowed to the truth, he is no longer filled with alarm, still less in the same degree or way. Is it that Christ's work is valued less? A great deal more. When souls wake up at Christ's word from moral death, when they justly feel their sins in the sight of God, there are deep and vehement heart searchings and painful pressure of guilt on the conscience; and the grace of Christ administers truly divine relief. Afterwards, as the soul submits to the righteousness of God, does the value of Christ and His work diminish? It acquires a far deepening character, as faith is exercised by the word.

May I observe that there are not a few hymns tending to make people think that the first joy of looking to the Lord Jesus as the Saviour is so bright and full, that all afterwards here below becomes comparatively pale. But is this really consistent with the truth? Does scripture justify our looking back on that early and indelible hour of contrition, when the Saviour's welcome was tasted, as the fulness of blessing for ourselves? I believe that for such as do so, the heart has feebly entered into "the riches of His grace," little, if at all into what the apostle calls "the glory of His grace." Great as that mercy was, we are all entitled to "receive of His fulness," and to know experimentally depths of His grace in Himself and His work far beyond.

It is the abiding blessing of Christ in His work of redemption that is here presented. Many circumstances of the first burst of the truth on the people of God are left out, the wondrous sacrifice in itself is recalled in its simple majesty, without any particular reference to the form in which it applied in the first instance The Spirit of God is here anticipating the way in which the passover should be kept in the land of God. Now it is precisely because the grace is anticipated of Jehovah bringing in Israel there, that no lack of care is tolerable, that the deepest call is made on their spiritual affections. It is no more leaving Egypt, nor yet the wilderness through which they passed, but Jehovah putting forth His power in new and, if possible, richer ways in bringing His people into the full accomplishment of the blessing. Does not this mark Israel entering into and dwelling in the "good" land where His eyes rest continually? So when we are first awakened, the pressure of our sense of danger is great, the urgent necessity of being screened by Christ's work from judgment because of our iniquities; but surely He and that work lead us on to appreciate far deeper things. So now we have the calm and peaceful enjoyment of a work in itself intrinsically the same, and infinite in its value. This seems to be what Jehovah would have His people enjoy in the passover kept in the land. "Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God, of the flock and the herd,* in the place which Jehovah shall choose to cause His name to dwell there" (ver. 2) But while the peculiar circumstances of its first celebration disappear, there is no difference as to the unleavened bread. It may be presumed that all know that the purity which must follow "the sacrifice," means the total denial of all ungodliness and corruption, however palatable to fallen nature. In the glorious land as Daniel calls it, could there be any relaxation of purity? Here we have the unleavened bread particularly enjoined; "thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, [even] the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste; that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life." So it was then, but there is no haste now. So there was and must have been on the first occasion; they are merely reminded of this in looking back: "that thou mayest remember the day . . . all the days of thy life." It personally concerned each one. When Israel come to know Who He is that was sacrificed for them, on Whose blood hung their entire shelter, what incomparably deeper thoughts and affections will arise God-ward! No wonder will it appear then that "there shall be no leaven seen with thee in all thy borders seven days." Our entrance into its force is revealed in 1 Cor. 5: 7, 8. The veil done away in Christ, lies upon their heart, because they reject Him; but whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. We, not Israel, are here below keeping the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. They will keep it when Messiah appears to their joy. They too are to eat the flesh of the lamb of which we have partaken in faith, while they are unbelieving. Mark the deepest reverence here for the sacrifice with full liberty to eat of it. "Neither shall any of the flesh which thou sacrificest the first day at even remain all night until the morning." The lamb's flesh must never be treated as common food. What was not then eaten must be burnt, not kept for ordinary use; it was a sacrifice to God, as well as a holy communion.

*It may be well to observe that the strictly paschal sacrifice was a lamb of the flock only. But it will be seen in Num. 28 that daily during the Feast, burnt-offerings of bullocks were also sacrificed, with a ram and lambs, a meal-offering, and a goat for a sin offering and a drink-offering. This explains the "herd" here.

The grand secret of Christianity, I do not say of christendom, the everlasting and peculiar blessing that we boast before our God, is Christ Himself. Oh, what a joy to have one word that contains all that we delight in, and, what is far more important, all that God delights in, the same object, God's delight and our delight, in Him who unites Godhead and manhood in His own person! But more than that: — there was a particular time that, even for God, drew out what Christ expressed in that fact, as before prophetically, which never was before and never can be again. With reverence be it spoken, I believe that as on the one hand God never felt before as He did at the cross of Christ; so on the other hand the Lord Jesus never felt as He did save at the cross. As His Spirit predicted it through David; so did He in the garden anticipate it; and oh, what a grief and weight of conflict for His Spirit! But anticipation is not accomplishment. It was on the cross there came from Christ that expression of it, so familiar, yet so solemn, to all our souls, "My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me?" There is the wondrous basis of all blessing. It is Christ forsaken of God after all the perfection of a life of obedience incomparable here below; Christ rejected and atoning for sin. What an unfathomable truth! What creature on earth or in heaven would ever have looked for it? For who was Christ? Was He not the eternal life with the Father before ever there was a creature? Was He not the Creator? Yet here He lay in death: and what a death! How did such a consummation come to pass? It was for sin; for our sins borne in His own body on the tree. This we know too well, yet alas! far too little. He, the Son, became man; man as truly as He was and is God. And God made sin for us Him Who knew no sin. Here therefore we rest on that foundation which can have no equal. God never saw anything but perfection in the Son of His love throughout eternity. When the Word became flesh and tabernacled among men, in a world of sin, that perfection was unfolded in such forms of moral beauty and grace, as were never before seen, and only in measure predicted. Truly He was the Second man and last Adam. Never did love and obedience, meekness, zeal and suffering, reach their acme till the cross. Never was God or God's Son, the Son of man, so glorified as therein. And every child of God in this hall knows it, and has, in his measure responded to it in faith. But the more we weigh it, the greatness of that work rises before our souls. The ground of righteousness is only found in that word so terrible to man's conscience — death; and wondrous to say, in His death, which was our sin (for He was rejected of men), yet on God's part a sacrifice to God. Here then dawns on us this first feast — the Passover; and more truly ours, by faith, than Israel's. They had, no doubt, their lamb; and they were entitled to enjoy the remembrance of God's deliverance of their nation from the land of Egypt. But what is that compared to God judging sin, in Christ? This is what we read in the cross of our Lord Jesus. What infinite things for our souls have we not in "the Lord's death!" What words could be put together speaking with the same power revealing a divine ground of righteousness for sin comparably with "the Lord's death?"

Consequently, there we have it before us, we have it through the infinite mercy of our God habitually and particularly on the resurrection day. There is something remarkably sweet in that, that we have His death on the day of resurrection, for it is never meant that we should be so absorbed in death as to forget the joy of resurrection.

I would only now notice the words of ver. 5, "Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates." There was to be but one place henceforth, many were allowed before. It had been taken in Egypt, house by house, and in the wilderness only at first. But now in the land where it might have seemed any place would do, because it was the holy land, Jehovah chose one sole place. He would take the matter of His blessing and of Israel's enjoyment of it entirely out of their hands, to bless them all the more because of binding it up with His presence. Jehovah chose one place and one only for the celebration of the passover; it was where He Himself dwelt. There He commanded the blessing, even life for evermore. This, He said, is my resting-place for ever. Here will I dwell; for I have desired it. Such was the place that Jehovah chose for His people's eating of the passover. Thus may be seen from those early days God manifesting, particularly in the way in which it is presented in the last book of Moses, the celebration of the passover in the land, which typifies our connection with heaven. Jehovah chose, for the purpose of our enjoying His interest in us as to that which is deepest for our souls. And what goes down into such depths as the passover, especially in the light and association of heaven where He is to whom we are united by the Holy Spirit, one spirit with the Lord.

But remark, although they took it "at the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose to cause His name to dwell in, thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt. Thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which Jehovah thy God shall choose; and thou shalt turn in the morning and go unto thy tents" (vers. 5-7), for Israel at least there was a return to their own things. It was not such peaceful communion with Jehovah as to detach them from all things in principle to Himself. They turn and go into their tents in the morning after eating the passover. They eat unleavened bread with the bread of affliction. It was far from being all that Jehovah designed and gave in the feasts to follow in due time. More was needed to impart full enjoyment of Jehovah's blessing in His chosen place. Only to the passover are these words appended; they are dropped, not only for the Feast of Tabernacles, but also for the Feast of Weeks.

Ver. 8 repeats the obligation to eat unleavened bread six days. On the seventh was a solemn assembly to Jehovah the God of Israel, and no work to be done. His work they celebrated and rested in. Only in this Feast is work here forbidden to be done.

2. — THE FEAST OF WEEKS, IN VERSES 9-12.

Then comes quite a different feast — the Feast of Weeks. What does this rest on, or spring from ? Christ not in death but risen again. Not the life before He died but the life of Christ triumphing over death. This is intimated by the wave-sheaf in due time followed by the two wave loaves brought before us in the Feast of Weeks. Not only are we told (ver. 9) that Christ was the first-fruits, but that the loaves at the Feast of Weeks were also first-fruits (Lev. 23: 17). They alike receive the same name. There was nothing like this in the Passover nor is there anything like it in the Feast of Tabernacles. There is a union with Christ when we come to the Feast of Weeks, found nowhere else. The reason is plain. We are united to Christ risen and ascended. The living Christ stood alone, was heard end followed by faith; but union there could not be before His death. "Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Yet are we not united to Christ dead. We have all the virtue of the death of Christ and can thus more than ever enjoy all the benefits of the life and the example of the Living One; and they are both of the richest value for the believer. Indeed we must begin with our sins, which were in His cross met once for all. It would have been a dangerous thing to have spoken of the example of Christ before our sins are dealt with. What do we find in the disciples who followed Him every day? Did they manifest Christ? They manifested tolerably decent Jews, sometimes pious, not infrequently prejudiced, and pre-occupied with themselves. Now and then appeared a good deal of self-righteousness, besides too, ambition and jealousy; but at what time did not self work? There never was a truth that Christ brought out to which their souls fully answered. He was always misunderstood, and even when it was a very grave misunderstanding, the Lord says, "what thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." But that was what was so blessed in our Lord — His love to them always the same, His patience whatever their incapacity — spiritual incapacity. And why was this? And why spiritual incapacity? Because there never can be spiritual power till in the death of Christ I have faced my sins. No life of Christ will ever do alone, no example of Christ, except to show how unlike to Him we are. And so it is that there is far too light dealing with our state, and a total incapacity of estimating the immense distance between the Son of God and every saint that loves Him.

But now it is another thing. The state of believers in the time of our Lord was not christian. They were saints; but a Christian is a great deal more than a saint. A Christian is a saint since redemption; a Christian is a saint that is united to Christ. A Christian is a saint that rests upon the death and precious blood of Christ in all its virtue before God, which has changed everything from that moment. Now starts a new reckoning of time altogether. There is a manifest progress from what was, to what God has now given us in our Lord Jesus. What a comfort it is that every question that could arise between our souls and God is now settled! There are many saints at the present time who lose incalculably; they stop short at getting Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, if, indeed, they know this as a truth always abiding. In general, they think that the forgiveness of sins is a great privilege that is being dribbled out day by day; and that one is forgiven to-day, wanting more to-morrow, and more and more all the time one is here below. But this is not the way in which scripture puts the mighty work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here we have a death that meets sins completely; nor is it merely our sins, but sin. I admit that this is beyond what we have any type for, for the types were the types of the law, and the Passover was taken up when the law was given, although it was instituted before. So also the Sabbath in the same way; the Sabbath was long before the law but nevertheless it was embodied in the law.

But "that which the law could not do" God did. And how? "Sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." It could not have been in the reality of sinful flesh. In that case He could not have been a sacrifice for sin at all. If there had been an atom of the reality of sinful flesh, if there had been a single taint, it would have destroyed the sin offering. Of the "meal-offering" which represents the life of Christ, and of the "sin" (and "trespass") offering which brings before us His death — of both these offerings are we alike told that "it is most holy." No, the Lord Jesus looked like another, therefore is it said, "in the likeness." There was nothing outwardly to distinguish the Lord, as far as His body was concerned, from another man. Mind, I am not speculating upon the Lord's appearance — I abhor all such speculations, but, at the same time, I am bound to believe from what Scripture says, that He was like any other man. Truly a man, as truly as we are, there was nothing in our Lord's outer man to indicate the essential difference, nothing to indicate that infinite difference that there is between Him and every other.

Therefore is it said, "in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin," or as the meaning is, "a sacrifice for sin."

Well, this is what God did, He sent His Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin." He "condemned sin in the flesh." This is what God did. He executed sentence on the Lord Jesus at the cross. He had shown Him in the likeness of sinful flesh during His life, and there wasn't a sin nor the appearance of one. "In Him is no sin." And now there is another work, His death as "a sacrifice for sin." He condemned — not only the sins — He forgave the sins — but He condemned "sin"; He executed sentence of death on the sin — not upon the sinner, which would have been his everlasting ruin — but on Christ. Assuredly, as "a sacrifice for sin" that we might be, not only forgiven, but that we might know the old nature completely and for ever dealt with for every believer. That is the reason why we are no longer "tied and bound with the chain of our sins," as many excellent people say that they are: some of the best in christendom. Really true saints believe that they are tied and bound by the chain of their sins. Many very earnest indeed in their way among our own nation. Others speaking our own tongue elsewhere, I must say, have shown more care for the truth of God as a general thing. But still there is that terrible lack, they don't know how God has met sin in the flesh. But this is exactly what God has said: "What the law could not do," the impossibility of the law God has done perfectly. He has executed sentence of condemnation, and the consequence is there is no condemnation for us. Not only that there is no condemnation for what we did, or have done, but there is no condemnation for the sin in our nature. That is the point of the apostle Paul in the beginning of the eighth of Romans. Then comes another thing; that is, the positive place into which we are brought. We have not to go looking for it elsewhere. And what do people substitute for that? They either fall back on the example of Christ, or they take up the law. They say, we know we could not keep the law or follow its example before we were converted, but now we are converted that is what we can do, and the Spirit will help us. But the Spirit of God will do nothing of the kind. What! the Spirit of God help people to keep the law as their rule of life! No. That the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in the Christian, I admit; and I understand the righteousness of the law consists of the two great parts — the love of God, and love to our neighbour. If a Christian does not love God and his neighbour, nobody does. There is not a single Christian in the main that is not really true. No Christian but what his heart goes out to God when he knows His love. I am supposing now a man who believes the gospel. "We love Him, because He first loved us." And what about our neighbour? I think the poorest Christian in the world is deeply anxious about the salvation of others. No doubt we are not like Christ. There is no need to say that; there is no need of crying up what a Christian is. But the new nature shows itself in every child of God by the desire for the blessing of people, with cost to itself, and further also I affirm that there is still more unqualifiedly the love of the God that has so blessed him.

But that all is not all that we find here. We have a great deal more. We have God's way of presenting it, and that is, that the believer now according to the Feast of Weeks has Christ risen from the dead, not only Christ down here as the manna, but Christ risen from the dead as his food. We see elsewhere in scripture that the heavenly food is Christ risen; Christ in heaven is the food of the believer now, and he requires it. The manna is not all, but there is Christ thus in the presence of God to feed on. There is another thing here, and that is, that "as He (Christ) is, so are we in this world." That is a wonderful thing to say. I ask this of you. If you hadn't these words in the First Epistle of John would you have believed them? If they were not written out in the Bible I should like any man in this room to say that he could have thought them? I don't believe a word of it. You are only cheating yourself if you think you could have dared to say these words. I say it again, As Christ is — not as He was, but now, in the presence of God, in all His glory there, the glorified man — "As He is, so are we in this world." So are we — not, so we shall be in the next world, but — in this world. Why, if these words were not the words of Scripture, it would be the most fearful presumption that ever passed through the heart of man to say them. But they are God's words; and they are God's words because they are His truth. They are the rich blessing He has given you and me at this very time, and, thank God, not to us only. There is no Christian here, in England, in the world but what has these words said of him, and they are meant of him and for him to take them home to his heart and live on them — at any rate upon the One into whose nearness of relationship we are now brought, into that wonderful place of union with Christ. If it were not the life of Christ that is given to us it could not be true. It is in virtue of that, that we are one with Christ — that it can be said, "as He is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4: 17).

If I look at myself or you, would that warrant such language? How is it then? Why, because our oneness with Christ is, not with Christ come down to take part of our nature, but, with Him risen from the dead and gone to heaven. On what does this depend? On the Holy Spirit sent down in consequence of Christ's exaltation. And you see how perfectly the word read tonight suits it. The Feast of Weeks was the day of Pentecost — the day when the Holy Ghost was given. It could not have been true a day before. It is always true after.

We may observe that this feast differs from others in that in it we have not only our individual responsibility brought before us, as in the passover for instance, but also our privilege. In the passover we have the solemn responsibility of practical holiness being maintained, also of our life being holy — all grounded upon Christ, the Lamb slain.

But here we have another thing, not our responsibility but our privilege. Now we have this new privilege that could not be in the least degree entered into by a Jew at that time. Now we can read, and are bound to read, these Jewish forms in a light that they did not possess or enjoy. The heavenly light shines upon us because Christ is in heaven. He is that light. That is the meaning of the day dawning and day star arising in the heart, of which Peter speaks in his Second Epistle (chap. 1). "And we have the prophetic word confirmed, to which we do well to take heed (as to a lamp shining in a dark place);" it is more than dark, it is squalid as well as dark. Look at all the prophecies, the terrible state of man which they show; for prophecy came in when things were in a state of ruin. That however is not Christianity. The blessedness of Christianity came when Christ came, when Christ died, when Christ arose and went up to heaven still more. This is the day dawn.

Now then here we have the rising to a height that cannot be exceeded, and it is all in Christ. How precious! Not only that we have all the blessedness of judgment stayed, of sins gone, and sin itself judged in that same death of Christ — all His mighty work in our favour to draw out the sense of God's love and to produce love to God as well, as nothing else could, — but now it is the enjoyment of this wondrous place of Christ, a new place even for Him. Great is the mystery of godliness, "God has been" or "He who has been manifested in flesh . . . received up in glory." What is the mystery of godliness? People might have thought that it is something we can do, something the Holy Spirit would work in us, but no, the mystery of godliness is Christ Himself, it is bound up with Christ.

This is what we find in these three Feasts, Christ in the Passover — Christ in the Feast of Weeks — the Spirit of God come down; but He was not the new corn of the land — the corn of wheat, that had fallen into the ground and died, but is now risen. No, Christ is that, and we are part of the same stock. We have the same nature — made "partakers of a divine nature." Christ is risen and He is our life, we have not only the life but we have also the Holy Ghost to give divine power of enjoyment of the life, which can never be unless the heart surrenders itself to the death of Christ. People stop short of that; they don't know the power of His resurrection till the power of His death is known. And that is what makes a full gospel of such grand importance for the saint. There is a great difference between a free and a full gospel. A free gospel is the finest thing possible for the sinner. A full gospel is not for the sinner but rather for the saint. I might say Peter preached a free gospel, and three thousand were converted on the first occasion. Paul preached a full gospel. There is this difference that the preaching of Paul was most rich and profound and of the greatest possible blessing where it was entered into. It is all there for us and we ought not to come short of it, and if it is for us to know, it is for us to preach. But the grand point for us is to take it into our souls. When that is done there is full blessing now. It is the life for evermore, where death can never enter, where sin never did enter. Now there is delivering power and that is the power that works in us. That is our portion by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, for that blessed Person is always at any rate faithful to Christ, and to Christ not merely dead, but risen from the dead. He never stops short at the death of Christ — He would have that death entered into in all its sweetness — and in many respects there is nothing like it, but still there is this power in resurrection that we do well not to lose, and the Holy Ghost would have us follow Christ in faith where He is, and to know that our portion is in Himself there.

His death! It was for us, but now in His resurrection and His present place in heaven we are there in Him. As Christ is, so are we in this world. Connected with this I would just add one word. It is remarkable that the day of Pentecost was the day when the law was given. The law was given on the first Pentecost — not yet called Pentecost in the same way as now, but still it was fifty days after the wave sheaf and there was the law, and oh! what weakness, what death, and what misery, just because the law was good and we bad, because Christ was not there. But now that Christ has come, everything is turned into blessing. The judgment of God! Yes, because it fell on Him, it was due to us but it fell on Him, and surely it is an immense thing to know that; and can anything show more clearly where these dear evangelical people are than the fact that this great truth of the gospel is not believed. The wonderful thing is that they are so good practically with so little truth to be their foundation. It is a vital truth of the gospel that the believer shall not come into judgment.

I lost a most valued friend years ago by insisting upon that great truth — a lady of remarkable spiritual power, more so than most women I have ever met. She never came into communion. There were great difficulties. Her family dependent upon her being faithful to what they called their own mother the church, and there she was — much to be felt for. She had been a Roman Catholic and had married a High Churchman who died and whose children were bound very strictly indeed. She however could not get over that difficulty in her mind. I have found few persons that more appreciated the truth as far as she knew. But when she heard this wondrous truth of the gospel, she thought it peculiar and something out of the common rut — this rich wondrous truth which has been so fully brought out of late years. But no, my dear friends, this truth is bound up with the gospel. It is a full gospel.

There is nothing more wonderful than a full gospel — the gospel as Paul preached it. As the Lord said in John 5, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word," not the word of Moses or the prophets now, "and believes him," not believes on Him, that is, about it, but "believes him that sent me." The essence of faith is that I believe God, that I believe what God says. He that, through hearing Christ's word, believes God that sent Him "hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment," not merely "condemnation." Our translators of 1611 changed it to that, and I have never met with one of these evangelical, pious, people — even the most intelligent, that believed that he should not come into judgment. They think that the believer will come into it, but be kept and brought through it. But, let me tell you, if the believer goes into the judgment he would not, could not, get through it, because he is not guiltless. Even David felt this when he said "Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified" (Ps. 143: 2). And the judgment is a real thing. It is a foolish thing to go into a judgment that is unreal, and the idea of God's sparing anyone is an impossibility. This idea of the believer going into judgment undoes the effect of Christ's redemption. It is true that they think that the blood of Christ will speak in the day of judgment. But no, no one will speak in the day of judgment but the Judge. There are the books, and they are opened, and the books speak of the guilt of the man and the guilt is undeniable, and so there can be no issue from judgment but to be cast into the lake of fire. There is no soul but a sinful soul that passes through the judgment. The believer's judgment is past, that has been borne by Christ for all who believe. We shall not stand before the great white throne. We shall tell all out, or, "be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ;" we shall confess everything there, but that is a totally different thing to being "judged." Being judged means that I suffer for what I have done, and if that is so what could it be but everlasting ruin! But it is not so. It would be a total denial of, a total inconsistency with, life eternal. Impossible that a person who has life eternal could be judged! A man who has life eternal, judged! such a judgment would be a mockery. The whole thing is a jumble of mistake. However, this dear friend presented my letter setting out the truth on the subject to the then Bishop of Carlisle, and he was horrified.

I mention this to show that nothing startles these people more than a full gospel. A free gospel presents rather what we are delivered from. It is a mercy to have got thus far, but I do believe that those I am addressing to-night are peculiarly responsible to God, that if they have got the truth fully for themselves, and I don't deny that they have, they are responsible to make it known to those who may not have had such opportunities. I don't deny that they ought to break it up into the smallest pieces to suit palates and the weakest stomachs. It is right to think of the state of souls, but we should seek to lead them on, little by little, and not to leave them where they are.

That is the danger of too great quickness in receiving into fellowship. Souls should be led on to know the gospel — a full gospel, otherwise they remain where they are in their souls. We are all to blame. Instead of teaching them about the antichrist and Babylon and the woman of the seven hills (all very interesting and profitable, in its proper place), let us seek that souls should hear and believe the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation. For what are all these things compared with a sound and full gospel as a foundation for the soul — to know that all the evil is cleared away in the death of Christ now, that we are in the unclouded favour of God, and that Christ's place is ours? No doubt, it is entirely through Him and His death. It is not merely that we look back but we look up to where He is now, we know that we are one with Him who is there. That is the grand truth of this Feast of Weeks.

"Thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a free will offering of thine hand." Well, undoubtedly, this free will offering of the hand is a bright testimony in its own way. The free will offering of the hand is supposed to represent the heart, and so it does. It is one who is delighting in Christ, for we are delivered from all unreality, from all appearances, and it is the saddest disgrace for a Christian if the heart is not behind all that the hand does. "Which thou shalt give unto Jehovah according as Jehovah thy God hath blessed thee." The essence of Christianity is our personal blessedness now. We are not only a forgiven people, but a people blessed; and how far? "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ." Well, that is just the Feast of Weeks, and as there is this blessing — the richest possible for God even for us now on the earth — mark the effect (ver. 11), "thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter," but it does not end there, "and thy manservant, and thy maidservant." The blessing is to be felt by those that serve in the humblest position. Is it for those in the houses only? No, "and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you" — the specimens of the various classes of sorrow and need that are in this poor world. There we have the opening of the heart to all. Truly this is divine love, that if we are thus blessed the heart opens in love both Godward and manward too, and wherever there is most distress, there it goes out the most actively.

"And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt" (ver. 12). This is not a man tied and bound with the chain of his sins. No, he remembers that he was a bondman. It is the denial of that. It is not that you get the denial of it simply in the eighth of Romans, but here you have it in the type of Deut. 16. The apostle presents it thus — "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8: 12). So, manifestly, I am no longer in bondage, but delivered. It is "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Had it been the law of Moses, I would be under bondage, and that is the reason really why these pious people are tied and bound with the chain of their sins. The law is continually before their eyes. When we are looking at Christ, we do fulfil what is according to the law; Christ in that case fills the heart. "Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt; and thou shall observe, and do these statutes." That is, the spirit of obedience is strengthened in the soul in the highest degree by the sense of this complete deliverance and this blessed union with Christ.

Can there then be more blessing than this? There is a third Feast. How truly is it written that "all things are ours"! If one were a Jew and not a Christian, he could only keep one at a time. One he was bound to observe, the Passover, first and alone then as the others came, each could only be kept separately. Indeed the Feast of Tabernacles points to a new and future state of blessedness. But "all things are ours"; and we are meant to have all these joys, once tasted, together in our hearts and to have them always, if we are given to know them from God.

Here we read in verse 13, "Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days." The day of Pentecost, if only one day, brings us pre-eminently into the anticipated joy of what is heavenly, eternal. It is based on the wave-sheaf exhibited in the wave loaves. A course of time here below is not marked in it as in the Passover on the one hand, nor on the other in the Feast of Tabernacles. Seven days, are an earthly period. There is no such thing in the Feast of Weeks. In a certain sense Pentecost, although a day marked off from all others, is the emblem of that which has no end. As one with Christ we enter into the things above and unseen which are eternal. There will never be a time when we shall lose the Spirit of God, not even in heaven. So our Lord gave commandments to the apostles through the Holy Spirit after He rose from the dead (Acts 1: 2). He received the Spirit at His baptism (Luke 3), and again in heaven, as the Father's promise, to shed forth on us (Acts 2: 33). For in virtue of redemption we have the Spirit too. We shall not lose the Spirit when we rise. It would be an irreparable blank if we had the Spirit no more when in heaven. But there it will no longer be His gracious condescension in working in us that we may judge ourselves and correct our faults. Alas! that a great part of His work now is not only ministering to us the blessedness of Christ but dealing with our short comings; in heaven it will be so no more: every affection will rise in worship, or go forth in service. He will have nothing to correct. All will go out in power and sweet savour to God. But here we have this Feast of Tabernacles seven days. How comes it to pass and when do the seven days of glory — seven days of grace crowned by that which does not end at all — Pentecost — come on?

We enter into the power of the resurrection at the same time that we rest upon the foundation of His death. But now here we have another thing. We have Christ in heaven and we have Christ coming again, so that all our blessing is bound up with Christ, and so we read "after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine." Now I think that none can have any doubt as to the meaning of the gathering in of the corn and the wine. You are all familiar with the gathering in of the corn — the harvest. The harvest is typical not only of the Lord's coming, but coming to judge; and farther, you know that there is another type — the vintage — still more tremendous. In the harvest, there is the gathering out of the good as well as the execution on the bad; but in the vintage there is nothing but the trampling down of that which is most hateful to God; and what is that? It is the religion of the world. When God is dealing simply with the world some will be gathered in, for of some, although just like the rest, grace will make a difference. But God has no measure of His abhorrence of the religion of the world. The vine of the earth, that which is of the earth, earthy — taking the place of the true Vine, after the true Vine had been here; but how horrible in the sight of God! how hateful to God! and accordingly there is nothing but trampling down in His fury. The Lord Himself will do it. After that, the Feast of Tabernacles will come. And what is after the Lord's accomplishment of His judgment on the earth? Well, it is the day of glory. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea; therefore, as I have said, there will be a stated and full time of glory — seven days. Just as there was a stated and full time of grace, so here there is a stated and full time of glory. But we are not waiting for that time in order to enter into the joy of glory. We see the glory, in its best case and highest power, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently it is said not only that the Spirit of God rests upon you, that is Pentecost; but the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. So we are entitled to keep the Feast of Tabernacles too.

And what belongs to the Feast of Tabernacles? ''Thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son and thy daughter," — practically the same thing as before. "Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto Jehovah thy God in the place which Jehovah shall choose: because Jehovah thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands." There is not a word of this said before. That will mark the day of glory, not only personal blessing, that is really now for all that are Christ's; but what will be then, "bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands." That is not the case now. There is many a saint now with whom all things go wrong, people are tried in every way, the apostles were the very off-scouring of all things, set forth the last, set forth as a spectacle to the world; that is not a blessing on the increase of the works of the hands! And where, on the contrary, people flourish in the things of this world the Lord intimates that it is hard, not impossible but hard, for such to enter into the kingdom of God. It is a difficulty but not an impossibility; but then there will be no difficulty. The time is coming to bless everything, not only persons, separated from all the rest of the world; that is now where the blessing comes on souls high or low; they are called out from the world, they are called not to go with the world in the slightest degree, as the Lord said, "They are not of the world, as I am not of the world" (John 17: 16).

Whereas in that day the world is to be blessed. Then will be the time when the Lord will ask for the world. He does not pray for it now. "I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me: for they are thine." That is what came in at Pentecost; but in the future He will ask for the world, and He will have it, and more than that, Jehovah will have it full of blessing every where. That is the Feast of Tabernacles. The universal blessing — all but universal blessing. There will be exceptions even in that time, just to show it is not the eternal state although the spirit of that day will have come.

"Because Jehovah thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which he shall choose" (vers. 15, 16).

Here we have a blessed setting out of our portion. May the Lord grant that our unfeigned confidence may be in Himself, that our joy and delight may be, above all, in that Christ that covers everything.

If I look at the dark side, there is death that covers it now; the blood is before God; not our folly not our death. His death! That has changed all for us. If I look up, there, He is in all the glory and perfection of His person and according to the counsels of God, I am placed there in Him. And so you are, so are you; and this is the portion of all that are His. As Christ is, so are we in this world. And if we look forward — there is nothing to fear in looking forward, there is all the fulness of blessing in all the increase of the works of the hands in that day. For the time will then have come for the day of blessing — the Melchisedec priesthood — not merely the principle of it, but the exercise of it, and not only according to the order of Melchisedec as now. Then will be the true Melchisedec bringing forth the bread and the wine, that it may not be simply meeting the necessary wants of the body, but everything that can cheer the heart of God's people here below.

W.K.

Jesus Forsaken of God,

and the consequences.

Psalm 22.

W. Kelly.

The substance of a lecture in Ryde in 1873 by W. Kelly.

The scripture that I have read is pre-eminently the psalm of One forsaken of God. In this it stands alone; not that there are not other psalms which refer to that most solemn hour, and to the blessed Person who here speaks to God; but this psalm above all. It is not merely here that we have the Lord taking His place among men, the trusting One, which Psalm 16 gives — His trust carried on unbrokenly, looking on through death unto resurrection, yea to glory at God's right hand.

But here what a contrast! He is abandoned of God, yet cleaves to Him wholly and vindicates Him absolutely. But He is forsaken of God. Now it is not His enemies that say so, though, they too did; it is Himself, and it is Himself to God Himself. No believer had ever been thus forsaken, or can be. "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on Jehovah that he would deliver him, seeing he delighted in him." (vers. 4-8) Never was there such an hour even for Jesus; never can there be such an hour again. Good and evil were then brought to an issue in the only Person who could solve the riddle; good and evil met in One that was perfectly good, and yet then bearing evil at the hand of God. It was atonement. Not that this alone appears in the psalm; but Jesus made sin is the first and deepest thought and fact. There was no sorrow that He knew not; there was no shame that He was saved from. Bulls of Bashan were there; shameless dogs compassed Him about the ravening lion was not absent. In truth these are but figures, and man was more cruel than all, baser and most deliberate, he alone indeed guilty, led on by a subtler, mightier enemy; but, deepest and most wondrous of all, God was there, and there first of all, as it could not but be — God as Judge of sin, who made His Son that knew no sin to be sin for us.

First, I repeat, was this mysterious judgment of evil on the Holy One; not merely first in point of fact, but because it stands necessarily to itself the most solemn and solitary of all things for God and man, in time or eternity, in earth or heaven or hell. Befittingly therefore with this the psalm opens, for what could compare with it, past, present, future? The Lord Jesus had met Satan at the beginning in the wilderness, at the end in Gethsemane. He had broken his power for the earth and for man on it, spoiling the strong man's goods; but it was another and in conceivably profounder question now. It was sin before God. It was no mere conflict, it was nothing that could be broken or won in the power of obedience. There had been living goodness, and God's seal was upon it. But here was another thing. He had glorified the Father all His life, but now it was a question of glorifying God in His death, for God is the Judge of sin. It was not a question with the Father as such, but with God as God touching sin. He who had glorified the Father in a life of obedience glorified God in the death

in which that very obedience was consummated; and not merely this: evil was laid on Him in whom all was good, and they met. What a meeting!

Yes, God was there, not the approver of what was good only, but the Judge of all evil laid upon that blessed Head. It was God forsaking the faithful, obedient Servant. Yet it was His God; this would — could — never be given up; for, on the contrary, He even then firmly holds to it — "My God, my God"; yet He has to add now, "why hast thou forsaken me?" It was the Son of the Father, but as Son of man necessarily that He so cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Then, and then only, did God desert His one unswerving Servant, the Man Christ Jesus. Nevertheless, we bow before the mystery of mysteries in His person — God manifested in flesh. Had He not been Man, of what avail for us? Had He not been God, all must have failed to give to His suffering for sins the infinite worth of Himself. This is atonement. And atonement has two parts in its character and range. It is expiation before God; it is also substitution for our sins, (Lev. 16: 7-10, Jehovah's lot and the people's lot), though the latter part be not so much the subject of the psalmist here, and I do not therefore dwell on it now. The ground, the most important part, of the atonement, though all be of the deepest moment, is Jehovah's lot.

Here then we have God in His majesty and righteous judgment of evil; God in the display of His moral being dealing with sin, where alone it could be dealt with to bring out blessing and glory, in the Person of His own Son; One who could, when forsaken of God, reach the lowest, but morally highest, point of glorifying God, made sin for us on the cross. It was the very perfection of His bearing sin that He should not be heard. There was the sharpest pain and anguish and bitterness of rejection; and did He not feel it? Did the glory of His Person render Him incapable of suffering? The idea denies His humanity. Rather was His deity that which made Him endure and feel it most, and as none other could. "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not thou far from me, O Jehovah: O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog." (vers. 14-20)

Nevertheless the Lord Christ perfectly vindicates God who forsook Him there and then. Others had cried, and there was not one who had not been delivered; but it was His not to be. For the suffering must go to the uttermost, and sin be righteously atoned for, and this, too, not by power, but by suffering.

But what is this that breaks on our ears when the last drop in the cup is drained? "Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee," says the Saviour. He says, now He is risen from the dead, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." He had declared it; such was His ministry here below, but now on an entirely new ground. Death and death alone disposed of sin; death, but His death alone, could dispose of sin, so that the sinner could bow to God's righteousness about it, and be brought without sin into the presence of God. And this is what God Himself declares.

Mark here, too, the consequence of it: "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." Now the Lord Jesus shows us in the gospels the wonderful adaptation of the truth of the Old Testament. "Thy name" what name? When bearing sin He speaks of God. When looking on to deliverance, or in enjoyed relationship, the godly Israelite speaks of Jehovah. But in the New Testament, while God remains God and must be ever the Judge of sin, Father is the characteristic term of a relationship which the Son of God knew from eternity, yet knew none the less as man, but in a truth and fulness which belonged to Him only. This in its reality and intimateness He would give them as far as it could be, in redemption, as many a soul here knows with joy. But I shall repeat it for some hearts which know not that blessed word in its sweetness and real meaning to the soul. Jesus could bring it out now.

"I will declare thy name unto my brethren," and so He says, "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." He had never said so before. He had been declaring the name of the Father, but He had never presented it thus; and your particular attention is called to the fact. It supposes not merely love, but this on a foundation of righteousness. Undoubtedly grace was that which gave Him, and thus wrought for sinful man; but here He gives us, when sin was judged and put away, to know that His God is ours, and when the life was bearing much fruit in resurrection, that His Father is ours. The glory of the Father and the nature of God were now engaged in blessing us with Him, as just before only the holy vengeance of God came out against sin. It was indeed glory in the highest, it was grace in the lowest, but all was on the footing of righteousness, without which all else would only inflate the soul and expose it to be dragged down into worse depths. The basis of God's righteousness is needed for the sinner, and he who in himself was but a lost sinner is now entitled to know God not merely as God, but as Father. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren." There was pardon now, and peace; but not these only; there was association with Christ Himself. Far more than this indeed, but as it is not here we need not now go beyond what is before us, with only the modification given by the scriptures of the New Testament already referred to.

Now mark how the declaration of His name comes out. "My God, my God," says Jesus when and because He was forsaken on the cross, made sin and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. It is the true and simple and strong answer to those who suppose that He had been all His life here below bearing sin; had this been so He must have been all through forsaken of God, unless God shine with complacency while judging sin. It would be the virtual denial of His life in the joy and communion of His Father's love. Son of God here below, He had ever walked in the intimate and perfect acknowledgment of His Father's presence and of His own relationship, and hence so much the more did He feet what it was to be abandoned. But now the sin that was charged upon Him is gone by His dying for it; and as the witness that all was gone, He is raised up from the dead, and then declares that very name — not first "your" Father, nor our Father (this were beneath His glory, whatever may be His love), but "My Father, and your Father; and my God, and your God." Thus what God is as Father to Him rests now on those for whom He died, on those whose sins had been blotted out by the blood of His cross.

But this is not all. The perfect and manifested acceptance of the Man that God made sin is altogether theirs now; not merely the love of the Father, but the glorified character and light of God. Thus it is love, not solely in relationship, but in nature: yea, more than this: all that God feels as God, all that pertains to Him vindicated for ever, not merely is Christ's, but by Christ's work consequently belongs to those who rest on that Person and that work. Such is the virtue and fruit of atonement; nor is it only for heaven, for it was brought out by Himself on earth. He was going to heaven, but it was expressly for wise and weighty reasons made known here to the souls that needed it most. To the poor in spirit, to the meek, His disciples, He had shown Himself the pattern of dependence and obedience, of grace and righteousness, of bright and peaceful communion with His Father; but all this of itself could only aggravate their condition, which was so far beneath His, and thus must be the more humiliating to His own, had not He by grace wrought their deliverance. With what force, then , the blessed truth broke upon their souls! God Himself, the Father of the Lord Jesus, was their Father, even as He was their God; all that is in God as completely in their favour by what He had wrought on the cross as all that is in Him as Father. And remark, it is not merely "as a father pitieth his children," for there is incomparably more now. He is the Father as the Christ knew Him. "I will declare thy name unto my brethren," brethren brought, and brought righteously, into the selfsame relation, so that all the satisfaction and delight of God (not only of the Father, which relationship He has given us to enjoy, but of God) Himself in Christ is shared fully with us because of the acceptance we have in Christ our Lord.

But we have more still to hear. "in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee." It is not merely "will I praise thee," nor yet "in the congregation," but "in the midst of the congregation." The Apostle Paul quotes this scripture in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and we find its spirit fulfilled in the little company gathered on that day (John 20), "the assembly." The Lord is at once found in the midst of them, not reproving them for their just proved cowardice, unbelief and unfaithfulness, to say nothing of lack of love for His person and suffering for His name. I say not that He had not His dealings with one or another, but He brings them at once into the highest relation and best blessings by His sacrifice. With more than one of them we know He dealt, but this did not hinder or postpone His grace at all.

"In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee." Think, beloved friends, for a moment what the praise of Christ was in such an hour, what His feelings must have been when emerging from the darkness, from the dust of death, from the abandonment of God! He alone could rightly estimate the immensity of it all who, having suffered once for sins, now rests in the hard-won victory. Then it was that He bore our sins; then He who knew no sin was made sin. Risen from the dead, He is bearing sins no more; He is praising, and not alone, but "in the midst of the congregation."

Let me add another word. There is a day coming when this earth shall be filled no more with groans, but with hallelujahs; the day hastens when every one born shall join in the chorus of blessing, when heaven and earth shall be filled with joy and glory; but never will come a day when such praise will burst forth as that which He began that day. It is not that they who praise with Him, being brought into such association of blessing, will ever lose it — they never will; but if it began with Him then, it will be theirs for ever, but it is theirs only with Him in their midst; and the psalm before us proves it the more strikingly because it was written expressly with a view to the earthly people. The praise of the resurrection day is peculiar, being Christ's praise in the midst of the congregation — that is, of His brethren.

And who could declare it as He? And when could even He have declared it as when raised from the dead by the Father's glory after having been brought into the dust of death for sin? None but He could feel to the uttermost what it was to be forsaken of God and not heard when He cried; but now, heard from the horns of the unicorns, He enters as the risen Man into the light and glory of God shining for ever on the accepted sacrifice of Himself, and declares to His brethren the name (now we can say) of His Father and their Father, of His God and their God; and there and thus, in the midst of the church now set free for ever by and in Him, He sings praises. Oh! what praises were Christ's, delivered now at length and from so great a death! But are they not our praises too? And is it not in "our midst" that He sings them? What a character does not this communion imprint on the church's worship! The praise of Christ, after sin was judged as it never can be again, and He who was crucified in weakness lives. by the power of God, gives the just and only full idea of what becomes God's assembly.

Are these your thoughts, brethren beloved of the Lord? Is this the standard by which you try your hearts and lips when you present your spiritual sacrifices to your God and Father? Be assured, He values none compared with those of the risen Christ, who deigns to be the Leader of such as cleave to Him in this the day of His still continued rejection, though He be, as we know, glorified on high.

Truly His is in the highest sense a new song. Alone He has thus suffered; not alone does He praise, but in the full chorus of the consciously redeemed. How wondrous that it is not here merely "in" the congregation, but "in the midst" of it that He thus sings! In the day of His power it will not be so for "the great congregation." Not that His praises will be lacking in that day; not that high and low will not praise in the earth when all Jehovah's works shall praise Him and all His saints shall bless Him. Still it remains true that there is a revealed association with Him of those who are now being called and gathered since His resurrection, which exceeds in depth anything said of those who follow in that bright and blessed day. Not to the great congregation is He said to declare His God and Father's name. In it, indeed, will His praise of Jehovah be, but not in its midst as on the resurrection day for those who have not seen and yet have believed. (Compare vers. 22, etc., with 25, etc.) For what is said of that jubilee for Israel and the earth would still be true if He praised alone on His ground and all others on theirs. Neither does He call them His brethren — as now, however He may pay His vows (in itself another distinctive mark) before those that fear Jehovah, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Him Lord to God's glory, even to the ends of the world and throughout all kindreds of the nations.

Is not all this grace indeed to us who deserve nothing less, even the true grace of God wherein we stand? May we appreciate the counsels and the ways of the God of all grace who has called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus! To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen! May our praises then abound; but may they be Christ's praises in our midst, who deigns to be where two or three are gathered to His name! He is not absent if we are called in aught to vindicate the truth or holiness of God; is He when we gather to worship His and our God and Father? By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually — that is, fruit of lips confessing His name.

This is followed by a call to others founded on the resurrection of the suffering Messiah. "Ye that fear Jehovah, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel. For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard." (vers. 23, 24) This was at least anticipated, we may note in passing, in those words which the Lord uttered before departing, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." The public answer to His cry was when God raised Him from the dead.

Thus we find Messiah no longer suffering, but heard, His God and Father's name declared to His brethren, and Himself in the midst of the church praising; and then a call to every one who fears Jehovah to praise Him, on the ground of atonement. For by the cross of Christ the whole question of sin and sins before God and for the believer was settled for ever.

But there is a new scene in the verses that follow, which may help to bring out more distinctly what I have already endeavoured to explain. Here the Messiah says, 'My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation." Thus "the great congregation" is distinguished from "the congregation" in verse 22. There it is clearly the assembly surrounding Him when risen from the dead, whereas in verse 22 we read, ''My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation." Remark that it is not in the midst of them. There is no such association with Christ spoken of.

Observe in John 20 (which has already furnished us with the illustration, and indeed fulfilment, of His name declared to His brethren, and the congregation in the midst of which He praises) that there also we have what answers to "the great congregation." For Thomas came eight days after and exclaims to the Lord, when convicted of his unbelief, "My Lord and my God." Not a word is hinted here about "My Father, and your Father; my God, and your God." There is no longer the association of Christ with the disciples traced here, but another confession which grace will draw out from "the great congregation," as from Thomas, when they too repent and confess their long despised and rejected Messiah. They too will then say, "My Lord and my God." It is most true, the striking type of what Israel will know and confess in that day. (Compare Zech. 12)

How wide will be the praise! But it is not association with Christ, it is not He praising in the midst of the congregation. There is no such blessedness of fellowship with Him. Of Christ in that day it is said, "I will pay my vows before them that fear him." Could anything more strikingly show that this is on Jewish ground? And still further, it is not only what is said which distinguishes them from those in verse 22, but what is not said. Thus there is not a hint of declaring the name of His Father and God here, nor are they here called His brethren. There will be a blessed people, but as a people round Him who is at once the reigning Messiah and Jehovah their God. Even He praises and pays vows in that day.

There had been Christ's praise in the midst of the assembly of His brethren when He rose from among the dead, their Leader; and there followed also a suited testimony of God to those who feared Him (compare Acts 10: 35), as well as to all the seed of Jacob or Israel. The day when grace assembles the children of God is also a day of good news to every creature, Jew or Gentile, that they may believe. But now it is more than testimony. Messiah's praises are of Jehovah in the great congregation; Messiah pays His vows before them that fear Him. There is the sure and open accomplishment of all promises. Now every prophecy of coming glory for the earth and the nations is being fulfilled. Accordingly the "meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise Jehovah that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto Jehovah: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is Jehovah's: and he is the governor among, the nations." (vers. 27, 28) Not a word of this was given in the former connection. Henceforth it is not merely calling on all the ends of the earth to remember, but they shall remember. It will not be the gospel of grace as now, nor the church, but the kingdom in its display of power. All therefore shall turn to Jehovah, as we are here assured, land all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." It is no longer a question of the Christian place (this was given us in verse 22) when the testimony goes out in verse 23, the ground of faith being laid in verse 24. After that (vers. 25-31) comes what supposes and characterises the millennial days. It is when Christ asks (Ps. 2) and gets the earth that He is in the "great congregation."

Now, on the contrary, His is a "little flock," and everything great among men is opposed to God. By-and-by it will not be so; but Christ will have "the great congregation," and be Himself the Governor of all nations. Then "all they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him." Then is a day of confessed dependence, though of the richest blessing, for "none can keep alive his own soul." He is the life and strength of all, as He is the exalted of all. "A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation." The old Christ-rejecting generation is gone, but the returned remnant, after undergoing judgment and consumption, shall be a holy seed and a new stock. "They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness (weaned now at length from all conceit of their own) unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this." (Vers. 29-31) It is neither heaven nor eternity, nor is it the present evil age, but the bright and holy age to come, when the Lord Jehovah is blessed and blesses, the God of Israel who only doeth wondrous things; and in that day His glorious name is blessed for ever, and the whole earth is filled with His glory. Amen and Amen.

The Free Service of Christians:

1 Cor. 15: 15, 16; 2 Cor. 4: 13; Phil. 1: 14-17; Col. 2: 19.

W. Kelly.

A Letter to the Irish. Or the so-called "Lay Preachers."

Dear brethren,

My attention has been directed to the leading article in the Achill Missionary Herald, No. 332, January 10,1865. This paper deals with three classes of correspondents: first, "those who consider lay preaching as altogether unlawful;" secondly, "those who disapprove of it as a system, but who think that circumstances may warrant the occasional use of it;" and thirdly, "those who regard it with unconditional approval, and who do not entertain a suspicion that it can be productive of anything but the happiest results."

First. The author of the article refers to a tract on "Lay Preachers" for proofs of the untenableness of the first position. He justly argues (from Acts 8: 4; Acts 11: 21; Revelation 22: 17) that all believers may, and should make known the gospel to others, privately or in public, when they have the opportunity. Besides the necessity there may be for such preaching, he remarks "that there is not a single instance in the Old or New Testament of any one having been prohibited from preaching." This witness is true — mark it well.

Secondly. Singular to say, after such an admission, after dwelling on the Scriptural principle and corroborative facts, the author professes to agree to some great extent with persons of the second class, i.e., those who disapprove of free evangelism! How comes this? Is it not the proved system of Scripture? The sore point soon appears: "If lay preaching is designed to supersede the ministry of an ordained clergy, we must lift our voice against it." Then comes a bitter explosion of feeling, not only from an anonymous clergyman, but on the part of the author, against those Christians popularly designated "Darbyites," or "Plymouth Brethren." The epistles to Timothy, Titus, etc., are supposed to convict them of disrespect for a considerable part of God's revelation. What has this to do with your "lay preaching?"

But you have taken the Lord's Supper without an official administrator! This is intolerable. Lay preaching may send souls, previously indifferent, to attend the public prayers — may be used to convert unregenerate parishioners. But the administration of the Lord's Supper by the "lay preachers" draws down the author's "unqualified disapprobation," "as an unwarranted intrusion into the proper work of the ordained minister. We have no doubt that the divine ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are included in the 'mysteries' of which the duly ordained minister is 'the steward' (see 1 Cor. 4: 1*); and it seems to us that the assumption of a right to administer it, by one who has no warrant for a call to the ministry, but his own persuasion, involves a denial of the authority of the ordained ministry altogether." Yet with that singular absence of fixed principle which is so often found in his party, the author immediately after allows that he "can imagine a case where an ordained minister could not be had, when two or three assembled in the name of Christ, might commemorate His dying love in 'breaking of bread,' but this is an exceptional case which does not apply in the town of  -, where the Lord's Supper is administered not only by a duly ordained minister, but by one whose whole life and conversation prove that he has been called by the Holy Ghost to the office and ministry which he adorns." In the next paragraph the writer looks more kindly on "our lay brethren." "It must, however, be stated that the act to which our correspondent has called our attention is not a public one [as if a fundamental question like this were one of mere degree! as if more or less publicity could affect the character of what he takes for granted is assumption and a denial of proper ministry!]. Our lay brethren have their own conscientious convictions, and they must adopt the line of conduct which they suggest as pleasing to the Lord. We think they are mistaken; they think otherwise; but so long as they abstain from urging their own views in this matter upon others [just as if they were not at least as free of man as the author, and equally bound to their Lord to urge on others what they believe to be God's truth on this point!] we cannot see why ministers of the Church of England should not avail themselves of their valuable services in calling sinners to Christ."

*"An old man" should have known the gross perversion of Scripture involved in this misapplication. I will not quote Dean Alford nor even Dr. H. Hammond to correct the error, but two worthies of the olden time, when there were no Darbyites to regard with "abhorrence." "The word in the Greek [Eph. 5: 32] is μυστήριον, which is never in Scripture used to denote what we properly call a sacrament." (Dr. Whitaker's Disp. on Scripture, Parker Soc. p.197.) Still more express, if possible, is Abp. Whitgift (Works, vol. ii., p. 519) on this very text, 1 Cor. 4. "Here is not one word for your purpose, except you take mysteries for sacraments, which, if you do, you are much deceived; for by the word 'mysteries' here he [Paul] understandeth the word of God, and gospel of Christ; as all learned writers do interpret it." Even Cardinal Cajetan (on Eph. 5) distinguishes a sacrament from a mystery. Thus the Achill Herald's zeal betrays it into a mistake repudiated by a papist. No Scripture restricts baptizing or breaking the bread to ordained men.

The author then gives his testimony, clearing them from the wish to establish a separate sect, and assuring his readers of the extraordinary blessing which has attended their preaching, and this in his own parish. "We say to all opponents of this blessed work, 'Refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.'"

Thirdly. To the last class the author now turns, thinking that his advanced age enables him to view things with more sobriety than those who unqualifiedly approve of lay preaching. One might have hoped that a hearty acknowledgment, under the first head, of the clear, express teaching of the Bible, would have silenced unbelieving fears. Ah! beloved brethren, never expect the simplicity of faith where a given course is judged, not by the sole standard of God's word, but by its effect on one's own associations. Where is the sobriety or the conscience that so much dreads lay preaching superseding ordained ministers, and so soon forgets ordained episcopal sceptics and Romanizers, nay, even professorial chairs indoctrinating the nascent clergy with their own neology or sacramentalism? It is certain that these boasted paper bulwarks have not hindered the rise and progress of deadly error within the Anglican body. It is certain that there was incomparably more purity of faith before they were invented. Ecclesiastical history demonstrates that they are vain: so does the actual state of Anglicanism. Human documents are faulty and even presumptuous as articles of faith; they stumble many good, they check few bad men. Such are the notorious facts. No wonder that the author here quotes not the Acts of the Apostles, but Bishop Burnet, whose sentiment, he thinks, "must commend itself to the common sense of every intelligent reader." Brethren, is "common sense" your arbiter? It is excellent in human things, but in divine what a miserable exchange for the Holy Ghost's guidance by the written word of God! "We have the mind of Christ," says the apostle; and, thank God, there are those still who refuse to descend to a lower ground. Neither Bishop Burnet nor any one else can prove that it is wise spiritually to trust a traditional human arrangement in ministry; for surely if there be, as all admit, danger "from hot-headed men of warm fancies and voluble tongues" among lay preachers, there is far more when those men, or even worse, "thrust themselves on the teaching and governing others" with all the authority of official status. If unofficial men preach nonsense or bad doctrine, what is the mischief, compared with that which flows from the same stuff preached by men who boast of the highest ecclesiastical sanction? It is the standing of the Oxford essayists which chiefly makes their freethinking dangerous; and it is the impotence of the Anglican body to put down the like official heresy and infidelity, not free preaching of the gospel, which brings that religious system "into disorder and under contempt." Besides, it is passing strange that a worldly-minded, unsound person like Burnet should be quoted as an authority by a man who values the gospel and loves souls for Christ's sake. Does he not know that Burnet (Exposition, Article xi.) makes the faith that saves to be, not believing on Him who justifies the ungodly, but "the complex of Christianity in opposition to the law?" The low churchman of the days of King William III. agrees in this with the highest churchman of our day, ("our faith which includes our hope, our love, our repentance, and our obedience!") and treats the essentially different doctrine of justification as held by the Reformers, and as defined at the Council of Trent, as, "after all, but a question about words!" Burnet's "common sense" did not even secure the truth of the gospel.

Doubtless, dear brethren, you feel that nothing but grace can raise up fit labourers for the Lord's work, and the grace only can continue them as long as it pleases Him. I am sure you pretend to nothing more than using what He has given you for perishing sinners or famished children of God. Beware of sects, old as well as new. As you are assured the Lord has "sent" you at His charge, fear not the frown of some, beware of the flattery of others. Serve the Lord on your own responsibility to Himself. You are naturally dreaded and suspected by those who are under bondage to a merely human system which usurps the functions of the Head. You have a Master over you, not a mistress; your allegiance is due to Him. The Church cannot teach, cannot give mission, cannot call servants save to service of tables or distribution of her bounty. Christ only gives ministerial gifts. To Christ alone is His servant responsible in the exercise of his gift. Hold fast your liberty, but hold it in direct subjection to Christ and His word.

Suffer me to make a few remarks on the references to Scripture which fill the "postscript."

No doubt you agree with the author, as I do, that God has appointed a ministry to rule and teach the Church, and that its members are responsible to the Lord for the performance of their duty. But the choice of proof-texts evinces that the author confounds the local charge of elder, or bishop, with ministry of the word. What would be thought of his acquaintance with Ireland who limited the magistracy to stipendiaries? All exercise of a ministerial gift is ministry. Not to speak of apostles and prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, exhorters, were all of them ministers; whereas none of these per se was a presbyter. A teacher might be invested with that local office, of course; but he needed due ordination before he could be properly styled an elder. Whereas the possession of the gift from the Lord of itself made him a teacher. On the other hand, so far were elders from being the only proper ministers, that local rule and not public teaching was their proper business. Hence says the apostle, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, specially they who labour in the word and doctrine." Ruling was their necessary duty: if they ruled well, proportionate was their honour. Labouring in the word and doctrine was specially to be valued, but it was a blessed accessory rather than an indispensable function. Hence it will be noticed that, in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4, 1 Peter 4 (which furnish the fullest teaching of the New Testament on ministry,) there is not a word on the local office of elders. For the exercise of these gifts, as far as they are continued of the Lord to the building up of the Church, the author's system leaves no room, and if it were only for this, it would be convicted of being false and unscriptural. Does Christ give evangelists, pastors, and teachers to preach, and teach, and rule now as at the beginning? and is not the Church now, as then, bound to receive them and profit by their ministry? The Anglican system does not even pretend to receive all such, nor to allow to any that free exercise of gift which Scripture demonstrates was the practice of apostolic times; for its parochial plan is inconsistent with anything of the kind. Does not the author abandon this large part of Scripture? It is certain that his system excludes action on it; and he is bound to his system as long as he abides there.

Acts 14: 23; Acts 20: 17-28; 1 Timothy 2: 5, etc.; 1 Timothy 5: 17, 19; Titus 1: 5, 7, 9; 1 Peter 5: 1-4, speak not of ministry in general, but solely of elders or bishops. Even here Anglicanism differs essentially from these principles: for, first, it sets bishops into a superior class, contrary to the express force of Scripture; and secondly, it asserts and furnishes a single bishop over many churches, whereas Scripture makes it certain that, where bishops and elders existed at all, the practice was to have several in each church or assembly. Of 1 Corinthians 4: 1, 2, I have already spoken in the note to p. 2. As for 1 Timothy 3: 8, 13, is it not absurd to found that unmeaning novice, the Anglican deacon (aged, perhaps, three or four and twenty), upon the Scriptural diaconate, which was a distinct office and not a mere formal stepping-stone to eldership? Where is the respect for Scripture in such a citation? Again, what is the meaning of the reference to 1 Timothy 1: 3, 4; 1 Timothy 5: 22; 2 Timothy 4: 1-5? Timothy had a special work, as had Titus; and neither ought to be confounded with an ordinary bishop or elder. Alas! the pride of human system leads men to imagine they are "rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," when, in truth, they are in Laodicean misery and blindness. It is mere delusion to fancy that any on earth are entitled to act like those apostolical men, who had a defined letter of instructions from an inspired apostle for their individual action within a certain given sphere. Who are most modest and obedient to Scripture — the men who imitate apostles and their envoys without warrant, or those who keep within the exercise of that measure of gift which the Lord still graciously gives? Happy they who faithfully preach the gospel, teach the believers, or rule the flock of God, if they are so sent of the Lord! Woe to those who pretend to give the Holy Ghost, or to appoint elders, by imposition of hands, without being apostles or their delegates! Hebrews 13: 7, 17, and 1 Thessalonians 5: 12, prove that there may be rulers, guides, or chief men, whom the brethren are bound to obey, yet without the smallest intimation that they were ordained.

To lay down that "ministers should be ordained to office by laying on of hands" is to set aside a vast body of Scripture on ministry (i.e., the exercise of spiritual gifts), through a mistaken use of the very peculiar place of Timothy, or of his subsequent duty. For what else can one think of referring us to 1 Tim. 4: 14; 5: 22; 2 Tim. 1: 6? The author evidently treats the case of Timothy, not as exceptional, but as the rule, in the face of a double array of facts. For, on the one hand, Timothy received a gift or χάρισμα through the apostle's hands, the elders joining, after prophecy had designated him to his peculiar task: which circumstances are not true either of ordinary ministers in general, or of elders or bishops in particular. On the other hand, according to Scripture, whoever had a gift of ministry in the word was not merely free, but responsible at once to exercise it, (i.e., to minister, Rom. 12, 1 Peter 4: 10, 11,) not only outside, but within the congregation (1 Cor. 14), quite independently of the functions of elder or deacon, which did require apostolic appointment or what was equivalent.

Cordially and decidedly do I hold that ministry is a divine and permanent institution. This is not the question; but whether human systems (and the author's among the rest) do not exclude the due exercise of the various ministerial gifts in the public congregation and elsewhere by an unscriptural monopoly assigned to local office.

But it is a total mistake that "bishops ordained by the apostles were to ordain others." You will find this in the fathers, never once in Scripture. 2 Timothy 2: 2 says not a word of ordaining, but of communicating truth to others, as Aquila and even Priscilla did to Apollos. Did that worthy couple pretend to ordain him? Titus 1: 5 shows that an apostle had authority to delegate another like Titus to ordain or constitute. elders; but nowhere in God's word is Titus called a bishop; and the bishops there are invariably the ordained, never the ordainers, in evident opposition to the author's statement as well as to the Anglican system. Is it not humbler, then, in present circumstances to bow to God and confess our lack, rather than assume to have apostles or their delegates, or to do their work without being either?

That a maintenance is due to those who minister, if they need it, is indisputable: 1 Cor. 9: 13, 18; 1 Tim. 5: 17, 18. Gal. 6: 6 would be my third text, rather than 1 Peter 5: 1-4, which does not treat of this subject.

It is agreed, too, that "separation from the Church is not warranted by corrupt living of ministers," though Matthew 23: 2, 3 seems rather wide of the mark as a prohibition of it. Again, that "unworthiness of ministers does not nullify their office" may be more or less true, while John 11: 49-52 is a strange foundation for it. It is quite certain, however, that the Church is bound to put away corrupt livers (1 Cor. 5), whether ministers or not; and that Scripture (2 John) is explicit that all — even a lady and her children — are not only at liberty, but bound to refuse him who does not bring the doctrine of Christ, were he a deacon or a bishop. The author's system, on the contrary, is at issue with the Bible and sustains an ordained man, even if he denied inspiration or atonement, as many of the clergy do.

No intelligent Christian holds, as the author insinuates, that "divine life" is "the bond of visible union;" nor is Colossians 3: 4 needed to refute such an absurdity. But it is clear that, if we hold to Scripture, Nationalism and Dissent and Popery are novelties contrary to its teaching, which shows that to all Christians on earth, if walking according to truth, there is but one body as well as one Spirit. The principle of sects or different denominations is wholly condemned by God's word. (1 Cor. 3, 11; Gal. 5) Membership not of a but of the Church is the true doctrine. (Acts 2: 47) And so with ministry: a gift was a joint of the body of Christ. "God (not man) hath set some in the (not in a) church: first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers." (1 Cor. 12) Is this all gone, and another principle to be on foot, because there are no miracles, or healings, or tongues? God forbid!

Again, there is not the smallest force in appealing to the Seven Churches to justify Nationalism or Dissent; because the bodies in the Apocalypse, with abundance of evil which the Lord was judging, were really churches, whereas these systems are not and never were churches. The assembly in Ephesus, for instance (and so of the rest) had been gathered and ordered according to the word of the Lord, and the presence and sovereign action of the Holy Ghost had been fully owned in its midst; while nothing of the sort is or ever was true of the religious associations before us. Till the Lord gave up an assembly, it would have been premature to leave; but what became the duty of one who had ears to hear, if the assembly rebelled against His final message? Surely to purge himself from the vessels to dishonour (2 Timothy 2), when evil became a sanctioned institution without remedy. But the national bodies and dissenting societies, excellent as many of their elements are as institutions of men, and precious members and ministers of Christ as there are in both, never having stood on the basis of the Church of God according to Scripture, possess no divine claim on the faith and affections of God's children. Who ever cited the parable of the tares (Matt. 13: 24-30) for "visible separation from the corrupt portion of the churches?" Often indeed this Scripture is employed to show that you must endure evil men in, not put them away from, the Church. But this is a stale sophism, which ought to he left to Papists or to its originators among the fathers. Hooker misuses it thus (Eccles. Pol. b. iii. § 1); but even Chillingworth exploded it when urged by his adversary long ago: "Our blessed Saviour foretold, you say, that there should be in the Church tares with choice corn. Look again, I pray, and you shall see that the field he speaks of is not the Church, but the world; and, therefore, neither do you obey our Saviour's command, 'let both grow together until the harvest,' who teach it to be lawful to root these tares, such are heretics, out of the world; neither do Protestants disobey it, if they eject manifest heresies and notorious sinners out of the Church." (Religion of Prot. chap. v. 57.)

It is fully admitted that a church must be apostate to warrant separation from it (which the author founds on Rev. 18: 2-4); but what claim on a Christian has a body which never was a church of God at all?

Trusting that this brief review may be graciously used of the Lord to help such as desire to do His will, I subscribe myself, dear brethren, though a stranger in the flesh,

Your brother, and A FELLOW-LABOURER.

The Fulness of Christ.

John 1: 29-51.

W. Kelly.

The glory of Christ is the central truth of the Bible. Anyone could see His humiliation; Pilate and Herod and the unbelieving Jews, the Roman soldiers, all the multitude did. But the sight of His humiliation was nothing without His glory; and when His glory was discerned, it was the humiliation of the Lord Jesus that filled the heart with shame and with abasement. This always deepens in presence of the love which made One so high to stoop so low; and whatever humiliation was seen in the days of our Lord was only the prelude of a deeper humiliation.

"Himself bare our sorrows and took our sicknesses," says the evangelist Matthew, looking on the wondrous grace of His earthly ministry; and it was true. The quotation, which is from Isaiah, does not refer to the atonement, I admit; but His path was one that led straight to the atonement. The bearing of our sorrows and sicknesses is quite a different thing from the bearing of our sins; but it was the same person in grace. Jehovah-Messiah was of course a divine person; but partaking of blood and flesh, He took the place of man in weakness. He drew from God the Father as a dependent man for every need that came before Him. it mattered not what it was; a sick body, a disordered soul, a mind filled with all that Satan can infuse of fear and terror and all that is most hateful to God and man; nay, death itself — nothing stood in His way. Whatever He needed, He drew down from God to meet each case; but He always bore the sorrow on His heart. He never was like those we may see any day who get rid of an importunate beggar with a sixpence. He never did so; but He bent under the weight of every sickness and sorrow He relieved. This is perfection. It was the perfection of His life as a man here below, even in doing miracles. Signs and wonders might be wrought by people that have no communion with God, and no compassion for man. He wrought them in grace peculiar to Himself.

The Lord Jesus was always in an unbroken bond of perfect relationship with God and of perfect compassionate pity towards man. Yet He well knew that all this was but preliminary to the great work that lay before Him. And what was that? His death as the Lamb of God — a work not yet seen in all its effects, and never to be so seen till not only the kingdom — which is a grand display — be established on the earth, but full perfection be reached; the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. No longer will even government be needed — righteousness will dwell in peace, when evil and wretchedness are gone. There will be the full fruit, not only of grace, but of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, already enjoyed by faith.

Therein is a great ground of confidence for a poor soul that is anxious about its sins. I do not say that the Lord Jesus has taken sin out of the world yet. This may not be quite true; but He is the One who is to do it. There is but One, "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Without saying that all is done, He is the Person; and if you ask me where is the work through which that infinite result is to be effected, on which it rests, and in virtue of which it will be done, I answer unhesitatingly, It is the cross. Love could not banish sin. Power could not banish sin according to God. Power might act, but where then love and righteousness? Had the Lord Jesus appeared merely to put away all evil from before Him, what must become of us? Where could sinful souls find refuge? If I am to stand and lift up my head in the presence of God, it must be on the ground of His righteousness. And this is exactly what the Lord Jesus provided on the cross. On the one hand, there was God in His love and holy nature, in His righteousness and majesty; on the other, there was man in all his sin and ruin; and the Lord Jesus comes between both. He goes not from man to God; but He comes from God to man, and God was glorified in His cross about man's sin. "For God so loved the world that he gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

The Lord Jesus did not produce one atom of love in the heart of God that was not there before; by the atoning work on the cross He removed all hindrance for every soul that bows down and owns his sins, but for none other. No one will receive the blessing of grace without faith and repentance; and it would be no blessing to man or glory to God without it. There must be the work of the Spirit in our hearts to produce self-judgment with confidence in God through that which the Lord Jesus has borne for the sake of sinners. If the heart be unaffected, if conscience be harder than a millstone, how could such a soul give praise to God in heaven?

God is not merely working for heaven, He is raising a testimony for Christ in human hearts on the earth before they go to heaven. The best robe for the prodigal does not mean only in heaven. When heaven comes, will there be an elder son out in the field? No murmuring is heard there — if possible less insult to the Father. Nobody in heaven will act thus. It is here and now, alas! that it is done. But there is where people very often stop. They think the only thing that is now true in the gospel is the Father coming out to kiss the son, the order to take away his rags — to invest him with the best robe, and to put a ring and shoes on him. Would to God that even this were better known! There are many who would lessen the guilt of sin and wrong Christ still. Men are not ashamed of this, and do not see it is deep dishonour to Christ, defrauding Him of His just reward. That which God delights in is to make men righteously happy now and in this world; and this not in the smallest degree because of any merits on the sinner's part, but entirely as the fruit of divine grace in His own Son and His redemptive work. But then the heart must bow to it; and this not only by the faith that receives it from God, but by the repentance that judges self, not one's evil works only, but the nature.

Now the feast is given; the calling of the friends and neighbours together is what follows; but it follows here — not merely in heaven. When in the heavenly city, there will be the tree of life with its twelve manner of fruits, and every month. But what the parable of the prodigal son shows us is a feast begun on earth — God's joy (for it was not merely the prodigal's joy) in having back His erring son safe and sound.

Beloved reader, what meaning has that to you? Has it none ? Are you, first of all, in the delivered condition of the prodigal? and secondly, are you entering into the joy and love of God, which goes out and shares your joy? This is what God looks for now in this world. In heaven no doubt, we shall have it in perfection; but the christian man is called to enter into the love of God and joy of God while on the earth. He is not merely a forgiven man. He is not at all a man who is forborne with: this was the case before the death of Christ on the cross. When God was dealing in Old Testament times with His people, He forbore to press the debt; and they were then, as men are now in their natural state, liable to punishment. But then the work of Christ was not done, and God, looking on to it, would not exact the debt. He passed over the sins. There was a praetermission of sins; now there is a remission of sins. Not only does the Lord not judge the sins — they are completely gone.

You can conceive a wise, indulgent creditor who knew that you were greatly tried, but who thought proper to pity you, whatever might have brought about your straitened circumstances. He was merciful to you, and did not press the debt. But is this all the gospel? The gospel goes farther, and says that your sins on believing it are completely gone. Remember too it is only the first step — the threshold of the gospel; and this is what brings me to the next truth which I wish to present to you.

He that is the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world, the same is He who baptises with the Holy Ghost; and it is of importance to see it all. He has gone up to heaven, but His interest in His people is none the less; if possible, He is in a better position to show it. All power, all authority, has been given to Him in heaven and on earth. And what is He doing now? Many things, of which one is here singled out by inspiration, His baptising with the Holy Spirit.

What is this? Baptism regularly means closing one condition in which you have been, and introducing you into an entirely different one. Such is the meaning of baptism in every case. It represents a closing of the past, and the introduction into a new position. It may only be a given place, and so only an external one. A man might be baptised, and none the better for it as far as regards his soul. This has been the case with thousands — nay, millions. But when a man is baptised even with water only, a solemn responsibility is placed upon him. A baptised person stands in a new and grave position. He is no longer a mere heathen. He is no longer simply a Jew. He confesses the name of the Lord Jesus. For we are supposing that the man adopts it — that he stands to it — that he does not apostatise openly: I am not at all raising any of the controversial questions of the time. I am only speaking of the thing itself, baptism; and I assert that it is not so small a matter as some people imagine, any more than the regular and indispensable means of life, as so many others dream. Christ gives life, not baptism: so to say is false and superstitious. But it does at any rate change one's status; and the baptised person, by the very fact of being baptised as much as says, I own Him Who died and rose again; I own Him Who is the only Saviour of sinners; I own Him Who has already accomplished redemption.

Now the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the power that brings us into heavenly privilege, and still goes on in its effect. It is not a question of outward profession, of which baptism with water is the sign. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is a new and divine work. But what does it bring to us? Not merely the remission of sins, which baptism with water represents. The baptism of the Holy Spirit associates livingly with Christ at the right hand of God. For this reason the Spirit comes from heaven. Our Lord, even after He rose from the dead, baptised not then with the Holy Ghost. He said before He went up to heaven — "Ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." To whom did He say this? To the disciples. They were not unbelievers: there were only believers then present. But they needed to have wrought another work in them that had not been wrought in one however favoured in the whole world. Never since the world began had there been baptism with the Holy Ghost. It is a work that followed Christ's ascension to heaven, uniting us with Himself and one with another.,

I call your attention to this, because all great vital truths are founded on facts. They are not ideas only. They are not mere reasonings hammered out of the intellect of man. They are the drawing out of the person of Christ the grand truths that follow from all the great facts about the Lord Jesus. Thus, as you have the work of atonement depending upon — His death, and the liberty and brightness of the Christian's life upon His resurrection, so His ascension has to usher in a fresh blessing. I do not say it is the only blessing, but a very great one — that now the Lord Jesus from the right hand of God sends down the Holy Ghost to associate livingly with Himself every soul that believes the gospel. The Son of Man indeed was sealed in His own moral perfectness (John 6: 27), as was meet; we, only in virtue of His redemption, Who is gone on high and has sent down the Holy Spirit to seal us.

And what is the result of that? A heavenly character is impressed upon every Christian. "As is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." We are not earthly men. We were, and indeed worse than that — we were lost men. A Jew at the very best is only an earthly man as such; but a Christian is characteristically not so. He has to learn what is spiritually discerned. He rests upon a Person. Grace to him flows down from that one Man, the head of the new family — the Man Who is in heaven, and Whom all heaven worships; for all the angels of God worship Him. And further, wondrous to say, Christians are not merely born anew and forgiven, not merely justified and children of God, but they are associated with Christ. They are united to Him at the right hand of God.

Suppose the greatest lord in this land were to select some person in this room to be his wife. What would he the result of that relationship? If a young girl became the object of his affections and were married to him, what would be the consequence of that union? Why, for her at once a total change. She enters into all his dignity, and receives a new name from him. There is a new relationship; and if he has possessions without bound, he shares them, as we know, with her. All that is exactly what is true of the Christian. The union of the Christian with Christ is founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus : he is by the power of the Spirit even now united to Christ at the right hand of God.

And so it is that we find the apostle opening out the consequence in chapter 15 of First Corinthians — "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly" (1 Cor. 15: 48, 49). Is it not very striking that the apostle wrote thus to the disorderly Corinthians? Every tyro has a slap at the Corinthians. They were indeed very faulty; but there are few saints now who are not really far below the Corinthians. Yet these were the persons to whom the Holy Ghost addressed these words. Had they been predicated of the choicest saints on earth, one might have said — "Oh, yes, these are heavenly men." It does not, however, rest on personal merit. It is not a question of superior intelligence or of higher endowments spiritually. Of course, there ought to be intelligence, and there ought to be practical spirituality; but we must never forget that the maiden's exaltation to be a duchess, or a princess if you will, does not at all depend upon her deserving it, nor because she had a sweeter character or a prettier face than other people. Perhaps it was not so at all. A far more important thing decides: it depends on the Duke, or Prince; and he was pleased to choose her.

This, I affirm, is what is pre-eminently true of our blessed Saviour. We know that all is accomplished according to the sovereign grace of God, and. that He looks watchfully that they who are called by His grace should comport themselves suitably to it. It is a question of conforming them according to Christ; and if they do not carry themselves according to the Lord Jesus, you know the Lord has His way of dealing with them. Why did some of the Corinthians die? Why were many of them troubled? Why were many sick? They had walked as men, as Greeks. But were they then heavenly? To be sure they were; and this is the very thing that made their conduct so bad. The more we see of the grace of the Lord, the greater ground for self-condemnation, if we behave ourselves unworthily of the Lord Jesus.

But the first thing is, let us leave room for the grace of Christ. Let us without hesitation rest upon the word of God — the word of His grace, inviting us, encouraging us, removing obstacles out of the way, bringing the full tide of blessing into our souls. Then when we have got the blessing, let us sit in judgment upon our souls, the Holy Ghost being in us a spirit of power, of love, and of sobriety, and bringing us into a new association with Christ at the right hand of God, which stamps us as heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall bear the image of the Heavenly. How perfect the description! All see that we do not yet bear the image of the Heavenly. We bear the image of Adam still. Who, then, are heavenly? The title is conferred upon us, although we have got very little to show for it in present appearance. But still there it is: Christ has made us heavenly. He has brought us into that relationship of glory, and will ultimately conform us to the image of Himself, when we shall shine in all the beauty and glory of Christ. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly. So declares God's word.

This, then, is the double work of our Lord Jesus — the mighty work He wrought on the cross, and the mighty work He inaugurated from the right hand of God. Indeed His glory is set forth in other ways, though we are unworthy of all. He is in heaven, but we are on earth, and consequently here exposed to difficulties, dangers, and snares. We require, therefore, a friend on high, and the light of the grace of Christ for all the difficulties. God may employ others; but the true test of any ministry is the bringing of souls to know Christ in a way He was never learnt before. If I get fresh glimpses of Christ with renewed confidence in His love; if I have the truth and the grace of the Lord brought before my soul in a manner which I had not previously realised, my soul receives a strength it never yet possessed.

Now, in this way it is that the Spirit of God shows us the immensity of Christ, and that the whole practical power of Christianity lies in His person and work. Every one admits that the great subject in the scripture is Christ, and that the object of faith is Christ; but it is not so generally seen that Christ is all." I have endeavoured to illustrate that in deed and truth Christ is all. When we are delivered from the burden of our sins; when we are brought into association with Christ by the power of the Holy Ghost, we want a centre for our hearts. Man cannot be without a centre. Only God is self-sufficient; we are not except in sin; and even where we pretend to be self-sufficient, we always sink low down. Now, man was made to look up, not to look down. A brute looks down, but man does not. Often, however, he only looks up as far as the stars and the sun, and worships them. You must look above them all up to God — not to the sun or to any other objects man has always been ready to deify.

We need a centre for our hearts. There is an energy in the heart of man, which otherwise denies God or deifies the creature. Man was made by God to rule; an angel was not. You never hear of an angel sitting on the throne or governing. On the contrary, the saints are to judge the angels. So that nothing can be more certain than that man was made to rule. For that reason, with others, we in our weakness require a centre to work to: for want of this people injure themselves or dishonour God. If a man has a consciousness of being unfit for it, he sets up another man and trusts to him. It is the same amongst scholars. They set up schools of opinion, of philosophy, of sciences, of languages, according to their tastes or their habits, and they make the school of their choice the practical centre, to which they are gathering. All their energies, their labours, are for the promotion of that central aim towards which they work. We also require one — the simplest Christian as much as the greatest; the greatest because he might otherwise set himself up, and the simplest because he feels the want of it. God gives us one, and this is taught in a very remarkable way here.

The first man we read of who officially had disciples was John the Baptist: I do not at all mean that he was wrong. Far from it; but still he is the only mere man in the New Testament, whose disciples God distinctly sanctioned. John had his disciples, and it is evident that he was a man singularly honoured (Matt. 11: 10, 11). "Again, the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples [having testified to the Lord the day before]; and looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! and the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus." Surely this is very striking. Now there was a Divine centre on earth; and John the Baptist, who had disciples strongly attached, so speaks of Jesus that his own disciples leave him to follow Jesus. How rarely we find that. It is not what men like. Even the good are too often jealous if men leave them, but John the Baptist showed the power of God. He manifested a simplicity of faith most seasonable.

No wonder the people took John for a prophet; for God was before Him. What is it that marks the prophet? The man that sees God's mind and makes it known. Other people may make known the truth, may preach the gospel; but the man that puts your conscience in the presence of God is the prophet. So the woman of Samaria, when her conscience was awakened to her sin, said, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." It is the consciousness of God given to the soul that is the true test of a prophet. And so it was here. John the Baptist so speaks of our Lord that his own disciples turn from him to Jesus. He was right, and they were right. He was right to bear his heart's testimony to the Lord Jesus; and it is remarkable enough that it was not a long effusion that he spoke, but a few words that told. "Behold the Lamb of God!" In the delight of his soul John rendered that testimony to Christ, and the moment that his disciples heard it, they followed Jesus. They heard John, they followed Jesus, and the Lord invited them to remain with Him that day.

Now there is exactly where you find the needed centre. One of the two that heard John and followed Jesus was Andrew, who first goes and finds his brother Simon Peter, and tells him, "We have found the Messiah," and he brought him to Jesus. Jesus is the true centre for men on earth. Not merely a Saviour is meant, but also a centre to work to. What am I doing, now that I am washed in the blood of Christ, and, what is more, associated with Him in heaven? Am I serving the world? I do not question the duty of carrying on my occupation in a Christian manner. This is all right, and in its own place most important. It is a bad job for any man who has not something to do: such a one is generally in the way. But the Christian that has an occupation by which he lives is called to stick to it, and do it thoroughly. It is my opinion, a Christian man ought to do his work a great deal better than any other; nay, it would be a real shame to him if he did not, because his carelessness could not but bring a stigma on the name of Jesus. Only senseless men run down a man for cleaving to his honest occupation. Let us heed the apostle Paul, that if a man will not work, he ought not to eat.

But in this case, where Christ and the soul are concerned, it is another thing altogether. Have I now a divine centre that fills my heart? What I want is not to make money or a name, nor yet that I should accomplish this purpose or that. Farther, it is not the mere service of my country or of my sovereign, or anything of the kind (although, of course, I am bound to honour the Queen); but there is made known, another centre to which we work, infinitely higher and more commanding, which does not really end when you have done your work, but which abides beyond all time. The one thine, that God wants is, that whatever you do should be to Christ, with a happy heart; no murmuring here, no complaining, nor striking for more wages. The one who helps you to meet and overcome all these aberrations, who puts your heart at rest, is Jesus. There was a time, no doubt, when men set up what they called a city for Jesus — a commonwealth for His name. But this was a kind of religious monomania, for after all the city was only for themselves. There was no reality in it for Christ. It was a mere outburst of fanatical folly. But I am speaking now of simplicity and assiduity in the sight of God, of guidance by His word and Spirit.

Faith is not just to be limited to believing in Jesus for salvation, or subjection to Him as to this duty or that duty. It is more. It is a cleaving to a Living Person as a centre that commands my soul in all the work I am set to do. The disciples went to Jesus, and one of them goes and finds another and brings him to Jesus. How was this? Had Christ been only a man, they never would have left John the Baptist. Why should they? They were John the Baptist's disciples, and of all men born of women there had not been a greater than John. Why did they leave him? Because they found the Messiah — One surely to be preferred before him — the Eternal One.

Are you conscious that in all your religious life you refer to the Lord Jesus — that He is really and truly your centre? Most people you know go by where they were born or bred, christened or converted, by their country, by their connection, or something of that sort. But these disciples did not. They for the first time in their lives recognised a Man of divine glory and authority Who had absolute claims on their affection and allegiance. I leave that to work in every breast here. Be sure whatever you do, more particularly in religious things, that you have no superior authority to Jesus. Look alone to Him then, whatever dark questions may perplex you, and He will give you light.

That is not all. We are going through a wilderness. We have to pass through a world where there are manifold and subtle snares. We want, therefore, not only a centre to work to, but a path to follow. Where shall we find the true path for our souls? Not surely when we get to heaven. There we shall need no way, because all is good and bright there. But where all is wrong, when you are surrounded by enemies of every kind, you want an unerring way. Where shall such a path be found? I answer, in the Saviour. The Lord, therefore, in the next place brings out that truth. "The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me." He Himself is the path, the only true way for the Christian. Whatever comes — whatever difficulties or trials — search and see what the will of the Lord is; and the moment you are subject to His will, you follow Him. He was always doing the will of God, as He reveals the will of God in His word. To obey His word in faith is to follow Himself.

There is another blessing. We are in a world where there are false paths of all kinds, and men are ensnared by them. Some have their tastes here, some have there their predilections or their prejudices. One requires, therefore, to have an object before the soul to keep it right; and what do we find to be the declared object in the end of the chapter? The Son of Man. Remark that He is not spoken of as the Son of God. Just before He is. But He Who is the Son of God is also the Son of Man, and it is as Son of Man that He is brought before us here. "Hereafter (rather, henceforth) ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Thus the highest angels of God waited upon the humbled Man — the One who came down so low that, while all saints follow Him, none really approaches. Such is the object for the Christian, no matter what he does. If I look at the foundation of my soul, the Lamb of God is this. If I think of the power that lifts to heaven, the Spirit He gives is the power. If I seek for a centre to work to, Christ is that centre. If I want a path to follow through the intricacies of the world, He and He alone is the One to follow. If I look for an object for my soul, He is the only one God gives me.

Do not treat even Scripture poetry as mere poetry. I grant that even from the poetic point of view nothing is like it, and that all Shakespeare or Milton ever wrote so grandly is poor indeed compared with what is therein. Take even Milton, who had the benefit of using Scripture expressly. He puts all wrong where, if I listen to him, the devil is reigning in a very fine palace. What a vain dream! Satan has never reigned in hell. The devil will be the most miserable object in hell through all eternity. This is not reigning. So evident is it that the effect of the Miltonic picture is to disorder men's minds about the truth. The devil is reigning in this world now and here, not in hell. What is still more important is the erroneous impressions he. gives of God and especially of His Son. For Christ is ever the test whether one is taught of God, or only glories in man. I press this for the purpose of securing the truth to settle our souls — to give us true objects as seen in the light of God — to make us firm and constant in His grace and truth, His light shining down upon our every step through this wilderness world. May God in His rich mercy grant that these remarks may help to lead some weary wayfarer out of the darkness of the enemy into the marvellous light of God. Amen.

Our Future Glory, and Our Present Groaning in the Spirit.

Rom. 8: 18-27.

W. Kelly.

It is comforting and instructive to notice the way in which the expected glory utterly outweighed the sufferings in the mind of the apostle. It is not that he did not suffer — we must suffer, and sufferings are not pleasant; but suffering is soon over! "I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." It is not merely that he knows he will then get rest and glory; but what a sense of the glory he has now, with his sufferings, of what he here calls the manifestation of the sons of God! Like a person you may have seen in the world, so filled with the bright hopes of to-morrow, that he is getting through today as fast as he can. It is "The glory which shall be revealed in us." It is our glory and yet God's glory. He counts it but fair that, if we are in sufferings, we should be in the glory too. " If so be we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." If ours is the suffering, it is also in respect of ourselves the glory is to be revealed. While Christ (the Son) reflects the glory of the Father, the woman (the Church) reflects the glory of the man. Then there is the sense too, by the power of the Holy Ghost, of its belonging to us — that it is really our own. If a man has the sense of its being his, there will not be the turning his back on what he knows to be his own, but the getting towards it as fast as possible. If his heart is in that state, filled with the Holy Ghost, he will pass on through the world, as an angel would pass through it. Do you think, if Gabriel were sent on a message into this world, he would desire to stop here? No, he could not stay where all is defiled. It is this "present evil world;" so he does not linger, but is in haste to get through. But it is a much higher principle we enjoy than can be enjoyed by an angel, and so there never can come out of an angel's heart the same song of praise that comes from the believer's heart. Though it has been lately remarked, that the angels are never said in Scripture to sing, they are said "to speak" — "to say" — "to talk," but they do not "sing." There could be no harmony in an angel's song compared with ours, their hearts not being exercised with trials like ours. Never having sinned, they cannot know what the joy of salvation is; or what it is to be strengthened when weak, or lifted up when failing, or comforted in suffering. They laud, and praise, and bless God; but they cannot know the new song that they sing who passed through it all. The four living creatures rest not day and night, saying, "Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty;" but their subject is creation - "for thou hast created all things; for thy pleasure they are, and were created." (Rev. 4) But in Revelation 5 it is redemption - "And they sing a new song, saying, Thou are worthy: for thou hast," etc.

Then you see how strong St. Paul's personal realization of it was; he says, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." How much he must have had the glory present to his soul, to prefer it to "present things!" Now, he had suffered much; but it only brought the glory the brighter before him, and shows how the glory of the cross filled his soul.

The words "this present time" are striking. His mind is full of the future — absorbed with to-morrow —  like the boy at school looking for a holiday, who can think of nothing else. The glory is so present, that he calls it but momentary — "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment." For if you talk to one whose mind realizes eternity, about this present evil world, eternity is too big to allow of room for any thing else. We never realize eternity, till we fill it with the Father's love and Christ's glory. If we think of it otherwise, we only look into a mere vacuum. We are confounded on the one hand, and filled with glory on the other. Finding ourselves in the glory of God, we hardly know how to grasp it — "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." It is a blessed thing that it is ours, so that we can get near it in that kind of way. "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us;" it is not to become proud with the "glory which shall be revealed in us;" it is not a change of time, but the glory is present to his mind, and he realizes the glory. Then he opens it out doctrinally: "For I reckon" — not "we teach" — "that the sufferings of this present time," etc. — the present sufferings had lost their hindering power, because he saw the power of God in them and endured afflictions according to the power of God. He does not say it is received, but "revealed in us." It is wonderful how the Holy Ghost uses that word "us." It is the common course of all the promises of God, "to the glory of God by us." "That ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length," etc. The great thing is to get the heart into conscious association with all this fair scene. And if we have our hearts always occupied with Christ and glory, there will be such a sense of it that we shall be always there. So that if I look at the stars in the heavens — though I admire them and gaze on them with wonder and delight — they do but remind me at once that I am one with Him who created them.

It is amazing how the soul becomes soft when happy in the Lord! How it removes all roughnesses. Saints cannot quarrel about being happy in the Lord, though they may quarrel about doctrine or discipline. We ought all to look onward, and have the heart filled with the glory. The effect of this is to put us into suffering, though we can say it is not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. It is not the divine essential glory, of course, but the manifested glory, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Verse 19 shows the sons exhibited in the family glory. In the world it is known by the dress of the children what is the wealth and grandeur of the father. It is the parent's pride and delight to deck them out and show them forth. Well, God has children, and He must display His sons in His glory. When He transfigures them, He manifests them. It is then, and not till then, the creature is introduced into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. This, as far as creation goes, is not intelligent, for it has been brought by man's sin, unwillingly, into all misery and bondage. It must also wait, for it will not be brought back until man has been. If a chain were suspended from the ceiling, and the first link be broken, which connects it with those below, the whole chain would immediately fall to the ground.

When man fell, all creation was involved. It has often struck me how as all the misery of the creature, sickness, bodily suffering, etc., came by man, so all the deliverance comes by man. There will be a blessing on the fruit of the ground and not a curse, by and by, certainly in Jerusalem. The Cain-curse it is that was taken away by the flood, as Noah (i.e., "this shall comfort us"), the name given by Lamech to his son, seems to imply. It is not that they get rid of labour, but they get comfort in it. No doubt there will be very great fertility and fruitfulness; not that there will be no labour needed there, but they shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; but they shall build houses and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." It is clear that "the creature" goes beyond our bodies; the creatures outside our bodies are groaning. There are two curses spoken of. The first was spoken to Adam, the second to Cain. The first was on the earth in general, but the second did not extend beyond the family of Cain. The two curses are very different. Cain was a tiller of the ground — "Now art thou cursed from the earth. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not yield unto thee her strength." It is true Cain had the earth, after it was cursed, after he had killed Abel. The two presented, as heirs of the earth, were Cain and Abel. These were two parties, and they soon showed who should get on in it — the righteous man or the vagabond — for Abel is slain; but Cain takes possession, builds a city, and makes progress in it. God blessed Israel in the earth; but what do we see? The godly forced up to heaven, because the ungodly were in prosperity, and this, too, while prosperity was the mark of God's favour to the righteous; and so David says, "This I understood not, till I went into the sanctuary of God." Well, they will have the heavenly blessing. The temporal promises were not even possessed by Abraham. God's temporal government was blessing on the earth. (See Ezra, Nehemiah, etc.) Solomon did not get higher than earthly blessing. The prophets rise up to heavenly blessing; not that they reach to the heavenly Bride — the body of Christ; for the Church never was the subject of prophecy or promise. The Church is founded on the defacing the difference between Jew and Gentile. Now to have attempted to deface the Jew before, would have been wicked. It was done in the cross. Meanwhile the Christian suffers. But, see how the energizing power of the Holy Ghost fills him with this "earnest expectation." He so sees the love of God and thought of God in the thing that is coming, that his neck is stretched out, as it were, looking for it. God is a faithful Creator, and so He will bless according to God. The intelligence does not know the remedy, though the heart feels the groaning. Paul knew God in the sorrow pressing on his spirit. If he links it with the glory, it never can come till the manifestation of the sons of God, when the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. It is not liberty by grace, but the liberty of the glory; "for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected the same." My will was concerned in it; if it had ruined itself willingly, it would have remained; but God is there, and He is good. The creature offended; then the Holy Ghost inspires the whole creation with hope, so that all are looking out for the manifestation of the children of God. That is what they wait for. They groan, but not intelligently. We have the key to the groaning. The text may be read thus: "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God, in hope that the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God; for the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that subjected the same." There is a parenthesis. If it had chosen all, then there would have been no hope of recovery; but it is "waiting in hope," and not only they, but we ourselves also wait, because we have the creature about us; "even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption." "The Spirit itself maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to God." It is recorded in the history of the experience of an old saint, that he had lain a whole day groaning, without uttering a word, and, at the close of the day, there came out simply, "My God!"

"The creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption." Everything connected with it — sickness, death, suffering. It was "made subject to vanity." He calls it all vanity. Take the flogging of horses in an omnibus to see how fast they can go, or how many they can carry, calculating the cost, what they shall gain by the journey, and the like. What is all this but "creature" groaning and vanity? Unless God sustained them, how could even the angels bear to look on and to witness it all? Look at what is called military prowess. Think only of 20,000 men being killed by their fellow men in a single fray! Man walks in a vain show, and toils for death; thus spending all his strength to die! The creature is subject to vanity, and cannot get out of it, until brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. There is more villainy and misery, I suppose, in Manchester or London, than anywhere in the world, even where men are still in a mere state of nature. Blessing of another nature, doubtless, comes in; but that is another question. Civilization has pushed men even to the extremity, so that they are at their wit's end — up to such a point that there must be a break out at last, which men will find out to their cost. Luxury, indulgence, and pride have crept in, living for comfort, without any regard or care for the poor: men everywhere are feeling it, and evil passions are breaking out and showing themselves in various forms. God has mercifully spared this nation, because they do care more in this country for the poor than in any other; there are poorhouses, or unions, hospitals, and infirmaries. This is not the case in other countries of the world, where the people are kept down by mere power or influence, by the priests or the army; only let these be removed, and all goes. Men are saying, Peace, peace, and all the while trembling with fear, looking for those things that are coming on the earth, for come they must; and God alone knows what will turn up in a year's time. It is not because "signs" are not properly meant for us, that we are not to discern the signs. The Lord said, rebukingly, "How is it ye do not discern the signs of the times?"

"The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together." How astonishing it is that Christians can go on trying to better the world, with so many positive texts of Scripture against them! "The whole creation groaneth," etc. What an amazing difference! He is speaking of "the weight of glory" which shall be revealed in us; and then at once turns and says, What a groaning creation I am in! It is his realizing the glory that fits him to enter into the sorrow of the groaning creation around. Christ, coming in glory, lifts him above it all. When Christ was here, every outgoing of His heart was stopped (except that grace would make a way): they turned away from Him and rejected Him; though He had cast out a whole legion of devils out of their land, they could not endure His presence, but "besought him to depart out of their coasts."

The groaning goes beyond the saints — the whole creation groans. If I have the Holy Ghost, I may be full of joy and full of hope; but this does not hinder my groaning as a creature; the more I joy, the more I feel this wretched body is an earthen vessel that cannot hold the treasure. We have but the "firstfruits of the Spirit." We have already the sprinkling of the former rain; when we get into glory, then will come down the latter rain.

There is no groaning in my connection with God; it is all rejoicing, and nothing else, in that respect. "Rejoice in the Lord always." I am not waiting for the redemption of my soul (that is the state of the quickened man in Rom. 7), but for the redemption of my body; we have redemption by blood already, but not so as to glory; we are quickened in our souls as His children, but God will never have us as He wills until we are conformed to the image of His Son — this cannot be to what Christ was in the grave, but to what He is now. Christ is a glorified man. (There is no such thing as a glorified spirit, as some speak; there may be a glorious spirit, but a glorified spirit — what is it? who can tell?) Just as the coming of the Lord, as a hope, had been suffered to drop out of the Church, so the hope of being conformed to the likeness of Christ has been allowed to vanish. Now the evil of this is, it dissociates from Christ the spirit in heaven and the body in the grave; it is as Christ was before He rose; but the moment I get my mind filled with the thought, "I am to be conformed to Christ as He is in glory," it associates me with Him now. The thought of His coming makes me happy. There is such a thing as delighting in God; but Christ fills up the scene between. He may make the person of the Lord precious to me — not merely His work but Himself; and then I shall not be talking about the immortality of the soul! (however true this may be, as indeed it is, but my body is mortal), I shall be waiting to have "this vile body changed and fashioned like his glorious body." There is no hope but that of being conformed to Christ. Death is not a hope. "Our conversation is in heaven," and there we hope to be. My hope is to be with Him in heaven, bodily. I have all for my soul now in Christ.

"We ourselves groan within ourselves." It is very experimental to see all this groaning, provided I see the hope that enables me to go on. The Lord groaned deeply at the grave of Lazarus, but He had power to carry it in spirit to God, and was strengthened. He came to the place of death and found all sealed up, and a stone laid upon it; and He groaned in spirit. Men put away their dead as loathsome — to get rid of them quickly.

The apostle had received the Spirit of adoption. Christ was "declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead;" so we are declared to be sons, and are waiting to be raised up bodily by Christ. We must never confound the groaning here spoken of, with the groaning of the soul for its own salvation, which we have already; but the redemption of the body is our hope, for Christ is made unto us of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Redemption comes last, as in itself comprising all, and not of the soul only. When they talk of hope among men, there is uncertainty always attached to it; as, one may ask, Do you expect to get this, or that? The reply is, I hope so; but meaning to imply uncertainty as to its being realized. Now this can never be the case with regard to our hope, for there is no uncertainty if God has said it. The full result is salvation; I have only the earnest of it now. I must wait patiently for it. Abraham had not a place to put his foot on, though God had given him the whole land: "He looked for a city," etc. When hope is settled, you go on quietly today, expecting Him to come. The Holy Ghost has fixed our hearts on this hope, and we are waiting for it. Whilst we groan, the Holy Ghost itself groans, so that while it is a groaning creation, that is not all. If you groan, your groanings are according to God, and are as divine as your hopes, though in a different way. But as the Son became a man, and, as a man down here, had these feelings, so the Holy Ghost (He does not become a man) dwells in me; and these groans are precious, because in these groans it is the positive intercession of the Holy Ghost; and "He who searcheth the heart, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit," so that if God searcheth my heart, He finds the Holy Ghost there.

It is wonderful how God has insinuated Himself into every thing: filling us with His hopes, His sorrows, and affections. If it is God who listens, it is God He hears. How thoroughly He is come in to possess man's soul! It is God's love outside us, and His love is shed abroad in our hearts. We dwell in God, and God in us. He has given us His thoughts and feelings, so that we are wrapped up in God, "Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." God's love! if it is not His love, it is of no use; if it is not in me, it has no reality. Scripture sometimes speaks as if it was of us, and at other times as of God. Thus it is my heart groans, while it is said, "The Spirit maketh intercession" — Oh! the wondrous ways of God! "Have I been a wilderness to your" It is a great comfort to know they are not selfish groans in me, because while I am groaning with all around me, I might have the thought, "Take care there is no unbelief there," but it is the Spirit's groan in us. Selfish groans we find in Rom. 7. There it is all I, I, I, — no Christ, nor Holy Ghost, until the end of the chapter. Rom. 8 is full of Christ and of the Spirit.

W.K.

A Letter to Mr. Geo. B. Gilpin,

In Reply To His "Warning," etc.

Guernsey, Sept. 27, 1866.

My dear brother,

Your "Warning" fell into my hands last night. Bear with me if I express my sorrow at the rashness which so quickly receives and circulates an evil accusation against an honoured servant of Christ.

After the fullest consideration I could bestow on the charges, both when first uttered by unscrupulous enemies, and when lately taken up by men from whom more candour might have been expected, my judgment, as in God's sight, is that you have utterly misconstrued J.N.D.

Thus your title is "A Warning, with regard to the doctrine of Christ being smitten previous to the Cross." Can you have read and remembered the note at the bottom of pp. 67, 68 in the "Sufferings of Christ?" Here are the words: "The persecuting 'Him whom thou hast smitten' is literally applicable in the 69th Psalm only to what was done to Him on the cross. (See verses 20, 21.) Still surely in spirit all that passed from Gethsemane, or when He had given Himself up to the suffering of death and rejection, have this same character." So farther on in the same note it is said of the cross, "There we know was the true smiting. It was written, 'Smite the Shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered but the moment after, in Gethsemane, He had given Himself up to this, all partook of this character, morally, though the fact of smiting had not actually taken place." How then could you in the fore-part of your tract accuse Mr. Darby of the doctrine that Christ was smitten previous to the cross? Not that you meant to accuse him falsely; but in fact so it is. Your "Warning" is founded solely on a misrepresentation; the ground of it he even pointedly disclaims. Mr. Darby affirms (and never, as far as I can speak, affirmed anything but) that the fact of smiting had not actually taken place before the cross.

You next quote the words of the "Synopsis" on Psalm 102, where it is said of the rejected Messiah, "He looks to Jehovah, who cast down Him whom He had called to the place of Messiah, but who now meets

INDIGNATION and WRATH"

[as you singularly print these words]. "We are far, here, beyond looking at sufferings as coming from man. They did and were felt, but men are not before Him in judgment; nor is it His expiatory work, though that which wrought it is here — the indignation and wrath." Now I declare to you, as I may to my brethren, that were I on a jury empanneled to pronounce whether, on the evidence of your "Warning," you did or did not understand Mr. Darby on Psalm 102, I could not hesitate to join in the verdict that you did not. Mr. Darby says nothing which warrants your very odd and oddly expressed inference — "that word on his part lying against the Lord Jesus Christ in life, 'INDIGNATION AND WRATH.'" He holds — what I think every saint does or ought to hold — that the blessed Lord had the sense of His coming rejection and cutting off before it came; that, far from being insensible, He felt all in perfect sorrow; and that He stopped not at secondary instruments, as unbelief does, but accepted all at the hand of Jehovah, His God — not expiation only, but all His sufferings, whatever their occasion, source, measure, or character. But it is wholly and groundlessly false that Mr. Darby has any such word to recall as you impute in p. 3 — "indignation and wrath lying against the Lord Jesus Christ in life;" or, as in p. 4, that the "indignation" belongs to Christ, as taught by him. I am, therefore, as certain as I can be of anything, that "you have laid yourself open" to the charge (not merely as you suspect (p. 4), of presumption but) of unwitting false witness. Forgive me if I add that you have spoken foolishly as to not meeting Mr. Darby at the Lord's table till he recalls a word of which you are the author, not he foolishly also in challenging brethren whom you may deem implicated in a wicked absurdity, which nobody in communion would accept or allow for a moment.*

* I have just examined, and have now before me, a copy of what you call "a private thing" (which is really a letter from Mr. Darby in reply to an inquiring brother); and here again I am bound to say the same fatality of mistake follows you. Mr. Darby applies Zechariah 13 to Christ's death, not "to Christ in life," as you assert.

And you have rushed into print with nothing but misconception from beginning to end! If it be criminal hastily to misjudge any man in a serious business, what must it be in the present case? Most "Brethren," I trust, will be helped by grace in the long run to distinguish between godly jealousy for Christ and the truth, and the unworthy jealousy which writhes under superior power; or the temerity which sincerely scatters, hotfoot, that which blind, if not insincere, ill-will originally forged. I am sure that the weightiest men among "Brethren" reject with disdain those charges or innuendos against Mr. Darby's doctrine, which charges were long since raised, weighed, and found wanting. Their reproduction now, chiefly by men who are unquestionably alienated otherwise, may pain us all, but need surprise none. I am grieved that you, and not you only, should not have seen through the snare. For let me tell you, that, while one from amongst us, who formerly seemed to me only too servile to J.N.D., now indulges in high-minded acrimonious impeachment of his doctrine, as well as of his ecclesiastical conduct; another (too upright, I hope, to remain much longer within neutral ranks) wrote to me (too long ago) his indignant refusal of these very imputations. Is it not ominous that W.H.D., in the pamphlet you commend and advertise, insinuates false doctrine against Mr. Darby in the ratio that he avows the principle (if principle it can be styled) of the so-called Bethesda party? When he hesitated (as at first) about the one, his mind was only moved (not made up) about the other. When finally he decided to secede because of Mr. Darby's alleged doctrine, he equally determined to renounce that witness against neutrality which he had pursued ever since the question arose. This seems to me the real "warning."

W.H.D. then wrote a pamphlet* far stronger against Bethesdaising than he has just written in its favour. W. H. D. therein not only expressed his approval of Mr. Darby's circular in reference to Bethesda, but was the only man among "Brethren" known to me who printed it in extenso. — Then he wrote, "This letter, I believe to be no more than a just expression of what the occasion required;" and, again, "it places the question in a broad, and simple, and intelligible light; and many facts have since come out to make plain, to all, the grounds the writer had for his conclusions." (Review, p. 13.) Now, on the contrary, he says (Close of twenty-eight years, p. 29), it is the "fiat of authority," "and the dictum of a leader;" and, again, "it is a false principle for any man to issue a human decree as to how an evil is to be dealt with in the Church of God, instead of leaving it to the direction of the divine Word." (Close, p. 5 7.)-Now (ibid.) he says a principle "is falsely applied when directed against Christians, not because they themselves hold or favour error, but simply use that liberty of association which they do not see to be interdicted of the Lord." But the fallacy is his own; for it is to favour error, even if not held, where liberty of association is claimed in presence of the allowance of a dishonoured and indeed a false Christ. Then, however, W.H.D. could see that personal separation was not enough; that the Church had to prove themselves clear; and that it is in vain to talk about a negation or that Scripture gives no warrant to punish for it. - Then he could declare, "I hold to the ground on which I first set out with brethren." (Review, p. 21.) Now he does not scruple to say that Mr. Darby's circular inaugurated "our present position and discipline" (Close, p. 17); and, again (Close, p. 37), eighteen or nineteen years ago their polity and position were entirely remodelled on the ground of separation from 'Bethesda' on account of alleged laxity in dealing with false doctrine." Then W.H.D. clearly saw the working of Satan's power in the heresy which, springing up in Plymouth, found a shelter in Bethesda and with its advocates; then he could see the deep personal enmity against Mr. Darby and Mr. Wigram, which usually characterizes the spirit of renegades against all who are prominent in holding fast to God's will and ways. Now! — but I need say no more than that I never remember reading a more "malignant thrust" than W.H.D.'s at the writer on Psalm 22 in Part lxv. of the "Present Testimony."

*A REVIEW of certain evils and questions that have arisen amongst brethren, designed to help the simple-minded to a godly judgment about them. By W. H. Dorman. London: J. K. Campbell, etc. 1849."

As to a general meeting, I doubt that it promises much for dealing with the question just now. Let brethren avoid haste of judgment and speech; let them give themselves to prayer with search in, and submission to, the Scriptures. Mr. Darby is not the man to amuse any one by light promises, or to refuse help to saints who feel difficulties. But who can disabuse those who are wilful and themselves more or less in error? Do you mean, by "largeness of heart, not standing on a technicality" (p. 4), that the meeting you desire should embrace brethren while they abide in such an association as would hinder our receiving them at the Lord's table? If so, I pray the Lord that every brother in fellowship may eschew so unholy an alliance, and that no saint may be misled by its issues.

Believe me to remain, dear brother,

Ever affectionately yours, W. Kelly.

The Gospel of the Glory of Christ.

2 Cor. 4: 6.

W. Kelly.

It is more particularly to these few words I would call your attention tonight. The words of God are deep as they are also simple and most truly reliable. I do not, therefore, at this time purpose to bring many words in an expositional way before you, but to look at the concentration of the truth given in a verse usually passed over without much painstaking. What does the apostle mean by "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"? It is clear that a bright knowledge is intimated, and of the highest value, not only for the present time but for all eternity. The God who spoke that light should shine out of darkness shone in our hearts (says he) for the shining forth of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. How pre-eminent the expression!

Our Lord Himself had spoken of the great importance of light and life in a depth and form peculiarly His own. But whatever the form, the same substantial truth appears where, in speaking of His own, He asked the Father that they might know Him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He had sent. And what did He call it distinctively in itself and for its effect on the soul? Life eternal. There are some in great danger of making light of divine knowledge, as others are of reducing it to human ideas. Beyond doubt any knowledge of the creature is small compared with knowing the Father and the Son and the infinite work in virtue of which as well as of His personal glory He has entered into the glory whence He came. But that knowledge may be greatly adulterated, as it is often ignored. For souls cannot but suffer who approach the word of God in an intellectual way.

Not so is the believer led of the Spirit who deals with him, at first, through his conscience. Till then, what is effectual? We may see this clearly in Peter's case. For, though he may have been a converted man when he first confessed the Lord (John 1), he needed a deep lesson as to his own nothingness; as every converted soul is all the better for it, and must have it if he is to be really blest and a blessing. Is it any honour to the Lord for souls that confess His name to accommodate themselves to the ways of the world around them in the little while given us to glorify God in our body? Did you ever notice that "in our spirit" is left out of the Revised Version? Every one moderately at home with the Scriptures was aware of this, which is of importance in its measure, because not a few think they can cleave to what is good in their spirit while walking with the world in their body. Is this "doing" the truth? Is it not in every way unworthy?

Where self is not adequately judged, we cannot enjoy the Lord's infinite love to us. The heart cannot but be divided in its affections, instead of being filled with the love that passeth knowledge. But this can never be, till we are brought down to be nothing in our own sight. Hence the Lord, when Peter had been toiling with his companions all night and catching nothing, told him where to cast the net. Now those used to fishing are not generally inclined to think much of what an outsider suggests. They are as jealous of interference as satisfied with their own skill. And no doubt it would have been rather presumptuous for an ordinary man to have given that word to Peter. But it was the Second man, the last Adam. He is the Man that brought God into the world. This was the first part of His work, as the next was to put sin out of the world. It may be far from being done yet as a fact; but the ground was laid in His cross, and He will do it. The reconciling work has been wrought, on which it will all be accomplished in power by-and-by. And remember, my friends, this is the work of redemption, on which I now call you, if you have never done it before, to rest your souls — Christ's work according to God's will, as Heb. 10 describes it through the offering of His body once for all.

Well then, we are told that Peter acted in spite of all his experience, on the word of the Lord — "At Thy word I will let down the net." The consequence was that the boats were filled to sinking. It is usually the history of things in this world when blessing comes. Earthen vessels are too weak to keep the blessing. All sorts of disorders ensue. It is not that the treasure is not good, but because even God's servants are indeed feeble. Nevertheless Peter learned a weighty lesson there; as he had to learn a good deal more before he was nothing in his own eyes.

But let us turn from the servant to his Lord, Master, and Saviour, as ready to be your Saviour tonight if you never heard His voice till now. What gave occasion to this striking expression — "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"? It was the most remarkable conversion that ever took place in this world. Of course one cannot pretend to know much about other people's conversions, and one feels that everyone's conversion is of the utmost importance to himself, as it ought to be of great interest to every other believer. Still we may say that there are marked differences, and that one transcended all others, not only in its importance for him that was saved, but for the shining forth of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the Saviour. It was not that of Peter, nor of Andrew, nor yet of John, but of Paul. How was Paul converted? By the voice of the Lord Jesus from heaven speaking from, and seen in, the excellent glory. For the holy mount was only a little illustration. The Lord Jesus was now in the very centre of the glory whence He appeared to Saul of Tarsus. It did not hinder that the smitten many lay prostrate on the ground. The Lord made Himself seen, and as easily in one posture of him who saw as in another. For it was a divine work, incomparably superior to all vision of the eye. It was a supernatural sight and hearing in his case — expressly meant to be so. In every respect it was a great conversion, and, what is rarely the case, a striking miracle accompanied this conversion. Christ's earthly miracles were rather signs like most to unbelievers; but with Saul of Tarsus the Lord went out of all ordinary ways, in bringing him to God, to work a stupendous wonder. For such it was that a man on earth should by the power of God see the Lord in heaven and hear His voice. The scene was in broad daylight, in the midst of a crowd of persecuting enemies, and not one of them so deadly as the man singled out by His grace.

Is there not bright hope for your soul after that? Is there a man or a woman in this company tonight so determined an enemy of the Lord Jesus as he to whom He spoke outside Damascus at the time? What a change from Saul of Tarsus to Paul the Apostle! It is the most striking conversion all Scripture shows. What was there on Saul's part to bring him to God up to that moment? Was there any — I will not say merit, but the least repentance? — even previous compunction? Was he not in the mid-career of his crusade against the name of Jesus? Was he not "breathing out threatenings and slaughter" at the time? Who was so full of religious pride? Had he not the highest authority of that day on earth? Little did he conceive that this is no safeguard, but may be the greatest illusion, as it was in his own case. He had letters from the High Priest to Damascus, authorising him to drag to prison men and women that confessed the name of the Lord Jesus. He had been only a little while before accessory to the martyrdom of Stephen, and according to every account — his own repeatedly — absolutely impenitent, ignorantly glorying in his sin. Indeed, there is nothing that so shuts out the heart from compassion as ecclesiastical pride; nothing that makes mild people more remorselessly cruel; nothing that more surely closes up every avenue to mercy. If ever a man seemed to be going straight to Satan, not only away from, but against, the only Saviour, it was Saul of Tarsus. Not a word of caution had he heeded from any quarter; not a doubt or fear as to what he was pursuing haunted his mind. He verily thought with himself, as he says, that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus. All that we do learn from God's account is that Saul was wholly untouched till, all being fallen to the earth, only he heard the Lord's voice. They all knew of something occurring most extraordinary in its nature. The light from heaven exceeding that of the sun at mid-day proved itself divine. And there was a sound — I do not say more than a sound — that reached the ears of the others; but the life-giving voice of Christ did not fail to reach the one to whom it was directed. It was quickening for his soul as well as a miracle.

Now, an appeal like this brings every soul of man to a point. One either believes or rejects it. Some in rejecting it may resemble that which is so fashionable in Germany; there they strive to reduce the outside circumstances to a hailstorm, a flash of lightning, and all that sort of delusion to which those learned men give themselves up so willingly. And why? Because, being unbelievers, they hate the truth and the love of God in Christ. As for our countrymen, are they not generally more scrupulous as the rule in the things of God? Yes but they like increasingly to be, what they call, abreast of modern thought; and the reality or affectation of "learned Germans" is so very attractive to some, that if the Germans are boldly sceptical, Englishmen are not ashamed to follow them admiringly. Yes, they follow them in this, and where? Away from God and His Christ, turning their back upon that grace that not merely was toward Saul of Tarsus, but is written and preached just as much to you tonight. It was life to him then; it is no less to you also, but only if you believe on Him. Beware lest it be a great deal worse before God, if you persist in rejecting the Christ, who made it all so blessed and so efficacious to Saul of Tarsus.

Why should not that light come to you? Why not this very night? The Saviour is come, His work for sin is done. One well understands the Jew, who does not believe, in waiting for the Messiah; but what are professing Christians waiting for? What are they if only baptised and they have no faith, no life, in them? They are worse than nothing. Christian baptism means that Christ died to give remission of sins, and that sin is condemned. But what does it mean for those that have it as a rite and believe not on Him that died and rose again? Undoubtedly it is a great truth that is represented in baptism. For Christ is therein shown, not merely as the Messiah, but as the Saviour who has accomplished redemption, the propitiation for our sins, and the sacrifice and offering to God and for us. But He is now raised and in heavenly glory, out of which glory He revealed Himself when He spoke to Saul of Tarsus.

Clearly, then, salvation is an individual matter. Saul was the only one in that crowd that received the blessing at the time, whatever God may have done through it; for nothing was more impressive. Could there have been found on the earth a person more nicely and rigidly moral than Saul? He was not conscious in his unconverted days that he had broken the law at all. But when the light made his real state manifest, the commandment came, sin revived, and he died. He was not awakened before to know the exceeding breadth and depth of the law, and he was well satisfied with himself; he had never offended in any gross manner. He had lived in his unconverted days a more correct and just life than anyone in this hall. He was frank, straightforward, conscientious, and truthful, religious after the flesh in no common degree. Further, he was a man of great capacity. He was not at all open to the passing fashions, but profoundly attached to the faith and institutions God had given to His people.

God particularly notified his conversion, wonderful as it was in its circumstances "for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting." For the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant in it. And His grace has recorded it in the Scriptures that you might be brought to the self-same salvation, seeing that Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom Paul declared himself chief. The Lord gave Paul a place that made many jealous of him; even some blessed people did not altogether relish it — those who were before him at first for instance. But Barnabas was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, and so he looked for good, and loved to seek and find it. Barnabas sought Saul when others were shy, and brought him to the apostles, and he was with them, coming in and going out at Jerusalem.

Turn we once more to Him who made this revolution in the persecuting missionary of the Jewish Sanhedrim. Can you have a more magnificent proof of the grace of God in dealing with a great sinner on the spot? Would that you might hear His voice in the written word tonight! Do not dream of preparation of any moral kind; do not yield to the temptation of a religious apprenticeship — if you are subject to God's word. Nothing whatever of this kind fitted Saul for the vision of the Lord Jesus in heavenly glory. Do not question that the Lord is still speaking from the same heavenly glory. For this is the doctrine in Hebrews 12: 25. It is real, though not a miracle also as in Paul's case. As truly as He once spoke upon earth at Sinai, the same One is now speaking from heaven. In whose person did God speak on earth? It was in the Son. Now He speaks in His Son emphatically, as Heb. 1 declares. He had sent His messengers of old; but if ever there was a time when God speaks in His Son, it is now. When the gospel goes forth to your ears, it is God speaking to you from heaven in His Son. So in 2 Cor. 5 and 13 you find the apostle expressing himself similarly. What he preached was "Christ speaking in me." Nor is the gospel Paul preached confined to the apostle. He that preaches aright is one who just gives out the good news unadulterated and fresh from God. If it be the true tidings of divine grace, is it not Christ speaking in that man to your soul?

When God was speaking on earth, as on mount Sinai, what was it about? Of the sins men, Israel, were prone to. In the Ten Commandments He forbade the various evils man was inclined to then, as he always is. Take the last of them, "Thou shalt not covet." Did you ever know a man, woman, or child that did not covet — did not desire to have — what they had not got? Did you ever know a man who would not prefer to have a sovereign in his pocket rather than a shilling? Is not this coveting, though it does not mean that one is dishonest? The chief dishonesty, alas! and of every soul, is toward God. How we have wronged Him! How we have dishonoured His goodness and His will! If He wants me to have only a shilling in my pocket, why should I trouble myself? Perhaps a little industry may add a shilling or more to what I have; but let me not forget that "man's life (how much more a Christian's!) consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth." All such things perish with the using. A heathen savage might put a coin in a dead man's mouth to take him over the River; but you know that all thoughts of the kind are vanity. We came naked into the world and we can bring nothing out.

All are sinners, though not in the way of Saul. But of him I have spoken particularly, because the subject calls for it, and gives such an admirable proof that even the chief of sinners may be saved; and as in this case expressly, when no plea called for mercy except God's grace, unless you add the greatness of his sins. This would be a strange sound in the ears of men, but it is not unknown to the Bible. Even in the Psalms of David, though God was then dealing by the law before grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, you may find its echo. Take for instance Ps. 25, where first in the book we hear of the forgiveness of sins — "O Jehovah, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great." Think of a man in the dock claiming such a favour from the judge! Would he not think the man clean mad? So too, the gospel is thought madness by unbelievers. It is quite foreign to the ways of man, who dreams not of showing good, save in return for good. But you, a sinner, have no good before God; you neither have merit, nor can you acquire merit in His eyes; you have sins, and only sins: what can become of you?

See, too, the immense danger of thinking so much of a little education, or of abstaining on the other hand from drink. Men, if temperate and educated, seem to think themselves somewhat better, and, if not nearer to God, more in the way to the gospel. Alas! how many build on sobriety or avoiding the dramshop, and the racecourse, and the like, making of these things their righteousness. And what does the Spirit of God do with men seeking after a little righteousness of their own? When God's word is mixed with faith, all such "righteousness" crumbles into dust. It is a barrier between his soul and salvation. He must come out of his little righteous castle, and surrender as nothing but a sinner, that he may be saved by grace through faith. It is not man that commends his love, or his anything else, to God; but "God commendeth His love towards us." And in what condition? When "without strength and ungodly;" for "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Can you ask a more conclusive proof than in Saul of Tarsus, himself the man who wrote those words for us from God? Are they not true now as then? Do you think the nineteenth century can add to or take from Scripture? The spirit of the age puffs up men, who think too much of themselves nowadays. Undoubtedly we have many conveniences — railways, steamers, electric telegraph, school boards, and what not? — all sorts of inventions which indicate progress; but is it progress in the things of God? Is it deliverance from sin? Not in the least. On the contrary, if you lean on material progress, or even intellectual, you will find it a broken reed which fails and pierces, when leaned on.

And where then is there safety for the poor sinful soul? In none but Him who is at the right hand of God; in the same One that met and converted Saul of Tarsus that day. Was it not on the spot? I do not say he was brought into peace the first moment. People are often in too great a hurry to get peace. It is of more importance that one should feel his sins thoroughly, and judge self in the light of God and His word and grace, perhaps long slighted. Through the faith of Christ's work on the cross, peace surely comes in good time; and the delay is turned by God's goodness into profit for the soul.

Christ did with the apostle just what He did on earth with the woman of Syrophoenicia. She also had to bear a temporary hindrance. "He answered not a word " (Matt. 15: 23): an unusual thing on His part. But why in her's? Because she came on wrong ground. She concluded to herself from Jews who appealed to him as Son of David. But she had no right to any such appeal, because she was a Canaanite and not of Israel, not of David's people, but rather of the enemy. When the Son of man comes by-and by, there will not be a Canaanite in the land. The evil stock will all have come under the solemn judgment pronounced at the beginning — "Cursed is Canaan." But for all that He is the God of grace. He is righteous in vindicating His injured name on him who despises Himself, and who has dealings with everything that is hateful to God; but He delights to take up even the worst of sinners on the spot, only He will have the sinner to know the truth of his sins. Where the soul realises that he is lost, he will find God in the fulness of His grace. Now the Syrophoenician woman came with a title right for a Jew, and the Lord would bring her to feel that she had no such title to His favour. And He helped her by explaining to the disciples that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Next she cried, "Lord, help me." Then He answered, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs." This cleared her way, and she said, "Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." With faith thus enlightened and strengthened, the woman readily saw that even the dogs, the little dogs, eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. Indeed the grace of God so works that the crumbs which fall to the poor dogs turn out richer food than all that was on the table. Such was Christ's wonderful way with the woman now blessed more than any other one hears of, as He testified of her faith.

But what about you, my friends? Can a poor sinner, you ask, receive perfect rest from Him that is in heavenly glory? What link can there be between the glorified Saviour and any wretched guilty one on the earth? Let me ask you, How did Christ enter into that glory? Was it not after He bore our sins in His own body on the tree? He came down, the Son, the Only-begotten Son of God, and, in infinite love, became a man; and, yet more and more wondrous love still, He who knew no sin was made sin on the cross; and the sacrifice was accepted. He bowed under the weight of sin that He might deliver those who were ruined by them; and God raised Him up from the dead, and not this merely, but set Him in the very highest place in the heavenly glory, and set Him there as Saviour, as well as Head of the church which is His body. Oh, how wondrous that glory for Him who was humbled to the uttermost!

And God now sends the gospel, the glad news, to the needy and the lost, Jew or Gentile, not at all to persons who deserve it. In point of fact, the word of His mercy never was really to such, but now it is conspicuously for sinners; now it is expressly to the lost. You cannot really be worse than lost. To be lost is the extreme, but not of all, not merely for the life that now is, but for ever. Nevertheless, while here, though you may feel in your conscience the awful brand of "lost one," "lost," "lost," it is just the occasion for the Saviour to save you. He is the Saviour of the lost. He is the Saviour not merely of people in danger of being lost, but of the lost.

Here is the mistake in a vast deal of the preaching of the day. They do not believe man to be really lost; consequently also they as little believe that man believing is perfectly saved. It is a shilly-shally doctrine about the bad state of man, and still more so about the salvation of believers. The apostle writes of an eternal salvation, leaving us only to enjoy His love, to do His will, and serve Him. It is not merely your sins all blotted out and forgotten, and yourselves accounted righteous instead of ungodly, but perfected for ever, made children of God with the Holy Spirit enabling you to cry, Abba, Father, and waiting to be with Christ and like Him.

But the question of interest and importance may be asked, What becomes of inward evil or indwelling sin? For remember that we carry with us an evil nature, even when forgiven our iniquities. Thank God, the Lord Jesus has provided for that. It was part of His great work on the cross, as it is written in Rom. 8: 3. The whole case is there summed up, as the conclusion drawn from the preceding chapters — "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." It is not only in the face of our sins, but of "sin in the flesh," or indwelling sin. Now there is nothing that troubles a believer more than this; for such a one when brought to God expects a path of brightness, not perhaps the absence of sorrow or pain, but of shame and failure. Who then looks for inward evil till he finds himself as weak as water spilt upon the ground?

Now, the old man is still there; and it is well to know it. It would not be salvation according to God if we had no sense of our utter weakness, which is true. It is part of what entails continual dependence on the Lord who died and is risen for us. If we were endowed with strength in ourselves, such as some think is given in a moment, it would nullify our constant need of Christ's priesthood. But His grace is sufficient for us; for His strength is made perfect in weakness. We are only strong as we lean on the Saviour. And those who otherwise boast only deceive themselves. Satan deceives the world, but should be unable to do more than accuse the saints. Why should they trust their own emotions, instead of the word of the living God?

Not for so uncertain a result was wrought the work by our Lord Jesus. "There is therefore no condemnation" for those that are in Him. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." Such is emancipation from the law of sin and death, not merely from our sins. Sin and death are no longer a law to me. No doubt present dependence is called for. If I look to the Lord, I shall be kept from sin. If death come, its sting is gone, and hades is spoiled of victory, which is given to the believer through our Lord Jesus Christ. But more, even now the Spirit of life in Him "hath delivered me from the law of sin and death." This is far beyond pardon or justification, if the Christian does not easily enter into it all at once.

For three days, we are told, Saul was blinded by the excessive light. He believed in Jesus as the Son of God as truly as he ever did; but he reviewed himself in that light of grace and glory with increasing depth, and could only say, "Wretched man that I am," as well as hate the religious illusion which made him the enemy of Christ and His own. It was the grace of God that thus gave him deliverance. It was a humbling work that went on thoroughly in his soul, but there was no need of some new work for Christ to do. It was to make his own experimentally what Christ had already done for the root of sin which distressed him. And so he explains in Rom. 8: 3, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh."

Such is the way God gives us also deliverance. We have already seen by faith the blood that washes all our sins away. Here it is the condemnation that God has already executed on the principle and nature of sin — on "sin in the flesh." Christ had nothing of the sort; He had not sin any more than sins. Yet He suffered not only for our sins, but for sin. He went through the whole question, and finished it to God's glory. The blessed result of His entire work is given to the believer. And you are called to believe it. You are entitled by God to take it in all its fulness, but with all humility. And be assured that the truest of all humility is to bow to God and to what He has wrought in Christ, not to think of yourself at all. Many imagine that talking badly of ourselves is the ideal of humility; whereas the simplest and most real humility is to feel unaffectedly that we are too bad to be worth talking about. Only One is worthy of all our thoughts and words and ways, even the Lord Jesus. Him you can think of and serve wherever you may be — in the shop, kitchen, office, or out of doors, on sea, or land. He is our Lord, and the Lord of all; and you are set free from the bondage of sin to serve Him in whom you believe.

Then only, we may add from verse 4, is the righteous import of the law "fulfilled in us that walk not according to flesh but according to the Spirit." You are a Christian if you believe in Him who for you died and rose; and to be serving the Lord is not only due to His name but the simplest guard against indulging the flesh and loving the world or its things. Satan used them to crucify the Master. Hence the need of watchfulness. Our criterion is the word of God. Hence the importance of reading the word of God day by day; only it is better to read a little well than to hastily read more. So to read is disrespectful to God, and a mere form; such forms are apt to be dangerous in the long run.

How bright then, my friends, is the light of the gospel for the sinner, which the Saviour displays in the glory of God! For that glory, into which Christ has gone, is the measure of God's approbation of His Son whom man slew, and of His Son's work for our salvation. Is it not beyond all things wonderful? Christ's resurrection from among the dead was the first proof. Man put Him to death, and God raised Him up. God was clearly opposed to the world and its judgment. The people who had the law, the priesthood, and the temple; the empire that had its power ordained of God — all were blinded by the god of this age to crucify the Lord of glory. And what can we say of all the disciples? Even they had most imperfect views about the Lord. But God made all clear to faith, in setting Christ on His right hand.

There sits the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus, with all the angels of God worshipping Him. I call on you to believe on Him, whatever may be your state. Put it not off; all delays are dangerous; and there is none so dangerous as about your soul, your sins, and the Saviour above all. You may never be so moved in conscience as now by the truth: God grant it may be so; but it must be in the owning of your sins before Him. If your sins be not as scarlet in your conscience, you will keep away from Him, you will sin more and get more hardened, and perhaps never hear again the call of God's grace through His own Son.

But why should you not be saved even now, young as many of you are? Look at Josiah who lived when Judah was in an evil day and judgment near. At eight years of age he was a decidedly pious child. What will make you so? Nothing but Christ, You are in your sins, it is true; but the very name of Jesus means that He was to save from sins. Whatever be your guilt as you are, look to Him as the Saviour God exalted with His right hand to give repentance and forgiveness of sins. It is just as guilty and lost ones you are now called by the gospel to believe on Him; and, if you believe, each to say, By God's grace I am saved. Salvation does not depend in any way on the desert of the saved, but on the grace of the Saviour. Indeed, it is now a declared part of God's righteousness to justify him that believes in Jesus.

Do you know the meaning of that righteousness? The righteousness of God in the Epistles of Paul means what God owes Christ because of His work on the cross. With this God is acting consistently, both to believers and to unbelievers, that all may hear the gospel, and that believers may reap its fruit. This perhaps may put it in a plain manner to many. It does not mean Christ doing what is right to make up for our wrong doing. This may be tradition, Protestant or Romanist; but tradition is apt to be shallow and unbelieving, because it is human. The truth of God is always incomparably deeper and nobler and better. And the righteousness of God is seen in His raising up Christ and setting Him on His right hand, as well as in His blotting out your sins; and your evil nature is so completely condemned, that having died (i.e. with Christ) you are justified from sin. There is no deliverance so effectual as Christ's death declared in resurrection. It is the death of Christ that has established this great victory for the believer. If I believe in Him who died for my sins, I am also entitled to add that I died with Him to sin (Rom. 6). If I had been a Jew, death with Him gives me death to the law (Rom. 7). In any case the Christian is delivered now in Christ's death, not by his own death, nor at the day of judgment. Further, as we are begotten again by the word, so are we purified by the word in practice while here below. All our need is answered in every way by the grace of God through faith.

This deliverance I press on your souls. It is what God has wrought in the cross of Christ, and declared in Him risen from the dead, that you may have its reality in your souls, besides the forgiveness of your sins. Emotions, or even prayer, will not give it. God forbid that I should slight the value of prayer, or deny the heart's affections when purified by faith, any more than Christian experience. But prayer must be founded on faith and experience, growing out of it, or it is altogether worthless and unsafe. What God proposes in His gospel is to bring the soul out of the bondage, as well as the guilt, of sin. Anything short of this scarcely deserves to be called His salvation. If out of sins, but not out of sin, it would dishonour the work of the Lord Jesus. If He accomplished all, it is no better than unbelief to say, I am forgiven my sins; but as to the old man of sin, it must reign; and I can only cry, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?"

It is right that you should go through that state (which is not unlike the small-pox — a good thing to have it over); but it is delusion to suppose that the believer must go on all his life crying, "Who shall deliver me?" The very next verse refutes this: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is not that the flesh is changed or vanishes, but that deliverance is given by God in Christ, as the next chapter fully explains. Assuredly I am not bringing in any novelty of man more than old tradition, but calling you to behold the light of the knowledge of God's glory in His face. It is, indeed, "light from heaven above the brightness of the sun;" and we, who believe, see it in the best possible way now by faith. One need not hesitate to say that Paul saw far better by faith what he saw miraculously the day he was converted. The sight of faith being divinely given is clear, calm, and fixed. The miraculous vision, however real and momentous for its object, was as overwhelming as transient. The sight of faith is steady, and grows brighter day by day.

The chapter before my text (2 Cor. 3) says, that "we all, with open (or, unveiled) face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even by the Lord the Spirit." Such is the position of the Christian. As there is no veil now between the holiest and the worshipper, there is none on the face of the Christian any more than of Christ, still less on the heart. The veil is on the Jew's heart, till turned to the Lord, when it will be taken away. The privilege of the Christian is with unveiled face "beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord." This is not the cross, though it could not be without the work there wrought for God and the sinner. It is the glory of Christ on high after and in virtue of that work. On Him you are invited to gaze, and with rich spiritual blessing meanwhile in forming us accordingly.

What a contrast with that which abounds throughout Christendom! Compare the week's preparation, and the very look of those that approach the sacrament (so called). Why is it so? Because they are full of anxiety between righteousness on the one hand, and unworthiness on the other. How many unbelieving believers there are! Even the Psalmist could anticipatively sing, "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered." How much more the Christian! Beware of the notions about higher life, and by some act of faith some higher holiness. They are, more or less, a revival of a fair show in the flesh. "We all," surely puts to flight all these reveries which limit the blessing to "some" of Christ's flock. They spring from ignorance of the full gospel, which never stops short of complete deliverance, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to enjoy it. Those referred to are anxious from time to time, and call for excitement to encourage them. But visions, frames, feelings, efforts, can none of them give solid rest before God, or strengthen the weak to face a hostile world. Nothing effects this but Christ received in all the fulness of His work and glory. Look at the result here — "We all with unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord [that is, as He is now] are changed into the same image." There is a progressive work, but it is not making us more meet for heaven than when we were first brought to receive Christ Jesus the Lord. In His work our title is sure; our blessed meetness to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light is really that which God gave us when we believed the gospel (Col. 1: 12). But it is a true and great privilege to be fruitful, and also to grow, as the same chapter points out in verse 10. A believing child might be taken to heaven as surely as the oldest saint; but if left here for a while, there ought to be growth through the knowledge of God in all the practical ways of the Lord.

May the Lord in His grace bring home what has been set before you, that the unconverted may be roused to the danger of neglecting so great salvation, and that the converted may know how much greater is their portion in the Saviour than they have realised hitherto. Faith is the way in which the blessing comes to us, but all the worth is in Christ and His work alone. It is, therefore, all the grace of God. What does grace mean? The pure favour of God, "wherein we stand," says the apostle. What, even though I fail or sin! Do you love your child when it is naughty, and in spite of faults? If even you do, is God not to love His? I remember a Christian who owned he could not whip a naughty child unless when heated; but I also knew a mother who never whipped her naughty boy till he went to bed, when it became a serious thing to him as well as to her. This, I cannot but think, was thoroughly wise and right, and according to God. Was it not love too? So it certainly is with the Father of spirits, who, loving us perfectly, yet chastises unfailingly.

Take courage then, my friends, along the narrow way, and beware of doubts. There is no Scripture to warrant a doubt. Every Scripture is given to strengthen faith, love, and withal self-judgment. When you are conscious of wrong done against the Lord, or any one else, go to Him yourself at once, and humble yourself before Him. Confess the fault, but doubt not His abiding grace towards you. We are brought into the family of God who loves us too well to make light of our faults. He chastises us that we may be partakers of His holiness. Over the world hangs God's sentence of condemnation, because, when He came in love, it hated and rejected Christ; and it still refuses to believe in Him. Therefore it is no question of chastising, but of condemnation when Christ appears in glory. But God chastises us when it is needed, because He has delivered us from all condemnation. The world is borne with meanwhile but will be condemned, and yet more shall be all who falsely profess the name of the Lord.

Therefore, my friends, be real. There is no full blessing without thoroughness. May the Lord grant you never to compromise His name in any way. Everything around is disposed to compromise and to take things easily here below; but this reverses what the Christian is called to. May the Lord by His word tonight encourage His own, and win those who may have been enemies like Saul of Tarsus, to their everlasting salvation, with joy and peace that will never end.

W.K.

The Gospel of God.

W. Kelly.

When our first parents transgressed and fell, God appeared in the paradise of Eden, and after hearing and convicting each, traced the evil to its source and pronounced judgment on the great enemy. To effect that sentence, wondrous to say, He proclaimed the coming Deliverer, who should suffer for sins but crush the power of Satan. And what grace, that He who should accomplish this divine work was to be the woman's seed, Emmanuel, the virgin's Son, as the prophet would fill in the sketch, long after Moses, and long before the Incarnation and Redemption! Scripture speaks of glad tidings in Abraham's case (Gen. 12, Gen. 22; Gal. 3: 8) and in that of Israel (Heb. 4: 2); yet these and all else were but typical and preparatory. "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Christ is all; and the efficacy of all He won comes to the sinner by faith. "And therefore is it of faith, that it might be according to grace." So still more plainly is it written, when the glad tidings came fully out, "by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that, not of yourselves; it is the gift of God."

This is what God proclaims. Man thinks otherwise, and prefers his "view" to God's word. The Romanist nullifies the truth by his supplement of works and rites and ceremonies, by priests and prayers and masses, by penance and purgatory, by spurious mediators angelic and human. It is dishonour to God and His Son, to the atoning work on the cross, to the Holy Spirit and to the written word. But the grace and truth of God in Christ remains intact for faith.

Calvinism clogs and obscures the gospel by teaching that Christ suffered to reconcile His Father to us, and by its decree of reprobation. For God so loved the world that He gave His own Son, not only that the believer might have eternal life, but that his sins should be effaced by His sacrifice. And Rom. 9: 22, 23 is conclusive, that while He before prepared vessels of mercy for glory, He endured with much long suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. They were fitted by their own sins and unbelief, not by God, who is not the author of evil and is righteous in judgment.

The Arminian scheme necessarily fails by making man guilty and sinful, to go as partner with God in his own salvation. But if it be true as scripture plainly declares, that man is dead in trespasses and sins, not the Gentile only but the favoured Jew too, that question is decided. Arminianism is farther from the truth than Calvinism.

What does "Zion's Watchtower" consider to be "the true gospel"? Blind to God and the Saviour, to sin and its judgment, to the infinite work on the cross, and the wickedness of neglecting, despising, and rejecting "so great salvation," it looks only at the awful issue for the great majority of men perishing and punished for ever. Scripture, which proclaims the gospel, in no way hides but warns of the tremendous doom that awaits those who refuse it. No fanciful or specious reasoning, no profane denunciation, can alter what God says. And it is Christ, and the N. T., that are so clear and solemn in letting men know that God's judgment is eternal. Nor is any blasphemer worse than such as gives them the lie. It is Jesus, not Moses, who speaks of "the unquenchable fire," of the future Gehenna, where (unlike the earlier and temporal one) "their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9: 48) in the absolute sense.

How then runs their new gospel? It is that in the millennial age all come forth from the grave to be tested again! by the gospel, and to be either accepted to eternal life, or destroyed i.e., extinguished, as unworthy of life, in the Second Death!!

Now our Lord has pronounced already as to this in John 5: 21-29, as well as in Rev. 20, "Verily, verily, I say to you, The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard shall live." This hour is still going on, and life for the spiritually dead depends on hearing Christ's voice in the gospel. "For as the Father hath life in himself, even so he gave so the Son also to have life in himself." Christ is the life-giver for those that believe, the one Mediator between God and man. This however is not all, if we believe our Lord: "And he gave him authority to execute judgment also, because he is Son of man. Marvel not at this; for an hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs (the literally dead) shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto a resurrection of life; and they that have done ill, unto a resurrection of judgment." In this future hour (the millennial age, as it is loosely called) shall be those two resurrections of wholly different character; even before the millennium begins, "of life," for the "just," who believed and bore good fruit, to reign with Christ; the other for the "unjust," who did not believe and are raised for judgment. This judgment is the second death, the lake of fire, where the Beast and the False Prophet were long before Satan, and shall be tormented day and night for all ages. The after extinction is a fraud. The word says tormented for ever, and in the most explicit terms.

Such then is this fabulous hope, one of Satan's many false gospels. There is no more ground for this millennial resurrection of mankind than for a preaching in Hades, to give a fresh test and a further opportunity, to those who had died in their sins. Not a word of scripture, O. or N.T., gives the least colour to it. Men audaciously dictate it to God, as what He ought to do. But, as we have just read, the Lord, the Judge of quick and dead, has authoritatively precluded it. The Revelation is in entire accord with the Gospel, that (before the thousand years begin) the blessed and holy dead are raised up to reign with Christ. When this is over and the little space that follows, another resurrection follows of the dead, who are judged and cast into the lake of fire. Not a hint appears there, any more than in the Gospel, for the dream of raising the masses of unbelieving mankind for that probation, which belongs to this life. Raising them again for it contradicts all scripture and can emanate only from the father of lies. It would be more upright for these dreamers on behalf of the unbelieving and wicked to write a Bible out of their own reveries, instead of wresting the scriptures to the destruction both of their own souls and of such as heed them. Alas! this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.

W.K.

A Letter on Recent Heterodoxy.

W. Kelly (B.T. Vol. N2, p.159.)

My dear Brother,

As warning has been already given (full enough) as to this system of strange doctrines, I have not thought it wise or good to be occupied with an unsavoury and dangerous theme. When we have arrived before God at the conviction, not only that such a truth for the saints as life eternal is darkened and rendered uncertain, but that Christ Himself is dishonoured and misrepresented, one may turn away from the darkness to enjoy Him Who is from the beginning, and the love that was manifested in Him and is perfected in us and with us.

But as you and others desire to know its late phases, I will cite a few passages from "Readings and Addresses at Weston-Super-Mare, Jan. 3rd. to 10th. 1897," which suffice to prove how daringly unreliable and perilous it is.

"The mystery is the body simply" (p. 38). Now the apostle took pains to lay down emphatically and on the contrary, that it is concerning Christ and concerning the church. How sad to leave out Him on Whom all depends, of Whom the assembly is but the complement! Compare Col. 1: 27. To ignore the Head as the chief and efficient glory of the mystery is a fatal blank.

"I do not think there will be any fellowship in heaven" (p. 81). Its perfection, outside the scene of contrariety, is a singularly perverse ground for denying it; its absence there, what a blank!

"We shall not know Him as Lord in heaven, we shall know Him as Head" (p. 82). We now know Christ as Head on high, while we are on earth; but where is it revealed; that we are to know Him so when we are there? Where, that we shall cease to know Him as Lord? The book of Revelation tells us most of such things; but it assuredly endorses neither of these random utterances. Shall we ever cease to say or sing "Lord Jesus?"

"I have thought [speaking of Rom. 8: 30] that for the Holy Ghost to be given to a man is in a sense to glorify him; all is settled morally" (p. 111). What a monstrous comment on the apostle's word, who in giving us the links of divine purpose speaks of glorification with striking anticipation!

But the worst and most shameless contradiction of fundamental truth is in p. 127: "Becoming a man, He becomes the Logos." Need I say that John 1 teaches that He was the Logos, or Word, in the beginning or eternally? He became flesh in time. The other chief speaker evidently felt the error, and stated the truth subsequently, but did not dare to say more. Was this loyal to Christ?

Now these notes are "revised." But where are they that care for Christ, wounded afresh in the house of His friends? Is there no fidelity left? no faith? no jealousy for the truth?

Of more than one I have heard, who owned such doctrines to be "diabolical." This was the word. Why do you then go on in fellowship with such? For testimony was the answer. Testimony! certainly not to Christ, but rather to the enemy. Is it not infatuation?

Yours ever in Christ, W. K.

A Letter to an Inquiring Hindu.

W. Kelly.

My dear Sir,

I too have to apologise for leaving your letter, though of the greatest interest to me, so long unanswered. Suffice it to say, that I had much to wind up before quitting home, and that much fresh occupation has hindered since I came to this busy city. You are right in not allowing your mind to get dragged into discussions, and I trust that I shall in no way tempt you to a path so unpromising especially in the things of God.

But you speak of the doctrine of the Trinity early in your letter. Now that entirely depends on the revelation of God, and indeed almost entirely on the Christian revelation or Greek Scriptures; for, though the Hebrew Scriptures fall in with it when revealed, they can of themselves be scarcely said to reveal it. So, too, the points of salvation and faith turn on the same larger and prior question of their Divine revelation, as distinct from the external testimony of creation or the internal testimony of the human conscience.

But, surely, my dear sir, if you have seriously read the books commonly called the Old and New Testaments, you can hardly have failed to see their essential difference, not in measure only but in kind, from the sacred books of India, China, Arabia, and any other people or age. They differ quite as much from the Talmud of the Jews and from the commentaries of the early Christian writers, which bear the unmistakable signs of being merely human and consequently fallible and in fact erroneous.

The Old and New Testaments, besides their superior moral character, differ in two respects. They have an historical substratum, peculiar each to each, supported if their testimony be true by miraculous vouchers; and they are prophetic. Now none but God could clothe men with miraculous power for some worthy moral end, and this too where the ways of the men so invested preclude suspicion of trickery and collusion. Still less, if possible, could any but God give distinct prophecies of the most unlikely events hundreds of years before the fact. These qualities are found only in the Bible, the wonder of which is increased by the circumstance that its writers extend over a space of about 1500 years from Moses till the Apostle John.

These things are only explicable by the truth of the claim of Scripture to be God's word. If the Bible then be His word, faith comes by hearing that word. Reasoning is good in its own sphere and for its own proper ends; but faith is subjection to and reception of God's word because it is His. If God has made such a revelation, it binds the conscience of all who hear it. But in such a world as this one need not wonder that men disbelieve it. For on the face of it men generally are far from God and opposed to His will. That God should leave man, so dark and wretched as he is, without a revelation, would be strange indeed: not so, spite of such a revelation, that many should reject it, and many should be unfaithful to it. Least of all is this a difficulty to one who believes the Bible; for the Old Testament predicted the sin and unbelief of the Jews, as the New Testament predicts the sin and unbelief of the Christian professing body. As the revelation comes from God to man and acts as a moral test, so does Christ. If I love what is good and holy and true, I shall love the Bible, and the Lord Jesus; if I like my own will and way, and the world, I shall despise both the Bible and the Lord Jesus Christ. If I begin to learn my unfitness for God's presence, I shall begin to abhor myself and to look to God, who will surely lead me on to welcome the good news of redemption through Jesus Christ.

Either Jesus was a Divine person or He was the worst of deceivers. This last you do not think: how then can you fairly escape from owning the glory of His person? Seven hundred and fifty years before His birth, Isaiah (Isa. 7) declared to King Ahaz that the Virgin should conceive and bear a son to be called Immanuel, GOD WITH US, further calling Him the mighty God (Isa. 9), the Father of eternity (or the age to come), etc. In due time the Virgin Mary does bear such a son, even Jesus, who raises the dead, rises Himself from the dead, and goes up to heaven in the face of His disciples.

Again, even the greatest difficulties which unbelief finds are all necessarily elements of the history and of the doctrine. Thus, if Jesus had not been a man, man had derived no such benefit as the gospel proclaims. If He had not been God, the benefit could only have been human, earthly, and temporal. To give such a boon as Christianity offers, He must be both God and man in the same person. Again, if He had not died as man, there could have been no Christian redemption by blood. If He who died had not been Divine, the value of blood-shedding had been only that of a creature, and limited. To be infinite, not in person only, but in His sacrifice for us, He must be, as Scripture declares He was, both God and man.

Take a proof of this from the Hebrew Scriptures. It was written by Zechariah 500 years before the crucifixion. "They shall look upon me whom they have pierced." This is still as a whole to be fulfilled for the Jews is a nation. It has only been verified by individuals as yet. The prophet speaks of a future time of trouble, when the Gentiles will gather round Jerusalem and God will appear on their behalf when at the last extremity and they will then recognise in their deliverer God the One whom they pierced. The "I" of the passage (Zech. 12: 10) is certainly God, Jehovah of Israel; yet He must have taken a body and come in humiliation, if He had been once "pierced" by them. In whom can all this meet but in Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord God of Israel?

The very notion of Christianity is above human thought till God revealed it. Others have concerned God's appearing in human form to steal, to kill, to indulge lust or other evil. Such were the ideas of Greeks and Romans. Scripture alone reveals God assuming human nature without sin to be a sacrifice for sinners, to make them saints, to glorify Himself in and by them. With this, too, the Trinity harmonises perfectly: for, instead of its being mere ideas or various functions and displays, the Father in His love gives the Son, who in equal love comes to die, in order righteously to put away sin and to rise in witness of the victory for the believer, and the Holy Spirit deigns to work in the conscience and heart of him who believes, both to convince him of his need and then to fill him with Divine streams of enjoyment and power to magnify Him who died and rose for him.

You will see from what is already said that I in no wise despise the value of reason. Thus it is irrational and immoral to suppose that a Being good and holy, omniscient and omnipotent, made this world and man as they are now. But reason, unaided, cannot account for it. Revelation declares that God made all good, but suspended its continuance on the obedience of its head — that the head failed, and that the race and the world fell thereby. My reason bows to this as the only true and righteous and sufficient explanation.

But how can I rise out of this state of ruin? My reason fails to find a remedy. Divine revelation shows me God undertaking, God giving, God fulfilling the mighty task; and this in the nature which failed, yet to the glory of Himself. This my soul accepts as the only solution of all my difficulties. It is worthy of God to save the lost, but it is only worthy of Him to save holily and righteously at all cost to Himself, at infinite cost, yet to save freely of grace, and therefore by faith of His testimony that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. In every other scheme love is lost, or righteousness is compromised, or guilty man is flattered. The cross of Christ alone satisfies and harmonises all truth, meeting every want of man and every attribute of God.

Before the Scriptures were written at all, as in the days of Moses, and before they were finished, as in the days of Jesus and the apostles, miracles were vouchsafed by God to arrest attention to the Divine power put forth in a less or a greater degree, as seemed fit to Him.

But, when all was written, miracles were not continued; for then the truth revealed was complete, and the testimony such as only inattention or self-will can dispute, the fulfilment of prophecy being the most powerful continuous testimony after miracles were no longer wrought.

Accepting then these revelations as proved truly Divine, I hear Jesus saying (John 8), "Before Abraham was, I am." Did He speak the truth? If not, the morality of the gospel in its Chief is detestable, not Divine. Lofty precepts condemn, if there be not holy practice. If Jesus was holy and true, He was God, according to the import of His own words. None but a Divine person could say, "Before Abraham was, I am," πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ  γενέσθαι, ἐγώ  εἰμι. If you know Greek tolerably, you will see, when it is pointed out, the amazing force of this statement. In speaking of Abraham, a mere creature, the Lord uses the verb γίνομαι, which means to become, or come into being. In speaking of Himself, He employs the substantive verb, which alone is proper to express, where required, absolute uncaused being. He, does not merely say, "Before Abraham was, I was," no matter how: high you carry the point and term of His existence, even if it were the first of created beings, as the Arians say. If so, Jesus would have said, ἐγενόμην. But no! He, the lowliest of men, could not deny His deity. He is God, the "I am," and so He declared Himself, which provoked the unbelieving Jews to take up stones. But the time to suffer was not yet come; and so He passed through and went on His way. Again in John 10 Jesus declares that He has ἐξουσίαν, right and title as well as power, to lay down His life as well as to take it again: who could have such authority but a Divine person?

This then was no mere Athanasian dogma. It is the distinct teaching of John 1, Philippians 2, Hebrews 1, and very many other passages in the, apostolic writings. It is the keystone of Christianity. Without it not only is its salvation a myth but its morality is a cheat. For all is built on the capital truth that God in Divine love humbled Himself to become man and die for sinners, that He might save and bless the believer to the uttermost, not by Christ only, but with Him.

But be assured, my dear sir, as great as is the free and boundless blessing of the gospel, so equally the sin and danger of neglecting it — mark, not of opposing only but of neglecting it. For, if it be true that God really give His Son thus to live and die, the guilt of neglecting so great salvation, once it is brought before us, is proportionate to the dignity of His person and the efficacy of the work wrought at an incalculable cost. May the gracious God and Father of the Lord Jesus bless you, giving you to read honestly the Scriptures, with prayer for Divine light and guidance! — Believe me ever faithfully yours,

W. K.

The Heavenly Hope

— John 14: 1-3

W Kelly.

(Section 3 of Three Prophetic Gems.)

INTRODUCTION

Another aspect in which Scripture presents the coming of the Lord is part of that immense change intimated in the Gospel of John when the public testimony was closed and the Lord unbosoms Himself to the family of God before He gave Himself up to apprehension and death. He had already and publicly announced His crucifixion (John 12: 32). The time was come to leave the world.

John 13 introduces the new subject. It is a distinct transfer from earth to heaven. Messianic hopes are wholly eclipsed. The chosen nation is no more in evidence than the city or the sanctuary. We do not have the Lord correcting the earthly expectations of the disciples as they drew His attention to the buildings of the temple, or predicting that not one stone should be left upon another, but be broken down. Nor is it the chief disciples coming privately to Him on Mount Olivet and asking, When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy presence and of the consummation of the age? Here we breathe a wholly different atmosphere. The Lord by deed and word leads on His own to unprecedented dealings of grace soon to dawn on them in proper Christian privilege and responsibility, for which the cross as seen in the light of God laid the basis.

WASHING THE DISCIPLES' FEET

“Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus (knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father) having loved His own who were in the world, loved them unto the end. And supper being come, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot Simon's [son] that he should betray Him, He, knowing that the Father had given Him all things into His hands and that He came out from God and goeth to God, riseth from supper and layeth aside His upper garments and took a linen towel and girded Himself; then He poureth water into the basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples and to wipe them with the linen towel wherewith He was girded. He cometh therefore unto Simon Peter. He saith to Him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said to him, What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know afterwards. Peter saith to Him, Never shalt Thou wash my feet. Jesus answered him, Unless I wash thee, thou hast no part with Me. Simon Peter saith to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He who is bathed needeth not to wash save his feet, but is wholly clean: and ye are clean, but not all. For He knew His betrayer: on this account He said, Ye are not all clean” (vv. 1-11).

What could be more impressive? and all the more, if Peter who expressed what all felt had only known that the Lord's washing their feet was in view of His departure to be with the Father in heavenly glory. This was the truth they all had to learn. The earth was now to be left behind for things above; not of course absolutely, but now for the Christian, as for Christ. Thus to stoop was a wholly unexpected and unrealized exercise of His love. He was conscious that the Father had given all things into His hands and that as He came out from God, He was going back to be with God, the rejected Holy One of God. He was passing from the earth and from the earthly people who were about to consummate to their own ruin that rejection which their state had implied. He was going to the Father who ever loved the Son, and now all the more because the evil was only the occasion of proving His entire devotedness at all cost to the Father's will and glory.

If He thus left this world, He would demonstrate His love to His own who were in it, in a manner beyond all thought even of those who had been learning it in every form they then needed and could bear. Associating them while here with Himself for that glory into which He was going, He must and would counteract every defilement of their way inconsistent with that association. Such defilements were incompatible with heaven where He was going as their forerunner. They had learned much of the kingdom from the Old Testament, and yet more from Him who added so much that was new to the old things. But the Lord here provides for them a fellowship with Him on high, transcending all previous thoughts, when He should ascend where He was before. His love would carry them through every need, obstacle and danger. No wonder that Peter who had confessed His personal glory (revealed to him by the Father who is in the heavens) was lost in astonishment at Christ going down so low as to clear away their soils as saints. Yet he was to learn soon afterwards that the reality in heaven would enhance the wonder beyond measure.

The Lord on earth sets forth by His action towards the disciples what He was about to do for them in heaven. We have an Advocate with the Father if we sin. Such advocacy is expressly not for the unclean as such, but for those already washed, if the feet get defiled. Those “washed all over” need to have any subsequent impurity removed. The washing of regeneration abides in all its value, but demands the cleansing of the soiled feet.

It is the glorified Jesus who assures His own of His persistent and effective love in carrying on this most needful work at God's right hand, acting on His people here below by His Spirit and Word, as it is said in Ephesians 5: 26, purifying by the washing of the water by the Word, consequent on giving Himself for the Church on the cross. The restoration of our communion when interrupted by sin is as essential as the new birth or as justification. He has set Himself down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, having made the purification of sins. However, this finished and accepted and abiding work, instead of dispensing with further work, makes Him the more anxious to clear away every inconsistency that would otherwise mar its lustre and displease our Father and leave ourselves in unavailing shame and grief. It is His action of grace on high which gives us to confess the sin and prove how faithful is the God of all grace. “He who is bathed needeth not to wash except his feet.” The blessed relationship of the Christian abides intact, but the Lord, even in the glories of heaven, occupies Himself to remove every failure and to turn it to our needed humiliation and to fresh blessing in His infinite love.

Why is this wondrous grace here enlarged on? It is part of the characteristic blessedness of the Christian. It was completely new to the disciples when the Lord so vividly set forth its type before their eyes. It was a necessary provision for them during His absence, which they would soon learn is full of far higher privilege than could be possessed or known during the days of His flesh. It would endear Him yet more when they knew it shortly afterwards, as they did not and could not know it then. They were aware of His exceeding condescension, and deeply moved that He should do the work of the lowest slave on their behalf, but only after His death, resurrection and ascension would they learn by the Holy Spirit what His mystic washing of their feet really meant.

GOD GLORIFIED IN THE SON

There is another and still more stupendous communication which the Lord made in this thirteenth chapter. It also is part of our Christian heritage, going far beyond any prophetic account of our Lord's atoning death in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah 53, precious and bright as it is in itself and as it will be to the generation to come of Israel. The going out of Judas (after Satan entered in) on his awful treacherous errand gave the occasion. “Now is the Son of man glorified and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God also shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall glorify Him” (vv. 31-32). No greater revelation of the Saviour's death as made sin on the cross is anywhere found, nor one so distinctly illuminated with Christian light and result for God's glory now that it is fulfilled.

As Son of God He had glorified His Father in a life of unwavering and absolute obedience. The exit of Judas was the signal of death on the cross. Would the Holy One of God bow to bearing our sin at God's hand, whatever it might cost? He had vanquished the living temptations of Satan by obeying the written Word. Was He willing through death to annul him who has the might of death, and thus deliver all those who through fear of death, were all their life subject to bondage? Would He take upon Himself the sins and iniquities of God's people, the most loathsome of burdens, to make propitiation for them? Would He by the grace of God taste death for everything, and thus break the yoke of bondage under which all the creation groaned? Would He bring many sons to glory as the Author or Leader, of their salvation, perfected through sufferings?

The Lord here reveals the deepest and most marvellous contest ever engaged in, wherein the otherwise impossible was achieved and the insoluble as plainly solved to God's glory and the everlasting deliverance of those who lay under guilt and judgment. Good and evil here strove for decision, and at the very place where evil seemed to have all its way, good triumphed to all eternity. Man was seen at his worst, hating the Father and the Son, hating God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Satan here swayed, not the heathen only, but most fatally, God's earthly people and above all their religious leaders — scribes, doctors of the law, Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, chief priests — and the high priest himself. Roman justice proved shamelessly unjust. Jesus was condemned for His good confession and for the truth counted as imposture and blasphemy. The disciples forsook their Master and fled, one betraying Him for the price of a slave, another denying Him repeatedly and with oaths. And in the shame and agony of the cross, His God hid His face and forsook Him — the bitterest of all His sorrows, the most intolerable of His sufferings. But so it must be. He was made sin and bowed to what it deserved at God's hand, that the divine majesty and holiness might be perfectly vindicated and salvation come to sinners through their judgment falling on Him. Grace then could issue in God's righteousness, justifying the ungodly who now believed. There and thus only, all the attributes of God are brought into mutual harmony. Otherwise, if love pleaded, justice opposed, for sin was not cancelled. But here mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other, and this not for earth only, but for heaven and all eternity. In the Lord's own words, the Son of man was glorified and God was glorified in Him in the very place where unbelief saw only failure and ignominy. What was the result? God shall glorify Him in Himself and shall straightway glorify Him. It is Christ's work seen in God's light, estimated and honored by God Himself on high.

Christianity is based on this, while Israel passes into its long eclipse. Hence flows the gospel of grace to the lost; hence, according to God's secret purpose, the call of the Church for union with Christ by the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven to baptize the saints into one body, Christ's body. Even the apostles were then and afterwards full of the earthly hope of restoring the kingdom of Israel. Not so; instead of the throne of David or even the dominion of the Son of man over all the peoples, nations and languages, Christ was to be glorified. His glorification was to be not only in heaven entirely separated from the world, but in God Himself, and this “straightway,” in emphatic contrast with the future kingdom which He eventually will receive. Then, He will return to put down all adversaries in power and glory. Christianity has heavenly and eternal things revealed to faith now.

THE HOPE OF THE COMING OF THE LORD FOR HIS SAINTS — THE CONTRAST TO HIS APPEARING

With this, the hope revealed in John 14: 1-3 is in perfect keeping. Here the land and the city, the people and the temple, vanish into nothingness. Not a word is said about misleaders, false Christs or false prophets. We don't hear of wars or rumors of wars, of nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, of famine, of earthquakes, of tribulation and murder, of hatred from all the nations for Christ's name, of internal discord and treachery and hatred as the love of the many decayed, or of the glad tidings of the kingdom preached in the whole inhabited earth for a testimony unto all the nations. Still less is there room here for the special and awful sign, according to Daniel's prophecy, of an idol standing in the sanctuary, the harbinger of speedy desolation when the godly in Judaea must flee immediately to save their lives or yet worse. There is not a hint here of the tribulation beyond parallel to fall at the close on the nation of Israel.

In chapter 14 we have a wholly different state. We see people about to be severed from such anxieties and elevated by incomparably higher associations, who have no fears of flight in winter or on sabbath and are in no way warned for themselves against the cry of Messiah here or there, or the great signs and wonders which Satan will be allowed to work in the hour when God retributively sends an energy of error that they all might be judged who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Still more complete and manifest is the difference of the Christian hope in John 14 from the Presence of the Son of man in Matthew 24, “As the lightning goeth forth from the east and shineth to the west,” especially with the accompanying words, “wherever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered.” This latter is the Lord coming in the accomplishment of His judgment, not of His love; His coming for the earth, not for the Father's home above. The figures employed point only to His judicial dealings, with which sun, moon and stars sympathize. For “immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened and the moon not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the land (or earth) lament, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

Here in Matthew 24 is no gathering of saints to Christ in heavenly glory, but the coming of the Son of man to whom all judgment is committed; and His appearing is as sudden as the lightning flash. The governing powers, supreme, derivative and subordinate, no more fulfill their office; all shall be shaken. The sign is not as before of apostate religion for the godly to flee and escape, but of their Deliverer to destroy those who destroy the earth. The Son of man appearing in heaven is the sign of His speedily coming to the earth to judge the living and the dead. Hence it is no longer those in Judaea, but “all the tribes of the land” (or earth) that lament and see Him coming; whereas Christians at that time are manifested, neither after nor before, but in glory with Him. While He is hidden, so are they; when He is manifested, so are they, having been previously caught up. It is His elect of Israel accordingly who are gathered together when He sends forth His angels with a great sound of trumpet and comes in His kingdom.

It is plain that when the Lord presents Himself for the earth and for the earthly people, the traits which characterize the solemn event are the apostasy and the man of sin usurping God's prerogatives even in His temple, the desolation and the tribulation that ensue beyond all that ever had been or that is to be, and the Son of man appearing to take vengeance on the portentous and blasphemous lawlessness, and to deliver Israel by the destruction of their enemies.

Our position is the completely distinct one of His coming to receive us to Himself for the place which He is gone to prepare for us in the Father's house, that where He is we may be also. It is the consummation of the sovereign grace which has associated us with Him, so that we are risen with Him even now, one spirit with the Lord, and can say with the beloved apostle that “as He is, so are we in this world.” We await His coming to be caught up together with the dead in Christ risen first, in clouds to meet the Lord, into the air, and thus to be ever with the Lord. We are not of the world as He is not, and we look for Him to make it a reality by taking us up to heaven as He Himself ascended there. Here, we do not have judicial dealing with our enemies to make the earth the scene of His righteous rule, but giving us part with Himself in His joy and glory on high, though we shall also reign over the earth when He takes His great power and reigns.

JOHN 14: 1-3

These are the words of the Lord and they are worthy of all heed.

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe on (εἰς) God, believe also on (εἰς) Me. In My father's house are many abiding-places; were it not so, I would have told you, because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you unto Myself that where I am ye also may be.”

Simpler words there could hardly be, but what depth of feeling and height of glory! Jesus was departing, despised of Israel. He was His disciples' beloved Lord, yet one was the traitor, another His denier. Who could wonder if all of them were troubled? Let them be assured that grace would turn all for good and to God's glory. “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe on God,” though you never saw Him. “Believe on Me” when I depart unto the Father, and you cease to see Me. Let your faith rise from its Jewish form to its Christian character and fullness. Compare John 20: 29.

Even my earthly people shall yet say, Blessed is He who cometh in Jehovah's name. Meanwhile I am re-entering heaven to give you who have fore-hoped in Me, the Christ, a better portion, even a part with Me on high. Instead of abandoning you, I will as your divine Savior both prepare you for the place as already set before you, and prepare the place for you by going to the Father's house. My heart is fixed, as is the Father's will, on bringing you there. “In My Father's house are many abiding-places.” No doubt you have never aspired to such a home. You have expected Me to abide forever with you in your house when I have purged it of all adversaries and evils by the power which I have even to subdue all things to Myself. But there is ample room for you as well as Me in that intimate home of divine love and heavenly glory. “If it were not so, I would have told you, because I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go, and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you unto Myself that where I am, ye also may be.”

This is a hope far beyond that of the fathers, though they waited for the city that has foundation, whose artificer (builder) and demiurge (maker) is God, and were eager for a better country than Canaan, that is, a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. But to Christians or saints now being called, God is not ashamed to be Christ's Father and our Father, His God and our God. Since redemption, this is our association with Christ.

No truth is more sure or important than the love the Father has for the Son, and all the more when for the glory of God He became man and died atoningly that the salvation of the lost might be of both grace and righteousness — God's righteousness — and that the same death of Christ might be the basis for all blessing and glory forever in His universe, His unbelieving enemies alone excepted. “This is My beloved Son in whom I found My complacency” (Matt. 3: 17, etc.). “The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things [to be] in His hand” (John 3: 35). But the Son Himself tells the Father later before the disciples that He (the Father) loved the saints as He loved the Son (John 17: 23).

This love accounts for their future display in the same glory. But it also accounts for that which was in His hidden purposes, still deeper, more tender and intimate — the hope of Christ's coming for the Father's house and fetching us into the place He prepared for us there, that where He is, we too might be. That is where He went, out of this world which crucified Him, unto the Father. There God, who was glorified in Him here at infinite cost, glorified Him in Himself. There our life is hid with Him in God. There is where we go when He comes and takes us unto Himself. How bright is the glimpse of it in John 17: 24! “Father, I will (or, desire) that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory which Thou hast given Me, for Thou lovedst Me before the world's foundation.” To those who love Him, this far transcends the glory that He gives us and that we share along with Him before every wondering eye of man at His appearing. Then the world shall know by the fact that we appear with Him in the same glory, that the Father sent the Son [for how else could we be thus blessed?] and that He loved us as He loved the Lord.

The facts that He deigns to prepare a place for us in the Father's house, so much above the hopes of saints and prophets, and that He personally comes into the air for the wondrous meeting to fetch us into His heavenly house, speaks of love unmeasured. We know how to show honour to our friends when we do not let them search for our homes, but send some trustworthy person to guide them. If greater attention were called for, the wife might go. But if the utmost honor were intended, the head of the family would set aside every hindrance and come to meet the beloved and honored guests. How wondrous, that for us, the Son comes! This is love beyond all thought or comparison for this supreme moment, and all that follows is in keeping with it. Sovereign grace lays the ground. Unfailing grace in its faithfulness, notwithstanding every human failure and malice of our — of His — great enemy, guards and preserves us all the way through. Triumphant grace at length consummates the love of Christ. “I am coming again and will receive you unto Myself, that where I am, ye also may be.”

THE HOLY SPIRIT SENT

There is the context which follows the hope and confirms the essentially Christian character of these communications the Lord was then giving. He proceeds to explain to His disciples that the gift of the Holy Spirit which is unique to the individual and the Assembly, as says the apostle Paul, is the distinguishing privilege and power since His work of redemption and ascension to heaven. “For the Spirit was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Nowhere is the divine personality of that gift more clearly asserted or implied than in John 14-16. It is the other Advocate whom the Father would give and send in His name, whom He Himself would send from the Father to be forever with them and in them. He is the Advocate who was to come because Jesus went away to heaven and sent Him unto them to be abidingly with us and in us.

This is the new and characteristic provision for the Christian and the Church while the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God. It is in the Spirit that we cry Abba, Father, and each are guided in right dependence. By Him one enjoys the deep things of God, otherwise beyond all comprehension. By Him we walk, witness and worship. So it is that one is enabled to preach the gospel or teach the truth. Through Him we by faith wait for, not righteousness which we have in Christ, but the hope of righteousness in the coming glory. Again, it is by or in virtue of one Spirit that we were all baptized into one body; as we are also built together for God's habitation in the Spirit.

Only part of what we now owe to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit is here alluded to, for He covers and gives a new and divine character to every exercise of the new creation, by the Word revealing and glorifying Christ to us. The Spirit was sent forth from heaven to honor Christ. Therefore, it was expedient for us that Christ should go away, great as the loss seemed to the sorrowing and troubled disciples. If He didn't go away, the Advocate who was to be expressly our Helper in every need (and this in the recall of all Jesus had said and been and done, as well as in the revelation of all His glory on high) would not come unto us. But Christ went up, and sent Him unto us — the two essentials of Christianity.

When the Spirit came, it was the demonstration to the world of its sin in not believing on Jesus. It also was a demonstration of righteousness because Christ is gone to the Father, rejected by the world that will see Him no more as He was, but as the Judge. Lastly, it was a demonstration of judgment because this world's ruler who led to His rejection has been judged. The Spirit's presence, outside this world which does not behold or know Him, can (now that redemption is made) guide the believers into all the truth, taking of Christ's things and reporting them to us, and also the things that are to come.

All this wondrous manifestation of the truth to the Christian depends on three things: the Son as come in manhood here below; the accomplishment of His work of reconciliation on the cross; and His ascension as the risen accepted Man according to divine counsels, who has sent the Spirit that we might have this divine Person dwelling with and in us forever, to make good subjectively what we behold by faith objectively in the Lord, the blessed image of the invisible God. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Now that He is dead, risen and gone on high, we have not only the unique hope beyond all others of His coming again to receive us unto Himself, to be in the Father's house where He is, but further by the Spirit, the unfailing power of communion with the Father and the Son. This is a fountain of blessing within, fresh and perennial, and rivers of living water flowing out through that Saviour living above for them, as they live because He lives.

All is new and Christian truth; the foundation as here made, not merely in view of our need met, but of God glorified as such to our immeasurable blessing. We have the necessary purifying from every defilement in our walk which Christ effects all the way through for us associated with Him for heaven. We see the heavenly hope for us destined to be with Him where He is, altogether outside and above the world, whatever else we may share. In the meanwhile, we have all the gracious help and power suitable for those so blessed and with such a hope, while we wait for Him in the world which with its ruler is already judged.

JUDAS

The allusions to Judas Iscariot in the middle and to Peter at the end of chapter 13 were important for the Christianity about to replace Judaism, as well as to strengthen and comfort those who were to labour, suffer, and share its privileges. The Lord made known to His disciples, in the presence of the traitor not yet indicated, the awful course he was about to take, so that their faith in Himself might be more established instead of being shaken. He followed it up with His very solemn statement: “Verily, verily, I say to you, He who receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth Me; and he who receiveth Me receiveth Him who sent Me” (v. 20). No mistake was made either in His sending the guilty Judas or in others receiving him. He was one sent by the Lord. It was a divine message heard from his lips, though he himself had neither saving faith nor life eternal, but was the son of perdition. Judas was the sad witness that the greatest external and official nearness to Christ, without eternal life, only exposes to the worst sin and ruin. And John could add later, “Even now are there many antichrists.”

PETER

There was another lesson yet more needed by the Christian. It is the most humbling case of Peter. The Lord, in view of His soon going where they could not as yet come, presses that new commandment which was an old commandment that they had from the beginning, and was to become true in them as it was in Him — love, love one to another, the love not of a neighbor only, but the deeper love of God's family. Then Peter, having confidence in his love, expresses his readiness to follow the Lord into the unknown, to follow Him now, to lay down his life for the Lord's sake, however others might hang back. Peter truly loved Him, but he was utterly wrong to have confidence in his love. Self-confidence is the feeblest of reeds. He was soon after to learn this and then to walk entirely dependent on Christ as a Christian. But now Peter must prove to all that flesh is no better in a saint than in a sinner. “Verily, verily, I say to thee, A cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice.” And so it was that night, not for Peter's profit only, but for every Christian's.

THE MYSTERY IN 1 CORINTHIANS 15: 51-52

Let us turn to other Scriptures and see whether the Holy Spirit presents the heavenly apart form earthly admixture, and distinct from the events of prophecy. Does He present a hope dependent only on the secret of the Father's purpose and the Son's faithfulness to His Word and love to us? In 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52 we read, “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

The resurrection of the dead is not “a mystery,” or even the resurrection of the righteous as a distinct act from that of men generally. Of the latter we read in Job 14: 1-12. “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not. And dost Thou open Thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with Thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with Thee, Thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass; turn from him that he may rest, till he shall accomplish as a hireling his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof grow old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the spirit, and where is he? The waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.”

The more familiar a believer may be with God's final revelation of things to come unto eternity itself, the more he will see the exact agreement of this early disclosure of resurrection with the resurrection of the unjust. It is man, the prey of sorrow, decay and death, without one ray of divine light till all ends in utter gloom, but not of actual extinction. Yet it is a “sleep” only broken when “the heavens are no more.” How striking the agreement with Revelation 20: 11! This resurrection is not only after the resurrection of the blessed and holy to reign with Christ, but when the thousand years of their reigning are over, after the last insurrection of released-Satan's deceit has ended in total destruction. Then comes the Great White Throne for the judgment of guilty unbelieving man. The portion of men is to die, and after this judgment; in contrast with the believers' portion which is Christ, once offered to bear the sins of many, appearing a second time apart from sin to those who look for Him unto salvation. He is the Savior of the body also.

The resurrection of the saints, which is called “the first resurrection,” was not in those early days unknown to the much enduring Job. “O that my words were now written! O that they were inscribed in a roll! That with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer (or Kinsman-vindicator) liveth, and that He shall stand up at the last upon the earth (or dust) [while the earth and still more the heavens continue]; and after my skin hath been destroyed, yet from (or in) my flesh shall I see God, whom mine eyes shall behold and not another” (Job 19: 23-27). The orthodox Jews in New Testament times also confessed that there was to be a resurrection both of just and unjust (Acts 24: 15).

As this was commonly believed except by the skeptical Sadducees, we may observe how properly the apostle does not speak of a mystery when he discusses the resurrection of the faithful in the earlier part of 1 Corinthians 15 and proves it to be the complement of Christ's own rising from among the dead. He tells them a secret or “mystery,” a New Testament truth now revealed, when he speaks of our being changed without dying at Christ's coming. “We shall not all be put to sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” No intimation of this change of the living saints had ever before been made, though now that it is, we can see a gleam preparing the way for it in the translation of Enoch in the antediluvian world, and in that of Elijah in the world that is now. And we can also read the words of the Lord in the days of His flesh, which were only written down in John 11: 25-26 after the Epistles of Paul. “I am the resurrection and the life: he who believeth on Me, though he have died, shall live; and everyone who liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” Here we have the grand result at His coming — the dead saints raised, the living believers changed without dying; as the Lord then enunciated, but left to be written and understood at a later day.

See how completely earthly objects are outside the description in 1 Corinthians 15. Nothing is named except the resurrection of those who are Christ's, except the living Christians who are changed, if possible more gloriously, at the same time. This last “change” involves “the mystery.” It is a mistake to think that the last trump has any reference to the seven trumpets of the Revelation which are the loud warnings of divine tribulational judgments in providence, after the seven seals of more reserved dealings have been opened. At length the last vials of God's wrath are poured out before the Savior appears in personal display of judgment.

THE LAST TRUMP

“The last trump“ seems to be a picture drawn like others here and elsewhere from the familiar facts of an army at the moment of leaving its encampment. Previous soundings were the known and necessary preparatory signals usual among the military. But the Spirit of God avoids more here and concentrates anything answering to them in the “last trump” when the instant arrives for those who are Christ's to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren.

BLESSING OF LIVING AND DEAD SAINTS

The gracious power of His resurrection is now proved to be the resurrection of the dead saints and the life of those alive, and to be on a scale and pattern altogether transcending the raising of Lazarus or any other during the days of His flesh. The unclothed will be clothed as never before and the surviving saints clothed upon, that mortality — the mortal in them — might be swallowed up of life (2 Cor. 5: 1-4). There is therefore an evident contrast with the awful sound of the trumpet at Sinai, and but one plain link of connection with “the great trumpet” of Isaiah 27: 13 and Matthew 24: 31; in that, the loud sound accompanies the gathering together of His chosen people on the earth, “the holy mount at Jerusalem,” as the trump of God is to gather the changed to the Lord for heaven.

One readily understands that the aim, when God was about to speak His “ten commandments” to Israel, was to fill sinful trembling man with overwhelming awe by thunders and lightning and thick cloud, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, and by Sinai covered in smoke because Jehovah descended upon it in fire with blackness and darkness and tempest and a voice more terrible than all. But here, it is exclusively the one fashioned, even in the body, according to the likeness of Christ's glory, loved of God as He was loved, and about to be with Him in the Father's house. Solemn grandeur will be there, but not an atom of fear before His perfect love as befits God's glory and ways.

Magnificent results will follow for the earth, for Israel and for all the nations when Jehovah will destroy “in this mountain” the face of the covering cast over all the peoples and the vail that is spread over all the Gentiles. But the resurrection of the just — the glorification of the family of God for the heavenlies — must precede even the taking away the rebuke of His people from off all the earth. Then indeed Jehovah's hand will accomplish what His mouth promised. A woman may forget her sucking child and have no compassion on the son of her womb, yet Jehovah will not forget Zion. Behold, He has graven her upon the palms of His hands, and her walls are continually before Him. And kings shall be Zion's nursing fathers, and princesses her nursing mothers; they shall bow down to her with face toward the earth and lick up the dust of her feet.

But the heirs of God and the joint-heirs with Christ have a place as elevated in the heavens as Israel will have on the earth. God's everlasting purpose must be made good in sight of the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, before the dealings of God begin to awaken and lead on into blessing the nucleus of His firstborn for the earth and to put down their Gentile foes in every form and degree. The secret of His will, now made known to the Christian according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, is that, for the administration of the fullness of the seasons, He will head up together in one, all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on earth, in Him in whom we were also allotted our inheritance. We are to share this with the Heir of all things.

The final touch He will put to fitting His joint-heirs will be done when He receives them to Himself on high for the Father's house, before the judicial measures of Daniel's last week begin to chastise the usurpers of the inheritance, and the gracious measures concurrently to prepare a people for the Lord when He with His heavenly ones appears in glory to possess Himself of the earth and fill it with the blessings of His reign.

OPPOSITION TO THE TRUTH

Before entering on the examination of other testimony, I take the opportunity of noticing the blighting effect of only seeing an earthly or Jewish position in John 14: 1-3. But notice that the Lord spoke of their being with Him, “that where I am, ye also may be.” This is quite different than being in Him. We do hear of this in the different intimation of verse 20 where He said, “In that day ye shall know that I am in My Father and ye in Me, and I in you.” This beyond question is realized today, as the context also shows both before and after, where the Lord says, “I will not leave you orphans (or desolate), I am coming unto you” (v. 18), and “If one love Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him” (v. 23). But in verse 3 there is distinctive care to preclude the confusion, as the word is “I am coming again and will receive you unto myself.” It is not the spiritual coming of the Father and the Son to abide with the obedient saint here, but Christ's personal coming again to receive us unto Himself, that where He is (that is, in His Father's house of many mansions, in which He even then speaks of Himself, as in chapter 17: 11), we also may be.

Can one conceive of greater havoc done through Judaizing the hope? Never have I known any truth as to which the least taught had more hearty communion with the most deeply instructed than in looking onward to be with Christ on high according to this promise of our Lord.

The mischief does not end with unbelief as to John 14: 1-3. It is equally marked when Zechariah 14: 5 is cited to show that the Old Testament recognizes the coming of all the saints at Jehovah's advent and day. Admitting that the holy angels will be there, it seems strange to question what is so distinctly taught in 1 Thessalonians 3: 13; 1 Thessalonians 4: 14; 2 Thessalonians 1: 10; Jude 14; Revelation 17: 14 and Revelation 19: 14, in some of which texts the accompanying terms exclude angels, though elsewhere these may really be meant. It is sad to see how a partial apprehension of the truth works to obliterate what is heavenly. Yet Daniel the prophet does not fail to discriminate the saints of the high or heavenly places (Daniel 7: 18, 22, 25, to whom judgment was given as in Revelation 20: 4), from their “people” who have the greatness of the kingdom given them “under the whole heaven.”

Christ is the power of resurrection and life in His person, as being the Son of God. He was therefore able to raise Lazarus to life in the flesh, as He will at the due time raise the dead believers and change the living ones. In order to do so, at the last day, consistently with God's nature and our sins, He must Himself die and be raised again. For as John 12: 24 tells us, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” Life in resurrection power is to have life abundantly. Hence since He rose, believers are now quickened (made alive) who were dead in offences and sins — quickened together with Christ and raised up together and made to sit together in the heavenlies in Him.

This in no way supersedes, but is rather the ground of our being changed, even our bodies of humiliation transformed into conformity with His body of glory when He comes from the heavens as Saviour in full, not of the soul only as now, but of the body also at that glorious hour. Life and resurrection are not inherent in the human race. The believer has life, but it is in the Son. All depends on Him. We live because He lives; and the life as a believer that I now live in flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2: 20). But though heavenly as of the Heavenly One, we still bear the image of Adam, the man of dust. When the body is raised in incorruption, glory and power at His still future coming, we shall bear the image of the Second Man, the Last Adam.

Satan shall then be crushed under our feet and the power of the Lord so established that not an idol shall remain, nor a blade of grass that shall not flourish under His glory. Then God heads up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, and we shall share with Him all the inheritance, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Though the Lord is received up in glory, He is hid in God; whereas then He will be manifested, and we too in glory. The “world to come” is not come, but is surely coming.

It is all well to quote John 5: 25, “Verily, verily, I say to you, The hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they who have heard shall live.” This is the faith that must be now, if souls are to be quickened and not perish. The further truth is added in verses 28-29, “Wonder not at this; for an hour is coming [which now is not] in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth: those who have done good unto a resurrection of life, and those who have done ill unto a resurrection of judgment.”

No one rises again independently of Christ, for as He is the giver of life eternal, God also gives the prerogative of all judgment to Him as the despised but glorious Son of man. It is His voice that expressly calls for resurrection, for “all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice,” just or unjust, well-doers or evil-doers. Hence there are to be two bodily resurrections, as we read in the prophecy of Revelation 20: 4-6 and 11-15: a resurrection of life and reigning with Christ, and a resurrection of judgment and endless woe. We need not wonder at the quickening (making alive) of the spiritually dead, when the Lord will call from their tombs the physically dead to come forth — the godly and believing who have life in Him now unto a resurrection of life, and the worthless unbelievers unto a resurrection of judgment, ending in the lake of fire.

Christ is not on His own throne to reign as yet, but as the world's despised and crucified is on the Father's throne. “In the world ye have tribulation,” said the Lord; not a special tribulation as retributively for Jews and Gentiles at the end of the age, but constantly during our pilgrimage. The very apostles the last, though in the Church the first, a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. It was the volatile and worldly-minded Corinthian brethren who took the place of being filled, and rich, and reigning “without us” (the apostles): “and would that ye did reign, that we might reign with you,” said the large-hearted Paul. But it was a mere delusion.

If we died together with Christ, we shall also live together; if we endure (or suffer patiently), we shall also reign together. As Christians we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him. “For I reckon that the sufferings of the now-time are not worthy to be compared with the glory about to be revealed to usward.” Christ is not reigning yet, still less is He directly administering the affairs of the world. Even the last time or hour (1 John 2: 18-27) is marked by the prevalence, not of Christ, but of many antichrists, the sad harbingers of the Antichrist whom the Lord Jesus shall appear to destroy, as 2 Thessalonians 2: 8 tells us. The Father's kingdom will not arrive for the heavens, nor the Son of man's for the earth, till He shall come to judge the living, and all lawless ones are cast out of His kingdom into the furnace of fire, and the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

LUKE 12: 35-39

In these verses we do not have the bridesmaids outside with their torches going forth to meet the bridegroom, but servants within the house with their lamps alight. “Let your loins be girded about and lamps burning, and yourselves like men waiting for their own lord whenever he may leave (or return from) the wedding, that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may straightway open to him. Blessed those bondmen whom the Lord on coming shall find on the watch. Verily I say to you, that He will gird Himself about and make these recline, and coming up will serve them.” Believing merely in the Lord's second coming in no way meets what our Lord here impresses on His bondmen, but their hearts fixed on His return is the first of their duties. He craves their watching. Servants are not to seek their own pleasure when their Lord is away. But He in the most earnest way lays it on them to be as people who wait for their own master whenever he may return from the wedding feast, that when he comes and knocks they may without delay open to him. They are to be on the look-out, by the door as it were, that, when His knock is heard, they may immediately open to Him. “Ye,” yourselves, waiting for Him, characterizes their whole outlook.

This account is eminently in keeping with the place assigned by the Spirit to Luke, who, as he conveys the grace in Christ, demands also the proper answer of the heart in the saints. The return from the wedding feast was the best possible figure on the Lord's part, the sympathetic occasion of festive joy, yet when the night might be more or less spent. His return from the wedding as a prophetic event does not suite the marriage of the Lamb on high, still less the day when Zion shall be called “Hephzibah” and the land “Beulah.” But as a figure, expressive of a duty suitable to His loving fellowship, filled with bright joy and excluding all associations of judgment and sadness, what is so appropriate? What could so well call out the warm affections of the bondmen to their own Lord? If words were to put the saints into the constancy of waiting for the coming of Christ, surely none could more powerfully set that hope as the proximate and immediate object before their hearts.

But there is more. What could strengthen that hope so much as the wondrous assurance He solemnly adds! He shall gird Himself about — yes, in the glory of heaven — and make them recline at its feast, and come up and serve them. It was the humiliation of love we only conceive faintly, that He who subsisting in God's form deemed it no object of seizure to be on equality with God, emptied Himself when He took a slave's form and came in likeness of men. Yet He went farther, as love's need required, and when found in fashion as man, He humbled Himself in becoming obedient as far as death (and what must it have been to Him) yea, the death of the cross. It was in that divine love which would secure God's glory and man's blessing at all cost. Now glorified in heaven He continues the work of a slave in intercession for us, which was symbolized by the washing of the defiled feet of the disciples. Here again His love is to assume a renewed form when we are there glorified; when, as His mark of honour for His bondmen who have watched for Him, He will cause them to recline at the heavenly feast and will come up to serve them.

Let us consider the joy it is, that this the apostolic hope is ours now no less than the apostolic faith and fellowship, if one has ears to hear. “And if he shall come in the second watch, and if in the third, and find [them] so, blessed are those.” It is thus evident that expecting the Lord at a distant and defined moment is not what He impresses. The object is that His bondmen should be always on the watch.

THE LORD'S COMING IN THESSALONIANS

If the teaching of the apostles is sought, none can find a more direct supply than in the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. From 1 Thessalonians 1, we learn that the great apostle Paul instructed those saints from their conversion to God, not only to serve Him as a living and true God, but to await His Son from the heavens, whom He raised from out of the dead, Jesus our deliverer from the coming wrath. This waiting is quite general, and wisely so as a first outline for believers just brought out of heathenism. It was enough for them to be put into this happy condition of waiting for Him who so loved them and had wrought so effectively for them now and forever. They would have details in due time: many were given in these early letters from Paul.

Nor was it less on Paul's side who, as he wished no selfish advantage nor present power nor worldly honour, but to be the ready servant of Christ's love and will, looked for his reward in no object of earth's vain glory. “For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting? Are not ye, too, before our Lord Jesus at His coming? for ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2). But he also most carefully urged them to love one another and all, as was his own affection toward them, in order to confirm their hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints (1 Thess. 3). The unbelieving idea of any members of Christ being absent at that coming was about to be effaced from every heart.

Disallowing another old idea that a saint's death is Christ's coming for him, the apostle in 1 Thessalonians 4 adds to the scene of bereavement the joyful certainty that God will bring with Christ all those put to sleep through Jesus. And he explains, as a new revelation, that the Lord Himself will come for His saints, the dead in Christ and ourselves then alive and remaining, in order that all thenceforth will be forever with Him.

Paul also points out in 1 Thessalonians 5 the awful character of the Lord's day when sudden destruction comes on the sons of night and darkness whom that day shall overtake as a thief. Every Christian ought to see the distinctness of the Lord's coming to gather His own unto Himself above, from His day of judicial dealing with His and their adversaries: the first is a fresh revelation of sovereign grace, the other a well-known theme of all prophecy.

The second Epistle follows the same truth, but particularly to guard from the delusion that the day of the Lord had actually come. Hence they are shown that their persecution was not at all the feature of that day. Then, the Lord shall be revealed from heaven, awarding both tribulation to their troublers and rest to His future saints. It will be the time of His vengeance in flaming fire on the evil; while He shall have come, not to receive the saints to Himself for the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints and wondered at in all who believed, before the world. Therefore in 2 Thessalonians 2 he begs them for the sake of (or by) His coming and their gathering together to Him, not to be shaken by the false cry that the day of the Lord was present. For before that day (not before His coming for us) two fearful evils must be: the apostasy and the man of sin revealed who is to be annulled by the appearing of His coming in that day. Lastly, in 2 Thessalonians 3 he prays the Lord to direct their hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. He waits patiently, and so should we.

1 CORINTHIANS 1: 7

See how the blessed hope is meant to cheer, elevate and strengthen all the practical life! No wonder Satan labours incessantly to dim, weaken and destroy its light and power. Take 1 Corinthians 1: 7. There we have in strict propriety not exactly the “coming,” but the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, in verse 8 “the day” because only then will be manifested how the saints acquitted themselves as to the use of each gift of grace entrusted to their charge. Whereas in the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11: 26) they were to announce His death until He come, bringing the affections into the deepest play between the beginning and end of Christian existence and pilgrimage — Christ's death and His coming.

2 PETER 1: 19

Nor should we fail to note Peter's words, which bear on our theme, especially as they are generally misunderstood. Peter counts the scene on the holy mount as confirming “the prophetic word, to which ye do well in taking heed, as to a lamp shining in a squalid place, until day dawn and [the] day star arise in your hearts” (2 Peter 1: 19). “Ye” were the same Christian Jews of the dispersion who Peter had addressed in his first Epistle. They were already familiar with the law. They did well in paying attention to the prophetic word which he compares to a lamp shining in a squalid place (as this world truly is), over which hang the unsparing judgments of God soon to fall. Like the Hebrews to whom Paul wrote, they were slow in appropriating the fuller light and better hope of Christianity. How few know of themselves, that “the worshippers once purged have no more conscience of sins”! The apostle accordingly adds, “until day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts”; i.e. till in your hearts shall have dawned heavenly gospel light, and Christ as morning star arisen there in hope, as now made known by the apostles.

The believing Jews were prone to be satisfied with “the word of the beginning of Christ” — that Jesus in truth was the Messiah, God's Anointed. They believed the fact of His death, resurrection, ascension and return, but they feebly apprehended the blessed results both for God and man, and especially for the saints. They were truly born of God and converted, but how little they entered, if at all, by the new and living way into their own nearness, far beyond that even of the Aaronic priesthood! How slow also to cry Abba, Father! With the light of the gospel goes also the hope of Christ as morning star coming before the rising of the Sun of Righteousness. Thus it is not merely His rising in the day of Jehovah with healing in His wings for Israel and with treading down as ashes for the wicked.

Here it is the hearts of the saints fully receiving heavenly light as well as the proper Christian hope. But men, and none more than Israelites, were proud of the old wine and unwilling to believe in the superior value of the new. They thus said, “The old is good.” Hence (as this was a serious wrong to Him who was infinitely more than Messiah), the apostles painstakingly led them onward from Judaism into the depths of God now revealed. God did this by Paul showing the better things of Christianity in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by John in the mysteries of his Gospel and the Revelation, and by Peter in the fervent appeals of both his Epistles.

Many dear Christians unconsciously betray their total misapprehension of the apostle's drift by stopping short of what he says and quoting only “until the day dawn and the day star arise,” as if the words “in our hearts” had never been written or had no meaning, whereas they are essential to the true sense. The apostle does not here speak of the day of glory come for the earth, of Zion's light arrived. On the contrary he desires that the believing remnant of Jews to whom he writes, should not be content with the lamp of prophecy, good as it is for the murky world under judgment with divine wrath impending, but have gospel daylight dawning and the morning star arising in their hearts. This is the special Christian privilege, but many never rise in their anticipations beyond the kingdom and reigning with Christ. It is the realization in their hearts of what Christ entitles to, both as to their present standing and the hope of His coming. If any already understood this privilege, they would know the vantage ground it gave them; if not, he would have them seek it from Him who blesses by faith according to the word of His grace.

REVELATION 2: 28 — THE MORNING STAR

A confirmation of considerable weight appears in other references. Thus Revelation 2: 28 holds out to the overcomer the precious promise of the Lord Jesus, “I will give to him the morning star.” It is presented as distinct from the authority which the Lord will also give to him over the nations, “and he shall tend them with an iron rod, as vessels of pottery are they broken in pieces, as I also received of my Father.” On the one hand there is the public display of association with Christ when the nations are shattered like potter's ware; on the other, our receiving from Him the privilege of having Him before that day of glory breaks, when He is compared to the star that precedes the dawn, and none see except those who wait for Him and watch in the night before the morn.

It is more interesting when we view the context more closely. This passage occurs in the message to the angel of the assembly in Thyatira, the first of the letters which speak of the Lord's coming again, and therefore in principle go on till then. Here, the change takes place when the expression “He who hath an ear,” instead of preceding the promise, follows it, and thus gives the more emphasis to the individual who overcomes. In what is written here one easily discerns the prefiguration of the mediaeval state, not only the adulterous and haughty iniquity of Jezebel or extreme Popery with its claim of infallibility (“who calleth herself prophetess”), but others also of wholly different mind — “My servants” whom she misled into uncleanness and communion with idol sacrifices, as notably the worship of the host, etc. There is also the striking intimation of a distinct remnant, “to you I say, the rest in Thyatira as many as have not this doctrine, such as know not the depths of Satan as they say,” that seem to designate witnesses of the pre-Reformation era, like the Waldenses who were remarkable for their endurance and works of faith: a people singularly simple, devoted and suffering.

Can we not discern the fitness of such a quasi-prophetic picture drawn by Him who knew the end from the beginning? The great corruptress, with her children, that sat a queen and should in no wise see grief, is to be cast into a bed, and with her lovers into great tribulation, to be killed with death. She, by falsely claiming His name, usurped authority over the nations in His absence and reigned where and when the true Church was called to suffer yea unto blood, wrestling against sin. Faith follows Christ as He walked here, content and bound to wait till He takes His world kingdom (Rev. 11: 15). Faith refuses, as He did, Satan's offer of the habitable world, the reward of paying him homage. Faith waits to share all with Him at His coming. It is not only that the Church will reign with Him over the earth, but that He will come to have her with Himself before (as the Sun of Righteousness) He shall arise with healing in His wings for those who fear His name, when as an oven the day comes to burn the proud and the wicked as stubble and to leave them neither root nor branch. In a certain sense all His saints have this honor — the risen reigning with Him, those on earth reigned over.

For the overcomer who keeps His works to the end, there is another privilege yet more precious, if not such a display of power. “And I will give to him the morning star.” It is actual association with Himself on high before that day! It is quite an advance on what the apostle Peter desired in his second Epistle (1: 19) for the Christian Jews of the Dispersion. There, he distinguishes the lamp of prophecy shining in the world's squalid place, over which judgments impend, from the superior daylight of the gospel, and the morning star of Christ as the heavenly hope arising within. It was well to heed that lamp, but they should not rest satisfied till they had what was far better even now in their hearts. In Revelation 2 it is not merely realizing the Christian hope as in 2 Peter 1, but the positively fulfilled promise when Christ will “give” the morning star. Then shall we who watch be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. But as yet the world slumbers and sleeps for it is still night, and they who sleep, sleep by night, and they who drink, drink by night. But we being of day, let us watch and be sober.

REVELATION 22: 16-17

In the last chapter of Revelation there is another application of the same figure when a similar distinction reappears in the closing words of our Lord. “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify these things to you in the churches” (Rev. 22: 16). It is our privilege to have the Spirit reporting to us what is coming, as well as what glorifies Christ both here and on high, guiding us into all the truth. “I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.” Here we have the witness of His twofold glory. The Old Testament bears clear witness as in Isaiah 9, 11, etc. that He is the Root and Offspring of David, the Mighty God, and the Child born, the Son given. The New Testament alone tells us of Him, whether in hope or in possession, as the Morning star. It is not the sun rising and calling the sons of men to their functions in the day when all shall be ordered aright under the great King. It is not the day when Israel will be at the head of the nations, and they in their place of subjection as Jehovah ordains for the world to come whereof we speak.

The passage conveys much more. The declaration from His lips is that He is the bright, the “Morning Star.” This elicits the prompt answer of the bride, the Lamb's wife in title; and not her's only, but that of the Holy Spirit who had anointed and sealed, and here fittingly guides her. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” It is Christ announcing Himself as the Morning Star which draws out the heart's answer. His bride, the Church, animated and directed by the Spirit, thus responds to His love and bids Him come according to His promise. Long had she waited for Him, and watched earnestly more than those who long for the morning. His coming will be her crowning joy of love and her instant change into glory forever, though not yet the appearing before the world.

In John 14 the Lord had said, I am coming again and will receive you unto Myself that where I am, ye also shall be. He was crucified by the world, but on the cross He glorified God as He never had been and never so needs again, glorifying God even as to sin and thus furnishing to Him a new glory. He was therefore glorified by God and in God as the basis of the gospel at its fullest, as well as of the Church of God, Christ's body. In order to do this with other purposes pertaining to the heavenly and new state of things, He departed out of this world unto the Father. But far from abandoning the feeble objects of His grace, it is there and then strenuously declared (John 13: 1) that having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end. His love was complete. Besides both He and the Father sent the Advocate, the Holy Spirit of truth, to abide with and in them forever. But He also assured them of His own coming again to fetch them into the Father's house, that they may be with Himself in those many mansions.

When the Lord says that He is “the bright, the morning Star,” it is no mere wish or enthusiastic emotion of nature that bursts forth. The Spirit Himself takes the initiative in the heart of the Church. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.” The earthly bride does not receive the Spirit till the Lord has appeared in glory. There will be true conversion of a godly remnant of Jews long before, in days of sore trial and growing evil and danger. Some will be slain for righteousness' sake and for truth as far as known; others preserved to be the nucleus of the generation to come. But the great privilege of the outpoured Spirit from on high is when the King is come and the wilderness becomes a garden and a garden is counted a forest. It is the day of Israel's full blessing and of the restitution of all things concurrently. But here in Revelation 22 every solid reason points to that heavenly bride who alone has the privilege of the indwelling Spirit* to give her present communion with Christ in all things before He comes, and here in His coming for her. The simple form of speech has striking beauty, and is full of grace, for He speaks and she replies intelligently in the love that at once answers to His love.

First, there is recognized the normal relationship, and the Spirit as competent and graciously prompting the bride. Many a child of God is uninformed and unconscious of his proper association with Christ after this intimate pattern. He does hear His voice and does not know the voice of strangers. The reality of his divine birth is thus fully owned, while ignorance of the bridal relationship is graciously provided against up to (we may say) the last moment that intervenes: “and let him who heareth say, Come.” What is there to fear in the coming of Him who died for us and rose and comes again? What love, joy and honor are couched in His coming again to receive us unto Himself and to set us with and like Himself now in the Father's house! Therefore “let him who heareth say, Come.”

To the last, the outflow of divinely given compassion for the wretched and lost has its place. The gospel has its glad and urgent message for souls. Hence the distinct turn in the closing half of the verse. The difference is made clear by the omission of “say.” It would be out of the question for any except the bride and the Christian to bid Christ come; those who know Him by faith and are assured of His love can and are called to say so. But it would be madness for any others to join in such a call. Because of their ruin and their sins, they need Him first to save them. Till they believe, He could only be their judge. But it is still the day of grace. The word for such accordingly is, “And let him who is athirst come and let him who will, take life's water freely.”

The thirsty one is invited to come. The Church has the spring within and rivers flowing without, but she calls to Christ. It is His name that avails for all the sinner's need before God. There is no obstacle on His side in the way: God gave and sent His Son for this express purpose. His death, however wicked and destructive might be man's part, only the more met his wants in God's surpassing grace. Let him in all his need “come,” but not say “Come.” Yea “he who will,” however feebly he as yet feels his evil state, shall the more truly feel it as he by faith apprehends divine love. “Let him take life's water freely” God's grace gives it to him who is only willing, to him who comes just as he is. Is it not indeed a wondrous verse? And it emphatically applies till Christ comes.

O the darkness which fails to see that the bright morning Star is the Lord's coming in fullness of grace to associate the heavenly saints with Himself, without the smallest sign of judgment if we accept the Word of God! How sweet a hope now to arise in our hearts! How glorious and what joy of love when He thus comes to receive us unto Himself for the Father's house! Yes, He announces Himself as the bright, the morning star; and the Spirit and the bride say, Come. Destructive judgments! unknown worlds! No! Rather, we have the consummation of His love and ours as one with Him, and this realized in the Father's house. If it were not so, He would not have raised our hope so high. Did He not say that the Father Himself dearly loves us because we have dearly loved the Son and have believed that He came from God, yea the Father?

God will do more than display us before every eye in the same glory with our Lord, that the world may know that God loved us as He loved Him. He will gratify His own desire that we shall be with Him above the world where no earthly eye can penetrate, so that we may behold Christ's glory, for the Father loved Him before the world's foundation. This spiritual joy is far beyond any manifestation before the world, however glorious. Weigh it, brethren, that you may learn how much your earthly preoccupation robs you of what should be your proper portion in fellowship with Him above.

THE SECRET RAPTURE

In John 14: 1-3 the rapture is implied in our Lord's coming again and receiving us unto Himself. Neither time nor season, neither contingent change nor prophetic date, neither general state of the earth nor specific sign of any sort, finds the least place. Infinite love of the Son in communion with the Father elevates us above all such thoughts into an incomparable blessedness above with Christ. It is inconceivable that any Christian mind fail to discern the rapture in what the apostle Paul announced in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17 and 2 Thessalonians 2: 1 and 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52, with details as to the dead saints and the living ones. Philippians 3: 20-21 and Jude 24 sustain the same heavenly truth. In all it is the same translation of the saints to be with the Lord above.

Not one word in these different Scriptures teaches visibility to the world. It is the making good that sovereign grace which without a displayed signal to the saints, still less to those who are not concerned, has given us the promise of heavenly association with Christ. Here we shall have the hope blessedly accomplished. In all these intimations there is the most marked absence of others beholding what the Lord is effecting. It flows from His special love for His own, which excludes strangers from intermeddling with His joy. But the day of the Lord duly follows when the world shall see both Him and His Church appearing in glory (John 17: 24).

What has misled people is the confounding of the revelation or manifestation with the rapture. The manifestion distinctly calls for “every eye” to see it, as the rapture excludes every eye. The Lord will come for His own, will raise those who were put to sleep through Him, will change us the living who remain until then, both in an eye's twinkling at the last trumpet, and thus gather us together to Him, not only into the air to meet Him, but so received to set us in the Father's house before the presence of His glory with exultation. All this is above and apart from the understanding of man. But the public vindication of Christ and His own before the universe is when He will come forth after the marriage of the Lamb on high (Revelation 19), as well as the final judgment on earth of Babylon the great harlot to which God under the seventh vial gave the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath (Rev. 17, 19). Only then is the visible display of the Lord and of the glorified saints who follow Him out of the opened heavens, when He smites the nations, shepherds them with iron rod and treads the winepress of His wrath.

It is called, not His presence merely, but “the appearing of His presence” (compare 2 Thessalonians 2: 1 with 8), by which the Lord Jesus shall annul the then-revealed lawless one as well as the apostate imperial chief, who shall both be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. Thus does God render tribulation to the troublers of the saints and rest to the troubled, not at the rapture of the saints, but at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who know not God, and on those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. This would have been quite out of place with all that is said of His coming to change His saints and translate them to heaven. But it is entirely in keeping with His appearing, His glorified saints being with Him, for the double purpose of their enemies paying penalty of everlasting destruction from the Lord's face and from the glory of His might, and of His coming (not to receive, but) to be glorified in His saints and marvelled at in all who believed in that day. It will be the day of the Lord then truly present, the saints having been gathered to Him previously.

This perfectly agrees with Revelation 17: 14 which is ignored by those who oppose what they call the “secret rapture” and no wonder, for it is utterly incompatible with their hypothesis. Those with the Lamb, when the Beast and the vassal kings make war with Him, are called and chosen and faithful, the first and the last. These terms can describe only His accompanying saints, not angels. This is confirmed by the later description in Revelation 19: 14 where the symbolic clothing points to the saints, not to angels (compare verse 8 before), and yet more by the previous marriage of the Lamb. All agree in proving that the rapture of the saints, unseen by the world, whatever the astonishment produced by the disappearance of the living saints, must have preceded the revelation of the Lord and His glorified saints which is associated with the manifest and awful judgments He will execute on their enemies.

It has already been shown that Colossians 3: 4 concerns the manifestation, not the rapture of the saints when the Lord is manifested in glory, which is more than His coming or simply presence. They are then, and not before, manifested in glory. Christ is therefore not seen in glory before they are caught up. They shall be manifested together. The Scriptures on which people have thought differently refer to the Jews, not to Christians. These godly Jews will be gathered in the land to Him as their glorious King instead of being first caught up, and then at a later time will appear with Him in the same glory. Compare Matthew 24: 31-41, Mark 13: 27-31, Luke 21: 27-36, Isaiah 24: 21-23 and Isaiah 25-27.

Though none of the Scriptures which apply to this subject speak of visibility to people, we do hear of the Lord's “shout,” of the archangel's voice and of the trump. But why should any attach loudness of sound to these expressions, solemn and impressive as they undoubtedly are? These verses fully speak of the personal and gracious intervention of the Lord Jesus for His own, the faithful summons of God, the acclaim of the archangel and in 1 Corinthians 15 the immediate and final notice to depart, but none of these goes necessarily beyond the persons interested. They directly concern only the household of faith and only the glorified.

People have compared the Lord's descent for us with Exodus 19. But thunder and lightnings were then, and the voice of a trumpet “exceeding loud,” so that all the people trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether covered with smoke and Jehovah descended upon it in fire, and the smoke from it ascended as the smoke of a furnace and the whole region quaked greatly. And the voice of the trumpet became louder and louder. All thus was alarming, and awful, as became the ministry of death and condemnation in the law.

When the Lord comes in restoring mercy for Israel, we read that in that day a “great” trumpet shall be blown and that His angels will be sent with a great trumpet, or a great sound of trumpet. This expresses what is wholly absent when Scripture tells of His coming in love and majesty to make good His love to the heavenly saints. His appearing to Israel is bound up with the infliction of judgments on the apostates, Jewish and Gentile, and the punishment of the enemies of His people and of the wicked in general. As with His own ascension, our rapture will be the triumph of grace which leaves the world unmolested for the moment, though the providential inflictions of God soon begin to follow in measured order and increasing degree, till all culminates in the day of the Lord at their close, as detailed in the Book of Revelation.

WHEN DOES THE RAPTURE TAKE PLACE?

The glorified saints must be caught up to heaven for some time before they with Him emerge from heaven, for they follow the King of kings who descends to smite the nations with a sharp sword and to shepherd them with iron rod, as well as to tread the winepress of God's exceeding wrath. Some only allow the saints to have been there from the destruction of Babylon under the seventh vial. Since all God's vials precede Christ's appearing, He cannot appear before they all are poured out. If therefore Christ destroys Babylon and takes up the saints then or before its destruction, so that God is praised above for His judgment of the great harlot, He must have come for them before the day of His revelation from heaven in Revelation 19 for His still more awful judgment of the Beast, etc. This clearly overthrows this system.

The main question for those who value the truth is, Where or when according to Scripture are the saints translated to heaven? It is beyond question that the book of Revelation opens with the Lord seen in the prophet's vision judging the seven churches in Asia. This is what John “saw.” “The things which are” is a notable description of the seven churches as judged by the Lord in His letters to each respectively. “The things about to be after these,” are the visions of the future to follow up even into eternity itself. These are the three divisions of the book according to Revelation 1: 19. The third division is the strict prophecy, consisting of two portions (Rev. 4-11 and Rev. 12-22: 5), for each opens with a prefatory introduction and goes on to the end.

Here then may be found adequate evidence when the rapture of the saints takes place. The condition of the Church is prefigured in the seven churches — “the things that are”: not the actual Asiatic assemblies only, but what they prefigured successively as the things would be to the hearing ear by what the Spirit says. Revelation 4 and Revelation 5 indicates the glorified saints already symbolized as in heaven, twenty-four elders, chief-priests of the fully numbered courses, crowned and enthroned around God's central throne. This is definite; and they are no longer disembodied souls but changed, resurrected people. Any saints, Jewish or Gentile, called afterwards (as many are), add nothing to them: they are complete. During the period that follows no church-state is seen.

Revelation 7 shows a numbered complement out of the twelve tribes of Israel, and after that a countless crowd of Gentiles, objects of divine choice and blessing, but they are separate from each other. There is no fusion into one, as the nature of the Church requires. God keeps each distinct from first to last: it resembles His work in the Old Testament. Only grace largely works outside Israel and so far like the New Testament. But church-state is closed. It is a new condition with abundant mercy in the face of idolatry, apostasy, persecution, tribulation and divine judgments. A people is prepared for the earth under the reign of the Lord personally present and His glorified saints: a reign of righteousness and peace, Satan wholly excluded and the Holy Spirit poured on all flesh for 1000 years.

That the existing Church-state closes on earth at the end of Revelation 3 is as demonstrable as that the overcomers out of it, with all who were Christ's before them, are thenceforth seen as glorified in heaven from Revelation 4 and 5. Nothing but the coming of Christ to gather those who believed to Himself can account for the new company above, the disappearance of recognized churches here below, and the formation of separate companies out of Israel and the Gentiles thenceforward for the earthly purposes of God during the crisis of evil and His judgments, till the Lord comes from heaven to put down Satan and his agents and to establish His world-kingdom. It is therefore between Revelation 3 and 4 that the time for the saints' translation best suits. A transition period then ensues when the Church disappears and grace works, in presence of solemn chastenings of men, to get ready a nucleus for the Lord's appearing and for the millennial earth, as well as for martyrdom meanwhile.

This conveys the general preview of the steps God takes in judgment, though with dealings of concurrent mercy, to chastise the world, and especially its more favoured parts, and to pave the way for investing the Lamb at the proper time with its direct and supreme government. This ends with Revelation 11: 18 for the earthly and the eternal kingdom.

In the next section we do not see a central throne with enthroned heirs of God and Christ's joint-heirs around, but the temple of God in heaven is opened and the ark of His covenant is seen, not on earth, but still above and yet with added signs of present displeasure. The first great sign seen there is of God's sure promise for Israel's glory. It is not the bride, but the travailing mother of Him who is to tend all the nations with an iron rod, arrayed with the sun, the moon under feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Supreme authority is to be her's, the sun that rules the day; the changing and reflected light of the old covenant, no longer guiding but under her feet; but also the fullness of human subordinate authority. Meanwhile the child who was born, the Son of might, was caught up to God and to His throne. The great dragon, another sign, was seen there, having seven heads and ten horns, emblematic of the Roman empire in deadly opposition to both. War in heaven ensues. The dragon, the devil, is cast out with his angels; woe to the earth and to the sea while the heavens and those who dwell there (for so it will then be) rejoice greatly! The devil has great rage, knowing he has a short time — and he vents it against the woman and the rest of her seed, the godly remnant.

These conflicts are regarded in a far deeper way than in the earlier visions. The counsels of God centering in His Son are seen, and the hostility of Satan in his last efforts during the half-week which has still to run out, before the Lord in person crushes him and his lawless instruments as in Revelation 19 and 20. It is the import of the woman's seed caught up on high that is insinuated. For in the manner of the prophetic word the apostle intimates in mystic style the translation to heaven of the saints before the dates begin.

We are thus viewed as in Christ who was caught up there, while the woman and the remnant of her seed are objects, not only of Satan's hate, but of God's providential care on the earth. As we shall share Christ's authority when He takes His great power and reigns (Rev. 2: 26-27), so we are symbolically wrapped up in Him in His being caught up out of Satan's way. We are one with Him in this foreseen rapture, as the apostle Paul in Romans 8: 33-34 applies to the Christian what Isaiah 50: 8-9 says of Christ.

Thus we again, and in a very different form suited to this part of the prophecy, come round to the still higher promise in Revelation 2: 28. We are associated with Christ as the morning star before the Sun of righteousness introduces the day for all the world, and we too share the glorious reign with Him. If, instead of groundless fancy, we listen Scripture, the bright, the morning star shines not for the slumbering world, but for those who watch during the dark night. It is essentially spiritual, visible to saints only, not to the world which will have to do rather with the Sun of righteousness.

The Holy Spirit had first to be poured out and the gospel preached to all the creation. But the New Testament attests that this was done during that first generation, and that the saints were then taught by the apostles to wait for Christ habitually and constantly with no revealed event to precede or intercept.

Reviewing, we have seen that after Revelation 3, churches in the book of Revelation disappear from the earth and that a new sight of glorified saints are soon in heaven. The fresh action of God follows, concurrently here below, of a secured complement of Israel and a blessed and far larger crowd out of all the nations. They are kept apart instead of being baptized in the power of the Spirit into one body as we are, and as the nature of God's Church characteristically demands.

Revelation 22: 16 is no exception. From verse 6 to the end we simply have appeals to John and the churches that then existed, however permanent the profit might be, as the suited conclusion to the visions previously revealed. The Lord would have all that preceded testified in the churches. But this affords no ground for imagining “churches” in the New Testament sense during the entire period of the crisis, or any part of it, from Revelation 6-19, or indeed any longer as on the earth.

The closing words of the last chapter of Revelation are impressive. They corroborate the essential difference between the Christian hope and the wondrous communication that comprises the unfolded visions of what is to befall the earth in judgment as well as mercy from Revelation 6-19 inclusively. This latter is in the richest way the prophetic word which in God's wisdom and goodness, completes the New Testament.

There are to be two successive series of judgments, of a general and then of a special character, as in the seven seals and the seven trumpets. A general securing to Himself out of Israel and from among all the nations, accompanies the one; and if the Jews in unbelief seek to establish their polity and religion, God begins within the other to recognize a godly remnant during those days of sin and sorrow, with an adequate testimony like that of Moses and Elijah, which none can hinder till their work is done. And the Beast is first seen in his deadly antagonism. Martyrdom ensues. The apparent triumph of the enemy is answered, not only by God's power in raising the slain and taking them up to heaven in view of their foes, but by a defined overthrow of man's pride on earth. Then follows the end of man left to himself, and the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ is come.

Next, we go back to let in details of the deepest importance, of which enough has been said. And the kingdom of glory follows, the great white throne and the eternal scene.

Many saints contend for a certain part [of Daniel's 70th week] to intervene before the Lord comes for us. However, none can show any legitimate Scriptural evidence. Proof to the contrary has already been given. The only consistent point for the removal of the saints to heaven is when the churches are no longer seen or heard of on earth and a new symbolic company is presented in heaven. After this, the steps are revealed by which God chastises the guilty world. In the midst of the great tribulation He calls and forms, not in one body as now, but separately, a twofold nucleus of blessed people — Jews and Gentiles — for the earth under the Lord's future reign. At that time He had already taken to Himself on high those destined to reign with Him when that glorious time arrives, as we see in Revelation 20-22: 5.

The fulfillment prophecy awaits the time for the earthly question to be answered. Now, the Lord is occupied with a heavenly work which does not have the distinction of Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ being the all and in all. This work is quite independent of earthly change because the end of that work is to be with Him where He is. And thus He concludes, “He who testifies these things saith, Yea, I come quickly. Amen, come, Lord Jesus,” is the divinely supplied reply. The constant waiting, apart from times and seasons, is kept up to the last for those who have an ear to hear.

It is striking to see how careful the Lord is to exclude prophetic events from mingling with our proper portion in His coming for us; and all the more because Revelation is in the main the great Christian book of prophecy. Hence, while giving solemn warnings in these concluding appeals in Revelation 22, He fixes our hearts on His coming in sovereign grace without a revealed earthly event to intercept it. He precludes any delay on the basis of governmental dealings with people on the earth. He allows no room for confusion with intervening changes in the world. “He who testifieth these things saith, Yes, I come quickly,” to which our graciously provided answer is, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus.” Can any words be simpler or more effective for the heart?

The gospel was sent to save sinners and to associate them when saved with Christ, the glorified Head, and thus to constitute them a heavenly body, His body. Its aim is not to gather into one the world, but the children of God who were scattered abroad. The gospel was to be preached everywhere as a testimony, but with no such thought as winning all Israel or the nations while He is on high. It is reserved for the Lord, not for the Church, in judicial authority to take His great power and reign when His world-kingdom is come: a future and total change from His present seat on His Father's throne. That occurs at His appearing and His kingdom (2 Tim. 4: 1). It is “the blessed hope” of what God will do for man and the world, and we rejoice anticipatively. There will be no general blessing for the human race till then. We await it with assurance and love it as redounding not to the blessing of man only, but to the glory of our Savior God. In the Pastoral Epistles, Christ's appearing alone is pressed because responsibility rather than distinctive privilege is the point, and then, not before, “that day” will the issues appear of fidelity or of failure.

Before that day of manifestation the awful apostasy must come, as well as the audacious uprising against God of the man of sin whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by His appearing (2 Thess. 2). Before that day, as is made evident in Revelation 19, the predicted blows of divine chastisement must be fulfilled as revealed from the seals of Revelation 6 to the last vials of God's wrath in Revelation 16, of which the judgment of Babylon in the descriptive appendix of Revelation 17-18 is a concluding part and explanation. Then follows the day of the Lord in Revelation 19 when the glorified saints follow Him out of heaven to the destruction of His enemies, the binding of Satan, the thousand years' reign of Christ and the risen saints over the earth, as in Revelation 20. God's Word makes all this clear, whatever the doubts and difficulties of the learned, or the unbelief of the worldly-minded.

But the still more intimate and proper hope of the Christian is Christ's coming for those who love Him and watch during the night for Him as the Morning Star, before the day.

As the apostle corrected the errors of the Thessalonian saints, yet confirmed the constant waiting for Him, carefully joining himself with them and all saints in the same attitude, so here does the Lord guard us from confounding His coming with that day, and God's necessary antecedent dealings of infliction or of mercy on Israel or the nations.

Meanwhile may “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”

The Coming Hour of Temptation.

Rev. 3: 10

W. Kelly.

That there is a time of trouble, a special season of tribulation for the world, revealed in several important and plain passages of the word of God, no thoughtful Christian can for a moment question. All may not be clear as to those whose lot will be cast in those days, but that such a season is to befall the world is not to be doubted. That it is also to be a day through which some of God's own people are to pass is equally certain. We shall now enquire what it is that God's word affirms as to both those who shall be there and those who shall be in the grace of God exempted from it.

At the same time a wider question arises than the hour of tribulation. We must not confound scriptures that differ, even if the difference be comparatively slight in appearance. "The hour of temptation" does not appear to me to be exactly the same as that of the great tribulation. Temptation may take the form of severe affliction, but it is not limited to such a type of things. Temptation may assume the character of seduction, as well as of trial in the shape of tribulation. I shall show tonight that there is a well-defined period as to which scripture leaves no just ground of hesitation; that there are preliminary judgments on one side, and on the other snares of all kinds, as well as a storm of trouble that will fall on those who have slighted the grace of God, and cast away His truth.

I shall show further that it is by no means true that none of His people are to be exempted from that "hour of temptation." The verse that I have read proves the contrary. We have the Holy Ghost here addressing to this effect the assembly of God in Philadelphia — the Christian assembly there. More strictly speaking, the angel of the church is before us — who was, it seems, a kind of ideal representative of the assembly — and the promise runs in the most distinct terms: "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."

It is evident that the import of this is not merely that the faithful are to be preserved. I shall prove that for others preservation is assured; but there is a special exemption promised here. We can all conceive how, supposing the fearful time of trial came, some might go, however secured, through that hour, and others might be kept out of it altogether. The question is, whether the scripture is clear that both of these methods are to be made good — that some are to be exempted from the hour of trial that is coming upon the habitable world, but that others are to be kept not out of it, but through it. I have not a doubt that these two schemes are true, and that God's word explicitly teaches both.

Further, the analogy of the dealings of God in past times leads to the same conclusion. If we look back to the earliest times, when God dealt with the world as a whole, undoubtedly He kept for His own name's sake some through that flood that swept the world away before it; but was that all? Was there merely a Noah and his family preserved in the ark? We all know the contrary. We know of one at least that walked with God before the flood came, and was not insensible to what was coming. He knew it as well or better than Noah; and whereas he walked in communion with the Lord before the season of judgment came, he was taken without seeing death. Enoch was translated from the earth, and taken to be with God above. Thus we have the circumstances of a great divine intervention — a time most striking and unexampled in the previous history of the world. When God was visiting the sons of men, and this with displeasure, for there was manifestly a tremendous judgment coming on the earth, God wrought in a twofold way. He removed one who looked to Himself and walked with Himself before the flood came; He brought others through the flood of waters that they might be a nucleus of blessing for the fresh conditions of the earth that were to follow the deluge.

We find again, if we look farther down the history of God's people, one similarly taken in special grace out of the world. In the course of the Jewish nation Elijah was caught up to heaven, while his successor, Elisha, was left to testify on the earth. Thus we have clearly God giving more than once a premonition of His will and of His ways in both respects. Therefore, in setting before those who are here tonight, as distinctly as God enables me, a sketch of what awaits the world, at least as to this short season of signal trial, we are not left without signs and tokens of what the Lord has done: this we may do well to compare with that which the Lord is going to do, both in exemption and in preservation.

Nevertheless, be it observed that I do not rest the proof on types. Nothing but direct scripture ought to be the foundation for any man's faith; and I shall cite enough to demonstrate that the word of God is as precise and positive as possible. I shall show that no other meaning is so satisfactory; that it is the simple unforced sense of the word of God. At the same time I shall be exceedingly obliged to any child of God who doubts it if he will only favour me with what he conceives to be a more satisfactory exposition of any one of the scriptures we may refer to. Need it be said that we ought to be above any question of our own opinion in these matters? They are too serious; they too closely affect the glory of God and the well-being of God's people.

Let me add, beloved friends, another thing, that my aim is not at all to excite or entertain any one's mind, but to furnish from the Bible for the Christian's faith what is of very great importance. Clearly if this is what is before God, if He means to remove some of His people from the earth, if He means also to have a people for His name to go through the time of temptation as well troublous as seductive that precedes the day of Jehovah, it evidently must be of the utmost possible interest and moment to know whether we can on scriptural grounds look confidently to the precious blessing of being with Christ Himself when the fearful hour of retributive infliction shall come upon the world.

Whether we open the Old Testament or the New, however we take the passages to be cited, we shall not fail to gather instruction. But to show how little depends upon anything artificial, I shall at this time take the texts simply in the order in which they stand in our common English Bible. The Christian has no interest — we ought surely to have none — but the glory of God.

No doubt by putting together particular passages in an artful way it is very possible to impose on the ignorant, whether by a show of strength or by a concealment of weakness. I am giving the best conceivable evidence that such a suspicion need enter no man's mind in this case.

The first passage then that occurs to me as bearing directly on the subject before us is found in Jeremiah 30. There we read of a day of trouble, a time of sore distress, and we are told who are concerned in it. The seventh verse is express: "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it." There can be no doubt as to the force of the passage. This is a time of trouble, of special sorrow, and the one who is said to be involved in it is Jacob — a well known designation of the Jewish people. They are thus called in their weakness, and trial, and suffering, and bitter experience of their own faults, but at the same time objects of God's faithful care; not looked at as Israel, a prince with God and men, but Jacob, as learning not a little of themselves.

Accordingly we may see how appropriately the term is used here. This time of trouble will come upon the Jews because of their unfaithfulness. God does not willingly afflict the children of men — never His people, but for higher and more blessed objects. Thus we find trouble referred to in these two ways — the loving discipline of a Father who seeks our better blessing, and along with that, in the Christian's case, as we know, the privilege of suffering for righteousness' sake, or, still more, suffering for Christ's sake. But such is not the character of this time of trouble. No scripture intimates it. It is never presented as being an honour: it is a time of judicial sorrow and affliction.

Again, the party here shown to suffer in that time of peculiar trouble is clearly a Jewish one — Jacob. At present I shall not, of course, enter into a detailed proof of the impropriety of applying the terms "Jacob," etc., to the body of Christ, the church. Perhaps it may be assumed that most persons in this room have no question on this head at least. They know perfectly well that Jacob or Israel, in the Old Testament as well as the New, means the Jews. They know that the Christian church is otherwise characterised, and that the greatest care is taken to keep the new thing distinct from the old, and to mark the distinction. There are principles in common no doubt. There is a great deal of the truth of God in the Old Testament which applies with equal and sometimes with even increasing force to the Christian. No one need question this. For instance, holiness, obedience, submission to the will of God, delight in His ways, suffering for righteousness' sake — all these terms we get in the Old Testament, and they are found even more emphatically true in the case of the Christian and the church. Therefore none can fairly suppose that I weaken the exceeding value of the ancient oracles. If I am addressing my servant, it is quite right that my child should profit by what is said to the other. Again, supposing a wise father might give instruction to a child, it is all well for any other person to profit by it. But then we must not confound the relationships. In the Old Testament clearly the Jewish people are primarily the object of God's direct dealings. In the New Testament the great object, after the Jews had rejected their Messiah, is to bring out the church of God as a new building, characterised after another sort altogether, nevertheless surely bound to profit by all the ways of God, especially with Israel.

Without further notice I assume, therefore, as a thing beside the present mark, and not needing discussion just now, that where the Jews, Israel, Jacob, Zion, Jerusalem, etc., are referred to, these words really do refer to them, not to Christians. If so, the bearing of the word in Jeremiah 30 is plain enough. The Jews are expressly supposed to be exposed to some exceeding trouble, but with this comfort, that they are to be "saved out of it." They are not to sink utterly in this time of trouble. Here then we have at least an analogy with one of the parties described at the beginning of this discourse. We have not persons kept from going into the time of trouble, but people that are brought through it. In short, we have the Jews saved out of their most dismal day.

If we turn to the prophecy of Daniel, we find, in the last chapter and first verse, an even stronger statement of the same fact: "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." Dan. 12: 1 By this of course the meaning of the passage in Jeremiah is strongly confirmed. There is the same time described, but in yet more emphatic terms. The trouble is to be not only "great," but none before so great, and never any to be so great again. It is manifest and certain that there can be only one such time. This is important. There is an hour to come beyond all that has passed upon the earth, and no subsequent hour can equal it. It is this very time of which Jeremiah was speaking; for we find, first, Daniel's people; then, involved in that dreadful hour; and, yet more, delivered out of it. These are precisely the three points in the passage already extracted from the elder prophet.

Thus Daniel and Jeremiah do not merely confirm each other mutually, but add exceedingly to the force and clearness of the truth in question. Nothing can be plainer than this conclusion. It is true that the Jews who are brought out of this hour of trouble are supposed to be persons of whom God has a record. They have a real living relationship with Him. That is to say, it is implied that the mass of the Jews will not be brought out of that hour; but as all then alive are to pass through it, so all will be delivered from it who are "found written in the book."

And this is the more interesting because it is from this same chapter that our Lord Jesus quotes in the discourse recorded in Matt. 24, as well as in Mark 13. In Matt. 24: 15 we read thus: "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand)," etc. Now this is a citation from the latter part of Daniel 12. It is evidently implied that many who read it might not understand; at least our Lord particularly cautions those who read to see that they enter into His thought. "Whoso readeth, let him understand." Never does He discourage from reading; but He would have understanding. His prescient eye foresaw the confusion that would pass over the minds of men, even of His own disciples. He knew well how much earthly objects of one kind and another obscure the spiritual vision. He knew well that there would be all sorts of notions afloat, more particularly about prophecy; so that many children of God mistake, and many more dread, the subject. They feel that there is gross confusion, too much of conjecture, and very little positive truth to build up the soul thereby, and thus they allow their minds often to be prejudiced. Instead of judging the thoughts of men and their systems, they turn aside from that precious word of God which certainly deserves better treatment. Surely it is to their own great loss; and it will be so increasingly; for as darkness sets in, and as all kinds of evil are brought up to the surface of the world, more and more as time goes on, the children of God will need to take heed to every word, and indeed especially to the word which casts divine light on the future.

In fact a man can no more avoid looking forward mentally than he can forbear ordinarily to look forward with his eye. It is the nature of man to do so. He ought to look up; but he certainly looks forward. But if you do not subject your mind to God's word, you will be sure to fill it with your own thoughts, or those of other people. That is, you must either be a student of divine prophecy, or you will be in danger of setting up to be more or less of a prophet yourself. Depend on it that to study believingly, earnestly, humbly, self-distrustingly, the word of God about the future, is exactly the way to keep oneself from being a prophet, and, let me also say, from being a false one. Nobody will turn out a false prophet who is content to be only a student of prophecy.

The word of God then, where Christ, not self governs, is the truest preservative from all error. I admit there prevails great and strange misuse of scripture. I entreat my brethren, whoever they may be, to watch against this with all earnestness. There is no need of hurrying to a conclusion. It is better to acknowledge our own ignorance; it is much better to wait on God and His word, and meanwhile to confess we do not know this or that. Why should there be haste to form a fully and clearly-defined sketch of what is coming ? Be content rather to get truth in a detached way; to let this matter that God reveals in His word fall into your soul, and then another matter, as He gives it. Almost all the mischief is done by forming, or attempting to form, a complete theory when we are but learning the elements. It is far wiser to take the revealed facts of the word of God, and gradually to link them together as we become matured. This is the right way with all truth. It is no otherwise even in science. It is the most serious hindrance to progress when men form a hasty hypothesis, instead of first collecting all the facts; that is to say, they thus foreclose the case, and take the place of being masters when they may be but scantily-taught disciples.

In the things of God, indeed, it is true and certain that there is One pre-eminently capable of teaching, even the Holy Ghost; and we may be perfectly sure that He takes the deepest interest in this; for He was given to show us not merely the things of Christ, but "things to come." Let us then thankfully and humbly look up to God, that we may be led into all the truth.

Turning then to the words of our Lord Jesus (Matt. 24), and the use that He makes of the prophet Daniel, we have the same elements as in the Old Testament, but with especial light and fulness. He was instructing His disciples, no doubt; but evidently a disciple in his then condition might represent either a godly Jew or a Christian. The reason is plain. The disciples were not on proper Christian ground until the death and resurrection of the Saviour, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Everyone knows this who bows to scripture about the matter. The proof is very evident. Going up to the temple, attending Jewish feasts, keeping rigorously the traditions of the law and the ordinances of it — no one can say that all this is Christianity in its due form. But it was the condition of the disciples then, and for some time after.

Consequently the disciples were capable of being used, according to the intention of Christ, to represent those who would be raised up in a day that was coming, substantially similar in point of circumstances to themselves; that is, men converted but still connected with Jerusalem, the land, and the hopes of Israel. Such was their condition at this very time, and therefore they were even more fitting representatives of such a state than they could be of Christianity proper. At the same time the Lord does afterwards give prophetic anticipations of what would belong to Christians, properly so called. It is entirely a question of the manner in which He was pleased to speak, and the subject of which He treats, which enables us to form a sound judgment in which relation the disciples are viewed.

Let us apply these principles to what we have here before us. What originated the discourse? The admiration expressed by some of the disciples at the beautiful stones of that splendid and wonderful fabric which was then the special adornment of Jerusalem. But the Lord told them that every stone should be thrown down, not one be left upon another. Is this Christianity? It was Christ predicting the downfall of Jerusalem, and the overthrow of their temple. Does this overthrow any of our hopes? It has nothing to do with our place and relationships. It had a vast deal to do with Jewish feeling and thought and expectation.

The Lord accordingly gives first various general warnings which dealt with them as they then were. In Matt. 24: 15 He comes to something much more precise. He launches out into the circumstances that surround the end of the age, and says, addressing them naturally as representatives of those faithful Jews who should be in those days — "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand), then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." Who can be so bold (to say the least) as to affirm that this is a picture of the church at large? Do you suppose that Christians would ever be contemplated in the land of Judea alone? Clearly not. All is plain if He is speaking about Jews — godly ones no doubt, but Jews in that particular land. It is not at all a prophetic declaration as to the saints of God in different parts of the world. It is here nothing but a view of what would be in a future day in that land alone. We all understand that the mission of the gospel of the kingdom to all nations is to be from that land as from a centre; but in Matt. 24: 15, 16, etc., He speaks exclusively of those in that land. "Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes." Their flight was to be so immediate, that if a man was on the housetop, he was not to come down through the house; and if he was out, he was not to come back for what might seem ever so necessary.

I know there are many persons of old and to this day who apply this to the past siege of Jerusalem. But the proper prophecy of the past destruction of Jerusalem is a part of Luke 21, not Matthew 24. There our Lord speaks about Jerusalem as encompassed with armies; but there is no such sign as the setting up of the abomination of desolation, no such rapid flight called for; and, in point of fact, every one who knows history at all must know that there was neither one nor other as in Matthew, but exactly as Luke says in the past siege of Jerusalem. The Roman lieutenant who came and encompassed the city did not at all demand to be at once heeded after this peremptory sort. There were months that elapsed between the retirement of Cestius Gallus and the arrival of the still greater force under the emperor when the destruction of Jerusalem took place some years afterwards. That is to say, there was plenty of time to get away, family, friends, baggage and all. There was no need, therefore, for so urgent a flight. All this is to me decisive, that our Lord did not in the first Gospel refer to the past historical siege of the city. There He says, "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place." This, we have seen, is never once referred to in Luke 21; but another fact, as follows — "And when ye shall see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto." There is not a word here about coming down from the housetop; not a word that forbids the man in the fields from coming back. In short, it is a different and more ordinary state of things, characterised as "the days of vengeance," etc., "great distress in the land and wrath upon this people," but not speaking of the tribulation, as Matthew and Mark do, and consequently without the citation from Daniel. The times of the Gentiles clearly run on after the siege in Luke, and as clearly not after the scenes of which Matthew and Mark speak. There is a flight enjoined, but no such instant flight as in Matthew. There is an analogy, and nothing more, between the past siege and the future of Jerusalem; but the past event, as Luke reports, admitted of a retreat from the city far more quietly, and with greater ease for their escape to Pella, etc. The future siege will demand a peremptory flight from Jerusalem, according to the word of God given by Matthew, who consequently (not Luke) speaks of the end of the age.

Coming back, then, to the earlier Gospel, Matt. 24: 20, the Lord says, "But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day." We see that it is not a question of the world at large. The winter would not affect all the earth at the same time; what is winter in one place is summer in another. It is not a universal picture. Again, there is "the sabbath day." Everyone here, it is to be hoped, knows that such is not the name of the Lord's day. We as Christians very properly keep not the seventh day, but the first. A man who does not know thus much has a great deal to learn, it seems to me. Christians deny, and very rightly, that there would be any sin, in case of death, or sickness, or any peremptory call, to walk a mile and a half in order to do good to a neighbour, or to seek the blessing of an enemy. I suppose there are many here in this room who would feel perfectly ready to go twenty miles, if they could visit twenty sick persons in the course of a Lord's day. All Christians surely would not censure but value it. What do I infer from this? That the Lord is not speaking here of Christians at all. He contemplates godly Jews who are to be under the sabbatic law, and who would feel themselves in a grievous dilemma, therefore, if they had to flee on that day. He says to such, "Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter" (when inclemency might hinder), "neither on the sabbath day" (when legally their flight could not be permitted). Then He gives as the reason for all — "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be." Matt. 24: 21

The conclusion to be formed from these considerations is this, that our Lord was addressing the disciples as representing future godly Jews — "every one that shall be found written in the book," not Jews as such simply, but the godly remnant of the last days, those that shall be delivered out of the final and awful tribulation. He is referring, in short, to the very same period as Jeremiah in his Jer. 30, and as Daniel in his Dan. 12. Our Lord makes this to be still more manifest, from the fact that He quotes from this very twelfth chapter of Daniel. If there could be any doubt about it here, we have His discourse again in the corresponding passage of Mark (Mark 13), where it is said, "But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: and let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment." Mark 13: 14-16 Thus we see Mark does not take up the same ground as Luke, but agrees with Matthew.

Remember, there is no discrepancy whatever. No more impudent belief can well be, than to set one part of the New Testament against another, or indeed any part of the Bible against another. Such a handling of scripture is not only dishonest, but profound ignorance. There is not in all the Bible one passage that really contradicts another. Of course, there are passages that may seem at variance; but then, as we begin to get a little more light, these diminish in their number; and hence modesty would feel, if there were but fuller light, all the appearances of inconsistency would vanish away. It is just the same thing in the moral world, nor is it otherwise in the natural world. There are everywhere apparent contradictions and exceptions, but a larger knowledge of things bring these under a deeper rule. So it is with the word of God. Greater spiritual wisdom causes these apparent anomalies to disappear. Sometimes they may be in the translation; sometimes they may be in faulty manuscripts of the original; sometimes, and most frequently, they are in our own understanding. But the great lesson learnt throughout is, that the Bible becomes more manifestly the word of God in its every detail. No doubt the more ignorant people are, the more fault they find with the Bible; the wiser they become, the more they rejoice in it, and bless God for it.

This being so, Matthew 24 and Mark 13 will be found to coalesce with the Old Testament texts we have weighed. All these scriptures suppose godly Jews to be involved in this unparalleled time of trouble, and that they are at the same time to be saved out of it. Thus far then the Old Testament and the New Testament clearly confirm each other. Every Christian man ought to accept this, even if not thus demonstrated; but I trust that what has been alleged may help to prove it in the face of gainsayers.

But this is not all. We come now to the Revelation, where we find a passage or two of a different nature. First of all is the one with which we began tonight: "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." Rev. 3: 10 What have we here? Jacob? Daniel's people? Not a trace of them. Every one knows — it cannot be questioned — that the Lord Jesus is here writing a letter by His servant John to the angel of the Christian assembly or church in Philadelphia. Here at once we find ourselves on different ground. Jews are not addressed, nor is it by a Jewish prophet, either before or during the captivity. It is now the Lord Jesus, who has a double relation. He is the Messiah, the hope of Israel, but at the same time the Head of the church. I have already shown that in the passages of Matthew and Mark He is instructing His disciples as to Jewish expectations connected with the land of Judea and the temple. It is clear that they had the sabbath-day, and the number of arguments might be largely increased in proof that Jewish disciples in the latter day are referred to, and such only. But now we find none of this. In all the scriptures that concern the Jews, they are supposed to go through this hour of temptation, but at the same time they are to be saved out of it. They go through that hour; they are protected of God; but none the less are they in the temptation, although they survive it, protected by divine power. Here, contrariwise, when the address is to Christians, the word is, "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience." The Jews were far from keeping this; they had rejected Himself; they despised the word of His patience. But one of the great distinguishing features of the Christian is, that he suffers with Christ, and, more than this, that he is content to wait, as Christ waits, for the great day. He is not anxious for the glory of the world now; his portion is not here; the Christian is waiting, as becomes the bride, for the exaltation of the Bridegroom over the earth. The bride knows that the Bridegroom is exalted in heaven, and her heart is where her treasure is. Christ is glorified at the right hand of God; and her present joy is to know well that He who is her Bridegroom is coming, and that He will first gather to Himself His bride, and that in due time He will display His bride with Himself in glory. "When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." Col. 3: 4 It is not merely that He shall take us away to be hidden in glory. He is hid in God now, and we shall be shortly. But when Christ appears in glory, those who are waiting, and are content to wait, keeping the word of His patience, will be displayed in the very same glory as the Lord Jesus. Such is the Christian's expectation. Christ is to come for us, and when Christ is manifested we shall be manifested with Him in glory.

Entirely falling in with this sketch of the difference between what a Jew expected and what we are now expecting, the Lord directs His servant to write thus to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience." Christ is patiently waiting to come; He looks onward to the future as much in heaven as He did when He was on the earth. He has not left His manhood behind Him because He has risen from the grave; on the contrary, the resurrection is that which binds indissolubly His manhood with His person. He took manhood in His incarnation, but He has manhood bound up for ever with His own eternal glory. As He retains manhood now in the glorified state, what a pledge this is of our blessedness with Christ when He comes again! We wait for that moment; and because we keep the word of His patience He says, "I also will keep thee," not from the tribulation only, but "from the hour of temptation (or trial) which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." Mark, He does not say, "I will keep thee from a certain place of trouble, or from a given sphere where the tribulation is to fall." We can understand that a man might be taken out of a particular locality under judgment. For instance, supposing Europe, or the Roman Empire, or the Holy Land, to be peculiarly the spot on which the tribulation is to fall, we can easily understand how persons outside the doomed limits would not suffer temptation in the same way. This has been a favourite theory; and I have heard of devotees who have gone east and west in order to get out of the scene of dreaded trial. But this is folly, and a total mistake as to the word of God. What the Lord Jesus says is not, "You are to go from the sphere," but "I will keep thee from the hour." Nay, it is a far greater promise, and infinitely more precise, than saying, "I will keep thee from the place of the temptation," etc. Those who keep the word of His patience are not to be there when the hour comes; that is to say, it is a complete removal (not only from the circle but) from the time of the trouble. The church of God will be exempt; the faithful will be kept from it. By the faithful I mean all the children of God.

I beseech all that are here to guard against certain and self-complacent notions opposed to this, and too widely spread in America, and sometimes nearer home. They will have it that such exemption is a reward for believing in pre-millenarian views, and that those Christians who are not so instructed are to pass through the future hour of trouble, — some going so far as to teach that they will be in torture for 1,000 years. I beseech you, brethren, treat these notions as they deserve; treat them as bad and base, as altogether opposed to revelation, and the greatest dishonour both to the person of Jesus whom they love, and above all to His work, on which their souls rest before God. Oh, is not this idolising knowledge? It would not become us, assuredly, to slight the study of prophetic truth in which we have found, if one may speak about ourselves, not a little profit and enjoyment. But at the same time to suppose that those who may love Christ quite as well as we do, but who do not hold just views on prophetic truth, are to be tortured for it so many years, perhaps a thousand years, — to suppose God will punish His children thus because they have not been pre-millennialists, let such thoughts be utterly condemned and banished!

I admit that the Lord Jesus is said to come for them that look for Him; but why? Because the Spirit of God assumes that all Christians look for Him; and so they do. Some do it, no doubt, more intelligently than others; some, no doubt, do interpose their opinions on the millennium, as well as others on the tribulation. I do not agree with either. I am sure that all such interferences with the constant hope of Christ are wrong; and men suffer loss through it. I believe that those who assume, contrary to scripture, that there is going to be a great and long reign of good over the earth before Jesus comes are under no small delusion. At the same time, while disapproving of that notion, I consider that the idea of torturing for a thousand years God's children, in order to punish them for not being pre-millennialists, is about as bad a notion as could be entertained by Christian men. I am not now speaking of those whose scheme directly lowers our Saviour by clouding His Deity, or allowing the smallest spot of suspicion to rest upon His humanity or His relation to God, because one ought not to regard such as Christians at all. They cannot be acknowledged as such while anti-Christian. They may turn out Christians, carried away for a time, of course, just as a drunkard, or any other sinner. A person may fall into a desperate sin, and after all the Lord may bring him out of it. Neglect of prayer and of the word of God, tampering with the world, etc., may draw him into any evil, as grace can restore. At the same time, if a man goes on in sin decidedly and deliberately, whatever you may hope and desire, you cannot, and ought not, to call him a Christian. It is the same with false doctrine: only I suppose that false doctrine is yet more evil and dangerous, because more deceptive than anything else; but no one can adequately judge of false doctrine, unless as taught by the Spirit of God.

This then may suffice to show how, so far as the Jews are concerned, the uniform testimony of the Old and the New Testaments is, that they are to go through this time of temptation, but that the godly ones are to be preserved. The word of our Lord Jesus in Rev. 3: 10, is addressed clearly to Christian ears, representing the faithful that should be found waiting for His coming to receive them to Himself, which is the normal position of all Christians. Nor could the Spirit of God contemplate such an anomaly as those who loved Him not so looking for Him. This scripture holds out the blessed prospect of such association with Him as will exempt them from the time of predicted tribulation and the hour of temptation also. If I do not misunderstand the latter phrase it would seem to take in the preliminary sorrows, as well as later seductions and unparalleled final judgments. These do not all come at once. There will be deceits used as well as persecutions before the crash and the frightful crisis come. There is clearly defined in this very book a difference and progress in evil and trouble. This being so, the promise here given serves without constraint to comprehend and cover all, including the time of earlier trouble and deceit no less than the pressure of special affliction.

Accordingly the Lord declares that those that keep the word of His patience will be kept from that hour of temptation which shall come upon all the habitable world. And for what purpose is this hour sent? That others may be tried by it — "to try them that dwell upon the earth." In the Epistle to the Philippians the Holy Ghost brands the earthly-minded as being enemies of the cross of Christ, "whose end is destruction." (Phil. 3: 18, 19) I hope no one will contend that this is said of a Christian, however it may be of those who had once taken that place. That a Christian may venture near the brink of evil, that he may tamper with the unclean thing, that he may be for a while drawn in more or less, is possible; but it is beyond dispute that the Spirit of God contemplates those who, professing the name of Christ, altogether abuse it; and their end is certainly and literally destruction.

Here first, in the book of Revelation, the apostle John, at the command of our Lord, characterises a class of persons who should be found just before the hour of temptation not only setting their minds upon earthly things, but if possible yet farther gone in that evil direction. They are called dwellers upon the earth. They had given up the blessed place of holy separateness as pilgrims and strangers in the world. Such is the uniform description of Christians; nay, in a measure, of the elders who obtained a good report by faith, as the Old Testament shows, although the light then vouchsafed was by no means so full as it is in the New. What intelligent soul would maintain that it was? If the Old Testament gave all the light needed now, where is the value and where the reason of the New? If it was the same thing, why not call it all the Old Testament? why the New Testament at all? The common faith of Christians knows this, if they do not frankly confess it. The one is divinely inspired no less than the other. There is no difference as to this; but there is the striking contrast that Israel's case is the history of a people under the law and government of God on the earth, while the church is a people led by faith out of all worldly connection to follow in the path of an earth-rejected Saviour glorified in heaven, and to wait for His coming as those who know their portion with Him above. This is the calling of the Christian, properly speaking.

But whenever did God bring in a blessing without the enemy seeking to turn it to a corruption? If there had not been Christianity, there could not be Anti-christ. There is invariably with the light of God the shadow of the adversary. Accordingly scripture is most explicit that the falling away must come. The falling away from what? From Christianity, to be sure; and very likely from the divinely-inspired testimony in general — from that of the Old Testament as well as of the New. Nor do I conceive there will be long to wait for this. Time was when the only persons who used to attack the Bible were wicked men such as Bolingbroke and Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau. Now, I am grieved to say, it is fashionable for clergymen — university professors, ecclesiastical dignitaries — to be infidels. God forbid that I should single out invidiously any one individual, or any one denomination, because it is easy to see that it is found in all the nations and tongues by which Christianity is at all professed. Scepticism is confined to no class, and is as rampant in Popery, though perhaps more open in Protestantism. Honest I can call it nowhere. It professes anything, while it believes nothing. The hard thing would be to say where it has not penetrated. Not that all are as boldly bad as Bishop Colenso; not that all are infidel after so cowardly a sort as the Oxford Essayists and Reviewers. But it is plain that the spirit of infidelity reigns in quarters that yesterday, one may say, would have been ashamed and horrified; and one of the most alarming signs is the powerlessness of Christendom in meeting it. I feel often that the answers to infidelity are only less infidel, if always less, than the assaults on the faith. Witness the address of Dr. Raleigh on religion and science to which the Congregational Union of London have committed themselves. I desire only to use such facts for the warning of those exposed and for humbling ourselves before God, while cleaving to the word of His grace. The devil is now making people bolder in the highest places, as for a good while in the lowest. You may depend on it that it is mainly in the middle classes is found the chief value for the revealed truth of God at the present moment. The higher classes are largely saturated with infidelity; the lower classes no less so. In modern times it has been seen that God, while never unmindful of the poor, has most used people between the highest and the lowest to stand for the truth, and to reject error. I believe it is so still, and that the extremes of society are those that go most rapidly to ruin. While this is no doubt true, it is patent that the extremes are advancing rapidly to a moral meeting-place, and that the number of those who are thoroughly devoted to Christ, and who have perfect confidence in the truth of all that is written, is by no means large in any land whatsoever. We may be thankful for what the mercy of God has done in our own country, but I am persuaded that the inroads of infidelity become gigantic at this present time, and that the strides it is taking everywhere are as rapid as they are vast. If this be so, it is a deeply important matter for us to be on our guard, and so much the more as the moment hastens when these things are about to be realised. Remember, I do not venture to say a word as to defining that moment. God may prolong His patience. Man is apt to be hasty in his thoughts. Just as he procrastinates in his duties, so is he apt to be precipitate in his expectations. It is unwarrantable for any man to predict the day which no one knows, says the Lord. God has kept all this in His own authority. At the same time there are moral intimations; and as none ought to be blind to the signs of the times, so the church of God ought pre-eminently to heed the tokens of what is coming — to read them in the word first, of course, and to seize their living counterpart in what is working round about us. It is not difficult to see that it is the tendency of the present moment to obliterate ancient landmarks — to cast down established distinctions, especially where there is a high or exclusive claim to revealed truth — to put all things divine and human on a common level.

However this may be, here we have the clear promise, held out by the Saviour, of a people that are to be kept from the coming hour of temptation. Observe, it is not merely a question of the place of tribulation. From elsewhere it is clear that the centre of the worst tribulation is to be Jerusalem. So true is this, that even if the godly but escape to the mountains, they are out of the area of that burning fiery furnace then seven times heated. This is certain from our Lord's own words. They may escape in a very short time to a place where the tribulation cannot fall upon them. Therefore it is evident that the unparalleled tribulation for the Jews can only have a very contracted sphere indeed. I shall show presently that there will be a larger sphere also.

But in the message to the church in Philadelphia we have a distinct assurance of exemption, not merely from the place, but even from the hour; and this not of tribulation only, but of temptation, which takes in, if I mistake not, the preliminary troubles and seductions as well as the tribulation that comes as a scourge for such flagrant apostasy and rebellion. Thus the promise is of the largest character, and at the same time of the utmost precision. It is a positive certainty to those that really wait for Christ. It is not a question of a mere doctrine. If the heart be not toward Him, what more value in seeing the pre-millennial advent than anything else? It is obvious that there are a great many souls who have the doctrine clearly enough, of whom none can say that it does them much good after all. I believe myself, that if Christ be not the personal object of the soul, anything else is comparatively powerless; but where Christ is in the heart as one believed in and loved, and hence patiently waited for, then, no doubt, His coming is no less sweet than purifying. Everything is seen to be precious that directs to Him, and the word of God about Him. Where truth is held apart from Him, there will be nothing to soften the spirit — nothing to maintain liberty, obedience, and a sanctifying object.

I am speaking, of course, not merely of being screened from the judgment, but of the power of salvation and of joy in the Lord now. Plainly this promise is most full, and it is at the same time no less precise as to the exemption of a people from this hour of temptation. Need it be added who these are? They are Christians, and none others. None but Christians were here addressed by our Lord. To them distinctly is the pledge made, that those who keep the word of His patience, the Lord will keep — not during, nor through, nor in, but — "from (or "out of") the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth"; to try such as may have borne the Christian name, baptised persons, but their heart not in heaven, nor with Christ; earthly-minded, earthly-dwellers, spite of the true light and the revelation of glory in the face of Christ.

But this is not all. In Revelation 7 we have another word, and here we have, as is well known, "the great tribulation." I am giving the critical reading; for remember, in cleaving firmly to scripture — and I do not see there is anything else worth contending for in this world — it is a duty to ascertain, wherever a various reading exists, what has the weightiest claims to be received as the true: we have no need to shut our eyes to any representative of the mind of God. In short, the purest state of the text must be sought as well as the most faithful version. To perpetuate a traditional blunder is not faith, but mere ignorance or obstinate superstition. Therefore I accept, and exhort all my brethren to accept, every help that God affords for the elucidation of His word. To this end every discovery of an ancient Biblical manuscript, every help toward a more accurate version that can be gathered from the study of the languages in which God wrote His word, is most valuable. I do not say that everybody ought to set up for a judge in these matters.

In fact, very few scholars, or even Christian scholars, have this sort of competency. It is easy enough to suggest changes of scripture, and supposed emendations of text and translations. We have all heard of 20,000 corrections collected by a diligent physician. It might be a wholesome check if any competent person dealt with that magazine of misapprehensions, as Bode did with the errors made by Mill and Bengel through trusting the Latin renderings of the old Oriental versions. What a tiny residue would come out from the subjection of the 20,000 to a really critical ordeal! In general you may dismiss at least nineteen out of every twenty supposed corrections of our authorised Bible. They are merely the crude guesses of tyros, the suggestions of such as may be scholars in profane Greek or Latin, but who possessed little or no familiarity with the Bible.

Again, it is monstrous for persons to sit in judgment on such matters, unless they do so as Christians. I deny that genius or scholarship will enable a man to understand aright either the Hebrew or the Greek scriptures. The best of scholars have made the grossest of mistakes here. Take Dr. Richard Bentley. Did not he and the like commit very painful blunders in scripture? I admit the scholarship of the famous Master of Trinity in his own sphere. He was, no doubt, a man of very unusual power, and of the largest attainments in the remains of Greek and Roman letters; but then, as a rule, no man is at home outside his own business. I do not trust people who speak confidently on what they have not made their own. I value the simplest artisan in his own craft more than the ablest philosopher who prattles about it. No doubt, if a shoemaker were to talk of philosophy, he would not be likely to throw much light on the subject. He might be a genius, undoubtedly, and to this you must give ample weight; but still, in general, one could not expect that men outside their own proper functions would be the most competent to give an opinion of value on matters foreign to them.

On doctrine I hold the opinion of a scholar to weigh about as much as that of a shoemaker. Not only is erudition in itself of no account in spiritual things, but scholarship in one branch does not give competence in another. The Attic nicety, which appreciates Sophocles, may be at fault before the abrupt passes and parentheses of the apostle Paul. But the first of all requisites, even for those familiar with Greek, for understanding the word of God is unfeigned faith in the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the sole power of comprehending and alone gives qualification to judge of divine things; and He dwells only in those who have faith in Christ. At the same time let none suppose that I exclude the use of every aid that can be brought in really and honestly to enable a Christian to read the word of God as closely as possible approaching its original form. It is, to my mind, a positive duty to welcome and apply every such help, let it come from what quarter it may.

To those who accept this principle there can be no doubt that the true reading here is "They which come out of the great tribulation." The omission of the article is wrong in the common text, and must be given in English to represent fairly the sense given by the best authorities. It is not always so; but it is needless to say that there are definite means of judging, and there is no question at all about its necessity here. To those who know these matters this is a ruled point, not without the effort of prejudice in some to resist the conclusion, but in vain. "These," said the elder to John, "are they which come out of the great tribulation." This is important, because if you read it simply "These are they which came out of great tribulation," many a Christian might say, "You and I have known great tribulation. This is a choice scripture, and it evidently applies to you and me." Alas! how often we are misled from the prime source of all mistakes — that is to say, interpreting the Bible by our own feelings, circumstances, and sphere. This is not the way to understand the word of God. You must look at it in connection with Christ, and not with self. Such is the only canon that will conduct a man in safety and light and joy right through the Bible by the grace of God; thus only can one be an intelligent disciple of the Lord Jesus.

Quite different is the way in which persons in general are apt to deal with the Bible; that is, they judge from their own things, and not from the things of Jesus Christ. Connect the word as well as facts with the Lord, and what a difference it makes! There may be Christians so unintelligent as to find in the Bible nothing but Christians and their enemies; but the man who reads scripture, looking at Christ, not at himself and his church, will say, "Well, there was once a people of Jehovah before the Christian and the church of God; the Lord had Israel then the object of His care, and they broke down utterly. Then He gave imperial authority to the Gentiles, and they turned it against Him, compelling the Jews, under pain of death, to worship their idols, and give up the true God. And now the Lord Jesus, having come, has been rejected by both; and having accomplished redemption, has sent out the gospel and set up the church; and what is the result?" We have before us in scripture the revelation of the end of all, and we have the working of these destructive principles in our own day. To leave room for all is of immense importance. It clears the way for understanding these and other scriptures. The fertile source of mistake is the desire to make all bear upon ourselves.

We have seen the Jewish portion; we have heard the promises to Christians; now we must be introduced to a third party. Nor is there the least reason why we should be in the dark about it; for in the latter half of Revelation 7 we read as follows: "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." (Rev. 7: 9-14)

How many believers here and elsewhere I can hear asking if this be not a picture of the church. Let me assure you that it certainly is not so. With the utmost desire not to contradict any one flatly, we must feel that there are times when it is much better to be plain and short. I must therefore take the liberty of affirming that demonstrably a Gentile multitude is meant, and not the body of Christ, the church. The proofs are clear and decisive. Every intelligent reader of the book, whatever his view of its interpretation in other respects, agrees in this, that "the elders" and the "living creatures," one or other or both, are the symbol of the church in heaven. How then could one of these elders describe this multitude, if all, elders and Gentile multitude, formed part of the same church? How could the party described and the party describing be the same body? Surely they must set forth a quite distinct thing. The elders were seen long before the multitude.

The context too will make their difference still plainer; and this is not an unimportant key to understand scripture. Never take a passage without examining its context. What is its bearing here? A numbered multitude we first hear of from the twelve tribes of Israel. I know the fondness of many for what they call spiritualising; but it is hard to spiritualise each of the twelve tribes of Israel; and the whole of these are brought before us distinctly and separately, as if on purpose to set aside such mysticising; for this is its true name and nature — not a spiritual but a mystical use of the scriptures. After the Holy Ghost has shown us the one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed out of the twelve tribes, the prophet then sees an innumerable multitude of Gentiles, distinct from both the elders and the four living creatures. If the elders mean the heavenly redeemed in Revelation 4, 5, I suppose they must mean the same body till the last chapter in which the symbol occurs (Rev. 19). Wherever they appear, do they not mean the same thing?

I here take the lowest ground. Is it not a fair inference that, if a symbol is found in different passages in the same book, it is to be taken in the same sense consistently? That is to say, if the elders are the glorified saints in one passage, they are the same in all passages. How then could this multitude of Gentiles be so, any more than the multitude of Israel? In short, therefore, Rev. 7 shows us a numbered company of Israel, and then a countless crowd of Gentiles, separate from each other as well as from the elders, and characterized as coming out of the great tribulation. There is not the semblance of truth that these Gentiles are composed of the successive generations of God's people throughout different ages of the world. On the contrary, they are not supposed to be risen but alive; to the prophet's eye a number numberless, gathered out by grace at a particular epoch, when the great tribulation comes here below. This, long known to a few scholars, is established now conclusively by the critical researches of all competent to speak, no matter what their bias.

And why should it seem incredible, or even strange, that God should begin to deal with Israel as such, again? As to this, there really ought to be no question, if we believe the various scriptures read at the beginning of this discourse. And if God will keep them, why not the Gentiles too? Nay, is it not certain that He means to bless the Gentiles as such? Is it asked what He purposes to do for the church of God? We have already seen about it. Those that keep the word of Christ's patience are promised to be taken out of the hour of trial, and those whose earthliness covers the Lord with their own shame are the persons on whom the severest judgments are destined to come. "The hour of temptation that shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth," does not mean simply Jews or Gentiles, but rather such as have professed the name of the Lord falsely. That true members of Christ's body will be left here below is an idea not only without foundation, but contrary to the clearest principles of truth, and to express statements of scripture. The evil servant and the foolish virgins mean not the true but the false.

And let me add too another point of interest. We find in Rev. 12 one scripture more which gives a cause, and an occasion too, for this fearful time.. All this needs to be duly taken into account. You are aware, no doubt, that the reason why the things of this world constantly appear to gain the victory over the truth, as far as what is bad triumphs, is the power of Satan, the great personal enemy of the Lord. Scripture affirms that the hour approaches when that power is about to be broken (not merely to faith, as ever since the death and resurrection of Christ, but) publicly in the world. Satan, according to the language of Rev. 12, will be cast out of heaven. From the seventh verse it is thus written, "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

Manifestly this is a state of things at which we are not yet arrived. It would be false doctrine and practically serious to say that such is the fact. A plain reason against it is, that Ephesians 6: 12 declares that the conflict in which the Christian is now engaged is with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, not with flesh and blood. As Israel had to fight with the Canaanites, so our special conflict is with spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies. Anybody who intelligently reads the Greek Testament will know, and even those who can enquire of those who do will hear it confirmed, that the expression ἐπουρανίοις means not merely "high" but "heavenly" places. No matter where you examine elsewhere, it invariably means "heavenly places"; and, in point of fact, it never does bear the sense of "high" simply, nor do I believe it to be possible. Any man who knows the language will hardly deny that "high places" is a slip or an evasion. I suppose our translators did not know what to make of the passage. They may have supposed that it would sound strange to hear of wicked spirits in "heavenly places," and so they thought to tone it down or to obscure it a little, and so put in "high places."

However this may have been, it is far from my wish to fasten any unworthy motives on them. They have erred occasionally, but were, many if not all, excellent men and able scholars, and I believe did their work with fidelity, though with a certain measure of hindrance, especially on the part of the king. We know he was superstitious on some points, and would not allow them to alter ecclesiastical terms which notoriously foster much misconception and prejudice. I do not mean to insinuate that James I. had anything to do with the mistake alluded to in Eph. 6, nor does it particularly matter who it was that suggested or kept it up; but the fact is certain, that we are said by the Holy Spirit to battle "with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places," as Israel with blood and flesh (that is, their Canaanite enemies).

It is certain then that Satan has an astonishing facility of wiles to hinder Christians from enjoying their proper heavenly privileges; but we know that, subtle as he is, it will all speedily come to an end; and this is in part what is described in Rev. 12. It cannot come to an end as long as we are committed to the conflicts spoken of in Eph. 6. None but Apocalyptic dreamers could sustain such a thesis for an instant. For, observe, what we read here is, that when that crisis comes there will be "a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night." (Rev. 12: 10) Has there ever been any time so striking for God's blessed intervention in the past history of the church that would answer to this? Is it really true that, when Constantine adopted Christianity, salvation came? Surely not. Who is so worldly-minded as to say this? Alas! such things have been said; but, after all, the idea only requires to be viewed in the light of scripture in order to feel that it is egregious and unfounded. To suppose that the downfall of Satan occurred in the fourth century, or that the coming of salvation was when Christendom began, or any such like scheme, is to draw largely on one's own fancy. Yet sober men, in other respects learned, sensible, and even godly, have put forth such views.

They were right good Protestants withal — a singular fact that Protestants should concede that in the days of many a dark superstition, afterwards embodied in popery, salvation came, and the kingdom of our Lord and the authority of His Christ! But there is no incongruity too astonishing for the minds of men. However this may be, it is added that "The accuser of our brethren is cast down." At this point Satan will have lost the power of calumniating as well as of hindering the people of God. Hence the call to joy — "Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them." It is evident that there are dwellers in heaven then — saints who are no longer found here below on the earth — entirely agreeing with what we have remarked elsewhere. But further: "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." It is the time of great trouble; that is, the time of the unparalleled tribulation that has been already before our thoughts. Thus God will have accomplished His purpose of taking away men to be with Christ in heaven, having put away their sin and given them a nature capable of enjoying His own rest. They dwelt there in spirit when they were on earth; they looked to follow Christ to heaven when they were poor pilgrims here; they waited for Christ longingly, and they are at length to be with Him whom they loved. After this comes the downfall of Satan's power, and the putting forth of his wrath on earth for a short time. Who can pretend that this vast change has taken place? Surely if there had been a most fearful and unexampled raging of Satan here below, one would think that the world ought to know and feel it. It is a strange theory that such an immense change could have taken place without anybody being the wiser for it, and nobody particularly the worse. Be not deceived. The dread reality is yet to come. Accordingly we read of a tremendous persecution, and the rising up of the two beasts described in Rev. 13.

There is no need to enter more into detail on this subject. I have endeavoured to give a simple and unvarnished view of what the scriptures teach us of the hour of temptation as well as of the tribulation. It has been shown, I trust clearly, that the Jews are to be in the innermost circle of the trouble, though the godly are warned of the Lord to escape from it. Thus our Lord's words have the closest connection with the declaration of the prophet Jeremiah that, though so sorely tried, they are to be delivered; but how is not explained. Daniel mentions the intervention of Michael, but adds no more. Our Lord fully explains. He tells them that, when they see a certain sign, those in Judea must flee: what is that sign? The abomination of desolation. There need be no doubt what this means, according to analogy, a certain idol, the setting up of which in the sanctuary of Jerusalem will be the signal for the infliction of this unprecedented tribulation. An incident of the tribulation, or, at any rate, another element of trouble to man, and especially to Israel on earth, will be Satan's great wrath for a short time on his dejection from heaven. Antichrist will show himself openly; Satan will work by him, also by the great imperial power of the Roman empire, as he never did before; and God will send men a strong delusion, that they should believe what is false.

As men throughout Christendom will be misled deliberately and wilfully to refuse the truth, God will allow evil to rise up beyond all precedent, and will let Satan have his destructive way, such of His people as are in Judea being saved from complete ruin by instant flight according to the word of the Lord. Jerusalem, therefore, is to be the centre, not merely of the great tribulation, but of the greatest; as being guilty of abandoning law and gospel with Christ Himself, always resisting the Holy Ghost, as their fathers did, so shall fall there such retribution as never was. But the Gentiles, guilty in their measure, are not to escape the storm; they may not endure the worst of it, but they must taste the bitter fruit of their doings in "the great tribulation" of Rev. 7, whatever may be the grace of God in bringing out of it a countless throng to enjoy His tabernacle over them during the millennial reign of the Lord Jesus.

Thus God will cause a great and numberless crowd of Gentiles to come out of that tribulation as truly as He will save the godly Jews; but observe, not a word is said about the church in either. How are we to account for a silence otherwise so strange if the church were really there? If God bound Himself to save Jacob; if He is pledged to bring out a multitude of Gentiles, why not a word about the church? Nay, rather, how could He speak of His church then on earth; for you are aware that in the church there is neither Jew nor Gentile. One great feature of the church is the blotting out of such distinctions, and the formation of one new man, which is neither. Thus, whereas we were Jews or Gentiles before, we have put all this off, and as many as are baptised into Christ have put on Christ. We are baptised into one body — the body of Christ — such is the inspired description of the Christian; so that we who receive the Holy Ghost now abandon our Gentilism or our Judaism, as the case may be. Thus the key is given clearly and at once. The elders will have been — at a moment kept silent in the Apocalypse — translated to heaven, and they are seen there before the trouble comes, not only before the fury of the tribulation bursts, but before the preliminary judgments of God on earlier evils, and the efforts of the devil to ensnare the saints by deceit, and draw them into the final apostasy.

As to this it seems to me that the general bearing of the word of God is abundantly plain, without pretending of course, to enter into every minute point. We are only learners; and a great joy it is to learn of God and in His own way. May the Lord bless the testimony of His truth, and give every Christian to have not the least anxiety, but to cherish perfect confidence in His word and Spirit! The Thessalonians were troubled by a misuse of prophecy. Mischievous men, who knew not at all the grace of God, troubled and shook their souls by a false apprehension of the day of the Lord — the day of judgment for living men on the earth. It is a total mistake to suppose that their delusion sprang from a too eager or enthusiastic hope of the coming of Christ. The mischief was, that their hope had been displaced and practically annulled by terror from false doctrine about the day. Excited hope was not the delusion, but dread, as if the day of the Lord was present. It was not wrong to believe that the day was at hand; but this is not what the false teachers insinuated, nor what the apostle reproves. Our English version, unfortunately, is exceedingly to be regretted here; and I appeal to every scholar with an unbiassed mind whether ἐνέστηχε does not mean "is present" (contrasted often with merely being "at hand," and never really admitting of such a sense). They falsely taught, then, that the day of the Lord was actually come; and this was the delusion (for which they dared to allege a pretended letter of the apostle) that distressed the Thessalonian believers. 2 Thessalonians 2 dissipates the notion.

It is another instance of what our translators occasionally did. They could not make sense of the passage according to the plain meaning of the word, and so they ventured to do what no man ought to do; they gave up the real meaning of Scripture, and substituted another meaning, which they thought would make better sense, and must have been intended. Nobody is at liberty so to deal with God's word: it is not translating, but interpreting. Beloved friends, let us cleave to scripture, whether we understand it or not. If we do not, let us frankly confess our ignorance, but faithfully adhere to the words before us. What the Thessalonians were drawn into was the idea that the day of the Lord had already come. The false teachers seem to have construed the persecutions under which they were suffering as a proof that the day of the Lord was actually there. This the apostle treats as a falsehood, and the more as they claimed his authority for it. No one ought to listen to these men, nor were they to be troubled about such a rumour. He beseeches them, by their blessed hope of being gathered to the Lord at His coming, not to be frightened by the cry that the day was come.

Why indeed should a Christian be alarmed about anything? He is entitled to look death in the face, and to have boldness in the day of judgment, as John expressly says. And do you think that a man who can honestly and according to the truth and will of God thus contemplate the most solemn certainties of the eternal future should be justly alarmed at anything here below? A Jew or a Gentile ought to dread the tribulation if he faces the revelation of God about it ever so briefly; for the tribulation will be a retributive dealing with the unfaithfulness of the world, whether Jews or Gentiles, and especially of those who abuse the name of the Lord. But for this very reason it does not apply to the Christian at all. This is the moral truth of the case, and therefore I may well press it on all who have not duly weighed scripture as to it. I entreat you to cleave to the Lord's name and to His word. Value every help, and seek the best you can. If danger menaced your body, I daresay you would have recourse to those who, as you believe, could do you most good: I do not think you ought to do less, if the question is of your soul and God's own truth and glory.

May God bless you who believe, and give you hearts truly and humbly to cleave to Him and to the word of His grace, assured that He will exempt, according to His own word, those that keep the word of Christ's patience, and that He will also in the darkest days preserve Jews and Gentiles according to His word through the awful judgments that are coming upon the world.

W. K.

Innovation.

W. Kelly.

Dear Brother,

Isolation is not the only snare for the Christian in the present anomalous condition of Christendom. Innovation is another resource of unbelief, suited to a different order of mind, but no less a dishonour to God and a danger for man.

Tradition, even in the baseless sense which Romanism conceives, is less offensive to a pious mind. For it assumes to have ever ruled, though unwritten, from the beginning of the church; it claims till our day the maintenance of God's authority intact. The authentic and authoritative doctrine of the Council of Trent is, that in their communion, and in theirs only, is preserved the precise and full truth and discipline from Christ's lips received through the Holy Spirit from the apostles. Council. Trident. Sess. iv. They add, what is a foolish impossibility, that no one may dare to interpret scripture itself contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers. For, though this may sound fair to such as know little beyond a compendium of controversial theology, those at all familiar with the Fathers must be aware of their differences as to almost every truth of scripture they discuss. Nor this only; for they ignore not only the most fundamental blessings of the gospel for the Christian, but the highest and most characteristic privileges of the church. The theory however is that theirs is the truth held uninterruptedly from the first.

Now it is true that in receiving Christ the Christian has the truth. He, not the church, is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14). The Father of His own will begot believers by the word of truth (James 1: 18). The truth, the Son, makes the disciple free (John 8: 32-36). But, if the babes are declared to have unction from the Holy One and to know all things (1 John 2: 20), scripture, every scripture, not only the O.T. but still more the N.T., is the special safeguard as well as means, divinely inspired, and profitable, for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction. Thus only can the man of God be complete, fully fitted to every good work; as the church, having God's final as well as first word, is in both privilege and responsibility the truth's pillar and basement. In no other body here below, Jewish or Gentile, is this found. If Christ is the truth, God's assembly or church is bound to hold it forth legibly and unshaken.

So we know that Christ walked, our only perfect example. Never did any so honour God's word, as the Eternal Word here when He became flesh. See Him, even as a child of twelve, sitting in the midst of the teachers, hearing them, and asking them questions; and all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. He was Lord of all, but came to obey, and learnt obedience (being used to command) from the things which He suffered. When tempted by the devil, it was not otherwise: even when hungry after forty days' abstinence in the wilderness, He would not convert a stone into a loaf without a word from God. Still less would He do homage save to Jehovah, Israel's God, for all the kingdoms of the habitable earth; Him only did Christ serve. Nor would He put God or His promises to the test, as if He were not sure of His fidelity, but here as always stood on "It is written"; and if Satan misused it, He corrected and defeated him by "It is written again." He was always dependent and obedient. So He ever met the weakness, the prejudices, or the self-will of friends, the opposition, hypocrisy, and hatred of enemies: every class, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians; priests, rulers, scribes, lawyers, He met with the word of God. If the officials owned, as all but the most wanton and wicked must, that no man spoke as this Man, He Himself set as the highest testimony God's written word, even Moses' writings, beyond His spoken words (John 5: 45-47).

As in life, so in death He inflexibly obeyed and put honour on scripture. In His deepest suffering He expressed His sense of abandonment in the words written by His Spirit in David a thousand years before, as He commended His spirit to the Father in the language of another Psalm. Just before departing, and knowing that all things were now finished that the scripture might be fulfilled, He said, I thirst. Then a sponge full of vinegar and with hyssop round it was put to His mouth; whereon He said, It is finished, and bowing His head He delivered up His spirit: words never used of another, only proper to Him Who, though true man, was very God. Even so what care to prove the divine value of the written word! Not a bone of Him should be broken, proclaimed one scripture, as another predicted, They shall look on Him Whom they pierced.

Now we who believe are sanctified by the Spirit to the obedience, no less than to the blood-sprinkling, of Jesus (1 Peter 1: 2). We are not under law like Jews; we are called to obey like Himself, in the conscious relationship of sons of God. His word is a law of liberty to us, as partakers of a divine nature; for Christ is our life. Hence God's word is our directory and chart; as Christ is the true object, and the Holy Spirit is the power. Thus has God provided for His children, for His servants, for His church, in all possible wants, difficulties, and dangers. He reveals every truth; He prescribes every service that is good. Not an evil doctrine, not a devious way, is overlooked. There is a "commandment" for the beginner; there is the "word" for the more mature. Examples and warnings abound. The walk and the worship that please Him, being alone due to Him, are clearly set before us. For as our life in love upwards or downwards is also one of obedience in the Spirit, so it necessarily requires His word, that all may be the doing of His will.

So the Lord told Saul of Tarsus (who asks on his conversion what His will was), Rise up and go to Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which it is appointed thee to do. Whatever his place and power might be, Paul gives a blessed pattern of obedience to the Christian, and charged the saints to imitate him, as he also did Christ (1 Cor. 11: 1). Again, John urges the same principle in 1 John 2. Obedience is the first and most peremptory exercise of life, as we read in vers. 3-6. Love is essential, but justly follows in vers. 7-11; for the first-fruits are ever due to God. And if this be not so, we cannot love aright, and it might even become a peril and delusion.

This we had learnt to be the saving principle in the present ruin of Christendom. This was sought and taught in being gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. Others, whether avowing it or not, had departed from God's word and believed not in the presence of His Spirit, for subjection to Him. There is always danger of swerving for personal or party objects; which, when yielded to, adds another sect. Let us consider the apostles when they met to decide the great question of imposing the law on the Gentiles who believed (Acts 15). Not Peter nor Paul, but James pointed to "the words of the prophets," as agreeing with what God had now wrought in taking out of the nations a people for His name. Inspired men though they were, they thus rested on God's written word. As we have the final mind of God in the N.T., what infatuation it would be to turn to any device of men from His will now given in full for our guidance! It is not only that scripture is sufficient, but that thereby the man of God may be complete: the chief safeguard in these last and perilous days.

Where Christ is not thus the centre, nor God's word the absolute authority by the Spirit, it is not surprising that saints should legislate, either to evade a danger or to enlarge their borders. But "scripture cannot be broken." It really is to give up the divine for the human, to turn from faith to sight. Innovation is a departure fatal to any such stand as God insists on for the church or for the Lord's service.

For the first time had the retort come from within that those gathered to the Lord's name should be the last to complain of innovation, since they are the greatest of all innovators. A more perverse and unworthy utterance never was made. For our entire position is a return to the Lord's will individually and collectively. Every change that now prevails in great or little societies of Christendom we have renounced, in order to obey the word, relying on the Spirit's presence and action to glorify the Lord. That the adversaries of Christian obedience should try to defame recurrence to God's word is intelligible. They naturally assume that things as they are in their own company is the right thing; and they claim power to make as many new plans as they consider expedient. Next they venture to stigmatize those who go back to the beginning, in order to do God's will as He revealed it to His apostles, not because the charge is just, but because they regard it as most offensive to those who desire to be faithful, and as likely to please the multitude who judge by appearance and prefer present ease.

But is it not a humbling and afflicting fact, yet significant, that any one who ever took the place of being gathered to the Lord's name should have so completely forgotten the truth as to adopt the language of enemies? For the retort is not only to the last degree unintelligent land false; but it abandons God's word and substitutes the actual state of Christendom as the standard to judge by. For this poor gibe means, that it is innovation to leave Romanists and Anglicans, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, and that such ought not to complain of fresh innovation. Where is faith, where the obedience we owe our God, in such vain efforts to mislead? To follow the Lord and His apostles is the very reverse of innovation; and the adoption of such a reproach betrays an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

In a similar spirit is the application one has lately heard of Gamaliel's advice to the high priest and the council who sought to kill the apostles. "Refrain from these men and let them alone: because if this counsel or this work be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it be of God, ye will not be able to overthrow them, lest haply ye be found even fighting against God" (Acts 5: 38, 39). It was the common sense, and perhaps the conscience, of an unbelieving Rabbi warning his fellows blinded by fury; but he and they in the dark as to God's mind. For we know too well how the grossest departures from the truth, like Romanism and many other evil systems, may last for ages and outwardly flourish, instead of being soon overthrown. Think of Christians fallen so low as to cite what scripture tells us of God's providential care in thus working among those without to restrain the residue of man's fury, even if it be not yet made to praise Him, as it shall be! Think of perverting it to hinder the inalienable and imperative obligation of God's children, in refusing any service which lacks His authority in precept, example, or principle! What He wills is revealed; what is not revealed, as being outside faith, has no claim on obedience. It is human and lawless; and lawlessness is sin.

Yours ever in Christ, W.K.

Isaac

W. Kelly.

Introduction

Having already sought to weigh the history of Abraham, I desire to consider what Scripture gives us to learn of Isaac. It is true that much less is said of him than of Abraham on the one hand or of Jacob on the other; even less than of Joseph among the many sons of Jacob. Yet there is not a little, in the spiritual account of him who came between the two chief fathers, distinguished by his own equable, retired, and peaceful way, and indicative of great principles in God's Word and ways, not in the Old Testament only but also in the New.

Isaac was the pattern of sonship, the child of promise, and as Abraham was its depository, elect, called out, blessed, and to be a blessing universally for the earth at the end, though himself looking higher by faith. Sovereign grace wrought as to both father and son. "For the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through law, but through the righteousness of faith." Thus only could it be, as it was, according to grace; that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of Abraham's faith, who is father of us all, before the God whom he believed, who quickens the dead and calls the things which are not as though they were.

But the progress of revelation as to this is as interesting as instructive. It was when Lot's choice of the well-watered plain of Jordan severed him from the one to whom all the land was promised that Jehovah renewed the assurance of it all not only to Abraham but to his seed (Gen. 12: 7; Gen. 13: 15). Still had the patriarch to wait; and when, after his disinterestedness on the occasion of his victory, he lays his childlessness before Jehovah, the word came that not Eliezer, his steward, should be his heir, but he that should come forth out of his own bowels, seed numerous as the stars (Gen. 15). Then after the episode of Hagar in Genesis 16 comes the revelation of God Almighty, El-Shaddai, in Genesis 17, and under the outward rite of circumcision, death to the flesh imposed on him and his seed, with a new name to his wife as well as himself; for she too has the promise of the son, whose name was given. Thus however great and fruitful He would make Ishmael, His covenant was to be established in Isaac, whose birth had a time set for it.

The exceptional interest Jehovah took in the birth of Isaac has a still more striking witness in Genesis 18. There in the guise of man He Himself appeared with two angels (compare Gen. 19: 1) to Abraham, and deigned to partake of the meal he prepared and set before them under the tree in Mamre. Thus and then He specified the precise certainty of the time when Sarah should have a son. For the difficulty lay, humanly speaking, yet more in the wife than in the husband, and her unbelief was reproved. But Abraham as the "friend" of God, heard not of his son's birth only, but of the world's judgment, which drew out his soul in intercession for his righteous kinsman and his house in ungodly and lawless Sodom. If his advocacy stopped short, "God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the overthrow."

After another failure in Genesis 20 (more guilty than the first occasion in Genesis 12), Jehovah visited Sarah as He had said, and Jehovah did to Sarah as He had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. Him on the eighth day Abraham circumcised; and Sarah's laughter was now of overflowing joy and gratitude. But the great feast on the child's weaning drew out Ishmael's mockery, and the expulsion of the bondmaid and her son on Sarah's remonstrance, an allegory to which Galatians 4 gives us the key.

The great change is then adumbrated. For instead of Abimelech reproving Abraham justly, Abraham now reproved the Gentile king; who with the chief captain of his host, owns God with him in all that he does. Yet Abraham swears to show him kindness; and they make a covenant. And as the well of the oath was not without significance, so neither was the grove planted there, or the calling on the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God. The day was anticipated when "in the wilderness shall waters break out," and "the glory of Lebanon shall be given to it." The blessedness of the coming age for the earth is thus typified.

After these things, and quite distinct from them, God tried Abraham. What is not here for God as well as man! It is the picture, which blind unbelief alone fails to see, of the Only-begotten Son given, of the Lamb which God would provide Himself for a Burnt Offering. Here Isaac gave himself up to die, as Abraham was ready at God's word to sacrifice his beloved son: the sign of a far better thing.

But Jehovah arrests his hand when his heart was proved, and confirms to the son raised from the dead in a figure, that in Christ, the Antitype, should all the nations of the earth be blessed, as the apostle reasons in Galatians 3.

Then after the passing away of Sarah (the covenanted mother of the child of promise), we have the call of the bride for the bridegroom and heir of all. Next are given certain details of Isaac's history, as we shall examine in due time after this preliminary notice. Yet we may notice here the "moderation" of Isaac made known to all men in the question of the wells his servants found (Gen. 26); and the crisis of his ways when his foot had well nigh slipped in the matter of his two sons (Gen. 27). Grace here overruled; and he was saved yet so as by fire. How striking it is that such a scene should be singled out to his praise in Hebrews 11: 20! "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau even concerning things to come." Isaac lived many years after this; but Scripture records only his death and burial.

His Antecedents

Genesis 12-20

Isaac stands in marked contrast with Abraham, though he and Jacob were "the fellow-heirs of the same promise." But Abraham comes before us the unexpected object of sovereign grace. The tales, so plentiful among Jews and Muslims, of preternatural ability and attainments of wisdom and goodness antecedent to his call, are altogether fabulous and excluded by Scripture. All the more therefore did he suit divine election. No prophetic word hailed his birth like Noah's, whose father said, This same shall comfort us for our work and for the toil of our hands, because of the ground which Jehovah hath cursed. Yet no man was given to hold a place as "father of those that believe," like Abraham, a headship of higher character than Adams's. But Isaac has the peculiarity of his own, however personally and in place overshadowed by his honoured father, in that he was gradually introduced before his birth more frequently and signally than any, save that Son of Abraham, and Son of David who was also Son of God as no one else could be, Isaac's great Antitype.

It may be of interest to draw out the evidence of this. In Genesis 12: 7 "Jehovah appeared to Abram and said, To thy seed I will give this land; and there built he an altar to Jehovah who appeared to him." Long before in Ur of the Chaldees had Jehovah said to Abraham, "Get thee (or, Go) out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, to the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12: 1-3). Therein Abram at first failed, not quitting his father but following him to Haran, from which he did not emerge till his father's death (Acts 7: 4).

Then and not before "Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had acquired and the souls that they had got in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came." Obedience now had its perfect work, and its result accordingly. The renewed appearing of Jehovah was not only a call to separation, but to the walk of faith, a pilgrim and a sojourner in the land of promise as in [a land] not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob the fellow-heirs of the same promise; for he awaited the city that hath the foundations, whose designer and master-builder is God" (Heb. 11: 9, 10). What was the possession of an earthly seat compared with this in heaven which dawned on his faith? Now he learns that Jehovah would give it to his "seed." He worships and was content to be a stranger; and as he moved his tent elsewhere in the land, he built an altar to Jehovah and called on His name (Gen. 12: 8).

Still "seed" was vague, as it is explained in Romans 9: 7 and so appears also in John 8: 33-39. But the time was not yet come. Abram failed in his new place, swerving from the revelation which had so happily wrought in his walk and worship. He goes down into Egypt for help under the strain of a famine in the land; and there is not a word of altar or tent. There he denies his wife, who was taken into the home of this world's prince, and got rich by it to his shame. Jehovah failed not, but plagued Pharaoh and extricated Sarai. This was not "all families of the earth blessed" in him: how could it be other than a curse when the depository of the blessing had left his true place with Jehovah and compromised his wife? Delivered by overruling mercy, he returns to the south or Negeb, and thence as far as Bethel, "to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai; to the place of the altar that he had made there at the first; and there Abram called on the name of Jehovah" (Gen. 13: 3, 4). The humiliation before was blessed to one, whose first wrong step led to worse; but his heart turned to Him who had rescued them, and he again regains his privilege without a fresh appearing to him. But in the strife between their respective herdsmen that followed, Abram is as disinterested as his nephew betrays his worldly wisdom. And "Jehovah said to Abram, after that Lot had separated himself from him, Lift up now thine eyes and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land that thou seest will I give to thee and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth," etc. (vv. 14-18). Lot has no title here. A fuller view of the land was given to him who looked above: it was secured forever to him and his. Again Abraham moves to Hebron and built there an altar to Jehovah. His worship rises afresh.

Next, after the wondrous episode of Abram's victory over the earthly potentates, who had punished their vassal kings and carried off Lot, and after the still more wondrous scene of the mysterious King-priest of the Most High God, we have (in a new series of Abram's history) the word of Jehovah coming in a vision, to assure him that not Eliezer, but "he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir," and like the unnumbered stars, "so shall thy seed be." And he believed Jehovah, who reckoned it to him as righteousness; of which the New Testament makes fruitful use. So it must be for the earthly seed, as well as the heavenly: flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. It is the earthly which is in view here; as this was what Abram sought, and God bound Himself by covenant based on death of victims, with prophecy and the limits of the land defined according to the Gentile races in present possession.

But if the son and heir was now defined to be Abram's, not so yet the mother. For in Genesis 16 Sarah manifests the haste which is not of faith but the device of nature, to gain the blessing in its way to the sorrow of all and especially her own. This the apostle applies allegorically to Israel under law. In Genesis 17 Jehovah reveals Himself (not His gifts only) by the new name of El-Shaddai (God Almighty), not His word in a vision, but God talking with him who has His covenant and the enlarged promise to be father of a multitude of nations, and kings to come out of him. Circumcision, death not of victims but of flesh, is imposed; and as Abram's name was now widened, so Sarai's was raised: Abram's son God would give of her. "And thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant to his seed after him" (v. 19). Ishmael was not to be forgotten of God; but His covenant should be with Isaac, whom Sarah was to bear at this set time in the next year. Thus was the case made increasingly full and clear.

These preparative notices are crowned in Genesis 18 where Jehovah appeared to Abraham by the terebinths of Mamre, and with two angels, who in human guise deigned to honour him as his guests. He thus emphasizes the importance to be attached to Isaac's birth, which even then Sarah laughs at as too wonderful. But the son and heir will surely come at the appointed time, and Jehovah personally announces it for the last time before it is accomplished. And we may note the proof He gives that He made Abraham His friend by telling him, not only the detail of what so intimately concerned himself and Sarah, but the judgment He was sending the angels to execute on the guilty cities of the plain. This draws out Abraham, not now to ask for himself, but to intercede, and Jehovah answered beyond his faith.

Yet Abraham failed once more after so signal a favour. How often it is so! Flesh is puffed up, not judged: we are off our guard, instead of watching to prayer. No flesh shall glory, but as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. The unbelief of the believer led to deceit; and the sin of Abraham was worse now with Abimelech than long before with Pharaoh. He denied his wife's relationship, after Jehovah let him know the soon coming birth of the promised son by her. Yet though inexcusable and reproved by the Philistine king, God does not forget but maintains Abraham's relationship and makes Abimelech seek his prayers.

The Son and Heir Born

Genesis 21: 1-7

The set time was now come. The child of promise was at hand. Many and various had been the premonitions on the one side, and checks on the other; but at length in the face of weakness and drawbacks, of unfaithfulness with gracious overruling, the divine word is proved to be, as it is, unfailing and worthy of all trust.

"And Jehovah visited Sarah as he had said, and Jehovah did to Sarah as he had spoken. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. And Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God hath made me laugh: everyone that heareth will laugh with me. And she said, Who would have said to Abraham, Sarah will give children suck? for I have borne a son in his old age" (vv. 1-7).

Here the usage of the divine designations comes before us remarkably. To impute the difference to distinct authors is the despairing or malevolent resource of unbelieving ignorance. First of all "Jehovah" occurs with emphatic repetition (v. 1). Governmental relationship was in question; and as Jehovah had promised, so also did He show Himself faithful to perform. But it was of no less moment in the next place to indicate that He who thus spoke was God in the supremacy of His nature (v. 2). Hence "Elohim" is employed, and throughout the chapter, till verse 33 where relative dealings properly demand the name of "Jehovah Elohim," as will be shown in due course.

But beyond controversy it was the birth of one who here typifies the Son of Psalm 2: 7, 12. This explains why there should have been so many prophetic intimations to prepare the way. This accounts for the serious consequences which followed for such as despised Him when come. So the prophet was given to say, more than seven centuries before the event (Isa. 9: 6 and following): "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And they shall call his name Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of eternity, Prince of peace." The prediction, glowing and glorious as it is, has nothing to do with His being Firstborn from the dead, Head of the body, the church, who is the beginning. It belongs to His other Headship, as born into the world, the Firstborn of all creation. For in all things He must have the supreme place.

Hence we can see that Calvin only expresses the prevalent confusion of these two relationships, when he says that in this chapter God has set before us a lively picture of His church.

Not so. It is not "the mystery" which is here foreshown, but the new covenant; it is the mother,* and not the bride. Consequently the Christian has already new covenant blessing in the death of the saviour; but the Scripture which most fully explains it to us (2 Cor. 3) points to its being in spirit rather than in letter; it will be formally with both houses of Israel in the day which fast approaches, and for ever. But Israel, however richly blessed in that day, will not have the union with Christ as His body, which is ours even now with Him who is Head over all things. And this involves the most important differences, as widely apart as heaven is from earth, of which this is not the place to speak more particularly. The distinction however, cannot well be overestimated.

*It may be noticed here that the error in question gave rise to the spurious reading πάυτωυ at the end of Galatians 4: 26, and to the no less unfounded misinterpretation of "Israel of God" in Galatians 6: 16, as if the phrase meant all the saints, though two classes are here distinguished.

Next in verse 3 Abraham called his new-born son Isaac. So he was now, whatever had gone before, whatever might come after. Any laughter of doubt had given place to the joy of grace. And Abraham certainly looked on with joy to wide, deep, and enduring results; he rejoiced that he should see Christ's day, and he saw it and was glad. How blessed will it be for Israel and the earth and all the nations and every creature of God! How different from the day of Massah and Meribah in the wilderness; when man hardened his heart and Jehovah was grieved long years with a generation that erred in their heart and knew not His ways! In that day what singing aloud to Jehovah, what shouting for joy to the rock of salvation, and coming before His face with thanksgiving and psalms! Yea, the heavens shall rejoice and the earth be glad; the sea shall roar and the fullness thereof; the field shall exult and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before Jehovah, for He cometh  -  for He cometh to judge the earth: He will judge the world with righteousness, and the people in His faithfulness (Ps. 96). Isaiah bears the same witness at intervals from his first chapter to his last, notably in Isa. 11; Isa. 12; 24-27; Isa. 30; Isa. 32; Isa. 35; Isa. 40-45; Isa. 49-55; Isa. 60-62; and Isa. 65. So we may say in general have all the prophets spoken. So much the more lamentable is the unbelief which merges all in the church's blessings, only to lose its heavenly bridal place to no end obscured by that groundless confusion.

But the joy of Abraham in no way weakened his duty of subjecting his son to the sign of death for the flesh. He circumcised Isaac duly when he was eight days old, "as God had commanded him" (v. 4). The eighth day points to resurrection in contrast with nature. Circumcision was instituted, not when Ishmael was born, but in view of Isaac, the seal of the covenant. The principle was God's righteousness. Man was judged as evil and flesh mortified.

It is notified in verse 5 that Abraham was a hundred years of age when Isaac was born. Faith had indeed to wait, but was in no way disappointed: God is faithful. "And Sarah said, God hath made me laugh; every one that heareth will laugh with me" (v. 6). She had laughed at first when Jehovah announced the set time for her to be a mother, and she added the shame of untruth when taxed with it (Gen. 18). But all is here changed by grace. God, she owns, made her laugh now. It was no longer within herself, but of Him; and others who heard would share her joy. "And she said, Who would have said to Abraham, Sarah will give children suck? For I have borne a son in his old age" (v. 7). Sarah is thenceforth, old as she was, become a child of wisdom; and wisdom is justified of all her children.

Isaac Abiding Hagar and Ishmael Dismissed

Genesis 21: 8-21

God knows how to rectify the false position that springs from unbelief. We may therefore look to Him and His Word, and have only to obey. But if this ever costs the flesh not a little, blessing surely follows self-denying submission to His will.

"And the child grew and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw Hagar the Egyptian's son, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. And she said to Abraham, Cast out this maid-servant and her son; for this maid-servant's son shall not be heir with my son, with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son. And God said to Abraham, Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy maid- servant: [in] all that Sarah saith to thee, hearken to her voice; for in Isaac shall a seed be called to thee. But also the maid-servant's son will I make a nation, because he is thy seed. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and took bread and a leathern bottle of water and gave [it] to Hagar, putting [it] on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away; and she departed and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba. And the water from the bottle was exhausted; and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. And she went and sat down over against [him] about a bowshot; for she said, I will not look on the death of the child. And she sat over against [him,] and lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the lad's voice; and God's angel called to Hagar out of the heaven, and said to her, What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not; for God hath heard the lad's voice there where he is. Arise, take the lad, and hold him in thy hand, for a great nation will I make him. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and she went and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad; and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness, and became as he grew up an archer. And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt" (vv. 8-21).

As the child born and the son given typified the Son of the Highest, it was meet that the occasion should be marked by consequences of the gravest. What can distinguish inspiration more than the lesson the apostle in Galatians 4: 22-26 draws from that which seems on the surface a mere domestic occurrence? "For it is written that Abraham had two sons; one of the maid-servant, and one of the free-woman. But he that was of the maid-servant was born according to flesh, and he that was of the free-woman through the promise. Which things have an allegorical sense; for these [women] are two covenants: one from Mount Sinai, gendering unto bondage, which is Hagar. For Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to the present Jerusalem; for she is in bondage with her children; but the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother."

This was God's purpose, though none apprehend it save those who have Christ's mind. Hence the unbelieving Jews fill the place, not of Isaac, but of Ishmael. They are as far as possible from suspecting that they are only born according to flesh, and persecute him that is born according to Spirit. Yet they cannot deny that their mother is the Sinai covenant, and that they are cast out by God. They have the law's curse as transgressors; they have not a shred of the promise to cover their nakedness. Their own prophets declare that they are not God's people, and if without a false god without the True, as they have plainly neither land nor prince; and this because they rejected, first Jehovah, next His Christ.

But the apostle goes a great deal farther; and though he does not confound the believing Gentiles with Israel, like the theologians of Christendom, he shows that all who take their stand on law come under the curse (Gal. 3: 10). Thus the principle applies in all its force, indeed emphatically, to Gentiles, who have not the excuse of inveterate Jewish prejudices. It is to fall from grace, through which alone can souls be saved. Law cannot save but condemn sinners; and if grace be mixed with law, the mixture is unavailing: grace only can save the guilty and lost. The Galatians who were bewitched to tack law on to grace, he solemnly warns of utter ruin, so sure that as many as are of works of law (i.e., on this principle) are under curse. After having begun in Spirit, how senseless for them to seek perfection in flesh! The law itself, in the tale of Abraham's two sons, convicts of folly those who thus abuse the law. Its lawful application (1 Tim: 1: 9) is not to a righteous person, but to lawless and insubordinate, to impious and sinful, to unholy and profane, to whatever in short is opposed to the healthful doctrine Paul taught.

Hence the peremptory tone of the apostle to the endangered Galatians. He will have this "leaven" extirpated, whatever it cost. It was a deeper peril than the "leaven" which he enjoins the Corinthians to purge out. Not even a moral man could defend the gross inconsistency with Christ and His sacrifice of having the wicked man in their midst. But the fair show in flesh set up in the Galatians churches was subtler, and a denial of the grace which the gospel proclaims, when law had been proved to be simply a ministry of death and condemnation. What then "saith the scripture? Cast out the maid-servant and her son; for the son of the maid-servant shall in no wise be heir with the son of the free- woman." The Judaizing Gentile is even more blamable than the Jew. Alas! the ritualism of the day is incomparably worse still and growingly apostate; for not content with the legal forms of Israel, it incorporates the idolatries of the heathen also, as in the adoration of the sacramental elements, etc.

Yet is it affecting to know God's goodness to Abraham's seed according to flesh. When the mother yielded to despair, and laid her son down to die at a distance from her, "God heard the lad's voice"; and His angel bids Hagar hold him in her hand. Had not Jehovah called his name Ishmael, because He had heard her affliction? And as she was then by a fountain called Beer-la-hai-roi, Well of the living who was seen (or, seeth me), from the name of Him that spoke to her (Gen. 16), so now God opened her eyes to see a well of water whence she gave the lad drink. If she forgot the divine assurance of a numberless multitude in general to spring from her, and that Ishmael should dwell in the presence of all his brethren, God remembered him and declares that He will make him a great nation. So it has been. There they are with the same characteristics to this day.

Jehovah, God Everlasting

Genesis 21: 22-34

Though the name of Isaac does not occur in this section, it is in no way a digression, but in strict pursuance of the divine ways on the occasion of his birth, the dismissal of Hagar and her son, and the recognition of Sarah's son as the sole heir of Abraham.

"And it came to pass at that time that Abimelech, and Phichol the captain of his host, spoke to Abraham, saying, God [is] with thee in all that thou doest. And now swear to me here by God that thou wilt not [literally, if thou shalt] deal falsely with me nor with my offspring nor with my son's son. According to the kindness that I have done to thee, thou shalt do to me and to the land in which thou hast sojourned. And Abraham said, I will swear. And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away. And Abimelech said, I know not who hath done this, and also thou didst not tell me, and also I heard not but today. And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave [them] to Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant. And Abraham set seven ewe-lambs of the block by themselves. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, what [mean] here these seven ewe-lambs which thou hast set by themselves? And he said, For seven ewe-lambs shalt thou take, that they may be a witness to me that I dug this well. Wherefore he called that place Beersheba, because they had sworn, both of them. And they made a covenant at Beersheba; and Abimelech rose up and Phichol chief of his host, and returned into the Philistines' land. And [Abraham] planted a tamarisk (or, a grove) in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Jehovah God everlasting. And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days" (vv. 22-34).

It was not only that due order of the household was now secured by the expulsion of the Egyptian and her mocking son, and that the child of promise abode without a rival; but an outward event follows of such significance that the Holy Spirit gives it here an imperishable place. The marked blessing that resulted drew the Gentile's heart, and the Philistine with due formality (for the commander-in-chief accompanied him) seeks the pledged friendship of Abraham. So it will be in days to come when the promises are accomplished in the Messiah; and thus far Isaac typifies Him. It was far otherwise when the Lord came the first time, and even the Jew rejected Him in dark unbelief and in bitter hatred that the grace which they refused should be preached to the nations. Unhappy and unholy, they please not God and are contrary to all men; and the wrath is come on them to the uttermost. But the day hastens when they judging themselves shall welcome by faith Him in whom the promises are Yea and Amen unto the glory of God. Then shall Gentile kings be Zion's nursing fathers, and queens her nursing mothers (Isa. 49); then shall ten men take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you (Zech. 8).

Nor does Abraham at all repel the Gentiles. The Seed of promise received and honoured leads to a new state of things for the earth. To the king Abraham assents, and forms a covenant on oath and other solemnities. In the Seed are the Gentiles to be blessed. Woe to those that curse in that day! A witness of the change to ensue on the largest scale is here given by Abraham's reproving Abimelech. Now only does he speak of the wrong done by Abimelech's servants who had violently possessed themselves of a well dug by Abraham. And Abimelech bows meekly. Righteousness will reign in that day, and princes shall rule in judgment; yea, judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. For the Spirit will then be poured on Israel from on high; and He holds the inflexible sceptre over all the earth, the Righteous Servant and Atoning Sufferer, who in that day shall be seen exalted, and lifted up, and very high. And Israel's seed shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which Jehovah hath blessed (Isa. 61). The limper shall no longer halt, but the first dominion be even to the daughter of Jerusalem.

The Well-of-the-Oath is the name Abraham gives as the permanent sign of the covenant made then and there. Typically it is a total change from strangership to possession, as it will be really in the days of the coming Kingdom. Nor do we hear of a tent now, though Abraham's calling on the name of Jehovah implies a fresh altar here. Only it is not now as the One who appeared to him in the far off land, and led him at length, separated to Him, into Canaan; nor is it the altar he built at Bethel anymore than at Shechem, nor yet at Hebron. Here only is the striking change, which inspiration alone can account for, to "God everlasting." For so it will be when the displayed Kingdom comes in power and glory. Fallen and fading things will then give place to permanence and peace and blessing. For "Thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee" (Ps. 102).

In unison with all this is the planting of a grove on Abraham's part. Here only do we read of such an act, the beautiful prefiguration of "that day" when the parched land shall blossom abundantly, and all the trees of the wood shall sing for joy.

Isaac Dead and Risen in Figure

Genesis 22: 1-14

Here begins an entirely new section of the book, which we may regard as stretching over the death of Abraham in Genesis 25, though more than once verses seem appended to complete the history rather than higher views. No more profound principle can there be than that which is introduced as the basis in our chapter; for it is death and resurrection in the person of a beloved son, an only-begotten. Such a type is unmistakable save to the blind. The very details are full of living force: what then is the Antitype? All is impressive, lovely, and instructive in the highest degree. As the figure of Abraham looms most in the scene, and as this has been years ago before us in treating of him, it remains to speak here of Isaac.

"And it came to pass after these things that God tried Abraham and said to him, Abraham; and he said, Behold me. And He said, Take now thy son, thine only [one] whom thou lovest, Isaac, and get thee into the Moriah land, and offer him there for a burnt-offering on one of the mountains which I shall tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he crave wood for burnt-offering, and rose up and went to the place of which God told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship (or, bow down), and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood for burnt-offering, and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and knife; and they went both of them together; and they came to the place which God told him of; and there did Abraham build the altar and pile the wood; and he bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And Jehovah's angel called to him from the heavens, and said, Abraham, Abraham; and he said, Behold me. And he said, Stretch not forth thy hand against the lad, nor do thou anything to him; for now I know that thou fearest God and hast not withheld thy son, thine only [one] from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold a ram behind caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for burnt-offering, instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh; as it is said this day, On Jehovah's mount it will be provided" (vv. 1-14).

We must bear in mind that "the lad" had at least reached his majority, as we say; Josephus (Antiquities 1: 13, 2) makes him 25 years old. His entire submissiveness to his father indeed, but also to the will of God, is exactly in keeping with his piety. If it was beautiful in the type, how much more in that which it shadowed! For it was unsought and infinite love in both Father and Son.

Here it was not merely a test of the strongest claim ever made on the heart of man, indefinitely increased by the promise so long waited for and so singularly accomplished, and by the full persuasion of world-wide blessing which centred in that very son, and yet seemed to be made impossible by the intensely painful act to which he was called. What was suffered to the full and unsparingly, that God might be glorified, that sin might be condemned in a sacrifice of blessing to sinners without bound or end, that good might surpass where evil abounded, that love might overcome where enmity had wrought its worst, that Satan might be vanquished where he had been a prince and a god, that man might be brought, no longer a child of wrath but of God, out of all iniquity, intense misery, and everlasting judgment to peace and righteousness before God now and to heavenly glory with Christ in the presence of the Father forever?

The father and son brought before us so strikingly here furnished an unrivalled occasion to show in a figure or "parable," as it is called in Hebrews 9: 17-19, the real death and as real resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The interpretation given, as it has been believed by all saints of New Testament times, rests on no probability however strong, on no tradition of men, however ancient. He that disputes will have to give account of his inexcusable incredulity to the Lord Himself when we are manifested before His judgment seat. Very beautiful is the minute accuracy of this New Testament comment. "By faith Abraham when tried hath offered up Isaac; and he that took up to himself the promises was offering up the only-begotten, in respect of whom it was spoken, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that even from the dead God is able to raise; whence also he received him in a parable." We may not in English easily express the perfect in the first instance of the offering; but the force is evident and points to the subsisting or fixed result of that act. Morally it was done; and the effect abides. The second use of the word in the imperfect corrects all possible misuse of that; for it states that literally Abraham was in the act of offering his only son when arrested as Genesis tells us by Jehovah's angel. The spiritual test was complete, though the act was not completed. So had divine wisdom ordered and accomplished.

Nor is this new thing, though only in parable, an isolated and transient fact, but is connected in the declarations and the events that follow with consequences of the utmost importance, as will be shown in due time. This is the most powerful and conclusive proof that the Scripture is in the fullest sense inspired of God. It is not only that a moral pinnacle is here reached as never before; but that the death

and resurrection of Christ prefigured by it reflects on what follows a light which shows that what is related stands in perfect keeping with that infinite event, and is a shadow of what we find in the new Testament could only follow it, as it did according to God's counsels and in the development of His ways.

The answer of the father to the son (vv. 7, 8) was from above and in a wisdom wholly above man's; God's providing Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering is the basis of the new and only justifying righteousness, God's righteousness. In the infinite reality it was the Son become man and on behalf of men yet to God's glory, after proving Himself the righteous Servant, made sin for us, that we who believe might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus was love maintained as fully as holiness, and that new righteousness, God's righteousness which can justify absolutely him that believes on the Lord Jesus, instead of condemning the sinner as he deserves. It was the Father's will, the Son's work, and Holy Spirit's witness, as indeed we read in Hebrews 10.

Viewed merely on the historical side, what admirable devotedness to God's authority testing the heart to the uttermost! What unhesitating trust in God and His word, that the giving up of what is dearest in possession and hope would result in unimpaired re-establishment of all! And so it truly was in the issue, and beyond all expectation of man as he is.

Isaac: The Numerous Seed, and the One Seed

Genesis 22: 15-24

Consequent on the wondrous type of the far more wondrous sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, we have Jehovah's angel announcing to Abraham His solemn oath on that which deeply concerned both Jews and Gentiles, and we may add God Himself most nearly, and His title to bless not only in His righteous government but in sovereign grace according to His nature.

"And Jehovah's angel called to Abraham a second time from the heavens, and said, By myself I swear, saith Jehovah, that because thou hast done this and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thy seed as stars of the heavens, and as sand that is on the sea's shore; and thy seed shall possess his enemies' gate; and in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast harkened to my voice. And Abraham returned to his young men; and they rose up and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.

"And it came to pass after these things that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milcah, she also hath borne children to thy brother Nahor: Uz his firstborn, and Buz his brother, and Kemuel father of Aram, and Chesed, and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph and Bethuel (and Bethuel begot Rebekah). These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother. And his concubine named Reumah, she also bore Tebah and Gaham and Tahash and Maacah" (vv. 15-24).

Because of Jehovah's appreciation of Abraham's unreserved surrender to Him of what was most precious to his heart, first comes the assurance of rich blessing and great multiplication of his seed according to flesh. It should be for multitude as stars of the heavens and as sand of the seashore. Nor this only, but with power over their adversaries, as befits the earthly people of His choice. Beyond just question Israel is thus in view (v. 17).

But there follows in verse 18 a promise intentionally severed, and couched in such terms as point to the True Seed in whom should all the nations of the earth be blessed. And here not a hint was uttered of a numerous posterity; as indeed the evident aim was to indicate the One on whom alone depended blessing of a far higher order, and this for "all the nations of the earth." Here we are recalled to the original promise made to the patriarch and recorded in the last half of Genesis 12: 3: "And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." There, as here, it follows the national blessing of the earthly people. It was therefore left open and goes out in unlimited grace as in the gospel. He only could thus speak who knew the end from the beginning.

Of this the apostle in the power of the Holy Spirit avails himself in writing to the Galatians (Gal. 3), beguiled as they then were into that judaizing of heavenly truth which has been and is the sore bane of Christendom. Works of law are a ruinous principle for sinful men; the promise is by faith, whereby alone believers are blessed with the faithful Abraham. For as many as are of law- works are under curse; not merely such as violate the law, but all that take the ground of law before God. As surely as they do, they being sinful fall under curse. Therefore Deuteronomy 27 is cited, wherein the Holy Ghost passes by all account of the blessings of the six tribes on Mount Gerizim, and only gives in detail the curses of the other six on Mount Ebal. These alone were effective. The blessings cannot be for guilty man on that ground. It is by faith, says the prophet, the just shall live; and redemption from curse is needed for those under law, that the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations in Christ Jesus, as the gospel declares. Nor is this all. For the Seed is arrived, and the covenant is confirmed, as it was typically in Isaac, dead and risen parabolically. Hence the apostle proceeds, "But to Abraham were addressed the promises, and to his seed" — to the father in Genesis 12, and to his son in Genesis 22. "He saith not, 'And to seeds,' as of many, but as of one, 'And to thy seed' [where allusion to stars and sand, as well as 'greatly multiplying,' are quite dropped], which is Christ."

The reasoning of the apostle, here as elsewhere, only appears weak to presumptuous men, who are unbelieving and so must fail to understand God's mind in it. Where souls accept the divine authority, not only of the Epistle to the Galatians, but of Genesis which the Epistle assumes, all is seen to be bright, profoundly true, and of living interest. It is no question of mere grammar, but of context; which, in the promise that distinctly contemplates Israel, makes much of numbers; whereas in that which introduces the Gentiles for blessing, it says not a word about anything of the kind, but only of one, "thy seed." It was a covenant confirmed beforehand by God; and the law, which came after four hundred and thirty years, does not annul it, so as to make the promise of no effect. Nor does the law clash with the promise: each has its own object; the one, a ministry of death and condemnation; the other, of blessing by faith. Mixing the two does the mischief; and this is exactly to what man is prone, and what Scripture ever explicitly sets aside.

In the light of New Testament facts, how the types of Genesis come out! The woman's Seed is surely man, yet more than man, bruised to bruise utterly and forever the old serpent the devil, fallen angel as he is. Abraham's Seed, foreshown in Isaac dead and risen in figure, portrays the Deliverer in the wholly new condition of man beyond death, able to bless Gentiles in sovereign grace no less than Jews, and unite them to Himself in heavenly glory. And this is just what the gospel now reveals to faith.

The closing verses of the chapter bring before us a brief sketch of Nahor's line (Abraham's brother), whose son Bethuel was father of Rebekah through Milcah the wife, not through Reumah the concubine. How closely this connects itself with Isaac's future we shall have before us in due time, carrying out the purpose of God.

Sarah Dead and Buried

Genesis 23

Here is given the decease of Sarah with her burial, to which inspiration devotes a considerable place. Is there no instruction beyond the affecting moral that is before all eyes? Where in all the Old Testament is there such a picture of a husband's sorrow in providing a burial place for the departed wife? Where of a father's care and faith in the call of a bride for his son, as in the chapter that follows? We have looked into the deep typical lessons of the chapter that precedes, and we hope to weigh that which is hardly less to be questioned in that which is now to occupy us. Is it to be assumed that our chapter is altogether devoid of similar truth below the surface? Let us at least seek to learn of God through His Word.

"And the life of Sarah was a hundred and twenty-seven years — the years of Sarah's life. And Sarah died in Kirjath-Arba, that [is] Hebron in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, I [am] a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a sepulchre with you, that I may bury my dead before me. And the sons of Heth answered Abraham, saying to him, Hear us, my lord: thou [art] a prince of God among us; in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead: none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre for burying thy dead. And Abraham rose up and bowed himself to the people of the land, to the sons of Heth, and spoke to them, saying, If it be your will that I should bury my dead from before me, hear me, and entreat for me Ephron son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which is his, which [is] at the end of his field; for the full price let him give it to me among you for a possession of a sepulchre. And Ephron was sitting among the sons of Heth. And Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the ears of the sons of Heth, of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, No, my lord; hear me. The field give I thee; and the cave that [is] in it, to thee I give it; before the eyes of the sons of my people I give it thee: bury thy dead. And Abraham bowed himself before the people of the land; and he spoke to Ephron in the ears of the people of the land, saying, But if only thou wouldst listen to me, I give the price of the field: take [it] of me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying to him, My lord, hearken to me. A field of four hundred shekels of silver, what [is] that between me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened to Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the price that he had named in the ears of the sons of Heth  -  four hundred shekels of silver current with the merchant. So the field of Ephron which [was] at Machpelah, which [was] before Mamre, the field and the cave that [was] in it, and all the trees that [were] in the field, that [were] in all its borders round about, were assured to Abraham for a possession before the eyes of the sons of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field at Machpelah, opposite to Mamre, that [is] Hebron in the land of Canaan. And the field and the cave that was in it were assured to Abraham for a possession of a sepulchre by the sons of Heth" (vv. 1-20).

The sketch is so simple and so graphic as to need few words. Abraham's grief lives before us, as does his noble bearing in such circumstances with the sons of Heth for a cave wherein to bury his dead. It was a delicate affair. For the Hittites were touched, courteous, and friendly; while Abraham, resolute to plead for such, as in Genesis 14: 24, was no less resolute to appropriate nothing now as then for himself. Even in the presence of death would he preserve the place of pilgrim and stranger in their midst. He would pay in full for a possession, not of a mansion nor of an estate, but of a sepulchre. Ephron, oriental-like, set his price abundantly high for those days; and Abraham weighed it in presence of all, the then mode of lawful and sure conveyance with a curious anticipation of modern particularity. Otherwise the patriarch had no inheritance in the promised land, no, not so much as to set his foot on, whatever argument the late Bishop of Lincoln set up to the contrary. Even for a grave he would not be unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion has light with darkness? Abraham would be separate and touch no unclean thing. Is this scorn or pride? Not so, but subjection to God, and maintenance of His honour by His children, however weak and unworthy, as some are, but all ought to be, quite willing to allow.

Typically viewed, Sarah was the free mother of the child of promise, in contrast with the bondmaid and her son cast out already, according to the doctrine of Galatians 4. Now that the Son is seen dead and risen, even that covenant, which Sarah represents, passes away, in order to bring in a yet higher counsel of the Father who would call a bride for His Son in the heavenlies. As surely as Sarah dies, she will rise again; and only then will that covenant of promise and liberty be valid for Israel, who meanwhile are blinded by unbelief and find their pattern in Hagar and her son. Thus did the Jews lose for this long season their privileges; for they were sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with Abraham. But rejecting the one true Seed, their own Messiah, through whom alone any and all could be blessed, they have stamped upon them more deeply than ever Lo-Ammi. Yes, Sarah is dead; and as the next development of rising purposes, we shall see Rebekah called from a far land and conducted across the desert to be the spouse of Isaac in Canaan.

The Bride Called for Isaac

Genesis 24: 1-9

Genesis 22 gave us the new and unique position of the son and heir, dead and risen, the figure of the infinite reality where the Antitype was also the Lamb that God would provide Himself for a burnt-offering; Genesis 23 the passing away, at this point of God's ways, of Sarah, the mother of the child of promise. For those who ought to have received the dead and risen Messiah stumbled at the stumbling-stone, and by their blind insubjection put off for the present the application of a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. As regards the ancient people, it was dead through their unbelief, though grace would not permit it to fail for a godly remnant and for those of the nations who believe the gospel. That blood, which the Jews imprecated as a curse on themselves and on their children (Matt. 26: 28), is to Christians the cup of blessing which they bless, Christ's blood of the new covenant that was shed for many unto remission of sins. Its literal terms and full extent for the earth await the chosen nation to whom it is pledged by Him who will infallibly accomplish it another day. Not more surely shall Sarah rise again than the covenant of grace shall be made good to Israel, notwithstanding all that they have done, when they shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in Jehovah's name. Then will he execute judgment and righteousness in the land, and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth, in that day there shall be one Jehovah and His name one.

But it is a wholly different prospect here, the no less distinct figure of the new and heavenly relationship which grace forms, while the Jew abides in unbelief and therefore postpones the magnificent scenes of predicted glory for Israel and all the Gentiles in that day. It is the call of a bride for Isaac out of that world from which Abraham had been called. The trusty servant, described in terms quite exceptional, "The eldest of his house, who ruled over all that he had," is charged with the delicate mission of finding her out according to God, and of guiding her across the desert to the bridegroom.

And Abraham was old, advanced in age; and Jehovah had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the eldest in his house, that ruled over all that he had, "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh, and I will make thee swear by Jehovah, the God of the heavens and the God of the earth, that thou take not a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell; but thou shalt go to my land and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac. And the servant said to him, Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land: must I, then, bring thy son again anywise to the land from which thou camest out? And Abraham said to him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again. Jehovah, the God of the heavens, who took me out of my father's house and out of the land of my nativity, and who spake to me and who swore to me, saying, To thy seed will I give this land; even he will send his angel before thee; and thou shalt take a wife thence for my son. And if the woman be not willing to follow thee, then shalt thou be clear from this mine oath: only bring not my son thither again. And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master, and swore to him concerning this matter" (vv. 1-9).

No one denies that in the letter the aged father was devising in a grave and pious spirit to help his son Isaac in the most important step of a life, not merely momentous to the Jewish seed which had earthly blessing divinely promised, and in the highest degree, but yet more bound up with still better blessing in his own seed to all the families of the earth. Nor was Abraham content with the long proved fidelity of him who had from earlier days earned and deserved his confidence. Here and now only he exacts of Eliezer an oath of peculiar solemnity, that the bride taken should be, not from the accursed race of Canaan, but out of that land from which he himself had been called, and of his kindred. But he who weighs the typical meaning which the New Testament authoritatively gives to the previous history, as we have seen, will not be disposed to deny it here; where the exceeding fullness and character of the narrative suggest a deeper import, which is itself the certain truth of God, and fits it here, as nowhere else, precisely answering to the new history, but of more exalted application and of the nearest interest to the Christian reader.

"I will make thee swear by Jehovah, the God of the heavens and the God of the earth, that thou take not for my son a wife of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell; but to my country and to my kindred thou shalt go and take a wife for my son Isaac." It is well to remark that here the divine title is most noteworthy, besides proving the groundlessness of Astruc's conjecture which has exercised so powerful a spell over rationalist minds. The nearest to it in the book of Genesis, (both without parallel in the Pentateuch) is found in Genesis 14. There "God Most High" is in conjunction with "Possessor of the heavens and earth"; and the evidence points to the days of the kingdom as yet future, when it will not be merely the "order" in contrast with Aaron's, but the true Melchizedek will exercise His priesthood in blessing the victors at the end of the age, and the heavens and earth shall be united instead of severed as they are still.

In Genesis 24 before us "the God of the heavens and the God of the earth" presents the universal rights of the only true God, revealed fully and only when the Son of God is come, and He dead and risen brings out all the truth distinctly in connection with the call of the church, the bride of Christ. Hence, in Ephesians 3, the apostle speaks of the mystery or secret hid in God who created all things (v. 9) and the Father from whom every family in the heavens and on earth is named (v. 14), one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us (or, you) all (Eph. 4: 6). Thus it is not only life and incorruption which are now brought to light in Christ Jesus, but the highest and widest rights of God in His universal supremacy, universal providence, and yet the truest intimacy of relationship with His children, and them all. Now if God intended to communicate this as far as a type (only intelligible with the Antitype), where could it be fittingly introduced but here)? Truly God's ways are as marvellous as blessed; and His Word as here is the revelation of them, as also of His counsels and nature. Of this rationalism is profoundly ignorant, and necessarily so because it is rationalism, and not faith.

The answer of the servant and the reply confirm the force of another and connected truth. "Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land: must I then bring thy son again to the land whence thou camest out? And Abraham said to him, Beware thou, that thou bring not again my son thither." Here we see the utmost stress (and it is reiterated once more) laid on Isaac's abiding in Canaan. There only must he be found; and he only of all the patriarchs. For as his father came out of Mesopotamia, so did he for a time go down into Egypt; and again his son Jacob returned to Mesopotamia, and also went down into Egypt, and died there. But Isaac alone must and did never leave the land of Canaan. In this he most strikingly represents Christ after He died, rose, and ascended; in which condition He becomes Head of the church, and the Bridegroom. He is emphatically the heavenly (δ επουράυιος). God makes Christians "heavenly," not yet as a displayed fact (for we still bear the image of the man of dust), but as a spiritual title and reality, on which we are called to walk while in the world, but not of it as He was not. Compare Eph. 1: 3-20; Eph. 2: 6; Eph. 3: 10; Eph. 4: 8-16; Eph. 5: 25-32; Eph. 6: 12; also 1 Cor. 15: 48, 49.

Hence Abraham continues, "Jehovah, the God of the heavens, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and who swore to me, saying, To thy seed will I give this land; he will send his angel before thee; and thou shalt take thence a wife to my son. And if the woman be not willing to follow thee, then shalt thou be clear from this mine oath: only my son bring not again thither." And so the servant swore. The Head given to the church remains heavenly in the most exclusive terms and according to the most distinct and persistent purpose. And such is the clear and sure doctrine, which the apostle was the inspired vessel to communicate. It was a secret revealed (Eph. 3: 6) to the holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; but Paul became minister of the church (Col. 1: 25) according to the stewardship given him to complete the Word of God in this respect; as in fact no other writes of the church as he does. Christ is glorified in heaven to be the church's Head; and He is there only while the body is formed in the power of the Holy Spirit sent for this end. "As He is, so are we in this world." The Christian, the church, is called to manifest the mind of heaven on earth. But the ground of this is that we are already joined to the Lord, one spirit with Him who is on high. Thus it is that we characteristically know Him; no mote according to flesh, but dead, risen, and ascended (2 Cor. 5).

Here the shortcoming of Christendom through unbelief is all but universal, though in varying shape. Some are so dark as not to comprehend what answers to Hagar and her child expelled from the house of Abraham. The bondmaid covenant of Sinai is still their rule of life, though they deny not the birth of the true son and heir. Others advance no farther than the covenant of promise in Sarah and Isaac, though they see that the son of the bondmaid cannot be heir with the son of the free-woman. They believe in the atonement; but they have no right apprehension of the new place of the Son as dead, risen, and associated only with heaven. Yet this alone, as we have seen in the figure, gives the proper blessedness of the Christian in union with Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit given to us on the ground of His sacrificial death, where He is, being Himself on high till He comes to take us to the Father's house. Hence as the heavenly relationship of the church is unknown as Christ's body and bride, as the truth of having died with Christ and being risen with Him and seated in Him in the heavenlies, is utterly vague and uninfluential, the door lies open to the rudiments of the world, as well as philosophy and the vain deceit of rationalism; hence the baptized set their mind like Jews or Gentiles on the things upon the earth instead of those above, where Christ sits at God's right hand. They are so ignorant of the power of Christ's resurrection and ascension, that they cannot read its wondrous fore- shadowing in the first book of the Old Testament. Thank God, they do not deny His death adumbrated in the sentence on Isaac, though only effected and forever efficacious in the cross of Christ. But they wholly fail to appropriate the new standing prefigured in Isaac risen and never quitting Canaan, while the bride is being called from the world to join him there.

Let us recall the beautiful conformity of the Acts of the Apostles, and of God's ways in this connection. After Christ went to heaven, Peter preached to the Jews in Solomon's porch, as recorded in Acts 3, and pointed out how the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob glorified His Servant Jesus whom they denied and slew. Yet did he assure them that, on their repentance and conversion, not only should their sins be blotted out but God would send Jesus who was fore-appointed for them, in order to bring in times of restoring all things as His prophets had ever declared. But the Jews sealed their unbelief; and thus the new covenant lapsed as far as the people were concerned; and an apostle was called by the Lord in heaven to preach to the Gentiles and reveal the full heavenly place of the church, one with Christ above. This it is which is called "the mystery," or secret hidden of old when God gave promises and prophecies. In the Epistles of Paul we have the mystery revealed as to Christ and as to the church.

Genesis 24: 10-21

In the early verses we have the most specific directions laid down by the father for his son's bride. Now we learn how faithful was "his servant, the elder of his house who ruled over all that he had," in giving effect to his will. It is he who becomes the most prominent throughout the chapter till the bride joins the bridegroom. This is unmistakable typically. As surely as we behold the Father seeking a bride, the church of God for Christ His Son, all the while and only in the heavenlies, so do we recognize the sending and action of the Holy Spirit in this signally honoured and trusty servant. In fact his unstinted and unwavering subjection, so far from being a difficulty or objection, is what the type required. For just as the Son became bondman to do the Father's will and secure His glory, so does the Holy Spirit subserve the Son as well as the Father. Thus we read in John 14-16 and other Scriptures. Take this one: "He shall not speak from himself; but whatsoever things he shall hear he will speak; and he will report to you things that are to come. He will glorify me: for he shall receive of mine and will report to you. All things that the Father hath are mine," etc. For the Christian, for the church, we need and have the Holy Spirit as well as the Word. The Spirit given is our distinctive privilege and power.

"And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master and departed (now all the treasure of his master was under his hand); and he rose and went to Aram-naharaim [High land of the two rivers], to the city of Nahor. And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water, at evening time, at the time that women go out to draw [water]. And he said, Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, meet me, I pray thee, this day, and do kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, I stand by the fountain of water; and daughters of men of the city come out to draw water. And let it come to pass [that] the maiden, to whom I shall say, Let down, I pray thee, thy pitcher, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also, [be] she whom thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and hereby shall I know that thou hast done kindly to my master. And it came to pass before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah wife of Nahor, brother of Abraham, and her pitcher [she had] upon her shoulder. And the maiden was very fair to look on, a virgin, and no man had known her; and she went down to the fountain, and filled her pitcher, and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me sip, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord; and she hasted, and let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him drink. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, Also for thy camels I will draw, until they have done drinking. And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw, and drew for all his camels. And the man wondered at her, holding his peace to know whether Jehovah prospered his way or not" (vv. 10-21).

How simply beautiful is the picture here presented of the walk by faith, not by sight or appearance, to which the church is called, and those who individually compose it! In no other part of Genesis, nay of the Old Testament, can one recall a scene so capable of foreshadowing it as what we have now before us. Dependent and confiding prayer characterizes it. So we find repeatedly in the Acts of the Apostles; even when not exactly "praying in the Holy Spirit," we are encouraged in every thing to make our requests known to God. Compare Ananias in Acts 9: 10- 17, and Paul in Acts 22: 17-21; and that "free address," which is the exact import of the word translated "prayer" in 1 Timothy 4: 5. Christ come, and His work, bring us into the reality of what becomes us before God. Even if we were not so weak and ignorant as we have learned ourselves to be, how blessed to have God near and faithful in fully proved love, so that we may bring before Him "every thing" great or small! How dishonouring Him to trust in our wisdom or common sense! See too how the servant keeps before him and puts forward the promises to Abraham, the special relationship grace had already formed as a place for present need, and especially in what had been pressed as of the profoundest moment. Guidance of the Spirit is precious but guaranteed. As many as are led by God's Spirit, these are sons of God. It was not a mere sign he asked as Gideon in Judges 6 and 7, but the very bridal person herself of whom he was in quest, not for himself, but for his master's son. The honour and love of faith filled his heart.

Nor had he long to wait. "Before he had done speaking," the maiden comes. Freely he had asked, boldly and minutely had he ventured to prescribe. But this reckoning on Himself is most pleasing to God, if unbelief dares to deny it as presumptuous. It was really prayer of rare simplicity, of striking suitability, of entire confidence; and the immediateness of the answer anticipated the day when righteousness shall reign, and Jehovah will hear while His people are yet speaking. So it is now through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, when we have the new covenant in spirit if not in letter, and the Messiah not present, it is true in earthly power and glory, but known on high in a yet surpassing glory.

Accepting the answer, "the servant ran to meet" Rebekah. There was no hesitation but alacrity; for he knew whom he had believed, and laid before her what he had already asked of Abraham's God, Jehovah. And Rebekah with no less alacrity responded graciously to his request uttered to her, and to that which he had said only to God in caring for "all his camels." No wonder that he wondered at her, silently waiting for full assurance (as he was but the type of a greater Servant), whether Jehovah prospered his way or not. Even our Lord expressed fully His appreciation of the Syro-Phoenician woman's faith, and wondered at the Gentile centurion's, though it was His own grace which produced faith in both. The servant could and would not disguise from his heart that God had acted according to his heart's desire for his master and his master's son; and he looks for yet more to His own glory.

Genesis 24: 22-29

There was astonishment in the servant's mind at the immediate and punctual answer to his prayer. To call it unbelief is unwarranted. It is the picture of the Holy Spirit's working in man, which never wrought so fully as since redemption, and never will work so again while he is on the earth. But if the servant rightly felt the gravity of the oath taken of him by his master, and the delicacy of the task for his master's son, he was deeply and believingly impressed with the speedy fulfilment of all he had laid before Jehovah, his master's God. The first sight of her could not but impress him. Still more was he struck, when, running to meet her, and asking as he had been led, she simply and completely responded to his petition just spread before God. Even our Lord, perfect man as He alone was, "wondered" at the Gentile centurion's faith. If this expressed His delight, where not a particle of unbelief could be, we need not disparage the servant's "wondering" at her, when he received so marked and ready a token of favour on his mission, "remaining silent to know whether Jehovah made his journey prosperous or not." His action that follows is the best proof of his faith. "He that believeth shall not make haste"; and this absence of the haste, into which flesh rushes, is what really comes out in one content to take a single step at a time, as becomes man however blessed.

"And it came to pass, when the camels had done drinking, that the man took a gold ring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets of ten [shekels] of gold, and said, Whose daughter [art] thou? tell me, I pray thee. Is there in thy father's house room for us to lodge in? And she said to him, I [am] daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor. And she said to him, [There is] both straw and much provender with us, and room to lodge in. And the man bowed down and paid worship to Jehovah, and said, Blessed [be] Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, who hath not withdrawn his mercy and his truth from my master; I [being] in the way, Jehovah hath led me to the house of my master's brethren" (vv. 22-29).

What a testimony to "the riches of grace" we have here from the outset! Where in all the Bible do we find anything to compare with those precious gifts on such an occasion or at so early a stage of it? The Christian reader can read the counterpart in Ephesians 1. There as here we have purpose in the early verses, followed up by the boon of redemption in verse 7 — the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of God's grace, before the proper privileges of union with Christ are spoken of, or those peculiar gifts which He gave as ascended on high, the type of which we shall not fail to see later on. So, anticipating the gospel of God's grace, our Lord shows how the Father receives the returning prodigal: the best robe, a ring on his hand, shoes on his feet, and a feast of joy greater far to Him than to the son thus wondrously received or to any that shared the feast. The gospel accompanies but precedes the church; and the call of grace is marked variously in both. Can any with open or intelligent mind fail to trace in our chapter the divine design, which is the constant and unmistakable witness of inspired Scripture, and which makes it differ from every other book?

But in the history before us, how confirmatory was the maiden's reply to the enquiry of the servant! Truly dependent on God, he tries even the brightest concurrence of circumstances by the word which guided his way and defined his aim. This does not suit the self-confidence of man; but is it not the one path, the inalienable duty, of the saint? For we walk by faith, not by sight. The Holy Spirit, as He thus led the Lord Jesus always and perfectly while here below, deigns now to conduct us after the same blessed pattern. What Rebekah said fell altogether and distinctly within the requirements of Abraham in the bride he sought for his son Isaac. No doubt her character even in this brief interview shone out in love and lowliness, in unaffected respect and readiest service, a meet daughter-in-law for Abraham, a pure and gentle wife for Isaac. Yet this was not everything that the servant sought, true to the interests of the son and to the words laid down by the father. "Whose daughter art thou?" Was she of Abraham's kindred? Her answer was just what he sought, and she assures him and his retinue of a suitable reception.

This draws out another characteristic in the account. For the man bowed down and paid worship to Jehovah. Worship, worship in spirit and truth, distinguishes the Christian and the church. So the Lord told the Samaritan woman. The hour for it is come and now is. The true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth, in contrast with Jerusalem no less than the mountain of Gerizim. A people in the flesh, a worldly sanctuary, earthly priests, material sacrifices and offerings, are unacceptable. The Father seeks and has children. They are sons, not distant bondmen nor yet infants; but redeemed and with the Spirit of adoption they cry, Abba, Father. Nor is it less true of the church than of the individual; as we read in 1 Corinthians 14 where the Lord enjoins that all be with the spirit and with the understanding also, prayer, and singing, and blessing, and giving of thanks. For not literal circumcision is now of account; but we, Christians, are the circumcision, who worship by God's Spirit, and boast in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence or trust in flesh. Forms avail not, nothing but Christ, our life.

And the man said, for it is intelligent worship, "Blessed be Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, who hath not withdrawn from my master his mercy and his truth; I in the way, he hath led me to the house of my master's brethren." It is confiding and adoring acknowledgement of His faithful goodness. So in our case the Son of God is come and has given us an understanding to know Him that is True; and we are in Him that is True, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life; without which, and the Holy Spirit given now that He is gone, we could in no way rise to such worship. But what a wondrous prefiguration of it is the scene before us! It is just where it should be; nor is there a scene like it elsewhere.

Genesis 24: 28-33

Hitherto we have seen the lovely prefiguration of the Father's purpose in calling out of the world a bride for His Son. In this point how sedulously and solemnly the Son is kept from all direct relation with the world. He is seen in a heavenly position exclusively. Nor is less clear the place which is given to the chief servant of the house in executing this charge of entire devotedness, distinct dependence in the prayer of faith, and in ready attitude of worship. These are exactly the qualities looked for in, and suited to the operation of, the Spirit in Christ's body and bride. As Rebekah at once and signally met this purpose from the first, we are now to learn how all that follows was furthered by grace to the same end.

"And the maiden ran and told her mother's house according to these words. And Rebekah had a brother, and his name [was] Laban; and Laban ran out to the man to the well. And it came to pass when he saw the ring and bracelets on his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spoke the man to me, that he came to the man, and behold, he was standing by the camels at the well. And he said, Come in, blessed of Jehovah: why standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for camels. And the man came into the house, and ungirded the camels; and he gave the camels straw and provender, and water to wash his feet and the feet of the men who were with him. And there was set before him to eat; but he said, I will not eat until I have told my business. And he said, Speak on" (vv. 28-33).

The simple-hearted alacrity of Rebekah is here as apparent as her thoughtful courtesy and kindness before. Such should be the church, and the Christian now. Blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, are we not individually and collectively bound to reflect the grace of Him to whom we belong in His sovereign goodness? Freely we received; freely should we give. Far from us should be the proud forbidding independence of a Jew, the ever craving unsatisfied covetousness of a Gentile. Yet was the maiden quick to discern the signs of the crisis for her, and ran to tell "her mother's house." This was in keeping with propriety, even if her father were not throughout singularly in the background: so much so, that some have ventured to think that the name after Laban's (v. 50) may have been a younger brother rather than the father. Certain it is that Laban is the active leading man of the house from first to last. Here he ran out to the man by the well or fountain.

Nor is it a casual circumstance that we read of Laban's ready proffer of hospitality when he saw the ring and the bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard her report of what Abraham's envoy said to her. Forthwith he came to the man still standing by the camels at the fountain, and gave him a welcome in terms no less cordial than pious, as such characters are apt to say when sure of honour and advantage accruing. The history shows subsequently that Laban was an overreaching man and an idolater. We are compelled therefore to infer from the language here employed that the sight of the jewels given to his sister, and the man's words about his master, powerfully acted on one whose motives were far from unselfish. His salutation was winning however: "Come in, blessed of Jehovah: why standest thou without? for I have prepared the house and room for the camels. "

The remarkable procedure of Abraham's servant is what we have to notice for our edification. He came into the house, ungirded the camels, and had straw and provender given, with water to wash the feet of himself and those with him. But when meat was set before him, he refused to eat till he told his story. This is not at all in accordance with the usual way, especially in the East, and after so long a journey. His errand is all-absorbing. He would not allow his own ease, or the customs of men, to come first or make the way for what he had at heart. He was there for his master's sake. Word and oath bound him, as well as honour and love for his master's son. He would not even seem to let their interests be secondary. "I will not eat until I have told my business."

So it is most exclusively and in a way altogether worthy of the Father and the Son, that the Holy Spirit devotes Himself to His quest and care of the Bride. We know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those that are called according to purpose, as the apostle says in Romans 8. But what should be our confidence when we also know the divine Person of the Paraclete sent by the Father in the Son's name to teach us all things, and remind us of all that Christ said, the words that are spirit and are life, and many other things which could not be borne before redemption? What new and heavenly relationships, as of Christ's body and bride! What light of His heavenly glory! What announcement of the things to come! If the Saviour's meat was to do the will of Him that sent Him and to finish His work, the blessed Spirit of God is no less sedulous in speaking, not from Himself, but all that whatsoever He should hear; for He it is who here and now glorifies the Son.

Genesis 24: 34-49

This portion is entirely devoted to his intervention whom the father sent to fetch a suited bride for the son and heir.

"And he said, I 1am] Abraham's servant. And Jehovah hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him sheep and cattle, and silver and gold, and bondmen and bondwomen, and camels and asses. And Sarah, my master's wife, bore a son to my master after she had grown old, and to him hath he given all that he hath. And my master made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife for my son of the daughters of a Canaanite, in whose land I am dwelling; but thou shalt by all means go to my father's house and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son. And I said to my master, Perhaps the woman will not follow me. And he said to me, Jehovah before whom I have walked will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way, that thou mayest take a wife for my son of my kindred and out of my father's house. Then shalt thou be quit of mine oath, when thou shalt be come to my kindred; and if they give thee not, thou shalt be quit of mine oath. And I came this day to the fountain, and said, Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, if now thou wilt prosper my way on which I go, behold, I stand by the fountain of water, and let it come to pass that the damsel who cometh forth to draw, and to whom I shall say, Give me I pray, a little water out of thy pitcher to drink, and she shall say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels — that she [shall] be the woman whom Jehovah hath appointed for my master's son. Before I ended speaking in my heart, behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder, and went down to the fountain, and drew; and I said to her, Give me, I pray thee to drink. And she hasted and let down her pitcher from her, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also. And I drank; and she gave the camels drink also. And I asked her and said, Whose daughter [art] thou? And she said, Bethuel's daughter (Nahor's son) whom Milcah bore to him. And I put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her hands. And I bowed down and worshipped Jehovah, and blessed Jehovah, God of my master Abraham, who led me in a way of truth to take my master's brother's daughter for his son. And now if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me; and I will turn to the right hand or to the left" (vv. 34-49).

Is it not well to notice the immense place which Scripture gives to him who was sent from the father and the son to make good the purpose of finding and bringing back the chosen bride? Various types present the bride in Old Testament Scriptures. In the last book of Scripture (Rev. 19) the New Testament discloses her in her heavenly place before the millennium as the Lamb's wife and in the eternal state (Rev. 21: 2), no less than as the holy Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God in her millennial relation to the nations and the kings of the earth (v. 9). We have the type of Eve with her admirable characteristics as Adam's counterpart at the beginning of this book, and at the end we have the wife Pharaoh gave to Joseph when exalted to administer the kingdom in his rejection by and separation from his brethren according to the flesh. So we see also in Moses (Ex. 2) before the time came for their deliverance from the king and land of Egypt. Jacob goes off himself and marries in a way wholly distinct in Haran, and through Laban's craft has another palmed on him before he received the Rachel of his heart, who in no way prefigures the church but Israel, Rachel weeping for her children, but with hope for her latter end. Sarah too not at all sets forth the calling of the bride, but the mother of the child of promise. Ruth again is a special figure, but not of the church any more than is the object of the king's love in the Song of Songs, the Psalms, or the Prophets.

Here is the unique figure of a bride not only called from a distant land in marked contrast with any woman of Canaanitish race, but by the extraordinary mission of the father's servant, the eldest of his house who ruled over all that he had, and with a most solemn pledge and charge, quite unexampled in any other case. And we have already drawn attention to the place it fills, for which no other marriage in Scripture could furnish such a type as this. For it follows the death and resurrection of the son in the "parable" of Genesis 22 as well as the death of Sarah, the figure of the covenant of promise and liberty in contrast with her who is in bondage with her children. Yet even she, the free-woman, disappears to leave room for the bride who is here called.

Again, how striking is the fullness of interest which converges on the trusty servant, and his absorption in caring for the father and the son! We have the whole ground traversed again before the bride's family, and bringing out purpose in the father for the son as nowhere else in this book or anywhere else of old, and devotedness most marked and exclusive on the part of him who was sent to effectuate it! Where is there an approach in another type of God's Word to that personal presence and action of the Holy Spirit which distinguishes the church? The time, the place, the action, the personal interest, the grace in giving, the prominence assigned to prayer and worship, the absolute carrying out of the word or charge, are all in perfect keeping with that which it pleased God to represent here, and here only in the same fullness. Is this all, is any part of it, casual?

Examine the entire range of types (and there are not a few which bring out the object of Christ's love for heaven); but where is one which so fully and distinctively presents her calling, as Rebekah does? Again, where, save here, have we closely connected with the bride the living representative of that other Advocate, who identifies Himself with the honour and the interests of the Father and the Son, in effectively gaining the bride, then in guiding and guarding through the many trials and the imminent dangers of the desert, safely to join the Bridegroom? How admirably he pleads for those absent, whose envoy he was! As he lost not a moment in engaging the damsel's heart for his master's son, so he hears of no delay in telling his errand to those who might naturally detain, if they did not deny. No picture in other Scriptures is comparable with this if divinely intended, as we assuredly believe, to set forth, not merely efficient operation, but personal presence and care in the highest degree. And in no part of the Old Testament was this so requisite and significant as in the scene graphically put before us here.

Genesis 24: 50-53

We may observe how Eliezer acts with the decision given by a single eye. Not only have we prayer in the Spirit, and worship; but there is a walk singularly devoted to the will and word of his master who sent him on this mission for his son. On this he is exclusively set. It was quite outside the world and its objects. Eliezer will not swerve from his errand; he allows no need of the body to interfere with its being the first object before him: to it all other claims must bend.

"And Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth from Jehovah: we cannot speak to thee bad or good. Behold, Rebekah [is] before thee: take [her], and go away; and let her be wife of thy master's son, as Jehovah hath said. And it came to pass, when Abraham's servant heard their words, that he bowed down to the earth before Jehovah. And the servant brought forth vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and clothing, and gave [them] to Rebekah; he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things" (vv. 50-53).

It is just so for the church and the Christians. The Holy Spirit given and indwelling acts by the Father's will for the glory of Christ whose bride is the church, whose member is every Christian. He is a Spirit not of cowardice nor of indifference, but of power and of love and of a sound mind; above all He is given to be with us forever and in us to glorify Him who glorified the Father.

Is it objected that this is to confound the Holy Spirit with the church and the Christian? It is really scriptural truth, not confusion. The objection flows from failure to discern that it is of the essence of the Spirit's action to merge Himself as it were in the object He employs or abides in. Hence every good fruit, of which He is the source and power, is set to the object's account. Indeed the case is equally true of those possessed by evil spirits. Thus the two demoniacs in Matthew 8: 29 cried out, saying, "What have we to do with thee, Son of God? Didst thou come here before the season to torment us?" Still clearer is this quasi-identification expressed in Mark 5: 2, where, when asked his name, the chief of the two answers, "Legion is my name, because we are many." No less plainly does it appear in Luke 8: 28, 29, where the possessed said, "I beseech thee torment me not"; and the evangelist continues: "For He had commanded the unclean spirit to go out from the man." Hence we see how profoundly correct it is in the history that Eliezer, typifying the Holy Spirit's action, should represent the church and the Christian also.

We can scarce fail to note too how God controls hearts as well as circumstances in pursuance of the design in hand. It is not that difficulties or dangers were lacking. They were many and manifold, to exercise faith in Himself who in the face of contrary appearances knows all beforehand, and works all things according to the counsel of His own will. We have no reason to accredit the zeal of Laban and Bethuel for the divine glory; yet they fell in at once with what was set before them, confessing that the thing was of Jehovah which left them without a word to oppose. Their yielding at once, their recognition that Abraham's word was Jehovah's doing, drew out the fresh adoration of Eliezer.

Then follows the bestowal of proper bridal gifts of silver and of gold, with clothing, for Rebekah, as well as precious things for those connected with her. It will be found by those who investigate symbolic usage in Scripture (for example in the tabernacle's construction), that, as silver answers to divine grace, so does gold to divine righteousness. This certainly is plain in the Antitype of Ephesians 4 where to each one of us, it is said, was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. "Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men . . . And he gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, and some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints unto (or with a view to) work of ministering, unto edifying the body of Christ." Could any type be more appropriate in this place? Here only, where it was so needful to complete the picture, it is given with marked care. Never were given gifts so distinctly flowing from the grace of God in Christ, and based on God's righteousness.

The power of Christ's victory will be fully and in many other ways manifested in heaven and earth another day. Meanwhile these gifts are the witness of His love to the Christian and to the church, delivered already from the enemy's power. He, the ascended Man, gave them to men; and this in virtue of His previous descent in humiliation the human victims of Satan's malice and of their own folly and sin. All is for the perfecting of the saints unto ministerial work and unto edifying Christ's body; all looks on to the bright future when Christ will present to Himself the church glorious, having no spot, wrinkle, or any of such things, but that it should be holy and unblemished.

Genesis 24: 54-60

Very unusual in the type are the marks of a marriage altogether extraordinary in itself. After a long journey, and even without such a one, how strange to refuse to eat, before the errand was told! A distinguished commentator remarks that his story seems superfluous. Far from this, it was in perfect keeping with the business in hand: and every part of his narrative to the household conveyed grounds of the nearest interest and of the deepest moment.

If he was the father's servant and devoted to the son's honour, God in His covenant name was before his heart from first to last. He, Jehovah, it was who had so greatly blessed; He directed his master in the oath exacted to take no daughter of the Canaanites for the heir, only from his father's house and kindred. If election thus dominated, providential mercy would control hearts and circumstances, as indeed was apparent throughout. Prayer was thus stimulated and promptly answered. The desired maiden came before he ended speaking in his heart, met every test with grace proper to her, and convincing to him that she was none other than the woman whom Jehovah appointed for his master's son. Her reply to his question about her parentage sealed the matter, so that he could not hesitate to bestow suited ornaments, and once more bowed down in worship of Jehovah. When they of the house acquiesced in its proceeding from Him and bade the man to take Rebekah to be Isaac's wife, again the servant bowed down to the earth before Jehovah, and the gifts flowed yet more to the bride in particular, but abundantly to all the rest also. It is a unique scene in itself and in what it thus appropriately foreshadows.

"And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and lodged. And they rose up in the morning; and he said, Send me away to my master. And her brother and her mother said, Let the maiden abide with us days, at least ten; after that she shall go. And he said to them, Hinder me not, seeing Jehovah hath prospered my way; send me away to go to my master. And they said, We will call the maiden, and inquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah and said to her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah, and said to her, Our sister, become thou thousands of tens of thousands; and may thy seed possess the gate of those that hate them!" (vv. 54-60).

Simple and fitting is the figure of communion with which this account opens: how strikingly is this too in keeping with the church's calling! Never in point of fact could there be full communion of saints till the deliverance came to Christians through the efficacious work of Christ and the new relationships founded on it. Hence the picture given in Acts 2 from the day of Pentecost. "And they continued stedfastly in the teaching of the apostles, and the fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers" (v. 42); "And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they partook of food with gladness and simplicity of heart" (v. 46). In the Lord's Supper, it was the communion of Christ's body and blood; but it pervaded their new relationship even in the most ordinary things of earthly life. And no wonder; for as Christ was their life, so was the Holy Spirit power against the flesh, that faith and hope, peace and love, in active exercise might fill them with joy. Their associations were based on Christ come, and their crown was to be in His coming again.

He Himself so taught and set them. Compare Luke 12: 21-38. Again, in the parable of the Ten Virgins we have the same principle modified by the Spirit's special aim in the Gospel of Matthew. It is in the middle or Christendom section of our Lord's great prophecy, the first part of which (Matt. 24: 1-44) presents the future for the Jews to the end of the age, and the third (Matt. 25: 31 ff.) that of the nations when the new age opens. Nor is it service in its corporate aspect as in the close of Matt. 24, or in variety of gift as in Matt. 25. It is the individual responsibility of the Christian, true or untrue; and its character is that thus, having taken their torches, they went forth to meet the bridegroom. For this nothing but the unction, the power of the Spirit, avails. The tarrying of the bridegroom became the test when all grew drowsy and slept. They all failed in the very aim which drew them out to Christ from every link of flesh or world. Where was their hope, if they no longer went forth to meet Christ? When the cry at midnight awoke them, the prudent alone resumed the early and alone right attitude. For they only had oil in their vessels; and, being ready, they joined Him at His coming, whilst the foolish went in quest of what they never possessed. How could such as these wait for His coming? Only those who had oil in their vessels. Alas! all failed in watching for Him, all fell asleep. But only the prudent had the Spirit's power and presence — oil in their vessels. The foolish had barely the torches of profession without His sustaining energy, and must be thus unready when Christ comes.

Only we have to bear in mind that the exigencies of the parable required, not the bride, but the train of maidens prudent and foolish, so as to represent Christendom; as the type demanded not such a retinue but the bride. Rebekah becomes now the prominent figure, as is the trusty servant of the father and the son, who here puts aside the natural feelings of the family. His one thought is to fulfil his mission. They would have her abide awhile. He, the more he is prospered, will hear of the less delay. The bride has to decide the matter. "And they called Rebekah and said to her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go." Her heart is made up.

So it is, so at least it ought to be, with her who is espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ; whom not having seen she loves, on whom, not now looking but believing, she exults with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of faith, soul-salvation. What is country or kin or father's house, or all other objects combined in comparison with her Bridegroom? What could she say but "I will go"? She falls in with Eliezer's zeal. This report was answered by her faith, hope, and love. Unhesitating decision was the result. She goes forth to meet the bridegroom; and the faithful servant who had won her heart to Isaac, continues his care, and guides her across the desert. "And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant and his men," with abundant blessings, short as they might be of her real position. But the picture is unmistakable. It is the bride, delivered out of the present evil age according to the will of God our Father, to belong to Him who is in heaven, soon to join Him there, typified by the elect maiden who sets out on her pilgrim journey to meet the one to whom she is betrothed.

The Meeting and the Marriage

Genesis 24: 61-67

How can one be surprised that the Holy Spirit dwells on circumstances such as those we have considered, if they prefigured the call of the bride the Lamb's wife? It is ever and justly a matter of the utmost spiritual interest for all but the thoughtless. What could this be to God if meant to typify the consummation of His Son's love to the church? What of wonder, love, and joy did He not intend for us who read it in the communion with His mind and His grace which faith gives to those so directly and deeply concerned? Here it is pursued to the close.

"And Rebekah arose, and her maids, and they rode upon the camels and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah and went away. And Isaac had just come from Beer-la-hai-roi; for he was dwelling in the south country. And Isaac had gone out to meditate in the field, toward the beginning of evening. And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and, behold, camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes and saw Isaac, and she lighted off the camel. And she said to the servant, Who [is] the man that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant said, That is my master; and she took the veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. And Isaac led her into his mother Sarah's tent; and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. And Isaac was comforted after his mother ['s death]" (vv. 61-67).

Rebekah thus far answers more clearly than any other in Scripture to the requisite type of the church; as Isaac we have seen to set forth in parable (according to the Epistle of the Hebrews 11 : 19) the Son risen from the dead, as the Head of the church is and must be. This last section of the chapter carries out the analogy no less than all the rest. Her decision was simple and true. As the servant urged immediateness of departure, so notwithstanding every otherwise strong tie of natural affection, the bride was no less unhesitating: "I will go." There was a most unusual distance that separated, a long journey to be undertaken, dangers of many kinds to be faced, deserts to be crossed; and she was a young maiden under the guidance of one entirely new to her, with no face familiar along the road but of her damsels.

"And Rebekah arose, and her maids, and they rode upon the camels and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah and went away." What simple faith, and confidence in love, and hope abounding in her breast! There is no such combination of becoming affections in any bride that one could name among the many we read of in the entire Old Testament circle. Dependence on her conductor along the dreary way was what sustained her heart, looking on to him who was about to bring her into the enjoyment of the most endearing of all relationships. What ample and reliable reports the wise and trusty servant, we may and must assume, told her to wean her mind from looking back on her old home and fill her with worthy expectation of such a father and such a son as awaited her!

It is just so that the Holy Spirit deigns to form our renewed souls with the love of Christ, the grace of His life and His death, the glory that was His eternally as a divine Person, and His present exaltation as the risen Man and Head to the church over all things, His coming manifestation in glory when he will make good His title and subject all things even to Him, having abolished all rule and all authority and power, but never changing in that purpose or the nearness of love He has for His bride.

"And Isaac had just come from Beer-la-hai-roi; for he was dwelling in the south country," the Negev. It was Canaan, but that southern district of it which borders on the adjacent wilderness. There he went out to meditate in the field at the eventide. One cannot doubt what occupied the thoughts of the gentle, calm, contemplative spirit. "And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and, behold, camels were coming."

But another also was quick to perceive as they neared the land of promise. For "Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. And she said (or, had said) to the servant, Who is this man that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant said, That is my master; and she took the veil and covered herself."

Yes, the Bridegroom is coming! and the Spirit crying, Come ye forth to meet Him. It is good to work for Him; it is better far to wait for Him; nor is there any more needed guard or more precious guide and spring for us in the Spirit for our work than this blessed hope. We require it in a world of seduction on one side, and of destruction on the other, for purifying ourselves as He is pure; we require it even with consecrated and heavenly affection, however truly we believe on Him and His love, and ourselves love Him. Nothing can make up for this hope if it be lacking or even feeble. "I am jealous over you," said the apostle, "with a jealousy of God; for I espoused you to one husband that I might present you a chaste virgin to Christ."

Rebekah covered herself with her veil; and the instinct should be sure to be for Him only. Thus shall all else be the truer and holier. And our Bridegroom has no such need to hear like Isaac what the servant had to tell; yet He in the communion of the Holy Spirit, one doubts not, takes all interest in her whom He loved as His own for heaven. He had His sorrows over the present death of Israel; but He even had hope in her end, if it be not rather her real beginning. But He loved the church, for which He gave Himself and will present her to Himself glorious.

Isaac the Heir

Genesis 25: 1-6

We may not now meditate on all this closing scene of Abraham's life, for we are occupied with Isaac. Yet it presents not a little of interest in itself, and in its bearing on eastern races who are to play their part in the glorious days of the future kingdom as they have in the past. Whatever tradition says otherwise, Keturah was not a bondmaid like Hagar, nor was she mother of the promised seed, but of six sons born to the father of the faithful.

"And Abraham took another wife, and her name [was] Keturah. And she bore him Zimran and Jokshan and Medan and Midian and Ishbak and Shuah. And Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan; and Dedan's sons were Asshurim and Letushim and Leummim; and Midian's sons, Ephah and Epher and Enoch and Abidah and Eldaah: all these [were] Keturah's sons. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac; and to the sons of the concubines that Abraham had Abraham gave gifts, and, while he yet lived, sent them away from Isaac his son, eastward to the east country" (vv. 1-6)

To none was Abraham indifferent, nor the God of Abraham who will remember them in the coming era of earth's joy and blessedness. But Isaac has a place altogether distinctive. To the rest Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son, to whom he "gave all that he had."

Thus Isaac stands before us typically as the manifest heir of all things (Heb. 1: 2). This title, of course, belongs only in its full sense to Jesus the Son of God. As the Creator of all, it is meet that He should inherit all (Heb. 1); and through redemption and purchase (Heb. 2) He will take all in the day of displayed glory, as the exalted Son of man. He who humbled Himself as none else ever could is beyond all crowned with glory and honour: though now given, we do not yet see all things put under Him. But unseen of man He has already this supremacy in place and title according to Psalm 8: 6 (7) thrice referred to in the New Testament; a supremacy so universal that He only is excepted who subjected all things to Him. God left nothing unsubjected to Christ, as attested by His actual seat on the throne of God, the Father's throne. But this is quite distinct from the intimation of Psalm 110: 2, etc. when the Lord will reign on His own throne and actively subjugate all the enemies whom Jehovah will have made His footstool. For the Lord it is who shall rule in the midst of His enemies and strike through kings in the day of His wrath. It is an evident contrast with all He is doing now at the right hand of the Majesty on high, where till that day He sits during this day of salvation by grace.

It is seasonable to recall here the specific use in the Epistles made of the citation from Psalm 8, where the glorious result of the Son of man's humiliation, announced there for Israel's instruction and joy, is set in the full light of God's final revelation. 1 Corinthians 15 fixes the time and the condition. It is when not only Christ is raised from the dead, but they that are Christ's at His coming. The resurrection of the saints precedes the kingdom there described as dealing with all the enemies, even to annulling death, last enemy though it be. It is the proper work of the risen Man, who when all things shall have been actually subjected to Him, will Himself be subjected to Him that subjected all things to Him, giving up the kingdom to Him that is God and Father, that God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] may be all in all.

In Ephesians 1: 22 the same words are applied to Christ in His present exaltation as given to be Head over all things to the church which is His body. It is not here the risen Man, with those raised at His coming that are His, reigning to the subduing of the last foe, but the mystery about Christ and about the church, the mystery in unique greatness of Christ set over all things heavenly and earthly, and the church united to Him in that supremacy after the nearest sort, He the Head, she the body.

Hebrews 2: 5-9 completes the divine picture. Here the words from Psalm 8 are again employed to show that the glorification of the Lord Jesus is the pledge of their future fulfilment as a whole, when all things shall be seen put under Him. Also the habitable earth to come is not for angels to reign over. All the universe will be put under the Son of man, as surely as we see Him already crowned.

Thus we have in the last Scripture the blessed fact on which Christianity depends that the once-suffering Son of man is exalted to the highest seat in heavenly glory, the assuring proof that in due time all things shall be seen, as they are not yet seen, to be put under Him. Next, the intermediate Scripture lets us know that meanwhile the church is made one with Him, as the body with its Head, sharing His exaltation over all things. Hence the delay; because, as we are all aware, the body is being now formed while He is seated and waiting in the heavens. The first Scripture accordingly explains that at His coming we shall be raised and like Him, in order to join the risen Lord in reigning with Him over all things, when He undertakes to reduce to subjection all the enemies which are made His footstool. For He will not reign alone. He, the Heir of all things, has joint-heirs; as it is written in Romans 8, the Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God; and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and joint- heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified together with Him. For as Hebrews 10: 12, 13 shows, after having offered one sacrifice for sins, He in perpetuity sat down on God's right hand, from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made a footstool of His feet. Having suffered all and done all for His friends, He will then trample down His foes, while His own reign with Him in glory.

Abraham Dead, and Isaac Blessed

Genesis 25: 7-11

We have seen the death of Sarah followed by the call of the bride. It was no longer to be "our mother," free as she was, but the type of the church, the Lamb's wife. The dead and risen Heir of all things has a spouse called out from the world and brought into that which figures the heavenlies. The mystery or secret is great, says the apostle, "but I speak as to Christ, and as to the church," its two parts. Though the grace and the glory were intrinsically His only, yet are we called all the more to rejoice; for we delight that the worth is His alone, and this gives all our security to God's glory.

Now we have another weighty and honoured link of the past removed.

"And these [are the] days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived, a hundred years and seventy years and five years. And Abraham expired and died in a good old age, an old man and full, and was gathered to his people. And Isaac and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in Ephron's field, son of Zohar the Hittite, which [is] before Mamre, the field which Abraham bought of the sons of Heth: there was buried Abraham, and Sarah his wife. And it came to pass after Abraham's death that God blessed Isaac his son; and Isaac dwelt at Beer-la-hai-roi" (vv. 7-11).

Here it is, the depository of promise who departs this life. For many years what had there been of divine moment to record? He was given, comparatively long before, a great place in sending his servant, honoured and trusted in the highest degree, to call and conduct the God-appointed bride for his son. And the son was not only in a new standing since the day of Moriah but exclusively associated with the heavenly land. Promise now, like covenant before, fades away before the brighter light of the mystery and its special relationship. The progenitors of many nations who had Abraham as their father as to the flesh were born, owned, given suitable gifts, and while he lived sent away, that Isaac might abide the undisputed heir of all that he had. Now in a good old age, Abraham too must expire and die. The new things were to receive their honour without a rival.

Little is said of Abraham's funeral, save to mark the link with Sarah's grave, of which the Holy Spirit made so much in Genesis 23. It had its just place for loving remembrance. Faith looks onward to the true hope for "the elders" also. It is the resurrection from out of the dead, which will be the portion of all the righteous departed. Groundless is the unbelief which imagined them in gloom, insensibility, or any other lack, unworthy of His grace who watched in love over their feeble pilgrimage for His name here below. The love of Him who in due time became flesh and died for their sins and ascended on high in resurrection life was no transient thing but eternal. Still their resurrection at His coming, so as to be not only with Him but like Him where He is, will be a blessed accession for them as well as for Him to God's praise; and for this they wait in assured hope and full of glory.

As things were, there could be no spiritual sympathy between Isaac and the others who boasted to be of Abraham's seed. But it is here told us that "Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah," in the field Abraham had purchased of Ephron, where Sarah lay already. The son of the bondmaid was in no way forbidden thus to honour his parent. "Cast out" he must be and was in presence of the child of promise; yet fleshly relationship has its place, and the son of the free in no way disputes it, but is gracious. The feelings of the two before God may have been as widely different as spirit and flesh, by which they were respectively characterized; but there at least around the grave they were together in the sorrow of bereavement, and in loving memory of him who was gathered to his people, "the friend of God."

The conclusion of the statement here vouchsafed is that after this God blessed Isaac, the son of the deceased patriarch; and that he dwelt at Beer-la-hai-roi, the well of the living one that seeth me. Thus Isaac left alone (of the fellow-heirs before him of the same promise) has this marked distinction — God blessing him: a precious reality in a world of curse through sin; and this not in the general form which was extended to those that sprang from Abraham, but as the heir. But there is the remarkable fact noted that he dwelt at the spot first designated by a fountain of water in the wilderness, where Hagar was found of Jehovah's angel, who told her of Ishmael's birth and singular destiny. Indeed He is a God that sees, as surely as He lives. But how different the path which awaited Ishmael and Isaac! Here Jehovah heard Hagar's affliction; here God blessed Isaac, already blessed on a still higher plane and with better blessings in hope.

The Generations of Ishmael

Genesis 25: 12-18

In Scripture family connection is noticed by the Holy Spirit according to the well known principle stated by the apostle (1 Cor. 15: 46): not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural. As we have had the progeny sprung from Keturah, and Isaac in his distinct place, so now we have the sons of Ishmael before the line of promise.

"And these [are] Ishmael's generations, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's bondwoman, bore to Abraham. And these [are] the names of Ishmael's sons by their names according to their generations: Ishmael's firstborn, Nebaioth, and Kedar and Adbeel and Mibsam and Mishma and Dumah and Massa, Hadar and Tema, Jetur, Naphish and Kedemah. These [are] Ishmael's sons, and these their names in their villages and in their encampments, twelve princes according to their peoples. And these [are] the years of the life of Ishmael, a hundred and thirty and seven years; and he expired and died, and was gathered to his people. And they dwelt from Havilah to Shur which [is] before Egypt, as thou goest toward Assyria. He settled (or, died, lit. fell) before all his brethren" (vv. 12-18), or, it may be, "to the east of all his brethren."

Flesh has its privileges speedily. Already was the beginning of what Jehovah's angel prepared Hagar to expect, "I will multiply thy seed exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for multitude." Jehovah hearkened to her affliction, and could not forget Abraham. Ishmael was to be a wild-ass man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him and he should dwell before or in face of all his brethren (Gen. 16: 10-12). This too, as we may easily find out, has been precisely fulfilled from the beginning till now. But yet more minutely as a proximate fact, the pledge of all to follow, in Genesis 17 had God said, "For Ishmael I have heard thee: behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful, and will very greatly multiply him. Twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation" (v. 20). So it was now. They are enumerated in their order, as later (Gen. 28: 9) we read of Ishmael's daughter Mahalath, Nebaioth's sister, whom Esau took to wife, besides those of Canaan.

Scripture clearly shows us the government of God providentially, and outside His covenant, in the same books which reveal the dealings of His electing grace. Nor is it the Jews only who are prone to overlook it. Unbelief rises up against God in this as in all else. Yet His Word abides worthy of all trust to whatever it applies. No more graphic a sketch was ever drawn than is given of Ishmael's posterity in the words cited. "Who hath sent out the wild-ass free? or who hath loosed the bands of the onager? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the salt land his dwelling-place. He scorneth the tumult of the city, neither heareth he the shoutings of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth for every green thing" (Job 39: 5-8). Such exactly are the Bedouins. No sober Christian supposes a perpetual miracle as to Ishmael, but that what God said of that race is as sure as what He said of Israel, no less than of Babylon, Medo-Persia, the Greek power, or the Roman.

No sceptical ingenuity then avails to shake the certainty that Ishmael's singular lot stands revealed from early days. The meaning of Genesis 16: 12 is as plain as it is striking, and as applicable today as for thousands of years past. This is not true of any other notable people. Compare the Egyptians, the Assyrians, or the Israelites: what differing changes have they not each and all experienced? How little if at all has the Bedouin altered? Cushites have settled here or there in Arabia, or passed across the Arabic gulf to the opposite coast of Africa. Joktanites in varied lines may still abide, especially in the South and the West; but their characteristics are by no means akin. The stamp of Ishmael is unmistakable in the North and East, as well as elsewhere; and the wild-ass marks him indelibly now as of old. Exceptions there may have been in the long tract of ages that have elapsed, but mostly affecting the nomad Arabs, in Yemen far more than where they pitched their tents, but also as to Mecca and Medina; as well as for awhile in the North. But these seizures are allowed to have been temporary and local. "The body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies; the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people, which it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless to attack."

It is easy to say that the obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and country of the Arabs. But God only could and did reveal their course from their earliest progenitor. The same unbelief which attributes Christianity to natural causes seeks to explain away the interest God felt about Abraham's offspring, even outside His covenant, and His expression of it in His Word. The believer enjoys His communications and is grateful to the enlargement of heart and mind, as unbelief reaps darkness increasingly and death. It is good to own Him, who is not only the Highest and only true God, but our Father in that gift of His love, His written Word: whatever be its subject matter, it is worthy of Himself. And if in the Old Testament He speaks of outward things and His moral government, are we not to appreciate His condescension?

The Generations of Isaac

Genesis 25: 19-26

As we have had occasion to remark in Scripture, the Spirit briefly notices the fleshly claim before giving us what is of grace: not first the spiritual but the natural; afterward the spiritual. We have had Ishmael's generations of much and speedy show; now we hear of Isaac's.

"And these [are] the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son. Abraham begot Isaac. And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah as wife, daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan-Aram, sister of Laban the Syrian. And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she [was] barren; and Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If so, why [am] I thus (or, do I live?)? And she went to enquire of Jehovah. And Jehovah said to her, Two nations [are] in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from they bowels; and [one] people shall be stronger than [the other] people; and the elder shall serve the younger. And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, twins [were] in her womb. And the first came out red all over like a hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. And after that came his brother out; and his hand took hold of Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob; and Isaac [was] sixty years old when she bore them" (vv. 19-26).

It is of God that faith should be tried. The promise is sure; but the believer has to wait for it. Ishmael can boast of his twelve sons, with names soon notable by their villages, if not "towns," and by their encampments, if not castles. Isaac mourned for a mother beloved, and had not a wife provided for him, till he was forty years old. Even then he abides childless some twenty years. "And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she was barren; and Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived." As Abraham knew that "in Isaac should his seed be called," yet staggered not at God's call to offer him up for a burnt-offering, assured that this very Isaac would be given back to him and continue the line of blessing, so Isaac had His Word securing the call inalienably in himself, the type of the promised Seed on whom all hangs. It was grace; but grace revealed the channel through which the blessing was to flow, and this drew out his prayers, while patience had its perfect work. Isaac therefore entreated Jehovah, and Jehovah was entreated of Isaac. The trial of his faith was far from being so searching as Abraham's. It was suited to each in divine wisdom. Strong faith shone in the father, gracious dependence in the son, to the praise of God in the blessing of both.

We may notice too that Isaac and Rebekah were kept from the snare that involved Abraham and especially Sarah in the grief which impatience brought into their home. In Rebekah's case there was no thought of building up the desired heir to Isaac by a concubine; nor did he on his part look to so fleshly a device. Conjugal faithfulness and purity in the main characterized the pair. They hoped for the promised boon which for so long they saw not; but with patience they waited for it, and not in vain. Isaac did not faint, but besought Jehovah according to His promise, and he was heard in due time.

There were to be twins. And the children gave anticipative token to their mother, as we are told, for her trial, so that she too went to enquire of Jehovah. Who can overlook the propriety with which the name of covenant relationship is here employed? All intrinsic value is lost by the supposition that it is due to an accidental occurrence of that designation; it is really divine purpose clothing the account with the title of moral government. Nor is there any ground to fancy that she consulted Melchizedek or journeyed to Moriah. Without either she knew where to find Jehovah and how to enquire of Him. Her faith might be weak, but it was real, and without superstitious dependence on any man or place.

Here was Jehovah's answer (v. 23): "Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; and people shall be stronger than people; and the elder shall serve the younger." Predestination as to their history on earth is manifest here. It is made all the more striking because the babes yet unborn were of the same mother as well as father, nay twins. So it is that the apostle in Romans 9: 10-12 deduces the truth intended. "But Rebekah also having conceived by one, Isaac our father, (for [the children] being not yet born, nor having done anything good or worthless, that the purpose of God according to election might abide, not of works, but of him that calleth) it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger." Divine sovereignty was thus shown to be as free as it is certain to faith. Fleshly descent on which the Jews founded their exclusive title is disproved; expressly and assuredly of Esau. For here flesh is excluded most distinctly, and the title is drawn from Jehovah's sovereign pleasure. His word made it all the more pointed by declaring that "the elder should serve the younger," and this in view of their future nations respectively.

The details of fact follow. Esau appeared first, full of evident vigour; Jacob afterward, with his hand holding Esau's heel, which gave his name of supplanter before he had power with God. But it is meet, whatever appearances say, that God should have His way, not man; and if man resists, it is to his own sorrow, shame, and ruin. We perhaps may say of Jacob, that God placed more abundant honour on that which lacked. Is our eye evil because His is good?

The Sons, Esau and Jacob

Genesis 25: 27-34

Now the difference in life and manners in the two sons was an issue of deep moment for each, and a warning for every reader who needs God's grace.

"And the boys grew; and Esau became a man skilful in hunting, a man of the field, and Jacob an upright man dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved Esau because venison was to his taste (or, in his mouth), and Rebekah loved Jacob. And Jacob boiled a dish (or, boiling), and Esau came in from the field, and he [was] faint. And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, pray, with the red — the red thing there, for I [am] faint. Therefore they called his name Edom. And Jacob said, Sell today thy birthright to me? And Esau said, Behold, I am going to die, and what [is] this birthright to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me today, and he swore to him; and sold his birthright to Jacob. And Jacob gave to Esau bread and the dish of lentils; and he ate and drank and rose up and went away: thus Esau despised the birthright" (vv. 27-34).

As the boys grew, it became plain that Esau had no faith, and that Jacob had. The life, far more truly than the lips, indicated where the heart turned and where the treasure lay. Of those from whom they sprang, it is written that "all of these died in faith," or according to faith. They had not received the things prescribed; from afar they saw and saluted them, confessing thereby that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth (or land), of which dwelling in tents was an express token (Heb. 11: 9, 13). It was not so with Esau. He had no relish for the believing and expectant posture of the patriarchs. He threw off all the lessons inculcated by the life and confession of his father and his grandfather. Nimrod was his prototype, not Abraham; still less was He the Object, who shone before the eyes of all the elders that obtained testimony in the power of faith. He chose and gave himself up to the exciting pursuits of the chase; he became a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field. He was bent on visible and present gratification, finding his pleasure in its vicissitudes, in its demand on craft and resources of every kind, and even in its occasional dangers as well as its successes. As with that rebel whom he thus far emulated, God was not in any of his thoughts. What cared he for that bright expectation of victory over the power of evil, through One more than man who should nevertheless come of woman and taste of the sharpest suffering though triumphant? The unseen was nothing to Esau, whose heart was filled with his own things of every day, catching and killing the animals without reason.

Jacob, on the other hand, could be described as an upright man dwelling in tents. He was an heir, with Isaac and with Abraham, of the same promise. The like faith produced like fruit. He waited for the city that has the foundations, beyond all that earth can furnish, of which God is artificer and master-maker, or demiurge. He had not a little to watch and contend against in his natural ways; but he looked beyond present scenes and so was kept from living according to motives of self-will with no object above the earth. His walk was feeble compared with Abraham, and chequered compared with Isaac. Still he could say ere he departed that God tended him all his life long, and that His Angel redeemed him from all evil. Esau could not and did not speak of any such shepherd care, of which he never felt the need and would have been ashamed. The earth as it is was his one field of enjoyment, and its wild creatures the object of his skilled toils. The future of divine glory was no more to his heart than a dream that is told. But Jacob, faulty as he was, did prove the watchful and gracious care of God now, and wait for "that day." It is this only which gives integrity before God, without which "dwelling in tents" had been no more than to the Bedouin; but with him it was the mark of his pilgrim character and hopes.

Alas! The faults of children often betray the carelessness or worse of their parents. Partialities, as in verse 29, may be natural; but they bring inevitable chastening. A parent on the one hand may like a character the most distant from his own, as we see here Isaac did; or there may be preference given to one that resembles, as appears in Rebekah. They had been more blessed and more a blessing, if they had commanded their children with vigilant love in faith, as Jehovah said of Abraham in Genesis 18: 19. Here the inspiring Spirit had a humbling tale to tell, as we learn the retribution in God's moral government.

Passing hunger led to the gravest results. Jacob sod a pottage of lentils the day when Esau returned faint and famished (v. 29). This gave the occasion. Jacob earnestly sought that title which to his forefathers and his descendants was bound up with blessing; and he knew that his brother had no such value for it. He therefore availed himself of Esau's need to strike the bargain. "Feed me, pray, with the red, that there," said the spent hunter. "Sell me today thy birthright," eagerly replied the unbelieving believer.

Thus Esau, ever open to the present, agreed and swore to it (vv. 30-33).

"And Jacob gave Esau bread and the pottage (or, dish) of lentils; and he ate and drank and rose up and went his way," with the simple and solemn comment, "Thus Esau despised his birthright."

No doubt, the edge of his appetite was keen, and the dish before his eyes was tempting to the hungry hunter. But had he no father that loved him, no mother to pity and provide? Blame Jacob as you will for seizing the opportunity for what he valued if Esau did not. And this was now evident: no hunger and thirst for him an hour longer. "That red there" he must have at once, cost what it might. Let others be for Christ's sake "in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings, in cold and nakedness." What was that to one who lived only to please himself? He could not fast another hour. "Behold, I am going to die, and what is this birthright to me?"

Ishmael, the bondservant's son, was evil enough. Born of the flesh only, he persecuted him that was born after the Spirit; he mocked the son and heir of Abraham born under circumstances which pointed to God's intervention for all who believe. But Esau was all the more guilty because according to prayer and prophecy he was born of the heir of promise, with whatever of advantage over Jacob that an earlier birth could give. Was not he equally with Jacob brought up in the familiar sound of God's word and ways as far as this is known? But tried in a way which to a hunter should have been comparatively light, and with resources at hand which never had failed, and which it would be monstrous to conceive could fail his urgent need, he deliberately sold his own birthright "for one meal" (Heb. 12: 16), and thus incurred from the Holy Spirit the awful stigma of a "profane person."

Jehovah Appears to Isaac

Genesis 26: 1-5

The chapter opens with the account of Isaac tried by "famine in the land," as Abraham had been a hundred years before. It was meant to put faith to the proof passingly, as the Canaanite then in the land tried it permanently. But well did father and son know that the time had not arrived for possession. For this the object of their hope must come in power; and the prospect of Christ's day, we may be assured, filled the heart of Isaac with joy, as we are expressly told of Abraham (John. 8: 56). Meanwhile they were content to dwell in the land of promise, as not their own, looking for the coming glory, not on earth only but in heaven too. Here therefore they bowed to whatever tribulation God might send. We shall see, however, distinctions as interesting as they are instructive.

"And there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine which was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines to Gerar. And Jehovah appeared to him and said, Go not down to Egypt: dwell in the land that I shall tell thee of. Sojourn in this land; and I will be with thee and bless thee; for to thee and to thy seed I will give all these lands; and I will establish the oath which I swore to Abraham thy father. And I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and to thy seed I will give all these lands; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws" (vv. 1-5).

Here we have Isaac's distinctive trial of faith. Abraham was called to get out of his land and from his kindred and from his father's house to the land that Jehovah would show him, as He did. But Isaac was charged not to leave, but to sojourn in that land. This had its own difficulties, which grace does not spare. Blessed is the man that endures temptation or trial; for having been proved, he shall receive the crown of life which He promised to those that love Him, and meanwhile the proving of our faith works patience. Isaac accordingly, expressly forbidden by Jehovah, did not go down into Egypt even under the pressure of famine in the land. Abraham, as we know, did go; but there he dishonoured Jehovah, his wife, and himself, however rich he became in consequence.

Personally Abraham was a man of faith far more thoroughly than his son. And the son was forbidden where no interdict was laid on the father. Isaac was called, whatever it might cost, to abide in the land, and not go down to Egypt. The land, as all know, typifies heavenly places, as he does Christ, dead, risen, and in heaven, though the Philistines were there as yet uncleared.

This is the trial now. If we have been given to know that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, our responsibility is to walk worthily of the call wherewith we were called with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love. It is in this very association that we are prepared to face the sharpest trial. We must expect to be visited by every wind of the teaching which is in the trickery of men, in craft for the systematizing of error; but we are exhorted to be truthful in love and grow up unto Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ. Our conflict is not against blood and flesh, like Israel in their day, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies. For this reason we need to take to us the panoply of God; and withal we need to pray at all seasons with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching "hereunto with all perseverance. Our exposure is all the more because our blessing is of the highest: just as Isaac was the object of incomparable favour then, and called to abide where he was.

So are the saints now. What can match their revealed and blessed relationship? Is it possible to conceive greater privileges? Nothing is easier than to despise the pleasant land, and to cast longing eyes on Egypt. There flourish the resources of the world, the incentives to flesh, the pleasures of sin for a season. In the land such attractions are not; there was a famine as to all that feeds nature. But the word to those whose blessing lay in Canaan is, Go not down to Egypt: dwell in the land that I will tell thee of. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee and bless thee.

We are diligently to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as also we were called in one hope of our calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in us all. Far beyond the oath to Abraham is our security, far beyond the lands of Israel or earth is our inheritance, though we rest on the same One who is the Seed of blessing for them and all the nations; and we boast a Father infinitely above their father Abraham.

Isaac in Gerar

Genesis 26: 6-11

What candour is in Scripture! How truly divine! Isaac was saved from going down into Egypt, whither famine had driven his father. He was guided so as to be a suited type of Him who is now for us only in heaven. But he sinned in Gerar, as Abraham sinned before him. This ought to have been to him a solemn admonition, if he had remembered it as he ought in God's presence. Out of it the failure of one we love becomes a snare to repeat it, and it may be an excuse as not pretending to be better.

"And Isaac dwelt in Gerar. And the men of the place asked him about his wife. And he said, She [is] my sister; for he feared to say, My wife, lest the men of the place slay me on account of Rebekah; because she was fair in countenance. And it came to pass when he had been there some time, that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of the window and saw, and, behold, Isaac [was] sporting with Rebekah his wife. And Abimelech called Isaac and said, Behold, she [is] certainly thy wife; and how saidst thou, She [is] my sister? And Isaac said to him, Because I said, Lest I die for her. And Abimelech said, What [is] this thou has done to us? Lightly might one of the people have lain with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought on us a trespass. And Abimelech charged all the people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely (dying) be put to death" (vv. 6-11).

For the Christian it is the sure proof of a low and earthly state of soul to palliate a lie by toning it down to "incorrect speech." One thus panders to the world's code of honour, where the truth is unknown, and an impeachment of veracity, however certain, demands wiping out with blood. Still more deplorable is the delusion which plays into the enemy's hand, as if no saint can be guilty of lying. Even the New Testament warns of the danger in Epistles such as those to the saints in Ephesus and Colosse, which treat of the highest privileges of the church. "Wherefore putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each with his neighbour; for we are members one of another." "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds." The repeated warning proves how readily it might be even among the best taught. Only ignorance or worldliness could think otherwise. In fact it is recorded for our admonition that such was the first sin after the great Pentecost.

But it is intolerable to compare or class with lying any mistakes of inadvertency or hearsay, particularly when there is care to correct them after the facts are better known. The essence of lying is the wish to deceive, whatever the motive; which may be to exalt self or to injure another, to evade through fear or to gain a desired end. There is no difficulty in discerning where the eye is single. Even the least esteemed or those of no account in the church are quite capable of judging matters of wrong or falsehood, though it would be absurd to expect from such a sound judgment on deeper questions. But as the Old Testament does not hide or extenuate the fathers, so the New Testament lets us know how far in this very way might fall an honoured apostle, who trusted himself and let drop the warning words of the Lord.

Is it not a most humbling element presented in Isaac's case as in Abraham's, that a saint may sink below the world's standard of morality? The king of the Philistines reproved Isaac for untruthfulness, and this in exposing that wife to dishonour and his own people to guiltiness; as either he or probably his predecessor had similarly denounced the same case of deceit in Abraham, made yet worse by his previous failure in a like way with Pharaoh in Egypt. Had Isaac borne all holily in mind, it must have proved a safeguard by grace, instead of a cloak for the flesh yielding through unbelieving terror. Let ourselves now see to it that we profit by the written Word all the more, because He who is the truth, now fully revealed, makes all such failure appear in its full heinousness.

There is an added element in the untruth of Abraham and of Isaac: the betrayal of the relationship of their wives, Sarah and Rebekah, by their own shortsighted selfishness. How blessed is the contrast of Christ, as the Husband of Israel, and the Bridegroom of the church! Compare Numbers 30.

Isaac Blessed of Jehovah

Genesis 26: 12-16

It is well to note the manner of Scripture. God does not need to vindicate His holy character, and still less does He attenuate or excuse the faults of His people. He demands and deserves our trust. He tells the unvarnished truth now of Isaac's prevarication, as before of Abraham's. He makes known the successive and humiliating reproofs of Philistine kings. On His part is no hiding of what man would have gladly ignored. The sin was too sadly true; and inspiration preserved the record for warning and profit at all times to His servant's shame but to His own glory. There He stops, leaving us to infer the inner exercises of Isaac. Yet striking is that which follows in the way of external blessing.

"And Isaac sowed in that land and found in the same year a hundredfold; and Jehovah blessed him. And the man became great, and went forward and grew great; until he became very great. And he had possession of flocks and possession of herds, and a great store of servants; and the Philistines envied him. And all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped them, and filled them with earth. And Abimelech said to Isaac, Go from us; for thou art become much mightier than we" (vv. 12-16).

Here it is the silence of Scripture which we do well to heed. For nothing is told us of what must have passed in such a man's soul. Did he not review the unworthy cheat by which he sought to screen himself from danger at the cost of his wife? Was he not humbled by its just exposure by Abimelech? Isaac was a gracious and prayerful person, who knew what it is to meditate in the fields at eventide. Is it conceivable that one of such habits would fail to sit in judgment on his own deliberate untruth, stumbling to the world, dishonouring to his Almighty Protector, to his beloved wife, and to himself as a saint? His father's sin in the same way, ought it not to have admonished him all the more, instead of ensnaring him to follow so bad an example? Can one doubt then, that the fear of Isaac (Gen. 31: 42) wrought in his conscience to humble and to clear his spirit from guile.

God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap. For he that sows unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that sows unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal. Did not Isaac judge himself? How else can we understand the blessing vouchsafed in so marked a way and degree to the patriarch at this juncture? It was no doubt of an external sort; but so it is that Jehovah wrought of old, and thus did He act then. There was no longer a moral obstacle in the way. The defilement, even when publicly known, grace had removed. "And Isaac sowed in that land and found in the same year a hundredfold; and Jehovah blessed him. And the man became great and went forward, and grew until he became very great," etc.

Isaac's increase, especially in the great year of famine, drew out the envy of his neighbours. Nor did ill-will stay there. The Philistines stopped with earth the wells dug before by Abraham's servants. But Isaac was a man of meek spirit. It was a felt loss to one whose household and herds were dependent on such supplies; it was no less insulting than injurious; but Isaac bowed before the wrong. "If when ye do good and suffer, ye shall endure it, this is acceptable [grace] with God." None of the fathers manifested the passive virtues equally with Isaac. Even Abimelech failed to rebuke the unkindness and enmity. "Go from us," said he, "for thou art become much mightier than we." Even so, He who is higher than the highest walked in His grace. Indeed it was His portion from a babe and onward, for Satan is "the prince of the world" — the personal enemy of the Lord of glory. There was no room for the Son of God in the inn: was not the manger good enough for Him? But is the slight nothing in God's eyes? The reproach of Christ ought to be dear to the hearts of His own. Yet is it excellent discipline for the godly, if indeed they walk by faith, not by sight. They declare thereby that they belong to the One crucified on earth but glorified in heaven.

So the Lord in Matthew 5 opens the principles of the kingdom of heaven, that those who follow Him now may clearly know His mind till the Father's Kingdom come, and His will too is done on earth as it is in heaven. Then must evil vanish divinely and judicially, for unrighteousness shall disappear from the earth when the Lord reigns in power; it is His patience as yet. Hence for the present the enemy rules. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens; blessed they that mourn, for they shall be comforted; blessed the meek, for they shall inherit the earth; blessed they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. In the day that hastens, as Jehovah will govern manifestly, His people shall dwell at ease, and the oppressor be broken in pieces; the righteous, instead of suffering, shall flourish, with abundance of peace till the moon be no more. For the Great King shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him. Can contrast be more complete with what the Lord taught us to expect till that day? We shall know His sufferings, with the assured prospect of reigning with Him then, as the Epistles no less than the Gospels and the Revelation so amply and plainly attest to Him that has ears to hear. For the world it will be Jehovah reigning as could not be now.

Isaac Up to Rehoboth

Genesis 26: 17-22

Gerar was a district as well as a town. When the patriarch removed from the king's neighbourhood, it was still the same country, the valley or "torrent" of Gerar, a wadi in our more modern term. At times of much rain a stream ran for awhile through the valley.

"And Isaac departed, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac again (returned and) dug the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And the servants of Isaac dug in the valley and found there a well of living water. And the herdsmen of Gerar strove with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, Ours [is] the water. And he called the name of the well Esek (Strife), because they quarrelled with him. And they dug another well; and they contended for that also; and he called the name of it Sitnah (Hatred). And he removed thence, and dug another well, and they strove not for that; and he called the name of it Rehoboth (Broadways); and said, For now hath Jehovah made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land" (vv. 17-22).

Neither sense of his own failure in the past depressed Isaac now, nor did the unmerited goodness of Jehovah puff him up. It was a pain, though it ought not to be a surprise, that the Philistines envied his prosperity; nor was it wonderful that Abimelech should gratify the popular feeling, and prompt his departure. But if he departed from their vicinity, he kept the word of the Lord and did not deny His name. Egypt was forever barred to him. He encamped in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there.

With none of the wandering fathers do we find wells of water so largely and conspicuously connected as with Isaac. This is manifestly characteristic. In that quarter of the earth they were of the greatest value. They were a needed and welcome part of his blessing here below, not so much for one that sowed and reaped abundantly, but in the possession of flocks and herds with a great retinue of servants, who suffered from the spite which sought to render useless what men did not need for themselves.

But the typical interest is no less instructive. Where but with Isaac should the pledge of spiritual use and refreshment be appropriately sought? The washing of water by the word, and yet more the fountain of water springing up unto life eternal, and the rivers of living water flowing out richly, have we not this and more in the New Testament as the figure of the Holy Spirit's operations, now that the Son of God is come, redemption accomplished, and the Man (who is no less God) glorified consequently in heaven? What can be plainer than the fact here attested? What less worthy than for believers to allow that inspiration had no divine motive or end in recording such facts as these and very few others in the lowly and peaceful path of Isaac? He dug again the wells of water, dug in the days of his father: even this is reserved for the account of Isaac, and his perseverance in the face of that enmity which has its pleasure in opposing and destroying the unused good.

Another feature in the case it is well to notice, because the blatant scepticism of the hour, more audacious and malicious than Philistinian hatred, perverts it to dishonour God's Word as well as to injure needy man. "He called their names after the names by which his father had called them": a very natural and proper thing for any upright soul to do, and peculiarly suitable to such a son as Isaac showed himself uniformly to be.

But here in verses 19-22 we hear also of wells unheard of before. "And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living water. And the herdsmen of Gerar strove with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, The water is ours; and he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarrelled with him." Change of place does not see change in man. "And they dug another well, and they contended for that also; and he called the name of it Sitnah." But Isaac did not change from that meekness which becomes the man of God, gentle to all, and forbearing to such as opposed themselves. Nor was his dependence on God without a speedy answer. For removing thence he dug another well, and they strove not for that; and he called the name of it Rehoboth, and said, as accounting for the name, "For now hath Jehovah made room for us; and we shall be fruitful in the land." Contention was as far from his spirit, as ingratitude to the Almighty Protector of him who must not strive. How is it with us? Do we indeed know that all things work together for good to them that love God? Do we give thanks always for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to Him that is God the Father?

Isaac at Beersheba

Genesis 26: 23-35

We cannot avoid seeing, at least when it is pointed out, how truly Isaac typifies the part of the Christian who is not of the world as Christ is not. He does not resist evil. Smitten on the right cheek, he presents the other also. He does not contend for the goods of which he was deprived, but when his cloak was taken away, he does not fight even for his coat. Neither Abraham nor Jacob was so tried, nor did their patience shine so eminently; the one fought for Lot (Gen. 14), the other for himself (Gen. 48), but never Isaac. The Christian, the church, has this call to suffer still more as a living principle, for which not only the Pagans of old taunted, but no less the sceptics who inherit their enmity.* Christ was the perfect exemplar.

*"The Christians were not less averse to the business than to the pleasures of this world. The defence of our persons and property they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrine which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries, and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh insults. Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistracy, and by the active contention of public life; nor could their humane ignorance be convinced, that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow-creatures, either by the sword of justice, or by that of war; even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community. [This is nowhere taught in the New Testament, which only lays it down for the individual believer.] It was acknowledged that under a less perfect law [the Mosaic], the powers of the Jewish constitution had been exercised, with the approbation of heaven, by inspired prophets and by anointed kings. The Christians felt and confessed [in contrast with Socinians, Anabaptists and Quakers, that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the world; and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their pagan governors. But while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defence of the empire [Compare John 18: 36]. Some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to those persons who, before their conversion, were already engaged in such violent and sanguinary occupations; but it was impossible that the Christians, without renouncing a more sacred duty, could assume the character of soldiers, of magistrates, or of princes. This indolent [!], or even criminal [!!], disregard to the public welfare, exposed them to the contempt and reproach" of the Pagans, who very frequently asked what must be the fate of the empire, attacked on every side by the barbarians, if all mankind [!!! "little flock" says Christ] should adopt the pusillanimous sentiments of the new sect? To this insulting question the Christian apologists resumed obscure and ambiguous answers as they were unwilling to reveal the secret cause of their security: the expectation that before the conversion of mankind was accomplished, war, government, the Roman empire, and the world itself, would be no more. It may be observed, that in this instance likewise, the situation of the first Christians coincided very happily with their religious scruples, and that their aversion to an active life contributed rather to excuse them from the service, than to exclude them from the honours, of the state and army" (Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 15, vol. 2, pp. 104,105, Oxford ed. 1827). Separation to God from mere man as such or the world is proper, in differing characters and degrees, for Israel His people under law, and to the Father now for Christians, His children under grace. This is the true key.

"And thence he went up to Beersheba. And Jehovah appeared to him the same night, and said, I [am] the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I [am] with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. And he built an altar there, and called upon the name of Jehovah, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants dug a well. And Abimelech, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phichol the captain of his host, went to him from Gerar. And Isaac said to them, Why are ye come to me, seeing ye hate me and have sent me away from you? And they said, We saw certainly that Jehovah is with thee; and we said, Let there now be an oath between us, between us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee; that thou wilt do us no wrong, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done to thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou [art] now blessed of Jehovah. And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink. And they rose early in the morning, and swore one to another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac's servants came and told him concerning the well that they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

"And Esau was forty years old, when he took as wife Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basmath, daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they were bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah" (vv. 23-35).

Patience had a perfect work with Isaac. If the old wells were stopped up out of spite, if the new that were found excited envy and ill-will, he contended not. Enmity on his side there was none. He departed when the ruler bade him, till at last a well was found beyond for which the opposing herdsmen did not strive. Yet thence, however promising it looked, he went up to Beersheba; and Jehovah again appeared to him "the same night," and bade him "fear not"; His presence and blessing were assured for Abraham's sake. And there a fresh spring was dug, where he raised an altar and pitched his tent.

Nor was this all. The very king with his friend and chief captain seek Isaac, not he them; and on his remonstrance own that they saw plainly that Jehovah was with Isaac, and seek an oath and covenant that he would do them no hurt, though they explained away their own shabby course. "Thou art now blessed of Jehovah." Yes, this is emphatically Isaac's position, the Philistines themselves being judges. They came and paid homage at his feet, and acknowledged that Jehovah loved him. And as a prince he treated them with a feast and the pledges they sought; for indeed he desired their blessing, as will one day be fully in the Promised Seed to all the nations of the earth. And "the same day" a new well was found, which he called Shebah, and renewed the name of the old city adjoining.

But verses 34 and 35 reveal a bitter sorrow in sad contrast. Not content with despising his birthright, profane Esau took to him at mature age two daughters of Heth, to the grief of both his parents. Was this a man to receive or value the blessing of Jehovah? It was He who was dishonoured most by such a marriage, to say nothing of the family.

Isaac Old and Seeing Dimly

Genesis 27: 1-5

Humbling for Isaac, and for all concerned yet more, is the scene which opens for our admonition. No such failure stained the testimony of his father nor yet his son Jacob's. His life of comparative easy-going blinded him for awhile to distressing forgetfulness of Jehovah's mind and declared purpose. Alas! it was not a new thing that Isaac loved Esau, not simply as his son on account of his natural boldness, but because venison was to his taste. Whereas Rebekah loved Jacob, whose character in its fleshly traits resembled her own in Syrian craft and selfishness; but in neither was there lukewarmness to divine promise.

"And it came to pass when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, that he called Esau his son, the eldest, and said to him, My son; and he said to him, Here [am] I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death. Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and hunt me venison, and make me savoury meat such as I love, and bring [it] to me that I may eat, in order that my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spoke to Esau his son; and Esau went to the field to hunt and bring venison" (vv. 1-5).

No doubt the words of Jehovah, before the sons were born, the more impressed Rebekah because they were said to her, "The elder shall serve the younger." But Isaac was wholly responsible as one that loved and feared Him. Then again did not Esau, when arrived at years of discretion, sell his birthright for one mess of food? And was not this profane act aggravated by indifference to that separateness which the chosen family were bound to maintain before Jehovah in the midst of the doomed races who possessed the land? His Hittite wives were bitterness of spirit to both parents: how sad that the father should now treat it so lightly!

The Holy Spirit puts the matter simply and livingly before us for our profit. Nor let us fail to adore our God for His wondrous patience. Let us delight in the wisdom of His ways, overruling carnal partiality which would make His Word void, and securing His purpose, however faulty they were who remembered it. And as they resorted to unworthy expedients to correct the wrong and insure His promise, they each fell under His righteous chastening of their crooked policy. God loves dearly, but rebukes and chastises.

What a grief it is to one who feels for God and His saints to look on this household of faith reversing that godly order which long before characterized Abraham's in His estimate! "For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah to do righteousness and judgment, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him" (Gen. 18: 19. Yet what He spoke of Abraham was the Seed of promise, and not only a great and mighty nation, but all the nations of the earth blessed in him. Now the type of that very Seed was oblivious save of present gratification of the flesh, and this with the intention of conveying the blessing to the profane line and away from the divinely designated heir! Again she who once turned her back on kin and country to become the bride of the father's only son and heir in distant Canaan, plotting against her husband, and teaching the true inheritor of the promises to cheat against the father's shortsighted folly! O what shame before God, men, and angels, even if we say not a word of him who hoped through his father's weakness to retrieve his hopes, ruined by his own rash and unbelieving self-seeking!

But, if we anticipate, Isaac's words certainly filled Rebekah with alarm. Instead of enquiring of Jehovah as in days of more lively faith, she heard them now to devise her own wretched way of deceit, in order to defeat the wrong her husband had in mind to do. Esau meanwhile went, we may be sure, with alacrity as unbounded as his surprise, to gratify his father after his own fashion, and regain what had seemed lost irreparably. But be not deceived. God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal. Even if all faithlessly fail and receive rebuke from above in righteous government, God abides faithful; for He cannot deny Himself; and His Word is as sure for the future as it has ever proved in the past and the present.

Rebekah's Advice

Genesis 27: 6-17

Every Scripture is inspired of God and is profitable. How much is passed by without notice in the life of Isaac! Inspiration implies special purpose. When a grave lesson was to be taught, there is no sparing the reputation of a saint: God speaks and writes holily and all is for our profit.

"And Rebekah spoke to Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak to Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat and bless thee before Jehovah before my death. Now therefore, my son, hearken to my voice according to that which I command thee. Go, I pray thee, to the flock, and fetch me thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make of them savoury meat for thy father such as he loveth; and thou shall bring [it] to thy father, that he may eat, so that he may bless thee before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother [is] a hairy man, and I a smooth man. My father perhaps will feel me, and I shall be in his eyes as one that mocketh, and I shall bring on me a curse and not a blessing. And his mother said to him, On me [be] thy curse, my son: only hearken to my voice, and go, fetch me [them]. And he went and fetched and brought [them] to his mother. And his mother prepared a savoury dish such as his father loved. And Rebekah took the clothes of her elder son Esau, and put them on Jacob her younger son, the costly ones that [were] with her in the house; and she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hands, and on the smooth of his neck; and she gave the savoury meat and the bread into the hand of her son Jacob" (vv. 6-17).

We may assume that Rebekah acted on impulse in circumventing her husband's forgetfulness of the Lord's word, and Esau's profane and evil character. Who can suppose that she "went to enquire of Jehovah," as when troubled by appearances before the birth of the twins? The sly Syrian character of her family asserted itself, in the assurance that Isaac was altogether in the wrong. But if right in her judgment, how sorrowful to tarnish it, not only by her own means of giving it effect, but by drawing her beloved child, the object of divine promise, into conduct so unworthy of faith!

In nothing be anxious, wrote the apostle; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, as our gentleness should be known to all men. We walk by faith, not by sight. Do you say that this applies to faith since redemption? But what of the three young Hebrews in view of the burning furnace of fire? What of the aged Daniel with the den of lions before him? No petition, nor visit to the king juggled by vanity into the impious decree pressed by the ruling princes. No hiding of his devotions to God, so well known to those that were envious of his position. "And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem); and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. Then these men assembled together and found Daniel making petition and supplication before his God." He obeyed God rather than men, and he took the consequences to His glory.

Rebekah and Jacob took the way of the flesh; and as they sowed, so they reaped; for God is not mocked, while He showed Himself faithful to His promise, and Isaac's folly was of no avail to reinstate the son who sold his birthright. But how humbling to the family all around, and not least of all to him who ought to have obeyed God in subjection to His express will, and have upheld in faith the dignity of its head! How foolish and unworthy in Rebekah particularly! She of all best knew Isaac's piety, as she beyond doubt had the liveliest remembrance of the divine sentence that the older should serve the younger. It was therefore the graver failure in her not to be open with her husband in Jehovah's name who would have blessed all around instead of having to chastise.

Even Jacob felt and expressed his qualms, lest the deceit of his mother which he was about to practice should elicit a curse, instead of a blessing from his father. But Rebekah's will was too much committed to her device; and she displayed no little aptitude in guarding her son from the danger he anticipated. In neither do we find conscience at work, still less any reckoning on God's gracious power to bring to naught the carnal design of Isaac to bestow that title to the blessing of Jehovah which Jacob truly valued, and Esau made of less account than one mess of food.

On me, said Rebekah, be thy curse, my son: only hearken to my voice, etc. Certainly Isaac had no curse to call on Rebekah; but as she was the prime mover in the wrong way to gain a right end, so had she most to feel the chastening of God's unfailing moral government. For soon after the transaction here recorded Jacob took his leave for the land of the sons of the east; and the mother never again saw her beloved child. He too through sorrowful years had to smart under the wily cheating schemes of his mother's brother, his own father-in-law. No flesh shall or can glory. It only remains to glory in Jehovah. He never fails; and alone, when every other failed as in this case, He accomplishes His purpose in mercy and wisdom. How worthy is He of all trust!

It was all skilfully done to deceive Isaac; and Jacob only too ready to comply with his mother to God's dishonour, who would surely have defeated the father's desire to favour Esau. But unbelief is ever far from God, and is nowhere so low and hateful as when it works in believers.

The Common Sin and Shame

Genesis 27: 18-29

The Scriptures do not spare us the needed lesson of what man is, even elect man. It is painful reading, and meant so to be, but full of profit; for many believers are slow to allow that flesh is no better in them than in the patriarchal family. Every one of them betrayed at this point the bad state morally of each. The usually blameless Isaac was so overcome by self-indulgence in his appetite as to lose sight not only of the profanity of the elder son but of Jehovah's will and choice of Jacob. Rebekah, however right as to the end in view, was utterly unscrupulous as to the means; and Jacob, not without conscience and fear about the deceit he was to practice on his blind father and lying personation of Esau, dreaded a curse instead of the blessing which he valued. But O what a God have we to do with, unmoved in His purpose of grace (else never could it stand)! unchanging in His righteousness which chastened every one of them for good even now, yet with pain because of their sins, that they might not be condemned with the world. It may not be that He brings good out of evil, as men say; but His own good to do us good, rising above every fault and dishonour. Thus "We know that to those that love God all things work together for good, to those that are called according to purpose" (Rom. 8: 28).

"And he (Jacob) came to his father and said, My father: and he said, Here [am] I: who [art] thou, my son? And Jacob said to his father, I [am] Esau, thy firstborn; I have done according as thou didst say to me, Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of thy venison, in order that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said to his son, How [is] this [that] thou hast found [it] so quickly, my son? And he said, Because Jehovah thy God brought [it] before me. And said Isaac to Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou [be] my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him and said, The voice [is] Jacob's voice, but the hands [are] Esau's hands. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy as his brother Esau's hands; and he blessed him. And he said, Thou then my very son Esau? And he said, I [am]. And he said, Bring [it] near to me, and I will eat of my son's venison, in order that my soul may bless thee. And he brought [it] near to him, and he did eat; and he brought him wine, and he drank. And Isaac his father said to him, Come near now and kiss me, my son. And he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his clothes, and blessed him and said, See, my son's smell [is] as a field's smell which Jehovah hath blessed. And God give thee of the dew of the heavens, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and new wine. Let peoples serve thee and races bow down to thee. Be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee. Cursed [be] every one that curseth thee, and blessed every one that blesseth thee" (vv. 18-29).

Undoubtedly for the time Isaac was blinded in the eyes of his heart worse than in his physical sight, even in his foolish partiality to thwart the declared mind of God. And this Rebekah overheard and sought to counteract with a woman's craft and quick fertility of resource. Had she looked to God instead of her feeble husband and her fond son, how different all would have been! Even Abraham listened to Sarah's voice when he was deeply moved for Ishmael: how much more ought not Rebekah to have counted on her appeal to Isaac's conscience, backed by the divine oracle even before the birth of the twins, that "the elder should serve the younger"! But she did not now inquire of Jehovah as of old; she yielded to a low deceit, as sinful before God as it dishonoured her husband and herself, reckless of its direct demoralizing of the heir apparent of the promise.

Alas! Jacob showed himself an adept to the manner born. "I am Esau thy firstborn," replied he to his hesitating father; "I have done as thou didst say to me." Not content with audacious falsehoods, he went on to hypocritical lying; for no sin grows less or better in the use. He meets his father's wonder at the quickness of the supply by his daring answer, "Jehovah thy God brought it before me." His voice made a difficulty even to dull Isaac; but the feeling of the goat skins which overlaid his neck and hands so cunningly, and the smell of Esau's best clothes, especially after savoury food and wine, removed further question from the aged father. And the blessing was given, both from Jehovah in covenant, and from God in sovereignty. Yet did its terms mainly consist of earthly abundance from the favour of the heavens, and the subjection not only of peoples and races of mankind generally, but also and specifically of his brethren and of his mother's sons, closing with a double sentence of larger and deeper import: "Cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be every one that blesseth thee."

Neither Esau's "running" nor Isaac's "willing" could set aside God's purpose. As the apostle says in Romans 9: 18, "So then it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Without His mercy not one could inherit the blessing. But this does not at all hinder His moral government meanwhile, which passes over no fault on their part of His children, and this because He detests their wrongs, and loves themselves. Were they spurious and not His sons, He would leave their iniquities to meet just doom at the last day.

Isaac Blessing Esau

Genesis 27: 30-40

We have now to hear of Esau and his blessing.

*The distinction of Jacob from Esau in the blessing which Isaac pronounced is stated strikingly in Hebrews 11: 20, though in a way which, as far as I know, is peculiar to the Greek language. The article is attached to each of their names, the Jacob, and the Esau. The intention was to present them respectively as distinct objects before the mind. It would have been enough ordinarily to have put no article before either. We may see a similar usage as to Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13: 2, 43, 46, 50 as compared with Acts 7 and Acts 14: 14, and in Acts 15: 2 both forms in the same verse. A further variety of the two names combined under one article is in Acts 15: 22. These are but a few instances of what is common in Greek.

"And it came to pass when Isaac had ended blessing Jacob, and when Jacob was hardly gone out from before Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came from his hunting. And he also prepared savoury meat, and brought [it] in to his father, and said to his father, Let my father arise and eat of his son's venison, in order that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said to him, Who [art] thou? And he said, I [am] thy son, thy firstborn, Esau. And Isaac trembled with a trembling exceedingly great, and said, Who then [is] he that hunted venison and brought [it] to me? And I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him: also blessed he shall be. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a cry great and exceeding bitter, and said to his father, Bless me, me also, my father. And he said, Thy brother came with subtlety and has taken away thy blessing. And he said, Is he not rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: my birthright he took away; and behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved for me a blessing. And Isaac answered and said to Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren I have given him for servants; and corn and new wine have I supplied him; and what then shall I do for thee, my son? And Esau said to his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, me also, my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. And Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold, of the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and thou shall serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt rove about, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck" (vv. 30-40).

It is all very touching in a natural way. One's indignation kindles at the underhand course of Jacob and Rebekah; one feels for the erring and deceived aged saint; one pities the bitter disappointment of Esau, worthless though he was, and ungodly as he had already proved. But we rejoice at the turning-point of grace in Isaac's soul when he bowed to God's thwarting his endeavour to gratify the son who had ministered to his appetite, forgetful alas! of the already declared will of Jehovah as to Jacob. When God's overruling broke on him, instead of reviling the wife and younger son, he bowed in self-judgment and trembled with a trembling exceedingly great, sealing in faith what his lips said unwittingly but under God, "also he shall be blessed." He felt that, however others were to blame, the error was his own. God was but securing now what He had said before the sons were born. Faith now wrought, unhindered by the flesh which had lately darkened his eyes. And so says the Spirit in Hebrews 11. It was not according to his proclivities, but against them; "By faith Isaac blessed," not Esau and Jacob, but "Jacob and Esau [even] concerning things about to be."

Jehovah, as the Lord God, is and must be free to act according to the good pleasure of His will, whether for the heavens or for the earth; for man to assert his is alike folly and sin. As a saint he is set apart to obey God, not merely in the Ten Words, but in every respect; as a sinner, he is Satan's slave, and only deceives himself when he boasts of liberty, freewill, and what not. Obedience is the essential duty of the creature; and no reasoning can lessen the obligation, though it may blind man already fallen. But it is a believer's shame to be deceived, as the whole habited world is. Satan may accuse, but ought not to deceive him who has God's Word and Spirit; as we have seen Isaac deceived for awhile, but restored.

Still there was a blessing for Esau, and one far more suited to his nature than that which was reserved for Jacob. What did Esau care for the promises or the covenant? What relish had he for Messiah's kingdom? What reverence or readiness of subjection to Messiah Himself? The fatness of the earth was more to his taste, and the dew of heaven from above. Heaven itself was only a sentiment he gladly left for others to enjoy. He was, he flattered himself, a practical man; and the present world was to him a scene of enjoyable pleasures. Then what a fine thing to live by the sword when men opposed! He did not envy the poor spiritless creatures who lived, or said they did, by God's Word. Such fanaticism he despised. It was true that the word declared that he, Esau, should serve his brother. This was a disagreeable sentence, which had to be proved, and he would do all he could to prevent it. Meanwhile the same sentence said, that he should some time get loose, or rove about, and break the yoke from off his neck. Well, this would be a joy indeed: let his brother have the rest. Esau was profane; and it is a growing sin in our day, more glaring in Christendom than among the heathen. Without doubt the end of the age is at hand. The day of the Lord hastens; but the apostasy must first come, and the man of sin be revealed, the lawless one, in his own time, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume by His breath and annul by the appearing of His presence.

The Family Distracted

Genesis 27: 41-46

Grace alone secures salvation to sinful man, yet only to such as believe. But God ever carried on, as now also, a righteous government, whereby He deals with every fault among His own. So it was then. The sin of Isaac threw all into confusion, and gross evil ensued on the part of Rebekah and Jacob. So great indeed was the complication, that Esau, ungodly as he was, at this sad and shameful moment seemed more an object of pity than any other concerned, whilst those who really cared for Jehovah's will and blessing exposed His name to dishonour by the deceitful means they employed to gain it. O what sorrows and shame they make for themselves who forget that God cannot fail to accomplish His own purpose, and who in their haste for a good end do not scruple to adopt wicked means!

"And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him. And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand, and I will slay my brother Jacob. And the words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebekah. And she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said to him, Behold, thy brother Esau, as touching thee, comforteth himself that he will kill thee. And now, my son, hearken to my voice; and arise, flee to Laban my brother to Haran; and abide with him some days, until thy brother's fury turn away; until thy brother's anger turn away from thee, and he forget what thou hast done to him: then I will send and fetch thee thence. Why should I be bereaved of even both in one day?

"And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good should my life be to me?" (vv. 41-46).

Thus Esau soon turned from wailing and tears to murderous hatred. It was not Jehovah that he valued, but the blessing; as he had already proved how far he estimated the birthright when he sold it for one mess of food. He was a profane person. This was no real excuse for the misdoing of Rebekah and Jacob; but it aggravated the sin of Isaac. Henceforth hatred of his brother, even to take his life, filled Esau's heart, though he had received the promise of all he cared for, save the supremacy of his brother which his pride could not brook. So he plots with himself, when his aged father departed, or at least the days of the mourning were over, to slay his brother. Truly Esau went in the way of Cain.

But He whose eye is over all hearts kept aged Isaac for a long while to come, and the days of mourning did not arrive before Esau with four hundred men met Jacob to his sore distress; but God turned the heart that meant to slay him to receive the trembling man with kisses and tears. So truly does God dispose, let those propose as they may who know him not. Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?

Rebekah was the one to send her beloved child away, whatever it cost her. It was meet that she should be the instrument of his exile whom she had so guiltily instructed; it was meet that she should never again behold in the flesh the one whom she knew was the object of God's favour and the true heir to the promises, as Isaac also was, to the exclusion of both Ishmael and Esau. God is, and must be, and ought to be Sovereign; but God is just, and cannot look on cunning with impunity, while He can have no terms with profanity and ungodliness. She herself therefore has to do the greatest violence to her own feelings as well as Jacob's, and urges his fleeing to Haran, that he might abide with her brother Laban. "Some days" did she say? Ah, poor Rebekah, for many a long year to be cheated by Laban, as you and Jacob cheated Isaac! No, never will it be thine, whatever come of Esau's fury and anger, to send and fetch thy Jacob thence. Indeed it is striking that her death is in Scripture without notice. We know from Genesis 35 that Deborah, her nurse, died in Jacob's company, and was buried beneath Bethel under the oak which thence derived its name of Allon-Bachuth, Oak of Weeping. It is certain that Rebekah is not spoken of when Esau and Jacob met at the funeral of their father; whence we may fairly gather that she had died, we know not how long before the most aged of the patriarchs.

But this at least can be said of Rebekah that she shared with Isaac bitterness of spirit over the Hittite wives of Esau, and that she was the more faithful of the two in grief at Esau's godless ways. This was what she pressed on her husband as to Jacob, that he might be saved from so ill an example. Yet there was an impatience in the tone which left not a little to be desired. But Scripture tells us things as they were, even of the saints: as it alone reveals God to us.

Isaac's Charge to Jacob

Genesis 28: 1-5

Rebekah did not speak in vain; Isaac acted on her word as to Jacob; as God directed Abraham to listen to Sarah's voice when she demanded the dismissal of mocking Ishmael and his mother.

"And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father; and take thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest become a congregation of peoples. And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother." (vv. 1-5).

How pointed the distinction from the blessing Isaac heard from the angel of Jehovah when he called to Abraham! Then on the gift of his son, his only son, to die as far as he knew, came the promise of blessing in the widest terms, and seed multiplied as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand on the seashore. Nor was it only for the numerous seed to possess the gate of the enemies, but "in thy seed" (where no number is named, the one Seed of the apostle's interpretation), the true Son raised as truly from out of the dead, "shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." So indeed they are now as Christians. Nothing of the kind is in the blessing Isaac gave Jacob. Nor is this in any respect faulty, but faith speaking according to God's mind in a wholly different case, as we shall see more fully in the sequel.

Indeed it was a charge with which he opens, "Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." So Isaac in his day was to marry not from the people of the land, but from Abraham's land and kindred; yet how different the manner! Most emphatically he, the bridegroom, must not leave Canaan; but Abraham's servant, the elder of his house that ruled over all that he had, goes under solemn oath to fetch a wife thence for Isaac. Here on the contrary Jacob is asked to go to Padan-Aram, and take a wife thence of the patriarch's kin, of Laban's daughters. So early must Jehovah visit Jacob according to his ways. "Jacob fled into the fields of Aram; and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept [sheep]." He became an exile from the land of promise, to be cheated in a strange land by his kindred, the sad recompence of his own crooked ways to gain what Jehovah had given and would have secured in His holy way of faithfulness and truth.

"And God Almighty bless thee," prayed Isaac, "and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee that thou mayest become a congregation of peoples." So it was of old, so it will be yet more in the future. Here, as before, it is strictly blessing on earth. Not a word drops that points to heaven or eternity. Enlargement on earth is assured, but nothing is said of a higher order. Even when Isaac asks God to give him "the blessing of Abraham," to him and to his seed with him, it is narrowed to this, "that thou mayest possess the land of thy sojournings which God gave to Abraham." The stopping short thus of higher and deeper and larger things is surely significant, where Jacob comes before us. Such precision is as marked in this earliest of the Scriptures; and the lack of observing it is not less apparent in critical eyes, which, failing to learn what is immeasurably above them, set up to judge them as human documents to God's dishonour and their own shame.

Of an opposite school are those who seek to read the church into every Scripture, because they do not see that the glory of Christ will have an object of His love on earth as well as for the heavens. They have fallen into the Gentile conceit, which Romans 11 was written to denounce and correct. God has not cast away His people Israel. They stumbled at the stumbling-stone, and rejecting their own Messiah, are rejected themselves, while the Gentiles are called, and the church is being formed wherein is neither Jew nor Greek, but Christ is all. But the Gentiles have been as faithless to their privileges as Israel, and must as surely be cut off. Divine mercy will then restore His ancient people when Christ returns and brings in His Kingdom in power and glory.

Israel is here in question for the earth, as the call of Rebekah to be Isaac's spouse typifies the bride for the heavenly Bridegroom. As to the administration of the fullness of times, which will only be when Christ appears, room must be left for all things to be headed up and centred in Christ, the Heir of all, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth — in Him, in whom we also were allotted a portion being marked out beforehand according to God's sovereign purpose. The Christian is not part of the inheritance, but heir of God and joint-heir with Christ. This truth was early lost. The church judaized wholly after the apostles. Even Irenaeus, one of the best of the early ecclesiastics, betrays this confusion, which has gone on deepening ever since.

Isaac's Death

Genesis 35: 27-29

It was a long while before the close of this life came for Isaac; indeed his was a greater span than fell to Jacob or even to Abraham. But the last forty years of it gave no occasion for the Spirit of God to dwell on. He had cancelled his sorrowful desires on behalf of Esau, when he trembled at the discovery of his wilfulness; and this was confirmed afterwards, when he summoned Jacob to repair to Padan-Aram with his renewed blessing.

Jacob too with his large household and retinue had come back to the land of promise after an absence of more than twenty years, with many a sin and a sorrow, among his children. This delayed his steps; but he now found his way at length to his father's house. The record is brief but affecting.

"And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre, Kiriath-Arba, which [is] Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac. And Isaac's days were a hundred years and eighty years; and Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days; and Esau and Jacob his sons buried him" (vv. 27-29).

As the Holy Spirit says little, it is not for a believer to say much. But one may remark how truly our patriarch lived to the end of his long life, confessing himself a stranger and sojourner on the earth. Isaac had not even to require a foot of the land of promise, as did Abraham a burying place for Sarah and those who followed. He too knew what famine in the land was, but he did not, under its stress, go down into Egypt like his fathers. And his marriage stood in the strongest contrast with Jacob's, who was forced to leave the land for the country of his kindred, and there cheated of the wife he loved to have another, parents of the twelve tribes of Israel, with many an experience of sorrow, yet blessed and bright in his end, while waiting for the end of God, when glory shall dwell in the land. Isaac remains in the land peaceful and comparatively unseen, but in no way signalized by victorious energy like Abraham, nor even an exile and wanderer like Jacob. His very wife was sought for him, and evidently given him by God from afar, brought across the desert by the father's trusty and honoured servant, object of purpose, prayer, and thanksgiving beyond all other brides of whom Scripture speaks, as already in due place shown by her typical bearing.

Now Jacob, after varied vicissitudes, comes to Isaac his father. It was at Mamre, or Hebron, once the city of the four, where was the cave of Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah rested in hope of the resurrection. For this was ever the faith of God's elect; and as they, so in due time slept Isaac in or according to faith, having not the land but its promise, and assured of its fulfilment in Christ's day, but waiting patiently till closes man's day of corruption and violence, when Jehovah alone shall be exalted.

For the burial of their aged father, old and full of days beyond the good old age even of Abraham, came Esau and Jacob; as Isaac and Ishmael had buried their father. Death has a powerful and subduing voice for the heart of man, even where faith is not; and it was surely not for those who believed to forbid the presence of their near of kin at the grave, but rather to welcome them where many a self-seeking and haughty soul has been bowed under the solemn issues of salvation on the one hand and of judgment on the other. The days of mourning were not at hand, when Esau's rage turned to kill his brother Jacob; and when they came, God who has power over all hearts so wrought that no such intention remained. Jacob too had passed through dealings of God which turned to good account his manifold and humiliating trials, at length strengthened in heart to confide in His mercy, above fear of human vengeance, and ashamed to betake himself to any further device of his own. Esau still lived to himself and for present enjoyment of the world and its things, Jacob saw the promises, and from afar greeted or embraced them, like his father and his grandfather; and they that say such things show clearly that they possess not but seek after a better fatherland, that is, a heavenly.

The Known Isaiah.

Isaiah 40-56.

W. Kelly.

Incredulity grows apace and with little shame. Take, as recent instances, the Cambridge "Divine Library," the Oxford "Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," and Prof. Cheyne's Bampton lectures on "The Origin and Religion of the Psalter:" works successively sinking lower and lower, as inspiration yields to the fancies of the fashionable criticism of the hour. That their authors, as well as some of their prototypes, deceive themselves, is true; but it is false to say that their premises and conclusions "do not touch either the authority or the inspiration of the scriptures of the Old Testament." They subject the divine to the human in the written word; just as kindred unbelief works as to Christ's person. As faith knows that He, though He became flesh, is none the less the True God and Eternal Life; so are we assured that every scripture is inspired of God and profitable for all spiritual uses: not only that men spoke from God, moved by the Holy Spirit, but that scripture, every scripture, is God-inspired. This is conclusive. The Holy Spirit has ruled dogmatically (as the Son of God did throughout His life and ministry, His death and resurrection) that scripture is God's word and absolutely authoritative. Criticism is free, yea, bound, to clear away the errors of men that copied, of versions, etc. But it is rebellion against God, under plea of "literature" or scientific methods," to question what inspired men wrote from God. "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name." "Not in words taught by human wisdom," says the apostle (1 Cor. 2), "but in those taught by the Spirit." Was He at all liable to mistake? or unable to secure the truth in result? God graciously employed men; but it is His word as truly as if His mouth alone had uttered it. This is not theory, but revealed truth.

The Christian stands on the vantage-ground of divine inspiration. This settles all questions. A book might be the genuine work of a given author; it might be authentic. But inspiration insures incomparably more, even God's will and power and design executed by the instrument of His choice. For what more absurd and misleading than only helping so far as to leave disorder, inconsistency, or error, as His word? Nor is this all. His Son, the Lord Jesus, appeared long after the Old Testament was complete, and just before the New Testament began to be written. He, the Judge. of quick and dead, has decided for faith the questions men have been raising as to the Old Testament for the last century and more. They did essay the same speculation, founded on alleged internal evidence, as to the New Testament. This last seems dropped by our English followers of the German school. One of them declares, that the same canon of historical criticism, which authorizes the assumption of tradition in the Old Testament, forbids it in the case of the New Testament, except within the narrowest limits. But "the unique personality of Christ" is of all moment for the Old Testament. He spoke, as He lived and died and rose, for all time, yea, for eternity. His words on the Pentateuch, on the writings of Moses for instance, are wholly inconsistent with the so called critical view of its structure and growth. But men are so enamoured of their theory that, rather than abandon it, they are willing to betray His glory. He Who could say "Before Abraham was, I am" knew well the men employed to write the scriptures, and shows Himself in the Gospels at issue with every erroneous opinion current around Him. Had it been His intention to say nothing on the points to be contested (and He knew the end from the beginning), it was easy for Him to have avoided saying, "He (Moses) wrote of Me," "David himself said in the Holy Spirit," "Daniel the prophet." But rationalism is even less for Christ than superstition is; and both are enemies of the truth of God. Is the Holy Spirit too, the inspiring Spirit, to be subjected to profane limitations? That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, says He (in Matthew 8: 17), citing Isaiah 53: 4, from a central passage of that which stands at the head of this paper. Did the Spirit of God also accommodate Himself to popular error?

These chapters are "the most important and most familiar case in which modern critics have agreed to see the work of a plurality of authors in one book" (says the Cambridge Regius Prof. of Hebrew, D.L. 25): "one of the best examples of the methods and results of biblical criticism" (26). "Let us then forget . . . that this writing — or rather, whether it is the work of one writer or of several, this group of writings — is attached to the book of Isaiah. Let us simply interrogate the document itself, and collect the evidence which it offers concerning its author, and the time and place and circumstances of its writing. Direct statement there is none. Very rarely does the author let his own personality appear at all. But of indirect evidence, indicating the circumstances under which he wrote, there is no lack." This would be reasonable enough if a merely human book were in debate; it is an absurd begging of the question in an avowed prophecy. But we proceed now to weigh that which appears to him "entirely convincing."

"Jerusalem is in ruins; the temple, in which past generations worshipped, is a heap of ashes; the cities of Judah are deserted, the land is desolate [citing Isa. 64: 10, 11]. Israel is in exile, suffering the punishment of its sins. Jehovah has surrendered His people to their enemies. They are being tried in the furnace of affliction. Jerusalem has drunk to the dregs the cup of Jehovah's fury. She lies prostrate in the dust. The chains of captivity are on the neck of the daughter of Zion. Zion is bereaved of her children, a barren exile, wandering to and fro. Her children are scattered from their home. Jehovah's wife is divorced from Him for her children's transgressions, and they are sold into slavery for their iniquities. Babylon is the scene of Israel's captivity. Babylon is the tyrant who holds Zion's children in thrall. Babylon has been Jehovah's instrument for executing His judgments, and she has performed her task with cruel delight.

The exile has already lasted long. It seems to have become permanent. Jehovah sleeps. Zion fancies herself forgotten and forsaken. The weary decades of captivity are lengthening out into an eternity of punishment. But where faith and hope are strained to the point of breaking, deliverance is at hand. Jerusalem's time of servitude is accomplished, satisfaction has been made for her iniquity. The decree is gone forth for freedom, redemption, restoration. The deliverer is on his way. Cyrus has been raised up from the east. He is already in full career of conquest. Babylon is doomed. Her gods are to be humbled. Jehovah is about to lead forth His people in a second exodus which will eclipse the glories of the first, and to conduct them through the wilderness to their ancient home, Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and the temple restored.

"What I want you to observe is this — and pray do not take the statement on my authority, but verify it for yourselves — that the prophecy does not profess to predict the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the mission of Cyrus. These things are described or assumed as existing facts. Jerusalem is destroyed, Israel is in exile. Cyrus is already triumphantly advancing from point to point. What is foretold is the speedy deliverance of the exiles from their captivity. All these data point unmistakably to the last ten years of the Babylonian exile as the time at which the prophecy was delivered. Moreover, there are indications, less definite perhaps, but tolerably convincing' which point to Babylonia as the place in which the prophet was living. He speaks in the presence of a dominant heathenism. Idolatry in all its grossness and stupid folly surrounds him. He. has watched the infatuated idolaters manufacturing their gods, and carrying them in solemn procession, and setting them up in their temples. With unrivalled eloquence, inspired by mingled feelings of pity and indignation, he contrasts the power and wisdom of Jehovah, the living God, the God of Israel, with the impotence and ignorance of these lifeless idols. The whole drift of his description makes it plain that it is idolatry in its own heathen home of which he is speaking, not the idolatry of apostate Israelites in Judah. Moreover the prophet is in closest touch and sympathy with the exiles. He is fully acquainted with their circumstances, their character, their sins, their hopes, their fears, their faithlessness, their despondency; and when we note how he unites himself with them in confession, in thanksgiving, in earnest pleading, we can scarcely doubt that he was himself one of them" (26-29).

Such is the rationalistic argument of Prof. Kirkpatrick, pleaded with greater detail by Dr. Driver in his "Introduction," 223-231. Rationalism "can scarcely doubt" its own dream. The truth of God it has lost, its reality, force, and blessing. Are not these University teachers aware that they have slipped into a similar position as an unquestionable sceptic like Mr. F. W. Newman, and on identical grounds? The difference is that he gives up the pretence of divine inspiration and rejects the claim of scripture to be God's word. They are clergymen specially because officially bound to vindicate what, in fact, they undermine.

But (apart from moral feeling and the denunciation they deprecate), what is the worth of the argument itself borrowed as it is from German neology, as this was in part from older English Deism? The earlier chapters do show that the prophet vividly realises, not only the exile in Babylon, but the deliverance of a Jewish remnant, not only the downfall of that city and its idols under Cyrus but his decree to build Jerusalem and to lay the foundation of the temple. Men assume that a prophet, was given to see nothing beyond the horizon of his own day, only what had a bearing on contemporary interests! But this is beyond controversy set aside by a vision (Isa. 6) which none of them denies to be Isaiah's — his most solemn call in the year that King Uzziah died. Happily too we have an inspired comment on its bearing which no Christian can question. "These things said Isaiah, because (or when) he saw his glory; and he spake of him." When the prophet saw the King, Jehovah of hosts, he saw the glory of the Son of God, of the Word in due time to be made flesh and to tabernacle here below, full of grace and truth. The prophet as the effect of the light owns himself to be of unclean lips and surroundings, but, touched from off the altar, is cleansed, and goes with the message of judicial blindness to the people that saw not His glory when present in divine love before their eyes. Nevertheless a remnant is pledged, even when His people should be, given up to utter insensibility and, as the consequence, desolation and removal from the land. Thus early was foreshown exile from Palestine, and reiterated consumption for those who should return, though not without the assurance of a holy seed. For promise cannot be broken any more than the scripture. But this early prediction in point of fact embraces not the Babylonian exile only, but troubles not yet exhausted, with a righteous remnant secured through all to inherit the promised blessing at the end.

The fact is that the maxim of the sceptics is unequivocally false. No prophecy of scripture is of its own (i.e., private or special) interpretation (2 Peter 1: 20). It becomes part and parcel of God's revealed mind, Who made it not to be of isolated solution but to bear on His kingdom in Christ, on which as a whole prophecy converges. And hence the confirmation of the vision on the Holy Mount, which was an anticipative sample of that kingdom. As the will of man did not bring in prophecy, so God, while employing the intelligence and affections of man, and his style, revealed His own mind, not only according to His ways which give variety of form, but according to His purpose which gives unity both to each book and to all scripture, not stopping short of the grand display of His Kingdom triumphant over every foe at the close. To this all scripture bears witness from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the Revelation, though in the prophets of course most fully and definitely. For what means the bruised Seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head in Gen. 3: 15? Did not that earliest of prophecies look out into a far distant horizon and bear consequences remote as well as near, and everlasting? "And to these also Enoch the seventh from Adam," says Jude, "prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with His holy myriads to execute judgment upon all." Like Isaiah, Enoch spoke of the Lord's judicial advent as an accomplished fact. So it is frequently in the prophets. How applicable is our Lord's reply, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God!

This is remarkably attested in 1 Peter 1: 10-12 too. For we learn that the Old Testament prophets sought out and searched out concerning the salvation now given in Christ, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ that was. in them pointed to. So truly was it God Who wrought in His own certainty above all the ignorance of the instruments He was using. Nay more, it was revealed to them, that not to themselves, but to souls who centuries after believed, they ministered the things now announced in the gospel. Can any sentence be more subversive of the fundamental axiom common to all shades of unbelieving criticism? Yet the context (1 Peter 1: 13) goes still farther, and proves that only at the revelation of Jesus Christ Will be fully achieved that deliverance from the ruin of sin which God announced from of old. So far did prophecy stretch beyond the horizon of the prophet's day and rise above contemporary interests.

So, in the closing chapters of Isaiah, is it not superficial in the extreme to say that "they deal throughout with a common theme, viz., Israel's restoration from exile in Babylon"? On their face it is undeniable that from Isaiah 49 the far deeper question is broached of the Messiah labouring in vain and spending His strength for nought and vanity, the true Israel in whom Jehovah is glorified, Though man despised and the nation abhorred Him, He should be a light to the Gentiles and salvation unto the end of the earth, before the day on which kings will be Zion's nursing fathers and queens her nursing mothers, and Jehovah shall judge the. oppressors of Israel and deliver themselves as the Mighty One of Jacob. Still more plainly is the stricken Messiah set before us in Isa. 50, Creator yet a man, the obedient man. Most clearly and in the richest detail is He presented by the prophet in Isaiah 52, 53, as the propitiation for sins, on Whom Jehovah laid the iniquity of us all; not only so, but exalted, and lifted up, and very high, when the pleasure of Jehovah prospers in His hand. For then Jehovah is to divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, This points to a time of judgment and glory not yet fulfilled, but just as sure as that grace which we now know in Him to our everlasting peace and joy, unless we be mere and guilty unbelievers.

But it also refutes simply and absolutely for the Christian the self-confident argument of the "higher criticism." For the vision of the Messiah is no less openly set forth by the prophet, than the preceding view of the Babylonish exile and the deliverer raised up from the north and the east. They do not deny this prediction of the Messiah, His sufferings and the glories that should follow them. If they did, what must be thought of them in direct contradiction of the gospel, the apostles, and the Lord Himself? They might equally argue that the prophecy does not profess to predict the mission of Christ, His humiliation, His atoning work, and His exaltation. "These things are described or assumed as existing facts," no less than the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the mission of Cyrus. The Spirit of prophecy in living power habitually carried him who wrote, and notably Isaiah, into the time, place, and circumstances of the prediction.

This the sceptical school, most of whom deny all real prediction no less than miracle, pervert into evidence of the prophet's residence among the exiles in Babylon a few years before the return! Some few like our English professors do not go so far as the rest in blank and audacious infidelity. Dr. Driver and Mr. Kirkpatrick, admitting prediction in a small degree only, will not hear that Isaiah wrote the later chapters, any more than Isa. 13, 14, and others in the earlier part. of the book. They adopt therefore the hypothesis of all unknown and unnamed prophet, more wonderful even than Isaiah! when Cyrus was conspicuous and the exile drawing to an end. But the truth is that their reasoning would make the prophet to have lived in our Lord's day! to have sustained the contempt of the Jewish people and especially their religious chiefs, to have sorrowed and sympathised with the godly that believe! nay to have seen His triumph in a way not yet fulfilled, and wholly distinct from the honour and glory with which He now sits crowned on High!

It may be added that the latter section of this continuous prophecy presents, no longer Israel the privileged and responsible servant of Jehovah, guilty of idolatry and exiled in Babylon, the great source and patron of idols, but delivered for Jehovah's name-sake; nor the Righteous Servant suffering, especially in atonement, and making intercession, seeing of the travail of His soul and exalted. The final chapters show the Messiah proclaiming not only in His grace the acceptable year of Jehovah but the day of vengeance of our God, the executor of divine judgment on the quick. Yet even in that day the works marvels in the heart and conscience of Israel, when they too are by grace acknowledged fully as Jehovah's servants, while their proud unbelieving brethren perish for ever. For God is not mocked, and no flesh shall glory in His presence. Hence, as in this part we bear of the new heavens and a new earth, of the glorious state of Jerusalem, Israel, and their land, we see also that Jehovah will plead by fire with all flesh and pour indignation on His enemies, in a time assuredly not yet come. The axiom of neo-criticism is therefore demonstrably false; and the more the chapters are duly, examined, the more evidently is the hypothesis cloud and not light.

Leaving general remarks, let us come a little closer. There is no analogy whatever between historical books, like those of Samuel, Kings, etc., and the later prophets, as they are called. Nor does more than one account of the same event prove compilation, or lack of harmony; it is due to difference of divine design. See this conspicuously in the Acts of the Apostles, where we have the call of Paul three several times: once as the historical fact (Acts 9), another time in the apostle's speech to the Jews (Acts 22), and lastly when before king Agrippa and the Roman governor (Acts 26). It is all well among men to talk of discrepancy making for the good faith of a compiler; but such a thought is wholly out of place and irreverent when applied to scripture. For "every scripture is inspired of God," and one is, therefore, equally true as another, but each adapted to a special purpose of God. Contradictions are apparent only to ignorance. Whatever may be the various methods of historiography in the East or in the West, ancient or modern, we are never right if we forget that, in the Bible, we have to do with God Who cannot lie, whatever be the errata from copyists or the like, here or there; to correct or eliminate, which is the legitimate province of true criticism.

That the prophets from whom we have words of the Lord to any considerable extent, delivered discourses from time to time, and afterwards collected them into the books which bear their names, is not to be doubted; and assuredly it applies no less to Hosea and Isaiah, than to Joel and Ezekiel. When the simple order of chronology suffices, this is of course adhered to; but a deeper order is found in O.T. scriptures, as well as notably in the Gospel of Luke. Inspiration decided this: wherever it was called for, it exists; and to fail in heeding it must be a positive and fatal hindrance to just interpretation. Everywhere in the Bible divine design will be found to rule: divine we say, for it may not have been apprehended fully or at all by the writers.

Again, that an amanuensis sometimes worked instead of the inspired writer, is true in both Testaments. That when a scribe wrote, as Baruch after Jehoiakim burnt the first roll, adding many like words according to the prophet's dictation, is as simple as it is certain. But what has this to do, extraordinary as it was, with other cases having not the least analogy? "Twenty years," a century, a millennium, can make no difference to the inspiring power of God, Who works by means, or without them, according to His sovereign pleasure and wisdom.

Thus in the New Testament we see that the apostle John wholly omits the agony in the garden, though one of the favoured three so close at hand; while Matthew, Mark, and Luke, give it more or less fully, not one of whom was in any measure a witness. Similarly John alone of the evangelists heard the great prophecy on Mount Olivet, whilst he alone gives not a word of it. And why? In no case because of a first-hand knowledge or a more thorough investigation, but because of the governing purpose of God in each Gospel, which excluded in John whatever was requisite in the synoptics, both in a varying form exactly suited to each, and in all with a wisdom of which God alone was capable. Such is inspiration: the greatest contrast possible with the rationalistic effort to conceive the origin and arrangement of the books of scripture, an effort characterized by the deadly bane of attributing to man what flows truly from God. Hence they lose His mind in the interpretation, because man, not God, is in all their thoughts.

But coming to Isaiah, we may learn much from the early chapters, indeed from the very first. The prophet's eye was given to see the things that were not actually, as though they were, a far-reaching vision into evil issues which no one else could discern, and above all into the bright day, with sure anticipation of divine blessing and glory. No doubt every discourse was given in circumstances which called for it; for God was addressing man there and then. But to limit a prophecy to its local or temporal occasion is unbelieving and unmitigated error; for God ever has in view, and in prophecy has revealed, His own glory inseparable from Christ. It is therefore, in order to meet both, a marked feature in prophecy to give the name of the prophet, and, in all but very short prophecies, to let us know not a little of his local surroundings and the time when he lived and uttered the words of Jehovah. This is distinct in the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and in very many even of the minor prophets. Its importance is obvious,. and the hand of the enemy ought to be as evident in those modern critics whose labour is directed, by every ingenious device, to raise difficulties and infuse doubts where the written word is plain and sure.

In Isa. 1, after the prophet names himself and his object and times, he sets forth before heaven and earth the ungrateful folly and rebellious sin of Israel, and the uselessness of such chastening and humiliation as had been their portion hitherto. What availed their sacrifices, their temple service, their new moons and sabbaths, which their moral corruption and hard-heartedness made only an offence to Jehovah? As yet, however, they are urged and encouraged to repent, assured of His grace if they hearken, but, if not, of consumption by the sword. Then follows a touching Plaint over their ruin; for the Prophet was given to know that the people would refuse Jehovah's call. The appeal closes with the LORD of hosts executing judgment and purification, when He will restore their judges as at first, and their counsellors as in the beginning, and Jerusalem will be in truth a city of righteousness, a faithful state. Zion, it is emphatically declared, shall be redeemed with judgment.

How different from the gospel dealing individually now by grace, and hence of faith! Zion's day of blessing opens with judgment, however great and real the action of divine mercy and truth and righteousness. It is the day of Messiah's power when His people shall be willing and He rules in the midst of His enemies. What blindness to overlook, even in this preface, that, as God foreknew, so He here reveals the end from the beginning! Yet it was an actual appeal to Judah in that day, though being divine for every succeeding day of Israel's sin and ruin. To reduce its character, to say only that it "was providentially designed to meet the needs of that time," is to make it of private interpretation. While thoroughly addressed to the people's conscience and doubtless blessed to such as had ears to hear, the Spirit of prophecy stretches over all times to the day of Christ's glory in Israel, by judgment as well as mercy, restored according to God.

The prophetic strain in Isa. 2-4 is no less instructive in another form. For here the prophet opens as he closes with unmistakable pictures of Messiah's reign in power over the earth. It is the more striking if he was led to cite Micah 4: 1-3 as the introduction; and seemingly the "And" of our ver. 2 suits a quotation only, whereas in the contemporary prophecy it is required. But in any case the day of earth's blessedness is in full sight for "all nations" flowing to the religious centre, the mountain of Jehovah's house; as Isa. 4 shows the Branch of Jehovah, Christ beautiful and glorious, the remnant holy, Jerusalem purged from its blood by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning, and over all the glory as a canopy, like the cloud over the tabernacle in the wilderness. More definite charges of evil both in religion and in state come in Isa. 3. But the same principle applies as in Isa. 1. Blessing would follow repentance; only the prophet lets us know that, in any full measure, it awaits the day of Jehovah, and as a fact its opening divine judgments. When they are in the earth, even the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. But where is the maxim of neo-criticism in presence of the prophecy, even at the threshold? Isa. 5 opens a new prophetic deliverance. It is evidently incomplete if taken alone; for under "a song of my beloved touching his vineyard" the faithlessness of the house of Israel is solemnly set out, notwithstanding all Jehovah's gracious care. It was so flagrant, that He could appeal to the proudest of themselves to judge in their own conscience. Judgment must ensue. Accordingly, after six successive woes from 8-24, Jehovah's hand is declared to be stretched forth unto them, so that the hills tremble and their carcasses are as refuse in the midst of the streets; and that solemn refrain of ominous chastisement begins, (ver. 25) "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." And a still heavier blow is announced (to the end of the chapter) from distant nations rushing swiftly and roaring against them, with nothing but darkness — distress — for the land, and the light darkened with its clouds. It is no less evident that Isa. 6, already noticed, briefly interrupts the strain; and also Isa. 7-9: 7: so that only in Isa. 9: 8 do we find the resumption of the dirge begun in Isa. 5 when four times is repeated the knell of coming judgment (v. 12, v. 17, v. 21, Isa. 10: 4).

But a change comes for their haughtiest foe from ver. 5, when circumstances look darkest, and the answer to their cry of distress at length is heard in ver. 25 (see Isa. 10: 12): "For yet a little while, and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger in their destruction." The Assyrian of the past is but a type of their mighty antagonist at the close, when Israel once more shall enter relations with Jehovah, and livingly and for ever. The time hastens, but is in no sense come yet; for it is immediately followed by the Messiah's manifest reign of righteousness and peace, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea. Thus Isa. 11, 12 are the true and bright termination of what commences so sadly in Isa. 5.

But what of the intercalated three chapters and more? No mere man would have thought of it: no arrangement more at issue with literary taste or scientific skill. Chronology wholly gives way to the higher need of a design. worthy of God, and hardly conceivable save in the "second cares" of the great prophet, when not first giving out each portion, but combining them finally a., his collective book according to a wisdom above his own. For Isa. 6 shows Jehovah's glory rejected in Christ: a far more serious sin and of deeper consequence than their national failures and the national chastisements down to the end. In the midst of that external history came Jehovah, as in Isa. 6, and incarnate, as in Isa. 7. But they and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor the voices of the prophets which were read every sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning Him. The interposed portion pursues the episode of the intervening Immanuel with the assurance of total ruin for all adversaries, however girt and whatever their counsel. Meanwhile He was to be for a sanctuary to a believing remnant, but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel; and for this application we have the unerring word of the Holy Spirit in the N.T. What a key to the religious history of the Jews whose awful apostacy is sketched to the end of Isa. 8! In contrast with that darkness the great light would shine in Galilee of the nations, as in fact it did. Then suddenly, as so often in the prophets, we are transported from the grace of the first advent to the glory and judgment that will characterize the second; and the kingdom of the divine Messiah follows in connection with Israel, just as we see in Isa. 11-12.

Here then we have a two-fold witness in this remarkable but divinely complete prophecy of Isaiah. Is it true that it was "so near to the events which it foretells?" Or is this a dream of pseudocriticism?

The second division of the book may now be compared with the assumptions of modern criticism. Its inherent unsoundness and fatal issues only the more appear, as is ever the case where the starting-point is false. We have seen that every one of the subsections of the first refutes the premise. For the historic occasion, however fit, may and does go far beyond it, and is limited to no proximate application. Instead of this, it stops not short of the grand display, not yet arrived, of the divine glory in the kingdom of the rejected Messiah. Pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic, whatever their shades of difference, are uniform in converging on this purpose of God. Isa. 1, Isa. 2-4, Isa. 5 — (Isa. 6, Isa. 7 — Isa. 9: 7) — Isa. 9 — Isa. 12, are not only inspired witnesses against this πρῶτον ψεῦδος, but divine disproof of it, and most conclusive. For, as the rule, prophecy of scripture is constructed by the Holy Spirit to be of no such private interpretation, or self-solution. By all His prophets since time began God spoke more or less clearly of seasons of refreshing from His presence when He will send Christ, the fore-ordained for Israel, to bring in times of restoring of all things. This is the revealed truth of the N.T., which theology denies openly and everywhere, even in the less advanced disciples of Oxford and Cambridge. For these, like their more daringly sceptical German guides, are not ashamed to avow and defend the paradox that the truly prophetic character of the work gains by denying that Isaiah wrote e.g., of Babylon's fall more than a century and a half before, and by referring such predictions to some unknown prophet a few years before the exile expired! Look at the prophets of the exilic period, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel: each having a divine lot suited to the instrument, all adapted to the varied circumstances, but none in the least like the challenged chapters of Isaiah. Modern criticism dreams of an imaginary, or at least (and contrary to all analogy) an unnamed prophet at a crisis for which grace provided amply by known prophets, and seeks to rob alike Isaiah of his brightest jewels and believers of their settled certainty. The incredulity of this school tends to shake the credit of scripture from the least thing to the greatest! And this is yet more evident when we glance at Isa. 24-27; for the last four seem the due close of this second series.

On the very threshold before the ark of Jehovah the rationalistic idol is fallen, with its head and hands cut off. Of these oracles or "burdens," characteristically though not exclusively on the nations (as Isa. 1-12 centred in Judah or Israel), the first contradicts flatly the neological axiom, that the situation presupposed must be that of Isaiah's age. But the prophecy itself explicitly declares the contrary. And every scripture is inspired of God. There is no real question as to the text on external evidence*, any more than on internal, save for men credulous enough to believe their own capricious canon, imposed by infidelity and opposed to all possible proof. These modern critics are avowedly on the human ground of degrees of probability; faith never is, but on that of absolute subjection to scripture as the voice of God. It is false, as they argue, that it is a question between traditional views and internal evidence. Here they cannot deny that the text, to be believed and interpreted, declares unambiguously against their primary assumption. Yet so pre-occupied and blinded are they by their own tradition about a century old, that they dare to fly in the face of the original text as well attested here as in any other part of the book which they own to be inspired. Alas! it is with the written as with the personal Word, "how can ye believe which receive glory one of another, and the glory that is from the only God ye seek not?" The authority of the ancient prophets, of the N.T. apostles of our Lord, and of the inspiring Holy Ghost, has less weight in their eyes than the conflicting hypotheses of Koppe, Doederlein, Eichhorn, Justi, and Gesenius, of Hitzig, Knobel, Umbreit, Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Riehm. These, with their English followers, when their scheme requires it, join hand and hand for their own thoughts in throwing overboard the word of God in the face of all true and irrefragable testimony Infidelity is a withering and destructive evil. Let them beware lest it advance to greater impiety.

* Names, numerals, and the like are peculiarly liable to error in transcription, Man's custody or use of scripture is essentially distinct from inspiration: only ignorance or fraud confounds them. What evidence have they against the title's genuineness or authenticity save their subjective idea or self-will?

A similar principle applies to the rationalistic treatment of Isa. 21: 1-10. It follows a chapter unquestionably Isaiah's, as it precedes a burden of kindred character (Isa. 22) which nobody as far as I know disputes to be his. But if his, and most distinctly predicting new and special features of Babylon's fall, it uproots their foundation. as to prophecy, and duly in its place follows up the trumpet blast of Isa. 13, and 14.

On other grounds many of these freethinkers attribute Isa. 15, 16, to some earlier prophet! adopted and reinforced by Isaiah. Does such speculation deserve other answer than that men, without the fear of God, may think and say any thing? If they trembled at the word of Jehovah, we should be spared such empty words. Again, Isa. 24-27, are attributed to a prophet distinct from him whom they style the Deutero-Isaiah, as well as from the original source of Isa. 15, 16. There is no cheek on these vagaries when these adventurous mariners abandon alike the captain and the chart, compass, and anchor of God's word in any just sense of these terms.

Enough has been said to vindicate the prophet generally. We may now interrogate the internal evidence so recklessly misdirected by the rationalists. To the believer (and an unbeliever is out of court as an interpreter of scripture) Isa. 13, 14, are reverently accepted as Isaiah's according to the opening words; against which on the legitimate canons of textual criticism no valid objection has ever been laid by Jew or Christian, by heterodox or infidel. Not only so, if intelligent, he sees divine wisdom in the order which departed from mere chronology for the higher and graver reason of setting in the van the last and victorious enemy of Judah which was, though far later than the other adversaries, to attain an altogether new relation of imperial power as Daniel would show in his season. The comparatively distant outlook of the oracle gave way to that design. The disputer of this age seats himself on a vain bench of judgment, and, yielding to human thoughts, necessarily misses the mind of God; he lacks the obedience of faith and does without the guidance of His Spirit in subjection to His word. "The burden concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see" is undoubtedly future throughout and has no trace of allusion to the circumstances of the prophet's age, place it even as the rationalists would. The Jews are not represented as in exile; which is only prophetically involved in the prediction (Isa. 14: 1-3) of Jehovah's choosing, not Judah only, still less a remnant, but Israel, and setting them in their own land: their hope still unaccomplished but sure, when they shall rule over their oppressors; not "servants" or bondmen "this day," as the remnant owned solemnly in Neh. 9: 36, as before in Ezra 9: 9 (R.V. "are," not "were" as in A.V.) long after the return from Babylon. The moral ground, as we learn from elsewhere, did exist. It began in the wilderness, as Amos long before told Ephraim in predicting their exile beyond Damascus; and this was no less true of Judah. But that of revolted Ephraim was precipitated by the unrepented sin of Jeroboam, with yet more flagrant results, till the Assyrian swept them away; as the fidelity of several kings of David's house was a stay for Judah, till the idolatry, rebellion, and perjury of king, priests, and people provoked Jehovah's wrath, and "there was no remedy," and those that escaped the sword were carried to Babylon.

The burden contemplates the scene as a whole, not in the least events in progress or such as a spiritual mind might discern. It is in the strictest and fullest way predictive. There is no spirit unworthy of Isaiah, though that of the Christian was not and could not be till Christ came and the Spirit of adoption was given. The style is as noble and the imagery as bold and beautiful as in any other effusion of the very chiefest of the prophets. It was not "alien to the genius of prophecy" even in Lev. 26, besides other horrors for the land and their cities, to warn of scattering the chosen people among the nations and the land enjoying her sabbaths, to say nothing now of Dent. 28, on which holy and genuine book of Moses the scepticism of professing Christians has laid its profane hand. In this burden God gave Isaiah not only to prophesy of Chaldean Babylon, the first of the great world-powers, as the object of hatred, overthrow, and slaughter to the ruthless Mede, the executor of divine judgment, but to see in inspired perspective the last holder of the world-powers that should successively follow Babylon, with which Israel's deliverance synchronises. And on the face of the strain, how is it that these men, so wise and prudent, fail to see that between the fall of imperial Babylon, and the ruin of the future chief of the last empire, comes a most momentous prediction, long after the one and still longer before the other, of the perishing of that great city's very ruins?

Yet what was more improbable humanly, even if any were so credulous as to accept the figment of an unknown seer living toward the close of the exile? "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged" (Isa. 13: 20-22).

The book of Daniel (Dan. 6) proves how little Cyrus thought of destroying fallen Babylon. Even Darius Hystaspes, after its revolt and recapture broke down only its outer walls. Xerxes, to punish the Babylonians for their resentment at his plunder of the temple of Belus, was satisfied with destroying that great building. Alexander the Great even encouraged them to rebuild what Xerxes had levelled; and his project to make Babylon the metropolis of his universal empire only fell through by his premature death. Afterwards it declined under his successors, not only through their wars but the building of Seleucia, as before by the Persians Ctesiphon, not far off, expressly to drain away its still vast population; and hence Strabo in the days of Tiberius spoke of it as to a great degree deserted. So Pausanias toward the close of the first century (Arcad.) said of this Babylon, once the greatest city of all that the sun beheld, that nothing now remains but her walls. The turning its site into a park for hunting wild beasts had contributed to its rapid devastation; and the fresh bed of the Euphrates, when it was stopped and caused an enormous marsh, yet more. Still the apostle Peter directed his first epistle, if not his second, from Babylon, to the christian Jaws of Asia Minor. And Theodoret in the fifth century of our era speaks of some Jews living there; which is fully confirmed by the issue of the Babylonian Talmud thence at the end of that century or beginning of the next. Yet it is folly to deny the total ruin of the once "golden city" because of a village here and there on the skirts of that awful desolation so graphically portrayed by the prophet. It was not so with the other imperial cities; it will be so with Rome, for the Holy Spirit has so written. Only He could have given Isaiah or John to predict either.

It is pleasant to note one observation of value, which Dr. Driver states; as we too have for many years insisted in these pages, as to which many students of the prophetic word are at fault. "The prophecy (Isa. 14: 24-27) has no connection with what precedes. It is directed against Assyria, not Babylon" (p. 202). He does not see, though it is most important, that it is expressly placed here subsequently to mark that, when the complete fulfilment takes place, and the day of Jehovah arrives not in part but fully at the end of the age, the last Assyrian will fall after the destruction of him who finally represents "the beast" or system of power which began with Babylon. Historically it had been the inverse, for Assyria fell long before Babylon. But by and by the beast will be destroyed from above; then will Jehovah tread the Assyrian under foot on his mountains, which was not literally so of old. Compare Micah 5. But though distinct they are connected (for there is no fresh "burden" here), but only connected so as to bring out their true order in the tremendous scenes of the latter day. The Assyrian is neither Antichrist nor the beast, but the chief of the north-eastern hordes of that day, of whom the prophets have much to say.

But we have not done with the connection. It is not to close as that of the Assyrian to fall after Babylon. "In the year that king Ahaz died was this burden," which the Revisers rightly connect with Philistia or Palestina, rather than with the Assyrian, as did the A.V., or those who arranged the paragraphs. Whatever may have been the historical earnest in the past (and commentators, as usual, differ widely, some understanding Jewish rulers, others successive kings of Assyria and the slain Sargon followed by Sennacherib), the true aim is to place the complete destruction of the old internal enemy of Israel by Christ in line with the final judgment of Babylon and Assyria, so as to bring out Jehovah's founding Zion in that glorious day, where the afflicted of His people take refuge — Zion, the divine contrast with Babylon, Philistia, or any other Gentile boast. Compare Ps. 87, with Ps. 2, Ps. 14: 7, Ps. 20, Ps. 48, Ps. Ps. 65, Ps. 76, Ps. 78, Ps. 84, Ps. 132, Ps. 146, Ps. 147, Ps. 149.

The pride of Moab is finally put down in Isa. 15, 16, whereas the throne of David is set up. See Amos 9. So in Isa. 17 Damascus is to be a ruinous heap, when Ephraim too that looked for her help ceases to have power, and the mighty rush of nations interfering to their destruction is rebuked in the latter day.

In Isa. 18 we see a land, outside the limits of the distant peoples on the Nile and the Euphrates, playing the part of protector to the Jew, a maritime power seeking to restore the chosen people to their land; but when all seems to promise good fruit, the project comes to nothing through the old jealousy and hatred of Israel; and then Jehovah of hosts undertakes and accomplishes the work Himself. For up to this point of these varied "burdens," or that which is connected with them, they all end in deliverance for Israel. Can any thing be more absurd than the rationalistic idea of Ethiopia here? Cush was Asiatic as well as African, and its rivers the seat of powers well-known and formidable to Israel. The land favourable to Israel but failing is beyond either, and left intentionally with no express explanation. The people scattered, etc., and in that time, when all appears lost once more, brought to Jehovah and the place of His name, the mount Zion, are His ancient people. But one must not expect intelligence of His purpose in the word from those whose principle dishonours it.

The group of "burdens" (Isa. 19-23), with the immensely enlarging revelation (Isa. 24-27 ) which closes them in mercy to Israel (through judgment executed on earth, the heavenly places, and the dark powers of evil), has its own characteristic differences, though all without doubt from the prophet Isaiah. They are occupied with the troubles of the nations beginning with Egypt and Ethiopia; but they include in a singular way Babylon and Jerusalem itself, which evidently are styled in an enigmatic manner and in reference one to the other (Isa. 21, 22). The solution seems to be that, though the fall of Babylon by the Medo-Persian armies is rehearsed with striking force, it implies that Jerusalem "the valley of vision" will be laid waste by the warriors of Elam and Kir when Babylon could be described as "the desert of the sea": a fulfilment still to come for Jerusalem,* though Babylon has long been so. Compare Zech. 14: 2. The Assyrian is the great leader, whether historically or prophetically. The wisdom of nature failed Egypt and her allies; the independence of Dumah will not avail; nor shall Arab and Kedar escape the overflowing scourge. As Babylon fell and sunk into a desert with scarce a parallel, so Jerusalem suffers for its shameless forgetfulness of God and of its unique relation to Him; and so does the crowning Tyre with its merchant princes, for Jehovah of hosts would stain the pride of all glory.

* Those conversant with unaccomplished prophecy will see in the fall of Shebna, and Eliakim taking his place in David's house, the type, in that day of future blessing, of the true Christ superseding Antichrist, Compare Rev. 3: 7 for the key.

Then follows a desolation which, beginning with the land and people of God, extends to the world at large. Yet from the uttermost part of the earth songs are heard; for not only are the wicked and treacherous smitten, and the earth itself, but Jehovah will punish the hosts of the height on high, and the kings of earth on the earth: as our Lord said, "the powers of the heavens shall be shaken," and not the earth only and its rulers. And Jehovah reigns in mount Zion. The prophet accordingly breaks forth into thanksgiving (Isa. 25), and furnishes the song for that day in Judah (Isa. 26), with a final hymn, (Isa. 27), when at length Jehovah punishes leviathan the fleeing serpent, and leviathan the crooked serpent, and the monster that is in the sea: the old enemy viewed emblematically as acting by political powers against God's glory in Israel.

As to not only Isa. 21 but these last four chapters rationalism vents its trite and baseless objections. If Isaiah's, as there is no solid reason to doubt, its occupation is gone. The N.T. proves (in 1 Cor. 15), that the last continuous prophecy is future. For in that day the covering overall peoples will be destroyed, the first resurrection will be realized, the indignation of God against Israel overpast, Satan's bad eminence extinguished, and the outcasts once more and for ever worshipping in the holy mountain at Jerusalem. If we believe the word of God, the neological hypothesis perishes in its own corruption. So far is it from being true that there is no definite prophecy in scripture save in the near future of the prophet, we may with certain evidence reverse the maxim. The person of Christ gathers round itself a vast series of minute, clear, and often exclusively verified predictions ranging through the scriptures of more than a thousand years. And very many more are only eluded by the unbelief which clouds those who await their fulfilment when He comes again.

Isaiah 28-35.

How does rationalism fare when the next or third division of the prophecy is seriously examined? We have a series of chapters, about not Jerusalem only but all Israel on earth (28-35), that have the common character of dealing with the final judgments which usher in more and more brightly the everlasting deliverance and blessing. Hence any past historic circumstances appear but little, so as soon to bring into relief the grand ways of God with and for the Jews at the end of the age.

In this group of "Woes" the Holy Spirit with the utmost moral propriety begins, not with the Assyrian, but with Ephraim or Samaria in Isa. 28, and with Jerusalem, or Ariel the lion of God, in Isa. 29. The Lord cannot overlook but must judge the evil of His own people, if He is about to put down their enemies unsparingly. The crown of pride shall be trodden down under a destroying tempest; and so it was. But even the remnant erred, priest and prophet; and self-indulgence indisposes to the word of Jehovah, let Him meet His people as He may. Whereon the prophet turns to the scornful rulers in Jerusalem who boasted of their prudent policy to escape the overflowing scourge. "We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol have we made agreement" (Isa. 28: 15). But Messiah is the sole and sure foundation-stone which the Lord Jehovah lays in Zion, As he that trusteth shall not make haste, lies and falsehood will but ensure judgment, and the overflowing scourge tread those down who sought shelter in the power of darkness. How can any Christian doubt that the prophecy on the side of both good and evil looks far beyond whatever partial application it had in Isaiah's day? Nor does the N.T. (Rom. 9, 10, 1 Peter 2) intimate that all was fulfilled, because the only Man was come Who could be without impiety an object of trust. It cites what was accomplished, but leaves for a day still future Jehovah's rising up for His strange work and His unwonted task, a consumption that is determined for the whole land or earth. Even men are taught a variety of dealings for a desired end: how much more God teaches! If men were not pre-occupied, they must have perceived that this chapter implies a successful attack on Jerusalem, as well as the downfall of Samaria. What has hindered is the fatal mistake of looking only at the past, or the yet more daring unbelief of imputing an exaggeration and error to the prophet when he predicted far more. Isaiah distinctly tells the scornful rulers of Jerusalem that the Assyrian scourge should tread them down; and the believer is sure that, as this never was the fact in the past, it must be in the future. "Scripture cannot be broken."

But the interest increases when we understand Isa. 29, which unveils a subsequent picture, a second attack on Jerusalem; and when they are reduced to the lowest, instead of being trodden down, "The multitude of thine enemies shall be like fine dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones as chaff that passeth away; and it shall be in an instant suddenly. Thou shalt be visited by Jehovah of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest and the flame of devouring fire" (ver. 4-6). Now this goes far beyond even the blow which an angel of Jehovah dealt on the Assyrian camp of old. For two considerations distinguish the future from the past. First, scripture does not speak of more than 185,000 warriors then left dead; here it menaces with sudden destruction the multitude of all the nations that fight against mount Zion. Next, it declares that in that day the deaf shall hear and the blind see, and the meek increase their joy in Jehovah, and Jacob shall not now be ashamed; it is what these critics call the "ideal future." When it comes, it will be a deep and plain reality. For "so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. 11). Never yet has "the altered character and temper "manifested itself in the nation, because the time is not come, though it be as sure as the prophecy is inspired.

Isa. 30 is no less unmanageable on the neocritical hypothesis, with "the ideal future," its necessary, though vague, misleading, and irreverent resource. For, if real and certain, however distant, the hypothesis falls. Read it in faith, not as a sceptic, and its entire fulfilment in the consummation of the age is in accord with the general bearing of prophecy; as "the glorification of external nature" corresponds to the new age no less than a transformed" Israel, henceforth blessed and a blessing in Jehovah Messiah. The punishment of the Assyrian (11 for the king also," ver. 33) wholly differs from that which befell Sennacherib or his mighty men, and it awaits a corresponding foe of Israel in that day. Compare Dan. 8: 23-25, Dan. 11: 44, 45, Joel 3: 9-17, Micah 5: 5-9, Zeph. 3: 8-15, Zech. 12: 9, Zech. 14: 1-4. "The King" is Antichrist.

Isa. 31, 32, confirm the believing conclusion manifestly; for Jehovah's instruction in that day (4, 5) exceeds all yet experienced, as also does Israel's renewal (6, 7). Of course Isa. 32: 1-8 is once more characterised as "the ideal future;" not a word about Christ and His reign, swamped under a phrase which may mean all or nothing. The truth is that this scripture, after the fall of the Assyrian, reveals the consolation of Israel in Messiah's reign, and the latter rain, or the outpouring of the Spirit, when the wilderness shall become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted a forest. How can a rationalist face such revelations, and retain his unhallowed brief that the prophet never abandons his own historical position, but speaks from it? How God is left out is plain enough in another's words: "We will not say that prediction is impossible, or necessarily limited to vague generalities"! Could such language come from such as tremble at Jehovah's word? Their à priori principle is false and unbelieving; their arguments are not founded on a holy interrogation of the document, but on misuse of the historical starting-point, to ignore or contradict the evidence it affords that the Spirit of prophecy embraces the judgment of the quick, in part or as a whole, in order to the establishment of Messiah's kingdom on earth.

Quite in its true prophetic place, whatever the date of separate delivery, stands Isa. 33 which appears to be the invasion of Gog (cf. Ezek. 38, 39) rather than the Assyrian. the mighty ruler still farther north, who will have strengthened in vain "the king of the north" of Daniel (i.e. the last Assyrian of the other prophets). It is therefore as easy to confound these two (for both express the same policy), as most also identify in error the last ruler of the Roman beast with his political vassal but religious chief, the Antichrist who reigns over the apostate Jews in Palestine. "At the noise of the tumult the peoples are fled; at the lifting of Thyself the nations are scattered. And your spoil shall be gathered as the caterpillar gathereth: as locusts leap, shall they leap upon it. Jehovah is exalted, for He dwelleth on high; He hath filled Zion with judgment and righteousness." It is likely, if not certain, that Sennacherib furnished the historic occasion for this as for the previous enemy; for as of old, so at the close both are beyond measure haughty, ambitious, all-exacting, and truce-breakers. The question is, To what, as His aim, does the Holy Spirit direct our faith? Those whose system it is to see little but the shell, cannot be expected to taste the fruit. They cannot learn God's mind who hear only an Isaiah, or a deutero-Isaiah. But it is a judgment of hypocrites in Zion (14) as well as of the last proud enemy that invades the land; and no wonder, for "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty." Jehovah is judge, lawgiver, and king; He is unto Israel glorious and will save them. "Then is the prey of a great spoil divided; the lame take the prey. And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven iniquity." It is a divine forecast of Messianic deliverance and blessing here below.

In solemn contrast with this prospect is the closing call (Isa. 34) on nations and peoples, the earth and all its fulness, the world and all that comes forth of it, to that immense judgment of the nations and their armies in Bozrah and the land of Edom; with which Isa. 63, may be compared. Dr. Driver ventures to tax it with "glow of passion," recalling that which animates the prophecies against Babylon in Isa. 13 and Jer. 50, 51. He too cannot rise above man smarting from some recent provocation. This, with its style, disproves Isaiah's authorship, and points to the period of the exile! God is not in the thoughts of this school, many of whom far exceed their English protégés, and are as scornful as the unbelieving rulers of Isa. 28, as blind toward scripture as the deep sleepers of Isa. 29, and as trustful in man's strength and wisdom, as the rebellious children of Isa. 30. What is this but paving the way for the apostasy that will surely come, before the Lord Jesus appears in judgment of living man? Part of that judgment is the scene here predicted in Idumea, followed immediately, and purposely without a break or a preface, by the reconciliation, not of believers only as now, but of all creation in the day of the Lord, Zion being His earthly centre. Compare Rom. 8: 18-23, Eph. 1: 10, Col. 1: 20, Heb. 2: 5, Rev. 20, 21. Our Lord, in Matt. 19: 28, spoke of it as "the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory" (being now seated on His Father's throne, Rev. 3: 21); also the apostle Peter as "times of restoration of all things" (Acts 3: 21). There is an age to come before the judgment of the dead which ushers in the eternal day; and Christians are apt to think of the judgment of the living, when the Lord returns in glory, as little as the Jews did of the judgment of the dead. Both are revealed with full light in scripture; and they are distinct, though the Lord Jesus will execute both (John 5: 22).

Isaiah 36-39.

The historical episode of Isaiah 36-39 is the fourth part of the book, and bears in an important way on what precedes and follows. For the Assyrian, who threatened Jerusalem after the extinction of the kingdom of Israel, though in no way the fulfilment of the many prophecies in all the foregoing portions of Isaiah's vision, was included in the divine perspective. Thus what was then accomplished became the earnest of all that remains to be fulfilled, much of it by express marks reserved for that day when, of all we seek out of the book of Jehovah and read, no one of them shall be missing, none shall want its mate; for His mouth, it hath commanded, and His spirit, it hath gathered, the doleful witnesses of His final judgments. One of the commonest forms of unbelief where scepticism is not extreme is to abuse the part accomplished in the past to set aside the incomparably more momentous times to come. The effect is to the last degree mischievous. The authority and truth of the divine word must be thereby undermined; because the language through such a misinterpretation seems to go far beyond the event, and has therefore to be explained away by supposed orientalisms and the like devices, even when positive failure is not imputed. Again, on this scheme Israel loses the special hope of Messiah and His kingdom, all the Gentiles their world-wide blessing, and creation fades too; not to say that the still higher purpose of glory in Christ over all things, which the church is to share with Him, is all brought to nought for souls so ensnared. For this unbelieving snare shrouds the Second man in darkness and reduces all at best to the first man, his emptiness and his doubts, his boasts and his sins. It is the enemy's work.

Hence the historical parenthesis serves the admirable purpose of enabling us now, and the godly Jewish remnant in the latter day, to discriminate between the past and the future of "the Assyrian" in the prophecy. For no instructed believer would contend that the prophet himself could then draw the line any more than the pious of his generation, He expressed the mind of the Holy Spirit Who saw to the end from the beginning and never loses hold of the real unravelling of all complications in the triumphant establishment of God's kingdom. Then Messiah appears in His power and glory, and evil in every form is judged by His hand at once mild and strong, and righteousness reigns in peace and blessing Nor is there a weightier evidence conceivable of God inspiring the prophetic word than the fact that, while affording adequate accomplishment in the comparatively near, it commonly stops not short of what can only be fulfilled in the end of the age. All the parts of Isaiah's vision bear this witness, as do the prophets generally. But these chapters, their counterpart in 2 Kings 18-20, and more briefly 2 Chron. 32, contribute invaluable aid to spiritual intelligence, and forbid the error of assuming that all was exhausted in the overthrow of Sennacherib.

Thus reading, faith holds without question to every word in Isaiah 8, 9, and sees a final Assyrian at the head of peoples and far countries associated at the close to thwart Jehovah's purpose to blot out Israel and appropriate Immanuel's land. But Immanuel! God is with us: such is the remnant's watch-word in that day, though He be for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel — the unbelieving mass. But the despised light, Jesus of Nazareth, reappears, no longer in weakness to be the holy sacrifice, but in glory to break the oppressor's rod, and the arms of their foes shall even be for burning, for fuel of fire. And the government shall be upon His shoulder Who shall be called Wonderful, and no more "ideal King." Nor is there need to squeeze the words of Isaiah 10: 28-32, any more than from ver. 12 onward, to suit Sargon or Sennacherib, as well-meaning men do; still less to subscribe the sceptical alternative, that the prophet "intends" merely to draw an effective imaginative picture of the danger threatening Jerusalem. This imagination may seem proper to Dr. D. after Ewald, Schrader, and other free-thinkers; but believers reject and resent such profanity. God does not inspire false prophecy or baseless fancies. We have also seen a similar guard in the subsequence of the Assyrian overthrow on Jehovah's mountains, to Babylon's fall in Isa. 14. This is only true or even fairly explicable as future. Still plainer are Isa. 24-26 of the second part. And the third part as a whole demands the future day for any full answer. "For a consumption, and that determined upon the whole earth," though heard from Jehovah, awaits fulfilment; and it will be fulfilled, as surely as His mouth uttered it to and by the prophet. Jerusalem is not only to be invested but taken in part by the Assyrian of the last days (cf. Zech. 14 also); but, on his second attack after an interval to complete the capture, he not only falls but is punished condignly by divine interference, as in Isa. 30 etc.

The history therefore by inspired wisdom supplies precisely what is needed, — evidence of the highest kind which enables us to discriminate what has been already accomplished from the still more momentous things to come, which can be fulfilled only by-and-by in the final downfall of the Assyrian as of every other foe, and in the triumphant establishment of God's kingdom over the earth, when converted Israel shall be delivered by the Messiah returning in judgment of their Gentile adversaries as well as of their own apostates. It is clear as light in the three scriptural accounts, each true to the divine design of the books wherein they respectively occur, that the great king never besieged Jerusalem, contenting himself with sending his servants and a considerable portion of his force from Lachish, whither Hezekiah had sent his confession and also the heavy fine imposed on him; that the Assyrian general in command (Tartan), the chief chamberlain (Rab-saris) and chief cup-bearer (Rab-shakeh) did come to Jerusalem, where the latter reviled Hezekiah, threatened the worst of siege — horrors in the ears of those sitting on the wall, and blasphemed Jehovah as if powerless like other gods; that thereon king Hezekiah and his servants rent their clothes, and, while the king humbled himself, his servants were sent to Isaiah, who gave a re-assuring answer from Jehovah to the king's petition. It is no less clear that Rabshakeh returned to his master, who had departed from Lachish to Libnah, and sent a message again to Hezekiah shorter and yet more blasphemous, and that Hezekiah spread the letter before Jehovah with prayer in the house of Jehovah, when the prophet sent to him a far fuller answer (which, as even sceptics confess, bears unmistakable marks of Isaiah's hand), that the Assyrian king should not approach the city, and should not shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a mount against it, but Jehovah would turn him back by the way he came. That very night the angel of Jehovah smote 185,000 in the Assyrian camp, "all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and captains." So Sennacherib returned with shame, and (when, we are not told) was slain by two of his own sons in the house of his god.

But all this, however striking as an earnest, fails in every respect both as to Israel and as to the Assyrian, if we see not two sieges of Jerusalem in the last days. For in the first the city will be taken, so far at leash as that half the city shall go forth into captivity, while the residue shall not be cut off from it. But in the second Jehovah shall go forth against those nations, the Assyrian being their chief; how utter the confusion and ruin, many scriptures bear witness, and notably of the Assyrian consigned to the doom prepared of old, executed then, as the N.T. shows also for the Beast and the False Prophet at the end of the age.

It may be added for consideration, that the sickness which befell Hezekiah, the record of which follows in Isa. 38, yields its own divine lesson. For as the two chapters before give the type of the outward deliverance (partially executed then fully when the Lord Jesus appears in His glory), so here is the type of the inner ground of all complete deliverance in the sickness unto death of David's son, prefiguring His sufferings Who really died and as really rose from the dead, whereby Jehovah will make an everlasting covenant with Israel, even the sure mercies of David. Compare Acts 13: 34, and 2 Tim. 2: 8.

Hezekiah however was not the Son of promise; so that even 2 Chronicles does not pass by the sad result of a heart lifted up with pride before the princely ambassadors from Babylon. And the prophet comes to the king (Isa. 39), convicts him of the sin, and pronounces the word of Jehovah, "Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." Here then is exactly the point of departure for the last comparatively continuous division of the book, the most distinct prediction of the Babylonish captivity. Unbelief therefore must bow silently and abashed, or strangely contend that Isa. 39 is not Isaiah's any more than those to the end of the book. This men who profess to be God's servants are no more afraid to do, than the wicked king of Judah to cut and burn the roll of Jeremiah. But God is not mocked, though judgment lingers; and the growing scepticism of the day is only making good the apostle's prophecy, even now awaiting its sure fulfilment, that the falling away must come first, and the man of sin be revealed, before the day of the Lord.

Isaiah 40-48

Having now come to the main effort of scepticism against "the vision of Isaiah," which denies to the noblest of the prophets the last and noblest portion of his prophecy, let us examine with more detail the scripture before us, and the argument of the neo-critics, if argument it can be called. For it assumes, what they ought to prove, that the prophet must have lived in the Babylonian exile while Cyrus was pursuing his career of conquest, and that the Jews there were in despair or indifferent, to whom these chapters were addressed to arouse and expostulate, by announcing the certainty of the approaching restoration. It assumes that such an immersion of the prophet's spirit into the future is not only without parallel in the O.T., but contrary to the nature of prophecy. For this rests on the basis of the prophet's own age and corresponds to the needs then felt, however far-reaching into the future. Transient flights forward are allowed; but such a sustained transference to the future as Isaiah would imply, for these chapters, if his, is held to be against all example, and to indicate a prophet writing toward the close of the captivity! What they call the internal evidence is their chief ground: — Jerusalem often represented as ruined and deserted, the Jews suffering at the hands of the Chaldeans, and the prospect of return imminent, with the prophet addressing them in person, as not contemporaries of Ahaz and. Hezekiah, but exiles in Babylon. Minute as well as more general traits of style, and other spiritual traits are supposed to confirm the conclusion of their difference from the undisputed writings of Isaiah. But what is here given expresses their principal and common plea, whatever the points of difference otherwise.

It is well to observe, by the way, how little the question turns on profound Hebrew scholarship, which their followers everywhere parade as if it were the grand if not sole qualification for judging aright. Whereas it is certain that the stress if their hypothesis lies on that which is open to all.

Our English Professors do not go so far as some who have greatly influenced them. But the well-known F. Hitzig ("Der Proph. Jes., 1833," a work which Dr. D. says is "the source of much that is best exegetically in more recent commentaries") lets out the evil root of unbelief. "A prophetic prescience must be limited to the notion of foreboding, and to the deductions from patent facts taken in combination with real or supposed truths. Prophets were bounded like other men (!) by the horizon of their own age; they borrowed the object of their soothsaying (!!) from their present; and excited by the relations of their present, they spoke to their contemporaries of what affected other people's minds or their own, occupying themselves only with that future whose rewards or punishments were likely to reach their contemporaries. For exegesis the position is impregnable (!) that the prophetic writings are to be interpreted in each case out *of the relations belonging to the time of the prophet; and from this follows as a corollary the critical canon: that that time, those time-relations, out of which a prophetic writer is explained, are his times, his time-relations; to that time he must be referred as the date of his own existence" (pp. 463-468)!!

It is hard to conceive a  infidel exclusion of God from inspiration. Believers will surely reject a canon which rests on the merest assumption, and cleave to the apostle's authoritative words which deny that prophecy was ever brought by man's will, but men spake from God, moved or borne along by the Holy Spirit. It is then a question of His wisdom Who deigns to vouchsafe no little variety in His communications by the prophets. Here we are discussing not only the most copious but the most varied and comprehensive of all the O.T. company; and Isaiah had already uttered a numerous set of predictions. For these occasion was given in the moral ruin of Israel and even Judah, which faithful kings could not retrieve, however for a time a stay and means of transient blessing. But even then the prophet's word from Jehovah exposed the ever growing evil, called to repentance, and set forth assured deliverance in the end. This was not a partial return from captivity; but glory and righteousness reigning in the chosen people; and not they only, but all the nations flowing to the centre of Jehovah's house established on the top of the mountains and lifted above the hills. In vain have the fathers as well as moderns become wise in their own conceits, denying the hope of Israel by-and-by to exalt Christendom now. Rationalists see that this application is groundless, and, having no faith in the true and future fulfilment, count it "ideal," and the prophecy a mistaken dream. It would, indeed, be the grossest perversion to contend that the glorious hopes in Isa. 2: 1-4 and Isa. 4: 2-6 were realised in the return from Babylon, the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, or the Jewish religion since then. How verified will every word be, when on the repentance of the Jews God sends the Lord Jesus, Whom heaven has received till times of restoring all things, of which God's holy prophets have spoken since time began! So St. Peter preached; so we believe. For the present the Jews believe not; and the rationalists even less.

The fact is too, that the series of "burdens" in our prophecy opened with as exact a parallel as the case admits of in this book without going farther. For there we had the destruction of Babylon portrayed in the most vivid colours, though there was no historic basis stated in either Isa. 13 or 21; and the implacable part the Medes played in the former, not Medes only but Elam, the Persian contingent; and the destruction is on that first occasion pursued to the end in the day of Jehovah, so as to prefigure the imperial system as a whole judged for ever, with the full and final deliverance of God's ancient people — the "all Israel" which shall be saved and set in their own land in that great day, as Isa. 14 shows. But the leaving out of Babylon makes an irreparable gap in the circle of these "burdens"; whereas its judgment most properly opens Jehovah's dealings with the nations, as it first was placed in an imperial position, which in one form or another goes down to the end; and the subsequent notice of the Assyrian, in its exactly proper place (Isa.14), becomes meaningless when taken out of this connection — a mere waif or stray. Hence, these sceptics are compelled by their fatal system to deny these chapters also to Isaiah. It is ever so with scripture no less than morals: one falsehood stuck to soon calls for more to give semblance of consistency. Nothing delivers souls but the truth of God. This they do not look for, and so are in the dark. They confide in the reasonings of Koppe, Hitzig, and such like. Their sole faith is in themselves, even if they shrink from being so outspoken, and perhaps are yet unprepared for the same degree of profanity. The very small residue of faith, which Dr. D. professes in page 230 for the purpose of avoiding misconception, will neither stand in the day of trial, nor does it save his scheme from the charge of incredulity even now.

It is a lack of spiritual intelligence to expect the same method in God's inspiration of Isaiah as with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or any other. Each had his own individuality, as God had His special design.

Thus Jeremiah, heartbroken, did very characteristically direct his expostulation to the conscience of the Jews, alike to king, priests, prophets, and people; as he also held out Babylon rising into its peculiar supremacy on the fall of Jerusalem, but for its idolatry destroyed and the Jew set free by the conqueror, the type of a greater judgment and a full deliverance at the end of the age. At the same time, as the moral prophet he proclaims the virtues of the new covenant for all the people restored to the land in that day. But Isaiah had a far higher flight and larger scope than Jeremiah. Yet the latter, who drank the bitter cup. of Jerusalem's sorrow more deeply than any other prophet, was given to look beyond their fall to the day "when they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north, to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers."

Ezekiel beheld the throne of God judging the city and in particular the house of God (instead of thence governing the nations) till it depart, but at the end returning in glory and blessing to dwell in Israel's midst for ever; as Daniel sees the Gentile powers, as "beasts" during the judgment of Israel.

But Isaiah is distinct from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Daniel, important as each was in his differing place. It was Isaiah's function (before the days of the captivity, or the setting aside of the Jews as God's sphere of manifested government) to bring out in a fulness and splendour all his own the boundless prospect of God's dealings with Israel, and His purposes of glory which centre in Christ and His kingdom. Judah being still recognised, the Assyrian figures in the first series. When "the burdens" on the nations follow (Isa. 13-27), Babylon comes at once into view, as about to have the special lot of setting Jerusalem aside for its apostate idolatry, till itself becomes the object of divine judgment because of its rebellious idolatry in order to set the people free. Not only would this divine panorama have been incomplete without Babylon, but it was only perfect by beginning with the first (or golden head) of the imperial world-powers, and prefigures the last in the day of the Lord. Even Egypt and Assyria are to be blessed of Jehovah when He takes Israel as His inheritance; but there is no merciful restoration in store for Babylon, whether Chaldean or Roman: strong is the Lord God Who judged her. We need not pursue this more, but avail ourselves of a believing use of Isa. 13, 14, to vindicate the momentous series, which follows the historical section (Isa. 36-39) of which we have spoken briefly.

Here the folly of unbelief is the less excusable because of Isaiah's prediction of the Babylonish captivity which closes the history. It was an awful sentence for the pious king to hear, and to hear it from Isaiah as the fruit of his own faithless ostentation to the heathen; which was the worse after the wondrous interposition of Jehovah, both against the Assyrian, and in raising himself as it were from death. It was not merely Hezekiah's offspring humbled in the dust before a Gentile master: Jehovah would have no throne longer on earth. His throne had been the unique throne of David's house (1 Chron. 29: 23). Other monarchs reign by God's providence. But Jehovah reigned through David and his line only, looking onward no doubt to a greater than them all — the Messiah, as truly Jehovah as He Who swore to raise Him up to reign. Till He come to take the throne of David (He is now on His Father's throne, expressly not on His own, Rev. 3: 21), power is transferred to the Gentiles. But they, though ordained of God, never had and have not any such title. We may judge better by the Lamentations what this blank was to a holy Israelite. The chosen people too were henceforth Lo-ammi, as Hosea declares.

Hence the appropriateness and power of the words which open Isa. 40, a preface to all those that follow, especially to Isa. 41-48. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her time of toil is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins." How exactly in keeping with Isaiah! In his earlier strains he thus repeated warning and menace to the foe, as in Isa. 8: 9, 10; now with no less force, but with deep pathos to the people after sore affliction and shame for their sins, his heart goes with the divine message of consolation. And yet critics say, It must be another! As if he who spared not the Galatians was not the same apostle that poured out his heart into the bosom of the Philippians. Strange criticism in good sooth!

But more: conceive for a moment the absurdity of such a prophecy as Isaiah's ending with the dirge of Isa. 39. Conceive again the prodigy of an equal of Isaiah pouring forth toward the close of the exile suddenly and continuously the otherwise unparalleled strains which roll on to the closing Isa. 66. Where is the historic basis at that epoch for such strains? Or is there the smallest approach to them in Ezekiel or in Daniel, whose times and circumstances afford the nearest points of contact? Surely their prophecies, however admirably adapted to God's aim then and there, stand in marked contrast of character, colouring, and contents. Here we have Isaiah's old affluence and dignity, depth of feeling, elevation of thought, beauty of language, sense of divine majesty combined with the most affecting loving kindness; but there is now not only a more majestic flow in style, but truth more searching and profound, a deeper probing of idolatry and rebelliousness, Messiah's sufferings and glory set out as never before, resulting in the richest blessing to God's glory for Jew and Gentile and the universe, nowhere else in the O.T. so fully revealed.

Take the certain and solemn fact already alluded to, that from the Babylonish captivity God no longer owned the people as His, save providentially and in purpose; and that the return of a feeble remnant was but provisional, and mainly to test them afresh, not as witnesses of the one Jehovah God, but of the Messiah. One sees at once that the bearing of the very first words goes far beyond. The sentence of Lo-ammi (not-my-people) holds from first to, last of the four empires of Dan. 2 and 7, which only meet their doom when the Son of man appears from heaven to execute the judgment of the quick. Whatever little earnest may have been enjoyed by those who went back to the land after the fall of Babylon, the prophetic word reveals a vast deal more, as it contemplates nothing short of a complete restoration to divine favour for the Israel of "that day." Hence the force of "My people." Then there will be no room for attenuating at all the consolation of the message: the appointed hardship will be over; the iniquity pardoned.

The great principles of this immense change follow. First, a spiritual preparation is announced (vers. 3-8). Now this is by all the synoptic evangelists applied to the mission of John the Baptist; and the fourth Gospel declares that the favoured herald of the Messiah applied it to himself. To give all these the lie would cost the unbelieving school little, though probably their English disciples might wince. But if the inspired interpretation is to rule, the rationalist house is proved to be built on the sand. For what had the Baptist's testimony to do with the close of the exile? And who that accepts the divine authority of the N.T. can deny that the prophet does bound forward at once many centuries? — the very truth which these critics reject with one consent, for their own gratuitous assumption, which is as opposed to the prophetic text in the O.T. as to the inspired comment in the N.T.

Where again is there the faintest shadow of a restoration from Babylon in vers. 9-11? in 12-26? or in 27-31? We have indeed in Ezra the divine account of the remnant's return after the striking proclamation of liberty by Cyrus. Is it really so that they regard that little and feeble return as fulfilling, "Behold, your God! Behold, the Lord Jehovah will come as a mighty one, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his recompence before him. He shall feed his flock as a shepherd," etc. It was the king of Persia who took the initiative; and Ezra himself confesses later on "We (the returned Jews) are bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the ruins thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem" (Isa. 9: 9). Ezra, an inspired man, saw no such way prepared through the wilderness as corresponded with the bright promise, and would have rejected as blasphemous that the return. of the remnant then was the triumphal progress of Israel's king, as a Conqueror Zionward, leading before Him His prize of war, the recovered nation itself. Never, never will this be, as the rejected Messiah told them, till they shall say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the LORD." Alas! how different is all yet, while that word of apostate unbelief stands unjudged, "We have no king but Caesar." More manifestly than ever are they Lo-ammi.

To the believer it is a prophecy awaiting its fulfilment. Let men beware of palming their worthless expositions on the word of our God. For the consequence of it is that those who lean on man fear not to treat His word with the contempt due only to these misreadings of unbelief. How plain to faith, that the true bearing of what is thus travestied coalesces with Isa. 25: 9-12, Isa. 35: Isa. 52: 7-12, Isa. 63: 10-12, etc.! How absurd to apply all to the return!

It is quite true then that in the vision the prophet has before him the things to come. Even in this introductory chapter it is John the Baptist he hears, the herald of Christ; as he next in the Spirit calls on the Jews to behold Jehovah triumphing on their behalf in His day, to the shame of human presumption, and yet more of idols, to the cheer and joy and strength of His own that have no might, for His is all might, wisdom, and tender mercy.

But repentance, which John preached and symbolised in his baptism, is by the action of the word on the conscience. Thus the Spirit withers up all confidence in self; and this is as much needed by "the people" as by sinners of the Gentiles. For all flesh is grass: surely the people is grass." Only God's word abides for ever, the incorruptible seed whereby any are begotten again through faith. This Israel will learn livingly.

Then shall they appreciate the grace of their divine Messiah. As His glory and power subserve His goodness to His people, so will they rejoice that their Shepherd is none less than Jehovah, Who counts all creation a very little thing, and the nations less than nothing. What a death-blow to a likeness of Him! — to an image graven by man! He that marshals the host of heaven, and calls each by name, gave poor Jacob his princely name; and He, far from fainting, imparts power to the faint; and they that wait upon Him shall renew strength, as Israel will in that day.

The exordium of Isa. 40. laid down clearly that the pledged and stable comfort God designs for His people is inseparable from their repentance by the word and Spirit of God judging nature; as the glad tidings centre in their divine Messiah, Who will feed His flock like a Shepherd, the Ruler and Judge of all the earth, Whose wisdom and power have already shone in creation, and reduce all the nations to a cipher compared with Him, to say nothing of likening Him in their folly to a graven image, or of Israel's unbelief of His watchful eye and efficacious succour. He will surely appear at the fit moment.

Isa. 41 follows this up and opens His first indictment (40-48) in the great controversy with Israel. It was the idolatry of the nations, and even of Shem's line, which gave occasion to the dealing with Abraham, chosen, called, and faithful, as the root of promise here below. So when the time came, itself predicted (Gen. 15), to deliver Israel and judge the nation which had held them in bondage, it was avowedly "against all the gods of Egypt" that Jehovah executed judgment. Israel, witness of the one true and living God, failed even under the king of peace; who went after other gods in his old age, and the kingdom was divided. Ephraim, guilty from the first of idolatry for political expediency, was at length broken in pieces that it should not be a people. Judah would follow backsliding Israel still more treacherously "till there was no remedy;" and, because of this persistent idolatry in the house of David, God cave them over to the Chaldeans and set up the imperial system of the Gentiles till the Lord appears for their judgment, and for the full and final deliverance, not of Judah only but of Israel, then to be restored spiritually as well as nationally, and ruled to the joy of all the earth by Him Whose right it is, when idolatry is judged and perishes for ever. Then only and thus shall the earth be filled, surely not without the Spirit's power, with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea.

The return from Babylon was but an earnest of the restoration which hinges on Israel's heart turning to Christ. Then, not before, is the veil taken away (2 Cor. 3: 16). When their soul loathed Him here below, His staff Beauty was cut asunder, and the covenant with all the peoples was broken; when He was bought for a slave's price and crucified, He cut Bands, and broke the brotherhood between Judah and Israel (Zech. 11). Every Israelitish hope was buried in His grave, but will rise again in Him at the allotted season: for what word of God can perish?

Meanwhile, founded on Him Who, dead and risen, is now glorified on high, the Holy Spirit is come to gather the children of God and joint-heirs with Christ into one body, the church, which is therefore a heavenly system though for the present on earth, but united to Him the Head above. Those who compose that body are accordingly called to suffer in conformity to His cross, sustained by the assurance of His love and all the privileges of possessed redemption as well as union, and waiting for the fellowship of His glory, Who is coming for us that we may be with Him where He is. Hence we stand contrasted with Israel in most momentous respects of walk and worship, privileges and hopes, as the N.T. shows fully. We may and ought to profit by such scriptures as are before us; but they treat, not of the church, but of God's ancient people, about to be swept into Babylon, yet even before that captivity comforted with the assurance of deliverance and restoration through divine mercy and power, only by and by to be adequately appreciated.

The chapter then begins with a summons, which Isa. 1 attests as the prophet's style, to the islands and peoples. Jehovah deigns to plead! "Let us come near together to judgment." It is again a question between the true God and vain images. Because His people served not Jehovah their God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things, therefore, as Moses predicted (Deut. 28), should they serve their enemies in hunger and in thirst, etc., plucked from off the land of promise, and scattered over the earth. Accordingly Jehovah demands, Who raised up from the east him whom righteousness calleth to its foot? The God Who knew declared beforehand by His prophet. It was He indeed Who wrought as well as spoke. "He shall give nations before him, and make him rule over kings; he shall give [them] as dust to his sword, as driven stubble to his bow. He shall pursue them and pass in safety, a path with his feet he shall not go;" i.e., so should he speed. The description of the conqueror is resumed in ver. 25, as one from the north as here from the cast, which singularly met in Cyrus the Persian, who welded the Medes into his kingdom before his crowning overthrow of Babylon. But he is not yet named as in the end of Isa. 44 and the beginning of 45. The effort of jealous rabbis followed by some Christians to apply the earlier words to Abraham is vain. It is a prophetic challenge on His part Whose power could make His words good, in contrast with dumb and lifeless idols, to which, as tutelary deities, dread of the avenger drove the Gentiles (ver. 5-7), in their ignorance of Him Who calleth the generations from the beginning, the First and with the last.

But Israel are addressed in terms most assuring as God's servant; they were not to fear: He would uphold them, and confound all inflamed against them. Their weakness is most pointedly owned (14); yet in virtue of their Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, they should thresh mountains and hills, which when scattered like chaff should leave Israel to joy in Jehovah, Who would interpose for the needy in the wilderness, even more gloriously than of old, that they might be satisfied it was His doing and even creating. And in the renewed challenge, which repeats the reference to the as yet unnamed Cyrus, the test of predicting is made most definite. "Bring forward your arguments, saith the king of Jacob." What a witness to the Israel of that future day, that He is not ashamed to acknowledge them! "Let them bring forth and declare to us what shall happen: show the former things what they are, that we may apply our heart and know their issues or make us know things to come. Declare the things to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods. Yea, do good or evil, that we may be astonished (or examine) and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you." Then the veil is removed from the conqueror, whom God alone revealed, i.e. Who first before any other to Zion (said), Behold, behold them!

Is it not impudent unbelief, in the face of such a divine claim, for modern rationalism to found on the prophetic style, which speaks in the Spirit of the future as if the past or present, that it was written while the brilliant progress of events was going on, just before Babylon fell and the captivity ended and the return began? Nay more, the sceptical hypothesis implies knavery in the pseudo-Isaiah, and especially in him or those who put these chapters into the vision of Isaiah. It is hard to imagine a more diabolical thrust at prophecy, however covered up under soft words. Proof there is none. The reasoning simply assumes that Isaiah could not be the prophet, because the reference to Cyrus' Medo-Persian career, the overthrow of Chaldean idolatry, the fall of Babylon, and the return, argue the writer cognisant of these momentous events as on the eve of accomplishment, the earlier of them actually a fact. That is, to any upright mind the critical hypothesis insinuates fraud.

Now the far later prophecy of Jeremiah (Jer. 25) did define the length of the exile in Babylon as 70 years; and Daniel (Dan. 9) is declared to have learned thereby the approaching change. The sole imposture is in these critics. Those holy men of God in no way exaggerated the event, long set out by Isaiah, much later by Jeremiah, and recognised by Daniel, the only one really in Babylon, as just about to be. So far from elation, the last gave himself to prayer and humiliation for the sins of Jerusalem and the people. Daniel in fact did not go up with the returning remnant, learning (by a fresh prophecy on that very occasion) how far the return would be from the promised restoration, and that the Messiah, when He came after a determinate interval, would be cut off and have nothing, instead of even then bringing in for Israel His righteous reign. All this is in perfect accord with the chapters before us. Isa. 41: 8-20 was in no way fulfilled in the return. It is still unaccomplished. The return, important as it may have been, was a mere pledge of Israel's glorious hope; and the aged prophet showed his believing estimate of it by remaining where he was, and received a subsequent assurance from God that, far from losing aught, he should rest and stand in his lot at the end of the days (Isa. 12). The promised blessing of the people is after unexampled tribulation, and Jehovah will make them, when truly repentant, a judicial instrument, "worm Jacob" and "mortals of Israel" though they be, to break down and scatter the proud power of all their foes to God's glory.

What confirms the truth, and disproves the human shallowness of neology, is Isa. 42: 1-4 and its certain application to the Messiah, unless we despise the inspiration of the N.T. also, and count sceptics more reliable than St. Matthew (Matt. 12: 17-21), who vouches likewise for Isaiah as the prophet. It is Jehovah's Servant pre-eminently, and beyond all comparison. Not Cyrus is here, not Israel though in Isa. 41: 8 called His servant, but Christ, exclusively said (Isa. 42: 6) to be given "for a covenant of the people and a light of the Gentiles." It is not an ideal figure, but the real Messiah. It was not yet the hour to lift up His voice in judgment, as the blind Jews desired, though it must have been their own destruction. Meek in heart He sought not glory but to do His Father's will, rejected by an unbelieving people, and about to go far lower to save them or any; so as to be a light to the Gentiles when Israel will have none of Him, caring for the weakest and in no way discouraged till He have set judgment, and the isles shall wait for His law, as in the day of His open power and glory, when all shall be fulfilled, not an earnest only. Then will close the former things, and a new song will be sung to Jehovah as in a new age, which neither the return nor even the first advent responded to, though the latter led to higher and eternal things not here contemplated. Idolatry still flourishes, even in Christendom. And Israel had been verily and exceedingly besotted (vers. 18-20), and therefore degraded of Jehovah to the lowest. There is no real difficulty in seeing only Israel in His blind and deaf servant, the strongest contrast with Messiah. The Revisers correct "perfect" into "at peace," as the younger Lowth "perfectly instructed" and the elder compares "Mussulman." It refers to their full endowment of privilege; and in no way is it moral, for they are censured and judged for their idolatry, who should have been a witness for one true and living God to all mankind. Therefore were they given over to severe chastening and humiliation.

Isa. 43 dwells on Israel's relation to Jehovah, in view not of their sins and their punishments, but of His unfailing fidelity in sovereign grace. Clearly this awaits fulfilment, as it goes far beyond any past instalment. No wonder that those who adopt the fatal error of limiting prophecy to an immediate future are incapable of seeing or expounding the truth, and must regard the inspired vision as utter exaggeration, to say the least. But the fault is solely in themselves. Jehovah will infallibly stand by Israel, and more conspicuously in the future than in the brightest memorial of the past, and bring their seed from the east and the west, from the north and the south (5, 6). This far exceeds the return from Babylon; and not Gentiles, but Israelites only are here in view.

The blind votaries of idols are once more summoned; and as Jehovah guarantees the redemption of Israel, so He reiterates the proof of a true God in His Predictions, committed to them as His witnesses, and here reveals the fall of Babylon expressly, and of the Chaldeans whose cry is in the ships (14), again claiming to be Israel's king, when they had none outwardly. It is not only that the new should surpass the old, but Jehovah reveals that they may know it beforehand. To limit prophecy to its evidence when accomplished is to take the place, unconsciously, of an unbeliever. Jehovah is not silent about His people's sins: so much the more wonderful is the declaration of His full forgiveness and rich blessing for His own sake (ver. 16-28, Isa. 44: 1-5). What Christian can allege that this is as yet completely fulfilled? Christendom, it is true, long gave up faith in God's mercy to Israel by-and-by, in flat opposition to Rom. 11, and many other N.T. scriptures, to say nothing of the O.T. Ancients and moderns are apt to be alike guilty of high-mindedness in this respect. God's gifts and calling abide; and Christendom will be judged, no less than Israel; but His mercy shall triumph yet. O the depth of His riches!

We have seen the glory of Jehovah set forth in creation and providence, but not more than in His gracious condescension and unfailing care of the people whom He chose and separated to Himself as His servant, witness of the one true and living God against all false gods and especially idols, the snare of no nation more than of Israel. This was especially seasonable, when the prophet had solemnly set before Hezekiah the ruin even of the residue who clung to David's house, when that royal stein, on which their standing and hopes depended, should be carried with all their treasures to Babylon. For on earth was no mother, no patroness, of idolatry, more ancient, powerful, or renowned than Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms." What then seemed so much to compromise His name as that Babylon should sweep His people off the land He gave them into captivity? On the contrary it was because of apostacy from Jehovah for Gentile idols, and this at length and persistently in David's house, that Jehovah gave them up to a land of graven images where men were mad upon idols. Judah's sin became their punishment, that they might learn, both from Jerusalem and in Babylon, the brutish delusion and destructive shame of trust in gods that man made.

Hence, long before the time, the prophet told them of the judgment Jehovah would visit on Babylon, by raising up one from the east and the north as avenger in righteousness. This was of so much the deeper interest to the chosen people, because its capture would open the door for their return. Yet who can overlook that the terms of the prediction, while definitely applying to both events, go on without doubt to Christ? Nor is it merely Christ in the past but in the future also, times for restoring all things, which the apostle Peter preached (Acts 3), as God spoke of them by His holy prophets since time began. It is a marked and integral part of the testimony that God herein challenges the devotees of idolatry to declare what shall happen, and things in (not the near future but) "the latter end of them."

The assumption therefore that this must have been a wise. anticipation, when Cyrus was in his mid career of conquest, and a very few years before the fall of Babylon, is not alone absolutely without proof, but morally irreconcileable with the language and argument of the prophet. To suppose the union of the Medes with the Persians as an actual fact, and Cyrus already triumphant in N. W. and Central Asia, is to make the prediction a vain mendacious boast, instead of a communication divine beyond question. If it be Isaiah's, as its place professes it to be, following his humbling words to Hezekiah, what can be more forcible in establishing the claims of the one true God, raising up the avenger and unveiling the future (itself but the pledge of One still more glorious) to the Jew when the crisis so loudly called for it? Yet in doing so He laid their iniquity bare with an unsparing hand, even while He calls them to sing a new song to Himself in view of a deliverance, not yet fulfilled but sure, when the day of sovereign grace dawns on repentant Israel, renouncing their own righteousness and looking to Him Whom they pierced. Nature began with all things good from God, which man, listening to the enemy and sinning, reduced to ruin; grace begins with the ruin, gives the Second man and last Adam to bear the judgment of the sins, brings in divine righteousness, and establishes at last a new heaven and a new earth. Israel's was a similar story over again; and so is Christendom's. In all God is faithful, above all in Christ by virtue of His person and work, Who vindicated God as to the past, present, and future; as He must reign till He has put all the enemies under His feet. When all things have been subjected to Him, then shall the Son also be subjected to Him that subjected all things to Him, that God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] may be all in all, instead of all things being under the glorified Man in the previous kingdom.

After this richest encouragement to His undeserving people (Isa. 44: 1-5), He again raises His controversy with idols, and sets out the folly as well as wickedness of man's making his object of worship (6-20), with a most touching appeal to Israel, formed to be His servant; as in view of sovereign grace He will dispel their transgressions like a mist and their gins like a cloud (21-23). He asserts His frustration of lying signs and senseless diviners, while He confirms His declared counsel, saying of Jerusalem, Thou shalt be inhabited, and of the cities of Judah Ye shall be built, as of the deep, Be thou dry, and of Cyrus (for now he is named), He is my shepherd and shall accomplish all my pleasure, who will say of Jerusalem, She shall be built, and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid (24-28).

So, notoriously and punctually, it came to pass: none need travel beyond the written word of God to learn it. Jehovah, with power supreme, has not only the knowledge of the end from the beginning, but imparts conspicuously of that knowledge for the sustenance of faith, at the very time when His people, because of faithlessness, were reduced to be no longer a vessel of His power. It was Jehovah that held Cyrus' right hand to subdue nations before him, to break in pieces the doors of brass, and to cut asunder the bars of iron. For Israel's sake He named Cyrus, though he knew not Jehovah, that men might know from east and from west that there is none beside Him. It was He that raised up Cyrus in righteousness, to build His city, and let go His captives, not for price nor reward, saith Jehovah of hosts. Yet this unparalleled return of the Jew from Babylon is as evidently but the shadow of an everlasting salvation, not yet Israel's, when idols and their worshippers shall be in the dust, and in Jehovah all Israel shall be justified and shall glory; yea, and every knee shall bow to Him and every tongue shall swear (Isa. 45: 23).

In Isa. 46 follows the utter humiliation of Bel and Nebo, chief idols of Babylon, more manifestly impotent than the beasts that bore them, unable to save, and themselves gone into captivity. Again is Jehovah contrasted in His loving patience toward Israel with the image that could neither move nor speak nor save; whereas He was giving proof, in their deep depression for their sins and especially their idolatries, that Jehovah is God, and none else, and none like Him, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done (to be shown full soon in calling a bird of prey from the cast, the man of His counsel from a far country), though Zion has still to await salvation, and Israel Jehovah's glory, which faith would never count far off.

But ere that great day the virgin daughter of Babylon must sit in the dust (Isa. 47). Warned solemnly as no Gentile monarch had ever been, a warning recalled and interpreted by a Jewish prophet of the captivity, "the head of gold" did not take these things to heart nor remember the end thereof. Hence he that had long before predicted the captivity, now followed it up with Babylon's desolation to come suddenly, she not knowing nor suspecting nor able to ward it off, spite of enchantments and sorceries, spite of astrologers, stargazers, and moon-prognosticators: there is none to save Babylon.

The controversy closes in Isa. 48, wherein Jehovah appeals to Jacob's house, called by the name of Israel, and come forth out of Judah's waters: a remarkable description which clothes the Jews with the honoured name of him, who, wrestling with God and with men, prevailed. Here again Jehovah reminds them of His declaring the former things long ago, lest, with their neck of iron sinew and their brow of brass, they should impute to their idol what the Eternal had long predicted and at last accomplished. Now He caused them to hear new things, that they might be kept, if it could be, from their perverse rebelliousness, and not be cut off but be refined in the furnace of affliction. He the First and He the Last again challenged which among them had declared these things? It was their Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, Who, alike by this very prophecy as by others, bore divine witness to His witnesses; and by the Gentile chief He raised up against Babylon, He would wean them from futile images to the assurance of His own sovereign goodness and unmerited fidelity. For there is no peace, saith Jehovah, unto the wicked." And what wickedness grosser or more ungrateful in Israel than idolatry?

Yes, there is a deeper depth to devour the guilty people; and this the prophet opens as the still more awful indictment laid to their charge in the next section.

Isaiah 49-57.

Here the ground taken by neo-criticism is untenable, self-evidently to all but unbelievers. For the section of the prophecy which Isa. 49 opens is beyond just question occupied with Messiah's rejection and its results. This is the second and still graver indictment alleged against the Jews; fruit of the same unbelief, though under deeper mercy despised, which had left Jehovah for idols the charge against them in the previous section. Hence Babylon and Cyrus disappear now, as Assyria has no place in either. Nor can any statement be less accurate than Dr. Driver's (Lit. O.T. 217) that "these chapters [Isa. 40-46] form a continuous prophecy, dealing throughout with a common theme, viz., Israel's restoration from exile in Babylon." In a measure it may be accepted as applicable to the first of the three parts, though even here it falls lamentably short of its full scope. For in the very preface (Isa. 40), we have, if we accept the interpretation of the N.T. as authoritative, John the Baptist's ministry, and the coming of Jehovah in the person of the Messiah, His appearing in glory and in triumph over idols, as tender and faithful as He is matchless in power and wisdom. We have also a result in sovereign grace far beyond anything realised by the returned remnant. If these men dare to say that the prophecy is false and is never to be fulfilled, let them stand out as open infidels. They may not all be so; yet they are all doing the enemy's work.

The truth is that "the servant" is the key-note of the continuous prophecy. It runs through all the three divisions, each of which has its special aim and proper character. Hence in Isa. 41: 8 we have "Israel my servant," responsible to bear witness of the one living God against idolatry, but utterly failing and therefore captives in Babylon (the ancient champion of image-worship), till Jehovah raise up a deliverer from the north-east, named expressly before the section closes, His shepherd to perform all His pleasure as to Jerusalem and the temple, as well as to execute judgment on Babylon and its dark superstition. Even here, however, and in an early part (Isa. 42: 1-4), care was taken to point out a "Servant" incomparably greater than Israel, Cyrus, or any other, Who should come in meekness, but not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for His law. How different from His blind "servant" in the same chapter, His people abandoned to heathen spoliation for their more guilty heathenism, whatever over-abounding mercy may do another day not yet arrived!

With Isa. 49 the heavier and more heinous charge is pressed. The prophet sets before us throughout the section the aggravated guilt of the returned remnant in rejecting their own, the true, Messiah. It is a striking instance of a principle common to the N.T. as well as the O.T., the replacement of the faithless "servant" by the faithful One, of Israel the empty vine by Messiah the True Vine, the fleshly son of God called out of Egypt by His Only-begotten in due time. Indeed it is the question for faith and unbelief between the first man and the Second, which underlies all revelation, and determines. the lot of every soul before whom it comes, for not time only but eternity. Messiah takes up Israel's place, as Jehovah's servant in Whom He will be glorified; but in view of His rejection He says (ver. 4), "I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and vanity: yet surely my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work [or wages] with my God." The next verse is the answer, which demonstrates the substitution of Messiah for Israel, not distinct only but for the present opposed to Him. "And now saith Jehovah that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, that Israel may be gathered to him (yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God shall be my strength); and he said, It is a small thing that, thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel. I will even give thee for light to Gentiles, to be my salvation unto the end of the earth" (vers. 5, 6). The text is here rendered in a form substantially as learned Jews prefer. What can be plainer, even if we had not the apostle's application in Acts 13, than that here we have the blessed result of the gospel for Gentiles, on the refusal of the Messiah by His own people? No doubt despising man joined the nation in its apostate abhorrence, and the Cross followed. This infinite grace made the ground of salvation indiscriminate to Jew or Gentile that believed: a state of things wholly distinct from what was before the first advent and what will follow the second, when Jehovah will prove that He never forgot Zion, but at length will contend with her enemies, and save her children then repentant and looking to Him Whom they pierced Thus verses 7, 8, quite confirm the grace now going out far and wide (cf. 2 Cor. 6: 2), while the chapter passes on to the millennial rescue and exaltation of Israel on earth. All is due to the Servant, and is God's gracious use of His rejection. Meanwhile the Jew has lost Him as King in Zion; and the believer (whosoever he may be) has Him as Saviour, Lord, Priest, and Head in heavenly glory.

How does the self-styled higher criticism fare before this divine light? It is really, what the cross of Christ outwardly seemed, emptiness and vanity: an unspeakably sad sight, a mob of Jewish foes inciting Gentiles against Christ and God's inspired scripture, with a traitor disciple playing into their hands! May they tremble at Jehovah's word, lest that come upon them which is spoken of in the prophets — lest they perish as despisers in their inexcusable unbelief. For no canon more pervades the school than the denial of true prophecy independently of local and actual indications, and especially of any unveiling of the distant future. Hence the foregone conclusion of incredulity. The question is begged. They neither prove nor disprove. They assume as their primary principle that "to base a promise upon a condition of things not yet existent, and without any point of contact with the circumstances or situation of those to whom it is addressed, is alien to the genius of prophecy" (Lit. O.T. 201). From the first prediction in the Bible to the last the very reverse is nearer the truth, allowing for the subordinate cases to which it may apply. From the great body of scriptural prophecy on the contrary is excluded private (i.e. isolated) solution; because it converges as the rule on the yet future kingdom when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah and His glory as the waters cover the sea. How transparently weak to deny the prophecies of Babylon or any other to Isaiah, because of a century or more, when their Great Unknown (itself the utmost folly for a prophet, and opposed to all inspired facts) beyond controversy predicts the postponement of Israel's hope through the rejection of Messiah many centuries after, the consequent grace to Gentiles, and the yet unaccomplished glory of Zion in the latter day when kings shall be nursing fathers and queens nursing mothers! This rationalism is the more irrational, because, in what they acknowledge as incontestable, the leap into that future vision of glory on earth and for Israel especially, is even more detailed in Isa. 2, 4, 9, 11, 12, so that the argument, if in courtesy it be so called, is as illogical and capricious as unbelieving.

But turning to Isa. 50, we have the new controversy of God carried on still more fully and profoundly. The Messiah is set forth evidently: the hidden glory of Jehovah on one side, and on the other the humiliation in grace of the dependent and obedient Servant, so competent and ready in love toward others, yet rejected and abased to the uttermost, and after all the shame and suffering helped of God and justified: a justification, which the apostle in Rom. 8 was inspired to claim for the Christian in virtue of His sacrificial death. And this wondrous but true portrait, not of some ideal personage, but of our Lord Jesus Christ, so amply and closely verified in the N.T., is presumed to be drawn by the unknown prophet of the rationalists "toward the close of the Babylonian captivity"! Not one solid reason has ever been given for the hypothesis; but if we conceive it for the moment as certified fact, what would there be but the equally sure refutation of rationalism? What bearing on contemporary interests was there just before the return, more than in Hezekiah's days when the captivity in Babylon had been announced? How these sceptics labour for the fire and weary themselves in vain, when they strive to rob Isaiah, not only here, but of such Isa. as 24-27, and 34, 35! Assign them to whom they please, the mouth of Jehovah has uttered them, and there shall be a fulfilment in the due time: blessed they that believe, wretched beyond utterance those that render null as to themselves the counsel of God. What point of contact with the circumstances of those addressed can be adduced for such predictions at one time rather than the other? To suppose an unknown prophet of the highest rank equal to Isaiah, or superior, is itself a very unreasonable and uncalled for fancy; especially when incorporated with his writings, the greatest known. Even the shortest strain is carefully attributed to each writer; and on a human point of view, no one less needs — less admits of — a supplement than the stately son of Amoz; on divine ground, the effort savours of impiety, wholly subjective as it is. That the latter seven and twenty chapters are on the whole the grandest and most important of the book is beyond dispute. Nothing but the malignant revolutionary violence of modern infidelity accounts for the scheme; which after all leaves God's book in possession of true prediction of Christ many centuries before He came to fulfil the most momentous part, as He will surely come again to fulfil all that remains.

Isa. 51-52: 12 apply the truth to the people of God or at least to the godly remnant of the future, regarded in their strict prophetic bearing. There is first a triple call: "Hearken to me, ye that follow righteousness" (vers. 1-3), "Listen (or attend) to me, my people" (vers. 4-6), and "Hearken to me, ye that know righteousness" (vers. 7-8); which indicate progress spiritually. Then follow three calls: first, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jehovah" (vers. 9-16), a call for divine intervention; next, "Rouse thyself, rouse thyself standing, O Jerusalem" (vers. 17-23), an address to the city of God's choice; then a final "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion" (Isa. 52: 1).

Then comes the joyful message, which certainly has not the smallest relation to the plain of Shinar, but to the high lands of Palestine, as the tidings coalesce not only with Isa. 40, but with 24-27, 32, 33, 35, indeed with 11, 12, and chapters earlier still. It would appear that, at this epoch of the future, Jews will be once more captives among the Gentiles, who then go out, priests and people, far more gloriously than the trembling remnant who should leave Babylon by the decree of Cyrus, or even the nation of old leaving Egypt in haste. We know from Zech. 14: 2 that, just before their divine deliverance, half of Jerusalem shall go forth into captivity. But Jehovah too shall go forth and fight against those nations as when He fought in the day of battle. Alas! one cannot expect faith as to the future from those who disbelieve His word about the past. This one scripture it seemed well to cite as decisive proof of Jewish captives, just before the close of man's and the beginning of Jehovah's day.

Here the antagonism of the modern critics to the truth becomes as evident as it is without excuse. Their theory totally breaks down. What historical circumstances furnished a ground for such a prediction? The critics fall back on one or other of the rival evasions of Jewish unbelief, in order to escape the varied and overwhelming proofs that the Holy Spirit sets forth the Lord Jesus in the expiatory sufferings and future earthly glory of the Messiah. Impossible to ask an accomplishment of the verses that close Isa. 52 and fill Isa. 53 more detailed or more comprehensive, more reflecting divine glory, more providing for the guilt and ruin, yet deliverance, of God's people through One Righteous Man a sacrifice for many. Every resource of hostile ingenuity in the east and in the west, of ancient times and of modern, has beaten upon this house; but it has not fallen, for it is founded on an impregnable rock, around which are strewn the dishonoured remains of God's enemies.

The sole objection which has any appearance of truth is the difficulty to ignorant minds that all its scope is not yet fulfilled. But this could not be consistently with God's ways and counsels, and is the less reasonable, because of the prevalent trait of prophecy which regards the end of the age, when human departure from God meets its judgment, and righteousness shall reign universally to His glory. No display of grace can match the Saviour sacrificially dying for our sins on the cross; and what display of glory to compare with His coming forth from heaven to put down every foe and establish a kingdom which will embrace not only all the earth but all things in heaven also? Now the prophet, in presenting His humiliation and especially His death as an offering for sin does not fail to speak of His exaltation and height of glory when He is no longer hid in God but manifested to the nations, to the abasement of kings, and triumphant over the great and the strong. Christ at His First advent made clear what His then work was, and what remains to be made good at His Second. So He said, "First must He suffer many things and be rejected of this generation" (Luke 17), and "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory" (Luke 24)? God's ways are not as man's, who, if he aspire however high, lies down in sorrow, and closes in death; but Christ went down the willing Victim into death and judgment, in order to bear away sins righteously and lay, a basis for holy blessing even of the most guilty, never to be sullied by evil, and never to pass away; and this to the glory of God the Father.

These are Dr. D.'s words (p. 221): 1,62, 13-53,12 deals again with the figure of Jehovah's ideal Servant, and develops under a new aspect his character and work. It represents, namely, his great and surprising 'a exaltation, after an antecedent period of humiliation, suffering, and death, in which, it is repeatedly stated, he suffered, not (as those who saw him mistakenly imagined) for his own sins, but for the sins of others." Is it not distressing that a man should see and acknowledge so much which applies clearly, unmistakably, and exclusively to the Lord, and yet withhold the confession of His name? Who but Christ ever suffered from God for the sins of others? The italics even are his own. Yet not a word honestly lets out the truth of the One efficacious substitute for sinners, though "it is repeatedly stated" as he does not deny but confess throughout the passage. Hence the effort to apply it to Jeremiah, or to Josiah, is as vain as to conceive the Jews to be here so personified. They suffered for their own sins, as all scripture shows, and most justly. Nor has any nation been less patient even under God's chastenings, instead of suffering as a lamb without one spot or blemish or complaint. Even the more ancient Jewish interpretation points to the Messiah; and the evasions alluded to are modern comparatively (on the part of Rashi, D. Kimchi, Aben Ezra, as well as Saadiah Gaon and Abarbanel) through the strain of controversy with Christians. Their very Prayer-book testifies to this truth against them repeatedly.

And why is it that those baptised unto Christ and His death swerve from the evident aim of the prophecy with the more incredulous and antichristian Jews? Alas! it is the same spirit of error, the same antagonism to the truth so humbling to man, so glorifying to God and His Son. Possibly Dr. D. allows that the prophecy, though not all accomplished yet, really refers to our Lord, as the N.T. everywhere attests. But if so, where is the vaunted necessity for showing a specially suitable occasion in Isaiah's age? Where the distinct bearing on contemporary interests? Is the situation presupposed that of any O.T. prophet's age any more than Isaiah's? Is not the predicted glory based upon a condition of things existent only in Christ's life, death, and resurrection? And is not this, the necessary conclusion, destructive of the neo-critical hypothesis in every form? The authoritative comment, the best interpretation, is the N.T., especially when we admit the light of the Lord's return from heaven to bless Israel and all the nations, times of restoring all things of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began.

Hence even Dr. D. cannot get rid of the impression. There is no frank confession of faith, no gratitude for mercy so rich as the prophecy expresses toward Israel, and the New Testament applies in the largest and surest way to all who now believe the gospel. Still it needs no argument to demonstrate that the atoning death of the Lord Jesus perfectly meets what was here predicted many centuries beforehand; and no Christian ought to question that the anticipated glory and blessing for the earth as its result will assuredly follow in due time, which the bulk of prophecy also awaits.

Isa. 54 looks on to that day. It was in no way applicable to the returned remnant from Babylon. The principle does apply and is applied to the grace of God bringing in so many unexpected children of Abraham as the gospel does by faith of Christ (Gal. 4). But the direct and complete fulfilment can only be as a whole, when Israel's sorrows are ended, — and they are gathered and established in righteousness, as far from oppression as fear, and the Holy One of Israel shall be called indisputably the God of the whole earth. No one of intelligence will say that their bright expectation is realised; every believer may well rejoice that God will be thus gracious to Israel in a day that hastens, It cannot be till Christ comes again.

Isa. 55 opens the door of mercy to others beyond God's ancient people. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." When Jehovah intervenes to save Israel according to the prophet, it will be on principles of grace which will bless the Gentiles who feel their need and hearken to His word to the ends of the earth. It does and can not fully express the gospel now; because, for those who have been baptised and put on Christ now, there is neither Jew nor Greek, all being one in Christ; whereas in the new age Zion shall be no longer ploughed nor Jerusalem become heaps, but the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and exalted above the hills, and peoples shall flow unto it as the religious centre of the whole earth. Then the first dominion, the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem, as indeed Jehovah shall reign in mount Zion henceforth: a state of things incompatible with the gospel.

Isa. 56, 57 consist of moral warnings, all the more impressed because of the grace which goes out so deeply yet so far and wide. For to grace evil is more offensive than to law which is its open condemnation. God carefully guards His grace from the imputations which fallen nature would cast on it. Hence saith Jehovah, Keep ye judgment and do justice; for my salvation is near to come and my righteousness to be revealed. Jehovah's salvation and righteousness prove to be the opposite of a licence to sin, as flesh might wish and think. The sabbath was, and will. be, so much the truer a test, because it flows from divine authority simply, not from the action of conscience which of itself condemns corruption or violence apart from God's commandment. Nor need any despair, however naturally powerless or distant. But grace is large, as well as holy and searching; and His house is to be open for the prayers of all who know and rejoice in Him Whom once they slighted in their ignorance.

Isa. 57 pursues the same consequences as to the Jew. In that day it will be plain beyond mistake that Israel have no immunity, as indeed they never had, however they may have nursed the fond delusion. Idolatry, strange to say, will reappear among the Jews during the end of the age, as the prophet here intimates, in a way contrasted with the eve of the return from Babylon or since; so too the Lord warns in Matt. 12: 43-45. The captivity led to the going out of the unclean spirit from his house, and the empty, swept, and garnished state which characterised "that generation" ever since. But the rejection of the true Christ will have as its issue in the latter days the reception of the Antichrist (see also John 5: 43), when the unclean spirit returns with seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Our Lord's application of the parable is indisputable: "Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation." Never has the unclean spirit of idolatry returned to the Jew, still less with the full power of Satan in Antichrist. But as surely as the Lord spoke, it will be at the close of the age, when this prophecy also is to be accomplished. For the king" (ver. 9) is none other than that ominous personage who is then to be adored by the apostate people, as "idols" will also be (ver. 5). Compare Dan. 11: 36-39: a prediction in the third year of Cyrus, never yet fulfilled, and expressly said to be "at the time of the end," just before the final deliverance, blessing, and glory of Israel here below "in the glorious land." What force does not all this give to the concluding words! "No peace, saith my God, to the wicked," When it was idolatry only with its moral effects, it was "Jehovah" as in Isa. 48: 22; here, where is this darker sin of Messiah's rejection with its issues, it is "my God."

Isaiah 58-66.

The last section of the great prophetic discourse here opens, running down to the end, but itself consisting of subdivisions which it is well to head. There is first a trenchant moral appeal to the house of Jacob in their combining sins and transgressions with punctilious regard to legal ordinances, especially fasting and sabbath-keeping, and yet total antagonism to their spirit (Isa. 58) There is at the close of that chapter, with Isaiah's wonted grandeur in recalling to true righteousness and the honour and blessing that would follow, the most forcible setting out of their entire corruption in Isa. 59 with all the amplitude of his early style. It was their own evil that separated the Jews and their God, their sins which hid His face from them that He heard not. Thereon ensues confession of their sins, but no power to rise from their wretchedness, till Jehovah intervenes (identifying Himself with Christ, the Redeemer, in Zion) with deliverance for the godly remnant, who according to His covenant receive His Spirit and His words for themselves and their offspring evermore.

Zion accordingly is called to arise and shine, for her light is come and the glory of Jehovah risen upon her; and this the more strikingly that darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the peoples (Isa. 60). So unfounded is the dream of Christendom that Israel's conversion is to be due to Gentile zeal or faith. On the contrary the apostacy shall first come, and the man of sin be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus slays or consumes with the breath of His mouth and brings to nought by the appearing of His advent. Both O.T. and N.T. are distinct that His personal judgment of the quick inaugurates the wondrous change for the earth, when not only shall all Israel be saved (after the destruction of the lawless one and his adherents, with other foes) but nations shall come to Zion's light and kings to the brightness of her rising. The picture of the future restoration, righteous and glorious here below, and this manifestly of Jerusalem and His people (though with marked difference from the heavenly city in Rev. 21, 22) is drawn, allowing for the new connection, exactly in Isaiah's manner, serene and sublime, and wholly different from the exilic or the post-exilic prophets. To interpret it of the church is not only unintelligent, but lowers our heavenly glory with Christ; it wrongs Israel and defrauds the Gentiles as a whole, to say nothing of the lower creation which God never forgets if man does.

Isa. 61-63: 6 bring in Christ, not in His humiliation and atoning death, but in the incomparable grace of His first advent, and its blessed consequences not yet fulfilled to the Jews as such, and His indisputable power in judgment at the second when the day of vengeance is come. How instructive His own closing of the book in the synagogue of Nazareth, when He read only the first clause of Isa. 61: 2! When He returns He begins with the day of vengeance before He gives effect to the year of His redeemed. See Isa. 62: 4. The Reformers were no more enlightened than the Fathers who confounded Isa. 63 with 53 and the blood of the peoples with His blood.

But what we have had in this brief summary is wholly destructive of the unbelieving school. For, as we saw in the first previous or second section the Jew guilty not of idolatry only as in the past but of the rejection of the Messiah, so now the prophet treats of that pretentious but hollow Pharisaism which has ever since characterised them, and of the sure judgment which the rejected Messiah will inflict at His coming in power and glory. Dr. D. does not venture to apply the end of Isa. 59 or the beginning of Isa. 63 to the first advent. Even if he could with the smallest show of justice, how would this fall in with the assumption

of an unknown prophet toward the close of the captivity? He knows quite well that the moral impediments which disqualify Israel for the enjoyment of the promised blessings have never yet been removed. He knows that the unreality of their fasts and other observances continues to this day, and that the true fast, so pleasant to Jehovah, of unselfish goodness and mercy is as far off as ever, when alone He can shower His blessings on His people, and they shall build the old wastes and raise up the foundations from generation to generation, nay, delight in Jehovah Who will cause them to ride on the high places of the earth.

Not only does the apostle Paul cite the close of Isa. 59 modified by Ps. 53: 6 (7) to prove the future coming of the Lord to save Israel (in Rom. 11), but he quotes also the earlier verses in Rom. 3 to demonstrate their utter moral ruin as a present fact. And this he meets with the grace of God in the gospel now to every believer; as he holds out the coming of the Redeemer by-and-by, when Israel shall be restored and have the kingdom according to prophecy.

Hence these self-styled higher critics betake themselves to "the felicity of the ideal Zion of the future," when, after a judgment to be enacted in the Jews, not in their foes only, the dark cloud of night that shrouds the rest of the world is lifted from the holy city, and light clothes Zion for ever. Then they talk, or at least Dr. D. does, of "Jehovah's ideal servant" once more introduced in Isa. 61, which is followed as before by the promise of Jerusalem's restoration, of the new and signal marks of Jehovah's favour resting on the restored nation, and of its own appreciation of all. Of course Isa. 63: 1-6 is similarly treated, as "an ideal humiliation of nations, marshalled upon the territory of Israel's inveterate foe" (Lit. of the O.T. 222).

It would be more candid to let us know whether Dr. D. believes, any more than his German forerunners, in the reality of these predictions. If he does, the critical hypothesis is ipso facto overthrown and abandoned; if he does not, its infidel and anti-christian character is apparent. In any case, it is absurd to argue that the prophet is merely addressing "the exiles in Babylonia," any more than "the men of Jerusalem, contemporaries of Ahaz and Hezekiah or even of Manasseh" (p. 224). All this reasoning is the pettifoggery of rationalism with not even the semblance of truth. It is impossible for any man to face any one of these sections, still less the second and the third, and to say that the prophet speaks always, in the first instance, to his own contemporaries (though they were responsible to believe as we are). Let him show, if he can, that the prophet never abandons his now historical position but speaks from it, when he predicts the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that should follow them. If by "ideal" he honestly confesses both, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace,

Founded on the vision of the judicial vintage, we have next the prophet's intercession on behalf of the Israel of God, the godly remnant as hateful to their godless brethren after the flesh as to the nations, indeed more so. Past mercies are recalled; their relationship to Jehovah pleaded; their sins confessed. Israel had destroyed themselves by their ungrateful, persistent, and shameless iniquity. Who had called them to be His own people? He was unchanged, if Abraham and Israel could not own them. Was not Jehovah better to them, ruined as they justly were, than even all their fathers? And the supplication was deepening and more urgent through Isa. 64, which brings together the beginning of their national history on quitting Egypt with still more tremendous and comprehensive judgments that open their final deliverance and blessedness under their Messiah. Faith gives power to repentance; and mercy anticipated makes guilt hateful, as its accomplishment sharpens self-judgment to the uttermost. Hence the confession with which the plea is pressed on Him Who even from of old proclaimed Himself Israel's Redeemer. All goes far beyond any historic dealings, and requires us to look to the end of the age when Jerusalem shall be no more trodden down of the Gentiles, and those with whom the prophet identifies himself abase themselves in the dust before Jehovah. "The set time" will soon come.

Isaiah 65, 66 are the answer to the supplication. Far from slight of Israel, Jehovah had meanwhile been inquired of by those that asked not — been found of those that sought Him not. It is the intermediate call of the Gentiles by the gospel. "I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation not called by my name. I have spread out my hands all the day long unto a rebellious people that walk in a way not good, after their own thoughts." The only true sense is that given by the apostle in Rom. 10: 20, 21: "Isaiah is very bold and saith, I was found of them that sought me not, I became manifest unto them that asked not of me. But unto Israel he saith, All the day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." The evasive efforts of the Rabbis, as well as of Grotius, Gesenius, Hahn, Hendewerk, etc., are deplorable. Nor need any believer wonder at Dr. D.'s silence (Lit. O.T. 223); for the inspired interpretation seals the unbelief and folly of rationalism, ever retreating from the light of God into nature's darkness. To those who accept the apostle's comment as the end of controversy, the conclusion only falls in with and confirms what we have learnt by many proofs in the prophecy itself; that here we are in presence of the Jews cast off, not for their idolatry only but for their rejection of the Messiah, and of Gentiles meanwhile called by sovereign grace, before mercy intervenes at the end of the age to restore Israel, when the Gentile, not continuing in goodness but high-minded, shall become the object of unsparing judgment. And the moment hastens.

But in that day it will be made apparent even to themselves that not all are Israel which are of Israel. Mere flesh will prove vain. Jewish antipathy to idols (so strong after the Babylonish captivity, stronger still after the Roman conquest, and seemingly strongest of all in presence of Popish corruption and persecution) will yield to the latter-day apostacy, with the yet worse enormity of worshipping Antichrist, as already shown. So we find here, not without Pharisaism. But Jehovah will bring forth a seed to possess His mountains, His elect, His servants, His people that have sought Him. Hence while those that forsake Jehovah, shall be numbered to the sword, His servants shall sing aloud and triumph in the exaltation of His name. For all is to be made new, of which Jerusalem's joy is the proof and pledge, and her weeping is no more, death being the exception and then only as a curse. The connection, with Isa. 11, 12, 24-27 and 35 is marked; all converge on the day when Jehovah reigns, earth is glad, and glory dwells in Israel's land.

To interpret all this of the return from the captivity is infatuation, which directly tempts such commentators to the sin of imputing exaggeration to the prophet. The root of all is the groundless limiting of prophecy to events close at hand. The truth is that the Holy Spirit, having convicted the favoured people both of idolatry and of the rejection of Messiah, looks on to the catastrophe which closes their evil career, and brings out a generation to come, in the solemn end of the age. Then a voice from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of Jehovah that rendereth recompence to His enemies! There will be no more delay. But the day that sees a land brought forth, and a nation born at once in the godly Jewish remnant, whom their brethren hated and cast out for His name, shall behold Jehovah come with fire and His chariots like a whirlwind to render His anger with fury and His rebukes with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword will Jehovah enter into judgment with all flesh. It is expressly the day come for the gathering, "Of all nations and tongues, when they shall see his glory. The restoration of His people coalesces in time with His judgment of the nations. And the blessing thenceforth of Israel is to be permanent. "For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah. so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass from new moon to new moon, and from sabbath to sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, saith Jehovah. And they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that transgressed against me; for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorrence unto all flesh" (Isa. 66).

What has all this to do with the close of the exile? The prediction of the Messiah is incomparably fuller than of Cyrus, and the setting forth of His unparalleled humiliation and sufferings as a sacrifice for the sins of His people no less plain than of His exaltation over kings and peoples, His judgment not only of the nations but of the wicked in Israel, where Jehovah's hand shall be known toward His servants as surely as His indignation toward His foes. It is merely trifling with a serious reader and with scripture to say "that these chapters [40-66] form a continuous prophecy, dealing throughout with a common theme, viz. Israel's restoration from exile in Babylon" (Lit. O.T. 217).

There are distinct themes, as we have seen, in the three sections of this great prophetic strain. All three look to the triumph of divine grace in Israel on their recognition of overwhelming sin. The first section alone (Isa. 40-48) notices Babylon, Cyrus, and the Return; but even it goes far beyond all that was then realised. The second (Isa. 49-57) charges the people with wickedness worse than idolatry through the same evil heart of unbelief in departing from a living God. The third and last shows the terrible result for the wicked pursued to the and of the age, when Jehovah, delivers and blesses the godly with glory in the land, as He punishes signally the apostate trangressors. It will be a day of judgment and of blessing for all flesh; and it is idle to deny that it still awaits fulfilment. Compare vers. 6-9, and 15, 16.

If one believes all this, the grounds for questioning Isaiah's authorship, and imagining another unknown prophet a century after, sink into total insignificance. The mainstay of the argument is disproved and excluded. The prophecy as certainly treats of the Saviour's atoning death and exaltation in the second part as of Babylon's fall under Cyrus in the first. And the third part sets forth the judgment on the evil and the restoration of Israel, which are still future. "Where is the disputer?"

"The servant" is the key note to all three parts; and we thus learn why "the king" would not be so appropriate here. For in the first part we have Israel the responsible servant, but altogether failing; the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears, therefore become a prey and given to the robbers. Then in the second, Messiah is substituted for Israel, formed to be His servant, as indeed already said to be His elect in Whom His soul delighted. And if man despise and the nation abhor Him, and if Israel be not gathered, Jehovah has given Him to be for a light of the nations, His salvation to the end of the earth. The gathering of Israel awaits another day; and this comes out fully in the third part, where they discover their sins and recognise in the Redeemer Who comes to Zion Jehovah's righteous Servant; and are owned themselves now at length as His servants, His elect, when He will recompense the iniquities of their brethren and of their fathers into their bosom.

It is perfectly certain that the Messiah is the King of Isa. 9; 67, Isa. 32: 1, and the Servant of Isa. 49-53; and it is quite true that the figure of the Servant rather than of King is here required, in order to give force to these three parts of this wonderful prophecy. Isa. 11: 2 and Isa. 61: 1, if compared, show how the two truths meet in the power of the Spirit of Jehovah that rested on Him: a clear evidence of the unity of the entire book. It is in Him the perfection of a Servant was found in the face of contempt and hatred, suffering and death; it is through His grace that the faithless shall yet become faithful servants, in that day afflicted and contrite in spirit, and trembling at His word. They will behold the great High Priest emerging from the sanctuary. Ours is a better portion, for we in spirit follow where He is on high, believing the things which are now reported to us through those that preached the gospel to us by (ἐν) the Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven.

APPENDIX.

It remains to notice briefly, but perhaps sufficiently and in plain terms for the Christian, the effort to find grounds in the language of the book against its unity; which we have seen to be evident enough from its consistent scope and unequalled grandeur throughout. Here those who disbelieve and deride what they call verbal i.e. plenary inspiration descend to points minute enough. But revelation has nothing to fear from criticism high or low, provided it be candid and comprehensive as well as complete. Reverent and believing were too much to ask; for the obedience of faith is incompatible alike with the theory and the practice of the soi-disant higher critics. They start with incredulity, latent only to themselves and their school, to end, unless grace intervene, in the depths of lawless thought and rebellion against God.

Here Professor Cheyne is more moderate than his fellows, and admits that "the peculiar expressions of the later prophecies are, on the whole, not such as to necessitate a different linguistic stage from the historical Isaiah; and that, consequently, the decision of the critical question will mainly depend on other than purely linguistic considerations" (The Prophecies of Isaiah). Third Ed. p. 234), Professor Driver differs and is much more confident, though well aware that the rationalistic hypothesis used to rest mainly on its assumption that prophecy is necessarily limited to the near future: phraseology was only added as a make-weight. Indeed it was argued by some against the latter chapters that they were a studied imitation of the style of the earlier. Delitzsch, though he weakly wavered at last, never recanted the judgment that, so far as regards language, nothing in the O.T. is more finished or elevated than the disputed close of this prophecy. He used to affirm that its ethereal character was in a state of continuous formation throughout the course of all that precedes. This witness is true. Does it suit the close of this exile?

But Dr. D. (Lit. O.T. 225-227) descends to detail and points out, first, the words or forms of expression in Isa. 40-66. (as some at least in Isa. 13 and 34), not in the unquestioned writings of Isaiah; secondly, eight words alleged to have a meaning other than therein; and three other differing features of style. Now every one of these alleged peculiarities is due to the new and enlarged character of the final trilogy, which demanded more moral and spiritual expressions than the short, separate, and generally limited range comprehended in the first half of the book. So it is for God's choice of Israel and of Messiah, for praise, pleasure, goodwill, rejoicing, shooting forth, and breaking out, "thy sons" said of Zion and the predictions of Jehovah, especially with a participle. Again, the new modifications of "isles or coasts," "nought," "offering," "justice," "breaking," and "decking," with phrases expressive of His future intervention in power of stipulated grace, ought to he no difficulty to any thoughtful mind, any more than impassioned appeals, repetitions, or omissions. To tie down such a soul as Isaiah to a servile sameness, to deny the unity of his pen because he rises to a higher strain when he is the instrument of revealing loftier hopes on a deeper basis, centring in the Messiah, and issuing in new heavens and a new earth, is a dream worthy only of an unbeliever. So the same spirit has hacked Homer; it might have split up Horace with more show of reason, had he not written his varied compositions so late in the day. Could our own poets Shakespeare and Milton, if severed from that day by a millenary or two, have escaped the like pseudo-criticism? To set grandeur against pathos, or force against persuasion, as incompatible with one great vision, is real short-sightedness. The case called for larger and fuller ideas than in the earlier words and "burdens." Jehovah infinite and incomparable, First and Last, is exactly in due place. So is Messiah the Servant in divine grace and unparalleled suffering, after the failure of Israel the responsible servant, and the wondrous mercy which is to form a faithful remnant, His elect servants, at the end and for ever through their once despised but then to be adored Messiah.

How different from Jeremiah the real prophet writing toward the beginning, to say nothing of the close, of the exile! Between him and Isaiah we do find beyond controversy the most marked differences of thought, phraseology, and style. Had the concluding portion of the prophecy emanated from a writer long after Jeremiah or Ezekiel, we should have expected differences far more decided and unmistakable, not merely because of a century later but from the throes and humiliation of a long national exile: strange circumstances for such an unparalleled flow as that of the later prophecy of Isaiah.

But this is not all. Not only are the words or modifications of meaning, as far as really new to the later discourse, fully accounted for by the fresh aspects of the truth revealed, so that the objections compiled by Dr. Davidson and selected by Dr. Driver are demonstrably invalid; but it has been shown over and over that there are deeply rooted similarities which bind together the first half with the closing strain. And they are exceedingly numerous and minute as well as distinctive; so as to indicate identity. Thus under the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet alone the late Mr. Birks pointed out some forty words in which Isa. 40-66 resemble the earlier prophecies, which do not appear at all, or with the slightest exception, in the writings toward the close of the Exile or after it. The true inference on this ground is therefore for the unity of the entire book as emanating from Isaiah. Nor does it lie only in bare words of a peculiar and striking kind, but in characteristic phrases which bespeak our prophet's mind and manner unmistakably. There "the Holy One of Israel" occurs with great frequency, and almost equally in the first and in the second half of the book; whereas (the corresponding part of 2 Kings excepted, as being Isaiah's) we elsewhere find it but thrice in the Psalms and twice in Jeremiah. So the rarer "Mighty One of Israel" is found in both portions; elsewhere only in Genesis 49: 24, Ps. 132: 2, 5, as has been observed. Again, "your God" alone occurs in both, elsewhere only with "Jehovah" preceding. A still more salient instance noticed is the phrase, "Jehovah will say," three times in the earlier prophecies (Isa. 1: 11, 18; Isa. 33: 10), and five times in the later (Isa. 40: 1, 25; Isa. 41: 21; Isa. 58: 9; Isa. 67: 9). This future form occurs elsewhere but once (Ps. 12: 6), the past tense very often indeed. Is it not a strong mark of one hand? If any desire a fuller setting out of the testimony of the language, they may find it in Mr. William Urwik's interesting essay on "The Servant of Jehovah" (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1877), especially in pp. 29-48; where the cautiously stated conclusion is, that the linguistic evidence, viewed by itself even, does not sanction but rather forbids, the difference of date and authorship which some modern critics claim for the two portions.

Yet the difference of style and language would naturally have been most palpable, if the assumption were true that the historic Isaiah of the earlier half flourished in Hezekiah's days, the pseudo-Isaiah of the rationalists toward the close of the Exile and after the Return. And the more manifestly so, as we have Ezekiel at Chebar, and Daniel in Shushan or in Babylon, with whose writings to compare those alleged to be written practically at the same time and place. But how utterly different from either, Isa. 13, 14, 21, 24-27, 34, or the later prophecy! Contrast, not resemblance, is on the surface and underneath it. They breathe an Asiatic air, not the Hebrew of all Isaiah. The comparatively unadorned style of the statesman in one, yet announcing the kingdom of heaven to be wielded by the Son of Man, after all the imperial system has been destroyed with offshoot successors, is undeniable in the one. The gorgeous imagery of the other turns the proud and idolatrous splendour of the Assyrian palaces into the service of God's throne, treating the symbols as mere attributes, and agents of Him Who sat there, then judging and leaving Jerusalem for a while (Ezek. 1-11), to return at the end of the age, and make it the everlasting seat of His presence and earthly glory (Isa. 40-48) Both prophecies fit exactly the two writers and reflect perfectly their times and places, as they reveal the suited truth for the yet future glory of God in Israel and all the earth. And if we add the earlier prophecies of the mourning prophet who was given to see the Exile begin, and the sins and shame of the unrepentant remnant in Palestine and Egypt, the difference is complete with Isaiah, late or early, who stands alone and unapproached by any other, whether during the storm of the terrible Assyrian, or after it in days of peace and truth, with the Babylonish captivity before his eyes, and not Cyrus only as a comparatively near deliverer, but the Servant of Jehovah Who should suffer unto death for sin, but be exalted and extolled and very high, sprinkling many nations and kings abashed at His glory.

"Is baptism a figure of what is, or what is about to be, possessed?"

(Examination of a tract entitled:)

It is proposed to bring the statements of this tract to the test of scripture. Though baptized myself as a believer, I cannot sympathize with such as are not only a sect but ignore scriptural light on baptism. On the other hand, who can fairly say that paedobaptism has been shown to be an article of faith? Tracts have been published, manuscripts lent about; but, as far as one can pretend to judge, we are far from having that warrant of holy writ which we justly look for before we accept any doctrine or practice as Christian. Yet one would think that of all matters, none would more seem to want the precious word of the Lord, who fails not habitually to provide for every need of the poor. These had, or might have, children from the first; yet not in one indubitable instance do we hear of their baptism. Even as to the nomination of elders, not nearly so constant a need as baptism, we have full instruction afforded. We know that the church never chose but only apostles or an apostolic delegate. Is the absolute silence as to children casual? Large-hearted and intelligent men on all sides admit that the households of scripture decide nothing as to this. There may have been no infants, or, if there were, the household might be said to be baptized without including them because of the nature of the case. We hear of people baptized, men and women, but not of children; we read of servants of the Lord brought on their way by the brethren with wives and children, but never of children where baptism is in hand. If it be a truth and a privilege intended for the children of the saints, does this appear like His provident wisdom and way? He knows that multitudes of His own are not subtle-minded but simple, and would prefer one word of clear scripture, in doctrine, or precept, or example, above all the theories that ever were spun, even if they could lay hold of them. They feel suspicious when one advocate rests much on the adverbial form πανοικί (Acts 16: 34); another on the difference between οἶκον and οἰκίαν (1 Cor. 1: 16, 1 Cor. 16: 15), especially as those who ought to know as well, with similar views in general, reject these criticisms. When such evidence is caught at with eagerness, the candid must own that real proof must be sorely wanting. The believer will do well to wait for solid ground from God's word. Open and thankful to receive all that is certainly taught by the Holy Ghost, he may have the conviction that as yet infant baptism is "not proven." The tract before me will not commend it to spiritual or even sober minds, but, on the contrary, will serve to warn many of the danger and evil of speculating even on an outward matter like baptism.

In his first sentence the author reveals the true source of the tract. A strong speech ("that they who hold so-called believer's baptism do so in the very teeth of scripture") set him to work. From beginning to end of the discussion this seems to have fired his imagination (pp. 3, 18). It thus becomes his text; and to support it the various passages of scripture adduced are bent with a rude recklessness beyond example. Infant baptism is not that of which I complain, but false doctrine as to adults which undermines the truth and tends to corrupt the Church of God. Every Christian will utterly condemn his idea of baptizing persons in order to believe afterwards, and his systematic perversion of scripture in order to extract a show of divine authority for so gross an error.

On Matthew 28: 19, 20, this is the comment: "Now, here we have our Lord's commission, which is the only commission to baptize. The disciples were to disciple (ματηετευσατε) all nations; but what was to be the means by which they were to be discipled? 'baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' and having thus been made disciples, they were to teach them all things, etc. . . . . It would seem, then, according to Matthew 28: 19, persons were to be made disciples by baptism in order that they might be instructed about the Lord Jesus, so that they might know and believe on Him, and be taught in all He had said."

First remark the absurdity of making this "the only commission to baptize." For, on the face of it, either Mark 16 warranted Peter and the rest to baptize the Jews, or the apostles baptized them without any commission whatsoever from the Lord. The commission in Matthew contemplates all the nations, but not the Jews. Hence the mistake is evident of treating Peter's action in Jerusalem at Pentecost as "just according to the commission of Matthew 28." (p. 7), and again (p. 8), "Peter followed strictly the commission of Matthew 28." How could he, seeing that, according to the tract, the only commission is to baptize the Gentiles, whilst Peter then baptized none but Jews?

But my next charge is a far graver one than making rash and inconsistent propositions. The Lord had the heathen directly in view and told His envoys to disciple them all, baptizing them to the name of the Trinity, and teaching them all that the Lord enjoined. But what can one say of the assertion that baptism, is the means of making these heathen disciples? Who doubts that even the least esteemed in the church can judge this to the writer's shame? Need I quote John 4: 1 to prove the folly of the thought that baptizing is the means of making disciples? "Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John." Baptizing then is the outward form of defining him who is already a disciple. Indeed this I should have thought the most unenlightened Christian must have known without so express a disproof. So too the conduct of the apostles proves. Never do we hear of Peter, or any other, proceeding to baptize in the first place, but to preach; then, those who received the word were baptized. But it was the receiving and confessing the name of the Lord, not the baptism, which constituted them disciples, however certainly the initiatory rite followed their confession. And if the author's thought had been true, how could Paul have declared that Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the gospel? He certainly laboured more abundantly than they all: was he not sent to make disciples? He tells us that he was not sent to baptize, but to do the real work by which disciples are made.

Had the participle translated "baptizing" been, like πορευθέντες, in the aorist, before the verb μαθητεύσατε, there would have been a ground of argument: as it is, there is none. For it is plain, that the Lord bids His servants disciple all the nations, baptizing them, teaching them, both following the act of making them disciples, one at once as being initiatory, the other all through their earthly career.

On Mark 16: 15, 16, he observes, "In this we have not the commission to baptize, but simply the statement, that he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and here, I suppose, all will be agreed." Now I ask any candid man, Is not this a bold way of escaping the force of the scripture which destroys the main position of the tract? Does "he that believeth and is baptized" mean that a man is made a disciple by baptism in order that he might be instructed about the Lord Jesus, so that he might know and believe on Him? No Christian will hesitate which he is to choose — the words of the Lord which are unmistakably plain; or the words of the tract which pervert equally the Lord's commission in Matthew, and what is called "the statement" in Mark. The gospel was to be preached to all, and he who believed it and was baptized (for some, Jews especially, might avoid baptism, while professing faith) should be saved. The discipling of Matthew answers to believing the gospel in Mark, followed in both by baptism. All admit that men might profess falsely of old as now; but this does not touch the question. It is a miserable thing to weaken the value of faith by raking together passages which speak of unreal believers or disciples.* All admit the fact that hypocrites may deceive; but does the author mean that the Lord intended His servants knowingly or carelessly to receive such? If not, his reasoning only deceives himself. Besides, the last words of his comment contradict his own thesis; because here he speaks of baptizing persons "on their simple profession of faith" (p. 5), which is completely to shift his ground from making them disciples by baptism, in order that they might be instructed about Jesus, so that they might know and believe on Him. The truth was too strong for the author's will. He is self-condemned.

* John 2: 11 is used most unintelligently to prove that the disciples were such before they believed. The author would do well to consider Hebrews 11: 8, 9, 17, and ask himself if it be therefore true that Abraham had faith before he had faith. Disciples may have their faith exercised again and again. (See John 2: 22.)

Next comes Acts 2: 38-41. The doctrine of the tract here is: "Peter did not tell them to believe, and then be baptized, but to repent — to judge themselves, and then be baptized for the remission of sins. Now, if they had truly believed, they would have had the forgiveness of sins; but they had not the forgiveness of sins, and therefore, they were not true believers; they were to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ that they might believe on Him, and through Him receive the forgiveness of their sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost" (p. 7). Now I distinctly affirm that this is thoroughly bad doctrine, a falsification of God's word, a delusion and a snare for souls. Is the author so infatuated with a theory as to set aside the fundamental truth of God's operation in souls? Does he not see that the repentance on which Peter insisted before baptism implies faith? His doctrine here is the baldest Pelagianism or worse, a mere action on the natural conscience, a self-judgment without true faith, and baptism for the remission of sins distinctly said to be before faith also: "if they had truly believed" (argues he), "they would have had the forgiveness of sins." The reasoning is wholly fallacious, for faith is supposed throughout as it is indeed inseparable from repentance. So repentance, though distinct from faith, is inseparable from believing. Hence if the Philippian jailer was only called on to believe, it would be as false to infer that he did not truly repent, as it is here to infer that there was no true faith because Peter only called on them to repent. There is not the smallest reason to doubt that the persons thus addressed were converted (always leaving room for the creeping in of false brethren) before they were baptized. Only we must remember that the proclamation of repentance and remission of sins in Christ's name was a new thing; faith was not, nor new birth, but the administration of the blessings now first bestowed in Christianity. To suppose therefore, because these souls had not yet remission of sins, that they did not truly believe, is to reason to their state from the Christian's state, fully made known afterwards, and hence a very serious blunder. Is it forgotten that no Old Testament saint enjoyed the Pentecostal state of things? Yet were the saints of old born of God and true believers. The ground taken is false, and the result disastrous. The author has sacrificed God's truth to the imminent danger of souls, because he has merely taken up another's thought, ill-understood, which he himself, not having learnt it from God, does not know how to conciliate with the rest of the truth. I believe there is truth behind, not seen in general, as to the Christian estate introduced at Pentecost. But this tract, far from clearing the ground, destroys as far as it can God's immutable principles in dealing with souls.

The same strange confusion pervades the remarks on Acts 8: 12: "What did they believe? The things concerning the kingdom and the name of Jesus Christ. They were then baptized and so brought into the kingdom, and to the name of Jesus Christ; but whether they divinely believed in Himself is another thing " (p. 9). Did he not know that "the name" is used for the person? (John 1: 12; 1 John 5: 13.) He writes as though he thought the contrary. Instead of honestly owning the plain proof of his own error (for the chapter distinctly shows that the Samaritans, as believing the things preached, were baptized, contrary to the "doctrine" of the tract), he flies off in a vain effort to disparage the faith of all, because Simon Magus was shown to have been false. "Thus we have in Acts 2 three thousand who were baptized before they believed [an egregious error, already pointed out], and were saved; but in Acts 8 we have one who was baptized after he believed, but was not saved. In the same chapter (ver. 15, 16), we read of those who had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, but who had not received the Holy Ghost . . . . Whether the eunuch believed before or after his baptism we are not told. But the Scriptures only record that he rejoiced, after that he was baptized" (pp. 9, 10). Does the writer not know that the reception of the Holy Ghost is invariably after faith, not in order to it? Does he not see that Philip preached Jesus to the eunuch, earnestly in quest of the truth already, who, because he believed, asked to be baptized, and not in vain?

The author feels the case of Cornelius to be in his way. "In Acts 10 we have the record of the conversion of the Gentile centurion, who did truly believe and did receive the Holy Ghost before he was baptized, contrary to the words of the commission, and contrary to the practice of Peter in Acts 2" (p. 10). It is really a pain to review a man so confidently talking of matters in which he displays a want of light quite astounding, and makes in a single sentence nearly as many errors as lines. For we have not the record of a conversion, but of bringing a Gentile already converted into the new christian estate. This ignorance our author shares with the mass of "so-called baptists." Only, dark as Baptists may be, they respect the fundamental truths of God's work in the soul, and are therefore kept from the far more serious error peculiar to the writer. Peter was to tell Cornelius words [this was the great thing rather than baptism], whereby he and his house should be saved. It is not quickened (for we must gather from his walk and ways and prayers that he was already acceptable to God, Acts 10: 2, 6, 22, 35) but "saved." And if the writer does not apprehend the difference, he has everything to learn which a man needs in order to write on baptism with safety to himself and edification to others. Again, the case was not "contrary to the words of the commission;" for Cornelius first became a disciple, and was thereon baptized, as no doubt afterwards he received instruction in christian truth and ways. Nor was it "contrary to the practice of Peter in Acts 2." For, as the Jews at Pentecost were not baptized till they received his testimony, so he gave no command to baptize the household of Cornelius till there was the public evidence of their faith by the extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Ghost. The sole difference was, not "the practice of Peter in Acts 2," but God's gracious act preceding, not following, in order to encourage or stop the mouth of Jews, present or absent. But is it not monstrous to suppose, as the author does, that Peter follows the Lord's commission* with the Jews who were not included in it, and goes contrary to His words with the Gentiles who were expressly in His view? To what can one attribute such incessant mangling of every scripture noticed? Did one ever read a paper more unequivocally written under a spirit of error?

* This commission says not a word about the gift of the Holy Ghost, the manner of which constitutes the difference between Acts 2 and 10

The case of Saul of Tarsus is dismissed very curtly. There is at least method here, which is to my mind a symptom even worse than thoughtlessness in things so grave. For the history of Saul's conversion in chapter 9 is quite passed by: can one conceive that the author forgot it? Certainly it is an important testimony for one who professes "to take up every scripture referring to baptism" (p. 3). And if the author does not believe that the great apostle was converted before he was baptized, I will repair his omission, and furnish evidence enough to convince every man who is not under the influence of a will-o'-the-wisp. "And Ananias went his way and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him, said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith and arose and was baptized." Such is the Spirit's report through Luke. It is for everyone to draw his conclusion whether the apostle was not a true believer till after he was baptized; or if he was, whether he too, like the poor Baptists, would not come in God's order, and God must go out of His order and take him to Himself (p. 12).

We have a brief allusion to the apostle's account in chapter 22. "When under conviction of sin, he is told to arise, be baptized, and wash away his sins" (p. 11). If we are to apply the reasoning to this case which we have had in pages 7 and 9, we must suppose the author meant that the apostle as yet had only a natural repentance or conviction of sins, and that he had not life; for if he had truly believed, the argument is, he would have had the forgiveness of sins; but he had not the forgiveness of sins, and therefore he was not a true believer, he was to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, that he might believe on Him, etc. Enough and more than enough of such mischievous talk. Granted indeed that the Baptists may not see the truth in these scriptures; but I solemnly arraign the anonymous author not of ignorance merely but of distinct and dangerous heterodoxy.

The same evil error runs through his misuse of the next two cases. "The jailer of Philippi is commonly referred to as one who was a true believer before he was baptized. Now the record does not say anything of the kind, but it does say that he believed and rejoiced after he was baptized (Acts 16: 34). In Acts 19 we have those who had been baptized with John's baptism, and they therefore had to be baptized again; and after their second baptism they receive the Holy Ghost." Now the record is as plain as possible that, when the Philippian jailer asked in the utmost distress what he must do to be saved, he was told, not to be baptized first and believe afterwards (as runs this new gospel which is no gospel), but "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house," without one word about baptism. No one doubts that the same hour he was baptized, and all his, straightway; but the word of God is too wise and holy to insinuate, or to give the smallest sanction to the dream, that he was baptized before he believed, because it is afterwards said that he rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. It is remarkable on the contrary that, while his joy is given in the aorist, his faith is described in that form (πεπιστευκώς) which distinctively implies the present or continuing result of what is past.

But the second instance has a really ill look; for the apostle lets us know (Acts 19: 2) that he reckoned the disciples to have believed before they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and received the Spirit, contrary to the thesis of the tract. Can we suppose that the writer had not read this or did not know it?

The author at the close (p. 23) supplies the omitted case of Acts 18, "where it says that 'the Corinthians, who believed, were baptized.' And that is the very people to whom Paul wrote, warning them of introducing wood, hay, stubble: reminding them of the house of God in the wilderness, and comparing it with the house of God of this dispensation." Now a mind of ordinary uprightness that had held the idea of baptizing adults in order to believe would have at once felt that his theory was ruined by this single scripture, which cannot be broken. Besides, one might wonder that he did not fear to insult those of whom the Lord said to Paul at this very time, "I have much people in this city." No one doubts that, spite of apostolic vigilance, wood, hay, and stubble might be introduced; but I think every brother of sense will admit that to baptize people avowedly without faith is not the way to guard the house of God from such a danger.

Here too I must supply the omission of Lydia in Acts 16: 14, 15, whose heart the Lord opened to attend to the things spoken by Paul before she was baptized with her house. How can such accumulated proofs of his error be got rid of by an honest man? So, when baptized, "she besought us saying, If ye have judged (κεκρίκατε) me to be faithful to the Lord;" it was not faithfulness, the fruit of faith, given after her baptism, but contrariwise their conviction of her faithfulness implied in their baptizing her.

We have next passages from the Epistles; and first Romans 6: 3, 4. "Here we have the order of the commission and the practice of Peter in Acts 2 maintained by the Spirit of God, showing again how exceptional was the case of Cornelius. The so-called believer's baptists [a very odd phrase indeed] hold that one must have Christ and must have died with Him before baptism: whereas the Holy Ghost teaches that one must be baptized in order to get to Christ. . . It is true that many have received Christ and His death before they have been baptized, but then our question is, What is God's order? All those whom God in eternity has given to Christ shall come unto Him: if therefore they will not come in God's order, then God must go out of His order and take them to Himself; and this, blessed be His name, He has done, which is but a further manifestation of His love and grace" (pp. 11, 12). To my mind the Lord's commission, Peter's practice, and Paul's doctrine chime admirably together; but as we have seen that the writer mistook totally the first and second, so it remains to be shown that he does not understand, and of course misuses, the third. If the Baptists simply held that an adult must be accepted as converted, repentant and believing in order to baptism, they would take ground not to be shaken; if the writer simply asserted that there is an administration of christian blessing which the believer enters by baptism, he too would have confessed a truth which Baptists never put forth as far as I know. But in trying to follow another (who indeed is "very greatly taught in the word"), but unhappily without any proper understanding of the matter, he has really fallen into errors fatal to any man's testimony, whether in preaching or in teaching. Till one is baptized, one does not, properly speaking, profess Christ or Christianity; if true believers then, we thus come into its special blessings, one of which is to have died with Christ. Nothing can be more palpably erroneous than that "baptism is then quite a subjective thing." Such indeed is the notion of the Baptists who reduce baptism to signify the state of the baptized. The truth is that both baptism and the Lord's supper are objective: whether there is any subjective reality depends on the faith of the recipients. And I affirm that all scripture proves that the adult ought to believe in Christ before he is baptized; and that the author's scheme is nothing better or else than a deliberate baptizing of natural men if not hypocrites under the awful pretension that such is God's order! It is in truth an order completely set aside by the uniform testimony of His word. This in my judgment "is very solemn" for the writer, and serious enough for all who for other reasons might essay to make light of it. It is not a casual statement; it is his settled doctrine, which all who read his tract must know full well that he intends, if he is to be regarded as responsible for his language. "Scripture" NEVER "teaches baptism unto Christ, who is the life, in order to get life" (p. 13), but on the contrary invariably shows that persons having life were baptized to Christ, who died, in order sacramentally to have part with Him in His death. The author holds decidedly false doctrine on a capital truth of God.

As to 1 Corinthians 10 the apostle warns how outward signs might be abused to self-deception, as well as to deceive others. But on the writer's scheme no provision should be against bringing in "lifeless professors" for in the very same page he teaches (and affirms most mistakenly that scripture teaches) baptism in order to get life. Were his eyes holden that he should not see how completely his notion is guarded against by "the solemn caution" of this epistle? To say that the house of God in Old Testament times and His house in the New must be the same in such respects as scripture does not affirm is pure assumption. That we are admonished by the apostle to beware of the sins of Israel or kindred evils is most true and salutary.

Galatians 3: 27. "Here again baptism is before the reception or the putting on of Christ — or rather, it is the initiatory act." So says the tract in the teeth of the text, which declares that, as baptism is to Christ, so not the law but Christ is put on. How "our so-called baptist brethren would have it" I do not know; but I am sure that the writer does say at least as wrongly as they in words, and worse than they in doctrine. The truth is that the verse teaches nothing about before or after, but rather, to my thinking, excludes such thoughts by identifying the putting on Christ with baptism to Him. In fact, as far as the sign goes, only the baptized have put Him on; but the receiving of Christ as life is another affair, as to which the tract from beginning to end is an incessant jumble of darkness and error. Scripture shows that believers only were contemplated for baptism, though a Simon Magus or other false professors might creep in unawares. The tract consecrates their entrance by denying it to be God's order that men should first believe. How it could be said that they were afterwards to believe, unless baptism act ex opere operato, would perplex any to explain.

Ephesians 4: 4-6. The writer's use of this (pp. 15, 16) halts miserably, because the third sphere is not merely larger than that of the body or of profession, which is allowed, but also more intimate as regards the saints. It is false therefore to say that it is heathen or Unitarian ground. And, whatever people may reason, it must be owned that it is somewhat harsh to place infants on the ground of profession. It is a great mercy that the Son can and does quicken before we enter the arena of His Lordship. He was distinctly set forth as Lord to the Jews by Peter for them to receive, and in fact they did receive the word to that effect, before they were baptized. Is the writer in earnest? One might almost imagine him to be a Baptist in disguise who wished to serve his party by pleading so absurdly against them.

So again on Colossians 2: 12, his question ("Is the raising through the faith of the operation of God before or after the baptism?") may be left without notice.

As for 1 Peter 3: 21, he says, "here I must freely confess my ignorance with reference to the answer of a good conscience." It seems to me that such an acknowledgement loses its worth somewhat from being immediately followed by a valiant argument for the old point. "The most intelligent of Bible students own it to be a most difficult scripture; one thing is certain, the good conscience is after the baptism, and by the resurrection" (p. 17). Nor can I admit the text to be so difficult, more particularly when you accept the true force of ἐπερώτημα which decidedly means "question" rather than "answer," "inquiry after," or "the thing requested." A conscience when awakened of God seeks and finds this in His righteousness, and hence one is baptized to all that it wants in being baptized to Christ. Thus the apostle does not hesitate to say, "which figure, (ὃ ἀντίτυπον), baptism, saveth . . . . . by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." It is here again no question of repentance or of quickening by faith, but of the new blessings vouchsafed on condition of Christ's name. One can then take the place of death in baptism, because His resurrection has given another place far better; one enters thus into God's mind according to Christ's death, but thus only in virtue of His resurrection. Hence too the force of "saveth" here as in Acts 11: 14 the latter being the truth, the former the sign of professing it. The so-called Baptists seldom if ever understand "salvation;" but neither does this tract which ridicules the idea of life before death; whereas nothing is more certainly true and scriptural, while his own thought is both unintelligent and a cheat of the enemy.

I conclude therefore that every scripture, without one exception (and it is childish to think there can be one as to the foundations of truth) is dead against the notion of baptizing faithless disciples as God's order for such as hear the gospel. If not His order, whose order is it? and who has guided in this systematic perversion of the written word? Certainly not the Spirit of truth.

As to the appended "Word on Infant Baptism," I may be the briefer (though I do not think his reasoning solid) because this not the object of animadversion but the avowed opening the door of baptism to known unbelievers, and this (must I not call it?) impiety styled the order of God, whose grace bears with those who enter as believers!

1. Romans 6 does not contemplate infants. It is straining the word to bring them in here. So, in Mark 16, they are not objects of testimony; and hence the damning of unbelievers does not apply to them.

2. If Timothy from a child knew the sacred letters, there is no reason why children, especially of Christians, should not. He certainly was not then baptized.

3. If "holy" in 1 Corinthians 7: 14 must mean baptized and "in the house," how comes the unbelieving wife, "sanctified" in the brother, to be left on unholy ground? So at least sober paedobaptists have hitherto thought: perhaps the writer goes all lengths, and will have her inside too.

4. The tract confounds "of such is the kingdom" with "theirs is the kingdom." Compare Matthew 5: 3, 10 with Matthew 19: 14. I should have thought too that the notion of circumcising the males being replaced by the baptism of all infants might have been left with those who make the Lord's-day to be the Christian sabbath.

5. The vagueness of "the house" just suits one who has got nothing to the point; and the argument about children going to heaven after death as a ground of reception here goes too far; for the same principle would forbid the rejection of the grossest offenders, of there was the least hope that they might be saved in the day of the Lord.

W. K.

P.S. I hear the tract is withdrawn, after being sent far and wide. This is not enough. False doctrine must be confessed, not merely withdrawn.

On Isolation, or Independency.

W. Kelly.

My Dear Sir,

As far as I understand your position, it is one of "holding yourself aloof," or nothingarianism as to church relations. Without doubt a dry morsel and quietness therewith is better than a house full of the sacrifices of strife; as it is better to dwell in the corner of a house-top than with a contentious woman in a house of society.

But I read unmistakably in the last Epistle of the great apostle who alone communicated the truth of the church, that grace gives a wholly different resource in view of the disorder and dangers of the last days. Circumstances may indeed here or there leave one isolated; but isolation is neither the revealed provision nor the legitimate aim. The firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, The Lord knew those that are His, And, Let every one that nameth the Lord's name depart from unrighteousness. This is individual and of deep moment as things are. But all does not end there. "Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honour, and some unto dishonour. If then one purge himself out from these (i.e. the vessels unto dishonour), he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared unto every good work." And this you own and have acted on. We are not tied to ecclesiastical corruptions where they are sanctioned constitutionally and admit of no removal. One must purge oneself out, if one cannot purge the evils out. But is this all? While the apostle bids his beloved child flee the lusts of youth, wide as they are and some of them subtle, he adds, "and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Tim. 2: 19-22). Thus one may and ought to look for companions and fellow-witnesses called to like fidelity. Never should one contemplate isolation. The Holy Spirit bids one by grace to desire and expect communion of saints, however great and general may be the ruin of Christendom.

You refer to disorder and party and scattering among those once united. It is sorrowfully true; but are there not some who refused these unworthy ways, and made themselves obnoxious to such as yielded to them? Some at least despised fads and cliques, resolved by grace to keep Christ's word and not deny His name, and rejecting any new departure. But a new lump was in the wind, and it was openly avowed that they did not fear division, though the apostle hated and warned against it. When a pretext is sought, it is readily found: the difficulty was to justify what saints shrank from as uncalled for and evil. Then was first heard among us the ominous cry that no scripture was needed: a strange thing for those whose watchword had hitherto been, "It is written." Truly it was a new and sad departure. Take the great council at Jerusalem, when the growth of party spirit wrought by the old difficulty that severed Jew from Gentile after the flesh to make void the unity of the Spirit. The apostles were all there, save the martyred James, Zebedee's son. So was Paul, an apostle by a higher calling than any, though all were the gifts of the ascended Christ. But even so there was much discussion. Peter spoke powerfully, and Barnabas and Paul related what signs and wonders God wrought among the nations by them. Then another James drew attention to the written word as the end of controversy. For "the words of the prophets" were decisive, Amos being cited, when they speak of "all the Gentiles, or nations, upon whom my name is called." The apostles and the elders with the whole assembly decided accordingly. Nor is theirs a question of doctrine, discipline, or practice, for which Scripture does not provide, that every thing, collective or individual, may be a matter of obeying God.

Rev. 2, 3 may be pleaded for individualism. Now the call here to "him that hath an ear" is imperative in not allowing assemblies absolutely to govern faith or practice. I am bound, whatever the pretension to authority in defence of wrong or error, to hear not them but what the Spirit saith to them. Their voice is prima facie entitled (like that of my parents) to high respect and obedience, but certainly not if there be wrong or error known and even acknowledged: else that holy, responsibly holy, enclosure becomes a screen for evil, and may end in a hold of any unclean and hated bird. As a prophetic book the Apocalypse does warn and call for obedience to the word; but that word was to leave no faithful soul settled down in isolation. On the contrary it encourages him, who separates from the evils men impose under the abused name of the Lord, to cherish a fellowship as much according to God as the separation. For Christ died to gather in one the children of God that were scattered abroad; and the Holy Ghost came to baptise them Jew or Gentile into one body. Never should God's will as to this inalienable privilege and duty become secondary. It is of all obligation; and the Holy Spirit abides to give both permanence and power, as we too are called to be subject to the Lord. Hence the blessedness of His own promise to be in the midst (not certainly of all Christians in their wanderings, but) of all that are gathered unto His name, were they but two or three. Let these be diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; and may they do it with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.

Yours faithfully in Christ, W. K.

Jacob.

W. Kelly.

CHAPTER 1.

JACOB BORN AND YOUNG.

Gen. 25: 30-34

If scripture speaks briefly of Isaac, it has much to say of Jacob, as it had not a little of Abraham. Yet the difference between the divine accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is marked and instructive. The grandfather was pre-eminently a man of faith, in whom God's call was conspicuous, head of a chosen race, as Adam of mankind. Isaac was distinctively the son of Sarah the freewoman; "in Isaac shall thy seed be called," Abraham's child and heir. In wandering Jacob, supplanter of Esau yet wrestler of God, His merciful purposes for the earthly people appear in their rich and striking variety. Jacob gives occasion to the exercise of

God's sovereignty as to the twin children of Isaac and Rebekah. For they being not yet born, nor having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calls, it was said to their mother, The elder shall serve the younger. It had been shown before in casting out the bondwoman and her son; but so it was now far more emphatically in Jacob chosen, not Esau. No flesh shall glory; in Jehovah certainly, as it ought to be. Is man only to think and talk of his rights? Sinful man! Has God alone no rights? Is He to be a mere registrar of man's wrongs? Ah! his wrongs, not rights: this is the truth, as no believer should forget from the dawn of a vital work in his soul.

Without dwelling long, we may notice the youth of Isaac's sons, already traced in the sketch given of their father. Esau did not become a sojourner in the land of promise; but, being at home there and without a heavenly hope, he made the early career of Nimrod his own, if he never thought of him. From the outset he was as unlike Abraham as one of the family line could be. His love of excitement and of reckless adventure made him despise the parental circle, and the monotonous duty of caring for the herds and the flocks. Others might look for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God; but it had not the least place in Esau's heart. For him the present life was all, and the chase in particular as giving scope to courage and address in overcoming difficulties and gaining personal distinction. Therefore was he a cunning hunter, a man of the field; whereas Jacob was a homely or quiet man, dwelling in tents, with warm domestic affections; and he valued too the link with God, though with a heart as yet little if at all cleansed by faith. So the history appears to intimate for many a day.

But those who seek their pleasures without a thought of God like Esau do not find their own path free from the world's sorrows. And his extremity became Jacob's opportunity. The cunning hunter came in from the field without his venison, hungry and faint; and the keen edge of appetite, so whetted yet foiled, made him the more sensitive to the dish of red lentils which Jacob had cooked. And so he, who at other times would have been too proud to ask a favour of his brother, whom he heartily despised as a milksop, stoops to beg: "Feed me, I pray thee, with the red — the red there, for I am faint." Quick as thought, without prayer to God, but full of that which his mind at least prized, Jacob makes his bargain: "Sell me now (or, first) thy birth-right." Truly it was the worm Jacob," and different indeed from the Israel" of a later day. But scripture tells the truth; and the two men were seen as they really were. "Behold," said Esau, "I am going to die; and of what use can the birth-right be to me?" Why so impatient? Could he not hold out a quarter of an hour? The mother's tent was near; could he not wait long enough to ask of those who had never refused his cry of need — never put him off with a stone or a serpent?

No; he must have the tempting food on the instant. In his impetuous haste and self-will it seemed death to wait a few moments longer. Alas! Jacob took advantage of it; and brought in God, whom he himself was selfishly slighting, to bind Esau who had no fear of Him whatever: "Swear to me first." And he did swear to sell his birth-right to Jacob. How fleshly the act on both sides! Instead of securing Jacob in the sight of God, it was part of those evil days on which he had to look back with shame and sorrow when grace really governed his soul. And it could do no more than widen the gulf between the brothers, rankling as it might, and not unnaturally, in his heart who was drawn into the oath by the pressure of a passing need. So Jacob gave his bread and dish of lentils; and Esau "eat and drank, and rose up, and went his way" in the graphic terms of the history, with the solemn comment: "so Esau despised his birth-right." What great moral principles are for us in these apparently so simple tales of domestic life in early days! Let us not, like unbelievers, leave God out of the account, none can, save to his irreparable loss.

CHAPTER 2.

JACOB DECEIVING ISAAC.

Gen. 27.

This is a cup to the brim full of sin and shame for all concerned. Isaac in comparison seems an object of compassion, though here really profane and without the fear of God; so were inexcusable not only Isaac, but Rebecca and Jacob. In speaking of his father we have sufficiently looked at the mother. It remains to say a little more of the one immediately before us.

Oh, the witness to what a saint may be allowed to stoop! What a witness also to that which God is in His long-suffering and grace! If He were not the Eternal who changes not, assuredly Jacob must have been consumed with his sons, as the last of the O.T. prophets tells us. Nevertheless as His moral government dealt with them, so too we may read in Jacob's history as God gives it in His holy word. The beginning was as wretched as could be conceived in either case; but Genesis lets us see in large measure the brightness which divine mercy shed on Jacob's close. Far different was it with Isaac, who disappears from view long before his departure; nor was there anything to distinguish the later years of Abraham's life comparable with Jacob a-dying. Then those eyes, which in youth were too keen for "his own things," were opened to see clearly the future of his sons to, and at, the end of days. Of a truth no prophecy comes of its own interpretation; for no prophecy was ever brought by man's will, but men spoke from God, borne along by the Holy Spirit, Who rests not short of His glorious purpose for Christ in the latter day.

But in this evil day what have we not to confess? What does not God recall in scripture for our admonition and warning? Humbling it is, but is it not truly good and profitable? Is it not then made evident, that He does not find in us what suits Him, but in love produces it where was a blank and worse? God alone gives the victory through faith; whilst every fault on our part is noticed, and fully, under the chastening of His moral government. Is not this as it should and must be, God being what He is, and man also? "He that hasteth with his feet sinneth." No flesh shall glory before him; he that glorieth, let him glory in Jehovah. Who but He could have said by Isaiah (Isa. 41: 13, 14), Fear not, I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel: I will help thee, saith Jehovah, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. We can find no solid ground of rest but in what He is to us, not in what we are for Him. All shall be beaten small who in their pride of heart refuse to believe, and who trust in themselves that they are righteous. Only those who have Him for righteousness shall rejoice and glory in Him.

Hence it is that the Spirit refrains not from laying the scene before us in all its sad ignominy, where the righteous broke down utterly, because not one of them was then walking by faith but by sight; and he who had no faith appeals to our natural feelings as the injured party. And verily he, Esau, had his reward; for of the fatness of the earth was his dwelling, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by his sword he lived, though he served his brother; and the time came when, breaking loose, he broke that yoke from off his neck. What did he care for "the promises?" What was the covenant to him who lived only to gratify himself and his lusts?

Badly as Jacob behaved under his mother's crooked advice, doing evil that good might come, he really valued what the Almighty did and pledged in words that could not lie; but so much the greater was the sin, which in son as in mother distrusted Him in the face of Isaac's unworthy effort to indulge his favourite against the purpose of the, Lord. But so it was. "There are many devices in a man's heart; but the counsel of Jehovah shall stand." Flesh wrought its dark way all round. God was forgotten. Deceit prevailed; but the word of our God abides for ever. He who had no faith received none of the everlasting portion of grace; all who had done dishonour to God and their faith reaped sorrow from their fleshly measures. The mother parted soon after from her darling, never more to see him; and he who turned from the Lord to follow her devices became long an exile, cheated by his father-in-law as he had cheated his father, and put to many a shame by his own children.

But God was good as He is holy. Therefore because of sin Jacob had to learn all in suffering and self-judgment. Far better to have learnt it in His presence, which would have preserved him from exile even when pressed urgently by a fond mother. For conscience speaks to one's own soul, and ever refers to God, whose relationship, being nearest and most authoritative, ought not to be gainsaid or thrust aside even for her that bore him. In this case indeed she, a pious woman, by her ardour in a cunning enterprise, betrayed her self-will in boldly offering to take on herself instead of a blessing Jacob's curse, if so it should be through his father's possible discovery of the fraud (vers. 12, 13). But her persistence overruled or at least silenced his fears; and encouraged him to dare a no less impiety, as we read in vers. 20, 21. So candid is scripture, unveiling the desperate wickedness of which the heart is capable in saints left to themselves, or at least leaving God's presence to achieve God's promise in their own strength and wisdom. We shall see in the sequel what conflict and humiliation befell Jacob, as the necessary discipline to which God subjected him in order that the flesh should be put down, and the saint restored to the ways of holiness from such shameless tampering with evil.

CHAPTER 3.

JACOB BLESSED AND SENT TO PADAN-ARAM.

Gen. 28: 1-9.

After the humbling scene in which Isaac and Rebekah with Jacob, to say nothing of Esau, played so unworthy parts, it is refreshing here to read of Isaac's pious care over Jacob; and all the more, that grace made use of Rebekah to recall the spirit of her husband to faithful and righteous ways about their son called to blessing (Gen. 27: 46).

And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, and said to him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-Aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee a wife thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty [EI-Shaddai] bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a company of peoples. And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest possess the land of thy sojournings, which God gave to Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-Aram, to Laban Son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, mother of Jacob and Esau. Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan-Aram, to take him a wife thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; and [that] Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-Aram. And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father. And Esau went to Ishmael, and took, unto the wives which he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife" (vers. 1-9).

We may notice this peculiarity in the blessing here pronounced on Jacob by his father that a "charge" (ver. 1) accompanied it. Jacob must not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. For they were accursed in Jehovah's eyes, though the execution in any measure tarries till the cup of the Amorites was full. For the wanderer Jacob there was to be as distinct a refusal of alliance with the Canaanite as for Isaac. Only the latter was in the strictest way forbidden to go out of the land (Gen. 24: 6, 8), and the bride must be fetched thither: whereas the former goes in quest of a wife to the house of his mother's father (2). Thus are Jacob's earthly place and relations made no less evident than Isaac's heavenly ones. As the prophet Hosea puts it, Jacob fled into the field of Aram, and Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he kept [sheep]. So God decided for him in righteous government. Isaac's history is the type of sovereign grace calling a bride to the Heir of all things in heavenly places.

But it is also to be remarked in verse 3 that Isaac says, "God Almighty bless thee," and in verse 4, "And may he give thee the blessing of Abraham." But it is distinctly limited to a "multitude of peoples," and to his inheriting, he and his seed with him, "the land of his sojournings which God gave to Abraham." Yet we never hear that God appeared to Isaac in that character of revelation, as He did to Abraham very expressly in Gen. 17: 1; and it is even contrasted with the name of Jehovah made known to Moses in Ex. 6: 3 as the covenant name thenceforth for the children of Israel. But Isaac had it not directly like Abraham and Jacob.

Another trait of distinction is of much interest, to which Gal. 3: 16 directs attention. "Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed." And the apostle reasons on the one Seed which is Christ, as contrasted with the numerous seed referring to Israel. So we read in Gen. 12: 3 of it to Abraham, and confirmed to Isaac in Gen. 22: 18, though the countless earthly seed had been just mentioned in 17. This however is absent from Isaac's blessing on Jacob.

Scripture tells us in vers. 6-9 of Esau's imitating his brother as nearly as he could in appearance, because his Canaanite wives displeased his father. But God was not in his thoughts; and his imitation fell miserably short. For in addition to the daughters of Heth he took a daughter of Ishmael to wife, the bondmaid's offspring cast out from Abraham's house. There was no faith, but a natural and ineffectual effort after better ways. Apart from faith it is impossible to please God; for he that approaches Him must believe that He is, and becomes a rewarder of those that seek Him out. This was true of Jacob, in no way of Esau.

CHAPTER 4.

JACOB AT BETHEL.

Gen. 28: 10-22.

This scene is remarkably characteristic of the outcast from his father's house, but of God's care over the destined progenitor of His earthly people. Fathers and Puritans have alike missed their way; for, not seeing the grand place reserved for Israel in the latter day and Messiah's millennial Kingdom, they turn all blessed persons and things to the church's aggrandisement, and thus deny at the end to God's ancient people their restored and enhanced dignity here below. This by necessary consequence lowers the Christian and the body of Christ to an earthly place, however favoured and exalted. It is to efface the true future; while it balefully reacts on the present also, enfeebling if not blotting out His glory on high and our proper heavenly privileges in the Spirit.

"And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted on the place, and lodged there, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of the place, and made his pillows, and lay down in that place. And he dreamed, and, behold, a ladder set up on earth, and its top reached to the heavens. And, behold, angels of God ascended and descended upon it. And, behold, Jehovah stood above it, and said, I am Jehovah, God of Abraham thy father, and God of Isaac: the land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt break forth to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I [am] with thee, and will keep thee in all [places] whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee till I have done that of which I have spoken to thee. And Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely Jehovah is in this place, and I knew [it] not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful [is] this place! this [is] none other but God's house, and this the gate of the heavens. And Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he made his pillows, and set it [for] a pillar and poured oil upon its top. And he called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of that city was Luz at first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and keep me on this road that I go, and give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, and I come again in peace to my father's house, then shall Jehovah be for God to me. And this stone which I have set [for] a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee" (vers. 10-22).

The place on which Jacob lighted was to be notable for the chequered fortunes of Israel; it had no bearing typically on the church. Jehovah made Bethel a pledge of assured mercy to Jacob when utterly forlorn, whatever the king raised up to be a scourge to the people might pervert it to in honour of a strange and rival god. There tarried Jacob all night, with nothing but the stones which he put for his pillows. But he dreamed, and saw set up on earth a ladder, whose top reached to the heavens; and Jehovah stood above it, declaring Himself Jehovah, God of Abraham his father, and God of Isaac, with the promise of the land, whereon he lay so desolately, to him and to his seed; and the seed to be as the dust of the earth (not a word about the stars of the sky), which should break forth on every side to the blessing of all the families of the earth in Jacob and his seed. Whatever the sad and lonely beginning, this should be the glorious end.

All is prophetic and for the earth, a dream from and of God, not such speech and open vision as Abraham had enjoyed, unless when on one occasion of deep sleep a horror of a great darkness fell upon him, when he too learnt the power of death in order to establish covenant security for the earthly seed, whatever came meanwhile, and the land was strictly defined and delivered from its usurpers, as the people had been from their oppressors. Isaac had only Jehovah appearing to him whether by day or by night to bless him in Canaan, and multiply his seed as stars of the heavens, and set him above fear. Jacob, however guaranteed by the striking sight of the ladder from earth (where he lay) to Jehovah at the top in the heavens, was afraid, and with angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder could only say, How dreadful this place! none other this but the gate of the heavens! Yet had Jehovah promised to keep him in all places whither he went (and which of the patriarchs such a wanderer?), and never to leave him till He had done all of which He had spoken to him. Could words more explicitly portray the Jewish portion, or stand in more marked contrast with the peace, liberty, and heavenly access of the Christian, while suffering With joy here below like Christ?

Yet the closing verses which. give us Jacob's acts and words add still weightier confirmation. For he at once set up his stone pillow for a pillar and anointed it, and called the name of the place Bethel, and vowed the first recorded vow, strikingly different from Isaac or Abraham. Therein he rises not above providential care, and the supply of present wants, yet God with him (for the root of the matter was there as his first thought), so that he should come to his father's house in peace. Jehovah should be to him for God, and this stone pillar His house, and of all He should give him he would Surely give the tenth to Him. It is, indeed, not Christians blessing the God and Father of our Lord, as from the first blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. How Jacob's vow differs from Abraham in Gen. 14 refusing to be made rich by aliens and giving unasked tithes. of all to Melchizedek, priest of the most High God, possessor of heavens and earth!

CHAPTER 5.

JACOB MEETS RACHEL AT HARAN.

Gen. 29: 1-14.

Jacob, strengthened by his dream, pursues his journey to the land of his kindred. The first phrase is an uncommon one; the nearest to it is used of the priests in quitting the channel of the Jordan for Canaan (Joshua 4: 18), which hardly confirms the alacrity ascribed to it here.

"And Jacob went on his journey (lifted up his feet), and came into the land of the sons of the east. And he looked, and, behold, a well in the fields, and, behold there, three flocks of sheep lying by it; for out of that well they watered the flocks, and the stone on the well's mouth was great. And when all the flocks were gathered there, they rolled the stone from the mouth of the well and watered the sheep, and put again the stone on the well's mouth in its place. And Jacob said to them, My brethren, whence [be] ye? And they said, Of Haran [are] we. And he said to them, Know ye Laban son of Nahor? And they said, We do know [him]. And he said to them, [Is it] well (peace) with him? And they said, Well; and, behold, Rachel his daughter cometh with the sheep. And he said, Behold, [it is] yet high (great) day; [it is] not time that the cattle Should be gathered together: water the sheep, and go, feed [them]. And they said, We cannot till all the flocks be gathered together, and they roll the stone from the well's mouth: then we water the sheep. While he was still speaking to them, Rachel came with her father's sheep, for she kept them. And it came to pass when Jacob saw Rachel daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother's brother. And Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept. And Jacob told Rachel that he [was] her father's brother, and that he was Rebekah's son; and she ran and told her father. And it came to pass when Laban heard the tidings of Jacob his sister's son, that he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house; and he told Laban all these things. And Laban said to him, Thou [art] indeed my bone and my flesh. And he abode with him a month of days" (Gen. 29: 1-14).

How strange that pious eyes of old and to our day should see in Jacob's foregoing journey and arrival in Haran a type of Jesus, Son of God and Heir of all things, despised and rejected of men, Jesus leaving heaven's glory to become a wanderer in the world, to accomplish redemption, and to espouse the church to Himself! Here evidently it rather typifies a contrast with Isaac, only son of his father, the dead and risen bridegroom of her that was fetched by Eliezer's guidance, the bride that must pass through the desert to be His bride in the heavenlies. Here it is one that leaves the land of promise after the saddest failure, but not without blessings in grace, with Jehovah assuring him in the dark night of His care, and not to leave him till He do so with His hand what His mouth had spoken. Jacob does not rise above the house of God on earth, the gate of heaven but not glory on high; and his vow, and anointed pillar, and tithe, and hopes, are all in unison with Israel, yet a prince with God here below. He is a type at most of the earthly side of the Lord; which tradition and theology, not discerning, have lowered so as to narrow the truth. These, seeing only the church position, have reduced the Lord's relationship accordingly, and appropriated Israel's place to the loss of the Christian's, as well as to the denial of the predicted blessings of the Jewish people as the head of the nations on earth under His coming reign.

Jacob is characteristically here under God's providential care, even when we hear only of the shepherds of Haran; and Rachel appears and Laban follows. It is His sure but unseen and unnamed direction. Yet we may remark the difference from Eliezer's distinct prayer of faith and immediate worship in Gen. 24, also from God's prompt answer, and from the bride's ready response and journey to join him whom unseen she trusted, and for whom she forsook all her existing ties of nature.

Here it is a touching scene, and the quick emotional outburst of Jacob's nature is in keeping, and even Laban's. But the deep communion with God, when it is the type of calling the bride for heaven, and the entire absorption of heart in the risen bridegroom's glory, are as wanting here as they are indelibly apparent in the unique episode of Isaac and Rebekah.

CHAPTER 6.

THE MARRIAGES OF JACOB.

Gen. 29: 15-30.

It is well to bear in mind that Jacob, however vigorous, was no longer a young man, being seventy-seven when he arrived in Haran. There he must bow to the divine discipline which had already forced him to leave his father's house, and the late unhappy influence of his mother. So it is with each of God's children. Grace is sovereign in calling even the most untoward; but they pass under a moral government which takes notice of every fault, that they may become partakers of His holiness. Compare John 15, Heb. 12: 5-11, and 1 Peter 1: 15, 16.

"And Laban said to Jacob, Because thou [art] my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what [shall be] thy wages? And Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder [was] Leah (Weariness), and the name of the younger [was] Rachel (Ewe). And the eyes of Leah:[were] tender; but Rachel was beautiful of form and beautiful of countenance. And Jacob loved Rachel, and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel thy youngest daughter. And Laban said, Better [that] I give her to thee than [that] I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they were in his eyes a few days, for his love to her. And Jacob said to Laban, Give [me] my wife for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went in to her. And Laban gave to her Zilpah his maid-servant [for] maid-servant to Leah his daughter. And it came to pass in the morning that, behold, it was Leah. And he said to Laban, What [is] this thou hast done to me? Have I not served with thee for Rachel? Why then hast thou deceived me? And Laban said, It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the first-born. Fulfil the week of this one; and we will give thee the other also for the service that thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and fulfilled the week; and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his maid-servant for her maid-servant. And he went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years" (vers. 15-30).

It is no small contrast to remember Isaac the heir, the son abiding in his father's house, and the honoured servant Eliezer sent to represent him and his father, with suited equipage and costly gifts for the bride. Here the outcast wanderer has nothing to recommend him but his relationship and his service. Nor was Laban slow to discern the value of so capable a man for interests dearer to him than all other considerations. So the bargain was soon struck, and the warm offer of Jacob instantly accepted. But when the full time of service for his bride arrived, the crafty uncle, under all his show of the wedding-feast to Jacob's honour, felt no scruple in the cruel deceit of substituting Leah for Rachel, the object of his heart from the first.

Then followed the humiliating temptation of the younger daughter offered on like conditions of long service, which to Jacob seemed but a few days, for his love to her. But we must not measure this case any more than others in Old Testament times by the light which the Saviour cast on marriage as on everything else. Yet it is refreshing to notice what He could draw from what was instituted at the beginning, before sin entered to throw into confusion the ways of God, by those manifold lusts of the flesh which war against the soul.

Here it was Jehovah dealing with Jacob that he might judge himself, and learn in his own experience the hatefulness of yielding to deceit, even if it were to gain the birth-right or the blessing over a profane brother, who cared only for himself and never had God as a living object before his soul. Such experience is made profitable to a weak or careless soul. One is thus habituated to the reality of having to do with God in the little things of life, as men are apt to count, as well as in the greatest. What goodness on His part to occupy Himself with every detail to teach us what a simpler faith had learnt in the happier and holier light of His presence. And scripture with divine largeness has room for all. If we have an Abraham comparatively firm and faithful, and an Isaac sheltered and with abundant favour in his weakness, we have a Jacob with his chequered life and faulty ways, yet chastened, kept, and blessed of God after a strikingly instructive sort.

CHAPTER 7.

LEAH AND HER FOUR SONS.

Gen. 29: 31-35.

The righteous government of Jehovah is clearly seen here also. Jacob was grossly wronged by Laban in what must deeply touch a man's heart, and Leah was beyond doubt a consenting party to the cheating breach of the marriage compact as to Rachel. She might and ought to have told Jacob the unworthy trick her father was playing by her means. But God would have His servant Jacob learn more deeply in his own wounded affections the vileness of self-seeking deceit; and hence He permitted what He would use for chastening and good in the end.

"And when Jehovah saw that Leah [was] hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel [was] barren. And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and called his name Reuben (See! a son); for she said, Because Jehovah hath looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me. And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Because Jehovah hath heard that I [am] hated, he hath therefore given me this one also; and she called his name Simeon (Hearing). And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, Now this time will my husband be united to me, for I have borne him three sons; therefore was his name called Levi (United). And she again conceived, and bore a son, and said, This time will I praise Jehovah; therefore she called his name Judah (Praise). And she ceased from bearing" (vers. 31-35).

It will be observed that it is not Elohim here, but Jehovah, God in special relationship and moral dealing. He looked on the sorrowful and despised wife, and gave not to Rachel but to Leah, the comparatively "hated," the consolation of a son. Rachel happy in her husband's love was left barren! We can notice how the firstborn loomed in the mother's eyes, and how much she counted on the call to Jacob's heart. But Jacob was slow to forget the wrong done him about Rachel, or to feel his own wrong to Leah. Nor was it only that Jehovah looked tenderly on her aggrieved spirit, but she acknowledged Jehovah's compassion in the matter. Jehovah, said she, hath looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me. This seems premature: we hear as yet not a sound of it on his part.

Again however she has a son, and says, Because Jehovah hath heard that I am hated, He hath therefore given me this one also. The even stronger expression of her husband's alienation does not weaken but renew her sense of the favour Jehovah was showing her; and as with Reuben, so now the naming of her second son bespeaks it: Jehovah heard as well as saw. We do not learn of any relaxation on the offended man's part: he had his Rachel. And again she bore him a third son, and said, Now this time will my husband be united to me; for I have borne him three sons. Therefore was his name called Levi. It is not as before that she called it. All seems more vague and in a lower key here; and Jehovah is not named. But He never fails; and again she bore a son, and said, Now this time will I praise Jehovah; therefore she called his name Judah. Never do we hear of her soul rising so high; the sorrow-stricken woman breaks forth into praise of Jehovah; and her fourth son bears it in the name she gave him that day. Yes, of Judah came according to flesh the Christ, Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. How much His grace rises above our praise!

There can hardly be a plainer warning of the danger to which even pious men are exposed in treating of types than that of the excellent Dr. J. Lightfoot with his vast Rabbinical learning. His knowledge of divine truth was too slender to warrant it. Like others in that day and in almost every other, he was superficial in gospel truth, ignored the Spirit's presence and the church's union with Christ on high, and His coming again to consummate God's counsels for heaven, earth, and all creation, being also utterly wrong as to the restoration of Israel in that consummation. Hence he held that "Leah and Rachel are figures of the two churches; the church of the Jews under the law, and the church of the Gentiles under the gospel: the younger the more beautiful, and more in the thoughts of Christ, when he came in the form of a servant; but the other, like Leah, first embraced and taken to wife."*

*Lightfoot's Works, ii. 98, 1822.

A deeper acquaintance with scripture would have avoided such mistakes. For Rachel represents Israel, Messiah's first object of love on earth. But this fails by no fault on His part. And He has Leah, who thus represents the intervening call of the Gentiles during Jacob's servant state and mighty sorrows, when "more are the children of the desolate than of the married wife, saith Jehovah" (Isaiah 54: 4, cf. Gal. 4). In due time the barren one bears Joseph who typifies Christ rejected and exalted, but making Himself known to His brethren at last; and also Benjamin, the only one born in the land, son of his mother's sorrow but of his father's right-hand, bringing millennial power before us, as Joseph does its blessing.

CHAPTER 8.

THE WIVES AND THEIR MAIDS.

Gen. 30: 1-13.

Though revelation of and from God is the essential difference of scripture from all other writings, there is much more of the utmost value. We have man as he is, as nowhere else: the truth is told us that we may know ourselves as well as God. Hence the interest and importance of inspired light in what the proud selfishness of man's mind is prone to despise as mere domestic jars. To the believer they not only are full of salutary instruction but suggest the witness of divine concern and compassion, in what must all be manifested before His holy eyes to Whom we shall give account of the things done in the body whether good or evil, yea, of the hidden things of darkness and the counsels of hearts. Assuredly no flesh shall glory; and it is well and wise to learn it now, that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

"And when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and she said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I die. And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel; and he said, [Am] I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? And she said, Behold, my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear on my knees, and I may also be built up by her. And she gave him Bilhah her bondmaid as wife; and Jacob went in to her. And Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and also heard my voice, and given me a son: therefore she called his name Dan (Judge). And Bilhah Rachel's bondmaid again conceived and bore Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, Wrestlings of God have I wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed; and she called his name Naphtali (my Wrestling). When Leah saw that she had ceased to bear, she took Zilpah her bondmaid, and gave her to Jacob as wife. And Zilpah Leah's bondmaid bore Jacob a son. And Leah said, What fortune! and she called his name Gad (Fortune). And Zilpah Leah's bondmaid bore Jacob a second son. And Leah said, With my happiness; for the daughters will call me happy! and she called his name Asher (Happy)" (Gen. 30: 1-13).

One understands too well, too sadly, why Rachel should view her own childlessness and her sister rich in children with chagrin. Self wrought and blinded her to her sister's lack of Jacob's heart of which she had the monopoly. It was envy, that base feeling which cannot endure another, even a sister's, having what she had not; and this broke out in unreasonable and impious repining to her husband, as if her barrenness were his fault. No wonder that his anger resented her unworthy state in his rejoinder, Am I in God's stead Who has withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? But he yielded to her proposal, and takes Bilhah that she might obtain children by her maid. Had not honoured Sarah done the like? Yes, but through Ishmael its fruit did it not issue in the expulsion of both Hagar and her son? Was this encouraging? How different from Hannah the sorrowful under Peninnah's provocations, or even the high-priest's misjudgment! She broke out into no unseemly murmurs against her husband, but wept and prayed and vowed to Jehovah, and was heard of the God of Israel.

It is the striking difference of the N.T. from the Old that perfection was only established when God spoke, and wrought also, in the Son. The law made nothing perfect, though a divine witness to what was coming and the just measure of human righteousness on earth. And the Lord was able to vindicate on Jehovah's part that, if Moses in view of the people's hardheartedness allowed them even to put away their wives, from the beginning it was not thus. Male and female made He them. Christ alone represented God adequately, and as Son the Father; and this in man, God and man in one Person. This is all to God the Father's glory.

But of old God permitted what was far from His mind, as we see here, till He makes all things new. Jacob was not Jesus, nor was any other He, though a man of faith. Jesus is Himself, not a man only, though this He was 'completely and perfectly, but true God no less than the Father.

The names Rachel gave the sons of Bilhah expressed the state of her soul, and toward her sister. Dan and Naphtali do not tell us of grace, but of satisfaction in gaining points of strife on her own part. Leah was drawn into the snare and through Zilpah would equal that advantage. And the names she gave Zilpah's sons, Gad and Asher, though not reflecting the contention which governed Rachel's spirit, by no means rose to the level of faith she had shown in naming her own sons. But it is the prerogative of God, while every wrong has its effect among men and its judgment before Himself, to cause all things to work together for good to them that love Him, the called according to purpose. He at least is good and does good, whatever man has to mourn.

CHAPTER 9.

LEAH AND RACHEL AGAIN.

Gen. 30: 14-24.

There is a twofold lesson in these divine sketches, which eludes the erudite unbelief which sits in judgment only to despise, and remains in really self-satisfied ignorance. For they present, to the life, the humbling history of the ancestor of a people destined to be God's possession for the earth by His own choice, spite of these petty ways. They also let us into the secret of that grace in God which rose above all that was immeasurably detestable to His nature in light and love, and even looked on to Him who was to come of this very family, the Christ that is over all, God blessed for ever, as truly God as His Father. It may well be doubted if such glorious hopes were then before the two wives, as the pious Bishop Patrick credits them with; but we are assured that such halo as this did faith give to many a Hebrew matron, grounded on the promises to their fathers, and stretching on to Him who should appear to make them all good. Besides, was there not food for reflection in that Moses was inspired to write these things down imperishably for their children throughout ages and generations, too sorrowfully like those from whom they sprang? And for us who come in on their downfall and before their restoration, for us who inherit better blessings as joint-heirs with. Him who is glorified in heaven, and is coming to take us into the same glory on high, is there not abundant profit for our souls? The flesh never changes to spirit: in it good does not dwell. If we live, it is by the faith of the Son of God: and Christ it is, not the old self dead to God, that lives in each Christian.

"And Reuben went out in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field; and he brought them to his mother Leah. And Rachel said to Leah, Give me, I pray thee, of thy son's mandrakes. And she said to her, Is it little that thou hast taken my husband, that thou wilt take my son's mandrakes also? And Rachel said, Therefore he shall lie with thee tonight for thy son's mandrakes. And when Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, Thou must come in to me, for indeed I have hired thee with my son's mandrakes. And he lay with her that night. And God hearkened to Leah; and she bore Jacob a fifth son. And Leah said, God hath given me my hire, because I gave my bondmaid to my husband; and she called his name Issachar (There is hire). And Leah again conceived, and bore Jacob a sixth son; and Leah said, God hath endowed me with a good dowry: this time will my husband dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons. And she called his name Zebulun (Dwelling). Afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah (Judged). And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, God hath taken away my reproach. And she called his name Joseph (He will add); and said, Jehovah will add to me another son" (vers. 14-24).

No veil is cast over their deplorable unbelief and mean jealousy, no excuse for their superstitious trust in the efficacy of love-apples, just like other Syrian women given only to the vanities of the heathen. It is clear that Rachel profited nothing by the child Reuben's discovery; but that God pitied Leah who sought to share her husband's affection, and bore him now a fifth son and a sixth, besides a daughter. But how strangely low Leah's state in regarding Issachar as her hire from God, because she gave her bondmaid to Jacob; and in calling Zebulun from her fond hope that her husband's love would prove abiding! Nor did the daughter's name indicate any higher view, being akin to that of Dan.

Rachel at length, as we read here, becomes the occasion of refreshment for the heart in the considerate tenderness of God's ways; Who, after her long humiliation because of her unworthy self-seeking, was pleased to pity her and give her a son so earnestly desired. Then she Paid, God hath taken away my reproach; for notwithstanding her lofty bearing she was sensible that she was under chastisement. The name she gave her firstborn is striking; for Joseph means He will add. As she said, Jehovah will add to me another. Her faith saw in Joseph the promise of Benjamin. Never before had she reached this level of expectation. For the mouth tells the secret, or certainly the abundance, of the heart. God — Jehovah — was now before her. Yet how little she knew that Benjamin would be Benoni, of his father's right hand, of his mother's sorrow; for his birth must prove her death. How much better to confide in unfailing love and wisdom than to set the heart on any object here below!

When Messiah takes up repentant Israel for everlasting joy and blessing under the new covenant in. the last days, how will not the children ponder these early annals of their progenitors, so long reproduced in their own history of painful failure under the law! How sweet to their hearts to recognise that their blessing and glory, under Him whom alas! they long despised blindly, are all and only of divine mercy!

CHAPTER 10.

JACOB AND LABAN.

Gen. 30: 25-43.

We need not dwell on the incident that next claims our notice. As the marriage life of Isaac and Rebekah was very different from that of Jacob with his wives and their maids, so does the bearing of Abram toward Lot present a strongly marked contrast with that of Jacob and Laban. We are now in a far more cloudy atmosphere, though in the main Jacob was a faithful servant, and Laban deceitful and selfish. But God is not mocked, even in the day when evil is allowed to work its dark way till judgment return to righteousness.

"And it came to pass when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, Send me away, that I may go to mine own place and to my country. Give me [my] wives for whom I have served thee, and my children, that I may go away, for thou knowest my service which I have served thee. And Laban said to him, I pray thee, if I have found favour in thine eyes: I have discovered that Jehovah hath blessed me for thy sake. And he said, Appoint me thy hire, and I will give it. And he said unto him, Thou knowest how I have served thee, and what thy cattle hath become with me. For it was little thou hadst before I came, and it hath increased into a multitude; and Jehovah hath blessed thee as I turned [lit. at my feet]; and now how shall I also provide for mine own house? And he said, What shall I give thee? And Jacob said, Thou shall not give me aught. If thou doest this thing for me, I will again feed and keep thy flock. I will pass through all thy flock today, removing thence every spotted and speckled one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and [such] shall be my hire. And my righteousness shall answer for me hereafter, when thou comest about my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, let that be stolen with me. And Laban said, Behold, let it be according to thy word. And he removed that day the he-goats that were ringstraked and spotted, and all the she-goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black among the sheep, and gave [them] into the hands of his sons; and he set three days journey between himself and Jacob. And Jacob fed the rest of Laban's flocks. And Jacob took him fresh rods of white poplar, almond, and maple, and peeled white stripes in them, uncovering the white which was on the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled before the flock in the gutters at the watering-places where the flock came to drink; and they were ardent when they came to drink. And the flock was ardent before the rods; and the flock brought forth ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flock toward the ringstraked and all the black in the flock of Laban; and he made himself separate flocks and put them not with Laban's flock. And it came to pass whensoever the strong cattle were ardent, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, that they might become ardent among the rods; but when the flock were feeble, he put them not in: so the feeble were Laban's and the stronger were Jacob's. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle, and bondwomen, and bondmen, and camels and asses," (vers. 25-43).

Jacob was a man of faith, but failed in spirituality, and comes under the Lord's discipline that he might bear more fruit and better. As he had cheated at home, he suffered abroad, and at the hands of his mother's brother most of all. His patience under Laban's hardhearted wrongs testifies that he bowed to God. He could now bear to be lifted up by slow degrees. And the story of divine retribution here recorded is the turning-point.

Rachel's faith too was real and has the Spirit's attestation in the N.T. quite as distinctly as in the Old. But it is evident that, energetic as it was and in the face of the utmost peril, there was the manifest alloy of her old self which accompanied the precious metal. She did not hesitate to mislead. So here, whatever the gracious intervention of God for His injured servant, we could not conceive either his father or his grandfather adopting such an expedient as Jacob employed to acquire the fruit of his long and patient service that was due. Yet God condescended to use what without His power had been, if not in vain, but very partial.

Laban's covetous desire to profit by Jacob's strange bargain turned to the impoverishing of the self-occupied master, and the new and growing affluence of the long defrauded servant. Neither compunction appears on Laban's part for the advantage he had taken of his nephew, nor the least considerate affection for his daughters or their children. It was a righteous thing, as far as it could go in its way, to requite the evil-doer and recompense the sufferer. Nor can one fail to observe, at least as here it is pointed out, how peculiarly appropriate such a divine dealing was toward that one of the patriarchs who, more than any other, sets forth the chosen people. They derived their corporate name from him; their ups and downs were like his endless vicissitudes, failures, humiliations, to be turned at the end through divine mercy into everlasting blessing at the feet of their long rejected (but then how endeared!) Messiah. They too become wrestlers with God and men, and prevail. Great indeed shall be the day of Jezreel. But it will be a greatness due to God's grace and mercy, and deserved only by Him Who died for them, as for us and all others, when they at their worst proved themselves His bitterest foes. Thus shall no flesh glory; but he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

CHAPTER 11.

THE FLIGHT FROM HARAN.

Gen. 31: 1-21.

Here we are in quite another atmosphere from that of Abraham or even Isaac. Kindred blood surrounds Jacob; yet what selfishness and deceit in the uncle, what planning (at least) to protect himself in the injured nephew! But God thwarted the covetous man and helped the long-suffering one. The result was abundance on this side and decay on that, which touched Laban and his sons to the quick: and their connection with Jacob soon came to a close, to his heart's relief. But how weak the faith!

"And he heard the words of Laban's sons, saying, Jacob hath taken all that [was] our father's; and of what [was] our father's hath he acquired all this glory. And Jacob saw the countenance of Laban and, behold, it [was] not toward him as beforetime. And Jehovah said to Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee. And Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field unto his flock, and said to them, I see your father's countenance, that it [is] not toward me as beforetime: but the God of my father hath been with me. And ye know that with all my power I have served your father. And your father hath mocked me and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me. If he said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages, then all the flock bore speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstraked shall be thy wages, then all the flock bore ringstraked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and hath given [them] to me. And it came to pass at the time of the ardour of the flock, that I lifted up mine eyes and saw in a dream, and, behold, the rams that leaped upon the flock [were] ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And the angel of God said to me, in a dream, Jacob; and I said, Here [am] I. And he said, Lift up now thine eyes and see: all the rams that leap upon the flock [are] ringstraked, speckled, and spotted: for I have seen all that Laban doth to thee. I [am] the God of Bethel where thou anointedst the pillar, where thou vowedst a vow to me. Now arise, depart out of this land, and return to the land of thy kindred. And Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, [Is there] yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father's house? Are we not reckoned of him strangers? for he hath sold us, and hath also quite devoured our money. For all the wealth that God hath taken from our father [is] ours and our children's: and now what God hath said to thee, do it. And Jacob rose up and set his sons and his wives upon camels; and he carried away all his cattle, and all his substance that he had acquired, the cattle of his possession that he had acquired in Padan-Aram, to go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan. Now Laban was gone to shear his sheep. And Rachel stole the teraphim that [were] her father's. And Jacob deceived (or, stole the heart of) Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled. And he fled with all that he had; and he rose up and passed over the river [the Euphrates] and set his face [toward] the mountain of Gilead" (vers. 1-21).

Truly Jehovah is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in loving-kindness. For when the words of Laban's sons, and the looks of Laban himself disclosed their discontent (and no wonder), Jehovah told Jacob to return. to the land of his fathers, and to his kindred. Divine providence paid Jacob in some five or six years the wages of which Laban had defrauded him for twenty years. They, really wanted to get rid of Jacob, but shrank from saying so: for after all what was Laban's substance before Jacob appeared on the scene? Jacob also was too timid to act openly, but, encouraged from above, calls Rachel and Leah into conference. He could truly say that if Laban showed ill-will, the God of his father was with him; and that if he had sought to cheat him, God did not suffer his, hurt. He refers to the recognition of Jehovah as became him, and recalls how God took away Laban's cattle and gave them to himself. Even Jacob was too like Lot, and far from Abraham's superiority to earthly gain. But He that had wrought to repay the servant his kinsman's injustice recalled Bethel to forgetful Jacob, bidding him depart and return to the land of his kindred. The two wives. quite fell in. Their father had lost all hope of either. love or respect on. their part; so that they, low as there thoughts were, encouraged their husband to do as God directed. The moment was opportune. Laban was shearing his sheep, when Jacob without delay set wives and children on their camels, and stole away in hot haste with all his cattle and substance to go to his father's house in Canaan. Jehovah's compassion was clear and wondrous; but how mingled is not the other side? It is a lesson wholesome for us all, and will be so specially for Israel in the coming day.

How affecting is the mention of Rachel's theft! "And Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father's." It lets us into the secret root of Laban's iniquity. The fear of God was not there. Personal and family idolatry is disclosed which so often accompanied the profession of the true God. But what can be more offensive to God than to make him a senior or a sleeping partner in a partnership of the gods? Think too of Rachel's stealing at all from her father's goods! It is a queer note of the good Non-conformist, Matthew Henry, that "we are willing to hope (with Bishop Patrick) that she did not take them away as being covetous of the rich metal they were made of, much less for her own use, or out of any superstitious fears lest Laban, by consulting his teraphim, might know which way they were gone. Jacob, no doubt dwelt with his wives as a man of knowledge, and they were better than so; but she might design hereby to convince her father of the folly of his regard to those as gods, who could not secure themselves, Isa. 46: 1, 2." This is all amiable but unwise. For we may gather the true reason from Israel, just after the solemnities of Sinai, bowing down to the golden calf "they made, which Aaron made," and from Israel's history down to the captivity in Babylon. We are bound to believe the profane and evil infatuation of man's heart instead of imagining other things. Jacob was deceived at the time; but Gen. 35: 2 proves that his house was not right with God in this respect, and that later he too became aware of it.

But there is a grave lesson lost by those who think there can be no danger of tampering with idols even for believers. There is no reason to suppose that Rachel intended to give up the one true God; even Laban scarcely went so far as that. Yet the fact that meets us here and throughout scripture is, that there was an evident tendency from early days to the latest in those who acknowledged the living God to indulge more or less in idolatry. The case of Solomon is the flagrant proof how great a snare this was for Israel in its brightest days. For what could be more solemn or humiliating than for the pages of inspiration to record, that the wise king, who built the magnificent temple to Jehovah's glory, the house where the Shechinah deigned to dwell, did also build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and this in the mount that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

How remarkable is the closing appeal in the First Epistle of John! "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." We cannot conceive that those to whom he wrote bowed to images of gold or silver, of wood or stone. There was a more subtle form of the evil which the apostle dreaded for saints in the apostolic day. But there can be no more powerful witness to the peril even for saints, than that the same Epistle which begins with the fullest manifestation of the True God in our Lord Jesus, so as to bring us into fellowship with the Father and with His Son, should end with such a warning. When anything outside the Godhead now known in Christ becomes an object to the heart religiously, it is an idol.

Nor was it long before distinct and shameless idolatry overspread Christendom, east and west, north and south.

CHAPTER 12.

LABAN AND JACOB IN COVENANT.

Gen. 31: 22-55.

Jehovah was faithful and gracious, Jacob a fugitive. Laban soon pursued in hot haste with no friendly intent, but was compelled at the last to bow to God's protecting Jacob.

"And it was told Laban the third day that Jacob had fled. And he took his brethren with him and pursued after him a seven days' journey, and overtook him on mount Gilead. And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said to him, Take care that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And Laban came up with Jacob; and Jacob had pitched his tent on the mountain; Laban also with his brethren pitched on mount Gilead. And Laban said to Jacob, What hast thou done that thou hast deceived me, and hast carried away my daughters as captives of sword? Why didst thou flee away covertly and steal away from me; and didst not tell me that I might have sent thee away with mirth and with songs, with tambour and with harp, and hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? Now thou hast acted foolishly. My hand is as God to do you hurt; but the God of your father last night spake to me, saying, Take care that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad. And now thou must needs be gone, because thou greatly longedst after thy father's house, why hast thou stolen my gods? And Jacob answered and said to Laban, I was afraid for I said, Lest thou shouldest take by force thy daughters from me. With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live: before our brethren discern what [is] thine with me, and take [it] for thee. For Jacob knew not that Rachel had stolen them. And Laban went into Jacob's tent, and into Leah's tent, and into the two handmaids' tents, and found nothing, and he went out of Leah's tent into Rachel's tent. Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, and put them under the camel's saddle, and she sat upon them. And Laban felt about all the tent and found them not. And she said to her father, Let there be no kindling in my lord's eyes that I cannot rise up before thee; for the manner of women is upon me. And he closely searched, but found not the teraphim. And Jacob was kindled, and chode with Laban: and Jacob answered and said to Laban, What [is] my trespass, what my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after me? Whereas thou hast felt all about my stuff, what hast thou found of all thy household stuff? Set [it] here before my brethren and thy brethren, and let them decide between us both. These twenty years I [have been] with thee: thy ewes and thy she-goats have not cast their young, and rams of thy flock I have not eaten. What was torn I have not brought to thee; I bore the loss of it: of my hand didst thou require it, stolen by day or stolen by night. [Thus] I was; in the day drought consumed me, and frost by night; and my sleep fled from mine eyes. These twenty years I [have been] in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy flock; and thou hast changed my wages ten times. Had not my father's God, the God of Abraham and the fear of Isaac, been with me, surely empty now thou hadst sent me away. God hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked [thee] last night. And Laban answered and said to Jacob, The daughters [are] my daughters, and the sons my sons, and the flock my flock, and all that thou seest [is] mine; and what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their sons whom they have borne? And now come, let us make a covenant, land thou; and let it be for witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. And Jacob said to his brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones and made a heap and ate there on the heap. And Laban called it Jagar-sahadutha (Heap of Witness), and Jacob called it Galeed. And Laban said, This heap is witness between me and thee this day. Therefore is its name called Galeed and Mizpah (Watchtower); for he said, Watch, Jehovah, between me and thee, when we are hidden one from another. If thou afflict my daughters, and if thou shalt take wives besides my daughters, no man is with us; see, God [is] witness between me and thee. And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold the pillar which I have set up between me and thee. This heap [be] witness and the pillar [be] witness, that I pass not over this heap to thee, and that thou pass not over this heap and this pillar to me for harm. The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us. And Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac. And Jacob offered a sacrifice upon the mountain, and invited his brethren to eat bread: and they ate bread and lodged upon the mountain. And Laban rose early in the morning, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them; and Laban went and returned to his place" (22-55).

The state of both comes out so plainly that no words can give any help when speaking of them. Here all is set in the light; and Laban brings on himself the proofs of his selfishness and dishonesty. Jacob was under no bond to stay. Laban and his sons gave ample signs how distasteful to them were his growth and their decay. He wanted a word from God Who gave it to him. His wives were of one mind with his own. He therefore seized the first opportunity, which Laban's shearing furnished, to be gone. Now that Laban with all the clan overtook Jacob on mount Gilead, what righteous objection could be urged? Undoubtedly the warning God gave Laban alarmed his guilty conscience, though no true fear of God was there, no sense of his injustice, even if Jacob had been no more than a faithful servant. Still on both sides, what a contrast with the day when Rebekah left the same roof-tree, it seems not with mirth and songs, nor with tambour and harp, but with love and honour and the fear of God and the assurance of His blessing, which had much fled from that homestead. If he dreaded spoliation or violence, he complained of his stolen gods. These he prized next to his gains, with no shame for his avowal of heathenism; for where this is, Satan has already brought in darkness and death.

How little Jacob knew that Rachel had really stolen Laban's teraphim, to her own shame! Jacob's house too was not so with God as to make it hateful to her in every way. She had already shown herself the prey of low and vile superstition, which paves the way for idolatry in secret. But Jacob had no suspicion that his beloved was really guilty: else he had not been so quick to propose that such a one should not live. And she that had played false to God little scrupled to deceive her father as well as to rob him. Jacob, ignorant of it, broke into unwonted anger with Laban, whose greed and lack of all justice, to say nothing of affection, he exposes unsparingly, and could well say, that but for God's over-ruling he had now been sent empty away. What could Laban reply but that all were his, wives, children, flock? God was in none of his thoughts, any more than love for his daughters, or their children, or his son-in-law. But he tries to put a good face on the matter, and asks for a covenant between himself and Jacob; who leaves all the terms to Laban, and his wretched thoughts and fears, but solemnly gives execution to it, as well as the name that stood. Not only did he swear by the Fear of Isaac, but he offered peace-offerings; and they ate bread together.

It is a sorry spectacle to the eye of faith; retribution for Laban, rescue for Jacob and his house through God's overruling hand and goodness: but within the chosen family idolatrous images stolen by the wife and unknown to the husband, who, instead of being crushed by Laban, is besought for a covenant with himself. For, as he feared not God, he had no confidence in his own nearest connection. But what had not Jacob to learn, as he weighed his old self-seeking and scheming before Jehovah?

CHAPTER 13.

JACOB IN DISTRESS, AND PRAYING.

Gen. 32: 1-12.

Laban went and returned to his place, as we have seen. Of him we hear no more.

"And Jacob went on his way; and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This [is] the camp of God. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim (two camps). And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother into the land of Seir, the field of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak to my lord, to Esau: Thy servant Jacob speaketh thus. With Laban I have sojourned and tarried until now; and I have oxen, and asses, sheep, and bondmen and bondwomen; and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother, to Esau; and he also cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people that [was] with him, and the sheep and the herds and the camels, into two companies (camps). And he said, If Esau come to the one company and smite it, then the company which is left shall escape. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Jehovah, who saidst to me, Return to thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee; I am less than all the mercies and all the truth that thou hast shown unto thy servant; for with my stall I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two companies. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from Esau's hand; for I fear him, lest he come and smite me, [and] the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will certainly deal well with thee, and make thy seed as sand of the sea which cannot be numbered for multitude" (1-12).

When a lonely fugitive from his father's house Jacob beheld in a dream on his way to Haran a ladder from earth to heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending on it, but above it Jehovah promising His presence and eventual blessing. Here again angels of God met him, a fugitive, so that, when he saw them, he recognised the gracious aim, This is God's host, and named the place accordingly. But neither the dream nor the sight of angels sufficed for Jacob's need. The fear of Laban was soon followed by his sorry terror of Esau. So it must be, just because Jacob was born of God, but with an unpurged conscience and a heart not at rest to enjoy the only object that satisfies. Even visions in this case are of little power and would soon be forgotten.

We see the lesson of faith feebly learnt. Again he has recourse to his plans, and sends messengers to his brother in Seir, with words skilfully framed to conciliate "my lord Esau," and "thy servant Jacob." Esau was not to fear that Jacob needed to encroach on a brother or a father; he had ample resources of his own, and only sought grace in his sight. But no answer from Esau filled Jacob with alarm and distress; especially as the messengers told him that Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred men. Why, but to overwhelm him? It was unbelief of Him who cannot forget His promise but can control and turn the most alien spirit.

Again, he betakes himself to his devices, dividing the people and the stock into two companies, saying, If Esau come to the one and smite it, then shall the other escape. How short and sad is man's prudence! He that arrested Laban in his hostile intentions and made him depart with a kiss all round, could he not bring Esau to Jacob with an embrace and not without tears? It is his state that the Holy Spirit here recounts for everlasting profit, that we be not anxious for the morrow, but cast all upon the God of all grace, because He cares for us. Jacob had as yet a bad conscience, and never yet faced it all out in God's presence. Yet God was faithful to him, not he to God.

After the trembling man had made his plan, he betakes himself to God, and we may trace the work slowly going on in his soul. He reminds Jehovah the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, that it was at His bidding he was returning to his country and kindred. He owns his unworthiness of the least of all His mercies and of all His truth. He compares his destitution when he first crossed the Jordan with his two companies at present. He earnestly entreats his deliverance from the hand of his brother Esau, whom he dreaded both for himself and for the mother with the children. Then finally he reminds Him of His promise of a surety to do him good, and make his posterity as sand of the sea innumerable. We can readily perceive that it was faith, but as yet mingled with human expedients. Hence was he far from peaceful reckoning on God, and even in abject terror of Esau.

The fact is that he was dissatisfied with himself, and feels the need of drawing near to God in a way he had never yet known. The interesting details of this we find in the next page of the divine story, a very important epoch in Jacob's experience. His plans did nothing toward softening Esau, any more than relieving himself from his dread. But he was now to be alone with God who took him up in a way worthy of Himself, and laid the basis for the deepening work in his soul ever after, and a blessing which. at length shone in Jacob's declining years beyond his father or even his grandfather. But in his then low estate spiritually grace was about to meet him that very night, little as his troubled soul looked for it, and in a manner foreign to all natural thoughts.

CHAPTER 14.

GOD WRESTLING WITH JACOB.

Gen. 32: 13-32.

The vision of two bands of angels did not deliver Jacob from fear for himself and his two bands. He was not at ease with God, though a believer. All that hindered communion was not yet judged; and hence his abject dread of Esau, of whose change of feeling toward himself he had no idea. Making his own plan of defence, he then prayed for Jehovah's blessing for deliverance from Esau. Further details are given in vers. 13-21; and the rest follows, where God takes Jacob in hand.

"And he lodged there that night; and took of what came to his hands a gift for Esau his brother; two hundred she-goats, and twenty he-goats; two hundred ewes, and twenty rams; thirty milch camels with their colts: forty kine, and ten bulls; twenty she-asses, and ten young asses. And he delivered [them] into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself: and he said to his servants, Go on before me, and put a space between drove and drove. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meets thee, and asks thee, saying, Whose [art] thou? and whither goest thou? and whose [are] these before thee? then shalt thou say, Thy servant Jacob's, it [is] a gift sent to my lord Esau; and, behold, he also [is] behind us. And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, According to this word shall ye speak to Esau when ye find him. And ye shall say moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob [is] behind us. For he said, I will propitiate him with the gift that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me. And the gift went over before him; and he himself lodged that night in the camp (or, band)."

Next we come to God's dealing with him that he might be blessed more abundantly.

"And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of Jabbok; and he took them and led them over the stream, and sent over what he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the rising of the dawn. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh: and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was strained as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. And he said to him, What [is] thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Not Jacob shall be called henceforth thy name, but Israel; for thou hast wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked and said, Tell, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore askest thou after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat. not the sinew that shrank, which [is] upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip (or, that shrank)" (vers. 22-32).

Jacob must be alone with God. He was not yet at Bethel, but had a needed meeting meanwhile in the dark. Not so much as men say, Jacob wrestling with God, true as this may be in its measure, but yet more God wrestling with Jacob. "There wrestled a man with him until the rise of the dawn." It was grace that gave him perseverance and to prevail, but in a way contrary to man's thoughts; not in any degree Jacob's goodness, wisdom, and power, but God's faithful mercy. Hence He touched the hollow or socket of Jacob's thigh, so that it became out of joint. This would render powerless the strongest; but it was not so here. His grace enabled Jacob to hold on. He deigns then to say to Jacob, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth: as Jacob answers, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Thereon Jacob gets his new name, no more the supplanter but a prince of God — Israel, "for thou hast wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed." So wrought divine mercy while withering natural strength; but there is no revelation of His name as to Abraham; and instead of drawing out his intercession for others, God wrestles with himself. Prevail he must in order to be blessed; but there is no communion. The name is undivulged as later to Manoah, before the man of overcoming strength was born, who wrought heroic wonders, yet with surprisingly little moral power. And so it is here with Jacob in his way, who called the name of the place Peniel; "for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Think of the totally different issue when Jehovah appeared to Abraham both in Gen. 17 and Gen. 18. Then "He went away as soon as He had left communing with Abraham." The wife of Manoah understood God better than her husband.

Thenceforth Jacob halted upon his thigh. God would have him permanently learn the lesson of His strength displayed in human weakness. So the sun rose on his halting as he passed Penuel; and therefore the children of Israel eat not the sinew that shrank which is upon the hollow of the thigh, to this day. Would to God that they read its meaning in the light, instead of going about to establish their own righteousness and refusing to submit to His righteousness! Nor is it Jews only that need to learn this great truth; for it is ever fading more and more away from Christendom, where flesh is increasingly gloried in, and superstition and rationalism contend for the mastery against God and His Christ.

CHAPTER 15.

MEETING OF JACOB AND ESAU.

Gen. 33: 1-15.

The bringing of Jacob into communion with God was not yet complete; and as God's dealing with him in the last chapter indicates it, so does this chapter confirm it. He lifted up his eyes and looked; but God was greater than his fears, though he still devised the best he could whether Esau came as a friend or as a foe. Jacob can hardly be said here to walk by faith, not by sight; but God was faithful in His providence.

"And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children to Leah and to Rachel and to the two maid-servants; and he put the maid-servants and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindmost. And he passed over before them and bowed to the earth seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him; and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children, and said, Who [are] these with thee? And he said, The children whom God hath graciously given thy servant. And the maid-servants drew near, they and their children, and they bowed. And Leah also drew near and her children, and they bowed. And after drew near Joseph and Rachel, and they bowed. And he said, What [meanest] thou [by] all this band (or, camp) which I met? And he said, To find favour in the eyes of my lord. And Esau said, I have much, my brother; let that which [is] thine be to thee. And Jacob said, No, I pray thee: if now I have found favour in thine eyes, then receive my present at my hand; for therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen God's face, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, my blessing that is brought thee, because graciously hath God dealt with me, and because I have all. And he urged him, and he took [it]. And he said, Let us take our journey, and let us go; and I will go before thee. And he said to him, My lord knoweth the children [are] tender, and the flocks and the herds with young [are] with me; and overdrive them one day, then all the flock will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant, and I will lead on softly according to the pace of the cattle that are before me, and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord unto Seir. And Esau said, Let me leave, I pray thee, of the people that [are] with me. And he said, Why this? Let me find favour in my lord's eyes" (vers. 1-15).

None of the patriarchs passed through such inquietude as Jacob. So it must be if one is out of communion with God; who avails Himself of anxiety and change and danger to do us good and restore the soul at length. Even after God wrestled with him and enabled him to wrestle with God for His blessing, it was as yet far short of God's mind. For how poor that he could say no more than "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved!" God "talked with" His friend Abraham, revealing His Name as the Almighty, covenanted to make him father of many nations with things to come of Him, and revealed what He was going to do to the guilty cities of the plain, so as to draw out his intercession for righteous Lot.

But here Jacob was still far from peace as he considered Esau. He never thought of God's power over the hearts of all, and His intention of over-ruling Esau's resentment, to fill his heart with warm natural affection. As Jacob passed before the carefully arranged company of women and children, and bowed to the ground abjectly till he came near his brother, Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, and kissed him. In his dread Jacob had prepared Esau for his abundant substance, but was silent about his family. Hence the enquiry, "Who are these with you?" to which Jacob, now getting more at ease, answers as became a believer, "The children whom God hath graciously given thy servant." But when Esau asks the meaning of all the band, or drove, he had met, he says, "To find favour in the eyes of my lord." To this Esau rejoins, "I have" (not only enough but) "much, my brother; let what is thine be to thee," and Jacob goes yet further in pressing its acceptance, "for I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me. Take, pray, my blessing that is brought thee, because God hath graciously dealt with me, and because I have all." In fact it was a gift meant to avert the anger and strong wrath he apprehended; but the manner and the terms in which it was couched hardly deserve the appreciation commonly expressed thereon. God had wrought pitifully: to Him indeed he owed thanksgiving; while he might well be touched by brotherly affection instead of all that he feared.

It may be painful to notice, but it is well to heed, what follows as showing Jacob's state even then. When Esau proposes that they should proceed, and himself lead the way, Jacob pleads the tenderness of the children and such of the flocks and herds as would all die, if overdriven one day, and begs his lord to pass over, whilst he should lead on softly, till he came unto his "lord" in Seir. Then on Esau's offer of some of his trained convoy he replies, "Why this? Let me find favour in my lord's eyes." The truth is, that he was most anxious to get rid of his brother, and that he had not the smallest intention of going to Seir. He was going to Succoth. Viewed in the light of God, Jacob was not truthful in what he said to his brother. There was evil still unjudged in those around, and he spoke with little scruple but with characteristic fertility of excuse.

CHAPTER 16.

SUCCOTH AND SHECHEM.

Gen. 33: 16-20.

God was faithful to Jacob, but not yet Jacob to God, Who still kept up reserve, and could not yet reveal His name as He did to Abraham and Isaac, and would in due time to Jacob (Gen. 35: 11). There was not the self-judgment that made the way for it. Hence with all his obsequiousness to his brother there Was not even candour, and still less faith in activity.

"And Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth, and built him a house, and for his cattle he made booths. Therefore the name of the place was called Succoth (Booths). And Jacob came [in] peace [to the] city Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he. came from Padan-Aram, and encamped before the city. And he bought an allotment of the field where he had spread his tent, at the hand of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs; (lambs). And he set up there an altar, and called it El-Elohe-Israel" (vers. 16-20).

Esau returned the same day to his own place, the scene hostile to Israel, and hateful to God, all the more because of the near relationship which drew down His deepening abhorrence. For vengeance belongs to Jehovah who will not permit unauthorised and guilty man to take it in hand. Jacob evasively journeys to Succoth, which should be marked east of the Jordan,* though there was a place so named west of that river, as elsewhere too Ex. 12: 37, Num. 33: 5, 6). But the Succoth of Jacob's dwelling was the place given to the Gadites (Joshua 13: 27) and made memorable by the princes who refused bread to Gideon and his three hundred, and were threshed for their baseness with the thorns of the wilderness and briers.

*Burckhardt identified this Succoth, or Sukkot as he calls it from the Arabic. Dr. Robinson and Van de Velde speak of the western place called Sakut which ought not to be confounded with the eastern. Jerome (Quaest. in Gen. 33: 16) had long before made the just discrimination.

There Jacob built him a house, as he made booths for his cattle which gave occasion to the name of the spot. But the serious indication of the patriarch's state was the building of a house for himself in manifest departure from the pilgrim practice of his fathers, and indeed his own, as is described in Heb. 11: 9, "By faith he (Abraham) became a sojourner in the land of promise [which gave it special emphasis] not as his own, having dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the joint-heirs of the same promise." It is incorrect to say with Matthew Henry that Jacob "was glad of booths," as contrasted with his descendants in houses of stone. The very point of God's word here is that he "built him a house," whereas his fathers dwelt in tents even in the land of promise. It was marked indifference and declension in this respect; and the more because Jacob was only on his way to the land. It was yielding like other men to the desire for the ease and convenience of a more settled and convenient abode.

At length however a movement was made.  "And Jacob came in peace to the city Shechem which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Padan-Aram, and encamped before the city. And he bought in allotment of the field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs (lambs)."*

*According to Gesenius k  - "equivalent," but Sept., Vulg., and Onkelos give the meaning of a "lamb."

It is hardly needful to justify "in peace" from "to Shalem" as in the A.V. following the Sept., Syr. Pesch., and Vulgate, nor from the "safe and sound" of the Targum of Onkelos and the Rabbis, with most Germans, in the desire to exalt Jacob, and pretend that his halting passed quite away, contrary to any simple impression conveyed by the end of Gen. 32. There is indeed a seeming confirmation of the first sense in the fact of a place still called Salim between Shechem and the Jordan. But this is a mere coincidence, though it weighed with Jerome and Epiphanius. For "in peace" is in contrast with his perturbation of mind through dread of Esau between Peniel and Succoth, which is surely pertinent to the purpose. Yet as he failed in Succoth, so did he yet more in Shechem, which had a pointed claim on him beyond Shalem; for there it was that the father of the faithful had his first manifestation of Jehovah in Canaan, and the promise to give that land to his seed; and there he built an altar to Jehovah that appeared to him. "And he bought an allotment of the field where he had spread his tent, at the hand of Hamor's sons, father of Shechem, for a hundred kesitahs." How different from him who had none inheritance given him in the land, no, not to set his foot on, save what he bought to lay his dead in at a later day! Jacob thus departed more and more from the position of a sojourner.

But did not Jacob redeem his character as saint by his subsequent act? Not quite as yet. "And he set up an altar there and called it El-Elohe-Israel." In setting up an altar, where he first spread his tent in the promised land, he was undoubtedly right. He had not raised, nor could he properly raise one, outside the land of God's gift. But he also made evident his falling short of God's mind by the name he gave it. "God, the God of Israel" (ver. 20) did not rise up to the due patriarchal title of relationship; it was not promise, but his own measure of experience. It was short of Bethel; and Jacob must go through more and more humbling experience, and God must dislodge him from settling on the field he had purchased from the Hivite, to bring him to the place of his vow, where he would make an altar to God that appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. Not even yet were the strange gods that defiled his household put. away. How could there be true communion till then? Yet there was unfailing, patient, and tender mercy. But only there and thus could he enjoy the portion of God as He then revealed Himself. How blessed and holy are His ways!

CHAPTER 17.

DINAH AND HER BROTHERS.

Gen. 34.

One wrong step in departure from our true position before the Lord leads to many a sin, scandal, and sorrow. So we find here as the consequence of Jacob's buying the land of the Hivite, and building himself a house. His stay at Succoth and Shechem covers some ten years. He must be unsettled to get him back to his pilgrim place; but the way was painful for all, and a deep shame and humiliation and fear for the patriarch.

"And Dinah, daughter of Leah whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the land, saw her, and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her. And his soul clave unto Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spoke to the heart of the damsel. And Shechem spoke unto Hamor his father, saying, Take me this girl to wife. And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; and his sons were with his cattle in the field; and Jacob held his peace until they came. And Hamor father of Shechem went out unto Jacob to talk to him. And Jacob's sons came from the field when they heard [it], and the men were grieved, and they were greatly inflamed, because he had wrought folly in Israel in lying with Jacob's daughter; for so it ought not to be done.

"And Hamor spoke to them, saying, My son Shechem's soul longeth for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make marriages with us, [and] give your daughters to us, and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us; and the land shall be before you: dwell and trade in it, and get you possessions therein. And Shechem said unto her father and unto her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes, and what ye shall say unto me I will give. Ask of me very much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say to me. but give me the damsel to wife. And Jacob's sons answered Shechem and Hamor his father with deceit, and spoke, because he had defiled Dinah their sister, and said unto them, We cannot do this thing, to give our sister to a man that is uncircumcised; for that [were] a reproach unto us. But only in this will we consent unto you: if ye will be as we, that every male of you be circumcised; then will we give our daughters unto you, and take your daughters unto us; and we will dwell with you, and be one people. But if ye hearken not unto us, to be circumcised, then we will take our daughter and go away.

"And their words were good in the eyes of Hamor and in the eyes of Shechem, Hamor's son. And the youth deferred not to do the thing, because he had delight in Jacob's daughter; and he [was] honourable above all his father's house. and Hamor and Shechem his son came unto their city's gate, and spoke unto the men of their city, saying, These men are peaceable with us; therefore let them dwell in the land, and trade therein. And the land, behold, [it is] wide on both sides before them. Let us take to us their daughters for wives, and our daughters let us give to them. Only in this will the men consent unto us, to dwell with us, to be one people, in circumcising among us every male as they [are] circumcised. Their cattle, and their substance, and every beast of theirs, [shall] they not [be] ours? only let us consent to them, and they will dwell with us. And unto Hamor and unto Shechem his son hearkened all that went out of the gate of his city, and every male was circumcised, all that went out at the gate of his city" (vers. 1-24).

The only daughter of Jacob had no doubt a difficult part to play in the midst of so many brothers, to say nothing of other characteristics of the household. As the destroying incident of the chapter was soon followed by all quitting the scene, she may have been about fourteen or fifteen years old. With or without the sanction of her parents Dinah went out to see the daughters of the land. Josephus alleges a festive gathering. What had she to do with them in any way? All but the profane knew that the time would come for their judgment, that the seed of Abraham should possess the land; and their iniquity was great though not yet full, Apart from that, how giddy she and dangerous! She seems to have been as independent of her mother, as the young men certainly were beyond taking counsel of their father. Her gadding curiosity exposed her to the young prince of the land, who, smitten with her and carried away by his passion, seduced if he did not by force outrage her. Her poor father was silent till the sons returned from work. Meanwhile Shechem earnestly sought marriage at any price, and his father repaired to Jacob, pleading hard for his son's set desire to have her as wife, and offering the readiest terms of peace between the peoples, as Shechem urged for himself.

Thereon Jacob's sons interposed with guile the condition of circumcision for every male. Not the smallest thought or wish had they for inviting the Shechemites into the covenant. It was the basest treachery in order to ensnare and massacre them. Jacob had nothing to do with the cruel secret. Their pride and revenge ignored God as it did their father. Shechem was guilty of a great wrong; but Dinah too was in fault. Neither their mothers nor their grandmother came of circumcised fathers; nor did any pious or delicate reluctance appear in their own marriages. The condition was a lying and cowardly pretext to carry out their resentment to the uttermost. Hamor and Shechem fell into the trap, and had influence enough to persuade all their townsmen with themselves to submit to the painful rite, and its unexpected peril.

Then, when the inflammation was at its height for the beguiled Hivites, the bloody crisis came, executed by the two of the least scruple.

"And it came to pass on the third day, when they were sore, that two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took each his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. And Hamor and Shechem his son they slew with the edge of the sword; and they took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went out. Jacob's sons came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. Their flocks and their herds and their asses, and that which [was] in the city, and that which [was] in the field they took; and all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives, they took captive and spoiled, even all that [was] in the house" (vers. 25-29).

How solemn is the calm with which scripture recounts this whole affair of corruption and violence, covered and effected by odious hypocrisy, in which the chosen race were the perpetrators and Canaanites were the victims! Still it is going too far to say that Jacob felt only the consequence, not the appalling iniquity. It is related here, "And Jacob said to Simeon and to Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and I [am] few in number, and they will gather themselves together against me, and smite me, and I shall be destroyed, I and my house. And they said, As with a harlot should he deal with our sister (vers. 30, 31)?" Jacob was no doubt filled with alarm, so as to forget God's promise; but who can forget the sense of this dark and hateful day he expressed on his dying bed in words of prophetic power?

"Simeon and Levi [are] brethren; Instruments of violence their swords. Come not thou into their council, my soul; With their assembly be not thou united, mine honour; For in their anger they slew men, And in their wantonness they houghed oxen. Cursed their anger, for [it was] fierce, And their, wrath, for it was cruel. I will divide them in Jacob, And scatter them in Israel" (Gen. 49: 5-7).

CHAPTER 18.

GO UP To BETHEL.

Gen. 35: 1-8.

The humbling experiences of Jacob had not come to their close; but the way was being prepared for better blessing than he had yet known, and a nearer, truer, approach to what had been the cherished portion of Abraham and Isaac. Had he forgotten his vow at Bethel? Why so slow after so many mercies? Why the delay at Succoth, and yet more disastrously at Shechem? where only God's overruling hand sheltered them from vengeance after the cruel plot of. Simeon and Levi. No doubt Shechem had behaved unrighteously, but Jacob's sons hypocritically and without mercy. God in grace interfered, and this leads to a decisive change.

"And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwelt there; and make there an altar to God that appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. And Jacob said to his household, and to all that [were] with him, Put away the strange gods that [are] among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments; and we will arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar to God that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went. And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that [were] in their hand, and the rings that [were] in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that [was] by Shechem. And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that [were] round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. And Jacob came to Luz which [is] in the land of Canaan, that [is], Bethel, he and all the people that [were] with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-bethel; because there God had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother. And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died: and she was buried beneath Bethel, under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth" (vers. 1-8).

Jacob was now to meet God, as he had never hitherto done. This he realised from the words spoken to him. And the effect was immediate and great on his conscience. Put away, said he to all that were with him, the strange gods that are among you. We may be assured that he was as much deceived by Rachel's trick as her father, and that his indignant denial of false gods, stolen and secreted, was simple and genuine. "With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live." Never would he have spoken thus if the least suspicion of his beloved Rachel's dishonesty and dishonour of God had crossed his mind. But he had learnt it since, and had taken it quietly. But to meet God thus woke him up from his indifference. Even the lawless vengeance it Shechem weighed not so heavily. "Put away the strange gods that are among you" took the first place in his charge. This did not trouble him at Succoth, or at Shechem; but God's call to Bethel at once cast light on his carelessness, and produced self-judgment.

Far was Jehovah from saying of him, "I know that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him." It was the reason of their being to the fathers chosen, called, and faithful. Even Terah was an idolater; and Abraham was separated to the one true God by the promises of which sovereign grace made him and his seed in the line of Isaac the depositary. Yet now his son was forced to feel and confess the sinful presence of strange gods in the midst of his household.

No wonder that his was a chequered lot; but how great the goodness that had watched over his trials and intermingled mercy at every time of need, and at length summoned him to Bethel, that he might clear himself and his house from their veiled ungodliness, and return to consistency with his calling! "Put away the strange gods that are among you, and cleanse yourselves, and change your garments; and we will arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make there an altar to God that answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way that I went." Who of us has followed the Lord without the proofs of the same fidelity on His part? chastising our waywardness too that we might be partakers of His holiness?

"And they gave to Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hand, and the rings that were in their cars; and Jacob buried them under the terebinth that was by Shechem." Idolatry pervaded even their little ornaments, all of which had therefore to disappear. "And they journeyed; and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them; and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob." The living God knows how to control and dispose the heart, not only of enemies, but of those naturally resenting injury. Let His children fear and withal trust Him.

"And Jacob came to Luz which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar and called the place El-bethel; because God there had appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother." It is not now an altar called by a name that limits God to himself like El-Elohe-Israel. His faith is now cleared, and fuller. He is the God of God's house, which is richer, better, and higher up the source of blessing.

"And Deborah Rebekah's nurse died; and she was buried beneath Bethel under the oak; and the name of it was called Allon-bachuth," the oak of weeping. It is remarkable that she should have joined Jacob's household, no doubt after Rebekah's death. There her heart turned, her mistress gone, to Rebekah's beloved son. That they requited her love is plain from the record of their tears.

CHAPTER 19.

THE PATRIARCHAL NAME OF GOD REVEALED TO JACOB.

Gen. 35: 9-15.

Slow indeed had been Jacob's steps to Bethel. Long his stay in Padan-aram; and afterward delay followed in Succoth and in Shechem, till he was dislodged at last by sin and sorrow, shame and fear, yet with God ever faithful and true.

"And God appeared to Jacob again, after he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, Thy name [is] Jacob; thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And he called his name Israel. And God said to him, I [am] God Almighty [El-Shaddai ]; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings out of thy loins shall come; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give it; and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured on it a drink-offering, and he poured on it oil. And Jacob called the name of the place, where God spoke with him, Bethel" (vers. 9-15).

It was no mysterious conflict in the dark as at Peniel with sentence of death put on the flesh. Nor was it a vision of the night as at this same Bethel long before, when Jacob dreamed, and Jehovah stood above the ladder reaching to heaven, with angels of God ascending and descending on it. Still it is not here Jehovah as such, but, "God" that now appeared to Jacob in grace, when come after so many vicissitudes to the scene of his vow, and blessed. O what a God is the only true God!

God to him as to his fathers reveals Himself as God Almighty. There is not a word about the faults which rendered chastisement necessary, but simply God blessing him. But no such rich and enlarged scope appears as we have in Gen. 12, no such oath as Jehovah swore on the virtual sacrifice of Abraham's only-begotten, raised from the dead in a parable, with its wonderful distinction between the numerous seed with power over their enemies, and the seed to which no number is attached, the one seed with blessing for the Gentiles, as the apostle draws it out in Gal. 3. Nor are there such terms as when Jehovah appeared to Isaac when He bade him not go down into Egypt, but sojourn in Canaan, spite of famine there, where He would be with him and bless him as He did.

Yet it was no longer Jacob entreating God for His blessing: God of His own accord appeared and blessed him, returned as he was out of the land of the stranger, and taught many a lesson about himself "in the way" as well as out of it. But the blessing however gracious is in a lower key and of a more general character as befitted the name Elohim rather than Jehovah. Still Jacob has Him, truly and unasked, revealed to him, as to Abraham and Isaac, by the proper patriarchal title of El-Shaddai, God Almighty. Nor did any one of the fathers need that assurance of protective might so much as that "worm" Jacob.

His name too is not to be henceforth called Jacob, the supplanter, but Israel, the wrestler or prince of God. The manner is striking. For God speaks of it as if it had been then given, and not merely confirmed, as suited to one who was come back to the land, and not a fugitive from his father's house (though greatly by his own sins, whatever the wickedness of Esau might have been and was). He has like Abraham in Gen. 17 the promise of nations and kings of his line; but nothing here goes beyond the bounds and glory of Israel and the land.

"And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him." We may compare this favour to Jacob with the similar terms as to Abraham in Gen. 17: 22. What grace to both! and what an unspeakable difference from the mythological dreams of the intercourse of the gods with Gentile mankind, even if these had been true! But as lies go with moral corruption, and spurious religion degrades man below natural conscience, what a joy to know that the bright side is yet to come for both Israel and the Gentiles! Then the promises, so long inert through unbelief, will be by divine grace bound up with a rejected Messiah and an everlasting redemption and the new covenant in its literal and direct force, and the people, so long blind, will look to Him whom they pierced, and mourn for Him as for an only son. Meanwhile between His two comings the heavenly counsels of God are revealed in Christ dead, risen, and glorified in heaven, and now made known to the church His body, truly the great mystery.

But great too will be the day of Jezreel in the land, and great the blessing of the nations, under Him who will be the head and centre of all glory heavenly and earthly (Eph. 1: 10). For nothing less than this will accomplish the purpose that God intends for the glory of Him who suffered to the uttermost that His Father might be glorified even as to sin. The universe will be reconciled and set under Him to the joy of every creature, and to the praise of God.

Can one wonder that Jacob set up a pillar of stone to mark that spot of divine grace, and poured a drink-offering and oil upon it, and called its name Bethel with a fulness of honour unknown before?

CHAPTER 20.

RACHEL'S DEATH.

Gen. 35: 16-20.

It was not without aim and interest that the Holy Spirit recorded the decease of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, and the oak of weeping under which she was buried at Bethel. God means His people to feel the blank of a faithful domestic, and all the more if that fidelity covered a long space backward. Remarkable is it too that she should now be heard of, not in Isaac's tent but in that of Jacob. What many have inferred hence of Jacob's visits to his father ere this we leave: scripture is silent even as to when Rebekah died. But we may be sure that the aged nurse abode with her beloved mistress at least till then. A nearer bereavement was at hand.

"And they journeyed from Bethel; and there was yet some way to come to Ephrath; and Rachel travailed, and it went hard with her in childbirth, And it came to pass when it went hard in her bearing, that the midwife said to her, Fear not; for this also [is] a son for thee. And it came to pass as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Benoni [son of my sorrow]; but his father called him Benjamin [son of right hand]. And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave, which [is] the pillar of Rachel's grave to [this] day" (vers. 16-20).

The moral government of God, now by the way, no more fails than His grace from the beginning to, the end. Rachel had greatly sinned and kept her husband in the dark, when he unconsciously said that one guilty should not live. Her theft was not only a sin against her father, but in what she stole a heinous insult to God. Nor evidence have we that there was soon, if ever, adequate self-judgment. It is plain that Jacob at length became aware of idols in his household; the sin of which God's call to Bethel laid on his conscience, as we have already seen. To take his beloved away was a chastening, not to her only but to him also.

1 Cor. 11: 27-32 is a most instructive teaching on the application of this truth, in which we learn the security of grace on the one hand, and on the other the Lord's dealing with the inconsistent ways of those that are His. The ignorance of the truth even among pious men, notwithstanding their ability and learning is strikingly betrayed in the mistranslation of a word all-important for the true sense. It is not "damnation" but "judgment" in ver. 29, expressly contrasted with "condemnation" in ver. 32. The Lord was then judging by sickness and even death the faulty state and walk of the Corinthian saints, that they should not be condemned with the world, that is, because they were His and to be kept from "damnation." They were judged in this temporal way for the blessing of their souls. It is a universal principle of God, and as real in the O.T. as it is plain in the N.T. For God is and must be God everywhere. Only the display of grace under the gospel brings out, not only His sovereign grace but, His moral government with special clearness.

Rachel's name for the new-born child expresses her sorrow; Jacob, whatever his natural feelings over the dying wife of his heart, looks forward in hope. But it is not in any degree a heavenly hope in Benjamin, as Abraham had in Isaac, received from death to resurrection in a parable. It is the pledge of Israel in power, when she that represented the former state passes away by death. Israel must at the close be brought through deep if not deadly affliction before emerging into victory through their long disowned Messiah over all their foes on the earth.

"Fear not" from the attendant was well-meant. From the Lord it had been a word of power. But He was calling her away from a scene where she had failed in testimony to Him, and compromised her husband too. How could she be trusted for training her offspring in His fear? God had added another son, as she had said in faith when her firstborn was given. It was fitting that she should depart.

Little thought Jacob, when he erected a pillar of thanksgiving at Bethel in the place where God talked with him, that he would so soon after erect another pillar, and this of sorrow upon Rachel's grave. But he bows to the hand of chastening: whom the Lord loves, He chastises, and scourges every son whom He receives. Jacob could not know, as it was not yet revealed, that near this very Ephrath should be born the King of Israel, the pledge and type of great David's greater Son, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. The smitten Judge of Israel, who gave up His guilty people, will surely restore them, so that they shall abide, and He be great unto the ends of the earth. And the day hastens.

Rachel dies, but the pillar that records it stands in Israel's land and history till the kingdom. And her weeping for her children, as the weeping prophet wrote, is with truth and pathos remarkably applied when the King was born, and preserved from the murderous intent of the usurping Edomite, the Rome — favoured enemy within.

Benjamin himself, the son of his father's right-hand, typifies Christ, not at all as head of the church, but as the conquering Son of might when the kingdom is established in the land as indeed the earth, and the enemies parish before Him. This evidently looks on to the future day of power and glory for the earth: a manifest contrast with Him who suffered and sits hidden in the heavens.

But we may also observe that the two wives of Jacob aptly represent, Leah the fruitful, and mother of the nations, and Rachel, Israel's first love, but only a mother after Leah had borne abundantly. Then of her who typified Israel after the flesh comes Joseph, the bright witness of Christ sold and separate from His brethren, at the right of Him who had the larger rule of the world while the Jews were disowned. But at length she dying gives birth to the son of her sorrow, but son of his father's right hand; who shall devour the prey in the morning and at even divide the spoil (Gen. 49: 27). "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong."

The effort of ancient fathers and modern theologians to make every type point to Christian association is the fruit of ignorance as to the extensive and varied glories of Christ, if not effacing yet assuredly lowering the proper brightness of His heavenly exaltation and of the church's union with Him. The late Bp. Chr. Wordsworth was a learned and pious man; but his commentary here and everywhere yields the fullest evidence of this theological bias, shared by the Puritan, the Low, and the Broad Schools, no less than by his own, the so-called High, little as he might relish such companions. Faith alone rises to the enjoyment of heavenly things. Tradition has classes in its school to suit the lovers of antiquity and of novelty, of the law and of free thought. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Not the church, but Christ, is the true centre of divine purpose, which embraces the things which are in heaven as well as the things that are on earth. Both are to be, not only set under Christ, but this in visible display at His appearing and kingdom. Making the church all, instead of maintaining its real position, invariably has the effect of lowering and confusing the truth. For the church in this case takes the place of Israel, and seeks earthly things, ease, honour, riches, and power. Our true calling is now to suffer with and for Christ, waiting for heavenly glory at His coming; and our right witness is that God will then restore Israel to more than pristine blessing in the promised land to the joy of all the nations of the earth under the great King.

CHAPTER 21.

ISRAEL PUT TO SHAME, AND ISAAC'S DEATH.

Gen. 35: 21-29.

Jacob had not yet reached the end of his journeyings, any more than of his sorrows, a man of the most varied experience among the fathers, as Isaac had the least. So he said later to Pharaoh, Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. Yet this painful experience under the governing hand of God was blessed to his soul; and the Spirit of God marks it here by the name of "Israel," not conferred only but here used historically, as we find it again when years after he took another journey still more eventful (Gen. 46: 1, 30; Gen. 48: 2, etc.).

"And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent on the other side of Migdal-Eder (Tower of the flocks). And it came to pass when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine; and Israel heard of [it]. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: the sons of Leah, Reuben, Jacob's firstborn, and Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Zebulun; the sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin; and the sons of Bilhah Rachel's handmaid, Dan and Naphtali; and the sons of Zilpah Leah's handmaid, Gad and Asher. These [are] the sons of Jacob that were born to him in Padan-Aram. And Jacob came to Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kirjath-Arba, which [is] Hebron; where Abraham had sojourned, and Isaac. And the days of Isaac were a hundred and eighty years. And Isaac expired and died, and was gathered to his peoples, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (vers. 21-29).

There is a day at hand when Jehovah will assemble her that halteth, and will gather her that is driven out, and her that He hath afflicted; and He will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast off a strong nation. And Jehovah shall reign over them in mount Zion from henceforth even for ever. And thou, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, yea the first dominion shall come, even the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem. So brightly Micah (Micah 4) was given to prophesy of the flock of Israel, as in the next chapter of the Shepherd through whose sufferings alone could come such blessing and glory. Meanwhile he, the father of the twelve tribes, halted slowly in his keenly felt bereavement, who had known both to be driven out and afflicted.

But the time was not come for Him whom he too awaited, even to be smitten on the cheek, much less for the birth of that grand change when He returns in power. In that. land, which is to be the glory of all lands, through Him who will restore all things to God's glory, dwelt the desolate man. It was a lingering that presented a dismal snare to his firstborn, and, sad to say it, to the concubine of his father, the mother of his brothers Dan and Naphtali. Dinah had been a grief already; but what was that compared to the two-edged dagger that pierced his bosom? "Israel heard of it." But we are not told of a word that escaped him then. It was a grief too deep, if not for tears, for a passing burst of feeling; but his heart had sense of it when the sons gathered together round his dying bed, and he was given to tell them what would befall them at the end of days, not for the eternal scene, but for "the regeneration" and indeed before this comes. The dishonourer of his father, and in a way not even among the Gentiles that know not God, was forgiven, but lost his birthright and could have no pre-eminence either now or when God's kingdom comes for the earth, and Jesus is the head over all things heavenly as well as earthly.

The enumeration of the family is pathetic at this point in the patriarchal story. No flesh shall glory. Let him that glorieth glory in the Lord. Yet God takes pleasure in recording their names, both early and late in the O.T., and finally in the last book of the N.T., but with instructive variations. For the Bible is not only God's word, but an intensely moral book, little to be discerned by those who make mind their all.

The death of Isaac, with his great age, exceeding Abraham's, is here named, though we must bear in mind that it did not happen till Joseph was not only sold into Egypt but rose, unseen and unknown of Israel, into the seat next the throne. But here it is recounted, as the burial at Mamre brought again together the two sons in a sorrow that set aside strife. Notwithstanding the hatred which God hated was to come out afterward even to the close of the O.T. It must meet its doom in the day of Jehovah's indignation against all the nations, and His sword Shall come down on Edom, when the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, and Carmel and Sharon shall See the glory of Jehovah, the excellency of Israel's God.

CHAPTER 22.

JACOB AND JOSEPH.

Gen. 37.

All thoughtful readers will understand why the purpose in hand excludes dwelling on Gen. 36 Jacob has nothing to do with the chapter. It has its own important place of sketching the earthly lot of Esau. Indirectly however it is instructive, as showing that which is natural first coming into power, afterwards what is spiritual. The family of promise remain shepherds and herdmen, wandering here and there, without the land and within it, and even grievously oppressed; while the generations of Edom rise rapidly into importance, away from Canaan, in Mount Seir. The posterity of Edom claim soon the distinction of chiefs. "These are the dukes of the sons of Esau: the sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke Gatam, duke Amalek. These are the dukes that came of Eliphaz, in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Adah. And these are the sons of Reuel Esau's son; duke Nahath, duke Terah, duke Shammah, duke Mizzah. These are the dukes that came of Reuel in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Bashemath Esau's wife. And these are the sons of Oholibamah Esau's wife: duke Jeush, duke Jaalam, duke Korah. These are the dukes that came of Oholibamah the daughter of Anah, Esau's wife. These are the sons of Esau, and these are their dukes: the same is Edom" (Gen. 36: 15-19).

Others, too, posed as grandees, the sons of Seir the Horite or cave-dweller, the inhabitant of the land, summarised in vers. 29, 30: "these are the dukes that came of the Horites: duke Lotan, duke Shobal, duke Zibeon, duke Anah, duke Dishon, duke Ezer, duke Dishan. These are the dukes that came of the Horites according to their dukes in the land of Seir."

Nor was this the acme of their development. "And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before there reigned any king over the children of Israel." No less than eight kings are successively traced from Bela to Hadar, though it is carefully said that we have Esau's dukes again (vers. 40-43); and so we hear in the song of Moses Ex. 15: 15), but "the king" in the later history.

Even in Gen. 37 it is much more the history of Joseph that now begins, typifying the Lord in humiliation, and how He fared at the hands of His brethren according to the flesh. Our present task is to mark Jacob in it.

"And Jacob dwelt in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan. These [are] Jacob's generations. Joseph, [being] seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and he [was] a lad (or, doing service) with the sons of Bilhah; and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives; and Joseph brought their evil report to his (or, their) father. And Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he [was] son of his old age; and he gave him a coat of many colours. And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren; and they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told [it] to his brethren; and they hated him yet more. And he said to them, Hear, pray, this dream which I have dreamt. And, behold, we [were] binding sheaves in the midst of the field; and, behold, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about and bowed down to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Wilt thou indeed reign over us? or wilt thou indeed rule over us? And they hated him yet more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream and told [it] to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to me. And he told [it] to, his father, and to his brethren. And his father rebuked him, and said to him, What' [is] this dream that thou hast dreamt? Shall indeed I and thy mother and thy brethren come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father kept the saying" (vers. 1-11).

We leave the early piety of Joseph till its own season, and the divine communications with which he was favoured even as a youth. But it falls within Jacob's history to note the special affection which bound Joseph to him, and the dress of honour which was to play a heartless and cruel part toward their father in the unscrupulous revenge on Joseph with which they answered all. Jacob, though moved by the singular honour implied in the second dream, could not but treasure up its as yet dim import. Joseph's simplicity and candour, for there was an absence of all presumption, only kindled more fiercely the spite of his brethren, which soon found occasion to vent itself in outrageous malice. How like the way of the Jews with Him who was long after to be the blessed Antitype!

"And his brethren went to feed their father's flock in Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed [the flock] in Shechem? Come, that I may send thee to them. And he said to him, Here [am] I (or, Behold me). And he said to him, Go, pray, see after thy brethren's welfare and the flocks' welfare; and bring me word again. And he sent him out of the vale of Hebron; and he came to Shechem. And a man found him, and, behold, he was wandering in the field; and the man asked him, saying, What seekest thou? And he said, I seek my brethren: tell me, pray, where they feed. And the man said, They are departed hence; for I heard them say, Let us go to Dothan. And Joseph went to his brethren, and found them in Dothan. And they saw him afar off, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another [lit. a man to his brother], Behold, this master of dreams cometh. And now come, and let us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits; and we will say, An evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams. And Reuben heard, and delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood: cast him into this pit that [is] in the wilderness; but lay. no hand upon him (in order that he might deliver him out of their hand, to restore him to his father). And it came to pass, when Joseph was come to his brethren, that they stript Joseph of his coat, the coat of the colours that [was] on him; and they took him and cast him into the pit; and the pit [was] empty: [there was] no, water in it. And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes, and looked, and, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites came from Gilead; and their camels bore tragacanth and balsam and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt. And, Judah said to his brethren, What profit [is it] it we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come, and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand he upon him; for he [is] our brother, our flesh. And his brethren hearkened. And there passed by Midianitish men, merchants; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty silver [pieces]; and they brought Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned to the pit; and, behold, Joseph [was] not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned to his brethren and said, The child [is] not; and I, whither shall I go? And they took Joseph's coat, and killed a buck of the goats and dipt the coat in the blood, and they sent the coat of the colours, and they brought it to their father, and said, This have we found: know now whether it [be] thy son's coat or not. And he knew it, and said, [It is] my son's coat: an evil beast hath devoured him;  - surely Joseph is torn in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons rose up, and all his daughters, to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, For I will go down to my son into Sheol mourning. And his father wept for him. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar, chamberlain of Pharaoh, captain of the guard" (vers. 12-36).

Jacob had yet much to learn experimentally of God as well as of himself, even though then he was disposed to have his idols. His most recent lesson was in Rachel's death, his new one prolonged it every way in Joseph her firstborn, his most loved son, not dead, it is true, as he feared, but only at length found to be risen into that exalted seat of honour which disconcerted even him when first announced. Like the Lord was Joseph in his measure, a vessel of divine wisdom in humiliation deepening into the shadow of death, rejected and scorned most by his brethren, and sold to the Gentiles: the very errand of love on which his father sent him to them furnished the opportunity for wreaking their hatred on his lowly and blameless head. How little his envious brethren could anticipate that in the approaching hour of the earth's need and distress he alone was to bear up the pillars, and deliver from death not the chosen family alone but the world of that day, and turn by his wisdom a tribulation so deep and widespread into the greater glory of the sovereign power which exalted him! More than this, as we learn later on, his brethren were to be brought down to true self-judgment and have their hearts opened to grace when he should lead them into the truth, and at last make himself known to them as their saviour, the saviour of the world too in the figure, he once humbled to the uttermost, and then highly exalted, entirely outside and above Jewish limits. But we forbear to anticipate more, even of what the history of Jacob makes known necessarily.

CHAPTER 23.

TWO SONS OF JACOB CONTRASTED.

Gen. 38, 39.

As the chapters henceforth till much later refer rather to Jacob's sons than to himself, there is the less reason for dwelling on them now; they may, at least most of them, come for more particular notice under the proper head. But as they furnished not a little for the experience of Jacob also, under divine government, we may survey them by the way.

"And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a man of Adullam whose name was Hirah. And Judah saw there the daughter of a Canaanitish man whose name was Shua; and he took her and went in to her. And she conceived and bare a son; and he called his name Er; and she again conceived and bore a Son; and She called his name Onan. And again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah; and he was at Chezib when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah, and Jehovah slew him. And Judah Said to Onan, Go in to thy brother's wife, and fulfil to her the brother-in-law's duty, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass when he went in to his brother's wife, that he spilled [it] on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother. And what he did was evil in the eyes of Jehovah; and he slew him also. And Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, Remain a widow in thy father's house, until Shelah my son is grown; for he said, Lest he die also as his brothers. And Tamar went and remained in her father's house. And the days were multiplied when the daughter of Shua, Judah's wife, died. And Judah was comforted, and went up to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah, the Adullamite, to Timnah. And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold, thy father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put off from, her the garments of her widowhood, and covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in the gate of Enaim, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given to him as wife. And Judah saw her, and thought her [to be] a harlot; because she had covered her face. And he turned to her by the way, and said, Come, pray, let me go in to thee; for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. And she said, What, wilt thou give me that thou mayest come in to me? And he said, I will send a kid of the goats from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give a pledge until thou send [it]? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy lace, and thy stall which [is] in thy hand. And he gave [it] to her, and came in to her; and she conceived by him. And she rose and went her way, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid of the goats by hand of his friend the Adullamite, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand; but he found her not. And he asked the men of her place, saying, Where [is] the prostitute (dedicated one) that [was] at Enaim by the wayside? And they said, There was no prostitute there. And he returned to Judah, and said, I have not found her; and also the men of the place said, No prostitute has been there. And Judah said, Let her take [it] to her, lest we be put to shame. Behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her. And it came to pass about three months after that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter-in-law hath played the whore; and also, behold, she is pregnant by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, that she may be burned. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in-law, saying, By the man to whom these [belong] I am pregnant; and she said, Acknowledge, pray, whose [are] these, the signet, and the lace, and the stall. And Judah acknowledged and said, She is more righteous than I, because I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he know her again no more. And it came to pass at the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed,. that lone] put out [his] hand, and the midwife took and bound on his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. And it came to pass as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? on thee [be the] breach. And they called his name Pharez (Breach). And afterward came out his brother that [had] on his hand the scarlet thread, and they called his name Zerah (Rising)" (chap. 38).

The chapter needs few words to impress its proofs of Judah's low state morally, as the next does for displaying Joseph blessed and a blessing. The name of "Jehovah," not "God" merely, is marked in both: in Gen. 38 judging the manifest violation of His will, in Gen. 39 causing him to prosper who sought to please Jehovah, and this in the most adverse circumstances, first as a slave, secondly as a prisoner, through the wickedness of Jew and Gentile. And we may notice that it is not Reuben or any other of the tribal heads, but Judah that proposed the sale of Joseph, and now evinced in his house the evil which drew down curse on curse, till its chief had to own the sad shame of Tamar, more righteous than himself who adjudged her to die by fire. Yet by this guilty Judah, and by Tamar, came He who cleanses from all sin by His blood, and will reign over the universe to God's glory, far beyond all that Joseph prefigured, as He went far lower in humiliation and suffering.

"And Joseph was brought down into Egypt; and Potiphar, a chamberlain of Pharaoh, captain of the life-guard, an Egyptian, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaelites that brought him down thither. And Jehovah was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that Jehovah was with him, and that Jehovah made all which he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found favour in his eyes, and he served him; and he made him overseer over his house; and all he had he put into his hand. And it came to pass from the time he had made him overseer in his house and over all that was his, that Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of Jehovah was upon all that was his in house and in field. And he left all that was his in Joseph's hand, and he knew not anything with him save the bread that he ate. And Joseph was beautiful of form and beautiful of countenance. And it came to pass after these things that the wife of his master cast her eyes on Joseph, and said, Lie with me. But he refused and said to his master's wife, Behold, my master knoweth not what is with me in the house, and he hath put all that is his into my hand. None is greater in this house than I; nor hath he kept back from me anything but thee, because thou art his wife; and how can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?* And it came to pass as she spoke to Joseph day [by] day, that he hearkened not to her to lie by her [and] to be with her. And it came to pass about this time, that he went into the house to do his business; and none of the men of the house was there within. And she caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me; and he left his garment in her hand and fled and ran out. And it came to pass when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled forth, that she called to the men of the house, and spoke to them, saying, See, he hath brought in a Hebrew man to mock us: he came in to me to lie with me, and I cried with a great voice. And it came to pass when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me and fled and went out. And she laid his garment by her until his lord came home. And she spoke to him, according to these words, saying, The Hebrew servant whom thou hast brought to us came in to mock me; and it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me and fled forth. And it came to pass when his lord heard the words of his wife which she spoke to him, saying, According to these things thy servant did to me, that his wrath was kindled. And Joseph's lord took him and put him into the tower-house, a place where the king's prisoners were bound; and he was there in the tower-house. And Jehovah was with him, and extended mercy to him, and gave him favour in the eyes of the chief of the tower-house. And the chief of the tower-house committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that [were] in the tower-house; and [of] all that they were doing there, he was the doer. The chief of the tower-house looked not to anything under his hand, because Jehovah [was] with him; and what he did Jehovah made to prosper (Gen. 39).

*"God" here is perfectly in place. The sin was against His nature, and independent of special relationship. But it is also a striking evidence of the folly of such as fancy an Elohistic writer to account for what is due to intrinsic grounds and spiritual feeling.

It is as lovely a picture in the simple fact of grace moving under Jehovah's guidance in purity and integrity where man and woman had dealt villainously; as Judah and his house, passing from one shame to another under His chastising hand, are a serious and humbling lesson.

CHAPTER 24.

JACOB'S LOWLY SON EXALTED, AND THE PROUD ABASED.

Gen. 40 - 45.

Here we must be brief, as we have to do, not with Jacob, but with his sons; so that a mere sketch is all that we would now attempt. As man's and his brethren's part was evil toward the righteous Joseph, God wrought in His admirable providence, and caused what they did to injure only the more to accomplish His purpose of good, as well as to set him in honour who deserved it, but had to pass from one humiliation to a worse.

First we see Joseph concerned with the unhappy looks of Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and chief baker, bound in the same prison with himself. They had each his dream, and were grieved that there was none to interpret. But Joseph, replying that this belongs to God, asks to hear, and furnishes the desired light; which was exactly verified in the death of the baker and the restoration of the cupbearer (Gen. 40). Next, Pharaoh, at the end of two full years of prison trial to Joseph, has his dreams which not all the Scribes nor the sages of Egypt could explain. This woke up the forgetful heart of the restored chamberlain who tells the king of the Hebrew youth; and he, hastily sent for from the dungeon, disclaims any source but God for the king's need. But on hearing he is equally clear that God had sent the dreams to Pharaoh, and enabled him to let Pharaoh see what He Himself was about to do. The word came so simply yet convincingly home to the king and his servants, that none was so fit to direct aright the divinely given light as he who had been the means of making it known; and at one bound Pharaoh set the captive over all the land of Egypt, next to himself on the throne. And here again the prophetic dreams were punctually fulfilled to the immense relief of suffering man (Gen. 41). Among the sufferers (Gen. 42, Gen. 43) were Jacob and his sons, all but Benjamin being sent by their father to buy the food which Joseph alone could supply. "And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him" (8). And a marvellous forecast follows of the way a greater than Joseph, first suffering from His brethren and the Gentiles, interpreter too of God's wisdom in His humiliation, and exalted to the right hand of the Highest, not only administers the richest blessing to the Gentiles, unknown to His Jewish brethren in their dark unbelief, but adopts deep and efficacious means to bring these to repentance and make Himself known as their Brother and gracious Friend in the day of His glory.

On the details, however instructive and necessary to a life of Joseph, we need not here dilate, beyond pointing out the critical part of the contrivance to make Benjamin prisoner, which drew out Judah's confession and plea at all cost to let this youngest brother return to, his father (Gen. 44). Thereon follows (in Gen. 45) Joseph making himself known to his brethren. And here we look on all as living pictures of that great event which will as surely be accomplished when all Israel shall be saved, by a distinct act of divine grace and power, when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in (Rom. 11: 25-27). As touching the gospel the Jews are still enemies for the Gentiles' sake; for God is still working among the nations, and not at all yet in a national way with the Jews, who are still unbelieving that He who came of themselves, the rejected Messiah, is exalted on high and has long been the source of salvation and blessing to the Gentiles.

But assuredly the time is at hand when the famished Jews will be brought under His gracious hand, and after secret mercy will be brought to own that the man of God's right hand, the Son of man whom He made strong for Himself, is none other than He whom they so shamelessly rejected and forced on the Gentiles to crucify Him, who in His glory will not be ashamed to call them brethren. In order that this should be a real work in their souls, not as often of old a mere external deliverance, but truly of those written in the book and characterised by genuine faith and repentance, they must pass through a special tribulation which will be disastrous to all who having no conscience toward God become apostate. But it will be blessed greatly to those who are born of God and exercised by their most bitter experience, and at length are brought to fully judge all when they behold in His glory for their rescue and blessing Him whom they recognise as the Messiah they had pierced.

The Psalms and the prophets, as well as the prophetic part of the Revelation, to say nothing of the synoptic Gospels also, cast much light, not on the glorious change only, but on the process employed by the Lord to make Himself known to His brethren. Here tradition has been guilty of a double wrong: by appropriating to Christians all that divine light which will surely be afforded gradually and increasingly when God begins to prepare His ancient people in darkness and error and suffering through a work of grace, however ignorant at first, for the blessed and exalted place they are to have under Messiah and the new covenant in the days of the kingdom, the kingdom no longer in mystery but in manifestation. And how precious will those chapters be, when conscience is truly awakened and exercised, and light dawns surely if slowly on their souls, and the true Joseph is at length made known to His brethren! The work will not be complete, until the sins are judged in the light of His personal presence, His glory and His grace. And what type could be clearer than this Gen. 45 affords us? Does this diminish our interest and profit too in anticipating the future? Nay, nor this only; for we may see in Joseph's marriage and his sons the shadow of Christian or church blessing, while He is not yet at all known to His brethren as such.

How sad it is to realise, as we enjoy the various light of Christ's humiliation and glory, that the very principle of the higher criticism is nothing but withering and blinding unbelief. For if there be anything more distinctive of it than another, is it not the denial of true prophecy? And what can be more characteristic of scripture than that such simple narratives as this should be so pervaded with that light divine? Alas! it is equally blind to the heavenly light of Christ, of which His miracles were a very real though far from the highest part. For this reason the apostasy is worse in Christendom than in Israel, however grievous and gross this may have been.

The root of the evil lies deeper still. It is fundamental unbelief in the glory of Christ's person, to which the emptying of Himself is perverted. Decorous language is observed, in England especially, not to openly violate the Athanasian creed, along with the strongest desire to get rid of it by efforts direct and indirect. Yet enough escapes the pen and lips to convince men of any discernment, that Christ's Deity is no more accepted in reality than the plenary inspiration of the scriptures. Craft avails itself of the facts, that God or gods way be employed of men in a merely representative sense as rulers, and that divine inspiration is vulgarly and in the Prayer-book applied to what is simply natural when exhibited in a surpassing degree of excellence. But all such reasoning is a wicked and destructive cheat, when the question is of the Lord of all, and of God's word. And these unbelieving men are only hurrying on that revealed departure of Christendom from the faith of God's Christ to bring on the predicted vengeance of God on the most loathsome and detested objects of His judgment.

CHAPTER 25.

ISRAEL AND HIS SONS GO DOWN INTO EGYPT.

Gen. 46, 47.

Parental affection answered in Jacob, both when he believed not for joy fainting at the news that Joseph was alive and governor over all the land of Egypt, and reviving when he said "It is enough: Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die."

But it was not quite enough. Divine goodness wrought in his soul when he reached the southern limit of the land. "And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-Sheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in the visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here [am] I. And he said, I [am] God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes" (Gen. 46: 1-4).

What grace on God's part! Abram had gone down into Egypt through the pressure of famine, and sadly failed there, whatever riches he gained. Isaac too, when famine in the land might have drawn him off like his father, was expressly forbidden to go thither and enjoined to dwell in the land under the assurance of His blessing. Israel needed and had God bidding him not to fear going down there, where He would make of him a great nation, with special comfort nearer still to his heart.

The rest of the chapter from ver. 5 presents the chosen family in Pharaoh's wagons with their cattle and goods, "Jacob and all his seed with him: his sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt." In the list that follows Joseph's sons are given in their due place according to Hebrew usage. "And he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to direct his face to Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen, and presented himself to him; and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou [art] yet alive" (vers. 28-30). The close of the chapter gives Joseph telling his brethren what he proposed to say to Pharaoh, that they might have Goshen to dwell in.

In Genesis 47 we have them presented to Pharaoh accordingly; and the still more interesting interview of Jacob with the king. "And Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How old [art] thou? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage [are] a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh" (vers. 7-10).

How wondrous the grace of God toward Jacob! It was his to bless Pharaoh. Abram deceived the Pharaoh of his day and for Sarai's sake had "sheep and oxen and he-asses and men-servants and maidservants, and she-asses and camels"; and he again deceived Abimelech similarly; as did Isaac at a later day in like forgetfulness of his Almighty protector. Not so the "worm Jacob." In weakness was he made strong, and enabled to bear himself with dignity before the greatest man on the earth. Not a favour did he ask, when, we may be sure, he might have had anything. He blessed Pharaoh when he went in, and before he came out. "And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better." Yet there was in this neither vanity nor pride, but a soul that had come to know divine goodness; and then a better thing was his portion than the world could confer. Besides there was treasure enough in God for Pharaoh; so that his heart overflowed on the king's behalf.

As to Joseph's administration of which the body of the chapter (11-26) treats, this is not the subject in hand. But the latter part tells us of Jacob's living in the land of Egypt seventeen years more; and the time drew nigh for Israel to die. So he called Joseph; and with the same solemnity as Abraham employed in sending Eliezer for Isaac's bride, he made Joseph not only promise but swear to carry his body out of Egypt and bury it in the burial-place of his fathers. Joseph's splendour did not in the least wean his heart from the land of promise. There would he be laid, as his spirit waited for the King of glory and the kingdom.

CHAPTER 26.

JACOB BLESSING JOSEPH'S SONS.

Gen. 48.

In this chapter scenes of profound interest follow as to the dying patriarch, for his blessing on the sons of Joseph; in the next for his dying words to his own sons in general. Few words are here needed however much may be conveyed.

"And it came to pass after these things, that [one] told Joseph, Behold, thy father [is] sick. And he took with him his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. And [one] told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee; and Israel strengthened himself and sat upon the bed. And Jacob said to Joseph, The Almighty God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me and said to me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples; and I will give this land to thy seed after thee, an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, who were born to thee in the land of Egypt before I came to thee into Egypt, [shall be] mine; Ephraim and Manasseh Shall be mine as Reuben and Simeon. And thy family which thou hast begotten (or, shalt beget) after them shall be thine: they shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan on the way, when yet a certain distance (way) to come to Ephrath; and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath, that is, Bethlehem. And Israel beheld Joseph's sons and said, Who [are] these? And Joseph said to his father, They [are] my sons whom God hath given me here. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee unto me, that I may bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age — he could not see. And he brought them nearer to him; and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face; and, behold, God hath also let me see thy seed. And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel's right hand, and brought [them] near to him. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid [it] on Ephraim's head — and he [was] the younger — and his left hand on Manasseh's head, guiding (others, crossing) wittingly his hands, for Manasseh [was] the first-born. And he blessed Joseph and said, The God before whom walked my fathers Abraham and Isaac, the God that tended me all my life long till this day, the angel that redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth (land). And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it was evil in his eyes; and he took hold of his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head. And Joseph said to his father, Not so, my father, for this [is] the first-born: put thy right hand on his head. But his father refused and said, I know, my son, I know: he also will become a people and he also will be great; but truly his younger brother will be greater than he; and his seed will become a fulness of nations. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee will Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh; and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I die; and God will be with you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers. And I have given to thee one slope (shoulder) above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow" (Gen. 48).

It is well to note the peculiarity of the phrase in verse 19, not "a multitude of peoples" but "a fulness of nations." The Septuagint is lax in verse 4, where it gives "congregations of nations," (συναγωγὰς ἐθνῶν) instead of "an assembly of peoples;" but it is nearer the truth in verse 19, where it has πλῆθος ἐθνῶν, "a fulness of nations." It is notorious, that in contrast with Judah and Benjamin, who had a distinct place, all the rest of the tribes fell under Ephraim as Israel.

Such was this affecting and instructive incident: Jacob clear, where Isaac had been dim; Jacob clearer than Joseph, hitherto given beyond other men of God to be of penetrating insight into divine things. What deep self-judgment must have passed through Israel's spirit, as he reviewed the blessing once stolen by his own guile! Could not, would not, Jehovah have, somehow to His own glory without his servant's shame, have crossed Isaac's hands to make good His word of promise to Jacob? How sad not to have trusted Him!

Jacob was deceitful no more; nay he even stedfastly opposed the will of his beloved Joseph in subjection to God who directed him. What a change through His grace!

We may not pass over the reference to this chapter in Hebrews 11: 21. Dying, Jacob was stronger in faith than in all the vigour of his life, tried and energetic as it had been. Then it was that he by faith blessed each of the sons of Joseph above nature's thoughts; as Isaac, overruled of God, blessed Jacob and Esau according to His purpose. Nor is it without force that Jacob's worshipping on the top of his staff is here mentioned, in contrast with his father's fear when he discovered his folly in striving to please himself contrary to God's word. With his staff he passed the Jordan a lonely outcast; in due time he had become two bands, though in fear of Esau's resentment, whom God had recalled to natural affection. Now, so soon to depart, he is strong in faith, adoring and giving glory to God; whilst he opens his lips as God's mouthpiece over his grandsons,

CHAPTER 27.

JACOB'S LAST WORDS TO HIS SONS, His DEATH AND BURIAL.

Genesis 49, 50.

On no dying bed of the patriarchs shone light more brightly than on Jacob's. They all were prophets, and Abraham, even when faulty, was so designated to the Philistine king, who could not but see his faults; but none was given so much as Jacob to scan Israel's future.

"And Jacob called his sons and said, Gather yourselves together, and I will tell you what will befall you at the end of days. Assemble yourselves together and hear, ye sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father.

Reuben, thou [art] my first-born, my might, and the first-fruits of my vigour, excellency of dignity and excellency of strength. Bubbling up as the waters, thou shalt have no pre-eminence; because thou wentest up to thy father's couch: then defiledst thou [it]; he went up to my bed.

Simeon and Levi [are] brethren, weapons of violence their swords. My soul, come not into their council; mine honour, be not united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will houghed oxen. Cursed [be] their anger, for [it was] fierce, and their rage, for [it was] cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

Judah, thee will thy brethren praise: thy hand [will be] on the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children will bow down to thee. Judah [is] a lion's whelp. From the prey, my son, thou art gone up. he stoopeth, he coucheth as a lion, and as a lioness: who will rouse him up? The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him will be the obedience (or, gathering) of peoples. He bindeth his foal to the vine, and his ass's colt to the choice vine; he washeth his garments in wine, and his vesture in the blood of grapes; his eyes [are] red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.

Zebulun shall dwell at the breach of the seas, and he [shall be] for a haven of ships; and his border [shall be] upon Zidon.

Issachar [is] a bony (or, strong) ass, couching between two hurdles; and he saw rest that [it was] good, and the land that [it was] pleasant; and he bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a tributary servant.

Dan shall judge his people, as another of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a horned serpent in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider falleth backward. I wait for thy salvation, O Jehovah.

Gad — troops shall press upon him; but he shall press upon their heel.

Out of Asher his bread [shall be] fat, and he, shall yield royal dainties.

Naphthali, [is] a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words.

Joseph [is] a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a fountain; daughters (i.e. branches) shoot over the wall. The archers have provoked, and shot at and hated him; but his bow abideth firm, and the arms of his hands are supple by the hands of the mighty One of Jacob. From thence [is] the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel; from the God of thy father, He, will help thee, and from the Almighty, He will bless thee, with blessings of heaven above, with blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath, with blessings of the breast and of the womb. The blessings of thy father surpass the blessings of my progenitors unto the bounds of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separated from his brethren.

Benjamin [is] a wolf that raveneth; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he shall divide the spoil.

All these [are] the twelve tribes of Israel, and this [is] what their father spoke to them; and he blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them. And he charged them and said to them, I am gathered to my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that [is] in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that [is] in the field of Machpelah which [is] opposite to Mamre in the land of Canaan; which Abraham bought of Ephron the Hittite with the field for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field, and of the cave that [is] in it, [was] from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered his feet into the bed, and expired, and was gathered to his people."

It is sadly instructive to observe how post-apostolic tradition lost the heavenly testimony by effacing Israel's hope, and appropriating its earthly place. We need not expend words in repeating these ecclesiastical vanities of Christendom; he that would know how far they reached can find them in Bp. Chr. Wordsworth's Commentary.

The true bearing is on Israel's future. For Scripture is prophetic generally and here avowedly so, as Jacob said. It begins with Israel in the flesh, anything but the Israel of God. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi indicate ruin through corruption, and violence: the two characters of human evil from the beginning to the end of man's sad story, saddest in God's people according to privilege and responsibility. Then, in Judah, only the blind can fail to see God's purpose in Christ born of the tribe but as King (not as the glorified Head in heaven), to whom shall be the gathering of peoples; but withal the failure for the time, because Shiloh was not received of the Jews. Yet the purpose stands firm in Him who came. Next, we see Zebulun going out in commerce of sea and ships among the Gentiles; in Issachar depressions and compromises for selfish quiet as the world's slave; and in Dan, though claiming to judge, falling under Satan's power worse than idolatry; yet at this crisis a remnant looking for Jehovah's salvation. Thereon the oppressed rises to press an oppressor, as shown by Gad; while Asher points out Israel's enjoyment of their proper blessings; and Naphthali, freedom in a gracious witness for God. The whole rises to the fitting climax in Joseph, after being separated from his brethren and exalted to a wider and loftier sphere, bringing in abundant and unfailing blessing clearly identified with the true Shepherd, the Stone of Israel once sorely wounded, but flowing forth over all enclosures: blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep beneath, blessings of the race and the creature, blessings beyond bound and comparison, centring in Him Who is worthy. And with Joseph goes Benjamin, the son of his father's right hand, when power in Israel will put down every rival and share the spoil. Thus is Israel to be blessed and exalted, because in faith under Messiah and the new covenant at the end of days.

As Gen. 49 ends with Jacob's death, the closing chapter (Gen. 50) tells us of his sons carrying him to the field of Machpelah in Canaan, where his fathers were buried: a grievous mourning in the eyes of the people of the land. What a difference for those conversant with Christ glorified in heaven when they "not of the world" depart to be with Him!

Jewish and Christian Expectation of Christ Contrasted.

I am not without hope that, under the gracious teaching of the Spirit, the simple statement of the distinction we are going briefly to examine may be blessed to souls. Happy is it when we are brought to ponder on the riches of grace which God has lavished on us; and this in the spirit of children, not desiring to prove our own notions, but to learn the thoughts, purposes, and ways of God. Happier still when, in the communion of Him Who dwells in us, our delight is to be shown the various glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to adore.

His various glory, I repeat; for this the natural mind relishes not, but it is exactly what the Spirit loves and leads into (John 16: 13-15). Hence it is that to unbelief the scripture is a blank without heights and without depths. The purity of its sentiments, and the simple grandeur of its style, may be allowed and admired. But there are no land-marks, no chart, no star of Bethlehem to direct and cheer the believer's way. His conscience is not in the presence of God, and therefore there is no true Christ in his heart. The Bible to him may be a very wonderful book, but that is all.

For professors of Christ is another snare. If it seem to be owned practically as that which reveals the divine way of salvation, almost every thing in it is made to bear on this one point. Warnings, threatenings, exhortations, invitations, instructions, commands, prayers, ordinances — nearly all that Old and New Testaments utter is made to converge on what, to the flesh, really amounts to this, God helping us by His Son and Spirit to save ourselves. From this quagmire God would mercifully extricate His people; has He not taught all His children with more or less intelligence to rest upon the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ? Then it is that the vast field of the written word opens apace: the different displays which God has made of His character; and the effect of these dealings upon believers and unbelievers in the several dispensations, summed up in the person of Christ, whether viewed once here below, now in heaven, or by-and-by returning again. Thus His child, led of the Spirit, grows in knowledge, and begins to see the revealed past, present, and future, in their just proportions, because he begins to learn all in Christ, Whose mind he has (1 Cor. 2). In other words, he is learning to prove the things which differ.

Now, it may be a narrow, but certainly it is an important, part of the things which differ, that is suggested by the title to this paper. Nor would I pretend to sketch minutely the ways in which the estimate formed by a godly Jew respecting Christ's advent is distinguishable from the hope set before the church in His future presence. Let us content ourselves with certain broad essential differences, which are nevertheless often confounded by Christians to the obscuring of their proper portion, and so far to the detriment of their souls. The testimony of scripture is so full and distinct that little reasoning is necessary; still its importance may well demand ample quotations.

The advent of a glorious Messiah to the earth was characteristically a Jewish hope. I speak not of traditional fables, but of the truths which the Jews saw and held fast in their scriptures. To such believing Jews, Messiah was the center and security of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He was the accomplisher of all righteousness, blessing and peace in their land, Immanuel's land. By Him they expected to be saved from their enemies and from the hand of all those that hated them, that so they might serve the Lord without fear all the days of their life. He was to cut off all the horns of the wicked, and to exalt the righteous; to save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they might dwell there and have it in possession, and thus the seed of His servants should inherit it, and they that love His name dwell therein.

This is plain in the Psalms as the character of deliverance pleaded by the Jewish remnant — not a rapture out of the earth, but a destruction of their enemies in it; a divine vengeance upon their enemies on earth, not a gathering to Jehovah for heaven. They looked, and will look, for Jehovah to go forth and fight against the nations He will gather at the latter end against Jerusalem; they will look for His feet to stand upon the Mount of Olives, and Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. Then, with David their king over Israel, restored as it were, from the grave and Ephraim and Judah united perfectly and for ever under the rule of the true Beloved, they expect to dwell in their land, and the heathen shall know that God Jehovah sanctifies Israel when His sanctuary shall be in their midst for evermore. They might read of a Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, but their hope was the presence and reign of the Messiah here below, in special connection with the Jewish nation and land. The following texts will still more plainly show the truth we have been stating.

Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession; Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel” (Ps. 2: 6-9).

For Jehovah the Most High is terrible; he is a great King over all the earth. He shall subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet” (Ps. 47: 2, 3).

Great is Jehovah, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion; on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. God is known in her palaces for a refuge” (Ps. 48: 1-3; 45; 47; 48.).

He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve him. For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence; and precious shall their blood be in his sight. And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised. There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth. His name shall endure for ever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him, all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be Jehovah Elohim the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things; and blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen (Ps. 72: 4-19).

I need not go more minutely through the Psalms, beyond directing attention to Ps. 128., as evidently in accordance with the remarks already made. So also Ps. 132: 13-18. The inspired praises of Psalms 146-150 will then have their literal fulfilment. It is earthly joy under Messiah's dominion, and all is in unison with the thoughts, feelings, associations, hopes, and triumphs of His people Israel.

The prophets are equally explicit.

In that day shall the branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: when Jehovah shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. And Jehovah will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defense. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain (Isa. 4: 2-6).

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this (Isa. 9: 6, 7).

But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together : and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim. But they shall fly upon the shoulder of the Philistines toward the west; they shall spoil them of the east together: they shall lay their hand upon Edom and Moab; and the children of Ammon shall obey them. And Jehovah shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt (Isa. 11: 4-16).

And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall punish the host of the high ones upon high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be visited. Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when Jehovah of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously” (Isa. 24: 21-23). “And in this mountain shall Jehovah of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall he take from off all the earth: for Jehovah hath spoken it. And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is Jehovah; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation. For in this mountain shall the hand of Jehovah rest, and Moab shall be trodden down under him, even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill” (Isa. 25: 6-10). “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root; Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. And it shall come to pass in that day, that Jehovah shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship Jehovah in the holy mount of Jerusalem” (Isa. 27: 6, 12, 13). “Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty ; they shall behold the land that is very far off. Thine heart shall meditate terror. Where is the scribe? where is the receiver? where is he that counted the towers? Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of deeper speech than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue, that thou canst not understand. Look upon Zion, the city of our Solemnities: thine eyes shall see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But there the glorious Jehovah will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For Jehovah is our judge, Jehovah is our lawgiver, Jehovah is our king; he will save us” (Isa. 33: 17-22).

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellence of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of Jehovah and the excellency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35: 1-10).

The whole of Isa. 60, 61, 62 are closely in point, but can only be referred to now.

For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of Jehovah, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah (Isa. 65: 17-25).

Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her; that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the abundance of her glory. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb: and the hand of Jehovah shall be known toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. For, behold, Jehovah will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire, for by fire and by his sword will Jehovah plead with all flesh: and the slain of Jehovah shall be many” (Isa. 66: 10-16).

And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers (Jer. 3: 16-18).

Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that they shall no more say, Jehovah liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; but, Jehovah liveth, who brought up and who led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land (Jer. 23: 5-8).

To this we may add as most express, chaps. 31, 32, 33.

In Ezekiel, the reader may consult chaps. 16, 20, 36, 37, 39, 40-48; also Dan. 7, 8, 9, 12; Hosea 1, 2, 3; Joel 2, 3; Amos 9; Obadiah; Micah 4, 5 ; Hab. 3; Zeph.3; Haggai 2; Zech. 2, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14; and Mal. 3, 4.

Another distinction which may be briefly noticed is that the Jews had the revelation of outward circumstances and ordered dates whereby to regulate their expectations. We need do little more than refer to the communications of God made to Abraham in Gen. 15, as well as others subsequently, for illustrations of this.

Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve, will I judge; and afterwards shall they come out with great substance (Gen. 15: 13, 14).

Now it will not be disputed that the father of the faithful rejoiced to see Christ's day, and he saw it and was glad (John 9: 56); but it was through, and at the end of, a long course of years and trying vicissitudes as regarded his seed. Abraham was in no way waiting for that day as if it might happen in his own life or shortly after. He was perfectly certain that the day of Christ could not come for some centuries at least. Full well he counted upon that day bringing in deliverance to his family, and hence, his joy. (See Gen. 49: 10). Again, passing over intermediate predictions, the word brought by Gabriel to Daniel is even more detailed and with chronological points of a very defined character.

Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city, and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined” (Dan. 9: 25, 26).

Hence it is plain that, if we suppose a godly Jew of that age to have understood the prophecy of the seventy weeks, he could not expect Messiah to come and be cut off till the expiry of nearly five hundred years. Ignorance might seek the living among the dead, but no believer with intelligence of this divine prediction could possibly look for the arrival and cutting off of the Christ previously to the revealed epoch. It would have been faith in him to have said, “I expect the Messiah after so many years, not before; for so hath the mouth of Jehovah spoken.”

With the church, on the contrary, the case is wholly different. Her hope is not the times of restitution of all things, but to be with the Christ in heaven as His bride; and as her hope is unearthly, so is it wholly unconnected with the times and seasons which characterized the expectations of Israel. Not that we are ignorant of these dates and epochs; but we know perfectly that the day of Jehovah so comes as a thief in the night — a day of destruction whence there is no escape. But we are not in darkness that that day should overtake us as a thief. We are already children of the day, and when the day arrives, we shall come with the Sun of righteousness Who ushers it in. We shall have been with Him before the day breaks; for we know Him as the bright, the Morning Star, and the morning star He will give to him that overcomes.

Certain times and seasons, as we all are quite aware, must precede the restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1). Thus we know that one week remains out of the seventy of Dan. 9, when the prince that shall come — a Roman prince — shall confirm covenant with the mass of the Jews for seven years. But, like another traitor and son of perdition, he shall put forth his hands against such as be at peace with him; he shall break his covenant (Ps. 55: 20). The covenant with death shall be disannulled (Isa.28). “In the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” This is followed by the abomination of desolation for its allowed term, “even until the consumption.” (Compare with Dan. 9; ch. 7: 19-26). “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24: 21). “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob's trouble: but he shall be saved out of it” (Jer. 30: 7). “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Dan. 12: 1).

The church knows these revealed periods, but knows them as connected, not with herself, but with Jerusalem and the Jewish people, Daniel's people. The church does not wait to be gathered under a Messiah on earth, but to be caught up to meet Him in the air, and be ever with the Lord (1 Thess. 4); with Him in His Father's house; with Him when the successive judgments (symbolized by the seals, trumpets, and vials) are falling on the earth; with Him when the marriage-supper of the Lamb is celebrated above; with Him when He wars with the beast and the false prophet; with Him, when we reign together for a thousand years; and with Him in the subsequent eternal state. “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” Surely, it is a blessed hope that the appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ is to set to rights all things here below which are now out of course. Creation shall be delivered into the liberty of the glory of the children of God, and Israel be no longer blind but seeing. All Israel shall be saved, when the Redeemer comes out of Zion, and turns away ungodliness from Jacob. And if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles: how much more their fulness? If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?

If we look above, the long usurped possession of the air (Eph. 2: 2; Eph. 6: 12) shall be rescued from Satan and his angels; no longer shall he be permitted on high to accuse the brethren of Christ in the presence of God (Rev. 12); no longer will there be conflict with wicked spirits above. That old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, shall be bound and cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years, before the last vain struggle when he is thrown into the lake of fire.

But it is important to see that not any {any of these things} nor all these things are our proper hope, which is to be translated, and meet the Lord Himself in the clouds. As it is said in John 14: 3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” Is this on earth, or in heaven? Is it merely the honors of a displayed kingdom? or is it not the nearer and higher intimacy of the Son of God in the home of the Father on high? The disciples did not ask, nor did the Lord indicate, dates or signs when their rapture should be.

But in the prophecy of Matt. 24 He does give the sign of His coming and of the consummation of the age. In then meeting the enquiries of the disciples from their own Jewish point of view, He enters into the general facts respecting Jerusalem and Judea, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, etc, which were but the beginning of sorrows. The end was not yet, which should not come before the gospel of the kingdom was preached in all the habitable earth for a witness to all the nations. From Matt. 24: 14 he describes the particular marks of the closing crisis up to His manifestation to all the tribes of the earth, and the complete ingathering of His elect (Jews) from the four winds. Of His elect earthly people this gathering must be, because when Christ, our life, appears, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. Thus the church and Christ are manifested at the same time in glory; whereas the elect described in Matt. 24 are only gathered after the Son of man's appearing, and cannot therefore be the church. All the context, the more it is examined, proclaims them to be Jewish disciples, who at the signal of the setting up of the abomination flee, and so escape the unparalleled tribulation of those lawless scenes of the end; for their simple trust is in the Man of God's right hand, “the Son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.” (Compare Ps. 79, 80.)

But, as we have seen before, the passage in John's Gospel has nothing to do with Jerusalem, or the earth, or earthly circumstances. John never speaks of a special tribulation for Jewish disciples at a particular time and place, but of the general tribulation we should count upon in the world at any time (John 16: 33). So His coming is not merely deliverance to a persecuted Jewish remnant on earth, but to receive us to Himself in heaven, without one hint of time, place, or circumstances, that we might ever wait for Him as our hope.

Doubtless the church is to reign over the earth, the bright witness of the Father's love; for the world shall then know that He loved her as He loved His Son, both being displayed in the same glory. And how blessed the ministry of the church in that day, serving the gladsome earth according to the grace which has called, kept, and glorified herself on high, the Bride, the Lamb's wife! We shall inherit the earth; we shall judge the world and angels too in that administration of the fulness of times, when all things shall be gathered together in one in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him in whom we also thus obtained an inheritance. Joint heirs with Him, we shall share all He will rule as the exalted Man. And God hath put all things under His feet. Though we do not yet see all things put under Him, we do see Himself exalted; and when the day arrives for Him to take the dominion, it will be manifested that He is head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.

The Old Testament prophecies, it cannot be denied, are full of the earthly glory. In the New Testament we have the mystery of God's will made known to us, involving the inheritance of things in heaven as well as things on earth, and the church co-heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ, as His body (Eph. 1: 9-14). No prophets of ancient times had ever uttered such thoughts. It is not merely that such a portion was not understood; but it was not even revealed. It was kept hid in God, and is now revealed, we are told, to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. The old prophets had spoken of times of refreshing from the presence of Jehovah, when Israel, or at least a Jewish remnant, repent and are converted; they had largely depicted the times of the restitution of all things, when Messiah comes from the heavens which now receive Him (Acts 3). No doubt they foretold the rule of the heavens (Dan. 4), and anticipated the joy and peace of the world under that kingdom.

But the old prophets, however inspired, never predicted, much less did any know, that Christ will have her who is His body and spouse associated with Him, and enjoying all His love and glory in the heavenly places; though they did celebrate the time when the land shall be married, and Jehovah shall make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. The bride they sing of, in the Canticles and the Psalms, is an earthly bride. Very different is the church of which Paul speaks in Eph. 5. Very different the marriage of the Lamb, of which John tells in Rev. 19, as far above the espousal of the Old Testament as the heavenly glory of Christ exceeds His earthly, though all be perfect in its place.

Further, be it noted that, whether it be deliverance in mount Zion and Jerusalem (Joel 2), whether it be judgment of the Gentiles in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3), with both we find wonders displayed in the heavens, and in the earth blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke; the sun turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come. Nothing of the kind is ever connected in scripture with the catching up of the church, whose only sign is the descent of the Lord Jesus to summon her into His presence in the air. His descent, and the saints' consequent rapture, are nowhere described as events which the world is to behold. To them that look for Him Christ appears, but to none else, so far as scripture shows, until He is revealed in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus. His public revelation, in order to judge, is called “the day of the Lord,” “the appearing,” etc.; and it is certain that many signs will precede that day, and His “manifestation” to every eye. The apostasy must be ripe, and the lawless one be without hindrance; and the great tribulation be, out of which comes the innumerable Gentile multitude of Rev. 7, as well as

the future unparalleled tribulation in Judea. But this is not all.

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet; and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24: 29-31).

But I would not dwell further upon these points of contrast, only praying that we may remember day by day, that our place, the church's only right and befitting place, is to wait for Christ from heaven. It is not judgments that we expect to be in; it is not the hour of temptation we have to dread for ourselves (Rev. 3: 10). Our business is to wait, as a heavenly Bride, for our heavenly Bridegroom. Those who link the church with earthly circumstances must be miserably disappointed: not so the hearts which the Spirit directs, animates, and sustains in the longing cry, Come, Lord Jesus. May it be so with us, brethren, increasingly as the moment, unknown to us, draws nearer! Amen.

The Bible Treasury, New Series, vol. 2.

Christ — the Door of the Sheep

Notes of a discourse on John 10: 1-10

It is on the latter words of the Lord Jesus in the passage just read I wish to say a little at this time. What did He mean the souls who then heard, or those who afterwards should hear, to gather from the remarkable clause, "I am the door of the sheep"?

There is a change in the employment of the words. In verse 2 He represents Himself as the Shepherd, but does not yet call Himself the good Shepherd. He takes up a well-known figure of the Old Testament in which the kings of Israel were frequently designated their shepherds, the Messiah of course pre-eminently.

In this part of the chapter accordingly He speaks of the sheepfold. There is not as yet an allusion, as in verse 16, to the sheep which do not belong to the Jewish nation: "Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock [not, as is familiarly known, "one fold"], one shepherd." Those who conceive (and it is a general error) that there is now a "fold" go back in heart and mind to Judaism. The Lord has really a flock in immediate relationship to Himself. The Jewish sheep, as He tells us, He would lead out, others not of it He would join with them; and these should form not two companies, but one flock round the one Shepherd.

The chapter begins with telling us how the Lord first in the case of Israel showed He was really the Shepherd. He had come in by the door, in the appointed way, at the proper time, and subject to all divine ordinances. So when to be baptized by John He says, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Afterwards He performed the miracles and manifested that character of mission which the prophets had predicted. He had come in by the door as the Shepherd, He only; others might claim it, but they were thieves and robbers. Not that some before the Lord Jesus had not sought the good of Israel. Josiah, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat, David, were far from being thieves and robbers; but they were witnesses to the coming Messiah, not usurpers. But those who had claimed the sheep as their own while in truth they were God's, what could they be called but thieves and robbers? And the Messiah was very jealous, as was Jehovah, over Israel, His people reserved for His Shepherd.

But now Messiah was come, and they alas! refused Him. The blind man had been cast out, because he, no longer blind, confessed Him. Some in the same hatred had before this taken up stones to stone the Son of God. In spirit He, rejected Himself, was now leading His sheep out. That murderous prelude on the part of His people was but an anticipation of His own death; and as with him once blind who now saw, so it would be with all who worshipped Him. Jesus would lead His own outside the world's religion. It was no question of staying to improve or reform, as think the infidel school of progress in every age; grace was calling out from what is sentenced to judgment. He was not going to work now as they expected. Israel's blessing and the glory of the earth await another day. A yet deeper task was in hand to be sealed in His blood. Therefore He would lead the sheep out and go before them Himself. He shows Himself as the Shepherd come in the due and long-predicted manner which God's word had let them to expect, as the Seed of the woman and of Abraham, as the Son of David and of man. He had seen their hatred of Him and His Father, and this would be soon apparent in His cross. There was no course but one open to Him; and He was not only going outside the fold but about to lead His own out too. The blind man who now saw, was cast out by men blinder than himself, to be with Jesus.

The sheep follow Him; for they know His voice. A stranger will they not follow; for they know not the voice of strangers. The ears of Israel were heavy; they could not understand. Yet there is not a hard word in what the Lord uttered. Why is it that people, then as now, do not understand the Scriptures? Not really because of difficult expressions. It is the truth that grates on the reluctant will of man. This is the source of all unbelief. It is resistance of the will to face the terrible fact of man's ruin; it is the pride that rejects God's grace and will not bend to one's own need of it. Hence the guilt of unbelief. not because man has a feeble understanding, but because he fears not God and believes not His love. Yet is not the truth good in itself, and full of goodness to man, spite of his evil? Is it not the only means of blessing, or of salvation? Is it not by the word of God that he is begotten, and nourished, that he can serve, enjoy, or worship God? be happy with Him now and for ever? Why then does not man love it? Because he has departed from God and refuses to return in God's way. He indulges himself in the fond delusion that he would like, some time if not now, to serve God; but he really likes nothing but His own will. Yet if God is to be served at all, it must be according to His will, which alone is holy and good.

But there is a deeper question than of his serving God. Some souls before me may flatter themselves that they would rejoice to serve God; but are they willing to take the place of having no good thing in them, of being lost and not merely in danger? Not merely that they have done evil in the sight of God, but that they are all wrong before Him? It is a serious thing when the heart of man bows to the solemn sentence of God, when one stands and confesses oneself lost before the God whose love and will have been slighted habitually. What then is to become of the soul? What of the body when resurrection to judgment comes?

Such then was the state of Israel, the fold; the Shepherd was obliged to go outside. The test that any were His own was that they heard and knew His voice. The crisis was at hand; when He has put forth all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him. It was the sentence of death on the best religion of the earth. The only persons who can boast of divine religion for their nation are the Jews; but here, solemn to say, the Lord virtually sentences the Jews and their religion. In the fullest love to them already had He gone into the fold, and they would not hear Him; so He goes out and leads His own out after Him. He always takes the first place, in sorrow as in all else; in the deepest of all He suffers for them, Just for unjust. Then He goes before His own sheep, whom He knows by name and leads out.

In truth all is in ruins, the world and man; the true Light has been put out, as far as man could. God Himself who came in love is gone. They felt not the sin. They believed neither His glory nor His grace. They could not understand His words; nay, how few did even the disciples then understand! It was not merely the Jews who were blind and deaf: the disciples were half Jews and half blind still. Men do not understand what they do not like, not because there is not adequate, yea, abundant, light vouchsafed of God, but because their own will is at work, producing darkness in the heart. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." It is an unerring test: with Christ the object, our soul is full of light. Have I darkness as to this or that? If so, and so far, my eye is not single. Why do I say it but because it is the truth, and that you and I may look to Him who alone enlightens and makes us light? In vain to look for divine light till you receive Him, and rest on Him, who will shew what He is for you and to you in the smallest need of every day, as in the greatest for eternity.

But there is more than this that follows (ver. 7): the Lord Jesus takes an entirely new place now outside Israel. He introduces this truth in the same solemn manner, not the sentence of death on Judaism, but the opening out of life and salvation to sinners. "Verily, verily [says Jesus], I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep . . . . by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." How blessed! He speaks to the same souls. What love! to the souls who could not understand Him! If the true Messiah was going outside His ancient people He would save sinners. Ah! they were sinners, and till the sinner feels that he is a sinner, he feels nothing aright, least of all as to God or His Son.

This is the beginning of wisdom. The first lesson of goodness is that I know and confess my badness. Nothing a man likes so little as to know and own that he is good for nothing before God; the grace that came by Him who is full of grace alone effects it in any. It is most true that I cannot have true faith in Christ unless I repent toward God. Never seek to divorce the one from the other. It is not only a human error but a snare of Satan for simple souls, where they are severed, for God has joined them in receiving the gospel. God would have souls feel and confess their sins. Repentance is when a soul no longer ignores God, cheating itself as to its own evil; he repents who by grace is willing to receive God's sentence on his own sinfulness in the sight of God. What a change! It is a man who abandons himself, because of his evil as judged by God, and looks with horror on himself as before Him.

Christ is the test of this as of all else. Thus in the case before us what could be worse in His sight than the self-will that refused to receive the Messiah? They did not like Him when they knew Him after a sort; they would have liked one to flatter them, and give them power and glory, making them the most exalted people on earth and crushing all their enemies. This will all come in due time from God, who will yet raise Israel from their fallen estate and put them on the pinnacle of greatness. But they, as we, must be put down first in their own eyes as sinners. By-and-by they will be brought to God; they will then own that they pierced Him, that it was their guilt though by lawless hands of others. In fact no man can have the blessedness of the truth or the grace of God unless he bows to Jesus as himself a sinner. This is the necessary controversy of God with every soul of man as he is. It is not faith to confess truth in an abstract manner, though in this way Satan often cheats souls. They own the forgiveness of sins in a creed, or as a dogma; but are they forgiven? They do not pretend to any such thing; it would be presumptuous on their part! O senseless souls in the face of God's express message! Faith feels the truth about itself more deeply than about others. Unless I believe the reality of God's grace and truth for my own soul, it is worse than a form. It is the hour when God will have reality (John 4). The Lord had come to the fold, the place of forms; but He has led His own out, and He must have them in the truth. True worshippers, they must worship God in spirit and in truth.

The reason souls are not really saved is that they are not in the truth for their own soul's need. I must meet God about my sins in this world or at the judgment-seat. No man can be saved in the day of judgment. It is in the place of my sins I must find salvation; where I am lost, I must be saved; where I have been an enemy of God, I must be reconciled to Him. The Saviour is come, yea is gone again, and the work is done. What would not Israel give to know it! Their eyes are blinded and they see Him not. They are strangers to Him; not His sheep, they did not know His voice. There they remain outside, waiting for the Messiah who is come. They know not that the Victim has been offered, and is accepted on high. We by grace have believed without seeing, and know that, His blood having been shed for sin, He is gone into the holiest of all.

Thus, if the Lord opens a new figure, it is for a new truth. "I am the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." Whosoever pretends to bring man to God, to step between God and souls on earth to claim Israel. the church or any souls as his own, as his people and his flock, is a thief and a robber. What! man stand between souls and God! Is he not himself a sinner? Does he not need salvation? "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers." Jesus is the door. He gives us to see what He was about to do after leaving the fold. He would save sinners. Now, accordingly the door is open to any. "By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." Grace and truth came by Him; man has neither. And the law can only condemn him; for he is a sinner. He needs salvation. It is no longer a question of being schooled even by the law of God; man is too far gone. As long as there is life, he will tell you, there is hope. But man has not life toward God. Earthly religion may try to remedy the disease by keeping up hopes before mankind; but it is all vain; for the patient is dead. There is no hope, no life, for man in his natural state; and he has proved it by rejecting the Son of God. But if His death be the great sin man has done, it is the infinite grace of God there to meet him in the gospel. "I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved." There is more than hope now, there is present salvation in Christ. There is in Him everlasting life. Those who believe, as He declares, shall never perish.

Do you draw back fearing this is too great grace? Who then, and what, are you to give God the lie? If you are a great sinner, is not the Son of God a far greater Saviour? Are you afraid to trust Him? Afraid to trust your soul in the hands of Him who died for sinners and rose again? It is the express mission of the Son of man to seek and to save that which is lost. Granted that man is dead; but is not Jesus the quickener of the dead. By-and-by He will raise the body. Now it is the hour of quickening the dead who hear His voice. He quickens the soul, and brings salvation. When He comes again, He will change the body into the likeness of His glorious body; now He blesses the soul. How proper is the order! How blessed for those who repent and believe the gospel; but how dreadful for sinners to be raised sinners, raised for eternal judgment, raised to be cast into the lake of fire! But He is now come to save, having done the work needful for it.

Thus is Christ the door; and now, thanks be to God, you are invited to enter. Will you not come in? He is calling: do you not hear His voice? He may have much for you to do when you enter. He gives each of His servants his work. He leads even now into more and deeper blessing. But if you have not come in, this is not what you want. The sinner cannot serve-the Lord till He has served the sinner — till He has saved him. Why then do you hesitate? To delay is most dangerous. It is now loss incalculable; it may be ruin irretrievable.

I do call on you to weigh with all seriousness these words of Jesus which evidently apply after He left the Jewish fold. He speaks as the rejected Son; He was going to the cross. He knew all that was coming, He required no prophecy about Himself, or God, or man. "Lord," said Peter, "thou knowest all things"; and so He did — all things; excepting only, where as servant He waited for the word of His Father (Mark 13: 32).

I invite and urge you then to believe in His name on God's testimony. He is the Saviour, the only Saviour of sinners; and you need a Saviour. Believe Him to be what He is. Rest on the work He has done. The Saviour and His work will perfectly suit your need, as they do the glory of God. Were He one hair's breadth less than He is, I could not trust Him for either. He could neither have glorified God nor save sinners. But the truth is that there is an infinite distance between Him and the highest of creatures, were it Gabriel and Michael themselves. For they are creatures and He is the Creator. He is God, even as the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Godhead; whatever be the difference of person and of function, Scripture is plain. Man is blind and unbelieving; and the worse, the less he suspects it.

Such then is the Saviour: can you trust Him? Seeing that the Creator of all the world came to save from sin, yea became Himself a man to save them righteously by His death for their sins on the cross, do you hesitate? Had it been only man, there could be no salvation, as far as such an one was concerned; but He that was God became man in order to it. No doubt He was Messiah and rejected. But God turns His rejection to our salvation, and opens the door to sinners. It is no question now of a Messiah for the Jew, but of a Saviour. And are there not some here awakening to His voice, some souls that answer to Jesus? Is He not now saying, "By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved"? For what is He as the door? Does He refuse any? Not one. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." He invites you. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. "He is not looking for qualities of which He approves, but for sinners that need Him to save them; and there is no man now who hears His voice and remains outside but because of the self-will that refuses to bow to His word. Salvation and every other needed blessing are in Him. The first call of God, the first obligation of man is to believe in Him; the first blessing for my soul is to have life in Him and be saved.

Shall I tell you why men say no man can know that he is saved? They think that God is such an one as themselves. They attenuate Christ's glory, seeing neither His person nor His work. When He bore God's judgment of sin on the cross, did He procure an uncertain salvation? Let none say so who fear God or honour Jesus. How could a divine person fail? It is His glory, at all cost to Himself, to bring in perfect salvation and this He now gives freely to the believer. To bless is what God loves. Only sin made Him a judge. He does not judge His counsels, nor salvation, nor the saved. Judgment has been borne by Christ for the believer. And the Spirit seals them, instead of doubting them. Thus does He fill the heavens even now with due praise and adoration. God is love and light, not a judge, in His own nature; but He will deal with all that is contrary to His nature, and so much the more solemnly with those who prefer self and sin to Christ. Judgment will be Christ's vindication on the unbeliever and ungodly, whatever grace may do at the end of this age.

In point of fact, if you, an unconverted man, were brought to heaven, no place would be so irksome to you. It is so now to be where others sing of Christ and pray, and you are anxious above all to get away and have done with it. What would heaven be to you with not one feeling in harmony with Him whom all praise there? No place could be so unsuited to the sinner.

How can one then be fitted for heaven? "By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved." What is implied in salvation? Two things at least, whatever more may be: a new and eternal life, and a propitiation for my sins. That life you cannot win, and no creature can give it you. Shame on those besotted enough to say, even if they do not believe, that water sprinkled on one can give life? Do they not accept a fiction as baseless, and if it be rested on quite as ruinous, as his wafer-god is to the poor papist? If the one trifles with the Lord Jesus, the other surely does with the Holy Spirit. But no: in Christ is life. Here is the Shepherd, here is the door, here is salvation. The only boast then is in Him and His cross. And no wonder; for He is the alone worthy One and your Saviour. We hear and know His voice; we know not the voice of strangers, nor follow them. The propitiation too is once for all in the Saviour's blood. The mass, or anything equivalent, is Satan's cheat for it.

Oh, fear not, doubting one, to trust in what He has shed to blot out very sin. Are you not hindered by those around you who believe not? Do you not slip into their thoughts and words? To have the dead with the living is dreadful combination. It was so in the Jewish fold; but Jesus led His own out. Go not back to that which He has left for ever. You that have come out to Him, cleave to Him; know that the only security is Himself, the one joy of saints is to be with Him. He not only has life in His own person, but He died that He might give that life to sinners. Sin must have been an everlasting barrier, but He died for it. Here is the One to look to and confide in; and He invites you. "By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved." There is no question as to the result: you have the positive word of Jesus for it. Do you believe in Him? Can you not trust the testimony of God who sent Him and raised Him from the dead? This is the One I commend to you. Rest all your weight on what He is; you may trust Him. He has suffered once for sins, the Just for the unjust (without this all were vain), that He might bring us to God. This blessing comes not when we die but now in this world when we believe the gospel.

Ineffable blessedness — to be brought to the God I dreaded, left, and was cast out from! And is every barrier removed? It is. God says so, and who knows as He? But again, if I believe, there is nobody that I know like God, not even my wife or my child. He alone has told me all His heart; and I am sure of God, not of any other: my best friend may fail me, He never will. And Christ makes Him known. He is the One God calls me to confide all to. He gives life to me; He died for me; the moment you believe, life in Him is yours. It is altogether wrong to think life-giving is a process, though the conviction of it may be. But to have life eternal is the simple consequence of faith in Christ. How do I know? He says it Himself, and there is nothing so good or true or sure as the word of Jesus. It is most humbling too, for it makes everything of Him and nothing of me or of any other child of Adam. Is not this as it should be? Or are you not prepared for it? Beware of dishonouring Him.

Man likes to be occupied with himself. If I receive life, propitiation, salvation, yea, all in Christ, is it not the annihilation of self? He is faithful too, and will make all real and living in the soul of the believer. Let your heart then be occupied with Him. It is a false gospel that sends you to look at yourself for proof of life. If God tells me to look at myself, it is to humble me. It is reversing the gospel to judge of His grace or of my standing by myself. If God gives blessing, He wishes it to be enjoyed. People in this world seem to grudge what they do for others. Indeed it was the Greek or heathen idea of God that He was jealous of man's happiness. The true God delights in the happiness of those He has called; and though men have sinned irreparably in the death of Christ by their lawless hands, it is by that death He blesses any in His own mercy, and this righteously. The moment I look to Jesus and His blood, at God's word, my sins are gone. And this is only the beginning of the Christian's career.

But, besides salvation, there is another rich blessing — "he shall go in and out." The truth makes free, the Son makes free. It is the essence of Christianity — liberty to do as God likes. It supposes responsibility to Christ. I am Christ's bondsman, but free to serve Him. You who look to Jesus, are not you at liberty also? Do you say that you are still tied and bound with the chain of your sins? Such is not the christian state but rather a denial of it. "He shall go in and out." This is the liberty in which we ought to stand fast: so says the apostle to the Galatians who had let it slip. Anything short of it is not Christianity, though it may be the state of souls born of God. It is not merely your gain or loss that is in question, but the Lord's glory. For God has Christ before Him, and He blesses you by leading you to think of Christ as He does. Nor can you duly serve as Christ's bondsman unless you know what it is to be His freedman. It is liberty to please the Lord, no longer like the Israelite under law, still less bound to the world or its conventionalities, its hopes or its fears, its pursuits or its pleasures. We are free to serve Christ, delighting in Him now. Having heard His voice, we shall serve Him in a changed body on high, as well as here in these bodies made the temple of God by the Spirit dwelling in them.

But the Lord adds that the believer shall "find pasture." He will feed us according to His own heart. "For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." We need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But He will surely see to it and does. What a blessing to have such an One to care for us! This is the Saviour I call on you to believe in and to confess. You that confide in the Christ of God, will you not confess Him? There is not for a starting-point a sound from a man's heart so sweet as a poor sinner's confession of the Saviour when he casts himself upon His grace and God's free justification through His blood.

May the Lord make it yours even now. His for ever, may we serve Him, seeking only to do His will: He will show you how, for you will hear His voice, as you follow Him. He will care for you, as He binds Himself to give not only salvation but liberty and pasture. "He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" "Therefore let no man glory in men; for all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's."

W. K.

F. E. RACE. 3 & 4, London House Yard, Paternoster Row, E.C.

John Nelson Darby as I knew him.

W. Kelly.

A friend of Mr. Darby's, who was for many years on intimate terms with him, has kindly forwarded the following interesting account of a most interesting career.

As you wish for some personal reminiscences of the late J.N.D., I go back to my first intercourse with him in the summer of 1845 at Plymouth. For though I had been for years in communion before this, it had not been my lot to see him for whom above all others I had conceived, because of his love and testimony to Christ, profound respect and warm affection. I was then living in the Channel Islands, in one of which I began to break bread with three sisters in Christ, before ever looking a "brother" in the face. It was in J. B. Rowe's shop, Whimple Street, that we met; and very cordial and frank was his greeting. Painful disclosures had already been made of an effort to undermine from within, and to set up, under His name Who had taught us liberty of ministry and the unity of the Spirit, a state of things contrary to His word.

Mr. Darby was then bringing out in numbers the perhaps most valuable critique he ever wrote, in exposure of Mr. B. W. Newton's Thoughts on the Apocalypse; wherein the main object was to oppose, slyly but with set purpose, every truth which was distinctive of the movement, and all-important in our convictions of God's truth and glory in Christ. Nor was the revolutionary effort confined to the retrograde party in Plymouth. Mr. Chas. Hargrove, an Irish ex-rector, Mr. J. Parnell (was he yet Lord Congleton?), with others, had committed themselves on various grounds to the reaction. Mr. Darby had replied to them all, with an earnest trenchant ability which earned the dislike and resentment of such as love compromise, rather than truth. Though grieved to the heart at schism, which must if unjudged lead to what the apostle calls "heresy" or sect, it was clear to me which cared for Christ, and which did not rise above self or their friends.

To established and non-established, it was just what many leaders of Christendom were desiring; for like the chief priests of old, they doubted whereunto this would grow. As no mean one among them wrote, they began to breathe freely when the Newtonian rent came. But a little matter of a private kind will interest you and your readers, as it gave me (some twenty years or so his junior), a practical lesson. When dining with Mr. Darby, he by the way said, "I should like to tell you how I live. Today I have more than usual on your account. But it is my habit to have a small hot joint on Saturday, cold on Lord's day, cold on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and on Thursday. On Friday I am not sorry to have a bit of chop or steak; then the round begins again." I too, like Mr. Darby, had been ascetic as a young Christian, and had been reduced, by general indifference to outward life, so low that the physician prescribed as essential what had been discarded in self-denial. How uncommon to find a mind endowed with the rarest power of generalisation, able to come down like the apostle, and impress on a young disciple, eating, drinking, or whatever is done, to do all unto God's glory! At that time Mr. Darby had not a whit of asceticism, but liberty and his heart bent on pleasing the Lord as to necessary food. To me, however small it might seem to some, it was a hint of daily value, and through me to others; for many a saint, when "cleansed from leprosy", forgets or neglects, in Levitical phrase, to shave off all his hair, and to wash his clothes, though he may duly bathe. So natural is it, as one of that class said, to retain and give to the Lord his "gentlemanship" — a gift abhorrent in His eyes; for it is worldly to the core.

Mr. Harris, Mr. Newton, Mr. H. Soltau, and many more I of course saw, and found full of kindness, even then when party spirit was doing its deadly work. For in brighter days did not Edward Irving call it a "swamp of love", when his own mind was carried away by pretensions to miraculous power, and to a ritual beyond the Ritualists?

But such is the power of spirituality and devotedness, that Mr. Darby was the only one there to whom I felt free to tell confidentially the sad tale of an ex-clergyman's sin, and to join with me in prayer respecting it. As the evil had come to my knowledge unsought and far away, it devolved on me in faith and love to seek him out, and lay what none perhaps suspected upon his soul before God. As he had already withdrawn from communion, one could leave all else with Him. No doubt he is long departed, and as no one is alive to guess the one meant, I venture thus to speak.

It was at a much earlier date (1831, I think) that F. W. Newman invited Mr. Darby to Oxford: a season memorable in a public way for his refutation of Dr. E. Burton's denial of the doctrines of grace, beyond doubt held by the Reformers, and asserted not only by Bucer, P. Martyr, and Bishop Jewell, but in Articles IX — XVIII of the Church of England. With a smile he said to me, "That is the only pamphlet by which I ever made money." The same visit of his acted more privately (not on Mr. W. E. Gladstone, who saw and heard him then) but on G. V. Wigram, Sir L. C. L. Brenton, B. W. Newton, and W. Jarrett, as well as others too halting in faith to make a decided stand and endure the consequences. It was characteristic of those young men that, when once at a conversazione someone remarked, "May the Lord give me a living in a beautiful country," (and he had more than his desire in a Scotch Bishopric), Mr. Wigram immediately exclaimed, "May He give me to follow and serve Him at all cost!" He too had his heart's desire. Sir Chas. Brenton hardly quite appreciated J.N.D., if one may judge by his rather severe saying, "I never knew a man in whom the two Adams were so strong." Sir Charles was rather legal, and suffered from it; so much so that J.N.D. called a few, not long before the former died, for special prayer on his behalf, and not in vain.

It was, if I err not, before 1830 that, filled with the sense of the Christian's union with Christ, J.N.D. visited London, and laid it before one regarded as among the most mature of the Evangelical clergy. But his own indifference to worldly appearances seemed to render that precious but little understood truth a dead letter to this divine, who confounded it with the new birth, as ill-taught saints commonly do. His tone was pompous and self-complacent. He evidently regarded his visitor as a poor curate airing as a wonder what all knew. But the well-appointed carriage from Westminster, with coachman and footman, came to take Mr. Darby to his father's house, and happened to catch the clergyman's eye, when his manner changed to servility. This disgusted my friend, who could make allowance for ignorance, but was pained by a worldly spirit in a Christian, especially in a Christian minister. He well enough knew that the clergyman was of humble extraction; but this was nothing in his eyes if there had been spiritual feeling. Nor did the clergyman grow in grace any more than truth, when he became a bishop, and a metropolitan one. There was a worm at the root of his theology; for he betrayed unsoundness as to divine inspiration, both before his elevation to the episcopal throne, and after it. Such men cannot be expected to have ears to hear.

I was unable to attend the Conference at Liverpool in the forties, but was present at that which was held in London in 1845. Only on the afternoon of the third day did J.N.D. rise to speak, and this, after a well-known friend had alluded to his silence in singular terms. Mr. Darby explained that he had not spoken because so many brothers had a great deal to say. It was a most impressive discourse; for after many, and not leaders only, had spoken with considerable power and unction, he gave a terse summary, which set their main points in the best position, and then brought in a flood of fresh light from Scripture on the whole theme. During the same Conference a noble personage, who resented Darby's exposure of a foolish and injurious tract by himself, gave way to vehement spleen. But J.N.D. answered not a word. Another, who was no less unreasonably offended, came into the hall while Mr. R. M. Beverley was telling us what had helped him to what he regarded as the chief truth he had long wanted. The old brother (very deaf) entered, and went as near the speaker as he could, and heard him read a page of his own book, affirming the very doctrine of the Spirit's presence and working, which he himself was abandoning, and for which Mr. Darby had censured him. This incident made no small impression on me of a living God's ways.

Considerate and kind as J.N.D. was to F. W. Newman, before Newman's active mind rebelled against "the doctrine of Christ", he had no real sympathy with the character either of him or of his brother the Cardinal. Men, and not God, governed them both, though in a different way. The younger of the two had been much the most distinguished throughout his academic career. The elder became a master of style in English writing, but a mere slave of tradition. Mr. Darby cared supremely for Christ and the truth to the glory of God the Father. Both brothers began as Evangelicals; but they diverged, as time went on, and were quite estranged, till the one became a Papist, and the other an infidel; then they "renewed happy intercourse." Anything like this was sorrow and shame to Mr. Darby, who could not respect, even as a man, him who wrote and justified No. 90 of the Oxford Tracts; for from beginning to end it is a barefaced and jesuitical plea, to construe in a Romanist sense the Protestant Thirty-nine Articles. More shocking still that Pusey and Keble etc., should endorse its deceit. Also what could J.N.D. feel but grief and indignation at the blasphemer, who at length could compare J. Fletcher's as a life more perfect than that of Jesus the Son of God? It is my judgment, that if Professor H. Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, crushed Phases of Faith on its own ground, much more did Mr. Darby, on a Christian basis, in his Irrationalism of Infidelity; just as he also laid bare the dishonesty of J. H. Newman's Apologia pro sua Vita. Even their logic was anything but immaculate.

Mr. Darby was deliberate and prayerful in weighing a Scripture; but he wrote rapidly, as thoughts arose in his spirit, and often with scarcely a word changed. He delighted in a concatenated sentence, sometimes with parenthesis within parenthesis, to express the truth fully, and with guards against misconception. An early riser and indefatigable worker, he yet had not time to express his mind as briefly and clearly as he could wish. "You write to be read and understood," he once said playfully to me; "I only think on paper." This made his writings, to the uninitiated, anything but pleasant reading, and to a hasty glance almost unintelligible; so that many, even among highly educated believers, turned away, because of their inability to penetrate sentences so involved. No one could be more indifferent to literary fame; he judged it beneath Christ and therefore the Christian. He was but a miner, as he said; he left it to others to melt the ore, and circulate the coin, which many did in unsuspected quarters, sometimes men who had no good to say of him, if one may not think to conceal the source of what they borrowed. To himself Christ was the centre of all, and the continual object before him, even in controversy; nor is anything more striking, even in his hottest polemics, than his assertion of positive truth to edification. He was never content to expose an adversary, where not only his unfaltering logic, but instant and powerful grasp of the moral side, and above all of the bearing of Christ on the question, made him the most redoubtable of doctors. Yet the same man ever delighted in preaching the glad tidings to the poor, and only paid too much honour to those whom he considered evangelists more distinctively than himself. Indeed I remember one, who could scarcely be said to be more so than he was, happening (to his own discomposure) to preach in his presence at one of the Conferences in the past (Portsmouth); and for months after, this dear simple-minded servant of the Lord, kept telling brethren in private, and not there only, "Ah, I wish that I could appeal to the people as So-and-so does!"

That he exercised large and deep influence could not but be; but he sought it not, and was plainspoken to his nearest friends. To one whom he valued as a devoted man, he said, "Come, -, not so much of the gentleman." Another, dear to him from an early day and an admirable pastor, a good teacher and preacher, had got married to a worldly-minded lady (his second wife), though an Evangelical of the Evangelicals. This brother (an ex-clergyman) grieved him by running down the simple few gathered to the Lord's name in the village where he lived. The complainant was no longer the labourer he had once been among the poor, but was as a half-squire and half-parson drawing back to a long abandoned social intercourse with country folk. "Ah! -," said Mr. Darby, "it is not the brethren but the wife." That this was true made it the less palatable; and the wife did not fail to make it a rupture never healed. Nor was it only such cases that gave him pain. A lady I knew, when he paid a visit to Guernsey, invited a company to meet him in private, but exclusively of those who were in a good position. Had it been an Anglican Christian, or one with Denominations, he would have made allowance and expected nothing else; but he was vexed that one in fellowship should be so far from the word and will of the Lord as to fail in giving an opportunity to lowly saints, rich in faith, who would have enjoyed it exceedingly. When asked to give thanks, he begged me to do so, meaning it as a quiet sign that he was displeased.

It was my privilege, being actively engaged, to hear him very seldom, and this at great meetings in which he ordinarily took a large part; but I remember once hearing him preach (on Romans 5: 20, 21) to a small company of the very poor; and to a more powerful and earnest discourse I never listened, though in the plainest terms, exactly suited to his audience. The singing was execrable; and he did his best to lead them, for his voice was sweet, and his ear good; but the barbarous noise of others prevailed, with which he bore in a patience truly edifying, going on with his message quite unmoved.

Yet was he anything but self-confident. Being asked once to preach in the open air, he begged the younger man to take it; for said he, "I shrink from that line of work, being afraid of sticking in the midst, from not knowing what to say." He ungrudgingly delighted in the bold preacher with a heart full of the love of souls. He overlooked many faults, where he credited anyone with devotedness (sometimes at their own valuation). An intense admirer of his used to say that in this respect and others too, "he was the most gullible man in England." This of course was extreme exaggeration; nevertheless it occurred often enough to embarrass his fellow-labourers. I remember once in Bath remonstrating with him, because of his apparently unbroken confidence in a brother who was behaving very ill to his own mother and sister, whom he drove out of the meeting as a veritable "Diotrephes," to gratify his mad and unbelieving father. Mr. Darby soliloquised as we walked along, "Strange thing, that my pets should turn out scamps." I fear that so it evidently was with this person; for not long after he furnished the most defamatory scandal ever written, printed and circulated, against his blindly generous benefactor.

The upshot of this case is instructive. The railer, who of course vanished, not only from fellowship but to another land, had great kindness shown him by a Christian man there, an Irish gentleman. Having occasion afterwards to visit Ireland, he enquired if any of his friends knew of one, Mr. Darby. Oh, yes to be sure! Everyone knows of Mr. Darby. "Well," said he, "I received — and his large family for a long time; during which he was habitually abusing Darby. But I found him out to be worthless; so I came to the conclusion that the object of his abuse must be a very good man." It smacks rather Hibernian; but it was a sound instinct, and true in fact.

The same readiness to believe the best, even of untoward souls, showed itself not seldom when persons drew on his purse, or, what was of more moment, sought fellowship through his mediation. Not a few even now will recollect an excessively turbulent man, who espoused the cause of one who had to be put out of fellowship; and being himself no less guilty, he fell under the like sentence. This man never appeared till Mr. Darby returned to London from his long journeyings, but repaired to him forthwith on his arrival. Then followed the renewed appeal: "How is it that — is still outside?" Thereon a dead silence ensued, easily understood; for everyone would have gratified Mr. Darby, had it been possible. At last a brother (now deceased), noted for his downrightness, said, "Mr. Darby, we know -; but you do not." Yet were some weak enough to call him a Pope who would have his way, and bore no contradiction.

A similar case, only more disreputable, of one ex-communicated for outrageous profanity, etc., occurred much later. Mr. Darby's heart somehow was touched, because he came to the meetings, and indeed forced himself to the front, and tried, while unrestored, to appropriate the Lord's Supper. Yet our beloved friend looked leniently on what was very painful to most. He was as far as possible from the ogre which so many fancied, but inflexible against those who assailed Christ. So he himself used to say, "I ought never to touch matters of discipline; for I believe the first person, brother or sister, that tells me about things. It is quite out of my line." So much was this felt, that I used to pray the Lord that only a true account might first reach his ear. But every considerate Christian must be aware that the faithful were as slow to spread evil tidings to gain a point, as the light and party-spirited were quick to plead for those they favour, and especially with one so influential as J.N.D. Also, when one of his position and character took up a cause in this one-sided way, as might and did happen, all can conceive how difficult it was for others to convince, or for himself to revise. Do any blame me for giving these amiable drawbacks? I humbly think that even in a brief sketch it is hardly truthful to omit what has been here touched with a loving hand, and what he himself would have frankly owned. It is not for me to say one word of what is best left in the grave of Christ, where my own failures lie buried.

No man more disliked cant, pretension, and every form of unreality. Thos. Carlyle loudly and bitterly talked his detestation of "shams," J.N.D. quietly lived it in doing the truth. He often took the liberty of an older Christian to speak frankly, among others to a brother whose love, as he thought, might bear it. But sometimes the wound however faithful only closed to break out another day. "What were you about, -, hiding among your family connections, and not once seeing the brethren around?" On the other hand reliable testimony is not wanting of his ready love in so lowly a way as to carry him where few would follow, especially where known. In early days, among the few at Plymouth a barber brother fell sick; and as no one else thought of his need, J.N.D. is said to have gone in his absence and served as well as he could in the little shop.

Thoughtful for others he was indifferent as to comforts for himself, though he did not mind buying costly books, if he believed them of value for his work. Then he was habitually a hard worker, from early morn devoted to his own reading the word and prayer; but even when most busily engaged, he as the rule reserved the afternoons for visiting the poor and the sick, his evenings for public prayer, fellowship, or ministry. Indeed whole days were frequently devoted to Scripture readings wherever he moved, at home or abroad. But his clothes were plain, and he wore them to shabbiness, though punctiliously clean in his person, which dressy people are not always. In Limerick once, kind friends took advantage of his sleep to replace the old with new, which he put on without a word, as the story went.

In middle life he trudged frequently on foot through a large part of France and Switzerland, sometimes refreshing himself on the way with acorns, at other times thankful to have an egg for his dinner, because, as he said, no unpleasant visitors for certain could get in there! In his own house, or lodging, all was simplicity and self-denial; yet if invited to dine or sup, he freely and thankfully partook of what was set before him. Still he had a vigilant eye for the Lord, particularly with younger fellow-labourers; and I remember that when with me on first setting up house, he deliberately looked at a table-spoon or fork before him. Happily I passed muster; and nothing was said: they were only plated! So he lived himself. Even in such things he hated for Christians the pride of life, and justly felt that one little licence opens the way for many greater.

His largeness of heart, for one of strong convictions and of practical consistency, showed itself in many ways. After he left the Anglican Establishment he preached occasionally at the call of godly clergymen who urged it; but he only appeared for the discourse and was not present at the previous service. So in France afterwards he preached for pious ministers of the Reformed Church; nor did he refuse the black gown as an academic dress; but when they brought the bands, "Oh! no," said he: "I put on no more." Again, he did not spare but warmly rebuked the zealots among half-fledged brothers, who were so ignorantly bitter as to apply what the apostle said of heathen tables to those of the various Denominations. It was only fundamental error which roused his deepest grief and indignation. Then, as one of these (a heterodox teacher) said to me, J.N.D. writes with a pen in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other.

As a more public instance, take his letter from Barbados to Archdeacon Stopford, when cast down by Mr. Gladstone's disestablishment and spoliation of the Irish Protestant church, to assure him of his sympathy. "If the Protestants trust God, this will remain their position. Let them, because of the word of God, and in honouring it and what is called Protestantism, as owning it cordially, coalesce with the Presbyterians, as you have noticed they did in the best times under Bramhall . . . Only be yourselves, and trust God. Have done with the State, reject it, making no terms for a little money and much subjection; if you do, you are lost." But none the less, when the pious and learned Dr. O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, who had married his niece, wrote a defence of Baptismal Regeneration, which he had long rejected, Mr. Darby wrote a vigorous reply, and proved that the argument on the formularies as well as Scripture was simply and grossly a begging of the question.

Even in his own circle his forbearance towards prejudice was as great as his decision in momentous things. He often worked with another, when he did not shrink from preaching in the open air so much as later. Once his companion was a man of singular eloquence, but slow to learn fuller truth and addicted to form. So the naval ex-commander read a petition from the Common Prayer selection, and the ex-clergyman made the gospel appeal. Perhaps one such experiment sufficed. Incongruities happened in those days. At a later date he became more chary of preaching in so-called churches or "temples" (as they call them abroad), when superstition crept in and rationalism. The recent indifferentism that prevails also curtailed in practice the readiness with which outside Christians were received, though the principle abode as ever; but its application could not but be abridged, when some wished to break bread who were insensible to notorious and grievous error taught where they usually attended.

It will interest many to hear that his paper on the Progress of Democratic Power, and its effect on the Moral state of England, immensely struck the late Sir T. D. Acland, who was Mr. Gladstone's intimate friend from Oxford days till death. In acknowledging the gift of Miscellaneous I., which contains the sketch, he wrote to me that it was (though written many years before) the most wonderful forecast and just appraisal he ever read of what is come and coming.

This then is my conviction, that a saint more true to Christ's name and word I never knew or heard of. He used to say that three classes, from their antecedents, are apt to make bad brothers; clergymen, lawyers, and officers. He himself was a brilliant exception, though a lawyer first and a clergyman afterward.

A great man naturally, and as diligent a student as if he were not highly original, he was a really good man, which is much better. So, for good reason, I believed before I saw him; so taking all in all I found him, in peace and in war; and so, in the face of passing circumstances, I am assured he was to the end. Do I go too far if I add, may we be his imitators, even as he also was of Christ?

W. K.

Joseph

W. Kelly.

Preface

The history of Joseph in detail, here brought before us, only carries us to Gen. 47: 12, where his father Jacob is presented to Pharaoh, for at this point the Author's closing days of his pilgrimage were rapidly being fulfilled. His pen was now laid aside, and he has since passed away to abide in the presence of a greater than Pharaoh or any earthly potentate — yea, of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords,

Intermitting therefore any comment upon the deeply interesting account of Joseph's skilful administration of the land and people of Egypt given us in the remainder of the chapter of the inspired record, as also the two following chapters (Gen. 48, Gen. 49), which the Author has already treated in his history of "Jacob," we may be allowed to pass on to the closing chapter of this first book of the Bible, and add here the following words thereon by the same pen, which appeared many years ago:

"The last chapter gives us the conclusion of the book, the burial of Jacob, the reappearance of his sons left with Joseph, and at last Joseph's own death, as lovely as had been his life. He who stood on the highest pinnacle in the land, next to the throne, type of Him who will bold the Kingdom unto the glory of God the Father, — that single-eyed saint now breathes forth his soul to God. "By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones." His heart is out of the scene where it enjoyed but a transient and at best typical glory. In hope he goes onward to that which would be lasting and true unto God's glory, when Israel should be in Emmanuel's land, and he himself be in a yet better condition — even resurrection. He had been exalted in Egypt, but he solemnly took an oath of the sons of Israel, that when God visits them, as He surely will, they will carry up his bones hence. He had served God in Egypt, but to him it was ever the strange land. Though he dwelt there, ruled there, there had a family, and there died fuller of honour than of years, an hundred and ten years old, he feels that Egypt is not the land of God, and knows that He will redeem His people from it, and bring them into Canaan. It was beautiful fruit in its season: no change of circumstances interfered with the promise of God to the fathers. Joseph waited as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Earthly honours did not settle him down in Egypt." (Lectures Introductory to The Pentateuch).

"Now unto the King eternal, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen."

INTRODUCTION.

Of the many biographical sketches in the Bible none for interest exceeds that of Joseph. It therefore attracts those of tender years not yet. hardened by intercourse with the world, or sophisticated by the spirit of the age. It is distinguished even among the patriarchs by domestic affections no less than hatred of evil, by personal purity sustained and guarded by faith, by the favour of Jehovah that communicated His secrets to one that feared Him from youth, throughout an unusually diversified life and the extremes of slavery, of prison, and of the highest position next to the greatest throne then on earth without a cloud, the most prudent and kind of viziers in times of abundance no less than of famine, the most skilful of statesmen for his master's interest. Again what can one think of his filial honour to his father? what of his gracious returns to his envious and spiteful brethren (only short of his blood)? And though for a believing Israelite he seems to have gone far in complying with the words of a heathen, and to have risen up to the airs of a great lord as to the manner born, his heart sustained the divinely given hopes of Israel, as evinced by his punctual heed to his father's burial, where lay Jacob's father and his father's father.

Nor did his earthly rank in Egypt dim his own faith before his death, that God would surely visit his brethren and bring them into the land promised by His oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He too took their oath when that day came to carry up his bones hence along with them.

The long desired son of his mother Rachel,  - herself his father's first and tenderest love, he derived a name from her (Gen. 30: 23, 24), Joseph i.e. adding; which pointed to another son, the son of his father's right hand, who was to be the occasion of her death. Sadly impatient with God's dealings in her case, grace opened her heart to Jehovah's goodness and gave her to look on through her son of unexpectedly wondrous destiny to another son, about to be born in Palestine, the little one who should become great both in the land and to the ends of the earth in its own season. For Benjamin figures in that day of earthly power and glory. Joseph is the vessel of divine wisdom in humiliation, despised by his brethren, suffering from them, and sold to Gentiles who punish him yet more; but, unknown to Israel, exalted to the right hand of power for unmeasured blessing to both, and married to a Gentile wife, the names of whose sons testify to his forgetting his past toil with his kin, and his fruitfulness in another land. Yet at the end like Christ he that was separated makes himself known to his brethren whom he established in the best of the land. Even from this brief summary the reader will gather how hard it would be in all O.T. scripture to find so rich a mine of typical wealth, so varied and comprehensive a figure of the Lord Jesus.

Hence the history of Joseph abounds in the forecasting of the lights as well as the shadows of Christ, and thus is singularly instructive in the ways of God. This is all the more striking, because it is found in an unvarnished and perfectly reliable history, when man's annals, or even monuments, afford but a flickering gleam. But all that these remains tall us goes to prove the perfect accuracy of that which the closing chapters of Genesis disclose of that land which was to be the nursery of Israel. There they were led on from a family group to become a people, Jehovah's people, waked up under oppression to the knowledge of their peculiar relationship to the Eternal, and at length from the furnace of affliction to that deliverance, which had His blessed dwelling in their midst, of which the second book of the Pentateuch treats so copiously.

It appears (for we must not say more when we go outside scripture) that the ordinary succession of native rulers was interrupted for more than two centuries by the invasion of Shepherd Kings from Syria (Hittite or Khita); and that the sudden rise of Joseph occurred during the reign of Apepi, the last of this foreign or Hyksos dominion.* If this be so, it accounts in a great measure for the rupture made with the set ways and jealous forms of an old civilization, in the exalted place to which Joseph was advanced, in his long continued rule, and his marriage with the daughter of Potipherah the priest in On (Heliopolis); still more perhaps for the readiness with which a shepherd people were given a quarter so valuable as Goshen, not far from either the royal residence on one side or the frontier of Palestine on the other. The abomination of a shepherd lay in the native eye, not in those who favoured Joseph and his brethren, but in the, restored native rulers, who soon after regained the upper hand, knew not Joseph, and proceeded to persecute the chosen people. This providential concurrence we leave. God is above circumstances, though His wisdom is often shown in His availing Himself of them on behalf of His plans.

* So says George the Syncellus in his Chronographia, Script. Hist. Byz. 48 c. folio, Ven. 1729: ἐπὶ γὰρ πᾶσι συμπεφώνηται. This, long doubted, has been conclusively established by recent research.

But whatever be the worth of these thoughts as to the then circumstances of Egypt and its rulers, there is certainty of God's directing hand, in His allowance of all the unworthy ways of Jew and Gentile in Joseph's early history, to bring about that very position of lofty distinction which, when foreshadowed, drew out the hatred of his brethren. His duty changed its form from his father's house to that of a foreign master, and from shame, even in the keep of a prison, to the highest rank in the realm.

But it was everywhere the same obedience in the sight of Jehovah, the same prosperity for all that he touched. He was tender even to tears as he was firm of purpose, clear of insight too, and resolute in execution, a man of mark and modesty, who rose to the command of every occasion without the least self-seeking. Jehovah was with Joseph, as Joseph was subject to Jehovah: a rare man among the Jewish people or any other, look where and when you will.

JOSEPH

CHAPTER 1.

JOSEPH'S EARLY DAYS

Gen. 30: 22-25, Gen. 33: 2, Gen. 37: 2-11

Joseph, it appears from comparison of clear dates in scripture, was born in his father's ninety-first year. He was the elder son of Rachel, long desired by his mother, and at length given of God, when her impatience had met its just rebuke. Leah had her six sons already born; and a daughter followed who later became the occasion of shame and grief to her kin, of a reckless and revengeful desolation to a city of Hivites, far beyond the demerit of the one that wronged her.

We need not repeat the tale of Joseph's birth, and of the remarkable utterance of his mother with the name given and the anticipation of the one, who was to be son not of her Sorrow only but of her death. In Jer. 31: 15-17 is a very touching reference to Rachel and a connection with the affliction of "her children" in the day of the captivity to Babylon, but looking to the blessed time of gracious reprisal when Jehovah will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. "Thus saith Jehovah, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, bitter weeping: Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are not. Thus saith Jehovah, Refrain thy voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears; for thy work hath a reward, saith Jehovah; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope for thy latter end, saith Jehovah, and thy children shall come again to their own border." Between the prophecy and its fulfilment in the coming days of Israel's restoration and national blessing, it is applied to the murderous onslaught, in vain meant for Jesus, which Herod brought on all the boys from two years and under that were in Bethlehem and in all its borders. In all their affliction was He afflicted, though exempted from that blow for the anguish of His rejection unto death, under the hatred of His own people and the infinitely deeper suffering in atonement at God's hand for their sins, and ours.

Not only was the birth of Joseph an epoch for the spirit of his mother (elsewhere dilated on), but we find Jacob thereon awakening to his due place and to his country associated with the promises of God. And it came to pass when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, Send me away that I may go to my place and to my country." The needed discipline was not ended: Jacob had yet to learn more of himself under the good dealings of God. There was still a sadly mingled crop to be seen. But thence we see his heart turned toward the land from which he had been long an exile through his mother's devices and his own. If he served Laban longer, God took care to bless his own portion so conspicuously that the sons of Laban wished him gone, and the word was given which decided him to flee. Then the return by God's grace, notwithstanding his crippled weakness, became no less an epoch for Jacob.

Next, we turn to chap. 37, "The generations of Jacob," where Joseph, young as he was, becomes the leading figure, with his brothers a dark background, and God at work in a remarkable way.

"Joseph, being seventeen years old, was tending the flock with his brethren; and he was a youth with Bilhah's sons, and with Zilpah's sons, his father's wives; and Joseph brought their evil report to his father. And Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons, because he was his son of old age; and he made him a sleeve-coat of many colours. And his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, and they hated him and could not speak to him peaceably. And Joseph dreamed a dream, and told his brethren, and they hated him yet the more. And he said to them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed. And, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves came round about, and bowed down themselves to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed rule over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more, and, behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down themselves to me. And he told [it] to his father and to his brethren; and his father rebuked him, and said to him, What. [is] this dream that thou hast dreamed? shall I indeed come and thy mother and thy brethren, to bow down themselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying" (vers. 2-11).

The witness of their evil ways and his father's love made Joseph hateful to the sons of the servile mothers. Nor did the distinctive robe which Jacob gave Joseph soften their asperity, nor yet his two dreams. "Fury is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before jealousy?" Whether it was wise or comely to rehearse his dreams to those who had no love for him may be a, question; but the dreams were of God, as the effect on his brethren was of the enemy. Even to his father the second was distasteful, though he kept it in mind. But as all that is recorded stamps Joseph as a pious youth, of moral courage, of faithfulness toward the erring, of a lowly mind that wondered at the dreams as much as any or more; so he too like his father could hardly shut put from his spirit that God betokened some singular exaltation in due time; and the strengthened repetition could not but confirm, as indicating, that they were not casual, but from above. This however always provokes adversaries to madness and revenue, while, strange as it may be in their eyes, God turns even their spite and wicked ways to the accomplishment of His purpose, as we shall see beyond fail in the history.

But we may not doubt on the one hand, that God had His gracious purpose of exercising Joseph's spirit and strengthening his heart for the distress and manifold troubles which were to be his portion before those remarkable prefigurations were to be fulfilled. On the other hand, it is no less plain that his fleshly-minded brothers, as they hated his piety and dreaded his moral judgment of their evil ways, were stung to mad malice in hearing of his dreams, which they were quick to interpret rightly enough. And we may hope that in the end God turned to their soul's profit what Joseph was given to tell them in the days of his youth. Thus, if they could not easily forget dreams so simple and striking that nearly touched all the family, the sufferer still less could not but remember in the midst of many a grief and shame the visions of strange dignity that awaited him in his and their life-time.

CHAPTER 2.

JOSEPH AND His BRETHREN

Gen. 37: 17-36

The dreams of Joseph were God-sent, and as real in the event, as realities of others are but daydreams. And what a mercy it was for his half-brothers, who were not in heart brothers, that their cruel purpose took effect but in part, and was turned in divine goodness, wisdom, and power to bring about the elevation which they hated as much as they envied. Cain-like their intent was to slay their brother. And wherefore? Because, at the bottom of all, their works were evil, and their brother's righteous.

"And Joseph went after his brethren, and found them in Dothan. And when they saw him afar off, and before he came near to them, they conspired against him to put him to death. And they said one to another, Behold, there cometh that master of dreams! And now come and let us kill him, and cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, An evil beast devoured him; and we will see what becometh of his dreams. And Reuben heard, and delivered him out of their hands, and said, Let us not take his life. And Reuben said to them, Shed no blood; cast him into this pit that is in the wilderness; and lay no hand on him (in order that he might deliver him out of their hand, to bring him again to his father). And it came to pass, when Joseph came to his brethren, that they stripped Joseph of his coat, the coat of the colours that [was] on him; and they took him and cast him into the pit. And the pit was empty: no water [was] in it. And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifted up their eyes and looked; and, behold, a caravan of Ishmaelites came from Gilead, and their camels bearing tragacanth and balsam and ladanum, going to carry [it] down to Egypt. And Judah said to his brethren, What profit [is it] if we slay our brother and conceal his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and let not our hand be upon him, for he [is] our brother, our flesh. And his brethren hearkened. And Midianitish men, merchants, passed by; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph for twenty [pieces] of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph into Egypt. And Reuben returned to the pit, and, behold, Joseph [was] not in the pit; and he rent his clothes. And he returned to his brethren and said, The child [is] not; and I, whither shall I go? And they took the coat of Joseph, and killed a buck of the goats, and dipped the coat in the blood; and they sent the coat of the colours, and had [it] brought to their father, and said, This we have found: discern now whether it [is] thy son's coat or not. And he discerned it, and said, My son's coat! an evil beast hath devoured him. Surely torn in pieces is Joseph! And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and said, For I will go down to my son mourning to Sheol. Thus for him wept his father. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt to Potiphar, a chamberlain [lit. eunuch] of Pharaoh, captain of the executioners (or, lifeguard)" (vers. 17-36).

Such is the simple but most touching account Moses was inspired to give of the atrocious wickedness on the part of Joseph's brothers, heads though they were of the tribes of Israel. Who but God would have told the tale, with whatever difference in Reuben and Judah? How evident that in Jehovah alone can one boast, and that the objects of His choice are in themselves nothing and worse than nothing! Yet in the midst of heartlessness toward the guiltless sufferer and the father who had sent him in love rises the fore-shadow of Him that should come, a greater infinitely than Joseph. He too was the Beloved of His Father, and sent as Son of man in quest of the lost. It was His to arouse the enmity of His brethren after the flesh and beyond all as the Faithful Witness who drew out man's evil by divine good, and in all things pleased God the Father.

But in how many soever ways of love, enough was done and is written to show how the, Holy One of God was before His eyes who knows how to effectuate His deliberate counsel and foreknowledge, not only in spite but by means of the apostate unbelief of the Jews, and of the hands of lawless Gentiles, in their blind pride alike knowing not what they did, yet knowing more than enough to make both utterly inexcusable. O, what a Father! O what a Son, given up by His brethren after the flesh, Messiah and withal Jehovah, ready to die for their sins, as none other could or would! For His price too was silver paid, as in the case of another Judah: a goodly valuation for the Lord of all! O what is man, be he Jew or Gentile! and what is God but the God of all grace! And what Jesus, full of grace and truth, who if He drew out by His perfection, as God to man and as man to God, the causeless and uttermost evil of man as a. whole, died as the efficacious propitiation to purge every sin in those who repent and believe the gospel of God in His Son's death!

Nor is it only that peace was made through the blood of Christ's cross for believers, who once were alienated and enemies in mind by wicked works, yet now reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, by which and nothing less it could be. But in virtue of the same death He will at His appearing reconcile all things, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heaven. God's blessed work of gathering out His heirs, the joint-heirs with Christ, to reign with Him in that day must first be completed. Then man's and Satan's accursed work of the apostasy and of the man of sin, the spurious Messiah set up in God's temple and worshipped as God by Jews and Gentiles, will bring down summary judgment by the appearing of His coming. But the manifestation of the Son of God, and of the sons of God in the same glory, is followed by the deliverance of the whole creation that now groans together and travails in pain together unto now. The work that followed Joseph's elevation over Egypt, so striking for its beneficence not only to the heathen but to all the Israel of that day, how small in comparison of a deliverance worthy of His person and of His reconciling work wrought in the cross, wherein God was glorified even as to sin for ever; for there met face to face man's sin in its height and God's love in its depth! But where sin abounded, grace more exceeded; and God could send His glad tidings, yea His best, to the worst of men, "beginning," as the Lord Jesus told them, "with Jerusalem."

CHAPTER 3.

JOSEPH PROSPERED IN POTIPHAR'S HOUSE

Gen. 39: 1-6

It is not without a profoundly moral purpose that, before Joseph's history is continued, the Spirit of God, in Gen. 38 discloses the debased state of Judah. We have already seen that the sensual Reuben was the only brother to show the least natural affection, or at least pity, to Joseph. It was he who suggested the pit, from which their offending brother could not escape, in order to bring him to his father again. But Judah, in Reuben's absence, took the lead in taking him out and selling him to the Ishmaelites, who in turn sold him to an Egyptian master. What a presage of Christ, suffering first from a faithless Judah; then too from the Gentile world! Divine history is as truly predictive in the types of the law as in the heart-breathing of the Psalms, or the more direct prophets. And so all must be, if scripture be God revealing His grace in Christ, His own delight, and the only salvation for wretched guilty man.

Judah, about to be not only the pre-eminently royal tribe but the progenitor of the King of kings, is to take profanely to himself a daughter of Canaan. No wonder that wickedness slew his firstborn, and infamy his brother. No wonder that the widow had no regard from the third. But how shocking her shameless and incestuous vindication of right! how self-righteous Judah's readiness to burn the mother of babes unconsciously his own, one of whom is carefully marked out in Messiah's direct line! Such is man, and such Judah; but such too is God. Where heinous sin abounded, grace much more exceeded. Let us now turn to what follows.

"And Joseph was brought down into Egypt; and Potiphar, a chamberlain of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian man, bought him of the hand of the Ishmaelites who had brought him down thither. And Jehovah was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man, and he was in his master the Egyptian's house. And his master saw that Jehovah [was] with him, and that Jehovah made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found favour in his eyes, and served him; and he made him overseer over his house, and all [that] was his he put into his hand. And it came to pass, from the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that was his, that Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of Jehovah was on all that was his in house and in field. And he left all that [was] his in Joseph's hand, and took cognisance of nothing with him save the bread which he ate." (vers. 1-6).

Little did the Egyptian anticipate the treasure one small purchase brought to his house. But the explanation is not far to seek, and it makes all clear. "Jehovah was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man." Never before was the word so emphatic. Not that Jehovah had not been with him at home or abroad hitherto. Jehovah was with him when he gained his father's confidence and love. Jehovah was with him when by his fidelity he earned the envy and hatred of his brethren. But now of him, a bondman in a strange land, it was said with marked force. Yet who but one inspired of God would have so written of one torn from his father's house, and this by his own brothers, who sold him for a slave, instead of taking his blood or leaving him to perish of hunger. But Jehovah was with him all the more because the need was greater. The favour of divine light shone on him even then; and it made him hateful in the eyes of wicked kinsmen who ought to have loved him, if they understood not but only disliked what seemed to his honour, besides the rancour for their evil report which he felt bound to carry to the father for their good.

In the Egyptian's house he recognised a new sphere of duty, and looked to Jehovah that he might serve Him and thus best serve his master. His eye was single, and the whole body full of light. Delivered from a cruel death which seemed imminent, he humbled himself under the divine hand, and sought to do diligently and conscientiously what lay before him day by day to please the Master above. Hence the prosperity that surrounded him and made him master of the situation. Never had Potiphar or any other such a slave: in him was neither self-seeking nor eyeservice. "And his master saw that Jehovah was with him, and that Jehovah made all that he did to prosper in his hand." One cannot wonder that things went wrong under such a mistress, when no Joseph was there, only, the bondmen. But now there was a force for good at work with the most marked results of blessing which the discerning eye even of a heathen did not fail to see. "And Joseph found favour in his eyes, and served him." Not heart only, but faith was in his work; and this gave a new character and power, which a shrewd master with large experience of human deceitfulness and incompetence made him appreciate all the more.

As he was faithful in the least, his master promoted him to greater tasks and much more honourable. And he set him over his house, and all that was his he put into his hand." This was no small sphere of service, and involved the administration of an immense establishment. For there is ground to accept the view that Potiphar had command of the White Castle at Noph (or Moph) of the prophets, the Memphis of Greeks and others of later times. But extensive, varied, and new as it was to him who had been so lately and singularly introduced, "Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of Jehovah was on all that was his in house and in field." For "A wise man's heart is at his right hand," says Solomon.

At a later day, when Israel had become a kingdom and so rebelled against Jehovah that even Judah was carried into captivity to Babylon, we have like faith and allegiance to Jehovah in Daniel and his three companions. On them too for their separateness to His honour the favour of Jehovah rested; and, in a way similar to that of Joseph yet to come, Daniel rose to the highest elevation in the empire of Nebuchadnezzar, and the rest also to high honour. But they knew no such sufferings as fell to Joseph, nor were they proved in such experience of slavery from its lowest form as was his lot. For there was all the difference possible between the house of Potiphar, to say nothing of the dungeon to which he was afterward assigned, and the palace of the first Gentile world-kingdom wherein they were tried. Yet the trial of faith and its bright results were beautiful in their case as in Joseph's before he rose to his great eminence. Here it was manifest blessing in his servitude, and his master's trust at last without limit. "And he left all that was his in Joseph's hand, and took cognisance of nothing with him, save the bread which he ate." Corruption was in that house, as it came out soon in a shameless guise; but till then "Jehovah blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake."

How wondrous His grace then shown! how much more now, if the eye of faith were not dim! Beyond doubt the splendours of the coming Kingdom under Messiah and the new covenant will exceed all that the earth has ever witnessed; when Zion shall have the first dominion, and the nations shall not only submit but rejoice, and this for a thousand years unbrokenly, while the very beasts renounce their fierceness, and the earth shall yield her increase. Yet that day of righteous power and blessing is really and far transcended by the heavenly glory into which the risen Christ has already ascended, where He sits on the throne of God, and whence He is coming to gather to Himself on high the heirs of God and joint-heirs with Himself, the Head over all things to the church, which is His body. Only for the present it is a work of faith for those who are His on earth; and the Holy Spirit, sent forth from heaven at Pentecost after He went above, still abides to carry it on to the glory of the Lord Jesus. When He and they appear in glory, then shall the nation long blind see Him whom they pierced, He shall reign to the joy of a restored universe. It will be sight then, and not faith as now. Because Israel shall see, they will believe: blessed they who had not seen and believed!

CHAPTER 4.

JOSEPH SUFFERING FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS

Gen. 39: 6-18

Every reader of the book of Genesis can see the larger space given to his life than to any of his fathers, even to the first and greatest of them all. We may profitably ask why; nor is the answer doubtful, for it is the key to all the O. T. No one in these early days was in so striking and varied ways the type of Christ. Nor did any other arise till David was given pre-eminently that place, both in humiliation and on the throne, to say nothing of his own inspired outpourings in the Psalms.

As seeing Him who is invisible, Joseph repelled the temptation, through which he passed unsullied, and meekly suffered under the false imputation of the shameless lady who sought his seduction. It is evident that he, a young man, not only resisted her importunities, but was careful not to wound his master by the proof of the wife's guilty passion and still guiltier revenge on the blameless. For lust, whether gratified or not, soon turns to hatred: so we see in Amnon, as in this depraved woman.

"And Joseph was beautiful of form, and beautiful of countenance. And it came to pass after these things that his master's wife raised her eyes on Joseph, . . . But he refused and said to his master's wife, Behold, my master takes cognisance of nothing with me: what is in the house, and all that he hath, he hath given to my hand. None [is] greater in this house than I; nor hath he withheld from me any thing but thee, because thou [art] his wife. And how should I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? And it came to pass, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, and he hearkened not to her, . . . And it came to pass about this time that on a certain day that he went into the house to do his business, and none of the men [was] there in the house. And she caught . . . and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and ran outside. And it came to pass, when she saw that he had left his garment in her hand, and had fled outside, that she called to the men of her house, and spoke to them, saying, See, he hath brought in to us a Hebrew man to mock us: he came in to me . . , and I cried with a loud voice; and it came to pass when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled, and ran outside. And she laid up his garment by her till his master came to his house. And she spoke to him according to these words, saying, The Hebrew servant whom thou hast brought to us came in to mock me; and it came to pass, as I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled outside" (vers. 6-18).

Egypt, a land of strange anomalies, was remarkable for the combination of a very high standard of morals in theory with extremely lax practice. If one cannot accept the exaggeration of Brugsch (Histoire d'Egypte, 17), we may safely receive Prof. Rawlinson's statement that "the Egyptian women were notoriously of loose character, and, whether as we meet with them in history, or as they are depicted in Egyptian romance, appear as immodest and licentious. The men practised impurity openly and boasted of it in their writings," etc. (Hist. of Ancient Egypt, I. ch. iii. 104-107, 147, 292, 552; II. 361, 362, 404). There is extant "The Tale of the Two Brothers," which experts believe to have been written near the age of Joseph, which tells the tale of female dissoluteness from an Egyptian witness, a romance or novel seemingly written to warn of the ruin to which such courses lead. Herodotus, as is well known, charged them with no less immorality at a later day (ii. 60, etc.).

Another remark may here fittingly be made. Learned sceptics have too hastily objected to the freedom which the incident supposes for the mistress of the house, apart from anything wrong. But such men only betray their prejudice, and, it must be added, their ignorance of Egyptian domestic life in that day. The very monuments bear testimony to the liberty which women, and especially the wife or mother, then enjoyed; but these objectors are as ready to credit that testimony as to distrust the Bible. Yet we need not labour so small a point.

Here then we have the holy youth resisting the tempter, and enduring grief, suffering wrongfully. And this is grace in the day of trial. For what glory is it if, when ye sin and are buffeted, ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye do well and suffer, ye shall take it patiently, this is grace with God. For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye should follow His steps; Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; Who when reviled reviled not again, when suffering threatened not, but gave [it] over into the hands of Him that judges righteously; Who Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, in order that, being dead to sins, we may live to righteousness; by Whose stripes ye were healed. Of the atonement Joseph could be no real type; but of Christ's suffering unjustly and in grace he was a blessed foreshadow.

CHAPTER 5.

JOSEPH BLESSED IN THE TOWER-HOUSE

Gen. 39: 19-23

We can readily conceive the difficulty for Joseph's master created by the wife's perfidy. On the one hand was the proved unimpeachable trustworthiness of his slave; on the other a wife capable of such solicitation must have long betrayed her evil character in many ways if not in that, so as to make her credit dubious. Still she was his wife; and whatever her bold, impudent, and malicious fraud, we hear of no effort on Joseph's part to vindicate himself by exposing her wickedness. A simple denial of the evil she laid to his charge would not avail against the natural indignation of a husband unwilling to search narrowly into the terrible alternative.

"And it came to pass, when his master heard the words of his wife which she spoke to him, saying, After this manner did thy bondman to me, that his wrath was kindled. And Joseph's master took him and put him in the tower-house, a place where the king's prisoners [were] confined; and he was there in the tower-house. And Jehovah was with Joseph, and extended mercy to him, and gave him favour in the eyes of the chief of the tower-house. And the chief of the tower-house committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that [were] in the tower-house; and whatever they were doing there he did. The chief of the tower-house looked not to any thing under his hand, because Jehovah was with him; and what he did Jehovah made to prosper" (vers. 19-23).

Unnatural as was the cruelty of his brothers which ended in his slavery, baser still was the fresh trial through a woman's guilty race. In them both Joseph suffered, for love and for righteousness' sake. In both Jehovah stood by His wronged servant, and caused His favour to rest on him even during the time of his sufferings. Never had his master a slave so efficient and prosperous. Never had chief of the tower-house such a prisoner. Which of the king's grandees in disgrace had ever so won his confidence? In both cases the secret of all was that Jehovah was with Joseph. Brothers, strangers, or jailers made no difference. Violence did not overcome him, any more than corruption: he overcame evil with good; and the heathen recognised it, if the evil state of his brothers blinded them for a while. It was hard enough for a free man to be sold into slavery; it was harder still for a pious man to be condemned for a crime, to which the false accuser had invited him in vain. But Jehovah was with Joseph, and extended mercy to him, and gave him favour where it might least have been expected. Slaves and felons do not as such approve themselves in the eyes of their guardians, as everyone knows.

But God abides the same for ever, and in fact now reveals Himself more endearing still as Father to all that believe since the Son came thus to reveal Him. The enmity of the world was even more pronounced when the true Light shone, and made the darkness visible universally, and the ancient people of God deeper in their enmity than the blind Gentiles. In Christ was no sin; and thus He, the righteous One, convicted them as only the guiltier sinners, because of their blasphemous unbelief along with religious pretension. And what were Joseph's sufferings compared with His? Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures. Once (and it was ample) He suffered for our sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, cleared of all charge or condemnation. None but Christ could thus suffer for us; for all others had sins to be atoned for. He alone who knew no sin could be made sin for us, as God made Him on the cross. His sacrificial suffering there furnished the efficacious ground for God's righteousness, not only in raising Christ from the dead, but in justifying all that believe on Him. Thus, where sin abounded, did grace all the more surpass; and man's total failure in righteousness is answered in the cross which lays the necessary, adequate, and blessed ground for God's righteousness which we become in Christ.

But though none but Christ could suffer for sins, we who believe on Him are called, when doing well, to suffer and take it patiently, as grace with God. So the apostle suffered the loss of all things, and went on counting them but refuse to win Christ on high, and be found in Him, not having his righteousness that is of law but what is through faith of Christ, the righteousness of God on faith: to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed to His death, if anyhow he might arrive at the resurrection from among the dead. This was undoubtedly the bright personal experience of the apostle; but it is divinely communicated to us for our like edification, and open to every saint in the power of the Spirit Who alone can make it good in our spirit and conversation. See how his faith shone in what he wrote at the last to Timothy, when with a slight exception all those in Asia turned away from the apostle, "ashamed of his chain." Yet looking for the punishment of death, he sees the crown of righteousness laid up for him, and tells how, when no man stood with him, the Lord did, and should deliver him from every wicked work, and preserve him for His heavenly kingdom.

CHAPTER 6.

JOSEPH WITH THE DREAMERS IN PRISON

Gen. 40: 1-8.

It is the way of God to give prophecy in a time of present ruin, that those who sin may be finally warned, and those who believe may be sustained by the hope of "some better thing" in His grace superior to all the powers of evil. Such it was in the midst of His earthly people when He was mocked in His messengers, and despised in His words rising up betimes and sending, because He had compassion on the Jews and on His dwelling-place, till there was no remedy. As His wrath arose and fell upon them was exactly the time when the prophets, not content with oral predictions, wrote more formally and fully. Such is the plain matter of fact in the O.T. Here too we find the same principle in the first book of the Pentateuch, given through Joseph the witness of supernatural light in very dark circumstances, and of divine interest. even in the comparatively insignificant changes of man; as He had already both gloriously and graciously intervened in announcing for faith the Second man, on the fall of the first in a lost paradise.

"And it came to pass after these things, the cup-bearer of the king of Egypt, and the baker, offended their lord the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was wroth with his two chamberlains, with the chief of the cup-bearers and with the chief of the bakers; and he put them in custody, in the captain of the life-guard's house, into the tower-house, the place where Joseph [was] imprisoned. And the captain of the life-guard appointed Joseph to them, and he served them; and they continued for days in custody. And they dreamed a dream, both of them in one night, each his dream, each according to his dream's interpretation, the cup-bearer and the baker of the king of Egypt that [were] imprisoned in the tower-house. And Joseph came in to them in the morning, and looked on them, and, behold, they [were] sad. And he asked Pharaoh's chamberlains that [were] with him in his lord's house of custody, saying, Why [are] your faces sad to-day?" (vers. 1-7.)

Joseph had served as a bondman in Potiphar's house. Now he served as a criminal in the tower-house, falsely accused of what was true of his accuser. But his faith remained simple, peaceful, and bright; and we note its effect on those who had no faith themselves, yet highly valued faithfulness. Joseph was charged by the captain with the care of the king's chamberlains. As before in the house of his master, so now in the governor's state-prison, he became the responsible agent: whatever was to be done there, he did it. Jehovah was with him in each place of trial; and what he did, Jehovah made it prosper.

But it is in God's hand to work out His purpose. And as in Joseph's dreams much had been divulged, while he was a young freeman in his father's house, which drew out the envious spite of his brethren, grace gave him now the opportunity of light from above on the dreams of his fellow-prisoners. So little were they instructed by their having each a suited dream the same night, that their visage presented similar sadness to their gracious and sympathetic attendant the next morning. His soul entered into the iron; but love rose superior to evil, and flowed out readily.

In all this Joseph typified Christ who shone to the eye of faith in His humiliation with a grace even beyond glory. He was manifestly the wisdom of God, where human wisdom proved itself utterly weak, foolish, and malicious. He was the prophet raised up from among His brethren, like to Moses, yet greater and with the highest authority. The deeper the enmity, the more He opened things to come, as not only the Christ for Israel, but the still more glorious if rejected Messiah, the Son of man, that all the peoples, and languages should serve Him: a day not come yet though fully revealed, when He shall be displayed as the power of God.

How awful the portion of those bearing His name who help the world to despise His words which will surely be accomplished to the ruin of all His adversaries! Christendom is even more guilty and pretentious than His poor blinded people who cried, His blood be on us and our children; as alas! it is till they repent, as they surely will in God's mercy. But this is not to be now while the church is here; yet the church should be a city of refuge for the homicidal Jew while he is out of the land of his possession, if peradventure he may be cleansed from his guilt by the blood of Him whom he blindly slew; till the priesthood on high closes, and the day comes for the manifested kingdom, and Israel repentant shall be saved and enjoy the new covenant under their long ignored Messiah.

"And they said to him, We have dreamed a dream, and [there is] no interpreter of it. And Joseph said to them, [Are] not interpretations God's. Tell me [them], I pray you" (ver. 8).

As they had a presentiment that their dreams were pregnant with significance for themselves, Joseph had faith, and not in vain, in Him who had once sent to him also dreams, though he had comparatively long to wait for their fulfilment. And with faith God gave him wisdom and patience. "But hope seen is not hope; for what one seeth, why doth he also hope? But if what we see not we hope, we expect with patience."

CHAPTER 7.

THE CHIEF CUP-BEARER'S DREAM

Gen. 40: 9-15

God had tried His dear child, and would try him longer. Yet this was an honour to Joseph, who was given not only to believe but to suffer for His sake. But the chain of providential links was being forged which would raise the suffering Israelite from the dungeon to the highest position in Egypt next to the throne. The dream of the chief cup-bearer was an important link in that chain.

"And the chief of the cup-bearers told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, In my dream, behold, a vine [was] before me; and in the vine [were] three branches; and it [was] as though it budded, its blossoms shot forth, its clusters ripened into grapes. And Phara6h's cup [was] in my hand; and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And Joseph said to him, This [is] the interpretation of it: the three branches [are] three days. Within yet three days will Pharaoh lift up thy head, and restore thee to thy place; and thou shalt give Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his cup-bearer. Only have me in thy remembrance when it shall be well with thee, and deal kindly with me, I pray thee, and make mention of me to Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house. For indeed I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon" (vers. 9-15).

God works often by simple means, as here by such a dream as fell very naturally to this official of Pharaoh's court. Yet was it truly prophetic; and only a prophet was enabled to give its unequivocal meaning. Here the wisdom of God was as evident as in sending the dream. No one looks for the unities of time and place in such a vision. The events of months, or years, might he crowded into a single transaction, as in the vine budding and blossoming and yielding grapes, and wine fit for a monarch's cup. Nobody ever heard historically of so rapid a result in the hands of a cup-bearer, without a winepress or vat, or the storage in jars, seen on the monuments and some tomb-walls dating even before the Hyksos. For wine-drinking to excess is known to have prevailed, especially at certain festivities. So that it is without warrant to assume that the liquor pressed out into the king's cup was meant to imply literally mere grape juice from the cluster rather than the fermented issue. But this is an insignificant point, save to a teetotaller's mind.

The remarkable point which Joseph was given to seize is the precision of the three days indicated by the three branches. No priestly interpreter in Egypt would have ventured to say, as Joseph did at once, "The three branches are three days. Within yet three days will Pharaoh lift up thy head, and restore thee to thine office." it might, if a guess, have been more probably three months; but no. The secret of Jehovah is with them that fear Him; and even more was given here, the exercise in Joseph's spirit, and the divine wisdom that sent the vision to the Egyptian official, with a sadness at its arrival so soon to end in his joyful reinstatement. Interpretation of what God says or does belongs to God, who communicates it as He will, and as the rule, to those whom He loves, even in circumstances of the deepest humiliation. For in this Joseph aptly figured what was verified in the blessed Lord Himself here below.

We too may have dreams; and one may not say that all spring from the busy working of the brain, or that God may not deal thus as of old in slumberings on the bed, to withdraw man from self-will and hide pride from him. But we have as believers, and especially as Christians, far better than such comparatively vague intimations. We have the scriptures in all their fulness, revealing God, His counsels, work, will, and ways, from eternity to eternity. We have also the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and the Son in heaven, never to leave but to abide with us and in us; Who when come undertakes to guide us into all the truth, and declare to us the things to come, glorifying our Lord Jesus in both. He is the standing, intimate, and ready interpreter, not like one among a thousand, as Elihu says, nor even as Joseph supernaturally endowed, but a divine Person dwelling in us. May we have grace to abjure all that grieves and hinders, and to cultivate what is of Himself so as to enjoy the privilege and the fruit more and more. For though God was ever faithful from the earliest days, no saints ever had this wondrous privilege till the Saviour died, rose, and ascended, whom the Holy Spirit thus honours.

CHAPTER 8.

THE CHIEF BAKER'S DREAM AND THE ISSUE

Gen. 40: 16-23

The fellow-chamberlain ventures to rehearse his dream after the chief cup-bearer. How little did he anticipate its dread import!

"And when the chief of the bakers saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph, I also [was] in my dream, and, behold, three baskets of white bread [were] on my head. And in the uppermost basket [there was] all manner of victuals for Pharaoh that the bakers make; and the birds ate them out of the basket upon my head. And Joseph answered and said, This [is] the interpretation of it: the three baskets Care] three days. In yet three days will Pharaoh lift up thy head from off thee, and hang thee upon a tree; and the birds will eat thy flesh from off thee."

"And it came to pass the third day, Pharaoh's birthday, that he made a feast to all his bondmen. And he lifted up the head of the chief of the cup-bearers, and the head of the chief of the bakers among his bondmen. And he restored the chief of the cup-bearers to his office of cup-bearer again; and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And he hanged the chief of the bakers, as Joseph had interpreted to them. Yet the chief of the cup-bearers did not remember Joseph but forgot him." (vers. 16-23).

It is clear how far the chief baker was from seeing anything to discourage his telling his dream to Joseph. But God gave Joseph the discerning ear which perceived the immense difference of the cup-bearer's action that Pharaoh should drink, from that of the birds (not the king) eating out of the basket upon his head. In no way is the credit given to mere natural intelligence. The secret of Jehovah is with those that fear Him. Joseph was one whose faith was habitually in exercise; who knew that God remains the same in the midst of heavy trials, which had changed only from each great sorrow into a greater. In his lowest abasement he looked up for wisdom to its only source, and was called by His power to solve the enigma for good or for ill in the cases which came before him. For if he confided in Jehovah, his love too went out in compassion to fellow-sufferers whose countenances without a word betrayed the anxiety which their dreams cost them. Was it not faith working by love?

That both should have dreamt characteristic dreams in one night he did not impute to what men call chance. If they were sad because there was no interpreter to explain what they instinctively felt to be of the nearest interest to themselves, Joseph as simply reckoned that interpretations belong to God, the giver of every good gift, and of every perfect giving. So He is the answerer of faith's cry to Him, though unheard by any other ear.

Yet Joseph could not but know the serious and speedy fate that hung over the chief baker. We may notice therefore that he made no appeal to him for remembrance. To the chief cup-bearer only did he say, "Think on me when it shall be well with thee, and show kindness, I pray thee, to me and make mention of me to Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house." There was nothing random in his words; nor was there any selfish desire for such royal favours as men expect. He sought simply to be delivered from the strange parody of judgment inflicted on the righteous one through disappointed lust and falsehood.

In both cases the time was short, as indicated by the dream and interpreted by Joseph. On the third day the two chamberlains had each his head lifted up by the king, on his birthday; but the chief cup-bearer rose to his office near Pharaoh's person, the chief baker to the gallows. It became the cup-bearer to remember the striking service rendered by the prophet in the dungeon. But as far too commonly occurs in this world of sin and self, the spiritual benefactor was quite forgotten. For we are expressly told, that two full years passed away to try the faith of Joseph, when God wrought in His providence to make the same difficulty felt in the royal court as in the tower-house. Thus was rebuked the ingratitude of the cup-bearer, oblivious of him who had been stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and who also had done nothing why they should put him into the dungeon. "They hurt with the fetters his feet; into iron went his soul, until the time his word came [to pass]. Jehovah's saying tried him." Yet he that sowed in tears would in due time reap with rejoicing. Joseph was but matured for the vast and difficult task to be assigned him without the least ambition on his part. How this was brought about the chapter that follows explains with all simplicity.

It may be noticed that Joseph is ever the interpreter, if not also the mouthpiece, of God's mind, and this in the future far off or near, beyond all creature prognostication. He was now at his lowest point of humiliation (as a dead man out of mind among the Gentiles, as before doomed to death by his own brothers), yet here the herald of restoration on the one hand, and of extreme judgment on the other. Little his brothers knew that they in their envious hatred were only the means of bringing to pass his exaltation for their own homage and preservation. Little could the Gentiles anticipate that the punishment so unjustly inflicted on him the guiltless was the necessary link in God's wonderful chain to have the administration of the world-kingdom committed to his hand! Yet from the prison which he endured for years, as an evil-doer of the worst imputation, he was about to pass at one step to the highest dignity and the largest power. "Only in the throne," as the king said, "will I be greater than thou." "Without thee shall no man lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt."

CHAPTER 9.

PHARAOH'S DREAM

Gen. 41: 1-7

God however did not forget, but kept Joseph in mind. Faith is tried to our profit (ver. 1), and never disappointed in result.

"And it came to pass at the end of two full years (years of days), that Pharaoh dreamed; and, behold, he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, well-looking and fat-fleshed; and they fed in the reed-grass. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-looking and lean-fleshed; and they stood by the kine on the bank of the river. And the ill-looking and lean-fleshed ate up the seven well-looking and fat kine. And Pharaoh awoke. And he slept and dreamed a second time; and, behold, seven ears of corn came up on one stalk, fat and good. And, behold, seven cars, thin and parched with the east wind, came up after them. And the thin ears swallowed up the seven fat and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, [it was] a dream" (vers. 1-7).

We may notice how appropriate the dreams were, as ordered of God throughout for each case. In Gen. 37 what more simple and suited to those in view than Joseph's sheaf rising up and continuously standing, whilst the other sheaves came round about and bowed down to his sheaf? or the even more emphatic vision of the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowing down to Joseph? A dream so plain, vivid, and startling as to need no interpreter, and to incur the rebuke of his dearly loving father. Darker and more adapted to an Egyptian were the dreams of the chief cup-bearer and of the chief baker in Gen. 40, and as matter of fact beyond any interpreter among the experts of their race, the lack of whom they lamented. He who owned a living God alone was enabled to expound its prophetic meaning, soon to be punctually verified as he said. But here in the chapter before us, how wild and strange and portentous the double dream sent to arouse the king! Yet the "river" is expressed by a word pointing beyond question to the Nile, and so is the marsh-grass on its brink which cattle loved to browse. But egregious as dreams may often be in confusing the proprieties of person or object, of time and place, here it is heightened to the utmost, first by the ill-looking and lean kine eating up the fine-looking and fat ones, next by the thin and parched ears of wheat devouring the fat and good ears that grew on one stalk.

Who that believes God's word can doubt that the wonders so opposed to nature were all the more evidently of divine purpose? But that purpose was worthy of His goodness and compassion. In a world of sin. and suffering, of death and moral ruin and wretchedness He works alike by uncommon bounty and by the hard pinch of want; and for the good of souls yet more by the pain than by the prosperity, that in his anguish the heart might consider why such an affliction came from such a God. The teaching of the two dreams was enigmatic in their forms, but identical in the aim; abundance to the fullest followed by the most abnormal consumption. But why the seven kine and repeated? why the seven ears of corn no less repeated? This needed His interpretation who sent the dreams. Man's power was powerless to open the lock. Wisdom was essential, not that which is earthly, sensual, demonish, but what comes down from above.

To whom did God give the key? To the humbled sufferer in the dungeon. The hour of his vindication was about to strike, and his exaltation at a bound from the deepest though unmerited dishonour to the highest position a subject could fill, always excepting the Antitype foreshadowed by both, yet with whatever resemblance beyond all comparison. But even then what a scheme of goodness while the evil day still dragged its slow length along! The abundance was not to be wasted in a luxurious and injurious waste; the famine was to be alleviated by a wise policy so as to consolidate the king's authority and power and means, instead of breeding discontent and despair and revolution. Joseph had the place of honour and administrative wisdom, after his long endurance of shame and grief at home and abroad; his father to be permanently comforted, and filled with joy overflowing after his life of trial and change beyond his fathers; and his brethren to be rebuked and humbled before his grace and glory, with verification of those dreams in his youth which then only increased their base envy and aggravated their hatred of his purity and love.

But if we may not run on longer in the anticipation of this great and sudden change, let us think of the deep and divine prophetic outlook which underlies even such a history as Genesis supplies. Let us abhor the blind and destructive incredulity, which perverts by false-named knowledge, or by the modern veil of "higher criticism" over real infidelity. Let us delight in the written word of God, which would and does unite a simple unvarnished and true tale, which even a child can take in and enjoy, with moral wisdom at the time and for all time. It is the Holy Spirit's vision of Christ's coming both in humiliation and rejection by Jew and Gentile, and in His administration of the Kingdom in power and glory to the blessing of both in the mercy of God at the end. Then He who chastised the unbelief of them all shall show mercy to all manifestly, and with universal confession of the once despised Jesus. O depth of riches both of wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable His judgments, and untraceable His ways! For who know Jehovah's mind? or who became His counsellor? or who first gave to Him, and it shall be given to him in return? Because of Him, and through Him, and for Him are all things: to Him be the glory for the ages. Amen.

CHAPTER 10.

FAULTS AND FORGETFULNESS CONFESSED.

Gen. 41: 9-14.

The trouble of the king, the failure of the world's resources, the magicians of Egypt and its wise men summoned in vain, touched the chief-butler's conscience and recalled to his memory what he ought never to have forgotten. He who still lay unremembered of man in the dungeon had been years ago used of God to interpret truly his dream and his fellow-prisoner's. The king's perplexity reminded him of their sadness before light from above came to his own immense relief and on his comrade's shameful end. Might not the same interpreter who so justly forecast the servants' future be enabled to help their king?

"And the chief-butler spoke to Pharaoh, saying, I remember my faults this day. Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, me and the chief-baker. And we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream. And [there was] with us a young man, a Hebrew, servant of the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he interpreted. And it came to pass, as he interpreted, so it was: me he restored to mine office, and him he hanged. Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they hastened his exit [made him run] out of the dungeon; and he shaved, and changed his raiment, and came in to Pharaoh." (vers. 9-14).

Here as ever, man's extremity is God's opportunity. The chief-butler forgot Joseph's service, so rare, opportune and unremunerated, which no money could have bought, which God alone could have enabled the blackened but blameless prisoner to render. Was it not inexcusable that the sure fulfilment of his own restoration to honour, and of his companion's fatal degradation, awoke no speedy gratitude, not to say burning sense of justice, on behalf of the suffering prophet? But the patience of God is as instructive as His wisdom is reliable, and His love never fails. Who that weighs the fact can doubt, that, while man has every ground for humbling himself, God timed as well as wrought for the greatest good of His servant and for His own glory? Joseph was allowed still to endure grievous things, the chief-butler to confess his faults, the king to be as agitated as his imprisoned chamberlains, and Joseph to come forth in a lustre incomparably brighter that through any possible rehearsal of his predictions in the dungeon.

It was the Egyptian monarch that was now at his wits' end, and full proof afforded that the nation's boasted wisdom was as unavailing for its troubled king, as their help would be in vain for Israel at a later day against the Assyrian.

Repentance, too, is for sinful man the necessary condition of blessing to the soul. It is God's goodness that leads to it, wholesome and steadying for him who really judges himself before Him and honestly owns it. "I remember my faults this day." It was no mere terror of consequences that confessed how much he was to blame. "Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, me and the chief-baker." He hides nothing of his shame or danger; and he tells how they two had dreams the same night, and repeated them to the young Hebrew (their fellow-prisoner in the state prison), who interpreted them forthwith; as they were fulfilled with a markedly different issue to each and no less surprising than distinct and immediate: "Me he restored to mine office, and him he hanged." The same God, who sent the dreams to the two Egyptian chamberlains, explained their prophetic bearing through Joseph, and accomplished them by Pharaoh in His providence.

No wonder that Pharaoh was so deeply moved as to send and call the long and deeply wronged prisoner from the dungeon to the royal presence. No wonder that the officials lost not a moment in bringing one of whom such good things were attested by the best possible witness to the king. Gates and guards, bars and bolts, must yield him up without delay. Yet would and must he come with due care and respect for the proprieties of the court. There was strong and sound ground to expect the light which not the king only but all the sages of Egypt craved the more to receive, after a testimony so weighty and energetic as they had heard from the chief-butler. How little any then could anticipate God's gracious wisdom, when he came in to Pharaoh, by his means both to enlighten the anxious mind of the monarch, and to provide for the husbanding of the exceptional plenty about to come in, for aiding not only Egypt but those of other lands during the extreme dearth to follow! But God meant, and not least of all, to rescue the blameless Israelite from the shame and punishment he never deserved, to raise him at once to a higher honour which was only his due; and to make him as wise, just, and pious an administrator as any king ever appointed, and any realm ever enjoyed. Of a design yet nearer to His affections, in caring for those He had separated to Himself, as witness for the true and living God against all strange gods, we need not speak now. This will appear self-evident from Gen. 42 and onward, and, higher than all, as the fore-shadow He was giving of the Coming Anointed One, as to whom more remains to be said in its place; for God ever loves to speak of Him, if deaf and dead man may but bear and live.

CHAPTER 11.

GOD'S INTERPRETER.

Gen. 41: 15-32.

Long had been the trial of Joseph's faith and patience, and the keenest morally and physically at the close, though Jehovah was with him all the while. But then "they hurt his feet with fetters: his soul came into iron, till the time that his word came; the word of Jehovah tried him. The king sent and loosed him; the ruler of peoples, and let him go free" (Ps. 105: 18-20). How sudden the change from the king's tower-house to the perplexed king's court, and the baffled sages of Egypt!

"And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and [there is] none to interpret it. And I have heard say of thee, thou understandest a dream to interpret it. And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, [It is] not in me: God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, In my dream, behold, I stood on the brink of a river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine fat-fleshed and fine-looking, and they fed in the reed-grass. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor, and very ill-looking, and lean-fleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness. And the lean and ill-looking kine ate up the first seven fat kine; and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had come into their belly, and their look was as at the beginning. And I awoke. And I saw in my dream, and, behold, seven ears came up on one stalk, full and good. And, behold, seven ears withered, thin, parched with the east wind, sprung up after them; and the thin ears. devoured the seven good ears. And I told [it] to the scribes; but [there was] none that could declare it to me. And Joseph said to Pharaoh, The dream of Pharaoh [is] one. What God is about to do he hath declared to Pharaoh. The seven good kine [are] seven years; and the seven good ears [are] seven years: the dream [is] one. And the seven lean and bad kine that came up after them [are] seven years; and the seven empty cars parched with the east wind will be seven years of famine. This [is] the word which I have spoken to Pharaoh: what God is about to do he letteth Pharaoh see, Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt. And there will arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the famine will consume the land. And the plenty will not be known in the land by reason of that famine which followeth; for it [will be] very grievous. And for that the dream was doubled to Pharaoh twice, [it is] because the thing [is] established by God, and God will hasten to do it" (vers. 15-32).

The king forthwith tells Joseph of his dream and of none to interpret it; of him he had heard as one that could. Joseph replies with modest and pious disclaimer for himself, but with faith in God's willingness and goodness in the matter. Thereon Pharaoh recounts it in yet more energetic terms than originally, the two-fold kine, the two-fold grain, the lean and ill-looking devouring the good and well-favoured, who came before. Joseph explains that both dreams related to one event, seven years of plenty, followed by as many of famine, beyond parallel. Both were of God's doing for extraordinary ends; as was His making all known to Pharaoh, outside the ken of man. The doubling of the dream indicated not only its certainty, but the speed of its accomplishment. God deceives not, nor is He mocked. Behind His good-will to man and those providentially set in authority, He cared intimately for the prophet who had suffered long for righteousness and His name's sake; as He had designs for humbling his brethren, chastising their evil ways, but eventually bringing them in the fourth generation into Canaan, with great substance, out of the land of their slavery, whilst He judges the nation that oppressed them. And this He did as punctually and plainly before the world's eyes, as He now wrought to save life generally and cause the wise dealing of His servant to be at once welcomed.

Indeed Joseph was the type of One incomparably higher, Who shall astonish many nations, and shut the mouths of kings on account of Him, and melt the proud heart of His ancient people; for in their self-will they esteemed Him not but despised Him. Yet it was the reality of His humiliation and of its infinite grace, not only in bearing their griefs and sustaining their sorrows, but far more deeply in being wounded for their transgressions and bruised for their iniquities. These gave the enemy occasion to aggravate their unbelief, as unwilling to allow their sins as to feel their need of a Saviour from God independently of themselves: at bottom the difficulty insuperable to all flesh, of Gentiles as well as Jews. But, strictly speaking, Joseph typified Him, first, in being "the Prophet that should come" and endure all griefs and shame, but be God's wisdom during His humiliation, rejected by His brethren, punished unjustly (though the righteous One) by the Gentiles, yet raised out of the depths to wield the authority of the kingdom outside Israel and the land, to the great relief of Israel and Egypt, before the day come to put the children in fulfilled possession of the promises made to the fathers.

It is intelligible that an ungodly reasoner like David Hume, or a dissolute sentimentalist like J. J. Rousseau should deny prophecy as well as miracle. One can understand too the trifling speculation of philosophers, who talk of alleged miracles or prophecies falling under a higher law which transcends the ordinary rule of natural causes and effects. The common and fatal defect of all such schemes is the sin that forgets and leaves out God, in a day particularly when there was neither the completed word of God or the scriptures, nor the presence of the Spirit imparted as the fruit of Christ's redemption. How sad that their erring and rebellious steps should be followed by men, who are not only professing Christians, but bound by their position to proclaim all revealed truth, and expound it faithfully in its fulness and precision to all disciples as well as opposers. It is both scandalous indifference and real hostility to God and His Son, and in fact less honest than those unworthy sceptics. But the apostasy must come before the day of the Lord, who will execute judgment on all evil among the living here below.

The Jews, once so stubbornly given to idol after, have long been remarkable for their incredulity and opposition to the word of truth, the gospel. And both the old evil will reappear, and the still more frightful unbelief will take the shape of accepting the man of sin, the lawless one, as both Messiah and God. But the apostasy of Christendom must be all the more shameless and desperate, as the rejected light of the gospel transcends the word of righteousness in the law. And who are the instruments most active in the preparatory work of Satan in our day? Beyond doubt those who call themselves the "higher critics." It is they who are now diligently destroying God's authority in the Bible by their vain theories miscalled "historical methods." And those who once trembled at God's word become increasingly dead to so great a sin in the critics, and so great a danger for themselves in listening. But so it must be as the end of worldly religion and life.

CHAPTER 12.

JOSEPH'S COUNSEL, AND PROMOTION.

Gen. 41: 33-14.

Nor was Joseph content only to interpret the dreams of the king, though this he did with a quiet simplicity and decision which so approved itself to Pharaoh's conscience, that he too had not the least doubt that God was in the matter. He saw that the case demanded the most energetic and prudent measures to turn to account the light given from above on the long super-abundant plenty against the no less long, sure, and extreme years of scarcity which were to follow. He therefore rose above all scruples which ordinarily would hinder one emerging from the obscurity and the shame of a prison from tendering advice to a king and his courtiers on affairs of state and of the most urgent and important kind. Confidence in the revealed mind of God took away the fear of slight, as it also drew out his heart in goodwill to the king and his people, not to speak of others, so intimately concerned. Otherwise they might soon forget the dream and its interpretation, as a nine days' wonder, and fall into the usual listlessness of unbelief, wasteful of the coming plenty, and heedless of the scarcity to follow. God indeed was not before the eye of the vast majority, ready on second thoughts to accredit Joseph with no more than ingenuity or, as even professing Christians would say, a lucky hit. The king at once was struck and solemnised, as the rest in measure; so that Joseph was encouraged to advise with prompt seriousness.

"And now let Pharaoh look himself out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do [this]: and let him appoint overseers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty; and let them gather all the food of these good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and keep [it]. And let the food be a store to the land for the seven years of famine which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land perish not through the famine. And the word was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants, Shall we find [one] as this, a man in whom the Spirit of God [is]? And Pharaoh said to Joseph, Since God has made all this known to thee, there is none discreet and wise as thou. Thou shalt be over my house, and according to thy word (mouth) shall all my people order themselves: only in the throne will I be greater than thou. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it on Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in clothes of byss, and put a gold chain about his neck. And he caused him to ride in the second chariot that he had: and they cried before him, Bow the knee (Abrech)! and he set him over all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I [am] Pharaoh: and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or his foot in all the land of Egypt" (vers. 33-44).

Thus without an effort of his own was Joseph elevated from the unmerited depths of suffering and ignominy to be prime minister of the greatest kingdom then on earth. Who could deny that it was God's doing in His providence, though not without extraordinary means in His Spirit's power working in His servant? And how plain the type of a greater than Joseph, Who suffered first from His own people that received Him not, afterwards unto the death of the cross from Gentiles who knew Him not, yet in the midst of both the vessel of divine wisdom far beyond Joseph or any other born of women! For He was indeed the wisdom of God in the days of His humiliation, as He is now at the right hand of power while His people are estranged from Him, and blessing flows to the nations (little as they too know Him yet), besides the little flock of faith, the sheep out of both that do hear His voice and follow Him. All authority meanwhile is given Him in heaven and on earth, though He still waits for the kingdom and the restoration of His alienated people; when all the ends of the earth as well as Israel shall see the salvation of God, and the earth shall make a joyful noise to Jehovah, breaking forth and singing for joy, yea singing praises. For it will be manifested power and glory then when He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to Israel, no longer haughty and self-willed, but humbled by grace, self-judging and submissive at the feet of the crucified Messiah come to reign.

No, Christ is not yet on His own throne as it will be then. He overcame the world and its prince that adjudged Him the cross; and, rejected by Jew and Gentile, He is received up in glory to sit for the little while on His Father's throne, while the heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ are being called out to await His coming to receive them to Himself for the Father's house above. To this end the gospel of God's grace goes out which the Holy Spirit, sent forth from heaven on the Son's ascension, uses to call them out. This done, the world question will be raised; for He is Heir of all things, and the Jew with Israel must come into the foreground for their deliverance, as distinctly as punitive dealings on His, and their, Gentile foes.

CHAPTER 13.

GOVERNOR OF EGYPT.

Gen. 41: 45-57.

Had Joseph been adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, had he like Moses been trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, had he enjoyed the king's favour as fully as that of the princess his daughter, we could scarce conceive of a stranger acquiring such confidence with the king and his servants at court as to be made grand vizier earlier than his thirtieth year. Then he stood nearest to the throne. It was God's doing; and at once represented by Pharaoh's seal-ring put on Joseph's hand, by his array-the court attire of byss [the finest cotton], and by the gold chain put on his neck, and by his riding in the second chariot of the realm with the suited proclamation of the honour due to his office. And we hear more; yet his elevation was wholly unknown to his brethren after the flesh.

"And Pharaoh called Joseph's name Zaphnath-paaneah, and gave him as wife Asenath, daughter of Potiphera priest of On. And Joseph went out over the land of Egypt. And Joseph [was] thirty years of age when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and passed through the whole land of Egypt.

"And in the seven years of plenty the land produced by handfuls. And he gathered up all the food of the seven years that were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities; the food of the fields of the city which [were] round about it, he laid up in it. And Joseph laid up corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left oft numbering; for [it was] without number.

"And to Joseph were born two sons before the year of famine came, whom Asenath daughter of Potiphera the priest of On bore to him. And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh (for God made me forget all my toil and all my father's house). And the name of the second he called Ephraim (for God caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction).

"And the seven years of plenty that were in the land of Egypt were ended; and the seven years of the famine began to come, according as Joseph had said. And there was famine in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. And all the land of Egypt was famished; and the people cried to Pharaoh for bread; and Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, Go to Joseph: what he saith to you, do. And the famine was over all the face of the earth. And Joseph opened every storehouse [all in which was grain], and sold to the Egyptians; and the famine was grievous in the land of Egypt. And the whole earth came into Egypt to Joseph, to buy, because the famine was grievous on the whole earth" (vers. 45-57).

Pharaoh gave Joseph a new name, as to which the learned question whether it means "Saviour of the world," or "Sustainer of life." Either way it points to the eminent service rendered, not in word only but in deed and truth, though the Rabbis and Josephus incline to "Revealer of secrets." But God had especially His purpose for the people of His choice, not Joseph only but the ungrateful and envious brethren, who led the way in his sufferings, and were yet to behold his glory and share his grace.

The two sons were born before the years of famine; and their names are the more remarkable as indicating the striking difference with those of the sons of Moses, notwithstanding a strong moral and typical resemblance between their respective fathers. Manasseh means I causing to forget"; as Ephraim means "fruitfulnesses"; and they express their father's affections in his remarkable exaltation outside Israel for blessing. The names Moses gave his sons express, not his forgetting his brethren, but his sense of "strangership" in being separated from them, and counting on "God my help." Both meet in perfection in our Lord Jesus.

The details that follow reveal the admirable administration of Joseph. Exuberant plenty with most leads to prodigality and waste. But he knew in Whom he believed, and entered wisely into the duty which devolved on him more than on any in the land of Egypt, and provided accordingly for the years of excessive want. Thus all living on the soil were to benefit in the highest degree from the sovereign to every subject, and far beyond that land. The superabundance affixed the first seal on the prophetic truth afforded and divinely interpreted; the famine affixed the second, still more impressive to such as hardly credited a change so disastrous to comfort and increasingly dangerous to life. But the monarch had unbroken confidence in his prime minister and his measures. When the Egyptians, in their distress and fears, cried to him as the father of the country, his one answer was, Go to Joseph: what he saith to you, do."

Grievous was the famine, not only in the outside countries, but in the land which at a much later day became the natural granary for the Empire; the crisis passed without riot, still less a revolution rising against the government. Yet in a simple and righteous statesmanship, which none questioned, the people were fed throughout, and gave up their lands and all they had; so that royalty was thus beyond doubt set on the most favourable position, beyond the ruler's ambition, and with the nation's gratitude to Joseph as their best friend. In all the history of the nations is it possible to find a match for what came to pass under Joseph's ministry for crown or for subject?

Faith marked Joseph's policy throughout, and his wisdom which became increasingly apparent. And if this were so with the type, what is it with Him whom he represents on high? And what will it be when He takes the world under His sceptre, and all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Jehovah? None can expect, in a pious Israelite called to rule Egypt, the light which the Lord's death, resurrection, and ascension afford to the Christian, and the responsibilities which attach to his relationship as not of the world even as Christ was not. But, according to the measure then vouchsafed, Joseph was a bright witness of faith in that day, as incorrupt in his lofty charge as when a slave of the foreigner, and the persecuted of his brethren.

In scripture however we are entitled to remember its prophetic character habitually, and never to forget that the great function of its real Author, who ever may be the instrument, is to glorify the coming One, as ever since He came to take of the things of Christ and announce them to the Christian. How could it be otherwise if we believe what an unceasing object of delight the Son is to the Father?

This is the true key to all scripture, differentiates it from every other book, and indicates the folly and guilt of confounding it with any other. Nor could one who knows it to be divine, as none else, allow for a moment the impiety of man setting himself up as a judge of that will judge him at the last day. But fallen man, though he may be credulous, is essentially unbelieving and as slow to feel his own evil as to trust God's goodness in Christ, because his conscience is bad.

Yet the truth abides the same whether received to salvation or rejected to perdition; and love is active to bear witness of it that benighted man may hear and live, believing the testimony of God concerning His Son. Life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.

CHAPTER 14.

JOSEPH'S BRETHREN BOW DOWN TO HIM

Gen. 42: 1-9.

How often God is pleased to use straits for His own purposes and in His ways for the good of all, saints and sinners! So it is here. The pinch of want fell on Jacob and his sons; "for the famine was in the land of Canaan."

"And Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, and Jacob said to his sons, Why look ye one on another? And he said, Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt: go down thither, and buy for us from thence, in order that we may live and not die. And Joseph's ten brethren went down to buy corn out of Egypt. But Benjamin, Joseph's brother, Jacob sent not with his brethren; for he said, Lest mischief may befall him. So the sons of Israel came to buy among those that came; for the famine was in the land of Canaan. And Joseph, he [was] the governor over the land; he [it was] that sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brethren came and bowed down to him, the face to the earth. And Joseph saw his brethren, and knew them; but he made himself strange to them, and spoke roughly with them, and said to them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food. And Joseph knew his brethren; but they knew him not. And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them, and said to them, Ye [are] spies; to see the nakedness. of the land ye are come (vers. 1-9).

The righteous Jehovah loves righteousness and had a controversy with those brethren of Joseph who had wronged their faithful brother, and had not judged their cruel envy and evil deeds. But this must be for the very reason, that they were His chosen family for His earthly plans, as none other could pretend to be. If therefore they had sunk below natural equity, God in His admirable patience and wisdom knew how to deal with their conscience, vindicate fidelity, chastise self-will, and cleanse from a defiled state. This first meeting of the ten brothers with Joseph had its importance in the moral government of God; who, as He had exalted His wronged and abused servant, was about to break down the hardened, and to clear their hearts from old iniquity which falsified their relationship as bearing His name.

But it was also the first step in the accomplishment of His word to Abram in Gen. 15, "Know assuredly that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall oppress them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge; and afterwards they will come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. And [in a] fourth generation they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (vers. 13-16). Of course ill-will turns what it does not understand to aspersion; yet all was made good in due time. God was faithful and accomplished as He spoke, but with His wonted patience toward the corrupt and hostile usurpers, as well as their hard taskmasters, whilst using both as a moral test of His stiff-necked people. It was His way now in progress to effect discipline for the past and present, and to increase family life into a national one under circumstances which soon changed to such as justified His intervention for His afflicted people, and gave a deep moral lesson to Israel when called to avenge His honour on the abominations of the Amorite. No forecast of man could have anticipated such a future. The God who made it known to Abram was now working in providence to bring it to pass.

Famine had wrought before in Abram's day, and not at all to his honour; but grace brought him back to his tent, and the altar as at the first (Gen. 13: 3, 4). Isaac was absolutely forbidden, under similar pressure, to migrate; he alone abides in Canaan: the instructive reason has been considered in its own place. But Jacob and all the family were expressly to sojourn there, and for a long though limited season: an altogether different lot from those before him as type of Israel, whose name he alone bore and remarkably represented.

Our chapter opens with the perplexity of the sons, and their father's proposal that they should go down into Egypt for supplies. Only Benjamin must not go lest mischief might befall him like his brother Joseph, for that burden though unexpressed ever weighed on his heart. How little he could foresee that ere long Benjamin must go too! But God was working out His good and holy design surely if slowly; man's will or intelligence had nothing to do with bringing all to pass according to His word (vers. 1-5). Things as yet were far from His mind. As it was said in Gen. 12: 6, "The Canaanite was then in the land," so now "The famine was in the land of Canaan." How different when Christ reigns in Zion, and Israel is under the new covenant!

Next we hear emphatically of Joseph as governor over the land, the administrator of the vast stores of corn against the predicted and now fulfilling years of famine. "And Joseph's brethren came, and bowed down to him, the face to the earth. And Joseph saw his brethren, and knew them." This is all simple and true. The change in him, from a mere growing youth in their own lowly sphere, to be prime minister and a great deal more in the greatest kingdom of that day, must have seemed immeasurable in their eyes. They, grown men, remained much the same for his observant glance. Yet the fulfilment of his early dreams rolled out so unmistakably as must have brought no small emotion, even to him already familiar with God's relationship and their certain verification.

We need not wonder that one in his position, not in the least through pride or lack of affection, "made himself strange to them and spoke roughly with them." So he "said to them, Whence come ye? And they said, From the land of Canaan to buy food." He was entitled to prove them; as his conduct equally proved his prudence and goodwill. They deeply needed the moral probe, which lay with him above all else; especially as he "knew his brethren, but they did not know him," as is repeated here.

But there is another element which ver. 9 draws attention to. "And Joseph remembered the dreams that he had dreamt of them; and he said to them, Ye are spies; to see the nakedness (or, exposed parts) of the land ye are come." The reality of God's interest in those who honour Him was plain before him, and the humiliation too of those who slight Him by their unbelief. One might not expect such a measure or manner adopted by an apostle, or a spiritual Christian; but it was quite in keeping with the governor of Egypt, although a pious man, and albeit brother of those who had never fully judged their persecution of one who had given them no just ground of offence. It is not love to be indifferent to flagrant evil, even in a brother. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. In remembering his dreams Joseph had God before him, and sought the good of his brethren, who as yet remembered nothing as they ought.

But God is faithful, and so was Joseph in the main, notwithstanding the spiritually uncongenial air of Egypt. Yet the circumstances called for prayer, the guidance and blessing of God, filial consideration of his father, entrance into the feelings of his brethren, and due care for the prejudices of Egypt. It is plain from the history that Joseph was a man who weighed all the circumstances fully.

CHAPTER 15.

PROVES HIS BRETHREN

Gen. 42: 10-20

Here a quite different scene opens for Joseph, yet recalling his earliest associations and God's dealings with him since he last saw his brothers: he discerning the past, the present, and in his measure the future; they as yet nothing aright. In his natural home he told the true dream of the exaltation which God purposed above not only his brethren but his parents, which they were soon to own. In his rejection only short of death he was the interpreter of life for one man and of judgment for another. Out of prison he was called to interpret for the Egypt-world a full period of plenty followed by as long a period of dire want; and not predicting only, but chosen to administer in power, as he had wisdom to impart, according to God. How it was to probe the hardened consciences of those dear to him notwithstanding their baseness to Jehovah, to their father, and to their brother! We left off with his knowing his brethren who knew not him, his remembrance of his own early dreams, and his imputation that they were spies come to see the nakedness of the land.

"And they said to him, No, my lord; but to buy food thy servants are come. We [are] all sons of one man; we [are] true; thy servants are not spies. And he said to them, No, but to see the nakedness of the land ye are come. And they said, Thy servants [were] twelve brethren, sons of one man, in the land of Canaan: and, behold, the youngest [is] this day with our father; and one [is] not. And Joseph said to them, That [is it] that I have spoken to you, saying, Ye [are] spies. By this ye shall be put to the proof: as Pharaoh liveth, ye shall not go forth hence unless your youngest brother come hither. Send one of you that he may fetch your brother; but ye shall be bound, and your words shall be put to proof whether the truth [[is] in you; and if not, as Pharaoh liveth, ye [are] spies. And he gathered them all into ward three days. And Joseph said to them the third day, This do that ye may live: I fear God. If ye [are] true, let one of your brethren remain bound in the house of your prison; but go ye, carry grain for the hunger of your households; and bring your youngest brother to me, in order that your words may be verified, and that ye may not die. And they did so" (vers. (10-20).

Joseph had no thought of vengeance; nor would he invoke or trust process of law. He with grace in his heart does not spare profitable lessons for the conscience of the guilty. So he speaks like a governor as he truly was of Egypt, and makes himself strange to them for no other end than their real good. If God wrought by the pressure, he who had His mind would lead them, by his words and ways which troubled them, to awaken their long-slumbering conscience, that they too might fear God as he did. It is just so in principle that grace wrought with every one of us who has been truly brought to God. The affections are not to be trusted, unless conscience also cries out to God in a true sense of our own ruin and deep distress. We must approach Him about and in our sins, yet in the name of Jesus.

As they were all guilty, which no one on earth knew so well as Joseph, he committed them all to custody. But as underneath the frown of the governor lay compassion to them all, he on the good witness of the third day proposed that one only should remain in prison, and the rest, with the food he supplied them freely (though this they never suspected), should return to the comfort of their kin. But there was one condition, which for their sakes as for his must be stipulated: "Bring your youngest brother to me." No doubt such a word sent a pang into their hearts; for well they knew what Benjamin was to his father and theirs with the then difficulties. They had sinned against their father and especially about one brother, who to their conviction was not alive yet the very lord who now confronted them. But if the way of transgressors is hard, the way of grace is beyond all thought of man good or bad. Here is nothing but goodness from first to last, if we can rightly say last of that which shall have no end. Only the sinner must learn his own badness, all the more guilty in presence of the love of the Father who sent His Only-begotten into the world, not only that we might live through Him, but that He might die for us as propitiation for our sins.

CHAPTER 16.

JOSEPH'S BRETHREN IN SELF-REPROACH

Gen. 42: 21-28

On the third day we have seen the governor of Egypt relented; and instead of keeping all in prison while one was sent to bring Benjamin, he offers the terms of keeping one as the pledge in custody, while the rest convey back the grain which their households required. But he dropped a few words of great significance to the sons of Jacob, and to them also exceedingly unexpected from the great lord of a people so idolatrous as the Egyptians. And he uttered these words as the explanation of a proposal so just and considerate: "I fear God." Who can doubt that this following their serious position and the relief just proposed was calculated to act powerfully on conscience?

"Then said they one to another, We [are] indeed guilty concerning our brother whose anguish of soul we saw when he besought us and we did not hearken: therefore is this distress come upon us. And Reuben answered them saying, Did I not speak to you, saying, Do not sin against the lad? but ye did not hearken; and now, behold, his blood also is required. And they did not know that Joseph understood, for the interpreter was between them. And he turned away from them and wept. And he returned to them and spoke to them, and took Simeon from among them and bound him before their eyes. And Joseph commanded to fill their vessels with corn, and to restore every man's money into his sack, and to give them provision for the way; and so it was done to them. And they loaded their asses with their corn and departed thence. And as one of them opened his sack to give his ass provender in the lodging place, he saw his money, and, behold, it was in the sack's mouth. And he said to his brethren, My money is returned, and, behold, it is even in my sack. And their heart failed, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What [is] this God hath done to us?" (vers. 21-28).

Their sin against Joseph as well as their father, their sin against God too, after being hid for some twenty years, had now begun to be brought home to them. God would work not the grief of the world unto death, but according to His goodness repentance unto salvation, that the truth they had heard from their father might be no longer a mere theory but a living reality, as it was in Joseph's soul. Think how their confusion must have touched his loving heart, as he heard them acknowledge the sin of their heartless turning away from his agony when he besought them as his brethren in vain; first in leaving him to perish, and next in selling him as a slave! Who but God ordered the matter so that he should now hear their self-reproach who then conspired to their sorrow and shame in devising one mischief after another? If it was amazing to him that God was giving such a token for good in his hardhearted and envious brethren, how much more would it not have been to them had they known that Joseph was now listening to their penitence?

Reuben who had shown some compunction then recalls to them their wicked deed and his remonstrance. Altogether Joseph was so overcome that he could only turn away and weep. Those tears were not of selfish feeling but of gratitude to Him who had watched over all his sufferings and dangers. Now too he could see God's working not only to humble and to bless his brethren but to cheer his father's heart, both by his own restoration to him as one from the grave, and as to his other sons who had been so little a solace and so often a shame. Their distress must deepen yet, for God does not spare the flesh; but the profit would be all the greater at last.

Joseph soon rose above his emotion and returned to them, and before their eyes bound Simeon (not Reuben) on adequate ground. No chastening seems to be of joy but of grief; but the end is worthy of God, even if we have to wait and trust Him in the trials we need by the way.

But Joseph followed up what he began by directing the money of each to be returned in their respective sacks. He sought to deepen the work beyond the sense of retribution for their past evil toward himself. Provision for their journey alone might not have had any such effect; but the money restored would strike them as not at all the way of sale or of man. And it came on them by degrees. For in their halting-place one only opened his sack to feed his ass and saw his money in the mouth of his sack. And this he told the others, to the consternation of all, who could but say to each other, "What is this God hath done to us?" A bad conscience brought God before them; for why should the governor act so kindly who suspected that they were spies, had one brother in his custody, and imperatively demanded the one on whom their father doted? Surely it was God working for good, which they did not yet at all realise. Part of that good was that they should judge themselves thoroughly, still more that they should learn God's ways and end as they had never done.

CHAPTER 17.

JACOB RESISTS THE DEMAND FOR BENJAMIN

Gen. 42: 29-38.

The way of restoration is not easy when souls have got astray like the sons of Jacob. But conscience had begun its deep and wholesome work, however much might be needful. Joseph knew far better than themselves that God was really at work, and using their self-judgment for their blessing through the very trouble which pressed on them and resulted in Simeon's detention in Egypt, confirmed for one by the discovery of the money in his sack's mouth. Their heart failed through fear, and the question was raised, What is this God has done to us?

"And they came into the land of Canaan to Jacob their father, and told him all that had befallen them, saying, The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly to us, and treated us as spies of the land. And we said to him, We [are] true; we are not spies; we [are] twelve brethren, sons of our father: one [is] not, and the youngest [is] this day in the land of Canaan. And the man, the lord of the land, said to us, Hereby shall I know that ye [are] true. leave one of your brethren with me, and take [for] the hunger of your households, and go and bring your youngest brother to me; and I shall know that ye [are] not spies but [are] true: your brother will I give up to you; and ye may trade in the land. And it came to pass as they emptied their sacks, that, behold, every man [had] his bundle of money in his sack; and they saw their bundles of money, they and their father, and were afraid. And Jacob their father said to them, Ye have made me childless: Joseph [is] not, and Simeon [is] not, and ye will take Benjamin! All these things fall on me. And Reuben spoke to his father, saying, Slay my two sons if I bring him not back to thee again;. give him into my hand, and I will bring him to thee again. But he said, My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he alone is left; and if mischief should befall him by the way in which ye go, then would ye bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to Sheol" (vers. 29-38).

The terror of the brethren was greatly increased by the evident purpose of the money in every man's sack. Even one case alarmed them, now that conscience was awakening. Yet this might have, seemed a singular accident; but not so the nine. Jacob too was afraid with them. It appears too that it was not mere goodwill on Joseph's part, but done in communion with God to work yet more in consciences so long scared. They were far as yet from understanding the way of the Lord with them; even Jacob was occupied with the wounds to his heart, and at once recalled the loss of Joseph and Simeon as a reason for utterly refusing to let Benjamin go.

Yet these blows which fell so heavily on his affections were the needed path for blessing and joy to all. And such is the end of the Lord for all that fear him, however trying the way. Joseph too had known it and far more deeply than any, in which he was rather typical of Christ, faithful amidst unfaithfulness; his brethren and even Jacob were buffeted for their faults, a very different alternative; and so it will be in the latter day for the Jewish saints during that hour of Jacob's sorrow.

But even for Joseph, and a far greater than Joseph, humiliation was the path to glory. And so with the Christian now. Our place is to suffer with Christ in a spirit of uncomplaining grace. But even the godly Jewish remnant will bow before the retributive dealing of moral government. They shall by sovereign grace "be saved out of it," and they shall look upon Him whom they pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only one, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. And the answer will be, Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins. Yet without Christ's cross all had been vain: on Him Jehovah laid the iniquity of all that believe. But this does not hinder governmental dealings also on Jehovah's part with His people that they may learn His ways of faithfulness, and their own ways when they forget Him and confide most in themselves that they are righteous, whilst they have least reason for it.

CHAPTER 18.

JACOB LETS BENJAMIN GO

Gen. 43: 1-15.

The sons quietly left the difficulty till the family need forced Jacob to speak, which gave Judah opportunity to plead without impropriety. Feeling would yield to famine. Yet God was in Jacob's thoughts, and in a measure in those of the sons, as compared with the past. But the mercy that fails not would shine through the dark clouds.

"And the famine [was] grievous in the land. And it came to pass, when they had finished eating the grain which they had brought from Egypt, that their father said to them, Go again, buy us a little food. And Judah spoke to him, saying, The man did positively testify to us, saying, Ye shall not see my face, unless your brother [be] with you. If thou wilt send our brother with us, we will go down and buy thee food; but if thou do not send [him], we will not go down; for the man said to us, Ye shall not see my face unless your brother [be] with you. And Israel said, Why dealt ye so ill with me, to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother? And they said, The man asked very closely after us and after our kindred, saying, [Is] your father yet alive? have ye a brother? And we told him according to the tenor of these words. Could we at all know that he would say, Bring your brother down? And Judah said to Israel his father, Send the lad with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and thou and our little ones. I will be surety for him: of my hand shalt thou require him; if I. bring him not to thee and set him before thy face, then shall I be guilty before thee for ever. For had we not lingered, we should now certainly have returned already twice. And their father Israel said to them, If [it is] then so, do this; take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a gift, a little balm and a little honey, tragacanth and ladanum, pistachio-nuts and almonds; and take double money in your hand, and the money that was returned to you in the mouth of your sacks, carry [it] back in your hand perhaps it [is] an oversight. Take also your brother and arise, go again to the man. And the Almighty God give you mercy before the man, that he may send away your other brother, and Benjamin "And I, if I be bereaved [of my children], am bereaved. And the men took that gift, and took double money in their hand, and Benjamin, and rose up, and went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph" (vers. 1-15).

It is in a world of evil and sorrow through sin, where grace works for good. As long as the food lasted, the dreaded condition remained in abeyance. But when their supply came to an end, facts must be faced, and God be found above their hopes as much as their fears, turning their faults to their profit, but abundant in suited mercy to His own glory. The sons left it to their father to propose a fresh visit to Egypt; and not Reuben but Judah states the case. They were absolutely forbidden to see the ruler's face without Benjamin. With him they were ready to go down and buy the needed food; without him they durst not go. Thereon Israel yielded to their complaint; for they could well plead the ruler's keen inquiry. It is indeed a vivid transcript of the situation, and of the agitated feeling on all sides growing out of iniquity, with God not only to exercise and chasten but to carry out His own way for blessing all round.

So it will be with the generation to come of Israel's sons, guilty of far deeper dereliction and against an immeasurably greater than Joseph. Him "this generation" spurned in their blindness and consigned in their hate to a far more ignominious doom than their fathers over conceived for their brother. And the repentance of the coming day will be proportionate, as the necessary trials through which they must pass retributively in God's government will be immense. But the end of the Lord will be rich in promised blessing, not only for Israel but for all the nations of the earth. And how deep and loud will be their thankful praise and joy and triumph in Him their own Messiah, to whom they owe it all in mercy without measure or end!

Here Judah again pleads with his father, with touching effect offering to bear the blame for ever. Now Israel yields, however it might wring his heart, and with careful instructions that all should be done honestly and with comeliness, he surrenders his beloved, the more beloved because of the missing link, recalling the proper patriarchal name of strength in their weakness. It was after a long interval, when God recalled it thus to Jacob, and along with El-Shaddai, the name of Israel (Gen. 35: 10, 11) with glorious promises yet to be fulfilled in Israel's sons. But this glory turns, as does their salvation, on their long, rejected, soon to be received, Jesus Messiah.

CHAPTER 19.

BENJAMIN WITH THE REST MEETS JOSEPH

Gen. 43: 15-34.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. So it will be for Israel when existing shadows yield to the reality Christ's appearing will bring in to the glory of God. So it was for the dawn of heavenly light and blessing in Christ for the Christian; and so it will be when this age ends, and a new one begins for Israel and the nations of the earth.

"And the men took that present, and they took double money in their hand, and Benjamin, and they rose up, and went down to Egypt, and stood before Joseph. And when Joseph saw Benjamin with them, he said to the steward of his house, Bring the men into the house, and slay, and make ready; for the men shall dine with me at noon. And the man did as Joseph bade; and the man brought the men into Joseph's house. And the men were afraid, because they were brought into Joseph's house; and they said, Because of the, money that was returned in our sacks at the first time are we brought in; that he may seek occasion against us, and fall upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses. And they came near to the steward of Joseph's house, and they spoke to him, at the door of the house, and said, O my lord, we came indeed down at the first time to buy food; and it came to pass, when we came to the lodging place, that we opened our sacks, and, behold, [every] man's money [was] in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight; and we have brought it again in our hand. And other money have we brought down in our hand to buy food: we know not who put our money in our sacks. And he said, Peace [be] to you, fear not: your God, and the God of your father, hath given you treasure in your sacks; I had your money. And he brought Simeon out to them. And the man brought the men into Joseph's house, and gave [them] water, and they washed their feet; and he gave their asses provender. And they made ready the present against Joseph came at noon; for they heard that they should eat bread there. And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which [was] in their hand into the house, and bowed down themselves to him to the earth. And he asked them of [their] welfare, and said, [Is] your father well, the old man of whom ye spoke? [Is] he yet alive? And they said, Thy servant our father [is] well, he [is] yet alive. And they bowed the head and made obeisance. And he lifted up his eyes and saw Benjamin his brother, his mother's son, and said, [Is] this your youngest brother of whom ye spoke to rue? And he said, God be gracious to thee, my son. And Joseph made haste, for his bowels yearned upon his brother; and he sought [where] to weep; and he entered into [his] chamber, and wept there. And he washed his face, and came out; and he restrained himself, and said, Set on bread. And they set on before him by himself, and for them by themselves, and for the Egyptians who did eat with him by themselves; because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that [is] an abomination to the Egyptians. And they sat before him, the first-born according to his birth-right, and the youngest according to his youth: and the men marvelled one with another. And he took messes for them from before him; but Benjamin's mess was five times as much as any of theirs. And they drank and drank largely with him" (vers. 15-34).

The inspired narrative in its own beautiful simplicity shows us God's working in the conscience of the sons of Israel. How little they yet understood that His goodness was leading them to repentance, and that the brother they had so deeply wronged and bitterly hated was but accomplishing their best good by the exercises they passed through! That they were invited into the governor's house filled them with uneasiness. ''The men were afraid because they were brought into Joseph's house; and they said, Because of the money that was returned in our sacks at the first time are we brought in; that he may seek occasion against us, and fall upon us, and take us for bondmen, and our asses." Hence their eagerness to tell the story of their mysterious discovery, and to repay the money that was not theirs. But the steward assured them that all was right on that score without further explanation. God would work more deeply yet.

Meanwhile Simeon rejoins them; and all are treated with the kind attention due to guests, and their beasts of burden too. And they made ready the gift for presentation to Joseph when he should appear. And very graphic is the meeting, and the enquiries on his part out of the love which he felt, as they bowed down again and again in obeisance. "And he lifted up his eyes and saw Benjamin his brother, his mother's son, and said, [Is] this your youngest brother of whom ye spoke to me? And he said, God be gracious to thee, my son. And Joseph made baste, for his bowels yearned upon his brother, and he sought [where] to weep; and he entered into [his] chamber and wept there."

Who can fail to realise it as a scene of human feeling? But it has also a far deeper character to him who reads in faith, and knows the blessed import of grace to be held out by a far greater than Joseph in His restoring His guilty and long alienated brethren to the knowledge of Himself and of themselves. How glorious the consequences when the blessing shall be on the head of Jesus "in that day" which is coming, "and on the crown of the head of Him that was separate from His brethren!" No wonder that those who limit the language to the past think scripture hyperbolical. Christ is not only the key to, but the fulness of, the truth, which here so nearly concerns, not the church of the heavenlies, but the earthly people of God, who must be inwardly fitted for the place to which they are destined before all the nations of the earth, "the glory of Thy people Israel." For figuratively Benjamin, the son of his father's hand must be joined to Joseph, "the separated from his brethren," in order to the accomplishment of their glory which awaits to be fulfilled in its own time. It could not be at this time while the church is being completed in which is neither Jew nor Greek.

Nothing more deplorably hinders the due understanding of the scriptures, both the O.T. and the N.T., than confounding the church's portion, and duties with those of His people Israel. These have lost their place for the while because of their idolatrous apostasy from Jehovah even in Judah and the house of David. Next when a remnant was brought back after the fall of Babylon, they returned to compromise His name especially under Antiochus Epiphanes, when the mass sunk into his guilty schemes, and into still more defiant rebellion against Jehovah in rejecting His Christ and demanding His crucifixion of the Romans, though the heathen procurator well knew His innocence and their spiteful wickedness. Wherefore wrath came upon them to the uttermost, and for a longer continuance. This further and more thorough rejection of the Jews gave occasion to the revelation of grace and truth in Christ, and to the call of the church into union with Him in the heavenlies as its Head, enjoyed even now on earth by the Holy Spirit's presence who baptised us into one body according to the promise of the Father and the Son.

It is the more important for the Christian to take heed; for it was overlooked and misunderstood by the earliest of the Fathers who more and more judaised till the so-called Catholic Church sunk in the darkness of the Latin and Greek rivals with other relies yet more heterodox. The Reformation more or less cast off the papal yoke by means of the Protestant powers who heard the cry for the Bible and justification by faith. But Lutherans and Calvinists never recovered the truth, least of all those who boasted most of tradition; and the Puritans earlier or later, who sought individual piety, wandered into greater darkness as they justified separate denominations without end.

CHAPTER 20.

THE CRUCIAL TEST APPLIED

Gen. 44: 1-17.

It was needed in the moral government of God that the brethren should be searched still more thoroughly; and Joseph is His instrument in devising a still more trying means, not only to carry out self-judgment to the uttermost but to prove their affections now sound and fervent to their father and their brother, after their deep guilt in both respects of old. Love joined righteousness in thus working for their best good.

And he commanded [him] that [was] over (or, the steward of) his house, saying, Fill the men's sacks with food as much as they can carry; and put every man's money in the mouth of his sack. And put my cup, the silver cup, in the mouth of the sack of the youngest, and his corn-money. And he did according to the word of Joseph which he had spoken. In the morning when it was light, the men were sent away, they and their asses. They were gone out of the city, not far off, when Joseph said to his steward, Up, follow after the men; and when thou overtakest them, say to them, Why have you rewarded evil for good? [Is] not this [it] in what my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? Ye have done evil [in] what ye have done. And he overtook them, and spoke to them these words. And they said to him, Wherefore speaketh my lord such words as these? Far be it from thy servants to do such a thing! Behold, the money which we found in our sacks' mouths we brought again to thee out of the land of Canaan; and how should we steal out of thy lord's house silver or gold? With whomsoever of thy servants it is found, let him die; and we also will be my lord's bondmen. And he said, Now also [be] it according to your words: he with whom it is found shall be. my bondman, and ye shall be blameless. And they hosted and laid down every man his sack on the ground, and opened every man his sack. And he searched carefully; he began at the eldest, and left at the youngest; and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack. Then they rent their clothes, and loaded every man his ass, and returned to the city. And Judah and his brethren came to Joseph's house; and he [was] yet there; and they fell before him on the ground. And Joseph said to them, What deed [is] this which ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can indeed divine? And Judah said, What shall we say to my lord? what shall we speak? or how shall we clear ourselves? God hath found out the iniquity of thy servants: behold, we [are] my lord's bondmen, both we and [he] also in whose hand the cup is found. And he said, Far be it that I should do so! The man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my bondman; but as for you, go up in peace to your father" (vers. 1-17).

Severe as the trial was, love dictated it in the fear of God, though we may feel that the mode adopted was in no way what the N.T. would suggest to the Christian. Unfriendly eyes ignorantly misapply the light of Christ to such as had not that light as we have, to disparage the ancient scriptures, and set the one against the other. Joseph acted according to his measure, impaired no doubt by the Egyptian life which surrounded him; and scripture tells us the facts as they were, without sanction or apology. So it is even in the N.T. when the true light was already shining: the record is not a divine sanction. But the written word is always the truth of things, be it what it may; and this is what God alone gives; and it is what we need and cap find nowhere else. And the steward knew well what his master intended.

How blessed for us, and to God's glory that we have the unfailing and ever holy wisdom of God in Christ! Here the unbeliever may spy as he pleases; his carping malevolence may assail or pervert. But the wisdom abides without a flaw. By-and-by He will be reigning in power; but when He too suffered as Joseph never did, His every word. and way was God's wisdom for us. And so it is when accepted on high and in the highest glory, though it be not yet His promised glory on His own throne, but exalted exceptionally as Joseph was with Gentiles in immediate view, not Israel under Him as when He reigns according to the prophets. He is God's wisdom alike in heavenly glory as in earthly humiliation, as the later revelation of God abundantly proves to our joy and blessing.

His type Joseph was here to carry out the necessary probe for the clearance of all the past mischief, and the forming of a new heart and a new spirit in his brethren. It was for God's sake and their sakes, rather than his own, that there might be the reality and the evidence of a divine work in their conscience and heart. This dictated the cup in Benjamin's sack. No doubt the shock of its discovery there acutely troubled the brothers. But so it must be where sin of the deepest kind lay at the bottom of all; and this was but a means that it might be duly felt and judged. After all, the pain of the means employed was very brief (not more than a few hours compared with what Joseph drank so deeply for years), and the same day followed with forgiveness and joy and tender love.

To reward the governor's good with such an evil as stealing his cup filled the brethren with all the more anguish that it was found with Benjamin. No wonder that they rent their clothes, and loaded every man his ass, and returned to the city heartbroken. And now more than ever they paid Joseph the fullest obeisance in unconscious accomplishment of his dreams, as they fell before him on the ground. In the latter half of the chapter we shall learn the depth of their renewed feeling for their father and their brother: the very issue which Joseph desired, as he on his part proved the reality and depth of his own love for all. But we need not say more now, as we have a pleading to hear which touched and delighted the heart of Joseph, as it has spoken to innumerable hearts since to our day. And what will it be when the type is fulfilled, and the Lord Himself appears to the Judah of the future day when they look on Him whom they pierced, and mourn as for an only son, every family apart, and the wives apart (Zech. 12)?

CHAPTER 21.

JUDAH'S PLEA

Gen. 44: 18-34.

What can be found more candid, and lowly, or more affecting, than the appeal to Joseph of the man once so hard and heartless?

"Then Judah came near to him, and said, Ah! my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord's cars, and let not thine anger burn against thy servant; for thou [art] even as Pharaoh. My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother? And we said to my lord, We have an aged father, and a child born to him in his old age, a young one; and his brother is dead, and he alone is left of his mother; and his father loveth him. And thou saidst to thy servants, Bring him down to me that I may set my eyes on him. And we said to my lord, The lad cannot leave his father; for [if] he should leave his father, he [his father] would die. And thou saidst to thy servants, Unless your youngest brother come down with you, ye shall see my face no more. And it came to pass when we came up to thy servant my father, we told him the words of my lord. And our father said, Go again, buy us a little food. But we said, We cannot go down: if our youngest brother be with us, then will we go down; for we may not see the man's face unless our youngest brother [be] with us. And thy servant my father said to us, Ye know that my wife bore me two [sons]; and the one went out from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces, and I have not seen him since. And if ye take this one also from me, and mischief should befall him, ye will bring down my grey hairs with evil to Sheol. Now therefore, when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad [is] not with us, seeing that his soul is bound up with the lad's soul, it will come to pass, when he sees that the lad [is] not [with us], that he will die; and thy servants will bring down the grey hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to Sheol. For thy servant became surety for the lad to my father, saying, If I bring him not to thee, then I shall be guilty toward my father all the (or, my) days. And now let thy servant stay, I pray thee, instead of the lad a bondman to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brethren; for how should I go up to my father if the lad [were] not with me? lest I see the evil that shall come to my father" (vers. 18-34).

The immense change God had wrought in his brethren was thus made manifest to Joseph. Their envy and selfish cruelty had given way to tender love to their father and his affection for the younger son of Rachel. The old jealousy was supplanted to the root; and he who took the lead was ready to become a slave to the governor, that Benjamin might return to be his father's joy and consolation, instead of death if he remained a bondman. What Joseph had sought was given him, though none as yet knew what he realised. The fraternal guilt how gladly forgiven! the father about to taste comfort beyond all his hopes! Also his own pious heart recognised God's goodness and wondrous ways in bringing about all that was about to be the portion of the family of promise.

Good M. Henry casts about for reasons why Judah should be here so prominent. But those who favour either Patristic expositors or Puritans will pardon me if I point out the great loss which all sustain who do not study the dispensational ways of God in scripture. They consequently are too little versed in the prophets, who render invaluable and indispensable aid for apprehending the types. There is no real ground for conceiving Judah "a better friend to Benjamin than the rest were," or "more solicitous to bring him off." Nor need we think that "he thought himself under greater obligations to endeavour it than the rest, because he had passed his word to his father for his safe return; or the rest chose him for their spokesman, because he was a man of better sense and better spirit, and had a greater command of language than any of them." I am not aware that anything is extant from Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Cyril which treats of this, or from Augustine, Jerome or any ancient Latin father. For they too entered so little into the study of the purposes of God as revealed in scripture that we could not expect gleanings of weight on this score.

Yet to those who have profited any thing to speak of from prophecy, it is evident that to a romancer Reuben would have seemed from Gen. 37 the natural one to have taken up the case, and Judah far from promising, especially when we read the revolting figure which he cuts in Gen. 38. But the truth according to God is that Judah was the one whom grace had now fitted for the work. And this harmonises with the divine disposition of the land, where Benjamin had a special nearness in their respective lots. "Of Benjamin he said, The beloved of Jehovah-he shall dwell in safety by him; he will cover him all the day long, And dwell between his shoulders" (Deut. 33: 12). And so it was ordered of Jehovah, that notwithstanding the almost extermination of the tribe for their defiance of their brethren in a gross case of sin, and later still their natural repugnance to the anointed king of Judah who superseded Saul's line and their tribe, they became attached to Judah and the house of David beyond and unlike all the others.

So it will characterise the future and its bright hopes when the heart of Jerusalem is spoken to, and she will hear the cry that her time of toil and trouble is accomplished, and her iniquity is pardoned. The ten tribes will share the blessing later; but Judah and Benjamin precede. They rejected the true Christ; they will receive the Antichrist. Hence Judah here has a. place with and for Benjamin quite peculiar; and He who inspired the scripture did not forget to point to this fact only known to God, which gives it a meaning full of interest to those who honour the word as truly His and not man's, all of it worthy of Him. As Joseph clearly prefigured Him that was rejected by and separated from His brethren, yet exalted in a sphere outside them now for the blessing of men in all the world, so Benjamin typifies Him in His tearing to pieces the enemies of the Jew in the day of retribution that is coming, not for blessing only like Joseph, but for power, executing divine judgment on the adversary.

One quite understands how few since apostolic days in the past or present exhibit a state to apprehend or enjoy the things to come. But this, thank God, does not enfeeble the truth, nor hinder faith's delight in looking beforehand to the glorious things for Israel on the earth then made ready for them. Our portion is with Christ for the heavens; for besides our individual blessing as Christians by faith of the gospel, we are by the gift of the Holy Spirit made members of His body whilst He is exalted as Head over all things at the right hand of God.

CHAPTER 22.

JOSEPH MADE KNOWN TO HIS BRETHREN

Gen. 45: 1-15.

The dealing with the conscience of the guilty had done its work. So it will be with the righteous remnant of the latter day. The chastening seemed at the time grievous, but was really in love and for profit, in order to the partaking of God's holiness. After that grace can display itself freely.

"And Joseph could not control himself before all those that stood by him, and he cried, Put every man out from me. And no man stood with him while Joseph made himself known to his brethren. And he gave forth his voice in weeping; and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said to his brethren, I [am] Joseph: does my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were terrified at his presence. And Joseph said to his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I [am] Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. And now be not grieved, and let it not be an occasion of anger in your eyes, that ye sold me hither; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine [hath been] these two years in the midst of the land; and [there are] yet five years in which [shall be] neither ploughing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance. And now [it was] not you sent me here, but God; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and governor over all the land of Egypt. Haste and go up to my father, and say to him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down to me, tarry not. And thou shalt. dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near to me, thou and thy sons and thy sons' sons, and thy flocks and thy herds and all that thou hast. And there will I nourish thee, for [there are] yet five years of famine; in order that thou be not impoverished, thou and thy household and all that thou hast. And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that [it is] my mouth which speaketh to you. And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. And he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept on his neck. And he kissed all his brethren, and wept on them; and after that his brethren talked with him" (vers. 1-15).

Judah's appeal gave full and conclusive proof that the means employed by Joseph had wrought its designed effect. What a true sense of their cruel wrong toward their guiltless brother! What intense feeling for their father, only less wronged of old than their brother Joseph, and now to be seemingly smitten in his old age by the loss of his beloved Benjamin! Judah craved as the greatest favour to remain instead of the lad as slave to his lord; for how could he go to his father without Benjamin? Joseph could not, would not, hold out longer, but without delay yields to his pent up affection; and, that he might do so freely and fully, charged every attendant to leave his presence. No stranger must intermeddle in such a scene. "And no man stood with him, while Joseph made himself known to his brethren" (ver. 1). All must be out now; and as in Gen. 42: 30 he sought to weep apart, and refrained himself, he now gave vent to his feelings without measure that they might be delivered from their fears and be assured of the love which was ever in his heart. For well he knew that the discovery must fill them with dread no less than astonishment. And he yielded to weeping so loud that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard (2). And Joseph said to his brethren, I [am] Joseph: doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were terrified at his presence" (3). Who can wonder that they were mute? But his love would cast out their fear. "And Joseph said to his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near." And not content with divulging the great secret, as "he said, I [am] Joseph your brother whom ye sold into Egypt," so he at once seeks to remove their terror by the words, "Now therefore be not grieved nor angry, with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God sent me before you to preserve life" (vers. 4, 5).

Now what a lesson follows in rebuke of the shameless unbelief of prophecy that prevails among this generation of professing Christians! Joseph speaks with the calmest confidence to his brethren, as he had to the king and court of Egypt, of the five years of famine in addition to the two which had led his brethren to repair to the stores, which the years of exuberant plenty enabled him by his faith to provide against the years of want. Near or distant is alike easy to the revealing Spirit of God: both are beyond man's power. Incredulity would explain both away. All the more the grace of God which was pleased to make the future known in a veiled shape, that the sufferer in the dungeon should not only be vindicated, but become the witness that God gives wisdom to the wise, and reveals the deep and secret things as He sees fit, and on behalf of His people even in their lowest estate.

We can truly and rightly judge how low the fathers of Israel's tribes had fallen; and how calculated Joseph's words were to give them a new confidence in God's interest in them, far more intimate than His beneficence to Egypt's king and people and the lands which profited by His wondrous ways. "And God sent me before you to establish you a remnant on the earth, and preserve your lives by a great deliverance." Here was the true key, not merely the discovery to Pharaoh and the rescue of Joseph, and the provision generally in the singularly long plenty and the equally long dearth, but the accomplishment of His plans, long before divulged to Abram (in Gen. 15), whereby His ancient people should grow up from the family of Jacob in a stranger land of bondage and affliction, the oppressing nation to be judged, and themselves to emerge with great substance.

Who can fail to see that the prophetic powers for Abram, and now for Joseph, were equally from God, whether for centuries beforehand, or for running septads of years? What difference can this make to God, known to whom are all His works since time began, yea, from all eternity? It is only a question of His pleasure directed by wisdom and love. And if Israel were called to own and witness the privilege vouchsafed, how much more Christians who are entitled by the Spirit to search all things, yea, the depths of God! For we can discern a greater than Joseph herein and anticipate, the day when the Jews shall be brought to learn by grace their incomparably worse conduct to Him, who, though God over all, deigned to become their Messiah, Who died to save and will restore them as a people to their land, and to reign King not only there but over all the earth, equally Jehovah as Messiah. In that day shall there be one Jehovah, and His name one. Yea more, He shall have things in the heavens and the earth summed up and together under His headship of all the universe, and all the earth filled with His glory as truly as the heavens. We can read in Zech. 12 the recognition scene for the Jews when the long despised Jesus appears in glory to the confusion of their enemies and to their own everlasting salvation.

But to return to Joseph, what concern to console his brothers! "And now not ye sent me hither, but God; and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and governor throughout all the land of Egypt" (ver. 8). Was not this the truth by grace to faith, not to the blinded sceptic? Thereon in vers. 9-11 he bids them go up to his father without delay, tell him all, and bring him down to dwell in Goshen near Joseph, both him and all his with flocks, herds and possessions. "And there will I nourish thee, for yet [are] five years of famine," lest all should come to poverty.

And what more touching than his final words? And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin that [it is] my mouth which speaketh to you. And tell my father all my glory in Egypt, and all ye have seen; and haste, and bring my father quickly hither." Not content with this, "he fell on his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept on his neck. And he kissed all his brethren, and wept on them; and after that his brethren talked with him." Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, not only he with them, but they with him. But what is even this compared with that which is yet reserved for Israel?

CHAPTER 23.

JOSEPH SENDS FOR JACOB AND ALL.

Gen. 45: 16-28.

Thus was Joseph led tenderly to care for his father and his brethren, as he was enabled to administer for the relief of Egypt and its surrounding peoples, that the exceeding and long plenty should not be wasted but turned to provide against the distress of the equally long famine which followed. Thus those who heard the word of God could see the hand of God accomplishing what the divinely-sent dreams portended of the ruling place which Joseph was to fill, and this not only in patriarchal limits but far beyond, while accomplishing, God's ways with His choice line as made known to Abram in Gen. 15.

"And the report [or, voice] thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, saying, Joseph's brethren are come; and it was good in Pharaoh's eyes and in the eyes of his bondmen. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, Say to thy brethren, Do this: load your beasts and depart; go into the land of Canaan, and take your father and your households, and come to me; and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land. And thou art commanded — this do: take wagons out of the land of Egypt for your little ones, and for your wives, and fetch your father and come. And let not your eye regret your stuff; for the good of all the land of Egypt [is] yours. And the sons of Israel did so; and Joseph gave them wagons according to the commandment of Pharaoh, and gave them provision for the way. To each one of them all he gave changes of raiment, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred [shekels] of silver and five changes of raiment. And to his father he sent this: ten asses carrying the good things of Egypt, and ten she-asses carrying corn and bread and food for his father by the way. So he sent his brethren away, and they departed; and he said to them, See that ye fall not out by the way. And they went up out of Egypt and came into the land of Canaan to Jacob their father. And they told him, saying. Joseph [is] yet alive, and he [is] governor over all the land of Egypt. And his heart became numb, for he did not believe them. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had spoken to them; and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. And Israel said, [It is] enough; Joseph my son [is] yet alive: I will go and see him before I die" (vers. 16-28).

No circumstances could be devised by man's wit so favourable for the entrance of Jacob and his sons into Egypt; and none could be conceived more simple than the plain facts of the case, to give Joseph the administration of the land, attaching to him alike the king and his subjects.

If they did not surpass fable, they were true; and they bear thus the clear impress of God's ordering, as they prefigure that which the prophets pledge in Jehovah's name of what a greater than Joseph was exalted to do when rejected by His brethren to sit on God's right hand in richer supplies to a famished world, and about to make Himself known "the second time" to His brethren with broken hearts and deep repentance, entering for the first time their real and unchanging history of obedience, when all the nations shall indeed be blessed in the one Seed, which is Christ as the apostle speaks in Gal. 3: 16.

Even in the world that now is, how rare to find a king and his servants united through respect for an alien governor to yield a hearty and harmonious welcome to his alien fathers and brethren! And Egypt had its strong prejudices then as it is known to have had for ages afterwards; and to none could it be so strongly opposed as to those who confessed God (unknown to them), who denied their gods, with that exclusiveness which ever must be where divine truth is consciously professed. So it was with the believers of Israel; and so it is with the faithful Christian. Neutrality in God's things condemns itself as false and evil to such as know Him.

Here at any rate they had special reasons showing no doubt that the Egyptians, king or people, could not deny how warm a reception was proffered to all the kin of Israel for Joseph's sake. The very wagons suggested by the king and left for Joseph to supply played their part in assuring the father to credit the tale, which made his heart fail at first, that Joseph still lived. "The Jews ask for signs;" and there it was in the means of going down into Egypt which his sons could not have provided, as indeed in much more which his loving and bountiful son gave for the whole of them, Benjamin in particular, and his father yet more.

But we can recognise words, so characteristic of Joseph and so suitable to his piety, which Scarce one but he would have thought of at such a moment of excited wonder and self-judgment. "See that ye fall not out by the way" is the last thing for a forger to invent, the expression of godliness and affection in perfect keeping with him who uttered the words.

CHAPTER 24.

ISRAEL SETS OUT, AND GOD SPEAKS IN THE NIGHT VISION.

Gen. 46: 1-7.

Jacob had seen more changes than any of his fathers, and is especially in contrast with Isaac, who never left the land of promise; yet it was a great surprise and effort to one who after so many vicissitudes expected to die in Canaan. And if he remembered the word of Jehovah to Abram in Gen. 15, he might well hesitate, however great his longing to look once more on his beloved Joseph.

"And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-Sheba, and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. And God spoke to Israel in the night visions and said, Jacob, Jacob! And he said, Here [am] I. And he said, I [am] God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will also certainly bring thee up [again]; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes. And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, on the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. And they took their cattle and their goods which they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed he brought with him into Egypt" (vers. 1-7).

Beer-sheba was a memorable spot to Isaac, who built an altar there, and called upon the name of Jehovah who had there appeared to him, some time after he had been forbidden, even under the stress of famine, to go down into Egypt, as Abraham had faultily done. But now God spoke to Israel in the vision of the night, after he had offered sacrifices to his father's God who called him by his name of natural weakness, and bade him fearlessly go down into Egypt. There in the land already pointed out as a furnace of affliction they were to sojourn, yet to come out with great substance and multiplied numbers. Till then their increase had been slow. Such were God's ways with His people, as well as with the peoples they ware to dispossess; for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. Jacob was not to hesitate. "I will go down with thee into Egypt, and I will certainly bring thee up again; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes." God entered into the anxieties of his feeble servant and knew how to strengthen his tried heart.

"And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba; and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, on the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him." But they took their live stock also and their goods which they had acquired in Canaan, and came into Egypt. Jacob and his sons had no idea of entering that land as mere dependents on its prince, whatever his desire to show all honour to Joseph, and the promise that the good of all the land of Egypt should be theirs. They therefore took their "stuff" along with them and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his seed with him; "his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, and all his seed, he brought with him into Egypt."

It was a sorry spectacle to the eye of sense, not more than a troop of Gitanos in the estimate of Spaniards. Yet there was the nucleus of a people, to sojourn in a land not their own for a while, but to return and take possession of Canaan. Alas! first they accepted conditions of law, wherein they utterly broke down and suffered the penalty of their presumptuous unbelief in idolatry, as in the rejection of the Messiah later. At length they shall be restored on the ground of pure mercy, under the new covenant, with repentance and faith in the returning Messiah, who will set them at the head of all nations, when He will reign over all the earth in righteousness, power and glory. Never till then shall there be the days of heaven upon earth. Even Pentecost was no fulfilment, but the strong pledge of it to come. Compare Acts 3: 19-21.

CHAPTER 25.

THE NAMES OF JACOB'S SONS WHO CAME INTO EGYPT.

(Gen. 46: 8-27).

If we honestly wish to avoid serious mistakes and rightly understand Scripture, it is important to read the genealogies according to their aim, and not modern ideas. And it is plain on their face that they present difficulties, which no forger nor compiler would have left but have avoided with all care. The writer, on the other hand, knowing details which we might not, expresses simply what he knows to be true without stopping to clear them up. Special motives govern each case; and if this be under the direction of the Holy Spirit, as a Christian is bound to believe, the mistake must be in judging according to his own mind, and method, not after the divine design.

"And these [are] the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons; Jacob's first-born, Reuben; and the sons of Reuben, Enoch and Phallu and Hezron and Carmi; and the sons of Simeon, Jemuel and Jamin and Ohad and Jachin and Zohar and Saul son of a Canaanitish woman. And the sons of Levi, Gershon, Kohath and Merari; and the sons of Judah, Er and Onan and Shelah, and Pherez and Zarah; but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan; and the sons of Pherez were Hezron and Hamul. And the sons of Issachar, Tola and Puah, and Job and Shimron; and the sons of Zebulun, Sered and Elon and Jahleel. These [are] the sons of Leah whom she bore to Jacob in Padan-Aram, and his daughter Dinah: all the souls of his sons and daughters [were] thirty-three.

"And the sons of Gad, Ziphion and Haggi, Shuni and Esbon, Eri and Arodi and Areli; and the sons of Asher, Jimnah and Ishyah and Ishvi and Beriah, and Serah their sister, and the sons of Beriah, Heber and Malchiel. These [are] the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and she bore these to Jacob: sixteen souls.

"The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife, Joseph and Benjamin. And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath bore to him, daughter of Potiphera, priest in On; and the sons of Benjamin, Belah and Becher and Ashbel, Gera and Naaman, Ehi and Rosh, Muppim and Huppim and Ard. These [are] the sons of Rachel who were born to Jacob: all the souls [were] fourteen.

"And the sons of Dan, Hushim; and the sons of Naphtali, Jahzeel and Guni and Jezer and Shillem. These [are] the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, and she bore these to Jacob: all the souls [were] seven.

"All the souls belonging to Jacob that came into Egypt, that came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives: all the souls [were] sixty-six. And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt [were] two souls. All the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt [were] seventy." (vers. 8-27).

It is God's register of Jacob and his house, "seventy" souls including Jacob, and Joseph with his two sons, "sixty-six" without these. The Sept. cited by Stephen speaks of seventy-five, because it adds Manasseh's son Machir and grandson Gilead, and Ephraim's two sons, Shuthelah and Tahan with Shuthelah's son, Eran or Edom. The time approached when they should exchange the life of a family, already in Genesis enlarged into twelve families, for that of a people; and their growth is one of the initiatory facts of Exodus, the second book of the Pentateuch. Scripture reveals the interest God took in recording things little in man's eyes. Nature revels in what it counts great in its own eyes and before the world.

The fact is that the sons of Jacob were even less than would be reckoned in a modern census. For the principle stated in Heb. 7: 9, 10 seems to have been here applied to Judah's offspring, and to Benjamin's also, as we may gather from the previous history, but inserted here, as the heads of future families, as we see confirmed by the list in Numbers 26 of independent families of the tribes of Israel in the day when Moses and Eleazar were directed to take the sum of the whole assembly of Israel's sons from twenty years old and upward. This is a solution suggested by those versed in such genealogies; and it is but one of several. It was no mistake, but intentional, however outside ordinary thought. Thus the immense increase during the sojourn in Egypt became all the more marked, notwithstanding the cruel and murderous oppression which characterised its latter part, and gave the occasion for Jehovah their God to show Himself greater than all gods; for in the thing in which they acted haughtily He was above them.

CHAPTER 26.

JOSEPH MEETS JACOB AND ADVISES HIS BRETHREN.

Gen. 46: 28-34.

Now then the father was to meet the cherished but long-separated son; and his brethren also were to be settled in Egypt through the loving care of him whom they in their hatred had sold to be carried there. Not one of them probably had ever till now expected to meet there, not even Joseph. But God had spoken long before what was just beginning to be accomplished, with much to follow, which may before have not engaged their attention. It was a prophecy, all the more vaguely remembered because it was not yet written as in Gen. 15: a great favour to be spoken at all, a greater still to be read in the written word long after it was uttered in God's grace.

"And he sent Judah before him to Joseph, to give notice before he came to Goshen. And they came into the land of Goshen. Then Joseph got ready (yoked) his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen; and he presented himself to him, and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said to Joseph, This time let me die, since I have seen thy face, that thou livest. And Joseph said to his brethren and to his father's house, I will go up and tell Pharaoh and say to him, My brethren and my father's house, who [were] in the land of Canaan, are come to me; and the men [are] shepherds, for they are men of cattle; and they have brought their sheep and their cattle, and all that they have. And it shall come to pass that when Pharaoh shall call you and say, What [is] your occupation? then ye shall say, Thy servants are men of cattle from our youth even till now, both we and our fathers; in order that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians" (vers. 28-31).

Civilisation was not what characterised the fathers, as it did the line of Cain in the antediluvian earth, and Egypt and Asshur and Babylon, to say nothing of others, after the deluge. But there was a dignity that accompanies the fear of God which is far better than any such worldly gloss, however pleasant to fallen nature. We see the pious sense of propriety as in Abraham and Isaac, here too of Jacob in sending Judah before him to Joseph to give good notice of his own coming to Goshen. Again, we may notice the faith and wisdom of Joseph who had already in Gen. 45: 10 sent the message as to Goshen, before he had said a word to Pharaoh. It was the outlying part of Egypt, where they could retain their old occupation best, and were least exposed to the idolatrous and moral corruptions of that land. Into Goshen accordingly they came. And Joseph on his part got ready his chariot and went there to meet Israel his father; and on presenting himself he fell on his neck and wept on it a good while. The affection was great on both sides, and Israel said to Joseph, Now (or, This time) let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou yet livest. Worldly splendour had not weakened that love which knit father and son together in the promised land.

But we also may remark the prudent administrator in his words to his brethren, "I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and say to him, My brethren and my father's house, who [were] in the land of Canaan, are come to me. And the men [are] shepherds, for they are men of cattle; and they have brought their sheep and their cattle, and all that they have. And it shall come to pass when Pharaoh shall call you and shall say, What is your occupation? then ye shall say, Thy servants are men of cattle from our youth even till now, both we and our fathers; in order that ye may dwell in the land of Goshen." Two things made this advice acceptable to the king, and even his people. For Pharaoh had already, as is stated in Gen. 45, declared his wish to give them the good of the land of Egypt, that they might eat the fat of the land (vers. 18-20). And as "every shepherd [is] an abomination to the Egyptians," there would not be the least objection to Israel's settling to this occupation on land most favourable to it, and from its site one farthest off from meeting their eyes day by day. Thus Joseph was enabled to advise his brethren from the start, so as to live where it was best for them, and least offensive to the Egyptians.

CHAPTER 27.

JOSEPH PRESENTS HIS BRETHREN AND HIS FATHER TO PHARAOH

Gen. 47: 1-12.

As yet however the king had not seen the kindred of Joseph. This now follows.

"And Joseph went in and told Pharaoh and said, My father and my brethren, and their sheep and their cattle and all that they have, are come out of the land of Canaan; and behold they are in the land of Goshen. And from among his brethren he took five men and presented them to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said to Pharaoh, Thy servants are shepherds, both we and our fathers. And they said to Pharaoh, To sojourn in the land are we come; for there is no pasture for thy servants' flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore we pray thee, let thy servants dwell in the land of Goshen. And Pharaoh spoke to Joseph saying, Thy father and thy brethren are come to thee: the land of Egypt is before thee; in the best of the land make thy father and thy brethren dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell. And if thou knowest any men of activity, among them, then make them rulers over my cattle. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father and set him before Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred- and-thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from the presence of Pharaoh. And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father's household with bread, according to their families" (vers. 1-12).

We read of Joseph's becoming attitude towards Pharaoh. On every point of view Goshen was the land most appropriate for his father and his brethren. The land lay nearest for sojourners in Egypt, for those who were destined by God to enter Canaan as the land He had promised long before when their father had not even one son (Gen. 15). Again, it was near Joseph, and the king also; and further, it was the least frequented by the people of the land, to whom herdsmen, shepherds and the like, were an abomination, as Joseph let them know. Even apart from this, we were already informed of their general objection to eat bread with foreigners (43: 32). Such was the severity of caste among the Egyptians, as we know it is among strict Hindus. But it was of moment that the king should come to the same conclusion as his minister of state, and decree freely without any pressure from one so near to the sons of Israel. The presenting of an adequate number of his brethren was ordered wisely. When they plainly stated their occupation, as handed down from their fathers, the king not only fell in with Goshen as the most fitting place for their dwelling, but gave hearty welcome. He also laid it on Joseph that he should set capable men from among them to undertake the charge over his own cattle there.

But another deeply interesting interview is next brought before us. "Joseph brought in Jacob his father and set him before Pharaoh." The aged patriarch was in no way abashed in presence of the world's most exalted monarch. "Jacob blessed Pharaoh." Never had the king of Egypt stood so high. Through his God-instructed administrator, he had been led to wise and equitable measures, which during years of super-abundant plenty provided for the years no less of famine, relieved the poor amply, enriched the sovereign beyond example, supplied the wants of adjacent lands, and especially for the chosen people, and brought them where they were to multiply, arouse the wicked hostility of their neighbours, and in due time furnish a wondrous spectacle of a deliverance from Jehovah, to declare His name throughout all the earth in plaguing the proud king of that day and vanquishing his false gods, as conspicuous as His mighty hand and outstretched arm on behalf of Jacob's seed in their most feeble and abject state.

"And Pharaoh said to Jacob, How many are the days of the years of thy life? And Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years: few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage" (vers. 8, 9).

"And Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph nourished his father, and his brethren, and all his father's household with bread according to [the mouths of their little ones" (vers. 11, 12).

The humbled heart of Jacob felt justly in comparison with Abraham and Isaac, but rose up. without question of pride to bless the king. God was before his faith, and he could bless Pharaoh simply, out of a full heart. And beyond all gainsaying, the less is blessed by the better. (Heb. 7: 7).

[Left unfinished by the Author's death].

Law and Grace

Ex. 34; 2 Cor. 3.

W. Kelly.

It is important to see that there were two distinct occasions in which we find tables of stone, according to God's command, committed, though in a different way, to man. On the first occasion, as we know, there was total ruin; and when God uttered His commands then, afterwards written down, there was no shining of the face whatever; there was no Moses transfigured by the power of glory. Law, pure and simple, never made the face of man to shine; it is not the intention of law; nor is it the result of law. Law, simply as such, is characterized by darkness and tempest, by thunder and lightning, by the voice of God dealing with the guilty — more tremendous than all together. And so it was on the first occasion when the law was announced by God Himself, and the tables were broken (before ever they reached man) by the indignant law-giver.

On the second occasion what a difference! The lawgiver was called into the presence of God, who thereon was pleased to give a mingling of mercy along with law. There was a covenant expressly made of this combined composite character. It was not law alone, and not grace alone, but rather the mingling of grace along with law. For it would have been perfectly impossible for God to have carried on dealings with Israel, or to have brought them even into the land, unless there had been this mingling of grace and mercy with law. Consequently on this occasion the law was still committed to man; but it was shut up in the ark, not displayed with all its terrors before the eyes of men; it was enclosed, as we know, in the testimony.

Now, there are many even of God's children who think that such is exactly the tenor of the dealings of God with us now; that is, law and grace mingled — grace hindering the action of law; the law bringing us in guilty, but grace interposing to screen the guilty according to the words we read in the early part of Ex. 34. There Jehovah proclaims Himself in the character of lawgiver, though he declares His longsuffering and mercy, as it is said, "Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." But it is also added, "And that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." Now you will observe that while such is the principle of God's dealings — that it is not law alone, nor grace alone, but the two together — while this is the case, whenever the mediator comes forward to speak to the people he has to put a veil upon his face. When he goes into the presence of God, the veil was taken off; in glory, in the presence of glory, there is no veil. But as long as man had to do with the law, even though there was mercy and grace mingled with it, the veil must be put on when he spoke with the people.

Now, the remarkable thing that I would call your attention to is this, that our position is in contrast with both. Our position is neither having to do with law alone, nor with law mingled with grace; we are in presence of grace and glory without the law at all. This is precisely what the apostle shows in 2 Cor. 3. Here he does not refer to the contrast of Ex. 19 or 20, but solely to the occasion of mingled law and grace in Ex. 34; and he lets us see that the ministration on that day was one of death and condemnation. The reason is this, that if the law enters at all, if I have to do with it as that which governs me, and under which I am, the more mercy that is shown, the more guilty am I, and He will by no means clear the guilty.

Now, that all-condemning character did not come out while God was dealing with men before Christ; but when Christ came, God stood to His principles with the utmost nicety and all His authority. The reason is, that there was One come who could solve all difficulties, meet all need, and deliver from all distress and danger. It was because the Son of God was now become the Son of man, and the Son of man was willing to suffer on the cross, not yet about to administer the glory.

Hence it is that our position is put in distinct and positive contrast. The apostle says, "If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." He does not put us in the place of the children of Israel, but takes care to show that it is after the type of Moses drawing near into the presence of God, where he takes off the veil. This is the sign of our position now, and not the children of Israel. In short it is not the man veiled, and the children of Israel afraid of him because of the glory of his countenance, which they could not look upon; but the man unveiled in the presence of God, when he turns, not to the people with a veil upon his face, but to God in glory without the veil.

Such is our position now; such the position of all Christians, if they only knew it. This comes out fully in the last verse. He says, "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." "We all" is in contrast with the one man Moses. The position of the Christian is typified by Moses in the presence of God, and not by the children of Israel in the presence of Moses veiled. "We all," for God makes not the smallest difference in this respect; the weakest Christian has exactly the same position before God. Whenever it is a question of position, of the simple effect or result of what the Lord Jesus has accomplished and given to us by grace, there is no difference whatever. When it is a question of spiritual power, there is a difference, and all possible room for variety. Just as in the first Adam there is no difference in the general fact that all have sinned; yet, when you come to look at the extent to which people have gone in sin, there are degrees of difference.

Precisely so with the Second man, the last Adam. He has brought all who belong to Him now into this common place of blessing. We all with open, or unveiled, face (for this is the true force of it) beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord. This was what Moses saw, and only Moses, and he merely for a moment; whereas it is our constant position. A Christian, all the time he is here below, is, as far as the work of Christ is concerned, one entitled to draw near to God, to look up into the glory, and to be there himself; the veil gone, Christ without a veil. There was a veil but it is rent. Now there is none — none on the heart of the believer, none on the face of Christ or on ours; it is completely gone. "We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

What the Holy Ghost now ministers to us is not merely a Saviour who came down into our woe and misery to bear our iniquities and sins, but that same Saviour after the work of grace is done when He is gone up as the witness of its perfectness into the presence of God; and we are invited by the Holy Ghost to keep our eye fixed upon Him there, glorified according to the excellency of redemption. That will not make His grace in coming down here to be less precious; nor will it make redemption to be less prized, but much more. It will also imprint a heavenly character upon all our ways; and this, and nothing less, is our place. "As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly"; and, "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Then it will be perfect; now it is only partial, and according to the measure in which self is judged.

What hinders the practical effect, the heavenly power being reflected from us, is the unjudged activity of our nature. Do we not know it? When is it we do wrong? When is it we form mistaken judgments, and become careless and worldly? Just in proportion as our eye is off Christ as He is now in glory. I grant you that Christ anywhere before the soul is a preserving means. Nevertheless, there is no such power for overcoming the seductions of the world; and that which looks fair and religious in the world; nothing will do it thoroughly but Christ in glory. As far as leading out our souls in love and devotedness is concerned, Christ here below will do it. But Christ in glory puts out the light of earth's best religion, and makes it appear pale and tawdry by the side of its surpassing brightness. We are invited, we are called upon as Christians, to behold Him in that glory continually now. The Lord give us so to walk, and we shall find the fruit of it, "changed into the same image from glory to glory."

One word more. There is nothing so dangerous as to trifle with the truth; nothing more ruinous than for men to use the brightest truth, and to be careless about the matters of every-day life. I beseech of you to remember this. There is something even of a disgusting character about it when we fail in ordinary duties, and yet are at the same time talking about resurrection and glory — life and all the special blessedness of the Christian position. I beseech you, my brethren and sisters, especially those of you who are young (though indeed it is a snare for old as well as young), think seriously of this. It is the natural snare of those who are accustomed to an atmosphere of truth, where the words of God are, so to speak, a common household bread. None are in such danger; but it is a danger because the eye and heart are not on Jesus. There will be power where there is simplicity with self-judgment; nowhere else.

W. K.

Life Eternal.

WITH F.E.R.'s HETERODOXY AS TO IT,

OTHER DIVINE TRUTHS

AND ABOVE ALL CHRIST'S PERSON,

by W. Kelly.

This immense privilege given to the believer let us weigh as scripture presents it. Always of the deepest moment, the assertion of its truth is more than ever called for, as will appear to faithful men before this paper closes. The spirit of error boldly opposes the Spirit of truth. Christ Himself is not only imperilled but misrepresented and undermined by the error; and error against the Son is of all things hateful to the Father. How dear to the Christian should be the truth!

For Christ is revealed to be, not only the true God, but life eternal (1 John 5: 20). The Father raises the dead and quickens (John 5: 21); and so does the Holy Spirit, as Rom. 8 shows variously; but it is emphatically said of Him who is image of the invisible God and object of faith to man. He, the eternal Word, became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and truth. For of His fulness we all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father, He declared [Him] (John 1: 14-18). Hence the apostle (2 Tim. 1: 10) lays it down that Christ annulled death and brought to light life and incorruption through the gospel. Only then and thus were they revealed in Him personally, through His work and by words He spoke, spirit and life to His own.

In the O.T. the light as to this shone dimly, the expressions were comparatively vague, yet enough to convey a real sense of a blessed state of future being for those who truly received the testimony of God. This is certain from the Synoptists as well as John's Gospel: Matt. 19: 16, Mark 10: 30; also Luke 10: 25, and John 5: 39. Abel's faith testifies the death of another for the need of his soul. Was it lost on others? The translation of Enoch bore witness to a life in heaven, as he had walked in that life on earth before God took him. Was this too without help as to life for saints after him? When Abraham said to God, O, that Ishmael might live before thee! we can hardly imagine that he thought only of the earth and present things. Certainly "Thou wilt make known to me the path of life" conveyed far more (Psalm 16: 11), and such words as "With thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light" (Ps. 36: 9).

The direct source of what even Jews owned in our Lord's day was presumably such scriptures as the last verse of Psalm 133. "life for evermore," and the exact phrase in Dan. 12: 2, as has often been remarked. Nor ought we to doubt that the revelation of grace which man heard at the fall itself gave assurance to repentant hearts, from the outset of his sad history, that the coming Seed of the woman would not only crush the mischievous power of evil but bless saints who looked to God through him with a new life victorious over death and capable of enjoying Himself in peace. Abraham exulted that he should see Christ's day; and he saw and rejoiced. The resurrection of the just was before Job (Job 19: 25-27), no less than of the unjust (Job 14: 10-12); the one connected with the Kinsman Redeemer's standing up on the last day on this earth of dust, as the other is with even the heavens being no more.

Thus from the O.T. we gather that life everlasting by psalm and prophet was bound up with Messianic days of power and glory. The Lord in Matt. 25: 46 enlarged the Jewish expectation so as to embrace equally those saints of all the nations who receive the messengers of the gospel of the kingdom at the end of the age. Said generally of Israel, it is expressly applied to the believers of the ten tribes so long sleeping in the dust, and to those of the nations who believe at that time. It seemed needless to say it of the God-fearing Jewish remnant.

All this remains true; but it is not all the truth. Now comes that which is distinctive of Christianity. Here we find a rich part of the "better thing" God foresaw for us. It was reserved for Him Who was worthy, Whose personal dignity it suited, through Whom grace and truth assumed subsistence and shape, to make known present life, in the Gospel which starts with the Son unknown to the world and rejected by His own people. To Nicodemus, as far as revelation speaks, it was first divulged, and this when he was but an enquirer, stirred in conscience but not yet born anew. The Lord, correcting his ignorance in view of what the Jewish teacher ought to have known from the ancient oracles for the earthly things of the kingdom, presents Himself come in flesh as the sole way to the Father by faith. How adequate a Witness was He who says of Himself that no one has gone up to heaven save He who came down out of it, the Son of man that is (not that "was" merely) in heaven! "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that every one that believeth on him may have life eternal: For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that every one that believeth on him may not perish but have life eternal" (John 3: 14-16). Thus the positive blessing is the gift of life eternal, followed up by the assurance of "not perishing" and being "saved" (ver. 17), as flowing from divine grace. The believer was brought in Christ to receive known life, a life eternal capable of knowing and enjoying God Himself.

If John 4: 14 speaks of the Holy Spirit as given the believer to be "in him a fountain of water, springing up unto life eternal" (inward power rising up to its fulness), John 5 opens the source. It is not healing sin-sick man wants, but life. Angelic visitation is quite insufficient; He was present Who is Son of God and Son of man. Jesus gives life in communion with the Father. He, received as Son of God, quickens; if rejected, He solely judges by-and-by as Son of man. Thus is there also a twofold resurrection to come: one of life for those who practised good (the issue of divine life); the other of judgment for those that did evil (as dead in trespasses and sins). If they believed not on the Son of God, they cannot escape Him when He executes judgment as Son of man. "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life" (ver. 24). Here revelation is explicit that the believer on Christ has life eternal. It is not future only, but his present possession. It is not surer that he does not come into judgment than that he has passed out of death into life eternal. Verse 25 is precise with the same solemn asseveration. "Verily, verily, I say to you, An hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that heard shall live." Hearing Him and consequently "now" is pointedly distinguished from His voice afterwards calling from the tombs specifically, first those who share the first resurrection, and next such as are raised for judgment or the second death. How solemn a word for such as searched the scriptures, thinking that in them they had life eternal! In fact the scriptures bore witness concerning Jesus; yet would the Jews not come to Him that they might have life. For in Him, not in them, was life; and the life is the light of men.

John 6 appropriately follows, setting aside, not only every other object, but even for the present His own Messianic glory according to promise and prophecy. Jesus is shown to be the true bread which the Father gives out of heaven. It is Himself incarnate, the bread of life; so that every one that beholds the Son and believes on Him should have life eternal, and as a distinct but sure consequence, be raised up by Him at the last day. This elicits the deepening unbelief of the Jews, and the Lord again solemnly affirms "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that believeth hath life eternal." But He goes on to the gift of His flesh, not for Israel only, but for the life of the world. As the Jews contended yet more, He said, "Verily, verily, I say to you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man and drunk His blood, ye have no life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day." The possession of life eternal is most real now, the result for the body no less sure and glorious, as the full victory of life in Christ over death.

It should be borne in mind however that John speaks also of life eternal in the final sense, as in John 4: 14, John 5: 39, John 6: 27, John 12: 25.

Knowing in Himself that not Jews only but His disciples were murmuring at a word so foreign to Jewish thought, Jesus said, "Does this offend you? If then ye should behold the Son of man ascending where he was before?" It is Himself again, not incarnate only, nor in death, but going up to heaven; a move traversing all Jewish expectation, once Messiah was here. But it is the characteristic of Christianity there to know Him, though given to another apostle to develop as connected with the mystery concerning Christ and the church. Here the great truth is the Son of man, not as Judge of quick and dead, but meanwhile the food of Christian faith, and the means of having eternal life now, while awaiting its crown at the last day, and without loss of either for a single soul that believed, in bright contrast with the present ruin of Messianic hopes so withering to Jewish hearts. To receive the incarnate Son rejected by the Jews was to have life eternal. Yet He must die to glorify God and deliver sinful man; and so faith eats His flesh and drinks His blood. Unbelief might seem to welcome Him incarnate, but betrays its opposition to God and its rest in humanitarianism by stumbling at the still deeper grace, even expiation, and judgment of sin in order to bring in a new state, of which the possession of life eternal now is the pledge, and that completed state the blessed and sure result. His words are indeed spirit and are life.

In John 7 as in chap. 4 we hear not of "life" exactly, but of "living water" which is more, being the Spirit in power: the one as a fountain within springing up, power for worship, the other as rivers flowing out, power for testimony to Him who, refused by the Jews, is already glorified at God's right hand.

In John 8 and John 9 the Lord is fully revealed and rejected, first in His word and so in His divine nature and His Person; secondly in His work when become flesh, and so operating that those confident and proud of their sight are blinded judicially, and that those who saw not, being born blind, see clearly according to God. Here we have in both chapters Christ the light of the world, with the blessed effect, for him that follows Him, of having "the light of life" (John 8: 12). It is not only knowing Christ but having Him as his life, the light of men. Now is the great need of it, and here in this world of darkness, whatever may be soon for the fulness of bright enjoyment on high. But the subject called for no more than, "Verily, verily, I say to you, If any one shall keep my word he shall never behold (or, taste) death" (John 8: 51, 52). Figurative terms he employs, but in the strongest way He claims to give a life superior to death through His word kept, as Satan murders through his lie. Christ is the light of life.

John 10 is more simple and definite. "The thief cometh not but that he may steal and kill and destroy; I came that they might have life and might have [it] abundantly" (ver. 10). Incarnate, He was life, and gave it to the believer; but when He died and rose, it was His life in resurrection power, with all the offences forgiven (Col. 2: 13). Truly it was life abundantly, and marked on the resurrection day by His breathing on His own, as He is never shown to do before (John 20: 22). As in all previous cases, the birth is said to be not only of the word (typified by water) but the Spirit, so now He said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit, for indeed such was its character, though the Paraclete was not yet given to dwell in them in personal power. And there the non-imputation of sin is impressively implied by His investing them with the administrative function of remitting or retaining the sins of others, as the occasion might require in God's service. It is an important accession, and here distinctly announced, as well as significantly fulfilled, as we have seen. His Person and His work are the key.

In a further discourse of the same chapter our Lord explains to the Jews why they refused all evidence and witness. "But ye believe not, because ye are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give to them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand. My Father who hath given them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to seize out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one" (vers. 26-30). Here indefeasible security is assured: neither inner failure nor outer force could jeopardise their life; it is maintained by the Father and the Son, who were not more truly one in divine nature than in loving care for the sheep.

In John 11: 25 Jesus declares, "I am the resurrection and the life." Of this the resurrection of Lazarus, dead and buried, was a bright testimony. If it be said that this raising up was but to natural life, His words that follow look forward beyond doubt to its final perfection. "He that believeth on me, though he have died, shall live; and everyone that liveth and believeth on me shall never die." So will it be at His coming. The dead believer shall be raised, and so live as to the body evermore; the living believer shall not die, but have mortality swallowed up of life. The phrase "eternal life" is not here used; but this it is, and in full conformity to Himself even bodily, for heavenly and everlasting glory. Again, in John 12: 50 says the Lord, "I know that His (the Father's) commandment is life eternal." This the Father gave Him, what He should say and speak. Eternal life, not providential care nor governmental dealings, was the blessed subject-matter of the Father's injunction and of the Son's gracious declaration. If He and His words in grace so rich were not received by any, that word which He spoke should judge him at the last day.

The Lord in John 14: 6 says to Thomas words divinely suited to banish his gloom and readiness to stick at difficulties, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." In seeing the Son they had seen the Father whom He declared and made known. Thus then He Himself was the way to the Father, as He was the living word or the truth, and also the life, the divine nature which alone knows and enjoys Him as God and Father. And this is so true, as the Holy Spirit when given would enable the disciples fully to apprehend, that Christ does not hesitate to say in vers. 19, 20, "because I live, ye also shall live." How truly is He our life! "In that day ye shall know (γν.) that I [am] in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Their beholding Jesus in that day would be in no way a physical fact, such as the Jews will have of the Messiah, but in the Spirit; and so is their life, and such is their knowledge as Christians, that Christ is in the Father, they in Him (as is marked in the Epistle to the Ephesian saints),* and He in them (equally so in that to the Colossians):* the true and distinctive knowledge, and privilege of the Christian.

* Only in these Epistles it is said in developing "the body" of Christ. It is even more intimate here as a question of life in Him.

If John 15 opens with fruit-bearing as due to the Father and flowing from our abiding in Christ, and is followed by preparing the disciples for the world's hatred, yet to be strengthened by the Spirit's witness whom Christ should send from the Father, in addition to what they heard and saw from the beginning, John 16 dwells on the action of the present Spirit toward the world and in the saints. But in John 17: 2, 3 we have the Son, the Second man, with authority given Him by the Father, and the special object of giving life eternal to all those given to Him. "And this is the eternal life, that they should know (γιν.) thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou didst send." His work, like His glorifying His Father on the earth follows and is distinct; His giving eternal life precedes as attaching to faith in His Person, whatever the added power when He rose from the dead.

Here too it is objectively presented, though generally applied to our subjective state. For the Lord speaks of what forms and characterises it to our faith in its full Christian import. Those have the eternal life now who receive the wondrous revelation, in manifest contrast with Jewish thoughts of Jehovah and His Anointed. As yet He had dwelt in the thick darkness. Not till the Father was revealed in the Son whom He sent as man was the true God known. And He is thus to be known as the Lord had already shown by the power of the Spirit to be sent forth. Higher, deeper, nearer than this (when the Lord adds His going on high after the work was completed) God Himself, be it said reverently, could not go; and this now constitutes to us life eternal as objective revelation. Heavenly counsels in their immense scope were left for the Spirit to reveal by the apostle chosen in sovereign grace, when redemption would fit the believers to receive what they could not then bear. But here the Lord concentrates His teaching into a few simple words of marvellous depth, as bringing His own into the communion of the Father and of the Son which transcends all other relations, about to be definitely made theirs on His resurrection day (John 20: 17).

Here it is not only life eternal such as Christ gave when souls believed on Him in the days of His flesh, but in its full development for the Christian. In no case is it natural life but supernatural, not of man but of God, nor a restoration of the life which Adam had unfallen, but life in the Son, the life of the Second man, not the first. Every saint that ever lived to God had this life, for none ever lived to God save of the life the Son gave, He object of the faith of all the faithful, though only when come revealed as the Son of the living God, the Only-begotten Son of the Father. The life that it was in Him which quickened those who believe could and did through Him in communion with the Father acquire its highest character, when He was manifested in flesh, and, we may add looking to His glorification, not simply on the ground of His Person but on that of His work which avails for us as well as every other purpose of God. Hence the emphasis laid here on "the eternal life," and its declared character as giving the knowledge of the Father, and His Son whom He sent, Jesus Christ.

The knowledge of the Father and of His Son Jesus already sent is in effect the possession of life eternal; they are inseparable. But it was not throughout the O. T. so characterised, nor could be till the Son of God was come and had given us an understanding to know Him that is true, as is implied in the verse before us. Yet none the less were all saints born of God; only if now, Christ gave this title to those that believe on His name (John 1: 12, 13). Yet Himself laid down (Luke 20: 35, 36) that all saints "are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection" i.e. from out of dead men, the "first" and "better" resurrection of life. They were born of the Spirit and thus had life as truly as we, though they understood it not. But God was pleased to mark it as life eternal when Christ was received in His rejection, and yet more in His ascension glory. But it was life eternal all through, though suitably so designated according to the new revelation. And Christ gives it now in this present character and fulness. The gospel brought it to light and in power through resurrection; but it was ever in the Son, and believers had it in Him, in unbroken connection with its source.

A few words more may be cited from John (John 20: 31), the apostle's comment on the selected signs, rather than many others not written, which the Lord did before His disciples. "But these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in his name." Scripture is all the more perfect, because God's design excludes what is not needed to render His mind clear, no matter how excellent might be any other deeds or words. An unneeded addition, however in itself excellent, would have been really a defect. Nor is the best of men capable of carrying out the design save as inspired of God to write. But here the aim as to the readers is plainly stated. The first of all divine claims is to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; the first of all blessed issues is to have life in His name. It is the eternal life, or life everlasting, as the Lord called it often not only in John 17: 2, 3, but in 3, 5, 6, 10, 12. It was always such substantially, though wise and fitting to reserve the known gift of it now for the rejected Christ. He imparts this new, everlasting and divine being; and the believer receives it, in virtue of which he is to be glorified with Christ. But even now He is a life-giving Spirit. The glorious result for the body awaits His coming again.

In the two short Epistles of John love and truth are applied in divine wisdom, and set forth richly in his First Epistle where life eternal is found afresh, the governing principle throughout. As wisdom in Prov. 8 points to Christ, so does the life eternal in the grand introduction here. "What was from [the] beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and report to you the eternal life, the which was with the Father and was manifested to us): what we have seen and heard we report to you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us; yea and our fellowship [is] with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we to you that your joy may be full." (1 John 1: 1-4) The manifestation of the life in the fullest degree was to the apostles, though not restricted to them, that they might report to others, who taught in faith have fulness of joy in sharing their fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus on the basis of eternal life, the same life which, he declared, was with the Father before the manifestation, and then unrestricted in time; for He was eternal.

The statement is not abstract as in John 5: 26 ("the Father hath life in himself"), but personal ("with the Father" πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα ); it cannot be truthfully denied. Walking in the light indispensably accomplishes such a fellowship as this. The rest of the chapter lays down to us the divine message, judging every false profession, while the true one enjoys the grace that cleanses from every sin through the blood of Jesus His Son. Provision for failure is in the advocacy of the Righteous One with the Father (in 1 John 2: 1, 2), as He too is propitiation in all its abiding value, and widest application.

Then from 1 John 2: 3 follows practical application to those that bear His name: obedience first in 3-6; love next in 7-11; the necessary traits and exercises of the life in Christians, contrasted with spurious professors. There succeeds a most instructive and interesting digression on the family of God, and its differences in 12-28, all being addressed in these extremes, each class (fathers, young men, and little children or babes) in the intervening verses. The only express reference to the eternal life is in 25, where its promise before the world is meant, not that it remains a promise unaccomplished now.

Then in renewing the theme of practical righteousness, as the proof of being born of Him Who is righteous, is a parenthesis of grace in 1 John 3: 1-3 to strengthen the warning against lawlessness. Thereon he resumes the thread, but presents Christ as the clean opposite, Who not only took away our sins, and had no sin, but gives a nature like Himself, and this in love as well as righteousness. The world on the contrary hates; and as we know that we have passed out of death to life because we love the brethren, so to hate one's brother is to be a murderer; and no murderer, we know, has life eternal abiding in him, like the believer.

We may now however omit a glance at the rest and the precious 1 John 4, for the next direct occurrence is in 1 John 5: 1, etc. "Every one that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten (or, born) of God; and every one that loveth him that begot loveth him also that is begotten of him . . . For every thing that is begotten of God overcometh the world." Only a perverse will could question that one spiritually born of God has divine life in His Son, who in no way treats "life eternal" as a higher or a future life; for in John 6: 40, 47 He in terms predicates it of the result of faith in Him incarnate no less than of faith in giving His flesh to eat and His blood to drink in ver. 54, that is, faith in His death. Again, who can avoid seeing in vers. 11, 12 of our context that "life eternal" and "life" are interchangeable in this sense, though the one may be more fully expressed than the other in divine wisdom? But they mean the self-same life of Christ. No less truly were the O.T. saints begotten of God, and instinct with that life, though it could not be said that they believed in our Lord Jesus, but had rather a living hope in Him that was to come. Such was necessarily the character of their faith, but faith it surely was, the faith of God's elect in their day. No intelligent saint doubts their good portion through divine grace, which we, for whom God provided some better thing, should be the last to doubt or disparage. Nor was it a small part of the greater blessing to believe on Jesus, revealed by the Father as the Son of God (the living God), on Him too that came by water and blood with the Spirit bearing witness as well as the water and the blood.

"And this is the witness that God gave us life eternal, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." (1 John 5: 11, 12) To us it is made known, as it could not be to an O.T. saint, and we therefore know it as they could not. This is fully warranted to us by the next verse (13): "These things I write [the epist. aor., or, I wrote] to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know (εἰδ.) that ye have life eternal." This conscious knowledge of it, what a privilege and to us essentially characteristic of Christianity! Nor does the Epistle close without reminding us that, among other things consciously known by us, this is one, "that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we should know (γιν.) him that is true; and we are in the true One, in his Son Jesus Christ: he is the true God, and life eternal." How establishing and endearing to us! What a safeguard against every idol!

It was not the apostle Paul's work to dwell on the present gift of life eternal to the believers. The righteousness and the counsels of God are fully treated in his Epistles with Christ's work the basis, His resurrection and ascension to give them heavenly character, and His coming to crown all. Hence He speaks of life eternal at the end (Rom. 2: 7, Rom. 5: 21, Rom. 6: 22). He does however speak, not only of reigning in life but of justification of life (Rom. 5: 17, 18): a remarkable phrase, and a blessed privilege which the Christian is meant to enjoy now. It is not "eternal" only but in risen form and power. Justified by His blood meets our sins, justified in His risen life goes farther and meets sin, sin in the flesh, not what we did evilly but our evil self, in Him dead and risen. Hence we are called Rom. 6: 4 to "walk in newness of life." This assuredly does not refer to walking with Christ in white when in glory, but to present walk here below. But this implies the life of Christ ours now as truly as then, when all is complete. It is none other than life eternal. And as Christ, being raised, lives to God, so are we to count ourselves dead indeed to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus. Such is the virtue of His death and resurrection, as Rom. 7 states, that, had we been Hebrews of Hebrews, we were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that we should belong to another that was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God: an impossible result without life, life eternal. So in Rom. 8: 2 the law, not of Moses, but "of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" (compare John 20: 22) made me free from the law of sin and death, the communication of Christ's risen life, the form in which He now gives life eternal to every Christian. The co-operation of the Holy Spirit in this life is clearly marked, and that which is now as clearly distinguished as the completion of His work when the body is raised (10, 11).

In 1 Cor. 9, 10 we have the danger of power without life written for our admonition; indeed it runs throughout this Epistle. In the Second it is yet plainer, as in 2 Cor. 2: 16, and 3: 6. Take again 10, 11, where we are exhorted always to bear about "in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body; for we that live are ever delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal flesh." Can language express more explicitly that the believer now has His life, eternal life, mortal though our body still is, while waiting to be raised, not merely "through" but "with" Jesus by-and-by (14)? This triumph is attested as superior to death ("mortality swallowed up of life" in 2 Cor. 5: 4). And what life is meant (2 Cor. 5: 15) "in those that live," in contrast with "all dead"? Is it not life eternal and abundantly? and is it not now and here below? "So if any one [is] in Christ, [there is] a new creation." What can be stronger, unless one were hardy enough to deny this a present application, because it is going to be complete at Christ's coming? or doubt that "we have this treasure" (2 Cor. 4: 7), because it is "in earthen vessels"?

The Epistle to the Galatians speaks no otherwise. In what way was God's Son revealed in Saul of Tarsus when called (Gal. 1: 16) but as life, Christ our life? So in Galatians 2: 20 the apostle says, "I have been and am crucified with Christ, and no longer live I, but Christ liveth in me, and what I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of (or, in) the Son of God, that loved me and gave himself up for me." Can any Christian doubt that this living was of life eternal? In Galatians 5: 25 the word is "if we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk." Can any one be so rash as to separate this from Christ, or deny that it is life eternal now?

In the Epistle to the Ephesians we are seen blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. Have we now (Eph. 1: 4, 5) no new nature, holy and blameless in love according to God's purpose? is the predestined sonship, or adoption, only future? or can either exist without life eternal? Eph. 2 utterly refutes such thoughts, and declares that God rich in mercy and of His great love to us quickened us, once dead in our offences and sins — quickened us together with Christ, and raised together, and made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2: 6). What can transcend this life, a clearly present privilege, which could not be said of O.T. saints, any more than it is of the millennial saints? It is life eternal, but much more. It is the Pauline truth given him by the inspiring Spirit of Christ, not only as quickening which John treats so fully as a real thing now, but of Christ raised from the dead and the believer already quickened and raised together with Him, and seated in Him, waiting as we know from elsewhere to sit with Him when changed at His coming. "One new man" (Eph. 2: 15) supposes life now and a status most excellent.

So does Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3), and spiritual intelligence, and His love known, though surpassing knowledge; so does the exhortation to walk worthily of God's calling us after so marvellous a sort (Eph. 4), not only together but individually, we having put on the new man as well as put off the old. Hence in Eph. 5 it is to imitate God as children beloved, and to walk in love as Christ loved us, and as children of light (life being supposed throughout), and not as unwise but as wise, understanding what is the will of the Lord.

To the Philippians the apostle dwelt on Christian practice. "For to me to live [is] Christ, and to die gain" (Phil. 1: 21). How possibly live Christ without having Christ as our life, and this beyond controversy life eternal? As believing on Him was the means, so their completeness as to the fruit of righteousness (ver. 11) and suffering for Him (ver. 29) could not be without the existing reality. Preaching Christ even of envy and strife might easily be without life, but not holding forth its word as lowly and blameless children of God, nor glorying in Christ in self-renunciation, nor learning, in whatsoever state, therein to be content.

In the Epistle to the Colossians, if not on the surface, life in Christ is everywhere the under stratum. He did not cease praying for our walking worthily of the Lord to all pleasing, bearing fruit and growing: surely not without life. Hence thanksgiving to the Father who qualified us for sharing the portion of the saints in light (Col. 1). But in Col. 2 it is yet more precise. How walk in Christ (6), already received, without the life of Christ? When dead in the offences and the uncircumcision of our flesh, God quickened us together with Christ, having forgiven us all our offences, and raised us up together. It was not only life eternal but having His life in the highest form and the closest association with Him. Hence in Col. 3 if risen together with Christ, they were to seek the things above, and not have their mind on the things upon the earth. "For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory." But He is our life as truly now, though not so completely as then.

It is needless to gather similar evidence from the letters to the Thessalonians, and the Hebrews, to Timothy, Titus and Philemon; yet everywhere is it taken for granted as possessed by all save empty professors. Yet let us in no way strain the exhortation in 1 Tim. 6: 12 "lay hold on the eternal life," or in ver. 19, "that which is really life," in contrast with present things desirable to the flesh. The glorious end is in view. But such as have not Christ as their life will become weary of well-doing, if they do not openly draw back, dead while they live. But 2 Tim. 1: 1 does appear to touch John's presentation of life in Christ now brought to light through the gospel. We may compare Titus 1: 2, Titus 3: 7 as distinguishing the Christian from the Jewish expectation.

As addressed to "the twelve tribes that are in the dispersion," the letter of James resumes in general "the word of the beginning of Christ" (Heb. 6: 1), and insists, not on redemption but on the life communicated from the Father of lights, who of His own will brought forth, or begot, us by word of truth. Nothing less than this new nature satisfies him; no one else can from his works show his faith as in chap. 2. The faith that has no suited works is barren and dead. "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath." The word quickens by revealing Christ to the soul, and fruit follows by abiding in Christ; for the new life lives by dependence on Him. This Epistle looks at the practical and righteous side, judging by a law of liberty in consistency of way, word, and heart, and the friendship of the world is enmity with God, but patience is to be till the coming of the Lord.

The life abundantly is disclosed as the present portion of the Christian Jews whom Peter in his First Epistle addresses. "Blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to his much mercy begot us again unto a living hope through resurrection of Jesus Christ out of the dead," etc. At the close, as at the beginning, the new life of grace and truth is shown clearly, and as it is by the word of God that we are thus born, so are we nourished (1 Peter 2). Husbands and wives among them are exhorted as fellow-heirs of the grace of life. Without this now they could not rightly dwell together for an hour or a moment. The Second Epistle addressed to the same puts the same truth strongly in 2 Peter 1: 3, 4; for it affirms the partaking of a divine nature, and not a merely moral change. If it were no more than this, he shows the utter ruin of turning back after having escaped. Only life eternal abides. Otherwise one is but a dog still, and a washed sow: they were never born of God.

Jude indicates the more awful case of apostasy, rather than of the unrighteousness Peter denounced, though both might be in the same person. But he writes to saints without restriction as "called, beloved in God the Father and kept by (or, for) Jesus Christ" in view of the perishing of Christendom and the Lord's judgment of all the ungodly at His coming amidst His holy myriads. The beloved, meanwhile, building themselves on their most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, were to keep themselves in God's love, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal. This is "the end" doubtless; but there had been no beginning of grace without believing on Him and receiving life in His name, to walk after God's will in the last time of mockers walking after their own ungodly lusts.

LIFE ETERNAL DENIED AS A PRESENT POSSESSION.

Of this fundamental truth in its Christian form and present reality the deliberate denial is most clearly avowed by "Notes of Readings and Addresses" in the United States and Canada. The responsibility of the production is acknowledged; for the work appears as "revised by F. E. R."

If we pass by a cloud of other errors, and some of moment, in page 54 is a plain statement of direct opposition to divine truth. "It used to be commonly said, I know that I have got eternal life. Why? Because the scripture says, 'He that believeth hath everlasting life.' I say you have thus the faith of eternal life; but that does not prove that you have the thing itself (!). Many a person has had a promise, but not the thing promised, that [sic] was the case largely with the Old Testament saints. They embraced the promises; but they had not the things promised. Christianity is not only that you have the faith of the things proposed, but that you have the consciousness of the things that you believe." "Scripture says" this; "I say" that! But even what he says of Christianity virtually contradicts his aim.

Can any sober Christian question that the truly blessed confession of Brethren from the greatest to the least for seventy years is here abandoned? yea, that the word of the Lord Himself is undermined? How awful to hear one frittering away the plain meaning of "He that believeth hath everlasting life!" This is not a promise, but a revealed fact. The Lord did not say, he that has the faith of eternal life shall have this life by-and-by. To confound His present assurance with O.T. prophecy is to abjure the gospel for the law. The truth in question is distinct from promise, and contrasted with not having the thing promised. Nor does the Lord here speak of having "the consciousness of the things that you believe" (whatever this may or can mean on the speaker's hypothesis), but simply if not solely of now possessing life eternal.

Equally evident in page 56 is the perversion of scripture, even if we omit the misleading talk in the preceding page. "Eternal life is there, and it is God's mind for you to be in it, but there is a gulf between you and it, and you have to pass over that gulf." This is what "I say." Let us hear what the Lord says. "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but is [hath] passed out of death into life" (John 5: 24). F. E. R contradicts the gospel. The believer's privilege now, this gift of grace, he denies. A gulf may be between the unbeliever, and eternal life. Yet Christ is, not even a bridge over the gulf, but eternal life immediately to him that believes. His word has so explicitly declared the present gift of that life, that it can only be a lie of Satan to teach, as F. E. R. does, any gulf at all for the believer to pass. The Lord declares that he "has passed" out of death into life. F. E. R s. voice is not the Shepherd's but a mere stranger's, an "idea" in open contempt of the Saviour's final decision by grace which flesh never trusts.

What follows is hardly less evil. For in reply to one who says, "It has been stated that eternal life was communicated to us this side of the bridge," F. E. R. dares to answer, "There is no truth in it; what is communicated to you on this side of the bridge is the gift of the Holy Ghost, and He is the well of water in us springing up to eternal life. Unless you have the Holy Spirit you will never get divine teaching, but it is by divine teaching [!] that you get over the bridge." This is no passing mistake or blunder. Is it not utter effrontery? That we have life eternal now he excludes. Yet the gift of the Holy Spirit supposes eternal life given, and redemption rested on by faith previously (Acts 5: 32, Gal. 4: 4-6, Eph. 1: 13). If there were any propriety in the figure of the gulf and the bridge, Christ crossed it to meet the sinner; and the believer has already the life eternal, comes not into judgment, and has passed out of death into life. The gift of the Spirit is to know and enjoy the grace and truth thus come in the power of the known relationships, to live Christ in accordant ways, and to worship in spirit and truth.

The "teaching" here is flatly opposed to our Lord's, and as it is a departure from what even its propagandist long and uniformly professed, who but those in the evil or bent on compromise can hesitate to pronounce it "devilish," not "divine"? Think of a believer without eternal life receiving the Holy Ghost! It is a quasi-incarnation of God's Spirit. This unscriptural and profane dream "divine teaching" forsooth! Nay, it is the sheerest impossibility if judged on scriptural principles, and the wanton guesswork of impiety. No wonder not a word of scripture is cited for it.

Again, we read in the next page 57, "In the third chapter of the epistle [1 John] you come to children of God, but not yet to eternal life [!!]. Children brings in the thought of Father — God is Father to us as children in the world." In page 58 "sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places. The close of the epistle lands you in what Paul speaks of, and that is, 'God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son.'" Does such evident confusion, such incoherent trash, need exposure? The truth revealed in the Epistle as in the Gospel is that every believer has life eternal and is a child of God; to which the apostle Paul adds that he is a "son" as well as a child, and the end everlasting life, but of either "the epistle" says not one word.

Again, Rom. 8 in the central part of that instructive chapter disproves the rash assertion that "sons of God brings in the thought of eternal counsel and of heavenly places"; for therein the apostle speaks of us, alike as "sons" and as "children," but is silent about "eternal counsel and of heavenly places." Children is opposed to strangers; sons, to slaves; and thus sons may be adopted for a position of dignity. But we are of God's family also, and hence children in respect of true and intimate relationship. Both terms are well suited and actually employed in view of the glory to be revealed (Rom. 8: 19 and 21). — Gal. 3: 26 again refers to present Christian standing, "God's sons," not children, by faith in Christ Jesus; but in no way does it in itself bring in the thought of eternal counsel and heavenlies. This is not Spirit-led exposition, but random and reckless misinterpretation to the pain and shame of all who honour God's word.

In p. 59 we read, "I think the mistake has been made of confounding the idea of children with eternal life. I have fallen into that too much myself; the thoughts are, I judge, quite distinct. Sonship is connected with eternal life; that puts you outside the death-scene." Did one ever read such empty and self-complacent drivelling? The connection of "children" is really nearer, than that of "sons," to life eternal. For the scriptures which most fully treat of children treat also of eternal life, predicate both of the same persons, and that, not outside but now and here, where all else is under the power of death. They are in truth intimately and inseparably associated privileges. "And the witness is this that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." so says the apostle of all addressed. 1 John 5: 13 goes farther still: "These things have I written to you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have [not at all, that ye shall have] eternal life." It was now and here where death reigns, yet according to F. E. R.'s wild reckoning "the highest platform," after having greeted them (1 John 3: 1-3) in the most glowing terms as "children of God" from "now" till manifested in glory like Christ. Could scripture more pointedly write folly on this elaborate and persistent effort to say something new, which is after all wholly untrue?

In the pages that follow are strange conceits as to life eternal. Take 66 for example. "If you fail to enter into the reality of eternal life [who ever failed more egregiously than himself?], it proves that you don't understand what it is to be identified with the minister of the sanctuary." Can the most friendly eye discern a grain of sense, to say nothing of truth, in this jumble? Heb. 8 has its own divine force; but why drag in here failure "to enter into the reality of eternal life"? Even if one have eternal life, one may fail to appreciate, exercise, or manifest it; but how do any such failures prove that you do not understand what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary? The language, the logic, and the exegesis are alike perverse. One comprehends failure in faith, or fidelity, or intelligence. But nothing can "prove," and nobody can understand (it seems to me), what it is to be identified with the Minister of the Sanctuary, because it is neither intelligible in itself nor true of any one. To be "all of one" is not identification with Him, which is not taught in this Epistle. Such teaching, far from being "divine," is not decently human, but a farrago of presumptuous impertinence and falsehood transparent to all that are not blinded.

On the allusions to eternal life in pp. 74, 75 one need not speak, as they refer to "the end "; and this all admit. Such too may be that in p. 94, though vaguely expressed. But we come to egregious trifling, as well as abandonment of the truth, in pp. 107, 108, to omit the page before.

"G. F. Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?

F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple (!) way, he has eternal life if he has it.

R. S. S. It is not a very bad way to ask those people who say they have eternal life, what they have got.

F. E. R. If I came across any one who asserted it at the present time, I would be disposed to say, 'If you have got it, let us have some account of it.' Our difficulty in England was that nobody could give any account of eternal life. If there had been anybody who could have given an account of it, the difficulty would have been much less. One person said it was one thing, and another said it was another. One old brother who affected a good many people, said that eternal life was obedience. He took up a verse in John 12 [sic], 'And I know that His commandment is life everlasting,' and argued from that that it was obedience. It shows you in what a muddle the whole thing was. Everybody claimed to have it, but nobody could give an account of it. Another brother asked me, 'Have you got eternal life?' I did not know how to answer it exactly because he simply meant resting on a statement of scripture. [Yes, this is what F.E.R.'s followers must avoid!]

G. F. Would you not define eternal life?

F. E. R. I do not think that we have any definition of it. You can speak of what is characteristic of it, and scripture gives you that, but surely if you claim to have eternal life you can give some account of it. If a man has a possession he can give me some account of what he possesses. Otherwise I doubt if he has it. I don't say he has not title to it.

R. S. S. Or the enjoyment of it.

F. E. R. I think thousands have title to it who are not in the good of it. Eternal life is God's purpose for you; God gave His Son to that end. I have the light of this, and hence it is mine in title, but to say that I have it is another matter."

Could the unbelief of a professing Christian go farther? Over and over again is the present possession of life eternal denied. According to F. E. R. it is "God's purpose"; and the believer has a "title to it," but in no way has he that life himself. "To say that I have it is another matter." Yet he knows as well as anyone, that the Lord with most marked solemnity ruled that He gives, not will give, life eternal, and that the believer "has" it, not merely is to have it. Simple title or God's purpose is excluded. Christ's meaning is made the more definite and indubitable (except to will under Satan's power), because He also says that the believer has passed from death into life. F. E. R. stands here in open antagonism to the word of the Lord on this vital matter. To quibble away His plain authority for it is to sap divine truth.

Again, how sad is the levity of the oracular platitude in answer to "G.F.! Would you say a believer then had eternal life in a certain sense?

F. E. R. I answer it in a very simple way, he has eternal life if he has it."

Any upright mind must feel that such a come-off is, if not Jesuitical evasion, anything but "simple," being just incredulous banter and a cheat.

All but the most ignorant know that life in itself, and of every form in nature, is difficult to explain, especially to a caviller. Yet who questions its reality but a materialist? With such F. E. R. here "lands himself" as to life eternal, however clearly revealed. On the highest authority the simplest Christian is divinely assured that he has this life eternal, not its mere title or promise. He expects indeed its certain completion in his body when Christ comes again; but he has no less certainty of possessing it now in his inner man. This F. E. R. denies emphatically, unequivocally, and constantly. Yet the scheme defrauds every Christian of his primary blessedness, dishonours the Lord in His grace and truth, and perverts His words of spirit and life into a willy-nilly of dark unbelief.

Is it true that in England "nobody" among the companions of this misguided man "could give any account of eternal life"? How deplorable if it were really as he says! I dare not allow that all have accepted the lie for the truth they once seemed to hold firmly and universally. Every intelligent saint, on the contrary, is able to explain that, just as he has by nature the sin-tainted life of the first man, so has he by grace, on believing, the holy life of the Second man. Who could expect our spiritual life to be outwardly cognisable more than our natural life? Yet even sceptics do not go so far as to deny it absolutely as a present thing, though they do its everlasting permanence.

It is almost needless to say that life eternal attests its presence by a newly given faith in Christ, by prayerful dependence on God, by delight in His word, by holy ways and walk, by a broken and self-distrusting spirit, by sympathies and antipathies upward and around and within, never displayed before. Besides these subjective qualities, the objective side is at least as marvellous and real: Christ sent from above, and the only true God, the Father, made known as only then in the gracious working of the Spirit by the word. Surely this, and it might be largely increased, is "some account of it," and familiar to the family of God. What does this incredulous talker want or mean? He is blinded by self- will and vanity against the truth. But what of the many who know better, yet hold their peace? Are they swamping truth for a unity worthless without it? Is this what they owe Christ the Lord? Do they keep His word, or do they deny His name?

The passage is really a tissue of extreme unbelief, a gross exaggeration of the condition of his companions, and withal vulgar mockery, to support a lie of the enemy. The "muddle" is in F. E. R. and his dupes, through defection from the truth which no doubt he long preached and taught, if he never in heart believed it. It is of comparatively recent years that a doubt was breathed, only to be sternly reproved and scouted as wholly unsound. Even mere Jews, as is allowed, had "the idea of it." But whatever may be judged of those in O.T. times, the error before us is the formal repudiation of life eternal as actually attaching to the Christian, though the Lord explicitly assigns it as a present inward reality. Even if a believer were so strangely ignorant through bad teaching as to be unable to explain the matter to an adversary, he might have the fullest conviction that he has life eternal and enjoy its effects in obedience, love, righteousness, patience and hope, as he never did before his setting to his seal that God is true. Does anyone but an idiot or a philosopher doubt he is alive, because he cannot give "some account" of life — cannot even explain why his movements answer his volition? Who questions "time," or "space", because he finds it hard if not impossible to give a ready interpretation of either?

"The idea of eternal life" which Jews had is quite different from the believer's present and known possession of it. This did await Christ's coming. It is a crude and confusing statement that "It was the same thing referred to all along" (page 108). Could any say or accept this save an unbeliever in the Christian's privilege, which did depend on the Son of God? Before He came, the saints had life in Him, but they were ignorant as to it; when He came, He gave them understanding of this and much more. It was greatly increased when He rose and the Spirit was given. But it is untrue that "all depended on that." And the error affects still higher truth.

Think of a person presuming to teach yet so dense as to say that in the opening of John's Gospel "the apostle is, I judge, speaking from his standpoint, not from God's!" Such a judgment might fall from a natural man: Luke 1: 2 gives not the slightest warrant for it. It is the kind of slip-shod comment by which Unitarians and other adversaries of the faith seek to undermine Christ. John 5: 26 is not the expression of Christ's divine right, but of the subject place He took when He became man, and received everything from God. Otherwise His deity is taken from the Lord.

Take another example. The alleged difference between "the Son" and "the Son of God" is rash and wrong, being even refuted by the text itself. That "Son of God" is (in Ps. 2 and elsewhere as John 1: 49, as well as Luke 1: 35) said of Christ as the King of Israel is true; yet the generalisation made in page 109 is a dangerous falsehood, as is made certain by such texts as 1 John 3: 8, 1 John 4: 10, 14, 1 John 5: 5, 9, 10, 20. But if one desire a single distinct disproof of its folly, one could not have a more decisive one than 1 John 5: 12: "He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." In this case the emphasis is rather the opposite way, as every spiritual mind must feel.

Similar lack of insight and subjection to scripture is at the bottom of page 113. God's calling is not "sonship" as such, nor is it synonymous with "eternal life." Take Eph. 1 where His calling stands richly; but not a word is said of "eternal life," as indeed page 119 admits. Take the Gospel and the First Epistle of John where "life eternal" is most fully treated; yet we have absolute silence about sonship. And what means the desire in page 116 to exclude "eternal life" from heaven, making it refer to earth? One might have expected a tyro to have profited better by the Lord's words to Nicodemus. A "teacher of Israel" ought to have known that to be born anew was needed for earthly things of God's kingdom; whereas the cross and eternal life suit the higher things of heaven, as made known by Him Who came down from heaven and would return thither, the Son of man who is in heaven.

The conversation on "the sphere" (116,117) is a characteristic specimen of unintelligent pretension. Of old the term "sphere" had been rightly used to designate the heavenly source whence He came Who was the eternal life and went back into the glory He had left, where we behold Him now and look to be, conformed to Him in body at His coming. We while on earth are given life eternal; but we have it in Him Who is above, and hence for that sphere where we are not yet, however assured by His grace. This morally becomes of the highest importance to act on our faith and love as well as hope according to Paul no less than John. What bewilderment, not to say darkness, of mind to refer to Rom. 5: 21, Dan. 12: 2, and John 17: 3, the last being said to "describe the sphere!" Was ever more pitiable hallucination, if it were not bound up with spiritual guilt of a black dye?

Contrast to death is the lowest and shallowest possible "idea" of life eternal. If we simply and truly believed Christ to be our life, could we fail to apprehend that this eternal life is our newly but truly given spiritual being, capable of communion even now with the Father and with the Son Whom He sent? Why this incessant and fruitless beating about the bush, ending in absolute denial of its present possession, the very thing on which the Lord most sedulously insists?

Remark too how far the reduction of life eternal to the contrast with death carries away this sciolist. "I think eternal life refers to earth. I don't think we should talk about eternal life in heaven . . . I don't think the term will have much force there . . . I don't see much sense in connecting the idea of eternal life with heaven." To one who pleaded his understanding "that it is connected with heaven also," F.E.R. answers, "I don't know the connection. The point of eternal life is that it comes in where death was. I think it stands in scripture in contrast to death." The expressions that follow might imply getting life here and now. But this he elsewhere so pointedly repudiates that we are obliged to believe that it is only "in anticipation now," not as actually possessed. But this novel jargon is as unmeaning as the strange dictum, "If you don't apprehend a sphere, you have no idea of eternal life"!! It is self-evident that he does not apprehend a sphere, simple as it is, but mystifies it.

On the "proportion" of deliverance here taught (page 106), it is enough to say that it is not so that scripture teaches. There is also no sense of correlation in saying, "I think the Father orders the world" (page 110) (for scripture testifies the contrast between these two), and in thinking that worship addresses itself to the Father, because the thought of God is presented to us in the Father (111). Now, John 4 is express in distinguishing the worship of "God" as such from that of "the Father," as any one may see in comparing verse 23 with 24. Spiritual perception is wholly lacking; and most sects have a peculiar style, or lingua franca, of their own. Could any one match the strange absurdity that John 17: 3 describes the "sphere"? His friend J. S. A. (who writes the introduction) indulges in the dream that where his leader is deeply astray, he is "correcting defective or erroneous use of terms!" Where could be shown infatuation more complete? And the worst is that not only are the terms defective and erroneous to an extraordinary degree, but the vital truth of scripture is misrepresented and lost, whilst empty falsehood takes its place.

The true sphere of eternal life was for the Word, the Son, with the Father (John 1: 4,1 John 1: 2) till the Incarnation. Then on earth in due time He said, "I came that they [the sheep] might have life, and that they might have it abundantly" (John 10: 10). They believed and had life eternal in the days of His flesh, and in yet greater power when He died and rose (John 5: 25, John 6: 33- 50, 51-58, John 20: 22). Finally He returns to heaven and is glorified above with the Father's own self, with the glory which He had along with the Father before the world was. This is the "sphere" proper to the eternal life in its fullest character as we know it. But it is of the essence of the truth when revealed that we, Christians, have it now, and were to live because He lives, Christ living in each Christian, not merely in a future and risen state, but as to the life which each now lives in the flesh.

There will be, as no instructed saint doubts, life eternal for Israel and the nations in the world to come; but it will be in a way quite inferior to our privilege. For as it is our characteristic portion to know Christ with the Father in heavenly glory, we now have it in Him there but have also Him in us here. Were it otherwise, what incalculable loss! But it is not so; we cannot have the one without the other. The N. T. which alone reveals the full character of the life eternal in no way points us to "the world to come," which is its earthly display, but to the Son on high. Then shall we, and not we only, reign in life by the One, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5: 17); and this is not limited by "the world" and "age" to come, but will be true for ever, an everlasting and a far higher enjoyment of life eternal than Israel or the nations enjoy in "the world to come." Nor can there be a more senseless view of life eternal than to look for the earth at that period as our sphere of its display. It is systematic error from ignorance of scripture, a repugnance to dispensational light through the word, and a falsification of what life eternal is. Here judaising too plainly ousts Christianity and its better hope. What a blind leader of the blind is he who would exclude "heaven" from the completion of life eternal, or from the Christian's enjoyment of His association with Christ there even now I See the trumpery too of treating "sonship" as greater than eternal life in page 119.

As to "the world to come," most astounding the departure from the truth. "What thoughtful person could say that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life now? I do not think it does yet. I do not think that grace is manifestly set in the ascendant" (p. 136). Not yet in the ascendant manifestly when Christ sits on God's throne! when grace triumphs in the power of the Spirit sent forth! It is the most deplorable ignorance of the world to come; for "righteousness" shall reign then, not "grace" as now. Christianity is ignored for the Jewish hope. This profound error is repeated and applies throughout; yet he says, "I do not doubt at all that what I have indicated to you is the line of divine teaching!!" Did ever fancy's fondness for its offspring more deceive itself? But where is God's word and Spirit in all this assumption? It is apostasy from what was once loved as the truth, now alas! trodden down under unclean feet, or at least by animals which do not ruminate. Rom. 5: 21 applies now, as will Isa. 32: 1 to the world to come.

Though my immediate duty be to vindicate the Christian truth of life eternal and to expose its frightful and pernicious denial now propagated, I cannot refrain from pointing out how the revealed testimony of Christ here suffers eclipse, and little remains but a morass of mud and vapour. Who but F.E.R. would say that we get in Ex. 15 figuratively "an idea" of the Kingdom? No one denies that as to this it goes no farther than anticipating the everlasting reign of Jehovah (Ex. 15: 18) at the end. But the true aim is the celebrating of the people's redemption by power as well as blood, and the destruction of the enemy's force for salvation accomplished. In no way is it the Kingdom come, which in this series of types is the figuration in Ex. 18. Hence here as elsewhere all is confusion worse confounded.

Indeed the like destructive vagueness characterises the volume from the first address at Quebec and its first page (8): "The Kingdom was coming in in connection with the Lord Jesus, who was the expression of the grace of God." Could any one of spiritual discernment thus put together Luke 10: 21- 42 etc. with John 1: 17? Indisputable that the Kingdom of God came in Christ and was proved by His casting out demons in virtue of God's Spirit (Matt. 12: 27); equally so that it was in their midst then, instead of coming with observation as in the days when the Son of man is revealed. But it is olla podrida to mix up as here grace and salvation with God's Kingdom even in its present moral aspect, which scripture declares to be "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit."

But a greater contrast can scarce be found between the Kingdom as presented in scripture, and as it is travestied in these "Notes," save elsewhere in this deceptive and unsavoury volume on the various topics discussed. In scripture there is a most distinctive object in God's Kingdom, the display, or at least morally speaking the reality, of divine power and government. By F.E.R. this is spoilt and smothered in "that sway of God which has to be established in the soul of every man; if God is have to say to man otherwise than in judgment, the Kingdom of God must be established in man. Every Christian must know the Kingdom in himself" (p. 25). J.S.A, singular to say, comments on "the vague kind of idea that many of us had," that is, before the new lamp shed its light of death, "that the Kingdom was heaven or something of that kind, something you get into by-and-by instead of an actual present thing in the soul." How can he be blind to the fact, that his chief has misled them with himself into a moral platitude, which might content a Scottish Moderate of the past or a German Rationalist of the present day? They might all stand together under the capacious shade of "the moral sway of grace" (26).

Assuredly Abel, Enoch, Noah, and all the elders of the Old Testament who obtained testimony by faith came fully under that "sway," if one may use for once their language? Yet the Kingdom of God was for some not at hand for thousands of years; and the great type was a long while after in David and Solomon. But here all is a fallacious dissolving view, to reduce the full-grown into babyhood and worse; for in the next page (27) F.E.R. is so benighted as to say that "the Kingdom means salvation." It never does. One had hoped that all brothers (so called) were well aware that, however they may be connected, the Kingdom and salvation are each as essentially distinct as the church or assembly is from both. This man's mission is not from the Holy Spirit, but from an opposing and evil spirit to seduce unwary souls from the truth they once seemed to know and enjoy into a whirlpool of confusion and corrupting error. Honest ignorance we ought not to snub but to compassionate; but it is an imperative obligation to expose and unsparingly denounce ungrateful and rebellious departure from the truth of God.

It is in the Toronto reading (pages 23-34) that the vagaries about the Kingdom come out so grotesquely. Matt. 18 is spoken of as very important, notably for the condition of entrance, but "at the close the great principle of the Kingdom i.e., grace reigning through righteousness." Now every person of real intelligence must know that the closing parable gives a totally different teaching; not in the least grace reigning through righteousness, but after pardon was proclaimed, the one who proved alien from its spirit consigned to condign torment. Can we conceive an archer more thoroughly missing the mark? No wonder he and his friends regard dispensational bearing with disfavour. "This is the rock on which many have split" (26) says the wrecker.

Nor is this specimen of "divine teaching" all the error here. In p. 32 we read that David's throne is really the throne of God! the very thing which the apostle contradicts in Acts 2. For David both died and was buried, and his monument was among the Jews unto that day; but being a prophet he testified of Messiah's resurrection; and to Ps. 16 we can add Ps. 110 where he tells us of His Son sitting at God's right hand, on His throne above, where none ever set or ever can sit but Himself. "You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne!!" Was there ever a more perverse as well as pretentious blunderer? The O.T. does speak of Solomon chosen to sit upon the throne of Jehovah (1 Chr. 28: 5), which, as it is differently expressed, has quite another import. "But in the New" you do not "find that David's throne is God's throne." Not only is it a confusion but a falsehood. The Son of God, the anointed of Jehovah, shall sit on David's throne. But every decently taught Christian knows that this will not be till He appears in glory: and we have always treated such an identification as the ignorance and even folly of adversaries.

In contrast with sitting as King on Zion by and by, Christ sits now on God's throne, His Father's throne. This is not mere ignorance in F.E.R. It is shameless abandonment of the truth which he long confessed. Yet not one of his fellows moved the wing, or opened the mouth even to chirp. They seem spell-bound and won over to invincible darkness. Can one be surprised that these unworthy retrogradists allowed it to pass that "ecclesiasticism! standing!! ground! and such ideas!! have almost ruined us" (34). Brethren, how have such insults to God's precious truth been heard or read without rebuke and repudiation? Truly "all have not faith": if men have only "ideas," they must come to ruin; yea, some seem ruined already.

"The New Covenant and Reconciliation" (35-47) abounds in judaising and the like confusion as before. What F.E.R. means, by saying in page 38 that "you get two things in this chapter (Col. 1), viz. the new covenant and reconciliation," is just a proof of his total incapacity to expound scripture. Where is a trace of the new covenant in the Epistle to the Colossians? Apparently he, for one statement, alleges "In Him all the fulness was pleased to dwell", but this immense truth goes far beyond, and wholly differs from, the new covenant; and, for the other statement, "by Him to reconcile all things to Himself" is a purpose wholly future. "In the cross" says he, "there was the removal of the old man to the glory of God: but where that man was removed, the love of God was expressed. The latter gives you the covenant! and the former reconciliation!" Can one imbued with scriptural truth imagine greater imbecility, letting pass the phraseology employed? For according to scripture the love of God was pre-eminently expressed in His Son's mission, that we might live through Him, and that He might die as propitiation for our sins. Only F.E.R., not scripture, connects it with "the removal" of the old man. Nor does scripture but F.E.R. say, that "where that man was removed the love of God was expressed," but that "love hath been perfected with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4). This we could not be if we had not now eternal life, propitiation, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a power far beyond the new covenant or the reconciliation, as Israel are to know under Messiah.

The new creation is a distinct truth, super-added to reconciliation and never in scripture confounded. No divine teaching is clearer on it than Rom. 5: 10, 11; which closes the question of God's righteousness in view of our sins, before the supplement which treats the annulling of our old man, a special Christian privilege for faith but not without the need of learning it experimentally.

As to the new covenant the apostle cites Jeremiah's words for days to come of blessing on all Israel; but thence for the Christian he turns to the beautiful shadows of heavenly things which the Mediator's death brought in, "God having foreseen some better thing for us." This never seems to enter the mind of these interlocutors. Yet is it the express truth which God opens in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a hope that enters within the veil, of which the new covenant in itself knows nothing, and never will. Have these sorry labourers forgotten what used to cheer and gladden the hearts of true men in days that are past, and of some by grace still? Let them read and learn what follows in Heb. 9, 10 where the Christian is shown to be put into living relation with the true holies, ourselves not only sanctified but perfected in perpetuity. Israel even under Messiah and the new covenant will have no such spiritual portion, but Levitical priests, and the sons of Zadok, material sacrifices, and an earthly temple with doors. How fallen from divine teaching are those who once seemed to enjoy it, forsaking the fountain of living water for broken cisterns which can hold no water! And what are others who sit quiet and dumb in the face of such enormous corruption? For there are not a few spiritual men who value heavenly truth, I feel sure, and who groan at this spurious substitute.

Is it by the way worth noticing the absurd change (p. 121) from the plain and certain force of Gal. 3: 26? The only error in the A.V. is in "the children," where all agree it should be "sons," of God. Thus "W.M. Do you read that passage in Galatians 'ye are all the sons of God in Christ Jesus by faith?' F. E. R. I do." This seems drawn from the R.V. which by its strange punctuation comes to the same sense, or from an English scholar who followed two or three Germans, and, being himself learned, had great weight with the Revisers in misleading them too often. But learning carries none safely through Scripture. The present instance is a distortion of the sentence, and the issue a truly unnatural abortion. No scholar would so twist a classic. Where is there anything in the N. T. to warrant "sons" any more than "children" in Christ Jesus? Either would be out of harmony with God's word. It is due to sonship on the brain of one who has no title to pose as the least authority in such a question, despising here as elsewhere an honoured servant of God who really had the fullest claim to respect. [FER N.S. Vol. 18 p. 136ff.]

In pp. 125, 126 are found remarks derogatory to scripture which are natural enough in a system of unbridled imagination. When J.C. went so low down as to claim that "the word of God is in the scriptures, F.E.R. answered "Christ is the word of God. The scriptures are more the record of it than the thing itself". How unlike the Lord when tempted by the devil! how like Quakers of old, and rationalists in our day! And when W.M. dutifully chimes in, "Then a Bible student is not much after all," F.E.R. rejoins, "I have said that if I had to live  over again I would study scripture less and pray more. The great thing for a Christian is to get into his closet and pray. Prayer and meditation." Had he not forgotten that Luke 10: 38-42 precedes 11: 1-13? Has he not taken as his model not Christ but the Jew in "much speaking" or the eastern monk? Certainly he does not profit by 2 Tim. 3 "Every scripture (not "the sacred writings" of the Old Testament only, but "every scripture" of the New too, written or to be written) "is God-breathed, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipline which is in righteousness." Prayer is of the utmost value on that basis, but is of none without it; for God's word is left out, which He has magnified above all His name, as Christ beyond all others exemplified here below. Even when 2 Tim. 3 was referred to, the effort was to reduce all to its "disciplinary value." But this is expressly only a part, and when R. S. S. "was wondering if, in Luke 11, where the Lord teaches His disciples to pray," it is that He first reveals God to us, the answer goes off to His giving the Spirit that they may pray. But our Lord says nothing whatever of this end, but of their asking the Father and of His surely giving Him. The Spirit was given for every need and every privilege, not merely for prayer and meditation, very notably to guide into all the truth in glorifying Christ.

What again can be more empty and divergent from the true scope of Rom. 4: 23 to end of 5 than the "four great thoughts" of F.E.R. in pages 128,129 of his Chicago Address on the Principles of the world to come" fraudulently imported into the passage? The apostle here shows neither the Kingdom of God, nor the Covenant in its bearing on teaching; but that even as to the inheritance of Abraham, it is neither by law nor circumcision but by promise and therefore to faith, that it might be according to grace. In the verse with which F.E.R. begins, the Spirit goes farther and contrasts our faith in the gospel with Abraham's in his being fully persuaded that what God promised He is able also to perform; whereas the Christian rests, not on promise however sure, but on His work already accomplished in raising from the dead our Lord Jesus, who was given up for our offences and raised for our justification. This is the truth, not mere thoughts great or small. Indeed they are unfounded in themselves and quite outside the scripture alleged for them. They are not the line of the Spirit's teaching. It is false to say so. We may leave aside what is irrelevant and dragged in by force for many pages.

But let us turn to page 148 which led to this retrospect. There we find contradiction of himself as well as of his betters. To the question of the difference between the Kingdom "of God" and "of Heaven," the absurd answer is given that the latter is analogous to what God did at the beginning: [For it was on the fourth day] He set a great light in the heavens to rule the day. Surely any old woman might furnish one with more sense, and any Christian child with more truth. But his explanation of the former is darker still. "The Kingdom of God, on the other hand, is connected with the presence of the Holy Ghost down here." Now he had already acknowledged, as all know, that the Kingdom of God was here before His presence at Pentecost. Again, to one who asked, what was once universally owned, whether the Kingdom of God is a more inclusive term, says F. E. R. "I don't think so." Yet when another remarked that "the Kingdom was really set up when Christ took His place on high," his answer was, "Yes, the Kingdom of Heaven." Yet he adds what contradicts himself, that "the Kingdom of God was present when Christ was on earth;" for this conclusively proves the latter to be the "more inclusive term," and before the Spirit's presence at Pentecost.

But what means the thought (page 150) that the robber "got salvation by his death"? "the death of Christ took him to paradise, but his own death was salvation"! "He was never baptized to the death of Christ, but he got salvation by death; that is, through it he got complete emancipation from the power of evil. We get salvation by death in a sense, but by the death of Christ we get heaven." One knows not what the saints beguiled into sanction or sufferance of this strange doctrine think of the new appendix — our death as a supplement to Christ's death for salvation. But it does seem a worthy appendage to the denial of eternal life as a present possession that "we get salvation by death in a sense." Is not F.E.R.'s "sense" sheer nonsense? is not our death given an unscriptural value when put as a partner with Christ's death? But can we be surprised where the scriptures lose their place as the divine standard for us?

Who can wonder that one who dispenses such "ideas" says in the same page "I think a great point in connection with the Kingdom is to get away from dispensational ideas. We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally"! Think of so bold a revolt from the fullest chapter God ever inspired on the Kingdom! For Matt. 13 (and it is far from being alone) for the most part sets forth dispensational teaching, though not this only. "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear" said the Lord. F.E.R. says on the contrary, "Get away from dispensational ideas." "Have ye understood all these things?" the Lord asked. F.E.R. is not afraid to gainsay Him: "We have been greatly hindered by taking things up dispensationally." Exactly so think the uninstructed leaders of Christendom. Extremes meet. Yet here samples only are noticed by the way, by no means all that deserves severe castigation as well as entire rejection; that those who love the truth may see how far-reaching is the departure which once would have been felt intolerable and without excuse.

Think too of such erratic teaching in the same short paragraph (154, 155), "for the moment the Kingdom is hid at the right hand of God," compared with the quotation of the future day when "the angels shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that offend," etc. Had it been said that "the King" is hid, one could understand; but "the Kingdom" has no sense. It is the fruit of sneering at dispensational truth and cultivating a crop of moral vanities. "In a day of confusion" (153) scripture is the divine resource, not mere moral views, which without it only mislead. But what can Christians think when to one who asked the difference between the Father's Kingdom and that of the Son, the answer was, "They refer to the same point"? And to another on the same page he maintained that Christ has "received the kingdom!" and cited for his error, "we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour!!" It is to be hoped that all who heard knew the gross mistake of both answers. Heb. 2: 9 is no more proof of Christ's reception of the Kingdom than Rev. 4, 5 proves that the heavenly saints then reign. It is His present exaltation when we do not yet see all things put under Him. When He comes to reign, He wears many diadems and is not merely crowned. Who can fathom this disgraceful ignorance? or the dense delusion which accepts it as fresh light and truth? It really annuls the sure witness hitherto rendered by all taught of God as to the future within brethren or without.

When one even before this asked, "Could a person enter into the moral sway of the kingdom not having life?" there is evasion. For to be "born anew" is life from God; and this life is in the Son of God. Why start off into "receiving" the Kingdom of God, which is by that faith which is inseparable from being born anew, as the Gospel of John so strongly insists? The truth is not only evaded but distorted and denied for the foolish dream which will have life eternal only at the end, instead of bowing to God's testimony that it is also given immediately on believing.

In p. 164 (the Minneapolis reading on the Sanctuary) we come again to the old strange doctrine. "You don't begin with eternal life," says an accommodating disciple.

F.E.R. You end with it, at least if scripture is right, "The end everlasting life.'

W.E. And that scripture does not mean then that you die?

F.E.R. I don't think so. A man gets to eternal life on earth. He may not get it until resurrection, but get it he will. Every believer will certainly get it.

W.H.F. Before he leaves earth?

F.E.R. Yes.

W.H.F. You don't enter into it now, but in resurrection?

F. E. R. You will be put into it then; you will not enter into it." The meaning of this utterance seems to be eternal life given only at Christ's coming when we shall not all sleep, but all be changed. But this is to efface the Lord's giving it to believers now, as a known and present possession, for mortality swallowed up of life at His coming, with which he confounds it. Scripture is as plain about the beginning as about the end. F.E.R. denies it for the believer when he most needs life eternal to know God, follow the Lord, enjoy the heavenly things at God's right hand, overcome the world, and resist the devil. He is doing the enemy's work and corrupting the temple of God.

Then in page 166 we have the arrant stuff so often repeated about the covenant. In page 129 "covenant on the part of God really means teaching to us"! Here "it is God's disposition toward you, and that is love. That is His covenant"!! Was there ever so downright a muddle with such pretension to "divine teaching"? Covenant means neither teaching nor love, though the new one flows from grace and ensures conscious knowledge of Jehovah, with sins and iniquities remembered no more. But it means, not God's disposition but, His order established for ever, in this case with His people according to His unchanging mercy.

Passing over wild statements about reconciliation, in page 171 as often before we have that phrase, so offensive to a spiritual mind, "you touch life"; "You touch His life now because you have accepted His death." Among other outlandish expressions (p. 172) we read, "The moment you love God, you are in the life of Christ." Scripture puts the truth in quite the opposite way: Herein was the love of God manifested, that God in our case hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Never is it written or meant that when we love Him, we are that moment in the life of Christ, unscriptural as the language is. That life is from God's love, not from ours. But the constant error is pretending to be in the life of Christ, whilst we have not life eternal; for His life exclusively is that life eternal, and He gives no other. Had Christ two lives to give, a life of His now that is not eternal, and another life at His coming which is eternal? Whatever is meant, it is a detestable lie of the enemy, incompatible with scripture, and contradictory to it.

What can one say of an assertion so preposterous in page 173 as that the reconciliation we have now through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5: 11) means that we "have another head?" "There is the sense of change from Adam to Christ. That is the point realized in reconciliation." Think of one who often heard the truth calmly drawing so untenable an inference from the passage! It is wholly alien from the mind of the Spirit. The context forbids it to anyone of the least spiritual judgment. When another asked (175), Does reconciled bring out the difference between the first and second man? the answer is "If you accept reconciliation you don't go in for (!) the comeliness of the first man." Now, leaving this slang of the race-course or the prize ring, one may be astonished at ignorance of the reconciliation so deplorable. Yet it goes on to the end; for we read with the emphasis of italics in 178, "In reconciliation Christ gets His place with us as Head." But everyone of intelligence knows that the verse closes the apostolic discussion of our sins; then the next verse begins the further truth of the two heads, in order to treat aright the new subject of deliverance from sin. Does F.E.R. flatter himself that he can overthrow the conviction of instructed saints for more than half-a-century? But why speak of any such conviction? The scripture is perfectly clear. Alas! he is a mere trifler with God's word; and those who, knowing better tolerated his folly ought to hide their heads for very shame.

The same page is disfigured with a truly scandalous comment on 2 Cor. 5: 20 ("We beseech in Christ's stead be reconciled to God"). "F.E.R. I think it is practical (!!); the Corinthians had not left Adam for Christ. They were practically very much in Adam"(!!!). This quite benighted man who sets up to teach had never learnt, or utterly forgotten, the very elementary lesson that the apostle is here giving the gospel message in his brief formula, as it were a specimen "word of reconciliation." Practical indeed for the Corinthian saints! Had not God already reconciled them (ver. 18), as He does for all who believe? Compare Col. 1: 21, 22. It is a divine work done once for all through Christ's death, and in itself distinct from His headship, however truly this is superadded. But "practical," as it is here made for saints in a bad state, is anti-scriptural; so that it raises the question whether one who so teaches has read his Bible to any profit, or can ever have submitted to the word of truth. This is not a gratuitous anxiety. Not the smallest reference is here to practice, in which the Corinthians were indeed low and inconsistent. Reconciliation has nowhere an aspect to saints. It is really the word of reconciliation in the gospel message: we are told how to address the world of sinners. Reconciliation, like justification, is a work absolute, and does not admit of degrees.

Suffice it to say that on Reconciliation his teaching, if so it is to be styled, is as thorough and vague make-believe as on the Kingdom; nor does Covenant ever mean in scripture what he affirms it to be, "the disposition of God towards His people." In divine things it means an order established by God and made known to the men concerned, according to which He forms relations with them, and they walk before Him. The first covenant wholly broke down because it depended on the obedience of a rebellious and wicked people. The second depends on the faithful mercy of Jehovah by the intervention of Messiah and His work to divine glory and their blessing; and this is everlasting. But that either one or other means "God's disposition, in F.E.R.'s sense of His gracious affection, is a dream. God's disposition, like His nature, His ways and His purpose, was ever good and worthy of Him Who is light and love. But the sinner must learn his sinfulness, ruin and powerlessness. Sin too must be judged to glorify Him morally and in a work efficacious to deal with it, fruit and branch and root, for all that believe. In such there is an inward work of return to divine order and peaceful enjoyment of God, based on the work wrought in the body of Christ's flesh through death. This is reconciliation; as the new covenant with both houses of Israel will be Jehovah's undertaking to secure their full and changeless blessing, the principle of which the Lord and the apostle apply to the Christian.

What impresses one's soul in reviewing these dreary talks and effusions ("readings" and teachings they are not, save by euphemism), is that Christ is lost, not being held in faith. Hence the truth sinks into a chaos, partly of traditional ignorance as on the Kingdom and the world to come, and partly of hazy "ideas" as on the new covenant and reconciliation even beneath old puritanism. On the Kingdom enough has been said, however briefly. But a fairly sober Christian has only to confront the "readings revised" with the Epistle to the Hebrews, to convince himself how manifestly these speculations stop short of the "divine teaching" vouchsafed to us in holy writ. They are no more than the inanities of an active yet feeble mind, which has broken away from subjection to scripture. In 2 Cor. 3 care is taken to guard against "letter" instead of "spirit"; for though the foundation is laid in the blood of Jesus, the terms and fulfilment of the new covenant can only be for the houses of Israel and Judah. We have only that of it which is compatible with a heavenly calling, yet enough to help greatly the Christian remnant of Jews to whom the Epistle was addressed.

Think too of the strange "idea" in 182 that "The only way in which you escape from the wilderness is in your own house. I don't think one's own house is exactly the wilderness, for it is a circle which God owns. The moment you are outside of your own house, you are in the wilderness"!!! Was there ever such puerility in a Christ-given teacher, or even a sane man? Who does not know that if typically we pass through the wilderness, which the world is to the new man, tents are an essential part of it, and that these become the pilgrim rather than the settled houses of Egypt? But what a conglomerate of thought, or at least of words and figures, to claim for "our own house" so favoured a circle! Would to God, our homes were more pilgrim-like, and more redolent of Christ!

But we come to more serious and systematic development of error in the use made of some later types in the book of Numbers (183, 184).

"G. R. Does the brazen serpent answer to Rom. 8: 3?

"F. E. R. Quite so . .  .

"J. S. A. And I suppose that although a person might be out of Egypt through the Red Sea, and brought to God in that sense, he cannot enter into the purpose of God unless he apprehends the brazen serpent.

"F. E. R. No, the Spirit is the real beginning of life in the believer, 'The Spirit is life' (184) . . God goes back to Adam (!) and the serpent, and sin is condemned in the flesh in the sacrifice of Christ, in order that God might impart the Spirit as life to man. You get the Lord's own expression of this in John 3."

These heterogeneous "ideas" may please souls immature in the truth; but they indicate a mind caught by appearance, and at sea with a compass wholly out of order. For the book of Exodus furnishes the shadows of redemption and its consequences, up to God's dwelling in the midst. There we have not only the sacrifice of Christ in the Passover but God's action in power for His people in the passage of the Red Sea, Christ dead and risen. "The purpose of God" had been before them in Ex. 3: 17, and Ex. 6: 4, 8; as they all celebrated it in the song, Ex. 15: 13-17. In figure they were truly and fully brought to God. Then come lessons of grace by the way and conspicuous among them the Bread of life come down from heaven marking out the true rest, and the gift of the Spirit in the living waters from the smitten rock fitting for conflict, though victory depend on the Mediator's intercession on high.

Is it not therefore certainly and manifestly in contradiction of scripture that one could not enter into God's purpose without the serpent of brass? For its object as the emblem of Christ crucified was to annul the power of Satan through the fiery serpents which bit those that loathed "this light bread." And it was an absolute and immediate remedy to the look of faith, Aaron being dead just before: for those concerned seem not such apostates as Jude speaks of, but souls who had not come out of Egypt nor passed through the Red Sea. They were a fresh generation requiring a new enumeration soon after, who have God's intervention for them against the enemy within and without. Hence they too receive the Spirit's refreshing, as they had the emblem of Christ made sin for them just before. It was meet that God should grant all this for the generation about to leave the wilderness; as He had done in previous figures for those who left Egypt for the wilderness.

But what a hodge-podge is made of "divine teaching" by these ill-assorted ingredients from Exodus and Numbers boiled together for a witch's cauldron of poison! Yet not a soul among his British companions or his American friends raised a note of warning! If the progress of audacious error is alarming, the silence of men in the party who must see more or less through Satan's deceits seems more distressing still.

The human invention of the believer's life by the Spirit, which is not a present reality in Christ or life eternal, explains much said hitherto, and is distinctly taught in "The Wilderness and the Land." "You have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness" (185). The truth is that life in Christ, life eternal, is at the starting-point; as is taught in John 3: 15, etc., John 5: 24, 25, John 6: 40, and very clearly in 1 John 4: 9 compared with 10, unless you say that this life is not eternal life. It is unmistakably false doctrine that "John 3 carries you farther than Romans 8": a total misconception of that Gospel, which tells of the Son come down from heaven, Who is withal in heaven, light come into the world then manifesting God on earth. This is not less "the wilderness" than anything in the Epistle to the Romans; and "the thought of God" is as truly in both Rom. 5 and Rom. 8 as in John 3. In short the teaching is a string of discreditable and mischievous blunders. It is owing to the thought of only the end, life everlasting.

Hence "perishing" is said to be in the wilderness (181), yet it means to "apostatize" like Judas, a lot so exceptional, that there is another string also to the bow. It really expresses the everlasting perdition (whatever its shape) which befalls every unbeliever. And what, even before that, more inept than the comparison (180) of Rom. 8 with 5 — "what we are for God in the Spirit?" Surely if Rom. 5 is God fully known in grace superior to our sins, Rom. 8 is our place in Christ, superior to law, sin, and every other difficulty. But this book drags souls from divine truth to self habitually, instead of ministering Him Who alone acts on us in the power of grace by the Spirit.

If we turn to the fuller light of the N. T., the violence done to revelation is extreme. For a twofold reason is given in the opening of Rom. 8 why there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus, itself a wondrous expression of divine favour. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed me from the law of sin and death." This was not only life eternal but in its risen power: God could not condemn one so liberated. But there is more. "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us that walk not according to flesh but according to Spirit." As God already in Christ's cross condemned sin in the flesh — not merely sins but sin, He is not satisfied only (as the old divines were wont to put it) but glorified therein. Thus on neither score can condemnation fall. The sins of the believer are forgiven in virtue of Christ's bearing them on the tree; and the sin in the nature also has already been condemned there to God's glory. The believer in both respects stands clear, in order to righteous practice in loving God and man, as he walks in that life which he has in Christ according to which the Spirit enables him.

No Christian doubts the part played by the Holy Spirit in new birth: but how can anyone overlook the plain truth that, when the apostle discusses the further working of grace in the verses which immediately follow, not a word here teaches that "the Spirit is the real beginning of life for God in the believer, 'the Spirit of life"'? For F. E. R.'s aim is to deny that Christ now gives life, life eternal, and here in resurrection power, to the believer. This he deliberately discards as the beginning or indeed at any time in our actual existence till He comes. "Life eternal" he believes to be only given in "the end" — an end of glory which can never come without its beginning in grace now. The apostle shows that it is no question of duty only, but of a new nature with its spiritual affections quite opposed to the flesh and its lusts which are enmity against God. The believer's relationship to God is in the Spirit, but grounded on having Christ for life and on being in Him. This is made clear even by ver. 10: "But if Christ [be] in you, the body [is] dead because of sin, and the Spirit life because of righteousness." Christ already in him as life warrants him to disallow the body as a guiding power, that the Spirit may act in that life and be life practically. For thus only is sin excluded and righteousness produced.

But this is power in Christian practice, quite distinct from and subsequent to the gift of life eternal in believing. As no Christian doubts that the Son quickens in communion with the Father, so he holds that one is thus also born of the Spirit. God in the fulness of His being acts in this operation of His grace. Thus here we learn how the Spirit is the immediate energy in the inner man all through. But to pervert it (as heterodoxy usually avails itself of a scripture difficult to many) in order to deny Christ as the present giver of eternal life, O what a sore grief to Him who is sent here to glorify Christ, and should receive of His to report accordingly!

Is it not blindness to say as in p. 185, after Rom. 5, and 8: 3 which is said to answer to the brazen serpent, that "you have not yet got to eternal life, but it is life Godward in the wilderness?" As we have seen, the very verse (Rom 8: 10) abused to put forward the Spirit, in exclusion of Christ's gift of life eternal, refutes the unbelief, and makes "Christ in us" the antecedent to the Spirit's power in making it good in our practice. But more: the Lord's application in John 3 proves that the life given forthwith to such as looked on the serpent of brass answers to "eternal life," and not to an imaginary different and inferior life meanwhile. Scripture never speaks of Christ giving the believer any life but His own life eternal. F. E. R.'s doctrine is a fraud of dangerous consequence from every point of view. Can a faithful man doubt that the Holy Spirit, far from accepting F.E.R.'s error in pretended honour to Himself, resents it as a profane slight on the Son of God and on God's own love?

If it were really meant that the life we have in Christ may in some disclose little beyond a pilgrim character, whilst they ought to have a heavenly character also as occupied with Christ glorified on high, one would accept its truth as long confessed and prized. This however is in no way his "idea." He fancies life eternal to mean neither the one nor the other; he asserts it to be "a purpose of God," and "a promise" to the believer, but in no case his present and known reality, and less still admits it to be the life of which all Christians live. His notion that "the Spirit is life," to the exclusion of eternal life in Christ now given, is a wretched falsehood, and beneath not only every Christian teacher, but any Christian whatsoever. He confounds the new being at the start with power for practice on deliverance. It is possible indeed that he was beguiled by his own misapprehension of the difference between the heavenly life and the earthly (or pilgrim) life in a practical sense, whether of Christ or of the Christian. Such a misunderstanding of one truly taught of God may have been the enemy's snare into his own systematized error. But if any one a dozen years ago doubted what he meant, there can be no real excuse now. The reader of this volume has abundant and decisive proof. Who with the fear of God can now say that there has been no false system, nor false doctrine at root? To deny it at this time of day would be party-spirited will and obstinacy unworthy of Christ.

No doubt mistake on the side of these who were right in the main weakened their testimony and gave a seeming aid to the adversary. For all ought to have seen that there are two principles and directions for the life Christ communicated, figuratively the wilderness, and Canaan. The heavenly ways and the wilderness walk are quite distinct. It was so even for Christ, where all was perfection. But this raises no uncertainty as to the unity of His life, any more than as to the life eternal now given to us. It affords no real cloak for the error, which positively denies the communication here and now of eternal life, and only admits the gift of the Spirit (56 et passim). For it is foolish and evil perversion of Rom. 8: 10 to exclude our having at present eternal life in the Son, under the plea that without it "the Spirit is life." Even verse 2 had clearly joined Christ with the Spirit, like the verse tortured into the contrary. For what means "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," if not that? What God joined together, let not man venture to sever.

Further, what Christian taught of God does not see that in Rom. 8 it is a question, first in 2, of delivering power in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and, next in 10, of the Spirit as power inwardly in order to walking in the Spirit? Think of confounding all this with being born of the Spirit, or with the gift of the Spirit! Yet this is a root-error throughout the volume; as if one could be born of the Spirit without life, or have life imparted to the believer which was other than life in the Son, life eternal. What a return to old ignorance, if one conceive that the experience of Rom. 7 could be that of a soul not born of God! Yet as clearly it is one without the Spirit of liberty. But F. E. R. is on every side wrong; and the worst is, that it is a departure from light into darkness on the foundation as well as the privileges of Christianity.

It would be tedious to analyse "The things before God" (pages 198-207). But there is the like confusion, instead of the truth, in what is fantastically entitled "the world to come" (pages 208-225) and its continuation (226-242), the submerging of Christianity under Jewish expectations, just as in the denial of life eternal as a known and present reality for our souls in Christ. Take the statement that "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has properly reference to the world to come" (208, 9). Now where is the Christian of spiritual intelligence and candour who can fail to discern that this is no casual slip but error down to the foundation of revealed truth? It is the surest self-evidence that he who holds and utters such a view was not taught of God as to either the present or the future; and this in what is and must be the innermost of all, the true relation of God to each according to His word. "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" has no proper reference to "the world to come." His only reference properly, if we bow to the word, is now to the saints and faithful in Jesus Christ, though of course they will enjoy Him for ever. The error is complete on both sides. The proper title of God in reference to the world is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, but Jehovah, El-Elyon or the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, according to the beauteous type of Abraham and Melchisedek in Genesis 14, and so predicted in the Psalms as well as the Prophets.

Nowhere does scripture warrant the faintest hint that God's relation to the world will be "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;" which is His exclusively given relation even now to those who compose the church. No Papist, no Protestant, within the scope of my reading, ever erred so scandalously, not even B.W.N. in his Thoughts on the Apocalypse or in any other of his most erroneous writings, though he shared the common ignorance that all saints from the beginning to the end compose the church. F.E.R. learnt better through Brethren; and therefore his error is the less excusable, because it is the more inconsistent. Alas! what makes it hopeless, as it is, is his consistency, rather than his inconsistency. He dares, after professing the truth in both respects, to contradict revelation in both; he robs the Christian now of his most cherished relationship shared with his risen and ascended Lord, and bestows it improperly and with reckless ignorance on "the world to come." All the effort of J.S.A. or J.P. to palliate it (209) is in vain. None ventured to expose or even oppose the twofold lie against the truth.

Again, weigh the words in page 210: "Every thought enumerated in chapters 1-10 [Heb. 1 - 10] connects itself with the world to come." Now had it been said that there are points of connection through the Epistle to the Hebrews with "the world to come" (beyond the text in chapter 2 which openly speaks of it), no one could fairly dispute it. But the grand central truth, which governs its teaching through more than those ten chapters, turns those bold words into dust and ashes. Christ's session at God's right hand after having made for Himself (if not also "by Himself ") purification of our sins is from first to last characteristic for the Christian now, and does not connect itself with the world to come. Any one versed in the truth could disprove it in detail from each one of these ten chapters and indeed from all. But, not to heap up counter evidence, it suffices to allege the indisputable fact of the teaching throughout, that sacrifices are now consummated and closed for us Christians in His one offering. Hence even every tyro in prophecy knows that it will not be so for "the world to come;" as for example Ezekiel (Ezek. 43-46) proves for Israel, and Malachi (Mal. 1: 11) for the Gentiles.

In these revised notes, after ample time for reflection, there is the issue to every eye of what deliberately and systematically reverses apostolic teaching of a fundamental kind. For in the Epistle from which it is sought to show that "all is viewed in relation to it with the world to come," the wilderness with the tabernacle and its antitype is ever the ground, not Canaan and the temple as then and there according to the prophets. Our position as Christians ever looking on as sufferers in full assurance of hope is the express aim of its teaching; not "the world to come" but the holiest relationship [not union here] with Christ in heaven itself which contrasts with that world. It is the better light of God's presence on high, the "heavenly" soon to be our actual portion. We are Christians, not Jews anticipatively, or the Israel of God as Christendom fancies; and our time, if this be meant (211), is the eighth day, not the seventh. So the Lord by His word (in John 7: 37 et seqq.) would have us enjoy now in the Spirit. But these judaising errors flow from the fatal root-error of denying to us the known present possession of life eternal.

In the notice of Heb. 11 according to the new school, we are told that since "sin came in saints were being instructed in some way or other in detail as to the world to come. In Abel we see the principle of the world to come, that is acceptance by sacrifice. Then in Enoch we get translation". . . "and in Moses the destruction of the world power" (211). Did ever a narrow and prejudiced Puritan convey anything paltrier? In Abel it was really a question, not of the world to come, but of righteousness from and of God, as it was testified in Enoch the next case for heaven and eternity. Noah might as to this bear such a view in the world after the flood; but what God's word actually says is that he condemned the world, instead of inheriting it, and became heir of the righteousness that is according to faith. No doubt the pilgrim fathers are said to be heirs of the same promise; but it is carefully shown that they all sought a better country, that is, a heavenly, the city that hath the foundations. Must one tell these darkened brothers, who formerly needed it not, that "the world to come" means the habitable earth to come, and does not include the heavenly side of the scene? The Epistle, while owning it habitually and in this chapter, was written to set their eyes on things above where Christ sits. This book retrogrades and sinks to an earthly level. Lastly what halting poverty of application only to get in Moses the destruction of the world-power! Why not point out, in blessed type, the overwhelming downfall of Satan's power and ourselves brought to God by the death and resurrection of Jesus? Yet no one denies the outward analogy when Israel's foes are destroyed by-and-by.

One of the pupils remarks that "It is not that they were delivered at the moment, but they were waiting for the One who delivered them" (213). Now scripture (1 Thess. 1: 10) puts "our Deliverer" from the wrath to come, as the most expressive form of conveying their abiding rescue. So said our Lord in John 5: 24, speaking of the last crisis of that coming wrath (cf. Rom. 2: 5, 16), the believer "cometh not into judgment." It is a present and assured exemption. Another adds from his teacher that "we do not need Christ as our righteousness for this world. We need practical righteousness here, Christ is our righteousness in view of the world to come." Well, if we have not got eternal life now, and thereby communion with the Father and with His Son, this might be; but just think how its denial degrades His life both now and by-and-by! A third has found out the error of taking (Col. 1: 12) as heavenly, the inheritance of the saints in light! "That is not heaven", says J.S.A., "but the world to come"! How deplorable the descent of error!

It may help him to learn that the word which deceived him is not κληρονομίας (inheritance) but κληερου (portion or lot). This is far above the "world to come." Even "inheritance" in Eph. 1 rises higher than the earthly horizon. Let him unlearn this folly and use this scripture, as they were all wont to do. How evidently one lie about a vital truth unsettles, vitiates, and falsifies many more! Would to God that no saints might "grasp these thoughts"; for they are a grievous perversion, and can only defile and destroy. A soul less an adept did cite 1 Cor. 1: 30 for Christ made to us of God wisdom and righteousness now. Yet F. E. R., after admitting it, said "I don't think it is in relation to this world, but to the world to come(!)." It was written to the saints here and now; and has no more to do with "the world to come" than the rest. "The age to come" attached to "the world to come." Neither contemplates heaven. This prattle is one tissue of blunder on blunder. No sound and well-taught man can truthfully deny it; and I trust that none such out of party zeal may have the hardihood to palliate it. They are likely enough to cry out about my tone and spirit, as once against J.N.D. because he did not mince his words when his soul fired up against outrage done to Christ or the truth. He was not at all animated by fleshly enmity or feeling, which I too disclaim. Is there to be no righteous indignation at such sin?

We can see in pages 220, 221 that neither J.S.A. nor O.O.'B. could give up without a protest the certain if mysterious truth of Eph. 6: 12; but F.E.R. showed himself alert to lower, here too, all he could. "I don't think the rendering is quite right (!). We wrestle against the spiritual things or influences of wickedness in the heavenly places (!). We don't wrestle against the wicked spirits (!). We have to do with the effect down here. There are influences which are abroad in Christianity. We have escaped one evil, but may fall into another." "We don't wrestle against wicked spirits" says this adversary of the truth, ever bold against God's word when it is plain.

"We have to do with the effect down here," says F. E. R. But the apostle says we have to do with the sources up there. The express aim is to assert that our wrestling is, not against blood and flesh which are down here, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against "spiritual [hosts or powers of] wickedness in the heavenlies." This I venture to affirm is the right rendering; and it is dead opposed to "things or influences," which sense in the context is nonsense; for this would-be renderer himself means "influences which are abroad in Christianity" [? Christendom], and can hardly mean to call the evil spirits "things" on high. The apostle speaks here solely of spiritual beings of subtle energy and malice banded against us; and all the more seriously, because they rule the world's darkness from that heavenly elevation by their wiles as quasi-deities. He does not speak of "spiritual things or influences" in the heavenlies, but a man as far as possible from being an apostle, for he contradicts the true one. Nor does he seem to be aware that infidelity and rationalism are as real if not as rampant in Popish lands as in Protestant, though the latter are generally more open and outspoken.

The reading ends with a few vague, obscure, and scarcely intelligible remarks on eternal life; but there is nothing definite enough to call for any notice further than the mistake of putting resurrection, instead of the Son, for the coming out of that life (225). How all these "thoughts" belittle Christ, and becloud the truth! Whose work is it to do either? Not the Holy Spirit's certainly.

Passing by not a little worse than worthless in the last reading as in those before, we may now consider in its continuation (220-242) some of the more shocking errors. Take this in concurrence with J.S.A. (page 227): — "F.E.R. Every point in the Epistle [Heb.] holds good for the world to come." Such a sentiment is worthy of a Jew masquerading as a ritualistic clergyman. He saps the transparent truth of the Epistle; for as it proves the "better thing" than even the fathers looked for in the fulfilment of promise, the surpassing difference of Christianity is, I may say, everywhere made plain. The lowest object in God's purpose, the habitable earth to come (ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα), is abused to swamp the far more commanding and distinctive truths of the Epistle.

It is utterly false that "every point in the Epistle holds good for the world to come." Israel and the nations shall see the King in His beauty, and their hearts muse on the terror of His day begun on earth. But not even the most spiritually intelligent among them can look by faith on the Son seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high when He had made purification of sins (Heb. 1). Nor will they behold Him crowned with glory and honour in heaven, as we do when we see not yet all things put under Him (Heb. 2). For though it is a citation of Ps. 8, the Epistle shows that Christians have the excellency, which Thomas had not, of having believed without seeing. Then again is it no point of vantage that Christians are "partakers of a heavenly calling" (Heb. 3) while the millennial saints have an earthly one? Nor will it be theirs to suffer being tempted, like Christ, yea, to endure, and reign with Him, as 2 Tim. 2: 12 says, whereas they are reigned over, having had no such gracious experience. And the rest of God (Heb. 4), is there no difference in enjoying it on the habitable earth to come, or with Christ above?

In all the similar and deadly thrusts of B.W.N. at our heavenly privileges, I remember none so sweepingly pernicious as these "thoughts" of F. E. R. palmed on the unwary as the truth of God. Surely "an enemy hath done this"; for one might easily go through the Epistle and prove that in every salient point it ascends and associates us with Christ, in contrast with his descent to the world to come. But, even again, to cite (the same page) "we which have believed do enter," as our anticipation of it, ought to disgrace a youth on the outside seats of a meeting-room. For it is really "a promise," and not our anticipation by faith, as ranters preach, but a simple fact that we enter there (viz. at Christ's coming), not that we have in any sense entered in. In the same context, as ever in the Epistle, we are as yet and only passing through the wilderness. No: this is the reverse of divine teaching, and wholly opposed to the truth accepted and taught by every instructed person among brethren. Surely they are not all traitors to it now! It must be so, if some teach the truth, and others are allowed to teach error. Is this the compact?

"This brings in the House of God, for the truth of the House of God is not literally fulfilled in the present time, it points on to the time to come" (page 229). What a discovery! One might have expected a due appreciation of what is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being a corner stone for God's habitation in the Spirit, though it be not literal. Yet no saint need deny or grudge the future house in the land of Israel. But will that house of visible glory be comparable to a living God's church, pillar and ground (or basis) of the truth? Truly this abuse of "the world to come" is letter, not spirit; and a like abuse pervades the volume. Christianity is here debased. How very largely it is "I think" and "I suppose" and "quite so" we all can see; and alas! how many are content to remain "by this wonderful system" bereft of the truth! Consider the absurdity of counting it (page 234) "a great mistake to think that Christianity is one thing, and the world to come another"! Christianity not another thing from "the habitable earth to come"! One might excuse such ridiculous error in a pulpit rhapsody from a preacher to whom that earth is an unknown land, or who is a spiritual babe.

But is it honest to allege that F.E.R. can plead either excuse? He poses as the burning and shining lamp in the obsequious company of several who do not think meanly of their lesser degrees of light. Is it not a stern duty, for any loving the truth who can, to expose so shallow and self-complacent a pretension? For where is "Christianity" or "the world to come" in the admirable group of Heb. 12: 22-24? Does he identify "Zion" with the one, the heavenly with the other? If so, he only demonstrates the same darkness into which he has fallen by yielding to his own ideas. We can hardly conceive that he found either in the "myriads of angels," or in the "spirits of just men made perfect." It would be blasphemy to identify them with God or with Jesus, and folly to do so with the "church of firstborn ones" (which is neither Christianity nor the heavenly city), or with the blood of sprinkling. Christians these firstborns are without a doubt.

But Zion, though the most exalted spot of the millennial earth and the embodiment of royal grace as its principle, is a very small part of the habitable earth to come. And the city of a living God, heavenly Jerusalem (distinguished from David's city, the earthly one), is the glory above this world, for which the patriarch waited (Heb. 11: 10, 16); not the new Jerusalem seen by the last Seer (the symbol of the Bride the Lamb's wife herself), but the glory which is to be the seat of the elders who believed of old. Thus self-evidently this heavenly city is not Christianity, and as clearly distinguished from the assembly of those associated with Christ as first-born ones.

The order of Melchisedec does apply now, in that Christ like him is the one sole priest without predecessor or successor. But the exercise of His priesthood now is after the pattern of Aaron in the sanctuary, and His intercession is founded on sacrifice, in contrast with the blessing and refreshment of Melchisedec for the world to come. F.E.R. shows he is a bungler following the tradition of Christendom, not scripture, when he says (page 232), "It is King and Priest, Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and at the same time saluted as High Priest." Heb. 2 says not a word on His kingdom, which is not come till the seventh trumpet of the Revelation, long after the rapture, and only announced a little before His appearing. It is not "at the same time." The soi-disant teacher is a forgetful professor, and a dreamer of dreams. As almost all in fellowship used to know better, so he must have been drinking the waters of the veritable Lethe from the dark regions. A King in righteousness by and by is not grace reigning through righteousness as now: none but a hopeless retrogradist could say so. But it is far worse; for it indicates, as far as the truth is concerned, a wicked heart of unbelief in departing from a living God. Even he once learned better, when at school and apparently grateful for sound teaching.

Page 236 has again the ridiculous disorder of the new covenant, purgation, reconciliation, and sanctification, directly opposed to what the Epistle indicates, as a child may see. How Satan must enjoy such nonsense greedily swallowed by persons who once seemed to love the truth, and the sad sight of grave men deterred from their allegiance to the Lord in not clearing His name and word by fear of consequences! Think too of such trash as the comment (page 237) on 1 Cor. 6: 10! "F.E.R. I think every man is set apart in the mind of God before he is justified." Brethren, is not this a falsification of the text? "Washed, sanctified, justified," you used to know, is a blessed existing fact, whatever the difficulty of such as have not learnt the truth of setting apart to God before justification here.

"The old man gone in the death of Christ" is a light and unguarded speech, as if flesh or sin were not there still. "Crucified with Christ" is the truth, "that the body of sin might be annulled, that we henceforth should not serve sin." Sweeping human phrases are dangerous for souls.

It is evident that he is as wrong about sanctification as (336, 7) about the kingdom, the Covenant, reconciliation, and life eternal. Sanctification, he says, is after reconciliation. It "means that you are before God as the brethren of Christ, in association; 'in Christ,' in a word." Now this all familiar with scripture must know to be utter falsehood. For 1 Peter 1: 2 clearly teaches that sanctification of the Spirit is unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ; whereas F.E.R. allows, as all must, that no one can be reconciled save through death, the death of Christ (Col. 1: 22). This fundamental setting apart is therefore in being quickened by the Spirit by the faith of Christ unto obedience and the sprinkling of His blood, whereby justification comes. It is the same error which betrayed itself in his perversion of 1 Cor. 6, where the apostle Paul joins Peter in putting "sanctified" before "justified," contrary to common evangelicalism, which sees only sanctification in the practical sense, and therefore of course after being justified. How comes to pass this incessant ignorance of, and opposition to, what every average "brother" used to know? Is it not the unmistakable work of the evil one that a leader should be thus guilty, yet without any decided or effective correction? An attempt was made by W.B. but silenced by the shuffle of "in the mind of God."

Just think that his answer (page 238) to What is the Minister of the sanctuary? should be, "Christ is Head of the body, the Church, and has the place of Minister of the sanctuary. He presents the saints to God; He takes the place of Head;" and this is interpreting the Epistle to the Hebrews!

Other remarks follow which in an average saint might have seemed strong; as in 240 where F.E.R. says to W.M., "Yes, but you see we are now going in so that we may be qualified to come out. W.B. I never saw that before. F.E.R. Well, it is a very good thought"[!]. Whatever may be felt at such self-applause, all sober Christians must agree that it was sad for any to remark (241), "I think that word 'will' declare it, in the second clause of John 17: 26, is what has been misleading to many of us." No, no: the misleading is from another source. The word of God here as always is quite right.

But I do call the attention of every saint to the atrocious verdict of F.E.R.: "Eternal life is realized only in the Assembly; no one touches (!) eternal life except in that connection(!)." This is an unmitigated lie of Satan. Scripture never speaks of it in that connection. It is strictly an individual privilege, and was as it is realised in each Christian apart from the assembly. Their corporate communion begins and goes on in the given Spirit. Such a statement betrays a soul not taught of God as to the assembly any more than individual Christianity.

What an astounding error to propound that "eternal life is realized [not possessed] only in the Assembly; no one touches [not has] eternal life now except in that connection!" Scripture on its very face never speaks of eternal life "in that connection." Neither did F.E.R. give one written word to warrant so bold an assumption and indeed untruth; nor did a single soul rise up even to ask for scripture. The Christian truth which is throughout denied, that the believer has it now, and that we know that we have it, and know it both objectively (John 17: 3) and subjectively (1 John 5: 13), is not in a single scripture connected with the Assembly, still less "only" there. All this is inexcusable departure from the plainest assurances of God's word. It is wanton opposition to scripture; and what must one conclude from his saying (page 242) that "the proper connection" of life eternal is with the world, the habitable earth, to come? Has he ever done more than read to talk about John's Gospel and First Epistle? Is it not there we find eternal life applying to the Christian now, thus only attested, and applied in the fullest and deepest way? Never is it there connected with the habitable earth to come, which is a prophetic "connection" and not "the proper one;" nor is it "in association" that we get it as a present thing, but individually by faith in the Son of God. "You are out of death" by His death and resurrection, as His coming will prove. As to our souls, we are risen with Him now. To say that we have this "only for the assembly," and talk of earning one's living and providing for the family now is to talk strangely like a poor raving creature.

The reading on "Fellowship and the Lord's Supper" opens with the effort to draw the contrast between the coming together and the assembly: the former in connection with our life down here; the latter having it in association with Christ (243). There is the usual fog of thought and phrase; not mystery, for this is God's revelation, but mist wrapping things up in dark ideas. "I think the supper is introductory in the assembly; the supper rallies the saints, and they come together in assembly to eat the supper: it is what is immediately before us in coming together, but as introductory to the assembly" (244). What does this mean? The Supper "is introductory in the assembly," and yet "introductory to the assembly", both in the same sentence, and each incompatible with the other. How can the same thing be introductory "in" and "to"? The mystification is increased by the care taken to show that "fellowship may exist even if we never come together" without the least pains to explain what sort of fellowship is meant. The enemy's aim is helped on by leaving high-sounding words in entire vagueness. Truth is not stated or even sought, save that 1 Cor. 10 is referred to for "fellowship" insisted on, without any "coming together."

Now what true-hearted saint can fail to discern that this is the letter that kills, not the spirit that quickens? Here is what the apostle lays down in real and refreshing contrast with that vain and unprofitable idealising. "I speak as to intelligent ones: judge ye what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of the Christ? Because we the many are one loaf, one body, for the whole of us partake of the one loaf." In 1 Cor. 11 it is the authoritative order of the Lord's Supper, where the coming together of the saints is in season and place to eat it. There, where the object was to preserve from all taint of idolatry without, and not from internal disorder, he even begins with the cup and ends with the one loaf as symbolising the one body of Christ. Hence there was no moment then to speak of our coming together; but think of the folly of forgetting it is strictly presupposed! Yet we have as to cup and loaf the expression of our most intimate association with "Christ," more so even than in chap. 11. It is not merely fellowship with one another, but also the communion of "Christ's" body and blood.

But we come next (245) to the still more solemn and most fatal error as to 1 John 1: 1-4; for the effort is to confine the fellowship there to the apostles, depriving the saints of their best. This troubled O.O.'B. and no wonder.

No soul of the least intelligence doubts the special place of the apostles and prophets as inspired vehicles of Christianity; and here the beloved disciple treats of truth and privilege made known second to none. The apostles' function is perverted to deny the self-same fellowship to the Christian. Those heard, saw, contemplated, and handled; for Christ was manifested, and to many beyond them. But those had seen, and were witnessing and reporting to the saints generally, as none others could with like certainty and power, the eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to them. To what end was this testimony and report? Expressly that others, Christians, also might have communion with them. "Yea, and our communion (says John) is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ; and these things write we to you that your [or, our] joy may be filled full."

Due honour to the chosen witnesses; all praise to the Father and the Son made known in the Incarnate Word, the eternal life that was with the Father manifested. But even the witness and the report of the apostles came, that the saints everywhere should know that they share the most essential boon grace bestows, known present possession of eternal life. No otherwise can there be communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This communion is enjoyed in having life eternal. The way is this, and there is none else. Satan never more audaciously assailed "the proper Christian privilege." Others in general may have been feeble, doubtful, and dark; F.E.R. is his deadly instrument, ever striking at its principle.

The reason why limitation to testimony is spoken of is, because thereby life eternal as ours now in the Son is wholly denied. Thus and thus only had the apostles fellowship with the Father and with the Son; and they in the power of the Spirit communicated the truth of Christ to us, that we, having the same eternal life as they, should enjoy the same divine fellowship. There is many an inconsistent thing said in these readings; but the most awful feature is the consistency of the error with itself, and its power of perverting other truths to subserve and confirm the capital error. In my judgment only an evil spirit could effect such concatenation of falsehood or impose a gloss of truth so persuasively on unwary souls.

Observe how smoke from the pit darkens the truth of God: "If anyone will take the trouble to read the first four verses of John's epistle he will see that they are an introduction, in which the apostle shows their title to address us. Then it goes on to say 'this then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you (248, 9).'" Such a remark proves fundamental ignorance of this scripture; for these verses, far from being a mere assertion of apostolic title, are the foundation laid for all that follows. What proof could be more complete, that the system leaves out the revealed manifestation (on which depends the gift of life eternal to the apostles, as well as to the saints for whom their testimony was written), and also that divine fellowship which is its fruit now and evermore?

"These things write we to you that your joy may be filled full" refers not to "the message" subsequently sent, but to His manifestation of which the opening speaks, the pillar on which depends all that grace builds up. It is utterly false that John begins with the lowest point. He could not speak, and nowhere does, of aught higher. This is spiritual blindness generated by the enemy. He begins with Him fully and intimately manifested, Who was the eternal life with the Father, but afterwards a Man as truly as the witnesses, though infinitely more. And what they had seen and heard, they report to other believers also, that they too may have that fellowship which they themselves had with the Father and His Son. And this is the truth to fill with joy, which is evaded and annulled by F.E.R. and his school. For it is plain that many besides himself are caught in the net of the fowler.

Very far is "the message" in the rest of the chapter from being that grace. It follows up the blessed beginning in 1-4; and consists of tests in varied forms of the deepest wisdom and interest, applied to false profession under the Lord's name. The pretension to life is put to the proof by God as light, in Whom is no darkness at all, by the three "if we says" (6, 8, 10). The first two verses of chapter 2 are an appendix completing all by the provision of grace for any so blessed, if there should be a sin. But the deadly lie betrays itself by denying fellowship in heaven, because of the wildly false hypothesis that fellowship is in a scene of contrariety. The wonder of Christianity is that we have life eternal and such blessed fellowship in a scene so evil; but to deny either, now or for heaven everlastingly, is to deny the essence of Christianity. If persons born of God can so think and talk, does it not show how far such can wander from the truth?

But this too is sad consistency with the statement in page 116, "I think eternal life refers to earth. I don't think that we should talk of eternal life in heaven." Were it one demented who blurted out such folly and falsehood, one could compassionate. But no; it is a man with his wits, energised by will to undermine the most precious privileges of Christianity under the darkening wiles of the great enemy. If eternal life be not now given to be our life, and its best fruit communion with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ, Christianity is unknown in its positive and proper character. But if and as it is our sure and present joy, where are F.E.R. and his echoes? That both the life eternal, and the divine fellowship thence, are our portion in God's love by faith in a scene of contrariety is most true, though denied by this dismal system; nor is there ground to doubt that they will be perfectly known and enjoyed in heaven and for ever. It is distinctly affirmed in the "eternal" life, and the fellowship results unfailingly by grace. Hence it is that here we are told of "the Father and the Son;" whereas in the rest of the chapter it is "God" as such.

Next (250, etc.) we find a quantity of truly small talk, as in the previous readings, unfounded and unedifying and indeed injurious: so we may skip these trifles now as before. But in 260 we arrive at words which manifest alienation from God's mind very plainly. "R.S.S. Does not the more blessed part of the meeting come properly after the breaking of the bread? F.E.R. The supper is introductory to the assembly; and that is the reason for finishing all that is formal at first. Passing round the bread and the cup and the box are so far formal; you cannot help this, but it is a great thing to be free of it, so that you may be prepared for the assembly in its proper character" (!). Surely no reverent believer will bear lightly such a profaning of that which is the very heart of true worship, as in the solemn calling of Christ to our remembrance. Can it be that the great thing which ordinarily follows is the speaking of one or more? And the same pair add yet more clearly to the same effect of irreverence and presumption. "R.S.S. Is the first part of the meeting what you do, and the last part what the Lord does? F.E.R. Yes. It is the cup we bless and the bread we break. The Lord never does that again. And then the presence of the Lord is realized; He has His place, and we are conscious of Him as Head." "If the Supper is over, it is over. If you get hymns and thanksgiving after, it is worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary. He leads the praises." "We are risen with Christ and quickened with Him, and therefore are priests."

Can words disclose more clearly men who have broken loose from God's word? This never hints at such splitting in two the gathering for the breaking of bread, that is, the Lord's Supper. Least of all, does it sanction any such slight put on the saints in sharing the bread and the wine for remembrance of Christ. There is no part, time, or act so profoundly near or deep in the meeting; and the contrast of what goes before with what follows is a myth. The Lord does not come into the midst at the Supper, nor does His word justify such words as "you cannot help" the formality of "passing round the bread and the cup and the box," and a "great thing to be free of it;" or again that "when the Supper is over," it is "worship in connection with Christ as the Minister of the sanctuary." It is letter work and theorising with little reality and not a little contempt for the Lord's Supper. And where does scripture connect the Christian priesthood with being risen and quickened with Christ? What random and sensational effort or mere dogma!

So in One Spirit and one body (263), the Lord and His death are lowered to a means: "the subject leads on to the assembly." Where is such an "idea" in scripture? In this page the error grows bolder still." F.E.R. You cannot call Him to mind as dead, but as One who is living, Who did die." This is to destroy the force of the Lord's repeated words, Do this for remembrance of Me; which is simply, expressly, and exclusively recalling Him to mind in His death, His body given, His blood shed. It is in no way looking up to Him as alive again for evermore and glorified. This is a present joy, not at all His remembrance. His headship or our risen state are not what should then occupy the heart. I remember one put out by some of these brethren for this error: now it passes as precious truth. The argument about the Duke of Wellington is beside the mark, not to say profane also. Christ's love in dying for us, for the remission of our sins, is His alone; and Him thus would He have us call to mind. His being made known to the two disciples in the breaking of bread was not His supper though not "curious" but most instructive in its way.

Farther, the contrast (268) between the Corinthian saints and the Hebrews in the Epistle is utterly contrary to scripture and facts. They were alike short of being "perfect" or full-grown Christians; and their state distressed the apostle according to both Epistles. He speaks of falling away or reprobation, and warns solemnly of such an end. Nowhere have we the body of Christ more unfolded than in 1 Cor. 12, save on the still more elevated ground taken for the Ephesians; the practical interior of the assembly on earth is given in 1 Cor. 14. The Epistle to the Hebrews richly treats the heavenly calling, giving us the key to the Jewish shadows, and more; but it is silent on the great mystery as to Christ and as to the church.

Again, how incorrect to say that Matt. 18: 20 has to do "with prayer, not discipline!" In fact it lays down the great governing assurance of His presence in the midst of even two or three if gathered together unto His name, including both discipline (18) and prayer (19), as well as a larger range not limited to those aims. This may seem a comparatively small mistake; but does it not expose the folly of so unfit a person assuming, or accepted, to "correct" "what is defective or erroneous?" See the fond fancy of page 5.

See too how the unbelief of life eternal being now affects other truth in the gravest way (276). Eternal life, said W. M., is not introduced in Corinthians at all; to which the rejoinder is, "How could it be, for they had not got to love"? Those who could so speak evince their departure from fundamental truth. For how could any get to love, save as "an idea" without having eternal life to bear that blessed fruit of it as a reality? The only escape from the force of this (what seems to be the fact) is that these benighted and heterodox folk hold that Christ gives the believer now another life, which is not eternal life: an idea inbreathed by Satan, and absolutely incompatible with Christ's own testimony. In short it is a different Christianity, which is not another; for how can there be but one? Besides, the doubt that Corinthians, carnal and worldly as too many were, "had got to love," is an unworthy exaggeration for "he that loveth not knoweth not God;" and the apostle, in rebuking severely, was careful to qualify its application by "some have not knowledge of God."

One can hardly conceive a greater muddle of speculation than the theory advanced on spurious authority without a tittle of scripture for a progress from the Lord's supper to the assembly, thence for the spiritual to touch life eternal, and thence onward to the sanctuary. As throughout, it is confusion of things which differ, and here of the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Hebrews (270-280). How loose too to say that "if a man is a believer, he is a Christian!" Cornelius is a sample of genuine piety by faith before Peter was sent with words whereby he and his house should be saved. So indeed it had been for Peter and the rest when they received the same gift from God. No doubt all such had been born of the Spirit; but sealing with the Holy Spirit of promise is essential to enjoy the new relationship. The error is from denying the difference of having life eternal and receiving the Spirit, an error shared with all the uninstructed in Christendom. Only in F.E.R. and his companions it is departure from all that was fully believed, and I hope is still believed by not a few who connive at this painful declension through incredulity. Faith in the gospel of salvation goes far beyond faith in Christ's person.

Then, moreover, how misleading to say "you may accept the truth of these chapters [presumably 1 Cor. 11 and 12] and never enter into the reality of the calling, that is, of the sanctuary and the service of God! In chap. 15 the apostle deposits the truth of the gospel with the Corinthians ! and in the second epistle he brings to them the new covenant and reconciliation!! So they could not as yet enter into the calling of God" (281)!!!. Contrast with it what the apostle says to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1: 26-31). No doubt they were shallow; but this is a sadly common complaint. Is it necessary to refute falsehoods so palpable? Was there ever among brethren such trifling in print? and with pretension so unbounded, yet unrebuked?

The same dark departure appears throughout "Things Unseen" (283-304). Truth (well known comparatively) on Heb. 12: 18-29 is set aside, from first to last, yet with a superficial gloss suited to deceive. Speaking of Mount Zion, he says, "I don't think there is the idea of sovereignty in grace so much as in mercy." Why? Was it his pleasure and Satan's plan here to oppose one in particular to whom God's children are pre-eminently indebted? to repay his own debt by the vain contradiction that characterises much through this despicable book? He refers to Eph. 2: 4-6, to Ex. 33: 19 (where divine mercy occurs), and to the fact that the mass of the people in Indianapolis were not present. But how does all this support his correction of J.N.D.'s "defective or erroneous terms"? The truth is that "mercy" does not characterise Jehovah's choice of Zion; nor yet "grace" only, but royal grace in view of David, and of his greater Son and Lord. This makes it the most honoured seat on earth, and clothed with the principle of such special grace in contrast with Sinai or law.

Next he is equally astray as to "the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" (Heb. 12: 22), which like other untaught men he will have to be the church, with of course his correction. "I think the idea presented is [not God's revelation to Paul himself, but] according to the work of the twelve, especially according to Peter" — anything to change and differ. Now there are plain and solid and unanswerable grounds to disprove the general thought, to say nothing of the futile speciality. For first the epistle speaks fully and distinctly of this very city (as none can dispute) in Heb. 11: 10, 16, Heb. 13: 14. By a suited figure it is the designation of heavenly glory, for which the patriarchs waited. But they never awaited the church of God, Christ's body and bride, either in its present condition or in that which is to be. The mystery in all its parts was then hid in God. Secondly the context itself refutes "the idea." It is not the truth. "The church of the firstborns enrolled in heaven" is given as a fresh object in its due place within this group (ver. 23). It is quite distinct from the "city."

We may leave the childish talk, and turn to the object subjoined, "To an innumerable company [or myriads] of angels, [not "to"] the general assembly." Here we have baseless speculations imported from Rev. 21: 9 et seqq., which does present the bride the Lamb's wife, symbolised as the holy city, new Jerusalem: not the heavenly glory where she is to be, but herself. The only one of these vague remarks worth a notice is the strange fancy that "God's providence may in a way appear to be against His people; but angels are not the providence of God, but agents employed for His people" (288)! Is this to "correct" the belief that they were and are so used in His providence?

Then comes the notable idea that "the church of the firstborn which are written in heaven" is "another aspect," Paul's work here, as the former Peter's. O brethren, is it come to this, that even the least of you should be so readily and madly deceived? Can you have entertained for a moment this double of the church? Separated too by "myriads of angels," universal gathering as they are, and wholly distinct? Once you were not so easily taken in; but now that you have so soon forgotten the sound teaching of many departed to be with Christ, you are become the prey of folly and imposture; and silence pervades the better sort, lest the truth should lead to a universal explosion. O why do you not trust the Lord, clear His name, save your own souls from blighting errors, warn the deluded, and deal with the deceivers? If all fail to deliver others, deliver your own souls from His dishonour.

Having demonstrated the false teaching thus far, I have no wish to occupy the reader with lesser points, though it is sad to think even F.E.R. could not see an incomparably higher reference of the firstborns than to those of Israel. The truth is that it beautifully agrees with Heb. 2: 12, and means the assembly of persons thus associated individually with the Firstborn; an aggregate, not a unity, in accordance with the Epistle. Nor need we discuss the curt and unsatisfactory remarks on the other objects in this group of glory, which are far from a just explanation. All is poverty-stricken as well as untrue. And you who know it, and are one lump with all, hold your peace! Is there not even a watchman to blow the trumpet? How different of old! What pity for mere weakness and ignorance! What hatred of presumption in divine things! What intolerance of error! Now you seem looser within your borders than the loosest you used to loathe. Beware too of hypocrisy. You still profess veneration for Mr. Darby as a great expounder of "divine teaching;" yet none but a simpleton or a knave can fail to discern that this deplorable book undermines his witness in all that is here pointed out and in much more that it would be a wearisome and needless task to expose. Are you now, through desire to hold together at all cost, imitating those with whom we have had "no communion"? They would be ashamed of much which here and till now passes as "great blessing" among you.

"The Kingdom as connected with the Church" (Plainfield), beginning at p. 305, betrays the usual desertion of scripture for human imagination, and is fundamentally erroneous. The truth is reversed in the remark, "if you make much of the assembly you make much of Christ." The assembly wholly depends on Him. Facts too sadly prove that the church may be cried up extravagantly and sinfully to the disparagement of Christ. She answers to the true Eve of the Last and heavenly Adam; she owes all to union with Him. It is a precious truth to know this as our portion in God's sovereign grace. But the one safeguard is to cherish that Christ is "all," the all: without this, that He is "in all" is often a danger. Those who ignore the assembly are quite wrong, dishonour God and His Son, overlook and misapply a large part of scripture, losing the full joy in the love of Christ of a relationship so wondrously near and glorious. But those, who teach the error that the mystery is the assembly, instead of the truth that it is CHRIST and the assembly, are inexcusably disloyal, ungrateful, and vain. All she is or has is from His love; and to make Christ the all is God's way to keep her from pride and shipwreck. The actual state of the church is its undeniable proof; and such will be the issue of those who make much of her to exalt Him. She thus becomes an idol. "Children, keep yourselves from idols."

In the next page we are told that "the institution of the Kingdom of necessity brings in the assembly," of course without a word of scripture. But scripture is explicit that it is false. The Kingdom, as our Lord speaks of it, is that which was prepared from the world's foundation (Matt. 25: 34); but those who were to compose the assembly God chose in Christ before it. And this is no casual feature, but an essential difference. Neither the Kingdom nor any other institution necessitates the assembly, which is a part though but a secondary part of the mystery, not told to men but hid in God, which the Kingdom was not but just the contrary. The O.T. saints as a whole anticipated the Kingdom exultingly; but not one knew the purpose of God for Christ's glory as Head over all things to the assembly. The thought is a return to the old lack of intelligence from which the truth better known was blessed to saints fallen asleep, and to some who still survive and await the coming of the Lord.

Then what can we expect from one who, being asked in p. 307 what are "the elements of the assembly," answers, "the Spirit in this chapter [1 Cor. 12] . In the next chapter it is love, which is the heart of the assembly; and in chapter 14 the important point is the mind!" Is this meant for a climax? It is an anti-climax and seems a woefully inadequate summary: and if "mind" be so important, how strange that so poor a specimen should be presented! But leaving this we have in pp. 308, 9 the strange quotation of Col. 1: 27 for "the great importance of the church." Surely any simple saint might rather have said, the all importance of "Christ in us, the hope of glory." This is not to depreciate the assembly; but it maintains the homage to Christ which is His due, and ought to be our chief joy.

Indeed throughout this page the misuse of scripture is remarkable, as generally throughout the volume. How is this? What has brought about so marked a change? What struck me near sixty years ago was the spiritual intelligence of unlettered souls in the just application of God's word. Here almost all is random and vague, if not erroneous. Think of citing 1 Cor. 12: 3 to show that the Spirit "came here to effectuate the Kingdom" ! and John 14: 17 to make one body! It is certain that the former is a guard against evil spirits; and that John, even in treating of unity, speaks of its family character, never of the body.

Speaking of 1 Cor. 13, F.E.R. (p. 312) alludes to "those with whom we have been once in fellowship" as lacking love. But if they, as before God, reject his teaching as destructive of the truth, how could faithful men slight so great a sin? One could not expect those so accused to appreciate such fidelity. In 1889 he not only objected to apply absolutely to the believer, in his mixed condition (which of course goes on all his life), what is true of him as in Christ, but he declared this to be the key of his system. Now this really means unbelief in God's justification by grace; and no explanation can conciliate it even with the bare gospel. He denied the unity of Christ's Person, contradicting His being God and man in one Person, because his natural mind suggested that this union would necessitate two Persons. He taught in 1897 that in Christ "becoming a man, He becomes the Logos;" whereas one of the most momentous communications of John 1 is that He was eternally the Logos, and in time He became flesh. What can argument in defence of such blasphemy show but his preference of his own "ideas" to the revealed truth of God? What can silence at best mean, but that he prefers his own reputation, if he now knows his shameless error, to owning it and vindicating Christ's glory? He denies eternal life to the Christian now, and fellowship with the Father and the Son in heaven, to say nothing of false trash on the Kingdom, covenant, reconciliation, etc. Can he and his complaining friends have any right sense of the truth, if they look for what they call "love" but really indifference, in presence of such fundamental errors? Is it not a pernicious system and an unholy fellowship, which could tolerate such evils, or seek to explain them away?

The rest of the colloquy is so trivial or such a repetition of errors already pointed out, that we may turn to p. 321 where it is taught that "the Holy Ghost never comes where there is not light"; and Eph. 1: 13 is quoted as the basis of scripture for it. This led one to suggest that "faith is light," which was assented to. It is the old story; not a word about life, though our Lord Himself so often assures that "he that believeth hath everlasting life." Now "light" is equivocal. The apostates in Heb. 6 had been once "enlightened" and had tasted of the heavenly gift, yea had been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, tasted the good word of God and powers of the coming age, yet fell away. They were not born of the Spirit; they had not life eternal. Anything short of this comes to nought; to warn of it is the aim of a passage so solemn. It was not Paul's function to dwell on life now, but given to John; yet he does fully show in this very connection the necessity of believing, not only in Christ's person but in His work, in order to receive the Holy Spirit. One must have heard the gospel of salvation. It is after this the believer is sealed. The unction follows the blood on the cleansed leper, as in the type here alluded to. But life is ignored, which precedes peace by the blood. Thus, as to the great truth of a new and eternal life now communicated, all is confusion and error. Here as ever is the evasion or denial of eternal life as a present possession by the faith of Christ, and known through the Spirit.

Again, "Peter was sent to enlighten Cornelius." Why is scripture so systematically ignored? Peter never speaks of mere enlightenment in the case, when challenged by the Christian Jews of Jerusalem; he says in Acts 11: 14, that he was to tell Cornelius "words whereby he and all his house should be saved." This goes beyond light or even life to salvation assured, and is based on Christ's death and resurrection. Cornelius was not a natural man, nor were his prayers and his alms a lifeless form but acceptable to God. He was already born anew, a dependent, God-fearing, and pious man, like Job or other O. T. saints. But he needed to hear the word of truth, the gospel of his salvation; and this went forth on the accomplishment of Christ's work. Then God's salvation came, instead of being "near to come" (Isa. 66: 1), and His righteousness was revealed, as it is now and not before. Without this, as the fruit of Christ's work, the Holy Spirit could not be given. But as Cornelius and the rest hearkened, the heart-knowing God bore them witness; and they received the Holy Spirit as the Jewish saints did at Pentecost. The work as well as the life of Christ are the due basis for the gift of the Spirit. "They were enlightened first, and then the Holy Ghost was poured out" is superficial and unsound, leaving out the essential life in Christ, and His work received by faith.

To F. L. it was admitted that "the divine work of new birth is always there first": but it is one of the incongruities of the system to allow this, and to deny life eternal. What other life, then, is communicated when one is begotten or born of God (1 John 5: 1-4). Not but that in John 3 wisdom shone, in the language of verses 3 and 5 as compared with verse 15; but it is folly and error to deny life to one born anew, and to doubt that it is life in Christ, life eternal. Think too of one so unenlightened as to say (p. 322) that the blood of Christ is "light, because it is the blood of Christ that reveals God to you!" Where does scripture say anything of the sort? What it teaches is that "the life (not, His blood) is the light of men" (John 1). "The true light was that which, coming into the world, sheddeth light on every man;" it is Christ Incarnate. But the title to become children of God required much more, even to believe on His Name, on God's revelation of the Lord Jesus. His blood lays the basis for showing forth God's. righteousness, which is quite another question.

Here too are the old vagaries about the Kingdom and the Covenant (323), and the false statement, "that John 3: 16 is not the beginning of the gospel;" though the Lord declared it to Nicodemus before His Galilean ministry commenced. It was not merely "in view of eternal life," but that the believer should have it. Eternal life will be the great blessing in the day of the Lord; but the wonder of Christ come, dead, risen, and glorified, is that the Christian has it now, and knows it both objectively and consciously. Its denial as a present thing is one of F.E.R.'s fatal errors, the denial so far of Christianity on the positive side.

When one not fully poisoned said (in the same page) "the blessing is heavenly," F.E.R. boldly answered, "No, I think the blessing refers to earth," qualified afterward "by the introduction of heavenly things upon earth." But what perversity! especially when 1 Cor. 12 is mixed up with it. For when the time here spoken of does come, the manifested blessing will be in the highest degree heavenly, and for others in a rich but incomplete degree on earth.

Pp. 324, 325 tell us that "Christ has not taken David's throne, but He is at the right hand of God." But this is flatly to contradict what was taught in p. 32, "Then David's throne is really the throne of God. You could not understand this well from the Old Testament, but in the New find that David's throne is God's throne." The truth is that the N.T. really refutes any such confusion, as we have seen already. So too in p. 155 it was false to say, "He has received the Kingdom," and still more to quote for it, "We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour." This is the present exaltation of our Lord in heaven; yet where does one word of scripture warrant the rash error that "He has received the Kingdom, but has not yet returned "? On the contrary Daniel predicts in his chap. 7 the uprising of the Beast and the blasphemies of the last horn which domineers it, before he tells us of dominion and power and glory and a Kingdom over all peoples, etc., given to the Son of Man. Again Rev. 11 is explicit that not till the seventh Trumpet sounded could it be said that He took His great power and reigned.

What sad ignorance, if it was not still more lamentable opposition to what has been heretofore fully believed among brethren of any intelligence! Whence comes this retrogradism? And why such unwonted toleration of folly? Here too the fundamental error reappears, "In the coming age eternal life comes in," which is thus made only dispensational. Dead silence on what Christ gave when here and still gives in richer power: eternal life now the believer's portion for his soul, which he falsely says "you can only touch it (!) in association with Christ; the fact is not yet brought to pass (325)." Alas! the fact is, that F.E.R. flatly contradicts not only the apostle John but our Lord and Saviour, the Son of God, and His present known gift of life eternal, which is beyond all dispensations, and was promised before time began.

Next we have Reconciliation as connected with the church (326-345). "In many minds the idea connected with it is extremely indefinite," says he; and his "idea" follows, that "where distance was there is complacency." Is this, then, definite? Complacency really was with Christ, where no distance was. Reconciliation has quite another force. It is that change, not in God but in us, when we are brought by Christ's atoning death into God's perfect favour and settled therein.

The grace and truth came in Christ. God was in Christ, reconciling the world. Man would not be reconciled, but crucified Him; and God therein made sin Him who knew no sin, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus was reconciliation made effectual for all who believe. But it is untrue that its principle (p. 330) is "No longer live I, but Christ lives in me." Life in the Son of God, as living it now by the faith of Him, is in no way "reconciliation," though both are our accompanying privileges. That it is the same in principle is truly and "extremely indefinite," and false too; and to say that "you are reconciled by being removed" is not the old truth but new barbarian theology. God reconciled us in the body of Christ's flesh through death.

It is puerile and vain exposition to say (331), "You can understand how Christ is the beginning in that connection." Not so; in Col. 1 Christ is the Beginning, First-born from out of the dead, as adding a second first-born. He was First-born of all creation; and, to be the suited head of the church, He was First-born out of the dead too (Col. 1: 15-18). Then we have the two reconciliations; not only the purposed reconciliation of the universe, but the already effected reconciliation of Christian saints (Col. 1: 20-22). The order just stated is only confusion. Here is repeated the old mistake, so profoundly wrong, of simply presenting "the world to come," the habitable earth really then, instead of (what scripture so plainly says) "all things, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens." Can there be a grosser fault in a teacher than leaving out what is there revealed and bringing in what is not? Again, is it not poor work to drag in here Aaron and his house from another part of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in order to illustrate Christ's relation to the saints in Colosse where He is set before us as Head of the body? And again, what has the ministry or minister of the sanctuary to do with the truth revealed to the saints in Colosse? It is the crudest perversion of the Lord's right paths that I ever remember to have seen; and it is habitual. There is no subjection to scripture nor guidance of the Spirit.

Then in p. 354 comes fresh speculation without scripture: "I don't think we shall address one another in heaven." What is the value of such fancies as these? Souls want the truth God has revealed. But admitting the need of viewing things in spirit as in heaven, it is remarkable that the chapter before us looks at the saints on earth, as its distinction from Eph. 1. It is not, You in Christ on high and in the glory, but "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Thus these "Notes of Readings" meddle presumptuously with what one has not seen (Col. 2: 18), and muddle what God has given for all His saints to profit by.

But we may omit such like thoughts, and come to the serious slight of God's word apparent in page 340. "Suppose I am thinking of the scripture, 'Holy and without blame before Him in love,' I cannot enter into it by accepting a statement; I can only enter into it by being it." The words of men are "statements," and if only such they are powerless. But consider what it means so to estimate the word of God, which faith appropriates. It is the more grave here, because he thinks that being reconciled, and presented "holy, unblamable, and unreprovable" before God go together. Yet the one is God's reconciliation of us through Christ's death, and the other is our being thus holy and blameless in love. What more incongruous, what more suited both to build up presumption in the self-confident, and to destroy the peace of the self-judging? Is it only in virtue of our new and divine nature that we could be thus spoken of, we in Christ and Christ in us? If this was intended, it should have been explained. Here all is in the air. But we who believe are to enjoy the wondrous truth God gives us of our place now in Christ, soon to share its glorious result. We are saints according to God's own nature; we are sons according to the good pleasure of His will, who reveals Himself to us as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and blessed us in Christ. His word is no barren "statement," but the means of His grace in Christ to introduce us into every blessing of faith.

With F.E.R. contrariwise it is love that appropriates the Head, instead of His love in all its unfailing fulness appropriating us (Eph. 5). What cloudland! yet no Christian would minimise our love created by love in Christ. First and last this scheme is mischievous. According to it one may have the faith of eternal life, but not the thing; one may have a "statement" of the blessed place in Christ grace gives to faith, but this does not make you to be what is said. Thus faith, like the word, is powerless, as if the Father, the Son, and the Spirit took no part. "You must be the thing itself in order to be before God according to that," whatever this ambiguous oracle may mean. It seems mere self-righteousness, like the Pharisee standing and praying thus to himself, "God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men." Who thinks we enter into Christian blessedness "by accepting a statement"? Who doubts of any door so good and sure as through Him Who is the way, the truth, and the life? His words are spirit and are life.

Not the unbelief and heterodoxy alone of the novel school, but its folly stands plainly in "Divine Teaching and its End" (pp. 346-356). "Risen with Christ is God's mind in regard to believers," and so I might go on. "Eternal life is the expression of His pleasure in Christ risen," etc. But how consists this with a system which wholly denies life eternal to believers as an existing fact of His grace? Risen with Christ, it is said, we are; but how could this be if believers have not even life in the Son now? Is "in God's mind" a loophole to escape the acknowledgment that it is already a real thing in the spiritual realm? If F.E.R. means so, simple souls are deceived into thinking that the error is exaggerated, and that he is really orthodox in this; if he does not mean it, it only adds error to error, as if life more abundantly could be in Him risen without life eternal being possessed in Him even before His resurrection.

But "risen with Christ" goes beyond having life eternal, as the Lord told the believer he had when He was here below. It is a fresh privilege which none could have till He was raised from the dead. For this is the way the apostle Paul was inspired to reveal it. Christ is seen as dead and raised up from out of the dead and set at God's right hand: not Christ quickening now, and raising by-and-by, true as this is; but God raising Him by His mighty power, and ourselves who believe quickened and raised together with Him by the same power. If we possess not now eternal life in Him, still less can we be said to be quickened with Him, raised up together, and made to sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. The system betrays its absurdity inherent and evident. The two truths, eternal life now given and ourselves risen with Christ, coalesce in the Christian, but are set aside by this destructive error: and "the consciousness of eternal life" (p. 347) cannot be unless you have it now. The consciousness is false unless we have it already in our souls in the most real sense.

The Epistle of John begins with eternal life in the Word of life, that we may have through the apostles' witness that fellowship with the Father and with the Son which they had. This is left out in any true force here as elsewhere. F.E.R. says it begins with "Christian fellowship," meaning the fellowship we have one with another in ver. 6. But this leaves out the foundation and fulness of grace conveyed in vers. 1-4, on which depends our true relationship to the Father and the Son. It starts with the holy tests due to God and His nature, which follow in vers. 5-10, after which comes the resource of grace, if the enjoyment of our proper place and blessed fellowship be interrupted by sin. Hence even here the "Father" reappears (2: 1), whereas it was "God" in the interval. How shocking the blindness which wholly omits our fellowship with the Father and with His Son, reducing our privilege to "fellowship one with another"! No wonder he counts it small.

There is nothing deeper or higher in all the Epistle, instead of its beginning with an elementary stage, whence it rises all through to the climax of "He is the true God, and eternal life" in 1 John 5: 20. What wretched fallacy, real disorder, and bold untruth! For it is the same true God and eternal life at the end as the Word of life at the beginning, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to the apostles. But therein is (what is not in any part of chap. 5 nor indeed elsewhere in the Epistle), such a fulness of love expressed as our sharing with the apostles the fellowship with the Father and with His Son. This is altogether and systematically explained away. To what spirit can we attribute this? Not surely to God's Spirit, but to "the spirit of error," of whose working the Epistle so pointedly warns us.

Undoubtedly there is immense force in the impressive close which the Spirit gives to the Epistle in 1 John 5: 18-21. But the notion of steps leading up from a lowly start to the greatest height of blessing is a complete misconception, even where the truth generally may be seen. Alas! true to the unfailing character of this book, falsehood surreptitiously takes its place; and all that the system allows is "carrying us into the scene and sphere where Christ is, who is the true God and eternal life" (p. 356). For even then it is not eternal life possessed, only looked forward to in hope. Yet the Lord had declared that He gives (not "shall give" merely) life eternal to the believer, who has it, distinct from but ending in the resurrection at last, not objectively only but subjectively as "our life," and hence consciously as in 1 John 5: 13. What monstrous unbelief to doubt such ample testimony!

The same insubjection to scripture is seen in "What marks the fathers" (p. 348). F.E.R. says it "is that they had judged the world system in the light of the death of Christ." No doubt they had; but this is what is rather attributed to the "young men" distinctively. Wholly different is what the apostle himself says (1 John 2: 13): "I write to you, fathers, because ye have known Him that is from the beginning" — Christ as manifested here. And this is simply repeated in ver. 14; whereas he enlarges for the "babes" and the "young men." It is not that truth, but a Divine Person Incarnate showing the Father and declaring God; not here His death really, but Himself (the eternal life before time) come as Man among men, exercised and displayed in every matter small or great, in word and deed. It is not the world judged in His death, but Himself, the True God, yet also a living Man in all lowliness and obedience, and with all love and holiness, yet in all the inscrutability of the Son. "From the beginning" (ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς) is contradistinguished "from the outset" (ἄνωθεν) in Luke 1: 2, 3, and should not be confounded; but why notice such mistakes? F.E.R. has a fatality of error, and seems raised up to contradict, undermine, and destroy as far as he can, what God-taught men laboured to instil into the faithful for much more than a half-century before. "The consciousness of eternal life" (p. 350), if you have it not, is absurd and self-contradictory. The steps of progress are a fiction of his mind.

Turn we now to another chapter of blatant crudities, "Eternal Life in connection with the church" (357- 375). There is the old reiteration of the only order "morally possible" (!), the Kingdom, new covenant, reconciliation, and life eternal, all falsely said to be in Rom. 5 which speaks only of the last two, here misrepresented. For even the last is but eternal life at the end, here and throughout abused to exclude eternal life at the beginning, though it be one of the most distinctive truths and important boons of the Christian as a known present possession.

P. 359 says that "the Church brings us to the truth of eternal life." What does this mean? It is so vague that it might bear many explanations, not one of them consonant with scripture, either in the final sense which the O. T. recognises as well as the N., or in that present sense on which Christ insists as His gift now, as He too will effect the other at His coming. In both cases it is Christ, and not the church. F.E.R. says "the church," where God's word points to Christ alone, whether at the first advent or the second. There is not an effort to cite scripture, as indeed not one word bears it out. Are not such baseless assertions from Satan? John's Gospel and First Epistle are the inspired authority for the truth of eternal life as a present gift to the believer; and neither even once speaks of "the Church."

Here at any rate the present is in view, for "quickened with Him" is referred to; and "the whole body is, in that sense, in the life of Christ; He is the Spirit of it." How unscriptural the language! and this to avoid and deny that the believer has life eternal! The truth is that "quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses," is another way of regarding God's work of grace: not the Son quickening dead souls by giving them life eternal on faith, but God raising Christ out of the dead, and quickening and raising those who believe with Him. This is an advance on John 6 which teaches life eternal given in the days of His flesh, but emphatically in His death: here it is in resurrection power with Him. The error is that this is allowed according to Col. 2 but the life is denied to be eternal life according to John 6. What other life does Christ give believers? How quickened with Him, if not life eternal? It is really saying and unsaying. He adds in the same page, "Eternal life does not take you off the earth," though admitting that "the truth in Eph. sets the saints in heaven." Did they lose life eternal when seated there? Was there ever a more absurd scheme? It is a mania of contradicting what scripture teaches, and what brethren have hitherto believed and taught without a dissentient voice. And now, -?

It is flat opposition to our Lord's plain assurance in John 5: 24, 25, John 6: 35-40, that "you cannot get to eternal life except either by resurrection or the setting aside of death [whatever this last means]. If God sets death aside, as in the millennium, then eternal life comes in." Not a word of Christ giving it to the believer when He was here (to say nothing of believers previously), though no doubt to none without His death whenever it came, as it was before God for all His own when unknown. "On the other hand, we reach eternal life by reaching resurrection." What does "reaching" eternal life signify? Not, having it: for this is wholly denied; and it is for those who accept the oracle to find out. It is one of the numerous ambiguities throughout these Notes; so that weak persons are deceived to think F.E.R. does not deny the present gift and possession of life eternal, and the strong who know better shut their ears and hold their tongues. Do they flatter themselves that they thereby escape responsibility? Where is their faith working by love?

Passing over questionable and false assertions of no less moment, we hear again (362), "I don't see any meaning in its [eternal life's] application to heaven." What an egregious statement to one who weighs 1 John 1 to 5: 20! We have it communicated to us here: else we do not belong to Him at all; and by the Spirit as power we enjoy. So too are we transformed by beholding God's glory in His face on high, and await His coming to have the same life completely, even for the body, when He will take us up to the Father's house. Christ is eternal life, and on receiving Him we receive eternal life, but only receive it in full when conformed to Him for glory. No doubt it is superior to death, and the believer in Christ, though dead, shall live; but so little has it "to say to death" in itself, that every one who lives and believes on Him shall never die (John 11: 25, 26). For we shall not all sleep, but we shall be all changed. So unquestionably false is every detail. When we go from this earth, eternal life cease or have no longer force (363)! If these men were Jews, one could comprehend. As to it all F.E.R. judaizes, and renounces the special Christian truth, not only of life eternal now but of its only completeness at Christ's coming for and in heavenly glory. A more shocking delusion and antagonism to plain scripture, who can find?

Leaving lesser thoughts, we take up what is said of 1 John 1: 2. Every true-hearted person accepts the simple but momentous truth that the life eternal was with the Father before it was manifested to the chosen witnesses here below. There was the source and the home proper to it; and there is that life eternal now. And if we have that life, we have it in Him above. This gave the true meaning of "the sphere." Life eternal is here said to be with the Father before the manifestation on earth. It was in its own eternal sphere. Now we have it truly, but in a wholly different sphere; but we await His coming to have it completely where He was and now is. "The world to come" will only know it in a partial and imperfect way, where righteousness reigns, and power suppresses evil; yet there evil is and will break out openly when the wicked one is let loose to call it forth. But this error-loving book lowers the being and gift of the life eternal with the Father to "a moral statement," which is false; and to "an abstract way" applicable to us ("true in Him and in us "), which is also false, for this becomes only true in us "after He rose from the dead." And again, "in the assembly you are risen with Christ": what fumbling in the dark! And when one asked "the significance of the term, you touch eternal life" [not the phrase of scripture where it is unknown, but a nonsensical invention], the answer of gloom came forth: — "Your soul comes into contact with what is outside of death, that is, Christ Himself and the saints looked at as risen with Him; we are called of God to priestly service and that is where I understand the soul touches the reality of eternal life. Q. Cannot we touch eternal life outside of the assembly, individually, I mean? F.E.R. I don't think so (368)!"

Can there be a more melancholy exhibition of departure from the divine faith of a Christian? F.E.R. owns some sort of a life, but not eternal life. Not only is the individual believer denied it, though our Lord affirms it of him, but "in the assembly you are risen with Christ" [a rare utterance of folly], you have not life eternal — not even those on whom the Lord breathed His risen life in the Spirit; you only "touch" its reality! And the reason why so little is known about eternal life is "because so little is known about the assembly"!!! Can aught be a more shameless slight on the Son of God? Is it not the voice of Babylon? And J.S.A. asked, "If he is going to die, how can he say he has actually got eternal life?" F.E.R. "It is an enigma to me" (p. 374). Has the enemy cheated these men, not only of divine truth, but of common sense? Did not Christ die, Who was and is the eternal life? Why should one's having life eternal in the soul preserve one from death of the body? So of 1 John 5: 13 F.E.R. says, "You are conscious of it — but not as a possession(!)." Can there be a stranger or falser notion? One might have a thing and not be conscious of it; but how be conscious that you have eternal life, and not possess it? It is indeed a system of delusion.

The last reading (376-396) and the last address (397- 406) call for few remarks, though full of the same or kindred errors as we have noticed. But as we have seen the utmost violence done to the truth in levelling down eternal life for the Christian to a Jewish measure, and hence denying its present reception, so here we have Abraham's blessing levelled up to the height of life eternal, as indeed it appeared earlier. Naturally the usual vagueness prevails; yet there is no thought of Abraham having life eternal: but "I think the blessing of Abraham will be eternal life . . . You get it, I think, in Psalm 133; 'There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore (380).'" How simple divine revelation would be, if one could solve deep questions so easily! Because Jehovah promised, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"; and the Psalm speaks of the blessing, even life for evermore; therefore it is the same thing! Q.E.D.

Rash assertions are repeated on the scriptures, especially "It is no good sending out Bibles if there are not preachers." Is this from God's Spirit or from another? 1 John 4: 1. Again "in regard to certain things which have come out in this country as to eternal life, the difficulty was that the limit of scripture was transgressed: the moment you get beyond the limit of scripture you are a transgressor." Pretty bold this from F.E.R. Had all brethren transgressed scripture in affirming, on the word of the Lord, that the believer has life eternal, till it was set right by the audacious denial that any believer possesses it now? And how are those who know he is a transgressor, as to not only this but almost every Christian truth, content to wink at the evil?

Such declension, such high-minded departure, from what once characterised, is of a piece with the denial of life eternal, not in the Jewish future form, but in its incomparably higher Christian privilege. That will be when Messiah comes to reign. This was when the Son came, all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily. No one doubts the blessing to be then, life evermore for Israel and the nations. But O what blindness to the True God and eternal life in the Person of Christ, not only when on earth, but shining out more brightly still when He died and rose! And this in giving eternal life to the believer now, so that he has it, and comes not into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Apostasy from this essential Christian truth is a horror, whatever one's pity for the blunders of a babe. Christ's words in John's Gospel are so clear that one can only impute their rejection to the deceiving power of the old serpent. What is it to give up truth and prefer darkness?

It is the distinctive character of the N.T. to reveal in Christ God come down to earth, and later Man in Him ascended up to heaven. The O.T. in its brightest aspect is predictive in type and shadow, in promise and prophecy. The N.T. starts with the Promised One come (Matt. 1.) and in Luke 4 proclaiming, Today is this scripture [Isa. 61, as far as He read] fulfilled in your ears. His death in rejection led to the Light shining brighter far in His resurrection. It was life abundantly to those who had it already, bound to tell others of life eternal. But the Holy Spirit, both in His action on believers and in oral teaching as well as the inspired writings which followed, wrought as the Spirit not merely of prophecy but of present communion, a fountain within springing up, and rivers of living water flowing out. As He sealed the Son of man, He sealed the believers; and this not merely as having life and light but in virtue of Christ's work. In Him is the Yea; wherefore through Him is the Amen for glory to God by us. But it is the unbelieving rejection of this present power and fulness of blessing in Christ, which alike denies the actual possession of life eternal and the unspeakable value of the scriptures, especially of the N.T. so called. It is accomplishment we have now, not merely "promise"; it is the thing promised before the world began, brought to light by the gospel and enjoyed in the power of the Spirit

This is in harmony with the slighting of the "living oracles" in p. 125. Like rationalists, J.C. said, "The word of God is in the scriptures;" like Quakers, F.E.R. evasively replies, "Christ is the word of God;" but he too can scarcely be unaware that what he added is just the unbelieving phrase of higher criticism at home and abroad: — "The scriptures are more the record of it, than the thing itself." Every word proceeds out of the mouth of God. They are spirit and life to man sin-sick and indeed dead. They feed the soul as well as quicken it by ministering Christ through the Spirit. They cleanse our feet when defiled, in answer to Christ's advocacy. They glorify our God and Father as nothing else does. Time would fail to tell the manifold blessings, which the scriptures confer, though surely not apart from Christ and the Holy Spirit. F.E.R.'s unworthy belittling them is the precise opposite of what pleases God, or what Christ exemplified.

It is nothing to the purpose that when Paul spoke to the elders in Acts 20, the New Testament was not yet written. Those whom God inspired to write it in due time communicated in the Spirit the same truth from Pentecost which was afterwards written by the same Spirit. If we have not the living apostles and prophets, faith is beyond expression grateful for the written word. This, even in a partial shape, our Lord teaches us to set before His oral testimony because of its divinely given permanence: "If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?" It is all the more sad that such thankless unbelief should emanate from companions of men of God conspicuous for Bible love and scriptural intelligence and self-sacrificing devotedness beyond any of whom we read since post-apostolic times. O how fallen, fallen, such followers!

Let two remarks on the address suffice. "Those who minded earthly things" does not mean "the working of unsubdued flesh" (404), but rather of flesh religious, seeking its own things, without living association with Christ on high. Alas! it is and has been ever since the religion of the day. They are enemies, not exactly of Christ, but of His cross. It is a fair show in the flesh, not its corrupt or violent working.

Equally is 1 John 3: 2 turned upside down. "It is not that I see Him to be like Him, but I am made like Him in order that I might see Him" (405). Faithful to his mission F.E.R. seems to have no pleasure so prized, or so frequent, as contradicting scripture. The apostle says just the reverse. "We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." To be made like Him first is to have no cause, or at least not the divinely assigned cause for it. What fatality and perversity of contradicting scripture!

P.S. — Great unbelief prevails generally as to life eternal. But till now I never heard of any sect save American Adventists (the most unsound and infidel of all), that anticipated F.E.R. in saying, that when Christ comes again, we shall have eternal life; "which is not possessed now at all: we have only the promise of it." See J.N.D.'s Letters, II. 469.

F. E. R. HETERODOX ON THE PERSON OF THE CHRIST.

In F.E.R.'s Notes of Readings in America little said on the Person of Christ demands animadversion. But as deep unsoundness thereon has elsewhere appeared, tainting all else as it must, a brief notice is here given.

Like B.W.N. he does not deny the true deity or the perfect humanity of Christ. But the mind of man readily overthrows the truth of His Person otherwise. So Mr. N. did by his teaching that distance in Christ's relation to God was involved in His birth of woman. Still more boldly does F.E.R. assail the common faith of God's elect. This he knows quite well; for he denies that its truth "consists in the union in Him of God and Man." I am content to denounce his own form of denial as a lie against the truth. He has trusted his mind in trying to explain the very point of the Son's inscrutability. The question is not simply of the divine and eternal personality of the Word, but of Him incarnate. The truth no less clearly revealed is that He became flesh, Christ Jesus Man henceforward, as surely as also God from everlasting to everlasting.

It is to the unity of the two natures in His Person that he objects, and in very revolting and contemptuous terms, where reverence and self-distrust were pre-eminently called for. Yet he knew that he was not only opposing but striving to put shame on the confession of every saint who has written on it, as far as is known through all the church of God, to say nothing of every teacher esteemed among Brethren. Here are his words (7 Dec. 1893):- "Where the idea of unity of a person is got from I know not. It seems to me perfect nonsense. The idea of person does not bring in the thought of either parts or unity. A person is that person in every variety of relations he may enter. No one would accuse me of dividing the person of the Queen because I said that in her home life she was seen distinct and apart from what she is as Queen. It is two totally distinct ideas coalesced in one person, but which can be separately presented and apprehended."

Now who does not know that a person among men consists of both parts and unity? There are spirit and soul and body; and yet they constitute the person. There may be temporary dissolution of the outer tie by death; there will surely be their unity in one person for eternity. But for the true believer Christ's Person is distinguished from every other by the infinite fact of God and man united thus. These are in Him for ever indissoluble, though no saint doubts that He is Son of God and Son of man. Whatever His profound emotion in spirit, whatever the conflict when He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became as great drops of blood, that Man was inseparably God; and as from His conception, so fully in His death and resurrection. Thus had His every word, work, thought, and suffering divine value. It is not the Son alone, but "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." The man Christ Jesus is not only the one Mediator, but the true God and eternal life; the sent Servant, and the "I AM"; Christ of the fathers as according to flesh, yet He that is over all, God blessed for evermore. Amen.

Deny the unity of His Person, of the Word become flesh; and all the truth of His life and death dissolves. His atoning work is thus utterly subverted; on which depends not only man's salvation, the reconciling of the creature, and the new heavens and earth, but the moral glory of God in view of sin, His counsels of grace as to Christ and the church, and His triumphant rest in men for all eternity. Think of the Queen or any other human being adduced to solve the great mystery of godliness! What have various relations or differing conditions to do with the divine and the human united in one sole Person, the Christ of God, the knot which man's wicked wit and will dare to judge, and essay to untie to his own destruction? Truly "fools rush in where angels fear to tread," where saints love to believe, prostrate themselves, and adore. To F.E.R. IT SEEMS PERFECT NONSENSE!

Brethren, have you ever heard of a true Christian who did not thus confess Christ? Here is one called a brother, and claiming to teach, who utters his scornful unbelief of Christ's Person in terms which must have insured his expulsion with horror from all fellowship of saints in former days. Who has a doubt that then it would have raised an impassable barrier? Only of the Lord Jesus could such a unity be predicated, for in Him alone were the two natures for ever united. F.E.R. talks of the Queen! and "two totally different ideas coalesced in one person!" Yes, it is not truth, but "ideas" for F.E.R. Is this to "abide in the doctrine of the Christ"?

It is to join Apollinarius of Antioch (the son). He too made the Logos simply form Christ's Person, as F.E.R. does, and was therefore justly branded as an antichrist; so Nestorius was for dividing the Person, and Eutyches for confusing it: all of them, strict Trinitarians. For if the Logos had not been united to the soul as to spirit and body in the Christ, Christ was not and is not very Man as well as very God. Without that union there must have been two distinct personalities, the divine and the human. It is the union of both in one Person which alone secures the truth according to scripture. F.E.R. with shameless self-confidence vaunts his idea, which is plain heterodoxy. He does not "bring the doctrine" of Christ. The Son did not change His Person, but took up manhood into unity, and this in soul as in body.

In some such way deadly false doctrine befalls such as venture to pry into what is only known to the Father and immeasurably above man's ken. The Apollinarian heterodoxy prevails largely at present; as the error which led to it is a relic of heathen philosophy, accepted by early Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, and exceedingly common among "thinkers" now as at all times. It pervades Franz Delitzsch's Psychology and its English analogue, The Tripartite Nature of Man. They (and F.E.R. follows them) make the self-conscious "I" or individuality to reside in man's spirit. But scripture abundantly proves its seat to be in the soul. The spirit is inner capacity as to which man is responsible to God; but the soul is that in which he is so; and the body is the outer vessel which displays the result, whether by grace for God's will or by self-will in Satan's service.

To the soul belongs the working of the will, and now also since the fall the instinctive knowledge of good and evil; so that one is enticed into fleshly lusts which degrade man, as well as into reasonings of the spirit and every high thing that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God. Hence we read of soul-salvation or "salvation of souls" as in 1 Peter 1: 9. Hence Ezek. 18: 4, "Behold, all souls are Mine," and the regular use of "souls" for persons in both O. & N. Testaments. For the self-conscious individual, the responsible person, is in the "I." It is the "I" in self-will without God; the "I" when converted to God, but in bondage of spirit; and the "I" when Christ's deliverance is known in peace and liberty; as for the latter we see in Rom. 7, 8. Read also Gal. 2: 20.

The error falsifies the truth in human things and yet more in divine. F.E.R. has fallen into Satan's trap in the most solemn of all truths through morbid self-confidence, and the mania of correcting every body by the standard of his fanciful ideas. He has imagined for the Christ a being, Who, if God, is certainly not complete man. For in his theory the soul does not enter Christ's personality which is exclusively the Logos. Thus he bans that unity of the two natures which every saint hitherto confesses to be in Christ's Person. He was already wrong as to man's person; for like most philosophers he follows the error of the heathen, and ignores the teaching of scripture which points to "the soul" by many plain and irrefragable proofs. But the awful weight of the falsehood lies in his audacious rising up against faith's mystery of Him Who was manifested in flesh (the body prepared for God's Son), not taken up as a mere condition but united with Himself indivisibly to all eternity for God's counsels, work, and ways. If we can rightly say condition, it is that of humanity sustained by Deity in the Person of the Christ.

Beyond doubt the union of God and man in one Person is the wondrous and unfathomable One revealed, not for our comprehension, but for unquestioning faith, love, and honour as we honour the Father. He is thus at once the weary man and the only-begotten Son that is (not "was" merely) in the Father's bosom; the Son of man here below that is in heaven, and the "I am" on earth threatened by the Jews with stoning because He told them the truth. He must have been the Logos to have been what He was here as man. His soul was united to the Logos: else the Person had been doubled or severed, and He could not be true and complete man. He cried, Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt. There was His holy will; and it was right to lay it before His Father, but in entire submissiveness to His will and glory; of which none but a divine Person was capable. It was not therefore the Logos superseding the spirit (still less the soul), but perfectly associated with the soul in His one Person. He was true man and true God in the same indivisible Person. In Him dwelt and dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

Yet it is deep pain to feel compelled to speak out plainly, on such a theme not only before others liable to stumble, but in the sense of one's own danger of offending against God's word in defence of what is dearer than life, and far beyond man's thought. Indeed some may be surprised to learn that it was most distasteful to say anything more. A warning I did give in 1890, and a brief leaflet, when the Weston-super-mare Notes disclosed the impious libel against the Lord, that, "Becoming a man, He becomes the Logos." Many hoped that it might be but a slip; but if so, why was it not confessed in sackcloth and ashes? Understanding that it has been defended since, what must one fear? At any rate when the volume unasked for was sent me, not a page was read for years. At length having dipped into it, I perceived an astounding progress of unabashed evil. Even then I intended no more than a short paper on "Life Eternal," and another on its denial as a present gift. As one read on, it seemed a duty to expose unsparingly the system of error in general. This may account for a lack of due order through enlarging the original design.

A Critique

by W. Kelly of:

"Lights in the World," and "The Gravity of the Moment."

by F.E.R.

After a careful reading of these, I am compelled to say, that to any one of spiritual discernment they prove a mind abandoned to its own ideas and unsubject to God's revelation of the truth. They have been sent for a judgment; as I never seek such reading.

"Lights in the world" in Scripture mean heavenly luminaries, in no way comparable to a candle or lamp, which is the figure for prophetic light in 2 Peter 1: 19. In Phil. 2 the children of God shine as Christ, and bear no such earthly analogy. Nor is "word of life" confounded with light anywhere as in this poor fancy, though it seems a new thing to speak of life, after giving it up as unintelligible previously. Here it is analysed into "two or three" elements meeting in one person which is mere stuff. Life is itself as Scripture clearly shows; but this system is sound and clear as to nothing, only launching out into fancies foreign to God's word.

After a good deal of irrelevant talk about the wick, i.e. "Myself," he comes in pp. 6-9 to "the first great fact in God's work in the soul." Yet characteristically he avows "I cannot tell you what new birth is." Why then did he speak or write? He tries to get rid of the stigma of such ignorance by saying that his auditors were equally ignorant. But, though this may be true of both, a birth is a manifest fact whether naturally or spiritually. Ignorance of the new or spiritual birth is simply because they deny God's impartation of life to the believer. This writer entirely left out the Spirit's use of the word to the soul dead in trespasses and sins by revealing Christ as life to it. He talks of its not being "the communication of anything"! but by the Spirit's power without the word or anything else. This is all fundamentally false and fanatical. The effect he says is "collapse," and "a cry" both clearly the effect of a new life, which he denies to be communicated in defiance of the plainest scripture.

The next thing is the "light" (p. 13). What foolishness! The True Light lighteneth every man, converted or not (John 1: 9). Life alone profits by it; but this victim of his own imagination puts it after the new birth! He understands nothing according to God. Further he shows his utter darkness by making the second thing, the enlightening, to be "properly the work of the evangelist"!! For he excludes the evangelist and human agency in general from the first work. One verse of scripture exposes and demolishes this wicked nonsense; "For in Christ Jesus I begot you through the gospel", (1 Cor. 4: 15).

As the oil figures admittedly the Holy Spirit's anointing, we may leave this.

But a great deal is made in the latter part of Christ's "glorifying God on the earth," in distinction from His being lifted up so as not to die there. Here however the truth is quite missed. For it is in addressing the Father that our Lord said "I glorified thee on the earth. I finished the work, which thou hast given me to do" (John 17: 4). On the other hand in John 13: 31, 32 He said, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God also will glorify him in himself and will glorify him immediately." The glorifying of God was as to sin on the cross, the glorifying His Father was all His life through on the earth. Here all is muddle with egregious pretension to accuracy. So it is also to say, I could only tell you that "the light is the love of God." How much better to have been silent than to let out such unconscious confusion oracularly!

On the "Gravity of the moment" a few words suffice. "The Son of God," who is the rock on which the church is built, is revealed in Rev. 2: 18 as the unchanging object of faith, when Christendom was given up to idolatry and persecution, combined with the pride of prophesying or the claim of infallibility in the church; but not in the earthly place of Ps. 2. Again, it is false to confound the promise "I will give him (the overcomer) the morning star" at (the translation of the saints) with that star arising in the heart now as in 2 Peter 1: 19, which ought to characterise the Christian's present hope. The promise includes the two parts of the Lord's future presence: His kingdom judicially as the Sun of righteousness; and the special heavenly hope that He will give us the Morning-star before that day dawns.

I have only to add the inveterate error as to righteousness (p. 15), a shameless misuse of Rom. 5: 21. For he makes it "obligation to righteousness" and "the practical setting aside of sin"; instead of believing it to be Christ made to us righteousness, and the obedience of the One (just before spoken of) to constitute the many righteous. This too is fundamental error destructive of the gospel of God. What is the worth of many true things with such falsehood? "No lie is of the truth."

W.K.

Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer.

W. Kelly

I propose to examine the Lord's prayer as briefly as is consistent with a plain perspicuous exposition: first, looking at it as it is given in its most comprehensive form in the Gospel of St. Matthew; next, comparing the form which St. Luke presents; and, in the third place, seeking, as far as the Lord enables me, to gather His design, touching its use, whether at the time it was given, or afterwards.

1. — The first thing I desire to point out is the accordance of the Lord's prayer with the place it holds in the first Gospel, and with the object the Lord Jesus had then in view. It occurs in the sermon on the Mount, where He is addressing Jewish disciples, and leading them out of their previous thoughts and feelings and ways into the new principles of the kingdom of heaven, which He was about to introduce. This is important to remember for understanding either the meaning or the object of the prayer. It does not contemplate, as it was not addressed to, the whole human race indiscriminately; it does not express the state, wants, and feelings of every person who has certain desires after God or a fear of coming wrath. Thus, when the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, realizing his sin and unworthiness, he does not venture to say, "Father," or "Our Father, which art in heaven." He has no thought of taking up the profound and lofty petitions with which the Lord's prayer opens, nor has he leisure of heart to think of the full supplies and the tender mercy counted on in God, which the latter portion breathes. "God be merciful to me a sinner" was the just and becoming cry from his contrite heart. Here was a man under the guidance of the Spirit of God, contrasted by our Lord Himself, not with disciples of course, but with the Pharisee who trusted in himself that he was righteous and despised others, whose prayer, if prayer it is to be called, betrayed his self-gratulation, and whose thanks were not for what God, but for what he, the Pharisee, was. The publican, on the other hand, might be dark as to the riches of divine grace; but at least, so far as his conscience was enlightened, he really felt and owned his condition as a sinner before God. "He who is mighty despiseth not any;" and the publican went down to his house justified rather than the other. At the same time, it is not to despise a man if we call his attention to the actual condition of his soul, and remind him that the Lord's prayer supposes discipleship and the relationship of children with a Father. Sincerity can never change wrong into right, and ignorance, though less guilty than the conscious utterance of language which goes beyond our state and experience, is a sorry excuse before the full blaze of God's revealed light in His word.

If asked how we are to know for whom the Lord's prayer was meant, I would answer that there are two ways of ascertaining, which, if rightly applied, lead to a right conclusion. First, we have to observe whom the Lord had in view in the prayer or the context in which it occurs; and, next, we must consider the nature of the petitions, separately and as a whole, which, if duly appreciated, will be found in harmony with the true wants of those for whom the prayer was designed.

Now, it is obvious that, when the sermon on the Mount was pronounced, there was an immense crowd listening, but it was not directly addressed to them. They heard the Lord, and were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Wherever confidence in man usurps the place of the truth, uncertainty before God is the never-failing result; and hence the craving after tradition, official and successional authority, and such-like props of conscious weakness. This was the case with these scribes in a very large degree. Their employment even of scripture had no power in it, neither flowing from nor producing simple happy-hearted confidence in God. They were a class who handed down a measure of scriptural knowledge, crusted over with a coating of tradition which often obscured and perverted even what was true in itself. Such is the inevitable effect of tradition: it always brings in foreign ingredients, which so mix themselves up with truth as to put a blind between the soul and God. The Spirit of God, on the contrary, uses the word to detect and expel all hindrances, and thus to place the soul without disguise in the presence of God, there to learn His thoughts. And if what God thinks of me as a poor convicted sinner crushes me, what He reveals of His own perfect love towards me calls me from the dust, sets me firmly on my feet and bids me fear not. It is so now where the Holy Spirit works in any power by the vessels whom He deigns to use; how much more when Jehovah-Jesus was there! "For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God; for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him."

In that discourse, then, the Lord had His own disciples immediately before Him. For their wants, as having been Jews, and not yet taken from under the law, He was providing. "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him; and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit," etc. The disciples were a class, who (excepting Judas, or any other special case of the kind, if such there were) had truly received Jesus as the Messiah by the Spirit of God. They had not chosen Him, but He had chosen them that they should go and bring forth fruit, and that their fruit should remain. They were gathered around Him as His witnesses, and separated from the rest of the nation even now in a measure (i.e., in faith and affection to His person), soon to be so far more fully by His death and resurrection and in the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. These were the persons to whom the Lord addressed Himself in the sermon, and of whom He thought in His prayer.

Hence, while the discourse consists of an admirable exposition of the principles of the kingdom, and announces great and precious truths of God which must ever abide, the actual circumstances of the disciples were not overlooked by their gracious Master. On the contrary, the proper application and only full meaning of many parts in detail are found in their necessities, and adapted to their condition. And most blessedly He did provide for them, as One who, though a divine person, was made of a woman, made under the law, and thus by experience, and not omniscience only, knew what they lacked most and where their real dangers lay. "For though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." For Him obedience was indeed a new thing, assuredly not because He had a rebellious nature as we have (for He was God, as well as with God, and even as born of the Virgin He was "that holy thing"), but because from everlasting He was the Word who had spoken into being all things, all creatures, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible. Therefore had He to learn obedience, and learn it He did, in a pathway of such suffering as none but He could know. What, then, was His first, last, and constant thought as He walked and served in perfect grace here below? It was His Father's name: as He says elsewhere, "the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father." Viewed as man, it was the power of His communion, as it was the aim of His work. And it is as the One who was thus familiar with the Father, whose heart was ever overflowing with the sense of His glory, that He puts forward His own heart's feeling as the first and prominent thought for His disciples in their intercourse with God. Some of the petitions He was about to put in their mouths were only suitable for them (e.g., that about the forgiveness of their debts or sins); but He would have them begin with their Father, not with themselves.

Accordingly, viewed in its structure, the prayer naturally divides into two sections. The first portion is made up of the desires proper to righteousness in the largest and highest sense — the atmosphere, I think I may say, in which our Lord Himself lived and moved here below. The second part is composed rather of supplications suited to those who were needy in every way, but withal the objects of grace.* The three first petitions form one division, and the last four the other.

* The old and common assertion that the Lord borrowed most of His prayer from existing forms is now confessed by competent authorities to have very slender proof. Lightfoot and others, to have a show of making out the case, have been forced as much to exalt these Rabbinical relics as to depreciate the Lord's incomparable prayer. I cannot but feel that such an hypothesis is as irreverent as it is unfounded.

The very opening title or address to God appears to me in beautiful keeping with the Gospel and the then position of the disciples: "Our Father which art in heaven." It is a phrase which constantly occurs in Matthew's Gospel and there only. It is true that the authorized Bible has in it the corresponding passage of St. Luke (Luke 11: 2); but it is known to every person of competent acquaintance with these matters, that there are weighty reasons for reducing the clause there to the single word "Father." My own conviction is that the larger form which appears in the common text of Luke was borrowed from Matthew, and this probably either through the mistake of some ancient copyist who trusted to his memory, and thus introduced confusion, or through the graver fault of designedly making as exact a harmony as possible in the language of the two evangelists. It is unnatural to suppose that, if an open enemy tampered with the sacred text, his corruption would gain currency in Christendom. On the other hand, no friend of revelation could possibly justify to himself the deliberate introduction of a discrepancy with another Gospel. The tendency, therefore, and more particularly in the Gospels, has always been, on the part of misguided professing friends, to interpolate words or clauses from one into another, so as to give not only concurrent testimony but as much as might be of verbal resemblance. I need hardly say that it is grievous and presumptuous thus to meddle with a word or letter of that which the Holy Ghost has inspired; that such a step, even if well meant, invariably spoils, so far, the beauty and perfection of scripture, though of course the substantial truth remains; and that they are the truest friends of the Bible who seek to go back to the earliest and purest sources, relying on the abundant evidence which the goodness of God affords in order to arrive at a just decision.

Assuming that this difference is well founded, what does it teach us? or why, we may reverently ask, is it thus written? In Matthew, I think, the disciples are regarded according to their connection with God's ancient people Israel, accustomed therefore to look on or hope for the earth as the sphere of their exaltation as a nation. Here the Lord is gradually breaking their merely Jewish links by the revelation of a Father in heaven with whom they would have to do. It is not now "the Lord of all the earth" causing the Jordan to be not a barrier but a highway for His conquering people to pass over and take possession of the land. Neither is it "the God of heaven" conferring imperial power, in His sovereign will, on a heathen when His people had utterly, shamefully, sinned away, for a season at least, their heritage. But, again, it is no such fulness of blessing as was conveyed in our risen Lord's message to the disciples through Mary Magdalene: "Go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

The address, in Matthew, wears to my mind an intermediate or transitional character. It supposed certain elements in the ancient oracles which Israel had; but there was an accession of light in accordance with the state of disciples, who were associated with a Messiah whom the people did not receive, and who were thus in process of weaning from their former prejudices and of training for yet higher privileges. "The heaven, even the heavens, are Jehovah's; but the earth hath he given unto the children of men." "Like as a father pitieth his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that fear him." These sentiments from the Psalms, or sentiments akin springing from the Lord's divine wisdom, seem to me the basis of the address, though there is (naturally, when we think Who the speaker was) that degree of progress in it which exactly met and reflected the due place of the disciples at that time. The Father is regarded as in heaven, and those who look up to Him were on earth,* far from Him as it were, and in circumstances of weakness, want, and danger, though with hearts in a measure yearning for His glory. The Lord, in the address, would fix their first thought on the Father above, would familiarize their spirits with looking up to Him as infinitely blessed and benignant as well as most high. There was not, nor could be at that time, the sense of nearness which was afterwards their privilege: nevertheless, the Lord Jesus assumes them to be real believers from among the Jews, and, while maintaining the authority of the law and enlarging its scope, leads on their souls to higher things.

* How different is the measure of blessedness conveyed by the phrase in St. Matthew, from what we find in Eph. 1: 3, Eph. 2: 6! In these last scriptures the Christian, even while in this world, is regarded as at home with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, seated together in Christ in heavenly places. It is an immense step forward.

But there is not an allusion to redemption in the prayer, nor indeed throughout the whole of the sermon on the Mount. Those who are taught to pray are in no way regarded as worshippers once purged, having no more conscience of sins: indeed, far from having and enjoying such a place, they would scarcely, I think, have understood then what such language meant. There is no thanksgiving to the Father "who hath made us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." All this and more could not be so said; because the work of redemption was still a promise merely and not accomplished. This gives its tinge to the whole prayer; for there is no haste in the ways of God, nor would He so far slight the suffering of His Son, nor the mission of His Spirit, as to anticipate in the experience of the saints the precious results which were to follow from these two glorious facts when once they had come to pass. God forbid that I should insinuate any thing imperfect as to the Lord's prayer or His sermon! For any one to speak disparagingly of either would be, in my judgment, blasphemy.

The Lord takes up the disciples where they were. If He had uttered the as yet undeveloped truth which was revealed when redemption was wrought and the Holy Ghost thereon given, His language would have been unintelligible to the disciples. If anything had exceeded what was suitable to their then state, if the standing, experience, or worship proper to accomplished redemption had been supposed, it would not have been the perfect prayer it was for them.

Take the instance of a person in prison. A petition is framed on his behalf to the sovereign. If the documents were rightly drawn up, two things at least would characterize it; a full owning of the majesty offended against, and a humble but thorough acknowledgment of the prisoner's guilt. Such would be the only language becoming one under such painful circumstances. He might have such grounds to hope that the petition would find favour in his sovereign's eyes and that its prayer would be granted. This would not be by ignoring the actual circumstances of the case, but rather by a frank confession: to adopt the tone of a freeman would be false ground.

Now, the condition of those under the law was, in the main, analogous to this, till redemption, when accomplished, changed all. Confidence in God that He would save they had, and it was right; for it rested upon a believing estimate of God's character, and upon His positive promises, spite of what they knew themselves to be. He had announced over and over again, by word and oath, in type and prophecy, that He would, through the Messiah, accomplish the deliverance of all who trusted in Him. Still, they were not yet set free, however certainly they were to be, because this depended on His faithful goodness and truth; and "God is not a man that he should lie." But as yet it was a thing desired, not possessed — a privilege longed and prayed for, but not bestowed and enjoyed as a constant settled portion, till the death and resurrection of Christ made it to be God's righteousness so to deal with the believer.

This consideration, by the way, explains much in the Psalms, and in particular the alternations of conflict found there. Sometimes the speakers are hoping, sometimes fearing; one moment confessing themselves the sheep of God's pasture, and the next moment afraid of being consumed in His hot displeasure. All this was the experience of the saints, before the cross of Christ made it possible for the Holy Ghost to bear witness to the soul of a complete and eternal putting away of sins. It was well and of God that they should feel their state, without presuming to run before the dealings of God, and thus it was with the disciples also. Many prophets and kings had desired to see what they saw and to hear what they heard; but redemption, with all its fruitful issues, was still a blessing in prospect only. And the Lord's prayer was the perfect expression of their desires and wants before that mighty change came in as a fact. It is essential, I believe, to an adequate understanding of the prayer, that we should realize the position of those to whom primarily it was given; and it will always be misapplied, if we do not appreciate the new ground on which accomplished redemption sets the faithful.

It is well to observe also that the prayer is the expression of individual wants. I do not mean that the disciples may not have used it together as well as singly, but it nowhere supposes the Christians formed into one body. A prayer for the Church, therefore, as such, it is not; for it never passes beyond an aggregate of individuals, irrespective of the uniting bond of the Spirit who baptizes into one body. But this may appear more distinctly as we look briefly at its several parts.

"Hallowed be thy name" is the great foundation of all, the first and strongest feeling of a renewed mind. Flowing from the sense of the holiness due to the Father's name, and obligatory on every soul that has to do with Him, as well as on His house for ever, there is also in the following clause the desire of the glory in which all shall answer to the Father's heart and character.

"Thy kingdom come." It is not exactly Christ's kingdom, but the Father's. The Gospel of St. Matthew, if examined with care, shows the Father's kingdom is distinguished in scripture from that of the Son of man. Thus, in Matthew 13: 41-43, we are told that the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all scandals, and them which do iniquity . . . . then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. At the end of this age the Lord will take the world as His kingdom, and must have evil purged from it, sooner or later, by His judicial power. But the Father's kingdom is another and heavenly sphere where only the righteous shine.

But it does not satisfy the heart that the Father's will should be done in heaven only. Accordingly, the third petition runs: "Thy will be done on earth as in heaven.'' When the Father's kingdom comes, this will be the moral answer to it, if I may so say, though in a lower sphere. The Father's will, instead of being despised or resisted, is yet to be the guide and ensurer of all blessing in that which was still but a rebellious province. The disciples were to pray that it might be done on earth, where there was nothing like it yet, save in His ways who thus led their desires Godward. This closes the first division of the Lord's prayer.

Next, comes what was suited to the disciples, as the objects of divine compassion, in circumstances of sorrow and trial here below. First, their bodily need is confessed, then that of the soul. "Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive"* the first calling for no comment here (but see Appendix B, on the word "daily"); the last being put on the ground or pattern of the merciful spirit which had been so strongly inculcated on the disciples at the close of the chapter before. It was no longer to be " an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,'' no longer evil for evil, but good only, good always. The model for their imitation was their heavenly Father, and not merely God as God. As the latter, as God, He has vindicated Himself from time to time, and He shall yet deal most righteously with all that demands judgment in man. As Father in heaven, He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust, not to speak of His intimate and everlasting relations with His children, who enjoy the overflow of all His love. So here the Lord teaches His disciples (not as a question of remission as sinners, but of divine government as children) to say, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." That is, we have this principle of forgiving mercy to others not only enjoined on the disciples as the will of the Lord, but solemnly interwoven with their own habitual need of it when they lifted up their hearts to their Father. The application and value of this to such as had been Jews must have been manifest; because as a nation they were responsible to walk according to the law, the character of which was not mercy in case of wrong, but the infliction of just punishment on the guilty. Thus it was that Israel of old was employed to purge the land of Canaan of its defiled and defiling inhabitants. And therefore it was that they themselves, when they and their kings thoroughly apostatized from God, fell under its terrible lash. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities." But now another principle was about to govern — not earthly retributive righteousness, but heavenly grace, which has power to transform as well as forgive the guilty. The Jews who believed were to be taken out of their previous standing and set in a new place as children, having to do with their Father in heaven, and responsible to reflect His character on earth.

* There is very good authority, Greek and Latin, for "forgave." The aorist here, if well founded, certainly makes the sense more specific. Our forgiving is viewed as summed up in one and complete. Its spirit agrees well with Matthew 5: 23, 24, of which it is the converse.

Again, we do well to remember who they were that the Lord instructs thus to plead with their Father. They were disciples, who were thereby shown the continual necessity of dependence upon Him and of confession. Nevertheless, it is the Father besought to forgive the debts of His children, not a poor sinner in an agony about his iniquity and without the knowledge of Christ. Scripture provides for such an one elsewhere but it is not the question here; and if the Lord's prayer were applied to, or appropriated by, an unrenewed soul as the prescribed means of blessing for his case, a real injury would be done. Does God make the forgiveness of an unconverted man depend, in any sort or degree, upon his forgiveness of others? By no means. That were to ask a very high practical requirement from a person in the lowest possible condition; it were to impose a new law more fatal to the sinner's hopes than that of Sinai: in a word, it would ruin and deny the gospel, which in that case would be of works, and no more grace.

Thus, this very petition, which ignorance would cite to prove that men indiscriminately were provided for here, is enough to show the utter inapplicability of the Lord's prayer to their condition. It supposes a living link with God by faith, and proves that the nature of the petitions is an additional ground for affirming that the prayer was not meant for men in their natural unrenewed state. Those whom the Lord was instructing how to pray were persons ignorant, it is true, of redemption and of the new rights its accomplishment would usher into, but possessed of real faith in the Lord Jesus — persons who would assuredly have gone to heaven, had they died then. They were, so far, on the same footing with the Old Testament saints; they were all alike forborne with by virtue of a work not yet accomplished but sure; they were safe in God's mind, because He was looking on to that work. The disciples had the privilege of the Saviour present with them; but the rich, blessed, perfect salvation which He was to bring in by His death and resurrection was still vague and dimly understood, if at all. In and for this condition of things the Lord's prayer was given.

Then they were to ask their Father not to lead them into temptation, which cannot therefore mean sin here. With temptation in the sense of lustful evil, as St. James says, God tempteth not any man, as He, of course, cannot be Himself. But scripture uses the word in the same chapter and in other places, from Genesis to Revelation, for a man's trial and sifting in a greater or a less degree.

Take Peter's case in the Gospels. It was no sin that he should be put to the proof, whether he would in the face of shame confess his Master. The Lord had already warned him of his weakness; but the too confident apostle heeded not the word, slept when he should have been praying against the temptation, and consequently, when it came, he fell — fell miserably, repeatedly. It was quite right, therefore, for the disciples, conscious of their own powerlessness, to ask that they might not be led into circumstances so sorely trying. Knowing their liability to fail under its pressure, they ought humbly and earnestly to deprecate such a sifting. No such prayer is or could be in the Bible as, Lead us not into sin; for this would be to impute moral evil to God. The temptation here was the putting a person thoroughly to the proof, and the consequence of it would be that, if there were unjudged evil in the heart, it would come out to his humiliation. The undetected mischief working within would be brought to the surface and the light. The Lord Jesus Himself passed through every kind of temptation, first in the wilderness, and again, at the close, in the garden of Gethsemane, when the power of darkness assailed Him to the uttermost. But He had nothing in Him that could be touched by Satan, as He said, "The prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me." In us there is something that is brought out by the temptation, and then, if we do not lean very simply on the Lord, we break down in sin against Him.

Therefore it is added in the next and last clause, "but deliver us from evil [or the evil one];" because the effect of temptation, where the flesh is not judged, is that evil is manifested, and he who is its source and prime mover acquires advantage over the soul.

I do not enter into the doxology which concludes the prayer in the received text of St. Matthew; for while everybody agrees in leaving it out of St. Luke, it is well known that its authority, even in the other Gospel, is, to say the least, doubtful. Probably it was an accretion derived from ecclesiastical usage in the fourth century, or perhaps earlier. Chrysostom comments on the doxology without a note of distrust; but previously to him not a trace of it appears in any exposition or citation, in either the East or the West. It would appear that the prayer began to be, or at least was, spoken of in the third century as "oratio legitima et ordinaria." But this seems scarcely to have been the case in the days of Justin Martyr,* who speaks of the ruler offering up prayer and thanksgiving ὅση δύναμις αὐτῳ (that is, I presume, extempore). But I trust I have shown that which we started with — the special suitability of the prayer to the class with which our Lord was thus dealing. I do not go farther now; for the question of His will, as regards later times, must be inquired into before I have done. But it is well to bear in mind, that, everlastingly true as is every word which our Lord spoke, we have to take care that all be rightly divided and applied. I yield to none in reverent admiration of the most sublime and the most pregnant form of prayer ever written. The question nevertheless remains, not of its intrinsic value, but of its due and intended use after redemption and the descent of the Holy Ghost.

* Pro Christianis Apol. I. § 67, p. 270, Ed. Otto, 1842.

2. — We must now turn for a few moments to St. Luke's report of the prayer, which differs in several respects from St. Matthew's, though both I hold to be of equal (i.e. divine) authority, and the points of distinction therefore to be not the slips of the evangelists, but the result of a different object in the mind of Him who inspired them. Difference there is unquestionably even in our common and excellent English version; but that difference is considerably greater if we adopt the text which flows from the combined testimony of the most ancient and best witnesses (manuscripts, versions, and Fathers). It is notorious that there has always been a tendency on the part of copyists to assimilate the language of the various portions of scripture as much as possible; and clearly from their nature we might expect, as we find in fact, that no part has suffered so much in this way as the synoptic Gospels. These copyists seem sometimes to have assumed that, if they found the same truth or fact variously represented in Matthew and Luke, there must needs be an error: and then they sought, by marginal glasses and even by textual changes, to make the corresponding passages almost a verbal repetition of one another. This of course has entailed trouble on those of our day who desire in all cases to know the very words of the Holy Ghost; for if they, resting on the weightiest authorities, recur to a better text than the vulgar one, they are open to the charge of innovation — at least from the ignorant or the prejudiced. Most groundless charge! for they are in truth those who alone vindicate the oldest vouchers for the word of God against comparatively modern change and corruption.

To return, however: the place or connection in which the prayer is given in the two Gospels may be noticed with profit. In Matthew the Lord speaks as Jehovah-Messiah, not neutralizing the statutes of His servant Moses, but with the conscious authority of the Master. And hence, I think, it is that whether or not the questions of the disciples drew out any part of that instruction, nothing is permitted in the first Gospel to break the onward continuous flow of its sententious wisdom and lofty discourse. Hence such notes appear as "ye have heard that it was said to [not 'by'] them of old time . . . . but I say unto you," not annulling the law or the prophets, but giving fresh heavenly light on some things, and opening the way for other things far higher. Hence, too, the prayer is introduced by St. Matthew in pointed contrast with Jewish or Pharisaic love of publicity and lack of pitifulness. It is one of the three examples of the righteousness (not 'alms') in Matthew 6: 1, which was not to be done before men to be seen of them.

By Luke, on the other hand, the Lord meets the condition of man here below — if there was any difference, of the Gentile more emphatically than the Jew. Therefore it is that here only we have the scene of the woman of the city that was a sinner (whom there is no good reason for identifying with Mary Magdalene or with the sister of Lazarus), the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the rich man and Lazarus, the preaching at Nazareth, the Samaritan leper, Zacchaeus the chief publican, etc. Facts and parables like these plainly indicated the affections of God about to burst the barriers they had been pent up in under the Jewish dispensation, and soon to overflow wherever there was need created by sin and wretchedness. At the end of Luke 10 the Lord shows us the all-importance of the word of God — of His own words indeed. This had tested the two sisters, Martha and Mary, both of whom we know He loved. (John 11) While Martha was cumbered about much serving, and her love, most true in its way, went forth in actively providing for the Lord's outward need, Mary, unconsciously perhaps, proved her stronger faith and deeper love by sitting at His feet and drinking in His words. The thought of Martha's heart was, What a feast I must give the Messiah when I receive Him at my house! Mary, on the contrary, felt that the best feast for Him, as for herself, was to receive and treasure up all she could from Him — to see, and hear, and be with, Himself. If we are learning thus from the Lord Jesus, we honour and please Him incomparably more than by any thing we think to confer upon Him. In the long run, too, it is the listening at His feet which best fits for the most acceptable worship and service. (Compare John 12: 1-8.)

But, besides the word of God, we want another element and exercise of spiritual life. By that word we were begotten again, and then nourished (1 Peter 1, 2): by it we are cleansed and instructed, kept from the paths of the destroyer, and set apart to Christ in heaven. But withal we need something more, and this is prayer. Without prayer the word, not being received in dependence on God, may be used as new material for mere mental activity, and thus the soul may find a positive and grave snare. Really to thrive in the things of God is from hearing the word, not with the ears or mind only, but with a conscience quickened and freed by the Holy Ghost's presentation of Christ. Now prayer is the great means by which we are practically kept in God's presence, and the word is made welcome, profitable, and sanctifying. It is the proper expression of our weakness to God and of our confidence in His love and care day by day and evermore. Instead of presuming, as men, to enter into the deep things of God, or to take and pursue the path of the cross of Christ, we confess in prayer our constant need of dependence upon God. And hence it is that throughout Luke the Lord Himself; "born of a woman," is so often brought before us as One that habitually walked thus with God. (Luke 3: 21; Luke 5: 16; Luke 6: 12; Luke 9: 18, 28, 29; Luke 22: 41-45; Luke 23: 34. See also His exhortations there to perseverance in prayer —  Luke 11: 5-13, and Luke 18: 1-8 — besides the following parable.) It was indeed His own praying which gave occasion to the request of the disciples in Luke 11.

In comparing the prayer in Luke with that in Matthew, it will be observed that, though the manner of its introduction be somewhat different, the application to the disciples is, if possible, more precise in the latter Gospel. "And it came  to pass, that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Father." It has been already noticed that the formula, "Our Father which art in heaven," was in all probability an interpolation from St. Matthew. A scribe, from habit of using the longer address, may have written it down by mistake in Luke's Gospel, or he may have designedly assimilated the two reports of the prayer.

"Father, Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come." These two petitions are alike in both Gospels. It did not matter under what circumstances the Lord spoke, or with what special aim or outlook. That the Father should be exalted in His holiness, and that the bright scene and season may come when His love and power shall establish it without dispute or effort, must always be the prime desire of a true heart, and the necessary condition of unalloyed and changeless blessing.

But it is remarkable that the next clause in the ordinary text was foisted in, probably in the same way as the address has suffered. "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth" is a petition peculiar, I believe, to St. Matthew. And I wish to state once for all that, in these questions of the true text, I never give a mere conjecture, but a judgment founded on a full survey of the extant evidence, and one which is generally received by those who are best informed and most able to pronounce on matters of the kind. If the omission be allowed here, it becomes us to ask why it is that the Spirit drops that clause in Luke which He had given in Matthew? What are we taught by the omission?

It is well known that, throughout Luke, God has Gentiles in view, and not Jews merely. Therefore such words of Christ and such circumstances as bear upon the uncircumcision, both in their natural outcast condition and in the character of their privileges when brought in, are recorded there with care and precision. With this agrees the very genealogy of the Saviour; for He is not, as by Matthew, traced down from Abraham and David, the heads of Jewish promise and glory, but traced up beyond all such limits to the first man, the head of the whole human family — "Adam, which was the son of God." What then would the poor heathen have known about the righteous expectation of Israel as regards the earth? To the latter it was an ever present desire of faith, whatever their temporary degradation through their own sin. "For Jehovah loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein for ever." Then and thus would God's will be done on earth as in heaven. This expectation is kept up in the sermon generally as well as the Lord's prayer in Matthew, while other and brighter hopes accompany it; but from Luke it disappears in the wisdom which ever marks the Holy Ghost. Peculiarly familiar to the Jew, it was foreign to the Gentile's proper hope even when converted; his outlook was to be exclusively heavenly.

Then we have a perceptible difference in the language of the next petition. Luke says "Give us day by day our daily bread;" Matthew had "Give us this day," etc. The believing Jews looked simply at the one day, it might be, before them. It was a definite request for the present exigency. How soon the trumpet of Jubilee would sound, and the true liberty and final return and everlasting possession would come, they knew not; meanwhile they say "Give us this day our daily bread." But the Gentile believer, for whose instruction the Lord was specially providing in Luke, is characterized by a more constant spirit of dependence — "day by day" is the word.* He was never to expect rest, or establishment on the earth, as the other might. His inheritance lay elsewhere; his portion here was to be always that of a stranger. I think that this is strengthened by the mode of its introduction here. The prayer is much later and nearer the close than in Matthew. All hope of Messiah's reception by the Jews was manifestly at an end. Thus, in Luke 9, He had His rejection and death ever before Him, and repeatedly names it to the disciples, both before and after His transfiguration. (cf. 1. Peter 1: 11.) In Luke 10 the mission of the seventy follows, as a sort of final message, in which He pronounces woe on the cities which had seen His mighty works but had despised Himself. Grace is then shown as replacing law, and doing what law could not do. The prayer in Luke 11 partakes of the progressive character of the circumstances which surround it.

* The word for "give," though the same verb, has a slightly different form and force in the two Gospels. In Matthew it implies a bare transient act; in Luke the continuous habit, which naturally accompanies the phrase "day by day."

But that is not all. In the next petition — "Forgive us our sins" — the expression is worthy of note. The always sound principle for interpreting God's word is, that God never changes without reason. It is our own ignorance if we do not see the bearing of different words used in Scripture. Thus, if in Matthew it is said "debts" and in Luke "sins," there is a slight shade of difference that ought not to pass unnoticed. What is the distinction? I believe it to be this: that "sin" expresses, in all plainness of speech, the depth of the soul's moral need. The simplest Gentile would understand the word "sin." The Jew would feel what a debt was in his responsibility to God: it supposes a known relationship in which he had been placed and had failed. To the Gentiles who had not been in such a position the idea of "debt" was not so obvious or applicable, unless the word "sin" prepared the way for it and made it more intelligible. The word "sins" has a more evidently moral meaning, being equally true whether people were without law or under it. "Debt" is figurative rather, though perfectly understood by a Jew. The parable of the merciless servant in Matt. 18 sets forth the Lord as dealing with Jew and Gentile in a way substantially similar. The servant that owed his lord ten thousand talents is the Jew guilty of the rejection of Christ. How deeply was he involved? Forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, etc. But moved with compassion, he forgave him the debt. Then the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants which owed him one hundred pence. The Gentile was certainly indebted to him, but found no mercy (1 Thess. 2: 14) for a debt small indeed compared with that which had been forgiven the Jews; and therefore wrath is come upon the Jews to the uttermost. (Compare also Matt. 5: 25, 26, and Luke 12: 58, both of which refer to Israel's position in our Lord's time.) There is another expression which confirms this, the Gentile dispensation being one of full grace; "for we ourselves also [poor as we are] forgive every one that is indebted to us." It is a stronger broader word than the expression in Matthew.

The conclusion in Luke appears to be, "Lead us not into temptation," what follows ("but deliver us from evil") being probably copied into it from the first Gospel. No motive can be assigned for leaving out this clause, like the former one, if it had been originally inserted; whereas it is natural that men, observing that they undoubtedly are found in Matthew, should hastily conclude that they ought to be in Luke also. Nor is anything lost thereby, but the contrary. For the omissions in an inspired book, as well as the things declared there, are meant to arrest attention and to instruct.

The last clause is most appropriate in Matthew, where it has special reference, I think, to the power of Satan which, beside what is ordinary, is directed against Israel as God's great earthly witness, and the severity of which is yet to fall upon them in the last days. (Cf. Zech. 3) Luke, as usual, brings out general moral principles, and hence retains the petition "lest we enter temptation."

3. — Having stated these points of distinction, I come now to a question of great practical importance: What was the Lord's intention in regard to the use of this prayer? The answer is involved in my first statement. I showed that, while intended for disciples, it exactly suited the condition they were in before Christ had finished His work. It therefore follows that, when redemption became a fact and a known basis of relationship with God, prayer suitable to those who stand in the enjoyment of its full results would be formed according to their new circumstances. In other words, referring to my former illustration, the man's prayer when out of prison would not be the same as his prayer in prison, unless he were under a delusion. If he had afterwards to do with the sovereign, he would owe, not a petition for deliverance, but a memorial of gratitude and a lifelong service of devoted loyalty.

But, besides this, we shall find that the accomplishment of redemption was the foundation of another and a most exalted privilege — the gift of the Holy Ghost, in a way of which the Old Testament saints had no experience. It must be remembered that there are certain operations of the Holy Ghost, common to all saints in every age, such as the new birth, conviction of sin, holy obedience produced in the heart and ways. These ways of the Spirit are not peculiar to any time; they were always true of every saint of God from the first — true of Noah, Abraham, David, etc. They were all born of God, and believing men. But while this is matter of common knowledge, there is another thing equally true, but not so generally acknowledged. When the Lord Jesus Christ was about to finish His work on earth and ascend on high, He promised His disciples that the Holy Ghost should be given in a way never before known.* The disciples were certainly believers then, and possessors of eternal life. Yet we find that, when the Lord was about to depart, He says: "It is expedient for you that I go away." What could make it expedient that they should lose their best Friend and Saviour? Why was it not rather preferable for them in every way that He should stay with them? The word is plain: "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but, if I depart, I will send him unto you." Does not this imply that there was to be some further and immense blessing imparted to them that they had not enjoyed before? Clearly so. But more than this. There are persons who confine the gift of the Holy Ghost to tongues, miracles, ministerial gifts, etc. But "the Comforter" is not to be confounded with the various powers that the Comforter produces. It is the Holy Ghost in person whom the Father would send in Christ's name. This was the grand truth that the Lord was teaching His disciples. All saints had had the Holy Ghost operating upon them from the beginning, but besides and beyond that, after the departure of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost Himself was to come down, in a personal and more direct and immediate way, to be in the disciples and with them unto the end. The Son of God had come down in a special way and become incarnate. The Holy Ghost would come, after Christ had accomplished redemption and gone up to the Father.† Therefore it is said in Acts 2: "Being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear." The powers that were conferred on the day of Pentecost drew attention to this blessed divine person, whose presence these powers indicated; they were valuable chiefly as the outward evidence and effect of that unprecedented gift, the Father's promise.

* It was from not distinguishing these two things that, if I remember rightly, Professor Olshausen and the late Archdeacon Hare fell into no slight error as to the Old Testament saints; for they actually taught that the new birth is a peculiar blessing of this dispensation! Dean Alford is also confused on the subject. The new birth, though of the Spirit, is entirely distinct from His baptism.

† "The gift of the Spirit at and since the day of Pentecost, was and is something TOTALLY DISTINCT from anything before that time: a new and loftier dispensation." — Alford's Greek Test. I., p. 783; cf. p. 706. (Second Edition.) The emphasis is the author's.

This, then, is the great truth that lies at the bottom of the question as to the Lord's prayer. It was intended for those who were true believers, but for whom redemption was yet a prospective thing, and to whom the Holy Ghost had not been given in this fuller and unexampled way. In the very context in Luke the Lord says, a little afterwards, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" That was their condition. They were already children, and yet were to ask the Father to give them the Holy Spirit. It could not mean the Holy Spirit to make them believers: such they were already — "children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." But there was still the Holy Ghost to be given personally, to bring them into all the full consequences of the redemption of Christ, when this should be effected, and to form them into union with Him as the glorified man at the right hand of God, members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. These privileges, which were neither known nor possible to be enjoyed by the saints before the cross, are nevertheless the essentials of Christianity, properly so called. Therefore, I do not hesitate to say that, while the Lord's prayer was the perfect expression of the disciples' requests to God in their then circumstances and actual condition, for this reason it was not intended to be the expression even of the same men when their whole standing and condition was changed: when the work was done, and all trespasses were forgiven; when all that believed, whether Jews or Gentiles, were by one Spirit baptized into one body, and were all made to drink into one Spirit.

The change indeed was so momentous and complete, that our Lord Himself prepares the disciples for it solemnly in John 16, when, after having fully brought out the mission and presence of the Comforter in and with them, He says, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." . . . . "At that day ye shall ask in my name," etc. What did our Lord mean when He said, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing?" This was what they had been doing while He was upon earth; they always went to Him as the blessed and gracious Messiah, and were quite right in doing so. Yet He adds, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, etc. . . . Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name." What! asked nothing in His name? Had they not been using the Lord's prayer for some years? Certainly they had; and yet they had asked nothing in Christ's name.* Now, He says to them, you are going to be put upon a new ground; no longer to be merely coming to Me and asking Me, but asking the Father, and asking in Christ's name. What is meant by asking in Christ's name? Is it merely saying "for Christ's sake" at the end of a prayer? No. The meaning is no less than this: that, by virtue of redemption when accomplished, and by the Holy Ghost uniting them to the Lord Jesus in heaven, they would be put in the same position as Himself. Therefore it is said in 1 John 4: "As he is, so are we in this world." And so St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 6, "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." This may illustrate the meaning of asking in the name of Christ, or rather of the ground on which it rests. It is to ask the Father in the consciousness of all their sins being put away, and of their being in Him brought nigh to God, and in the full enjoyment of His favour, without a question or cloud between God and their souls: going to God and making supplication to Him as standing in the possession of the full blessing to which Christ above, and the Holy Ghost below, should entitle them in that day: this is asking the Father in Christ's name.

* The late Dean of Canterbury had the intelligence to perceive and the candour to own, in his comment on this passage, that "it was impossible, up to the time of the glorification of Jesus (ἕως ἄρτι proleptical, as before), to pray to the Father in His name. It is a fulness of joy peculiar to the dispensation of the Spirit to be able so to do, Eph. 2: 18." The reader will hence infer how he is to estimate Wheatly's assertion that the Lord's  prayer" is so framed, that it is impossible to offer it up, unless it be in the name of Christ." (Rat. Illust. of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 6.) It is singular, however, that Dr. Alford was guilty of the contradictory remark on the preceding verse, (John 16: 23,) that "that day," in its full meaning, cannot import this present dispensation of the Spirit, but the great completion of the Christian's hope when he shall be with his Lord. His own note on 24, already quoted, sufficiently refutes him, not to speak of verse 26 and his note thereon. — (Greek Test. pp. 788, 9.)

The Lord had given the prayer already, and the disciples had been using it. Yet He intimates to them here that there was a new position into which they had to be put, and that the old ground would no longer suffice. Their circumstances being changed by the gift of the Holy Ghost, prayer must now take its form from the new standing, the full grace into which they were brought. What is the effect of believers now putting themselves back into the position of disciples before redemption was accomplished? They never can know what it is to have real settled peace; they cannot take the place of worshippers once purged, having no more conscience of sins. In a word, they forfeit, as far as enjoyment goes, the vast and entire sum of blessing which Christ's death and resurrection have procured.

Still more manifest is the mistake for a company of believers, alas! of believers and unbelievers mixed together, to take up the Lord's prayer, as the expression of their common need and worship. There is no such thought in the passage as a body thus using it. Indeed, just before, the Lord had told them, when each prayed, to enter his closet; and then follows this prayer as the suited language of an individual's wants. But whether it be a company or one alone now expressing wants to God in the Lord's prayer, I have only to repeat, You are putting yourselves back into the state of the disciples under the law and before the Lord had done His work of reconciliation, and thus you are doing, unconsciously, great disrespect to the will of God the Father, to the work of Christ, and to the present witness of the Holy Ghost. (Compare Heb 10.)

If a soul, converted indeed, but still under bondage of spirit and ignorant of the Lord's ways and of the full extent of His redemption, were to kneel down and pour out his heart in the words of the Lord's prayer, I could, for my own part, quite sympathize with the feeling; for I believe that such a condition of heart and conscience as nearly as possible approaches that of the disciples whom the Lord actually had before Him. Still, under the gospel of God's grace, the state I have described is altogether anomalous. It is themselves who go back — not God who puts them — as it were, before redemption. Though they believe in Christ, they are not quite sure that they are justified from all things, or whether they do not fall short of the full favour of God. They certainly do adopt and use a prayer given to disciples who could not know what every Christian since the cross ought to have his heart filled with, and what his prayers should assume and more or less express to God. So that, without questioning the final security of such believers in Christ, I dare not withhold my conviction that they do not see their most precious privileges, and thus, without intending it, are guilty of real dishonour to the Lord's sufferings and glory.

The fact is then, that saints on earth are contemplated and provided for in the prayer before Christ died and rose, and before the Holy Ghost was sent down from heaven, the witness of perfect acceptance in the Beloved. True honouring of Christ is to apply His words as He intended. If our souls have entered into this, that we are brought nigh to God, that our sins are all forgiven; that we have got the Holy Ghost sealing us, and uniting us to Christ in heaven; we are on altogether new ground, and our prayers should savour of it. This would be to ask the Father in the name of the Son.

It will be said, How was it that the Lord gave the prayer in His word, if it was not intended for the permanent use of all His people? I answer that the Lord said much which did not and could not apply to all. Look, for example, at Matt. 10. While many principles are found there which abide for our instruction, who will deny that the mission of the twelve was Jewish? Supposing a person were to quote verses 5 and 6, and to say, "These are the Lord's own words: we are not to go into the way of the Gentiles, nor to enter any city of the Samaritans, but rather to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," the absurdity would be manifest. We ourselves, poor Gentiles* and yet saved, are proof enough that such an application of our Saviour's words must be false. It would set a few words here against the great mass of the New Testament, which supposes special mercy to those very Gentiles. As the Lord was then sending out the disciples on a special errand, so He had previously provided for their then state in the prayer. The death of Christ, in my judgment, necessarily interrupted the prohibition of testimony to the Gentiles, deepened and extended the ground of prayer, and laid the foundation for the introduction of another order of things. Therefore, after His resurrection, the Lord, at the close of the same Gospel, charges them to go and make disciples of all the Gentiles; as in the Gospel of St. John He, anticipating His ascension, tells them that at that day they were to ask the Father in His name. Hitherto they had not done so.

* Some have objected the fact that one form of the prayer is given by Luke, the evangelist, who treats all in view of the grace of God and the call of the Gentiles. But this in no way proves that it was meant to be used by us of the Gentiles; for this Gospel tells much that was said and done then, though with a special design to instruct us who are called, not to be said or done by us.

Much, therefore, as I desire to sympathize with those who continue to use the Lord's prayer now, or at least to feel for their difficulties, I must say that we ought to understand His word and will, besides having upright intentions. And what intelligence can there be if it is not seen that the redemption of Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost have wrought a total revolution as to the conscience, communion, worship, and walk? They have brought us out of bondage into liberty, and consequently put our prayers on a different footing from what would have been right and comely before our deliverance.

Hence, in the Acts of the Apostles, not a trace appears of such a use of the Lord's prayer as has become the traditional practice of Christendom. And when you read the various prayers which the Holy Ghost inspired in the different epistles, such as those in Romans, Ephesians, etc., everywhere the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ form the great substance and basis. The petitions were founded thenceforth upon the great and glorious facts, on which rest alike our faith and hope; they were not made and were inapplicable before.

Evidently this is a question of no small importance for the child of God who desires to know his full standing in Christ since the Holy Ghost has been given. We all believe that the Lord's prayer was divinely suited to the actual state of the disciples. But for this reason it could not fully express their subsequent relations nor the outgoing of affections proper to them then. Those who appreciate the extent of the change can profit by every clause of the prayer, even if they do not repeat it literally. But to ignore the results of redemption is not to the honour of Christ, but rather a slight on the presence of the Spirit, and voluntary poverty in the midst of the riches of grace which are now lavished upon us. The humble and obedient heart will seek to know and do the Lord's will in this, as in all else.

May we receive things as the Lord puts them in His word. May we rise above our natural thoughts and be thoroughly rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith as we have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

APPENDIX A.

It may interest some to see the text of the Lord's prayer, as presented in the two Gospels, according to the readings of the most ancient and valuable Greek MS. extant — the celebrated No. 1209 in the Vatican Library of Rome: so also the Sinaitic with slight errors. The Alexandrian approaches the latter text in some respects, as the Dublin rescript of Matthew does the former.

ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ, 6: 9-23.

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὀ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου, ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου, γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου ὡς ἐν οὐρανῳ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς. τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον, καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν, καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

Our Father, who art in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, as in heaven, also on earth; our necessary bread give us today; and forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil [or the evil one].

ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ, 11: 2-4.

Πάτερ, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου, ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου· τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν, καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν (καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν), καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἱς πειρασμόν.

Father, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; our necessary bread give us day by day; and forgive us our sins (for we ourselves also forgive every one if  indebted to us); and bring us not into temptation.

To show that this difference was well known of old, we need only summon two witnesses, of distinct country, time, language, school of doctrine, and ecclesiastical position; but both of them unusually acquainted with Scripture, and, of course, thoroughly trustworthy as to matters of fact. 1. The ablest critic of Christian antiquity, Origen, expressly says (De Oratione, p. 240) that Luke, after "Thy kingdom come," passes in silence over "Thy will be done;" etc., and sets down "Give us day by day," etc. Διόπερ ἃς προετάξαμεν λέξεις, ὡς παρὰ μόνῳ Ματθαίῳ κειμένας, κ. τ. λ. And again, as to the end of the prayer, he observes (p. 256), Τὸ δέ, ἀλλὰ ῤῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ, παρὰ τῳ Λουκᾳ σεσιώπηται. 2. Just so speaks Augustine, the greatest theological light of the Western Church: "Evangelista vero Lucas in oratione Dominica petitiones non septem, sed quinque complexus est." Enchirid., cap. cxvi.) He tries, like Origen, to solve the difficulty on the plea that the two clauses omitted by Luke are virtually contained in the petitions that preceded them; a plea which, in my opinion, hardly consists with the perfection of either Gospel, especially the apostle Matthew's, even if it could account for the other points of difference, which it does not so much as touch.

The process of corruption is very palpable in the famous Codex Bezae. (now in Cambridge), which contains several patches obviously borrowed from Matthew, which are repudiated not only by all critics, but even in the Textus Receptus. But the same thing is true of MSS. better in every way than that venerable document.

This being so, what are we to infer? Let Dean Alford answer. "It is very improbable that the prayer was regarded in the very earliest times as a set form delivered for liturgical use by our Lord. The variations . . .  in Luke, for the corresponding clauses in our text, however unimportant in themselves, are fatal to the supposition of its being used liturgically at the time when these Gospels were written." (Greek Test., vol i., p. 52. ) So say I, for reasons of greater weight perhaps than these variations. We are next referred to the notes on Luke 11: 1; but there, singular to say, the Dean seems to question his own deduction in the remarks on Matt. 6: 9; for he quotes from Meyer an argument identical in sense with his own, and then asks, "If the Apostolic Church did not use the Lord's prayer as a form —  when did its use begin, which we find in every known liturgy?" The liturgical application of the prayer at no great interval from the apostolic days I admit, but what is that to the purpose? The true question is as to the Lord's intention, when the Holy Ghost was given. What was the apostolic practice then? The Gospels of Matthew and Luke were not written for years after Pentecost; and the Dean admits that there are reasons fatal to the supposition of a liturgical use when they were. Was the Church wrong under inspired men, and right under guides so erring as Tertullian and Cyprian, or Fathers later and more mistaken still? In a word, "when did its use begin?" after the inspired writers passed away, may be an interesting inquiry, but it is of no consequence to our faith and practice. But is it not strange to be remanded from Matt. 6 to Luke 11, and then to find a strong and positive statement, in a note to the former, sought to be undermined by a query in a note to the latter?

What a mercy it is, in the midst of human uncertainty of old or now, have the sure unfailing word of God, the sole standard of truth, and the Holy Ghost, the sole applier and interpreter of  it, to the glory of the Lord Jesus!

APPENDIX B.

Τὸν ἄρτον ·ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον.

Few words in the New Testament have given rise to more discussion, and with less satisfactory results, than the adjective ἐπιούσιος. It occurs only in the Lord's prayer. (Matt. 6: 11, and Luke 11: 3. ) Origen is the first ecclesiastical writer who discusses the question of its derivation and meaning; and certainly, whatever was the eccentricity of his dogmatic views and the frequent extravagance of his interpretations, none of the Fathers was his equal in matters of language. According to him, the word had not been employed by the Greeks, learned or unlearned, and it appeared to be a coinage of the evangelists. (De Oratione, Ed. de la Rue, vol. i., pp. 245,6.) He compares ἐπ. with περιούσιος, deriving both from οὐσία. Καὶ δοκεῖ μοι ἑκατέρα λέξις παρὰ τὴν οὐσίαν πεποιῆσθαι· ἡ μὲν τὸν εἰς τὴν οὐσίαν συμβαλλόμενον ἄρτον δηλοῦσα, ἡ δὲ τὸν περὶ τὴν οὐσίαν καταγινόμενον λαόν, [alluding to Ex. 19: 5,] καὶ κοινωνοῦντα αὐτῃ, σημαίνουσα. He was, of course, aware of the alternative derivation from ἐπίεναι (or its participle); indeed, he expressly alludes to it to affirm his preference of the first source and sense. Ἐρεῖ δέ τις τὸν ἐπιούσιον παρὰ τοῦ ἐπιέναι καὶ ἔσχηματίσθαι, [which is evidently corrupt, and to be corrected with Bentley into κατεσχηματίσθαι,] ὥστε αἰτεῖν ἡμᾶς κελευέσθαι τὸν ἄρτον τὸν οἰκεῖον τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος, κ.τ.λ. (ib. p. 249). The Greek Fathers seem to me, in general, to have agreed with Origen's derivation of the word, though they diverged in interpreting or applying it; for he held it to mean Christ, Chrysostom (Homil. xxx,) Theophylact (Comm. in loc.), etc., applied to the necessaries of life. Hence in Cyril we read, ἔστι γὰρ ἔτι διὰ τούτων ἰδεῖν ὅτι τῆς ἐφημέρου τροφῆς ποιοῦνται τὴν αἴτησιν, ὡς ἀκτήμονες δηλονότι· ἐπιούσιον δὲ τὸν αὐτάρκη ποιεῖσθαι χρή.

The Latins were, for the most part, indifferent judges of such a matter; and, until Jerome, seem to have acquiesced in the reading of the Itala, all the copies of which, as far as I know, had quotidianum (cot.). But the learned secretary of Pope Damasus did not improve upon the old versions, as far as ἐπ. is concerned, but rather increased the confusion. For even in the Vulgate he gave "supersubstantialem" in Matt. 6, and "quotidianum" in Luke 11; while in his Commentary on Titus (2: 14) he says, "Melius in Graeco habetur panem nostrum ἐπιούσιον, id est, praecipuum, egregium, peculiarem, eum videlicet qui de caelo descendens, ait: Ego sum panis, etc. Absit quippe ut nos qui in crastinum cogitare prohibemur, de pane isto qui post paululum concoquendus et abjiciendus est in secessum, in prece Dominica rogare jubeamur. Nec multum differt inter ἐπιούσιον et περιούσιον: praepositio enim tantummodo est mutate, non verbum. Quidam ἐπιούσιον existimant in oratione Dominica panem dictum, quod super omnes οὐσίας sit, hoc est super universas substantias. Quod si accipitur, non multum ab eo sensu differt quem exposuimus. Quidquid enim egregium est et praecipuum, extra omnia est, et super omnia." What can one think of the consistency of all this? What of its philology or its logic? Who would have guessed that the author does not adopt his own "melius" in either of the texts where the word occurs? Who could expect that in one of them (Luke 11: 3) he so translates as most naturally to convey the sense of needful food for the day which; in one of his sentences he sternly denounces? And as to the idea that there could be no great distinction between the two words, have I to convince the merest tyro that composition with a preposition may effect a far more decided change in the sense than if many a totally different word were used? Again, will it be credited that among the "quidam" who think ἐπ. in the Lord's prayer means above all substances is — Jerome himself, not only in his version of Matt. 6, but in his vacillating comment on the passage in that Gospel? (Ed. Migne, vol. vii. col. 43.) In his Dialogue against the Pelagians (lib. iii. 15), I may also observe that he seems to take for granted another view — not daily supplies, nor Christ, but the Eucharist. "Panem quotidianum sive super omnes substantias, venturum Apostoli deprecantur, ut digni sint assumptione corporis Christi." This last was a favourite and early notion especially in Africa, as may be gathered from the treatises of Cyprian, Tertullian, and a host of successors. They took care, however, not to err on the score of deficiency, for they appear to have held all three senses of the phrase. Augustine, in due time, added the meaning of the word of God, sacred lessons, and hymns, to the force of the expression, already burdened enough; though I have not found that any of these writers deduced them save from the old Latin "panem quotidianum."

On the other hand, a large body of modern scholars, though with shades of distinction among them (as Grotius, Scaliger, Wetstein, Wahl, Winer, Meyer, Bretschneider, etc.), incline to the derivation from ἐπίεναι, or ἐπιοῦσα, and therefore to the sense of "our coming (future) bread," or "our bread of tomorrow." But this is obviously awkward, whether one considers Matthew or Luke, and hardly reconcilable with Matt. 6: 34. If ἐπιοῦσα were certainly the parent of ἐπιούσιος, it might mean "sufficient" or "necessary," on the same principle as ἐπηετανός is used for "abundant," as well as for "year by year." Dr. John Mill (Prolegg. lxxxii.) derives it from ἐπιοῦσα, and yet thinks that it means "diem qui jam advenit, instantem, praesentem;" but this is resisted by the plain fact that ἐπιοῦσα is never used in Scripture, or elsewhere, for this day, but for the next (or following) day. And as to the objection that from οὐσία it must have been ἐπιοῦσιος, the most learned of the Greek Fathers did not so feel. In fact, too, we have ἐπίοπτος and ἔποπτος, ἐπίουρα, etc. But "of tomorrow" is unquestionably ancient, in spite of Salmasius's assertion to the contrary; for, besides the Coptic and Sahidic versions (supposed to be of the third century), Jerome so understood the reading of the old Hebrew or Nazarene Gospel of Matthew. And this Gabelentz and Loebe take to be the meaning of  the word "sinteinan," which answers to ἐπ. in the ancient Gothic version of Ulphilas.

There remains to be noticed another signification, grounded upon οὐσία and giving ἐπί a more distinct force in composition than Origen's suggestion. Instead of being equivalent to περιούσιος, as Jerome assumed, it is distinguished from it and even in contrast. Περιούσιος is, in ordinary Greek, used for "abundant," "superfluous;" being derived from περιούσια = that which is over and above necessary expenses, and hence wealth, luxury, etc. Ἐπιούσιος, from analogy of many words similar in formation (as ἐπιβώμιος, ἐπίγαμος, ἐπιδεικτικός, ἐπιδίφριος, ἐπιδόρπιος), and from the requirements of the prayer, would naturally mean necessary, or proper for subsistence. There is no doubt that οὐσία, besides its metaphysical usage for the essence or true nature of a thing, and the Stoic application to matter, was commonly used both in Attic and Hellenistic Greek for "what is one's own," "one's substance," etc. (cf. Luke 15: 12), the transition from which is easy to the sense required, as I conceive, by the evangelists. The reader may compare the last clause of Prov. 30: 8, the beginning of which verse, I see, Augustine had already connected with it (Epist. 130 alias 121: 22): also Matt. 6: 25-34, and James 2: 15. It was thus Suidas understood the word — ὁ ἐπὶ τὴν ἡμῶν οὐσίαν καὶ τροφὴν ἐπαρκῶν, or ὁ ἐπὶ τῃ οὐσίᾳ ἡμῶν ἁρμόζων. "Quae interpret." (says H. Stephens, Thes. Ling. Gr. iii, col. 3584, Ed Valpy) "aptissimum quidem sensum habet, sed similis signif. τοῦ οὐσία exemplum desidero." But is not the comparison with περιούσιος  a sufficient answer to the great lexicographer's demand, especially bearing in mind the absolute newness of the word ἐπ.? On the whole, then, I am of opinion that the mystical references, "substantial," "peculiar," etc., are forced and unnatural; that the sense of "tomorrow" is inconsistent with the context; that the meaning "daily," though followed by many and weighty names, ancient and modern, has no probable source in the word itself, and is tautological in its connection in both Gospels; and that "our necessary (or sufficient) bread" has the best claim to be received, as in fact it is, in the oldest known version, the Peschito Syriac.

The Lord's Supper

1 Cor. 11.

W. Kelly.

The Lord's supper differs from the other standing institution of Christianity in this, that while baptism is individual, the breaking of bread is congregational. Personal enjoyment merely is not God's mind in the supper, but rather communion. The gospel gives high value and scope to what is individual; and we need this, for it is the first call from God to man, and should take precedence of all else. That soul is never right which loses itself in a crowd. One's soul needs to be set right with the Lord in His grace by faith.

In baptism, being individual, each one is said to put on Christ as the sign of His death; for "as many as were baptised unto Jesus Christ were baptised unto His death. Therefore we were buried with Him in baptism unto death." Burial unto His death is the aim; but it is individual, even if ever so many were baptised at the same time. There is no fellowship one with another in baptism. Baptism by proxy is an absurdity, if not worse. Christian baptism is the privilege of owning Christ's death. There the soul is brought under solemn responsibility (though immense favour too); because he that is so baptised is called to walk as one alive from the dead. But this has nothing to do with others — it is one's own responsibility, and is independent of association with any.

The Lord's supper is another thing. It was not a mere circumstance that the disciples were assembled when the Lord instituted it. Their gathering to partake of it together is not merely a fact but a principle. It is therefore a question of fellowship with saints. There is no such thing in scripture, or in the meaning of the institution, as an individual taking bread and wine in remembrance of Christ; the doing so would rather be an error to be forgiven. The blessedness of the Lord's supper consists in this, not only that it is essentially remembering Christ in common, but soon after also the one body of Christ. Being the expression of our joint Christian worship, what does not leave room for every member of His body, walking as such, destroys (as far as it goes) the character of the Lord's supper. Not of course, that in many a city all could eat together in one spot; but let them eat in ever so many, it was and must be on the same ground, and in real inter-communion. The truth indeed embraces all saints walking as such: whatever does not is not the Lord's supper.

There is another remark to make. Not only was Christian baptism liable to be perverted (and surely this has been the case far and wide in Christendom), but the Lord's supper was even more easily misused. Whether Christian baptism was or was not perverted in very early days is not now taken up; but certainly the Lord's supper was so almost immediately. It was the more open to have its character forgotten because it demands spiritual fellowship. The First Epistle to the Corinthians testifies to this. Even in apostolic times the Holy Spirit has recorded gross failure. How great the humiliation, and how deep the grief, for the apostle to expose it! But though to write 1. Cor. 11 was to spread and even perpetuate the bad tidings, the Spirit of God felt it necessary for their good and also for the welfare of all the assembly.

The way in which the misuse of the Lord's supper came in at Corinth is highly instructive. The Corinthians valued the social character of Christianity more than moderns; and it is a very valuable trait. In those early days Christians loved to be together, and so partook of a love-feast. No doubt, plausible reasons were not wanting for uniting this with the Lord's supper. As all were assembled then, it would be a saving of time; why not on the same occasion take the two together? Was there not something like it at the last Passover when the Lord was here in person before instituting His supper?

Perhaps many Christians now are willing to take the Lord's supper together who would shrink from taking a meal in common. But the Corinthians had not yet lost sight of the bonds which unite the holy brotherhood. They had a stronger sense of it than some who like to speak of their faults. Nevertheless their low moral state exposed them to evil and error; and this effect, not being corrected in the Spirit, brought out dangerous fleshly activity. There was levity and looseness among them; Christ was forgotten. At these love-feasts they each brought their fare as for the convivial feast (or ἒρανος) of the Greeks. This was in point of fact a contribution meal. What a descent from Christianity to heathen practice, when each would bring his own! and thus the rich came with plenty, and the poor had little or nothing! Hence the open result of their coming thus together was, that selfishness, not love, characterised them. Those well off soon proved how easy it is to have too much; and the poor were made to feel lack on these occasions. So the whole scene became a reflection, not of heaven and God's grace in Christ, but of the proud heartless world; and the holiest feast on earth — the Lord's supper — gilded and turned into a disgrace to His name that covered all. In fact, their state at this very time was such as to bring down His hand in judgment on His people.

Many wonder how this could be in the "church of God." They forget Satan's wiles and enmity; yet some go so far as to draw conclusions favourable to themselves and their own time. But the Spirit of God never leads to such thoughts. "The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword;" and those only read it to profit who by it judge themselves rather than their brethren, and still less saints of primitive times just emerged from paganism. Let me inquire of each, Do you compare your ways with those of the Corinthians when beguiled of the enemy? How much wiser to judge yourselves, not by what they slipped into, but by what the apostle wrote, and what the Lord instituted! And let none think this too hard; for it is fair to ask, Who is entitled to alter the institutions of Christ? Has the church such a licence? Is she not, on the contrary, called to submit herself to the Lord as a virgin espoused to Him? What should we think of one who set herself up against her husband? Yet this is but a small part of what Christendom has done — taking advantage of His name to speak proudly and act independently; and most especially that church which claims for herself to have altered nothing, whereas to her remains scarce a shred of Christ in truth, love, and holiness.

But let us look at scripture, not to condemn Rome, but to prove ourselves. Let us search and see whether and how far we are doing the will of the Lord. How are we to know we are pleasing Him? His word is our only sure guide.

We have the description of the institution of the Lord's supper given to us in three of the Gospels — by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Eternal life and the gift of the Holy Ghost are the great themes of John. Neither baptism nor the Lord's supper enters into either his Gospel or his Epistles; but in the synoptists, or historic Gospels, we have a full account.

The apostle Paul too had a fresh revelation about the Lord's supper, not about baptism. He expressly tells us that the Lord did not send him to baptise but to preach the gospel. The others were given by Himself a commission to baptise. "Go ye therefore, and disciple all the nations, baptising them unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." But the apostle Paul was called from heaven, and from his very conversion hears that the Christians are one with Christ. Of this the Lord's supper, not baptism, is the suited sign; and so it was revealed to him, though of course he was baptised and did baptise like another, at least occasionally.

Baptism is the confession of Christ, emphatically of Christ's death and resurrection. The Lord's supper is the symbol of unity with Christ, founded on His death Who is now on high. That those who partake of the one loaf are the one body of Christ is the great idea, as well as the announcement of His death. Hence the apostle Paul, who beyond all made known the mystery of Christ and the church, has a special revelation concerning this given to him from heaven. "For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread."

Nothing strikes one more than the extreme simplicity of the materials the Lord was pleased to use for His supper. He "took bread." What is more common than a loaf? He blessed, and broke, and gave to them, while they all remained in the same position. He blessed; but there is no thought of consecration here, still less of consubstantiation or of transubstantiation. He gave thanks; but He did exactly the same when distributing the five barley loaves and two fishes, though nobody would say that they were consecrated or changed. It is a delusion to conceive any miracle in the elements. Scripture intimates very expressly the contrary. The disciples ate bread and drank wine; and the whole blessing is the power of faith coming in and investing what was before it, though the simplest materials, with the deepest associations of God's grace in the death of His beloved Son. "Ye announce the death of the Lord till He come." What so solemn in itself, so precious to God, so loving to us, so separative from sin and the world!

Every scheme which exalts the elements, or aggrandises those who "administer'' to the communicants, takes away from Christ. Any accessories of sight or sound accompanying it are human accretions contrary to His word. Scripture repudiates them as not of the Spirit, and of the first man, not of the Second. The Lord's supper is of Him and to Him, and this so specially that to bring in anything else is to slight Him, being an infringement of His heavenly glory, as well as of the cross, whereby the world is crucified to the Lord, and the saint to the world. For He that hath His word and keepeth it, he it is who loveth Him. It is in vain to think we care for His glory if we slight scripture that reveals it.

He says to all His own, "Take, eat." Not, Take thou; because this would bring in individuality, which is never the intent of the Lord's supper, but the body; communion in the remembrance of Christ, but of Christ in death. In this His love is everything to the heart, and the common blessing of all is in and with Christ. His death separates believers from the world, and as His body we are one with Him Who is in heaven.

The love-feast was what we may call the Christians' supper; this was its primary aim. It was their feast; but the Lord's supper is far more. In it, therefore, so far from a person eating or drinking for himself alone, it is intended to contemplate the whole body of Christ, save those who may be outside through discipline or self-will. Whatever narrows this holy circle, either in principle or in practice, infringes on the Lord's object in His supper. Hence the moment you bring in your peculiar doctrine, discipline, or polity, only admitting those who expressly or virtually subscribe to it, you make it your supper and not the Lord's. If guided of Him, we meet there as members of His body; and everything else is set aside as secondary but Himself.

What can be more valuable in its place, and for God's ends by it, than Christian ministry? It embraces rule as well as teaching, pastorship as well as preaching. There are those that can teach who have not the power of ruling; as, again, others who rule well, having great moral weight, who could not teach. Some again have the gift of preaching who themselves need teaching, and are not at all fit to lead on, clear, and establish the church of God. Nor does a gift for ministry in itself carry moral weight for rule. Thus scripture teaches, and so we see in the facts of every day.

Christian ministry was founded by the Lord Who died for us; but the spring flowed when He went up to heaven. If He gave gifts to men, it was after He ascended on high (Eph. 4: 8-11).

This is very important; for if Christian ministry had commenced while Christ was on earth, it might be said that things have wholly changed since. There has been no change for Christ, but only alas! among Christians, since He went up to heaven. He is the risen Head now as then.

Our Lord Jesus when here below sent out twelve apostles in relation to the twelve tribes of Israel; as He sent out the seventy afterwards with a final message, but still in testimony to Israel. Was this Christian ministry? Not so. It was after His ascension that He gave gifts to men — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Not that these are all; but those named in Eph. 4 are enough for my purpose now.

When the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption and went to heaven, He from His ascension glory gave gifts to men. It is quite a new source of supply from above. What He did publicly when on earth was for Israel. The disciples were even forbidden to preach to the Samaritans or to the Gentiles. This therefore could not be Christian ministry. No doubt those previously used were again sent forth now; but they had a fresh mission when Christ went up to heaven. Has Christ then, I ask, ceased to give gifts to men? or is He still owned by us as the Head of the church, not in word only but in deed and in truth? And those who in practice and principle deny this and take His place, are they not really conspiring against Him and His rights as the fountain of all gifts for the church? Rome is the chief of the conspiracy against the headship of Christ. Babylon — the false lady, the would-be queen — was not content to be subject, and is ever denounced as a strumpet going to be judged by God. Take care that you fall not into a similar error of disowning Christ's headship in another form, to speak of no other corruption.

Christian ministry is a divine institution and a permanent one. It is not like the local charge of elders, which required apostolic intervention, direct or indirect. If others plead for change, do you hold that it is the same now as when Christ first ascended? Christ, and Christ alone, through the Holy Ghost, has all authority in His hands. He gives gifts: not the foundation gifts of apostles and prophets (for that work has been done perfectly), but all needed to carry on the church, as evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Christ alone has the title of Head of the church; and the Holy Ghost is come down as alone competent to carry out His mind on earth in accordance with God's written word, as He acts and dwells in each saint.

But while we hold up the place of Christian ministry, and slight none who are Christ's gifts, owning all who are really His, and disowning all who are not, still there is one occasion where distinctions disappear, where only One is or ought to be the prominent one, even Christ in His grace to us; where, no matter what our position and standing in the church, everything for the time gives place to Christ and His death; and this occasion is the Lord's supper. Human presidency there is avoided in scripture. How precious therein to merge all else and have nothing before the soul but Himself Who died for us in infinite love! This the Lord (the night in which He was betrayed) commended to the saints. This He would have us to do in remembrance of Him till He come. It is wholesome for the most highly gifted not always to be in the position of giving out; and it is well for the simplest saints not to be ever taking in. An evangelist, e.g., might else get so occupied with winning the souls of others as to forget he has a soul of his own to praise and remember the Lord; and so with every other gift. "They made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept." It is good for the heart of any man, no matter what his gift, to have for Christ a little quiet time; and that these quiet times should not be too far apart.

All this is provided for amply in the Lord's supper. Souls should have such seasons when occupied neither with delivering nor with hearing a sermon. It is blessed when even the apostle is merged in the saint, when we and all are occupied only with the remembrance of Christ. There is a feast provided by His love, in which we all may enjoy Him together, and enjoy Him to the full; for He does not want us to treat His love as an uncertain sound. He would have our joy to be full. But if you value not this feast, because of its own nature and His love Who invites you, no wonder you cannot enjoy it. If you join in a rite which bears His name but with its character altered, how can you expect it to pass as the feast to which He invites you and guarantees His presence? Some make an idol of the Eucharist and worship its elements; others, running away from the idolatry of Rome, seem to have forgotten His word and to put His supper nowhere, save as a gloomy appendix to the sermon, and that but a few times in the year.

The early disciples came together not once a year, nor once a quarter, nor once a month, but the first day of the week to break bread. It is no new theory, no notion of moderns or ancients, but what God has written in Acts 20: 7. Does it not concern you as much as me? It is Christ's feast for His own — what in a special way concerns you, children of God, though Christ and His glory even more.

I remember the time when the Lord's supper was a duty of dread, lest one might fall into the condemnation supposed to be written here — of eating and drinking "damnation," — guilty in respect of the body and the blood of the Lord. No wonder with such a danger before one, the Lord's supper could not be enjoyed, and to the believer, with no one to show any better, it was so much the more awful a burden. It was no feast, but a fast of the most trying description. It was a misrepresentation of the Lord's supper that produced so unhappy a result. Somewhat similar alas! is the condition of many a soul now, though the mistake is publicly corrected, but not in the Book of Common Prayer. It is "judgment" in the shape of sickness or death, but not "damnation."

But the Lord Jesus died on the cross to suffer for the sins of believers, and to blot them out. Yea, He glorified God about sin itself, instead of leaving it to stand as a perpetual reproach to God. The Son of God, having gone down under our evil in love, and risen again without it in righteousness, He from the glory gave these words to Paul for us. They come, in the infinite grace of God, from the Saviour Who witnesses to judgment borne for us, from resurrection accomplished, from the right hand of God: thence the Lord commends to us this institution of His grace. Do not treat it as a mere commandment, and hence "a means of grace" for those who have not faith. It is a call of love, embracing all who are His, and only for His own, by faith. "Do this in remembrance of Me!" It is not for those who, slighting His love, love Him not. Christ's death was God's judgment of sin as truly as His remission of our sins.

For whom it is, need one say more? The only persons who have the smallest title to the Lord's supper are those who rest on Him and His redemption. You might even be converted, and not yet be in a fit state to partake of this feast.

For the Christian state is more than being by grace turned from one's evil ways to God. Besides this, the Christian believes the gospel of his salvation; he has peace with God, being justified by faith. He does not wait for righteousness, but is become God's righteousness in Christ. We therefore wait for the hope of righteousness, that is, for glory. We do not require righteousness when going to heaven. There we shall have it gloriously; but here by grace we receive it, the object thenceforward being to glorify Christ whilst in the presence of His enemies and now called to serve Him. Here then we confess, by faith in His cross and glory, how truly all the evil is already judged; all the good is already given by our God and Father, whatever remains for the body at Christ's coming.

For what does a person come to the table of the Lord? Is it to pour out his doubts? If he has them, he surely will; but this makes it an ordeal, not a feast. You would scarcely like this even at your own festivities. A gloomy heart or face suits not a marriage feast: it would slight the bridegroom and the bride, and might spoil all for everyone else. Such a person would be best away; and the more you loved him, the less could you desire his presence thus, because of the pain to all concerned.

The soul that is troubled with doubts and fears had better look to Christ and listen to God's gospel. The Lord's supper is the best and holiest feast on earth; but whatever does not consist with His presence in peace and liberty, love and holiness, has no title to be there.

Ministry is not meant to furnish, adorn, or fence the table; he whom God sets first in the church comes there simply as a saint. Ministry deals with souls, preaches the gospel, gives meat in due season, guides, instructs, corrects, and rebukes. But to the Lord's supper we rightly come only as members of Christ's body — as once sinners but now saints, justified, happy in Christ's love, full of peace and joy in believing. "If we walk in the light:" such is the condition of a Christian. Hence the responsibility is to walk in accordance with the light in which we are. This is the object of ministry, to fit souls for and keep them in their place at the Lord's table. Thus the Lord's supper is the present practical end of the ministry for the worship of God; and the end is greater than the means.

As for the notion that you may have the Lord's table without the Lord's supper, it is beneath sober Christians. We may distinguish where we cannot separate. All such speculations are but the fruit of idleness with a certain small activity of mind, but none the less injurious to faith and practice.

One may well scruple to call it the Lord's supper when not taken according to the Lord's institution. But we may notice that there is a difference in the way in which the apostle speaks in 1 Cor. 10 as compared with the language in chapter 11. In the first it is not the Lord's supper viewed from within. Neither their right state nor their wrong state is the point here discussed, but communion with Christ compared with what was outside. The apostle is contrasting it with what the Jew or the Gentile had. It is not the internal view of eating worthily or not; but, contra-distinguishing the Jew and the Gentile in their worship, he proceeds to show what the nature of the church's is. "We being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread."

"The table of demons" has been foolishly applied to that which is not celebrated according to the Lord's word. This is certainly not the meaning of the apostle's words, but a grave error on the part of those who have so misapplied it. The apostle is contrasting what the Christian has with the Jew on the one hand and the Gentile on the other. What the Gentiles sacrificed was to demons. The idol might be nothing; but their danger was from forgetting the demon that was behind it. Israel, again, had their peace-offerings their symbol of communion with Jehovah's altar. The church of God, as he shows, is as distinct from the Jew as from the Gentile. Thus the apostle is contrasting both with the Lord's table of which Christians eat.

But in chap. 11 he deals with the state of soul of those who partake of the Lord's supper. It is a question of Christians rightly or wrongly communicating. If you remember the Lord and His death, do not satisfy yourself with the fact that you are a Christian. You are made worthy by faith in Him and His blood; but ever test yourself whether you partake in a worthy manner. If the day comes round, and you go as a religious habit, it is an unworthy partaking of it. Familiarity breeds contempt where the soul is so unexercised. Where self-judgment is kept up, the spirit of worship is strengthened and enlarged. The Lord's supper makes a distinctive appeal to the conscience, as it has a special place for the heart. This is not a theory, but the doctrine of God in 1 Cor. 11.

A word to you who have no doubts. Your danger is in coming to the Lord's supper without adequately weighing your ways and state of heart. "Let a man examine himself," not to see whether he be a Christian, as some say. But if assured of salvation as we ought to be, the Lord intends that there should be a solemn challenging of the soul every time, with a view to seeing in what spirit and state we come to the Lord's supper. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily is guilty with respect to the body and blood of the Lord. He falls into no small offence against Christ who treats His supper irreverently. Consequently the Lord does not fail to vindicate the honour of His name thus set at nought, as we see He did at Corinth.

It is not supposed that, when one has thus tried himself, he will stay away. "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat." It is well to search, judge, and blame yourself. For it is always assumed that a Christian is one who is here to obey and please God. To partake unworthily then means, not that the communicant is not a Christian, but that the Christian partakes without due self-judgment.

But, again, "damnation" here is quite wrong. The word κρίμα means "judgment." Its only possible force here is judgment in this world. The context is decisive and plain even for those who have no knowledge of the language in which the Holy Ghost wrote. The saints have to judge themselves in order that they may not be condemned (or damned) with the world. Thus the solemn guard of the Lord maintains gravity and holiness among those who partake, on the peril of His judgment now.

When a soul begins to be careless, the first thing the Lord does is to make him feel miserable and distressed as to his ways, applying the word to his conscience. If he bows to the word, it is well — he is humbled and walks more softly in future. If he is hardened by not heeding the word, then comes in the work of those over him in the Lord to admonish, entreat, or rebuke, seeking to restore. A little evil unjudged always leads to a great deal more. If those that are gathered to His name fail, the Lord never fails to judge here by sickness or even by death. Such is the meaning of "sin unto death" (1 John 5: 16). It is death in this world. So Ananias and Sapphira sinned unto death. The time and circumstances made their sin heinous, and brought down on them the Lord's dealing in a peculiarly solemn form; but the principle is the same.

W.K.

"We must all be manifested."

2 Cor. 5; John 5.

W. Kelly.

Judgment is never properly understood in its real depth, as well as its comprehensiveness, unless salvation be also rightly apprehended. A great effort of the enemy, working on the unbelief of man, is to confound these two things. The object is evident. Man in flesh, i.e., in his natural state, never trusts God, who on His part, it is clear, cannot trust man. The gospel calls upon man to confess that his condition is such that God cannot trust him; it claims in the name of the Lord Jesus, because of God's love displayed in giving Him, and by virtue of the efficacious work He has accomplished, that man should trust God — in a word, that he should repent and believe the gospel, that he should believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. There is immense force in the words, "be saved." There are many even of God's children who have most imperfect thoughts about salvation. Were we, instead of this expression, to insert the words, "be pardoned," or "reconciled to God," I apprehend that the mass of Christians at the present moment would see but little difference; but salvation includes a great deal more than pardon, precious as it is. Salvation takes in the whole scope and result of Christ's work; and whether you look at salvation in its complete sense and heavenly light, as shown us in Ephesians, or add to the work of Christ His priesthood and coming again in glory, either goes far beyond forgiveness of sins, and both are certain and scriptural. The mass of God's children at present on the earth have not only scant but dim perceptions about it, which is proved by the fact that they are under the impression that those saved must be judged like man in general — that all men, saints or sinners, must equally pass through the judgment, the eternal judgment of God. This prevails even in the minds of pre-millennialists, who suppose the saints before, and sinners after, the millennium. If they asserted that all men, saints or sinners, must alike be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; if they maintained that every one, without exception, must surely give an account of the things done by the body; if they held and taught that God will magnify Himself, not only in the judgment of those that have despised Christ, but in the distinct appraisal of the character and conduct of every saint, just as much as of every sinner, they would assert nothing more than in my judgment the word of God most clearly propounds. To me, I confess, it seems an evidence, not of strength but of weakness of faith, where real Christians shrink from the truth of being manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, and vote it a strange doctrine and virtually a raising of questions as to personal acceptance again. But not so; Scripture is most explicit as to present and eternal acceptance, and as to our future manifestation before the Lord Jesus. Let none, then, imagine that the doctrine I trust now to prove, surely and plainly, from God's words, weakens the manifestation of every soul, at some time and for one object or another, before our Lord.

In 2 Cor. 5 we have a weighty, full and unambiguous statement of God's mind upon this matter. Here the apostle, when bringing out the rich blessing of the Christian in the power of the life of Christ communicated to the soul, shows that this life is such in its own character that Christ, the source of it, has only to come, and at once every vestige of mortality in the believer is swallowed up of life. Hence there is the strongest expression possible of assurance; but in this the apostle puts himself on common ground with all other saints, and acknowledges, as a matter of common Christian knowledge, that "if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." At the same time he shows that what the believer earnestly desires is not to be "unclothed," that is, to pass through the article of death, as if death were a necessary step in the way of the saint to glory. It is not so at all. "Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon" is the word, the very reverse of being unclothed. When the saint dies, he quits the bodily tenement, he is unclothed, he departs to join Christ. Instead of waiting in the body till Christ comes for him, he goes to be with Him. In this case there is no such thing as mortality being "swallowed up of life." He is "absent," as it is said, "from the body, present with the Lord." But let the Lord come, and instantly there answers to His call and presence the life that He gave to all the Christians upon the earth, and not only to those then found alive, but to such as are dead — to those that slept in Christ. "The dead in Christ shall rise first;" but, more than that, in the case of the living, "mortality is swallowed up of life." These not only do not necessarily die, but death can have no possible dominion over them. Even now and till then mortality is in them; but for such saints as live till Christ comes, there is no death at all. A tendency to death, of course, there is now in the natural body of the believer, like anyone else; but in him, until the actual act of death if he die, it is only mortality. Christ comes, and at once every trace of mortality is swallowed up of life. This, then, so far above natural thoughts, was what the apostle speaks of all earnestly desiring then. "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life."

Lower down he insists that "we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." And here I would point out that there is a slight difference in the form but important enough in the sense, which shows that "we all," in the tenth verse of 2 Cor. 5 differs essentially from "we all" in the eighteenth verse of 2 Cor. 3. In the third chapter, "We all (ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες), with open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord," means all Christians, and Christians exclusively. But in the fifth chapter there is a specific difference (τοὺς γὰρ πάντας ἡμᾶς) which has not been noticed, as far as I am aware, proving that a larger thought is in the mind of the Holy Ghost, and that while Christians, of course, are included, the expression embraces more than Christians, in fact, all men without exception. It seems to me there need be no hesitation whatever in affirming this; it is, at any rate, my conviction. It is well known that some have restricted 2 Cor. 5: 10 to Christians; but they have overlooked, in my judgment, the comprehensive character of the passage that follows, which they are obliged to pare down and even alter unwarrantably, even then presenting a lame and impotent conclusion, and failing to give value to the distinct phrase alluded to, which appears to me expressly calculated, and, indeed, framed to intimate a different truth. For it is not the way of the Spirit of God to vary the language after this manner, unless He have some different sense to convey by it. In 2 Cor. 5 the Greek article, thus inserted, gives all possible breadth — "the whole of us;" whereas in 2 Cor. 3 it is simply "we all." What confirms this is, as was said, the effect produced and stated immediately after in verse 11, which shows that the apostle had more in his mind than believers and their portion. "We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in [by] his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

Now, this is clearly applicable either to a believer or an unbeliever. An unbeliever has nothing but what is bad; and when God enters into judgment with him, all will be made manifest, whatever may have been his own thoughts, or those of others, in this world: he is judged and cast into the lake of fire. There had been no love for the will of God, but hatred to it: there had been no faith in God's testimony to his soul, but wilful rejection of it, there had been no clinging to mercy in the person of Christ, but on the contrary all was scorned, or at least done without. Judgment takes its course. There had been nothing but unmingled evil, as will be proved before the judgment-seat of Christ, whose name and precious blood had been despised. In the believer the crop has a mingled character: there is good and there is bad. The Lord will fully own and reward whatever has been the fruit of the Holy Ghost working in the believer's soul and in his ways; but as to the bad, it will be his own deep and thankful satisfaction, while himself owning it all fully, not merely to know it blotted out as a matter of guilt against his soul, but to find himself brought into perfect communion with the Lord about it; he will thoroughly see and judge according to God respecting it all. If there were a single thing offensive to God that self-love or haste or will had blinded him to in this life, he will then know it even as he is known. So far from causing a single waver in his affections, so far from raising any doubt or question of God's perfect grace to his soul, it would be positive loss if the believer were not thus brought into oneness with God's mind and judgment about all that he has here done. Even in this life we know something analogous. Who that has passed any time in the Lord's paths has not experienced what it is to be laid aside for a season — to have the Lord speaking to him and calling up before his soul that which he had too lightly thought of, or wholly passed by? Much, it may be, in the very energy of his service had been easily forgotten, when carried along with delight in the work of God, though I am supposing there was also what is sweet and of God in the midst of all. But still, surely there is not a little of nature, not a little of unjudged and unsuspected nature, in the ways and testimony of those that love the Lord.

Now, would it be for the Lord's glory if these mistakes, and even wrongs, were noticed by Him at no time? Even in this life He does often send circumstances of sorrow, want, sickness, disappointment, it may be a prison, shutting out from the activity of work, to raise needed questions for the soul's health  - not as to God's saving grace nor as to the believer's standing. To doubt either is inexcusable: no trial will ever rightly lead to it. Nothing questions God's grace or faithfulness but flesh, and flesh acted upon by Satan. The truth is, there is not in all God's word a single ground, or even excuse, given to a believer for doubting divine grace or his own blessing in Christ. But assuredly one is convicted of feebly holding God's grace, if one regards this perfect manifestation before Christ's judgment-seat as the smallest contradiction, or even the least possible difficulty. In the end it is a part of God's necessary ways with His children; its principle is true of them even now: for we are expressly told by the apostle Peter that the Father judges now. Is this opposed to His love? Surely not! Neither will it be so then. Perfect love will have brought us into that place; for in what condition shall we stand there? Before we are manifested at the judgment-seat of Christ, He will have come for us, and presented us in His Father's house in pure, simple, absolute grace. We shall appear there already glorified: our bodies being like that of Christ, we shall be incapable of that natural shame which might be a pain to us here in this life. We shall then feel entirely with Christ, and consequently be thoroughly above that which will be disclosed there. All will justify His ways, though it be humbling to us; but we shall only rejoice in, only exalt, Him. And I see no ground at all to doubt that not merely what we have been as believers, but the whole life from first to last, will be brought out. And what will be the effect of it? An infinitely deep appreciation of the grace of God; profound delight in all His ways and ends, and above all in Himself; and an equally deep sense of what the creature, and we ourselves, have been, in every form or degree in which self wrought here below. God forbid that any one should count such a manifestation a loss, grief or danger to be dreaded. Even here the measure of it we know is gain: what will it be then and there?

Further, it appears to me that this is the reason why the Spirit of God uses the remarkable language found here; for there is nothing expressed about being judged in the passage. It would not be true, as may be proved by other Scriptures, to say, "we must all be judged before the judgment-seat of Christ." None but the unjust, the unbeliever, will ever come into judgment; but every soul, good or bad, believer or unbeliever, must be equally and perfectly manifested before His judgment-seat. And what makes this still more evident is not only the choice of the language, "we must all appear," or "be manifested;" and then again that which follows — "knowing therefore the terror of the Lord" (which there is no ground whatever to weaken) — "knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men." This is the strongest possible proof of the large scope of the preceding verse 10, because we are here shown the effect of that future final manifestation upon the spirit as regards not ourselves but others. Thus, properly understood, this portion of Scripture supposes the fullest rest in the grace of God, even when we contemplate solemnly the judgment-seat of Christ. There is no question of perturbation about our own souls; but it fills us with anxiety about "men" as such. Why about men rather than about saints? Evidently and only because the judgment-seat of Christ will not in the smallest degree jeopard the safety of a single saint. The language is therefore changed, and instead of adopting the word "we," or continuing the former phrase "us all," or anything that would either present the believer alone, or the believer with the unbeliever to a certain extent, we have the word changed — "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." That is, we go forth animated with the deep feeling of what that judgment-seat must be to the unbeliever. We know that it is a solemn, though a most blessed, thought to a believer. We know nothing but the mighty grace of God in Christ could have made it to be a happy prospect for us. But the deeper and more solid the conviction, that only His grace gives us stable peace in presence of the judgment-seat, the more in proportion do we feel what that judgment-seat will be to those who have not Christ.

Hence, then, the apostle proceeds to speak of it as the common feeling of himself and other Christians, from the awful import of the judgment-seat to the unbeliever, to "persuade men," as he calls it; i.e. to seek to bring them to the knowledge of Christ. "But we are made manifest to God," he carefully adds here. In other words, even now the spirit of the judgment-seat is true of the believer; not that he will not appear there by and by, but that now also we are made manifest unto God. This is most true, and important too. "We are made manifest unto God, and, I trust, also are made manifest in your consciences." He could speak in an absolute manner of being made manifest to God; he could speak but in a hopeful way of being manifested to the consciences of believers, because there might be disturbing influences in their case. After all, this could only be a comparative thing, while to God, I repeat, they were already made manifest absolutely. Thus the passage contains the most weighty truth, fully asserting the present manifestation of the believer to God, while it also insists on what is future and perfect before the judgment-seat of Christ for the believer by and by, and intimates the effect of grace on his heart to seek unbelievers, knowing, as we do, the terror of the Lord for them by and by; for we shall all be made manifest there; not only the unbeliever, but the believer. He presumes in the strongest manner the peace of the believer, even in contemplating the judgment-seat. On him the effect of this disclosure is to awaken not a single alarm as to himself or his brethren. What a witness of a full, and a present, and eternal salvation! All his soul's energies are thrown out in behalf of men who are living for the present and for the earth, little thinking that they must stand before Christ's judgment-seat, ignorant of its real character, and heedless of its issues.

This will be sufficient, I trust, to convince any Christian open to conviction, that, far from denying, I think we cannot too strongly insist on, the extent as well as the certainty of the manifestation of every man, believer or not, before the judgment-seat of Christ. But then, observe well, it is their manifestation. The moment we come to speak of judgment, the Lord has decided for the Christian already. In John 5 will be found clear, unmistakeable evidence, which proves the separation, even in this world, between believer and unbeliever, through the Lord Jesus. This real present separation is simply by faith, but it is not the less according to the eternal truth of God. I do not speak, of course, of external circumstances. The Lord introduces it thus in verse 21 "For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will: for the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father that sent him." Hence, it is evident that as two glories meet in Christ, so two actions are attributed to Him. One of them is in communion with the Father; the other is confined to Himself alone. In communion with the Father, He quickens or gives life. The reason is manifest. The communication of life flows from His deity. None but a divine person can quicken the dead. The Father raises the dead: so the Son quickens not only those whom the Father will, but whom He will. He is sovereign, therefore, as being the Son, equal with God. Whatever may be the language of His lowliness as man, He never abrogated, though He might hold for a season in abeyance, His full rights. as a divine person, one with the Father. But then the Father does not judge. How is this? The Son judges, and He alone. No doubt it is the judgment of God, but it is His judgment administered by the Son. The Father has committed all judgment unto the Son. Wherefore this difference as set forth in so marked a change of language? Why, in the one case, the quickening whom He will, and in the other, the judging by that authority that is given Him of the Father? Because the Lord Jesus here lets us know that His judgment is in the closest connection with His assumption of human nature.

The moral ground is evident. Why do men, despise the Son, who ostensibly pay homage to God the Father? They take advantage of the humiliation of the Son, because He was pleased to empty Himself, to take the form of a servant, to, be made of a woman, to become man. Wretched man, led of Satan, dared to spit in the face of the Lord of glory, and to crucify Him between robbers. His matchless and all-lowly love gave the opportunity to man, who was too madly base to lose it. The unbelieving way of every soul demonstrates the same sad truth. It is the history of the race from the beginning, and will be so to the end. God notices and will avenge it, when He makes inquisition for blood. But, besides, He commits all judgment to the Son. In that very nature in which He was set at nought He will judge. He will judge not merely as God, though He is God, but as Man, once thoroughly despised and rejected, because, though the Son, He deigned to partake of flesh and blood, and thus become Son of man. Man will be judged by the Man he hated unto death. Man will stand and tremble before the exalted Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is treated here: "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all [men] may honour the Son even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father that sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath everlasting life, and cometh not into judgment but is passed from death into life" (vers. 22-24).

The believer, of course, does not require judgment to compel him to honour the Son. There is nothing, first of all, that so honours the Son as faith; therefore, in hearing Christ's word and believing Him who sent Christ, the believer does honour the Son in that sort which is so sweet to Himself, and most acceptable to the Father, who refuses all homage at His expense. He bows to Him as Saviour; he owns his sins, seriously and truthfully; he receives life and propitiation in Him and through Him. He confesses Him as Lord; acknowledges Him to be his Lord and his God. He does not need, therefore, the judicial pressure of Christ to make him unite the Son with the Father in coequal divine honour. Well he knows that none but a divine person, one with the Father, could give him that life which he has received in the Son of God. "He that heareth my word," as He says, "and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life." Even now to the believer the Son of God gives life, and the highest form of it — eternal life. How can he then but bow down and bless the Lord Jesus? The consequence is that he needs nothing to enforce it, as the unbeliever does, who rejects Him, does without His cross, denies therefore His word and His work, and therefore has to be forced to honour Him in some other way, if he with all men must honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.

It is said here further for his comfort, not only that he "hath eternal life," but that "he shall not come into judgment." It in well known, and must be insisted on, that this word κρίσις means judgment, and not "condemnation." There is no Greek scholar who does not know that there is another word (κατάκριμα) whose function it is to express "condemnation." Remarkably enough, it stands correctly represented in the common Popish version, though we all know the Roman Catholic version is too often inaccurate, and otherwise faulty, because it follows the common text of the Vulgate, even in its blunders not a few; yet for all that, the Vulgate being right as to this particular passage, the Romish version is therefore much nearer the truth of God in this chapter than the Authorised version of our Protestant Bible, though now given correctly by the Revisers of 1881. The Roman Catholic version, faithful to the Latin, which is here faithful to the Greek, allows and maintains throughout the whole context that there are two dealings in opposition one to the other, life-giving and judging. This contrast is kept up in every case. The Son has life because He is God; the Son judges because He is man. Being the only person in the Godhead who became man, but still in no way forfeiting His rights as God, He is ordained of God the judge of quick and dead. His resurrection proved what God thought of Him and means to do by Him, and what is the character, position, and doom of the world which put Him to death. The Son — the Son of man — will judge man. On the other hand, the believer owns Him, not only as the Son of men, but as God, on, and according to, His word; he consequently receives life eternal through honouring the divine glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The unbeliever, stumbling more particularly over His deity, refuses Himself, rejects, as we know, His work in atonement, or manifests a guilty indifference about it, even if he do not openly deny it — has no real sense of his sins, and consequently no fear of God, nor appreciation of His eternal judgment. In one or other form, men, unbelievers, slight, if not oppose, and in all cases do without, the Son of God, and, as far as they can in this world, dishonour the Father in thus dishonouring Him. And how, then, are they to honour the Son? They must be judged by Him. They have disclaimed eternal life, because they received not the Son of God. Now, they may avoid stooping to, the humbled Son of men; but they must stand before Him as the glorious Judge, to be condemned for ever. But as for those who in this world received Him, followed Him, adored Him, through faith in His name, — they have everlasting life now, and therefore they need not to come into judgment. In truth, He was judged in their stead on the cross.

Let me repeat that it is not merely life and condemnation which are contrasted, but life and judgment. The word used here throughout means simply "judgment." Unquestionably the effect of judgment is condemnation. But this very result, which is otherwise scripturally certain, necessarily excludes the believer! Herein lies the importance of the truth before us. It crushes the vain hope of unbelief; it demonstrates the absolute need of grace. No guilty soul can enter into the judgment of God without being laid bare in his sins. Impossible that God should not deal with them according to His own holiness. No matter who it is the man may be, if he be judged he is judged for what he has done and is; he is put on his trial for his sins; and if it be so, what is more certain than that he must be lost? In vain, then, to talk about God's mercy! His mercy is now manifested and proclaimed in Christ, who is the Saviour Son of God, but will shortly prove that He is also the Judge of men. You cannot mingle the two things. The unbeliever has avowedly no part in Christ's salvation; he believes not, he ridicules or loathes the testimony of life eternal in the Son of God. On the other hand, and equally, the believer has no part in the judgment which the glorified Son of man will then execute. The two things are kept perfectly distinct. There is no mingling them in the smallest degree.

Therefore, we may note, the statement of the Lord Jesus is the strongest the language He employed could afford: and where is the tongue more admirably accurate than the Greek? and by whom is it wielded with such precision as by the writers of the New Testament? The Lord's words here recorded show that it is decided for ever between the believer and the unbeliever. The truth is, that for man all turns upon Christ. Do I make light of Him? Then I give the lie to the testimony of God. I insult the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ, and prove myself to be at war with God. This I cannot do, save to my eternal judgment: "He that believeth not is judged (κεκριται) already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God; . . . shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3: 18, 36). If I receive Him by faith, I have eternal life in Him on the warrant of the living word of God: "He that heareth my word and believeth him that sent me hath everlasting life, and cometh not into judgment" (κρίσιν). It is a verbal noun formed from, and alluding to, the same word that was rightly translated "judge" in verse 22. It is essential to the context that the same sense should be preserved intact throughout. Weigh what comes afterwards: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." Manifestly we have life again as the effect of hearing His voice — and this, too, going on now. The dead, the spiritually dead, are being awakened to hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, then heard when the great salvation began to be spoken by Him, but still continued "by them that have preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." And they that hear shall live — as He said. Such is the declared effect: He that believes "hath everlasting life:" "For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." The reason why the Father is said to give this to the Son is, I apprehend, because Christ the Son so completely takes the place here of a sent One in humanity upon the earth, though even He does not so speak till He had betrayed, as it were, His own intrinsic glory, as One personally entitled to quicken whom He would. Here, however, true to the place He had been pleased to accept, as man in subjection to God the Father, whose glory He upheld above all things, He only speaks of the Father as having given to the Son to have life in Himself. It is part of His perfection as man, that He did not claim as a present thing all or any of the rights attached to His essential dignity, but that He entered fully into the humiliation by which alone God could be retrieved in His moral glory here below, by which alone the counsels of grace to the lost could be made holily efficacious.

Hence the Lord says that the Father hath "given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man." Life is in Him; He also is the appointed Judge. Then we have the final result: "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall bear his voice, and shall come forth." Here it is an hour, not "that now is," but wholly future; and it is no question of faith called for, or unbelief proved, but "all that are in the graves shall hear his voice." Before, the only part expressly treated was the believer with his blessing; dead indeed as to his state by nature, but quickened by hearing the voice of the Son of God. It was an individual personal thing for the soul; but when we come to this future hearing of His voice, there is no question of faith any longer. It is the mighty power of the Son of God that is put forth absolutely and universally. Therefore, "all that are in their graves," it is said, "shall hear his voice, and shall come forth." Does this mean all at the same moment, so that they all form a common class? Not only is there no such doctrine anywhere else in the Bible, but this passage, rightly understood, excludes it. Popular as it may be, the idea of a general resurrection is wholly without foundation — nay, contrary to all Scripture. No doubt two or three passages in the word of God have been construed to speak of an indiscriminate rising from the dead, and none more commonly or more constantly than the verses before us.* Yet it is not merely a mistake as to the force of the text, but a fundamental error, which will be found to obscure and weaken salvation by grace; for it confounds the ways of God, and blots out that present difference which it is God's manifest desire to render specially distinct now to faith, as it will be by and by in fact, when confusion is no longer possible.

*The other Scripture chiefly rested on is Daniel 12: 2; but it needs little exegetic skill to see that the rising in question is bound to the deliverance of the Jews at the end of this age, and therefore must be figurative (like Isa. 26 and Ezek. 37). It would, if literal, involve both just and unjust rising before the millennium, which contradicts the plainest Scripture. Besides it is here "many," not the many, still less all, contrary to the hypothesis.

They were not, then, to wonder that even now dead souls receive life in hearing Christ; for a more manifest wonder was coming when the voice of the Son of God sounds forth in a day that is future. Then, "all that are in the graves," (that is, not the dead morally, but all literally dead,) "shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." These are thereon not viewed as a common category, which as lying in the graves they were, but are by resurrection divided into two distinct classes — "They that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of [not 'damnation,' but] judgment" — the very same word throughout. It cannot be denied. It is in vain for learned or unlearned to attempt glosses, clever or clumsy, over the expression. The word of God is too strong for man to bend it. No doubt, the truth is too bright for those that uphold the error of the A.V. in this particular case. This or other reasons may have influenced the English translators from Tyndale: the motive I do not pretend to judge; but the fact is plain. And I affirm that "condemnation" or "damnation" is a wrong rendering of κρίσις, for which there is no tenable ground. The verb means, and is rightly translated, "judge" (verses 22-30); the substantive means, "judgment," or "the act of judging," and should have been so translated throughout, as is now done by the Revisers of 1881. (Vers. 22, 24, 27, 29, 30).

But this makes the distinction of the two classes that are raised from their graves manifest and complete. As to the first, they are those that have practised good (for they are no longer characterised as believers only); it is a life-resurrection. As bowing to Christ in this world, they had life in Him, the Son; their resurrection is simply the consummation of the life. For the body will be quickened as well as the soul. It is Christ, as the Son of God, who gave them life through faith, even now and in this world; it is Christ who will shortly call them out of their graves; and the power of the life they possessed in Him will be then manifest for ever.

As to unbelievers, they contemned the Son of God. They saw not His glory; they felt not His grace. They consequently lived, or rather they lay, in unremoved death, moral or spiritual death before God. They had no life even while they lived, because they had not the Son of God; and the consequence is that they, summoned from their graves, know not a resurrection of life according to the mould of Christ's own, but simply rise to be judged. They come forth in due time (solemn thought!) that they may be compelled in judgment to honour that Son whom here they spurned to their own everlasting shame and ruin — to honour Him who, when they were alive, met them with gracious words of life, had they but hearkened to His voice of quickening grace. But, alas! He was definitively rejected. They had done nothing but evil or worthless things here; they are called up by Christ's power. It is a judgment-resurrection.

Thus, beyond all controversy, there remains the patent fact that we have two resurrections distinguished here by their character — resurrections, not merely separated by time (which is stated expressly elsewhere, but after all it is quite a subordinate question), but in their own nature and issues as different as can possibly be. A difference of character is a far more important feature than a difference in point of time. For my own part, so far from thinking so much of the long space between them, I believe that were it but a minute which separated the resurrection of life and the resurrection of judgment, the eternal and essential features would remain; that the one is a resurrection of life which is given by the grace of God in His Son, and always distinguishes those who have received Him here; the other is a resurrection of judgment for those who would not have Him in this world, but are finally compelled by divine power, when His voice is heard in glory, to honour the Son even as the Father.

A Man of God

2 Timothy 3:17

In the New Testament "the man of God" supposes one faithful in the service of souls. However, the term is by no means confined to the New Testament, being rather in itself a familiar Old Testament expression. By it we may understand a believer who has the moral courage and the spiritual power to identify himself with the Lord's interests, and to maintain the good fight of faith in the midst of perils and obstacles of every sort. Such a testimony is incompatible with yielding to human principles and the spirit of the age.

We must not suppose, however, that fidelity in such a day as ours wears an imposing garb. An appearance of strength is out of course when declension has come in and judgment is approaching. God will have a state of ruin felt, and His testimony must be in keeping. When he calls to sackcloth and ashes, He does not give such a character of power as has price in the world's eyes. Thus one of the truest signs of practical communion with the Lord is that at such a moment one is heartily content to be little. This is reality, but it is only a little strength. It is according to the mind of God.

That which attracts the world must please and pander to the self-importance of man. The world itself is a vain show, and likes its own. Consequently there is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation. But when a servant of God is thus drawn into the spirit of men, he naturally shrinks back from fairly facing the solemn call of God addressed to His own, loses his bright confidence, and gets either hardened or stands in dread of the judgment of God. When Christians lose the power and reproach of the cross, philanthropy has been taken up, which gives influence among men, and general activity in what men call doing good replaces the life of faith with the vain hope of staving off the evil day in their time at any rate. One need not deny zeal and earnest pursuit of what is good morally; self denial, too, one sees in spending for purposes religious or benevolent. But the man of God, now that ruin has entered the field of Christ's profession, is more urgently than ever called to be true to a crucified Christ. As surely as He is soon coming to take us on high, He will in due time appear for the judgment of every high thought and the fairest looking enterprises of men which will all be swallowed up in the yawning gulf of the apostasy. W.K.

Remarks on Matthew 18.

W. Kelly.

In chapter 16 we had two subjects connected with the revelation of the Lord's Person to Simon Peter — one of them entirely new, or for the first time divulged; the other the familiar subject of the kingdom of heaven. We shall find in the chapter before us that these two topics are again brought together, but of course not confounded or identified. We are called to see the kingdom and the Church in their practical bearing. We heard already that the Lord was to build the Church upon the rock of the confession of His Person — "Upon this rock I will build My church." Afterwards, He promised to give the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Peter. Now we find — and I think connected with our Lord's showing the practical principle which actuated Himself with the consciousness of glory, and of the absolute command of all that He had made (for He was the Lord of heaven and earth, if He paid the tribute of the temple) — it was not a question of rights. Had it been a mere matter of right, the children were free: He was the Lord of the temple, so that there was no claim possible on that ground. But "lest we should offend them," etc.

Grace, you see, gives up its rights; at least, it does not seek to claim and exercise them for the present. And in the very consciousness of the possession of all glory, it can bend in this evil world. But, then, carefully observe that what it leads the soul that understands it to, is never to yield God's rights, but our own. We must be as unbending as a flint wherever God is in question. Grace never surrenders the true holiness, the claim or will of God; in fact, it is the only thing that, as far as man is concerned, strengthens any soul to value them, or assert them, or walk in them: and grace does this. It is God's own way from the gospel upwards. "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." The practical lesson follows: "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." That which the law claimed, but never produced, is accomplished by the power of grace acting upon the heart of man. Christ does not so much demand as give the power. It is all of His goodness.

And grace consists not merely in forgiving sins, but in giving power to be and to do that which is entirely contrary to nature and above it. The law never even sought this. The law addressed itself to man as he was — supposed him to be a sinner, to have evil lusts and passions, and forbade them; but what more could it do? It claimed the heart of man, the very last thing he would or could give. He might give his body to be burned, and all his goods to feed the poor, but never his heart to love God. I am speaking now of man as man. When you speak of a Christian, what makes him a Christian? Not the law, which never made a Christian since the world began, nor ever was intended so to do. It condemns a man because he is a sinner, and does not like to obey God: but it does not even hold out what a Christian ought to be. It never proclaims that a man should forego his rights, and be willing to suffer: a Christian is one who does this, being called to go far beyond what the law asked; and if he does not, he is not walking as a Christian. So that, in both ways, looking at the law whether as dealing with an ungodly man, it cannot save him; and in dealing with a godly man it never puts before him the full character of the holiness Christ enjoins. What, then, is it that God has given the Christian? If he is not under the law, under what is he? He is under Christ, under grace; under Christ as the very fulness of grace and truth.

This is what comes out here. And it is a very beautiful feature of the chapter which we are about to look at just now. We find that the grace of the gospel is the pattern of the spirit that is to actuate the Church and its members in everything that merely concerns ourselves. There is often a great practical difficulty that people do not understand. While you are called upon to walk in nothing but grace, as to your own relations with God, it is a misuse of grace to suppose it to be an allowance of evil or indifference. Grace, on the contrary, while it meets a man in his ruin and forgives him, spite of his sins, imparts a power that he had not before, because it reveals Christ, strengthens the soul, gives a new life and acts upon that life so as to carry him forward in the obedience as well as in the enjoyment of Christ. Our Lord shows that this ought to govern everything. But, first, we have the spirit that befits us: "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" This furnishes opportunity for our Lord to indicate the spirit that becomes the kingdom of heaven. "Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Now this is what is wrought in a soul when it is converted: there is a new life given, even Christ. Hence there is much more than entire change. That would be very far short of the truth as to a Christian. Of course the Christian is a changed man, but then the change is because of something still deeper. A Christian is a man born again, possessing a life now that he possessed not before. I do not mean merely that he lives after a new sort, but that he has a new life given him, that he had not as a man. It is in this way that he becomes a little child. Then this new life has to be cultivated and strengthened. Our natural life as men grows up, or it may be checked and hindered by various circumstances. So it is with the spiritual life, though it be external.

Our Lord shows here what is the characteristic moral feature that suits the kingdom of heaven; and this in opposition to Jewish thoughts of greatness. They were still thinking of the kingdom of heaven, according to Old Testament delineations of it. When David came to the kingdom, his followers that had been faithful before, were exalted according to their previous worth. You have the three great chiefs, and then thirty other warriors, and so on; all of them having their place determined by the way in which they had carried themselves in the day of trial. The disciples came with similar thoughts to our Lord, full of what they had done and suffered. Peter gets rebuked for that very thing afterwards. The same spirit broke out on many occasions, even at the last supper. Our Lord here uses it for showing that the spirit He loves in His disciples is to be nothing — to be without a thought of self, in a spirit of lowliness, dependence and trust — that does not think about itself. This is the natural feeling of a little one. It may be spoilt; but naturally it looks up to its parents, and thinks there is nobody like them; and as long as the child is unsophisticated, so it goes on. In the spiritual child that self-forgetfulness is exactly the right feeling.

The little child is the standing witness of true greatness in the kingdom of heaven. In our Lord Himself this was shown fully. The wonder was that He who knew everything, who had all power and might, could take the place of a little child; and yet He did. And indeed you may be sure that the lowliness of a child is in no wise incompatible with a person being deeply taught in the things of God. It is not a lowliness that shows itself in phrases or forms, but the reality of meekness that confides not in itself but in the living God: and that has the respect which God Himself loves that there should be towards those around it. Perfect humility was just as much a feature of our Lord Jesus as was the consciousness of His glory. The two things may well go together: and you cannot have becoming Christian humility, unless there be the consciousness of glory. To behave ourselves lowlily, as children of God, is the beautiful thing the Lord is here putting before us. "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

It is not merely the becoming like little children, as begotten of God, and brought into the family, but there is here the practical work of humbling ourselves. But then comes another thing: not only the humbling ourselves, but how we feel towards others. "Whosoever shall receive one such little child in My name, receiveth Me." Whatever may be the lowliness of the Christian, he should be viewed with all the glory of Christ, which is meant by receiving him in the name of Christ. It is a person that does not defend his rights, nor assert his glory in any way, but is willing to bend and make way for any one; and yet conscious of the glory that rests upon him. There may be the very opposite of this — "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me." What is meant by this? Anything calculated to shake their confidence in Christ, to put a stumbling- block in their way. It does not mean anything said in faithful love to their soul.

People may take offence at this: but that is not what is spoken of here. It is what shakes the confidence of the little one in God Himself. "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." These things are constantly occurring in the world. Therefore, says the Lord, "Woe unto the world because of offences; for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." What is to be done? The Lord shows in two forms the way to guard against these stumbling-blocks. The first is this — I must begin with myself. That is the most important means of not stumbling another. "Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee." It may be in one's service, or in one's walk; but if hand or foot become the occasion of stumbling (something in which the enemy takes advantage against God), deal resolutely and at once with the evil thing. "It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire." The Lord always puts the full result of evil before the soul. In speaking of the kingdom of heaven He takes into account that there may be persons in it false as well as true. He therefore speaks generally. He does not pronounce upon them, and say, "If you really belong to the kingdom you have nothing to fear." But He looks at the kingdom of heaven; and there are persons who apparently enter that kingdom, some of whom may be truly born of God, others not.

The Lord solemnly puts before them, that such as are indifferent about sin are not born of God at all. It is impossible for a soul to be regenerate, and habitually careless about that which grieves the Holy Ghost. Therefore He puts before them the possibility of such being cast into everlasting fire. Of no one who was born of God could this be said. But as there may be in the kingdom of heaven a false profession as well as a true, so a grave thing for the believer to look well to is, that he do not allow sin in any of his members. "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire." It may cost ever so much, but God is not a hard Master: none is so tender and loving. And yet it is God giving us His full mind by the Lord Jesus, Who shows us that this is the only way of dealing with that which may become an occasion of sin (cf. Eph. 5: 5, 6).

The first great source of offence to others, which must be first removed, is that which is a stumbling-block to our own souls. We must begin with self-judgment. But there is also the despising the little ones that belong to God. "Take heed," therefore, our Lord says, "that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven. For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost." A beautiful word; specially as here it is evidently so broadly stated by our Lord, as to take in a real literal little child as well as the little ones that believe in Him. I believe that this chapter was meant to give encouragement touching little ones. The plea on which our Lord goes, is not that they were innocent, which is the way in which they are so often spoken of among men; but that the Son of man came to save that which was lost. It supposes the taint of sin, but that the Son of man came to meet it; so that we are entitled to have confidence in the Lord, not merely for our own souls, but for the little ones too.

But our Lord goes further. "How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? and if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, He rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish." No doubt we can embrace all those that are saved on the same principle, and St. Luke does so in another chapter. The Gospel of Luke shows us (chap. 15) this very parable applied to any sinner. But here the Lord is taking it up in connection with the foregoing, namely, the right feelings for one who belongs to the kingdom of heaven. Starting from a little child, whom He sets in the midst, He carries the thought of the little one all through this part of His discourse. And now He closes with the proof in His own mission, of the interest which the Father takes in these little ones.

But more than this. He now applies it to our practical conduct. Supposing your brother does you wrong, something that may be very hard to bear, perhaps; an evil word, or an unkind action done against you — something that you feel deeply as a real personal trespass against you; the man has done it deliberately, and of course it is a great sin. Nobody knows it but himself and you. What are you to do? At once this great principle is applied. When you were ruined and far from God, what met your case? Did God wait till you put away your sin? It never would have been done at all. God sent His own Son to seek you, to save you. "The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." That is the principle for you to act upon. It is not merely that this is the way in which God acted. You belong to God: you are a child of God. Your brother has wronged you; go you to him and seek to set him right. It is the activity of love, which the Lord Jesus now presses upon His disciples. They are to seek the deliverance, in the power of divine love, of those who have wandered from God. It is not the flesh feeling its wrong, and resenting what has been done against itself. The law would enable even a Jew to judge this.

But now it is grace, and grace does not shroud itself up in its own dignity, and wait till the offender has come and humbled himself and owned the wrong. The law executes punishment upon the guilty. If I have to do with the law at all, I am a lost man. But now another has come in — not the law, but the Son of man, the Saviour of the lost. Nor is this all. I want you, He says, to be walking after the same principle — to be vessels of the same love. As you have received your life from me, so I want your walk to be characterized by grace, going out after that which has sinned against God — grace to seek the man that has gone astray. This is a great difficulty, unless the soul is fresh in the love of God, and enjoying what God is for him. How does God feel about the child that has done wrong? It is the loving desire to have him right. When the child is near enough to know the Father's heart, he goes out to do the Father's will. It may have been a wrong done against him, but he does not think about that. It is his brother who has slipped into evil, and he sorrows over him. It is a real desire of heart to have the person righted who had gone astray; and this, too, not in order to vindicate self, but that his soul may be restored to the Lord. "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone."

He could not bear that another should know it. It is not here the case of a sin known to a great many, but some personal trespass only known to you two. Go, then, to him and tell him his fault between you and him alone. A thing, no doubt, very contrary to the flesh, which would ever demand that the offender should first come and humble himself, or that would act on the worldly ground of not troubling itself about the man, but let him go from bad to worse. Love seeks the good, even of the one who has done ever so wrong. "If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." Love is bent upon gaining the brother. It is always so to him that understands and feels with Christ. It is not the offender, but thy brother that is the thought before the heart. "Thou hast gained thy brother." "But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established." Is it possible for him to resist one or two who come to him, witnesses of the love of Christ? He has refused Christ pleading by one, can he refuse Christ now that he pleads by more? He is sought again. Will he refuse? It may be, alas! that he will. "And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church." The Church means the assembly of God in the place to which the man belonged. "If he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."

It does not mean what people call "a" church now; there is no such thing in the word of God. Scripture never knows anything but God's Church; the Churches Scripture recognizes were simply His assembly in each city or analogous place. And therefore all the terms of men that have been brought in through departure from His thoughts, are entirely unknown in Scripture. "A church," separate from others and independent, has no warrant except in the will of man. Every Christian person is bound, not only to have done with these names, but with the thing itself, because God is looking for reality, and we are bound to act upon the truth of God. His will is that we should not belong to a church of the world or to a voluntary association of our own. Nothing is more simple than for a Christian to act as a Christian. It is only pleasing the flesh whenever we depart out of the path of God. It is evident that this passage contemplates a known assembly to which these persons belonged. It was the Church — the only assembly which we are called upon to acknowledge.

The assembly, then, are told of the guilty person's fault. The thing has been solemnly investigated and pressed home; and the Church now pronounces upon it. The Church warns and entreats this man, but he refuses to hear; and the consequence is — "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." A most solemn thing! A man who is called a brother in the verse before, is like an heathen man and a publican now. We are not to suppose that the man was a drunkard or a thief; but what he has shown is a hardness of self-will and a spirit of self-justification. It might have arisen out of small circumstances; but this unbending pride about himself and his own fault is that on which God may pronounce him to be regarded as an heathen man and a publican; that is, that you no more acknowledge him in his impenitent state as a Christian. And yet it may spring mainly from the spirit of justifying ourselves when we are wrong. In the case of drunkenness, or anything of that kind, there would be no necessity for adopting any such mode of dealing with it. If there were not the least question on the mind of any one as to the sin, the duty of the Church is clear: the person is put away. He might not have been seen by a number of persons: there is no absolute need for that. Nor would there be reason in such a case for going one at a time, and then one or two more. This is only where it is unknown to any one but the individual against whom the trespass has been done. But the Lord shows here how, out of a little spark, a great fire may be kindled. The end of this personal trespass might be that the Church are convinced that the man displays not a trace of Christian life about him. "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." It is not a mere question of agreement. What gives the validity is that it is done in the name of the Lord (see 1 Cor. 5: 4). "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." Whether for discipline, or for making requests of God, the Lord lays down this great principle, that where two or three are gathered together in His name, He is in the midst of them. Nothing could be more sweet and encouraging. And I am persuaded that the Lord had in view the present ruin of the Church when there might be ever so few gathered aright.

No company of saints is thus gathered unless it assemble in obedience to the word of God and nothing else — founded and carried out according to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. Any sect may contain good people, and have good preaching; but these things do not make it to be the Church. Unless it be upon the foundations of the word of God, subject to the Lord by the energy of the Holy Ghost, it is not such. But a person may ask, "Do you mean to say that you are upon that ground?" I can only say that we are taking an immense deal of trouble for a delusion if we are not. We are very foolish in acting as we do, unless we are sure that it is according to the mind of God. I have no more doubt how Christians ought to meet together for worship or for mutual edification, and that we are doing so, than I have about any other directions in the word of God. Not being restrained by rules, there is nothing for it but the word of God; and there is the most entire liberty to carry out that word. But while I speak thus confidently, I feel, on the other hand, that we need to take a very low place. Where members of Christ's body are scattered here and there, humiliation alone becomes us, and this not because of others' ways, but our own. For what have we been to Christ and the Church? It would be very wrong to call ourselves the Church; but if we were only two or three meeting in the name of Christ, we should have the same sanction and blessing as if we had the twelve apostles with us. If through unbelief and weakness the Church at large were broken up and scattered, and if, in the midst of all that confusion, there were only two or three who had faith to act upon the Lord's will, for them the word would still be true, "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." The whole thing is wound up with this grand truth. It is the presence of Christ that gives sanction to their acts. If the Church has fallen into ruin, the business of those who feel this, is to depart from evil; to cease to do evil, learn to do well. We always come to first principles when things get astray. This is the obligation of a Christian man. He is never to go on doing what he knows is wrong. Where a man makes up his mind to do even a little wrong, he is an Antinomian. If people think they may sin in the worship of God, they deceive themselves. "God is not mocked."

There is one other thing that I must close with. Peter says to our Lord, "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?" We had the case of how we were to act in the case of a personal trespass. But Peter raises another question. Supposing my brother sins against me over and over, how often am I to forgive him? The answer is, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven." In the kingdom of heaven — not under the law, but under the rule of Christ — forgiveness is unlimited. How wonderful! To think that holiness, the deeper holiness that Christianity reveals, is at the same time that which feels with the deepest possible love, and which goes out with it to others. So we find here. "I say not unto thee, Until seven times," which was Peter's idea of the largest grace, "but, Until seventy times seven." Our Lord insists that there really was no end to forgiveness. It is always to be flowing out. But remember this: it is a sin against you: it is a person that does wrong to you. We are not to forgive a wrong done to the Lord, till the Lord has forgiven it; and the Lord only forgives upon confession of sin. I am now speaking, not of the grace that meets a man in his unconverted state, the case here is that of a brother. When a man is converted, he has to confess his sins day by day. It shows a wretched state of soul if a person breaks down in his daily path without confession to God. But what we learn here is, that if it is some sin done against you personally, and it is a question how often you are to forgive, the answer is, "Till seventy times seven." God will never be outdone in His perfect love: but even a man upon earth is called to forgive after this wonderful and divine pattern.

"Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants." Then we have two servants brought before us. The king forgives one of them who had been very guilty (who owed him ten thousand talents; practically, a debt which could never be paid by a servant). The king forgives him. The servant goes out from the presence of the king after the debt was remitted, and he meets a fellow-servant who owes him a hundred pence — a small sum indeed in comparison with that which had just been forgiven to himself. Yet he seizes his fellow-servant by the throat, saying, "Pay me that thou owest." But the king hears of it through the sorrow of the fellow-servants, and summons the guilty man before him. What is taught by this? It is a comparison of the kingdom of heaven; and these comparisons refer to a state of things established here below by God's will. While we may take the principle to ourselves, much more is taught than this. Taken in the large way, the servant that owes the ten thousand talents represents the Jew who was peculiarly favoured of God, and yet had contracted the enormous debt that he never could pay. When the Jews had completed this debt by the death of the Messiah, a message of forgiveness was sent them: — "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out." The Holy Ghost presses on them a message of repentance. They had only to do so, and their sins would be blotted out. God would send the Messiah again, and bring in the times of refreshing. The Holy Ghost answered the prayer of our Lord upon the cross, and Peter was entitled to tell them that they were forgiven. "I wot, brethren," he says to them, "that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers"; even as the Lord had said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That does not mean a personal forgiveness, but a national one, which required their faith and repentance.

Thus the servant had heard the sound of forgiveness to himself, but he had no understanding of it. He goes out, and casts a fellow-servant into prison for what was comparatively a very small debt. This is the way in which the Jew acted towards the Gentiles. After rejecting the message of mercy for themselves, the Jews followed the apostle Paul wherever he went, in order to stir up hatred against him. When the apostle told them that he was sent to the Gentiles, the word was, "Away with such a fellow from the earth." That answers to the catching of the fellow-servant by the throat.

It was the hatred of the Jew toward the Gentile. And thus all the debt that God had forgiven them became fastened upon them. The lord says to the servant, "O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me; shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." You may apply this to an individual who has heard the gospel, and who does not act according to it. The principle of it is true now of any mere professor of the gospel in these days, who acts like a worldly man. But taking it on the broader historical scale, you must bring in the dealings of God with the Jews and the Gentiles. The Gentile had, no doubt, treated the Jew badly; but what was all his debt compared with that which God had forgiven the Jew ? The Jew therefore is cast into prison; and he will not leave it until he has paid all that was due. The day is coming when the Lord will say that Jerusalem has received of His hand double for all her sins. Jehovah in His grace will count that Jerusalem has suffered too much. He will apply to them the blood of Christ which can cleanse out the ten thousand talents and more; but the unbelieving generation of Israel are cast into prison, and will never come out; the remnant will, by the grace of God; and the Lord will make of the remnant a strong nation.

Meanwhile, for us the great principle of forgiveness is most blessed, and a thing that we have need to remember. We have specially to remind our souls in the case of anything that is against ourselves. May we at once look stedfastly at what our God and Father has done for us. If we can, in the presence of such grace, be hard for some trifling thing done against ourselves, let us bethink ourselves how the Lord judges here. Sometimes a soul goes on well for a time. But if there is not life from God, a slight circumstance happens, which brings out a man's true state, and then you have such a turning back from Christ, as proves that there is nothing of grace in the man's soul. For where there is life, the warning of God is heeded.

May the Lord grant that His words may not be in vain for us, that we may seek to remember the exceeding grace that has abounded towards our souls, and what God looks for from us.

W. K.

On the Millennium.

A Review of the Late Bishop of Lincoln's Two Lectures, 1875.

W. Kelly.

The Bible Treasury, New Series, vol. 1, p. 252.

Having examined fully Bp. Hall's Revelation Unrevealed, let me now test Dr. Chr. Wordsworth's Two Lectures. But it is important to remark that the term "Millennium" tends to narrow unduly the scriptural evidence. Rev. 20 is undoubtedly the ground for defining the time. This, however important in its place (and it is just the place for it), is quite subordinate. The doctrine of a displayed kingdom, which the Lord Jesus is to establish in power and glory over all the earth and all the nations, with Israel and hence Jerusalem as His center here below, is revealed in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets; it reappears in the Gospels, and is dogmatically laid down in the Epistles, which assure us who now believe of "some better thing." For we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies with (in is the correct word) Christ (Eph. 1: 3) already exalted there at God's right hand. But this only helps those who search the scriptures, to the quite distinct truth of the first dominion, the kingdom, coming to the daughter of Zion, as Micah says with a crowd of others, when the Judge of Israel is no longer rejected by her as now, but owned as Lord in His eternal majesty. The proofs will be given abundantly from the Bible throughout. How long this kingdom will last is defined in Rev. 20: 4; but the general truth has the amplest evidence.

The doctrine imputed to those who assuredly believe in the Millennium, p. 2, is stated incorrectly. "The first resurrection" includes the general mass of the risen saints, as given in the opening clause of Rev. 20: 4:

And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them. These were the armies which were in heaven and followed the Faithful and True when He comes forth to execute judgment (Rev. 19: 11-16), clad in white pure fine linen or byssus, expressly explained in v. 8 as the righteousnesses of saints (cf. Rev. 17: 14). They were already risen and glorified like their Master. Not so the two classes that follow which were till now in the disembodied state. Therefore we read at this point, "and the souls of those beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus and on account of the word of God": a description exactly answering to the early martyrs of the Apocalyptic prophecy (Rev. 6: 9), who cried for vindication, and to whom it was said, "that they should rest yet for a time (i.e. in the separate condition) till both their fellow-servants and their brethren, who were about to be killed as they, should be fulfilled" (v. 11). Here accordingly, and connected especially with these sufferers, we find the later martyrs of the prophecy, "and those who [with a different construction to mark the distinct classes] did not homage to the beast nor to his image, and received not the mark on their forehead and hand," of whom we read in Rev. 13, 14, 15.

As to all this the late Bp. was as unenlightened as Bps. Andrewes and Hall, or the ancient expositors who misled them. Neither Andreas nor Arethas, nor Primasius nor Bede, any more than Origen or Eusebius, Augustine or Jerome, understood the scope of the Revelation or the prophetic word in general. Nor did the Reformers any better, Luther, etc., Calvin, etc.; nor the Anglicans, nor the Presbyterians of Great Britain. The early ecclesiastical writers, whose remains we have, betray rapid and grave departure from the truth. In no subject do they manifest it more than touching the heavenly associations of the Christian and the church. They claim the Jewish hope after a mystical sort. Hence they deny that restoration of Israel to their land under the Messiah and the new covenant, which remains for the Jew in God's mercy, quite distinct from the far more glorious things reserved for us who anticipate them.

Again, risen saints do not reign "on earth," as the old Chiliasts taught (Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Tertullian and Lactantius, etc.), but over it: an error which exposed them, both to much mistake on their own part, and to attacks of men like Dionysius of Alexandria and others who followed in his wake. Further, what deplorable ignorance to speak of Satan gathering the nations to battle, "in order to war with Christ and His church?" What is written in Rev. 20: 9 is the very different statement that "they went up on the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city." That is, the postmillennial insurrection from all quarters of the earth under Satan is to be directed against the saints, who will flock to the land that surrounds Jerusalem, and form an immense "camp" round "the beloved city"; for then indeed is Zion Hephzibah and the land Beulah. The church is not in question. It is an earthly scene. From Rev. 12 Satan has no place in heaven.

Further, Rev. 20 does not reveal "the universal judgment," but expressly the judgment of the wicked dead, small and great, raised for this purpose, set before the great White Throne, and consigned to the lake of fire which is the second death, in contrast with the righteous who shared the first resurrection and reign with Christ, more than a thousand years before that judgment. Here, Dr. W., with the theologians ancient and modern, is directly at issue with the uniform doctrine of scripture, which never teaches such a (general) judgment, but denies it for those who believe. What can be plainer than our Lord's own words in John 5: 24? No doubt the A. V. disguises this fundamental truth of the gospel: for it confounds κρίσις with κατάκριμα, and hence insinuates that the believer may come into κρίσιν or "judgment," though to be saved from "condemnation". But this is to misinterpret scripture according to tradition, not to receive it from God as he revealed the truth. Even the R. V. leaves such an error without a plea.

The entire context makes the truth so plain that there is no excuse for unbelief. For the Lord shows that, founded on His person, the Son of God and Son of man, are two functions. As Son of God He gives life; as Son of man all judgment is given to Him. The veil of flesh gave occasion for man to disbelieve and dishonour Him. It is therefore as Son of man He will judge those who do not believe in Him, the Son of God. He who hears Christ's word and believes Him that sent Him has life eternal and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. For it is now an hour when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. But the unbeliever who dishonours the Son by denying His glory, and consequently does not receive life in Him cannot escape the judgment which the Father has given to Him, that all should honour the Son even as they honour the Father. This the believer does now, and therefore has life instead of coming into judgment. He hears His word and receives God's testimony to Him Who is the true God and eternal life. Judgment is to secure the honour of the Son in those who despise and reject Him now; whereas the believer, having life eternal, lives to honour Him henceforth and for ever. They were not to wonder at this; for an hour is coming (in distinction from that which "now is") in which all that are in the tombs (it is the body therefore) shall hear His voice and shall go forth: those that produced good, unto a resurrection of life; those that did evil, unto a resurrection of judgment. Thus, if we, hear Christ's word, we know that there is no universal judgment, but, as certainly as divine truth can make it, two contrasted resurrections: the one of life for the body on behalf of those who, having life eternal in their souls, produced good things; the other of judgment, because, having refused the Son of God now Who is life, they did only evil things of their own corrupt nature. Their judgment is indeed just, as the salvation of the believer is of grace which fails not.

With the doctrine in the Gospel of John the Revelation entirely harmonizes. For in Rev. 20 we have quite clearly a resurrection of life for those who were blessed and holy, and just as plainly a resurrection for the wicked over whom the second death has power. And the Son of man is He Who, as He gave life to the saints, will judge the wicked who had no part in the first resurrection, as they existed only to dishonour Him and do those evil works which come up in that solemn and everlasting judgment.

We shall all be placed before the judgment-seat of God; and each of us shall give an account concerning himself to God (Rom. 14). We must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each may receive the things [done] by the body, according to what he did, whether good or evil (2 Cor. 5: 10). Not a word in either scripture teaches that it will be at the same epoch, a mistake drawn from not seeing that the judgment of all the nations is of living men on the earth when the Son of man shall appear in His glory (Matt. 25: 31). But these inspired declarations on the one hand carefully avoid weakening the blessed assurance that the believer is by grace exempted from judgment, which Christ bore for him on the cross that he might not bear it; while on the other there will be a complete manifestation of ourselves and of all done in the body, which takes the awful form of judgment for him who rejected Christ and His cross. Each shall give account of himself to God; but the unbeliever must suffer for his sins, because he despised the Son of God and His propitiation which alone annuls them before God.

It is really a question of honouring the Son and hearing His word, and of faith in His work as well as His person. He who receives the truth in its simplicity and fullness as God revealed it avoids the traditional error of a promiscuous or Universal Judgment; which is real heterodoxy as to the gospel, mixes up believers and unbelievers in a way abhorrent to the truth, and plunges souls into doubts and anxieties so that they are often constrained in unbelief to ask, Am I His, or am I not? Dr. W. raised the question as to Rev. 20, with too much confidence in himself and in other men; but it goes far deeper, and the true answer proves how little that able, learned, and pious man, entered into the truth of the gospel itself. But we may see a good deal more before having done with his pamphlet, of which we here notice not quite a page.

Nobody among the many writers on prophecy who have passed before me, ancient or modern, regards the Apocalypse as absolutely continuous chronologically. On the other hand no writer of worth denies that there is continuity in the main. This is quite independent of the view taken of Rev. 20, though of course it falls under the general plan. Assumption or theory cannot decide such a question but internal evidence. There are here, as in other books of the kind, landmarks given by the inspiring Spirit which no one can slight without loss. Inattention to its structure has made vain the attempt of many, of old as at this day, to elucidate its bearing as a whole yet more than in detail.

The co-ordinate hypothesis (p. 3), for instance, is evidently and utterly inapplicable to the two marked series which ran through the prophecy in what may be called its first part, Rev. 6-11. Within themselves the Seals and the Trumpets, as well as the Vials or Bowls in the second part of the book which begins with Rev. 12, bear the seal of consecutiveness on their face. What can be more absurd than to doubt, in a carefully numbered sequence, that the first is before the second, the second before the third, and so on, not in revelation only but in accomplishment? Some have been hardy enough to even question this relative order which is so natural and manifest; but their reasons are as baseless as their scheme refutes itself. The only semblance of difficulty perhaps is in the Seals; but even there, how untenable is the denial! It is the Bishop's assumption (page 4), with many another premillennial as well as postmillennial.

Upon the Epistles to the seven Churches in Asia he first of all argues; but what is said there proves nothing but limited acquaintance with the subject, and an illogical character of mind. They [the Ancient Expositors] did not imagine that the Epistles to the Asiatic churches, in the second and third chapters of the Apocalypse, are to be limited to those seven churches; but, in their opinion, they are to be applied by a figurative expansion to the Christian churches of every age and country (pp. 3, 4). This is transparently another question, distinct from the proper visions of things to come, in the book. But even here the order is not insignificant. Can anything be less reasonable than to displace their relative position or to deny that, prophetically applied, Ephesus is the first and Laodicea the last? Their "figurative expansion" perfectly consists with their order, whether historical or prophetic.

It was mere fancy to say that the period of seven Seals in the sixth chapter [it is really in the opening of Rev. 8] extends from Christ's Advent to the end of the time. What has "silence in heaven for about half-an-hour" to do with eternity? Take it literally or allegorically, the seventh Seal can mean nothing of the sort. Probably it was the sixth Seal which ran in the good bishop's head, as with the "Ancient Expositors" whom he follows, though it is well to say plainly that no exposition of the book is known for several centuries. From none of the more distinguished Fathers have we an extant commentary; any which exist in Greek or Latin are of exceedingly little value.

Those who did write and remain seem to have led Dr. W. into the strange interpretation that the First Seal applies to Christ's Advent, and the Seventh to the end of time. Every part of that scheme is erroneous. The true scriptural figure of our Lord's work at His first Advent is "the sower going forth to sow"; three fourths of the seed failing, and even of the fourth which bore fruit, but a third arriving at perfection. How could a result so checkered and short answer to the archer on a white horse and a crown given him, who went forth "conquering and to conquer?" No room is left in such a symbol for "the apostasy" and "the man of sin," which the apostle declares must be before the day when the Lord appears in glory. Again, there is a manifest analogy between the four horses of the earlier Seals. What more irreverent than to regard the Lord as one of God's inflictions on the guilty world? or the first of them His victory in the gospel, followed by heterogeneous matters?

The Seals run connectedly as the dealings of God with man after "the things that are" (Rev. 1: 19), or the church state (Rev. 2, 3). Then the Lamb opens the book that reveals the measures God takes with the rebellious to put Christ in possession of His promised inheritance (Rev. 5). On this view all is plain enough and consistent; whereas the extant early comments are as unintelligent as those of such as can only read now through their discolored spectacles. Tradition is hardly better than the poor stuff of rationalists. The world, not the church, is the object of the judgment set forth by the four horses (Rev. 6: 1-8). How preposterous to look for the gospel in the white horse or any other! Never is spiritual work set forth by a war-horse of any color, however apt a figure for aggressive power in good or evil.

Hence, as is well-known some who are the antipodes of the late Bp. of Lincoln strive to see in the first Seal Christ's second Advent in judgment! Abstractly this is less extraordinary than applying it to the gospel of grace. For in that day (Rev. 19) He will come forth from the opened heavens, the Faithful and True, on a white horse, with (not a mere chaplet, but) many diadems upon His head, clothed with a garment dipped in blood, and followed by the armies in heaven on white horses. How different from the first Seal! Instead of a bow, even out of His mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword to smite the nations, as He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. The points in contrast make the desired identification impossible.

What then, is the force? The first Seal really imports a time of conquest by prestige. The bow is enough. There is no carnage. It will be more truly than for Julius Caesar, "I came, I saw, I conquered." The second or red horse is characteristically a time that follows of bloodshed, and probably of civil war: peace taken from the earth, "and that they should slay one another," and hence a great sword is given; but in no way the sharp two-edged sword that proceeds out of His mouth in symbol, Who speaks and it is done. The third is the black of scarcity, which presses on the necessaries rather than on the luxuries of life. The fourth is the pale horse of Death, and Hades following, when God's "sore plagues" accumulate over the fourth part of the earth. But a salient part of the truth revealed is their sequence in this order and no other; which is upset by making the first Seal last, or coincident with the last.

As usual in the septenaries of the Revelation, the first four have a common bond, which the remaining three do not share, though they too are connected, each following in due order as the Seals were broken successively. When the Lamb opened the fifth Seal, the prophet saw, not another horse and its rider, but the souls of martyrs for God's word and their testimony "underneath the altar," i.e. as if offered in sacrifice for the truth; approved of God now, but awaiting, for the time of public vindication, the completion of a further band of brethren who should be killed as they were.

Then is the sixth Seal, when not only a great earthquake ensues, but the governmental powers, sun, moon, and stars, are convulsed, and the stablest institutions are smitten, and small and great of men are filled with dread of the Lamb's wrath. They say in their alarm that His great day is come. God does not say so, but reveals that such is the thought and language of their fear: two very different things which many ancients and moderns confound in their shortsightedness. For how could the seventh Seal follow, if the sixth were really the end of man's day, and the great day actually come? It is not so: an immensely important and awful sequel of apostate lawlessness plays its subsequent part, as the Revelation shows plainly, whether people understand or not; for all do not hear who have ears.

When the seventh Seal was opened (Rev. 8: 1), there took place in heaven silence for about half-an-hour; and the seven angels that stood before God have seven Trumpets given them, while the high priest (viewed angelically, for under this series we have angels throughout) intercedes in answer to the prayers of all saints, but herewith the loud tokens of deepening judgment, which falls on the third part of the earth, as in the Trumpet series on the western or Roman earth. These accordingly do go down to the close, and the mystery of God is then finished, not before. The seventh Trumpet really announces the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ as come, while the seventh Seal only ushers in the seven Trumpets after a brief pause. The seven Vials or Bowls on the other hand are made to indicate a special character of judgment before the end comes, in keeping with what we may call the second volume of the Apocalypse. Hence there is necessarily a slight retrogression in their case.

But there is another feature of moment not only to notice but to understand. In each of these three septenaries occurs at the same point a parenthesis, not in the regular course of Seals, Trumpets, and Vials, but apart yet connected with each series. It is uniformly inserted before the seventh takes its course. Thus Rev. 7 is the parenthesis before the seventh Seal is opened; as Rev. 10, 11: 14 before the seventh Trumpet is blown; and Rev. 16: 13-16 before the seventh Vial or Bowl is poured out. It is therefore unfounded to suppose any lack of symmetry or of order in the book.

Heavenly glory was already revealed for the elders in Rev. 4, 5. But Rev. 7, however glorious, does not describe this. There are two scenes in that anticipative parenthesis. One deals with the twelve tribes of Israel, out of whom God lets us not forget that a measured number is sealed for security from the storm of judgment anticipated even after the sixth Seal. The other gives us to see the blessed ways of grace which will have a countless crowd out of every nation and tribe, and peoples and tongues, who come "out of the great tribulation" which is before the age ends. These are to be before the throne of God, and to serve Him in His temple with the Lamb as their Shepherd. It is a pretty strong draught on credulity to confound either with the crowned and enthroned elders who really set forth in symbol the heavenly redeemed (Rev. 4). Why not too distinguish the sealed Israelites from the palm-bearing Gentiles (Rev. 7), who are both to enjoy the blessedness of the kingdom, when the Father's will shall be done on earth as now in heaven, and all be administered above and below by the Lord Jesus to the glory of God?

Far is one from saying that there are no difficulties, for such as we are, in contemplating so boundless a scene. Certainly the prejudices, natural even more to Christendom as it is, hinder spiritual intelligence of the inspired word. But let believers own that the fault is in themselves, never in the scriptures which reflect alike the grace and the truth of God, Who, knowing all perfectly, has deigned to reveal to us the things to come. Let us recognize that what is written is the communication of the Lord; "if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant." There is His word for us. It did not come out from a party; nor did it come to a party only, but to all the children of God (1 Cor. 14: 36-38). Let us not through unbelief be defrauded, nor defraud others, of so interesting and important a part of His gift and of our heritage.

It is unfounded then that the period of the Seals, in Rev. 6, "extends from Christ's Advent to the end of time" (p. 4); it is at least equally so that "after the opening of the Seventh Seal St. John commences again at the initial point from which he had first proceeded." Both series are expressly and in the plainest terms declared to be "the things which shall be" (Rev. 1: 19), and "which must be (4: 1), hereafter," or (more definitely) after "the things which are," the state comprised by the seven churches in Rev. 2, 3. The vision in Rev. 4, 5 is exclusively future, and must be accomplished before the Seals and the Trumpets can begin. The crowned and enthroned elders, etc., are in their due positions on high before a Seal is opened; and the Seals are all opened before the first Trumpet is blown. There is only a brief but solemn silence in heaven "about half-an-hour" between the first series and the second. What can exceed the monstrous interpretation of the ancient commentators, such as Victorinus and Tychonius, that this means the saints' eternal rest! Yet this wild idea, which has not a shade even of plausible appearance to commend it, has prevailed from early days to our own. It is the less reasonable, as the same writers profess to see eternity in the palm-bearing Gentiles before the seventh Seal was opened. This too we have already noticed as a blunder, but at least intelligible if not intelligent: whereas their notion of the half hour's silence, on any feasible principle, is neither. It is a marvel of credulity without reason and against scripture.

Nor is it true that, after the sounding of the seventh Trumpet, a return is made to "the first origin of the church" (ib.). For there is not a trace of "her history" beyond Rev. 2, 3. After that the symbol of the saints glorified is seen as the four-and-twenty elders in heaven (Rev. 4), till this yields to that of the bride, the Lamb's wife, when the due moment comes to present the bridals of the Lamb (Rev. 19). What the Bp. with a crowd of predecessors calls the church (in Rev. 12) is really the symbol of Israel about to appear on the scene, mother of a Son, Male of might, Who is to shepherd all the nations with a rod of iron. Who this great personage is ought not to be inscrutable but most obvious. It is Christ, come of Israel according to flesh (as all know, and both Testaments witness), Head and Bridegroom of the church, not her Son, as perverse misinterpretation alleges. No! The Revelation clearly distinguishes the woman of Rev. 12 from her of Rev. 19, 21, 22. The church is the bride in this book (as the great world-church is the harlot); while the mother is Israel, seen in God's purpose of glorious power as she is destined to in fact, but in sorrow before that time come. For also the dragon is invested with the form of the Roman empire to oppose and devour, so that she must again flee into the wilderness till the day dawn. There are undoubtedly in John's Revelation, as in Paul's Epistles; "some things hard to be understood, which the uninstructed and unestablished wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their destruction"; but the grand outlines here as elsewhere are distinct, and convict the mass of commentators of inattention to scripture.

The truth is, as we may state in brief, that "the beast" had only been named in its antagonism to the Two Witnesses in Rev. 11 and the general stream of prophecy to the close. Then in Rev. 12 (sic) connected with "the ark of God's covenant seen in His temple" (which verse is its proper beginning) we have retrogression to give first the complete history of that portentous power with God's ways in good and against evil. These bring in the Seven Vials, and the descriptive chapters that follow on the corrupt woman and city Babylon and her fall, before the heavenly marriage with the appearing of the Lord Jesus and the Millennial reign. Is it possible to conceive a clearer or more certain view of the order of events in Rev. 19, 20 and up to Rev. 21: 1-8? There a necessarily retrogressive vision is given about the holy bride and her relation to the kings and nations; just as Rev. 17, 18 were a retrogressive description of the great whore to explain what her corrupting relations were to the kings and nations, which at length drew down divine judgment.

In other words, no person that understands the Book of Revelation questions either the parentheses that occur at distinct and unmistakable points, nor the clear retrogression at Rev. 12 for wise and necessary reason. So it is with the descriptive returns of Rev. 17, 18 and of Rev. 21: 9-22: 5, which are introduced in a way precisely analogous, as if to intimate to the reader of any discernment that they answer to each other in contrast. Otherwise the book is strictly consecutive, as indeed the inspiring Holy Spirit has made indelibly plain to all who heed the strongly defined proofs of its internal order. Bp. Wordsworth is, like his guides of antiquity, altogether hazy and haphazard. He slights, as they did, the landmarks which God has given us through the prophet. Neither he nor they perceived the principles of its structure, but they caught at appearances here and there which have no bearing on the relative bearing of its parts. Thus, as all began with guess work, no considerate Christian can wonder that all has resulted in confusion.

But it is surprising that a pious and learned man, as I gladly believe Dr. W. to have been, should so misstate the views in the most ancient remains on the Millennial prophecy. Why cite Bede (8th cent.) and Haymo (9th)? He knew perfectly well that Justin Martyr, as well as the pseudo-Barnabas, Irenaeus (an Asiatic godly bishop of Lyon in Gaul A.D. 177) who wrote in Greek and Tertullian who wrote in Latin, Hippolytus bp. of Portus Rom., Methodius bp. of Tyre, and Victorinus, all the three martyrs, and Lactantius the rhetorician father, believed and taught a literal reign of Christ and the risen saints over the earth. Origen, learned but heterodox, was the only one (those excepted who denied the genuineness of the book) of the pre-Constantinian writers who differed in principle as an extreme allegorist, though he did not live to comment on the Revelation. From Constantine's time indeed writers began to imagine, as it was not to be wondered at perhaps, a present millennium, though not all in the same sense. But it is unnecessary to speak of later Fathers, as I attach not the smallest authority to any of them, however early.

However this may be, the notion of the millennium advocated by the late bp. of Lincoln, no matter who held it, is in every respect absurd. What contempt of the Apocalyptic order to say that John "reascends once more" (p. 5)! What ignorance of Rev. 20 to fancy that it declares what Christ had done for the church since His incarnation? How He had bound Satan! though the N.T. is express throughout to the contrary. See 1 Cor. 5: 5; 2 Cor. 2: 11, 2 Cor. 11: 3, 2 Cor. 12: 7; Eph. 4: 27, Eph. 6: 12; 1 Thess. 3: 18; 2 Thess. 2: 2; 1 Tim. 1: 20, 1 Tim. 3: 6, 7, 1 Tim. 4: 1, 1 Tim. 5: 15; James 4: 7; 1 Peter 5: 8; 1 John 4: 1, 6; Rev. 2: 9, 13, 24, Rev. 3: 9, to say nothing of Rev. 9: 11, 20, Rev. 12: 17, Rev. 13: 4, Rev. 16: 13, 14, Rev. 19: 20. Christ's preservation of His servants in every age no believer contests. But the vision speaks of their reigning; whereas the N. T. reproves such a present thought as the practical folly of the Corinthians, and insists on the contrary that they must suffer now, until "that day." Undoubtedly Christ has done His infinite work, and carries on His intercession and care in every suited and blessed way for us on high, till He appears the second time unto salvation. But this, or His calling to heavenly glory all that are true to Him, or His ordaining strength out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, what has it all to do with a saintly resurrection to reign with Him?

It is a miserable bathos to conclude, that "St. John shows in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse that the failings, which had been described in such vivid colors in the preceding Visions of this book — under the Seals, the Trumpets, and the Vials, — were due to themselves; and that all God's acts toward man are done in equity and love" (pp. 5, 6). A Jew might have said far more; a heathen almost as much. St. John showed this in Rev. 20! The only thing really shown is how utterly, with the one exception of Rev. 17, 18, Dr. Chris. W. misunderstood the book as a whole, and this chapter in particular: else he never could have conceived an inference so pitiful and even imbecile. And this is the real moral to be drawn: that a man, be he ever so respected and able otherwise, should seek to comprehend a book before he writes. Think of his adding, "This twentieth chapter, then, according to this view, is a summary of the Apocalypse"!!! Beyond doubt, "it is in perfect harmony with the whole." It is the moral picture and bright issue of what he calls "this sublime drama." And when so regarded, it gives no countenance to Dr. W.'s Anti-millenarian notions.

In the next section II. (6-14) the Bishop proposes "to consider the reasons pleaded in behalf of Millenarian opinions," but really offers his own reasons against them. He is like others under the delusion that the doctrine rests on one single passage of scripture, Rev. 20. If it were so, God's word once spoken is amply sufficient for faith, as a thousand times would not suffice for unbelief. But that kingdom is revealed in many scriptures of both Old T. and New; and, once received, it is seen to fill a very large part of the Bible indirectly as well as directly in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelation. Not to have seen this implies sad prejudice and lack of intelligence (in divine matters).

John 14: 2 and Luke 20: 36, as well as John 12: 32, Acts 1: 11, Acts 3: 21, John 5: 28, 29, John 6: 39, John 12: 48, 1 Cor. 15: 52, 1 Thess. 4: 15, 2 Thess. 1: 7, Matt. 16: 27, Matt. 25: 31, 32, Luke 9: 26, 2 Tim. 4: 1, and Dan. 12: 2 are the texts culled to prove that a Millennium is repugnant to scripture. On the contrary every one of these falls in with the doctrine; some even demonstrate its truth, besides the bulk of distinct testimony which is left out.

Thus the Christian's hope of Christ's coming to present us in the Father's house above is as consistent with the Millennium as is our risen equality with angels. Other scriptures prove the blessing of Israel and the nations on the earth at that very time under Christ's reign, as Matt. 19: 28, Rev. 21: 24-26, and in the O.T. Isa. 11: 10-13, Isa. 24: 21-23, and Zech. 14: 5-9.

Theologians in general quite overlook Eph. 1: 10, God's purpose in Christ for an administration of the fullness of the times; which is to head or sum up all things in Him, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth — in Him in Whom we too were made to have lot or inheritance; for we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Here we learn in the dogmatic teaching of the great apostle, and not only in parable or prophecy, that God will put the entire universe heavenly and earthly under Christ; and that we shall share it with the Heir of all things in that day of glory. This is neither the present time of gathering the heirs, nor the eternal state, when it will be no longer a question of His government; but having put down all enemies He gives up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15: 28). Hence, as a groundwork for it, we hear in the companion Epistle to the Colossians that all the fullness was pleased in Him to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of His cross — by Him the things on the earth and the things in the heavens (Col. 1: 19, 20). For it is to be on the basis, not of His creative rights only, or of His incarnation, but of the reconciling work in His death.

To leave out of our faith and hope the counsels of God is to have no intelligent communion with the future display of Christ's glory. It is also to ignore the mystery of Christ and the church; and this is just where believers are for the most part, since they betook themselves to the weak and beggarly elements against which the apostle strove so strenuously and solemnly in early days. He knew, and took care that we should hear, that after his departure grievous wolves should enter in among the Christian confessors, and among their own selves should men arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. And so it came to pass that Christendom lost largely the sense of God's grace and almost wholly the understanding of His glory as purposed for Christ "in that day." Through the influence of such as Origen and Eusebius, or of the more sober and orthodox Augustine and Jerome, the hopes of Israel were denied; and consequently the church, ignorant of her heavenly glory with Christ, was held to have succeeded to the earthly inheritance. This is what the apostle dreaded for the Gentile, as we may see in Rom. 11, lest he should be wise in his own conceit, and, instead of fearing, become boastful to his ruin and eventual cutting off.

Why the Bp. referred to John 12: 32 is strange; for it refers to the attractive power of Him crucified, and has no bearing on the question. But Acts 3: 21, especially 19-21, refutes his own view; for it proves that the Lord Jesus is to be sent from heaven for the restoration of all things according to the testimony of the holy prophets since time began. This is the Millennium, not the White Throne judgment; and Acts 1: 11 agrees with it, for He will come to restore the kingdom to Israel as well as for other glorious designs of God. Among these, and of the deepest moment, is His raising bodies, as He is now quickening souls (see John 5: 25-29). But it is an error of the first magnitude to think of one simultaneous resurrection. Our Lord here speaks of two, in open contrast of character, "of life," and "of judgment," or as elsewhere called "of just and unjust." These Rev. 20 declares, as might be expected from the great Christian prophecy, severed by more than 1,000 years for a momentous purpose, the special reign of Christ and His own over (not "on") the earth, where they once were holy sufferers, and distinct from reigning in life throughout eternity, wherein even the millennial saints that never suffered will in due time share.

"The Last Day" is the general expression in John 6, 11, 12 for that time which begins by our Lord raising the believers and ends with judging the faithless, answering to the two resurrections, and opposed to the Jewish hope of present exaltation under a living and reigning Messiah as things are. There is no difficulty in the "hour" of John 5: 28 covering 1,000 years and more, since the "hour" of v. 25 covers admittedly a still longer space. It is therefore unfounded and indeed plain contradiction of scripture to say "there will be no Millennial interval between the Resurrection of the saints and the Universal Judgment." It is an absurdity to talk of both taking place on one and the same day, unless the last day be understood as already explained (an epoch spanning the millennium): why imagine an ordinary day?

For not only do 1 Cor. 15: 52 and 1 Thess. 4: 16 fall within its capacious limits, but 2 Thess. 1: 7, Heb. 9: 27, Matt. 16: 27, Luke 9: 26, 2 Tim. 4: 1, Matt. 25: 31, 32, Isa. 2, 4, 11, 12, 24, 25, 26. 27, Jer. 30-33, Ezek. 12, etc., and Dan. 12: 2, varied as they are in scope and character. But why need particulars be cited, when prophecy as a whole bears on it? It is the day when the Lord takes in hand His execution of God's purpose in good and evil from raising the saints to judging the wicked, as distinguished from the first man where all ends in failure and ruin through sin.

As to all this the Bp.'s views, through heeding human tradition, were vague and confused, defective and even false. With Christendom generally he was a Ptolemaist, not a Copernican; he made the church his center, not Christ; and thus, bending all scripture to his own relations, he left no room for the various glories of Christ for earth as well as in heaven, and for His reign over Israel and all nations, and indeed for His displayed supremacy over all creation, which we shall share with Him. Hence, too, his ignorance of the judgment the Lord will execute on the habitable earth (ç æ ) in righteousness at His appearing, as well as earthly rejoicing and the multitude of the isles glad at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth, when idolatry will with shame vanish for ever and the desert blossom as the rose.

No doubt the ancient Chiliasts were in error who only saw the earth restored and the glorified reigning with Christ on it; but so were the theologians who transferred all thoughts to heaven and the souls in bliss eventual if not present with Christ, among moderns even to losing sight of, if not denying, the resurrection. But even Gen. 14 might have taught these shortsighted men on both sides a better lesson of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, as will be made manifest by our Lord in His day when the enemies are delivered into His hand, and the friends are refreshed after the victory is won over all the opposing might. The great foe will then be restrained by power, as he never has been, the pledge of his final and everlasting punishment. The true or at least antitypical Melchizedek shall sit and rule, a priest on His throne (Zech. 6: 13), no longer hidden, but every eye shall see Him, not only after that "order" as He is now, but then also in the exercise of His royal priesthood, blessing man from God and blessing God the Most High from man, when hateful rivals, mere nonentities with demons behind, are gone for ever. Oh, what a blank where all this, and much more accompanying it and hanging on it, to Christ's glory, are unperceived and unbelieved, though clearly revealed in God's word!

Dr. W. urges (p. 9) that the saints reign with Christ, not that He reigns with them. This no sound Christian disputes; but he uses it to deny Christ's reign and ours with Him over the earth. It is not wise to plead either Eph. 2: 6 or Rev. 1: 6 to get rid of that future glory we are to share. He tells us in a note that the best MSS. of Rev. 5: 10 have the present tense. But the fact is that the most ancient extant () has the future, and so has the Porphyrian uncial of cent. 9, with some 30 cursives, and the best Latin copies, Coptic, etc.; whereas the Alex. and the Basilian uncial (of cent. 8) support the present with less than 30 cursives, etc. Of these the Alex. might have greater weight, but that it alone reads the present in Rev. 20: 6; all else give the future. The title of king given to the believer in no way means that he is now reigning, which the apostle reproves in First Corinthians as inconsistent with an actual call to suffer with Christ. Assuredly John 10: 28 implies simply that no hostile power can pluck out of His hand as Phil. 3: 21 shows that at His coming He will prove Himself Savior of our bodies as He is now of our souls.

What he failed to see is that scripture is abundant and plain in assuring that, distinct from the present and before eternity, Christ will come in glory to reign over Israel and all nations according to the consentient testimony of the Prophets, confirmed by His own words in the Gospels, and the Holy Spirit's witness in the Epistles, and by the Book of Revelation. He thought such an expectation leads necessarily into low and irreverent notions concerning our Lord. Entirely do we sympathize with the hope for the glorified of our proper blessing in the heavenly places; but to slight the prospects of a blessed earth for Israel and the nations is not faith but prejudice (p. 10). O.T. and N. we have seen to be an ample and irrefutable witness to it. If sin entered there, the Son of God came there to put it away by the sacrifice of Himself. Satan achieved the greatest success there; Satan will be thence expelled, first for a long while, then for ever. God there displayed His grace in Christ; in Christ God will there display His glory.

So far from there being any inconsistency the kingdom of God when manifested has its heavenly things no less than its earthly; and all things shall not only be put but seen under Christ the Heir of all, heavenly and earthly headed up in Him, as they were all reconciled to God by His work on the cross. The low view is the curtailing of Christ's glory, nor is it true reverence to explain away plain scripture. Others yielding to unbelief think that for a Divine Person to take flesh and die on the cross is incredible degradation. Why should it seem to disgrace Christ risen and glorified to reign over the earth for 1,000 years, besides the perfect and unbroken rest of eternity? It will accomplish unfulfilled scripture and display a righteous kingdom over men as Christ only can. The Deity of Christ stands distinct and intact, and indeed will derive further and rich evidence thereby.

It is all a mistake (p. 11), though made by early Fathers and those who have since followed guides so erring, that the earth is to be peopled by the risen saints. Not so; they will have heavenly glory and reign with Christ over the earth, not on it, as we see in the symbolic New Jerusalem (Rev. 21: 9 ff. and 22). Israel will then be on earth a saintly people, not in name only but in reality; and the nations shall seek (as they have not yet done) unto the Rod of Jesse; and His resting place shall be glory. And all the creation that still groans shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty (not of grace, as is the new creation even now, but) of the glory of the children of God. Therefore we that have the first-fruits of the Spirit, though we too groan within ourselves, do all the more wait for the adoption, the redemption of our body; as the earnest expectation of the creature also waits for our revealing, the signal of its deliverance. What difficulty is there in believing that the unconverted among the nations, though controlled by the power of the great King, surrounded with abundance of all good, and freed from the Tempter, will relapse under his wiles when he is let loose for a little season, and be consumed with fire? It is only the "monstrous" mistake of the Bp. that the risen saints are concerned. The earthly saints, Jews or Gentiles, are threatened by Satan, not his allies.

It is false that the present mixed state (p. 12) will continue when Christ reigns. For the darnel and wheat grow together unto the end of the age (à), not of the world ( åæ ). The error excludes the judgment of the quick, and of the habitable earth (Acts 17), as well as of the world- kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. 11: 15). All the parables cited, good and bad fish, good and bad guests, wise and foolish virgins, find their separation at the end of this age; and the Millennium is no gulf (p. 13) but a blessed bridge between the age's end and the eternal state.

So the Thessalonian saints (p. 13), like others, were waiting for Christ's coming, which is followed by the Millennium. It is His appearing that destroys the man of sin before the kingdom is set up in power and glory. When Christ our life shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory (Col. 3: 4); we are caught up before, and follow Him out of heaven for that day of judgment of the earth (Rev. 17: 14, Rev. 19: 14). 2 Peter 3 warns those who mock His promised coming with His day, which fills a thousand years and does not close till the universe melts with fire; and Rev. 1: 9, Rev. 11: 18, agrees with this.

The creeds of Christendom do not contradict (p. 16) the Millennium. The Athanasian confesses the foundations of the faith; the so-called Apostles' Creed is rather infantine like the Nicene. They do not assert the Millennium. Utterly false is it that, if true, it would falsify Christ's promises to His church; for on the contrary in the millennial day the world will see that the glory, which the Father gave Him, He gave them, perfected as they will then be into one, that the world may know the Father sent the Son and loved those glorified saints as He loved Christ (John 17: 22, 23). I am sorry to say that such language betrays infatuation, but am glad to agree that it is no question of the early Patristic writers, but of scripture (p. 15). No importance is attached to the Rabbis either (p. 15).

And as to Cerinthus or the like, one abhors their heterodoxy yet more than Montanist enthusiasm (p. 17). What matters the opinion of a worldly-minded semi-Arian like Eusebius about Papias? Neither (pp. 18, 19) is an authority, any more than the Romanist expositor who falsely attributes the decline of faith in the Apocalypse to millenarian teaching. None love, understand, or enjoy that blessed book so much as those who believe what it teaches of that kingdom (p. 20). The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse clashed with men's will, and hence were unjustly questioned by men of shallow faith, like Caius the early Roman presbyter (p. 20). Origen, learned and clever indeed, was but a sorry defender of the faith. Did not the Bp. know that he was unreliable and wild, even to the ungodliness of universalism? Surely also Dionysius of Alexandria (p. 23), an able man without doubt, cannot be acquitted of strange doctrine on Christ's person in opposing the Sabellians. Nor was Jerome (pp. 24, 25) a model of orthodoxy any more than of temper, though an erudite and laborious translator. Augustine of Hippo was one of greater weight; but we have to bear in mind that the Millennial views he opposed (pp. 26, 27) were not sound, those which were rejected by the Reformers and the Puritans (pp. 28-31). Only it is certain that some of the best instructed and most pious men in the Anglican body found no such incompatibility in its formularies with their faith in Christ's millennial reign as the Bp. argues, who himself narrows "the last day" unscripturally (p. 22). The prayer in page 33 is on the contrary consistent. "The end of the world" is the mistake repeated from the A. V. of Matt. 13: 39, 49. We all value the Apocalypse at least as much as the Bp. (pp. 33, 36) and do not share in daily use the slight which the Book of Common Prayer puts on that divine book, while it honours the Apocrypha for its lessons in Oct. and Nov. and more.

The second Lecture calls for fewer words. How strange the doctrine that Christ through His death bound Satan! — that this is the true interpretation of Rev. 20: 1-3 (pp. 37-44)! and that the first resurrection of vv. 4-6 is not bodily but spiritual by baptism! Hence they live with Christ and are made unto God Kings and Priests in Him (p. 52), and even now judge the world and angels by the precepts of the Law, etc. represented by the 24 elders, as the four cherubim typify the Gospels! This Bp. Wordsworth will have to be the authorized interpretation of the church, attested for more than a thousand years by such as Origen, Dionysius, Jerome, Augustine, etc.

On the face of the prophecy this scheme ignores its plain structure. For Rev. 19 beyond a doubt supposes Babylon on earth fallen for ever, and in contrast the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven, followed by heaven opened, and the Lord with His armies, His saints, emerging to execute judgment on the Beast and the kings of the earth, and their armies. Thereon, not before, ensues the binding of Satan for a thousand years (not days), and the long predicted reign of the saints over the earth for the same long period. Yet during it the Beast reigns also, not only the ten horns but his the one great authority to whom the dragon gives his power! What? . . . during the reign of Christ and His saints! Such is Dr. W.'s scheme. Hear on the contrary the scriptural expectation.

And it shall come to pass that Jehovah shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth (Isa. 24: 21). In that day Jehovah with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea (Isa. 27: 1). Only the N.T. is fuller and more precise, giving stages in Rev. 12: 2, Rev. 20: 1-3, and v. 10, of which the present vision is intermediate. The same N.T. leaves no shadow of doubt that, though the work is wrought by which Satan will be crushed for ever, he is still active in deceiving the nations, as well as in tempting, hindering, and accusing the saints: Acts 5: 3, Acts 19: 13-16, Rom. 16: 20, 1 Cor. 5: 5, 2 Cor. 2: 11, 2 Cor. 4: 4, 2 Cor. 7: 5, 2 Cor. 11: 14, 2 Cor. 12: 7, Eph. 2: 2, Eph. 4: 27, Eph. 6: 11, 12, 16, 1 Thess. 2: 18, 1 Thess. 3: 5, 2 Thess. 2: 2, 9, 1 Tim. 1: 20, 1 Tim. 3: 7, 1 Tim. 4: 1, 1 Tim. 5: 15, 2 Tim. 2: 26, James 4: 7, 1 Peter 5: 8, 1 John 2: 13, 14, 1 John 3: 8, 10, 1 John 4: 4, 6, 1 John 5: 18, 19, Rev. 2: 9, 13, 24, Rev. 3: 9, Rev. 9: 11, Rev. 12: 7-17, Rev. 13: 1, 2, Rev. 16: 13, 14. These scriptures abundantly prove that the promised binding is still future, and that Bp. W.'s notion is hopelessly at war with revealed truth. Nothing could be farther from his intention; which the more illustrates the peril of deserting the plain word of God in deference to the thoughts of men, however venerable or numerous. The binding of Satan is reserved for the presence and day of the Lord.

"The first resurrection" only, and brightly, confirms this. The O.T. saints and those of the N. T. the church were already in heaven; for how else could the Lamb's wife have made herself ready for the marriage? These saints had been symbolized by the 24 elders (Rev. 4, and in 5 also by the four cherubim): which is as sure from the context as the application to the 24 books of O.T. scripture and to the four Gospels is a chimera. Here that symbol changes to "the bride," and "the guests" at the Lamb's marriage supper; and this again to "the armies" that follow the Lord out of heaven, when He assumes the character of Warrior. Then in Rev. 20 we have the change from "white horses" to "thrones" when the reign is to begin. In Dan. 7 the thrones were set. Here they are filled. "And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was given to them." These were the saints already glorified, who had followed the Lord out of heaven (Rev. 18: 14, Rev.19: 14).

"And I [I saw] the souls of those that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God." These were the martyrs whose souls were seen under the altar in Rev. 6: 9, who were slain in the earlier persecutions of the book after the elders were seen complete in heaven, and who were also told that they should rest yet a little while till their fellow servants also and their brethren that should be killed even as they were should be fulfilled. But now as these were fulfilled under the later persecutions of the Beast, these two classes are raised together. Hence we read, "and such as (or whosoever) worshipped not the beast nor his image, and received not his mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." "Souls" is therefore strictly correct, as in Rev. 6: 9, so here in v. 4. They had died and were seen in the disembodied state; but now "they lived," which has no reasonable sense but in a resurrection from the dead, as it must be also to "reign with Christ a thousand years." And this is the uniform apostolic doctrine of the N.T. "If so be that we suffer with [Him] that we may be also glorified with [Him]" (Rom. 8). "If we died with Him, we shall also live with Him" (2 Tim. 2). "Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14).

Granted that "a thousand years' reign" must not be confounded with "reigning in life," as all saints shall throughout eternity. But the principle of the difference is as clear as it is scriptural. The millennial reign is for those that suffer with Christ, which embraces all that are His in O. and N.T. times till He comes for them and presents them on high. It is not restricted to saints who suffer for Him. All saints who from the beginning suffered with Christ share that reign. But those who suffered in the Apocalyptic troubles were only called of God while the glorified are seen on high. As they did not survive to welcome His appearing for the reign, they are thus raised at the last moment, not to be reigned over, but to reign with Christ like those already seen seated on the thrones. Those thus honoured are then fulfilled:

The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be completed. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of the Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Such is the simple and unforced interpretation of the vision, as worthy of the Lord and of the prophet, as that of the Lecture is mean, and harsh, as incongruous with the Apocalypse generally as with this particular context. The plain and just meaning furthers the action of the Book and is consistent with all revealed truth, not to say requisite for God's glory, and the Lamb at that juncture. "Know ye not that the Saints (not the martyrs only) shall judge the world? . . . Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" Those converted during the millennium escape all suffering with Christ; for there is no enemy there to sift or tempt, Satan being forcibly kept away. Hence they will have no such reigning before the world, then for the first time, as the millennium affords for Christ's holy sufferers. Yet like all saints, they "shall reign in life by the one, Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5: 17).

It would have been easy to have criticized the lecture in detail from first to last; as it would have been difficult in that case to have avoided sharp notice of singularly wild sentiments, if one dealt with the statements as they deserved. It is preferred therefore to let the distinct enunciation of the truth itself dispel the error, which leaves a lamentable blank in the future of the universe, where God has revealed, in both Testaments, the grandest scheme for the glory of Christ and the saints of the heavenly places to the joy of all creation, especially of Israel and all the nations, before the judgment of the dead and the eternity which follows. How blind are all who, listening to tradition, fancy that the state of things which began with the cross, wherein Satan is still the prince and god of this age, is the reign of the saints with Christ predicted by John! No, that reign is the restitution of all things (Acts 3), the revealing of the sons of God, when the whole creation ceases to groan, the idols utterly pass away, all families of the earth are blessed in Christ, He and His heavenly ones shine in heavenly glory, and Jehovah alone is exalted in that day. The gospel and the church are given their special development in the N.T. But the visions of glory promised to Israel and of blessing for all the nations of which the O.T. speaks must surely be "in that day."

On the Millennium

Remarks on Dr. Wardlaw's Sermon on the Millennium

W. Kelly.

The Prospect 2: 36-40.

In considering this discourse, which is as candid and as able as can be found on that side of the question, the reader will do well to bear in mind the apology which the author has made for himself (Sermons, p. 492). He acknowledges certain defects, of which we may frequently see clear evidences. No one, therefore, will charge me, I trust, with presumption, any more than with a hypercritical spirit, if it be needful to point out errors which a more patient discriminating search of the prophetic word must have corrected. The author here fully allows that he is far from being familiar with the subject, however unconscious he is of the mistakes into which he has fallen.

But let it be premised, wherein one can agree with him. Contrary to the interpretation of many popular millenarians, I believe that the privileges and glory of the Church are characteristically heavenly. This, and no other, is our calling. The hope is laid up for us, not here, but in heaven (Col. 1: 5). It is in the heavenly places we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1: 3). Our head is, not a living Messiah sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but a risen, glorified Christ at the right hand of God above, and we are by God's grace seated in Him there (Eph. 1: 20; Eph. 2: 6). And if we look at Christ in Spirit here, it is Christ in or among us the hope of glory (Col. 1: 27); not a Messiah reigning, — a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, which was the constant expectation of the believing Jews, from the time of Abraham downwards — not such a Messiah merely, accomplishing all the old familiar prophecies and ruling over the Gentiles, but a Christ in them now, and that as the hope of a glory yet unfulfilled, entirely hidden during all the ages and generations of the Old Testament, but now made manifest to the saints of God. This glory will soon be accomplished in heaven; meanwhile, Christ in us, the hope of it, is a secret no longer hidden, but plainly revealed and enjoyed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Hence, while on earth, which is not our element, the Church is really and distinctively a heavenly body — not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world. Hence, it is not merely to make all men see what is the fellowship (or the dispensation) of the mystery hid in God previously; but to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God (Eph. 3). The Jews had been, and will be, the earthly people and witness of God. And so, finally, we wrestle, not as Israel did, against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly places (Eph. 6). Blessings, standing, testimony, conflict — all are essentially heavenly; the contrast of Jewish place and privilege, which were of earth. Thus, to Israel the promise was of earthly exaltation, the mountain of the Lord's house being established on the top of the mountains and people flowing to it, and many nations, or Gentiles, as such (and not an election out of them) coming, and saying: "Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" {Isa. 2: 3, 4}. To the church, it was no more the honoured mountain, nor yet the city of solemnities, where was the place which Jehovah chose to himself for an house of sacrifice, but an hour when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth. No earthly temple need they, who, having Jesus Christ Himself as the chief corner stone, are growing unto an holy temple in the Lord, themselves in Him builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. The glory of a particular earthly people or place had no glory now, by reason of the glory which excelleth, the glory of the Lord above, which we all, the Church on earth, behold even now. Again, far from earthly peace and triumph, to us it was in this world tribulation, not merely as the needed path, but positive privilege; "for unto you," said the apostle Paul, "it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake" {Phil. 1: 29}, and if we suffer we shall also reign over them: we shall reign with Him, joint heirs with Him* {2 Tim. 2: 12}. Thus it is not to us, as to Israel, every man dwelling under his vine and under his fig-tree, no one making them afraid; but many mansions in the Father's house, and Christ gone to prepare a place for us, and coming again to receive us unto Himself, that where He is we may be also {John 14: 3}. Doubtless, the Father will take care that the world may know that He has loved us as He loved Christ: the glory by and bye will manifest and demonstrate this beyond all question. Still, to us, the blessed thing is to be with Christ, where He is. Briefly, Israel is the grand national witness of God's justice on earth; the Church is the body of an exalted Christ, the blessed vessel of God's grace for heaven. They had carnal ordinances, visible sacrifices, a human priesthood and a worldly sanctuary; to us of the heavenly calling, Christ is our one Priest, Ordinance, and Sacrifice, and that in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man. Their weapons and enemies, blessings and hopes, were as plainly of earth and the flesh as ours are spiritual and heavenly. At the outset I would state the unspeakable privileges of the Church, even more fully than is done in the sermon.

*Supposing the Church to be meant by Rev. 5: 10, the verse does not state that the Church shall be on the earth, but that these saints shall reign over it.  Ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς after a verb of reigning, governing, etc., means not the locality where the judge resides, but the sphere of government. The authorised version conveys a wrong idea, which to this day misleads many students of prophecy.

And now to notice briefly the observations seriatim.

1. The first is already anticipated. I admit, not only that heaven is the locality where Jesus is, but that there depart the spirits of the saints who have fallen asleep in Christ, to be present with the Lord (Phil. 1: 21-23; 2 Cor. 5: 6-8). But the latter of these passages explicitly shows us a blessedness beyond that of the separated spirit with the Lord. Paul was willing (verse 8) rather to be absent from the body (i.e. the present body of sin and death) and to be present with the Lord; but it was not the thing which he earnestly desired. This was quite another thing — "to be clothed upon with our house which is FROM heaven" {2 Cor. 5: 2}; which is especially contrasted with death and the separate state, and as decidedly preferred. "Not for that we would be unclothed, (i.e. of the body,) but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life" {2 Cor. 5: 4}; i.e. the transformation or change, which is the exact opposite of, and triumph over, death. As to the passage in Philippians, although no one doubts that, personally, it is far better to depart and be with Christ, than to abide in the flesh, let any unbiased Christian read Phil. 3: 10, 11, and say whether it does not manifest that the apostle never for a moment puts the separate state into comparison with the resurrection. That, and not the separate state, however preferable to present conflict and temptation in the flesh, was the result and complement of Christ's resurrection. Hence, as in the close of the same chapter, is clear, it is not death that we expect: "We look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body" {Phil. 3: 20, 21}. Is it IN heaven? That is the author's view; but the Holy Spirit teaches us that it is FROM heaven. Our citizenship, our only true and worthy citizenship, is there, even at present — it is in heaven — from which also we look for the Savior. Thus, the very scriptures here cited, if impartially examined, prove that the apostle did not stop short at the mere blessedness of the spirit with Christ. He waited and longed for the resurrection of the body in the image of Christ, for we are predestined to be conformed to His image that He might be the first-born among many brethren. Indeed, the very creation earnestly awaits the manifestation of the sons of God, which is consequent upon our resurrection.

Next, the objection of improbability does not seem to be of much force, because these matters are not in any way questions of à priori likelihood, but of revelation. And here I take my stand that even the author himself, I suppose, admits the fact, that Christ will at some time come from heaven. That is, the principle is confessed, against which he is here contending. The object of Christ's leaving heaven, as well as the period involved in that action, may be questioned; but the fact itself, be it recollected, all admit, and that fact embodies the principle I contend for here.*

*In page 497, the author misquotes scripture. He refers, I suppose, to Matt. 25. He speaks of "the heaven of heavens; the place prepared for His people from before the foundation of the world." Matthew speaks not of heaven, but "the kingdom," and that prepared, not "before," but "from the foundation," which entirely subverts the author's inference. John 14 again, which speaks of the Father's house,  not of the kingdom, says: "I go to prepare a place for you;" which differs widely from being prepared before the foundation of the world.

2. If many millenarians have lost sight of the general analogy of the book of Revelation, Dr. W. appears to have hardly a ray of light upon it at all. Prophetical books are not necessarily literal, nor figurative, nor symbolic. In Ezekiel, and Daniel, and Jeremiah, we find all three styles occurring in each. For example, in Ezekiel 37 we have the valley of dry bones, confessedly a symbolic vision, and later the symbol of the two sticks: but substantial facts were conveyed by both. Again, "Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost. . . . I will open your graves" {Ezek. 37: 11, 12}, are clearly figurative expressions; but they do not the less indicate positive facts. Lastly, we have a number of plain literal expressions in verses 21-28 of the same chapter, some of which are the explanation of the foregoing symbols and figures. Prophecy is future history; and God may, and does, communicate it, in the forms which seem good to Him. Is 2 Samuel to be rejected as real history, because the Holy Ghost has begun it with a dirge (2 Sam. 1) and closed it with a song, (2 Sam. 22) alike full of the boldest and most beautiful, but true figures?

It is granted, that the vision which precedes the one in question, is symbolic. But, mark, if we have the symbol, the dragon, we have the explanation immediately after, "which is the devil and Satan;" if the prophet saw in the vision the key, chain, prison, and seal, connected with that old serpent, surely, it does not take much spirituality to discern that, by all this, was meant, not the final crushing under the woman's seed, but a previous intervention of God by an angel, to confine the tempter and destroyer during a certain defined period; that is to say, as in Ezekiel, so in Revelations, we have a symbolic vision with its meaning literally annexed, so far at least as God judged needful to guard against mistake. Now, it is upon exactly the same principle that I understand the next vision. As the key and seal are symbolical of a confinement and security thereupon, the thrones which John saw convey the idea of the kingly dominion which will succeed the binding of Satan. Neither the key nor the thrones were other than prophetic symbols; but they were equally symbols — one of what God would do to His enemy, the other of what He would do for His friends during the period of the thousand years.

3. Even if it be agreed that "the souls of them that were beheaded" is not parallel to "the souls (i.e. persons) that were beheaded," and that such texts as Acts 2: 41; Acts 3: 23; Acts 7: 14; Acts 27: 37, are not quite in point; still, what are we taught? As John (John 6: 9-11) saw in vision "the souls of them that were slain" not yet re-united to their bodies, but crying: "How long, O Lord," proving evidently, that they were in a condition short of what they longed for, but knew would soon be theirs; so here, after the expiration of the little season, when their fellow-servants and brethren were now killed, as they had been before, we have the description of all these souls joined to their bodies (Rev. 20: 4). "They lived," etc.,* implies this.

*Nor can this expression be applied to "the souls," but to "the beheaded;" unless the soul dies, which Dr. W. does not hold. A resurrection of spirits is nonsense. But that those who had fallen asleep — whose souls were seen in their separate state — should live again, is good sense, and the simple meaning of the passage.

But, when Dr. W. asks, "What was the meaning of the symbol?" and answers, "a glorious revival and extensive prevalence of the spirit and character of those who had laid down their lives for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus," it astonishes one that he should have been so pre-occupied with the notions of certain interpreters as to overlook the fact that He who revealed the symbol has adjoined His own explanation — "This is the first resurrection". Just as, lower down, in the same chapter, having spoken of the lake of fire, the Spirit of God adds, "This is the second death;" the terrible explanation of that terrible symbol.

4. We have to notice the confusion in the first words, "the figure of a resurrection," as applied to Rev. 20. It is the exact opposite; it is the interpretation, not the thing to be interpreted. Nothing of the sort occurs therefore in this passage. Let us compare it with those here alleged.

Now, first, in Ezekiel 37, be it noted, that the dead state and then the revival of dry bones, is the symbol, and this is interpreted to mean the whole house of Israel brought out of their low estate, (or the grave, figuratively,) and God's Spirit put upon them, and they thus living, and placed in their own land. Here, on the contrary, visions pass before the prophet's eye, and in the one instance, the explanation given is, "this is the second death;" in the other, "this is the first resurrection." In other words, while the resurrection of the bones is explained to be a symbolic pledge of Israel's revival in Ezekiel, John's vision is as positively explained to be a resurrection — the first resurrection seen symbolically, of course. Secondly, Dr. W. weakens and departs from the plain scope of the explanation given by the Spirit of the early part of Ezekiel 37; for, while nothing is said about the deceased children of Abraham, either in the vision or in the interpretation of it, the latter does decidedly and literally predict the resuscitation and establishment of the same house of Israel, which was then scattered among the heathen. If a literal Israel was scattered, a literal Israel was to be brought back.

As to the other texts cited, it is admitted that resurrections may be spoken of in another sense, by a kind of accommodation; but this does not nullify the two facts, that there is such a thing as a real resurrection of the body; and that the Spirit of God explains this vision to set forth such a resurrection.

5. Evidently, Dr. W. is little acquainted with millenarian writers, or he would not charge them with this supposed inconsistency. There are notorious millenarians (Mr. Burgh, for example) who apply Rev. 20: 4-6 to the martyrs exclusively. But I have no hesitation in saying that both these writers are wrong in excluding the rest of the saints. It is not true that martyrs alone are mentioned. There are three classes of persons viewed as having part in the first resurrection. "I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and (I saw) the souls of those that were beheaded because of the witness of Jesus, and because of the word of God; and such as had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received," etc. First, the previous saints, embracing both the Church and the spirits of just men made perfect; secondly, those who identify themselves with the class John had seen in Rev. 6: 9-11; and, thirdly, the sufferers under the bloody apostasy of the beast, (Rev. 15: 2,) the two last being especially what we may term the Apocalyptic saints, i.e. those of whom the Revelation treats, and whose comfort, guidance and sustainment under their tribulation, we may suppose to have been one main object of the book, by the gracious provision of our God.

6. A great part of the reasoning here falls, the moment it is seen that "the first resurrection" embraces not these martyrs only, but the saints before them also. "The rest of the dead" is then perfectly simple: it means the wicked, who had no part (blessed and holy is he that hath part) in the first resurrection.

But one word as to Dr. W.'s explanation. He says, "the remnant" and "the rest" is the very same Greek word. And what of that? It is the same word in Rev. 11: 13 and in Rev. 12: 17. So it is, no doubt, in Rev. 19: 21 and in Rev. 20: 5; but as there is not the smallest analogy in the former case, so neither is there in the latter. In chapter 19, it is the remnant of the beast's armies, after he himself and the false prophet were cast alive into the lake of fire — a living remnant, which is thereon slain. But in chapter 20 it is a remnant left by the resurrection of the saints who have their part in the first resurrection — a dead remnant, embracing all who do not rise to reign with Christ. 7. These consequences pressed upon us do not follow.

I. So far from limiting judgment to the wicked, I believe, on the contrary, that 2 Cor. 5: 10 and Rom. 14 refer exclusively to Christ's dealing with the works of His own. There the question is not about our persons; we are not put upon our trial whether or not we shall be saved. For, 2 Cor. 5 is Christ's appraisal of the conduct of those who are already justified; He reviews the works, good or bad, of those who are cleansed by His blood, but He could not condemn themselves without condemning His own cross. The believer hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation. (John 5: 24.) Nay, the Word of God is even stronger; the believer shall not come into judgment, εἰς κρίσιν. There is absolutely no judgment of the person, no solemn assize as to his guilt, no κρίσις for him: in such a judgment the Psalmist (143) assures us no man living shall be justified in God's sight. But God has already justified the believer; Christ is dead, is risen, is at the right hand, and is interceding for him. On the other hand, it is the judgment, the κρίσις, which is the settled portion of poor man, as we are told in Heb. 9: 27, and it is the details of this last, I believe, which Rev. 20: 11 presents us with. Again, it is clear that Matthew 25: 31-46 does not refer to the dead at all, and even among the living leaves out the Jews entirely. It is the Son of man's judgment of all the Gentiles (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη), and hence the ground and nature of the investigation is quite different from that stated in Rom. 2, which really does state the character of that solemn and final scrutiny. And it certainly appears highly inconsistent (I do not say incorrect) to press the force of the last part of Rev. 20 in a plain and literal manner, (however there may be figures interspersed,) in the very same discourse which seeks to evade the force of the portion almost immediately going before. It is not that I doubt the application of the white-throne scene to the last closing session of judgment; on the contrary, I agree with the author in what he says, save in his assumption that the righteous are included in it. No proof is offered. There certainly ought to be; for, to a simple mind, the bare reading of the early part of the chapter conveys the idea that all judgment of the righteous must have been over for one thousand years, (literal or symbolic,) for they have been reigning with Christ during that period, and then the rest of the dead are raised, not to a resurrection of life, but to one of judgment and the second death.

But, plainly, Rev. 20 records two resurrections; one in verses 4-6 which is called the first resurrection, and evidently distinguished from the other resurrection in verses 12-15 of those whose portion is the second death. It is inconsistent to interpret the former figuratively, and the latter literally, as was long since urged by Bishop Newton.

II. The judgment of the works of the saints before the tribunal of Christ is not represented as being during the thousand years, much less during the scene which follows it (i.e. the great white-throne judgment of the rest of the dead). I believe that it must precede the actual reigning; because the divers places and rewards in the kingdom hinge on, and pre-suppose, to my mind, a foregone examination of the things done in the body, according to which each is to receive. The five cities and the two, in the language of the parable, depend on the use of the talents, and can hardly be awarded, much less enjoyed, till the Lord has examined the conduct of His servants.

The judgment of the quick goes on during the millennium, as in Matt. 25.

The judgment of the dead (i.e. of such as had not part in the first resurrection) succeeds, as we have seen in Rev. 20: 11.

Now, what is the difficulty to the receiving the plain revelation, that about the close of the reign with Christ, but previous to the white-throne judgment, Satan is allowed to go out and deceive the Gentiles, or nations, which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, and gather them to battle against the beloved city? I see none. So that the next head,

III. is not only needless, but contrary to any supposition ever heard of among sober-minded millenarians. This last rebellion is before the wicked dead are raised. Nor does "the camp of the saints" and "the beloved city" mean the glorified saints, in my opinion, but the city where God, the Jehovah, has set His name, when His people (the Jews) are all righteous. Nothing can be more simple, as it appears to me. The only difficulty is to conceive how so sensible a person could have so strangely bewildered himself.

8. According to Dr. W., "the resurrection of all the dead," is stated or implied to be for the purpose of their being tried before the great white throne. But I answer, that even this necessarily excludes those who are and have been reigning in life by one, and with one, even Christ Jesus. It is admitted that the expression, "the dead," embraces all those who died but had not part in the first resurrection; but this is absolutely all which can be proved, by fair reasoning, from the context.

As to John 5: 28, 29, observe, that while the day of the Lord in 2 Peter 3 evidently embraces events separated by one thousand years — the morning and evening of that great day — and cannot be reduced to a twenty-four hours' day; so here, somewhat similarly, "hour" cannot be restricted to a period of sixty minutes. Nay, in verse 25 of the same context, "hour" embraces a lapse of more than eighteen hundred years. Why may it not be extended similarly to one thousand years, three verses lower down? As all Christians believe that this hour of quickening does run on from Christ's time till the present; surely, it is perfectly in keeping to hold that the hour of judging may occupy the millennium. And other Scriptures show that it does so precisely.

Again, 2 Thess. 1: 7-10 states no more than all instructed Christians, who look for Christ's premillennial advent, rejoice in. From 2 Peter 3: 10, we simply gather, that in the day of the Lord (without revealing whether at the end or at the beginning of it) "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat," etc. But 2 Thess 1 and Rev. 20 give us this further light, that, while flaming fire will accompany the Lord's revelation from heaven, taking vengeance when He comes to be glorified in His saints, yet will this be but the precursor and monitor of the conflagration at the close of the reign on the earth. Dr. W. is, therefore, mistaken in imagining that we separate the vengeance and the glory by a thousand years; but we do affirm, what while all these Scriptures are true, they do not furnish the same, but different, aspects of the truth, and we simply seek to discern things that differ. This, in my humble judgment, the author has failed to do.

1 Thess. 4: 15-17 refers exclusively to the resurrection of the righteous. There is not a word about a general resurrection. It is the same thing with 1 Cor 15. But I should have thought this at least confirmative of a first resurrection, in which the wicked have no part.

I cannot allow the justice of what is said of Acts 3: 19-21. The obviously correct rendering of the passage is: "Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, unto the blotting out of your sins, that *times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send τὸν προκεκηρυγμένον (or with Griesbach, Scholz, etc. προκεχειρισμένον) ὑμῖν  Ἰ.Χ. whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things," etc. Now, the very formation and nature of the word ἀποκατάστασις proves that it cannot have here, or any where else, "the same effect with fulfillment." Supposing even that the verb ἀποκάθιστημι meant to fulfill, still it will hardly admit of question, that the amendment here proposed is wrong; for words so formed, as a class, refer not to an act past and completed, but to the doing of the act implied in the verb. In other words, it would mean the fulfilling or fulfillment, but not an action already finished; and, therefore this verse would teach the retention of Christ in heaven, not till the prophecies have received their accomplishment, but till the times of the fulfilling itself, i.e. the reverse of what the sermon would aver. But the truth is, that in the eight passages where that verb occurs in the New Testament, there is not one passage where it can be shown to mean "fulfill;" there is not one where it may not be safely rendered "restore." "Reconstitute," in some cases gives the force well. Using this, then, the meaning of the verse in question would be, "until the times of reconstituting, or restoring," i.e. not, in any sense, till the act was done, but being done, or doing. So far from subverting, this text falls in with and supposes the coming of Christ from heaven, for the purpose, or at least at the time, of God's effectuating in the earth the latter-day glory, Jewish glory, as predicted by the prophets. The Church, as we have seen, is blessed in another and higher sphere.

*Compare Matt. 6: 5, προσεύχεσθαι, ὅπως ἂν φανῶσι κ. τ. λ. the ἂν in both being required, because of the dependence on an infinitive, and not on the principal verb. The authorised version and the Vulgate are both wrong in their translation of this clause.

Death is not the last enemy "to each individual soldier of Christ," for it is positively revealed that "we shall not all sleep, though we shall all be changed;" and this too in the very same chapter from which Dr. W. quotes. But, viewed, as it was meant to be, as the last enemy dispensationally, let the reader compare these three Scriptures, 2 Tim. 1: 10, 1 Cor. 15: 54, (cf. verses 23, 24,) and Rev. 20: 13, and then answer if it be not plain that there are here three stages; first, the conquest over death at Christ's resurrection, and life, and incorruptibility, brought to light through the Gospel; secondly, the conquest over death at the resurrection of Christ's people at His coming before the reign; and, thirdly, the annihilation of death at the end of that reign, when He shall have put all enemies under His feet — Gog and Magog, and if there be any other — the last of which is death.

Luke 20: 34-36 is misapplied. Studied with a simple mind, it is highly corroborative of a special resurrection, a resurrection of the just quite distinct from that of the unjust. "They that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that age and the resurrection from the dead" is any thing but a general rise of dead persons. It is clearly eclectic. It belongs to the worthy. It is, in short, the first resurrection. Besides the saints of the heavenlies, there will be a converted, spared remnant of Israel, God's holy seed on earth. These are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them; they marry and are given in marriage. They are men in unchanged bodies, and of them especially the sweet promises in the prophets speak. But they are clearly not the children of the resurrection, for they are not risen.

Is the next statement, in page 516, true? All agree that "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea;" but instead of reading in the context (Isa. 11) that the Gospel works its way to universal extension, we find that the rod out of the stem of Jesse must smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips slay the wicked. (Compare verses 4 and 9.) 2 Thess. 2: 8, instead of teaching that this was done at the death of Christ, or was to be done by the progress of the Church, reveals, alas! a dismal progress of iniquity; shows that not peace and happiness, but the falling away, must come first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; declares that even then this evil was working as a mystery, or hidden form, of lawlessness; but, upon the removal of a hindrance, the Lawless One would be revealed, whom THE LORD would consume (not by the gradual influence of the Gospel, but) by the Spirit or breath of His mouth,* and would (not save by the preached grace of God, but) destroy with the brightness or epiphany of His presence.

*Compare with Isa. 11: 4 and 2 Thess. 2: 9, Isa. 30: 33: "The breath of the lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it." Surely this is not the Gospel, but the judgment; not grace, but destruction.

Matt. 13: 31, 32 and 33, conveys the idea of progress, gradual progress. But of what? of a good thing or of a bad? Is a great spreading tree, where the birds of the air (compare verses 4 and 10 of the same chapter) come and lodge, is the nest of the wicked one according to Christ? It may bear His name, but is it the mind which was in Christ Jesus? Lofty, ambitious, soaring — may aptly describe Christendom; but is it Christianity? I trow not. (Compare also Dan. 4.)

The parable of the leaven is still plainer. It marks diffusion over a certain defined quantity, three measures. But it is the spread of leaven; and the instructed scribe knows that leaven is every where the symbol of that which is corrupt. Let the reader compare 1 Cor. 5: 6-13 with Ex. 12: 15, 17, 18, 19, 20. Lev. 2: 4, 5, 11; Lev. 6: 17. Also Matt. 16: 12. Gal. 5: 9. Again, we find where the mingled state was to be described, the presence of evil was marked by that of leaven. Lev. 23: 17. This parable, then, proves the exact contrary of that which is here drawn from it. It is the progress of corrupt, not of sound, doctrine, if we are to read the parable with a spiritual eye.

2 Thess. 2: 1, 2, in no degree sets aside the possible immediateness of the coming of Christ; but, on the contrary, exhorts the saints by the coming of Christ and their gathering unto Him, not to be troubled, as though the day of the Lord were then present. It would seem that false teachers were troubling the Thessalonians with the thought that the day of the Lord was actually come, and they in the midst of tribulation, instead of being caught up to meet Jesus in the air. "No," says the apostle, "I beseech you by His coming and by our gathering unto Him, that ye be not troubled." You have no reason; you will be with Him; you will come along with Him.-The day of the Lord (compare 1 Thess. 5: 1,) is that part of the coming of the Lord which looks with judgment towards the world. It is associated with vengeance. The presence of the Lord embraces it, it is true, but embraces much more, especially that sweet thought of the Lord's calling the Church to meet Him. This latter is never called the day of the Lord. In this very chapter it is the comfort to the saints against the terrors of that day. And that day shall not come except there come the apostasy first, etc.; that is, certain terrible events were to happen before that day; but not necessarily, so far as revelation informs us, before the Lord's coming or presence. These events might, or might not, be before the Church was taken away, for the Father kept the times and seasons in His own power or authority; but they must be before the day of the Lord.

Moreover, I must utterly reject the notion that death and the coming of the Lord, are "in effect and decisiveness the same thing." It does seem wonderful that such a remark should have been written, when the passages under consideration (1 Thess. 4, 5, 2 Thess. 2) confute it. Instead of the apostle there teaching what Dr. W. says, he uses the coming of the Lord as the blessed consolation against death. He does not say, "we must all die, and therefore ought to bear the stroke patiently;" nor does he teach them that they should rejoice because the separated spirits of their deceased brethren were gone to glory. He, on the contrary, brings the hope of the Lord's coming, as a present thing, as the most influential of comforts, as, in short, the divine remedy for sorrowing saints in such circumstances. That is, instead of identifying as in the sermon, he positively contrasts the Lord's coming with death. And, surely, there cannot be a greater contrast than there is between death and the victory over death, viz. the resurrection of the saints at the last trump. Compare 1 Cor. 15, especially verses 54, 55. It seems as if the Spirit wrote the passage to neutralize such an error — "When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, THEN (and not before) shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." Death, in scripture, is the thing vanquished; not the victory. Nor does the apostle here detain himself for a moment with the incomplete state of the separate spirit. It is the resurrection which is the victory — the resurrection of them that are Christ's in His presence. It is the resurrection which vindicates Christ's claim to these vile bodies of ours. When they lie crumbling or crumbled into dust, what so unlike and so unworthy of the Firstborn in glory? But He will come and change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body. Far from being death, — the enemy, — the destroyer, His coming is that of the Saviour who swallows up death in victory. And it is His power, His victory. May we never be satisfied short of it!

This same chapter (like 1 Thess. 4) suggests another and most convincing proof of the fallacy of this popular notion. It is agreed that the Lord's coming is a motive pressed upon all the Church: none can doubt it. But in 1 Cor. 15: 51, it is clearly revealed that "WE shall not all sleep," or die. Death, and the Lord's coming are in no sense the same thing; the latter affects us all without exception, the former does not. Death affects us as individuals, and our happiness, in departing to be with Christ, goes not beyond ourselves. But the coming of the Lord at once acts upon the whole Church; and what will be the joy of all the members when we all throng to meet Him in the air? Is this the same as death? So in Heb. 9: 27, 28, it is laid down that, while "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment," the portion of the saints is contrasted in the very next verse: "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many," and instead of death (or judgment either, in the sense here spoken of) being set forth as the lot of the believer, it is written, "unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." No! I look not for death, but for Christ, and Christ is not death, but life, — our life. Can contrast be more definite?

To say, then, Ought not the remembrance — that death is, in effect, to every one of us, the same as the coming of the Lord to judgment — to bring home to us, with quite sufficiently persuasive power, the admonition of the Lord, "Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come: " to say thus, is to be wise above and against what is written. For the remembrance is not true; and it is the truth only which sanctifies. But we have just seen that it is untrue to affirm that death and the Lord's coming are, in effect, the same thing to any one, for in themselves they are different, and in Scripture they are ever contrasted. The addition of "to every one of us" makes it as singular a contradiction as can be well conceived to the apostolic words — "we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord." That is, some believers will meet the Lord when He comes, without passing through death at all. May it be ourselves, beloved! And one may go further, and affirm, that to say, the remembrance of death ought to bring home to us, with quite sufficiently persuasive power, the admonitions of our Lord, "Watch, therefore," etc. is not to be the disciple, but the teacher of Christ. Now, I believe that what He said, and that only, is the right weapon to faith. The sheep hear His voice, and He said, "Watch, therefore," not for ye know not what hour ye shall die, but "what hour your Lord doth come;" and so uniformly — never once on the ground of death. It is for the coming of the Master we are set to watch, with lamps burning and loins girded. But death is in no way the Master, any more than the Bridegroom; far from it, death, (however humiliating in itself, inasmuch as it is the last effect of Satan's power touching us,) is now one of our servants through the grace of our Lord Jesus. Cast into the waters, He has made them sweet for us; and, life or death, all are ours!

Christian Ministry

W Kelly

"Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, [let us prophesy] according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, [let us wait] on [our] ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, [let him do it] with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness" (Rom. 12: 6-8).

I have purposely taken a scripture in an epistle familiar to us all, where we have gifts brought into prominence which were not on one hand for mere signs to the world, nor on the other that character of foundation gift which was limited to the earliest days of the church of God upon the earth. At least no apostles are specially named among the gifts of our chapter. Thus it is evident that our list differs on both sides (whether looking at the world as the sphere of God's remarkable manifestations of power, or looking at the church as requiring what was special in order to its first establishment on the earth); and this because of a design here different from that of 1 Cor. 12 or of Eph. 4. We have what is called the ordinary ministry required for the good of the saints, rather than the manifestation of God's power in man by the Spirit in witness of the risen Lord, or of Christ's love to His body in its fulness, and in principle too till the completeness of His work on the earth. From the choice of such a scripture every one will see that my object is a practical one. It is to search simply and honestly, as in the sight of God, into the true nature of Christian ministry, — of ministry such as we need to know it and to have it freely exercised in our midst, — such as we ought to acknowledge, if we are to be found faithful as the children of God in presence of so great a blessing.

You will see therefore, that it is here assumed — as, I trust, unnecessary to be proved particularly now — that Christian ministry is a permanent institution. It is agreed that Christian ministry, not in all its forms, but in substance and in its essential nature as it was given from the beginning, was not intended to be withdrawn till the close of God's work here below as now known in Christianity. We are not going to enter into curious questions as to what preceded Christianity, nor to occupy ourselves with anything that is to follow after Christianity has accomplished its mighty task. For the present I hold myself, and would direct your attention, to that which is connected with our constant place of privilege and duty every day. As this will greatly simplify the subject, so at the same time it is quite evident that it concerns every Christian.

I define Christian ministry, then, to be, according to the word of God, the exercise of a spiritual gift. Ministry in the word is the exercise of a gift which has the word for its subject-matter. It may embrace, no doubt, different spheres, but it brings the word of God to bear upon souls, whether converted or unconverted. Confessedly, when we look at the converted, ministry has by no means the same simple character as the gospel addressed to the unconverted. If then Christian ministry in the word be divided into two great departments, namely, towards the world on the one hand, and towards the church or Christian body on the other, it is clear that, whereas towards the world it is really summed up in evangelizing or proclaiming the gospel of the grace of God towards men, towards the church it is a more varied and complex matter. Here we must leave room for distinctions of very great importance.

That these are the two greater departments of ministry in the word, few Christians will be disposed to question, or to require proofs at length. The thing is all but self-evident. Thus the word of God is perfectly plain as to evangelizing. Our Lord Jesus, before He left the world, directed His servants to preach the gospel to every creature. He told them to go and make disciples of all nations — the Gentiles, "baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." He bid them proclaim repentance and remission of sins to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. He charged them to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all the creation. Is it not evident that this was ministry to those without, and that it has for its aim the making known the name of God, as now fully revealed in Christianity, and the glad news of redemption to every creature whom they could reach? Accordingly, among the most prominent of His servants, are seen the apostles themselves. Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost to the thousands that gathered after the astonishing sign was shown of the sending down the Holy Ghost from heaven. This arrested universal attention: men flocked to know what this wonder was; and the apostle Peter explained all from the Jewish Prophets and Psalms. But he did more. He preached the glad tidings. He showed them the way to be saved; he set forth Jesus as the one and only possible means for a sinful man, and then of course, to men of Judæa and of Israel. He was addressing such as had gathered at that time to the great feast of Pentecost — strangers from every nation under heaven, but still Jews; to whom he set forth Jesus as the Messiah (above all His death and cross, resurrection and ascension) made Lord and Christ; for all these and more are brought before us in one way or another, and are substantially the same great truth of His rejection by Israel and His exaltation by God, though it is quite admitted that the whole subject is testimony to Jesus and hence of far larger bearing than simply the way for a sinner to be brought to God.

In preaching we should avoid too nice distinctions. It is wise to be direct, simple, and thorough, in affectionately pressing with solemn earnestness the broad facts of Christ and redemption. It may be all well among the children of God to point out the various lights and shades in the truth of God; but, in my judgment, refinement in evangelizing spoils the message of Divine grace. As God is simple in His dealing with souls, so should we be as servants, not seeking to please men or ourselves. The same apostle Paul, who was inspired to lead into all the heights and depths of God's counsels and ways, when helping on the children of God, appears in the Acts of the Apostles, coming down to a gospel of such simplicity as many preachers would hardly think of giving out. He takes his stand on the facts of Christ, His death and resurrection; but he also takes care to meet them exactly where they were, where for instance he cites the rain from heaven and fruitful seasons as witnesses of God's goodness, against degrading and selfish demon-gods, even when all the nations were suffered to go their own ways. These suffice to tell of His beneficence who now sent them the glad tidings of Jesus. For we are not to suppose that we have all reported, but some special point urged in divine wisdom: the wants of a sinner's heart cannot be met by rain from heaven; nor can a soul now, still less in view of God and eternity, be satisfied by present goodness in this world, however rich. Nevertheless it is wholesome and important to note how the apostle takes up the poor heathen, and presents to them (from what was before their eyes, or in their own consciousness) testimony to a power infinitely superior to the creature. To a heathen, who had not the written word, the analogy of God's care for the body was no mean argument from which to proceed to tell the love of God to the soul, and thus the whole story of Divine grace. To my mind there is no less wisdom than simplicity in such a method, which we might do well to cultivate.

The same apostle Paul, speaking to the Jews, does not enter into the question of the outward creation, or the nature of man here below, forgetful of his truest dignity (Acts 14, 17, end). He takes them up to the Old Testament (Acts 13, 17, beginning), shows them the Messiah, His death, resurrection, and kingdom, required by the positive word of God with which they were so familiar, and then compares the facts of the life and death of the Lord Jesus, as the only answer to what the Law and the Psalms and the Prophets prepare us for. All this clearly shows the singleness of purpose, and consequently the union of depth and plainness in the presentation found in scripture. For it is a mistake to suppose that those most profoundly taught are necessarily the hardest to understand. The reverse was true in the apostle's case.

When people are imperfectly instructed, they are apt to be in a cloud both of thought and words; and often fancy that, because they are scarcely intelligible, they must be very deep. The truth is that, where there is the certainty of the known truth, you can afford to be simple; and where there is adequate power to give out as the rule, so the hearers will find it. There will be real depth according to spiritual power and acquaintance with God. It is inconceivable, when one enters really into what God is, as revealed in the glorious person of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, and His work and His position, that there will not come out what is of God above the thoughts of flesh and blood. Ordinarily however, the greater the intimacy with God, the more will there be simplicity with man; and although simplicity can very well cohere with depth, we must remember that depth is a very different thing from obscurity.

Now the apostles were not muddy, but perspicuous and plain. Their manner was direct, personal, positive. They had before their souls the most momentous truth from God for man, and this distinctly seen. They had the deepest conviction of man's ruin and of God's grace; they had before their eyes in the fullest and the clearest light who Jesus is and what the Rejected of men did and suffered in atonement, and what God could, would, and did work, through Christ the Lord, for poor sinners. This formed the staple of their teaching. This is the gospel. This is the glad tidings of a Saviour, and more particularly of Him displayed in the mightiest work, the only one indeed, which could at all, which does fully, meet the sinner's wants, namely the work of redemption.

But this clears the way at once. There is first of all the ministry of the gospel, next there is the ministry of the church. But when we come to look at the ministry of the church, there are many different kinds of it. Take for instance what we have in the verses read. "Having, then, gifts differing," as it is said, "according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, [let us prophesy] according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, [let us engage] in ministry, or he that teacheth, in teaching; or he that exhorteth, in exhortation. He that giveth, [let him do it] with simplicity (or, liberality); he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness."

Any thoughtful mind will see that this is not at all the way in which man would have written of Christian ministry. Is it too much to say that not a single individual in all the world would of himself have written as the apostle has done here? If so, do you think that this was not meant to instruct us? Is it not a notable fact, while he introduces that which no one could dispute to be of the highest character of Christian ministry (for instance, prophesying), that at the same time he brings in exhortation; and again he mingles with this a kind of ministry which has nothing directly to do with public instruction in the word, while nevertheless, it is emphatically called "ministry;" and again he adds to them, yet distinct from all, ruling or taking the lead. Many Christians seem to be greatly afraid of ruling. They are jealous lest its admission might compromise what they consider the scriptural principles of Christians. They would do better to sink every principle which cannot face the word of God. They would do better simply and fully to trust what God has given and revealed. Be assured that the Lord knows how to keep up principles for us far better than we for Him. He classes ruling along with the other forms of ministry. This should be enough for the believer. It is in no way bound up with an authority which does not exist any longer.

But there is another matter to which I call your attention. Giving is a kind of ministry that is often deficient, not receiving, but giving. Again, it is another gift to show mercy. They are both admirable kinds of ministry. At the same time they are not assuredly the forms of ministry that men would have joined with prophesying and ruling: nobody would have thought of such an association. What are we then to infer from all? This at least, I think, that God is much larger, simpler, more real, than we are — that He counts as a part of the wondrous work that He is carrying on in the church a great many services that we do not call ministry and have not in general regarded as any gifts at all. Ought we not then to be guided in these things by God's word?

This brings me to an important principle that I desire to press and always hold fast as well as to urge on others; that ministry is not any mere qualification which we have naturally — that no ability that any man can have is what constitutes the force of ministry. Ministry always depends on a positive gift from the Lord. Do I mean then, by this, to set aside natural abilities or acquired qualifications, more particularly since we have been Christians? In no wise. It is an equal error to confound gift with qualification, and to deny that qualification is of any consequence to gift. Let us believe both, but maintain, according to the word of God, that gift is entirely in itself distinct from those qualities which nevertheless may be necessary for the due working of the gift. The Lord has Himself set this forth in a remarkable parable (Matthew 25: 14-30), which may be referred to for a moment, because the matter is put with such decision that it is hard to see how any one can fairly evade its force. We learn thence that Christ was as a man travelling in a far country who called his own servants and delivered to them his goods. It is not merely God in His condescension making use of our goods, which is also quite true. He knows well that the Lord does so. But this is not the point of the parable. The Lord delivered to these servants His goods. This was when He went up to heaven. For His country, according to the style of Matthew's Gospel, is the land of Israel. He is regarded as Jehovah-Messiah from chapter 1. Palestine therefore was His land. Accordingly heaven, in the point of view of this Gospel, is the far country. Going away, then, He delivered them His goods, "and unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, — to every man according to his several ability." Two things are here evidently distinct. The ability of the servants is recognised in its place, but the goods of Christ are still more manifest on the other side. In short the Lord does not give the same kind of gift to different servants. Who ever yet saw two men that had the same? Far from fighting with these differences, it seems to me in beautiful harmony with Christianity, and has immense practical importance. Every servant of the Lord has a gift suitable to his own ability; and hence, as the ability of servants differs, so also does the gift. Thus, even though for instance the Lord might give the gift of evangelizing to many, as He does, they do not receive it in the same form or measure. Every evangelist has his own line of work, according to his peculiar gift, in presenting the truth. Is this a matter to find fault with? Much rather should we thank God for it. Miserable is the ministry of one man following another. I grant you it is the constant tendency of narrow minds. They have got an ideal before them, such as it is — good, bad, or indifferent — some favourite of theirs by whom each is judged, and to whom they would like every one else to be conformed. Their norm for the church and for those who minister would be to resemble a regiment of soldiers, of the same height, or as nearly the same as possible, and with the self-same dress and drill. But this is sadly discordant from the will of the Lord, who gives in no case the same gift in mode or degree, but to each as He will. The right working of Christ's ministry depends on this — "Having then gifts differing," followed by its different forms. And this is so true, that, even though the gifts may be to the same end, yet take any one of them — evangelists, pastors, teachers, — and it will be found that they have each their own individuality as servants of the Lord. They have each their own ability, to which grace adapts the gift of the Lord Jesus; for His gift is evidently suitable to the particular vessel in which it is placed. This serves a weighty purpose of God in the church, on which I may touch a little more when we come to see how it has been abused and perverted. For thus man always tends, under every possible circumstance, to trench upon, and hinder, and spoil the blessed work the Spirit of God would carry on for the glory of Christ. Let it suffice to point out the broad principle at the present.

It has been shown, then, that gift is not to be confounded with ability; that ability is not to be denied because of gift; that the two things are perfectly consistent; and that our Lord Himself is the authority for both. Our Lord intimates that He gives His goods according to the several abilities of the servants. We shall find there is more than this, important guard as it is against both unbelief and fanaticism; but we must reserve each for its own place.

This, then, is the first element I desire to press as to ministry in the word, that there are "gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." It is not therefore according to the education of the man, or the will of others. Popes and patrons, prelates and congregations, have no voice in scripture as to ministry in the word. Its title is directly and immediately derived from One immeasurably above them all. As to the source of the gift, everything depends upon the Giver. This is of immense moment. The gift comes from Christ — from Christ alone — not from the church in part, anymore than wholly. Nor should the church presume to sanction formally what comes from the Lord Christ, as if He needed her countersign.

But further, this principle decides its place in another way; for, properly speaking, Christian ministry began with Christ's ascending up to heaven. He designated apostles while He was upon the earth; He sent out seventy persons with a last message to Israel; but the same New Testament which tells us these facts declares that, when He ascended up on high, He gave gifts. Both facts are true; they are not to be arrayed one against another, which is what infidelity does, though sometimes well-meaning ignorance does so too. But if we do not know, we should seek to learn; for ignorance in divine things often exposes souls to the assaults and influence of infidelity. Though far from being the same thing, we should bear in mind that ignorance of the mind of God does expose to the inroads of the enemy, who takes advantage of it.

However this may be, we see what a place Christian ministry has. It began when Christ had done with the earth, consequent on the accomplishment of redemption. He had come down to the earth, but it was to test man. A man, He lived among men here below, manifesting the Father in the midst of darkness; but it too surely proved that man would not have Him — yea, hated both Him and the Father. The end of that was the cross. Risen from the dead, He acts in power — not merely in testimony, but efficaciously; and this too, not only in power over the body, but in full delivering energy, first for the soul, by and by for the body, conforming it to Himself in the glory of resurrection. Meanwhile, exalted above, He works by the Spirit of God sent down to maintain His glory and give effect to His grace. In the practical working out of this He gives gifts as He will, and these constitute the ground of true Christian ministry. When He rose from the dead, He commenced a new thing; as it is said — "Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead." At the right hand of God He inaugurates an entirely new work, and in connection with this work He provides a fresh and suited instrumentality. The operation of this instrumentality is Christian ministry.

The first part of this service of the Lord is His dealing with men by the word, gaining their attention, and drawing them out of the world to God, through His name; but then, when souls are converted, by much the greater part of Christian work remains to be done. They are quickened indeed, but only brought within the threshold of divine blessing. It is not that one doubts or slights the reality of this blessing. God forbid that we should disparage the new birth! They have Christ as their life; but how much they have to learn of Him whom they now possess! Hence the main work of Christian ministry in the church is to lead those converted into a deepening practical acquaintance with Christ and delight in Him and His glory, into the application of the truth (found only in its fulness in Him) to all the difficulties as well as to all duties and the energetic purposes of His love, while we are passing through this world. Hence the need of various forms for the due fulfilment of Christian ministry; as we see in the passage read.

The apostle begins with prophecy. It is indeed the highest character of instruction from God. It is not necessarily predictive. Prophets do predict, but this is not what constitutes prophecy. On the other hand, it is a great mistake to suppose that prophesying is merely edifying men in a general way. Prophesying does edify men in the most important way; but the verse to which I have referred in 1 Corinthians 14 is not a definition of prophesying but a description; that is, it does not tell us what prophesying is, and nothing else; but it describes what prophesying is as compared and contrasted with speaking in a tongue. To speak in a tongue does not edify people, but prophesying does. Yet there are many who might edify without prophesying. He surely edifies who strengthens souls by holding up Christ and making His love better known; and so does he who exhorts or teaches well. But none of these things is prophesying, which means that character of truth which puts the conscience of a man in the presence of God, which gives the soul the certainty that His mind is in that which is uttered, stripping and laying bare thoughts, motives, feelings, everything. Such is prophecy. There may be what approaches it, no doubt, elsewhere; but this is its proper force. In that same chapter (1 Cor. 14) we see the proof. Going into a Christian assembly, where they were talking with tongues, a stranger might think they were mad. What a reproof to the Corinthians! In very childish spirit they were reasoning after some such human way as this: "If God has given us tongues, we ought to use them: but there is no place so important as the Christian assembly; therefore tongues should be used in the Christian assembly." One thought of Christ, one right feeling about the church, would have preserved them from that mistake. How did the talking with tongues promote the glory of the Lord Christ in the assembly? How did it edify those that came together in the name of the Lord? Not in the smallest degree: consequently, had there been singleness of eye in thinking of Christ and those that were Christ's, they never would have thought of it. They went astray owing to the commonest source of error: they were thinking of themselves and of their own importance. Having the gift of tongues, they thought they were to use them because they wished it. Who could forbid them? Did not the gift come from God? Thus, we see, it was independence of action, not perhaps without human arguments as to their duty, but without the express word of God, or even that instinctive sense of truth which requires a certain spirituality to apply aright. They were walking like men, and even children; they were carnal, not spiritual; they were reasoning instead of believing. All was wrong.

This led the apostle to suppose another case. Let a person come to the assembly, and hear them, not talking in a tongue that nobody could understand, but prophesying; and what a different result! Then all the secrets of the heart would be revealed, and the effect upon the unlearned person, or even the unbeliever, would be, that he would fall down on his face and feel that God was in them of a truth. In this case his conscience would have met God through the word thus brought to bear on him.

We must remember that in those days the Christians were surrounded by the heathen and the Jew; the one brought up in the follies of many gods and many lords, even below the consciences of man, instead of above them; the other accustomed to the driest and coldest possible moralizing on the law and the prophets. What a change it was for them to see the true God brought into contact with the heart of man and his conscience! The effect was immense on them, more particularly on the poor Gentile. Accordingly such an one fairly broke down prostrate before the living and true God who thus dealt with the secrets of his heart. But this shows us the true nature of prophesying. It was not predicting something that would have to be waited for, to see whether it would come to pass: this is not the prophesying the apostle means. Prophesying applies to the future in peculiar circumstances. Not that one looks for such a character of it now: I do not believe that a person predicting things now would be in the order of the action of the Holy Spirit, for the simple reason, that the predictions of importance for God and for man are already given in the written word. But there remains the other sense of it, — namely, the bringing out the truth of God so as to deal with man's conscience, and give him the full conviction that it is God who is speaking to him by man. I see no reason to doubt that God still vouchsafes this — in feeble measure perhaps, and in rare cases; but still, that the principle of it is true I cannot doubt, and that it will not fail as long as God has work and testimony on the earth.

But next we find what is called here "ministry;" and by ministry I apprehend is meant serving the saints — kindly, loving, self-denying interest in their difficulties, snares, sorrows, wants, and trials. It is not preaching nor teaching, but helping the saints otherwise. This is set down as a real gift. Do you not feel and know that there are those who teach admirably, to whom you would not think of going if in any strait? I am sure there are not a few who can preach and teach too, yet do not possess that kind of spiritual power needed to advise in case of any trouble or difficulty. It is part of the fallen state of the church to concentrate all in one; as on the other hand there is no disrespect if one simply own each according to what is given from above. Scripture alone gives the certain truth, and sanctions the right man for the right place.

Is it asked how the reality of these gifts can be known? May there not be mistakes through vanity on the side of some claiming beyond their measure, or through the pride of those who disown and thwart what eclipses their self-importance? I answer that all that is good in divine things is by the Holy Spirit, by whom God decides for us these difficulties. Undoubtedly prejudices may hinder for a time; but those who know God can trust Him to make known how He would have us serve the Lord, or to whom we should look for loving succour in things too hard for us. Power of the Spirit in any way proves itself; especially where souls are habituated to test all by the word of God, as the Christian and church always should. Were there no such person as the Holy Ghost in the Christian and in the assembly, the difficulty would be insuperable; and the objection has weight in exact proportion to the objector's unbelief in the real presence and gracious guidance of the Spirit, alas! the characteristic sin of Christendom. But the Spirit is here to care for the saints of God, to draw them out in worship and to direct them in service. Does He fail in this? Never where faith is at work. That unbelief cannot see how these things can be, is but natural. It is His function to glorify the Lord in all, but especially as regards public testimony by those to whom He has given special gifts for the general good.

Gift, then, of whatever kind it may be, is not an official status, nor a name by courtesy, but a real power which Christ gives by the Spirit, and which is made good in practice, as conscience guided by the written word will own; and this is just as true in "the ministry" or service of the saints, as in prophesying or anything else. The chief difference is, that "ministry" in this sense may not be a public gift at all, whereas prophesying in the case of man is, of course. Those engaged in preaching and teaching may also have this gift of "ministry." I am persuaded some have it in a very eminent manner; but it is well always to give the fullest breadth to gift, and to give the utmost value to what one does not possess oneself. Grace delights in honouring others. And, be assured, this the Lord would have us cultivate somewhat more. It is always happy when those who themselves preach or teach are earnest in maintaining the place and value of those who do not, and when those who have other gifts, such as serving or ruling, stand up for those who teach or preach. "For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body." (1 Cor. 12: 14-20)

It is in this way that God works for welding all together by His Spirit. His is no system of classes, each jealous of another. All that was found abundantly in heathenism, if not in Judaism; but it is not so in Christianity. There are "gifts differing," and each servant of Christ should maintain those of others, trusting the Lord as to his own; for there can be no course less worthy than for a Christian minister to be contending for himself under the plea of Christ's honour. For sometimes excellent men fail in this, through a mistaken notion of not allowing the Lord's gift to be despised.

This is all well; but am I the right one to see to it in my own case? or should I strive to stir up others on my behalf?

It is clear that there is always plenty of evil going on; but as a rule, true wisdom, if you are ill-used, is quietly to bow, and, if you must, to fight the Lord's battles, confiding in Him to espouse your cause, but in no case to fight your own battles. You may have done so; perhaps we have all done so; but have we not learnt, if so, that the route is cheerless, and that not thus can we gain the victory that shines to the praise of Jesus in His day? Your defence provokes aggression, and, as long as you defend yourself, you will have, not one only, but many, who will for this reason suspect and oppose you.

Such is human nature, and the children of God are not free from its effects. The path of faith gives deliverance from these difficulties, though it has its own, in which the Lord shows the sufficiency of His grace. Therefore leave these matters with Him. Our business is to fight His battles, not our own — to look at the things of others, which are really of Jesus Christ, and not our own.

Hence we return to the great theme now before us. "Having, then, gifts differing" does not mean valuing our own gifts, or of those who accept particular views on given points of an external character — the surest sign of a party spirit. In the church of God, in order to faith's full blessing, the Lord gives gifts various in measure, and differing in kind and aim. Hence the plain duty of all the saints, and more particularly of His servants, is to take care that there is nothing on their part, and nothing sanctioned by the saints in this or that servant, that would hinder the free and full operation of whatever the Lord has given for the church's good; for if He gives, it is ours to receive, and, as we value His love and authority, to receive all in their place, as He has set each in the assembly. This is the ground of ministry, and the true principle on which depends its due working to His glory.

But every reflecting Christian will observe how this clears the way immensely. The church of God is neither the source nor the channel of ministry. Without speaking of the monstrous sin of accepting the world's interference, or accrediting a mere sect, which of course, like the world, can only give an authority within its own circumscribed limits (for sects, like nations, are mutually jealous, and only recognise each other by courtesy), the right of the Lord — the free action of His service in grace throughout the entire assembly of God — is ignored by both, and as impossible to be heeded in sects as in the world.

But supposing you look now at the brightest and fairest scene that God ever made on this earth — namely, His own church, the body of Christ — it is most certain that ministry never did find its source or authorization in the church, but from the Lord Jesus acting by the Spirit; and this can be readily proved by the word of God. It is a truth indeed of capital importance, yet little seen, and less acted on, but indispensable to every saint, and above all to every one who serves the Lord in the word.

First of all, then, it is clear, according to the scripture already referred to (Eph. 4), that ministerial gift is attributed to Christ as the Giver. If it be said that Christ is away, I answer, that this was true when Christian ministry began. There is no essential change in this; for although, before proper Christianity was seen among men, the Lord had chosen apostles and others, like the seventy messengers sent throughout Israel, we must remember that they had an exclusively Jewish mission before He (Christ) went to heaven. They were Messianic envoys, who testified of the kingdom only, not of redemption by His blood, still less of Christian standing or the assembly of God; and their testimony was armed with peculiar powers, revoked before He suffered (Luke 22: 36).

But my subject tonight is not Jewish but Christian ministry, which followed on Jesus taking His place on high, as Lord of all and Head of the church. Ascended on high, He gave gifts unto men. Those first named are no doubt the most important: He gave some apostles. So great is the change, that previous appointment is quite passed by; even the apostles are set on new and heavenly ground. But He gave some prophets also, either distinct from apostles as here, or associated with them in the foundation of the new building, when the same term was met with. Then we hear of some He gave as evangelists; that is, individuals specially fitted to spread the glad tidings to every creature. Lastly, He gave some pastors and teachers; that is, such servants of His as were qualified privately as well as publicly to enforce the truth of God, both doctrinal and practical, on His children. The object of all this was "for the perfecting of the saints," with a new ministerial work, with a view to edifying the body of Christ. Thus the proper effect, and the shape taken, are clearly laid down.

This then is plain, and at the same time of weighty consequence; because we have certainty from the word of God as to the Giver, and the most important kinds of ministry; but, besides that, as to its aim and object. May we not add too, from the context, the implied perpetuity of Christian ministry, peculiarly expressed so as not to clash with the constant expectancy of Christ, but enough to comfort faith; for if Christ has given in each case "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ," it cannot be suspended — still less terminate and fail — till the whole end is accomplished. Assuredly the Lord dies no more. He died once, and for us, blessed be His name; but this was before He ascended and became Head of the church. He is living at the right hand of God, and, as the unfailing Source of supply, He gives these gifts.

This again is another exceedingly important consideration. To faith it supplies the answer, whatever the questions that arise. Let us conceive the present company to be a true, however faint, representative of the church on earth; and the question to be started by any, How ministry is to be appointed in our midst, and how what is real is to be distinguished from pretension.

Must we not look to the Lord, and search His word? To form our own thoughts and theories is natural, but human, and the way of sure error. Does the Lord leave us without instruction? Certainly not. He who gives the gift (which, when exercised, constitutes Christian ministry), secretly deals with the souls of the saints whom He would build up with His grace and truth, and of the servant who is in a given way stirred up and strengthened of the Holy Ghost to go forth in the work, whatever it may be, to which he is called. How often and how various the exercises and conflicts between heart and conscience; love for the Lord and for souls; fear of one's own nature and perhaps of others!

I remember myself, for instance, a person in whom the beginning of his work in the ministry of the word among the saints was of this sort. Found just in such a company as is here this night, he had strongly enough the word of God laid on his spirit. He was timid; he did not wish to speak; he dreaded a mistake about the Lord's will in rising, but he did not like to risk the appearance of forwardness. Was there not pride in this? He really shrank from what people might say, and consequently kept back. There is sometimes as much of self in cleaving to one's seat, as in too great eagerness to leave it. There may be flesh in both ways — the vanity of coming forward, and the pride that shrinks from being thought vain. Both are wrong. Were there more simple occupation with the Lord, and hearty exercise of love in seeking the good of souls, most of these difficulties would disappear. However he had not the faith to go forward. The meeting proceeded. The very scripture so heavily pressing on his heart was read by another. Then he felt constrained to rise, and ventured to speak out boldly the word of God, who was pleased to carry home the message to the hearts and consciences of the children of God then present. This was used to teach him to confide in the Lord, and with quietness and simplicity to go on in the face of difficulty, opposition, detraction, hindrance — everything which the enemy excites wherever there is a gift from Christ exercised in dependence on Him; for assuredly he will never leave undisturbed those who are really raised up of God. He may not harass thus where natural or worldly plans reign, but he knows how to sift, thwart, and trouble where Christ is sought to be served. Thus the fact of such opposition and difficulties ought rather to reassure and cast on the Lord where there is faith to look to Him and His word.

But it may be asked, "May not believers be mistaken?" Certainly; but where simply gathered to the name of the Lord, and instructed in the word of God, it is rather a critical experiment for an individual to get up and minister. Vanity and pride may be found everywhere, and are always evil; but assuredly of all places it is hardest to speak where the word of God is really weighed and intelligently applied. He who has not something from God is pretty sure to be found out there; and, if there is Christian plain dealing in love, he is sure to be discouraged. Not that it is right or gracious to be hard on any man in such circumstances. Indeed it always strikes one as deplorable to hear of the readiness of some to bear hard on the comparatively young and the ardent, still more on older men who have been under less favourable conditions for knowledge and free service. It seems to me an altogether mistaken line of criticism to be sharp on worthy labourers who could know little, and at the same time to be timid enough in presence of mistakes in those who ought to know more and better. Where persons have somewhat of experience, they might be expected to have patience; and where thoroughly grounded in the scripture, they can afford to hear all the difficulties and bear that which would be severe and crushing to young men. It is beneath the dignity of those matured in the mind of God, to be oversensitive with such as are apt to have their stumbling blocks, prejudices, and objections. Bear in mind as to this the language of the great apostle. The first sign of an apostle Paul puts forward is "in all patience." If that was a goodly index of one extraordinarily sent by Christ, I am sure for other reasons it ought to be the accompaniment of a true minister everywhere. The more you have the consciousness of the Lord putting you forward, and being with you in the work, no matter what may be the form of your ministry, the more be encouraged to bear with the froward, to compassionate the ignorant, to help all that need it. The more you are assured of the truth and of the Spirit's power, the more you can put up with that which would be otherwise trying. This is plain, that, if not simple in faith and strong in the Lord, you will in the same ratio be touchy, which is anything but a badge of Christ's service. It is well to bear this in mind, for things are sadly changed in this as elsewhere. The church of God is not a place for avoiding difficulties, or displaying what we know and would make known. Ministry in the church, whatever is of God, whatever is holy, true, and good, must be fully tried, so as to put men to the proof. To faith this is just one of the privileges which the Lord turns to His own glory and the very great blessing of those who cleave to His name.

But this at once shows us that the idea of being what is called "educated for the ministry," or taking it up because one happens to be a fluent speaker, is vain. I do not mean to say that as a question of ability this may not have its value in its own sphere. It is admitted that, if ability is not forgotten by our Lord, His gift is required in order to real ministry. So true is this, that we may easily see, not only men in the world, but Christians in the church, possessed of considerable ability but having no gift whatever in the word. You may all have known such, as I have; persons of admirable knowledge of scripture but without spiritual power to enforce or explain the word of God in a proper manner to others; if they attempted it, they would fall into confusion and make mistakes, or at best the word would be powerless for good. Even if what they said were pellucid as water and free from error, there would be no power in it, — nothing to bring Christ before the heart, or to exercise the conscience before God. It is evident that such speaking is not ministry. It may be a pleasing discourse, but not Christ applied to souls. Ministry means far more than a Christian speaking truly on scripture; it is the exercise of a positive gift from Christ; and what He gives has for its effect, either to bring souls to God out of the world, when they pass from death unto life, or to nourish and direct the life which is already given.

This leads also to another thing. It may be asked, Do we not find in the church of God, according to the account scripture gives of it, that there was a certain form or method of initiation — a public induction of gifted men — into the ministry? There are certainly many men of godly feeling who think much of what is called "ordination," appeal confidently to Scripture for it, and think it is a very serious wrong or defect where it seems slighted or at least absent. Many where they least expect it can appreciate their difficulty. Some of us here can remember the time when we had equally strong prejudices on this head. Confessedly it is a duty to examine scripture thoroughly, and to cleave to it at all cost. It is allowed also that the word of God is quite plain about it.

First of all, as to preaching the gospel, none can dispute that, when persecution broke up the church in Jerusalem, all good Christian men went about evangelizing the world (Acts 8). This ought to settle the question as to principle. It is not only that they scattered and went everywhere, but that scripture proves they were sanctioned and blessed — that the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord. It is in vain to allege in the face of Acts 11: 19-21 that the action then was irregular and owing to peculiar circumstances. It might have been hoped that those who plead for antiquity and order would show more respect for that which had the sanction of the primitive church, of one not behind the chief of the apostles, yea of God. For let it be remembered that all this was in the earliest days of holy order, if ever there were such, and of power in the Spirit, if ever this was known in man here below. These were days when truth was proclaimed by holy apostles and prophets; what can be more harsh than to imply a departure from due order sanctioned of the Lord at such a time? The truth is, that the objection is human, and that the collision of scriptural precedent is with an order set up, not by apostles, but by the fathers in the dark days of declension which too soon set in, when through the craft of the enemy another sort of order undermined that of the Holy Spirit, when pretentious form was substituted for power, when Ignatius, and Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria supplanted the apostles, and utter departure from the grace and truth of Christ ensued far and wide.

But it is only fair to weigh those scriptures which are commonly quoted against freedom of preaching and teaching, always bearing in mind that the question is exclusively one, not of spiritual competency, but of liberty to minister among those assumed to be competent.

One of the passages chiefly insisted on is the beginning of Acts 13. There it is alleged that even Saul of Tarsus, the apostle of the Gentiles, himself submitted to the rite of ordination. He and Barnabas, it is said, were then ordained at Antioch. Were there any real ground for this, the case would be closed. But the passage disproves that for which men produce it. There was no ordination whatever. Look at it well: the truth has nothing to fear. If it were the revealed will of the Lord for every preacher or teacher to be ordained, the right course would be clear; for one must expect His gracious wisdom would make due provision for giving effect to His will among those who fear and love His name and word. Were the common practice of Christendom sound, it is certainly an easy matter anywhere to get ordained. It nowhere requires learning, and a little piety suffices the very few bodies which require it. Few trades or professions need so short an apprenticeship, so little ability, such slender acquirements; and the mass of clergy, from Rome to Geneva, from Canterbury to the Primitive Methodist Conference, consist of men springing from a comparatively humble position in life. Ordination therefore, if scripturally requisite for all preachers and teachers, is by no means of difficult attainment in itself or in its conditions. The natural heart likes it; for it prevails among Catholics and Protestants; and Mormons or Moravians as rigidly insist on it as Papists or Presbyterians. Quakers make much of their elders, and Congregationalists of their ministers. In short, search Christendom through, and all have in some shape their ordination, and hence their clergy, of which they think no small things. The question is — Is it of God? How far Acts 13 sanctions it, we shall see when the account is examined.

"Now there were at Antioch in the church that was [there] prophets and teachers; both * Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them."

*The best authorities omit τινες "certain"; and there is no authority whatever for the insertion of "as" in the Authorised Version. Thus the vague impression is removed, that there were other teachers there unnamed. There were really three besides Barnabas and Saul.

Is this what men think to be ordination? What are the facts, as compared with the inspired history? Barnabas had been ministering in the word for years before this. So had Saul of Tarsus, as we learn from his own account in Gal. 1: Compare Acts 9: 20-29. Afterwards for a year together Barnabas and Saul were gathered together in the church at this same city of Antioch, where they taught much people. Thus, not only Barnabas, but he who was an apostle by the call of the Lord Jesus, preached freely among Gentiles as well as Jews, and taught particularly in that assembly and city where, a considerable time after, we are told (but not by God) that they received orders at the hands of their ecclesiastical inferiors. Is this even reasonable?

But this leads us to another point of importance. We have Paul's own inspired answer to the argument. He distinctly pronounces upon the question; for from the first there were not wanting those that found fault with him because he had not been appointed by men, — that is, ordained. As to the twelve apostles, every one knew that the Lord Jesus had either formally or virtually appointed them (formally as to the eleven, virtually as to the twelfth); but there were men of that day who shook their heads as to Saul of Tarsus. Of course he said he was an apostle by divine call, and spoke of the wonderful vision that he had seen outside Damascus; yet nobody saw it but himself, they sagely remarked, and who then could be absolutely sure? Very mysterious man, this Saul, who had suddenly leaped from a persecutor to be an apostle. His teaching too was strikingly different from every one's else, even the other apostles'. Thus doubters appeared among the early Christians, who were stumbled at his immediate call, irrespective of those before him; and these men were difficult to convince about the matter. Hence in an inspired epistle, and this the most solemn in its form that he ever wrote, Paul told the Galatians that he was an apostle not of men neither by man. He denied that humanity was either its source or its channel. This statement destroys the argument from top to bottom. Ordination, in the common popular sense, must mean that the channel, if not the source, of the ministry in question is human. The apostle for himself denies it as to both. He insists in precise terms, that he was an apostle "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead." That is, when God stopped him on the road to Damascus, when the Lord Jesus appeared and told him then that he was a chosen vessel, he was appointed or constituted His apostle from that day. This is what he lets us know, and exactly what he acted on. In the same epistle he says, "When it pleased him who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen." What did he do then? Go up to Jerusalem to get his orders from the apostles? Not at all. "Immediately," says he, "I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem."

But was it then to be ordained? No; but to visit Cephas, with whom he stayed fifteen days. "But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." And so strongly does he feel on this head that he adds, "now, the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not." He was conscious that, for him and others too, the truth he preached was bound up with his ministry; and as the truth he taught was the development of what the grace of God gives, not only in the death and resurrection, but characteristically the exaltation of Christ in heaven, so his ministry had a heavenly source, not earthly, still less human. Expressly to harmonize with the divine counsels as to Christ and the church, the ministry of the apostle Paul knew no human channel, and not even as its source Christ Himself on earth — for this also it is of importance to affirm. There are many pious souls who acknowledge God as the source of ministry; but then, as they say, for the sake of order man must be its channel. The apostle takes pains to deny the latter no less firmly than the former.

Further this is not to be regarded as an unfruitful exceptional circumstance. It intimates a principle thenceforward to be seen at work in the service of the ascended Christ the Lord. It is vain to say that it does not concern others; for he was an apostle, and had a miraculous vision. And why then did you venture to argue on his alleged ordination (Acts 13)? If you take the ground of treating the apostle Paul as furnishing no instruction for ministry now, why do you throw dust into people's eyes by the insinuation that there was real ordination in his entrance on ministry. The truth is, that you are as wrong in your alleged facts as in denying their bearing on our practice. Saul and Barnabas had been preaching to those without, and they had also been instructing those within, before this pretended ordination, the fact and principle of which is excluded by Galatians 1: 1, as far as Paul is concerned, in every shape, degree, or aim. Has the erroneous use, has the truth, no voice for us all?

Do you ask, "Why then were Barnabas and Saul separated?" It was of the Spirit who was now distinctly sending them on an unprecedented errand among the Gentiles, though regularly even then "to the Jew first." In this it was important to have the sympathy and prayers of their fellow-labourers. Supposing some one here were marked out in some way adequate, as God knows how to make it to our consciences, to an untrodden field surrounded by peculiar difficulties, such as Tartary or the interior of China, with the danger of ever-present death for the truth's sake, — would it not be a becoming thing, in those circumstances, that those who had faith in God and fellowship with the work should get together, and with prayer and fasting lay their hands on the head of him that was going out, not pretending to make him anything that he was not before, but rather identifying themselves with this errand of love? The known and ancient sign of identification was the laying on of hands. It was so in the case of sacrifices; so too in conferring a blessing on a child, or a gift on one designated for it like Timothy (1 Tim. 4: 14; 2 Tim. 1: 6), in praying for a sick person, or in appointing any to a charge like the seven curators of the poor in Acts 6, where the task was exclusively external, though some had also a spiritual gift in the word. It was always on the part of some one presumed to be connected with the source of the blessing, who by that outward sign indicated his desire that God would impart it to him who was its object.

Observe that elders are never said to have had hands laid on them, though it is probable from 1 Tim. 5: 22, and from general use, that imposition of hands may have accompanied the choice of them by apostles and apostolic delegates. But scripture seems purposely silent, as if to warn against making a form of it, there at any rate it can claim no sure inspired warrant.

The case of Acts 13, then, could not be one of ordination; for what is the meaning of this rite? In the generally understood sense among godly men (for I do not speak of vulgar superstition among Romanists or the like) it is this: the Christian may have the power from God (or the gift) for a certain work of a ministerial sort; but he has not thereby title to act, till those who have the authority from the church ordain him, investing him with a proper ministerial character according to the prescribed degree or position he is to occupy. There are differences; but this is the broad notion, divested of abuses and irregularities which abound here as elsewhere.

What a strange disorder, yea, inversion of things, to interpret the scripture so as to involve the conclusion that Paul and Barnabas, two apostles, got their orders from Christians, who were not only not apostles, but in gift, position, and every other respect, inferior to themselves! Is it thus they would prove a valid ordination? Who will pretend to say that, if ordination was meant, any could be thus chosen in a legitimate manner? Even in the world superior officers of government are never appointed by the inferior, unless in a republic. Government ordinarily and properly descends from the higher authority to the lower. Such is the picture according to the word of God; and it always will be so unless where and as the spirit of revolution upsets it. But such is the order most certainly in divine things. Accordingly, wherever in scripture the question of ordination comes up, a subordinate office is conferred by functionaries of higher grade. Where were such here? The advocates of ordination are in danger of repeating the error of Paul's adversaries, in denying his full apostolic authority, through deriving it from men, and men of subordinate place. Scripture assigns to Paul an apostleship of the highest character and immediately from the Lord.

Thus it is manifest that the attempt to found ordination on Acts 13 is not only a total failure in every point of view, but strikes a blow at his underived apostleship and his testimony of the truth, as well as at the veracity of God's word. Those who imposed hands on Barnabas and Saul never had their important place; and in fact, before this act they themselves had been teaching the church in Antioch as well as preaching to those without. Evidently they had held the highest place among those that were then labouring there.

My conviction then cannot but be, that the imposition of their fellow-labourers' hands in this case was a most orderly act of interest and of prayerful communion; it was in no wise a pretension to confer an authority which they did not possess. But, if this case fails, there is no other as regards Paul; for it is remarkable that, when first brought to the Lord, it was so ordered that a simple brother laid his hands on him, and then the Holy Ghost was given to him. He who baptized the apostle was not an apostle: else it would have been said that it was one in that high position who gave Paul his authority. As it is, nobody can pretend that Ananias conferred anything of the sort on Paul.

How wise are the ways of God! I remember well reading some years ago a book by a living dignitary of the Anglican establishment, in which he speaks of the absurdity of men in office claiming to be the sole persons to baptize. This he argued from this very case of Ananias, as well as from Cornelius, etc. He pointed out that it was a layman, as people would call it now-a-days, an unofficial disciple, who was used purposely to baptize and lay hands on the greatest apostle the Lord ever gave to the church. It seems to have been just the same principle on the day of Pentecost; for, although Peter and the rest of the apostles no doubt baptized many, it may be doubted whether only they baptized three thousand in a day. So, when Peter went down to Caesarea (Acts 10), instead of his baptizing as if it were his sole prerogative, "he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord." The other brethren — the unofficial brethren that accompanied him — must have baptized on that grave occasion.

Surely, if anything could destroy the notion of baptism having its validity from the authority of the apostle, such a fact is calculated to do so. What clergyman would think of doing this? Peter, then, was not, and could not have been, a clergyman. Suppose one looked, for instance, at an official in any particular religious system, is it conceivable that such a one would delegate his power or authority to these unknown Christian brethren? Especially, would he act thus on a most novel and critical occasion, without such a plea of numbers or necessity of circumstances as might be said of Pentecost? Has anybody ever heard of such a thing since the clergy began? It is not so that men do now. Their thoughts and habits are altogether changed from the truth of God in this matter. Far be it from me to say that the apostles Paul and Peter would have thought lightly of one preaching the word out of his own head, or out of unworthy motives — envy, strife, or covetousness. This would be a gross evil, but not unknown of old (Phil. 1). But the clerical principle in no case remedies its worst forms, but rather sanctions by legitimating them. Again, ministry does not mean that Christians have a right to preach or teach; for in truth no man has such a right: the Lord has the right to call and send, as He alone gives the needful gift. It is in this that the true principle is wholly opposed to what men call democratic. For democracy means that all rights flow from man's will. Christianity denies this, root and branch; it affirms that the right is the Lord's entirely, and that He exercises His right by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. Hence the choice is for God's glory; and one way in which this is secured, is that, by choosing not many wise or learned or mighty or noble, God puts honour on the Crucified One, not on mere circumstances, as position or possession, family-birth, genius, ability, or acquirements. Rather does the Lord in the face of obstacles exercise His sovereign will, so that He gathers, so to speak, out of every sort. To the spiritual mind which delights in honouring the Second man and not the first, what can be more delightful? In such a state as the present such a choice is precisely the best and wisest possible. What more deplorable than if He chose only from some particular class? No, such is not the way of the Lord. Inasmuch as the church chiefly consists of the lowly, so is it with the greater part of those that minister. Thanks be to God, none is excluded from His grace or the service of Christ for natural circumstances. Thanks be to God, none is to be supposed fit for the Lord's service because he is learned, or noble, or rich, or anything else in this world. Let us cast off all unworthy prejudices or prepossessions. We must be simply governed by the word of God and the evident will of our Lord Jesus.

The essential principle of ministry is, then, that, as the power is of the Holy Ghost (only just suited in form to the ability of the man who is called, but distinct from it), so on the other hand it is entirely in the Lord's hand. Therefore the assumption of the church to choose and authorize ministers, or to order their action, is a plain direct infringement of God's word and of Christ's authority. It is no question of any particular body; for I am sorry to think that wherever one looks — from the Pope of Rome down to the humblest pastor — this principle has found footing. A minister is regarded as an official of the system or denomination. There is no such thing in Christendom as a servant of Christ left free to do His will. And the reason is obvious: it would not help on the interests of the sect. He must be a priest of the Romish church, a clergyman of this body, a minister of that, and so on.

My brethren, if you are guided solely by the word and Spirit of God, you cannot fail to see that Christ alone calls and makes one His servant. Why should Christ's servant be a servant of man in divine things? Be content to serve Christ alone; you cannot serve two masters, as Christ has warned you. To serve Him only gives singleness of purpose and becoming dignity. This alone puts you in the place of dependence; this produces and sustains the only true and lawful independence. This I hold to be essential to the glory of Christ and our own allegiance to Him. There should assuredly be the freest scope given to that ministry. In the history and epistles of scripture, never does even an apostle step between the least servant of Christ and his Master.

The evident feeling there is that, as it would be unbecoming for the little gifts to interfere with the greater ones, so it would be still less worthy for the greater ones to absorb or extinguish the less. There is no right sense of Christ's authority, no adequate value for His service, where any of these things are allowed to intrude and hinder. Yet such is the actual state. The apostles were hardly gone before this crop of evil showed itself; for, indeed, the germs were there before.

Take for instance 1 Corinthians 3, already referred to: "I am of Paul, I am of Cephas." There were those who thought that Paul was immeasurably above every one else, as others had a jealousy of all but Peter; others again were swallowed up in Apollos. But what of some who set themselves against the rest, on the plea that we must beware of exalting man, and said "I am of Christ"? I have little doubt that these were the worst of all who thus troubled the church with their fleshly preferences. For the corruption of the best is ever worst; none certainly were flying more directly in the face of Him whom they professed to honour. It was a subtle self-assertion, and none the better because under His name. In vain do they pretend to honour the Master who despise those He has called to serve Him in serving them. In such cases the real object of idolatry is poor and paltry self, and in order to this the enemy suggests the name of the Lord as a convenient cover. For it would never succeed to put self forward: people would reject it of course. But it was a specious self-deceived deceiving to say that for their part they thought it better to be taught of God and not man; that, as for these ministers, it was well to beware, for it was evident that they all more or less set aside the congregation of the Lord, not giving sufficient place to their brethren and not owning the lordship of Christ. They counted it therefore more spiritual to look away from them all to Christ exclusively. Such thoughts, brethren, though they may look fair to some, are in my judgment based on the hollowest and falsest principle possible to conceive among Christians. For the express way in which the Lord Jesus is now glorified is by His Spirit here below; and the Spirit works by the different members of Christ's body to the profit of all. So true is this that I believe it would be a calamity for the church if it had only the ministry of the apostle Paul; and none would have resented this evil narrowness more than the ostensible object of such spurious homage.

Suppose it were possible to have the ministry of Paul, I do not hesitate to say that the church, if it shut itself from all but Paul, would be robbed of no small part of its food and other necessary supplies. Even the great apostle was not the most suited means of conveying all that grace had to communicate. The ministry of the least gift that Christ confers on the church is as necessary in its place as the ministry of the greatest. I maintain, therefore, that it is just as the arms of the body have a place more imposing than the toes, yet you cannot do well without the lower and lesser members for all that. They too have their place; and if they are wrung or pinched, the whole body suffers not a little. The smallest member, if it gets out of joint or into a bad condition, as we know, may cause excruciating agony to the whole body. So undoubtedly it is with the spiritual body. It is this apostle who gives us the same analogy. The Lord has appointed these things for His own glory, and He is jealous over His own order. There is not much fear as a general rule that the more showy gifts will be despised; for a powerful ministry in the word will ordinarily have admirers, even though to a great extent it be not understood. On the other hand, wherever the Spirit of Christ works in power, there will be no jealousy of lesser lights, but anxious care that they may not be superseded or despised. What can be more happy than when we see men of greater power leaving room for the less; or, again, the least of these walking humbly, and giving the fullest place to those to whom grace has given more than to themselves?

Thus manifestly the church of God, and the ministry of Christ, are expressly intended to be a place not merely for the communication of gifts, but for the exercise of grace and patience, of the mind and the affections of Christ. Nothing keeps but the eye fixed upon His glory. This is God's aim by the Spirit.

Christian ministry is not a means of living for men, however right it may be that the servant should live by the gospel if he have no adequate resources in God's providence. It is a comely thing that those who minister in spiritual things should not only not want for carnal things, but that fruits of loving care and honour should abound even if there be not absolute need; for one could scarce devise a greater humiliation and loss for the church than to be in circumstances where apparently their affections could not be drawn out. Suppose an assembly where none were needy and only rich men addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints and of the gospel! It were far better for the assembly if the rich moved off, or at least took care not to stifle the activity of love in their poorer brethren. It is a calamity when rich men patronize and saints sink into clients, — a twofold snare, and a permanent dishonour to the Lord. Let the rich seek objects outside the place they live in, that the poorest brother may not be hindered from knowing the acceptance of his mite, and the value of his quota in all that concerns Christ. It is of prime moment that the heart of all, even to the destitute widow or child, be drawn out in active, gracious, intelligent interest and sympathy as to the church or the gospel. Wherever patronage intrudes and is allowed, there will surely be "death in the pot," and, in the end, disappointment to the patrons, if not the danger of covetousness to the dependants, who will be apt to feel that there is no good reason why they should practise generous self denial; for wealthier men supply more than is wanted, and why then should the poor contribute? Thus are they taught to count themselves and their offerings of comparatively no moment, whereas grace and wisdom would carefully instil the contrary.

Do not imagine that this is a fanciful picture. I am persuaded that not a little of the kind has too often injured those called "brethren" in some quarters. Occasionally there has been a disposition on the part of men of large means to be lavishly ready and forward in settling everything. They ought to beware and leave room for others — yea, for all. They need not fear for love. The assembly is one, and many places might well and wisely receive a share of what in their own locality would be almost unalloyed evil. Whatever gives undue importance to wealth is as evil as the slighting of the least member of Christ. Ministry according to the world manages these things, according to Christ it corrects and directs them to His praise.

It is good that those who have the means should use all as faithful stewards, but never so as to stifle love or dignity in the lowliest saint of God. Let us not forget the poor but blessed widow with her two mites. Instead of telling her that it would be more prudent for her to keep the two mites, the rich may learn how poor are their gifts in comparison, and seek to have their hearts drawn out as hers was in devotedness and faith Godward.

Thus ministry is a large theme, and serves to connect the homeliest matters with the glory of Christ, which casts its bright light over all the details, and alone secures its truest honour.

Christian ministry is spoiled if made a question of present distinction in the world and filthy lucre. And do not let us think of danger for other people only; let us beware for ourselves. There are none exposed to greater perils than those who are brought outside the camp to Christ, bearing His reproach. Not that one has the smallest doubt of the right path for the faithful in the present ruinous state of the church. Scripture leaves no hesitation as to this for those who have confidence in it by the Spirit. At the same time it is a path where a careless foot may trip, where none is exempt from the constant danger of being dragged to one side or another. The path of Christ needs the hand of Christ to keep one steady in it. The only guiding star is Himself, seen on high, and soon about to come for us. Shut your eyes to that which attracts nature, and unflinchingly carry out what you know to be the revealed will of the Lord. Do not join parties or allow party feeling. There is not a little of this sort which we have to guard against.

Exercised according to the word of God, ministry is an invaluable means of helping souls and keeping things straight. But the true principle, it must be repeated, is this: whatever gift Christ gives, He has given for use. If it be asked on this, — What is to become of gifted women; for surely some of them have such power in the Spirit? I answer that undoubtedly they have gifts, and ought to use them too. It is not intended for a woman, more than a man, to put the light under the bushel. The Lord holds us responsible to profit by and use His gifts. Only we must remember that the woman, not being a man, is to act as becomes a Christian woman. We must not forget that it is no question of privileges in Christ, where there is no difference, but of public action in His name, where we must have His warrant. Now there is a propriety in this, and very strongly is this insisted on, and by true-hearted intelligent souls recognised as in the Bible. Never there do we hear of a woman preaching the gospel. In the East, for women to go forth publicly to proclaim the glad tidings in the crowd would seem utterly wanting in decorum. In the West, men do not require such severe seclusion in females; yet is there a wide gap between the happy liberty they enjoy and the forgetfulness that they belong to a sex whose best place is the home circle, or that which approximates to it in visiting the sick and poor, the young and old.

It appears to me then, that the thought of women going forward in public to preach the gospel is unknown to scripture, often as we find women employed in delicate, difficult, and extraordinary errands. Not, of course, that women might not freely declare the glad tidings to needy souls, for they clearly ought to tell of Christ diligently, and far and wide; but there are bounds prescribed, and a seemliness which may not be sacrificed. For no otherwise speaks the word of God. Never do we hear of a Christian female preaching to the world.

The question might be raised as to the Christian assembly. Surely, as some think, they may be allowed to speak in the church or congregation of holy men and women, where lawless ways are intolerable, and the Spirit acts freely for Christ's glory. But no, says scripture; this is the very place where they are commanded to be silent. As to the world the question is not even raised; as to the church the question is ruled in the negative by the Holy Spirit.

Scripture does not in the smallest degree supersede the value of woman's service, as well as her seeking the good of souls individually. We know (Acts 21) that the four daughters of Philip prophesied. These pious women had the highest character of gift for ministry in the word. Where did they prophesy? Certainly not in the assembly. They probably prophesied in their father's house, which seems a fitting and the fittest place for them. In this case we must remember the principle laid down in 1 Corinthians 11: 3-16. For 1 Corinthians 14: 34, 35; 1 Timothy 2: 11, 12, are conclusive as to that which has been affirmed; and, undoubtedly, the more you search, so much the more you will find in scripture that every truth falls into its proper place. No one duty destroys another; the word of God is in perfect harmony with itself when really understood. Our haste sometimes, flesh's will always, sets one passage in opposition to another. But the believer does not make haste, and, desiring to do the will of God, knows the truth through grace.

Having but touched upon these important topics, I must not omit to say a word on elders, as it might be thought that the subject was passed by designedly, or at least with negligence. There is not the smallest reason for evading it, inasmuch as the light of scripture enables one to furnish a clear, distinct statement on what is generally misunderstood.

In Christendom elders are habitually confounded with ministers of the word; even Presbyterians, who ought at least to be right in this, make the same mistake here as their neighbours. Hence an elder is never included in any scriptural list of gifts (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4; 1 Peter 4). They had a grave and responsible post, but they might never preach. Their business was to lead or rule, exhort and rebuke (1 Tim. 3: 5, 1 Tim. 5: 17; Titus 1: 9). An elder must be apt to teach, and might have the gift of a teacher; but his position as an elder was something distinct from, and other than, a gift. Whatever may have been the fact among the Jews, where the beginning of eldership is not unveiled to us, it is certain from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 14: 23) and the Pastoral Epistles that elders were by apostolic authority, personally or by delegate, invested with a local charge or an outward authority of rule within a certain circumscribed sphere (κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν, κατὰ πόλιν).

In some of the churches of old, as, for instance, Ephesus and Philippi and elsewhere, we hear of elders or bishops, of whom there was always a plurality in the same assembly. They were different names for the same persons and the same thing. The notion of elders or presbyters and bishops being different is mere ignorance or prejudice, if the authority that decides be God's word in apostolic times, not tradition since. In scripture they are always of the same extent, the same functionary and same function, only with a different name from a different point of view. Hence the comparison of Acts 20: 17 with verse 28 proves not merely, as dishonest controversialists say, that bishops are presbyters, but that presbyters and bishops are identical, which is a widely different statement. I doubt that any Christian teacher who is entitled to be heard on this subject, no matter who or where he may be, if he be only possessed of competent knowledge, would venture to impugn what I am saying on this decisive passage of scripture. It used to be contested by divines of the last and former centuries; but although one may not think much of progress in the nineteenth century, I am glad to say that hardly any one would dispute this now; and I am speaking now even of scholars attached to episcopacy. It is all but universally acknowledged that the elders and bishops of scripture were not two classes, but the selfsame persons and office.

It has been already remarked that they were appointed or chosen by due authority. Persons might ask, "Have you then elders or bishops now?" I answer, No. This however is from no indisposition to receive those whom God raises up, but because none can have elders or bishops without apostolic authority in person or by delegate to appoint them. Hence, if we have not duly chosen elders, you have them not one whit more than we. The difference is, that you pretend to what you have not, while we confess the truth.

Nobody at this time has scripturally authenticated elders, not having true apostles to appoint them. You cannot have them because you want the requisite authority for appointing them according to God's word. There are many religious societies which have them in name; but whether it is a gain to have them thus irregularly, without the authority needful to validate them scripturally, judge for yourselves.

We are all familiar with the fact that they have plenty of elders in Scotland, of Established, Free, and I know not how many other sorts. We are at home, too, with the fact that in England they claim to have them, disguised, it is true, under other names; and this not in the national Establishment only, but in the various associations of Nonconformists and even in the Society of Friends. So, too, it is abroad, far off or nearer home.

At the same time I am bold to say that in Scotland as in England, or in any other country, they may be styled presbyters as much as men please, but they are no more presbyters scripturally appointed than the other members of their flock. It is easy enough to call a person a presbyter; but it is another thing to recognise them as such according to the word of God. But it is into this we are now inquiring: — What is the truth of eldership according to scripture? not the value of the name when only given by man in a way altogether different from that only rule of divine authority.

There the essential condition of duly constituting one a presbyter or bishop is, that, besides having the necessary qualifications (personal, relative, and circumstantial), he was chosen as such by an apostle or an apostolic delegate, like Timothy or Titus. Thus chosen, they were put in that position in the assembly before they exercised their office. This probably was what induced people to imagine the idea of apostolic succession, and to invent it by a fiction, since God provided none. They saw that apostles were necessary to appoint elders or bishops. But scripture gives no warrant for expecting the continuance of divinely-given apostles. Hence they fell upon the theory of succession, yielding to the assumed necessity for a constant appointment of elders. But they have no scripture. The men who are loudest in their cry of order are really therefore convicted of the gravest disorder and presumption.

The fabric of holy orders is built on the sand. They cannot truly defend it by the word of God. In scripture there is no authority for what they are doing, nor anything like it. It is, therefore, however well meant, as mistaken and really rebellious an assumption as appointing magistrates without the seal of the realm.

Such is the fatal net in which most Christian bodies have involved themselves. How much better to do what scripture warrants, using our gifts in the church of God or without elsewhere going a hair's breadth beyond what it directs or allows us to do?

The Presbyterians, it is true, do not pretend to apostolic succession; they do not claim to have apostles or their delegates; but they fall into at least as great an evil on the other side; for they share between the people and the presbytery that choice and authority which scripture attributes to apostles or their duly commissioned delegates. Will they dare to say, with the New Testament before their eyes, that an ordinary minister was competent to exercise a function which we see there committed only to Paul or Barnabas, to Timothy or Titus?

It is evident that Timothy had a charge over elders or bishops, and that ordinary ministers at Crete could not do what Titus was authorized to do. Presbyterianism and Congregationalism dislocate and deny this beautiful order of scripture, and, by a gross error, let the congregations choose the elders!

But in the word of God there is no such thought as a congregation choosing elders, and then another man or other men appointing them. Such confusion was unknown where God arranged. Would that all were content to bow to revealed facts and truths, and to learn the wisdom of His ways!

Before the apostles closed their career, the declension of the church was palpable, and its ruin irretrievably at hand, if not come. God would not then provide the highest authority to sanction what was slipping more and more from Himself, or to keep up external local order in presence of such growing unfaithfulness overspreading the church as a whole.

In modern times, when Protestant efforts for truth, honest but unintelligent, added to the ecclesiastical chaos, one can understand how wise was the seeming oversight, but really intentional omission, to provide the means of providing elders, any more than apostles, legitimately; as otherwise they must have legitimated the existing confusions of Christendom, which would be as far as possible from the mind of God.

Is it thought that God does not provide amply for the guidance and blessing of His people in the worst of times? There could be no greater mistake. His grace abounds in the richest way, but not so as to annul His moral testimony to His own word against man's corruption and self-will. He gives all that is for His own glory, and our blessing, spite of all the church's sin. For — mark it well — to be a ruler, leader, or chief (προι>στάμενος or ἡγούμενος) is quite distinct from being an elder. Thus, in Acts 15: 22, 23, Jude, Barnabas, and Silas we see distinguished from the elders, but yet recognised by all as chief (ἡγουμένους) men among the brethren; and so it is elsewhere. These two were even said to be prophets (ver. 32).

Undoubtedly the elders ruled, but many servants of Christ ruled who were not elders, and some of them in spheres incomparably larger than that of an elder. Weigh the very passage (Rom. 12) which has been read, where ruling is maintained without the least reference to elders.

"He that ruleth, [let him do it] with diligence." Is it argued that an elder may be meant though not named? I answer that no apostle had ever been in Rome up to that time, nor any one delegated to do apostolic work in that great city; consequently there was no one to appoint elders. Hence the force of the passage. There were gifts of Christ, and among them some necessarily not as yet, if ever, chosen elders; and yet they were rulers. Such a recognition as this has been a comforting word to many a heart, and often a great assurance to servants of Christ in the present perplexity of the church. There are, and will always be, rulers raised up of God, as long as the good of saints calls for them; although the condition of the church is such that they have not and cannot have the official status of elders, because God has not seen fit to perpetuate the needed ordaining authority. I would ask any grave Christian which of the two, in his conscientious judgment, is the best — a real ruler, or a sham elder? This seems exactly the point to which matters come on this head — to be a ruler according to the gift of Christ, or an elder according to a spurious apostolic succession, or the equally unauthorized choice of a congregation, with or without a make-weight ceremony of men who have not the slightest authority from the word of God for it.

But observe another ominous and patent fact. So glaringly is the present state of things in collision with the word of God that there is now sprung up a new kind of official never heard of in apostolic days — the individual called "the minister." Who ever heard of him in scripture?

There is no such person or office there as that which is commonly known as "the minister." Not to speak of elders, we hear of rulers, preachers, teachers, pastors, ministers in the word, and other ways too, according to what we have been endeavouring to ascertain; and I doubt not that your consciences have gone along with me, led by the word of God. There were gifts differing, and consequently ministers differing in the same church. There might be many; as in the church at Antioch we heard of Simeon, Manaen, Lucius, Barnabas, and Saul, — various labourers having different gifts, and harmoniously using them. Such is the right principle. It requires no little grace among the companions in labour. This can be dispensed with when a man has the place all to himself; which saves from much difficulty, no doubt, but it sacrifices the will of the Lord. What can be more miserable for those who love His name? Who can deny it? The one-man system is clean contrary to scripture. Is this a light matter? It is to those who deny its Divine and permanent authority. Say not that this is a secondary or impractical question. A bad conscience can plead this because it fears the truth which condemns the course it chooses to follow. Are you prepared to hold to scripture, or will you yield to unbelief and go on in disobedience, because you have been hitherto unfaithful? Why not look to God for grace to follow as He leads from day to day? Why not begin with humbling yourselves for your blind zeal in so long defending human tradition and fighting against the word of God? Are you indifferent to the fact that you have been systematically slighting what so nearly concerns the Lord's glory? Most of us have known the sorrow; many of us have learnt better through grace. We know what it was to have been merely following the track of our fathers or at best what we ourselves were attracted to when converted, before making it a distinct question for prayer and the word of God. Certainly it is a great mercy to think of our parents, as well as our own souls, brought to the Lord; but the Divine object in all mercies, past and present, is that we may be strengthened to do the will of the Lord now, and henceforth grow in it with increasing fervour and simplicity.

I pray you then, hold fast to the truth of God's word. Search the scriptures, and fear not to obey. The things which puzzle most when not understood illustrate His grace and wisdom when once seen. Thus, when the church was evidently breaking up into parties, and there was to be no longer the one manifested assembly of God on earth, the apostles disappeared. After this the mass fell into ever-swelling corruptions through the admission of Jewish and heathen principles, and sects and parties split off, and at length Popery, etc., and Protestantism with its manifold denominations. In such a state the officials would be only those of a denomination, instead of being bishops set in the flock by the Holy Spirit. The Lord accordingly withdrew the means of imparting a true scriptural charge, when the condition of the church falsified His testimony. So far from finding fault, then, with that which looks anomalous in making it impossible to impart His stamp on that which is spurious, I bless God for the fact that an order which is only human has not the smallest just claim, whatever its pretension, to have God's sanction. From the nondescript minister of a sect, from elders who lack the sole authority which scripture acknowledges, you are driven to reality. It becomes more and more a standup fight between infidelity and superstition on one hand, on the other the word of God and the Holy Ghost. Which, then, is your choice? Infidelity is abandoning scripture as fast as it can; superstition is perverting scripture to maintain the way that it loves; and both will be found united against the written word. The reality is finding its true place in conflict with them both, not without the joy of the Lord and His known will. May we cleave to God and to the word of His grace! Manifold difficulties may be experienced; but He knows how to solve them for us by the Spirit's use of His word.

The subject of ministry is vast and has various points of view, with many details not touched on tonight. I have evaded none; at the same time to enumerate all at once would be impossible. My desire has been, trusting in the Lord's guidance, to say what I could on it at this time with simplicity and earnestness, with the clearest proof from His word as to His will, on which depends your duty, for they are correlative. May it be yours, then, first to learn what His will is, and then to cleave to it; and this in a spirit of grace and humility, as becomes such as we are, especially in a day of evil and confusion! Is it not true, that many of us have found the truth too much for our measure of practical grace? Have we not been sometimes lifted up, as well as harsh, too ready to find fault with others and to correct mistakes in those who could hardly be expected to receive it, where, therefore, if there had been more grace on our part, we should have allowed many things to pass? For why force good so as to do evil by an unseemly way? On every ground, and more urgently, as things are, should we see to it, brethren, that, holding fast the truth uncompromisingly, we may walk in love and lowliness. The Lord make us more simple and devoted to His own name and glory!

The Rev. A. Moody Stuart on "Brethren."

W. Kelly.

To W. T. P. Wolston, Edinburgh.

Dear brother,

Visiting a christian friend in the north of Ireland a short time ago, I glanced over the "Life of Elizabeth, last Duchess of Gordon," and found in it a statement, which, one must presume, expresses views generally entertained among godly Presbyterians. The copy I saw was the fifth edition (1866): so that the representation there made has gone forth widely and long uncontradicted. As you well know, we are in the habit of letting most of these notices pass without a word, especially where their ignorance and coarseness suffice to refute their ill-will; as of Messrs. Carson, Croskery, D. Macintosh, and suchlike. But the piety and the character of Mr. M. Stuart, who has condescended to no improprieties of the kind, make it desirable to give him a distinct answer. We may be sure that he would not knowingly circulate what is unfounded.

I cite in full from pages 174, 175: "After her decease the charge of Plymouthism was brought against her Grace's memory. But 'there must be order in the church' was the expression of her own sentiments on that head; and while she had valued friends abroad belonging to the communion, there was not one of her associates in Scotland over whom the Plymouth doctrines had any influence. With the 'Brethren' the good Duchess had nothing in common, save our common Christianity. Her brotherhood was not like theirs, first severing other churches and then their own. Their frequent enunciation, 'He's a good man, but I could not break bread with him,' was contrary to every thought and feeling of her heart; for there was no good man throughout the world, with whom she would not have been too happy to sit at the table of the Lord, only counting herself unworthy of the privilege. So with their other peculiarities. In her clear and strong views of the imputed righteousness of Christ she differed from such of them as deny it, and in her love for the Lord's prayer from those who reject it is legal; in her fervent admiration of nature she differed from others; in her firm belief in the perpetual obligation of the Ten Commandments, and of the Sabbath as one of them, in her appreciation of the inestimable privilege of infant baptism, and in her high value for the christian ministry, she differed from them all.

"Her daily life at Huntly Lodge was a testimony against those doctrines which level all earthly distinctions; a constant witness to the scriptural institution and the attractive beauty of a regulated order in the world," etc.

Certainly her ordinary way and Mr. M. S.'s biography should sufficiently protect the Duchess from reproach of sympathy with those who are styled Plymouthists by all who in practice sanction the present state of Christendom. Her Grace was a Presbyterian larger-hearted than most, and with this we heartily sympathize. But one who found it so hard a struggle to cast in her lot with the Free-Church movement had certainly not learnt to judge tradition enough to go farther.

But how strange the notion that "there must be order in the church" condemns the very Christians who have left the disorders of denominationalism, in order to walk, and to walk ecclesiastically too, in subjection to the Lord acting by His word and Spirit! To me it has been for more than a quarter of a century a matter of as much surprise as shame that our brethren who do not even pretend to own the sovereign action of the Spirit in the assembly can venture to use such a text as 1 Corinthians 14: 41 ("Let all things be done decently and in order") against the "Brethren" who alone are acting on it in the simplicity of faith. Why do they not blush to refer to God's order, which they never think of carrying out from Lord's day to Lord's day, which they cannot carry out as the Free, any more than as the Established, Church of Scotland? No intelligent believer can question what was the comely order laid down by apostolic authority. Far be it from us to covet tongues or external signs. They never were the best gifts; they do not, could not, suit the circumstances or moral state of a fallen church. Far from any of us then be the pretension to have all the early church had, or to be wistfully seeking for what, if it could be conceived to reappear, must, as things are, prove a snare.

But here we have the order of God's assembly for prayer, for singing, for thanksgiving, for prophesying; and if we are God's assembly, with what face stand any before the Lord who practise habitually a wholly different arrangement, founded on the directly antagonistic principle of one man's controlling action? Entirely do I believe in and value individual responsibility for preaching the gospel, or instructing disciples, as Paul did in the school of one Tyrannus. We have liberty, we are bound, to use our gifts for Christ. But the christian assembly stands on another footing-the recognition of His presence therein who divides to each member of the body as He will. "For ye may all prophesy, that all may learn and all may be comforted." That this is not practised among Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or others, is too well-known; but will they dare to say it is obsolete? Does the absence of a tongue, or of sign-gifts, annul all the chapter? If they say, Yes, why do such men or women talk about "order in the church," when they thus blot out by their unbelief and wilfulness the only order in it He ever established? If they say, No, why do they not seek grace and faith to practise His "order in the church?" This it is "Brethren" desire above all things to do: if they are feeble (as indeed they are), why do not those who think themselves strong and wise try to help them? Can they say that they do or even desire this? Can they deny their hostility to those who stand and suffer for God's order in the church? I humbly think the departed lady and her associates might have been all the better for adding to "our common Christianity" a little deference to the sole order God's word furnishes for the church.

But we are told that "her [the Duchess's] brotherhood was not like theirs, first severing other churches, and then their own." Now is it not universally confessed by all intelligent men that the associations of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, are not churches or assemblies according to God's word, but rather such sects or divisions as we are warned to avoid? Is not this felt by those who form the Evangelical Alliance? The difference is that others stay in what they know to be unscriptural, "Brethren" not only own but on principle abandon it as wrong. Who are acting with most conscience, toward God? And if evil doctrine broke out in the midst of "Brethren" worse than any they had left behind, were they not right and thoroughly consistent. in putting away or abandoning those who would cleave to it? Even if Mr. M. S. had not faith to act thus, he ought not to refuse his sympathy to what is manifestly due to the Lord, unless indeed his predilections, be with those who hold or make light of heterodoxy as to Christ, which 1 should be sorry to think. Certainly, if we departed from nationalism and dissent to fall back on the imperishable truth of God's assembly and on the Saviour's presence with those gathered to His name, were we but two or three, it would have ill become us to have preferred our own ease and peace to His name when dishonoured in our midst. Yet for refusing to be parties to union at His expense we are censured: will the Lord blame us for it? I am confident He will not. The blame of others is a light. thing comparatively in our eyes; it may be serious another day for themselves.

"Their frequent enunciation, 'He is a good man, but I could not break bread with him'" strikes me as a strange assertion; for in thirty years' intercourse and ministry in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, I have never heard such a thought once, even from the least enlightened brother. I do not say that Mr. M. S. has not encountered some such most mistaken and untoward speech, and often too; but I am assured that his acquaintance must have lain with persons wholly unworthy to represent "Brethren's" principles or practice, wherever this had been their language or feeling. It is their distinguishing feature that the table of the Lord is open to all who are His, where they are known to be walking as such; and this, as a matter, not of courtesy towards them, but of honouring Him in His members, according to the place they have in the assembly of God. Hence they might not only break bread but speak in worship or to edification, without the smallest violence to their conscience. On the other, hand, where there was deliberate maintenance of, or indifference to, evil against Christ, no name, place or reputation would induce "Brethren" to receive such. We are not so far off then, as Mr. M. S. imagines. "Our common Christianity" goes farther than many think: only act on it, and you will find the hostility, not only of the world, but yet more of worldly Christians. With the same persons you would be the best Christians going if you believed all we believe and stayed where they are, theorising, but dishonest, perhaps breaking bread in every form of disunion to show how much you value unity.

It is probably the same thing with "their other peculiarities." Thus none of the "Brethren" accept the notion of inherent or infused righteousness as our justification before God; not one but holds that Christ is of God made to us righteousness, and hence that the Lord imputes righteousness to the believer apart from works. Hence we have no sympathy with the Arminian slur (be it J. Wesley's word or any other's) that "imputed righteousness is imputed nonsense." But we do not therefore embrace the hypothesis that imputation means Christ's obedience of the law imputed to us. Scripture grounds it on Christ's obedience up to death — the death of the cross whereon sin was judged and God glorified about it; so that it is God's righteousness to set Christ in heaven and accept us in Him. And we too, having died with Christ, are thereby delivered from the flesh, the law, and the world, as the apostle elaborately shows ; and thus, had we been the most zealous of Jews, we are no longer under law, having died to that wherein we were held and belonging to another, even to Him who is risen from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

Again, while admitting that mistaken things have been said by many "Brethren," I had never heard of one daring to say the Lord's prayer was legal, or to reject it as legal; nor could any right-minded soul among them yield to the Duchess in love for it. The question does not lie here at all; but whether the accomplishment of redemption did not lay a new basis for believers, when, as the Lord Himself told them, they should ask the Father in His name, and this by the Spirit given to them. Hitherto (He said, long after they had been taught the prayer) they hid asked nothing in His name. To go on as before is disrespect both to Christ's work and to the presence of the Holy Ghost, ignoring and slighting Christ's own words.

Nor is it true that men of calm and holy judgment among "Brethren" disparage the beauty of nature. God forbid! Only it is possible that the Duchess made sight-seeing or the cultivation of flowers an object of her life, in a way which most of us feel to be beneath a Christian. (Compare 2 Cor. 5: 15-17; Col. 3: 1-4.)

As to the perpetual obligation of the Ten Commandments and of the Sabbath, there is a radical difference: not that "Brethren" hold, as many did at the Reformation and since, that the law is abrogated, but that we, Christians, have died with Christ and are risen with Him and are hence on a ground to which the law never did and never can apply. Such is the doctrine of the New Testament (Rom. 6: 15; Rom. 7: 1-6; Rom. 10: 1-6; 1 Cor. 15: 56, 57; 2 Cor. 3; Gal. 2-5 1 Tim. 1: 9). Accordingly it teaches that we meet to remember Christ in His Supper on the first day, the resurrection or Lord's day, not on the seventh or sabbath day which beheld His grave. (Acts 20: 7; 1 Cor. 16; Rev. 1: 10.) It is really sorrowful and humiliating to have to defend the simplest, most fundamental, truth thus lost sight of by well-meaning souls who are, as usual, stern and sharp and haughty against all who have learnt a little beyond themselves.

Evidently neither the late Duchess nor Mr. M. S understands this, the liberty wherewith Christ makes free; and their lack of acquaintance with it lies at the. bottom of their inability to appreciate the position taken by "Brethren" as to righteousness and the law. Only such persons should take heed what they say or whereof they affirm, as the apostle admonishes.

Further, many more than Mr. M. S. will be astonished, I dare say, to hear that what he calls "the inestimable privilege of infant baptism" is appreciated by a great number of those who by their adversaries are styled Exclusives, Darbyites, and such-like nicknames.

One of these also, in speaking for all, long ago explained that we have the highest value for Christian ministry in every kind and measure, prizing nothing more than its freest exercise in responsibility to the Lord, and objecting to nothing but un-christian ministry. It certainly does seem to us childish, if not presumptuous, to hear how these good people flatter themselves that they differ from us in their "high value for the christian ministry." They are sincere but under the merest illusion. Did the Duchess really differ from us in the principle? How came her biographer to make such assertions? The Scotch are believed to be a reading public. They ought then to have known better. For if their denominationalism sunders them from us, our writings are accessible enough and should be weighed before they write about what they so little understand.

It is well-known, that "Brethren" in general are utterly opposed to what is called radicalism; and that they were long ridiculed at first as a knot of high Tory gentlemen and ladies, unable to endure either the corruptions of Anglicanism or the vulgarity of dissent, and so establishing a sort of Madeira climate for their delicate lungs. Thus an infidel leader once wrote in one of the most respectable reviews of the Nonconformist party.

We may express some surprise too at the quarter whence such a charge emanates against us; for Scottish Presbyterians have been thought only less democratic than English Congregationalists, neither of them being usually considered remarkable for their loyalty or their lowliness.

Finally, life at Huntly Lodge may have been worthy of all respect as opposed to levellers, and a fair specimen of a "regulated order in the world;" but for this very reason, on Mr. M. S.'s own showing, it could not be a real testimony to death with Christ from the rudiments of the world. It was an effort to live in the world aright, not the walk of those consciously risen with Christ and seeking the things .above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

You are at liberty to use what I now write, for the correction of errors and the help of all who would know the truth.

Yours affectionately, W. K.

The Mystery and the Covenants.

W. Kelly.

While it is of the utmost moment to remember that the death of Christ is the only possible basis of divine blessing in a world ruined by sin, yet has it pleased God, for the display of His divers perfections, to make many spheres, the centre of which will ever be found to be His Son, Christ the Lord. Our wisdom then is to distinguish these things that differ; that so we may grow thereby in holy familiarity with all the ways in which the various glory of Christ is developed unto the praise of our God. So led, we shall be kept, through His mercy and unerring word, from the many and opposing currents of human feeling which strongly tend to distract us from the paths of His calm and happy guidance. His glory steadily kept in view solves all difficulties, and is the best answer to all questions of the due place for Enoch, Abraham, and other elders, as compared with the church of the first-born. Our secret of blessing is more and more to learn and adore the grace of Him Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.

The Christian can understand and sympathise with the jealousy which takes fire at the idea of preaching any other gospel than that which an apostle preached; as if there could be salvation save by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. But if we heard one quoting Gal. 1 to show that the very same thing was meant by the gospel there, by the gospel of the kingdom (Matt. 24: 14), by that which was preached to Zacharias (Luke 1: 19), to Abraham (Gal. 3: 8), to Israel in the wilderness (Heb. 4: 2), to Paul (1 Thess. 3: 6), to God's servants, the prophets (Rev. 10: 7), as well as by the everlasting gospel in Rev. 14: 6, we should feel that εὐαγγέλιον and εὐαγγελίζω were unscripturally limited through our conventional usage of the word "gospel" in English; and so the profit was missed of the distinct force in each of the applications of the term in the perfect word of God.

The truth of the case beyond question is, that the word "gospel" is used there in a far wider manner than is common with us, who confine it to the word of salvation through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. In that sense there can be none other; and such is the meaning in Gal., where the apostle utterly denies a different gospel which is not another. There can be none, save that of the grace of Christ Who gave Himself for our sins. To insist even on so apparently slight a matter as the circumcision of a Gentile believer, as well as on his faith of Christ, is in effect to frustrate the grace of God; and so Christ is dead in vain. Make circumcision, along with believing in Christ, to be the necessary means of the blessing, and Christ is become of no effect to you. You have slipped from the only tenure of the liberty wherewith Christ emancipates. You may have become far more "religious"; you may rival the Jews in observing days, and months, and times, and years; you may have fallen into no outward immorality; but you have done that which is infinitely worse, for you are severed from the root both of real holiness and of salvation by Christ. "Ye are fallen away from grace."

But, that the word εὐαγγέλιον* (gospel) and the corresponding verb are applied in scripture to many other glad tidings, besides those of salvation through the death and resurrection of the Saviour, is beyond a doubt to an unprejudiced mind. The scriptures, already referred to, set this at rest. It is true, on the other hand, that what is called the "promise" to Adam is really no such thing (Gen. 3: 15). It was part of the judgment on the serpent; and, so far as it can be said to be a promise, it was such to the Second, and not to the first, Adam. As to all the promises of God, in Him is the Yea, and through Him the Amen, to God for glory by us (2 Cor. 1),

* Another word which has been unduly restricted, in modern thought at least, is the word "church." The simple force of the Greek word ἐκκλησία is "assembly" or "congregation," a word applied to many other assemblies beside the body of Christ. Thus the confused meeting of the Ephesians in Acts 19: 32 cannot mean the church of God, yet is it called ἡ ἐκκλησία so "the church in the wilderness" (Acts 7: 38) ought rather to have been "the congregation" there. It means unquestionably not the church of God, but the congregation of Israel, almost all of whose carcases fell in the wilderness, and to whom He sware that they should not enter into His rest. Again it may be well to press that the Lord in Matt. 16 treats of His church as a thing yet future. "Upon this rock I will build my church." So far from being built, the foundation was not even laid. He had to die, to rise, and to be exalted on high, in order to be the corner-stone of this new and heavenly building. Further, one does not hesitate to say that the apostles, though designated to their office, were not yet in a position to be the foundation of the building, until the Lord had ascended. (Compare Eph. 2: 20, Eph. 3: 5, and Eph. 4: 8, 11.) When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men . . . . and he gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, etc. In their relations with Israel, the apostles had their appointment before; as the foundation of the church, they are the gifts of  Jesus already ascended on high.

But the pre-evangelisation to Abram, that all the nations should be blessed in him, is a very different message from that which the Lord in the days of His flesh commissioned the twelve to preach, when He said, "Go not in the way of the Gentiles." Nor can the gospel of the grace of God, which now gathers Jew and Greek for heavenly glory, be rightly confounded with the everlasting gospel which the angel is by-and-by to preach, saying, "Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment is come." God will then send to the Gentile world the simple tidings of the bruised woman's Seed as the vanquisher of Satan, backed up by the message of judgment at the door. In fine, as a question of salvation, there can be but one gospel; while in another and in its place an important sense, repeatedly enunciated in God's word, there are many glad tidings, whose several bearings must be admitted, if we would be wise in the dispensations of God.

These observations may suitably enough precede our more immediate subject. For though one admits the connection, but not strict identity, of the Abrahamic covenant with the new covenant, which is to be made with the houses of Israel and Judah, it is impossible to show that the "mystery of Christ" (Eph. 3) is included in the oath to Abraham (Gen. 22). The difficulty arises from not seeing the proper distinctive position of the church, body and spouse of Christ, as now being formed and gathered by the Holy Ghost (sent down from heaven) into union with Christ the Head in the heavenly places.

To explain:-there are, besides types, many statements in the Old Testament which leave room for the church, and bear upon some of its circumstances and destiny, and thus are, or ought to be, full of light to us, now that its calling exists as a reality. On the other hand, the Holy Ghost is express in Eph. 3, not merely that the church did not exist, but that it was not even made known in other ages to the sons of men, as it is now revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets. From the beginning of the world this mystery of Christ was hid in God. The Seed of the woman was no secret, neither was the Son of Abraham, nor the Son of David. As such, Christ had been plainly revealed and looked for by faith. The blessings of the new covenant were in no way hidden, and it was clearly made known throughout the Psalms and the Prophets that the Messiah was to be forsaken of God, and all His waves to go over Him, that He was to be wounded for the transgressions and bruised for the iniquities of His people; that reconciliation was to be made, and everlasting righteousness brought in; that the sword was to awake against the Man Who is Jehovah's fellow; that He was to die, rise, and be seated at the right hand of Jehovah. Not all nor any of these things was the hidden mystery, wonderful and precious truths as they are. They had every one of them been unambiguously declared in the oracles which were entrusted to God's ancient people. They knew that Messiah was to reign over a loved and loving people, judging the poor, saving the children of the needy, and breaking in pieces the oppressor. They learnt that not only would there be every eternal blessing for the righteous under His beneficent sway, but that the Spirit of God was to be poured out upon all flesh. They heard that, not the Jews only, but the nations blessed through them, will then praise Jehovah, and seek to Him Who is alike the Offspring and the Root of David.

"Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch; and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness" (Jer. 23: 5, 6). These truths are in no sense the mystery. From Moses to Malachi there was an unbroken stream of testimony to the mercy in store for the Jews, and also for the Gentiles, under the reign of the promised Messiah.

But, pursuing the same stream, it is equally evident that in all these arrangements of divine goodness connected with the earth, the Jews had secured to them, by the promise to Abraham, the first place. And that promise was irrevocable and inalienable. God would not repent of His gifts and calling; and certainly in the promises to Abraham it will scarcely be pretended that God gave no higher privileges to His friend than to the outside stranger Gentile. "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." The nations are to be blessed in the Seed; but surely Gentiles are distinct from Abraham's seed, and the position of the latter superior to that of the former. But if it be so, they are not fellow-heirs and of the same body and joint-partakers of God's promise in Christ, whereof the Epistle to the Ephesians treats. It is another truth.

It seems incontestable then, that the privileges of the Abrahamic covenant are totally distinct from those involved in the mystery, the exact accomplishment of the one being in itself incompatible with the terms of the other. For if you make the nations to be blessed with the same privileges in all respects as the Jews, the marked honour and boasted prerogative of Abraham's seed is at once swept away as you reduce the standing of the favoured people down to that of the most distant Gentile. But if it be still allowed that for the seed of Abraham is reserved by their faithful God the most exalted seat on earth, above (though encircled by) the nations blessed in them (all blessed in Him Who condescended to take and secure these promises as the true Seed); then it is clear that the oft-repeated promise to Abraham, which distinguished and elevated his posterity above all nations, is entirely and manifestly different from the mystery hid in God, Whose eternal purpose it was, but revealed only when the Holy Spirit came down, consequent upon the exaltation of Christ in heaven.

In this mystery the distinctions disappear which the Abrahamic promises maintain. Jew and Gentile are now made one and the same body, the body of Christ. For earthly blessing this could not be, because the oath to Abraham, it need scarcely be said, was inviolable. But this was a new and heavenly mystery, which in not the slightest degree interfered with the ancient pledges; and thus Gentile distance and Jewish nearness alike are now eclipsed by the glory of Christ exalted on high, and gathering out of Jews and Gentiles a body for Himself. "By one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free."

Thus faith, eternal life, and saintship, though of the operation of the Holy Ghost, are not His baptism: those had been from the beginning; this was not until Pentecost. The disciples of Jehovah had as great, and even greater, privileges than any saints in previous ages; but they were not yet baptised of the Holy Ghost. Nay, even after His death and resurrection, they had not this blessing until the Lord had ascended on high. Risen from the dead, the Lord breathes upon the disciples, and says "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." This appears to be the more abundant power of that life, life in resurrection, which He could now impart as the quickening Spirit.* But it was not yet the baptism of the Spirit. For immediately before His ascension we find Him with them, and commanding them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father (which, saith He, ye have heard of Me): for John truly baptised with water, but ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence (Acts 1: 4, 5).

* Mark here the incidental testimony, so harmonious with the Gospel of John generally, to the Godhead of Jesus. In Genesis, Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; but the Second man is Himself "out of heaven." Accordingly, while He is the last Adam, He is much more; He breathes on the disciples, as had been done with the first Adam of old.

They had long believed in God's Son; they had eternal life, as well as whatever accession of vital energy may be supposed to be conveyed by His breathing on them when He was determined to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. That is to say, they had already as great, and (I think we may say) greater, privileges than any Old Testament saints had ever enjoyed; but they had not yet the promise of the Father. Jesus had to ascend on high, to go away, in order to send the other Advocate. The second chapter of Acts records this; and it is of great consequence to bear in mind, that while on the day of Pentecost many gifts of external testimony were imparted, this was neither all the blessing, nor the best blessing, which was given on that occasion by the glorified Lord. It was the Spirit in Person.

Beyond all doubt, what the Jews saw and heard then was a witness to the reality of His presence Who was given; but the powers of the world to come are not identical with the promise of the Father. The χαρίσματα* and the δωρεα† of the Holy Ghost are not to be confounded: the former expression refers to those manifestations of the Spirit given to each for the profit of all; while the latter implies the Holy Ghost Himself as given to be in the disciples according to Jehovah's promise in John 14: 16, 17. On that day began the accomplishment of the words their Master had spoken to them before He was taken up; they were then baptised with the Holy Ghost.

* Rom. 12: 6. 1 Cor. 1: 7; 1 Cor. 12: 4, 9, 28, 30, 31. 1 Tim. 4: 14, 2 Tim. 1: 6. 1 Peter 4: 10.

† Acts 2: 38; Acts 10: 45.

Turning to 1 Cor 12: 13, we see the consequence of this. "By one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit." It is not therefore faith merely which introduces into this one body, the church; it is the baptism of the Spirit. No soul was ever quickened apart from the second Person, and enlightened otherwise than by the third Person, of the Trinity. But the Spirit, though He had from the beginning quickened souls and given faith, had not been sent down to baptise believers into one body before the day of Pentecost; and therefore this one body, the church, did not and could not exist, until the Spirit came personally to baptise. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, He was thus given, and not before; and therefore it is impossible, if we would adhere to scriptural facts and language, to date the church, as a body actually existing here below, previously to that day.

We have exactly the same warrant for believing that the baptism of the Spirit began as a fact with the day of Pentecost (Acts 1, 2), as we have for believing that the body of Christ commenced as a fact at the same epoch (1 Cor. 12). The word of God is precise as to both facts, treating the formation of the body as a thing contingent on His baptism; and therefore it is inconsistent, as well as incorrect, to admit the one and deny the other. "There is one body and one Spirit." For the Holy Ghost, although He had always acted, and will ever act unto the end, was not yet given for this new and blessed work until Jesus was glorified (John 7). For Jesus is not the Lamb of God only: the same is He Who baptises with the Holy Ghost (John 1). And it is expressly revealed in 1 Cor. 12 that, though there are diversities of gifts, of ministries, and of operations, and though the manifestations of the Spirit are given to profit withal to each one (i.e. in the church), "all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to each man severally as He will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12: 12, 13). Is it not plain from thence, and from the entire context, that we are on ground totally new, which pre-existed nowhere? yea, which could not exist, until God made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Christ, and the Spirit was sent down as He never was until Jesus departed and sent Him?

Where, before Pentecost, do we see a body composed of Jewish and Gentile believers wherein the word of wisdom was given by the Spirit to one; to another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues? Nowhere. But we can go much farther. We can say, not only that these characteristics, as they are here described, did not mark any previously traceable society, but that the "one body" was yet in the womb of the future, because the one Spirit had never baptised believers before the day of Pentecost. "For by one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles," etc.

It is of all moment to say that it was by none of the ancient, and in this sense ordinary, operations of the Spirit that the one body was formed. From of old He had given faith and life, and all the holy and gracious paths of the elders were formed under His plastic hand. But the baptism of the Spirit was a new work, and without His baptism the one body could not be. It required His personal presence on earth; and this could only be when Jesus died, rose, and ascended. The baptism of the Spirit and the body of Christ are indissolubly bound together; for by Him it is that we were all baptised into one body. Will any one, who admits the foregoing, dispute in the face of the chapter, and especially of verses 12, 13, 18, 27, 28, that this body is the church? If not, the entire question is ceded. The body of Christ is the peculiar privilege of saints baptised of the Holy Ghost after the ascension of the Lord Jesus to heaven. They constitute the assembly of God, in total contrast with the congregation of Israel.

This truth is entirely confirmed by a comparison of the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, which so peculiarly and richly dwell, the latter upon the glory of Christ the Head, and the former upon the blessedness of His body. But I would not at this time do more than refer to Eph. 4: 7-16, and put the following questions: 1. Is it not beyond a doubt that the entire calling, framework, nature, walk, etc., of the body of Christ here detailed, are based upon the grand facts of accomplished redemption, of Christ's headship exercised from on high, and of the presence of the Holy Ghost here below? "Unto each one of us was given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore He saith, when He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts," etc. 2. Have we not inspired authority for counting upon the continuance of all those gifts which are needed for the perfecting of the saints etc., till we all come in the unity of faith, etc.? 3. Have we any scriptural warrant for supposing that this kind of ministry, viz. apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, will be continued in millennial times? And if not, is it not a collateral proof that the then state of things is wholly changed. For the body of Christ will be completed at the coming again of the Lord Jesus. In that day another work begins; and a different instrumentality, suitable to it, will be provided of God. Hence, though doubtless it belongs to future ages to realise in its fulness of blessing the oath of Jehovah to Abraham, yet is it evident, from the right scriptural answers to these questions, that the mystery of Christ is a glorious work of God sui generis, into which none was brought before the ascension, and none can be brought after the return, of our Lord Jesus Christ.

All can agree therefore, that God's promise to Abraham will operate first upon the houses of Judah and Israel, and afterwards upon all the families of the earth. It is the restitution of all things. But that which is not generally seen, even by some spiritual persons, is that between the rejection and the owning again of God's ancient people, an entirely novel edifice is being reared upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (of the New Testament), a building of which Jesus Christ Himself, having reconciled to God Jew and Gentile in one body by the cross, Jesus risen and glorified in heaven is the foundation corner-stone.

Previously, as all admit, there had been scattered children of God, hidden units among the Israelites and the nations; but their faith did not in any way break their Jewish or Gentile connections. They lived and died separately, though they might be believing Jews or Gentiles. But now Jesus had died, not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad (John 11: 51, 52). The blessings resulting from His death for that nation await the times and seasons fixed of God, when the Jews, or at least a believing remnant of them, shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah; and God shall send Jesus Christ, who was fore-appointed unto them. Meanwhile the heavens receive Him; and it is precisely during His session there that the gathering in one of God's scattered children goes on, founded as we have seen upon His death, and effected on earth by the Holy Ghost personally sent down.

This one body, we repeat, is the church or assembly of God, of which Christ is the Head and object, and of whose unity the presence of the Holy Ghost sent here below is the power. The life of the members of this body, no one can doubt, is hid with Christ in God; but those who possessed it were known as a manifested holy people, as separate (though in a different way) from both Jews and Gentiles, as the Jews themselves had been distinct from the Gentiles. This is the church parenthesis; and evidently it turns upon the baptism of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, after Jesus had taken His seat as Head at God's right hand. Acts 1: 5 is decisive that even the disciples themselves were not baptised of the Holy Ghost until Pentecost; while 1 Cor. 12: 13 is equally decisive that what scripture calls the one body (i.e. the church) could not begin till the baptism of the Holy Ghost was a fact.

The Old Testament saints looked for a Saviour, and their faith was counted for righteousness; for God ordained Christ Jesus a mercy-seat through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the passing over of sins that are past in His forbearance. But never had been propounded to their faith that there was to be a body of Christ on earth composed of Jew and Gentile, all distinction being blotted out, and both built together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. Not only did they experience nothing of the sort in their day, but it was a secret which we know, on divine warranty, was from the beginning of the world hid in God. It was for the first time revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit, and in a pre-eminent way through Paul. Here it is that the post-apostolic Catholic church, the medieval Romanists, the Protestants, Lutheran or Reformed, the Moravians, the Puritans, and in short Christendom in general, have been profoundly in error.

God, by Isaiah, had predicted that upon the land of His people should come up thorns and briers, because all should be desolate until the Spirit be poured on them from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Christians may perhaps apply the spirit of this passage to the Pentecostal effusion; and for an indisputable application of a similar prophecy they may appeal to the authority of the apostle Peter in Acts 2. But it will hardly be disputed by the readers of these remarks that both predictions are to have a far more minute and complete fulfilment, when judgment shall fall on the Gentiles, and the divine favour, no longer veiled from the seed of Abraham, after long hours of thick darkness, shall shine out. Then will God pour out His Spirit on all flesh, accompanied by literal wonders in the heavens and on the earth, and a mighty deliverance in Mount Zion and Jerusalem.

So, from Ezekiel 36, it is plain that when Israel are thus sprinkled with clean water and have God's Spirit put within them, they shall dwell in their land, the increase of their fields shall be multiplied, the waste cities shall be filled with men, the land that was desolate shall become like the garden of Eden, and the heathen, or Gentiles, shall know that their God is Jehovah when He is sanctified in Israel before their eyes. Evidently here are blessings which were not given at Pentecost nor since. But the apostle cites the prophet Joel to vindicate the wonderful effects of the presence of the Spirit from Jewish cavil, proving that such an outpouring was no more than God had promised should come to pass in the last days.

On the other hand, there were blessings at Pentecost which will not characterise the future millennial outpouring of the Spirit, as there were other dealings common to His working in men's souls since the fall, such as producing repentance and faith. For instance, it is nowhere said in the scripture that the Holy Ghost will, in the new age, baptise Jew and Gentile into one body. The Jews are to enjoy the most marked supremacy. "And many nations shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For the law shall go forth out of Zion, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem . . . . . In that day, saith Jehovah, will I assemble her that halteth, and I will gather her that is driven out, and her that I have afflicted; and I will make her that halted a remnant, and her that was cast far off a strong nation: and Jehovah shall reign over them in Mount Zion from henceforth, even for ever. And thou, O tower of the flock, the hill [Ophel] of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, yea the first dominion shall come, the kingdom to the daughter of Jerusalem" (Micah 4: 2, 6-8).

"Yea, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek Jehovah of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before Jehovah. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you" (Zech. 8: 22, 23). See Isa. 60: 1-4; Jer. 3: 17, 18; Ezek. 39: 25-29.

The Psalms like the prophets abundantly show that the distinctions of Jew and Gentile, which have no place in the intermediate period (or church parenthesis), are to be renewed and owned of God once more here below. Now in the church they do not exist, because the church, though on earth during the process of its formation, is characteristically a heavenly body. So that the church of God (for such is the scriptural equivalent of the body of Christ) is not the common title of all saints from the commencement to the close of time, but the title proper to that special corporation begun at Pentecost, still perpetuated by the Holy Ghost Who was promised to abide with us for ever, and completed at the coming of the Lord, when also all other saints who have slept in Christ shall arise, bearing the image of the Heavenly Man.

For I see no reason to doubt that the Old Testament saints will be made perfect when we are caught up to meet the Lord in the air; but this in no way interferes with what was said immediately before, that God has provided some better thing for us (Heb. 11). It certainly does not exclude a difference of glory between us and them. Again, that we sit down (Matt. 8) with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven is certain, but by no means inconsistent with the place of the church as the body and bride of Christ. For what is to hinder our enjoying other spheres of glory beside these which are specially our own? Retrospectively, as to our earthly course, it has been so: Heb. 11 descants on the faith, deeds, and sufferings of other saints, in days before ours, who were pilgrims and strangers on the earth; and Rom. 11 shows that we follow Israel, even as Israel again will follow us, as branches of the olive tree and the depository of God's witness and promises here below.

Again, the blessings of the new covenant the church enjoys, because we are one with Him Who is the Mediator, and the cup which He gave us to drink in remembrance of Him is the new covenant in His blood. Millennial Israel will enjoy the new covenant in a still plainer and more literal way; but proper heavenly glory with Christ is not reserved even for converted Israel in that day. To the church alone is Christ head over all things. It is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Thus all these privileges and responsibilities are clearly distinct from the place which, I fully believe, pertains emphatically to the saints now being called out of Jews and Gentiles-that of being baptised by one Spirit into one body, the body of Christ, as Eph. and Col. clearly prove.

Without doubt it does seem to evince an inadequate apprehension of the glorious person of Christ, to see nothing in Him more or higher than the mediation of the new covenant, and the accomplishment of promises, let them be ever so exalted. It is to leave out, not only what is supremely adorable in Him, but also that which is most precious in His grace toward the church. The entire Gospel of John, for instance, though doubtless recognising the various positions which He deigned to occupy, is devoted as a whole to the exhibition of what was infinitely greater, His personal dignity. So the Epistles of Paul (although, wherever the occasion required it, they vindicate the promises and covenants given to Abraham from the exclusively Israelitish limitation to which some in his day would have restricted them) dwell as their main topic upon those treasures of grace in God's special dealings with the church, which are far above and beyond the patriarchal covenant or promises, while, at the same time, the church or Christian enjoys privileges in virtue of these also.

Does this disparage Israel, or push from his place their great forefather Abraham, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came? The answer is, that the church wears as her badge, "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we had known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." Our connection is with a Christ Who died for us and rose again. We are one with Christ in heaven. On earth, in the days of His flesh, Christ must have said and did say, Go not into the way of the Gentiles. "But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who were aforetime far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." It is the accomplishment of no promise spoken to Abraham to make in Christ of Jews and Gentiles one new man, and reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross. One doubts not what God promised before the world began (Eph. 3: 6, 11; 2 Tim. 1: 9; Titus 1: 2); but nothing of the sort was revealed in the Abrahamic promises, covenant or oath, which expressed no more than blessings here below.

The proper privileges of the church are rather the contrast, "in heavenly places" (Eph. 1: 3), though all, heavenly and earthly, be secured in Christ, around Whom all the divine counsels revolve. So also it is clear that Christ, and not the oath to Abraham, is the channel of salvation. And if Christ were, as He surely was, the Seed, the true Isaac, He is very much more. What shadows are there, what typical personages, whose rays do not converge on Him, from Whom they derived all their brightness? It was a place He condescended to take, and not that which was His immediately and intrinsically. Even as regards the church it is the same: we are Abraham's seed as the consequence of being Christ's. "If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3: 29). To be the seed of Abraham is a privilege of a far lower order than those elsewhere disclosed (e.g. in the Epistle to the Ephesians) as characteristic of the church.

All agree that the finished work of redemption was the ground of still clearer testimony from the Holy Ghost. See Heb. 10. Yet let us not be mistaken. The work of Christ is finished for millennial Israel as much as for the church of the firstborn. But there is a vast difference indeed between their positions, though it be the same Jesus Who died for both, and the same Spirit Who appropriates the result of His death to each. Israel, like the church, will be born of the Spirit; yet one is for God's glory on earth, as the other is for His glory in heaven. The sovereign hand of God has so ordered; and who shall say Him, Nay?

These considerations sufficiently prove the fallacy of the notion that the accomplishment of Christ's work was the hidden part of the mystery referred to in Eph. 3, although that was clearly necessary as a preparation for it. The truth is, as we have seen, that "the mystery of Christ" was unrevealed, not partially but as a whole, till the Spirit was sent down from heaven by the risen and ascended Lord; and this, not merely to render an inward witness more clear and vivid than heretofore, but to be the vicar of Christ, the ever-abiding Paraclete (John 14: 16). To confound Him with the "strong consolation" of Heb. 6 is virtually, though not intentionally, to reduce the person of the Holy Ghost to the effect which He produces. The other Advocate is quite distinct from the consolation which He administers through enabling us to lay hold on the hope which entereth into that within the veil. And as Heb. 6 is referred to, it may be added, that the context is assuredly decisive, not only that the promise and the oath are distinguished by the Holy Ghost, but that they are the two immutable things whereon the "strong consolation" is based. "For when God made promise . . . . He sware . . . . Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it (or interposed) by an oath; that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie," etc. Nor can I conceive with what propriety God Himself, the pledger, could be called an immutable thing, in which it was impossible for God to lie; whereas the phrase is perfectly applicable to the promise and the oath.

Lastly, the admission of the Gentiles to certain dispensational privileges (Rom. 11) is most plain. But it likewise is so large and important a subject, that one must reserve it, if the Lord will, for a more extended inquiry than can be given at present.

W.K.

The Mystery of Godliness.

W. Kelly.

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God (or, He who, R.V.) was manifested in flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, believed on in the world, received up into (in) glory" (1 Tim. 3: 16).

That which introduces "the mystery of godliness" is well worth considering. The apostle had spoken of the church in a practical manner. He is not unfolding its heavenly relationship nor entering into particulars as to the presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling there; but he speaks of it as the "house of God." And it is the only house of God that is now recognised on earth. The church is the assembly of a living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. The church is never called the truth: Christ is the truth; but the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. The church is that assembly which has the truth, as it were, inscribed upon it, and presents it on a firm basis as well as in a distinct manner. The church, at any rate, is responsible to present the truth of God stably and impressively before man. The world has not got the truth — on the contrary is under the power of error; and error as to God is of all things deadly for the soul. The heathen never had the truth. Even the Jews, although they had the law, could not be truly said to have the truth, which goes altogether beyond the law. For this is the expression on God's part of man's duty to God as well as to his neighbour. The truth is the revelation of what God is, and of what man is, as indeed of every other subject-matter of which it speaks. It is not like the law a claim of what ought to be, but a declaration of what is.

Christ is the One Who brought and was the truth: "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ;" and that, in express contrast with "the law" which "was given by Moses" (John 1: 17). Now when the people, who were entrusted with the law, so fell away from it as to lose their position before God, and did so flagrantly and finally, not only by idolatry, but by the rejection of their own Messiah, then it was that God was pleased to bring truth in the person of the Lord Jesus into the world, as He subsequently set up His monument of it inscribed so to speak livingly. This is the church here below. It was not to be a question merely of so many individuals, but of the assembly, the body of men in the world who possessed the truth from God in the Lord Jesus on Whom they believed, and witnessed it practically through the Holy Spirit Who made them to be God's habitation, His house on earth. So it is declared here.

There is no other representative body that He owns, as "the truth" from God save the Word personal and written; but the truth of and from God is not only for the life that now is but for eternity. Christ, being the Word, the Son, was exactly the suited person to declare God the Father, Whom none saw at any time (John 1: 18). He was Himself God, the Eternal, the Only-begotten Son. None but He Who was God and in the beginning with God, through Whom all things were made, was competent, as being the way, the truth, and the life, to reveal the truth. But the Lord having been rejected, and thus accomplishing redemption on the cross, sent down the Holy Ghost from heaven, in order that there might be here below the assembly of believers united to Him in one body. "For in (or by) one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all made to drink into one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12: 13).

Life, it is of moment to note, never unites, but the Holy Spirit of God, the baptism of the Spirit present on earth. There was life for all saints before; they were born of the Spirit. Some of them were Jews, and some of them were Gentiles; but as yet there was no union in a single body. The Gentile remained of the nations, and the Israelite was kept apart as such. But Christ is our peace, Who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments in ordinances, that He might create in Himself of the twain one new man (making peace), and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross. Thus the rejected and crucified Messiah became the effectual sacrifice for sins; and those who believed in Him had redemption in Him as well as life eternal. Thereon the Holy Spirit was given from above to unite in one body all the redeemed who had in Christ the truth, — to unite them in every place (separated necessarily from all others who remained Jews or Gentiles in the refusal of Christ), yet them also called to testify grace, as Israel of old to represent God's law.

But we are also Christians individually; and therefore are we called, each one, to be a witness of practical grace, and to suffer with Christ and for His name. For grace and truth came by Jesus Christ; and the attempt of any Christians to present the truth without grace can only end in total failure, — pride, self-righteousness oppression, and every evil way. Nothing but grace and truth will God acknowledge in the Christian; and this we have in Christ. Let us see to it, not only in faith but in our ways. And the Spirit is life because of righteousness — a Spirit of power and love and a sound mind. He it is Who is also called the truth (1 John 5: 7), having made it known to us in power. If it were not that He is given for the Lord's sake, He would have left us long ago. But the Holy Ghost came down, not in honour of the Christian or the church, but in virtue of Christ and His redemption. Therefore the Holy Ghost abides for ever; and He it is that makes the church to be Christ's body and God's house, as we read here. He is that divine Person Who, when Christ was glorified, came down and dwells there. Thus it is no mere figure, as of old with the Jewish temple, but a great reality, God's habitation in the Spirit. And here it is used practically; here, not Timothy alone in his place, but each one in his own, has to know by the written word how he ought to behave himself in that holy place. For the church, thus founded and formed, furnished and characterised, is the pillar and support of the truth, presenting and maintaining the means by which the truth is held up before the world.

Having stated this plainly, the apostle next gives us to know what in very deed the truth is, and why it is called "the mystery of godliness." The truth inscribed as a whole consists of that great mystery. It goes far beyond the accomplishment of Old Testament prophecy. "Mystery" does not in scripture mean something inexplicable or unintelligible, but that which could not be understood without God's revelation in the N.T. The O.T. scriptures properly speaking do not contain mysteries, though alluding to them (as in Deut. 29: 29). It is in the New Testament from its first part to its last, where we hear of mystery — so much so, that those who are ministers of grace now are called stewards of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4: 1). Some people have long been disposed to make mysteries of the sacraments: but such is never the meaning of the word in scripture. It was a spurious force put upon it when the truth got perverted, and men turned to fables. Mysteries are New Testament revelations — truths which God in the Old Testament reserved to Himself, but which are now revealed in the New Testament. So in this chapter, ver. 9, the apostle speaks of the mystery of faith, — "Holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience." What God has revealed through His own Son by the Spirit is for faith now to receive. The test is not the past but the present call of God.

The Old Testament in general treats of a state of things when people would see and know what God says and does: so it was of old, and so it will be in the glorious days to come. Far beyond is the case now. As Christians we are called to believe and confess what we do not see and can not know by our mind merely, but what God has revealed by His Spirit (1 Cor. 2: 6-12). It is therefore called "the mystery of the faith." But here is another remarkable expression. It is called " the mystery of godliness:" "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness." How is it then that the Spirit of God calls the truth the mystery (i.e. secret) of godliness (i.e. practical piety)? "The faith" and "godliness" are thus bound up indissolubly with "the mystery" here revealed. There is nothing so practical as the truth of Christ; and all practice which flows not from it is vain. The law demanded, but gave not power any more than life. Christ is the life as well as the truth; and the Holy Spirit honours faith in Him risen with power.

Again, the mystery is no longer "hid in God;" it is divulged. You must always bear this in mind when you read about the mystery, that it is now revealed and nothing left in the dark. The secret is set forth in the light of God, and the simplest Christian is expected to receive it. So Christ said to His disciples, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven." All other mysteries of God are given to be known in a similar way. Can words more completely dissipate the prevalent idea that mystery means something incomprehensible, which piety dares not to pry into — at least while here on earth in time? By the Lord and the Spirit acting through the apostles in the N.T. the mysteries of God are given for us to receive and understand and enjoy them.

Further, what more indispensable for practice? For we may observe that being here called "the mystery of godliness," it is inseparable from true proper christian piety. How can truth be "the mystery of godliness?" You can easily understand the mystery of the "faith;" but why is it called the mystery of "godliness?" Because the Holy Ghost will not allow that "godliness" or christian piety can be without the truth, nor that the truth can be received in the love of it without producing godliness. The truth implies living Godward.

I am aware that unconverted men can read and admire the Bible, and have done so. But the Bible is addressed to the conscience, and to the heart also when the conscience is reached and purged. It is not addressed to the mere understanding; and whenever it is thus intellectually taken up by men, the issue is that such men become heterodox, or infidels. How is this? For the simple and sufficient reason that the understanding as a matter of course judges God's word; whereas God gives His word to judge man thoroughly, as he is indeed a sinner, none righteous, none that understands, none that seeks after God. Hence God gives the word to convict of sin, and to establish His own authority, which always exercises, as it ought, a moral judgment over the soul. This therefore raises the question, in the person who reads it, as to his own practical state of ruin through sin; and there is no greater calamity for a man than to read the Bible without that effect.

The absence of this is the reason why in our day what is very absurdly called "higher criticism" is the fashion. Unconverted men presume to judge the Bible in the vanity of mind and learning: hence they turn out, not real critics, but blasphemers of God's word. Ignorant of the mystery of the faith, what real intelligence of a spiritual kind? For God is always God in light as in love and authority, where the truth is received, and man is put in his own true place of dependence and subjection. This never was so until Christ came (for the O.T. saints had promise, which left much in the dark); and this is exactly what Christ did, and always does when the truth is received by faith. God has His own absolute authority over the soul, and he who receives the truth is subject to God.

Now the only way in which a person is brought into subjection is by receiving Christ, because it is Christ Who makes God known to the soul. If we know the only true God and His sent One, this is life eternal; if we do not, we shall find ourselves lost. But when we receive Christ and His redemption (and we needed it deeply), we know ourselves justified and saved, as well as brought into the certainty of the presence of God. When people are vague and hesitating, it is quite plain that, darkened by tradition, the law, or some other means, they have received the truth in a manner feeble indeed. The effect of the truth is that we walk in the light as God is in the light. How can He be uncertain? His word is the word of One Who, knowing all, communicates the truth to produce the certainty in our minds which is due to His communication.

Hence therefore "confessedly great is the mystery of godliness." And surely it is a wonderful fact that the truth taught of God should produce godliness as by grace its simple and unfailing effect. Wherever Christ is received in faith, godliness follows; and, further, as there is no truth anywhere else, so also no real godliness.

Clearly then the question is, what the mystery of godliness, the truth inscribed on the church, is. Can any other subject be of greater importance? Now, in a most striking verse, we have the answer set before us. The truth is presented here as Christ from beginning to end; and Christ in a way peculiar to N.T. revelation as a whole. There is nothing more explicit than this. It is not a body of doctrines, still less is it an exposition of Christian duty. He is the truth: the essence of all Christianity is that all doctrine and all duty is embodied in a person, and that person is the Saviour. What is there that a simple soul can understand better than a person? Even a child can believe in Christ, can find Him life, and can feel His love. Christ then is the blessed truth according to (or after) godliness. Indeed it is stronger than this: it — He — is the secret of godliness; Christ First and Last, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End; a great mystery or secret, but a secret now revealed of God with consequences commensurate for souls that believe, and for those that believe not. For God is not mocked.

And what, coming to details, is the first view as it were that is afforded us? What is this first presentation of Christ in the verse? "God (or, He Who) was manifested in flesh." It is not as we find in the Prophets, mighty God, Father of the age to come, God revealed with fire before Him. The God of the Old Testament was God in the exercise of power and judgment; God bringing His reward with Him, and dealing with men according to their works. But in a wholly different aspect is He shown here. God was manifested in flesh, in human nature. If ever there was a mode of manifestation in the universe where we should not have expected Him Who is true God, it was "in flesh." The flesh had been busy from of old in pleasing itself, in rebelling against God, in yielding to evil lusts, and, from the flood at least, in religious abominations. Who could or would have looked for Him manifested in flesh or human nature?

No more solemn history than man's: even Satan or his angels never practised anything like the evil that man does habitually. One single sin, and angels lost their place — lost all for ever. But man, oh, how active and pertinacious, and how futile in evil! How audacious and provoking against God! Again how ready to seduce his fellows into moral evil! and with what love of proselytising into error and falsehood! Such is man: yet God bears with him. How astonishing the long-suffering of God with the race! Now this was the nature in which God was to be manifested. It was not in angelic nature; nor was it to be simply in divine nature. The mystery of godliness was thus to be far deeper and larger; yet is it ineffably sweet and intimate to us. The foundation of it is the Son of God incarnate; and not merely this, but manifested here below in flesh, albeit the Holy One of God, in Whom was no sin (not merely He never sinned). Never was any one manifested like the Lord Jesus Christ: in obedience, dependence, devotedness, humility, patience, righteousness, holiness, zeal but self-abasement, majesty yet love, unswerving truthfulness, beyond measure. It was He that was manifested in flesh. He was the Word, He was God, He was the Son; and if none had seen God at any time, He was now manifested in flesh, and He declared God the invisible perfectly, that man might know Him. Man wanted it, oh! how badly; God's people had the deepest reason to feel their lack. Never had there been seen the like before; never will there be the like again. For at His appearing He will be displayed in the exercise of judgment: how different was His first coming! For the first time in the ages and generations was He thus manifested when the world was old in falsehood and iniquity.

In the Revised Version they do not say ''God," but "He Who." It matters practically but little, though one would not say there is not a shade of difference. If we take the reading "He Who was manifested," there is but one person that can answer to it, the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. It could not be either the Father, nor yet the Holy Spirit of God. Without dogmatising, we may say that the best authenticated reading is ὅς, that is, "He Who" (cf. John 1: 1-3). If it be so taken, the person of the Son is implied; whereas if we read "God," this would look at the Godhead as such. But as the Son was God, and Christ the image of the invisible God, it is substantially true, no matter how it be taken, whether as in the Authorised or as in the Revised form. Here certainly is predicated a manifestation such as was meant for faith at this time; and as it was "in flesh," so also in this world when most evil, and flesh utterly corrupt (save in the Holy One of God). So that reason judging morally would conclude that God had nothing to do but to execute His most solemn sentence, if He sent thus His only-begotten Son.

But here is a sight altogether new and unexpected. He came in pure grace. The Jews who had the prophets had no such expectation. They looked to the great King to set up His kingdom in Zion. This is what is largely and often proclaimed in the Old Testament. But as it predicted also His rejection even by the Jews, the Lord was to introduce in the first instance a kingdom of the heavens, which was altogether a mystery to them. For He is ascended on high, and sits on the Father's throne, not yet on His own throne (Rev. 3: 21).

Accordingly the Lord's position is a most peculiar one. Rejected by the Jews, crucified by the Gentiles, He bore all shame and suffering and is seated, risen and glorified, at the right hand of God, till His enemies be made His footstool, when He will appear in glory to their confusion and take His world-kingdom (Rev. 11: 15). There He is waiting, to take His place by and by on His own throne; and when He does come, the Jews will be broken down before Him, made to say by the Holy Spirit, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah." And in that day all nations will follow the Jews. "God (as Ps. 67 says) will bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him." Compare Ps. 68: 26-32. When the time comes to bless the world, Israel will be redeemed from the enemy's hand and gathered out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. The Stone the builders refused they will recognise as become the head of the corner; and they will take a place on earth as God's son, even His firstborn, at the head of all peoples of the earth. Nor can there be universal blessing for the earth until that day.

God is now calling out of the world to Christ in heaven. And the reason is plain. His Son, the Saviour and Head, is there. Christ is the centre of all God's dealings; and as Christ rejected on earth is exalted on high as the heavenly centre, God is now forming a heavenly people, the body of that glorious Head. The Christian is therefore by calling a heavenly man (1 Cor. 15: 48), and is unfaithful to the will of God and his relation to Christ, if he value and sink into an earthly man. But flesh likes to be important here below, to be busy in the world. Man counts it hard now to forego ease and honour, wealth and power. Yet according to the N.T. the pursuit of such objects is altogether foreign and opposed to Christianity. "God forbid (wrote the apostle) that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I am crucified unto the world" (Gal. 6: 14). How can a Christian, who appreciates Christ and the gospel — who enters into God's mind about him — seek to be on common terms with that world which cast out his Master, the Lord of all?

The only becoming path therefore for a Christian now is to walk consistently as one with Christ above. Now we know that He walked entirely apart from the world, and declared that we are not of it as He was not. And how did Christ appear to the world when here? Was He not despised and hated? Did He not prepare His disciples to expect the like? "If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated me before [it hated] you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you" (John 15: 18, 19). A heavenly man must be content to be as His Master, persecuted for righteousness' as well as for Christ's sake. Consequently this is grace, as the apostle Peter says, if one for conscience toward God endure griefs, suffering wrongfully. "If, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is grace with God" (1 Peter 2: 19, 20). When the time comes for the display of Christ's glory, then all that are His shall appear with Him in glory. Meanwhile, having died and risen with Christ, we are exhorted to seek and mind the things above where He sits, not the things on the earth; for our life is hid with Him in God.

Evidently all turns on the mystery of godliness, or the mystery of faith, as we read also. It is bound up with Him Who was manifested in flesh and received up in glory. The New Testament presents mystery from its first book to the last. But it is given to the believer to know these secrets; for all is now revealed. The believer is inexcusable for misunderstanding the word. The Lord's way of giving us to understand the truth is when the eye and the heart are fixed on Himself. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be light." The grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ gives light as well as life; and as God has now revealed through the Spirit what of old was hidden, so the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

Of course we do not enter into all in a moment, but we do get the indispensable and all-important sum and substance even so by the faith of Christ. In receiving Him there is a divine capacity created in every believer; and when he submits to God's righteousness in Christ's redemption, the Spirit of God is given to him. I do not mean the new birth, but the gift of the Spirit. This gift is far more than being born anew. New birth or awakening is in order that one may have Christ's redemption, even the remission of sins. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. We are brought to God through Christ once suffering for sins, Just for unjust. When begotten by the word of truth, we look out of ourselves and find rest for our conscience in Christ's work on the cross; and thereon we receive the Holy Spirit. First we are born of water and the Spirit, as we read in John 3: 5; and when we have heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise; and not before (Eph. 1: 13).

It is the more important to urge this now, because if we have the unction from the Holy One (1 John 2: 20), we cannot deny that grace has imparted to us spiritual power to understand the word. If the Holy Spirit given to us does not carry with it such power, what does? Do you think all the learning in the world could enable a soul to understand one truth of scripture? It never did and it never will. Learning of course has its use if you are not proud of it; and a chief use of it, I believe with John Berridge, is as a stone to throw at a dog. Thereby one may confound the mischievous pretensions of such as know not the truth. Truth the Holy Spirit alone can communicate in the written word. There we must take the place of children, nay, become fools, in order to become wise. A learned man naturally does not like to stoop so low, and therefore is slow to learn of God. Satisfied with his external lore and ignorant of every good giving and every perfect gift coming down from the Father of lights, he can only as a blind guide lead the blind into a ditch. Truth it is that stands for ever, and this the Holy Ghost shows us in Christ through the word of God.

More particularly here is "the mystery of faith" — "the mystery of godliness," which the apostle brings before us. The foundation of it all is "He Who" was manifested in flesh. Before the Son of God was sent from heaven, born of woman, born under law, no such manifestation was possible. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of an Only-begotten with a Father) full of grace and truth (John 1: 14). He was thus also mediator unique of God and men, Christ Jesus a man, man as truly as any, but altogether different from any even in respect of the nature He derived from His mother. God prepared Him a body (Heb. 10: 5). "The holy thing that shall be born shall be called Son of God."

Adam's was not a holy nature, but innocent at best. Innocence is easily lost: the first sin destroys it; and so it was with Adam and Eve. Jehovah judged where ever sin showed — it was not allowed before Him. But Christ was the Holy One. Not only He did not sin, but in Him was no sin; He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners. He repelled all evil and was absolutely uncontaminated by sin. That was a state of humanity altogether peculiar and proper to the Son of God. All was perfection; but if anything here below specially marked our Lord, it was His obedience. "Lo! I am come to do Thy will, O God." There was never a man but needed pardon before, never a man who, if God had been strict to mark iniquities, could have escaped judgment. He was woman's Seed come to be bruised indeed, but to bruise Satan and to save the believer. And here the wondrous intervention on God's part came to light, "He Who was manifested in flesh." And what was manifested? A divine person: and that divine person "the Son." We have not to go up to heaven to find what God is, Who is best and only known aright by the manifestation in flesh of His Son, the Lord Jesus.

There are hasty souls who fancy that the manifestation in flesh only means that Christ was a man. But the true wonder is Who He was that became man. It would be devoid of force or even sense to speak of Moses, Elijah, or of Julius Caesar or any other man, as manifested in the flesh. For there was no other way for any mortal man to be manifested. But for Him it is not so, for the Son of God might have come as He pleased. Here is the marvellous fact that He came in flesh. He Who made all things, and without Whom was not anything made that has been made, — He was manifested in flesh, Who could command all glory. But the Creator God is the Redeemer God. And one of the most momentous objects of this Epistle is to identify the God, Who created all things and is now the Preserver of all, with the Saviour. God is the Saviour God. And He deigned to be manifested in flesh. None other was He than the Son of God, but the Son of God "man" in this world.

The next fact stated as to Him in the mystery of godliness is "justified in Spirit." But when was that? In the Holy Ghost Christ walked and testified all through the days of His flesh. The very demons bore witness to Him with abject terror. But man reviled Him with impunity and shamelessly. When was He irrefutably justified? They called Him a winebibber, a Samaritan. They said, He had a demon. There was no end to the wickedness that was spoken of the Lord Jesus. How then did His justification come? When He was raised from the dead. This was the standing justification of Him Whom man crucified. If lawless hands slew the Lord of glory, God raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death: such was His answer to man. And this seems to be what is referred to in the words, ''justified in Spirit." In the first Epistle to Peter He is said to be "quickened in Spirit," being in contrast with "put to death in flesh" (1 Peter 3: 18). The quickening in Spirit expresses the divine power in which He rose. This fell to the province of the apostle Peter; as the apostle Paul is the great witness in bringing out, not only life and resurrection but, justification. No doubt justification has a different sense as applied to the Lord Jesus compared with any other person; for every other man is a sinner. Still there is a common point in all; and justification in every case means that the person is proved or pronounced righteous — here inherently so. Man had spoken contumeliously against Him, and none more so than the religious people of the day. The scribes, Pharisees, and the chief priests were educated enough, but the worst of the Lord's adversaries when He walked the earth. Surely that is a very instructive fact. Consequently it became God to mark His sense of what Christ was. And He was "justified in Spirit." The same Spirit of God, Who had led "Jehovah's righteous Servant" in all His course of unswerving obedience and love during His life, now justified Him against the world that treated Him as the worst of malefactors. How true the prediction Christ cited from their law, "They hated Me without a cause!"

And what follows? What is the next part of the mystery of godliness? "He was seen of angels." It is a notable fact. No doubt angels saw Him throughout every step of His path here below. But on earth Christ was the light of men, not of angels. So the angels proclaimed at His birth: the good pleasure of God, His complacency, was in men, not in the celestial beings who are here spoken of. His Son became man, not an angel. Therefore are men, though not without redemption, associated with Christ, as angels are not, in those glorious counsels of God for gathering together all things heavenly and earthly under Christ's headship, and displaying the result before all the universe.

He is "seen of angels" after He went to heaven. There is no doubt that angels ministered to Him first and last here below, as the heavenly host praised God at His birth. They are now sent forth to minister to those who are to be heirs of salvation (Heb. 1).

But it is not the attendant angels who are spoken of here. Our Lord, after being justified in Spirit, is presented next where the angels are what we may call indigenous inhabitants, and where men have no natural place. Earth is given to the children of men, but heaven is filled with myriads of angels; there too is the risen Lord gone. He has passed out of this world and entered on a condition suited to heaven, where He is "seen of angels." Men who had the far nearer interest no longer see Him, angels do. This was a fact outside the expectation of Israel as to the Messiah. They ought to have known that the Son of man would come with the clouds of heaven, and be invested with everlasting dominion over all peoples, nations, and languages. But there was no intimation that the Lord would be rejected by the Jew while the church was being formed in union with Him on earth. Besides, and in order to this, the Lord has a body now, just as much as when upon earth. Thus the resurrection and ascension are capital truths of Christianity. ''Seen of angels" falls in with His seat on high, where we know Him no longer according to flesh. When He comes to reign over the earth, of which the prophets chiefly speak to Israel, "every eye shall see Him."

Is there not anything going on meanwhile with regard to the world? There is a very admirable work of God. "Preached amongst Gentiles." Never could be conceived a fact more repulsive to the Jews as they were. Even Peter was exceedingly astonished, although the Lord before He left the earth had prepared them all for it. The communications in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are plain enough to all now. Yet Peter did all he could to avoid going; and afterwards he behaved ill about it at Antioch. Here then we find that instead of the Lord Jesus, Jehovah of hosts, reigning in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before the ancients gloriously (which was what Isaiah and the other prophets taught to look for), He was "preached amongst Gentiles." It was a new and unexpected work "till the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" (Rom. 11: 25), while blindness in part is happened to Israel (for there is ever a remnant). It is Christianity, flowing from Christ as now made known in the mystery of godliness, "preached amongst Gentiles." Can anything be of deeper interest and moment to us who are not Jews but Gentiles? For God now makes such as we are His express object of appeal. The rejected but glorified Christ is now preached "among Gentiles." How great is our debt to His grace revealed in the mystery of godliness! Nor have we heard in vain. We have received Christ and are already brought into relationship with God Himself; for there is no other way.

And "this mystery" the apostle explains to the saints in Rome, who in time to come would forget it, and become wise in their own conceits, and fancy Israel hopelessly abandoned, that the Gentile might take his place for ever in a kingdom that shall not be destroyed. Vain delusion! Romish corruption! — corruption soon to end in the fall of "Babylon the great." True Christianity, the result of Christ "preached among Gentiles," is witness of His coming again in judgment of all enemies and evil, Whose dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away.

Notice how the next statement is beautifully in place, as indeed all are. They are in regular sequence, so that you could not put one of them out of its place without damaging the order of the truth. Hence, after saying that He was preached among Gentiles, there follows, "believed on in the world." Nor can any assertion be more accurate. It is not the reign of the Messiah in Palestine or "King over all the earth"; still less does it mean that there is going to be a reign of the gospel, though there is the gospel of the reign. The Lord will come to reign by-and-by in power and glory, as none can mistake when His day arrives. He is now occupied with His heavenly work. Soon He will ask and have the nations for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. And He will inaugurate His kingdom by ruling them, rebellious as they are, with a rod of iron, and dashing them in pieces like a potter's vessel. It is His kingdom over the earth; and that is the truth, and a truth that earthly men indeed like not, because they prefer something pleasant for themselves, instead of suffering with Christ now and reigning with Him in that day. But the first duty of the Christian now is to follow Him as He walked, and not to be above his Master, but to be perfected as He.

Our prime business is unequivocally to accept His rejection here, the very reverse of seeking earthly ease or glory. The Corinthians saints got a severe rebuke from the apostle (1 Cor. 4), when that error began in their midst. "Already ye are filled, already ye are become rich, ye have reigned without us." They were taking their ease, reigning as kings without us, said he. "And I would that ye reigned, that we also might reign with you," that is, at Christ's appearing. Instead of that, God set forth the apostles, not in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, but last of all, as they were first in spiritual power and authority, as men doomed to death, a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. Ponder vers.10-13; see how in 1 Cor. 11: 1 he exhorts the saints to be his imitators, even as he also was of Christ. Christendom alas! has followed the erring Corinthians, not the blessed apostle. Nor need any doubt that the Christian is strengthened so as to endure with joy the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, as also of the gospel. Read Col. 1, 2.

Certainly in these sufferings the apostle rejoiced and set the pattern for all who would be faithful. Glory now to suffer with Christ. It is the snare of the enemy, that we should court or allow the world. We are set in express contrast with Gentiles who know not God and seek present honour; whereas our true object of hope is the coming of the Lord Jesus, for Whom we wait. Christ's work makes us meet for glory. The very gospel says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, thou and thy house." And those who believe will in due time join the Lord on high, conformed to His image: not some choice saints, but every one of them. Beware of the newfangled idea of superior Christians, who alone are to be caught up. Such preachers always give themselves credit for that superiority. When the Lord comes, He will translate the entire church, His body. In His body there are differing members, some "more feeble," as the apostle says (1 Cor. 12), some "less honourable." But the grace of God tempers the body together, giving more abundant honour to that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. In the face of such a principle, how sad to indulge in reveries so fantastical, which leave room for personal vanity and slighting of one's betters! There is not the least room for doubt that "they that are Christ's" will be translated to meet the Lord at His coming. Such is the positive teaching in 1 Cor. 15: 23, and such is the plain force of 1 Thess. 4: 14, 16, 17. Nor does any other scripture qualify either. There is no ground for such a delusion in all the Bible.

Lastly comes the clause "received up into (rather, in) glory." It marks Christ's permanent condition on high — received up in glory. There He abides: why is that last? It seems arranged in this order, to present a contrast between Christ and what "demons" or deceiving spirits were to do in latter times, as says the next chapter. Christ ''received up in glory" puts shame on the efforts of men that give heed to evil spirits at work in the hypocrisy of legend-mongers that despise marriage, and cry up abstinence from meats which God created to be received with thankfulness by those that believe and know the truth.

You may ask for any other instance in the word of God of a special departure from order. Take the first chapter of the Revelation, vers. 4, 5. Every one knows that the usual order is, as we find in the apostolic commission (Matt. 28: 19), Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But in the benediction or prayer of 2 Cor. 13: 14 the apostle for good reason begins with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Rev. 1: 4, 5, with equally good reason the order is reversed, and the Lord Jesus is given the last place. "John to the seven churches which are in Asia. Grace be unto you and peace from Him which is and which was and which is to come." Next we have "and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne." Lastly, we have "and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth." This again is clearly a departure from putting the Lord in the second place. But the reason is not far to seek. The Lord Jesus is presented in His earthly glories only; and so as to be followed immediately by a parenthetical strain of praise from the saints; and then by the testimony of His coming judgment of the earth. This would have been frustrated if "the seven Spirits" had occupied the third place. In every instance contextual grounds account for the special order.

So it is here. Christ "received up in glory" would historically have followed His being justified in Spirit; but had it been put in there, contrast would have failed with the power of Satan in helping on departure from the faith. For "believed on in the world" would then stand against that departure. But the true contrast being found in "received up in glory" explains the order required. In Him thus regarded is the delivering object. These seducing spirits, these false-teaching demons, energise men who are the instruments of leading away from the faith, fair spoken but false and hypocritically undermining the truth. Religious lies and pious frauds are but the worse work of the enemy. In this case they deny the creation rights of God through the pretension of superior sanctity.

But Christ "received up in glory" refuted them. Those that gave heed to the evil spirits were misled through the hypocrisy of men speaking lies, branded in their own conscience, forbidding, etc. And this sense is right; because demons have not a conscience to be thus cauterised, whereas their lying agents have. Otherwise one must, if adopting the ordinary version, identify the liars and the spirits, as is beyond doubt found elsewhere in the N.T. account of demoniacal possession.

How singular that the claim of holiness superior to that of the gospel should go with and depend upon despising the creatures of God, and therefore impeaching His glory as creator and sustainer of all! But so it was: the early germ of Gnosticism led later on to the bolder speculation of Manicheism, that is, the imaginative impiety of an evil God of creation and a good One of the N.T. Hence the dream of matter as essentially evil, of food (animal at least) as immoral, of marriage as degrading to the spiritual. Hence the denial of all lawful use of the law and contempt of the O.T. and of the elders who obtained witness of pleasing God. "He Who was manifested in flesh . . . . received up in glory" dissipates the entire system as a lie of Satan. As there is but one God, so but one Mediator of God and men, a man Christ Jesus, yet never more manifestly God than when He deigned to become man to glorify God and save men. And He Who came down in love, to a depth unfathomable as a ransom for all, is the same Who was justified in spirit by resurrection; He received up in glory is as truly man as when He was born or when He died. Thus the Creator God is the Saviour God, and the Man that suffered on the cross is the glorified Man on high. And the believer called to have part with Him now will be conformed to His image at His coming. To disdain what God sanctioned from the beginning, and what He gave for man's use since the deluge, is to prove oneself His enemy and Satan's slave; and all the worse, if one claim also a sanctity superior to Christ and the gospel of Christ.

So it is with all schemes of higher life, absolute sanctification, or perfection in the flesh. They are not of God but of the enemy; they offend against the gospel, and destroy real holiness. The fuller, the full truth of God, now enjoyed in the church, is meant to deepen reverence for God's authority in the world as well as in the earthly relations of this life; which Satan seeks first to dissolve under the pretence of higher principles, in order later to overthrow Christ's person as well as the church, all real privilege, and the truth itself.

For, as this scripture remarkably illustrates, it is in Christ's person that the truth is centred; it is He that no less secures all godliness; not alone as come down in love, but as glorified in God's righteousness. It is the One Who counted it not robbery, no object to be seized, to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself and took on Himself the form of a bondman and was made in likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, yea death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him. Thus the personal glory of Christ, the Son of God, gave occasion to His moral glory when incarnate, going down to the uttermost in love, obedience, and suffering for sin to God's glory at all cost. Now He has heavenly and indeed universal glory conferred on Him by God as Man "received up in glory." It is the exercise of a new righteousness, God's righteousness as His answer to Christ's infinite sufferings; as it is also the ground of blessing and glory for all that believe on Him.

So in John 13: 31 the Lord Himself says, when Judas went out to betray Him, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God also shall glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him.

And such is the scope of this wonderful summary, as we have already seen, in perfect accord with the other scriptures just referred to, each of which has its own special object and character in harmony with the design of the book in which it occurs. For such is the invariable stamp and proof of divine inspiration. Some have called it the apostle's creed; others have conjectured that he has here incorporated a formulary more or less generally so used. But such guesses are as unfounded as unnecessary. It is a requisite and essential part of this epistle to Timothy and of no other; it expresses the writer's special line of doctrine, and of no other apostle, though it also display the inspiring power of the Holy Spirit, as every and all scripture does.

W. K.

Active Neology

W. Kelly.

A journal of the day sent me gives the Dean of Westminster's theory of inspiration, which is really a denial of God in it. Scientific discovery [?] is assumed to have revealed facts plainly inconsistent with Genesis taken literally, and to cast Christians on Origen's mischievous allegorising. The Dean is one of those who do not go as to miracles all the lengths of many Germans, Dutch, and Americans, to say nothing of some Britons. He talks of the vast difference between the historical evidence for our Lord's miracles, and that for many of the O.T. miracles. But such a defence cannot long resist the dead weight of unbelief. Evidence of sense was enough to render inexcusable those who saw; but it is slight compared with God's testimony in Scripture. If men did believe on evidence only, the Lord did not believe in them (John 2: 24, 25). Man must be born anew for God's Kingdom; and this is of the Holy Ghost through faith, greater than any miracles, which are a sign to unbelievers, but have per se no power to bring sinners to God. Modern scientists, who dare to assail scripture will have to mend their hypotheses as well as their exegesis; in fact they are scarce better than heathen philosophers. But think of the folly and the sin of professed Christian teachers being influenced by speculative anthropologists, astronomers, biologists, geologists, against God's written word! Ascertained facts are very distinct from human theories, and have never been proved to clash with Holy Writ, ardently desired as this issue has been by some.

As to the Dean's principles, they are not of faith and cannot please God, any more than secure the truth to man. "Biblical criticism proper" is the reducing of the current text, injured by human copying and also by editorial guesswork, to the very words of the Holy Spirit as originally written. But neo-criticism is essentially infidel; because it consists of man's mind sitting in judgment on what no Christian can reasonably doubt to be the deposit for faith through the inspired writers. What he calls "the science of literary and historical investigation," or the self-styled "higher criticism," is unbelieving, illegitimate, and spurious, certainly as applied to Scripture, and uncertain for any other ancient book, such as Homer for instance, in the hands of even a first-rate scholar like Karl Lachmann.

The church of God did not take its stand on any such humanitarian ground, but persevered in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Christians accepted without question, as our Lord taught them, the written word as authoritative and beyond controversy. It was after the departure of the apostles and prophets (the foundation on which the house of God stands), that wicked men and impostors came out more openly, as the "apostles warned, to push their school of doubt and incredulity, with all the evils in its train. "I know (said not the least) that after my departure will come among you grievous wolves, not sparing the flock. And from your own selves will rise up men speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20: 29, 30). The Christian student, nay the highest teacher, is not called to any such investigation as judging the scriptures, but to judge himself and others, and even what assumes to be the church, by the scriptures. Indeed it became a necessary question to judge which is the church, from the time that it openly split into bodies holding no intercommunion, aggravated since the Reformation by the gradual swarm of rival societies claiming to be churches. Thus, only one can be according to scriptural truth; and if this one had just grounds, it would surely take the place, not of boast, but of humiliation and grief that things had come to such a pass, where, once was blessed unity.

If we turn, as the Dean did, from the abstract to concrete facts, his statements are equally shallow, unintelligent, and unfounded; as is the case with all rationalists, even of experts in Hebrew and Greek; which learning has little or nothing to do with their novel criticism. The command to Noah of one pair of animals is contrasted with another to take seven pairs of the clean: the first as by God's command; the second as Jehovah's, with corresponding differences in each case. "In this way we discover that two early accounts! written by writers of a different style!! have been welded together by the final author of the Book of Genesis!!!"

So this is his first sample of the revolutionary criticism, of "the science of literary and historical investigation!" It is a mere dream of imagination playing on the surface of facts and words, without the least understanding of the truth which the Divine Author was giving through its writer. Elohim is "God" in His sovereign dealing, as of creation. Jehovah is "the LORD," in His unfolding special relationship. Is not this incontestably true in both respects? Let then men search the Scripture and believe as they ought; or, if they venture to deny it, proclaim their wilful ignorance. For this explains the case to the honour of God, the unity of the writer, and the profit of the reader. And the difference of the names is not only accurate but indispensable without a circumlocution beneath a revelation. This too gives occasion to the beautiful differences which accompany divine wisdom. How absurd to conceive that "writers of a different style" are required, "welded together by the final author!" Yet the Dean is modest in imagining only three; for even Dr. Driver exceeds, and he is far from keeping pace with his German leaders in their crusade against this Holy Scripture as given through Moses, if we truly own the Lord Jesus. Take one verse (Gen. 7: 16) to squash the bubble: "As God commanded him; and the LORD shut him in." Two writers! because as "Elohim" care of male and female animals is expressed, while the special concern as "Jehovah" appears to shut Noah in. And the third tacked the two into his patch-work without a single ray of light, and not even an idea! What a whimsical scheme!

The same principle applies still more manifestly to Gen. 1 - 2: 3 as compared with Gen. 2: 4-25. Let us consider it. The chapters are not two differing accounts, but two aspects of the same revelation; as to which historical investigation, no less than science, or this new and absurd pretension to "the science of literary and historical investigation," claims new light beyond our Lord and His apostles. Now chap. 2 has no reference to creation save in ver. 4, the transition link with the relations established among His creatures by Him, who therefore is spoken of accurately and necessarily, not as Elohim, but Jehovah Elohim. Accordingly we have none of the general details of creation, so minutely given in chap. 1, but new matter in chap. 2 of what bears on man for special relationship, morally rather than as head of creation. Here only we learn that Jehovah Elohim formed man of dust of the ground like other animals, but, unlike any, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Others had the breath of life by creative will physically; man alone by Jehovah Elohim's inbreathing, the cause of his soul's immortality (for good or for ill unspeakable), whilst life perished for others with their bodies. He only of earth has direct moral responsibility, and must in resurrection give account to God, as other scriptures prove.

Therefore it is that chap. 2, not chap. 1, tells us of the garden or park which Jehovah planted in Eden, where He put the man He had formed, not only stocked with beauty and beneficence for the being in relationship with Himself, but having in its midst the tree with peculiar privilege, and another tree to test his obedience, the first man's responsibility. All this was not, nor could be, in chap. 1, but properly and only where Jehovah Elohim gave the keynote; not the creator God as such, but also the personal name, the moral Governor who in due time revealed it in His covenant with Israel: a fact of the profoundest interest and import to the only nation as such brought into relationship with Him of old as their God, the sole living and true God.

Without pretending to explain every other detail, we may all discern that only to chap. 2 falls the beautiful moral ground on which Jehovah Elohim acted in making him a helpmeet, his counterpart, separately and subsequently out of himself, after allowing man the remarkable title to give each living soul of the lower creation its name, as pertaining to their sovereign: a striking refutation of another Dean's ridiculous and unbelieving dream that man learnt to talk gradually from the chirpings of birds and the cries of beasts. But woman alone was built by Jehovah Elohim out of man's rib for their special relationship, and therefore appropriately recorded here, and not in chap. 1. Does not this commend itself to every purged conscience and true heart? Does not the bearing of the chapter, and especially when both are compared, convict not of error alone but of sceptical sin those carried away by the scheme of Elohistic and Jehovistic fragments and one knows not how many more redactors German ingenuity feels it necessary to invent in order to eke out these idle unmeaning dreams? Let the self-applauding "higher critics" remember that they too must give account to the Lord of glory, Who with His apostles and prophets vouches for the Bible's authority, as well as its genuineness and authenticity.

The fatuous and unspiritual hypothesis of Astruc yields nothing but Dead Sea fruit or even worse. The respective distinction of God's creation, and of the relationships laid down by Jehovah, is of great interest and importance, quite sacrificed by these would-be sages, who leave out God as the author, and deny Moses as His instrument.

What might help to show the untenableness of the theory is that the same distinction pervades all Scripture. Take the Psalms, where none of their fragments can apply: the difference of Elohim and Jehovah is conspicuous there throughout (and marked particularly in the first and second books); as expressive of what we have seen in Genesis, as exclusive of what the neologians say. Take again Jonah as a clear example of the same truth as against the fancies of these unconscionable critics, if critics they deserve to be called; for they really are free-thinkers.

The N.T. in its own blessed way presents the corresponding difference in "God" and "Father;" for this last, and not Jehovah, expresses the Christian relationship. Compare John 4: 21-24; as indeed it is true and plain from the Gospel of Matthew to the end of Revelation in its own peculiar way.

The function of a sound and Christian critic is to detect and cast out every slip, or what is worse, any quasi-correction, which crept into the original text through the copyists. In the O.T. this is chiefly in names and dates. In the N.T. are more serious additions, as in Acts 8: 37, Acts 9: 3, 4 (from elsewhere only), 1 John 5: 7, 8; and omissions, as in 1 Cor. 9: 20, 1 John 2: 23. But though these and the like have their importance, especially for those jealous for God's word to the minutest degree, as believing in its plenary inspiration, they affect most slightly the reliable and blessed testimony of God in the Scriptures. And the most ample grounds are in general extant to convince any upright mind, whatever may be the case. True criticism goes on the ground of faith in God's authoritative and certain written testimony to man; the soi-disant "higher" believes in no inspired deposit in the Pentateuch, etc., in the Psalms, or in the Prophets, according to the measure of their incredulity. And this ungodliness cannot stop there, but will at length undermine the N.T., Christianity, and Christ Himself for themselves and their admirers. W. K.

The Blessedness and Scope of the New Creation.

2 Cor. 5: 14-19; Gal. 6: 12-16; Eph. 1: 19 - 2: 10.

W. Kelly.

When looking at the crossing of Jordan by the children of Israel, we observed that the case of believers now is not like that of God's people of old who, when they crossed the Jordan, left the wilderness and had done with it for ever. With us it is not so; we are, in a certain sense, both in the wilderness and in Canaan at the same time. Egypt we have done with totally and for ever, because in fact the wilderness is just what Egypt becomes to the child of God. That is to say, the world, where once we had all our pleasures, and all our resources, becomes to us now a place which can only be described as a moral desert, where we find nothing to strengthen, to refresh, or to cheer.

In connection with the same subject we noticed the remarkable fact, that of the great army of six hundred thousand men who came out of Egypt only two crossed the Jordan and entered the land — Caleb (the man of faith), and Joshua (type of the energy of the Spirit of Christ in a man). This, I have no doubt, is intended to teach us that we can only take possession of our heavenly inheritance on the principle of faith and in the power of the Holy Ghost.

Jordan, no doubt, presents to us the death of Christ, but not His death for us; it is rather our death with Him, where all that we are in nature disappears. This does not mean, as some have fancied, that we are, or should be, dead to nature. A person claiming to be dead to nature is not a Christian. But while this foolish thought is totally absent from, and contrary to, the scriptures, the serious truth which we do find there is that we are dead in nature. This is what is very definitely presented to us in the portion of the epistle to the Ephesians which we read together.

In the epistle to the Romans man is regarded as a living, active sinner, and the character, extent, and variety of sins are fully set forth. A living sinner manifestly needs two things; clearance from the guilt of his sins, and deliverance from himself as a sinful man. These two things the epistle to the Romans supplies. The first is met by Christ dying instead of us: "Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God." The other necessity is met by our death with Christ: "He died unto sin once. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin." The greatest and most necessary blessing that a living sinner can have bestowed upon him is to he dead, for in no other way can he escape out of the place of responsibility in which he is as a man, and in which he is lost because unable to meet it.

When we come to the epistle to the Ephesians, however, we find nothing of justification or of deliverance from a State of guilt, or a position of responsibility as a child of Adam. A totally different aspect of the state of man by nature is here presented; the darkest and most desperate that can be set forth. It is not merely that he has committed enormous sins, either in character or in quantity, but that he is beyond all possibility of repair or recovery. It is not merely a very bad case. A physician might have a very bad case on hand, a patient most seriously ill and almost on the brink of death, but as the adage goes, "while there's life there's hope," and he does not give up his exertions for his patient while life remains. But if death has actually taken place, what can he do? Now this is the state of man as presented in the Ephesians. It is not that he is guilty of trespasses and sins, but that he is dead in them.

Let me ask you, my friend, have you ever accepted in your own soul what this means? Have you ever entered into it as a great reality, true of you, that the moral and spiritual condition of all mankind is that they are absolutely dead? You do not think of applying remedies to a dead person, and hence in the epistle to the Ephesians, where this aspect of man's condition is presented, we find no such thing as justification. What do we find there then? Is there any blessing? Yes, blessing of the very highest order. Just as the natural condition is the lowest and most degraded — governed by the prince of the power of the air, and doing only the things which the flesh willed to do (Eph. 2: 2, 3) — so the blessing is the highest, for it does not stop short of seating the believer in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

It is of the greatest importance that we should get hold of this in our souls; that it is not merely blessing from God we need, in the sense of the removal of our guilt so that we may not come into judgment. That we do need, and get in its own place. It is fully set forth in Romans, as we have seen, but it is not what we have in the Ephesians. It is not surely to make little of the epistle to the Romans that I contrast the two; but we must remember that the scriptures are written with the most perfect order, and that everything is found in its own place, and not elsewhere.

In Ephesians we find that the whole wide world presents to the eye of God nothing but what I might call a moral graveyard. There is not a single pulse in the heart of man toward God. If this is our spiritual condition, how is anything to be got out of it? The answer is that nothing can be got out of it. God, if He is to work at all, must work from Himself absolutely and independently, for there is no material to work upon. Hence, what we find in the scriptures which we have read together is that an absolutely new creation is called into being by God, perfectly distinct from the former creation, but no less real. Just as God, when there was nothing, spoke into existence all that is, so when morally there was not a living thing for God's eye to rest on, He (not by the mere breath of His mouth, but) by "the exceeding greatness of his power," by the might of His strength, wrought to bring into moral existence a creation, absolutely new and distinct from anything that ever existed before. To this new creation believers belong.

This is what I desire that you should get the sense of — that we not merely need and get forgiveness of sins, practical cleansing and deliverance from the moral state in which we were, but that we belong to a scene and sphere where all is absolutely of God, without any admixture whatever of the human element. All that is of nature — not merely the flesh, not merely the evil that is in us, but all that is of ourselves — completely disappears from view, and God begins a new and distinct work for His own glory, and by His own power, into which nothing enters but what is divine. This is not my statement merely, nor does it need arguments to prove it; we have it in the simple and direct words of scripture.

In 2 Corinthians 5 the apostle tells us that he was constrained by the love of Christ, because his spiritual judgment showed him that the fact of Christ having died for all proved that all were dead. If there had been a single person living there would have been no need for Christ to die for him, and hence He would not have died for all. But He did die for all, and with a purpose in view, too — that whoever would live in this scene of moral death might have a new object to live for. The man who belongs to the first creation, whether amiable or the reverse, has himself for his object; those who have this new life are to be governed by a new object — the One who died for them and rose again.

From this aspect of Christ's death two conclusions are drawn. The first is, that we no longer know anyone according to flesh. Even if we had been Jews, and had known Christ as a living Messiah on earth, we cease to know even Him in that way, because He died. He did come as Messiah and was known according to flesh by the Jewish nation, who should have received Him, but He was not received. We know Him now as risen and glorified at God's right hand. All the former state and character of moral existence has completely passed out of God's view, and for faith it has passed out of our view, too. For faith, in this sense, is just receiving the thoughts of God into our souls and being governed by them. I repeat, it is not our sins or forgiveness we have here. We need deliverance from our sins, and, thank God, we get it. But has God nothing more to say to us in this death of Christ, and this work which He has wrought? Are we to rest satisfied with getting clear of our guilt and responsibility? Is there to be no living unto Him who died for us and rose again? Surely God has a purpose for us, and He wants us to enter into His thoughts, not merely as so much information, but in order that they may form our minds, govern our hearts, and guide our lives.

The second conclusion is, "If any one be in Christ — new creation" (there are but the two words — καινὴ κτίσις — employed in the original.) It is not merely that the person is a new creature; in fact it is not a question of what is done in the individual at all. So also, if we turn to Ephesians we shall see that, even though quickening be spoken of, it is not in the sense of giving life to an individual soul. It is the whole mass of both Gentiles and Jews that are in view. Both are on a common level. Those who had all the privileges which God could bestow upon them are children of wrath even as the others. All are alike dead in sins. What takes place? God quickens them. Is it by an operation in their souls? Not so, but in a totally different fashion — "together with Christ." The next step is that He has raised us up together, not with Christ, but with one another. "And hath made us sit together [with one another] in heavenly places in Christ." In all this what is in view is not any operation wrought in certain individuals at particular times: it is the operation of God, according to the might of His strength. Where and when? "In Christ, when He raised Him from the dead." The power is "toward" us, but the operation itself took place in Christ. It was a mighty, sovereign act of God, which He accomplished in His own Son. All we alike, Jews and Gentiles, were dead in trespasses and sins; the Lord Jesus Christ in perfect grace goes into the same place — the place of death — as a man; and now when all are in death — we dead in trespasses and sins, and Christ gone into death in grace — God comes into the scene and begins a new work in His own sovereign power. He raises Christ out of this place of death, and we are quickened together with Him.

This is a work of God in which man can have no share. There is no human material to enter into it, for that had all gone in death before this work was wrought. Justification has here no place, for it is a living man, not a dead man, who needs to be justified. The whole question of responsibility as children of Adam is at an end, for Christ having gone into death for the very purpose of meeting our responsibility, and having settled that question for all that are His, has been raised from the dead in a new character of life (in resurrection), to which responsibility does not belong. He is in a sphere into which responsibility never shall enter, and we are there in Him. It is a work absolutely and entirely of God, a new creation, the character of which is that "all things are of God." (2 Cor. 5: 18) The old things are passed away, gone in death never to return; the things that we have now are all new — new, not in the sense of being fresh merely, but as never having existed before. The great thought in the passage is that all that is of man has entirely disappeared from view, and what is of God alone is now seen. The day is coming when this will be true actually, when all within and around will be characterised by being of God, but in the meantime this is true of believers, of all who are in Christ, "if any man be in Christ there is a new creation."

This, I repeat, is not a man having a moral operation performed in himself: that is the new birth — a totally different thing. Being born again is a moral operation which takes place in a living person. The word and Spirit of God act upon a man and he is born anew; but in Ephesians there is no man to operate upon — he is gone in death. You never can understand what new creation is until you have got some sense in your souls that the old creation is morally gone from before God. We are not speaking now, of course, of the material creation — of the trees, and fields, and rivers, or of our bodies, which belong to the first creation — but of moral existence. As to our souls, as to our moral and spiritual existence before God, we belong as believers, as those who are "in Christ," absolutely and entirely to this new creation where all is wholly of God.

Have you ever got the sense of what it is to belong to a new creation, as real as the material creation which you see around you? I do not deny that to us the material things seem more real, but that is because we so little live in faith. If we accepted in clear and simple faith the thoughts of God as He presents them in His word this new existence would be as tangible to our souls as this book in my hand. But, alas! believers, as a rule, are contented to live in material and natural things, and those things which belong to another sphere are but feebly laid hold of in our souls.

Why, then, should we insist upon the fact that believers do belong to a new creation which is entirely of God? Because this gives us the rule by which we are to guide our steps, as we learn from Galatians 6, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. [The same two words, καινὴ κτίσις.] And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."

Circumcision and uncircumcision both apply to the old creation, and therefore, the apostle tells the Galatians they were on a wrong line altogether. They were resuscitating that which God had put completely out of sight, reviving the first man, which He had made an end of. They wanted to have feast days and holidays, to observe new moons and sabbaths, to restore those ancient institutions which had come to an end in the cross of Christ. They wanted to add to what God had done, and their addition would really have destroyed God's work. Seeking to be justified by the law they were fallen from grace. What the apostle winds up his earnest epistle to them with is this: it is all vain, circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing, the only thing that is of any value is new creation. And he pronounces peace and mercy upon as many as walk by this rule. What rule? The rule of new creation. There is a certain walk then for those who apprehend their place in the new creation and a rule for it. The Israel of God are here blessed, not the Israel of Palestine, but those truly separated in heart to God.

This wonderful work of new creation was not a mere arbitrary act of God to show either His power or His love (though it does in the highest degree manifest both); it had a purpose in view. It was surely God's "great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins," which moved Him to quicken us out of this state of death, and to give us a place in the heavenlies. But, while displaying His love and His power, this work had an object in view, both in the future and in the present. In the future it is "that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." We are saved by grace, by means of faith, and even this is God's gift. Works of men have no place here, for where there are works there is room for boasting, and God is determined that no one shall have anything to say but Himself. It is a blessed thing for our souls, and an immense relief too for those who have found out what they are in themselves, to get the sense of this one thing; that man, be he good or bad, amiable or unamiable, religious or profane — man in nature as belonging to the old creation — passes here completely out of view, and we have nothing more to do with him. God comes upon the scene and works in His sovereignty, and now all that we are connected with, and have to carry out, is absolutely of God.

But there is to be a present effect as well as a future result of this wonderful work of God. "We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." God designs us not for a life of mere ecstasy, like that of a monk shut up in a cell, but for a life of practical, real, good works. Believers are not to be idle spectators but actual workers. What are the good works? Is it whatever we take into our heads? Is it to do what we consider good, and nice, and amiable, to benefit our fellowmen, to elevate mankind, and such like ideas, by which so many are governed? No, we are not left to follow our own fancies. God has before prepared the good works in which it is His will that we should walk. Not only are we ourselves His workmanship, but the very sphere and character of the works which we are to do are already prepared by Him for us. How are we to get into these things and carry them out? Faith, which accepts what is of God, and absolute dependence, which characterises the new man, make all quite simple. If we forget, or neglect, or disregard the fact that we have been taken out of all that which belongs to man naturally, and brought into this new sphere, we shall very readily drift with the multitude, and find ourselves engaged in a hundred things which God never intended us to be engaged in, and practically leaving aside those things which He would have us occupied about — much less imposing, perhaps, but far more agreeable to Him. "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Nothing can please God so much as to do His will; nothing pleases us so much naturally as to do our own will. If we have really got rid of ourselves we shall have done with our will as well as with our responsibilities, for both alike go in the death of Christ. And if we through grace have accepted God's will instead of our own it will be just as real a pleasure to us — indeed, a far more real pleasure — to carry out what we find to be His will than it would be to do that which our own hearts might suggest.

Well, it is God alone who can give effect to these things in our souls. Still it is blessed for us to have them before us, for it is by means of this word of His that the Spirit makes these things good in our hearts. Just one remark, and I have done.

It may be said or thought, was not the first creation a work of God, good and agreeable to Him, when it was made? It was so. God viewed it over and pronounced it "very good." But it is not so now. It pleased God to make that first creation dependent on its head, the first Adam. He listened to a voice which he ought not to have listened to; sin came in by him, and by sin death, and now the whole creation groans in bondage. (Rom. 5 and Rom. 8)

But if this has taken place with the first creation, may not the same thing happen to the new creation? No, it cannot. Just as the first creation depended entirely on its head and came in for all the consequences which he might bring upon it, so this new creation depends on the One who is its Head and Centre — the Lord Jesus Christ — no less a person than the blessed, eternal Son of God. It will never be subjected to any failure, or to any effects of our failure in our responsibilities, because the Lord Jesus Christ, before ever He entered on this new headship, had already taken up, and effectually dealt with, all questions of responsibility before God, in reference to all those who belong to this new creation. Hence, whereas in the first creation responsibility lay in front, in the new creation responsibility lies behind, it is already over. All depends on Christ, who is the Head of the new creation, "the beginning of the creation of God." We are identified with Him in life and blessing — created in Christ Jesus — and the more we know of Him, the more we enjoy Him, the more our hearts are taken up with Him, the more we listen to His voice and walk in His footsteps, the more real will this new scene and sphere be to us, and the better shall we be fitted to serve Him therein.

APPENDIX.

Some have felt a measure of difficulty in reconciling the truth of new creation with the maintenance of natural relationships. As there was not time to speak of this when the foregoing lecture was delivered (about seven or eight years ago), perhaps I should add a word on the subject now.

Every one subject to the word of God will be greatly helped by remembering that the scripture which speaks most of the new creation speaks very plainly of the necessity of carefully maintaining every relationship set up or sanctioned of God. This can easily be seen by reading the epistle to the Ephesians, and is sufficient as a mere reply to the difficulty raised. But such need more than a naked reply, they need help, and ought to get it, seeing it is so easily supplied.

Keep in mind that all natural relationships which have been established or sanctioned of God have their origin and end on earth. They are necessary in the ways of God, and therefore it is evil to violate or speak lightly of them. (Compare Matt. 19, Heb. 13, etc.) But, important as they are in their place, they have no place in the new creation. A person may be in the new creation and maintain these relationships in their integrity at the same time. But this would not be enough., He should observe and practise all the duties and responsibilities devolving thus upon him in a new and distinct manner, in harmony with the new and elevated place into which he has been introduced. Just as a man who had been raised from mediocrity to the peerage would treat his wife and family in a manner suited to his new and dignified position.

Every man should love his wife, but a new creation man should love his wife after the manner of Christ's love to the church. Every right-minded man should train up his child "in the way he should go," but a new creation man should bring up his "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Servants should always be obedient to their masters, but those belonging to the new creation should serve "in singleness of heart," "with good will," and "as to the Lord." And so with other things.

The new creation itself, for so far, only applies to our souls; but it gives a character to those who are in it which is seen in, and has an effect on, the commonest affairs of human life. Thank God, the day is near when we shall have done with the present things in every way — bodies, relationships, and mode of existence; and shall be entirely the workmanship of God, and according to His mind. But, in the meantime, it is with this as with all else, our duty is to maintain in its integrity what God has set up till He sets it aside. And we can truly thank Him for being so considerate of us while here on earth as to establish these relationships for us, and maintain us in them. This would be a dreary place without them, not to speak of the practical benefits that accrue from them. For in these relationships dependence is developed, confidence established, affections drawn out, our hearts enlarged, not only with reference to the objects of our care or esteem, but also to Him who has placed us in such close and happy associations with each other.

May we have grace and wisdom to know how to combine the two things, to live in the spiritual and heavenly element in such a way that it will influence and control us in the natural things. If this is not the case, rest assured the natural will have the upper hand.

W.K.

No More Conscience of Sins.

Heb. 10: 2

W. Kelly.

It is not enough to believe that the atoning work is done, great a truth as it is. The Christian knows that Christ entered once and for all into the holiest, having obtained everlasting redemption. There and now He appears before the face of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, else He must often have suffered, which could not be. But now once in the consummation of the ages He hath been manifested for putting away of sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Such is the Christian's confession not of His person only but of His work. But the Holy Spirit follows it all up by declaring its revealed effect, in contrast with those under the shadows of law and its sacrifices which they offer continuously year by year, unable as they are to perfect those that approach. "Else would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshippers having been once purged would have had no more conscience of sins." This is the result for every Christian. So perfect is the cleansing of the worshippers one and all, that they have "no more conscience of sins."

"Believest thou this," my reader? It is revealed as the consequence of Christ's work, not for some only but for all that believe. Do you believe it for your own soul? It is of the utmost moment that you should receive it as God's mind about yourself; as the settled and continuous state Christ's work has effected for you and every other Christian, that you may enjoy it by faith, honour Christ in it, bless God through it, worship and serve in the consciousness the indwelling Spirit gives of so great a privilege.

1. Time was in your unconverted days when you made light of sins, and tried to quiet yourself that as we were all sinners, it was no wonder if you sinned like others; but then God was very merciful to those so born and brought up with bad examples on every side. Conscience awoke qualms now and then, especially when you read or heard scripture warning of God's hatred of evil and of His judgment righteous and inevitable. But you soon went to sleep again after a vain effort to do well. It never occurred to you that you were by nature a child of wrath, and Satan's slave by doing your own will. You went to church or chapel, you read the Bible or good books occasionally, being in fact not so bad as many you could name but that charity forbade it. During this while you practically had no conscience of sins, save a painful twitch now and then which quickly passed and left you no better but worse.

2. A moment came when God by His word and Spirit laid on your conscience your evil, dangerous and lost state. No longer did you parry the dread conviction that you were wicked and ungodly, an enemy of God, and powerless for good. But He probed the wounds, and made their depth felt, and gave you to bow down in the confession of your guilt, and of your corrupt and wilful nature. Palliatives you refused, and you loathed yourself, and cried to Him whose goodness was leading you to repentance; and like Peter at the knees of the Lord Jesus, you said, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord; yet still like him, there you knelt, and owned Him as your hope. You had now the conscience of your sins, and the dread of God; but to go away from Jesus, No, No. To whom should you go? He had words of life eternal; He was the propitiation for sins; and you felt the need of both.

3. How precious then to hear from the Lord Jesus, the judge of quick and dead, that He came, the Sent of God, to give all of which the Holy Spirit made you feel the want! to give it in the fulness of love and grace and truth according to the worth of Christ and His work in His sight. Who but He could even have conceived of such a standing as "no more conscience of sins" for such as had been brought to the feet of Jesus, owning themselves as nothing but guilty and lost? Yet there and then never had they so deep a sense of their inexcusable evil; never was the burden of their sins felt to be so intolerable. The gospel of God was His answer in the cleansing power of Christ's blood. It cleanses from all guilt, from every sin, him that believes. Rest then on Him at God's word for your iniquities; and they are remembered no more.

We may and ought to remember our sins as the witness of our ruin, of God's righteousness, of Christ's grace, and of the efficacy of His work. Henceforth this is our new place as Christians. Having been once purged we have no more conscience of sins. When unconverted we were dark and dead as to any right sense of our state or of God's abhorrence of them and necessary war against them. But now that we believe, God sees not our shameful sins but the blood of Christ, which has for ever and completely effaced them. Thus the worshippers, having been once purged, have no more conscience of sins.

Dear reader, this is a fundamental truth of the gospel; and God looks for your appropriating it to the utmost, as due to His own Son's suffering once for your sins. It is here in its unmeasured fulness of blessing without a word to qualify it or any statement of the resource of grace, if a believer should sin. This we have in 1 John 2: 1, 2, but not in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is occupied with our drawing near to God, not with the provision for restoring our communion when interrupted by sin. The serious thing for believers now is the same defect as characterised the Hebrew saints to whom the great Epistle was written. Therefore are they so fully instructed in that perfected state of the conscience to which Christ's work entitles them, but which few, then as now, enter into as becomes them. This is pursued in Heb. 10: 9, 10, and especially in 12-14. "But he [in contrast with the Jewish priest], having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down continuously at God's right hand, waiting from henceforth till his enemies be set as footstool of his feet. For by one offering he hath perfected continuously the sanctified." It is a description of the standing His work gains for every true Christian, not a special attainment of some, but the new and common privilege for all by faith.

What a living illustration Peter affords in Acts 3: 13 of a worshipper once purged, having a clear conscience! How else could he charge the men of Israel with denying Jesus? Had he not denied Him notoriously, recently, and repeatedly with oaths? Now so completely was he cleansed by the Saviour's blood, that he boldly taxed them with that sin! Had it not been effaced, he must have been ashamed to whisper the words. This clearance you by faith are entitled to know and say as to all your sins. You owe it to the Saviour and may you own it for His glory. W.K.

Not  Sinai but Zion

With other coming glories heavenly and earthly.

W. Kelly.

"For ye are not come to a palpable thing and all aglow with fire, and to obscurity and gloom and tempest, and to trumpet's sound, and a voice of words, which those that heard deprecated that a word more should be addressed to them; for they were not able to bear that which was enjoined: And, if a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; and, so fearful was the scene, Moses said, I am affrighted and trembling all over. But ye are come to mount Zion; and to a living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem; and to myriads of angels, a universal gathering; and to an assembly of firstborns, enrolled in heaven; and to God judge of all; and to spirits of just made perfect; and to Jesus mediator of a new covenant; and to blood of sprinkling speaking better than Abel" (Heb. 12: 18-24).

Let us look at this wonderful contrast drawn between the people under the law, after which so many uninstructed and unsteady of the Jewish confessors of the Lord Jesus were hankering, and the Christian privileges to which the gospel entitles all who now believe. Therefore was the Epistle written to wean them from an unbelieving return to a covenant which the prophet, who predicts a new one of divine grace and blessing to come, makes the first old and nigh to vanishing away (Heb. 8: 8-13). The sins, folly and danger of such unbelief is vividly set forth here in Heb. 12: 18-21.

Hence this word boldly declared to the circumcision that confessed Jesus, "ye are not come," as the Jewish people in their fathers came to Sinai: a mountain that might be touched, before all eyes in its stern and barren and solitary grandeur. Then also was a state of burning with supernatural fire still more terrible than anything ordinary, along with obscurity and gloom and tempest. What an unearthly and strange aggravation (attested in Ex. 19 and Deut. 4, 5)! and a trumpet's sound, never heard before nor since, which waxed louder and louder in its awful summons; and a voice of words audible to every soul as God's, more terrifying than all the rest in majesty and deadly meaning for the conscience! Therefore did they above all deprecate this voice that they might hear no more, but Moses on their behalf. For was it not charged that even a beast, unconscious of sin, if it touched the mountain, should be stoned? How then could a poor sinful Israelite stand? And so fearful was the scene, the very mediator on whom they set their hope said, as the inspired writer could avouch, I am affrighted and full of trembling.

How truly the law was a ministry, not of life and the Spirit, not of pardon and peace, but of death and condemnation! Could God have made it plainer than that, in itself and in its accompaniments, it was to make sin exceeding sinful, and to warn sinners off the delusion that the least help for the sinner lay within its condition? Salvation must come through another, the Messiah; salvation is and must be of God's grace in Him, of whom God had spoken from the day sin entered man and the world (Gen. 3: 15); as He confirmed it by many signs and tokens and sacrifices and deliverances throughout the O.T., which no believer that searches can overlook.

Alas! it is not only that Jews are still obdurate. Christendom is more guilty still; and as faith in grace and truth declined, a judaising reaction has tainted it everywhere. Hence the more ancient bodies have revived the temple, altar, sacrifice, and priests (some with its three orders of high-priest, priests, and Levites). The more modern societies follow the synagogue with its preachers. Both are now flooded with rationalism, superstition, heterodoxy, and worldliness; and this in their all but universal prevalence and alarming growth. Sight and sound, learning, science, sentiment, oratory, show, carry away high and low, with the utmost zeal to gain the masses, but gold and silver also, earthly rank and reputation. Thus is the cross of Christ (abused in a material or idolatrous form) undermined and overthrown on earth; and His heavenly glory in dogmatic and practical power utterly ignored, as is the Holy Spirit's presence and action and testimony to both set aside more and more. It is Judaism and Gentilism supplanting Christianity; and this is Christendom.

Next is the divine picture of Christianity, as presented to correct and instruct and warn the Jewish confession (22-24). "But ye are come to mount Zion;" etc. It is a coming, not actually in letter, but in spirit by faith, even if only professedly so. Sinai was the original standing of Israel, their proudest boast. What nation could truthfully say that the living God appeared unequivocally as to them in giving His fiery law, spoken directly and afterwards written on tables of stone by His own hand? But ye, Christians, have come to the mountain of grace, not law.

Such then is the principle of Zion. 1 Sam. tells us of the priests corrupt and profane; of the ark taken, of Ichabod written even on their religion and state; of the people sick of Jehovah in their midst, and demanding a king like the nations, in disobedience of the prophet, and their king disobedient like themselves, and pursuing him whom Jehovah chose till he wearied of faith, and the king sought a witch and fell with his three sons by Philistine hands on mount Gilboa. David came at length to the throne of all Israel; but Jerusalem, the future and true metropolis, was so firmly Jebusite, that they taunted him with the insult that the blind and the lame could hold the fort in his defiance. Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion; and there was the king's palace, as the temple later on Moriah.

Thus Zion became the most marked sign of royal grace; but it awaits great David's greater Son to prove and display it effectively and for ever. And the day hastens. He whom the Jews rejected in reckless hate shall sit on the hill of Jehovah's holiness in royal glory as well as grace. It is not heaven, as the Socinians expound; nor is it the church, as the theologians of Christendom dream. It is the centre of the kingdom restored to Israel, when they repent and are converted to their true King. Compare Ps. 2, 9, 14, 48, 68, 69, 76, 78, 84, 87, 110, 128, 132, 137, 149.  The Prophets abound in similar anticipations, as Isa. 1, 2, 4, 12, 24, 33, 35, 40, 49, 51, 52, 59, 62, 66; Jer. 3, 31, 50, 51. See too Micah 4, 5, Joel 3, Obadiah 17, 21, Zeph. 3, Zech. 1, 2, 8, 9.

Zion therefore is not merely like Gerizim a pledge of blessing at the start, but an ever recurring signal of sovereign and royal grace triumphing after utter sin and shame and ruin. No mountain named in the Bible suited the aim here so admirably as Zion, the Zion of scripture, not the whimsical substitute of theology, "the catholic church" as even Cromwell's Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, the able and excellent J. Owen makes it to be, militant and triumphant, and to this end omits the copulative (Works, xxiv. 329, Goold's Ed.). But here we may add that almost all editors of the Greek Test. as well as the commentators almost universaIly fall into error, sometimes repeatedly, by not heeding the plain and sure fact that the conjunction (καὶ — and) connects with Zion each new and distinct link in the chain of glory. In the next page after, as in the text of the page before, it is given correctly; but such laxity makes sound exegesis impossible. The most prevalent instance is in joining "general assembly" (as in the A. V.) with "the church of the firstborn;" of which Dr. Owen of course is also guilty, to the destruction of all right intelligence of the context. The least skilful of handlers could not have the hardihood to construe "God the judge of all," "Jesus the mediator of the new covenant," and "the blood of sprinkling'' etc., as the further description of the catholic church; but they do strive hard to merge "the spirits of just men made perfect" in the same object.

Even J. A. Bengel (Gnomon ii. 467, Ed. 1836) lumped "myriads of angels and firstborn" in one category, so as to make out his double sevenfold; whereas the latter consists really of eight, not of seven. Yet in the next p. 468 he properly asks, who would join together as synonyms the church of the firstborn with the general assembly of angels? Nevertheless, who knows not that able men of research like Dean Alford, and Bp. Chr. Wordsworth, and Bp. Westcott, persisted in the same false punctuation, and in joining more or less two categories so different as the angels and the church; as the erudite Bp. J. Pearson laid down in his famous exposition of the Creed since 1658? The perplexities of the learned are great and varied, as F. Delitzsch here speaks of three closely connected questions, and among the hardest in our Epistle. But, whatever the connection, the difficulty is largely due to overlooking the help rendered by the conjunction as the introduction of each added object after the first, or Zion. The neglect of this threw even so eminent a preacher and teacher as J. Howe into confusion like almost every other, as we may see in his use of this scripture everywhere, particularly in his sermon or part of it dedicated to Lady Russell. Lesser lights we need not notice.

The inspired picture then starts as a great principle from the spot of all on earth most ennobled by its associations to believing Israelites. For though the Epistle would bind their hearts and relations with Him who sits in heaven at God's right hand (and therefore Christian truth, above all visible forms and shadows), care is taken to notice briefly by the way the people of God and their hopes of the Kingdom and rest on earth also (chaps. 2, 4).

Next, we read "and living God's city, heavenly Jerusalem." There is thus no connection with a dying David's city, but a rise from earth to heavenly glory, as this Epistle testified of Abraham's case when in the land. For "by faith he sojourned as a stranger in the land of promise as a foreign [country] having dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob the joint-heirs of the same promise; for he waited for the city that hath the foundations, of which God is architect and builder" (Heb. 11: 9, 10). The same truth is if possible more plainly stated in vers. 13-16. It will be in addition to what their seed will have on earth under Messiah and the new covenant for their joy and the blessing of all the families of the earth; their own seat of glory above as risen saints. Not that we should confound the coming and abiding city on high of which this Epistle speaks with the holy city in Rev. 21: 9, which was seen coming down out of heaven from God. For the Epistle never rises to the mystery in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. When "church" is spoken of in chaps. 2 and 12 in this context, it is not in its unity but in its constituents, as "of first-borns" proves. It's city is a place of glory which risen saints are to occupy. But in the Revelation it is what the church is to be, and not where; not objective but subjective, as men say. For it would contradict scripture, to infer that Abraham or any other O.T. saint had any idea of that union as the one body with its heavenly Head which is its essence, being the great mystery expressly declared to be not made known to the sons of men, the mystery or secret hid, not in scripture, but in God, and now revealed to the holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.

Then we hear, "and to myriads of angels, a universal gathering (or, myriads, universal gathering of angels)." A multitude of this heavenly host at the Incarnation hailed with unjealous delight the Divine Saviour's birth as man, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men. Here they are seen as the indigenous denizens of heaven in festal assembly, rejoicing in the results of grace for men on earth.

But now follows not only the glory of God seen above supremely, but first an unexpected sight: those who, expressly as lost ones saved irrespectively of special promises (after all seemed a hopeless ruin of Jew no less than Gentile in the cross of Christ), were brought into the nearest association with Him for heavenly places. "And an assembly of firstborns, enrolled in heaven" by sovereign grace as angels are not, and called to reign with Christ which a created angel never is. If we do not hear of them as Christ's body and bride of the Lamb, as the apostles Paul and John speak elsewhere, their being heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ is here recognised in the remarkable title of these as individuals. Contrary to nature which admits of but one in human limits, here they were all and equally first-borns, as He who in His own right infinitely above them deigned to treat them as His "fellows," in no way ashamed to call them "brethren" (chaps. 1, 2), His holy brethren partakers of a heavenly calling, not like Israel of an earthly one however grand. They were enregistered in heaven as their proper fatherland in sovereign grace.

Thence we ascend to Him who is supreme. "And to God judge of all." Judicially He had been known, though by few comparatively in O.T. times, as in the age to come here contemplated He will be universally manifested, proved, and confessed. So for instance He is celebrated in Ps. 1, to take one witness out of many. "El Elohim Jehovah hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth. Our God will come and will not keep silence; fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He will call to the heavens above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather to me my godly ones, those that have made a covenant with me over sacrifice! And the heavens shall declare his righteousness; for God is judge himself." Isaiah points out (Isa. 24: 21-23) His action still more loftily and profoundly: "And it shall come to pass in that day Jehovah will punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth on the earth. And they shall be brought together, an assembly of prisoners for the pit, and shall be shut up in prison, and after many days shall they be visited. And the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed; for Jehovah of hosts shall reign on mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients [in] glory."

As God is and must be the summit of glory, it is clear that, if another step be added, it is to come down from Him on the other side. And this is just what we see next. The richest manifestation of grace in Christ is toward the church; and this we had, before we were directed to God in His judicial capacity, the great burden of O.T. expectation, which is to be displayed in the Kingdom, which our Lord taught us to consist of two distinct parts, not only the heavenly kingdom of the Father, but also the Son of man's kingdom, out of which His angels shall gather all offences and all that do lawlessness. God as judge of all prepares the way naturally for the saints in O.T. days who knew Him thus, yet walked in hope of Messiah. "And to the spirits of just [men] made perfect" fits those saints more aptly and fully than any other class. They all died according to faith, having promise but in no way its accomplishment; whereas the church of first-borns did not begin to exist as such till the Son and Heir of all things, being rejected of Jew and Gentile, suffered for sins on the cross, rose, and ascended to heaven, whence He sent forth the Holy Spirit to commence and establish that new creation by baptizing those that believe into one body, Christ's body. These spirits are the elders that obtained testimony before the Lord came, and are here grouped as spirits of men who had finished their course, but not yet crowned or enthroned till their bodies are glorified at Christ's coming. No more exact phrase could be used about them; nor any less adapted to the church, even if we had not the church already, which must have a surviving part on earth when the Lord comes, instead of being all separate "spirits."

The seventh object we come to here is, "and to Jesus mediator of a new, or fresh, covenant." This is a remarkably precise and significant clause. It is not said that we are come to the new covenant, which, as Jer. 31: 31-34 tells us, is to be made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the first covenant at Sinai where all hung on the people's faithfulness to Jehovah, and, as they were unfaithful, to their ruin till this day. The new covenant is on the opposite principle of His grace and faithfulness to them, when He will put His law in their inwards and within their heart; and He will be their God, and they His people in His love and power, not on their responsibility. They shall all know me from the least to the greatest, saith Jehovah; for I will pardon their iniquity, and their sins will I remember no more — the great hindrance to knowing Him being thus taken away. To this state of Israel we are not said to have come, but to Jesus its mediator, as is indubitable; and we enjoy "the spirit," if not "the letter," of that covenant, on the principle of grace in contrast with law, as 2 Cor. 3 intimates. But there is more here implied in this, the only place where occurs a "fresh" covenant in the N.T. Its force appears to be that, however long that covenant of grace got suspended for the ancient people of God in their unbelieving Lo-Ammi condition, it awaits their sure and repentant acceptance of it, as "fresh" as when founded on the only sacrifice by which it could come to them.

The last is "and to blood of sprinkling speaking better than Abel." Here we descend to earth again, but it is not to the central seat of Zion, from which we rose. It is the earth in all its extent, with any such exception as is due to God's indignation during the kingdom before "a new heaven and a new earth" in their absolute form, and for the everlasting state, as in 1 Cor. 15: 24, 2 Peter 3: 13; and Rev. 21: 1-8. As the blood of Abel cried to Jehovah from the ground and brought a curse (Gen. 4: 10-12), Christ's blood of sprinkling has reconciling power, in virtue of which when He is revealed and the sons of God along with Him in glory, all things (not all persons) that were dragged down through Adam's sin shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. We even now know by faith the liberty of grace, as Rom. 8: 1-4 teaches, and Gal. 4, 5 and many another scripture. This the groaning creation cannot from its unintelligent nature enter into and enjoy through the Holy Spirit, as is now our portion. But none the less shall the whole creation which fell with the first Adam share the blessed power of the Last Adam when He appears, not only to save Israel, but to gladden the wilderness and the dry land; and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose or lily: not a leaf or an insect too tiny to expand in that bright day of glory.

W.K.

The Lord's Prophecy on Olivet

in Matthew 24-25

W. Kelly.

(Section 1 of Three Prophetic Gems)

Chapter 1

The Jewish Disciples

INTRODUCTION

In the discourse given in Matthew 24-25 the Lord unfolds, first, the future of the Jewish disciples; secondly, that of the Christian profession; and thirdly, that of all the nations tested by the gospel of the Kingdom before the end comes, and He Himself reigns. Such are the simple divisions of the two chapters of this study, and so it was or will be in fact. The discourse grew in the Lord's wisdom out of the disciples directing His attention to the splendor of the buildings of the temple, from which their hearts were not yet weaned. They believed that Jesus was the Christ and that they were born of God, but their hearts were associated with Israel's hopes, until the day that He ascended to heaven (Acts 1: 6-11), though theirs was no small advance when He rose from the dead.

The Lord therefore begins with His disciples as they then were. They fittingly also represent those who are to succeed in the latter day when the work of gathering out the Christian company for heavenly glory is complete, and God begins to prepare His people on earth for the reign of the returning Son of man. It is also the historic order. No other division of the subject matter could be so satisfactory. In this connection the disciples were viewed not only generally throughout the Gospel, but evidently when He sent forth the twelve in Matthew 10. “Depart not into a way of Gentiles, and into a city of Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather unto the lost sheep of Israel's house. And as ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of the heavens hath drawn nigh.” This was superseded by the Christian testimony, as we shall see still more markedly in the discourse on Olivet, but it is plain from verse 23 that this Jewish mission will go forth again before the end, “for verily I say to you, Ye shall not have finished the cities of Israel until the Son of man be come.” Christianity is a parenthesis.

In Matthew 23 the Lord says to the crowds and to His disciples, “The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all things therefore whatever they tell you, do and keep; but do not after their works, for they say and do not” (vv. 2-3). The disciples clearly are here viewed not as Christians, but as Jews, and this is confirmed by the pointed language of verse 34 to the end of the chapter. Sad as the retribution must be, a change will come to the people before His return. “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate, for I say unto you, Ye shall in now wise see me henceforth until ye say, Blessed [be] he who cometh in Jehovah's name.” Thus the repentance of a remnant will pave the way for His return; some suffering to death for His name, others preserved to welcome the Son of Man when He comes. We hear much of both in the Psalms and the Prophets, as well as in the Revelation.

The first part of the discourse with its various sections suitably follows in Matthew 24: 1-44.

THE TEMPLE DESTROYED

“And Jesus went out, and was going forth from the temple, and his disciples came to [him] to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said to them, See ye not all these things? Verily I say to you, Not a stone shall be in anywise left here on a stone, which shall not be thrown down” (vv. 1-2).

The rejected Messiah pronounces sentence: most solemn to hear for believing Jews who justly regarded the temple as the great external or public witness of the one true God and His worship on earth. It had been destroyed before, after reigning sons of David apostasized and made it the seat of Gentile idols. But had not there been a gracious return (not of Israel, it is true, but) of a Jewish remnant from Babylon to rebuild the city and temple and to await Messiah? Alas! now, He whom they believed to be the anointed Son of David doomed it to another demolition which should not linger, when not the first (Babylon) but the last Gentile world-power (Rome) should executive it. Its destruction was not because of idols, but because the Jews were first to refuse and then by Gentiles, crucify their own Jehovah-Messiah. These were two impeachments which Isaiah so long ago had predicted against the chosen people (vv. 40-48 and 49-57).

WHEN WILL THE TEMPLE BE DESTROYED? WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF THE LORD'S COMING?

“And as he was sitting upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us when shall these things be? and what [is] the sign of Thy coming, and of the completion of age? And Jesus answering said to them, See that no one mislead you. For many shall come in My name, saying, I am the Christ, and they shall mislead many. And ye shall be about to hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled; for they must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nations shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in places. But all these [are the] beginning of travails. Then shall they give you up to tribulation and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated by all the nations for My name's sake. And then shall many be stumbled, and give up one another, and hate one another: and many false prophets shall arise, and shall mislead many. And because lawlessness shall be multiplied, the love of the many shall grow cool. But he who endured to [the] end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole habitable [earth] for a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come” (vv. 3-14).

From Mark 13: 3 we learn that Peter, James, John and Andrew were those who thus enquired, When shall these things (the temple's destruction) be? and What is the sign of His coming and of the consummation of the age? In Luke 21 we find the first of these questions fully answered. There we find the overthrow of the city with the temple, and Jerusalem trodden down by Gentiles till their times be fulfilled, running on still since the sacking of Jerusalem by Titus. This is distinctly severed from the Son of Man's coming when the redemption of the godly Jews draws near. Here in Matthew, the answer as to the impending ruin, already given in the parable of the marriage feast (Matt. 7) is passed by and the Lord passes on to the second question which brings together the sign of His coming and of the completion of the age. Prophecy is not of isolated solution.

It is important to note the error in the KJV of confounding the age of “the age” with that of “the world” (v. 3). The coming age of a thousand years and more is after the age that still is, and before the eternal scene. Even disciples, as yet preoccupied with Jewish hopes and prejudices, and wholly unintelligent of the new, heavenly associations of Christianity, knew better. It is clear in the Greek that they did not say “of the world,” but “of the age.” The Lord in Matthew 13: 38, 40 had amply guarded against such a confusion. The field or sowing-place was “the world,” the judgment on the darnel and the display of the wheat would be at the close of “the age.” The new age, the Millennium, will be characterized by the King reigning in righteousness when the Father's kingdom is come on high and the Son of Man's here below, when His will is to be done on earth as in heaven.

The Lord first gives a general sketch of the ruin about to ensue. Moral improvement, truth prevalent, peace for mankind, as yet were misleading dreams against which they should be on their guard. The rejection of Himself would open the door to many false claimants to lead many astray. Wars and their rumors would be heard. Only when He takes His great power and reigns could it be otherwise, as Isaiah predicts. His disciples were not to be disturbed or deceived. Such evil things must be because the King was rejected, and the end is not yet. Instead of learning war no more as when He comes in His kingdom, national shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Also, there will be providential inflictions such as famines and pestilences and earthquakes in various places. Yet all these are a beginning of birth-throes. At this time His disciples would be objects of persecution, betrayed and even killed by all the Gentiles because of His name. Worse still, stumbling would befall many and mutual treachery and hatred would be among themselves. Many false prophets would rise and mislead many, and because of the lawlessness that would abound the love of the many would grow cold. But he who endured to the end would be saved.

The Lord in these verses is contemplating people with Jewish expectations, and tried by Jewish opposition and unbelief with the hatred of all the nations. The one who endured is specially assured. The Deliverer will come in due time, but not a word about the Church nor the gospel in its depth. Yet “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the habitable earth for a testimony to all the nations, and then shall come the end.” It is a testimony with fruit everywhere, without a word of effect farther. The change for dead and for living, for heaven and for earth, is reserved for Him who is worthy, the rejected Christ at His coming.

The remarkable and evident fact is that the Lord has here before Him Jewish disciples in early days with their counterpart before the end, but without reference to the Christian light and privilege which would come in. So we have plain enough proof in Acts and James, that in Jerusalem there was persistence in this respect that has often struck Christian readers as strange, not only after the great Pentecost was fulfilled, but to the even of the destruction of the city and sanctuary. Hebrews, written just before that destruction, gave God's final warning and proof that for the Christian, the Jewish system was now null and void. In this way one can apprehend how the Lord provides instruction for Jewish disciples before the end is come. Still thus far all is general, but from verse 15 we are given much that is precise, He Himself referring to the last chapter of Daniel.

THE GREAT TRIBULATION AND THE LORD'S COMING (VV. 15-31)

“When therefore ye shall see the abomination of desolation that was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in [the] holy place (let the reader understand), then let those in Judaea flee unto the mountains; let not he who is upon the house come down to take the things out of the house; and let not he who is in the field return back to take his cloak. But woe to those with child and to those who suckle in those days! But pray that your flight be not in winter nor on sabbath. For then shall be great tribulation, such as hath not been from world's beginning until now, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days had been cut short, n o flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days shall be cut short. Then if any one say to you, Behold, here [is] the Christ, or there, believe [him] not; for there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you before. If therefore they say to you, Behold, [he is] in the desert, go not forth; Behold, [he is] in the inner chambers, believe not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east and appeareth unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered. But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the land mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from [one] end of heavens to the other” (vv. 15-31).

THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION; HISTORICAL AND FUTURE

Here we learn the awful mark of Jewish wickedness — guilty and fatal alliance with the Gentiles, as Daniel warned. An abomination also had been set up by order of Antiochus Epiphanes long before Messiah's first advent. This idol was set up in the holy place. It brought desolation on all who acted or submitted. It also drew out the uncompromising opposition of the Maccabees. This was predicted fully and plainly in Daniel 11: 31, as the pious heroism that rejected the abomination follows. For this reason it is the more distinguishable from the similar but greater future apostasy. For all has been accomplished up to verse 35, where a blank is implied leading to the “time of the end,” which we have here also in Matthew. Then “the king” of the last time appears, not “of the north” as Antiochus Epiphanes had been in his day, still less “of the south” (Egypt), but distinct from both. At the time of the end the king of the south will push at him, and the king of the north will come against him (Dan. 11: 40). He is thus the object of hostility to both, and has for his sphere “the goodly land” which is physically between those two powers of the future.

He is also more widely the great religious enemy of Jehovah and His Christ. While reigning over the land of Israel, he will set himself forth supremely in the temple of God. This is the “man of sin” whom the apostle portrays in 2 Thessalonians 2, citing or applying Daniel's words. The Lord refers in Daniel 12: 11 to this future abomination of desolation with which is connected a date of 1290 days and a supplement of 45 more, before the blessed time comes which the then-faithful of Israel await. Then the prophet himself shall rest and stand in his lot and the Son of man shall reign over, not Israel only, but all peoples, nations and tongues. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom shall not be destroyed.

The divine design was to present us with the Roman capture of Jerusalem and its results in Luke 21: 20-24. But here the Lord passes these over in the corresponding place of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and dwells only on the unequalled wickedness and tribulation of the future days, expressly said to be followed “immediately” by His own coming in clouds with great power and glory, closing man's evil age and opening the long-desired day of Jehovah. Luke omits that awful crisis.

The Lord makes this public act of apostasy the signal for immediate flight. As the sign for flight is unmistakable, so are those disciples contemplated by the Lord: “then let those in Judea flee unto the mountains.” This could not be Christians who, as we know from other Scriptures, will have been translated to heaven. God, upon their disappearance, works in souls by His Word and Spirit to also have an earthly people first and especially among the Jews, the mass of whom are then deceived by the Antichrist. The godly Jewish remnant are in question, and the Lord here points out that their danger is so immediate that there is no time to come down from the housetop and go into the house to get their property: they must flee at once. If one is in the field, let him not turn back even to pick up his coat. It touched the Lord to think of women at such a crisis, impeded personally or by their babes. He urges prayer that the flight might not be in the rigor of winter or to the dishonor of sabbath. Can any Christian fail to see that godly Jews are here in view? From “the holy place” in verse 15 to “sabbath” in verse 20, all points to Jewish disciples at that future time and in that limited area.

THE GREAT TRIBULATION

The tribulation comes next (vv. 21, 22). “In the world ye have tribulation” applies to the Christian in principle, but no specific tribulation is ever held out for him. He should expect it always. All who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. The tribulation beyond parallel even for the Jews is during the last three-and-a-half years from the setting up of the abomination of desolation in the sanctuary. It is a judicial dealing of God through their enemies because of their bold apostasy. It has nothing to do with the Christian except that merely professing Christian fully share it. The Gentiles as such play their part in it; so we read in Revelation 7 of “the great tribulation” out of which comes a crowd of faithful ones who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The Jews and the Gentiles in that latter day will be thus visited in their respective measures, when the Christians are no longer here but in heaven with Christ. Those days are cut short for the elect's sake: otherwise no flesh would be saved. Here the Lord speaks of Jewish disciples preserved on earth for His kingdom, not of Christians who endure suffering and then reign with Him when changed at His coming, which is not even supposed in this question.

No less clear are the intimations in verses 23-26. They suppose Jewish dangers and deceits of the most trying kind, but not at all such as Christians are exposed to. We know that when the Lord Jesus comes for us, we shall be changed, dead or living, and be caught up to meet Him in the air. This is so definitely revealed in 1 Thessalonians — a letter written to correct the mistake in the assembly of Thessalonians, just gathered unto the Lord name — that it is hard to conceive of a Christian not now apprised of it. Hence were any to tell him that Christ was here or there, in Rome or in London, he would reject it and treat the alleged as a false christ and the herald as a false prophet. Nor would great signs and prodigies weigh in support of so glaring a contradiction of the word of the Lord. But Jewish believers who have no such promise [as the Rapture] did and will need the Lord's fore-warning to keep them from the snare. Whether some say, He is in the desert or in the inner chambers, they were to believe neither. “For as the lightning cometh out of the east and appeareth unto the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of man.” This is not how the apostle John speaks of His coming to receive us to Himself. Rather, He comes as the Bridegroom for the bride.

The lightning flash appropriately describes His judicial presence for the Jewish disciples beset with Jewish and Gentile enemies who are animated with satanic rage and hatred. This is fully confirmed by the figure attached: “wherever the carcase is, there shall be gathered the eagles” — the swift instruments of divine vengeance on the dead prey which ought to have been a living witness for God. What a contrast with His coming and our gathering together unto Him! — the blessed motive to deliver the deceived Thessalonians from being troubled by the false assertion that His day was actually there (as in 2 Thessalonians 2: 1, 2).

THE LORD'S APPEARING

Then the Lord states that “immediately after the tribulation of those days” there would be a total subversion of governmental order above — the sun, the moon, the stars — “and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” signs physically of the great change in progress for the earth. “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in the heavens.” His appearing there on high is the sign of His coming to set up His kingdom and judge the living. “And then shall all the tribes of the land” (the context seems to favor this rendering, rather than “of the earth: ” the word means either) lament — a result never expressed with His coming to translate us. “For they see Him coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” He acts on and by more than men. He has His angels, and these “He shall send with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather His elect,” meaning here those of Israel as well as of Judah who are written in the book, “from one end of the heavens to the other.” We may compare it with the many references in the Psalms and the Prophets, Isaiah especially.

A PARENTHESIS ON BIBLE INTERPRETATION

To interpret Scripture we need a power and wisdom above our own. We cannot understand by forcing the lock: the key is needed, and grace gives it in Christ as taught by the Word and Spirit of God. If you have Christ by faith, you already have the key. In faith apply Him to the Bible, and the Holy Spirit enables you to understand it. It is not a question of a superior mind or of great learning: many learned men have been foolish in their mistakes. The simple saint who knows neither Greek nor Hebrew may understand the Bible if he with true simplicity submits himself to the Lord and has confidence in His love. This understanding is produced by the Spirit of God: only this makes people humble and gives confidence in God and in His Word by taking away objects which darken, misdirect or overpower one's own mind.

Take the advice of a friend: read the Scriptures prayerfully but believingly, and you will understand what is infinitely better than anything found in the various schemes of man. It is just the same as regards the interpretation of prophecy as in doctrine. No person should be able to convince a Christian that one part of the Word of God is sealed up and the other open. Once it was so. When Daniel received those very communications to which the Lord directs the reader, he was told to seal up the book. When John was called to have the same communications and yet greater ones, he was told not to seal up the book. Perhaps you have seen the difference and the reason of it: Jewish saints could not enter into the true and full meaning of the future till Christ came at least until the end arrives. Then, when the last days of this age are here, the godly remnant will understand. The wicked shall not understand. You cannot separate moral condition from real intelligence of God's Word. But the Christian already has both Christ and the Holy Spirit in virtue of redemption. Hence, he is called and qualified to search all things, yea the deep things of God. They are now, including the things to come, revealed fully and finally.

When the grace of God gives faith and the desire to do the will of God, then people become able to understand both doctrine and prophecy. They learn that all the revealed mind of God centers in Christ, not in the first man. When you are not bent on finding in prophecy England or America, some epidemic, or your own time; when you are delivered by grace from all such prepossessions, then with Him as your Object you have a fit moral condition because the absorbing ideas of unspiritual people no longer govern and blind you. Hence the only way to understand any part of the Bible is just by grace to give up for Christ our own will and prejudices. Thus we can face anything. We are no longer afraid of what God has to reveal. We don't try to read anything of our own into the Bible, but are content to gather God's meaning from it. May this be truly our desire and endeavor..

THE SABBATH AND THE LORD'S DAY

It has been clearly shown that thus far the Lord Jesus speaks of disciples connected with the temple, and Judaea and Jerusalem, but not of Christians. Take these further proofs of it. He says, “And pray that your flight be not in winter nor on a sabbath day.“ The Lord's day is our day, the first day of the week. The Jew rightly and properly kept Jehovah's sabbaths. As to this, there are languages in Europe more exact than English. The Italian keep sup the right distinction; it always speaks of Saturday as the sabbath day and Sunday as the Lord's day.

In our own land there has been a great deal of confusion as to the sabbath and the Lord's day. The Lord' day differs from the sabbath by a higher degree of sanctity, not by leaving Christians free to do their own will on other days, but by calling them to do the Lord's will on that day in a complete separation to His glory, the holy services of divine honor in works of faith and labors of love. In short, the Lord's day differs essentially from the sabbath in that it is the day of grace, not of law, and the day of new creation, not of the old. The consequence of seeing this will be important differences in heart and practice.

Suppose a Christian had the strength to walk 20 miles on the Lord's day and to preach the gospel six or seven times. Would he be guilty of transgressing God's will? It is hoped that not a single person would think so; yet if really under the sabbath law it would be a violation. What can absolve from the obligations of that day? All under the law are bound within defined limits. Are Jews free to use the sabbath in indefinite labor even for what you know to be the active purposes of goodness? We must obey in our relationship.

Granted that the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath, but are the Jewish disciples also lords of the sabbath? You cannot do freely what you count ever so good: Jews are under stringent regulations as to that day. If the sabbath is your day, you are required to keep it as such. Likewise, you, a Christian, have to do with the Lord's day, and seek to understand its meaning and be true to it. Without question the Lord's day is a day of consecration to worship and to the work of the Lord. It is not the last day of a laborious week, a day of rest. It is a day that is devoted to the Lord Jesus, especially to communion with His own in the world. Nor is there sin in the most strenuous labor for souls: on the contrary such labor in the Lord is good and blessed wherever it is found, if He guide in it (and we need this).

The Jewish disciples contemplated here are told to pray that the time for their precipitate flight should not be in the winter nor on a sabbath day. The one would from its inclemency seriously impede, and on the other they could not go farther than a sabbath-day's journey. But how could this affect us as Christians? Even if once Jews, we are no longer under such restrictions. The Lord is speaking not of a Christian, but of future Jewish disciples, subject to the law and its ritual and animated by Jewish hopes.

THE JEWISH ELECT DISCIPLES

Further, it is said, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not even from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days had been shortened, no flesh would be saved.” All this is plain enough. It is not a question of heavenly things, but of His Kingdom. They sought to live here and be the subjects of the blessed reign and gory when the Lord comes. It is glory on earth, not in heaven. “But for the elect's sake those days should be shortened.”

“Then, if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is the Christ, or there, believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great sings and wonders, so as if possible to mislead even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. Therefore, if they say to you, Behold, [he is] in the desert, go not forth: Behold, [he is] in the inner chambers, believe [it] not.”

It is clear that the elect here are Jewish. A Christian would unlikely be deceived by such rumors for an instant. But the Lord Jesus supposes considerable danger for such disciples as are here. In fact, being Jewish (not Christian), they might be deceived by the cry that He [the Messiah] was here on earth, whereas no Christian could be in danger, who awaits the Son of God from heaven. Yet the Jewish disciples were exposed to it. Looking as they were for the Lord's coming to the earth, they knew that the Lord's feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives. They might thus be taken in by deceits. Not so the Christian. He knows that he is to be with the Lord in the heavens, being for this taken up out of this world into the air to meet the Lord on high. Thus the deceits in question are addressed only to those who expect to meet the Lord on the earth. The whole of the scene thus far consists of the Lord's instructions to disciples connected with Jerusalem and Judaea, and has nothing to do with the Christians looking to join the Lord above.

Here again is the reason why even Jewish disciples should not listen. “For as the lightning cometh forth from the east and is seen even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” This is not the Roman conquest. The army of Titus did not come out of the east, as the lightning is said to do here, nor did it shine unto the west: the very reverse would be a more apt figure, had the Romans been meant. So distinctly has the Lord Jesus guarded against the misinterpretations of men! The Son of Man's coming will be quite different and will surprise all like the lighting. There will be no question of going here or there to seek Him.

The Lord then has given these disciples landmarks in the prophecy, which hinder us from being carried away by every wind of theory. We may see clearly what the Holy Spirit has set before us. Nothing important has been knowingly passed over, nor any violence done to a word. The desire is to give a clear, distinct and positive impression of the mind of the Lord as conveyed in His own words. The disciples furnish occasion for others in the main like themselves in Judaea at the close of the age.

THE CARCASE

Then it is said, “Wheresoever the carcase is, there will be gathered together the eagles” (v. 28). Apply this to the Church or to the Christian, and what can you make of it? Is the Church “the carcase”? The Church united to Christ by the Holy Spirit is His body: it is a wondrous privilege and a blessed truth, but is the Church a carcase? Surely not: it is His living body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Nor is the Lord ever regarded as a body dead or merely alive, but as the risen and glorified Head.

The moment you refer “His carcase” to the Jewish people, it becomes strikingly true. The mass of the Jews then will be apostate, and the eagles or vultures who flock there are figures of the divine judgments executed on the guilty people by the hostile nations of the earth. Whatever may be the instruments, they are judgments of God executed at this time. If the Christians were the carcase, they must be the object of the judgment, for there the eagles, figures of those who execute judgment, are gathered together. But this is not the relation of the Lord's coming to the Christian. Nor can any Christians be the eagles or instruments of divine vengeance, any more than the carcase, without abandoning all the truth and character of their calling. The changed saints will go up to meet the Lord, but is He then to be the carcase and are the Church the eagles? In such a scheme, there is only the choice of one evil less or greater than another, which is generally so with an erroneous interpretation. Apply it to the object the Lord had in view and harshness disappears. This is the test of scriptural truth: whenever people press a false interpretation, the general testimony of Scripture is confused and dislocated or contradicted thereby.

JERUSALEM'S LAST CRISIS (WITH THE EMPHASIS OF EACH GOSPEL)

Then the Lord adds, “But immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (v. 29).

A popular view makes this verse the Lord's beginning to speak of His return personally. This destroys the force of “Immediately after the tribulation of those days” and breaks the connection with the true transition to the last days in verse 15 which introduces precise details of that epoch in their order. They are synchronized with the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom in all the habitable earth as a witness to all the nations in the general history, “and then shall the end come.” Thenceforward it is, and we have what happens in the temple, Judaea and strictly Jewish concerns at the end of the age. This is shown clearly by the reference to Daniel 12: 11. The prophet there tells us that “from the time that the continual [holocaust] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolation set up, [there shall be] 1290 days,” with a supplement in verse 12 of “45 days” more to complete the incoming of the blessed time. Now count as men like from the siege of Titus, 1335 years for days. Nothing of the sort is brought in. The starting-point is wrong, and all modes of rectification are vain.

In reality we have here the last future crisis in and round Jerusalem, though it seems the gospel of the Kingdom goes on by godly Jews outside over the earth about the same time, the days in the prophet being literal days as here in verse 22. What has misled most is confounding the different language and truth in Matthew 24: 15 etc. (who both give us what is entirely future) with that of Luke 21: 20-24 which is entirely past, except the treading down of Jerusalem by Gentiles while Gentiles times last, etc. These verses cover exclusively the Roman sack and its consequences to this day. Luke's future reference commences with verse 25 and onward. It is an error to mix up this Roman episode in Luke with the pointedly different description in Matthew and Mark which omit this, and then converge on the future only. They speak of the abomination of desolation and of the unequalled tribulation, on which Luke is silent. Rather, Luke tells of the Romans investing Jerusalem and of that desolation, of which Matthew and Mark are silent. Luke is silent about the tribulation without parallel, speaking only of “days of vengeance and great distress upon the land and wrath to this people.” The other Evangelists are silent on the extreme slaughter of the Jews by the Roman army and their captivity into all the nations, with the notable prolonged fact that Jerusalem should be trodden down by Gentiles till their times are over, as they are not yet. All this is as carefully presented in Luke in exact consistency with the Spirit's design in his Gospel, as the other two omit it, being devoted to the unprecedented horrors of the future which Luke omits.

All three Gospels take up the closing scene. Luke doesn't say “Immediately after the tribulation” etc., since he had not alluded to it, but he joins the other two about signs in sun, moon and stars, though as usual noticing moral state beyond the others. Next, all speak of the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Luke then alone adds, “But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads because your redemption draweth nigh.” Can any Christian fail to see that the heavenly saints are not here in view? We already have in Him redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our offenses whereas those here represented have yet to enjoy it in His Kingdom.

Luke's presentation is valuable for settling the true force of “this generation shall in no wise pass till all things have taken place” — among them, the end of Gentile supremacy over Israel and Jerusalem. The desire to limit “this generation” to the destruction of their city by the Romans, is thus precluded. Further, at the consummation of the age the revived Roman Empire will not be against the apostate Jews. It will be an ally of the Antichrist or willful king of Palestine, when the king of the north at the time of the end comes against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen and with many ships. But each power shall perish successively and horribly under the Lord of lords and King of kings.

THE EVENTS SURROUNDING HIS APPEARING

“And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall the tribes of the earth mourn” (v. 30). The Son of Man appearing in heaven is the sign of His coming to enforce His claim on earth. It is not here the believers with joy going up to meet the Lord, but the tribes of the earth, or at least of the land, mourning when the sign appears. “And they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (v. 31). Here too, light is given to decide that the coming of the Son of man is in view of the land, Israel (or at least the chosen), and not to receive the heavenly ones for association with Himself in the Father' house.

He is seen coming on the clouds of heaven before He sends forth His angels to gather together His elect from the four winds. Now it is a matter of positive revelation by the apostle Paul (Col. 3: 4) that “When Christ our (or, your) life shall be manifested then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” It is not the moment when we are changed and caught up to meet Him in the air, but the time when we are with Him manifested in glory. The heavenly saints are already with Him when He comes judicially as Son of man, for to execute judgment is His given office as such (John 5: 27). They are with Him already, not then translated, called and chosen and faithful. They are not angels (who are not “called” nor said to be “faithful”), but saints (Rev. 17: 14).

We learn from Revelation 19: 14 that the armies that are in the heaven followed Him upon white horses clothed in white pure byss, the righteousnesses of saints as interpreted just before, whereas angelic clothing had been said to be pure bright linen (Rev. 15: 6). The elders, who represent the saints as chiefs of the royal priesthood, are seen on high from Revelation 4 to 19. Here they first appear in the quality of bride for the marriage of the Lamb above, and next accompany Him as armies when He goes forth from heaven to judge and war in righteousness. Hence it is in the teeth of Scripture that we can be on the earth and see Him appear as the glorious Son of Man in heaven coming to judge the living. On the contrary we shall then be manifested together with Him when He is manifested in glory.

The Lord had already intimated it before Paul wrote 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians 15 and Colossians 3. Though spoken it was long after Paul had departed to be with Christ that John 14 was written, and still longer for Revelation Revelation 4-19. These Scriptures reveal that Christ will come to change and translate to heaven the heavenly saints. Enoch (Jude 14) and Zechariah (Zech. 14: 5) say they come with Him: a truth repeated by Paul in 1 Thessalonians (1 Thess. 3: 13, 1 Thess. 4: 14). Then in verses 15-17 Paul gives a new revelation to explain that this will be by His coming for them by His descent from heaven with a shout of command which gathers them in a moment to Himself. Clearly then “the elect,” subsequently gathered after the Lord appears, are not heavenly saints, but rather His restored people, the nucleus of godly Israel, in harmony with the context.

HIS ELECT

Too many lay great stress upon gathering “His elect.” Don't be too quick, my friends. The “elect” may not necessarily mean Christians. If one speak of elect now, it is so, but had God no heavenly “elect” before there were Christians? And after these are taken to heaven, will there be no elect on earth? Was God precluded from showing mercy on earth because His sovereign grace had given us and the Old Testament saints our respective places in heaven? There were elect Gentiles in patriarchal days and later too. Take Job and his friends: were they not elect men? Melchisedek, Jethro, and others; were not they elect? Need one enumerate the elect of Israel in the past? We clearly find elect Gentiles as well as Jews and Christians. When we read of Christianity, then the elect must be so explained; if we read about a Jewish state, then the phrase applies to a Jewish election, and so with the nations too. We must be governed by the context. As the Lord here is simply speaking about Israel, the sense should not be ambiguous. When we have “his elect” named, He means the elect of those described, of Israel. This is not to bring in arbitrary rules. It is in fact a very plain and necessary principle of exposition.

The Lord in all the context is speaking about Israel and their hopes. Consequently “his elect” must be interpreted according to the object in view. These elect ones are to be gathered “from one end of heaven to the other,” yet not for heaven but on earth. (Compare Isaiah 27, Isaiah 65, Romans 11: 5, 7, 28.

THE PARABLE OF THE FIG TREE

“Now learn the parable from the fig tree.” The fig tree is a well known symbol of Israel as a nation. In Luke, where the Lord views both Gentiles and Jews, He employs this very symbol, but enlarged remarkably. He says “the fig tree and all the trees.” The latter are not spoken of in Matthew because this part only looks at the Jew, but in Luke, referring to the Gentile as well as the Jew, He adds, “and all the trees.” The latter are not spoken of in Matthew because this part only looks at the Jew, but in Luke, referring to the Gentile as well as the Jew, He adds, “and all the trees.” Compare Luke 21: 29.

“Now learn the parable from the fig tree. When its branch is now become tender and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that the summer is nigh; even so ye also, when ye see all these things, know that it (or, he) is near, at the doors. Verily I say to you, This generation shall not pass away till all these things have come to pass” (vv. 32-34).

Mark the phrase “all these things,” from the first troubles down to the last, and the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Clearly here “this generation” cannot mean a mere period of thirty years, or a man's life. The phrase signifies, what it frequently does in Scripture, a line characterized by certain moral tokens entirely independent of a brief limit of time. Hence we find particularly in the Psalms, this use of “generation.” One text is enough to prove it. In Psalm 72: 7 we read “Thou shalt keep them, O Jehovah, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” “This generation” is supposed to go on, and it is an evil generation, a generation which has no faith, a stubborn and Christ-rejecting generation. “This generation” or the non-believing race of the Jews is not to pass away till all these things have taken place. Thus the same generation which crucified the Lord of glory is going on still, and will, till He comes again in the clouds of heaven. They are still the same proud, self-righteous, Christ-rejecting race as they were then.

The grace of God will make them anew, “a generation to come.” The Lord will judge the unbelievers at last, dealing with them righteously after His immense patience, but delivering a godly remnant in His grace. The Messiah has great things in store for Israel. There will be this double action, that the mass of them will fill up the cup of iniquity which their fathers began, while the remnant will become the holy seed, the Israel of the millennial day. He speaks of the former when saying that “this generation shall not pass away till all these things have come to pass.

“The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. Of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of the heavens, but the Father only” (vv. 35, 36).

THE DAYS OF NOAH

The next comparison is not to the fig tree or anything else taken from the physical world. A figure is taken from the dealings of God in the Old Testament.

“But as the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man; for as in those days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women [shall be] grinding at the mill, one is taken and one is left” (vv. 37-40).

Had heavenly saints been in question, Enoch would be the appropriate Old Testament type, but as the Lord meant non-raptured saints who are carried through the waters of judgment, He justly chose Noah as the pattern for the remnant to be on the earth.

Again, instead of such an indiscriminate slaughter or such a captivity as was executed upon the Jews by the Romans, there is a direct and plain contrast. Here is unfailing discrimination: one man taken and one left, one woman taken and another left. The Lord will deal with perfect discernment in each case: The Romans did not, nor any army that ever took a city. Notoriously if not necessarily at such a time, there is little thought of, or time for discrimination. The rule is wholesale bloodshed and often slavery. It was especially so when Titus sacked Jerusalem. But when the Lord Jesus comes in judgment of the living on earth, it will be otherwise. One, whether of men or of women, is taken for judgment, one left for blessing in the land.

CONCLUSION

“Watch therefore, for ye know not on what day your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the house-master had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have suffered his house to be digged through. Therefore, be ye also ready, for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh” (vv. 42-44).

These verses close the portion of the prophecy which refers to the Jews. It began by referring to the Jewish remnant because the disciples as yet were such, though believers. Christ took them up just as they were, though they subsequently became Christians. They then passed into a new relationship. They already had faith in Him, but instead of His reigning and blessing them on the earth, another order of things was founded in connection with His ascension to heaven. Hence the same disciples merged into a new form of relationship with God, of which the Holy Spirit sent forth was the power. They were taught no longer to expect the Lord's restoration of the kingdom as their proper hope, but, contrariwise, that the Lord would come to receive them to Himself and take them to the Father's home in heaven. This is the Christian's hope; this is what they await. The Lord calls them out from everything on earth to Himself. They had been expecting the Lord to establish them on the earth up to the day when the Lord Jesus went up to send down the Holy Spirit.

Christianity thus comes in, as if a door had been opened and let them into an entirely new circle. The disciples at the beginning were on one side of the door, the disciples at the end would be on the other side. The door opens and the new thing, the Church, passes through. It is the calling of Christians out of the world, of those called in one body, waiting till Christ comes to receive them to Himself and take them where He is. The Lord Jesus, having accomplished redemption, has Himself first taken His seat in heaven. Thus the disciples become heavenly (1 Cor. 15: 48) and are being transformed spiritually (2 Cor. 13: 18). Finally, at His coming, the Lord Jesus will take them completely out of their natural environment, conformed in body to His own glorious body. The state of things on earth since redemption, till He comes to take us to be with Him on high, is called Christianity.

It is not denied that the saints of old, before Christianity came in, will share in the resurrection, when they too will shine in the likeness of Christ. But there is an enormous difference meanwhile. We are brought, since His cross, into salvation, with new relationships in union with Himself. Then the Holy Spirit gives a fresh and incomparably greater power to those who are now gathered to His name. It is possible that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were more faithful than many, perhaps than most of us. We cannot take high ground, but we boast in God and of what Christ has given us. He brings in “grace and truth” which makes our unfaithfulness me manifest, for the greater the Christian privileges, the more strictly is our unfaithfulness measured. But the hope does not make us ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.

Very striking is the fact that the title “the Son of man” is not mentioned again until the third section where all the nations come into review. The clause containing that title in “the Christian portion” (Matthew 25: 13) is spurious in the KJV. In Daniel 7 we see this title used when He comes to deal with the Gentile powers (the last in particular) to the deliverance of the Jewish people and His universal dominion over all peoples and tongues.

It has to do with His presence for the earth, but does not rise to His heavenly glory nor to our association with Him there. Hence the need of the intermediate part of the great discourse, in which the Lord communicated as much as those addressed could then bear, leaving it to the Holy Spirit when sent from heaven to lead into all the truth. It is here that failure in faith and hope is found even among true saints, especially when they lean on that frail reed, human tradition, against which the Lord directed the keenest arrow.

CHAPTER 2

THE CHRISTIAN PROFESSION

Matthew 24: 45 - 25: 30

INTRODUCTION

From this point the Lord begins to open out a new thing — that which the disciples were going to enter. Evidently this was the proper order. The Lord had begun with them as they were. He then leads on to what they were soon to become, with the new relationships to Christ dead and risen, when fresh power would be given by the Holy Spirit. As a mark of this, you will see that the Lord drops all allusion to Judaea and any reference to the temple, the prophets and the sabbath.

The Lord widens out now into parables of a general and comprehensive nature, which would be equally as true at Timbuctu as at Jerusalem — it does not matter where. They bear upon Christianity. What Christ died and rose to establish by the mission of the Spirit is not one of the narrow systems of men, or of their broad worldly associations. Christianity is only exclusive of sin. It is the practical expression of Christ, not only in grace and truth, but in resulting practice. The Lord definitely marks this opening out into wider principles of a moral nature, which embrace all Christian disciples, wherever they might be in this world, and at any time till He comes. Hence we find three characteristic parables.

THE FIRST PARABLE

The first parable is the prudent servant contrasted with the evil one. It is a question of faithful service in the house, the duty of the highest and the duty of the lowest, not of the excellent activity with variety of spiritual endowment in each for trading with his lord's goods as given in the parable of the Talents (Matt. 25). The form is very striking. We have, seen as one, a profession carried out and ending very differently, and this in relation with the Lord, not with Israel as before.

“Who then is the faithful and prudent bondman whom his lord set over his household, to give them their food in due season? Blessed [is] that bondman whom his lord on coming shall find so doing. Verily I say to you, that he will set him over all that he hath. But if that evil bondman shall say in his heart, My lord tarrieth; and shall begin to beat his fellow-bondmen, and shall eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that bondman shall come in a day when he expecteth not, and in an hour that he knoweth not, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vv. 45-51).

It was another case with the nation. In Judaism there was an enormous unbelieving mass in former times falling into idolatry and all kinds of wickedness, and hence persecuting the faithful brethren. But one of the characteristic marks of Christendom is that all are professors of Christ, whether truly or falsely, and it is therefore presented here as one whole. The Lord in the parable says the faithful and prudent servant shall be made ruler over all His goods. Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find so doing. It is the responsibility of all in the house. Hence He goes on to say, “But if that evil servant” etc. They are surprisingly joined. On what does his ruin depend? “In his heart” the evil servant says, “My lord delayeth.” His coming is not a mere idea: man likes to have his notions and no one is the better for them. This refers to what is deep and real — the heart's indifference to the coming of the Master. The evil servant says in his heart, “My lord delayeth.” He believes what he likes, and what he likes is that the Lord should delay His coming.

THE EFFECT OF THE LORD'S COMING MISUNDERSTOOD

It is most affecting to see that the Lord treats the putting off of His return as leading to assumption within and laxity without. That evil servant, when he says in his heart (for so it is), My lord delayeth, shall begin also to beat his fellow servants and shall eat and drink with the drunken. What a contrast with Christ, and what a practical denial of Him! It led the professor back to the world in self-exalting oppression and in allowed intimacy with the ungodly and immoral. He is therefore appointed, when the Lord comes, to have his part with the hypocrites. The Lord does not treat him as a Jew or a Greek, but according to his responsibility.

How different it is with the faithful and prudent servant! He waits and longs for the Lord because he loves Him who first loved us. Hence the hope of Christ is quite distinct from prophecy. One might be greatly versed in the prophetic word and wholly lack that hope; one might be filled with the hope and be altogether unacquainted with prophecy. Next to believing in Christ for life and redemption, with worship and service and walk following, the Christian needs and is called to wait for the Son of God from heaven. Now if you love anyone, you delight to see him. The absence of the beloved person is trying to you. There may be the wisest reasons for delay, but the delay taxes your patience, and the hope of the speedy return of the one you love is the greatest joy.

The Lord gives this feeling and strengthens it toward Himself. It is the proper hope of the Christian — not the kingdom, but Christ. Grant that it may be hindered by the influence of prophetic notions; yet there is in the heart of all true Christians a genuine desire for the coming of Christ. But when one is not in peace through a full gospel, one is afraid. Those who give them an uncertain gospel are responsible for it. As they thus keep people in dread, they do the greatest injury to the grace of God. We do not speak of those who falsify Christ or His work, but of those who preach it partially, who fear to set forth the full value of the sacrifice of Christ in the perfect deliverance which His death and resurrection have wrought for the believer. The result of this defect in teaching is that Christians are apt to be alarmed instead of rejoicing at the immediate hope of Christ's coming.

Such Christians do not understand that the acceptance of Christ is the acceptance of a Christian. They have not learned the truth that the Lord by His death has not only effaced their sins, but that their sinful nature condemned completely so they can walk now in the Spirit, to be followed by a perfect conformity to Christ's image in resurrection at His coming (Rom. 8: 1-4, 11, 29).

Who can exaggerate what Christ has wrought for the believer? If you rest on His redemption, all difficulties Godward are taken away. Then there is nothing left except the need of daily self-judgment for every inconsistency, the duty of serving Him now and the delight of being with Him and seeing Him then, as also of worshipping both now and forever by grace. He has done all to bring us to God, taking us out of every evil. How can the believer not rejoice in this and in Him? Therefore all Christians, wherever or whoever they may be, are entitled to have joy and delight, though for many, dimmed by the prospect of His coming due to improper teaching.

Notwithstanding all their imperfect notions, it is certain that all Christians love Christ and in principle await Him too. This may not please some pre-millennialist friends, but surely this hope belongs to every Christian.

There are false prophetic views which hinder, but as the new nature goes out toward Christ, so it longs for the time when we shall be forever with the Lord. Waiting for Christ supposes waiting for His coming. If the object be to prove that many Christians do not look for Christ's coming, abundant grounds appear for working on. But if you are child-like, God gives sufficient evidence that those who are Christ's, notwithstanding obstacles, do look and long for His coming.

The children of God need to get clear of those clouds of noxious and unwholesome vapors that constantly rise up between the Lord and them. Let them cherish the hope He gave them. If you bring in a millennium first, it is hard to see Christ's coming clearly: it acts as a veil which dulls the hope of that day. It may not destroy the hope; yet one cannot help but look for His coming in an imperfect manner. If you bring in a great tribulation first, this also lowers the outlook and greatly enfeebles the hope. It occupies one with evils as they rise, produces a depressing effect, and fills the heart with that judicial trouble and its corresponding desolations. These are the mistakes of theorists. The one puts a wrong expectation between you and the coming of the Lord, kindling meanwhile a dreamy excitement in waiting for that day. The other case produces a sort of spiritual nightmare, an oppressive feeling in the thought that the Church must go through the dreadful tribulation.

Be assured, my brethren, that the Scriptures deliver us from both the dream and the nightmare. They entitle the believer to wait for Christ as simply as a child, being perfectly certain that God's Word is as true as our hope is blessed. There is to be God's glorious kingdom, but the Lord Jesus will bring it in at His coming to earth. The great tribulation shall come, but not for the Christian. When it is a question about the Jew, you can understand it well, for why does the greatest tribulation come upon him? Because of idolatry — the worship of the Beast and the Antichrist! It is for him a moral retribution with which the Christian has nothing directly to do. The predicted trouble falls on the apostate nations and the Jews. Those who ought to be witnesses of Jehovah and His Christ will at last fall into the dreadful snare of allowing the abomination to be put into the sanctuary of God.

What connection is there between this and the Christian looking for Christ? Here the prophecy of the blessed Lord drops all allusion to anything unique to Israel. His coming will be for the solemn judgment of all who pervert grace and indulge in unrighteousness, receiving a sentence so much the me stern because the gospel reveals God perfectly in light and love, which they abuse to fleshly license. Scripture teaches the Christian not only to wait for Christ as his proper and dearest hope, but also for His appearing and kingdom when wrong will be redressed and righteousness rewarded and evil put down forever to His honor and glory. Yes, we love His appearing and His kingdom when the proud shall be abased, the meek inherit the earth, Satan be set aside and the Lord exalted publicly without a rival or a foe. It is a blessed hope, but we have the better and higher hope of being with Him where He is, that we may behold His glory which the Father gave Him because He loved Him before the world's foundation.

THE SECOND PARABLE (The 10 Virgins)

Then comes the parable of the ten virgins. It is needed to disengage the Christian from the thought that the early part of this discourse is about him: such an idea completely perverts his judgment. Rather, as we have seen, it presents the Jewish people distinctively. Here we have a then future comparison of the kingdom of the heavens.

“Then shall the kingdom of the heavens be likened to ten virgins, the which took their torches and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were foolish and five were prudent. For the foolish took their torches and took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in their vessels with their torches. Now, the bridegroom tarrying, they all slumbered and slept. But at midnight a cry was made, Behold, the bridegroom! go ye forth to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their torches. And the foolish said to the prudent, Give us of your oil, for our torches are going out. But the prudent answered, saying, Peradventure there be not enough for us and you. Go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and those ready went in with him to the marriage-feast, and the door was shut. Afterward came also the rest of the virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answering, said, Verily I know you not. Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25: 1-13).

In our day we have another and opposite error, an error that takes away the parable of the virgins from applying to the Christian. On the contrary it has nothing directly to do with the Jewish remnant. They are not called to go out to meet the Bridegroom. They could not have oil in their vessels, and lastly they will not be exposed to the temptation of going to sleep. The Jews ought to abide where they are, or only flee to escape death in their refusal of idolatry. Those who survive for the Lord's appearing and their own deliverance, only receive the Holy Spirit after He appears. All is in contrast with the Christian position.

In this parable, then, the Lord shows the kingdom of heaven will be likened to ten virgins. They all went forth to bear their testimony to Christ: the torch was to give light. They were to shine as lights in the world. Each virgin taking her lamp, they went forth to meet the Bridegroom.

This is characteristic of the Christian. The Israelite did not separate from the world of which he was head. The Christian goes forth to meet Christ who is gone to heaven. If he had been a Jew, he would thus leave his ancient associations and hopes behind. Again, if the greatest person in the Gentile world, or if of the poorest condition, he alike abandons his old obscurity or his old grandeur. He willingly forgets all that is of the world. He is called out of every snare which can arrest or fascinate the heart of man. He has got a new and all-absorbing object in Christ — Christ in heavenly joy and blessedness.

It is not the Judge coming to deal with the wicked. If the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom, does such a parable bring an image of terror? He well knows that the same Jesus who is the Bridegroom will be the Judge; he well knows that Jesus will put down all those who oppose Him, but He is not the Judge and the Bridegroom to the same persons, any more than both will be true of Him at the same precise time. Where would be the sense of such confusion? The Lord purposely brings in the bright figure of the Bridegroom to Christians who are waiting for Him.

There also are other important elements. Here are persons true or false. They are not presented as one object: consequently the idea of the bride* is not the expressed aim. When we talk about Christians, real or nominal, we do not fix our mind on unity; we think of individuals who go forth. Christ was about to present profession, and so introduces foolish as well as wise virgins. He therefore looks at Christians professing His name truly or falsely, not at the Church, the bride of the Lamb. The Christians are here characterized by quitting every object on earth to meet the Bridegroom. Even the Jew, attached as he was to the old religion (and they had a religion which could boast of greater antiquity than any others), when become a Christian, leaves all to go forth unto Him, as we read in Hebrews 13: 13, “bearing His reproach.”

*It is a strange fact, however, that two uncial MSS. (DX), eight cursives, several ancient versions, including the Itala and Vulgate, and fathers Greek and Latin endorse this addition, and represent the virgins as going to meet the "Bridegroom and the Bride." Of course, it is a mere gloss. Had a bride been named, it would have detracted from the perfect finish of the parable and brought in confusion, as Christians real or in name are meant by the ten who go forth to meet the Lord.

Here you have the same great principle. As the Christian, even though once a Jew, was called to leave the old order behind, so the virgins went forth to meet the Bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five foolish. Those who were foolish took their torches, but no oil with them. The prudent took oil in their vessels with their torches.

Is it true that the Jewish remnant at the end of the age could have oil in their vessels? They will only have such an anointing when the Lord Jesus comes and sheds the Spirit on them. Oil symbolically means the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not merely the washing by the Spirit, however vital: the Jewish remnant will have this. They will be cleansed in the heart by the Word. The Jewish disciples who will be found at the end of the age do not receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit till the Lord appears. They wait for that day. It is only when the kingdom comes that the power of the Holy Spirit will be upon them. They will when converted welcome Him, saying, Blessed be He who comes in Jehovah's name. They then will go through a serious inward process: when they see the Lord Jesus, they mourn as for an only Son. They have a fountain opened in Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness, but the power of the Holy Spirit will be given only after they have seen the Lord. The Christian receives the oil or anointing from the Holy One while the Lord is unseen and on high.

Again, with the Jew there is no time when, as we see in these virgins, a class goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. The Jewish disciples will not disappear from Jerusalem until the idol is set up and the great tribulation is at hand. Then they flee from the enemy's power and its dread consequences from God. It is a flight from the overflowing scourge in retribution and judgment for the people's iniquity. It is no going forth to meet the Bridegroom in joyful hope as here.

The Christian has another course and hope altogether. Whether it be light or dark, the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. What is the original hope of the Christian? It is our object and calling revealed in, from and for heaven. That object is Christ, the blessed One whose grace has been proven and whose coming is awaited. Hence, he goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. The Jewish remnant rather expect to see the Lord coming to deliver them by putting down their enemies. As Christ ascended, so the Christian waits to be caught up out of the world; the Jewish saint waits for the Lord to come judicially into the world, which also is our later expectation. The parable speaks solely of the Christian and in no way refers to the Jewish remnant.

We shall see other proofs of this. It is said that the wise took oil in their vessels: the foolish took no oil. The best blessings we have are those which God confers on His children, on the body of Christ — on all those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, who rest on Christ and His redemption. These are the persons spoken of as wise. The Holy Spirit is the divine spring for sustaining testimony as well as the divine power for understanding the Word of God and for communion with the Father and the Son.

The foolish virgins never had oil in their vessels. Some ask how they can have had their torches burning. The answer is easy. They could light the torch: there is no mystery about that. The foolish virgins were not real Christians. The weakest Christian as well as the strongest has the oil. The apostle John so tells not the father nor the young men, but the babes, the little children. He tells the feeblest that they have an anointing from the Holy One. Thus, those who had no oil could not be Christians, in any real, full or divine sense of the name. They were strangers to the Lord's grace.

If you have Christ, if you know the blood of sprinkling, if you rest on a crucified and risen Savior, you have the oil in your vessels. You are not one of the foolish virgins. The foolish lived a life of religious levity, not necessarily hypocritical, but of self-deception, ignoring God and His grace. Consequently, not having the Spirit of Christ, they were none of His.

We often think of the early Christians with their great advantages, with many of the Scriptures applying to them fully, while we can only get the principle of them. But your attention is called here to the fact that there are other Scriptures which apply more emphatically to us now. There is thus what one may call a divine compensation. We can only take the general spirit of what was said to the Corinthians. For instance, they had the gift of tongues and other miraculous powers among them, while we have not. Alas! wherever there are now pretensions to sign gifts, their falsity or worse is soon found out.

The fact is that God, for the wisest reasons, has not been pleased to continue these miraculous powers. The present condition of the Church makes it a moral impossibility for God to presently bestow these extraordinary virtues. If the Lord were to restore them now, one might ask, Where? Most people would begin with themselves. Were the Lord to confer these powers upon the various sects of Christendom, it would be putting His seal of approval upon what His Word says is wrong. How could He thus contradict Himself? How could He thus sanction the broken fragments of His house or put honor upon its fallen condition? Without this we still are ready to be self-satisfied. We are too prone to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and the Lord will not help us to be more so.

He, however, has left what is infinitely better: He continues everything due to Christ. He has taken away nothing needful for edification [building up]. He still gives peace and joy in believing. Now as of old He puts this inward power in the Church, but He once marked it with a brilliant signature before the world. Those who look for the restoration of these powers do not understand what befits our fallen condition. It is morally important for the Christian to know what the Church was at first and what it is now, and to grieve before God at the difference. What sympathy ought there to be with the Christian who is not a mourner because of the state of the Church? It is well to have joy in the Lord, but we should be humbled about ourselves and the Church. Ought we not for the Lord's sake to feel deeply the actual condition of ruin?

In the parable the Lord points out the failure from the original calling. “While the bridegroom tarried, they all nodded and went asleep.” What a state of departure, resulting from forgetfulness of the Lord's return! It was a general and total insensibility to the blessed hope. When sleepy, they happily turned in here or there to rest. They no longer went forth to meet the Bridegroom. The wise who had the oil in their vessels slept like the foolish who had none.

Mark another thing. It is midnight, and there was a cry made, “Behold, the bridegroom, go forth to meet him.” Has this been fulfilled? It is being fulfilled now. It is a cry made by divine grace. No sign appeared, no outward warning, no seeing of a prophecy accomplished, as for the Jewish remnant in chapter 24. God works in us invisibly by His Word and Spirit. The Lord intervenes to break the long slumbering condition of Christendom for both the wise and the foolish.

There have been times when men were impressed with the fear that judgment-day was coming. They yielded to sore panic at the cry that “the end of the world” was at hand. In the year 600 they were sure it would be then. But time passed on, and the end of the world did not come. They slumbered again. Then, in the year 1000 there was yet greater alarm all over western Christendom. The clergy took advantage of this and got the barons and people to give their gold and their labor, lands and possessions to build grand cathedrals and religious houses, some of which exist to the present day. This fear passed away when the end of the world did not come. Then followed a long and deep slumber.

In past ages there was alarm, sometimes to the utmost degree. This state is represented in the mediaeval hymn or dirge, “Dies Irae,” the extreme expression of Catholic terror. Such was the feeling of the middle ages. Since then, Protestants have tried to get power into their hands. But this means seizing the earth at the present, not quitting all to meet Christ.

The momentous fact is that two spiritual characteristics, distinct from ancient or mediaeval or modern views, mark off truth from error as to this. Are we not to be humbled because of the evil that has been done in Christendom? Are we not practically to take our stand on what was the Lord's will from the first? If the Lord at the outset called all Christians to go out to meet Him, they always should cherish this as their calling and joy. The consequence of a revival of the Christian hope of meeting the Lord is resumption of the original position of going forth to meet the Bridegroom. How could believers continue in what they know to be false and unscriptural, if they look for the Lord to come back any day? Thus the practical effect is immediate and immense where heart and conscience are true to Him. Compare Luke 12: 35-37 for the proper moral posture.

Awe-stricken, the foolish virgins come to the wise, saying, “Give us of your oil,” but this is beyond what the Christian can do. The wise bid them “Go, buy oil for yourselves.” There is One who sells, but freely, without money and without price: to buy even from an apostle is fatal. The cry was given to revive the hope: it also had the effect of recalling to the original and only right attitude of the saints toward Christ. It was enough to sever the wise from the foolish, as ones alone ready to act accordingly. It was too late for the foolish: who but One could give what they wanted?

All the machinery of religion does not change people's state or suppose real renewal. The decking of ecclesiastical buildings, the costumes of clergymen, the modern taste for church music, simply show that the foolish virgins are at work. They are not in a fit state to meet the Lord, and fear it themselves. The consequence, then, of this midnight cry is that a double activity is going on. The Lord is awakening those who know Himself and are wise by His grace, to go forth to meet the Bridegroom. The others, if indirectly, are also powerfully but in their own way affected by the cry, but its effects do not rise above nature and the earth.

Utterly ignorant of the grace of God, they are trying to make up by “earnestness.” They do not know that they are far from God, dead in trespasses and sins: their superstitious trust in religious forms such as baptismal regeneration blind them. So they think, or hope, that being “earnest” they may somehow or other get right at last. What delusion! If you ask them whether their sins are blotted out and if they are saved by grace, they count it presumption. They are as ignorant of the true power and privilege of redemption as the heathen or the Jew. They have no Spirit-taught certainty that the Son of man came down to save the lost.

As sinners, we need a Savior and a divine salvation; as saints, let us seek a calm but complete devotedness to the name, word, and work of the Lord Jesus. But man prefers his own works. To win the world he finds that pictorial representations of Christian facts or forms act most on the masses and attract the light, sentimental, despairing and even profane. Individuals in the midst of such religion may use a certain measure of the gospel to win people, but they subject Christ Himself to the “church.” But the movement as a whole is just the activity of the foolish virgins who do not have the oil and in vain try to get it as best they can.

The Bridegroom finally comes, and “they who were ready went in to the marriage, and the door was shut.”

Afterwards come the foolish virgins. Now they cry, but it is with horror and despair. Their religious energy is seen to be of the old man. In agony they say, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But the Lord of peace, the Giver of life and glory, can only tell them, “I know you not.” This is not said to faulty believers. It is said to the foolish virgins who had no oil — to those who bore the name of the Lord, but did not have the Spirit of Christ. “Watch, therefore,” He says, “for ye know neither the day nor the hour.”

There is no authority for what follows in the KJV: “wherein the Son of man cometh.” Copyists added the clause from Matthew 24: 42 and brought in the sense of the coming Judge. But this is incongruous with what the Lord here urges, which is the delight of going forth to meet Him the Bridegroom. Man as such must be judged: all the guilty tribes mourn before the Son of man. But the calling and hope of the Christian is filled with other and joyous expectations in spite of their unfaithfulness during the night while He tarried, for all slumbered and slept.

This middle parable is a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens. Here only is found a dispensational view of the state of things among those professedly Christ's on earth while He is on high. Here accordingly, the constant expectation of those who took the place of entering into the interests of His love is treated, with the issue at the end for such as were “foolish” and had no share in the anointing of the Spirit, for this alone could enable any to be “ready” to go in with Christ to the marriage. The “then” of the comparison (Matt. 25: 1), when judgment is executed on the evil servant of Matthew 24, carries us up to the foolish virgins shut out and disowned by Him: a complete proof that they were not saints. Indeed, the theory that any member of Christ's body will be left behind when He comes to receive His own to Himself and translate them to the Father's house, is opposed to the clearest testimony of Scripture, and unworthy of a spiritual mind. Think of Christ's body without an ear or an eye or a finger or a toe — the Bridge of the Lamb mutilated and deformed in glory! “They who are Christ's as His coming,” not some who have some external mark or believe some subordinate truth, will be raised to share the kingdom when He reigns and to be with Him before the kingdom and during it and after it. All such will have His presence and love in a glory deeper and higher. The scheme that denies this revealed certainty as in John 17: 24, Romans 5: 17, 1 Thessalonians 4: 17 (last clause) and Revelation 22: 5 is not only anti-scriptural but repulsive and destructive of all sound judgment and of the best affections.

THE THIRD PARABLE (The Talents)

In the third parable we do not have the collective responsibility so strikingly depicted from other objects and attaching to the Bridegroom's coming, as in the second, but a kind of pendant on it.

“For [it is] as [if] a man going abroad called his own bondmen and delivered to them his goods. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his several ability, and went his way. Straightway he who received the five talents proceeded and traded with them, and made other five talents. Likewise also he [who received] the two, and he gained other two. But he who received the one went off and dug in the earth and hid the money of his lord. After a long time the lord of those bondmen cometh and settleth account with them. And he who received the five talents came forward and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst to me five talents: behold, I gained five other talents [besides them]. His lord said to him, Well, good and faithful bondman, thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many: enter into the joy of thy lord. And he also who [received] the two talents said, Lord, two talents thou deliveredst to me: behold, I gained other two talents. His lord said to him, Well, good and faithful bondman, thou wast faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many: enter into the joy of thy lord. And he also who had received the one talent came forward and said, Lord, I knew thee, that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering whence thou didst not scatter; and being afraid I went off and hid thy talent in the earth; behold, thou hast that which is thine. But his lord answering said to him, Wicked and slothful bondman, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not and gather whence I scattered not. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have got mine own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him and give [it] to him who hath the ten talents. For to every one who hath shall be given, and he shall be in abundance, but from him who hath not, even what he hath shall be taken away [from him]. And cast out the useless bondman into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (vv. 14-30).

Here it is the Lord working by diversity of gifts. As He is sovereign, so confidence in Him is what severs the “good and faithful” bondmen from the wicked and slothful one, as it was in Matthew 24, a question of prudent or wise fidelity. Zeal according to that confidence was followed by blessing and fruit. Here we have marked variety and individual responsibility in faith, in contrast with unbelief and blindness to grace. When we know Christ (and the unprofitable bondman professed this) such unbelief is profound wickedness, and none in general worse than with such a nominal Christian. When confidence in Him is wanting, all is wrong. It may be shown in fear to use what He had given for profit. Had he truly known the Lord, he would have served Him gladly, especially as he had a gift of power. He thus was judged according to his distrust and the falsehood which unbelief readily yields to. Unbelief receives what flesh says, according to what the evil heart suggests when it listens to Satan's lie.

The Lord deals with the wicked man as his slander deserved. While those who work on in confidence of His grace enter into the joy of their Lord, those who would not work in distrust of Him, shall be consigned to the outer darkness with all its horrors and misery. Bliss with Christ is beyond rewards, though this too has an important place.

The Parable of the Ten Pounds (or, Minas) in Luke 19: 12-27 is also instructive. It is unique to his Gospel and was given before the Lord's last visit to Jerusalem, whereas that of the Talents was given when the visit was drawing to a close. In Luke there is the same gift entrusted to each of the servants, and their responsibility and right use in some was strongly in evidence, yet to have authority over so many cities is the reward of the Kingdom, not entrance into their Lord's joy. But how profound the mistake to set a place of outward honor above sharing the Lord's joy with Himself! The good and faithful also will receive that, both being in the Kingdom. There is responsibility in active service.

If the faithful and wise servant, contrasted with “that evil servant,” set forth the general place in the house, whether faithful or the contrary, the parable of the Talents shows us those who trade with the goods of Christ, and that blessing in this work turns on confidence in Him and His grace.

Chapter 3

THE GENTILE PORTION

Matthew 25: 31-46

This is the third and concluding section of the Lord's prophetic word on the mount. No part of it has been less understood, yet it is clearly defined as distinct from the other two by internal marks which ought to have carried conviction to every believer. But such has been the fate of Scripture, not that God's Word fails in plainness of speech and certainty of meaning, but because it crosses man's will. Man therefore seeks to interpret it according to his own thoughts. Every Scripture is for us, and being of God, is also profitable for man, but it is not all about us. We can only learn from itself concerning whom it speaks.

1. We have had a believing Jewish remnant, but without the full privileges of Christians, as the Lord addressed those Jewish disciples who then represented it down to the end of the age. Then He appears as the Son of man and in that day delivers not only such, but all the elect of the nation, the “all Israel that shall be saved,” immediately after unparalleled tribulation.

2. Then (without any allusion to Judaea, the city, the temple or any association local or temporal) the discourse takes up what applies directly and exclusively to the Christian profession, sound and unsound, in the three intermediate parables which were therefore couched in general terms. Here “the Son of man” disappears according to the overwhelming testimony of the best manuscripts of Matthew 25: 13.

3. Only the Gentiles remained. Every reader is aware that the mass of mankind is devoted to idols and impostures and has to this day resisted the Christian testimony. But the Lord had intimated in the first part (Matt. 24: 14) that “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the habitable world* for a witness to all the nations, and then shall the end come.” Here He lets us know the fruit of this preaching by the believing Jews of that day, as its place intimates, just before the ends comes.

*Even those who try to limit "the inhabited world" to the Roman Empire are obliged here to abandon it; for they admit that at this very time the Beast and the False Prophet will have banished it hence. We can understand the term employed by the Romans in pride of power, and so cited in scripture as in profane historians, and loosely used by the speakers in Acts 17: 6, Acts 24: 5. But it is not possible so to confine it in Acts 17: 31, Rom. 10: 18, Heb 1: 6, Rev. 3: 10, Rev. 16: 14, any more than in Matt. 24: 14. Compare also Matt. 4: 8 with Luke 4: 5.

Hence the last section has its suited uniqueness which differentiates it from both the preceding ones. The specific ground for the King's decision turns on preaching the glad news of the kingdom which only came through His brethren (evidently converted Jews) before “the end,” and is here shown to result among all the nations in some heeding the message and in others despising it. It is therefore unique in its circumstances as a whole; though no principle is involved which cannot be justified from other Scriptures.

“But when the Son of man shall have come in His glory and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit down upon His throne of glory, and all the nations shall be gathered before Him; and He shall separate them from one another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats (or, kids); and He will set the sheep on His right, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those on His right, Come ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the world's foundation. For I was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee hungering and fed Thee; or thirsty, and gave Thee drink? and when saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in; or naked, and clothed Thee? and when saw we Thee sick or in prison and came unto Thee? And the King answering shall say to them, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] to one of the least of these My brethren, ye did [it] to Me. Then shall He say also to those on the left, Go from Me, accursed, into the everlasting fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and ye gave Me not to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me not to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and ministered not to Thee? Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say to you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of these least, ye did [it] not to Me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life everlasting” (Matt. 25: 31-46).

The Son of man will have already come. His war-judgments are over — not only what He executed by the appearing of His presence (2 Thess. 2: 8), but when He put Himself at the head of His people as in Isaiah 53, Ezekiel 38, Ezekiel 39, Micah 6 and Zechariah 14.

JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS

Now the “King” (found here only) enters on the sessional judgment of His throne, before which all the nations must appear, for then all the peoples, nations and languages must serve Him. It is part of that judgment of the living and of the habitable earth by the risen Man whom God appointed. The judgment of living man on the earth, in the midst of his busy, selfish, sordid, and sinful life was much pressed by the Lord and the apostles, as it is in Old and New Testament prophecy, but it has been lost to the living faith even of saints in Christendom. Yet even the creeds confess it, however little it was realized when they were written. As the Jews let slip the judgment of the dead, so Christendom practically forgets the judgment of the living. Here we have judgment applied by the Son of man judicially when He enters on the exercise of His world-kingdom. Hence it is a question of people at large, not Jews and of course not Christians, but of “all the nations” when the Lord is come and sits on the throne of His glory.

This is not “the judgment at the great white throne.” Then the earth and the heaven flee from His gaze and no place is found for them. The “the dead,” the great and the small, stand before the throne. Then “the dead” (none else are spoken of) are judged according to their works out of the record of all done in the body, the book of life sealing it by its silence. This white throne judgment is not the coming of the Son of man to reign over the earth (as in Matthew), for the nations are destroyed and the earth fled and even the heavens. On the contrary, Matthew shows the Son of man come to the earth and all the nations gathered before Him. Here they are all living, to whom alone “nations” could apply; there, the wicked dead alone are indeed, for the righteous dead had been raised long before for the first resurrection. After that, no righteous ones ever die.

In the judgment of all the nations there is no such scrutiny as Romans 2 speaks of for the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by our Lord Jesus before the great white throne. Then it will be that as many as sinned without law shall also perish without law and as many as sinned under law shall be judged by law. Still more terrible will be the doom of those who rejected the gospel or even neglected so great salvation, as other Scriptures declare.

But here it is a simple and single issue which applies only to that living generation of all the nations: how did you treat the King's messengers when they preached this gospel of the kingdom before the end came? The end was now come. The test was an open undeniable fact, but it proved whether they had or had not faith in the coming King. Those who honored the heralds of the kingdom showed their faith by their works, and likewise those who despised them manifested their unbelief. The test was both just and gracious. The King pronounced accordingly. The form was new, as were the circumstances, but the foundation is the same for all the objects of God's mercy on the one hand, and for the objects of wrath on the other. So it was before the deluge, so it will be when the Son of man on His throne of glory on earth shall deal with all the nations. Apart from faith it is impossible to be acceptable, for he who approached God must believe that He is, and becomes a rewarder of those who seek Him out.

So it will be with the blessed of these nations. Their conduct to those who preached the coming kingdom evidenced their faith. The King's grace accepted to their astonishment what they did to His brethren, even to the least, as done to Himself. The trials and sufferings of these “brethren” gave the Gentiles occasion to show their faith working by love, or to show the total absence of it. Rahab the harlot likewise was justified by works when she received the messengers, but her faith is as carefully stated by the apostle Paul: without faith her works would have been evil. She rightly judged that Jehovah and His people were above her king and country. This was a turning point for her; not then only, but to eternity. So it was with the sheep; and the sad reverse was no less true for the goats.

There is another element overlooked by those who confound Matthew 25: 31-46 with Revelation 20: 11-15. In the judgment of the dead only one class is stated — the dead who were not in the resurrection of the just. Hence only the unjust appear, and they are judged according to their works in all their life. Here appear not only the sheep and the goats, but the King's brethren, a third and highly honored class, none of them dead or risen, but all alive. Can there be a more striking contrast? The resurrection-state must exclude what we find herein. With the judgment of the living, and in particular of “all the nations,” all here is harmonious. At the end “of the age” He comes; at the end “of the world” He does not. There is then no world to come to. It is all gone, to appear afterwards made new for eternity.

The decision is final. The decision of Revelation 20 also is final. But the one is at the beginning of the thousand years' reign, and the other at its end.

The righteous, though they had faith in the kingdom and therefore treated its preachers as became the truth, were evidently poorly instructed. We see how little their intelligence rose above that of their unbelieving countrymen. But their heart was right by grace, as the King knew perfectly, who from the first separated these to the right and the others to the left. He allowed this ignorance to come out that He might give to all a profound lesson never to be forgotten. This is quite compatible with the righteous as alive in their natural bodies. But is such lack of intelligence consistent with the risen condition? When that which is perfect is come (and it surely comes at the resurrection of the just), that which is in part shall be done away. This was not at all the state as yet of these sheep, the righteous Gentiles; and the King only communicates to them before His throne what every Christian may be assumed now to know, with much more quite beyond them. Yet was the kingdom prepared for these, as for the righteous generally, from the world's foundation.

Noticed also that the everlasting fire to which the unbelieving Gentiles of that epoch are consigned is said to have been “prepared for the devil and his angels,” not for the goats, except that they fitted themselves for it by their evil ways. Compare also Romans 9: 22. The devil and his angels were not yet cast into the lake of fire. This will only be after Satan's last effort at the end of the Millennium, as Revelation 20: 10 tells us. But here the goats have now their portion, as the Beast and the False Prophet had a little before them, as we read in Revelation 20, and that while alive too.

It must be borne in mind that stupendous events had just taken place before all the nations are gathered here; facts all-important for understanding the position. The vast hosts of the west will have been destroyed from above at a stroke when the Beast and the False Prophet meet their doom. Soon after the eastern hordes led by the Assyrian of the prophets (Daniel's king of the north) will have been dissipated like the chaff. Edom will have met its final judgment (Isa. 63) and so will Gog with his numerous allies (Ezek. 38-39). The Jews and Christendom will have been judged, as we see in this discourse. Hence “all the nations” here summoned are composed of what remains after these other executions of judgment. From the nature of the case, they must needs be exclusively living people who were placed under the responsibility of having heard “this gospel of the kingdom” preached by God-fearing Jews, whom the Lord sent for that express purpose before the end come.

This alone explains the unique criterion by which “the righteous” were marked off from their unbelieving fellows. It was His grace that blessed those who received these glad tidings, and now they hear of their blessed portion from the lips of the King. They were as amazed to learn His estimate of their faith working by love, as the hardened were to meet their awful end. We have no reason to believe that either the sheep or the goats ever heard the full gospel of God such as was preached by the Christian witnesses, or that the converted Jews knew it as we do. We must leave room for the sovereign ways of God, dealing variously in His wisdom with the future as with the past. But for every sinful person there must be faith for eternal life, and faith is from a report and the report through God's Word. Thus only can any fallen person be brought into living relation with Him. The measure has differed greatly at different times, as it will, but the principle is the same. This of course applies only to those who hear.

Particularly note that there is no allusion to resurrection here for either “the righteous” or “the accursed.” On both sides they were Gentiles living in their natural bodies, for they are expressly said to be “all the nations” when they were gathered before the glorious throne of the Son of man.

He had said that this gospel of the kingdom should go forth “in all the habitable world for a witness to all the nations.” Some had shown, not merely benevolence or self denial or moral excellence in any marked degree, but love in varied ways to the servants who preached in the King's name the same truth which He had preached at the beginning of His public ministry. But it was faith which wrought in their love. If the King and His coming Kingdom only had been a myth in their eyes, they would have at least ignored His messengers as impostors. They believed the message to be of God and therefore treated its preachers with kindness, and are to enjoy the gracious result. It was not good done even to the sheep, but specifically to “My brethren,” even the least of them.

So the King puts the difference of the two classes on the only ground that could apply to “all the nations” then before His earthly throne, after such a preaching as had by grace reached them before the end. Now it had come: the new age had begun. The King had done what none else could: He separated them all individually and with unfailing discernment. Instead of their giving account to Him, He recounts to them why He set some on His right and some on the left. It turned on faith that it might be according to grace, or sadly, on unbelief where there was no grace, but only self. Hence He said to the wondering righteous, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it to Me.” How awful on the other hand for the unjust to hear, in answer to their more hurried summary, “Inasmuch as ye did[it] not to one of these least, neither did ye [it] to Me.”

Thus all rests on Christ, though His grace makes the most of what to others might seem trivial. The faith working by love in the one class, and the utter unconcern of the other, laid bare respectively their fitness or unfitness for inheriting the kingdom. In all cases of saints, works are the evidence, faith of the Word the instrument, Christ's work the ground, and God's grace the source.

The King does not call them adopted sons, as is the portion of Christians (Gal. 3: 26) nor do they exhibit the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is characteristic of Christians. He calls them “blessed” of His Father, but does not say “your Father” for this was not their privilege to know, as it is ours. Nor does He speak of the blessings according to God's counsels for us in the heavenlies, to which He chose us in Christ before the world's foundation. The King bade them inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the world's foundation. They are elect and born of God, as all saints must be, but they do not reign with Christ in that day, any more than even “His brethren” among the Jews who survived the tribulation crisis before the kingdom, whereas those slain for His name at the “time of the end” will be raised to reign with Him as shown in Revelation 20: 4. But those saved of Gentiles like the saved of Israel will have a distinctive place of honor over those born during the millennial reign, as we may gather from Revelation 7 and 14. As elect Jews will have known “flesh saved” from the tribulation which is to befall the rebellious people, so elect Gentiles emerge out of “the great tribulation,” distinguished from the Church which the Lord declares He will keep out of the hour of trial that is about to come on the whole habitable world to try those who dwell on the earth (Rev. 3: 10).

During the many years that precede this extraordinary mission to all the habitable world, the ground of statement as stated in Romans 2: 12 is for mankind generally wholly different. There is no respect of persons with God, who will then judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, which can scarce apply to this scene. Hence, while there is a resurrection of life for such as (hearing the word of Jesus and believing God who sent Him) have eternal life, there will be at length also a resurrection of judgment for those who, believing not, produced only evil works. This is the judgment in Revelation 20: 11, etc., where all had been dead but were raised and judged according to their works, and are therefore lost. But it is a total contrast with the King's decision about the living Gentiles, to whom His brethren (the converted of the Jews) are to preach before the end, and who will be proved righteous or reprobate as to how they behaved to words the bearers of “this gospel of the kingdom”

Clearly the test here employed by the King suits only the living Gentiles who had treated well or ill His brethren with whom they are confronted, because of their faith or unbelief in the King who pronounces on both. The character is unique and necessarily determined by the brief* mission of “this gospel of the kingdom” before the end. It was in no sense the end of the world, but of the age, when the King had not yet come to reign over the earth. This appraisal of all the Gentiles is when He shall have come in His glory and shall sit on His throne. It will thus be plain that Revelation 20 in the two resurrections exactly agrees with the Lord's discourse in John 5: 21-29; while Matthew 25: 31-46, though equally true, widely differs from both.

We may see an interesting link between Matthew 24: 14 and Matthew 25: 40,45. “His brethren” were those who at the time of the end carried “this gospel of the kingdom” to all the nations, which are blessed or cursed by the King's decree according to their behavior toward those who thus and then brought the word of God. It was not brethren of the intervening Christian character, but of the converted Jews to the Gentiles. And as these brethren are thus honored by the King, so are the Gentiles blessed who received and treated them well, the Son of man being come and reigning over both. It is the age to come, not the judgment of the dead. The ground on which the solemn decision depended fits into no time or circumstances of the Gentiles, except the eventful mission by a future remnant of godly Jews who preach the gospel of the kingdom just before the Son of man comes to enforce and establish it.

Thus we have here a deeply interesting and momentous judgment which the Lord is to execute over all the nations who only heart “this gospel of the kingdom” before the end comes and He returns to bring in His kingdom. Applied as it often is by the theologians, it enfeebles and darkens what Scripture declares of the judgment before the Great White Throne in Revelation 20. And its own true application is effaced. A gap is thus created in the revelation of God which no other Scripture can fill, while the attempt to fit it into the last judgment after the Millennium is over, and the subsequent destruction of the insurgent rebels, causes nothing but confusion. Give this judgment its place at the beginning of the Millennium a fresh light shines without obstruction.

Chapter 4

THE FUTURE TRIBULATION

The Christian is to expect suffering, scorn, injury, persecution and tribulation of every sort in and from the world, as that grace has given him the richest privileges in Christ. “These things I have spoken to you,” says our Lord, “that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye have (not merely “ye shall have”) tribulation, but be of good courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16: 33). Also in Acts 14: 22, for establishing the disciples and exhorting them to abide in the faith, the word is that “through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.” So the great apostle could say on the one hand, “I ask that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory” (Eph. 3: 13) and on the other, “to you it was granted in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which ye saw in me and now hear of in me” (Phil. 1: 29, 30). “Faithful the word [is], for it we died with [Him], we shall also live together, if we endure we shall also reign together” (2 Tim. 2: 11, 12). We may not all be called to suffer for Him, but if we do not suffer with Him, can we look to be glorified together? (Rom. 8: 17). It is here that we differ essentially from the saints born in the millennial age who are reigned over instead of reigning with Christ.

Who then are the saints who pass through and come out of the great tribulation? The answer can only be given by the light God has given us in the prophetic word. The answer is plain, not only on the positive side, but even on the negative.

First, and chiefly, the Old Testament is explicit that “at the time of the end,” when “Michael shall stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy (Daniel's) people,” “there shall be a time of trouble (or, tribulation) such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” It will far exceed even what accompanied the idolatrous effort of Antiochus Epiphanes of whom Daniel 11: 31-32 speaks. We do hear of an “abomination that maketh desolate” then set up, but not of the tribulation without parallel which Daniel 12 predicts for the end when the abomination that maketh desolate will be set up again and for the last time. Here it is incontestable that we hear only of Daniel's people, the Jews, who “at that time shall be delivered, everyone who shall be found written in the book” — the future elect and godly remnant.*

In Matthew 24 our Lord refers to this abomination standing in a holy place for those in Judaea to flee to the mountains, and to the great trouble that is to follow, in even stronger terms than used by Daniel. The context is just as plain and certain as that of Daniel. The Lord also contemplates Jewish disciples whom He will deliver by appearing in glory as the Son of man to the discomfort of their enemies, but also to the discriminating judgment of Israel. His elect, not merely of the Jews (v. 22), but of His entire people Israel (v. 31), shall be gathered together from the four winds (where are still scattered these of the ten tribes undiscerned), from one end of the heavens to the other. The Lord addresses His disciples here in a personal way, which does not apply to the intermediate part, still less to what He tells us of “all the nations” in Matthew 25: 31-46.

The same fact is observed in Mark 13 which give sin substance the first section of our Lord's prophecy as in Matthew's Gospel, but with those characteristic additions of Mark on the service of His name. See verses 9-12 and 34. But there is no difference in the relevant intimation that in the future crisis only “those in Judaea” are concerned and that it is a question here of “flesh” being saved and of “this generation,” etc., not of resurrection and rapture on high. Jewish disciples only are in question, and deliverance coming down to the earth in displayed power and glory, instead of saints caught up by the Lord and to be with Him as in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Luke 21: 20-24 contains unique truth not found in Matthew or Mark — an explicit prediction of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem and resulting great distress upon the land and upon this people. Only Luke mentions their being led captive into all the nations as also the remarkable and still continued sentence of Jerusalem to be trodden down by Gentiles until their assigned times be fulfilled. He speaks of “days of vengeance” as indeed they were then, and he leaves room for more at the close when he speaks of distress of nations and men fainting for fear. This is in character with the design of the third Gospel which entirely omits the abomination of desolation and the unequalled tribulation, so prominent in the two preceding Gospels. From verse 25 Luke coalesces with his predecessors in what belongs to the time of the end. Verses 20-24 are special to him.

Secondly, Revelation 7: 9-17 presents the vision of a great crowd which none could number (distinguished from the 144,000 sealed out of the twelve tribes of Israel). The crowd was out of every nation and of tribes and peoples and tongues. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb. They have a wholly different position from the crowned and enthroned elders and the four living creatures; so much so that one of the elders explains to the prophet who they are and from where they came. “And he said to me, These are they who come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Here we have clear evidence that grace will deliver a vast crowd of believing Gentiles out of “the great tribulation” at the time of the end. They are therefore, as a special gathering out at the close, distinct from those heavenly saints of all times symbolized in the same scene.

The extreme severity of the future tribulation will fall in and round Jerusalem, but there is no reason to doubt that it awaits all nations, if in lesser measure. It is “the great tribulation,” perhaps implied in Luke's description of “distress of nations” at that very time. Gentile saints, as well as Jews, will emerge from it in that day, not forming one body as now in the Church, but expressly distinct from it and from one another, as Revelation 7 plainly attests.

Thirdly, there is the promise, most appropriate to the overcomers of the church in Philadelphia (Rev. 3: 10), though surely not for them exclusively, “Because thou didst keep the word of My patience, I also will keep thee (not during, but) out of the hour of trial that is about to come upon the whole habitable earth, to try those who dwell upon the earth.” That hour may include more than “the great tribulation”: no intelligent Christian thinks it covers less. The promise is to keep the faithful, the Christian saints, out of that hour. The refuge is not simply geographical because that hour of trial will befall the whole habitable world. The heavenly saints (1 Cor. 15: 43) will be caught up before that crisis comes, which is retributive for the lawlessness of the Jews and the Gentiles — a wholly different kind of trouble from what is our portion as Christians.

There is no evidence that the Church, the Christian body, will pass through the great coming tribulation before this age ends. The proof-texts concerning that time apply expressly and exclusively to Jews and Gentiles, with the striking exemption from that hour of those who keep the patience of Christ. Though pledged to the Philadelphian overcomers, no prophetically intelligent saint would limit Revelation 3: 10 to such, any more than other words of comfort similarly promised to the various seven churches.

Some argue that because all Scripture is for us, for our edification and use, it is therefore about us. Any serious consideration must assuredly shatter such an assumption. Is it then left to uncertainty or guesswork? In no way. Nor is time the great interpreter, or history: it is the Holy Spirit. Inasmuch as He inspired to write it, so does He give understanding of God's mind to those who wait in dependence on the Lord for it. Therefore, weigh well not only the text but the context, and all other Scriptures converging on the same point.

Suffering for righteousness' sake and yet more for Christ's name is a high privilege. God has given it in the fullest measure to the members of Christ, though in spirit to all saints from the beginning. Our Lord was here as in all else supreme, and as He said, The disciple is not above his Master, but every one perfected shall be as his Master. Yes, adds the great apostle Paul, and all who will live piously in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted. Hence the faithful, not of the world as Christ is not, should be prepared for persecution beyond all, throughout their pilgrimage.

But the future tribulation has a very different source and character. In its most terrible form it will be a penal infliction of God on the consummation of Jewish apostasy when the abomination of desolation is set up in the holy place. Those who rejected and by hand of lawless men crucified their own Messiah, the Son of God, will worship the Antichrist in the temple of God, showing that he himself is God. If without parallel for severity of judicial woe, it is because of his unparalleled audacity of lawlessness, and Satan's power in the Beast of the west joining the False Prophet of the east in contempt of Jehovah and His Christ. What has this specific crisis to do with our being granted to suffer for Christ's sake?

Indeed the Lord Jesus (instead of calling on the godly Jews to stay and suffer when God is thus visiting His guilty people, because of their final apostasy and their bowing down to the man of sin as the true God in His house) bids the godly remnant to immediately flee, regardless even of clothes or anything else, to save their lives. So in the minor case of the days of vengeance that befell Jerusalem when the Lord's murderers were destroyed and their city burnt, it was no question of suffering as a privilege, but of a retributive dealing of God. The Lord therefore directed those who heeded His words to escape when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies.

It will be a short time of unexampled trial. We also know that there will be martyrdom once more, and a later group answering to a former one, as Revelation 20: 4 concisely assures us. Those who died for rejecting the Beast, like the earlier faithful (cf. Rev. 6: 9-11), shall rise in the blessed resurrection and reign with Christ. Those whose lives were spared shall enjoy the kingdom under Christ. Daniel (Dan. 7: 18, 27) had already pointed out the distinction of the saints of the high places (or, the heavenlies) from “the people” of those saints: the one receiving the kingdom in an absolute way and possessing the kingdom for ever; the other having simply the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdom “under the whole heaven” given to them. They both consist of godly Jews with converted Gentiles at the time of the end, but there is no union in one body like the Church, which at this time of the completion of the age, is only seen symbolically and on high.

The Great Olivet Prophecy

of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Wherein are contrasted the Jewish and Christian calling and hope.

W. Kelly.

I have taken this portion of the Word of God to set forth "The Christian calling and hope," as distinct from that of a Jew or a Gentile. There may be some who might demur to this. They are not convinced that it is a question of Christians, for example, in the parable of the Virgins.

There are those, on the one hand, who have been disposed to exaggerate, maintaining that even the foolish virgins are really Christians. There are some, on the other hand, who deny that the parable speaks of Christians at all. These will have it that not only the foolish virgins are not Christians — which I believe to be quite true — but that the wise are not either, but what is commonly called the Jewish remnant. Now, I am of opinion that they are both mistaken; that in this Scripture we have positive evidence, of a clear and cogent kind, which ought to remove the doubts of any dispassionate mind, and to give with certainty the conviction that the Lord had real Christians in view in the wise virgins, and professing Christians in the foolish virgins. In order to demonstrate this more clearly, I will first draw your attention to the context, and then to the contents of the parable.

It is plain that from these two sources must be drawn the main evidence that the Lord Jesus has given by which we may form a sound judgment. That is to say, the Lord has given, in the surroundings of the parable, not a little to help us to understand its bearing and application. Then, again, what the general evidence of the context would lead to we shall find, I trust, entirely borne out by the specific contents of the parable. The language, the drift, the circumstances, the design all converge on Christendom; all point to the calling and hopes of the Christian; for alas! not only the parable instructs us, but it is a fact that we see now around us many who bear the Christian name with no reality.

The End of the Age.

First of all, then, we have the Lord's discourse, founded on the disciples pointing out, with not a little complacency, the grand buildings of the Temple.

"And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple; and His disciples came to Him for to show Him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them: See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down."

The Jewish system was tottering to its ruin; the temple, where the glory of God had once been, was itself about to be destroyed.

"And, as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us when shall these things be?"

They were disturbed and distressed by such a thought. Was not He the Messiah? Was not He going to establish Israel? Was not He about to restore the tribes — which had been so long waiting — to the nationality of God's chosen people? What, then, would be the meaning of such solemn words as that all was to be razed to the ground? Jesus meets the questions, When these things should be, and What should be the sign of His coming, and of the end of the age — not of the world.

The Jews were not so ignorant on this head as many who have less excuse in the present day; they did not confound the end of the age with the end of the world. They knew well that God meant to bless this earth — to bless it as a whole, not merely His children passing through it, but the nations and the earth itself; to overthrow Satan's usurped dominion, and to deliver from the thraldom of the curse the whole creation. The disciples, who as Jews held all the hopes of their nation founded on prophetic testimony, were therefore anxious to know what should be the sign of His coming or presence, and of the end of the intervening time of sorrow and distress; for they were aware that it is only when He comes in power and glory that there can be an end of desolation. So the Lord explains that the time was not yet come; that they would be liable to be deceived about the time when the restoration of their people, and all this introduction of divine power to bless the earth, was nigh at hand.

"Take heed," said He, "that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many."

"And ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom."

It is the reverse of the glowing picture of the age of the Messiah's reign.

"He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2).

The new age is not yet come, nor can it while the Lord Jesus is away. Whatever may be the promises and hopes of men, all their scheming will not avail; all their expectations must be falsified. "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom"; that is to say, a state quite contrary to what is held out for the kingdom. The prophets glowed as they looked forward in the Spirit to the time when

"the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills: and all nations shall flow into it. And out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2: 2, 3).

But the Lord intimates that the time is not yet at hand. There must still be the sorrows that belong to this age.

The New Age.

The new age would be characterised, not by the destruction of the earth, but by its renovation; not by the great White Throne, where the dead will be judged, but by the Lord coming to reign and govern the living. "For he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" (Acts 10: 42; 2 Tim. 4: 1) not the quick and the dead at the same time, but the quick first, the dead afterwards. The judgment of the quick (or, the living) traverses over a considerable tract of time; the judgment of the dead is at the close of all, before the eternal scene where all judgment will be ended, when nothing will remain but the blessing of those that are of God, such as are of the enemy having been judged for ever. The Lord explains that there must be an earthly time of manifold sorrow during this age before the blessed time begins for the earth in the new age. Whether it be the present era of sorrow, or the future dispensation of blessedness for the world, the end of "the world," as popularly held, is a false notion; the end of "the age" is the true thought. Man's day will close with the end of this age.

The new age will be under the government of the Lord Jesus. The fact that power will be exercised in rule supposes flesh and liability to disobedience. Evil will be put down; it may be kept thoroughly in check; but it needs the reign of the Lord to effect it. The eternal state differs essentially from this age. It will have no evil to be kept in check, but will display the peaceful dwelling of good in the presence of God, when evil has been judged, removed, and punished.

The Lord then pursues His sketch of what the disciples must expect.

"Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

"All these are the beginning of sorrows.

"Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for My Name's sake.

"And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

"And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

"And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

"But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." (Matt. 24: 7- 13.)

This, again, is beyond controversy the close of what is going on now; not the end of the world in a physical sense, but of the period or dispensation which terminates with the appearing of the Lord Jesus in power and glory. His return to reign will open the new age.

Jewish disciples.

Then the Lord proceeds to give some indications of the closing scene of the age a little more definitely —

"When ye therefore shall see the Abomination of Desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place,

"Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains."

Nothing can be more distinct than this. The Lord Jesus is not here giving us the calling and hope of the Christian, but addressing the disciples in their then Jewish state and circumstances.

Now this is an immense help for the understanding of the prophecy. For many persons now as of old have taken the whole discourse as if it were addressed to Christians as such; they imagine that it all describes the position of Christians at one time or another. But this is a fallacious idea. The Lord begins with the Jewish disciples before Christianity, properly speaking, was revealed. For Christianity supposes the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord: these are the pillars of Christianity. Without them you have the Lord Jesus still connected with Israel. The essential features of Christianity display themselves on the basis of redemption, and in the gift of the Holy Ghost consequent upon it.

Now, in all we have heard thus far, there is nothing that is essentially Christian. We have disciples: I doubt not believers, but believers looking for the Lord's return to reign over Israel. They are disciples whose expectations are in connection with the land of Palestine and the Temple; whose hopes embrace Israelitish ascendancy; whose fears are based upon the troubles or tribulations predicted for Israel by the prophets. Hence we see the Lord Himself deigns to refer to the prophecy of "Daniel the prophet." Does not this show that He was speaking of the same time, place, people, and circumstances as Daniel? Nothing can be clearer than that He is not describing Christians as such. What have Christians to do with Jerusalem or Judea? What have Christians to do with the Temple? They have no personal interest in those stones; they have no special connection with the grandeur of those buildings. The destruction of the Temple leaves Christianity unaffected, and where it was, in point of fact. We quite understand on the one hand that God saw fit that during Christianity the Jewish people and their Temple should be in ruins soon, if not immediately; as we know it was important on the other hand that Christianity should derive its force from God while the Temple had still an outward appearance.

Jerusalem and the Temple.

It was no mere concurrence of circumstances which gave birth to Christianity. It might have been said that Christianity grew up as a natural development after Judaism had actually disappeared; that there had been an old religion in Jerusalem, and when this perished, then Christianity sprung up. But God took care that the Temple and the Jewish system should still continue for a season. It is true they were spiritually defunct. They remained to the eyes of men alive, but really before God they were dead.

The Lord, then, shows us clearly that He is speaking of disciples' hopes and fears. He, therefore warns certain persons who should be analagous to the disciples of that day; Jews who should be found at the end of the age, disciples in Jerusalem once more when there would be a Temple once more. For it is remarkable that Christ in speaking of the Temple gives it unity: the Temple may be built and destroyed, again built and destroyed, yet it is all counted the Temple, for God deals with things according to the place they assume. He views all that is done in His name as having a kind of moral unity. Hence we find this carried out with regard to Antichrist. The Temple, too, has been destroyed, and may be again, but it is still the Temple of God. In days yet future we know that, when rebuilt, it will be put to the most fearful uses to which any buildings have been applied since the world began; still it is called the Temple of God.

The Gospel of the Kingdom.

There will, then, be disciples — Jewish believers — keeping to the words of the Lord Jesus in the latter days of this age, for the Lord is clearly carrying on His thought to that time, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached to all the nations, and then shall the end come. We know the end has not come yet. We are aware that this gospel of the kingdom needs yet to be preached as a witness in all the world to all the nations. But how far it will take effect is not said: there may be few believers, but there will be witnesses of the gospel of the kingdom sent out, like the disciples when He was here. It is not telling the people that He died and rose and went to heaven. They preached the kingdom of heaven was at hand before the end of the age. There will be Jewish disciples and believers who will preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, who will take up the testimony which the disciples were rendering in His day and will proclaim this to all nations at the very time that Satan will be prompting the Beast and the False Prophet to bring in the infernal kingdom — when there will be that base usurpation on the earth which Satan cannot longer continue in the heavens.

For a little while he will attempt to secure the sovereignty of the earth, and have a kingdom of his own. Then will be found the voices of faithful men, holding fast the old testimony, and proclaiming it unto all the nations when Christendom shall have gone into apostacy. These kingdoms may have their science and civilisation; but they will fall into the deepest depths of deceit and strong delusion. The mass of the Jews, too, will fall into the dreadful snare that the kingdom of God is come, when it is only the kingdom of the Beast and the Antichrist. Then will be heard those faithful Jews, going forth with power to proclaim that the true kingdom — the kingdom of heaven, not of the Beast that rises up out of the pit, but the kingdom of the heavens — is at hand, the kingdom that comes down from above, and of which the Lord Jesus is King.

The Kingdom of Heaven on the Earth.

When that kingdom is at hand, when the Lord is going to accomplish His word which was interrupted by His death and resurrection — for He is now, manifestly, out of the world — what He will then establish will be the kingdom of heaven on the earth. This is the true hope that God has given as far as the world is concerned. But the only One who can accomplish the work, and the only One, too, who deserves the glory, is Jesus: all other men require to be saved and purified. He is the only One who has both a divine and a human claim. He is the Saviour available for all; He alone will have the dominion as of right. Thus, then, these faithful Jews — these disciples — when the mass of their nation are apostate, and when Christendom, too, is apostate, will renew the testimony in the latter day. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world to all nations, a final testimony of the true kingdom, while the false kingdom is set up in Satan's power.

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached everywhere, and then shall the end come. This is not the character of the teaching that is given to us as Christians. If we look at the Epistles of Paul, where does he ever give us anything of this kind of warning? How could an idol in the Temple be a sign to you or me, if we were Christians in England, France, Germany, or in any part of America? How could it be a sign to us if anything new were set up in Jerusalem? But we can perfectly understand that if an idol should be set up to be worshipped in the Temple in Jerusalem, it must be a most solemn sign of Satan's power over that people. And so the righteous will take warning and flee. It applies only to such as shall at that time be living in Jerusalem; but how could it be a sign to those scattered over all lands thousands of miles away?

It is no use saying that the thing may be communicated rapidly nowadays, for the whole thing is represented by our Lord as a signal for flight to those who saw it.

It is not that others may hear, but "when ye shall see" the Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet. Then they are to flee.

It is not then an announcement by wireless that there are these dismal doings in Jerusalem, but persons on the spot, who see evident tokens of the power that Satan is wielding, and that their nation is damnably guilty, who are at once to retire.

The Lord, it is plain by His call to the reader to understand, supposes that some would not understand. He supposes that there would be a very great tendency to mistake about it, and calls their special heed to the word. It is what concerned the Jew, as put down for a season by the Gentile; for Daniel speaks about these facts and not about the church. "When ye shall see" this, "then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." Clearly this is no sign to the Christians scattered in all countries.

Take it as the Lord gives it, for there is no need to put in any words of our own. I am expounding what no believer can deny; and who can affirm that what I am deducing is not the plain meaning of the Lord's words, or that they will bear any other construction?

"

Then let them which be in Judea flee to the Mountains;

"

It is to be an instantaneous flight. There is no time to communicate with others. It is as much as can be done to save themselves.

"Let him which is on the house-top not come down to take anything out of his house;" — it is too late to think about doing this.

"Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes." Immediate flight is the only hope of safety. What sort of safety? It is the saving of flesh — of natural life. Is this what the Christian is expecting? Not so. The Christian is looking for the coming of Christ, not to save his life, but to change and take him up to heaven.

The point here is escape, for it is not safe to remain. There is unprecedented trouble coming; those who refuse to worship the idol will be put to death, and those who worship will be besieged and led into captivity largely. Therefore the Lord warns His disciples to flee in order that they may not be so troubled. It has nothing at all to do with the Christian's expectation of going up to heaven to meet the Lord "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." For, where would be the propriety of telling the Christian not to come down from the housetop at that time? Would it matter whether at the top or the bottom of the house? Thus it is perfectly plain that the Lord is here speaking simply of the Jew who sees this most startling sign of Satan's power, and is ordered at the peril of his life to make his escape. It is much more like Lot and his family going out of Sodom, than Abraham from a distance with the Lord.

Christ the Key to the Bible.

There is one thing to which I would call your attention regarding the Word of God: there is not a book in the world that has fared so hardly as the Bible. When other books are read men strive to understand them, but when they read the Bible they shut their eyes and give up its interpretation as hopeless. This is due to the blinding power of Satan: he does not wish it to be understood, only read as a task. This is not the way to treat the Word of God. I grant you we need a power above our own. To this end we cannot understand the Bible by forcing the lock; what we want is the key. But if you have Christ, you already have the key. In faith apply Christ to the Bible, and you can understand it. It is not a question of a superior mind or of great learning; — for the most learned have been the most foolish in their mistakes. The simple man who understands but his mother-tongue understands the Bible, if he with true simplicity submits himself to the Lord and has confidence in His love. This is produced by the Spirit of God: it is this only that makes men humble, that gives confidence in God and in His Word by taking away objects which overpower his own mind.

Suppose I am a red-hot Calvinist: I cannot understand the word which calls one to preach the gospel to every creature. Suppose I am a rather violent Arminian: I cannot understand the Scriptures which speak of "being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world." Assuredly then the wisdom of the Christian is to be neither the one nor the other. He should take all the Scriptures simply as they stand.

Those who read the Scriptures carefully but believingly will understand what is infinitely better than anything found in the various schemes of men. It is just the same as regards the interpretation of prophecy as in doctrine. No man should assert that one part of the Word of God is sealed up and the other open. There was a time when it was so: when Daniel was called to have those very communications which we have been reading, he was told to seal up the book; John was called to have the same communications and yet greater ones, he was told NOT to seal up the book. Do you not see the difference and the reason of it? The principle was this — the Jews were incapable of entering into the true and full meaning of the future till Christ came, at least until the end comes. It will only be then, when the last days of this age are come, that the godly remnant will understand (Daniel 12: 10). The wicked shall not understand. You cannot separate moral condition from real intelligence of the Word of God. But the Christian already has, not Christ only, but the Spirit in virtue of redemption; and hence he is called and qualified to search all things, yea the deep things of God.

Further Jewish Signs.

It has been clearly shown that in all that the Lord Jesus had been teaching in His great Olivet discourse, He was speaking of disciples connected with the Temple, with Judea, with Jerusalem, and not of Christians. Take these further proofs of it.

He says, "Pray that your flight be not on the Sabbath Day." The Lord's Day is our day, the first day of the week. The Jew rightly and properly keep's Jehovah's sabbaths. As to this, there are languages in Europe more correct than what we hear more commonly spoken around us. The Pope's tongue, the Italian, keeps up the right distinction; it always speaks of Saturday as the Sabbath Day, and Sunday as the Lord's day. How curious that it should be so, where such blind darkness reigns on almost everything else!

But these Jewish disciples contemplated here are told to pray that the time for their precipitate flight should not be in the winter nor on the Sabbath Day; for the one would be inconvenient from its inclemency, and on the other they could not go farther than a sabbath-day's journey. But how could this affect us as Christians? Even if once Jews, we are not any longer under such restrictions. The Lord is speaking not of Christians but of future Jewish disciples, connected with Jewish ritual, and filled with Jewish hopes.

Further, it is said,

"There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

"And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved."

All this is plain enough. It is not a question of the soul but of the salvation of the body. They should then live and be the subjects of the blessed reign and glory when the Lord comes. It is earthly glory here, not in heaven. For the elect's sake those days should be shortened.

"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

"Behold, I have told you before

"Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold He is in the desert, go not forth: behold, He is in the secret chambers; believe it not." (Matt. 24: 23-26.)

It is clear and certain that the elect here are Jewish. What would be the effect of such sayings on your mind, suppose one were to tell you that the Lord was in London or Vienna? You would pity the poor fellow; you would feel that he could not be in his right senses unless he were an impostor. You, as a Christian, could not be deceived by such rumours for an instant.

But it is clear that the Lord Jesus supposes considerable danger for the disciples here. In fact, being Jewish, not Christian, they might be deceived by the cry that He was here or there on earth; whereas no Christian could be in such danger. But the Jewish disciples were exposed to it. They were looking for the Lord's coming to the earth; they knew that the Lord's feet should stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.

Jerusalem and Judea.

It is clear, then, that the Jews might be taken in by such deceit. Not so the Christian. He knows that he will meet the Lord in the heavens, and that he will be taken up from the earth into the air to meet the Lord on high. But the deceits in question are addressed to such only as expected to meet the Lord on the earth. The whole of the scene thus far consists of the Lord's instructions to disciples connected with Jerusalem and Judea, and has nothing at all to do with the Christians looking to join the Lord above. But here again is the reason why they are not to listen to false Christs.

"For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."

Learned men have applied all this to the Roman conquest. But the Roman army did not come out of the east, as the lightning is said to do here, nor did it shine unto the west: the very reverse would be a more apt figure, had the Romans been meant. So correctly has the Lord Jesus guarded against the misinterpretations of men.

I deny that the prophecy is obscure or ambiguous. There is no uncertain sound in the Bible. I grant you that there is no book so profound as the Word of God, but this does not hinder its clearness for the simplest. It is meant for the highest as well as the lowest. If it were of use only for one class, to the exclusion of the other, it could not be the Word of God; for what is of God must suit men in all conditions. I speak, of course, of believers: but still, even if the soul were in the densest natural ignorance, there is everything in the Bible to enlighten and establish such an one. If he be one who dives ever so much into the depths of God's mind, like the Apostle Paul, the Bible is still beyond him. "Now we know in part," said this very man, one of the greatest of its inspired writers. How truly divine is all this! Is it really so with any other book? If you are a man of ability, you may soon fathom another man's measure, but never the depths of the Bible, though free to search all. The fact is, you only begin to find out how little you know of the Bible when you are really advancing in the knowledge of it.

There is no discipline so wholesome as this, because, on the one hand, you are strengthened and encouraged, on the other hand you are humbled. This is exactly what the soul needs.

The Lord, then, has given these firm standing points, these landmarks, as it were, in the prophecy, which hinder us from being carried away by every wind of theory. We can see clearly what the Lord has set before us. I have not knowingly passed over anything material. There is no violence done to a word here. I wish to give nothing but a clear, distinct, and positive impression of the mind of the Lord as given in His Own words.

The Eagles and the Carcase.

It is next said,

"Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together."

Now, if you apply this to the church — to the Christian — what will you be able to make of it? Is the church the carcase? I have heard something still more dreadful. Men have not been wanting who say that the Lord is the reference! Such are the ideas expressed by such an attempt to interpret the prophecy on false grounds. Learned men, including some of the Fathers, taught this; and a great many of the moderns follow in their wake. The last notion I must beg to consider as very great irreverence as well as grossly mistaken. Understand me! I do not wish to fasten anything unfair upon any of them, but it appears to me a crude and unworthy interpretation, no matter how (according to the Christian scheme) they take the carcase, whether applying it to the church or to the Lord. Is the church a corpse? I believe it to be a. living body. And the Lord is not regarded as a body dead or even alive, but as the Head. But the Lord a carcase! What are they dreaming about?

The whole effort is false. There is no getting a consistent meaning out of the passage when interpreted of the church: the moment you apply it to the Jewish people, it becomes strikingly true. For the mass of the Jews will then be apostate, and the eagles or vultures who come together are figures of the divine judgments executed on the guilty people by the nations of the earth; but whatever may be the instruments, they are judgments of God executed by Him. If the Christians be the carcase, they are the object of the judgment, and there the eagles, or the executors of judgment, are gathered together. But this is not at all the relation of the Lord's coming to the Christian. Nor can the Christians be the eagles or instruments of divine vengeance, any more than the carcase, without abandoning all the truth and character of their calling. The changed saints undoubtedly will go up to meet the Lord; but is He then to be the carcase, and is the church the eagles? Thus, in such a scheme, you have only the choice of one evil less or greater than another; and it is generally thus with an erroneous interpretation. Apply it to the object the Lord had in view, and all is clear. This is the test of Scriptural truth: whenever you press a false interpretation, the general testimony of Scripture is dislocated.

Then the Lord adds,

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,"

It is not here the believers with joy going up to meet the Lord, but the tribes of the earth mourning.

"And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

"And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." (Matt. 24: 29-31.)

Who are the Elect?

Here many lay great stress upon gathering His elect. But the "elect" do not necessarily mean Christians. If you speak of elect now, it is so; but had God no "elect" before there were Christians? There were elect Gentiles. Take Job for one, and his friends, probably, also the same; were they not elect men? Melchizedek and others, were not they elect? Need I enumerate the elect of Israel in the past? We find clearly elect Gentiles as well as Jews and Christians. When we read about Christians, then the elect must be so explained; if we read about Jews, then the phrase applies to a Jewish election; and so with the nations. We must be governed by the context. As the Lord here is clearly speaking about Israel, the sense should not be ambiguous. When we have "His elect" named, He means the elect of those described, that is, of Israel. This is not at all to bring in arbitrary rules, but in fact a very plain and necessary principle.

Let us suppose a case in common life. If you go into a crockery shop, and choose out some of the things there, everybody understands how far the choice extends: to the seed shop next door it would not apply. Your choice or the chosen cannot be fairly said to be uncertain because you speak of it in two different places. The word applies equally to the things chosen in both shops. It is all simple enough in everyday matters; and so it is with Scripture.

The Lord, I repeat, in all this context is speaking about Israel and their hopes. Consequently "his elect" must be interpreted according to the object in view. These elect ones are to be gathered "from one end of heaven to the other," not for blessing in heaven, but on earth. (Compare Isaiah 27 )

The Parable of the Fig Tree.

Then "learn the parable of the fig tree." The fig tree is a well known symbol of Israel as a nation. This confirms what has been already said. In the Gospel of Luke, where the Lord takes a view of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, He reverts to this very symbol, but enlarged remarkably. He says "the fig tree, and all the trees." He does not speak of the latter in Matthew, because He is only in this part looking at the Jew; but in Luke He is looking at the Gentile as well as the Jew, and hence adds, "and all the trees." (Compare Luke 21. as the authority for this statement.)

"Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When its branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

"So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." (Matt. 24: 32- 34; Luke 21: 29).

This Generation.

Now mark the phrase "all these things" — namely, from the first troubles down to the last, and the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Clearly "this generation" does not mean, what some impute to it, a mere period of thirty years, or a man's life. The phrase means, what it frequently does in Scripture, a line continued by certain moral features entirely independent of length of time. Hence we find in the Psalms very particularly this use of "generation." I will give you one text which proves it in the most convincing manner. In Psalm 12: 7 we read

"Thou shalt keep them, O Jehovah, Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever."

This generation is supposed to go on, and it is an evil generation, a generation which has no faith, a stubborn Christ-rejecting generation. "This generation," the Christ-rejecting race of the Jews, is not to pass away till all these things be fulfilled. Hence the same generation which crucified the Lord of glory is going on still, and will till He comes again in the clouds of heaven.

"A

Generation to Come."

But the grace of God will make them anew, "a generation to come" (Psalm 78). The Lord will judge the unbelievers at last, dealing with them righteously after His immense long-suffering, but delivering a godly remnant in His grace. The Lord has great things in store for Israel. There will be this double action — that is to say, the mass of them filling up the cup of iniquity which their fathers began to fill; and the remnant, who will be the holy seed, the Israel of the millennial day. Of the former He speaks when He says that "this generation " shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled . . . . Of that day knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (verses 34-36).

The next comparison (verses 36-42) is not to the fig tree nor anything else taken from the physical world. A figure is taken from the dealings of God in the Old Testament,

"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

"For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered the ark,

"And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

"Then shall two be in the field, the one shall be taken, and the other left.

"Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken and the other left."

Taken or Left?

Instead of being an indiscriminate slaughter or captivity such as the Jews had executed upon them by the Romans, there is a direct contrast to this. Here there is discrimination: one man shall be taken and the other left; one woman taken and another left. The Lord will deal with perfect discernment in each case: not so did the Romans, not so any army that ever took a city. We know there is no time, no thought, no desire for discrimination. It is wholesale bloodshed or slavery. Thus it was when Titus took the city; so alas! it too often is unto this day. But when the Lord Jesus comes, it will not be so.

Then the Lord winds up this part of His prophecy by saying,

"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

"But know this, that it the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh."

There, I believe, closes the portion of this prophecy which refers to the Jews. He began by referring to the Jewish disciples, because the disciples were really Jews then, though believers. He took them up just as they were; and we know they subsequently became Christians. They passed into a new relationship. Not that they had not faith before; but when Christ rose from the dead, and went up to heaven, a new state of things was founded in connection with Him then and there.

The Christian and Jewish Hope Contrasted.

Hence the same disciples merged into a new form and power of relationship with God. They were brought no longer to expect the Lord's restoration of the kingdom to Israel as their proper hope, but, contrariwise, that the Lord would come to receive them to Himself, and take them to the Father's home in heaven. This is the Christians' hope; this is what they wait for. The Lord is calling them out from the earth to Himself. They had been expecting the Lord to come and establish them on the earth up to the day when the Lord Jesus went up and sent down the Holy Ghost. Christianity comes in as an entirely new thing. It is the calling of the Christians out of the world, waiting till Christ comes to take them up to heaven. The Lord Jesus, having accomplished redemption, has Himself first taken His seat in heaven; then the disciples become heavenly, and are being transformed spiritually: finally, at His coming, the Lord Jesus will take them completely out of their natural condition, conformed to His Own glorious body. The state of things on earth since redemption wrought at Calvary till He come to take us to be with Him on high, is truly to be called Christianity.

I do not deny that the saints of old, before Christianity came in, will share in the resurrection, when they, too, are to shine in the likeness of Christ. Only there is this enormous difference meanwhile. We are brought, since His cross, into conscious salvation and new relationships.

From this point the Lord begins to open out a new thing, namely, what the disciples were going to become. And evidently this is the proper order. The Lord had begun with them as they were, and then He leads on to what they were to become, with the new relationships of Christ dead and risen, when also fresh power was given by the Holy Ghost. As a mark of this, you will see that the Lord drops all allusion to Judea, and all reference to the temple, prophets, and sabbath. The Lord opens out now into parables of a general and comprehensive nature which would be equally as true at Timbuctu as at Jerusalem — it does not matter where. They belong to Christianity; to that which Christ died and rose to establish by the mission of the Spirit. The Lord here shows us this opening out into wider principles of a moral nature, which embrace all the true disciples, wherever they might be in this world, at any time till He comes. Hence we find three parables which apply to this.

The Faithful and Wise Servant.

The first parable is the wise servant contrasted with the evil one. It is a question of faithful service in the house, the duty of the highest and the duty of the lowest, not of intelligent activity in trading with goods given as in the parable of the talents, chap. 25. The form is very striking. We have, as you see, a double profession; and this in relation with the Lord, not with Israel as before.

This was not the case in Judaism. There was an enormous unbelieving mass in former times getting into idolatry and all kinds of wickedness, always persecuting the believer. But one of the characteristic marks of Christendom is that all are professors of Christ, whether truly or falsely. The Lord in the parable says the faithful and wise servant is to be made ruler over all his goods. But the evil servant says in his heart, "My lord delayeth his coming"; it is not a mere notion. One may always have his notions; and one is none the better for them. But the Lord refers to what was deep and real, the heart's indifference to the appearing of Jesus. The evil servant says in his heart, "My lord delayeth his coming"; he believes what he likes, and what he likes is that the Lord should delay His coming. If you love anyone, you want to see him. The absence of the person you love is trying to you. There may be the wisest reasons for delay, but the delay taxes your patience; and your hope of the speedy return of the one you love is the greatest joy to your heart.

All That Love His Appearing.

The Lord gives this feeling and strengthens it. Granted, that it may be hindered by false prophetic notions; yet there is in the heart of all true Christians a desire for the coming of Christ: only, when the soul is not in peace through a full gospel, it is afraid. And those who give them this kind of gospel are responsible for it; those who keep souls in fear do the greatest possible injury to the Church of God. I am not speaking of such as set forth Christ or His work falsely, but even of those who do not preach it fully, who fear to set forth the full value of the sacrifice of Christ, and the perfect deliverance which His death and resurrection have wrought for the believer. The result of this defect in teaching is that Christians are apt to be alarmed instead of rejoicing at the thought of the coming of Christ.

They do not own that the acceptance of Christ means the acceptance of the believer; they do not believe that the Lord by His death has not only put away their sins but also dealt with their sinful nature completely; and this in order to their walking now in the Spirit, to be followed by a perfect conformity to Christ's image in resurrection at His coming.

You cannot exaggerate what Christ has wrought for the believer; if you are resting on His redemption, all difficulties God-ward are taken away. Then there is nothing left but the duty of serving Him now, and the delight of seeing Him then, as also of worshipping both now and for ever.

He has done all for you to bring you to God, and to take you out of every evil. How can the believer not rejoice in this? I believe with my heart that all Christians, I care not where or who they are, have joy and delight in the prospect of His coming.

Notwithstanding all their imperfect notions, I am sure all Christians love Christ here, and are waiting for Him too. I may shock some of my zealous pre-millennialist friends; but I believe this hope belongs to every Christian.

There may be false prophetic views which hinder; but as the new nature does go out towards Christ, so it longs for the day when it will be ever with Christ. Speaking generally, waiting for Christ supposes longing for His coming; but if put in certain forms and propositions, this may never be found out. If you want to show that men do not look for Christ's coming, you can have abundant grounds for working on. On the other hand, I think God will give you sufficient evidence that all who are His really look and long for His coming.

Only let the children of God get clear of those clouds of noxious and unwholesome vapours that are constantly rising up between the Lord and them.

If you bring in a millennium at the present time, it is hard to see Christ's coming clearly; it acts as a cloud, which dulls the hope of that day. It may not destroy the hope, but one thus looks for the Lord's coming in an imperfect manner.

The Great Tribulation Jewish.

If you bring in a great tribulation first, this would enfeeble the hope greatly; it tends to produce a depressing effect, and to fill the heart with trouble.

The one puts a mistaken hope between you and the coming of the Lord, giving meanwhile a dreamy excitement in waiting for that day. The other case gives you a sort of spiritual nightmare, an oppressive feeling in the thought that you must go through so dreadful a crisis.

I believe, my friends, that the Scriptures deliver us from both the dream and the nightmare. I believe they entitle the believer to wait for Christ as simply as a child, being perfectly certain that God is true and our hope blessed. Again, I believe there is a tribulation to come, but not for the Christian. When He is speaking about the Jew, you can understand it well: for why does this great tribulation come upon him? Because of his idolatry; it is for him a moral retribution, with which the Christian has nothing at all to do. It is the judgment of God on the Jewish people; they who were called to be witnesses against idolatry at last fall into the dreadful snare of allowing the "Abomination of Desolation" to be put into the sanctuary of God: then the tribulation comes upon them. There is no connection between this and the Christian looking for Christ; and here the prophecy of the blessed Lord drops all allusion to anything of the kind. What He presents is, that when He returns, it is as Son of man, a title which is always used in reference to His coming in judgment, as in John 5: 27:

"The Father hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man."

When He comes as judge, He deals with the evil servant, cuts him asunder, and assigns him his portion with hypocrites.

The Ten Virgins.

Then comes the parable read to-night. I call your attention particularly to it. I have been long in coming to the ten virgins; but it is only right to disengage the Christian from the thought that the early part of this prophecy refers to him: such an idea completely perverts his judgment.

But we have also in our day to do with another and opposite error, an error that takes away the parable of the virgins from properly applying to the Christian. Now I suggest, on the contrary, that it has nothing to do with the Jewish remnant directly, who, are not called to go out to meet the Bridegroom, and will not be exposed to the temptation of going to sleep. But many an one might have been a Jewish disciple and then have ceased to be one; practically such became Christians, in the true sense of the term, as Peter uses the word in his 1st Epistle, and Luke in Acts (Acts 11: 26).

In this parable, then, the Lord shows the kingdom of heaven to be likened unto ten virgins. They all went forth to bear their testimony to Christ; the lamp was to give light. They were to shine as lights in the world; each taking her lamp went forth to meet the Bridegroom.

The Ten Virgins Christian not Jewish.

Now this is characteristic of the Christian. The Israelite did not separate from the world of which he was head. The Christian goes forth to meet Christ, who is gone to heaven. If he be a Jew, he leaves his ancient glories behind. Whether the greatest grandee in the Gentile world, or of the poorest condition, he alike abandons his old obscurity or his old grandeur. He willingly forgets all that is of the world. He is called out of every snare which can fascinate or arrest the heart of man. He has got a new and all-absorbing object in Christ; and Christ in joy and blessedness. It is not the Judge coming to deal with the wicked. If a Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom, does such a parable fitly bring images of terror? The Christian knows well that the same Jesus who is the Bridegroom is the Judge; he knows well that Jesus will be the Judge of those who oppose Him; but He is not the Judge and the Bridegroom in the same associations, or to the same persons. Where would be the sense of such confusion? The Lord purposely brings in the bright figure of the Bridegroom to those who are waiting for Him.

But there are other elements of moment. Here are persons true and false. They are not presented as one object: consequently the idea of the Bride is not the thought. When we talk about Christians, real or professing, we do not fix our mind on unity; we think of individuals who go forth. He was about to show profession, and so brings in foolish as well as wise virgins. It is Christ looking at Christians professing the Lord truly or falsely, not as the Bride of Christ. The Christians are all characterised by quitting every object on earth to meet the Bridegroom. Even the Jew, attached as he was to the old religion (and they had a religion which could boast an antiquity before which all others grow pale) — the Jew leaves all to go forth unto Him, as says the Apostle in Hebrews 13, "bearing His reproach."

Here you have the same principle. As the Christian, even though a Jew, was called to leave all the old things behind, so here they went forth to meet the Bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps but no oil with them; but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

The Outpouring of the Spirit.

Is it true that the Jewish remnant at the end of the age are to have oil in their vessels? They will never have oil in their vessels till the Lord Jesus comes and pours the Spirit on them. We must remember oil symbolically means the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not merely the washing by the Spirit — even were it vitally: I grant you the Jewish remnant will have that. They will be really cleansed by the Word in the heart. The disciples who will be found at the end of the age will not receive the outpouring of the Spirit till the Lord appears; they wait for that day. It is only when the kingdom comes that the outpouring of the Spirit will be for them. They will go through a very serious process first. When they see the Lord Jesus, they will mourn as for an only child. They will have a fountain opened in Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness; but the power of the Holy Ghost will be given only when they have seen the Lord. So far it is quite different with the Christian, who, as you know, receives the oil or unction from the Holy One while the Lord is away. The Jewish remnant will only receive it when the Lord comes back. Again, they will not go forth from Jerusalem until the tribulation is at hand. It is a fleeing from the enemy's power and its consequences. It is a flight from the sore scourge in retribution and judgment for their iniquity; it is no going forth to meet in joy.

For the Christian has another course and hope altogether. Whether it be light or dark, the Christian goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. What is the original hope of the Christian? It is our object and calling revealed from heaven. That object is Christ, the blessed One Whose coming he awaits: hence he goes forth to meet the Bridegroom. Not so the Jewish remnant; they expect to see the Lord coming to deliver them by the putting down of their enemies. The Christian waits to be called up out of the world; the Jew waits for the Lord to come into the world. It is a totally different expectation. The parable speaks solely of the Christian. It does not refer to the Jewish remnant.

The Foolish Virgins.

We shall see more proof of this. It is said that the wise took oil in their vessels: the foolish took no oil. This meets another error. It has been supposed that the foolish virgins mean Christians who are not pre-millennarians, which gives a very undue value to correct notions of prophecy. I grant you entirely that those who look for the Lord to come before that reign are in my judgment right; and I am quite sure that those who put the millennium before the Lord's coming are mistaken. But I can never sympathise with those who put a slight upon such Christians as have not been taught as you and I. These are self-flattering delusions, and are mere manifestations that bear the brand of sect or school written on them. I am persuaded that the best blessings we have are those which God confers on the body of Christ. That is to say, all those in whom the Holy Ghost dwells — those who rest on Christ and redemption. These are the men spoken of here. The Holy Ghost is a divine spring for sustaining testimony, as well as a divine power of understanding the Word of God.

The foolish virgins never had oil. Some ask how can they have had their lamps burning. The answer is easy. They could burn the wick: there is no mystery about that. The foolish virgins were not real Christians. The weakest Christian has the oil, as well as the strongest. The apostle John so tells not the fathers, nor the young men, but the babes, the little children. He tells the feeblest they have the unction from the Holy One (1 John 2: 20). For those who had no oil could not be Christians. Hence a deeper evil is in question than denying the millennium to be after Christ's second coming or before it. The heart was wrong as to the Lord — a thing more momentous than right notions about prophecy.

If you have Christ, if you know the blood of sprinkling, if you rest on a crucified and risen Saviour, you surely have the oil in your vessels. You are not one of the foolish virgins. Their folly consisted in something much more than in a right or wrong prophetic scheme. The foolish lived despising God and His grace; and, consequently, not having the Spirit of Christ, they were none of His. The foolish virgins have not the Holy Spirit; so the Lord says and deals with them.

We often think of the early Christians with their great advantages, we see that, many of the Scriptures applying to them fully — we can only get the principle of them. But I will call your attention to the fact here that there are other Scriptures which apply more emphatically to us now. There is thus what I may call a divine compensation. We can only take the general spirit of what was said to the Corinthians. For instance, they had tongues; they had miraculous powers among them. You know that we have them not. There are certain persons who pretend to have them: wherever there are pretensions to such gifts, their falsity is soon found out.

The fact is that God, for the wisest reasons, has not been pleased to continue these miraculous powers. The present condition of the church would make it to be a moral impossibility that God should bestow any of these miraculous virtues. For if the Lord were to restore them now, I should like to ask where? Most people would begin with themselves. If the Lord were to restore them now on Christendom as a whole it would be to sanction, as if all right, a rationalistic Protestantism and an idolatrous Romanism.

The Lord could not thus sanction the broken fragments of His house, or put this honour upon its actual condition. We are ready to be high enough, we are prone enough to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and the Lord will not help us to be more so.

But He has left what is infinitely better — He continues everything due to Christ and good for the soul which walks with God. He has taken away nothing needful for edification. He still gives peace and joy in believing. Now as of old He puts this inward power in the church; but He marked it of old with a brilliant signature, as it were, before the world. Those who look for the restoration of these powers are not alive to the fallen condition of the church. I hold it to be most important to the Christian to know what the church was and what it is, and to grieve before God for the difference. I have no sympathy with the Christian now who is not a mourner because of the state of the church. It is well to have joy in the Lord, but we should be humbled about ourselves and the church. You ought to feel deeply this condition for the Lord's sake. In this parable, you will observe, the Lord marks the failure from the original calling, "While the Bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept." There is a state of forgetfulness of the Lord's return.

The Midnight Cry.

But now mark another thing: it is midnight, and there was a cry made, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go forth to meet Him." Has that been fulfilled? I believe it has, or rather that it is being fulfilled now. The Lord has interposed to break the present slumbering condition of Christendom, doing so not only for the wise, but for the foolish.

Once more come the foolish virgins to the wise, saying, "Give us of your oil"; but this is beyond the Christian, and the wise bid them "Go buy for yourselves." There is One Who sells, but freely, without money and without price: to buy even from an apostle is fatal.

There is only one means of procuring the oil. It is solely through Christ Himself, without money and without price. As the cry goes forth, "Behold the Bridegroom cometh," many realize that they are not in a fit state to meet the Lord. They are troubled with the rumour of they know not what. The consequence, then, of this midnight cry is that a double activity is going on. For the Lord is awakening those who know Himself, who are wise by His grace, to go forth and meet the Bridegroom. The others, if indirectly, are none the less powerfully affected by the cry and its effects.

The Shut Door.

At length the Bridegroom comes, and "they that were ready went in to the marriage, and the door was shut!"

Afterwards come the foolish virgins. Now they cry, but it is with horror and despair. In an agony they cry, "Lord, Lord, open to us." But the Lord of peace, the Giver of life and glory, has only to tell them, "I know you not." Do not tell me this is said about real believers. It is said of the foolish virgins who had no oil; of those who bore the name of the Lord, but had not the Holy Ghost. Of and to them it was said that the Lord knew them not. "Watch, therefore," says He, "for ye know neither the day nor the hour."

There is no authority for what follows ("wherein the Son of man cometh"). You have heard the names of Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Tischendorf; of Dean Alford, Bishop Wordsworth, and Dr. Tregelles in this country. I am not giving you a peculiar thought in the least, for all biblical critics worthy of the name agree in this omission as required by the best authorities. Copyists added the clause from ch. 24, bringing in the sense of the coming Judge. But this is quite different from what the Lord here urges, which is the delight of meeting, yea, the going forth to meet Him, the Bridegroom. Man, as such, must be judged; all tribes of the earth mourn before the Son of man. But the calling and hope of the Christian is fraught with other and joyous expectations; and this spite of their unfaithfulness during the night whilst He tarried.

If the faithful and wise servant, contrasted with "that evil servant," set forth the general place of the servant of the Lord, faithful or the contrary, the parable of the talents shows us those who trade with the goods of Christ, and that goodness in this work turns on confidence in Him and His grace. (Verses 14- 30)

Judgment of the Living Nations.

Then, from ver. 31 to the end, we have the judgment of the Gentiles, or all the nations, by the Son of man when He returns and reigns. Those who treated well or ill His messengers, "His brethren," who proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom before the end, are severed to His right hand or left respectively, as the sheep or the goats. It is the judgment of the quick at the beginning of the millennial reign, as far as the nations are concerned. But that judgment is final. It is not the judgment of the dead, or of the secrets of the heart. The one question for decision is their conduct towards His brethren, or the Jewish preachers of the kingdom after the Christians are gone from the scene. Faith only will enable any Gentile to deal with them kindly in that day; and those who do so inherit the kingdom. It is no question here of heaven or resurrection.

This last scene is clearly the third part of our Lord's prophecy, the principle and nature of His procedure towards all the nations (as distinct from Israel, and, of course, from Christians) after He enters on "the kingdom." At the beginning, when the Lord was here of old, as well as just before the end of this age, there will be an active testimony to the kingdom: only the final preaching will be in all the habitable world to all the nations, not as at first restricted to the land of Israel. Now the King is come and judgment of the quick proceeds accordingly. Mix this up with the judgment of the dead (the wicked dead, of course; for the righteous dead are supposed in Rev. 20: 4 to be received long before, and the righteous living of the millennium do not die), and all is chaos. You lose the specific teaching both of Matt. 25: 31-46, and of Rev. 20: 12-15, the one being the Lord's judgment of the Gentiles living on the earth (good and bad), when He comes to reign over the world, the other His judgment of the wicked dead raised after the millennial reign is concluded before the Eternal State.

The true view of the King, judging all the nations in Matt. 25, it will be observed, alone explains, first, why the King's brethren should be regarded as a company distinct from the sheep; secondly, why there should be no scrutiny into all work, or ways of those who stand before the throne, but only the question how they behave to His brethren who are to carry the gospel of the kingdom among all the nations before the end comes.

These envoys being either slighted in hate or honoured in love, the King now repays with interest the astonished Gentiles. Who does not see the contrast with the righteous and the unrighteous in the resurrection state? As the wicked will then feel in all its horrors their just and everlasting condemnation, so for the saints the perfect state will have come, and they shall know even as they are known.

W. Kelly.

One Body and One Spirit

W. Kelly.

The will of God is that His church should be one, not in spirit merely, but also in an embodied form, so as to exhibit its unity in each place, and its unity throughout the world (John 11: 52; 17: 11, 21; Acts 2: 11; Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 1; 10; 12; Eph. 2; 4; 1 Tim. 3: 15). This He will accomplish in perfection at the coming of Christ (John 17: 21, 23; Eph. 5: 27; Heb. 12: 23; Rev. 19: 7; 21: 9). Meantime it is incumbent on all believers to seek this holy and manifested union, and to put away everything that hinders it. We may be weak in meeting our corporate responsibility, as we are in answering our individual calling to holiness. Still in both respects, and in spite of all difficulties, our duty remains clear, paramount, and inevitable. But this is not by the mass of Christians maintained as a sacred, irreversible, point of doctrine and practice.

Popery owns it, but after a carnal manner.

All the Protestant national bodies have asserted, and acted on, the assumed title to accommodate their modes of government, rites, ceremonies, etc., according to the will of their rulers, whether they be within or without the so-called churches. These, consequently, vary in different ages and countries. The dissenting bodies, again, have been formed, generally speaking, either according to the self-devised plan of some individual mind, sometimes without even the idea of the church of God occurring to its founders; or according to partial views of scripture truth, which scatter the faithful instead of uniting them.

The chief error of nationalism, in this or in any other country, is the latitudinarian opening of the door to receive into the most solemn acts of worship and Christian fellowship the whole population, i.e., in principle, irrespective of looking for the gift of the Spirit. That of dissent, on the contrary, is the sectarian closing of the door on real Christians who cannot utter the Shibboleth of the party; and thus many brethren are excluded. In a word the characteristic evil of the latter is, that they do not treat as Christians many who are known to be such; whereas the equally characteristic evil of the former is, that they do treat as Christians many who are known not to be such at all. The one system makes the limits broader, the other narrower than God's limits. In either way the proper scriptural idea of the church is practically destroyed: dissent virtually affirming that it is not one body, but many; while nationalism virtually denies that it is the body of Christ. God would have His children not to be separate, but to gather together to the name of Jesus. Now this is evidently set aside when you separate any who ought to be united, (viz., all believed on proper grounds to be true Christians), or when you associate as brethren in Christ with any who ought to be separate (viz., those who are plainly of this world,* or who, if they profess Christ, deny Him in evil doctrines or works).

* The Evangelical Alliance — which I believe to be a result, however imperfect, of the testimony at home and abroad to the present ruin of the church — is, in fact, an acknowledgment that there is no such union avowed and acted on in modern Christianity. It is really therefore, a confession on the part of its members that they feel dissatisfied with their respective systems: for obviously, if any one system among Protestants had been according to the mind of God, there would have been no need of the Evangelical Alliance. Now it is remarkable, and ought to be known more widely, that the most able and spiritual of its Continental advocates has publicly allowed, not only that he regrets the constitution of the Alliance, but that the above ground is a better one. Compare pp. 12 and 38 of the "Alliance Evangelique (Section de la Langue Francaise, Paris, 1847)." "Cela dit, si l'on nous demande: n'avez vous pas des doutes sur la convenance d'une base dogmatique? ou tout au moins, ne regrettez vous pas que tel ou tel article ait trouvé entrée dans cette base? Nous répondons: oui, dans ces deux cas, et surtout dans le second. Nous avons lutté même pour notre part contre les articles en question. Mais la grande majorité de l'assemblée ayant été d'un avis contrairs au nôtre, nous nous sommes rendus, soit parce que nous estimons possible que d'autres voient mieux que nous, soit aussi parce qu'à defaut de ce qui nous paraît le meilleur nous sommes d'avis de 'retenir ce qui est bon.'"

It may be replied perhaps, that though this was, beyond all legitimate question, the order of the Holy Spirit in the early days of the church, times and circumstances are altered now. Gifts of healing, working of miracles, diversities of tongues, no longer exist as they once did. All this is freely admitted. But we ask, Is there such a body as the church* any longer on the earth? If there be, the Spirit of God is Himself personally on earth as truly, though not so manifestly, as at the commencement; for He it is who is the formative agent and guide of the church. It was He that baptised Jews and Gentiles into one body. It was He that was to abide for ever. The church, properly so called, began then as an accomplished fact (see Acts 1: 5, and 1 Cor. 12: 13); for one speaks not of the hidden purpose of God. Pentecost first saw her dowered with the promise of the Father.

* When we speak of the ruin of the church, it is not meant that the church does not exist upon the earth. On the contrary, if it did not exist upon the earth, it could not be in any such condition. The phrase is similar to that which is applied to a man of broken fortune. Men say, "He is a ruined man." Of course it is understood that the man exists. So it is with the present state of the church. That state doubtless occasions difficulties; for many things are not as they ought to be, nor as they once were. But the word and Spirit of God are for eternal service, and suffice for every emergency. "If therefore thine eye be single, they whole body shall be full of light: but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness." The humble and obedient heart will never lack divine guidance.

Believers of course there had been before, as we know, from Abel downwards; but, though quickened of the Spirit, they were not baptised of Him, they had not Him dwelling in them, like the saints after Pentecost. This was the precious privilege, for which it was expedient that Christ should go away: "for if I go not away, the Comforter (or Advocate) will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you" (John 16: 7). It could not be till Jesus was glorified (John 7: 39). But when sent down from heaven, the Spirit of truth was to be in them, and to abide with them for ever. " And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you" (John 14: 16, 17).

It is the owning, then, of the Holy Ghost as Christ's vicar, as the really present, sole, and sufficient Paraclete or Advocate in the church during our Lord's absence, which is our special responsibility, and ought to be a leading feature in our testimony as Christians.

This cardinal truth of the presence of the Holy Spirit in and with the church has these two immensely important consequences: —

I. It is not by baptism, infant or adult ;* it is not by the adoption of this or that article or creed; it is "by one Spirit," the Holy Spirit of God, "we are all" (i.e., all of us believers) "baptised into one body" (1 Cor. 12, 13). It is, if one may be allowed so to say reverently, the highest qualification which God can impart — the baptising by the Holy Spirit Himself of the blood-washed believer — which introduces into the one body, the body of Christ. But this is the privilege of all true Christians. Nothing therefore short of a platform such as in principle to admit all Christians, and Christians only, can satisfy faith, because nothing short of this satisfies the Spirit of God. When it is said, "Christians only," it is meant, so far as man guided by the word and Spirit of God can discern. If they are hypocrites, they will be made manifest in His own good time.

* It is not denied that baptism was the outward sign or manifestation of a confessor of Christ. Only it is important to remember that a believer was not baptised as a member of any particular assembly. Recognised by baptism as a confessor of Christ, one naturally sought communion where one happened to be, if there was an assembly there; and the Lord's supper was the constantly-recurring outward pledge and symbol of union and communion. "For we, being many, are one bread, one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread " (1 Cor. 10: 17). It may be added here, that those who preached in no way regarded baptism or the Lord's supper as rites to be administered necessarily by them. Thus Peter commanded Cornelius and his friends to be baptised in the name of the Lord (Acts 10: 48); and Paul writes, "Christ sent me, not to baptise, but to preach the gospel" (1 Cor. 1: 17). He says this markedly as to the Corinthians, and many of them, we know, believed and were baptised (Acts 18: 8); so that other brethren must have acted in this service. As to the Lord's supper, the same thing is as plain, if not more so. In fact the idea of an authorised person to break the bread does not occur, nor anything that I know which gives a colour to it, in the New Testament. See Acts 20: 7, also 1 Cor. 11, where if under any circumstances, there might have seemed the need of some restraint; for the Corinthians had turned the table to fleshly licence. But while the Spirit reproves the evil, and presses the holy and solemn character of the feast, He leaves the manner of its celebration as unrestricted as ever. It is the saints as a body who are in His view, and not a privileged class who claim the administration as their right. Circumstances apart, as for the example in the case of a novice, any brother was competent to baptise or to break the bread.

2. After the apostle has discussed the confession of the Lordship of Jesus by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12: 3), which is the foundation of everything here, he shows that there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; diversities of services, but the same Lord; and diversities of operations, but the same God working all in all. Then in 7-11 he enters into the detail of these manifestations of the Spirit. It is given to each for common profit; whether the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, etc.: different manifestations, "but all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will." Now, while it is confessed that some or many of the exterior gifts are no more found, it must be here affirmed that this does not in the smallest degree negative the truth that the Spirit Himself does abide. But if He abides, has He resigned His functions? If even in these days, when pride cannot cloak the spiritual declension it so vainly strives to deny, if still one Christian has "the word of wisdom," and another has "the word of knowledge," is it from the Spirit of God, or from some other spirit? "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. 2: 11). Can it be mere man's wisdom now? or is there such a thing as the teaching of the Holy Spirit?

It may be assumed, I trust, that the Christians who read this paper believe that there is still real power to evangelise the world and to edify the church. If so, whence comes it? The natural man knows nothing but natural things, and can neither receive nor communicate the things of the Spirit of God. Real, spiritual power is of Him. Who of us believers is not a witness that this power still continues? Weakened and blunted, alas! it is; for He who works is grieved with all the sin, and confusion, and desolation around Him. But He does abide, and His power abides, and the way in which He acts, according to the scripture cited, is "dividing to every man severally as he will." Clearly then He uses whom He pleases. It is no humanly divided caste that He employs to be the narrow and exclusive channel of His blessing. No: He does not vacate His sovereignty. It is not the pleasure, therefore, of a preacher, nor of a synod of preachers, nor of a congregation, nor of a sect, nay, nor of the true church, much less of a worldly power. It is the Spirit of God. And He divides as He will. Again He divides to each, or every man (i.e., inside the church), not this or that particular gift; but He does divide something for the common good — "to every man severally as he will."

Hence the order and action of the church, as described in scripture, depend upon the presence and the operations of the Holy Ghost. And if He be allowed free scope to work, it is, if we are in truth to follow God's word, according to the pattern of "many members, yet but one body." He acts in he unity of the whole body. After this manner we shall find His testimony regulated, as is plain from the Acts and Epistles: and this, whether inside or outside the church.

As for the testimony to those without, compare Acts 8: 1, 4; Acts 11: 20; Acts 18: 24-28; and Phil. 1: 14. The mass or main part of the church, scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, went everywhere preaching the gospel. Among them Philip was conspicuous in Samaria and elsewhere. If it be said that he was officially set apart, the answer is, It was to serve tables, not to preach the word of God. The office was instituted that the twelve, relieved from care touching this business, might give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. If Philip preached with power, if Stephen disputed with irresistible wisdom, and if both wrought miracles, none of these things was in virtue of an appointment which related simply and specifically to the daily ministration. Compare Acts 6: 6 with Acts 4: 35. Further, others of those dispersed "travelled as far as Phoenicia, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they were come to Antioch, spoke unto the Grecians (or rather Greeks), preaching the Lord Jesus." Did these brethren assume what was unjustifiable? Were they reproved even by the church at Jerusalem, ready as many there always were to censure what seemed irregular? "Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem; and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch; who, when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto the Lord" (Acts 11: 22-24).

At a later period "Apollos spoke and taught diligently the things of the Lord:" and this, when he knew only the baptism of John. Instructed more perfectly, through the instrumentality of a believer and his wife, who were as unauthorised as himself, he is soon found more active and honoured than ever: "he helped them much which had believed through grace; for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ" (Acts 18). At Rome, the most in the Lord, waxing confident by the bonds of Paul, were much more bold to speak the word without fear. It is true the motives of all were not good; but this is a danger which no human restriction could ward off. Alas! motives baser even than these were necessarily introduced, when the so-called ministry of Christ became synonymous with a regular, respectable, and in some cases lucrative profession. It was not so in apostolic days; yet even then, there were those who preached Christ of envy and strife, as well as others who preached of good will. What then, says the large-hearted apostle? Does he propose to fetter that blessed liberty, because it was now abused by these unholy feelings? Nothing of the sort. "Notwithstanding every way," says he, "whether in pretext or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and I will rejoice." (Phil. 1: 18)

I need not quote other scriptures less direct, but equally showing that doctrine, not ordination, is the divine test for rejecting or receiving those who profess to be ministers of Christ. It is clear that several passages have been adduced which prove that such Christians as can are at liberty, not to say are bound, to preach the gospel. Not one text can be brought forward which contradicts, limits, or qualifies the principle. Scripture never prescribes a human commission as a necessary preliminary to that work. On the contrary, the parable of the talents in Matt. 25 teaches, by its solemn judgment, the danger of waiting for other warrant than the fact that the Lord delivers to the servants His goods, wherewith they are responsible to trade. To doubt the grace of the Master, to fear because one has not the authentication of those who presumptuously claim and trifle with His right, to bury the talent in the earth, is to act the part of the wicked and slothful servant. For the Lord of the harvest, to use another parable, has alone the title to send forth labourers (compare Matt. 10 and Rom. 10). In a word, the question is not whether all Christians are qualified of God to preach the gospel, but whether those who are so qualified may not preach without waiting for any human authoritative call. Scripture, we have seen, decides that they may.

As for the testimony to those within, 1 Cor. 14 shows plainly, that the only restriction upon the exercise of gifts by brethren was this: " Let all things be done unto edifying." Women were positively forbidden to speak in the churches. Elsewhere they were responsible to use whatever gift the Lord imparted to them, subject to His word. Thus Priscilla, no less than Aquila, takes Apollos and expounds to him the word of God more perfectly (Acts 18: 26). And the four daughters of Philip did prophesy (Acts 21: 9), but not in the assemblies: the Spirit forbad that (1 Cor. 14: 34, 35). A woman was not suffered to teach nor to exercise authority over the man (1 Tim; 2: 12). But all the brethren, as a whole, were exhorted thus — "follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy." And of course they were to exercise their gifts as God empowered them, so that all things were done decently and in order.

Hence it is that James says (James 3: 1), "My brethren be not many masters" (i.e., "teachers"), an exhortation as entirely out of place in modern arrangements, as it was suitable, wholesome, and needed in their case whom he addressed: an exhortation which manifestly implied that there was an open ministry, which might very possibly be abused by the flesh, but which the Spirit, instead of closing or restricting, turned to the good of their souls by pressing upon them their direct responsibility to God. On the other hand, the entire family of God are exhorted not to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets were gone out into the world (1 John 4: 1). Even the elect lady (2 John 10) is told that if any come and bring not the doctrine of Christ, he is not to be received. Those who hear, as well as those who teach, have need to take heed. Responsibility is maintained on all sides: from this none can escape.

In Rom. 12 we have the same thing, though from another point of view. "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every one that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office; so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, [let us prophesy] according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, [let us wait] on our ministry; or he that teacheth, on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation; he that giveth, [let him do it] with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness." God's dealing to each was looked to, and not a mere human commission to one, or to a few. Hence faith came in, and each is exhorted to think soberly of himself, and to use what God has given him instead of pretending to more. We see not one member absorbing all the gifts, or hindering others, but many members, and yet but one body, having gifts differing, and exhorted to employ them, not merely through love, because we are every one members one of another, but because of the grace given on God's part.

So in Eph. 4: 4-16: "[There is] one body and one Spirit. . . . But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ . . . . , from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." Col. 2: 19 is to the same effect: . . . "the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God."

Again, 1 Peter 4: 9, 10 makes it a matter of positive obligation that "as each one hath received the gift," even so they should minister the same one to another. Thus, and thus only, should they be "good stewards of the manifold grace of God." "If any one speak, let him speak as oracles of God: if any one minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." Can anything more clearly show that mere human acquirement is of no value, while the idea of human restriction is perfectly shut out? Whatever came from God and nothing else, was to be used and received without further sanction, that God might be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.

From these scriptures we learn also that the gifts from above were for the blessing of the whole body of Christ: not one for one particular section of the church, and another for another; but all open to the whole church, and the whole church open to all.

Thus, according to the divine plan, if I am a member of the church at all, I am a member of the church everywhere. If I go to any quarter of the world where saints call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I am a member, not by permission nor by courtesy, but by the universal recognition, on the part of believers, of the title which grace has given me. Baptised by the Spirit, I am a member of Christ's body, wheresoever I may be. In apostolic days that membership, and none other, was known throughout. There might be differences of view. There might be need of the word, "Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." Some might eat herbs, and some might eat meat; but the Spirit said, and says, "Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God." Now the glory of God is identified, not with some, but with all the members of the body of Christ. If the weakest member therefore were excluded, save in case of necessary scriptural discipline, so far would that glory be forgotten or despised; and those guilty of such exclusion ought to be avoided, as causers of divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which we learned.

As is the ground of membership, so it is of ministry. It is of God's Spirit. If not, it is nothing or worse, and ought to be so treated by all those who honour God rather than man. If a Christian be an evangelist, he is so everywhere, and not restricted to this or that district, congregation, or chapel. If he be a teacher or a pastor, or both, he of course exercises his gift where he usually resides. But then he is not the teacher, but a teacher:* and he is a teacher in the church, and not in a church. "We," says the apostle, writing to far distant saints whom as yet he had not seen — we, "being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." He is not speaking of what was to be in heaven, but of what actually was on earth, the unity of Christ's body here below. "Having then gifts differing," etc.

* In the church at Antioch there were at least five prophets and teachers (Acts 13: 1).

So (1 Cor. 3). in meeting the carnal, because exclusive, preference of one servant of Christ above another, the apostle presses the broad and blessed truth, "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas," etc. It was a sectarian spirit in respect of those who ministered that Paul rebuked.

It is the same principle in 1 Cor. 12: 18-28: "But now God set the members each one of them in the body, as it pleased [him]. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of you. Nor, again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: and those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour: and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; but our comely parts have no need. But God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church; first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healing, helps, governments, diversities of tongues." "God set some in the church," not in a church. Viewed as churches, apostles could be in but few. There were none in the church at Corinth when Paul wrote. Teachers stand clearly on the same base: apostles in the church, teachers in the church.

Again, in Eph. 4: 11-16, whether apostles, or prophets, whether evangelists, or pastors and teachers, they are given of Christ, not to be the solitary officials of a denomination, but "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come," etc. Verse 16 tells us that it is "the whole body fitly joined together," not broken into sects; the whole body "compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part": a practical thing, and not a mere theory, a thing meant to be in the church while on earth, and not at all referring to heaven. We shall not need such ministration there. In this passage there is also, I would notice, a warrant to faith for expecting the continuance of the gifts of Christ till His body be completed. And of a truth He has never failed during all the long years of ruin in which His gifts were well-nigh smothered, as they were too really and painfully misused.

For I fully recognise that there have been even in popery, in her clergy and laity, those who had gifts of God's grace to build up His own people, and to spread Christ's name among sinners. But, at the same time, I as utterly deny that they were Christ's gifts in virtue of the commission which popery conferred, any more than that others were not His gifts for the want of such a commission. The same remark, I need hardly add, extends still more widely to modern Protestantism. Would to God that the tender love of Christ, in thus cherishing the church as His own flesh, might touch a chord in all His members, that together we might weep over our common sin, and that together we might rejoice, extolling the grace that has abounded but the more!

There is, however, a distinction to be observed, which cannot be forgotten without injury. When the body came together as such, the assembly was under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It would have trenched upon the right of Christ for any individual, however gifted he might be, to absorb the regulation of it into his own hands. The Giver is there, and He is looked to, not the gifts merely. The order of such an assembly is definitely laid down in scripture (1 Cor. 14). "Ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted." "If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order.

It is quite a different principle which governs a servant of the Lord in the exercise of whatever talent has been entrusted to him. He owes an immediate and individual responsibility to Christ to trade with it. He may preach to the unconverted, or he may instruct more perfectly the children of God, or both, if he possess both gifts. He owes it to his Master to exercise all he has received for the good of souls, hindering and hindered by no one else. Every servant, be his gift great or small, has the same liberty and the same responsibility. Two or more may see it good to associate in the ministry; but let us remember that if Paul chose Silas, recommended to the grace of God, Barnabas took Mark; and we do not read that he was thus honoured of God in confirming the churches (Acts 15: 36-41). Liberty is not licence. The servant is free of man, but bound to obey the Lord; and his brethren are no less bound to judge his disobedience.

These gifts, let it be borne in mind, must be kept distinct from local charges, such as the elders* or presbyters of scripture, which are ever regarded there as the same with the bishops, or overseers, as indeed Cranmer and others allow, whose practice was totally different. The charges had to do with some one church, and were appointed by an apostle, or by a delegate possessed of a direct and special commission from an apostle to that end. Such a delegate was Titus. But scripture nowhere intimates that authority for appointing elders was meant to continue. We have seen that the gifts of Christ were to be "till we all come," etc. But scripture never confounds them with local charges, although both clearly might co-exist in the same individual. We know this to have been Philip's case, who was one of "the seven," and an evangelist besides.

* In Acts 11: 30 they are mentioned for the first time in connection with the church at Jerusalem. They are prominent at the council in Acts 15; but not a hint is dropped in the Acts touching their appointment, if they really had any outward authorisation. James 5: 14 mentions the elders; and Peter (1 Peter 5: 1) and John (2nd and 3rd Epistles) call themselves elders, but do not speak of official establishment. This appears to be confirmed by the way in which the elders are in one place contrasted with the "younger" (1 Peter 5: 1, 5). Experience is in question, and moral weight to guide.

Pastorship, to come still closer, is a gift (Eph. 4: 11), eldership is a charge; but the gift of feeding the flock of God, so far from being incompatible with the office of an elder or bishop, was evidently one of the most important qualifications sought in those who desired that good work. Thus Paul (Acts 20: 28) exhorts the Ephesian elders to take heed to themselves, and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers (bishops, ἐπισκόπους), to feed the church of God which He had purchased with His own blood. "Feed the flock of God," said another apostle, "which is among you, taking the oversight thereof (ἐπισκοποῦντες) not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over their allotments,* but being ensamples to the flock" (1 Peter 5: 2, 3).

* Into this wrong Christendom has long grievously fallen, nationalists or dissenters, and in so-called Catholic times. Their ministers and pastors do regard the parish its congregation, etc., as their allotments. "Do you belong to the Rev. So-and-So's church? I am of such anothers'." Thus is "the flock of God" overlooked and nullified.

In the First Epistle to Timothy (3) we find aptness to teach and ability to take care of the church of God among other requisites. Titus too (1: 5-9) was told to ordain such as held fast the faithful word, as he had been taught, that he might be able by sound doctrine to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. But it would be too much to draw thence that all the elders necessarily laboured in the public ministration of the word. They were appointed to exercise a godly fatherly care over the church; but labouring in the word and doctrine was not an indispensable adjunct. Hence the apostle says, in 1 Tim. 5: 17, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." In one way or another, all elders were assumed to feed the flock; but there might be elders who did not serve, at least publicly, in the word: a principle recognised in the Presbyterian system.

Another remark is to be made on the question of rulers. Paul, in writing to the saints at Rome, exhorts "him that ruleth" to do it with simplicity. Now all the evidence we have goes to show that there was no official nomination as yet, if ever at Rome. Peter's primacy there is a dream, scripture affirming in a positive way that he was distinctively the apostle of the circumcision, as Paul was of the uncircumcision. Now the latter had not yet visited the faithful in the Gentile metropolis. Accordingly there is not a word which supposes elders to have been appointed there. Nevertheless it is evident that those at Rome, like the rest of the church, had gifts of grace in their midst — prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, ruling, etc. These they might possess, and they are exhorted to use diligently; but not a word is said about elders. It has already been observed that at Corinth no elders are even implied, and yet the brethren were besought to submit themselves to such as addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints, and to every one co-working and labouring.

Again, in 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them that labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." Do not the exhortations "to know" them which labour and rule and preside (the same word as in Rom. 12: 8), suggest the thought that it was not a class officially appointed? Office must have been self-evident, and therefore would render needless an exhortation to recognise such labourers. The esteem and love was for their work's sake. An official place was not alluded to. In Hebrews 13: 7, 17, 24, certain chief men are named (οἰ ἡγούμενοι, leaders or guides); but there is nothing indicative of exterior appointment. It is probable that they were persons whose age, character, and gifts, gave them a certain place. See Acts 15: 22.

Now if any one in our day could give satisfactory (i.e. scriptural) proof that he was an apostolic delegate, his appointment of elders ought to be respected; and respected I have no doubt it would be by all (at any rate) whose eye was single to the Lord in the matter. If such proof be wanting, they ought to be as decidedly disowned. If then in scripture we see not elders appointed by any save apostles or their delegates, can nationalism or dissent justify their respective appointments by the word of God? Apostolic succession seems to be the only consistent plea in its pretensions as to this: in its pretensions, I say, for reality it has none — it is Christianity Judaised, or rather it is Judaism Christianised (see Bingham's Eccles. Antiq. b. i. ch. v.).

The case of Paul in Acts 13, which is sometimes referred to in proof of the necessity of a human commission, proves in fact the contrary. It would be strange indeed if it did, seeing that in Gal. 1: 1 he takes such pains to insist that he was an apostle, "not of men (i.e., as the source), "nor by man" (as the channel). He had been preaching for years, before this separation by the Spirit to the special work recorded in Acts 13, 14. Further, those who fasted and prayed and laid their hands on him and Barnabas had been cherished and taught by them, as by those who were over them in the Lord. To such an imposition of hands I know of no objection. It pretends to confer neither gift nor authority, but is a simple commendation to the grace of God, which it would seem might be repeated (Acts 15: 40). Is there one feature in common with the ordination of our day and for ages? Is it possible that Christians, in order more thoroughly to justify a modern ordination by Acts 13, have pretended that Paul was only an inferior apostle, a messenger of the church — like Epaphroditus (Phil. 2: 25)? But see Acts 14: 4; Rom. 1: 1; 1 Cor. 1: 1; 1 Cor. 9: 1-6; Eph. 1: 1; Col. 1: 1; Gal. 1: 2; 1 and 2 Tim. 1: 1; Titus 1: 1; where, if we may so say, the highest form of the apostolate is claimed, and its entire independence of man.

It is too often forgotten that Matthias was chosen Jewishly, by lot, before the Holy Ghost was sent down from heaven to baptise the believers. The church, properly speaking, was not yet manifested. His election therefore can furnish no precedent for a state of things which was changed and governed by the presence of the Spirit. Nor do we read of the use of lots ever afterwards. The Moravian system, with its usual and blind servility, has tried to copy this and other forms which were peculiar to Jerusalem.

In the instance of Timothy, there were prophecies going before (1 Tim. 1: 18), and an actual gift imparted by prophecy, with the imposition of the hands of the presbyters (1 Tim. 4: 14), and by the imposition of Paul's hands (2 Tim. 1: 6): a case which it is not only impracticable to imitate without an apostle and duly chosen presbytery, not to speak of prophecy, but which is a mischievous pretension, unless there is the power to bestow the gift which was bestowed then. May God deliver His people from saying, "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing!"

Lastly, in 2 Tim. 2: 2 it is evident that the question is one, not of authority to appoint successors, but of communicating the things which Timothy had heard of the apostle by many witnesses. It was not to consecrate a clergy, but to commit sound doctrine to faithful men who should be able to teach others also.

On the other hand the dissenting principle of electing a pastor is purely human, derived not even from Judaism, much less from Christianity. Hear the testimony of one who was himself thus chosen, the author of "Spiritual Despotism" (p. 153). "It is not without some amazement that we find a congregational church, on the modern scheme, proceeding in the momentous act of creating or electing to itself a pastor and teacher, without being able to allege from the New Testament any law or licence to that effect, or any one example, satisfactory or unsatisfactory . . . . . . . . On secular principles nothing can be more simple or reasonable than that those who pay should command; and in the present temper of mankind, especially in certain circles, it may be nearly impracticable to secure submission to any other law. Nevertheless this serious question returns upon us, Is this the law or this the principle recognised as the basis of church policy in the New Testament? We are compelled to answer, It is not."

Yet some have professed to see it in Acts 14: 23; "When they had ordained (or chosen, as seems better) them elders in every church." But this proves not that the church, but that they (i.e., Paul and Barnabas) chose the elders. Some argue from the etymology; but usage, not etymology, is the only safe guide. The word (χειροτονέω) meant originally to stretch out the hand. Hence, it was applied to voting in this manner, and by an easy transition to choosing without reference to the manner. Thus in Acts 10: 41 the same word, compounded with a preposition, is applied to God's choice, where the notion of the church's voting is of course excluded. When it was a question of a gracious and prudent use of tables, or the like, as in Acts 6 and 2 Cor. 8: 19, the assembly, or assemblies, did choose; though even in Acts, if the multitude of the disciples looked out seven faithful men, it was the apostles who appointed them over their business. In short, when God imparts a gift, He chooses; when the church gives what she can, she may employ what instrument seems to her fitting. As she cannot bestow a ministerial gift, neither ought she to choose, but to receive all those whom God has given for her good.

As to elders, then, an apostle chooses (Acts 14: 23) or leaves a delegate for a season during his own life to appoint them (Titus 1: 5-9), or describes to another the requisite qualities (1 Tim. 3: 2-7). In no case is the church invited to select them. The saints had no such authority, even in their brightest days. No epistle addressed to a church touches the question, and fitly so. It was not their mission. Titus was left in Crete expressly to set in order what the apostle had left undone, and to appoint elders in every city, as the apostle had appointed him and none else.

Afterwards he was to come to the apostle in Nicopolis (Titus 3: 12). You cannot have the one without the other. This is the sum of what scripture states, unless we add the "angels" of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation. But "angel" is neither a gift nor a charge, but a moral representative of each church, and only introduced for special purpose in this great prophecy. Hence all systems with almost equal unreality try to fit in the "angel" to suit their aim. It applies in fact to no such thing, but to the introduction of a judicial book. The apostle looked, and taught the church to look, for the coming of the Lord as their immediate hope. This of course stimulated and in no way hindered present care for the sheep; but it was inconsistent with perpetuating official organs for ages to come. Accordingly we find no such arrangements in the Epistles.

But as for gifts they rest on quite another ground; not upon apostles who might be removed, but upon Christ, who never ceases to be the head and source of nourishment, and cannot but love and cherish His body the church. These gifts never needed man's sanction, even when apostles lived. Christ dealt them without the intervention of any; so that what Paul said of his own apostolate might be said in principle of them all, "Not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead." I speak of course of the manner and source of the gifts, not of their measure.

As regards discipline, it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind that it does not depend on gifts, offices, or any other thing than the blessed fact that the body, the church, is Christ's body, is gathered in His name, and has the Holy Ghost present to guide and energise its movements. He is, we may say, the soul of this holy and heavenly body. Hence the fullest directions respecting discipline, either in putting away or in restoring, were given to the Corinthian church, where it would seem there were at the time no elders. That there might be and were churches without elders is manifest from Acts 14: 23 and Titus 1: 5. The churches existed before any such charges were appointed. Elders were desirable no doubt for the administration of a church, but by no means indispensable to its being. Certain it is that at Corinth elders are not alluded to, and the disorders which broke out there are pressed home on the entire body. Nor does the Spirit, in correcting the abuses, suspend their functions as a church until elders were duly appointed. On the contrary, whether it be the extreme and solemn act of excision, or the worthy celebration of the Lord's Supper, it is the body which is addressed, rebuked, and charged with ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well, in all these grave particulars. And this is the more striking, as it is clear that there were among them those who came behind in no gift (1 Cor. 1: 7); that, at any rate, the household of Stephanas addicted* themselves to the ministry of the saints, and that the believers in general are besought to submit themselves to such. It is not the labourers, I repeat, but the body which is appealed to in matters which the common consent of a fallen church has made the peculiar and distinguishing province of the clerical or ministerial order.

* The word is ἔταξαν, and means that they set, appointed, or devoted themselves to the ministry. It is one of the words sometimes translated "ordained." Let those who have not scrupled to ridicule "self-appointment " weigh this passage, and remember that what they despise, as some carnal Corinthians may have done, the Holy Ghost by the apostle distinctly and unqualifiedly commends. If they will obey God, let them be subject to such.

Doubtless where overseers were, as at Philippi or Ephesus, they in their exercise of a godly care would naturally and justly have a large share of the practical details; and the more so as an appeal to the church is the last and most painful resort (Matt. 18: 15-17), the urgent object being to restore the soul, if so it may be in the Lord. But the known sin of a Christian affects the conscience of the body, for it is one body; and if not judged, a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. If the offender mourn and depart from the evil after a godly sort, he is restored, and all rejoice; if he continue in that which dishonours Christ, the body must be cleared at all cost. "Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, . . . . For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth. Put away from among yourselves the wicked person."

Further, scripture even more sternly deals with false doctrine; because it is subtle, more poisonous in its effects, and touches the Lord Himself more directly than a bad walk. It is ever a work of the flesh, and may be emphatically of Satan far more than a mere carnal spirit of action. (See Gal. 5: 9-21; Rom, 16: 17, 18; 1 Tim. 1: 18-20; 1 Tim. 6: 3-5; 2 Tim. 2: 23-26; 2 Tim. 3: 6; 2 Tim. 4: 3, 4; Titus 3: 9-11; 1 John 4: 1-6; 2 John 10, 11; Rev. 2: 14, 15, 23, 24).

As it is the body which puts away, so it is equally for the body, under His direction Who dwells therein, to restore. God may use the instruments He sees fit to rouse the body to a remembrance of Christ's holiness in excluding a wicked person (1 Cor. 5), and of Christ's grace in forgiving and restoring a repentant brother (2 Cor. 2). In either case it is the conscientious action of the body which the Lord expects. If everything fail to awaken — if, in spite of patient testimony, the assembly persist in doing or cloaking evil, and so in tarnishing the Lord's name, the claim to be His body becomes null and void. It is an entirely corrupt lump, from which the Spirit, who loves Christ, would have us to separate, instead of wasting our energies in the effort to amend that which is irremediable, and only waiting for the judgment of the Lord.

There remains but one more difficulty for us to state and seek to remove. It has been supposed that the assertion of the failure of the church forces us to say that we in these last days cannot have recourse to the Epistles to the Corinthians, etc.; and so to fall back upon the promise — "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst." The present pamphlet of itself is a sufficient answer to as hardy a charge as could well be made. It has been proved that nationalism and dissent cannot defend the principles of their membership or of their ministry by such scriptures as 1 Cor. 1, 3, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16; Eph. 4, etc. The great truth of the church as being God's habitation through the Spirit, Who is the sole energy and distributor of the gifts of Christ in the unity of the whole body, is recognised by neither; it could not be practically owned for one moment without condemning both in all their varieties. Are all our brethren responsible to own this truth whatever may be the results of their confession? If they are not, let it be openly said.

But if the church once lived, rejoiced, suffered, in realising the blessedness of such a place, where and what are we? Are we not to feel, are we not to confess, are we not to have done with, all the evil known to us, which has overspread the professing body and made it a witness against Christ, not for Him? If I find myself honouring as the church of God a society or system whose laws are inconsistent with the leading scriptural principles of that church, am I not to confess my sin, and come out from the unclean thing? or am I to abide and sin on, that grace may abound? This is the true question.

It is now admitted by almost every Christian of moderate spirituality and intelligence, that the existing ecclesiastical condition, national or dissenting, is not to be defended, if we compare it with the word of God. Not merely in the detail is it wrong, but in its fundamental principles. Hence it is that some eminent names in the religious world boldly avow that the word of God, though perfect as regards individual justification, leaves men to their own discretion in the formation and government of churches: virtually they say we ought not to have recourse to such Epistles as 1 Cor. etc. for the present direction. One party is satisfied with things as they are; another yearns for a church of the future, wherein man may have things on a grander scale.

But if the saint of God shrinks from so fearful a principle as casting away the word of God which displays and demonstrates the infidelity of the church to its calling, what is he to do? Can a Christian hesitate? Is he not at once to cease from the evil he feels, and to humble himself before God for the failure of himself and the church? And if he knows two or three disciples meeting in Christ's name and opening the door wide that the Holy Ghost may act holily and fully, according to the blessed word He has written and by whom He will, will he not gladly find himself there? Instead of using Matt. 18: 20 as a licence to do what is right in their own eyes, will they not thus gathered, learn to their joy that Jesus is ever faithful? Will they not bless God for the authority and sufficiency of His blessed word? and, if there be any difference, for the proved comfort and living applicability of the very scriptures, which their adversaries say they cannot have recourse to? Will they not afresh thank Him for the Holy Ghost, Who loves to act in the body as well as in the members, to the glory of the Lord Jesus?

It is God we need, it is the living God we have to do with, and not principles merely. His presence only can give power and blessing, even when the principles are right in themselves. This is what we seek, knowing that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

W. K.

Oneness and Union

W. Kelly.

The Lord Jesus is the true pattern of the "union" of man with God, God and man in one person. It is a common mistake to speak of union with God in the case of us His children. Scripture never uses language of the kind; it is the error of theology. The Christian never has union with God, which would really be, and only is in, the Incarnation. We are said to be one with Christ, "one spirit with the Lord," "one body," one again as the Father and the Son; but these are evidently and totally different truths. "Oneness" would suppose identification of relationship, which is true of us as the members and body of our exalted Head. But we could not be said to be one with God as such without confounding the Creator and the creature and insinuating a kind of Buddhistic absorption into deity, which is contrary to all truth or even sense. The phrase therefore is a great blunder, which not only has got nothing whatever to warrant it from the Spirit, but there is the most careful exclusion of the thought in every part of the divine word.

And here it may be of interest to say a few words of explanation as to our partaking of the divine nature, of which Peter speaks at the beginning of his Second Epistle (2 Peter 1: 4). It does not seem to be the same as oneness with Christ, which in scripture is always founded on the Spirit of God making us one with the Lord after He rose from the dead. Christ, when He was here below, compared Himself to a corn of wheat that was alone: if it died, it would bring forth much fruit. Though the Son of God was already the life of believers from the beginning, He promises more, thus indicating that union is a different thing. They must never be confounded. They are both true of the Christian; but union in the full sense of the word was that which could not be till Christ had died to put away before God our sins, yea to give us our very nature judged, so that we might stand in an entirely new position and relationship, made by the Spirit one with Christ glorified on high. This I believe to be the doctrine of scripture. Along with this, observe that the only one who brings out the body of Christ asserted dogmatically in the New Testament is the apostle Paul. Our spiritual oneness is referred to frequently in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John; but this is not exactly the same thing as being one with Christ according to the figure of the head and the body, which is the proper type of oneness in scripture Now it is by the apostle Paul alone that the Spirit sets before us the body with its head; and this it is which figures the true notion according to God of our oneness with Christ.

To be one with, or have life in, Him is not the same thing. This may be clearly illustrated by the well- known instance of Abel and Cain. They had the same life as Adam; but they were not one with Adam as Eve was. She only was one with Adam. They had his life no less than their mother. Thus the two things are never the same and need not be in the same persons. Oneness is the nearest possible relationship, which may or may not be conjoined with the possession of life. Both are in the Christian. The pattern of oneness or its proper scriptural model is found under that of the head and the body which is the more admirably expressive as the head clearly is, and of right directs all the movements, of the body. In a man of sound mind and body there is not a single thing done by the extremity of the foot which is not directed by the head. Such exactly is the pattern spiritually. The Spirit of God animates the assembly, the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the true bond of oneness between the members on earth and Christ in heaven. By and by, when we go on high, it will be represented by another figure equally apt, though also anticipatively applied while we are on the earth. We never hear of the head and the body in the day of glory, but of the Bridegroom and the bride. So we read in Rev. 19 that the marriage of the Lamb is then come. This takes place in heaven after the translation of the saints, and before the day of Christ's appearing. Scripture avoids speaking of the marriage until the work of God is complete in His assembly, so that those who are baptized of the Spirit into that one body may be caught up to Christ together. These, between the two advents of the Lord, are all in one common position. But those before Christ came were surely quickened of Him; sons of God, they were partakers of the divine nature. So are Christians now; so will be the saints when the millennial kingdom is set up under the reign of Christ manifest to every eye. But to be one with Christ, members of His body, is only true now that He is in heaven as the glorified Man, and that the Spirit is sent down to baptize us into this new body on the earth. That one body is now being formed and perpetuated as long as the church remains on earth. The marriage of the Lamb (of course a figure of consummated union and joy) will only take place when the whole church is complete, not before, whatever may be the language inspired by hope ere then.

As to the difficulty of some minds whether Christ partook of our nature as it is here, or we partake of Him as He is in heaven, the answer seems to be that both are true; but they are not the same truth. Christ partook of human nature, but not in the condition in which we have it. This, as explained elsewhere, is essential not only to the gospel but to the Christ of God. The man who denies this denies Christ's person; he wholly overlooks the meaning of the supernatural operation of the Holy Ghost. Such was the fatal blot of Irvingism — a far deeper mischief than the folly about tongues, or the pretensions to prophesying, or the presumption of restoring the church and its ministries, or even its gross Judaizing. It made null and void the Holy Ghost's operation, which is acknowledged in the commonest creeds of both Romanists and Protestants. These all so far confess the truth; for I hold that as to this, Romanists and Protestants are sound but the Irvingites are not, although in other matters they may say a great deal that is true enough. Certainly Edward Irving saw and taught not a little neglected truth. Notwithstanding, they were, and I believe still are, fundamentally unsound in holding the human nature of Christ to be fallen and peccable through the taint of the fall, thus setting aside the object and fruit of the miraculous conception by the power of the Highest.

Hence then our being partakers of the divine nature is one thing, the gift of the Holy Ghost quite another. Both we have now. The first is the new nature that pertains to us as believers, and this in a substantial sense has been true of all believers from the beginning. But besides this there is the peculiar privilege of oneness with Christ through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Clearly this could not be until the Holy Ghost was given to baptize the disciples of Christ into one body; as again the Holy Ghost could not be given to produce this oneness till Jesus by His blood had put away our sins and been glorified at God's right hand (Heb. 1; John 1, 7). Those who should be saved had been in every kind of impurity, and they must be washed from their sins before they could be righteously set in that position of nearness and relationship as "one new man." Esther was chosen and called to a high position; still, according to the habits due to the great king, there must needs be a great preparation before the actual consummation. I grant you this was but a natural place; still it is the type of a spiritual relationship; so that we may use it to illustrate God's mind. It is not consistent with His ways or His holiness that any should be taken out of the old things and put into the wonderful position of oneness with Christ until the work of redemption completely abolished our old state before God and brought us into a new one in Christ. Such is the order of scripture.

But there is more to come. For although we have already the Holy Ghost as well as the new nature, there is a third requisite which the glory of Christ demands for us: we shall be changed. That is, we Christians, who have now not only humanity, but this fallen, are destined at Christ's coming again for us to be changed. Christ had human nature, but not fallen. In His case alone was humanity holy, free from every blemish and taint, and pure according to God. It was not only not fallen, but fit without blood to be the temple of God. This is far more than could be said about Adam in his pristine innocency. When Adam came from the hand of God, good as he was, it could not be said that he was holy. There was absolute absence of all evil. God made the man upright before he sought inventions. There was untainted innocence; but holiness and righteousness are more than creation goodness and innocency. Holiness implies the intrinsic power that rejects evil in separation to God: and righteousness means consistency with the relationship in which one is set. Both these qualities we see, not in Adam but, in Jesus even as to His humanity.

"That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." He was "the Holy one of God," "Jesus Christ the righteous." Indeed He was the only one of whom it was or could be said of His human nature that it was holy, as it clearly is of humanity in His person that the expression "that holy thing" is used. The divine nature was not born of the virgin; and it was little needed to call that holy. There was the highest interest and moment in knowing the character of His humanity. Scripture as to this is most explicit. His humanity was holy from the very first, spite of being born of a fallen race.

And this agrees with all other truth. Thus, had the human nature of Christ been tainted by the fall, how could He have been the "most holy" sin-offering for sinners? There was no instance about which there was so much scrupulosity of care as the meal-offering and the sin-offering. These two are remarkable, and remarkably opposed, types of Christ: the one of His life, the other of His death.

But we shall have much more in the way of power and glory by and by. When Christ comes, human nature in us will participate in the victory of the Second Man, the last Adam, as it now shares in the weakness and ruin of the first man. Then indeed is the time when human nature will be promoted to a good degree; that is to say, it will be raised out of all the consequences of the fall of the first man, and will be placed in all the power and incorruption and glory of the Second Man as He is now in the presence of God. Never shall we be made God: this could not be, and ought not to be. It is impossible that the creature can overpass the bounds that separate the Creator from it. And more than that, the renewed creature is the very one which would most abhor the thought. No matter what the church's blessedness and glory may be, it never forgets its creature obligations to God and the reverence due to Him. For this very reason he that knows God would never desire that He should be less God than He is, and could not indulge or tolerate the self-exalting folly which the miserable illusion of Buddhism cherishes, along with many kinds of philosophy which are afloat now as of old in the west as well as the east — the dream of a final absorption into deity. This is altogether false and irreverent. All approach to such thoughts we see excluded in the word of God. In heaven the lowliness of those whom the sovereign grace of God made partakers of the divine nature will be even more perfect than now while we are on the earth. Human nature under sin is as selfish as proud. Fallen humanity always seeks its own things and glory; but the new nature, the perfection of which is seen in Christ, (that is to say, the life given to the believer, what we receive in Christ even now, and by and by when everything is conformed to it) will only make perfect without a single flaw or hindrance that which we now are in Christ Jesus our Lord.

W.K.

Concerning Unions: Worldly or Religious.

W. Kelly.

(THE TESTIMONY OF TWO WELL-KNOWN AND ABLE MINISTERS OF GOD'S WORD CONCERNING UNIONS: WORLDLY OR RELIGIOUS.)

Being a reprint from, "THE BIBLE TREASURY," of January, 1895.

What leads to these few words is a letter from Chicago, which discloses the deeply painful and astounding fact, that there are professors of Christ, gathered to the Lord's name, who are banded on oath with the recent conspiracy in that city, or elsewhere also, of so-called labour against capital. That this issued in robbery and arson, in mutilation and murder, and other forms, not of wickedness only, but of lawless and criminal violence, is only the natural and necessary result.

It appears that these unworthy abusers of the Lord's name have defied the meetings (leavened by their presence) to put them out from their midst, and dare to plead the names of J.N.D. and of the Editor of the Bible Treasury, as abettors of their ungodliness. For such a plea they have nothing but their own wilful falsehood. Not only has there never been a word orally from either to furnish the smallest pretence for their talk, but the published writings of both are well enough known (wherever in the English, French, and other languages, they are read among Christians). Both refute the calumny and prove how hateful such combinations must be in their eyes, even if clear of any punishable enormities. None living ever more decidedly or constantly rejected their very principle as opposed to Christ.

We have always maintained that, as brought unto God, the Christian is bought with a price, the incalculable price of Christ's blood, and bound to glorify God in his body. As having the Holy Spirit of God, we are members of the one body of Christ even now and on earth; and no one estimating such a bond loyally and intelligently, as all profess by being gathered to His name, could consent to belong to another body, disparaging His, or yet more antagonistic to its nature, character, aims and hope. To any one rightly instructed it will soon appear that special societies for Bible or tract distribution, for missionary work at home or abroad, for training of the young or for help of the sick and suffering, are usurpations of the functions of God's assembly, or of its members as such; who are bound to do, in a better and holy way by His word and Spirit, what those societies attempt piecemeal and in a plan more or less human and worldly. Yet no fair mind doubts for a moment that in abounding grace God has deigned to bless these mixed and irregular agencies in the present anomalous and broken state of the church.

But nothing can justify a saint of God joining the irresponsible societies which resort to force and fraud in execution of their self-will, animated by motives alike short-sighted, selfish and sordid. Their springs are infidel, their objects are revolutionary, their means are fallen man's will, coercing all they can, without a thought or care for God, Who sanctions nothing but faith working by love. This of course cannot actuate the natural man. But here we are contemplating those who claim to be sanctified and redeemed. Do any Christians claim under lying pretexts to be allowed also to trample God's revealed word under the foot of men who bear on their forehead the stamp of destruction, veritable enemies of the cross of Christ? No meeting sheltering the known members of such guilty societies of the world has the least title to be considered an assembly of God — at any rate, after the question has been fairly raised before the Lord and His word. If the meetings persist in disobeying the holy word of God, they become defiled with great guilt, and cages of Satan.

W.K.

Openness in Receiving and Freedom in Serving.

Blackheath, August 31, 1875.

My Dear Brother, . . . Individuals among brethren may urge their private views on evangelists or others; but all such narrowness is censured by every wise man in our midst; and, what is more important, it is dead against that return to keeping Christ's word and not denying His name which characterises the work. The question has often arisen as to fellowship as well as service; and as often those who are entitled to speak have resisted the tendency to a restrictive school. If some have sought to require intelligence in those received, my own answer has been that it is vain and unscriptural; that they themselves when received were the very reverse of intelligent; that if intelligence is to be anywhere, it should be in those who receive; and that those who require it in the received fail in the intelligence they demand from others; else they would not expect it where it could not be. For how could men in sects really understand the church of God? They might see just enough to disturb them from the wrong and attract them to the right; but all true intelligence is acquired in obedience. What is the worth of that which we learn in disobedience? and what the character of the principle which would keep in disobedience, in order to be intelligent, those who can get it only aright in obedience? Hence Scripture knows nothing of keeping outside a godly-walking member of Christ.

As little does it countenance the church's interference with the Lord's work, and especially in the gospel. To set the servant in the simplest dependence on the Lord, to foster his immediate responsibility to the Lord, without the intervention of the church, is what every brother holds as a sacred duty and principle. One must not plead, however, one's liberty in order to gain license. We may not grant a license, but we dare not exact a pledge.

We would rather trust in the Lord and His grace, while we would warn against all laxity as a scandal to the saint, and the enemy's snare for discrediting grace. When positive sin in word or deed appears, the church is bound to judge; and individuals may warn in love and holy care if they believe there is danger. More than this I should refuse; but this maintains the evangelist intact in his liberty and his responsibility to his Master.

Ever yours,

W.K.

Why many saints were outside the Park Street of 1881.

W. Kelly. 29th March, 1905.

[New Edition.]

While Dr. C.'s matter was before Kennington, Park Street sent out (in 1879) an independent and sectarian Declaration, on which Mr. H. J. JULL and others left the Ramsgate meeting. The rest there waited for London's decision, declining as in duty bound to prejudge a case still pending. The JULL party went out, several brothers "one by one declaring that they withdrew from the assembly as then constituted." It was they who sought to reconstruct or revolutionise. The rest were content to act like all others, save a very few small meetings full of the same fanaticism which actuated the seceders. This was ecclesiastical independency, a breach of unity subversive of the church.

Not content with groundless secession, of itself demanding repentance and of course condemned by all the meetings that did not so act, the seceders after one day's interval set up a counter-meeting outside recognised fellowship, and gave plain proof of "new-lumpism " by rejecting summarily and clerically some of their own following. This was what scripture calls "heresy" or "sect" (1 Cor. 11: 19, Gal. 5: 20). He who was thus active is (in Titus 3: 10, 11) branded as "heretical" and "self-condemned."

Claiming that they ["]broke bread together on the alone divine ground of one body, one Spirit," they quickly ceased nevertheless. Too self-confident to see or judge the real evil of their proceedings, yet finding out their mistaken policy, they seized on flaws in their brethren who remained, both to deny their standing and to redintegrate their own pretensions. Hence (in 1880) they repeated their party effort, with the bold assumption that "the Lord would own and protect" their second table. This the Lord did not; nor was it long before they themselves dropt it.

Then came their third and too successful renewal (in 1881) after private encouragement. It was brethren now who sunk low enough to ask if they were never to break bread. Was this a right or godly question then? Had they truly condemned their party work throughout, all would have rejoiced; but justifying themselves as they did in the main, how in this state could it be allowed without compromising the Lord's honour and word?

The Park Street meetings followed. It is idle to say that no other course was open. Who can gainsay that scripture teaches us to localise mischief by dealing with evil on the spot of its outbreak? It was the enemy's snare to precipitate division, long sought by fiery zealots everywhere, of whom H. J. JULL was one. Park Street then intervened, where was a known predisposition, not to say determination, to at length endorse the seceding party, still impenitent as to their gravest offences, though ready to own other failures — a blind for themselves and their supporters. It is false that they there cleared away, as was pretended, their open wrongs against the Lord's name in the assembly. "Haste and errors of judgment" were confessed, but neither the independency nor heresy (or, sect, its true sense), of which thousands of saints knew them to be guilty; nor were they asked to confess either, as far as was shown. But chief men among brethren, who of late lent them secret countenance, led Park Street into public sanction of their third start; and other subordinate men were glad to push it on. Yet all these knew that J. adhered to the Park Street Declaration which led him into the ditch, though J.N.D. had got it withdrawn. For he thought it independency, as he told J.H.B. who at once reported this to J.

This was the evil deliberately committed by Park Street in the Lord's name, and sought accordingly to be imposed upon all. Its acceptance was not left as usual for the Lord to vindicate if sound, or disannul if wrong. It was speedily required on pain or forfeiture of fellowship in the face of the known, wide, and deep disapproval of it. This meant nothing short of separation forced through on a question of discipline. What could those do who were sure that the entire procedure was unscriptural, and a party snatching a triumph for party? They could not agree to what they judged unrighteous and untrue, cleaving the more in their weakness to His name and word, as all once used to do together. They neither went nor sent to Park Street or its allies, but were in sorrow, humiliation, and prayer, if peradventure the Lord might purge through sense of a false position, and of the previous evil that brought it about. We at Blackheath acted as was done at Plymouth in 1845-6, when a small minority left Ebrington Street, after it got wrong ecclesiastically as well as morally, before the heterodoxy of B.W.N when known gave it a far darker character; we did not reject souls from Park Street, though not going there. Crying to the Lord for His gracious interference, we had suspicion and insult for our forbearance. We wrote plainly when challenged for receiving several of Lee, our neighbours, who could not more than ourselves subscribe a decree which we believed to be sinful.

Some blame us, notwithstanding our common and solemn convictions, for not refusing those despised little ones. We think it would have been despicable as well as error, if we had not received saints suffering for a godly protest, in order to retain a fellowship no longer true to the Lord's name. By letting them break bread with us, we well knew that our adversaries rejoiced to have the occasion they desired. Surely our Lord has said, when the preliminaries are done in obedience, "Hear the church"; but is this His voice when they were not? Has He not also called him that has an ear "to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches?" To idolise assembly-judgments as necessarily right is condemned by His word. Nota bene.

But we may come still closer. The more that episode of sin, shame, and sorrow is weighed, the clearer it will be that ecclesiastical independency had unconsciously and extensively infected those who talked loudly of "one body and one Spirit." This was evident in the discredited Park Street Declaration. This carried away, not only H. J. J. and his companions in their secession and even worse, but the numerous party that might blame but aided and abetted them, at last bent at all cost on having them back without confession of their evil acts which betrayed false principles. Had they honestly been ashamed of their heretical or party ways the third time more than the first or the second? They themselves strenuously denied their guilt in this kind; yet no intelligent believer acquainted with the facts, and without strong personal predilection, can doubt it. Therefore, till repentance for those public wrongs was known, to give them the right hand of fellowship was both to become partakers in their sins, and to part from all unprepared to join in that universally imposed unrighteousness. Far from penitence on that score, they indignantly and uniformly repudiated every charge of independency, or even schism, to say nothing of heresy. Yet, it is as certain as can be that they were thus guilty, and that those who knew it as surely as ourselves joined at Park Street to condone it in their reception.

Therein ensued the strange and grievous fact of Park Street judging for itself, and leading each company in London to judge for itself, independently of others. Thus through influence were enticed many with a conscience defiled; as also the fear of being "cut off" alarmed no fewer into acquiescence. For the advocates of division, without check somehow from those that knew better, applied to an ecclesiastical question the extreme measure, which we in obedience to scripture had hitherto confined to antichrists and blasphemies. Who could anticipate a great and good man* drawn by unworthy inferiors into that very stream? We know how strongly he resisted it for years, alas! beguiled at length into what he had ever hated when left to himself with the Lord. Witness only a little before his letter to JULL, which it was sought to hide; as they did shamefully a postscript of his on a critical occasion previously.

*A line is left out here, as some have objected, and it seems doubtful.

It would have been evil if (not Park Street and other self-isolating fragments, but) the assembly in London had acted independently of a known widespread conviction elsewhere, that its proposal was utterly wrong, and must if confirmed demoralise, or repel, saints all over the world. How much worse when the independency of Park Street gave the signal to every other part of the same city, and then to the country meetings, as well as everywhere, to follow that fatal course! In the new departure truth was forgotten, and grace prevailed quite as little. Nor (apart from the wrong change of venue to London, perhaps above all to Park Street for a reason already given) was there the least excuse for failing to act in the unity of the Spirit and obedience of the word.

A proposal might have been submitted to all the gathered saints, and action taken or refused, as judged due to the Lord. It was the more to be heeded when passion was letting in disorder. But dissolving for the time, and for this matter only, into independent assemblies, each judging itself, was to adopt the human device of a voluntary society, and to ignore the ground of God's church, abandoning for the nonce our divine relationship and its duty. God thus allowed an evil movement of party to fall into a flagrant contradiction alike of His principles, and of our own cherished practice in faith. Could it be for anything else but the worldly and rather vulgar end of catching votes? A sad fall for saints who for many a year walked together in faith, if but "two or three" here and there, and rejoicing to suffer for the Name, whatever the show or scorn of enemies! It caused heart-breaking to not a few that were hustled out, and that for the Lord's sake rather than their own: has it ever been matter of grave self-judgment to many prominent in those days, when good men were too often swayed by the more unworthy?

Nor can plea be more hollow than claiming heaven's sanction of a measure so begun, carried on, and completed. A commendatory letter to one meeting or another was no valid reason for shifting the place scripture indicates for a decision without prejudice or favour, even if all had to wait in our weakness ever so long. How shocking to take it up hotly where partiality was rife, notorious, and violent — where the desire was expressed for a division to get rid of all but "the spiritual" i.e. their own sort! Acts of the assembly done in obedience, without bias or connivance, all are bound to accept, even if individually one regretted over-leniency or over-severity, as may be sometimes.

Just before indeed was a case in London, closely related to the Ramsgate rupture, by which the party of division hoped (through unprecedented rigour toward one in error but justly beloved) to drive out largely of their brethren. But grace prevailed. Almost all bowed, though in grief. The ill-wishers were sorely disappointed, and grew more relentless and overbearing. So Park Street took up the Ramsgate question; with what character and result we too well know. Since then God has permitted many an object-lesson, last and worst of all in the heterodoxy as to Christ and eternal life, before which even party is comparatively a small thing. Some there are who, if they had been entangled more or less by the divisionist party in the past, have by grace cleared themselves from that worst evil. But if they can neither deny nor justify the facts here stated (and I believe truly), are they not in an unsound ecclesiastical position? May faith and love work deliverance to the praise of the Lord's name. W.K.

P.S. Mr. C. D.Maynard refers to the first edition of this paper, but does not face, as far as I see, the facts and principles laid down. He assumes the rectitude of the Park Street action which was impugned, as both unscriptural and inconsistent with our avowed principles and regular practice. And because I durst not he has the hardihood to call it "unprincipled conduct." Such impropriety comes ill from a man who left his own party since he wrote his paper, and somehow got back again before he printed it.

Nor should I notice his childish and crooked thoughts now, had he not published downright falsehood, which it seems a duty to contradict. Think of one so blinded by party as to apply "leaven" to the case! Does he not know that scripture uses it (as far as Christians are concerned) only for corrupt morals as in 1 Cor. 5, or for corrupt doctrine fundamentally as in Gal. 5? Is such ignorant acerbity an endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit? Is it not the rancorous spirit that scatters the saints?

It is false to speak of my "commending A. H.". Blackheath, while utterly condemning the whitewashing of G. H., [I] did not accept A. H. till after careful investigation and due clearance of what was to be blamed, long after the Park Street proceedings.

Further, Blackheath never owned the Ryde meeting with which Dr. C. mixed himself. It is again false that "I owned the two opposed meetings at Ryde." No doubt Mr. M. was misinformed.

I did strongly deprecate the violence against Dr. C., though I blamed him from the first more than Mr. Darby did, till he was carried away by the malicious fables of others against him and more. Dr. C. never so much as thought of leaving fellowship. Yet when they could not put him out, they invented the fiction that his mistake at Ryde meant that he went out! and on this the Park Street party insisted till Kennington yielded to his being (not "put," but) "declared out." Now I affirm that this was an idea never to my knowledge broached before, being quite opposed to every genuine case of declaring out. For this goes on the ground of wilfully leaving communion, and after adequate remonstrance; neither of which was true of Dr. C. It was an invention of ecclesiastical inflammation to hustle out somehow a much better brother than those who conspired to that end. He was of course inside till that unworthy deed, though he had owned his error and declared he would not repeat it.

What pettifoggery and wrong then to make this my owning "two opposed meetings"! Let me say to C. D. M. that one of the most active and valued leaders of his own party told me a few years ago, that he (and he was not alone among their wiser men) thought worse than I did of the Park Street proceedings, the real cause of our anomalous state since 1881. Did not this involve a duty?

This is M.'s First point. His Second in p. 7 refers to a similar owning of "two opposed Tables" at Ramsgate: a similarly puerile and baseless misconstruction of his and of persons like him.

The Third in p. 8 is "the present desire for amalgamation." Of this I am wholly innocent. It may be true among his own party. It may comfort M. to know that I should never break bread save with such of his associates as feel the sin and shame of what he defends and excuses; in which humiliation I should feel bound humbly and heartily to join. We owe it before the God of all grace thus to vindicate the long injured Name of the Lord Jesus, and save the truth from disrepute and mockery.

"The Plymouth Brethren,"

a reply to the "Christian Observer", Art. II., December, 1866.

W. Kelly.

This evangelical magazine again assails the "Plymouth Brethren," as they call them. Are they wise? It may be doubted; for while they own their hopelessness of convincing those they oppose, we are pretty sure that, the more they write on the subject, the more they expose their want of acquaintance with the principles of those attacked, with the Scriptures, and even with their own indefensible position. Many godly and intelligent persons outside "Brethren," some even in their own Anglican fold, are ashamed of their advocate, and of his objections, which are never well-founded, sometimes suicidal, always frivolous. We are not so unreasonable as to expect that those who pronounce the clerical system to be anti-scriptural can ever find favour in the eyes of clergy as such; but there are servants of Christ who, spite of being clergymen, value the faith of those who at all cost carry out practically what they themselves know to be according to God's word. Naturally, among laymen so-called, there are many more who agree with us that the clerical system grew at best out of a graft of Judaism, that it is wholly opposed to Scriptural ministry as instituted of the Lord, and that it is inconsistent not merely with the best interests but with the fundamental constitution of the Church of God. Of course, those who justify that innovation of patristic times cannot cry up those who denounce it as sinful. The next best thing they can do, as far as we (not they) are concerned, is to cry us down; for this always makes manifest their own weakness, gives candid Anglicans an opportunity of comparing scriptural principles and practice with their own ways as well as ours, and keeps the subject as one of present, permanent, and great importance before all who read and hear. More prudent adversaries avoid the perilous game of confronting the Scriptures as to ecclesiastical ground, walk, and discipline, on which the so-called "Brethren" seek to act in the face of Christendom which let them slip from the earliest days as impracticable.

By those who read this journal, whether among or outside "Brethren," a refutation of these articles can hardly be wanted. The writer is therefore under a surprising and groundless illusion if he really believes what he says, that the former article "seems indeed (and here it has exceeded our expectations) to have gone, like a Palliser shot, right through all the iron coating of their system, and to have caused much fright, even within the vessel, by the scattered splinters." (Page 896.) There is as much truth in this romance as there was weight in the arguments; but the self-complacency of the whole thing is singularly grotesque.

In the same page the writer claims no small vantage-ground in being able to look at us from without. Will he dispute that it is better sometimes to look from within as well as without? But granting that a look from without has its value, does he not perceive that on his own showing the advantage is greatly on their side who have examined Anglicanism as well as "the Brethren" both from without and from within? Our mathematical friend ought not to need the lesson that a whole is greater (or better) than a part. For myself, I believe that the proposed criterion is only partially true, and quite fails in divine things. There is a testimony to those without, sufficient to leave without excuse, as will be seen another day, and now used by the grace of God to produce conviction through faith; but all our best blessings in Christ, or even in the Church, His body, must be tasted within in order to be adequately known. But let us hear our accuser.

"One of the gravest charges we have to make against the Plymouth Brethren is, that they take the most extraordinary liberties with God's Holy Word.* While professing the most entire subjection to every word of the Lord, and chiding all who do not join them with the want of that subjection, they set aside the far greater part of Scripture as not applicable to the present age of the Church, and as of no present authority or obligation. Here we shall be met again with the charge of misrepresentation; but we assert that this is no misrepresentation in the sense we mean. Their great knowledge of Scripture, and their readiness in applying it in its spiritual sense, is one of the things we continually hear advanced in favour of the Plymouth Brotherhood. We fully admit that they are most of them well up in the contents of the Bible; that they are very ready with quotations; that they can find a spiritual sense for almost every word of it: but here lies our complaint. They spiritualize it till they pulverize it all into fine dust, which any one's breath may blow clean away. Now for the proofs. They condemn us of the Church of England for repeating the Psalms of David in our Christian service; these, they say, are Jewish, expressing feelings belonging to the Old Dispensation, and altogether unsuited to the now: thus the whole Book of Psalms goes aside, except in the spiritual sense in which parts of it may be thought to relate to the person or work of Christ. With this aside goes the whole of the Old Testament, except so far as that is prophetical or can be spiritualized." (Page 897.)

*The italics are the Christian Observer's.

Did one ever hear greater confusion and absurdity, giving the writer credit for meaning to say the truth? The first proof, then, of this heinous charge is that we! spiritualize the Psalms! That we read them habitually alone and with our families, that we hear them in our assemblies, that we preach on them and expound them and write on them and publish our expositions far and wide, and this not alone historically or prophetically, but also for our soul's profit and blessing and the present edification, of all believers, does not satisfy. "Here lies our complaint. They spiritualize." Now I appeal to any intelligent man in the English Establishment: Does not the Christian Observer herein state exactly the reverse of the truth in both its parts? Is it not plain and notorious and undeniable matter of fact that those who use the Psalms in their Christian service must necessarily spiritualize them? and that one main reason why "Brethren" do not use them as the expression of their worship is because they refuse to spiritualize the Psalms of David? They believe the Psalms in their plain and direct meaning, and accordingly see in them the sympathies of the Messiah with the godly Jews, also their Aaronic priesthood, incense, sacrifices, and all the other appurtenances of an earthly land and a city here below. All this the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches them to be now superseded for the partakers of the heavenly calling, on the footing of accomplished redemption and of a priest after the order of Melchizedec, no longer typified or predicted, but actually on high appearing in the presence of God for us.

It is therefore the Christian Observer's own system, not Plymouth Brethrenism, which really comes under the charge of spiritualizing. For those who employ the Psalms of David in the christian service as the proper and full expression of christian worship are obliged to fall back on the mystical process in its extreme form in order to effect a tolerable metamorphosis. Hence David's throne must be made the throne of God; Israel, Judah, etc., must set forth Christians; Zion and Jerusalem must be the Church now on earth, now in heaven; the pleasant land has to be construed of the Father's house; the wars must be taken as a figure of spiritual conflicts, and the destructive judgments on the enemies of the Jews must be converted after some analogous fashion. If this be not spiritualizing, what is? Is it not the basis on which reposes the use of the Psalter in so-called christian services all over Christendom? Was it not the system (probably derived from Platonizing Jews) of Clemens Alex., Origen, as of Jerome and other Latins, and soon prevalent, all but universal? From this mischievous system the Reformation delivered only in part, not merely because the Reformers, like ourselves, were but disciples imperfectly instructed, but because they were much fettered and hindered by their respective governments from carrying out all they saw. However this be, and whether spiritualizing be right or wrong, the misapprehension of our censor is as complete as can be. For spiritualizing, which he so unqualifiedly blames, is abjured by the "Brethren" and is in full force in the Establishment; and the use of the Psalms in the christian service, for which he contends, is only consistent on the ground of spiritualizing, which he mistakenly lays at our door.

The truth is that the Psalms, like the law, are divinely inspired and profitable to all: only like the law, they must be used lawfully. I quite acquiesce in the principle of the Christian Observer that what is called spiritualizing is dangerous where it supplants or interferes with the real distinct scope of the Holy Ghost in any part of God's word. But I appeal to his own conscience: does he not perceive that he wrote under some strange spell which inverted his vision and falsified his conclusion? For beyond a doubt it is his own system, not ours, which, to accommodate the Psalms to christian purposes, yields to the common error of spiritualizing, which we both agree in denouncing. "Brethren" however, I humbly think, enjoy a decided superiority over their unexpected ally in this, that they honestly act out what they believe by God's grace — at least such is their hearty desire and strenuous aim. Hence, rejecting the later patristic and still popular mysticizing of the Psalms, they believe that the evident character and contents of that wondrous book demonstrate it to be an inspired provision, as for the past, so for the future devotions of Israel, in public and private; while it also opens its treasures meanwhile to us, Christians, furnishing copious and rich and touching expression to the heart's exercises and outpourings before God for the present and all time. In our walk and varying states of soul, beside prediction of Christ and His work, who shall set limits to the measure of our appropriation and enjoyment of the Psalms? Certainly not the "Brethren." Here the Christian Observer is inexcusably ignorant and mistaken. If he takes the ground of competent knowledge, I arraign him of positive untruth. The "Practical Reflections on the Psalms" in the Bible Treasury, not to speak of what everybody knows who knows "Brethren" moderately, suffice to contradict flatly his statement. Indeed the New Testament freely applies the Psalms as we use them freely. But thence to infer that the Psalms contemplate our present standing and service as Christians is as false and unreasonable as it would be to deduce, from a similar employment of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, that we are not under grace but law, with an earthly priesthood, carnal sacrifices, and a worldly sanctuary.

The same principle applies to the Old Testament. None but the most ignorant fancy it is the same state of things now that the blood of the new covenant is shed, though the knowledge of it is not yet given to the house of Israel. The writings of the Old Testament mainly occupy themselves with the state of people under the law, save that the prophets, as indeed the types of all the other books, looked on to better things. Faith now knows, as to all the promises of God, the Yea and Amen in Christ. All Scripture accordingly is for us in these days of the gospel; the mistake is that it is all about us. The state before the fall differed essentially from that which followed the fall; and new conditions ensued on the flood. The call of Abram and the dealings with the fathers were not at all the same as those known previously. So also the days of Moses saw new ways of God, as the law of course raised the question of righteousness in a more definite shape than had been before it was given. Then, again, without noticing the details of Israel's history or the times of the Gentiles which began with the supremacy of Babylon, the coming of Christ and yet more His cross laid the foundation for all that is now or ever shall be, though even so the age to come will be wholly diverse from that which now is, and the eternal state, when the new heavens and new earth are in their full and final consummation, will differ from both as indeed from all the past dispensations also. Now the Scriptures treat of all these varying states from first to last, and the revelations of God adapt themselves in His wisdom to all that has been or will be during the vicissitudes of the earth or rather of men upon it. That they are all about us who now believe in Christ is untenable; that they are all for our instruction and direction, none can hold too tenaciously, which is indeed the reason why we notoriously study the whole from Genesis to Revelation. If they considered that any part of the Old Testament was not of real present value to the soul, it is absurd to suppose that "Brethren" generally, abroad or at home, teachers and taught, would read, hear, teach, meditate on it as they do. The only persons entitled to bring such a charge are men so grossly in the dark as to deny all difference of dispensation, if there be such. If the Christian Observer allow (as I presume they do) different dispensations, they admit the principle which lies at the bottom of their objection: all else as to this is a question of detail and degree.

"But worse still: it is not the Old Testament only that is thus made null and void as respects authoritative instruction, but also a great part of the New Testament. The Gospel of St. Matthew, for instance, it is assumed, was written specially for the Jews, and contains peculiar Jewish phraseology, such as the expression, 'the kingdom of heaven:' therefore it is ruled that it relates specially, if not only, to the intermediate dispensation, or period between the birth of Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost when according to the Plymouthites, and not before, the Church of God came into existence." (Page 897.)

"Brethren" need not to be told that in every respect this is a string of blunders, founded on truth or statements which the writer did not even comprehend. "As respects authoritative instruction," they hold that all Scripture stands on the same foundation which never fails. They do hold, as christian writers have done from the earliest days to our own that Matthew was inspired to write his gospel in view of the Jews and the relations of their Messiah, and the consequences of His rejection; but they see with equal clearness that "the kingdom of heaven" goes through the entire dispensation, as it is called, in its present mysterious form (Matt. 13), and that it is the only Gospel in which Christ announces the building of His Church (Matt. 16), and lays down the spirit which ought to regulate discipline in the case of one brother trespassing against another. (Matt. 18) The Christian Observer ought to be more careful: the allegations are quite unfounded, though it may be unintentionally.

As to the charge that the Church of God, Christ's body, began at Pentecost, it is quite true that such is the conviction of most or all "Brethren," though no one is required to believe it. The Christian Observer reasons thus: — "Mr. Kelly fails to see that he has fallen into the absurdity, in his interpretation of the words — 'The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved' — of making them to be added to a thing that, according to him, did not exist; or rather, to go a little further back, the three thousand souls converted on the day of Pentecost, respecting whom the word 'added' is first used, must thus have been added on to nothing, if the Church had no existence before!" (Page 898.) The blunder is exclusively on the part of the Christian Observer. Even if the Lord's adding to the Church daily such as should be saved had referred to Pentecost, the error was disgraceful; for the Lecture criticised had drawn attention to the 120 names of brethren in Jerusalem. Were they, including the twelve apostles, nothing? But the case is in fact much worse. For in Acts 2: 47 the Holy Spirit (of whom the Christian Observer likes to hear as little as possible, at least through the "Brethren") is describing the additions which the Lord was making from day to day after Pentecost with its three thousand souls added to the previous band of disciples and the Twelve. Does the Christian Observer fail to see now that itself alone has fallen into absurdity at the very moment when it was seeking, without reason, to charge it on another?

"He [Mr. K.] finds the word Church for the first time in those words of Christ to Peter —  'Upon this rock I will build My Church,' and because the future tense is here used, 'I will build,' he infers that this must have had reference to what was to take place at the future period of the Pentecost; and because he never meets with the word 'Church' in the New Testament before, that no such thing was before known of! He thus falls into precisely the same mistake as the Baptists," etc. (Page 898.) Perhaps it may save time if I at once summon not a P. B. but a Bp. of Chester in days of yore, who has never been surpassed there in the combination of solid learning with excellent powers of mind, especially of reasoning — the celebrated John Pearson in the most celebrated of his writings, a textbook for Anglican clergy everywhere. "The only way to attain unto the knowledge of the true notion of the Church is to search into the New Testament, and from the places there which mention it, to conclude what is the nature of it. To which purpose it will be necessary to take notice that our Saviour, first speaking of it, mentioneth it as that which (Matt. 16: 18) then was not, but afterwards was to be; as when He spake unto the great apostle, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church;' but when he ascended into heaven, and the Holy Ghost came down, when Peter had converted 'three thousand souls' (Acts 2: 41), which were added to the 'hundred and twenty' (Acts 1: 15) disciples, then was there a Church ( . . . . ) for after that we read, 'The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.' (Acts 2: 47.) A Church then our Saviour promised should be built, and by a promise made before His death; after His ascension, and upon the preaching of St. Peter, we find a Church built or constituted, and that of a nature capable of daily increase." In his posthumous work containing his "Lectiones in Acta Apostolorum" all this is given again as his ripest judgment, which, as far as it goes, coincides entirely with the "Brethren" and condemns the Christian Observer of ignorance, not only of Scripture but of their own ablest writers, where they were most confident.*

*Let the reader bear in mind that any names or views of men cited in this paper are not here regarded as of the least authority. They are summoned as Anglican witnesses of respectability to show the unreasonableness of the Christian Observer's criticism and abuse. Take another sample from Dr. Whitby's comment on Matthew 16: 18 (and W. was and perhaps is the favourite commentator with the bishops, professors of divinity, and other leaders of the English Establishment). "First, then, observe that our Lord speaks here of his church, not as a thing in present being, or as a building now erected, but as hereafter to be raised, and therefore doth not say, οἰκοδομῶ, I build at present, but οἰκοδομήσω, upon this rock I will hereafter build my church, the christian church commencing after our Saviour's resurrection and ascension; of such a church to be hereafter founded by St. Peter's preaching to the Jew and Gentile, and the baptizing of men converted by his preaching, our Lord here plainly speaketh in this text . . . Secondly, observe this promise punctually was fulfilled, by our Lord's using St. Peter's ministry, in laying the foundation of a Christian church among the Jews and Gentiles, and in his being the first preacher to them of that faith he doth here confess, and making the first proselytes to it; we therefore, suitably to this promise, find that Peter laid the first foundations of a church among the Jews, by the conversion of three thousand souls, (Acts 2: 41,) who, when they gladly had embraced St. Peter's doctrine, were all baptized, and then we first find mention of a Christian church in these words, 'And the Lord added daily to the Church such as should be saved,' (ver. 47.)" (Whitby's Paraphrase, etc. in loc., Pitman's edition.)

Hear again: "Is Mr. Kelly really so ignorant as not to know that the word ἐκκλησία is constantly used by the Septuagint translators for the Hebrew word which in our English translation is rendered 'congregation' or 'assembly?' The idea of Church, then, was no new thing. Mr. Kelly makes a great parade of his knowledge of the Greek, and of the various readings of the New Testament, where it suits his purpose: he could even tell us that 'the Holy Ghost' used the singular 'the Church' where our version has Churches (Acts 9: 31); but how is it that he has not discovered that the word, 'the Church' in the passage, 'the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved,' is not found in the ancient MSS. but is an unauthorized interpolation; and yet upon this groundless basement he has built his grand fabric, that now for the first time God's Church came into existence." (Pages 898, 899.)

Now in the same page of the Christian Observer there is printed an extract from my Lectures on the Church, which to any man of sense and temper would testify (if the writer questioned my acquaintance with the fact), that the LXX. (as is also done exceptionally in the New Testament) employ the word ἐκκλησία in the sense of the congregation of Israel. I expressly said "The Church, in the New Testament sense of the word," i.e., as the body of Christ; and I challenge this writer, or anybody else, to produce instances from the Septuagint where ἐκκλησία is so used. His insinuation, his logic, and his learning are equally at fault, not to speak of good manners, which I hope one may expect from a decent evangelical journal. If this be so, "the idea of the Church" was a new thing in the sense in question; for there never was before even the thought divulged of believing Jews and Gentiles taken out of their natural associations and united on earth in one body with the Head glorified in heaven. And so far is it from being true that my books referred to contain a parade of Greek and various readings, that, on the contrary, every scholar must see that I refrain from these topics save where the truth would be, in my judgment, seriously affected by reticence. Further, it was my dislike to talk of "the Greek" and "the right translation," which led me to speak, as I do not infrequently, of the blessed "Spirit of God" saying so and so, which I think I never do unless perfectly sure of my ground. But enough of this.

As to the criticism on Acts 2: 47, I recommend the Christian Observer to beware of damaging its character by allowing men to venture on that serious task who are such novices as my reviewer. If his ignorance made him ridiculously timid and captious (not to say more) as to Acts 9: 31, his ignorance makes him ridiculously rash as to Acts 2: 47. "How is it that he [Mr. K.] has not discovered," etc. Let me answer that I have not now discovered anything of what he says, but that I am perfectly sure he knows hardly anything of the matter, no matter what books he had to help him. His statement is in every point of view unfounded. 1, I knew the various readings of this verse quite familiarly, but a statement of them here would have been mere "parade," because the determination of the point is not clear or sure. 2, It is false that the words "the Church" are not found "in the ancient MSS." Is not the famous Codex Bezae of Cambridge a venerable manuscript? Is not Laud's copy of the Acts (now in the Bodleian) an "ancient MS.?" 3, So far is it from being "an unauthorized interpolation," that it is the reading of the vast majority of manuscripts, supported by both the Syriac, the Arabic, and Slavonic versions, not to speak of early citations; though it is wanting in the Sinai, Vatican, Alexandrian, and Rescript of Paris, a few juniors, and the rest of the versions. 4, So far from being "a groundless basement," (as says this slashing sutor ultra crepidam), the greatest of living editors, Prof. Tischendorf, who had yielded in his first edition of the Greek Testament, has replaced τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ in his following editions (except of course his strange Greco-Latin one, Paris 1842), and Griesbach, who is inferior in acumen to none of the past editors, never removed the words.* But the fact is, that the editors who, like Lachmann, omit τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ take ἐπὶ τὸ  αὐτό from the beginning of Acts 3 (as in the received text). Now this makes the sense in substance the same as if τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ were read. "And the Lord was adding daily those that should be saved together." In this case Acts 5: 11 would be the first occurrence of the word, referring to the assembly, or Church, as an existing and known institution; but this would fall in with the idea that the assembly, not yet begun to be built when Christ was on earth, actually commenced at Pentecost and is ever afterwards recognised as a subsisting fact. Lastly, even if the words were removed, my doctrine of the Church is affected no more by their removal than the doctrine of the Trinity by the exclusion of the unquestionable interpolation in 1 John 5. Nor would it be shaken if there were half a dozen dubious insertions of the word ἐκκλησία, for happily both the word and the general truth, presented in a variety of forms and phrases, cover a large part of the Acts of the Apostles as well as the Epistles of Paul.

* As a striking evidence of the precariousness of the clause one way or another, I would cite the exceeding vacillation here of a man in whom learning and piety and spiritual intelligence united to make an unusually good judge of these matters, J. Alb. Bengel, His critical opinions in general were carefully formed and rarely changed. But here, in his ed. maj. of 1734, he only cites the omission of τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ in his margin, or foot of the page, to disapprove of it. In His Gnomon, 1741, he approves of the omission. In his ed. min. of 1753 he is in suspense. Hence in the Spicileg. Lectt. Varr. at the end of the ed. of 1790 (drawn up by E. Bengel) there is no remark whatever on Acts 2: 47 as furnishing any reading especially worthy of attention; whereas it is noted on Acts 9: 31, "ex c. xvi. 5 pluralis videtur irrepsisse. Vim habet h. l., Bengelio judice, numerus singularis."

The writer next (page 899) repeats (on a vague reference which, as far as I can see, does not confirm in the slightest degree his statement) that Matthew's Gospel is relegated to the transition between the beginning of our Lord's ministry and the development of the christian system. (i.e. Pentecost, page 897). I believe it to be one of his usual blunders; for not only have I failed to discover the smallest ground for it in the "Papers on the Gospels," reprinted from the Christian Witness, but it is notoriously contrary to the views which everywhere prevail among "Brethren" on the point. What makes the mistake on his part the graver is that he imputes a motive here, as he often does elsewhere. Some men never seem to feel that there are those on earth who are above every consideration save homage to divine truth. And here it is my duty to tell him that he affirms what is utterly inconsistent with fact, in saying that "the Plymouthites get rid of the application of the parables, which describe, under the phrase 'the kingdom of heaven,' the mixed condition of the Christian Church till the Lord comes again, and confine that to a very limited period." They do neither the one thing nor the other, as every intelligent person who has read their expositions on this gospel, or even short tracts, must know. They teach, on the contrary, that the "kingdom of heaven," though in substance equivalent to and hence often interchangeable with "kingdom of God," differs nevertheless in this that the latter is applied to the state of things while Christ was on earth, the former never is said to be come or set up till He went to heaven. They, as strongly as the Christian Observer, do hold that the parables of the kingdom suppose a mixed condition, and that they extend till the Lord comes again. But that "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of heaven" are not absolutely equivalent terms, is clear and certain from the fact that Matthew uses both terms, and that you could not always, if ever, substitute "kingdom of heaven" in the few passages of his gospel where "kingdom of God" occurs. Our Lord's teaching we believe to be eternal truth: only we must also bow to His own declaration, "I have yet many things to say unto on, you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all the truth." And so He did; and we seek to be obedient to His words and to the Holy Ghost's further communications in the Epistles, whether to the Corinthians or to any others. But we suppose that what is addressed to the members of the Church of God, as to matters of common concernment and duty, do not warrant us, or the writer in the Christian Observer, to claim the authority of Timothy or Titus.

Mark the sophistry of pp. 899, 900. "How do the Plymouth Brethren, in their 'assemblies,' carry out such injunctions as these? — 'I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.' Again; 'I will that men pray everywhere lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.' This relates, surely, to the general Church, and is of general obligation." 1, What extreme preoccupation to overlook the fact that the same letter may contain matter of common obligation, along with peculiar instructions which suppose and are addressed to one possessed of authority and gift conferred for the work to be done by him! 2, Christian men can and do pray everywhere amongst us, while it is impossible on Anglican principles. 3, It is not only fallacious in reasoning but evil in morals to urge that "there is nothing here about waiting till the Holy Ghost sensibly moves us to do these things; they are to be done as a matter of apostolic ordainment." It was the Lord who rebuked Satan's misuse of a scripture with "It is written again." The Christian Observer falls into the same snare. 1 Timothy 2 is not opposed to, but agrees with, 1 Corinthians 14. Paul does not contradict or weaken the earlier communication by the later injunction. Prayer, thanksgiving, prophesying, etc., fall under the common principle of dependence on the power and guidance of the Spirit of God, though they are also regulated by the Lord's authority through the apostolic epistles. To set one against another, as is here done, is the enemy's work. 4. So far are we from making void this part of Scripture, that on the contrary we tax those with that sin who merely borrow from it the names of bishops, elders or presbyters, and deacons and then, set its instructions at nought, besides contenting themselves without the requisite authority. For it is certain by the confession, not only of all the unbiassed, but even of many Anglicans spite of their prejudices, that bishops and presbyters are not two distinct orders but one; and, again, that the diaconate of Scripture has not a feature in common with the unmeaning noviciate which Anglicanism with Popery has inherited from the Catholic system. The christian congregation may look out such trustees of its bounty and external services as deacons; but apostles or their delegates alone can choose elders or bishops. Who then is justly chargeable with setting aside this part of God's holy word? — those who in effect employ it to gain the credit of a scriptural name for their own officials, but who wholly set aside the only source, process, character, and ends of the appointment which Scripture sanctions? or those who, in the fear of God and faith of His word, refuse every infringement of these and all other scriptures, whatever it may cost them? Is it not more humble and deferential to Scripture to confess our lack of due authority rather than to imitate what nobody possesses more than ourselves?

Whether the Christian Observer defends the notion of apostolic succession, is unknown to me: as being an evangelical organ, it is to be presumed that they abandon that pretension to others. Who then is to do the work of Paul and Barnabas in ordaining elders? Who is to take up the task deputed to Titus by the Apostle Paul? Those who claim and exercise such authority ought to prove that they are similarly, or at least validly, invested with it by the Lord. The attitude of "Brethren" is simple and clear. We do not go beyond the word of God, and are thankful that, if we cannot do all that the apostles or their delegates did, we can freely do whatever God is pleased to put within our little compass, and find our own blessing and the profit of others proportionate to our fidelity and lowliness, which we pray Him to increase. It is confessed by all men of any weight, and, if it were not, it is patent to every believer in the word of God, that to preach and pray, to baptize and break bread, never needed ordination even in presence of the entire college of apostles. Hence our doing any or all these things, as God leads and enables us, is strictly within the limits of the general orders of Him whose we are and whom we serve. If any men exhibit the qualities required in such as desire to be bishops, or elders, and deacons, we own them and their labours, valuing them for their work and submitting to them as over us in the Lord. This 1 Thess. 5, 1 Cor. 16, Rom. 12, show we can do without exceeding our bounds, or imitating Paul and Titus, as some do. Far from narrow views of ministry, we recognize real ministers as well as members in the English Establishment, and of course in the various orthodox Dissenting Societies, as heartily as among our selves. But this does not hinder our conviction that unscriptural arrangements (partly relies of Popery, partly through governmental influence, partly through lack of heed to God's word) have effaced much truth as to the Church and ministry for Christians in general. Is this impossible or even improbable? I am surprised that any man pretending to teach others should fail to distinguish between an exhortation in 1 Timothy 2 meant expressly for all christian men and women, and a charge as to dealing with bishops meant for Timothy. Any and all in Timothy's position may act and ought to act thus; but surely all who do so should have credentials like Timothy. Who are they now? (Page 900.) Those who set up to do what Timothy or Titus did without their authority seem to act "most presumptuously," not those who confine themselves within what they are sure is their duty before God. What would have been thought of, what would have befallen, the Roman citizen in the days of Domitian or Nerva who, because he found a description of Roman officers (say in Cicero's letters), proceeded incontinently to appoint them alone or with others? "The Plymouth Teachers," as they are called, are clearly on the side of legitimate authority; the Christian Observer is here broaching the rights of man, or rather the wrongs of anarchy. The principle of their argument is religious radicalism, their practice is insubjection to Scripture: "Brethren" abhor both.

"Our authority shall again be Mr. Kelly. Upon this point he is most positive and dogmatic. This is one of his statements: 'In fact, as far as the New Testament speaks — and it speaks fully and precisely, (the italics in the following are his own) — 'no one was ever ordained by man to preach the gospel.'" And what is the refutation? For there is nothing like having a clear, downright ("most positive and dogmatic") statement to deal with, if it be erroneous. "Now this is asserted, be it remembered, in the face of the fact that each of the elders whom Titus was 'to ordain in every city' was to have this qualification, that he was to be one 'holding fast the faithful word, in teaching, that he may be able both to exhort and convince the gainsayers.'" And then he proceeds to compare me to the voice of the Vatican, a pope, etc. Really the Christian Observer is fallen to a low ebb if they can put forward no more competent person to defend their own system or to combat those whom they may believe wrong. I warned them already of this writer's inability to do service. If they are still unable to appreciate the state of the case, they have many friends who will discern the worth of such talk as this: argument it is not, still less is it unfolding the precious and sure testimonies of God. Does the writer not comprehend that preaching the gospel, or evangelizing, is wholly distinct from the functions of an elder? I will not accuse him of anything undue in adopting the marginal alternative, though in my judgment the common text is better than the active sense which thus comes in so awkwardly. But letting it pass, no "Plymouth Brother" doubts that an elder was ordained by competent authority, and that his duty was with sound teaching both to exhort and to refute gainsayers; but how does this prove that he or anybody else was ordained to evangelize? Nay, I am bold enough to go farther and to affirm that multitudes preached freely in the best days of the Church, when the fullest authority was there, without question of ordination; and that he who disputes my affirmation seems to me open to the just reproach of excessive boldness and of no less ignorance of his Bible. (See Acts 8: 4; Acts 11: 19-21; Acts 18: 24-28, etc.) Even teaching was not the work for which the elders were chosen, but to rule. Hence, says the apostle (1 Tim. 5: 17), "let the elders that rule (or, take the lead) well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine." Thus, their business was ruling, overseeing, shepherding the church within a given sphere: if they took the lead well, they were to be esteemed worthy of double honour, especially those labouring in word and doctrine, which last clause implies an excellent service that was beyond their required episcopal functions. It was necessary that a bishop should be (not exactly "a teacher" but) "apt to teach," possessed of a capacity for instruction. Others might be teachers, yet not eligible for exercising oversight, because of the want of moral power for government, which last was the chief desideratum in an elder.

If Scripture nowhere pledges the perpetuation of an ordaining authority, what is the fair inference? Is it not a perfect standard? Was it not provided for all times and circumstances? Did not God who wrote it give us every requisite for obedience and godly order, individually and corporately, ruler and ruled, teachers and taught, till the Lord come? Is anything lacking to its words which ought to be supplied? It is not "Brethren" at least who imply that it is defective and needs either the supplement of tradition, the system of development, or the new inventions of human wit.

Let us test the principle by facts. Who honour most the Epistles, not to the Corinthians or the Ephesians only, but to Timothy and Titus — the Christians who let the government of the day choose the bishops or elders; or those who own they have not those apostolic envoys, and therefore refuse to go beyond their measure, whether as simple disciples or as possessing gifts as teachers, evangelists, etc.? Far from slighting, it is their sense of the superior place and the definite mission of such as Timothy and Titus, which makes themselves shrink from the pretension to appoint and regulate bishops as those did. There is no arguing in a circle, any more than setting aside the scripture. We cannot but tell the Dissenter that he disobeys them, because in his system the church chooses men to minister in the word and to rule; we cannot but tell the Anglican that he is at least as guilty, because in his system the squire, or the Lord Chancellor, or a college, or the crown chooses similarly: both parties in manifest opposition to the uniform practice of the early Church and to the plain word of God. It needs no "positiveness of a pope," but only the simplicity of faith in Scripture, to know without a doubt that these Dissenting and Anglican methods are at issue with the only principle of ordaining elders laid down in the Bible. Yet because we hold to this firmly and say so, we are charged with nullifying the Epistles to Timothy and Titus and "taking extraordinary liberties with God's written word!" (Page 99l.) As honestly asserting the place of apostolic delegates and cleaving to these very epistles, we are obliged to condemn the present practice of Christendom as palpably unscriptural. Will the Christian Observer dare to affirm that Anglican or Dissenting appointments (which indeed cannot both be scriptural) are the same as the apostle enjoined on Timothy and Titus? I can understand his soreness and hard names: it is usual with men who know themselves wrong.

"For what purpose, then, we ask again, as respects us, were the Epistles to Timothy and Titus written?" Surely one weighty lesson, and in order not the last perhaps in the present state of Christendom, is that no Christian should sanction a direct violation of that which they teach us as to the appointment of elders. The Christian Observer knows perfectly well that Anglican appointments are not according to those epistles, any more than the popular call of Dissent. If any of the "Brethren" set himself to ordain elders because Titus was commissioned so to do, there would be good reason to challenge his authority and to denounce his acts. Is it not rather too bad to blame us because we refuse any such assumption in deference to these and other scriptures, and frankly allow that none of us has the place of a Timothy or a Titus in this respect?

But the second lesson we gather from these epistles is that a very small part indeed is confined to this peculiar relation of the apostolic delegates to elders. It is in fact with them as with almost all other scriptures: if certain points here and there are special, much the greater portion directly concerns believers in general, and every whit is or ought to be instructive to us all. Thus, from first to last in these epistles, how much there is of the deepest importance to every Christian! The value of sound doctrine, the rejection of fables and unprofitable questionings, the end of what the apostle enjoined, even love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith, and the danger of missing this in the desire to be law-teachers, with the lack of intelligence which invariably accompanies it (for such pervert the law unlawfully to the righteous, instead of knowing and using its application to the lawless, impious, unholy, violent, unclean, and in short anything else contrary to sound doctrine according to the gospel of the glory committed to the apostle): all this is but the beginning of 1 Timothy 1. But why need I thus enlarge? The present value "as respects us" is unquestionable; and even that which was exceptional, so far from dying with Paul or Timothy, has this momentous and living use, that it furnishes a divine test to judge whether those who now assume Timothy's functions as to elders have Timothy's qualifications and authority. My knowledge of a magistrate's office and duties, according to the country's laws, does not warrant me to set up myself or my neighbour as a magistrate; but, far from being useless, it may, in a day of difficulty, be the means of preserving others besides myself from owning those who claim to be in the commission of the peace without the necessary authorization (i.e., in fact, from rebellion).

There is a third lesson of great practical value deducible even from the special instructions in the pastoral epistles, where there was no apostle nor apostolic man to appoint local functionaries. They, clearly state the qualities spiritual, moral, and even circumstantial, required in bishops or elders. The possession of them all, however unquestionable, would not in my judgment warrant a man to call himself an elder or bishop, nor another who was not duly authorized, nor the assembly so to call him: but it would be the strongest ground, where due ordination could not be had, for all godly-minded saints to be subject to such, to recognize them as labouring and taking the lead among brethren in the Lord, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. "Obey your rulers (or leaders, chief men, τοῖς ἡγουμένοις ὑμῶν), and submit yourselves," would thus apply to the conscience wherever such men watched over their souls in the fear of God, though no apostle or apostolic delegate had ever penetrated there.

This may suffice for the argument drawn from the pastoral epistles. A wise opponent would have carefully retired from that field. For it is the part of God's oracles which sentences to death ordinary ministerial appointment, as hopelessly as 1 Corinthians exposes the actual departure of Christians from God's order for the assembly, and from the principle and exercise of gifts in it. (1 Cor. 12, 1 Cor. 14.) Do they so much as think of their indifference to these things?

It is strange that such an effusion should pass muster with a staff of (I hope) grave, godly, and educated, if not learned, men.

As to the remarks in the rest of page 901, it is due neither to the writer nor to myself, still less to the Master, that I should dwell on such improprieties. "To our view, his 'Fundamental Truths' are so many fundamental errors. It would be easy to demonstrate, had we space for it, that he is wrong, most egregiously wrong, upon every one of his points. He may well be afraid of mathematics. By his method we would undertake to prove anything whatever out of the Bible," etc. Uninstructed minds are apt to over-estimate their own powers and attainments; but such a specimen of self-confidence, with so little bottom for it, one rarely meets with. There is no man possessed of a fair knowledge of Scripture who does not hold with me, that God's word is sometimes explicit, sometimes not, and that only unbelief doubts its preciousness in either case. Let any instance be produced where explicitness was predicated of it or denied to it wrongly (both of which errors might easily be made by anyone): if I have been guilty in this respect, show it like an honest man; if not, confess that "the true sectarian style" is on the part of those who can thus prate maliciously at random. It is no enviable strong-mindedness which can do without God's word, or which feels not the precious wisdom of its utterances and even of its silence. To the believer all is perfect and instructive: but all men have not faith, and to such every expression of spiritual enjoyment is offensive and suspicious. Habitually acting without Scripture, they must keep up the courage of those subject to their influence, and so run down our pressure of subjection to Scripture, as the Papists do, by undertaking after our method "to prove anything whatever out of the Bible." Need I say that they prove nothing beyond their own evil eye and self-sufficiency? With every desire to avoid a style so unbecoming, let us pass on to page 902 where the writer recurs to the supposed error of believing that the Church of God, Christ's body, began after the ascension of our Lord and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Now we do not "assume" but produce the amplest testimony of scripture that the Spirit's baptism of believing Jews and Gentiles into one body, the body of Christ, did not exist before the middle-wall of partition was broken down by the cross of Christ and the Holy Spirit was sent down to unite the members to Him and to each other. It is this state of union with a glorified Head which is not found in the Old Testament. On the contrary, by God's law the Jew (believer or not) was peremptorily, in every detail of walk and worship, separated from the Gentile (believer or not). Nay, even during our Lord's ministry here below, the same separation was, as a rule, maintained when He sent out the twelve to preach over the land of Israel (Matt. 10: 5, 6). After His resurrection He gives His disciples a world-wide commission to all the Gentiles; and in due time the Holy Ghost came down baptizing both Jew and Gentile into one body, one new man. Thus and then was revealed that mystery hid previously in God, now made known to His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. Such is the Church of God, Christ's body. Not a syllable in 1 Corinthians 10 intimates that the Old Testament fathers were members of it. Nobody denies that believers among them were saints, looking for Christ and regenerate of the Spirit; but where are they called Christ's body, or said to be baptized by the Holy Ghost? The writer does not see that there may be many blessings common to the faithful at all times, and a new corporation formed from among the redeemed within given limits for the glory of God. This cannot be determined à priori or on vague general grounds. It would be wiser to weigh the alleged proofs, and above all the Scriptures. Indeed it is a more logical inference from 1 Corinthians 10 that the Jewish fathers could not have essential identity with us, because the apostle says these things happened as "types" of us. For a type suggests resemblance, and not, as he contends, identity with the antitype.

So Hebrews 11, to which he next appeals (p. 902), concludes with a verse remarkably adverse to the notion that they and we form one body; for the words he cites expressly teach that God has provided a better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Instead of being perfected in resurrection glory, when the Lord came and wrought redemption, they had to wait for us who are called to partake of the heavenly calling. (Chap. 3) When we have all got our" better thing," they will be perfected (not apart from but) with us. That is, the verse teaches with equal distinctness that God has foreseen some better thing as to us, and that we and they are to be perfected together; but not a trace appears of the union of them and us in one body. Hebrews 12: 23 distinguishes between the spirits of just men made perfect (the Old Testament saints), and the church of the firstborn.

Again, if Stephen treats of Moses being ἐν τῃ ἐκκλησίᾳ with the angel that spoke to him in Mount Sinai and the fathers, Pearson and Alford will, with the "Brethren," correct his error, and tell him that it was the assembly of Israel in the wilderness, not the one body of believing Jews and Gentiles. Will he be bold enough to say that the Bishop and the Dean were "utterly obfuscated by their sectarian theory?" He ought to be more cautious, and not scandalize his evangelical magazine by abusing too strongly men far more instructed and able than himself, when letting out against the "Plymouth Brethren."* It is to be presumed that some of its readers are decently acquainted with common Anglican divinity.

* It may be worth while to add that among men of known ability and of every ecclesiastical shade, even of some as far as possible from "Brethren" and of others on the evangelical platform, there is no hesitation in coming to the same conclusion as I do on Acts 7: 38. There is this slight difference that some, as Grotius, contend for the congregation of Israel in general, while others, as Kühnöl, think that it means that particular assembly of Israel which gathered at Sinai when the law was given. But I do not know a single person of weight who does not accept one or other of these shades of the same thing, without a word about the inference which the Christian Observer seems to think everybody holds except "the Brethren." This is the more remarkable, because most of these writers held the usual loose traditional view of the Church as the aggregate expression of God's people from first to last. Yet they were faithful enough to Holy Writ not to force this verse to say what it was not intended to convey. Thus Schleusner says on the expression here, "concio Israelitarum, ad audiendam legem convocata;" and Dr. Hastings Robinson in his monograph (Πράξεις τῶν Ἀποστόλων, Cantabr. 1824) differs not from others: "Sermo est in h. 1. de certa quadam populi concione, qualis illa fuit in promulganda lege ad montem Sinai congregata." Meyer (Krit. exeget. Kommentar, Göttingen, 1835, in loc.) takes the same view, as does Bloomfield. The truth is that the word ἐκκλησία in itself determines nothing, as being applied, even in the book of the Acts alone, in three senses, Jewish, Gentile, and Christian: — first, the assembly in the wilderness; secondly, the assembly at Ephesus; and thirdly, the assembly whether in Jerusalem, etc., or absolutely. It is the context which decides either by some particular qualification or by the general bearing.

Nor does the writer perceive that the argument here surrenders the citadel. Christ, says he, "as 'the angel of the covenant' was in the Church in the wilderness,' as Stephen says (Acts 7: 38), before He actually became its human Head, because His incarnation was an anticipated fact in the divine purposes. He existed in posse before he existed in esse, as the logicians say." (P. 903.) This bit of logic is unfortunate. For Scripture speaks of the Church as the πλήρωμα or complement of Christ, never of the glorified Head as the fulness of the Church. It is our point in opposition to the Christian Observer that Christ's headship of the Church was only in posse, not yet in esse till the basis not of incarnation only but of redemption. It is now confessed that it was not in esse. This is a fatal admission: for that which wants a head is not a body but a trunk or a monster. Scripture never speaks of the body before the head but rather as following it. Thus, Ephesians 1 tells us God raised up Christ from the dead and set Him in heaven, "and gave him to be head over all things to the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." So the figure of the building in Ephesians 2 where Christians are said to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. Was the building begun before the foundation was laid? Our question is one of fact, not of the counsels of God, who of course sees the end from the beginning. Were the question about the existence of Adam and Eve (who set forth the mystery as to Christ and the Church), what would be thought of the argument that Adam and therefore Eve existed in posse in the dust of the ground on the fifth day?

Again, there is nothing about that one body, the Church, in Hebrews 13: 8, or in Matthew 21: 43. One text speaks of the unchangeableness of "Jesus Christ;" the other intimates the rejection of "that generation" which refused Him, and the passing of God's kingdom to a nation producing the fruits of it. What has either to do with the question whether those before and after Christ form one and the same body? This is not reasoning, still less Scripture; but a mere popular notion without Scripture as to those before Christ, and against Scripture as to those since Christ. It is a tradition, founded on grounds which real scholars of his own and all parties explode as untenable. Indeed any Christian can judge for himself.

The motive too which he imputes (pp. 902, 903) is his own fancy, and contrary to all our thoughts and words. If he in the least understood our principles, he would see that to constitute a peculiar church of ours is quite foreign to us. We object to making a church, as much as to the churches, so-called, other men have made. We insist on the truth that God made, and intended there should be according to His blessed will and word, but one Church — not, of course, denying any number of assemblies locally severed, but all Christians forming one assembly, the assembly here on earth; all enjoying one Head above and one Spirit below; all joined into one body, so that a member of Christ should be a member of the assembly everywhere; and similarly His gifts of ministry. (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4.) Such was the fact in apostolic times: Scripture recognizes no other doctrine or practice. "Brethren" only recall believers to the Church God has made, of which they and we are already members, and entreat them to cast away the worn and soiled clouts as well as the new fashions of human texture, and to cleave simply to what is of God's word and Spirit.

Next, we come once more to 1 Corinthians and the Christian Observer's never failing misstatement as to both Scripture and ourselves. 1. It is not true that this is "the stronghold of 'the Brethren.'" Of course, we believe it to have divine authority over us and all Christians; and it is ridiculous to evade the fact that we are really seeking, cost what it may, to act on it, and that our brethren, Anglican and Dissenting, are not. All Scripture, nothing less, is our stronghold.

2. It is not true that, "because they find at the beginning of this the expression, 'the church of God which is at Corinth,' they conclude that that, as set in order by the apostle, must have been intended to be a pattern church." We see and say that there is admirable harmony between the address and the contents of the epistle; but we conclude that it is the most largely ecclesiastical, and therefore the most instructive on such matters, from the plain fact (deny it who can?), that it enters into questions of the sort, not only more than any other epistle, but more than all other epistles put together. At Corinth the spirit of schism and party displayed itself early. (1 Cor. 1.) Here the wisdom of the world soon claimed to adorn the doctrine of the cross. (1 Cor. 2.) Here schools of doctrine quickly found mutually opposed votaries. (1 Cor. 3.) Here apostolic authority was widely despised for teachers who allowed the world and flattered the flesh. (1 Cor. 4.)  - Here gross practical evil was winked at, as if the christian assembly were not competent and responsible to put away known evildoers. (1 Cor. 5.) Here was seen readiness to neglect brotherly arbitration for the world's decisions, forgetting the grace of rather suffering wrong than compromising the love and glory of Christ; here too moral laxity was an especial snare. (1 Cor. 6.) Here difficulties as to marriage, as to the unmarried, as to widows, and as to slaves, required solution. (1 Cor. 7.) Here questions of communion and conscience as to idols, temples, and things sacrificed, demanded an answer, and his own ministry to be vindicated, however he might have waived its rights; for such was his joy and glory. (1 Cor. 8, 1 Cor. 9, 1 Cor. 10.) Here the order as to women, even in points of external decorum, had to be laid down; and also the right mode of celebrating the Eucharist is given. (1 Cor. 11) Here the operation of the Holy Ghost with a view to the common profit of the assembly had to be explained; and this, not in view of any local need only but of the Church as such everywhere on earth; for it was not in any one church but in the christian assembly as a whole that God set, first, apostles; secondly, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healing, etc. (1 Cor. 12.) There too after the sweet episode on love in 1 Cor. 13. (how needful in such things!), the apostle had to regulate the exercise of the manifestations of the Spirit, especially for the assembly when they came together. (1 Cor. 14.) Again, after the assertion of resurrection against gainsayers as a foundation truth — not merely the soul's immortality but the rising of the dead (1 Cor. 15.), he lays down the general principle and method of collections for the poor saints, and treats of the various ways of divine grace in the service of Christ here below. (1 Cor. 16.) I have but sketched the salient features, as the chapters pass before the mind's eye: but where can one match these inimitable church canons? Still none that knows the value of what is "written again" thinks of making any spot the stronghold, or any church exclusively a pattern church. There is not even the shadow of an excuse for either misrepresentation. What can one think of a man who, when his mistake is corrected and contradicted, simply repeats it without a word or fact adduced as an excuse for his obstinacy?

3. Who ever dreamt that "the Church of God was to be found only at Corinth, because this expression is used" in the address? Nobody but the Christian Observer in its rash efforts against the "Brethren."

4. It is not a gratuitous assumption but a necessary consequence of the inspired character of 1 Corinthians, that "what is there written respecting the Church" is obligatory on every assembly which claims to be on the ground of God's Church. Human churches may take or leave what they like, or do not like, out of this or any other epistle. How striking it is that the very address of this epistle, from which they try to escape (sometimes under the subtle excuse of their deference to other epistles or churches!), is not merely to the Church of God at Corinth, to the sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, but "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours."

5. Is it honest to say that "the apostle speaks of several things as exceptional, or only of temporary purpose?" This may be convenient to a defender of present things in Christendom; but why not specify? It is true that the apostle corrects their mingling of a feast with the Lord's Supper; but if he enjoins anything exceptional or temporary, why not say what? If the allusion be to miracles, tongues, etc., it seems to me unworthy of a grave man. His directions as to these things abide, just as his injunctions to a Timothy or a Titus. If such powers exist at any time, they must submit to the apostolic order; and if any man have the authority from God of a Timothy or a Titus, they can appoint and govern as their predecessors did — nay, they are bound so to do. But there seems rather more care taken to assert the general value and authority ecclesiastically of 1 Corinthians than of any other epistle, if one may judge from such passages as chapter 1 Cor. 1: 2; 1 Cor. 4: 17; 1 Cor. 7: 17; 1 Cor. 11: 16; 1 Cor. 14: 37. Does not this peculiar provision seem meant to guard souls from that prevalent unbelief of which the Christian Observer is here the exponent?

6. "And if that Church were designed to be made the model for all Churches, in all countries, and in all ages, the epistle to it ought obviously to have been the very first epistle St. Paul wrote. But the First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians at least is of earlier date; so is that to the Galatians; and that to the Romans is coeval if not somewhat earlier." The argument has no force, laying aside the irreverence of dictating to God the order in which He ought to reveal His truth, which lies at the bottom of it. But, in fact, no objection can be more worthless. For there is evident propriety in the Epistles to the Thessalonians taking the priority in time of all others. They develop christian life in its fresh simplicity and in its capital elements of faith, hope, and love, though correcting specially certain errors into which they fell or were misled in the great article of our hope, and insisting on the moral duties which suit that hope, instead of being incompatible with it, as some vainly supposed. There is no niche which these epistles could so well fill as that in which the Spirit of God was in fact pleased to put them — an initiatory instruction and exhortation to an infant assembly. The date of Galatians is the least ascertainable of all Paul's epistles, some making it first, some last, and many viewing it as intermediate. There is no sufficient reason to postpone it till the apostle's visit to Rome, as the legendary subscription in the common Bible does, followed by not a few names of weight. I do not even contend for its being so late as the Epistle to the Romans, which was certainly written at Corinth long before he saw Rome, but after the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written from Ephesus, and even after the second was written somewhere in Macedonia, before his stay of three months in Greece, when and whence he wrote to the Romans. But, supposing that the Epistle to the Galatians could be proved to be anterior to 1 Corinthians, contrary to the recent investigation of Prof. Lightfoot, what would be the value of the argument? Who can fail to see that to deliver saints from abandoning grace for the law (which is the point in Galatians) is an individual appeal of the most urgent personal importance, and therefore might well precede the laying down of the divine will as to corporate privileges and responsibilities? But the truth is, that the measure of uncertainty which hangs over the place and time of writing to the Galatians suits exactly. The aim was their recovery from a lapse into Judaising, which might have been either before or after or along with 1 Corinthians. But the Epistle to the Romans was assuredly written in Corinth during the apostle's brief stay in Achaia, after both Epistles to the Corinthians were written and despatched. The Christian Observer therefore is all abroad in the alleged facts: but had these even been correct, the desired conclusion would not follow.

In a former reply it has been already shown that a model place is not given to the Corinthian assembly more than to any other which the apostle planted or wrote to. We go on the broad ground that the same substantial principles were in force everywhere, that all the assemblies of God recognized the same fundamental truths as to communion, the same exercise of gifts and discipline, the same administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper:- all this because the Church is one body, the habitation of God through the Spirit. Scripture is fatal to the present condition of Christendom. Our critic somehow must get rid of the authority that condemns it all. Is not this the aim of the following remarks? "The apostle of the Gentiles seems to have had no idea of conforming the churches, as established in different countries, among people of different habits, to exactly the same type. That would have been Judaism indeed. There is a certain pliancy in Christianity in this respect. The churches planted by the apostles were, so far as we can discover, differently endowed as to gifts, and so they had prescribed for them different rules of action. (!) The Plymouthites admit that the age of miracles has passed away, so far as the supply of 'apostles and prophets' is concerned. By what kind of logic, then, can they contend for its permanence in the supply of 'evangelists, pastors, and teachers?' If the Plymouth Brethren can exhibit the miraculous gifts possessed by the Corinthian Christians, we, for our part, will not object to their acting by the same rules; but to enforce the rules for their exercise, where the gifts do not exist, would be obviously Pharisaic and foolish. The laws of the first creation of the world were exceptional: the laws of its continued existence are fixed and uniform. Is not the same true of the Church?" (Pp. 903, 904.) Now it is no question of detail, nor of the presence of this or that particular gift in this or that particular assembly. The truth is, not that Brethren contend for some one out of the scriptural churches as a model (for we are convinced that they were all essentially alike as to constitution, the Church in fact), but that our adversaries want no model whatever from Scripture. And no wonder.

I utterly deny the ground of the reasoning. Differences in the measure of supply, varying displays of power, there were in apostolic days, yet there was one divine system which then pervaded the entire christian profession, founded not only on a common relationship to Christ but on the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. This then is the true question: Does that relationship still subsist for faith to act on? Is that divine Person still present here below to guide those who desire the honour of Christ in obeying God's word? Let others gainsay not only that it remains but that it ever was true, and thus in vain deny their responsibility and their guilt. May "Brethren" in their weakness have grace to hold fast the word of the Lord and not deny His name! It is not true that all the gifts described in 1 Corinthians are gone, because miracles and tongues are no longer. Does the Christian Observer doubt that God any longer sets in the Church teachers (1 Cor. 12.)? That He still makes His presence felt in His assembly (1. Cor. 14.)? There have been Anglican bishops and archbishops who, spite of their system, fully allowed that the prophetic (not predictive) gift is not extinct, and who yearned and contended for the liberty of exercising it; and this on the same ground of 1 Corinthians 14. as "Brethren" take. So far is this chapter from being limited to miraculous displays, that the apostle forbids the exercise of a tongue unless some one could interpret it for the edification of the assembly. Such was the grand aim of all — common edification, and this in order and decency. But the order is that of the christian assembly open to the action of the Holy Ghost through its members — an order undoubtedly believed in and acted on by "Brethren." Will the Christian Observer dare to say it is obsolete? Will they say that no gifts, not even teachers, exist, because tongues, etc., are passed away? "Laws of creation" is mere clap-trap which can only mislead. God created all things by the Son, by whom too all things subsist. He formed the christian assembly which can never depart from His word given to regulate it, save sinfully.

It is true that it was pre-eminently Paul's province to lay down the authoritative regulation of these matters; but God took care to affirm precisely identical principles by the great apostle of the circumcision. So we read in 1 Peter 4: 10, 11, "As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." This unquestionably supposes the most absolute openness for the Spirit's action in the free working of every gift from the Lord. Not even an apostle, still less the elders or bishops, thought of silencing the lesser gifts. There was room for all, great and small. Nor were gifted men merely at liberty to employ what was given them for the good of souls; they were bound to minister to one another, as good stewards of God's various grace. Otherwise God would not be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. Flesh might take advantage of this; but no human restriction can afford a remedy: on the contrary it aggravates this evil, introduces others, and in itself outrages God's revealed will. The trite guard lies in the conscience exercised before Him and subject to His word. Hence the exhortation of James (James 3: 1), "My brethren, be not many masters [teachers], knowing that we shall receive greater judgment." The abuse of gift was in no way peculiar to Corinth, but the very abuse, whether in one place or another, demonstrates what was the sanctioned principle of God which required the warning, and this where no sign-gift is spoken of, but only such a gift as abides still for the edification of Christ's body. If indeed the Christian Observer's view is that no such gifts as evangelists, pastors, and teachers, are still given by the Lord, if they are obliged to substitute for them the scanty mathematical or classical lore possessed by the ordinary graduates of a university, and the common-places of divinity required by an examining chaplain, one can understand that much of Scripture ceases to apply either in principle or in practice. It is for the believer to judge between us and our adversaries. We hold that' every spiritual gift needed to call in souls and build them up is still provided by our living Head; and consequently that the Scriptures which treat of this subject are as applicable and binding as in the day they were written. Whose logic is at fault? Whose principles make Scripture a dead letter?

It is remarkable that the principle for which men now contend was anticipated by the Corinthians, and is for ever condemned in this very chapter 14 of the first epistle. The Corinthian brethren also wished a certain "pliancy" in their church. They saw that some of their females were endowed with gifts. Why should people of habits so different from those in Judea, or proconsular Asia, be conformed to exactly the same type? "That would have been Judaism indeed." Surely the apostle of the Gentiles had no idea of conforming all in different countries to the same model! Has not the church power to decree rites and ceremonies? has it not authority in controversies of faith? The apostle of the Gentiles does pronounce on the case, but it is to put down with peremptory hand this licentious self-will which forgets that the Church, even on earth and though composed of living men, is a divine institution, and cannot be altered in its landmarks without rebellion. Did they contend for tongues in the assembly? Did they come together every one full of his own contribution? Did they prophesy ever so many on the same occasion? Did they allow women to speak in the assembly? These were abuses of christian liberty in the assembly, which must be subject to apostolic ordinance, instead of arrogating the title to please itself according to race, age, or country. "What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only? If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant." This is the alternative for the Christian Observer as well as for ourselves. Which of us owns and seeks subjection to the things the apostle of the Gentiles wrote to the Corinthians? Which of us contends for leave to give up this very portion of Scripture as of present obligation? Which of us seeks to originate methods of our own as the Corinthians did? Which of us insists that the word of God comes to us only (not from us as "a certain pliancy" would imply)?

As for the notion that it is illogical to contend for the permanent supply of evangelists, pastors, and teachers, if apostles and prophets be not now vouchsafed, I can only stand amazed at the extent of these men's incredulity as well as ignorance. Are they so far gone as to think that we must have either all the gifts the ascended Christ conferred on the Church at first, or none? Had we the miraculous sign-gifts of those early days, 1 Corinthians 14 forbids their exercise save under peculiar circumstances in the assembly; whereas the edification-gifts were exactly in place and season there. Does this writer believe that we have no edification-gifts now? no evangelists, pastors, teachers? or will he boldly take the other side and claim the continued supply of apostles and prophets too? Nothing is simpler than that the Lord does not furnish gifts to lay the foundation when the foundation is laid; but that He in faithful love continues all gifts needed to build up the saints "till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." (Eph. 4: 13.) If these divine gifts exist (as we believe) among all Christians, Anglicans, Dissenters, as well as ourselves, is it Pharisaic and foolish to enforce the divine rules? Is it not Corinthianism to seek other rules or no rules at all?

Next, as to Calvin's note on 1 Corinthians 1: 21 (p. 904), so far from being opposed to our views, few brethren have taught or commented on this epistle, as on others, without similar reflections. God is long-suffering and faithful; but a real assembly of His may be distracted by countless elements of sin, shame, and sorrow. The Christian Observer does not understand our aim, nor does Calvin touch the point. Since Catholicism swamped Christendom, which then broke out into the rival systems of the east and west, there has been no gathering of God's children in the power of the Spirit to the name of the Lord as their true and everlasting centre. on earth. The Reformation, which did so much for putting man in presence of God's word and proclaimed justification by faith, did not clear from the rubbish of ages the revealed truth as to the Church, ministry, worship, etc. On the contrary, it embarrassed the, ecclesiastical difficulty by giving rise to national churches, each with its own peculiar system of government, ministry, and discipline, independent and co-ordinate. This was pushed out yet farther by the non-conformists at home and abroad who claimed the title to frame churches of their own. Thus, the result was (not the Church of God on earth, one body, energized by one Spirit, with local assemblies doubtless, but the members and ministers in the unity of Christ's body, but) distinct bodies, Roman Catholic or Greek, National or Dissenting, with no proper intercommunion, only occasional or by courtesy, but contrariwise membership and ministry in a church, so that to be a member or minister of one is incompatible with belonging to another. What people call Plymouth Brethrenism is the recall of Christians to the original state of things in its essential features, as of eternal obligation and the only groundwork truly divine. We leave it with God to give this re-assertion of the Church according to Scripture that measure of acceptance which seems good in His eyes; but whether we convince others or not, our own duty remains clear, as it is our joy and, we believe, both glorifying to God and profitable to His children.

It is curious, however, that the Christian Observer omits in its citation the pith of Calvin's answer to the question what appearance of a church was any longer presented in Corinth. Let me supply his words, "Respondeo: Quum illi dictum esset a Domino, Ne timeas, populus hic mihi multus est (Act. 18: 9): hujus promissionis memorem id honoris paucis bonis detulisse, ut Ecclesiam agnosceret in magna improborum multitudine. Deinde," etc. The Lord's word that He had much people in that city sustained his hopes spite of appearances. Now, although satisfied Calvin did not seize the truth of Scripture as to much, any more than other great and good men of that day, yet I do not dissent from his conclusion that the true assembly of God in any place may be painfully afflicted with all sorts of evil in the members. 1 Corinthians 5 is explicit, as are other Scriptures, that it is not the amount of sin that may enter or spring up in the midst, but the refusal to judge, and the consequent sanction given to evil there which destroys the corporate title of the Church as God's witness here below.

The reader may gather hence how little either the Donatists or the Plymouth Brethren so-called are understood, classed as they are here together. "They are attempting what the Donatists attempted in the first century." (p. 904.) This at least is a discovery! I had been content to know with less pretentious students of ecclesiastical history, that the squabble about the election of Caecilianus (A.D. 311) is the earliest point to which we could look as giving occasion for that famous rent in Africa. From the works of Optatus and Augustine I had learnt nearly all that can be ascertained about that turbulent faction. It seemed to be far more a question of discipline than of doctrine if not of party opposition, the Numidian bishops being piqued that they had no part as usual in the election. Felix, bishop of Apthunga, who ordained the new bishop of Carthage, was said to be a traditor during the persecution of Dioclesian, and Caecilianus himself also was accused of ill conduct at that time. The elder Donatus who took part in the election of Majorinus, the bishop of the seceders, was the bishop of Casae Nigrae of that day; the greater one, who seems to have given the name of Donatists to the party, was successor of Majorinus. Spite of a fierce persecution, which Augustine palliated in the hope that it would be good for their souls, they appear to have gone on sometimes flourishing, and sometimes depressed, till Mohammedanism extinguished both them and the Catholics. Insisting on the rebaptism of all whom they received from their adversaries and refusing all communion save to such as absolutely broke off spiritual connection with others, they differed essentially from the so-called Plymouth Brethren. For we believe, that no ecclesiastical mistake, however grave in itself, calls for such stringent measures, and that extremities ought to be reserved for those who bring not the doctrine of Christ or connive at Antichrist.

But there is another discovery as to Scripture which rivals the Christian Observer's sight of the Donatists in the first century, and this in the very next sentence of the same paragraph. (p. 904.) "It is as clear as anything can be, that there never was 'the one body' in the sense the Plymouth Brethren would put upon the words, that is, a church consisting exclusively of true saints (?) in perfect unity one with another (?) since the day that the three thousand, along with the previous hundred and twenty true disciples, assembled with one accord at Jerusalem, and had all things common. The Corinthian Church certainly exhibited the reverse of this: and indeed, in all the apostolic churches, as described in the epistles, we find precisely the same evils, more or less, and still greater moral evils prevailing, than can be found now in any community of Christians. Are there no similar evils, even among 'the Brethren' themselves, with all their pretensions to oneness and to exclusive purity?" (Pp. 904, 905.), I know not how godly Anglicans relish such remarks as these on the dead as well as the living; but I avow that a lower tone of spiritual judgment it has rarely been my pain to meet with. Defamation of the apostolic church seems natural to those who apologise for Christendom as it is, and dislike the testimony to their own departure from God's word. Here every statement, every notion, is false. The sense said to be put on the words "the one body" is never given by us. We do say that none were received who were not accredited as "true saints;" but we always allow that our brethren of old, like ourselves now, were liable to be imposed on for a time by deceivers or self-deceivers. Such, however, are apt to fall soon into evil of word or deed, were they as clever as Simon Magus, and thus bring themselves by their manifest iniquity under the discipline of the Church. Next, it is a strange deduction from our writings to infer that our sense of the one body supposes not only the Church to consist of none but true saints, but these " in perfect unity one with another," since the same writer pretends that we count the Corinthians to have been the model for all churches. For the first evil denounced in the first epistle is their schismatical state, which forced the apostle to exhort them to be perfectly united in the same mind, just because they were not. Yet there are throughout more frequent implications that they belonged to "the one body" than in any other epistle; though, of course, the fact that such was their privilege is as often urged to correct their practical short-coming. See especially 1 Corinthians 10: 16-21; 1 Corinthians 12: 12-27. I do not hide for a moment the extent to which unwatchfulness exposed the inexperienced Corinthian assembly to gross evil, the remains of old heathen habits, or the effect of wondrous power at work among souls so little used to walk in self-judgment and the conscious presence of God. But there is about as much truth or right feeling in the odious comparison of that church with modern communions to the advantage of the latter, as if it were said that the apostles Peter and Paul were not quite so respectable ministers as the modern clergymen of Nationalism or Dissent. The essential thing to remember is that the Corinthians had been really gathered according to God; and though Satan brought in exceeding mischief, still they were in a position and free to use divine remedies according to His word, neither of which features is true of modern communities.

As to the attack on ourselves, in the rest of the article (pp. 905-913), it is not for us to speak in self-vindication. We can trust God and are not careful to answer such charges; and the rather, as it is evident the writer knows scarcely anything about us. Others will and ought to look more to the realities of things, judged by Scripture, than to the thoughts and feelings either of ourselves or of our accusers. Mere vituperation has no force save for the weak and worthless; rarely is it the servant of a good cause. The question of Christendom is with the revealed word, rather than with those who cannot depart from that word knowingly, save at the peril of the soul and in opposition to God Himself. No dissenter who knows us will admit that we have their common, still less a special, dislike of the English Establishment. But, again, "Brethren," to maintain their position, "give us a new version of the scriptures under the title of a 'Synopsis of the Books of the Bible,' which is their 'Douay Version.'" (p. 905.) Mark the trustworthiness of the Christian Observer in common matters before all eyes. The writer must speak at random of what he cannot have examined, if he ever touched the works alluded to. For the fact is that the "Synopsis" is not in any sense a version of the Bible, though its author has also translated the Greek Testament into German and French as well as English. But the most learned men of the English Establishment have recorded their judgment of this English translation, which one of them, inferior as a textual critic to none in this country, recommended to his divinity classes. The writer can know neither the "Synopsis" nor the version; else he could not have confounded them, nor have foolishly sneered at either, as "their Douai version." Also, the "daring dogmatism" of describing the aim and object of each book of Scripture, is just what every annotator and every expounder does every day. The only question is, whether the work be done with spiritual insight, accuracy, and comprehensiveness. It requires no great penetration to see that the Epistle to the Romans, for instance, is not addressed to the assembly as such, but to the saints at Rome (i.e., in their individual standing) and hence, as in Romans 8, brings out their position very fully as "children" and heirs of God. 1 Corinthians, as we have seen, is far more ecclesiastical. He who denounces such self-evident facts as to these epistles may not be a dogmatist nor write mistily; but certainly he must dwell in a land of Egyptian darkness. Would he fain condemn us to the intolerant yoke of his own dullness?

Of the three anecdotes next given to illustrate the spirit of the "Brethren," I know that the two public ones are not stated truthfully. May one ask if the private case is any better? Is a monstrous tale against well and long known servants of God to be received because it is evil, though none among those acquainted with the facts feels the least need of contradicting it? Trashy scandal neither deserves nor needs notice, though some have a natural liking for it. Further, I never knew any "Brother" object to join in family worship conducted by Christians in a Christian manner. And I am perfectly sure that separating the wife from the husband, save for reasons which all Christians would hold as decisive, would never be tolerated in our midst. We have no controversy with our brethren as to such matters; and no man or woman guilty of such shameful impropriety would be allowed a place in fellowship. What can one think then of statements so reckless? or of those who deign to employ them for party or any other ends?

As to our "essentially schismatical and sectarian spirit" (pp. 906, 907), we have suffered not a little in vain, if we do not utterly condemn it, fruit, branch, and root. But how is it schismatical to abandon all schisms, whether national or dissenting, in order to recur to the original and constitutive principles of God's Church? Is this what the apostle denounces in Rom. 16: 17, 18? Is the Christian Observer a true witness or a false?

It is observable too that, in excusing their own intolerance of our refusal to join in ways which we are sure are unscriptural, the Christian Observer avows its gross latitudinarianism. To us it is no matter of opinion but of faith to worship God as the apostolic church was called to do in holy writings still vouchsafed and obligatory. It is not charity to give up conscience, or to allow self-will, but this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous. To talk about the wise and good of all generations is idle and false; seeing that every wise and good man knows that the original church action and worship have been abandoned for many ages in Christendom, and that the best and wisest of the reformers (e.g., those who laid the present basis of the greater Protestant bodies) owned how far short they fell of the primitive standing, and that many of them then and since contested these questions hotly with one another. There are ever so many different modes of worship in Christendom, which may all be wrong but cannot more than one be right. Why this rancour? Is it not fear or hatred of the truth that condemns them? "Brethren" felt that there was no use in owning one thing and doing another, and therefore necessarily left what was wrong in order to do the right thing according to Scripture. The Pharisees did not leave the religion of the day, but gave themselves proud airs at no cost in it. Would it have been more righteous or charitable to have gone on, owning our common defection from scriptural duties, but yet persisting in that which we believed to be sinful? This seems precisely what the Christian Observer thinks a more desirable course. Let christian conscience judge. We have learned that we ought to cease to do evil and learn to do well; and of course where such matters come before us, we lay this as an evident duty on all who see that they are in a false position but are disposed to tamper with a good conscience by remaining in it. Where is the "sectarian spirit," save in those who take fire at this?

I do firmly and openly tell all these defenders of Christendom against the authority of Scripture and the rights of the Holy Ghost, that God's glory is and should be the aim of the Christian, and not only the salvation of souls.* I tell them that in vain they worship Him, teaching for doctrine the commandments and notions and practices of men. I tell them that for christian men it is of the utmost moment both for His glory and the good of themselves and their brethren that they should recognize and follow His will, as about other things, so about His assembly; for they are members of it, and so much the greater is their condemnation if they (through tradition, prejudice, haste, or any other cause) neglect that which so intimately concerns both Him and them. He who truly believes in the Saviour but does not understand the assembly of God, or his own responsibility in respect of it, will not be lost; but the man who treats a matter which runs through a vast part of the New Testament so lightly as to class it with "foolish and unlearned questions," is bolder than one ought to be with the divine truth he does not see, as he will learn to his cost in the day that is fast approaching.

*"It is not salvation of their souls only he [Mr. Kelly] plainly tells them, they ought to consider, but the unalterable plan, which, according to him, God has laid down for His Church, or 'the Assembly.' This is made by him an Article of the Faith. He has got so possessed with his own figment about the Church, (for a mere figment it is, as we have shown) that this fills the whole sphere of his imagination and constitutes, in fact, his creed which he would constrain all others to adopt as essential to their Christianity. If he could show us the place in Scripture, where it is written. 'He that believeth not this shall be damned,' we might be brought to listen to him ourselves. But we read in our Bibles many things which Mr. Kelly and others of his sect, seem not to see, such as 'But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes' (2 Tim. 2: 23.)" (pp. 907).

Do the readers of the Christian Observer think that its managers will damage any but themselves by citing 1 Timothy 6: 4, as if it applied specially to those they call "Plymouth Brethren?" I admit it is as close to or as wide of the mark as the rest of their diatribe; but it must be manifest to unbiassed men in their own community, that this sort of thing is mere rant. The apostle was denouncing those who sought to make slaves discontented with their masters, especially believing masters. Are "Brethren" men destitute of the truth who suppose that piety is gain? Others there are, most will allow, who lay themselves rather more open to the appearance of using religion and its service as a means of worldly advantage.

Among our logomachies they class objections made to the character of the English Liturgy, to language which confounds the believer's need of forgiveness day by day with the unbeliever's need of remission through the blood of Christ; and, above all, to expressions which cloud the great truth of the Spirit given to all Christians, with desires after greater power of the Spirit. I pity those who count these "foolish questions;" but our objections go much farther than any phraseology however beneath christian privilege.

But when it is next said that "they confound atonement with pardon on the conditions of repentance and faith, and make faith a mere assent of the mind to a fact," etc. (page 208), they assert what is directly opposed to truth. This, I should judge, was gathered out of a Methodist preacher's attack, or in article in a Wesleyan organ founded on it. Let me tell them that, without boasting of our knowledge, I do not believe they will produce one man, woman, or child among us guilty of that confusion which they so inconsiderately impute to us as a class; and that no man holding the Sandemanian or Walkerite doctrine, which reduces faith to a mere mental assent, would be knowingly received amongst us. We hold universally that faith is the soul's reception of a divine testimony by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost.

Again, the Christian Observer must be strangely uninformed of the sentiments of Christians in general, if they do not know that some of the best and ablest men among the Evangelical clergy repudiate the mingling of Christ's legal obedience during His life with the ground of justification. We all agree that Christ obeyed the law perfectly, and that this was needful to vindicate God who gave it; but it is infatuation to think that this proves His law-keeping to be the very basis of the merit of His death as our substitute. These men, like others, are feeble in their apprehension of the divine judgment of sin and sins in the cross. The union of the divine and human natures in Christ's person, His sinless life, His obedience, were all necessary to redemption. The true question is, by what was atonement wrought? With what does Scripture connect our justification?

"Brethren" know nothing of imputed sanctification, which would really deserve the sneer which J. Wesley cast on imputed righteousness. It is false that such is our doctrine. Every man who knows ourselves or our teaching in any moderate degree, must confess that we insist on a holy walk, as Paul does, because we are under grace, not law. It needs no argument to see that "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh" does not mean daily practice but the ground of it. Really the Christian Observer's grammar is very peculiar, not to speak of the doctrine. Do they not know that the aorist implies a single act, as opposed to what is continuous; or a completed act, as opposed to what is in progress? I do say that Galatians 5: 24 speaks of what is "done already;" and I defy any man to prove otherwise. Other Scriptures teach a process going on, but not this passage.

If the Christian Observer stands to this, there are more intelligent clergy and laymen who will join with those they blame. It is not a question of substitution alone, but of imparting a real life to the believer, everlasting life in Christ; so that they, possessed of that very life in Him, are called now to walk in the Spirit according to the characteristics of His life in whose cross the flesh, with all its activities and issues, was judged. Is this religion made easy? Ignorance of Christ and the cross may so deem it, but nothing else can. Life is not a question of imputation but of impartation; and the believer, accounted righteous, has also life in Christ. This will show how far men are to be trusted (is it want of common understanding or honesty?) who talk of imputed sanctification as the doctrine of the Plymouth Teachers. It is only the misapprehension of the writer. We hold that the believer is sanctified through the offering of Christ's body once for all, and that, besides, he has to pursue peace and holiness (or sanctification) without which none shall see the Lord. What, then, means this senseless outcry?* —  It is unquestionably false witness, which is even more conspicuous in the next paragraph; where a "subtle and specious heresy," "very pernicious errors," "Satan's snares," "angel of light," open the way to a wholesale application of 2 Timothy 3 against us. Now is it not remarkable that the provision of the apostle against the perils of the last days (which is the real aim of the passage, and of evident bearing on that assumption which is so apt to impose on the morbid, especially on the weaker vessel) is precisely what "Brethren" everywhere press — the value of every written word of God?

* Since writing this I have examined Mr. Mackintosh's tract, and I distinctly charge the critic with misrepresentation at the least. Mr. M. denies progressive sanctification to be taught in 1 Cor. 1: 30, 1 Cor. 6: 11; Acts 26: 18, and Hebrews 10: 10, but he maintains it from John 17: 17; 1 Thessalonians 5: 23, Ephesians 5: 26, and Heb. 12: 14. "Here (says he) we see sanctification presented not merely as something absolutely and eternally true of us in Christ but also as wrought out in us daily and hourly by the Holy Ghost through the word. Looked at, from this point of view, sanctification is obviously a progressive thing." (Sanctification: what is it? p. 19.) What can one think of the Christian Observer? It is certainly and inexcusably mistaken. But the note to page 896 looks so much like confusion that I am willing to hope the writer is inconceivably dull, not deliberately false. In August he said that we twisted 1 Cor. 12: 3, aiming at the doctrine that Jesus bore the curse of the law for us. (p. 610.) I replied (Evangelical Organs, p. 19) that the text was aimed at something wholly different, taught by a former Fellow of Exeter College, to whom we refused fellowship. Now, in the above note, he means to correct his error, but falls into the new and absurd blunder that the Fellow in question held that Jesus did not bear the curse of the law for us! Having already explained what he really held, which has no resemblance to this. I do not feel disposed to repeat a painful story.

I do not deprecate the violence of the Christian Observer, nor should I tax them with "uncharitableness" if their assaults were founded on God's truth. But they falsely accuse us of desiring or allowing liberty to the flesh, which is incompatible with giving due place to the Spirit and word of God, but may and does co-exist well with human ordinances, ecclesiastical creeds, and worldly plans of government, substituted for God's system of His Church. But they betray themselves in the next breath; for after asserting in page 907 their large allowance for differences in modes of worship as well as in opinion, in other communions, so long as all things are done in charity, they maintain in page 911 that "separation from a church like that happily established in this land . . . . is nothing less than needless schism." This blind self-complacency in their own religious system (at an hour when its powerlessness to deal with Infidelity, Popery, not to speak of heterodoxy and wickedness of the gravest kind within its own borders and even in its highest seats) would be ridiculous, if it were not a fitter object for pity and grief. How often must one repeat that no amount of good points and persons can make an association to be God's Church, unless it be the assembly of those recognized as God's saints gathered in the Lord's name, and in subjection to the word and Spirit of God! This the Anglican system never was, any more than the various associations of Dissent. To meet on divine ground, of course separate from every unscriptural form, as far as we know it, is the aim of "Brethren," and the occasion of the Christian Observer's charge of schism, which to us seems no better than the blindness of prejudice, as it flows from sheer ignorance. It is evident, moreover, that if Anglicanism were really God's Church in England, every species of Dissent would be schism, according to page 911, and the large allowance of differences of worship in other communions would be wholly unjustifiable, contrary to page 907. The fact is, that the premisses and the conclusions of this writer are equally and altogether at fault. Separation from that which is not God's Church, though pretending to it, is not necessarily to create a fresh sect (as some absurdly conceive), but an absolutely necessary condition if we would "endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Am I free to abide in a body whose membership and ministry I believe to be opposed to God's word? I might, no doubt, have continued a member of it, lay or clerical, like some thousands alas! even of real Christians, not to speak of others, who are convinced, like myself, that it is but a human politico-religious system, and not a Church of God, any more than societies framed on the narrow basis of some peculiar and perhaps mistaken ordinance, the denial of external divine institutions, or the maintenance of an earthly founder's plan. Do they really believe that subscribing Art. 6 absolves their consciences, either in using formularies they know to be unscriptural, or in not obeying the Scriptures as to the assembly, the Spirit's action there, ministry, discipline, etc.; in short, in never doing the right and always doing the wrong thing in matters that concern the Lord's glory in the Church here below? Tetzel offered indulgences for sin cheap enough, and yet too dear in result; but what shall we say of this evangelical license for a pliant conscience?

Further, I can understand prejudice steeling a man against the scriptural evidence we produce for the nature of God's Church, and the presence and operation of the Holy Ghost in it; but he who treats such a matter as a crotchet or a persuasion about meats or drinks (page 912), and not as a fundamental question for the believer and the Church,* does not seem to me, I confess, qualified spiritually, morally, or intellectually to assume the place of an instructer in divine things. It is easy for such a mind to fling out accusations of "mental idolatry" and "singular obstinacy;" it may even appear loving and Christ-like to argue that the apostle classes us as the ἄσπονδοι, the implacables or irreconcilables, with the most wicked of characters. Does he think it consistent with this in the next and final paragraph (p. 913) to admit that the "Plymouth Brethren" have got hold of a good deal of scripture truth, and have, most of them, no deliberate intention of doing wrong; and (believing, as they easily can, that some of them possess considerable gifts) to suggest some sort of linsey-wolsey spiritual occupation in the English Establishment? With such dreary jokes (if a joke this part, or the whole, of the paper can be) in serious matters I have no sympathy. But I may say (with unfeigned respect and love to the saints of God I know, and the many more I can believe to be, in that system,) that from first to last more sorry specimens of a religious essay than these of the Christian Observer on the "Plymouth Brethren" it has not been my lot to find, even in a day when the press teems with productions which have not a grain of personal modesty, love to brethren, fear of God, or real knowledge of His truth. Did they design to expose themselves or to prove the value of what we have learnt from scripture, I doubt that they could do either more effectually than by committing a principal organ of the Evangelical party to attacks which injure none but themselves, and themselves in every point of view, with men of faith and intelligence.

*Schism we feel most deeply, and sects (αἱρεσεις), a yet sadder fruit of the same bitter root of self-will, we have honestly sought at all cost to keep ourselves pure from. But it is the reverse of either schism or sectarianism to quit every confederation even of genuine Christians where the ground of fellowship is not, and never was, the name of Christ as the centre maintained in holy discipline by the Holy Ghost through the written word, and this in the unity of Christ's body. Our one desire as to this is to be gathered and kept thus, as the saints were at the beginning. Nothing but a spirit of obedience in God's children can give them to feel and act aright, withdrawing them not from God's assembly but from every substitute for it, and engaging them to follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. To accredit as God's Church that which really is not, being neither so founded nor so perpetuated, is not to avoid schism but to help on the mystery of lawlessness and build up the great city of confusion. It is manifest wickedness for the Christian to remain where he is if it be confessedly "only the world under another form." Under every form the world denies Christ, and the Christian is not of it and never should appear to be of it. Neither birth nor any other circumstance is entitled to bar the way of faith. And faith ever judges by God's word, not by what we see, and in spite of the bitterest reproach. Even the Corinthian assembly of old purged out the leaven and proved itself clear: what would have been the result, had they allowed the evil in defiance of the apostle's command? A leavened lump. The important point, however, is to bear in mind that the religious societies of Protestantism never were gathered on scriptural ground, any more than Popery, though of course very different otherwise.

The Pentateuch and its Critics.

W. Kelly.

Modern criticism has ventured to undermine and assail almost all the books of holy scripture, but none with such boldness as the Pentateuch, unless it be the prophecy of Daniel. The incredulity of not a few theologians in our own day, abroad and at home, outstrips while it follows that of Celsus and Porphyry, of Spinosa and Hobbes, of Bolingbroke and Hume. The remote antiquity of Moses especially seemed to invite their unhappy efforts in the dark; for as the prowling birds of night shun the day, so the sceptics of all ages love darkness rather than light for a reason which is plain to every eye but their own — a reason on which the Judge of quick and dead has already pronounced, if not on themselves because of it.

We need not cite the heathen critics, nor the famous Rabbis outside Christianity who rise up to rebuke such unconscionable doubts. We would not summon the whole nation of Israel, whose testimony is in this all the stronger, because from a date far earlier than the father of Grecian history it is given with double force to the law if not to the prophet. We would not glean from the widespread field of tradition, east, west, north, south; nor appeal even to the unwritten but emphatic records of Egypt itself, that once renowned mistress, but now, according to one of Jehovah's prophets, the basest of kingdoms; which hides no doubt the shame of its rulers, but confirms in the most minute way the nicest details of the Mosaic report of Israel's hard bondage before their triumph. Let us take our stand on the fact, broad, deep, and conclusive, that the authority of Christ has decided the question for all who own Him to be God as well as man. It is well that we should know with what sort of men we have to deal; for all have not faith. He who spoke of charity, and lived it as perhaps none other ever did since, saw no inconsistency (even if for a moment we leave his inspiration out of sight) in binding up with his salutation in the same epistle the solemn warning — "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha."

Our Lord then has spoken with particular care of Daniel as "the prophet" toward the close of the Old Testament canon, but of Moses at the beginning as the writer of the law. (Mark 10: 5, Mark 12: 26; Luke 24: 27, 44; John 5: 46, 47, John 7: 19.) It is not merely that He does not contest the position of the Jews as to Moses; He affirms it and insists on it repeatedly Himself in the plainest terms. Think of the coolness of a man, professedly not an infidel but a Christian and a Christian minister, who, after quoting Christ's words, "Have ye not read in the book of Moses how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham," etc., can say, "Here the allusion is to Exodus 3: 6, which was not written by Moses, as we suppose!"*

*"An Introduction to the Old Testament, Critical, Historical, and Theological; containing a Discussion of the most important Questions belonging to the several Books." By Samuel Davidson, D.D., of the university of Halle, and LL.D., vol. i. p. 124.

Fully admitting the value of reasoning to convict gain-sayers, and expose the futility of their captious arguments, I lay it down as an axiom that in revealed truth it is and must be simply a question of a divine testimony, which is given to be believed, and which binds the conscience even of him who rejects it through unbelief. If physics require patient induction and comprehensive grouping under general principles or laws, if mathematics demand a strict and necessary demonstration, if the mixed sciences admit of both, the written word of God claims faith in His testimony which tests the moral state of him who hears. The faith which receives it traditionally and with indifference is of no value, and will under pressure give it up with the same otiose facility in which it assented. Certainly to doubt is not to believe; yet one could almost allow the saying to pass, that there is more faith in some doubts than in such traditional faith as characterises Christendom, save those in it who are born of God. For the soul which begins to be really in earnest is apt to hesitate till it has adequate motive to believe; while the flesh which so promptly offered to obey at Sinai is just as ready to say its Amen to the Athanasian creed.

Again, God does give sufficient evidence to render the unbelief of the objector inexcusable; but the faith which rests on such human motives is merely of nature, not of the Holy Spirit as its source. One may be arrested or attracted by such evidence; but God's testimony must be received because and as He gives it, with no other motive whatever: else we set up to judge Him and His word, instead of submitting, as divinely formed faith always does, to be judged by Him. If the testimony be of God, it is the truth; and if so, he who cavils and opposes is ipso facto proved to be in such a state morally that he has no congeniality with the truth of God, and, if pressed closely, his indisposition to receive it ripens into active hatred and scoffing unbelief. Whatever be the circumstances, he has so yielded to his own thoughts or those of other men, that he overlooks the motives adequate to win his confidence which God has given, and becomes at length settled down in such hardness of heart against His word, that it is enough to resist all testimony, and he can only be left to the judgment which he despises.

From this it will be plain to the reflecting mind why in the things of God it is a question of believing a divine testimony, while in pure science we have to do with necessary inference, and in applied science with observed fact also. Hence in these latter it is of course a question of knowledge or ignorance; they are not the subject of doubt or belief as is testimony. But it is a horrible and fatal error thence to infer that any conclusion of science is more certain than every word of God is in itself and so to the believer. There are measures of faith as of knowledge; but, though no Pyrrhonist in the domain either of the senses or of science, or even of honest and competent history, I maintain that (pure science apart, where the premises necessitate the conclusion) the word of God alone gives absolute certainty, and faith receives accordingly. Revelation is the word of a God who cannot lie; and if man can with comparative ease convey his mind correctly, how much more can God His, infinite though it be? The human element is fully admitted; but the essence of inspiration is, that the power of the Holy Spirit excludes error in the writer. It is too much forgotten that there is ignorance in every reader; and that this ignorance as to divine truth is really and always, spite of appearances, in the ratio of our self-sufficiency.

Further, that there are difficulties, not only great but possibly insoluble by you, me, or any other man, is not only allowed but affirmed. It may well, not to say it must, be so in a system so immense as that of which revelation treats from the creation of all, and before it, till the new heavens and earth of eternity. But he is unwise who would surrender the positive proofs of revelation, or of the truths it contains, because of difficulties which perplex the human mind. There is no divinely formed province even in nature, and this in its least or lowest forms, where there are not enigmas beyond the wit of man; and these the wisest are the most ready to confess. If writings which professed to be a revelation had no depths beyond man's plummet, it would be a juster conclusion to infer that it could scarcely be a revelation of God.

Scripture claims to be the communication of the mind of God to man, not setting aside the character or circumstances of the writers, but giving the full and absolute truth of God in and through all. Such is the doctrine asserted in 1 Cor. 2, 2 Tim. 3; and with this agrees the uniform use of the passages cited for special purposes throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. So above all said He Who spoke as never man spoke; and no wonder; for He was God as well as man, and man as truly as God. But it is to be feared that unbelief as to the written word bodes ill for the faith which is professed in the Word, the personal Word of life. In both cases it is the Infinite brought into the finite by grace; of which the ruinous speculations of unbelief would deprive us, as their authors have been themselves deprived of it by an enemy subtler than they are. Thus, if incarnation be the Word made flesh (a divine person yet a real man, "that Holy Thing," born of His mother, and this by the power of the Spirit), revelation is the mind of God in the language of man, but perfectly guided and guarded by the Spirit. It were to lose the truth in both respects, if we accepted the foolish cheat of Satan that the finite drags down the Infinite. Not so; both were given in God's love to meet the finite in its actual state of sin, degradation, and distance from God; and in both the finite is so governed by the Infinite, which has joined it to itself in holy and perfect union, that grace and truth alone exist and appear without the smallest admixture of human evil or error.*

* I do not refer to questions of readings, translations or expositions, which are quite distinct from divine revelation, and belong solely to man's responsible use of revelation.

Take the following decisive utterance of the Saviour: "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5: 44-47.) The Lord had been declaring Himself the object of faith, who as Son of God becomes the source of life to him that believes, but is the judge of him that believes not to his utter destruction. This leads Him to open out the various testimonies to Himself: first, John the Baptist; secondly, the works which the Father gave the Son to do; thirdly, the Father's own witness to the Son; and lastly, the scriptures. Even the Jews owned their all-importance for their souls; yet did they testify concerning Christ. Self and the world were and are the true hindrances to the love and the glory of God, and hence also render faith impossible. Their accuser would be not Jesus [who will judge all] but the very Moses in whom they had their hope. If they had believed Moses, they would have believed Jesus; "for he wrote of me. For if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" Thus the Lord puts the highest honour conceivable on the written word, if it were only the law, and not the latest and fullest communications of God. For scripture as a testimony has a permanence in this respect which can belong to no spoken words. Christ did not therefore expect them to receive His own words if they did not believe the writings of Moses.

It will be observed, however, how many modern questions are here by anticipation answered. The scriptures as a whole testify about Christ. He is the object continually before the inspiring Spirit, directly or indirectly. Good or evil is noticed relatively to Him, the brighter and only complete exemplar of the one, the absolute contradiction and finally the judge of the other. The Old Testament therefore is in the fullest sense prophetic. Christ is the end of the law: is He not of the Psalms also, as well as of the Prophets? So indeed He risen from the dead tells His disciples. (Luke 24: 27, and 44, 45.) I know that these unhappy rationalists dare to think that in the days of His flesh He, the Lord God, was not above the prejudices of that time and place from which they, dupes of Satan, flatter themselves somewhat freed. Thus they conceive either that He did not know the truth, or that, knowing it, He deigned to — . No; I refuse to stain even this paper of mine with their infamy of the Lord of all.

Yet, earnestly desiring not their destruction but their edification, I entreat them to weigh the last citation, and the fact, to them surely as reasonable men most momentous, that Jesus is declared so to speak as risen from the dead. If they have failed so lamentably in faith and reverence for His personal glory during His earthly service, at least they must believe, if they believe anything divine, that no human prejudices survive the grave, that in the risen state even we shall know as we are known. If then they are pleased to accord also to Jesus risen that perfection, which it is to be supposed they hope for themselves, I call on them with me to denounce the shameful, nay shameless, notion that He stooped to "a wise accommodation to popular views."

Again, no one alleges that "Christ and His apostles came into the world to instruct the Jews in criticism."* But does not faith in Christ bind us to accept His authority as superior to any criticism? He declares both during His ministry and in the risen state that Moses wrote of Him, that the books commonly called the law, the Pentateuch, are Moses' writings. Was He in this fostering an error of the day, and supporting it by His authority? Certainly it was no part of Christ's mission to prove that the Pentateuch did not proceed from Moses! But it is impossible to believe Christ's words and to deny that He declares those books to be written by Moses, which the rationalist declares are not, and distributes between Moses and perhaps earlier hands the primitive Elohist after the expulsion of the Canaanites, the junior Elohist in the days of Elisha, the Jehovist in the reign of Uzziah, the still later redactor who was not Ezra,† and the unfortunate Deuteronomist in the reign of Manasseh who employed the "innocent fiction," "which an uncritical age rendered easy," of attributing to the legislator the utterance of the contents of Deuteronomy as well as the authorship of the first four books, in both of which Dr. Davidson (i. 118) deliberately imputes to him what is a fraud.

* Introd. O.T. i. 126,127.

† Ibid. i. 47-61.

I trust the pious reader will pardon my copying such views, which I may fairly call the Christian or unchristian mythology of the nineteenth century. They have found entrance and even taken root in certain quarters beyond their native soil; and I am sure that they will work to yet greater ungodliness, and contribute to the growing denial and rejection of divine authority in the world as well as in holy things, the counterpart of the haughty and effete superstition which has just pretended to claim the infallibility of God, which no apostle* had nor all together, for its chief priest: two main streams of evil which will pour their impure waters into the stagnant pool of "the apostasy" that is at hand for ungrateful and self-vaunting Christendom.

* Authority in rule or appointment, and inspiration which they might share with the prophets, are very different things, neither of which is denied. None but God however is infallible.

But the Christian will turn with increasing confidence and singleness of purpose to the living oracles; and loving Christ he will keep His word, even as he who loves Him not keeps not His words, little thinking that the word he thus despises is the Father's who sent the Son, and will judge him at the last day.

Even the Jews who to their ruin refused Christ, because they did not hear Moses and the prophets, and who resisting them were not persuaded when He Himself rose from the dead — even they never went so far in presumptuous yet petty criticism as to shut their eyes to the most abundant evidence, external and internal, to the writings of Moses, never dared to deny (as rationalists do) the only light we have for more than half this world's obscure history, besides its highest function of bearing witness to Christ. Never did they presume to say that there is little external evidence for the Mosaic authorship; that what little there is does not stand the test of criticism; or that the succeeding writers of the Old Testament do not confirm it! — all this in the face of such evidence as neither Greek nor Latin classics possess; whose authorship none would dispute but vain or crazy dreamers. Again, no intelligent man questions the claims of Mahomet to writing the Koran, probably not alone, but by the help of an unprincipled Jew. The reason of the difference is plain: not that there is nearly such an amount or excellence of proofs for the authorship of the Koran as for Moses' writings, but that these, not that, appeal so loudly to conscience. The Koran flatters human nature, bribing its own party and bullying others; but the law brings in God, the true God, and testifies of Christ, which flesh fears and dislikes and therefore instinctively seeks to defame, unconscious too often of its sin and shame.

But if it is monstrous to deny the immense and unbroken chain of external evidence to the Pentateuch, were it only in the fact that the entire political and religious life of the Jewish nation turned on it in prosperity and adversity, captive and restored, for fifteen hundred years before Christ, not to speak of what goes on before our eyes till this day; if it is equally so to deny that from Joshua through the Psalms to Malachi the strongest links and the most express statements are given wherever they could be found naturally, what can we think of one who does not shrink from saying with the scripture before his eyes that "the venerable authority" of Christ has no proper bearing on the question? I should have thought that the effort to represent Moses as not the writer of the law as a whole, as a lawgiver, not a historian, was manifestly and hopelessly at variance with His authority who condemned the unbelief of the Jews on the ground that Moses not only wrote the law, but wrote it concerning Himself. If there are various irreconcilable contradictions;* if there are convincing traces of a later date (beyond such as an inspired editor put for the help of the reader after an immense change in the condition of the people as all admit, Jews and Christians); if the narratives are partly mythical and legendary and only usually trustworthy; if the miracles are the exaggerations of a later age; if the voice of God cannot without profanity be said to have externally uttered all the precepts attributed to Him; if Moses' hand laid the foundation but he was not even the first of those who penned parts,* where is Christ's authority? Did He not mean, did not the Jew understand Him to mean, the five books of the law by the writings of Moses? Was He deceived? Does the evangelist John deceive us (unwittingly it could not be, if the Holy Spirit inspired him) through Christ's words? Certainly, if Dr. D. be true, He who is the truth is not true; and the Gospels are as untrustworthy and misleading as it is possible to be. To state the blasphemy is to refute it; yet such is the inevitable issue if there be one word of reality in what is thus alleged against the Pentateuch.

* Introd. O.T. i. 131.

But if the Lord is and spoke the truth, no real believer can fail, though with grief and amazement, to see that the rationalist stands in the most deplorable and fatal hostility to Christ's authority and to God's word. For if Moses testified the truth of Christ some fifteen centuries before He lived and died, he was a prophet, and inspired of God in what he wrote; and if God gave him, according to the Lord Jesus, to prophesy truly of Him, is it credible that he has written falsely of that of which even an ordinary man might have written truly? If the rationalist speaks aright, the Pentateuch is not Moses' writings, but a bundle of tales true and false, and in not one word written really of Christ: else it would be bona fide prophetic, which the system denies in principle; because true prophecy implies God's supernatural communication, and this would be necessarily a deathblow to the criticism of the rationalist.

It is needless to say that the objections derived from internal structure are only conclusive proofs of the rash ignorance of those who make them, and lead us, when cleared away by the light of Christ, into (not mere evidence of the Mosaic authorship, which is ruled definitely to all who respect the word and authority of Christ, but) an increasing sense and enjoyment of the testimony which the honoured servant bears to his Master, the Lord of all descried from far but most distinctly by the power of the inspiring Spirit.

If scripture itself gave the slightest intimation to that effect, there would be no difficulty in supposing ever so many writers contributing to the Pentateuch. The Psalms also consist of five books for an incomparably better reason than, as the Rabbis say, in order to correspond with the five books of the law. I have no doubt that their order is as divine as are the contents and character of each; and that they can be shown to have internal grounds for it of very great interest, instead of being a mere collocation of David's first, and of others afterwards, which in no way accounts for some of David's in the last book, and for one of Moses himself the introduction of the fourth book. But we have the sons of Korah, Ethan, Asaph, perhaps Solomon, and others unnamed in addition to the writers already named. But then we know the authors as far as they are mentioned from the inspired account in each case; and the grouping will be found to carry along with it the self-evidencing light of God; for none but He, I am persuaded, could have distributed to each as He has done, or have so tempered them as a body together, securing a moral and prophetic progress in the greater divisions as well as in the unity of the entire collection.

No believer would refuse to the Pentateuch what he owns unhesitatingly in the Psalter, if there were similar grounds of faith. But the declarations of God are clearly and expressly opposed to any such conclusion, and the internal structure of the law too has nothing in common with that of the Psalms, but to my mind falls in so simply and naturally with the single authorship of Moses, that the real difficulty would have been to have supposed more than one if the question otherwise had been absolutely open. If the Lord and the apostles had not corroborated irrefragably the Mosaic authorship, both the style and the line of inspired Jewish witnesses, not to speak of the evident claim of Moses to all implied in Deuteronomy, would point to this conclusion.

If Moses had been led of God to use a quantity of earlier documents for the writing of Genesis, of contemporary records for Exodus or Numbers, I do not see how this could impair the inspiration of the Pentateuch. For we know little of the mode in which God wrought inspiration, though we are authoritatively taught the result; and we cannot but be sensible of its essential difference from all other writings in the working out of the divine purpose, and in the exclusion of human imperfections stamped on it. But even the more sober, who contend for the tessellated composition of the Pentateuch, have as yet presented no evidence but what can be better accounted for otherwise: especially as they confess "a unity of plan, a coherence of parts, a shapeliness, and an order " which satisfy them that, as e.g. Genesis stands, it is the creation of a single mind. Is it not forgotten that the opening chapters for instance, largely at least, could not have been narrated by Adam himself any more than by Moses from personal knowledge? God necessarily must have communicated the account of creation, as also of the flood, two of the parts most attacked, and one might add with least reason, by infidel temerity.

On the peculiar use of the divine names, and a certain accompanying difference of style, we need not enter much, as this is noticed frequently in its place. I need only say that the Jehovah-Elohim section (Gen. 2: 4 — Gen. 3) presupposes the so-called Elohistic one that precedes, as both are assumed in what follows; and the difference of motive truly and fully accounts for all; and that it is the very reverse of the fact that the name of Elohim almost ceases to be characteristic of whole sections after Ex. 6: 2; Ex. 7: 7. On the contrary, it holds good wherever similarly required throughout not the Pentateuch only but the Psalms (compare books first and second) and the Prophets (see Jonah especially). It is impossible to account for all the facts (not to say for any of them) by the documentary or fragmentary hypothesis.

But it is worthy of note that the Lord distinctly attributes to Moses not merely the substance but the writing of Deuteronomy. (Mark 10: 5.) There can be no doubt that the Pharisees refer to the injunction in Deuteronomy 24; on which the Lord declares that not "a later writer" but "Moses wrote you this precept." How grievous the unbelief then which does not tremble to say after such an utterance, "it is certain that Moses himself could not have written the book of Deuteronomy, nor made such changes in the old legislation as are contained in the discourses of the book!" To say that the work was impossible to one whose eye was not dimmed nor his natural force fled till he died is unwise. Besides, had it been otherwise, or had he seen fit as it was, an amanuensis (one or more) would not detract any more from Moses' writings than Tertius did from Paul's.

As to the fact of changes, such as Numbers 18: 18 compared with Deuteronomy 12: 17, 18; Deuteronomy 15: 19, 20, they are due to the difference in the character and object of the books: the one having the wilderness in view; the other the settlement in the land, where we see not only the importance given to the central place of worship which Jehovah their God would choose, but also the joining of all, including the priests, the Levites, in the exulting joy of blessings already possessed. To infer, from the circumstance of Moses addressing the people in the affecting form of a homiletic recapitulation, that he of his own motion rescinded what Jehovah had ordained, is as wanton as to deny Jehovah's title to modify according to moral design in a changed state of things. Yet this puerility is made much of more than once.*

* Introd. O.T. i, 75, 76; 356, 357; 364; 377, 378; 395, 396.

It may be also observed that the Lord Jesus (Matt. 19: 4, 5) attributes to God the words cited from Gen. 2: 24: "He which made them . . . . said, For this cause shall a man leave father,'' etc. It was Moses that wrote; but it was God speaking none the less. Rationalism denies both through confiding in an ignis fatuus of criticism.

But the inspired apostles also are explicit. Thus Peter (Acts 3: 22, 23) cites the famous passage as to the prophet from Deut. 18, and affirms that Moses said so. Rationalism shrinks neither from refusing the book to Moses nor from declaring that the correct interpretation rejects all but the one sense — the succession of prophets or prophetic order in general, while it allows the adaptation to Jesus to be reasonable, or an argumentum ad hominem! To minds of this bias it adds no more weight that Stephen too quotes it as the language of Moses, and with evident reference to the Messiah. (Acts 7: 37)

Paul again cites freely from the law, and in the same chapter of Romans (10: 5, 19) cites twice from portions in a sense diametrically opposed to neological criticism: in the former, Lev. 18: 5; in the latter, Deut. 32: 21, which it relegates to two different and much later writers. It is not a question of Paul as a man, but of Paul writing in the Spirit. Did not He know the truth? Has He told it? We cannot speak of the Holy Spirit thinking this or that: He knew all. To suppose that He did not know is as false as that He kept up a fiction is impious. No, it is only man who has deceived himself again through trusting his own thoughts against the plain word of God.

1 Cor. 10: 1-11 is a passage of much moment for the consideration and correction of those influenced against the theopneustic or inspired character of the history of Exodus and Numbers. The passage of the Red Sea is denied to be literal history. The cloud; the manna; the water from the smitten rock; the punishment of the murmurers, etc., are viewed as more or less legendary. The apostle affirms that all these things happened to them as types, and that they are written for our admonition. Thus he attaches a divinely prophetic character to the accounts which rationalism slights. Ought it to be a question whether the apostle or a neologian has the mind of God?

Heb. 11 is quite as weighty a test, and yet more comprehensive in its survey of the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament. The apostle (verse 3) accepts creation as a literal fact; the rationalist endeavours to show "its mythical character." But both Prof. Powell and Dr. Davidson misstate the case in order to place Gen. 1 in opposition to facts. It is not correct that "the chapter can only convey the idea of one grand creative act, of a common and simultaneous origin of the whole material world, terrestrial and celestial, together with all its parts and appendages, as it now stands, accomplished in obedience to the divine fiat, in a certain order and by certain stages, in six equal successive periods," etc. So the late Mr. P., in whose wake follows Dr. D., who says that "the first verse of Genesis is a summary account of the six days' work which follows in detail. On the first creative day God produced the matter of the world, and caused light to arise out of it. Hence it is implied that the world was created only about six thousand years ago. But geology teaches most incontrovertibly that the world must have existed during a long period prior to the races of organized beings now occupying its surface. Thus geology and scripture come into collision as to the age of the earth." *

* Introd. O. T. i. 152.

I affirm, on the contrary, that Moses was inspired so to write Gen. 1: 1-3 as to avoid with the greatest precision and certainty the very error which these writers attribute to him. It is easy to see their desire to array geology against the Bible. But the incontrovertible fact is, that the usus loquendi proves that the first verse is not a summary of what follows in the six days' work, but an initiatory act sui generis, the groundwork of all that follows no doubt, and as distinct from verse 2 as both clearly are from verse 3, where the first day's work begins. The copulative vau connects each verse, but of itself in no way forbids an immense space, which depends on the nature of the case where no specification of time enters. In the first two verses there is no limitation whatever; and hence in these instances all is open indefinitely. Had the conjunction (which I translate "and" in all these cases, not "but") been wanting, the idea of a summary heading would have naturally followed in accordance with the phraseology elsewhere, as at the beginning of Gen. 5; Gen. 6: 9, etc.; Gen. 10: 1, etc., passim; Gen. 11: 10, etc., 27, etc.; Gen. 25: 12-17, 19, etc.; Gen. 35: 22-26; Gen. 36: 1, etc., passim; Gen. 46: 8, etc., passim; Exodus 1, 6, etc. It is needless to pursue the proof. It is the necessary phraseology not of Hebrew only but of every conceivable language. In no tongue could one rightly prefix such a clause as Gen. 1: 1 as "a summary account of the six days' work."

The truth is that the first verse of the chapter states with noble simplicity the creation of the universe — not of matter on the first day, but of the heavens and the earth — without the smallest note of days. There is another and wholly different notation of time, "in the beginning," reaching back to the farthest point when God caused (not crude matter, nor chaos, but) the heavens and the earth to be. The second verse coupled with it describes, as even Dr. D. admits, a state of chaos or destruction, but not universal; for the earth only, not the heavens, was the scene of the utter confusion. I am surprised that a sensible man did not see the incongruity of this with his previous position, and still more with the admirably perfect statement of verse 1. Contrary to the style of Moses, and to the genius of Hebrew and indeed of universal grammar, he asserts the first verse to be a summary of the entire six days' work. But if so, such a summary cannot be the bare creation of matter. For matter is not said to be produced on any one of these days, but contrariwise its previous existence is assumed throughout their course from first to last. On the other hand, if he says that verse 1 means the production of matter, he abandons his own thesis that it is a synoptical view of the six days' work. Does he then take verse 2 as God producing the matter of the world? How, if so, can it also mean universal chaos or destruction? Perhaps he thinks that the first clause of verse 2 means this, and that the last points to the production of matter; but here again he is entangled in the strange conclusion that the universal chaos or destruction — destruction of what? — precedes the production of matter. If he concede, as I think he must on reconsideration, that God producing the matter of the world is not the meaning either of the first or of the last clause of verse 2, it follows that his exposition is fundamentally erroneous, and that matter must have been produced before, unless he fall back on the Aristotelian absurdity of eternal matter, which is a virtual denial of creation in the proper sense, and indeed betrays an atheistic root. From this he saves himself by the statement that "on the first creative day God produced the matter of the world, and caused light to arise out of it." The reader, however, has only to read the record in order to see that Dr. D. interpolates here the production of matter without the least warrant from the inspired account of the first day, and contrary to the clear intimation of the verses that precede it. The production of matter is supposed before the chaos of verse 2, and is involved in the creation of verse 1.

Thus scripture is more exact than the natural philosophy of Mr. Baden Powell, or the system of Aristotle, or the exegesis of Dr. S. Davidson. It asserts the grave truth of the creation of the heavens and the earth, but expressly not "as it now stands," nor with the "parts and appendages" which were found in the days which preceded Adam. We have no connection of day or night in this earliest phase, any more than the state of disruption and ruin that is described so graphically in verse 2. Vast tracts of time may have passed ere verse 3 — not "innumerable periods of past duration in one unbroken chain of regular changes."* But Dr. D. is ill-informed in the facts which geology is slowly building up into a consistent science, if he ignores the proofs of repeated and extraordinary breaks and upheavals, when anarchy was again followed by fresh creative energy, and then by order. So it was, if Mr. D'Orbigny and other men of the highest reputation may be trusted, for some thirty successive and stupendous revolutions of this earth before the week when man stands at the head of a suited realm subjected to him by the Creator.

* It is not true that "law, order, uniformity, slowness, partiality characterize those changes; not suddenness or universality. Universal destruction and reconstruction — anarchy followed by order — are things unknown to science, and opposed to all its fundamental conclusions." A little learning is a dangerous thing. Had it been said that, once established, such is the way of the Creator as long as a given state of things is permitted to endure, Dr D. would have been right; but to put matters thus absolutely is only the science of infidel progressionists or unwary souls, like the late Hugh Miller, beguiled in a measure by them. Laws of phenomena are quite distinct from causes; and the reason why moderns merge the last in the first is the instinctive desire to escape from the thought of creation, and hence of the true God. Positivism is the lowest form of all, and hence is essentially atheistic.

But the reader, who desires to find a calm and full and exact exposition of the facts can find it in D'Orbigny's "Cours de Paléontologie et de Géologie Stratigraphiques,'' especially chapter 9 vol. 2. pp. 251-258. There is hardly a finer instance of patient induction, nor a more distinct contradiction of the alleged law of continuity, and this without an allusion to Genesis or a thought beyond the largest collection of the facts of geological science known to me. Even the tertiary period alone he shows must be divided into five distinct successions, and in them, of 6042 species 91 only common to two or more, but all distinct from the existing species of the Adamic earth. "Une première création s'est montrée avec l'étage silurien. Aprés l'anéantissement de celle-ci, par une cause géologique quelconque, aprés un laps de temps considérable, une seconde création a en lieu dans l'étage devonien; et successivement vingt-sept fois des créations distinctes sont venues repeupler toute la terre de ses plantes et de ses animaux, à la suite de chaque perturbation géologique qui avait tout détruit dans la nature vivante. Tel est le fait nous bornons à constater, sans chercher à percer le mystère surhumain qui l'environne." This witness is true; but the Bible conducts the simplest believer with sure foot and opened eyes where the mere man of science finds himself arrested by an impenetrable veil. Scripture asserts original creation, and then destruction: how often renewals and destructions may have followed it does not say; but, having given us the key to both facts, it does tell us, what it most concerned us morally to learn, the details of the construction of the world where the human race was to be tried and fall, where the Creator was to become in sovereign grace the woman's Seed, and by His suffering and death win more than was lost for the creature's blessing to the glory of God.

It is granted that the Bible does not reveal these sequences of order and convulsion. But it shows us the principle of both in verses 1 and 2 anterior to the Adamic earth. This was enough for us to know; and this we know more clearly and certainly from these few words of scripture than science ever taught till very lately. In fact some geologists seem recently in danger of overlooking the best established facts of their own and all other science, and of drifting into that strange delusion — the Darwinian form of Lamarckian development which necessari1y destroys faith in creation altogether.

But Genesis leaves room for all the changes, calm or violent, which passed over this earth before the race. Creation, and creation of the universe, verse 1 does state; how long it went on, and with what changes, till the state of chaos described in verse 2, we are not informed. Let science tell if she can. There is ample space here without danger of collision: God has effectually guarded against the mistakes of hasty expositors, friends or enemies. Verse 3 begins the account of the days; and here, after a chaos (we know not how long or often), we hear of light caused to be on the first day. The state of things is so contrasted in each of the verses that the conjunction which simply introduces each new statement can produce no difficulty whatever.

Far from contradicting the large bearing of verse 1, texts such as Gen. 14: 19-29, 20: 11, Exodus 31: 17, 2 Peter 3: 13, can in no way be restrained to "the earth itself." It is careless to confound the making of heaven and earth in six days (which I grant is always for Adam) with the original creation of verse 1. Gen. 2: 4 speak of both. As to the objection founded on animals of previous states seeing, and plants too requiring light, before the work of the first day or of the fourth, it suffices to say that not a word implies that light was created, or the heavenly bodies either, on these days. Light was caused to act, as the luminaries later still. But of the geologic periods, after creation but antecedent to the earth made for man in six days, we have nothing either affirmed or denied, though in my opinion the strikingly guarded language leaves room for all. The statements of Dr. D. are as unfounded in science as they are careless in taking account of the exactitude of scripture.

That the sense just given to the inspired account of creation is unforced and exact, it would require hardihood to question; so it would to deny the looseness of the rationalistic interpretation, inconsistent as it also is with itself and with facts, and thus exhibiting the usual faults of what is wholly misunderstood. I advocate no stooping to a barely admissible meaning, nor call in the wisdom of the world to ascertain the force of scripture. The believer need neither court nor fear human science. Nowhere however has a single fact of geology been proved to be at variance with the words of Moses: those who affirm it have only exposed themselves, whether they attack or apologise for Gen. 1: 1-3.

Further, from Gen. 2: 4 we have the necessary complement of chapter 1. The terms of the fourth verse though a most natural commencement of another aspect which follows with fresh particulars of the greatest moral weight, refer unmistakably to what had been already written. It is certainly not a summary of what is to come, for this does not describe the production of the heavens and the earth, but introduces us to the transitional state of things before rain fell or man was there to till the ground; it then gives us the specific difference which is the ground of human responsibility, and therefore forthwith describes the garden of Eden with its two trees, where the first Adam was about to be tried. It is plain accordingly that Gen. 2: 4, while it gives a retrospective glance at chapter 1 with its orderly chart of the creation, leads us into the scene of relationships. Even according to the earlier outline, far from being lost in the graduated series of creative acts, the pre-eminent place of man in the scale of the creature is carefully guarded for male and female — of man made in the image of God,* after His likeness, with dominion over the fish and birds and cattle and earth and reptiles, not worshipping them all like the sages of Egypt. But the detailed formation of man, in his body from the dust of the ground, in his soul from Jehovah-Elohim's breathing into his nostrils (alone of living creatures) the source of an immortal immaterial nature proper to him, is found in the later account only. Here too we have his various relations not only to the subordinate creatures to which he gave names as their lord, but to his wife (who was built up peculiarly out of Adam's body as he slept), and above all to Him Who set the man in a position of such singular honour, though necessarily of commensurate responsibility.

* It is the grossest ignorance to confound the knowledge of good and evil (i.e. conscience), which was acquired by the fall, with the image and likeness of God in which Adam was made.

In Gen. 3 accordingly the issue of the trial soon appears. Abruptly and mysteriously an enemy of God and man enters, and by his subtle insinuations deceives the woman, who in turn becomes the instrument of the man's disobedience. It is a simple but profound, and the only satisfactory solution of the problem on which human philosophy and religion have laboured in vain, on which all have made shipwreck who have not submitted to the word of God. It can surprise none that it is the same serpent playing his old deceits and destroying souls by the hope of knowing good and evil as God, yea better if they refuse His account for their own thoughts, even though they yield no more than that coldest and most irreverent of results, negative criticism. Satan, availing himself of "the serpent," thus dragged down our first parents into sin and ruin not for themselves only but for the lower creation dependent on Adam's maintenance of his relation to God, as also for the race yet to be born.

Does not this approve itself as worthy of God? Is it not in harmony not only with all the Old Testament, but only more conspicuously with the New? The earliest inspired account reveals God creating and fashioning the universe in wisdom and goodness no less than omnipotent power, the earth in detail as man's abode to whom the world is given. But man is tried and fails irretrievably as far as original innocence and Eden are concerned, but not without righteous conviction, not without a judgment which accounts for the great present facts of humanity even to the difference of woman's lot from man's, yet with their common sentence of death and the sorrowful change which has passed over the creation now subjected to vanity and groans; but not without the gracious revelation of a Deliverer, who should be in some special sense Seed of the woman, yet (after suffering) conqueror of the enemy the serpent, who had done this foul and otherwise fatal dishonour to God as well as man.

Without this key what have the greatest wits of this world made of it all? I do not speak only of monstrous cosmogony, or the (if possible) still falser and less rational assertion of the world's eternity. But take the mental workings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; nay take the latest philosophic enemies, who have stolen all their best from the Bible but who have not learnt its first lesson, without which all is vain — that fear of Jehovah which is the beginning of wisdom. But what have any ancients or moderns said up to this day to be named in comparison of the Mosaic account, which ungrateful rationalism would fain behead, draw, and quarter? Sin and ruin, suffering and death, are facts in God's earth as it is: inspiration did not make them; rationalism cannot unmake them. To suppose that a Being of infinite power and goodness made the race and the earth as they are is to imply an absurdity, which philosophy (where it admits God at all) accepts. But scripture is in no way responsible for a conclusion which is opposed not only to His word but to all right reason and sound morality, for mind and conscience cannot but own the truth when revealed, though superstition and philosophy essay to explain it away again. Such a Demi-urge as every system supposes but scripture (or what follows scripture) would be a malicious demon, not the true God.

Bow to Gen. 1 - 3 and the difficulty is explained, yet even then just as it ought to be, in the measure of our faith. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light:" the want of this is the real source of confusion, error, contradiction and every other fault which rationalists love to heap on the Bible. These exist in their own minds and system, not in God's word. It is impossible to understand scripture without seeing the divine design which accounts for distinct aspects, repetitions, and all the other peculiarities over which they ignorantly stumble. God, being love, is considerate of the poor, the lowly, the young, the old, while He puts down the haughty who count themselves learned and deep, wise and prudent. He has revealed Himself in writings whose unity of thought and moral purpose, is only and infinitely more striking because they consist of books in more than one language, and spread over the greatest variety of writers through fifteen centuries. Hence, whether dealing by law through Moses, or by grace in His Son one-half in both Old Testament and New consists of facts profoundly instructive for the most reflective, but withal coming down to the level of a child. Only God could have done or thought of this beforehand: now that it is before us in the Bible, we can see that there is nothing like it (save in poor measure what is borrowed from it) for simplicity or for depth, for rising up to God or for coming down to the secrets of man's heart.

What reader can fail, for example, to see that God made all around and above Adam and pronounced it all very good; that man the chief and most favoured of all in a paradise (not such as blind Mahometanism holds out but of purity and innocence) disobeyed Him who gave him all and tried him by the least conceivable test, and thus brought in the vanity and death of all this lower creation? Who can be deaf to the solemn voice that searches out the truth from lips which, spite of deceit and insolence, cannot but condemn themselves? Who can forget the accents of grace implied even in the hopeless condemnation of the arch-foe, and assuring the guilty of a Saviour who must suffer first but at last crush the serpent's head? None but the rationalist; none but the man who prefers his own reasonings to scripture, — himself the first man to Christ the Second and last Adam.

The unreasonableness and utter poverty of the separate document-hypothesis is also plain by joining Gen. 5 to the end of Gen. 2: 3. What can be more meagre? The entrance of death is unaccounted for, the moral trial in Eden is lost, sin is left out, and God's ways as to it: the prophetic revelation of the Saviour and of the destruction of Satan's power is gone; the solemn history of Cain and Abel disappears; also faith in a sacrifice, and this the index and accompaniment of righteousness, God testifying of the gifts; the suffering of the godly; the worldliness and progress in material things of those who are far from God. And Seth is introduced in a way which derives an immense accession of weight from the intervening chapters, if even it be really intelligible without them.

On the other hand, if the entire narrative be taken as a whole, consisting of distinct parts, each having its own definite character, yet only seen in their proper value as conspiring from different points to the one result, how immense the gain in beauty, force, and harmony! Creation properly falls under Elohim; the relationship of man and his trial and fall, as well as the ruin and creation, under Jehovah-Elohim; the discrimination of the just from the unjust, both morally and above all in worship, with the issues here below, under Jehovah, the distinctive name of God in the government of man on the earth. Genesis 5 returns naturally to Elohim since the perpetuation of the line from Adam is in question, but with Jehovah in verse 29 where we see special relationship.

Dr. Perowne * thinks that the alleged design in the use of the divine names will not bear a close examination. Not so; it only seems to fail, I venture to say, for want of a searching analysis. He allows that it does suit the earlier chapters, but not Noah's history, on comparing Genesis 6: 7 with 8: why say, argues he, that "Noah found grace in the eyes of Jehovah," yet that he "walked with Elohim"? Now he might have seen in Genesis 5: 23, 24, that the expression "walked with God" is not casual but designed. Not only is it appropriate to simple historical mention, but to moral contrast with those characterised by the violence and corruption of all flesh in the earth (Gen. 11, 12). Jehovah is required where not nature but relative feelings and position are meant to be conveyed. The principle is true in the New Testament equally as in the Old. Thus our Lord Himself always says "Father" in His life or ministry; He says "God" on the cross when bearing the judgment of sin, against which all that God is in holy antagonism was arrayed; He says both when He arose from the dead and placed His disciples in His own place and relationship as far as this could be, now that sin was put away by the sacrifice of Himself, and He could take the place formally of a quickening Spirit in resurrection. So John's epistles employ "God" and "Father " concerning the Christian with invariable distinctiveness and propriety. It is evident to me then that to "walk with God" is just the right phrase for moral character; while we may also see, by comparing verses 5 and 12, that the introduction of His special relationship applies a more severe and intimate test.

* Smith's Dict. of the Bible, ii. 775.

Again, the other cases Dr. P. has named (Gen. 6: 21, 22; Gen. 7: 5, 9) are plain examples used from internal motives, while Gen. 7: 16 exposes the futility of referring the matter to distinct documents. In the former Elohim speaks with authority of destroying creation, preserving as Creator only enough to perpetuate species. In the latter He reveals what became Him in special connection with Noah; but even there, where care of the creature only is in question, we read of "the male and the female as Elohim commanded Noah," "male and female of all flesh as Elohim had commanded; and Jehovah shut him in." The change in the last is plain and necessary, as in verse 6 also, closing the directions which provide for the exigencies of sacrifice in the "clean" beasts and birds preserved not by a pair but by sevens. The existence of both titles in the same verse is most unnatural on the document-hypothesis, but as explicable as elsewhere when we see that a divine design guides from internal reasons in every case.*

* Neither the name of El-Elion (the most High God) nor any other trait in Gen. 14 is a sufficient reason to warrant the notion that it is a "monogram" from another pen. It is bound up in the closest moral connection with chapter 13. Lot chose for himself, and, soon tasting the sorrows of the world, is only delivered through the prompt love of him who walked in faith while he himself had yielded to covetousness. Further I cannot doubt that Jehovah's declaration in Gen. 15: 1, "I am thy shield, thy exceeding great reward," is an allusive answer on His part to the noble and generous disinterestedness of Abraham recorded at the close of Gen. 14. Thus the account appears to be so bound up with the chapters before and after as to refute the idea of its being an ancient monument transferred to this book of Moses.

Such then is the true explanation of the duplicate accounts, as they have been styled. If difference of authors or of documents had any real evidence, it in no way covers the facts; it really introduces mere imagination to set aside the positive declarations of the Lord and the apostles, who attribute to Moses expressly what a groundless fancy distributes among 2, 3, 5, 10, or even more imaginary writers of the disjecta membra of the Pentateuch severed from each other by considerable intervals of time.

It would not be edifying to discuss too minutely the neology of Dr. Davidson's book, chiefly culled from German sources: a few specimens must suffice. To him the Fall, for instance, is a national mythus. The apostle repeatedly treats it as a fact of the gravest import, which none can slight with impunity. (2 Cor. 11; 1 Tim. 2) But what of that? Paul knew nothing of the higher criticism, and must be condoned for his ignorance. The nature of the serpent, the manner in which he is said to have proceeded, the dialogue between him and Eve, the sentence pronounced, militate against that mode, the apostolic mode, of interpretation! Thus, however plain the scriptures, these men are not ashamed to count it a vulgar error if one insist on their authority and sacredness. It has nothing, say they, to do with personal religion; it conduces in their judgment to a right view of inspiration if one accepts their word that the Bible abounds in almost every sort of error on the one hand, and on the other that all religious men were counted inspired. Talk no more of Paul in the first century: did not "the immortal De Wette" come to opposite conclusions so long ago as the year 1805? Paul, no doubt, treats the history as the origin of man's universal sinfulness (Rom. 5: 12-21; 1 Cor. 15: 21, 22); but why heed so antiquated an idea? The Anglo-German scribe had not yet appeared to expound aright the philosophical myth in which a reflecting Israelite sets forth his views on the origin of evil! Such, my reader, is the spirit of modern rationalism.

Of course the apostle's use of Genesis 4 in Hebrews 11: 4 is of no account. It is an accommodation. We are told by our new oracle that the "mythic view of the first three chapters is corroborated by the succeeding narrative." Genesis 4 "presupposes a different theory of the origination of mankind" — this because of verse 14, and the supposed inconsistency of verses 2 and 20! The infatuation of this pseudo-criticism culminates in the judgment that the Sethite line in Gen. 5 and the Cainite one in Genesis 4: 17, 18 "are parallel accounts resolvable into one and the same genealogy!"

The solemn account of antediluvian apostasy and corruption in Gen. 6 is naturally treated with levity; and the flood (Gen. 7, 8) affords the usual material for free handling. "What gave rise to the mythus was the yearly inundations which happen in most countries..... If the account of the deluge be a poetical myth, it is of no importance to inquire whether the catastrophe was partial or universal. . . . . . Authentic (!) Egyptian history [for with these men Egyptian history (?) is authentic, scripture is not] ignores the existence of a general flood, to which there is no allusion in the annals from the epoch of Menes the founder of the kingdom of Egypt, B.C. 3463 (!), till its conquest under Darius Ochus, B.C. 340; whereas the period of the Noachian deluge is said to be about 2348 B.C." I presume that the writer is not much acquainted with these matters, and that he means Baron Bunsen's date for the accession of Menes, B.C. 3643. But the reader should know that in the same work the world's history before Christ is set down at twenty thousand years, and that Egypt is supposed to have been ruled provincially for more than five thousand years before Menes. On such a scale, in contempt of all that is known in or out of the Bible, one must consider that it is a moderate flight in this imaginative system to claim for Menes no more than a few centuries before the flood. It may be added that the basis of it is a passage of Syncellus, and a manifest error, as has been shown by others. But there is no need of learning or logic here; for the divine testimony of Christ has sealed the truth of the flood as an authentic fact, and a most solemn warning to unbelief. (See Matt. 24: 37-39; Luke 17: 26, 27.) The apostles Paul (Heb. 11: 7) and Peter (1 Peter 3: 20; 2 Peter 2: 5) have confirmed the witness to it, if this were wanted.

The freest thinker will not complain that, when I cite the testimony of Baron Bunsen, he is likely to give an opinion unfairly to the prejudice of Egyptian records as compared with the Old Testament. "The written character is prolix; the repetition of fixed phrases makes it still more so. Little is lost by occasional lacunae; but comparatively little advance is made by what is preserved. There are few words in a line, and, what is still worse, little is said in a great many lines. Inscriptions on public buildings were not intended to convey historical information. They consist of panegyrics on the king and praises of the gods, to each of whom all imaginable titles of honour are given. Historical facts are thrown into the shade as something paltry, casual, incidental, by the side of such pompous phraseology as Lords of the World, Conquerors of the North, Tamers of the South, Destroyers of all the Unclean, and all their enemies. The case of the papyri is certainly different. But written history, such as the historical books of the Old Testament, so far as our knowledge of their writings goes, was certainly unknown to the old Egyptians."

Let us briefly review a quantity of smaller points. The unbelieving criticism on the earlier chapters of Genesis has been noticed the more, as being in fact the most confidently urged, and, if refuted, involving the rejection of much the greater part of the rest. Subsequent insertions, brief and rare as they are, are rather a confirmation than a weakening of the Mosaic authorship, and in no way an infringement of inspiration, which is a far more important thing; for all were equally inspired of God, whether Moses or Samuel, Ezra, Jeremiah, or any other prophet. The Book of Proverbs is a clear instance, where a large and important addition at a later epoch than that of its earlier portion is avowed. But it is not certain that some of the notices supposed to be of this kind were not original, as, for instance, Gen. 13: 18, etc. One can easily understand the original name, for a time overlaid by the name of Arba, finally restored; and we can conceive a curious coincidence in the name of Dan, as it seems to have been an element in Jor-dan and Dan-jaan, apart from the tribe.

The passage in Gen. 36 (verse 31) on which most stress has been laid seems to be undoubtedly of Moses. To call the notice of kings that reigned in Edom "before there reigned any king over the land of Israel" a trifling proposition* is not only irreverence, but evinces that fatal defect of all rationalists — the absence of moral perception. Israel had the promise of kings, which Esau had not; yet Esau had many successive kings long before a sign of royalty was seen in the object of that promise. Had the passage been written after Saul or David's line began to reign, the phraseology would have been different not "any" or "a" king, but "the king" or "the kings."

* Introd. O.T. i. 3, 4.

Again, Ex. 16: 35, 36; Ex. 22: 29; Lev. 26: 34, 35, 43; Deut. 19: 14, are only difficult to one who denies the essential claim of scripture. Lev. 18: 28 is cleared in its true sense by simply reading verses 24, 25. Num. 15: 32 is quite plain if written, as it probably was, in the plains of Moab. Gen. 40: 15 is most natural on the lips of Joseph looking back on the land where his father and himself were once together, aud designating it by "the Hebrews" — a name familiar among the Gentiles.

Nor do notices of ancient inhabitants or actual rulers and their history, as in Deut. 2, 3, present the smallest difficulty. They are of the highest interest in themselves, and Moses might well speak and write of them.

Exodus 6: 26 has nothing to do with the lapse of a considerable time after Moses, but is due to the sense of God's condescension in using such men by the writer who was one of the two. This may seem trifling to a modern critic: what does the pettifoggery (and, as far as I have had leisure to sift, very incorrect minims) seem to those who rejoice in the divine truth of God's dealings with man for this world and for eternity? So, if the Bible were a human book, such texts as Exodus 11: 3, Numbers 12: 7, might seem strange. Nevertheless the history proves their strict truth; and the language of Paul in 2 Cor. 11 may cause one to hesitate in counting them later additions by Ezra or some other authorised hand, as no one doubts of the formula "unto this day." But none of these in the smallest degree touches the claim of Moses to have written the Pentateuch by inspiration.

It is not only that the "higher criticism " fails to explain justly the divine names, and does not pretend to any remark on their employment beyond the superficial and, as we have seen, unfounded notion of different dates, but another notable trait is its extreme carelessness, and, I must say, its misstatements as to alleged matter of fact. Thus even opponents of neology are too apt to repeat the assumption that the supposed Elohist always says "pad-an" or "pad-an a'-ram", not "a'-ram gaharam[?]" like the supposed Jehovist. Now the fact is that Padan occurs but once (Gen. 48: 7) in an address opened and therefore governed by the name El-Shaddai, the distinctive title of relationship to the patriarchs. Next the very first occurrence of Padan-aram is in Genesis 25: 20, where it is severed from Elohim by seven verses (12-18), which set forth the generations of Ishmael and his sons, and where it has in its own immediate sequence and connection (ver. 21) the name of Jehovah. In Genesis 28: 2 it is followed in the next verse not by Elohim but by El-Shaddai, though after that no doubt comes Elohim. But Jehovah appears repeatedly in the middle of the same short chapter, as does Elohim at the close. The only criticism therefore to which the new school can resort is the very mechanical device of the scissors, by which they divide these few verses, though bound up intimately, among at least three different writers: — verses 1-9, the Elohist (which does not at all account for the quite distinct title of El-Shaddai); 10-12, 17-22, the junior Elohist (which overlooks the most emphatic use of Jehovah in the chapter, ver. 21); and 13-16, the redactor. Why the Jehovist should be discarded and the compiler or editor substituted where the Jehovah title is so prominent is not explained or apparent. But such is the artificial hypothesis which Dr. D. borrows from his German leaders. Genesis 31: 18 is the next occurrence of Padan-aram, which here follows Jehovah's word to Jacob. Jacob calls him repeatedly God; but it is impossible to deny that the passage turns on what Jehovah said (ver. 3). The ground taken therefore is wholly false; an the attempt to cut out verse 18 for the Elohist, and to assign the rest of the chapter to the younger Elohist, the Jehovist and the redactor, as Dr. D. does,* only proves the desperation as well as the poverty of thought to which such criticism reduces its partisans. In Genesis 33: 18 Padan-aram occurs again, but the title with which it stands most nearly connected is the remarkable compound El-elohe-Israel, which is certainly not purely Elohistic on their system. But singularly enough Dr. D. seems here to have forgotten his lesson himself (i. 59), for he distributes this verse 18 between the Jehovist and the redactor, giving the latter the clause containing the name, which in p. 27 he confines to the Elohist. And this is criticism! Genesis 35: 9, 26 Dr. D. has mangled to the utmost limits of the hypothesis, for he cuts it up among all the four imaginary writers of this book. It is impossible, however, to deny the distinctive force in the chapter of El and El-Shaddai which are not Elohistic: so exactly of Genesis 46: 15, the last occurrence, save that El-Shaddai is not here.

* Introd. O.T. i, 58, 59.

On the other hand, the basis for pronouncing Aramnaharaim Jehovistic is of the weakest, as the reader will feel when assured that it occurs but twice in all the five books of Moses, Genesis 24: 10, Deut. 23: 4. Even in this word the same fatality of error haunts the neologian; for one of the only three occurrences of the word outside the Pentateuch is in the title to Psalm 60, one of the most intensely Elohistic compositions in the Bible. Besides, it is not at all proved that Padan-aram is identical with Aramnaharaim. The high land of the two rivers may well include the ploughed highland or plateau of Syria, though both might with sufficient accuracy for ordinary use be translated Mesopotamia. Aram, simply, is the most comprehensive term of all, and occurs but once in the Pentateuch (Num. 23: 7) distinctly in the sense of a country, and this in Balaam's speech, who uses Elohim, Jehovah, Elion, and Shaddai in such a way as puts to the rout the idea of a Jehovistic document.

I grant that, in general, terms expressive of natural species, distinctions of sex, generations (save in an exceptional case such as Gen. 2: 4), historic specifications of time, etc. occur in scriptures where Elohim is used rather than Jehovah. But this flows from the nature of things, and must therefore be on the supposition that Moses wrote the five books. It is a question of propriety and exactness of speech, not of different documents. For in describing for instance natural production, or the perpetuation of the creature, or facts as such, Elohim is required, and the name of special relationship would be out of place.

Again, we are told that "establish a covenant," is the Elohistic expression, the Jehovistic "to make (literally 'cut') a covenant." Now, not to say more of Genesis 17: 7, 19, the strongest evidence possible against the exclusive Elohism of the first formula is, that it is employed in immediate sequence after the formal revelation of the name of Jehovah. (Exodus 6: 2-4.) I am aware that our scissors-critics never fail for want of boldness, and that Dr. D. ventures to bracket this very passage to the redactor in verse 1, and to the Elohist in verses 2-7, leaving verse 8 to the Jehovist. But to treat scripture thus, to represent the passage as such an ill-assorted farrago, is mere wilfulness, and contrary to their own principle which professes to draw its proofs wholly from internal evidence. For, if so, nothing can be more certain than the Jehovistic character of this chapter, though care is taken, as we have seen elsewhere, to show that Elohim is Jehovah, as well as El-Shaddai, henceforward to be looked to nationally according to all that the name of Jehovah implies as their God. Ezekiel 16: 6, 62 cannot be pretended to be Elohistic. So as to the alternative form, [establish a covenant], it occurs twice only in the Pentateuch, Genesis 9: 12, Num. 25: 12. Of this last chapter I am aware that Dr. D. calls verses 1-5 Jehovistic, 6-18 Elohistic. The best answer is to read verses 10-12, which open thus: "And Jehovah spake." As to the exclusively Jehovistic phrase, the disproof is equally sure. (See Gen. 21: 27, 32.) Junior or senior, it is Elohistic, contrary to the alleged distinction. It occurs again in Genesis 31: 44, which is certainly not Jehovistic; though I am not able to make out how Dr. D. (58, 59) tabulates verses 43-47. He assigns parts of 41 and 48 to his redactor. At any rate the use here contradicts the system. So the connection is Elohistic, not Jehovistic, in Ezra 10: 3; Psalm 83: 5. In short the reader has only to sift in order to prove how unfounded is the hypothesis and its conclusions.

I do not judge it to be called for just now to examine all the other phrases supposed to characterize the Elohistic or the Jehovistic passages* respectively. But of this the reader may be assured, that it is wise in no case, were it the most immaterial statement, to trust the assertions of rationalism. Even where there may be a true element, it is invariably misapplied and in general exaggerated to the last degree. Thus much is made of "possession;" and "land of sojournings," as "peculiarly Elohistic." Unfortunately for the theory, their first occurrence in the same chapter and in the same verse (Gen. 17: 8) disproves the assertion, unless indeed one is weak enough to allow a chapter to be counted Elohistic which begins thus: "And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, Jehovah appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am El-Shaddai," etc. How can this be Elohistic, either elder or younger? It begins with Jehovah revealing Himself to Abram by that special name in which he and the other fathers had to walk, and then showed Himself to be none other than Elohim (ver. 12, 15, 18, 19), which was of the utmost importance. One could hardly conceive of a more satisfactory disproof of distinct documents as well as of confining the phrases cited to Elohistic passages. Any good Hebrew concordance will multiply cases of it.

* The supposed confirmation of the Elohistic and Jehovistic hypothesis drawn from the few proper names compounded with Jehovah before Samuel and David (Introd. O.T. i. 19) is null. It was natural they should use the name more when revealed to them in national relationship, though it did not become general till Samuel in measure, and David, faithful and obedient fully, set up what Moses had enjoined, but what had been grossly neglected for centuries before.

Another remark may be here made, and not without cause. The uncertainty of these speculations is such that hardly two rationalists agree tolerably, nay, hardly one agrees with himself for any length of time even, as to broad outlines and points of very great importance. Thus Dr. Davidson, in his contribution to the tenth edition of Horne's Introduction, contended for two documents, the Elohistic of Joshua's day, and the Jehovistic during the Judges, which he supposed to have been combined in one work under Saul's or David's reign. What is of still greater moment, he then ascribed the authorship of Deuteronomy to Moses. Traditional orthodoxy may have yet exercised a check on his mind; for one can hardly speak of faith, when in six years all was changed for the worse in his own Introduction to which reference has so often been made. I am far from insinuating that the author did not believe what he wrote in his second volume for the late Mr. Horne's work. But one can only save his honesty by blaming both the extreme want of judgment in questions of very great consequence (for the denial of this, i. 129, will satisfy none but the light-minded), and the instability which could make such a revolution in so short a space. Were it a stripling, allowance might be made for inexperience or the influence of stronger minds: As it is, even a heathen could say, facilis descensus Averni.

The pretentiousness which accompanies the worst insinuations against God's word, when these rest on the flimsiest of reasons, is deeply painful. Every one in the least familiar with the manner in which the Holy Spirit has deigned to instruct us in scripture knows that it is frequently by taking up the same subject and presenting another line of association, so as to give us the truth fully through viewing it on all sides. Not otherwise do the wisest men, as far as their small measure is capable of a method so exhaustive. Instances of this we may see frequently, not only in the five books of Moses, but in every part of the scriptures, and nowhere more conspicuously than in the inspired accounts of our Lord; for it is true of whole books, as well as of retracings of particular themes within them. One can easily understand the lack of spiritual perception which overlooks such a mode of instruction. But what can one think of those who fear not to sit in judgment on what, just because it is divine, must be beyond the natural mind; and who, instead of looking to God that the entrance of His words might give the needed light, venture to speak of an author, in such a case, stultifying himself by announcing an important distinction which he had uniforlmy observed in certain sections and as uniformly violated in others?

It is a joy on the other hand to learn on, I suppose good authority that De Wette, speculative as he once was, I will not say led captive every thought to the obedience of Christ, but certainly turned to Him and His blood, with much simplicity some time before his decease; and that the late Baron Bunsen, after a career of theorising on scripture almost wilder than Origen's, found rest at last in that Saviour who alone can and does give it to the weary and heavy-laden.

On the whole, then, no support is given by any or all such passages to the scheme of Astruc, who deserves no credit for a critical eye, but rather reprobation for yielding to an unbridled imagination, which has already wrought no small mischief among his followers; and so much the more because, untaught and ill-established in divine truth, they sometimes expend great industry and ample erudition on the mere surface of the scriptures which they wrest to their own destruction, as ignorant of their object as of their scope and depth.

Another opportunity may offer to prove how far the minute philology applied to Deuteronomy really weakens Moses' title to have written it. I am satisfied myself that the phenomena supposed to be adverse are but a cover for the main object underneath all the muster of difficulties and objections — the desire to get rid of divine authoritative truth, which probes the conscience as nothing else can; and the more so, as not the prophets only but the Lord of glory also have affixed a seal, which profanity alone would think of breaking, to the Pentateuch as God's word written by Moses.

We have seen that the positive objections, when sifted, either fall to the ground, or become rather witnesses in favour of the Mosaic authorship and inspired character of the first five books of the Old Testament. The alleged omissions, rightly viewed, bear testimony to the same. An inspired writer can and does habitually leave such blanks as we find in the history of the sojourn in the wilderness, the journeys and stations, the desired particulars of Hur and Jethro, etc. This is never so, save by defect of information, in human annals; but it flows immediately from the moral design of scripture. Man loves to stimulate and indulge curiosity; God inspires for the communication of His mind, the link of connection being in the divine purpose and objects, not in the facts which may often be partial and disjointed as a history.

Let me cite the competent opinion given entirely apart from controversy by Mr. H. F. Clinton, which may serve to illustrate more than one point. "The history contained in the Hebrew scriptures presents a remarkable and pleasing contrast to the early accounts of the Greeks. In the latter we trace with difficulty a few obscure facts preserved to us by the poets, who transmitted with all the embellishments of poetry and fable what they had received from oral tradition. In the annals of the Hebrew nation we have authentic narratives written by contemporaries, and these writing under the guidance of inspiration. What they have delivered to us comes accordingly under a double sanction. They were aided by divine inspiration in recording facts, upon which, as mere human witnesses,* their evidence would be valid. But as the narrative comes with an authority which no other writing can possess, so in the matters related it has a character of its own. The history of the Israelites is the history of miraculous interpositions. Their passage out of Egypt was miraculous. Their entrance into the promised land was miraculous. Their prosperous and their adverse fortunes in that land, their servitudes and their deliverances, their conquests and their captivities, were all miraculous. The entire history, from the call of Abraham to the building of the sacred temple, was a series of miracles. It is so much the object of the sacred historians to describe these that little else is recorded. The ordinary events and transactions, what constitutes the civil history of other states, are either very briefly told, or omitted altogether; the incidental mention of these facts being always subordinate to the main design of registering the extraordinary manifestations of divine power. For these reasons the history of the Hebrews cannot be treated like the history of any other nation [exactly what rationalism essays to do, to the dishonour of scripture, and to its own utter and ruinous confusion]; and he who should attempt to write their history, divesting it of its miraculous character, would find himself without materials. Conformably with this spirit there are no historians in the sacred volume of the period in which miraculous intervention was withdrawn. After the declaration by the mouth of Malachi (Mal. 3: 1) that a messenger shou1d be sent to prepare the way, the next event recorded by any inspired writer is the birth of that messenger.† But of the interval of 400 years between the promise and the completion no account is given. And this period of more than 400 years between Malachi and the Baptist is properly the only portion, in the whole long series of ages from the birth of Abraham to the Christian era, which is capable of being treated like the history of any other nation."‡

* "It may be said that Moses was not a witness of the facts which he relates between the birth or the call of Abraham (when the history of the Hebrews may be properly said to commence) and his own time. But there were so few steps between Abraham and Moses that, though not a witness, he was an authentic reporter of evidence. In the following history, from the exodus to the rebuilding of the temple, all the writers were, strictly speaking, witnesses."

† "Or at least the circumstances which preceded it: Luke 1: 1-56. Augustine, Civ. Dei., xvii 24, has remarked this cessation of prophecy: Toto," etc.

† "Because during this period divine interpositions were withheld, and the Jews were left to the ordinary course of things. And we may remark that in all ages of their history divine inspiration was vouchsafed in exact proportion to the necessity of the case. Inspiration was afforded to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses; and from Moses to Malachi there was an uninterrupted communication of the divine will through inspired ministry to the chosen people. By this chosen people the knowledge of the Deity was preserved through so many ages in the midst of the darkness and idolatry and polytheism of the other nations of the world. And the measure of inspiration was always in proportion to the exigency. The greatest prophets arose in the most difficult times. The reign of Ahab was distinguished by Elijah and Elisha. Isaiah continued to prophesy through the time of Ahaz. And during the captivity many eminent prophets consoled and instructed the Jews in their calamity. But with Malachi inspiration ceased, and the Jews were left to the exertions of their own faculties. Inspiration appears to have been withdrawn because it was no longer necessary for the purposes of Providence.

"The character of the Jews in their captivity had undergone a remarkable change. During the period of their judges they had been easily seduced into the idolatries of their neighbours; but, after their return from Babylon, they exhibited a spirit of attachment to their law and to their sacred books which they maintained under all circumstances with incredible firmness. A people of such habits as they had now acquired was eminently fitted for the office, for which they were designed, of guardians of the oracles of God, ἐπιστεύθησαν τὰ λόγια τοῦ Θεοῦ. (Rom. 3: 2.) Josephus, Apion, i. 8, remarks of his countrymen, πᾶσι σύμφυτόν ἐστιν εὐθὺς ἐκ τῆς πρώτης γενέσεως  Ἰουδαίοις τὸ νουμίζειν αὐτὰ Θεοῦ δόγματα, καὶ τούτοις ἐμμένειν, καὶ ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, εἰ δέοι θνήσκειν ἡδέως. Miraculous aid was now therefore no longer necessary to fit them for their office, and was accordingly withheld. As in the material world Providence had everywhere proportioned the means to the end, the forces being not greater than the occasion requires, so it would seem that in his spiritual communications extraordinary aids are only granted when ordinary influence is insufficient. At the birth of the Messiah the greatness of the occasion demanded that divine communication, after a suspension of four centuries, should again be made; and the evangelists and apostles were armed with supernatural gifts and powers adequate to the duties which they were to perform."

"From this spirit of the scripture history, the writer not designing to give a full account of all transactions, but only to dwell on that portion in which the divine character was marked, many things which we might desire to know are omitted, and on many occasions a mere outline of the history is preserved." (Fasti Hellen i. pp. 283-285.)

These are in the main, without vouching for every thought or expression, words of truth and soberness. Not only were God's ways with Israel above mere nature, but His word as to the patriarchs and them has throughout a prophetic character. Even so ordinary a transaction as the domestic trouble of Sarah and Hagar as to Isaac and Ishmael we know on inspired authority to be an allegory of the two covenants, and the opposition of the flesh to promise and the Spirit. So we are taught that Melchisedec in Gen. 14 represents a higher priesthood than that of Aaron, verified now in Christ and to be displayed in His kingdom. In short everywhere God selected by the inspired writers such facts as were adequate to bring out fully what man is as morally judged of Himself, and what God is in grace or in government, of which Christ is the only complete expression. All scripture is the expansion of this as its central idea: not that the several writers knew the bearing of all they wrote, especially those before Christ, but that He did who inspired them all to write.

Hence there is a vast system of which the several books form part, filling up each the place assigned in the purpose of God. While every book has an unity of its own, and certain books may supplement each other in a way evidently beyond the writers' thought, they all compose a divine whole.

Thus in Genesis, couched under the simplest forms of word or deed, are seen the great principles of divine action and relationship with man from the earliest days, which look on typically to the last: creation, human responsibility, sin, revelation of a Deliverer in grace, sacrifice in faith, the world in its worship and in its outward progress, translation to heaven, corruption and violence on earth, providential judgment and deliverance through it, covenant with the earth, human government ordained but of God, combination of men in pride, dispersion into nations, tribes, and tongues by divine judgment; calling by grace as a separate witness for the God of promise; the risen son and heir with the calling of the bride; the election for the earth cast out for a time, but after humbling experiences restored and blessed and a blessing; and this in connection with a holy sufferer rejected by his brethren, sold to the Gentiles, but by this very path of sorrow exalted over the world while unknown to Israel, and receiving a Gentile bride, but finally making himself known to his brethren preserved through their secret trouble, and now owning in him the grace and glory they had so long despised and hated.

In Exodus we see, not individuals or a family, but a people, God's people, redeemed from the house of bondage and brought to God from the world which falls under His mighty hand, and inflictions in an ever-rising character till chastening slighted ends in exterminating judgment; but the people of God themselves failing to appreciate His grace which led them all the instructive way from Egypt to Sinai, and voluntarily accepting conditions of obeying the law as the means and tenure of divine privilege, yet even in the shadows of the tabernacle, etc., having His grace in Christ typified with striking variety and fulness.

Leviticus next presents God from the tabernacle laying down the means and character and consequences of access to Himself by sacrifice and priesthood and ordinances for food, birth, disease, infirmity, etc., and feasts for the people in the midst of whom He dwells, with the prophecy of their ruin and exile for rebellious and idolatrous unbelief, but of their restoration when they should repent by His grace, and so enjoy the promises made to their fathers.

The book of Numbers gives us the sojourn and march of the people through the desert, with the provisions of grace, the full account of their unbelief as to both the way and the end, the judgment of presumption and rebellion, and the effort of the enemy to hinder turned of God into the grandest vindication of His people and assurance of future glory when He judges the world, with facts and ordinances which look onward to their possession of the promised land.

Deuteronomy is not only a farewell moral rehearsal of the law, but also of God's ways with Israel, enforcing obedience as the way of blessing; as the last words of him who was the chief type of Messiah as Prophet, it urges on the people, just about to enter the land, a more direct relationship with Jehovah their God, and, while predicting their ruin through disobedience, points darkly to "secret things," the resources of divine mercy in which He will more than retrieve all to their blessedness and His own glory in the latter day.

There is thus a deep inward connection as well as progress in the five books of Moses, and the reader who looks below the surface will find proofs of this multiplying on his prayerful study; but the same principle is true of the entire Bible from Genesis to the Revelation, the links between which are as strong as they are numerous, and those comparatively indirect or latent so much the more undeniable a testimony to the One Divine Author of them all.

W.K.

Peter's Denial of the Lord.

W. Kelly.

(B.T. Vol. 15, p. 35-40.)

Flesh in the saint is no better than in any other man. Peter did not know this more than most do now. He did not believe our Lord's warning: if he had, he had not entered into temptation, but would have watched, prayed, and been kept through faith. He must therefore by bitter experience learn what the flesh is, as the word was not mixed with faith in his soul when the Lord warned him so solemnly. He was confident in himself. It was not the vulgar confidence of an unbeliever, no doubt; but still it was confidence built on his own estimate of what his love for Jesus would enable him to do or bear. And this it was which, as it is an illusive and mischievous egoism, grace must expose, as it does pardon, and would turn to profit and blessing, not only to Peter, but to his brethren through him. For now and thus he was humbled and had learnt what man is on the one hand, and what God is on the other. If Peter was to be used of the Lord more than all, it was meet that he should more than any learn experimentally his more than nothingness.

The other disciples forsook the Lord and fled. John slipped in, as an acquaintance of the high priest's. Peter followed afar off. Wherefore this? Asleep when called to watch and pray, he awoke to draw the sword and strike, all-through out of communion with the adorable Master. If, bolder than the rest, he ventured into the circle of those who smote the Lord, it was only to sink lower than any and to dishonour Him by a denial which a few hours before seemed to him impossible, by a repeated denial with imprecations and oaths. Only Judas went farther in iniquity. Jesus alone shone in perfection; yet never was His shame and humiliation more complete, save when He hung on the cross, rejected of His people, despised of men, and forsaken of God. It was sin on man's part, and for sin on God's: what a climax of reality for both, as the believer knows, in Christ the Lord!

There and then it was that Peter heard a cock crow twice immediately after he denied his Master thrice. How insignificant such a sound ordinarily! Then how pregnant with the deepest consequence, not to the penitent apostle only, but to his brethren whom he soon began to strengthen, and to the multitudes whom he was honoured of God in bringing by the word he preached, out of darkness into His marvellous light! But it was the Lord's look upon Peter, and the remembrance of His words, which gave it all the force that wrought in conscience and heart, the look and words of the Saviour brought home by the Holy Spirit where there was life Godward. But alas! flesh had shrouded all and the believer, having slept, had cursed and sworn as if he never knew the Master. Now in bitter grief he learns himself humiliatingly, and what the world is in its highest religious pretensions; yet what would all else have been, had he not learnt the grace of Christ and His moral glory, and God Himself in the cross of Christ and the purpose and ways of redeeming love?

But, in that light grace gave Peter to discern the worthlessness of the flesh alike in its weakness and in its energy, in its unbounded self-confidence and in its dastardly fear and falsehood. Yet was he a saint, thoroughly sincere and most truly loving the Lord; but a saint not yet broken before God, with self but little judged, who slighted really if unwillingly His word and neglected prayer and so entered into temptation, instead of being upheld in the dependence of conscious weakness and the power of faith by grace. But Peter, (brought down in self-judgment to own that, far from boasting of his love for Christ more than any, only omniscience could know that he dearly loved Him) is then fully re-instated in what might otherwise have seemed forfeited for ever, and hears the blessed Lord in the presence of the brethren committing to His care His beloved sheep and lambs, and promising that he should in very deed  be enabled at length to go to prison and death, yea the cross itself, for Christ's sake. Grace thus ensured to him when old and weak all that which in his natural vigour he, a saint withal, had failed in so foully, and with every possible aggravation of dishonour to his Lord.

Now we are told that the accounts exhibit discrepancies, but these, it is said apologetically, owing to the disciples' perturbation of mind! Let us read them: here they are:

MATT. 26: 69-75.

"But Peter followed him from afar off unto the court of the high priest, and entering in was sitting with the officials to see the end" (58) "Now Peter was sitting without in the court, and a maid came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus, the Galilean. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he went out into the porch, another [maid] saw him and saith to those there, This [man] also was with Jesus the Nazarene. And again he denied with an oath, I know not the man. And after a little those that stood came up and said to Peter, Truly thou also art [one] of them, for thy speech  too maketh thee manifest. Then he began to curse and to swear, I know not the man. And immediately a cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus as having said, Before a cock crow, thou wilt thrice deny me. And going forth without he wept bitterly" (69-75).

MARK 14: 66-72.

"And Peter from afar off followed him, even within, into the court of the high priest, and was sitting with the officials and warming himself at the [fire] light" (54). "And as Peter was below in the court, there cometh one of the maids of the high priest, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked on him and saith, Thou also wast with the Nazarene, Jesus. But he denied, saying, I know not [him], nor understand what thou sayest. And he went out into the fore-court, and a cock crew. And the maid seeing him again began to say to the bystanders, This is [one] of them. And he again kept denying. And after a little again the bystanders were saying to Peter, Truly thou art [one] of them, for also thou art a Galilean. But he began to curse and to swear, I know not this man of whom you speak. And immediately a second time a cock crew. And Peter recalled to mind the word, how Jesus said to him, Before a cock crow twice, thou wilt thrice deny me. And as he thought thereon he kept weeping" (66-72).

LUKE 22: 54-62.

"But Peter followed afar off. And when they lit a fire in the midst of the court, and sat down together, Peter sat amid them. And a certain maid, having seen him sitting at the [fire] light, and looking steadily at  him, said, This [man] also was with him. But he denied, saying, I know him not, woman. And after a short [while] another saw him and said, Thou also art [one] of them. But Peter said, Man, I am not. And after the lapse of about one hour, another affirmed strongly, saying, Of a truth, this [man] also was with him, for also he is a Galilean. But Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he was yet speaking, a cock crew, and the Lord turned and looked on Peter; and Peter called to mind the word of the Lord, how he said to him, Before a cock crow this day, thou wilt deny me thrice. And going forth without he wept bitterly" (54-62).

JOHN 18: 25-27.

"But Simon Peter followed Jesus, and the other disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the court of the high priest; but Peter was standing at the door without. The other disciple therefore, that was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the portress, and brought in Peter. The maid, the portress, saith therefore to Peter, Art thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not. Now the bondmen and the officials, having made a fire of charcoal (for it was cold), were standing and warming themselves; and Peter was standing with them and warming himself" (15-18). "Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore to him, Art thou also [one] of his disciples?  He denied and said, I am not. One of the bondmen of the high priest, being a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Again therefore Peter denied, and immediately a cock crew" (25-27).

1. It will be noticed in this corrected version of the various accounts that it is a question of the high priest's "court," not palace, which more properly applies to the governor's residence or praetorium (Matt. 27; John 18), which no doubt had its court also, as is also intimated in Mark 15: 16. In Luke 22: 54 the "house" of the high priest is distinguished from the "court" or open yard. Confusion on this head has obscured the truth; for Peter was not where the preliminary enquiry was held, but "without" and "below" in the court-yard. There at the light of the fire the maid that kept the door (John) taxed him with being a disciple of the Nazarene (Matt., Mark). It has been assumed by some that John puts the first denial in the porch or forecourt; but this is quite to overrule the import of ver. 18, which seems to me appended for the special purpose of guarding against such an error, and adds a correction in the characteristic manner of our Evangelist; just as ver. 24 is meant parenthetically, to correct the hasty assumption that the first general interrogatory was before Annas to whom Christ was led first; whereas it really was before Caiaphas to whom Annas sent him "bound," though it may probably have been only across the same court. Luke adds the distinct shade that the maid spoke of him, and not only to him.

2. Unbelief, if it cannot torture an additional fact in the first denial into a discrepancy, thinks that there is a plain contradiction in the second denial. For Matthew speaks of another maid, Mark of the same maid as before (the portress of John), Luke of "another" but a "man." To all this however John gives the key with moral certainty by his use of the plural — "they said therefore." For thus he clearly shows, even to a doubter, that what each of the three Synoptists says may be all and equally authentic; as the believer is entitled to accept unreservedly without any such demonstration. The two maids and a man may have taken part, in what the fourth Gospel thus sums up. It is plain from Matthew and Mark that the second charge was, in presence of several bystanders on the spot, probably the porch or forecourt whither Peter had gone out, and that Peter's denial was then repeated (ἠρνεῖτο), and not a single act like the first (ἠρνήσατο). Is it not then humiliating to find a scholar like Grotius saying, παιδισκή τις.  quomodo articulum interdum sumi certum est? And J. Piscator one of the most learned of the early Protestant commentators had said (iii. 143, ed. third) pretty much the same thing before, as others since down to J. G. Rosenmüller, to avoid naming more. But the Greek article is never even pleonastic, neither can it interchange with the indefinite pronoun. The only natural if not necessary reference is to the same maid as before, though we know from Matthew of another maid also, who joined in the same second charge. Prof. Michaelis is represented in Bowyer's Conjectures on the New Testament (Ed. iv. 176) as asking, "Is there no MS. where the article ἡ is wanting?" To this Dr. H. Owen answers, "No MS. yet known omits the article, nor is it necessary that any should. It is apparent, from their own mode of expression compared with that of St. John's, that the three first Evangelists never attended to the order; their point being only to assure us, that Peter denies our Saviour thrice. Hence it appears to me that the maid here meant is not the same with her that is mentioned in ver. 67, but the principal maid;" etc. No statement can be more rash and baseless as to the neglect of order here in any one of the Gospels, nor had John any superiority over the rest. And as to MSS. the fact is, that out of the vast sum of N.T. Gr. copies, Lambeth 1179,* a cursive of the tenth century, is the only manuscript known to omit the article here. But the object is as plain as the mis-rendering in the Memphitic of Wilkins and the Diez cod., as well as in some of the old Latin copies. The omission therefore must be regarded as a mere slip or, if intended, a fraud; for no sane mind of competent knowledge can question that it is inserted in the genuine readings of the Gospel. Dr. Owen's alternative is even less sound; for there is not the smallest reason to doubt that every one of the Synoptists tallies in the order, and that the points of difference do not clash with the perfect accuracy of each. Fresh facts are in no way an inconsistency,

* It was a MS. brought to England by Prof. J. D. Carlyle at the beginning of this century, who died less than three years after. As Dr. H. Owen died nearly six mouths before the Cambridge Professor of Arabic got back from abroad, he could not have known of this peculiar reading, which is curious rather than important.

3. Not less must one deplore the misguided efforts of Grotius, Wetstein, as to force Luke into a reluctant repetition of the same thing with Matthew, instead of believing what each says. No scholar doubts that not only in poetry but in prose the masc. is used where one might expect fem., if an indefinite expression be desired as in Acts 9: 37. The object seems rhetorical. What has such a principle to do with the case before us? Nobody would think of any but a male in 58, were it not taken for granted that the third Gospel states afresh what is in the first; but as we have seen, the second differs, and why not the third also? And to conceive that to the maid Peter says γύναι (57), and to "another" or different person he says Ἄνθρωπε, and yet means as before a woman is surely a harsh interpretation for most, if not in ambiguous eyes. The true answer is that the language of John describing the second appeal to Peter is such as admits of all three taking part to the same effect.

4. How painful then to think of sentiments so disparaging to scripture from one who so sincerely sought to understand, explain, and defend it, as Dean Alford in his Commentary (i. 283, ed. 5)! — "It would appear to me that, for some reason, John was not so accurately informed of this [the third] as of the other denials." What notions of inspiration a man must have formed to allow himself the use of such language! God is excluded from the scheme, or at least inspiration does not mean His conveying the truth perfectly through chosen instruments. The Holy Spirit who empowered John to write could not but be cognizant of all; and if He undertook to reveal the things of God in words taught of Him, was it left to the precarious will and uncertain mind of the writers employed, or carried out according to His known wisdom? An imperfect standard misleads, so much the more because a standard from God cannot but be accepted and applied with the assurance that it is perfect. That an enemy should impugn the truth of God's word is natural; but if its friends unconsciously yet really undermine its character and authority, by misusing the human channel so as to ignore and deny its exemption from error and the divine purpose which makes it what it is, what can one do but mourn as well as warn? The statement here (and alas! how common it is in our day) assumes that the differences in the Gospels are the effects of man's weakness and want of accurate information, instead of their variety being the fruit of the Spirit's wisdom in each contributing to a fulness of truth the more wonderful in result.

Even if one only considers the accounts of bare facts, it is John who alone tells us of the leading of the Lord before Annas. It is from him we learn that the maid who first charged the apostle was the portress, and that it was through the other disciple that Peter was let in to the scene of his fall. It is to him we owe the remarkable link which reconciles at one stroke in the simplest and surest way the diverging accounts of the three Synoptists as to the second denial. And he alone lets us know the interesting connection of the slave, wounded of Peter and healed of Christ, with him who was the most pointed of those who drew out the third and most aggravated denial. And this even on human grounds, is the one who "was not so accurately informed!" Never were accounts so evidently above the just imputation of one copying another; never was harmony demonstrably more perfect, without hiding or diminishing but fully unfolding the difference, of each succeeding account. Nor can any fact be more triumphantly apparent, not withstanding discrepancies to the superficial glance, than their really consenting testimony, the more minutely investigated the better, to the full truth of the story as a whole.

Matthew and Mark alone name Peter's going out into the porch or fore-court. How weak and absurd, not to say irreverent, is the reasoning that John does not seem possessed of this detail, which Luke mentions no more than he! Mark speaks twice of Peter's "warming himself," as John twice of his "standing and warming himself;" but how does it demonstrate that Matthew and Luke knew not this detail?

II. But let me now proceed to draw out the indications that the characteristic manner, in which each of these inspired accounts differ from the rest, has its peculiarity impressed on it by God to serve His distinctively aim, no less than as a whole, without which, it may be added, we could not have the truth as now.

1. In the first Gospel the Spirit traces the Lord as Emmanuel, Jehovah-Messiah, but rejected of the Jew; and consequently the change of dispensation, which brings in the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and the assembly, but associates the rejected Messiah meanwhile with the despised poor of the flock in Galilee, the pledge of resumed associations with such in the latter day, before the Son of man comes on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Conformably with this, the unquestionable design of the Gospel, we may notice that the account of the denial here brings into prominence Jesus "the Galilean" (69) and "the Nazarene" (71), in the first and second denials, as is implied also of Peter in the third (73). Nor do the other Gospels (save Mark for another reason) so bring out the Messiah disowned by His own disciple before the feeble lips of women, or with such aggravation when others pressed it on the third occasion. Was this coincidence an accident on Matthew's part? or the fruit of the inspiring Spirit's purpose? The last without doubt, the peculiarities of form being due to divine wisdom and truth.

2. Every one at home in the second Gospel knows how devoted Mark is to unfolding the service of the Son of God here below, and the effect of this governing design on all that is omitted as well as inserted from first to last, inclusive of the closing verses which B do not exhibit (to the serious detriment of the true conclusion of the book). The total failure of Peter as a servant is drawn out minutely, as Christ's grace toward him shines on to the end so much the more brightly. Here we see as in John his selfishness and his "evil communications" or "company," and the effect on "good manners." Here as well as in Luke is mentioned the taunt of his Galilean dialect as fixing an unwelcome association on Peter. Here his failure repeated under the pressure first drew out his shame and fear of confessing Jesus the Nazarene. Here only is noticed the warning of the Lord in its most specific form (Mark 14: 30), and here too its no less specific fulfilment (68, 72). How gracious of the Master! how base in the servant, only to find His goodness still more abundant! Truly, where sin abounded, grace over-abounded! What a contrast the terms of the third denial with his public preaching shortly, to such as these bystanders, of Jesus as a known Saviour and Lord! So is he a self-confident servant to learn of the only Perfect Servant, and by grace become faithful at length. Is all this defect and chance? Or is it divinely purposed? If it can be only of God, learn and cavil not.

3. In Luke we see the Son of man who is Son of God. Perfectly a man He is, the Man in whom the Father delighted, whose delights were with the sons of men. He is the Mediator between God and man, who came into the world to save sinners, Himself the Pattern not only of all that pleased God in dependence and obedience, but of all grace toward all men, Gentiles no less than Jews. Hence, in approaching the case before us, this Gospel alone tells us of Jesus touching the wounded slave's ear and healing. him, though all set forth the disciple's misguided zeal. Luke also finishes the account of Peter's fall before he speaks of the preliminary indignities put on the Lord by the priests and elders with their servants, hastens to the council when it was day, and while fully speaking of Pilate, as the rest do, alone lets us know Herod's part in these scenes of cruel impiety.

A maid's steady look and charge sufficed to scare the bold man who failed to believe the word and watch unto prayer. A man takes up the second charge, leaving John alone, it would seem, and setting on Peter, "Thou also art one of them," as indeed began the maid who certainly knew John; for we may reject utterly the assumption that the high priest was too great a personage to have the son of Zebedee for an acquaintance. "A mean fisherman" John was not, though Calvin says it (ignobilis erat piscator, Opp. vii. 161, col. i); and even had it been so, how strange to ignore that the proudest may have intimate relations with the lowly for reasons too numerous and patent for a word more to be needed! This notion might justly be called "levis conjectura;" and Heumann's hypothesis of Judas Iscariot is, as Alford remarks, too absurd to deserve confutation. But Luke, as all the rest, only supposes this; John alone tells his own tale of shame, as often without naming but the very reverse of concealing himself. Lastly, another unnamed man taxes Peter stoutly (which only receives its explanation in John's Gospel), and, the third denial follows in terms peculiar to Luke and characteristic of him only, who makes "man" so prominent. "While he was yet speaking," says Luke (another touch of his), "a cock crew." But there is added a fresh trait, which could be nowhere else so appropriately as in the Gospel which pre-eminently gives us grace dealing with the heart: "the Lord turned" (for He was in an elevated hall facing His accusers and His back toward Peter in the courtyard), "and looked on Peter, and Peter called" etc. The mind that could conceive these differences to be mistakes, or even thrown by hazard into the Gospels where they are, might consistently imagine the world to be the result of a concourse of atoms. And yet Dean Alford is but one of a class of well-meaning men who have so little faith in scripture as to say, without the least thought of impropriety, that "the trial he (Luke) omits altogether, having found no report of it!" What "report" had he of the agony in Gethsemane, though he alone tells us of an angel appearing to strengthen Him, when His sweat became as great drops of blood? He might have had Matthew's Gospel and Mark's long enough before Him without that of which there could be no reporter; for who of men was there to see or hear? Oh! how grievous is the unbelief of believers.

4. But surely believers are not blind to the divine character of John's presentation of things here as everywhere. Alas! it is not only Dean Alford who, we saw, apologises for John's lack of accurate information; nor is it only men like Olshausen, Wieseler, Tischendorf, speak of a contradiction! between the Synoptists and John as to the locality of the denial. Living writers of eminence hint at a confusion in our Evangelist's account owing to the excitement of a popular ferment. Happily inspiration, though it may use, is independent of, sight or hearing as well as report and information. And what evidence of divinely impressed design can be plainer or more conclusive, than that John, nearer to the Lord than any of the Synoptists during His agony, does not relate it; and that, none of these, not even Matthew, tells us how the band all went backward and fell to the ground before Him who was the Son, as surely as Jesus the Nazarene.

It is a pleasure to cite Calvin here, more right than he, is sometimes on the difficulties of unbelief: even here one might wish a stronger faith and a deeper reverence. He says (ibid.) that John was not too eager ("curiosus," which Mr. Pringle, in the Edinburgh Translation Series, was not justified in rendering "very exact") in drawing up the history; because he is satisfied with framing a brief summary. "For after relating that Peter once denied Christ, he intermingles other matters, and then returns to the other two denials. Hence inattentive readers inferred that the first denial took place in Annas' house. No such thing however do the words convey, which rather state clearly that it was the high priest's maid who drove Peter to deny Christ." And Calvin reads ver. 24 as a parenthesis, correcting the idea that the narrative in 19-23 was of what took place at Annas', and explaining that it was before the high priest, Caiaphas. This is the inattention that led Dean Alford after others to deny the bearing of ἀπέστειλεν "sent" in 24; for its quasi-pluperfect force is contextual simply, which is quite notorious in temporal subordinate sentences, and not only in relative, but independent sentences if they contain some supplementary notice, which is exactly the fact here.

Annas, the ex-high-priest, soon high-priest again (for all was out of course), is very briefly introduced to mark how completely the Son of God was rejected. Before, Caiaphas was the interrogator while Peter denied his Master; and the tone is here no more different as compared with the other three Gospels than is always found. There is no solid ground for imagining the portress to have charged Peter immediately after entry. It was really at the fire, as in other Gospels. All is open and general in the account of John. And the second denial, so far from being a difficulty, we have seen to be the solution of the difficulties which hasty minds found in the Synoptists; as the third sheds an important light on Luke and indeed all the rest, in the keen asseveration of Malchus' kinsman, who with the rest might yet more alarm the guilty apostle's mind. Oh! the sad spectacle of Peter, and even John drawn by his own hand in the power of the Spirit, where Jesus stands alone in the majesty of grace and truth, immeasurably superior to all who presumed to judge Him, where His own who ought to have received Him are manifestly and immensely worse than the most hardened of Gentiles, and seal God's judgment on their infidel declaration that "We have no King but Caesar." Now which of the Evangelists has the function of bringing this out habitually? John, who here does so above all.

Unbelief then is as inexcusable as it is blind. "By faith we understand."

Philadelphia and Laodicea.

Rev. 3: 7-22.

(BT Vol. 16, from p. 268: 4 episodes)

W. Kelly.

My task now is to show that the Lord Jesus had something much more definite in His mind than the ordinary profit that one may and ought to derive from the word of God, which is written for every believer. For instance, what was written in the Epistle of James, or in those of Peter, or in the Epistle to the Hebrews, or in any other of the Epistles of the New Testament, is all of God. I need not say that the Christian believes that every part of them is divine; that every word of them is profitable, and so intrinsically for all days, if we have not all the elements that men possessed by the church at the time they were written. At that time there were outward powers manifested; there were persons in the highest position of authority for rule as well as in revelation of the truth; which thing we do not possess at the present time. And one presumes that all persons of sobriety would acknowledge this. There may be shades of difference, and some may claim more as perpetuated at the present time; but, among sober Christians who may differ as to other things except that which is fundamental, there is no question that the apostolic church did possess not a little that does not exist at present. But all that is needful for the edifying of Christ's body — for God's service and worship — we have assured here in scripture itself, with the certainty that it abides till we all come to the unity of the faith.

Now, I claim for the scripture which has been read something more precise; for the Lord was here contemplating such a scene as is unrolled before the eye at the present time. There is no doubt that the Churches existed when the Lord told John to write to the angel of each; there is no doubt that instructions were given at that time for each church, as well as the whole book which connected them with a great deal that followed the Epistles. But the contents of these Epistles in themselves, and very particularly the character of the book, show that the Lord had a larger view than any ordinary thing that was realised in the day of the apostle John; for it is entirely unusual to present Epistles as here in prophecy. If the Lord was pleased to give certain Epistles as a preface to the great prophetic book of the New Testament, there was clearly a distinct object in it, and I believe that object was twofold: first, to meet existing wants in John's day (and no doubt, in that point of view, Epistles were sent to each of them, according to the instructions given to the apostle); and, secondly, to make those Epistles to be a vehicle of the widest instruction for days that had yet to come to pass. But now they are come. And the Lord has brought out the light of them, when we read the closing scene of these seven churches. They were all there when He originally gave them messages; but now they have come into being in the prophetic point of view. There is, however, a division to be made among them, which is of much consequence to lay hold of; and this is, that the first three were not permanent states. They were passing ones. This is marked even outwardly by the fact that the call to hear changes its place at the fourth church.

But one need not go into this to demonstrate the character of the Epistles. All prove the same thing. For instance, mark the feature of the Epistle to the church at Ephesus. Of old it was a question of first love. This could only apply prophetically to the state of things which followed in the day of St. John. There never was a time when it could so aptly apply as then. They had the full grace and truth of the Lord brought out for them, and it they had abandoned, or were beginning to abandon. They were letting in waves of vain thoughts — doctrines soon after — which altogether weakened their sense of Christ's love, and therefore of their own love to Him. They were relaxing from their first love. Evidently, this could not apply in the same precise manner afterwards as then, and for the simple reason, that far more serious evils came up before the mind of the Lord.

Take again the second — Smyrna. It is plain that the heathen persecution is referred to. We know that this followed, that prison and death were used as engines against the church a little after the early days.

In the Epistle to Pergamos too we have the church of God establishing itself in a public manner in the Roman Empire; that is dwelling, as it is said, where Satan's throne was. Now, this could only apply then, and once, while other things of a much more serious import would afterwards call for the notice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Do these admit of repetition? In fact, there was no such thing of the same character of persecution. There is a persecution of Babylon; but that is brought before us in a much later part of the Book of Revelation. The old heathen persecution assuredly could not be repeated after there ceased to be heathens within the bosom of Christendom. So, again, the church getting established in the world was not a question after it was established. We find her acquiring a place, a settling down, on earth. Afterwards much greater abominations were seen.

It is exactly at this point that the Lord makes a most strikingly new feature enter into these churches; and what makes it to be of so solemn an import for us is, that it is His account of the permanent conditions that follow. Thyatira is the first one; and the only or chief reason for entering into this now is to give a greater definiteness to what one has to say about Philadelphia and Laodicea. I want to show it is not the mere application of these letters, or that they illustrate truth by the past. There is much more than that. In fact they apply chiefly to what I am going to spread before you for our own spiritual judgment. At least, such is my conviction. But the word must be mixed with faith if it be really the mind of God to profit souls. It would not become me to speak so plainly and distinctly if I had not the firmest conviction of the truth.

Thyatira is the first, then, in which there is the marked outward change referred to. But there is a more remarkable characteristic than the call to hear. It is here, for the first time, that we have the Lord distinctly bringing in His coming again. That is, the Lord intimates to these that the state goes on till He comes again. It is not so with the first three. With Ephesus, the only coming described is a providential coming, "or, else, I will come to thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place;" and so with Pergamos, fighting with the sword of his mouth, but not His coming to receive the saints. nor yet to introduce His kingdom. Here it is in Thyatira for the first time; and, what is more, He introduces it in the body of the Epistle before the promise. See that which we have in the twenty-fifth verse of the second chapter: "That which ye have already hold fast till I come." The plain intimation is, that what He describes here goes on until He comes.

Now, this is evidently very much to be weighed, in order to have a sound judgment of these Epistles. When we look into that to Thyatira, it becomes still more manifest. Here we have that portentous personage Jezebel, the false prophetess. I do not mean that Thyatira is embodied in Jezebel; far from it. We shall find, on looking into it, there is a remarkable conjunction of opposites. In Thyatira both good and evil are brought together. But still here we have Jezebel. It is a most apt figure of that Popery which, I have no doubt, is also brought before us in the symbol of Babylon given much later. Here she is presented as a false prophetess. We know how thoroughly this represents the character of Popery: that is, her pretension to continuous inspiration, a claim to pronounce the voice of God on whatever point may come before her, is really setting herself above the written word of God, as if she alone had His living voice. We know that such a procedure always does set aside what is written.

It is not altogether a peculiarity of Rome to indulge in a self-assertion which enfeebles scripture; but in Rome it takes its most determined and most pronounced form. Here then, first of all, we have Jezebel: "Thou sufferest that woman, Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce My servants." It is a striking fact that the Lord Jesus intimates that, in Thyatira, there were persons whom He characterised in the face of all drawbacks as "My servants." And so it has always been. Not a few, there is every reason to believe, who were God-fearing had a conscience about the word of God, with a love for the Saviour, that never really left Romanism; while, at the same time, there was still plainer the fact that they were stupefied by the acceptance of fleshly unity, and by the doings of Jezebel. There was thus a most painful issue, the alliance of those that were the Lord's with a system which, in itself, was the most cruel enemy of those that He loved.

This, then, is the first thing here called to your notice. It is a picture of the Middle Ages. We find that, if the Lord had His servants there, Jezebel had children not only then but later. There is a perpetuation of the evil race — a continuance of the same character of persons. Then, thirdly, and this may go along with the rest, there is another distinct feature, only found in connection with Thyatira, namely, a remnant; that which must neither be confounded with Jezebel's children on the one hand, nor with His servants on the other. Surely this is a very remarkable state of things. And what demands all your attention is, that it was found here only for the first time, while it continues up to the present day. That is, you have what may be called the Romanising or Ultramontane school; the Papistical party, thoroughly determined in carrying out the system to the uttermost — Jezebel and her children; next, those whom the Lord called "My servants," in the Middle Ages, such as St. Bernard, or, in later times, Pascal and Fenelon, if I may mention the names of such, down to M. Boos — saints who really had a moral abhorrence of what was enforced by Jezebel. Yet there they are, at the same time, all mixed up together.

But mark, contemporaneously, another party, which had its spring in those early times before Protestantism — the remnant or "the rest," mentioned in Thyatira, as it is said, "As many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak." Who are they? They are such, in my judgment, as the Waldenses, that is, a body of Christians who feared the Lord, though in ignorance, who lived before the days of the Reformation, yet quite refused the wickedness of Rome, and who were, therefore, distinct from "My servants" found in and seduced by Rome. These rejected the overtures of the harlot, but, at the same time, they were more known for their practical godliness than for any clearness in the truth of God. They were exceedingly unintelligent, as we should call it. They but imperfectly understood even justification. Compared with the measure of the Reformation, they were far behind; and it is remarkable that they have remained much in the same state. They seem to have paid little attention to light from without, which is common in these days of ours. Substantially they only retain their old attitude. They were, no doubt, undermined, abused, attacked by everything that either the power or wiles of Rome could do to destroy them. But there they abode in their secluded valleys, and there they are still, and I believe there they will remain till the Lord comes — not merging into Rome on the one hand, nor Protestantism, nor fuller light on the other. They retain the peculiar place, which they had even before the Reformation. Here, then, is the picture; and I ask, Is it not striking that from the first the Lord should have so sketched it out? There is nothing like it previously, and nothing like it in what follows. It began at that time and no other; and let us always remember that this state of things goes on till the Lord comes.

Then, in the next Epistle, we have a wholly different character. There is the absence of all the revolting features that were found in Thyatira, or even in Pergamos. Pergamos was what we may call the Catholic system; Thyatira brought in the Romanist. The first was the exaltation of the church in the world; it was what far and wide prevailed before the Pope set forth his aspiring and worst pretensions. The empire had become Christian in name long before. Thyatira, as we have seen, gives us the Roman system, but with these remarkable features which we have just endeavoured to indicate as predicted by our Lord.

But here, in Sardis, we know nothing of the persecuting or idolatrous queen. There is rather what we may call outwardly a respectable orthodoxy. One can understand how this came to pass when energy failed: a name to live, while ready to die. Sardis indicates what came after the Reformation. The Spirit of God does not describe that wonderful work as far as it went, the power which, in various lands separated souls from Rome. He gives us here the cold condition into which they settled down after form superseded the preaching of those stirring days: "These things saith He that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; 1 know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that were ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God." And one understands readily why it was that death is so marked. It was the universal doctrine of all the Protestant bodies that when souls are justified, they are put under the law as the rule to live by. Now, the necessary effect of this is the ministry of death, a most effective way to deal with a sinner to convince him of death. But the apostle, in the third chapter of Second Corinthians, sets forth a distinct contrast of the ministration of the Spirit, which is God's will about His people now, with the ministration of death under the law  that which was written and engraven on stones. As no man can deny this to be the law written by Moses, so he contrasts the two, and insists on it that the ministry of the law has, for its effect, death and condemnation.

Now the Lord here contemplates the result. It was, indeed the inevitable effect of not going on, in the possession of life and acceptance of God, to walk in the Spirit as they lived in the Spirit. They attempted to embrace what was utterly incompatible; to put those born of God, and set free by His grace, on a common ground with the mass of men in all Protestant lands  - that is, to bring in the whole population. Now the natural way in which this could be done was by the law; and the consequence was that, while the Lord might use the law in particular cases for the conviction of sin, the saints of God suffered irreparably. For the law provokes and condemns evil; it neither quickens, nor strengthens, nor justifies. Souls never enjoy settled peace ; and the walk is as feeble as is the hold on God's grace. So He says: "I have not found thy works perfect." There was an incompleteness about them. The savour of Christ was not there, life in Him being little known, any more than full redemption. In fact the law displaced the Holy Ghost. "Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." So the Lord threatens, because the Protestant bodies fell back on the power of the world. Every one of them sought the patronage of the great. There were not any of them above thinking there was a mighty influence for good where there was an acquisition of worldly authority. And hence, therefore, it is that they were threatened by the Lord with the judgment which is to fall by-and-by on the world. The Lord, in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, brings it before the saints that He will come as a thief in the night, but not on the saints of God — they are distinguished: Christians have a different position from the world. In 1 Thessalonians 5. He threatens the thief-like coming; and this is the very thing that is repeated here. I scarce know a more solemn thought than that Sardis, having accepted the world to govern itself in the things of God, has the Lord speaking of His coming as He threatens it on the world itself. If men choose the world's power, how can they escape the world's judgment? Such a choice is the less excusable if they boast an open Bible; and this is the prospect of Protestantism. The bright hope of the church is wholly wanting.

But now we come to another thing. And if it has been shown that Thyatira affords us a prophetic picture of what would be in the Middle Ages, and Sardis of what followed the Reformation, let me ask you to weigh before God, beloved friends, what the Lord means by the new and most singular testimony that is implied in the message to the church at Philadelphia. It is entirely different, not only from Romanism, and from everything that is found connected with Romanism, but not less distinct from the picture of Protestantism. What does the Lord mean? What in fact does He characterise by it?

The first notable feature is Himself — His own person — and His own person judging according to the truth; His own self so revealed as to act practically, to insist on genuineness, to allow no longer a mere acknowledgment of truth that was not carried out. He will have moral reality. This is what I think the Lord intimates in saying: "These things saith He that is holy, He that is true; He that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth." He looks after all.

And when did the Lord distinctly thus work in Christendom? When did He make His own feel how useless it is to acknowledge truth that we do not live? When did He thus recall His saints back to His word, and to own the power of the Holy Ghost in making that word living? Where is this found? We all know that there are those in Christendom that have set up for the Spirit of God without the word; and we are not ignorant of others who have set up for the word without the Spirit; and in both cases with results the most disastrous and withering. But where is it that the Lord has recalled His own to His word, insisting also on that sovereign place and liberty which is due to the Holy Ghost?

It is freely granted that there is another thing calculated to cause distrust in connection with this, among the children of God — namely, mere assertion of the rights of the Holy Ghost. And for this reason, that the Holy Ghost is here to glorify Christ; and, therefore, if it were but the revival of long lost privileges of the church, there is only partial recovery here. If it were people seeking to set up the church again on its own foundation, we ought to hesitate, not as if it were not a right desire; but it is hardly a becoming aim in the present state of things. Ought we not also to feel its sin and ruin?

Supposing a man were to receive, for instance, the truth of the church of God in all its fulness of privilege and power, do you think, blessed as this is, that this alone — where the recognition of the church of God filled his soul — would make him an adequate witness of God at this moment? Very far from it indeed; not because the thing itself is not true, but because alone it would be accompanied by high thoughts and hard measures. It would inflate the soul, and be no better than an utterly impracticable theory, too, as far as that goes.

Beloved friends, there are two things necessary — real faith in what the church of God is, as God made it; and, along with this, the sense of the utter ruin that has come in. For such is the state of soul that suits the man who feels he is part of the ruin as well as of the church. And how are these conditions produced? Not by looking at the church only, but at Christ. And this is the very thing that the Lord brings in here. It is the re-awakening of the heart to the place of Christ — to Christ as the Holy and the True. The effect then would be judgment of the present by the past — ah! how changed. Nothing is more needed than judgment of what man has made of it, by what God Himself set up in His own incomparable grace. There will then be no pretension to recover; no thought of setting up what once was, or rather no attempt, on a little scale, at what once was in all its fulness. This would be a denial of the ruin of the church.

No; there is a true path for faith; but it is a lowly one. There is a path that uses what God has given, what is imperishable and unchangeable — what God always makes to be the portion of faith. But then, it is in the sense of deep dishonour done to Him, and the going out of the heart to every member of that body, with the patient waiting for Christ's coming.

Now, the only way in which this is wrought in the soul is by looking not at the church or the Holy Ghost either, but at Christ. Hence you will observe here that He brings in no powers of the Spirit of God; it is "He that is holy, He that is true." I am sure there is a power deeper than miracles; but then it is a power that works morally. It is a power that effects self-judgment in the Christian, even as repentance is to the soul under conviction when being brought to God. "These things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that hath the key of David, He that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth." One may perfectly confide in His resources; He has got all under His hand. He opens; who shuts? He shuts: who opens? But the way in which He uses His power is to set before them the open door; and surely the man must be blind who does not own that it is precisely in this way that grace has been at work. Nor can one doubt that concurrently God has been working providentially in this way; for how often, while the Lord may exercise faith by difficulties, He also shows His own power by surmounting them all in a thousand different ways!

Thus there is nothing more ordinary in the way of God, than that He works in His own power providentially at the same time that the Holy Ghost works morally. And so it is at this present time. There is the greatest possible indifferentism growing up, breaking down the barriers on all sides; and though man misuses grace for his own licentiousness, the Lord, in every sense of the word, sets before His saints an open door. It is not a question of preaching the gospel (one can understand the importance of it for the service of God); but the church does not preach any more than teach. We must not think of narrowing it to evangelization. In that respect there may be an open and an effectual door; but here it is an open door simply, by which one understands that the Lord makes clear the path in the midst of all obstacles — opening a way for what is for His own glory in the doing of His own will. Will any one maintain there ever was a moment since the church fell into disorder, when the Lord has made the "open door" a characteristic of His working so much as at the present moment? "I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." All mankind cannot open it; nor can all the power of Satan shut it. It is but for a little while. The Lord has opened the door to His people, and they are using it. They see the way clear before them, and they act on His grace. And the reason, too, is remarkable: "Thou hast a little strength." He does not say so to Sardis or Thyatira. They might boast outwardly. Not so Philadelphia. And anything that takes us out of our weakness, anything strong, is incompatible with the mind of the Lord at the present time. Whatever is a seeking of greatness in any one way does not suit the testimony of the Lord or the church's state. “Thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name."

I should like to put it to the conscience of any Christian person here, who doubts the soundness of what has been said, to answer me — Where do you find the word of Christ kept in any remarkable way? where do you find it treasured and carried out? One might ask even the enemies of the Bible, whoever they may be, where that word is heard and prized in away comparatively unexampled? Would any one say — without wishing to utter a word in disrespect of the Wesleyans — would any one say that it stamps that society? I do not care to be personal, and shall not go round the compass of the different Protestant bodies; but we ask any person who has a conscience, and who knows the facts of what God has been working, where they find Christ's word really kept. You may tell me of the extension of missions, and of the conversion of souls; and I do not deny it. Would to God there were far more zeal in spreading the gospel in foreign parts, and seeking the conversion of souls at home! But one asks, Where is it that you find the characteristic so marked, that the Lord Who weighs all could say of them, "Thou hast kept My word?" Where is the reproach of bibliolatry cast most, if we may put it in another form? Where in Edinburgh, or in any place whatever you choose around you, is this stigma to be seen?

Remark, that our Lord is not here speaking of the old bodies of the Middle Ages — that is to say, of Thyatira. We must leave them behind: it is not among such; nor, again, in the Protestantism of Sardis. It is a new action of God, distinct from both. Where will you find, then, those that love the Lord — disclaiming any kind of kindred in an ecclesiastical way with Romanism and Protestantism — who are content with Christ in His moral glory, and characterised by keeping His word here below?

But there is another thing. They are described as not denying the power of that name — His name as a centre. That name is one that must not be slighted. It is the resource for all difficulties from forgiving sin to the dealing with every kind of need. It is the only name of holy power; and, for this very reason, a name of unfailing avail in dealing with what is contrary to God in the way of false doctrine or unholiness. Where is it that there are children of God who love to confide in it, to gather round it, knowing what it is to trust it? Where then must we look for those to whom the Lord says distinctively — "Thou hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name?" It is not for me to say where they are. It is for you to find them out. And may the Lord give you to prayerfully search before you settle the question! For you ought to know well that no one here wishes to urge anything that does not commend itself to the conscience of the children of God. Christ's word and name concern them most nearly; and He assuredly speaks of those who cleave to both.

I should not, on any consideration, be here to speak of a party interest, or some object of man upon earth. Such aims must be always low and unworthy of those that, having Christ for their life and righteousness, are looking for Him to come, and know He is coming quickly. But here is His intimation of a peculiar blessedness. Let it be yours and mine not to let slip this grace! Is this presumption? It is rather faith, which unbelief counts presumption. How much there is on the contrary to judge us in the words the Lord has addressed to us! I wish to show that these words concern you and every one of us here; and I cannot but say, that these words are either true of us as Christians, or they are not. If they are not, it is serious for us, for we are not in the current of what the Lord values most at this moment; if they are, blessed are we. Blessed are those that do the truth — wretched such as know and do it not.

But let us follow what He says: "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee." Now it is remarkable that, at the very time when the Lord is making this special testimony, Satan has been forming counter testimonies. Take, for instances, the outbursts of Tractarianism, Irvingism, Mormonism, Christadelphianism, and I know not what — those enormous and frightful evils growing up so rank and luxuriant at this present time. What are they? Devices in order to bring discredit on the action of the Spirit of God according to the word. When the Lord is thus calling out and forming for Himself according to His own glory, the enemy would distract by novelties, or keep fast in the darkness of antiquity. But even the stoutest of them shall be compelled to acknowledge — "I have loved thee." He will at length vindicate His own grace.

But turn we to the words that follow: "Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come on all the world, to try them that dwell on the earth."

Now, I ask, how could such a promise affect a person looking for the progress of Christendom and the improvement of society, who was looking for all things to advance gradually, and improve on the whole? who thinks that the heathen are to be converted, and the present evils that afflict Christendom to be all expelled? Why, it would have no force at all. But take now the other side. To those who know that the hour is approaching — that hour of deceit as well as tribulation, who know that Satan is to be allowed a special power for a little season, who know that we are on the eve of what, when restraint is gone, will work both in a seductive and in a destructive way, how blessed to have His own voice saying, "Because thou hast kept the word of My patience!" Christ's patience is sweet and good for the people that are despised and scorned. As He waits to come, so they wait for His coming. They have communion with Him about it.

Let me ask again, Where are those found that are, as a whole, waiting for the coming of the Lord? Wishing not to be invidious, I put it to the conscience of any intelligent person, even of those who are opponents, where are the Christians that, as a whole, ever look for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? That such are meant here, can scarce be denied. Do not imagine that great things are said of a particular position. It is a sorrowful fact, that those enjoying the most blessed privileges, if they prove unfaithful or turn aside, become the bitterest enemies. None will be keener to oppose. So it must be with a bad conscience; which has turned such away from what was once the deepest enjoyment. They affect to despise and deny what they once appreciated. It is the enemy which produces this fearful change. None become such restless antagonists of what the Lord is doing. No! it is somewhat to make good in faith, nothing to boast of. And the Lord says, "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience" (remember it may be given up if not kept), "I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come on all the world, to try them that dwell on the earth." Thus, those who keep the word of His patience are a people not settled down on the earth, but who, unknown by the world as Christ was, desire to walk by faith and in grace, as becomes persons united to Him Who is heavenly. They are heavenly, and wait to bear His image shortly, purifying themselves as He is pure. But who would value this promise, except those keeping the word of His patience?

Mark the further words, "I come quickly." Blessed, indeed, is this for those that are waiting, for those that watch, for those that with joy welcome Him. Mark this also; it is only now, for the first time, so brought before any of these churches. Surely there is something significant in this fact: we have perhaps looked over these messages vaguely, and might have imagined it elsewhere. But here only it is thus. The Lord did give promises that referred to His coming, as for instance to Thyatira, and a solemn warning again to the church — world of Sardis. Here is quite another thing occurring, before the promise comes. And why so? Because it is a part of their spiritual life, and spring of their constant heavenly hope. The Lord, therefore, refers to it graciously as a thing that occupies their heart. He could not have given a word of sweeter comfort to those who enter into His patience. He says, (not, Behold) "I come quickly."

But there is another word: "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." How little others understand your weakness and mine? Some are perhaps reputed so firm in convictions and ways, that it is useless to say a word to them. Oh! how little people believe that none require such sustenance of grace as those who are exposed to the difficulties we know every day. I should say, that if there are any apt to be swayed to and fro, and peculiarly open to be assailed by the enemy, if any exposed to danger in every shape, it is those who, abjuring forms, need the direct power of the Spirit of God to keep in obedience and hope. Hence you can understand how needed is the admonition in the Lord's message, "Hold that fast which thou halt, that no man take thy crown."

Let me tell those, if there are any here, that know what it is to be separate to Christ in every-day walk, who, without setting up to be, are Philadelphians in the reality of faith, who really and humbly are standing on that ground, not merely in name and desire but in truth before God — let me say this to them: Trifle not with it, suppose not that you have got a lease in perpetuity, or that you have any such insurance as would preserve you against the wiles Satan is seeking to ensnare you by. I grant that the grace of the Lord has not called you out for nothing, and that He means to have a testimony kept alive till He comes. We believe there is now such a thing as Philadelphia, to go on till the Lord comes. If, proud, you will be swept away; and if cherishing what is of flesh — what belongs to the objects of men, and not of Christ — you will learn, that, far from having prospered in such licence, on the contrary this very thing will bring the judgment of the Lord on you. "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." The crown will be there, the crown is sure; but it does not follow that the same soul will have it. The men may change, but the crown will be conferred. For the Lord will set aside the haughty, and exalt the humble; and He can gather those who might seem far off — the very persons who will be found faithful when He comes to receive us to Himself.

I therefore desire to submit my own conscience and heart to this test. I also, press on you, believing it a most serious thing to flatter ourselves as to any position, simply because we are here, and happily so, as we have been mercifully kept hitherto. Let us remember that faith dries up when it ceases to be dependent on the Lord, and becomes an outward creedism. On the contrary, it is then a source of the most imminent danger. Let us rejoice, but go on in dependence on that grace which, having called us out, alone can keep us: "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." The Lord could easily set aside those who pique themselves on their knowledge, and form from the stones, to take their place, truer children of Abraham. Let us beware, lest in any way we presume on position instead of depending on Himself.

"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out." This seems contradistinguished from the open door. It is supposed that there is a going out of heart now: assuredly a person whose heart does not go out in love is unworthy of the Lord, and does not understand what He is calling him out for. For beyond question, one of its most distinctive qualities is this very thing, this open-door exercise of heart. It is not merely the entertaining and making use of what the Lord gives for yourselves; but as witnesses of His grace and truth, the heart going out towards all that are His, as well as towards those who know Him not. It does not matter what their state of ignorance or need may be. Nay, to tell the truth, why should one mind persons who speak hardly of those they misapprehend? It is small on our part to think too much of it. The path of faith must be unintelligible to those who are outside it. How could such a place as this seriously interest the men of Sardis or Thyatira, or those of whom I have to speak in closing — Laodicea?

Holding in mind what I have said of those things, and of the forms in which the testimony, more or less according to God's mind, has been found in Christendom, beginning, one after the other, but continuing from Thyatira to the end, we see that it is an extremely serious thing for Laodicea. Do not suppose that Philadelphia turns into Laodicea. This is a false thought altogether. That there are persons who, once in Philadelphia, become active in Laodicea, one can well believe. It must always be that the corruption of the best things is the worst. No doubt there is a moral link in that fearful collapse. The Lord takes Laodicea as compared with Philadelphia. There is a thorough contrast, and this in all points. But then it is not true that the one falls into the other. After Laodicea begins, they coexist. It is to lose sight of what has been remarked, that they begin, like the rest, successively; but they are also contemporaneous states that go on till the Lord comes. So with Philadelphia and Laodicea.

But we, for a little, would look at Laodicea; and here we have what is more offensive than in Sardis, or even in Thyatira. There may not be that which looks so gross; and there is that which is truly doomed to destruction in Thyatira — Jezebel and her children for instance. This may not be so with Laodicea. But still there is a most repulsive character in Laodicea. With what exceeding disgust does not Christ mention it? I am anxious to show that this is the danger, the special danger, of the present moment. Christians in general do not go back to Sardis or Thyatira; but who will warrant against Laodicea? This is what we have to beware of. Laodicea is growing up rapidly. If Philadelphia is characterised as making Christ the object in everything, here self-complacency and indifference to His glory govern. There is plenty of knowledge if not of truth; for there is a great difference between the two. They are rich, and increased with goods. Where did they get them? They were never given in the grace of God, but borrowed or stolen. They were truths that others had got fresh from God's word. Here they are used for man's exaltation, and hence quite apart from conscience, and so without Christ. They, therefore, minister to self-complacency, and soon produce painful results, yet a certain appearance which satisfies the mind. There is nothing new you can tell them: they know it already. Truth has no power, because Christ is not the object first of all, and knowledge is not used for His glory afterwards.

And this is the reason why I think it is a destructive principle — the bringing of mere intelligence, as it is called, into the fore-ground, in the case of a soul that comes before us. In sober troth persons who make such a point of intelligence about souls do much to damage them. But more, can those who do so be really intelligent themselves? It is then unfortunate on both sides. For the truth of it is, that you cannot get true intelligence apart from obedience; and, if you could get it apparently, is it worth having? The only thing that seems to be desirable, or of the Spirit of God, is a little light acted upon leading on to more; and this, beloved friends, found in the place that is according to God. And, therefore, it is sorrowful indeed when undue moment is given to knowledge. Suppose a person is not in fellowship, and wants to understand all about the nature of the church before he comes, and it is thought he will not make a good brother unless he be first intelligent ecclesiastically, the whole principle seems false from beginning to end, a mere substitution of knowledge for Christ.

For according to my observation the best men who have grown up into the truth of God are those who, many of us can remember, were unintelligent enough when they came in; and the men who complain, are they intelligent now?

Supposing the case of Christians seeking fellowship; some may object to a sort of back bench for catechumens, whereas you want them to understand about the church and the Spirit before they are received: how are they to get this? What are they about and where, while it is to go on? Perhaps they feel a certain need of remembering the Lord, and they are accustomed to do so. But they must not yet be received! they are not intelligent enough, it appears. Are they meanwhile to drift into churches and chapels in order to get intelligence? Is not the whole notion in every way wrong, and, what is worst, contrary to the word of God. For it is plain that, for the most part, persons will not leave denominations unless they have a substantial ground of attraction in the Lord. For more you can hardly look at first. But there is enough in them to discern what is according to God; and far better act on Christ's title than keep them out shivering in the cold. Receive them and welcome them as members of the body, of Christ. Of course, there may be a question whether they are His, and there can scarce be too much care here; but it is in the true place, according to God, that truth is divinely learned. There may be value for Christ before, just enough to attract them; yet do not look for knowledge first, but fidelity to Christ. Be sure they know the Father.

Have you not known persons in fellowship, who talked exceeding strongly of their ecclesiastical principle, yet let all principle go to the winds when something crossed their will? I have known tried and feeble souls who came in, attracted by the savour of Christ they found as nowhere else, and these grew up in the truth, and stood firm and true, whilst your intelligent persons fell away to nothing. Have no confidence in anything but the name of Christ. And when it is really Christ Himself, the grace and truth found in Him, it is found strongest, and ministers grace to the soul when acted on obediently.

Thus, it is a real evil to souls and far from Christ, when an undue place is given to intelligence. This is the material to build up Laodicea and not Philadelphia. "Rich and increased with goods," is exactly what results, and it is repulsive to the Lord, Who says, "I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thins eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see." Is not this solemn? Where is now the place given to mere knowledge — not Christ, nor truth, but knowledge? These riches in the way of goods were acquired. There was a total absence of living truth, even as to the fundamentals of Christianity, so much so that people constantly apply this to unconverted men; and it looks like it. Gold, that is, divine righteousness, white raiment or practical righteousness, and eyesalve, the power of divine discernment, are the very things that ought to characterise simple Christian men from their start; but there is a total absence of the needful, and the Lord counsels them to buy.

There is more too. After mentioning His rebuke and chastening of those He loves, He calls them to be zealous and to repent, saying, "Behold I stand at the door." It is not now the open door but the shut one. "I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." For the same reason, it is a text applied or misapplied rather in the preaching of the gospel. But this shows the widespread latitudinarianism which grows up through the misuse of Philadelphian testimony. It is the state of things for people who are not satisfied with any Protestant body, nor perhaps with anything of the Catholic kind, but have not got the faith to go forth without the camp to Christ only, to keep His word, and not deny His name. They think they can get the truth without the coat, hate exclusivism, decry brethrenism, love nothingarianism, and keep a place of respectability in the world. Laodicea is the consequence, and the moral state that ensues on this is a total enfeebling — I will not say of the church, nor yet understanding of the heavenly glory of Christ but even — of God's gospel. Oh! is it not solemn? "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see." So the very elements of what a sinful man wants for his soul is what these Laodiceans inflated with the idea of knowledge and privilege, need at the last; the Lord brings before them this humbling testimony. Such is the result of man's self-complacent misuse of the truth God gave in His grace.

Let us mark the closing scene: we are on the verge of it. Let us, therefore, look to the Lord, for I am persuaded there is very imminent and increasing danger. No doubt there is the blessed hope that He is coming, and coming quickly. There is the grace that keeps us, if we look to Christ as the object of our souls: there is no other which does not lead astray. And I would press this on you, that the very fact of our indulging in any confidence in position will be found, not only a total failure, but a delusion and a snare. The result will surely be that these things will not stand the day of trial — the fatal leap will be taken. Laodicea is the new title of neutrality or indifferentism growing up rapidly around us at this moment. There is on one side what is of man, on the other what is of God; and the Lord introduces all that and more in this most affecting picture of the end of Christendom. Oh! may there be grace and power to deliver, and set souls in perfect freedom to worship and serve Him. May the Lord give us, cleaving to Him, first and last in fellowship with His Son, also to be found simple and earnest in our desires to make known His name. If there are those who leave Philadelphia for Laodicea, there may be others gathered to Christ out of that which is most offensive and nauseous.

Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII.

On the Unity of the Church.

June 29, 1896.

W. Kelly.

Souls may be profited if one subject this document to the test of God's word. It professes to come from an infallible man; and after full consultation with all who could render aid, rather than alone, we must presume. It is on a momentous article of faith, on which, if anywhere, infallibility should not falter. "If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them."

THE FOLD.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §1.

Let us begin with an all-important question raised in the first sentence. Pope Leo XIII. speaks of "the fold." It is no slip of the pen. It reappears with similar emphasis near the middle of his letter. It is reiterated in the final "appeal to sheep not of the fold," p. lvii. But the Lord Jesus, whom the Pope acknowledges to be "the Chief Pastor of souls," has ruled otherwise in John 10. He led His own sheep out of "the fold," the only such enclosure set up by God; and He forms "one flock" in contradistinction, Himself the "one Shepherd," as indeed is owned. So it is said in Matt. 16: 18, they are His church; as in the epistles, the church of God.

"The fold" applied to the Christian body is a vulgar mistake, or, if you wish it, as universally current a tradition as could be produced. What can one think of its adoption by the religious chief over 200 millions of baptised? by one who aspires to gather under his authority a still greater number, who bear the name of the Lord but do not accept his title? Is it not strange to find an infallible claim, not only stumbling on the threshold, but persisting in so palpable an error throughout? For the Pope ignores "the flock," which the Lord of all instituted, and recalls the sheep to "the fold," out of which the Lord led them. It is no mere quibble of words, but distinctive truth. For "the fold" out of which the Saviour led His own sheep was governed by the law, and fenced by ordinances on pain of cutting off; it had a succession of priests; it provided continual repetition of sacrifices, and boasted of a gorgeous sanctuary, splendid vestments, and captivating music, to say nothing of saints such as were found nowhere else. Yet out of this fold the Lord leads His own sheep; and into such a fold, as far as man could imitate it, does the Pope seek to win the sheep now.

"The flock" which the Good Shepherd forms has quite another character. He had entered by the door into the fold of the sheep, as their Shepherd, the Messiah, with the utmost difference from those who claimed them as theirs. Prophecy and miracle, light and love, made Him plain save to those who, being enemies of God, received Him not. The porter opens the door; the sheep heat His voice, and He calls His own sheep by name, but leads them out. The confession of His person (John 8: 58) provoked from the Jews not worship but an effort to stone Him; whilst His work of gracious and divine power (John 9) drew out their agreement that every confessor of Him should be put out of the synagogue The Jews thus condemned themselves. Jesus was come that those that see not (like the blind confessor) might see, and those that see (like the unbelieving Jewish leaders) might be made blind.

The Lord further sets forth Himself as the new separating and gathering object; no longer as Messiah entering "the fold," but as "the door of the sheep":- not of the sheep-fold, as some misinterpret. "I am the door: by me if anyone enter, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture" (ver. 9). In these divine words we learn who and what they are that compose "the flock." They follow Jesus because they know His voice; and He came that they might have life, end have it more abundantly. He is the object of faith; not "the flock." "He is the true God and eternal life." "He that hath the Son hath life." If any persons on earth could assuredly assert that they were God's people, theirs the fathers, theirs the covenants, theirs the Messiah, it was the Jews. Yet when proved to reject the Lord, as once for serving idols, God gave them up; and Jesus was the warrant for His own sheep to follow Him outside, where they enjoy salvation, liberty, food, and shelter from the enemy, in Him Who laid down His life for the sheep. "And I have other sheep which are not of this fold [namely, Gentile believers]; those also I must bring, and they shall bear My voice [this is the main criterion]; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd" (ver. 16).

Such is "the flock," not "the fold." The flock consists alike of the sheep separated from Judaism, which was "this fold," and of the sheep scattered among the Gentiles that had no fold: these are the "one flock." He Who is indeed infallible speaks of no "fold" now for His sheep; the Pope does. Can any child of God hesitate which to believe? The sheep hear His voice; an alien will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of aliens. The sheep follow Him, for they know His voice. "We walk by faith, not by sight." Blandishment is as vain as threats. Ever before, while "the fold" was owned, Jews and Gentiles were rigidly kept apart; now if they hear His voice, they are "one flock." It is anew thing, where grace reigns; and Christ is all, and in all. What a contrast with the fold of old or any new one! His person and work are the guarantee of every spiritual blessing to those that believe on Him.

Is it said in excuse that not only the loose speech prevalent in Christendom but the Vulgate of Jerome misled? Yet Pope Leo is a student of Scripture, they say, and probably familiar with the Greek original of the N.T. He ought herefore to have known and avoided so flagrant a mistake. In the same verse 16 of John 10 is the word (αὐλὴ) rightly translated "fold", the Jewish enclosure. Here the Lord declares that the sheep He had which were not of this fold should, with those He was leading out of the fold, be "one flock" with one Shepherd. No such gathering into one had been hitherto. It was reserved for Christ when rejected by the Jews. As the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, Who died to gather together in one the scattered children of God (John 11: 52).

Oh! how the truth has been forgotten, and the fold" set up again into which the Pope devotes his "endeavour" to bring back "sheep that have strayed." It is part of that fatal judaising against which the great apostle of the Gentiles strenuously laboured and fought throughout his blessed course. Therein the apostle Peter grievously failed: a feeble foundation for the church, and for the Roman claim of universal jurisdiction. Why should anyone hide that Peter was untrue at Antioch to the divine vision of Acts 10? He had rightly used the keys of the kingdom to admit the Jews, and afterward Gentiles. He at first had eaten with Gentiles, the sign of fellowship; and then when certain came from James, he was drawing back and separating himself. not vacillation and inconsistency only, but schism and despite of the "one flock, one Shepherd." And it was the more deplorable cowardice now, because he had confronted the narrow Pharisaic brethren in Jerusalem once (Acts 11) and again (Acts 15); and all the worse, because he was so honoured and influential. But the apostle of the uncircumcision was faithful and resisted him to the face, because he was (not merely "reprehensibilis," as the Vulgate improperly tones it down, but) "condemned". Indeed the apostle writes thus severely, "And the rest of the Jews also were guilty of like dissimulation [or hypocrisy], so that even Barnabas was carried away by their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before all," etc.

Has Pope Leo XIII. laid this solemn admonition to heart or those who helped Pope Pius IX. to proclaim papal infallibility? To the believer can there be a plainer instance of the care God has taken in scripture to anticipate and condemn human presumption? Holy Peter broke down where not only his faith as a saint should have kept him firm, but where his apostolic authority compromised the faith of the gospel and the unity of the church. It was a brief but sad slip into "the fold" again; but we read his censure for our warning in God's imperishable word. There is a painfully instructive tale of patristic dishonesty that hangs thereby; but to tell it here would cause too great a divergence from the present question, and so it must now be left.

But there is another fact of immediate bearing, which, if not familiar to all, one might expect so experienced a theologian as the present Pope to know. The correct and only tenable rendering we now discuss is given in copies of the old Latin Gospels, both African (or unrevised) and of the Italic revision. Thus in the Cod. Vercell. we read "fiet una grex, et unus pastor"; in the Cod. Veron. (with which here agrees Cod. Corbei.), "fiet unus grex, et unus pastor"; and in the Cod. Brix., "fient unus grex et unus pastor": each independent and differing perceptibly, but all agreeing in the sure and weighty truth of "one flock." This the Hieronymian Version perverted, the Popes and Councils and clergy ever since sanctioning it, ignorantly or deliberately, for their return more and more to the Jewish fold; as in fact there is none but that one. The blessed difference of the "one flock, one shepherd" they do not appreciate. It is all one to them no doubt.

Let me add that even the Gothic V. of Ulphilas is correct: why Gabelentz and Loebe have given a misinterpretation in Latin is the more strange, because in their note they rightly convict Schultz of error on this point. It is well-known that the Peschito Syriac gives the just sense, as does the Syr. Hcl. or Philox.: so also the Aeth., the Anglo-Sax., the Arabic, the Arm., the Georgian, the Memph., the Sah., and the Sclavonic. Luther translated correctly, as did Tyndale; but Cranmer and the later English wrongly followed the Vulgate, which was natural in Wiclif and the Rhemish. Erasmus in his note cites Valla, who knew that ποίμνη is "grex" rather than "ovile"; but he left the error uncorrected in all his five editions. Beza corrects it in his fourth and fifth editions, though wrong in the first three. But there can be no question, to those who adhere to the word, either of the truth, or of its importance. In Matt. 26: 31, Luke 2: 8, and twice in 1 Cor. 9: 7, the Vulgate without hesitation gives "flock," not "fold," and thus condemns itself in John 10: 16, where it is dogmatically of moment.

W.K.

UNITY.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §2.

To attract the stray sheep Pope Leo has thought it most conducive . . . . to describe the exemplar and, as it were, the lineaments of the Church. Amongst these the most worthy of our chief consideration is Unity" (p. v). Now in scripture the church has unity, not bare, but of a most distinctive character. It is the unity of God's presence in light and love, of which Christ is the head and centre, and the Spirit is the power, where therefore falsehood and evil are, as intolerable, judged by the written word. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Where this is not realised, the unity becomes the enemy's snare attaching the name of God and binding souls helplessly together to that which sanctions any iniquity and error. Unity, which exalts man and his will under. pretence of God's authority, letting in error and allowing evil, is the hateful antithesis of the Spirit's unity, the object of God's wrath and sore judgment, as St. John predicts for the harlot city of Rev. 17, 18. No wonder then that all votaries of corrupt and spurious unity should both slight openly and secretly dread the last book of holy prophecy.

The truth is thus unworthily ignored, or strangely taken for granted. But even if this were a sound and spiritual judgment, how sad! For nothing is more certain than the fact that "unity" no longer exists among Christians. There was a time when the apostolic exhortation in 1 Cor. 10: 32 could apply absolutely and without explanation: "Give none offence [no occasion of stumbling] either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God." There was no Latin church opposed to the Oriental, each claiming to be Catholic and Apostolic, to say nothing of the Russian patriarchate independent of Constantinople. There were no Jacobites, nor Nestorians; no distinct communities of Abyssinians, of Armenians, and of Copts. Again, how refuse the Christian name to the multifarious Protestant bodies who date from the Reformation, or to such as the Anglicans who boast of ecclesiastical continuity of a dubious sort for long ages before it? It must not be forgotten that more of the baptised are outside Rome than within it; and if one may at all speak not of mere profession but of real children of God, the preponderance is enormously against Rome. Yet godly and intelligent Protestants have immensely added to the disunion of Christendom. Who can deny it? or is it a light matter?

In apostolic days the church was one. How could it be otherwise if it were, as scripture declares it to be, the body and bride of Christ? It was not only that the individuals who composed it were sons of God with the Holy Spirit given to each, and crying, Abba Father. They were one with Christ corporately, His body; which relationship created the responsibility of walking as such together on the earth. They were heavenly in title already as belonging to the Heavenly One, before they bear His image at His coming again. "By one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12: 13). It was not an invisible light here below; but out of the most discordant elements expressly one, that the world seeing it might believe that the Father sent the Son Who constituted it.

The church therefore was as distinctly separate from the world, as it was Christ's alone, bearing witness, wherever it existed on earth, to its Head in heaven. The Christians formed the "within," as all who were not, Jews or Gentiles, were the, "without." It was the only divine society here below. Israel of old had been Jehovah's chosen nation. But this place they for the time forfeited. Thereon God visited Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, called by sovereign grace to incomparably higher privileges, and to heavenly glory as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The same cross of Christ which ended Judaism founded God's reconciliation of both Jews and Gentiles that believe in one body, the enmity being slain thereby. Thus through Christ we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. So real and efficacious the presence of the Spirit, that in each locality (as at Corinth) the gathered saints were addressed as "Christ's body" (1 Cor. 12: 27); and so are they all together on earth "the church" (1 Cor. 12: 28). The unity was universal as well as local. A member of Christ was so equally in Antioch and in Ephesus, in Jerusalem and in Rome, so were apostles and prophets, evangelists, also pastors and teachers. There was one body, and one Spirit.

It is beyond controversy that this visibly and practically maintained unity no longer subsists. The later Epistles are full of warning for Christendom, as the O.T. prophets for Israel. The apostle Paul too in an early one had predicted that "the apostasy" should come before the day of the Lord. Nothing worse was ever said to the Jews. He declared that "the mystery of lawlessness" was already at work even in his active days. It may be held down for the time, but at last would issue in the revelation of the lawless one, the man of sin, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy when He appears. Was not this to write from God sentence of death on Christendom? 2 Thess. 2 intimates with divine certainty, that lawlessness was even then at work, breaking out in heterodoxy and unholiness, in schisms and heresies; that there is no uprooting of it, whatever the Spirit may do to suppress or cheek it; but that it will, when God's restraint is removed, rise up at last into the most impious defiance of God and the most openly lawless arrogation of His glory, judicially closed by the Lord shining forth in His day.

That the church which Christ builds on the rock, on the confession of His own person and divine glory, will prevail over all the power of Hades, is certain (Matt. 16: 18). But this in no way clashes with what scripture attests of ruin for the professing mass. What we now see around us, if we have the least spiritual eyesight, is thus clearly accounted for. God is no more pleased with the state of Christendom than of old with that of Israel (1 Cor. 10). Since the departure of the great apostle grievous wolves came in, not sparing the flock; and from among Christians themselves men rose up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Hence the last apostle could only say, "even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour" (1 John 2: 18): not the triumph of the church, but alas! the spread of anti-christianism. So far too is Rome from being set out in scripture as the indefeasible guarantee of unity or of aught else, to the saints there above all others is addressed the solemn word for the professing Gentile, "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but on thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off" (Rom. 11: 22). If there is a spot on earth perpetually infamous for iniquity, moral, doctrinal, and ecclesiastical, it is Rome, in Popes, Cardinals, priests, people, monks, and nuns: such have been the confessions of many of its own most distinguished adherents. Must I cite Gerson, Baronius, or a crowd of witnesses before and since? "Thou also shalt be cut off."

Is it meant, as too many think, Protestants as well as Papists, that all is hopeless, even for such as sigh and cry for all the abominations done in Christendom? Is there nothing but Christian work now? Is there no common walk and worship, no longer communion of saints reliable for the believer, or acceptable to God? God forbid that we should doubt Him, defraud our souls, or dishonour the Spirit given to abide with us for ever. There is a path and a centre for faith in a day of ruin. The name of Jesus is not the ground and pledge of salvation only, but of unfailing security for those who are gathered to it. And the Holy Spirit is here to make good His unity for all that use diligence to keep it according to the written word in the uniting bond of peace (Eph. 4: 3). Those gathered to the Lord's name, even "two or three," wherever they be, have His promise and sanction as keeping the unity of the Spirit. Were 200 millions gathered otherwise (e.g. to the see of St. Peter), they have no such promise; if 400 millions were reunited otherwise, it would not mend matters, but only make them worse. To be gathered to His name is His own resource for a day of evil, and stumbling-blocks, and scattering; and it is an unfailing resource to such as have faith in Him.

Diligently to "keep the unity of the Spirit" is as far as possible from the letter or spirit of a sect. For a sect falsifies things by being sometimes broader, more commonly narrower, than the church of God. Thus nationalism departs from it by embracing a whole people in principle by sacraments; as dissent forms mere voluntary societies by adhesion to particular views. In both ways God's design is lost sight of and His children err.

But even in a day of confusion and ruin the path of His will is open to the single eye of faith. His word abides for ever. It is a solemn duty, not a sect, where Christians turn away from all that hold a form of godliness, but have denied its power (2 Tim. 3). It is a plain call of God not to forsake the assembling of themselves together as members of Christ — the only membership they recognise as of His grace. So it was originally according to His revealed will; and it remains ever true and obligatory. Yet to assume the title of the church of God, for the few who now act on it, would be pride and heartlessness, as virtually denying the many who are scattered here or there in the present state of ruin. But on no other ground should believers act; for only this is obedience, which remains always valid for action as for faith.

W.K.

PERPETUITY.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §3.

There is another truth which the Popes have misconstrued, no less ruinously than unity, to build up their tower of Babel. "This [unity] the divine author impressed on it as a lasting sign of truth and of unconquerable strength" (p. v). They have one and all assumed that the church is to abide on earth conquering and to conquer till time melts into eternity. Not a word in the N. T. warrants such an expectation. Matt. 16: 18 speaks of the gates of Hades, which are not in this world. Unquestionably they will prevail against the wicked which Satan brought in, not against His church which Christ built: resurrection will vindicate it, as He was defined Son of God in power thereby. Yet earthly power or glory is assured neither here nor anywhere else; but as the Lord Jesus was once rejected and suffered, so each of His must now deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him, as He ,explains at the same time to Peter, sternly rebuked for minding the things of men, not of God. Hence they essay to found it on the promises, psalms and prophecies which speak of Jerusalem, Zion, and the like in the O.T. But this is wholly unsound and misleading.

Let us weigh the scriptures on which they rely. Here are Pope Leo's words (pp. 13, 14), "That the one Church should embrace all men everywhere and at all times was seen and foretold by Isaias, when looking into the future he saw the appearance of a mountain conspicuous by its all-surpassing altitude, which set forth the image of The house of the Lord - that is, of the Church. And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of the mountains (Isa. 2: 2). But this mountain which towers over all other mountains is one; and the house of the Lord to which all nations shall come to seek the rule of living is also one. And all nations shall flow into it. And many people shall go, and say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths (Ibid 2: 2, 3)."

Now it is vain to quote Fathers in support of an interpretation which is inconsistent with the text, foreign to the prophets universally, and contradicted by all that the N. T. tells us of the church. Beyond doubt the rejected Messiah, the Son of man, was lifted up on the cross, and must be, that (not Jews only but) "whosoever believeth might in Him have life eternal." "For there is no other name under heaven given to men whereby we must be saved." But neither these scriptures nor any others teach that the church embraces the whole race. The very name essentially excludes and forbids such a perversion. "Church" means the "assembly," the calling out which leaves the rest where they were. The Lord therefore, who had before Him the end from the beginning, calls the "little flock" not to fear (Luke 12); and, when looking on to the day of displayed glory, He contrasts those that are then to be perfected in one with the world, which will thereby know that the Father sent the Son and loved the saints then glorified, even as He loved His Son. For are they not manifested in the same glory? The church is catholic, in contrast with God's previous dealing with one people, as comprehending not all mankind, but "out of" every land and nation. Hence in giving the sentence of the council in Jerusalem on the question of admitting the Gentiles, James refers to Symeon's explanation how God first visited to take "out of Gentiles" a people for His name. And this will be complete "in the consummation of the age" (Matt. 13: 40-43), in the time of the harvest, when those gathered out are brought to heaven, and shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

But Isaiah had before him the vision of the new age, when the veil is no longer on Israel's heart, and they see eye to eye, for Jehovah has returned to Zion. Therefore is her light come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon her. In this mountain shall Jehovah make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees. And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the veil that veileth all the peoples, and the covering that is spread over all the nations. Nor will this be without the solemn judgment of the living, which the living are so apt to forget, though He Himself revealed it, as the apostles repeated, and the O.T. prophets predicted of old: a judgment which will fall on the nations, but severely on the Jews, and yet more so on Christendom, more guilty still as knowing better and no less unbelieving and lawless.

Israel will then be under Messiah and the new covenant; and the inhabitants of the world, when His judgments are in the earth, learn righteousness. Such is the basis, such the circumstances, presupposed in the scene, to which the prophet prefixes a title which ought to preclude misapplication: "The word that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem." The church at that time will have a still more glorious position. For she is the bride, the Lamb's wife, and is symbolised, not by Zion, or Moriah, or Jerusalem, but by the new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. She had suffered with Christ during her earthly sojourn, instead of faithlessly, like Babylon, seeking present ease and power and glory; therefore will she be glorified together with Him in that day. Jerusalem even then is reigned over. The first dominion comes to Zion; and all the nations shall truly bow to Jehovah's choice and Messiah's seat of earthly rule. But the heavenly Eve of the second Man, the last Adam, has a far higher place and glory, as united to the Head over all, the Heir of the universe. The glorified saints alone shall reign with Christ over the earth.

With this agrees every word of the text. The Lord has not yet taken His great power and reigned, as He will, at the seventh trumpet in the end of the age when the world-kingdom is become His de facto. Then will He reward His servants, and destroy the destroyers of the earth; and the present evil age will yield to the good age that follows when He is come and governs. Then as Zion is His earthly centre, so is the mountain of Jehovah's house exalted; and all the nations shall flow thither. The nations are no longer envious, nor is Israel jealous any more. Jehovah Messiah will have wrought in divine attractive mercy as well as in overawing power; and the peoples come up, assured that He (not the church) will teach them of His ways.

The prophet does not say that the gospel as now but that the law shall go forth out of Zion; it is not the Father's word which we know, but Jehovah's word from Jerusalem. No allegoriser is bold enough to deny the literality of Jerusalem here; but this they quit in a moment and interpolate the gospel and the church. But the prophet in ver. 6 goes on to say, "Thou hast cast off thy people, the house of Jacob," etc. How say this of the church? It is "the kingdom"; and the Great King will judge among the nations, and will reprove many peoples: a wholly different state from the church, wherein is neither Jew nor Gentile, now in training, and sufferings too, in the fellowship of Christ's, for heaven. The time for earth's deliverance and joy and blessing is come. For Jehovah will reign in a way He has never done yet.

Accordingly we are assured that men "shall forge their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-knives: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." So it will be in the age to come. But our Lord has expressly told us that till the end of this ace come, "nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom." Thus there is no excuse for the confusion of the theologians. This is not confined to Popery, though there it is extreme and systematised error. It is due to the evil heart of unbelief that loves the world and the things of the world. But the Lord has laid down for Christians that they "are not of the world" as He is not: a principle itself subversive of this evil scheme, which seeks earthly dominion more persistently and unscrupulously than any usurper that ever breathed. But strong is the Lord God that will judge Babylon, and this righteously.

It is not to the church in one single instance, but to Israel (when restored in sovereign mercy, yet also in accomplishment of the promises to the true fathers), that perpetuity is assigned throughout all the O.T. and sealed in the N.T. So Genesis 17 repeatedly assures to Abraham and his seed "an everlasting covenant," and the land (which decides its literal import) "an everlasting possession"; to Isaac and to Jacob the gift was successively confirmed. But Exodus shows that, while Jehovah remembered His covenant, Israel forgot His free promise and their own weakness, undertaking to obey the law as the condition of their possession. Thus man being what he is, all was certain to be lost. Only through a typical, and therefore temporary, mediator did they pass through the wilderness or enter the land. There (after the fullest patience and the exhaustion of all possible remedial means) ruin came at last under the first, and more under the last, of the four "beasts" or imperial world-powers. But even Lev. 26 which declares the stern chastenings awaiting their sins, lets us know that when their heart is humbled as our Lord taught us to expect (Matt. 23: 39), Jehovah will remember His covenant with their fathers, and remember their land. Jerusalem (said He, Luke 21: 24) shall be trodden down by Gentiles — for ever? Not so; but only until times of Gentiles be fulfilled. What has all this to do with the church? It has much every way to say to Israel and the future kingdom. Compare Num. 24, 25, and Deut. 32 especially vers. 36-43.

But it is in the Psalms and Prophets that evidence is most abundant, so much so that one need not cite any in particular, unless it be Dan. 2: 35, to which allusion is made in the extract from Augustine (p. xix). Now it is absurd to apply to the first advent that judicial act, which effaces not only the Roman empire, but all that remains of its predecessors on the earth. It is He at the second advent alone, who will execute sudden and complete judgment on all hostile powers. Only when utter destruction falls on them, does the stone that smote the image become a great mountain and fill the whole world. It will be the kingdom of God in Christ set up on Zion, when Jehovah makes Judah as His majestic horse in the battle. What can be more decidedly in contrast with the suffering church, the witness of grace and heavenly glory? What more distinctly in keeping with the Lord coming in His kingdom and trampling all His enemies under foot?

Nevertheless theology has habitually confounded these two things; and none more grossly than the Popes, nor any with such evident and interested aim to profit by a deception, which probably deceived themselves. Yet what can be plainer than the wholly different facts when the church was brought in to view at Pentecost? Zion was for the present no better than Aceldama, and Jerusalem doomed to desolation. Instead of all the nations flowing to the mountain of Jehovah's house, the gospel was soon preached everywhere by the scattered Christians and later by the apostles. Instead of judging among the nations from His centre of Zion, He executed sentence on Jerusalem by heathen Rome (Matt. 22: 7); and instead of nations ever since learning war no more, all history attests, as He predicted, incessant ravages of war. And the day in which we live beholds Christendom, more than ever since the world began, bristling with arms on sea and land, and learning war with a zeal and mutual suspicion beyond all previous zeal. What more infatuated then than the traditional misuse of this vision and of others generally?

W.K.

THE FAITH.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §4.

The flock and its unity we affirm. Human co-operation in all that is a duty on our part by God's will, none but a fanatic can dispute. That the church was originally visible is as certain as that it always ought to have been so; but it is not since early days, being broken up into parties ancient and modern. Self-will has made Christ's body the church invisible. This the faithful are bound to feel and confess as sin, while repudiating all corporate existence or action save on the principle of its divine unity. From its nature and character no section has departed so flagrantly as Romanism, none in such deliberate and active resistance against its Head as the Popes.

Let us now briefly test this self-vaunting system by "the faith." If we cleave to the teaching of the apostles, Popery is a manifest revolt from it. If it allows that the passages cited for unity from the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Corinthians, as well as the Gospel of John, "need no interpreter," is it conceivable that what is more vital still, what concerns the basis of man's individual salvation or his perdition, does not "speak clearly? "

First, does Romanism proclaim, as the apostle Peter did, the remission of sins through Christ's name to every one that believes in Him (Acts 10: 43)? Does the Pope, or any of his venerable brethren, make known, as the great apostle of the Gentiles did, that through Christ is preached forgiveness of sins — that by Him all that believe are justified from all things (Acts 13: 38, 39)? To the cry "What must I do to be saved?" do they answer with Paul and Silas, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house" (Acts 16: 30, 31)? The Council of Trent (Sess. vi. cap. 9) nullifies this, the simple and certain word of truth, the gospel of our salvation; and in Can. ix. it anathematises any one who says that the ungodly man is justified by faith alone. They are, therefore, false witnesses and adversaries of the faith. They confound justification with practical sanctification, which destroys it. "Non est sola peccatorum remissio sed et sanctificatio" are their words (cap. 7), which betray ignorance of the first message in God's gospel.

Secondly, they have invented an unscriptural, fabulous, purgatory, owing to the same blindness as to the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice. For though they allow that His blood meritoriously avails for the justification of the faithful, they hold, save for exceptional men like martyrs, that all others must go into that future prison till they have paid the last farthing. Not only is this flat contradiction of God's testimony to the Saviour's work declared not only to sanctify the believer (Heb. 10: 14), but to have perfected him in perpetuity (εἰς τὃ διηνεκὲς); it is distressing defamation of our God and Father, both in character and in conduct toward us. For He is said, even now, to have qualified the faithful for the participation of the inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1: 12); and therefore are they called not only to pray but to give Him thanks. For His love is shed abroad in their hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us; and perfect love casts out fear. This the Tridentine fathers blacken as the vain confidence of heretics, being themselves as far from crying Abba, Father, as they are from enjoying redemption, in truth.

Thirdly, even at the start, their doctrine is (Sess. xiv. c. 2) that by baptism putting on Christ we are made wholly a new creature in Him, obtaining full and entire remission of all sins. Now this is to confound baptism with water and baptism with the Spirit. It is no wonder that, when they had lost the truth of the gospel, they exaggerated an institution like baptism. Even so it is evident that they have no confidence in anything really secured and abiding by Christ and His work. Of standing in grace they are in blank ignorance.

Hence, fourthly, they resort to a sacrament of penance to meet sins after baptism, and they urge "contrition" as its condition, that is, not only hatred of the sins but desire to make reparation or atonement for them, proportionate to the crimes it effaces. Now as few could hope to attain such an end, they pretend that God eases the difficulty by giving the keys of the kingdom to the church, and thus opening the gate of heaven to those who, not truly contrite, have only reached "attrition." Penance, therefore, is a deliberate device of Romanism to give absolution where there is confession without due repentance or contrition. Nor was auricular confession established till the fourth Lateran Council (1215), when Innocent III. had it imposed as an article of faith. For previously, though confession of sins was held to be a duty, it was left open to do so to God alone or to a priest also. The new development was by the usual fiction declared to be the church's faith from the beginning. So they say of all their peculiar dogmas, no matter how recent they be as articles of faith, nor how loudly their highest authorities are known to have once rejected them. More barefaced deceit than in Romanism it were hard to imagine.

Fifthly, may be noticed the strange doctrine of Rome as to the extreme unction. The Greeks are depraved and superstitious enough; but their practice approaches far nearer to that of early days among Jewish believers. For if they anoint the sick with oil, it is that the prayer of faith may heal him and the Lord may raise him up. Not so the unhallowed Romish system. In open departure from James 5 the aim is some faint hope of solace for the dying. Remission of sins in baptism suffices not; and no wonder, whatever the strong language employed. Penance again with its satisfaction and absolution has failed, no matter how often repeated. Of another resource we may speak presently, still more .their boast during life; but now that death approaches, it too has proved a broken reed. Then the priest is anew called in to administer the viaticum and extreme unction. The Council of Trent (Sess. xiv. c. 2) perverts the scriptural text, though not without prevarication, to the saving of the soul as the Jesuit commentator, Cornelius van der Steen, boldly, Delicta, si quae sint adhuc expianda, ac peccati reliquias abstergit. Yet after all this round of appliances, however diligently used throughout life and in the hour of death, the soul at last goes to purgatory and must endure exquisite torments from God. What a contrast with the saving grace of God revealed in His word! How deplorable the ignorance, among Westerns or Orientals, of the unction from the Holy One, whereby even the babes of God's family know and enjoy the grace wherein they stand! For want of it in vain do they wrest the scriptures to inaugurate means of quieting consciences, which need to be and can only be purged by the blood of Christ.

This, sixthly, leads us to another of these unavailing expedients, which is, if possible, even more characteristic of incredulity — masses for the dead as well as the living. Here too is the same fatality of powerlessness to keep from the generally inevitable horrors of purgatory. But the serious feature common to them all is that these lying vanities undermine God's word and supplant the one sacrifice for sins, the offering of Christ's body once for all; which was God's will, that we might be not only sanctified but perfected uninterruptedly. Now no article of Popery is more sacred than that which is professed in the Creed of Pope Pius IV. that in the mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. Necessarily then the simple and complete efficacy of Christ's sacrifice is disbelieved. For if His blood really cleanses from all sin, it is dishonoured and in effect denied by supplementary sacrifices. Like the Jews of old, the Ronianist now trusts in the repetition of sacrifices; but in this the latter is immeasurably more guilty. For the New Testament is explicit that sacrifice was repeated because of inefficacy, and that Christ's is but one because it makes the conscience perfect. The doctrine and the practice of Rome are in this not erroneous only but infidel and apostate.

There is further evidence of the same fundamental antagonism against the revealed truth. For God's word declares that since Christ's death there is no more offering for sin; whereas the Council of Trent curses all who deny its constant repetition in the Mass. There not only is Christ's one oblation on the cross brought to nought, but a rival is set up pretending to be its continuation. The excuse is made that the Mass is a pure unbloody offering. But this only renders the case worse and more glaring. For if Christ be offered often, the Holy Spirit has ruled that He must suffer often, which is impossible and false; and again, that an unbloody sacrifice cannot avail for remission of sins, because scripture decides that without shedding of blood there is no remission, Heb. 9, 10.

But the fact is, seventhly, that the Romish creed consecrates natural feeling without the least warrant and in the grossest way, against the faith of God's elect in the mediation of the Virgin, of angels, and of saints. Scripture is not plainer in the O.T. for the unity of God than in the N.T. for "one mediator between God and man" — Christ Jesus, not only man but Son of the Father Who is God over all blessed for ever.

The Epistle to the Hebrews elaborately draws out His perfection, both in sacrificial work and in priestly office, from the glory of His person as Son of God, and Son of man, exalted above all men and angels, and seated on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Highly favoured as Mary was in that the Son deigned to be born of her, so that all generations call her blessed, it is merely natural religion, as it is the deepest offence against Him and the word and the glory of God, to claim for her more accessible grace, or a more compassionate heart. He only is the merciful and faithful High Priest. What would it have been to have sought Miriam to interpose with weak and failing Aaron? How much more intolerable to have recourse to Mary with Him that has passed through the heavens, the Son of God! Herein we have known and do know love, because He laid down His life for us — for us, when we were enemies and ungodly. This, neither Mary, nor any saint, ever did for us; nor if they had, would it have availed in the least for us or even for themselves. His death alone was or could be efficacious for our sins. His love is the same now that He is risen, and appears in heaven, interceding, for us, before the God of all grace, Whose love to us is as perfect as His own. The Romanist dream may not openly oppose this, which is the certain truth of God, but saps it all effectually. So that Mariolatry and guardian angels and patron saints really displace the worship of the Father and the Son to the infinite grief of the Holy Spirit.

But lastly, their hostility to scripture, in order to claim authority for the church both to authenticate and to interpret it, is the plainest defection from the faith. For the church is in no way the truth, but responsible to be its pillar and base. If the Queen sent a letter by the post, just think of the empty conceit of the postmaster or the postman pretending to accredit what solely depends on her majesty's sign-manual, or her command through this or that minister! How incomparably worse for the church , or its rulers, to arrogate the title to pronounce on God's word! Every scripture has in itself divine authority, because it is inspired of God; and the church, like every member of it, is bound to receive and obey it accordingly. To set up the church's title to accredit it is blasphemous pride, which is none the better because they profess themselves to believe. Satan deceives them to make that presumptuous claim, in order to exalt the church and enhance its authority over all mankind, alas! to their own sin and ruin, to God's unfailing and predicted vengeance.

W. K.

HEADSHIP.

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §5.

In scripture the truth is plain. The church of God knows but one Head, even Christ in heaven (Eph. 1: 22; Col. 1: 18). Earthly head there is none if we hear God's word. Not only is there no such anomaly as two heads of the one body of Christ; but the invariable teaching of divine revelation is incompatible with such an earthly incumbrance. The principle is as certain as the doctrine. The evident aim is to make the church of God even while on earth a heavenly institution by giving the glorified Christ to her as Head. This accordingly excludes any other. The church, if faithful, accepts on earth shame, rejection, and persecution, as the Lord Jesus did in the days of his flesh. "In the world (said He) ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world" (John 16: 33). When the church even seeks, still more when she receives, earthly glory, the world overcomes her, instead of her by faith overcoming the world. She is false to her Head. Latin, Greek, Protestant, makes no difference as to this. As we died with Christ to sin and law, so is it for the Christian to say in truth, Be it not for me to boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. Thus is this great severance laid down by the Holy Spirit. Souls may be and are delivered by grace from this present age; thenceforward they are not of the world as Christ is not.

Hence meddling with the world, or judging its questions, was refused by the Lord peremptorily (Luke 12; 13-15). So He departed from those who would make Him a king (John 6: 15). He is gone to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return (Luke 19: 12); He will receive it from God the Father and return to His earthly people, when they, no longer impenitent but believing, will say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah (Matt. 23: 39). Yet is He a king, but His kingdom is not of this world. if it were, as He testified to Pilate (John 18: 36), His servants would fight, that He should not be delivered to the Jews. It was not from hence, but from heaven. His present work here below is quite another thing  - bearing witness to the truth, not governing the world as He will in the day of His appearing (Rev. 11: 15). "And every one that is of the truth heareth His voice," not loving his life but hating it in this world, that he may keep it unto life eternal. For the true christian path is plain to him whose eye is single. "If one serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also shall My servant be; if one serve Me, him will my Father honour." "To him that overcometh will I give to sit with Me in My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father in His throne." Therefore are we called by God to suffer now while He is on the Father's throne; and we shall reign with Him when He receives His own throne.

The carnal and mercurial Corinthians seem to have been the first to err from the way. "Already are ye filled, already ye are become rich, ye reigned as kings without us, and I would at least ye did reign, that we also might reign with you." When reigning really comes, all enter on it together with Christ. How touchingly the apostle corrects this worldly-minded desire, when he adds, "For I think God set forth us the apostles last of all, as it were doomed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, both to men and angels" (1 Cor. 4). Those whom He put first in the church (1 Cor. 12: 28) He displayed last (like prophets before them), as patterns of suffering outwardly. What can be more evident than the place of unworldly affliction God indicates for the Christian here below? In nothing is Christendom more at issue with Christ and His word to us. Paul did not write to shame them (as he well might), but to admonish his beloved children. "I beseech you then," he says, "be imitators of me." Only faith does or can follow him in simplicity.

In all Christendom the Popes and their party have been the most grievous offenders, enemies above all of the Christ in minding earthly things, 'but not even there so audaciously as in claiming dominion over the Christian faith. All are bound to obey Christ the Lord.

On what then is supposed to be founded this fable, so obviously not only a stranger to, but utterly inconsistent with, scripture? They cite, as their proof-texts, Matt. 16: 15-19; Luke 22: 31, 32; and John 21: 15-17. Can anything more decisively prove themselves ignorant of the scriptures, and of God's grace as well as His power?

1. Peter, in the face of Jewish unbelief, confessed Jesus to be not alone the Christ or Messiah, but the Son of the living God. The Lord owned it to be not of human nature, but a revelation of His Father to him. And He also said to him (for He was co-equal), "Thou art Peter (stone) and upon this (not stone but) rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." On that believed and confessed truth He would build His church. Peter did not dare to exalt himself thus, but was inspired to preach Him Who is life and fulness. They were stones, Christ the chief corner-stone; and all believers were living stones, like himself deriving life from Him Who is life, though an offence to the unbeliever. The inspired word distinguishes in the strongest way between him who was but a stone, and the rock on which Christ builds His assembly. Romanism confounds it all in order to exalt, not Christ, but Peter. But the context resists this folly. For immediately after, when Peter betrayed his error in setting his will against the Lord's sufferings, he is denounced as a stumbling-block, as well as pronounced Satan, an adversary of God and man. What sort of rock is this for the church?

And you that appeal to Fathers, why do you not hear Athanasius, Augustine, and Jerome who understood the rock to be Christ Himself? Granted that Cyprian and Origen and Tertullian thought it was Peter; but what does this prove but Fathers against Fathers? Sometimes the same one, as Chrysostom or Augustine, gives both. What is the worth of all, save to show that the saying of Vincent of Lerins fails in practice? Universality, antiquity, and consent do not exist among the Fathers, whatever special pleaders pretend. The dictum was set up only when faith in the word and Spirit of God had long gone down.

2. Peter's restoration in wondrous grace from the awful sin of repeatedly denying his Master is a monstrous basis for the claim of supremacy. What a manifest witness it affords that they have no real grounds! Peter's faithfulness wholly failed; but the gracious Saviour besought for him that his faith should not fail — yea that, when turned back again, he should confirm his brethren. So the Lord is pleased to do continually when a fallen disciple is made to stand. Who but the blind could strain such mercy into a papal throne?

3. So it is with the Lord's reinstatement of Peter after the resurrection, lest the disciples should have been too shocked to own God's grace toward him. Peter certainly felt keenly the threefold allusion to his sin, where these vain men dream only of ecclesiastical power and exalted position. Undoubtedly it was the richest grace on our Lord's part, which would be found sufficient for the self-confident saint who, in the face of solemn warning, fell so soon and so low. And this is made a lever for the grossest ambition!

Now we have the inspired writings of N.T. prophets and apostles. How comes it that, in providing bountifully and unerringly for the church and the Christian, nothing can be produced but such ghosts of so-called tradition, of really patristic confusion? Imagine if you can that Peter was invested with a power which solely belongs to the glorified Head; imagine Christ to vacate His functions, instead of ever living to make them good; imagine the Holy Ghost to have gone back into the heavens whence He came to abide with us and in us for ever. How comes it that there is not one sure testimony to it in a single Gospel or Epistle? Yet we have the apostle writing to the saints in Rome, unfolding fundamental truths, and regulating differences which menaced the peace of the church; but not a whisper about Peter, who is said, by one of the most respectable of early fathers, to have with Paul founded the church there! This we know to have been not only absolutely baseless but contrary to scripture. For how could this be, when Paul wrote as one who had never visited Rome, and altogether ignored Peter there, though he salutes more saints there at that time than in any other epistle? It is certain in fact that Paul was there a prisoner, and a martyr; it is probable that Peter may have been carried there to die; but that both founded the church in Rome, or that either was a bishop there, is a fabrication, in the teeth of powerful evidence in scripture against any such ideas of the Fathers.

So again it is fiction (and professing Christians very early began to invent spurious Gospels, Acts, and Revelations, some of which are extant with their detestable heterodoxy) that Peter ever held "the See" of Antioch, which East and West greedily received for their respective aggrandisement. He and Barnabas and Paul were there together. And the occasion was memorable. For the old question was renewed whether God under the gospel does or does not put a difference between Jews and Gentiles that believe. There Peter and Barnabas as sadly failed, as they stood firm in Jerusalem; and Paul declares for permanent and universal warning in his Epistle to the Galatians, that he resisted Peter, and "before all" to the face, because he was condemned. Can anything more completely refute the papal authority, to say nothing of the infallibility they absurdly assume to have been conferred on Peter? His fault was flagrantly inconsistent with God's revelation to him. they would minimise it as a small matter; but the Holy Spirit condemns it solemnly as "walking not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel"  - a heinous sin, especially in an apostle so honoured.

But there is another fact of the utmost importance as to Peter and his sphere, which the Holy Spirit records in the same fruitful chapter, Gal. 2. The reputed pillars, James, Cephas, and John, gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that these should go to the Gentiles, themselves to the circumcision. They saw that Paul had been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with that of the circumcision. So God had wrought; and they bowed. And the Epistles of Peter, written not long before his death as the second expressly intimates, fall in with this divinely ordered arrangement. For they are both addressed to the circumcision that believed. Peter left the work among the Gentiles to the far mightier hand of Paul. And God, knowing the pride of man and the corrupting, design of Satan, took care that the church in Rome should not be, as in Corinth or Ephesus, founded by any apostle. Men might deceive or be deceived; but scripture has foreclosed any such pretension. Both apostles may have suffered there unto death; but neither one nor other presided there, as neither had to do with founding the assembly there. The traditions about it are as false, as a more ancient one that "the beloved disciple" was not to die (John 21).

The apostles, whatever their spiritual energy, were all of them, and not least Peter and Paul, as far from affecting earthly pomp and power like the Popes, as light and love are from the selfish darkness of the earth. Before the baptism of the Spirit they did indeed often strive which should be accounted greatest: a contention inconceivable, (yet up to the last, Luke 22: 24), if the Lord had been understood so to invest Peter. But He reproved vanity so opposed to all grace and truth, and contrasted their intended position with kings or even those that exercise authority called benefactors. They were not to be so; but the greater among them was to be as the younger, and the leader as he that serves. The Lord Himself set the same example here below. He could as easily have made them earthly princes, as He left them able to say truthfully, as Peter did, "Silver and gold have I none." They had incomparably better. They had persevered with Him in His temptations, as He did with them in theirs when He sat at God's right hand, yet working with them (Mark 16: 19, 20). And He appointed to them a kingdom (as His Father to Him), that they might sit at His table in His kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel: certainly not now, when called to the fellowship of His sufferings, but in the regeneration when all things shall be restored by His grace to divine order and glory. It is the wickedness of man by the prince of the power of the air to do his utmost to antedate that future kingdom. The papacy thus sets at nought the truth and will of God now, and turns the church into a scheme of vainglorious pride and present exaltation, by deceit and intrigue and cruelty that would disgrace the pagan or infidel world.

W.K.

DOES THE CHURCH TEACH?

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §6.

There is no assumption more widely accepted, not only by Rome but throughout Christendom, than the teaching-authority or magisterium of the church. Nor is it easy to conceive a claim more opposed to every fact and principle of revelation, or more derogatory to the rights of God. Yet it prevails wherever the Catholic idea governs the imagination. That the church teaches this, and denies that, sounds grand and imposing; but all is vague, where we need certainty; and if sifted, it ends in the authority of clergy or the infallibility of the Pope.

God has revealed His mind conclusively on this in 1 Cor. 3. "What then is Paul, and what Apollos? Ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to each; I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one thing; and each shall receive reward according to his own labour. For we are God's fellow-labourers: God's husbandry, God's building ye are" (vers. 5-9). What can be clearer? God employs gifted men as joint-servants, His journeymen; but the church is the object of their labours. They teach from Him; the church is taught. The apostle not only contrasts the church with the fellow-workmen, but he claims the magisterium for God, Who employed the apostles and all others of His servants for the church's good.

It is nothing at all to the purpose, to cite John 10: 37, 38, John 15: 24, or Matt. 28: 18-20, Mark 16: 16 any more than John 14: 16-17, John 15: 26, 27, John 16: 7-13, or Luke 10: 16 and John 20: 21. No Christian doubts that Christ's words carry divine authority, or that what the apostles taught and wrote is no less authoritative (Mark 16: 20, Rom. 1: 5). But how is it that darkness so veiled the Encyclical that not one scripture referred to means that the church teaches? that every one means that the church is taught by Him or His servants? The Pope deceived himself. He undertook to prove that the church teaches, which is not even touched by one of his quotations of scripture; all of which at most show that Christ teaches the church, either by His Spirit or through servants sent and qualified of Him to that end. Timothy's committing what he had heard from Paul to faithful men (2 Tim. 2: 1, 2) was ministry to teach the church, the reverse of the church teaching.

Thus then the true magisterium is of the Lord Jesus, Who is not dead but risen and ascended. Only thus and then indeed was He given as Head over all things to the church; and from the right hand of God He continues such gifts as are for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a full-grown man, to stature-measure of the fulness of the Christ. The Head continues His functions without fail, and cares not only for duly giving "joints and bands" (Col. 2), but that ''all the body," ministered to and united by their means, shall increase with the increase of God. His love can no more cease than His power: one moment's breach would be as fatal to the church, as the severance of the head from the natural body.

Unbelief as to the Lord's present and continual guardianship of the flock of God as the Great and Chief Shepherd is the root of this presumptuous usurpation. If it be replied that such a heavenly Head can only be apprehended by faith, and that the church, while on earth, needs an earthly supreme ruler, we answer that the reply betrays the enemy's deceit. For we are expressly called to walk by faith, not by sight; and as the heavenly Head makes the church a divine institution, so an earthly head makes the body as earthly as itself. To say that we have two heads, one heavenly and another earthly, is not only a baseless fable added to the truth of scripture, but an elevation of a mortal to share His glory Who is Lord of lords and King of kings, and an impiety on which God will not fail to take vengeance when His day comes.

Is it not strange to hear the champion of church tradition saying, that "every revealed truth without exception must be accepted?" (p. 24) Had he forgotten the Judge of quick and dead ruling that the Jews who set up their authoritative magisterium in His day (and it still abides, much older than Rome's) "made void the word of God on account of their tradition" (Matt. 15: 6)? They charged His disciples with transgressing the tradition of the elders; whereas He acquitted His followers of all sin in the matter, and convicted the Jewish leaders of transgressing the commandment of God because of their tradition. Such is the inevitable hypocrisy of those Jews or Christians, who teach as doctrines men's precepts. Assuming God's place, they really fall into the devil's snare.

It is in vain then, as we agree, to speak of zeal to keep the unity of the Spirit, unless we hold "one faith." How far Romanism is true to "the faith" has been shown in §4. Nor is their flagrant departure surprising; for they have overlaid the holy deposit by their superstitions and profanely fabulous supplements. The true rule of faith is thus hidden from them. God has not left the faithful without the certainty of His mind. As the Lord laid down so solemnly (in the Rich man and Lazarus), "They have Moses and the prophets: let them hear them;" so we can say, We have Christ and the apostles. There is the Christian magisterium. It is not gifts or ministry, however real and precious in their place, but the teaching of the Lord Jesus and of those He inspired to give by the Holy Spirit what they could not bear before redemption.

Hence says an inspired man behind none, If any one think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the Lord's commandment (1 Cor. 14: 37); and another later says for all, We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error (1 John 4: 6). None but the inspired are entitled so to speak. They therefore to us speak permanently in what the Holy Spirit empowered them to write. If we hear them, we are blessed. Woe to all that hear not them! Such are of the world and not of God.

What says Popery here? That Christ and the apostles could not safely give God's mind and will, without a living judge of controversy now to make their sense clear! Did God and His servants need the Pope and his vassals to do what they failed to do? Such is the arrogance of Romanist unbelief that confronts us habitually. Therefore do they enlarge like Donatists and other heretics of old, on the obscurity of scripture. Do they not show their hostility to it by forbidding a Romanist to read even their own version without a permission in writing from his parish priest or his confessor on pain of being refused absolution? So any one can see in the last Session of the Council of Trent (rule 4).

But their irreverent enmity to scripture goes farther still. For to embarrass the Protestant and to exalt what they call the church (in reality their own Romish sect), they take infidel ground and deny the authority of the scriptures without the sanction of the church. You cannot, say they, know them to be God's word unless the church declares them so. But this, far from being true, is blasphemous. The O.T. derived no authority from Israel, but gave divine authority to all their institutions, rites, and statutes; while it convicted them of continual transgression in violating the law. Just so it is the N.T. which reveals the Lord's building His church, His order, gifts of ministry, worship, and will generally. In both Testaments it is God's word which will judge man, instead of sanctioning Christendom's sin in pretending to judge what is of God. Israel transmitted the O.T., as Christendom the New as well as Old. And the Jew, of the two, was more faithful than Romanism and other sects; for these dared to add books, which their own favourite father, St. Jerome, confessed to be uncanonical, the Apocrypha, which books are not in Hebrew.

On their own showing Romanists are thereby seduced from God's authority to man's. They believe not God but the church; their principle makes the church's word surer than God's. Now our Lord and Saviour took all pains to teach that faith is in God's word because He communicates it; those only believing in His name when they saw signs, He did not trust (John 2). To receive His testimony is to set to one's seal that God is true. This alone is divine faith, and has His authority commanding the soul. To believe His word because of the church is to believe the church, not God. So the Lord said, Verily, verily, he that heareth My word and believeth Him that sent Me hath life eternal (John 5). Thus it is the saints agree in the faith. They each and all believe God's word. Nowhere does scripture sanction such a human faith as believing what the church believes.

On the face of the N.T. neither Jews nor Gentiles believed in the authority of the church. The Jews of Berea were even commended for searching the O.T. scriptures when the apostle Paul preached the gospel. The heathen heard what was no less inspired in the gospel; so that Dr. Milner in his End of Controversy had to own exceptional grace on their part who could know nothing of the church. But this lets out the real ignorance of the Romanists generally: they rest on saving ordinances administered by their priests, and not on that grace which alone saves any soul through the faith of Christ.

Further, it is plain to all that the great bulk of the N.T. Epistles is expressly addressed to all the faithful (in one case, with the bishops and deacons). The Holy Spirit therefore confided in the spiritual capacity of every believer, in open contrast with Romanism. In his first Epistle Paul adjured them that this letter of his be read to all the holy brethren. In his last he, in view of the perilous times of the last days, directed to scripture as the main safeguard, and to every scripture as God-inspired and profitable. Doubtless we need the Holy Spirit's grace against our own thoughts; but this gift every true Christian has. Error too has come far more from the clever and learned than from the simple believer. Rome's antagonism to God at all points is too evident.

"Hear the church" in Matt. 18: 17 is a favourite appeal for such as seek scriptural support for ecclesiastical pride, or, as they would say, its magisterium. But the context is perfectly plain that there it is simply and solely a question, not of teaching-authority, but of local discipline in a case of personal trespass.

Before the church began, the Lord in John 5 laid down in order the various testimonies which made the Jews inexcusable: (1) John the Baptist's witness, (2) the Son's works, (3) the Father's voice, and (4) the scriptures. Beyond dispute the Lord attaches the utmost weight to what was written. "For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" Scripture has the character of a standard beyond all that was unwritten. It is only in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians that we hear of doctrines that were taught, not written. No such thought appears in the later Epistles. God took care to give His mind in a sure and permanent form. To impress into service such a text as this shows the lack even of appearances. The church does not teach, but is taught. The Lord's servants teach. Theirs is the ministerium, His the Magisterium.

W.K.

THE CHURCH OR ASSEMBLY, CHRIST'S BODY

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL §7.

Talk as men may of "possessing the supreme authority," "the primacy," it is a fleshly ambition, uniformly reproved by our Lord Himself even in the apostles. What is it in their pretended succession, of men that call themselves apostles and are not so, but lie? He, Who on the holy mount was displayed for a moment in the glory of His coming kingdom as Son of man, and owned by the Father as His beloved Son, laid before the disciples the then strange words, The Son of man is about to be delivered into men's hands. Even then arose the unworthy dispute who should be greatest, which the Lord met by setting a child by Him, and saying, Whosoever shall receive this little child in My name receiveth Me, and whosoever receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me. For he that is least among you all, he is great.

How evident that the Lord expressly puts down by anticipation all such self-seeking as the Pope claims in virtue of Peter! The Lord looks for self-renunciation. So, when James and John, like Elijah, asked for fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans who did not receive the Master, He turned and rebuked them. Even the Seventy He corrects in their joy over the demons subjected through His name: their becoming joy should be that their names were written in heaven, in divine grace, not in miraculous power. Their place was to watch for His coming, and meanwhile to work as His bondmen in His love. Let them beware of the servant that said in his heart, My lord delays to come, and began to beat the men-servants and the maid-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken. He utterly reversed for His followers the world's order, and taught the guest to put himself in the last place; that, when the host comes, he may say, Friend, go up higher. Hence Peter, when Cornelius fell at his feet in homage, raised him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man. What a contrast with those who falsely arrogate the fisherman's chair, and require their venerable brethren, cardinals and all, to kiss their toe as they sit on the high altar of St. Peter's! who instead of being subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake as Peter commands, instead of honouring the king in his place, abuse the alleged see of Peter to kick the royal crown in the plenitude of presumption, or to humble an erring and haughty emperor to the dust with a haughtiness more aspiring than his own! Such is not the mind of heaven but from beneath, not of Christ but of Satan, and all the worse because veiled under the hollow hypocrisy of calling oneself "servant of the servants of God." Has the Pope, or the papal system, ever accepted these revealed truths? If so, their practice wholly contradicts them. What is this morally?

But let us briefly turn from the unworldly lowliness which the Lord enjoined for "the fitting and devout worship of God," which it is said "must be also" (p. xxxi.), "as well as salutary laws and discipline." Let us try Romanist worship by the written standard of God's assembly in public edification, the Lord's supper, and discipline. The inspired directions are laid down in 1 Cor. 5, 11, 12, 14. Not one of these is found according to revealed truth, though the Encyclical says, "All these must be found in the Church." Undoubtedly they ought to be, yet who can deny the total departure of Popery from every one of them?

1. We have the constitution of the church clearly shown us in 1 Cor. 12. The irregularities at Corinth drew out the apostle's instructions so much the more fully. Its unity depends on the presence of the Holy Spirit sent forth at Pentecost. He acts in it through its members to the glory of the Lord Jesus. God set the members each one in the body, as it pleased Him; if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. This is so true that the apostle tells the assembly in Corinth, Ye are Christ's body and members in particular. And God set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, etc. It is true that "faith alone cannot compass so great, excellent, and important an end" as is proposed in that divine society the church.

But the Encyclical Letter of the Pope overlooks the power and presence of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. He it is Who baptised all into one body, however dissimilar the constituents. Jews or Greeks that believed, they are now one body, of which Christ in heaven is the Head, the sole head known to scripture. As there is one Head living and glorified, so are they now in the Spirit's power but one body. Faith and life had been before; but not unity till the Holy Spirit personally came so to constitute. This is Christ's body. It was true in principle locally, for it is Christ's body as far as it was then manifested in Corinth, but the very next verse looks at it in fact as a whole on earth. For apostles, prophets, teachers, etc., were not of course in the Corinthian assembly, but in the assembly of God in its entirety here below. This Protestantism ignores or denies; while Popery perverts it into a corporation of men, not even born of God but nominally formed by ordinances, in order to constitute a quasi-spiritual kingdom as worldly as ever was set up by human will, and more wicked than any because of covering their ambitious corruption with the Lord's name.

2. This then makes evident the divine character of the one body, God's assembly or church. In 1 Cor. 14 (after the beautiful episode on charity or love, the great desideratum to the right working of every member of the body) we have the divinely intended action in the assembly, and the guard against its dangers. It may be said that miraculous powers, tongues, healings, etc. are now no longer manifested. Granted, and for wise reason. But is the Holy Spirit gone? If so, there is no more one body. If however He be still here, and abide for ever in and with Christians (John 14), does He not work by the manifestations of His gracious power? Are there not divinely given and qualified teachers? Are there not pastors and teachers as well as evangelists (Eph. 4) till the last member is formed and the body absolutely complete? Surely it would be base unbelief to doubt the love and care of the ascended Head. It is His grace, and He cannot fail in all that is needed for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto building up His own body. Shame on the Christians who do not believe this!

Instead of these gifts of His grace, the Pope looks to the aspiring chiefs of man's invention, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops in a sense altogether foreign to the revealed word, and other "ordinaries" as extraordinary to the apostles Paul and Peter and all the rest, as the one who glories in his shame of pretending to be the Vicar of Christ, jure divino. Not one of them acts, or even professes to act, on the principle of 1 Cor. 12 or according to the regulated practice of 1 Cor. 14. They have every one and everywhere departed from these revealed truths; as if the Holy Spirit had gone back, and Christ's one body, the assembly, had ceased its functions on earth. Is any Christian bold enough to deny the fact or its guilt? Granted that Protestantism never knew these truths, and is also guilty in this. Not only Romanism, but what called itself the Catholic system had slipped away from the revealed truth of the church, long before papal pretensions began. Yet 1 Cor. 14 shows us the true and sanctioned action of the assembly by its members in speaking to edification and exhortation and consolation. It forbids men speaking in a tongue not understood or interpreted, and commands women to keep silence in the assemblies. It comprehends also prayers and singing and praise and thanksgiving.

3. The discipline of scripture in its most solemn form is on the self-same principle. Our Lord anticipated it in Matt. 18. A trespass was to call out grace bent on delivering one's brother from wrong. The one wronged was to go after the man who had wronged him! if he heard, he was gained! This was not law or power or authority, but love. If he did not bear, one or two more were to be taken: surely he would not resist such earnest love! But if he would not listen, could he hold out against the assembly in the place? Alas! this was possible. But if so, "let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the tax-gatherer." The Lord solemnly declared that whatsoever they should bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and whatsoever they loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. Heaven would validate what His disciples decided, even if ever so few gathered to His name. If Peter personally had this solemn privilege, but is no longer here to exercise it, the Lord charges it on those gathered to His name, were they but two or three in the darkest day. This is the true succession.

4. In 1 Cor. 5 the apostle reproves the Corinthians for their lack of spiritual feeling about deplorable evil in their midst. If they were not yet instructed how to act, where was their sensibility as saints? where their grief that such wickedness should be where the Lord was confessed? Why did they not humble themselves and pray for the offender's removal? In the name of the Lord Jesus the apostle not only calls on the entire assembly to put out from them the wicked person, but joins himself in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver him such as he was to Satan for destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. For, as Christ our passover was sacrificed, we have to celebrate the feast with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. It is a manifest instruction drawn from the Jewish feast of unleavened bread for seven days after the Paschal lamb was eaten. So is the christian assembly, under the efficacy of Christ's blood, bound to purge away corruption; as they were an unleavened lump, they must not tolerate leaven. And as this applies to practice, Gal. 5: 9 applies the same principle to fundamental doctrine.

Will anyone be hardy enough to say that there is the least resemblance between Roman discipline and what the Lord enjoined or the apostle Paul? Think of the anathemas of the Papal Bulls! Never have human ears heard such bitter or varied curses. Can anything be more in contrast with scripture? Even in delivering the grievously wicked person to Satan, the declared aim of the apostle was that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. In no case is it the assembly acting responsibly in the Lord's name, without which the discipline is invalid. It is the same with restoration. When the offender was overwhelmed with sorrow, the apostle would only forgive when the assembly had forgiven. But as the evil-doer had fully judged himself, and the assembly had proved itself clear in the matter, he urges them to confirm love to the repentant, as he had before pressed them to clear the Lord's name of such sin unjudged. The revealed will of the Lord for the church is as plain as that Popery of all sects in Christendom is the farthest from Him. Confessing the doctrine of the Trinity and Christ's person, it corrupts almost all else, and not least the church, its worship, action, and discipline. This is the society which denounces others to damnation and cries up itself to heaven so loudly!

5. "The Lord's Supper" as laid down in 1 Cor. "has hardly a trait in common with the Mass; but it is not needful to enter into details now, as it may be examined later.

W. K.

WAS PETER CHRIST'S VICE-GERENT?

THE POPE'S ENCYCLICAL. §8.

It remains to notice the main pretexts, foundation it is too much to say, for the airy palace of the Roman Pontiff, his claim of universal monarchy in spiritual things continually encroaching on the sovereignties of the earth, and striving directly or indirectly to dictate to all. It is as unsubstantial as his own sedia gestatoria, with its flabelli of peacock's feathers, sustained on nothing but an arm of flesh, with an ambition as vaulting as that of the prince of darkness.

The alleged evidence of scripture is mere perversion, even as to Peter to say nothing of the Popes, who assume but cannot prove the smallest connection with that apostle. "The supreme authority," so far from being vested in Peter, the risen Lord declares was given to Himself, all authority in heaven and on earth. Confiding in Him therefore, Who is no longer dead but alive again for evermore, His servants were to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever He enjoined them, "And lo! I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age." He never "appointed Peter to be the head of the Church" (p. xxxvi.). Where? one text would suffice; not one even approaches it.

As unfounded is the statement which follows that He also determined the authority should be inherited by his successors. What has Matt. 16: 18 to do with this? "Thou art Peter (a stone); and upon this rock I will build My church." It was a new and wondrous privilege to be claimed for Himself with a name derived from Him; but the apostle Peter takes care to predict the same yet more strongly ("living stone") of all the believers in Christ addressed in his First Epistle (1 Peter 2: 5). It was a high personal honour that Simon was so named by the Lord on the first day Andrew brought his brother to Him; and it was again more emphatically confirmed on his confession of the Messiah's personal and eternal glory. But the blessed apostle, far from seeking self-aggrandisement and exclusive title, rejoiced to own those who are Christ's as "living stones" no less than himself. And the fiery ecclesiastic, Cyril of Alexandria, whom the Pope cites in the same page, is no more reliable in his exegesis than is the piety that inflamed the fierce populace to tear in pieces Theon's daughter, Hypatia, τὴν φιλόσοφον, pace Cave. It is false that upon him our Lord was about to found His Church. A stone is far from being the rock, which rock was Christ, and Christ confessed in the divine glory of His person,

It is true that the Lord on the same occasion gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of the heavens; the kingdom now in mystery of the earth-rejected King on high before He returns in power and glory as the Son of man. And Peter used them to throw its gates open to Jewish believers in Acts 2, and to Gentile in Acts 10. The work was then and thus done. It was a personal privilege, which admits of neither repetition nor still less of continuous descent. It remains accomplished, and the Popes could not undo it if they would. Peter was given to fill this charge.

There was another solemn charge conferred. Whatsoever thou shalt bind on the earth shall be bound in the heavens; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on the earth shall be loosed in the heavens." Undoubtedly Peter had used this authority, as we read in Acts 5 and Acts 8, but it was administrative in the Spirit, and as far as possible from Kingly or Imperial, the earthly-minded vain dream of sacerdotal ambition, and expressly tied to the apostle by the Father's sovereign choice and also by the Son's authority. Chrysostom was guilty of inexcusable exaggeration and error in saying that the Lord gave to a mortal man all power in heaven, because what is done here in His name and service is ratified there. This is made so much the more manifest in Matt. 18: 18-20, where the self-same ratification on high is assured to the local assembly on earth, were there but two or three to pray or decide as gathered to the Lord's name.

Luke 22: 31, 32, and John 21: 15-17 are misapplied in puerile levity to eke out of them a monarchy over the church. The one was to assure the self-confident disciple of His Master's grace in restoring him, even to his service in strengthening others so much the more afterwards; the other was His loving goodness in going to the root of Peter's fall, and as He knew his love in the face of his deep and public failure, which all others might have doubted, committing to his shepherd care His sheep and lambs, the dearest objects of His own love for whom He died. The sheep were the Jewish believers, not those outside the old fold, which we know did not fall within the official care of Peter but of Paul (Gal. 2); and so Peter wrote both his Epistles to the saints of the circumcision. But in no case was there exclusive prerogative, still less did it approach the royal type on earth. There was no Prince of apostles, let the Fathers speak as they may. The risen Christ alone has the keys of death and hades; He only has the key of David (Rev. 1, Rev. 3). Neither Peter nor Paul ever claimed such a place, which belongs solely to the Conqueror of death and Satan, to Him Who is the Holy, the True. But whatever of spiritual power and authority either of those most honoured apostles received from the Lord, not a word of God teaches or implies its devolution on a successor. Both wrote in view of their death and of growing evil in the christian profession, and both direct to God and the word of His grace as the provision and security for perilous times (Acts 20: 29-32, 2 Tim. 3, 2 Peter 1: 12-15, 2 Peter 2 and 2 Peter 3). Not a whisper about the Roman Pontiffs, about which men began to boast as Christendom fell from the wisdom that is from above into earthly and natural policy where is envying and strife, and consequently confusion and every vile deed.

The Pope quotes (41) from Basil's Hom. de Poenitentia, "He (Christ) is a priest, and makes priests. He is a rock, and constitutes a rock."

The latter statement is baseless and at issue with all revealed truth. As Christ alone is the Head of the church, so He only is the rock. Controversialists may prattle about the Syriac or Aramaic they imagine our Lord to have used. Of this neither we nor they have a right to speak; but none can deny that the sole revelation given expressly distinguishes a stone from the rock. And it is inconceivable that any language beneath the sky should be unable to mark the difference of ideas so distinct, as it is corrupting the faith to level down the Lord in order to raise Peter to the same height.

The former statement is true. The true great High-priest is Christ, and He makes priests. But the apostles Paul, Peter, and John, uniformly teach the truth which Romanism (and not Romanism only) denies and seeks to destroy, that He constitutes every believer now a priest with greater privilege, not merely than Aaron's sons but than Aaron himself. For as Heb. 10 insists on the one completed offering of Christ, whereby He has perfected us uninterruptedly, the same chapter from ver. 19 is as definite that we have title and boldness to enter into the holies in virtue of the blood of Jesus through the rent veil, and are exhorted to approach. with a true heart in full assurance of faith, instead of the anxiety which could not but fill Aaron when he approached once a year. And if it be said that now there is a royal as well as holy priesthood, we agree cordially that so St. Peter calls not presbyters or bishops, but the Christian brotherhood in 1 Peter 2: 5, 9; the sole priesthood, besides Christ's, which the N.T. sanctions. Ministry in the word and rule are given to a few for the good of the many; but all saints are by the gospel declared to be brought to God, nigh by the blood of Jesus; and therein lies the chief privilege of a priest. So St. John represents the believers breaking forth at the name of Jesus in Rev. 1: 5, 6, owning not His love only, nor His having washed us from our sins in His blood, but also His having made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father. If it be replied that this is solely by faith, the answer is that so is every Christian blessing but this too as really as any other.

And here is just Rome's unbelief to its ruin. As the Jewish branches were broken off through unbelief, so the apostle solemnly cautioned the saints in Rome, that Christendom stands in the olive-tree by faith. This is its responsibility, as it was Israel's of old; and therefore the call not to be high-minded but to fear. Who but themselves can deny the high-mindedness of the Papacy and of Romanism in general? No doubt there is infatuated pride in the Greek church and in other remains of the old ecclesiastical bodies; but Babylon's sins have exceeded all others, heaped or glued together up to heaven, as Rev. 18: 5 so graphically puts it for God to remember her unrighteousnesses.

W. K.

"The powers that be"

The source of their authority, and the obligations of Christians towards them; with remarks on Capital Punishment

W. Kelly (Broom 1854)

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Rom. 13: 1).

Human government, it has been justly said, finds its root in the authority which God conferred upon Noah. There was no such thing, properly speaking, in the antediluvian earth. Adam had a most extensive dominion, but no power over life. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man," etc. (Gen. 1: 26-28). There was no authority delegated over man, nor even to deprive the least animal of its life. Hence it was that the murder of a brother did not draw down vengeance from man, though conscience dreaded the retributive blow from every hand. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto ME from the ground," said the Lord to guilty Cain; and He set a mark upon him, lest any should slay the fugitive. Then followed a long reign of gigantic and uncurbed wickedness. Finally, a preacher of righteousness was raised up who warned for the space of one hundred and twenty years, when God swept away the corruption and violence of the race in the waters of the deluge.

After that catastrophe, a new commission opens. Noah and his sons have the Adamic grant confirmed; but they have much more. Every moving thing that liveth, even as the green herb, should be meat for them, the blood thereof excepted. "And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man: at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man.* And you, be ye fruitful," etc. (Gen. 9: 5-7). Evidently, the world was then placed under new conditions, which, in their substance, continue and must subsist till a new and yet future dealing of God change the face of all things, as may be gathered from 2 Peter and other scriptures.

*Will it be believed that some have gone so far as to treat these words as a mere prediction, and not as a solemn permission and charge on God's part?

The principle, then, of the divine charge to Noah and his sons remains true and obligatory till the day of the Lord. Now what is its chief characteristic? Clearly it is God's committal of the sword, or the power of life and death, into the hands of man. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, BY MAN shall his blood be shed." Such is the true source and basis of civil government. It did not spring from social contract. It did not grow by degrees out of family relationships. It did not originate in the usurpation of man or of a class. As God's command gave it being, so it can never cease to be clothed with His authority, whether men hear or forbear. If there be any one part of the charge which stands most prominent, it is the responsibility of man to visit capitally him who sheds man's blood. Such is the requirement of God, grounded upon the fact that He made man in His image. But though the reason of the thing might apply from Adam downwards, no such power was delegated till Noah. The notion, therefore, of its being, in any sort or degree, a right inherent in man, is thus cut off. It is a right of God, which He, ever since the flood, has been pleased to entrust to human keeping, which those in authority are bound to enforce in subjection to Him, and for the exercise of which they must by-and-by give account to Himself (Psalm 82).

It is easy to say that God has withdrawn or quashed the commission given to Noah and his family. But I ask, where? when? how? and await in vain the shadow of a proof.

Undoubtedly, God revealed other thoughts and hopes to the faith of Abraham and of his seed. With the fathers he entered into a new relationship — a covenant of grace and promise, as proved by Rom. 4 and Gal. 3 — which did not clash with the previous bond signed, sealed, and delivered, if I may so say, to Noah and his sons. This was a covenant between God and the earth at large; that was a special covenant between God and His own people. By the one, the world's wickedness was kept in check; by the other, the wandering patriarchs walked as strangers in a land promised to them and their seed for an everlasting possession. The former menaced human violence, if need were, with death; the latter led the men who embraced its hopes, pilgrims on earth, under the guidance of a known and almighty Friend. The government of the earth proceeded in its own sphere, wide as all the families of the earth. The calling of Abraham and his seed had its proper and peculiar domain. Between them there was no confusion, much less contradiction.

It is true that, after the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, the principle of government, first committed to Noah, and that of God's call, first manifested in Abraham, were seen united. In that chosen people, separated from the Gentiles as His witness, God developed His ways as a Ruler. But, alas! at Sinai, instead of confessing their sin, and pleading the absolute promises made to the fathers, they accepted the conditions of their own obedience. The result was ruin under all variety of circumstances: the law broken before it was brought down from the Mount, God Himself rejected, failure under priests, under prophets, under kings, "till there was no remedy," and God at length gave them into the hands of their enemies. During their national existence in Canaan, none can pretend that God relieved Israel from the responsibility of punishing with death.

At the Babylonish captivity, God severed the principle of earthly rule from that of His call, transferring the former to the Gentiles. The four great empires appeared in succession, as Daniel and other inspired writers predicted and attested. The last, or Roman empire, bore sway, as is notorious, when our Lord was born and died; and God began to call His church, chosen from Jews and Gentiles, as one body here below. But it is clear and certain, from the Acts of the Apostles and the rest of the New Testament, that the church in no way interfered with the government of the earth, which God had placed in the hands of magistrates. They had, no doubt, to hear and to bear the reproach of turning the world upside down, and of doing contrary to the decrees of Caesar; but it was false. Christ's kingdom is not of this world. They knew it, they had it, and they did not want another. They remembered His own glowing words about them: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world"; and they waited for Him from heaven, assured that those who suffer shall also reign with Him. As they never resisted the authorities by force, so they sought in their teachings to uphold, not to weaken, the just place which God of old had assigned them. Hence St. Paul thus addressed the believers in the imperial city: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" (rather judgment, as also in 1 Cor. 11: 29, where the context is decisively against the idea of "damnation"). "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same; for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger [or avenger] to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake,'' etc. (Rom. 13). The reigning emperor was a pagan and a persecutor; but clearly that was not the question. The language of the Spirit is so framed as to exclude cavil, founded either on the profession or the practice of the ruler. "There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." What can be conceived more definite on the one hand, more comprehensive on the other? What more opposed to revolutionary movement? It was most wholesome; just in the right place and time. For the Jews were then turbulent, and the Christians were obnoxious in the extreme to the ruling powers. It seems probable that some at Rome, from old Jewish associations, found it hard to own and respect, as of God, rulers whom they saw sunken in the spiritual and moral degradations of heathenism. Under such circumstances, if under any, one might have supposed à priori that God might have revoked the grant of power from its Gentile holders, if He did not transfer it to the church. But no! The door is closed against every excuse. "The powers that be are ordained of God."

As regards Christian responsibility, it is of no essential importance what may be the form of government. It may be despotic or constitutional: it may be aristocratic or republican. Nay, more, in its profession, it may be Pagan or Mahometan, Popish or Protestant. The principle or rule, as regards mankind and the earth, remains untouched. Thus, the Christian is bound to pay allegiance and honour wherever he may be — in England to the Queen, and in France to the Emperor; in Russia to the Czar, and in Turkey to the Sultan; and the same thing is true of all subordinate authorities. The only limit is that the Christian owes absolute subjection to God; and therefore when obeying an earthly government entails — happily a rare thing — disobedience to God, it need scarcely be said that he must obey God rather than man. To resist the powers is to resist God's ordinance. The alternative for the Christian, when he may not obey a human command that involves a breach of God's will, is suffering, not resistance. But in general it remains true that to him who does good, the magistrate, under any government you please, is God's minister for good. So said St. Paul in view of an arbitrary and an idolatrous power. "But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid: FOR HE BEARETH NOT THE SWORD IN VAIN." That is to say, we have the Apostle, long after Christ had been extensively preached among the Gentiles, urging the saints at Rome to submit themselves to the existing authorities, to render to Caesar the things of Caesar. Of course, if Caesar had sought to corrupt the faith or destroy the worship of God's church; if Nero had ordered them to give up the Lord, positively like Nebuchadnezzar, or negatively like Darius, their duty had been plain — not to protest merely, and sin all the while, but to suffer for righteousness' sake: they were not to render the things of God, but of Caesar, to Caesar. But if the State demanded any service, however hard, Christianity taught them to yield it, if not positively sinful. If it insulted and persecuted them, still they were taught to pray for kings and for all in authority, "that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty."

But suppose, instead of doing good, and having praise of the ruler, a man does evil, what then? "Be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain." Assuredly, if the ruler is not to use the sword, he does bear it in vain. He might as well, or better, not bear it at all; for an idle threat is a proof of feebleness, and a brutum fulmen brings a ruler, of all men, into contempt. St. Paul, however, anticipates no such dereliction of duty on the part of the magistrate, but warns the ill-disposed that he is God's servant, "a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." The passage is clear as noonday. It demonstrates that the authority of the sword delegated to Noah and his sons, as representatives of government, is no more repealed or neutralised by the grace of the Christian revelation, than it had been by the righteousness of the Mosaic code. It proves that the Christian is bound to respect that sword by whatever hands it may be wielded. Even if the magistrate were an infidel, if he degraded his office by regarding the popular will, not God, as the source of his authority, the Christian is not the less bound to own God's authority in him, and to honour him as God's minister in worldly things, in "the things of Caesar." It is mere delusion, therefore, to suppose that Christianity deprives a government of the authority to punish evil-doers with the sword. St. Paul, as we have seen, fully recognises that power, and describes the ruler as one authorised by God to avenge evil. To speak of mercy, amendment, etc., as the sole or chief aim when law is violated and a man is convicted of murder, for instance, is to evince the utmost confusion of thought. For while grace is the central idea in God's scheme for saving sinners by the cross, justice is and must be the foundation of all earthly government, Jewish or Gentile. Doubtless, in the gospel God can and does justify — not pardon only, but justify — the chief of sinners freely, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. But thence to infer that a world's ruler ought to deal on the same principle towards criminals, is, in my opinion, to despise both revelation and reason.

Some, I am aware, find a difficulty because of Matt. 5: 38, etc., and similar texts. This is due to a failure in seizing the bearing of these scriptures; for no believer would even insinuate that one part of God's word contradicts another. Now we have seen Rom. 13 to teach distinctly that the ruler is to be owned as bearing not the sword in vain; as an avenger to execute wrath on him that doeth evil; in short, as God's minister in earthly things, no less than Paul and Apollos were God's ministers in heavenly things. This chapter formally sets the Christian in the place of subjection to the powers that be, asserts the authority which God has vested in them, and finally makes it a matter not of wrath merely, but of conscience to the believer. Matt. 5 is in quite another direction, but perfectly consistent with the former teaching. Here the Lord instructs His disciples in their individual path, not their relation to governors, and puts their calling to walk in grace, active or passive, in contrast with the Jews, who were called to act in the righteousness of the law. It is absurd to apply such a passage to a government or a worldly tribunal. If it did so apply, it would prove that magistrates ought to caress and reward every culprit, instead of punishing any.

1 Peter 2 connects and enforces both truths within a narrow compass. On the one hand, we are exhorted, in verses 13 and 14, to submit ourselves to "every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well." On the other hand, we are told that this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. "For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." The latter verses savour as strongly of Matt. 5 as the former do of Rom. 13; they teach different but harmonious truths. And the present day is a time when we need to put each other in mind "to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men" (Titus 3: 1, 2); for there is no lack of them that "walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed; they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities." The Lord keep His own in the path of obedience.

W. K.

Presbyterianism,

Tested by the Word of God.

A letter to the Editor of "The British Herald."

by W. Kelly.

Note.

This letter to Mr. Reid is a brief but perhaps sufficient answer to three articles (entitled "Rule in the Church," "Local Charges" and "Power the Ground of Office,") in the British Herald for April 1, 1870.

Nothing call be more unfounded in principle or in fact than Mr. R.'s note to the May Herald (p. 78), in which the impression is given that "Brethren" imply "something very like a mistake" in the apostolic choice of elders. Not so: it is our conviction of God's wisdom in this which compels us to reject as unauthorised and anti-scriptural either Prelatic or Presbyterian appointment of elders. But it is impossible to choose them scripturally without apostles or their delegates. Let those who will, dare to imply a mistake that apostles were not perpetuated, on whose authority, living authority, direct or indirect, the choice of elders depends according to Scripture: we adore the God who provides all that is needful for a day of ruin without endorsing false pretensions.

Presbyterianism,

Dear brother, — In general, as you know, "Brethren" do not answer attacks made on them, unless they afford a good occasion for stating the truth. I am bound to add that your allusion cannot be rightly viewed as an attack, but rather as a defence of your own position. Suffer me, however, to send a few words which may remove misapprehension as to ourselves, if they do not convince you of what I believe to be mistaken on your part.

There has never been a time when "Brethren," as represented by those competent to speak for them, did not hold the perpetuity of all the gifts needed by the saints and given in Christ's love; and among the rest of pastors or rulers, Not an article, tract, pamphlet, or book has ever emanated from their midst, so far as I know (and I know them long and extensively), which does not insist on the value of rule in the church, if they treat of ministry at all. I have known strange doctrines elsewhere compromising the truth — never among such as possess the confidence of "Brethren" Individuals have shown a tendency, one to clericalism, another to democratic spirit; but it would be disingenuous to confound the mistakes of a few (whether among teachers or among taught) with the genuine working and effects of their distinctive principle, which I consider to be the return and recall of Christ's members to the word and Spirit of God, from the actual disorganisation of Christendom in which His sheep are scattered by Popery, Nationalism, and Dissent.

From rule in the church, then, which we all accept cordially (provided, of course, it be of God and not a mere name or a cheat), I turn to local charges. Here you concede that apostles chose the elders according to Scripture. It is equally clear that the people never chose them —  none ever did but an apostle, or an apostolic delegate expressly commissioned so to do. We have no controversy with you as to the plurality of elders, or their identity with overseers; but we are sure that Episcopacy is not more at issue with Scripture in setting up a class of men (call them bishops or what not, who claim to perpetuate the ordaining power of the apostles) than Presbyterianism or Congregationalism in substituting popular election for the apostolic choice of elders.

It is acknowledged by all well-informed Presbyterians that the earliest authentic documents after the apostles demonstrate the existence of the Episcopal system, as it is confessed that this prevailed in the Catholic world, till Rome crowned the incubus with the papal tiara. In vain do Congregational or Presbyterian controversialists invoke the testimonies of such fathers as Cyprian or Jerome: Episcopacy (though of a city, rather than of a diocese, at first) is a fact patent from the beginning of the second century. We hear of a bishop, of presbyters, and of deacons, in the same church from Ignatius, even if we use the shorter Syriac to correct the larger Greek copies. It is in vain then to say that you were "born in the apostolic place." Not so: we have all been born out of it. Eighteen centuries ago, "the Church-train" left the rails. The Reformation was a greet work; but there was no return to the original apostolic line — none even in the theory of Presbyterianism, still less of revolutionary Congregationalism.

And the error lies far deeper than an informal appointment of presbyters. The sub-apostolic fathers and their successors, you will not deny, evince a complete ignorance of the church's character and calling, as well as of the Holy Spirit's presence and action in it. So did Luther, Calvin, John Knox, and John Owen. Hence from first to last the clerical system is seen in operation, i.e., the confusion of Christ's gifts with the local charges (even if duly appointed, which they never were by any of these), which confined preaching in the church to the bishop of old, or "the minister" among moderns. He might by courtesy permit others to minister, but he only had the title. Such was and is the prevalent system of a clergy, from which Presbyterianism is no more free than other sects, in open war with the Christian assembly as seen in Scripture and carried out everywhere among "Brethren." It is evident, then, that the "Church-train" had disastrously slipped aside (not "shunted" but slipped) from the rails laid down in Scripture.

Calvin and his fellows, who thought they gathered Presbyterianism from Scripture, never pretended that they were "born in the apostolic place," but turned their back on Episcopacy as a deviation from Scripture, though it had lasted for more than a thousand years. They tried to distinguish between ministry and eldership, but really fell into the Presbyterian notion of two classes of elders, the one ruling and the other teaching. You rightly call this a "mistake;" but is it not a mistake to which you are bound in subscribing the Westminster Confession of Faith? Calvin and Knox never had their eyes opened, as yours have been, to the momentous truth of God's assembly on earth with the Spirit, free to act by whom He will among Christ's members in the exercise of gift, thanksgiving, prayer, etc. Something resembling this you have essayed at the Lord's Supper of each Lord's day at Warwick Road; but how it is to be reconciled with the plain honesty of a Presbyterian minister and members has always been a pain more than a marvel to me. I do not say to you or any other, Come to us; but I affirm that you are bound in the Lord's name to cease from all evil, to avoid even its appearance, counting on His future guidance when you stand clear of all you know to be an unscriptural bond and ground-work.

Agreeing with you that "Christendom is in rebellion" (which is surely serious for the "Church-train"), I hold with you that rule abides no less than preaching and teaching. But I ask: are Presbyterian elders chosen spiritually? If not, is this nothing? or is it part of the "rebellion?" And what of the place given to "the minister?" Is it more scriptural than an Anglican bishop? Does either honour the Lord's order? "Brethren" hold that, though we may lack much of apostolic order, we are never at liberty to contravene it. What can more flatly contradict Scripture than letting the people choose their elders, who in Scripture were invariably chosen by apostles or their delegates? If Scripture allowed this either to the assembly or to ordinary gifted men, "Brethren", could and would use the like liberty. But they find in Scripture principles irreconcilable with either; and to it the authority of the Lord binds them to adhere, as did the Christians in early days, when no apostle or apostolic envoy visited to choose them elders. Call this "naked" if you will; but we can prove that this has the sanction of God's word, as readily as we can disprove the self- will of allowing the people, or an Anglican bishop, to choose presbyters. All that can be done by either is to clothe with the livery of a sect; whereas the value of appointment in Scripture depends on its being of the Lord through His apostles. If not the true Scriptural authority, we are convinced it is worse than nothing, for it is really an act of "rebellion," — even though those who do it ignorantly may be His servants. How much better to confess our wants than to hide them by a pretentious fiction!

Do "Brethren," therefore, undermine rule in the Church? Are they thereby destitute of rulers? In no way. Have you observed that many (yea most) of the inspired Epistles of the apostle Paul suppose rulers, but not elders in them? So at Rome, where ruling is enjoined (ch. 12), but not a word about an elder. How could there be elders where none had as yet gone competent to choose them? They had rulers like "Brethren;" but like them they had no elders. — It was not otherwise at Corinth, where their presence is ignored, though the Apostles had formed the assembly there. This is not surprising to us, but inexplicable to a Presbyterian. It was not the apostolic way to appoint elders in an infant assembly, but rather in places where churches already existed, and some exhibited the qualities required in overseers or elders. — In the assemblies of Galatia we hear of no elders; but we cannot doubt that some ruled, as we know they taught from the apostolic command that the saints should communicate with those who taught them in all good things. — There were not gifts only but elders at Ephesus, which had enjoyed the apostle's stay there for a considerable time, after an earlier stage of less light and power. — At Colosse both fact and principle point to an absence of elders; while it is certain that the church at Philippi had overseers.

But at Thessalonica we see how false the assumption is, that we cannot have men over us in the Lord without elders. Not that apostolically chosen elders were not a great boon locally, as apostles were yet more universally; but it is a fallacy to teach or fancy that we cannot walk in holy obedience and recognition of rulers without the presence of either. At Thessalonica those over the saints were clearly not invested with the charge of eldership, yet the saints there had rule then, as "Brethren" now. Apostolic order neither taunted them as "naked," nor admitted of election by the people to clothe them with authority. This I should call democracy, the fruit of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," which "Brethren" dislike more than any other Christians that I know.

It would seem too that, in writing to Jews, the Apostle purposely employed the phrase οἱ ἡγουμένοι in Heb. 13: 7, 17, 24, to embrace all who exercised pastoral care, whether "elders" or not. Compare Acts 15: 22, where it is applied to two "prophets" (not "elders"), and is translated "chief men." The true deduction from all this, compared with 1st and 2nd Tim. and Titus, I consider both plain and as decidedly in favour of "Brethren," as it is adverse to Presbyterianism and every other denomination. Among the Jewish believers we do not read of any formal installation of "elders," who are first named in Acts 11: 30.

On the one hand, then, scripture speaks of the people choosing men to take care of the poor (Acts 6, 2 Corinthians 8)* — never of elders chosen save by apostles or their delegates. "Brethren" could as easily as others choose; but they could no more than Presbyterians confer the scriptural authority of elders which apostles did (directly or indirectly); but after all they are no worse off in this than many chief churches for some time, many probably always, in apostolic times. Presbyterians, on the other hand, like the rest, have never been "on the rails" of Scripture in this respect, of which they nevertheless are apt to boast. I see no "shunting" in our case, any more than in the assemblies at Rome, Corinth, Colosse, and Thessalonica. But I do see an upset of the scriptural system in Presbyterianism, not of elders merely, but of ministry, of the assembly itself, and of the sovereign action of the Holy Spirit in the assembly.

* It would be a wrong to Paul and Barnabas to rank them as mere ἀποστολοι ἐκκλησιῶν ("messengers of the churches") entrusted with supplies for poor saints. They are called οἱ ἀποστολοι ("the apostles") twice over, not Paul only but Barnabas also, in the same chapter which records their choice of elders. (See Acts 14: 4, 14, 23.) Elders never chose elders, though the apostle associated them with his own laying on of hands when he communicated a gift, χάρισμα, to Timothy, who was an evangelist, not an elder.

I have now, I trust, said enough to raise grave inquiries in grave minds; and to God and the word of His grace I would commend you and your readers, desiring only His will to stand. He is the best judge of the church's need, and the only wise and adequate provider for it. He abstained from perpetuating an ordaining authority where the departure from His truth was such that He must thereby have given an outward sanction to His own dishonour. He does vouchsafe all that is needful, but in such a way as to exercise faith in all, and to convict of disorder those most of all who pique themselves on names and shadows without reality. Ever yours in the Lord,

W Kelly.

The Priesthood of Christ.

Hebrews 4: 14-16.

W. Kelly.

There is often vagueness found in the thoughts of many a child of God as to the priesthood of our Lord Jesus, as to what its place and proper action is, as well as what it is founded on — what its relation to other truths, more particularly to redemption — what it is that God secures to us by it — what the portion that the saint enjoys in virtue of it, or consequently loses if he have it not. All these various ways in which priesthood may be examined will be found somewhat indefinite, I think, in the minds even of most real believers; and it is wise in general never to assume that a truth is known till we have proved it.

We often take for granted, finding the children of God happy together in fellowship, that they must know this or that truth; but it by no means follows. They may be using language beyond what they have actually learnt from God. The mass are apt to be carried along by others (and this even where their words would give little suspicion) by the faith of others. This is easily understood. They do not doubt in their own minds that it is all quite true, having the general sense and savour, and surely not without some enjoyment of it; but still they have not thoroughly sought out and realized the mind of God for their souls, receiving the truth distinctly and decidedly from God. If exposed to misleading influences they might soon and seriously be turned aside, at the least be perplexed and tried by questions easily raised, and often for the very purpose of confounding those whose general confession puts to shame such as are walking in the ways of the world. And these are days, brethren, when we need to have everything from God for our own souls.

Assuredly, one need say no more to urge the importance of every child of God, simply and thoroughly, searching into His word; if they do know, having it so much the more happily confirmed to their souls, and if they have not yet ascertained it for their own souls, searching and seeing what God has to show and give them. They have the truth in having Christ, I need not say; but it is well to have it fairly out for our souls. His priesthood goes on for us whether we enter intelligently or not into what our portion is in it and by it. But is it not of the greatest importance that we should know how suited, and rich, and constant the grace of our Lord Jesus is? Indeed it is this which makes it so blessed, because the truth we are about to look at now is bound up with Christ. He is all in it. There may be the reflection of His grace; there may be the working of it, no doubt poorly and imperfectly, in souls on earth who enter a little into their priestly character and blessing; but this is altogether of a different bearing after all from His relation to us; for it is not now simply priestly grace in activity of love for others, but that which our own souls indispensably want in order to be carried through the wilderness.

And I call your attention to this point at the start of the observations I have to make (and you will see how true it is when you reflect upon it): the whole Epistle to the Hebrews supposes a redeemed people pilgrims and strangers on the earth. They are not in Egypt; they are not in Canaan; they are passing through the wilderness. The very same people may be viewed, if not in Egypt, certainly as being in heavenly places even now; but such is not the aspect in which the children of God are viewed in this epistle. In no case here do we find them invested with that character of blessings which we have, for instance, in Ephesians and in a measure even in Colossians. We do not find anything at all of resurrection with Christ either; although this too, of course, it need hardly be said, has its immense importance, and Romans, Philippians, and other epistles take it up.

But here we have distinctively the Spirit of God starting first of all with Christ at God's right hand in heaven; and this is an essential feature of His priesthood. So long as He was upon earth He could not be a priest. His is an exclusively heavenly priesthood; and those for whom He is acting are a heavenly people. The time was come for God to form and fashion them accordingly. There were saints of old waiting, with more or less light of heavenly hopes, looking for the city above — the saints of the high or heavenly places, as the Spirit of God in the New Testament explains the expression to us. But still they looked up only in hope, and this, too, necessarily with vagueness. Here it is still in hope; but the veil is rent, and heaven opened, and the Spirit sent down because of Christ's redemption and glorification. There all is definite, without the least vagueness whatever. The ground and scene is clear and distinct from the very fact that Christ who purged our sins is in heaven, yet in living relationship with those He is not ashamed to call His brethren on earth. Thus, even if we look at the Christian in this point of view, having a priest and passing through the wilderness, still there is a positive and present imprint of heaven upon all.

Hence, therefore, in chapter 3 those who are particularly contemplated in the epistle are called "partakers of the heavenly calling." It was not only that they were called to heaven by and by, but the One that called them was already in heaven, and in heaven on the ground of redemption already accomplished. This is another truth of the greatest possible, yea, indeed, primary importance; for the heavenly place of our Lord Jesus is here viewed as consequent on the accepted sacrifice of Himself for our sins, as in fact it was. It is no question at all of our Lord Jesus coming down from heaven. This, we know, is most true; and this too has its revelation elsewhere in a suited manner. But the point here with which the epistle opens is the great truth that the Lord by Himself purged sins, or our sins, it may be. I merely say this because there is a question of reading; but the question raised has nothing to do with the indisputable truth (and that is all that I affirm now, as it is perfectly certain) that the Lord Jesus went up to heaven, and took His place at the right hand of God, to enter on a new kind of action there, and this founded on the annulling of sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

But this at once clears the way for the application of Christ's priesthood to the believer. It supposes a people already redeemed. It supposes that the great and absolutely necessary work of grace on their behalf has been accomplished. It supposes that they are resting on it without a question, the main danger being that some may be tempted to give it and Him up, because of the difficulties, the trials, the snares, the persecutions, the dangers of the way. And this we see to be before the mind of the Spirit of God every now and then in the Epistle to the Hebrews. You will find it very early brought up in Hebrews 3, and you may trace it continuously to nearly the last. It was what Satan was seeking to separate them from; but it was no question of whether the work was done. The whole doctrine of the epistle supposes that the Lord single-handed had finished the work which He undertook on earth. All that God contemplated to be done for sin — that God Himself could do in the way of blotting out sin — was already done before the Lord entered on His priesthood on high.

It is the want of seizing and holding fast that great truth which has thrown such confusion and darkness into the minds of most on the subject of Christ's priesthood, and which has made it vague to better instructed souls, and just in proportion to the weakness with which they hold the completeness of redemption. For, naturally, if the believer is not resting with his conscience purged and perfect now, the priesthood of Christ is thrown in to complete what is deficient. The true grace of the priesthood, therefore, is impaired, yea, lost; it becomes a mere maker up of weight; for the preliminary question must naturally be to know Christ, and one's sins forgiven through His blood. With most nowadays there is but a hope (for it rarely amounts to more throughout Christendom) of being with the Lord by and by. Thus the true place of the priesthood disappears, because redemption has never been received from God in its simplicity and its fulness; and Christ's walk and priesthood are thrown into the scale to make up what His death on the cross has done perfectly.

Certainly the Epistle to the Hebrews leaves no ground for any such hesitation. Before the Spirit of God enters on priesthood, we have, with the greatest precision and fulness, the person of the Lord Jesus brought out, and this in a twofold way. We behold Him as the Son of God; we see Him as the Son of man. And both natures were necessary to His priesthood. If He had not been God's Son in such a sense as none other was, there had been no such priesthood as that which this epistle sets before us. On the other hand, if He had not been the Son of man, in a sense too that was as real as that of others, but in a character that was peculiar to Himself, there had been no such priesthood available for us. The Lord Jesus was both; and as the first chapter presents Him particularly as Son of God, so the second as Son of man. At the end of this we have the first allusion to His priesthood. In both these chapters we have the fulness of redemption set forth.

We have already seen this in the first chapter; the second supposes the same fact. There we read, "It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one."

Here again, then, we have a very important relation to His priesthood. It is a question of the sanctified, and of the sanctified only. None but the sanctified, we shall see, have to do with the priesthood of Christ. They are the persons contemplated. On the other hand, "by the grace of God he [Jesus] tasted death for every man." But after this the apostle begins to narrow the sphere; for he is about to treat of the priesthood of Christ. He shows us certain that are sanctified, or set apart. They are therefore spoken of not merely as the seed of Adam, for this would take in the whole human family, but as the seed of Abraham. Thus it is a less general class taken as the seed of Abraham, not literally after the flesh, but as it really means, after the Spirit; for none but such are viewed as here sanctified.

Sanctification in the New Testament is not fleshly, as in the Old Testament. If of profession simply, it might be given up by those that take it up of themselves, and are not born of God; but still it is separation to God in the name of Christ. We find persons afterwards spoken of as treating the blood wherewith they were sanctified as an unholy thing. They became apostate, as we know; but as yet He does not contemplate such an issue. He speaks of them as real. "Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." They are His brethren.

In short, then, the priesthood of Christ is in no way a work which looks out to the whole of mankind, as the propitiation of Christ does. That which was represented by the blood on the mercy-seat looked out to all. It was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and before it. It was not merely a question of those that were in the immediate circle of God's dealings. That blood was too precious, being infinite in its value, to be thus limited. "By the grace of God he tasted death for every man." Indeed, the word may go a little farther, and take in "every thing;" but still it includes every man à fortiori. As we approach Him in His actions and sufferings and qualifications for priesthood, we find a special regard to those that had an actual relationship of grace. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise, took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

Plainly therefore it is for a delivered people that Christ is viewed as a merciful and faithful high priest — for the sanctified, for the children. "For verily he took not on him the nature of angels." The real force is, "he does not take up the cause of angels." It has nothing to do with "nature" here, which was put in very inconsiderately. You will observe some words printed in italics, but others too are ill-rendered. The margin here gives the sense much better — "He taketh not hold of angels;" that is, He does not espouse their cause, which is the true meaning. "But of the seed of Abraham he taketh hold. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest."

It will be seen, then, how this clears the ground distinctly; for we learn that priesthood follows accomplished redemption, that it supposes the Lord Jesus Himself as He is now, not merely as He was before He came into the world; for He was not priest then, nor yet, when actually in the world, was He priest then either. When He suffered on the cross, and left the world and went to heaven, He is saluted of God as priest then and there, and this for those who see Him while He is there. We see Jesus, as it is said, crowned with glory and honour. It is for such as see Him by faith. It is an office and function He discharges in heaven, then, for those that are separate from the world, severed unto God; that is, for the sanctified.

And here by the way let me express the hope that there is nobody here who mistakes the meaning of the word "sanctified." The point in Hebrews 2 is not at all the thought of a process going on, though I do not the least deny this to be true practically, as it is taught elsewhere. In the practical sense holiness is of course a gradual product of grace — a growth into Christ which always should be going on in the saint; but this passage, and others in Hebrews, look at the class so viewed in the abstract; and what made it also the more striking was, that it was no longer true, as such, of Israel. The Jews alas! had profanely refused as far as they could the Holy One of God. They had treated Him as a reprobate and an impostor. They had lost, therefore, their sanctification, and God treats them as profane. And the sanctified here are those who were separated out of Israel; here, I repeat emphatically, out of Israel; for, as far as the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks, we could scarce prove by it that any Gentiles were being called now. From elsewhere we all know that there are, and the principles in the Epistle to the Hebrews apply to the Gentile believer just as truly as to the Jewish; but the Holy Ghost was tenderly dealing with these men of prejudice, whom He is now instructing in the way more perfectly, and thus leading out from old attachments to the best of blessings. There was solemn warning, but also the desire of love; there was the consideration of such thoughts and feelings as might appear weak, and, no doubt, to a Gentile supremely so. A Gentile would have torn their prejudices to atoms, with rudeness perhaps, certainly without much scruple. But the Spirit of God dealt with the utmost care and gentleness, yet throughout with increasing plainness of speech, until at last the truth has been brought out so fully that they are summoned to quit the camp for Christ outside, bearing His reproach. There is much to learn in this; and I am sure, my brethren, every one of us needs the lesson.

But still what I am recalling your attention to is this, that the Lord now stands related as priest above to those who are separated to God in the confession of Christ, and separated out of the people just as much as out of any other race, yea, pre-eminently here out of that people. For the apostle thus implies that those for whom He is acting were not according to the old sanctification of Israel, but sanctified out of that sanctification which no longer had any validity before God. All now turns on Jesus, the rejected Messiah. He was the sanctifier, as indeed He is God no less than man. "He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one." "He that sanctifieth" here means Jesus. "He is not ashamed to call them brethren." It is not God, as such, of course; who does not, could not, call any one "brother." It is our Lord who is the sanctifier; and the sanctified are those set apart in His name and by His blood.

Then comes the first allusion to Jesus as priest; we find it at the end of chapter 2. He is "a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God" — not exactly "to make reconciliation." I regret, on such an occasion, to be thus commenting on our common version; but the truth must be spoken, I suppose, and specially on such fundamental and momentous topics as these. It really means propitiation, not "reconciliation." The great day of atonement is alluded to here, and the expiation of sins on it. Reconciliation is a much larger thought than atonement, and means the making good the whole state of the object of it with God. Therefore, although it is founded on propitiation, it goes farther; and so it takes in creation universally, as we see in Ephesians and Colossians — "all things," not all men, though the blood was shed in view of all, to be testified in due time. Everybody can see for himself that there is no very just sense in saying "making reconciliation for sins." People are reconciled; but can we say reconcile sins? or make reconciliation for them? Expiation, or propitiation, for sins is the exact force. And this is what the word does mean. And it is the more striking, as showing the confusion into which people had fallen, that in Romans 5: 11, where "atonement" occurs in the English Bible, it ought to be "reconciliation;" while in Hebrews 2, where "reconciliation" occurs, it ought to be "atonement." That is, our translators were unfortunately astray in the very points that the Spirit of God was teaching in both. I do not mention the fact as taking pleasure in detecting flaws of the kind, but simply to vindicate the truth of God, holding that it is of much more consequence for His word to be seen as it is, and for souls to be set right, than merely to keep up an unreal appearance in the version we have in our hands, though heartily admitting that providentially we have abundant reason to bless God for so good a translation. It has its faults, however; and these are two.

It is plain that up to chapter 3 we have the introduction; and, the atonement being brought in, we have hence not merely a priest but the high priest introduced. So in the day of atonement the high priest of Israel appears, and none other. This was a very peculiar action on the day of atonement; and it was the only one of the kind. Atonement was done once for the whole year. It thus set forth completeness (as we can now say, for ever), not a continuous process. The action of the priest or high priest otherwise might be going through all the year round; but not the atonement, which was distinct, unique, and absolutely settled for that circle of time. The high priest on this occasion represented the people, and offered that on which Jehovah's lot fell for the sins of the people, bringing its blood within the veil, and doing with that blood as he did with the bullock's, and thus making atonement, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins. After he came out from the most holy place he laid his hands upon the live goat, and confessed over him all their iniquities, and all their transgressions in all their sins. The whole was wound up by sending the goat Azazel into the wilderness, as the figure of sins thus borne away.

Thus two goats, in fact, were needed to complete atonement, the formal and particular confession being upon the scapegoat or people's lot. Still they were both involved for the type of atonement in its two great parts, the vindicating of God, which was the first thought, and next the allied comfort of knowing that all evil on the part of the people was minutely brought out, laid upon that goat, and discharged to be seen no more. And these two truths are distinctly before us in Rom. 3 and Rom. 4; chapter 3 answering more to Jehovah's lot, chapter 4 to the people's lot, the latter part of both chapters. In the one case it is God just and justifying him that believes in Jesus; and there we have the blood on the mercy-seat. In the other, Christ is said to be delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification, which delivering of Him up for our offences is exactly what the scapegoat figured when sent away with their sins over his head.

Azazel does not answer to the resurrection part. There is no type of this in the offerings here, though we find it in that of Isaac. (Gen. 22) There was also a figure of it in the bird that was let loose, dipped in the blood of the killed one, for the leper; but it is not so with the live goat. For it was to be sent into a land not inhabited; and heaven is anything but that. It is a place already well inhabited, and will be so yet more for ever. Impossible for it to be symbolised by the desert scene into which the goat was sent. What this was intended to set forth was the dismissal of Israel's sin, the visible testimony to all their offences — their positive acts of transgression — borne away. This seems to be all that was meant by it, the evident complement therefore of Jehovah's lot, as it was the people's. Substitution appears no less than expiation.

Atonement, however, though by the high priest alone, does not, strictly speaking, give us the proper ordinary action of priesthood, but the foundation, and hence is intimately connected with it. The purging of, or making expiation for, sins was a prime necessity, but still a foundation for the priest to appear before God day by day on behalf of the people.

We come now to another matter of the deepest interest in the person that could fittingly act as priest. "In that he himself suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." Let us weigh it the more because it so clearly concerns, not merely ourselves, but Himself, so often wounded in the house of His friends, as well as by heartless enemies. It is not only the person in both parts, or the foundation work for us, but the gracious provision in His heart, as man tried in every possible way, that He might thus the better succour those that are tempted.

What is meant by the word "tempted"? As you may have observed, not a word is said about temptation till we hear of the sanctified people. "Tempted" in these cases, then, has no allusion whatever to the inward solicitations of evil. Such is not the thought: it should be needless to say the Lord never had any. But even where priesthood is spoken of on our behalf, it is remarkable that by it God does not make provision for sins or failures. So we see in Hebrews 4, where we learn not a little more. "Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."

Here the introduction of the word "yet" into the clause (printed in italics) is a very great blemish, calculated to ruin the sense. If you read it without that addition, you may apprehend what the Holy Ghost means a great deal more distinctly and correctly. As it stands now in the Authorised Version (and I fear in the mind of the translators, certainly of many individuals in our own day), the deduction is that the Lord was tempted, but never yielded, never sinned. This is not at all the point. The Holy Spirit was teaching quite another truth, more worthy of Christ's glory, and needed by the believer. Of course, it is true that Christ never did sin; but it is far below the truth here intended. What is revealed goes a great deal farther.

Christ "was tempted in all points like as we are, apart from sin." He had no sin whatever. It was not only that He never sinned, but He had no sin; and this makes all the difference possible. He was the Holy One, and this was manifested, especially in the unparalleled temptations He endured. Assuredly He was all through the Holy One; but it was all apart from sin. In Him was no sin — not sins merely, but sin. It was not only that He did not yield to sin, but there was no sin there to yield. His nature as man had no evil to be acted on by the devil. There was evil without. He was assailed by every possible, the most subtle, effort of Satan in a ruined and wretched world. There was all that could give pain, not only in men and the Jews, but even in disciples. There was the presenting of what was agreeable to allure at the beginning of His path; there was the endeavour to alarm at the end by what was most tremendous and overwhelming in death, and, above all, in such a death as was before Him.

But whether it was by the pleasant or the painful, at every time, under all circumstances, Christ was tempted like as we are. It is not said that He was not tempted more. "There hath no temptation befallen us but that which is common to man," i.e. a human one. Could one say this about Jesus? Who does not see that the Lord was tempted above all that man was ever tempted? that there was no temptation to compare with His? While, therefore, it is perfectly true that He was "tempted in all points like as we are," it is far from being true, as many ill-instructed souls assume, that we have been tempted in all points like as He was.

The wilderness was the marked scene of Christ's characteristic temptation. Have we been ever tried so? Certainly not. There may be a measure of analogy, and I have no doubt that the three well-known temptations which closed the sojourn in the wilderness are full of instruction in their principle at least. Each one of the three efforts of Satan against the Lord — the natural temptation to make the stones loaves, the worldly temptation in the offer of the kingdoms of the world on the condition of homage, and the religious temptation in the exhortation to cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple according to the promise in Psalm 91 — is full of the weightiest instruction and warning for our souls. But then be it remembered, that before that He had been tempted for forty days without food. Is this a trial that we have ever been subjected to? We may boldly say, I think, that it is one into which the Spirit will never lead us as Him. It was a trial altogether peculiar, and suited to the Son of God, the man Christ Jesus.

While, therefore, our Lord Jesus here below was tempted like as we are in all points, He was tempted in a most important way that was altogether proper to Himself. And it was meet that it should be so; for He was not what I may call a merely natural member or natural head of the human family. Most truly a man He became, by grace made of a woman; but in His own right God, and the Son of God. And soon He was about to take the place of head of the new creation. He was to be the counterpart of the first man — as he in sin, so the Second in righteousness and grace; and just as Adam fell in a place that was peculiar to him in a small way, so the Lord Jesus stood under incomparably more severe temptations, and is now the glorified man in resurrection, as the other brought in death for himself and his race. Thus Adam's case, here briefly sketched, helps, or ought to help, any soul that wants to know what temptation is; for the common notion that temptation supposes inward evil is a fatal mistake, and shows that there is a leaven of unsuspected heterodoxy in all who think so, and thereby fail to conceive of temptation apart from proclivity or tendency to sin. One need not do more than just ask the simple questions, Was not Adam tempted? and what was his condition when tempted? Certainly there was no sin, no inward proclivity to evil, in Adam before he fell. Sin therefore is in no way necessary to temptation in the sense of the word here meant; for the first great instance of temptation, and alas! of sin, was the case of a man who was made without sin. So here; so with the Son of God who conquered Satan, the destined extirpator of sin, and this too not by power but by suffering, that it might be by righteousness, and so grace have all its blessed way for and with our souls. How gloriously, here on earth morally, now in fact on high, was not our Lord Jesus the counterpart of that first man, Himself the second man, and last Adam!

I affirm, then, that He, absolutely without sin, was therefore the very and only One that could be a fit object for temptation on the part of Satan. The enemy's aim was to get sin in; but no, even at the very close, the prince of this world came and found nothing in Him. There was neither sin inwardly to excite, nor was there lack of dependence on God which admitted sin. It was not there, nor could it ever find entrance by independence of God. If Satan had only contrived to lead Him to use His own will, there had been sin at once, and all was ruined, every hope gone. It could not be indeed; for He was both a divine person and the dependent, obedient man. The foe was utterly foiled. And there is the great mistake — that many reason from themselves to Him, and conceive it was a kind of virtue or merit in the Lord Jesus that He never sinned. Whereas there never was a question about His sinning, either to God or even to any man who believed in Him.

How could any one born of God entertain for one moment the thought of the Lord Jesus failing? Could such a profane dreamer be really supposed to believe that He is the Son of God? All these speculations of men which lower the glory of Jesus simply show that they do not really believe that Jesus is God while a man. They do not know what they mean by such a confession as that He is the Son of God to be honoured as the Father. They do not truly believe that He is God Himself as truly as the Father or the Holy Ghost; for His becoming a man detracted nothing from it. He took manhood into union with His deity; but the incarnation in no way lowered the deity, while it raised humanity in His person into union with God. Each nature, however, preserved its own properties. There was no confusion. Each was exactly what it was — human nature, and divine nature, each in all its own characteristic excellence, combined, not confounded, in His person. And such was Jesus, who came to glorify His God and Father, and deliver us from our sins to His glory by redemption through His blood.

And such is the priest we have before God. Hence we see the great force of the words, "In that he himself suffered, being tempted." Truly He suffered. Where you yield to evil, you do not suffer when you are tempted. When there is only evil, it is yielded to. Evil is gratified by its own exercise. The sinner does his own will, pleasing himself without the fear of God. This is sin — the indulgence of one's own will or lawlessness, than which nothing is more pleasant to any ungodly one. This the Lord never did, never wished, never wavered about for an instant; and this is what we find throughout the whole of His course. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." So it was before; so it was at the end; so all through. He was the doer of God's will — of all things, to my mind, the most astonishing in the Lord Jesus regarded as God's servant here below. He never did, never once, His own will; He always did or suffered the will of God. It was the perfection of man morally. No miracles, no deeds of power, can be compared with it. God could work wonders by a worm, as He has often wrought by the merest sinners. But there never was that only did the will of God except One; and He was the One therefore that was called to suffer as no one else could; for it is just in proportion to love and holiness that one suffers, not to speak of His intrinsic glory.

Just so with a child of God now. You refuse to do your own will. Assuredly it costs no trifle to cleave to God's will in a world where nothing else is done but man's; for the world lives, moves, and has its being in seeking its own will. The Lord Jesus was just the contrary, and so those that are of Him, the sanctified. For this indeed they are, as the apostle Peter teaches, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." This, I believe, goes very far too, as it means the same kind of obedience as the Lord's; for He here below never obeyed in a single instance as under compulsion or resisting an influence within that was opposed to the will of God. He suffered; but the suffering was because of Satan's devices against Him who always pleased God, refusing absolutely and always to swerve from obedience, besides the holy horror of His soul, not at evil within, because there was none, but at evil everywhere else outside Himself. The suggestions too of the enemy, instead of awakening will, only inflicted pain and suffering on Him. He was a sufferer just because He was the Holy One, not in the least degree (as with us) from the sense of the mind of flesh; and therefore it is said, "In that he himself suffered, being tempted." When man as he is yields in anything, it is of course to gratify his nature; it is self-pleasing, whatever be the bitter result. There neither was nor could be aught like this in Jesus. He "suffered, being tempted," and He is "able to succour them that are tempted." But the remarkable thing to note here is, that an obedience similar to His is looked for from us: to obey God as sons in the new nature, and by the Spirit of God. In this path there is trial.

In exact accordance are Christians viewed here below in the Epistle to the Hebrews. They are redeemed; they are sanctified; they are children; they are Christ's brethren; and meanwhile they are in the place of temptation, which the wilderness is and must be. So we find the Psalmist reminding the children of Israel of "the day of temptation in the wilderness." For us too now, as for them, there is the substantially same trial. The scene around is the wilderness, the time is the day of temptation. We are tried and thoroughly put to the proof. And this our God turns to our good; for we are in a place too where every spring of power, all the food that sustains, the light, the direction that guides, is from above, not from within ourselves, nor from the world without of course. There is nothing here around us, any more than in our own old nature, to help us on; but just the contrary, to impede and defile, to injure and destroy. Above the rest in malice is the great enemy that tempts to evil. Christ knows it, having His wakeful eye on him as well as on us. As the general, who once in a beleaguered city had to stand and beat off the enemy, though he suffered, is just the one most of all to feel for his friends, who, being besieged by the same foe, have besides to contend with a traitor within: how much more cannot Jesus feel for you and sympathize with you? Never was a greater mistake than the supposition that He must have the traitorous old man within in order to sympathize. Had there been evil within Him, it would simply have destroyed the person of Christ in His moral glory and perfection, as well as His sacrifice and its consequences. There would have been no Saviour at all. This is what unbelief ever comes to — a virtual denial of Jesus, the Son and His work. And hence, therefore, it matters but little whether men deny His Godhead or undermine His spotless and perfect humanity: either way, no Christ remains for God, no Saviour remains for man. It is the merest naturalism to imagine that the perfectness of the Saviour and of His salvation takes away from the perfectness of His sympathy. Love and holiness in our nature tried here below, and suffering to the utmost, are the basis of His sympathy; and He, if I may repeat, that knew what it was to suffer in having to do with the tempter, knows best how to feel for you who, besides the same tempter, have to watch against traitorous flesh within you. If He had it not, does He therefore care for you the less? Nay, but the more and perfectly; for the old man occupies one with self in one way or another: He was absolutely free to love, serve, and suffer.

But then the succour that the Lord renders is to holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. They are "the sanctified." The priesthood of Christ applies itself only to saints. This is so true that we never find the slightest raising of the question of sins when Christ's priesthood is discussed by the apostle. It is a common enough thought among believers that Christ acts as a priest for us when we fail by sins from time to time. This you will not find in Scripture. The teaching of the epistle applies His priesthood to succour and sympathy when we are tempted as Christ was; and I have no doubt there was the holiest wisdom in this.

Another opportunity I hope to have for showing what is an admirable and gracious provision for us, whatever may be the depth of our need in failure. We shall then see that, if a believer sin, his sad case is not overlooked, but that God does in His own most merciful and wise goodness provide for it, whatever the want may be.

But your attention is now drawn to the first great truth, which, believe me, ought to be gravely weighed; for not the least unhappy feature of modern Christendom is this, that people have imbibed the notion that we must sin, and that there is no adequate help or power against it. They are apt therefore to regard sin as a small, or at least inevitable, matter, making up their minds for it because we are only "poor sinners:" such is the language constantly adopted, and by evangelicals pre-eminently, whether Anglicans or dissenters.

Now, I do not deny that the Christian may be viewed as a sinner, yea, as the chief, looking back at what one had been, or at what one is in oneself apart from Christ — as the apostle Paul speaks of himself in 1 Tim. 1. But surely he did not mean that he was then going on in his sins? or in constant failures as a believer? This is the way many people use it; and I grieve to think that the object desired is to reduce the holy apostle to their own level as much as possible. Sad to say, they would like to get a license for a little sin out of the Bible. Hence, one party try to make sin only a violation of known law; others take advantage of the middle portion of Romans 7, and the ineffectual struggle against sin there described in a quickened but undelivered soul, as if it were the ordinary and normal state of a Christian here below. What can I call this but Antinomianism? And yet you will find that these evil thoughts reign most with a great many persons who think themselves the most opposed to Antinomians. But there is no one thing more remarkable in the present confusion than the fact that the very people who most fail take credit for what they least possess, and bandy charges against those too who, through the mercy of God, seek to be as far as possible from affording ground for them.

It is, however, the truth now, that throughout Christendom theology limits sin to flagrant, or at any rate overt, acts of transgression, and teaches men that, human nature being what it is, there must needs be sin on the part of Christians; and one reason of this Christ-dishonouring result is very plain. They agree in general to put themselves under the law as the rule of life. Now, as surely as the flesh is in us, it is utterly impossible that the law should not provoke those under it to sin. Nay, it was what the law was given for. It is not meant to make men sinners, which God could not do, but, when they were sinners, to make the sin evident, and to bring it out unmistakeably. In a certain sense the object was wholesome and merciful in the result, because it was to hinder people from deceiving themselves. It was directly calculated to guard those that had sinned, and really were guilty before God, from being able to gloss over their sins and pretend they had none. It was to prove them distinctly obnoxious to judgment, and to make them cry out to God for mercy, glad to find the free grace that God has provided in the Lord Jesus Christ and by His redemption.

Such a process it pleased God to carry on before the Saviour came, preparing the way for Him and His work in this as in other respects. But then it is another thing altogether now that He is come, and the grace and truth of God in all its fulness, and the redemption that Christ has accomplished. It is a totally different thing to go back from the gospel and put oneself in that condition of law in which souls necessarily were before, in order to make them feel the impossibility of law availing them and their need of grace in Christ. If it was in due season then, it is unbelief now, when God's word entitles the believer to the enjoyment of what He has wrought and of what He is. Law is not enacted for a righteous man (which and more the believer surely is), but for lawless and insubordinate souls, for impious and sinful (which believers are not); as, on the other hand, the right and intended use of the saving grace of God is to teach us, that, having denied impiety and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, and justly, and piously in the present age (or course of things), awaiting the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. By grace, therefore, the soul is put as absolutely clean by virtue of Christ's redemption before God, once utterly guilty and lost, but now without a charge on His part.

What more do I want? That the same Saviour who died and rose for me should be now living and active on my behalf in all the gracious exercise of His watchful, loving, holy care, succouring me in the midst of my trials for His name's sake, and from man's, the world's, and Satan's hatred. He is in the glory, and I am in the wilderness, going on, toiling, suffering, but awaiting Him to come and take me to Himself in that glory whither He is gone. For the present I am here. He was crucified, and, while here, exposed to His various enemies, not only to their malicious power, but to the serpent's wiles. And who and what am I to stand or march through? It is here that priesthood applies to saints, and for such ends. It is to minister to them the suited succour, that we may receive mercy and find grace for seasonable help. It is from One, too, who knows all by His own experience in depths beyond comparison; who knows what an enemy Satan is, and how great his subtlety and his malice; from One therefore not only as divine, but that can succour on the ground of being once tried to the uttermost Himself as man, but then One who is priest as Son of God, and not merely because He has that nature which I have, although I have it in a fallen unholy state which He had not. I have humanity tainted: He was and is the Holy One, not only as God, but as man. Certainly, however, this is no reason why He should not sympathize, but the contrary. For it is selfishness and sin which hinder sympathy, not holiness and love.

But we are told "we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Mark, the apostle does not speak about our sins; nor is there any ground whatever to confound "infirmities" with sins. He supposes a people that have now done with their sins by the grace of God, because by the blood of Christ they are blotted out for ever. They are set, therefore, with their faces Godward and heavenward; but still they are in the wilderness. And above is the Lord Jesus in all His active love and grace occupied with them individually, and able to sympathize with our infirmities, as One tempted in all things in like manner apart from sin. No doubt one of the sources which commonly pervert the character of Christ's priesthood is from looking in a natural way to our Lord Jesus. Men can not make out how He can be dealing with every one at once according to His word. But this is a simple matter of faith. The word of God is as plain about the suited care of the Lord Jesus in His priestly office, as about the efficacy of His redemption for each believer. And as to the total absence of sin, there is exactly the same phrase used for the one case as for the other, as displayed in salvation when He appears a second time. (Compare Hebrews 4: 15 with Hebrews 9: 28.)

Accordingly it is in this way that the Holy Ghost treats it. "Having therefore a great high priest who hath passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the profession." For therein lay the difficulty. Their peril was lest they should compromise Christ Jesus or go back. The apostle never hints at the danger of assurance, but insists on holding it firm to the end. That they should doubt the forgiveness of their sins does not occur to the Spirit of God, if I may so speak. Beyond controversy He could not treat the work of Christ with such contempt as to raise the question whether it does not absolutely effect the end for which God had given Him to die. Rather does He call on the children to hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end, resting on their simplicity, which is their wisdom, on the fulness of divine grace in Christ. It is for this very reason they in their trials want sympathy, as well as to be helped and strengthened; and the priesthood of Christ does this for the holy brethren.

It is not a question here of meeting unholy men, and pardoning those who are taught of God to cry to Him about their sins and ruin. This is the gospel of God's grace found elsewhere, but not here. It is not the point in priesthood, but rather "let us hold fast the confession." Christ was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin. It is not merely without sinning, but "without sin:" temptation in His case was absolutely apart from sin. "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."

In the next chapter (Heb. 5) this is pursued, and in a manner full of importance and interest, although men often overlook it. "For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God." This they apply to the Lord Jesus. "Well," you ask, "was He not taken from among men?" I answer that the Holy Spirit is not giving this as a description of His priesthood at all, but of priesthood in contrast with His. "For every high priest taken from among men is established for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins." The third verse ought to make it indisputably plain to any believer. The same high priest of the first two verses is described in the third verse also; and he expressly requires to offer for himself — not merely for others, but also for his own need — to offer for sins. Is it not obvious, then, that it is such a high priest as Aaron, or Aaron's son, not such an one as Christ, who, if compared, is accordingly also contrasted with that description? "And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called by God, as was Aaron also. So also Christ glorified not himself." He begins with a point of similarity, but it is only to bring out contrast. He did not take it to Himself. He who said to Him, Thou art My Son, said also elsewhere, A priest Thou for ever after the order of Melchisedec. He was addressed by God accordingly. Thus the essence of our Lord's priesthood here, where the root, stock, and fruits are all before us, is this, that He was not merely Son of man, but the Son of God. Most blessed to see, that being Son of God He deigned to become a man, the Son of man; but the ground laid down is what He is essentially in His own right and title, not merely what He became, but what He is, the Son of God, as none else was of men or angels. The high priest, with which chapter 5 opens, is merely a child of Adam like another, who could exercise forbearance toward the ignorant and erring, because he was no better himself. He was himself also clothed with infirmity. It was but natural therefore that he on this ground should feel for his fellows. But all this is exactly in contrast with the place, and dignity, and grace of the Lord as priest.

The priesthood of Christ is in relation to the trials of those who are His, loved in the world and unto the end. It is for the succour of them when tempted, as He was, when suffering for righteousness' or for His name's sake — tried in every way in which they can be here below, unless it be because of their sins. There may be, and is, pity even there; and God's grace may mercifully come down to such need, and deal with one who is buffeted for his faults. He knew too well that it would be all over with us if it were not so; but it is not what the Spirit of God treats of here. Now this is of all possible consequence for us to be clear about. For we must never put a strain on Scripture. Although the teaching might, if introduced here, seem more compact to one's mind and wishes, and a shorter road to comfort thus open to the children of God if they looked on the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ as dealing with our faults and applying itself in grace to sins; still the path of faith is to read the Bible as God has written it, and the only real power and comfort of the Spirit will be found to accompany subjection to His word.

It will be my business, if the Lord will, when we next assemble for the purpose, to take up the other part of my subject, the provision of grace, not for the weakness of the children of God, nor for their sufferings from the enemy, but when alas! through unguardedness they have been drawn away or slipped into evil, into sin. I shall show that the grace of the Lord Jesus can meet this as every other difficulty. But the sympathy of the Lord could not be with our evil. We can only dwell on this for a moment now.

When we were nothing but sinners, it was not a question of sympathy or of priesthood consequently, but of suffering for sins, as He alone suffered. This was what we wanted, not sympathy for our sins. No right-minded person, no saint of God, could want sympathy with his sins. Suffering for us, the just for the unjust, blotting them out with the precious blood of Jesus, was the way in which God met that need, and met it conclusively. But they being made now a new creation in Christ, washed not only in blood but also in water by the word (for this is He that came by water and blood, Jesus the Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood), both atoned for and already clean by reason of the word He had spoken to them — being thus on every side and in the fullest sense holy and beloved, then they want and find One that succours in all trials, difficulties, sorrows, and sufferings that befall saints here for His sake.

This is exactly what the Lord is doing for us now, occupied with each believer; for the very point of the blessedness in it is that it is individual. He is not priest for the church: I know no such doctrine in Scripture. Nor is it even for an individual viewed as a member of His body, though of course the Christian is such. But if one think of oneself as a member of Christ's body, then is to be seen only what is absolutely perfect, what is truly of the Holy Ghost. But then I am exposed to the enemy in this world; I am passing through a howling wilderness, a pilgrim and a stranger. There is exactly where I want and where I have the grace of Christ's priesthood.

The children of Israel, it will be remembered, when they were journeying through the wilderness, brought out in a humbling but instructive way the presumption of man, though altogether vanity. They thought one was as good as another; for they were all a holy people, and therefore needed no priest given them by God. The consequence was that a plague set in, and the earth opened her mouth, Jehovah's judgment swallowing up those rebels against His authority. But immediately afterwards they are taught in the most significant way the all-importance of priesthood. He directs the heads of the families to put a rod for each tribe in the sanctuary. Aaron does the same. When looked at in due time, Aaron's alone buds, blossoms, and bears fruit. That rod of the high priest accordingly becomes the characteristic of the chosen priesthood. There could not but be authority, nor could a saint wish otherwise; for God, not man, must command. But it was not the judicial authority of Moses's rod. It was not a rod marked by judgments executed on wickedness. Such was the well-known rod of Moses, which would have only brought destruction on such a people as the Israelites were; for, after all, how often they were breaking down! There we find this wonderful thought, the rod of grace, of priestly grace, the rod of living power — of the life that was after death, and that bears fruit in the face of it. And so the Lord in this significant way showed that the way to lead such a people through the wilderness was not to be by such an act of delivering power as brought them out of Egypt. This would not suffice for Him or them. Thus had they been by mighty hand led into the wilderness, but what could bring them through the wilderness? The grace of priesthood, in the figure of the power of an endless life, which bears fruit out of death, as set forth by the wonderful token of it thenceforward laid up in the holiest of all, at least in the desert — Aaron's rod that budded.

So we see in our Lord Jesus, as we read in Hebrews 7, set forth in all the precision and fulness of inspired teaching: "He is able also to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by him." He saves them completely. How could the Son of God fail as priest any more than as Saviour, or in any other way whatever? It is not here a question of the redemption of slaves, but of His saving the saints of God, of bringing them safe through in presence of a power opposing itself to God's purpose about them, and from all the consequences of their weakness here below. He is always living to make intercession for them. But they are associated with One who was "holy, harmless, undefiled." There is no allowance of sin, and least of all by priesthood — no such thought as a company of sinners who have a priest that takes care of them in spite of their sins. Such is not the doctrine of Christ's priesthood. They are holy, for God is who has begotten them again to a living hope by Christ's resurrection from the dead. They are consequently not born of God only, but sufferers here below while He is on high, where as priest He is always living to make intercession for them.

Undoubtedly, in spite of such great mercy and privileges, they may, through unwatchfulness, sin; and it remains to be shown that they are not left to perish in the folly of an evil way into which they were surprised. We shall see how God meets all this, and that it is in a somewhat different manner, though it be by the same Christ. But it is Christ in a way suited to that need in His wondrous grace. Enough has been now pointed out from Scripture, I trust, to clear the subject of Christ's priesthood for the Christian: this was all I proposed for the present.

THE ADVOCACY OF CHRIST.

1 JOHN 2: 1, 2.

I have already endeavoured to show the distinctive character and object of Christ's priesthood. We have traced how in Scripture it stands in relation exclusively to those who are brought by the work of Christ into the presence of God. It is, therefore, in no way an association of the Lord Jesus with the world. Its aspect is not to the wants of the sinner viewed as such, but rather to those of the sanctified, whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. For God's design by it is not to give to any a standing, but to sustain and succour those whom grace has already brought nigh to Him by the blood of Jesus. This makes the matter sufficiently plain for the priesthood of Christ. Grace would thereby maintain a holy people according to that nearness which it has already given them; and hence therefore in the epistle to the Hebrews, as we saw, it is assumed that they have already access to God, which, we must remember, is a privilege that is never taken away.

We are brought to God by the one offering of Christ. This nearness the Christian never loses. We may fail and act with grievous inconsistency; and it is most sorrowful if we do. But for the believer remains access to God (being founded, not on legal conditions, but on Christ's blood), and this too of the most absolute kind; because the measure of it is the value which God puts upon the work of His own Son, and it is impossible that God should slight that sacrifice. In virtue of it then He acts in our favour according not merely to our faith but to His estimate of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in His sight. Hence, we being thus brought nigh, it is for evermore, as Scripture insists with the utmost care and clearness.

It is possible, as we are there assured, that some souls that have confessed the Lord, and been sanctified by His blood too, might give Him up. (Heb. 10) Such is the solemn warning set forth to those who had been baptized from among Israel; and the same danger is of course true of Gentiles also. But evidently this is no question of what we may call failure, but giving up Christ. It is apostasy, though no doubt the Spirit of God speaks to check the incipient tendency to go away, pointing out the awful result; and the renewed man heeds the word of God; whereas the warning is lost upon the unconverted man, perhaps at best attracted by the novelty or the intrinsic beauty of Christianity as an intellectual scheme; and so much the more in those days when it was entirely new, after the Jews had been accustomed so long to Rabbinical tradition as dry as their own parchments, or the Gentiles to the vain philosophy of the Greeks. We can readily understand what a refreshing power there was in the facts and the theory of Christianity, which could not but exercise an immense charm on certain candid minds as minds. But this of itself never lasts. Neither does affection moved by the mercy of God, if alone, last. Nothing abides short of a new nature, where the conscience is wrought on by the Spirit of God, which brings a man in as nothing but a sinner to find his one resource, remedy, and deliverance in the Lord Jesus. And where this is by grace given to faith, then there is nearness to God brought in by the blood of Christ. And the priesthood of the Lord Jesus is that action of divine grace that is carried on by the Lord risen, living, and interceding for us at the right hand of God, whereby the word of God is applied to keep us up, and to lead us on in the face of all trial, difficulty, opposition, and our own weakness and suffering. This is contemplated and provided for by God in giving us such a Priest as the Lord Jesus is in His presence on high, so that we see it to be sustaining grace and mercy. It is that which meets and keeps, but keeps us a holy people in the midst of weakness.

Again, we must never confound infirmities with sins, or call sins infirmities. The essence of sin is self-will, not necessarily transgression of law; but, whether there be the latter or not, sin is self-will; it is acting without a divine motive; if not against the authority or will of God, without having Him or His word before us as that which prompts and directs the action. When we do not seek Him we are acting independently of Him, and pleasing ourselves. All this is sin, it matters not how fair our ways may be in the eyes of men. But this is not what the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ is meant to meet, but the need of those who suffer in striving against sin.

For, when we suffer for Him, when we have trials just because we are seeking to follow the Lord, we do need His sympathy and comfort. We shrink from trial, and cannot but feel it, sometimes with mixed feelings. Our blessed Lord ever felt it holily and perfectly. There was not an atom of sin in His sorrow and suffering, and all His pathway was full of it; for He was the man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. So with us in our measure. It is quite right that we should feel the contrariety of things to God. We wrong Him and yield to the enemy whenever we seem to make up our minds to the awful state that surrounds us now as if it were any adequate reflection of God, or of His moral government either; for although He does govern in secret providence, and this most wisely and righteously too, carrying on His will in the face of the subtlest foes, and apparently insuperable difficulties and the conflict of circumstances, yet the present state of the world is in no degree an adequate manifestation of God's government. In the midst of such a state, then, His own must suffer: there is our own weakness, and a malignant foe, and a hostile world. And here it is that the priesthood of the Lord Jesus applies to us — as a people holy but feeble — who feel what is around, and are tried by it, and suffer through it; and the priesthood of Christ is to carry us through in spite of all this.

But now we have to look at another part of the subject. May we not sin, although we are a holy people? And when "we" is thus used, there is meant the family of God — none less; that is, all saints, all those who now bear the name of the Lord Jesus, and love Him in incorruption; all that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. And may not such, then, fail? May they not slip, through unwatchfulness, in such a way as to grieve the Holy Spirit of God? Most assuredly. "In many things we all offend." This is sin. Call not this infirmity, but rather sin. Do not use "failure'' in such a way as to imply something between infirmity and sin for what is really sinful. Call things by their true names. Grace emboldens us to be thoroughly truthful and upright, to be honest with God and man, and, above all, to hold the right and title of God against that nature which — whilst ourselves are held for dead to it — not being treated as utterly evil, has been allowed to work out to the dishonour of God.

But should one sin, what is the resource according to Scripture? The advocacy of Christ. And there is just the importance of paying heed to the distinctness of these two dealings of divine mercy and living grace in our Lord Jesus, now at the right hand of God; for they both belong to Him there, and they are both viewed as reaching us here. But they are not the same thing; and to confound them is to lose the characteristic power of each of them, and, as is always the case when you muddle together truths that are distinct, both are enfeebled, if not lost. You may have, perhaps, a general vague sense of them both, but you have not the precision and full comfort of either.

Yet would the Lord freely give us both, as we need both. In 1 John 2 we find to what the advocacy of the Lord applies, and what it assumes. We are brought not merely into the presence of God, but we have communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We have a new life or divine nature, and along with the possession of this previously unknown spiritual being, given us by divine love in and by the Lord Jesus, there is the enjoyed fellowship with the Father and the Son. Now it is evident that, when we speak of communion, we have before us that which is very delicate and sensitive exceedingly. For we have only to reflect for a moment, and we must see that it is impossible that God the Father could have communion with sin, or with us in it.

We who understand the gospel know that our being the most wretched of sinners did not hinder God from applying the blood of Christ in all its efficacious power to us. It was for such that His Son shed His blood; nor would there have been sufficient ground for shedding His blood except for such. The sin-offering of the Lord Jesus supposes our utter vileness and distance from God. But now we are, through that one offering, not merely sanctified, but perfected for ever. This has been secured by His death; and, once done, the work for ever stands. But then it is quite another thing when you speak of communion in the practical sense. Confound these, and you destroy either confidence as to your soul, or enjoyment of God, if not both.

What then is the basis of our communion? It is Christ; but, this being so, whatever is not of Him, whatever is of self, whatever is of sin, interrupts the enjoyment of communion. And what can restore it when broken? The advocacy of Christ. It is not therefore, observe, the ministration of that which strengthens, consoles, or gives courage to a holy people who are brought into absolute nearness with God while walking in a world where all is counter to Him and to them because they are His, and it is not yet in fact under His sway, but rather that of His enemy. Here it is a question of the practical state of our souls. And this is just as true in its place, and of the greatest possible moment for the saint. And you will find that the persons who merely dwell on such truth as is in the epistle to the Hebrews, or rather that part of it which discusses the effect of atonement, or the early part of Romans our justification, and make all this, however momentous, to be the sum and substance of Christianity, are apt to be a cold set of people indeed, and in danger of becoming not only formal and doctrinally dry, but also deficient in sensitiveness of heart and conscience for the glory of God.

The work of Christ is not all. When we rest on it, the priesthood of the Lord Jesus first applies to our need day by day. God does call for a people walking separately to Himself. If I am brought into this holy nearness, Christ's ministration of grace does not fail to act so as to conciliate my practical condition with my standing by grace in Christ before God, to maintain me here according to such a title of holy access to Him there. But then may I not sink to, or even allow, what is positively evil — be betrayed into bad feelings, bad thoughts, bad words, bad ways? It is too true. And what then? Am I to despair because I have sinned after baptism, as a child and saint of God delivered from the guilt and power of sin? Am I to quiet my conscience with the plea that I must sin, as being still in this body and world? Neither the one nor the other would be according to God.

And this let me say, dear brethren: in itself, knowledge does not preserve, but rather, when alone, it endangers; and the Christian that is most liable to slip, yea sure, is he who knows most, but least seeks grace to walk in dependence on God. There is no more critical position; indeed, we may say, that he who ceases to walk dependently is morally ruined already. What worse therefore than where there is a vast deal of truth taken in without the continued exercise of conscience before God? We need self-judgment to be continually going on, and that, too, in a sense of weakness and waiting on God; for as the essence of sin is the desire to be independent, so also that on which godliness practically turns, and of which it consists, is the spirit of constant deference to God in things small and great. There can be no acceptable obedience without waiting on God; and, where this is found, obedience will always follow; and obedience is of the very essence of the practical path to which we are called as sanctified. So the apostle Peter says, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." That is, we are thus chosen by the Father, and thus sanctified by the Spirit, for the purpose of obeying as Christ obeyed. We have all the comfort of His blood sprinkled on us, and washing us clean without a spot; but we are sanctified to obey, not slaves like Israel under law, but sons under grace as He obeyed.

Where the soul enters into this, tenderness of conscience will be cherished, distrust of self and watchfulness before God, with a spirit of prayer, which is the simple expression of our dependence on God. But one may be easily unwatchful, and open sin ensues ere long. "My little children," therefore says the apostle John, "these things write I unto you, that ye sin not." This is the word of God to the Christian practically. I am speaking of His word now, of course, as the ordinary rule of our daily ways. His servant writes, "That ye sin not."

But then, if all are warned against sin, the Spirit of God fully provides for any one that may stray, not as if evil were to be coolly looked for, but in the most guarded terms and careful regard to holiness. "And if any man sin." He does not say, "If we sin." How could He say of the family, "If we sin"? Had it been said, "And if we sin," it would be as good as allowing the thought that all must sin. Never does the Spirit of God say anything of the sort. And if any man — any one — "sin," it is a lamentable alternative to the Spirit of God; but still such a fact may be. It is, alas! in the believer's history what one has to face, and feel, and humble one's self before God for. "If any man sin, we have an advocate." He does not merely say "he," but "we." How perfect is His word, even in that which to a Grecian would be sure to sound an irregular or peculiar phrase! Can one doubt that they of old criticized John's words, or Paul's, just as much as or more than anything that we poor creatures might write now? This clause would have sounded harsh enough to Attic ears. Yet the men who flatter themselves that they understand writing so well know but little about the extreme accuracy of Scripture. I delight in the perfection of that sentence, and I maintain against all comers the perfect accuracy of what the Spirit of God has written there. Not all the world could improve on it; and the very singularity, too, which embarrasses them — which they count so strange in the structure of it — seems to me the proof of its perfectness.

An ordinary man of letters, if writing the sentence, might have said, "If any man sin, he has an advocate with the Father;" or if he had intended "we have," he would have changed it to "If we sin." But no; the Spirit of God has exactly given the right thing; because by saying "If any one sin," He makes it a sorrowful individual case: He keeps up the sense that it ought never to be. It is a contingency that may be, and it is always to be regarded as a most painful humiliation for our own souls, the sense of which we ought to maintain undimmed — in no way making light of sin, or treating it as if it were a common thing that we must all do sometimes. We may fall, doubtless; and we should never lose sight of the danger. On the other hand, we have an Advocate with the Father. There He is; and we have Him as Advocate; that is, Christ belongs thus to every Christian; He acts thus in the presence of God. It is the fulness of love which has given Him there to meet this great and distressing need of the soul. But still we have, not merely he has. If it had been said "he has," this might have given the idea that it was His need that created the office, so to speak, or that it was this which set Christ to work as an advocate. No; He is always there, not simply as Priest with God, but as Advocate with the Father. "And if any man sin, we have an advocate." He is the common portion of all in the blessed fulness of the grace that takes up the deepest want of any created by sin. And this is exactly what is expressed best by the language of the Holy Ghost in the sentence — "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father."

Now observe how he goes back to the language of grace. He introduced the coming down of divine love in the person of the Lord Jesus, that eternal life which was with the Father before the world was, to spend Himself upon us, to give us what He alone possessed, what was peculiar to Him; for no man, no angel had it. Neither Adam, fresh created, nor the archangel, had not that eternal life: only the Son of God. "In him was life," and "he that hath the Son hath life." Communion with the Father and with the Son was the consequence. "And these things write we unto you, that your joy might be full." It is not merely a question of peace with God. It is not anything that tends to that end, as I have said, but the great and blessed truth of a communion which flows out of having Christ, the Son of God, and eternal life in Him.

Thus, whatever in our conduct is inconsistent with the action of divine life, Christ, as advocate, takes up. Nor is the result uncertain. The effect is revealed to us. So absolute is the grace that the apostle says, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." If any uninspired Christian had written such a sentence as this, can one hesitate to affirm, that men would have called it downright antinomianism? I am persuaded that the only thing which shields many a word of the apostles from such a calumny is because most are as yet unprepared openly to speak ill of the Bible. There are men that so much the more do so, and not a few, and they are growing; and in this country, as in others, they lose shame and become bolder. In some neighbouring lands, Romanist and Protestant alike, they are practised in modern forms of the scepticism once rampant here but abashed till of late; but now it spreads, the reaction from ritualism — this the religious, that the profane enemy of the gospel, and you must be prepared for it.

Many godly people then, but, if godly, not established in grace, are just such as find most difficulty in the fulness of God's provision. Incredulous minds are not troubled in general by such things, being rather glad to fasten on any inspired words which might seem to give them a loophole and excuse for sin; for so it is that they wretchedly pervert the Scriptures to their own destruction. I speak now of such as love the Lord, but have never been brought to nought in their eyes, nor to rest only in the grace of God; and such are apt to be particularly tried by what exceeds their measure.

For instance, take such a word as this, "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace." What can they make of it? For their part they had been diligently trained to think, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or any others, that, saved by grace, they were now put under that very law as a rule to live by, which the apostle declares they are not under; yea, more, because they are not under law, but under grace, that sin shall not have dominion over them. As it never occurs to them to suspect the prevalent tradition, they are thereby incapable of understanding this Scripture. So lack of appreciating the fulness of redemption hinders souls from attaching any intelligible idea to that great privilege of the Christian — "no more conscience of sins."

It is the same here again: "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Wondrous way of God! In such a connection to tell us that we have Christ in all righteousness, making good our cause with the Father. There is precious assurance of communion in John 14, 15 to such as walk in obedience; but here it is, "If any man sin," — not if any man adhere to the good, and holy, and acceptable will of God. "If any man sin," says the apostle; not even "If he be made sensible of his sin;" nor yet, "If he spread it out, and humble himself for his sin." It cannot be that the holy and true God could lessen one's moral horror of evil: how comes it then that He should set forth our having an advocate with the Father, and such an advocate — "Jesus Christ the righteous"? There is a confessor of Christ who, we will suppose, has fallen into some deed of unrighteousness; what then does he need? "Jesus Christ the righteous;" not the miserable idea of substituting His own perfect ways for his evil ones. Most precious truth in its own place is the scriptural doctrine of Christ's substitution, the true Azazel, on the cross. Viewed as a sinful man, I have my substitute in Him there, suffering for my sins, not sympathy then. Even He must suffer for them to the uttermost, Just for unjust. God forbid that any one should look for sympathy in his sins! There we have the substitute. And there, in my sorrow, and trial, and suffering, I have that blessed priest who Himself suffered, and is "able to succour them that are tempted." But now, after God's grace to me, is found a sad practical contradiction to my place as His child and saint. Here is that with which God can have no fellowship — sin. I have sinned, and in the most bitter sense, too, sinning against His grace, because I failed to walk watchfully and humbly in prayer and self-judgment, and so fell to the Lord's dishonour. "If any man sin" — not "he must begin again;" nor "he has lost his blessing;" nor "let him apply afresh to the Saviour for eternal life." Nothing of the sort. "We have an advocate with the Father."

Thus, it is not the poor thought of comforting us because He was righteous, wherein we were all wrong. This is not God's way; but "we have an advocate with the Father." It ought to be plain that the Puritan notion of substituting His rights for each wrong of ours would act as a continual destruction of the conscience. No. "We have an advocate with the Father." We have One that takes up all our business, One that acts for us where we could not, One that enters thoroughly into the case with the Father. Men know what it is to have in court a man of business worthy of all confidence in what they might compromise through many causes, and what would certainly be for them a source of the greatest possible perplexity. Here you, a Christian, are in exceeding trouble through your own fault, and you hate yourself the more, because you know His love against whom you have sinned. Yet, O the comfort of grace! He tells you of One in whom you have the fullest trust, who, knowing all your history, state, and heart, is entirely identified with you, and gives what is more, the perfect certainty that, as He is all prevailing and righteously so before God, so surely He will extricate you to God's praise, if to your humiliation. This, and no less, is what our advocate is; and this He is, too, not with us, though He does wash us every whit clean, but "with the Father."

It is not said with God in this case, as if it were a question simply of our justification. But is all hope of communion gone after such failure? after having so disgraced His name and our own confession of it? No; "we have an advocate with the Father." It is for the restoration of the communion that had been interrupted. For though the sin of the believer in his walk may not destroy his nearness to God, his access to God being made good by the sacrifice of Christ on which he rests, it does interrupt the enjoyment of communion with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; and it is the very Son Himself who does set Himself as advocate to enter into this otherwise hopeless necessity of the soul. Nothing shall separate from His love.

"We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." How blessed! His advocacy is as perfect to restore the saint's broken communion, as the blood to cleanse the once guilty sinner. But it is not simply the fact that He is my righteousness, which remains most true, unimpaired, and unimpeachable. The evil is dealt with, not spared. Not only does the Father feel that His child has so sinned, though there was grace to have kept right through, but I judge myself. And, in point of fact, this is the way in which the advocacy of Christ works. He is an advocate with the Father; but then He deals with my soul also. It is not merely an exercise of what He is for me, and this is quite true and important; nor can one be too firm in holding fast one's standing. This abides according to its own perfection through Christ's work; but then it is not His advocacy. So here we have the standing supposed in "Jesus Christ the righteous," in whom, as St. Paul tells, we are made God's righteousness. Even as advocate He probes the wound, and in very love to my soul does what makes me feel, more truly and hence acutely, my failure; for He heals me by the Spirit as well as manages my cause with the Father. He is patron or advocate no less than the propitiation for my sins, and this too abides intact. The work is done by which the sins of the believer are effaced. But such riches of grace only cause the soul, where there is living faith, and so divine life, to feel the more anguish and shame for the sin against God; not because one dreads His judgment of ourselves, but just because we know His love so true and faithful, spite of unfaithfulness.

It remains that I should seek to show a little this advocacy in the application of Christ's advocacy to the saint. We have seen the main fact, the doctrine, and its relation to the truth of Christ our righteousness and of the propitiation, into which, of course, we need not enter now. It is a subject which is more or less familiar to all here. But I shall endeavour to adhere to the special truth that claims a somewhat fuller illustration just now, that is, Christ's advocacy; and now not only the truth in itself, but in its application to the soul. This too we find in the writings of the same apostle John. I do not say that we may not take the principle elsewhere, but we are indebted once to St. John for the brightest presentation. Just as Paul lets us best see the priest, and this in connection with our being a sanctified, purged, and perfected people by virtue of the blood of Christ, so here we have the advocacy of the Lord Jesus for those who have eternal life, and are brought into communion with the Father and His Son.

Here I must direct your attention more particularly to John 13. There it is said of the Lord Jesus, when He was about to depart out of this world unto the Father, that "having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." What blessed comfort for the needy! He loved them unto the end. But when He goes out of the world, it is only to work for His own in another way. On one hand we have the enemy in all the malice of his activity against the Lord Jesus. He had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him. On the other hand, we have the Son of God in all the fulness of divine love to His own, spite of defiling influences, "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands." That it is not only that He goes back to God in all the purity in which He came from Him as God, but also with the conferred glory which the Father had put upon Him. "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself." He is the servant still. It is the task divine love must take up in such a world as this. Man loves to figure and be somebody for a little while; God humbles Himself, and becomes a man, yea, a bondman, in order to deliver from self and Satan, loving and serving to the end, not merely as now, because of wretchedness and sin. It could not be otherwise. It is exactly what Jesus did, and does, and will do. Love serves, and seeks the good of others. We see it not only in the Son, but in the Father Himself also, though in another way. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

Such is love, but it was displayed above all in the Son. Jesus would intimate what would occupy His heart about us when He should be on high; especially as it would prove no small difficulty for the Jewish or any other mind. Further, it was meant to form the heart and ways of the saints in their mutual relations. He shows them in this significant act that He was still to be their servant in divine love. His cross would in no way exhaust the ever-flowing and fresh spring; for it was not a question of expiation only; but, if He was going up into glory, He would work so that they might have part with Him, even while they were upon earth, being dealt with according to that glory into which He was gone, and where they were to follow. Therefore "he took a towel, and girded himself: and after that poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet."

Carefully remember that all through the context it is the washing of water by the word, and not by blood. In no case, as far as this scene typifies, have we propitiation here. The doctrine of the chapter is exclusively grounded on cleansing by water. No doubt the very same Son of God shed His blood for His own; but this was, observe, to wash us from our sins and expiate guilt before God. There it is the cleansing by water of these when reconciled to God, meeting the failures, the sins of saints, in their daily walk. "If any man sin;" but it is as saints that the Lord here regards them as His own; not those that grace seeks and brings to Christ out of the ranks of a rebellious world, but such as were already His own, and loved accordingly. And this was the way in which He would prove His love. He would cleanse them in divine love when He went up on high. He showed them here what He would do there. He washes the feet of those already bathed — bathed in water, and washed with water. It is the word used at first and then through the believer's career. The bathing that He supposes as a ground for washing their feet is water, not blood, although there was blood at first too.

For we must remember this is He that came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the more important to recall, because this is one of the truths that has well-nigh dropped out of the professing Church of God. I never met a man yet in the ordinary profession of Christianity that understood well the washing of water by the word, and but few who had any just idea of it whatever. That no doubt is plain speaking; but is there not a cause? At any rate it is quite evident that the truth intended is most important for saints. It is THE provision of grace against what defiles in our walk. One is far from meaning that the godly persons included in the previous statement have not had some enjoyment of the truth itself, for we may be quite sure grace has secured that. But I am now speaking of intelligence in the word, which rightly applies it, and so avoids utter misconstruction of a really important part of divine truth. Refer it to baptism, and you have absurdity as well as false doctrine; use it as the symbol of new birth, and of the subsequent cleansing by the word of the saints when defiled, and you have most needed truth.

For that which the Lord then and there represented is exactly what the Holy Ghost is carrying on here below in answer to Christ's advocacy on high. It will be seen that another truth is intimately connected with it, the action of the Holy Ghost now sent down from heaven, and this, we know, grounded upon Christ's ascension; for, having accomplished redemption, He went on high, and is glorified at God's right hand, whence He sent down the Holy Ghost here, who, in answer to His advocacy with the Father, works in us by the word. Hence therefore is readily seen how it applies to the soul. "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." Carrying out the purposes of that advocacy, as far as concerns the saints in their need, the Spirit of God brings home the word in power to the conscience and in every detail of our practice day by day.

Let me just refer to a clear instance in another Gospel, which may show that the principle runs through Scripture. We have seen that the doctrine and the application are particularly found in John, as bound up with divine life and communion. But now take an instance from the great moralist among the four evangelists, who was inspired to give us the account how Peter fell into a public and scandalous offence calculated to shake the confidence of all weak believers. For he was a weighty man, and a well-known leader: and the public fall of such an one denying his own Master in the hour of His greatest need, and this with oaths so solemnly and repeatedly and openly as in Peter's case, could not but necessarily be a tremendous shock to the infant company of the disciples who were then gathering to the name of the Lord Jesus. As this was so flagrant a case, and recorded for our admonition, the Spirit of God shows us how it was dealt with by the Lord. First he had been solemnly warned. When boasting of his love, he was told of the fall that was at hand — told of it in presence of his fellows, undisguisedly, but also with the most tender desire if peradventure he might only be wise enough to profit by it. Alas! it is part of the state of him who falls that he does not realise his danger.

Here it was Peter's own Master who told him what impended; and he had confessed before that Jesus was a divine person, for he had owned Him to be the Son of the living God. Nevertheless, our ears are but heavy when we like not to hear, and we do not understand what we do not at the present time feel to be our own need. Unpalatable truths pass over us: what is then said is "a parable," as we find with the disciples on a previous occasion. Peter therefore had no deep impression left on his soul, no vivid sense of need produced. Indeed such a fall, an aggravated outward evil, is always the effect of inward or secret failure before God. It neither comes alone nor all at once. Before this, Peter's case, though a man singularly fervent and of earnest purpose, had not wanted certain traces of unjudged forwardness and self-confidence. And this it was that furnished the occasion; for the apostle was so sure of himself and of his own courage that, if everybody else denied the Master, it was impossible to his own mind that Peter could. Yet this was the man that denied the Christ of God through fear of a little servant-girl. So it is: if unbelieving and unwatchful, we fall into the very thing in which we are proudest, and in the way that is most humbling to us.

But look at the merciful ways of the Lord Jesus; for this it is of all things we want most to see — not Peter's fall, but Christ's fulness of grace. Before it He had said (Luke 22: 31), "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." Satan demanded to have the disciples to sift them in general as wheat; but it was said to Simon individually, "But I (emphatically) have prayed for thee," not merely "for you." Ah! did not Peter need it? How sweet soon would be the proof of such interest and deep concern on the Lord's part about himself, under such circumstances, as if there had not been another to care for, and all His love were concentrated on the one on the point of such grievous dishonour of His name. "I have entreated for thee, that thy faith fail not quite. And thou, when thou hast turned again, strengthen thy brethren." The word rendered "converted" means the turning to God, whether it be conversion originally, or the turning back when one has departed from Him. The latter is, of course, what is meant here. It is what we commonly call "restoration" of soul rather than what people in general understand by "conversion." The word is suitable to either. "Then, when once thou hast turned, again strengthen thy brethren."

But the point I would now press and clear is the grace of the Lord that could so provide for a wanderer, and that would give the certainty of it to the soul in such an hour of distress and humiliation. That flesh and hypocrisy might take advantage is true; but such grace is needed and shown. How comforting is the truth of God! Observe that this rich grace does not appear in answer to a penitent cry. Not for a moment does one doubt that the Lord hears and answers such; but there was in the case before us a reason for speaking otherwise, and, to my mind, of no small importance. If one had only the consolation of the word of the Lord, and of His appearing on our behalf when we begin to repent of any sins and judge ourselves before God, one might perhaps think it was one's own repentance, or prayers, that drew out His grace and awakened His care. And such is the thought of many a soul around us. It is exactly where people ordinarily find themselves in Christendom. That is, they make out that a man's conversion, as well as his restoration, is in answer to his prayer, a substitution throughout of human merit for grace. Where is Christ in such a scheme?

It is not so Scripture speaks. There God ever takes the first place. It was God that began the good work when the soul sought Him not; as here it is the Lord evidently that entreated even before Peter fell, not the failing man after it, though of course he did pray and weep bitterly. But the stress is thrown on the prayers of Christ, not of Peter, however men may reason. "If any man sin," we have — not shall have when he repents — "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." It is the settled possession that Christians always have. Sin is inexcusable always in a saint; but if one should be guilty, "we have an advocate with the Father." His advocacy brings us to repentance. It is not our repentance that makes Him our advocate, or puts His grace in activity.

Have you seized the truth? Thus, as it is grace at the beginning, so it is grace through every step of the way. The spring is grace all through. I am far from saying that there is no righteousness; for, indeed, without it not anything else were good. Without the full maintenance of God's character and ways, all must be wrong; but this we have in Christ Himself, who is our life, "Jesus Christ the righteous." And besides, as we know, the fullest account has been taken of all that we were. "And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." It may not be in precisely the same way as for the believer, but still He died for all. The blood is on the mercy-seat, and this is not merely limited to the people of God, but embraces the largest outlook over God's creation, so that the gospel can go out righteously in His grace towards anybody, commanding to repent, no doubt, but appealing in love, persuading and warning souls far and wide that they may be saved.

It appears to me, then, that we have the subject distinct thus far in God's word. We are born of water and of the Spirit. It is that action of the Holy Ghost, by the word of God, carrying out the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which first of all the soul is set apart to God. Hence we read that He saved us "by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." There we find what is clearly from the starting-point of the Christian's career. For God chose us from the beginning to salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. So also Christ "loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." The disciples were clean through the word Jesus spoke to them.

The truth, too, is often taught without the figure, as where we read in James 1, that we are "begotten by the word of truth." It is the same principle in 1 Peter 1: "We are born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible," which is true from the very first.

The same distinction is maintained in the symbolic action of John 13, to which I have already referred. "He that is washed" (or bathed) "needeth not save to wash his feet." "Bathed" also is in the water of the word. It is not in blood, but in water still. Only that is when a man is first converted, or set apart unto God. He is bathed, as it were, all over. Afterwards, when there is a particular case of failure, the word is applied by the Spirit to convict us of that failure, and to humble us for it in self-judgment. So we see, in Luke 22: 61, that the Lord turned and looked upon Peter when he fell. "And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice." It was the washing of water by the word. The words of Jesus were recalled in all their life and power to his soul. "And Peter went out, and wept bitterly."

There is another remark, too, that I have to add as to this. We come to further details in the practical application to this particular instance. The work was not completely done when Peter went out and wept bitterly. This was right and seasonable; it was of God; but it was not complete. And therefore we find that the Lord Jesus afterwards deals with the inmost soul of this very Peter. As far as the apostles were concerned, His first interview was with Peter, with himself alone. But even after this we learn what must be to make the work complete, and this not judicially, but in the perfection of His love. "Simon, son of Jonas," said He, "lovest thou me more than these?" Simon protests He knew that he dearly loved Him. The Lord repeats the question of his love, and the third time takes up his claim of special attachment; on which Peter was grieved that He said the third time, Dost thou love me dearly? Well he might feel; for it became evident that his threefold denial was before the Lord's eye, and its root also. And now Peter gets to see how it came to pass. Not but that he had wept over it, and felt already his great sin and the Lord's great grace; but had he thoroughly judged himself?

It is not a question therefore of merely judging the particular offence. Never do we reach the bottom of that which has misled us if we but look at the outward act. What exposed one to it? And what was it that exposed Peter? He thought he loved the Lord better than anybody; he could go where the others could not; he could trust himself who loved Him so truly: never should he deny the Messiah. Peter was satisfied that he loved Jesus more than all, and could face prison, death, anything for His sake. The Lord thus brought to light the root of his failure. There, without one harsh word, without even an ostensible reference to the threefold denial, without the smallest needless exposure to others, the root was laid bare and dealt with; and Simon Peter was perfectly restored, and the Lord now could commit His sheep and His lambs to his tending and feeding. "When thou art restored, strengthen thy brethren." He was converted (restored) now, and had the promise in the end, when nature's strength should wither, that he should follow Himself even to the death of the cross.

Nor is it only in the New Testament that we find this truth. We have there, of course, the doctrine and the application, and such a special instance as I have just cited; but I now go farther, and affirm that it is a principle which is no less true of the Old Testament, though it be only the New Testament which gives us to understand it clearly. The water of separation (Num. 19) which the law enjoined on the children of Israel — what did it mean? Water was mingled with the ashes of a heifer that was wholly burnt, skin and all, even what was most offensive. The whole was reduced to ashes, being one of the few sacrifices where this was done completely; and why? For the very important reason of vividly expressing in a figure the consuming judgment of God. In no sacrifice was this more fully carried out than in the burning of the red heifer. The ashes (for that was the point) were kept mixed with running water, and the Israelite, if defiled, was ordered to be sprinkled with this as a water of separation. There were two sprinklings; the first on the third day, and the second on the seventh day if the defiled one had been sprinkled on the third. The meaning I take to be that he was sprinkled on the third day, not the first, because one does not show a due sense of sin by being over-quick to get through it. You have seen a child who, directly she has been guilty of a fault, readily tells you how very sorry she is. But the same child will fall into the fault again no less quickly. Would you not rather see a child that showed more shame, and remained for a while under the feeling of it, than one so very hasty to ask pardon, and then forgetting the sin the next moment? Alas! we are but naughty children ourselves, and sometimes we have behaved as ill to God our Father.

The only wise God provided this institute for the people passing through the wilderness; for, remark, it appears only in Numbers, the book of the wilderness journey. And there it was and is wanted. It contemplates the people, not in Egypt, or in Canaan, but on their march through the wilderness. Accordingly the Israelite was called to abide under the sense of his uncleanness; he must bear the feeling of defilement till the third day. There must be no haste. The man who was unclean must abandon life to the pain of it for two days, and only on the third day, when there was a full witness ("in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established") is he sprinkled. Such I believe to be the fire of the third day here. It has nothing to do with resurrection. It signifies, it would seem, an adequate testimony to his having been unclean; and it is when he feels it before God, and abides under it thus, that the seventh day sprinkling takes effect, and the man is clean. Thus it is the reverse of trying to escape and have done with it, as a man would like to do; just as Saul, when he said, "I have sinned," and then forgot all. Here the unclean was not sprinkled till the third day, and then afterwards on the seventh. The one case gives us sin in the presence of grace, as the other grace in the presence of sin. Thus all defilement was now judged and gone. The once defiled Israelite is now fully cleansed. Grace triumphs.

How great, then, the grace of our Lord, who, while making the fullest provision in case of sin, nevertheless in no case makes light of it; even in the very provision for restoring, grace turns all to holy account. Thus is the soul made to feel its sin as it never did before, not the particular act simply, but that which exposed to it, so that one may be profited and strengthened, as well as humbled, in a way and degree which had not been the previous experience. Thus, too, where sin abounded, grace yet more, giving a better state to the Lord's praise alone, which could not be if there were no more than the open evil act seen; for we may be quite as liable to fall again, if not more so. What riches of grace thus meet us! Assuredly it does meet us in the particular act that disgraces and pains us: only according to both Old and New Testament it does not stop there, but would go to the root of the matter, that the defiled might judge self in its roots, and the soul gather strength for itself, minister grace to others, and God be glorified in all things by Jesus Christ our Lord.

May we, then, rejoice in the Lord, and rejoice always. May we know how to hold fast every particle of His truth, in the confidence of His grace. May we look to it, that all the grace and truth we know in Him be used to maintain and vindicate the revealed will and word of God, that it may deal with our own souls as with others, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

W. K.

The Preaching to the Spirits in Prison.

W. Kelly.

Foreword

A considerable part of this treatise is occupied with the discussion of many of the unsatisfactory theories which have at various times been based upon the passage. The discussion involves a certain amount of discursiveness, and it may be well therefore to insert as a preface a brief summary of the interpretation of the text, as expounded by the author.

First of all, it is desirable to note that in the immediately preceding verses (1 Peter 3: 8-17) the apostle alludes to the considerable persecution to which these believing Jews were subjected because of their faith in an unseen and heavenly Christ. This fact evidently occasioned difficulties in their minds because such an experience was so definitely contrasted with the ordinary Jewish expectation, based on the Old Testament, of a Messiah who, by His personal presence, would introduce a state of earthly glory, accompanied by deliverance of the nation from servitude to the Gentiles. To help and enlighten his readers, Peter speaks first with relation to the problem of their present suffering, and secondly, concerning the absence of Christ corporeally.

First, then, the apostle explains that if they suffered for righteousness' sake they were a happy people: this was the mark of true disciples. It was therefore better, if the will of God should so will, that they should suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing. They ought not to suffer as evildoers, because Christ suffered once for sins that we might not suffer, though He was the Just One and we the unjust.

In referring to the suffering of Christ for sins, the apostle mentions the guilt of the Jews, namely, that He was put to death in the flesh (cp. Matt. 26: 59; Matt. 27: 1; Mark 14: 55; same Greek word), but, he adds, quickened by, or in the Spirit.

The naming of the Holy Spirit brings the apostle to his second point, namely, the explanation of the power at work during the absence of the Messiah on high. He thereupon shows the present co-operation of God the Spirit with God the Son to be in analogy with what happened in antediluvian times. It was by the Holy Spirit that the gospel was being preached to them, as Peter had said before (1 Peter 1: 12), and it was by that same Spirit that God strove with man before the flood (Gen. 6: 3). The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets of old Peter had said in the early part of the Epistle (1 Peter 1: 11). Now he says that by the Spirit Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison who were disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. As the Spirit of Christ was in the prophets, so we learn He was in Noah, the preacher of righteousness.

Then the great mass of the antediluvians were "disobedient" to the warning of Noah of the coming deluge, so the great mass of the Jewish people were "disobedient" (see 1 Peter 2: 7, 8) to the warning of the Spirit to save themselves from that untoward generation, doomed as it was to judgment (1 Peter 4: 17, 18; 2 Peter 2: 9; 2 Peter 3: 7). Then, too, a few, that is eight souls only, were saved through water, and, to continue the parallel, the Jewish believers found that only a small minority were being brought into the blessings of the gospel.

THE PREACHING TO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON

It may interest, and I trust also profit, the reader, if we not only examine this scripture but review the questions raised on it for ages. Here many a Christian finds perplexity, rejecting what does not fall in with the analogy of faith, yet unwilling to doubt what seems intimated by the letter of the word. He is ready to suspect himself of failure in spiritual intelligence, and to question whether there might not be some unconscious insubjection of heart and mind to the perfect revelation of GOD. The chief at least of the speculations in which men of reputation have indulged in ancient and modern times will claim a notice, in the hope of satisfying the believer that human thoughts are ever worthless, and that divine writ is clothed by the Spirit with self-evidencing light and power for all who have their hearts opened to the Lord and are self-judged in His sight.

It will be seen, too, by a full enough examination, that the most exact criticism in the details of the clauses confirms the general scope derived from the context as a whole, and that grammatical precision points with equal force in the same direction. Thus from every point of view the truth comes out with a fulness of proofs proportioned to the closeness of our investigation, once we have the right object and aim of the passage clearly ascertained and held firmly before our eyes. There is no ground in the passage for any action of Christ in the intermediate state for saints or sinners, nothing to hold out a hope for those who die in unbelief and their sins. How could there be, if all His words are true?

The true text is ὅτι καὶ Χριστὸς ἅπαξ περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν ἔπαθεν,* δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, ἵνα ἡμᾶς προσαγάγῃ τῳ Θεῳ, θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ ** πνεύματι, ἐν ῳ καὶ τοῖς ἐν φυλακῃ πνεύμασιν πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε ὅτε ἀπεξεδέχετο*** ἡ τοῦ Θεοῦ μακροθυμία ἐν ἡμέραις Νῶε κατασκευαζομένης κιβωτοῦ, εἰς ἣν ὀλίγοι,**** τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ὀκτὼ ψυχαὶ, διεσώθησαν δι᾽ ὕδατος. "Because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to GOD, put to death indeed in [the] flesh but made alive in [the] Spirit, in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient aforetime when the long-suffering of GOD was awaiting in Noah's days while an ark was being prepared, in which few, that is, eight souls, were brought safe through water."

* ἀπέθανεν ("died") is the reading of α A C, more than a dozen cursives, Vulg., Syrr., Memph., Arm., Aeth., with several Greek and Latin fathers; while the common text is supported by B K L P, the mass of cursives, and some of the same fathers.

** τῳ before πν. is the received reading on the strength of a few cursives, contrary to all the uncials, the great majority of the cursives, and all the Greek fathers, not even excepting Epiphanius who elsewhere does give the article. There need be no hesitation in accepting the anarthrous form, which cannot mean "His" Spirit.

*** ἀπεξεδέχετο is unquestionably correct, of the uncials K alone being adverse according to Matthäi, and of the cursives not one supporting the reading of Stephens, Beza, and the Elzevir editions. It seems to be a mere conjecture of Erasmus, who in his first edition gave ἅπαξ ἐδέχετο (so K), in the rest ἅπαξ ἐξεδέχετο. In fact, it is hard to comprehend how the adverb could be used with the imperfect, though it might be with any other tense. It is remarkable that though Erasmus read the blundering ἅπαξ in the text of all his five editions, he gave the correct word in his notes, even before it was published in the Complutensian Polyglott.

**** The question between ὀλίγοι (α A B, six cursives, Origen, Cyprian, Augustine) and ὀλίγαι (C K L P, most cursives and fathers) is more delicate, and less decided. It is the only case in which the text as given above differs from the Complutensian edition.

Though the original text is not doubtful but sure, the interpretations of ancients and moderns are for the most part precarious and misleading. Why was this? It may be helpful, and it is instructive, to note the unusual uncertainty of the ancient versions. The Greek is linguistically plain, the construction grammatically clear: why, then, should the rendering be variant and confused but by ideas imported from without? So early was the tendency to bad interpretation instead of faithful translation. Thus the Vulgate has, without authority, "erant" in verse 19, and "qui" in 20, but the atrocity of "expectabant Dei patientiam," which misled so many Romanists into error in the Middle Ages and to the present day; for so it stands in the Tridentine standard of authentic Scripture, impudently false, yet unabashed in its open inconsistency with the passage itself. The Pesch. Syr. was similarly unfaithful in the first errors of the Latin, renders φ. by "Sheul," and falsely paraphrases the rest thus, "while the long-suffering of GOD commanded that he (Noah) should make the ark upon the hope of their conversion, and eight souls only entered therein and were saved in the waters." The Philox. or Harcleian Syr. is much nearer the truth, as it avoids the error in 19, though not correct in the slighter case at the beginning of 20. As to the Memphitic V., Wilkins gives "living" for "quickened" in 18, and its rendering of 19 as "In this to the imprisoned spirits also He went, He evangelised," which is sufficiently loose, though not in quite the same way. But verse 20 is well translated except in giving a finished instead of a continuous force to the preparation of an ark. Again, the Aeth. adds "Holy" to "Spirit" in 18, and like Pesch. Syr. adds "held" or "shut up" to 19. The Erpenian Arabic is everywhere free, and seems peculiar in "departed to the spirits which were shut up," which goes beyond and verges into interpretation, if not mis-interpretation. One may remark here that πορ. in verse 22 has εἰς οὐρανὸν, whereas in verse 19 there is a careful avoidance of εἰς ᾳδου or any equivalent, which has been overlooked by those who have argued for the force of 19 from 22. In the Armenian there is little or nothing that calls for notice here.

Nor is the meaning doubtful. The apostle of the circumcision is eminently plain and practical, fervent and forcible. He does not, like Paul, penetrate into root principles or rise into the vast circle of the divine counsels, "wherein are some things hard to be understood." He is not like John, profoundly contemplative on the divine nature as revealed in the Son of GOD. Peter is so simple and direct, that the interpreters err greatly who fancy that his words convey what their own speculations import. He would not have the Christian suffer for evil but for well-doing; and this, not for moral reasons only, but in a touching appeal to Him who suffered atoningly on the cross: — "Because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust ones, that He might bring us near to GOD." Let it be ours, objects of His saving grace, to suffer only for righteousness and for His name. If it cost Him everything here up to death, GOD vindicated Him by resurrection, "put to death indeed in flesh, but quickened in Spirit" (or, as in 1 Tim. 3: 16, "justified in Spirit"); in which [Spirit] also having proceeded He preached to the imprisoned spirits, disobedient as they were aforetime when the long-suffering of GOD was waiting in Noah's days. As the Holy Spirit raised Him from the dead,* so not personally but in the same Spirit also He went and preached to the spirits in prison because of their disobeying the word in Noah's time, when preached by him.

* This is far from excluding the Father's part (Rom. 6: 4), or yet the Son's (John 2: 19; John 10: 18); but it adds the Spirit's agency: all the Godhead shared in it.

It is an evident and striking reference to Gen. 6: 3, "And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for he indeed is flesh; but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." So long would His long- suffering wait; and in result only the patriarch's family were brought safely through. Thus the persons who then perished, and whose spirits are in ward for judgment at the end of all things, are no less clearly defined than the time in question, and the specific sin of insubjection to the Divine Spirit which wrought in Noah's preaching. The more accurately the words are examined, in textual criticism or in grammar, the more certainly it will be found that in strict exegesis they admit only of the meaning here assigned, and this in the full harmony of the New Testament with the Old.

The connection and scope is evident. The apostle is exhorting the believers to a patient life of suffering so as to fill with shame those who vented their spite on their good behaviour in Christ. Who could gainsay that it was better, did the will of GOD so will, to suffer while doing well than doing ill; and this because Christ also suffered (but He suffered once, once for all) for sins? This should be enough: we should suffer not for sins, but only for righteousness or for Christ's name sake. It was His to suffer for us, this once and for ever, Just for unjust persons (for such were we), that He might bring us to GOD. It is ours to suffer at times especially, but in principle always while in this present evil world. The καὶ connects Christ and us as suffering, but the contrast is as striking as it is morally suggestive. To understand with some περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν as a point of comparison between Him and us under such a junction is to miss the reasoning utterly, not to speak of failure in reverence towards the Saviour in that work which stands far above all comparison. This ought to have been too plain to need further reproof from δίκαιος ὑπὲρ ἀδίκων, where His solitary and unapproachable place is set out. It was His alone thus to bring us near to GOD. The participles that follow tell us how this was done: "Put to death in flesh but made alive in [the] Spirit."

But here a very important question arises. The article is certainly to be eliminated: what is the bearing of its absence on the meaning? If the articles were inserted, τῃ σαρκὶ and τῳ πν., these would be the contrast of the two parts of our Lord's being as man, the outer and the inner; were it τὴν σ. and τὸ πν., it would be the utterly false thought that His Spirit as man was the object of quickening. The anarthrous form points to the character of the acts specified; but so far is it from denying the agency of the Holy Ghost in the quickening spoken of, that the presence of the article would be more consistent with Christ's Spirit as a man. No doubt, when it is intended to present the Holy Spirit objectively or extrinsically, the article is required and, as far as I can mark the usage, the prep. ἐν or ὑπό ; it is excluded where the manner of His action is meant. On the other hand, wherever the spirit either of Christ as man or of any other is to be expressed, the article is indispensable, as may be seen in Matt. 5: 3; Matt. 26: 41; Matt. 27: 50; Mark 14: 38; Luke 10: 21; John 11: 33; John 13: 21; John 19: 30; Acts 19: 21; Acts 20: 22; 1 Cor. 5: 3, 5, etc.

Again, the following cases without the article clearly mean the Holy Spirit, but characterising the action rather than specifying the person, though He must ever be a person: Matt. 22: 43; John 3: 5; John 4: 23, 24; Rom. 8: 1, 4, 9, 13; 1 Cor. 12: 13; Gal. 3: 2, 15, 16, 18, 25; Eph. 2: 22; Eph. 3: 5; Eph. 5: 18; Eph. 6: 18; Col. 1: 8; 1 Tim. 3: 16; 1 Peter 4: 6; Rev. 1: 10; Rev. 4: 2; Rev. 17: 3; Rev. 21: 10. The attentive reader of these instances will see that the turning-point is not the presence or absence of a preposition, as some scholars have thought. Words after a preposition follow the ordinary rules. Only, after prepositions capable of usage with a statement of manner (as κατὰ, ἐκ, ἐν, κ.τ.λ.), the anarthrous form is of course more common. Thus ἐν πνεύματι would mean in the power of the Spirit, the manner of being, or of being carried, built, justified, or of blessing, preaching, or whatever else may be in question.

Hence the meaning here seems to be that Christ was put to death in respect of flesh, but quickened or made alive in respect of Spirit, in the power of which He went and preached to the spirits in prison. The ἐν ῳ falls in with the Holy Spirit still more as that wherein Christ acted in testimony. It is not said that He went to the prison and there preached to the spirits; but that in the power of the Spirit He went and preached to the spirits that are there. For it is certain that τοῖς ἐν φυλακῃ πνεύμασιν can signify "that are in prison" as naturally at least as "that were" there: only the necessity of the context could really justify the latter sense. But if the context favour "that are," it is the simple unforced bearing of the phrase. And that it does favour it should be plain from ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε ὅτε, κ.τ.λ., which points to an antecedent time of guilt as the ground of their being now imprisoned.

It may be doubted then whether quickened "by the Spirit" best gives the meaning of the apostolic statement: for that would most naturally suppose the Spirit as an exterior agent. Still the anarthrous construction, as is certain from the numerous places cited, does not at all exclude the Holy Spirit: only it expresses the manner of the quickening, not the personal agent. But the thought of His power is conveyed by the phrase that follows, ἐν ῳ, wherein Christ is said to have gone and preached, etc. Thereby it is pointedly contradistinguished from πορευθεὶς in verse 22, which is not qualified by ἐν ῳ or ἐν πνεύματι, but left in its strict sense of a personal change of locality to heaven. Thus it is excessively rash to say that the rendering of the English version here is wrong either grammatically or theologically, though it is more correct to cleave as closely as our language permits to the Greek style of expressing "Spirit" as the character rather than agent of the quickening of Christ, though agent too He was beyond doubt.

Bishop Middleton wrote with great force on the insertion of the article, but he was not equally successful in accounting for its omission. Prepositions he treated as exceptions to rule, and anarthrous cases like σαρκὶ, πνεύματι, as practically adverbial. Hence in our passage, he held the apostle to mean that "Christ was dead carnally but alive spiritually"; as indeed he thought would flow from τῳ πν. if the article had been authentic. (Doctrine of the Greek Art., p. 430, Rose's Ed., 1855.) The only difference is, he thought, that by retaining the article we destroy the form of the antithesis between σ. and πν. But instances already given show how imperfect this able treatise is in requiring either the article or a preposition to accompany πν. in the gen., dat., or accus., in order to mean the Spirit of GOD. Romans 8: 13, to which he himself refers, refutes his position.

Here Dean Alford, who is so strong against "by the Spirit" in 1 Peter 3: 18, translates the same word exactly in the way condemned: "but if by the Spirit ye slay the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of GOD, these are sons of GOD." So on Gal. 5: 5, Alford expressly remarks on πνεύματι "not 'mente' [Fritz] nor 'spiritually,' Middleton, al., but by the [Holy] Spirit, [reff.] as opposed to σ.," the very rendering he afterwards treats as wrong grammatically and theologically. Again, on verse 16 he particularly observes that πν. without the article may and does here mean "by the Spirit" [i.e. of GOD]. His reason, probably after Winer or the like, is invalid; for it is not because it is a sort of proper name, but because it is employed characteristically. There is no need to multiply proofs against the comments on πν. in 1 Peter 3: 18 — proofs equally at least against Middleton. Consequently Barrow, Hall, Leighton, Pearson, Ussher, etc, the divines who denied the applicability of the passage to Christ's descent to hades, were not mistaken, as thinks Dr. E. H. Browne, the late Bishop of Ely. They contend that the true meaning of the text is that our Lord by the Spirit in Noah preached to the antediluvians, who are now for their disobedience imprisoned in hades.

"This interpretation of the passage," says the Bishop, "depends on the accuracy of the English version. That version reads in the eighteenth verse, 'quickened by the Spirit.' It is to be noted, however, that all the versions except one (the Ethiopic) seem to have understood it 'quickened by the Spirit': and it is scarcely possible, upon any correct principles of interpretation, to give any other translation to the words. If, therefore, we follow the original, in preference to the English version, we must read the passage thus: 'Christ suffered for us, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to GOD; being put to death in the flesh, but quick in His Spirit; by which (or in which) He went and preached (or proclaimed) to the spirits in safe keeping,' etc." (An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, etc., 1868, pp. 94, 95.)

I confess to surprise at such a rendering of ζωοποιηθεὶς πνεύματι as "quick in His Spirit." For, first, though there is an occasional looseness in the LXX., it is certain that the New Testament strictly and exclusively employs ζωογονέω for keeping alive, ζωοποιέω for making alive. Secondly, is it not singular to reason from a non-authentic lection as the original? And the Bishop of Ely (see note, p. 94) knows that the best critics reject the article before πν. If absent, it is impossible for πν. to mean "in His Spirit."

Besides, the resulting theology is as strange as the grammar; for he proceeds, "there is, it will be observed, a marked antithesis between 'flesh' and 'spirit.' In Christ's Flesh or Body He was put to death. Men were 'able to kill the body,' but they could not kill His soul. He was therefore alive in His Soul, and in or by that He went to the souls who were in safe custody (ἐν φυλακῃ); His Body was dead, but His Spirit or Soul went to their spirits or souls. This is the natural interpretation of the passage; and if it ended here, it would contain no difficulty, and its sense would never have been doubted. It would have contained a simple assertion of our Lord's descent to the spirits of the dead." To my mind such a sense must seem far below scripture. For what a poor inference that men could not kill Christ's soul! Why, they could not kill the soul of the least of His saints, nay, nor of the most wretched of His enemies. Indeed, "kill the soul" in any case is a singular phrase to use of anyone, most of all to feel it worth while denying it in the case of our Lord Jesus. How different His language! "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear. Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him." "He was therefore alive in His soul" is a feeble platitude for the issue of the clause; as surely as it supposes a wrong sense given to ζωοποιηθεὶς, not to speak of the confusion of the soul with the spirit in a way foreign to all exact speech. The interpretation, therefore, would be in every respect unnatural even if it ended here.

When we follow, the gulf widens which severs truth from error. "But it is added that He not only went to the spirits in safe keeping, but that He went and preached to them. Hence the passage has appeared to savour of false doctrine, and hence its force has been explained away. But the word 'preached,' or 'proclaimed,' by no means necessarily infers that He preached either faith or repentance. Christ had just finished the work of salvation, had made an end of sin, and conquered hell. Even the angels seemed not to be fully enlightened as to all the work of grace which GOD performs for man. It is not likely then that the souls of the departed patriarchs should have fully understood or known all that Christ has just accomplished for them. They indeed may have known, and no doubt did know, the great truth that redemption was to be wrought for all men by the suffering and death of the Messiah. But before the accomplishment of this great work, neither angels nor devils seem fully to have understood the mystery of it. If this be true, when the blessed Soul of our crucified Redeemer went among the souls of those whom He has just redeemed, what can be more probable than that He should have 'proclaimed' (ἐκήρυξεν) to them that their redemption had been fully effected, that Satan had been conquered, that the great sacrifice had been offered up? If angels joy over one sinner that repenteth, may we not suppose paradise filled with rapture when the Soul of Jesus came among the souls of His redeemed, Himself the herald (κήρυξ) of His own victory?"

It is certain, however, that the preaching of which the apostle here speaks was addressed neither to angels nor to devils, nor yet to patriarchs, but expressly to those who did not hearken to it in the days of the divine long-suffering, just before the deluge. The text itself therefore dissolves the airy fabric we have just seen, and proves that the preaching was addressed, like all other proclamations of the truth, to faith, but, as in this world habitually, met with unbelief and insubjection of heart in those who heard. Indeed, in p. 96 Dr. B. confesses that the proof-text is not favourable to the point they would make it prove. "The only (?) difficulty in this interpretation of this difficult passage, is in the fact that the preaching is specially said to have been addressed to those who had once been disobedient in the days of Noah. That many who died in the flood may yet have been saved from final damnation seems highly probable, and has been the opinion of many learned divines. The flood was a great temporal judgment, and it follows not that 'all who perished in the flood are to perish in the lake of fire.' But the real difficulty consists in the fact that the proclamation of the finishing of the great work of salvation is represented by St. Peter as having been addressed to those antediluvian penitents (?), and no mention is made of the penitents of later ages, who are equally interested in the tidings."

The really important thing for all to weigh is that this difficulty is created by the interpretation that Christ went in His soul and preached to the spirits in the separate state. The text itself speaks of His preaching to such as had been once disobedient in Noah's days. The only unforced inference is that these are in prison because of their disobedience of old, not that being in prison they obeyed Christ's preaching in hades. Nor is there the smallest hint that, having perished in that great temporal judgment, they were alleviated by any subsequent preaching of our Lord, but rather that they are kept waiting for a still more tremendous, because an eternal, judgment before the great white throne. They despised Noah, the preacher of righteousness, yet not with impunity, for the flood took them all away; but worse remains than the flood brought in upon the world of the ungodly. They are kept for judgment like such angels as sinned.

"It must be confessed," continues Dr. B., "that this is a knot which cannot be easily untied. Yet should not this induce us to reject the literal and grammatical interpretation of the passage, and to fall back upon those forced glosses which have been coined in order to avoid, instead of fairly meeting and endeavouring to solve," the acknowledged difficulty. To my conviction there is nothing to untie, where one cleaves to the strict language of the apostle and the real bearing of his argument. For he is exposing indirectly the Jewish unbelief, which would have nothing but a Messiah visibly reigning in power and glory, to the exaltation of the chosen people and the confusion of their enemies. The faith of the believing or Christian Jews in Him, dead, risen, and gone to heaven, exposed them to the derision of their brethren after the flesh, who felt not their sins, and cared not for the grace of GOD displayed in redemption by the blood of Jesus. He had preached, not as present, but rendering testimony by virtue of the Spirit. Hence the importance of pointing to His testimony by Noah, a testimony to man as such, like the gospel of Christ; for it was before the days of Israel or even Abraham, and the most striking epoch and also period of preaching to men in all the Old Testament.

This is as we saw confirmed by Genesis 6: 3, where Jehovah said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." Then the ark was preparing, the space of GOD'S long-suffering; and "the waters of Noah came," and man was destroyed from the face of the earth. And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man; for the days of the gospel are pre-eminently of testimony, as were those before the deluge, during which Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house, and became heir to the righteousness which is by faith. Again, he was not a believer only, but a preacher of righteousness, more emphatically than we find it said of any other in Old Testament times. The preaching was in the power of the Spirit, and hence attributed to the Spirit of Christ, who is ever the active person in the Godhead, as is well known in each visitation of man before the incarnation, preparing both the way and mind for it. Compare "the Spirit of Christ" which was in the prophets of old (1 Peter 1: 11).

This then would encourage the believing Jews, as it might well admonish their despisers. It is a question of preaching to the world still in the Holy Spirit, not yet of the public reign and government of the Lord. So Christ wrought by the Spirit then; and so He does now. As the flood came on those heedless of the preaching of old, so it will be when He comes in judgment, for He is ready to judge quick and dead. And if they taunt the believers with being so few compared with the masses that believe not, let them not forget that but eight souls were then saved through water; which figure now saves, baptism, on one side of it death, and on the other, resurrection. Christ has passed through actually for us, as we also in spirit by faith, having a good conscience before GOD through Him who is not only risen but at the right hand of God in heaven, where the highest and mightiest of creatures are subjected to Christ; who is therefore as full of assured security for His own as of irremediable ruin for all who slight the warning.

In thus tracing the links of the apostolic thought and word, I am greatly mistaken if the least strain is put on any part, as without doubt the true text and the exact version have been already given. It is not so with those who have flattered themselves that they adhere most closely to the words of the apostle and their plain sense.

Thus when Bishop Middleton considers the true meaning to "be dead carnally, but alive spiritually," almost every word is misrepresented. For, to bear such a translation, the sentence should have been θανὼν μὲν σαρκικῶς, ζῶν δὲ πνευματικῶς, though one might call such a statement absurd and heterodox. I deny that we must or can render θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πνεύματι in any such fashion. Bishop Browne is as wrong in adopting such a thought in the note to p. 95, as he is in giving "quick in His Spirit" in the text of p. 95, or in expounding it as Christ alive in His soul, in or by which He went to the souls ἐν φ. All this in my judgment is as loose in grammar as in philosophy, if they allude to this; and as faulty also in theology, as it has not the least coherence with the context or the scope of the apostle's reasoning.

If Peter too had meant to say that the soul of our Lord went to these other souls, he must have taken a most circuitous and unexampled mode of expressing it in employing the phrase ἐν ῳ, referring to πνεύματι just before. The statement, if not the interpretation, would be most unnatural. Taken as it stands for Christ's going and preaching in virtue of the Spirit by Noah to the rebellious antediluvians, it is in my judgment fully justified, were this necessary, by the Pauline phrase, καὶ ἐλθὼν εὐηγγελίσατο εἰρήνην ὑμῖν τοῖς μακρὰν καὶ εἰρήνην τοῖς ἐγγύς. The latter is even a stronger instance; for there is no explanatory reference to πνεύματι ἐν ῳ. Further, it is not a natural interpretation to take τοῖς ἐν φ. πν. as those who were, but who are, in prison, because of ἀπειθήσασίν ποτε ὅτε, κ.τ.λ., following, which very simply attributes their being in custody to their disobedience of old. There is no need nor just ground for joining ποτὲ with πορευθεὶς ἐκήρ., but with ἀπειθ., which marks off their unbelief at the preaching from the time when they were in prison. We are thus shown as plainly as words can that we here read of Christ preaching, not in person but by virtue of the Spirit, to those suffering the consequences of having been disobedient in the days of Noah.

Again, be it observed, the moral aim of this supposed preaching in the unseen world is as unsatisfactory as we have seen the grammar to be irregular and the doctrine strange. For it supposes a preaching confessedly without either faith or repentance as its end; and it selects, in what seems the most arbitrary way, out of all the departed souls those spirits imprisoned because of their heedlessness, when the long-suffering of GOD was awaiting in the days of Noah.* To single out such wilful sinners, as the objects to whom Christ in the under-world proclaimed His triumph and their fully effected redemption, seems to be a statement as foreign to scripture as can be conceived, and equally ill-adapted to impress their danger on such as now despise the preached word.

* The careful student will notice that the original is not exactly rendered by the English translators and most others in this respect, that ἀπειθήσασιν from the omission of the article must needs be a predicate, and not an epithet describing or defining the spirits. The meaning therefore is not "which were," etc., for this requires τοῖς, but "disobedient as they once were when," etc.

Bishop Horsley's Sermon on the passage, which is so warmly commended in Bishop Middleton's Treatise and in Bishop Browne's Exposition, appears to sober minds little worthy of confidence. Thus he affirms strongly that the English translation of ζ. δὲ πν., though "a true proposition, is certainly not the sense of the apostle's words. It is of great importance to remark, though it may seem a grammatical nicety, that the prepositions, in either branch of this clause, have been supplied by the translators and are not in the original. The words 'flesh' and 'spirit,' in the original, stand without any preposition, in that case which, in the Greek language, without any preposition, is the case either of the cause or instrument by which — of the time when — of the place where — of the part in which — of the manner how — or of the respect in which, according to the exigence of the context; and to any one who will consider the original with critical accuracy it will be obvious, from the perfect antithesis of these two clauses concerning flesh and spirit, that if the word 'spirit' denote the active cause by which Christ was restored to life, which must be supposed by them who understand the word of the Holy Ghost, the word 'flesh' must equally denote the active cause by which He was put to death, which therefore must have been the flesh of His own body — an interpretation too manifestly absurd to be admitted. But if the word 'flesh' denote, as it most evidently does, the part in which death took effect upon Him,' spirit ' must denote the part in which life was preserved (!) in Him, that is, His own soul; and the word 'quickened' is often applied to signify, not the resuscitation of life extinguished, but the preservation and continuance of life subsisting (?). The exact rendering, therefore, of the apostle's words would be, 'Being put to death in the flesh, but quick in the spirit,' that is, surviving in His soul the stroke of death which His body had sustained, 'by which,' or rather 'in which,' that is, in which surviving soul, 'He went and preached to the souls of men in prison or in safe keeping.'"

I have given this long extract, which clearly puts this able divine's objections to the Authorised Version. Now without committing myself to the defence of what is not quite correct, I have no hesitation in asserting that Horsley, by his own mistaken view, has diverged incomparably farther from the truth. We need not go beyond the Bishop himself and the passage in debate, where he gives a difference of shade to the two participles, which are quite as much contrasted with each other as their complementary datives. According to his own principle therefore, as the first means "put to death," the other should be "made alive," even if its uniform usage by inspired writers did not force one to the same conclusion. Why then did not H. carry out fairly and fully his own reasoning? Because it would have involved him in the result that Christ was not only put to death in the flesh, but made alive in His own soul or spirit. The good Bishop of course shrank from so portentous an inference, and was therefore driven to modify the antithesis, not in πνεύματι, but in an unnatural and unfounded interpretation put on ζωοποιηθείς, which even Dean A. explodes, who insists justly on "brought to life," instead of "preserved alive."

The truth is that Horsley did not himself seize the exact force of σαρκὶ and πνεύματι, still less the difference produced by ἐν in the beginning of verse 19. Christ was put to death in (i.e. in respect to) flesh, as a living man below; He was made alive in (i.e. in respect to) Spirit, as one henceforth living in the life of resurrection, characterised by the Spirit as the other by flesh, though Christ was not a spirit only but had a spiritual body. It is not His own spirit as man, which is far worse than the English Version here, both grammatically and theologically. Grammatically it would demand τῳ πν., which is a reading unknown to the best copies and scouted by all competent critics; but even if diplomatically and grammatically legitimate, it would land us in the frightful heterodoxy that Christ died not merely in flesh but in spirit, and had to be quickened in the human spirit, which dies not even in the lost. Only the materialist conceives that spirit, if he at all allows of spirit, can die.

Further, if ζ. δὲ πν. refers to the resurrection of Christ, it is harshness itself and out of all reason to suppose Him back in the separate state in the verse following, where Horsley takes ἐν ῳ to mean in which surviving soul He went and preached to the souls of men in prison. But understand it as ἐν means we should, that Christ also went ἐν πνεύματι, not merely in character of Spirit, but in His power when He preached through Noah; and all is precise in grammar, correct in doctrine, clear in sense, and consistent with the context. When we are raised by-and-by it will be διὰ τὸ ἐνοικοῦν αὐτοῦ πνεῦμα, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in us. It was not suitable to Christ, so to speak of His resurrection. He was, when put to death, quickened πνεύματι, denoting the character of His life in resurrection (not merely the agent), ἐν ῳ καὶ marking the Spirit's power in which, before He was thus put to death and raised, He went and preached to the spirits in prison, disobedient as they were once when, etc.

Who can wonder, therefore, that the Anglican divines in the 5th of Queen Elizabeth dropped the reference to this passage of Peter in Article 3, while they had inserted it in the 6th and 7th of King Edward the Sixth? Nor need we with Bishop Horsley impute it to undue reliance on the opinion of Augustine (Ep. 99 [164], Evodio), who was followed by some others of the Fathers in rejecting the superstitious idea of Christ's preaching in hades. The excellent Leighton, at a later day, was so far from seeing this to be the plain meaning of the passage that he does not hesitate to say, "They that dream of the descent of Christ's soul into hell think this place sounds somewhat that way; but, being examined, it proves no way suitable, nor can by the strongest wresting be drawn to fit their purpose."

On the other hand, the figurative explanation of τοῖς ἐν φ. πνεύμασιν is quite indefensible and uncalled for. The sense of sinners shut up in a prison of darkness while living on earth, whether in Noah's day or in apostolic times, whether of the Gentiles or of the Jews and Gentiles, must be rejected. Bishop Horsley, however, is as mistaken on his side when he avers that such passages as Isa. 49: 9, Isa. 61: 1, refer to the liberation of souls from hades; they describe Jehovah's gracious work on the earth. Equally wrong is his idea that ποτὲ joined with ἀπειθ. implies that the imprisoned souls were recovered from that disobedience, and before their death had been brought to repentance and faith in the Redeemer to come. Contrariwise the scope is that, having once on a time disobeyed when GOD'S long-suffering was waiting before the deluge, they are in prison. In virtue (or in the power) of the Spirit Christ went and preached to such, by a preacher of righteousness, no doubt; but it is styled His preaching to enhance the solemnity of what was then refused, as it was also in Peter's day. These spirits were in prison as having once been disobedient thus and then; and GOD will not be mocked now if Christ's preaching in the Spirit be rejected and He be despised in His servants. Where would be the force of the few, that is, eight souls who were saved through water, if the disobedient mass, or any of them, were saved none the less though outside the ark?

Again, it is certainly a suicidal citation which H. makes from the beginning of Revelation 20: 13. For we know that the sea at that epoch will have none to give up but the unblessed and unholy, all the righteous dead having already been raised in the first resurrection. Nor is there the least reason from scripture to fancy that souls deceive themselves by false hopes and apprehensions after death, so that some should need above others the preaching of our Lord in hades. It is nowhere said that thither He went and preached. The spirits are said to be in prison, and this, as having once on a time been disobedient; but it is not said or meant that Christ went there and preached to them.

It is no question then of discrediting clear assertions of Holy Writ on account of difficulties, which may seem to the human mind to arise out of them. It is inexact interpretation, which produces endless confusion, leads too naturally into false doctrine, and has no connection with the passage any more than with the general tenor of revealed truth elsewhere. To put such a notion, based on a spurious reading, slighting the exactness of grammar, ignoring the nice distinctions of the phrases, and resulting in the most impotent conclusion spiritually; to put this on the same level "with the doctrines of atonement — of gratuitous redemption — of justification by faith without the works of the law — of sanctification by the influence of the Holy Spirit"; to say that, discrediting Christ's preaching in hades, we must, on similar grounds, part at once with the hope of resurrection, is more worthy of a bold or weak special pleader than becoming a grave and godly minister of Christ. To urge that its great use is to confute the notion of death as a temporary extinction of the soul, or of its sleep between death and resurrection, is certainly not to claim much from so wonderful a fact, if a fact. Whether scripture does not abundantly confute such dreary and mischievous dogmas of unbelief, without resorting to strange doctrine, based on a hasty and superficial interpretation of 1 Peter 3: 18-20, may safely be left to spiritual men who judge according to the word of GOD.

It is curious to see how an intrepid and strong-minded writer, such as Bishop Horsley unquestionably was, commits himself to untenable statements,* once he leaves the lines of the Holy Spirit in scripture. "The apostle's assertion, therefore" (says he), "is this, that Christ went and preached to souls of men in prison. This invisible mansion of departed spirits, though certainly not a place of penal confinement to the good, is nevertheless in some respects a prison. It is a place of seclusion from the external — a place of unfinished happiness, consisting in rest, security, and hope, more than enjoyment. It is a place which the souls of men never would have entered had not sin introduced death, and from which there is no exit by any natural means for those who once have entered. The deliverance of the saints from it is to be effected by our Lord's power. It is described in the old Latin language as a place enclosed within an impassable fence; and in the poetical parts of scripture it is represented (?) as secured by gates of brass, which our Lord is to batter down, and barricaded with huge massive iron bars, which He is to cut in sunder. As a place of confinement, therefore, though not of punishment, it may well be called a prison. The original word, however, in this text of the apostle imports not of necessity so much as this, but merely a place of safe keeping; for so this passage might be rendered with great exactness, 'He went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping.' And the invisible mansion of departed souls is to the righteous a place of safe keeping where they are preserved under the shadow of GOD'S right hand, as their condition sometimes is described (?) in Scripture, till the season shall arrive for their advancement to their future glory; as the souls of the wicked, on the other hand, are reserved, in the other division of the same place, unto the judgment of the great day. Now, if Christ went and preached to souls of men thus in prison or in safe keeping, surely He went to the prison (?) of those souls, or to the place of their custody; and what place that should be but the hell of the Apostles' Creed to which our Lord descended, I have not yet met with the critic that could explain."

* Indeed, so far from agreeing with Bishop Browne that it is an "admirable sermon," I am surprised at the want of knowledge that Horsley displays, e.g. in respect of Calvin's views. For he imputes to his favourite author the doctrine of Christ's literal descent into Gehenna; whereas C. really held that Christ suffered on the cross the divine wrath due to sin, and that this is the meaning of His descent into hell — sound doctrine, though mistakenly attached to that clause of the creed.

The careful reader will perceive, indeed any one when it is pointed out, the immediate departure from scriptural sense and accuracy. For the apostle does not assert "that Christ went and preached to souls of men in prison." He speaks not of human souls generally, but only of those characterised by disobedience of yore, when Noah the preacher of righteousness prepared an ark to the saving of his house. This makes all the difference possible; for there is no reference whatever to the invisible mansion of departed spirits as a whole, still less to the special place of seclusion for the good. These last are in fact excluded by the language and the thought of the apostle. His argument is against those who, as incredulous Jews were especially apt to do, made light of preaching Christ only present in Spirit, not reigning in power, and of the comparative fewness of those who professed to believe. His refutation of their taunts, and proof of their extreme danger, are grounded on the Lord's dealing with the men of Noah's day, who similarly slighted the divine warning, while those only were saved who heeded it. How few the latter, how many the former!

It is true indeed that "it is a place which the souls of men never would have entered had not sin been introduced"; but what is this to the purpose? It applies on the side of good as of evil, of heaven as of hell; for sin, which forfeited living on the earth along with innocence, furnished occasion for that infinite grace which gives the believer eternal life and heavenly glory in and with the Son of GOD, the last Adam. And if the actual condition of the departed be as regards the body incomplete, even so it is not correct to speak of our being at home with the Lord as "a place of unfinished happiness." Doubtless the Lord Himself, the saints with Him, and those on earth are looking onward to the day of His and their manifested glory, when the world shall know that the Father sent the Son and loved us even as He loved Him; when He will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, in Him in whom also we have obtained inheritance, being predestinated according to His purpose; when in virtue of the name of Jesus every knee shall bow of beings heavenly, earthly, and infernal, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to GOD the Father's glory.

Nowhere does scripture speak of "the deliverance of the saints from" this state of things, though surely it is of the Lord's grace and the divine virtue of life in Him, that He will raise their bodies and transform what was erst of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory, according to the working of power whereby He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. This no doubt is the full answer to the cry of the wretched though quickened man (in Rom. 7): "Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?" For it is our resurrection (Rom. 8: 11) which will manifest the victory over death* through our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is His resurrection which has even now given us life in the Spirit, freeing us from the law of sin and death. We have for our souls what we shall know at His coming for our mortal bodies. But deliverance from a place of seclusion for our spirits, to be effected by our Lord's power, is a dream wholly opposed to the scriptural representation of the saints' enjoyment with Christ meanwhile. The apostle declares that to depart and be with Him even now and thus is very much better than remaining here, though doubtless there will be more for the body when He comes: for the soul there cannot be. Therefore, while earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, he says that we are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord (that is, rather than abide here in the body absent from the Lord). Yet are we now, not shut up as were believers before redemption, but called to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ made us free.

* In 1 Corinthians 15: 55 it is twice, "O death," θάνατε, α B D E F G I, some cursives, the more ancient versions save the Syriac and Gothic, several Greek, and all, or almost all, the Latin fathers. Two uncials of the ninth century (K L) with the bulk of cursives support the reading of ᾳδη. The Alex, before being changed gave ποῦ σου νῖκος.

Hence it is in vain to urge what "the old Latin language" describes, since it is quite opposed to the truth; and it is a mistake to cite the poetical parts of scripture which treat of the deliverance of GOD'S people on earth. For "the gates of brass" and "the bars of iron" (Isaiah 45: 2) certainly refer to Babylon, not to the presence of the Lord, with whom are the spirits of departed saints. So Psalm 121: 5, "Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand," is expressly a prophetic song for Israel in the latter day, and in no way about those deceased; as Isaiah 49: 2 certainly has no such reference, the context plainly giving the transition from Israel to Christ. It is a distressing misrepresentation then to call His presence a place of confinement, though not of punishment, which "may well be called a prison." Never does GOD'S word so call it. The converted robber asked to be remembered when Christ comes in His kingdom (i.e. in the resurrection state and the day of glory for the earth); and the Lord gives him, as a nearer comfort and intrinsically the deepest joy, the assurance of being with Him that very day in paradise. It is grievous dishonour to Him and ignorance of scripture to slight such grace, even to the length of saying that it "may well be called a prison." Certainly it will never be so called by one who appreciates either the blessedness of Christ's love or the honour the Father is now putting on the Son. The Father's house can only be called "a prison" by the darkest prejudice. It is where Christ is now, and where we shall be when Christ at His coming takes us to be with Him as the expression of His fullest love. The presence of the Lord on high is the very kernel of joy by grace, whether for the separate spirit after death or when we are all changed at His coming.

Feeling apparently that this is rather strong language (though many of the fathers knew no better, through their ignorance of eternal life in Christ and of redemption), Bishop Horsley qualifies his defence, and affirms that the original word in the text of the apostle imports not so much as this, but merely a place of safe keeping. Now what are the facts of the usage of φυλακή? Primarily it means the act of watching; hence (2) the persons that watch or guard (as in Latin and English); (3) the time; (4) the place, not only where those watching are posted, but (5) where others are kept as in ward or prison. Such (with the moral application of taking heed, and being on one's guard, from keeping in ward) are the chief senses in which the word was employed by the Greeks. The New Testament has it once in the first sense (Luke 2: 8), once in the second (Acts 12: 10), five times in the third (Matt. 14: 25; Matt. 24: 43; Mark 6: 48; Luke 12: 38 twice), and forty times in the fifth sense, including not only 1 Peter 3: 19 but Revelation 18: 2, where it is in the Authorised Version translated "the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird," all evidently equivalent to the meaning of "prison," which is used even of Satan's place of temporary detention. Never elsewhere does the Holy Spirit use it in the more general signification of a mere "place of safe keeping." Is there any special reason in our text why it should here be so rendered? The assigned ground of custody being the former disobedience of the spirits thus restrained, there ought to be no hesitation in accepting the English Version as fully justified, and rejecting that suggested as both unexampled in New Testament usage and at issue with the context.

It is then going beyond scripture to affirm that "Christ went and preached to souls of men thus in prison or safe keeping"; and no proof is given that He went to the prison of those souls or to the place of their custody. It is quite sure that the apostle speaks only of the spirits in prison, disobedient once when the long-suffering of GOD waited in Noah's days, not of souls of men as a whole in the separate state. It is sure that Christ, in the power of the Spirit, went and preached to the former; but it is nowhere written that He went to the prison or place of custody of any souls whatever, and preached there. The building and the groundwork of Bishop Horsley are alike unsubstantial; his handling of scripture is careless, and his reasoning unsound. Such passages as Isaiah 42: 7 and Isaiah 49: 9 have only to be examined with ordinary attention in order to satisfy any candid mind that it is a question of the deliverance of captives in this world, be it literal or figurative, and in no way of men's souls after death.

If, as Bishop Browne holds, hades and paradise are two names applying to the same state, it would seem to follow that paradise must apply to the place of departed saints, and hades to their state as separate from the body. For 2 Corinthians 12: 2, 4 naturally connects paradise, not with heaven merely, but even with the third heaven, where the Lord is (cf. Luke 23: 43); and Revelation 2: 7 is decisive, that in this very paradise of GOD will the faithful have their future reward at Christ's coming, when risen from the dead or changed. It is an error, therefore, to think that "it was not heaven"; for the latter scripture certainly identifies the scene of the separate spirits of the saints with that of their future glorification.* They are with the Lord now as they will be when changed, and thus completely and for ever with Him; but now as then in heaven. The ancients who denied this were as wrong as the moderns, who popularly hold the soul's passing at once to its final reward with very little thought of the resurrection at Christ's second coming, or of the kingdom.

* One sees hence the rashness of Bishop Horsley, who says, "Paradise was certainly some place where our Lord was to be on the very day on which He suffered, and where the companion of His sufferings was to be with Him. It was not heaven; for to heaven our Lord, after His death, ascended not till after His resurrection, as appears from His own words to Mary Magdalene. He was not, therefore, in heaven on the day of the crucifixion; and where He was not, the thief could not be with Him. It was no place of torment; for to any such place the name of paradise never was applied. It could be no other place than that region of repose and rest where the souls of the righteous abide in joyful hope of the consummation of their bliss." The fallacy running throughout is due to the want of understanding that the ascension is spoken not of the separate spirit but of the whole man, of body as well as spirit and soul. The conquerors are certainly not promised their final recompence in an intermediate state, yet it is to be in paradise. And there beyond controversy entered the spirit of the Lord Jesus, and with Him that of the converted robber on the day of crucifixion. John 20: 17 speaks of His ascension in bodily presence, but in no way negatives the going of His spirit there at death. (Compare Luke 23: 43 and Rev. 2: 7)

But we may here add that the ancient versions are too loose to render any help worth naming. Without discussing now whether the Peschito does (as Bode and others assert) or does not use scheiul for the grave as well as hades, it is plain that "lived" in spirit is faulty for ζωοποιηθεὶς, and that to leave out "in [or in the power of] which," substituting a mere connective particle "and," is far from the truth. "To the souls which were kept" may after a fashion represent τοῖς ἐν φ. πν., the addition of "in hades" or "scheiul" being unwarranted. There are other inaccuracies; but let this suffice. Far better here is the Philoxenian Syriac, which is thus rendered by White, "morte affectus quidem carne, vivificatus autem spiritu. In quo et spiritibus, qui in domo custodiae sunt, profectus praedicavit: Qui non obediverant aliquando, quum expectabat longanimitas Dei in diebus Noe," etc. The Arabic (Pol.) and the Vulgate alone give correctly the beginning of the verse, the Erpenian Arabic and the Aethiopic being as loose as the Peschito Syr. The Aeth. adds "holy" to "Spirit"; but it does not follow, as Bishop Middleton seems to think, that the other ancient versions did not understand exactly the same sense, though they very properly did not add the word "holy" so as to define their rendering more than the original text. The Memphitic, according to Wilkins, is no better than the rest. This is his version: "mortuus quidem in carne, vivens autem in Spiritu. In hoc Spiritibus [S. sic] qui in carcere abiit evangelizavit. Incredulis aliquando," etc.

In every version and in every edition of the text, accurate or faulty, this at least stands out irrefragably, that the spirits in question are nowhere represented as those of men who had already repented when on earth, but on the contrary as disobedient. This we have seen to be very far from the only difficulty in the way of the alleged preaching in hades; but it is at least felt and confessed by the stoutest champions of that interpretation. It is quite erroneous to assume that Peter speaks here of the proclamation made of finishing the great work of salvation; nor is it less to say that it was addressed to the penitents of antediluvian times, even if there were no question about the penitents of later ages, who are equally interested in the tidings. The apostle uses not even εὐαγγελίζομαι (which, though expressive of glad tidings, admits of far greater latitude in scripture than the good news of the finished work of salvation) but κηρύσσω, a word equally applicable to express a public setting forth of righteousness, and a warning of the destruction which must fall on the despiser. (Compare 2 Peter 2: 5, "Noah a preacher of righteousness," δικαιοσύνης κήρυκα.) The main difficulty then really is that the text speaks only of impenitent persons; the exposition, only of penitents.

Whatever the rapture with which we may suppose paradise filled when the soul of Jesus came among the souls of His redeemed, it is certain that the passage of the apostle says not one word about it; and it would be no small difficulty to produce any other scripture which does reveal it. Here it is a question of the spirits in custody for their former disobedience in the days of Noah, while a very few in contrast with them were saved, used for the present comfort of saints taunted with their paucity by the masses, who disbelieved what was preached by the Spirit now, as before the flood. Possibly no doubt some who then perished in the waters may not be doomed to perish everlastingly in the lake of fire, just as one at least preserved in the ark may not have been ordained to life eternal. But all this is only profitless speculation; and those who indulge in it lose sight of the grand and plain lessons of the apostle, whether for the comfort of the faithful or for the warning of unbelievers. Before the kingdom of GOD is established and displayed in power the masses have ever been disobedient to the word, and believers a little flock; but be these ever so few, let not those forget the days wherein a world of impious men perished. And this too is not the worst; for their spirits are in ward (which is never said of the righteous), the Lord without doubt reserving them as unjust for judgment-day to be punished.

As much misconception exists respecting Calvin's sentiments, I will here state fully what he has written in his early and later works. It is at any rate an error to classify him, as did Dean Alford after Huther, with those who understand the passage of a literal descent of our Lord into hades. Nowhere does Calvin commit himself to any such statement, though, as already pointed out, he applied the phrase in the creed to His sufferings on the cross, and he conceived the efficacy of that work sensibly and at once to reach the Old Testament saints. The reader need not for a moment suppose authority is attached to what may be quoted from the great leader of the reformed. The effect, I trust, will be only to prove the incontestable superiority of the divine word; the wise are but weak where they depart from it, while it gives light to the simple.

In order of time the first allusion is in the Psycho-pannychia, published in 1534, when the author was but twenty-five years of age: a tract directed against the materialistic notion of Anabaptists and others, who would have the soul to sleep during its departure from the body before the resurrection. Some zealots were the more disposed to embrace this revolting and utterly unscriptural scheme; because, if true, it would decide against the Popish dreams of limbus patrum, and in particular of purgatory. But Calvin's pious sobriety was proof against such a temptation even in the heats of controversy. This is his use of the text, as quoted from the third volume of his Tracts (Translation Soc. Edinb. 1851), pp. 428, 429: —

"Not less evidently does the apostle Peter show that after death the soul both exists and lives, when he says (1 Peter 3: 19) that Christ preached to the spirits in prison, not merely forgiveness or salvation to the spirits of the righteous, but also confusion to the spirits of the wicked. For so I interpret the passage which has puzzled many minds; and I am confident that, under favourable auspices, I will make good my interpretation. For after he had spoken of the humiliation of the cross of Christ, and shown that all the righteous must be conformed to His image, he immediately thereafter, to prevent them from falling into despair, makes mention of the resurrection to teach them how their tribulations were to end. For he states that Christ did not fall under death, but subduing it came forth victorious. He indeed says in words, that He was 'put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit' (1 Peter 3: 18), but just in the same sense in which Paul says that He suffered in the humiliation of the flesh, but was raised by the power of the Spirit. Now, in order that believers might understand that the power belongs to them also, he subjoins that Christ exerted this power in regard to others, and not only towards the living but also towards the dead; and, moreover, not only towards His servants but also towards unbelievers and the despisers of His grace.

"Let us understand, moreover, that the sentence is defective and wants one of its two members (!). Many examples of this occur in scripture, especially when as here several sentiments are comprehended in one clause. And let no one wonder that the holy patriarchs who waited for the redemption of Christ are shut up in prison(!). As they saw the light at a distance, under a cloud and shade (as those who saw the feeble light of dawn or twilight), and had not yet an exhibition of the divine blessing in which they rested, he gave the name of prison to their expectancy.*

* But how could the spirits of the ungodly (as he supposes, no less than of the godly) be "in a watch-tower" of expectancy, anxiously looking out for Christ? if "in a prison," how include the godly? It is painful to remark Calvin's irreverence for scripture, no less than Luther's, when they failed to understand its meaning.

"The meaning of the apostle will therefore be that Christ in Spirit preached to those other spirits who were in prison — in other words, that the virtue of the redemption obtained by Christ appeared and was exhibited to the spirits of the dead. Now there is a want of the other member, which related to the pious who acknowledged and received this benefit (!); but it is complete in regard to unbelievers who received this announcement to their confusion. For when they saw but one redemption from which they were excluded, what could they do but despair? I hear our opponents muttering and saying that this is a gloss of my own invention, and that such authority does not bind them. I have no wish to bind them to my authority; I only (?) ask them whether or not the spirits shut up in prison are spirits."

In this handling of the text there is no great ability in tracing the apostle's scope or in developing the argument of the Epistle, though the reasoning may be fair against the fancied sleep of the soul. But it is plain that Calvin then held that the power of the work of Christ when accomplished reached the departed spirits, just and unjust, not that He visited them in person. But the young man does not tremble at GOD'S word. He confesses that the sentence does not express what he wishes it to comprehend; for the member relative to the pious is wanting, unbelievers only being spoken of, at least "completely"! The truth is that the only patriarchs in question were those preserved in the ark; yet they are contrasted with the disobedient whose spirits were in prison. The pious Noah and his house therefore are not wanting afterwards, but so named then as to refute the argument before us.

Not long after Calvin published his Institutes of Christian Religion, in the second book of which (chap. 16 § 9) we may see, if possible more clearly, how little he agreed with the class to which of late he has been assigned. After a severe but just reproof of those who like Bishop Horsley in modern times wrest* Psalm 107: 16 and Zechariah 9: 11 to an imaginary subterraneous limbus, treating such thoughts of Justin M., both the Cyrils, Ambrose, Jerome, etc., as no better than a fable, he then proceeds: —

"And what need was there that the soul of Christ should descend thither to set them free? I readily own indeed that Christ illumined them by the power of His spirit, enabling them to recognise that the grace, of which they had only had a foretaste, was then displayed to the world. And probably to this may be applied the passage of Peter, where he says that Christ went and preached to the spirits in a watch-tower (it is commonly rendered 'in prison') (1 Peter 3: 19). For the context (?) also leads us to the conclusion that the faithful who had died before that time were partakers of the same grace as ourselves; because he dwells on the power of Christ's death in that He penetrated even to the dead, pious souls enjoying an immediate view of that visitation for which they had anxiously waited, whilst on the other hand the reprobate more clearly knew themselves shut out from all salvation. Though Peter does not speak very distinctly (!), it is not to be received that he absolutely confounds the righteous and the wicked; he only intimates that both alike(?) had the death of Christ made known to them."

* The Latin has "huc perperam trahunt testimonia," etc. Still stronger is his French: "Pour colorer leur fantasie, ils tirent par les cheveux quelques témoignages," etc.

It is a strange notion, adopted by Calvin (it is to be hoped, without a single intelligent follower), that φυλακὴ here means a watch-tower, whence he supposed the saints to have been awaiting the Messiah. On this no remark is needed in addition to what has been made already, unless it be that the verse itself is as inexorably adverse to it as the general current of the New Testament. For the spirits spoken of are those of men not only without the least hint of any subsequent obedience, but expressly said to be kept in ward because of former disobedience. The only reason for charging defect or indefiniteness on the passage is his own singular fancy that the apostle meant to include the pious in these spirits without one word to justify it. As to the wicked the language of the apostle is confessed to be "complete."

The reverent reader of scripture will not fail to censure Calvin for adding to GOD'S words, rather than Peter for taking away. In text or context there is no thought of making known Christ's death to believers and unbelievers; but very plainly does the apostle urge the danger of despising Christ's testimony by the Spirit, even before His Kingdom come, and this drawn from the days of Noah, to which the Lord elsewhere compares the day when the Son of man shall be revealed (Luke 17). Before the flood, as now, we see a time of testimony; but an awful blow fell on heedless man then, as there will again shortly from Him who is ready to judge quick and dead. If there is any reference in the context to the believers who died before Christ it is to those saved in the ark, a figure of the salvation set forth in baptism by virtue of Christ's resurrection. The spirits in prison were expressly those of the men who perished in the deluge for their unbelief.

But here again we see how far it was from Calvin's mind that our Lord, in His disembodied state, did actually go to the place of detention for the departed spirits, and there preach; still farther, that He thus preached salvation to those in that state who had refused to obey the Spirit's voice when the judgment of the flood was hanging over them. The plain words of scripture here, as elsewhere, give no countenance to such strange doctrine; nor is it true that there is any "dark enigma" in the judgment either of men before the flood or of those the apostle warns here. It is neglect or unbelief of scripture to say that these are cases where the final doom seems at all out of proportion (I will not dwell on the impropriety of saying with the late Dean Alford, "infinitely out of proportion") to the lapse which has incurred it. To speak or to think so is to dispute with GOD and to contemn His most solemn revelation.

If the antediluvians had a doom more awful than others before them, we have the divine assurance on the one hand of a special testimony to them, and on the other of their excessive corruption and violence. Most justly therefore did the Judge of all the earth send the flood which took them all away, save the man of faith who, divinely warned of things not seen as yet and moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Granted that worse remains for all unbelievers than the flood; but not worse for antediluvians as such than for others, and for none so sad as for those who slight GOD'S call to repent and believe since redemption, especially for such as bear, and bear falsely or with indifference, the name of the Lord. Who that beholds the Lamb of GOD who takes away the sin of the world can say that the doom of unbelievers is out of proportion to their guilt? He who can deliberately think so seems to me to have no real sense of man's evil or of GOD'S infinite grace.

To allow that unbelievers, who perished at the flood or otherwise, are objects of a preaching of salvation in the disembodied state when Christ died or at other seasons is to cast off, not only the general testimony of Old Testament and New, but very specially that dark background of eternal judgment and destruction which the gospel affirms with a precision unknown to law. To found such a renewal of hope for deceased unbelievers on our text, and to hint at extending it indefinitely, seems to my mind presumption of the most perilous sort.

But there is a third passage from Calvin's writings of a later date, which may furnish further matter for reflection as well as comparison with scripture. In his comment on the Epistle, published about the beginning of 1554, it will be observed for the third time that, far from admitting Christ's personal descent to hades, as meant by the text, he seeks to explode any such application. "It has been a threadbare and common opinion that Christ's descent into hell is here stated; but the words mean no such thing. For there is no mention made of the soul of Christ, but only that He went by the Spirit. But these are very different things, that Christ's soul went, and that Christ preached by the power of His Spirit. Expressly, therefore, does Peter name the Spirit to take away the notion of what may be called a real presence"* (Owen's Translation, 1855).

* "Trita et vulgaris opinio fuit, hic narrari Christi descensum ad inferos; sed verba aliud sonant. Neque enim animae Christi fit mentio; sed tantum quod spiritu venerit. Sunt autem haec longe diversa, animam Christi venisse, et Christum praedicasse spiritus sui potentia. Nominatim ergo spiritum exprimit Petrus, ut imaginationem tollat (ut vocant) praesentiae. Alii de apostolis exponunt, quod scilicet eorum ministerio mortuis apparuit, id est, infidelibus. Fateor quidem, Christum per apostolos spiritu suo venisse ad eos qui in carne detinebantur; sed haec expositio multis rationibus falsa coarguitur. Primum dicit Petrus, ad spiritus Christum venisse; quo nomine significat animas a corporibus separatas; vivos enim homines spiritus vocari nusquam receptum est. Deinde quod cap. 4, in eundem sensum repetet Petrus, allegoriam non admittit. Ergo de mortuis proprie verba intelligi oportet. Tertio hoc valde absurdum est, Petrum de apostolis agentem mox quasi sui oblitum transilire ad tempus Noe. Certe nimis intempestive hoc modo abrupta esset oratio: falsum ergo est illud commentum. Porro eorum delirium, qui putant incredulos Christi adventu post mortem suam a reatu liberatos esse, longa refutatione non indiget. Certe enim scripturae doctrina est nos salutem non consequi in Christo, nisi fide: ergo qui ad mortem usque obstinati fuerunt, his nulla spes relinquitur. Probabilius aliquanto loquuntur, qui redemptionem a Christo partam profuisse dicunt mortuis, qui tempore Noe diu fuerant increduli: tamen resipuerant demum, paulo antequam diluvio mergerentur. Illos ergo intelligunt poenas contumaciae suae dedisse in carne, servatos tamen Christi beneficio, ne aeternum perirent. Sed haec parum firma est divinatio; deinde pugnat cum orationis contextu. Petrus enim uni duntaxat familiae Noe salutem attribuit: exitio autem addicit omnes, qui extra arcam fuerunt. Ego itaque non dubito quin generaliter dicat Petrus gratiae Christi manifestationem ad pios spiritus pervenisse, atque ita vitali spiritus efficacia esse perfusos. Quare timendum non est, ne ad nos usque emanet. Sed quaeri potest curnam piorum animas postquam e corporibus migrarunt, in carcere collocet. Mihi quidem φυλακὴ potius speculam significat, in qua aguntur vigiliae, vel ipsum excubandi actum. Nam saepe ita capitur apud Graecos, et sensus optime fluet, pias animas in spem salutis promissae fuisse intentas, quasi eminus eam considerarent. Neque enim dubium est, quin ad hunc scopum sancti patres tam in vita quam post mortem suas cogitationes direxerint. Verum si cui placeat retinere carceris nomen, non male conveniet. Sicuti enim, dum vivebant, lex illis (teste Paulo, Gal. 3: 23) quaedam arctior fuit custodia in qua detinebantur: ita post mortem sollicito Christi desiderio constringi oportuit, quia nondum spiritus libertatis plene exhibitus erat. Ergo exspectationis anxietas illis fuit veluti carcer. Hactenus apostoli verba cum re ipsa et filo argumenti belle congruunt; sed quod sequitur, nonnihil habet difficultatis. Neque enim hic fideles sed incredulos solos commemorat, quo videtur tota illa superior expositio everti. Hac ratione adducti quidam putarunt nihil hic dici aliud nisi incredulos, qui olim piis molesti infestique fuerant, spiritum Christi iudicem expertos esse, quasi hoc argumento consoletur fideles, quia Christus etiam mortuus poenas de ipsis sumpserit. Sed eorum errorem convincet, quod proximo capite videbimus, mortuis evangelium praedicatum, ut vivant secundum Deum spiritu, quod peculiariter in fideles competit. Porro certum est idem, quod nunc dicit, illic repetere. Deinde non animadvertunt hoc praecipue velle Petrum, quemadmodum potentia spiritus Christi vivificam se in ipso ostendit, et talis, a mortuis fuit cognita, talem etiam erga nos fore. Videndum tamen quorsum hoc spectet, quod incredulos tantum nominat. Videtur enim dicere, Christum in spiritu apparuisse iis qui olim fuerant increduli. Atqui ego aliter distinguo; tunc quoque permistos fuisse incredulis puros Dei cultores, imo eorum multitudine fere opertos. Discrepat (fateor) ab hoc sensu Graeca syntaxis; debuerat enim Petrus, si hoc vellet, genitivum absolutum ponere. Sed quia apostolis novum non est liberius casum unum ponere alterius loco, et videmus Petrum hic confuse multas res simul coacervare, nec vero aliter aptus sensus elici poterat: non dubitavi ita resolvere orationem implicitam, quo intelligerent lectores alios vocari incredulos quam quibus praedicatum fuisse evangelium dixit. Postquam ergo dixit Christum se mortuis manifestasse, mox addit: quum increduli fuissent olim; quo significat nihil nocuisse sanctis patribus quod impiorum multitudine paene obruti fuerint'' (Calv. Comment. in loc. ed. Tholuck, 56, 57). The late Dean A., quoting the most objectionable part of these remarks, designates it "a sentence to be well remembered for many reasons": why, it is hard to see, unless it be a pleasure to remember how far a believer can go in unbelief, and a commentator in doing violence to his text. We may do well to remember it for our own warning, as well as to guard souls from this or any such licence. Is it possible that he meant to encourage others to similar disrespect towards an inspired writer from a reformer's delinquency? From his own freedom sometimes I cannot but fear that the latter may have been one of his "many reasons," which he naturally hid.

Again, Calvin sets himself against the view advocated chiefly by Socinian commentators, but also afterward by Grotius, Schöttgen, and others, who take the preaching as that of the apostles, and by τοῖς ἐν φ. πν. understand either the Jews under law or the Gentiles under Satan, or both together as bound with a common chain of sin, the allusion to Noah's time being, no more than a sample or similitude. To this our commentator replies: "I allow, indeed, that Christ through the apostles went by His Spirit to those who were detained in the flesh; but this explanation is proved false by many considerations. First, Peter says that Christ went to 'spirits,' by which he means souls separated from their bodies, for living men are nowhere called spirits. Secondly, what Peter repeats in chapter 4 does not admit of allegory. Therefore the words must be understood properly of the dead. Thirdly, it seems most absurd that Peter, speaking of the apostles, as though forgetting himself, should go off to the time of Noah. Certainly such a mode of discourse would be abrupt and unsuitable. This explanation then cannot stand."

But there is no sparing the notion of many fathers, now it would seem reviving, that dead unbelievers had a fresh offer of salvation, and in fact were saved after the cross. "Moreover, their madness who think that unbelievers in the coming of Christ were after His death freed from their guilt needs no longer refutation; for it is the certain doctrine of scripture that we do not obtain salvation in Christ save by faith; and therefore for those who have been persistent in unbelief up to death there is no hope left."

Then he gives his reason for rejecting the notion that prevailed among the Greek and Latin Fathers: — "Somewhat more probable is their assertion who say that the redemption procured by Christ availed the dead who in Noah's day had long been unbelievers, but repented a short time before they were drowned in the deluge. The idea, therefore, is that they suffered in the flesh the punishment due to their perverseness, yet that they were saved by Christ's grace from perishing for ever. But this conjecture is weak; as besides it is inconsistent with the context, for Peter ascribes salvation only to the family of Noah, and assigns to ruin all who were outside the ark."

But we must pay more heed to his own conclusion in its most mature form. "I therefore do not doubt but Peter says generally that a manifestation of Christ's grace was made to the godly spirits, and that they were thus endued with the vital power of the Spirit. Wherefore there is no cause to fear that it will not reach to us. But it may be inquired why he puts in prison the souls of the godly after quitting their bodies. To my mind indeed φυλακὴ means rather a watch-tower in which a watch is kept, or the very act of watching. For it is often so taken among the Greeks, and the sense would be excellent that godly souls were intent on the hope of the promised salvation as if they saw it afar off. Nor is it doubtful that the holy fathers in life as well as after death directed their thoughts to this object. But if anyone chooses to retain the word (prison), it will not be unsuitable; for as, while they lived, the law (according to Paul, Gal. 3: 23) was a sort of strict custody in which they were kept, so after death they must have felt the anxious longing for Christ, because the spirit of liberty had not yet been fully given. Therefore their anxious expectation was a kind of prison."

Here for the third and last time in his writings we see how Calvin repudiates the idea of Christ's actual descent into hades. He among the reformed held a view substantially similar to that of Durand among Romanists, that Christ's preaching to the spirits was a visitation by the efficacy of His work, not by His presence among them. To call Abraham's bosom or paradise either a watch-tower or a prison will not be accepted by sober believers as fair dealing with our Lord's intimations. To be "comforted" is no characteristic of imprisonment. Dean Alford's note on Luke 23 is not only exceptionable throughout, but its conclusion is refuted by 2 Corinthians 12 and especially by Revelation 2: 7, where beyond controversy paradise is the scene not merely of blessed spirits, but of the perfection of glorified humanity in heaven. The effort of Calvin to reconcile the idea of a prison with spirits in heaven (as he at least believed) is vain; and the weakening, if not change, of the apostle's words is the evident and inevitable consequence.

It is not correct therefore to say that thus far the apostle's words seem to agree well with the fact itself and with the thread of the argument. "But what follows," even he confesses, "is attended with some difficulty; for he does not mention the faithful here but only the unbelieving, by which the whole of the preceding exposition seems to be overturned."

I do not agree with the objection put forward any more than the thoughts we have next, believing indeed that the ground is of the strongest, and that the reasoning given has no real force. "Some have been led by this reason to think that nothing else is said here than that the unbelievers who had formerly opposed and persecuted the godly found the Spirit of Christ a judge, as if Peter consoles the faithful with this argument that Christ even when dead punished them. But their error is disposed of by what we shall see in the next chapter, that the gospel was preached to the dead, that they might live according to God in the Spirit, which peculiarly applies to the faithful. Moreover, it is certain that he repeats there what he now says." "Next, they do not perceive that Peter meant this especially that as the power of the Spirit of Christ showed itself vivifying in Him, and was known as such by the dead, so it will be toward us."

The apostle seems rather to correct unbelieving notions natural to those who looked only for the Messiah reigning gloriously and delivering them from their enemies. They therefore despised the Spirit's action in preaching, and the comparatively small results which yet appear, nay the present sufferings and persecution of Christians. Peter brings in Christ's death but also His resurrection, and points to His dealing of old by the Spirit (not by a personal display in glory), where there was disobedience then as now, but to their spirits too as in prison kept for judgment, besides the public fact in this world that far fewer than the Christians were saved in the ark.

Further, it is gratuitous assumption to bring in here 1 Peter 4: 6, which has assuredly a quite distinct bearing. Calvin's mistake is proved by 2 Peter 2: 6, which does expressly treat of the same time, and excludes all idea of the faithful by the declaration that God brought a flood on a world of ungodly persons. I believe accordingly that the apostle does certainly not repeat there what he now says, but speaks here of good news having been set before dead persons also, though of course the preaching to them was while they lived, with one or other of these two results, "in order that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, and live according to God in the Spirit." For the Jews habitually were apt to lose sight of the judgment of the dead in their eagerness to put forward the judgment of the quick, as to which the heathen were wholly ignorant.

"Let us see, however" (continues he), "why he mentions only unbelievers; for he seems (!) to say that Christ in Spirit appeared to those who were formerly disobedient. But I distinguish otherwise; that then also the pure servants of GOD were mixed up with unbelievers and were almost hidden by their multitude (!). Greek syntax (I confess) is at variance with this meaning (!); for Peter, if he meant this, ought to have used the genitive absolute (!!). But because it was no new thing for the apostles to put one case instead of another (!), and we see Peter here heaping together many things confusedly (!) and no other suitable sense can be elicited (!), I have no hesitation in thus explaining an intricate passage; so that readers may understand that those called disobedient are different from those to whom the preaching was made (!). After then he said that Christ manifested Himself to the dead, he immediately adds, 'when there were formerly disobedient men'; by which he means that the holy fathers sustained no harm from being almost overwhelmed by the multitude of the ungodly." How sad this perversion of the text!

To the rest of his remarks I make no objection, as they seem sound and sensible: but it would not be easy to discover a match for the hardihood of the words just cited, and the utter want of self-distrust in thinking and speaking as he does of an inspired man. The Greek construction, he admits, is adverse to the sense he would impose. This is enough for one who believes that the Holy Spirit perfectly guided Peter. Certainly the dative ἀπειθήσασιν is in agreement with the πνεύμασιν just before, which demolishes the imaginary distinction of GOD'S servants mixed up with the unbelieving. It is impossible to construe or even conceive the meaning Calvin would insist on, without giving up the claim of the Epistle to be divinely inspired. Again, it is as false that the apostles elsewhere put one case instead of another as that Peter here heaps anything confusedly together. The most suitable sense has been shown to be the strictest according to grammatical considerations. Calvin therefore would have been much wiser if he had hesitated about his own explanation, which in fact brings intricacy into a passage by no means obscure, either in syntax or in scope.

The Christian reader will want no further reasoning to assure him that the spirits in prison are no other than those of men once disobedient, when the Spirit of Christ in Noah preached by him before the deluge. It is egregious to suppose that the Spirit was not only to strive with them, contrary to God's express admonition, after the term of a hundred and twenty years of waiting in divine long-suffering, but even to save some or all after Christ died: a strange proof, it must be allowed, that the Lord knows how to deliver godly persons out of temptation and to reserve unjust men unto judgment-day to be punished.

Having examined the statements of the Reformer most celebrated for his doctrine, we may now turn to the very different views of Bellarmine, the most famous of those who have written on the Romanist side, with the authoritative statements of the Council of Trent in their Decrees and Canons, and yet more fully in their Catechism. To the discussion of our text the Cardinal devotes the entire chapter (xiii., book iv.) of his third general controversy — that about Christ (Disput. R. Bellarmini Pol. tom. i pp. 176-178, Col. Agr. 1615). It may strike some as remarkable that the text is not cited by him to prove purgatory, but only the descent of Christ's soul to hell; and the more so as the proofs of purgatory from the New Testament are lamentably defective and manifestly forced. But this able controversialist justly avoided the passage as evidence for purgatory; for nothing would suit Romish ideas less than preaching, least of all Christ's preaching, to souls there. Wholly different is their scheme, which distinguishes purgatory from limbus patrum.*

* "IV. Verum inferorum nomen abdita illa receptacula significat, in quibus animae detinentur, quae coelestem beatitudinem non sunt consecutae. Ita vero sacrae litterae hanc vocem multis in locis usurparunt, etc. . . . Neque tamen ea receptacula unius et ejusdem generis sunt omnia; est enim teterrimus et obscurissimus carcer ubi perpetuo et inextinguibili igne damnatorum animae simul cum immundis spiritibus torquentur, qui etiam gehenna, et propria significatione infernus vocatur. V. Praeterea est purgatorius ignis, quo piorum animae ad definitum tempus cruciatae expiantur ut eis in aeternam patriam ingressus patere possit, in quam nihil coinquinatum ingreditur. . . . VI. Tertium postremo receptaculi genus est, in quo animae sanctorum ante Christi Domini adventum excipiebantur, ibique sine ullo doloris sensu, beata redemptionis spe sustentati, quieta habitatione fruebantur. Horum igitur piorum animas, quae in sinu Abrahae Salvatorem expectabant, Christus Dominus ad infernos descendens liberavit. VII. Nec vero existimandum est eum sic ad inferos descendisse, ut ejus tantummodo vis ac virtus, non etiam anima eo pervenerit. . . . VIII. . . . Praeterea alii omnes qui descenderunt, partim poenis acerbissimis torquebantur, partim vero ut alio doloris sensu carebant, tamen Dei aspectu privati et spe beatae gloriae quam exspectabant, suspensi torquebantur . . . IX. His expositis docendum erit propterea Christum Dominum ad inferos descendisse, ut ereptis daemonum spoliis, sanctos illos patres caeterosque pios carcere liberatos secum adduceret in coelum. . . . X. . . . Quamobrem antequam ille moreretur ac resurgeret, coeli portae nemini unquam patuerunt; sed piorum animae, cum e vivis excessissent, vel in sinum Abrahae deferebantur, vel, quod etiam nunc iis contingit, quibus aliquid diluendum et persolvendum est, purgatorii igne expiabantur." — Cat. Conc. Trid. Parisiis, pp. 66-69.

Purgatory, according to Tridentine doctrine, is a penal fire to satisfy for the remains of sin in the righteous, a place of punishment where justified souls in general suffer for a time before they go to heaven; for, as they teach, souls dying in mortal sin go to hell, while on the other hand martyrs and adults dying immediately after baptism go to heaven. Thus, in the first part, Art. v. § iv.-vi. of the Catechism, they distinguish hell into (1) the place where the damned are for ever punished, (2) the fire of purgatory, where the souls of the pious suffer torture in expiation for a definite time, and (3) the receptacle in which the souls of saints before Christ's advent were received, and, exempt from any pain and sustained by the blessed hope of redemption, dwelt there in peace. It is true that this last statement does not cohere with the language of § 8, that the fathers were tortured in suspense while waiting for glory: but when was error really consistent? Again, in § 10 they confess that Old Testament saints, like those of the New, not only were in limbus as we have seen, that is, in the bosom of Abraham, but also might need the satisfaction of the fire of purgatory for their venial sins, and for whatever remained of the temporal punishment due for mortal sins though forgiven.

It is plain therefore that it is ignorance of their own doctrine or deceit for a Romanist to cite our text for purgatory.* Their most authoritative teaching is that the apostle speaks of the place once occupied by the Old Testament saints before Christ came and took them to heaven. Limbus patrum is therefore without a tenant, and useless for any practical purpose now. Purgatory is far otherwise, according to their best instructed doctors; though why it should be styled "purgatory" does not clearly or satisfactorily appear, for there is only the endurance of penalty, and no real purging whatever. How opposed to the truth and grace of GOD! By Christ all that believe are justified from all things and have life, eternal life, in Him. They even died with Christ from sin; crucified with Him, yet they live of a new life, not the first Adam life but Christ living in them, dead to sin but alive to GOD in Christ Jesus. Hence sin is not to reign in their mortal body. They are under not law but grace; and, living in the Spirit, they have to walk in the Spirit. But if one sin, we have an Advocate with the Father; and the washing of water by the word is made good to us by the Spirit in answer to Christ's intercession when we get defiled in any way.

* So the note to the text in the Rhemish New Testament, where the difference is slurred over under the phrase "middle place."

But Romanism ignores and destroys the entire groundwork of the gospel and its privileges as applied now to the believer. They preach as if Christ were such an one as themselves; they reason as if His blood had no more efficacy than a bull's or a goat's; their thoughts of sin are as human as of the Saviour and of His work. Of a real communication of life through faith, of a new and spiritual nature which the believer has in receiving Christ, they have no notion; for if they saw either life or redemption as scripture puts them, there could be no place for purgatory. There is a process of cleansing which goes on in the believer while he passes through this defiling world, that the practical state may correspond with the standing, with life in Christ and full remission of sins by His blood. But when the Christian departs from this life, he departs to be with Christ; and there is no need of cleansing more, as only the new and holy life remains.

Romanism sets up the veil of Judaism again, undoing laboriously the infinite blessing of a known reconciliation with GOD founded on atonement, and consequently putting those who bear the Lord's name not only outside, but in darkness, doubt, and uncertainty. It is the unbelief of nature, usurping the place of the gospel, a mere round of rites which flatter the flesh and can never clear the conscience. Who can wonder, seeing that the true light which now shines is intercepted, and the power of redemption is wholly denied? Hence it is really heathenism clothed with Jewish forms, a return of the Gentiles in Christendom to the weak and beggarly elements to which they desire to be again anew in bondage. It is the more guilty, because it is a going back to old darkness after GOD'S revelation of Himself as a Saviour in Christ: a churlish turning away from the feast of divine love and light where the Father imparts His joy in goodness, saving the worst and to the uttermost, let who will stay without and boast of their own ways to His dishonour.

But enough of the fabulous purgatory: our business is with B.'s explanation of our text. The first exposition noticed is that of Augustine, who applied it to the preaching of Noah by the Spirit of Christ to the men of that day. The chief defect in it is that the prison is held to be the mortal body, instead of seeing that ἐν φ. ("in prison ") refers to their subsequent state when alone also they could be properly designated as πνεύμασιν or "spirits."

The Cardinal apologises for refuting S. Augustine. No doubt it is awkward to such as start with the Vincentian canon of tradition, "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus"; and the rather when the father to be refuted is the greatest light of the Western Church. It is pleaded, however, that A. himself confesses that he had not understood the passage, and asks for cause to be shown why it should refer to hell (or hades). As if the father then not only permitted but himself desired it, B. proceeds to his task.*

* "Prima expositio est sancti Augustini epist. 99 ad Euodium, quem sequitur Beda. Sic Augustinus exponit, ut per spiritus in carcere constitutos intelligebat homines qui erant tempore Noe, quorum animae erant in corpore mortali tamquam in carcere; est enim corpus carcer animae, ac digit Christum non secundum humanitatem quam nondum assumpserat sed secundum Deitatem praedicasse per internam inspirationem, aut per linguam Noe illis hominibus, qui tamen increduli fuerunt. Itaque non vult August. hunc locum ad inferos pertinere. Hanc expositionem non refutarem si ipsi Augustino placeret omnino; sed ipsemet fatetur se hunc locum non intellexisse et rogat ut quaeratur ratio quomodo possit hic locus ad inferos pertinere. Ipso igitur non solum permittente sed etiam cupiente Augustino, hanc expositionem primam breviter refellemus."

His first argument is the common opinion of the fathers in opposition; Clement Alex., Athan., Epiphan., and Cyril, Hilary, Ambrose, Ruffin., and Oec. being all alluded to as inferring hence Christ's descent to the spirits in hell. He also points to the occurrence of an alleged citation of Isaiah to a similar effect in Justin M. and Irenaeus. But we may reserve the views of the early ecclesiastical writers to a later moment, when they will come fully before us.*

* "Primo, non placet haec sententia, quia communis Patrum est in contrarium. Nam Clemens Alexandrinus libro 6. Stromatum ante medium, Athanasius epistola ad Epictetum et lib. de incarnatione qui incipit: Mos pii hominis, Epiphanius haeresi 77, Cyrillus lib. de recta fide ad Theodosium, et lib. 12 in Johanem, ca. 36, Hilarius in Ps. 118 in illud: Defecerunt oculi mei in eloquium tuum, dicentes: Quando consolaberis me? Ambrosius in c. 10 ad Romanos, Ruffinus in expositione Symboli, Oecumenius in hunc locum Petri, exponunt de descensu Christi ad inferos, ubi spiritus defunctorum degere existimabant. Praeterea Justinus in dialogo cum Tryphone, et Irenaeus lib. 3, c. 23, citant verba quaedam Isaiae quae modo non inveniuntur, simillima istis verbis sancti Petri, ut credibile sit inde sanctum Petrum accepisse. Sunt autem haec verba: Commemoratus est Dominus sanctus Israel mortuorum suorum, qui dormierant in terra sepultionis, et descendit ad eos evangelizare salutem quae est ab eo ut salvaret eos."

The second objection is that Christ is said to have gone in spirit to preach to spirits. The spirit which is here distinguished against flesh seems as if it could not possibly mean anything else than the soul, says B. Not, therefore, in His divinity only, but in His soul did the Lord go and preach to the spirits. Now this, if it were the real intimation, would have incomparably greater weight for the Christian than the opinions of the Fathers, were they ever so unanimous. But it is precisely what I have shown the best authorities for the critically correct text of the epistle reject. If the article of the vulgarly received text before πνεύματι possessed any real weight of evidence, the phrase might well, if not certainly, convey the sense of Christ's spirit as man; but all the copies of value concur in the anarthrous form, which cannot bear the meaning for which B. contends. As the apostle wrote, it is the character of Christ's quickening when He rose from the dead. The Holy Spirit beyond a doubt was the agent; but this is presented in the shape of manner, and therefore the article is absent; whereas it must have been present if the intention had been to present the case as B. imagines. The more carefully the language is examined, the more certain it is that the soul of Christ cannot have been here contemplated.

Again, Augustine had good ground to say that ζ. δὲ πν. could not apply to the soul of Christ; and B. tries in vain to answer by citing 1 Sam. 27: 9; 2 Sam. 8: 2; and Acts 7: 19; for this is a confusion of ζωογονέω or ζωγρέω with ζωοποιέω. It is unfounded, therefore, to say that Peter meant that Christ's soul could not be slain, but remained alive in His triumphant work over hell. He really says and means that Christ was brought to life; and all efforts to shake the truth will only confirm it before all competent judges. Our clever theologian is decidedly feeble in questions of a philological kind.*

* "Secundo, non probatur ea sententia, quia dicitur Christus profectus spiritu ad praedicandum spiritibus. Id enim refert illud, in quo, nimirum spiritu veniens, etc., at spiritus qui hic distinguitur contra carnem non videtur posse significare aliud quam animam: non ergo sola divinitate, sed etiam anima Dominus ad praedicandum spiritibus profectus est. St. Augustinus ex hac ipsa ratione dicit se moveri ad hoc ut non intelligat per hunc spiritum animam Christi. Nam cum dicitur (vivificatus autem spiritu) si spiritus significaret animam, sequeretur aliquando animam Christi mortuam fuisse, nihil enim vivificatur, nisi quod mortuum est. Vult igitur ipse sensum esse, Christum mortificatum fuisse carne, quia secundum carnem mortuus est, et vivificatum spiritu, quia virtute Spiritus Dei excitatus est a mortuis. Sed haec ratio non concludit: nam in Scriptura passim dicitur vivificari id quod non occiditur. 1 Reg. 27, Virum et mulierem non vivificabat David, id est non relinquebat vivum, et 2 Reg. 8 dicitur: David extendisse duos funiculos super Moab, unum ad occidendum, unum ad vivificandum, id est definivisse quot ex Moabitis vellet occidi, quot servari. Et Act. 7, Afflixit patres nostros ut exponerent infantes suos ne vivificarentur, id est, ut non viverent, sed occiderentur ad unum omnes. Vult ergo sanctus Petrus dicere, Christum carne mortificatum, spiritu vivificatum in passione, quia caro mortua mansit, anima vero non potuit occidi sed mansit viva et operans ac triumphans de inferno."

There is no force in the third argument, which is that the expression, "went and preached," can properly apply to the soul, not to Christ's divinity. It is a question of what is called in 1 Peter 1: 11 "the Spirit of Christ," which certainly wrought in the prophets and among the rest in Noah, who is also formally styled "a preacher of righteousness" in the second Epistle. There is no more reason why in this place πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν should be a literal change of place in Christ personally than ἐλθὼν εὐηγγελίσατο in Ephesians 2: 17. We are dealing with historical matter equally in both passages; but figure is excluded in neither, and in fact there is the strongest analogy between the figures employed by both. The one illustrates the other. There is a manifestly distinct precision of phrase where a literal going of Christ is intended, as in verse 22, where we read π. εἰς οὐρανόν. It might have been safely inferred here if the apostle had written π. εἰς ἅδου, * or ἅδην.

* "Tertio, non placet ea sententia, quia illud: Veniens praedicavit, si de anima intelligatur, proprie accipi poterit, vere enim venit ad locum ubi non erat. At si de divinitate, non potest accipi nisi improprie. Praeterea verbum in Graeco est πορευθεὶς, id est, profectus, quod idem reperitur paulo infra, cum dicitur, profectus in coelum, etc., at in hoc secundo loco accipitur proprie, ergo et in primo."

It is granted that the fourth argument of the Cardinal lies fairly against a faulty detail in the view of Augustine; for we cannot by "spirits in prison" rightly understand living men. Such a description applies only to persons in their disembodied state. There is no ground, however, to suppose that the preaching was then and there, more than in chapter 4: 6 (where we are told that "to dead men also was the gospel preached"); but this, of course, while they were alive, not after they died as some strangely conceive, without the smallest warrant from the words employed, and contrary to the plain drift of universal scripture on the point elsewhere. It is not correct to suppose, as is often assumed, that Peter speaks here of the same persons as dead whom he had described in the chapter before as the "spirits in prison." He contemplates here not the generation which refused righteous warning before the flood, but such of the dead in times past as had the promises presented to them with the effect of putting all under the responsibility of being judged as men in flesh, while those who heeded the word, being by grace quickened, lived according to GOD in Spirit. The language of the apostle perfectly agrees with his own teaching throughout the Epistle, as well as his immediately precedent warning of the Lord's readiness to judge quick and dead, no less than the witness in baptism to His saving grace.

But the notion of preaching after death is evidently a strange doctrine, out of harmony with the context, and openly, irreconcilably, opposed to the scriptures in general. There is therefore no need here to adopt the Augustinian fancy of "dead" meaning dead in trespasses and sins, any more than to explain "the spirits in prison" of souls shut up in flesh and the darkness of ignorance as if in a prison. But that the men were dead when the glad tidings were announced to them is not what the apostle says; still less that it was Christ who preached thus, or that dead men spoken of in such broad terms are the same as those formerly disobedient when the long-suffering of God was waiting in Noah's days. The exegesis which indulges in such assumptions as these seems justly open to the charge of having no longer any fixed rule. But, thanks be to God! scripture refuses everything of the sort, and cannot be broken.*

* "Quarto, quia per spiritus qui in carcere erant, non videtur posse intelligi homines viventes nisi de industria sanctus Petrus affectaverit improprietatem et obscuritatem: at certe quando habemus sensum proprium et facilem, non licet fingere tropos. Adde, quod capite quarto de iisdem loquens Petrus dicit: ideo enim et mortuis praedicatum est evangelium. Et licet Augustinus per mortuos intelligi velit mortuos in peccatis, qui tamen vivant in corporibus, tamen videtur obstare praecedens sententia, nam dicit: Reddent rationem ei qui paratus est judicare vivos et mortuos, ideo enim et mortuis praedicatum est. At cum dicimus Christum esse judicem vivorum et mortuorum, intelligimus ad literam, quod judicabit eos qui vivunt, et eos qui mortui sunt vere et proprie, et ut idem Augustinus docet in Enchiridio, ca. 55. Igitur veris mortuis Christus praedicavit, id est, ad veros inferos descendit."

B.'s fifth objection is that, if the passage be understood of the preaching in the days of Noah, it does not appear to what end that account is inserted here. For how hang together, that Christ was put to death in flesh, but quickened (or, as he says, remained alive) in spirit, and therefore GOD formerly preached to men by Noah? But if we understand it of the descent to hell, all is consistent. For Peter, wishing to show that Christ in suffering and death remained alive, proves it as to His soul, because at that time His soul went to hell and preached to the spirits shut up in prison.* Now the fact on the contrary is that the reference to Noah's preaching is highly relevant to the purpose in hand. For the apostle is insisting on the certainty of divine government, whatever the long-suffering of GOD in bearing with men's hostility to His people and opposition to His testimony. His own people are called to walk with a good conscience in grace, suffering for righteousness, and for doing good, not ill. How touching the reason! Christ once suffered for sins: let this suffice. It was His grace so to suffer unto the full, exclusively His glory to suffer thus Just for unjust, in order that He might bring us to GOD. It is ours to suffer for good, for righteousness: never should it now be for faults and sins. For us when unjust this was His work, in which He was put to death in flesh but quickened in Spirit.

* "Quinto si hic locus intelligatur de praedicatione facta in diebus Noe, non apparet quorsum hic sit inserta ista narratio. Quomodo enim ista cohaerent, Christus in passione sue carne mortuus est, spiritu vivus mansit, ideo Deus olim praedicavit hominibus per Noe? At si intelligamus de descensu ad inferos, omnia cohaerent. Nam volens Petrus ostendere Christum in passione et morte mansisse vivum, quoad animam probat, quia illo tempore anima ejus profecta est in infernum, et praedicavit spiritibus in carcere conclusis."

The outer life of Jesus closed in suffering for our sins, the days of His flesh wherein He offered up both supplications and entreaties, with strong crying and tears, to Him who was able to save Him out of death. His resurrection was no question yet of external display of power, but characteristically of the Spirit, and hence unseen and unknown by the world. This was of all things most strange to the Jewish mind, which associated with the Messiah the manifestation of an energy overwhelming to all adversaries. Never was such a victory over Satan, even in his last stronghold of death, as Christ's resurrection; but He was made alive in no such way as instantly to put down the Roman oppressor, and expel the old serpent, and exalt restored Israel, and humble the haughty Gentiles, and deliver all creation. All this and much more must yet be to the praise of the glory of divine grace; but He was quickened in Spirit. Doubtless divine energy of the highest kind wrought here, but it was distinctively in the Spirit; and hence He who was thus raised (though most truly a risen man), capable of eating and drinking (though needing no food), capable of being handled and felt (though equally able to pass through closed doors, to appear in another form, to vanish out of sight, and to ascend to heaven), was seen only of chosen witnesses, not as by-and-by He will be seen by every eye.

In knowledge this ran so counter to ordinary Jewish expectation that the apostle reminds his readers of that which might help them to more just thoughts of GOD'S ways before the day comes when judgment will silence all gainsayers. It was no new thing for the Spirit of Christ to testify. He, as we have already been told — He who in the prophets had pointed out beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow, preached in Noah's days. The patience of GOD in testimony sounded strange to the Jew. Yet there it was in the first book of the law: "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." It is the very scripture which it would appear the apostle had before his mind's eye, when inspired to write, "in which [Spirit] He went and preached to the spirits in prison, once disobedient when the long-suffering of GOD was waiting in Noah's days."

Now also, as then, it is a season of testimony and long-suffering before the judgment shall be executed at the appearing of Jesus. If the Spirit strove of old, surely it was not less now; if the work of GOD was wrought in the Spirit, proclaimed and received in the Spirit, not yet in visible and indisputable power before which all the world must bow, it was just so in the most marked season of testimony, before the most marked judgment on all mankind which the ancient oracles attest. Hence the exceeding appositeness of the allusion to Noah's days when the Spirit strove, but would not always; for the flood was then at hand which must, as it did, surprise and take away those who stumbled at the word, being disobedient. It was guilty then for the sons of Adam to slight the preaching: how much more so in the seed of Abraham now, who had before them that ancient warning, with an incomparably fuller testimony in the promises fulfilled, though not yet manifested, before the world!

The attentive student of scripture may thus see the admirable force and pertinence of πνεύματι, ἐν ῳ καὶ τ. ἐν φ. πν. πορ. ἐκήρ., especially as connected with the account given in Genesis 6, which the Holy Spirit here interweaves in the instruction for those addressed. There is no such statement as that Christ's Spirit was the subject, recipient, or vehicle of restored life, for this would require the article to convey such a sense. Yet were the article genuine and such a sense necessarily taught, it is hard to see how one who held to the text thence resulting could deny the monstrous inference that His spirit had previously died — at least, if the case connected had been the direct complement, not the indirect. It is also a manifest oversight to contend, as has been done, that the use of the word πνεύμασιν, connecting ἐν ὧ (πνεύματι) our Lord's state with the state of those to whom He preached, is a crowning objection to the view here advocated. For it is certain that ζωοποιηθεὶς δὲ πν. describes the resurrection of Christ, not His separate state; and that the anarthrous form of πν. is decisive against the idea of its being His spirit as man, as is supposed in every form of the hypothesis that Christ descended to preach to separate spirits.

No such connection is in the passage: but attention is drawn to the character of Christ's resurrection as of the Spirit, bound up with His testimony and presence now known in Christianity, instead of the visible power and glory of the kingdom which Israel looked for. The Spirit is expressed as giving character to the quickening, not His spirit as the subject or vehicle of restored life; and then it is added that in virtue, or in the power, of this (ἐν ῳ ) He went and preached to the spirits in prison, once on a time disobedient when the long-suffering of GOD was waiting in Noah's days, while an ark was in preparation. There was no external demonstration of divine power then, but a testimony of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ; and all who despised it proved the value of the warning too late in their own destruction; and their spirits are imprisoned till the judgment of the dead declares afresh and for ever the consequences of despising GOD'S word. So it will assuredly be with all who, preoccupied with Messianic glory according to Jewish feeling, scorn the Spirit of Christ that now warns the world of coming judgment, and mock a presence of Christ which is only known in Spirit.

Another point of analogy singled out from the tale of old and applied now is the fewness of those saved, as meeting the taunts of those who looked for universal homage to the Messiah reigning, and could not understand the hidden glory of One who, believed in by a few, bears with masses of unbelief till He comes in judgment.

But one can easily discern why all these analogies between the testimony of Noah and that under Christianity should escape the Cardinal, who finds more congenial aliment in the reveries of imagination about the descent of Christ to hades, than in the solemn and sober realities of a Christian's walk and witness, well-nigh forgotten in Christendom. The dark source, whether Popish or Patristic, of Bishop Horsley's reasoning will not have escaped the reader. For he too, like Bellarmine, draws from this strikingly suggestive passage little more than the impotent conclusion that Christ remained alive in His passion and death! proved by His soul's descent and preaching to the spirits below. It is needless to expose the poverty of an interpretation which yields so paltry a result, as compared with the rich and varied lessons flowing from the passage, when understood in itself and in its connection with the Old Testament history alluded to.

Augustine had objected* to the deduction of Christ's descent to hades, from this passage, (1) that consequently He would preach only to the unbelievers at the time of the flood, and (2) that, Abraham's bosom being distinct from hades, such a preaching would lead to the notion of converting the damned. Bellarmine (1) retorts with the question why Christ should be said to preach in Noah's days rather than in those of Abraham and other patriarchs or even of all other men, and (2) answers that the preaching of Christ in hell was not to convert infidels but only to announce great joy to pious souls in redemption now completed, Abraham's bosom being viewed as part of hades by Augustine himself like all other fathers.

* "Sed objicit Augustinus, quia non videtur ratio, cur praedicaverit solum iis qui increduli fuerunt tempore Noe, cum tam multi alii essent in inferno. Item quia videtur absurdum valde, quod Christus praedicaverit in inferno. Videtur enim inde sequi, ut debeat etiam in inferno constitui ecclesia ubi convertantur et reconcilientur animae. Id autem absurdum sequi ex nostra sententia probat Augustinus, quia sinus Abrahae, ubi erant omnes justi, non videtur fuisse in inferno, sed ab inferno remotissimus cum esset Chaos magnum inter divitem inferni colonum et Lazarum habitatorem sinus Abrahae. Ergo si hic locus de descensu ad inferos intelligitur, Christus solis peccatoribus praedicavit: at non praedicavit frustra, nec sine fructu: ergo aliquos convertit. At hoc nullo modo est asserendum, ergo praestat hunc locum non intelligere de descensu ad inferos. Et haec est potissima difficultas, quae Augustinum a communi sententia recedere coëgit. Timuit enim, ne cogeretur admittere conversionem et reconciliationem spirituum damnatorum.

"Respondeo, primam objectionem posse retorqueri. Nam etiam non apparet ratio cur dicat Petrus Christum in diebus Noe praedicasse potius quam in diebus Abraham et aliorum patriarchorum vel etiam aliorum omnium hominum. Dico praeterea, Christum praedicasse in inferno omnibus bonis spiritibus, sed nominatim fuisse expressos illos qui fuerunt in diebus Noe increduli, quia de illis erat majus dubium an essent salvi nec ne, cum puniti fuerint a Deo et submersi aquis diluvii. Indicat ergo hic Petrus etiam ex illis incredulis fuisse aliquos qui etiam in fine poenitentiam egerint, et licet quantum ad corpus perierint, tamen quantum ad animam salvi fuerint (quod etiam Hieronymus docet in quaestionibus Hebraicis in Genes. tractans illud cap. 6. Non permanebit spiritus meus in homine, etc.). Ubi dicit Deum punivisse multos eorum temporaliter aquis diluvii, ne deberet eos punire in gehenna in aeternum. Et hunc etiam sensum videntur facere illa verba cap. 4: Ideo mortuis et praedicatum est evangelium, ut judicentur quidem secundum homines in carne, vivant autem secundum Deum spiritu; id est, ut secundum homines exterius judicentur carne, id est, damnati existimentur humano judicio, quia corpora eorum aquis necata fuerunt, tamen vivant spiritu secundum Deum, id est, animae eorum salvae sint apud Deum.

"Ad secundam dico, ipsum Augustinum postea cognovisse sinum Abrahae fuisse in inferno, ut patet ex tractatu in Ps. 85 et lib. 20 de civ. Dei, ca. 15, quae sententia est omnium patrum et totius ecclesiae. Dico igitur, praedicationem Christi in inferno non fuisse ad convertendos infideles, sed fuisse solum ad annunciationem gaudii magni piis animabus, quibus annunciavit completam esse redemptionem, ut intelligerent se jam inde liberandas et tempore suo etiam corpora recepturas. Atque haeo de expositione sancti Augustini quam refutavimus, sequuti mentem ejus, non verba."

But the reader will have seen that Bellarmine is quite wrong, and Augustine much more right, as to both points. The text characterises the imprisoned spirits as having been formerly disobedient without a trace of their subsequent repentance or piety, the announcement of great joy being a pure fiction for which the passage gives no warrant, but rather as we read it plain intimations to the contrary. Not a word in scripture intimates that those on whom the flood came were believers but unbelievers, not a hint that they repented at last or that their souls were saved, though their bodies perished, let Jerome teach what he may. Their spirits are said to be in prison, in full contrast with Abraham's bosom or paradise; they are kept there for judgment like angels that sinned of old, with whom indeed the apostle classes them in the second chapter of his second Epistle; and no wonder, for he characterises them as a world of ungodly men.

Are these then the pious souls to whom above all others the Lord descended to announce the great joy of His completed redemption? It will be observed by those who weigh GOD'S word, apart from tradition, that not a thought appears in the passage of delivering the spirits from prison, any more than of translating them to heaven. This would be singular on the supposition of such a descent; for it is evident that, were the patristic idea true, it would be more in keeping with Christ's presence there to speak, not of preaching in hades, but of translating the saints thence gloriously as the fruit of His victory over Satan.

The remarks of Bellarmine on Beza's modification of the Augustinian view and on Calvin's ideas do not claim any special notice here, whatever is true in them (as I believe) having been already anticipated.

We may now briefly consider the current of thought from days not long subsequent to those of the apostles. We shall see the various but constant aberration from the truth which characterised such as drew from our text an actual preaching of our Lord in the world of spirits. Doubtless it was no question of an isolated or casual misinterpretation of the scripture before us; but this rather sprang from the general ignorance even then pervading Christendom as to the full blessedness of our standing in Christ — ignorance found in the Fathers as such, if possible more than in the popular theology of our own day, or in the puritanism of the past. Lack of faith could not but expose men to crude guesses because of their uncertainty; especially as here where the first obvious view of the passage is not the sure, sound, and spiritual one which falls in with the contextual aim and the analogy of the faith elsewhere. Indeed our way of regarding any particular portion of revealed truth can scarcely be severed from our state generally; so much so that habitually an intelligent eye can see where we are by the judgment we form as to divine things wholly remote and apparently quite unconnected. Here, for instance, a soul established in the gospel and therefore feeling solemnly the fixed doom of the lost, as well as the blessedness of the saved now and evermore, is at once delivered from nine-tenths of the speculations about our Lord's preaching to the spirits of saints or sinners after their and His separation from the body. It is ordinarily thus: where we rest not in the grace and truth which came by Jesus, we are in danger from ordinances, fables, reasonings, or from a mixture of them all. Apostolic power and fidelity, Paul's above all, cut up by the root these workings of Satan's malice; but, when the apostles were gone, the evils previously judged found too ready an acceptance and gave birth to results more openly disastrous both to truth and to souls, and, if this could be, more decidedly opposed to the glory of the Lord.

1. The first I would produce is the allusion of Justin M., the ecclesiastical writer, more blessed in his death of martyrdom than in his life of philosophy. It will illustrate the state of things at that time in more ways than one. Καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν λόγων τοῦ αὐτοῦ  Ἱερεμίου ὁμοίως ταῦτα περιέκοψαν. Ἐμνήσθη δὲ κύριος ὁ Θεὸς ἀπὸ (? ἅγιος) Ἰσραὴλ τῶν νεκρῶν αὐτοῦ τῶν κεκοιμημένων εἰς γῆν χώματος, καὶ κατέβη πρὸς αὐτοὺς ἀναγγελίσασθαι αὐτοῖς τὸ σωτήριον αὐτοῦ. The common reading is retained in the modern edition of Otto, spite of the conjecture of Sylburg approved by Jebb, Thirlby, etc. But the emendation if correct makes no difference for our object. Here then we have a spurious text attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, but evidently founded on the vulgar misapplication of 1 Peter 3: 19; 1 Peter 4: 6. Man, however, cannot add to scripture without clashing with revelation. Supposing we draw from the apostle a personal preaching of the Lord in the place of spirits, it is impossible to infer from the words of the New Testament an announcement of His salvation. The apostle, where he may be thought to speak of such a descent, tells us only of His preaching to imprisoned spirits once disobedient in the days of Noah; where he speaks of glad tidings to dead men, there is no hint of Christ's descent to preach.

2. Irenaeus, the pious Bishop of Lyons in the latter part of the second century, cites repeatedly this alleged text, under the name of Isaiah and of Jeremiah, as well as with no name attached to it (Adv. Haer. iii. c. 20, § 4; iv. c. 22, § 1). The notion that the Jews effaced such a verse from the Hebrew is baseless; especially as they have left other testimonies to Christ incomparably clearer and more at issue with their traditions. Even Massuet confesses this to be a knot quite beyond his power to untie, bound though he was to sustain, had it been possible, the credit of patristic traditions. "Vereor ut Justino primum, ac deinde Irenaeo fucum fecerit apocrypha quaepiam scriptura." The unbiassed reader will have no scruple in affirming what the Benedictine feared — that it is a mere apocryphal gloss, loosely imputed to a prophet, and a little expanding as it goes down; for Irenaeus adds (or at least the barbarous Latin version, which alone here represents his Greek) "ut salvaret eos" or "ad salvandum eos." That is, He preached in hades not merely to announce but to save. Irenaeus, strange to say, seems unusually attached to this pseudograph; for he cites it again in his book, iv. c. 33, § 1. Only in § 12 of the same chapter the Latin translation gives the notable variation, "in terra limi . . . uti erigeret," with the addition named in both, though differently expressed. Lastly, in his fifth book too he once more falls back on his prophet, but recurs to the earlier form, "in terra sepelitionis" (so Feuardentius, etc., instead of the Erasmian reading, "stipulationis"), though even so with some change, "extrahere eos et salvare eos." Comment is scarce needed. When a man quotes so carelessly in the same work of no considerable extent, we need not be surprised if he were loose as to scripture and indistinct as to doctrine.

3. But there is no small descent when we turn next to Hermas, an author probably of the latter half of the same second century. Much of his reputation was derived from the singular confusion which led many in early days to regard him as the Christian saluted in Romans 16: 14; for most probably (Muratori, Ant. Ital. med. aevi, iii. 853) he was brother of the Pius who was Bishop of Rome, after Hyginus died, A.D. 157. Here too we have only a Latin version of the "Shepherd," as even the recent discoveries of Tischendorf do not give us the Greek original* beyond the fourth ἐντολὴ (i.e. mandatum or command) of the second book. I quote from the third book, and the sixteenth section of the ninth similitude (Cotelerii Patres Apost. I. 118, ed. 1698): — "Quoniam hi Apostoli et doctores, qui praedicaverunt nomen Filii Dei, cum habentes fidem ejus et potestatem defuncti essent, praedicaverunt his qui ante obierunt, et ipsi dederunt eis illud signum. Descenderunt igitur in aquam cum illis, et iterum ascenderunt," etc. Thus, Hermas is distinctly committed to the absurd doctrine that the apostles preached to the dead and baptised them. This is a further and a desperate step in superstition, and of course without a shred of support from scripture; but it seems to be the not unnatural complement of the notion that the Lord went down after death to preach in hades to the spirits there. Is it not melancholy to think that such a production as this, immeasurably inferior in every point of view to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, though doubted by some and even declared apocryphal by certain synods, was extensively read in the public Christian assemblies, and was evidently incorporated with the scriptures in the Sinai MS., as Clement** of Rome's epistles were in the Alexandrian copy?

* It is likely indeed, that Clement of Alexandria gives us part of the Greek in his citation in the Strom. ii. 379, ed. Sylb.

** Clement of Rome is tainted with the same vice of that early day that we have seen in Justin and Irenaeus, quoting as scripture the words of men. Not only does he refer to apocryphal books, but also draws from the false Gospel to the Egyptians, not to speak of an unauthentic dialogue between the Lord and Peter; nay, he more than once formally cites as the word of GOD what is not scripture, γέγραπται γάρ· κολλᾶσθε τοῖς ἁγίος, ὅτι οἱ κολλώμενοι αὐτοῖς ἁγιασθήσονται (1 Ep. ad Cor. xlvi.), and εἶπεν ὁ κύριος· ἐὰν ἦτε μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ συνηγμένοι ἐν τῳ κόλπῳ μου καὶ μὴ ποιῆτε τὼς ἐντολάς μου, ἀποβαλῶ ὑμᾶς καὶ ἐρῶ ὑμῖν· ὑπάγετε ἀπ ἐμοῦ, οὐκ οἶδα ὑμᾶς πόθεν ἐστὲ, ἐργάται ἀνομίας (2 Ep. iv.). Some doubt the genuineness of the second epistle; but the first substantiates what I say.

4. Can we go down lower? Alas! not only so, but at the next step. Clement of Alexandria appears under the reign of Severus and Caracalla, a speculative eclectic though a Christian presbyter. In the second book of his Miscellanies (Στρώμ. 379, ed. Sylburg, 1629) he quotes "the Shepherd," and applies the baptism carried on by the apostles after death, not (as Hermas appears to mean) only to the godly before redemption, but to heathen philosophers or moral men as well. In the sixth book (637 et seqq.) he recurs to a similar strain, and yet more openly treats it as certain that our Lord descended to hades for no other reason than to preach the gospel, and this that they might believe and be saved; that such as lived uprightly, Jews or Greeks, even though imprisoned in hades, on hearing His voice either in person or through the apostles, were presently brought to conversion and faith; that there is the same dispensation below as on earth for souls to manifest their repentance or their unbelief. Thus the awful consequences of living and dying impenitent in this world are explained away by this Clementine notion of a further offer of salvation by Christ and the apostles after death; and this evidently to keep up the illusion of salvation for philosophers and moral men among the heathen.

5. None will wonder that the famous Origen outran his master, and that the philosopher Celsus provoked him into deplorable statements. Thus in the second book in reply (Opera I. 419, ed. de la Rue) Origen does not hesitate to say that the Lord in the separate state held converse with souls similarly separate from the body, converting to Himself such of them as would or such as He saw more suited for reasons known to Him. Again, in his fourth homily on Luke (1. 937), he says that John B. descended to hell and there preached the Lord's advent; and a similar work of Paul he seems to imply in his comment on Romans 11: 13 (IV. 35).

6. Cyril of Alexandria writes, if possible, more unguardedly in his Homilies: — "hades spoiled of spirits"; yea, of Christ (Hom. 6) "immediately spoiling all hades, and opening the doors which admit of no escape to the spirits of those fallen asleep; and, the devil then deserted and alone, He rose after the third day."

7. In the same spirit wrote the author of a discourse on the ascension, falsely imputed to Chrysostom, who really censures such thoughts as old wives' fables in his Homily on Matthew 11: 3, as Augustine classed the dream among heresies — the 79th in his list. I say nothing of the question raised by Gregory of Nazianzus (whether Christ saves in hades all without exception or only such as believe, Orat. xli.); or of such romance-writers as Anastasius, who introduces Plato appearing to one asleep who used to abuse his doctrine, and pretending that he was one of the first to believe on Christ when He preached in hades. Even a Roman Synod condemned one, a man of mark, who taught thus in the year 745. Tertullian among the early Latins and Gregory of Nyssa are far enough from Romish doctrine either as to limbus patrum or as to purgatory; for they, like many others of the ancients, held all the saints before and after Christ to be waiting in Abraham's bosom, a region not heavenly yet higher than hell or hades, till the resurrection at Christ's coming. Let this suffice just now.

I feel it neither needful nor profitable to pursue the long dreary journey through the mediaeval desert, though even then souls were not wanting, like our own Bede and St. Thomas Aquinas, with a long interval between, who adhered to the substantial truth in the apostle's words as against the more prevalent superstition which had overgrown them.

Coming down to the Reformation times, it may be of interest to mention that Luther naturally did not refrain from giving his mind on a scripture which had occupied so many and been perverted by not a few. We may notice here that Dr. John Brown, in his Expository Discourses on 1 Peter (i. 222), cites with mild censure some alleged remarks of the leading Reformer,* as not meriting the eulogium he bestows on the "well-weighed words of the candid and learned Joachim Camerarius."** If Luther really wrote that the apostle seems moved by the horrible punishment, so as to speak like a fanatic words which cannot to this day be understood by us, he spoke with as little sense as reverence. Even of a fellow-Christian, or of an ordinary minister of the gospel, ought one not to be thoroughly sure that he is in error before pronouncing that he talks like a fanatic or almost so? But to confess that the words were not understood ought, to say the least, to have shielded an apostle from any censure; indeed, to have made it impossible, and thrown the blame on those who confessedly understood not the voice of inspiration. But I have searched in vain both his Latin (tomm. i.-iv., Jenae, 1556-8 folio) and his German (ten vols. folio, Altenburg, 1561-4) writings without finding anything like the passage cited. What I do see in both Latin and German differs widely; so that, if the citation be authentic, it would go to prove very great inconsistency.

* "Hac tam horribili poena Petrus Apostolus quoque motus videtur, ut non aliter quam fanaticus loquatur talia verba quae ne hodie quidem a nobis intelligi possunt (1 Peter 3: 19, 20). Mirabile profecto judicium, et vox paene fanatica." — Luth. Exeg. Opp. Latt. tom. ii. p. 221.

** "Est hic unus ex iis locis sacrarum literarum, de quibus pietas religiosa quaerere amplius et dubitare quid dicatur sine reprehensione: et de quibus diversae etiam sententiae admitti posse videantur, dum modo non detorqueatur κανὼν τοῦ τὸ αὐτὸ φρονεῖν, id est, religiosa de fide consensio, neque aberretur ἀπὸ τῆς ἀναλογίας τῆς πίστεως ."

In the exposition of Peter's Epistles, given in the second volume of the great German collection, he calls the passage (1 Peter 3: 19-22) a "wonderful text," but speaks with considerable hesitation. He will not resist those who infer from it that the Lord descended to hades, and preached to the spirits imprisoned there; but he seems disposed to think the meaning is rather that Christ, risen and gone to heaven, preaches to sinners spiritually while His servants preach the word to their ears — to sinners as unbelieving as those in the days of Noah, and thus embracing sinners of all times. He objects, however, to the change of man's state before GOD after death. This is the substance of a rather diffuse comment in pages 451, 452.

The passage in the German writings, vol. viii. p. 660, answers to what appears in the Latin edition, vol. iv. pp. 638, 639: "Et Petrus hunc descensum videtur explicare cum dicit," etc. "Hic Petrus clare dicit, non solum apparuisse Christum defunctis Patribus et Patriarchis, quorum sine dubio Christus aliquos cum resurgeret secum ad vitam aeternam excitavit, sed etiam aliquibus qui tempore Noae non crediderunt ac expectaverunt patientiam Dei, hoc est, qui sperarunt Deum non sic duriter grassaturum in universam carnem, praedicasse, ut agnoscerent sibi per Christi sacrificium peccata condonata esse."

Hence it is evident that there is little harmony between the earlier and the later doctrine of Luther on this point; and that the later view does not seem to be an advance in truth, but rather approximates to what was taught afterwards by the well-known Romanist divines, Suarez, Estius, etc., as well as by his own followers. The earlier view is what we find substantially taken up afterwards by the Socinian party,* or such as too often seem swayed by their reasoning, Grotius, Schöttgen, etc.

* "Christus dum in terris vixit paucos Judaeos convertit: at post mortem et resurrectionem suam, per spiritum profectus praedicavit spiritubus qui erant in carcere (1 Peter 3: 19); id est gentibus quae sedebant in umbra mortis constrictae compedibus, atque catenis tenebrarum et ignorantiae, easque imperio ac regimini sui subjecit." - Wolzogenius, Comm. in Evang. Joan. xiv. 12. Bibl. Pol. Frat. viii. 963.

Francowitz (or Flacius Illyricus), famous for his hand in the Centuriae Magdeburgenses and other works which furthered the Reformation, held that our Lord descended to hades to announce only the condemnation of the lost. It is plain however that, though less objectionable on exegetic grounds than that which supposes a declaration of deliverance to believers there (for Peter speaks only of spirits in prison once disobedient), this scheme is open to the defect equally fatal to both views, that the passage in debate speaks neither of believers nor of unbelievers as a whole in the separate state, but only of such as rejected the divine testimony in Noah's days. Not that there is any force in Wiesinger's or Alford's reasoning that such a "concio damnatoria" would jar in the midst of a passage intended to convey consolation and encouragement by the blessed consequences of Christ's sufferings. For, as we have seen, the context here as elsewhere consists really of as distinct and solemn warning to unbelief as of rich and solid comfort to faith. On the face of it the governing object is to meet those who might be overmuch tried and cast down under their sufferings for righteousness' sake, and to sustain them in well-doing.

Hence the apostle brings in the Messiah not reigning here but suffering once for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God; put to death in respect of flesh and quickened in respect of Spirit. Instead of even then restoring the kingdom to Israel, there was only the testimony of His Spirit while He is exalted (not on earth or in Jerusalem, but) on high at GOD'S right hand, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to Him, but not yet His enemies made a footstool for His feet. On the contrary there goes on here below His testimony by the Spirit; just as of old He went in the Spirit and preached when the antediluvians disobeyed the word as the mass do now, and still fewer were those saved in the ark than the comparatively few baptised, who have now found that acceptance which is the demand of a good conscience toward GOD by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is the long-suffering of GOD now as then, and the Lord will come to judge the quick as the deluge befell the despisers then, eternal judgment awaiting all the wicked dead by-and-by (Rev. 20: 11-15).

We have already seen Calvin was as little consistent as Luther. Thus in his Commentary on the first Epistle he maintains that Peter speaks of the manifestation of Christ's grace to godly spirits, and this expressly in the spirit that he might take away the notion of a real descent of Christ into hades to preach,* contrary to the representation of Dr. Huther followed by Alford, who twice over classes him with the advocates of a literal preaching there. On the other hand Calvin in his Institutions (like Erasmus a little before him, following Athanasius among the Greek fathers and Ambrose among the Latin) lays down that the preaching had for its objects both the good and the evil, the one for salvation and the other for damnation. But such an inference, while it may be reasoned out or imagined, none can gravely pretend to elicit from the words of the apostle as the revealed mind of the Spirit.

* This reminds one of J. Pious Mirandula before the Reformation, as cited by Huther: "Christus non veraciter et quantum ad realem praesentiam descendit ad inferos . . . sed quoad effectum." Hollaz sets against it the πορεία of Christ (ver. 22); but this no more proves it to be really personal than Paul's ἐλθὼν in Eph. 2: 17, indeed rather less.

But early or late, in this at least Luther and Calvin agree with Augustine (who was no less wavering and uncertain as to our text than themselves), that preaching the gospel for faith and repentance to spirits after death comes altogether too late, and is repugnant to the uniform tenor of scripture in its plainest, brightest, and most earnest appeals to the souls of men. It is a notion subversive of the first principles of truth, not to say of morality. Let me add that a fresh offer of salvation in the invisible world is not more contradictory to and contradicted by the awful warnings to unbelievers which accompany the gospel than destructive of one of the main lessons in the passage before us. For Peter is refuting the fond security of such as taunt the paucity of the household of faith in comparison with the multitudes of those who slighted the Christians and the suffering Christ (their foundation before GOD): and this by the instance of the days of Noah, when the world perished save the few who found a divinely given and ordered shelter in the ark.

It would scarcely be for edification to pursue minutely the history of opinion to our own days, involving too as it would a frequent repetition of hardly anything more than old views and arguments under new names. Dr. J. Brown's exposition is perhaps the lengthiest contribution among moderns on the Epistle, and therefore it may seem to claim examination; but there is extremely little to notice in the way of fresh thought, and his own judgment of the passage seems to my mind defective or wrong in various ways.

Commenting on the Authorised Version he says (168, 169), "the words flesh and spirit are plainly opposed to one another. The prepositions in and by are not in the original. The opposed words [σαρκὶ — πνεύματι] are in the same case; they stand plainly in the same relation respectively to the words rendered 'put to death' and 'quickened' [Θανατωθεὶς, ζωοποιηθεὶς], and that relation should have been expressed in English by the same particle. If you give the rendering, 'put to death in the flesh,' you must give the corresponding rendering, 'quickened in the spirit,' which would bring out the sense, either 'quickened in His human spirit or soul,' a statement to which it is difficult to attach a distinct meaning; for the soul is not mortal. Christ's spirit did not die, and to continue alive is not the meaning of the original word; or 'quickened in His divine nature,' a statement obviously absurd and false, as implying that He who is the life, the living One, can be quickened, either in the sense of restored from a state of death, or endowed with a larger measure of vitality. On the other hand, if you adopt the rendering of our translators in the second clause, 'quickened by the Spirit,' then you must render in accordance with it the first clause, 'put to death by the flesh.' If by the Spirit you understand the divine nature of our Lord, by the flesh you must understand the human nature, which makes the expression an absurdity. On the other hand, if you understand by the Spirit the Holy Ghost, then by flesh you must understand 'mankind,' put to death by men, but restored to life by GOD the Spirit. This interpretation, though giving a consistent and true sense, the sense so forcibly expressed in Peter's words to the Jews, 'whom ye crucified; whom GOD raised from the dead,' is forbidden by the usage of the language. Then there can be no doubt that there does appear something very material in introducing our Lord in what is plainly a result of His atoning sufferings, as having in the Spirit, by which He was quickened after He had been put to death, gone many centuries before, in the antediluvian age, to preach to an ungodly world; and there is just as little doubt that the only meaning that the words will bear, without violence being done them, is that it was when He had been put to death in the flesh, and quickened in the Spirit or by the Spirit, whatever that may mean, He went and preached; and that 'the spirits,' whoever they be, were 'in prison,' whatever that may mean, when He preached to them."

This is no unfair specimen of what one cannot but characterise as daubing with untempered mortar. It is but a balancing of probabilities or rather of improbabilities, and recalls the passage of Isaiah, who tells us of the judicial sleep poured out on Israel; so that the whole vision became to them like the words of a sealed book. For this, if delivered to the learned man with the request to read it, elicits the reply, I cannot, for it is sealed; or, if delivered with the same request to the unlearned, he excuses himself as unable because of the want of learning.

It is confessed by Dr. J. B. that the sense brought out is self-consistent and not incompatible with any of the facts or doctrines of revelation. He only complains of the mode of interpretation as liable to objections. I shall show, however, that, far from being really insurmountable, every one of these objections is destitute of weight.

Flesh and spirit are opposed; though in the same case it does not follow that they must have the same preposition supplied in English. This would not be necessary if the same Greek preposition (which is far stronger or more precise) accompanied each of the two opposed terms. Thus in Romans 4: 25 two clauses stand in antithesis with one another, whence many have been allured to argue, like our author here, for a necessarily similar force of διὰ with each accusative. But this is an error. For the former clause means that our Lord Jesus was delivered because of our offences; the second, that He was raised again on account of the justifying of us (that is, in order to it); for justifying cannot be severed from faith, as the very next verse proves (Rom. 5: 1). Indeed the notion of justification before faith would introduce nothing but confusion and false doctrine, not to speak of the evil in practice which naturally results. The Authorised Version however has not rendered ill in giving "for" with both clauses, the English preposition "for" being as flexible as the corresponding Greek one.

Similarly here there is no necessity to vary the English by supplying in the flesh and by the Spirit; but, if there were, it was open to the translators to have done so. The relation of the dative is not so contracted or consequently so uniform as to demand the exactly same form of representing it. Besides we have to take into account the idiom of the English tongue, which does not by any means conform always to the Greek. The reader is already aware that "in" or "in respect of" may be given equally in both the clauses; but the translators might legitimately enough have given "in" and "by" as they have done. Hence the reasoning which develops the objection is invalid. "In His human spirit," if it were ever so proper in itself, would require the article τῳ (as in the common text). But as the best MSS. expunge it, so the sense resulting from its presence would have been really an insurmountable objection, for it is impossible to apply "quicken" to the spirit of Christ any more than to His divine nature. But, as we have seen, if one translates the latter term "by the Spirit," it is not correct to assume that we must translate the former "by the flesh." The alleged necessity is just the mistake which falsifies the reasoning of many interpreters, and has mystified more readers.

Strictness of parallelism is to my mind more common in the limited scope of human thought than in the word of GOD, which habitually (I believe), while thus comparing or contrasting, gives a further and varying side of truth in the fulness of divine wisdom. Hence the mere technicality of the schools is sure to err in interpreting scripture. It does not follow therefore, that, when we see two datives balanced against each other, they must both be expressions of element, agency, or instrument, though it may be wise to avoid a greater precision in the rendering than the inspired original itself carries. At the same time such a difference is not advocated in the present instance; but, as the authorised translators rightly enough elsewhere represent διὰ twice by an English "for," so "in" or "in respect of" will be found to suit both here. Consequently there is no such difficulty connected with the version or with the interpretation already given as to weaken it; still less, as some easily frightened have supposed, to convince us that it is untenable. Nor does it become the believer to hesitate because the plain meaning of scripture seems to favour a view opposed to his prejudice, though he would do well to examine closely what is really at issue with known truth. For "no lie is of the truth": all that is true must be consistent. Only we must beware of confounding our limited apprehensions with the truth itself in all its breadth and depth.

But let us follow the reasoning a little more. If we hold the rendering "in" on both sides, there can be no doubt that "put to death" in flesh yields a simple and excellent sense. But what of "quickened in the Spirit"? Is not this equally good, and as clear as the other? Strange to say, the true and plain antithesis seems to have quite escaped Dr. B., who allows us only the alternatives of "in His spirit" (which would be quite wrong, as we have often shown), or "in His divine nature," which is an impossible version, and, if possible, obviously absurd and false, as is admitted. But why not "in the Spirit" as presenting the manner of Christ's resurrection, characterised by the Spirit in contrast with the violent close of His life in flesh, in both cases the article being excluded by presenting each as a question of principle rather than of fact? On the other hand, "put to death by the flesh" is intolerable, either as the human nature of our Lord or as mankind. But there is no need to understand either if we take "by the Spirit" to mean the Holy Ghost, which to my mind is assuredly the truth; only presented in character rather than as an objective personal agent, which is quite common in Greek, though not so easily expressed in our tongue or caught by the English reader.

Nor can I for one see anything unnatural, but rather great force and beauty, in pointing out that it was in virtue of the Spirit who thus wrought in His resurrection that Christ preached by Noah in the antediluvian world. For it was of the utmost importance for the Jews, who ever craved the visible in their thoughts of the Messiah and His kingdom, to learn that it is now, as of old, a question of a testimony in the Spirit to be believed or slighted, and surely to be followed by judgment; as then, so now. Hence, too, the preference to the Spirit's mind of presenting their past example as "spirits in prison" rather than as men living in flesh; which, however, He does also involve in their antecedent moral condition in the world when "once" or heretofore disobedient.

Such an allusion here to Genesis 6: 3 appears to a reflecting mind most apt and impressive, identifying Christ with Jehovah, as is often done in Peter's Epistles. It was natural in writing to Christians of the circumcision, and comforting them, in their sufferings and the contempt of their testimony, by the evidence given to the substantial sameness of its reception from the flood till the Lord returns in glory. This passage has in no way for its immediate object a description of the results of the Lord's atoning sufferings, bright as is the witness given to them, but rather to console the saints in their sufferings, apt to repine as Jews might at their trials ever since they believed in the Lord Jesus. The apostle explains to them the government of GOD in what He permits of sorrow to His own. Faithfulness does bring present blessing; but even if suffering come for righteousness' sake, is not the saint now blessed? It is better, if GOD will it so, to suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing; because Christ also once suffered for sins, Just for unjust, that He might bring us to GOD

Such is the way His suffering for our sins is introduced, not a harsh interpolation (of His having, in the Spirit that raised Him, preached of old to the impenitent antediluvians) put into a statement of His atonement, but undeniable encouragement to downcast saints to go on suffering for righteousness, since it was His once for all to suffer for sins. With this, not they, but He only, had to do; and it is quite done — a work despised by sneering Jews, who felt not their sins nor their need of grace like His. But if put to death in flesh, He was quickened in the Spirit, in whose power* He had already gone and preached to the imprisoned spirits, once disobedient when the long-suffering of GOD waited out in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is eight, souls were saved through water, which was the destroying element.

* We have already seen that, if it were meant that Christ went down after death and as a disembodied spirit preached to the spirits in hades, the language is singularly ill-adapted to bear such a meaning. Observe that, if so, it must have been after He was quickened in Spirit (that is, raised, as well as put to death). The truth is however, that it is expressly said to be not personal, but ἐν ῳ, in which Spirit.

They must not wonder then, if few were saved now; for this has ever been a favourite taunt of unbelief, as an absent Messiah who left His own in suffering would be to an incredulous Jew. Thus far the analogy with the times before and at the deluge is plain. So is the use of the allusion that follows; for as men were then waited on in long-suffering, it is not otherwise now; and as they are kept for a worse judgment, so will it be with such as despise the gospel. On the other hand, baptism is to the believer the sign of salvation by the death and resurrection of Christ; for as He died atoningly, so we, when baptised, are buried with Him in those waters of death; and as He rose, we through His resurrection have what a good conscience asks for, even acceptance before GOD by His work who is gone into heaven and is on GOD'S right hand, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him. This, though invisible, is far beyond the throne of David on earth and the subjection of Gentile foes, as the Jews coveted.

What is Dr. B.'s explanation? Truly the notable one, that "a consequence of our Lord's penal, vicarious, expiatory suffering, was that He (!) became spiritually alive (!!) and powerful in a sense, and to a degree, in which He was not previously; and in which, but for these sufferings, He never could have become — full of life to be communicated to dead souls, mighty to save. He was there spiritually quickened." No wonder that Dr. B. has few to follow him in his view, though it is no worse than most others. But to be "quickened" is not to be a "quickening Spirit," though both be true of our Lord. Neither does John 5: 26 speak of the Lord in resurrection but as a man here below, the Servant of His Father's glory; nor does Matthew 28: 18 speak of either quickened or quickening, but only as Son of man invested with authority in heaven and on earth. And if this be violent as to Christ, not less so is the notion that by "the spirits in prison" are meant "spiritually captive men." A strange phrase indeed, as the author allows; stranger still if possible, though Dr. B. sees nothing perplexing in the statement, "that they were aforetime disobedient in the days of Noah"; as if it meant that Christ preached to spiritually captive men who were hard to be convinced in former times, especially in Noah's day. But this is to pervert, not to expound.

If Dr. B. had been a scholar and had examined the passage, he must have seen that the absence of the article before ἀπειθήσασι arises from the disobedience being viewed as the ground why the spirits were in prison. There is no hint of an aggregate, some part of which had been disobedient in former times. In short, the view is mistaken altogether; for, instead of employing "spirits in prison" as a phrase characteristic of men in all ages, Peter speaks there of a special class disembodied and in custody or prison, because they had been once on a time disobedient in the days of Noah: not a word about their being turned to the wisdom of the just and delivered after Christ's resurrection. These steps of departure from the text emboldened Dr. B. to go farther still and contrast the multitudes that heard and knew the joyful sound with the few saved in Noah's day. "Still is He going and preaching to 'spirits in prison'; and though all have not obeyed, yet many already have obeyed, many are obeying, many more will yet obey." And this is a comment on 1 Peter 3: 19, 20! where one prime aim is to comfort the Christian Jews subject to the taunts of their enemies on their own fewness, as compared with the masses who reject the truth of the gospel. The saved are comparatively few alas! now as in Noah's day. There is analogy, not contrast. So the apostle teaches.

But this is not all. "This view of the subject has this additional advantage, that it preserves the connection of the passage both grammatical and logical." We have seen enough of the grammar: let us see as to the "logic." "The words of the apostle, thus explained, plainly bear on his great practical object. 'Be not afraid, be not ashamed of suffering in a good cause, in a right spirit.' No damage comes from well-doing, or from suffering in well-doing. Christ in suffering, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to GOD, suffered for well-doing." "For well-doing!" does the author say? Happily little logic suffices to test this view of the context; for the scripture here says, in the most pointed terms of contradiction, that Christ suffered once for sins, not for well-doing.

Dr. Bartle's book (The Scriptural Doctrine of Hades 3rd. ed., London, 1871.) may be briefly noticed so far as it alludes to our text, which he pronounces most extraordinary, because, after all that has been written by ancients and moderns, and notwithstanding the learning and erudition expended on it, the passage is still involved in much obscurity. He himself proposes a solution, which, he tells us, differs entirely from the expositions of any of those who have hitherto written on the subject. (Page 63.) Now one of the tests of a true or a false explanation is whether the light shines thereby or the darkness abides. If any scripture is still involved in obscurity, there is the strongest presumption that its meaning is as yet unknown.

Whether Dr. B.'s view be well founded remains to be shown. His denial that the paradise (to which the converted robber went with our Lord on the day of the crucifixion) is in heaven seems rather an unhappy beginning. (Page 67.) Dr. B. reasons that the robber spoke to Jesus as supreme GOD, that the words "with Me" are to be understood as referring exclusively to His divine character, and that therefore the meaning of the promise is, not that the spirit of the condemned malefactor was with the spirit of Christ in heaven, but that he was with Jesus only as the Omnipresent GOD, according to Psalm 139: 7-19! His frightful doctrine is, that, while the penitent thief quitted the earth in a forgiven state, and was therefore among the blessed, Christ, being a substitute after the cross as well as on it, had still to suffer in the other world that measure of punishment allotted by divine justice to sinful man. It denies the work finished by the offering up of His body. This is heterodoxy. It separates the natures of Christ no less than Christ and the robber in paradise. Touch His work or His person, and our best privileges are immediately shaken. In this Dr. B. seems to affect both fatally.

But, as to the passage itself, Dr. B. tells us that those who regard it as a statement of Christ's preaching by His Spirit in Noah seem to forget that He is represented to have effected it in His own person. (Page 90.) This, however, is not the fact. He is declared to have done it by or in Spirit; as the Spirit of Christ, which was in the prophets, is declared by the same apostle in the same Epistle to have testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

Further, it has been already shown that the use of the preposition (ἐν ῳ) is not immaterial, and that the anarthrous form (πν.) is perfectly correct. The quickening and the preaching, therefore, are not absolutely analogous, as he argues. It is not true that Christ is said by the apostle to have done anything whatever during His disembodied state. But, even if a personal action of Christ were here intended, it would seem most natural to place it after His resurrection, not during His disembodiment; for there can be no just doubt that "quickened by the Spirit" refers to resurrection. But Dr. B. himself owns that Christ preaching to the spirits in the prison of hades involves very grave difficulties, arising from its apparent inconsistency with numerous declarations of the word of GOD. He maintains from Luke 16 the impossibility of an alterable condition in the next world for the departed righteous or wicked; and so far he is quite right. A great gulf is fixed, and there is no passing it from either side.

What then does Dr. B. propose? An amended translation, "Because Christ also once suffered for sins, a Just for unjust persons, in order that He might bring us to God, being put to death indeed in the body, but enlivened in the Spirit, in which Spirit He also went and cried aloud in prison, among those spirits who formerly believed not," etc. (Page 89.) It is first to be observed that ζωοποιηθεὶς means not "enlivened," but "quickened," as has been already shown with precision.* Secondly, "cried aloud" is an impossible rendering of ἐκήρυξεν. The passage quoted from the Hecuba of Euripides (145) proves nothing of the sort. To invoke is not to "cry aloud" as a sufferer. In the very few classical instances where the word bears the peculiar meaning of invocation, κ. has an object which determines the sense, whereas here it is without one. But its New Testament meaning is to preach or publish; and the reason alleged for a variation here (that it is the only place in which it refers to one who was in a state of suffering) is a mere and unfounded assumption. There is no more real ground to deny an active subject here than anywhere else in the New Testament. It is not true that the apostle was in this clause concerned with the voluntary sufferings of Christ, any more than with the desire of the Saviour to be delivered from those sufferings; for this slights the value of the conjunction "also" (ἐν ῳ καὶ). The apostle states it as a distinct fact, and connects it with the Spirit's power by which He was quickened.

* Dr. B says quickened or enlivened because His spiritual personality or soul ceased to perform its functions through a body. (Page 104.) This, however, would also require the article τῳ πν., which, we know, is contrary to the best MSS.

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The attempt also to gather support from the supposed derivation of κηρύσσω from the Chaldaic proves rather the contrary, for Daniel 5: 29 in no way supports the notion of crying out in suffering.* Nor is it true that the word ἐκήρυξεν should be followed by an objective case, if the apostle had been desirous of impressing on our minds the definite notion of publishing the gospel; for if Mark 16: 15 expresses the gospel, Mark 1: 38 leaves it out, and yet who can doubt the meaning? So does Mark 3: 14, nay, even chapter 16: 20 — the very context to which Dr. B. appeals for the contrary. The rest of the New Testament would still more fully disprove the notion, but what we have referred to is surely enough.

Then again it is to corrupt scripture, not to translate it, if one represents Peter as saying that He "cried aloud in prison among those spirits who formerly believed not." It has been already pointed out in an earlier part of this essay that the apostle says nothing about preaching in prison, but that Christ by (or in the power of) the Spirit preached to the spirits that are there, which is a wholly different proposition. For this leaves it to be decided by the context, if not by other scriptures, whether the preaching was there, or only the persons preached to were because they heeded not the preaching, as indeed the next clause of the verse lets us know is the truth.

* The theory that "Christ" and "Jesus Christ" respectively distinguished between our Lord's suffering and glory (p. 199), is at once disproved by a simple reference to scripture, say, to Romans 8: 11; 2 Tim. 2: 8; Heb. 2: 9; Heb. 10: 10, etc.

Now it is obvious that the Greek does not intimate that Christ cried aloud (even if the word could bear this meaning, which would rather be ἔκραξεν) in prison; it tells us of the imprisoned spirits of those contemplated in Christ's κήρυγμα or rather κήρυξις by the Spirit. To bear the desired meaning ἐν φυλακῃ must have been put with κήρυξεν, instead of being entrenched in its present position apart, as it is most firmly. Further, it is equally an error to suppose that the original text can possibly mean "among the spirits," etc. Were the words ἐν φ. μετὰ τῶν πνευμάτων, κ.τ.λ., there would be something answering to what is set out in his English: as it is, there is not even a distant resemblance. Again, the Greek does not say "who formerly believed not "; for this would require the article, the absence of which indicates that their former disobedience in Noah's day was the ground, occasion, or circumstance antecedent to their being in prison.

Our readers will therefore gather that of all expositions Dr. B.'s is perhaps the least satisfactory, and of all translations, known to me, certainly the most inexact. Many have failed in one phrase or another; Dr. B., in all that is of consequence to the right understanding of the passage, though clear enough in rejecting most of the counter-interpretations. For (1) it is impossible to sustain that "the spirits in prison" mean the blessed on high; (2) it is contrary to the tenor of scripture to allow of a preaching to the lost in hell; (3) it is a paltry view that no more is meant than the Gentiles in bondage to idolatry till they heard the gospel; (4) the notion of purgatory being intended here is quite untenable and inconsistent. For it is not Romish doctrine to have Christ preaching to souls there (at least for prospective grace); it is to have masses now said and paid for on their behalf.

All who look into the passage must in fairness concede, that the singling out of the spirits of the antediluvians (who perished for their indifference to Noah, preacher of righteousness as he was), for Christ to preach to them in person after His death, is not only without the smallest support from general scripture teaching or any passage in particular, but wears every appearance of caprice, being both without moral motives and opposed to the most solemn considerations derivable from GOD'S word. On the view that Peter means Christ's preaching by the Spirit in Noah to the men of his day, one can readily understand that those who were about to be visited by an unexampled destruction might well have a special warning; and that all this should be turned by the apostle to the present or future profit of those who hear the gospel that is now preached. For Jews especially were disposed to slight anything short of open signs and displays of power. They little thought that, while not reigning as David's Son over Israel and their land, now too He in Spirit is preaching before He comes personally in judgment of the habitable earth. Indeed all who have despised His admonitions, and fallen in such solemn dealings, await what is still more awful at the close. For then is eternal judgment when the dead, small and great, stand before the throne and are judged according to their works by Him who, unseen and gone into heaven, is at GOD'S right hand, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to Him. Even now is He Himself ready to judge the quick and the dead.

There is another work* to be noticed before this treatise is brought to a close, because it seeks to yoke our text with the general bearing of the unholy scheme of universalism. Not that there is anything intrinsically which calls for a notice; but that the work bears witness to the prevalence of the infidel thought, now put forth without a blush by professing ministers of Christ, and spread far and wide by those regarded as respectable publishers. The usual guarantees of orthodoxy fast vanish away.

* The Kingdom of Christ: its ultimate, complete, and universal triumph over evil, in the subjection and reconciliation of all things to God. By Rev. A. R. SYMONDS, M.A., Wadham College, Oxford. London, 1873. Hamilton and Adams, etc.

"That even as to the saints, the intermediate state between death and the resurrection will be one of progression I firmly believe, and on that point I shall have something more to say in my next sermon. But what of those who die in utter ignorance of the truth as it is in Jesus or in conscious rejection of it? If ultimately all things are to be reconciled to GOD, if the kingdom of Christ is to eventuate in the restoration of all things, then it is evident in regard to those who are not saved from sin and brought to GOD in this life, there must be some provision for their rectification and restoration in an after state of existence. Let it be admitted that holy scripture does most clearly and distinctly teach that all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered up again into one in Christ, and that by Him everything is to be brought into subjection to GOD, that in His name everything is to bend and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of GOD the Father; let this be admitted, and I do not see how the inference can be escaped that, even though there were no specific revelation on the point, there must be some provision hereafter for the reconciliation and restoration of those who in this life have not been reconciled and restored." (Pages 135, 136.)

It need surprise none that in his next sermon Mr. S. has not one word to prove the alleged progression of saints in the intermediate state. "The life, then" (says he), "of the sainted dead, we may believe, is one of blessed hope and holy expectation; and if, as before said, it be one also of nearer communion with GOD and Christ, we may believe it to be a life of progress and development," etc. (Page 150.) But supposing we believe nothing of the sort without scripture, what then has he to say? Nothing. The idea of growth is altogether unwarranted by revelation, and contrary to every instinct of the believer, who weighs the force of what scripture does say on our sojourn here below as the place of growth, exercise, and testimony. We turn however to what is of even graver concern, the perversion of the scriptures, which speak of reconciling and restoring all things, to draw a similar conclusion as to the impenitent and unbelieving, in the teeth of the plainest and most solemn warnings of GOD. Every believer must feel the utter fallacy of such arguments.

Thus, on the one hand, Colossians 1 distinguishes between "you hath He reconciled" and reconciling "all things." But even so, they are only "the things on the earth and the things in the heavens"; not a word about the things infernal. The apostle does not speak of persons; they are nowhere before us in this reconciliation of "all things." It is a question of the universe, not of men: "all things" are contra-distinguished from the saints, who are already and expressly said to be "now reconciled," whereas the reconciliation of all things is of course future, "to reconcile" etc.

On the other hand, when the Spirit of GOD treats the subjection of every creature to the Lord, infernal beings are just as distinctly added to those heavenly and earthly (Phil. 2); because the point here is the compulsory bowing of every knee and the confession of every tongue. Reconciliation therefore is carefully avoided. For judgment is beyond question the means GOD the Father will use to enforce the honour of His Son on the unbelieving (John 5), as the gift of eternal life bows the heart of the believer now before His glory and His love.

Ephesians 1 quite confirms this evident and important truth. For we have there shown to us the mystery of GOD'S will, according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, for the administration of the fulness of the times, to gather up together (or, head up) all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth. Here we see that infernal things or beings are quite left out of this blessed gathering under His headship; and, secondly, that the saints, or the church, do not form a part of "all things," in heaven or earth, but are associated with Christ in His inheritance over them all. Compare not only verse 11 but also 22, and indeed scripture in general. It is the universe, distinguished from those who reign with Christ over it, which is meant by "all things."

Thus the awful revelation of the unending punishment of the ungodly and unbelieving remains intact and unqualified; and the mischievous and wicked folly is exposed of such as would distort the disclosure of the regeneration of creation, or "restitution of all things," into a spurious hope for the final recovery of the lost. Not a hint of such expectations appears in scripture. The alleged passages refer to the inheritance or to the judgment, not to the heirs or to salvation. To the deliverance of the groaning creation, of which Paul speaks in Romans 8, the prophets bear witness; not one, nor a single shred of either Testament, to the reconciliation and restoration of those who in this life have not been reconciled and restored. With this falls all possibility of such an inference legitimately.

But Mr. S. thinks that there is even a direct intimation in the passage before us, wherein St. Peter tells us how Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison. His short paraphrase however is quite wrong; and he only adds to the number of those he characterises as trying to make the text mean almost anything but what it does mean, if taken in the simple literality of its words. We utterly deny, for reasons already given, that it speaks of or means a preaching to spirits in another state of existence. A superficial glance might so construe it, not a careful or exact examination of what is said.

"Suffering death" (says Mr. S, p. 138) "as far as the flesh was concerned, His body being put to death upon the cross, but continuing to live in respect of His spirit, which did not die, but passed from the body on its dying, and descended into hell, that is, hades, the place of disembodied spirits, 'in which also,' says the apostle, that is, in His spirit, 'He went and preached to the spirits in prison."'

Now this paraphrase is manifestly and hopelessly inaccurate. "Continuing to live" is a false rendering of ζωοποιηθεὶς, which is the less excusable, as the Authorised Version in this respect gives the only correct translation. Again, "in respect of His Spirit" is ignorance or neglect of the true text, which has no article in the Greek; if "His Spirit" were meant, the idiom would require it. As it is, the Holy Spirit is intended, though this be rather as a characteristic state than drawing attention to the person who so wrought in power. Compare 2 Timothy 3: 16, where, as here, it is hard in our language to avoid the article; but it is "the Spirit" that is meant, certainly not "His spirit." Lastly, the interpretation of the clause is false; for as a whole it points to our Lord's resurrection, not to His spirit's passing from the body on His dying, to say nothing of foisting in here a descent into hell or hades, of which the passage says not a word, but "in which [Spirit] also" He went and preached to the spirits in prison. That is, Christ in Spirit went and preached to them. Not a word intimates that the disembodied spirit of Christ went there; not a word that He personally preached in the prison, disembodied or not; not a word that they, when preached to, were spirits in prison. There are of course precise phrases in the Greek tongue for expressing any of these ideas, which the paraphrase assumes. As they are not employed, the only fair and sound inference is that they were not meant; and that the paraphrase departs really from the letter and spirit of the words, which we are quite content to take as they are, refusing every sense save that which flows from their precise grammatical import.

Nor is it allowable to Mr. S. to cite the late Dean Alford for what these words mean; for he expressly declares that they do not mean "universal restitution" (Mr. S.'s hypothesis), any more than the Romanist dream of purgatory. "It is not purgatory, it is not universal restitution; but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of the divine justice: the cases where the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse which incurred it." Did the Dean realise his own thought? In good sooth he did not; for the real difficulty to speculating benevolence is not GOD'S visiting the antediluvian rejecters of Noah's preaching in the destruction of the deluge, but the everlasting punishment of all unbelievers. There is no darkening of divine justice in the former, any more than a ray of light cast on the latter in this passage. It is implied indeed, that, besides perishing by the deluge, their spirits are kept shut up for the day of judgment; but one can hardly imagine that this is the "blessed light" Dean A. cherished in his lively and poetical mind. It is certain at least that he explicitly denies that the words mean that universal restitution which Mr. S. would draw from them: what he himself inferred is left, purposely or not, in the utmost vagueness.

So it is apt to be where we have not consciously the known truth of GOD. The hint is even thrown out, of which Mr. S. does not fail to avail himself, consistently enough on the scheme of universalism; most inconsistently on Dean A.'s, if indeed he had anything definite before his mind. "And as we cannot say to what other cases this κήρυγμα may have applied, so it would be presumption in us to limit its occurrence or its efficacy. The reason of mentioning here these sinners, above other sinners, appears to be their connection with the type of baptism which follows. If so, who shall say that the blessed act was confined to them?" (Comm. in loco.) To faith the real presumption seems the fancy of an efficacy which the context disproves, and the hinting at an enlargement of its occurrence without the smallest evidence. Undoubtedly that the Spirit of Christ preached to those spirits in prison was a "blessed act." All we know of the result for those preached to is that they were "disobedient, and suffered its consequences in being kept" shut up (as Dean Alford says) "in the place of the departed awaiting the final judgment": a description which in no way suits the deceased saints, who are with Christ in paradise, and come not into judgment. One may boldly say that the "blessed act" Dean A. fancies, of our Lord's preaching in hades to the disembodied unbelievers of Noah's day, not only was not repeated to any other class, but has no warrant from scripture in the case reasoned on. It never once was a fact.

It is useless after these remarks to quote all the arguments of Mr. S. in which he enlarges for his own purpose the words thus rashly flung out by the late Dean of Canterbury. But the reader will learn how things grow worse and worse in this line from his conclusion (p. 139): "Yet it is these notable sinners who are especially mentioned as having been preached to by Christ on His descent into hades. If to these then surely to all, may we believe, was the announcement made," etc.

Nor is one disposed to give the least weight to the reasoning Mr. S. reproduces from Dean Plumptre's sermon. It is absurd to argue, as he and some of the fathers do, from Ephesians 4: 9, 10. Not a word connects the spirits of the departed with "the lower parts of the earth." Nor is it the reverence believers owe to GOD and His word to quit revelation for analogy and human reasons, whatever one may use for stopping the mouth of an infidel if we truthfully can.

Once committed to the uncertain guesses of the mind, how can one avoid being tossed as waves and carried about by every wind of teaching? "May we not be permitted to indulge the thought" (says Mr. S., p. 142) "that as the Lord Jesus in His spirit went, in the interval between His death and resurrection, and preached to the spirits in prison, so possibly this may form part of the blessed occupation of the saints in hades? They rest indeed, we are told, from their labours, so far as weariness is connected with them, and yet their works do follow them. May it not be that the work in which they delighted here, that of winning souls, shall follow them there? If, it has been well observed [by the aforesaid Dean], — if the future is to be the development and continuation of the present, if we are not to pass from a life of ever-varying relations with our fellow-men, each bringing with it opportunities for self-discipline and for serving GOD to an absolute isolation, may we not so get one step further and believe, as some did in the earliest ages of the Church, and as others have thought of late, that those whose joy it has been in life to be fellow-workers with Christ, in leading many to righteousness, may continue to be fellow-workers there, and so share the life of angels in their work of services as in their ministries of praise? The manifestations of GOD'S righteous judgment and of His changeless love may thus, using men and angels as His instruments, help to renew throughout His universe all who are capable of renewal! "

Thus sadly is it our lot to see, in these last days of a fallen but no longer slumbering Christendom, that the anile fables of early legend-mongers find ready acceptance among those who turn away their ears from the truth. The Holy Spirit has prepared us for these and all other aberrations. For as surely as the wise virgins have obeyed the midnight cry, "Behold, the bridegroom: come forth to meet him," the foolish are going hither and thither to buy that "unction from the Holy One"; the lack of which no religious zeal, no sentimental activity, disguises at last from consciences even unpurged, from hearts which have never found rest in Christ the Lord.

Little did the early fathers, little do the modern ritualists and rationalists, suspect that in these dreams of preaching in the unseen world to such as heard not in this world, and thus continuing the work of grace in the separate state, they are in principle reproducing the reveries of the heathen, who knew not GOD nor sought His word. Instead of this they fell a prey to human imagination, and pictured to themselves an occupation after death as akin as possible to the life which now is. The chief difference among such as profess the Lord's name is, that they conceive a continuance of Christian forms, instead of merely earthly habits and enjoyments.

As we wait for new heavens and a new earth may we be diligent to be found of Him in peace without spot and blameless, and account the long-suffering of our Lord salvation! Whether it be the Epistles of Peter or of Paul, the untaught and ill-established wrest them, as also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.

Since the foregoing was written, Dr. E. W. Bullinger's pamphlet (fifth edition revised, 1898) has appeared. He is not aware that its distinctive point was long ago presented by a former and respected Rector of Fethard, Mr. H. Woodward. "The conjecture then, which I propose without further preface, is that the imprisoned spirits spoken of in the nineteenth verse are fallen angels" (Essays, 186, second edition, 1836). He too reasons from Gen. 6: 2; Job 1 and 38; Heb. 1: 7, 14; 2 Peter 2 and Jude, with "seen of angels" in 1 Tim. 3: 16.

Dr. B. begins with the design and scope of the Epistle. The apostle has himself decided, and decided against Dr. B., that he wrote to Christian Jews only, though of course for the edifying of all the faithful. But he addressed "strangers of the dispersion," a category applicable not to Gentiles but solely to Israelites, in a very large part of Asia Minor, as indeed such was his province as apostle of the circumcision. Ch. 2: 10 does not include Gentiles, any more than do 1: 14 and 4: 3. When Paul, in Rom. 9, cites Hosea for the call of Gentiles, he cites Hosea 1, as Peter cites for his purpose Hosea 2. The other texts merely indicate how the Jews there had sunk to the low level of their Gentile neighbours practically. But it is agreed that trial and persecution had set in; nobody perhaps doubts this. The apostle was to strengthen his brethren; and so he does here.

Next, in p. 8 we come to the question, and first the fact that τῳ before πν. is rejected by the best critics, though read by perhaps all the editions before the A.V. of 1 Peter 3: 18. But in p. 9 "Holy Spirit" is repeatedly given as the sense. This is erroneous, for it would require the omitted article. The rendering of the A.V. is not so far wrong, though it is better to avoid "by" with "spirit" if we have "in" with "flesh." They are antithetical, and if we say "in respect to" we can say it of both. But it is not possible to justify the inference from the true text, "that though as regards His flesh Christ was put to death, yet as regards His Spirit He was quickened or made alive" (p. 9). It is as unsound philologically as in theology. In no way is it justifiable. Undoubtedly the second member refers to resurrection; but how can any legitimately draw "the body" from "His Spirit "? This is an error which the anarthrous construction repels; for πνεύματι without τῳ cannot mean "His Spirit." The true text points to the Spirit of GOD, as I have already shown, and Dr. B. can verify it in his own dictionary, in Bruder's Concordance, or in any good text of the Greek N.T.

Our tongue does not always admit of the Greek anarthrous expression. If it did, we might say, "Put to death indeed in flesh, but made alive in Spirit." But English requires for most ears "in [the] Spirit." It is a simple difference of idiom, and does not affect the sense intended. In respect of natural life here below (or flesh) He was put to death on the one hand, as on the other in respect of Spirit, or as we say the Spirit, He was quickened, when raised from the dead. Thus, though the A.V. varied the preposition needlessly, their version is right in substance, and Dr. B. is clearly wrong. He seems aware of mistake somewhere, though unable to discern how it came about; for he admits of course that "as regards His Spirit He was always alive," and therefore the quickening cannot apply to His Spirit; yet this is just what his argument does imply. But if the text really and only means "quickened in Spirit," i.e. GOD'S Spirit, the difficulty vanishes. For the characteristic phrase expresses the Spirit's action in quickening after Christ was put to death in flesh.

"Quickened" never means "always alive," any more than "His Spirit" can mean His body risen from the grave. Neither the text nor 1 Cor. 15: 45 sanctions such teaching (p. 10). In p. 11 it is remarkable how ἐν ῳ [in the power of which] is left out of what is called "the glory of the triumph" Christ immediately received when risen; "He went and preached to the in-prison spirits." The difference between ἐκήρυξεν (as here said absolutely) and εὐηγγελίσθη (4: 6) is justly stated; and it is as necessary for the true interpretation of those "spirits" as for the strange doctrine here taught. Notably too, though p. 18 puts together πορ. in verse 19 and the same word in verse 22, it was already said in p. 13 that the proclamation of it [His triumph] was so far-reaching that it extended "even to the in-prison spirits." But unless it were a local going to Tartarus, there was not "perfect correspondence." If he really holds that Christ risen went there in person, what comes of the intimation that it was in virtue of the same Spirit, that quickened Him when dead, He went and preached? Is it not language suited to convey a preaching not in bodily presence but in the Spirit? Can one be surprised that the pamphlet says so little about this visit?

The main peculiarity is next described (pp. 18-20). Were "the spirits" those of men who once lived and disobeyed the word? Or, as Dr. B. affirms, were they fallen angels? He argues on the absence of qualifying words, such as are in Heb. 12: 23. This again is singular misconception. For the imprisoned spirits are qualified "as heretofore disobedient," i.e. to the preaching in Noah's days. Men, not angels, are the objects of preaching, or the subjects of unbelieving disobedience. On the showing of the scripture cited, the sin alleged in Second Peter and Jude was a horrible rebellion against the divine demarcation between angels and mankind. Nor does Moses any more than the N.T. characterise the offending angels as disobedient to preaching. Jehovah's Spirit strove with man, but would not more than a hundred and twenty years; whereas angels are branded as having sinned and not kept their own first estate or principality, but left their proper habitation. Therefore were they dealt with exceptionally and consigned to Tartarus, while reserved for judgment of the great day, instead of being allowed freedom to tempt like the rest. "The demons also believe and shudder" (James 2: 19). They all knew and know their doom, they are not blinded like man.

Again, our Lord in Luke 24: 39, compared with 37 (and see Matt. 14: 26), explains "spirit." "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have," even when risen. He had a "spiritual body," and was not a mere "spirit," though a quickening spirit. Granted that angels are spirits, but so is man when disembodied, whether the Lord Himself before He rose (Matt. 27: 50; John 19: 30), saints (Acts 7: 59 ; Heb. 12: 23; Rev. 22: 6, as rightly read), or the unbelieving (l Peter 3: 19). Soul (ψυχὴ) is the "ego" or 'I," the seat of personal identity, and therefore predicable of men alive or dead, as in ver. 20, etc., for the former; or Rev. 6: 9; Rev. 20: 4, for the latter; while πνεῦμα expresses the spiritual capacity, inseparable from the soul, wherein is the working of the will. They compose the inner man, as the body is the outer.

Thus responsibility is, if we may so say, in the soul, about the spirit and the body. One may be a rebel against GOD by that spiritual capacity in disobedience of His word, while by it in faith the renewed man enjoys and serves GOD, as the body is the outward instrument, for obeying or disobeying Him openly.

Dr. B. (p. 20) confounds "the angel" with "the Spirit" in Acts 8: 26, 29, 39 (cf. Acts 12: 23 and Acts 13: 2), as he misinterprets "the seven Spirits" in Rev. 1: 4 and 4: 5, of angelic beings. Think of creatures, however exalted, placed between the Eternal and the Lord Jesus, and sending grace and peace to the saints! That the Holy Ghost should be presented, not in His unity as in the rest of the N.T., but in the divine perfections of His power in the great book of prophecy, as in Isa. 11, might be a difficulty to his mind; but piety ought to have preserved a believer from a statement so hazardous, unsound, and irreverent. In p. 18 (note) he even seems unwilling to allow that spirits of just ones made perfect were certainly those of men in the separate state, and to suggest the alternative of "their angels"! His view of Heb. 12: 22-24, as referring to the Heavenly host in contrast to 18-21 or Earthly things, is a manifest blunder; for the very first object is Mount Zion, which is assuredly not heavenly, though the most GOD-honoured site of earth. It is really a series of glory which rises from earth up to GOD, and then descends again. The divine purpose comprehends all things to be put under Christ, whether heavenly or earthly (Eph. 1; Col. 1)

Again, why did Dr. B., in giving his own version of vers. 18, 19 (as in p. 21), perpetuate the slipshod error of "which were disobedient" for the anarthrous ἀπειθήσασιν? For it expresses not the fact as such, but their disobedience causatively or as the reason for their being in prison.

Nevertheless Dr. B. strenuously rejects the evil and mischievous misuse which amiable men like the late Deans Alford and Plumptre made of our text. For in p. 24 he denounces "the new doctrine of probation for men after death, which is foreign to the word of GOD; which is repugnant to scripture-truth; which has no relation to the context; and, moreover, is utterly destitute of all logic," etc. Has he not himself missed capital parts of the contextual appeal? Their unbelieving brethren looked for a kingdom of power and glory on the earth if Messiah had really come. They taunted the believing Jews with their exposure to suffering. This Peter answers by Christ's necessary and blessed suffering for sins, which was His alone and but "once" atoningly, while we share those for righteousness and love. What did they care for His acting by the Spirit? They panted only for the "first dominion," and for all the nations to own it. Hence the importance of pointing to His testimony by the Spirit before the deluge, by which the disobedient perished, as at His appearing will those who despise His Spirit now. Did they reproach the Christian Jews with their fewness? Very much fewer were preserved in Noah's days.

As for Dr. Sanderson's little book on The Life of the Waiting Soul, it is a dark denial of the gospel. He believes neither in the real salvation of the saint, nor in the total ruin of the finally impenitent. This comes out in his opening address (on 1 Thess. 4: 13). From the first page of the second (p. 13), it seems, he does not like that a good man's soul should go straight to heaven, escaping the day of judgment.

Hear our Saviour's ruling in John 5: 24 (R.V.): "Verily, verily, I say to you, He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." Here is no ambiguity. It was too plain for many of old as for many now. Hence the fear of grace, which changed the true rendering into "condemnation" in the A.V. and some others, not in the Vulgate. It is not κατάκριμα however, but κρίσις. This noun, and the corresponding verb to "judge," the context requires as imperatively as philology.

The Lord throughout contrasts life (life eternal) with judgment. All for man turns on receiving or rejecting Himself. He that receives Him by faith has this wondrous life (for He is our life as believers), and comes not into judgment; which is for those who in unbelief reject Him and so must be judged by Him. He is Son of GOD, giving life to those that believe; Son of man to judge unbelievers. Hence He tells of a resurrection of life at His coming, and afterwards a resurrection of judgment, exactly as in Rev. 20; where we have the first resurrection for the blessed, and the judgment at the close for those whose names were not found written in the Lamb's book of life.

All shall give account to GOD (Rom. 14); all shall be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall receive according to the deeds of the body. But this is not judgment, save for those who, rejecting Christ (2 Cor. 5), die in their sins. Those who are Christ's are justified even now by faith. Unbelievers, who refuse Him and His redemption, must be judged; and they perish justly, for their works are evil. The day of judgment will be no contradiction of the believer's justification. The gospel declares it individually; the church witnesses it corporately; as the Lord will manifest it gloriously in that day. It is only unbelief which sets all in confusion. Take Heb. 9: 27, 28, as a clear corroboration of this on the ground of redemption, as John 5 on the ground of life eternal. "And as it is appointed to men once to die, and after this judgment; so Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time apart from sin to them that wait for Him unto salvation." Dr. S. sees only the natural man's portion; faith receives Christ's sacrifice and waits for salvation in contrast with judgment.

How incredulous in p. 16 is his comment on Luke 23: 43!* "Was Paradise, then, another name for heaven? It cannot be; our Lord did not go to heaven until the day of His ascension, forty-three days after His death." Has he never weighed 2 Cor. 12: 2-4? or Rev. 2: 7? The paradise of GOD is not only heavenly but its choicest part, as Adam's was of the earth. The Lord commends His spirit to the Father, whereas John 20: 17 speaks of His bodily presence there; just as 2 Cor. 5: 8 and Phil. 1 identify the believer's departure and being with Christ, or present with the Lord. Is He then not in heaven? His system is an idle and evil dream, at issue with the first principles of Christian truth.

* Even Dean Alford, who unhappily wrote too much to spread this dangerous delusion, says, "Surely the reply to the penitent thief implies a πορευθῆναι, and in that πορευθῆναι a joy and triumph sufficient to be the subject of a consoling promise at that terrible moment." Now the force of that blessed episode of the crucified robber's appeal of faith is, that the Saviour gave him to know on this side the grave, and at that moment, that he should not have to wait for His remembrance in His kingdom, but should have part with Himself that very day in paradise. By the gospel Christ has annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light. Thus has He thrown blessed light on what unbelief still ventures to call "the darkest enigma of divine justice." Surely the apostle Peter did not write to contradict the apostle Paul, nor claim to announce a posthumous gospel to solace the "disobedient." As the application of mercy to the antediluvian unbelievers is mere infatuation, yet more presumptuous is it to deduce or to fancy its occurrence or its efficacy for other reprobates without limit. This one cannot but regretfully call a snare of Satan.

In pp. 44, 45 he repeats the common error as to "spirit" in 1 Peter 3: 18, the sole ground of which lies in the τῳ which all true criticism explodes. The anarthrous πν., as every scholar who reflects must recognise, does not admit of His human "spirit," but only of the divine. So false too is the note in p. 72. In p. 73 it is equally untrue that "St. Peter now tells us what His spirit did there " — i.e. in paradise. Of a prison or custody he spoke, not of paradise. It is only Dr. S. who confounds them. It is not said that Christ's human spirit visited the imprisoned spirits, but that they are there as having been formerly disobedient when in the Spirit He went and preached by Noah.

Not a word of GOD countenances the notion of Christ's "disembodied soul" visiting them in their safe keeping, but that they are there in consequence of their guilt in disobeying His proclamation by the Spirit, and this in Noah's days. Nor is anything said of "the good news of the gospel"; it is expressly and only "proclaiming," as to the Ninevites, in contrast with dead saints in 1 Peter 4: 6 who were "evangelised" when living. Dr. S.'s "facts," p. 75, are entirely fictitious. His deduction is as illogical as his doctrine is unsound. Does it not strike him or anybody as beyond measure harsh that Jehovah's Spirit should strive with them only for 120 years when living, and that He should to these spirits only again preach in the unseen world?* Error constantly involves incongruities. Not a word of GOD implies "a chance, as we say, of salvation." The text before us spoke not of those who never heard, but of such as "disobeyed." Then follows the same wild speculation, as with the more childish of the fathers, on Christ's servants carrying on His gospel work in the unseen world (pp. 78, 79). This is worse still, and blinds men to GOD'S present call: "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6: 2).

* Well might the learned J. Elsner ask (Observ. Sacrae, in N.F. Libros, ii. 407), "Cur quaeso ostentasse sese diceretur spiritibus solis diluvianis, nec Diabolo potius, Judaeis mortuis, Judae proditori, et Herodi regi? Nec Tartarus sed Golgotha locus fuit istius ostentationis triumphalis, Paulo doctore (Col. 2: 14, 15), ut alia quae Theologia suppeditat taceam."

Dean Luckock's volume on The Intermediate State, though in a new and cheaper edition, need not detain us long. He belongs to the Oxford school of sacramental and ecclesiastical retrogradism. Prejudice betrays itself as early as the note to p. 3; he objects to "up" in 2 Cor. 12: 2, 4. Now what difference of sense would be in "rapt as far as third heaven," or caught up into paradise? Certainly snatch down would be quite false. The connection of paradise is not with heaven only, but its highest scene, "third heaven," from which he has no right to separate paradise as he does. John 11 encourages no such speculation as to Lazarus. Even Tennyson's verse was more reverent. Not to the imprisoned spirits did Christ's spirit pass in dying, but to the Father; and there the converted robber was the same day with Him. There He risen and ascended is now, as none questions; and with Him there are all the faithful on their departure to be present with the Lord. Dr. L. shares not the faith of the apostle, but the gloomy unbelief of the fathers and their modern imitators. Yet, though "very far better," it is not the best of all which awaits Christ's coming for the resurrection of life or glorious change.

From the chapters that follow, with heaps of mistakes flowing out of ignorance of Christian standing, church state, and even a full gospel, let us turn to chapter 14 on our text in 1 Peter 3. He admits that such weighty names as J. Pearson, Barrow, Hammond, Leighton, to which we may add Piscator and Beza, Scaliger, Ussher, etc, with Augustine and Bede of old, excluded from the passage any allusion to Christ's preaching after death. But he says that their view "is abandoned by modern interpreters as grammatically inconsistent with the plain meaning and construction of the language" (p. 138)! Now assuredly even the more learned of these moderns, as De Wette, Huther, Steiger, Weiss, Wiesinger, or their Anglo-Saxon followers, Drs. Alford and Christ. Wordsworth, possess no such oracular place. Happily he states what the grammatical inconsistency is. "There is no reference in the Greek, such as the A.V. implies, to the action of the Holy Spirit, but simply an antithesis between the lower and higher parts of Christ's human nature, between His flesh and His spirit; and this is brought out in the R.V." But the grammatical blunder is Dr. L.'s. For, to bear his view out, the Greek ought to have the article before σαρκὶ as well as πνεύματι. Next confessedly the correct text is anarthrous on both sides, the statement being characteristic. Nor does the R.V. decide anything against referring to the Holy Spirit, save perhaps by their small "s" We can certainly render more closely "in flesh" and perhaps may say "in Spirit." But even if English idiom prefers "in the Spirit," the true sense is not Christ's human spirit but "Spirit" i.e. of GOD, as already often shown.

Further, Dr. L has not read Bishop Middleton aright. For M. asks, "What would happen, supposing the article authentic? Not that the passage would speak of the Holy Spirit [as Dr. L. fancies]: the sense would be, in his Spirit, viz., the spirit or mind of Christ, as John 13: 21, and elsewhere." He does lay down the need of a preposition where anything is said to have been done or suffered by the Holy Spirit. But Dr. L ought to know that this is unfounded. In Rom. 8: 14 we read of being "led by the Spirit of GOD"; yet there is no article and no preposition. Neither A.V. nor R.V. differs, nor any others known to me; nor do MSS., critics, or commentators raise a doubt. In Gal. 3: 3 we read, "Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh," in A.V., or in R.V., "perfected in the flesh?" But both rightly regard it of the Holy Spirit; and yet there is no preposition any more than article. The Bishop's notion that it means no more than "spiritually" was a mere crotchet. The reader may compare to profit Gal. 5: 16, 18, and 25. The context only confirms how truly the Holy Spirit is in question. His own view of the true meaning here too is anything but satisfactory, "dead carnally, but alive spiritually." This is doubly false; for it is neither ζῶν nor πνευματικῶς. Indeed throughout his able treatise he fails as to the usage with prepositions, etc., and has misled many thereby. See how uncertain he is as to πν. in Rom. 8 and Gal. 5, and so are the Revisers occasionally as to spirit or Spirit, as any attentive reader can see.

Then in p. 139 what a failure to reflect the drift of the passage! "He was put to death in the flesh, but in that He died, the Just for the unjust, not because He deserved death, but simply for well-doing," etc. What! not a word about its unique character to GOD'S glory and for us! not a word about "once for sins"!

Dr. L. is absorbed in the mirage of His activity about the imprisoned spirits. "And if the men died impenitent, it cannot be but that He preached repentance and offered them salvation." Really the logic here is peculiar. Why cannot it but be? Does he not know that a large body of those holding the strange doctrine of Christ's preaching personally in hades regard it as announcing condemnation to the lost? Does he not know that the early fathers (as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian), the mediaeval School-men (not Thomas Aquinas), N. de Lyra, and some of the Reformers as Zwingle, held it to be His announcing salvation to the Old Testament saints? Luther, Peter Martyr, Bengel, etc., like the Romanists Suarez, Estius, and Bellarmine, adopted the imaginary idea that it speaks only of the unbelievers at the deluge believing at the last moment! Others, like Ambrose and Athanasius, Erasmus and Calvin, held that His preaching was to both saints and sinners! Logic has as little as scripture to do with these conflicting hypotheses. They all neglect the grammar, the context, and the analogy of the faith generally.

He is a bold man who denies an allusion to Genesis 6: 3 in the apostle's words, especially remembering 1 Peter 1: 11 and 2 Peter 2: 5, or excludes what Christ did in the Spirit's power of old, when His personal work is dwelt on. And why should not Peter use πορ. figuratively in 19 and literally in 22, when we find Paul using καθεύδωμεν for moral sleep in 1 Thess. 5: 6, and for the sleep of death in verse 10? Yea, the Lord Himself uses "dead" figuratively and literally in the same clause of Matt. 8: 22. The Holy Spirit looks for spiritual intelligence in a believer. "When thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light" (Luke 11: 34). What more inept than singling out of all the myriads of lost spirits the antediluvian sufferers through the flood for Christ's visit in either mercy or judgment? Especially as a plain design in the passage is to warn by the disobedient on the one hand, and by the few preserved in the ark on the other.

In his Second Epistle perishing in the flood, or in the fires of Sodom, is not all the doom of the ungodly: the Lord keeps for worse punishment in judgment-day. Does Peter contradict his First Epistle or its misinterpretation? It is utterly false that their doom seems out of proportion to their sins. The Lord Himself, the righteous Judge, warns that, as it was then, so it will again be in the days of the Son of man. Who and what are the men who dare in their self-sufficiency to sit in judgment on GOD'S ways and on Christ's word? "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

In short the superficial impression, leading into "strange doctrine" all who yield to it, neglects the full connection of the words and clauses, the scope of the apostle's argument here, and the instruction given as to them in Gen. 6 and in 2 Peter 2. Noah's days are cited as the most striking testimony in the O.T. for publicity, patient continuance, and striking results. For the disobedient mass not only perished in the flood, but their spirits in custody await judgment (2 Peter 2) as having despised that "preacher of righteousness." On the other hand stress is laid on the few who were preserved with Noah in the ark, not "by" water, but "through" that which destroyed all the rest. Hence it is not said (of these spirits), as by Dean A. and too many before and since, "which were once disobedient," but "disobedient as they once were." It is the moral reason why they are imprisoned, as all must be who refuse Christ's testimony by the Spirit now. "The very far-off allusion," to the fact that the Spirit of Christ (not His spirit as man) preached in Noah, is the most pertinent and powerful which the O.T. furnishes to warn against the perils of disobedience. For what did unbelievers care for One who only acts by the Spirit now, instead of reigning in visible glory and crushing opposition? By that Spirit Christ preached then; by the same Spirit He preaches now. And as so few, heeding Him, were brought safely through then, beware lest you be among the many who disobey and perish today. What a comfort to the despised little flock who suffer for His Name!

How sad and humbling that one should need to speak of another pernicious book greedily received today. Our Life after Death has reached its forty-sixth edition! Notwithstanding its scientific show of propositions, deductions, and objections considered, it is mere froth covering deadly error, not without impiety. Much is made of "hades" according to Greeks later Jews, and post-apostolic Christians, like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, etc., deeply infected by heathen and heterodox thought. No real heed is paid to the full light of our Lord and His apostles.

Thus the Hebrew of Ps. 16: 10 does not mean "in" but "to" sheol, nor imply a descent there, any more than Acts 2: 27 in the critical text (εἰς ᾳδην) of Alford, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Wordsworth, Westcott and Hort. So the R.V. rightly renders the Hebrew "Thou wilt not leave my soul to sheol," etc., though they wrongly translate the Greek as "in" instead of "unto" or "to." In dying our Lord commended His spirit into the hands of His Father, who is assuredly in heaven; and the converted robber, late as it might be, was that very day with Him in paradise (Luke 23). Now we have already seen that, instead of being in hades, paradise is in heaven, and, as before remarked, its brightest part. One apostle connects it with "third heaven" (2 Cor. 12: 3, 4); and our Lord by another says He will give to him that overcometh (when glorified) to eat of the tree of life there, certainly not in hades (Rev. 2: 7). In the O.T. hades, like death, life, and incorruption, were left indefinite; but these things and more are brought to light through the gospel. Hence in the last parable of Luke 16 our Lord represents the rich man, who had neither faith nor love, after death lifting up his eyes in hades, but believing Lazarus blessed with faithful Abraham. So great a gulf was fixed as to preclude crossing from either side. Hades was indeed "afar off"; and to be there is to be "in torments." Not a word is breathed that Lazarus was there; he was in Abraham's bosom. The parabolic converse in no way denies that the believing were comforted in heaven before resurrection, or that the self-seeking were in "this place of torment," though not yet in the lake of fire.

This error falsifies much scripture. Thus (p. 40) "it is quite certain that Christ did not go from the cross to heaven." This assumption he supports by John 20: 17; yet the text not only supposes the risen body but looks on to His ascension, and refutes the absurd "therefore" that the paradise in question was not heavenly.

We may pass over the misuse of 1 Peter 3: 18-20 as fully exposed in dealing with others, only noticing the inexcusable misconception which applies "the dead" in John 5: 25 to the departed; whereas it expresses the common condition of fallen mankind, dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2: 1, 5). "The hour coming, and now is" tells us what the Son of GOD is doing, ever since He came, by the gospel which quickens those that hear His voice. The blinding effect of preoccupation leads into the ditch. No Christian doubts the separate state, or what he calls ''intermediate life"; none ought to doubt that the lost soul is at once tormented before the judgment, and that one saved when absent from the body is present with the Lord, which is assuredly in heaven, and not hades. Yet the resurrection of the righteous is not come, still less that of the unjust.

The reference to Rev. 6: 9 is unintelligent; for the reference to "the altar" is simply to indicate that in their martyrdom they offered up their souls for GOD'S word and their testimony. In the very different verse 8 we hear of hades, not in verse 9. Saints await the vindication and rest of "that day," like others to suffer after them, as the Apocalypse shows elsewhere also. Intermediate "state," not "life," would be correct language.

The remarks in pp 51-54 on 2 Cor. 5: 1-8 and Phil. 1: 23, 24 are an evasion, not an exposition, of the truth. The resurrection of the body is glorious for the Lord, and for His own at His coming; but to deny that saints on departure go to Christ in heaven, to imagine hades instead, is to contradict the scriptures before us. Not less unfounded is the reasoning on Heb. 12: 22, 23. A "perfecting" in the intermediate state is without GOD'S word. Hades is not used in any of these texts: 2 Cor. 12: 2 expressly mentions the "third heaven," in absolute contradiction of that hypothesis on the author's showing (p. 58).

From p. 100 is an advance into ever-deepening error. It is not universalism, but annihilation for the worst, and conditional immortality for any; it is not Romish purgatory, but one of the sceptical order for many who died in their sins, to whom is vainly promised salvation in hades. Did the Lord hold out any such hope in His parable? Did He not teach its impossibility? But the mind of Christ we have not in this book; nothing but perverted scripture and self- confident argument. What can one think of a man who could apply such passages as Heb. 6: 1; Rom. 2: 7; Eph 4: 13; Phil. 1: 6; Phil. 3: 12, etc., to progress and perfecting after death? For most of the race the "due time" of 1 Tim. 2: 6 must be the intermediate life!

What is it to deduce from ἀπολέσαι (Matt. 10: 28) "cessation of being"? Was he so ignorant as not to know that a form of the word, rather stronger, is applied to the lost (ἀπολωλότα) sheep of the house of Israel in verse 6 of the same chapter? For the perfect participle implies the present result of a past act, wholly incompatible with extinction of being. They were living men when said to be "lost sheep." Annihilation is a falsehood of Buddhism, and a resource of incredulity, but a lie of the enemy, and unknown to scripture: even science repudiates its folly. The Lord here, as in Matt. 25, teaches "punishment everlasting," and more solemnly still, if possible, in Mark 9: 42-49.

But the book is more guilty yet. What does this rash man allow himself to say? "However hideously the thought misrepresents GOD, by making Him more cruel and remorseless than the vilest monster ever pictured by perverted imagination . . . this barbarous dogma of eternal torment is the only one we can consistently adopt if we start with the assumption that man is naturally immortal" (p. 140). Is he not as real a blasphemer as the scoffing T. Paine? He believes in prayers for the dead (pp. 179-188) no less than the darkest Romanist. These are necessary consequences of his wicked fable. If the Bible be thus twisted, the Litany and Occasional Prayers do not escape.

The GOD who gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, is "an unsympathetic Exactor," in too evil eyes, if His wrath abides on him who disbelieves! GOD is not "fair," if He gives not an opportunity after death — the GOD who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins! Is it not a horror that one claiming to be a minister of the gospel should be its unblushing reviler? Alas! in these days it is a growing evil of which scripture has fully warned (2 Tim. 4: 3, 4; 2 Peter 2: 1, 2).

From an hypothesis, weird and murky in itself, alien from the assured bearing of revelation, barren of glory to GOD or of profit to man, fruitful only in encouraging spurious hopes, and in undermining GOD'S incalculably grave warning against present insubjection to Himself and His word, what a blessed contrast we have in that which scripture does tell us unmistakably of Christ's closing scenes here below up to His resurrection! Four detailed accounts have been furnished by the Holy Spirit, besides all-important additions in the Acts and the Apostolic Epistles. The first Gospel tells us of those hours on the cross of supernatural darkness, when the rejected Messiah expresses, according to the prediction of Ps. 22, His sense of being abandoned by His GOD; and well we know why! It was for our sins. GOD made Him to be sin for us, as the apostle expounds it. And this the second Gospel presents from its picture of the righteous Servant completing His work of obedience even unto death, and that, death of the cross. The third Gospel, which brings into relief the perfect Man, the Son of Man yet withal Son of GOD, in all His human affections and sympathies but in absolute devotedness to GOD'S glory, lets us know that with a loud voice He said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit," and expired. The fourth Gospel is equally true to the Spirit's purpose in it of setting out the Eternal Word and Son become flesh, who of His own authority yet in obedience (John 10: 18) could give up His spirit (an expression never used of another, and possible only to Him), after saying in His consciousness of Deity, "It is finished."

The environment and consequences were no less worthy and of inestimable value. For what meant the rending of the veil recorded by the three Synoptics, but that as GOD had come down to man in love, so now believing man can draw near to GOD in righteousness? If the first Gospel mentions the earth shaken, and the rocks rent, and the tombs opened, it takes care to add that after Christ's resurrection many bodies of the saints that slept were raised, left the tombs, entered into the holy city, and appeared to many: a bright testimony to the victory after His atoning death, whereby the devil's might was annulled, and He Himself has the keys of death and of hades.

But not a whisper is insinuated here or elsewhere in all four Gospels of a visit (whether when disembodied, or when risen, for they differ widely) to hades or Tartarus (where believers could not be), to preach to unbelievers a message as unmeet for them then and there as the supposition of their repentance at the last moment is a baseless fable, irreconcilable with all that the text conveys. 1 Cor. 15 again expressly announces the gospel, but without a shadow of this pseudo-evangel; so it is with Eph. 4 and Phil. 3. The saving grace of GOD appeared here to all that sinned (Titus 2). Hades knows "being in torments," not the gospel entering there to save those who paid no heed to GOD'S word here. It is a "place of torment" for the wicked dead, though not the lake of fire; and there is a great gulf fixed between it and the blessed by faith in Abraham's bosom, which none from either side can pass. So our Lord has revealed. Can words more evidently and conclusively refute these unholy speculations?

INDEX OF AUTHORS NAMED

Alford, Dean,

Hollaz,

Ambrose,

Anastasius,

Aquinas, Thomas,

Athanasius,

Augustine,

Jerome,

Barrow,

Bartle, Dr.,

Bede,

Bellarmine, Cardinal,

Bengel,

Beza,

Brown, Dr. J.,

Browne, Dr. E. H.,

Bullinger, Dr. E. W.,

Calvin,

Camerarius, Joachim,

Chambers, Rev. A.,

Chrysostom,

Clement of Alexandria,

Clement of Rome,

Cyril of Alexandria,

De Wette,

Durand,

Erasmus,

Estius,

Elsner, J.,

Francowitz (Flacius Illyricus),

Gregory of Nazianzus,

Gregory of Nyssa,

Grotius,

Hall,

Hammond,

Hermas,

Hippolytus,

Horsley, Bp.,

Huther,

Irenaeus,

Jebb, Bp.,

Justin Martyr,

Leighton, Abp.,

Luckock, Dean,

Luther,

Massuet,

Middleton, Bp.,

Origen,

Pearson, Bp.,

Peter Martyr,

Piscator,

Plumptre, Dean,

Sanderson, Dr.,

Scaliger

Schöttgen,

Steiger,

Suarez,

Sylburg,

Symonds, Dr. A. R.,

Tennyson,

Tertullian,

Thirlby,

Ussher,

Weiss,

Wiesinger,

Wolzogenius,

Woodward, H.,

Wordsworth, Bp. Chr.,

Zwingle.

'The prize of our high calling'

A review by W. Kelly of: 'The prize of our high calling' by J. Sladen:

Such is the title of a tract in defence of the late R. Govett's endeavour to prove that many who receive life eternal fail to reign with Christ, and are kept in Hades all the thousand years of the kingdom, because they were not immersed and rose not up to the requisite mark of good works. "It is of great importance," says the author in his opening sentence, "to distinguish between (1) eternal life as the gift; and (2) the prize as a reward according to works."

What saith the scripture? Does not the Lord identify what this theory distinguishes? Take Luke 18: 29, 30: "Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left home, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time and in the age to come life everlasting." Do not both coalesce here? Only the Gospel of John among the Four treats of eternal life as a present gift of grace, the special known and enjoyed privilege of him who receives and follows the rejected Christ. So in Matt. 18 to "enter into life" is when saints inherit the kingdom; which surely overthrows the alleged distinction.

The alternative again is not a punitive or purgatorial Hades for so many years, but "to be cast into everlasting fire." Scripture nowhere anticipates for believers such a lot as Mr. G. imagined. The sheep on the King's right hand, or saved of all the nations at the end of the age (Matt. 25: 31-46), were very defective in knowledge, but practically honoured the King in His messengers. Those who will not are consigned to everlasting punishment, not to temporary suffering. So in Mark 9: 42-50 it is either entering into the kingdom at whatever cost, or to be cast into hell-fire. There is no middle position between the kingdom and irretrievable ruin. Scripture nowhere speaks of crownless kings. The foolish virgins without oil in their vessels were but empty professors, who cry too late, Lord, Lord, open to us, whom He answers in the solemn words, "Verily I say unto you I know you not." Without doubt the Lord knows those that are His (2 Tim. 2: 19). These virgins were not His, save externally and therefore for responsibility and judgment, not for life.

It is in John's Gospel we hear Christ opening the Christian privilege of present known life eternal, far beyond the hope of the kingdom which was revealed in the O.T. and enjoyed by all saints. What lack of spiritual intelligence to treat the kingdom as the grand prize and life in the Son as the common portion, even of the unfaithful to be in Hades while the rest reign with Christ for the thousand years! Not so does the Lord anywhere speak. In John 5: 19-28 He lays down that one of two things awaits men now that He the Eternal is the Rejected here: life everlasting as a present possession, of which no O.T. saint ever thought; or judgment executed by Him as Son of man. To hear the voice of the Son of God made the dead even now to live of His life; to despise and reject Him as but man was to be left in death for dread and sure judgment. For there are two resurrections of wholly distinct character: one of life for those who have life already for their souls in Him, and do good according to that new nature, as none else do; another and later at the close of the kingdom when they that have done evil according to their sinful nature come forth for inevitable and endless judgment. But not the least hint is here, or in Rev. 20 where the prophetic vision of both is given, of a class who had life eternal raised to be judged according to their works, and yet to enjoy a blissful eternity in God's presence, after being in Hades for a thousand years as the penalty of non- immersion and a careless walk. The dead raised in the resurrection of judgment are cast into the lake of fire.

Indeed an O.T. saint knew better than this strange dream. It is due to the blind unbelief of Christendom which talks of universal judgment for sinner and saint, though Mr. G. cleared himself in part from that error. But the psalmist knew better, saying (Psalm 143: 2), "Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." Were God to enter into judgment even of His servant, there could be no justification for him; for judgment must deal inflexibly with sins. And what servant of His has not sinned since his confession of the Saviour? No, salvation is by grace through faith, but impossible on the ground of judgment according to works, which is reserved for those who refused the Lord and rejected His "so great salvation." Only of the wicked Rev. 20: 11-15 speaks. "The dead were judged out of the things written in the books according to their works." With this condemnation of each and all the book of life agrees. For therein was the record of the objects of saving grace. "And if any one was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire." Not a word is here found of one written in that book. The books condemned them; the book of life had no such names written for grace.

Where then is there room for the distinction here thought of great importance? Where the intimation that any possessed of eternal life miss the prize of our high calling? Rom. 11: 6 does not contradict Rom. 2. God will render to each according to his works: to those who, in patient continuance of good works, seek for glory and honour and incorruption, life eternal (that is, in God's kingdom as well as for all eternity too in God's grace: so little is the distinction found in scripture); but to those that are contentious and are disobedient to the truth, wrath and indignation [shall be], etc. But why set this against "grace"? For grace alone gave a new nature through faith of Christ, and works meanwhile in obedience and good fruit, so as to inherit life eternal for the body in the day of glory. Error dislocates the truth, puts one scripture into collision with another, and thus unwittingly makes a chaos.

No Christian doubts that 1 Cor. 9: 25 tells us of an incorruptible crown as the prize. But the "disapproved" one at Christ's judgment-seat here spoken of is a worthless professor, and not a child of God. The apostle feared for some of the Corinthians in the church. Some were fleshly and party-spirited, making contentious badges, not merely of Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, but of Christ. They were morally loose, and so worldly-minded as to sue their brethren at law-courts. They sought ease and honour among men, and made light of heathen temples and sacrifices. Levity and shame had clouded even the Lord's table in their midst, and gross vanity their misuse of spiritual gifts. Nay some questioned (not the soul's immortality, but) the resurrection of the dead. Who can wonder that the apostle was deeply concerned? Yet in his delicate consideration he applies the danger to his own case (compare 1 Cor. 4: 6); as if he said, Supposing I were to walk without conscience and self-judgment before God, what must be the end of it? "I therefore thus run, as not uncertainly; so I combat, as not beating the air [as many there were doing]. But I buffet my body and lead it captive [his was no easy-going walk]; lest having preached to others I should be myself rejected."

The preaching might be zealous, powerful, and blessed; but if the preacher indulged his lusts instead of mortifying them, God is not mocked, and he himself must be "reprobate." The word which is softened down to "disapproved" is never used in the N.T. in any sense but the worst. If said of "land" (Heb. 6), it means "worthless," bearing thorns and briars, but no acceptable fruit. So it is employed in 2 Cor. 13: 5, 6, 7, never for what is good though failing. Lack of perception that the apostle had no real fear as to himself, but was transferring the case to himself to make it all the stronger if he were to walk so wickedly, misled not a few to imagine that he meant works rejected but the preacher saved. It is precisely the contrary here. The preaching might be all right, but the preacher's life was offensive to God, and himself therefore rejected or as the A.V. says, "a castaway," which is quite sound, though it is a pity to multiply needlessly the rendering of the Greek word.

As to 2 Cor. 5: 10, the true force is that "we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ." It is not the same as the "we all" in 2 Cor. 3: 18. A different form distinguishes them. In the latter "we all" means all and only Christians; in the former it is so framed as to take in not only all saints but all sinners too. Hence it does not say "judged," but "manifested." For the believer does not come into judgment, as the Lord ruled in John 5: 24. We shall be fully manifested and give account and receive accordingly. But how will it be with the ungodly? Their manifestation must be "judgment;" for they believed not on Christ, and went on in unremoved sins till death. The believer did repent and believe the gospel, and was justified by faith. Nor will God reverse but stand to it; for "it is God that justifieth"; whereas His wrath abides on him who disowns the Son of God. And is not this truly righteous, however awful? The manifestation is therefore at different times, of distinct character, and with opposite results for those manifested. But it remains that we, the whole of us, shall be manifested, that each may receive the things in (or, through) the body according to those he did whether good or evil. Nothing more sweeping or precise; not a word to countenance failing believers shut out of the Kingdom, and judged with the wicked at the end according to their works.

It is ever wholesome and cheering to hear our Lord say, "I am coming quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown" (Rev. 3: 11). But this is far from implying that there will be crownless kings in Hades; and though we shall share the authority He will give us over the nations with Him who shall shepherd them with iron sceptre, we shall be associated with Him who is the Morning Star which is far higher and better. This is before He dawns on the world as Sun of righteousness in both judgment and healing (Rev. 2: 26- 28; Mal. 4: 2).

Christendom seeks to reign now, a heartless reign hollow and faithless. This, with error of all sorts, is what has been "garnered" during the centuries of insubjection to the word and Spirit of God. The only true place of the bride is to suffer here and now where He suffered to the utmost, awaiting the day when we shall be glorified on high and reign together with Him. Some of the Corinthians in their light-heartedness forgot the truth, and as the apostle said "reigned without us." But with his large heart he added, "I would that ye did reign [for as yet it was a delusion and a wrong to Christ], that we also might reign with you." He was far from menacing them with being kept away in Hades, though he did not hide the apostolic path of present reproach and shame for Christ's sake in which so few are ambitious to be their successors. They prefer to be enthroned as bishops and archbishops, patriarchs or popes, from which earthly glory the apostles were wholly apart. Nor are the so-called Free Churches a whit less covetous of money, ease, and honour, as far as they can compass it. But in Luke 17 the Lord points two aspects of the kingdom: one present in the midst of men, which does not come with observation but is known in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; whilst we await one manifested in power. "For as the lightning shines which lighteneth from the [one end under] heaven to the [other end] under heaven, thus shall the Son of man be in his day." "Every eye shall see him;" and "where the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together." God's judgments shall not fail to light upon the objects of His displeasure.

Yet the apostle did not put off the spirit of the kingdom till that day. He sought and exercised it not in word but in power by the Spirit, even now and here.

To speak of "imputed sanctification" is to diverge from scriptural truth. But sanctification is not merely in practice, which is always imperfect and admits of varying degrees. Mr. G. and his defender were not aware that the word of God speaks of a sanctification by a new nature coincident with being born anew, and antecedent not only to practical holiness but even to justification, of which popular theology is wholly ignorant. It is identical with saintship. This is meant in 1 Cor. 6: 11: "But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." The order stated is exact; but it perplexes all who draw their doctrines from man instead of from scripture. 1 Peter 1: 2 may make this truth clear to those that doubt: "elect according to foreknowledge of a Father God, by (or, in) sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ." Here too the ordinary teaching is at sea. Yet the truth revealed is certain and plain. Election as God's children is shown in sanctification of the Spirit for obeying as (not the Jews, but) Christ obeyed, and His blood-sprinkling which cleanses from all sin, that is, for justification. There is a real and vital sanctifying by the Spirit when we are converted to God before we obey as God's sons and know ourselves justified. It is a life setting-apart to God, which precedes acceptance, and is overlooked by universal theology, Arminian and Calvinistic; but scripture, as here shown, makes much of it.

No serious person doubts that real Christians may be "carnal, walking as men," as many Corinthian saints were; but those with whom they were not even to eat were under discipline and put away from among them, as "wicked" persons, no longer in the assembly, nor called a brother though he had been, and might be again if or when restored. But to be regarded as at the same time a saint and a wicked person is merely human theory, unscriptural and pernicious. The old leaven was to be purged out, that they might be a new lump, according as they were unleavened. Therefore, Christ having been sacrificed, we are to celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth. If leaven enters, the church is bound to cast it out when seen, never to sanction its presence, being directly inconsistent; as the form was in Israel, so its reality is in us. Some in the church might turn out unjust, but they were not to be tolerated but put away, and should not inherit God's kingdom, any more than they had life eternal. None were to be deceived, as they had been. They had been baptised and eaten the Lord's supper, and were none the better but the worse, as 1 Cor. 10 warns. Evils such as these involve everlasting ruin no less than loss of the kingdom, though 1 Cor. 5 and 1 Cor. 11 leave room for repentance in the wondrous grace of God, and if restored, not only for renewed fellowship but for inheriting the kingdom; contrary to this singular theory.

The remark under 4 (p. 3) is quite inept, as far as Rev. 20: 4 is concerned; and it is decisive on the point. "Notice the Church is not spoken of as reigning with Christ; but blessed and holy (practical sanctification) is he that hath part in the first resurrection. Unholiness excludes from the first resurrection." Now it is certain that of no class of believers is holiness so strongly predicated as of the church in Eph. 5: 25-27: "The Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for it that he might sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present the church to himself glorious, having no spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things, but that it might be holy and blameless." Where is anything said so deep and full of any other object of grace?

The real bearing of Rev. 20: 4 is most comprehensive; for three classes are included. "And I saw thrones; and they sat upon them, and [instead of being judged according to their works] judgment was given to them." These are the saints of the O.T. as well as the church caught up to meet the Lord at His coming (1 Cor. 15: 23, 51, 52; 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17; 2 Thess. 2: 1), and seen glorified above from Rev. 4 onward. Secondly, the early martyrs of the Apocalyptic time, Rev. 6: 9-11. Thirdly, those later and more severely persecuted by the Beast and the false Prophet before the Lord appears in glory. These two are distinguished in the subsequent clause, as ''the souls of those beheaded on account of the testimony of Jesus and on account of the word of God;" and "those that did not worship the beast or his image, and received not the mark on their forehead and hand."

As these witnesses for God were only raised after the translation to heaven of the first general class, and suffered to death for the truth as far as they knew it, they are here clearly described as seen by the apostle in their disembodied state, and raised from the dead to join the first great class, after the Lord appears for the destruction of the Beast, the False prophet, and their armies, as well as for consignment of Satan to the abyss. Hence the announcement of the first resurrection here, in order to include in it these two classes of Apocalyptic sufferers, who might have been hastily thought too late to share the thousand years' reign with the Christ, as well as perhaps spiritually inferior, because their intelligence was small as the Revelation shows. But "Blessed and holy is he who hath part in the first resurrection"; and as they were slain by hostile authority, it is said "over these the second death hath no power." But to infer that any living members of Christ's body, the church, do not share the rising to reign is wholly incongruous, unintelligent, and wild to the highest degree.

An attempt however is made to find a basis in Phil. 3, a chapter specially setting aside every dependence and boast but Christ, on whose account, says the apostle, "I suffered the loss of all, and count them to be filth, that I may gain Christ, and that I may be found in him, not having my righteousness which is [or, would be] of law, but that which is by faith of Christ, the righteousness that is of God through faith; to know him, and the power of his sufferings, being conformed to his death if any how I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I already obtained the prize or am already perfected; but I pursue, if also I may get possession, since also I have been possessed by Christ. Brethren, I do not count to have got possession myself; but one thing — forgetting the things behind, and stretching out to those before, I pursue toward the goal for the prize of the calling above of God in Christ Jesus." It is really the power of life in faith of Christ glorified which fills the apostle's heart to run the race with that prize in view; as far as possible from the notion of a reward according to works, which is essentially law, sterile and deadly. He utterly repudiates his own righteousness for that which is by faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

This agrees with what the Lord made of the resurrection of His own in John 5, the issue of what He gives the believer now — life eternal, which loves good, hates evil, and produces good fruit, according to (not law, but) sovereign grace, its opposite. Hence we hear of those that are counted worthy to have part in that age, which is the reverse of the present evil age, and the resurrection that is from among the dead. But He nowhere speaks of it as a reward of our good works (though good works there surely are), but the fruit of His life in power according to divine grace and its counsels.

No doubt it is a manifest token of God's righteous judgment that the saints should be counted worthy of His kingdom, as their wicked troublers deserve the penalty which awaits them. But this strange doctrine looks at the surface of things, overlooking the spring of grace and the power of the Spirit working in the heart by faith. Yet even while page 4 says that the incorruptible crown, the resurrection from among the dead, and the kingdom of God are different aspects of the prize, it adds that thus all may be lost through disobedience and consequent unholiness, and concludes that none of these is a question of pure grace. Yet the very next paragraph owns that grace is indeed needed every hour to insure them. Is not this to say and unsay? It is to confound those begotten of God with such as are not, in order to countenance the fable of saints left to unholiness, and hence to punishment for the thousand years when other saints shall reign. The simple truth is that the Lord prepares us for unreal professors, for those that say and do not, whom He declines to own, while Mr. Govett and his followers declare that they are His to the great dishonour of His word, the grief of the faithful, and the false hope of the fruitless.

As to failure and sin on the part of true saints through unwatchfulness, there is the plain duty of the church to exercise discipline; and the Lord acts as we read in 1 Cor. 11, dealing even to death of the body; just as the Father judges in loving care, as 1 Peter 1: 17 says no less than John 15. They are thus chastened in this life. Nowhere is there a hint of saints detained in Hades while their brethren reign. Saints by call are disciplined now that they may be saints practically. If all these fail, people are not of God, and only false professors.

It is not exact to say that "all saints will share in the Kingdom" or the millennial reign with Christ, but for a plain reason wholly different from the misteaching. The fact is that there will be a harvest of saints possessed of life eternal during the kingdom, who are (whether Israel or the nations) reigned over instead of reigning. These, like all those glorified before them, reign in life through the one Jesus Christ (Rom. 5: 17); they and we shall reign to the ages of the ages (Rev. 22: 5). This will be the eternal state to the exclusion of time or any other characteristic of a dispensation. But that saints by call are not saints by practice also is not apostolic doctrine; for the notion is directly denied in Rom. 8: 30 and many other scriptures. When our Lord tells us that many are called but few chosen, it is clearly the public call in the kingdom of heaven, and distinct from the work of grace according to His counsels, whereby all that have life in Him are described as having done good, and rise to a resurrection of life, in contrast with a resurrection of judgment which is only for the unbelieving, unholy and unblessed.

But we come next to what in the same page 4 are called proof-texts, and first John 17: 22. This is said to "refer to present union with Christ." Its terms declare the contrary. "And the glory which Thou hast given me I have given them, that they also may be one even as we [are] one; I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me and lovedst them as Thou lovedst Me." It is clear that the glory is not actually ours till He comes again, and that there can be no perfecting for us into one till then. But it is now for the world to "believe," as in verse 21. When the glory is revealed, and not before, the world shall "know"; because it is a fact before their eyes and impossible to deny; and such is the distinction of vers. 22, 23 from what had been already presented by our Lord. The oneness "perfected" will be in the day of glory (as the oneness in ver. 21 is during the day of grace in order to act on faith now), and will only be matter of fact when the Lord appears and we with Him in the same glory (Col. 3: 4; 2 Thess. 1: 13).

We have already shown that Rev. 20: 13 is the resurrection of judgment, in contrast with that of life, the one of the unjust only as the "first" is of none but the just. Neither Eph. 1: 21 nor Eph. 2: 6 applies save to our portion as in Christ. Thus the "age to come" is the millennial one, and our state is everlasting, as reigning in life (Rom. 5: 17) is unlimited.

Then too Luke 22: 29, 30 is no less misunderstood and misapplied. The Lord speaks of His own in a grace which secures from all their slips and follies. To construe His words here or anywhere else as a reward of their righteousness is distressing error and real self- righteousness. As a fact, they grievously failed, and Peter in particular. How can saints be so blind as to argue the contrary? Besides, glorious as "the kingdom" may be, it is not so deep or precious, as life eternal or union with Christ. The kingdom will be a magnificent display of honour; but eternal life and union with Christ suppose communion with God, and enjoyment of His love which is intrinsic and far beyond any display. The scheme spiritually is thus a total fallacy.

Again, Rom. 8: 17 draws out the mistaken comment that the Greek particles "always signify contrast." They may mean no more than distinction, like our "on the one hand" and "on the other." All depends on the nature of the case intrinsically. Thus in 1 Cor. 12: 8 to one (μὲν) a word of wisdom, to another (δὲ) a word of knowledge, though here of different persons, were varieties rather than contrasts; and in Eph. 4: 11 these (μὲν) apostles, and those (δὲ) prophets, were so far from being in contrast that they form a joint class in Eph. 2: 20 and Eph. 3: 5. But we need not go so far from here. Take for instance Rom. 6: 11, "dead indeed to sin (μὲν) and (or, but) (δὲ) alive to God in Christ Jesus." To make one grace, and the other conditional, is not only error but absurdity. And so it is to separate heirship of God from being joint-heirs with Christ, though it is expressly a gift of grace (as in Phil. 1: 29) to suffer for Him as well as with Him. He who does not suffer with Him now has not His Spirit and is none of His. It is perversion to make such a contrast in Rom. 8: 17, and 2 Tim. 2: 11, 12. The contrast, if any such thing were intended, would be with the millennial saints who enjoy entire exemption from such suffering, and therefore do not reign with Christ during the thousand years. But to make this of works is utterly unscriptural; for good works characterise all saints as born of God.

So with James 2: 5. Loving God and one's brother is shown in 1 John 5: 1 to be inseparable from being begotten of God. It is essential to the new nature. How dreadful to conceive a saint without loving God or obeying Him! Extremes meet when those who profess sovereign grace can thus talk like the lowest latitudinarians. It is precious to know that God has chosen the poor as to the world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom; but when it is added ''which He promised to those that love Him," who but the legal would confine the latter clause to the poor and refuse it to a Nicodemus or a Joseph of Arimathea? This is not to read the scriptures in the Spirit; nor should we deny practical holiness to any one born of God, though he may fail here or there through lack of intelligence. Not a few who are correct in outward points easily apprehended by the mind may be far behind in the faith that worketh by love, which is characteristic of all who have passed from death into life, and will assuredly share the resurrection of life. One can believe in utterly "disobedient " profession of Christ, but hardly in a "most disobedient child of God." Every true Christian is watched over by our God and Father in order to the partaking of His holiness. Does He not scourge every son whom He receiveth? Heb. 12: 5-11. See also 1 Cor. 11: 31, 32. Why overlook such plain scriptures as preclude and deny the extravagant theory before us? Gal. 6: 8 is quite in harmony with the truth generally. But the word is akin everywhere.

The rapture of the saints is the crowning act of sovereign grace instead of being when the day of grace is past. The throne of judgment only comes into view when the heavenly saints are seated on their thrones around it above. And "who is worthy?" is answered by the Lamb alone, not by them (Rev. 4, 5). Can anything be more certain?

It is impossible to allow the correctness of the thoughts on the two letters to the Thessalonians, as not touching on the standing and privilege of the church, but on faithful service in waiting for Christ. The opening words refute this. What grace can be plainer than addressing them in both as "the church of Thessalonians in God the (or, our) Father and the Lord Jesus Christ"? and in the first saying, "Knowing, brethren beloved by God, your election"? Their awaiting His Son from the heavens in 1 Thess. 1: 10 the apostle treats as part of their conversion to God from idols, no less than serving a living and true God. "The church in God the Father and Lord Jesus Christ" is a unique expression of the grace in which that infant assembly stood, conveying the strongest assurance of divine security in love, just because they were so young and had to face persecution from the first. Nor is such a beginning more than a sample of the privileges of grace of which these two Epistles are full, though no doubt there is not the unfolding of the body as in that to the Ephesians or of the Head as to the Colossians, written when the apostle was a prisoner of Christ in Rome so many years after. But they are the Epistles wherein is found the brightest communication of our heavenly hope, and the triumph of grace in our association with Christ far more intimately and profoundly than in the display of the kingdom in which He vindicates us before the world, and rewards some specially.

To say as p. 7 does, that "some of the Church will not be accounted worthy of the kingdom at the judgment-seat of Christ," is to assert the strange doctrine without one word of proof. The exhortation to walk worthily is valid; the deduction of harsh dealing with failing saints is a fable. The idea that the question of reigning is decided at the judgment-seat is inconsistent with the likeness to Christ consummated in a moment at His coming to present the church glorious to Himself (not a part but the whole), and then bringing us into the Father's house, is a monstrous one. So in the Revelation the glorified are seen at home in heaven from Rev. 4 which gives the first view of them there after their translation. And very striking it is that grace so deals; for we naturally might have thought of a judicial inquiry first of all. But nothing of the kind is implied till the close of their presence, before the Lamb's marriage and the world-kingdom of our Lord is about to begin, when He and the glorified appear in glory and judgments. Only then is it said that His wife made herself ready; and I know nothing else that answers to such a phrase but our each giving account to Him of the things done through the body when we shall know as we are known. For we must all be manifested before His tribunal that we may each receive according to what he shall have done whether good or evil. This affects his particular place in the kingdom, but all reign without doubt if scripture decide.

What a solemn but withal joyful fact to those taught of God that we are already reconciled, justified, saved by grace as fully as God could through and in Christ our Lord, the last to question His own perfect and perfecting work! No longer a mistake in anything; no hasty thought to mislead; no prepossession or prejudice to warp, to which all here and now are liable. All will be in perfect light and perfect love. Even now we do not fear but delight in what manifests all as it really is. Then it will be without alloy, and ourselves like Christ to enjoy it to the uttermost, without an atom of the old man to darken or excuse; so that it would be real loss not to be thus manifested perfectly, if this could be. And we can understand why it should be just before we come in His kingdom where our particular place will depend on that which shall have been manifested of fidelity and devotedness, or the lack of it (Luke 19: 15-26; 1 Cor. 3: 8; 1 Thess. 2: 19, etc.).

Hence it is not with His "coming" to take us on high, but with His "appearing and kingdom" that scripture connects the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award in that day; but this, says the blessed apostle, not only to me but also to all that have loved and do love His appearing. Thus is sovereign grace reconciled with the nicest righteousness, His coming to receive us to Himself and for the Father's house being as evident for the one, as His appearing and kingdom will manifest the other. Nor can one conceive a sadder wound to this harmony, for all the elect children of God whom He justifies, than the notion without any solid ground for it, that the great mass of saints are to be shut up away in Hades for a thousand years, say for not being duly immersed or some other point of difference, which multitudes glory in without the least fellowship with the Father and with His Son. Can there be a dream more distant from the general analogy of the faith? or more decidedly set aside by revealed statements as here shown?

It is a fundamental mistake, then, to conceive the rapture of the saints "to be when this day of grace is past, and the throne of judgment set up" (p. 6). On the contrary, that the once lost sinners and children of wrath should be caught up and set before the Father, in the closest association with Christ above, is the highest expression of sovereign grace. Instead of being display when this day is past, it is its triumph without an atom of judgment in it any more than in our Lord's ascension which did not touch a single sinner in this world. "The appearing" on the contrary is the beginning of the Lord's action in personal judgment after God's providential inflictions close.

Again, how short and shallow is the view this system imposes on "worthiness of walk for the Kingdom of glory" (p. 7)! It supplants the love and holiness proper to every Christian for a rather mercenary motive. The apostle comforts the Thessalonian saints in their endurance of persecution as a manifest token of God's righteous judgment, "to the end that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which ye also suffer." Christ was the object and spring of power; the kingdom, as the glorious day when the tables should be for ever turned into rest for the suffering righteous, and trouble for their troublers, was but the consoling recompense. And this is so true, that every discerning eye can see how these very scriptures are stripped of their fulness by this narrow and withering hypothesis. "That ye would walk worthily of God that calleth you unto His own kingdom and glory" (1 Thess. 2: 12). How incomparably richer and holier His word than reducing it to the millennial kingdom, true as this may be! But why overlook that this is but one of three such appeals? "To walk worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the right knowledge (ἐπιγνώσει) of God." Here is yet more than the young Thessalonian saints had put before them. And Eph. 4: 1 is larger and higher still than Col. 1: 10, "Walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called": a calling which embraces God's dwelling-place, and Christ's body in union with the Head over all things, immeasurably beyond the kingdom.

Thus we are throughout on the ground of grace which alone produces an answer in practical righteousness, which it does in those begotten of God, as 1 John elaborately states. Undoubtedly the difficulties are so great that to unbelief they seem unsurmountable; but faith is entitled to count on being guarded by God's power for salvation complete, and is in no way disturbed by judgment beginning, now as of old, from God's house (1 Peter 4: 17). But the apostle gives no hint of believers suffering as an example, only "those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus"; as it is in 2 Thess. 1: 8, 9. The second sight of Hades which the scheme claims is a delusion.

So it is to deny ''that all the dead in Christ will have part in the first resurrection." Take Romans 5-8. All points from "reigning in life" (Rom. 5: 17); "so also we (not some only) shall be of His resurrection" (Rom. 6: 5); "to be conformed to the image of His Son," and if justified, also glorified (Rom. 8: 29, 30). How preposterous not to be raised and glorified but kept in Hades even then!

Take again 1 Cor. 15 the capital seat of the resurrection: "For since through man death, through man also resurrection of dead. For as in the Adam all die, so also in the Christ all shall be made alive" (that is, the simply Adam family in its universality, and the Christ family in its completeness) (vers. 21, 22). Is not this last categorically all the dead sharing Christ's resurrection? So it is repeated in ver. 23, "But each in his own order (or, rank): Christ, first-fruits; after that, those of Christ at His presence" (or, coming). Can any scholar question that οἱ Χριστοῦ comprehends all the dead in Christ thus to rise? "Then the end" at once carries us, not to the resurrection of the unjust (for the chapter is occupied with that of Christ and His own), but to His giving up the conferred kingdom to Him that is God and Father after all such government is over. Again in vers. 49, 50, as we bore the image of the dusty man, we shall bear also the image of the Heavenly One; and this in connection with inheriting the kingdom with Christ, while those converted then in their natural bodies enjoy its blessed effects, as in both O.T. and N.T. But not a hint of some of the sons of the resurrection (Luke 20: 36) falling short of their inheritance! And when from ver. 51 he opens the "mystery" of the living saints changed without death, the modern legend of excluding many real saints, in whom the Holy Spirit dwells (else they are not properly Christian), is itself excluded as an unscriptural invention. For though we shall not all die, "we shall all be changed." For (1 Cor. 15: 52) "the trumpet shall sound; and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we (the then living saints) shall be changed." Had the νεκροὶ been anarthrous, it might have left room for exceptions; but the article denotes the whole class, as the "we" does the survivors of God's family without exception, with a destiny as far from Hades as can be.

It is exactly similar with 1 Thess. 4: 14-17. And 1 Thess. 3: 13 is the more striking, as we are therein assured, not merely of the raising of all that are Christ's for the first resurrection and reign with Him when He comes for them, but here we read of His coming "with all His saints", which is when He appears in His kingdom. Can one ask a more overwhelming disproof of this strange doctrine? No less destructive is Rev. 20: 4-6. "The first resurrection" here is for the purpose of supplementing the earlier and later martyrs of the Apocalyptic times. They were witnesses after the rapture of the saints generally who were already seen seated on thrones; and those two classes are raised after the Lord appears to the destruction of both the Beasts, etc., and added to the enthroned. This is styled "the first resurrection," embracing all who have part in it, in contrast with that of the unjust before "the end" for "the second death." But here too is not a whisper of one emerging from Hades to join the rest of the risen saints when the thousand years are over.

We may add, that nowhere does scripture teach that the first resurrection is a judicial question; or as it is said in the tract, "This will depend on the decision of the 'Righteous Judge.'" It exclusively depends for us on the grace which has given the Christian life eternal in Christ. Such a one cometh not into judgment, but has already passed from death unto life; and He will raise him up at the last day, as He repeatedly declared (John 6). It is decided already by grace; and the believer will have been glorified before he stands before the Bema of Christ to give account of all done in the body: a process of solemn interest for the saint and affecting his particular position in the kingdom. Only perdition awaits the unbeliever when he is raised for judgment before the end. These things essentially distinct are here confused.

Further, as it is admitted (p. 8) that "all the church are called to this glory of the first resurrection," let it not be forgotten that "ye were also called in one hope of your calling" (Eph. 4: 4) is not declarative merely or dispensational but of effectual grace, like "one body and one Spirit" with which it is bound up. "One baptism" attaches to "one Lord" and "one faith too," which belong to the sphere of profession, and might fail of effect in one way or another. "One God and Father of all" is wider than either, but expresses the closest intimacy in the ease of all Christians — "in us all."

Holiness, we all agree, as divine life goes with the word, is so imperative that without it no one shall see the Lord; and the professing Christian who does not pursue it only deceives himself. It is false and misleading to let people fancy that they may be real saints, yet unholy. "Every one" that has the grace-given hope resting on Him purifies himself as He is pure; others that have not are self-deceived. Because of iniquities the wrath of God cometh upon the sons of disobedience; but believers are essentially sons of obedience, and His love rests on them. If one sin, it is a grievous inconsistency. But grace does not fail to awaken self-judgment through our blessed Advocate with the Father, and restoration ensues. Those who do the wicked works of the flesh, and abide impenitent and indifferent have no part or lot with Christ, shall not inherit the kingdom of God, and in no way share the portion of the saints in light.

The Promise of the Father.

W. Kelly.

When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son. Never had intercourse been so fraught with healing and joy to publicans and sinners. The Son of man had power on earth to forgive sins. He was come to save what was lost. Never had saints of God listened to such words of sweetness whereby was disclosed to them the bosom of His Father, which He, the only-begotten Son, knew so well. "The Word became flesh," one of them could say, "and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only-begotten from a Father) full of grace and truth." In the simple tale of the Gospels, we have the blessedness of the disciples in the presence of the Lord. There is no distance nor reserve. He speaks to them face to face; He calls them and treats them as His friends. And oh, what a friend was He! Blessed pattern of all meekness, of lowliness unknown, of patience that could not be wearied, of grace that flowed out the more, the more He was wounded in the house of His friends, like a sweet herb that breathes fragrance when trodden by the heedless foot of man!

It is indeed sadly true that His presence rendered more conspicuous the infirmities, the dangers, the sins, and the enemies of God's people. But never did murmur break from His lips Who had undertaken their cause — God's cause. Notwithstanding their unbelief, their pride, their insensibility, and their perverseness, never did He complain, "Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? Wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me?" Instead of saying, "Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?" Jesus, the good Shepherd, looks onward through the vista of His sufferings to the day when He would say, "Behold I and the children which God hath given me." Instead of saying, "Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people?" He, and He alone, could say, "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

It was assuredly a crisis when Jesus appeared. God had given His law; but holy, just, and good as the commandment was, it could not better, and was not meant to better, the heart of man. It detected and condemned what issued thence; for through law is the knowledge of sin. Prophets, too, had been sent by the Lord God of their fathers. But what could these avail save to show the importunate love of Him Who rose up betimes and sent them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling-place? They alas! mocked and misused His prophets "until the wrath of Jehovah arose against His people, till there was no remedy." In this state of things He appeared. Truly we may say that in the person of Jesus God brought Himself nigh to the sinner. But in vain. Jesus must suffer for sins, the Just for the unjust. So must He bring us to God. All might bear Him witness and wonder at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth; and surely had there been one pure thought in the heart of man, one feeling undepraved by sin, Jesus must have drawn it forth. But there was none — nothing Godward. His presence, therefore, could but demonstrate, that the carnal mind is enmity against God. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."

"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; whom God raised up (Acts 2)." The grand basis of blessing was laid. God's righteousness was declared not only at this time, but for the passing over of sins that were past in His forbearance.

Still, while in that death all the past dealings of God were divinely vindicated, Christ Himself, in anticipating His approaching departure, hints at a new order of things: an order consequent upon His rejection by the world, and exaltation to the right hand of God. And was it not worthy of Him, that, when Jew and Gentile joined to show their implacable enmity to God, He should then show the exceeding riches of His grace to them?

From Christ, I say, risen and seated at God's right hand on high, a new and unprecedented and peculiar work of God begins. Their sins had been borne away. They were sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. They did believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. If a work of God commenced then, it was necessarily something above and beyond the blessings they at that time enjoyed, however great these might have been.

Both before His death and after His resurrection the Lord had told His disciples of the promise of the Father. He had spoken of another Comforter Whom the Father was to give them, an ever-abiding Comforter (John 14). In chapter 15 He speaks of the same Comforter as not yet come, One Whom He would send from the Father. In chapter 16 we have further particulars still. "These things (their, as well as His, sufferings from the world) I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you. But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." He had told them that He was going to prepare a place for them in heaven, and that He would come again and receive them unto Himself.

On these two truths, deeply interesting as they are, it is not my present purpose to dwell. Suffice it to observe here, how closely bound up with them is the truth of the intermediate descent of the Holy Ghost. It hangs upon the departure of Christ to the Father. So peerless was the gift, "that," said our Lord, "it is expedient that I go away." Wherein then was this inestimable preciousness that outweighed the presence of the Lord Jesus? For Him they had forsaken all; and more than all He had been to them. He is about to go. What could turn a loss so grievous and seemingly so irretrievable into positive gain? Was it solely that the Crucified was about to take His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, crowned with glory and with honour? Was it needful merely for the display of God's righteousness in vindication of His Son? "I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away." The reason, and the only reason stated here is, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you."

It is clearly impossible to lower the language of these chapters (John 14 - 16) to anything short of the Holy Ghost Himself. Effects and manifestations are beyond doubt enlarged on elsewhere; but such is not the theme here. It is the Spirit personally, the Comforter Himself. It is One Who could be described as a teacher, remembrancer, testifier and convicter — One Who could be said to come, hear, and speak. It is a really present and acting Person Who leaves heaven when Jesus ascends there, and Who, as thus sent down, takes His place with and in the disciples, only on the footing of the accomplishment of that work to which the heavenly glory is the sole adequate answer in the estimate of God, however necessary it might be to all His earthly purposes: a footing clearly impossible in the days of the Lord's flesh.

Even then, while here below, the body of Jesus was the temple of God; but this could be predicated of none else. Elizabeth and Zacharias and John (from his mother's womb) were filled with the Holy Ghost; but upon Jesus alone in that day did the Holy Ghost descend and abide. It was not so with His disciples, any more than with believers before them. They, unlike Jesus, could not righteously be the temple of God, until the bloodshedding was actually effected and accepted; even as in the consecration of the priests (in Lev. 8). Aaron is first anointed alone and without blood (ver. 12); afterwards, the blood is put upon his sons and him (verses 23, 24), previous to their being all anointed together (ver. 30), for the anointing oil is the well-known symbol of the unction from the Holy One. Thus Jesus was first anointed Himself with the Holy Ghost (Acts 10: 38); afterwards being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, "He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2: 33). Having borne the wrath of God, and also annulled by death him that had its power, thus removing every obstacle, He was enabled to send the Holy Ghost to dwell in the believers; so that the apostle could appeal to them, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (1 Cor. 3: 16)?

Plainly also the miraculous conception of Jesus is totally distinct from His anointing, though both were of the Holy Ghost. As man born of the virgin, He was the Son of God. But besides this, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus baptised and entering upon His public service: in other words, He was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. Analogously, we find as to believers, that their life and relationship to God, and their anointing by the Holy Ghost, are quite distinct. When Jesus arose, He could say, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." But they were not yet anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power. Later, but before His ascension, He says, "Behold, I send the promise of the Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." Waiting, they found the sure promise of the Father. The Holy Ghost was given. They were anointed then and not before. Nor was this anointing, one need hardly add, a boon conferred there and then only; for the apostle in addressing the Corinthians writes, "Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; who hath sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." These are assuredly not signs and wonders wrought by the hands or tongue, but the blessed presence and actings of the Spirit in the saints. Compare also 1 John 2: 20-27.

In principle, then, the coming of the promised Spirit was contingent on the departure of Jesus; and in fact, it was when He took His seat as the glorified Man in heaven, that the Spirit was sent down. Assembled together with the disciples previous to His ascension, He "commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me: for John truly baptised with water; but ye shall be baptised with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence" (Acts 1: 4, 5). The next chapter records the accomplishment of the promise on the day of Pentecost. The Comforter was given. Now in them was He Who was promised to abide with them for ever* (John 14). The third person of the Trinity was now, and permanently, present in them, as truly as the second person had been with them before He ascended to heaven. The Holy Ghost was the abiding witness, as His presence in the disciples was the new and wondrous fruit, of the glorification of Jesus in heaven.

* This is true, I suppose, individually as well as corporately; and thus the apostle exhorts, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" (not, lest He should leave you); whereas in the Old Testament the cry is, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me" (Ps. 51: 11). "Quench not the Spirit" (in 1 Thess. 5) connects itself with "Despise not prophesyings." The subject is a different one altogether.

Are the operations of the Spirit of God from the beginning denied? In no wise. Creation, providence, and redemption, all speak of Him. His energy is to be traced in every sphere of God's dealings. Who moved upon the face of the waters — strove with man before the deluge — filled Bezaleel with understanding and all manner of workmanship — enabled Moses to bear the burden of Israel, or others to share it? By Whom wrought Samson? By Whom prophesied Saul? It was by the Spirit of Jehovah. And as in their early national history His good Spirit instructed the people, even so could the prophet assure the poor returned remnant, "According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my Spirit remaineth among you." Were any born anew? They were born of the Spirit; and the blessed and holy actings of faith in the elders who obtained a good report were, beyond controversy, the results of His operation. So far, the way of God is still and necessarily the same. Jesus set not aside in the least the need of the Spirit's intervention. He proclaimed its necessity as a sure irreversible truth — "Except a man be born of water and of Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." Far from weakening its place, He rather gave it a prominence never so clearly enunciated before, though of course always true.

Life, peace, and sonship (while all are communicated and known by the effectual working of the Holy Ghost), are in no sense the presence of the Comforter. We have seen that the disciples possessed these privileges before the Lord Jesus ascended. They are therefore entirely distinct from the promise of the Father, which the disciples did not possess, and which none ever did or could possess, till Jesus was glorified. The presence of the Comforter is clearly the distinctive blessing since Pentecost. It was never enjoyed before, though the Spirit had wrought, and wrought savingly as regards believers at all times. The signs and powers which attested His presence at the first were extraordinary (χαρίσματα), and thus quite distinct from the gift (δωρεὰ) of Himself to abide with the Christian for ever.

W.K.

Propitiation

W. Kelly.

It may help souls in danger of being perplexed by words as unintelligent as they are confidently uttered, if it be clearly understood that the same Hebrew expression for "atonement" is used throughout Lev. 16, and that this finds its counterpart in the Greek verb which the Revisers correctly render "make propitiation" in Heb. 2: 17, and its derivative substantive "propitiation" in 1 John 2: 2 and 4: 10.

It is a characteristic of the N.T, that there alone do we find " reconciliation " in the sense of divine grace. The Septuagint never uses καταλλάσσειν or καταλλαγὴ with any such force. Indeed the verb only occurs in Jer. 48: 39, the substantive in Isa. 9: 5, the one meaning "changed" and the other exchange or "restitution"; so remote is the application from its N.T. usage. We can easily understand that, as with other words, so Christ's presence and-work of grace gave k. an entirely new and blessed character. God was in Christ reconciling, not merely the Jews, but the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them — the very thing the law must do. But the world, though made by Him, knew Him not: its wisdom was its darkness. The Jews more guiltily received Him not. In result both crucified Him. On that cross Him Who knew no sin God made sin for us. This is atonement; for no ignorance can be more pitiable than only looking for the bare word. God has graciously revealed the thing in all variety of forms, for which faith praises Him. On the cross the Saviour was charged with sin and our sins, and bore the judgment of all unsparingly, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus the reconciliation which unbelief and hatred refused is now made good; and God has not only reconciled to Himself us who believe, but given us the ministry of reconciliation. Grace reigns through righteousness here also. What do we not owe Him?

Now the fact already stated as to Lev. 16 proves the utter fallacy and sheer heterodoxy of denying that propitiation applies to the blood of the cross, and of limiting it to putting within the sanctuary. For in that chapter, which is the main ground of course of the N.T. references, call it atonement or propitiation, one and the same term is used of all the work of that great day. So we find it employed in general, ver. 6, as none can deny, without the least restriction to the sanctuary. It is striking that it is next expressly said of the scape-goat, Azazel (ver. 10), where such a limitation is manifestly absurd. Again in ver. II it occurs with presenting the bullock for sacrifice. Afterward it is said, as all agree, of the sanctuary in vers. 16, 17, whatever be judged of ver. 18. What is more, the same term is applied as elsewhere to the burnt offering for the high-priest and for the people. In short the Holy Spirit applies the word for making atonement or propitiation to all the sacrifices of that day, and to each part without no less than within (vers. 30-33), so as completely, and without the least arguing, to demolish the human theory that restricts propitiation to the sanctuary alone, and thus excludes the work on the cross from that expression.

The N.T. speaks with no less largeness; and "to propitiate" or "propitiation" there means that God-glorifying work as a whole, not a part only. To limit it to an act in the heavenly sanctuary, to deny propitiation to Christ's work on the cross, is therefore flying in the face of the truth of scripture without the smallest warrant, and to the deep-dishonour of that which gave its righteous efficacy to the blood before God, or to the dismissal of all sins into the land of forgetfulness.

If any one were to say that the Lord on the cross failed to make good the type of the blood put within the holiest, etc., such teaching on Lev. 16 ought surely to be refused as unsound. To set forth the efficacy of Christ's blood in figure, Aaron had to bring in some of the atoning blood, as well as when he came out to lay the sins on the scape-goat for their total removal out of sight. But the substance of the atonement or propitiation was the sacrifice offered to God. The slaying of the victim, the carrying in of the blood, the dismissal of the confessed sins (to say nothing of the incense at an early point and of the burnt offerings at the close), were each and all aspects of the same one work. What is so painful and new to most of us (certainly to myself in general fairly informed) is the singling out the intermediate portion of this instructive ritual as alone propitiation or atonement, in the face of the scripture which itself so speaks of all the parts composing it. To me this is an irreverent anatomy of atonement, as dangerous to faith in His work as the severing of His person in which other speculators have unholily indulged. All sound in the truth hold that the propitiation or atoning work of Christ is a whole, and "finished" here below as He Himself said. And a most serious slight of His infinite sacrifice I cannot but regard it to deny that to be propitiation wherein sin was judged and God for ever glorified as to it.

But the new doctrine goes farther, and by a mischievous putting together of Heb. 2: 17, Heb. 8: 4, and Heb. 9: 12, assumes that Christ went on high after death and before resurrection (of course therefore in the disembodied state) to effect propitiation; and that this alone did it! NOT His sacrifice on the cross instantly owned before God, as the rent veil testified on earth! Propitiation was not even begun then, whatever the Lord cried! The new doctrine boldly tells us that He in the separate state and in heaven alone made propitiation for our sins. Is this the truth of God? or a cheat of the enemy? He that rests in the simplicity of faith on the atoning sacrifice of Christ as prefigured in Lev. 16 rejects the hypothesis of these separate stages of life and death, of earth and heaven. The true force of the types he sees in their combined value, as the inspired text carefully impresses on every soul subject to the word. The interpreting of the blood taken within, as alone propitiation, and never verified till after Christ died and was a separate spirit on high, not only shocks the spiritual sense but dislocates scripture, disparages the cross, and invents a strange unheard-of propitiation in lieu of that which God's elect have hitherto believed in. Familiar as perhaps one may say I am with what has been written on propitiation since the church began, it has not been my lot to hear a whisper of the kind till some four or five years ago, if memory fail not.

But what say the N.T. scriptures whence we are entitled to look for the fullest final light from God? Does Heb. 2: 17 give a hint of a work done after death to propitiate? We hear very simply of Christ "a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation (or atonement) for the sins of the people": a clear reference to Lev 16 and as clearly fulfilled in that complete work in which He stood representatively on earth for the exceptional work of atonement, the basis of all that blots out sin, and glorifies God, before interceding for the saints in their temptations and sufferings. But not the most distant hint of a disembodied priesthood before He was made perfect, saluted of God a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and for ever set down on the right hand of God.

Does 1 John 2: 2 or 1 John 4: 10 give cause for the scheme? The first text simply declares Christ the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world. Thus the essential requirement, the foundation of all the rest based on it, is the death and blood-shedding of the victim; for apart from shedding of blood there is no remission. Now the truth includes what is meant by putting the blood before God, but it insists on the sacrifice as the absolutely necessary and most integral part of propitiation. This spurious novelty on the contrary as absolutely excludes it from being itself propitiation, which is conceived to be a special action by Christ's presence in heaven for a little while after His death. Just think of the boldness of trusting a bit of reasoning against the plain and large bearing of God's word in order to pick out, not Jehovah's lot nor the people's, nor yet the bullock, but a manifest result however interesting, instructive and momentous, and contending that this alone is propitiation! Certainly 1 John 2 is ominously silent on any such point.*

* I leave it to the reader to find out what there is in Rom. 3: 25 and Heb. 9: 5 to support the new theory.

Still less does 1 John 4: 10 help the desired inference. It appears distinctly and decisively adverse. The love of God was manifested in our case, that God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. Such was the first want of man morally dead, even life Godward; and this life is in His Son. But however precious and eternal, it is not all we want, for we were guilty and lost sinners. Therefore another proof and gift of His grace: — "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins." He sent Christ to be such. The heterodoxy to gain the least show requires His going to heaven after death, for the purpose. As far as it speaks, the intimation here is altogether in favour of the large, full, and sound view of propitiation, and against the notion of a retreat to heaven to effect it.

And scripture cannot be broken. Whatever added light may be from other texts (and I am dead against limiting our view to where the mere word literally occurs), no other can undo the certain and simple intimation to our faith that God sent His Son to be propitiation, instead of the dream that He went back to heaven after He died and before He rose for any such purpose. We know that He was that very day of His death in Paradise and the converted robber too; but what scriptural link has this with making propitiation? If ever a time and place could be supposed to forbid such an association, Lev. 16: 17 excludes it. The triumph of grace is seen in such companionship in Paradise. Whatever the importance of our Lord's passing through the separate state, nowhere does scripture connect it with effecting propitiation. And as for Heb. 9: 12, what can be stranger than to lower that grand entry once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption, to the imagined brief errand to make propitiation? To say that it is not ascension is the merest assumption.

I am not ignorant that some complain because I do not set out other views of the author, such as his faith in the Lord's sacrifice, bearing the curse and judgment, and dying for us. This seems to me wholly unreasonable. I did allow of much truth, and truth altogether inconsistent with his error. The statement that "expiation was made on earth, for Christ suffered on earth, died on earth" (Help, 63, 4), overthrows his system completely. For every scholar knows that expiation means at bottom the same thing as propitiation, and that any real difference is imaginary. In Greek and Hebrew it is the same word.

Nor ought it to be forgotten, by those who feel a difficulty of seeing how the dismissed live goat fills so weighty a place in the rites of atonement that, Aaron was expressly to take the "two he-goats for a sin-offering," and to set both before Jehovah at the door of the tent of meeting (Lev. 16: 5, 7). Indeed it is added, as if to forestall any objection of this kind, that "the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be set alive before Jehovah, to make atonement over (or, with) him, to send him away as (or, for) Azazel into the wilderness"(10). The removal of our sins, though thus typified, as truly hung on our Lord's death on the cross as the witness to the efficacy of His blood in the sprinkling of the sanctuary. To deduce separate acts of Christ, at distinct times and different places, and even in another condition of His person, is foreign to christian truth.

What I affirm (in the face of all special pleading to minimise a mere fable, which lowers the cross by denying its propitiatory value, and draws the mind away to itself from the solid truth of God's word) is that all which is peculiar to Mr. C. E. S. on the most solemn of subjects is unquestionably false. Therefore I envy not the human feeling that essays to put forward other things that are true, in order to weaken the just indignation which rejects and resents such an error. An outcry from any beguiled by the heterodoxy is natural. What can one think of an apology for it from any that reject it? With such human liberalism one cannot sympathise. God is light and God is love. To predicate of Christ as propitiation a false scheme which diverts from the revealed truth is to my conviction beyond measure grave, though I do not expect to convince all that may read this protest. To palliate it by a show of argument in order to justify fellowship with those in such error one can leave the Lord to judge.

When we are subject to the scriptural testimony to Christ and His work, there is no difficulty. If we take it up in a human way, there is nothing to save us from error one way or another. But it does seem marvellous that one imbued with N.T. truth should fail to see that what gives character to all the accessories of Lev. 16 is the offering to God, the great sin-offering of Aaron, not more the centre of the book than of the entire Jewish system. No doubt, therein were many measures and many manners; but it formed, specially to the christian eye, a unity without parallel among these types. We may study with profit the distinction of the goats from each other, and of the bullock from both (5- 11); so also the censer with its burning coals causing the cloud of incense to cover the mercy-seat, the witness of the personal acceptance of Christ when ever so tried by divine judgment (12, 13); again, the sprinkling of the blood, not only of the bullock but of the goat upon the mercy-seat and before it, and the cleansing and hallowing of the holy places and altar (16-19). We may weigh the dismissal of all the confessed iniquities on Azazel to a land of separation (20-22). We may consider the resumption of the ordinary garb of the high-priest instead of what marked the exceptional action in the previous verses, and the offering of the burnt-offerings as well as the fat of the sin-offering (23- 25). But not even a pious Jew would have singled out one of these many parts as exclusively atonement or propitiation, whilst he would simply, unequivocally, have viewed the sacrifice as not only the grand basis but that which in the highest way gave an atoning character to all that followed.

That Aaron had to enter the sanctuary in order to put some of the atoning blood there according to the word of Jehovah is true. That Christ had to enter heaven before He rose to do something analogous is to beg the question altogether; just as it is to overlook the type of Aaron's coming out again for the transaction of the scape-goat. The force of this last is evaded by making it solely prophetic of future dealings with Israel at Christ's appearing. For it figures what Christ did atoningly, as the ground of that mercy to guilty but repentant Israel by-and-by. It is the removal, rather than the forgiveness, of the iniquities confessed. The two goats are regarded together as a sin-offering. It is valid for every true penitent.

And when the christian looks at Christ on the cross, given in infinite love, yet withal abandoned of God, His God, drinking the cup His Father gave Him, suffering infinitely for sins, sin itself judged on His person, — there it is that both conscience and heart rest by faith according to the fullest revelation of the word. He believes without hesitation that all was made good there and then. He does not limit the work any more than the person of our adorable Saviour: it immediately penetrated heaven, and is the ground of a reconciled universe for eternity. He gladly interprets the shadow of the incense, and of the blood put in the holiest as the highest witness to Christ vindicating God for His own presence, but this solely because the essence of the propitiation was in the sacrifice. He does not admit for a moment another act in the Antitype for the necessarily separate and the subsequent stages of Aaron; and he points not only to the scape-goat as the manifest disproof of it, but to the burning of the fat of the sin-offering as well as the burnt-offerings as assuredly fulfilled in the one great sacrifice of Christ. All were parts of the atonement, as the chapter clearly shows, save to a reasoner bent on his own will and indifferent to the N.T. key which God graciously affords us in our weakness and ignorance.

It is this holy and beautiful and solemn unity which is infringed by the delusion lately broached of the blood in the sanctuary being alone propitiation; and this in the face of the express statement of the chapter itself which applies the same word, call it atonement or propitiation, to the entire work of the high-priest on that day. So arbitrary a restriction has the effect of denying the sacrifice itself, the ground of what follows, to be propitiation. And this not only does the greatest wrong to Christ's work on the cross but opens the door for the will-o'-the-wisp of a distinct action of Christ in heaven after death and before resurrection which alone claims to be propitiation.

It is by more than one said that in pointing out the unscriptural temerity of this false teaching I am attempting to fasten heterodoxy on its author. But this his own words fasten really on himself. Nor am I in truth unfair or one-sided, as they are who set the true things the author says to screen the error from the abhorrence of all who glory in the cross of Christ. Nothing is easier than for a partisan, if he will, to give good excuses for a bad thing. It is the invariable way of human alliance faithless to Christ and the truth. I have briefly enough exposed a novel intrusion into a foundation of the faith, which is refuted by the scriptures alleged and would supplant the revealed propitiation by a fable. Nor has the author or any friend title to complain of its summary and decided exposure, after venturing in his "Recent Utterances" to attack the faith of all save his own small following, as if others denied propitiation or made it impossible.* For in this respect Mr. P. differs not substantially from all saints known to me. The aim of the enemy is plain. If the only propitiation be something that followed Christ's going to heaven after death, the sacrifice is robbed of that value which scripture gives it in the faith of all outside the Reading fraternity, and must sink into a subordinate place. Some who accept the dream may continue in a measure old habits of speech notwithstanding; better still some having real faith underneath their new creed may retain honour for the cross of Christ. But inevitably where souls are formed only on this notion, they must eventually sink to the level of the heterodoxy that Christ's sacrifice is not the essence of the propitiation, which last is a mysterious and subsequent sprinkling of His blood by Himself in heaven after His death and before His resurrection. To state the view is its truest and strongest condemnation to all single-eyed believers. And any effort to fritter away its seriousness by putting forward other things the author states is, in my judgment, not of God. Error is apt to be inconsistent.

* Neither the author nor his apologists have a just plea against hard measure from others in presence of such words as these, still uncancelled — the first hint of the dogma that came before me (in 1886 I believe). — "Now as propitiation by blood could only be made in the holiest and the Lord never entered that on earth, for He was not a priest on earth, where and when has propitiation been made by Him? The answer is simple — in heaven and after death. Mr. Pinkerton affirms all was done in this world, not in heaven [and in this I should have thought all saints concurred unhesitatingly]. If so, propitiation by blood the Lord has not made, nor can He make it. The doctrine we are asked to accept [and I never to my knowledge heard other from an orthodox believer of any age, land, or confession] sweeps away all hope of salvation, for atonement is not complete without propitiation, and thus Mr. Pinkerton really denies that the Lord could and did effect [a monstrous conclusion and simply from his own delusion]. His doctrine is in flat opposition to the word of God" (Recent Utterances by C.E.S., p. 42). Either people do not believe such language reprehensible, and then what can one think? or, if they do, they are bound to have the courage of their convictions, and to act as they speak. If the saints at large, who differ as to this from Mr. S. wholly, and not from Mr. P., "sweep away all hope of salvation," and deny true propitiation, are they not in deadly error, or are they condoned by the author as so ignorant of the truth that their error is a small matter and quite unworthy of raising a question of fellowship or discipline?

It is a fact that the N.T. does not expressly say that God was propitiated, but speaks of Christ expiating our sins, of His being a propitiation for them and sent for this purpose by God. Admiring the wisdom that avoids language which heathen, ignorant of divine love and holiness, might from their old habits seriously misunderstand, I believe it quite another thing to deny that God needed propitiation. For herein the offended majesty and violated will and outraged nature of God were vindicated. It is therefore profoundly erroneous to confound it with reconciling love. The gift of the Son in God's love in no way negatives the necessity of Christ's blood as a propitiation: it is unbelief to array them in opposition. Therefore one hails these words of C. E. S. in Dec., 1888 (only just seen), "God requires propitiation to be made, because men have sinned, that He may in righteousness be propitious to them," even though the N. T. may not so express itself. But they seem quite inconsistent with, and surely corrective of, the expressions reprobated in "Help and Instruction," which shocked souls by setting the letter against the spirit of all scripture. For the essence of propitiation is Godward, on man's behalf indeed, but in the unsparing judgment of his evil, the ground of divine righteousness as we see so plainly declared in Rom. 3: 25 and elsewhere. Nowhere was it said, thought or implied, that the author believed not in Christ's sufferings on the cross. But this doctrine was judged, whatever else was right, to be ruinously wrong: first, in eliminating propitiation from the sin-offerings of atonement to confine it to the blood carried and sprinkled within the sanctuary; secondly and worse, in insisting that Christ only made this type good, and Heb. 2: 17 true, by going into heaven after death and before resurrection, to make propitiation for our sins.

To me it seems no honour to brethren beloved but a real indignity to the Lord, that every question of moment seems of late to drive so many to a departed and honoured brother, as to their living oracle. Have we no Bible? or can christian men not interpret it in the Spirit? are they cast on the safeguard of that tradition? No man had a greater horror of such unbelief in God's word, such idolatry of man. And perhaps I may be allowed to express my personal grief and shame, the more for having given not a few laborious years to collecting and editing what is being so painfully abused. But it seems unobjectionable and called for to say, now that his name is so often invoked for what he detested, that J. N. D. has repeatedly left on record under his own hand (what his life-long ministry proved to all that knew it) his distinct faith that Christ's making propitiation for our sins was here below on the cross (Heb. 2: 17), and by no means after death and in heaven as an action of His priesthood there. Any one who has access to his Collected Writings can verify this without doubt by examining Doctrinal iii. 484, 485, iv. 325. From this conviction I never knew a single godly man in or out of fellowship, still less a teacher, dissent; and if it be true that the Reading error appeared ten or twelve years ago, I can only presume that no man of discernment had read the articles, almost all such at that time being absorbed in the then impending or occurrent sorrow.

W. K.

The Prospects of the World according to the Scriptures.

2 Thessalonians 2: 1-12

W. Kelly.

I have previously shown the hope and calling of the Christian in the parable of the virgins. We shall now see what the word of God reveals as to the future of those not born of God, who may bear the Christian name for the present, but who will abandon it, as we learn from the very portion of Scripture just read. No doubt the world comprehends more than those who outwardly profess the name of the Lord. Besides Christendom, it embraces the Gentiles or heathen, and the Jews. Scripture is silent about none of these; and the light of God is as bright on the future as on the past.

GOD ONLY CAN FORETELL THE FUTURE

This is an immense principle to hold fast in reading the written word. Men are apt to judge of God by themselves. To speak with certainty of the future being to us impossible, man forthwith imagines that, if God speaks about it, even then it must be somewhat uncertain. If we only reflect a moment, we cannot but see that this idea is the principle of infidelity. What difference does it make to God whether He is speaking about the past, the present, or the future? He assuredly does not think in the sense of having to reflect, nor does He merely give an opinion. On the contrary; He knows all things. The only question is whether God communicates what He knows, or how far He has been pleased to do so. Does not the prophetic word profess that He has done so? Is it a true profession? If God has communicated His mind about the future, as evidently the Scriptures assume and even assert, it is simply faith to accept it; and the moment our faith rests upon His word, the light shines. What seemed confusion, when we did not believe, turns to order before our minds when we do. The light was really there always. It was our unbelief that made confusion.

The word of God is the perfect revelation of His mind, no matter what He speaks, or when; and God has been pleased to speak about the future. To do so is the special mark of His confidence. He tells Abraham what He was going to do what concerned not merely himself, but others, even the cities of the plain. Abraham had nothing directly to do with them though Lot had; yet it was not Lot but Abraham who was told of the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot only learned it just in time to be saved, as he was, by fire. But Abraham knew in peace beforehand, and interceded with God. Our portion ought to be that of Abraham rather than of Lot. There are those who in the future will be saved just in time to escape destruction. There are those yet to be in the sphere of judgment, who will pass through it in a measure, who will be preserved only at the last moment. Some will be destroyed. Remember Lot's wife. Others will be rescued, as the angels rescued Lot and his daughters. But theirs was not the happier portion, like that of Abraham.

God has "provided some better thing for us" in every respect. He has given us the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Accordingly, says Paul, writing, not to the Ephesians or the Philippians, but even to the Corinthians, "We have the mind of Christ", the intelligence of Christ, the capacity of spiritual understanding (1 Cor. 2: 16). Not, of course, that we have the same measure as the Lord, Who had and was Himself the wisdom of God, and this absolutely. We have nothing save in and by Him, and hence only in dependence on Him. However, as Christians having the Holy Ghost, we have not the mere mind of man only but of Christ. The intelligence of Christ is ours; and this shows why what was true in principle of Abraham is increasingly — so to speak — true of the Christian, for it could not be said, in the full force of the term, that Abraham had the mind of Christ. The Holy Ghost had not yet come, for Jesus was not yet glorified. Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished the redemption, and has gone up on high, He has sent down the Holy Spirit to dwell in His saints, to make them the temple of God, and even the body of each believer the temple of the Holy Ghost, just as His own body was, He on earth having His body perfectly holy, and ever fit for the Spirit without redemption, we only in virtue of His blood. Hence, never till the blood of Christ was shed could any other here below be the temple of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was the temple of the Spirit; we, I repeat, are only so because our sin is judged in His cross, our guilt blotted out by His blood. Therefore the Spirit of God comes down to dwell in us, putting honour on the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; and because of this we have a divine power opening into all that God communicates.

This, though a digression, is of immense importance on the particular subject which we are examining, for there is nothing that more clearly proves divine intelligence than the communication of the future. The Old Testament makes, in the main, this challenge to the false gods, a challenge which — and we need not wonder at it — could only strike them with dumbness, even if they had pretended ever so loudly before to give out oracles. As long as it was merely a question of baffling inquirers, they might deceive by equivocal answers; but Isaiah, in the most trenchant and severe style, shows their utter impotence to disclose the future.

THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD HAS BEEN FORETOLD

Now a very large part of the Old Testament consists of revelations of the future, and not only of what was future then, but of what is future still. The Old Testament prophets expand largely, and in the most blessed terms, on the bright future that yet awaits this world. Isaiah depicts the day of Jehovah, when all that now obstructs the light of glory shall be removed; when all that rises up against the honour of the only true God shall fall; when Satan will lose his delusive power; when the nations of the earth, long groaning under oppression' shall be set free; and when the Jews themselves, who truly ought to have been the leaders of all that is good and true, but alas! abound with teachers of the infidelity that now poisons the world, shall be delivered from every bitter thraldom, and will come forth to the place that God's promise assigns them as the head and priest of the world. They are destined to fill the foremost place when the earth itself is raised out of its actual and long degradation. The Lord has spoken it, and His hand will accomplish all in due time.

These are parts of the prospects of the world on which the Old Testament prophets descant at great length, and with graphic minuteness. When the Lord Jesus came, on Whom the accomplishment of prophecy depends for the realisation of the kingdom of God — for in truth He was the King Who brought in the kingdom personally, and presented it with final responsibility to Israel — He was rejected. Then came a mighty change of all consequence to the world, when every bright hope seemed blasted, when all expectation of glory for Israel set in clouds and a deeper darkness than before. God made use of that moment of fallen hopes for the earth and the earthly people, and the nations of the world, for "some better thing". He used the cross of Christ to bring in a wholly new state, when Israel vanished for a season — a state distinct from that which prophets prepared the minds of men of old to expect. The reason is simple, and the ground plain. The rejected Christ is raised from the dead, and, having ascended to heaven, takes His seat there to bring in a new and heavenly order of blessing. He is seated there until a future moment, unknown and undisclosed during which God brings in altogether new things. This present interval is Christianity, which is therefore essentially of heaven. The prophets did not speak of heaven, save incidentally. Prophecy refers to the earth. No doubt there are here and there allusions to heaven; but-by no prophet and in no prophecy is there an opening out of what the Lord Jesus is doing now at the right hand of God.

THE LAMP AND THE DAY-STAR

It was not the object of prophecy to do so. Prophecy, the prophetic word, is a lamp, and very useful, to which those who heed the Lord will do well to pay attention, for that lamp shines in a dark or squalid place (2 Peter 1: 19). Such is the revealed use of prophecy for Christianity. But then there is a brighter light, even the light of day, as the apostle says "Till the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts." What does he mean by this? The accomplishment of prophecy? Not at all. Till the day of Jehovah comes for the world? In no wise. He speaks of day dawning, and the star arising in the heart, not of that day arising upon the world. This would be the accomplishment of prophecy; but he is intimating what the Spirit of God can bring into the heart of the Christian now. The Jewish believer was encouraged still to value his prophetic lamp. The word of prophecy derived confirmation from what was seen on the Holy Mount. Yet there was to be a far clearer light — the light of day, the brightness of heaven, not of the lamp. Further, the person of our Lord Jesus is our hope, the day-star, not merely the general light of heaven, but the day-star arising in the heart. This is, as I understand it, the dawning of heavenly hope in the heart, of which Peter spoke.

The actual arrival of the day of the Lord is another matter, and this will be in its own time. It is, however, a good thing to hold fast the prophetic lamp until we get a better light. There are far brighter associations into which the Christian is introduced now through Christ Jesus; but of these things prophecy does not treat. The prophetic word does not contemplate the arising of the day-star in the heart. There it is the very reverse of Christ. The day-star of prophecy is the name of the Lord's enemy, as you may see in Isaiah 14: 12. The day-star that the Christian knows is Christ, while He is outside of the world in heaven, before He comes to earth. Day dawns, and the day-star arises in the Christian's heart while he is here.

In consequence of this present privilege we stand in a wondrous position. Believing in the Lord Jesus, we have a Saviour Who is already come, and has accomplished the redemption of our souls, and given us remission of sins. We have life eternal, and the knowledge of our absolute cleansing in the sight of God through the Holy Ghost. Yet the condition of the world is no better, but rather worse. The world has been led on by its prince to reject its only true King — I mean the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, the Supreme. We are in the secret of its declension; we know that the King of kings has been refused; and our hearts are with Him. We can afford to wait for the great day; but meanwhile we have the light of day before the day comes. The light cannot yet shine on the world, but in our hearts; so that it is evident we have more than the lamp of prophecy, even the light of day.

We are children of the light and of the day ourselves. Hence therefore it is the part of the Christian to be able to read all that is passing around, as well as the communications of God as to the future. According to God it is a part of our proper heritage. We ought to be able to understand the signs of the times. We ought to be able to read not only what is before us according to God, but also to speak of the future because we believe the word of God. With all that God has communicated we may and should interest ourselves. We have the family interests; for, if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; and it would be a poor thing that the heirs should not make themselves acquainted with the inheritance; and how strange if Christians should not understand by the Spirit of God! For this reason then, if we only knew our own privileges, we are led into an immense field of blessedness entirely outside the natural ken of man. This is what I shall endeavour a little to expound and apply, in looking at a few of the principal passages that bear upon the prospects of the world according to the Scriptures.

ROOTING OUT TARES A MISTAKE

Now the Lord, when He was here below, showed clearly what was to befall the world (Matt. 13). He says, "The field is the world", and He has told us what will become of the world, where men would be Christianised — that is, He has shown us clearly what would be the result. Good seed was sown; but there was an enemy who sowed bad seed. Now He does not give us the smallest idea that the bad seed would be ameliorated. He shows us that the servants were zealous enough to remove the bad seed, but He reproves them. He shows that the effort to correct the evil that is in the world, the attempt to use the name of the Lord for reforming the world, always ends in rooting up the good as well as the bad.

We see this habitually in Popery. It is the principle of the reproved servants; but, instead of making the world better, in effect it ends on the contrary by destroying the wheat, not the tares. Babylon, above all that ever were, has killed the saints, and made herself drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus (Rev. 17: 6). This is a matter of divine revelation to every one, and history verifies it as a fact of Rome, not pagan only but papal yet more. Scripture had said so long ago: he would be a bold man who would dare to deny it. Yet, as of old so now, there are men who talk of making the world better! This delusion goes along with another fundamental error which is found in Popery (and far beyond it too), and that is the notion of men getting better themselves. The two delusions go together. The fact is, that Christianity denies both; one's very baptism indeed denies it, particularly as to man (Rom. 6). To be saved one must take the ground of death with Christ, not of improving the first man; and he who sees and knows what man is ought never to be drawn into the delusion of the world's improvement. Further, the Lord Jesus sets aside the latter error when He tells us the nature of the harvest that is coming; and the harvest is the end of the age, this present evil age, not of the world (Matt. 13: 38, 39).

When the consummation of this age then comes, there will be a process of discrimination and judgment. The wheat will be removed on high, the tares dealt with here below. Consequently then will be the harvest; but evil will abound up to the end of the age. Never will there be a time in this age when the preaching of the gospel or the zeal of the children of God will root out the evil that has been sown by Satan from the beginning under the Christian name. The new age, the millennial kingdom, will be characterised by righteous rule over the earth in power.

In short therefore those who expect the gradual extirpation of evil are in antagonism with the distinct teaching of the Lord Jesus. I am as far as possible from saying this to repress efforts towards winning and edifying souls; and I fear those who yield to such thoughts, or at least to such words, are guilty of slander. It is one thing to work in faith, and another to expect the general blessing of the world as the result. I grant you the latter will surely come, but its introduction is reserved for the Son of man. Should the bride of the Lamb be jealous? Such a work and result is not for the church, which has been very guilty from early days, dragged down into the snares of the world, into its activity, its honours, its gold and silver, and what not. If Christendom is now suffering the buffets of the world, the world, once eagerly sought by Christians for its own things, is now turning against those who gave the poorest testimony to what a Christian should be. So it will be more and more with the world. Ungrateful for whatever of God has been shed around by Christianity, it will turn again and rend her who abused the name of the Lord for her own selfish and earthly interests. Evil was planted in Christendom under the pretext of Christ's name, and that evil can never be rooted out until the judgment which is to be executed at the end of the age. It is presumptuous unbelief to expect or attempt it. The angels dealing judicially are quite distinct from and contrasted with the servants who sow and watch (alas, how poorly!) the good seed. It is astonishing how men continue to confound the two.

END OF THE AGE BUT NOT OF THE WORLD

I repeat also that the end of the age is not the end of the world. The phrase "end of the world" in Matthew 13: 39 is an unequivocal error of translation. There is no scholar who ought not to be ashamed of such a blunder. Far from being the end of the world, the very context proves the contrary. The Lord sends His angels and purges from the field or world what is offensive to Him. The evil is judged, the scandals removed; the bad crops or bad fish destroyed. In short, the living wicked are punished, and the righteous shine in the kingdom of their Father. The kingdom of the Son of man is the earthly part of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the Father is its heavenly part, as will appear to any attentive reader. The heavenly things and the earthly things of the kingdom of God (compare John 3: 12) will be found then in unsullied brightness and harmony. In the Father's kingdom, according to His own counsels, the glorified saints shine to His own praise. The field or world which had been spoiled by Satan's wiles will be cleared of all its corruptions and lawlessness. Thus, far from being the end of the "world", the harvest which closes this age will be the beginning of the world's going onward in blessedness under the displayed kingdom of the Son of man and Son of God, the Head of the church which will then be exalted and reigning with Him.

It is the end of the age, the present age, during which Christ does not appear in glory and reign over the earth. There will follow another age, when Christ, instead of being hidden, will be manifested, and will expel Satan, removing all that contaminates men and dishonours God. This judicial purging connects itself with the Old Testament prophets They all refer to the times of restitution of all things, the kingdom of Messiah over the earth. The mistake is applying them to the church now. The principle often does apply in the New Testament, as we all see. I do not mean to contest this, but there are limits. The fulfilment is another thing.

In the future kingdom there will be not only Jews blessed but Gentiles too. Of this the apostle Paul avails himself, pointing to the fact of both enjoying the present blessings of grace; and this fact amply suffices to stop the mouth of the Jew. Thus we find the Old Testament applied in Romans 15: 10 — "Rejoice ye Gentiles with His people." How then could the Jews consistently object to the apostle's preaching to all men? Was it right of them to fly in the face of their own prophets? Did they not affirm God's blessing on both to be contrary to the Bible? But the Gentiles are certainly blessed no less than the Jew by the gospel; and this the proud Jew could not endure. Still the apostle never says that the prophecy was therefore accomplished to the letter now. The principle of it is true under the gospel; the fulfilment of it awaits another day and a different state of things when Christ Himself appears.

In the prophecies we find intimations not merely of the coming blessedness, but of the Jews treated as a rebellious gainsaying people; and of God calling in those who were "not a people". Take the beginning of Isaiah 65. The Gentiles are there called as those who knew not the Lord, while His own are treated as disobedient. Compare again Hosea 1: 10 with Rom. 9: 24-26. Thus the Spirit of God gives here and there hints, dim enough once but now clearly interpreted by Himself, which were to have a special bearing on the present time. But none of these Old Testament Scriptures discloses to us the heavenly glory of Christ at the right hand of God, or of Christians united with their Head in heaven. These things compose "the mystery"; none of them is ever developed by the prophets.

We have the fact of the Lord sitting at the right hand of God in Psalm 110; but the only use the psalm makes of it is to show that He sits there till His enemies are made His footstool. There is not a word about what is done with His friends. The revelation of the counsels and ways of God with the latter now is Christianity. The psalm only speaks of His sitting there till judgment is executed on His enemies. We see what the apostle calls the revelation of the mystery is now verified. It is a secret which the Old Testament never brought out, though giving certain intimations that are now accomplished — for instance, in calling the Gentiles. For as Moses told Israel, "The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the works of this law" (Deut. 29: 29). But the great central truth of St. Paul is that the mystery or secret of God concerning Christ and the church is now revealed by His holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit (Rom. 16: 25, 26).

It would be easy to furnish further proofs, were this the fitting time. The character of the church supposes that God abolishes at present the difference between the Jew and the Gentile. The grand fact of the future is that then the Jew is exalted to the first place, and the Gentile blessed, but subordinately.

In the kingdom they will each be recognised and blessed, but in a different position, not equally as now both are. It is quite evident that the future millennial kingdom supposes the reinstatement of Israel in more than former favour., and the nations will rejoice, but in a place secondary to that of Israel.

In the church of God all this disappears, the church being heavenly, as Christ is, and according to the nature of things in heaven. People are not known by their nationality on high: on earth they are, according to God's providence. But the Christian being essentially called on high, all these earthly distinctions entirely disappear. Hence after Pentecost there was a new state of things and a fresh testimony, for God has now revealed that which comes in between the first and second advent of Christ.

When the Lord comes again, the Old Testament prophecies will resume their course, with the additional confirmation of a small portion of the New Testament which refers to that time in order to give a harmonious testimony.

One may now see clearly what has been shown already, that the Lord Jesus prepared His disciples from the very first not to expect that the Christian economy would, so far as the world was concerned, end in joy and light and blessing. On the contrary, evil must take root from early days by the crafty power of Satan, and never be corrected till the end of this age. This then is the first great lesson that we are taught in the Gospels.

Again, in Luke 21 is a statement to which we may refer as giving a further view of the prospects of the world according to the Scriptures. It is said, "When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." This distinctly points to the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, when it was invested with armies more completely than at any point of its most eventful history. But there is not a word here about seeing "the abomination of desolation." Nor does this chapter say "then shall be great tribulation," such as never had been, nor shall be: "these," it only tells us, "be the days of vengeance" — two very different things. Here again we read, "But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people." This was fulfilled to the veriest tittle in what befell the Jews when Titus took the city, and the Jews passed into captivity for the second time. "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." So it was, in fact. Jerusalem was trodden down of the Gentiles. One national power after another was to have possession of the holy city. So it is now; that treading down still goes on, for the times of the Gentiles are not yet fulfilled.

But much more follows: "There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring," etc. Some people have made the mistake that these scenes took place when Titus took Jerusalem. There is no authority for such a supposition. We have had the capture of Jerusalem long ago; then that Jerusalem is trodden down after the siege, while "the times of the Gentiles" flow onward; thence we are transported into the final scenes. "Then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory; and when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." It is clear that destruction is not intended, but the blessedness that is coming in at the end, when God terminates the time of misery and sorrow and trouble and suffering. The coming of the Son of man is never made to be the annihilation of the world, or the end of it in that sense, but the end of Satan's misrule, and the shining forth of the kingdom of God. For the world there can be no real permanent general blessing till the Son of man comes in power and glory.

THE FIG TREE AND ALL THE TREES

In this chapter (ver. 29), we find the parable in an enlarged form compared with Matthew: "Behold the fig tree, and all the trees." As being of Luke, it speaks about the Gentiles explicitly. Therefore "all the trees" are in the scene. When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that "summer is nigh." "The kingdom of God is nigh at hand." Is it not evident, therefore, that the kingdom of God is coming in a sense different from what men look for and say? Its approach is true now to faith; but we do not see it. Then it will be manifest, and it will put down all that opposes itself against God. The yoke of evil will be broken then, which it is not now. Satan is still the prince of this world. We have to fight against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places (Eph. 6: 12). The term "high places" is an error of the translators, which falsifies the sense. It has led persons to oppose the higher authorities; for instance it led the Roundheads to oppose the government of their day. Such an interpretation is as false as the translation. The rendering and the doctrine are both wrong. The doctrine of the New Testament is that we have to do with the most serious fight that ever can be carried on by man here below; we have to combat Satan, not only to hold our own, but to hold the Lord's own against all the power of the enemy. But in no case is the Christian to wage carnal warfare, only against Satan.

This spiritual conflict is what is going on now, but it will not be the case when the kingdom of God comes. Satan, animating the empire in its last uprising, and the nations in general, against the Lamb, will be put down: then the stream will steadily flow on for God's glory. Now we have to swim against the current. Now it is a question of life and faith, where Satan reigns, and only the power of the Spirit sustains. There will be no power of death then against which the saints of God will have, as now, to make good His will in the name of Jesus. There are, no doubt, those who will tell you that the kingdom is gradually winning its way among men; but this is a grievous mistake, a short-sightedness not without danger as to the word of God. It ignores the utter ruin of man and the world, the incurable evil of flesh, the power of Satan, the honour reserved and due to Christ. It overlooks the heavenly calling and the future reward and the present rejection of the Christian. It is manifest that, if this present advance were the fact, a very great part of the New Testament would cease to be applicable directly the power of Satan was broken. The doctrine and exhortations which suppose we have now to fight against Satan would be no longer true. There is a plain contrast between the character and circumstances of the millennium and those of the present day.

Romans 11 will tell us a little more of the world's prospects as God teaches us in His word. We read there that the Gentile, who is now the object of God's calling and of His dealings under the gospel, is warned to take heed from the fate of the Jew: "Because of unbelief they were broken off; and thou standest by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee" (vers. 20, 21). It is impossible to apply this to the believer as such. The apostle is speaking of the general professing body. It is the danger of what is commonly called Christendom, of those baptized to the name of the Trinity, who are here warned of excision if they continue not in the goodness of God which He is now displaying. If the Gentiles do not stand by faith, they will be cut off, just as the Jew was before.

This judicial act has nothing to do with the believer's security. But God deprived His chosen nation of their place of privilege and testimony. He always guarded His own people, Israel, as He cares for His own people now. God always is faithful to His saints; how could He be otherwise to those who, renouncing themselves, confide in Him, that is, in His Son? As the Lord Himself told the disciples, they were in His hand and in His Father's hand (John 10: 28, 29). But He is here speaking, not of individual saints, but of the professing body. As the people which had the law were cut off because of their infidelity, so those who are now unfaithful to the gospel will be cut off because of their infidelity. He is speaking of the olive tree, that is, the line of those who profess the name and testimony of God in the world.

THE OLIVE TREE OF PROMISE

The Jews were the beginning of the olive tree. The olive tree being founded on the promises given to Abraham, it does not take account of persons before God's dealings with him. The olive tree begins with the first soul called out as a public witness for God in the world; Abraham's seed, the Jews, followed as a nation; and Christendom is now the public witness for God. But, as the Jew had been false to his calling, so Christendom has been faithless to theirs. The fact is certain, not so much from our own thoughts or from secular history, but from the unerring word of God.

They are told, if they do not abide in the faith, they must be cut off; also, if they (the Jews) do not abide in unbelief, God will graft them in again. The tree was Jewish; then some branches, not all, but some, are brought in under the name of the Lord. Meanwhile the Gentile was Christianised; but when they become unfaithful, the Jews will be grafted in again. This will be when the kingdom of God comes upon the earth.

In Romans 11: 25 we read, "I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits."

This is exactly what Christians have become. They dream that things are always to get better and better. Is not this one way of becoming "wise in their own conceits?" He says again, so "blindness in part is happened unto Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved; as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." You err if you suppose that Christ will be always at the right hand of God, as He now is. When He returns to the earth, when He espouses Zion, there will be a place given to Israel, the old promised place, on the ground of divine mercy; as God has said, "For this is My covenant unto them when I shall take away their sins" (Romans 11: 27).

What is going on now? The Jews are the enemies of the gospel. And one great cause of their enmity is that they first rejected Jesus Himself; then they became furious when redemption through the blood of Jesus was preached to the Gentiles; they could not bear such grace to the world, they were the adversaries who dogged the steps of the apostles wherever they went to preach to the nations; they tried to get hold of the chief women and men, and stir them up against the apostles. So they have been antagonists of Christ ever since. Men wonder what is going on in the infidelity of the day. The Jews are mainly at the bottom of this wickedness. Satan has set up their famous men as objectors to the truth; Spinoza was one of them. But latterly this opposition has taken a new and more apostate shape. It is the old error with a fresh burnish, but with aggravated guilt given to it.

The unbelieving Jews, I am grieved to say, are the mainspring of the world's opposition to the truth of God. They have lost the earth, and they gnash their teeth at heaven. They cannot bear that the Christian should get a blessing which they do not want themselves. The same thing was found wherever the heralds of the divine mercy of God went forth in early days with the message; and so it is now, with the sorrowful addition that the Gentiles were to be unfaithful like the Jews, and foes of the truth also. What an awful thing it is that those who bear the Christian name, shepherds in chief perhaps, are pioneers of the most abominable infidelity! This is the case not merely in Protestant countries, but equally so in Catholic countries. The Protestants are more open and plain-spoken; the others pay their priests if they do not go to mass, or are priests themselves, believing as little as they like. A little hush-money suffices to keep up the delusion.

There is infidelity everywhere in Christendom, and not less but more, I believe, in the lands of Popery, than even in Germany and Holland. Nor do the priests care much about it; so long as men or even women only keep up outward forms, it is all right, and they are "the faithful"!

In Protestant countries, as we know, the Bible is too much read and known for such a vain show. People too are more honest about God and His word; if they do not believe, they say so. Some, it is true, have been learning a novel lesson at Oxford lately: it is to profess the truth, but to insinuate, preach, and print the contrary. This is almost the lowest form of infidelity that has been seen yet. In former days infidelity went outside the profession of faith; this had at least an appearance of low and rude integrity about it. If a clergyman became an infidel, he gave up his profession; but the characteristic of modern free-thinking is that you find men of amiable habits and character who adhere to forms of Christianity which they do not accept as divine and ultimate truths, but only as a step in human progress; and thus they try to destroy the faith of the truth. The influence of this immoral, easy-going scepticism extends, as does the equally unbelieving system of Ritualism; and what will be the result? There will come an uprising of public indignation against Babylon; there will be a revolution in religious things as well as political. This I shall show by the word of God.

The general truth, however, as we have seen before coming to details, is that the Gentiles are warned that they must be cut off, while Israel will be brought in again. The prophets, and yet more, the apostles, are clear enough about it. We go farther, however; and in the Scripture which we have read tonight the statement of the Spirit of God is most explicit. He encourages the saints by their hope of the return of the Lord Jesus, Who will instantly gather them up to heaven, not to be troubled with the false rumour that the day of the earth's judgment had already come.

THE THESSALONIAN ERROR ABOUT THE DAY OF THE LORD

I must particularly call your attention to this passage, though it has been often done of late. The phrase in question should be, "The day of the Lord is present." There is an error in the common English version, as also in the commonly received text. This is conceded by almost all competent scholars and intelligent Christians. The meaning of the last verb in 2 Thess. 2: 2 is not "at hand," but "is present." I am not aware of a single case where this form of word could have any other meaning. Nor does it occur seldom in the New Testament: see Rom. 8: 38; 1 Cor. 3: 22; 1 Cor. 7: 26; Gal. 1: 4; Heb. 9: 9, in all which it unequivocally means present, repeatedly in express contrast with what is at hand or future. In 2 Timothy 3: 1, is a different form of the word; but there too it means that difficult times shall be there, not merely imminent. These are all the occurrences in the New Testament. Without exception, they are every one clear and explicit in their sense as to this. "The day of the Lord is at hand" would be a different phrase. When the apostle means "at hand" he says so, using quite another word. Further, this erroneous version, as in the English Bible, makes the apostle contradict himself, for the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 13: 12) tells the Romans that "the day is at hand." How then could the misleaders at Thessalonica be consistently charged with error if they only taught that the day of the Lord is at hand — the same thing as Paul afterwards teaches himself? But no; these false teachers had given out that the day was (not coming ever so soon, but) actually arrived; and this was filling the saints with panic, especially as they pretended to a revelation for it, and even more, as we shall see.

There is an indubitable sign of false teachers that I must here commend to the notice of all Christians, for we need it in these days, and may need it yet more if the Lord tarry. Observe then that the false teacher ordinarily does one of two things, sometimes both: either he lulls asleep those who ought to be roused, keeping them entranced in the deadly slumber of fallen nature, or he tries to alarm true believers by endeavouring to shake their confidence in the grace and truth of God, filling their minds with groundless alarm. Not possessing peace himself, he is often deceived as well as a deceiver; for he knows not in his own experience peace and joy in believing. The false teacher then either injures the children of God by weakening their confidence in God, or, at the same time with this, he lulls with opiates those whom God would have to be awakened from their dangerous insensibility. In short, false teachers either flatter the world or try to alarm the true children of God.

The truth does exactly the contrary; it always has for its effect to rouse men from their state of guilty indifference or of self-confidence, setting before them their fearful danger for eternity. But it tells them of a divine Saviour and of a present salvation. Along with this there is the comforting, establishing, and leading on of the believers. into all their privileges and responsibilities, their proper joys in communion with the Lord and one another, and their growth in the knowledge of His mind and ways for worship and service. For all these things are the portion of the believer.

What then were those about who misled the Thessalonians? They pretended to the word and Spirit for their cry that the day of the Lord was come; false teachers often do as much. But they did more; they grew bolder in their iniquity; they pretended to have a letter of the apostle Paul affirming that "the day of the Lord was present." I am aware that some learned men have thought they alluded to the former Epistle. Thus Paley* says that the apostle writes in the Second Epistle, among other purposes, to quiet this alarm and to rectify the misconstruction that had been put on his words; in that the passage in the Second Epistle relates to the passage in the First. But this is an oversight. It is certain and evident that the epistle alluded to here was not his; for he says "that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us." He does not say the letter that we wrote, but a letter as from us, or purporting to be from us. It was a suppositious letter, not his First Epistle.

* Works (Horae Paulinae), vol. v., p. 284 (ed. 7).

The pretended letter of the apostle was to the effect that the day of the Lord was already come; but the day of the Lord, according to the Bible, will in general be one of trouble and anguish, a day of clouds and darkness for the world. You may read this abundantly in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and many of the prophets. On what pretext then was the cry raised at Thessalonica? The Thessalonians were suffering great trouble and persecution for the truth's sake. The false teachers seem to have converted this into that day, alleging that the day of the Lord had come. All indeed knew it to be a day of fearful trial, and that all meanwhile goes on worse and worse till the evil is then put down and the power of God is victorious. Hence the saints that did look for that day, according to the First Epistle, became troubled by this cry and were shaken in mind. For, as we have seen, false teachers naturally shake the righteous, instead of seeking to comfort and stablish them. On this occasion they contrived to excite no little panic and anxiety as if the day of the Lord had actually come.

Not at all, says the apostle: do you not know that the Lord is coming to gather you to Himself? "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming (or presence) of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind nor troubled." He first appeals to a known motive of joy and confidence in their hope and then goes on to a prophetic reason, thus giving the idea a complete refutation. But you may notice that it is never supposed that the saints wait for the day of the Lord to be taken up and meet Him in the air. It is the coming of the Lord they await for this. "The coming of the Lord" and "His day" are two quite different thoughts, often confounded by men.

The coming or presence (παρουσία) of the Lord is a much wider term, embracing the day as well as what is just before the day. But the part of His coming that is called "the day of the Lord" consists of the execution of His judgment on the earth and then of His reign. The first object is to gather home those He loves. Love would always secure the object of affection first.

The. coming of the Lord then is bound up closely with the gathering of the saints; the day of the Lord with the execution of judgment on His enemies here below. Hence we find here, "let no man deceive you by any means." It is evident there might be a great deal of mistake on this subject; "for that day shall not come except there come the falling away (or apostasy) first." "That day shall not come" is an insertion of our translators, marked therefore by italics, though, I believe, substantially correct. The "day" will come after the apostasy, the public abandonment of Christianity throughout Christendom.

Oh, how men deceive themselves, when they think that all is going on to progress and triumph! There will be victory when Christ comes, not before. What is revealed is a very different and more humbling prospect. The distinct intimation is that ["that day shall not come"] except there come the falling away first, the apostasy. And what is the character of modern infidelity but a preparation of the way for the apostasy; men bearing the Christian name, yet giving up all the Christian substance; men who still carry on the dead forms while the spirit has fled? This abandonment of the truth of God will grow and extend, and men are getting ready for it too. They are destroying everywhere on earth the outward and public recognition of the truth. There will soon be no outward homage paid to Christianity in Europe. I mean that the governments of the world are gradually stripping off all connection with the Christian name. There are those who think this is a great boon. Though I have not the smallest interest or affinity for established religion, I cannot but think the act criminal and that this will turn out more serious than the reformers expect.

I believe it was a most serious evil when the Christians accepted an alliance with the world; but it is a totally different and most solemn issue for the world when it casts off all its connection with Christianity. It was a deep loss for the Christians when they sought the world's recognition; it will be an awful day for the world when it is so tired of the union as to throw off Christianity entirely, Consequently, that most slender tie which binds and attaches men to the reading of the Bible or going to church will be broken when it has no longer connection with the government. You may live to see the vast change which will take place. I grant that there is no reality, no divine life, there is no true honour paid to the Lord, in carrying on a mere outward profession; but people who go to church, as it is called, hear the word of God and an acknowledgement of the name of Christ. When this is no longer publicly recognised, they will give it up as an antiquated prejudice, and go to shoot, fish, ride, or drink. They will amuse themselves in reading anything but the Bible. There will be the most rapid decay. Not so with the saints of God. The result will be, no doubt, that the real will become the more evident. They will rest only on the word of God; but as regards men of the world, the neglect of reverence for what is divine will bring about the apostasy. This is what is in prospect for the world!

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians was also the first written by the apostle; the Second, from the nature of the case, was written shortly after. Thus, from the very beginning of Christianity — from the first communications of the Spirit of God to the churches such is the solemn declension of which they were warned. Those who profess the gospel will abandon it ere the end of this age come. But that day is not to be "except there come the falling away first." It is not merely a falling away here, and a falling away there, but the falling away, or the apostasy.

THE MAN OF SIN

Further, "That man of sin (will) be revealed, the son of perdition." There was once a Man of righteousness — the Saviour; but He was rejected. There will be a man of sin — the son of perdition — "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped." I am aware that many people apply this to the Pope of Rome. I do not for a moment agree with them, though regarding that system as a frightful delusion, even Babylon. But I dare not say that the apostasy has arrived yet, and it is a sorrowful thing to use Scripture with a party aim, or for controversial objects; it is a sorrowful thing in the presence of growing evil, which pervades both Protestant and Catholic countries alike — a sorrowful thing to cast such a stone from one to the other. No, beloved friends, the apostasy is the result of despising the gospel, of trifling with the truth, of keeping up forms that are unreal, and then casting them off with shame.

The apostasy will be the result wherever Christendom extends. Wherever the gospel has been preached, or at any rate the Lord professed, the apostasy will be the issue, whether of Catholics or Protestants, whether of Greeks or Copts or any others; such will be the result, not outside but within Christendom. It does not mean the end of the Jews, or of the heathen. The apostle is here speaking of that broad scene wherever the name of the Lord has been professed. "The day of the Lord cannot be, except there come the falling away first and the man of sin be revealed." The climax is that lawless one who "exalteth himself." Jesus humbled Himself, and only exalted God. Here is a man, the man of sin pre- eminently, the personal adversary of the Lord Jesus. And, as the Lord said to the Jews, they would not have Him Who came in His Father's name; they will receive him who comes in his own name (John 5: 43). At the end of this age he will come, and accordingly he is found as Satan's winding-up, not merely of apostate Christianity, but of apostate Judaism also.

I have already shown the connection with Christendom, but now I will briefly touch on Judaism, for this personage "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."

As the true church began in Jerusalem, the great result of the apostasy will find itself conspicuously in Jerusalem. It was this city that saw Pentecost; so far as the world could behold, it beheld that which belongs to heaven on the earth. Jerusalem will see the judgment of that which, long a counterfeit, will end in a manifestation of hell — the fruit of the amalgam of Christianity with Judaism. So the apostle reminds them, "Remember ye not that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things. And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time."

THE WITH-HOLDING POWER

There is a withholding power. What is that power? I cannot doubt it is the Holy Ghost. It is not evil which so opposes evil, but good. That which effectually hinders the outbreak of the power of Satan is not the energy of mortal man. I am aware the ancients used to think it was the Roman empire. This being long gone led some to conceive that the papacy is meant by the beast, as well as the apostasy, the man of sin, etc. But I am not prepared to allow that the beast is come yet. The "mystery of iniquity" is working still. It was working then, and is working now; but even now it does not show itself in its most horrible colours.

The apostle says, "The mystery of iniquity doth already work: only there is one now who letteth (or restraineth), until he be taken out of the way." Thus you see the hindering power is to disappear. Further, it is both a principle and a person (being spoken of as neuter as well as masculine); it can therefore apply to none so well as the Spirit of God, Who still, for the sake of the children of God, and to sustain His testimony, continues to hinder the first manifestation of Satan's power. But then that is only for a time, it will not be for ever. "Only there is one who now letteth until he be taken out of the way." The Spirit of God will by and by cease to stand in the way of the working of the Evil One. "And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the shining forth (or appearing) of His coming." The Lord Jesus is the appointed destroyer of this lawless being the one who is elsewhere called the antichrist. Even now there are many antichrists, says St. John; when the antichrist comes, he will be destroyed by the Lord Jesus coming from heaven and publicly. "Then shall that lawless one be revealed whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the spirit of His mouth." The critical addition of " Jesus" I put in, because it is certainly genuine and gives more definiteness to the thought.

THE APPEARING AND THE COMING

Now mark the first verse of the chapter. The apostle does not say the appearing of His coming when Christ gathers the saints. "We beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto Him." Here, when the destruction of the man of sin is in question, he speaks not merely of His coming but of the appearing — the epiphany or brightness — of His coming. If when the Lord comes to gather His saints He appears, why should not His appearing be brought in there? Is it not manifest that the coming of the Lord does not of necessity mean His appearing? How else the phrasing of verse 8? It was necessary, when His appearing was meant, to say so; and this is when He judges. When it is the dealing of His grace in translating us to heaven, His coming or presence is named, but not a word about His appearing. When the lawless one shall be destroyed, it is not merely His presence or coming, but the shining forth of it. For He might come without being seen beyond what He pleased; but here we have the manifestation of His advent. When He comes to take up His saints, what will the world have to do with it? It was His own love which saved them; they belonged to Him, not to the world. He comes to claim His own. He does not make the world a spectator before He appears in glory for the destruction of the antichrist.

The world will have bowed down to the antichrist. Gentiles as well as Jews will have accepted him. Just as the blessed Lord Jesus is both the true Messiah and the God of Israel, so this false personage, the man of sin, will set up to be both the Messiah and Jehovah of Israel, and the mass will be led away by the fatal delusion. The same unbelief which rejects the true will bow down to the false.

These are the dismal prospects of the world according to the Scriptures. A very different future fills the imagination of men generally. Why wonder at this? How can they truly prognosticate what is to be? No man can discern the future unless he believes the prophecies of God.

I am aware many will tell you how dangerous it is to predict. But the study of prophecy is calculated and meant to keep us from predicting. Those who study prophecy should be humble enough to be content with prophecy. If you despise the prophecies of God, you may set up to be a prophet; but, if so, you must always be a false one. It is only God Who knows and can tell the future. But God has revealed it: we have the responsibility of believing. A man cannot believe these things without their leaving their impress upon his heart. If you have truth in your heart, show it in your hand and on your forehead, seeking to prove true to what you believe.

The Lord Jesus is coming; but He is going to appear also, not merely coming to receive His own, when His coming will be in the twinkling of an eye. That the world should see the change and translation of the saints is not at all necessary, for the Lord has many ways of taking His own to Himself without death. Suppose the Lord were to cause a tremendous earthquake to happen, would not the wise men of the world say that the Christians had been swallowed up in the earthquake? It is easy enough to conceive a way in which the Lord could conceal the matter; but He does not conceal from us, nor will He from men, what He will do to the misleader of the world. This, at least, will be manifest to every eye. Hence we find that, whenever judgment is in question, manifestation characterises it. When the Lord Jesus called Saul of Tarsus, his companions felt the tokens of some extraordinary action going on, though they knew nothing about itself. There were not a few men in the throng going to Damascus, yet only one man saw the Lord Jesus; all the rest only heard an inarticulate sound. They did not hear the words of His mouth; Saul of Tarsus did. Then, again, we find Philip caught up and carried to another place; but what did the world know of all that? There was a subsequent occasion when the apostle Paul was caught up into the third heaven. But was this divulged for the good of the world?

Nothing, then, is easier than for the Lord to show things in a partial way on these occasions; but He will do them on a grand comprehensive scale when the judgment of the world comes, after taking on high His people previously.

Manifestation is always connected with the world's portion. The Lord, when He comes for the saints, will manifest Himself to them, of course; but that He will manifest Himself to the world is nowhere said in the Bible. There is a positive intimation that it will not be so at the end. "When Christ, Who is our life, shall appear, then shall we [be not caught up but] appear with Him in glory." Consequently, the world cannot have seen Christ when He came to take His people. The very same moment that the world sees Christ appearing in glory they will see the saints appearing in glory along with Him. If Christ could appear before the saints were caught up the Scriptures would be contradicted.

BABYLON AND THE BEAST

I will refer to one Scripture more before I close; and it is a very solemn one. It is from Revelation 17. There are two great objects of judgment brought before us there. One is called the great harlot, the other is the beast. The first object is seen sitting upon many waters (vers. 1-6). She is a corrupt woman, seated also upon a most remarkably characterised beast, a beast with seven heads and ten horns. What is the meaning of these two symbols? You may easily gather it by comparing the 1st verse with the 9th and 10th verses of Rev. 21, which refer to "the bride, the Lamb's wife."

It is plain that the one is the counterpart of the other; that Babylon, the harlot, is Satan's sad contrast to the bride, the Lamb's wife. As the one is the holy city, the bride of the Lamb, the other corrupts herself with the kings of the earth, and corrupts them. This explains why she is styled "harlot." She is the great ruling city of the world, which has her kingdom over the kings. The church glorified, the body of Christ, the Lamb's wife, is said to be "the holy city, Jerusalem," that comes down out of heaven from God. This, then, is the holy (not the great) city. "He showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem"; the word "great" ought to be expunged, and the word "holy" transposed to take its place — "the holy city, Jerusalem" (ver. 10).

But still, the very fact that the holy city, Jerusalem, is the church glorified, gives the greatest possible help towards understanding what Babylon means. What is the religious body which, under the shelter of Christ's name, pretends to be the mother of all the churches? Can one hesitate?

I grant you that much evil has been done by what is called established churches, the national body of this country, and the national body of that; but what is this coalition in comparison with the pretensions of her that claims all countries and tongues, kings as well as subjects? Can there be any question who and what she is? Has there ever been any but one?

There can be no reasonable doubt about the meaning of Babylon; but as if to preclude the possibility, we have several marks. First, she is a persecuting power,* the greatest of all persecutors, drunk with the blood of the saints. Have you not heard of an ecclesiastical body which thinks it her duty, for the love of God and the good of men's souls, to exterminate heretics? She is herself as innocent as Pilate! She kills none; she only hands them over to the civil power to be punished! Alas! there never was a Pagan power, there never was a Jewish frenzy, which so tortured the saints of God as Babylon has done. So clear is her identification that I do not require to point her out. Surely the truth must be evident when it is unnecessary to name who she is.

* Mr. J. A. Froude has too much reason to say, "The so-called horrors of the French Revolution were a mere bagatelle, a mere summer shower, by the side of the atrocities committed in the name of religion and with the sanction of the Catholic Church. The Jacobin Convention of 1793-4 may serve as a measure to show how mild are the most ferocious of mere human beings when compared to an exasperated priesthood. By the September massacre, by the guillotine, by the fusillade at Lyons, and by the drownings on the Loire, five thousand men and women, at the utmost, suffered a comparatively easy death. Multiply the five thousand by ten, and you do not reach the number of those who were murdered in France alone in the two months of August and September, 1572. Fifty thousand Flemings and Germans are said to have been hanged, burnt, or buried alive under Charles V. Add to this the long agony of the Netherlands in the revolt from Philip, the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the ever-recurring massacres of the Huguenots, and remember that the Catholic religion alone was at the bottom of all these horrors; that the crusades against the Huguenots especially were solemnly sanctioned by successive popes, and that no word of censure ever issued from the Vatican, except in the brief intervals when statesmen and soldiers grew weary of bloodshed, and looked for means to admit the heretics to grace."

Nor is this nearly all we are told here. The last verse says, "The woman is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth." There is a distinction of importance. This chapter does not confound the harlot and the woman. For the woman is here declared to be the symbol of the ruling city. This is unquestionable. Now there never was one that ruled as this city did. The better you know history the more you will feel that Rome only it can be. There was but one city. which ruled more and longer than any empire since the world began; and everybody in St. John's day would know where that city lay and what was its name.

It was not Athens — for Athens could never for any considerable time rule even Greece. It was not Jerusalem before nor Constantinople since. Some think that this chapter refers to the literal Babylon of Chaldea; but this was a city built on the plain of Shinar. How could such a city be truly said to be built on seven hills! The Chaldean capital had been a great city; it passed away, and only remained to occupy the curiosity of the learned men. Here was one then ruling over the kings of the earth. There was but one city that could be said so to reign in the days of John, and no one ever has so reigned since.

This city was to become the harlot, and so to exercise power over the Roman beast or empire, the beast of seven heads and of ten horns. But at first sight there is a difficulty here; for the Roman empire has disappeared. It existed and has fallen. How then are we to understand the chapter? The historian tells us that the Roman empire long ago declined and fell. There he stops; he cannot lift the veil. Not history explains prophecy, but prophecy explains history. Prophecy is the true and divine key to the prospects of the world. Accordingly here is the explanation:- the beast that then was, the Roman beast, would cease to exist. "The beast that thou sawest was, and is not." Its vast power was to perish; and the infidel historian chronicles the fact.

But you have another thing which history could not divine. If God's word is true and sure, the Roman beast is to revive. It is well known that its revival has been essayed. Charlemagne tried; Napoleon the First tried; Napoleon the Third would have liked well to have tried. Not that I have sympathy with those who pretend to point out the person. There were many that fixed on the last-named fallen potentate and a few cling to their notion still [1873]. They are premature: better leave guess-work to such as do not search into prophecy.

THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Here is the word of God. Why should you predict? You had better not pretend to it; the word of God has spoken already; be you content with its predictions. Now the word of God has said nothing of the sort it speaks of the beast that should ascend out of the bottomless pit, or abyss, and go into perdition. Why add to this? Why speculate? Let us only believe. Diabolical power will revive the Roman empire. "And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is." The common reading "and yet is" (χαίπερ ἐστίν) is incorrect. "And shall be present" (χαὶ πάρεσται) is the true sense. Here, then, we have the clearest intimation that the Roman empire is to be reconstructed under the worst influence before the age ends and the Lord returns in judgment.

Let us look back for a moment at the history of the world-empire, and compare it with the present and the future.

In the time of John the Roman empire ruled the known world. That empire had then but one governor or chief. Gradually the power began to weaken and wane. First came the division into east and west. Then some time afterwards the Germanic barbarians broke up the Western empire and founded those separate kingdoms of Europe, which, after feudalism, passed into the constitutional monarchies of modern times. Such has been the result of the breaking up of the Roman empire. Here we find the two conditions: the beast that was, the beast that is not. But it "shall ascend out of the bottomless pit." This will be a new trait in the world's history. The worst of powers is better than anarchy; the most grinding tyrannies are safer than no authority at all! So, it is evident that, whatever changes may have occurred in the world's affairs, there has never been a power without the sanction of God, bad as its exercise of authority may have been. The letting loose of the power of Satan is not yet, because there is One Who withholds (2 Thess. 2); but when He withdraws the hindrance, the beast ascends out of the bottomless pit. St. John of course speaks symbolically of the Roman empire in its last Satanic uprising and state. In the end of this age Satan will be allowed by God to re-establish that great object of human ambition. Men are even now yearning after an energetic central authority in the West. It is the plain fact that the ten horns, or kingdoms (supposing for the moment that the kingdoms of Western Europe comprised just ten) have no political coherence. One of their marked features has been that they are constantly in danger of war with each other. They have sought by what they term "the balance of power," to maintain a measure of mutual understanding, peace, and order. But in consequence of this very arrangement no one power has been allowed to get the upper hand.

Many have desired it; but the result of their desires, when action has followed before the time, is that such perish. But by and by it will be accomplished. Then the beast will be reconstituted. There will be unity, one central authority, without extinguishing the separate kingdoms, save that the little horn acquires three. Thus there will be the revived Roman empire, with distinct kingdoms. The future state will consist of the imperial headship, along with the subordinate kingdoms of the once united western empire. The balance of power will then be required no longer. The day is coming when Satan will deceive the world. God has accomplished His own purpose of gathering out His saints to Himself. And then the world is allowed to have its little moment when Satan has consummated his power on earth. (See verses 12 and 13.)

The state here described is perfectly unexampled before or since the fall of the Roman empire. One knows the independence of even the least of the kingdoms. They do not like people to interfere, if they be ever so little. Several too join — some for and some against. Such is the way things have long gone on in the political world of the west.

Here the principle of national independence has disappeared. Separate or party action is all gone. The time is come for a vast change in the world. This will be the character of it: a great imperial power, called the beast, not absorbing but wielding the separate powers of the west. The beast is a type of strength, no doubt, but without reference to God So it will be then at the close. The western imperial system will have thrown off all care for God or thought of Him. Apostasy will have prepared the way. This imperial power will have the direction of the western nationalities of Europe. The separate kings will be flattered with the idea that they have each a separate existence and will. But they are only the sinews of the strong man who wields them all. What will they do then? "These shall make war with the Lamb."

What a difference from the blessed reign of peace and righteousness, no less than from what men dream as the gradually coming future! On the other hand, the saints come from heaven, being with the Lamb when the conflict arrives. (Compare Rev. 19: 14). Being changed, they are for ever with the Lord, and they follow Him. So, when the final contest arises between the Lord Jesus and Satan represented by the leader of the west, the Lord is accompanied by His saints. They are here (Rev. 17: 14) styled "called, and chosen and faithful." Some have thought they must be angels. But they are not. For angels are never called "faithful." And, again, they are said to be not merely chosen, but "called." How could an angel be "called"? Calling is an appeal of grace, which comes to one who has gone astray in order to bring him back again. But this is never true of an angel. The gospel is God's calling fallen and guilty man to give him, through faith and by means of redemption, a place with Christ in heaven. Those who believe on Him are here shown to be with Him; and they are "called, and chosen and faithful."

THE DESTRUCTION OF BABYLON BY THE BEAST

But there is more. What becomes of the woman?

We hear about her too in the 15th verse, and here discern vast religious influence. It is not a national church, but an idolatrous, persecuting, religious system claiming to be the spouse of Christ, but really an unclean harlot that extends its influence over all the world. It is easily seen what, and what only, such a system can be. There is but one such in Christendom, though she has daughters. Further (as in verse 16), what a change takes place!* Instead of these horns, or kings of the west, being any longer subjected to Babylon, they turn furiously with the beast against her. Would it not be a very strange thing if the Pope turned against his own church or city? The Pope is not the beast, and has nothing directly to do with Babylon's destruction. It is the symbol of the empire in its last phase, it is the beast from the abyss which joins with the various leaders of the different kingdoms of the west against that ecclesiastical system.

* In verse 16 observe that the true reading is not the ten horns "upon" the beast, but the "ten horns which thou sawest and the beast, these shall hate the whore . . . "

Babylon had long intoxicated man, persecuted saints, and dallied with the kings of the earth. Now the turn of the tide comes: Babylon was not of God, but a corrupt idolatrous imposture. But there is nothing of Christ in her destroyers. It is Satan against Satan. The end of the proud world-church is come, and, soon after, of her destroyers. The beast and the ten horns, throughout the Roman empire, have risen up. The ten kingdoms of western Europe turn against the Roman harlot, and strip, eat, and burn her.

There are solemn premonitory signs even now. Let me mention only one fact noticed by both Romanists and Protestants. You are aware of the Ecumenical Council lately held in Rome (in 1869). Its distinctive character is remarkable, and emphatically indicative of the change that has taken place even among the Western powers. For the first time the Pope could not ask one Catholic sovereign to sit in this council. It was composed simply and exclusively of priests. Not a single ambassador or representative of the crowned heads was there. There never was such a state of things before in mediaeval or modern Europe.

I grant you that infidelity lies under the change. It is overflowing even now everywhere, as by and by the beast will be steeped up to the eyes in blasphemy. He and the horns will be given over to the hatred of God, while, at the same time, they hate the harlot which had deceived them so long. It is a violent reaction against the lies of Babylon, but no less a rejection of the truth. You see its spirit in our own country and day. Men take pleasure in spoiling the religious dignitaries and their earthly goods. This is going on in all lands; but the end of it will have a deeper dye.

Let me repeat that I do not mean that we are yet come to the beast or the ten horns of Rev. 17. I am only showing the tendency of the present times — the way in which the wind is blowing in the west. Men prepare to turn violently against what they had been so long enslaved to.

As the end approaches, the word of God asserts its majesty and power, as fresh as at the beginning; for we are verging towards the close of the profession of Christianity on the earth, when the Lord is leading His own to expect their removal to heaven to meet the Bridegroom. We have these admonitory symptoms that the world gets weary of false religion, and becomes ashamed of forms which are themselves superstitions. And no wonder, for there is scarcely an outward ordinance remaining, scarcely even a form, which has not been utterly perverted, as well as the truth itself ignored or denied by it.

W. K. [AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN 1873]

Providence and Faith.

Ex. 2; Acts 7; Heb. 11.

W. Kelly. (BT Vol. N2. p.376.)

The same principles which accompany the moral deadness of the unbeliever, may be found in the believer, weakening and hindering his simplicity in following Christ. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." It is true, the believer is not in the flesh (Rom. 8: 8), and through grace he can please God; yet the flesh is in him, and, so far as it is unjudged, it will prove a sure and sad obstacle in the path of faith. Hence there is not an evil in the unregenerate heart of man which the regenerate can afford to despise. The tendency, nay, the root of all, is in his own heart, although, as a believer baptised unto Christ's death, he is entitled to say that he is crucified with Christ-the flesh crucified with its affections and lusts. This is his weapon. He has died, and he that thus died has been freed (or justified) from sin. And if dead, how shall we live any longer therein? But then, although in God's estimate this is a fact, for He has identified the believer with the death and resurrection of Christ, yet it is a fact which faith alone realises.

The experience of the believer is the constant, painful witness that the flesh is within, ever seeking to display its enmity to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Practically he finds that the flesh is alive and actively energetic toward evil, and that struggling with it is not the way to gain the victory, because it is not God's remedy for it, and therefore not the resource of faith. Such is not the way in which the Spirit, by the apostle, instructs us to deal with sin. For, after having said, "reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus [our Lord]," he also adds, "let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof."

The faith that would reckon us dead to sin in Christ's death, wherein the sentence. of God was executed upon it, is the weapon which gives us practically the victory over its efforts in each day's experience. But if the believer, ignorant of this sword of Goliath which the divine armoury supplies him, attempts to face the enemy with some puny instrument of his own, is it wonderful that he fails in the encounter? If, after being justified by faith, he puts himself under law as regards the daily train of Christian conversation, is it strange that the offence again abounds, that the perverseness of the flesh is afresh stirred into activity, that the law is once more proved to be a ministry of condemnation? No! it is the sense of grace, it is the sense of what God's grace has done in uniting us to One who is raised from. the dead, far above the claims of law and the effects of sin, into His own holy and blessed acceptance in the presence of God; it is this, kept bright and fresh before and in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which enables us to bring forth fruit unto God. "For sin," says the apostle, "shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace."

The unconverted, if he thinks at all about God and his soul, naturally and necessarily puts himself under law, and proves it to be a ministry of death. The tendency of the converted man is to do the same as regards his walk, if not as regards his salvation; and so far as he slips aside into legalism, be is powerless for God, and certain to be immersed in worldliness. Let us then, dear brethren, hold fast grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear : for our God is a consuming fire. Granted that the flesh would say, Let us continue in sin that grace may abound; still, the cure is not to throw away that which is the alone spring of holiness as well as of salvation. The grace of God not. only brings us salvation, but teaches us that, "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Titus 2: 12).

But it is far more ensnaring to the believer when there is a partial recognition of God in His actings, which Satan turns to account by making him indifferent to the question of God's will. A familiar instance of this, and one that is corrected by the word of God, appears in the too prevalent habit, which some Christians would even justify, of looking to providences; in other wards, walking by sight rather than by faith. But the believer is called to walk as seeing Him who is invisible. "We serve the Lord Christ." It is a comparatively easy thing to act as circumstances seem to prompt, and if these circumstances become a supposed divine rule of action to me, this is precisely to abandon the march of faith for providences. Alas! into how many ditches will this blind guide lead the unwary, or the unfaithful Christian? Even the wretched unbelieving world likes to talk of "Providence" in the abstract. It demands no faith; nay, it is a shutting outside of a present acting God, Who condescends to lead His children with His eye; of a God Whom we have known in Jesus — Who has brought Himself nigh to us, and us nigh to Himself. They prefer to have an abstraction of their minds to discuss, rather than to be brought so close to the living God. "Providence" is a familiar and palatable word, where "God manifest in the flesh" would sound strange and unwelcome. So, practically, it needs little spirituality to see the hand of God in circumstances; but it requires much power of the Spirit to understand their bearing, and to discern the path of Christ in their midst. What is unseen, not what is seen, ought alone to guide the faithful.

Hence the necessity of an undivided heart, of a single eye. Only thus is the body full of light. If the circumstances fill my eye, instead of Christ, I am sure to go astray. It is not that one would deny the providential dealings of God, or that a Christian can overlook them without loss. What is affirmed is, that no circumstances can rightly be the guide for Christian action, and that all circumstances ought to be judged in the light of the perfect word of God. Nay, I believe that while God, on the one hand, frequently overrules circumstances in default of our faith, on the other, He often orders circumstances so as to be a test of fidelity or of its absence. In other words, a Christian may find himself in a position not of his own seeking, but of God's superintendence, which nevertheless faith has to relinquish, and not to abide in, though divine providence may have placed one there. Of this the scriptural history of Moses furnishes a striking example. I do not speak now of the faith which marked the parents of Moses, for faith it was, and not parental affection merely, which led them for three months to hide their child; "they were not afraid of the king's commandment " (Heb. 11: 23).

Nor do I allude to the overruling hand of God, Who met their faith, and so arranged events as to accomplish His future purposes respecting Moses and His people. It is the conduct of Moses himself, which is so full of instruction to the man of God who would learn the true place of faith in relation to providential circumstances.

"By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward."

Now, here we learn that as surely as providence carried him into the house of Pharaoh, faith led him out. Never was a providential dealing more strongly imprinted with the finger of God than the one before us. In spite of the royal ordinance Pharaoh's daughter took up the outcast Moses and nourished him for her own son. The providence of God had placed him in an illustrious position, unsought, unexpected. Educated too as became it, he was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds. Why not use his ability and his wisdom — why not use the influence which his exalted rank gave him, and his nearness to the most princely personages in the realm-why not wisely and thankfully turn such evident gifts of providence to the service of God's people? What a blessing it would be to see Pharaoh the tyrant transformed into Pharaoh the patron of Israel! And what enterprise more worthy of one who, without a wish or effort of his own, had been so strangely brought into the circle of the throne of this world? What return would he make to that august person who had lavished such kindness upon him? And for what end had God wrought so wonderfully, if not that Moses should employ Egypt's sceptre for the emancipation and advancement of God's people? But, no! faith at once disposes of all such reasonings founded on providences. "By faith Moses when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter." The simple question to him was, Will it please God? Where are God's affections? Are they not with His people?

The people may be suffering, wretched, and discreditable. They may little understand and ill requite the love and faith that could renounce all. They might greatly prefer the patronage of the son of Pharaoh's daughter to a self-sacrificing Moses, who refused such a place, choosing rather to suffer with them; but it was enough for Moses that the poor captives were God's people. It was not enough that his heart was with them and himself far away in the splendid court of Egypt. His single eye judged all that Pharaoh's daughter could offer to be the pleasures of sin. He deliberately resigned the glittering honours and the worldly influence which providence had strewn around him, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. With whom was God identified? With Pharaoh's palace, or with Israel in the iron furnace? Had he followed providences, he would have sought to succour and relieve, and perhaps ultimately to deliver Israel, through the advantages which his position furnished; but it was faith which led him to estrange himself from the world and identify himself with the people of God. The world hates God's people, and may be permitted to enslave them; but can the world bless God's people? Surely not. Moses would have shrunk, as a man of faith, from the thought of yielding to the world such a place. It would be to assert that the world is greater; for, beyond all question, the less is blessed of the greater. Therefore it was that Moses gives all up, and rests only upon God. His desire was not to save himself loss, suffering, reproach: he chose it rather, because God was there; and Moses desired to be where God was, and with those whom God loved. How the actings of his faith only reflected the feelings of God for His people may be gathered by reading Exodus 3: 7, 8, 9.

Thus, we see that providence may place in a position which God would have us not use but leave. It may seem the most fair occasion possible in outward things; but faith judges the contrary, because faith looks not to our honour but to God's; not to our ease, but to His deliverance. Faith rests on the promises of God to His people, and has respect to the recompence of the reward.

Purchase and Redemption.

1 Corinthians 7: 20-24.

W. Kelly.

There is nothing that characterises fallen man more than the love of change. In an unfallen state there was not even a desire for it, had it been possible. And the very reverse will characterise the rest of glory, that rest which "remaineth for the people of God." But, in the meantime, one sees man trying to find in change a relief from his misery, to drown all serious thoughts by a continual recourse to some new thing, some fresh effort, some novel experiment. This is so true that certain sages of this world define happiness to be change: could they really condemn themselves more? They thereby show that they have no knowledge of God; for, as God Himself is the Unchanging One, so He brings His people to know even now peace with Him; yea, a state of calm settled blessedness, of repose for the spirit, of rest in His love, His peace, that would be utterly ruined by the suspicion of a change. They thus tell their own sad tale, that they are far from God, that they taste a misery which is not in any wise done with, but only concealed by constant fluctuation, if peradventure they might find  -  I will not say comfort, but  -  forgetfulness of their sorrow. Such is the estate of man fallen: nothing more dismal; and men are afraid to face it: else they might look out of all these shifts of wretchedness to the Unchanging One, Who can change all things for us, and Who so does through His own Son to give us a blessedness which does not change.

Nor is it only men of the world that we see thus ensnared: Christians are apt to be affected by the thoughts of the age, of those around them. Among the Christians of the New Testament none show this more than the saints at Corinth. The reason is plain. They still admired the refined world and its opinions; and they were, therefore, more or less drawn into the feelings and ways of the world. This appears not only elsewhere, but in that which gave occasion for the apostolic teaching in this part of the chapter. We can understand it well. The condition of a slave (and he was writing about slaves) in those days was no doubt distressing. Take a heathen master, where there was the grossest moral degradation, with Christian slaves men or women: these could scarcely escape the sight and sound of most defiling communications, they must ever be exposed to that which was irreconcilably opposed to the purity of new life in Christ. One can understand how natural the desire might be, in the heart of a slave, to be delivered from such a state of things; but to set the heart on a deliverance of this kind is the very thing the apostle here rebukes. He would not have it made an object. Prayer was a different thing, if it might please God to present a door of escape; but the general principle, as laid down by him, points in the contrary direction  -  to abide as they had been called. And this is said expressly to those who were in the condition of bondage. But it is revealed for their comfort, that God has introduced in the Lord Jesus a principle and a power superior to any and all circumstances in ourselves or around us. Now, our faith is meant to bow to this as God's word for us; and, therefore, the cultivation or allowance of desires for shifting our circumstances is clearly opposed to faith. The duty of a Christian is subjection  -  to God where he is; it is indeed more  -  confidence in His present interest and affection, in His willingness to direct and to order all for us. May we not detect in ourselves such restlessness that we really treat God as if He paid no heed, nor loved us  -  at least in our actual circumstances and present relationships on earth? What utter unbelief, and this in believers!

But the apostle takes up these questions of the Corinthians, in order to bring out the mind of God, and to give us divine counsel, while passing through such a scene as this. Therefore he lays down in a few brief words the principle  -  "Art thou called, being a slave (for such was the "servant" here)? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." The utmost sobriety prevails. There is no such extreme view as speculative minds have imported into the phrase, that the Christian had better remain a slave, even if he could be free. Such a dream might commend itself perhaps to the student in his comfortable library, but certainly not if he knew practically what slavery meant, especially in heathen times, and for Christians above all. "Let it not be a care to thee:" he must not treat the Lord as if He did not look upon the one He loved, nor enter into his sorrows and condition; let him believe that it was He who ordered all. It is His to arrange, ours to obey; for does it become the soldier in the field of battle to choose for himself what he shall do? Or is it a great matter that he should understand why one or another is put in any post of danger? To dispose of each rests with the one who commands.

Now there can be no doubt of Christ's love or wisdom, Who brings in what is entirely above all questions, what grace alone could conceive, and what grace now confers. Hence it is of all consequence that we should see the present power of the truth of God; for it is now that we walk by faith, now that we need its comfort and strength. Surely we shall have the results of the divine purpose for ever on high; but it is now above all that we need to walk in the faith of His grace, saying, in the hope of the glory, "The slave called in the Lord is the Lord's freedman; likewise the freeman called is the Lord's slave" (verse 22). Here we have a very blessed pointing out of the relationships of the believer, and this, too, in the true moral order for the soul. It is not first, you observe, that we are Christ's servants; we are the Lord's freemen; indeed, one is a little more, "the Lord's freedman"  -  he that was a slave, but is a slave no longer. The Lord's "freedman" is a word not used elsewhere, that I recollect, in the New Testament.

"Likewise also the freeman that was called is Christ's slave." He is speaking now of the man whose position and circumstances seemed outwardly so much fairer. But he is Christ's slave. Now it is well to point out, as far as the Lord enables me, the force and the connection of this twofold place. For it is not merely that one applies to the slave and the other to the freeman. I shall endeavour to show that both are true of every saint, and to show too, what they are as connected with the mighty work of our Lord Jesus; for it is of the greatest consequence to see every privilege having its root in the grace of God, and all revealed in the word of God, and all centering in the person and work of Christ.

Now there are confessedly difficulties on the subject, and they have been felt so long and widely that one cannot but desire for God's children generally a clearer view of the truth: especially as growth in divine things depends on a fuller perception of Christ and His work by the Holy Spirit's use of the written word. God has always so ordered it that the soul is led into the truth by the Holy Spirit, Who will not act apart from the glory of the Lord Jesus. He may use means if He please; but every attempt to perpetuate truth in the abstract is vain. Apart from Christ it cannot be truly known. There is something exceedingly gracious of God in it, because in this way He keeps up the freshness of the truth for His saints. He does not permit it to become a science, which is in fact what theology is and boasts to be. But where, when, ever did a soul drink of the living water in those dry beds? Let me then point out the difference between what scripture calls being "bought" or purchased, as distinct from redeemed. It is a familiar fact that the words of the Spirit are not really the same, though frequently confounded in our justly prized English Bible. The translators seem never to have suspected that there was any substantial distinction; and the mass of expositors and preachers have followed in their wake.

Take for instance in Rev. 5: 9, "redeemed us to God." Here it is ἀγοράζω the word not for redemption, but for purchase; and compare Rev. 14: 3, 4. It is, "Thou hast bought us to God." In our chapter it is translated aright, as in 1 Cor. 6: 20. The word "bought" does not mean redeem; but so thoroughly had these two thoughts been identified in the minds of Christians generally that even the difference was quite ignored by the two parties who stand most opposed to one another as they have been for 1400 years. I refer to the old Pelagian struggle in the fifth century (between those who contended for grace in God to meet the sinner's ruin, and those who held up man's ability to please and serve God if he liked), or, when you come down to later times, to what is commonly called the Arminian and Calvinistic controversy. The remarkable fact is that both agree in taking these two words as equivalent; so that there has been no thought of discriminating, but the habitual confusion of the two ideas "purchase" and "redemption." The effect of this has been most disastrous; because it hinders, not only the settlement of the question, but all clear and sound discernment of the truths revealed. It is the confounding of the two that makes the chief difficulty. It does not seem to have occurred to any engaged in the ancient or the modern strife to distinguish between the truths conveyed by these words.

What then is the scriptural connection of purchase? The apostle is here looking at Christians, slaves as well as those who had never been other than free. Of all he says, "Ye were bought with a price." They had become by purchase the property of God; such is the effect of being bought. Right of possession had been acquired by purchase. "Ye were bought with a price:" the effect is to make the one purchased His own. If He buys, those who are bought become His slaves.

But another fact has to be considered. In 2 Peter 2: 1 we find the solemn prediction that, as in the ancient people of God there were false prophets, so there should be false teachers among Christians, and how characterised? "Bringing in heresies (i.e. sects) of perdition, denying the Lord that bought them." Here it would be unwarranted to say "denying the Lord that redeemed them." "Denying the Lord that bought them" is true, denying the Lord that redeemed them is false. "Bought" is universal, being true of all whether they own it or not.

The Lord bought the world and every soul in it: all mankind belongs to Him. It is not merely that He has the earth as the One Who created it; He has also bought it. After sin entered and brought in confusion and every evil work, He bought all here below with a price. So, in the parable of the treasure hid in a field (Matt. 13: 44), the man who found it goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field  -  not the treasure but the field. Doubtless it is the treasure which gives him joy, but he buys the field, and not the treasure only. Such is our Lord's testimony.

Just so speaks His apostle as he has already cited. These false teachers deny the Lord that bought them. They refuse to own His title, they treat His blood with contempt or indifference; they gainsay, in short, the sovereign Master, the One to whom they belonged not merely by creation but by purchase. Consequently their guilt was most aggravated. It was wicked to fly in the face of His creation glory; how much more to deny the Lord that bought them!

The same twofold circle of His belongings is taught elsewhere also. Thus, "As thou hast given Him power over all flesh" (John 17: 2)  -  here it is the Father giving the Son Whom He loved the title over (not merely the chosen nation, or the elect in general but) "all flesh." Then follows the inner circle of blessing, " that He may give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him." Thus we have concentric circles in the earth, the universal one of "all flesh," and the special one of all Christians  -  those that have eternal life in the Son through faith. But Christ was God's gift to the world, not to believers only.

Romans 3: 22 is still more in point, as bringing in what is due, not to His personal glory only, but to His work: "God's righteousness through faith of Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe." For I utterly reject the mutilated text, which reads no more than εἰς πάντας τοὺς πιστεύοντας, though so given in A B C P, etc. It is easy to see how εἰς π.  might have been confounded with ἐπὶ π., for even Dean Alford (who does not go so far as some moderns in sacrificing every consideration to the oldest external evidence, and therefore only brackets καὶ ἐπὶ π.)  will have it that in the theological meaning ἐπί has no real difference from εἰς, and adds to this error the further one of referring to ver. 30 and Gal. 1: 1, which in fact prove an intended distinction. But it is to me incredible that an unprincipled scribe should have seen the grave difference which results from the full reading, amply sustained as it is by ancient and widespread testimony; especially as a similar difference reappears in Rom. 5: 18, 19, couched in a somewhat altered form, which shows only the more emphatically how well-founded is the distinction. Even Bengel, who rightly accepted the fuller text, understood its value no more than Theodoret and other fathers, who applied εἰς π.  to the Jews, and ἐπὶ π.  to the Gentiles. No wonder people revolted from so unsatisfactory an exposition, and were disposed to doubt the text on which it was based.

It would have been wiser to have weighed the words more fully, and sought their true force. For it ought to have been plain enough that by εἰς πάντας the apostle was indicating the direction of God's righteousness to all, Jew or Gentile, without distinction. Had it been man's righteousness, it could only indeed have been under law, and hence for the Jews alone who had the law; but it is God's righteousness by means of faith in Jesus Christ, and hence "toward all" without distinction, yet for that reason it takes effect only "upon all those who believe," but on all such, be they Jew or Gentile. It was preached to all, for all were objects of divine compassion, and Christ died for all; but it took effect only on believers in Him, and on all of them. What can be conceived more luminous than the statement, more grave than the distinction, or more consoling than the truth, for those who bow to the gospel and Him whom it makes known? But the distinction is enfeebled or lost in a weightier witness than Dean Alford or the Greek fathers, even in the authorised version of Rom. 5: 18, where εἰς should be rendered "unto" or "toward," as in Rom. 3: 22. The apostle is distinguishing the universal tendency or bearing of Christ's act with Adam's in chap. 5: 18, from its actual effect in the following verse, which exactly answers to what we have seen in chap. 3: 22. How confirmatory of the difference between purchase and redemption need not be insisted on at greater length.

Take again another case in Hebrews 2. We do find undoubtedly many sons that are brought to glory, and Christ becomes the Captain of salvation to lead them there; but is this all. Did He not "by the grace of God taste death for every man?" Yea, perhaps a little more, "for every thing?" This scripture embraces at least man universally. Is, then, Universalism true? Destructive falsehood; none more dishonouring to God or ruinous to man! It fundamentally undermines both holiness and love, both righteousness and grace; it virtually dissipates on the one hand sin and on the other judgment, mercy, and salvation. If there is an appearance of goodness, it is a cloak for Satan's lie. When it is said, "that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man," it is a witness undoubtedly of the rich and wide mercy of God; but does not this very thing immensely aggravate the guilt of those who despise it? Still the two things are plain and distinct  -  by God's grace the death of Jesus for every one; and His bringing "many sons to glory." The truth is guarded on every side. There is the testimony of love to every creature; there is also the full security of the delivered.

There too redemption comes in as distinct from purchase. Redemption is a matter of distinct application and delivering power to the persons or things concerned. It is never merely a testimony of grace, or manifestation of the character of God and His goodness, reaching out to the whole scene He has created. Redemption is the intervention of God (and ultimately for the body) that breaks the bond of the enemy, and delivers the one that was captive. It may be by blood for the soul, but finally by power for the body. Thus it is always treated in scripture. Hence you find, "Let the redeemed of Jehovah say so, whom He hath redeemed" etc. (Ps. 107: 2). Whom does the Spirit mean? All mankind? Not so, but Israel only.

Doubtless, when we come to the characteristic truth of the New Testament, redemption has another sphere; and where is this found? Unquestionably it is believers, Jew or Gentile, the church of God. Hence, whether you take up the Ephesians or any part of the later scriptures, where redemption is treated of as a present thing, this is the language: "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins" or offences (Eph. 1: 7). It is not, therefore, merely a manifestation of grace which may be despised and ineffectual; it is an unfailing work, a delivering operation, a blessing that is actually conferred and possessed: "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." It is not merely that we have been purchased through the price paid, which may or may not be owned by our souls. That is, there may be persons bought that are unrenewed, and they may turn out rebels against His rights Who bought them (denying, as it is said, the Master that bought them). It is not so with redemption; here it is an actual, known, and enjoyed blessing, if you speak of the soul. It is true, however, that it is not confined to the soul. In the same chapter of the same Epistle to the Ephesians we read of the redemption of the purchased possession. Here it looks at the inheritance, when the body also shall be changed in the day of redemption. Compare Eph. 4: 30. As believers in the Lord Jesus now, through His precious blood we have our sins as completely gone as in the day of judgment. It is a mistake to suppose that only then will be the decision of the great question. He that believes on God's Son is not judged; but he that believes not is already judged, because he has not believed on the name of the Only-begotten Son of God. "And this is the judgment, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, for their works were evil." The object of that day will be to manifest all, and to execute judgment on the unbelieving. It is now or never that in Christ we have life and forgiveness. "By Him," as it is said, "all that believe are justified from all things," not merely shall be. If you speak of life, it is just the same thing: "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." It is a present thing. So redemption, the forgiveness of sins, is an actual state of possessed deliverance through faith in Christ and His work.

Thus then we have, with the absolute certainty of God's word, the answer to that which, however simple and certain in itself, has proved a difficulty so general among men. Purchase is universal, but does not necessarily secure that all who come under it now will submit to Him Who bought them. Redemption is not of the same extent as purchase, being not universal but partial. It is effectual and complete, as far as the soul is concerned, even now for those who believe. Consequently it is not at all true that, because purchase is universal, redemption should be. On the contrary, scripture shows that redemption is predicated only of a sphere which is limited, whereas purchase is an unlimited one. The creature itself also shall be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth together and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but even we ourselves having the first-fruits of the Spirit groan in ourselves, awaiting adoption, [to wit,] the redemption of our body. God will reconcile all things, never all persons, but all things heavenly and earthly. Meanwhile believers are reconciled. "You hath He reconciled;" while the gospel was proclaimed, and so it is now, in the whole creation under heaven. Here again the testimony is unlimited, for all is purchased; but then those only have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, who believe in the Lord Jesus.

This, then, as a matter of truth, is as sure as it is plain; but next we come to its consequences, for every truth has its answer in practice, and speaks to the affections. How, then, does this truth find its reflection in our hearts? and what answer does it look for in our practical path day by day? "The slave called in the Lord is the Lord's freedman" (ver. 22). What is it that sets the captive free? What is it that brings us into liberty? Is it purchase? So far from this is it that purchase, instead of giving me my liberty, rather makes me a bondman. I am His to serve, now and evermore, Who bought me with a price  -  His own blood. But people do not serve Christ when it is merely a question of being thus bought. There is another blessing necessary to make the claim of purchase felt, even redemption. For the adverse power of Satan has possession of me in my natural state, and he avails himself of my self-will and love of the world. This must be broken; but how can it be? It is by redemption, when the believer, finding life in Christ, is won to God. How blessed, then, to have redemption in Him through His blood! Unless I am thus brought to God through Him Who suffered once for sins, Just for unjust, what is there to set me free? A slave of sin  -  what is to liberate me? There is nothing in the nature of purchase to set one free; there may be, and is, a powerful motive in it when the spell of Satan is broken, and forgiveness is known in the incomparable grace of God, but not before or otherwise.

Hence, therefore, in dealing with the different classes addressed, the apostle distinctly lays down the truth, "The slave called in the Lord [even if he abide a slave] is the Lord's freedman." As a Christian, he need not therefore be troubled about his condition of bondage; no change of life, no intervention of others, could give him such a freedom as he has already. He was a slave, but, called in the Lord, he is His freedman; he belongs to the One Who has set him free. Being called in the Lord, grace gives him freedom forever; is it not for a little while, as in the institutes of law or relations of flesh. Consequently he is entitled to take comfort without an anxious thought. What could the world give him? what could money do for him? Either might procure an emancipation; but from either does it not perish with the using? Neither in any way makes him the Lord's freedman; but redemption does. Thus the Christian slave was divinely consoled and cheered. Can we fail to see that the scripture abounds in such filling of the heart with comfort from above?

So in the Epistle to Titus we have a similar thing. "The grace of God, which bringeth salvation unto all men, hath appeared," is an outburst of thankfulness in view especially of slaves visited by the saving grace of God, which went out to all, "teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people." It is not merely purchase here, but redemption. There was the delivering power. It is not therefore merely a price paid, which might as yet have no answer in those purchased. They had redemption in Christ through His blood. Redemption is a state entered, and not merely a title of Christ asserted. He has bought the world: the heathens, the Jews, are all purchased; whatever their actual feeling or conduct, they are bought, one as truly as another. He has right thereby to every soul. But redemption is our state and not His claim only. No man is redeemed unless there be an effect produced  -  present deliverance from the enemy and the forgiveness of sins, though it goes beyond. So those that were redeemed of old were not left under Pharaoh; they were brought across the Red Sea, God taking His place with them. In Egypt the blood of the lamb secured Israel, so that judgment did not fall on them; but they were redeemed also, and brought completely out of the house of bondage. Redemption supposes known deliverance, though in the wilderness. Evidently, then, the difference is marked.

But we have to see how the apostle turns to the other side. "Likewise the freeman called is Christ's slave." He now changes the phrase; he does not say he is the Lord's bondman, but "Christ's." He might be freeborn, or a master of slaves; but be he what he may, if a Christian, he is Christ's bondman. He is bound for ever to Him who shed His blood for him. It is the purchase that is urged now to make the freeman feel that he is Christ's bondman. It is an appeal to his sense of grace, and not merely of authority.

In what, then, consists the difference between purchase to the believer and the unbeliever? It lies in this, that faith acknowledges the purchase, while unbelief despises it and all responsibility founded on it. The believer owns it, and is bound to glorify God in his body, as no longer his own. So we find Israel acknowledging both in the song of Moses, "Thou in Thy mercy hast led forth the people which Thou hast redeemed . . . . the people pass over which Thou hast purchased" (Ex. 15: 13-16). Men may abuse the purchase to their destruction.

But the great truth is plain. The believer is redeemed by the mighty arm of the Lord; he is no longer the slave of Satan, though he was; he is forgiven his offences, and does not stop there, but he passes into liberty; he is on the other side of the Red Sea, and he can now sing for the first time. Israel's song was only when they were clean out of the land of bondage; and so with the believer now. Redemption is the great thought, from Ex. 14: and onward, but the same song owns that then they were bought; and the soul should reflect upon both: "A slave once, I am become the Lord's freedman, for I am redeemed. But I am purchased also, and so became Christ's bondman." Such is the double truth for the Christian, as the apostle puts it. So it was in the type. Jehovah had interfered as a man of war. It was a fight between Himself and the enemy. Israel never struck a blow, but none the less enjoyed the victory. So with the Christian now. He is the Lord's freedman. He was the slave of sin and Satan, but the Lord has delivered him from all that kept him in bondage; but of what is he reminded — he who had known only human liberty? He is bought with a price, and Christ's servant; he is glad to acknowledge such bonds of love. For "Christ" is the name that speaks of grace, as "the Lord" at once recalls supreme authority. The believer acknowledges himself bondman, not merely as his duty to the Lord, but as that in which his heart is concerned; it is his boast, his joy, his glory, to be Christ's slave; and this is the more strikingly said of him who never knew other than freedom in the world. Both in truth were the Lord's freedmen, and both Christ's bondmen; but it comes out with the greater emphasis when the distinction is put as the apostle puts it here.

Even in the Revelation, as we have remarked, the thought as here is purchase rather than redemption. In Rev. 5: 9 it is the worth of the buyer, and consequently the value of the price paid that is celebrated, not the liberated state of the redeemed. Hence in the text ἡμᾶς is not found — an omission as hard to account for, unless it be the truth, in A., 44, Aeth., as it is easy to understand its insertion in all the other witnesses. The Lamb is worthy, because he was slain and purchased to God by His blood out of every tribe and tongue, etc., and made them to our God a kingdom and priests; and they shall reign over the earth. Such is the new song of the elders; whereas ἀπολύτρωσις is redemption, rather than the costly act which bought us. In Rev. 14: 3, 4, though the connection of course differs, the 144,000 with the Lamb on Mount Zion were bought from the earth and from men. From these they were purchased, so that they did not belong to either; but it is not the act or state of deliverance they were in.  Ἐξαγ. may go a little farther, yet it is not properly "redeem," but buying up or retrieving, as in Gal. 3: 13, Gal. 4: 5; Eph. 5: 16; and Col. 4: 5. It is not the state of deliverance we enjoy, though this be the result for the believer, but that Christ bought out from under the law those once under it to make them His own; or ourselves exhorted to make the fitting time or opportunity our own. Cf. Dan. 2: 8 for the two latter references.

Thus we see our place with reference to these two truths. Beyond doubt the Lord has, in His infinite goodness, interfered for us in our utter guilt and ruin. On the one hand, He has dealt with Satan, who had us enslaved, and brought us clean out of that bitter bondage; on the other hand, we are bought with a price, and have not a single right that is not swallowed up in that purchase by Christ's blood, not only what we have, but ourselves also. "Ye were bought with a price." The Corinthians were dull to see and own what it is to be thus bought. Therefore the Spirit takes up the truth again and again. In 1 Cor. 6 they were reminded that their body was the temple of the Holy Ghost, which was in them, which they had of God; but, moreover, that they were not their own, for they were bought with a price: therefore were they to glorify God in their body; they belonged to Christ the Lord. Thus there is not only a divine power that deigns to dwell and work in answer to Christ in the body: to take our own way, or do our own will, is denying God's title to us as His positive possession through Christ's blood. We are His for all the way, and not merely for the end in glory. We are His to please and glorify Him now in this world, yea, in these bodies of humiliation which the Holy Spirit deigns to make God's temple.

Here the exhortation takes a rather different direction, though grounded on the same truth. "Ye were bought with a price: be not ye slaves of men." There it was urged against pleasing ourselves, especially against corrupt licence and impure passions. Here it is a guard against pandering to others, it might be for ease or honour, or to avoid pain or reproach: a great snare to the Corinthians, not to slaves only, but as much, or more, to the free. Hence the force of this word which embraces both. The Lord's freedman should not become a slave of men; neither should Christ's slave. There is not such a thought as enfeebling the Christian slave in serving his earthly master: grace would rather strengthen him to serve with twofold zeal and honour, for he was now the Lord's freedman. How base again for one who, after the flesh free but now bound to Christ as His slave by the deepest and most durable of ties, should become man's slave by compromising his Master, Who had bought him with His blood!

All this and more is clenched in the following verses of our chapter. "But this I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use the world as not abusing it." As the verses before deliver the believer from the spirit of change, so these sweep away every thought of a settling down in the world that now is. Not a word brings in formally the return of our Lord Jesus Christ; but it is all really and profoundly based on that great and most influential truth, as a living constant expectation. What does the entire course of the world depend on? It takes for granted ages to come for man and man's progress here below; it thus denies virtually, and often openly, the Lord's coming as a real hope, or even truth. Do you think that that which fills man with vainglory, or kindles his enthusiasm, or nerves him to labour and endurance — that all or any of these things would be found if he believed the Lord was coming? Clearly not. All the aspirations of the world, all that men here pant after as objects, and push forward as ways and means, are founded on an uninterrupted future. They confidently look for amelioration and advance. Just as infidel but credulous geologists, naturalists, etc., imagine an indefinite past here below, so they generally build all their hopes of the progressive and triumphant future, not on God's word, or Christ's coming and reign, but on an assumed infinite series of improved methods and inventions, till they reach a perfection of their own for the human race on earth.

But the coming again of the Lord at any moment cuts up by the root all such unbelieving and presumptuous speculations of men. Hence their angry opposition to that truth. Hence the guilt and shame of the church's failure to walk in that light. Not believing it herself, she says in her heart, My Lord delayeth His coming, eats and drinks with the drunken, and beats most those who have been most faithful in serving Him. The consequence is, she does not confess this grave but also bright testimony of divine truth, as He meant it, before the world; for people must walk and worship in the truth they utter (if even, alas! they do utter it, for many deny it), in order to have power with others. Everything good flows really from faith working by love, the springs of which are in God. When souls show that the heart is filled with Christ, when the ways are according to the truth they confess, then even enemies feel that for them it is a living reality. We know what the blessed hope was to the apostles and the church of that day: what has it been since?

Here, in the apostle's exhortation to all, we see its influence so mighty that, without a word of direct reference, it shows the time straitened. Not that it does not reveal a period of true and holy blessedness for the earth afterwards; but there will be a total change, compared with which the greatest of revolutions is as nothing; for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, not the earth only but also heaven, and the world-kingdom of the Lord and His Christ shall come, not to speak of the still brighter portion of the glorified saints in the Father's house. Thus the scriptural expectation effectually blots out from heart and mind a long future for man's enjoyment as he is. "It remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use the world as not abusing* it; for the fashion of this world passeth away" (vers. 29-31). It is not, of course, that Christ ignores relationship, sorrow, joy, business, or position; but He brings in an energy of the Spirit for each, which, while deepening sensibility, and respecting everything which God established in nature and on earth, raises superior to all and attaches to Christ in heaven about to come again. The apostle thus would have the saint true to Christ on the one hand, and on the other to form a just estimate of the world as already condemned, and only awaiting the Lord's coming to have the sentence executed. For not more surely has He been lifted up from the earth and does He draw all to Him, than the judgment of the world is now, though its prince has yet to be actually expelled. The apostle would have us in faith to see the present form passing away.

* The word is καταχρώμενοι, "using to the full," or "outright," as the "Five Clergymen," Dean Alford, and Mr. T. S. Green translate. "Abusing" would be παραχρώμενοι, where it does not mean "slighting"  -  a word common enough in Greek moralists and historians, but never used in the New Testament. Even a heathen might exhort against "abusing" the world, but the apostle would have us to use it not for ourselves but for Christ's glory, just as he forbore to use his own title to support in the gospel.

This brings in a most sanctifying element for the heart. What a guard for the affections even in the closest ties of life! What a check to otherwise unrestrained grief! And, supposing there is an occasion of joy, what solemnity in the hope that the Lord is at hand! Ought the buyers to forget Him? or they that use this world to use it as their own? This is what I would press with all simplicity, the way in which the truth sets us free, holily free, even here on earth, in which we are now to be entirely the Lord's and only for the Lord, waiting for that bright moment when He will make good His every word. Surely now is the time for faith to confess Him fully; now is the time to exhort one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching.

May grace then give us to rejoice in this that, as He has set us free, so we may enjoy our liberty for His glory and not for ourselves; and as we are bought with a price, so we may refuse to become slaves to men, and gladly acknowledge Christ's purchase, redeemed from the enemy and bought for God from self and all else.

May God thus endear Christ and the truth to our hearts, proving how it all abides from the beginning and is needed to the end, to direct and strengthen us in what we do or suffer, in the least things of this life as well as in the greatest that belong to the life to come. Amen.

Who Made Purification of Sins?

Gospel Gleanings' Booklets. No. 100.

Dear reader, let me call your attention to what God has told us of His Son. It concerns you more deeply than aught else. It enables you to judge yourself, and confess your sins. God has spoken in the plainest and fullest terms, that you might hear and live and have yourself cleansed for ever in His sight, that you might know it now, and enjoy assuredly His favour resting on you. If you could be exalted to an empire, what were this transient honour in comparison?

It is not only sinners unawakened who do not believe in that perfect cleansing as open to their need. But few here and there among true saints of God believe it for their own souls as their real living privilege. They are become dull of hearing in Christendom, as the believing Jews were to receive the truth in its fulness. They ought to have an appetite for solid food, whereas their infantine state superinduced the need of milk. None can rise to the place of full-grown men (or what is here called perfection) without resting on the work of Christ as God presents it. And His blood cleanses us from all sin. How could it avail to God and for us, if it did not? If all iniquities be not blotted out, we are inadmissible to God's presence.

The Jews were used to a constant round of offerings for their recurring sins. It could not be otherwise, if they had only blood of bulls and goats incapable of taking away sins. But now Jesus the Son of God has come and offered His body once for all. The Levitical sacrifices kept up the remembrance of sins: and this was good as far as it went; for the sinner is apt to forget his guilty state. But now that Christ has done God's will in offering up Himself as the one sacrifice which more than fulfils all sacrifices, He takes away the shadow to establish the everlasting substance: "by which will we [who believe] have been (and are) sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

For a work so amazing a divine Person is essential. Therefore it is that we are shown on the very threshold of this epistle, Who and what He is in Whom God speaks now since the Messiah came. It is no longer partial, as before His advent, but perfect and complete. Many measures and many modes are eclipsed in its fulness. Nor is it from God dwelling in the thick darkness, but in His Son, a Man full of grace and truth, the one True Light wherein there is no darkness at all, shining in love to win and save us by bearing our sins in His body on the tree.

"Son" is His relation to God, not by adoption but by personal right, and hence established "Heir of all things;" truly man, yet as truly Heir of the universe, as none other is or could be. Think how the glory of every other vanishes before it, yea, of all creatures that ever were or could be if put together! Nor need you be surprised, seeing that by Him also God made the worlds. The Creator of all is entitled to be Heir of all. Of whom else could the least part of this work be said but of God? Had He not been God, it could not be attributed to Him; and to Him it is attributed more than to any other person in the Godhead, as appears from John 1: 3, and Colossians 1: 16, to cite no more.

Nor is this by any means all that is here said to exalt His Person. He is effulgence of God's glory, and express image of His substance, as He upholds all things by the word of His power, all which only a divine Person could do. His shining forth makes known the divine glory as no angel could, nor yet the archangel. They are but servants. He subsisting in the form of God counted it no object of rapine to be on equality of God, but first emptied Himself, taking a servant's place and in likeness of men; and then humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, yea, death of the cross. None but God could either empty Himself or humble Himself. A creature could not leave his first estate without sin against the God Who had put him in it. The highest angel is a servant and could not, save by sin (like Satan), quit his own place as a creature of God. The Son could and did leave His in abeyance, to glorify God, become man, and in due time a sacrifice to God for sinners.

And what was the fruit of such grace by One so glorious? "When he made by himself purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high."

He sits there, and is so pointed out by God's word to you, that you may be assured that His work of purifying sins is finished and accepted by God for all that believe on Him. O then, sin no more by unbelief of what God has thus wrought in His Son, and proclaims to you in the gospel! Surely you must own that only God can forgive sins against Himself, as all your sins have been. Man may forgive what is done against him; but consider the blasphemy of any that pretend to forgive sins against God! Wondrous grace! it is God Himself Who sends you, if you repent and believe on Christ, the glad tidings of entire remission of your sins; because Christ made their purification, and sits on His throne as the witness that the atoning work is done, not a doing or to be done but done, before He took His seat there.

Believe on Jesus, and the blessing is yours. So God has spoken now in His word. Humble yourself as a poor guilty lost sinner, that you may be saved by grace. W.K.

The Purpose of God for His Sons and Heirs.

Eph. 1: 3-7.

W. Kelly.

The Old Testament makes it clear that God, even in His aspect of Jehovah, the God of Israel, never limited Himself to Israel. He made them His particular people. He made known His name, His will for a people on earth to Israel only. He abounded in every kind of privilege that could be to a people in the flesh. Israel as naturally, were the chosen people who belonged to Him here below. They were objects of favour and goodness and mercy in a way that no other nation received, except the people in the land of Palestine.

But even before that, God had His blessed intention to set up a kingdom that would in no way be confined to Israel. This we find explicitly from the Gospel of Matthew in the last section of the great prophecy on the Mount of Olives; at the end of this age will be the accomplishment of these last words. Not only will the godly remnant be formed out of the Jews as in Matt. 24 down to ver. 44, and the heavenly saints, or the Christian company, which forms the central part from ver. 45 to Matt. 25: 30, but lastly there will be the future sheep, or living believers, of all the nations, brought into marked blessing and favour. The King bids them, not reign with Him like the heavenly saints, but "inherit the kingdom prepared for" them "from the foundation of the world." It is well to have this clearly, as a preliminary principle. Had we only this single prophecy, it is a plain proof that others are to be blessed, in their several places on earth under the reign of the Lord Jesus, whilst the risen saints reign over it with Him. It is a mere delusion that to the church belongs every elect soul from the beginning to the end, and that God has not varied companies, both for heaven and for earth, destined to be objects of His grace for His glory.

Far from me to deny that there is on earth now, the church, Christ's body, gathered out of Jews and Gentiles, wherein all earthly distinctions disappear. But those Gentile sheep at the consummation of the age are not the church. Scripture proves that God is so full of goodness toward man that He means to bless Israel after all their long unbelief and manifold iniquity; and that He will send the gospel of the kingdom among all the nations for a blessing to many before the end comes. The church will be glorified on high. Remnants from both Israel and the nations are about to be blessed on the earth in that day. The sheep of Matt. 25: 32 are by no means all the sheep of God.

The popular divinity, if you believe it, says that there is nothing else but these sheep, and that they compose His church. Why? Because the church is assumed to be the one and only object of divine grace throughout all time. They have got their ideas out of tradition, following not the scriptures, but men no wiser than themselves. Do you ask if we pretend to any wisdom of our own? God forbid. What we confess is that God is true; and what we do is to be subject simply and solely to the word of God. Is it not the only right way?

The fact is, there will be, if we heed scripture, different companies of the blessed in heaven, as well as on the earth. It is mere traditional prejudice to conceive a single multitudinous throng. On the contrary there will be marked varieties both above and below, blessed with or by Christ. Nor can we know the glorious future for heaven and earth, but by the word of God, which is the one authority for all truth, past, present, or future. In the verses with which the Epistle to the Ephesians opens, we have a wondrous unfolding of divine grace at its very highest, and coming down to the lowest possible. The time too made it all the more striking, though eminently suitable as it must be for such a disclosure. Not a word had been divulged about it in the Old Testament as we are distinctly told in a subsequent part of this Epistle. It was a secret kept hid in God from all previous ages and generations. Indeed it would then have been quite incompatible, whether in the earlier generation, or after the law was given to Israel by Moses.

When was it that God chose to bring out this, the highest, the deepest, and the most wonderful of His purposes? It was when Jew and Gentile, the world, had united in greater sin than it had ever before committed. Need one tell you what that awful sin was? Too well — alas! too little, men know it. To your souls that believe, it has been brought home by the Holy Spirit of God. That tremendous sin is the rejection, even to the cross, of the Lord Jesus. Yet such is His unbounded grace that the otherwise hopeless sin can be forgiven though it be the hating of the Father and of the Son without a cause (John 15: 22-25). The worst of man, and the best of God, never came clearly out till the crucifixion of the Saviour. The cross of the Lord Jesus was morally the end of probation. The whole of the Old Testament had been given long before that; people who alone were familiar with Law, Psalms and Prophets were indifferent learners of the New Testament. They liked the Old better. They said the old wine was good; and they stuck to it, as the Lord told them when their refusal of Himself came out more and more. It was very fate when the Epistle to the Hebrews was written to set those of them who believed on their proper ground intelligently. They had been but partially on Christian ground, pretty much as most professing Christians are now. They had only vague notions about the gospel, Christian walk, worship, and hope. All was indistinct, not to say incorrect; and that is the state not only of Christendom, but of the children of God in it. Believers from among the Jews ought to have been teachers when Paul wrote to them his great Epistle. They had to learn better the very elements, "the word of the beginning of Christ." They had not arrived at "perfection" or full growth, the due and definite truth of Christianity. There was not only a shortcoming, but a veritable muddle in their minds; consequently their conduct as Christians was mixed and vacillating.

Among those who are upright, how much depends upon their real hold of what scripture actually teaches! The Christian Hebrews feebly understood anything distinctive. Without denying that Christ died, rose, and went to heaven, the great truths that came out consequently were not developed as they should be, so characteristically different from what the Old Testament led people to expect. With Christ confessed they looked for everything grand, honoured, prosperous, and delightful here below. But how did the cross of Christ and His going away to heaven consist with the expectation of Israel being now at the head of the nations and in the enjoyment of earthly glory ? Even believers had that idea still. You will recollect that when the risen Lord was about to go to heaven from the Mount of Olives, they asked, "Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" They had little idea of the thorough break with Israel; still less that God was bringing in a wholly distinct purpose, and associations new and heavenly. This is what we find very fully in the Epistle to the Ephesians and elsewhere: an absolutely fresh revelation. The believers in Jerusalem were slow to learn. Nor does the Epistle to the Hebrews rise to the mystery concerning Christ and concerning the church. Even the heavenly calling therein treated was imperfectly known. Yet it was written late, though somewhat before the destruction of Jerusalem. It speaks of Mosaic. covenant, ritual, system, tabernacle, altar, priest and offering, superseded by what was far better, earthly shadows by the heavenly realities. This was strange not only to the unbelieving Jews but to the Christian remnant. They thought that the old forms were rather to be filled with new power, and that grace would be given to make them living. They had not realised that the old divine service must pass away, and be succeeded by entirely heavenly things in accordance with Christ seated at the right hand of God on high. He is the truth, and must be brought not only into the heart by faith as He is now exalted, but wrought into the worship of God and into the practice of men that believe as a living reality here and now.

To this and nothing less is the Christian called. He is, end ought to know from God through Christ, that he is a heavenly man, while here on earth. He has to act out this association with Christ above whilst he lives here below. The consequence is that the Christian seems, if faithful, the greatest fool going. That is what the world thinks of out and out fidelity to Christ. They can understand a Papist or a Protestant, an Anglican, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Baptist or the like. If you are ever so inconsistent with Christ, it may be excellent in men's eyes. Accordingly they scourged, imprisoned, stoned and slew the faithful witnesses of Christ; and Rome at length tortured them in every cruel way to kill, or cure them of the truth, which seemed to them nothing but the most chimerical ideas. Do the children of God feel how far they have slipped away? It is to recall them to a better grasp of Christianity that I am speaking to you to-night. It were not much to talk about what you know well enough yourselves. My duty is to show in my measure some things you are but little acquainted with. Think me not proud or pretentious if I thus speak and earnestly urge. God forbid! He that would be true to Christ's name and word, and true to the church of God of which he is a member, ought assuredly and with all his heart to speak of the fruit of Christ in heaven brought by the Spirit to men on earth; for, if we believe it, we are called to speak it and by grace to live it. What indeed is the good of truth if you do not humbly seek to carry it out? Better not to hear and know it, than to have on your lips what condemns all your life and your worship.

The truth now made known in the N.T. would not have been understood by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, nor by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel. None of them could have so much as guessed what is now revealed. It all hangs upon Christ come down in reconciling love, yet utterly rejected not merely by the Gentile world but by the Jew most of all. Him God has received up into heavenly glory, and by the Spirit associates us with Himself there and now. Of Him and this, we are called to bear witness, in our walk, service, and worship. We care not to confess it boldly, if we shirk it practically; it is only our greater condemnation. Assuredly this is as true as it is solemn.

I cannot but believe God raised up brethren to recall themselves and their fellows to these truths in all their necessary consequences practically; it is also my sad conviction that some lifted up with pride have brought these very truths into all kinds of confusion. Does any such reaction disprove the truth? Not for a moment. It proves how easily grace may be divorced from truth which then degenerates into knowledge that puffs up. The truth never got really into their heart, for one does not suppose they depart from what they know to be true. When grace does not direct and strengthen, it becomes a great danger for every one of us of losing whatever truth we have. All really turns upon Christ, and Christ now in heaven, who also brings out the now revealed character of God. For He does now assume a new character according to the position of Christ who died and rose. When Christ receives the earth, He takes up the Jewish people, and all the nations; and Jehovah shall be king over all the earth, one Jehovah and His name one. God will act in accordance with it in power and majesty. For the world-kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ shall then have come, and He shall reign for ever and ever (Rev. 11: 15). The Spirit of God will make effectual what is then in hand, as He always does. "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.''

In past history who can recall a single thing in which the Gentiles and the Jews agreed except to crucify the Lord Jesus? Otherwise they hated each other with mortal enmity. Yet they joined for once to cast the Lord out of the earth as unfit to live. Nevertheless the Lord is gone up into supreme glory on high, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. And all things being made subject, He is given as Head over all things to the church, which is His body — He that stooped to all ignominy in the cross. We cannot be Christians in faith without both. To Him in all depths we go as lost sinners to be saved; and when we have redemption through His blood, we that were far off are brought nigh, in the closest association with Christ at the right hand of God.

Is it not a strange and humbling and prevalent fact that so few Christians should understand their own Christianity? Yet it is true that there are many brethren in the Lord who know more about the Jews than they do about their own Christianity. Pay close heed to this, lest it be your own case. It is always the truth most important for us which the devil tries to hide away from us, and turn us bitterly from. Nor is it only the bad things that he perverts, to hinder our blessing. For many true believers are kept back because they refuse to look for more than the forgiveness of their sins through the gospel. Now therein is God's righteousness revealed by and to faith; therein the sinner owns the riches of God's grace to his soul: but to stop there is altogether unworthy. And so many saints of God fall into this snare at the present moment, that it is well to see to it that we ourselves escape it. What is the good of occupying ourselves with what does not promote God's glory? Let us seek in all integrity to judge ourselves. Let us zealously seek to be taught of God. Let our eyes be fixed on the Lord that we may be filled with fervour of spirit, and purpose of heart, simple and thorough going. The question for our faith and practice is the attitude that God assumes toward us, and our relation to Him while Christ is above on His own right hand. How is the answer to this great truth to be carried out on the earth in the heart and ways of those who believe? Must it not be through faith working by love?

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us." It was His God and Father that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope should be in God — His Father and our Father, His God and our God. As in the rest of the N.T. it is not the God of Abraham, etc.; but here "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is no longer the revelation of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; you naturally become more or less of a Jew in this case; and your heart cannot then rise higher than the promises made to the fathers. Hence so many believers now, like the Puritans in former days, talk of grasping the promises. This is to ignore and lower the privileges of the gospel and of the church. It loses sight of Christ in heavenly glory after redemption. Every Christian ought to appreciate the difference. At any rate, the foundation of Christianity is that the most wondrous of all promises is already accomplished. It is no longer the righteousness of God as near to come, or His salvation to be revealed (Isa. 56: 1), but His righteousness is come, and His salvation is revealed. This supposes the Lord Himself come, and His work done for our sins, with an entirely new state of things. And this is the new creation in Christ which each believer gets by grace in the gospel. Therein is revealed the righteousness of God, and thereby salvation is no longer a hope, save for the body, but a reality now also brought into the soul. This reminds me of a text much misunderstood in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 11: 14). Cornelius in Caesarea was to send for Peter at Joppa, who should tell him words whereby he and all his house should be "saved." It was not merely, nor at all, words by which he should be "converted." Cornelius already was as much converted as you. He was as truly born again as anyone in Jerusalem. The chapter before describes him as devout and God-fearing, as a man that gave much alms, and praying to God always. Well for you and me to be in these respects, his match, if not his superiors. It is a total error to regard Cornelius then as a self-righteous person. This is the effect of ordinary Evangelicalism, Calvinistic no less than Arminian; because they alike confound conversion with the soul's salvation. It is theology, not the gospel. The N.T. makes the difference known.

The words of Peter were to tell how they were to be "saved," which goes far beyond conversion, and is the actual privilege of the gospel through redemption. Ignorance of this leads preachers to pervert the force of this scripture, and of the truth in question. It destroys for converted souls in our day what grace was giving Cornelius to learn through the apostle then. Cornelius, like the O.T. saints, was already born of God. He was, as we are told in Acts 10: 37, not at all ignorant of the word published throughout all Judea, and sent to the children of Israel. What he wanted to learn authoritatively was that God intended the same word of His grace to himself a Gentile and others like him, in all the freeness and the fulness of the gospel. He did not dare to take it without divine sanction. He saw it clearly enough for Israel whom he honoured as the old and chosen people of God. He believed that Messiah had come for their blessing; but he was not one of God's people Israel. He needed to have the assurance for a poor Gentile. For soul-salvation means the knowledge of being saved now. When people do not know this as their present portion, they are in substance like Cornelius. They too need to hear words whereby they shall be saved. It is really to be brought personally into "the word of truth, the gospel of" their "salvation." Many converted persons do not know on the word of God, that all is clear between themselves and God, now and for ever. This is soul-salvation. It is not only that a good many of our Methodist friends need to be saved in that way. Their system allows them but a scanty salvation, because they think it depends so much on themselves from day to day. Consequently if ever so happy today, they dread losing it tomorrow. This is not the salvation of God, but rather of man, or more particularly of John Wesley; who nevertheless did believe on Christ, and had the blessing far beyond his own scheme. For who can doubt that John Wesley is with the Lord, a blessed man as he really was, with short and imperfect views of salvation. I hope no Methodists here will be offended. Why should they be, because they are told plainly the truth? It is not mine, save that I believe it, but what God reveals in His word. It may soften matters, but is a sorry comfort, that we are all liable to mistake. Brethren, so called, are just as liable as others, especially if high-minded. Nothing keeps them or any others but God's word and Spirit. Thank God, in His rich grace, we Christians have both; and therefore should we be glad to prove more and more how perfect the blessedness is for our souls and to His glory.

The relation He gives us is not only beyond all that had ever been known, but the highest and nearest that could be given. For what could equal Himself as the Lord knew Him, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? The Lord said the same. So on this resurrection day the Lord gave the message to Mary of Magdala, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." There is the revelation of the divine Name according to this knowledge, and the relation that His own beloved Son enjoyed. There is necessarily the difference, that God was the Father of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in a way ineffable and inscrutable, because of Godhead where He could not but be the eternal Father of His eternal Son. If people do not like the word eternal in this connection, so much the worse for them; for doubt here is peculiarly dangerous. If the Word was not the eternal Son, He is not God. You cannot bring time into the Godhead, because its nature being essentially eternal, what is not so can have no subsistence in Godhead. The Word became flesh, the man Christ Jesus, inasmuch as He was born of the Virgin Mary; He was truly man in virtue of His mother, yet in no way to the loss of His divine nature. Yet the Son, the Word, was God; and when born of woman, the Holy thing born was still the Son of God. He took nature into His person, but was still eternal as God. Before Abraham came into being (if we render it in its full force), "I AM." There never was a beginning to that "I AM." Going back before the world's foundation, He could then say as He said to the Jews, "I AM." The eternity of His divine being could not be more distinctly expressed than in "I AM." It is granted that you cannot prove it by reason; because man argues according to his reason from his own experience. It is legitimate enough to reason from yourself in what is subject to man's sense or mind; but to reason from yourself about God is presumptuous folly. How then are we to learn divine things? We learn by receiving what He says in His word. How else could we learn the truth about Himself or His Son? But also as to what grace gives the believer, the new place was taken by God the Father when Christ accomplished redemption for the soul though not yet for the body. Both Jew and Gentile had done their worst work when God did His best work.

The meeting place of man was at the cross of Christ; which was the immutable basis for God. There was this foundation for His judgment of our sins and for uniting the otherwise irreconcilable. Thence was the new and everlasting building to rise, God's habitation in the Spirit even now, to grow into a holy temple in the Lord; the church of God, to be the bride of Christ through all eternity. But it is remarkable that the apostle in unfolding this great mystery in the two Epistles devoted to this end carefully begins with the individual soul. When any learn of the church before they learn themselves they invariably make a very bad use of it. Does the Romanist say, "I believe what the Church believes?" Alas, my friend, you believe nothing as you ought. This is no genuine, no acceptable belief. It is merely believing what other men say. The true ground of faith is believing what God says. To be right before Him I must individually come out of my own thoughts or yours to what God says. You and I must begin with this; and what does God say to us at the start? He says that I am dead in sins, an utterly lost sinner. In Christendom they furnish the babe with an ordinance for giving life. Not in Christ by the hearing of faith is one quickened, but in the christening of one as duly ordained! The Eucharist sustains or renews it! Both are portentous and pernicious lies of Babylon. Baptism is to Christ's death and never gave life since the church began. The Lord's Supper is the memorial of Christ's love unto death, and the symbol of His one body to the many members. Baptism is individual confession of His death, as the Lord's Supper expresses the communion of His body and blood. This makes all the difference possible. Christ died because all were dead; and this the believer owns to his life and salvation. He came down as the sacrifice to God for me by His death, and brings me not only life eternal, but propitiation for my sins. Christ is the only life and salvation for the sinner who believes. Baptism and the Eucharist are His institutions, the one individual, the other corporate, but simply signs, however precious for His sake, and holy, which it would be sinful and even rebellious to refuse.

I once knew a Jewish Rabbi who could not understand English any more than a Greek monk, but both able to understand French. So we had a little meeting for them and others to read the Epistle to the Hebrews. The monk was already converted; and the Rabbi confessed at length that Jesus was the Son of God. He was told of course to get baptised. But from this he shrank, saying, "If I were baptised, I should be counted a dead man." He was told that this was exactly what the Lord meant by it, namely, passing out of the scene of death into the blessedness of the Christian salvation. If I meet God without Christ, it can only be ripening for hell fire; but if I receive Christ from God, He is life and quickens me. That is why He says nothing at first about union; it is God's purpose about us individually. Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who not only honoured Him, but blessed us with every spiritual blessing. The Jews had every sort of carnal blessings. Our blessing is distinctively of a spiritual nature, not on earth, but in heavenly places where Christ is. The meaning of this should not be dubious.

Of course as to the body we are all on the earth; but now that I am in Christ, I belong to the heavenly land. The Christian is no longer of this or that country. Heaven is meant to supersede his old boast in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, or anywhere else here below. To be "in Christ" is meant to take him out of earthly places. I know some friends who are still so enamoured of Devonshire (Where this address was given, in Exeter.) that it spells danger to talk of anything that reflects ever so little on the things or the men of Devonshire. What is Devonshire compared with the heavenly places? What is any other country here below? The Lord takes all the vanity or pride out of us for our native land by giving us an incomparably better. To the child playing with poisonous fruit the mother says wisely, "Here is an orange, dear, much better than those berries." The child gladly drops the danger and grasps the orange. O that we may be won in heart to heavenly things! He blessed us "with every spiritual blessing"; and not only the best blessings, but in the highest or "heavenly places"; and also "in Christ,'' the best possible security. We have then, the highest blessing; His purpose follows in vers. 4-6; and then in ver. 7 the redemption in Christ "through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses," — for the soul, not yet for the body. God confounded the worst wickedness of man by bringing out His secret and best blessing to the glory of His grace, when Satan succeeded in drawing all mankind in principle to their united and worst daring rebellion against Himself and His Son. Is not this grace God's grace beyond mistake? Who need despair, if he bow in faith to such a God — the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Be not dull of hearing, nor hard of heart, like the Jews. You have not the danger or excuse which they had. They as a people had promises beyond all others. They sprang from Abraham the friend of God. They had a religion and city laid down by Him who was their God. The Messiah came of their stock supernaturally, long after the manifestation of divine glory was forced to depart. Was it not very hard for a nation thus favoured to forget such favours and own their need of grace, like sinners of the Gentiles? Compared with such antecedents as Israel possessed, what are we? Our ancestors ran about in the wilds and woods with stains of blue on their bodies instead of clothes, and burnt their children in order to appease their demon gods. It is easy enough to understand how the Jews in unbelief, proud and stiff-necked, resisted the truth which pronounced them children of wrath like others.

But at a time of utter evil it suited God to divulge the secret of His purpose. From before the foundation of the world He chose us Christians, in Christ, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. He would surround Himself above with beings like Himself: holy in nature, blameless in ways; and love, their animating principle as it is His own. Such we shall be when His purpose takes full effect. We are sadly short now, yet is it verified in principle as to His elect. But God's purpose cannot fail; and Christ will make every word good when He comes to receive us to Himself and like Himself for the Father's house. Not as though we had already attained, or were already perfect; but we follow after; and God's purpose shall surely be fulfilled then. He that knows what the Christian is destined to, judges any present measure in the Christian race and knows that he will have a more humbling yet blessed account to give the Lord in glory than any one's experience in a Methodist class meeting. Those who have entered more deeply into God's mind in His word are better aware what our manifestation to Him will prove. The faith of it has already brought down their high thoughts and imaginations, and shown us how weak and unworthy we are as saints, that no flesh should glory in His presence; and "that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."

But God will surround Himself, not merely in heaven, but in its nearest circle of His own, with those capable of holding communion with Him about everything that concerns His nature, counsels, and ways. Can anything be more wonderful than the place He designs for Christians? We ought to be therefore in course of spiritual education for it now; but till we are like Christ at His coming, none can have yet arrived as a matter of fact at the fulfilled purpose of God. But then we shall be absolutely holy before God, and not a single thing to blame in us, according to the working whereby Christ is able to subdue all things to Himself. Instead of vanity or pride, there will be love that delights in God and His goodness without alloy. Even now are our hearts won to all this by divine grace, in partaking of a divine nature; but we justly feel how poor is our manifestation of it now, and how comforting is the purpose, that every son of God will be absolutely thus according to God's nature. So it is to be according to the fourth verse.

The fifth verse takes up another side of the truth. Predestination is not quite the same thing as election, and here we have the Scripture account of it. We do well to stand clear of human exaggeration here. Election is to fitness for His presence in a nature like His own. Predestination is to a relationship, as like as possible to His Son's. But scripture carefully excludes any such human inference as God's predestination to hell fire. It is clearly revealed that such must be the unending end of the wicked. When the everlasting judgment comes, and they are judged, each according to their works, the book of life has none of their names written there, and they are cast into the lake of fire. But there is no predestinating decree of God in the case. Their own sins fitted those vessels of wrath to destruction.

Notice that pious and learned men have made the mistake of confounding " son" and "child" in the Scriptures. But they, however closely connected, are not the same thing. To identify them is really to take no small liberty with the word of truth. Not that one means to deny that the child of God may be also called a son of God; but the N.T. shows plainly that the two words express different things. It is the apostle John that particularly dwells on our being "children" of God. Why? Because we are born into the family of God. Born of the Spirit, we are thereby children of God, children of His family. "Sons" is wrong in the A.V. of John 1: 12 and of 1 John 3: 1, 2. Beyond question it should be "children" as in 1 John 3: 10, and 1 John 5: 2. But when it is a question of being "sons", it is predestination that puts us into this place of relation. This was overlooked in the A.V. of Gal. 3: 26, which should be, not "children," but, "sons," as in Gal. 4: 5-7. And so it should be in Eph. 1: 5, where the word requires the adoption of "sons," not "children." There is never the adoption of children, but of sons. One must be by new birth a "child" of God. But God also predestined to adopt the Christian into the position of a "son" by Christ Jesus to Himself. All the Old Testament saints were "children," as we who now believe are also. But they were not the adopted "sons," as we may read in the argument that opens Gal. 4. On the other hand, we are all His sons now, whether Jew or Greek, and receive the Spirit of His Son. Every Christian is brought into that place of sonship. It is one of the new privileges of the gospel. The King and Queen do not consider the highest nobles in the land to be in any such dignity. They may by courtesy be their trusty cousins; but they are not their sons. We Christians are adopted into the place of sons, and have the Spirit of God's Son sent into our hearts, crying Abba, Father. How wondrous, yet true! We are sons of an infinitely greater personage than the king, or any other that ever was on the earth. Such is the Christian by faith in Christ Jesus. It is not spiritual necessity as in ver. 4, but "according to the good pleasure of His will." God might have predestined to a much lower place; He was pleased to give us, for His own delight, the highest possible for a creature, "to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He made us objects of favour (far beyond the one act of "acceptance") in the Beloved." This explains all. Thus only could we be thus blessed (ver. 6), whether in new nature or new relationship.

Yet the apostle comes down in ver. 7 to our need even in communicating this roll of privilege: — "In whom (Christ) we have (a present thing) redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of trespasses." This is indispensable for the soul now. Otherwise we should be burdened and wretched, and unfit for the gracious working of the Spirit, or the enjoyment of Christ, or communion with God.

THE PURPOSE OF GOD IN THE INHERITANCE

vers. 8-12

The earlier verses presented to us God's purpose about His sons, His heirs. This, I need scarce say, is the highest of all; for therein we are viewed as perfectly brought into communion with His mind. This goes far beyond the inheritance, and we are before Himself. The inheritance is what we are set above in His grace. But the purpose of God about His sons directly concerns us in the nearest way, because it concerns Himself too. As men He has given us a soul and spirit by which we are distinguished, yet thoroughly responsible to Him. But as His sons we have now a new blessedness and a new responsibility. The old responsibility, we know too well, ended in total ruin. Man fell, and this practically led to, and means, every evil in nature and ways, because all is involved in sin, and flows from it. But now in grace He has taken us entirely out of ourselves (so to speak) as sons of Adam, and set us in Christ. God found none in heaven, still less in any other part of the universe, comparable with His Son the Lord Jesus. On the contrary, Satan led the world to the rejection and slaying of Christ; as the setting up of the antichrist will be his worst work at the end of the age. Impossible to conceive anything so evil, hateful, and rebellious as the antichrist. Even now are there many antichrists that prepare the way, who are all the worse because they once confessed His name. Of course, as the apostle says "they were not of us": had they been, "they would have continued with us." Their departure proved that none had part or lot with Christ. They abandoned their natural place in professing His name, and they became His greatest enemies, in direct antagonism to the One that God delights to honour, and loves supremely.

Already are believers given to know that they are set in Christ, associated in this ineffable way with Him to whom we belong. We may, however, be in the presence of God in spirit now. By and by we are to be there, in the very likeness of Christ, according to whose glory we are now called in every way by God. First, the heirs are brought out very distinctly; next, comes the inheritance. God, as to the heirs, had that purpose before the foundation of the world. But He purposed the inheritance also. It was not an afterthought. It was not after the ruin, but before the creation. It was immeasurably in eternity. Quite different was the call of Abraham. His was merely in time, but the call of the Christian was before time began. The very first purpose that God formed in His own eternal mind was to surround himself with beings of a totally different destiny from those that were to follow; beings that could know Himself, and appreciate grace and truth; beings that needed it all, but at the same time whom He needed in order to gratify His own love and share with them His thoughts and affections. And a wondrous fact too is, that He would have them to enter into that purpose of His now by faith. They were His secrets before redemption, but are here revealed in due time. It is what the apostle is now occupying us with in this Epistle.

It is observable in ver. 8 that His grace abounded toward us in all wisdom and intelligence, that such a communion should not be in vain. We do not hear about His rich supply in the earlier verses. There it is rather to tell us that we should be holy and blameless in love. But He would have us understand the inheritance, immense as it will be. Before, it was the imparting of a divine nature, as 2 Peter 1 calls it, an answer to His own in holiness and blamelessness and love; for what else was suited to His presence? Not only so; but the new relationship must be just as fully in accordance with Christ. Nothing would satisfy His love but that which was after His pattern. The Son, the Only Begotten, was God, and of course therefore eternal. These were necessarily creatures, taken out of all ordinary conditions, but put into the immediately nearest relationship that God could vouchsafe. It was an adoption, a sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will. Assuredly, it concerns every true Christian to know what his new nature and relationship are. God forbid we should ever neglect or forget these things. Can anything make one feel more deeply that all is ruin at the present time and how deeply we are fallen from our true estate? It is not meant that the purpose of God can be frustrated in the end; but where, among those that bear the Lord's name, can be found any adequate approach to what is here revealed to the saints? The rarest thing to find in Christendom is any answer to the description God gives of the Christian. Is it not so? What can we say to such a fact? At best we are only learning what it is.

So again this future and immense inheritance is so illimitable as to embrace all heavenly and earthly creation, all that is to be put under Christ and consequently under those who are united to Christ. Do Christians realise that they are to share it all with Him? Hence the form His grace takes in view of the glory of Christ. He would have us capacitated to apprehend it in all wisdom and intelligence. This last word is in the A. and the R. Versions called "prudence," an excellent thing in practical things. But in the present case it is a very insufficient word. What has prudence to do for understanding Christ's future glory. Clearly it stands here for "intelligence." God would have us even now acquaint ourselves with this purpose also. We need to know our personal blessing first; but next, what we shall share with Christ when He takes the inheritance of all things. Spiritual understanding is requisite but is also abundantly given for this express purpose.

We may be helped in this if we look at the first Adam. When God made the first man and put him into the brightest part of the earth, or paradise as it is called, everything was "very good" (Gen. 1); but the very best were collected by Jehovah Elohim in His power for the head of mankind. So He planted the garden for Adam with special provision, not for every use only, but for delight and enjoyment also. And as Adam was constituted the lord of the lower creation here on earth, he was enabled in God's goodness, through the wisdom and intelligence conferred upon him, to give the proper names to all cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field; for all these were subjected to him. This is the more important, because it is the appropriate sign of the dominion given him. In Adam there was no question of sin. Adam herein assumed nothing in pride: it was the Lord God that brought to him the animals to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, it had His sanction. As master by divine appointment, the right or title was recognised, as he had the wisdom and intelligence for that function. Divine goodness had pleasure in it.

It is of the more interest to remark this, because, as we generally know, men of speculative mind have dared to question that man was thus endowed from the first. But philosophers deny everything of divine grace and power. They assume that Adam, if he ever existed, was a kind of barbarian. They lack faith and its discernment to enter into the real difference of Gen. 1 and 2, being carried away by the nonsense of the Astruc guess growing into the pretentious theories of German sceptics. In Gen. 2 is the relationship of the creature, and, in particular, man's responsibility founded on the place in which God was pleased to put him. So Adam gave these names, and God recognised them. Very far greater are the things God has done in Christ for us.

A fair and beauteous scene it was with every creature in it that God subjected to Adam. But what is that compared with the whole universe of God, and every creature above and below, after all the ruin, gathered into united blessedness under Christ's headship, and ourselves associated with Christ in that place of honour over all things? God therefore caused grace to abound toward us "in all wisdom and intelligence" that we might be capable even now of entering with spiritual understanding into a scene so boundless.

Even real Christians count it wisdom and prudence to disclaim all definite thought about the future glory. And no wonder. For the mixture of law and gospel destroys the right use of both, and reduces revealed truth to uncertainty. To souls in this state these purposes of God are, and must be, unknown. They need to receive previously the word of truth, the gospel of their salvation. Were they at home in God's grace and truth, even in that respect, they would yearn after more, and the Spirit would lead them into all the truth, and show them things to come for Christ's glory. Surely God looks for this, that we should understand the grace He has lavished on us. Here He has made known "the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself for the administration of the fulness of the times" or, seasons (vers. 9-10). The importance of the word "mystery" is that it means, not something unintelligible as in vulgar usage, but, a secret that was never revealed in the Old Testament. Mysteries are entirely peculiar to what is called the New Testament, wherein they are made known from the Gospel of Matthew to the Revelation of John.

Hence the purpose of God about us, or about the inheritance, was nowhere revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is well to recall the last verse of Deut. 29, "The secret things belong to Jehovah our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law." Now, God is pleased to reveal what He then reserved to Himself. The time was fully come; and these purposes of His are some of His great secrets. You will find for that reason that the Lord speaks about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. In the Old Testament that kingdom was revealed, but not the mysteries of which the Lord spoke in Matt. 13, which turned on His rejection by the Jews, which forms the theme of Matt. 11 and Matt. 12 especially. Thereon follows the peculiar aspect of the kingdom of the heavens when the Rejected of men would go on high; and there it is that we know Him now by faith. The kingdom of the heavens assumed this new form when Christ took His seat on the Father's throne. And we may note that when He rose from the dead and was glorified, then more and more the disciples were brought into the understanding of the mysteries of God; and of those mysteries the apostle Paul was an eminent steward, as John also was.

All these were entirely outside the Old Testament; but they could be understood like other truths when revealed. For this we need, and we have, the Holy Spirit given to us. None of them could have been anticipated; but now that God has revealed them, they are for us to search into by the Spirit.

Here it is first the truth as to the Christian; then we begin to hear it as to the church, each in due time. All is revealed in view of the new creation that God was bringing in. It is far beyond the kingdom of the heavens in ever so new a way. The church of God is explained which had never been revealed, but kept hid in God. The mystery hid from ages and generations was now revealed to the holy apostles, and by Paul. The new building, the church of God, rests upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. It is not said, nor is it true, upon the prophets and the apostles. Great care is taken to put the apostles before the prophets as both of the N.T., and a common class for this work of God, when Israel was finally set aside for the present. Their writings are an entirely new volume; and in order to make it plain and certain, they were written in a different language, in Greek, as those who compose the church were to be chiefly from among the Gentiles.

God made known this mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself; and, to render it effectual, conferred the needed wisdom of understanding. It is therefore now no longer a secret. His purpose is for administration of the fulness of the seasons, to gather together (or head up) the universe in the Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth (ver. 10).

This is a wholly different thing from gathering together into one the scattered children of God for which He died (John 11: 52). The latter is the unity which He asked of His Father in John 17: 20-23. The former is not yet begun till He appears in glory and delivers the whole creation. The heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ must be revealed before the inheritance can be set free; and its earnest expectation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For we know that though grace has already freed the heirs, their mortal bodies are not yet changed into the likeness of His glorious body, and that till they appear with Him in glory, all the creation groans together till now.

Hardly a phrase in scripture seems less understood than Eph. 1: 10. Though this is not the fit occasion to lay bare the strange variety of opinions — learned and unlearned — the fact is as certain as inexcusable. The language of the apostle is plain, save that the word for summing, or heading up, rises necessarily to a sense never thought of among heathens, but given its fullest and highest force in this apostolic revelation: an immense elevation shared with other Greek words in N.T. usage. The question here is not what men conceive who do not adequately weigh both the word and the context; but what these both fairly compel us to accept as the mind of God here conveyed.

Most have been misled by the supposed analogy of Gal. 4: 4. But the phraseology is as different as the time and circumstance and aim. "The fulness of time" now past, simply means the time fulfilled for God's sending His Son to redeem or buy out from under the law to the adoption of sons, and to impart the Holy Spirit. "The fulness of the seasons," still future, means the completion of those seasons when God instituted dealings of varied character: human government from Noah's day; call to separation and promise given to Abraham; law from Sinai with other supplements, in Israel; world-power, on Israel's failure, in the four great empires; to say nothing of the fall of man and creation long before, and the gospel, last of all, consequent on redemption.

God has left all these to run their course, as testing human responsibility in so many ways. And it is unquestionable that none of them is ended, as all must be when the Lord of all comes in judgment of the quick: a judgment practically forgotten in Christendom, though the creeds, so little heeded or even understood, testify to it. There will be seen in all solemnity the total failure of man, in all these respects; but most flagrantly in that the world, Jew and Gentile, rulers and people, crucified the Lord of glory. God will then call to account how men treated each of these institutions which He established and man violated. Take government on the earth. It never was till after the deluge; and it continues still. Hence in the N.T. we read, "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and those that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment" — not "damnation" which is an execrable exaggeration, and blunder of translation as in Rom. 14: 23, 1 Cor. 11: 29, and in too many other passages that refer to temporal judgment only. The Christian is to be subject to the law, or, if God's truth be at stake, bear the consequences quietly. Yet not one word warrants the Christian to exercise civil authority: many scriptures call for his subjection to such authority, but never to exercise it. We are not of the world, as Christ is not. He declined even to arbitrate, and has set us an example that we should follow His steps. It is ours to obey God always, if not always man and then to suffer, not to rebel. We are sanctified by the Spirit to the obedience of Christ, to obey as He obeyed. What a help it is to a Christian to be content to walk as nothing at all in this world but in the spirit of obedience as the Lord ever did. Further, he can afford to respect others, and can do so freely, learning of Him who was meek and humble in heart. Especially does he need grace when it is a duty to find fault with another. Then have we most reason to be lowly, and vigilant. We have to watch against ourselves lest, by a hasty word or way, we should only make bad worse. But to return, God has not yet called the world to account for misgovernment. He surely will, as we may read in Ps. 82; and the One who will be invested with the administration is the Lord Jesus. But quite another dealing of His began with the first of "the fathers" (Rom. 9: 5, Rom. 11: 28) Abraham. It was the separating to God from idolatry which came in after the deluge and overspread even the line of Shem, as we read in Joshua 24.

Israel as a people then followed and undertook to keep His covenant. But what did Israel become at Sinai itself? and where are they now? Scattered to the winds of heaven. Where is a nation in the world so dispersed as Israel? Yet had they walked rightly, God would have made them stand unmoved as a mountain. In every way they totally failed. Take any detail of theirs, as, for instance, the priesthood. It was set up, as nowhere else. Aaron made the golden calf to please the people, and before consecration was complete, two were cut off, and the other two only spared by intercession.

Then, take the judges that God raised up in their distress. What failure even in the judges! What can one say of Samson? Even Samuel who shone among them, through his sons' fault lost the confidence of Israel, who would have a king like others. And how did Saul turn out? or even David, the man after God's heart? or Solomon, with his father, typifying the Lord, each in a different way? The nation consequently broke up in Solomon's son, the proof of general sin, till each of the kingdoms in turn had to be swept out of the land by the just judgment of God.

Then came the Gentile world-powers. They were entrusted with universal empire. The head of gold, Babylon, soon set up an idol forced on all the nations at the penalty of death. Such was the first: what was to be the conduct of the last? It crucified the Lord Jesus; and on its rise again, will oppose the same Lord when He returns in power and glory. Man broke down in every one of the empires; but the last was to be the guiltiest of all.

Thus all these seasons will close when Christ comes in the clouds of heaven. The Lord will bring in an entirely new administration; in which, besides judging each of these broken trusts, He will establish them in His own person and power to the praise and glory of God. Everything in which man failed will be taken up by Him who never failed in His humiliation; nor will He in that day of manifested blessing and glory. He will not only stand Himself, but He will maintain a glorious kingdom over Israel, and empire over all nations and tongues. Then, on earth righteous men will live throughout a period of a thousand years. Of course one does not ask the doctors what they think about that. They, judging by present appearance, must regard such an expectation as mad. They are no worse than the divines, who deny miracle and prophecy, and are giving up genuine inspiration from Genesis to Revelation. These men of knowledge falsely so called know not the scriptures nor the power of God. Methuselah fell short of a millennium; whereas in the future, everyone on earth who is not rebellious against God, is to live the thousand years throughout. Believers will be transferred from the old earth to the new without passing through death. So it will be on earth when the seasons spoken of are fully out, and the time come for the Lord to take His world-kingdom (Rev. 11: 15). The future administration will be in His hands when the seasons of man's responsibility have come to nothing but utter sin and ruin. Then will all the universe, inclusive of the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth, be summed up under the headship of the Lord. It is not the eternal state, but the kingdom in its largest possible sense, when the Heir of all things takes and holds the inheritance to God's glory.

The heavens, as we too well know, are now severed from the earth; and the things on earth are in opposition, each to each; and confusion reigns through sin. Spiritual wickedness is still in the heavenly places; Satan is still the accuser before God, as he is the arch-deceiver of the whole inhabited earth. And what a field of self-will, vanity, pride, covetousness, lust, violence, falsehood, corruption, lying, unrighteousness, and ungodliness, is that of man here below.

Even in what is called Christendom, where is Christ all? Where is scripture only, and all, obeyed? Where has the Holy Spirit His due place individually and corporately? But the time hastens when the Lord will come in His kingdom, and the heavens and the earth be in perfect harmony; when everything in the heavens above and on the earth shall be subjected by divine power to Christ, gathered or headed up in Him as a universal and united system. All know too well that there is not the smallest approach to such a call as this now, nor has it ever been so. But in this day of the Lord that is to dawn, there will be unfailing righteousness, peace, and joy. In an exceptional case of rebellion, death will demand its victim. But it will not be the rule as now. It will be normal to live through the millennial day. But Christ will then have complete and universal sway manifestly. He will bear up the pillars, and chase away want and suffering. If the tiniest insect that flits in the sun's light, if a single blade of grass on which we tread, were not brought under the power of Christ's reconciliation and blessing, it would be a victory for the enemy over Him. But God's purpose will stand, not only for His heirs, but for the inheritance in all its vast extent and to the minutest detail. The reason is plain. As He created, He will restore, all things, though assuredly not all persons, for the mass live and die His implacable enemies. He died to reconcile all things to Himself. He is declared to be the Heir of all things. Everything above, and everything below, the universe will be put under Christ. This is God's purpose, but not the fact as yet now. It is only God's counsel still, while the heirs are being called; it is not accomplished yet, but surely will be. The Lord is waiting for it. He is not reigning in any such sense as prophecy requires. Rejected by Jew and Gentile He is accepted on high, and He sits on the Father's throne above. There beyond doubt He is crowned with glory and honour, but He has not taken His great power to reign openly and put down every foe.

The Jews rejected Him as their King, and the Gentiles crucified Him. But God the Father raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory; and we are meanwhile being called, His friends, His brethren, and His joint-heirs. When the last one is called, the Father will give the word, and the Lord, after receiving them to Himself, will descend in flaming fire on all His foes and tread them down. After that He will inaugurate the reign of peace; and the spared, who submit, will be the willing subjects of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Every creature on the earth will share the blessing in peace; for the nations will learn war no more. Such will be the administration of the fulness of the seasons. What an absurdity to fancy that the time or state is yet come! "The whole creation groaneth together." Why does it groan? Because it is not under Christ, revealed in power and glory. It is travailing in pain together until now. Weakness, failure, and death are stamped upon every creature that has any kind of life. And things that have not life are habitually turned to a selfish purpose. Take gold and silver, precious stones, pearls, etc., what crimes do they not cause? Think of the pride and vanity and misery to which the lust after these things leads! There is a time coming when everything will join in a chorus of praise to the glory of the Lord Jesus. O what a righteous; holy and beneficent change. He will bring it about: nothing but His coming in power, who once came to suffer for sins, will avail. He who has preyed upon man ever since the fall in the garden of Eden, Satan, will be for a thousand years shut up. He will not be consigned to the lake of fire till after the millennium: but during the Lord's reign he is not allowed to deceive the nations. Now he is also the accuser of God's saints above. Now he does all possible mischief there and here. All that will cease during the millennium. Idolatry and evil in general will cease, righteousness will flourish during the reign of our Lord over the earth; and the new Jerusalem, metropolis of the universe, will be intimately connected with but above, the rejoicing earth. The Jews will be the head, not only of Israel saved by God's mercy, but, of all the nations. It does not matter what the anti-Semites say, Israel is kept of God for this blessed time — "the restitution of all things whereof God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets since time began." They will be the lowly and faithful servants of the Messiah in that day of gladness. But the Gentiles will also abandon their self-sufficiency and joyfully acknowledge their folly and God's goodness, and this glory of Jehovah will fill the earth as now the waters the bed of the sea. That is the unforced and explicit revelation of God. More than that, the very beasts of the earth will lay aside their fury that followed man's departure from God. Whatever may have existed before man, I speak only of the time since man was created. In contrast with the first man's fall, God means to honour the Second man. He is worthy to bring all creation, and the brutes as part of it, to the true centre in the power which subdues all things to Christ. How universal and profound the evil when man fell! Reconciliation of all things prepares for the transfer to the risen Man who is also True God as truly as is the Father, to Christ the one Head of all things in the heavens no less than of all things on the earth. Then will Christ have come forth publicly, with all His glorified saints following Him; then will He take up the dispensation of the fulness of the seasons, establishing all the divinely given institutions which had broken down in man's feeble and faulty hand. But the saints are carefully distinguished from the inheritance. If the inheritance be given to us, we are the heirs, not the inheritance; and so it is distinctly stated in ver. 11, "in whom [Christ] we were also allotted, foredetermined according to purpose of him that works all things according to the counsel of his own will." The heavenly Bridegroom shares His inheritance unreservedly with those who are constituted His bride; just as Eve the earthly bride shared all that Adam her bridegroom possessed as the gift of the Lord God to him.

In Christ's case, it was not only in virtue of creating all (John 1: 3); another ground far more precious and unfailing was laid in His death. "Because all the fulness was pleased in him to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things unto him, having made peace through the blood of his cross — through him, whether the things on the earth, or the things in the heavens " (Col. 1: 19, 20). Here too the saints, the heirs, are beyond doubt discriminated, as in the counterpart Epistle, from the "all things," the inheritance, "You" He reconciled now, vers. 21, 22. Creation has to be reconciled by power as well as blood, and that will be when He is manifested in glory. But the saints already are reconciled, not by incarnation as is falsely held, but, in the body of His flesh through death.

The church is neither all things in the heavens, nor all things on the earth, still less both, which is a most egregious error, but believers out of both Jews and Gentiles, baptised by one Spirit into one body, Christ's body, from which all earthly distinction is blotted out. Impossible to fairly maintain the current traditional view, or to deny the truth, that the gathering of all the universe is the future stewardship for Christ's manifestation.

Christ's death is the ground for the saints now reconciled; but the reconciliation of the universe as a matter of fact awaits His appearing in power and glory. It is already applied to those who believe the gospel; and they are the heirs. But the deliverance of creation from the bondage of corruption will be into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Rom. 8: 21), and cannot be before those already delivered by grace through faith are revealed to every eye as His sons in glory. What is here said, is but a simple reflection of God's word. It declares with all plainness of speech that the heirs are reconciled; as the inheritance will be, at Christ's manifestation. The heirs are those reconciled through the blood of Christ, as all creation will be. But they believe the gospel of grace; with which the rest of creation, animate or inanimate has nothing to do. But they will answer fully to the revelation of Christ's power and glory. We must never confound the Christian's portion with Israel's. The chosen people were Jehovah's especial inheritance. We are united to Christ by the Spirit, not in any sense His inheritance, but heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If Christ is to have all things above and below we too by grace shall share all things.

Let us consider seriously a purpose so immense. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus was pleased so to purpose, and also to reveal it clearly to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Was it not to exercise a direct and intimate bearing on our souls? to lift our hearts to Christ in the heavenly places, as united to Him who is there, for entirely like glory with Him? It is not only the bad things of the flesh and the world that present danger, the best things are perverted and falsified by spiritual wickedness in heavenly places to rob us of our highest privileges. We belong to Christ, for and in heaven; He is the way, the truth and the life. If we give not, as a constant principle and practice, to Christ the first place, we grievously wrong Him and to our own irreparable loss as Christians. It is our privilege and our duty to make Christ the prime object of our souls in every question that comes before us. Satan ensnares by our own interests. We are only kept and guided aright by Christ's dwelling in our hearts through faith. What quiet comfort and confidence, if you are content to tell the Lord about it and are subject to His will and word! He gives entire deliverance from every wile of the enemy. His love entitles one to consult Him about little matters: — nothing, it has been well said, is too great for us, nothing too small for Him, in His grace. Who that believes need wonder, if when dead in our offences and sins, God quickened us together with the Christ, and raised us together, and seated us together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them.

The efficacious work is offered and accepted on high for all things in the heavens and on the earth. Yet spiritual wickedness is not even yet dislodged from the heavenlies. Still less is the field of the world cleared of all scandals and those that practice lawlessness. Yes, the serpent's trail is still above; and those associated with Christ in the heavenlies have brought deep dishonour on Him by their unbelief and worldliness, tampering on this side with superstition, on that with rationalism; bad enough in mere professors, far worse in members of His body. The heavenly things therefore needed to be purged by better sacrifices than Israel or any man ever offered. The inheritance, heavenly and earthly, remains yet to be delivered according to the energy of His power even to subdue the universe to Himself; and we shall share His most worthy exaltation, in that day for which we wait, suffering with Him, and it may be for Him, by grace meanwhile.

The Rapture of the Saints:

who suggested it, or rather on what Scripture?

W. Kelly.

The Bible Treasury, New Series, vol. 4, p. 314-318

(Also published by T. Weston 1903.)

When a bitter adversary of the Christian's heavenly hope sought many years ago to stigmatise it as having a foul and even Satanic origin. there were questions, in which he was compromised, too serious for any who weighed their import to notice so unworthy an insinuation. It is much to be doubted that the late Mr. J. N. Darby saw or heard of it; nor did I ever meet with it till lately, long after its dispersion far and wide. A recent American journal brought it first under my notice; but the idea was probably derived, directly or indirectly, from that source. I quote from a "little booklet" written with no small warmth on our side of the Atlantic by a clergyman. This one could appreciate if Christ's person or work were assailed; but is it not extravagant, if not unaccountable, in such a question where all agree in the general truth?

"I am not aware that there was any definite teaching (i.e. in the early days of the Plymouth movement) that there would be a secret rapture of the saints at a secret coming, until this was given forth as an utterance in Mr. Irving's church, from what was there received as being the voice of the Spirit. But whether anyone ever asserted such a thing or not, it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose. It came not from holy scripture. but from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God; whilst not holding the true doctrine of our Lord's incarnation in the same flesh and blood of His brethren, but without taint of sin."

What must one think of a polemic who would extract an envenomed shaft to injure, if he could, the apostle Paul's preaching and teaching of "salvation", from the utterance at Philippi of the maiden with a spirit of Python? "These men are servants of the Most High God that announce to you the way of salvation." The then instrument of Satan was not so openly hostile as the slanderer of J.N.D, On the contrary the enemy adopted the craftier policy of commending the apostolic testimony. But Paul, distressed by it (for it went on for many days), turned at length, and in the name of Jesus expelled the unclean spirit, disdaining such an ally. The spirit's talk of "the way of salvation", however, did not hinder Paul or his companions from proclaiming "so great salvation", which, having been spoken by our Lord, was confirmed by those who heard, God also bearing witness with them. Argue, as adversaries might, from the fact that the apostle never wrote a word on the way of salvation before the evil spirit proclaimed this as his errand, he was not to be driven from the truth by the wiles of the devil; and woe would surely be to such as availed themselves of that craft to turn away from the glad tidings of God.

But let us turn from surmise to such facts as exist; for both assailed and assailant are departed. Though Mr. D., in general used to say little of himself, he does speak, in two pieces which appear in his Collected Writings, of the way in which light dawned on his heart as to the future according to the scriptures. The first bore on the change in the divine dealings with men at the end of this age. "But I must, though without comment, direct attention to chap. 32 of the same prophet (Isaiah 32) which I do the rather, because in this it was the Lord was pleased, without man's teaching, first to open my eyes on this subject, that I might learn His will concerning it throughout — not by the first blessed truths stated in it, but the latter part, when there shall be a complete change in the dispensation, the wilderness becoming the fruitful field of God's fruit and glory, and that which had been so being counted a forest, at a time when the Lord's judgments should come down, even great hail, upon this forest; and the city even of pride be utterly abased" (Proph. 1, pp. 165, 166).

Of that light which later shone on the heavenly side of the Lord's coming he speaks rather differently. "It is this passage which, twenty years ago [i.e. from 1850 when he then wrote], made me understand the rapture of the saints before — perhaps a considerable time before — the day of the Lord (that is, before the judgment of the living.)" The difference is this, that he expressly excludes "man's teaching" in the first case, which he does not even imply in the second. There he simply says that it was 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2, which made him understand the rapture of the saints to be before the day of the Lord, but not a word about the Lord pleased to open his eyes in the same way: how he does not say, as there was no call for it in his criticism of M. Gaussen on Daniel the Prophet.

Now it so happens that, during a visit to Plymouth in the summer of 1845, Mr. B. W. Newton told me that, many years before, Mr. Darby wrote to him a letter in which he said that a suggestion was made to him by Mr. T. Tweedy (a spiritual man and most devoted ex-clergyman among the Irish brethren), which to his mind quite cleared up the difficulty previously felt on this very question. No one was farther from lending an ear to the impious and profane voices of the quasi-inspired Irvingites than Mr. T., unless indeed it were J.N.D. himself who had closely investigated their pretensions and judged their peculiar heterodoxy on Christ's humanity as anti-christian and blasphemous. As to this anyone may satisfy himself by the Collected Writings XV, the first two articles of Doct. 4, with strictures in six other volumes, to which may be added, in a new edition, a longer paper that has been discovered since.

On the other hand Mr. Newton knew, as well or better than most at this time of day, such of the Newman St. oracles as reached ears and eyes outside. But he also knew that no serious brother in fellowship regarded them with less than horror, as emanating not from human excitement merely but from a demon accredited with the power of the Holy Spirit. Their sorrow was great over E. Irving as a man of rare ability, large gift as a preacher and teacher, and zealous to live the truth in faith and love. Though he was carried away pitiably by the claim of tongues and miracles, and by the yet more dangerous pretension to restored apostles and prophets, they thankfully observed, what was his humbling admission, that he received no such endowment. It was a striking difference from his associates; that he, much the most eminent of them all spiritually, should have been unvisited by the alleged new power from on high. Yet Irving was bolder than any in affirming the fundamental heterodoxy as to Christ's person, nay that His sinful humanity (may God forgive the blasphemy!) was the basis for the divine gifts, the spirit (whatever its source and character) coming as its seal.

But Irving was at least honest and outspoken; and however erring as he surely proved, God kept him personally from the evil energy which wrought in those to whom he bowed down with abject superstition, and took him away comparatively young but worn out, contrary to their confident predictions. Their apostles and prophets with the rest of what they called the fourfold gifts, shuffled and prevaricated in the way habitual among men under demon powers. Take a single sentence of his out of many, "I believe it to be most orthodox, and of the substance and essence of the orthodox faith, that Christ could say until his resurrection, Not I, but sin that tempteth me in my flesh" (The Orthodox Catholic Doctrine of our Lord's Human Nature, p. 127, London, 1830). And when Mr. Robert Baxter challenged this doctrine as false, Irving could reply that the spirit in their prophetess, Miss E. C., had laid down that B. had departed from the truth which I. had maintained, the Lord being pleased with him for it. This was confirmed by another prophetess, Mrs. C. (Baxter's Narrative of Facts, etc. pp. 104, 105).

But I willingly bear my testimony to Mr. N. that he never to me thought of attributing the source of the so-called doctrine, the rapture of the saints, to that seducing spirit. It was new, however, to hear that Mr. Tweedy, who died full of blessed labours in Demerara, was the one who first suggested, as a decisive proof from scripture, 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2. I so implicitly believed in his telling me the truth as conveyed in Mr. D.'s letter to himself, that it did not occur to me to question Mr. D. about it. I knew the latter to be generous in acknowledging readily any debt of the kind he owed to other brethren, having experienced it in my own case and in that of Mr. Bellett, if not of more still. Indeed it was very touching to observe that one, to whose richly suggestive help so many were indebted, was himself so frank to own any fresh thought of value in another, and to manifest his simple-hearted pleasure, not only in hailing the accession but in adding to the evidence of its truth, as he so well could and did, while pointing out its importance.

Further, when Mr. N. named to me the disclosure of Mr. D.'s old letter, things had reached a very high temperature, and on no question more than the one before us. Mr. N. had issued the first edition of his "Thoughts on the Apocalypse" in parts, completed in 1844; and Mr. D. was at that time bringing out in parts his "Examination" of it, as able a volume as he ever wrote, not only in my judgment thoroughly subversive of the "Thoughts", but establishing on a sound basis the grand truths which were sought to be undermined. Now B. W. N. was no neutral, but abhorred it in divine things as much as J.N.D. or anyone. Christ's relation to God had not yet come into controversy, nor the righteousness of God; but he was quite right in feeling the immense moment of God's revealed mind as to the Lord's coming, the heavenly calling, the church of God, etc. These truths he opposed through his prophetic system, which was sadly narrow and crude, however assured he might be of its certainty. His antagonism to Mr. D. and his teaching as incompatible had already come out clearly and decidedly, though the open breach did not occur till some months after.

On that humiliating breach there is no call to speak here. It was followed about two years subsequently by the distressing discovery of a systematic heterodoxy, one part of which, singular to say, appeared in the Second edition of the Plymouth "Christian Witness (vol. ii.)," an article of B. W. N. on the Doctrines of Newman St. The Editor (J. L. H.),* through the loan to his wife of MS. Notes on Psalm 6, divulging doctrine revolting to his spirit, deemed it his duty to Christ and the church, that it should appear with his comment, no matter what the secrecy enjoined might be or any possible consequence. Mr. N. hastened to defend his scheme of thought, and thus first laid open what had been working too long in the dark. J.N.D., providentially detained beyond the time when he meant to go abroad, was thus called to deal with it searchingly, and with such effect that the most trusty of N.'s fellow-workers who remained broke down in confession of their fatal departure from the true Christ, owning the evil to be worse than what was known and laid to their door. Even B.W.N., threatened with the deserting of his friends if he did not retract, sent out (26th Nov., 1847), "A Statement and Acknowledgement respecting certain Doctrinal Errors."

* He also disclaimed all knowledge of this "Second" edition, like most of the elder brethren also, being already provided with the first. This it is well to state, as an effort was made to show that people were inconsistent in complaining later of what was in circulation long before. The fact is that an active teacher of the system (W.B.D.) acknowledged just before it was exposed, that it had been fully canvassed in their large meeting for eight years before, and that the party were fully made up in it. He too with N.'s chief associates renounced it in print.

But this failed to satisfy those aggrieved. Mr. N. did confess his awful sin "in holding that the Lord Jesus came by birth under any imputation of Adam's guilt, or the consequences of such imputation"; but he put a similar issue on His being made of a woman. Think of including Christ with the many constituted sinners! This he gave up; but he never disclaimed the horrible falsehood that He was under the curse of a broken law as a born Israelite, not vicariously, but in His own relation to God. No one any longer alleged against him his perversion of Rom. 5: 19 (first half); but he gave no sign that he renounced his evil teaching against the Lord, as "come of a woman, come under law". On the contrary, in a "Letter on subjects connected with the Lord's Humanity" (Oct. 1848), the latest known to me in which Mr. N. brought out his own doctrine on Christ's relation to God, he maintained the principles of the obnoxious tracts withdrawn for reconsideration — all, save involving Christ in Adam's guilt. He had "used wrong theological terms, and a wrong application to the fifth of Romans" (p. 32)!

It is plain that this system is semi-Irvingite, and though rejecting sinful humanity, comes to the same result of overthrowing His person directly, and indirectly the work which depends on His person. No doubt he wrote often on His work, and on justification by faith; but what is the value, as I told an eminent religious leader, of faith in a false Christ? Living faith is in the true Christ of God. Now it is one fully implicated in his kinsman's heterodoxy who dared to impute to an Irvingite spirit the doctrine of the church's rapture! Far from me to say a needless word of one who is no longer alive to speak and explain. Nor is it that I was with the new departure of Park St., nor approved of proceedings that led up to and followed it, and have reason to feel grief for that which there is good ground to impute to others. But unbroken deep regard to a great and good man, [J. N. Darby] an uncompromising champion for Christ's glory and God's truth, makes it an imperative duty to expose so low an effort of polemical rancour.

If there had been no letter from Mr. D, to Mr, N. stating the actual source, it was a rash and wicked surmise to say or think that "it was from that supposed revelation that the modern doctrine and the modern phraseology respecting it arose." That a vexed and vindictive spirit might thus imagine under a lamentably sad temptation, one can readily understand. But can any fair mind in God's presence, if he knew no other facts, conceive a greater improbability than J.N.D. adopting the utterance of what he believed a demon as a truth of God?

On the face of it, the "supposed revelation" [among the Irvingites] declared that, within three years and a half, the saints would be caught up to the Lord, and the earth wholly given up to the days of vengeance. The power came upon another at the same time confirming the rapture of the saints within three years and a half. Mr. N. 's words are purposely quoted from the article in the "Christian Witness'', though at hand is Baxter's Narrative from which he drew the information. This betrays a source and character totally different from Mr. Tweedy's suggestion, or Mr. Darby's letter, for the doctrine [the pretribulation rapture of the saints] which became a factor of force not only among brethren so-called but among saints of God largely throughout the world.

The oracular utterance was grounded on the ordinary system, which Mr. B.W.N. shared, of making the Lord's coming a link in the chain of prophecy. The rapture was to be within three years and a half from the time of prediction; as the voice then or afterwards taught that those described in Rev. 7 and 14 (for they confounded the two companies) would be the saints caught up. But all such ideas are baseless, and prove the absence of any real intelligence as to the book of Revelation. In neither case is there a translation to heaven, which takes place between Rev. 3 and 4. For the saints are still viewed as in the churches on earth according to the one chapter; and in the other they are seen under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders. During that interval Christ must come to fetch them on high. The hope is thus carefully kept in scripture from confusion with the prophetic account of God's dealings with Israel and the Gentiles which follow. The like distinction is not less carefully marked by the coming of the Lord in 1 and 2 Thess. with other corresponding scriptures, and has nothing in common with the Irvingite voice in its unfounded and false application to the prophetic part of the Apocalypse.

Whatever men think, scripture (in the capital seat of the revelation of Christ's coming for the church, 1 Thess. 4) is express, that the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. All must believe in this rapture at some time, for it is surely the common hope of Christians. The humbling fact, even among prophetic students, is that it has occupied so little their hearts and lips. But allowing this, why should any who wish to decry its prominence rush to the malignant conclusion, that it was derived from an Irvingite source, by those who are and have ever been as far as possible from such teaching, and who deem it utterly antichristian?

Ah, yes; but the "modern phraseology" — that tells the tale! Is it then that "the rapture" betrays the tainted source beyond a doubt? What a blinding preoccupation must have possessed the mind which drew such an inference! It is true that in the Dictionary of Dr. S. Johnson, and even in that of the much lauded Richardson, "rapture" is wholly absent in the sense before us. Webster, and Worcester also ignore it. It is an inexcusable blank. For it is not a modern "phraseology", but employed as in this case two or three centuries ago by well known authors of choice expression.

An early use of the word "rapture" for actual removal out of the present scene by power is by Shakespeare (Pericles, Act II, sc. 1, near the end). This however applies, not to the Lord for heaven, but to the sea, "the rapture of the sea." As there is no other expression for the idea in our tongue, we cannot afford to lose it. But in fact it did not become obsolete. On the contrary it is employed, and in its scriptural application to divine power catching up to heaven, by men of celebrity for their language. John Milton, who, whatever the splendour of his style in prose and verse, is not one to be relied on for soundness in the faith, or decent respect for prelates however pious, did believe that "Thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world," and of course to reward so sober, wise, and religious a commonwealth as that of England! But no reference of his to heavenly hope do I know; and hence he had no need of such a word. But in the same literal sense he does use its kindred "rapt" in Paradise Lost, III, 522, "Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds," and in Paradise Regained, II, 39, 40, "For whither is he gone, what accident hath rapt him from us?" Nor is he by any means the only old English poet who so wrote.

But let us pass to the graver roll of divines, which any can verify without trouble. Bishop Joseph Hall in the most popular of his writings, "The Contemplations," so entitles Elijah's translation to heaven, ''The Rapture of Elijah" (Hall's Works, II, p. 80, Oxford, 1837). A second is Dr. Thos. Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, born after Bishop Hall but deceased before him; in whose second folio (p.1068) we read of the "taking up" of Enoch and Elijah, yet in the Table of the third it is their "rapture" (ed. 1673). A third and later witness is the still more celebrated Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who in vol. VI. 548 of his Whole Works, a new ed. 1828, uses "rapture" twice over for Paul caught up or rapt up; and he has the credit of being considered one of the refiners of the English language.

From the Episcopalians of that early day I turn to Nonconformists, not so far back but by no means modern; Matthew Henry's Exposition of the O. and N. Test. VI* on the scripture before us, "At, or immediately before, this rapture into the clouds, those who are alive will undergo a mighty change," etc.

* Of course it is known that Henry only left MSS. for the latter half of the N.T., and that D. Mayo completed the Epistles to the Thessalonians. But this only confirms the fact that "rapture" was commonly known in that day. instead of being a modern phrase due to Irvingite vagary.

The last that we need is the respectable Dr. John Guyse, who wrote the Practical Expositor (i.e. of the N. T. in three quarto vols.). The Second ed. of 1761 now lies before me. In his paraphrase of 1 Thess. 4: 17, he says of the dead saints raised, "and we with them shall be carried up by a divine rapture," etc. These quotations are the more seasonable, as whether Anglicans or Dissenters they were little conversant with the blessed hope. Nor was anyone more uninstructed than Dr. G. For in the Lord's call he hears only "an awful summons," and he confounds the glorified saints when caught up with the sheep or blessed of all the nations (Matt. 25: 34). Like all the theologians and their Oxford critic, Prof. Jowett, he, with even more evident blundering, makes the apostle entreat them by "the awful coming" of the Lord to the final judgment at the last day, and by their hope of being then gathered with us to meet the Lord in the air. That is, he makes Paul treat of the same subject in his true comfort and in the falsehood he refuted! Yet even Dr. G. did not go so far as a highly respected Bp. of Carlisle (an Oxford double first), who translated ἐνέστηκεν will immediately come. Dr. G. was more grammatical; but all err who deny it to mean that the day of the Lord "is present."

It is no question of omniscience in man, but of the inspired truth God was pleased to give. The confusion, not merely among Christians little conversant with prophetic scripture, but in those who fully look for the Lord to return in His kingdom and fulfil the predicted times of refreshing for the earth, is deplorable. Take, as an instance out of multitudes, the words of the late Dean Alford in his Prolegomena on 1 Thessalonians, Sect. II. 6, 4th ed. p. 46. "Their attention had been so much drawn to one subject — his preaching had been so full of one great matter, and from the necessity of the case, so scanty on many others which he desired to lay forth to them, that he already feared lest their Christian faith should be a distorted and unhealthy faith. And in some measure, Timotheus had found it so. They were beginning to be restless in expectation of the day of the Lord (1 Thess. 4: 11 ff.), — neglectful of that pure, and sober, and temperate walk, which is alone the fit preparation for that day (1 Thess. 4: 3 ff.; 1 Thess. 5: 1-9), — distressed about the state of the dead in Christ, who they supposed had lost the precious opportunity of standing before Him at His coming (1 Thess. 4: 13 ff.)."

Here the mistake corrected in the First Epistle is mixed up with the error which the Second dispels. They are quite distinct. The first was not restlessness in expecting the day of the Lord, but was unintelligent sorrow over departed brethren, because they were supposed by death to lose their place in the train of His glory. This gave occasion to the fresh revelation in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's causing the dead in Christ to rise first, while it is also shown that both dead and living saints are to be caught up together into the air to meet the Lord; and thus shall we ever be with the Lord. After the removal of their needless grief, disturbing alarm befell the saints by the unfounded rumour that the day of the Lord was actually there, in all probability confounded with their sore trials and persecution from their worldly countrymen and the unbelieving Jews, embittered by envy against the gospel and all who had received it. This the apostle clears away by setting before them the true nature of that day, which will display their enemies as the objects of retributive punishment, and Himself glorified in His saints and marvelled at in all that believed. He next beseeches them, by their bright hope of His presence and their gathering together to Him, not to be shaken quickly from their mind, nor yet troubled by this false report; and then he proceeds to prove that there must be the apostasy first, and the man of sin revealed, not before the Lord comes to receive His own, but before they come with Him from heaven to accomplish that tremendous day (2 Thess. 2).

Again, what misconception of the hope as a whole can be more profound than to represent that the later epistles gradually modify the earlier "expectation of His almost immediate coming" (Sect. iv. 8, p. 49)? "9. And in this, the earliest of those Epistles, I do find exactly that which I might expect on this head. While every word and every detail respecting the Lord's coming is a perpetual inheritance for the Church, — while we continue to comfort one another with the glorious and heart-stirring sentences which he utters to us in the word of the Lord, — no candid eye can help seeing in the Epistle, how the uncertainty of 'the day and hour' has tinged all these passages with a hue of near anticipation: how natural it was, that the Thessalonians receiving this Epistle, should have allowed that anticipation to be brought even yet closer, and have imagined the day to be actually already present. 10. It will be seen by the above remarks how very far I am from conceding their point to those who hold that the belief, of which this Epistle is the strongest expression, was an idle fancy, or does not befit the present age, as well as it did that one. It is God's purpose respecting us, that we should ever be left in this uncertainty, looking for and hasting unto the day of the Lord, which may be upon us at any time before we are aware of it." etc.

Thus then the rapture of the saints is not a mere catching up into the air in a moment, to come down again with the Lord the next, which seems to be the strange, hasty, and narrow conclusion of some men; but even Matt. 13 might correct them. For the saints are transferred from earth to heaven to be for ever with the Lord, as the wheat from the field into the barn. No doubt it is the harvest season, and after the darnel are collected by the reaping angels into bundles for the purpose of burning them. It is Christ's presence who calls and assembles the saints to Himself above. The consummation of the age is not a point of time, but a period which consists of successive events highly important, distinct, and even contrasted; for after the rapture beyond controversy the darnel are consigned to the furnace and burnt; and then do the righteous shine out, not on the earth, but as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, the heavenly region of the kingdom of God. Antichrist is not destroyed till then, whereas before it the marriage of the Lamb is celebrated above. Other scriptures of more formal and comprehensive prophecy, as the Revelation, enable us to see the interval, and to learn the momentous aims which it subserves for the divine ways of both judgment and mercy, almost quite lost in the superficial and confused view referred to.

Ps. 110, so often and boldly urged for Christ's rising from the Father's throne at once to take His own in the new age, leaves room for these great events which lay outside of Israel's hopes, and are here passed by in silence. The notion (Five Letters p. 58) that for a time the "saints in their risen bodies will be in the midst of those who remain unchanged: a terrible sight bursting suddenly as in a moment upon the slumbering world: — the Lord over them in the air in His glory, and raised saints near and around them"! is a dream worthy of the Shepherd of the Pseudo-Hermas, and beneath even the Pseudo-Barnabas.

Not less suicidal is the notion that after Christ has received the wheat and executed final sentence on the darnel in Christendom, the lawless one "was still existent," and "undismayed by all he had witnessed," instead of being annulled by the appearing of the Lord's presence (Thoughts on the Apocalypse, 1st ed. 298). But what destroys the entire scheme is the admission (in the page before, 297) that the saints "are recognised in the commencement of this chapter [Rev. 19] as being above with the Lord in the glory." This is indeed quite true; but how does it consist with the systematic effort to jumble all up in a single act at the moment of His presence? It is not for me to defend his spurious idea in the same pages, "that the moment when the Lord terminates the history of Christendom, and takes His saints to meet Him in the air is the moment when He also gives His final blow to Babylon." To Babylon! Why, this is another absurd contradiction of his and almost every one else's fundamental principle, that the vials like the preceding series of judgments are God's activity, before Christ comes judicially; and great Babylon came in remembrance before God to give her His cup of wrath in the most extreme form before the Lord with all His saints left heaven to deal with the Beast and the False Prophet, etc.

Now this is the staunch champion of the school implacably hostile to allowing any but one act of coming. For on Rev. 19: 11-14 he concedes (in Thoughts, 299) that the saints have joined Him, and fall into the train of His glory. Yet he knew, as do his followers, that the Lord must have come into the air to receive them, before they could thus follow Him out of heaven to execute judgment on the most blasphemous and daring of all his enemies.

"Magna est veritas et praevalebit." Who before could anticipate such an acknowledgement from B. W. N.? For he thus acknowledged the principle, without having learnt that the only true time for the rapture is at the close of Rev. 3 and before the scenes of Rev. 4, 5. But even he was compelled by the force of scripture to confess that Rev. 19: 14, to say nothing of the preceding vision of the heavenly bridals, compels the admission of Christ's having come for His saints before He appears, and they with Him, manifested together in glory. Granted the great truth of His coming for the saints in sovereign grace before they follow Him from heaven for His overwhelming judgments on the earth, the interval is quite secondary; but this too can only be learnt satisfactorily from scripture. Surely acrimony might be well spared in searching into such a detail, though of no small interest and importance.

The criticism then, in order to deny the "rapture," evinces not only a captious spirit but real ignorance. "Rapture" in the usage required is a word familiar to English Christians from earlier days, and gives no ground of offence save to an evil eye.

Need it to be pointed out that "the modern doctrine," if of any weight, assumes that the rapture of the saints by Christ to the Father's house is not the doctrine of God? But this is the question for revelation to decide. We on the contrary here join issue, being assured that no other conviction truly answers to the inspired testimony, only let scripture be fully taken into account, and adequate room left for what it speaks about Jews and Greeks, and the church of God, as the apostle says. The failure to distinguish Christ's coming, or Presence for the Christian (for the phrase bears a generic sense), from that later aspect of it which is specified as "the day," throws even careful minds into confusion, and creates sure collision with scripture. Where for instance is the force of the apostle's appeal in 2 Thess. 2: 1, 2, when they are mixed up? Distinguish them, and chaos is reduced to divine order, and the argument is seen in all its cogency without strain or effort.

Take this illustration from a still more solemn subject, though not strict but sufficient to help, if the enemy were seeking to destroy faith's confidence by the terror of the great white throne. We beseech you, brethren, for the sake of (or by) the known grace of Christ and the life eternal and the everlasting redemption we have in Him, that ye be not soon shaken in (or from) your mind, nor troubled, either by spirit, or word, or letter as by us, as that the eternal judgment will bring perdition on you. That awful doom is to be at the close, long after you have been caught up to heaven; and it will fall on the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and fornicators and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars. Their part will not be in a new heaven and a new earth, but in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; this is the second death.

Rationalism.

1 Cor. 2: 6-16.

W. Kelly.

It is not my business at this or any time to weaken the place of reason as given of God to man. It is an instrument fine, active, admirable, in its own sphere. Rationalism is the abuse of reason, by no means necessarily its result. Rationalism is reason intruding into the sphere of God and His revelation, so as in effect, if not openly, to deny both. It is this that I shall seek to combat, and this above all, not so much by exposing, as might be easily done, the folly of its course, and the danger of its issues, but as much as possible by the presentation of the truth. Now Rationalism does not pretend to the truth; on the contrary its constant aim is to render the acquisition of truth an uncertain thing. It would thus plunge man back again into that very darkness from which the revelation of God was given to bring him out.

The apostle, in the passage just now read, touches on the root of this snare for the spirit of man; and the same principle, it is needless to say, is found almost everywhere in Scripture. The very fact of there being a Bible is of itself the witness against man's self-assertion, for the Bible throughout assumes that it is the word of God, — not merely that there is an element of God in its pages, which reason has to discover and separate from the human elements that surround it. It is not so that God teaches or intimates or allows in any part of His word.

Happily too we stand at such an epoch in the revelation of God to man that we can bring in what all but an open infidel must acknowledge to be a most decisive authority. I am not now alluding to the assumptions of men, whoever they may be. I allude to the holiest and humblest of those born of woman, —  to One who was man as truly as ever there was one, but to One who counted it not robbery to be equal with God. The authority of the Lord Jesus Christ ought at least to be definitive; and He, the Lord, has spoken not once only, for whenever He employs the word of God at all He makes it the ultimate authority from which there is no appeal. He guards it so fully as to exclude the notion that there might be that in the word of God which betrayed the infirmity of the earthen vessels His grace employed. Though man wrote, it is never styled the word of man, but God's word: yet He used human instruments; but these, the instruments, were so inspired of God as to display and to preserve their own distinctive features, whilst they perfectly furnished God's truth and only this. Such was in part the wisdom of God in inspiration. It did not set aside man, but it brought in God, and this with invariable perfectness: to bring Him in partially would have been to introduce the old element of difficulty and uncertainty.

That such is the fact cannot be denied by any soul that receives the words of the Lord Jesus as they are given by His disciples; and it is quite certain that He always speaks as one who gives us the words of God, and that He promised His followers the power of the Holy Ghost in order that they should communicate the word of God, one of these chief followers, no doubt ignorant of Jesus in the days of His flesh, nevertheless as to labours not only in word but in deed not a whit behind the chiefest, being the great apostle Paul. (John 3: 34, John 7: 16, John 14: 26; 1 Cor. 2: 13; 2 Tim. 3; 2 Peter 3: 15, 16.)

Let us for a moment consider the gravity of this fact. I cannot allow you to take the ground of owning how good, how lowly, how perfect was Jesus, and then to cavil at His words. I know that Rationalism does so. May I be permitted to say that it exposes its folly in so doing? There is nothing more offensive than to talk in a patronizing way of the Lord Jesus, — to own the unsullied integrity of the Saviour, and at the same time to deny the inevitable conclusion which follows from His words and from His ways. I am aware that it is the fashion of some to insinuate that the Lord Jesus was not above the prejudices of His day — that He shared in the notions of the Jews. Can those who say so believe that He was and is God? Has God prejudices? Does He not move above the thoughts of the day of man on the earth? Now the Lord Jesus has committed Himself throughout the whole course of His ministry to the most simple, distinct, reiterated utterances on a subject which yields to no other in vital moment, — which concerns you, — which concerns each child of man, — which does not concern the believer only but the unbeliever, — for which every soul must give account to God. Impossible therefore to find anything that touches one more practically, more immediately, or more solemnly.

All through we have the Lord Jesus, first in a general way, next also in the smallest detail, in joy, in sorrow, in what concerned others, in what concerned Himself, in life, in death itself, at all times and under all circumstances, showing us His estimate — God's estimate —  of the Scripture, the written word of God. And this came out in a remarkable way, and at a time when even those who freely handle Scripture, and in anything but a becoming spirit, must acknowledge it to be decisive; for there are those who would insinuate that our Lord Jesus "in the days of His flesh" was not above the possibility of being affected by the passing opinions of the age.

But will they say so of Him risen from the dead? Is it come to this, that resurrection itself does not deliver — nay, not even Jesus — from that which belongs to a world where sense and the workings of mind, and tradition may no doubt cast their chequering influences on man's mind and expression? I again ask, Is it so in the resurrection state for any? Assuredly we have the Lord risen from the dead; we have His words; we have one of the sweetest and most deeply interesting scenes of converse between the Lord and those who loved Him, when tried immensely by His death. Why? They understood not the Scriptures. And the Lord meets them where they were. What is the weapon that He uses? He, if any one, might surely have spoken out of His own unfathomable depths of mind, — might have opened those rich and mighty streams of divine truth that could and would have burst from His heart to roll away the difficulties of those that clung to Him, cast down by the very cross wherein He was accomplishing their redemption. But no, our Lord takes up the Scriptures — the plain written word of God.

He begins with Moses; He quotes the Psalms; He points to the prophets — the well known threefold division of the Old Testament. I refer to this, because it proves in the most decisive way that the difficulties of speculation, on which so many have stranded are in fact their prejudices — that they are the passing clouds of this day, not the truth of God. It is false, yea blasphemous, that the Lord, the eternal Creator, yielded to the prejudices of His day, but true that the men who thus object are carried away by the irreverent thoughts of their day. He does indeed stamp with His own divine authority the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. He gives it to us just as it was then known among the Jews.

Undoubtedly too the Jews had passed through deep trials and great changes at that time. Then, if ever, the Old Testament Scriptures must have suffered somewhat from transmission. Impossible, save by the most immediate care of God, that the transcription of the Hebrew Scriptures should have quite escaped damage during such a fearful crisis as Israel had experienced. Up to this date, you must remember, they had been as a whole translated into but one language besides the original Hebrew. For although obviously the diffusion of God's word into a number of different tongues may act in each to admit of the mixture of man's infirmity in the translation, nevertheless the comparison of these different tongues tells just in a contrary way. The result is that, where these various versions made at different times by so many distinct parties agree, his must be a singularly constituted mind which can get rid of the force derived from such united testimony. Now, at this very time, when our Lord employed Moses and the Psalms and the prophets as witnesses, there was not nor could be that wide-spread testimony which is derived from the Scriptures being diffused all over the world; it was after much had occurred calculated to ruffle the surface of the word of God, but before there was the counteracting power of one translation checking another in detail, yet in the mass conspiring to guard the revealed truth of God.

Neither is this subject to be considered simply in a broad point of view, but in practical application. For example, take our Lord in either His ordinary ways or the most extraordinary passages of His life. It is always the same weapon He uses. Regarded with Satan, in the scene of the temptation in the wilderness, the word of God is the one means of repelling him; and even Satan did not venture at that day on the expedient of the present — the insinuation that the divine authority of the Scripture is compromised by errors in copying, by the difficulties of preserving it intact, or the like. There was a plain issue between the enemy and the Saviour; but all depended on obedience, on meeting him by constant faith in the word of God. Then again, in the course of His ministry as of His daily walk, the continual reference is to the Scripture as the arbiter of every doubt or controversy that could be raised — the true, the divine, and the only solution of every enigma in this dark world.

I have referred to these applications of a practical kind, in the first instance, but we may take the general principle into consideration for a few moments, in order to show how admirably revelation meets the wants of man and the glory of God.

God did not make man in the condition in which he is now; He did not throw the world into its moral confusion, not to speak of its physical misery. He that can conceive a divine being to have made man as he is, and the world as it is, must have the notion of a demon, an Ahriman, instead of the true God. That infinite power should create man to be the victim of such sorrow, to have his heart distracted with varied, intense, and ceaseless misery — to have, according to the word of God itself, evil inbred in his very nature (a doctrine enforced by the facts of every day), he that could conceive God to have so made man in such a world has the least worthy notion of God that even Rationalism could conceive. The word of God alone supplies the key, and explains this otherwise inscrutable riddle. According to that word He made man upright; the world and every creature in it He formed good; but man departed from God, and lost Him morally. No wonder, if foundations are out of course — God left and man fallen through self-exalting rebellion, that there should be misery; for the only possible spring of happiness is in the communion of God with His creatures. Sin necessarily destroys it; and man having lost Him becomes a prey to all the evil that the enemy of God can bring into the world, more deeply and if possible irreparably, to sever man from God. This is the account of the Scriptures, and there is none other that can compete with it or explain all, so as either to justify God or to clear up the state of man. To make God Himself the author of man's moral evil is heinous wickedness, and man's conscience knows it, even when he might wish it to excuse himself. Here then at the outset the immense and singular value of God's word comes in; and upon this too a remark of general import may be seasonable.

I say "God's word," — not at first "Scripture," but God's word; for His word was spoken before it was written. Then as ever the word of God became the sole link with God of man departed from Him. Sin had broken the relationship between the Creator and the creature. The word of God meets man even so through the revelation of another; for man had no sooner fallen into sin than God appeared upon the scene, and pledged, not Himself as such, but in the most tender way the Seed of the woman as the conqueror of him that had brought in the evil — the bruiser of the serpent's head. That word of God became the resource, if not yet the resting-place, of faith. It might have other words added in due time; but that first pledge of grace was enough for faith to receive, and find in it the spring of a new nature by looking to the Seed of the woman — the Lord Jesus Christ. The word of God is revealed before there can and in order that there may be a blessing for man — a blessing for man fallen from God.

At that time the circumstances wherewith to prove divine wisdom and goodness were unlike what we know as our own. The length of man's life on the earth was enormous. It did not reach, it is true, that space to which man is yet destined even on earth. Man will never arrive at his proper and full measure here below, till the Second Man comes to take the world under His government. Complete blessing for man in the world is reserved for the woman's Seed — for Jesus. Still, the life of man was only short of the due period of its ultimate display (though even then dissolution may not be). It never reached a thousand years, — all but a thousand years, we may say in general terms, but never so much. This will be the common term for man ere long; but it is reserved not for his witty inventions — for no panacea that he will discover; it will be the honour of God for Jesus, and for Him even with man here below. At that day we can well understand therefore how fitly the word of God was not yet committed to writing; but in due time, when man's age was shortened, and it was no longer individuals with whom God had suited dealings in grace, but when a people was called out, we see the perfect wisdom of God in then committing His word to writing.

This as a whole was called the law, contained in its great foundation in the Old Testament, — of course generally, but more particularly in the five books of Moses — not without a most remarkable companion, the book of Job, the witness of what God is to a man, to one outside, and not merely to a Jew. And, wonderful to say, the Jew, ignorant of this priceless and peculiar treasure, is nevertheless the very channel to which we are indebted for its transmission to us. He does not see that his narrowness is rebuked by it; he does not perceive how God's mercy to the stranger is assumed and indeed asserted in it; he does not conclude that He who was the God of Israel is the God who had compassion for man in his need and wretchedness, the sport of Satan's power, but always under the mighty hand of God, who accomplishes His own sifting and gracious purpose — a purpose decided on before Satan tempts — a purpose which Satan only consummates in attempting to hinder, corrupt, and destroy.

Moses is followed by a multitude of other testimonies in due time. It is of this collection of writings called the Scripture that our Lord speaks, and it was from this that He borrowed from time to time as occasion called for it. But, when or for whatsoever end cited, even He constantly used it as decisive authority. Thus we have the principle laid down in the question with the Jew which the fifth chapter of John's gospel presents to us. There Christ justifies the judgment which is coming by the weight and variety of the evidence addressed to their conscience. There was first the Baptist whom the Jews acknowledged for a prophet. There was next a greater witness in the works that Jesus did — His miracles — never before approached in magnitude or in character; for the works of Jesus had a speciality in their import, and not merely in their grandeur. Then again the Father Himself bore witness of Jesus up to that time. But the Lord reserves for the last place, and therefore the greatest of all morally — what? His words? Nay, but the writings — of whom? Of the very man who, if this century is to be listened to, has written none of these books called by his name — at most but scanty legends made up many centuries after into that which is styled the law of Moses. Not such is the language of the Lord of glory. HE has commended, used, and reasoned on the books of Moses as in point of authority possessed of a character superior to any words that could be spoken. This is a point of capital importance. He censures the Jews for slighting rather than believing Moses, and decides that, if they did not believe the writings of Moses, it was in vain to expect their believing His words. This does not at all imply that the writings of Moses in themselves were more simply, or thoroughly, or characteristically divine than the words of Jesus: God forbid such a thought! But it is Jesus Himself who sets the writings of Moses, as a medium of authority, in a place which no spoken words could have. Who can deny that this is the doctrine of John 5? Can any man bring any other conclusion in fairness from it ?

The words are plain: and here is another point to which I may address myself for a moment. Men talk about the "obscurity" of Scripture. It is not for me to doubt that Scripture must be profound; it cannot be that that which is the revelation of God should not be incomparably above man. But is it therefore obscure? Certainly not in the sense of that vague and dark uncertainty from which men suffer who are conscious of their own weakness. I can understand a person with a dense cloud of words, just because he has little matter. I can understand one that, perhaps without even intending it, thus involves himself, just because his thought is anything but clear; but the reverse is true as to Scripture. Not only did God see all things as they really are, but He would convey the truth (for this was the object of revelation) in the manner most suited to man, and nevertheless by the instruments whom it best suited His glory to use at one time, whether in the Old Testament or in the New. This He has done. He has not in any way shut out the style, the manner, the heart, the character of each man inspired to write. All these things are impressed upon the Scriptures. Particular authors have their own way and tone. This is one of the great beauties of revelation — the vast variety of those that were employed. But then the main distinguishing feature which Rationalism denies is, that it is the word of God — the chosen, the appropriate, the specific name of Scripture.

On the other hand I grant you that there are those who would apply the term "Word of God" exclusively to Jesus. It is true that Jesus is the Word of God. Thus the link between Jesus and the Scripture is immensely close and characteristic. I make this remark because, as is so often found, these oppositions will be proved to have a link which reconciles them. It is true on its own warrant that Scripture is called the word of God; it is true that Jesus is called the Word of God; but it is true that Scripture is the word of God emphatically, because God has continually before Him Jesus as the object of that written word. He is the personal Word of God from all eternity; Scripture is the written word of God in time, but then having its link of connection in this — that the thread, so to speak, which unites all Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is the reference of the Holy Ghost directly or indirectly to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Now why is this? For a reason of the deepest import; and, as being of a general character, we may glance at it for a moment. Jesus is THE TRUTH. The truth is to be found nowhere else. You may find other things, but the truth is in Him, and severed from Him it is nowhere else. It is remarkable that Scripture never calls the Father the truth, nor ever uses an expression of which Rationalism is exceedingly fond — that God is the truth. I grant that not a few divines say so too. They are not aware that they are rationalizing when they thus speak. No doubt they mean nothing wrong; but very surely they are wrong. Scripture is right, and nothing but Scripture is divinely authoritative. How comes it then that Scripture calls Jesus the truth ? and why is it that neither God nor the Father is ever said to be the truth? The reason is this: God could not be said to be the truth because "the truth" means the expression of what a person or thing, is — the revelation of what it really is. The statement which reveals another fully and truly is the truth. Consequently God, being the self-subsisting One who alone can say I AM, has been pleased to reveal Himself, not in the written word only, but in and by One who is God and became man, and thus alone could be the expression of Himself to man. The truth means the expression of what God is, not merely the being of God. Hence the blessedness of revelation by the personal Word, the Son who when none saw God at any time declared Him the Father. Christ is called therefore in Scripture "the image of the invisible God."

Do you know why it is that rationalists lean to and employ the expression that God is the truth, while they shrink back from the declaration of Scripture that Christ is the truth? Because they assume the ability to know God directly and immediately themselves, — because they instinctively if not formally exclude a mediator. The system maintains that man is competent to search out God without another, without a revelation, without a personal expression of Him. Such is its fatal vice. It may not be carried out to the same extent in all: piety, reverence, tradition may arrest its full conclusions. But if Rationalism be regarded in its principle, and consistently carried out to its last logical results, there is the absolute exclusion of the truth as revealed in the person of Christ. It is the assertion either of man's ability to know God without any means except his own mind, or it sinks into sheer despair. Thus when carried out it always tends either towards the Pantheistic idea of man being a part of God, or to the atheism that denies the God he cannot thus know. Such is the philosophy of the day in various forms.

But the truth cuts up the principle by the roots. Christ is the only One who objectively presents the truth — that truth which was revealed in the words of Scripture; for here was just the difficulty. The creature, as such, cannot of himself know God. It is impossible for one that has merely a relative being to know the absolute. There is necessarily an infinite distance between God the Creator as such and the creature as such; still more, when the opposition of sin enters the account, and makes it not merely a difference in nature, but a moral gulf which separates. And how then is this immeasurable gap between God and the creature, severed withal by sin, to be met? How is the vast distance to be filled up? By One who can come down from God to man, — by One who, deigning to humble Himself in love, does not merely bring Godhead into contact with humanity, but comes down to be a man in the midst of men. In this is seen what orthodoxy most justly insists on (and it cannot be too much insisted on), — the grand fundamental truth which lies at the bottom of all truth from God and of all hope for man, — that the same blessed person is as truly God as man, as truly man as God. For on one side we have One who is in Himself absolute (He is God); on the other side none the less does He come down into relationship with man (He is man), — One who, if He were not man, could not make God known to man, but One who, if He had only remained God, could not have bridged the space between God and man. But becoming man without ceasing to be God, and uniting God and man in the same person, He is just the one to give us the truth as it could not be otherwise known. The Father remains in His own unapproachable Godhead; He does not become relative. It is the Son, the man Christ Jesus, who becomes the Mediator between God and man.

But then this is not the only want of man; because the heart of man still rebels, and no matter what the love, the goodness, and the truth which God reveals in Christ, no matter what the need, the misery, the sense of guilt in man; neither the grace that is on the one side, nor the abject evil and wretchedness on the other, of themselves can bring men to God; — in truth, if this were all, they fail to overcome the resistance that the carnal mind makes to God. And how then is this difficulty vanquished? By another great fact in the divine nature, clearly set forth in the word of God. Not only is there One who is the truth objectively, even Jesus, but there is One who has the power of bringing the truth in grace into the heart of man, in virtue of God's counsels, and of Christ's redemption, communicating a wholly new nature. Who, what, is He? The Spirit. Hence it is said in 1 John 5: 6, that the Spirit is the truth. It is said of the Holy Ghost no less than of the Son — of the Son because He brings the truth in His own person; of the Spirit because He makes that truth my own. The Spirit is the immediate link by bringing the written word and mixing it with faith in those who hear it. Such is the way in which God settles the matter, and there is nothing that shows divine wisdom and grace in a manner more blessedly distinct. Let me ask too, who can complain of lack of clearness even when we listen to the most abstract truth? It would be hard to find any communications made with greater simplicity throughout the compass of the revealed word of God. Yet here we are touching on the highest truth — the very nature of God Himself; here we are touching on the deepest wants of man: nevertheless what can be plainer?

It is well to state another fact. The reason why the word of God is not understood by man is not from any obscurity in the word, but from the will — the alienated condition of man's own nature as departed from God. The truth is that the word of God is too plain for him. There is the real fault, if man only realized what the true difficulty is, — and you will find it true continually. I grant you this: there are cases where an honest doubt exhibits more working of conscience than a mere traditional faith. A man who merely accepts things generally received because they are so believes man, not God, and under pressure will give all up. He got what he calls his faith easily, and the day hastens when he will part with it easily: it has never sunk down — never been planted of God in his soul. When you are in earnest about a thing, you do not so readily believe what is said. If you don't care the least about it, you may believe anything, and you may deny anything. Easy going and otiose faith is mere indifference.

A person tells you a story: well, you feel no particular interest in it, and you answer, "I suppose so;" you are not in a position to confront the informant with a counterproof, even if it seem suspicious. You let it pass. It may be so. What does this prove? Simply that your heart is not concerned in the matter. But a person tells you that a large fortune was left you a month ago in France, and at once you turn round. Why so? Because you are interested in the thing. You say, No, you cannot believe it is so; you have no relatives there; and you demand full proof. In this you are interested, though the effect of the interest is that you seem obliged to doubt the tale. You would like it to be true, but still you have serious difficulties. It is just so when persons are interested in the testimony of the word of God. Indeed it is so when the Spirit of God has so far met the heart's indisposition to receive the blessing of God that it really desires what scripture says to be true. Then men enquire, believe with the heart, and are saved.

But the real ground why man fights against the word of God is because it slights and judges man as he is, laying bare all his faults. There is nothing that man likes so little as his own exposure; there is nothing he will fight more keenly for than to show he is not in the wrong. I grant you that when a man is abandoned to all that is evil, — when utterly unjust, he knows not even shame, and may allow anything to be said without feeling about it; but I am now supposing men in their ordinary state, when the last thing a man will honestly allow is that he is quite wrong.

As a whole Scripture necessarily directs itself to this, — yea, the word of God before it was written, — for there never was a word of God bearing on man's estate, since the fall, without that effect. There was a word given of old meant to be the rule of conduct in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they might eat anything else; but this was forbidden. They eat, and fell; but there never was any word revealed to be the resting-place of faith except what prostrates the first man and exalts the Second, thus laying bare man as he is fallen from God, but bringing in the Second Man, the Lord Jesus, as the only deliverer.

This then is the great difficulty for man in Scripture. Every part of it tends to a moral end. It is not merely a book that contains truth, but it has this moral character, dealing with the nature of man, and letting in the will of God. All Scripture speaks thus. There is not a single portion of Scripture which has not moral elements in it. If God were only giving a genealogy, He does not separate the truth even from what looks to be a list of dry names. Take, for instance, the first chapter of Matthew. You know, I dare say, that rationalists will have it that Matthew could not even count fourteen right; and as for Scripture facts, according to their sage conclusion, the apostolic writer did not know as much as a Sunday scholar. So much for the discernment and wisdom of men. Do you think they believe it? Perhaps so; I will not dispute that matter; but at any rate, whether they are satisfied with their own statements or not, I must affirm that this chapter — and I am speaking now of its list of names, which is the driest part of it, as men would say — bears the stamp of God upon it as truly, though not so evidently, as John 17. It is clothed with a deep divine purpose in every particular. Who but God would have thought if it were only of his beginning with David and Abraham, and bringing these two capital points together from the very first? Why not trace up to Adam, like Luke? No; David and Abraham alone were right in Matthew. If Luke had either begun with Abraham and David or ended with them, there would have been no such perfection in the Spirit's design by him as there is now.

For what am I using these facts? To show that all Scripture is instinct with a purpose of the deepest wisdom, and moral power, and divine grace. Whose purpose was it? Am I contending that Matthew knew all this? Perhaps he did not. It is nothing at all to our present question whether he did or did not. The great thing for you and for me is this, that it was God's purpose, — that it was a wisdom above Matthew's; and yet it is such that, though extant from the first in the word of God, how many of us have passed it over, how few have even noticed it! Why? Because we so little enter into His hidden wisdom. But there it is; and it is just the fact as to Scripture, that not the most enlightened teacher or glowing preacher who ever spoke put a single beauty into it; he only helps you to see the beauty that is there. This serves to show by the way that true ministry is in no way weakened by the assertion of the divine authority of Scripture. Neither again is the authority of the church weakened by it.

On the contrary, it is Scripture which gives the church authority; as it is Scripture which furnishes the great store of materials for ministry. At the same time here is the essential difference: ministry is not an ultimate authority in itself. In fact it is not properly authority: the idea of ministry is serving, even if it were the exercise of the gift of rule. For I grant that there are among those that minister such as rule. My advice to those that rule, if I may be allowed to offer any, is to do that work with firmness, however lowlily, as much as anything else. Rule is no less divine a gift for ministry than preaching and teaching. It is well, no doubt, to take care that they are rulers of the Lord's giving before they enter on that grave task. But, however -this may be, what I want to show is, that Scripture, so far from interfering with or weakening whatever is good and of God, not only furnishes the finest and most abundant material for the use of those who are serving the Lord, but has another use yet more distinctive — indeed unique. Scripture is not merely a source of truth, an infinitely richer source than all other mines of spiritual lore in the world put together, but it gives you pure truth without error on every subject of which it treats. Not that it talks the science of the nineteenth century: and there is just the wisdom of God. Neither does it talk the science of the first century, or of any other. It stands alone with a wholly different origin, nature, character, and aim. Confessedly the language of science has often changed; it has often had to mend, just because it is imperfect, as it is human. But there is the word of God, which, while it condescends to the humblest, never changes for the highest. It is the expression of the unchangeable One; it is the permanent communication of truth, and for all souls, places, and times. There is nothing similar nor even second to it.

But I wish also to show that, while the church, as already referred to, is not and could not be the truth, any more than ministry, Scripture is the truth, as being not only its best source, but its only standard. Such is the blessedness of the Scripture God has given. It is the standard by which we can test every statement that is made by man. There, above all, it writes its own divine character. The written word is the truth even as Christ is. If Christ were not the truth, scripture would not be so in the same way in which it is. Christ personally — the written word as the standard of truth — is the test for everything that can be said or written now, in the hands of all that fear the Lord, whether it be those that minister or those that are ministered to. What an invaluable prize to have the perfect standard of truth, and not only a means of knowledge! This means we may have from one another. A man, woman, child, a tract even, it has been remarked, might be the medium of communicating the truth; but none of these is the standard: only the word of God is. Scripture has this character, and this because throughout Christ is its constant object, directly or indirectly, — Christ who is the truth.

Thus it does not matter what you are looking at, test it at once by Christ. Supposing, for instance, I want to know who and what God is, — how is it to be learned ? I might search out and weigh all the works that point to a divine mind and hand; but where is the man to gather thence a full, clear, adequate conception of what God is? I answer, look at Christ. What Christ said was the word of God; what Christ showed was the way of God; what Christ wrought was the work of God. I cannot know God Himself except so far as I behold Him in Christ. As the Lord Himself said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." It was not that the Son was in any personal sense the Father, but assuredly He was the only one competent to reveal the Father. No angel would suffice. An angel could only show me a creature. A divine person, the Son, the image of the invisible God, — He lets me know what God is.

Again, supposing I make a totally different inquiry — one which might seem so opposed as to be incompatible with the display of what God is in the same person of Christ — I want to get a true conception of man: where am I to look for it? At you, or myself, or any other? No; I grant you that we are men. But oh! it were sorrowful to think that there was no brighter ideal of humanity, sorrowful to think there had never been any exemplar better than ourselves. But there was, there is. Where? Adam? No; he was man, the first man, it is true; but what I see in Adam is a man that fell, a man that gave up God for an apple. Ah! it is a poor picture of man. I see God acting there for the trial of man's responsibility; but there is nothing that gives me the true elevation of man in Adam. Let me look at Christ. Ah! there is man. There I find that which my heart loves; there is that which gives me the true nobility and perfection of man; there I can rest.

We might go through all other objects; for it does not matter what is chosen. Thus, suppose I want to know the wickedness of man — surely we cannot find this in Christ! No; but I must bring in Christ none the less to find its full manifestation in others. Looking at man at any time, no doubt we find evil in abundance. I see man wicked when he fell in Paradise, and no less wicked when he killed his brother outside it; I see man in all corruption and violence till the Lord swept him away; I see man setting up demons and idols before the law, and I see him basely rebellious under the law; but where shall I find man as he is, where at his worst? Not till I see perfect goodness come into the world in the person of Christ. It is always Christ who is the test of every object. He is the truth. Never do we get the truth of anything until we compare it with Christ; and, on the other hand, if we honestly apply Christ, there we have the truth as it never can be found otherwise. All else is but piecemeal. A partial view of man is given at this time, and a partial view at that; but bring in Christ and then man appears as he really is. Christ goes not merely among poor men, but among , the rich; not only before the profane, but before religious people, — Pharisees, Sadducees, Pilate, Herod, or anybody. Thus every soul is put to the test, for Christ is the truth, and Christ only.

Just in the same way must I seek, supposing I want to gain a just idea of what heaven will be. What then is it? A place of gold and precious stones? Nothing of the sort. I know that these are employed as figures of the Bride or the glorified church in the Apocalypse; but it is to me certain that a man who has merely this as his conception of heaven is more a Mahometan than a Christian. All believers ought to know very well that such is not the meaning of the word of God; and God Himself, therefore, gives us divine landmarks that we may not be ignorant when He is using Scripture figuratively, and when He is using it symbolically. There is no such difficulty as unbelief affects to find. Men do the same thing in principle almost every day, as we meet with in the language of Scripture. Supposing you tell me that you "flew" down the street, we do not suppose that you borrowed wings, yet we know very well what you mean; you are only using a very intelligible and expressive figure. Supposing you tell me that another "crept" down the street, are we to suppose that he went on all fours? Thus, no matter what the figure that is used, there are landmarks by which one may learn whether the thing, is intended in its literal import, or whether it is a strikingly figurative method of stating what is meant. This makes no difficulty at all. It is only uncommonly stupid or uncommonly wilful people who are stumbled by such expressions. If the Bible be accepted as God's word, He must look for docility, not wilfulness, in those who profess to believe in Him; but He takes account of everybody — the poorest and the lowest; and there is nothing that delights one more in Scripture than the manner in which God has respect even to the child or the feeblest soul imaginable. And Christ is the One who brings it all out. Thus I know what heaven is, because it is the place where God is displaying His own excellence by crowning the man that was rejected from and by the world. It is the place where Christ is glorified, where He is accepted in love, light, and glory, where God Himself puts honour on His Son.

But further, as we learn from Christ what are the elements of heaven, by the very same application of Him, one may know why and how it is that the simplest soul who receives the gospel will be in the nearest circle round the Son of God in the heavens. And another thing is discovered which otherwise might perplex some — how it is that the amiable, the moral, the benevolent, might nevertheless be lost, instead of going to heaven. How many do not understand this!*

* I am certainly not disposed to defend the system laid down by Sir W. Hamilton and defended by the present Dean of St. Paul's, believing that they have laid themselves open to the not unsuccessful attacks even of men hostile to revealed truth. Yet who that fears God can but shudder at the language of the critic, bolder than man should be in talking of God as set forth in the very imperfect words of those he censures? "If (says Mr. J. S. Mill, in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, 2nd edition, pp. 102, 103) instead of the 'glad tidings,' that there exists a being in whom all the excellencies which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them: convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." Now it is plain that the principle on which Mr. M., like all other unbelievers, goes, is that of judging the word which will judge him at the last day, when the lost, no less than the saved, when those under the earth, as well as all on it and above it, shall bow every knee, and with every mouth confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Mr. H. must bow: may it not be in perdition!

Is not God just? Certainly. How then is it that God should cast into hell a conscientious, benevolent, and kindly person, amiable, refined, all that is delightful in human society? For this simple reason: the test of every soul is Christ; and if the most correct, the most elegant, the most intelligent in every other pursuit, were to turn all those qualities, and make them the reason, as is constantly done, for rejecting Jesus and refusing to be saved as poor sinners, I affirm it to be most righteous with God to condemn them. For they despise His grace.

I press this truth on every soul here: salvation flows from grace; salvation is for the lost; salvation is for those that want it. It is not help merely; salvation is far more than help. When God owned the Jews as His people, He gave them helps, ordinances, priesthood, every moral test, and ritual aid. What was the result? The crucifixion of His Son Jesus Christ. The use of every help in the hands of weak and guilty man ends in the rejection of the Lord of glory; and when man has done his very worst, God, if I may so say, does His very best; for blessed as it was to give Jesus, to send Him on an errand of love into the world, it was still more blessed to give Him to die for His enemies, and to turn that death which was their worst sin into the only door, not of hope only, but of salvation for the poorest of sinners. This is what He has done. This is the truth; and there if not purblind we may see the highest kind of justice too — God's justice now revealed in the gospel. For it is no longer a question of claiming righteousness from man, as the law did, but on God's part of revealing it; and this is the precise meaning of the expression that we have all read in Romans 1, 3, 10, to which I would briefly draw your attention, so that you may learn it from God himself in His own word for your soul, — "the righteousness of God."

This is a new kind of righteousness — God's justifying justice, through the redemption that is in Christ our Lord, because of His blood and death. It is the justice of God, who now justifies the unjust by faith of Jesus; it is for lost ones who believe in Jesus, by whom God can afford to reconcile to Himself His enemies. And how? By Jesus Christ. It is His righteousness by Christ's work. This is the truth. Therefore, plainly, it does not matter what you look at, whether salvation or perdition, whether the ground of the rejection of the most moral or the reception of the most depraved, all finds its explanation in this — that God measures everything by Christ. If He is refused, all is lost; if He is accepted, all is changed — old things pass away, all things become new.

How different is God's standard from that of the philosophers, who said that man was the measure of all things! They could not have uttered a greater lie; for I use plain words about a very serious thing, and refuse pleasant compliments where the deepest interests are at stake. I say that the grand standing maxim of the Greek philosophy was a falsehood. Not man but Christ is the measure of all things. He of whom we have been speaking — the Truth — alone truly measures all things. Accordingly this is just the reason why I press it so strongly this day. The word of God is the written form of it — the fully-expressed manner of giving it to us in Scripture. But do you not see one that runs through all the book — a person that we can and do love above all?* I can understand valuing, prizing, honouring a book; but we can love a person as even a book cannot be loved. Hence it is that you cannot have real faith in Jesus without love to His person, as He is Himself the full expression of God's love, found nowhere else in perfection. For although there are manifestations of divine bounty and goodness everywhere around us, there is always a sad falling short, and how often moral perplexity and contradiction even for the thoughtful, in this world! There is, no doubt, a beautiful exuberance of life in the spring; but as surely as possible there is the extinction of its leaves and fruits before the winter closes. And so if there be the bloom of man's life, there is more palpably the inroad of decrepitude and death at last. Everything in this world is thus tarnished and spoiled; the reason of which is simply that man is departed from God. But then another Man is gone up to God, and is glorified straightway — not in heaven alone, but in God Himself. And there is the true place to behold man now — in Christ's person. It is not only that we see the true man now, the perfect image of what man is in Christ; but we learn the God-given place of man in heaven at the right hand of God. And Christ is gone to prepare a place for us.

* See Appendix.

More than this; it is only by looking at Christ that I know the future according to God any: more than the present place of the Christian. The nations are wearying themselves in the very fire for vanity, trying this expedient and that to improve the world. I do not wonder that statesmen have weary heads; I do not wonder that there is constant change and disappointment; for in point of fact it is only man trying to patch up a thing that cannot be mended. But then here is what God will do. With Him is no patching up, but the bringing in what He calls a new creation. This is what God has in hand. He does not mean alone to bring glory to Himself by taking men up to heaven to be with Christ there, and reign with Him, but also to bless men under Christ's reign on earth. And how does one know this? By bringing Christ into the consideration of man here below. God has promised Christ the earth, and all things; for He did not merely reconcile those that believed, but all things. Consequently it is there we see the triumph of the truth as against all the rationalizing of men. Rationalism merely allows of man's experience whereby to judge all else. According to it man cannot work miracles, and therefore there were none! man cannot prophesy, and therefore there could not be prophecy! Everything in this school is founded on man's little circle of power, knowledge, and experience; but man is far from being the measure of everything, — is, in fact, the measure of nothing. Christ is the measure of all things. Christ is the truth, and that is what I have wished to press on you.

I desire not to protract this lecture beyond a reasonable length. I have tried to bring forward, as opposed to Rationalism, the great distinctive features of the truth in Christ. Men will say as to the word of God, that there is fine poetry in it, wonderful biography, admirable maxims of prudence such as are found nowhere else, and the most profound morality. All most true, but all in vain; for what is the good of grand poetry and true history and the soundest maxims of human life and the deepest insight into the heart, if after all one perishes, as assuredly they must who have not received the truth? Further, there are none who fall into such perdition as those who go out from the bosom of Christendom. It was bad enough for the Jews to reject Christ; but Christendom is guilty of a worse apostasy from far greater privileges and from the most certain truth. Depend upon it that Rationalism is one of the most powerful currents that is flowing on and carrying down in its stream all who trust it. The Lord deliver from that which can only lure to destruction — deliver from that system which exalts man and lowers the Christ whom it professes to honour, but really rejects as the Truth.

The Lord give all who hear faith to receive Jesus Christ the Son of God, and then to read the word of God as the divine expression of Jesus — the personal Word brought before us in the written word. This will be our safeguard, and we shall need all: it is the divinely given one, specially for the last days. It is not faithful ministers (although I am sure God will have them as long as He is gathering the church from the earth); it is not the church (for itself requires to be secured, and therefore is not the security): the word of God is. It is not even the Spirit Himself, although there cannot be the power of the word without the Spirit: you cannot know the value of Christ the truth unless you have the Spirit the truth. Nevertheless the test of having the Spirit the truth, and of not being a prey to fanaticism, is that the soul is attracted and subject to the Lord Jesus, the Son of God; and this cannot be without faith produced and nourished by the word of God.

APPENDIX.

The following extract from Mr. J. S. Mill on Liberty, chapter 2, will illustrate the utter blindness of the natural man where Christ is not seen and applied by faith as the embodiment of God's mind and will. Hence the absurdity of concluding that the ideal of Christian morality is negative rather than positive; that in its precepts 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt;' that a body of ethical doctrine is only possible by eking it out from the Old Testament (that St. Paul, hostile to this, assumes a pre-existing morality; namely, that of the Greeks and Romans); and that it is a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that complete rule for our guidance which its author intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. How solemn too to see that superstition and infidelity alike bring in law, heathen philosophy, and ecclesiastical development, because they both ignore Christ, who alone gives the written word its fulness of meaning and power of adaptation, as they both set aside practically and even in principle, though not in name, the free action of the Holy Spirit, in order to claim church authority on one side and human liberty on the other. Development is manifestly common to both; for Christ is not seen by either as the Second Man any more than as the last Adam. (1 Cor. 15) The Christian knows Him as setting aside Adam and all the race included in that first man — knows Him as magnifying the law, but withal bringing in perfection which the law did in nothing. Thus He is not only the Second Man, but He is the last Adam. Perfection is in Him only. Progress after Him is a lie; and no lie is of the truth, says St. John. Pretension to a fuller or higher morality is in part that spirit of antichrist which was to come; "and even now already is it in the world."

Mr. M. thus writes: "Before pronouncing what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desirable to decide what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality of the New Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge of this from the book itself can suppose that it was announced or intended as a complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers to a pre-existing morality, and confines its precepts to the particulars in which that morality was to be corrected, or superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in terms most general, often impossible to be interpreted literally, and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethical doctrine has never been possible without eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a pre-existing morality; namely, that of the Greeks and Romans (!); and his advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accommodation to that; even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery. What is called Christian, but should rather be termed theological morality, was not the work of Christ or the apostles, but is of much later origin, having been gradually built up by the Catholic church of the first five centuries, and though not implicitly adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been much less modified by them than might have been expected. For the most part indeed they have contented themselves with cutting off the additions which had been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect supplying the place by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and tendencies. That mankind owe a great debt to this morality, and to its early teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not scruple to say of it that it is, in many important points, incomplete and one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it, had contributed to the formation of European life and character, human affairs would have been in a worse condition than they are. [This means, that to the free-thinker's mind mediaeval Christendom has been better for man than the pure and simple Christianity of Christ and His apostles!] Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is in great part a protest against Paganism. [Quite true; but how does this consist with Paul's assuming the pre-existing morality of the Greeks and Romans? This I should have thought to be in great part an adoption of Paganism, not a protest against it.] Its ideal is negative rather than positive; [Is not Christ its ideal? Is He negative rather than positive? or can blindness be more absolute?] passive rather than active; [What! He who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil? Undoubtedly He was also the Sufferer beyond all, but this seems a small matter to the man who feels not his ruin nor the need of redemption;] innocence rather than nobility; abstinence from evil rather than energetic pursuit of good; in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.' [It is clear that the allegation here is based on the traditions of a guilty judaizing Christendom, not on the teaching of Christ and the apostles, which is and is meant to be the exercise of a new spiritual nature in obedience, righteousness, and love, instead of the mere prohibitions of the law addressed to Israel.] In its horror of sensuality it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life, in this falling far below the hope of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character by disconnecting each man's feeling of duty from the interests of his fellow creatures, except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him for consulting them. [The truth is that the gospel alone is right; for it deals with man as a sinner and lost, needing therefore to be saved: this done, it acts on him by the highest motives of known divine grace in Christ to obedience, righteousness, and love. In both its parts how incomparably beyond heathenism, which denies the depths of human need and the heights of God's favour! It does condescend to the real necessities of the sinner, but it lifts him out of his abject wretchedness into fellowship with the Father and the Son: if this be to meet selfishness, it assuredly is to slay it, and replace it with the enjoyment and active power of divine love.] It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they command what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted, far less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong in themselves. kind while, in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to the State holds even a disproportionate place, infringing on the just liberty of the individual; in purely Christian ethics that grand department of duty is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the New Testament, that we read the maxim, 'A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominions another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the State.' What little recognition there is of obligation of laws in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of obedience. [This last is of God; the "purely human" is Satan's cheat for man far from Him. "My kingdom," answered Jesus to another freethinker, "is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." Soon the kingdom of the world will be His. The Christian follows Him in both respects.]

"I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics, in every manner in which it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral doctrine which it does not contain, do not admit of being reconciled with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts of Christ Himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all that I can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality requires; that everything which is excellent in ethics may be brought within them, with no greater violence to their language than has been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from them any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent with this to believe that they contain, and were meant to contain, only a part of the truth, that many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for, nor intended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the founder of Christianity, and which have been entirely thrown aside in the system of ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances by the Christian church."

It is vain to speak patronisingly of Christ or Christianity. Either He was the Word (and the Word was God) made flesh, or an impostor. If He is God over all blessed for ever, though He became man to die for man in infinite love, it is folly to argue that His sayings, supplemented by the subsequent teaching of the Spirit, when the disciples could bear all the truth, leave any part either wanting or superfluous. Mr. U. utters only the presumptuous language of unbelief, for which he must surely give account. There is grace with God through that very Christ now: there will be judgment then. May he and my reader be wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus!

"And this being so, I think it a great error to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that complete rule for our guidance, which its author intended it to sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe, too, that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil, detracting greatly from the moral training and instruction, which so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves to promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and feelings on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those secular standards (as for want of a better name they may be called) which heretofore co-existed with, and supplemented the Christian ethics, receiving some of its spirit, and infusing into it some of theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject, servile type of character, [What! Mr. Mill was CHRIST'S character "low, abject, servile"? This is the Christian's "type of character;" and who can pretend that He derived His morality from Greek and Roman sources — that love, purity, lowliness, and devotedness, at cost of all to God's will and glory which shone in their fulness in Jesus of Nazareth? But no; he that admires the morality of the "secular standards," if he spoke out the truth of his mind and heart, must own his hatred and contempt of Christ's life who came solely to do God's will,] which, submit itself as it may to what it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to, or sympathizing in, the conception of Supreme Goodness. [Was not Christ the ever obedient one? Was He incapable of rising to, or sympathizing in, the conception of Supreme Goodness? Are we not to walk as He walked?] I believe that other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian sources must exist side by side with Christian ethics, to produce the moral regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no exception to the rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions. [It is clear that a revelation of God, of His truth, is ignored and denied.] It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths not contained in Christianity [such as "honour" i.e. personal pride !] men do ignore any of those which it does contain. Such prejudices, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always exempt, and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good. The exclusive pretensions made by a part of the truth to be the whole [which is inevitable to every man save the instructed Christian, who has learnt to use the fulness we have received in Christ] must and ought to be protested against; and if a reactionary impulse should make the protesters unjust in their turn, this onesidedness, like the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated. If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Christians, they should themselves be just to infidelity. [This is precisely what the Apostle shows himself, and what every Christian can afford to be; for even the infidel is not without a conscience, and must own that which is amply sufficient to expose the sin and folly of his own infidelity.] It can do truth no service to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the Christian faith."

Thus lawlessly writes a man, who, not having seen and believed in the Son of God, has not life and is in darkness, hating the true God whom he knows not, and misrepresenting the Christian morality, which cannot be understood apart from Christ, who is its living model and the sole spring of conformity to it as now made known to the Christian by the Spirit in the power of His own resurrection. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, not to the mere works of innocence which befitted an unfallen Adam, nor to the legal position of a people in the flesh like Israel under Sinai, but unto good works [does this mean honestly "'thou shalt not' predominating unduly over 'thou shalt'"?] which God before prepared that we should walk in them. Undoubtedly in those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit, the righteous demand (δικαίωμα) of the law is fulfilled, yet the result is produced by being under grace, and not under the law. For the law works wrath not love, and is the strength of sin, not of holiness. The law is lawful if one use it lawfully; and even Mr. M. ought to be aware of this, still more any one who truly names the name of the Lord, that the law is not made for a righteous man (and surely the Christian should be this and more), but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, etc. Be ought to be aware that the apostle Paul affirms that this is according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, who will judge men ere long by Jesus Christ the Lord. If He will be "just to infidelity," where and how must the infidel be?

"Receive ye the Holy Ghost."

John 20: 22.

W. Kelly.

It was the first day of the week, and the same day at even our Lord finds Himself in the midst of His people gathered together. The first word He utters is peace — "Peace be unto you." Precious word! It was not remission of sins simply, blessed as this may be, but "Peace be unto you." Peace is much more than sins forgiven; and "when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side." He showed them what was the sign and witness of the shed blood of His cross, by which He had made peace. "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." But speaking to them again He repeats the words, "Peace be unto you." Only this second time, remark, it is not now so much personal as prefatory to their mission; for He adds, "As My Father sent Me, even so send I you." Thus the first words of peace would be for their own enjoyment, as I conceive; the second declaration comes as the introduction to their mission. It is this with which they are sent to others. It is therefore repeated to them, that in the renewed strength of this peace they may go forth. As the Father sent Him so the Son sends them, for He always speaks as the conscious Son of God in communion with the Father.

But there is a notable sign appended: "When He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Probably many who read these lines are not ignorant of the correspondence that has been carried on but recently on this very passage.

There are two contradicting theories which claim to be received: one, that our Lord here establishes a kind of sacerdotal authority, by virtue of which those whom He addressed and their successors were entitled, in His own name, to give remission of sins to everyone who confessed his sins duly. I wish to put the view as fairly as possible. They all admit, of course, that there may be a failure in the conditions, whence, after all, the remission comes to nothing, notwithstanding where there is uprightness on man's part; they hold that the Lord pledges His part through His servants; that is to say, His absolution pronounced by virtue of this commission through certain authorised channels to the end of time. "No," says the opposite party, "nothing of the sort. There is miraculous action here supposed. If men nowadays profess to absolve people from their sins, why not cleanse lepers and raise the dead? Why not perform the other miracles which the Lord empowered the disciples to work?" Now does it not seem amazing that Christian men should broach theories so miserably short of the truth of God as both of these? The one seems to be just as unsatisfactory as the other. Even the latter view, which emanates from the evangelical party, really concedes what is worst in the former, while it falls into absurdity, as well as evasion of the truth, by bringing the performance of miracles into a passage which alludes to nothing of the sort. For it is clear that the argument just spoken of assumes that if men could cleanse lepers and raise the dead they are competent to absolve sins. But we deny that it ever was the title of disciples to grant such absolution as is contended for. Thus, whether we take the ritualistic or the evangelical theory, it is hard to say which is farthest from Scripture.

Is it then insinuated that the passage has no determinate meaning? Far be such a thought. What gives a clue to the subject is the Lord's resurrection as here presented. If men better knew Christ and the power of His resurrection they would understand that which is a fruit of it. Hence ignorance of resurrection privileges leaves men, whether on one or other side of the quarrel, in the dark as to the truth which is here revealed. For let it be observed that after our Lord sends the disciples out with peace He breathed on them. I am not aware of any action in the Bible to which this can be supposed to refer but one, and with this it stands in marked and instructive contradistinction. If we examine Genesis 2 a very striking difference on Jehovah Elohim's part appears in forming man as compared with any other animal. When He made the various beasts, birds, reptiles, etc., each became, as it is said, "a living soul" by the simple fact that it had been duly organised. In man's case it was not so. Man was made out of the dust of the earth, as we know; but he did not become a living soul by being thus fashioned. There comes out an essential difference between man and every other such being then created.

It is not merely that all the rest of the animal kingdom were put under man here below, but he alone had his life direct from above. "Jehovah Elohim breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." No other animal became a living soul thus. Man, and man alone, enjoyed the breath of Jehovah Elohim. Such is the true source of the immortality of the soul; this is the reason why man alone stands in direct moral responsibility to God, and must give account of the things done in the body to that God who thus gave him his soul and spirit. In the case of a beast, though possessed of a spirit, it goes downward and not to God, because God never breathed into it. The living principle of a beast, in other words, perishes, because it is a mere question of what is connected by God's will with its material organisation. Therefore an irrational animal when it dies perishes, but in man's case there is a soul and a spirit which abide distinct in origin from the body, having a far more intimate connection with God Himself. Accordingly therefore, the soul partakes of an immortality which the mere body, alive here below in its own nature, does not possess. This was a physical question of the will of God, but that was a thing which indelibly and intrinsically belonged to the soul and spirit. Therefore it is that the body of man will be raised up in the resurrection to be reunited to that soul and spirit, and so every one of us shall give account of himself to God.

Here the risen Lord Jesus stands before us, and in this Gospel alone characteristically unites these two aspects. He is man, and now He is the risen man; but He is also the Lord God, even as Thomas immediately after says, "My Lord and my God." He is One who, in His own person, united both divine nature and proper manhood. He stands, the risen man, "the second man," on the first day of the week, and as the quickening or life-giving Spirit He breathes into the disciples. That is, it is the Spirit of Christ Jesus risen from the dead. It is the Holy Ghost accompanying this resurrection-life, and the power of it which the Lord, as the Head of the new family, conferred upon the members of that family. They had believed on Him and had life eternal. Now they had life abundantly. (John 10: 10)

Accordingly such is the all-important change which came in with the action of our Lord Jesus Christ. One can conceive a person reasoning on this subject and saying, "If people get eternal life, I do not see what great difference it makes that it should be risen life — that this life in resurrection together with Christ should so signally mark it." Very possibly you do not; but allow me to say that full victory already achieved and made ours in Christ widely differs from life struggling with death; life with the handwriting uneffaced and contrary to us in ordinances; life not yet delivered from the power of the evil that surrounds it; life seeking after what is good though failing; life striving to avoid what is bad, yet constantly drawn somehow or other into it. This is precisely the state of man where the delivering power is unknown. But it was closed for the believer, as far, at any rate, as showing the new place into which the believer is put by the death and resurrection of our Lord. The life that one receives now in the Lord Jesus is life not under the law — life not having to do with the earth or its ordinances. It is the life of One who has brought me into perfect peace with God. It is the life of One who has put me in possession of His own relationship with God. Accordingly, it is as giving this in its most intrinsic form and its fullest power that our Lord Jesus Christ thus breathed to show the new character of life, so to speak, that was given them — that the life that they lived in the flesh was really by the faith of the Son Himself: "Not I, but Christ that liveth in me." This, then, was given by the notable fact that He thus breathed upon them. It was a partaking of Himself as He then stood — a participation in what He was, specially in the life that was in Him, after all questions of good and evil were settled, and perfect deliverance from sin and death was won by Him and given to them.

Hence it is that the apostle Paul, referring to this, says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus."* Why? "For," says he, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." "The law of the Spirit of life" is the phrase of the apostle Paul. This is the very life, as John tells us, that was here given. If in being born again (John 3) one was born of water and Spirit, much more was it here the Holy Ghost received; but it was the Holy Ghost as the Spirit of life. It was not the Spirit of external power working miracles, or any such energies — things which to men might appear to be far greater. Much less was it anything so wanton as men taking the place of God, and professing to forgive sins on the earth: to this no apostle ever pretended. Nevertheless it is a real privilege, and as true now as on the day when Jesus rose from the dead. What the Holy Ghost then did was simply communicating life according to its resurrection power and character through Jesus Christ, the Second man risen from the dead and withal the Divine Person, the Son, giving life no less than the Father.

* The latter clause in the Received Text, represented in the Authorised Version, has no sufficient authority. It hinders the immediate connection with the reasons given, first in verse 2, next in verse 3; and it undermines the assurance of verse 1 by turning into a condition what rightly follows as the consequence in verse 4.

But He adds more: "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." Someone may ask, "Well, do you believe this?" Assuredly I do; and more than this, I believe that you, Christians, having the Spirit, possess the power and are responsible to God to walk in it. (Gal. 5: 25) But this is a high claim, some will think — this power of remitting sins and retaining sins. Without doubt it is so. But to whom did the Lord speak on that day? Not to the apostles only, nor even to all of them, but to the disciples. "Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled." Surely, if it had been some restricted prerogative confined to the company of apostles, some care would have been taken to make this appear. It is thus that even a sensible man acts. If there were a special communication from the Queen to her cabinet ministers, it would not be made to the House of Commons or to the House of Lords either. Where would be the propriety in such a course? Whereas, on the contrary, if we suppose a royal message were delivered to the House of Lords, or to the House of Commons, to whom would this be understood to be addressed? If meant for the whole house it would be addressed accordingly. And so it is here. Our Lord was speaking to the disciples; He was addressing the whole of them. The moment we take the word as it is written we see clearly that what He said applies to all. Will any man say that the resurrection-life of the Lord Jesus Christ was only for the twelve? Shall I be told that the peace the Lord gave so solemnly and repeatedly was only for the apostles? Nothing of the sort: though of course the apostles shared it, and it must have had a most valued place in their souls.

There was, indeed, special authority from the Lord to form assemblies confessing His name, and to rule them when formed, not to speak of powers which were personal. There was a post of authority in laying the foundation; there were also acts initiatory and regulative which Scripture assigns to the apostles. But it is so little the aim or the character of John's Gospel to dwell on what was official, that the very word "apostle" never occurs throughout its course save in John 13: 16. The spirit, form, and substance of it are devoted to what is intrinsic and essential and what passes not away. More particularly we shall have reason to gather in a moment that this very portion is the express setting of Christianity on its proper basis, and stamps on it a very distinctive character before God and man. For various reasons, therefore, I am persuaded that we are not to look for the accomplishment of these words in anything that was personal to the twelve, still less to any others imagined to succeed them; least of all are they to be construed of the function of elders or presbyters, as if they were officially entrusted with remitting and retaining sins, as is most deliberately assumed in the standards of certain religious bodies. The truth is that the Lord Jesus has the "disciples" as such before Him, and to them He imparts the Spirit as the power of risen life; them He thereon charges with this spiritual commission.

Does the inspired history, then, do the epistles give no light how the apostles understood, and how we are to interpret, Christ's words? Take, for instance, those converted on the day of Pentecost, and others whom the Lord added from time to time: by whom were their sins remitted? They were not satisfied with individually believing the Gospel; they submitted their confession of the Lord's name to those who were Christians before them. And a most important thing this is. I am not entitled to set up to be a Christian on my sole opinion of myself, on my judgment of the faith I confess.

Are we not bound to submit our pretensions to those who have been in Christ before us? Miraculous as may be the call of Saul of Tarsus, even he, though an apostle by call, was not exempt from this duty; he was baptised by a certain disciple; he was subsequently received by others. This is full of instruction and comfort. It is real presumption to shrink from or weaken it, because the more really a man has faith, the more willing he is to let others examine it. Even the apostle Paul had to taste the bitterness of this at first, for some were in doubt of him. Surely if this most honoured of Christ's servants had to bear with not a little that was trying to him, it is not for any of us to count ourselves too sure confessors of His name to yield for a little our own importance, and, at the same time, to submit to that which is the Lord's will, and of vast moment for the blessing of the Church of God. Think how the enemy might take advantage if you supposed it was a question of setting up to be a Christian on one's own sole and independent warrant. It is good to be subject one to another, and this from the first, in the fear of God, who is wiser than men, and has laid down His will through these words of the Lord Jesus.

This, if we accept the apostolic writings as a comment, is the manner and practical working of it. When one professes to turn to God in repentance and faith, when one believes in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of the soul, then one must "confess" with the mouth, as well as "believe" in the heart. This confession may and should, of course, go out as a testimony to the world; but it belongs to those who are the confessors of His name to judge of it. I may admit something that is derogatory to Christ; I may overlook that which is injurious to my own soul and offensively evil to others. Then comes in the all-important function of those in the faith before, to which Scripture attaches no small weight, and regulates it for God's glory, as we find the apostle Paul doing in Romans 15.

I affirm, then, that the disciples, as the assembly of God, did warrant the remission of sins in certain cases, and did retain sins in others. Since they received heartily and simply, owning as the brethren of Jesus those that before then had been wallowing generally in sins of every kind, and suddenly (it might be in an hour) turned to God, was it not of exceeding moment that there should be a company in this world constituted by the Lord, having distinct responsibility, as well as possessed of capacity in His own life, even the Spirit as the power of abundant life in resurrection, and that they should endorse the confession of those accredited true, while examining the pretensions of all who professed? It is not, of course, that this could in the long run be injurious to a child of God, but, on the contrary, be a signal mercy and comfort, even an additional joy to his heart — the welcome of others in owning him here below — as the angels, instead of man here, rejoice over the repentant in God's presence. Consider what a serious check it would be were there any reserve, or again if anything evil lurked underneath, or the mere desire to bring in people privily.

We find that in this spirit, accordingly, the assembly of God did act They remitted sins and they retained them. I speak not now of the solemn case where a man and his wife were successively struck dead on the spot, and also of a baptised man rejected almost immediately. (Acts 8) But we read also how the apostle insists on the saints putting away one that sinned grievously, and on their restoring him when duly repentant. Here, then, is the case in which a man who had been received, and had his sins thus publicly remitted, was put out from them as a wicked person. (1 Cor. 5) This offender, when broken down, they were to receive back. (2 Cor. 2) Thus the two Epistles to the Corinthians illustrate both sides. "Sufficient to such a man is this punishment, which was inflicted of many. So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you that you would confirm love toward him." (2 Cor. 2: 6-8) Here, then, we have the cases of remitting sins on the one hand, and of retaining sins on the other. Can there be a doubt that one of the reasons why Christians have failed to carry out their separate place in this world, and thus to walk in their proper joy and delight, and as a rich means of blessing to others, is that they have lost sight of this responsibility, treating it as either ministerial, or as a power long passed away?

Alas! the cause is as obvious as it is humiliating. The Church has not kept its place as in the Spirit a people separate to God, endowed with the love and glory of the Lord Jesus. They have taken in all the world in a misnamed "judgment of charity"; but no judgment of charity can avail unbelievers, nor is it really in question for believers, who by faith stand in God's favour. Thus the deep and public landmarks of grace and holiness have been broken down; and, consequently, the very profession to retain or to remit sins, except for the superstitious as a sacerdotal act, is scouted, because its nature is wholly ignored. It is as a fact attached to the disciples collectively by the risen Lord Himself since the day of His resurrection.

The Lord's words make it to be of the essence of the Christian congregation in this world to stand forth as publicly owning what grace has done, by receiving those whose confession satisfies, and as publicly refusing what does not approve itself to their conscience.

Let me, however, press with decision, that what we receive is not a certain amount of intelligence. It is not for me any more than others to make light of spiritual understanding, Unquestionably it has its place, season, and value; but of this we may be assured, that what Jesus breathed on the disciples was not merely intelligence, but His own resurrection-life in the Spirit. This, then, is what He would have us own; this is what we are bound to recognise in those that come forward. "You hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses." I do not mean thereby that we are to sanction what is sinful along with life in Christ. But we are bound to accept the sheep and lambs of Christ, and to be very tender in dealing with mistakes, the fruit very often of a wrong position and of bad teaching. Let us beware of playing into the enemies' hands by even seeming to mix up the ground of reception with points of attainment in practice or in doctrine. Hold fast the grand, simple, but infinite fact, that Jesus breathed the Spirit of His own resurrection-life on the disciples. We are to treat the feeblest as a part of the Christian assembly.

But if we receive on the one hand, let us not fear to reject on the other, according as the confession may or may not be suitable to the name of Jesus. If a man really has the resurrection-life of Christ, one looks for holiness with a purged conscience; but let us press also another thing — that Christ be the standard of all his judgments, as He is the source of all his blessings, and withal the object to be kept before his soul. Therefore the name of Jesus, which is the sole and sufficient passport to the simplest possessor of eternal life in Him, is the same name by which we can reject the loudest pretension that compromises His glory. Let the Lord Jesus be for us, as in truth He is, the perfect and only personal standard. If Christ is owned and honoured, His name and His word, it is well and safe and blessed.

The attempt to unite Christ with sin is fatal. All thought of having Christ and playing fast and loose with His name be far from us! What can be more offensive to God? Therefore it is of all-importance that we should steadily have Him before our eyes, and avoid the snare of building up the ecclesiastical plans and developed theories we have left behind. All ecclesiastical theory is assuredly false when in any measure allowed to shroud the glory and value of Christ. Not less firmly should we refuse to treat ecclesiastical mistakes as calling for such dealing as ought to be demanded were it a question of Christ dishonoured or positive known iniquity allowed. If there be so much as the connivance at the holding of what is not of Christ — if one bring not the doctrine of Christ, it is ruin. The man might appear to be as sound as an apostle on ecclesiastical truth and have every other New Testament doctrine at his finger-ends. But what is the value of anything where the name of the Lord is put to shame? On the other hand, where Christ is the object of the soul, though His confessor may be uninformed, has He not breathed His life there? and is not our course clear if we be subject to Christ? Let us welcome such a one to the heart in His name. It is the Church's business to take all such up and to foster them; for how are they to acquire more light, and where can they get the crooked joints adjusted, if it be not in God's Church? But if we hold aloof till they get all right, this is well-nigh an impossibility on their part, as it is to forfeit our own place of help and duty. Methought that the Church of God was the pillar and ground of the truth, and that there only can the truth be truly learnt where it is lived in, and that those saints, ill-taught though they be, having received Christ have Christ within and Christ without. Do I want or boast of more? Why, then, should there be the slightest hesitation? See that ye neither offend nor despise one of these little ones.

The Lord enable His own to be thorough in removing difficulties and hearty in welcoming souls where there is no question of ungodliness in faith or ways. I do not say where the doctrine of justification by faith is held. Many a wickedness and a worldliness may be allowed where that great doctrine is confessed. But these words of our Lord Jesus Christ are a standing rule for the disciples, and we are responsible for acting on them. If we are met together in His name let there be a plain, unswerving expression of our place and privilege. Our action, our collective action, should be as firm for the truth as our individual wall; — that we have and supremely value Christ — that to those confessing Christ we are to remit sins, and, whenever there is anything inconsistent with Christ, we are no less to retain sins. We disown the pretension of doing either as between God and man: the Church never claimed such a right; the apostles never aspired to such a prerogative. But our Lord Jesus clearly here called the disciples to discharge the retention as well as the remission of sins, and this, as we have seen, was verified in the Christian assembly which exercised both, not as a question for eternity between God and the soul, but administratively and now on earth as a duty to Christ in receiving the true or in rejecting the false, of putting away in prescribed cases or in restoring when repentance is plain.

W. K.

On Reconciliation.

W. Kelly.

Reprint from an Article which appeared in "THE BIBLE TREASURY," October, 1867.

Reconciliation is, to use familiar language, making all straight; and even primarily, I believe, used in money-changing as that which makes the sum even, so that there is satisfaction of the parties in the matter; and thence passing into the more ordinary sense of making all smooth between alienated parties, and reconciling one who is alienated or at enmity. But it is not simply the change of mind from the enmity, though that be included; nor is it justification. It is the bringing back to unity, peace, and fellowship what was divided and alienated. We must not confound in Scripture "making reconciliation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2: 17) with "reconciliation" in 2 Corinthians 5, Colossians 1, Romans 5: 10, 11. The former is making propitiation, atonement (ilaskesthai and ilasmos), propitiation (1 John 2: 7); while on the contrary "atonement" in Romans 5: 11 should be reconciliation (katallage). Compare 1 Corinthians 7: 11, "Let her be reconciled to her husband." where it is not merely her mind being restored to affection and good feeling, but matters made straight between them-the relationship made good. So it is between us and God; but the alienation was on our part. It was not alienation on God's part, but righteous judgment against sin in His creature, and that righteousness must be met in order to bring back the alienated creature into relationship with God. Only now it is much more than bringing back, because of the purposes of God in Christ, and the infinite value of the work by which we are brought back to God. Still it is an establishing a blessed and peaceful relationship with God, and us in it.

Reconciling God to us is quite unscriptural in expression and thought. No act or dealing could change God's mind, either in nature or in purpose, but He acts freely in what is before Him according to that nature, and in bringing about that purpose; and though His mind be not changed, yet the meeting, satisfying, and glorifying His righteousness, is according to that mind and the imperious claim of His nature and authority, is necessary in the highest sense, that is, according to that nature. His holiness, too, is involved in reconciliation. Reconciliation is the full establishment in relationship with God according to His nature and according to the nature of that which is reconciled. It now acts in redemption and a new nature, and as regards all around us, a new state of things, so that it is more than re-establishment. It is re-established inasmuch as the old relationship was broken and forfeited, but it is not the returning to that but the establishing a new one which has the stability of redemption, and is the accomplishment of the purpose of God. Still it is a bringing back into the enjoyment of divine favour that which had lost it. This reconciliation is twofold in Scripture — of the state of things and of sinners. Thus in Colossians 1 all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him, "and, having made peace by the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things to Himself; by Him, whether they be things on earth or things in Heaven; and you that were sometime enemies and alienated in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight." The force of the word is evident from the first case. Then there is no question of changing the disposition of the reconciled things, because the purposed reconciliation spoken of in verse 20 refers to all created things as to the vast majority of which no such change can take place. It is the bringing of the whole created scene of Heaven and earth into its true order and right relationship with God, and to its right standing and condition in that relationship.

The first passage which suggests itself when we come to inquire into the use of the word in Scripture is 2 Corinthians 5: 18-20, particularly verse 19: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." It is not God is in Christ reconciling. The passage states that the apostolic ministry had taken the place of Christ's personal ministry, founded on the blessed Lord having been made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It is the aspect of Christ's ministry down here. God was in Him reconciling the world. Man would not have Him, but this was the service and aspect of His ministry. He was proposing to the world a return to God in order and blessing, not imputing their trespasses to them. If man had received Him, it would have proved that man in the flesh was recoverable, though he had sinned; though such indeed was not God's thought, the result proved he was not, and the Lord had to be made sin for us. Man had to be redeemed out of the state he was in, and justified on a new footing, not recovered from his ruin as man in the flesh still. Lawlessness and ease had both proved men sinners in fact. God was in Christ saying, I am not come to judge; return, and I will forgive; return to order and to God and nothing will be imputed. But the mind of the flesh was enmity against God, and the true state of man was brought out. The sin of the world was demonstrated by their not believing in Christ; righteousness in their seeing Him no more and His going to His Father. No doubt a change in us is needed to our being in order and peace before God; but reconciling is more than a state of feeling, it is a being brought back to the condition of right relationship with God. In Colossians 1, already quoted, we find it the purpose of God to bring all things in Heaven and earth into this order and condition. All things were created by the Son and for Him, and all the fullness of the Godhead which dwelt in Him will bring all created by and for Him into its due condition and order, into a normal state of relationship with itself. But we, the apostle adds, are reconciled, Christ being our righteousness, and we are the righteousness of God in Him. We are, as regards the very nature of God, in our normal place with God, according to the efficacy of Christ's work. Being moral beings, a new mind was needed for this, and Christ is our life, perfect according to what He was for God, that we may have it. The believer is reconciled in the body of Christ's flesh through death. We are before God with the entire putting away in His sight of our old rebellious nature, and by a work and obedience which has perfectly glorified God Himself, so that we are the righteousness of God in Him. Nothing is wanting to our place and standing in Christ, our old state being gone, quickened together with Him; dead, and the old man put off; risen, and the new man put on, we are in Christ before God according to the efficacy of His propitiation and work. We are so consciously by faith and the presence of the Holy Ghost by which we are sealed, for our being presented "holy, unblameable, and unreproveable in His sight."

Hence in Romans 5: 10 reconciliation is attributed to Christ's death, not to a change of mind in us. "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." And, "We have received the reconciliation" (v. 11). Remark here that the Christian is spoken of as being reconciled. Now it is quite true this does not and cannot take place without a work in man by which the peace Christ has made is appropriated, it cannot take place without faith. The Spirit of Christ works in quickening power in us, makes us know our state, gives new desires, makes us judge our old state, and finally shows us the value of Christ's death and our standing in Him, but peace was made, God glorified perfectly when Christ was made sin, so that His love can seek us and grace reign through righteousness. It is not that God is changed, but He can freely work in love according to righteousness for His own glory in virtue of that which has been presented to Him. Propitiation has been made, and hence, according to righteousness and abounding in love, He can bring back the sinner to Himself according to these, and, faith being there, has brought back-has reconciled. That which is the foundation of reconciliation has been offered to God, but it is not God who is reconciled or brought back into a normal place with man, but who reconciles in virtue of that which has been wrought by Christ and presented to Him. Propitiation is the foundation of reconciliation, the reconciliation of the Sinner, and in due time that of the universe. Thereupon the Gospel beseeches men* to be reconciled to God, to return to Him in true relationship in Christ, who has been made sin for us. It is not then propitiation, it is not at all reconciling God, nor is it merely a change in man or his feelings; but it is the standing of man (when applied to him) in peace with God according to the truth of God's character in virtue of redemption, man being brought morally back in a new nature which by the Holy Ghost appreciates that redemption and enjoys the peace — joys in God as well as has peace with Him.

*The "You" and "ye" should be left out of 2 Cor. 5: 20.

There is one passage which remains of these wherein the word is used, which has to be considered. But rightly apprehended it confirms and clears the sense given. "If the casting them away be the reconciling of the world" (Rom. 11: 15). Now the sense is more vague here, it is true, but it confirms what we have said. The Jews had been in ordered relationship with God, though unfaithful to it, the world out of all relationship, men were utterly without God in the world, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope, without God in the world. On the fall of Israel this state of things ceased. God now called all persons everywhere to repent. God took up the world again, no longer winking at the ignorance. The world was again put in relationship with God, so that His grace and Gospel went out to deal with it as that which thus far stood in relationship with Him, not as it did when Judaism was owned. These are all the passages where the word is used.

It is important to note that the Christian is always treated as being reconciled. It is more than being justified — this is being authoritatively pronounced righteous by God, whether from sins or now actually in Christ. It is more than the restoring of the heart to God, though both have place in order to reconciliation; for to be with God fully revealed in joyful and settled relationship with Himself, all in order between us, it must be as justified according to His righteousness and the objects of His love as those who have tasted it. We have been brought into both by Christ's work, but with hearts livingly renewed and tasting that love, or we should not as moral beings be in it. It is thus a word of great power and blessing. Nor is there an expression more full or more complete connected with God. It supposes God revealed, in all that He is, and man in a perfect place and standing with Him according to this relation-reconciled to God.

The Red Heifer

Numbers 19.

W. Kelly.

In this chapter we have a most instructive ordinance of God, peculiar to the book of Numbers. "This is the ordinance of the law which Jehovah hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke." What the great atonement-day is to the centre of the book of Leviticus, the red heifer is to the book of Numbers. Each seems characteristic of the book wherein they are given, which shows how systematic are the order and contents of Scripture.

Thus we have here a provision distinctly for the defilements which are met with as we journey through this world. This is of vital moment in practice. There is many a soul disposed to make the atonement do, as it were, all the work. There is no truth more blessed than the atonement, unless it be His person who gives that work its divine value; but we must leave room for all that our God has given us. There is nothing which so tends to make a sect as to take truth out of its proportions, treating a part as if it were the whole mind of God. It cannot be too much insisted upon, that the Bible is the book which delivers from all petty exclusiveness. What does it matter to have good thoughts here and right ways there, if there be along with this the essential vice of settling down contented with a part of God's mind to the rejection of the rest? Our place is carrying out the Lord's will, nothing but His will, and all His will, as far as we know it. Less than this gives up the glory of Christ. It is impossible to be sectarian where His word governs all; and there is no way of being unsectarian without it. Our being in this position or that will never make us individually and really unsectarian. The seeds of error go along with wretched self, from which there is no deliverance except by walking in the power of Christ dead and risen. This too applies here, where we have not merely the wrong of sectarianism, but the evil of thus abusing the most precious truths of God. When used exclusively, they will ere long turn into an excuse for sin, whatever the high assumptions of an earlier stage.

It will not do to confine the saint then even to Christ's atoning work, which has for ever abolished our guilt before God; not even if we add to this that we know that in Him risen we are placed in an entirely new position, a life where evil never enters. Both most true and precious; but are these the whole truth? Certainly not; and there is no course more dangerous than to construe them as the whole truth. They are as precious as they are needed for the soul; but there is really no part of truth which is not needed, and this largeness and openness to all truth is precisely what we have to insist on. Indeed I am persuaded that this is after all what is most peculiar — to avoid peculiarities and pet subjects, welcoming all truth by the grace of God. Not that one can say much if the question be, How far we have made it our own? but it is truly of God to be in a position where all truth is open to us and we to it, and which does not exclude a single fragment of God's mind and will. It will be impossible, 1 am assured, save on the ground of the assembly of God, to find a place which will not shut out truth, and perhaps much which is evidently most precious. It is well to guard sedulously another thing — that we do not simply satisfy ourselves that we are on right ground according to God, but that our hearts earnestly desire to turn what He has given us always and only to the account of His glory.

The red heifer teaches the children of Israel on the surface of it that the work of the day of atonement had not so completely dealt with all sin that they might treat daily defilements as immaterial. It is impossible to exaggerate the value of the shedding of Christ's blood for our sins. It does give no more conscience of sins. We are justified by His blood; yea more, with Christ we have died to sin; and we are alive to God in Him. But though this is all quite true (and was then set forth imperfectly as far as figure could, when we look at an Israelite), such grace is the strongest motive why we cannot tamper with what is defiled. The very fact that we are cleansed perfectly before God is a loud call to us not to endure a blot before men. It was to guard His people from soils by the way that God gave here a provision so remarkable, "A red heifer" was to be brought "without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke," a striking picture of Christ, but of Christ in a way not often spoken of in Scripture. The requirement supposes not only the absence of such blemishes as was indispensable in every sacrifice; but here expressly also it must have never known the yoke, that is, the pressure of sin. How this speaks of the antitype! Christ was always perfectly acceptable unto God. "And ye shall give her to Eleazar the priest that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face."

The blood was taken and put seven times before the tabernacle. It was quite right that the connection should be kept up with the great truth of the blood that makes atonement, and that vindicates God wherever the thought of sin occurs. But its special use points to another feature. The sprinkling of the blood is the continual witness of the truth of sacrifice; but the characteristic want follows. "And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn. And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer." Then we find the ashes of the heifer laid up in a clean place. "And a man that is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up without the camp in a clean place, and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for a water of separation; it is a purification for sin." In what sense? Simply and solely with a view to communion, i.e. of restoring it when broken. It is not at all a question of establishing relationships (that was already done), but on the ground of the subsisting relation the Israelite must allow nothing by the way which would sully the holiness that suits the sanctuary of Jehovah. This was the point.

Such is the true standard as set forth in this type. It is not merely the law of Jehovah condemning this or that. This shadow of good things demanded separation from anything inconsistent with the sanctuary. The form which this ordinance took was in respect of travelling through the wilderness, where they were exposed constantly to the contact of death. It is death that is here brought in as defiling in various shapes and degrees. Supposing one touched the dead body of a man, he shall be unclean seven days. What was to be done? "He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean." It was not permitted to purify one's self on the first day. Am I wrong in thinking à priori we might have thought this haste much the best course? Why not at once? It was ordered not for the first but the third day. When there is defilement on the spirit, when anything succeeds in interrupting communion with God, it is of deep moral importance that we should thoroughly realize our offence.

This seems the meaning of its being done on the third day. It was to be no mere sudden feeling that one had sinned, and there was an end of the matter. The Israelite was obliged to remain till the third day under a sense of his sin. This was a painful position. He had to reckon up the days, and remain till the third, when he has the water of separation first sprinkled on him. "In the mouth of two or three witnesses" (the well-known provision in every case) "every word shall be established." Thus we see he who had come in contact with death must remain an adequate time to show the deliberate sense of it, and must take the place of one that was defiled before God. A hasty expression of sorrow does not prove genuine repentance for sin. We see something like this with children. There is many a one who has a child ready enough to ask for forgiveness, or even own its fault; but the child that feels it most is not always quick. A child who is far slower to own it may have, and commonly has, a deeper sense of what confession means. However, I am not now speaking of the natural character; but I say that it is right and becoming (and this I believe to be the general meaning of the Lord's ordinance here) that he who is defiled (that is, has his communion with God interrupted) should take that place seriously. Of course, in Christianity it is not a question of days, but of that which corresponds to the meaning; which is that there should be time enough to prove a real sense of the evil of one's defilement as dishonouring God and His sanctuary, and not the haste which really evinces an absence of right feeling. He who duly purified himself on the third day was in effect purified on the seventh day.

Thus, first of all, he has a sense of his sin in the presence of this grace that provides against it; then, he has at last the precious realization of grace in the presence of sin. The two sprinklings are one the converse of the other. They set forth how sin had brought shame on grace, and how grace had triumphed over sin. This seems the meaning, and more particularly for the following reason. The ashes of the heifer express the effect of the consuming judgment of God on the Lord Jesus because of sin. It is not simply blood showing that I am guilty, and that God gives a sacrifice to put it away. The ashes attest the judicial dealing of God in the consumption, as it were, of that blessed offering which came under all the holy sentence of God through our sins. The water (or Spirit by the word) gives us to realise Christ's having suffered for that which we, alas! are apt to feel so little, if not to trifle with it.

There is another thing to notice in passing. The water of purification was not merely wanted when one touched a dead body, but in different modes and measures. That might be called a great case, but the institution shows that God takes notice of the least thing. So should we — at least in ourselves. "This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent; all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall he unclean seven days. And every open vessel, which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean. And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man; or a grave, shall be unclean seven days." "The bone of a man" might be a much lesser object, but whatever defiles comes into notice, and is provided for in Christ our Lord. Thus God would habituate us to the nicest discernment and the most thorough self-judgment. It is not only grave matters that defile, but little occasions, as men would say, which come between us and communion with our God and Father. At the same time He provides the unchanging remedy of grace for every defilement.

W. K.

THE THIRD AND SEVENTH DAYS

Numbers 19

(An unexpected taste of J N Darby! — bound with the above in a pamphlet.)

Of the use of the third day and the seventh day in Numbers 19: 12, 1 should not give any very dogmatically certain interpretation, drawing its meaning more from the experiences pointed to by the figure than from directly scriptural proofs. "Third" is little used in scripture as a number to which meaning is attached; it is, however, somewhat as that which is beyond two. Two seems to import completeness by corroboration in witness; the third more than enough, and hence, also, what leave the previous state whose witness is complete. It is here used, I believe, only as a division of seven.

But the moral bearing I apprehend is this. The red heifer was a provision for defilement in the way — hence introduced into the book of Numbers, not in Leviticus. Its use was not to found communion by blood (though that groundwork was first laid and perfectly laid, in that the blood was sprinkled seven times there where Jehovah was to meet the people), but to restore communion interrupted by defilement. The sign (the ashes) of sin having been consumed long ago, was put into running water, and the unclean sprinkled with it the third day. For two days he lay under the uncleanness — must feel it as such. There was no haste in restoration to communion till the privation of it (and thus the uncleanness of sin) was felt. Then in the water (the application by the word in the power of the Holy Ghost), the sense that the sin (which interrupted communion) was put away before God, was given after the full witness, in the soul, of the evil. The man was brought out of it in the sense of the grace that put it away, and that cleansed from it; and connected the sense of sin, not with the bitterness of lost communion, but with the grace that had put it away: giving a deeper and more justifying sense of it in connection with grace, making us judge it with God in grace; not in the sense of being, as to enjoyment, without Him, and the Holy Ghost a reprover.

Still, this is not communion; it is not the soul occupied with God without the conscience having to be exercised, but the — conscience in exercise, though now no longer a bad one, but in a renewed sense of grace and goodness. judging the evil thence, one is in a sense purified, but not so as to be peacefully in communion with God; enjoying Christ for His own precious excellences, which we do in communion. When the full work is wrought; when this purifying is complete, and grace in respect of sin is fully entered into, — then, communion is entered into which leaves sin and all thoughts about it behind. The grace that has purified, in making us judge sin according to grace, makes us now enjoy grace without any more thinking of sin — in a word, enjoy God. Communion is restored, and, in the full acceptableness of the offering of Christ, understood and enjoyed. I enter into the presence of, and communion with, God — sin, as the subject of my thoughts, being wholly left behind. This is the seventh day. All is complete.

J. N. D.

The Salvation of God

as typified in the Red Sea and the Jordan

Part 1

The Red Sea

Exodus 14

We are all too apt to settle down with that which merely stays the craving of the conscience, and satisfies our own sense of what our sins deserve from God's hand; and this to the great impairing, not only of His glory, but also of our peace, instead of endeavouring to rise to the enjoyment of the full portion we have given us in the gospel.

This appears always in every part of the truth of God, and it will be made manifest here, I trust clearly, to the children of God, by that which certainly ought to be the known portion of all belonging to Christ. For I am not now going to speak of what might be safely unknown by any Christian. I am only going to treat of the common heritage of all that belong to Christ. I propose to speak, not of the whole even that by grace pertains to us from the very starting-place of our career, but of that part of our blessing which God has given us in redemption, by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christians are too apt to settle down with this — that they have been awakened and feel their sins, and that they have found a blessed refuge and resource in the blood of Christ.

They are quite right as far as they go. God forbid that one should enfeeble the sense of the preciousness of Christ's blood. To enter into our full portion enhances the value of His blood, and brings out the grace of God in its own fulness, not in any way shadowing even that which souls are apt to make their goal, but giving them to enjoy it richly, which they are too apt to content themselves without.

In general you will find that what souls are content to rest in is the answer in the New Testament to the type of the Passover.

No soul that is awakened of the Holy Ghost could find the smallest possible hope for his guilty soul save in the blood of the Lord Jesus. To Him pointed, as we know, the Passover lamb that was killed, the blood of which was sprinkled on the doorposts of Israel in the land of Egypt. It is plain that all Gods children must necessarily be sooner or later driven to find their shelter within the blood-sprinkled doors; there alone they are safely sheltered from judgment.

But they are apt to satisfy themselves with something short of what God has given. The paschal lamb's blood is not really all that God has given to us, even from the starting-place of the Christian.

The children of Israel, as you may see by the historical circumstances, were not yet redeemed out of Egypt, even after the blood was sprinkled. There was another need and a different action of God, following up the first, no doubt, but still another dealing of grace necessary to show the deliverance that Christ has really secured for the believer.

The truth of death and resurrection alone gives the believer the measure of the blessing which Christ has really procured; just as in the circumstances here, the Red Sea itself was necessary to give the Israelite his deliverance from the house of bondage.

The New Testament fully teaches this. Take for instance, the First Epistle of Peter. There we find that we "are redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot"; but that is not all. The Spirit of God shows that by Him we believe in God, who raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God.

There you have our Red Sea. The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus — the putting the people through the Red Sea answering to it as the type in the Old Testament — was necessary to complete the deliverance which God pledged the blood of the lamb to perform.

And so you find it also in the Epistle to the Romans. In Rom. 3 we have the blood of Jesus; in Rom. 4 we have the death and resurrection: the Red Sea being the type of the latter, as the Passover is of the former. We have Jesus shedding His blood in Rom. 3; Jesus raised again for our justification in Rom. 4; and then in the commencement of Rom. 5, we read — "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The Holy Ghost does not say we have peace until we have the result of the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as of His blood, applied to our souls. I am not in the least denying that a soul may be filled with great joy without such knowledge. The attractive grace of Christ continually wins souls, leading them to rejoice before God; but joy and peace are very different things.

You never can have solid peace without knowing that all that is against you is judged of God. He would have me to look at what I have done and to feel what I am; nay, He would use means to bring a due sense of sin, and not only of my sins, before my soul — to judge self both in what I have done, and in what I am.

In the face of all, then, have you perfect peace? What could give you this? Not merely the blood of Christ. Without that precious blood there could be no peace; but the blood of Christ, whilst of infinite price, does not give the full measure of the blessing into which your soul is brought, even as a groundwork before God. He has made peace through the blood of His cross, no doubt; but still the way He brings me into the enjoyment of it is by showing Himself raised from the dead for our justification; and more than this, by showing us ourselves, dead unto sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Accordingly, then, we have this fully discussed in the Epistle to the Romans, and upon this I must dwell for a little.

First of all the apostle looks at our guilt in the sight of God — our actual sins; and, after this has been fully discussed, the other question which so often troubles the believer is taken up. I have been pardoned, and may be happy in redemption. I am enabled to look to God with a certainty that I am reconciled to Him; but there remains this that so shocks me — to find that, in spite of all, I have pride, foolishness, carnality, self- will, and a continual tendency to turn away from Him. All this surprises me so much the more that God has shown me such exceeding favour. Is there nothing to meet it? What is God's way of dealing with this sense of evil within, that we feel the more deeply because we are brought to God? Are we merely to comfort ourselves with the thought of Christ's love, or that He shed His blood? Nay, there is more. Accordingly the apostle Paul deals with this more particularly in chapters 6, 7, 8 of Romans.

In Romans 6 the point is sin and our continuing in sin. Now he shows that this is altogether judged and met by the nature of the blessing that God has brought us into. It is not merely that I am to be consistent, or that I have got a motive in either the love or the blood of Christ. That is not all. What he says is, "How shall we that died to sin live any longer therein?" It is not "How shall we that are living now?" or "How shall we that have been brought to believe in Christ?" Not so. Quite another thought. Neither is it because we are washed with His blood, but "How shall we that died to sin live any longer therein?"

There is many a soul in this world striving to be dead to sin, and there is hardly anything that more tries Christian people. They are not surprised, before they are converted to God, that they should have sin; but, after they have been brought to Him, to feel within them the workings of sin alarms them indeed.

He does not meet this by turning them back to look at the cross, and by showing them the blood of Christ that was shed for them. The blood of Christ effaces the sins, but it does not meet the question of sin that is working in the believer after he is brought to God. What does? You died to sin, with Christ; and you ought to know and act on it.

There are a great many who do not know this; and an immense loss it is to them, because the effect of one's not knowing this is, that he strives to become dead, instead of believing that he is.

This is at the bottom of all the legal efforts you find yourself and so many making. Ignorance of it led to nunneries, monasteries, and other similar devices in early days as now. But the same thing is found among Protestants. I do not mean they use these precise methods, but efforts to the same end. This led to all the schools of mystics and pietists, because the same condition is found amongst all until they get hold of the great truth that the Christian is dead with Christ.

Don't you know your baptism? He says (in Romans 6). Don't you know what God gave you at the beginning of your career? Don't you know what was meant in that first rite? Of course it is not the sign that could give a real blessing. Now, baptism with water is not at all the sign of the bloodshedding of Christ; therefore we hear nothing about it in chapter 3. It means a great deal more than bloodshedding. It sets forth our death to sin, and not merely that Christ died for our sins. In short, it sets forth the Red Sea, and not the Passover. That is, it shows me Christ's death applied to my nature — a condition that is so often the stumbling-block to the children of God, and the means of harassing them. Satan knows well how to work by it for the purpose of producing despair on the one hand, or of tempting to license on the other.

Christianity denies both. It dispels despair and delivers from license. It is the application of what God has wrought in the Lord Jesus to all of us — not merely to our sins, but to our sin, to that root of evil within; and just as He has shown me the blood blotting out my sins, so He brings me to see that I am dead to sin. If He had not given me this, I were equally lost. It was true from the first, and accordingly in the very baptism of a Christian the Scripture sets forth this great fact. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?"

Such is what baptism signifies. It is not the sign of life-giving but of death-giving so to speak — that is to say, it brings the believer into this place of death with Christ. It is the outward expression that if I have got Christ at all, the Christ I have is a Christ that died and rose again; and when I am baptized, I am "baptized unto his death."

This is immense comfort. "So many of us as were baptized unto Christ Jesus were baptized unto his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also [in the likeness] of [his] resurrection."

Now the reason why we look onward to this is, because we know "that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." Why? "For he that died is freed (or, "justified," as the margin says,) from sin." It is not a question of being justified from sins, but from sin. It means that you in that very act confessed what has brought you out of your condition, out of that death where you lay as a sinful child of Adam. "He that died is justified from sin."

Then we have the present consequence: "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God, in (or, through) Christ Jesus." And then comes a practical consequence, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." That is, the sin is supposed to be there, but it is not to reign: and the reason is, because I am dead to sin. To every Christian, to every person to whom his baptism is a sign of a great reality by and with Christ, this is so.

It is not therefore a question of striving to be different, or seeking to feel this or that, but of believing what God has done for me in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we look at the Red Sea, we can understand how this applies.

After the Passover the children of Israel came into the greatest pressure of trouble. All they felt in Egypt was a little thing compared with what stared them in the face. They had left that land after the blood of the paschal lamb was sprinkled on their doors, but so hard pressed were they that there was nothing but death before their eyes. They had never, so far as their feelings were concerned, been so shut up to death as then.

On all sides there were obstacles they could not surmount. Behind them the army of their foes, and before them only more certain death. But that which seemed to them merely the waters of death was precisely what God was about to make the path of life; and Moses, at the word of God, lifted up his rod — that same rod of God which had brought judgment upon the Egyptians, which had plagued them often before. That rod was lifted up over the sea, and at once the waters of death rise up on either side as walls, and the children of Israel passed through protected; so much the more because it was evident that God was for them.

Not so on the night of the Passover. God, no doubt, did not permit the destroyer to touch them, but the blood of the lamb, instead of showing God for them, was merely a protection that God should not be against them.

It was not yet God for them. There was no communion. He was outside of where they were. The blood interposed between Him and them. How could a soul be at ease and at peace with God when that is the case? What I want is to be able to look up into the face of my God. What I want is that He should be with me, and that I should rest in His presence. But merely to have that which comes between myself and God would never give me solid comfort before God, and, indeed, it ought not. Accordingly the subsequent circumstances proved the condition into which the children of Israel had fallen — a condition of anxiety, and dread, and danger, worse than they had ever known before.

And it is frequently so with the Christian. After the soul has been directed to Christ, there is often a coming into deeper waters than ever, and a deeper realisation of one's own sinfulness than ever. The sense of sin after we have looked to Christ is far more acute and intense than when we fled for refuge at the beginning. There was then a path of life through death. God was for them; but that was not all, He was against the Egyptians. And so when the Israelites had passed over, the Red Sea closes upon their enemies and all are dead; then Israel was saved, and it is remarkable that here for the first time God uses the term salvation. He does not say salvation on the night of the paschal lamb, but when they have passed through the sea. Salvation is a great deal more than being kept safe. Salvation means that complete clearance from all our foes — that bringing us out of the house of bondage, and setting us free and clean before God, to be His manifest people in the world. It was only pronounced when God brought them out of Egypt into the wilderness; it was when their foes were completely judged, and when they were so saved as never to pass under that kind of dread again.

Is it so with the Christian? Yes, surely. For what was the question then? The point then was, the prince of this world seeking to use and to turn God's righteous judgment against His own people — the prince of this world seeking to retain the people of God because of their sins; and what God shows is the complete judgment of their enemies — the destruction that fell upon all claim as against the people of God. God Himself publicly espoused their cause and acted on their behalf, so that they never returned to the house of bondage.

At the Red Sea it was the rod of judgment that was lifted up over the waters — it was that rod that smote the Egyptians with all plagues. So it is in the Epistle to the Romans. It is always righteousness. It is a question of turning righteousness against the people of God; but Christ has come, and by His blood He has cleansed them, and by death and resurrection He has brought them out of the place over which judgment hung — completely outside. There is no judgment any more. They see their sin, as well as their sins, completely gone in consequence of Christ's having undergone God's judgment. Therefore chapter 6 of Romans is the first place where sin in our walk is discussed; and in dealing with this question the apostle shows that we died to sin, and that the gift of God now is eternal life. Sin cannot touch the believer, for he is dead to it.

The next point is law. That, he shows, cannot touch the believer either, and for this reason, that I have "been made dead to the law." So in Romans 7, "we have been made dead to the law by the body of Christ" It is not some fresh means, but it is the application of that which is true already, to the law, even supposing I had been a Jew. That is, it is the death of Christ, applied to both sin and law, that gives the believer his clearance. And now we are "married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead." So it is as wrong for a believer still to have a thought of being "under the law" as for a woman to have two husbands at once. We are dead to the law that we should belong to another.

In Romans 8 we have it very fully. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." And he explains this in two ways. How could you condemn them? "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." How could you condemn what is perfectly good? That which God has given me in the Spirit of life in Christ. But there is another reason. God has condemned sin already. There is a reason founded upon the character of the new life, that God will never condemn what is good. But, moreover, God has condemned the bad life already: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." He has already judged my nature. It is not a question of forgiveness. I do not want my nature to be forgiven; I do not forgive it myself.

It is a great comfort that God in the Lord Jesus Christ has dealt with sin in the flesh. It was not enough that Christ by His own perfect purity condemned sin in the flesh, for that would have made me worse than ever; but after Christ in His life showed me a pattern of all purity, He became a sacrifice for sin, and then God condemned sin in the flesh — this nature that troubled me. Accordingly, if God has given me a new nature found in Christ risen from the dead, and also has condemned my old nature, it is very evident there can be no condemnation to those in Christ. You see in every point of view there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. Their walking after the Spirit is the consequence — the effect — of it; and the more I know I am delivered, the more happy my soul will be, and the stronger I will be in walking after the Spirit.

Although the believer is supposed to be perfectly brought out of this state of condemnation — out of the evil condition in which he was — yet for all that, he is in the wilderness; and so truly is this the case, that in this eighth of Romans, however happy, he is groaning, he is only "saved in hope." He is still in the wilderness, and so completely is this the case, that the Holy Ghost becomes the power of his groaning in the wilderness. So the analogy is perfect between the Christian and the Israelites, who were brought out of Egypt, but who never returned to it.

After they came out, they raise the song of triumph. There is no singing in Egypt. Here we find them singing on the other side of the Red Sea; but for all that, they are travelling through the wilderness — they are only going on to the rest of God — they are still toiling through the scene of trial, where, if there is not dependence on God, they perish. I speak now, of course, not in application to the Christian as a question of eternal life, but of practical experience. The wilderness is the place where flesh dies, and where all hangs on the simplicity of dependence on the love of God.

Part 2

The Jordan

Joshua 3, 4

It is evident that the Jordan is a type similar in its character to that of the Red Sea. I need not say that, whether in the type of the Red Sea or the Jordan, it is what grace has given the believer.

But then there is a most sensible difference, at the Jordan there is no such thing as a rod. It is another symbol altogether. The ark of the covenant of Jehovah, borne by the priests, goes right down into the Jordan; and from the moment the priests' feet approach the water, the waters fail on one side and rise up in a heap on the other; and so, while the ark remains in the bed of the river, the children of Israel pass clean over.

And when all is done, we find another remarkable point; that is to say, we have a memorial. It is not Egyptians destroyed. There is no question of judgment. The point is neither the justification of the people of God on the one hand, nor the judgment of enemies on the other. This is the great question of the Red Sea. At the Jordan God was bringing forth His people into His own land. Accordingly it sets forth One, a divine Person, who goes down into the waters of death and there alone stayed the proud waters till thus the people are brought through.

How does this apply to Christ? I answer, The Jordan finds its counterpart not in Romans but in Ephesians. In Ephesians, accordingly, there is no discussion of justification. Search it through and through, and you will fail to find in it the righteousness of God. If God accomplishes the great work that was before His mind (even before there was a world to be spoiled), if He intended to have a people who should have a nature capable of communion with Himself, a nature that never could be satisfied without being in heaven, that delights in His mind and love; if God intended, I say, to have such a people, and to have them, too, in the nearest possible relation to Himself, to have them as His own children in His own presence, how could justifying come in there? It is evident God does not need to justify such a work as this. I can understand when a person has got wrong, or when we think of the ungodly, that this should be told us. It is an infinite mercy that God has His own blessed way of justifying the ungodly; but there is no notion of justifying that which is perfectly according to God.

Hence in the Epistle to the Ephesians we never have the subject of justification. It is not that the apostle does not look into the state into which those that are the objects of God's mercy had got; for the second chapter is as plain as Romans 3 about the dreadful condition of those that were brought into that relationship. But in Romans we have, in the fullest manner, their sins proved and brought home to the conscience. We have their evil ways all traced fully, and yet God justifies. We have also their evil condition; and yet God takes them out of that condition, and gives them a new place. In Ephesians it is another aspect. The first thought the apostle dwells on is the purpose of God.

It is God's righteousness that justifies, as in Romans; not His mercy. There is not the smallest hint, therefore, of straining a point.

We know a king may, in order to forgive, pardon a person altogether guilty. I do not say the temper of the world would admit it, still less do I say that man is capable of using such a prerogative as God's grace. But it remains equally true, that it is not merely mercy, but righteousness which justifies, and the believer is the only one that owns his unworthiness and feels his sins according to God.

But in Ephesians another thing appears; God is there purposing from Himself and for Himself; it is God that delights in His own counsel. He means not to be alone in heaven. He means to surround Himself with men thoroughly happy. He means to give them that which would be capable of answering to His own mind and ways, and accordingly in a relationship suitable to it. This is what He does. But what, after all, is their state, when taken up by grace? Dead in trespasses and sins. And this makes it the more remarkable, that there is not a word about justification. But Christ goes down into that death where they lay, goes down underneath their condition, so to speak; and this is the only way in which it is handled in Ephesians. He by grace went down there, and God raised Him up, and set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places. The point in Jordan is, not bringing the people out of slavery, but bringing them into the land, "into heavenly places in Christ."

Will you say, That is when we die? When Israel crossed the Jordan, they entered on a scene of conflict, I ask, When we die and go to heaven shall we have to fight there? No. Well then, if so, it is wrong to make it our dying and going to heaven. The passing of the Jordan means, the bringing the believer into "heavenly places" in such a way that he shall fight and win the victory too. This is the meaning of it. How can a Christian be brought into heavenly places while here? This is what the Epistle to the Ephesians tells us.

You will see how different this is from what was found in crossing the Red Sea. Hence the style of doctrine in Ephesians is different from that of Romans; that is the reason why in Ephesians, it is "heavenly places" that are spoken of. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ."

Yet all this is true to faith now. Of course when we actually go to heaven we shall not lose this place of blessing, but the point that Paul insists on is, that God has already blessed us thus and there in Christ.

The end of the first chapter shows that God raised up Christ from the dead, and set Him in heavenly places; and the beginning of the second chapter shows that in doing this God laid the foundation for our being put in the very same place before God. "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in trespasses, quickened us together with Christ, . . . . and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." We have already then crossed the Jordan. It is not that we are to cross it, but that we have crossed it now.

Is Christ "in the heavenly places"? Am I united to Christ now, or am I only going to be united when I die? Am I now in this very place before God, raised up together with Christ, and so "in the heavenly [places] in Christ Jesus?" It is quite evident that the doctrine of the Epistle to the Ephesians is, that we are so; it is notorious that the doctrine of most Christians is, that we cannot be so till we die.

Now, why is it that people do not enter into this truth? The reason is, you cannot be both a prosperous earthly man, entering into that which occupies men here below, and a heavenly man too; but the natural mind would like to make the best of this world, and the best of the next too. The truth is, I must cross the Jordan now as a Christian; nay, I have crossed it in Christ, if I am a Christian. So you will observe I am not going to point out to you what you have to do, but I wish to make plain what God has done for you, if you are Christians. How blessed it is that Christianity does not hold out what I must attain to in order to be saved, but is a revelation of what God has given me in Christ!

God gives me, and you that believe, a salvation so full, that it not only means that we have been brought across the Red Sea (thus made pilgrims and strangers), but that we have been brought across the Jordan into heavenly places, and blessed with all spiritual blessings there. You say, perhaps, it is mysticism. No such thing. It is the very negation of mysticism. For this turns the eye to Christ, and God's work in Christ; whereas mysticism occupies the heart with its feelings about Him. If Christ is my life, and Christ is seated there, it is evident that I have, by the Spirit of God who dwells in me, and who has been sent by that Christ, a divine link with Him who has entered in there. It is thus that God speaks of us according to that which is true of Christ. That is, Christ being there and He being the life of the believer, and the Holy Spirit the power of that life, we are spoken of according to the place that Christ has entered.

The grand point of the Red Sea is what Christ brings us out of, and that of the Jordan is what Christ brings us into. It is quite evident that what God sets forth by this type is the sweet and blessed truth, that Christ having entered into the very place where God means the Christian to be, God would form us according to Him in that which is to be our true home. Our proper home is not this world, nay, not even in the millennial state. Our hope is not any change that will ever take place in this world, but the "Father's house," where Christ is dwelling. God means that where He is we shall be. It is not merely that Christ will come and bless us where we are (like Israel by and by), but that He will come and take us to where He is; this is what we are waiting for; but meanwhile we are viewed and treated as one with Him to whom we are united there.

I do not mean that we can do without the Epistle to the Romans. The Christian who gets so full of Ephesian truth that he can do without Romans (or, I would add, Hebrews), is on dangerous ground; while he that thinks he can do without Ephesians is flying in the face of God, and the glory of His grace. If He has given us a full cup of blessing in Christ, our wisdom is to seek to understand what our portion is; and the great practical business of the Christian is to live according to the place wherein he is set by God.

If God has brought me out of the house of bondage, He has also put me in heavenly places in Christ. It is not a question of what I see or feel. It is all very well we should appreciate what we are, but we must believe first; and when we take in the completeness of the deliverance out of Egypt, then we see in type what we are delivered from; and when we believe our portion in heavenly places, what can we do but bless Him who has so blessed us?

The First Epistle to the Corinthians, though by no means so full of this as that to the Ephesians, brings before us the principle of this truth: "As is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." The first thought is, that we are heavenly now; and the second is, that though we are heavenly, we do not yet bear the image of the heavenly, but we shall. What a deliverance from mysticism! Mysticism is merely the craving of the heart to feel within what it would desire to have; but faith avoids this occupation with self, and enters into the truth of God. It may be a mystery; but it is one unveiled, and which God makes to be most real and intelligible by the power of the Holy Ghost, for God, of His own grace, has counselled, done, and given it all to us in Christ.

Thus you see the passage of the Jordan differs essentially from the crossing of the Red Sea. Even for the children of Israel at the Red Sea, there was the rod, the judicial rod of power; which for the Egyptians brought destruction. Besides, there was no lasting memorial set up. When you come to the Jordan, there was a double memorial. Twelve stones were placed in the bed of the river, where the feet of the priests rested; and other twelve were taken out of it and were brought to Gilgal.

This reminds me of another fact that gives us a beautiful link with the Epistle to the Colossians. When Israel passed through the Red Sea, circumcision was not practised — there was no sign of the mortification of the flesh — but when they passed through the Jordan they submitted to it. Circumcision means the mortification of the flesh. This furnishes another reason why the common doctrine on this point cannot be true; for when we are dead and gone to heaven there is no flesh to be mortified. Alas! it explains also why self-judgment is so feeble in the mass of those who love the Lord. They know the Lamb and His sprinkled blood; they freely realise their deliverance from Egypt into the wilderness, but not at all their position in Him above, nor consequently do they know Gilgal, where the reproach of Egypt was rolled away from the circumcised.

When the children of Israel crossed the Jordan they placed two memorials — one of death and one of resurrection, showing that in every sense death is gone. But more than that, flesh now is mortified. And there is nothing that gives the soul the sense of the end of the flesh, its being judged thoroughly, and the comfort of it, so much as the consciousness of death and resurrection as bringing us into our true place before God.

Hence, in Colossians, the Holy Ghost speaks not only of a baptism, but also says, "in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in the putting off of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2: 11).

In the next chapter we read "Mortify, therefore, your members which are on the earth." So there is this double application. According to the book of Joshua they were first circumcised; and, let them move where they might, they come back to Gilgal. This is a call to continual mortification of the flesh, on the ground that we have been once for all circumcised. Our circumcision was God's dealing with our nature in the death of Christ; but on the ground of this we have to mortify our members. If God has already judged the flesh, what I as a Christian am called to do is to take God's side against my own evil nature. I am called to cherish direct communion with God in condemning any and everything that is unlike Him. This type, you see, is full of direct instruction to the soul, and so far from being a mere theory is eminently practical. I have no doubt this is the reason why people shrink from the types of both the Red Sea and the Jordan. Many would like to know that they shall be protected from judgment, but God would put them in association with His own objects. He gives me a heavenly title that I should have my mind set on things above; for He would have my mind formed by these new and heavenly objects that are where Christ is.

And oh, beloved brethren, what a relief it is that in the common business of this world one can have one's mind and heart set upon what will never perish! Let us have our hearts occupied with what is precious in God's eyes. We can take up other things as matters of duty; but the moment we make them objects, we altogether miss the mind of God. It does not matter what the thing may be. Suppose a person at any business; it makes all the difference possible whether he is simply doing it to God as that which He has given him to do, or whether it is what he likes and takes pleasure in, his object being to be great or rich by it. Where this is the case, I am practically making this world to be the scene of my enjoyment. I am not even treating it as a wilderness, still less am I acting as associated with Christ in heavenly places. On the other hand, if I hold firmly, as from God, that even now I am a heavenly man, still, if God has given me anything to do, I do it — no matter what it may be.

Accordingly, in Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 6, you find all these earthly ties which may rightly be the relationships of heavenly men and women and children; but the only true power of walking well on earth is to remember that I am a heavenly man. It is not only that I am a delivered man, but I am put in present association with heavenly associations in Christ; and unless I bear this in mind, how can I behave myself suitably to the position I am in?

Suppose you take the case of a member of the royal family that for a time goes incognito to some other country. Though he hides his glory, he carries the sense of it in his heart. The Queen of England might travel on the continent by the title of the Duchess of Kent, yet would she have the secret consciousness that she was Sovereign of an empire on which the sun never sets. So with the Christian: the world does not know his title. The world would think it downright fanaticism to be talking about heavenly persons when here below; but we know not merely this, but that the world is under the judgment of the Lord, and it is only the breath of His mouth that is between it and everlasting judgment. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ is ready to judge the living and the dead.

Oh, on what a hair hangs the judgment of this world! but as to us who believe, judgment has passed for ever; — I mean judgment as against us on God's part. I do not mean that we shall not have all our ways manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ. We shall all appear, but shall never appear as criminals there. If Christ has brought us now into the favour of God we are not going to lose it when we are risen and glorified.

I beseech of you to hold fast this precious truth. You have passed across the Jordan as truly as you have marched through the Red Sea. You are not only to remember that you are pilgrims, but that you have a living link with heaven; be sure you regard it as your own proper home. The wilderness is merely a place of sojourn; but the heavenly places are our only abiding place. God's purpose to have us in heaven was made before the world was. The world has become sinful, and so has become a wilderness, for there would be no wilderness if there was not sin; but God has delivered us in grace from our sins, and has also brought us in spirit through the wilderness. As a matter of fact, indeed, we have sin, and are passing through the wilderness; but in title, and as united to Christ, we are clear from both. May God in His grace give us to enter more into this truth, and to live in the power of it!

W.K.

Christ for the Saint and Christ for the Sinner.

Rev. 22: 17.

W. Kelly.

"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

There is a great deal more in this verse than most are apt to find, even though they may be dear, and even intelligent, children of God. Yet it is also remarkable that, although the depth is uncommon in presenting the brightest hope of the church, as well as encouraging the simplest individual believer, there is likewise the most ample expression of sovereign grace to the neediest of sinners, in whatever state he may be found. What can be more open than saying "He that will, let him take the water of life freely?" There is no more unrestricted invitation to perishing souls in any part of the Bible. Yet what grace shone when the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria and announced — what man's hard heart is so slow to believe — the Father's love in seeking worshippers to worship Him. And the Son was there to manifest that He did not disdain, but even sought, that poor woman without a character. Some may have thought she avoided going at the hour when other women went to the well. If she had obvious reason for shunning them, they had not a kind word to say about her. But Christ made God known in love, even to one so wretched through sin. Yet He who thus loves is holy, whereas those who despised her were not.

Those who set up and cultivate sanctimonious expression of speech and ways have rarely any real sense of sin in themselves, any more than of grace in God. They make a fair show in the flesh, and have never learnt their own ruin as sinners. They desire to feel and appear holy, and fear to find out and own what they really are in God's sight. But is it not always the greatest weakness to wish to appear anything? The believer has no reason to hide when he is assured of the grace that forgives all his sins. If God justifies him, who is he that condemns? He can afford to appear what he really is. "The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from every sin." "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God," says the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, who had been amongst the most dissolute of mankind. Greece as a country was full of immorality; and there was no city in all that land so proverbially bad as Corinth. Yet the Lord, to encourage His servant in the face of opposing and blaspheming Jews, said, "Be not afraid but speak, and hold not thy peace . . . for I have much people in this city." It required a word by a vision at night from the Lord to the apostle to keep up his courage in continuing in a place so full of corruption as Corinth.

Ever bear in mind that in the gospel it is what the Lord brings to us, and not what we offer to Him, when received in faith, which is the turning-point and the substance of the soul's salvation. God has, and freely, given a perfect Saviour in Christ for the lost. Does any one of you doubt that His heart is so ready to forgive, even you, notwithstanding your sins which are many and great? You do Him a heinous wrong in doubting His word and His love. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, not only can He afford to save you on believing, but He gives all with the freeness and fulness that becomes the God of all grace. "He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all: how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

The figure employed, in the Revelation, is "the water of life;" as the Lord spoke of giving "the living water" in John 4: 10. The two books, the Gospel and the Revelation, are as different in character as can be; but who does not see how thoroughly the words tally, and how one Spirit reigns throughout Scripture? The book of Revelation is as full of judgment, as the Gospel of John teems with grace; but it is the same Lord Jesus Christ, whatever the distinctness of design may require in each case. The prophetic visions vindicate His rights over all the universe, and therefore over all nations as well as Israel. Before they begin in Rev. 6 we are given to see the bright result of grace in the glorified saints gathered on high around the throne, under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned and enthroned elders in Rev. 4, and Rev. 5. But the book could not close without the words read in the text, which put the church and the believer in their present place of hope, and which continue to invite the sinner, whatever his state, to receive His grace as freely as ever. First of all, we hear "the Spirit and the bride" saying to Christ, "Come." For He loved the church and gave Himself for her; and she knows from His own lips that He is coming to receive her to Himself. Therefore we can understand how proper are the words, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." To whom does the Spirit animate the bride thus to speak? To the Bridegroom. It is indeed much to be noticed, and full of instruction.

Earlier in the book (Rev. 3: 11) the Lord says "I come quickly"; but the Spirit and the bride do not add "quickly" now — they join in crying to Christ, "Come." Those who compose the bride had already each submitted to the righteousness of God; they knew for their own souls that they were saved by grace through faith; and they were waiting in assured hope of Him to bring them into the Father's house, where He Himself now is, and whence He had promised to come and fetch them there. Remark then how important and how suited are the words, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." Men, and even saints, are all liable to mistakes. Who, that knows himself or others, could rest his hope on the creature in its best estate? As we need Christ's work for saving us, so we cannot do without God's word for any appearance of solid worth, whether for faith or hope, for walk or worship. Therefore does the Spirit — that is, the Holy Ghost — prompt the word. He and the bride are represented as saying, "Come." Can anything be more comely or in character?

The Spirit of God has His place as directing and strengthening the heart of the church, the bride. He dwells in the believer as well as in the church. As this privilege never was enjoyed before redemption, so it never will be given in the same power and way again. Ample blessing awaits Israel and the nations by and by. The Spirit will be poured out again when the Lord reigns. It will be "the regeneration" for the earth, as the prophets predict, in the millennial day. But Scripture indicates again remarkable differences as compared with His presence now. And no intelligent soul can be surprised; for on the bright day that approaches for the world, there will be sight; and no such tests of faith as there are now. Everything will be joyous, peaceful, and prosperous in righteousness. Satan will be shut out from tempting and seducing; and Jehovah shall reign over all the earth without a rival or a rebel, His name one. But now the present is the evil age from which grace has delivered the Christian who has to make his way by faith and suffering for his Master's sake.

We ought to be like the fish swimming against the stream as living fish do: the dead ones are carried along with it. The prince of the power of the air, the spirit that ever works in the sons of disobedience is still directing the many evil currents of the world; but every one is dead against the Lord Jesus, as Scripture warns us. Constantine did not alter that; and the Papacy only added another evil. There cannot be a better proof of the world's enmity to God than that it all, civil and religious, cast out and crucified His Son. For who were those who did the deed? Not Hottentots or Tartars, or Chinese. The Roman power of that day was misled by His own ancient people, the Jews. Herod was content with mockery. Even the ruthless Pilate wanted to let the Lord off, because he knew it was for envy, He was victimised; and by whose envy? The priests', the High Priest's — the very men set up of God to intercede for others. How evidently they were fallen under the power of Satan, and were interceding for his will and victory when they crucified the Son of God! Such was the real character of their persistent outcry. And so it is that the world treats His name and truth. It may go on in apparent quiet for a time; but what brings its enmity to a head? Christ. As then, so ever and so now, it is Christ that Satan always opposes, drawing in his train the enmity of the world.

The judge of quick and dead is a reality they cannot stand. And so they gnash, not perhaps with their teeth, but in their hearts. They accordingly cannot, as they are now, but hate those identified with His truth, as they will hate you if you are faithful, but not if you compromise. Compromising is an insidious and especial danger for a Christian. The new nature he has in Christ makes him abhor sin, and just because he is born of God, he turns away from it and prays to God His Father to be delivered from all evil by virtue of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. The Holy Spirit was sent from heaven in manifested power after our Lord died, rose, and ascended. It is well to remember the words in John 7: 39, "The Holy Ghost was not yet [given] because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Is this the doctrine you usually hear? Alas! very commonly it is not, and this among the saints and the excellent of the earth. Let me speak of one no longer alive, an eloquent and celebrated preacher, a pious and prayerful man (a former dean of Ripon), who wrote a book to prove that the Holy Ghost's presence and action did not differ at Pentecost from what it was before. But this idea contradicted flatly the words cited and the truth generally in the New Testament. For the Gospels all look forward to that great gift as an immense and new privilege. When Jesus took His seat on high, the Holy Ghost came personally, and came to abide for ever. This had never been before, and never will be again in the same peculiar way. For the kingdom by and by there will be a larger work. The Spirit will be poured on all flesh; so that the extent will be far greater. "My people (Israel) shall be all righteous" in that day; and vast too will be the blessing among all the nations of the earth. How striking and how general the work of divine grace when the idols shall utterly pass away, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted in that day!

But what the Holy Spirit occupies Himself with now is a most special work of concentration, rather than of world-wide action, though the testimony of the gospel is preached to every creature. And why ? Because He is gathering souls in spiritual power round the true centre, the Lord Jesus. And this survives all man's failure and defection. "For where two or three are gathered together to my name, there am I in the midst of them." Christ's name was the centre at Pentecost when the church began; and so it is still. When the Spirit is poured out at the coming of the Lord's world-kingdom (Rev. 11), He will adapt Himself to the work in hand. He will, for instance, enable God's people to walk according to God's laws under the new and divine government of the earth. For Israel it will be the new covenant, and a Messiah reigning in open power; and the Spirit will strengthen in that way. But what an enormous difference there will be when the Lord visibly governs, reigning as a king in righteousness, with princes that rule in judgment; and the vile shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful! How will not the presence of the Lord as a priest on His throne make everything to be in holy order and peaceful happiness in that day!

So He says, in the verse before the one read, "I [Jesus] am the root and the offspring of David." He will then assuredly accomplish all the old and glorious predictions for the earth. He will bless Israel to the full, and, after Israel, all the nations in general. Israel behaved shamelessly, and the other nations (previously rebellious) found no deliverance, no help, in a people that sinned along with them. In due time the gospel came in and lifted the believer above nationality, whether Jewish or Gentile. The gospel has for its aim to save the believer, and unite him to Christ in, and for, heavenly glory. Thus is the church formed by the present Holy Spirit. It is the richest expression of divine grace. Those who believe are called to be, and even now are, God's children, as they also are by one Spirit baptised into one body.

Do you ask, What of ourselves and our sins? I ask in reply, For what did Christ die? Did not His death effect for the believer what God intended? Was He not offered for the remission of sins? Does He not blot them out before God for each believer, as in the type of the scape-goat (only a great deal better) they were borne away to a solitary land, where nobody would hear of them more? Remember there were two goats. There was one goat for Jehovah, and the other was for dismissal into the wilderness. The first was sacrificed for a sin-offering. The essential thing where sin is in question is, first of all, to vindicate God. If we are to have His grace, He must have His rights in order that His grace may flow without a jar or an obstacle. The first goat was therefore offered as a sin-offering to Jehovah. The second goat could have no efficacy save in virtue of the first; but after that offering, how invaluable its testimony that "all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins" were sent away expressly to a land of forgetfulness! Such was the solemn type on the day of atonement (Lev. 16). And the Lord Jesus more than made it good, as all can find who receive Heb. 9, and Heb. 10 from God. On His work are founded the blessed words, "their sins and iniquities will I remember no more."

Do we, my friends, for ourselves believe these words? How few comparatively in this land of religious profession really believe? How many flatter themselves that they do, while manifestly unconverted! If you believe God's testimony to you as a guilty person, it would mark that His grace has awakened your soul. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Have you bowed in faith to the truth and the grace so plain in the gospel? Do you not see that God could afford to justify you righteously through Christ's blood, and in no other way? Till our Lord died, not a single sin was taken away; when He died and rose, a work was accepted by God which would leave not a single sin on any believer. But even God's children for the most part are only half-believers. They have generally slipped back to the condition of Jews before the Lord came. They think the efficacy is lost every time they break down, and that they must begin over again.

How sad to be in a measure always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth! The Jew, under law, could not avoid this constant need of renewal; but what are Christians about, who so forget the gospel? It is unbelief of what grace now gives through Christ Jesus. What can more evidently weaken and darken the glad tidings God sends us? All spring is gone for a holy walk; and you cannot worship in the Spirit unless you know that all is clear between Him and you. Far am I from saying that you are to gloss over any failure. Confess all fully, and at once; but go to Him with the certainty that He welcomes you to His presence which you must have slighted when you sinned. But are you not in living relationship with Him, and with the Lord Jesus, His Son? You have dishonoured Him; but if He denies not your relationship, you should not, who need it more than ever for the restoration of your soul. Perhaps you may have said, or done something, wrong this morning. But is there no appointed remedy, no adequate way, of getting practically clear? Certainly there is. Retire into your closet, shut the door, and have it out with God. It is not that He revokes His grace, and that you are back in the world, but that having partaken of His grace in the gospel, you should humble yourself deeply for any sins into which carelessness has let you slip.

The apostle told the Corinthians that, "if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." They then had not judged themselves, and the Lord was chastening them. How did He then deal with the Corinthians? "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and not a few sleep." This did not prove they were unbelievers, but rather the contrary. It was just because they bore His name that the Lord chastised them. He does not execute condemnation on the world yet: it will be judgment in strict unsparing righteousness. There will be no mercy (which men despised) mingling with the just award (which they did not fear). Now there is grace without judgment. Why? Because Christ undertook the judgment and bore it on the cross. Nothing is more righteous, if He undertook it; nothing more gracious, nothing simpler than the gospel; while nothing is deeper, nothing surer, and nothing more blessed. Therein God gives complete rest for your conscience in what Christ has suffered for you, and in His love perfect rest for your heart. You are then free to have Christ Himself to enjoy.

What can compare with the privileges of the Christian? It is not merely hearing sermons, were they master-pieces, nor is it prayer individual or common, although you are sure to fall into sins if careless as to prayer and the word of God too. "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" It is through the washing of water by His word. It admonishes and warns, corrects and rebukes, feeds and directs, revives and encourages us; yet how seldom one hears ordinarily about this cleansing by the word. All who believe do speak of Christ's blood; its need is too absolute for such souls to forget it. But children of God for lack of honouring the word must seem to be lingering about the door, as if they were not free to cross the threshold of forgiveness. There they are and there they stick; which tends at length to the forgetfulness of the purging from their old sins. It is the more sorrowful because we all are called to go forward in enjoying Christ, and to be filled with thanksgiving and praise.

Therefore, my dear friends, I cannot but press this upon your earnest heed, so that you who believe may be enabled to take in faith your due place. Never mind what man thinks; hearken to what the Lord says. Men count it strange if you go back to the standard of the only, the best, way. It looks eccentric when compared with modern thought or practice ever so old since apostolic days. But your wisdom is never to let such talk deprive you of the blessing of walking obediently in the truth. "As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk ye in Him." Delivered from a bad conscience and guilty fears, see that you move onward, dependent and confiding. Be assured of His grace whether you fall asleep, or live till He comes, when He will receive us all together to Himself and for the Father's house. Unless you know yourselves purged by His blood, and yourselves the objects of His love, how is it possible to be in a fit condition to worship the Father and the Son? You may fairly be described as no more than lying on the threshold, instead of entering into the joys of God's habitation in the Spirit; for He surely has pleasure in the happiness of His children. As things are, how many Christians are but borderers, whereas Christ suffered for our sins, "the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God," and has given us the Spirit that we might enjoy the presence of God fully even now and here.

Is not this condition sanctioned in the New Testament? What did the apostle mean in desiring that the Colossians should be thanking "the Father, who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light?" Are you thus thanking Him now? You, if a believer, have eternal life, your sins are forgiven, and yourself are a child of God, with the Spirit of His Son enabling your heart to cry, Abba, Father. To be a "door-keeper" now is falling short of what God bestows on you. Christ not only meets us where we were, but brings us even now in faith where He is — into the holiest. The salvation God gives, not to some, but to all that believe, is worthy of Himself and His Son. He leaves not a single spot or stain upon us; and we are thenceforward called in the strength of the heavenly meat of Christ to enjoy God's love unstinted and perfect. Christ's work may well banish every doubt on that score.

But what does He mean by saying, "I am the root and the offspring of David"? To be David's offspring not even an unbelieving Jew could deny to the Christ. But how could He be David's root when He was born more than a thousand years after David? Yet He says so, which is enough; as the Old Testament scriptures said the same, centuries before. Yes, He was David's root just as surely as, if more wonderingly than, He was David's offspring — the Son of David as well as David's Lord. Compare Psalm 110 and Matthew 22: 45. In one person now is He both God and man, as He loved to call Himself the Son of man, yet of David's lineage, and thus, inheriting Solomon's title. If He had been only of His mother, this, though absolutely needed, would not have been sufficient. For, as is known, she was, through her father Heli, descended from Nathan, who had not the promise of the kingdom. It must be through Solomon's line. Here, therefore, Joseph furnished the missing link, being not only of David but through Solomon.

Hence, plainly as in Luke 3 we have His mother's line, so in Matt. 1 we have Joseph's title, and how it became His indisputably, on Jewish principles. Both met in Himself the Messiah, "Who is over all, God blessed for ever, Amen." He was thus, and only thus, by any possibility, David's root as well as offspring. And yet if He had been Joseph's son in His humanity, as He was Mary's, all would have been sin and falsehood. For He could not then have been God's Son, His Only-begotten; He could not have been God, as truly as the Father is. But Joseph's son He was legally alone, because Joseph was affianced to the virgin Mary, though they never lived together till the wondrous Babe of Bethlehem was born, as scripture carefully states, and the prophet Isaiah had no less carefully foreshown.

Truly we may exclaim

"How wondrous the glories that meet

In Jesus, and from His face shine

His love is eternal and sweet,

'Tis human, 'tis also divine."

Yet, with an incomparably higher claim, He never had a kingdom here below from God, like David, or Solomon. He came to suffer for sins to God's glory, and thus lay the basis of redemption, not only for sinners and the church now, but for the kingdom by and by, and for all things, God being thus infinitely glorified. Oh, what a wonderful combination of glory, divine and human, past and present, future and everlasting! He died, not for that nation only, the poor Jewish people which had Him put to death on the cross. Yet He died for them. He prayed for His murderers, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." On that very ground they had the gospel preached, and many believed; on that very ground they will have forgiveness in the age to come.

And why are not you forgiven today? The word of this salvation is sent to you that you may believe it now. "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Put not the word of reconciliation from you, but receive it into your souls. Believe that God made Him that knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in Him.

But my task is to show that there is another and very distinct character in which the Lord next presents Himself. He will verify and make good all that David's root and offspring can impart in His coming kingdom. Yet He is also the "bright, the morning star." This is never said in the Old Testament about the Lord Jesus. The only morning star we hear of there is His enemy, foreshadowed by the haughty king of Babylon in Isa. 14, the last holder of the imperial power which began in "the golden city." "Thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God . . . I will be like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the uttermost parts of the pit." It is because of his great words at the close that he will be given to the burning of fire. This appears to be the true identification of the "day-star, son of the morning," in the prophetic word of Isaiah. It is not Satan, as many have hastily thought. He is described as a great king, this king of Babylon. Thus the first king of Babylon is a type of the last who succeeds to the world-power which began then. It is not Nebuchadnezzar whose last appearance in scripture (Dan. 4) is as different as possible, both in humiliation and restoration. Nor did any other fully meet the terms of the prophet; but it surely will be in the little horn of the West (Dan. 7) He is the final holder of this world's imperial power. Such is the man whom Old Testament prophecy describes as the "son of the morning, or the day-star" (Lucifer).

But the Lord for whom we wait now, the hope of the church and of the Christian, reveals Himself accordingly as "the bright, the morning star." Nor is it the first time. For, in an earlier part of this very book of Revelation, it is said of Him, "I will give him (the overcomer) the morning star." Here too the Lord distinguishes it from giving him power over the nations; just as we have His own title as "the root and the offspring of David" distinguished from His being "the bright, the morning star." Authority or power over the nations will be when the Lord takes the kingdom of the world, rising as the Sun of righteousness. But when He adds "and I will give Him the morning star," it is association with Himself when He receives His own to Himself before that day of outward universal power shall dawn. He thus promises to the overcomer something more, and higher, and more intimate than that. He is going to give us Himself in heavenly blessedness and in love truly divine before that day.

Such will be the morning star. This lovely harbinger is before the day breaks. The sun is not yet risen to dispel the darkness of the night. The morning star, oh! how it cheers those who watch while others sleep; and to watch now is what Christians are called to — to wait for Christ, sure that He is coming for His own, not knowing when He comes. This is the precious object for our hearts as we pursue the pilgrim path. It is the hope given us by Himself (John 14) If day by day we make it by the Spirit a living reality, what a power of raising our souls from toil and moil, from snares and troubles, to that which is before Himself! For He particularly awaits that moment. Impossible to be peacefully directed thus in heart, and to be also absorbed with earthly expectations, and clouded with worldly cares.

Whatever be the duty of the Christian, he is bound to do it thoroughly and with thanksgiving to the Lord. But he is not troubled if others run before him as they like; and whatever the trial, he can trust the Lord unqualifiedly. Where "the bright, the morning star" fills the heart, as its outlook, what comparable is anything you can win by labours night and day? The Gentiles seek after meat and drink and clothing; and the world holds out as prizes, gold and silver and precious things; but what are these compared with "the bright, the morning star"? To behold Christ at His coming to share with us His heavenly glory! to be in a moment, and for ever, associated with Him, before His judgments fall on the nations! Yet, in substance, it is the same hope He gave His own whilst He was here — the hope of His coming again to place us where He is in His Father's house. It is a quite different thing from His earthly glory as the root and off-spring of David, when He reigns by and by. He is in His Father's house, whither He went to prepare a place for us. He is coming to give him that overcometh the Morning Star.

Is this then your hope, my brethren? Or are you only occupied with the Jews and their movement toward the land? Many are expecting the world to get better by education and temperance, by art, letters, and science. But all such expectations are vain. Others with better feeling trust to the preaching of the gospel as the panacea in the hand of the Spirit. Have they forgotten that Pentecost has been fulfilled without any such effect on the nations of the earth? Did the world improve when the twelve apostles laboured here below, and the apostle Paul beyond them all? Can you imagine that the present generation of Christian preachers or any one else approaches within a measurable degree those whom God set "first in the church?" He who could tolerate a thought of comparison with them could only be a person as ignorant of himself as of them. Yet were they men filled with an abiding sense of their own insufficiency and with a like spirit of dependence on the Lord. They accepted, and held unflinchingly to, the path of pilgrims and strangers, as it was Christ's path. Yet even in their own time, though lingering at first in Jerusalem, they went forth and preached the gospel everywhere, practically through the known world of that day. But nobody then dreamt of its improving the world. The true object and right effect of the gospel is to gather believers out of the world for heavenly glory with Christ. It is quite another thing which, if we believe scripture, will change the face of all here below on the earth according to the purpose of God. It is the coming of the Lord in power and glory. Then He shall chase away its darkness as the Sun of righteousness. Then "every eye shall see Him." But here He announces Himself as "the bright, the morning star." Only believing eyes shall see Him thus. It is the Christian's hope; and this is what we are awaiting now — Himself our hope.

Do not tell me that only some choice and intelligent Christians are to be caught up to meet Him. Read 1 Thess. 1, and learn how these young disciples "turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven." Here was living reality. They were waiting by faith for the Lord Jesus to come, and receive them to heaven out of the world, not to improve the world by them. The genuine bettering of the world will be first by divine judgments, and then by the effectual working of the Holy Spirit, when Christ rules the universe manifestly. The wicked will be smitten, and Satan for a thousand years shut out from the world. This has never been as yet. Think you that sermons, and tracts, and all the preachers that ever were could shut up Satan for even an hour? But the Lord will do it with ease, whatever the means He deigns to employ. He shall bruise the serpent's head, yea, under the feet of His saints. Satan during His reign is to be shut up in the bottomless pit, before he is let loose for his last temptation, and flung for ever into the lake of fire.

Scripture describes the present in one aspect as "night." Well might it be so! since our Lord was crucified. It is the night of man's day. But the light of God's glory in Christ has shone into our hearts, once utterly dark; and we can look up into the heavens, and by faith behold the One who is coming. And this hope brightens the heart before He comes, and makes us long for Him. The first object of the Christian's heart is Christ. This only the better fits us to seek the perishing, that they may be saved; as we have a yet nearer call of love toward brethren in Christ. But the first and deepest affection is and ought to be toward Christ. Our constant and due attitude is to be patiently waiting for Him, that is, for "the bright, the morning star."

Now, let me ask, Is it so with you that believe? What is the use of any truth if you do not make it your own, and live in it? It will otherwise only condemn you. Who can be said to set a just regard on God's truth if he does not earnestly act on it? We owe all to His love; and in fact it was His love that sent Christ to die and bring us salvation. "God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5: 8). So also just before, we were yet without strength, when "in due time Christ died for the ungodly." This is God's gospel; and the proper hope of him that has received the gospel is Christ coming for us, when also we shall reign with Him. The Old Testament saints shall also share His reign; they suffered in faith. But none had the Bright, the Morning Star revealed, as Christ does it now. Hence see the force of "The Spirit, and the bride say, Come." For the Holy Ghost is in us now, and leads the church to say, Come; as he that hears, the individual believer, is invited to bid Christ come. But how could anyone ask the Lord to come, the Judge of quick and dead, unless he were justified by faith, and had peace with God?

Beware of the too common view which mixes up the coming of the Lord for the saints, with His appearing to judge the world. Shall I tell you what such a theory is like? It actually makes the Lord, when He comes to receive His bride, array Himself as it were with the black cap of the Judge. To him who knows the symmetry of God's word there can scarce be a sadder perversion of the truth. The Lord coming with a black cap to meet His bride! Oh, what folly man can conceive when he slips from Scripture into his own thoughts!

There are two parts in Christ's coming. First, He will receive His saints and take them to heaven. There is the great importance of the fourth chapter of the Revelation. None can find the church on earth after Rev. 3; for the concluding word in Rev. 22 goes back of course, and is no exception to the fact named. The second and third chapters of the Revelation show the churches in seven different types, which furnish a somewhat prophetic view of what it seemed good to the Lord to notice therein until He comes. The next chapter (Rev. 4) lets us see all the saints glorified in heaven. How did they get there? The Lord had translated them. It does not belong to the purpose of the Revelation to give a vision of the Lord's coming to receive them to Himself. The vision we have in Rev. 19 is of the Lord coming from heaven with the saints following Him when He executes judgment.

Confessedly, the only way (and how happily!) believers can be caught up to heaven is by Christ's presenting them there at His coming. The fullest revelation of it is in 1 Thess. 4, in 2 Thess. 2: 1, and in 1 Cor. 15. In these three scriptures, which ought to more than suffice, we have the proof that in this way only are the saints to be taken in a moment together out of the world; as they will at a later season leave heaven — at the time of His appearing to execute judgment. There is thus not the least mixing of the Bridegroom's coming for the bride, and of the Judge's execution of judgment on the world. This enforcing of judgment might suit such a cap of condemnation (at least in human style). But think of so grotesque an array for one meeting and marrying a bride, even though he were a judge! Yet this reflects symbolically what such a system of confusion makes of our Lord's coming. It is as contrary to Scripture as to the nature of things. Distinguish the two parts, and you have, Christ coming for His saints, and in due course His other act of coming with them to judge the world.

The distinction preserves the hope in its constant power. We may always wait if there be no revealed events to intervene. Such is the unquestionable impression formed by the Gospels and the Epistles, and confirmed, not impaired, by the Revelation rightly understood. Still more profuse again are the references to His appearing to judge the world, before which important events must necessarily be fulfilled. Then in the Revelation we have the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials, to say nothing of signs and solemn facts which the Lord and the apostle declare must be before that day. But the coming for His own is carefully apart, that it may be a simple hope, and not an event of providence or of prophecy. They are both true, but distinct, parts of His Second Advent.

Hence the moment the bride hears of Him as the Bright, the Morning Star, she answers, "Come." She knows of no revealed delay; she asks for no tokens; she thinks of no preparation further in this world. The church alone (and so the Christian individually) has the Spirit thus guiding in perfect peace and confiding affection before the Lord comes. Whatever outpouring of the Spirit the Jews receive is after He appears. It is therefore eminently characteristic of the bride, the church, that the Spirit is shown here leading her to say, Come. It is not a mere expression of her own feeling (which might be enthusiasm), but a Spirit-given and sanctioned call to Christ, as the fruit in her of His grace and truth. And what has ever wrought in saints effects more acceptable to God than the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ? The bride is, without doubt, the church, longing for Christ to come, and rightly interpreting by the Spirit His way of revealing Himself.

It is not at all doubted that Jerusalem will be in a similar relation comparatively on the earth. Jerusalem is the bride referred to in the Canticles, as well as Ps. 14 and elsewhere in the Old Testament. There the associations are all earthly. Of course it is a figure in either case, meaning the one dearest to the Lord respectively in heaven or earth. There is no real difficulty; only we must not confuse the two. When we have as here, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come," the words can apply only to the church waiting for Christ. But the words that follow are of much moment, and serve to guard us from over-valuing knowledge in comparison with the possession of Christ by faith.

I have seen people rather proud of their knowledge, which then bred worms and stank; but grace never despises those who may not know as much as others. We ought to love dearly Christ's own who know but little — to cherish them all the more because they are short. Do you not see this in the mother who has a child not so pretty or bright as the rest? She tries to make up for its defect by the most marked affection. She knows that the beauties of the family can get on very well for themselves. Most people like a handsome boy or girl; but the plain one is apt to fare ill with strangers. Not so with the mother, who cleaves to it, so that sometimes even the poor little soul is in danger of getting a little conceited or selfish, because so much love is showered upon it. But without question grace would lead one to care especially for the feebler among God's children. Those who are strong do not well to overlook the weak and please themselves. It is according to Christ that we help the needy in this way, and take pains to lead them on.

Here we have a special addition that illustrates His grace in a practical shape. "And let him that heareth say, Come." There are not a few who have never understood, never enjoyed, the pledged relationship of the bride. Are they then to be silent? Are they forbidden to welcome Christ's coming? Not so. If one has really heard the voice of Christ, without appreciating the bridal place, let him not hesitate. He believes in Christ and His work, he knows His love already, and that He is coming to consummate His love; for He will change the body of our humiliation, so as to be conformed to the body of His glory, and have us thus like Himself, and with Him where He is. Here the word warrants the weakest one "that heareth" to say, Come. This is grace indeed, as it disproves the theorists who slight the deficient in knowledge. They are more to be blamed than those they look down on. "Let him that heareth say, Come," is an encouraging word to the feeble believer.

But this is not all. Having now set in their place those who answer with bridal love, and such as hear Christ but know not that relationship, the revealing Spirit is careful even here to insist on zeal for the gospel, and warm interest in souls who are strangers to Christ and in danger of perishing. There are those of the world or such as look like the world, as the publican did to the Pharisee in the temple. For the publican, not the Pharisee, bitterly bewailed his condition and cast himself on God's sovereign mercy. Far different he who despised and hated him with a hard and haughty bearing, most hateful to God. But the Lord entered into the publican's need; and just because he did not justify himself, he is declared to have gone down to his house justified rather than the other. Some such state seems described in the next words of our text, "Let him that is athirst come." It is an address to one who is no longer indifferent, but thirsting for what would relieve his soul. He could scarcely be athirst if unawakened to feel it; but a sense of want, a craving for the blessing he does not yet know, there is. And here is the invitation of grace — "Let him that is athirst come." He is not told to say, Come, as in both the former cases. How could a man in his misery ask the Lord to come? He is just realising his wants and his ruin; and the question for him is how to assuage his burning thirst. "Let him come." For the water of life is here to be taken freely. Nothing but life's water can refresh the thirsty soul. Let him come and drink then without money and without price.

W.K.

"Hold fast that which thou hast."

Rev. 3: 11.

W. Kelly.

There is a striking coincidence in the facts of the word of God with the ways of God at this present moment. I daresay many have been struck with, and unable to account for, the circumstance — and I remember when it exercised my own mind many years ago — that God should have given such a setting forth of His grace in the twenty-first of Numbers, when the children of Israel were nearing the end of their journey. I think that we should have more readily thought of it at the beginning. But God is always wise. We may be exercised; He may bring in apparently a difficulty; but a difficulty overcome by faith, in the mind of God, a difficulty that has long been uncertain, when once apprehended, what a gain it is, not merely to our own souls, but for others, as leading into fresh confidence in God and His word!

And truly the word of God is a mighty thing, not merely for us but for Him at this moment, a moment when Christendom is abandoning it, and when its leaders, blindly, I am sure, and not knowing what they do, are doing what they can to undermine it. His grace has caused that word to shine out in fresh power. For I speak not only of the beauty of the word, but of its authority; and this has a most weighty place. By it God Himself puts and keeps us in subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I would first ask, beloved brethren, whether we have not felt that which answers to it, that God has given the living power not merely of much in His word that we had not known, but also of fundamental truth that we knew imperfectly?

Has He not given us back again the gospel, and that which is the fruit of receiving it? Not that He has poured out the Holy Ghost again, as some have wrongly asked at His hand, but most assuredly He has given us back the truth of it again. I do not speak now of individuals. It has been very properly said, that when we are speaking of that which is the mind of the Lord, we must distinguish between that which is for His own glory and for the church at the present stage of it, and His special guidance and working in individual souls. It would hinder a little misunderstanding of thoughts very precious in themselves, but very capable of being misused.

It is the mind of the Lord at the present time to be forming and fashioning the church as the bride of Christ. It is His mind that we should be awaiting Him from heaven. But it would be a very grave mistake to substitute that which is His will for the individual, for that which is His mind for the church His body. It is the truth for us all — what the church should never have forgotten. But this does not in the least degree interfere with the particular work of the Spirit of God by each individual believer.

Therefore, whether in the fishing or the feeding [which we have had brought before us], servants have each their place — they in no wise supersede each other. When the heart is filled with Christ, the heart recovered to Himself personally, Himself as an Object before us, and Himself in His moral discerning power — for this is one of the most remarkable features of the way He reveals Himself to the church in Philadelphia — are the fishers to be less simple, earnest or devoted? Is the feeding to be relaxed? The very opposite! There is a heavenly impulse given to it. There is also a freedom from excitement, a solidity and a separateness of character. Not a single want that is not met in the fulness of Christ. The love of Christ constrains.

Knowledge puffeth up, love buildeth up. You cannot separate love rightly from the truth. This personal revelation of the Lord Jesus at the present moment — this use of truth, not as putting something between us and the Lord, but putting away all that separates — is what we must all have found not only our deepest joy, but our best security.

Let me recall this word as a very solemn one. Do you think any are in such danger as the men of Philadelphia? I do not find that such a sifting goes on elsewhere. But I do not believe that Philadelphia is gone. I believe that Laodicea is come, but that Philadelphia is not gone, and will never go until the Lord Jesus comes; and that what He has set forth as a testimony, by revelation of His person, will never be rendered void. I do not believe that Philadelphia will go, but that the souls that fall short of attachment to Christ there revealing Himself, will go, and that grace will bring others to fill up more worthily their place. Assuredly the grace of God which began will keep those that have been there and go on with Christ.

But further, it may be well to observe that the most painful elements in the forming of Laodicea may well have had their place in Philadelphia, when faith failed and flesh gave place to Satan. But if they were in Philadelphia (or separation to Christ), they never were of it. They were such as never appreciated the testimony of Christ; for my heart fully goes along with our beloved brother in the thought of the Lord having a present mind.

I believe that, while something more has come in, we must not allow that which we have to slip from us, as it would if we were to get under the clouding depression that Philadelphia has so failed that there is no longer now anything of that character. I am saying this as a word of supplement. I believe this is on His mind, that those who are accounted of Philadelphia — surely not a mere question as to position but morally — do specially need His grace; for Satan uses all his arts to deceive and injure them. Where the heart is with Him, there He is all to the heart. But you have not Christ thus unless the Lord has led you back into understanding of what His church is to Himself. The most remarkable features of the appeal to Philadelphia suppose a knowledge of the truth and of grace found nowhere else. There must therefore be a very striking commentary within that Epistle. It is simply true. "Behold, I come quickly."

But we find that the Lord warns. "Hold fast that which thou hast, that none take thy crown." Do we not know, beloved friends, that never were men more liable to be carried away by feelings, and to be caught with novel teaching? People outside do not believe it; they think if you know one, you know all! We know a very different thing, and that as grace began the thing, so grace alone sustains and completes it. If any people are liable to be moved, we are. The very fact of being alone with Christ, away from the various means of occupying (I might say, of entertaining) the saints of God — for what else could I call the excitement of gathering thousands, with the attraction of music, etc. — makes us seem ungenial and ungracious in these days of exposure to the efforts of Satan in ways most trying and delusive. Let us cleave to the evident truth of the Lord. It is a caution given to Philadelphia more than to any other — "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown." It is hard for love to look unamiable; but Christ should be beyond all to us, and His love is alone true.

There are other reasons. This I would add: If you look back over what the Lord has been doing, you find that when souls do slip away, it is rarely into Sardis, still more rarely into Thyatira, but Laodicea is the common direction into which those who fall from Philadelphia gravitate; and there you have that which is most painful, nay, repulsive, to the Lord Jesus. Self-complacency of knowledge abounds, but Christ is outside the door. It is not lapsing from first love, it is far worse than that. It is indifference to Himself, with total lack of spiritual discernment. What state is farther from the mind of God?

Philadelphia, I believe, according to marks that, to my mind, are incontrovertible and sure, will be found when Christ comes. I believe that as Sardis does not supersede Thyatira, the state abides, but, through the infinite mercy of God, I see in Philadelphia the saints enter there as a question of Christ. It is not merely a true thing here or there known, but the truth bound up with Christ is apprehended, and there only presented morally and in love. Now, this is in no way boastful. There is no man that is led by the Spirit and enters into the mind of the Lord as regards the church but is ready not only to live for it, but to die for it; but Christ is nearer still, not merely this particular service or that rendered; though God has been recovering the cream of the gospel, and putting it in quite another fulness. Who does not know the controversy as to the righteousness of God? The heart of each of us owes much to the recovery of that truth at the end.

Another thing it is well to bear in mind, for it is important for God's glory as for the saints. Christ leaves room for all liberty and variety; for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." We must not set one thing up against another. Evangelising is a special power, and the Lord calls upon us, as we are enabled, to spread the gospel, and not to teach only. We may be called to correct and be corrected, but our place, I am persuaded, is one of freedom and responsibility in individual service. So the apostle, in exhorting Timothy as to the last days, bids him do "the work of an evangelist." Nor can any who are not evangelists duly enter into the feelings or appreciate the mode of that work.

"I have a few names even in Sardis"; and suppose any of these came; suppose they misunderstand those who do not happen to be in their own circle, and apt to be fault-finding if not captious, would it not be humbling for those who are blessed to be offended by their remarks? If the Lord has borne much from us in many ways, and yet has shown the fulness of His grace, brought out in the greatness of His love, we too are called to answer to His mind. And what is it? There are many saints that pine for a better knowledge of His truth, and desire to enjoy the presence of the Lord who is very dear to them. We know that whatever He may give to some in His abounding grace, the true way to enjoy His presence is according to His word, to be where saints gather to His name. There His Spirit works freely.

He says to the angel of Philadelphia, "Thou hast kept my word, and not denied my name." I should feel it was making His word of none effect if we allowed that there was the same enjoyment of the presence of the Lord where His name was not the centre, and His word not maintained. He has brought out His truth in such activity that those who would follow Him fully now are called into the place of Philadelphia, to know Him who is holy, Him who is true, to hold fast His word and not deny His name. Other things have come in. The most evil departure with good and bad together leads us in it. We would never forget that is what grows until Christ comes. We may let go that which we have! May we hold it fast! May it be true of us, "that no man take thy crown"!

The trials will be fierce and fresh. There are constant dangers and constant difficulties. Only one object keeps, as well as awakens, while in this world, and that is Christ. But there must be self-judgment, weighing truth and judging self solemnly, in order to communion. So only can we have Christ's power, in our weakness, resting on us. Who or what will make more complete shipwreck than the attempt to take up such truth as this in a mental way? Persons that seemed Philadelphians when they started, where are they now?

Yet I have no such thought as that Philadelphia will end before Christ comes, though individuals may come or vanish. It is precisely this which is so serious. We are on a ground where nothing can sustain us but the Christ who led us there. The word without the Spirit of God always ends in intellectualism, Sandemanianism, or rationalism; as the Spirit without Christ goes into fanaticism for a while, and fleshly form in the end.

What avails to offer the brightest visions possible of the church? Better have Christ with self-judgment. The grace towards the end of the journey teaches us how He recovers. The Lord at the beginning, and before the beginning of the church, gave us these very words: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst"! Did He not contemplate our need at the end? Faith in them and Him thus really forms Philadelphia. I do not believe that we shall be ever driven to isolation, though desire after union will never keep us together — nothing but the power of His name. There may be a thinning of numbers instead of that increase which some complain of. All but Christ will fail, no flesh shall glory in His presence.

There is another word, and a weighty one — "The Spirit and the bride." The Holy Ghost has had His active presence and power confessed. It is a great thing to the Lord Jesus that the One sent down from heaven to glorify Him be owned, and this too in our proper nearness to Christ.

It is not that He does not bless where this is not so. But there is an immense difference between those that are merely blest by preaching and prayer, and those that own the Spirit's presence and action in the assembly also. For my part I see in verse 10 an intimation that there will be the expression of it going on until the end. Saints will be together, and not breaking up into mere units — "the Spirit and the bride say, Come." I do not say that all that ought to have it, have really the intelligence of the place. But there are those who do cleave to Christ thus by the grace of God, who prize it above all things here, and that because it is the grace of Christ.

"The Spirit and the bride say, Come." It is the due answer to the voice of the Lord Jesus who is coming. It is His word that gives the ground to faith. Such His grace will keep; keeping together, too, those who have kept the word of His patience. Where He is, He not only produces liberty, but sense of unity. It would be a most painful thing, and disheartening to our faith, for those for whom the Lord had interposed — separating them to His name — if they must think that all that is found henceforth would be merely Laodicea. Let none think so. Sardis will go on to the end, and Thyatira. But it is solemn enough and searching truth for us, and for others, I repeat, that while Philadelphia is not gone, Laodicea has come!

If the worldly-minded slip into Laodicea, God is working to bring out of it also, and into Philadelphia, just as those who become more simply set for Christ must do. May our Lord, beloved brethren, both warn our souls, and at the same time encourage our hearts, for His name's sake! Amen.

W. K.

Remarks Connected with the Study of the Revelation.

W. Kelly.

The Prospect 1: 165-171 (1850).

There are few simple-minded Christians who, in searching into the prophetic Word, have not felt the difficulty of reconciling the undoubtedly normal posture of the Church in daily waiting for Jesus with the long train of successive events presented in the Revelation. The principle, if not the measure, of the difficulty is the same, whether you understand the Revelation to be fulfilled in a brief eventful crisis, or to extend over a course of many hundred years. In either way, I cannot truthfully expect Jesus from heaven from day to day, if I am looking out for a series of numerous, and some of them unprecedented, and all of them solemn, incidents to occur on earth, the gradual and accumulative evidence of His approach.

But it is certain that in the apostolic times, when the grace of God was proclaimed in its real power and freshness, when His Word was most prized and best understood, and produced its loveliest effects, the saints were habitually expecting Jesus to come. In Him they had redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, and they knew it. They were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Were they, therefore, satisfied? Was not the Spirit Himself, blessed divine Comforter though He be, yet was not He the earnest of still greater blessings? Doubtless, they received Him as the Spirit of sonship, and not as a spirit of bondage unto fear (Rom. 8: 15); but instead of His leading them into rest and contentedness here below in the absence of Jesus, in the same chapter it is said: "Ourselves also, (besides the groaning creation,) which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom.8: 23). It is the groaning of those who are justified by faith and have peace with God. It is the groaning of those who have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them, and bearing witness with their spirit that they are the children of God. It is the groaning of the adopted, earnestly yearning for the full results of adoption: of those who, because they have known God's grace in redemption forgiving their sins, look for more, for all, — for the redemption of the body in the actual presence of the Saviour, that they may be like Him and with Him for ever!

The aim, however, of these remarks is not to prove that the personal coming of the Lord was the hope of the Church — proofs easily found elsewhere. My desire is rather to convince those who know what is and was meant to be the hope of the Church, that God, by no concurrent or subsequent revelation, ever interfered with the practical power of that hope. That He might give fuller details as to the growing iniquity of man, of the Jew, and especially of the outward professing body, and as to His own judgments upon each before the millennial reign; that He might describe in greater minuteness the circumstances of that reign and the events that succeed it, is not only possible, but that which He has done. But that He, on this or any other theme, corrects in one part of His Word what is affirmed in another, is that which every Christian ought surely to repudiate from the bottom of his soul, in whatever modified form it may be insinuated.

The Word of our God needs no apologies from man. Unhesitatingly believed, every part of it will be found to be perfectly true, though (from the narrowness and imperfection of our apprehension) patient waiting on God is necessary to avoid the systematizing of the human intellect, and to discover in what order God puts things together. Haste in deciding such questions only leads to forcing Scripture, which will not yield; and hence the danger of framing one-sided hypotheses, which are only tenable by shutting the eye to the plainest Scripture which contradicts them as hypotheses, though there may be elements of truth in them.

To apply this to the matter in hand, it is undeniable that the apostle Paul (to say nothing of others) invariably speaks of the coming of the Lord to take the Church to Himself as that which might be at any moment, however Jesus might tarry; but no necessary detention — no chain of occurrences involving a period virtually — no certain lapse of time — is ever presented to the Church as keeping Him in heaven. On the contrary, if he writes to the Corinthians, (1 Cor. 15: 51) it is: "Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Admitting that "we" is a representative word, not the persons addressed merely, but those standing in the same privileges: still will any one say that the apostle or the Corinthian saints knew that the moment would be deferred till they had fallen asleep? *Was it not calculated, beyond all cavil, to keep them in simple, constant expectancy of the Lord? And the Thessalonians, (1 Thess. 1) who were trained, from their birth to God, in looking for their Deliverer, were they mistaken enthusiasts? Or, did not the blessed work of the Spirit in their case consist not only in turning them from idols to serve the living and true God, but to wait for His Son from heaven (1 Thess. 1: 9, 10)? Did that wise and faithful servant, who knew what it was to mingle the service of a nurse with the affectionate care of a father, — did he consider that blessed hope to be unsuited food for such babes? So far from it, that when he writes to them supplying some things that were lacking, the Holy Ghost impresses this great doctrine in so repeated and different modes as to demonstrate how cardinal a truth it was in the mind of God, and how influential as regards the walk and communion of His saints. It ramifies both epistles, being not only found at least once in every chapter, but in some chapters occupying the most conspicuous place. (See 1 Thess. 1: 3, 10; 1 Thess. 2: 19, 20; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 1 Thess. 4: 13-18; 1 Thess. 5: 1-10, 23, 24; 2 Thess. 1: 5-10; 2 Thess. 2: 1-12; 2 Thess. 3: 5.) They had rejoiced in this hope of our Lord Jesus Christ from their earliest Christian career; they had patiently continued it through the Spirit, and the blessedness of such patience was sweet to the absent apostle, even as their work of faith and labour of love. True, they needed further light as to its circumstances, and the Lord granted it. So immediately were they awaiting the Lord, that the decease of some of their number plunged them into sorrow — not, I apprehend, that they for a moment doubted of the salvation of those who were gone. No one knowing the Gospel in word only (much less knowing it in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as it came to them,) could have such a doubt. But they feared that death had severed their departed brethren from the glorious hope they had so brightly burning before them, of being caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. They were gone — doubtless, were happy; but would they not be absent from that crowning joy for which they themselves were waiting? Here was the place, if they had been mistaken in so waiting, to have corrected it. Here was the place for the apostle to say: — We have been all wrong in living with our eyes heavenward till the Son of God comes to take us to Himself: He is not coming soon. We need not expect Him, for many ages must expire before He comes. Besides, He has already given you some, and He now adds more, signs of His advent. You have not seen these signs yet. You must wait for them, and not for His Son. — But there is the exact reverse. The Holy Spirit deliberately keeps them in the same attitude of waiting which He had previously wrought and sanctioned in them, though He gives them a comfort of which they were ignorant as to their brethren who had been put to sleep by Jesus.† "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [i.e. go before] them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess. 4: 15-18).

*Nothing, it has been observed, more strongly proves the Church's constant expectation of the presence of the Lord for it, uncertain when that was to be, than the fact that it needed a particular revelation to individuals, (such as to Paul and Peter,) about their departure first, which so far modified their individual apprehensions. The general expectation of the Church was not affected thereby.

Τοὺς κοιμηθέντας διὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. So the Vulgate, cos, qui dormierunt per Jesum.

But it may be said, — If the Holy Ghost did not here correct the excited notions of the Thessalonians, He did in the second chapter of the second epistle. — I answer that the true question is, Does the Holy Ghost correct Himself? He may supply that which is suited to correct the undue sorrow of the believers in one epistle, or their fears in another epistle; but I insist upon it in the strongest manner, that if the Church is set in the position of waiting for Christ's coming in one part of Scripture, no other part can possibly alter such a position. It is necessarily right, whatever increase of instruction may be given. Let us only be well assured in the perfectness of every word of God, and we shall soon see how little the passage warrants the notion that the apostle Paul, in the second epistle, dissuades them from expecting Him, whom the first epistle had confirmed them in expecting.

In the first place, it is generally assumed that the day of Christ (or "of the Lord," for that is the true reading*) is identical with "the coming (παρουσία, presence) of our Lord Jesus Christ" in the verse before. But it is a groundless idea. If it be affirmed, let proofs be adduced. It is quite clear to me that the day of the Lord is a distinct though connected thing. In its full, ultimate sense, and no one disputes that such is its force here, it supposes the presence of the Lord; it is the judgment consequent upon that. But the presence, or coming of the Lord, by no means necessarily supposes judgment. Is there a word of judgment, or wrath, or destruction, expressed or implied in the full description given in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's coming for His own? So when the apostle says, "what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy," (1 Thess. 2: 19, 20) where is the word of judgment or evil? On the other hand, when the day of the Lord occurs, it is, whether used in a full or a limited application, habitually connected with judgment and its consequences (cp. 1 Thess. 5: 2-4; Zeph. 1, 2, 3; Zech. 14; Mal. 3, 4). I conclude therefore that, though the coming of the Lord may include the day of the Lord, as the whole includes a part, the coming of the Lord is in itself presented in an aspect of grace, not of judgment, and that the terms and things are not to be confounded.

*(So all the critical editors known to me, such as Griesbach, Knappe, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, etc.; and this wholly upon external evidence.)

In the second place, while it is true that the day of the Lord cannot come before the apostasy and the revelation of the man of sin arrive, which are to be judged in that day, yet is there a serious error in the English rendering of the last clause of v. 2, "is at hand." The word usually rendered "at hand," "near," or "nigh," is ἐγγὺς or ἐγγίζω , as is known to scholars. The present word ἐνίστημι , on the other hand, is never so rendered in the New Testament, save in the passage before us. On the contrary, occurring several times, it is used invariably in a way which excludes the possibility of such a rendering, (more especially when it is, as here, in the second perf.). The first occurrence is in Rom. 8: 38. It is evident that here ἐνεσῶτα cannot mean things at hand. It is contrasted with μέλλοντα , i.e. "things to come." It signifies only and emphatically "things present," and is so rendered in the common Bible. See the same words and the same contrast in 1 Cor. 3: 22. Again, in 1 Cor. 7: 26, διὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν ἀνάγκην is properly translated "for the present distress." A distress not actually come, but only at hand or coming, would spoil the meaning. The next is Gal. 1: 4, "this present evil world," the only possible meaning of the word here. The next world, or age, will not be evil, and therefore "at hand," or "imminent," is shut out. Compare also Heb. 9: 9, εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα "for the time then present," not "at hand," which cannot be the true force. All these are instances of the same tense as 2 Thess. 2: 2. The only other occurrence is 2 Tim. 3: 1, ἐνστήσονται , in the future middle. Here the English version renders it, "shall come." Still, the meaning indubitably is not "shall be at hand," which could have no point, but "shall be present." To be impending merely was little: the grave thing was, that perilous times should be actually there. It may be concluded, therefore, from an induction thus complete, that in all the other instances the authorized version is right, but in 2 Thess. 2: 2 it is wrong. It is not conceivable to uphold both; so that if right in 2 Thess. 2: 2, the version must be wrong everywhere else. But we have seen, from the intrinsic meaning of the word, as well as from the sense imperatively demanded by the context, that in all the other cases the translators are justified. They are therefore mistaken here, and the proper rendering, in conformity with their own translation of the word in the same tense elsewhere, ought to be, "as that the day of the Lord is present."*

*(Since the above was in print, I have had the opportunity of examining "Le Nouveau Testament de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, traduit en Suisse, par une Société de Ministres de la Parole de Dieu, sur le texte Grec recu," (seconde edition, etc., 1849,) where the original is rendered, "Que le jour du Christ est la.")

The Thessalonian saints had from the first known much affliction. They had notoriously suffered from their own countrymen, and this to such a degree that the apostle, in his earnest and watchful interest about them, sent Timothy to establish and to comfort them concerning their faith, that no man should be moved by these afflictions. They knew that "we are appointed thereunto" (1 Thess. 3: 2, 3). Nevertheless, they needed comfort. The apostle had warned them before, that "we should suffer tribulation, even as it came to pass, and ye know" (1 Thess. 3: 4). "For this cause when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain" (1 Thess. 3: 5) But Timothy brought good tidings of their faith and love, and the apostle could break out into thanks and joy for their sakes before God, and he lets them know it in his first epistle.

The tempter, however, was not to be discouraged, nor diverted from his wiles. They had been already taught that the Lord Himself was to come, and the saints, sleeping of living, were all to be changed, and to be caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so be ever with Him (1 Thess. 4: 17). They also knew that the day of the Lord was one of destruction and terror, unlooked for by the world: "Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5: 2).

Accordingly, he appears to have distracted the saints by the harassing statement that the day of the Lord was actually there, thus seeking to rob them of all profit and joy in the persecutions and tribulations which they were then enduring. Nor let any think it strange if, in a time of perplexity in the world and persecution of the Church, the fears of saints might be wrought upon; particularly as they knew that the day of the Lord in the Old Testament by no means necessarily implies the personal presence of the Lord, thought it looks onward to that anticipatively. Compare, for instance, Isa. 13(: 6), where God's judgment of Babylon and the Chaldeans is so designated: "Howl ye, for the day of the Lord is at hand;* it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty," etc. (See also Joel 1: 15; Joel 2: 1-11; Amos 5: 18, 20; Zeph. 1: 7, 14, 15, etc.)

*(The words In the LXX. are ἐγγὺς γὰρ ἡμέρα Κυρίου. Will men defend a version of 2 Thess. 2: 2 which makes the Holy Spirit contradict there what He has unequivocally affirmed in Isa. 13: 6? The Septuagint and the Greek Testament are in harmony here. It is the English version which is at fault.)

In the second epistle, the Holy Ghost conveys the needed instruction. "We ourselves," says the apostle, "glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day" (2 Thess.1: 4-10). The time of retribution is not when Jesus comes, but when He is revealed. For though at His coming the Church is caught up, there is nothing yet of a retributive character. It is favour, not a process of judgment. Whereas the revelation and the day of the Lord are, as is manifest, associated with judgment, and hence there is the public award of God, then, for the first time, manifested to the world; "seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed" (v. 7). Doubtless there is a tribulation, and even the great tribulation, in the time of Anti-Christ, previous to the revelation of Jesus; as obviously there is rest to those who sleep in Jesus now, and there will be rest in a fuller sense when our bodies are changed, and we are caught up to be with Him. But both are wholly distinct from the divine, retributive tribulation and rest here spoken of. It is the day of punishment with everlasting destruction to the adversaries, as it is the day when Christ comes, not to present the Church to Himself, nor to take them to mansions in the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe. For when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory (Col. 3: 4). It is the public, judicial dealing, (not the hidden joy or blessedness, before, then, or afterwards) which here enters into the scene.

Next, the apostle turns to the source of their agitation. "We beseech you, brethren, by* the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled" (2 Thess. 2: 1, 2). Assuredly, the consolation administered here is not that Christ's coming was a distant thing! Can it be that theologian upon theologian has desired to make of this fancied long and far off absence of the Lord a balm for the tried and fearful? Can it be that the poor Church has but too willingly sipped the cup, and, heedless of His words, cheers herself on the delirious career of worldliness, and folly, and faithlessness to Him? "Lord, how long?"

*(The authorized version appears to be substantially right in thus translating ὑπὲρ when we bear the context in mind. Such is the rendering of the Vulgate, as well as of Luther. Professor Scholefield also, though choosing the sense "concerning," because of his interpretation, admits the sense "by" to be "an unquestionable one." The fact cannot be disputed that "on account of," "for the sake of," are most common renderings; this sense of the word, connected with expressions of prayer and entreaty, is pretty nearly equivalent to our "by." None of the passages, such as Rom. 9: 27; 2 Cor. 7: 4; 9: 3; Phil. 1. 7, cited by Schleusner, Macknight, Whitby, or Elliott, is because not one occurs after such a verb as ἐρωτάω. Let an instance be produced of ὑπὲρ after a word of beseeching, where it can be rendered in any other way. In certain cases, it is used, as Phavorinus says, ὁμοίως τῳ περὶ, but not, I believe, in a connection parallel to the present, where it assimilates to πρὸς, as Stephanus observes, and translates it "per: ut Greg. ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ δέομαι, rogo te per Christum. Sic. II. ω. Καί μιν ὑπὲρ πατρὸς καὶ μητέρος ἠυκόμοιο Λίσσεο, καὶ τέκεος.")

Not so the Thessalonians. Full well they knew that His coming was to end their sorrows and crown their joys. Under apostolic guidance they had looked, and the Holy Ghost had commended their looking, for Christ. Was it not the part of the evil servant to say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming (Matt. 24: 48)? But Paul was a blessed, faithful servant, and never says anything of the sort. He uses the fact of the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him as a comfort against the anxiety created by the idea that the day of the Lord was already arrived — nay more, as a proof that such an idea was false. His ground of entreaty is two-fold. He urges a reason connected with the Lord and heaven, and a reason connected with earth and the man of sin. There must be our gathering above, and the falling away below. In the first place, the Lord was to come, and they were to be gathered together unto him, in order that He and they might bring in the day and appear together from heaven. This had not taken place, and therefore they were not to be disturbed as if that day had come, or could come, previously. In the next place, he presses the point that the evil must first be developed completely which that day is to judge. "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away (or the apostasy, ἡ ἀποστασία) first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth, and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or object of worship; so that he* sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2: 3, 4). But the apostasy was not then come, nor the man of sin revealed, and therefore the day of the Lord, the day of vengeance upon these evils, is yet to come. "And now (if one may translate the apostle's word a little exactly) ye know what hindereth that he might be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness† doth already work: only there is one that now hindereth until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the appearing of His coming" (2 Thess. 2: 6-8).

*(All editors of note omit ὡς Θεόν : i.e. "as God.")

†(There is a link of importance missed by the English translators between the mystery of lawlessness already working and the lawless one who is yet to be revealed. The germ was there in the midst of professing Christianity, which was at last to issue in so portentous a conclusion.)

No! the Thessalonian believers were not mistaken in waiting for the Son of God. It is not wrong to believe that "the Lord is at hand" (Phil. 4: 5) (ἐγγὺς), as the apostle pressed upon the Philippians when drawing to the close of his career. It is not wrong to establish our hearts because the coming of the Lord draweth nigh (ἤγγικε, James 5: 8). Nor does the language of the Spirit, in the passage before us, depict excitement from a too eager anticipation of this glorious event, — alas! that Christians should suppose we could too earnestly desire it. The expressions in v. 2 denote fright and agitation. The enemy sought to instill the idea that the day, the judgment was come, and that they were obnoxious to its terrors. Where then was their hope to be caught up to the Lord and to come along with Him? Would it have been sorrow and fear if Christ had come and they had been raptured to meet Him in the air? Rather would it have been their chiefest joy, as it had been the object nearest their heart since their conversion. Their faith was growing exceedingly, and the love of every one of them all toward each other abounded; and, far from weakening that which he had already taught, the apostle prays for them in the last chapter of the second epistle, that the Lord would direct their heart into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. That is, he confirms them in their expectancy of the Lord.

But the deceiver had affrighted them, not of course by presenting the coming of the Lord as an imminent thing, which was what the Holy Ghost had done, and which is for the Church a hope of unmingled comfort, but by the report that the day of the Lord was actually present, — "a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness" (Joel 2: 2). The apostle had already told them (1 Thess. 5) that they were not in darkness, that that day should overtake them as a thief. The tempter disturbs and confounds them with the thought that, as a thief, it was really come upon them; using it would seem some false spirit, or word, or letter, to give to it the colour of the authority of Paul himself. And how does the apostle defend them from such assaults of others, and fears of their own? For, let it be repeated, it was not high-wrought feeling as though Christ were at hand, but terror arising from their giving heed to the false representation that the day of the Lord was present, and they in tribulation on earth, instead of being caught up to Jesus above. The apostle at once brings them back to the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him as their ground of comfort and protection against the alarms of the day of the Lord. As if he had said: the Lord Himself is coming, and you will be gathered to Him. When His day comes, you will be with Him. You are the children of the day: you will come along with it, for you will come with Him who ushers it in. You therefore need not be troubled, but be joyful. That day is not come. You will go to meet Him whom the Church knows as the bright, the morning star (Rev. 22: 16, compared with 2: 28) so that when the day breaks and the Lord appears you too will appear with Him in glory. You will introduce the day together — that day of retribution when those, who troubled you shall have trouble, and you, the troubled, shall have rest with us when Jesus is revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance.

In harmony with this, it is written in v. 8, that the lawless one will be destroyed, not simply by the coming of the Lord, but by a further step of it, by the appearing or manifestation of his coming.* This scene is given at length in Rev. 19: 11-21, where the seer beholds, in the prospective vision, the heaven opened, and the rider, the Word of God, upon the white horse, issuing to judge and make war. "And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean" — the righteousness not of angels, but of saints. (Compare v. 8.) The saints are already with Him. They follow Him out of heaven, as his army. Christ, therefore, must have come before this to take them to Himself, for they have been with Him in heaven and leave it together, preparatory to the battle with the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies. This then is not merely the coming of Christ. It is Christ appearing, and we with Him in glory. It is His revelation from heaven, taking vengeance. It is the day of the Lord, when sudden destruction comes. It is the shining forth of His presence, or the brightness of His coming, which destroys that lawless one.†

*(The word "coming" here. and frequently elsewhere, is παρουσία, which denotes not barely the arrival, (like the verb ἔρχομαι in Scripture, and like the substantive ἔλευσις in Greek ecclesiastical writers,) but the circumstance or state of being present; that is, " presence." Nevertheless, as the presence of a person, who is now absent, necessarily supposes his coming, the latter is often and fairly enough given as its English equivalent, though the former is. the full meaning.)

†(If the reader is disposed to investigate further a subject so full of interest, he may derive much instruction, through the grace of God, by examining carefully the following Scriptures:

First as to ἀποκάλυψις, Rom. 8: 19; 1 Cor. 1: 7 ; 2 Thess. 1: 7; 1 Peter 1: 7, 13, and 1 Peter 4: 13, compared with the cognate verb, Luke 17: 30; 1 Cor. 3: 13; 1 Peter 1: 5, and 1 Peter 5: 1.

Next, as to ἐπιφανεία, 2 Thess. 2: 8; 1 Tim. 6: 14; 2 Tim. 4: 1, 8; Titus 2: 13.

Lastly, as to φανερόω, Col. 3: 4 ; 1 Peter 5: 4 ; 1 John 2: 28, and 1 John 3: 2.

It is only needful to remark that, though (as already proved) we are not here below until the appearing of Christ, It Is only then, and not before, that the result of faithfulness, or the want of it, will be manifested. The labourer is to work patiently, and it may be hiddenly, in view of that day. Though still the παρουσία, it is more than the presence of the Lord; it is the revelation. the appearing, or manifestation, as the case may be.

Be It noted, further, that the appearing of Christ is still His coming, although His coming does not necessarily mean His appearing. Thus, when Christ comes to take the Church first of all, it is His coming, but not His appearing, save to them that look for Him. But when afterwards He Is revealed in view of the world, vindicating the Ways of God, both as to His enemies and His friends, it is still His coming, while, as a distinctive thing, it is His day, or the epiphany of His presence, as it is termed in 2 Thess, 2: 8. The recent Swiss version readers the entire verse thus: "Et alors sera révélé l'inique, lui que le Seigneur détruira par l'Esprit de sa bouche, et rendra impuissant par l'apparition de son arrivée, (ou présence.)")

Matt. 24: 23-31 falls in with this view: "For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." It is His coming in connection with His earthly rights. Rejected of this generation as the Christ, He comes as Son of man (in which capacity He is never presented as coming to take the Church). "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." The elect here gathered together by the angels of the Son of man from the four winds, are demonstrably not the Church, because they are gathered subsequent to His appearing. The Church, on the other hand, had been translated before. For when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Our manifestation in glory cannot be after His manifestation. Christ and the Church are manifested together. Hence the signs specified in this chapter are indices to elect Jewish disciples of His appearing. They are not to be regarded, therefore, as interfering with the posture of the Church continually waiting for the Lord from heaven. They are signs for a remnant in special relation with Judea, who will be awaiting the coming of the Son of man. No signs of this or of any other description were ever put before the Church, as such, whereby to judge of the near approach of Christ to take her to Himself. On the contrary, what the Holy Ghost taught the Church is, to a simple mind, inconsistent with such indications: she was to be expecting always, because she knew not the moment of His coming. The apostle (1 John 2: 18) would have even the babes to know that it is the last time; and that, not from the spread of the Spirit of Christ, but from the presence of many Anti-Christs. But, although they had heard that the Anti-Christ should come, no signs to be seen, no evil to reach its climax, no specific tribulation, are ever put before them, as events necessarily retarding the coming of the Lord to take the Church. For the Bride, the one heavenly sign is the presence of the Bridegroom Himself. But for a converted remnant of Jews, of whom the Lord has graciously thought in the instructions of Matt. 24, there are signs which will be given before the coming of the Son of man.

Now, it is precisely here that the Revelation affords so distinct a light, showing us the position of the Church in heaven, Christ having come and taken her to Himself, and afterwards, during the interval of her absence in heaven before she appears along with Him, God's dealings, testimonies, judgments, and deliverances, on earth. The epistles gave us simply the fact of the rapture of the Church, but did not inform as to the length of the interval before the appearing and the kingdom. That such an interval existed might have been gathered; but whether long or short, or how filled up, does not appear in the epistles. The Revelation furnishes that which was lacking upon the subject, and connects, without confounding, the Church caught up to the Lord on high, with certain witnesses to be raised up during the closing term of the age on earth before He appears in judgment.

As for the relative bearings of the different portions of the New Testament, it may be said, in general, that the Gospels have a character peculiar to themselves. It is not certainly an exclusively Jewish condition, neither is it a proper Church condition, but a gradual slide, in John more marked than in the others, from the one to the other. The Lord Jesus, rejected, was with His disciples here below. The Holy Ghost, who of course was then, as ever, the faith-giving, quickening agent, was not yet given, i.e. in any new, unprecedented way, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. Hence the disciples, although possessing faith and eternal life, (John 6: 35, 47, 68, 69) were not yet baptized by the Holy Ghost into one body. (Compare Acts 1: 5 with 1 Cor. 12: 13.) In a word, the Church was not yet built nor begun to be built: "Upon this rock," says the Lord, "I will build my church" (Matt. 16: 18). But the Acts historically, and the Epistles doctrinally, describe a different state of things as then existing; Jesus absent and glorified in heaven; the Holy Ghost present and dwelling on earth in the saints, who were thereby constituted the body, the Church. Christ had taken His place as head of the body above, and the Holy Ghost sent down was gathering into oneness with Him there, into membership of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. Such is the mystery of Christ, which it was emphatically given to the apostle Paul fully to make known. And as the Gospels may be regarded as the preparatory transition out of Jewish relations to the blessed elevation on which the Church rests, the Revelation answers as the corresponding transition from the Church one with Christ in heavenly places, by various steps or stages, down to those Jewish relations which for a time dropped out of sight in consequence of the calling of the heavenly body.

The doctrine of the Church is clearly at the root of the ONE HOPE, which is found in the intermediate part of the New Testament. For along with the truth of the peculiar calling of the Church, as the body commenced by the descent and indwelling of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and thenceforward guided and perpetuated by Him — along with this truth, it will be found that the peculiar aspect of the coming of the Lord for which I have contended, stands or falls. None of the school of interpreters commonly called "the Protestant school" understood by the Church anything more, at best, than the Augustinian notion of an invisible company from the beginning to the end of time. None of them, therefore, has an adequate idea of the new and heavenly work which God began at Pentecost by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The consequence is that, if they read of saints in Daniel, in the Psalms, or in the Revelation, they are at once set down as of the Church. If they read of "this gospel of the kingdom" in Matt. 24, or of "the everlasting gospel," it is to their minds the same thing as what Paul calls "my gospel," the gospel of the grace of God preached now. Hence follows, and quite fairly too, a denial of any speciality in the walk and conversation of the saints since Pentecost, and a general Judaizing in doctrine, standing, conduct and hopes. It is also a simple and natural result of this, that all Protestant interpreters, if they admit a personal advent at all to introduce the millennial reign, present as the hope of the Church, that which is, in fact, the proper expectation of the converted Jewish remnant; viz. the day of the Lord, the Son of man seen by all the tribes of the earth, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Nor is the truth of the Church unknown to the Protestant interpreters only: it is equally an object of dislike to many of the Futurist school. And it is my conviction that the two baleful heresies, which have brought such shame upon the revival of prophetic study towards the beginning and the close of the last twenty years, are intimately connected with the rejection of this grand truth. For an error touching the Church cannot but affect Him whose personal presence is what is so essential to it; and that which dishonours the Spirit goes far, in the long run, to disfigure or deny the person and work of Him of whom the Spirit is the vicar.

In the epistles, it is beyond doubt that the Church is continually addressed, as if there were no understood, fixed, necessary hindrances to the rapture at the coming of the Lord. How could this be if the Church be the same body as those saints who are described in Daniel, the Psalms, etc., as being destined to certain fiery trials still future from a little horn and his satellites who are yet to appear? How comes it that the apostle Paul, when he speaks of the coming of the Lord, never hints at this tribulation, as one through which the Church must pass; but always presents the advent as an immediate thing which might occur at one unknown moment to another? that the apostle Paul understood the just application of these prophecies, better than any since his day, is that which few Christians will question: they were Scriptures long revealed and familiar to Jews, and the Lord Jesus, in Matt. 24, had very significantly linked his fresh revelations upon that occasion with the predictions of Daniel. Yet, the Holy Ghost, in His constant allusions in the writings of the apostles to the future hopes of the Church, never once refers to these terrible circumstances as a future scene wherein the Church is to enact a part: on the contrary, the way in which the coming of the Lord is put before the Church, as a thing to be constantly looked for, seems incompatible with it. We have examined the only statement in the epistles which might appear to interpose such a barrier, and we have seen that, so far from contradicting the thought of immediateness, the apostle seeks to relieve the Thessalonian saints from all uneasiness about the day of the Lord and its troubles, by the blessed hope of His coming and their gathering unto Him, which are in his mind indissolubly bound together: a gathering unto Him which must be before He appears to the world, and judges it, because He and they are to appear together. It is certain, moreover, that there must arrive the apostasy and the revelation of the man of sin (not before the coming, but) before the day of the Lord.

The prophecy of Daniel had already revealed the leading features of the interval during which "the prince that shall come" plays his terrible role. "And he shall confirm a covenant" (see margin and compare Isa. 28: 15) "with the many" (i.e. of Daniel's people, the Jews) for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation" (or consumption, as in Isa. 28: 22) "and that determined, shall be poured upon the desolate" (Dan. 9: 27). That this prince is not "the Messiah the prince" is manifest, not only from this, that the former is described as one "that shall come," after the latter has already come and been cut off, as is plain from verse twenty-six, but also from the certainty that "the prince that shall come" is the prince of the Roman people: his people "shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." We know who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple — the people of this future prince. The latter part of the twenty-sixth verse does not continue the thread of the history, further than the general expressions "and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." In the last verse we are transported to the epoch of "the prince that shall come," and his actings during the last week of the age. This period is shown to be broken into two parts, during the former of which, according to covenant, Jewish worship is resumed, but "in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." If ch. 7 be consulted, it will be seen that there is a certain little horn rising after the ten horns of the fourth Roman beast, before whom three of the first horns fell — "that horn that had eyes and a mouth, that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows" (v. 20). "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High (or of the high places) and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time" (v. 25). Is it not evident that in ch. 7 is a horn or king whose blasphemous pride brings judgment upon the beast, or Roman empire, and whose interference with times and laws, that is with Jewish ceremonial order, continues for three years and a half? and that for the same space of time, or the last half week, "the prince that shall come," the Roman prince of ch. 9, overthrows this ceremonial worship?

But the Revelation not only takes up the two halves of Daniel's week (Rev. 11, 12, 13) but shows what is the place of the Church during this period — a truth which it was not given to the Jewish prophet to reveal, because it was that which supposed and fitly followed the revelation of the mystery hidden from ages and from generations. Paul had shown us the Church waiting for the presence of the Lord. What is it that the Holy Ghost adds by John? What is the great outline given in the Revelation?

After the vision of the Lord Jesus, in ch. 1, we have "things that are," epistles to the seven churches, so conveyed as to apply not only at that time, but as long as the Church subsists on earth, and then the properly prophetic part, the things which should be after the Church-condition had passed away. Throughout the prophetic portion of the book, the Church is never described as being on earth. At the close of the third chapter, it altogether disappears from earthly view; and instead of its course being any longer traced here below, a door is opened in heaven and the prophet is called up there to see the things which must come to pass after these, i.e. after the things which are, or the Church regarded in the completeness of its varying phases on earth. Besides other things, (the Throne and One that sat upon it being the centre of the vision), John sees, not seven candlesticks, but, suited to the new circumstances of heaven, four and twenty thrones, and upon them four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment and upon their heads golden crowns.

Here we have, in vision, the place and functions of the Church after it shall have been taken up to meet the Lord, and before its manifestation with Him in glory. And for this simple reason, that the way in which He and they are here represented emblematically is totally different from what is revealed as connected with either, when the moment comes to leave heaven for the purpose of judgment upon the beast, etc.; or from what is revealed touching the reign for a thousand years subsequent to that judgment: that is, in Rev. 19: 11 and Rev. 20: 4-6. Nor can the scene in Rev. 4, 5 be interpreted consistently with any view, save that of the Church being actually caught up and completed in the presence of God. It is a quite distinct thing from our sitting in heavenly places in Christ: that is the subject of the epistle to the Ephesians. Neither is it the same thing as the boldness which the partakers of the heavenly calling have even now to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh (Heb. 10: 19, 20). Such is the subject of the epistle to the Hebrews, where the high-priesthood of Jesus is dwelt on at length and the liberty which we have in consequence to draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith (Heb. 10: 22); for it is still faith, and not actual possession, however it may be, through the power of the Holy Ghost, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But the purpose of the Revelation is to disclose the dealings of God, whether the facts be expressed or understood, but dealings which involve a certain condition of things, which was future if considered in relation to the circumstances looked at in the epistles, as actually subsisting at the time — the things in short which must be after these. Nor can this chapter be supposed to describe the blessedness of the spirits of the saints previous to the coming of Christ for the Church, because the departed who are with Christ could not be symbolized by twenty-four elders:* that is, by an image evidently borrowed from the full courses of Jewish priesthood. The whole Church, and not a part only, is comprehended in the symbol. But this can only be after the dead in Christ rise first, then we which are alive and remain are caught up together with them in the clouds, and so are ever with the Lord. Accordingly, here they are represented in heaven, the Lord being also there, and although made kings and priests even when on earth, still the time is not yet come for the exercise of government. In beautiful harmony, therefore, with this peculiar and transitional period during which they are removed from the world, they worship above. But the saints below are not forgotten. Those above have golden harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sing a new song, celebrating the worthiness of the Lamb to take the book and open the seals, not only because He was slain and had redeemed themselves, but had made them, i.e. these saints, to their God, kings and priests. They should reign over the earth. The fulfillment is seen in Rev. 20: 4-6: the reigning with Christ not merely of those symbolized by the elders, but of the Apocalyptic saints also.

*(Let not the reader suppose that the omission to dwell upon the four living creatures is through inadvertence: I have designedly passed them over, because I do not at this moment possess upon the point any light satisfactory to my own mind. Some suppose that they see in them the symbol of the angelic functions, as the four and twenty elders set forth the priestly functions, of the Church above; some, that the four living creatures are the representatives of the Old Testament redeemed, as the twenty-four elders represent the New, while others conceive that in them indications are to be traced exactly opposite. The four living creatures seem to be heads of creation — at least, of the creatures which found a shelter in the ark.)

Moreover, it is clear on the one hand, that the lightnings and thunderings suit neither the day of grace nor the millennial state. Earth is certainly not yet brought under the power of the blood of Christ, when these symbols will find their accomplishment. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are saints on earth, while the twenty-four elders are before the throne above. That is, it is neither the millennial nor the present state; but an intermediate period of a peculiar nature, in which we have the throne, not of grace as now, nor of displayed glory as by and bye, but clothed with what has been justly termed a Sinai character of awful majesty attached to it.

But those above exercise their priesthood in the presence of God as the full completed Church. Hence the symbol of twenty-four elders round the throne, at a time when, as all confess, earth is still unreconciled, however there may be, in the next chapter, the anticipative song of every creature. If this be true, it follows that the Lord's coming to meet the saints takes place between Rev. 3 and 4; (if the thought be pursued, which I doubt not, that Rev. 6-19 will be fulfilled in a rapid crisis;) room being left there for the coming described in 1 Thess. 4 and elsewhere. Then the main action of the book goes on subsequently to the removal of the Church, and after that another character of testimony from that of the Church properly is announced, and God Himself is revealed in ways different from those which He is displaying now: that is to say, not as showing the exceeding riches of his grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, but in the chastening judgments of the seals, trumpets, and vials, preparatory to the great day of the Lord which Rev. 19: 11 ushers in. On this state of things Daniel compared with the Revelation will be found to cast and to receive much light, for it seems plain that the saints of the Most High or heavenlies, of whom we read in Dan. 7, identify themselves with the saints who suffer under the beast, after the rapture of the Church and before the Lord's appearing. They keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, which, be it noted, is the spirit of prophecy, and though they are not of the twenty-four elders, they will have their blessed and holy part in the first resurrection. And here let it be remarked, that the term has nothing to do with the question whether all are raised at the same time; it simply describes the condition of those who rise and reign during the thousand years, as distinguished from those who do not rise till that period is ended. How true this is, is manifest from the fact that Christ has part in the first resurrection, who nevertheless rose before the Church more than eighteen hundred years at least. Hence the thought is not forbidden of certain saints being raised who stand and suffer after the Church is gone.

The symbol of the twenty-four elders continues unchanged throughout the course of the book, till chap. 19. They enter into God's ways and judgments, as interested in whatever affected His glory, as may be seen in Rev. 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 19.

But in Rev. 19 there is a striking change. After the opening scene of the rejoicings over Babylon the elders no longer appear, but the time for the marriage being come, (and how evidently the Church therefore is still viewed in the Revelation as unmarried,) the Bride, the Lamb's wife, is announced as made ready.

The heavenly joy and the Bridegroom and His bride being thus incidentally glanced at, He takes a new aspect, for the day is about to break upon the world; and so do we, for we will have gone long before to be ever with the Lord, and if He is about to appear, so are we along with Him in glory. Hence, in the eleventh verse, the prophet sees heaven opened, and a white horse, and He that sat on him was call Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. In unison, therefore, as He thus comes to smite and rule, the armies which are in heaven follow the Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful, which expressions are sufficiently clear to determine who are meant by the armies, if any one should have a doubt. It is the Church which was in heaven following Christ, in the capacity of His hosts, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. Contrasted with the marriage supper of the Lamb, all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven are invited to the great supper of God. The prophet sees the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and His army. The result all know.

Next follows the angelic binding of the dragon for a thousand years, and the parenthetic revelation of the sitting on thrones, or at least, of the living and reigning with Christ during that period, of such as had part in the first resurrection. They will not cease to be priests of God, though their office may be discharged in a different way from what we saw as to some of them in Rev. 4 and 5, but they all reign with Christ for a thousand years.

It is a prominent feature of the book, that in it is traced the sovereignty of God, not only in His purposes regarding the Church properly so called, but in His gracious ways with an election from among Jews and Gentiles subsequently. Thus, after the Church is seen in its completeness in heaven, under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned elders, (Rev. 4, 5) we hear in Rev. 6: 9-11 of saints suffering, yet crying for vengeance; and the announcement to them that they should rest yet for a little, until their fellow-servants and brethren, doomed to be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Vengeance should not arrive till then. These are evidently not the Church, but saints on earth after the Church is in heaven, whose sufferings and cries to the Lord accord much with the experience detailed in the Psalms. Still, whether Jewish or Gentile saints is not named here. But in Rev. 7 we have a numbered company out of all the tribes of Israel, sealed with the seal of the living God, and after this an innumerable multitude out of all nations, etc., who are characterized as coming out of the great tribulation, and as having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. These bodies are evidently distinguished from, if not contrasted with, each other; and they are still more markedly shown to be different from the Church; for we have the facts not only of a certain defined tribulation out of which these said Gentiles come, but of the elders, i.e. the confessed symbol of the Church, being still represented as a separate party in the scene.* (v. 11) Under the trumpets again we find the prayers of saints alluded to, who are of course supposed to be still on earth, (cp. Rev. 8: 3, 4, with v. 8,) and an implication of the sealed Jewish remnant being in the sphere, though saved from the effects of the fifth trumpet (Rev. 9: 4). In the eleventh chapter are seen the two witnesses, prophesying in sackcloth, and killed; in the twelfth, the woman persecuted by the dragon, who wars with the remnant of her seed that keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ, which is accomplished in the beast of ch. 13, who makes war with the saints and overcomes them. Ch. 14 is clearly a seven-fold sketch of the dealings of God, which brings the crisis to a conclusion: the hundred forty and four thousand associated with the Lamb on Mount Sion; the everlasting gospel summoning all to fear and worship God because of the proximity of His judgment; the fall of Babylon; the declaration of torment to the bestial worshipers; the blessedness from henceforth of those dying in the Lord; the harvest of the earth, out of which were redeemed the one hundred and forty-four thousand, as the first fruits unto God and the Lamb; and lastly, the vintage of the same. The reader has only to weigh verses 12, 13, in order to have the foregoing remarks confirmed. Even here we have the patience of saints described just before the harvest; the portion, too, not of the Church, (for we shall not all sleep,) but of a special class of saints described just before the harvest; the portion, too, not of the Church (for we shall not all sleep,) but of a special class of saints here below, while the Church is hidden above. In Rev. 15 (preparatory to ch. 16, i.e. the seven outpoured bowls of the wrath of God), is heard the song of the conquerors of the beast, celebrating the works of the Lord God Almighty and the ways of the King of nations. Compare also Rev. 16: 5, 6, 15; Rev. 17: 6; Rev. 18: 4-6. To those who kept the word of Christ's patience (Rev. 3: 10) the promise was to be kept (not in or during, but) out of the hour of trial, out of that fearful tribulation which is in store for the dwellers upon earth. But in the preceding Scriptures it is clear that after Christ has fulfilled His promise in the translation of the Church to heaven, there are saints on earth, both from among Jews and Gentiles, who suffer throughout the tribulation. And these Apocalyptic sufferers are described in Rev. 20: 4 as having part, equally with the Church, in the first resurrection. For that text discloses, first, the general place of the Church in the millennial reign, "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them"; secondly, those killed in the earlier persecutions of the book (Rev. 6: 9-11), "And I saw the souls of those that were beheaded because of the witness of Jesus, and because of the word of God"; and thirdly, the later witnesses for God, "and those who had not worshipped the beast," etc. (Rev. 15: 2). Those saints who were called and suffered after the rapture of the Church, are emphatically mentioned, because it might have appeared that they had lost all by their death. Not members of Christ's body before He comes for the Church, they share not in the rapture; not protected from death during the prevalence of the beast, they cannot be the living nucleus of Jews or of Gentiles, saved to be the holy seed on earth during the reign of Christ. They suffer, are cut off, but not forgotten. "They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

*I cannot concur in the view put forth in the most voluminous and elaborate comment of modern times upon this book ; namely, that the sealed hundred and forty-four thousand are identical with the innumerable palm-bearing multitude; the latter embodying the idea of the different generations of the former into a corporate form, (for the idea of the Church being one body here below by the presence of the Holy Ghost is utterly denied, and unceasingly distorted, in this system of interpretation.) But Mr. Elliott allows that the twenty-four elders represent the Church in the character of a royal priesthood. No one denies that the Church, in different scenes, may be set forth by different symbols. But how comes it, not only that these distinct symbols are in the same scene, but that one (if the elders is found explaining who, what and whence the multitude are? and that the description is of those who, among other things, come out of a particular tribulation, and thus form a peculiar class? Nor is this denied by Mr. Elliott, who meets "the great" with the fifth seal, as the complement of the sufferers there, though another and distinct body. And if Israel, in verse 1, is to be understood symbolically, why not "all nations," in verse, 9, which are plainly distinguished from the preceding company? And if the election out of Jews be the emblem of Christians, how come these same persons immediately after to be characterised as an election out of Gentiles? Where is the consistency of treating the former as symbolical, and the latter as literal? and the more so, is it is in the latter picture, that various mystic personage , appear, such as the four living creatures and the elders.

Thus the truth brought to light in the epistles to the Thessalonians, is assumed in the view which the apostle John was the honoured servant to enunciate — viz., the blessed condition and holy employ of the Church round the throne and the Lamb, after the removal from earth, but previous to the appearing with Christ in glory.

The central part of the Revelation then appears to corroborate on an irrefragable basis, the truth that the Church will be taken away and fulfil the symbols we have been noticing, previous to the day of the Lord, during the same time that other saints are still groaning and shedding their blood like water here below (Ps. 74, 79).

Such seems to be the main key which unlocks an important portion of the book and confirms the view, so sweet to the renewed mind, of going to meet the Lord, without one earthly obstacle between: keeping unblunted the point and energy of a truth only revealed in the New Testament. For the Old Testament spoke of His coming with all His saints, not for them; of His appearing in glory to the confusion of His enemies, and not of His descending to meet His friends, when we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed and caught up together in the clouds. And hence, it would seem, the emphatic language of the apostle, conscious that God was by him revealing a new thing to faith. For in 1 Cor. 15 he says, "Behold I show you a mystery"; and in 1 Thess. 4, "This we say unto you by the word of the Lord."

How sweetly do the closing appeals tell upon the heart of him who has an ear to hear! "I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright and morning Star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come" (Rev. 22: 17). It would be to lose the blessedness of keeping the prophetic sayings of this book, to have any other thought than that Jesus is coming quickly (Rev. 22: 7). It is well to read in their light the signs of the times: knowing the closure, we can thus detect the principles now at work. But it is a mistake and a misuse to construe of such signs obstacles to the coming of the Lord: to say, until I know the arrival of this or that precursor, I cannot in my heart expect Jesus. Blessed be God! such is not the language of the Spirit. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." Are these the words of mere feeling, unguided by spiritual understanding of the mind of God? As a fact, we know that the Lord has delayed; but He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3: 9). But who will say that it is conceivable to be looking for the Lord, wholly uncertain of the time of His advent, and at the same time to have the revealed certainty of a number of events which determine the year, or, it may be, the day?

That Jesus will arise, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in His wings (Mal. 4), is clear, and we know that the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13). But this same Jesus is more than the supreme power of righteous government on earth. His is known to the Church, at any rate, as the bright and morning Star. Blessed light of grace, ere the day breaks, to them who watch for Him from heaven during the dark and lonely night! "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." "He that testifieth these things saith, Yea I am coming quickly: Amen! Come Lord Jesus" (Rev. 22: 20).

The Righteousness of God: what is it?

Rom. 3: 21-26.

W. Kelly.

It is known very generally that a serious question has been raised on the righteousness of God, and that it has given occasion to keen controversy. Nor is it too much to say, that those who have betrayed their feeling most have little understood its bearings. Such, certainly, is the fact with those who have made themselves conspicuous by violent language on the point. Their discussions, or rather their denunciations, are the strongest possible evidence that, far from having settled the question aright, they do not even know what it is that has to be settled. On the other hand, there are many who reject false views, and yet would find themselves at a loss, were they asked to explain what "the righteousness of God" really means. They know what it does not mean, better than what it does — better than what God intended us to gather from the phrase throughout His word. Souls in such a state experience considerable difficulty in explaining divine righteousness to others, and have little clearness and decision as to its positive, proper character in their own minds.

As there is but one occasion on which it is now proposed to enter upon this large and weighty theme, it will be my business to begin at once in the simplest way, reviewing some, at least, of the chief scriptures, if not all those in the New Testament, which take it up. This only is to be premised, that it is from no indisposition to look at the Old Testament if I say less about it; for, in point of fact, singular as it may appear to some, it is clear beyond controversy that the view which prevails among many modern theologians is not found there. For instance, nothing can be plainer than the passages in Isaiah, where Jehovah speaks of His righteousness as being near to come, and His salvation as that which was about to be established for His people. Who can say that there is any question here of the Lord Jesus Christ's walk upon earth? It is Jehovah, as such, who alludes to His own moral consistency with Himself; it is Jehovah who proclaims His own salvation. In short, Jehovah speaks of His righteousness, and the blessing of His people — not of the ground, real or supposed, on which He displays His righteousness, and they are thus blessed.

Understand me well: the question is not at all whether there be not the absolute need of a basis on which there should be a display of divine righteousness in favour of His people. All agree in this — all who love the truth. There is no debate among believers, that without Christ, and without a work on His part which vindicates God in showing His infinite mercy, there could be no such thing as the justification of the ungodly. Further, it is to me no question between inherent righteousness, on the one hand, and God's imputing righteousness, on the other. For a sinful man all turns on this, whether in very deed God does reckon righteousness to him on his faith without works; and Scripture emphatically declares that He does. How He does, on what righteous ground, remains to be seen.

I will endeavour to make as little reference to passing controversies as is desirable. The word of God, which judges the question, must not be avoided for the simple reason that these controversies exist. The rather is it of importance that the children of God should know simply, clearly, unhesitatingly, what His mind is, by virtue of which they may detect and refuse that injurious leaven of tradition, which men so ardently contend for.

It may be, perhaps, more satisfactory to begin with Romans 3 rather than chap. 1, because the one is as explicit as the other is brief and abstract. In Romans 1: 17, the Holy Ghost merely states the leading truth in the fewest possible words, as introductory of the subject. In chap. 3, He deals with it freely; not all at once, but laying down the grand foundation of God's righteousness. Inasmuch as this so far unfolds the subject, we do well to weigh the larger development of the Spirit of God, and to read the more concise statement in the light of that which is more completely opened. Error habitually takes advantage of an expression, which to some might seem obscure, to darken the clearer explanation by. It is our wisdom to accept all which the Spirit of God affords us. We have a right to assume, that the fullest statement of this or any other doctrine is the best help to the understanding of communications made in fewer words elsewhere.

Now, in the portion read, we have clearly the righteousness of God contrasted with law. He had said immediately before, that "what things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." The law, instead of justifying those that are under it, brings them in, if possible, more guilty. We can all understand it. Man being a sinner, the law, wherever it operates, cannot better his case: it can but prove his guilt; it can only pronounce upon it; for it measures each violation of God's commands. The law of God is "holy, just, and good;" and it is impossible that a good law could save or acquit a bad man. The law of God, therefore, has for its only effect in dealing with the evil to condemn them without hope to death. Not, of course, that this is all that God can do, but it is the only conceivable direct effect of God's law upon the guilty. A law which an evil man might escape could not be the law of God. It is to be regretted that a criminal should escape man's law  - God's law he never can. The law, therefore, closes all up in condemnation. The Jew had no difficulty at all about the Gentiles; for these worshipped idols, and wallowed in every kind of fleshly lust, caring little about either. Many sins were lightly regarded; fleshly uncleanness and drunkenness were connected with the very worship of their gods. On all this, accordingly, the Jew looked down with no small self-complacency.

But, argues the apostle, how is it with you? What does Scripture say about yourselves? What does your own law declare about your ways? God looks down from heaven, and says that "there is none righteous, no, not one; none that doeth good, no, not one," as it is summed up most emphatically. Now for the masterly line of proof (if I may use such a word about the apostle, remembering that the Holy Ghost employs that blessed man as the vessel of His reasoning; for the Spirit of God does reason here): "What the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law." You cannot throw that solemn sentence of God at the Gentiles. You boast of your law: be it so. But "what the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law." God, when He declares so strongly that "there is none that doeth good — none that is righteous, no, not one," speaks not of Gentiles but Jews. Hence, every mouth is stopped, and the whole world becomes guilty before God. For the Gentiles had been shown to be evidently guilty in chapter 1; the philosophers were proved to be no better in the beginning of chapter 2; and now the Jews, who had the law and thought themselves righteous, are brought in more guilty than any in the end of chapter 2. and in chapter 3. The very law it was that manifested and proclaimed their exceeding iniquity in God's sight. Thus every mouth is stopped.

But, beloved friends, when man's mouth is closed in guilt, God can open His in grace; and so He does. He was entitled to ask for righteousness. Though knowing perfectly there was no good in man, none to be got out of man, He had demonstrated that His law, instead of producing righteousness among the Jews, on the contrary, only proved their evil more plainly, if there was a difference.

Now it becomes a question of another kind of righteousness altogether. Man is all wrong; there is no righteousness in him. That has been proved already. The only righteousness, therefore, is God's. What it fully means, what its basis is, and how it avails for the blessing of man, are other questions. But the first great truth asserted is, that man, as a whole, man in every grade and variety, being put down as destitute of righteousness according to God, it becomes a question of God showing His righteousness, if so it pleases Him. This He does, and most worthily of Himself.

But how is it done? If God were simply to act in His righteousness without Christ, what must be the effect on man? The whole race at once swept into hell! What does He, then? He has acted in another way, and most righteously, that He may not consign the guiltiest to hell. How can this be? Hearken, then. There is no doubt man has deserved judgment. This has been proved unmistakably by the law in the favoured people that were under it, as well in the Jews as in the lawless Gentiles. But now bursts forth the glorious truth — "The righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ." As he says here: "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin," not the putting away, or the pardon of sin, for the law never pretended to do either. "But now," says he, "the righteousness of God" — mark the strength of the language — "without the law," etc. That the Saviour came down from heaven and accomplished the law is the certain truth of God. But is this what the Holy Ghost here presents as God's righteousness? Where is there a word about Christ's keeping the law for us, in order that this should be accepted in lieu of man's failure? In truth, the Jews only are meant by "those under law," and in contrast with the Gentiles, who knew nothing about it. But, waiving this for a moment, surely here was the place to explain the importance of Christ's accomplishing the law for man, had God's righteousness meant anything of the sort. How comes it that there is no trace of such a thought? Are we to believe the Scriptures? Directly or indirectly shall we presume to mend them? Are we to supplement the written word, as if God did not know the truth better than we? Has it not come to a strange pass, that men now, instead of seeking to understand what the righteousness of God means, turn aside from the plain truth that the Holy Ghost here insists on, and interpolate a doctrine not found here, and, I venture to add, very hard to find anywhere else in the Bible? Indeed, my conviction is, that it is unknown and opposed to the word of God.

Here, again, let us understand each other. Do we deny for a moment the subjection of the Lord Jesus to the law of God? God forbid! He did fulfil the law, of course; He glorified God in every possible way in the fulfilment of it. This is no matter of controversy for Christian men. He is no believer who supposes that Christ in any act of His life failed, that He did not entirely and blessedly accomplish the law of God (under which, as we are told, He was made), or that the result could be of small moment to God or man.

The question is, Has His accomplishment of the law of God the place which a certain school gives it? Is it God's righteousness as here taught of Him, or its revealed ground? Assuredly, here we have the doctrine unfolded, and this for the permanent instruction of the Christian. It is the most elaborate statement of this truth that God's word contains. How comes so absolute a silence, where, if true, we could not but look for a clear, decisive introduction of Christ's fulfilment of the law in place of our breach of it? For it is a question not of pardon only, but of justification. To foist something in looks like a fable. Does it not suggest the suspicion, to say the least, that man invented the opinion? There may have been the best intention.

Do I deny that the ways, the walk, the life of Jesus, the magnifying of God in all His ways, are anything to our account? God forbid! We have Jesus wholly, and not in part; we have Jesus everywhere. I am not contending now at all against the precious truth that, Christ being our acceptance, we have Christ as a whole. We have His obedience unbroken through His entire life, and its savour unto God is part of the blessing that belongs to every child of God. I believe it, rejoice in it, thank God for it, I trust, continually. But the question is wholly different. God does use for His own glory and for our souls all that Jesus did, and all that Jesus suffered.

The question is, what is the righteousness of God? It must be settled not by notions, feelings, fancies, traditions, not by what is preached or received, but by what is written — by the word of God. Are you afraid of this test? Do you shrink back from the word which searches out what you hold as to the righteousness of God? It is to be supposed you have reason to fear the scrutiny. When a man shrinks from the Bible, depend upon it it is because the Bible condemns him. It does not support speculations which he is not yet prepared to abandon. Certainly, I do not ask you to abandon anything that is of God. By all means hold fast Christ in all His ways magnifying God, and the blessedness of this for our acceptance before God. Still the question recurs, What is God's righteousness? Is there a legal ground laid for justification, as some suppose?

Here is God's answer. "Now," it is said, "the righteousness of God without the law." No language can be more absolute and precise. What the Holy Ghost employs is an expression which puts the law entirely aside, as far as divine righteousness is concerned. He had been speaking about the law, and the law condemning man. He had shown that the law required righteousness, but could not get it. This is another order of righteousness, not man's but God's, and this, too, absolutely exclusive of law in any shape. How suitable a time to say, had it been the good news of God, that Jesus came to obey the law for us, and that God substitutes this as His righteousness for every man to stand in! Why is it not said, then? Because it is not the ground, nor character, nor nature of the righteousness of God. That righteousness is wholly apart from law.

Accordingly, this is what is here said, "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Observe the exceeding accuracy of the language. The law and the prophets did not manifest the righteousness of God: yet the law, in various forms, pointed to another kind of righteousness that was coming; the prophets brought it out, if possible, still more clearly in respect of language. The one furnished types, the others assured that Jehovah's righteousness was near to come. But now the gospel tells us it is come. Now divine righteousness is a revealed fact. The righteousness of God without the law was not only witnessed by the law and the prophets, but is actually manifested. There is no veil now; there was once, but the death of Christ rent it from top to bottom. The righteousness of God, therefore, is no longer a shadow of coming good, no longer a blessing locked up in promises or looming in a prediction, however truly the law and the prophets bore their witness all the way through, from the time that man broke down and his righteousness entirely failed. Now there is far more than a witness to it: there is a standing manifestation of it since the cross. Such is the present result of that great fact. Divine righteousness is not only being revealed (ἀποκαλύπτεται) in the gospel; it has been and is manifested (πεφανέρωται).

The matter is more fully explained as "the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ." Here, then, was another place to have affirmed the value for our justification of what the Lord Jesus was doing when here below. Not one word is said about it. All that is added in the passage is the statement that God's righteousness (in contrast with man's, which is by his accomplishing the law) is "by faith of Jesus Christ." Still, one can understand the objection raised that this is not conclusive. Believing in Christ does not settle the point, they say; for all hold that it is by faith of Jesus Christ. But is it the value of what He was doing in His life, or is it the efficacy of His atonement — of His death? Is Scripture silent? It is, on the contrary, explicit against mixing up the law. It is most express against turning away the eye from Christ in His death.

Thus, at the very outset, if the object had been to withdraw attention, in the matter of righteousness, from the active life of Christ, and to fix it by faith upon His blood, how could the task have been accomplished more effectually than in the passage? Is not this an extraordinary way of handling the truth, if the ground of God's righteousness were Christ's obedience to the law? If it be the all-important point in order to justifying, if it be the great indispensable preparation, and the only solid ground, on which a man is righteous before God, how comes it that Scripture preserves such absolute and singular silence in the fullest passage where the Holy Ghost discusses the ground and means of justification before God?

It is not so that reasonable men would act. When we have to bring out a truth dear to us, and important for those to whom we are about to explain it, do we hide the most characteristic portion? do we omit the smallest reference to the very turning-point? Surely not. And does not God reveal His own truth infinitely better than we can explain it, or convey our own thoughts? Listen to the man who holds the popular doctrine on the subject: does he conceal the distinctive feature? Does he keep back Christ's observance of the law for us? On the contrary, it is the uppermost idea, and continually pressed in his discourses. It is the law kept by Christ, he tells you, which specially and alone constitutes the righteousness of the believer before God. He does not deny that the blood of Christ is the means of the sinner's pardon: but then it will never do, he argues, to approach heaven with pardon merely; one must have righteousness also, and this for him is found in the legal obedience of Christ. Thus, if it is a question of justifying (and in general the popular theologian sharply distinguishes between the two things), his justification is made to depend on the fact that Christ kept the law for him, which he could not keep for himself — that Christ omitted no duty of his, and performed all perfectly in which he himself failed.

But how comes it to pass that God does not put the matter thus? Because it is not the truth. Nothing more simple, if it be not the truth. It is the truth that man has failed in every way; it is the truth that Christ obeyed the law of God; it is not the truth that even His keeping of the law is the real sense of God's righteousness, or the ground of our justification before God. Let me press this upon every candid mind among our adversaries, who contend for this theory. Account for it if you can; account for it with the maintenance of the inspired character of God's word; account for it, that the Holy Ghost, who certainly understands justification in perfection, does not treat the subject as your system demands. Why? Because He and you do not agree. How awful that believers should, on so fundamental a truth, differ from the mind of the Spirit, and that man should prefer his own thoughts, because they are the common quasi-evangelical tradition, and a sort of "short cut" to understanding how a man is justified!

Now, it is the invariable fact, that where we are subject to God as to any truth, no matter what, God's way is always the best, although it may not be the most obvious way of bringing a soul into comfort and blessing to His own glory. Thus, in the present instance, the first thing that God proclaims when He is presenting His own righteousness, is this: "By faith in Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe." "Unto all" is the direction which the righteousness of God takes. It is not limited to a particular people, as the law was to the Jew. Divine righteousness goes out, as far as its tendency is concerned, to every one without exception. So the Lord Himself said, "Preach the gospel to every creature." His message is just the manifestation of the righteousness of God. Accordingly, it is here said to be "unto all." But, then, every creature does not believe it, and consequently, we have the other side of the truth, that God's righteousness by faith of Jesus Christ is only "upon all them that believe;" "for," again, "there is no difference" — all have sinned and do come short of the glory of God. Hence grace is the only hope: "being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Thus, on the one hand, it is clear and certain that there is not a word about the keeping of the law; and, on the other, what the apostle does expatiate on is justification freely by God's grace (not law-keeping), and this through the redemption that is in Christ, not His legal observance. Hence, it is said further, "Whom God hath set forth a propitiatory."

Mark the place that God takes in all this. It is not that Christ put Himself forward, but God set Him forth. Why so? and what its importance? Because it is a question of the righteousness of God. There is no doubt that Christ was righteous, as no other ever was; yet Christ's righteousness is not the truth here affirmed, but God's. There is not the smallest doubt, as we all agree, that He fulfilled all righteousness; but is this to be a reason why any man should pervert Scripture? Why are divines not content to take the word as God has written it; and if He speak of His righteousness, why should they read it as the righteousness of Christ? Is it not to eke out a peculiar school of doctrine? What plainer than the truth, that God accounts us righteous by virtue of Christ's work? Can they not understand, that divine righteousness in so justifying us goes far beyond the righteousness of the law, even if we could have done it?

It is not that Scripture never speaks of the righteousness of Jesus.* In 1 John 2 we read, that "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." It would be wrong to alter that Scripture, and to understand the righteousness of God here. Equally erroneous is it to say, that we have got the righteousness of Christ in Romans 3. The advocacy of "Jesus Christ the righteous" is the important truth in 1 John 2, because it is a question of One that acts for me, that undertakes my cause, if, alas! I break down as a follower and confessor of the Lord here below. Hence, I want a living person, active in love for me, before the Father; and such an One grace has provided for the need, even "Jesus Christ the righteous." "The righteousness of God" would not suffice for me, or suit me in my failure; other truth is that which my soul then wants. "The righteousness of God" one must know in order to be on the ground which, in case of inconsistency, needs "Jesus Christ the righteous;" but the two truths, though connected, are perfectly distinct and ought never to be confounded. Scripture does not sacrifice one to the other. In 1 John 2, we have Jesus Christ the righteous as our advocate with the Father — precious provision if any one sin; while in Romans 3, it is the character and application of God's righteousness which is in question.

* 2 Peter 1: 1 does not touch on the ground of justification, but asserts that the saints he addressed obtained like precious faith with the apostles, in virtue of the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Even if we adopt the marginal suggestion, it would mean that our God and Saviour Jesus Christ took care, according to His faithful regard to the promises, that there should ever be a remnant according to the election of grace. Hence He, in His righteousness, secured that they should get faith. Christ's law-keeping is not in question: introduce it, and you spoil the sense. For how could His legal obedience bring any one to faith. But verse 2 confirms the English Bible against the margin. If the former be correct, there would be no possible place for the desired result; for nobody believes that God and Jesus kept the law either to make up a legal righteousness for others, or to give them faith. The later Puritans were the chief promoters, though not the authors, of the scheme which conceives our justification to consist of Christ's observance of the law imputed to us; but even their chief, Dr. John Owen, renounced the sense which modern Evangelicals try to fasten on 2 Peter 1: 1.

The more we weigh the passage, the clearer is its import. "Whom [Jesus] God hath set forth to be a propitiation," [a propitiatory or mercy-seat. It is the same word that is so translated in Heb. 9,] "through faith in His blood." Can any proof more conclusive be conceived? How, if it be the truth, comes the absence of that which men now-a-days plead for? To what can one attribute the presence of that only which they would put in the shade? Certainly God's word is plain enough. Modern theology springs from the heart's natural opposition to the truth of God. Why should not believers accept what the word presents so plainly and definitely? Is it that it would shiver some favourite thoughts? Is it that it would open out new views of the ways of God? And why should an enlarging knowledge of His word be a matter of suspicion? Why should the ways and thoughts of man be pleasanter to them than the precious truth of God? Let them answer it for themselves. Account for their liking or disliking as they may, this is what Scripture says: — "Whom [Christ] God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood." Indeed, what God gives, what He could not do without, is precisely what man wants, as a sinner. It is not well-doing, were it even the blessed Lord's, in place of our sins and guilt. The sinner wants a propitiatory before God, and finds it through faith in the blood of Jesus. As man, He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. He was subject to the law; He wrought miracles; He walked in grace. But if we were to be justified, our ruin demanded a deeper dealing, even redemption, redemption through His blood.

Such, then, in part at least, is God's righteousness; and large and rich is the comfort of the truth. But the language is precise also. We have very distinct statements on the subject here. If God has set forth Christ as a propitiatory by faith in His blood, it is "to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Thus was God declared to be righteous in His ways toward the Old Testament believers (ver. 25), as well as at present (ver. 26). In the first case His righteousness was shown forth on account of the passing by the sins that had been before. He could not have justly remitted their sins, strictly speaking, for the atoning work was not yet done; but He did pretermit them, and this through His forbearance. In the second case He shows forth His righteousness in the present time, without question of forbearance, because now the work of atonement is done. For who speaks of the creditor's "forbearance" when the debt is paid in full? By the actual accomplishment of redemption, instead of barely passing the sins by, God is just, and justifies him that is [not of law-works, but] of faith in Jesus.

May I not ask any fair mind, Who is here meant? "That he might be just and the justifier," etc., — that who might be just? Answer uprightly, — if possible, without reference to your previous thoughts, and before that word which will judge in the last day. "That he might be just." Who is He? Is it Christ just? or is it not God just by virtue of Christ? There can be no doubt in the world. No man who understands the Bible could give save one answer. It may seem a bold challenge, and some may think it too bold; but I am sure of my ground, and repeat that there is no man acquainted with the scriptures who would dare to say the assertion is wrong. It is, that God "might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." "It is God that justifieth." (Rom. 8) It is, therefore, "the righteousness of God," without a hint of transferring to us the legal righteousness of Christ. It is by virtue of Christ, or God could not be thus righteous in behalf of the sinner. Redemption is the righteous groundwork. The blood of Christ deserves at God's hands that the believer should be justified, and God Himself is just in so justifying him.

Astonishing fact and truth! His is a new righteousness altogether. It is not God righteous apart from Jesus; it is the righteousness of God apart from law. It is God who has set Christ forth, but not merely as a righteous man, obeying Him in every thought, feeling, word, and way, manifesting perfect righteousness upon earth: even all this never made one sin of yours or mine a whit less in the sight of God. Our sins were as heavy after as they were before. I might almost venture to say that they pressed more heavily; for whatever we might say for ourselves, and however God might look down in pity upon poor sinful men upon the earth heaping up their sins before, what were those sins when Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, the righteous, dependent man, the obedient servant, was here below? What was the effect of it? Light brought out the darkness of all others more conspicuously. It did not lighten their load; it rather proved how deep, dark, indelible, were the stains of sin. Had God merely acted after this sort, would it not have been comparing men in their sins with the perfect man without sin? How could He have such as we, or any others, companions of the Second Man, the Lord Jesus Christ? It could not be. This would have been very far from the righteousness of God. It might have been styled, if you please, the righteousness of Christ; but how could even this have availed to meet our desperate case? How could it have vindicated God as to sin? Christ was absolutely perfect; but "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." There was nothing to save us in the fact of His being the righteous man that obeyed God all His life.* There was nothing in this which could get rid of our sins. There was nothing in this which could give us a standing apart from sin in the presence of God.

Hence came in another thing. God set Christ forth, it is said here, as a propitiatory. Christ became the true mercy-seat. God gave Him up as a sacrifice for sin, that through His body, offered once for all, every soul that believes on Him might be sanctified — nay, more than that, "by one offering perfected for ever." It is done in His death. He came to do, not merely the law, but the will of God, by the which will, the apostle carefully adds, we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

* The hypothesis of Justification by the law-keeping of Christ involves the extraordinary consequence that our righteousness is made out in the days of His flesh, before His blood was shed to procure our pardon! But when was a theological idol not mis-shapen and incongruous?

Here, then, we have the righteousness of God developed in the simplest and clearest way. It means that God is just, and justifies in virtue of Christ. He is just, because sin has been met in the cross: sin has been judged of God; it has been suffered and atoned for by Christ. More than that: the Lord Jesus has so magnified God, and so glorified His character, that there is a positive debt now on the other side. Instead of the obligation being, as it was, altogether on man's side, who was accumulating that which never could be paid for by him, God now has interposed, and, having been so magnified in the man Christ Jesus in His death, He is now positively just when He justifies the soul that believes in Jesus. It is consequently the righteousness of God. For God is now approving Himself righteous to the claims of Christ. It is God now that owns and discharges His debt to Christ. Christ has undertaken the cause for God, and also for man. Very God, still He was a man; and it was in human nature, not before its assumption, that the wonderful work of atonement was done. The consequence is, although it was the witness of God's love that He gave His own Son, and gave His Son to become a man and die for men, that now the scale is turned. The debt of man to destroy him is not so great as that which Christ has paid to deliver him. Scripture makes it a matter of God righteously justifying him that believes, in virtue of what Christ has suffered for sins. Thus nothing can be clearer or fuller, nothing more blessed and precious, than the meaning of this remarkable expression. It is, indeed, a priceless treasure. What Christ did, as living here, is not the point; or surely, where we have the great unfolding of divine righteousness was just the place to bring in what occupied Christ in His life, if it were the ground of this truth.

But I go further. Show me anywhere an unambiguous portion of the word of God, where His fulfilling of the law is treated as a part of the righteousness of God. You can produce none. I can tell you some of those Scriptures which, perhaps, you think about; but I affirm that there is no proof whatever. It is better to be plain about that which is certain. Let others venture to say, if they will, what can be contradicted; it were well, in such a case, not to speak at all. But really there is no Scripture which makes what Christ was doing as under law, — I will not say the exclusive ground, but — any ground at all, of God's righteousness. Why not produce one?

I will now refer for a moment to Rom. 1, having given my reason for beginning with the third chapter. There was no object beyond this, that it seemed to be the most straightforward course. But allow me to mention, by the way, that he who has been put forth as the most distinguished defender of the common view, is compelled to own that, in Rom. 3: 25, 26, God's acting righteously through Christ yields the easier, better sense.* Though arguing expressly in defence of the ordinary scheme, he is too candid to gainsay the evident bearing of the context. There need be no secret as to his name. He is a well-known person — the present Bishop of Ossory. He is supposed to have written the best modern book on justification by faith according to the theologians. Yet is he forced, by the plain, positive language of Scripture to admit, that in these verses "His righteousness" most naturally means, not a something that Christ did by keeping the law, but what God can be and is by virtue of redemption. His justice now justifies the believer. This, as far as it goes, is true. Not that Dr. O'Brien adequately understands the truth, still less is he able to develop it, according to the Scriptures. But he at least confesses that "His righteousness," in this palmary passage of the epistle to the Romans, points to the quality of divine righteousness, or God's justice; and this, because of what follows — "that He might be just," which, of course, means God being just, and not simply the Lord Jesus, or what He did as made of a woman, made under law. But this great passage, if conceded, seems at once to decide the question; because we have here not some text or phrase that can be debated. Whenever a doctrine claims examination, it is always a sign of weakness if men fly from the full and bright unfoldings of the truth in the word of God to supposed hints and obscure allusions. When you have got the truth, when you desire it and nothing else, you are not afraid to face the strongest assertions and the fullest communications of God's mind. When men overlook or evade the large and distinct instructions of Scripture, and hide behind some scrap wrested violently from its real connection, the presumption is that it can only be, because the truth is too strong for them, and they are not prepared to abandon their dogma

* The following words contain the discussion referred to: — "Is it the righteousness (justice) of God regarded as a divine attribute, or the righteousness which is bestowed by God upon sinners believing in Christ? I think either gives a consistent interpretation of the passage. On the one hand, the righteousness which God bestows upon believers, derived as it is from the propitiatory offering of Christ, when rightly understood, shows how God is just when He justifies the sinner to whom it is given. And, on the other hand, when the righteousness of God which is manifested is understood to be His justice, the sense of the passage is still easier. Christ was the Lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was not to be sent into the world until the fulness of time was come. His sacrifice was from the first the ground of the forgiveness of sinners; but it was not distinctly made known as the ground upon which they were forgiven until the offering was actually made. And so, though God was really as just in the forgiveness of sin before as after the coming of Christ, yet His justice was not manifested until Christ was set forth to be a propitiatory offering through His blood — not set forth only to those who witnessed His death, but evidently set forth before the eyes of all to whom the Gospel was preached, crucified among them. So that though I have no doubt that the interpretation which makes the righteousness of God here spoken of the righteousness which He bestows on believers, is defensible, I think it is easier, and therefore better, to interpret it as His justice." — (An Attempt to Explain and Establish the Doctrine of Justification by Faith only, etc. By J. T. O'Brien, D.D., formerly Fellow, etc., now Bishop of Ossory, etc. Second edition, pp. 584, 585.)

For are we really to conceive that "the righteousness of God" means one thing in Rom. 3: 25, 26, and another thing in Rom. 1: 17, if not also in Rom. 3: 21, 22? The notion is suicidal. Let us then observe the way in which God's righteousness first comes before us. The apostle says that he is not ashamed of the gospel; "for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith." Where is there any allusion to Christ's keeping the law of God? God has not spoken of it: why should we insert it? Our business is not to put notions into scripture, but to gather what God conveys to our souls. We are taught here, that in the gospel His righteousness is revealed from faith to faith. The expression may be somewhat difficult; but, in my judgment, there is no question whatever about law-keeping here, but a tacit contrast with legal requirement. The law demanded righteousness from man, but could get none. In the gospel God's righteousness is being revealed. What a change from the law, with its claim on man for a righteousness he had not! God's righteousness, he says, is revealed in the gospel, because the gospel supposes the redemption is accomplished; it therefore speaks of sin put away and forgiven: in short, it makes known God justifying him that believes. It is therefore God's righteousness, not man's, and is founded on Christ's expiation, "by faith in His blood." Observe, it is the righteousness of God, who justifies "him that believeth." In virtue of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, God is enabled justly, not only to forgive the believer, but to account him righteous in His own sight.

On what terms, then, does God reveal His righteousness in the gospel? It is revealed by faith; that is, it is not by works of law, but by reason of faith. There is not a trace here of Christ doing the works for us, as they say who plead the law. How easy to have told us so, had this been the meritorious title ! It is said to be by faith; and inasmuch as God's righteousness is revealed by faith, the blessing of His righteousness only comes to him who believes; that is to say, it is revealed to faith. Hence, as it is here expressed, "the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith." It is "by faith" on God's part, and therefore it is " to faith" on man's. Whoever has faith is the object for the righteousness of God. It addresses itself to all, without exception, but it is actually for the believer.

Whoever believes in Jesus is justified by God; or, as it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, "All that believe are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses." Why is there not a whisper about being justified by Christ keeping the law of Moses? Unless you can show it me from God's word, bear with me if I treat it as a myth. What is the value of a doctrine on so weighty a theme which does not come out of the Bible? It may be put forth sincerely, piously: no doubt men mean to exalt the Saviour by it; but, be assured, they have made a very great mistake in putting their hand to prop up the ark. Upon it God has sprinkled the blood of Christ; thereby, in virtue of that precious blood, He can be just in justifying him that believes. With this the teaching of Rom. 1: 17 agrees, in my judgment. Clearly the meaning is, God righteous on the ground of faith, and consequently to faith. It is put in the most abstract form, because it is the expression of His terms as a principle, without defining any class of persons. This is supported by the prophet Habakkuk, who says, not that Christ kept the law for the unjust, but that "the just shall live by faith." Thus we see all thought of law-keeping for us by Christ is foreign to Rom. 1: 17, as we have seen it to be unknown to Rom. 3: 25, 26.

But is there not another sense of the expression in Romans 3: 5? Unquestionably, "the righteousness of God" is employed with a different aim and subject there. But even so it always leaves the same substantial sense of a quality of righteousness in Him, variously exercised, of course. He may judge the world, as here; He may justify believers, as in verses 22-26; but it is in all cases His righteousness. Does not this commend itself to your conscience as being a truer, simpler, less forced explanation than the traditional shiftings to and fro? It is assumed that God always justifies Himself. God is not responsible for man's evil; and the fact of man's unrighteousness being turned by Him to His own glory is no excuse for sins. It is the same fundamental truth, no matter how applied. If God displays His justice in judging the world, it is His righteousness, administered no doubt by Christ at His appearing; but it has nothing to do with Christ's keeping the law. For what link is there with God's taking righteous vengeance upon the guilty world? On the other hand, the sinner comes confessing his sin, flies for refuge to the blood of Christ, and God justifies him. He is righteous when He deals with impenitent unbelievers; He is equally righteous when He justifies the soul that repents and believes in Christ. It is the righteousness of God in both cases. Thus there is the strongest confirmation of the truth, although the application be different. In either direction it is God who is righteous, it is God displaying His righteousness. God's righteousness acts in view of those who, in pride or indifference, despise Him, and of those who, confessing their sins, betake themselves to the hiding-place of grace. Everywhere God is just, whether in judgment or in justification.

But does not such an expounding of divine righteousness in the gospel weaken the law? Assuredly it excludes boasting that a man is thus justified by faith without works of law. It overthrows the distinctions of men; it bespeaks one God who justifies Jews only by faith, and Gentiles through their faith. It is instructive to observe that the Apostle has to guard the true doctrine from this self-same charge: "Do we then make void the law through faith?" And this he meets by an emphatic denial. The contrary is the fact, — "we establish the law" — law as a principle. But how? Bring the law in as done by Christ for us, and it is difficult to see how this objection could have arisen. St. Paul could hardly have said absolutely that a man is justified by faith, apart from law-works; for according to this scheme the law-works were done all the same for the man, only by another: a strange doctrine indeed, for which one ought to have Scripture before believing it! But the statement has quite another sense, and intimates that faith, apart from works of law (let them be done by whom they may), is the true and only principle of justification according to God's word. And yet by faith we establish law, instead of annulling it; for faith sees and rests on Jesus suffering unto death for sin under Divine wrath, when sin was not only imputed to, but most really judged in, Him on the cross. When, or where, had law so deep and divine a sanction? Never, we may answer, can there be elsewhere such a maintenance of its authority. Were we under the law for our walk, we should make it void, if we fell into the vain conceit that we could break it, and yet escape its curse. Faith sees the law established in the death of Christ.

Next we come to a distinct step, which gives me occasion to ask, whether justification be only by the blood of Christ. Is this the sole measure and character and fruit of God's righteousness?

Let me say, that my object is not at all to reduce the blessing to naked forgiveness of sins, essential and precious as this may be; it is in no way or degree to deny the value of the life of Christ to the believer. On the contrary, the ordinary scheme of justification, I must contend, deprives you of realising the richest privilege God would have you know and enjoy. If this be so, how it illustrates that God's way is always the best! But what is it in this case? With singular inconsistency, these men allow that one cannot do without the blood of Christ. All admit this, as every Christian must. But then, say they, you need righteousness besides; and for this God needs Christ to obey the law for you. And what does Scripture say? It gives me the life of Christ, but life on the other side; not Christ keeping for me the law on the earth, but Christ risen: it is the resurrection-side. In point of fact, there is no such thing as identification with Christ as a living man here below; it is, without intending it, a virtual denial of Christianity. We are not Jews. Union is not with the blessed Lord as under the law, but with Him risen and exalted on high.

There is no doubt as to what is taught in Scripture. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," it is said. In what position is this union? Scripture leaves no question whatever. Thus the apostle Paul says: "Though we have known Christ after the flesh" [this is what the traditional righteousness amounts to], yet "now henceforth know we Him no more." Did the inspired writer put a slight upon the Lord here below ? Did he in anywise dishonour the perfect walk of Christ as a man under law upon the earth? God forbid! The truth is, that there and thus He was known as Messiah. There I ought to have regarded Him as a Being, however gracious, yet above and entirely aloof from me. I might believe in and love Him, follow Him, confess Him, obey Him, if I had life in my soul; I might be the object of His love and gracious care; but I could in no just sense have been a member of Messiah. I could not have been said to be of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones; I could have possessed no such actual oneness with Him. Peter, and James, and John, would have been horrified at any one telling them they were one with their Master. United to Him! a member of His body! who ever heard of such a thing? The fact is, the basis on which union with Christ exists and goes on was not even laid then. How could any soul be one with the blessed Lord, when his sins were unatoned for and unremoved? More than this, Christ was not then standing in that power of resurrection-life in which He could take the place of bringing them into His own relationship to His God and His Father, free from sin and law. Directly He dies, and is risen, the first day (I might almost say the very first act), when He comes into the midst of His disciples, He breathed upon them, and said, "Peace be unto you." He gives them the fullest assurance that all which pertained to the old man was gone, with peace not for themselves only, but others also. "Receive ye the Holy Spirit," said the quickening Spirit, as He breathed upon them. "Whose soever sins ye remit," etc. Not only were they quit of their own sins, but, in virtue of His large and blessed work, they stood and went forth witnesses, administratively, of the same to others.

Thus, there was the Lord Jesus Christ acting from the resurrection-side of the cross; for the believers had Him breathing life more abundantly upon them. (John 20) It was life in resurrection, life now entirely apart from and above the earth or Judaism, in short, above everything connected with the world or the law. What! Not connected with the law? Do you mean to slight the law, too? Certainly not; but we do mean to exalt Christ, yes, to assert His supreme and incomparable worth. Do you mean to keep Christ under law after He rose from the dead? That is the question. If so, assuredly Scripture will not help you. It shows us most plainly that now a new sight appeared. Not only was there a Messiah who came to shed His blood that God might righteously justify; but the character of the justification was to be according to the new place which Christ entered by resurrection. That is, it was not merely a justification in view of the old nature and all its effects and workings met by redemption, but an entirely new standing in which the believer is set by virtue of Christ's resurrection. This is begun to be treated in Romans 4, being taken up in connection with the type of Abraham. It is not now the time to dwell upon it at large, especially as it has been before many minds in various forms. But it may be remarked that Rom. 5 brings both before us: in verse 9, "justified by His blood;" and in verse 18, "justification of life," - one answering to chap. 3, the other to chap. 4. In Romans 3 God justifies by virtue of the blood of Jesus; in Romans 4 God justifies by virtue of His resurrection, for He "was raised again for our justification."

Such is the doctrine of Scripture. Where is the fulfilment of the law in this? Here, if anywhere, one might expect it to be introduced, were the hypothesis only true and sound. For the point raised is not forgiveness barely, but justification. It is presented in both its parts, exactly and fully, in Romans 3, 4. How comes it that there is not a word about Christ keeping the law for us? It is an unfortunate case, in sober truth, and piteously destitute, seeing that it has to go begging about the Bible, without getting even a single sure contribution in its favour. If there is, where is it? It is not here; nay, it is inconsistent with what is here. For "to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Why not, if true, tell us to believe on Jesus doing the works of the law for us? Why not tell us God imputes righteousness, not "without works," but by Christ's working, for us? The truth is, the promise would then be through the law, and not through the righteousness of faith, in contradiction to Rom. 4, whereas it really is of faith, that it might be according to grace, and not law.*

* It is just the same principle in Gal. 3 "They that be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." No man is justified by the law; not merely he is not justified by his own keeping the law, but not in virtue of law at all. To be justified, to live, is by faith. "And the law is not of faith:" they are opposite principles. If not so, what an admirable opening to have told us that Christ kept the law for us, and that His doing it is our life and title to eternal blessedness in heaven! For His legal observance is, according to some, the way, the truth, and the life, the ground necessary to imputing righteousness. But not so. Scripture excludes the idea, insisting that no one is justified by law, and that the law is not of faith; whereas these men say that, though it be nothing for pardon, it is all for righteousness. Had we been Jews, Christ has bought us out of the curse of the law [not a word about fulfilling it for us] that we might receive the promise by faith. Hence the apostle proves that the promise was independent of the law, and hundreds of years before. The blessing of Abraham, the inheritance, is not by law, but by promise. It is a question, therefore, of the immutability of the promise, not of the law, whatever cavillers may say. The law was a wholly distinct institution, added because of transgressions (in express contrast with our righteousness), till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. Is there inconsistency, then, between the law and the promises of God? There would be, if either life or righteousness were by law. But not so. The Scripture has shut up all (τὰ πάντα) under sin [not transgression merely], that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Dead silence as to His keeping the law for us! What we are told is, that, before faith came, we [the Jewish believers, not the "ye"] were guarded under law, shut up unto the faith about to be revealed. So that the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ [not a hint of being kept by Him for us], that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and heirs according to the promise, not the law. In chapter 4: 4 we do hear that God sent forth His Son, made of woman, made under law. Surely here, if anywhere, one might expect to learn, if it were true, that, so come, He was here keeping the law for us representatively. Not the most distant hint of it! On the contrary, He was sent to redeem, or buy off, those under law [the Jews], that we might receive sonship. Nor this only. "But because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So thou art no longer a bondman, but a son." It is an elaborate argument to exclude law on every side, — law as a principle, — from life, promises, righteousness, and special relationship. When Christ is introduced in this connection, it is solely as redeeming those under the law from its curse, and never as obeying it for their justification.

We go farther. Take up Romans 6, 7, 8, and what do we find? That the Spirit, having laid down the precious basis of resurrection in Christ, reasons upon it, applies it to the meeting of various difficulties, shows the fulness of the blessing to which the believer is brought by it: a blessing not only above all nature in its character, but also flowing out absolutely and without restriction to souls, wherever they might be in this world, absolutely ignoring the shades of earthly distinction. That is, it altogether leaves behind the limits of the law, and contemplates man as such apart from all else. The moment you have the race before you, mankind as they are, you are outside the necessary boundaries of the law, which dealt with none directly but Jews. Hence, we never hear the Gentiles spoken of in their guilt as "transgressors," because they were not under the law as the Jews were. We read of "sinners of the Gentiles" (Gal. 2: 15), because they were sinful men, of course, though not under the law. (Rom. 2: 14) On the other hand, when we have in view either Adam, who had a law (Rom. 5: 14), or the Jews, who had the law (Hosea 6: 7; Gal. 2: 18), the word "transgressors" has its force and appropriateness, as we see in Scripture. And why? Because Israel, like Adam, were under the positive enactment of a known law, and were consequently more guilty if they were unfaithful. Hence, both are said to be "under sin" (Rom. 3: 9), not exactly under transgression; as death is said to be the wages not merely of transgression but of sin.*

* Few mistranslations have wrought wider or more profound mischief than that which represents 1 John 3: 4 The real sense is, "Every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness." Violation of a positive command is not merely ἀνομία but παράβασις νόμου, a wholly different and sometimes contrasted idea, as in Rom. 2: 12.  Ἀνομία of course includes all infraction of law, but it goes incomparably farther, and takes in every exercise of self-will, where and when there may be no promulgated requirement. This explains the universality of sin since the fall according to Scripture; as the Apostle proves of those who died between Adam and Moses, though they had no known code or command from God. Thus, where there is no law, necessarily no transgression can be; yet it would be erroneous and evil thence to infer that, where there is no law, there is no sin. (Compare Rom. 4: 15, and chap. 5: 13, 14.) As to all this, the moderns are as dark as the fathers or the schoolmen. The common error as to the law naturally led to an erroneous system, both as to justification and the standard of Christian walk.

But what are we to think of Romans 5: 19, so continually cited to prove Christ's fulfilment of the law as the ground of our justification? "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Here the apostle is meeting the objection that the Gospel of grace makes all turn on one man Christ Jesus, and on one accomplished righteousness. Hence, he goes up to Adam. Could the Jew deny that this one man by his single act brought in sin and death? Why should not the grace of God reverse the tale? Was not the first man the type of the Second man, the last Adam ? Thus, while the law is alluded to parenthetically, the whole scope of the argument necessarily mounts up before the law to Adam. It accordingly comprehends under the two heads their respective families, as involved in the ruin of the one and the redemption of the other. The express aim is to exclude the law, and to bring in, on the one hand, universal realities, on the other, special relations under Adam and Christ. "For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace, and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."

Observe that we ought in verse 18 to have "by one offence," as in the margin; such is the right version. It is "one offence" here, but "the offence of one" in verse 17. The two verses are entirely distinct. "Therefore as by one offence [the tendency is] toward all men unto condemnation, even so by one righteousness [the tendency is] toward all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."

Many rest very confidently on the passage; but allow me to ask, How is it you overlook that here the Holy Ghost is arguing upon the headships of Adam and Christ — not upon the narrower issue of the law, but in pointed contrast with it? He is comparing, not Moses, but Adam and Christ. Now, Adam had nothing to do with the law of God given by Moses. If we think of the moral sum only of the second table, he would not even have understood it. How could he have been told to love his neighbour, for instance, in Paradise? Why, he might have looked over the world and would not have found a neighbour to love. Again, to take a particular command, where would have been the sense of telling an innocent man that he must not lust? "Lust!" he might have said, "I don't know what lust is." He was a man without a single failing; there was a total absence of any evil, and therefore on this ground the propensities of the sinful heart which the law assumes did not even exist for Adam.

How, then, can men talk and reason as they do about Adam having the law? It is a mistake as to the fact, a moral contradiction as to principles, unscriptural and irrational. If they merely said that Adam had a law, it is admitted; but we must not confound a law with the law. Further, in Adam's case it was no question of doing the law to live, for he was sinless. Hence, it was not such a trial as the law supposes. For the point in his case was not, "Do and live," but rather "Do not, lest you die." That is, it was in both its parts the exact opposite of the law, which supposes the state, and forbids the indulgence, of sin. Again; the law supposes one not to have life, which it presents as the object to be gained. But this the sinner cannot do.

Hence the result, or at least the aim, of the law is to fix the consciousness in the heart of man, that, as he does not, cannot, meet God's terms, he is a dead man in God's judgment. Now, was this, in the least, the case with Adam unfallen? Unquestionably it was not. He was a living man; and it was not a question of doing to get life, but not doing what God forbade and Satan tempted him to do in order that he might not die. Fallen, he brought in death to all his family, as Christ risen brought in life for His family. Therefore, the apostle puts in contrast Christ and Adam, not Christ and Moses. Is not this the real point of contrast? Not Moses or the law (though both are incidentally glanced at), but Adam and Christ. However, the case is really far stronger than this. The next verse does introduce the law, but it is as a distinct thing added and contra-distinguished to the foregoing. One can have no hesitation, therefore, in concluding that the obedience of Christ here spoken of had nothing at all to do with the keeping of the law for us in any sense whatever. "Moreover" [or "now," "but"], says he, "the law entered [by the by] that the offence might abound." It is evident that the point insisted on is the value of tracing things to their sources. The law, which came in by Moses, and pressed man individually for what he was in himself, however important, was but incidental, and for special purposes.

Thus, in order to get an adequate view of the subject, we must go beyond Moses up to Adam and the beginning of this world's moral history. There man fell through disobedience. It was not a question of breaking the law, for of it he knew nothing. He violated the command which he was bound to obey. So, here, Jesus stands at the end of the ages. (Heb. 9) As Adam at the beginning, so Christ appeared at the end, of the moral world; in the one case a disobedient man, and in the other the obedient One. The first exposes all to condemnation; the Second triumphs so as to open justifying to all. In effect, the disobedience of the one constitutes his company sinners, as the obedience of the other constitutes His, righteous. The one disobeyed, and brought ruin upon the mass of his dependents; the other obeyed, and the consequence is that the many dependent on Him are made righteous. Thus not an allusion is here made (ver. 19) to the keeping of the law, but, on the contrary, law entered by the way (not that the offence might be abolished, and that the ground of justification might be established), but quite simply and subordinately "that the offence might abound." Why are not men content with God's word and wisdom? "Where sin abounded, grace (not bare law-fulfilling) did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned in death [it is not a question of law broken or transgression merely], even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." How infinitely beyond law-keeping!

In Scripture, then, nothing can be more certain than that God's righteousness means His justice in justifying by virtue of Christ. We have seen in Christ, as the ground of justification, first, blood to put away the guilt of the old man before God; and next, resurrection, the spring of a new, more abundant, and holy life, where no condemnation can be. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." And what do men substitute for this? A mere patching up of the old man as living under the law! Are you prepared to follow them? Can you accept this traditional earthly scheme as Christianity? It is really no better than lowering Christ, and His work for our justification, to a making up of the flesh's deficiencies as responsible under the law.* Is this YOUR Christianity? You ought to know by experience the disastrous effects — uncertainty of soul, anxiety, doubt, fear, frequent, if not habitual, sense of bondage and condemnation before God, which is precisely and naturally the result for the conscientious mind. As long as the first covenant stood, it was the old man schooled and disciplined by the action of the law; and such was the external condition in which even the saints of God were held, whatever might be their faith and its fruits individually. (Gal. 4) "Through fear of death," as we are told, "they were all their lifetime subject to bondage." (Heb. 2) Alas! how very many are in this day of ours practically in the same condition. How many really abide as if they knew not whether the Holy Ghost were or not! as if they were not quite sure that Christ had died for them, or that He, risen from the dead, had procured them present and eternal nearness to God! Do you think this a calumny? The truth is, men are themselves too much under the darkening influence of the error to be competent judges. But even they ought not to be ignorant of the fact, that there are now in the world thousands and millions bearing the name of Christ who are still going on their legal round, just as if the glorious Deliverer had not yet come. How comes this to pass? Because they do not submit to nor understand the righteousness of God; because they pertinaciously cling to their bald thought of law-righteousness made up by Christ, which they have made into a kind of party badge and banner under which to fight. In a measure, God leaves even saints to taste the bitter fruit of their own folly. Hence it is that, though believers, they are kept from all enjoyment of peace and joy in Christ.

* Hence, as all men before conversion, in every age and country, are imagined to be equally under the law, the Gentile no less than the Jew, so the Christian is put under the same law, not (they say) for justification, but for a rule of life. Every whit of the system is false; the whole is a denial in principle both of Judaism and Christianity, of law and gospel, and even of sin and holiness, as taught in God's word. It is certain, from Rom. 2, 3, that the Jew is under law in contrast with the Gentile. It is certain, from Rom. 4, 5, that between the fall and Moses not one could be said to be under law. It is certain, from Rom. 6, 7, that the Christian is not under law but under grace, and this not only for justification, but for his walk; so that, even if he had been a Jew, he is become dead to the law and belongs to another, Christ risen: to be connected now with both is spiritual adultery, and leads to bad fruit. Rom. 8 is distinct that God has wrought in Christ the mighty work of condemning sin and delivering ourselves who believe, in order that the δικαίωμα or righteous sum, of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. And, in truth (as we are shown in Gal. 5), walking in the Spirit is the true guard against the lusts of the flesh; and if we are led by the Spirit, we are not under law, and yet we love, in which one word the whole law is fulfilled. For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc., against which there is assuredly no law. He that is under law does not love, but breaks the law; while he that loves fulfils the law (Romans 13) without being under it (indeed, by being under grace and not law). For the law is the strength of sin, never of holiness (1 Cor. 15), and applies not to a righteous man, but to the lawless and disobedient. (1 Tim. 1) Those who desire to be law-teachers in our day are evidently, therefore, equally unsound as to justification and the walk of the Christian, and, what is more serious they virtually frustrate God's grace, and annul for righteousness the death of the Saviour. "For" (says the Apostle) "I through law am dead to the law that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God [not who kept the law for me, but] who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." Do you say Christ was only keeping the law in dying on the cross? Then you ignorantly blot out grace and debase the Saviour's infinitely precious death to the mere doing of a man's duty; for the law is just the expression of man's duty to God, not of God's grace to the sinner, nor of the saint's devotedness to God, still less of all Christ did to glorify God in either life or death. But the notion is utterly false. "By the grace of God" [in contrast with His law] Christ tasted death for every man.

Such is the practical state of those who commit themselves to the error; for thoroughly is it allowed, that — as in other cases, so in this — where there is simplicity of heart in cleaving to Christ, where there is a fervent sense of the personal worth of Christ, it is wonderful how God cheers them, spite of their perverse bias. It is no otherwise with so many persons who see not Christ's coming as an immediate hope: God in His grace sustains them blessedly where there is an eye single to Christ; and if they have written hymns, others can sing their hymns as well as they can, and perhaps better; but then, this is no effect of their doctrine as to the coming of Christ. The insertion of a heap of intervening events practically puts Him aside as our hope; for one is thus waiting for the happening of this and that event rather than for Christ. I attribute it to the Spirit of God raising them above the withering influence of their system.

Just so is it with those who, in lieu of the righteousness of God, advocate the idea of Christ under law as a substitute for it, and as our standing before God. In such persons, where there is liveliness of faith and a hearty sense of the Saviour's grace and glory, they rise, more or less, above their false views. But the inevitable native effect of the doctrine, as far as it is carried out in the soul, is to bring persons back into the condition in which saints were before Christ came to accomplish redemption. And so it is that, beginning with Roman Catholicism, you will find that the language of such persons is founded very much more upon the Psalms misapplied than on the truth and grace of God displayed in Christianity. And very naturally; for Popery (and, alas! not Popery alone) will tell you that Jerusalem and Zion are the Church of God. Popery acts as if, like Israel, commissioned to beat down all the Canaanites in the name of Jehovah. "O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us! Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones!" So now, Popery is happy where it acquires power to found the Inquisition — is happy where it can punish recusants and heretics soundly for their spiritual sins. Such is the effect of grafting the law on their system. Would that it were confined to one religious body only!

My reason for referring to it is, because it shows the issue, practically, of slipping outside the blessed region of liberty, and light, and life in resurrection, into which Christ has brought the saint now by virtue of His own redemption. Thus one loses sight of the new standing of grace, and returns to what could not but be before the cross, instead of following on through the cross into the presence of Christ on high, made the righteousness of God in Him.

Let me call your attention to an expression in the beginning of Romans 8, which illustrates the immense importance of the resurrection-side of justification: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them . . . ." — for whom Christ died, is it? No. For whom Christ shed His blood? No; but "to them which are in Christ Jesus." Redemption by His blood we have seen, — not pardon only, as these misleaders say, but justification by the blood of Christ. It is the value Godward of Christ dying for us; but in that aspect there is no such thing as being "in Christ." But here is another character of privilege, because our justification is not only by the blood, but in the life of Christ risen from the dead. Accordingly, the believer not only has Christ for him on the cross, but he is "in Christ." What is the effect of this? "No condemnation." To justify, therefore, is not, as some teach, "to declare judicially the innocence of the party justified." For innocence, the condition of man unfallen, once lost, is gone for ever. But God, as always, brings in something better. The gospel, accordingly, is no return by law to the first Adam condition, even if it were conceivable, but the gift of relationship by grace to the Second man, founded on the judgment of sin, root and branch, in the cross, and displayed in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Now let us just look back at the scene where this victory was achieved for us in the grace of God. There are those who will tell you that there is nothing beyond the precious blood of Christ. This I do admit, that for depth of vindicating God, for thorough clearing of sin, and for intense manifestation of love, such as never else was conceived of, there is nothing that equals the cross and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you mean to affirm that there is no privilege founded upon His blood beyond pardon and cleansing — if you mean to deny that there is any new region of life and liberty for us to be ushered into, as God's sons, beyond the blood of Christ in itself, I cannot but infer that you labour under a profound mistake. It is to exalt, not to depreciate, His precious blood, if I say that I follow Him into resurrection, that I am one with Him glorified in heaven, and that Christ dead, risen, and ascended, alone gives me, through the Holy Ghost sent down, the true place of a Christian, and of the Church. No doubt His blood is the foundation, but His life in resurrection is the new character in which the believer stands before God. And here is one effect of it — "No condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Why so? "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." It is not the blood of Christ, but the Spirit of life in Him after redemption was accomplished. The blood of Christ was the sacrificial basis on which the freedom is conferred; but He, risen from the dead, is the spring, pattern, and power of the freedom He confers. His blood cleanses from all sin. "This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood." But all this, indispensable as it may be, is not the same thing as the life of Christ risen. Upon the cross I see our Divine Saviour suffering for our sins; there too I see the heavens in darkness, and earth a scene of utter confusion and rebellion against Him; yea, not even God espousing His cause, but, on the contrary, forsaking Him — the true God, His own God, abandoning Him, the Holy One, whom He made sin for us. Does that give me my conscious peace, and joy, and liberty? Peace I never could have without it; but were there only the cross thus seen, how could we have it? Absolutely needed by us, absolutely needed to vindicate and glorify God, as the cross is, it seems to me that we ought to be in the darkness, the grief, and the shame of the cross, yea, that we ought to abide there still, if God were only thus dealing with His beloved Son. Why should we expect anything more? What right should we have to look beyond, were this all?

Once more look at the resurrection. What a new and pregnant fact! The same God who smote Jesus, raised Him: the same God who then forsook Him, now ranges Himself on His side, and, not satisfied with raising Him up from the grave, takes and sets Him, "far above all principalities and powers," in the very highest place, "at the right hand of the Majesty on high." And what is all that, you ask, for you, me, and all who believe? Beloved friends, it is Christianity. It is not merely the cross, though the cross be the sole sufficient foundation; but you cannot separate Christianity from the person of Christ exalted on high, consequent on redemption. That risen Second Man in the presence of God it is who determines the acceptance of the believer now. Is Jesus not the object of the perfect favour of God? His work has brought every Christian into the same place of favour and relationship. "You that were sometime alienated . . . . yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and unblamable, and unreproveable in His sight." Such is the cloudless grace in which all now stand who believe. There is no difference whatever as to the standing of the Christian. "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." If there is no difference as to sin, there is none as to acceptance: for Christ is all and in all.

''What shall we, then, say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation," etc. Here we have the apostle, in Rom. 8, triumphantly closing his comprehensive exposition of justification. But there is no weakening, modifying, or supplementing of the doctrine. Death and resurrection, or their results, remain, as ever, his theme, — the security for the believer, no less than the ground and character of divine righteousness. In our baptism we owned ourselves dead with Christ, buried with Him into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life, reckoning ourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and delivered from the law, being dead to that wherein we were held. In the Lord's Supper it is His death we show forth till He come, not His living for us under law, which is nowhere so said, but eating of His body broken for us, and drinking of His blood shed for us. So again under the pain and pressure of our daily path, we have His intercession for us at God's right hand, His ever living on high to plead for us; nowhere a repairing of our faults in the flesh, as on earth and under law. There is no going back for comfort there; "for such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens." It is all in pointed contrast with an earthly, legal state. For us it is the Son perfected for evermore. "Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." Most sweet it is, that if any sin, "Jesus Christ the righteous" is the advocate we have with the Father; and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

The deep general want is, that Christians should know Christ, and their blessing in Him, far, far better; not merely read and hear occasionally, and even seem to enjoy at times, but that they should never allow or join in any lower or different language; for they know the Shepherd's voice, not that of strangers; "and a stranger will they not follow," says the Lord, "but will flee from him." To slight the Lord's warning word is not the way to live in the new place into which the resurrection of Christ has carried us; but, on the contrary, for one exposed to the tones and ways of a worldly sanctuary, as temptations increase and thicken, the taste for and enjoyment of the truth impoverishes. Is it a matter for wonder if those who retrograde at last become the enemies, ay, the bitterest enemies, of that very testimony that once seemed so grateful to their hearts? For, allow me to ask, who at this moment are so keen, persistent, and implacable as those who, having once confessed, now turn away from the confession of an exalted Christ and of His speedy coming for us? This deadly opposition is going on, and you need be on your guard "lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness." Not that God does not, will not work, who will surely call out those who have ears to hear as long as Jesus tarries. May He grant them such faith and faithfulness to Christ, that they may walk far better than we have done! Not, of course, that we could desire to be put to shame; but that, even so, Christ might be magnified, and His heavenly testimony have a better answer in the hearts and ways of His own on earth. But be not deceived nor self-secure. There is such a thing as having had the truth and selling it. There are those who, having once appeared to value the truth, have allowed painful circumstances and mortified feelings to carry them away against those that were the instruments of God's gracious power for their good. And, depend upon it, when men become the antagonists of such, under various and plausible pretexts, they will ere long fall into the deeper guilt of becoming the enemies of God's testimony itself.

To return, however. The evident scope of the righteousness of God is, that He himself is righteous in justifying the believer by virtue of Christ's work in all its extent and blessedness — a work first viewed in the efficacy of His blood-shedding upon earth, but alone fully displayed in His resurrection, that we might stand in Him, cleared from all charge, the very old nature being thus judged dead and gone, and a new life given according to the power and character and acceptance of Him risen from the grave. Legal obedience is essentially individual. The law is the measure of duty as in the flesh to God. Its righteousness, therefore, wholly differs from God's righteousness, not in degree or sphere only, but in source and kind. To the sinner the law was necessarily a ministry of death and condemnation; to our blessed Lord an occasion for manifesting His perfectness, and having its own character retrieved. But never did the law hold out such a prospective reward as quickening or justifying others. The idea is purely imaginative, and entirely false. Nor did Christ earn life by doing the law: such a thought denies the glory of His person. In Him was life; yea, He was "that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." Not as made of a woman, made under law, did He give life, but as the Son of God, quickening whom He would in His own sovereign title, and in communion with the Father. For the law knows nothing of the sort; it says, the man that does these things lives, and the man that does not, dies. So Christ, speaking for it, says, not to sin-convicted souls, but to the self-righteous young ruler, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." No dead ever passed into life by this road, but only by faith, only by hearing the voice of the Son of God. For eternal life is the free gift of God, and is never otherwise the portion of sinful man. It is false, then, and ignorance of the gospel, to say that we enter into life by virtue of Christ's keeping the commandments; for life and incorruption are expressly declared to be brought to light by the gospel, not by the law. "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." But it could give neither. "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son."

Hence, in Scripture, legal righteousness is never treated as vicarious: if it be so, where? Not only is the language of the law intensely, exclusively personal, but the New Testament pointedly contrasts it with the language of faith in Rom. 10: "For they [the Jews] being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law [why not tell us of fulfilling it?] for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in shine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

It is impossible to conceive words more directly fitted to shut out the thought of the same righteousness, only fulfilled by Christ for us. The point insisted on is, that there are two righteousnesses which speak two-wise: not a single righteousness of law, obligatory on us, and done by Christ; but one righteousness of law, and another of faith; one of doing to live, and the other of believing (not that the Lord Jesus kept the law for us, to justify us, and fill up the deficiencies of the old man, but) that God raised Him from the dead. It is a question of salvation, which finds its answer only in the righteousness that is of faith.

Again, this difference is entirely confirmed by Phil. 3: 9, where one's own righteousness is explained to be of law, in contradistinction to that which is through faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God on the ground of faith. And the reason is obvious. Legal righteousness is that which every one under law is bound to render to God; the righteousness which is God's, and of God on the ground of faith, is of pure grace, and as much higher and better as God is above man — yes, above what man ought to be; for that was human, this is divine righteousness. The law never called a righteous man, still less a divine person, to die for sinners; never claimed His resurrection, and still less to raise Him again for their justification; never proposed to glorify in God Himself a suffering, crucified, but therein God-glorifying man, still less to give us the glory which the Father gave the Son. The law, in fine, sought righteousness from man, made God but the receiver and so far passive — man being contemplated as the active party; in the gospel, on the contrary, God has His due and better place as active in grace through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord — it reveals His righteousness. It is δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ, and not only ἐκ Θεοῦ divine in nature and in source.

John 16: 8-10 I will just notice. It does not expressly mention "the righteousness of God," but it is evidently connected with it, and full of instruction and interest. "I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you. And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin," etc. It is a totally different process from that of the law. In the prophets' times the law was made to reprove the Jews of sin. And so at any time it may be the instrument to deal with the guilty, and convict them of sin. " By the law is the knowledge of sin." But now appears another power, mightier, yet deeper withal, and not precept or principle only, but a living, divine person. Assuredly He is here, while Jesus is away, for glorifying Him, for teaching and comforting those who believe in Him; but the same Holy Ghost sent down from heaven is the power for convincing the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Whether men like it or not, such is the statement of the word of God: let them beware of fighting against that word.

The Spirit then reproves or convicts the world of three things — "Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness" — Is it because Christ came from Jehovah to fulfil the law for man? The very contrary! — "Because I go to my Father." How can men continue, then, to speculate? Why should believers persist in contending for what none can find in God's word, to the giving up that which is there? It is a mere delusion which the enemy encourages them in, because he knows that, in their zeal for this notion of their own, they are losing the full and fresh power of the truth of God, as set forth in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. The object of Satan is, if he can, to make some fancy about Christ Himself a means to take people back to the state of things before redemption. Do you suppose Satan is become less keen-sighted? Do you imagine that he has lost his ancient subtlety? This is his aim — if he cannot keep people altogether away from Christ — as little of Christ as possible. Even Scripture may be so misused as to help it on.

When Christ was on the earth, redemption was not effected; God was still dealing with the world; man was not thoroughly condemned. The "strange doctrine" I am combating at once dishonours Christ's sufferings and consequent heavenly glory, puts God again behind a veil, deprives believers of the full liberty of redemption, resuscitates the flesh, and represents the world as a present possible scene of enjoyment. It is not the wrong of any one association in particular. Christ's law-keeping for us is quite as strongly held among rationalists as dissenters, and more among Calvinists than Arminians. This tenacity, in holding on to what they cannot prove from Scripture, demonstrates how powerful is the spell of tradition, new or old, and how small is the place they practically give to the authority of God's word over their souls. Hence, too, unbridled license of tongue and pen to make up for Scriptural evidence, and this in proportion to their own want of a spiritual mind and of enlarged acquaintance with the ways of God. The consequence is, that the zeal which should be put forth in defence of God's blessed truth evaporates in ignorant and powerless efforts to pass off on others, as the light, those earth-born clouds by which their own souls have been kept in comparative darkness.

Let us look at another and serious application. How do I know that man is lost? By the word of God, no doubt; but it is the doctrine of the resurrection that shows the state in which every one lies who has not resurrection- life in Christ. Therefore it is that we find many a soul pretty much in the plight of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. They are waiting for the troubling of the waters, instead of enjoying the blessed fact and proof in their own souls, that He is come who is life everlasting, and that He, dead and risen, gives life in deliverance from sin, law, world, and judgment. Without slighting any good man, and with a certain knowledge of the best men's writings in most ages, I may say confidently that this legal theory is the millstone about the necks of most moderns. If I must mention names, take John Owen and Richard Baxter among crowds of others.

Are you aware that Richard Baxter never had peace in his soul until he came to his death-bed? He was an ardent Christian, of fervent piety, of no small energy in service, possessed of considerable powers of mind as well as of large stores of reading, and one who wrote very extensively indeed on the things of God. How came it that the author of the "Saint's Rest" never had rest himself till the close? The reason was that Baxter lay under the dark bondage of law as a matter of his soul's experience day by day. It was not that he did not believe in Christ, but that he so feebly realised the deliverance of redemption till he was ending his career.

Look, again, at John Owen. He was Baxter's antagonist. The one was a moderate Presbyterian, the other a Congregationalist. They were both good and able men, but they differed materially — the one being decidedly Calvinistic, the other Arminianly disposed. Still, in both there was, perhaps, equal lack of light as to the righteousness of God. Is this to disparage either? Be it far from us; but must we therefore accept their mutual attacks and their clashing thoughts on this very head of justifying righteousness? The fact is, their stamp remains and is plain enough: not a heavenly, but an earthly tone; little sense of the liberty of grace; no joy of resurrection, but contrariwise, a strong assimilation to the position and experience of godly Jews. This is not to be wondered at in Cromwell's Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. His system of theology rather fitted him for (certainly in no way hindered him from) the revolutionary movement of that day. None of them had the faintest conception of the heavenly calling of the saint, still less of the Church's privileges as the body and bride of Christ in heaven. Nay, they had no right understanding of the full and proper deliverance of the individual Christian. Association with Christ raised and ascended was to them an unknown region. Not one of the Puritan class could say intelligently with the apostle, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." (2 Cor. 5)

For us Christ is dead, and risen, and gone on high, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. This is the righteousness, therefore, that the Holy Ghost is convincing the world of; not man's under law, but God's in grace. "Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more." Christ, rejected of men, is gone to the Father, and has done with the world, as such, for the present. The world will never see Christ again, till He comes in judgment of it. The Christian even now belongs to Christ in heaven, and will go shortly to meet Christ in the air and be with Him in the Father's house. He will also appear with Christ, and the world will behold Christ and the Christian in the same glory. The world will then see with shame and remorse what it was to despise Christ and those who are Christ's, and the testimony of His name. What a changing of sides! Assuredly, the joy and the grief in that day will be great indeed. All will turn on Christ and His word. Are you honouring Him, His word, and His work now? If so, blessed are you now, and blessed then.

But observe here again how law-righteousness differs from that of God. Law promises earth and living long upon it to those who kept it. Grace gives Christ to suffer for our sins, the just for the unjust, raises Him for our justifying, glorifies Him in heaven, and makes us God's righteousness in Him there, with the sure hope that He will soon come to have us with Himself where He is. No doubt, the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. But then in Christ we are dead to it, instead of being alive — not, as the English Bible makes it out, by the law being dead to us (Rom. 7: 6), which would be to abrogate the law indeed, but by our being dead to it by the body of Christ. Thus, being in Christ, there is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Without stopping long, I would add a word on this last verse of 2 Cor. 5, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Some find a little difficulty here, and this, because the "righteousness of God" is applied with a somewhat different shade of meaning. But can you bring in the fulfilling of the law? If there be a Scripture that more positively excludes it than another, it is this verse. It is not that God made Christ to keep the law for us that we might thus have His performance of it imputed to us; but "He made Him to be sin for us." What and when was this? Was it anything but the cross? It is evidently and exclusively the atonement. Thus it is another form in which the righteousness of God is presented. For here it is not put before us, so to speak, objectively; it is predicated of the saints. The righteousness of God is upon us in Rom. 3; it is what we are made here. No matter, however, whether it comes before us in Scripture objectively or subjectively: it carries always the same thought of what God is because of the cross of Christ. It is God justifying us righteously by virtue of Christ, without the remotest allusion to Christ's keeping the law for us. God made to be sin for us Christ "that knew no sin." Christ had no sin within, neither had He done anything sinful. He did not even know sin. Yet "God made Him to be sin for us" upon the cross: it was atonement for us, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

The apostle connects all present relationship with Christ at the right hand of God; even as, from his conversion, we know he had to do with Christ in glory. It is the capital truth of all that part of the epistle. Compare 2 Cor. 3, 4 (and it is always of importance to get the context, for this does not deceive), where you will find that the point is Christ glorified as the object of the Christian's regard, in contrast with Moses veiled, which was the distinctive sign for Israel. They could not even look upon Moses without a veil, which is the exact type to represent Judaism. With a veiled man they had to do then; whereas "we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," (not Christ fulfilling the law for us upon earth) "are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit."

In other words, Christ glorified in heaven is the proper object of the Christian's daily contemplation. He knows and delights in the life of Christ, as he follows Him in spirit here below; he rests exclusively upon the blood of Christ, as that which purges his guilt; but the object of his soul, which transforms and acts upon him from day to day, is Christ beheld in glory. So, in 2 Cor. 4, it is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (as Paul saw him literally in glory, we by faith), ''the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Again, chap 5 confirms the same doctrine: "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." He is viewed, of course, there — not on earth, but in heaven. And so, at the close, we are told that "Him who knew no sin God made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." On the other hand, in John 16 we saw the Spirit, sent down, convicting the world of righteousness, because Christ, rejected from earth, is accepted on high. There was no righteousness in the world: had there been a particle, they would have bowed down and worshipped the Son of God. But they cast Him out in unrighteousness; He goes to the Father, and the world sees Him no more. This is, in both its parts, righteousness. But it is not all; for God not only shows His righteousness by exalting the world-despised Jesus to His right hand, but He makes us His righteousness in Christ. What a blessing! We become "the righteousness of God in Him!"

With another I would illustrate this truth by directing you to the analogous case of Jerusalem and Jehovah. (Compare Jer. 23: 6, and 33: 16.) In the former passage the Lord is called "our righteousness." "This is His name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness." In the latter passage, "This is the name wherewith she [Jerusalem] shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness." Thus, Jerusalem acquires by grace a standing in association with Him who is the source of her justification. But even this is never said to be by law nor law-fulfilling, be it by whom it may. Substitution is of the essence of the gospel; vicarious sacrifice was an unquestionable truth before the law, and during the law, as it is for ever consecrated in Christ's one offering, which set aside the Levitical system. The obedience of One is that by which alone any can be justified; but it is His obedience all through: not the active, as men say, contrasted with the passive, but His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. But where is He said to have obeyed the law for us? Where that His life was vicarious? He suffered, was made a curse, was made sin, died for us — all most true, His substitution and satisfaction on the cross; which is enfeebled, not strengthened, by the unscriptural addition of His walk on earth, as if this also were substitutional.

So it is, then, with us as with the earthly city. "Jehovah our Righteousness" is the name of the Lord in connection with Israel. Our association is with Christ in heaven. The Lord Jesus has been received up in glory. Divine righteousness is shown in exalting His person on the throne. But if God has shown His righteousness in setting Him there, He further exercises His righteousness in setting us in Him there. Such is the efficacy of His work as made sin for us. "Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who from God was made to us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." (1 Cor. 1: 30.)

But I close. To dwell upon this subject further here might be but wearisome, and only weaken what I desire to leave resting upon the minds of those who have been listening. May the Lord bless what has been of Himself, for His name's sake!

W.K.

Kings and Priests

W. Kelly

First published 1870

Published 1948 by C.A. Hammond

This edition retypeset 1994, © Chapter Two, 1994.

ISBN 1 85307 107 2

This edition has been slightly modified to bring it up to date. The lecture was given in London in May 1870. Modifications were made by W. J. Hocking in 1943. Its original title was 'Ritualism, A disparagement of Christ and a perversion of the Christian Faith.' — E.N.C., 1994.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from Chapter Two.

Kings and Priests

“For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the Judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9: 24-28)

The subject on which I am to speak this afternoon might appear altogether opposed to that of Rationalism, which we had last week; but the opposition is only in appearance. No doubt in the minds and intention of many it is a real antagonism; and far be it from me to doubt that, as godly men have been tinged with somewhat of Rationalism, so on the other hand probably even more have suffered from Ritualism. There can be no question to any upright mind, adequately acquainted with both the word of God and the facts growing out of the present state of thought among the children of God in the world, that there are, carried away in these contrary directions, persons who have a true living knowledge of God through the Lord Jesus. But this proves nothing whatever as to the character of either system in itself. It shows that the children of God themselves have, in the bare fact that they are His children, nothing to preserve them from the snares of the adversary; that, even though they have been born again, in consequence of allowing human thought and feeling they may be swayed in either direction.

Rationalism and Ritualism Distinguished

But further, underneath the seeming opposition of the two systems, there is a link, and consequently often no small sympathy, and will, I have no doubt, afford the enemy of souls power in his own time to blend them together in a union for which neither might be prepared at the present moment. The reason of this lies in the very simple fact, that as Rationalism is a deification of human powers, in which man presumes by his own mind to judge the word of God, and is therefore the infidelity of the intellect when either carried out to its results or judged in its principle; so on the other hand Ritualism is the infidelity of the imagination, very often with piety underneath it, with a love for the Saviour that may preserve from the full consequences of the system, but in itself always savouring of and tending to idolatry.

Now the power of deliverance, as well as that which makes manifest its real character, is what we may most profitably dwell upon at this time. It is no pleasure to dissect that which is evil. The momentous thing is to supply God's remedy; and as I endeavoured to bear this in mind in speaking of Rationalism, so I shall for the most part restrict myself at this time to that which may, by God's grace, preserve souls from religious infidelity, giving them divine grounds to judge and reject Ritualism in all its fruits as well as its roots.

Gospel Truth Preserves from Rationalism and Ritualism

Thanks be to God, the remedy is not far off; it is nigh us in our mouth and in our heart. The truth of the gospel is the best guard, not against Rationalism alone, but also against Ritualism. It is impossible for a soul that really understands the gospel — I do not mean one that is merely born again, but one that intelligently knows by grace the word of truth, the gospel of salvation — to be dragged into either. There may be persons drawn away for a time into anything; but it is impossible for a person who understands the gospel simply, and who carries its truth really before his soul, and, above all, who has Christ Himself as the object revealed to his heart in love by that gospel, to be left under the snare of either, if indeed to be drawn aside into it at all. I shall show therefore that, if Christians hold fast what God has given them in the Lord Jesus, and also in that mighty work which Christ has accomplished, and which God now reveals by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, Who makes it known to us more particularly in the New Testament, there is a divine preservative which no power of the enemy can break through.

You will have noticed that in the verses just read we have the Spirit of God showing us the relation of the truth and facts of Christianity to what was really a ritual system — the only ritual that God ever acknowledged. In Israel there was a system of religious shadows, furnished by God Himself. Undoubtedly therefore, if this were all the revelation of God, we ought every one of us to be ritualists. For the believer there can be no question either that God set it up, or that God maintained it by His authority until it had done its work. It was by no means the primitive system, for God took care that promise should be before law and those shadows which in the law were systematized, commonly called the Levitical economy.

Christ Jesus Gives Us the Truth

But the truth of the gospel shows that the Lord Jesus came into the world to give us the truth, which Rationalism, far from having found, confesses that it has not, because it is only in quest of truth — does not profess to know, and even doubts the possibility of knowing. Not only has Christ brought us in Himself the truth for the simplest soul that receives Him, and not only is He in Himself the very same Christ for the simplest as for those who are most spiritual, but, besides that, He has wrought a work, the consequences of which are infinite and absolutely exclusive of Ritualism and of the ground it assumes.

God has not left us to gather what these consequences are; He has revealed them. He states distinctly some of them in the verses already read. He tells us there that Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands. These holy places belonged to the ritual system of Israel, and they are divinely declared to be “figures of the true.”

Ritualism therefore does not give us the truth any more than Rationalism; it gives us shadows, while Rationalism only leaves men in darkness. It gives us figures of the true, but nothing more. It gives us not the very image, but at best types. Rationalism is a negative and deadly system, gives nothing, and would destroy all. The ritual system according to God did, in an emblematical way and to a certain extent, present the truth which Christ was about to bring in — not the whole of the truth, far from it, nor even any part of it in its fulness.

It is impossible for any one, for any thing, to be an adequate representation of Christ. We must have Christ Himself in order to have the truth. But we are told in this chapter that Christ “obtained eternal redemption.” This He did being lifted up from the earth as a sacrifice. We are told further that He has entered “into heaven itself.” Thus, if everything in Him is a reality, there is none in the condition of the creature as it is, except indeed the sorrowful reality of sin; but, properly speaking, we cannot call sin a reality, except for judgment. It is the alienation of man's heart from God, self-will, lust, passion, pride, vanity — yea, it is all a lie against the nature that God made. Being a departure from God Himself to the view of the creature it has, save in its guilt and misery, no right to be called a reality. There was once reality, when God made the heavens and earth, and placed man in the Paradise of delight, when man and all that God surrounded him with was very good but that reality faded when man sinned; and from that day till God displace the world of sin by Jesus Christ our Lord, it is not according to God, but a vain show in the flesh, though in part with shadows of good things to come.

But there is no reality according to God here below; it has become but a wilderness, where there is no way except to faith. Christ came down to it. He is the reality, and He has done a real work for God and man, as we are taught in this very Epistle (and in all the rest, speaking now in a general way). This it is which, received into the heart by faith, brings the sinner out of what he was — out of the lie in which fallen nature lives, or rather is dead — brings him into the truth and the grace of God which are the fruits of love according to His will. God leads the believer into consciousness of relationship with Himself, and thus, while walking through this world, prepares the soul to await another reality, to await heavenly glory, where Christ Himself is gone before, to await too (though not for Himself) this earth to be made worthy of the God Who created it, to be worthy of Him Who has reconciled all things unto Himself by Jesus Christ (Col. 1: 20).

Christ Takes the Place of the Figures of Moses

Now the apostle has his soul filled with these truths, and brings them before those to whom he was writing. They also particularly needed it; for they had been accustomed to a ritual system. It was more important for them than for any others to know whether Christianity was a prolongation of that with which they had been familiar among the Jews, or whether it was an altogether new system — not without a certain preparation of the way for it, not without promises going before, and shadows as we have seen, but in itself wholly new — in contrast with ritualistic Judaism. And this contrast is precisely what the apostle here lets us know: “Christ has not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”

Consequently, we now have all according to God; as there is but one Christ, so but one sacrifice, and, speaking now of what is needful for God and for the deliverance of man from his ruin, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Consequently, it is shown there is no necessity that “He should offer Himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others.” Continual repetition was part of the ritual system; and Christianity stands in contrast with it. He has offered Himself once and for ever. Were it necessary to offer Himself repeatedly, He must also often suffer. The two things cannot be separated: for then must He, we read, “often have suffered since the foundation of the world” (Heb. 9: 26). The idea of a fresh offering of Christ to God without His fresh suffering is not merely a mistake, but is in direct antagonism to His word and to the foundation of Christianity.

“But now once,” it is said, “in the end of the world” — speaking of the world as the theatre of God's dealings, not as the mere physical system but the consummation of the various ages that have been running their course, by which man was put to the proof, and, among other tests, very specially by the ritual system — "But now once” in the end of all the experimental ways with man, “in the end of the ages hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”

Christ Brought God In and Put Sin Out

Thus we find in the Lord Jesus and in His death two grand truths: (1) He came to bring God into the world; (2) He came to put sin out of the world. Rationalism is plainly and certainly ignorant of both; if Ritualism own the first, it assuredly ignores, and in effect denies, the second — i.e., God's putting away sin by redemption. Far from controverting the incarnation, Ritualism makes much of it for its own ends; but it is very sure that the principle is inconsistent with redemption, save in figure. It is impossible for Ritualism to live in presence of the fundamental truth of the gospel, that Christ suffered to “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Has He done it or not? Has He failed to do what He came for? Has He indeed, or only once even in figure, “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself?”

That there was accomplished on the cross the sacrifice of Christ Himself not even the ritualists deny; nor does one believe that they mean to deny that He put away sin by His death. We are not now discussing what men would say, but judging what their system means. We are searching what Ritualism really is, as judged by the living word of God. I affirm then that, during God's maintenance of a ritual system for special and worthy purposes, there was no such thing as a sacrifice that would put away sin before God. There were sacrifices; but the very opposite was their character and their result, as we are told in Heb. 10: 1-3. They brought sin to remembrance. They kept the fact of man's defilement constantly before the eyes of the Jew. It was well that it should be so, being to him a most wholesome lesson as far as it went. It was of God's mercy, and in itself right and good that man should be made to feel his sin till it was put away; and it was not, could not be, then put away. But if I believe the truth of the gospel, sin is put away by Christ's death. Granted that it is, so much the worse for him that does not believe in Christ. The truth and the blessedness of the fact remain for faith; but assuredly it is so much the more terrible for him who substitutes something else for Christ — so much the more fatal, not to the rationalist only, but also to the ritualist.

We must not be deceived by sounds nor by appearances. We are responsible for the truth now, because the truth is revealed. And, let it be observed, that now all is out between God and man without a veil. There was a veil, but it is rent. Mark the time and fact well: when Jesus died, the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. Has this no significance? Everything has that God reveals; but surely no facts more so than those of the cross. Up to that time man was not in the Divine presence. But God had come down to man. He was here on earth in the person of the Lord Jesus. He that had seen Him, the Son, had seen the Father.

But there was more than this manifestation in the death of Christ. In a certain sense He brought God nigh to the sinner during His life; in His death He brings the believer to God. Do you believe this? If you really receive and act on it, you are not a ritualist. If you believe that you are brought nigh to God, I ask according to what measure? Use your own weapon, you who love Jesus and know Him; have recourse to your own standard. Never give Christ up; never lose sight of Him as the Truth; never fail to bring Him in, whatever the difficulty, whatever the question. Your vantage-ground is that you have Christ, and that you know it. Therefore do you seek humbly, holily, but believingly, to apply the Christ Whom you have received from God and Whom the Holy Ghost has made known to your soul by the word of God.

Brought Nigh through Christ's Death Not Incarnation

Now you are brought nigh to God, not according to the measure of a Jew, nor even of a Jewish priest, nay, nor even of the Jewish High Priest. You will not say therefore that my doctrine lowers the privileges of a Christian. I am persuaded that there is too often a painful deficiency in the way in which these evil steps of retrogression to Judaism are apt to be met. Mere protest against them is cold and powerless, that is, by the negative process of showing their fallacy here and there. This kind of opposition will never stand in the day either of dark trial or of alluring promise. The heart of man wants something solid; and God would make it sure too. God, according to His own grace, has revealed His own truth, His own power, His own wisdom in Christ the Lord; not merely so, but also in Christ's redemption. And this unique fact is the standing witness and effect of it; the veil is rent.

Ritualism Denies the Rent Veil

It is not merely therefore, that God has come down to me, but that He has consecrated for me a way to Himself — a new and living way through the veil (Heb. 10: 19-22). Ritualism denies this; it renews and again insists on the veil. Who gave it such authority? Not God Who tore it down in answer to Christ's cross. What warrants the renewal? It is treason against His word. It is in effect a plain, flagrant, inexcusable denial of the revealed effect of the death of Christ. Let it be again said that I accuse no man among their ranks of an intention to nullify the gospel; but it is impossible for an intelligent Christian not to arraign the system, no matter by whom it may be held — be it by one that you hope to be Christian, be it by one that you are as sure as you can be that he is a Christian. Grant all this, which I do with all my heart: yet a Christian's holding such an error does not make the error less serious, and cannot consecrate what is contrary to Christ.

I maintain then, that Ritualism is a return from Christianity to figure, and that its doctrine and its practice ignore the nearness to God into which the gospel brings the believer by Christ's work. Is not this true according to the plain word of God which you have before you in Heb. 9 and 10? This truth you know I am not wresting; for your consciences cannot evade its force. I appeal to you in the presence of God Whose word you have before you. You might doubt if one were stringing together a cluster of passages which might dazzle or perplex; but I purposely dwell now on a single luminous portion of Holy Writ. One is enough, if there were no others.

But I hope to show briefly that throughout the New Testament since the accomplishment of redemption, the same truth is taught in different forms. It is impossible that the truth of God should be inconsistent with itself. All the scriptures which treat of Christianity are admirably harmonious, their testimony is uniform, and all demonstrate that Ritualism, though not a rejection of Christ's person, is distinctly a virtual denial of the efficacy of Christ's work as now declared in the gospel of God.

A Special Earthly Priesthood Revived

Thus Ritualism has for one of its pillars the assumption that God has still an earthly priesthood. The assertion of a holy caste of ministrants on earth, who draw near to God for the Christian, thoroughly sets aside the gospel of Christ. Remember that it is no question of Christian ministry. I yield to no man in firmness of conviction that ministry is a divine and permanent institution of Christianity. The truth is that Christian ministry and earthly priesthood are antagonistic, instead of being the same thing. For ministry, Christian ministry, is the service by a divine gift, which brings the truth of God to bear on the soul of man. It is a service toward the unconverted, to bring them to God by the gospel, and toward the converted, to instruct them more fully in the truth of the gospel and of the whole counsel of God in Scripture generally.

But earthly priesthood is quite another thing; and so far from its being part of the institutions of the gospel, the attempt to set it up is beyond just doubts the sin of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16). For it is the presumption of a man, who might be a Levite or a leader of the people, to supplant the authority of Moses, and to stand in the place of Aaron, the apostle and the high priest of the Jewish system. It is really a blow struck at Christ's priesthood, as it was against Aaron chiefly that the rebellion of Korah was directed.

The Epistle of Jude (verse 11) will show you that this is no mere fanciful application of a type, which has no bearing on the perils of Christians. Indeed I should scorn to take advantage of those who are but ill versed in the types of Scripture. I dare not use what I did not believe on the fullest examination of Scripture to be the truth, but this, though it is enough for me, will not do for you. I beg you therefore to compare with Numbers and Hebrews what we are told by Jude. We learn there (verse 11) that not merely the way of Cain and the error of Balaam apply now, but also that men are to perish in the gainsaying of Korah. What is this but, since Christianity was revealed, the setting up of men to an earthly priesthood so as to infringe the glory of the Lord Jesus? According to Hebrews He is the true and only Priest in the sense of one that stands between God and our souls.

The Present Christian Priesthood

No doubt there is, in another sense, a priesthood under Christianity; but this only furnishes a further instance that Ritualism is irreconcilable with the Christian's place, as it is a fresh proof of what I have already endeavoured to show, that the power of Christianity is lost where its positiveness is forgotten and men reduce it to a negation of this or that error. There are those who constantly desire to maintain the truth by saying that there are no priests now. I should reverse the matter, and say, that what the New Testament declares is that all Christians are priests, that is, all who are brought nigh to God. Not that all are ministers of the word; those that minister are the few for the good of the many — of all. No Christian, because he is a Christian, is a minister of the word. Ministry depends not on a man's being a Christian, but on the question whether he has received a distinct power or gift as it is called in Scripture — the gift of the grace of the Lord Jesus, in which he is bound to serve Him whether in the gospel or in the church. Consequently, if we look at Christians, they differ in point of gift. Some are not called to serve the Lord in that way at all; and even those who are called to serve have gifts differing, as the apostle says in Rom. 12: 6-8.

When we come to the Christian priesthood, there is one common position for all Christians; and why? Because we are brought nigh to God. The truth of the gospel supposes, not an earthly institution, but that Christians are priests, and that this is the only real priesthood which God now owns, save Christ's on high. Even our Lord Jesus Christ was not a priest upon the earth, and when here He exercised no such functions. This is the direct statement of Scripture. The same Epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 8: 4) affirms it: so false in every way is the ritualistic system as applied to Christianity. Even He Who is the foundation-stone of all blessing for man, the life and righteousness and glory of the Christian under the gospel — even He was not a priest as long as He lived on the earth. Lifted up from the earth, He became a sacrifice; ascended to heaven, He entered the sanctuary which the Lord pitched, and not man, and was there, according to the work of God, the great High Priest. And who are the priests? If the Lord Jesus fills the type of Aaron, and incomparably more, if Aaron was but a feeble shadow of what Christ is as high priest, who are the sons of Aaron? They are those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren: “Behold I and the children whom God hath given Me.” Who are the children? Christians. He Who sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one, as the same inspired writer tells us in the second chapter of the same Epistle (Heb. 2: 11, 13).

Consequently we see how the doctrine of the types exactly agrees with the plain statements of the gospel. For if He suffered once, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God, He has brought us so perfectly that there can be — there is — no priest between us and God save Himself. And the Lord Jesus, so far from keeping us from God, is the very One Who by His death brings us to God, and ever lives to make intercession for us.

Again, this is the present position of the Christian, not merely the future one. When we go to heaven, we shall not cease to be priests. When the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ over the earth comes, we shall not cease to be priests; on the contrary, instead of it being as now a position for faith to enjoy and realize, we shall be displayed as kings and priests; we shall reign with Christ. But the gospel, the truth of the gospel, as revealed in the Epistles, shows that every Christian is in the place of priest now, not in a merely figurative but in a most real way, for there is always a reality according to the gospel. Christianity gives the reality of the truth and grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This may help to show the immense importance of the theme before you. Moreover, it shows how unbelieving is Ritualism, though in appearance more respectable than Rationalism, not so bold perhaps, certainly more reverent in its postures — if not in its impostures. It may salute with a kiss, it may bow down to Jesus, it may give Him ample honour in word; but judged by Scripture, by the ever-living word of God, its heart is far from Him. Yea, it is no more true worship of the Lord Jesus than when Israel of old, wrought on by Satan's power, dared to liken a calf of gold to Jehovah; for unquestionably the Ritualism of Christendom does not even adhere to the figures of the true. By no means would it be justified if it did restrict itself to ancient shadows of “good things to come”: I have already shown that, even if it did, it were not Christian. For Scripture affirms that it is idolatrous for Gentile Christians to consecrate to Christian uses the ritual elements given to the Jews (Gal. 4: 9).

The So-called Christian Fathers

In point of fact, however, Ritualism goes much farther; and it is a striking fact, too, not known by everybody, that, in spite of its boasted reference to the old writers that are commonly called the “fathers,” it has developed enormously since these days. Take, for instance, its strange millinery with colours more suitable to harlequins or the most fantastic of stageplayers, in which men indulge who call themselves Christ's servants — I beg pardon, Christian priests: do the “fathers” sustain them here? By no means. Not that the “fathers” will ever be to me a standard either of practice or of orthodoxy. I know them too well to admit such a dream for an instant. It may suit such as have never compared them with the word of God; for I own that it is possible to study them deeply, and to be completely stupefied by them. Indeed, there are few greater wonders to my mind than to see men of sweet affections, and of superior ability and attainment, who yet seem given over to minds void of discernment when they cite the “fathers.” Why they could and do write far better themselves, whenever they follow the word of God; nevertheless they bow down to them, just as a Romanist does before the wafer he worships as his God, or before the virgin whom he trusts to intercede for his soul.

Not less painfully one sees good men whose consciences and minds seem holden, when they are in presence of the musty remains of these ancient writers. But even they never contemplated what has come to pass in our own day; for it is remarkable that they brand as no better than good-for-nothing people those who scarcely went so far as to indulge in gorgeous vestments. Clement of Alexandria, if I recollect aright, treats such symptoms even in the germ as utterly disreputable. The truth seems to be, that the dresses that have long become ecclesiastical were originally merely the dresses of the people of that day. There were vast changes brought in when the barbarians overran and overthrew the Roman empire; and that which used to be merely the civil dress of a Roman became, by an extraordinary turn, the ecclesiastical dress of a so-called “Christian priest.” They had a particular dress for fast days, and another dress for feasts or ordinary days. This is pretty much, I believe, the origin of that which has long been metamorphosed so strangely, but at the same time so singularly abandoned by some pretenders to ecclesiastical antiquity in our own day. But enough of this.

The “Fathers” and the Scriptures

I go back still to the solemn fact already referred to — the connecting-link between Rationalism and Ritualism, and the more so because the connection is apt to be unsuspected.

I remember an incident which may illustrate this a little. A friend of mine who was once travelling to Oxford did not identify for a moment an old university chief who was sitting by him. Many years had elapsed since their separation, nor am I aware that there was any particular acquaintance even in earlier days. They were no longer young, and now they are both gone. The question put to his fellow-passenger by my friend was this: “Pray, sir, can you tell me how the Rationalists are getting on at Oxford?” It was an awkward question to one who was a principal leader of Rationalism; for he was, at any rate in physical science, the most distinguished of the seven who since then attained unenviable notoriety by the “Essays and Reviews.” He was silent for a moment; but I suppose he saw that the questioner's face did not indicate one who would be disposed to insult another by an unbecoming enquiry — a question which I am persuaded he would not have put if he had recognized Mr  - .

(The “Essays and Reviews,” by six clergymen and one layman of the Church of England, were published in 1860, and were condemned by the bishops in Convocation, 1864.)

After a pause the professor answered, “As fast, sir, as the Tractarians will let them.” “What do you mean?” said my friend. “This,” said the other — and it puts the case pithily enough, and is no bad confirmation of what I have been insisting on already — "The Tractarians say that the fathers are as good as the Scriptures. The Rationalists answer that the Scriptures are no better than the fathers.”

The reply brings the case clearly to an issue, and shows us that under wholly different surfaces — intellectual audacity on the one hand, which dares to speak against the word of God, and on the other hand the outward piety or at any rate the genuflexion of Ritualism — there is really the same root of infidelity at bottom. There is the supplanting of the plain truth of the inspired word. Both get rid of it, depriving, the soul of that which is the only means of a living link between God and man. It does not matter what the means or forms may be, whether the negative process of Rationalism, or the more positive claim of Ritualism: if man comes in — whether it be with his rites or his reasoning — so as to exclude God's word, or step between its authority and the soul of man, it comes to pretty much the same result in the end.

It remains to show further, as to this, the general teaching of the New Testament. I have confined myself to a particular passage; but, as before, instead of exposing in Ritualism what is crude, painful, and evidently evil, I am willing to take it as it presents and loves to present itself-to take it in its best shape from its ablest defenders. It is always fair, if not obligatory, to do so. The more we have to blame another, the more should we let him put in the best appearance, and have the highest credit that your conscience can admit of. Always set out an adversary in the most favourable light you can; you have no business to be an adversary if your cause will not bear this. Why should you lower another? Why harbour an exaggerated or uncharitable thought? It is no unkindness nor want of humility, but on the contrary real love — love for God and for His children — to state with all plainness that divine truth which is ruined by Ritualism, ignorant of His nature and of its own opposition to God.

Ritualism is Built on Incarnation Only

As to the doctrine of Ritualism then I am not now about to say a word of excesses in form and practice, and I refuse to dwell on what might be called the abuses of the light-minded people that adopt it. I will not bear hard on the giddy young men and women, or on their guiltier seniors. We must turn to look at the gravest and wisest among those that are its leaders. Now, as asserted by those that are most competent, in its fairest light, this is the essential principle of Ritualism: it does not disbelieve in Jesus as a divine person; far from denying that the Son of God was a man in the world, it takes its stand on the grand truth of the incarnation — a truth I hold to be most precious and essential to Christianity. Incarnation means not only God in the world, but a divine person Who has taken manhood into His person. It is the union of God and man in the same person. Ritualism is an imaginative system, built on the truth of incarnation. It maintains that when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was in this world He brought down all needed blessing — power, goodness, love, truth — to bear upon the souls and bodies of men. It holds that the only way for a man to receive the blessing is by coming in contact with His humanity. But then He died on the cross, and is gone. Ritualism always passes lightly over the grave of Christ, rarely dwelling on it, except as a weapon for dealing with the affections, or as a display of divine love. This the falsest systems may do, as Socinianism itself. So the Jesuits were always famous preachers of the cross thus far, with warm appeals to fear or feeling.

Ritualism cannot be said to go beyond this, even taking into account those that might be real believers. For I wish to set it in the light in which they would wish it put themselves. They hold then that, when our Lord Jesus departed from this world, the church was that divine system in which the benefits of Christ's incarnation were to be perpetuated for man on the earth; that consequently the church has made this good by her officials or the clergy. We all know that Ritualism is a common belief at the present day, although of course it had its springs before. They hold that by certain persons, in an uninterrupted line from the apostles, who were the personal companions of the Lord Jesus incarnate here below, the benefits of His incarnation are kept up in a given channel, and assured by outward signs or seals, which are the adequate means of conveying the blessings of incarnation to such as submit to them. This is the system. They hold accordingly that any one who disputes this must be a Rationalist, and that this is the difference between an orthodox man and an unorthodox.

Christ's Atoning Death Slighted

But in fact it is the Ritualists themselves who, without any intention to be unorthodox, are really quite opposed to the truth of the gospel according to God's word, their system being incompatible with what God has revealed. For, it will be observed, their principle on its own showing slights sin, sets aside its judgment, and ignores redemption. On its own theory it is a simple continuation of what was found when the Lord Jesus had not suffered on the cross. The Son was as truly incarnate before He died as after. His sacrifice, His death, His resurrection, are altogether distinct from incarnation, though impossible without it. It is granted freely and cordially that incarnation gave us not only the person of the Son of God, but also the condition of humanity in which He could accomplish redemption. As long as He remained simply divine, there could be no link with man; but when He did become a man, no doubt there according to the blessed will and ways of God was the state of the person Who was to die in atonement. When He was merely incarnate, it was not yet done.

Observe too the consistency of the system, so far as regards its idea of an earthly priesthood, and of sacramental ordinances as the only means of salvation — for this is the doctrine. When our Lord Jesus Christ was here below, when He, the Son, became incarnate, before His death and resurrection, He carefully acknowledged priesthood according to the law — a priesthood vested in Aaron and his sons, which in no way belonged to Himself. And as He respected the Jewish priesthood, so He maintained all the shadows of the law. In other words He threw His own divine weight into the support of the ritual system till the cross closed it. The time was not yet come for God's grace and glory to displace it. It would have been contrary to God's mind to have overthrown it then, and the Lord Jesus, in word and deed as in person, was the expression of God and of His ways. Consequently, as long as the Lord was on the earth, we see His adhesion to the temple, feasts, sacrifices, everything. Nay, in the case of His own person we know it was so from the first, as we find in Luke 2. The Lord observed the times and seasons, and owned fully that earthly system of ritual which God had brought in by Moses.

The Rending of the Veil

But the moment He died on the cross, the whole system in principle disappeared before God. It was dead. The death of Christ sentenced to death the ritual system; it did infinitely more, but it did that. Then, as we have seen, the veil was rent; and it was not man, nor an accident; it was God Who rent it. How could Ritualism subsist with a rent veil? How could it abide for those who had received the Lord Jesus and were by His blood entitled to go straight into the presence of God?

And what a wonderful witness of this truth appears in the converted robber who died by the Lord's side! “To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” What more unequivocal proof could be that it was not a bare theory, but, on the contrary, it was, as all the truth is, most practical! In fact, it was for the souls of men and the glory of God, for present wants and eternal blessedness. Accordingly, therefore, that converted robber proclaims the falsehood of the ritualistic system.

Dr. Newman and the Converted Robber

(Dr. J. H. Newman was leader of the Oxford Ritualistic Movement, afterwards joined the Church of Rome (1845), and became Cardinal (1879-90).)

I am aware that the ritualists would answer otherwise, and I remember how it was used by one not behind the chief of them — a man no longer, it is true, in the Protestant ranks of Ritualism, but in Rome, the natural home and necessary end of it all. It was in a sermon intended to act upon his old companions; and something like this was his comment: “Without church or sacrament, without priest, without confession, at once through faith the dying thief received the Saviour and went to heaven.” Many would say, “What admirable doctrine!” Others would add, “How extremes meet! Think of Dr. Newman preaching the doctrine of Plymouth,” the free and full grace of God in the gospel! But not so; it is evil, root and branch: let me tell you why. What he taught is, that the strength of the faith of the converted robber was so great and precious in God's sight, that He, in consequence of the necessary lack of the church and sacramental channels, was pleased to honour the faith of the man so much as to give him this great indulgence Now I affirm that this is a denial of the Gospel: no man who understood it could teach thus. It is vital error, really leaving out Christ and His work, and making all of what was in the man.

But God forbid that anyone here should go away with the thought that I am pronouncing on the author of this discourse: I would only compare his doctrine with the truth of the gospel; and I do reject that which opposes the gospel, without a word about his own personal condition, of which I know nothing. It is better not to speak of what we do not know; but, as a servant of the Lord Jesus, I do speak of that which He has taught or preached, and I say that it is untrue that God saw such a meritorious value (for this is the doctrine) in the faith of the thief under those circumstances that it counterbalanced the want of church, priest, and sacrament. All such thoughts are simply religious imagination without the smallest warrant from the word of God. They are not the mind nor the language of faith.

No! what the converted robber does in reality show is the value of Christ and His blood, the present, immediate, everlasting efficacy for a most guilty but now repentant soul of that which Jesus wrought for sinners on the cross. There sin was judged; there was God's grace shown to the very uttermost. There was a soul that in the face of every obstacle received it with simplicity; but not a thought of anything in himself that could be an offering to God, not a trace of presenting, as it were, his faith, and God accepting this as of such signal value in His sight, that He could and would dispense with what in strictness ought to have been for souls in order to salvation. Not so. The robber had what ought to have been; he had what alone can suffice for a sinner with God. Not that I deny for a moment the place of the church; for I must tell you that I am a churchman — a high churchman if you will — and that, viewing the church whether as the body of Christ or as the house of God, I have the strongest convictions of what is true and obligatory on the Christian in respect of it.

Every Christian a Churchman

Do not suppose any play on the word church; for indeed I hold it to be the place of every Christian man to be in the truest and fullest sense a churchman. It is not enough for a man to be a Christian without being a churchman; nor is it the same thing. Nor do I admire the Augustinian subterfuge of an invisible church. I mean no offence to my dissenting friends who are present, but I am thoroughly convinced that they are wrong, and that most evangelicals are little if at all better. That is to say, I have been for many years satisfied that societies, or voluntary companies, are a practical denial of the church of God. Therefore, as far as the principle is concerned, however far apart in application, I shall go quite as far as Dr. Newman or Dr. Pusey, although I abhor the embrace of Babylon, which has seduced the one, if not the other. I do not regard the woman that sits on the seven hills as the church of God, but, on the contrary, as a spurious counterfeit, as the chief and central spring of all the dark and turbid streams of Ritualism; for she sits also by “many waters.”

But I maintain, that, before the question of the church comes, a man is put to the test thoroughly by the truth in Christ; and this is of vital moment in every conceivable way. It is not the church first, and then Christ; but Christ first, the church being merely the complement, though of all importance. And sure I am that if a man holds simply but intelligently withal to Christ, he will be little disposed either to Romanism or to Dissent. He will be content with the church of God, as He puts it in His word, and makes it good in fact, spite of all the external ruin; and this is what I mean by being a churchman. I repeat that I do not mean merely in an invisible way, which is wholly unscriptural. Before the church began, there was invisibility for the saints, save individually: the very object of the church here was a visible witness, though it will only be perfect in glory, and it has failed like all else. At the same time, I maintain that there is the reality of the church of God on the earth, as “ruined man” supposes a man, though in ever so wretched a state.

Now, what makes plain the importance of this is, that the truth of the gospel deals with the soul, with man as a sinner altogether guilty, but it also shows God's dealing with its evil in His own grace, yet putting it away righteously; that is, in the maintenance of His own character. It is here that Ritualism is so offensive and utterly hostile to the truth of God. If you substitute the incarnation for the atonement, for redemption, you set aside the judgment of sin; you make the atonement a mere accident — something at the very best which comes in as a sort of make-weight of the incarnation; you thus ignore its only proper place. Whereas the truth of the gospel is founded on a Christ, not incarnate only, but Who has died both to put away the “old man” with all its evil and to begin a new creation — Who has entered into a new and most real place, not the ruined scene of sin and fallen man. For He Who was God as well as man, Who was not in a fallen condition, but as man was “the Holy Thing” (Luke 1: 35), went down under all the consequences of the fall on the cross, and there achieved the perfect victory. Now the Holy Spirit is sent down from heaven to proclaim the present immediate results of that victory to every soul that believes. This is the gospel.

Romans and Righteousness

In the foregoing statements I have referred to the facts of the Gospels; but if we take up Romans, it is the same thing. There it is not incarnation only, but Christ that died, and Christ that arose; and the Christian acquires a corresponding place. Consequently it is not the vagueness of Ritualism any more than the darkness of Rationalism — cold, comfortless both of them indeed; but what is really presented is that God has fairly and fully brought out all the evil, in order to put it away. Christ “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” Consequently now it is not mercy only. I grant you the coming of Christ to the earth was most rich mercy; but there is more than mercy now. The death of Christ has laid the foundation of righteousness. It is not only that He was the Righteous One; He was this in everything here below; but now the wonderful thing is, as the gospel shows, that there is righteousness to justify the believer, yea, the ungodly. It shows that God is righteous now on behalf of him who has received Jesus, regarding him without a spot or stain in His sight. On that day the converted robber was fitted for heaven, and thus is every soul made meet that believes the gospel. By a suffering Christ (1 Peter 3: 18) we are brought to God, brought in grace and power by faith. We know Him thus, having in the gospel learned His love in our greatest need.

But then it is not merely this. We are also brought into a new relationship. There are many who believe in Christ, and are quite sure that God has forgiven them their sins. I would to God that every Christian, be he Dissenter, or Anglican, or whatever — I would to God that every person who has received the name of Jesus stood “full of the remission of sins,” as Luther calls it. He said the church was full of remission of sins. I would to God that every individual were really so, that he had the simple, full, happy, constant sense of being forgiven.

I do not mean by this that a man is to be without grief and shame if he has slipped aside and dishonoured the Lord. By such a plenary forgiveness I do not mean that if a man falls into evil he is to make light of it because it is all forgiven. Who teaches such doctrine? But I do hold that what God has given him by the gospel is not lost by his folly; and because he is forgiven in the sight of God. he is called upon to humble himself and confess to the Lord; he can go to God about it because he has a great High Priest. It is here that the high priesthood of Christ comes in. It is not even going to Christ, still less to a man upon the earth, but going by Christ to God; and the reason is that God in the Gospel has now proved His perfect grace and salvation by giving all freely to my soul. Consequently, as it is against God that I have sinned, I use that Saviour, and am entitled to use Him, as my High Priest — to go to God and acknowledge my sin — to have it fairly and fully out before God, with the certainty that His grace will restore my soul, and it does.

But this supposes that the believer is in a settled relationship. He is in the relationship of a child of God; and more than this, he is a member of the body of Christ. But it may be well to warn you of the great mistake of supposing that membership of the body of Christ is simply a question of faith. There must be besides faith something more; and the sum of it is, that on the ground of your faith you receive the Holy Ghost, baptizing you into the one body (Acts 1: 5, 11; 1 Cor. 12: 13).

Thus it may be seen that the position of a Christian is a living relationship both individually and corporately. You will understand therefore why I spoke of the difficulty of conceiving an intelligent Christian that is not also a firm churchman in the true sense of the word. In short, he is not merely an individual. This he is, and he is first of all an individual brought to God; but then he shares in the infinite blessing of being a member of Christ's body, and this now on the earth. This I mean by being a churchman. Such was the church as it was known in early days: why should it be otherwise now? Why should anything else suffice now? What do we value? Is it what comes from God, or what is of man? This is the question.

Christian Privileges Surrendered

Hence, through all the Epistles, beginning with Romans, we find the great truth that the Christian's place is by Christ's death and resurrection, not merely by His incarnation. Thus are maintained two principles — first, God glorified by the Lord Jesus as to everything that could harm us; next, the believer justified from sin, as well as from his sins. When incarnation is put instead of the gospel, it brings you back where the work ought to be done; you are waiting for what you have not. This is the state in which Ritualism leaves you; consequently you must needs go and take advantage of religious ordinances. What are they? Promises. It would be presumptuous, according to Ritualism, for a man to know that his sins are forgiven; it would be presumptuous for one to say that he is a child of God; it would be presumptuous to take the place of certainly being a member of the body of Christ, except in the vague sense that every man of the world is who behaves decently and goes to church. Now in Scripture all is real, and not only so, but is made known; it is communicated in power to our souls, because all our action has to be founded on a known relationship. Why, you ought to know this yourselves.

Systematic doubting has a ruinous effect. No wonder that, where incarnation takes in effect the place of Christ's redemption, there are doubts unremoved. Ritualism takes away what Christianity has revealed as come, as it also sets up a veil which leaves man outside of God's presence. As long as there was a veil, God dwelt in the thick darkness, and man was on the other, the wrong, side; whereas the essence of Christianity is that God has both come down to me and brought me to Him while I am in this world. No doubt it is a matter of faith, but this does not make it to be any the less a reality. Indeed, the facts of faith have a substance in them far beyond the facts of sense. They are both real, but the facts of sense may disappear, while the facts of faith never will. You are brought into an eternal reality when put in contact with the world of faith; but you are brought in now.

This is Christianity. You do not wait till you get to heaven to be heavenly. This is part of the new relationship. Again, you are dead with Christ, not merely dying. The ritualist is trying to die. He is endeavouring, poor man! to put to death that old man that won't die. There is always a killing, but it is never killed; and no wonder. The fact is that there is no power but God's that can deal with it; and it is God Who has done it in the cross of Christ. The believer, the Christian who understands the gospel, starts with this precious truth.

Ritualism and Baptism

And this shows the place in which the institutions of Christianity come. I hope there is nobody here that makes light of baptism or the Lord's supper; but I dare say there are a great many here who but little understand their true import. Now I am not going into debatable points, but I will state the certain truth of God. It is notorious that baptism is used by the ritualist as a means of getting life. That is what he means when he talks about “baptismal regeneration”: he means that a person is brought into life by that act duly administered by one who is in the apostolic succession. I am not maligning or exaggerating in any way. They would say so themselves in stronger terms, if possible. Yet mark how the whole system perishes before the divine word.

In the first place, according to Scripture, baptism is never the sign of life-giving but of death-giving. It is the sign of having part with Christ in His death. It is never presented in Scripture as a means of quickening. Those who say so are altogether wrong in the very principles of Christianity. Death is what we want; and not merely life. There was always life-giving in the sense of quickening. Do you suppose that before the Lord Jesus came into the world there were not persons quickened? This was before anything was heard of baptism. To be sure: who can doubt it? Do you suppose that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not receive quickening from the Son of God as much as you and I? But they were not baptized for all that; and I am not going to give up my baptism, nor what Scripture tells me baptism means. I am not going to listen to people who tell me it is either the means of new birth or only the sign of it. I hold it to be the outward sign of a most blessed truth peculiar to Christianity; and the truth is this — not quickening (which is not peculiar to Christianity, but common to all saints from the beginning) but that I am dead with Christ, which never could be said till Christ died. Consequently the Christian starts with this as the grand truth on which he is called to act, not by trying to die like a monk or a nun, endeavouring to kill the “old man,” but by believing and acting on his faith that God has slain it, that we are crucified with Christ and nevertheless live, that the “old man” is dealt with by divine judgment on the cross of Christ, and that I, receiving Christ, have all that blessing now.

Assuredly our blessed Lord did not die for Himself. Scripture has no thought of it, but the contrary. There was no “old man” in Christ: the man that says so is a heretic. The truth of the gospel is that He Who had no sin dies for us who had nothing else, and the consequence of His mighty work is that we are not only quickened, but delivered from sin by His bearing its judgment. He did not leave the “old man” as before. That was the condition of the Old Testament saints. It was not gone for them; to us it is. I do not mean by this that we are perfect in the sense that there is no such thing as the flesh in us; but what Scripture shows is that I am entitled by the death of Christ to treat my “old man” as already judged. I am entitled to take all the comfort, as completely as if it were actually gone for ever. It is gone in the sight of God as truly as it will be when Christ comes. At His coming we shall have all the results manifestly; but now I have them to my faith, and am called to act according to such a place in the sight of God.

It is instructive to see that Ritualism, like every other human system, denies this, while after all it is one of its great boasts to give a fuller than ordinary value to baptism. You will invariably find that the people who boast of their soundness about baptism are, as I believe, wrong about baptism. The best course is never to boast of anything but Christ. You are always right there; but the moment you begin to boast of this doctrine or of that, I would not give much for your doctrine after all. But when content to have only Christ to boast of, He will be with you, and will make your doctrine to be good and sound, not by your magnifying your own possession of it, but by your holding simply to Christ. We have got all the truth in Him, and may the Spirit of God make us increasingly true to Him!

But there is more than this. I said that first of all Ritualism is false in its theory of baptism — in the very meaning of it; but, further, even as a system it is most inconsistent, because the principle is that these blessings of the incarnation are only through the appointed channel or the well-known ordinances; but every thoroughgoing ritualist would acknowledge at once that Christian baptism is valid even if administered by a woman, and of course by a man. Thus they hold they every Christian is competent to baptize in emergency; that is to say, it is valid. No doubt they do not think it orderly, but still they acknowledge it to be real. The Romanist does so. That is the doctrine of Catholicism, no matter what its form may be. Dissenters and most Evangelicals do not allow this, strange to say; but all Catholics so called, east, west, north, south, agree in it. Now, if this be the case, if baptism be the means of getting life, there is the most fundamental blessing of Christianity, according to Ritualism received entirely apart from the apostolic succession duly administered in the appointed way. Thus, even in its foundation, it cannot stand; for, as usual, God takes care that a thing which is false shall be inconsistent. It is a mark set up as it were by the roadside to warn people that there is danger here, and that the truth is elsewhere. The tale does not even hang together. The witnesses do not agree.

Ritualism and the Lord's Supper

Take the other ordinance, the Lord's Supper, and the same result appears. What does the Lord's Supper set out? The incarnation? Not at all. The Lord's Supper shows that He Who became incarnate died. But this ever-recurring institution of Christianity is not individual like baptism, which is strictly so, and properly speaking is outside the church. Properly speaking it belongs to me as a Christian. Were there no such thing as the corporate system of the church, I should be, and ought to be, baptized as a Christian; but the Lord's Supper has no place except in the church. No person therefore is at liberty to take the Lord's Supper by himself.

The Lord's Supper is not according to Christ's intention or its own meaning unless on the ground of the church of God; nor ought one to partake of that bread or that cup except on the divine foundations of the church of God according to His word. We are not at liberty to give up or to alter; we may not bring in our own thoughts or modifications under any pretence whatever. This has nothing to do with the question of the church being in a state of confusion. I grant it; but there is the more reason why we should hold to the truth of God if we know it — to the unbending word that God has given. Be as gracious as you will to those who do not understand it; but let your carefulness be for the Lord's glory by your own holding fast the truth. Make allowance for others. Grace would do it; but hold you fast under all circumstances to what you know to be the will of the Lord Jesus.

Now, in the Lord's Supper, supposing that the mass of God's children anywhere had gone off, some here, some there, and there were only two or three that joined in taking the Lord's Supper according to Christ's institution, what is the meaning of it? Is it not so far a witness of the one body of Christ? It would be very presumptuous for two or three persons to say. “We are the body of Christ”; but it would be no less presumptuous for them to take the Lord's Supper on any other ground than that of Christ's body. If they are not thus, it is an unauthorized human act; on the other hand, they must hold fast to His name as members of His body, and simply partake of that bread in His name. This is its meaning. It is the remembrance of Himself; but it is the showing forth of His death, not of His incarnation.

Here again see how utterly false the ritualistic system is. In short, it is a wilful, deliberate, systematic going back to what existed before the death of Christ; it is the annulling of what God has introduced now, and what the Holy Spirit is holding to. The incarnation was a step towards the great end; the end was the judgment of sin, and the establishment of righteousness through the death of Christ, but displayed in Him risen from the dead.

Ritualism and the Risen Christ

This brings me to another point. My relationship is with Jesus risen. Undoubtedly He came down and took part of flesh and blood; but why? “That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death” (Heb. 2: 14). It was not merely to continue the benefits of what He did when He was living. He did indeed attract when He was alive, but substantially the disciples that followed the Lord Jesus in His life were on the same ground as the Old Testament saints They saw and heard more; but it was simply this — that their eyes saw, and their ears listened to, the One for Whom the Old Testament saints had been waiting; but when His death and resurrection took place, and the Holy Spirit was given, the whole was changed, and Christianity came in; and the going back to what was before the death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit tends to apostasy from Christianity, although real Christians may be entangled by the snare.

This is surely serious if true. Let me just direct you very briefly to a few Scriptures. Take 1  Corinthians 6: 17: “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” It is not a question of joining Him in flesh when He was here below. No doubt He took flesh and blood: but this is not the link of union. “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” Again, who can deny that the expressed doctrine of 2 Corinthians 5: 15 is that “He died and rose again, that we should not live unto ourselves, but unto Him that died for us and rose again”? Then Paul says, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh” (that is, when He was incarnate, and when the ritualistic system was still in force) — "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” Now that Christ is dead and risen, and the Christian brought into association with Him at the right hand of God, the surpassing glory of the new position completely eclipses any connection that was formed when He was here below. As long as Christ was here, there could not be union. There might be that which looked onward to this high privilege, but it could not yet be given righteously. Now it is, and we are brought into it, and hence the connection of the Holy Spirit with it. It is not merely by faith, but by the Holy Spirit, which is a very important truth indeed to bear in mind. Our link with Christ, I repeat, is by nothing less than the presence of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, acting in us individually and also as the body of Christ.

I have referred to Galatians 2: 20: “I am crucified with Christ” (not incarnate, simply), “nevertheless I live.” Take again Ephesians 1: 20-22, and you will find that Christ only became the Head of the church after He died, rose, and went to heaven. The doctrine of Ephesians first presents Christ when He died, and then He is seen raised up, and now seated at the right hand of God; and only so does He become the Head of the body.

Now, we belong to that body, or we are nothing. If we are now in living association with Christ by the Holy Spirit, we are of Christ's body, exalted at the right hand of God; and that body had no existence till the Head was there. So in Colossians 1: 18 it is said, “Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” Christ is then the beginning. When He was here below, He was not the beginning; He alone was going to be, as risen. He alone was to be the Head of the church, but this required the putting away of sin. How could the Lord Jesus be united to us while our sins were not blotted out? and how could the Holy Spirit dwell in us when sin was not judged? We see therefore how all the truth hangs together. Sin is gone, righteousness established, union is formed by the Holy Ghost with Christ risen and glorified at the right hand of God.

This is, I believe, the truth of Christianity. The gospel touches on the mystery that was hidden from ages and from generations. Need it be said that this is what we are called to testify? Not the church only or chiefly, but above all Christ Whom God has given Head over all things to the church. It is the body to which we belong; the Christ of Whom we are members.

May the Lord grant then that holding fast the truth, we may bear witness to it! It is the best answer of all to Ritualism.

The Sabbath and the Lord's Day.

W. Kelly.

"And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight" Acts 20: 6, 7.

We are about to consider at this time, as most of you know, the testimony of scripture to "the Lord's-day," a term which is no invention of man. Indeed that very phrase of itself, given as it is by the Holy Ghost, to one who has an adequate sense of the force of scripture, would be conclusive for the object now in view; which is to assert its authority, to explain its special place in God's word, and to enforce its claims on every Christian heart. It is scarcely needful to say that I am not about to present it as having anything to do with the sabbath. Such a reference must always weaken and obscure the Lord's-day. In fact, it tends to destroy the character of an institution which those who love the Lord desire to hold firmly and enjoy with all their hearts.

Of course I am aware that there are many pious men who think that there must be a sensible loss, if we exclude from the Lord's-day the place which the sabbath possessed of old; and this indeed justly in the minds of those saints of God who had peculiar associations with Israel before our Lord came, and all through His earthly ministry. It is not, again, as in the least degree denying the importance of the sabbath that this distinctness of character is asserted; for it will fall within the scope of what I am now about to open if I a little draw out the contrast between the two days. But I say "contrast" advisedly. It will be my place to show that it is not simply a question of what is expedient, or what the church has inaugurated, or what the world acknowledges in the codes of law. I claim for it divine authority, although that authority be exercised in a characteristic manner. This may strike the minds of some Christians as singular, for the simple reason, that they have been habitually accustomed to regard the law as the only expression of divine will.

One understands that such should be the thought of an infidel. I remember sometime ago reading — an unhappy task, but still it did come within the scope of my duty to read — the essay of a well-known freethinker of our day, who takes this very ground — that the only thing which is authoritative, definite, and even positive, is the law. This we can understand of course in an unbeliever, for the sad and sufficient reason that Christ is no more than a blank to him. He may admire this or that in Christ, but he sees neither His personal glory nor the perfection of His ways as displaying God and man here below. Still it does seem an egregious thing that any person looking at the Ten Commandments should say that there alone, not in Christ, we find what is positive, and that what the New Testament furnishes is only negative. For any one to read, "Thou shalt not do this," and "Thou shalt not do that," and then declare that this is positive, on the one hand, and on the other to behold the revelation of God in Christ in the New Testament, and then tell me that this is negative, is certainly strong. Yet one can understand an infidel saying so; but it is no less singular than painful that children of God in our day should be found on the same platform as far as this is concerned. They at least ought to know that Christ alone, not the law, is the perfect expression of God in man. It does not become the saint of God to be thus blind to His moral glory.

I hope to show at this time, then, that there is not the smallest need of endeavouring to supplement what the New Testament lays down as to the Lord's-day. There is a clear and ample intimation of God's mind and will as to it; for though it may come in a way which to minds accustomed to the law, and owning no other rule, must certainly seem strange, it will be their great gain if disabused of so serious an error. The truth is that the manner in which the Spirit of God has brought out the Lord's-day in the later revelation is in exact keeping with the fullest unfoldings of divine grace and truth. It is bound up with Christ Himself, and yet more manifestly with His work. Hence, it is lack of faith and of spiritual intelligence, as well as a slight of revelation, to rest it on abstract grounds, especially on one so low and foreign to Christianity as the law of nature. It is in striking contrast with a perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages. It is not true that one day in seven is the sabbath but the seventh day, any more than the dream of a change in the sabbath to the first day to constitute the Lord's-day.

I shall proceed to show that the Lord's-day is an essential part of Christianity for the believer while here below. It is not a human or ecclesiastical arrangement that comes in, desirable in its way, and to be accepted with thankfulness but destitute of a divine claim. I believe, on the contrary, that, while given of the Lord no less than the sabbath, its nature, association, and object are far higher. No Christian man can intelligently put a slight on the Lord's-day. I know there are those who, affecting a kind of ultra-spirituality, will tell you that, for their part, all days are alike the Lord's-day to them. My answer is, that it would be more true to say that to such no day is the Lord's-day. Such is the effect of not owning the Lord's-day as pre-eminently His. The theory of making every day to be His ends in the practice that no day is really so. It is want of faith as a starting-point; and where faith is lacking, all else fails. By little degrees, perhaps with rapid steps if they are bold, such men will begin to treat every day as being theoretically the Lord's; but they will soon allow themselves such a latitude on the Lord's-day as is, in my judgment, disgraceful to the Christian, and a dishonour to the Lord Jesus.

It will be apparent, on the contrary, that, though the day was brought out as a fact, just as with other characteristics of the New Testament, there was light enough for faith to act on and understand from the very birthday of Christianity. From that moment when Christianity had its proper being and impress, the Lord's-day was marked out by the Lord Himself, and all through from beginning to end the Lord's-day has assigned to it, by the distinct sanction of the Spirit of God, a clear and distinctive and momentous place for the heart and conscience of every Christian. Further, it is well to press the grave observation, that those who confound the Lord's-day with the sabbath invariably and necessarily lose the true idea of the latter, if not of the former also. Certainly the height of the truth that is connected with the Lord's-day is never appreciated under that confession, whereby you descend from its heavenly character to an earthly one. Again, to put it on sabbatical ground is to forfeit the light which shines so richly in it when duly understood. For what people call "the Christian sabbath,"* as it is a term entirely unknown to the scripture, so also is a plain confusion of the law of God with His grace.

* The Westminster Confession expressly declares that the Lord's-day "is to be continued till the end of the world as the Christian sabbath." One can only grieve that godly men should be bound down to so palpable a departure from the truth of God, and forced while under its authority either, like most, to remain ignorant of scripture as to this weighty matter, or to defile their consciences if they know better, like a few.

But let none suppose that I mean by this that the sabbath was not a most important institution. A large part of scripture refutes such a notion. Further, I wish to guard all from the mistaken thought, that what God instituted with such solemnity as the sabbath, from the beginning of man's earth, is really done with. Not so. Scripture is distinct that the sabbath will have a place again; that it will yet be a day of gladness and joy in the earth; that it is associated with the blessing that is coming upon all the creation; that, in short, it will not be the Lord's-day but the sabbath, when Jehovah shall fill the world with the goodness that is natural to Himself. When evil has been put down, when Satan has been dealt with, when the Lord will have His way manifestly from sea to sea — at that glorious period the sabbath will have its own proper and honoured place. Hence we find, in the book of Ezekiel for instance (which gives us most interesting glimpses into the future that is reserved for the people of God, and for their land here below), that the sabbath comes forward once more into prominence. So also one may see in the prophet Isaiah. There is no need of accumulating such scriptures now; but those referred to plainly prove that, not in some figurative sense, but in all strictness, the day is at hand when God will vindicate His people for Himself — when Israel will be no longer a remnant of deceitful tongue, abandoned to the grovelling acquisition of gold and silver, but when, contrariwise, they will be Jehovah's witnesses. Poor alas! has been their testimony hitherto — false witnesses against the only True and Faithful! But they are yet to be bright witnesses of divine mercy in the reign of Messiah's glory. And when that age comes, the sabbath, I repeat, will resume its place for the earth.

Israel shall then observe their new moons also, and, as we are told, they will celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, as well as Passover, but, remarkably enough, not Pentecost. Look at the book of Ezekiel, and you will find a striking absence of the latter feast in the picture of the future. If his visions had been a figure of what God is doing at this present time, Pentecost must have been, I do not say, the exclusive but assuredly the most prominent feast. Instead of this, the prophecy of Ezekiel shows us conspicuously the absence of Pentecost, the reason of which seems to me as manifest as it is beautiful. The types that were given under the law had a bearing on, the heavenly people as well as on the earthly. Pentecost in particular and confessedly sets forth the gathering of a heavenly people; and that heavenly people, now in process of gathering, has, if I may say it, so absorbed the feast to itself, that Israel will have no Pentecost in the day that is coming. They will have the Passover; none can do without that sign of Christ sacrificed. It does not matter whether it be earthly people or heavenly, the Lamb and the Lamb's blood are essential for any to be in living relationship with God. "Christ our Passover is sacrificed" not merely "for us," but for them also. They accordingly will have the great foundation feast of Passover. But the distinctive feast for them in that day will be the feast of Tabernacles, as we have seen, because it is the day when glory shall dwell in the land, not merely be seen in heaven, but descend and dwell in the land — when God therefore is accomplishing His glorious thoughts and plans for this long groaning but then delivered earth. In that day then, along with all this, there are naturally the new moons. She that, ruling the night, had given her light, and had long faded away, will shine out once more with renewed brightness. Israel will again become the great vessel of reflected glory here below.

But we, Christians, in that day shall enter into the glory itself. We have to do with Him whom we are permitted to see with unveiled face even now; for meanwhile the power of the Spirit of God has brought us into this nearness, and has made true the feast of Pentecost so completely in the heavenly people, that there is no place by-and-by for the earthly people to keep it suitably. Such is the way in which God has arranged with the utmost skill these remarkable shadows of good things to come.

In that day the sabbath too will resume its place on the seventh day as of old. Meanwhile a new creation in Christ has come in, and I will presently show how this has linked itself with the Lord's-day, and in what its character essentially differs from the sabbath.

The sabbath was instituted, as we know, at the beginning. It formed the close of the week devoted by God to making the heavens and the earth which now are. It set forth the precious truth, that He who had deigned to work in forming the earth for man always looked onward to a rest which the renewed creature should share; not merely a rest for us, but for Him and us together, when there will be no more working. The sign of this was the sabbath or seventh day.

Nevertheless it is not exactly true that the sabbath was made a command at first. God sanctified it; but no man can prove that the sabbath was taken up and acted on in any formal manner. Scripture is silent about it, and it is wise for us not to go beyond scripture. But this we do know, that the Lord sanctified the sabbath, and there are tokens here and there that it was known by men. Even the very heathen were not without some traces of it. But the word of God bears the remembrance of the six days of creation and of the sabbath in the institution of weeks. This we find appearing every now and then (as at and after the flood, for instance); so that it is plain that, more or less, the sabbath was known from the beginning. But here it was connected with creation. And what was the state of creation? Man had fallen, and all placed under him was ruined before God. I am aware that man tries to cover that ruin, not daring to face the solemnity of such a fact. Even godly men sometimes try to patch it up. But the way of truth is always to own the havoc that sin has brought in, confessing it to God, and looking for His deliverance, not men's effort to conceal, deny, or remedy it.

But now we must open another book; we come down to Exodus. There is a change. A people in flesh are called out by and to God; everything accordingly is regulated by His law. Their whole life — private, public, social, religious — everything comes under His legislation and authority.

This then gives occasion to another step on God's part as to the sabbath. It is not only the sanctifying of it as the pledge of His rest for creation, but, further, God imposed the keeping of the sabbath on His people, binding, it up as an essential part even of His ten words. Even before this He had marked its importance when the manna was given distinctly and solemnly. There was a direct infraction of that which God made so apparent, that His people were without excuse if they did not heed it, not that there was a command even then, we may notice. But if there be a true way of learning God's mind, it is in weighing what He does as well as what He says. And the God who had given Israel the manna gave them a double portion on the sixth day, but none on the seventh. Was this in vain? Was it not for the express purpose of guarding against any activity on His people's part, even in gathering manna on the seventh day? The sabbath, and the people's rest on it, were thus made sufficiently apparent to any who wished to learn what God's will was about the matter. All the rulers came and told Moses that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread; but they are told that this is that which Jehovah had said, "Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath unto Jehovah," when the manna, though kept, did not stink nor breed worms. Yet were some bold enough to despise His ways and words; but the Lord as yet contented Himself with a solemn reproof, without as yet making His people to be the executioners of His judgment because of those that regarded not the works of Jehovah nor the operation of His hand.

Soon after, however, it was not left to a sound judgment formed on what God did, nor to such words as we have heard, but He blended it with the law, and indeed made it to be the one special exception to its general character, for all the rest of the law is moral. The sabbath has another nature quite distinct. The very heathen would acknowledge that no man should steal, do murder, or commit adultery. Every human conscience, unconverted or not, recognizes these and the like. Indeed it may be mentioned here, that a great enemy of Christianity, the Emperor Julian, in speaking about the law, acquiesced in all the rest but the denunciation of idols and the keeping of the sabbath. He owned that the moral commandments were perfectly right, but tried to make out that they had all known them before. And if he classed along with the sabbatical law the command against idols, he need not; for there were not a few Gentiles who knew the wrongness of such objects of worship. Heathen conscience could easily feel the absurdity of an idol; but the sabbath is purely prescriptive, owes its existence to the revealed facts of creation, and hence derives all its authority from God's word. This is what gives its particular importance.

If there is any commandment of the ten, therefore, that rests on God's claim simply, it is the sabbath. Thus because the child does the will of his father, and shows far more the spirit of obedience, if he obeys him, not merely abstaining from or hating what his own conscience knows to be wrong, so the Jew proved it much more by simply bowing to God's command about it. If one were merely to cleave to the moral commandments, it might be no more than honouring one's own conscience. If I bow to God's command, where my own conscience says nothing apart from His word, it is evident that His authority is dear to me. Therefore this was what gave the sabbatical law such immense force, and justly so, to an Israelite. For this reason the sabbath acted as a test, rather than the other nine commandments; so it was the special sign between Jehovah and Israel. None of the other commandments could have been, or was, such a sign as the sabbath-day. It was the peculiar and easily recognized badge that distinguished the Jewish people from all others, and hence in the law and prophets it is thus referred to. But you see it, in fact, constantly brought forward by God, and attached to all other things — what it did not matter. We have already noticed how with the giving of the manna the sabbath was marked for the observation of Israel; so, if God set up a tabernacle, the sabbath came in afresh. Indeed, as has been remarked by another, it followed, no matter what the dealing or institution might be. If He appointed feasts, the sabbath stands in the very front of them, the first and foremost of them all, as it points to the crowning result for God and man. It differed essentially from all the others, in that all the other feasts came but once a year, whilst the sabbath was recurring every week. Nevertheless, if God was giving His people an account of the feasts, not only did the sabbath come within the list of the feasts, but it came as the foremost of them.

There was nothing therefore in the legal system that had a more pointed and constant importance in the mind of God for His people Israel than the sabbath, and accordingly by this day they were tried peculiarly. (Comp. Lev. 26: 34, 35) They were surrounded by jealous neighbours; but who ever dared to take advantage of the sabbath as long as Israel walked in any measure with God ? When they fell away from Him, when they had broken down in every particular in which His honour was concerned, when they had been swept away into captivity because of their idolatry, God did not sustain them in the sabbath. It is remarkable that, when they returned from captivity, and when they had enemies to contend with, the Gentiles took advantage of the sabbath, and pressed it craftily against the Jews by attacking them on that day because they knew that there would be scruples on their part to fight on such a day. While under the direct government of God it never was attempted.

All this is surely striking enough, as showing the ways of God and His modes of dealing with His ancient people. But we come now to a still more solemn crisis, when our Lord came into their midst; for never do we get the truth fully about anything until we connect it with Christ. How did He then act as to the sabbath? And how did the Jews use the sabbath-day as to Christ? The answer will be fully and clearly found in the Gospels.

First, How did Christ use the sabbath as to men? He pointedly wrought miracles upon it He walked with His disciples through the corn-fields; and they in their hunger rubbed the ears of corn to satisfy it. But there were watchful and jealous eyes, which viewed it not so much with hatred against them as with suspicion against Him; for He it was that bore all reproaches. As the reproaches that fell on Jehovah fell on Him, so on Him came all the reproaches that fell on the disciples. He was the constant butt and object of all attacks, yet was He the ever present shield for the faithful in their weakness and exposure. So He pleads for the guiltless, reminding them how little their own law was understood by those who wrested it against His disciples.

Did the Pharisees talk about this act of His hungry followers as an infraction of the sabbath? They had better turn to their temple, and look a little more closely at their priests. Did they not bring their sin-offerings on the sabbath? For if sin were known, it could not be put off till another day. The Israelite that was burdened with the sense of a wrong to the Lord, or his neighbour must own it at once, if he feared God. The priests might be in a bad state; the sabbath was holy: but to put off was perilous; for to slight sin is to ensure worse sin. Therefore he that had a defiled conscience brought his offering, and thus owned his sin. And the priests that offered, as well as the person that brought the offering, were all guiltless before God. Why then did not those zealous sabbatarians find fault with God's provision on the part of the priests and the people when offering for sin on the sabbath?

But further our Lord refers to a most remarkable case in the past, a type of Himself. David, the beloved of God, when he too was cast out with his hungry followers, did once on a time partake with them of the bread set apart for the priests alone. Was this a sin? It was Saul's and the people's sin that there was no bread for David. It was their sin that the true anointed was an outcast. And the bread that was holy at a holy time was profaned in the hour of their wickedness. If it had no sanctity in the presence of a rejected David, how much less in the presence of a rejected Christ? This was the argument; for assuredly a greater than the priests and a greater than David was there. Hence a greater sin was done than in the ordinary days of Israel, or even in the special days of David. Thus the Lord retorted the conviction of sin on the heads of those that would have condemned the disciples.

But on the very next sabbath after the Lord Himself acts; it is not merely that He defends His disciples. He goes into the synagogue, and in full congregation singles out a man with a withered hand. And there He not only heals the man in the presence of them all, convicting the hypocrites that would have condemned Him once more, hating Him for the grace that ever flowed out to the miserable; but, further, He told the man to do an act which, had there not been a divine object in view, could have been dispensed with readily. He particularly marked it therefore in such a fashion as to show that it is no question of God's having complacency in their sabbath-keeping, but of His acting for His own glory in a ruined world. This work of love is what God deigns to be about. Now this was exactly what they resented. So the Gospel of John gives just the same truth, and with yet fuller evidence. A man that lay impotent in the presence of Bethesda, waiting for an angel to come down, found that a greater than all angels was there, who needed not to trouble the waters. A word was enough; for power accompanied it, and the man was healed. But Jesus directed him to arise, take up his bed, and walk, sabbath though it was. Could he not have left his bed there, or at least then? Yes; but so to act at His word who healed him was a plain and much galling testimony that God had no communion with their Sabbaths. Was not God thereby showing that, if there was to be the blessing the sinner needed as he is, He must work, and this on the sabbath; for man was waiting in sin and misery without His blessing? What folly to talk punctiliously about the sabbath from amidst the ruins of sin! If sinners were to be saved, there was no time to be lost. If the Blesser came, would He not give the blessing at once? So grace reckons, even as Christ then wrought. But what so offensive to self-satisfied man? Accordingly therefore the Jews were filled with hatred against Him who thus judged their thoughts and ways, bringing in God in this full opposition of His own grace to man in his selfish hypocrisy.

Thus the Lord showed how He used the sabbath against Israel in their pride.

I have now to speak of a darker page: what indeed more solemn? How did the Jews use their sabbath against Jesus?

The sabbath, sad to say it, was the only day right through, evening and morning, that the Lord Jesus spent in the grave. Yes, and that sabbath was a high day! Thus over the grave of the crucified Christ did unbelieving, guilty, rebellious Israel keep holiday. They had to their own rejection rejected the Son of God. He lay in the grave; and they kept their sabbath. And where was God? and what were His thoughts? Where His affections and His glory? In that grave that they had made for His Son. They had cast Him down into death, and He had taken all from His Father's hand — the worst and most ignominious of deaths. But God was there in the cross accomplishing for ever His greatest work. No sabbath was He keeping, but working in the depths of His grace, that salvation might flow not from His mercy only but in His righteousness. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." The counsel of peace was between them both. The work of the Father and the work of the Son had testified to man's sin and God's grace all through His ministry. We now look on the deepest point of all — not only the Christ, the Son, abandoning Himself to do God's will, but abandoned of God because He was bearing the judgment of sin on the cross; and this in order that God might be for ever vindicated and glorified even in respect of sin. And now the work is done. "It is finished." The hour then was for the Son of man to be glorified. God was glorified in Him; but if glorified in Him, God would glorify the Son of man in Himself, and would glorify Him straightway. Instead of waiting for the kingdom, and for Israel to be gathered for the millennial day, God would glorify Him at once. The people were not ready, nor the land either. What in short on the creature's part was ready as it should be? On God's part, however, all things were ready. But new counsels come in when Israel still rejects and God carries out His great heavenly work. The efficacy of Christ's work is first of all applied to what was unseen. Only faith sees the heavens opened and the Son of man at God's right hand. For Son of man He went up, as He came down Son of God (as He is now, and was from eternity to eternity). Then it was in perfect grace; now He goes up in accomplished righteousness, and sits on the right hand of God. In due time follow the glorious consequences of that work. And grace forms in Saul of Tarsus a suited witness: but I will not anticipate further.

On the day, however, that Jesus burst the bonds of death and rose from the grave, He first of all sends out a message by Mary Magdalene, whom He had previously delivered from the complete power of demons. She is now sent to the disciples with the message of the risen conqueror of Satan. He that had the power of death was conquered for ever. Accordingly on the day that speaks of light and life from the grave — that proclaims the mighty work of redemption accomplished for ever — the Lord Jesus sends a message to His own, who thereon are gathered together, and in the midst of them Jesus finds Himself. It was the first day of the week, the day of His resurrection. Such beyond doubt is its character. It was no longer creation-rest: for this had been broken. Nor was it any longer legal rest. For where was this now? Man ought to have learnt from the ways of God; for he might be commanded as he was in the law; but the very aim of all was to prove that sin had made him altogether incapable of doing God's will or of answering to His nature. The dealings of God were as excellent as His commands were all righteous. It is man that is all wrong Here lay the real difficulty and the constant dead-lock in Israel. It was from no fault of the law. The failure is entirely from the sin of man, not excepting the chosen and favoured people; and the divine object in the law was to bring this out distinctly in Israel's history, and make all that have ears to hear feel their sins and confess them to God — the very last thing the Jews (like any other self-complacent men now) thought of doing. What they themselves used the law for was simply to make out an appearance of righteousness of theirs; what God gave them the law for was to demonstrate that they had none of their own.

But now the gospel shows and proclaims another thing — the righteousness of God; for it is He who in Christ has interposed now. The law demanded man's duty to God and man, compelling those who are thus convicted of sin to own their ruin and cry to Him for remedy. Alas! Israel were hardened. Yet under the law man had done his worst. Instead of really producing fruit for God, according to the parable in which the Lord set out their history, they said, "This is the heir; come, let us kill Him," and slew and cast out the righteous One. Thus had man not only broken the law, but rejected utterly and absolutely God come in goodness in the person of Jesus. Man had put the Son of God to death on the cross; and what does God next? He interposed, and from that lowest abasement to which His Son become a man could be subjected God raised Him up and set Him at His own right hand, far above every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come.

Thereon comes in Christianity. Evidently it is based on the rejection by man of the Lord Jesus, in which God has accomplished atonement. For in the cross sin has been judged. It may not be put away in fact; but it all is to be, and on the basis of that mighty work. But sin is judged before God in the cross, and those who believe are entitled to know all its consequences gone for their souls; that is, their sins are forgiven, and sin itself is already dealt with to faith. But, as we know, none of this great deliverance as a matter of fact appears outwardly yet. That is to say, the evil of the world goes on as badly or worse than ever; nay, in the saint the old nature is there, and will surely break out if unjudged; and Satan, instead of being dethroned, is still the god of this world; and this was manifested at the cross of the Lord Jesus. Christianity does not mean in the slightest degree that the world, or human nature, still less that Satan, is better since then. I need not say that the truth is far from that. It is not even that Satan is put down from his access as an accuser before God (for this awaits another dealing at a future day), but that God is glorified, and has accepted meanwhile an infinitely efficacious work for the believer. Not only has a divine person been manifested full of grace and truth, but before God is that accomplished work, whereby the believer stands in the acceptance of Christ. It is no longer a mere hope grounded on a divine promise; but the work is done, and the present efficacy is perfect before God, so that the Holy Ghost is come down to be the witness of this to the soul of the believer, the seal of redemption, and the earnest of the coming inheritance when we shall appear with Christ in glory.

Such is Christianity; and the consequence is therefore that God at once inaugurates a new day. It is no longer the last day of the week; for they speak not truly who say that the sabbath is a seventh day; that is, any day of the seven. There might be rest for man all the same, but in that no memorial of God at all. A seventh day blots out all record of God's past, and all hope of God's future. The very idea of it destroys from the sabbath every atom of what is divine. Such tampering with scripture, and in particular with the sabbath, makes it to be no more than a human thing. Those that think that any day would do equally well, show that they know nothing, heed nothing, of God's intention in the sabbath. They are alive to the human need and boon. Its place in the mind of God, and for man's highest welfare, is lost to them. On the contrary, I maintain that it is of the very essence of the truth as to the sabbath that it is the last of the week, or seventh day; not a, but the, seventh day, and no other. This is the day that God sanctified, the remembrance of creation and the type of His rest. But then the rest was not yet. Creation-rest was ruined; law-rest, though commanded, never had a real footing for sinful man. What is the consequence? On the ground of creation or law there is no hope for man, because of sin. But grace, God's grace, enters; and now it is a question of God's giving rest for the soul, if not yet for the body, in Christ the Lord.

There is no rest from labour yet, as we see in Hebrews 4; the rest of glory is of course future. It will all come, but only when Christ comes. There is rest given in Christ to the weary; there is rest which the Christian finds who takes Christ's yoke, and learns of Him who is meek and lowly of heart. These are respectively suited to the Christian and to the heavy laden; but what rest can rightly be as yet from the labour of love in such a world as this? For the spirit there is perfect rest in Christ and peace before God, but at the same time no rest from toil or sorrow, no settling down in the world which cast out Christ save to the selfish and unbelieving.

And here I may observe that it is a mischievous thing to apply Hebrews 4 to the question of the soul's present rest by faith. This is not at all the point that the apostle Paul is there discussing, but rather the danger for the believer of seeking present rest, seeing that we are passing through the wilderness and have not yet reached Canaan. We are as yet pilgrims and strangers. He is warning the Hebrew believers of their danger in valuing present ease. This is not our rest. Some might take things quietly because they knew themselves justified. But the believer is really redeemed to serve and suffer for a season here. Every one knows that there is a danger of turning to the folly of present ease for souls when relieved from fear; and a very particular danger it is for those that have gone through a great deal of sifting at their conversion, lest they forget that this is but the beginning of a course of trial and testimony on earth. No bad thing either for any one so to judge self; but the danger is that there is apt to follow a kind of reaction, unless grace keeps one simply looking to Christ. When persons have gone through much trouble of conscience, and have found themselves saved by nothing but grace, they enjoy peace thankfully; but it is very possible for them to think that after this they are free to take all else easily. Not so. It is after this that they are set in freedom of heart to labour for the Lord, as those who are still in the desert. Far am I from saying that they are not to enjoy His love more and more. They are free, and need, to draw near in thanksgiving and praise surely; for there are two distinct ways in which divine life works: the one is upward toward God in worship, the other is downward toward man in love; and grace gives us both now. But we, if wise, wait for rest when God rests in the scene and day of glory. Now is the time to fear and to labour.

Hence therefore, as the Apostle exhorts, he who believes in the Lord Jesus now is called into this blessed participation of the mind of God. Having been set free in virtue of the work of Christ from guilty fears (most just and real), being delivered from that sense of condemnation which the Spirit of God had lately pressed on his conscience, he has peace with God, and rests in our Lord Jesus Christ. But he is only for that very reason guarded against taking his ease in the world. And this belongs to the very nature of Christianity and to God's object in it. A Jew naturally expected that, when Christ came, he would himself have ease and rest. There would be neither evil to avoid nor enemies to contend with, all being put down for him at least at the beginning of Messiah's reign. Then would every kind of blessing be brought in for his enjoyment. For danger will not then lurk in the earth and the things of the earth; but men, Israel especially, take all good freely from God. And so it will be; for the millennial kingdom will ensue a time of ease and joy here below, when good will be at peace and evil must hide its face, banished from the scene by the power of God, then manifestly the possessor of heaven and earth. But this is not the experience which Christianity is now forming, while we await Christ from heaven and suffer with Him on earth.

Now, on the contrary, the Spirit brings in what is heavenly and unseen into the midst of a visible state of things where all is contrary to God, and faith has to make its way against the current, living by the word of God. It is now a state of things characterised (let us not forget it) on the one hand by the utter rejection and cross of God's own Son, on the other by His exaltation at God's right hand on high. The cross was the expression of the world's extreme hatred to God, Christ's session above of God's perfect satisfaction in the work of redemption. Christianity is based on the one and displayed to faith in the other. There is for the sinner the cross of Christ; but there is more for the believer. Christ is risen: what is the meaning of it? Has His resurrection no voice to the Christian? It is not simply that He who brought all grace and manifested all righteousness was ignominiously and in hatred rejected; but that in His death and resurrection my sins are forgiven, sin is judged, righteousness is established, and a new and intimate relationship (His own) with His God and Father are given me by faith in Him. He is coming soon to have me with Himself in the Father's house; but meanwhile He has for a season left me in this world while He is gone out of it into heaven. Consequently He has given a heavenly character to me, to my standing, worship, walk, testimony, conflict, and hope, to everything in short with which grace puts me in present communion. For this is not our home or abiding-place; for the Christian it is where Satan reigns. Am I then to have communion with things that are around me here? If a Christian, through the grace of God my communion is with the things that belong to Christ at His right hand. All that is of the world is not of the Father. Christ, and now He is on high, is the test of everything. But it is there that the secret lies; it is in Him who is gone to the right hand of God. Hence therefore Christianity is essentially heavenly. It is built on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Hence the first day of the week at once becomes the characteristic day for the Christian, and whenever this is not kept in view, a man always tends to slide down into Judaism. Such is the effect of talking about a Christian sabbath, especially if it is a sober judgment, and not idle talk. People who so think and speak have a distinct view neither of Judaism on the one hand nor of Christianity on the other — little more than a wretched medley of the two systems. Is not this too sadly and surely just what we find in Christendom at the present moment? Hence therefore not unnaturally the prevalent confusion — I was about to say the unholy, but one may call it without exaggeration the unhappy alliance — between the law and the gospel.

Do not, however, mistake my mind as to this grave subject. The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good. Every whit of God's requirements in the Old Testament is worthy of the utmost reverence on the part of the believer. No godly man of intelligence that values grace will ever disparage law. But it is one thing to give each its place and application, quite another to confound them. For this there is no warrant whatever in the word of God. The law has its own function, and its due application is to deal with man fallen and wicked. It was a wholly different thing when He who had no sin, the Son of God, deigned to be born of woman and to come under law, and made it honourable, glorifying Him who gave it by His servant Moses. And a different thing there will be in the day of Jehovah when it is written on the heart of Israel according to the new covenant. Then will His mighty hand maintain His own when Satan is bound, and a new heart is given to His people, the heart of stone being taken away. Indeed, they are happy if only unhappy, for I confess that in too many cases this misuse of the law is associated with positive unholiness, and this not merely personal failure but in principle. For when they know they have sinned, they fly to Christ's blood as a Jew to his sin-offering, and thus by fresh application to His sacrifice try to maintain an intermittent peace, thus proving how little they, though believers, really know the gospel. Their standard of practice is proportionately low. They do not understand what it is to walk in the Spirit. They have not submitted to the truth that they are dead, nor entered thus into the deliverance of Christ.

But now that man is dealt with as lost, and the believer as saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, what is it for the righteous to take up the law as their rule? As far as my experience goes, darkness ensues, and with it weakness and failure. Sense of grace comes to ruin for the soul. For it is invariably found that, when God's children take up the law as the rule of walk, it cannot but gender bondage.

I dare say many remember as well as myself what it was to be endeavouring to keep the sabbath in olden time. What was the consequence? Holy, happy peace? Not so; but the soul anxious, self-condemned, and unhappy. The most solemn and grievous result of all was, that under this mistaken system, the more righteous people were, the less happy they found themselves. What a strange conclusion if it were God's will and word! most simple if it is not. Those who took things easily (I may call them free and easy, perhaps without offence) got through the sabbath pretty well, as far as they themselves thought doubtless; but it was a grave and sorrowful matter for such as strove to keep this law in the midst of the inconsistencies of Christendom, and with such conscience towards God as the law and the prophets inspired. They might fast and pray, but the more they strove, the more miserable they were. They might endeavour and try to guard it in the simplest things, but it always ended in failure; and therefore they never were happy under it, but often if not always ill at ease; and no wonder, for the whole principle was a mistake for the Christian.

But now comes the positive side; and a very important question practically arises — What does scripture connect with the Lord's-day?

I answer, first of all, let us see its true character. It is not the day that was sanctified by creation rest. It is not the day of law which the law commanded Israel to keep the main test amongst them of God's authority. What is it then? What is emphatically connected with the first day? I answer, resurrection-life in Christ and the grace of God. In contrast with creation, the Lord's-day tells of the new creation; in contrast with law, it speaks of the grace which has brought salvation. Christians therefore have no reason to be ashamed in comparing the first day of the week which God has given them with the sabbath which He imposed on Israel. On the contrary, I claim for the Lord's-day a higher sanctity, deeper principles, and the strongest, yea, an immutable, foundation. If the sabbath can boast much, the Lord's-day incomparably more; for as the one is connected with the first Adam, the other is with the second Adam; and as much as the heavens are higher than the earth, so is the Lord's-day higher than the sabbath. The sabbath, I repeat, was for man — for man in the flesh — for man as he was under probation — for man dealt with as living under the law of God. Undoubtedly there are many who think that man is under probation still, and that the Christian is under the law of God, just as a Jew used to be; though they may add that the law is not to justify him but to rule the walk — that we are under it for the latter, and not for the former. Well, it may be convenient for you to say what the law is to do; but let me tell you this, that if you are under the law, God does not allow you to say what the law is to do, and what it is not. If you are under the law, and you fail, what can the law do to you? It can do nothing in justice but condemn, curse, and kill you. This is its declared object — this its necessary function. If you are under the law, and you fail to meet the law, what can, what ought, the law to do but punish you? And what is its punishment but death? Are you to alter all this too? But theology is bold, demurs, and says, "Oh, I am not under the law to be punished!" But the question is not what you say about the law, but what the law says to you. Theory, or theology, cannot stand against scripture. The truth is, your thought is an imagination of men, and a mere attempt to get out of a difficulty. They see in the gospel that the believer in our Lord Jesus is justified, and then, though they put him under the law as a rule of life, they try to get out of the dilemma this throws them into by pleading that they are only under the law for walk, and not for condemnation. Do they not mean that the Christian is under the law to break it with impunity? What sort of a rule of life is this? It is not the gospel but a mitigated, emasculated, sanctionless law. It is not Christ and the truth. Where do they get such a thought in the word of God? Nowhere.

There I do find the question raised and answered in one of the most important and simple and withal comprehensive epistles of the New Testament. I am not speaking now of those to the Ephesians or the Colossians — it is no wonder that such men do not understand Ephesians or Colossians — nor yet of the Book of Revelation. But let us take Romans; and surely every Christian of moderate light ought to be familiar with that epistle at any rate, and to rejoice in the truth the Holy Spirit has there furnished for every day's need. Now what is there laid down as to the law? Where it is a question of the life exercised in the walk of the Christian, he is formally declared not to be under the law but under grace. Such is expressly the doctrine of the apostle Paul. In the sixth chapter of Romans the discussion is not how a sinner is to be justified, but how he being justified is to walk. Does the mercy of God in the gospel leave the soul free to live in sin? The answer is, Not so; for he is dead with Christ to sin, and he is not under the law, but under grace. It is substantially the same truth everywhere else, as in 1 Cor. 9: 20,* 21; 2 Cor. 3; Gal. 5: 18; 1 Tim. 1: 7-10. Never do we hear the theological or at least the Puritan fiction, that the Christian is freed from the condemning power of the law as a question of justification only, but under the law as a rule to live by. Such a notion is clean contrary to the apostle's teaching, who declares that we are dead with Christ to the law as well as to sin. These theologians do not know what death with Christ means; they do not understand their own baptism in His name.

* I call the reader's attention to the omission in the commonly received Greek text, as well as in the Authorised Version, of the important clause, μὴ ὸν αὐτὢς ὑπὸ νόμον, "not being myself under law." The passage reads thus: — "And I became to the Jews as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to those under law as under law (not being myself under law), that I might gain those under law; to those without law, as without law (not being without law to God, but under law to Christ), that I might gain those without law." (Compare Rom. 8: 3, 4.)

Now the Lord's-day is the day of grace, and not of law; and this is manifestly consistent with the power and ways of grace. The reason why no Christian is absolved from what is due to God is illustrated by that day when grace triumphed in a new creation through our Lord Jesus.

And look at the beautiful way in which the Lord Jesus introduced it. There is no command in the New Testament such as — "Thou shalt keep the Lord's-day." Why should the sabbath be in the Old Testament, not in the New? Why the Lord's-day in the New, and not in the Old? If you look over the Ten Commandments, you will find that the principle of prohibition runs through them generally. The people to whom they were uttered had no inclination to keep them. Hence the command ran in these terms — Thou shalt not do this, Thou shalt do that — because they wanted to do the contrary. Is this the case with the Christian? Has it come to this pass, that children of God do not really desire to keep the Lord's-day? I should be sorry to think one counted it a burden. They are sanctified to obedience; they are called to the law of liberty. If it were a question of imposing the first day of the week on the world, I can understand a command given to keep the first day; for it is and must be irksome to all who know not His grace. But this is not at all the intention of the Lord as to those who know Him not.

With the sabbath the ground, nature, and end were altogether different. It must be repeated that it formed part of the law, and was distinctively a sign between God and Israel. The sabbath was never given to the Gentile as such, whatever may be the reasonings of men. If a Gentile came and put himself under the wing of Israel, of course he kept the sabbath; but as a Gentile he had nothing to do with it. The sabbath was Jehovah's sign to Israel; and the effort to prove that it was imposed on all alike does no less in principle than deny that fact, and the scripture which declares it. It could be no longer a sign to His elect people: if it was equally binding on all, it was not peculiar to Israel. How could it be a sign to one if it was the common duty of all? But the fact is, that the Lord has decided that question clearly, and so do the law and the prophets. "Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am Jehovah that doth sanctify you." . . . "It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed." (Ex. 31: 13, 17) "Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am Jehovah that sanctify them." (Ezek. 20: 12.)

Now look at the Lord's-day. How different from the sabbath! The latter was a day that involved yourself, your family, your servants, even your very cattle, your ox and your ass. As to them all, Jehovah the God of Israel and the Creator had a care, and brought them within the beneficent scope of the seventh day; and no wonder, for it was the sign of the rest of creation, and man, and all animals subject to him, were a part of creation. It might be the lower part; but still it was a part which God did not forget in His law. But what has an ox or an ass to do with the new creation?

This radical distinction of the sabbath as expressive of creation and law, and of the Lord's-day as expressing resurrection and grace, is what people do not seem to see, and hence they are apt to make mistakes in practice. The ground of the difference is evident. The moment one gets hold of the principle of the Lord's-day, not only must all the inferior part of the creation be left out but those that are unconverted also. These beyond doubt are not overlooked by God, who sends them the gospel; but He does not place converted and unconverted on the same footing of relationship, nor consequently require the same duties. What do unconverted men with grace and the new creation, but pervert or despise them? I do not deny their obligation in presence of the great facts and truth of the gospel. They have and read the word of God; they own the duty of prayer and of praise. This may all be, while the believer must know that it cannot be such prayer and praise as faith presents in the Spirit. But if the question be the true principle of the Lord's-day, and the intended scope of its application, the answer is, that the Lord's-day essentially is for the Lord's people. May I not go farther, and question whether a Jew could understand its meaning? Certainly even in the days of the kingdom he is not called to its observance. Of course I am speaking of him who not only is a Jew but abides in his unbelief of the gospel. The Lord's-day is naturally unintelligible to the unconverted now. Nor will it be a question even for Israel in the millennium; for they will never have it as we have now. There will be an arrangement altogether different for them. Of course they will see it in the New Testament, and will understand that there were saints before them who kept that day, and how they kept it; that they gathered together on it, and remembered the Lord's death, worshipping their God and Father, edifying each other. They may understand all this; but as to the deep principles involved in it, I doubt much whether they will ever enter into them, at any rate with any real intelligence; whereas to understand the truth of them in Christ, and walk faithfully in accordance with it, should be the distinctive characteristic of the Christian.

It may have been noticed, for instance, in the verses read at the beginning (Acts 20), how the apostle Paul loved to spend seven days in a place. Can there be a doubt what was in his heart? Was it not to cover the Lord's-day? He loved to spend at least one such day with the saints; so we see in more than one passage. It was the great day of assemblage for the children of God. Not that they never assembled on other days; but there might be no small difficulties in those early times. It may have been so indeed sometimes even for the Lord's-day. Still this was the day that commanded the hearts of the disciples. It is evident that, if there had been no distinctive day, the brethren could not be so justly blamed for forsaking the assembling of themselves; but such a fault would at once be felt if there was a known day, and a day not merely chosen by the church or sanctioned by all but one that the Lord had stamped with His own resurrection image. Such certainly is this day; and so marked is it by the presence of our Lord Jesus, that I will just refer to the point for a moment before we touch on the statements of the apostle Paul.

Our Lord is shown to have revealed Himself repeatedly during the course of the resurrection-day to disciple after disciple, from His appearance to Mary Magdalene first of all until He stood in the assembly of the saints on the evening of that day. Thus there was a succession of manifestations throughout. Nor do I doubt that a Christian is entitled to know an especial presence and enjoyment of the Lord Jesus on the same day of the week that is not vouchsafed on any other day. If his faith does not take this in, so far there will be loss for his soul. The word of God must be the ground of it, and to make this the more marked, what do we find there? Does the Lord appear on the Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, etc., as we call them? Not a word about it. He passes over all the intervening days, but the next first day following He appears again. What could more significantly mark that day to all who remember Him and delight in His ways?

This to me is most expressive of the mind of the Lord, not in the shape of a command or even a promise which would have called one back to the relationship of Israel. At any rate a formal pledge might suppose a kind of unwillingness or want of intelligence on the part of the saints of God. What the Lord looks for is love that understands Him. A single eye gives entrance into His mind. He rose on that day: we understand it. He comes again and again on that day: we understand it all. That day remains fixed for us as "the Lord's-day,"* even as the Holy Ghost designated it expressly in the closing book of the New Testament. (Rev. 1: 10) The time was come so to stamp that day long familiar to the Christian heart, now designated as pertaining to the Lord no less than His supper. From first to last there is no command, nothing like a legal claim; but the more, not the less, do both appeal to the faith and devotedness of all who love Him. As the supper is His, distinct in character and aim from all others, so is His day to the Christian.

*I am aware that the late Dr. S. R. Maitland, followed by a very few others, ventured to deny that the expression ἐν τῆ κυριακῆ refers to "the Lord's-day," and to argue that it means "the day of the Lord," into which he supposed the prophet was carried forward in Spirit. The fact is however that, first, the expression is pointedly distinct from that prophetic phrase, ἡμέρα κυρίου with or without the article (for it is used either way according to the exact shade of thought intended); secondly, it is the form constantly and regularly used from the earliest ages to express, according to Christian feeling, the first day of the week, as Jews would say, or Sunday, as Gentiles said. Hence Justin Martyr, wishing to defend Christians and their faith before heathen, uses their term, but in a sort of apologetic way, τῆ τοῦ ἡλίου  λεγομένῃ ἡμέρᾳ (Apol. i. 67, ed. Otto, 1842, i. 268- 270.) Where no such motive operated, the phrase of St. John is employed, as in the alleged Epistles of Ignatius to Magnesians, ix., μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες, ἀλλὰ κατὰ κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες ; so also in Clem. Alex. Strom. v. vii. 12; in Iren. Fragm. vii., ed. Bened. 342, and in Euseb. H.E. iv. 23, 26, v. 23. There is no need to multiply later references, nor to prove that it was so understood by the Latins or by those who spoke in other tongues. It is as certain as any such matter can be that the meaning is "the Lord's-day," and nothing else. On that day it pleased the Lord to give His servant John in the Spirit those visions of the future which make up the book of Revelation and close fittingly the canon of scripture.

Let us now consult once more the Book of Acts. When the disciples were brought into their blessed place as the church of God, the Holy Ghost came down, and they were so filled with joy and gladness that they could hardly keep away from one another. So we find them meeting every day; and I have no doubt from Acts 2: 46, that they then partook of the Lord's-supper every day. It was not merely what people call, and indeed what scripture calls, a love-feast. They did this too. But a love-feast meant nothing more than that the saints united in partaking of a meal with the word of God and prayer. They did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people, even as the Lord at first. (Luke 2: 52.) That is, they enjoyed every sort and measure of communion with one another as fully as they could. But the Lord's-supper was far more than this since, it is the communion of Christ's body and of His blood. It was not a mere token of brotherly intercourse, but the most solemn though joyful act of Christian worship. They also broke bread at home. This is the Lord's supper.

Accordingly, at first, they used to break bread together day by day. And so far, is there anything contrary to scripture in taking the Lord's-supper on any day whatever? There is a principle laid down which justifies it whenever circumstances of an extraordinary kind call for it. Acts 2: 46 is the clearest proof that under such a claim (of which spirituality alone can judge aright) it is no unauthorized thing to take the Lord's-supper every day.

But from Acts 20: 7 we may assuredly gather a little more. We learn thence that there is one day above all others appropriated to the supper of the Lord. No doubt other acts of worship or divine service may accompany it, such as prayers and praises; and if there be present any that need a word from the Lord in the way of a discourse on the grace of Christ or the truth of God, there is the fullest openness for it. The assembly of God is free to receive not only all that falls in with her own thanksgiving, but also everything that might contribute to the real edification of the saints of God. And therefore, as we find in 1 Corinthians 14, all these different elements are in exercise there, singing, prayer, thanksgiving, and blessing, but also speaking to edification and comfort. Yet the central object and chief motive for the heart in thus coming together is the remembrance of Christ in the breaking of bread. So we find it here: — "Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread."

I am sorry to be obliged to point out a necessary correction here. But you will understand that the change has already been made from the truth. I am only seeking to bring souls back to the truth. The real words* of the Holy Spirit here were: "When we came together." Now no doubt at first sight it seems a little harsh. I will read to you how it runs, and you will see that it is a little difficult. In the most authoritative text of this verse, according to the oldest and best MSS., it reads thus: "Upon the first day of the week, when we came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them." One can readily conjecture how the change took place. The copyists, seeing "preached unto them," thought that "when we came together" did not well harmonise, that there must be some mistake, and that "we" had probably slipped in instead of "the disciples." The truth, however, is, that "we" is right, and that the real intruder is "the disciples." It was the apparent jar of which the correction sought to get rid. This was wrong. Always accept this, my beloved brethren, as a true canon in such questions as to the word of God: never cut the knot of a difficulty in scripture, but wait till God untie it for you. There are difficulties in His word. What is to be done with them? Submit to them; own that you do not understand; pray to God till, in the use of all right means, He clears them up. But never force the word of God. That appears to have been done here. Some of the scribes cut the knot of the difficulty by changing "we came together" into "the disciples came together;" thus they thought that the latter would agree better with "them."

*It is a question of the true Greek text, not of our version only. Ἡμῶν is read by the Sinaiticus ABDE, twenty cursives, all the ancient versions of value, save perhaps the Coptic, and several of the Greek fathers, as against HLP and most cursives.

But now let us simply take the clause as God wrote it; for there cannot be a legitimate doubt, to any competent person who has examined the matter, that I am giving the true form of the verse. Thus it will be found in every critical text of value, no matter whose it may be; and so you will find it in every correct version of the critical text — "Upon the first day of the week, when we came together." Why we? Because all had a common interest. Had it been said, "when the disciples came together," it might possibly have been thought that it meant no more than the disciples in that place, who had the habit of meeting together on the first day of the week. But as it is "when we came together to break bread," the principle takes in all saints. All are found here in a common character. The family word, "we," so familiar to the Spirit, is used — "when we came together." It is not merely the mode adopted by the disciples in Troas. It is the habit of the saints wherever they might be — of Paul, and Luke, and every one else. The only question that could be raised is, whether the writer does not mean by this to put himself along with the rest when he says, "When we came together to break bread." This I doubt not he does; but that the phrase goes farther we see from the context, which implies the fixed and regular habit of all the saints of God, wherever they had the opportunity, to meet together for the Lord's-supper on the first day of the week.

Thus we have a by no means unimportant truth, with historic simplicity, conveyed in this verse. There had been a time when every day, under the peculiar circumstances of the Pentecostal assembly, was devoted amongst other things to breaking bread together; but that state of things soon passed. The saints were scattered. Persecution drove them from Jerusalem, some here, some there, to other lands. We see no more the meeting to break bread day by day among the Jewish Christians; but we do hear among the Gentiles of an established fact to which the apostle puts his seal as one of those that had authority to order and arrange things in the name of our Lord Jesus. To meet and break bread was the settled habit of the saints then for the first day (not of the month or quarter, but) of the week.

Further, take notice, that "Paul preached." It is not "unto us" — this is not said — but "unto them." The propriety appears at once on reflection. Paul did not exactly preach (ἐκήρυσσεν, or εὐηγγελίζετο); for it is a totally different expression from that of preaching, and had no reference at all to proclaiming the gospel. It is simply "discoursed" (διελέγετο): no doubt it was upon profitable truth for any servants of God that might accompany him; but it was particularly addressed to the disciples that were in Troas. This seems the reason why it is said "to them," rather than "to us." Of course all the rest profited; but it would at this time have been a less appropriate word to say that Paul preached to us. It would not have so correctly expressed the address of Paul to the saints there. When it is said, "We came together to break bread," Paul, etc., are included. When the writer says "Paul preached unto them," he points to the apostle discoursing to these saints who rarely enjoyed such a privilege. Thus, I think, the propriety of the change is sufficiently manifest, though at first sight it might seem a little difficult. Indeed it is always the truest and wisest way to accept scripture according to the best authorities, and to wait on Him till we gradually see the beauty and fitness of every word of the living God.

It appears to me then that from these scriptures we have gained some very important points as to the Lord's day. We see that the Lord did not leave His saints isolated. By His will is the gathering of the members of His body to worship. So it was the Lord had begun with the disciples; so it is the Holy Ghost continues now that the assembly is formed in unity. How beautifully harmonious is the truth! We do not find that the risen Lord met with them every day during the forty days before He ascended. The Spirit records at any rate His meeting with them on two successive first days. So when the day of Pentecost was now accomplishing, they were all together in one place. It was the Lord's-day again. Then if in the joy and fellowship of Pentecostal blessing we hear among other peculiar but suited effects how they broke bread day by day, we learn that things afterwards recurred to the Lord's institution. He Himself had met with them, not merely with one or more, but "with the disciples;" and again on that day of the week following He stood in their midst. (John 20: 19, 26) The same thing becomes the regularized method which the Spirit of God records for us, sanctioned by an apostle's presence, and this too among the Gentiles. There might be other gatherings together; for it is in no way meant that the wants of the saints of God could be satisfied with simply gathering together to break bread on the Lord's-day, weighty as this may be. Still it is presented so as pre-eminently to include the heavenly family; even as the Lord's-supper is what appeals to all Christians, and no wonder; because His death brings before us that which is of all things the most momentous before God, humbling for man, and affecting to those who remember Him. In the Lord's death what is there for the heart! What there is some of us perhaps know a little — all of us, I am sure, far too little. Yea, rather what is not there? I might challenge the universe to say what there is not in the Lord's death; and sure I am that heaven would only bring out the answer to the call with incomparably greater appreciation of it than by earth. For the Spirit, though here, is sadly hindered by our feeble faith.

But still the Holy Spirit is here to give us power in the face of all hindrances. And it is precisely while we are passing through the wilderness, whilst we prove what the world, flesh, and Satan are in their enmity to God, that grace gives us this day as a witness of Christ's resurrection and the pledge of our own. It is not now a command to rest on the sabbath with the consequence of death for those who despise it. This is law. Far different is the way of grace. Now that through our Lord Jesus we are brought out of death by His death, we have entered into life. We stand on wholly new ground in Him risen. We are put on no probationary trial to see whether we shall stand or fail. The grace of God has delivered us. Already saved, we are in Him blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And as of old visibly, not less truly does the Lord now deign to be in our midst. The Holy Ghost is come down to give us, among other privileges, the enjoyment of Christ's presence; and this is what pre-eminently is our portion when we assemble in His name. How precious to read God's word together! What a mercy to have liberty and opportunities for proclaiming the good news! How many ways of serving the Lord with old and young, the sick and the poor, in which Christian life may express itself and be exercised!

But the first day of the week has a character of its own, a blessed and constant call for every saint, where Christ is all; and here it is accordingly where, if it were an apostle, he finds himself one of God's family. It is "we," not I and you. "When we came together to break bread." Doubtless, the Lord's-supper apart, the apostle had his special place. Having the first of all gifts in the church, he exercised it as the Lord guided. A blight is on the assembly that would silence any gift which the grace of God has given for common profit. A blight is on all the individuals that say or feel so satisfied with what they are and have attained that they want nothing more. Those who know so well in their own conceit, be assured, know nothing as they ought. Whatever edifies is most appropriate for us when gathered together. The Lord would soon blow on the self- complacency that declines what He is pleased to give.

Here we find the apostle not only discoursing freely to the saints, but using his liberty to so great a length that it proved indeed a danger to one present that was heavy. Yet it furnished an occasion for the display of the power which the Lord had given, not for destruction, but for His own tender mercy and gracious power.

I have already shown the main object of the Lord's supper; but it is not the only one. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians there is another connection with the Lord's day which must not be passed by. It occurs in the last chapter. The apostle says, "Concerning the collection for the saints, as I gave order to the assemblies of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him [or at home] in store whatsoever he may be prospered in, that there be not gatherings then when I come." (vv. 1, 2.) Here again is a duty of love associated with the first day of the week. If it were a mere question of the saints remembering their poor brethren, there seems no reason why the collections might not have been from time to time as need was made known. Nor is it certainly a bare question of laying by at home, though it is well known that some learned commentators declare this to be the meaning of "by him." As if it were some great matter, they tell us that "laying by him," as a phrase taken by itself, means nothing more.

Supposing this to be certain, and I am not going to dispute with them about it, is this all? Did the apostle mean nothing more? It does seem to me that the truth greatly supplements what they say; for one may justly ask the question, Why, if so, stress should be laid on the first day of the week? Why not on any other day? Why was the collection (for this it was) on that day above all others? Beyond a doubt it is good and wholesome for a Christian to lay by at home for the need of others. It is well that he should consider gravely, and not on mere impulse or when he is on the spot, what he is going to give in the Lord's name. It is evident that the Lord meant each believer to challenge his heart in view of any prosperity he may have had in the course of the week. But that each was to accumulate a separate store in his own house from week to week appears to me the merest assumption, and indeed mistake. The apostle would have it to be a grave matter of enquiry before the Lord, and of course therefore rather a question raised at home than, as is common in modern times, an emulous act when people flock together, or perhaps at haphazard, whether they be duly provided or not, and often under moving appeals to act on their feelings. All these are but poor ways of giving, and by no means answer to the intention of the Spirit of God here for His saints on the first day of the week.

The apostle wished giving to be a grave habit, and one that should be settled, as we have been prospered, with one's self or at home. He wished to avoid a special collection at the time of his visit, not merely, as it seems to us, because his time could be better employed than in such diaconal work, but because he felt it to be an affair for the Christian conscience and heart, not for influence of his own, still less for emulation, nor yet the gusts of some passing impulse. What a contrast is the getting a popular man to come and preach a moving sermon in order to work upon people's feelings! Far different is the principle laid down here. He urges on the saints to consider gravely before the Lord, and each by himself to lay by at home, not to act on impulse, but conscientiously, according as he had been that week prospered.

Accordingly the saints at Corinth, as elsewhere, are called in the name of the Lord to give on the first day of the week. "Let every one of you," i.e. each of them. Is this always remembered? It is not the rich alone. Is there not sometimes the thought that they are to give that can out of their abundance? Is Christ in this thought, or self? Not a word about wealth is breathed here, but "as he may have been prospered." The poor man may be prospered just as really in proportion as the rich; perhaps it might be even more sensibly. Many a rich man has nothing in particular different one week from another, but the poor man may often have; and the Lord thinks about the poor. The Spirit of God takes care to give him who has been ever so little prospered during the week a living and personal interest in everything that is connected with the name and saints of the Lord. Certainly it is not meant that those who are always in prosperity, and may not have any special abundance, should think themselves absolved from their duty of gravely considering with a view to giving. God forbid! Thus did the Lord ordain, that the poorest might not conceive himself left out, that the simplest might know that he has an integral interest in all that concerns the glory of God. There is too the gracious wisdom that connects all with Christ and His resurrection, and thus with the joy and the deliverance and the eternal blessing into which we are brought and know we are brought, and which we are intended to manifest in gathering together to His name, breaking bread in the remembrance of Him. What an association for our little contribution to the poor saints!

This then is the meaning of the first day of the week as here introduced, showing plainly that, as in the verse stated, there is a laying-up by each at home, so on the first day of the week they contributed when they came together; for we have already seen they always met on that day. Be it so, then, that the laying-by was at home, the day on which it was done implies that whatever might be thus separated to the need of the saints was not to be kept there. As they came together then, so they had fellowship in casting their offerings into the common treasury of the church in the name of the Lord. This appears to me the point here in connecting all together. Where would be the force of pressing the collection for the saints on the first day of the week, if it went no farther than each laying by at home? Why might it not be as well done on any other day? We can see its importance if they contributed on that day what each laid by at home, when they came together to break bread. Thus was communion best maintained among those that belonged to Christ; especially as it was also for the express purpose of avoiding collections when the apostle came. He would not mix it up with personal feeling. He desired not that money should be drawn out because Paul was there. He would have souls exercised in love and liberty but withal conscientious care, and the motive Christ for the needy that are His. And He is always there; and this especially, let me repeat, on the first day of the week. No doubt withal there is liberty for every holy service in prayer, preaching, and visiting; and we may well thank God for all. But these are not confined to the Lord's-day, having their place as God gives opportunity on any if not on every day; whereas the breaking of bread is the standing institution of the church's communion; and the Lord's-day is the standing day for it, though it might be every day. The Lord's-supper and the Lord's-day answer to each other, being mutual complements in the witness of Christianity; and as the one is especially the expression of Christ's death, so is the other especially of His resurrection.

Thus too is all duly kept in its place and tone. For we are not meant to come together in sadness, in a spirit of mourning, or with garments of heaviness. There is set forth then the most affecting sign of our Saviour's humiliation in unfathomable love, the most solemn witness of our sin and shame and ruin. How overwhelming the evidence in His death that we were sinners, and what sinners we! But no less is it a demonstration of our blessedness through His infinite work as believers. God is not only satisfied as to sin and our sins, but glorified, and ourselves by grace washed, sanctified, justified, in the name of our Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. And our Lord, though on high, deigns to be with us till He come again and take us to be with Him.

Meanwhile the Lord's-day,* where the grace and truth expressed in it is understood, and the Lord's-supper, observed as it should be in its original integrity as the central institution for the gathered worshippers in spirit and in truth, have their own appointed and appropriate aim — the best means according to God's wisdom — for the testimony and enjoyment of Christian privilege here below in His assembly to His glory. May our part, if indeed we are Christ's, be holily and happily in it all evermore. Amen.

* I reject, it is scarce needful to add, the broad church laxity of such Presbyterians as the late Dr. N. Macleod, who put the Lord's-day on human, not on divine ground; and the criticism of the late Dean Alford on Rom. 14: 5, 6, who confounded the question of Jewish days, which some wished to impose on the Christian, with that of the Lord's day. The essence of the modern school is to take away the Sabbath, without leaving the Lord's-day — in my judgment, a grievous error and sin. The truth is that they, like too many others, have superficial thoughts on the one hand, of man's ruin on the other, and of God's grace in redemption and the new creation; and hence their slight of its sign. How few Christians really understand Christianity!

Present Salvation

W. Kelly.

A LETTER TO A FRIEND, IN REVIEW OF A SERMON BY THE REV. G. SALMON

(Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin).

My dear brother,

Have you seen a sermon on John 3: 36 by the Dublin Regius Professor of Divinity, preached in the chapel of Trinity College toward the close of last year?

There is this inconvenience in noticing it that one does not, cannot, sympathize with the preachers objected to, if they are fairly represented by their censor. What can be more offensive or dangerous than crying up grace without righteousness, faith without repentance, pardon without life? The Professor may be assured that there are those who, preaching salvation as an actual state, hold quite as firmly as himself the importance of viewing salvation as future also. But they deny that the formularies he seeks to justify express the truth as it is revealed.

It is rather unhappy however that Professor Salmon's second paragraph, the opening of the case, exhibits reasoning and criticism far from exceptionable. For no intelligent Christian doubts that the New Testament speaks of salvation in these two senses, present or future, not to speak of others. But there is neither confusion of the two, nor uncertainty how each is used In general the line of truth pursued by an inspired writer in a particular book excludes one or other, though there are subjects, and hence books containing them, which admit of both; but in no case is there vagueness for a mind imbued with revealed truth. Thus in Ephesians salvation is viewed exclusively as a thing complete and now enjoyed by the Christian; in Hebrews it is regarded as going on and only consummated in resurrection-glory when Christ appears to those that look for Him. Does Dr. S. make this distinction? or the Prayer-book?

Again, scripture speaks of eternal life both as a present possession, and as a future privilege in glory: but are they ever confounded? The believer has remission of sins, and yet was taught to ask forgiveness: but are they the same? The Prayer-book jumbles both, whereas scripture discriminates. What is the worth of an argument then from scripture to the Prayer-book?

Now the grounds of objection I press are far deeper than questions as to any words or forms employed in the Book of Common Prayer; and I wholly disapprove of every effort to overthrow the National Establishment in England any more than in Ireland, regarding politics as at best beneath a Christian, and these changes as playing into the hands of infidels or papists, though most of the godly dissenters seem to be beguiled into them.

But in plain straightforwardness it seems indisputable that the petitions, "O God, make speed to save us," "O Lord, save thy people," "Show thy mercy upon us, and grant us thy salvation," being drawn from the Old Testament, express the hopes of Israel before the work of redemption and the distinctions it maintains could even exist. The want of seeing this involved the Reformers, not to speak of the Fathers and the mediaeval writers, in great darkness. Has Dr. S. emerged into light, as far as this momentous matter is concerned, more than his predecessors or his neighbours?

Till Christ died and rose and went to heaven, it could not be said of any, as in Ephesians 2: 4-10, "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love where. with he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might Show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

Nor could Isaiah or Malachi have said of the Jew as Paul (2 Tim. 1) of Christians, that God "hath saved us and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus, before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought light and immortality [incorruption] to light through the gospel." So the same apostle adds to Titus, "according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour."

In the Psalms and the Prophets we hear the Holy Ghost, as the Spirit of prophecy, stimulating and guiding the cry of the saints of old before the cross of Christ. It could not be otherwise. They were petitions in due season. To have spoken as St. Paul did later would have been presumptuous and false. The basis was not yet laid, the Saviour not even come. To adopt the language as to this of David or Jeremiah now is ignorance and unbelief; for it is to blot out the infinite work of the Son of God, it is to slight the witness the Spirit of grace is now rendering to its value in God's sight — its efficacy as a present fact for the believer, who cannot worship as he ought unless he know and enjoy it.

It is not only want of knowledge to confound distinctions so well defined, which the accomplishment of atonement has necessarily brought in; but I ask, Is it really meant that we are saved and not saved in the same sense? If this be rejected as absurd, the question is, Do the Anglican formularies, does Dr. S., truly draw the distinction according to the New Testament? I should rejoice to believe that they did: but both appear to be self-evidently at fault here. Dr. S. seeks to justify the Prayer-book's use of these petitions on the ground that they are the words of scripture found in the Psalms. (Page 5.) Such a defence is the best proof that, as the framers of the prayers did not know the real difference introduced by redemption in Christ, so neither has Dr. S. learnt it to this day.

Indeed it is the lamentable state of Christendom generally. They are like the virgins who, weary of going out to meet the bridegroom, have gone in somewhere to slumber. Instead of going forth to Christ bearing His reproach, they go or keep within the camp. Scripture accurately employs the term "save" or "salvation," for soul and for body, for past, present, and future; the Prayer-book confounds all together, so as to impair if not destroy the enjoyment of peace with God, leading believers to perplexity and producing false hopes in unbelievers: the former never receiving the true, simple, constant fact of salvation, while waiting for its complement at Christ's coming; the latter using the same language for their condition, fearing yet hoping, without any adequate sense of utter present ruin or divinely given faith in Christ. What loss to the believer! what danger for the unbeliever!

Dr. S. cites Acts 15: 11, 1 Thessalonians 5: 8, Romans 8: 24* (ἐσώθημεν would be curious for the future), and Romans 5: 9, 10. One can give another from the same Epistle (Rom. 13: 11, 12), which may help the reader to understand these all the better: "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand." Now I ask any competent man, any Christian: Is it just to mix up New Testament texts which speak of salvation in glory by-and-by (which no Christian questions), with the use men have made of Old Testament passages which merge soul and body together, as all must have done till Christ died? Is it not increasingly plain that Dr. S. defends the liturgy because be is himself in a confusion akin to that of its compilers? He is not entitled to say as he does, "I will not delay to examine the correctness of a theory, according to which the Christian Church has been wrong from its first foundation to the present day, in supposing that whether in its public worship or in the private devotions of generation after generation of its most saintly members, it could find in the Psalms of David adequate expression for its deepest feelings." (Page 5.) "Wrong from its first foundation!" nay, but since the enemy contrived to Judaize it.

* No one doubts that "hope" distinctively looks at the future; but there is neither uncertainty nor a weakening of the actual present blessing in Scripture. The redemption of our body is wholly future; and therefore, the apostle says, were we saved in hope. It is not seen yet.

Nor do I think that any Romanist need ask more than Dr. S. here concedes, to land alike Episcopalians and Presbyterians in the darkness of his own superstition; being fully assured that such an use or rather abuse of the Psalms of David, as the "adequate expression for the deepest feelings" of the church or the Christian, if not derived from Romanism, is traceable to that scarcely better catholic system which preceded the ambitions politics of the papacy. Not one clause in one psalm, I am bold to affirm, expresses the proper and peculiar feelings of the Christian or of the church. There is not a single cry of Abba Father; nor a hint of drawing within the veil; nor an unequivocal expression of membership of Christ; still less of the distinctive love of Christ for the church as His body for which He gave Himself.

Further, I maintain that the Psalms abound with expressions just and proper for Israel of old, and for Israel in the last days, but utterly incongruous and unsuited and improper on any fair interpretation for the Christian or the church ever since its first foundation till now. Does Dr. S. soberly pray that our foot may be dipped in the blood of our enemies, and the tongue of our dogs in the same? Is it the "deepest feeling" of the Christian that God should persecute our enemies with His tempest, that they should be confounded and troubled for ever, yea, perish? Would he be happy to take and dash the little ones of Babylon against the stones? Certainly be ought, without scruple or limit, if the christian church can find in the Psalms of David adequate expression for its deepest feelings.

Not for a moment are those expressions impugned in themselves. They are righteous altogether; and they will express the feelings of the Jewish saints adequately in that day when Jehovah is Himself judging the earth and the quick upon it. But now God is showing the riches of grace and long-suffering, not yet judging the habitable world in righteousness; and we are called to speak to ourselves and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, that is, not in the Psalms, but in christian compositions of these various characters; as indeed believers are constantly found to do so, and did from the first.

But an opening criticism of Dr. S. was referred to, which must now be noticed. Speaking of the Prayerbook, he says, "It contains the prayer, 'O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant us Thy peace,' whereas it is said [by the preachers he is chastising], St. Paul teaches us, that being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now it is clear that, if the Prayer-book mean the same peace, it is at issue with Romans 5, and indeed the general teaching of the New Testament. Does Dr. S. seriously deny that the Epistles contemplate the Christian as having peace with God? Can he say that the Prayer-book does?

I only notice by the way the fact that the liturgies of Rome and England misquote scripture gravely in their reference to John 1: 29, which speaks of "sin," not sins; and the difference of force is great to anyone familiar with God's word: so great that, while the, Gospel expresses perfect truth, the Anglican or other misquotations would imply, if true, that there was nothing more against the world, its sins being gone. Logically they seem to warrant the destructive lie of universalism, or to annul Christ's work.

Another point notable is the following: "I may remark in passing that this very text (Rom. 5: 1), which is one of the main pillars of the system of doctrine which I am considering, is now given by the principal critical editors, in the form, 'Let us have peace,' according to which reading the text changes sides, and makes St. Paul guilty of the same error which is reprehended in our church, namely, exhorting his converts to a peace which they had already. I mention this various reading, not that I myself prefer them altered reading, but as the immense preponderance of ancient witnesses, whether manuscripts or early citations, is in favour of it, the example shows how very precarious is the deduction of a doctrine from a single text," etc. (Page 4.) Does it not Show rather how precarious is such a critical judgment? For the question between ο and ω is precisely one of that class as to which the ancient manuscripts are least reliable. Whether we can best account for their frequent lapses in the interchange of these letters by ignorant copyists deceived by the ear may be a question; but the fact that the most ancient and best cannot be depended on in such cases is certain. Compare 1 Corinthians 15: 49,* Hebrews 12: 28. This explains why the reading of several of the oldest MSS. may be merely a clerical blunder. If Tischendorf is gone over to ἔχωμεν with the uncorrected text of the Sinai, with Vat., Alex., etc., Lachmann abandoned it for ἔχομεν in his maturer edition. There is no deficiency whatever in external authority, for the majority of uncials, and cursives, supports ἔχομεν. The criterion for a spiritual mind under such circumstances is the bearing of the context: and, if so, I have not a doubt that this reading and not ἔχωμεν is required by the scope of the verse and the argument generally. But the odd thing is that Dr. S. himself accepts the reading ἔχομεν, "we have." If he does so on solid grounds, why is it precarious to use it? If he have no solid grounds, why "prefer" it?

* Professor Tischendorf in his eighth edition of the New Testament reads φορέσωμεν on the authority of , A, C, D, E, F, G, K, L, P, the great mass of cursives, It. Vulg. Go. Cop. and many Fathers Greek and Latin. In his seventh he had followed B. 46, and perhaps a few others with some Fathers in giving φορέσομεν, which seems to me beyond doubt the true meaning. The form ἔχωμεν is rejected by R, K, P, 17. 31. 37. 73. and at least twenty-five cursives more, not to speak of several old versions and Fathers. So also λατρεύμεν appears in yet more of the ancient authorities. Yet who can doubt that the, subjunctive mood is right?

Rom. 1: 3, 21, 32; Rom. 2: 14; Rom. 3: 8, 9, 22, 28, 31; Rom. 4: 25; Rom. 5: 3, 10, 11, 17; Rom. 6: 1, 2, 8, 15; Rom. 7: 4, 9; Rom. 8: 2, 17, 22, 26; Rom. 9: 16. 17, 31; Rom. 10: 14 (thrice), 15; Rom. 11: 15, 27; Rom. 12: 9, 21; Rom. 13: 13; Rom. 14: 8 (thrice), 13, 19, Rom. 15: 4, 13, 15, 20, 24, 33;

1 Cor. 1: 31; 1 Cor. 2: 7, 11; 1 Cor. 3: 9, 14, 21; 1 Cor. 4: 2, 4, 8, 19; 1 Cor. 5: 8; 1 Cor. 9: 11, 16, 23, 27; 1 Cor. 10: 8, 9; 1 Cor. 11: 19, 34; 1 Cor. 13: 12; 1 Cor. 14: 14, 15, 24; 1 Cor. 15: 29, 32, 51; 1 Cor. 16: 3, 6:

Heb. 2: 3, 9; Heb. 3: 18; Heb. 4: 3, 11, 16; Heb. 5: 3; Heb. 6: 1, 3, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19; Heb. 7: 3, 11, 12, 14,15, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26; Heb. 8: 1, 6, 11, 12; Heb. 9: 5, 10, 11, 20; Heb. 10: 8, 22, 23, 25; Heb. 11: 25, 27; Heb. 12: 1, 9, 10; Heb. 13: 10, 11, 13, 15, will be evidence enough from these three epistles alone elsewhere to show the tendency there was similarly to confound these letters on almost every occurrence of either letter where such an error was possible; and this, observe, even in MSS. otherwise of the highest character. In many of these verses the itacism is found twice.

It is not contended then by any man sound or instructed in the faith, that it is improper to speak of salvation as a future thing. But future salvation in scripture is the close of present temptation, up to the redemption of the body at Christ's coming again. Does this justify the unbelief which overspreads the confessions and theologians of Christendom in their attenuation of that which grace has already given the Christian? or the effort to cover over the consequent ignorance of our actual privileges in Christ, prevalent not merely in the greater national systems but among dissenters generally? An appeal to the Psalms of David seems to be a plain and conclusive proof that this charge is just: where Christ's light is enjoyed, who could doubt it? Again, texts like 2 Thessalonians 3: 16, or Romans 15: 13, do not warrant Christians in asking for peace in the sense of Romans 5: 1, which they are supposed to have already. Distinguish the nature of the peace, and the argument is powerless; for it assumes the identity of what is quite distinct. Peace with God, founded on our soul's submission to His righteousness in Christ, is a wholly different thing from practical peace in the midst of the questions apt to agitate believers, then especially so when the association of Jews and Gentiles, for the first time in the history of God's dealings with man, brought up many serious occasions of discord. If those who has peace with God needed (as they surely did and do) peace from Him in these and all other trials, we have the truth of scripture as to this, but no real apology for the feeble and indeed false teaching of the Prayerbook, which habitually (though I am sure most unwittingly) tends to hinder and deny peace with God. The reasoning, criticism, and use of scripture by the Professor in page 6 are far from exact.* The Bible does not speak of the very admission into the christian church as an act of salvation; nor does it interchange the terms of being saved and "being added to the church;" nor does τοὺς σωζομένους mean those that were then being saved, but the class destined to salvation, which is fairly enough rendered in our version. There were οἱ σωξέμενοι in Israel before; now the Lord, instead of leaving them there, was adding them ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό  (if, as seems required by the best evidence, we omit τῆ ἐκκλησία). But this is in no way to speak interchangeably of their salvation and of their addition together; still less does it speak of their admission as an act of salvation. It rather distinguishes the two things, and makes their being the class destined to salvation the ground for putting them in the new position. Those who believed in Christ were henceforth to form an assemblage apart; in Acts 4: 23, called "their own company;" in Acts 5: 11 (if not in Acts 2: 47), styled "the church" or assembly, according to our Lord's words in Matthew 16: 18, Matthew 18: 17.

* "The Bible speaks of the very admission into the Christian church as an act of salvation. In the account of the miracle of the day of Pentecost, 'being saved' and being added to the church are spoken of interchangeably. . . . And subsequently the Lord added daily, not as our version has it, those that were afterwards to be saved, but τοὺς σωζομένους, those that were then being saved. And in remarkable conformity. with this, St. Peter in his Epistle, speaks of baptism saying us (1 Peter 3: 21;) but yet it would be unscriptural if baptism were represented as anything more than the first step in the Christian's life, and in the 2nd Epistle of Peter (2 Peter 2: 21), it is said" etc.

As to the stress laid on the participle, it is certainly a mistake; for, though such a form of the word is in itself capable of being so used, it is quite wrong to, infer that it necessarily so means. For the participle is equally susceptible of an abstract signification, which expresses simply that the persons are objects of the operation in question without reference to present or past time. For, if the point were the present time, such persons could not be said to be σωθέντες or σεσωσμένοι, both of which terms are used or implied of Christians in this life as to salvation, no, less than σωζόμενοι. They are used of the godly Jews expressly in the Septuagint, σωζόμενοι being the character, σωθέντες the fact, and σεσωσμένοι the present result of what is past. It is evidently therefore not a question here of a fact or date; for, if it were,, it would be impossible consistently to employ about them the other terms, all referring to the same salvation in a similar sense. For manifestly, if οἱ σωζόμενοι meant those in actual process of salvation, they could not also be described as οἱ σωθέντες, by which nevertheless the same translators describe them in the same book of Isaiah. (Compare Isa. 10: 20; Isa. 37: 32; Isa. 66: 19 in the LXX,) The conclusion therefore is irresistible that οἱ σωζόμενοι must have been technically employed in its abstract application of a character and class, and not of time present as Professor S. conceived.

Again, a somewhat similar reasoning applies to his use of 1 Peter 3: 21. Baptism unquestionably is the well known initiatory sign, the figure of salvation by Christ's death and resurrection; but this is abused, if used, as apparently it is, to weaken the grand truth that according to His mercy He saved (ἔσωσεν) us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. The present tense is frequently used, as here, for a moral fact irrespective of time: else, if present were emphatic, ἔσωσεν could not be applied to the Christian now. Nor does 2 Peter 2: 21 modify that truth; for it speaks of the ruinous turning away of those who had once confessed Christ, but it carefully avoids all idea that they bad ever gone beyond knowledge, nor hints that they had at any time, possessed life in Christ. Thus theology has misled Dr. S., and the desire to extenuate the forms of his own religious connection not only fails but throws him, as far as it works, outside the limits of scripture.

Dr. S. justly feels that God's gospel is inseparable from holiness of walk, in contrast with heathenism (p. 7) which allowed of sin alike in the false gods and in their votaries; as does priestcraft now and of old in Christendom: witness any system of penance, indulgence, and the confessional. The mere revelation of a future life had not of itself, as he says, the power to bring morality and religion into closer union. And no doubt it is delusive to flatter oneself that thinking rightly about God, or paying Him due honour, will stand without practical righteousness (p. 8). "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness,, and the unrighteousness of men that hold the truth in unrighteousness." Thus, whatever the self-deceiving thoughts of the Newmans now (p. 9), or of the Jeromes of old, if there be a difference as there surely is in judgment, their unrighteousness is to Him most offensive, who know most or are most orthodox, for they hold fast the truth in unrighteousness. God is not mocked: as men sow, they reap. Nor is antinomianism confined to Romanists, but as widely found as the unrenewed heart when it adopts a form of godliness. Most freely and fully do I grant that God holds to His principles immutably, as the apostle elaborately insists in the earlier half of Romans 2. In fine, Christ being life as well as righteousness, the believer has both in Him, and thus holiness is secured no less than justification.

But is it not strange for any one who knows the truth of the gospel to deduce from the fact of God's moral government, however certain and important it may be, the doctrine of salvation, present, future, or any other? "Future happiness is represented, not as coming by an arbitrary decree on certain favourites of heaven, but as following in strict conformity with the laws God has ordained. 'Be not deceived,' says St. Paul; (Gal. 6: 7); 'God is not mocked,' etc. . . . From this doctrine that what a man soweth he must reap, that future happiness or misery is the natural fruit, according to God's appointed order, of the character that is formed in us here, the doctrine of present salvation necessarily follows." . . . "Only embrace that salvation, only join yourself to Christ now, only strive to be like Him through the aid of that Holy Spirit whom He has promised to give you, and you will not have to wait for a future life in order to taste the happiness which is the portion of His people" (pp. 10, 11). Is this Dr. S.'s gospel? It might suit those not too infirm who could step down after the angel's visit into the pool of Bethesda; but how for the lost, for the dead in trespasses and sins? Does he recognize the need of quickening? not merely of a new walk but of a new and divine life? yea, of deliverance from the law of sin, and not only of remission of sins? There is no adequate statement of these truths here or anywhere else in the sermon, though it is a discourse on "present salvation." Nay, what is said seems scarcely consistent with the truth. Salvation is by grace, not by moral government, however God may vindicate His grace in justifying the ungodly by the fruit of righteousness which is by Jesus Christ to His glory and praise in the result: Scripture is urgent and express that it was not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to His own mercy He saved us.

On the other hand it may be granted to Dr. S. that there is need to warn souls against self-delusion, for a man's own favourable opinion about his condition in the sight of God must be false, if he rest not on Christ and His work; and it is a wicked and dangerous absurdity to teach that, if a man pronounces himself saved, he is saved (p. 12). But is it really believed that God justifies freely by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus? that to him who worketh not but believeth on Him who justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness? that David was inspired to tell us of the blessedness of the man to whom God reckons righteousness without works? It is the Master who says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." (John 5: 24.) It is an inspired servant who says, "Yea, he shall be holden up; for God is able to make him stand." But why should Dr. S. add (p. 12), "No matter into what sins he may afterwards fall, his acceptance with God remains unshaken, for he has once for all passed from death unto life?"

The doctrine for which I contend puts no arbitrary break between our future portion and our present life: for the Christ we shall have in glory is the Christ we have now in grace. No doctrine so excludes any gap whatever as our Lord's words, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of nay hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." (John 10: 27-29.) I complain of Dr. S.'s language, not for its strength but for its weakness. How different the words of St. Paul, with death and judgment before him, when speaking of the power of life in Christ possessed by Christians! "Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we [it is nothing peculiar, but the common expression of christian feeling] are always confident." (2 Cor. 5.)

Entirely do I accept the statement that faith is in Christ, not in ourselves.* True faith sets to its seal that God is true, not that my hopes about my acceptance are well founded. But it is a painful descent from faith, to silence doubts by "those rules of practical probability which are the very guide of our present life" (p.14). Do we not read that "whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world"? "And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" But it is hard to conceive how on Dr. S.'s showing a young believer, or an upright old one, could have unbroken confidence. His gospel seems to be partly Christ, partly the believer's conviction that he is saved in detail from sins in practice.

* "The cure for such apprehensions is faith; but by faith I mean, as the New Testament teaches, faith in Christ, not, as some modern teachers would have it, faith in ourselves. . . . Nothing is more unscriptural than any teaching which makes your hope depend on your looking into yourself, instead of looking unto Christ" (p. 13).

"I too, brethren, would ask each of you the question — Are you saved? But saved from what? Are you saved from sin? Are you saved from anger, bitterness, uncharitableness, untruthfulness? Are you saved from sloth and frivolousness? Are you saved from impurity, from unclean thoughts and words and deeds? Are you saved from selfishness in all its manifestations? Ask these questions to yourselves, ask them of any one who tells you he is saved. If you have learned to mortify these works of your earthly members, bless God for it; and be confident that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. But if you dream that you can be saved from the punishment of sin without being saved from sin itself, Christ has commissioned me to preach no such gospel to you. It is not true that you can; and if it were true, a miserable gospel it would be" (pp. 15, 16).

Does not this teaching tend to make your hope depend on your feelings, thoughts, words, ways, on yourself in short, instead of looking only to Christ? Does it not savour of "faith in ourselves" quite as much as what is objected to? It is not Paul's gospel.

For my part I see in scripture a much richer salvation than that poor evangelicalism which is apparently the object of Dr. S.'s attack.* His own statement too seems to be just is meagre and otherwise as objectionable. The written word declares that God sent His 'Son into the world that we might live through Him, and that He might be the propitiation for our sins. Without life in the Son we could not enjoy God; without His expiation we could not be purged so as to have no more conscience of sin. Children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, we have not redemption only but the Spirit of His Son sent into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. We believe in His death for us, and we know that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. We have died to sin and live no longer therein. Thus we have, by grace not remission of sins only but deliverance from sin — a privilege virtually (I do not say ignored merely but) denied by the Prayer-book. For I am compelled to go farther than the Professor, and am assured that it is a most "miserable" system of theology, which represents the Christian as still tied and bound by the chain of his sins — a dark and enslaving tradition, which ignorantly abuses the latter part of Romans 7 (the parenthetic discussion of a soul in bondage to the power of sin) to set aside the liberty wherewith the law of the Spirit of life in Christ sets one free, as in Romans 8. For we cannot rightly be under both husbands, as this unhappy and unholy scheme supposes (and Dr. S. tells us, p. 14, that holiness and happiness are one); but dead to the law by the body of Christ we are married to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

*"If the gospel be, what some would reduce it to, a mere contrivance for quieting men's fears of hell, it would have been simpler if such fears had never been excited" (p. 13). Most godly minds will not accept so slighting a sentence on those who alarm sinners with the just judgment of their sins before the great white throne, and in the lake of fire, in order to drive them to the Saviour and Him crucified. Such preaching may be in some sort imperfect; but there is more truth in it, and more fruit from it, and, I venture to think, it will have more honour from the Lord another day, than the calmer essays of an erudite pulpit which please the world now.

None of our heavenly privileges is here touched on so that I am not going into what might seem deep. But what sort of theology is it which blinds men even to the meaning of baptism as set forth in Romans 6? Assuredly young evangelists are often superficial, are old theologians much better? Is it not ominous that both have to learn what their baptism means? and that the wildest Irish evangelist is not so far from this elementary truth as is the Anglican Office for Baptism or its apologists?

May it please the Lord to recall His own to the living and abiding word of God.

Ever yours, affectionately in Him, W. K.

Salvation by Grace

an address on Luke 23: 39-43

W. Kelly.

The occasion was unique. It was just the moment for God to make manifest His grace. Man's iniquity was complete. And when all classes, the high and the low, were alike implicated in pouring scorn upon God and His Son, it was of no use to be drawing distinctions. To the Son of God it was due that His Father should show the efficacy of His blood for any  - the immediate and abiding value of His blood.

The moment gave a striking opportunity; for there hung a man openly a sinner, a criminal, a malefactor, of the darkest dye. Indeed there were two; and we have no ground whatever for supposing that he who repented and believed was less a criminal than the man who died in impenitent rebellion against God. Still less is there any ground to suppose that the man who then confessed the Saviour had been under previous process, or that any deep work had been going on in his soul before he hung upon the cross. Scripture, as far as its speaks, is distinctly against such a thought. Matthew and Mark speak of the robbers railing upon Him, not of one only but of both. We know that men try to get rid of this, and would make out the one to be something not so bad as his fellow. A good deal has actually been made of the fact that they were not thieves, but robbers! Is it not extraordinary that men should think there was any difference to signify? A thief may be a sneaking robber, and a robber a bold thief; but one would think that when sin is weighed in the presence of God, it is not very much worth talking of the difference between them. For one thing is very clear — that they were both suffering as robbers. That is, they were not merely dishonest men, purloining what was not their own, but they accompanied it as usual with boldness rather than treachery, with violence or even murder. Barabbas certainly did so; and these at any rate were both of them robbers.

The difference between them does not lie there at all; and they would have been no better or worse if they had been thieves and not robbers. We must not lose ourselves by letting slip the grand truth of the grace of God through Christ toward the lost. But there was an expression produced not merely in the feelings, but in the conscience, of one of these robbers; and we can well understand that the wonderful spectacle of the Holy Sufferer, which had impressed Pilate when He was not in the depth of His sufferings but only in the outer circle of them, should have deeply impressed the dying man. Even such a hardened soul as Pilate, accustomed to condemn so many to death, and historically known to have been a man of desperate character, and most unscrupulous — even he had his feelings, and shrank (I do not say with really righteous indignation) from the suggestion of the priests. He morally condemned them, and evidently felt how false they were, and hypocritical, and bloodthirsty. He wanted to let Jesus off, not wishing to add one more crime to the long list of his life's villainies.

But there was more than this, and quite different from it, dawning on one of the robbers; and what brought it out was the continued railing of his fellow. "If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us." The conviction evidently pierced the soul of the penitent robber that here was a Man who differed not so much externally as morally and essentially.

No circumstances made such a difference. Education, religion — as people call it, or whatever they like — none of these things made the difference. The robber had heard Him, for faith cometh by hearing, not by seeing. It was not the sight of Jesus, for thousands saw the same thing that he saw; but he heard the Holy Victim for sin on the cross say, "Father, forgive them." One may not say that these were the words to sink so deep into his soul; but how calculated they were to go right through the conscience of the man, and to act on his heart!

So it is written "There is forgiveness . . . that Thou mayest be feared." Yes, "forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared!" (Ps. 130: 4) not fear of being lost merely, that he knew. No Jew could be without more or less knowing the danger of ruin if a man die in his sins. But "there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." And here was that most solemn moment, when never were so many, not merely of the rabble but of the greatest in the land, and those that occupied officially the highest religious places, animated with one implacable desire for the destruction of this most holy Man! and this most holy Man uttered not one word of judgment, but at that awful crisis pleaded that His Father would forgive them! A new light dawned upon the dying robber. Samuel did not so pray, nor David, nor Solomon. Who ever before? You must wait for Christ that you may have such a prayer: then only is everything in perfection.

It was the proof of this perfection of the Lord Jesus, along with His wonderful words, His looking for and counting upon mercy for others, which touched the heart of the robber. Who could He be? There was but One Person conceivable. The woman of Samaria, although she was utterly dark and ignorant, knew quite well that "when the Messiah cometh, He will tell us all things." Every Jew of course knew that. Now this poor crucified robber sits in judgment on himself, and wholly refuses the railing in which he had up to that moment himself participated.

"Dost not thou fear God?" said he. He feared God then. He is astonished at the other robber. He cannot tell why the words that had won his own soul to God had not won his fellow. "Dost thou not fear God, seeing that thou art in the same condemnation?" They were all alike crucified but oh, how different each! The Messiah crucified, hardened, unbelieving, robbers crucified. But in one, as he hung upon the cross, there was such a new-born sense of grace that it produced "fear of God," horror of sin, faithful dealing with it, reproving his fellow with whom he had joined, no more dreading a retort, nor afraid of being asked — "Who are you? what do you pretend to? Why, you have been railing too!" What then produced such an entire change of feeling in the man? Faith. Yes, it always produces repentance when it is itself genuine. Faith makes a man willing to see sin as he never saw it before, and makes him see it because God is revealed to him. We never can see sin, except through the cross of Christ, in the light of God. It was Christ crucified Who brought the light of God into the man's conscience. How exceeding sinful must his sins be to bring down the Son of God to die for them!

The very effort to please God makes a conscientious renewed man feel his inability; and sin becomes increasingly sinful. There is nothing that brings out the hideousness of sin so deeply, and with such abhorrence, without destroying confidence before God, as the grace of Christ. Does law this in measure? Christ does it far better than law, as was the case with this poor robber. It was not law but Christ that made him thus judge himself, and form a sound estimate of the sin of his fellow. "Dost thou not even fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly." His conscience was purged. When a man has a purged conscience, he can afford to confess his sins. He can tell all out exactly now, even to men. He had been with God in the secret of his heart. It might be only just before, but he had been with God. No man is ever true before men that is not true before God; and truth before God must come previously to truth before men. It was the Lord Jesus that stripped him of all the disguises of his soul. It was His grace to the guilty that gave him confidence to make a clean breast to God, no longer hiding his sins, but assured that God would receive Him by the blood of Jesus.

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven: whose sin is covered." But he is not a blessed man who covers his own transgressions; and such is the way of the unbelieving man. The believer has God to cover him, and God covers his sins with the blood of His own Son. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from every sin." Such was the real secret of this converted robber; and now he takes all the shame to himself. He owns his guilt, and says to his fellow, "And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss." Who told him so? He had never heard it from the lips of man. On the contrary, men had been condemning Christ; not least those who paid mock honour. Pilate would have let Him off. Herod found nothing to call for death. It was the chief priests — the High Priest of all — the religious heads of God's ancient people, who would crucify the Lord Jesus; and the voices of the crowd gave their loud approval. Had public opinion been his guide, had he listened to the great men of the nation, he would have come to a different conclusion. Just apply it to yourself. Are you not influenced by today's opinion? Are you not prejudiced by what great men think? Evidently, you must see, man does not change. The world is just the same world substantially as it was then. There may be superficial changes; but the world, as such, is the same.

It was in Jerusalem, in the city of solemnities, in the midst of the ancient people of God, of those who had the law and the prophets, where these events occurred. There was not then for Jews a single idol in Jerusalem. I dare say the Roman soldiers, as their manner was, worshipped their standards; they may have had some of their little gods in the castle or elsewhere. Ah! possibly you may have got some little idols in Montrose. At any rate they are to be found in most places throughout this country. What is worshipping a wafer? That is a little enough God, to be sure. Think of angels, saints, the Virgin, the crucifix, or any relic of that kind! It is of no use saying that people do not worship them. There is a great deal more worshipping of Mary than of the true God in the Roman Catholic body; and it is in vain to tell me that they are not professing Christians. They are; and this makes it truly awful; real idolatry among professing Christians!

I do not wish to allow an unkind thought about them, and I have not one. There is no Roman Catholic in the world I would not serve as far as I could for God's glory, without the cheat of torturing or burning heretics, and calling it an act of faith and God's service. One could not be expected to join them in what he believes to be wrong: for why should one do wrong for any person under the sun? But to do good to them — or even for that matter to a Turk or a Jew — surely such is the business of a Christian man in this world; to magnify the Lord Jesus in well-doing to others, and in bringing the truth to bear upon them. But take care to do so in a loving way, and not so as to hinder the very truth you desire to commend to their consciences. Such was the way the Lord Jesus took with this poor man. For is it not absolutely certain that there is not a single sheep ever brought to God that the Lord Jesus does not personally pursue? does He not go after till He finds it? does He not lay it on His shoulders, and bring it home rejoicing?

Would you like to have the Lord Jesus laying you upon His shoulders, and bringing you home with joy? Why not now — this night? Why not have the blessed Saviour your Saviour, and know it? You may tell me Oh, but the man was in such danger! It was no wonder he turned to God. May I say that if you were crucified, you would not think it a nice time for conversion? You do not know what it is to be in the agonies of the cross. It was perhaps the most cruel and shameful form of torture, one reserved for slaves only. But then it was, while the man was suffering such agonies, that the Lord Jesus won his soul to God.

But this also let me point out to you; people of every sort think this quite an exceptional case. It is altogether a mistake. Granted that there is a grandeur and simplicity about it that exactly suits the cross of the Lord Jesus; but I maintain that the way whereby the man was brought to God is that in which you must be brought to Him: not of course by the outward agony, but by the word of the Lord; by the Holy Ghost applying the word to your conscience, and by your submission to it as "the grace of God that bringeth salvation." It is no use to say it has not appeared to you. The grace that bringeth salvation hath appeared to "all men." It is not meant that all men have seen it. A man may plunge his head into a dark cave and cannot see the sun shine; but the sun shines over the rest of the world for all that. There are men that do not see the sun. It may be that they are blind, and there is such a thing as moral blindness; and above all there may be a wilful turning away from God. But still the true light already shines.

The Lord Jesus, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man (or, everything). This does not mean that every one will be saved. But every man ought to have that grace presented to his soul. It is true that the church of God has not been faithful; that the servants of the Lord have not done their duty. Even very real Christians are too often content with doing a little now and again, instead of all living only and always for Christ.

The Lord's charge was that the gospel should be preached to the whole creation. Thus nobody should be shut out from the bright light of the gospel — no class so bad that they are excepted. And just as there were these two men on either side of the Lord Jesus, so there are always two classes in the world now — those who believe, and those who refuse. On which side are you? Have you been won to God through hearing the blessed word of Jesus? "He that heareth My word and believeth Him that sent Me, hath life eternal." The law of Moses would not suffice. It could not give life. How could law set free? "He that heareth My word." Now, this is what one poor robber did, as the other did not. Yet physically both heard. Externally one robber was just as near as the other. And you too have been just as near the gospel. Have you heard with your soul? Have you taken those words as good for you, sufficient and valid for salvation? The converted robber believed the word. He heard the word of Christ, he believed God that sent Him — gave Him credit for truth, as well as for love, in sending the Saviour of sinners; and he reaped the blessing.

And look at his testimony. He could give the lie to all the world; for all the world had said that Jesus was a malefactor, and treated Him as such in the most gross and shameless manner. Alas! we do not find that even the two robbers were hurried to death in the way that Jesus was. Then His trial was one of the most scandalous transactions of its kind. They rose early in the morning to do their bad work, and rushed it through as if their very salvation depended upon their injustice to that Blessed One. It was done by the Sanhedrim — the highest council in Israel. But what an awful thing this world is without Christ! Take care that you are not arrayed against Him, and on the side of the devil.

Has Satan insinuated into the heart of any of you to refuse the Saviour tonight? This is as great an insult as you can do Him. Now He is seeking to bless you. Now He is appealing to your souls. He wants you to rest upon His precious blood, just as the poor robber did. Oh, beware of turning away from Him! Remember those solemn words of the Apostle Paul, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" One of the robbers did neglect, the other did not. Many a one has said he would not like to be with a robber in heaven. Would you prefer to be the other in hell? This is what it comes to. With one or other of the robbers you must be. Nobody can help that. If you were a king, you could not avoid it: but what folly of men to refuse to be saved on the only ground on which men can be saved — God's absolute, sovereign, grace in Christ!

But it is not grace without righteousness. Where is the righteousness? It is God's in Christ. In yourselves you are not righteous. I know few in this hall; but I do know this of every one of you, that there is no righteousness here that could stand in the presence of God. Where is it? In Christ Jesus only. Oh! to have the righteousness of God by faith of Christ, to have righteousness fit for the throne of God. That righteousness is ours if we believe in Him, for "God made to be sin for us Him who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." Have you, then, got it, or are you content to live without it? Without it you must be judged; and if you are judged, you are lost for ever. Do you deserve to be saved? Dare you say so?

There are two things in Scripture — judgment and salvation. The people that are judged are not saved; and the people that are saved are not judged. It is not that these do not tell out all that they have done here below. Every person must do that — saved or lost. Every man must out with what he has done in the body, and out with it to one Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Judge, not God the Father. All judgment is committed to the Son. It was the Son who was insulted; it is the Son who is to judge. Men turned upon the Son of God because He became man; but He as man will judge all mankind. All emperors, kings, and commanders — all the mighty men that have ever lived — must bow down before that one Man. So must you; no man so obscure, no man so hidden in the crowd of this world, as to escape. If a man be buried in the deepest abyss of ocean, it must give him up — Hades give up his spirit, and the ocean give up his body. For we must all stand to tell out all our lives to the Saviour. But if you have not got Him as Saviour, you will meet Him as Judge.

Those who believe have Him now as a Saviour; and when they tell all out, they will do so to One who loves them with perfect love, to One who shows them the secrets of their heart, to One who explains every difficulty. We shall know then as we are known. We shall assuredly learn, from that wonderful transaction before the throne of the Lord Jesus, the depth of His love, the extent of His goodness toward us, and our own inexcusableness. We shall then see perfectly how nothing but His work could have saved us.

But if you refuse Him now as Saviour, then His unsparing judgment will fall upon your guilty heads — spirit, soul, and body. For every man has got all this complex being. It is a mistake to suppose that it is only believers who have got spirits as well as souls. All this is merely the description of a man. The believer has a new man, which is another thing. He has in Christ a new life, a divine nature. The spirit, the soul, the body, are characteristics of men, no matter where they are or what they are. And there is the solemnity of it. If man had only a body of flesh and blood, or if he had only an animal soul, we could understand his carelessness; for a merely animal soul will never appear in the resurrection. Precisely, because MAN alone, of all animals on the earth, has got a reasonable soul, a soul that came from the inbreathing of God — therefore it is that he only is to rise, as his spirit returns to God who gave it. Brutes do not rise — man must. But those who are Christ's will rise in all His beauty and glory; and those that are not Christ's must rise to be judged, not merely to give account. The believer will have to give an account, but not as a criminal. A criminal has to give an account, no doubt, or at any rate an account is taken of what he has done; and he is judged. The believer is not judged. The words quoted show this, particularly as given in the Revised Version of John 5: 24, as many knew it long before.

I refer to it now, not that I have a very high opinion of that revision, but it is often right. "He that heareth My word and believeth Him that sent Me hath life eternal, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life." Our old version had "condemnation;" and many of us used to say that it was not exact, and the Revisers imply so too. "He that heareth My word . . . cometh not into judgment." How blessed! There would be no sense in judging a man who is already saved. Till a man is saved, he is under judgment; and when he is saved, he is taken out of judgment. Only theologians talk of putting him into the dock again. The whole thought is a mistake. The believer is justified while in this world. Where is the sense of his being judged afterward? Would it not be a denial of his being now saved? The mistake arises from nature always denying grace.

Do you know how it is that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, people are mistaken about the teaching of the Bible? It is because, being not right about the gospel, they are not sound as to the first foundation. Everybody knows that if a foundation is faulty, the building is sure to have cracks in it, and is not to be trusted anywhere. May grace keep one from fault-finding! But I do want Christians to understand how it is that they are not more happy. Is it not for the same reason that poor anxious souls are kept, for years, perhaps, in misery and doubt? It is for want of seeing the fulness of the grace of God that meets them in our Lord Jesus. Scripture knows no such thought as that people should wait for weeks, or months, or years before knowing themselves saved. You have only to read the Acts of the Apostles and see men that knew nothing at all before, who were saved the same hour. Look, for instance, at the gaoler at Philippi, or at the Ethiopian treasurer of Queen Candace. It does not matter where you turn, to Jew or Greek, they were through faith blessed at once.

Why should it not be so now? Must there not be some strange barrier in your way? some hindrance of Satan, that keeps genuine souls from entering into peace for months, or even years? And the worst of it is, that when people do enter, they dread lest they should deceive themselves. It is curious enough that in the two hymns we sung to night I was really embarrassed; because they both take for granted that the Christian must die, that the tongue shall be silent in the grave. Both are assumptions, although the authors of them were excellent persons — John Newton the writer of the one, and W. Cowper of the other. They were both of them, beyond a doubt, true saints of the Lord; but the truth should be dearer than either.

Now just look at the grave departure from Scripture. I ought never to assume, as a Christian, that I am going to die, but rather to be waiting for Christ. One may die, of course, as is perfectly true; but I ought not to speak as if I must die, as both hymns do. I was rather hard put to it to find a hymn one could sing; and I just refer to it to show how adulterated the truth is in reference to the question. Do you think people do not lose by it? Of course they do. What is the remedy? The grace and truth of our Lord Jesus Christ as set forth in the gospel. We know that many say this is dangerous! The truth of God dangerous! The grace of God dangerous! just reflect for a moment, and you will see how excessively false and evil such a notion is. Nay, it is rebellion against the grace of God, as God has revealed it in His word.

Look again at this man. I have shown the blessed testimony he bore to the Lord Jesus as the Holy One who had done nothing amiss. Surely he must have been more than man to have done nothing amiss. But then the dying robber does not rest there. He turns to our Lord, and strikingly pleads, "Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom" — not exactly "into," but "in Thy kingdom." This is a remarkable point, because our Lord does not go into His kingdom there. He comes in His kingdom from heaven; He receives a kingdom from God and comes back. It is given Him by God before He comes, as is shown in the parable, where it is said that "A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and to return."

Is it not a marvellous thing that the robber should know the truth better than our authorised translators? They made the mistake of thinking He had come into this kingdom there. The robber knew more about the kingdom than they. He, no doubt, had heard the Prophets read — had heard of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, and all His angels with Him; and he asked to be remembered of the Lord. When you consider how the robber had lived up to that time, what a favour it was for him to ask of Christ "Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom!" That the Lord Jesus in that august moment, when claims of the countless interests of the kingdom over all the earth rested upon Him, should remember the new-born one, the poor converted robber! For him personally to be remembered by the King of kings and Lord of lords at that moment, you would say, was a bold request. Yes, but the Lord Jesus loves the boldness that confides in Him. What you have to guard against is just the contrary — the bravado of unbelief. Oh, think of this!

People talk about the presumption of believers. It were wiser to warn them of the presumptuous sin of unbelief. Is it not truly presumptuous to think that they ever make a title to the skies, or a title to Christ's kingdom comparable with His grace? You never can have so good a title as the robber had unless you receive his title. There is but one title good. The title of grace is perfect; and this is Christ: Christ in all His worth, Christ in His perfection, Christ in all the power of His redemption. Is that your title? If so, blessed are you: you have got the same title as the converted robber; you cannot have a better; you may easily have a worse. All else is good for nothing. There are some Christians who consider it the way of wisdom and prudence to mix a little bit of self with grace. The more they do so, the weaker they are, the less happy. And so they deserve; for they dishonour Christ, by marring grace, and darkening the truth.

What a deliverance to have done with self! What self-abandonment to have only grace, and nothing but grace, and all grace! Such was the case with this poor man. He saw he could look in the Lord's face, and say to Him, "Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom." And the Lord did not reply, "What! you talk about that. You may think yourself well off to be just the soul borne with, as it were, in heaven." The Lord will not have one in heaven save like Himself. He will not allow a person there with a single token of shame about him. They are to be resplendent every one in the beauty and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I remember seeing a curious mistake in a tract by one of our brethren; for you must not suppose we want to maintain that they do not make mistakes. "The Broken Crown" was the point of the tract. But seriously, in heaven there are no broken crowns — nothing of the sort. When Christ takes saints to heaven, they are crowned: no broken crowns are there, nor men in robes that are not the best robes. Yea, the best robe is given here. What is the best robe? Christ. Put on Christ, no robe so good as He. Be true to Christ. It is impossible to have Christ, and not have the best robe. This is the truth of the figure; and the man that had not on the wedding garment was one who dared to come in his own righteousness. So that, when the robber begged the Lord to remember him when He came in His kingdom, he was thoroughly within the just petitions to Christ. He was there, if I may so say, swimming in that blessed sea of love in which he was made to find his true bliss. He was at home there, at ease there, breathing freely there. He was buoyed up and made strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; yea, he was as good as preaching from that cross to every creature, and showing what faith in it can do for a poor guilty sinner.

Is this to be your portion now? I call on you not to believe half the gospel, nor to seek and find a little something for your soul. I want you to see that Christ does not give in such fashion at all. It is not His way to give a little now and a little again. The crumbs that fall from His table are turned into richer and still richer blessing. He gives better than the whole loaf of man. He was asked, "Remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom." What is the answer? It is in accordance with a blessed principle of God, that, whatever faith asks, grace gives yet more. The Lord knew well that the boldness of the man's faith was to be eclipsed by the fulness of God's grace. His grace must needs always be greater than any faith on man's part. The man asked a very great thing — to be remembered when the Lord comes in His kingdom. His heart was filled with assurance that even at such a moment He would be able to remember him; but the Lord lets him know He was going to do far more. "Verily," said Jesus unto him, "I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

This is surely more than to be remembered in the kingdom. You will not suspect me of running down the kingdom, or of willingness to depreciate the day of the Lord. You know that one loves often and publicly to insist on it, and on its great importance. You will not think, therefore, that slight of it is meant. But this I do say, that, great as may be the glory of the kingdom when our Lord Jesus comes, to be with Christ in Paradise is even more and better. The two blessings go together, and therefore it is not at all a question of setting the one against the other. But there is this difference. The kingdom will be an outward display when the Lord will give five cities to one servant and ten to another. It will be a day of rewards for service, for fidelity, when every labourer shall receive according to his labour. But to be with Christ in Paradise means the fulness of grace; and beyond doubt, great as is the importance of the kingdom, the privilege to a sinner saved of being with Christ in the presence of God is one that nothing can exceed or equal.

Blessed be God, when the kingdom comes, we shall not lose our communion with Christ in Paradise. We shall eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God; and this will be in the days of the kingdom. We shall be remembered, not one forgotten, when Christ comes in His kingdom, and we shall reign with Him. It remains that Christ is Himself more precious than what He gives one, and that to be with Christ is even better than to sit upon a throne in His kingdom. This is all glorious; but to be with Christ, when we remember what Christ is, to be there the object of His love, to be able then perfectly to behold His glory, is a deeper privilege than to be crowned in the kingdom. Yet it was what the thief entered into that day. And what force there was in being there "today!" All the thoughts of gradual preparation here, all theory of waiting dimly in another world, every form of purgatory — I do not mean only of a Roman Catholic pattern, for many a Protestant has got a quasi-purgatory of his own — all these things are completely dissipated to the winds. Here was a man in himself black enough to be kept out for ever doubtless: none the less was he to be with Christ that day in Paradise, perfectly purged by His blood for the intimate presence of God.

What a comfort this ought to be to any of you who have fears that you are not fit for heaven! For it is meant for you that believe as much as for the penitent on the cross. Have you not Christ too? Are you not resting on grace? Is it a different measure to you from what it was to the dying robber? If it be the same way of faith to you as to him, is it not really the same portion with Christ in Paradise? Hence death, when you look at it thus, is no longer to be regarded as an enemy. Assuredly death is the last enemy apart from Christ: is it really so to the man who possesses Christ? To him death is in truth only a servant to open the door, and let him in to be with Christ. Is this an enemy's work? Death is yours who believe, as all things are.

May God then bless His own word. May He bring home the testimony rendered to Christ and Christ's blood tonight; and may you see what a joy it is to wait for Christ to come in His kingdom, and, above all, what it is to have a portion with Christ by faith wholly superior to death, so that if Christ were to come to-morrow you would never die in any sense. For "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we the living that remain shall be caught up together with them in [the] clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord." You see that "we" ought to be expecting Christ, not death. The "we" in that day ought, and the "we" in this day ought, and the "we" in every day ought, to be so. If death comes when we are looking for Christ, that will not at all disappoint us. Death will only be our usher into the presence of the Lord; then instead of waiting for the Lord on earth, you will wait with the Lord in heaven which is far better. It is a good thing to be waiting for the Lord on the earth; but it is a better thing to be waiting with the Lord in heaven — to come when he comes — to reign when He reigns — but above all to be with Him now, or by and by, and for ever, in Paradise. Amen.

W.K.

The Schools of the Prophets

W. Kelly.

It was on the failure of the law, that the value of the priesthood as ordained of God became known to Israel; but, in the days of Eli, the priesthood itself became corrupted, — the priest's sons, themselves priests, being the leaders in the most flagitious practices. They ground down the people by their exactions, and men "abhorred the offering of the Lord; wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord." The feeble remonstrances of Eli himself were not the sharp rebuke which the occasion needed. And solemn warning — Eli himself, as the one responsible for the maintenance of the honour of God in the priesthood, is made to hear the grievous burden that awaited all his family, and at the same time to know that, although man had profaned the ordinance of God in priesthood, and that God would for this set aside His own order: yet He said, "I will raise up a faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind, and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed for ever." How refreshing to the weary soul thus constantly to see mercy rejoicing against judgment, and the sure establishment of all that had failed in man's responsibility in the hands of One Who alone is "the faithful and true Witness." But God raised up in Samuel a most distinct witness of the failure of the priesthood, and then it may be said that the ministry of the Prophets commenced (Acts 3: 24). And from this time the heart of faith turned from the priest to the prophet, and it was not that which was in existence which sustained it, but that which was in prospect. The thing announced by Samuel was the execution of summary vengeance on the house of Eli, "because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not." And now Israel was sustained by an extraordinary energy from God in the person of His prophet. He sacrifices as well as judges, taking as it were the place of both Moses and Aaron. "And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-Sheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord."

In all this we find God teaching Israel that their alone power of standing was in that energy which was immediately from Him. Samuel raised the stone of Ebenezer; but they understood it not, and vainly thought they could stand in their own strength under another arrangement, and they desired a king. Thus was God's prophet set aside as the priesthood had been corrupted, and surely too with the same end to show that there was only one perfect prophet (Deut. 18), as well as only one faithful priest and righteous king. But we find not only the wilfulness of the people in the rejection of God by rejecting His prophet (1 Sam. 8: 7), but their willingness also to have the ministry of the Prophets in having a king. It was too valuable a blessing to do without; and accordingly we find, throughout the history of the kings of Judah and Israel, a class of men known by the name of "sons of the Prophets" or "Prophets", apart from those immediately raised up by God Himself. Among them there were many whom God owned and used, but in later times they became the great instruments in fostering rebellion against God and causing the rejection of His word. The origin of this class so conspicuous in later times, we are not able scripturally to determine. But doubtless at first it arose from piety and the fear of God. In the days of Samuel those who feared God would have looked to him more than to Saul; and we find a company gathered round the aged seer, either placed there for instruction by their parents or led by the fear of God themselves, who are distinctly called Prophets (1 Sam. 19: 20). "And Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul and they also prophesied." It is from this that the term "Schools of the Prophets" appears to have so generally obtained. That there were institutions of this character appears clear, but the question is, Were they of divine or human origin! We have no scriptural authority for believing them to be of God, but that these men of God, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, should have gladly given themselves to the instruction of the young committed to their charge, teaching them those things which God had revealed to them, and bringing them up to reverence God in all His institutions, is by no means improbable. God was now with the prophet and not with the priest, and therefore real godliness could only be secured through the prophet. It appears also that these young men were used by the prophets, who were raised up by the special energy of the Spirit of God, on any service or errand they might be pleased to send them. Thus we read, "Elisha the prophet called one of the children of the prophets, and said unto him, Gird up thy loins and take this box of oil in thine hand and go to Ramoth-Gilead: and when thou comest thither, look out there Jehu the son of Jehoshaphat the son of Nimshi, and go in and make him arise up from among his brethren, and carry him to an inner chamber; then take the box of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel. Then open the door, and flee, and tarry not. So the young man, even the young man the prophet, went to Ramoth-Gilead" (2 Kings 9: 1-4).

There can be little doubt that young men so educated would by degrees have a character attached to them, not according to the actual energy of the Spirit of God in them, but according to the education they had received. And although God from among them might raise up instruments fitted to be employed in His service, yet that is not the thing which would have been regarded so much as their official training. And the influence which they had with the people would not have been that which flowed directly from God, but from that which men had instituted, to perpetuate a class among them, which might be useful to them as expositors of the mind of God. This has been one way of man's waywardness — to seek to secure God's blessings by his own wisdom and prudence. If God gave a prophet, man would desire to have this blessing in his own way; and accordingly he contrives an institution for the supply of prophets. God may bless such an institution, and doubtless did under the instruction of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, who appear in their respective times to have been looked on as the heads of these institutions. It was thus that Elijah was looked upon, "and the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? And he said, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today? And he answered, Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace. And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off and they two stood by Jordan. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, The Spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha" (2 Kings 2: 3, 5, 7, 15).

So we have seen Samuel regarded and subsequently Elisha (2 Kings 9). But the attribute of "jealous" belongs to God; and it is in this that He is especially jealous, that He will not allow any human institution to supply the place of His own prerogative grace. And it was not in the power of any of these illustrious men of God to impart to another the energy of the Spirit in which alone they could act efficiently. Doubtless these schools of the prophets were a means of spreading the fear and knowledge of God. The priest's lips which should have kept knowledge had become corrupted and testified against by the prophets. But when the master-spirit of these men of God had departed with them, the institutions which had been under their superintendence survived; but instead of ensuring the end for which piety had set them up, they became the greatest means of producing corruption and aiding apostasy. These institutions had the same moral power after the death of Elijah and Elisha as when presided over by them. And those who issued from them came to the people with a claim of authority which usage had rendered venerable. And thus, by the very means of perpetuating the prophets, was this ordinance of God corrupted, not that He gave it up, but raised up not in these schools, but in the energy of His own Spirit, His prophets to prophesy not only against the priests but against "the prophets of Israel." And real discernment then stood in distinguishing between the Lord's and the people's prophets. It does not appear that any one of the authenticated prophets of the Lord was raised up from out of these schools. * But from hence it came to pass that in process of time there was an accredited class of persons, consulted on special occasions and exercising an immense moral influence, the value of which must have depended on their individual piety and simple subjection to what God had revealed.

* Elisha may seem an exception, but he stood as the servant of Elijah, as Gehazi subsequently to him, to pour water on his hands.

But the weight of that influence was speedily turned against God. It was more popular to prophesy smooth things and deceits, and nothing is so dear to the human heart as to have God's sanction to its own lusts. And hence the popularity of the prophets who would say, "Thus saith the Lord," when the Lord had not spoken. It is not to be supposed that these prophets were always inventing lies, but they corrupted the word of God and rendered it suitable to man's taste (2 Cor. 2: 17). They must imitate the real prophets in many of their expressions, and yet after all only produce their own vain speculations.

"I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart, which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams, which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal. The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbour. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues and say, He saith. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord. And when this people, or the prophet, or a priest, shall ask thee, saying, what is the burden of the Lord? thou shalt then say unto them, What burden? I will even forsake you, saith the Lord. And as for the prophet and the priest, and the people, that shall say, The burden of the Lord, I will even punish that man and his house" (Jer. 23: 25-34). And the misery and wretchedness of the people was, that they had not the ability to discern between the real prophet of God, and the educated prophet of man.

Man had taken God's ordinance into his own keeping — he had an institution of his own for supplying that which God could only efficiently supply. Accordingly we find the prophets as much testified against by the special witnesses of God in the midst of apostasy, as the priests. They are both classed together. But the prophets appear to have been more actively engaged in helping forward the apostasy, and therefore to be more frequently addressed by the real prophets of the Lord. This testimony of the Lord against the prophets increased as the apostasy set in. The nearer the ruin approached (such is the way of His grace), the more testimony He raised concerning it. But in proportion as God multiplied His witnesses, we find the prophets of the people multiplied also.

We have a remarkable early instance of the influence which these prophets exercised, recorded in 1 Kings 22. We find Jehoshaphat in league with Ahab, and persuaded to go against Ramoth-Gilead. "And Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel, Enquire, I pray thee, at the word of the Lord today. Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against Ramoth-Gilead to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king. And Jehoshaphat said, Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might enquire of him? And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me but evil." So Micaiah "came to the king, and the king said unto him, Micaiah, shall we go up against Ramoth-Gilead to battle or shall we forbear?" Thus was the case of Israel according to the prophet — "a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord: which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits" (Isa. 30: 9, 10).

But it is more especially in the prophets contemporary with the apostasy, that we find the powerful influence exercised by these prophets: Jeremiah at Jerusalem, and Ezekiel at Chebar, each found in them the greatest hindrance to the effectual reception of the word of the Lord. In Jeremiah we have three distinct features, — first, God's testimony against the prophets. "And the priests shall be astonished, and the prophets shall wonder" (Jer. 4: 9) . "A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so" (Jer. 5: 30, 31). "And from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely" (Jer. 6: 13). "Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine; but I will give you assured peace in this place. Then the Lord said unto me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart. Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not; yet they say, sword and famine shall not be in this land; by sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed" (Jer. 14: 13-15) . "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing . . . for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land" (Jer. 23: 14, 15).

A second feature was the influence that these prophets exerted among the people. "The priests ruled by their means." "Then said they, Come, let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words" (Jer. 18: 18). "Hananiah, the son of Azur the prophet, which was of Gibeon, spake unto me in the house of the Lord, in the presence of the priests and of all the people, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the Lord's house, that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place, and carried them to Babylon: and I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with all the captives of Judah, that went into Babylon, saith the Lord; for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Then the prophet Jeremiah said unto the prophet Hananiah in the presence of the priests, and in the presence of all the people that stood in the house of the Lord, even the prophet Jeremiah said, Amen: the Lord do so: the Lord perform thy words which thou hast prophesied. Nevertheless hear thou now this word that I speak in shine ears, and in the ears of all the people; the prophets that have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many countries, and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of pestilence. The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him" (Jer. 28: 1-9). These prophets prophesied of peace and present establishment, according to the word in Micah 2: 11, "If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people." It was thus that man's own institution became a snare unto him, for God taketh the wise in their own craftiness. The very means they had taken of perpetuating a blessing among them became, by their own wilfulness, the means of blinding them; as in a subsequent period, the scribes and Pharisees and doctors of the law, in man's estimate so many supports of religion, were the great means of hindering the people confessing Jesus as the Christ.

As a third feature, we notice the virulent opposition of the prophets to God's prophets . "Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears" (Jer. 26: 11, compare Acts 6). "Why hast thou not reproved Jeremiah of Anathoth which maketh himself a prophet to you?" (Jer. 29: 27).

The whole of Ezekiel 13 applies to the point in question, but is too long to be quoted. It is painful but profitable to trace the progress of religious corruption; it arises not from without, but from within. No means of outward temptation could apparently have brought the people of Judah to rebel with so bold a front, as corrupt prophets and a corrupt priesthood. It was the blinding power of holding certain ordinances of God, not in the power of God, but in the form which human wisdom had substituted for them, that made the people reply, "Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil" (Jer. 44: 15-17).

Now these things are recorded for our admonition, and we have the most substantial authority for asserting, that the declension and apostasy of the church would arise from those who are accredited as teachers within the church.

"But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction" (2 Peter 2: 1). They very early showed themselves, as in the church of Corinth. "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ" (2 Cor. 11: 13). And at Galatia, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you" (Gal. 5: 12). St. John alludes to them, "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2: 19). "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not Jesus Christ come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist" (2 John 7).

This early attempt of Satan to undermine the church from within was that which the apostles were constantly guarding against, and formed a considerable portion of the afflictions of the gospel. Trying indeed must it have been to the soul of the apostle, to find all in Asia turned away from him to listen perhaps to those who would set before them doctrines more suited to their tastes. It was thus too at Corinth, where although they had ten thousand instructors, yet not many fathers. Here was the germ of the evil: why not a class of men or a profession of men to be accredited as instructors and teachers, the same as prevailed in their schools of philosophy? This was the readiest way in man's thought to provide for the instruction of the church; to keep to themselves teachers; and it was thus early in the church that we see its ruin provided for, and the dawning of that season which is not yet fully matured, when they would not endure sound doctrine. The secret is, that we can never be taught except in obedience. "He that hath an ear, let him hear." Now a recognised class of teachers, as such, relieves from the responsibility laid upon us by the Lord. "Take heed how ye hear." Men hear what they like to hear — hear after their own lusts, instead of proving what they hear, and holding fast that which is good. Instruction to the church never assumes the ground of ignorance, but that of competent understanding. "I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it". . . "and ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things" (1 John 2: 20, 21). And the Second and Third Epistles throw the responsibility on Christians, not of receiving teachers as teachers, — let them bear what name they might — but of testing their doctrine. In St. Paul's discourse to the elders of Ephesus, the Spirit leads him to point out the corruption of the church as arising from within.

"For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20: 29, 30). And the solemn charge of the apostle to Timothy, points out the result of that which he had noticed to the elders of Ephesus. "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom, preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry" (2 Tim. 4: 1-5).

Now in all these instances, there was no guard against these teachers by having recourse to another authorized and accredited class — for the teachers marked as characterising the apostasy, would be authorized and accredited in the eyes of men; but the only way to meet the difficulty and escape the snare, would be individual faithfulness. He alone in Israel who followed Jehovah fully, would have had moral ability to discern between the wheat and chaff — the prophet of the Lord and the prophet of his own heart. Even so at this present time, a single eye to Jesus, subjection to the word of His grace, and regard to the unction — the common possession of the church, will enable us to discern between the teacher, the gift of the ascended Jesus, and the teacher of man's institution. The provision the Lord has made for the church, are the abiding presence of the Comforter, and the word of His grace, and ministry. He presents Himself to the church not only as having the seven spirits of God, the fulness of all spiritual life, but as holding in His hand the seven stars, the perfectness of all ministry. Now the error of the church has been analogous to the sin of Israel. She has not denied to the Lord the possession of all spiritual power; but, ministry as distinctly flowing from Him (Eph. 4 ), and therefore, only exercised responsibly unto Him as the Lord ("there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord"), was very early set aside by human institutions; arising doubtlessly from real piety, and from the desire originally to perpetuate teachers in the church.

As in the case of the prophets, Jehovah had His servants among those brought up in the schools of the prophets — so surely the Holy Ghost as the sovereign dispenser of gifts of ministry has raised up many from universities and academies to bear witness to Jesus; but always with the grand characteristic of His teaching, the setting aside, and in the background, of all advantages derived from such sources, on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, which He teaches. We may smile at the disputations and subtilties of the schoolmen of a former day, but the principle is the same. It is not whether better instruction is afforded in the schools now, but whether the schools themselves are not institutions of man, for the provision of that which the Lord Jesus most jealously keeps in His own hand. It is not to the purpose to say that many of the most faithful ministers have been raised up out of these schools; this is not denied; because the Holy Spirit will not allow human arrangements to interfere with His own sovereignty. But if these schools furnish a supply of men accredited as ministers, they must necessarily exert a powerful human influence, much more so than perhaps we are disposed to allow. We have seen the Lord raising up prophets, and men having prophets of their own; and the prophet of the Lord brought into instant collision with the prophets of the people. Jesus, as ascended, gives teachers to the church, and men have provided for teachers in the church. May we not then most reasonably expect that the teachers the Lord has given will find the greatest hindrance from those whom man has provided for himself?

The prophet was not an integral part of the former dispensation, but only came in on the failure of the priesthood; but ministry is the very power of this dispensation (Eph. 4); "pastors, teachers, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Now if God has provided this in one way, even by distinct gift of the Spirit, and man has substituted another way, we see what necessarily must be the result, even the most fearful form of apostasy. "The beast and the false prophet" go together, the former could not prevail without the help of the other. Professing Christians could not easily be persuaded to tell a lie, unless they had found those who would teach them after human tradition, instead of the plain word of God. And nothing could be devised more effectually to stifle enquiry and to lull the conscience, than a humanly accredited ministry, teaching things only which the hearers expect to hear. When this is the case, the solemn responsibility of speaking and hearing are alike forgotten. And the very means provided for blessing is by Satan's craft turned into a hindrance. We hear constantly of a young man intending to go into the ministry. Now fully granting the honesty of the intention, the very expression shows the popular feeling in the matter. Let such a well- intentioned young man be sent to a university, or academy, or institution, and after a few years he comes forth as an accredited minister. Now all this appears a direct taking of ministry out of the hands of the Lord Jesus into our own hands. We should see the folly of a pious Israelite sending his son to be educated for a prophet, as if God needed human preparation for the instrument He would use. And surely to educate for the ministry is equally more preposterous in a dispensation in which the Holy Spirit, as sovereign divider of His own gifts, is especially manifested.

We read of Samuel being "established as a prophet of the Lord," but all his education under the aged and indulgent Eli could never have furnished him with what he was commissioned to reveal. We find Paul thanking the Lord for "putting him into the ministry," and unto this his education under Gamaliel profited not. It is not whether one whom the Lord has put into the ministry may use the aids within his reach to enable him more efficiently to work, for we find Paul not only exhorting Timothy to stir up the gift he had received but likewise telling him "till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine;" but, whether the most vigilant and wise training can make a minister of Christ. If it be allowed that the various ministries in the church are distinct gifts, then the recognition of the gift must precede the education, if indeed that be needed. And it would be no longer saying, "I think of entering into the ministry," but, "woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel! '' The very worst evil of human institutions for supplying ministers is the effect they have of weakening the sense of responsibility to the Lord in the exercise of ministry. And if ministry be not exercised responsibly unto Him, it is not received in responsibility to Him. "Take heed how ye hear." And the result is, that instead of ministry being regarded as that which is for the health of the church, ministers are regarded for their own sake. And trivial as it may be, the practical difference between regarding ministers or ministry is very great. We have seen in two former instances, the accredited organs of religious instruction — the prophets before the captivity, and the scribes and lawyers during the time of our Lord's ministry, all arrayed against the truth. We have solemn warning as to the parallel to be exhibited at the close of this dispensation. And surely it is not too much to say, that the virtual rejection of the Lordship of Jesus and of the sovereignty of the Spirit in the gift of ministry, has prepared the way for a most unhealthy state of mind in the great majority of Christians, who are prepared to receive no more truth than that which human institutions have thought fit to supply. And it may be safely affirmed, that ignorance of scripture does very generally prevail, and so much insubjection of mind to the word of God, that a plain declaration of scripture is set aside by its supposed contrariety to some received dogma.

The priesthood of Israel stood in order, and we find an early departure from the present order in Nadab and Abihu — awaiting the completeness of its corruption in the sons of Eli. But prophecy stood in power — holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and the corruption was the attempt to establish it in form. Now the whole character of this dispensation is power; we have a priest constituted after the power of an endless life — the word of God is powerful — we have received not the spirit of fear but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind. And the preaching of the apostle was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. The apostasy then is characterized as having the form, but denying the power of godliness. Formal ministry or humanly accredited ministers, must necessarily therefore be the greatest hindrance to the truth. The minds even of professing Christians are not in a moment prepared to believe a lie, and a certain previous training by being taught those things which they ought not, must necessarily bring about that result so fearfully marked in the scriptures: — "with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in those that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

The apostasy of natural religion was, reasoning about God, and therefore He "gave them up to their own hearts' lusts" (Rom. 1: 19-26). But now it is the departure from the truth by means of human teaching. The real question is often effectually obscured in disputes about office and order — it is, where is the power of either? Can man's institution at all provide for the presence of the Holy Ghost? Does He still abide according to the Lord's promise, in the church? Let it be granted that human arrangement had secured the exact apostolic order, and that every office in the church was arranged after the apostolic model — what then? there might be the form without the power still. Now spiritual wisdom has ever been exercised in the discernment of where God is present in the midst of man's corruptions. There were holy priests after Eli — there were true prophets amidst Israel's prophets. There are many most valued ministers among those who are accredited by human institutions, but true wisdom will be to acknowledge that which is of God, and to discern that which is of man. Many are not content to be acknowledged as ministers of Christ — they rest on something besides that "grace given to them according to the measure of the gift of Christ," and demand to be received on credentials simply human. Now the recognizing this would be the same as to recognize Israel's prophets. And would lead us, which is in fact the apostasy of the dispensation, to recognize human credentials, where the Spirit of God was not. It is a much readier way to come authenticated by man than to make "full proof of our ministry." And nothing is more unhealthy than for a believer to be seeking the authentication of his ministry, and demanding to be received as a minister, because he has been educated for the ministry. The receiving any is on infinitely higher grounds than any gift of ministry, and that is, as "holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling," — "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ." Our highest privileges are our common privileges, and no ministry not even that of an apostle could ever put one so high as the fact of being a child has already put him. It is indeed a most blessed thing to minister to the body of Christ, but a more blessed thing to be of the body. And wherever we see the tendency to exalt ministers into a privileged class or order, of nearer access to God than others, instead of recognizing them as those having a distinct gift of the Spirit, we are in danger of having ministers in name, and not in the "sufficiency of God" in the church (2 Cor. 3: 5).

Let the solemn warning in the case of Israel's prophets be looked to by us, and while we seek to honour the Holy Ghost in the thankful acknowledgement of any of His gifts, may we be kept from the sin of acknowledging any office in the church where He is not. "Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; or ministry, let us wait on our ministering; or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation; he that giveth let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth with diligence; he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness. "May the Spirit be manifested in the church in all His varied gifts for its present need, and in all His manifold grace, that the name of the Lord may be magnified! Amen.

On Alleged Neutrality and Real Sectarianism.

May 15, 1882.

Dear Brother in Christ,

I presume the difficulty our sister felt is that the form in which you meet the call of Ventnor, or of others who subscribe the Park Street decision, is said to be neutrality. But Phil. 3: 15, 16, or Rom. 14 would be open to the same sort of charge from the violent brothers in the apostle's day. Neutrality where Christ's person is concerned, as in the Bethesda question, is great sin. The sin of Park St. and its followers is in making such a question as that of Ramsgate — an ecclesiastical difference — to be a test for assemblies, and even individuals, as I know is being done. Godly men might honestly stand in doubt of either A. H. or G. H. or both. To make a test of Ramsgate, therefore, is to split up assemblies, or to demoralise, them by inducing many to accept for fellowship what they doubt about really. Quite apart from the merits of the question at Ramsgate, I believe it to be a departure from our fundamental principles, for Park Street, or any other meeting, to take up such a dispute as this, and make it a question to divide the saints. The sin of division rests on those who seek so to force consciences. All but partisans would have agreed to leave G. H. and A. H. in the Lord's hands, and those of the assemblies where no vital question was at stake. I understand you to judge as such do, and as all brethren of weight and spiritual intelligence did, till this agitation made manifest a party bent on division, who were long felt to be desiring it secretly. For the person of Christ, or any like foundation truth, one would feel bound to reject, as we are commanded, those who bring not His doctrine. But to treat an assembly rupture as equivalent is to quit Scripture for tradition, which ever tends to put the church in Christ's place to God's dishonour. Those who do so are, in my judgment, a sect, and not to be owned as on God's ground — though one might receive saints from them for Christ's sake. Such is the way in which I regard all assemblies which accept the new test. Are you aware, is our sister aware, that we separated from Ebrington Street (Plymouth), chiefly on ecclesiastical grounds, in 1845, two years before the heterodoxy of B. W. N. as to Christ became known and judged? During those two years saints going on with Mr. N. were allowed to break bread, if they wished it, at the Lord's table with us; but after the proof of that terrible heterodoxy it was no longer allowed — they were utterly refused if they did not break with Mr. N. And this was what gave occasion to the guilty neutrality of Bethesda; which received those who did not bring the doctrine of Christ, and so became a partaker of their evil deeds. To call our position and yours Bethesdaism is, therefore, lack of knowledge and righteousness, of truth and charity. We abhor all neutrality where Christ is concerned, and own our own responsibility to judge every evil thing, as I trust you do at Newport.- Believe me, dear brother, to be yours faithfully in the Lord, W. K.

{N and B.W.N. refer to B W Newton, A.H. is Abbott's Hill, Ramsgate, G.H. is Guildford Hall, Ramsgate.}

Self-abnegation.

W. Kelly. (BT Vol. N6, page 61.)

In all things Jesus was perfect, and in nothing more than this — that He, knowing all things, the end from the beginning, came down into a scene where He tasted rejection at every step — rejection not merely as a babe when He was carried away into Egypt, but rejection all through a life of the most blameless yet divinely ordered obscurity; then through a ministry which excited growing hatred on man's part. There is nothing a man more dreads than to be nothing at all. Even to be spoken against is not so dreadful to the poor proud spirit of man as to he absolutely unnoticed; and yet the very much greater part of the life of Jesus was spent in this entire obscurity. We have but a single incident recorded of Jesus from His earliest years until He emerges for the ministry of the word of God and the gospel of the kingdom. But then He lived in Nazareth, proverbially the lowest of poor despised Galilee — so much so that even a godly Galilean slighted and wondered if any good thing could come out of Nazareth. Such was Jesus; but more than this. When He did enter on the publicity of divine testimony, there too He meets opposition, though at first there was a welcome which would have gratified most men, yea servants of God. But He the Son, the divine person who was pleased to serve in this world, saw through that which would have been sweet to others when they, astonished and attracted, hung on the gracious words that fell from His lips. And how soon a dark cloud passed over it! For even that self-same day in which men heard such words as had never fallen on the ears of man, miserable and infatuated they could not endure the grace of God, and had they been left to themselves, would have cast Him down headlong from the precipice outside their city. Such man was and is. How truly all that was fair was but as the morning cloud and early dew. But Jesus, we see, accepts a ministry of which He knew from the first the character, course, and results, perfectly aware that the more divine grace and truth were brought out by Him, the sterner rejection He should meet with among men.

God deals very tenderly with us in this respect. He does not fail to send somewhat to cheer and lift up the heart of the workman in praise to Himself; and only just so far as there is faith to bear it does He put on him a heavier burden. But as to the Lord Jesus, there was no burden that He was spared; and if none in His life, what shall we say of His death? There indeed a deeper question was raised, on which we need not enter now.

So too in the apostle Paul, a man, not only of flesh and blood but, of like passions as we. Who ever suffered like him the afflictions of the gospel? Who with burning love to Israel so spent himself in untiring labours among the Gentiles — labours too so unrequited then, that among the Gentiles themselves who believed, he so often knew what it is to be less loved the more abundantly he loved?

On the other hand Jesus had no sin. Although perfectly man, every thought, feeling, and inward motion was holy in Jesus: not only not a flaw in His ways was ever seen, but not a stain in His nature. Whatever men reason or dream, He was as pure humanly as divinely; and this may serve to show us the all-importance of holding fast what men call orthodoxy as to His person. I shall yield to none in jealousy for it, and loyally maintain that it is of the substance and essence of the faith of God's elect that we should confess the immaculate purity of His humanity just as much as the reality of His assumption of our nature. Assuredly He did take the proper manhood of His mother, but He never took manhood in the state of His mother, but as the body prepared for Him by the Holy Ghost, who expelled every taint of otherwise transmitted evil. In His mother that nature was under the taint of sin; she was fallen, as were all others naturally begotten and born in Adam's line. In Him it was not so; and in order that it should not be so, we learn in God's word that He was not begotten in a merely natural generation, which would have perpetuated the corruption of the nature and have linked Jesus with the fall; but by the power of the Holy Ghost He and He alone was born of woman without a human father. Consequently as the Son was necessarily pure, as pure as the Father, in His own proper divine nature, so also in the human nature which He thus received from His mother: both the divine and the human were found for ever afterwards joined in that one and the same person — the Word made flesh.

The Separate State, and the Resurrection.

W. Kelly.

When we have learned a truth, even in power from God, such is the narrowness of the human mind, that we are in serious danger of making it a shut-door against other truths, and thus of stopping short of the largeness of God's thoughts. Indeed the more imposing a truth, the greater is the peril lest it become all-absorbing. "But the Advocate, who is the Holy Ghost (blessed and divine safeguard!) whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." "When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth."

Thus Jesus, after speaking of the many mansions in His Father's house, and of going there to prepare a place for His own, said, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." It is clear that He did not mean death, nor the destruction of Jerusalem, nor the end of the world. He Who was going away promised to come again. If it was a real and personal departure of Jesus, it was to be as real and personal a return, not to reign over them in their place, but to take them to His place that He and they might be in heavenly bliss together. Right therefore it is, that our hearts should feel how very distinct a thing our going to Him is from His coming to receive us unto Himself in such sort as this.

Again, our souls may have drunk somewhat into the triumphant strain of the apostle when he cries, "Where, death, is thy sting? where, death, is thy victory?" Death is not our joy, but He that has won the victory, the Living One Who became dead, and, behold, He is alive for evermore and has the keys of death and of hades. Hence can the Christian say that all things are his, life or death, things present or things future. But death is not, nor ought to be, the object of His affections. Christ is the Bridegroom; not Christ known after the flesh, for henceforth as a new creation we know no one thus. We know Him the risen and ascended Man; and, He being of heaven, we look for Him to come for us to fetch us there. For us He is the Heavenly; as even we are so too by His grace, and no longer of the man of dust as once.

Meanwhile in the Spirit knowing Him where He is, we long for that which will fully express His power and glory, assured even now of His love in all its fulness. We long for His coming and the resurrection of all that slept in Christ; we long for His coming that in those surviving till then the mortal may be swallowed up of life, without even dying. Happy as it is assuredly to be rid of the body of humiliation as now, happier still in the departing to be with Christ, it is not all that our hearts are set on. Living or dying, we long for His full triumph, and the consummation of His joy, in having all His heavenly ones as Himself and with Him at His coming.

For we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in an instant, in an eye's twinkling, at the last trumpet. For sound it will, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. "Far better" than the present life is our departure to be with Him in the separate state; yet it is not His victory, but rather the last experience for the body of that which sin brought in. It is "when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then (and not before) shall come to pass the word written: Death is [lit. was] swallowed up in victory."

Nevertheless it is an error to depreciate the blessedness of those who, absent from the body, are present with the Lord. When the word of truth in its simplicity and its fulness speaks out, this may not be touched. To the dying robber, who prayed the Lord to remember him when He should come in His kingdom, Jesus said, "Verily I say to thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." He thus proffers a blessing beyond and better than he asked, to the renewed mind a dearer prize than any outward display, however glorious: the joy of being that very day with Christ Himself, where the Father delights to love and honour the Son. It is not that the presence of Christ will be lacking in the kingdom, nor shall we be less able to enjoy it in that day. But He promised him this blessed companionship at once on high before He comes in His kingdom. This none should disparage: no honour or reward can equal it; and thanks be to God, we shall have it for ever.

The saints then that were put to sleep through Jesus, as 1 Thess. 4: 14 beautifully puts it, shall not be separated by death from God's love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nor did Stephen when stoned only look to the coming of Christ, though this he surely did, but says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" as the Lord had said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." So Paul later says, "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain . . . having the desire for departure and being with Christ-it is very much better" (Phil. 1: 21-23). There was not nor could be a doubt between death and resurrection. The hesitation was about "living in the flesh," as being needful for others in loving service; but as for himself individually, to depart and be with Christ was "very much better."

The best of all is for Christ to come; and so at the end of the same Epistle (Phil. 3) we have the proper hope for Paul and all. "For our citizenship (or, commonwealth) is in the heavens; from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity with his body of glory, according to the working of his power to subdue even all things to himself."

This quite agrees with the apostle's language in 2 Cor. 5, where in the face of death and the judgment-seat he expresses the common Christian confidence and willingness to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. But here he speaks of what is the best of all. "We groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed (i.e. death and the separate state), but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." He longed for the change at Christ's coming.

But we must beware of a prevalent error which denies the heavenly blessedness of paradise and seeks to make a purgatory of it. Scripture is wholly opposed to this falsifying of its character. Even where it first occurs, the aim is to reveal that the converted robber can forthwith be with Christ. Such is the immediate efficacy of His redemption for one who truly believed in Him, though only at the last brought to God.

Not less inconsistent with the low and superstitious idea is the light conveyed by the apostle Paul's words in 2 Cor. 12: 2-5. He identifies being caught up to "the third heaven" with being caught up into "Paradise." It is the highest view of heaven that scripture discloses; it leaves no room for the idle dream which consigns to some lower receptacle a soul whose fitness to partake of the inheritance of the saints in light is not achieved. For this meetness is taught by Col. 1: 12 to be already conferred by grace on all believers here. The scheme, so widely preached now, is a dark unbelief of the gospel, derived from mere Jews and Gentiles, not from scripture, and meant to comfort those who die in their sins without Christ by a hope wholly unwarranted. There is not the smallest ground for it in inspiration.

The testimony of our Lord in Rev. 2: 7 is if possible more explicit and absolutely decisive. For to the overcomer in the church at Ephesus He promises that He will give him to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. No one can question that this contemplates the future glory when that which is perfect is come, and the redeemed are changed into His image even for their bodies. Yet He calls it paradise; and in Rev. 22: 2 we see it fulfilled. Both texts therefore of this wondrous final book of scripture concur to explode as unfounded the assumption that paradise is not heaven. It is its most favoured quarter, where Christ went when His atoning work was done; where those who die in faith of Him and His work go to be with Him; and where they shall taste its sweetest enjoyment, when they have their bodies changed into the likeness of His glory at His coming. The revival of patristic tradition is a revival of heathenism, entirely at issue with what has now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1: 10).

W. K.

Behold My Servant

Isa. 52: 13-15, Isa. 53.

W. Kelly.

The portion, of which the commencement is now entered on, does evidently assume the form of a dialogue between Jehovah and the godly Jewish remnant about the Messiah. To read it thus on the sure ground of its own clear and unforced evidence adds not a little to its interest. Nor is this confined to our prophet. We have an even greater variety in Psalm 91, among others; for there in answer to Christ's reliance on Jehovah in ver. 2, the godly remnant express their conviction of His security from all evil, and of the judgment of His wicked foes in 3-13; and Jehovah responds to His love with the assurance of love and deliverance and exaltation. The form is poetical, the truth certain and cheering to a high degree, as evincing not only honour for His Anointed but the communion between Himself and His people in that day.

"Behold, my servant shall deal wisely; he shall be exalted and extolled, and be exceedingly high. As many were astonished at thee — his visage so marred more than man, and his form more than sons of men — so shall he startle (or, sprinkle) many nations: kings shall shut their mouths at him; for what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider (or, understand)."

It is in Isa. 42 that Messiah is first presented by Isaiah as "My servant" after Israel had been so designated in the chapter before, with help soon to come by means of Cyrus through the judgment of Babylon and its idols. But a greater than Cyrus or Israel is here, however similar the terms employed. "Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect [in whom] my soul delighteth! I will put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the nations. He shall not cry, nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench; he shall bring forth judgment in truth. He shall not burn dimly nor be crushed, till he have set justice in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law." Beyond a doubt it is Messiah in His blessed abnegation or rather absence of self, such as no conqueror ever displayed, and of which He only was capable to perfection, but looking onward to the day when the nations shall submit to His law superseding every false god.

After this glance at Him, the prophet speaks of Israel as Jehovah's servant till the early verses of Isa. 49. where is begun a new section; and Messiah takes the place of Israel who had failed to the uttermost, not only in abject slavery to idols but in still baser rejection of Messiah. He is not only; to deliver Israel but always the true Servant, though Israel be not gathered and the Jews to be again scattered. "And he said to me, Thou art my servant, Israel, in whom I will glorify myself. And I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought and in vain; nevertheless my judgment is with Jehovah, and my work with my God." Hence it is said to Him, "It is a small thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I have even given thee for a light of the nations, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. Thus saith Jehovah the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth, to a servant of rulers: kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall worship, because of Jehovah who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen thee" He is also given for a covenant of the people (Israel), to establish the land, restore the captives, and execute judgment on their foes.

Still more does Isa. 50 prepare the way for all that was afterward told of the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. For here we have His servant with the tongue and ear of the instructed, whatever it might cost. "The Lord Jehovah opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious I turned not away backward. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheek to those that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. But the Lord Jehovah will help me: therefore I shall not be confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me: who will contend with me? Let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him draw near to me. Behold, the Lord Jehovah will help me: who is he that shall condemn me? Behold, they all shall grow old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up. Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that hearkeneth to the voice of His servant etc.?" This is succeeded by the triple call to hearken in Isa. 51 and to awake, awake, in 51, 52, closing with the announcement on the mountains of him that publisheth peace, good, and salvation, that saith to Zion, "Thy God reigneth.... Jehovah comforteth his people, he redeemeth Jerusalem." Therefore were those that bear His vessels to depart, to go out, to touch nothing unclean; and this not with haste or flight, for Jehovah was both front and rear guard.

On what was this deliverance based? On the suffering Messiah; and as 50 revealed His sufferings from man, so along with them 53 reveals that which makes plain His still deeper and infinitely faithful sufferings from Jehovah. The end of 52 is thus the preface which, while connected with the foregoing chapters, is the due beginning of chap. 53.

Jehovah speaks in general terms to the godly remnant, the earnest of the generation to come. "Behold, my servant shall deal wisely; he shall be exalted and extolled, and be high exceedingly." Christ is God's power as well as God's wisdom. Time was when many were amazed at the depth of His humiliation — "His visage so marred more than man, and his form more than the sons of men." For He went about doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, as neither Moses, nor Elijah, nor Elisha, nor any other ever did. Anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, He was the lowliest of men and taught subjection to the powers that be. Why then the spite and contempt of men, especially of the Jews, beyond all measure?

They were utterly without excuse. For the same prophet Isaiah in his early visions had announced Him Immanuel (Isa. 7: 14, Isa. 8: 8), and brought together (Isa. 9: 6), for "a child born to us, and a son given to us," the many wonders of His name, "called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of the age (or, eternity), Prince of Peace." This made His humiliation inexplicable, save to those who see by faith that only thus could God be glorified as to sin in Messiah's atoning death, in order that all who believe might be saved by grace.

Now all was changed. This finds abundant illustration in Isa. 9: 1-5; Isa. 11: 1-10; Isa. 35; Isa. 63; Jer. 33. 14-26; Ezek. 34. 23-31; Ezek. 37: 21-28: Dan. 7: 13, 14; Hosea 3: 5; Micah 5: 1-5; Zech. 12: 9, 10; Zech. 14: 3-9. The Psalms are no less plain: Ps. 2: 6-12; Ps. 8: 5-9; Ps. 22: 27-31; Ps. 45: 2-7; Ps. 72: 1-10. "So shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths at him," as their menials used to do at them. "For what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard shall they consider." The glory, to say nothing of the grace, which shows us the once despised and hated and suffering Messiah so surpassing all that nations or their kings knew, filled them with unutterable astonishment. Yet this is but the introduction to the colloquy that ensues on the deepest things for both God and man opened out in its course.

In strong contrast with the kings astounded and abashed at Messiah's glory, the godly remnant confess the incredulity even of the chosen people at their report.

"Who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed? For he grew (or, shall grow) up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground. No form had he nor comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and shunned by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their face, he was despised and we esteemed him not" (Isa. 53: 1-3).

Judicial darkness overhung the people. So the prophet long before testified, according to the word of the Lord. They had eyes, but they saw not; ears they had, but they did not hear; and their unintelligent heart was hardened against Him who would have healed their desperate sickness. Hence there was no reception of what ought to have been the most welcome tidings, though the arm of Jehovah had been revealed unmistakably, but as yet only to a very small remnant.

Messiah's humiliation was an affront to the Jew, as poor as he was proud and filled with nothing but earthly power and grandeur in his dreams of the coming king. And the root of it was the insensibility of the natural man to sin, his own sins and utter evil and ruin before God. But whatever the glorious things designed and assured to Israel, it is impossible that He could overlook iniquity. Of old they had been ready and confident to obey His law; and they made it their boast that they alone had it. But how had they kept it or honoured Him? Their history (and He wrote who knew all) was a record of continual sin and rebellion. While Moses was up the mountain to receive the tables of stone on which Jehovah wrote the Ten Words, the people broke into open revolt, and made Aaron the instrument of setting up a golden calf to fall down and worship as the deliverer from Egypt, covering yet aggravating their apostasy under the proclamation of a feast to Jehovah. Why wonder that such a generation perished in the wilderness?

Were their sons any better under Joshua in the conquest of Canaan? Jehovah failed in nothing, they in everything; and so in Joshua 24: 19 he told them, "Ye cannot serve Jehovah, for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. If ye forsake Jehovah and serve strange gods, then will he turn and do you evil, and consume you after he hath done you good. And the people said to Joshua, Nay, but we will serve Jehovah." But the covenant he made in this last interview of his had no more heed than that of Moses. And the book of Judges occupies its first chapter with the failure even of Judah to dispossess the defilers of the land, as the second declares that Israel served the Baalim, forsaking the God of their fathers who brought them out of Egypt. Though He raised up judges to restore them and to save them out of the hand of their enemies, they ungratefully, on the death of each, turned back, and behaved more corruptly than their fathers; so that His anger was kindled against (not the Amorite or the Canaanite, but) Israel, and refused to drive out their enemies, left to prove His people.

But they rebelled against the best of judges, even Samuel the prophet, and would have a king like the nations, though this meant rejecting Jehovah. They soon proved that the king of their choice brought them into dismal subjection to the Philistines. And God chose David, type of the true Beloved; and things looked bright comparatively, but not without dark blots, notwithstanding the outward show of Solomon's reign, another type of the same Messiah in a different aspect. But the ruin that impended became manifest in his son Rehoboam when ten tribes revolted out of the twelve, never to know reunion till Messiah's day of power and glory.

Meanwhile the people, the priests, and the kings, increased their transgressions (2 Chr. 36: 14), though Jehovah sent to them by His messengers; but they mocked at them till His fury rose against His people. "There was no remedy"; and they were carried to Babylon. Was the remnant any better on their return? Let the Cross of Christ and the destruction under the Romans answer.

Yet the dry bones must live, and stand up an exceeding great army, before the union of Judah and his companions with Ephraim and his, to be one in Jehovah's hand (Ezek. 37). The chapter before lets us know the primary work on their souls when He sprinkles clean water upon them, gives them also a new heart, and replaces their stony heart with a heart of flesh; so that they repent and loathe themselves in their own sight for their iniquities and their abominations.

On what ground will this "regeneration" stand? On that very humiliation and the propitiation for sins which till now the blinded nation refused in Jesus with scorn. This is what the godly remnant take up and in the deepest contrition acknowledge to Jehovah on His call to behold His Servant before whose exaltation the kings are struck dumb.

Not so the converted remnant. They open their lips to tell out to Jehovah, not only the unbelief of others notwithstanding the fullest proof on Jehovah's part, but their own. They acknowledge their past folly and the people's, in misinterpreting His matchless grace in stooping so low to vindicate God's nature and word, and to be their Substitute and Saviour. "O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!" Why fix on Isa. 63 and ignore Isa. 53? Why rejoice in Messiah's treading down their foes, and forget their own sins, and their need of Him to be trodden down under divine judgment, that they might be saved and brought to feel their otherwise inexpiable guilt?" Ought not the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?" as He Himself told the mourning pair on the resurrection day.

The Lord therefore took His place in the ruin of the people and of its royal house. How unlike Adam who fell in the midst of pristine excellence, beauty, and sinless enjoyment! He accepted the lowliest position at Nazareth and under the dominion of the last heathen empire, because of the sins of the people. And thence He emerged, without a single advantage of place, power, wealth, or human learning, to glorify His Father in His living ways, to glorify God as to sin in His death (rejected by all), yet dying for the lost as indeed for everything. For His is a twofold reconciliation, not only for all believers but for all the universe of heaven and earth, that all, save the wicked and the unbelieving, may be blessed for ever by His redemption. If man despised, how did not God joy in Him that was His fellow humbling Himself for His Father's glory from first to last here below, as He expressed it from heaven repeatedly! In Him was His own best pleasure. How immeasurably above coming in power and pomp! "For he grew up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground. No form had he nor comeliness; and when (not Gentiles, but) we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." Yet had they not this very word and many more to win and warn them? "He is despised and shunned (or, rejected) by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (yes, He alike Messiah and Jehovah), and as one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

But the latter half of the remnant's reply is a confession, not only of their once unbelief but of their now faith as simple as it is real and deep.

"Surely our sicknesses (or, griefs) he bore and carried our sorrows, and we regarded him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him, and with his stripes was healing to us. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid (or, made to light) upon him the iniquity of us all" (vers. 4-6).

It is well that we have the divine application of ver. 4 in the Gospel of Matthew (8: 17), where it is cited from the Septuagint as "Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases." It is not meant that He suffered under them as a matter of fact; but that He took them on His spirit and was burdened by their weight, whilst He removed them by His gracious intervention. He was perfect in this respect as in all others. What a contrast with Moses in Egypt inflicting scourges on the oppressors of Israel and despisers of the "I am"! and with Elijah in the midst of apostate Israel recalling the guilty king and people from Baal to Jehovah! Here we have God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offences, but not yet the sinless One made sin for us that we might become God's righteousness in Him. It was He who, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and power, went throughout doing good and healing all that were under the devil's power, because God was with Him. And it appears from this remarkable word of the prophet as applied by the apostle that as He healed in divine energy, He took the infirmities and the sicknesses as a load of sorrow on Himself before God.

Do we not see the detail of this peculiar way especially in the Gospel of Mark? Take the leper in Mark 1, the paralytic of Mark 2, the demoniac of Mark 4, the raised daughter of the synagogue ruler in Mark 5, the deaf and dumb in Mark 7, the blind man of Bethsaida in Mark 8, and the son with a dumb spirit in Mark 9. It was not only power that dispelled the evil, but His deep interest and grace in the way wherein He did it, as the perfect servant of man's need in God's power. Truly "He hath done all things well." Thus we gain a truth through the prophet by understanding ver. 4 of His wondrous way in healing the afflicted, instead of forcing it to speak of His yet distinct work of propitiation for our sins, which required far more and different from the cure of infirmities and diseases appreciated aright before God.

It is in vers. 5 and 6 that the godly remnant express their infinite debt in His suffering for them, instead of being regarded as one stricken, smitten of God and afflicted like Job, or in another way a Gehazi or an Uzziah. "But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed (or, healing was to us)." The figures are abundant and as strikingly differ: but these all agree in revealing Him as the expiatory sufferer and substitute: the ever present shadows throughout the Jewish ritual of His atoning for the believer's felt need and deepest want before God as a guilty sinner. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins."

The blood of such creatures did all that was available till the Lamb of God came and suffered for us, not only made sin and become a curse on the tree, but for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet- smelling savour. For every shadow met and was more than fulfilled on our account in Him who glorified God as God in His death for sin, as He had in His life glorified Him as His Father in an equally perfect obedience. It is unbelieving blindness to see in His cross nothing more than a martyrdom for the truth and an example of holy love. These elements were in it beyond doubt, but incomparably more: the absolute necessity on God's part as well as ours of One as truly God as man, one mediator both of God and men, Christ Jesus man, who gave Himself a ransom for all, who suffered for sins once (and once was ample), Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, not yet to heaven (however surely this in due time) but (what was of the utmost moment for the soul now and here) "to God."

And what can be plainer than the prophet's figures? He (none other in heaven or on earth could avail), He only, He truly, He effectually "was wounded," not in regard of any good in us, but "for our transgressions." When in their darkness they did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, it was governmental, and significant of God's displeasure. But now they knew by divine teaching, and state it as a certain truth that only in sovereign grace to helpless and otherwise ruined sinners was He therein wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. It was God's way to save righteously. If the Jews did not dispute that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and thus death passed upon all men for that all sinned (adding then their personal sins to Adam's transgression); much rather did the grace of God, and the free gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ exceed unto the many. Was it not worthy of God and due to the Saviour, that where sin abounded, grace should exceedingly surpass? Compare the unworthy first man's sin with the all-worthy Second's suffering for sins. Who but an unbeliever could fail to see the infinite contrast, that grace should flow abundantly for the salvation of the believer, as judgment must act all the more certainly against those who despise such a God and such a Saviour?

Peace with God, for such as we were, needed an immovable foundation. And He is the foundation, righteous and holy even for us through "the blood of His cross." "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him." Who else could have borne it? Sinful man must have sunk under what sin deserved, irretrievably and for ever. But He whom knowing no sin God made sin for us endured to the utmost, and was raised righteously and triumphantly, Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and for ever. "And with His stripes we are healed." Such is the one divine and only panacea for any and every lost one who bows to the Crucified One and to the righteousness of God, abjuring his own righteousness but confessing his guilt and ruin.

This is what takes away not only guilt but guile, and stablishes him that had been dishonest and deceitful, in integrity even in God's sight. The mouth is all the freer and fuller to own its wicked folly: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned each to his own way." There was no exception: all astray, yet each in his own evil way. Yet in the face of all wrongs, and in His own spontaneous and all-overcoming goodness Jehovah caused to light upon Him the iniquity of us all.

Did not one of our own poets sing "I lay my sins on Jesus?" Nay, friend, God's truth is far beyond thy hymn. Jehovah who knew all laid the iniquity of all that believe on Him. Is not this far greater, better, and surer? We have all had habits of sin, even those converted young; and a sinful habit genders forgetfulness as well as heedlessness of sins. Which of us could be so confident for eternal salvation as to rely on his own memory in laying his sins on Jesus? How awful to have presumed fatally in such a case! How blessed, even apart from that danger, to have the certainty that God does perfectly for the believer what he himself could only do imperfectly! What grace on His part, and what pitiful consideration of our shortcoming! He who could not but feel abhorrent every act of self-will, every uprising of independency and rebellion, caused the vile mass of iniquity to light on His head who is here shown to be its infinitely suffering Sin-bearer, willing because Jehovah willed it in a grace which is His prerogative, to save the lost.

This is the answer of Jehovah to the remnant's confession of their past unbelief and their present faith in Messiah. The last clause of ver. 8 makes it certain that the strain in these verses is His language, beginning in 7 and ending in 9.

"He was oppressed and he humbled himself, and he opened not his mouth: as a lamb he is brought to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment was he taken away; and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked but [he was] with the rich in his death; because (or, though) he had done no violence, nor [was] deceit in his mouth" (vers. 7-9).

How precious it is to have the true God thus communicating His moral complacency in the rejected Messiah, and in His work of sin-bearing, to those who once despised Him but now share His delight in that meek endurance of all indignity! What a sight for the heavenly host, who at the marvel of His birth of woman appreciated the sign of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, yet praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-pleasure in men! Now it is Jehovah musing on the deepest proof the only-begotten Son could give of the Saviour's love and His own, not only to display the true nature of God where it was unknown, but to save His people from their sins, whose history had been a succession of divine favours followed by deepening departure and rebellion against Him.

When His law and His institutions were more and more despised, when His priests made His offerings abhorred by their corruption, when the kings became leaders in idolatry and its debasing consecration of vice, He sent prophets not only to reprove but to win Israel back extraordinarily. But they took His servants, beat one, killed another, stoned a third. He sent others more than the first; but they persisted instead of repenting and did even worse. Having yet therefore one beloved Son, He sent also Him to them the last, saying, They will reverence My Son. But they said one to another, This is the Heir. Come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance will be ours. Was there ever a truer sketch than the Son drew for that generation, which they recognised yet fulfilled in His cross?

The Lord of the vineyard did destroy the wicked husbandmen, and gave the vineyard to others; who if they heard the glad tidings for awhile did not abide in goodness nor stand through faith, but presumed to think that God had cast off Israel to give Christendom an everlasting and indefeasible possession of the earth and of all nations. How utterly heedless of the solemn warning that this present evil age shall end with the apostasy and the man of sin, and that the day of the Lord shall dawn on Israel penitent, believing, and saved, after exterminating judgment of the wicked Jews and Gentiles, while the heavenly saints shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father!

Here the prophet was inspired to present the renewal of Jehovah's relations with the godly Jew under the figure of the converse we are considering. And as it began in Isa. 52: 13-15 with His pointing out the amazing change from One whose visage was marred more than man's, and His form more than the sons of men, to a glory which should astound kings when established before them, and this drew out in Isa. 53: 1-6 the confession of their past unbelief and their present assurance of His sufferings in atonement for them, so Jehovah takes up the strain of the meek Sufferer doing the divine will whatever it might cost in a world at enmity with God. How suited and impressive the lesson to the remnant about to become a strong nation! Messiah, The Lord of all, "was oppressed"; but, far from resenting, "He humbled Himself." He "opened not His mouth," though He knew well the purpose of the religious chiefs to compass His death. "As a lamb is brought to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not his mouth. he was taken away by oppression and judgment; and who shall declare his generation?" Whatever might be the form of judgment, all was unrighteous; but those who condemned Him condemned themselves unspeakably. For He who came in perfect love "was cut off out of the land of the living."

Where was Jehovah then? He was there in a light strange to man: God would Himself provide a lamb for a burnt-offering, and a guilt-offering too. "For the transgression of my people was he stricken." It runs through scripture from Genesis to Revelation; but in no scripture is it declared more plainly than here by Isaiah. How then have the Jews failed to hear? Through the same unbelief as blinds the natural man. Sin unjudged makes a Saviour hateful. A God of law is reasonable; the God of sovereign grace is intolerable to self-satisfied man, who trusts in himself and distrusts God, denying alike the need and the value of the sacrifice of Christ.

Expositors generally assume that the oriental style in the Psalms and the Prophets overflows and must be allowed for in the sober facts. Certainly it is not so in Christ and His cross! The truth exceeds in His grace and His endurance; as shown in the N.T. The reality penetrated more deeply and rose far above any anticipation vouchsafed. But there is another side not to be overlooked. The cross of Christ reveals His moral glory as nothing else could. Where was Jewish righteousness and priestly grace, where Roman law, and Greek letters at that solemn hour? Did not all of man and the world with its religion conspire against the only Righteous Servant, the Lord of glory full of grace and truth? And what can be said of the disciples, of His apostles, of Peter? Where can there be an atom for boast save in Him who was made a curse upon the tree, abandoned even of God necessarily that we might never be, yet vindicating Him to the uttermost when realising it to the uttermost? Truly it was the hour which stands alone through all eternity, and the Lord Jesus could say of it, Now was the Son of man glorified and God was glorified in Him; if God was glorified in Him God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall glorify Him immediately (i.e. before the predicted glory of the kingdom be manifested).

Yet whatever He suffered, it is touching to observe how Jehovah cared even for the dead body of His Son as here noticed. "And they made his grave with the wicked," the natural end of a crucified malefactor, "but [he was] with the rich in his death," the unlooked for issue under divine guidance, "because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth." The fact too of its being a new tomb where no dead body had ever lain gave occasion to make the truth of His rising the more unambiguous and undeniable.

"Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; he hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul a trespass-offering, he shall see seed, he shall prolong days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand" (ver. 10).

In the preceding section the last clause of ver. 8 is decisive that the speaker can be none other than Jehovah Himself meditating throughout 7-9 on the gracious sufferings of His Messiah. Here in ver. 10 it is no less certain that we hear the remnant's voice about Him in answer to Jehovah, and reckoning on the sure and blessed fruit of Jehovah's part in that momentous trespass-offering. If Jehovah viewed with delight the Holy One of God meekly bowing to all indignity and suffering at the hands of those among whom He deigned to dwell in infinite love, and with heart set on representing aright the true God who was as little known as He is as among the heathen, the godly tell Jehovah of the wonder, once hidden from them but now their delight, that it seemed good in Jehovah's eyes to bruise Him.

Long had the bruising of Him been revealed. It was disclosed to the guilty pair in paradise forfeited by their transgression (Gen. 3: 15), before the responsible man was driven out, and the cherubim were set with the flame of the flashing sword to guard the way to the tree of life. Then the enmity of the serpent was in the foreground; and the word was "He shall crush thy head, and thou shalt crush his heel"; as this was the announcement proper then, and most true in itself. The crushed Saviour should crush the Serpent's head, and at last be his utter destruction; for the God of peace shall bruise Satan under our feet shortly, howsoever long He has waited: as he is the last enemy with his power of death to be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. Nor is it here the deceived and beguiled human adversaries Jew or Gentile who are dwelt on.

Of these the Lord spoke often to His disciples when unbelief became more and more pronounced. "From that time Jesus began to show to his disciples that he must go away [being then near Caesarea-Philippi] to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief-priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised" (Matt. 16: 21). Then after the transfiguration, while they abode in Galilee, He said to them, "The Son of man is about to be given up into men's hands, and they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised up" (Matt. 18: 22, 23). Again, in Matt. 20: 17-19, He took the Twelve apart, and said, "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man will be given up to the chief-priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; and they will give him up to the Gentiles, to mock and to scourge, and to crucify, and the third day he shall rise again." Compare Acts 2: 22, 23, 36; Acts 3: 13-15; Acts 4: 10; Acts 5: 30, 31.

But here the godly view His sufferings in the light of Jehovah's purpose and peace. Whatever man's wickedness, and it was immense every way, love still more unfathomable was behind it to bring about a work of grace beyond human thought to God's glory, beyond all love in man who might die for his friend, as He for His enemies proves it essentially divine. "Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him." What grace could compare with this? What an answer to Satan's base suggestion in paradise, that He begrudged His most favoured creature the fruit of the tree in the midst of it! For what gift in heaven or earth could approach that unspeakable free gift? What sufferings too were like His? Truly He was subjected to grief; and by whom? How divine a way to demonstrate the love and holiness and righteousness of Him that sent, and of Him who came thus put to grief!

O sinful man, O doubting believer, accept the witness God has given concerning His Son. Professing Christian, go not below what godly Jews shall yet confess. As Isaiah here predicts to be fulfilled in them for the kingdom on earth; so we ought to know still more fully according to the gospel for heaven. "Herein is love, not that we loved God [as we surely ought], but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Indeed He loved us beyond parallel, and doubly. We were dead in sins; and God's love was manifested in sending His only- begotten Son, that we might live through Him. We were guilty sinners; and He sent His Son as the only and the efficacious sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4: 9, 10).

The prophet, so many centuries before, as to this thoroughly agrees with the apostle who looked on the cross, and so many years after lived to give this witness of divine love. "When thou shalt make his soul a trespass-offering, he shall see seed, he shall prolong days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand."

There are those bearing the Christian name who venture to question and even deny that God dealt with our Lord Jesus judicially. But here is not a debateable type, if such it be counted; here is no trope which can be deemed Oriental, as so many love to find in scripture. It is the greatest of the O.T. prophets after Moses expressing in the Spirit what the future believing remnant of Jews will respond to Jehovah's intimate communications about Messiah. None can dispute that it is a term taken from the very heart of the offerings for sin in the Jewish ritual, illuminated by the light of Christ to those so long sleeping among things dead, as all must be in unbelief. It is more than an offering for "sin," and expresses the addition to swerving from right the guilt of offence against relationship with Jehovah, a desecration of His name in respect of Him who deigned to make them His (and, we may surely say, in every respect); for in what had Israel not failed?

But when Messiah's soul (for it was not His body alone, but Himself in the most intimate and full way) was made a trespass-offering, how efficacious the result! What was blood of bulls and goats, of rams or lambs, in comparison? The worshippers once purged have "no more conscience of sins," as the Epistle to the Hebrews so boldly declares. Messiah has already seen a seed purged and blessed thereby; and "He shall see seed" too for His manifested kingdom here below, not of His ancient people only but "all the families of the earth blessed in Him." "Unto thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and they shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited falsehood, vanity; and in these things is no profit" (Jer. 16: 19). Dead for our sins, He is alive again for evermore, the best prolongation of days; and "the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand." For "the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of the age to come (or, Eternity), Prince of Peace, . . upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom to establish it, and to uphold it with righteousness and with judgment from henceforth even for ever." "Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment; a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm; as brooks of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land."

Not less certain is it that the two concluding verses are the answer of Jehovah. Who but He could speak of Messiah as "My righteous servant?"

"He shall see of the travail of his soul, he shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct the many in righteousness, and he shall carry their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ones; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

The godly remnant had said in faith, "When thou shalt make His soul a guilt- (or, trespass-) offering, He shall see a seed." Now Jehovah responds emphatically, "He shall see of the travail of His soul." It was no mere act done as a duty, though in truth out of the depths of His obedience. It was also "of the travail of his soul," if these words ever applied to any suffering accepted in love, and endured for the glory of God and the salvation of the otherwise lost. What was it for the Holy One of God to be forsaken by His God, when He cried and could not be heard? when forsaken by His disciples? when despised of men, and scorned by His people, from the high priest to the meanest of the Jews? by the very robbers deservedly crucified on either side? Yet at no time was He so efficaciously suffering for God's glory; at no time so infinitely the object of divine delight, though His God who could not regard sin with the least allowance, so far from then delivering, made Him, the sinless One, sin for us.

Here and here only was the travail of His soul without a parallel; and hence the fruit of it no less unparalleled. It was thenceforward to be God's righteousness to justify the lost if they believed on Jesus, the sole way of salvation by grace for any. Others cried to Him who inhabited the praises of Israel. The saints before He came trusted; and Jehovah delivered them. But He went down under the burden of our sins, intolerable to all but Him, yet to Him more intolerable than to any; and He crying "Thou art holy," yet the abandonment continuing till the atoning work was done, when from the horns of the buffaloes He was heard, and in departing could say, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. Next the demonstrative answer came in raising Him from among the dead and seating Him at His own right hand on high. This was God's righteousness to Him (compare John 16: 10), who has also given us who believe to become God's righteousness in Him, and declares "He shall be satisfied." For the Father's glory and God's glory thus He secured at all cost to Himself; and hence God, as God and Father, is concerned in glorifying Him who in love and according to divine purpose shares it with us. If He is head over all, we are His body and shall be associated with Him in His exaltation over all things, the things in the heavens, and the things on the earth. Our text speaks only of the earthly people's part; but Eph. 1: 10-14 is no less certain as to the church's union and glory with Him over all things heavenly and earthly.

The rest of verse 11 needs the more care, because it has been forced to speak in concert with traditional views, instead of its real and simple meaning. For the Lord's ministry is first set out, and then His sacrificial death. "Justify many" would be a singular departure from due order, before His bearing our iniquities; which if such a sense were intended would require the preceding place as the necessary ground for justification. But the verb admits where requisite of "instructing in righteousness," no less than of "justifying," according to the context, as is plainly demanded in Dan. 12: 3. "they that turn to righteousness" goes too far, especially when we take into account that it is "the" many, who have an evil place in the prophet's usage: not "many" but "the mass" of apostate Jews in the last days, who had their prototypes in those who rejected the Messiah when He presented Himself the first time. These He patiently and zealously instructed in righteousness as minister of circumcision; and so the wise or teachers will do in the coming days. "The many" in either case might be instructed in righteousness without being turned to it; for they appear to be in contrast with the righteous few and perish in their stubborn unbelief. Here too, as the phrase is "the many," it would seem that the same objects are in view.

Hence too there is no need for departing from the regular force of the last clause, "and he shall carry their iniquities." Such was the second part of Messiah's work, His death-work, as instructing in righteousness was His life-work before. "Justifying" is rather attributed to God on the ground of Christ's death. Hence the necessity for another rendering, required for the human instruments in Dan. 12: 3, pleads strongly for a cognate force in Isaiah 53: 11, because it falls in with the order here, which is adverse to "justifying" before propitiation. The change to "for" He shall bear (or, carry) their iniquities was to make the clause square with justifying, which would have been a harder saying with "and," the true sense.

Jehovah ends the strain (ver. 12) with the proclamation of Messiah's earthly exaltation and all the more because of His humiliation in suffering love. "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ones." He is the mightiest and most enduring of conquerors; but the spring lay not in strength or wisdom or majesty or glory. It originated in infinite love, it flowed out in divine grace, of which He will be the most suited administrator in the day of glory; because He, to make all effectual both for God's glory and for man's need and blessing, had gone down into suffering unfathomable to all but Himself. So the prophet here expresses it "Because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." He submitted to the last degree of creature weakness; He bowed to the foulest imputation of indignity; He carried the sinful load of not a few but "many," and made intercession not for friends but enemies, "the transgressors," who but for Him had been lost for ever. What possibly plainer here than the sinless One suffering at God's hand sin's punishment, turning to God in bearing their evils that those who believe might be forgiven and purged, blessed and triumphant through Him? Christ is the way, the truth, and the life; but here primarily for repentant Israel. Yet as the substitute for guilty objects, He suffered at the righteous Jehovah's hand beyond all that men can conceive; and for Gentile no less than Jew as the N.T. explicitly declares.

Is it not deplorable that any one bearing the name of the Lord should allow the truth of this wondrously accurate picture which the prophet drew, but speak of "the ideal Sufferer"? The exaltation which startles the kings is not yet fulfilled, because the mystery of the heavenly work is in progress; but it will surely be when He appears in glory to take His world-kingdom (Rev. 11: 15). But why evade the only answer to the sufferings already and exhaustively made good to the full? Why idealise the yet to be fulfilled picture of His earthly reign in Isa. 1: 24-31, Isa. 2: 2-4, Isa. 4: 2-6, Isa. 9: 3-7, Isa. 11, Isa. 12, Isa. 35, Isa. 65. etc.? Indeed it is where the prophets as a whole point and converge. No doubt the early fathers wrote with little intelligence; and later tradition is yet more wide of the mark. But this idealism shirks the truth which convicts the new criticism of unbelief.

W. K.

The Seventy Weeks

Daniel 9: 24-27

W. Kelly.

There is no prophecy of which the general scope is more certain than this of the Seventy Weeks; yet there are few on which so much debate has wrought, so much difference exists even among genuine believers. This is apt to create a certain measure of prejudice. So slow are our hearts to expect sure light from God, that the existence of a great variety of opinion, more especially if it be in those that love and value the truth, is apt to deter and turn aside even children of God. It ought not to be so; yet it is too often the fact. Yet to exclude part of the truth of God is not faith, but manifestly owing to prejudices or prepossessions; and particularly has it been so in the case of these Seventy Weeks.

But this at least is plain, that what God was here revealing to Daniel He was revealing through His servant to us. There is a snare too prevalent among Christians, now as ever, that they are on the look-out for something to bear upon their own circumstances. They have been apt to consider that the Church of God, being so great an object to God Himself, must therefore be always the foremost thought in prophecy.

But this does not follow, nor is it true in the Old Testament. The Church is not properly a subject of prophecy, but part of the mystery for which Scripture left room, and which is now revealed. Yet there may be some here who are under the influence of this opinion, and for their sake especially I may say that, besides salvation, there are two great subjects in the Bible; the one is the kingdom in the Old Testament, and the other is the Church in the New Testament. But nearer to God than the kingdom or the Church there is another object, and this is Christ, who is Saviour, as well as Head of the Church, and King not only of Israel but of the nations too. Hence the true key to understanding any part of Scripture, you will find, is to divest yourself as much as possible of any such external prepossession — in favour, for instance, of either the kingdom on the one hand or the Church on the other — as would hinder you from seeing that God is first of all thinking of Christ, whatever His special relation may be.

In this scene of the Old Testament we see the true centre — Christ, but Christ there in view of the kingdom in its earthly aspect; that is, the kingdom of Messiah as the display of the divine power on earth, of which display Israel is the centre. Indeed this is what gives us the real importance of either Israel or the Church; it is not because of anything intrinsically deserving in them, but wholly of Christ as connected with each. The moment we see that God is glorifying His Son, we understand that His object in heaven or earth must be Christ.

God, however, takes care that in the Old Testament there are words which could not be understood until the Church or Christianity came in. These words here and there received a blessed meaning when the assembly was introduced. And so with the New Testament: God takes care that none should think that the kingdom is done with. And this was of great importance. God had not abandoned the kingdom. Be it that the Church comes in; but even when it has been revealed fully, the kingdom must come also; so that neither when He was about to form the Church had He dropped the kingdom, nor, on the other hand, when He has brought out all His glorious thoughts as to the Church, has He given up the kingdom. 'The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.'

This helps us in the subject before us. If I approach it with the desire of seeing how it applies to me or the Church I am off the true ground. The translators seem to have turned aside the edge of the passage by trying to make its meaning bear on the Christian Church, whereas you will learn that this adds nothing to us, but rather takes away. Whatever is meant for the Church is given in the best possible way in the Scriptures which speak about the Church: everything from elsewhere is apt to weaken the truth.

I will use no further preface, but at once turn to that which is before us; and I think we shall see at a glance what God has in view in the Seventy Weeks.

But first of all I would call your attention to the error of regarding the vision as something which one cannot comprehend. The word is, 'Understand the matter, and consider the vision.' Further, had it been simply for Daniel's personal understanding, it would not have been revealed to us. Daniel was inspired by the Holy Ghost to reveal the Seventy Weeks that we might not only read but with intelligence. We may, therefore, look to God to-night to give us such help by grace that we may comprehend this great matter.

And first of all you will notice that in the 24th verse you have the entire period. 'Seventy weeks are determined;' which is to say, that from the mass of time God was pleased to cut out a certain portion for a special object; but whether the portion or portions set apart, or cut out, for the object in question — seventy weeks — were to be all in consecutive order, or whether there was to be a gap or breach between them, remains to be seen. But the first object conveyed is, 'Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint a Holy of holies.'

Thus we have the scope of the vision; but we are not left to conjecture. 'Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people.' Whose people? Daniel's people. The Church? Clearly not. They were the Jews, notoriously at that time in the utmost possible depression — so completely degraded from the grand position in which God had planted them in their earliest history, that God had at this time taken away His name from them. Gabriel does not say that seventy weeks are determined on 'God's people' or on My people, as if speaking for Him, but on 'thy people.' They were only Daniel's people now. Hosea had predicted this a long time before. He was the instrument in making it known to Israel, a most solemn fact for an Israelite that had the fear of God and felt the just delight that his nation had been singled out from all others to be the people of Jehovah and have Jehovah as their God. But God announced to them by His prophet that they were no longer to be His people, though grace will surely make them so once more and for ever in the latter day (Hosea 1, 2, 3.).

And now, you observe, they were in captivity. It is true the time was very nearly at hand when God declared that they should return from Babylon; but they were not yet taken from under His sentence. It was just before Jeremiah's prophecy of seventy years was fulfilled. They were on the eve of closing the seventy years of captivity in Babylon, and Gabriel was sent to announce the 'Seventy Weeks' — that is to say, seventy weeks of years. Of course, these years were on that very same people; but on that people, be it noted, not yet taken from under God's solemn 'Lo-ammi.' Whatever might be His glorious purposes in the future, and whatever His gracious ways with them for the present, still it is distinctly 'thy' people Daniel's people. God no longer owns them publicly as His people. No doubt there were believers among them, children of God like Daniel and others (as for instance, his three companions were of similar spirit, having received like precious faith with him); but the angel was not speaking of believers only, but about the Jews as a people.

It is the Jews then who are called, not 'My people,' but 'thy people' — Daniel's people. 'Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city.' Jerusalem, doubtless, is still called a holy city; but it is no longer as God's own city: it is 'thy' — Daniel's — holy city. All this tends to make the great object of the Seventy Weeks perfectly plain. It is not Christianity or the Church that is contemplated, but Jerusalem — Daniel's holy city, and Daniel's people, the Jews.

The Seventy Weeks therefore, it will be seen from the very words with which they open, are bound up in the clearest possible manner with the Jewish people. 'Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.' Of the aim one cannot doubt when we look at these expressions as a whole; though we might perhaps have a question if we took up an isolated one. For instance, 'to finish the transgression' is, literally, to restrain it. But if one might have a little question about its meaning alone, when he adds, 'to make an end of sins' or, literally, to seal up sins, 'and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness,' these words make the bearing perfectly plain. The seventy weeks were determined upon Daniel's people and Daniel's holy city to bring in the blessed time of which the prophet spoke — -to fulfil the promises that God from the beginning held out to Israel. This, clearly, is the object; and accordingly we have it both in respect of sins, to close them, and in respect of righteousness, to bring it in, and not only so but to bring it in everlastingly (that is, righteousness not only given but also secured for ever). There could be no just question, therefore, that what Daniel was intended to gather, and what faith did gather, from Gabriel's communication was this, that at the end of these seventy weeks of years the long-promised blessing would be made good to Israel.

It is plain however that we must look into the prophecy to see whether the Seventy Weeks were to be continuous; whether or not there intervene a breach, an interruption or postponement of some. But at any rate these Seventy Weeks, described as they are here — for this is all-important for the truth of the prophecy — must be filled up in all their details for the Jew and Jerusalem. I shall show the importance of this before I have done. Clearly the end of the seventieth week would close, according to the word of God, with the fulness of blessing, and righteous blessing, brought home to Daniel's people and Daniel's city. That is, it is not at all a question of saving souls and bringing them to heaven; it is not here a question, therefore, of the purposes of God in connection with Christ above. It is the earth, and, above all, the well-known city, Jerusalem, and the Jewish people. These are the objects of the prophecy. 'And to seal up the vision and prophecy' is another thing, too, confirmatory of what I have said. Prophecy, instead of being given out more, was to be sealed up; the whole thing was to be closed. It implies the completion of what prophets had been raised up to predict; henceforth it was to be sealed up, and a Holy of holies anointed; or, in other words, the unfailing power of the Spirit of God would make the sanctuary of the Lord to be in the fullest sense the most Holy. There is in the phrase a slight difference, which has been used, not only by unbelievers, but even by believers, to bring in confusion. But I do not dwell on small points now, wishing to develop the object of the prophecy in as clear and brief a manner as possible.

Let us examine further. The 24th verse sums up the general scope of the Seventy Weeks; but now we come to look at the parts into which the Seventy Weeks are broken up. 'Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.' Here again we have most abundant confirmation, if this were needed, from the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem. It is not the new and heavenly city, but the old Jerusalem. The end, no doubt, would be Jerusalem brought under the new covenant and the Messiah — under the sway of the King, when the Lord will reign over Israel; but still it is Jerusalem.

'Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks.' Surely this is a remarkable way of expressing it. The natural mode, it might seem to us, would be sixty nine or three score and nine; but not so: it is 'seven weeks, and threescore-and-two-weeks.' There is a design in this. God never says a word without a blessed reason — a wise and gracious motive; and so there is here. In thus naming the seven weeks there is a purpose, which appears in what follows; for we shall find that each of these two portions of time-the seven weeks, that is, forty-nine years, and then again the sixty-two weeks of years that follow — has a description that follows, which explains them, and shows the reason of the division, as well as the starting point. 'From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and three score and two weeks: the street shall be built again and the wall, even in troublous times.' Here is the reason of naming the seven weeks. The rebuilding of Jerusalem, hindered as it might be, was an object of interest to God: His word both predicts and records it.

Sanballat, Tobiah, and their fellows, might show their scorn of the little walls that were rising up. Precious to God was the death of His saints — their very dust; even then His servants took pleasure in the stones of Jerusalem. So it will be in the day that is coming, when indeed it will be the full accomplishment of what is always before God. But even that which reminded Him, if I may so say, or was at any rate meant to remind His people, that God had purposes of good for His degraded and long guilty Israel — that God would yet appear for them, and rear up Jerusalem to far more than pristine splendour — this was before God even then. It is full of interest, and, I think, an instructive thing for us, beloved friends, that God in a day of ruin takes special consideration of what is despised. Nay, I believe further, that what was lowly, and calculated to draw out the indignation of those that hated them, and the scorn of proud men against them, had a very special interest for God, and God reveals it here. We might have thought it not worth while to have spoken of such a thing in a book of prophecy; but God would give ample encouragement to the Jew in the midst of such adversaries. Was it not sweet to them to know that God had told it them beforehand? Were they then to be discouraged? Now the books of Ezra and of Nehemiah particularly throw beautiful light upon the facts which were the accomplishment of this word. There we find the street built again; there we find the details of the wall. We know the different men that took part in building it. We know some women too; for these too were not wanting even for that work. Wherever the heart is in question, you do not find women absent; and so it was that God has taken care to record their names for ever — those that took part in the building of that very wall, and occupied those very streets in these troublous times.

In short, then, we see these seven weeks are singled out that God might give us not merely a history but a prediction of the troubles. The derision, the hatred, the enmity, the endeavours to destroy, the continual intrigues and plottings in and round the land, the efforts to stir up the court of Persia against them, the carelessness of the people, the faults of the princes, the unfaithfulness of the priests — all these things counter-worked, the bitterest and most humiliating of all their sorrows being found among themselves — Daniel's people, not the Gentiles or even the Samaritans. Here then we have the prediction, not only the history of it; so much does God think of His people in the day of small things. This, I think explains the reason of the seven weeks.

But now for the sixty-two weeks. What makes up the sixty-two? Ah! here we come to something, I will not say externally grand, but I do say of all moment for God and man; and what was that? The death of the Messiah — his cutting off. 'After the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off.' You will notice the peculiarity of the expression. It is not here said precisely, that He would be led as a lamb to the slaughter. It is not the point that He is to have our iniquities laid upon Him.

'It pleased Jehovah to bruise Him.' This is not the way in which it is now spoken of. The death of the Lord Jesus may be looked at in one of two ways; either from God's side, in the way of atonement, or from man's side, in the way of rejection. It is in the latter point of view that Daniel was here inspired to predict it. 'Messiah shall be cut off.' It is the violence of His death from man's hatred, and particularly too, as we know, because He had been cut off through the Jewish people — Daniel's people. That is the very scene opened here. We find it elsewhere. 'After the threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off but not for himself.'

Now here I have to call attention to the warping, not to say the blinding, influence of prepossession. Our translators considered that the death of the Messiah could only be viewed as an atonement. I dare say we have known people of similar mind. We have known persons who could not take in the death of the Lord for anything except to atone for sins. That is, being preoccupied with self and the wants of self, they have forgotten that God comprises other views. For instance, God must use the death of the Lord Jesus as a proof of the wickedness of man. This is not atonement, although it be when man is thus guiltily rejecting and slaying the Messiah that God accomplishes atonement. But still, we may look at it on the side of man and man's wickedness, or on the side of God, and God's grace, which are two different things. In short, the true meaning of the clause is not that which our translators have given. The margin is much more correct — 'and shall have nothing.' I am not aware of any version which, on the whole, presents the true thought more clearly than this.

It has been a matter for a great deal of discussion to many, and particularly among scholars. And my experience, beloved friends — and I know a little about what these men have said and written — is this, that there are no men less to be trusted than mere scholars, because, being scholars, they are naturally apt to be proud of their scholarship; and whatever we are proud of is always the very thing in which God will humble us. There is the mistake that Christian people often make. They very often overvalue the knowledge of a little Greek or less Hebrew. Depend upon it, that to know the English Bible well is far better than to know somewhat of Greek or Hebrew; and I have rarely found that knowing a little of these languages has any other effect ordinarily than to give a good deal of conceit. It enables persons, of course, to talk about knotty points, especially to those that do not understand them; but I do not think that really profitable for either party. However, I will, not expatiate upon this, although no doubt it has its practical lesson, because among active-minded Christians, such as those who are present, there is very often a strong desire to know accurately the things that God wrote. Now, if He give means and opportunity, I would not say a word to discourage; but I do advise you, before you begin, not to expect too much from it. Whatever may be the opportunities that you can look to have for learning, you are never likely to be great scholars. You may learn a little; but you must remember that as those of old who translated the Bible were men of real learning, so you are never likely, in this respect, to compare with them; nor can you hope to get by such study beyond what you have already got in the English Bible.

Is there no means then of getting further light? Certainly, and here we have a little help in the margin; for God takes care, in His grace, to raise up persons who, perhaps, spend a great deal of a long, laborious, and uninterrupted life in many of these pursuits; but even this would enable them, you may depend upon it, only to speak with considerable moderation. I think you will find that persons who know most are apt to speak most moderately. They are diffident, after all, as to their own judgment; and although they would give it where it is called for, they would not pronounce so dogmatically as a learner. Through such helps God corrects mistakes for His people.

I say then that the margin here gives the scope, in my opinion, more exactly; for it is not a question at all of the Messiah not being cut off for Himself. The thought would thus be that He was cut off for other people. This is the implication, as it seems to me, of our version — 'but not for himself.' He was cut off for our sins. He suffered in atonement for our iniquities. Thus they only viewed the death of Christ in the light of expiation. But not so. The meaning is, that Messiah should be cut off and have nothing; that is, His inheritance is completely gone, His people refusing Him, His land not possessed, His kingdom denied, everything that belonged to Messiah taken away from Him. It was not only that Christ met with a violent death, but there was no repentance on the part of the people afterwards. Their cry was, 'His blood be on us and on our children.' Was this atoning blood? or was it not the expression of utter unbelief and the occasion of divine judgment? The Lord told them that He was about to leave their house desolate. He would not call it His Father's house now but 'their' house, and they should not see Him henceforth till they should say, 'Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah.' And they will say so in the day that is coming; but this day is not yet come. Consequently, after the Lord was cut off on the cross, we see the Jewish people persisting in the same unbelief which put Him to that shameful death. They gave him up then to the hands of lawless men — the Romans, insisting on His crucifixion. And this is the point that the Spirit of God reveals here. He 'shall be cut off, and shall have nothing.' The literal meaning — though you must not suppose that the literal meaning is always the best way of rendering words — is this, 'And it shall not be to him.' This, of course, conveys no intelligible idea to most readers; but I presume that the meaning of the Hebrew idiom is, that nothing He could claim as His should belong to Him. He had now lost everything, as far as man was concerned. The Jews had risen up in rebellion against their own King, their own Messiah, the anointed Prince. They had put Him to death on the cross, and He had nothing. All the earthly hopes of Israel were buried in the grave of the Messiah. But it did not at all contradict what God shows elsewhere, that He will revive them in the end, and set them upon a solid basis that never can be shaken — that He will Himself see to it, and found it in pure grace upon that very cross, but the cross as used by God and not by man. Man used it to reject the Messiah. God will use it as a foundation for the kingdom in power and glory by-and-by, just as He has made it the foundation for our salvation and bringing us to heaven. But this is not what is spoken of here. All the vision makes known is what concerns Daniel's people and Daniel's city. And how did the cutting off of Messiah affect them? In rejecting Him they lost their place and nation. It was not only that He had nothing of all His earthly kingdom, but that they lost everything along with Him; and this is shown more fully afterwards.

'And the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city.' Now, I ask, when did this come to pass? Clearly at the destruction of Jerusalem. We have seen that the cutting off of the Messiah was after the sixty-two weeks in addition to the seven (or sixty-nine weeks). Here is an interruption, and there could not be a more admirable place for marking the course of the seventy weeks as stopped. The death of the Messiah was a clean breach, not only between God and man, but very particularly between God and Daniel's people and so-called holy city. Daniel's people, Daniel's holy city, rose up against their own Messiah, and crucified Him. Consequently, sixty-nine weeks having run out now, it was 'after' that period. He does not say exactly at the sixty-ninth, but afterwards. That is, there is room left for a space, less or more: God does not say how long or how short. All we can surely gather from prophecy is this: Messiah was not to be cut off till after the sixty-nine weeks. 'After' that time, be the interval less or more, Messiah was to be cut off, and He was to have nothing. And then the next thing of which we hear is an event that took place some forty years, we may say in a general way, afterwards; namely, the destruction of Jerusalem.

Hence it is evident that the past siege has nothing to do with the line of these weeks. Their course is interrupted. The last link of the chain was broken after the Messiah's cutting off. The course of the sixty-nine weeks till then has been uninterrupted; but now the gap comes in. It is created by the death of Messiah; and the next thing that we hear of is, that 'the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city.' What people is here meant? The Roman people. Mark, he does not say that the prince shall come and destroy. He avoids saying so. The people of the future prince — 'the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy.' There is the most guarded care not to tell us that the prince came then, but only that 'the people' of the coming prince would then come for their destined work of destruction. And this is so true that, although they had a prince at their head, the prince who then came up in command of the Romans was anxious not to destroy all. The great desire of Titus, as everybody who knows history must be aware, was to spare the temple; but, as the well-known historian of the Jews tells us, a Roman soldier flung a fire-brand into the temple, and the consequence was that, in spite of the efforts of the Roman commander, it was thoroughly consumed.

Thus, you see, Titus is not the prince that is meant here at all. It is a prince that was coming after the people came. His people were to destroy the city and the sanctuary, and so they did. The Romans came up, were manifestly used as the executors of God's vengeance against the Jews, and did destroy the city and the sanctuary, as the prophecy declares.

But there is a coming prince. A prince of whom? Of Israel? No; of the Romans. That prince has never yet come, and to this I call your particular attention. We have had the Messiah, the Prince; but He is the One that was cut off. Here we have a prince spoken of as coming after Messiah had come and been cut off. His people came and destroyed the city and the sanctuary; but he himself is not come. He was yet to be born. It is a future prince — a Roman prince; and this is the great link for which Satan is waiting. When the prince lifts up his head, Satan means to put forth his power in a way that he has never yet been able to do. He is coming, 'The people of the prince that shall come' — or of a prince that shall come — 'shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood.' The destruction of Jerusalem was not at all to be the end of Jerusalem's sorrows. 'The end thereof shall be with a flood,' just like water that does not come down in one sudden shower merely, but in an overwhelming flood. 'And unto the end war, desolatenesses, are determined.' That is, you have a long vista of things desolate as well as war, and this decreed, impending over Jerusalem after the destruction of it by the Romans.

Such has been the history of Jerusalem. What has it been up to the present day, but a city evidently and always under the abiding wrath of God! None but the enemies of God have been allowed to possess it. Nominal Christians, you know, took possession of it for a short time; but they were comparatively soon turned out, and the most violent enemies of Christianity, and especially of the Jews, as the rule, have followed. Even the nominal Christians hated the Jews. Thus Daniel's people have never had any except their bitterest enemies there, whether they might be Christians who attempted to found their supposed Christian kingdom, or Saracens, or Turks that hold Jerusalem up to the present moment. 'To the end of the war desolations are determined'; even as we have nothing but disaster threatened upon Jerusalem, so we also see how evidently this prophecy has nothing at all to do with the Church. It is Daniel's people, and Daniel's holy city.

But now we come to the last verse: 'And he shall confirm the covenant.' Who is he? Why, the last person just named of course. Who is that? 'The prince that shall come.' It is the Roman prince; and there is what has made the difficulty for most people in reading this prophecy, and made it impenetrable. They have actually confounded the Roman prince with the Messiah. They have not seen the Roman prince at all. They thought it must be Messiah that was to confirm the covenant. They had the new covenant in their minds, and therefore they could not understand. But where would be the good of a new covenant for 'one week'? A covenant for the soul — a covenant for our sins — a covenant for the glory of God — how could this avail only for seven years? Where would be the sense of it? No; it is not Messiah. The Spirit of God here speaks of another prince, and a counter-prince — a prince that will ruin the people instead of loving them — a prince to be connected with the people that destroyed the city and sanctuary instead of building either up. Messiah is to build the temple; Messiah is to sit on the throne of His glory, and build it up another day. But this is to be an adversary of the Messiah — one of His great antagonists; for I suppose, not to speak of an antagonist opposed to both, that two will be at work on the same side; there will be a religious chief, and a political chief: — a fact indeed of great importance for understanding, not only this Scripture, but prophecy in general. If the religious chief is to have his seat at Jerusalem, the political chief will have his seat at Rome (that is to say, 'the prince that shall come,' or the Roman prince). The prince of Jerusalem would not be described as either coming or making a covenant with his own people. This, of course, would be quite senseless. A reigning prince does not make a covenant with his own people. He makes laws, and he sees to the execution of his laws. But we can understand a league, treaty, or alliance, whatever the form of it may be, with another people. Thus every word confirms what I have said — that the person spoken of in the 27th verse does not mean the Messiah, who is the prince of Israel; nay, he does not mean the Antichrist, or the false prince of Israel who will be reigning by-and-by in Jerusalem; but the Roman prince, or 'the beast,' the prince that shall come in the closing crisis.

When he is come, then, he shall confirm a covenant with the many 'for one week.' This is the last week. Here again we see that the last week was severed from the chain of the sixty-nine. The first sixty-nine weeks ran without a break to the cutting off of Messiah. After the sixty-nine He was cut off. Then was the snapping of the connection of the last week from the chain. That week remains to be accomplished in due time; and as the first sixty-nine weeks ran out before Christ's death, the last week is occupied with the Roman antagonist of Christ — the future political chief of the Roman empire who covenants with the mass of Daniel's people, Daniel's holy city. But then the end of that seventieth week is that the Messiah comes in power and glory; and in spite of the efforts of those that help or hinder, and the excessive wickedness then to be found in Jerusalem, all the promises will be accomplished. The Seventy Weeks will be fulfilled, and divine blessing will follow.

Who can deny a great gap? and in the midst of that gap what has come in? Christianity, the calling of the Church. This it is fills up the space between the sixty-ninth week and the seventieth; so that God is always actively working in His own grace and wisdom. Not a hint of this grace to the Gentiles appears here where the prophet speaks only of Messiah's rejection, and the consequent desolation of Jerusalem. Up to the sixty-ninth week it was a question of that poor people being delivered; but they trusted instead to the will of men and their own will to their utter ruin. They were slaves of Satan. The moment you get man's will you will always find Satan's service. Yet so it was. Satan hastened to take possession of that people too glad to throw off Jehovah, as it were, from making use of them as His goodly horse; and on the back of Judah vaulted Satan who thereon became their master and lord. Only there are greater abominations in store.

When and what will these greater abominations be? for such is not the case now. The Jews are what you may call decent people as yet. They are not worshipping stocks and stones. The unclean spirit that possessed them is gone. He left them, as our Lord intimated, after the Babylonish captivity, and he has stayed away for many hundred years. The house is still empty, swept and garnished; but He told them that the unclean spirit shall return, and return not as he went out, but with seven spirits worse than himself. The full power of Satan would accompany the unclean spirit in taking once more possession of Judaism. This is to be in the seventieth week.

Let us look a little more into details. 'And he,' this prince, 'shall confirm a covenant.' It does not mean the covenant. There is no such word there as the definite article. It is corrected in the margin. This is another case in which the margin gives a sense better than the text. You cannot always expect that; for sometimes the text is far better than the margin. But here we have two instances in this very prophecy where the margin is undoubtedly accurate. He shall confirm a covenant. Man is never to be trusted; and so, whatever the appearances may say, the Roman emperor is yet to make a covenant with the Jewish people to let them have their own religion — to sanction its exercise in their own city, and in their own sanctuary. For this, I apprehend, is what the covenant was about. 'He shall make a strong covenant with the many.' 'The many' means the mass of the Jewish people; and the mass of the Jewish people are thus singled out for the reason that there will be some who will not trust the prince. There will be godly ones at this very time truly looking to the Lord. There will be a remnant, whose minds will turn towards Him and His coming; and the Lord will be working in them to draw forth that cry, 'Blessed is he that cometh in the name of Jehovah.' They are looking for another prince; they are looking for Messiah the Prince; they are looking for Him whom their fathers pierced, whom they will acknowledge they pierced themselves when He appears in glory. And for this very reason, though they are only gradually rising, as it were, out of their long slumber of unbelief — for this reason, being born of God, they distrust the arm of flesh. They look for promotion neither to the north, nor to the east, nor to the west. They cry to Jehovah; and accordingly a covenant with the Roman prince does not satisfy them but the mass of the Jews, corrupt and about to apostatize. 'He shall confirm a covenant with the many for one week.' For the present, however, he engages to let the Jews have their own worship for the space of seven years.

'And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.' It is not Christ doing so by His death, which is the very perverse meaning tradition has put on this passage. Why, the cross had taken place many hundreds of years before — we may say nearly two thousand years before. We have seen in the beginning of the 26th verse 'Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing;' and then followed disasters on the Jewish people and city and temple. When finally we plunge into the last week, it is the latter day, the end of the age; and this Roman prince comes forward, who makes a covenant with the mass of the Jews (that is, the unbelieving portion of them or the great majority of the nation); and he promises to let them have their own worship undisturbed, but in the midst he breaks it. Men cannot be trusted in divine things. Even when they agree together against our Lord Jesus, their witness is not true. Man never succeeds where it is a question of God. The only hope for man is God Himself; and the only way in which God will make good his hopes is by his bowing to Christ Himself.

Now there was just the secret: Christ was a stone of stumbling, and the Jews would not have Him. By-and-by they fall not only under the wilful king, the Antichrist in Jerusalem, but besides there will be the Roman prince — the revived imperial head — the great leader of the western powers in the day that is coming. Ere long he stops their worship, he will impose idolatry once more. 'He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease' — the general expression, you know, for the various offerings that the Jews presented to God. God will not be with their effort: it is not really in the current of God's ways. The time is not come. It is not a question of their offering sacrifice and oblation, but of their repenting and receiving Christ — of their finding out their sins, and looking to God about them. But no, they have trusted the prophet-king in Jerusalem, and they have trusted the emperor in Rome; and this is the result from them both: 'He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.'

One is sorry, where much is excellent in combating rationalism, to have to complain of the way in which a learned person here deserts his text, and mixes up without the least warrant the middle of verse 27 with the first clause of verse 26, to the total confusion of God's word. The most ancient commentary extant (Hippolytus, Rom. de Antichristo), which even at Rome, in 1772, they printed along with the true and lately-found Septuagintal version of Daniel, might have guarded him from an error as popular now-a-days and long-prevalent as it is grave and obvious. 'The entire cessation' (says Dr Pusey, Lectures on Daniel, p.184) 'of the bloody sacrifices of the law has a twofold aspect — of mercy and of judgment. To those who have believed in Jesus, He caused the sacrifice and oblation of the law to cease by replacing the shadows, which portrayed His atoning sacrifice, by Himself, the substance, of offering Himself once for all, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. To the Jews, who rejected Him, He caused sacrifice and oblation to cease by the destruction of the temple and city, and the dispersion of the people. On this, the death of the Messiah, follows the sentence of that utter destruction of the city and temple.' Quite true; but the cessation of sacrifice and oblation stands in a wholly distinct connection, and as evidently after the Roman destruction of the city, and in the midst of an entirely novel state of things, as the cutting off of Messiah is before that destruction. Is it not serious to bring in the cessation of the Jewish ritual where Scripture is silent, and to avoid speaking of it where Scripture expressly asserts it?

It is agreed that the central unmistakable prophecy lies in the connection of the destruction of the temple and city with their great sin, the cutting off of Messiah, and that the connection here is not of time but of cause and effect. The Roman destruction of Jerusalem is carefully intimated to be within the gap after the sixty-nine weeks close, and before the seventieth begins. Some forty years, as we know, followed the sixty-ninth week, and the Romans came and took away both their place and nation. Ever since war, desolatenesses, have not been more surely decreed than accomplished.

But the seventieth week awaits its fulfilment; and it clearly supposes two immense changes still in the womb of the future, but as sure to be in the appointed hour, the end of this age, as every other word of the prediction. The Roman empire, or fourth beast, is to ascend out of the abyss, as St John declares in the Revelation, to revive, after its long state of nonexistence, before it consummates its iniquity against the returning Lord Jesus as it did of old in His cross. 'The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and' [not 'yet is,' but] 'shall be present.'

This is one mighty change, pregnant with awful effects for mankind in general, and especially in these lands of the west; but there is to be another equally sure — the return of the Jews in unbelief into their own land by political means, and to the destruction of the mass when the Lord appears to the judgment of the beast and the false prophet, with all their adherents, and the deliverance of a godly remnant. The beast of Rev. 13, 17. is the Roman empire, and the 'coming prince' of the seventy weeks is none other than its last head, who is to confirm a covenant for the last week (or seven years) with the mass of the Jews, and break it in the midst, causing sacrifice and oblation to cease; when we see the last half-week of tribulation follow, or the three and a half years of Daniel and the Apocalypse.

The prophet does not say, but carefully avoids saying, what Dr Pusey makes him say (p. 188), that 'in the last seven' of the 490 years Messiah was to be cut off, or that in the midst of those seven He was to make sacrifice to cease; but to confirm a covenant, not with all, but with the many. It has been shown fully that not the foreign or Roman prince, but his people were to come, as they did, and waste city and sanctuary, with war and desolatenesses decreed to the end; and that this prince himself is to confirm covenant for seven years before this age concludes with the many of the Jews, but break covenant, and protect idols or abominations, and not without the guilty consent of the Jews; so that a desolator will come upon the desolate city, but a desolator quite as opposed to the Roman prince as to his associate, the false prophet-king in Jerusalem.

This alone squares with the grammatical context, with the scheme of prophecy in general, with a covenant for seven years (which most would think distinct enough from an everlasting one like Messiah's), and with the evil character of 'the many' in our prophet. The reader can compare 'the many,' or mass, in Dan. 9: 27, Dan. 11: 33, 39, and Dan. 12: 3, with chaps. Dan. 11: 34, 44, and Dan. 12: 2, 4, 10, where the article is absent and no such sense is intended. 'The many' cannot be viewed as the same with 'many,' but in contrast with the remnant who bow and taste the mercy of the Lord, who certainly are not to know sins ended, expiation for iniquity made, everlasting righteousness brought in, any more than vision and prophecy sealed up, or holy of holies anointed, till the seventy weeks are complete. The destruction and lasting desolation of the city and temple are not closing traits of the vision, but during a timeless gap after the sixty-ninth week and before the seventieth. Nor is there to be consolation for Daniel, or at least for his people as such, till all the weeks are ended. No doubt we Christians enter into the blessing, while the gap goes on for the Jew; and because we by grace believe, sin is brought to an end for us, and everlasting righteousness brought in — not a covenant for seven years, which no scripture connects with Christ. But for the Jew it is desolation, with worse to come, when the foreign prince of Rome confirms covenant 'for one week' with them, and yet breaks it off in the midst — a covenant which is plainly not the new covenant, but merely a human convention for seven years' liberty to worship after the Jewish sort. Compare Dan. 7: 25 for the Roman prince's changing times and laws, and at this very epoch and for the remaining half-week. It is the Jewish laws and seasons, not the saints, which shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the dividing of times. It is the more to be regretted that one should find such mistaken interpretation here, especially as Dr Pusey does not deny, but seems to look for the Jews anew acquiring property in Jerusalem, 'preparing the way probably for Antichrist' (page 189, note).

But here we come to a very difficult phrase indeed. I am afraid the margin does not help us now; but I will endeavour to render a little aid. I have no doubt God has given special light for the moment out of His word; and you must remember that Christian people have been examining carefully our English version for the last 250 years since the translation was made. We must not be surprised therefore, if faults have been found in such a long period of examination, where such vast numbers study, men of prayer as well as of spiritual ability, some few mighty in the word of God.

The literal meaning of the clause is this: 'Upon the wing of abominations a desolator.' Here as often the literal way of rendering it gives but little notion of the sense; but the truth of it is that 'wing' is used figuratively. Now there are two ways in which a wing is thus used in Scripture. From the expanded wing, it may be either for the wider extension of anything or for protecting, as when the hen spreads her wing over her chickens. Thus the figure is frequently used as where the Lord speaks of the bird and her young, and so on. In this case, to spread a wing over signifies to protect the weak in the hour of danger or the like. It is thus used in a good sense, which is one use of the word wing; but there is another use, where it is rather the idea of overspreading from spreading out the wing. Here our translators considered that the word meant the overspreading of the desolations. They took the word 'wing' to indicate the abundant extent or spreading out of those abominations. I take it in the other sense that the wing means protection, and therefore that the preposition means not 'upon,' but 'because of,' or 'on account of;' for the word may mean either the one or the other. If it be a material thing, it means 'on' or 'over;' but if it be a motive, it is rather 'because,' or 'on account,' of the protection of abominations. And everybody knows that 'abomination' means an idol; as the 'abomination of Moab,' or the 'abomination of Ammon,' means the particular idol that each worshipped. 'On account of the protection of abominations a desolator.' This is the meaning of it — that God will raise up a desolating power to come down on the Jews, chastening them because of the protection given to idols. They had made, as the prophet Isaiah calls it, 'a covenant with death and an agreement with hell:' and he speaks of this very time, this very people, and this very circumstance. Isaiah 28 will furnish you with the most important commentary on, or further confirmation of, the expression.

Let us then consider what the meaning is that we have gathered from all. 'And on account of the protection of idols;' that is, because the Roman prince, along with his ally in Jerusalem, had not only interrupted the nominal worship of God among the Jews, but countenanced idolatry in their midst. The worship of God, begun in unbelief, had no value, no power, no acceptance. But still, after all, it was sincere; and it might be said to be, as far as it went, true in the way of form, if nothing more. But forms do not last; and men in the end find their level before God when they take up forms. They must then have reality, and when the forms are not filled with truth, they discard the forms for error, because error is more congenial to the heart of man in his natural state. Hence therefore they have determined to put an end to these forms of the worship of the true God. The emperor of Rome — along with the Antichrist his ally in Jerusalem, the great spiritual chief at that time, the religious head of the world — agrees to set up idols in the temple of Jerusalem. The latter finally sets himself up as an object of divine worship. This is the man of sin, man worshipped as God in the temple.

But Daniel does not give all these details. We only hear that in the midst of the week he shall cause sacrifice and offering to cease, and on account of the protection of idols [there shall be] a desolator. You may remember the same general truth elsewhere as 'the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.' It is the same time and the very same place. Compare, with Matt. 24: 15, Rev. 13: 14, 15. Because of the protection (which I take to be the meaning of the word 'wing') given to these idols, there will be a desolator. A great scourge will be sent in the providence of God to chasten them. That desolator I hold to be what is called 'the king of the north.' He is the person that is referred to here; so that, in a few brief words, we have a reference and an insight to a great mass of facts in Scripture. A desolator is sent down; and you will find that in Isaiah 28, to which I have called your attention already, where you have this 'covenant of death and agreement with hell,' you have an 'overflowing scourge,' the very personage that is called here a desolator.

It is a power from the north, the sovereign of Asia Minor acting under Russian influence. I do not say that it is Russia; but I do say that it is a power completely carrying out the designs of Russia, which is no less jealous of the western powers than anxious to get Jerusalem under its sway. And then they will think they have got a case, and that it is their bounden duty to interfere. Here is the emperor of the west supporting the king in Jerusalem, who is setting up idols and himself in the temple there. The emperor of Russia will not allow this, and he seizes the fact as an opportunity for carrying out his own ambitious designs. His care is not for God; but he makes this his occasion. Men must, of course, always have some plausible excuse for aggrandisement; and this will be the plea. It seems a righteous one; and, having a ground of righteousness in it, God favours it at the beginning. As far as there is righteousness, God always goes so far with it, no matter who they are. Suppose even a child of God, but that what he does will not stand scrutiny? does not God chasten for that bit of unrighteousness? Always. It may be that other people take advantage of the unrighteousness. God will deal with them afterwards; but He will chastise the righteous first. (Cf. 1 Peter 4)

Here then, where all is bad, God permits these men to show themselves out; and, first of all, He judges and scourges the infamous alliance between the people in Jerusalem and the emperor of the west. The desolator comes down from the north, takes Jerusalem in part, and leads into captivity a certain portion (Zech. 14). Excited with hopes, and filled with the highest expectations of success, he goes down into Egypt — as we are told in the last prophecy of this book — to punish the king of the south (that is, the king of Egypt) in that day. In the meanwhile Christ appears and destroys the antichrist. It is the day of the Lord and of His glory; and when the king of the north comes up again, it is not a question of the emperor of the west, for he is gone; it is not a question of the king of the Jews, for he is destroyed. The northern foe too meets the Highest, and the question is decided. He is cast into Tophet. How worthy of God when the day is come to judge the quick!

This therefore is the point, although it be not all entered into here; but you will see the general facts. 'On account of the protection of idols [there shall be] a desolator until the consummation and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate,' that is, upon Jerusalem.

Thus, then, beloved friends, I have given as succinctly, and at the same time with as much clearness, as I was capable of, the general meaning of the prophecy. May the Lord help you, in reading His word, to be more and more strengthened in your souls, and may you be enabled also to see MORE THE CONNECTION WITH CHRIST, AND SO THE DEPTH, OF THE WORD OF GOD. W. K.

Sinai and Its Terrors.

Hebrews 12: 18-21

W. Kelly.

From the triumph at the Red Sea was a succession of divine dealings in nothing but grace to Israel, the Gentile at the end, bringing to Moses his wife and sons, and, after offerings and sacrifice, eating bread with Moses and Aaron and all the elders before God.

The words just read which describe its distinctive character with all vividness, were addressed to confessors of Christ. They had been Jews, and still were exceedingly attached to what they called, and what might reasonably seem to be, the covenant. All know that ancestral religion with any show of coming from God, must have no small fascination for the natural heart. Men assume that what God Himself introduced with the utmost solemnity must be the right thing for man to receive and retain at all cost. But this scripture is expressly far otherwise. God was here giving the plainest warning that although His sovereign grace had brought His people out of Egypt, and they had promised to keep His covenant as the condition of being His peculiar people, it could issue in nothing but failure and ruin. None could live by the commandment holy and just and good, because they were all sinners.

How could sinful man be saved by the law? It was not given to save sinners. It was meant to convince such as seriously tried to obey it, that none could stand on that ground before God. Life is of His grace to the believer. We are saved by grace through faith. He that breaks the law must surely die. Hence no matter what helps may later accompany the law, it is said in 2 Cor. 3 to be the ministry of death and of condemnation. Its real aim is to overwhelm the guilty, that they might turn from self and law to the Saviour.

Accordingly when man fell in Eden, the divine resource was made known. The bruised Seed of the woman was to crush Satan's power. It was Christ, not only before the law, but long even before the promises to the fathers. It was the due time to reveal it when the first pair sinned and became outcasts from paradise.

Long after, Israel undertook to obey Jehovah's voice, and keep His covenant. "All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do" (Ex. 19: 8). They trusted themselves ; they forgot all the solemn witness of the past; they pleaded not the promises to their fathers, still less the everlasting gospel for a lost paradise. On the contrary they made promises to God which sinful man never keeps, and only pretends to in an outward form and with lip homage. There is no reality in it. A groundless hope may buoy up, along with a fearful looking for of judgment. It is terror that rests on men's consciences, and terror is not the way to God or His salvation.

That is what the Epistle to the Hebrews here portrays. The reference is to Ex. 19, 20, the unmistakeable evidence of what all Israel then felt, nay, of what Moses could not but share, and was inspired to state for all time to all that heed the word of God. Such was the inevitable character of God's law-giving at Sinai. It is in vain for men to forget the facts and to imagine a fond dream for religious pride out of what was spoken, seen, and heard at Sinai. God displayed His awful majesty there and then to Israel in a way that was never known in this world before or since. Therefore the Jews boasted of such a beginning of their religion as unparalleled. Only their fathers stood round that Mount of God: but were they not there in abject fear and excessive trembling? Where was there shown the least real knowledge of God? where any true sense of their own state in His sight? What a contrast with him who said, "I have heard of thee by the bearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself in dust and ashes" (Job 42: 5, 6). How little they owned that they were guilty sinners, and that there could be no approach to God until their sins were judged and blotted out from them!

What the scene at Sinai presented was the certainty of God's judgment of sin; of this the passage I have read is a simple, clear, and solemn declaration. Least of all ought Israel to forget that Jehovah is God armed against sin, a jealous God that visits the fathers' iniquity on the children unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate Him, and shows mercy to thousands of them that love Him and keep His commandments. But how could the sinner appear before God arrayed with such terrors? How was he to get rid of his sins to stand before Him? Not a word to this effect appeared in the ten words God spoke that day. It was but little indeed that He did then say, but every word was beyond doubt tremendous and fatal to the guilty. It was meant to fill the heart of man with terror because of his sins. But it is the goodness of God that leads to repentance; it is faith in our Lord Jesus that gives assurance of salvation.

But alas! it is the sad fact and incurable malady of man's heart as he is naturally, that he thinks, feels, and does everything wrong. The gospel he scouts because it is sovereign and divine righteousness. The law he perverts to make out his own righteousness, though it only pronounces death and condemnation on him. His conscience trembles every now and then before the law of God; but he renews his sins ere long. For if there be nothing more but such a dread of God, after the lightnings and thunders pass man returns to his vomit or to wallowing in the mire; so it is that he perishes.

Hence, even in the early days, when the gospel of grace was first sent out by God, there was a constant tendency among both Jews and Gentiles that confessed Christ, to hanker after the law in one shape or another. So the apostle had to seek the recovery of the Galatian saints, and here was led by the Spirit to set forth to the Jews that professed Christ the true character of the law, and its entire difference from the gospel. It was not merely the unconverted who were in danger but those who had begun well. There is the same peril now.

How often where a man is entirely unexercised about his sins, he is occupied with the sins of others! Thank God, I am not "a swearer," nor "a drunkard," nor "a whore-monger," nor "an usurer." And because he can acquit himself of the more glaring transgressions of the law, whereof he sees others guilty, he flatters himself that he is in a position by no means bad. If he be also rigid about the Sabbath, paying his debts to the Levite! remembering what is due to the priest, and making an offering to the Temple of God, is he not a good and religious man? There are not a few like this now. The Lord puts that very case into the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-gatherer. The Pharisee stood and prayed with himself. Here was one thanking God that He was not as other men, extortioners, unclean, unjust, or even as "this taxgatherer." Therefore he believed he was righteous and despised others. But the Tax-gatherer, standing afar off would not lift so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote on his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, not merely a sinner, as one of the crowd, but the sinner, who has not a word to say for himself.

How fatal to turn the law, which God gave to prove how man fails, into a means of pretending to righteousness before Him! How blessed to own the truth as to ourselves, and yet to rest upon the mercy that provides a Saviour!

Then again, there is another danger. In returning to the law since Christ came and died and rose, it is to abandon the great reality of grace and truth to take up a mere shadow. At that time when the apostle wrote, confessing Jews still brought their sacrifices and offerings and such like ordinances of the law. God had forborne since Pentecost, but He would have these shadows to cease before He swept away temple, city and people from the land, which was really but Aceldama, Blood-field. And the apostle lets them know here that when God pronounced the law at Sinai He showed its death-bringing character. The lesson really inculcated at Sinai was that as a man in the flesh, that is in my natural state, there is nothing for me from the law but wrath. It is quite certain that I cannot live before God save in Him to whom God pointed as Saviour from the beginning. "It was for Him that all believers waited. They counted, not on themselves but on the Christ. Yet they accordingly offered sacrifices as a witness and they walked before God, as they worshipped Him, before that Moses was raised up to introduce the Levitical system with all its multiplicity of types and shadows. These were things that they honoured as provisional and preparatory to the One whom they awaited.

But God also looked onward to His own Son becoming flesh, and replacing that system by His work on the cross. It was He who was to be incarnate that appeared to tell of grace in the judgment of Satan before Adam's expulsion from the garden of Eden. Directly man transgressed against God, He came there, and spoke to them of another that should take up the cause of man; of another that should be bruised, but should also and completely bruise the old serpent, the devil.

The Deliverer of man, the Seed of the woman, was to be therefore a person far above man, however truly He might become man through the woman, to do His work righteously and suitably to God's glory.

A believing man is rightly called to resist the devil when he tempts 1 but how can any man apart from Christ bruise the devil under his feet? Only a divine person could really effect that. Hence one is sure that He Who was spoken of when Adam and Eve fell in the garden was none other than the divine person Who deigned to come of woman, and will bruise Satan shortly under our feet.

Very touching it is to know that none other was He who was first Himself to be bruised. Whether He appeared as angel of Jehovah to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob, it was He that we own now as the Son of God before all that He wrought and suffered in the fulness of time. He became man because in Him alone were the elements of His person united that could adequately meet the exigencies of both God and man. He must be able adequately and perfectly to present man to God, as well as God to man.

Further, He must be man to sympathise with man, no less than to die for him. He must be absolutely without sin if He were to become a sacrifice for sin. He must be the propitiation or atonement for our sins if we are to be righteously forgiven. None of this could come to pass, save in the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross.

At Sinai not a ray of kindly light shone, not a token of grace for sinners was given, not a word to encourage approach to God: nothing but the most awe-inspiring menace of death, save for such as love Him and keep His commandments. How inexcusable that any should be so blind about himself and his sins as to take his stand on law before God! It was Cain-like insensibility. Let me help to make the truth plainer by referring you to the scene itself of which the apostle treats.

"The people stood afar off; and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness, where God was." How different from God being in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and committing to us the word of reconciliation! So John 1: 17 contrasts the two: "the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." At Sinai was heard the law; and by the law is the knowledge of sin. The saving grace of God is what teaches us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godlily in this present world, looking for the blessed hope, and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The law is not of faith, and can only kill and condemn the sinner.

The law is associated with that which could be touched, and that burned with fire, and with blackness and gloom, and tempest. Every instrument of divine service was visible and tangible. It essentially met the eye of man. The unconverted man could see and touch its objects, just as much as the believer. There was nothing there that was characteristic of faith. The Christian, on the contrary, walks by faith. We have to do with what is not seen and cannot be touched. Take the cross of Christ. Although there was evident enough the worst effect of man's evil in His pain and shame, the infinite work that was wrought thereon was between Him and God. This was hidden entirely from the eyes and ken of man. It was not the outside of the cross which any one could see that saved believers. It was the council of peace between both. Indeed we may notice that there was a time for Christ upon the cross when all was shrouded in supernatural darkness the very time when our sins were laid upon the head of Jesus. Who saw this within'? None but God. Sin is rebellion against Him, and atonement is entirely between God and Jesus His Son. It was for His glory, as well as for sinners that they by faith might be saved. For no other reason was it possible for God to bruise His own righteous Servant and Son. Why else should He forsake Him in whom His soul delighted? One word explains it: grace on His part; on man's-sin, that even in this the Son of Man should be glorified; and God in Him. It was sin that brought Him down from heaven; it was sin that led Him to the cross on earth. Then and there was our guilt by Jehovah laid upon the Lord Jesus, when He in love, and obedience, became a sacrifice for sin, even for our sins (Isa. 53).

This was all purposely kept from the eye of man; as it most fittingly was made matter of faith in God.

While the work so fully predicted in both O. and N.T., was being enacted, who on earth entered into its wondrous import and bearing? Not a single disciple, not one even of the twelve apostles whom He had so often apprised that so it was to be.

Whether we consider God's doing in love, or man's misdoing in I hatred, we can apprehend in our measure that there should be that darkness of a supernatural kind. Throughout the land of Egypt darkness had been inflicted as a plague by Jehovah, while Israel had light in their dwellings. For three days it lasted, so that they saw not one another nor did any one rise from his place. At the cross of Christ it told a tale to the ear of faith still more profound. It was not an infliction upon wicked men. This darkness surrounded the Holy One of God made sin, and God forsaking, Him because of sin, our sins laid on Him.

He undertook that burden which none other could bear, yet more intolerable to Him than to any other; and God must judge the sin-bearer as sin deserves in His sight. And the certainty that so it was, that it was borne fully and as fully accepted by God is the ground of perfect peace with God.

Man had wrought ill guiltily, incessantly, audaciously for many hundreds of years, and the deplorable result now seen, especially in Israel, who became worse and worse until God destroyed them nationally and dispersed them over all the world. Since then they have never been able to establish themselves in their own country. Such is their state now, "abiding many days without a king and without a prince, and without a sacrifice."

Christianity is altogether different. There the Lord is saving sinners, and gathering saints to His name. He alone bore the burden of sin; and He alone is the Head of the body. But not one word in the verse read treats of either; because Sinai is the theme, and not Christ's work of atonement or of gathering God's children in one. The darkness at Sinai was in view of His law and its war with transgression. At the cross it surrounded Jesus made sin, that sinners who believe might be brought to God without a trace of sin, washed in His blood. The law was so spoken as to strike terror into every heart. At the cross, Christ was doing the deepest, greatest and most loving work He ever did; to man utterly strange, the most wonderful even for God, the most profound for saints. Nothing more abhorrent to God than our sins; yet He that hated them absolutely laid them upon the head of His own Son that He might bear them away for His enemies, henceforth His family.

Christ must bear the burden, which, if He bore it not away righteously, must sink us everlastingly in hell. The perfect sacrifice on our behalf to God, He completely clears every one that believes in Him, from the judgment of God.

It is positively declared by our Lord (John 5: 24), that he who believes has life eternal and does not come into judgment but is passed out of death into life. Such is the virtue of life in Him, as the apostle John witnesses; such the efficacy of His death, according to the apostle Paul. Christ bore the judgment at God's hand, that we who believe might be set free.

Nothing can be clearer than the astonishing work of divine grace in salvation. Christ bore that judgment alone, even those most concerned being wholly ignorant of such wondrous grace, the foundation of God's righteousness till He revealed it in the gospel. None could intermeddle. No stranger could intermeddle with our joy; still less could any stranger intermeddle with the judgment of God and our sins. Hence it is that the gospel goes forth fully and freely to the greatest sinner upon the earth.

It was altogether different at Sinai. There they stood afar off at the foot of the mountain all aglow with fire, the very mediator, Moses, quaking with terror.

But when the Holy Spirit led them to apprehend the cross of Christ what a contrast! Where sin was atoned for the victim was consumed by fire. In such sacrifices, the blood was brought in and the body burnt without the camp. The one part attested His absolute fitness for God's presence and efficacy there; the rest attested His identification with our sins and was burnt by fire outside. Christ, perfectly holy, identified Himself with all our evil.

To bear our evil He came, and evil cannot be got rid of except by divine judgment, which the fire represented.

But here, the mountain, Sinai, on fire was to warn men of what must be their portion who, neglecting Christ, betake themselves to law and fail under it as they must.

Yes, blackness, gloom, tempest, preternatural trumpet, and God's voice, more terrible than all the fitting accessories of the law, threatening wrath and death to those that trust themselves instead of Jesus the Christ.

"The law worketh wrath," instead of saving from it as Christ does.

And the trumpet's sound was no earthly trumpet, its blast sounding louder and louder only added to the abject terror of their hearts.

Did God's voice at Sinai relieve the Israelite? Calm, distinct, unmistakeable, it pronounced what must be the knell of death for each guilty of slighting or dishonouring Him : for him who went after other gods or broke any commandments of Jehovah, this voice was more terrible than all the other signs and sights of that tremendous day.

Not one word of His glad tidings was then breathed with the law. This is the work, not of God: but of Christendom all over which mixes up the law and the gospel. I should be thankful to hear of a single denomination where it is not habitually practised. Nor is this mixture in the large buildings only, in the little ones too. But whether in little or in great, the issue is that man is mixed up with the divine work of the cross; and what Christ has finished is supplemented and smothered under works of law.

Here the law is wholly distinct from the gospel. At Sinai it was unrelieved terror, and God purposely did it that they might cry out for Messiah, the Saviour. They never thought of Christ. They cried out in fact for Moses as the mediator between them and God. But His mind was to give a far better mediator; but it was kept quite distinct from the law, its fears and its distance.

Therefore they entreated that they might never hear that voice again. What! never hear the voice of God! Yes, when He made known the law God's voice was far more awful than the unearthly trumpet, or the gloom or the thunder and lightning at mount Sinai.

Such was the ushering in of the Jews' religion. It was wholly devoid of mercy for the sinful; it threatened death on failure. It presented nothing of Christ; and only filled them with alarm and despair. God could use it to crush self- righteousness and thus negatively drive to grace in His Son. The background and surroundings of Sinai had for their object to set aside all hope of life from the law. Righteousness in that way is a perfect impossibility for mortal man.

The law can only prove death to the sinner. For "The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law." It is Christ who is life, and gives life to the believer.

The law can but kill fallen man. Yea, here we are told of the proclamation at Sinai: if so much as a beast touch the mountain it shall be stoned or thrust through with a dart. Yet, a beast having neither guilt nor conscience, is incapable of moral responsibility to God. Hence if a beast devours another beast none thinks of murder in the case. But God would mark at Sinai that the law overflowed with the threat of death all round, and that sinful man under it stood in the worst case of all: for who can deny that he is most guilty, and not a beast? Fallen man has a conscience which habitually bears witness against him and his sins.

Accordingly, at Sinai, God left no sort of doubt that there was no comfort, nor even hope, for man under the law. "As many as are of works of law are under curse" (Gal. 3: 10). Such is the character and issue of the law of which the Jews boasted. Yet have confessors of Christ sought to mix it up with the gospel. And how very many all over Christendom to-day have been crying: "Have mercy on us and incline our hearts to keep this law."

Used to this cry once, I have not, thank God, heard it for sixty years. Still it rises up continually, where the gospel is professed. But such a mixture is a grievous mistake. It is to perpetuate what this scripture before us and many more were meant to avert. The law, says the apostle, is good if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man [which is not a lawful use of it] but for the lawless and disobedient. If you put yourself under the law, it can and must condemn and kill you; not because it is bad but because you are. The law is necessarily a killing power to the transgressor. The crucified Christ is the only Saviour of the lost. The law as such executes its office to the bitter end; but when it brings the sinner to the sense that he is a dead man before God, grace shows him how Christ suffered for sins that he might believe and be saved.

This mixing up of the law with the gospel is as pernicious as it is unscriptural. "For ye are not come" to Sinai, but to Zion, even had we been Jews. "By grace ye are saved through faith." It is on a wholly opposed principle. No doubt there is another way of ruin; not by going back to rites and ordinances, but by giving up to sin and licentiousness. Compare Heb. 6: 4-8, and Heb. 10: 26-30.

The aim here was to point how, when law was given, God indicated the folly of expecting salvation through it. So terrible was the sight that even Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake." Who can say that this is the effect of the gospel? Does God's glad tidings produce dread, or take it away from the believer?

It gives life, pardon and peace. It assures of Christ's love and of God's love, which is more than even glory. The glory manifested will be the proof of the love that gave it; but love is the source of that gift and of a vast deal more.

Look at the Saviour and the sinful woman who came into the house of Simon the Pharisee. Weigh if you can, the love shown and vindicated in that uncongenial abode. Her sins were many, but she believed and loved; for love so gratuitous and divine drew out her love. And the Lord manifested it, delighted to make it known, not to the unbelieving Simon only, but to all present, and especially to her. He was not in the least degree ashamed of grace to the sinner. He knew, laid bare and refuted all that was passing in the Pharisee's heart; but He manifested God's love in His own. That love is shed abroad in the heart now; and so it will be in the presence of the Father and the Son.

May the Lord, therefore be pleased to deliver from all misuse of His word. For we have to do with the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ. It is neither grace alone, nor yet truth alone; for either way would be the utmost danger. Grace alone tends to laxity and even licence; truth alone to a hardness and rigour, offensive to God and unbecoming to man. Grace and truth in all their fulness we know in our Lord Jesus; and thus alone were we won and blessed. Thus too we live, walk, serve and worship. Can there be a stronger contrast with the scene of Sinai?

W. K.

The Sinner Saved

Luke 7: 36-50.

W. Kelly.

(BT Vol. 20, p. 68.)

Immediately before the deeply affecting interview between our Lord and the woman that was a notorious sinner in the town into which He had passed, we have Him pronouncing on the moral state of mankind — more particularly of those that had the word of God, the Jews. For we must remember that among such our Lord was manifested. They were not, like the heathen, ignorant of the scriptures. They were entrusted with that great privilege, and professed to prize and preached the word. They had no excuse on the ground of sitting in darkness. All the word of God then revealed was theirs; and yet what could compare with that generation, as the Lord says? John the Baptist they did not like: he was too strict for them. And when the Son of Man, the Saviour Himself, followed, they called Him by still more shameful names: — He was too loose for them. Thus, it does not matter what may be the testimony God gives, man has always some reason for refusing.

"But wisdom is justified of all her children." In the Gospel of Matthew wisdom is justified of her children, because the Lord there welcomes the weary and heavy-laden that come to Him, and gives them rest. But Luke was led to specify in the Pharisee's house the guilty woman of the city. It is in truth the Lord anticipating what God was going to do in the gospel everywhere. So he says, "Wisdom is justified of all her children." Who could have expected that henceforth a child of wisdom was to be found in a notorious child of folly? This was her known and evil character; but when God drew her to the feet of Jesus, all was changed. Such is the power of His grace in Jesus. And He has taken care that this admirable fountain shall not be closed, having employed Luke thus to point it out in His word. Who else would have thought of a robber reconciled to God on the cross? who of a sinful woman picked out from the mass of human beings? a reprobate character saved by faith and sent away in peace?

"But wisdom is justified of all her children." The robber vindicated the wisdom of, God; for he confessed the Messiah when the High Priest, the Roman Procurator, and the Tetrarch of Galilee, in that day, mocked, rejected, and condemned the Lord and Saviour. That robber gave the lie to the wisdom of the world.

People thought not a little of education in those days; and they think a great deal more of it nowadays; but where were the "cultured"? Not on. the side of Jesus, but against Him. The robber had nothing to boast on that score; but he justified the wisdom of God against all the pride, knowledge, power, and glory of man. They all rejected the Lord to their own everlasting shame and ruin. The robber at the last moment was saved; only then he became wise, for he had been Satan's dupe all his life before; but how gracious that divine wisdom which can take up its abode in the breast of a hardened criminal at the last!

And here was a woman that no decent person had the smallest acquaintance with, who had sunk into the depths of depravity; here is this woman brought forward to vindicate divine wisdom in another way altogether. There are two characteristics of human wickedness. The one is violence; the other is corruption. The woman clearly was a sample of corruption, as the robber of violence. But the distinctive truth of the gospel is, that redemption depends not upon what you bring to the Redeemer, but on what God gives in and from Him. There is not a single quality in your heart or life that could commend you to God; nay, if you read them in the light of God, you would yourself condemn all. "But God commendeth His love toward us [not ours towards Him], in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

It was impossible to give a greater proof of love than dying for His enemies, and enemies in mind by wicked works, not merely through some mistaken cause or misunderstanding. Sinners, because powerless, are the very persons God takes up and saves; therefore let no person whatever, man or woman, aged or youthful say, "I am too bad to be saved." It is just because you are so bad that you need such a Saviour. Therefore does Jesus bring God's saving grace to you. He does not expect any good from you as you are. You must first receive the blessing; then, as Luke proceeds to set forth, when the grace of the Saviour is applied, when the heart bows to Him, His grace transforms the man or woman so that he or she becomes a totally different person. Yet not the transformation saves, but only Christ; and this gives the entire glory to God. If it were the good the Christian afterwards does that saves the soul, it would be man reaping the glory

But it is not so. Since the fall, man is altogether bad, as well as guilty. God no doubt works a great change in the heart that receives the Lord Jesus; but it is not his new moral qualities, not the difference of his life practically, that procures salvation, nothing but Jesus; and therefore by believing on Jesus. For only the sovereign grace of God, coming down to man in Christ His own Son, could save the sinner from his sins and from the judgment of God. This we are here given to know; as God has written it for the purpose.

If the story of this woman were quite exceptional, we should not have it presented as it is. Many things of great moment took place that were not historically recorded in Scripture. For instance, at the beginning of the Bible, we have not a single word about the creation of angels. Man would have put it there if he had written a Bible, instead of God alluding incidentally elsewhere as to an already accomplished fact. For God, in writing the Bible through inspired witnesses, does not state when He made angels. Why not? Because it does not fall within His design to disclose it as history. And to this faith always adheres. Let us then not doubt that what God reveals is at the right time and place, not otherwise. So here we do not find the new and blessed effects of grace in the woman, real as they were, enlarged upon. It must have done souls harm. They would fall from grace in seeking to first acquire good qualities. Even as it is souls too often strive to win for themselves a good character in order to be pardoned, and thereby Christ and His work are annulled.

Scripture simply presents the Saviour, and in the background the host that invited Him into his house, a man without faith, though a Pharisee. A woman also came there uninvited, the last person seemingly to be attracted by the grace of Jesus. But God showers grace on souls that least deserve it. What a witness is here of the way of grace with one that had been altogether abandoned to evil! Is it not enough to enlarge our thoughts of God and to humble the pride of human nature? Where in the Gospels did grace produce more beautiful and deep effects, or more immediately, than in this poor woman without a character? What produced it will produce it again. The woman was the object of mercy; the transforming power was Christ. Indelible was the impression that the Saviour made on that woman's heart, and the consequence was that His reflection shone out in her ways. It would be hard to find greater humility, a clearer repentance, or a more devoted heart. And this all wrought so soon! How great must be, therefore, the efficacy of the Saviour's grace! This is what God commends. It is indeed His own love to the sinner; and faith can commend it not only to any hitherto unconverted, but to the converted that hesitate. What a reproof for any, converted or not, to be left behind by such a woman!

Let us then look into the Holy Spirit's account of this transaction. Simon, the Pharisee, asked the Lord to his house. No doubt he thought he was acting in a generous manner. But while the Lord and the company were there, a stranger entered — "a woman in the city that was a sinner." Those terms are sufficiently emphatic. They do not mean a sinner in the ordinary or broad sense that we all sinned, but in that peculiar force which made the woman notorious in the town; and everybody knows what this is. What drew her? Jesus, nothing but Jesus.

The first thing for your attention is that God does not make the path of faith an easy one. His word is truth, His call is simple, so far as the message is concerned. He uses all plainness of speech to sinners, no matter where they be. But there are always difficulties for the soul. There is a lion in the way of every one that believes in the Lord Jesus. The Destroyer tries to hinder, just as much as there is a Saviour that loves to save. The "lion" in the way of the woman was that Jesus was "at meat" in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Such a man, having no faith in God's grace always stands upon morality or forms or both. The man that prided himself on his religion would be exceedingly disgusted with an immoral woman coming into his house, especially when he had company.

What emboldened the woman to go there and then? Apply it to your own case. Supposing a party invited to dinner, what would you feel at the intrusion of a worthless character, especially a woman of scandalous life? There is not a single man from a lord to a labourer but would feel that his castle, great or small, was invaded. Would not the labourer be as indignant as the lord? Nor was the intruder insensible in the least; yet grace drew her notwithstanding, and gave her the needed courage to go at all cost. Whose grace? Her own? It was Christ's — entirely and exclusively the attractive power of His goodness. She felt herself so much in distress about her sins, so much in earnest to cast her burden on the Saviour, that she said as it were to herself, "There is only One that can aid me; He who has been giving sight to the blind, and strength to the lame; He who cleanses the leper, and bids the paralytic rise; He who has been blessing even a Gentile and healing his servant; He who quickened a dead man as he was carried to the grave, might perhaps deign to speak pardon to a depraved and wretched woman like me.

What was the way of grace with her soul? The good news of Him by the Holy Spirit touched the springs of her heart, so that her awakened conscience could not but go with guilt to His feet. When it is but an idea or a feeling, there is not such earnestness of purpose. Shame, fear, pride, etc., outweigh and turn aside. Naturally the woman might have thought the difficulties insuperable, the moment most inopportune. What would the Pharisee say and do at such a liberty on her part? And the holy Saviour! How could she venture to go near Him, especially in such circumstances as these? "Ah, but" (whispered the still small voice to her) "there may never be another opportunity. You may never see or hear Him again. Go now; seek Him at once." Sense of need in herself and of grace in Him silenced every doubt and refused yielding to any fear. Not a moment must be lost. Her sins, her grievous sins, drove her to Him. He was there; Pharisee, disciples, all the world, could not keep her back from the Only One that availed her. She was in good earnest. Are you, my dear friend? Yet you know you have sins on your conscience warning you of God's judgment for evermore? How awful to put off, to make excuse, to trifle with His grace! For is not the Saviour always passing by when you hear the gospel? Do you neglect so great salvation? Is He not near to everyone of us? You are called to go neither to the heavens nor into the depths to find Him. "The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart which we preach. . . . that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

I remember a friend that was saved by these very words, and a remarkable man he was, one most acceptable in a certain city in the north of England. Private and public dinners were not quite complete in the place without him. He was the man for a good story and a bright song, able to enter genially into all that occupied the company. But he was utterly without God, living only for this world, pleasing himself and other people, but with no sense of sin, and no care for God. He had a friend who was rather an imitator of this. You know there are many imitative wits, but not many original ones. Now this friend was regarded as of the former class and passed off jokes like the latter in his humble way. The lesser had a grave brother who was the constant butt of the greater's pleasantry.

One day the greater met the grave man, and asked him "How is your brother"? The grave man looked graver still and said, "He is saved." The effect was as though a chasm opened at his feet. He was astonished at the answer and the fact alleged. He had never heard of such a thing in his life before. A man saved! particularly a man he knew, who had no more thought of God than himself, not the least concern for his salvation, but living in pleasure and vanity! When he recovered his breath, he asked how that was. Why, said the grave man, do you not know the scripture? quoting the words from Romans. "You do not mean to say that is in the Bible," said he. Some that do not read the word of God, when once arrested, are much more affected than those only reading it as a duty. This shows how carelessly men read: it ought not to be; but it is a common fact. The words seemed to him wondrous. He apparently had not heard them before, though of course he had; he did not remember the words because he knew nothing of the truth conveyed by them. Asking where was this passage, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved," he was told the epistle, chapter, and verse. As soon as his public position permitted, he got alone with God, and did not leave his retirement until he by the faith of Christ was brought to Himself.

That man lived a devoted Christian, an excellent and earnest preacher of the gospel, and departed to be with Christ but a short time ago. The story may show that what God describes in the Bible is going on day by day. Do not think it is something out of your reach, or not urgent on you now. Why should this man and that woman be saved, and you not? Why should you turn a deaf ear to those gracious words of God, mighty to save? Why not follow the converted robber, or the abandoned woman, brought out of all their iniquity to God? Alas! there are men and women too proud, as themselves say, to be saved in the same way as either. But, my friends, have you no fear of being lost with the other robber? There are only two ways, like the two robbers, the one lost and the other saved. Are you then too proud to be saved with the believing robber, but not too proud to be lost with the impenitent robber? What is this but supreme folly, madness, and sin? Is it not the blinding power of the enemy, God's enemy and yours?

Think of their endless doom who thus live and die; think now of that awful companionship through all eternity. Think on the other hand of the blessed on high, many no doubt taken out of the gutters of this world, out of all their wallowing in open wickedness or selfish frivolity and pleasure, yea out of darkness and evil and ungodliness even when veiling themselves in a vain mantle of religion. Oh what a blessed portion "to be with Christ" in the blessed throng! The word declares that the Lord Jesus gives eternal life for heaven, and will adjudge to hell. All depends on how you treat the Lord Jesus. Those who believe God honour His Son. See how this woman bore herself toward Him. She was aroused in conscience, drawn in heart, and so filled with good courage that she appears not to have thought of the Pharisee or of any one else in the house but the One on Whom her soul was concentrated. She sought only the Saviour, caring not for aught else that she might be saved. She went because of her sense of her sins and utter ruin. She knew how unable she was to resist temptation and refuse sin; she. knew that, having sinned habitually and in the face of shame, she would go on, sinning to the end. Without Him she could do nothing.

But what about you? It is not a question what kind of sin is committed. It is very encouraging for the soul that the Saviour does not disdain the grossest sinner, the most unworthy man or woman. This ought to encourage you. If you say, "I have not been so bad a sinner as that," remember that it is not the gross sinners merely that are cast into hell but sinners, whatever the sort or degree of sin theirs may be; and without doubt you are not saved, unless you receive Christ by the Holy Ghost for your soul. This is what the woman did; and mark her conduct. Assuredly she showed her faith by her works: this is always God's way. It is not that works could save of themselves for a moment; but faith working by love is most acceptable to God. This is the kind of works the epistle of James speaks of. Therein are specified two examples, Abraham, and Rahab.

Now it is plain that the work of Abraham, if it had not been of faith, would have been the worst possible. Can you conceive an act so evil as for him to have offered up his son Isaac with his own hands, unless it had been a trial of his faith in the words of God? And what does the Holy Spirit tell us of Rahab? She received the spies that came to destroy her king and country. This would have been another execrable work, if it had not been bowing to God in faith. The one and only thing that made it acceptable to God, was that He was leading His people, and she knew it and was obedient. This was the difference between her and every other in Jericho. Rahab alone had faith in the living God of Israel, and this saved herself and her family. As Abraham gave up to God's will the resistance of all natural affections in the sacrifice of his son, assured that God would give Isaac back, so with Rahab and her feelings of patriotic duty. She would have been shocked at the idea of entertaining the spies if she had not seen the authority of God at stake. Was she to fight against God? It is the same God fully revealed in Christ Who has to do with you now.

God in view of eternity is calling on you to hear Christ's word, even commanding to believe the name of His Son (1 John 3: 23), yea commanding men everywhere to repent. And how can one truly show repentance? By turning away from all sins and self in the sight of God. The attempt to avoid evil and get good by watching and praying, by reading the word of God and taking the sacrament, is not repentance. It is a religious but unbelieving abuse of scripture and of those institutions of God. What is there more blessed than the word of God and prayer, than baptism and the Lord's supper, in their proper places and for their right ends? But if one make them the means of salvation, putting them in place of the Saviour, it is only less evil than the worship of the mass, and prayer to the virgin and the saints, or anything alike idolatrous.

But God, rich in mercy toward sinners, drew the woman that was a sinner, to the Lord Jesus. Who else could meet her guilt and shame and misery? And we are told that she brought with her an alabaster box or flask of ointment. It is better to say unguent (for when men speak of "ointment," not a few think of provision for a wound or sore). It was a precious unguent fit for a king's use. But those unhappy women, living by their shameless ways, often spend recklessly on their faces in order to recommend their persons. It is not said she bought the unguent for the purpose, but that she "brought" it. One can scarce doubt that she bought it for her own purposes. All was now changed. It was the most precious thing she had in the world, and therefore she brought it with a full heart for Jesus. She did not consult the apostles nor ask the virgin Mary. Yet nothing could be more comely, or appropriate, than her conduct. Who taught her? The Spirit of God. It was because her heart was opened to the power of the grace of Jesus. She needed no tongue of man to tell her now. In the depths of her soul she knew by the teaching of God's Spirit that there was none to compare with Jesus; and she was right.

This entirely changed all her thoughts and affections. Christ was now her life, however little she understood it, transforming accordingly her character, and forming new ways. Instead of being as formerly the brazen-faced woman, henceforth she became modest and humble. Christ made her forget herself altogether — a thing otherwise impossible to any; and how in contrast with all her life before! Why should we wonder? Such is the true and spontaneous effect of Christ on the soul that believes on Him. Who could fail to observe the marked change? and all the more because she forgot the others and hid herself behind the Lord Jesus.

Up to that day she sought the eye of men; now she thought of none but that Saviour. What now were any other eyes to her? Time was when she planted herself boldly and tried to catch if she could get the least admiration from anyone; but now for her soul "Jesus only"! And when she ventured in with her cruse of unguent, she stood behind at His feet weeping. What an unexpected marvel of moral beauty! It was the life of Christ manifesting itself in suited ways. She was standing as a penitent behind Him. Never did she think of coming before His face? She did not reason on it; but in truth He could give peace behind, just as readily as in front. Behind was her place. She knew by a divinely given instinct that He Who gave eyes to the blind and raised the dead would understand her need and distress and repentance. Yes, and she understood him better than by any human intelligence.

Alas! that any should wish to reduce the Lord Jesus as much as possible to the level of an ordinary man. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also." The woman knew better, as she stood behind at His feet weeping. It is known, of course, that they did not sit on chairs as we do, but when taking their meals, lay reclining on couches with their feet stretched out for their convenience behind them. Thus the woman could reach Christ's feet readily, because they appearing without would be accessible to her as He lay reclining at table. Not only did she weep, but "began to wash His feet with tears." Who would have thought of this but a woman deeply feeling and changed from all her old ways? She also wiped His feet with the hairs of her head. Ah! how often had those hairs been like nets to catch loose and foolish men: now they were used to wipe the feet of Jesus. "And she kissed His feet, and anointed them with the unguent."

There were those who looked upon that scene with very different eyes. First of all turn to Simon: he had little estimate of the Lord when he asked Him to his house. This was plain enough in that he did not kiss Him (which was the usual mark of kindness in a host); nor did he give water for His feet, which was only common courtesy. He perhaps said to himself, "A man like that ought to feel highly honoured, if he is asked to my house, and I give him a dinner." But now that he saw a loose woman thus engaged, he was sure that Jesus could not be what he was thought. A prophet to his mind must be more rigid than a Pharisee; and assuredly a Pharisee would have walked on the other side of the road with a scowl at the woman, if he deigned to notice her at all. All turned in his mind against the Saviour. "He spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner." How far from the blessed truth that Jesus came for sinners, not for little only but for confessedly great sinners! Who can be conceived worse than "the lost"? What does it mean now, what by-and-by when God enters into judgment? Simon entirely missed the mind of God in his thought. He was like the Pharisees generally in the darkness of nature, whilst flattering himself that he was a guide of the blind and an instructor of the foolish.

The Lord proved that He was a prophet and infinitely more than a prophet. He read the man's heart as well as the woman's, and, yet more, He revealed God's love. Not that Simon uttered a word but thought his evil saying within himself. "And Jesus, answering," i.e., the unuttered judgment of Simon's mind, "said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee," giving the parable of the two debtors, the great and the small. "And when they had nothing to pay, he [the creditor] frankly forgave them both. [Tell me] which of those therefore will love him most" (ver. 42). "I suppose," said Simon, "he to whom he forgave most." Thus did Simon unconsciously condemn himself and vindicate the grace of God. There was a man without real sense of sin, with no sense whatever of forgiveness and consequently without fear of God (Ps. 130: 4), to say nothing of love. There was the woman who truly acknowledged her enormous debt in presence of grace. Her love was real and great; in faith she came to Him Who will in no wise cast out, and did not doubt that the great Saviour would look on the great sinner, compassionating even her; and so He did. "She loved much," Simon not at all. As our Lord said, Simon had rightly judged the truth in the abstract, but, having no faith, he hated and despised the Lord.

It was equally plain that the woman loved after a new and divine sort. What produced this? Faith in Jesus. Love without faith is of no account with God, absolutely worthless, merely human. Faith is the root, and love is the fruit as here. "And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment" (vers. 44-46).

O my friends, why not go and spread out your guilt before Him? Why tarry longer in willing bondage to Satan, when the Deliverer is near to save you? He knows all already, so that you may honestly confess all to the Lord. And how did she tell it? By her tears, her ways, her heart. Nor was she wrong. For He recognised the faith His own grace produced. The word of God speaks of doing the truth, as she did now. Words of truth are good; but acts are more powerful sometimes than any words of man. And there was the only Man that could read the heart and interpret it justly, truly, and graciously. This was everything to the woman, now turned from darkness to light, sanctified to God by faith in Christ, a jewel that will shine in His presence for evermore.

Dear souls, are you to be one of His to receive forgiveness and inheritance among .he sanctified like her? The only way is to be at His feet now, taking the place of the lost sinner at once. Doubt not His salvation by grace. It is not exactly saying that from a lost sinner you may be a saved sinner, but a sinner saved. There is no small difference between the two. A "saved sinner" is a common phrase, which might lead a man to think that he may sin after being saved without any ado; that God allows him quite naturally to go sinning and sinning. But the word to the family of God is, "we write unto you that ye sin not" (1 John. 2) For the sinner, when he obeys the call of God, becomes the saint, in other words a man separated from sin, the world, and Satan, unto God. Nobody denies that the old man is still there as a fact, but to his faith crucified with Christ, that he should not serve sin. But in himself what weakness, and how exposed to snares, and his path full of dangers! He is like one going through a furnace with his pockets full of powder. He needs a mighty Guide and Protector; and this and far more is Christ, on Whom God calls him to hang as a child clings to its mother. Without Him the Christian can do nothing acceptable to God — can bear no fruit.

We need, therefore, all through the journey to depend on the Saviour. So the Woman was doing — looking to the Saviour and to Him only. As she listened, what must have been her joy when she heard the Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the world, vindicate her and God's wisdom with that erring child of folly, now by His grace a child of wisdom evermore! Whatever may have been your folly, it is high time now to become a child of the wisdom that comes down from above. Beware of the earthly kind, earthly, sensual, devilish. What He was to the woman once so depraved, He will be even to you in the midst of your sins to deliver you from them. Do not wait to get a better character, but go as you are to the Lord. We do not know that this woman had been even the day before brought to hate herself and her sins. Even at the moment she entered the house, she was known only and significantly as "a sinner." What time or means or power of reform had she? No, it was Jesus attracted her; grace, yea God, she found in Him. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus that produced faith; and all that is good and holy follows: grace sees to it. Beyond doubt I am called to believe. If I believe not, I neither judge my sins and sinfulness, nor know the true God. Jesus is nothing to me. If I believe in Him, it is all mine; and all yours if and when you believe in Him. How good is our God! He has sent His own Son to do the work of redemption, to suffer for our sins. So Christ applies the parable.

Do not confound this woman with Mary in John's Gospel (not named by Matthew and Mark). The one anointing took place at the end of the Lord's ministry, the other far earlier which Luke here records. The one was the anointing of Himself by a saint devoted to Him; the other by a sinner without a character, just being brought to God. They were wholly different facts. We do not find Mary of Bethany weeping over the Lord, or any sign of penitence there. If you speak of some resemblance, how could there but be, if divine love worked in the heart of either the lately abandoned woman or the long proved child of God? Some have supposed her to be Mary Magdalene. This is another of the fallacies of tradition, and irreconcilable with scripture. Mary of Magdala comes forward first in the next chapter (Luke 8) as a stranger. "And certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven demons, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others." These are brought before us as altogether new persons. This Mary is nowhere spoken of as having been a woman of loose life; hers was the dreadful lot of having seven demons dwelling in her — an extremely awful case as a prey to the power of the devil, whether men believe it or not. Such is the difference that scripture makes between the two women.

To confound the penitent with Mary of Bethany, or Mary of Magdala, is one of those moral blunders theologians make with regard to the Bible, of which none would dream if dealing with any other book. Men let loose their fancy when they read or write on the Bible. They betray far less with other books. They like to lower God's book. Take up the Bible as a mere divinity student, and you will never understand it. You must approach God and it as a sinner. The scribe of this age, the "higher critic," is insensible and lost to all its blessing. The Bible judges man; but if I set up for such unworthy criticism, I am judging the Bible, which is the essence of infidelity; for who and what is man to judge God and His word? Yet this spirit of infidelity was never so rife as now in Christendom, and never before so abundant in Great Britain, to say nothing of less favoured lands, whatever some prophesy of a good time coming. It is a day of rebuke and blasphemy. It is an hour of many antichrists. The Word personal is humanised, no less than the written word. May grace give you who believe the love and reverence of the new born penitent!

The person who reads this divine story in faith gets a true and holy and profitable view of God's way with a sinner. The grace of the Lord does not tell us who the woman was. There are men and women curious to know all about her. What the Christian wants to learn is just what God reveals. The Lord threw a gracious veil over the woman's name. It is enough for us to know that, bad as she had been, grace saved her for ever; and this means a new life given, as well as propitiation made in due time. What edification for you or me or any to hear her name? We shall know her in heaven; we ought to see and admire the holy love which withholds her name, while disclosing her misdeeds sufficiently. We hear that her sins were "many." The Christian has not a good word to say about himself; and if you were known as God knows you, who would have a good word to say about you? Oh, let us have the very best word to say of the Saviour, as He warrants me to say His good words to you. Indeed the Lord is a Saviour in earnest and a friend in need; a Saviour to the uttermost and above all price. The love of Christ, how rich and true! It was His love which, by the action of the Holy Ghost, reproduced its like in the woman's heart.

To His host the Lord turned and said, "Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven; for she loved much." The word "for" is sometimes a reason why, and sometimes an evidence why. In this case it is the evidential "for," not the causative. It was not because she loved much that the Lord forgave her. It was His grace that caused her love.

But there is more. "And He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven." Without this declared to herself, how much would have been lost! It was a great thing to hear Him tell those that judged her and misjudged Him (which was far worse), "I say unto thee (Simon), Her sins, which are many, are forgiven"; but how much more when He deigned to turn round even to her and say, "Thy sins are forgiven!" And you think all this quite extraordinary; and so indeed it is. But let no one think himself a real Christian till he is in the enjoyment of this primary blessing of the gospel. For what is it but the Lord saying to you, not of course in a dream or in a transient feeling, but by the precious word which you receive from God, "Thy sins are forgiven?" How can you sing and praise with joyful heart if your sins are not forgiven? There can be no genuine thanksgiving, no cry to Abba Father, unless you know your sins forgiven. Until then, you dread God; and fear has torment; but when consciously forgiven on divine testimony, you rest on God's love to you in the Lord Jesus. Thenceforward, what matters anything the devil can insinuate? what man or woman say? or the world may frown?

It is impossible, some affirm (nay many a minister constantly teaches), that anyone can tell whether his sins are forgiven. Really one might think from such unbelieving ignorance that people had gone back to heathenism. Were there no Saviour, they could truly say it; and so they might, if there were no divinely inspired record of the Saviour. But for what is the written word given, but that we may know that forgiveness is as much for us who believe as for her?

What was the effect on the Jews that had the law and the prophets, but disbelieved Jesus? Very much the same as on those who, having the scripture now, hesitate to receive forgiveness at His word. "Who is this," they said, "that can forgive sins also"? They had heard of His healing the lame, feeding the hungry miraculously, performing all wonders of power and love; but now He had gone so far as to forgive sins also: who had ever heard the like of that? Was it not God's prerogative? Undoubtedly. How does the Lord answer them? He said to the woman, "Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace." How simple, suited, and beautiful! It is not, "Thy love hath saved thee." She did love and much; yet not this but her faith saved her. You recollect, perhaps, a natural philosopher (once a missionary) who flooded the country with a little book crying up love as the greatest, thing in the world. It is the greatest thing where there is living faith; without faith it is not divine but merely human and of the creature.

Now God accepts not what is of the creature as between Him and the guilty soul. But His saving grace has appeared to bless the soul, however guilty; and the entrance of blessing into it is and must be through faith; and love and hope follow. Hence the Lord says, "Thy faith hath saved thee." Listen not to deceivers, who are self-deceived; listen to no words of charm, no matter how sweet they sound. Friends of error maybe by your side; enemies of the truth may rise up against you. Jesus, the Son of God, is more and nearer to a needy soul than all beside. We shall all give account of ourselves to God. We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ. Those. who mislead will not answer for you, nor avail you. Can you say, with that manifestation in view, that you are "always confident"? Does the Lord look you in the face and say to your spiritual ears, "Thy faith hath saved thee"? It is not in heaven He says this first, but here on earth; and what we have received from Him on earth, we will not lose in heaven. If we have not heard His voice here, do not expect to hear it there. A resurrection of judgment awaits you, if you believe not.

To the woman He said more: not only "Thy faith hath saved thee," but "go in peace." Think what a blessed word and passport it is, "go in peace" from the lips of Jesus! Whatever may come, let the trying circumstances be as they may, — adversity, poverty, sickness, or death; opposition, detraction, persecution, or aught else — whatever changes be in the course of this life, His word to every believer is, "go in peace." Look therefore to God now, rest on the name of Jesus. You are about to return to your home, and to partake of the food that is needful for the body; but is not His message of forgiveness far more than food? Is not He infinitely more than any earthly good? You hope to enjoy a refreshing rest tonight; but what is this compared with "go in peace" from the Saviour? Think of him who fared sumptuously every day; with his purple, and fine linen, and every luxury that wealthy selfishness could command; but he died and was buried, and in hell, or Hades, "he lifted up his eyes, being in torments." May this never be your portion! The only security against it is Jesus. You require nothing good to bring. Bring your sins — yourself with all your sins on you. If you come confessing your sins, but believing on Jesus, He will blot them all out. When told to wash and be clean, do not say as Naaman, "Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel"? When the sinner comes to the fountain opened for all uncleanness, he is purified. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth from all sin." "This is He that came by water and blood." The grace of the Saviour can and will bless you as you are. May you not put God's assuring word from you, nor neglect so great salvation!

Sanctification.

W. Kelly.

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." — John 17: 17-19.

I propose to treat with a little freedom the great truth of sanctification, Christian sanctification, not confining myself to the verses which introduce the term in the passage just read, but connecting with them some other portions of the word of God which set forth the same great truth, either as the Lord here introduces it, or as carrying it out in practical detail. That there is a very special sense in the way in which our Lord employs the term must be evident to any one who weighs His words. What I hope to show may convince some (who may not perhaps have perceived it before) of the danger of taking only one side of any truth, let it be ever so precious. We shall also see, I trust, that the subject is larger and deeper in God's word than anywhere else. This is no disparagement of that which may have been seen by many of the children of God. We ought to delight that it is so; and not least such of us as find out how much more there is to gather than they had even conceived. Why should we wonder if we find the mind of God infinitely rich as compared with our own? We ought to expect it rather, and should constantly bring our little measure of insight into the truth of God with the confident assurance that we shall find that there is far more that had escaped our notice even where we have laid real hold of a truth. I am not now about to dwell upon that which is erroneous. There are views prevalent at this time in Christendom which diverge far from truth on this very subject. My present purpose is not at any length at least to deal with what I believe to be unfounded, but to attempt the happier task of searching out with simplicity what the plain truth is, and thus of demonstrating with the clearest evidence how much there is in God's word of prime importance which is never found in the measures of man.

Now our Lord, when He says, "For their sakes I sanctify myself," seems to me to give a most plain and positive proof that what is commonly the view of sanctification prevailing among the children of God is at any rate defective, — that even those who see what is from Him see but a small part of the truth. In general sanctification is limited to the practical work that the Spirit of God carries on in the souls of those who, though born of God, have much to contend with, but find power in His grace through the knowledge of Christ against their own evil. It is evident that this cannot apply to verse 19; and this on the surface of it. It must be owned therefore that sanctification must have a bearing different from ordinary thought, and incomparably larger than that to which it is usually confined. "For their sakes I sanctify myself," says our Lord Jesus.

Thus at the outset it is happy for a simple child of God to find plain proof that it cannot mean the amelioration of fallen humanity. He has the certainty in his soul that the Lord Jesus does not here refer sanctification to the Spirit's dealing with an evil nature. There was no evil in Him to be subdued or improved: what child of God does not reject such a thought with horror?

Hence it is that many have through ignorance and haste fastened a meaning on our Lord's sanctifying Himself very remote from the truth. Thus some of old supposed that our Lord used it in some figurative way of His sacrifice, if not of other truths. But it can readily be shown that this is altogether a mistake. There is no reason for departing from the radical thought that is always contained in "sanctification." It invariably means the setting apart unto God of those that are concerned. This is its true and simple meaning, from which there is not the least reason to depart here. It does not matter where the word is found in scripture: sanctification when used of a man always means his setting apart to God. How the person is set apart is another matter. In the Jewish system we know the nation itself was so. This was after an outward sort, and was effected by various ordinances, more particularly by that of circumcision; but in fact it was a sanctification that was carried out in all the details of a Jew's life. The whole ritual system of ordinances and judgments which ran through the practical habits of a Jew forms the evidence, measure, and material of his being so set apart unto God.

But the striking thing that we find in our Lord's unbosoming of Himself to His Father on this occasion is, that there is now a new kind of setting apart. Within those of old set apart as Israelites we have the disciples themselves, to be set apart after a fresh sort, nay even the Lord deigning to set Himself apart for their sakes. For His own sake He needed nothing. We must find room therefore for thoughts differing widely from those prevalent among men. Indeed there cannot be a more striking proof of the depth of the setting apart of the Christian to God than the patent fact, that our Lord here prays the Father that the disciples, already morally apart from the Jewish people, who were themselves apart from all other peoples on the face of the earth, should be sanctified by the truth. He was not content with their being drawn to His person here below; He was about to make them more than followers of Himself, in whom they already had faith. All the rest was true; yet He prays, "Sanctify them through thy truth." It was no longer therefore on the face of it a question of the law. This should be beyond controversy. From the people who had the law the disciples were to be sanctified. The Jews might be a holy people, but the disciples were to be sanctified not only from men but from Israel — from all they themselves had been. They were to be set apart after a new sort altogether. The law which severed the practice of Israel from the Gentiles is not the rule of Christian life.

But even this is not all. The Lord Jesus in carrying out this setting apart or sanctification of the disciples shows that He must contribute to it personally, and in order to this that He must set Himself apart. "For their sakes," as He says, "I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth."

Now the first thing to which I would here call attention is the instrument employed. The disciples were to be sanctified, as He says, "through thy truth." Then the Lord explains what He means by the Father's truth. "Thy word [the Father's word] is truth.''

Undoubtedly the Father's word is most directly to be found from the time when, and in the holy writings where, His name as Father was clearly revealed. It is in the New Testament, as we all familiarly know, that the Father's name was thus declared. We find our Lord Jesus from the beginning, as in the Gospel of Matthew for instance, most carefully declaring that name. But we know too that the disciples did not yet enter into its real power. This could not be in the transitional state through which the disciples were passing with the Lord. All the time of His ministry, and with increasing plainness towards the close of it, He was intimating that an immense change was at hand. In the chapter read (John 17) He says that which a little connects itself with what has been now remarked — "I have declared unto them [unto the disciples] thy name, and will declare it." He had been already doing so through His life, but it does not terminate there — quite the contrary. It was to be declared with still greater fulness afterwards. There were many things He had to communicate which their state forbade. They could not bear them now. When the Spirit of truth was come, He would guide them into all the truth.

It is therefore more particularly in the scriptures of the New Testament that we have the Father's name set out and made known, the Lord Jesus declaring it either in person or by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. It is the Father's word then that is most manifestly and immediately given us there. And what a mighty change, my brethren, this was! — that He who remains still, as He always is, God, the only true God — that He who had been revealed to the sons of Israel as Jehovah, and even before their immediate parents, to those that are called "the fathers" (to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) as the Almighty, — that He was now making Himself known in the intimate name and relationship of Father. But we must remember that there is something more than this. It is not merely a nearness of love, but it was as the Son knew God the Father. That is, it was as He is in truth — in the deepest and fullest way in which the only One capable of knowing the Father from all eternity knows Him. And He who had known the Father from all eternity — the only begotten Son — had come down, was a man upon earth, and though born of woman He was still the Son. In this condition He walked in unbroken communion with the Father. All this was really new, and the disciples were permitted to see and know the fruit of this holy fellowship. But now they are told more. The wondrous truth is more clearly made known that the Lord Jesus by the work which He would effect for them, and which He in spirit sees already finished, would bring them, as no others could be, into a most real and profound enjoyment of the same relationship — would bring them, even while passing through this world, to know the Father as none had ever known Him in this world but Himself the Son.

I grant you there was in the knowledge of the Father by the Son that which was ineffable and entirely beyond the creature; but then we must remember, brethren, that our knowledge of the Father is in a certain sense above mere creature knowledge. Not that of course we ever cease to be creatures, even in the glorified state, but that we now enter a wholly new place as partakers of the divine nature, and with the Holy Ghost given that we may enjoy it in power as well as testify it to others. We are now brought out distinctly and consciously as the children of God, being born of God; and, further, the Lord Jesus, having closed the whole estate of the race as such in the cross, and having entered into the new and final condition of man according to the counsels of God in His presence on high, the time was come for the Father's name and truth to be known in the Holy Ghost, as it was impossible before or otherwise.

It is in view of all this then that our Lord prays that the disciples might be sanctified through the Father's word — through His truth. And indeed the knowledge of Christ has consequences immensely greater than even that to which I have already referred. It is not only that we are now rendered capable by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us of appreciating His mind, but we are said to "have the mind of Christ." It is not only that that which was not revealed of old is now, and that we enter into it, as the same chapter that I have referred to proves (1 Cor. 2); but, more than this, all scripture is sensibly transfigured for us, if one may say so, by the knowledge of the Son of God thus revealed.

Thus, if we but take up the legal ordinances, there is not one of them but what is now filled with a new and heavenly light. It is not therefore that the Father's word is to be necessarily restrained to the full unfoldings we have in the New Testament, but the light of the Son of God is reflected from every part of scripture. The very same portion which is understood by a Jew in one way conveys wholly distinct and infinitely deeper lessons to the Christian in another. This is nothing fanciful in us, nor shadowy as to scripture, but an effect of its own real fulness in the light of Christ. Take a pious Jew reading the law, or the Psalms, or the prophets, before the Lord Jesus came. What he saw was true enough, and had its own importance for the object for which it was literally given; but how immensely enhanced and enlarged and deepened when the connection with Christ as we know Him is seen! Thus the revelation of the Lord Jesus, and this too as the One who declared the Father to the disciples, affects every part of the word of God, making that which in its primary application is merely an institution of the law to be a witness of gospel truth, of divine grace, of heavenly things.

Take for instance the great day of atonement. A Jew reads Leviticus 16, and has before his mind certain important institutions of the law: the high priest, the bullock, the goats, the application of the blood within and without, and the confession of the sins on Azazel sent off into the wilderness. All this is before him; but to us how different! It is not that we deny or slight any one part, nor that the fuller truth, the Father's word (to apply it to this subject), is such that one loses an atom of what a Jew saw; but that the Jew has not the smallest conception of that which we are permitted to know in fellowship with Christ, as we look on the things that are unseen and heavenly. We see the High Priest going into the holiest, but have its application in an altogether distinct way. We see our Lord Jesus Christ going there, not alone; we see others in Him.

Not a word of this identification is said in the chapter. It is a mystery; and the mystery was not then revealed. Now it is. It is not merely a question of the sons of Aaron, and that we have the force of it made good in ourselves in a new way. Christ is known not merely as a single person, so to speak, but complex. The New Testament gives us to see Him constituting us a part of Himself; we are "members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Thus in the One who goes into the holiest we behold our own portion as brought into the presence of God. We are not like the people that stood without, waiting for the reappearance of the high priest, when their consciousness of acceptance is imparted. We are entitled to an incomparably deeper knowledge of this sacrifice, because it enters into that within the veil, instead of waiting for what is published outside. Ours is what is before the eyes of God in heaven; and not merely the measure of acceptance that the people would form from seeing the high priest come out; it is founded on the infinitely more glorious fact of what God sees in the blood and in the great High Priest who presents it before Him. In short, what we are brought into is not the measure of the comfort or of the judgment formed by a pious mind, even though the Spirit of God be working therein. What we rest on is what God the Father sees in the Son and His work, and what the Holy Spirit testifies accordingly.

Thus therefore for us all is changed. Hence, we know, the great force of that word which I do not suppose a Jew will ever know as the Christian does — "the righteousness of God." The way in which Israel will have it made known, more particularly, will be rather as to the form "the righteousness of Jehovah;" but we see "the righteousness of God" as such, entering in our measure into that which the depths of His moral nature have found, all that is suitable to Himself completely glorified in the Lord Jesus by His work; and then God according to His counsels dealing with us suitably, for we are made His righteousness in Christ.

This may illustrate the way in which the Father's truth, the Father's word, is the instrument of setting us apart to God the Father as given directly in the New Testament, but not confined to it, as just seen. What I am more anxious still to show is that which might easily enough be overlooked — the complete change that the knowledge of Christ has thus revealed on the basis of redemption already accomplished in the Holy Ghost sent down to bring us into all its fruit now in faith, — the change that is wrought by this in our appreciation and enjoyment and application of all the word of God. In short, the result of Christ revealed as we know Him is that we see scripture generally as we never did before. Many of us have said, and many more have felt if they have not said, that such a knowledge of the Lord Jesus makes the Bible to be a new book even if we had been Christians before. I am perfectly persuaded that many present in this place know what this is. I am appealing to what has passed through their own souls in feeling. Instead of the questions, the anxieties, the unsolved thoughts that they have had, the vagueness with which the truth of God was approached, and their own relationship too with God, now they have seen it fully through the grace of God as far as any of us can speak of anything being full: but, in truth, we may, for God our Father speaks of us as knowing Himself without a doubt or question. He speaks even of the youngest among us, the babes that have an unction from the Holy One and know all things. How could the Father so speak of the least of His family? He has given them Christ and the Holy Ghost.

Yes, we are sanctified by the truth, and the Father's word is truth. This it is then that has made such an immense change. The Christian is brought out of the old contracted way of looking at the word of God. We know what it is now no longer to be half Jew and half Christian. We have been brought by His infinite grace in the gospel to appreciate Christ, to embrace all the revelation of Christ, to see that, whatever might have been the literal application, it is now absorbed and lost in the brightness of One who fills the mind of the Spirit from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation 22.

All scripture is thus our heritage, and nothing less. Only we need to know the Father in the Son in order to read it all thus. I shall not be charged at any rate with abridging; nor does such a view admit even in appearance of shutting up the Christian to that which the Jew had as a rule of death which some would persuade us to regard as our rule of life. I rather think that those who plead for the law are more liable to that accusation. No, beloved friends, let us not abandon what our Saviour spreads before us in its infinite extent for that by which God was shutting up the proud Jew to condemnation. If we had been Jews, we have left that kind of sanctification behind. The disciples were not only Jews, but believing Jews; yet they needed to be (and were not yet) sanctified by the truth.

Sanctification then was not conversion (for they were converted), but the separating power of the Father's word which they were about to prove. And the mighty change was wrought in them. How was it wrought? What has the Lord said? "Sanctify them through thy truth." Undoubtedly that which wrought this, as far as the written word was concerned, was the new development of divine truth where the Father's name as revealed in and by the Son was the distinguishing characteristic force of it.

In short, the instrumental means was the New Testament. But then so far from this taking away one fraction from the Old, it is the best way to make the Old truly our own; thus is it really understood. Knowing the Father we enter in and enjoy every part of the word of God. There is nothing therefore lost. It is not imagining ourselves to be Jews that will give us the truth or sanctify us. On the contrary, it was precisely out of all that was Jewish those were taken who had been really Jews. It is a question now of one new man in Christ.

Thus then we may see clearly the general ground on which the Lord speaks, and somewhat of that weighty change that was to be brought about by the power of the Spirit of God. "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." You must remember that the disciples were not yet on Christian footing. This sanctifying that is spoken of here is really setting them apart as Christians. It was not the communication of life, which is not sanctifying. On the other hand it does not refer simply to the practical work that goes on day by day in the heart of the child of God. This is true, and important too; and there are scriptures that speak of it in this light exclusively, as 1 Thess. 4: 3, 4; 1 Thess. 5: 23; Heb. 12: 14. There is a sanctification or setting apart unto God the Father of a more general kind, and more fundamental too. This, without excluding the practical work going on all through, is what (I believe) the Lord Jesus refers to; the setting apart, in that new proper Christian character and power, of the disciples who then surrounded the Lord Jesus. They were still connected with the old condition of things, having been Jews up to this moment. The time was just at hand when they were to be brought out of their Judaism. The Lord Jesus appears to have this in His mind.

But this is not all. He does not merely say, "Sanctify them through thy truth" — the Father's truth, more particularly and directly in the Christian scriptures commonly called the New Testament; but further He says, "As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." It was no question of the land of Judea now. The world was before them. Thus, if there was the intimacy of setting apart to the Father, there is also an universality of mission. Though the Lord Jesus had a mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, this is not the way in which He is regarded in the Gospel of John. There is a deeper thing here in question. The fact is that all through this Gospel the people are viewed as utterly gone from God, and as only part of a vast system in opposition to the Father: so completely are all regarded as hopelessly evil and enemies. As the Father had sent Him into the world, "even so I also sent them into the world."

But in order yet more to effect this work of setting apart unto the Father, the Lord adds another and a most weighty truth: "For their sakes I sanctify [or set apart] myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." That is, the Father's word (blessed as it is, and changing all as it does for us) is not enough. We want a personal object in order to bind our affections to it. Who could that object be but one — the Lord Jesus himself? But it is the Lord Jesus not on earth. Jews will have the blessed revelation of the Lord here below: I do not say how far or how long; but they will have it. They will have the promised One making Himself known to them here below. His feet, as we know, shall stand on the Mount of Olives. But it is not there or thus that we know Him. How then? As He is now in the presence of the Father in heaven. This is the meaning of His setting Himself apart. It is not the victim upon the cross. There God made Him sin, instead of His sanctifying Himself. There it was the substitute forsaken of God that we who believe might never be. Not that Jesus, even when made sin, was one whit less but infinitely more the object of God the Father's delight, and in that most solemn judgment even morally a deeper, yes the deepest, delight to the Father. But still it was most true and real that He was made sin upon the cross in this sense, that He identified Himself thoroughly and without reserve with all the consequences of our evil, and suffered accordingly at God's hand against whom the evil was wrought and whom He came to glorify. The cross certainly was no mere appearance but a reality, whatever might be the vain show of the world wherein it stood. Weaken the reality of His suffering, and the reality of your redemption is gone. Weaken the reality of His suffering, and the reality of the glorifying of God is gone — which is a much more important thing than your salvation or mine. Brethren, all was met there and settled for ever. All evil was there taken on Himself, who was judged for it. There was nothing so foul but Jesus suffered for it; there was no sin so dark but He washed it away with His precious blood. The consequence is that there, and there alone, can either God Himself rest with satisfaction when He looks at a sinner, or a sinful soul find the rest that his awakened conscience needs. But this is a wholly different thing from our Lord setting Himself apart or sanctifying Himself for our sins, "that they might be sanctified through the truth." It is the Lord Jesus who enters into an entirely new place for man — a place essential in order that there should be Christians in deed and in truth. For the essence of a Christian is that, although he is upon earth, he is heavenly; and how could he become heavenly unless by the revelation of a heavenly man who is his life ? And who is or could be that heavenly man but the man Christ Jesus, who, after having put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, takes this new place there, Head of a new family, and is so revealed to us by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven?

This then is the force of our Lord's added words. Instead of only giving us that fulness of truth in the Father's word, more particularly the New Testament, but at the same time so affecting all the Old as to give us distinctly and positively a means of knowing the Father in every part of scripture, He gives us Himself as a personal object before us in order that we may have the truth thus. Besides having thus the detailed word of the Father, we want an object to attach our hearts to; we need it that we be not lost in the abundance of the revelations of God. Here then is One who can claim every affection, who can detach us by the revelation of Himself, the worthiest of all objects, an object worthy of God the Father, and surely of us the children who delight in what He delights in. This is none other than Christ, but it is Christ after all the evil was judged, after all the good was won, after love had nothing to do, nay, even righteousness no other task but to bless us. This is what God now can afford to do as the Father: this is what He is now doing through the infinite sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. But this is what He now reveals, through the Lord Jesus in His presence, and by the Holy Ghost sent down gives us to know. Hence therefore our Lord's taking His place at the right hand of God is not a bare fact in Christianity, an incident be it ever so great and glorious, but barren of fruit. Far from it: His setting Himself apart at God's right hand is a root of divine truth, yea, the root of our distinctive blessedness. He is there the model man according to whom the Spirit forms us by the truth. It is thus essential in order that He fitly and fully should be the means of that wondrous display of truth and love that God looks to be reproduced in those that are Christ's below.

This then is the further intimation in the words, "For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." We require the Father's word; but we require the person thus set apart in heaven, and in this order too. For the Father's truth that is made known in the New Testament invariably precedes our full appreciation of the Lord Jesus at His right hand, thus sanctifying Himself that we might be sanctified through the truth. But then, (need we say it?) when we have seen the Lord Jesus there, when we appreciate the all-importance of having Him as an object before our souls entirely outside the world, according to which the Holy Ghost is carrying us on and fashioning us while we are here below, the truth is everywhere made more personal and in power. Not that the truth abides not in the word, but that it is thus applied with increase of blessing. As He says here, "For their sakes I sanctify myself," but not stopping at this, "that they also might be sanctified through the truth." Thus we see, if we begin with the truth and rise to see the personal place of the Lord, the truth only receives more and more power and point through it.

Turning now to some of the chief scriptures of the New Testament that touch on sanctification, we shall find fresh developments no doubt, but all of them making good the same great truth, whatever the special application to need.

Almost every epistle furnishes evidence. "To all that be in Rome, called to be saints," or rather saints called; "to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus," saints called, that is, in Corinth; "all the saints in all Achaia;" "to the saints which are in Ephesus;" "to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi;" "to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse;" "unto all the holy brethren," speaking of Thessalonica. Here there can be no doubt to any simple, not to say intelligent, mind. It is the description of persons set apart to God; and this too from the beginning of His work in their souls as Christians. The word in no way speaks of their measure or practical attainment of knowledge: it supposes that they were set apart to God as His own children in this world from the outset of their career after their calling, but it says no more.

But this truth, elementary as it is, was far too much for Christendom to carry uncorrupted. Nor do I speak only of the grossness of Babylon, which canonizes her saints years after death, and actually not till alleged proofs are given of miracles from relics of the deceased candidate. But even where the pope is rejected, what can be more timid, what more unscriptural, than the unwillingness of most believers now to recognise each other as saints, and to confess themselves sanctified in Christ Jesus from the starting-point of their confession of the Lord's name? What is this but an unworthy shrinking both from accrediting the rich grace of God and the solemn responsibility of the believer? Saints they are however; and as such they are bound to walk. Not to own it is not exuberance of humility, but only ignorant unbelief to the dishonour of the Lord and their own souls' great loss. It is clear as light from the scriptures adduced that all who confessed Christ were called and treated as saints, and that sanctification is viewed as attached to every one who bore His name. They were set apart to God; and this from the first. (Compare Acts 9: 13, Acts 20: 32, Acts 26: 18.)

Again, in 1 Cor. 1: 30 we find another reference, without taking up every one, for this would be beyond the limits of the present discourse. But here the apostle says, "Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." There I think that the Spirit of God uses "sanctification" in a very large sense, not only for the separating us from the first unto our God and Father through the Lord Jesus the Son, but also looking at the separative power as going on practically in our souls to the last. It is very general, and this is my reason for citing it, as I believe that this two-fold application is contained in it and meant. "Wisdom" is in contrast with the philosophy of men that particularly prevailed among the Greeks to whom he was writing; "righteousness" as setting aside all that was imperfect, and communicated in grace where moral consistency with God was absolutely wanting to man as such; "sanctification" not only from the first call but going on all through; and "redemption" completing the work of grace; for it is not here redemption through Christ's blood but that of the body, as I gather from its place as winding all up. This again illustrates the largeness of the term "sanctification." As it is clear that redemption is meant in the fullest sense, so I suppose is "sanctification" too.

But when we come to chapter 6 we have something a little more precise in verse 11: "Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified." No theologian writing in the nineteenth century would ever think of putting these words in any such order. They have missed the truth therefore. And let me say further that no man writing in any century whatever would have ever chosen the same form of words except one inspired of God. But have we learnt the wisdom of it? Have we discovered why these words are not only true, but more true in this order than in any other? Certainly the verse does not regard sanctification as only the practical application of the truth to the conscience by the Spirit of God after one is justified, which is the general sense among Protestants; still less does it confound sanctification with justification as Romanists do.

It is manifest therefore that, assuming the apostle's words to be the vehicle of divine truth perfectly expressed, the notion which limits sanctification to the practical process which goes on in the soul after justification is altogether defective. It is not the view that the apostle gives here for our instruction. Is it meant then to weaken the value and need of that practical work, of growth in holiness, after we believe and are justified ? Far from it. I admit its importance and that it is rightly styled sanctification, being our continual setting apart to God every day and in each detail. But I maintain that there is more truth which man does not so easily let into his own thoughts and judgment, and that an element is wanting to give Christians a fuller and clearer understanding of their relation to God.

First of all is it not plain that the apostle Paul here tells these Corinthians that (whatever they might have been in vileness before they knew the Lord Jesus) when they received Him, they were washed? It is very possible there may be some allusion to their baptism as an outward sign of it. I am not discussing this; but I affirm that washing is not the same thing as sanctifying, and that sanctifying is, as all admit, a different thing from justifying. But further, as all these express necessary parts of Christian salvation, are they not all right as God has written them here? The Corinthian believers are said to have been "washed," because the first action of the word of God on a guilty soul is to deal with his impurity — to detect, judge, and remove the evil that defiles. "Washing" by the word (Eph. 5) is not sanctifying, though in the closest way associated with it; God's grace thereby takes notice of and deals with that which is altogether contrary to Himself. "Sanctifying" is more positively and exclusively occupied with the good to which the soul is set apart. There is a separating object to which the affections are attached, not merely a cleansing from our natural evil.

Although we may distinguish between the washing and the sanctifying, in point of fact they cannot be separated in the soul of him that comes under the quickening power of God.* But still God is wise in the order in which He puts the thoughts and words. The washing, I repeat, is the application of the word of God by the Holy Ghost to the conscience. Christ, thus received in truth, gives the sinner to detect and judge his evil before God. He is born of God; but the effect of the new birth is that he feels what he himself is. There is repentance in short. But, besides, sanctifying goes farther by the revelation of an object that wins and draws out the heart towards that object. It is plain therefore that the washing supposes more the removal of defilement; and that the sanctifying is rather the effect of the object revealed, which commands the heart, and attracts it from all else, set apart to itself.

* So in Eph. 5: 27 we read that Christ gave Himself for the church that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water by the word, that He might present the church to Himself glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or any of such things, but that it might be holy and blameless. The English Version might, and no doubt does confuse, by putting it as "sanctify and cleanse." The cleansing or purifying by the washing of water by the word is the way by which Christ sanctifies the church. The object here is to state the work in itself, not to distinguish the initiatory setting apart from the progressive work.

This then is the way in which the Spirit of God presents the matter. But there is a third expression — justifying; and it is clear that to be justified is here put after and not before sanctification. In the order in which the Spirit of God puts them, it follows washing and sanctification. How is it possible to reconcile this with the view which limits the doctrine of sanctification to the practical holiness of a Christian after he is already justified? Impossible! Is the apostle's statement then to be given up as unintelligible? Are we not to have the truth of God as to this received and enjoyed by our souls? The truth is, that not only "sanctified" in John 17 is proved by our Lord's use of it to have other and larger meaning than men usually assign to it, but the way in which the Spirit of God, through the apostle, uses it has a force quite different from its bare application to the practical condition or growth of the soul after the Lord is known.

I will refer to one other scripture, in order to show that this is no arbitrary thought, but that the Spirit of God has designed it in the most distinct manner. The very same side of the truth is revealed by another apostle. In 1 Peter 1: 2 we are told that the Christian Jews who were scattered about Asia Minor were elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. It is clear that what is called "justified" in 1 Cor. 6 answers to the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus here. If the common view were meant, the way in which the apostle Peter would have expressed himself would have been somewhat of this sort — that these Christian Jews were elect unto the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, after which the Spirit carried on the work of sanctification in their souls. But He makes, at the very least, a totally different statement. He says here, "Elect through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus." In short, the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus is supposed necessarily to be in virtue of sanctification; for they were sanctified by the Spirit in order to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus.*

* See Appendix.

In what sense then is sanctification meant here? This is the real question. What does the Spirit of God mean either by Paul saying, "sanctified, justified;" or by Peter saying, "through (ἐν) sanctification of [the] Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of [the] blood of Jesus Christ"? Put before "justified" in 1 Cor. 6, and before the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus in 1 Peter 1: 2, "sanctification" in these passages must needs take in the work of the Holy Spirit from the time that the soul is quickened to desire after God, to look up because of Jesus, distrusting itself, yet daring only to hope for good. Perhaps the soul does not yet know what provision grace has made; but it knows enough mercy in God to make it willing to bow to His judgment of all that it has been and all that it has done. Hence it cleaves to Him, and is perfectly sure that all goodness is in Him, trusting that His grace through the Lord Jesus will yet shine upon it; but it does not yet know how richly that grace has sought it out, and wrought for it even before its awakening. The Spirit of God produces a desire to do the will of God at all cost, and testifies before such a soul the work of the Lord Jesus in its infinite efficacy before God. Then and thus it is brought to the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus; but as it was elect before the Holy Spirit began to work effectually, so the Spirit was effectually at work before the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus.

There is, it seems plain, an allusion to Old Testament figures or facts in the language of Peter, which was calculated to impress the believing Jews with a lively sense of their new position as compared with the nation of old. For an Israelite could scarce avoid recalling Ex. 24: 7, 8, when Moses "took the book of the covenant and read in the audience of the people; and they said, All that Jehovah hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant which Jehovah hath made with you concerning all these words." Now here we have the same elements in their case: obedience of the law and sprinkling of the blood of the victims offered at that solemn moment. But how great the contrast ! Israel stood pledged to obey the law and sprinkled with the blood which declared death the penalty of its infraction. The Christian is partaker of the life of Christ which lives in obedience, the obedience of a son, even as Christ was its perfect expression; and he is sprinkled with His blood, which declares that he himself is perfectly cleansed from his sins before God.

That effectual work of the Holy Spirit from first to last is called in the scriptures "sanctification of the Spirit." It embraces the entire setting apart of the soul to God from the beginning onwards. Quickening looks on the soul as being dead in trespasses and sins. There is a new life given it from God; but the effect of divine life is that the heart goes out towards the God that gives it. Sanctifying always supposes the affections drawn out towards Him who thus confers His blessing. The depth and fulness of the blessing may be imperfectly known yet, but nevertheless He is believed in who alone can bless. It may be but the conviction that in the Father's house there is bread enough and to spare, with the assurance of happiness if one could only get there. The soul is quite sure that mercy is there, though not yet looking when there to be more than a hired servant. Still the confidence of the heart is in the love that is there if one can only get there; and so he sets out. Such is the effect: behold a quickened soul. Without the Spirit there had been no such turning of the prodigal's heart to the Father; no real sense and confession of having sinned against heaven and in His sight. This action of the Spirit was immediate and vital. From the moment that self-judgment was produced, and the affections of the heart turned towards the Father and His house, there is sanctification of the Spirit. It is only when he meets the Father and learns the killing of the fatted calf with the ring and the shoes and the best robe — it is only then that he is doctrinally what may be called "justified." Justified is the application by faith of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ to the person who is already in the true sense of scripture sanctified by the Spirit.

Of course practical holiness mainly follows justification; and with such a view I have not the smallest quarrel. I do not in the least mean to raise any question or attack any person or party on that subject. It is an important truth in its own place that the progressive work of holiness proceeds after we are justified. But what is sanctification of the Spirit before we are justified? And why is it that theologians or preachers never say a word about this? Why is it thus left out? Not certainly to do honour to scripture; nor through intelligence in the truth of God. How comes it to be thus ignored in Christendom at the present moment, and for seventeen centuries before it? If it be not so treated, where among the divines ancient or modern can we find its expression? Who can say? I do not know, and I do not believe that anybody else does. The fact is that this truth has, in a way absolutely unaccountable save to such as have learnt the defection of Christendom from the faith, fairly dropped out of the schools of theology.

What should we gather from this, my brethren? The blessedness of having the scriptures. For this is no recondite truth; it is not something that might be lost without any particular detriment to the soul. There are immense practical consequences which result from losing sight of sanctification of the Spirit from the point of view in which both Paul and Peter treat it. I am speaking now not of what may be called relative or progressive sanctification, or whatever growth in practical holiness may be styled in theology; I leave all that as it is. Those terms may be more or less correct, but I pass them by without the smallest debate or arresting ourselves upon that question. For my own part I believe that they express substantially the truth, and I have no controversy with Arminian, Calvinist, or anybody else about the matter.

But I must demand of these Christians and you, whether it is not a most extraordinary and suggestive fact, that one of the primary truths for every soul that fears God, one of the most capital truths of the New Testament, should have thus practically become a cipher to most of God's own children up to this present time? If I be mistaken in such a thought, let me be shown the evidence; for indeed I should take it as a very great kindness if any one do me the favour of pointing out where I have in some way overlooked it; but I can honestly say that, after searching in vain yet examining carefully, I believe that what has been said is the simple truth, (and a solemn truth it is,) that sanctification of the Spirit, in the most important sense in which the New Testament presents it, is a truth wholly wanting — an "unknown quantity" — to most Christians at the present moment.

And what is the result practically for souls? Much every way. But this is obvious that there are those in whom the Spirit of God has wrought, who are often tried and miserable. Then not the Father's word but the law is brought in as a rule for them, and they are thus made still more wretched; for it never was the intention of God by the law to make any sinful man happy. "By the law is the knowledge of sin," How could it do aught for any child of Adam but enslave, condemn, and kill? (See 2 Cor. 3) Further, the law, as it does not give power, so it never reveals an object. The law has a most important use: but its use is to convict the guilty soul. As the apostle expressly teaches, its lawful use is not for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane. It is the strength of sin, not of holiness, the precise reverse of a sanctifying power. The Father's grace reveals to us the most blessed object that even He has; and His word makes His object to be our object. This sanctifies. "Sanctify them by thy word. Thy word is truth. . . . For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified by the truth."

Besides this, which gives us the full character of Christian sanctification right through the believer's course, "sanctification of the Spirit" takes in the first effectual working of the Holy Ghost in every soul that is born of God, from the earliest real effect of the Spirit of God by a life that is given in opening the heart more or less (for it may be often hindered, and is often in bondage), nevertheless with affections turned to God. In such a case how frequently the soul is pining after the assurance of being sanctified! If a person could know himself sanctified already, what a relief it would be! It is exactly in that condition that many a person, conscious of his unworthiness, is cast down immensely, because he is deeply conscious that, whatever the grace of the Lord Jesus, at any rate he is not sanctified himself. What a comfort it would be for such a soul to know that it is precisely what he is in a sense still more absolute than the practical measure which occupies his mind — to be thrown off self on Christ!

But there is a further thing. While God does meet a soul tried, cast down, and without ability to take full comfort and peace through faith in the Lord Jesus, even though already sanctified, He does not allow one to settle down in that condition. Here is where the importance of Peter's word comes in: "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus." And why obedience first? This often is no small difficulty, and sometimes leads persons to a sad perversion of the word. They acknowledge that as believers they are called to obey; but are apt to think that, if we fail to obey, the blood of Christ becomes the resource, and makes up all deficiencies. There is hardly any one, it is to be hoped, in this room so uninstructed in the mind of God as to treat the scriptures thus lightly, not to say offensively. No, my brethren, the apostle meant no such thing; but this, — that when the Spirit of God thus separates a soul from the world, the first movement of the soul when turned really and truly to God from sin and Satan, the great and prime desire of the heart thenceforward is to obey, while the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus assures of cleansing from guilt in the sight of God. "Lord," said Saul of Tarsus, when he was smitten down, "what wilt thou have me to do?" I know there are those who say that this was rather legal. From such thoughts I wholly differ. I grant you there was not yet known the full liberty of the gospel; but, as far as it went, the desire was excellent and blessed. It is the instinctive yearning of the new nature to do the will of God.

But we have far more here. We are told that the measure of the obedience of the elect soul now sanctified by the Spirit is the obedience of Jesus; for His name, I believe, qualifies both the obedience and the blood sprinkled. It is not the obedience of a Jew, but in contrast with it. Such is the point of the words "Jesus Christ" introduced at the end. "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by sanctification of the Spirit unto [the] obedience and sprinkling of [the] blood of Jesus Christ." The English words are a little changed to give the full force. The obedience was Christ's obedience, as the blood was His blood. And is not the first desire of the awakened soul to obey? But God has no obedience now that He values, except that kind of obedience which Jesus rendered. It is not obeying the law, as a Jew might do, in the hope of certain blessings, or from fear of certain curses. The Lord never obeyed on this principle; He always obeyed out of the consciousness of a Son — the Son — of God; and the simplest Christian ought to obey from a similar consciousness too; for we too by grace are children of God; and our God and Father has implanted this in us as the first feeling of the new life — to do His will. This it is you may see in many that are born of God, and that, even though not in liberty, and alas! too often imbued with doctrine that injures the soul, they nevertheless delight in His will. Their hearts desire to be faithful and obedient. They only want the bright fulness and freeness of the grace of God to clear them out of these imperfect and sometimes erroneous thoughts.

This then is what I believe the Spirit of God here meant. The sanctification of the Spirit is "unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus." It is in contrast with the Jew saying presumptuously, "All that Jehovah hath spoken will we do, and be obedient," and in consequence of this, having himself as well as the book sprinkled with the blood of the offerings, which threatened death in case of disobeying the law; for this was the sense of the blood with which the book of the covenant and the people were sprinkled. It was not at all the blood of atonement to secure them, but blood sanctioning the law and their own obligations, so as to keep before them the death that they must die if they failed. The apostle Peter appears to me to have all this in view: only the change is complete for the Christian, who begins, not with the book of law, but with the Saviour; and what he finds in the Saviour is both a spring of life, by which he desires to obey God, and also accomplished redemption, by which he starts with his sins effaced and forgiven before God. Thus, instead of having the blood of victims to tell him he must die if he fails, he has the blood of the Saviour to assure him that all is clear because he is thereby washed from his sins. And the redemption is eternal no less than the life in Christ.

I trust, therefore, that in these few scriptures compared with what has come before us somewhat more at length in John 17 the nature of Christian sanctification has been shown clearly. Its full character and means the Lord Jesus first gave us to see. This the epistles follow up, developing the order and place of sanctification, or the setting apart of the soul to God, as compared with His other dealings in grace. Christ looked at its full import right through, while the passages in the epistles we have examined take up its beginning, so to speak, in the heart. At the same time both of course are divinely true, and each of all possible importance; but both differ not a little, unless I am greatly mistaken, from popular thought even among the children of God. I have been anxious therefore to set forth, as far as God has enabled me, the testimony of scripture to this most momentous truth.

There are other scriptures that refer to practical sanctification, on which I must say a word next. One clear text of this description is in Hebrews 12, where the apostle says, "Follow peace with all men, and holiness" (or sanctification, if you please) "without which no man shall see the Lord." It is evident that this is practical holiness. He is addressing those whom he assumes to be Christians. There might be persons among them in danger of going back, as we know there had been. Some had already been apostates; but the apostle was "persuaded better things of them, and things that accompanied salvation, though he thus spoke." But here he says, "Follow peace with all men." They had already peace with God, but they were told to "follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." There is nothing really harsh in that, nor a word to cause the smallest difficulty to the most sensitive spirit; for surely, my brethren, there is no Christian who would affirm or allow that a man can live as he lists and yet go to heaven. Can a person sin habitually and be born of God? Surely the language of St. John is even stronger where it is laid down that "he that is born of God doth not commit sin." No doubt, as you justly plead, he means the person so characterised, not that a believer may not fail in this particular or in that, but that no man who is really born of God lives without exercised conscience and holy ways before God: no man so born goes on in sin, but walks according to the new nature. There are differences of measure, and various degrees of spiritual power as we know; but all saints have an uniform desire, and the Lord hearkens to that desire and answers it too, — meeting and helping the soul, sometimes by the comfort of the truth, sometimes by sharp discipline, but in one way and another strengthening it to please Himself. It is manifest from this that there is not the slightest ground for explaining away such an exhortation, no excuse for trying to make out that "holiness" here means what we are made in Christ. This is not the thought in the smallest degree. It is only deceiving ourselves if any think so.

Again, in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians it is clearly a question of practice. "This is the will of God, our sanctification." "For God hath not called us to uncleanness but in holiness" or sanctification. Here it is plain that he is speaking of walking in holiness every day. And then again he prays that the God of peace Himself sanctify them wholly, and that their spirit, soul, and body should be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In all he is looking at the practical work that goes on in the believer.

I particularly mention these passages; for we ought never, in asserting one side of the truth, to forget another. Only what has been already said proves that, besides the practical holiness of which we have been last treating, the New Testament speaks pointedly and plainly of the separating power of the Spirit of God in every man's soul who is born of God, and from its rudiments calls it "sanctification of the Spirit." From the first motion of divine life in the soul right through, all that time a man is sanctified; and this one may call absolute or personal sanctification, in order to distinguish it from what came next, that is, relative sanctification, which depends upon spiritual growth, submission to God, use of means, as the word of God, prayer, fasting, self-judgment, discipline. All these things help on the soul's practical growth in holiness.

Again, we must notice briefly such passages as Acts 20: 32, Acts 26: 18. It is impossible to apply these to progress in holiness but to the character and estate of all Christians. The structure of the word ἡγιασμένοι admits of no other meaning. Is it argued that this is only the condition of believers when they have arrived at the end of their course, if not of the world altogether? Rom. 15: 16 and 1 Cor. 1: 2 refute such a restriction; still more forcibly does Heb. 10: 10. This is not at all weakened by the form of the word (ἁγιαζόμενοι) in verse 14, as in chap. 2: 11. For the present participle may be used abstractedly apart from the question of the action or the passion. But the perfect tense could not be used as it is in verse 10 about the same persons at the same time, if the object were to define by ἁγιαζόμενοι that we are only under a process of sanctifying now going on, but as yet imperfect. For while the present may express either the actual time or the abstract character and object of the operation, the perfect necessarily gives the permanent result of a terminated action, and therefore affirms that we have been and are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. It is no question of God's counsel respecting us, but of a present abiding effect of Christ's finished work. Hence to lay stress on ἁγιαζόμενοι as if it must needs indicate a process going on is not only arbitrary, because the present participle does not always convey this force, but even negatived by ἡγιασμένοι which decides the time and excludes what is imperfect. It is not potentiality, but a present fact and a continuous character acquired by Christians through the accomplished and accepted sacrifice of Christ. To translate therefore in verse 14 τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους as "them who are being sanctified" is, under the appearance of literal precision, to prove that we have never seen the true spirit of the passage, and that we do not understand the apostle's doctrine on this great head; and the rather too as τετελείωκεν (he hath perfected) in the same clause is irreconcilable with this effort to get rid of sanctification here as a standing condition, by denying the abstract force of the present participle as used in this case. It is interesting to observe that in the same chapter (ver. 29) the Spirit employs the aorist ἡγιάσθη to describe him who had once been a baptized confessor of Christ crucified but afterwards turned out an apostate. That tense simply states the fact historically; whereas the perfect, adding to it the idea of an existing result, could not properly be used of one who spurned Christ and counted the blood of the covenant a common thing. It is not true that he had advanced so far in the spiritual life that this blood had been applied by faith, or that its hallowing or purifying effects were visible in his life. Such talk is merely imaginative, not only without scripture, but neglecting the obvious intimation of that which is said; for the passage says nothing of spiritual life, or of applying the blood by faith, or of purifying effects visible or invisible, but only of sinning wilfully after having received the knowledge of the truth. Be it ever so exact and full, this in no way implies in itself a divine work in the conscience so that the person was born again and converted to God, but such a clear full and certain knowledge as many unconverted men possess who nevertheless hold fast the truth in unrighteousness. Very different is the statement in Heb. 9: 14 where the blood of Christ is said to purify the conscience from dead works in order to serve (i.e. religiously) the true God. Had there been any such language in chap. 10 used of the renegade's previous state, there would have been a scriptural basis for the idea of some; as it is, in what is really said here and in what is said not here but in chap. 9: 14 is a twofold testimony of the most distinct kind against it. Heb. 13: 12 seems too general to decide the question before us in either way; but there is ample light where the language is strict to gather the sense with certainty.

These then are the two main senses in which "sanctification" is used of believers; for I do not here go into the setting apart of the Son by the Father (John 10: 36), nor of praying that the Father's name be hallowed (Matt. 11: 9; Luke 11: 2), nor of the relation of marriage with a believer (1 Cor. 7: 14), nor of food no longer taken in mere nature but set apart for godly use of the faithful. The first is what the apostles Paul and Peter have laid down, where, as we have observed, sanctification is expressly shown to be before justification. To apply this to the practical work would destroy all truth: there can be no proper Christian holiness of heart and ways before the soul is justified. Tridentine doctrine is ignorance of scripture: "to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness."

Since therefore both emphatically introduce it before justification, it is plain that the "sanctification" of the Spirit intended has another sense than the practical one; and that it means the setting apart in principle to God which is true of the believer from first to last. So it is used in 2 Thess. 2: 13, 14: "But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Sanctification of the Spirit" evidently here accompanies "belief of the truth," and this "from the beginning." It is not growth in holiness afterwards. Yet assuredly growth comes when the soul, finding rest in the work of Christ, identifies itself by the working of the Spirit practically with Christ as an object before the heart. "As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness" or sanctification. Hence "being now made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." There it is and thus that the Christian enters into what the Lord Jesus set out so fully, which, as we have seen, contemplates Christian sanctification and its specific means without drawing attention to time one way or the other. Its object is a deeper one, showing that we are set apart unto the Father according to what was revealed by His word and in the Son on high. "We all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are changed unto the same image from glory to glory even as by the Lord the Spirit."

May the Lord then grant that this rich and grave subject may be estimated better, — a subject so easily obscured to the loss of the children of God, and so easily forgotten to the injury not only of those that are beginning their career (depriving them of the comfort of the knowledge that they are sanctified), but also of those that may be longest in the way. May they be continually stimulated, knowing that if they are thus sanctified, they are called on to walk according to no less a measure than Christ revealed by the Father's word. May they profit not by fragments of the truth only, but by the whole revelation of God, acting by the power of the Spirit of God in renewed affections, ever judged, ever deepened, by these divine communications, but also concentrated on the person of the Lord Jesus. May He give us thus to prove more and more how precious it is that we are sanctified by the Father's word, and that the Son has set Himself apart for our sakes that we might be according to such a model. Amen.

APPENDIX

ON 1 PETER 1: 2.

It may help souls if I give a few proofs, not from persons of extreme views, but from the most intelligent among the Reformers, of their looseness on this subject and their divergence from scriptural truth. It is needless to speak of Romanists; for they are too stupefied by tradition to afford the least hope of finding real and intelligent subjection to the teaching of the apostles.

The plainest conceivable instance of the way in which popular error works may be seen in the following extract from Beza's Version and Annotations. I quote from the latest edition (1598) during his life, where his thoughts are given most fully and correctly. "Electis ex praecognitione Dei Patris ad sanctificationem Spiritus, per obedientiam et aspersionem sanguinis Jesu Christi." Such is his version: of the note this will suffice. "Ita complexus fuerit Petrus omnes proprias salutis nostrae causas quae a Deo manant, nempe efficientem summam causam, Dei Patris praescitiam, id est decretum aeternum: Formalem, vocationem efficacem, quam electionis nomine intelligit: (nam ut alibi diximus, tum demum re ipsa eligimur quum Deus aeternum suum decretum in nobis per vocationem exequitur) Finem, sanctificationem electorum: Materiam ipsam, Christi justitiam, cujus imputatione justi coronamur."

First his version is as unfaithful as one can imagine. He not only departs from the necessary force of the apostle's words in two most weighty particulars, but inverts the prepositions employed so as to alter completely the revealed mind of the Spirit. It is true that in one of these errors the Vulgate had led the way; for it is impossible fairly to render ἐν ἁγιασμῳ by "in sanctificationem." Beza should have been rather warned by such a flaw, especially as Erasmus from the first had correctly given "per sanctificationem," as none could justify the taking ἐν and εἰς as both = "in" with the accusative. But Beza allowed his system of doctrine so completely to warp his mind that he proceeded to the still greater error of representing εἰς by "per," a rendering which not only falsifies the meaning but has not the smallest shadow of justification from the Greek idiom in any work of any author from Homer down to the fall of Constantinople. And, secondly, this bold and excessive perversion is the foundation of his comment; which, being wholly unfounded, calls for no remark further than that it is just the common notion on the subject. For, spite of the English Bible, which is in the main right, people continue to fancy that the Lord means here that the Christian is elect according to God the Father's foreknowledge unto sanctification of the Spirit by the obedience of Christ and the sprinkling of His blood.

Much more right was his leader, J. Calvin, though he speaks hypothetically. "If there be parts or effects of sanctification, then sanctification is to be taken here somewhat differently from what it means when used by Paul; that is, more generally. God then sanctifies us by an effectual calling; and this is done when we are renewed to an obedience to his righteousness, and when we are sprinkled by the blood of Christ, and thus are cleansed from our sins." Even he is mistaken in thinking that Paul does not use sanctification in this more general way, as I have shown on 1 Cor. 6: 11. But plainly the Genevese chief owns a sense of sanctification different from that which is ordinarily seen and admitted. 2 Thess. 2: 13 appears to me another clear witness of Calvin's limiting this more general usage to Peter. For there the apostle speaks of God's having chosen the Thessalonian saints from the beginning unto salvation by sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. It was in virtue of the Spirit's setting them apart and their faith in the truth of the gospel that God thus chose them to salvation: doctrine strikingly in analogy with the statement of Peter, if we allow for the difference in presenting the thought to Jewish and Gentile Christians.

Again, the excellent Archbishop Leighton, in his well-known Commentary upon the first Epistle of Peter, is perplexed by this obedience. He rejects Beza's application to Christ's obedience actively (though he took it as His obedience unto the death of the cross); and he himself thinks that it is contained in (yea, chiefly understood to signify) that obedience which the Apostle in Romans 1 calls the obedience of faith, by which the doctrine of Christ is received, and so Christ Himself. When he adds that "by obedience sanctification is here intimated," it appears to me that he gets confused by not holding fast the more general sense of sanctification. The apostle certainly treats of obedience in this place as flowing from the setting apart to God or sanctification which precedes it. Besides, I think he mistakes the nature of the obedience by understanding it as the obedience of faith when a soul receives the gospel. In my judgment the phrase means that we are thus set apart to obey as Christ did, in the consciousness of our sonship, and with the assurance of being purged by blood. Much more correctly does he say later (Works, vol. i. pp. 15, 16, Jerment's edition) that "sanctification in a narrow sense, as distinguished from justification, signifieth the inherent holiness of a Christian, or his being inclined and enabled to obedience mentioned in this verse; but it is here more large, and is co-extended with the whole work of renovation, and is the separating of men to God by His Holy Spirit, drawing them unto Him; and so it comprehends justification (as here) and the first working of faith, by which the soul is justified through its apprehending and applying the righteousness of Jesus Christ."

The Soul — neither mortal, nor to sleep.

W. Kelly.

It is a grave and humbling fact that the immortality and even existence of the human soul, distinct from the body, should be seriously questioned in Christendom; yea, that Scripture should be wrested against it by such as love to have it so. But so it is, with the sanction of some who have the reputation of piety. All things from the highest downwards are now put on their trial, as if man were judge, and not God. Nothing is sacred for enquiring spirits and unhallowed eyes. Because human tradition is stupidly false and blinding, men are indisposed to believe anything on God's word, as if He were altogether such an one as themselves. Gnosticism* was an early plague — not less is Agnosticism in these days. Senses only they admit in evidence, and are proud of the deductions and inductions of reason, unconscious that they thus necessarily come short of the glory of God, and of all that is most enduring, momentous, and truly elevating for man. For their very principle is to ignore the everlasting future for weal or woe. It is to live for self, though it may claim the greatest happiness for the greatest number, in rebellion against God and His gracious testimony of Christ in person and redemption, whereby, through the Spirit, He delivers from sin and wrath into present, living, imperishable relationship with Himself.

* Gnosticism is the ancient system, which dared to pry into God's nature by human speculation, affecting to soar above revelation. Agnosticism is the modern infidelity, which, abandoning revelation as unreal or impossible, professes that God, heaven, hell, and man's future state, if such there be, are unknowable. Of this apostate ignorance some, alas! are proud, as ancients were of impious Gnosticism.

Herein lies the transcendent value of Scripture. Senses cannot avail beyond what acts on them. Reason can give no more than conclusions or probabilities. Even to ascertain facts is beyond its province; still more, truth moral or spiritual. How can reason furnish man with what most deeply concerns his being and state, present and future? How, above all, make God known and enjoyed, served and worshipped, now and evermore? Reason cannot, ought not, to be a groundwork for souls in view of eternity; and it is only perverted thus by such as will not bow to Scripture. What must be, is one thing; what is, reasoning, which deals with inference, cannot discover. Now, truth is the making known what is; and this in divine things can only be by revelation. Facts rest on sense or testimony; supernatural facts on a testimony above man, even if through him. To be made known with divine authority for man's blessing, they must be revealed by God, as they are in the Bible. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

How else could we know with assurance whence we came, and whither we go? Conscience may whisper that we are guilty, yet responsible before God. The more active and thorough its exercise, the more we are forced to feel our unfitness for His presence. There is therefore no prospect before us, as we are, but a fearful expectation of judgment. For conscience can tell us no way of escape from our own evil, no means of righteous reconciliation with God. His word confirms, in plain, strong, and solemn terms, all that we cannot but judge of our own state. But His word adds far other and better things; it makes known Christ, the coming Judge of quick and dead who despise Him and the God that sent Him to die for sinners; to all who repent and believe the gospel, it makes known in and through Christ the victory of His grace. The believer is not only rescued from the wrath to come, but brought already into divine favour, and even the relationship of a son of God; and henceforth, instead of dreading the Judge, he is entitled, while he serves a living and true God, to wait longingly for His Son from heaven. Such is the gospel Christ commands His servants to preach to every creature.

Scripture gives us sure and abundant light, not only as to God, but as to ourselves and all things as connected with Him. He who made us as well as the universe can alone inform us with certainty. Nor is any theory or tradition of men comparable with the clear, simple, and comprehensive dignity of the inspired record. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Matter did not exist eternally, as most philosophers conceived (some falling into the more evil folly of "no God"); nor was chaos "in the beginning," as heathen poets sang, and many a theologian has taught. "In the beginning," says St. John, "was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made." It is impossible to affirm more definitely or to deny more exclusively. Angels preceded not man only, but the material creation (Job 38: 7); but by the Son were all things created, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers, all things have been created through Him and unto Him; and He is before all things, and by (in virtue of) Him all things subsist together (Col. 1: 16, 17).

But, in creating, God created not a confused and disorderly mass; He created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. The heavens, in fact, were never thrown into confusion — the earth was, as we see in Gen. 1: 2; but this was after the beginning: how long is not said. Thousands or millions of years may have elapsed. It answered no moral end to reveal what science would investigate or conjecture. Only it is revealed, as befitting the divine character, that He is not a God — not a creator — of confusion. The confusion of the earth was subsequent, the reason or cause being unexplained as the interval or the history. The fact is distinctly revealed; and nobody would have failed to discern it, if philosophers had not misled the divines who are vain of standing well with the men of science. Geologists differ fundamentally to this day: some insisting on catastrophes, followed by renewals; others contending for continuous action of forces gradually operating. If there be a measure of truth in both, scripture leaves room for all, without straining the six days, which are wholly distinct from the immense ages that preceded man.

Days and weeks and years have to do with the human race and God's moral dealings on earth, after God had created and destroyed — it may be, many times — within those vast periods differently characterised before man was made, though not without a beneficent design for him on God's part. The principle and the fact, first of creation, then of disruption, before the immediate preparation of the world for the race, is the revealed communication of Gen. 1: 1, 2; the days, 1: 3 - 2: 3, are the commencement of time as we reckon it, not of creation, but of that later and special form when man was ushered into the earth. On the first, God said, "Light be;" and light was. It is not intimated that light was then first created. The previous ruin may have hindered its action till God uttered this fiat with a view to man's earth. On the second day, with the severing of land and sea, came the expanse as we have it (strangely rendered by the Seventy, whence "firmament" came through the Vulgate into the English version); on the third, the vegetable kingdom, herbage and tree yielding fruit; on the fourth, the luminaries in the expanse, not first created but set to give light night and day on the earth; on the fifth, animal life begun in the waters and for the air.

On the sixth day the earth was commanded to bring forth the living creature; the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and the reptiles.

Last of all, man is created on the same sixth day; but how different the language! "And God said? Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and every living thing that creepeth on the earth." Notice the striking change. It is no longer, Let there be this or that; no longer, Let the waters, or Let the earth, bring forth: so had it been for all other things earthly. God marks the introduction of man with words of unparalleled solemnity. He, as has been often remarked, holds counsel with Himself about it. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Man, therefore, clearly stands, not only at the head of creation here below, with title to rule it, which no angel is said to possess, but with a place of peculiar nearness, and, in some respect, resemblance to God. "And let them have dominion, etc." "And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." (Gen. 1: 26, 27) Of no other creature does God so speak. They were not only to replenish, but to subdue the earth, and have dominion over fish, fowl, beast, and every living thing that creeps on the earth (ver. 28). Who can wonder? It is a superiority, not in degree only, but in kind: both a moral nature and a mind capable of indefinite progression, as compared with the mere instincts of the lower creation.

But this, and more than this, in chap. 1 only comprises the general ordering. In chap. 2 we have what is much more specific. Accordingly, not "God" only, but "The Lord God" is introduced; not the originating Creator only, Elohim in contrast with the creature, but the moral governor, Jehovah Elohim, with man in special relationship to Himself as well as to his sphere, his companion, and his subjects. Jehovah God is from Gen. 2: 4, the first three verses being the true sequel of chap. 1. Here, therefore, we are told, ver. 7, that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground [as a potter might mould his vessel], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." All animals were living souls; but they lived when made. Not so man: the outer vessel was formed of God for man, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man alone had the wondrous privilege of God's inbreathing. It was thus only that man, and man alone, became a living soul; therefore is man's soul immortal. He derived his living soul from the inbreathing of God. This is the ground of his special relationship with God: man now responsible to do his will, as by-and-by he gives account to God.

In accordance with this presentation of relationships we hear of Eden in the next verse; not merely the earth in general, but that garden of delight which the Lord God planted eastward, where He put the man He had formed. Here also, in the same connection, we are told, not merely of every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food that the Lord God made to grow, but of the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus we see the test of responsibility, and (entirely distinct from it) the means of life. To eat of the forbidden tree was disobedience and death; life depended on eating of the other tree, which was expressly distinct. Further, we find all the other creatures brought by the Lord God to man, who gave names to them as he would; and, last of all, the special building up of woman by the Lord God from a part of man's own body.

These, in short, were the relationships of man, not only to God, but to the sphere he enjoys, to the beings that were put under him, as well as to her who was made a help-meet for him. In every respect man has a place altogether peculiar and above all other mammalia on the earth; yet more, in virtue of God's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, the inner man was derived directly from God. He was thus God's son (Luke 3: 38), God's offspring (Acts 17: 29); and this naturally, quite apart from becoming by grace a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus. He could not shirk the responsibility of his high estate and relationship to God, let him debase himself as he might, as they had done to whom the apostle then preached at Athens, as elsewhere.

Is it not, then, pitiable to find some who bear the Christian name labouring to reduce man as much as they can to the level of a brute? A living soul, or animal, they argue, is a phrase distinctly applied to the brutes as to the human race, for which they cite not only Gen. 2: 7, but Gen. 9: 10, Ps. 104: 30, and Rev. 16: 3, as well as 1 Cor. 15: 44-47. In its measure and way, the argument is like that of Unitarians, who flatter themselves that they exclude the Deity of Christ when they prove Him to be a man. So those who deny the soul's immortality assume that they have gained the end into which the enemy has seduced them, when they point out that Scripture speaks, as does everyone of common sense, of man as an animal. But the fact remains that, from the very first Scripture which so speaks, man alone of all creatures on earth is carefully shown to have got his inner being from the inbreathing of the Lord God. No intelligent Christian holds that the phrase "living soul" is chosen to distinguish him from the rest of the creation. But the statement of an immediately divine source in the sole instance of his natural life, as distinguished from all the animals set under his rule, was assuredly meant to convey, what no one ought to have doubted, that man, as man, apart from eternal life in the Son of God, essentially differs inwardly from all other animals. Ps. 104: 30 is no more identical with Gen. 2: 7 than God's hiding His face from the creatures in the preceding verse has the same import as His hiding it from Christ in Ps. 22. The ingenuity of error is deplorably pernicious. Outwardly, he is shown in the same passage to be of the meanest origin, "the dust of the ground;" inwardly, he is of the highest, and this constitutionally. God is the Father of spirits, speaking of man. It is not of Him, but of the enemy, to degrade man's distinctive nature.

It is not denied that a beast has a soul, and even a spirit: only the soul and the spirit, in this case, being simply animal, have an incomparably lower character. In man, personality, self-consciousness, will, is in the soul; capacity is by the spirit. Each has his own soul, and so is personally responsible. The spirit is faculty or power; and so John Baptist was to come in the spirit and power of Elias, not in any other's soul but his own. So all animals have a soul, and show it by a will of their own, as they have a spirit shown in the capacity of their species. Man only has a soul and a spirit immediately derived from God, which may be distinguished, but are inseparable. Hence, man's body only is treated in Scripture as mortal (Rom. 6: 12, Rom. 8: 11) — never his soul or his spirit. So we read in 2 Cor. 4: 11 of "our mortal flesh": flesh, not spirit in man's case, is mortal, whatever may be true of a beast. Again, in 2 Cor. 5: 4, "mortality,'' or "what is mortal," applies only to the body which will be swallowed up of life at Christ's coming.

Therefore, the Lord says — "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Gehenna). This destruction is not annihilation, which, indeed, is unheard of in Scripture, and as contrary to fact as it is to Scripture. For, as no creature can annihilate another, so God is never said to annihilate, but to judge and punish His enemies. Destruction here is their ruin judicially; not their ceasing to exist, but their continuance in wretchedness, suffering the due reward of their deeds at His hand Whom they despised, hated, and rebelled against. It is, therefore, called "everlasting destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might," and "everlasting punishment," the lot opposed to "eternal life." Men could not possibly doubt the meaning of such language, save from the will to please themselves, and determination to doubt God's word when it opposes that will. The conscience of the sinner unforgiven might rightly tremble, but in no wise doubt. The meaning is as sure as it is plain; and it supposes the soul immortal, as well as the body to be raised. Both shared in the sin; both join in sharing the punishment, when God judges, as He will, by our Lord Jesus.

Nor is it true that between death and the resurrection the soul sleeps. The Lord, in the Gospel of Luke, has made the truth no less certain for both the wicked and the righteous. In Luke 16 He shows us the beggar dying and carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom. This was certainly not the body but the soul; for the soul is the seat of personality. Whilst alive, soul and body are together. When death comes, the soul is the person till the resurrection, when they are together again for evermore; and therefore it is that only man rises from the grave; for he alone possesses a God-inbreathed soul — an immortal principle from God. As death is but an intermediate and incomplete state, resurrection (whether for just or unjust) will restore the full being, and in a condition for eternity. But, meanwhile, the beggar was, according to parabolic language, with the blessed beyond death. He was blessed with faithful Abraham, and not asleep. The rich man also died, and was buried. There was laid his body in the grave with whatever pomp. But in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments. His soul, thus, was not asleep; he was in torments. It is perfectly certain that this is a picture, not of resurrection, but of the intermediate state; for he is represented as entreating for his five brethren, that some startling testimony might reach them, "lest they also come into this place of torment." When resurrection dawns, there will be no question of testimony to save. Besides, the Lord stands for the divine authority of Scripture. They had the inspired witnesses, and if these were not heard, neither would they be persuaded if one rose from the dead.

Again, in Luke 20, in answer to unbelieving Sadducees (who said there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit), the Lord lays down that the God of the fathers is not God of dead but of living; "for all live unto Him" (Luke 20: 38). It is not only that the saints rise for the first, holy, and blessed resurrection, but that meanwhile also they live for Him, if not for man; and that "all" so live, not the saints alone. With eternal life in Christ the believer is mortal; without that life the unbeliever's soul lives, save spiritually, after he dies. And spiritually dead the natural man is while he is alive.

Most simple and instructive is the case of the converted robber in Luke 23: 43. He asked to be remembered by the Lord when He comes in His kingdom, and receives the answer, "Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." That very day, through faith in Jesus, by virtue of His precious blood, should his soul be with Him in Paradise. The paradise of man was lost and cannot be regained. The second man, the last Adam, opens a new and better Eden, the Paradise of God; and the first soul to enter there after Jesus was the converted robber. Oh ! what a testimony to the grace of God, and to the blood of Christ. The Lord will come surely in His kingdom by-and-by; but this newly converted soul has not to wait for that day. On the day he died he enjoyed the heavenly Paradise with his Lord and Saviour.

So Stephen when dying (Acts 7: 59, 60) says, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The Lord Himself when dying had said, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." This, after suffering as He did, was His perfection; and He alone could properly use these words. Stephen fittingly, in his place, calls on Him and says, "Receive my spirit." To be with Christ, then, is what departing from the body means; not sleeping, certainly, which would be far worse than the portion we now while alive enjoy in His love. "To depart and be with Christ," as the apostle says (Phil. 1: 23), "is very far better." It is to be absent from the body, no doubt; not sleeping, still less non-existent, but "at home with the Lord." And, therefore, we are "willing" rather to be absent from the body, as compared with living here. But it is not what we are "longing for;" for verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation, which is from heaven. Therefore, now we groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed (that is, divested of our body), but that we would be clothed upon (that is, invested with our changed bodies), that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.

What is this but proof upon proof that the soul is immortal for man even though lost, and that the saint's soul, separate from the body, will have immensely increased enjoyment of and with Christ in heaven? The notion of sleep, still more of extinction, for the soul, is a baseless and wicked fable.

I am aware that some, who plead for the mortality of the soul, adduce 1 Tim. 6: 16 to this end; but when it is said of God that "He only hath immortality," the reference is to essential, not to conferred, being. Even the misusers of the text do not deny that the angels are immortal. Certainly our Lord has laid down that such is their condition, and that the risen saints shall resemble them in this respect. "Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels" (Luke 20: 36). Therefore, God's only having immortality is perfectly consistent with the immortality of angels; and, if so, with the immortality of the human soul. The soul is immortal as angels are; but it is through God's constituting both so. God only hath immortality. Again, the objectors urge that Christ abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1: 10). But this, as far as "immortality" is concerned, is notoriously a mistaken version, as known for many years to all scholars, and now corrected by the Revisers, who properly say "incorruption" for immortality. Christ has brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel; life in Himself alive again for evermore, and incorruption for the body. For the last, the soul is not in question here at all. Further, in 1 Cor. 15: 53, 54, not only is it plain that this corruptible must put on incorruption, but that this mortal must put on immortality: — two clauses which refer only to the body when the resurrection comes.

Mortality is never said of man's soul. All Scriptures of Old Testament and New Testament alike treat the inner man as immortal, though in the Old Testament it may be somewhat obscure; through the gospel all is now brought to light, whether for soul or body. Hence, in the Book of the Revelation, no shadow overhangs the prophetic visions — "And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Master, the Holy and True, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6: 9, 10). These are the souls of saints, no doubt, but they are neither extinct nor yet slumbering; and as they cry with loud voice for the righteous judgment of God, there was given to each one of them meanwhile a white robe, and the answer of the Lord is assured in due time. No doubt there is symbol here as there was figure in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; but the symbol here, like the figure there, supposes life and acceptance and communion with God's mind, not extinction of being nor stupor after death. They had died as to the body, not as to the soul. It was separate, not sleeping, but awaiting resurrection.

So again in the vision of Rev. 20: 4, "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them; and (I saw) the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God; and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." The first class, consisting of the enthroned, were already in the resurrection state; but two other classes follow in the separate state, whose souls accordingly were seen by the prophet, as they are subsequently said to live in order to reign with Christ, no less than those who already sat on thrones. Here, again, the souls clearly existed, even before they "lived" in the sense of their bodies being re-united to their souls.

The doctrine of Scripture, therefore, is throughout plain, certain, and consistent; and this for all souls, wicked as well as righteous. Even while living, the wicked are by Scripture called "lost" or "destroyed" — the very same word which ignorance would force to mean annihilated. That this is false is therefore unquestionable; for whilst they live now, they are said to be destroyed as positively as when judgment seizes them for ever. Then only will it be everlasting destruction. Annihilation is, therefore, out of the question. They are morally destroyed, certainly not annihilated, whilst they now live to reject the Saviour and the gospel. No honest man can deny it. The fact is, that God alone could annihilate what He has made, and that He never says that He will, but expressly — a wholly different thing — that He will raise the wicked, and judge them by the Lord Jesus. For resurrection will introduce into a state fixed and changeless for ever.

And now, my reader, be not turned away from the truth by empty speculation, or by vain jangling of words. If not born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. You have spirit, soul, and body of incomparably higher character than that of natural animals without reason, made to be taken and destroyed. You have far greater advantages than the Jew of old, as he had much profit every-way over the heathen. You have God's oracles in all their fulness; you hear not the law merely, but the gospel. But you are fallen; you are a sinner — yea, a rebel against God, not only in will, but by that spirit which is the highest part of your nature. In vain do men seek to allay your fears or their own by the false philosophy which denies immortality to that inextinguishable nature which belongs to the human race alone of all that breathe on earth. You are not a superior sort of brute; nor does the difference consist only in powers of mind, reflection, and language. You have the consciousness not only of self but of God in your soul, and about your spirit as well as your body. You, therefore, alone of animals are morally responsible, alone must be raised from death, alone must give account to God.

But with all your endowments and privileges, especially under the gospel and the church, you are lost for ever if you flee not to Christ and His precious blood which cleanses from all sin. In Him only is eternal life, by Him only eternal redemption. They are God's free gift to every one that believes. Oh! then repent, and believe the gospel. If you turn from Him who now speaks from heaven, you prove that you judge yourself unworthy of eternal life, that you prefer the world to heaven with Christ before the Father. So living, so dying, what can be said to you by and by, but "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels?" Not Moses, but the Son of Man so warns. It was not for guilty man that God prepared this everlasting punishment. It was for the enemies of God and man; but if men now reject His grace in Christ to take part with the enemies, the doom of the enemies will be theirs. And what more just as against those who trample on mercy to the uttermost?

W. K.

Restraint put on speaking in the Assembly

Restraint Put on Speaking in the Assembly.

Certainly in 1 Cor. 14: 27-29 there are restrictive rules put as to speaking in the assembly. The very disorder in the church at Corinth furnished the occasion for the profit of all afterwards. "If any speak with a tongue, two or at most three, and in turn (or, separately), and let one interpret; but if there be no interpreter, let him be silent in an assembly, and let him speak to himself and to God. And let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge."

The apostle had just laid down the great principle, "Let all things be done to edification." Then he applies it to the two typical or representative cases; to a tongue on the one hand; and on the other to prophesying. He begins with what the vain Greek mind affected most, speaking with a tongue, because it was so open and surprising a witness of divine power. It electrified people. But in an assembly, if alone, it did not edify. Therefore if he who had "a tongue" could not interpret, or no interpreter was there, he must be silent and content with speaking to himself and to God: an excellent lesson, where there was the desire to display that gift. Even if there was an interpreter, edifying required only two or at the most three.

Next, he turns to prophesying which had the highest character of direct edifying, and directs that two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge, not add their lesser mites, which could only distract, instead of edifying, but rather hinder the profit of what came from God. Under this regulation comes teaching of any kind in assembly for edification, encouragement, consolation, exhortation, warning or any other spiritual aim. More than "two or three," even if possessed of the most weighty of God's gifts, is forbidden in the most distinct and absolute way.

The question is, if we believe that grace still preserves meeting in an assembly, and if we in divine mercy cherish so signal a privilege, spite of its absence in general. Are we subject to the "Lord's commandment" in these things as in all else? It is to be feared that many forget it, and think that prevalent ruin opens the door to laxity and self-will. Perhaps others too have heard not many years since of no less than eight speakers, occupying a professedly Christian assembly, and rather boasting of this plethora of talk, as if it were a proof of zeal, simplicity, or the freedom which the Spirit of the Lord creates. It really indicated their lack of intelligence, in subjection to the inspired word which they could not but know, but failed to recognise; and love of letting their voices be heard on such a solemn occasion, which is meant to witness that God is verily in or among them.

In vers. 34-36 is another and a prohibitory rule, "Let the women keep silence in the assemblies; for it is not permitted to them to speak; but let them be in subjection, as also saith the law. And if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for a woman to speak in an assembly. What! went the word of God out from you? or came it to you alone?"

Such is His regulation of His assembly. Would we as Christians prefer, or even tolerate for ourselves, an assembly independent of God, where man speaks as he pleases? How necessary it is to judge ourselves, especially if we exercise the title to judge other people. What is more excellent than obedience?

W. K.

The Spirit of God

W. Kelly.

"The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining upon him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost" (John 1: 29-33).

Two works of our Lord are referred to here — what may be called His great earthly work, and His great heavenly work. On earth His work is — and what can be so great? — to take away the sin of the world; not only the sins of us who believe, but the sin of the world.

Did you ever, by the way, know one that quoted the phrase correctly? Have you ever seen it employed aright in any liturgy that ever was framed? I do not recollect it so much as even once, although familiar with rather many of such compilations. Evidently, the truth intended is not before hearts, nor even understood, but confounded with something different; and hence men cite the words falsely. This shows the all-importance for the truth of cleaving to the only unerring standard, the written word of God. Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; but the Holy Ghost in this connection carefully abstains from saying "sins." It is constantly assumed, when persons read the passage, that Christ has taken away the "sins" of the world. Now this would be another thing altogether, and confounds the text with 1 Peter 2: 24.

When John the Baptist gave his testimony, in pointing Him out to his disciples, saying, "Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," he did not mean that He was then effecting it, nor yet that, when He died on the cross, the sin of the world would as yet come to an end. Then and there no doubt He laid the basis for taking it away. The only work which could ever take away the sin of the world was the blood-shedding of the Lamb of God. Yet the sin of the world is not yet gone. If sin were taken away out of the world, no wickedness could be known or exist anywhere longer. There would not be an atom of evil left.

When, then, will the sin, that the Lamb died to take away from the world, be clean and for ever banished from it? In the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. It will not vanish away till then. As believers, your sins are undoubtedly forgiven, but this is another thing. Your sins are now blotted out by the precious blood of Jesus if you believe on Him, "whereof the Holy Ghost is also a witness to us" (Heb. 10: 15-17). Hence we read: "You now hath he reconciled" (Col. 1: 21); but He has not yet reconciled "all things" (ver. 20). He has shed His blood for the purpose, and that blood is beyond doubt a perfectly efficacious sacrifice, whereby all things are surely to be reconciled to God; but they are not reconciled till He comes again. There is still suffering, sorrow, and death; there is corruption and violence, unblushing idolatry, and heartless infidelity; there is still every kind of human iniquity and rebellion against God going on in the world as much as ever. Yet the work which, as a righteous ground before God, will remove all this evil out of the world, is done; and God has accepted it but not yet applied it to the world, though He is so doing to believers. When the Lord takes the world-kingdom, it will be richly applied and for a long while, but not in absolute and everlasting fulness, till "the new heavens, and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Then there will be left remaining no more sin nor effect of sin in the world. It will be completely gone. Then will it be proved how true it is that Jesus is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

I am aware that people lay stress upon the fact that John said, "which taketh away," as if it were then going on; but this is a very ignorant way of using Scripture. For instance, one goes into a druggist's shop and gets there a bottle of laudanum labelled "Poison." This does not mean that the poison is working now. If the druggist says it is laudanum which kills a man, he does not mean that it is then doing its work, but simply that, when it is applied to a man, it will kill him. People confound what is called the absolute or ethical present with the actual present. One is sorry to be obliged to use high-sounding words about this matter; but it is difficult to convey what is wanted in simpler language, and it is important that it should be conveyed accurately. Even learned and devoted men — and you know very well that I do not wish at all to question their ability — have sadly mistaken in this matter.

But a man may be a great scholar, and not wise in Scripture. Not a few of the greatest scholars have been rather heterodox. Great learning does not necessarily give even good sense. Further, a man may have both learning and good sense; and yet not be spiritual. If you had ever such ability and attainments, you would still require the teaching of the Spirit. Assuredly this is what one constantly finds if much used to commentaries and writings upon the Scripture, as some Christians have been in their time. You would find it dull work to pore over their discussions, if you had reason to examine the folios and quartos that have passed through the press; you would prove how very little Biblical learning has to do with the real intelligence of the word of God. Learned as many of the writers of these commentaries were — and some of them were also able men indeed — yet somehow or other, when they took up the Scriptures, they failed to apply Christ as the one key to unlock all. They rarely seem to speak out of the possession of the truth; and this is the only way to understand the Bible. You can never understand it unless you have Christ and Christ's work, and its present result in power for the soul, clearly before you, in order out of this to interpret the word of God, which then to a large extent becomes an explanation in God's own language of what you have already got. You have already life in the Son of God if you are a believer; you have by His blood the forgiveness of your sins; you have by faith entered the family of God as His children, and have been sealed by the Spirit till the day of redemption.

Let me bring the matter home to you. I had great difficulty in finding a few verses of a Paraphrase which we might sing to-night in a certain connection with my subject. Be assured that I do not wish to find fault — the very reverse. But then I could not agree to sing what was not true. I should have liked to have found something scriptural to celebrate about the Spirit; but I could not. I found a prayer to seal us by His Spirit. But how could one sing that, any more than, when I put my coat upon my back, I could ask a man to put it there? If you are sealed, it is a fact, and it is a fact that abides. It is not an uncertainty. It is not something that requires to be repeated. There is no such thing as being again sealed by the Spirit. It is not a partial blessing, or constantly in need of renewal, just as you have to take food every few hours. This is not the case with the sealing of the Holy Spirit. It is a privilege once given which continues, however important it is that we should not grieve Him but be dependent on His action and be filled with Him. Clearly then he who wrote the Paraphrase referred to was not aware of this; and the consequence is that he was in no little uncertainty when he came to the Spirit's operations. I see in the LXth Paraphrase, and no doubt it is the same all through, "Oh, may Thy Spirit seal our souls." I could not sing this, nor could I ask you to sing it; because, if I believe the Scriptures, He has sealed my soul, and He has sealed yours if you are now children of God in the liberty of Christ. If you are not in liberty, you need to be sealed. It is the sealing of the Spirit that brings, not life but, liberty into the soul. You recollect the apostle's words — "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Now, in a previous verse of the same chapter he says "The letter killeth" (referring to the law), "but the spirit giveth life." Thus, if one take up the Old Testament and abide in the mere letter, no spiritual blessing is gained. If one take, for instance, the various offerings and merely think of a Jew bringing his bullock or sheep, or perhaps a pair of birds, to the altar, what is there in this to quicken the soul? Nothing. The consequence then was that the Jews who simply brought their birds or beasts to the altar lived and died Jews, and never went to heaven at all. But any of us drawing from these symbols that there is Another who must settle his case with God, that there was to be an unblemished One to take up the cause of the sinner atoningly, and that this sacrifice is none other than Christ's, passes at once from dead offerings to the Lord made sin on the cross. There is the spirit that quickens.

When a man is quickened, he does not always receive liberty. I have known a soul (who, I cannot doubt, being quickened, has gone for thirty or forty years without being sealed at all) to remain still in great bondage of spirit, a lady who passes too much of her time in capricious judgments, too harsh here, too light there; the end of all which is that she finds the word a two-edged sword, which, while it has an edge against other people, has also one against herself. Constantly doubting whether such or such a person is saved, she goes from one thing or person to another, but always comes back to herself, and never yet has seen for her own soul that God rolled everything upon Christ, never yet for her own need been able to rest on Him as the Lamb. The consequence is that she is not what Scripture calls "saved." It is not that she doubts He is the Son of God, but she constantly hesitates about her own interest in Him when it comes to the point. She is like a person who would say, "I am not content with the High Priest confessing the sins of the people. If I could only hear Him mentioning my name and my sins, it would give me true comfort; but I only hear about sins in general, which I cannot believe to be a confession for me." This is not the faith of the gospel really. The word of God's good news says, "Whosoever," for He knew a great deal better than to indulge souls in such delusions.

Supposing for a moment, that there was such a thing as naming anybody, do you not know that there may be hundreds of the same name? Thus a person would on this principle be always in doubt whether his own sins were really confessed: so that, if one were to be indulged in a desire so selfish, neither he nor others could ever get solid peace at all. Graciously therefore does God say "Whosoever." Surely any of you that have had questions about your soul are covered by the words "whosoever believeth." Again, "If any man thirst." Just see the blessed ways God has taken to open the door and to bring sinners in. He loves to save. It is the delight of God to reconcile to Himself. It is glory to the name of Jesus when a poor sinner comes and casts himself upon His precious blood. He is the Lamb of God, and the very fact that He is so is the best possible ground for a soul to come now, no matter who he may be or what he may have done.

It is not true that Christ has taken away — still less that he was then taking away — the sins of the world; for if this were done, not a single soul would be sent to hell. Everybody would be saved if all the sins were taken away. If faith were still necessary in order to apply it, the believer would be comparatively uncertain, or in danger of self-righteousness; for all his difference from a lost soul must then lie in what is personal: God's grace would be the same absolutely for all. But this contradicts Scripture.

The consequence of this mistake is the more serious, because it leads to other and if possible worse mistakes. In the Roman Mass Book they say "The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." Christ, according to their doctrine, has taken away everybody's sins; but nobody gets to heaven unless, besides that, he is faithful to the church, and does what the priest tells him — unless he obeys not only the commands of God, but also those of the church, availing himself duly of the seven Sacraments. And so there is a hope that, being thus faithful to the church, he may get to heaven at last. Is it not a very poor kind of salvation? Is it God's?

It is God alone that can save; none but a divine person. The church needs to be saved, and therefore cannot save. The whole notion is radically false, and while opening the door to the delusion that everybody's sins are gone, it brings everybody's sins upon them after all, because if after being baptised they sin again, Christ does no good to them, and the whole work has to be done over again. Such is the doctrine of the Council of Trent, yea of East as well as West. Indeed it has so affected other bodies that there is scarcely any Protestant body in Christendom that has not been more or less injured by this dangerous departure from the word of God. This shows the importance of even one letter. The "sin" of the world is right — "sins" would not be true. It is never said that our sins are gone except to the believer. Where it is written that Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, it is the believer's sins that are referred to. There is no such thing as His bearing the sins of every person in the world; but if you come out of the world, if you confess the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, you find your sins are gone. Christ has done the work. God gives you to know by His word and Spirit that you are forgiven. This is the doctrine of Scripture, so that there is the fullest comfort — without reserve, and without hesitation — in virtue of the mighty work of the Lord Jesus. But the full effect of His earthly work will only be when every trace of sin is gone in the eternal scene of righteousness and glory.

We come now to His heavenly work. What can it be? Many are not aware that Christ has done a great heavenly work. I do not speak of His priesthood, nor even of His advocacy before the Father. He is a Priest to give us sympathy in our suffering, and He is an Advocate to give us restoration when we have sinned. For alas! you know believers may sin, and do sin; and the Lord Jesus is Advocate with the Father; as John says — "If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

But there is another blessed work that John refers to here in the verses we have read, and what is that? "The same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." Yet the Lord Jesus never baptized with the Holy Ghost till He went to heaven. It is from heaven that He does so, and this is clearly brought before us in the Acts of the Apostles, to which you can now refer. You may see it for yourselves clearly promised for the last time in Acts 1: 4, 5, "And being assembled together with [them], commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which [saith he] ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." Do not suppose that this was confined to the apostles, or to those who were Christ's immediate disciples. The apostles were prominently before His mind, but not exclusively.

Accordingly in Acts 2 we find that, when they were all with one accord in one place, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, which filled all the house. Just as the wind did then fill the house, so the Holy Ghost came to constitute them God's house. Cloven tongues, like as of fire, sat upon each of them. There was the personal as well as the general presence of the Spirit of God. He did not appear like a dove, but like cloven tongues of fire. He came like a dove on the Lord Jesus; for the Lord Jesus had no sin: not a taint of evil was in the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a perfect man, not even knowing sin; and, that this might be, He was conceived of the Holy Ghost. If He had been born in a natural way, He must have had sin; but the power of the Highest counteracted this, so that He should be born of woman, yet "A body hast thou prepared me" without sin. This wonderful truth was set forth in the meal offering, where the flour was mingled with oil, without leaven, which represents the corruption of our nature. But there was no leaven in the meal-offering. Oil, the constant symbol of the Holy Ghost, was mingled with the flour to make the cake, and, when the cake was made, oil was poured upon it. This was admirably fulfilled in our Lord Jesus. First, the Holy Ghost came upon the virgin, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her; and next, when He was about thirty years of age, the Holy Ghost descended upon Him without blood, because He was without sin. And God the Holy Ghost comes down on us.

But see how strikingly our case resembles, and yet is differentiated from, our Lord Jesus Christ. We are of a sinful nature, but born of the Spirit. There is by the word of God the action of the Holy Ghost: we are born of water and of the Spirit. The Holy Ghost does not come on us until we rest on Christ's redemption. The problem was, How could the Holy Ghost come and dwell in what was unclean? Now the efficacy of the blood of Christ is to make us perfectly clean in the sight of God. This is what redemption does. The precious blood of Christ "cleanseth us," it is said in Scripture, "from all sin." Do you believe it? Do you really bow to what God declares, that "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin"? We see the reason why the Holy Ghost was never before given to a sinful man. I do not say He never operated on such; on the contrary He did so in every believer since Abel. But He never was given, never sealed a believer, till the blood of Christ left him without spot or stain. There is the Spirit of God quickening the soul when a man is a sinner; and there is the Spirit of God now sealing him, when he, a believer, rests on the work of Christ. So our Lord Jesus told the disciples that they were to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. They were already quickened, being for years true believers, but they were not yet baptized in the Holy Ghost. But now He goes up to heaven to send down the Holy Ghost; and this is most distinctly shown in Acts 2: 32, 33, "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."

The Holy Ghost was given to Christ twice — for Himself while He was upon the earth, for us when He went to heaven: and this is the reason why the Holy Ghost never leaves the church, because He is given to the church in virtue of Christ, and not because of our good behaviour. The Holy Ghost is given to Him, and it is through Him and because of Him that the Holy Ghost always abides. If the Holy Ghost were to leave the church, it would be as good as saying that Christ was no longer worthy of the Holy Ghost abiding. God could not say so; and this is what makes the Holy Ghost so precious. And so the Lord told them in the fourteenth chapter of John, "He shall abide with you for ever" (John 14: 16).

To be sure there are people who do not believe this. I do not know whether it is the case now, but some forty years ago it used to be a regular practice for known evangelical men to put forth a little document every year calling for united prayer that the Holy Spirit should be shed forth again on the church — that we should have a fresh effusion of the Spirit of God. Is not this a very serious thing? Suppose that people were to begin to pray at the end of the year that Christ should die again! Everybody would look aghast, thinking it a denial of the faith. But is it less really preposterous, is it not equally unbelieving, to pray for the Holy Ghost to be given again? He is shed, and being shed, He abides for ever.

Do you tell me, that the Spirit is to be shed again in this world's history? I grant it; but this will be for Israel, and for the Gentiles when Israel believes, as it is beautifully shown in the High-Priest going into the sanctuary and coming out. Perhaps you recollect that the bells which were on the vestments of the High Priest gave forth a sound when he went into the most holy place, and when he came out. The bells ringing when he went in would answer to the gift of the Spirit of God to us, the church, when our Lord went up on high; and the bells ringing when he came out, to the fresh testimony of the Holy Spirit when Israel shall be brought in. But there is no such doctrine as the Holy Ghost shed repeatedly for the church. When He was sent down, He was given to abide with us for ever. I am aware of all the darkness in the middle ages — of the revived superstition and the fresh and abounding rationalism in the present age; nevertheless, the Holy Ghost abides. Yet I do say that the Holy Ghost abides, because Christ said it, after He obtained eternal redemption, as it was because of this that He went up into heaven itself. It was not a temporary redemption, like that of the Jews, who were taken out of Egypt, but might be carried off to Babylon. It is otherwise with the church of God. The Lord Jesus brought in eternal redemption, and the consequence is that the Holy Ghost comes down and abides for ever.

So far our Lord's case differs, on Whom the Spirit came down like a dove, because there was a perfect absence of evil; no question of the smallest sin or taint, or anything to indicate corruption in our Lord. This could not be said about us, and therefore did the Holy Ghost descend in the form which He assumed for the disciples, "like as of fire." Fire always marks the judgment of God. The Holy Ghost could not have come upon the disciples if there had not been God's judgment dealing with their sin in the work of Christ. But there was more than this. There appeared cloven tongues, because it was to be a question of testimony. Not so in Christ's case; for He is the One testified of. We are called to be witnesses of Him. We know but are not the truth; He only and emphatically is the truth to be witnessed to. Cloven tongues formed a beautiful emblem of the power of the Holy Ghost put forth in making believers witnesses to our Lord Jesus Christ. Cloven tongues — no longer one language as of Canaan, but more, every tongue of every nation under heaven — point not to Jew only but to Gentile, so that the expressiveness of the symbol seems unmistakable.

Such then is the fact: let us now enter a little into the doctrine. Notice, first, that the Spirit of God, and we are speaking of the gift of the Spirit, is never mentioned until a man has already believed. Always bear this in mind. The new birth makes a man a believer; the gift of the Spirit comes when he is a believer. The gift of the Spirit brings him into liberty — not into life. The truth of Christ brings him life, and the Spirit of God takes His part in quickening; but the Holy Ghost is given to him already a believer; and this seals him in perfect liberty. For this reason you wilt observe that in the earlier chapters of the Epistle to the Romans we have the sinner looking to Christ and His blood, and not one word about the Holy Ghost yet, because the idea is to present Christ, not to distract him with what works within him. The Spirit does work in order that he may look to the true object, but the Holy Ghost is never an object of faith, which Christ is. When a man has received the gospel, when he rests upon the blood of Christ, the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given. This is the first mention of the Holy Ghost in the Epistle to the Romans. We come to no less than the fifth chapter before there is any allusion to the working of the Holy Ghost in the believer; and then we hear of the love of God shed abroad in the believer's heart by the Holy Ghost.

"Perfect love casteth out fear." (1 John 4: 18) But it is God's. Whenever we turn upon our own love, or take any satisfaction from it, it is a poor sign of state or faith. Real love always has a high ideal of the object that is loved, but never of itself. God's love in Jesus is a perfect love, and casteth out fear. There is no perfect love except the love of God in our case, not ours to God, but His to us. His is perfect love, and only so; and this alone casts out fear. I know that He loves me so perfectly that He not only gave His Son to come down and bear my sins on the cross, but that I should be as He is in heaven. There are two ways in which Christ shows perfect love: first, by coming down to bear all my sins and stripes; secondly, by going up to heaven to give me His glory. Meanwhile He sheds on me the Spirit, that God may dwell in me and I in God. Such is the perfect love of God. Christ was carrying out God's mind, God's affections, God's great purposes; and all this is exactly what the Holy Ghost bears witness to. "For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God, who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." (2 Cor. 1: 20-22)

Passing over some most instructive chapters in the Epistle to the Romans we come to the eighth, where we are told — "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." We need not read the next clause, because it ought not to be there; and one may safely venture to predict that, when the new version of the Scriptures comes out, none will find it there. [See now R.V.] "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8: 1-2) This is the first reason assigned why there is no condemnation — sin and death are no longer a law to the believer, because the Spirit of life in Christ risen has liberated him. He has a new life; and the Holy Ghost has been given to him. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." The allusion is to what the Lord did on the day that He rose from the dead. He told Mary Magdalene to go and tell His disciples, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." (John 20: 17) This was His message. He put the disciples, as far as could be, in precisely the same relationship with God as Himself. He could give them (not Godhead, but) the place He had as the risen man before God. Up to that time the bearing of sin, and death in rejection and atonement, were always before Him. Now everything evil was behind Him, and glory in heaven before Him. Now He says, this is your position as well as Mine: "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." And that message brought the disciples together, "the doors being shut for fear of the Jews," and the Lord entered the closed doors just as easily as if they had been open. (John 20: 19)

You will notice that the first thing He did — after giving them the comforting announcement of peace, peace for them, and peace for others — was to breathe upon them. And what breath was that? His resurrection breath — life in resurrection power — "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." (John 20: 22) It was the resurrection life of Christ breathed into the souls of the disciples. I do not say that it was a thing that could be felt physically, or seen, of course. Such is not the nature of the spiritual life. The wind may be a figure of it, but it is not a material thing palpable in an outward way. Yet it is a reality — a present reality — much more so than the old life, which itself is quite impalpable. The wisest who cry up the present time are no wiser on this point than the sages of former times. Yet life is not more momentous than wonderful; and how solemn to think that, when it leaves the body, all efforts to restore it fail! You may galvanise a dead body and make the limbs move, but electricity is not life. Even in natural life you come to a barrier that no science can penetrate — no microscope can discern, no tests can analyse; but there it is, an inexplicable secret to man — a thing that shows the finger of God, where all the discoveries of science only bring out more clearly the fact that man cannot solve its enigma.

If such is the case with natural life, how much more so is it with the spiritual — that life that comes from Christ and enjoys Him for ever! With this law the Christian has to do, as the Jew with the ministry of death and condemnation written on stones: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (Rom. 8: 2) Death, of course, was the end of the first man. The resurrection of Christ is the believer's power of entrance into the new condition where there is no change, or sin whatever. You may tell me the Christian may sin, and quote passages from Scripture to prove that; but they do not mean that the new life has sinned. It is because a man has not kept the old life in order. The old man is like a wild beast, which you have to keep like a wild beast under lock and key. We are responsible to do so. Nothing can be more shameless than to hear a man who has broken out into sin say, "Oh, it was not I that sinned, it was the weakness of the flesh." If you live in the Spirit, you are bound to mortify the flesh with its affections and lusts. It is unchristian-like for any man to excuse his wickedness by talking about the flesh. No doubt it is the fact; but he is bound to keep the flesh under, and there is power in the Holy Ghost given him to deal with the old man.

In Gal. 5: 17, correctly translated, we read — "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would." Our version runs, "So that ye cannot do the things that ye would"; but this is quite wrong. What the word of God, properly rendered, says is good and true, "That ye do not the things that ye would." The Holy Ghost is given to the believer, and the action of the Spirit is directly contrary to the flesh, as the flesh is contrary to the Spirit. "Lo, I come," said Christ — who indeed was the only one that could say it unwaveringly — "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God"; but we are responsible, being set apart for the purpose — sanctified unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. This does not mean that we are merely to obey and that the blood of Christ repairs our disobedience. The meaning is that we are sanctified to the same kind of obedience as Christ, whose blood gives us confidence that our sins are by grace forgiven.

The allusion in 1 Peter 1: 2 is to what took place at mount Sinai, when blood was sprinkled on the people, and they said, "All that the Lord hath said will we do." But they did not. They were disobedient; and the blood witnessed that they must die the death because of their disobedience. We start with the precious blood of Christ, while at the same time we are called to obey as Christ did; and what comes in to meet our delinquencies is confession of our sins, or the washing of water by the word. This is the meaning of the washing of the disciples' feet by the Lord Jesus before He went to heaven. It was to show His own here the work He is gone to heaven to do for them. Peter at first refused to let his feet be washed, and then, when corrected, asked that his whole body should be washed; but he was wrong in both respects. He did not know, if one be already washed with the washing of regeneration, that no more is wanted for the removal of subsequent faults than to have his feet washed. In other words, the particular evil that may be contracted in walking through the world requires to be removed. "He that is washed (bathed) needeth not save to wash his feet." If at first wholly washed, as every believer is, he needs only partial cleansing, in other words the washing of his feet, when he subsequently does wrong. Peter did not lose the benefit of being born of water and the Spirit when he afterwards sinned grievously. If not a true saint he would have gone and hanged himself, like Judas. Therefore the very thing the Lord prayed for was that his faith should not fail. Judas, in the despair of his heart, went and perished miserably. Peter did not, although he committed a great sin, because the Lord prayed for him, and afterwards indeed took particular notice of him — "Tell the disciples and Peter" — the only one mentioned, and why? Because he was the one that most needed it. How gracious is the Lord! How full of tender mercy! He is the spring, the unfailing Giver of all grace. Once in Him all your sins are gone, and yourself brought nigh as alive to God. This is the true place of every believer. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." (Rom. 8: 2-4)

You observe two reasons are given why there is no condemnation. The first is, that Christ gives a life which God cannot condemn; whilst the second is, that God has already condemned (not merely the sins, but) the sin that gave them birth. The whole of our evil is already condemned in the cross of Christ — the wondrous Christ of God. These are the two grounds why there is no condemnation. And the effect is that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us. Not in any Jew, but in every Christian; for every Christian loves God and loves his neighbour, and these are the two great moral aims of the law. How can a Christian not love God, who first loved him? And does not the Christian love his neighbour? Does he not go forth every day of his life to serve not only his neighbour and friend, but even his enemy? This is what the Christian is called to; and this is what every real Christian does, although not so fully as he ought, "that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Just so far as a Christian walks in the Spirit is the righteousness of the law fulfilled in him. It is a remarkable fact that the people who were under the law never kept it, and that those who are not under the law are the only people that do keep it, and this because of the delivering power that God has brought in through Christ.

Let me here recall to your notice the constant danger of a soul that has been awakened, to mix up the work of the Spirit with that of Christ. It is always on the look out for fruits. As you are, you had better say nothing about fruits yet. If you seek to find fruits before you enter into peace with God, you never can find peace. No man ever found peace with God by looking within himself; and God never meant any to find peace save by turning to Christ. Do you not hear Him saying, "Having made peace by the blood of His cross?" This is not within but without you. It is something wrought for you by Christ, and Christ alone: and the quickening of the Spirit is not to furnish ground for peace within you, but to prove that you are nothing but a poor guilty sinner; thus forcing you out of yourself to rest on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The tendency of the anxious soul is to look within, for confirmatory marks of the Spirit. But so long as he does not rest on the work of Christ, he never can have peace.

For saints there is another danger. When you have peace, beware of separating, as is too often done, the Spirit from Christ. Men say you need the Spirit of God to sanctify you. Rather you need the Spirit of God constantly to direct your eyes toward Christ. There are these two dangers then: one for a man who is just awakened; the other for him who has found peace with God. The saint cannot go in safety unless he has the Spirit of God fixing the eyes of his heart on the Lord Jesus. This is the point the apostle refers to at the close of chap. 3 in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians.

But I would say a few words on a preceding verse "Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty"; (2 Cor. 3: 17) and I will show you how difficult it is — not in reality, but in appearance — either to understand the Scriptures, or to give them even a right outward form. People often think that if you have "spirit," or any other word in a verse more than once, it must always bear the same meaning. Here this is not the case. "The Lord is that spirit." How should "spirit" be printed? I answer unhesitatingly, with a small "s." "Now the Lord is that spirit." The "Spirit" would be downright heterodoxy. Who would tolerate such a notion as that the Lord Jesus is the Holy Ghost? One can understand how in the "Shepherd of Hermas" (a most offensive little treatise, and really heretical, which in the second or third century used to be read in public worship) there occurs a confusion and worse between the Lord Jesus and the Holy Ghost; but this no where is or can be in Scripture.

The fact is, that the meaning of the verse is connected with what was quoted before. The apostle was contrasting the old covenant with the new, and he says, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Christ, under the letter of the old, quickens; the letter of the old without Christ does not. "Now," says he, "the Lord is the spirit," i.e., of the old. The letter cannot quicken, but the spirit does. It is the Lord that is meant by the Passover, Red Sea, Manna, etc., as also by the burnt, meat, peace, and sin offerings; and so one might go through all the letter of the law. "The Lord is the spirit"; and this is the reason why I should print "spirit" with a small letter, though it is not so in my book. It may be different in your Bibles. But if not, you must remember the copyists were not inspired, any more than the printers, translators, or critical editors. The question is the bearing of the truth of God; and I affirm that the doctrine which confounds the Lord Jesus with the Spirit is not true. Is it not impossible, therefore, to print "spirit" in that verse with a capital "S" consistently with truth? For this would identify the second person of the Trinity with the third, which is wholly untrue.

But the moment you come to the next clause, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is," you must have a capital "S," because the Holy Ghost is meant. The Lord has gone on high, but the Holy Ghost is sent down below; and He it is who now seals the believer, bringing him into liberty in Christ. Thus what the apostle first lays down as a principle is that the spirit of the old forms of the law always pointed to the Lord Jesus. "The Lord is the spirit." Then besides this, the Spirit of the Lord is now come down from heaven to anoint the believer, and seal him in virtue of redemption.

Not a few passages might be quoted bearing on the same point. I might go through almost the whole of the epistle with the same result, each having its own special bearing, and all perfectly harmonious; but this is scarce necessary.

What I want is to lay before your souls the truth of God as to this the great Christian privilege. Have you not only Christ for your life, but the consciousness that your body is the temple of God? I know there are many who would think this a most extraordinary thing to claim. Let me tell you that — "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his"; (Rom. 8: 9) he does not belong to the Lord as a Christian unless he be sealed. He may be quickened, born of God, and converted. But the proper power, the true distinctive mark, of a Christian is that he is sealed with the Spirit; and the sealing of the Spirit comes in answer to the redemption of Christ Jesus.

Wake up then, wake up, beloved children of God, to your great privileges! Those who are ignorant of the gospel may call you presumptuous. In truth you can never worship or serve God as you ought, if you do not enjoy your proper privileges. You need to do so in order to be at home with God, to gain confidence in His love, and glorify Him. The spring of all power to perform duty depends on the simplicity with which your soul enters into your relationship with Christ. Even in common life relationship affects, as it should govern, all our actions. The duty of a servant is quite different from that of a master; and a similar rule holds good in all our social relationships. There is a walk, and a worship too, belonging to the children of God, and to none else. You cannot mix men of the world with those that are of God without dishonouring Him. Indeed the effect of such a union is ruin practically to the souls of both; because, as the child of God cannot raise up the worldly to his own level, he must come down to the level more or less of the worldly man; and this is why in many of the liturgies they mingle both in an offensive alliance that suits neither, with language of a wholly inconsistent kind. A Christian is not getting forward with God who tries to please both world and church; if he follows God's way, all will go well with him. We are members of the family of God — heirs of God with Jesus Christ. Even on earth the family life is the highest type of bliss for man. And God has a family, in whose well-being He takes special delight. Suppose a person were to go into a household, and, pretending himself a friend of the children, should put it into their heads that possibly the chief of the house was not their father, you would say, "What a villain he is, to try and spoil all the peace of that family!" And if this would be bad in your families, to play a like part is a great deal worse in God's family. It is as insulting to God as it is injurious to His children; and though people may do what they like with God for a while, the day is coming when they will have to own their folly and sin.

I beseech you, therefore, to be faithful to the Lord. Let me urge on you, in the name of the Lord Jesus to search and see whether these things are so. If you are not children of God, the door is open, the way is clear, the Saviour is waiting. If you simply come as poor sinners, the Lord will in no wise cast you out. But come as sinners in the sense of your sheer need, in the confidence of His grace. Do not come as if there were a doubt that had to be cleared whether you could succeed or not; and the Saviour will meet and serve you at once. When the Syro-Phoenician woman came, she spoke as a Jew. She cried, "Son of David." What right had she to say, "Son of David, have mercy on me"? No more right than a Frenchman has to repair to an English consul and ask his assistance; let him go to the French consul. The Son of David was for Jews. When the two blind men so appealed in Matt. 9, had they to wait for an answer of peace, when they confessed their faith? When two more at the end made the same call near Jericho, did the gracious One rebuke, or reply in grace? The woman of Canaan was wrong — somewhat as worldly people when they say, "Our Father, who art in heaven"; for He is not their Father at all, but will judge them by the Lord Jesus. But if a person comes and says, "God be merciful to me a sinner," will He then say them nay? The Lord would not at first answer the woman's prayer, because she went on mistaken ground. And when the disciples would have done with the case, ashamed of her crying after them, He had to correct their impatience with His maintenance of God's order: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Then she said, "Lord, help me!" When she dropped to this, the Lord answered her, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." The moment she hears it, the truth flashes on her soul that she was not of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but a dog. She sinks to the lowest place, and says, "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." She took the place of truth, and got the blessing of grace. The lack of this keeps many souls from obtaining the blessing. They are unconsciously in a false position. They assume to be worshippers when they should not. If they confessed themselves poor sinners needing to be saved, they would find the Saviour at once. If you can and do say, Abba, Father, be assured you have the Holy Ghost; and if not progressing in the Christian race, see and judge what hinders you, and if you are not grieving the Holy Ghost; search the word of God, and follow Christ! Amen.

W. K.

Stephen the Christian Proto-Martyr.

Acts 6, 7.

W. Kelly.

I trust it may be of profit as well as interest to look a little into the inspired account of so blessed a saint. This closes the first phase of the church, confined to Jerusalem. Philip's work opens the second, when the word of grace goes to the Samaritans and farther still. The Gentiles are to hear through (not only the great apostle of uncircumcision, and the mission of Peter too, but) the free action of the Spirit in such of those scattered by the persecution as evangelised the Greeks also in Antioch.

Acts 5 attests power in every form: the Holy Spirit that indwelt the church avenging by Peter hypocritical deceit within, followed by blessing inward and outward; unseen power delivering the injured apostles from the world's persecution; and power over men's hearts as in Gamaliel's intervention.

Increase of numbers was followed by internal weakness: the waning of love, and the rise of jealousy, were it only fed by so slight a difference as that which divided the home-bred Jews from those who freely used the Greek language and the Greek version of the scriptures, the Septuagint. "There arose a murmuring of the Hellenists against the Hebrews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily ministration. And the twelve, having called the multitude unto them, said, It is not proper (or, pleasing) that we, forsaking the word of God, should serve tables. Look out therefore, brethren, from among you seven men attested, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we will set over this business; but we will persevere in prayer and the ministry of the word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles; and, having prayed, they laid [their] hands on them" (Acts 6: 1-6).

The daily ministration of food* grew out of that singular and touching fruit of the Spirit produced among the saints since the day of His descent at Pentecost. For all that believed were together and had all things common, selling their possessions and substance for distribution to all, according as any might have need; and this in pure grace, not by requirement. To carry out the duty holily and efficiently needed time and judgment as well as diligence and wisdom, especially as the sphere extended daily. The apostle justly felt that it was not for them to curtail the claim of prayer and the ministry of the word. Hence men of God, not set in their place, might profitably devote themselves to this labour of faith and working by love, without which nothing can go well, even for external things.

*It is straining scripture with Bp. Pearson to make these tables partly ecclesiastical; and to say as Bp. Wordsworth of Lincoln did is to mislead, that "having been so chosen and ordained, they performed the sacred functions of baptizing and preaching the word" (Acts 8: 36, 38). Scripture nowhere connects the Eucharist or Lord's Supper with these or any other officials; and Philip's baptizing followed his evangelizing, not his office as one of "the seven" the attempt to assimilate with the modern diaconate being as great a failure as to find warrant for the other two orders.

Here we have to remark the wisdom with which the apostles ruled. They did not choose the seven men of attested fitness for the work. They bade the multitude of their brethren to look out such men, full of the Spirit and wisdom. Yet they gave it an official stamp which neither the whole multitude, nor any individuals but themselves could confer, as acting for the Lord, the source of their own apostolic authority. For the apostle was in the highest degree, not only a gift from the ascended Christ, but an authority called to confer it also in His name. "The seven" were no immediate gift from the Head to the church, like evangelists or pastors and teachers (Eph. 4). They had a charge needing appointment by the due authority; and so the apostles established them in their place of administration which concerned earthly wants, and lent them solemn ground of responsibility in the eyes of all as well as their own. But the multitude of the disciples chose them.

It was not so in the case of elders or presbyters, as we learn from Acts 14: 23; where the apostles Paul and Barnabas are said to have "chosen" (compare Acts 10: 41; 2 Cor. 8: 19) elders for the disciples in each assembly. Accordingly, when the apostle left Titus in Crete to act for him in his absence as an apostolic delegate, he directs him to set or establish elders or bishops in every city as he gave him charge. In other words, the apostles directly or indirectly chose and set the elders in their places. The multitude did not act. Elders were chosen for them, and established by apostolic authority.

There was nothing arbitrary nor inconsistent, but a divine principle in each case. It was the multitude which gave the funds for the public distribution. To all therefore was given a voice in the selection of acceptable ministrants. This in no way applies to elders. Theirs is a question of spiritual, moral, and even circumstantial qualities fitting them to preside or rule. Hence for choosing right men a nicety of discernment was requisite, which was far beyond the saints generally, and, if we bow to scripture, reserved to an apostle or his delegate. Gifts (δόματα) were given directly by the Lord: whether those that laid the foundation, as apostles and prophets; or those that build on that foundation, as evangelists, pastors and teachers, who needed no such apostolic establishment as the local charge of "the seven" or that of the elders.

Though "the seven," for an office peculiar to the state of things then existing in Jerusalem, are not called "deacons," their work was generally analogous to that which was designated by the latter term, when the peculiarity vanished. The deacon was the regular title for those charged with the duties of external service; and so appropriately styled. If grace for such a work is overlooked, the diaconate degenerates into a mere demand for business tact to the dishonour of God in the church, helping on the descent to the world's level.

The word of God, with the prayer which drew down application in power and unction, was the fitting work of the apostles. Men might beat and threaten worse; but it was in vain to forbid or oppose their speaking in the name of Jesus, seeing they were witnesses that God raised up and exalted by His right hand Him whom the Jews by instigation of the priests slew by hanging on a tree: God must be obeyed rather than men. "They therefore went their way from the council's presence, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to be dishonoured for the Name: and every day in the temple and at home they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus [as] the Christ" (Acts 5: 41, 42).

But remembrance of the poor saints is precious in the Lord's sight; and it was wise and gracious to cut off occasion from those that murmured. The twelve, like Paul later, were as the rule averse from meddling with money, and only touched it under strict provisos that the ministry might not be blamed. But what do we see here? If Hebrews of course in Jerusalem preponderated over Hellenists, it is notable that the names of all "the seven" whom the multitude chose, and the apostles appointed with prayer and hands laid on them, seem Hellenistic. If they were not Hebrews (for we know that Andrew and Philip among the apostles were not Hellenists), it was grace abounding practically, not man's way of prudent compromise. Now grace inspires confidence as it expels suspicion. Grace indeed is to the Christian and the church what law ought to have been to Israel. But the heavenly people no less than the earthly forgot their calling; and judgment will surely be executed on the evil at His coming who is to be exalted with His own in heaven and on earth. Though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come; it will not tarry.

The appointment was followed by marked blessing on the word of God, so that the number of the disciples in Jerusalem was very greatly multiplied; and a new evidence appeared of which nothing was said till now: "a great crowd of the priests obeyed the faith." We should not be justified in inferring that they as yet in the least suspended their sacerdotal duties in the temple, but rather that the truth gave them more zeal and conscientiousness in their discharge. It was at a comparatively late day, and in fact only a little before the destruction of Jerusalem that they received the call to go forth unto Jesus without the camp, bearing His reproach, and possessed of no abiding city here, but seeking the one to come. How little they yet realized that this one sacrifice for sins now supersedes, because it more than fulfils, all sacrifices!

Another fact of immense moment came to view. "Stephen, full of grace and power, wrought great wonders and signs among the people." That divine energy had nothing whatever to do with his being one of "the seven," for this was simply and solely to serve tables and care for the widows, etc. But as hitherto many wonders and signs were wrought by the hands of the apostles (Acts 2: 43, Acts 5: 12), so now did Stephen in Jerusalem and Philip afterwards in Samaria (Acts 6: 8, Acts 8: 6, 7). Yet we have no ground to suppose that so it was with the other five. In neither Stephen nor Philip had this divine energy to do with their duty as official curators, but with the teaching of the one, and with the preaching of the other who is elsewhere described as "Philip the evangelist" (Acts 21: 8), which is not said of Stephen greatly gifted as he was. But his power in wielding God's word was great, and roused the determined opposition of others, as it must in such a world as this, where His word pierces the conscience.

And there rose up certain of those of the synagogue that was called of freedmen, and of Cyrenians, and of Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke." Power is not noisy or vainglorious, but makes itself or rather God and the truth felt, which the devotees of form and tradition cannot endure. Hence their animosity has recourse to the basest means as here. "Then they suborned men saying, We have heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God; and they roused the people and the elders and the scribes. And coming upon him they seized and brought him unto the council, and set false witnesses saying, This man ceaseth not speaking words against the holy place and the law. For we have heard him saying, This Jesus the Nazarene shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered to us. And all that sat in the council, gazing on him, saw his face as an angel's face" (Acts 6: 9-15).

Clearly the spiritual activity of Stephen in Jerusalem, as of Philip outside, was wholly distinct from their official functions: so much so, that it appears to be the express aim in these chapters to intimate this very working of the Spirit in power and liberty, that all saints might know the rights of the Lord Jesus, and God's mind for their guidance. They each had received a gift from Him, as all gifts come, and were bound to exercise it to His glory. Unbelief, regarding Him as a hard man is afraid, goes away, and hides the talent in the earth; whereas the man of faith knows Him to be a good and faithful Lord, becomes a good and faithful bondman, and gains for His pleasure in the measure of his own grace and fidelity. Such is the principle of all Christian ministry. It is the exercise of a gift, confiding in the Lord's goodness

and zealous for His will and honour; and such as are faithful over a few things, as Stephen and Philip, shall surely have His gracious recognition in that day (His day), be set over many things, and enter into the joy of their Lord. Office in due order, to which competent authority alone can validly appoint, is quite another thing, and from its nature is a local charge. But gift from the ascended Lord has no such restriction, as scripture amply proves; and so even the parable implies in its manner, under the figure of going and trafficking or gaining by trade with the talents entrusted by Him.

It was a principle of marvellous value not only then but for any time among Christians, that the Lord so wrought directly and placed His servant so wrought on in immediate dependence on Himself by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The fact that all the apostles were there, and that they had appointed "the seven" to an honourable office, only gave the greater effect to the Lord's giving to at least two of them a gift not given (it seems) to the other five, who were ministers of the tables, as two were also of the word.

"There are distinctions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are distinctions of services, and the same Lord; and there are distinctions of operations, but the same God that worketh all in all. But to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit. For to one through the Spirit is given a word of wisdom; and to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; and to a different one faith, in the same Spirit; and to another gifts of healing, in the same Spirit; and to another Working of miracles; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; and to a different one kinds of tongues; and to another interpretation of tongues. But all these things worketh the one and the same Spirit, dividing to each in particular according as he pleaseth" (1 Cor. 12: 4-11).

Christendom looks to form and office, and overlooks the living power of the Lord Jesus, which thus wrought then as He works now, seeing that He is alive again for evermore. And. it is written that we may believe and obey: for the Spirit who is the agent of power was sent forth to abide for ever; and He is faithful to His work in thus glorifying Christ.

It would seem from the false accusation that Stephen was led of God beyond even the apostles in seeing and following the power of the Christian testimony. He may have profited by the Lord's prophecy on Olivet beyond the four who heard, or by other kindred discourses of our Lord, which no doubt in some way percolated among the faithful and convinced him that the temple was doomed to fall, and the Jews to suffer a still wider dispersion than to Babylon. This might readily give occasion to a charge of blasphemy; and the allusion in chap. 7 to the prophet's words confirms it. All proves that he was a teacher of marked intelligence and power.

THE APPEAL: ABRAHAM

Acts 7: 1-8

It is notable how mild was the challenge of the high-priest. He like the rest seems for the moment overawed by the radiance that shone in Stephen's face. It could not but have reminded them of Moses at a critical point in Israel's history as well as of his own; and now he was accused of speaking against Moses, the sanctuary, and the law, yea of threatening the temple's destruction.

"And the high-priest said, Are these things so? And he said,* Brethren and fathers, hearken. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he, was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said to him, Go out of thy land and out of thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee. Then going out of the land of the Chaldeans he dwelt in Haran; and thence, after his father died, he removed him into this land in which ye now dwell. And he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot-plant; and he promised to give it him for a possession, and to his seed after him when he had no child. And God spoke thus, that his seed should be a sojourner in a strange land, and they shall enslave them, and entreat [them] evil four hundred years. And the nation to which they shall be slaves will I judge, said God; and after these things they shall come out and serve me in this place. And he gave him a covenant of circumcision; and thus he begat Isaac and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob, the twelve patriarchs" (vers. 1-8).

* It may be needed to point out that there are only two classes here addressed, elders and youngers, "men" applying to both by a well-known idiom.

It might seem astonishing (if we did not know from God what the heart is) that so many men of ability and learning have failed to apprehend the admirable power and nice relevancy of Stephen's answer. But evidently the inspiring Spirit attached to it signal importance, as shown in more space devoted to it than to any other in the book of the Acts. Its force as an appeal to Jewish conscience assembled in council, sealed in Stephen's blood, is another though awful proof of its cogency. Had it consisted of, or only contained the "demonstrable errors" which some have dared to impute, it must have fallen at once through its own impotence under men's contempt. Not so; it was the energy of indisputable truth which pierced through forms to their hard hearts; as it roused their indignation to white heat, when their own sad history of unbelief, disobedience, and opposition to God was proved from holy writ to be as applicable to their present state as it had been to their forefathers in early days.

"The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. What unanswerable evidence of sovereign grace! To overlook it springs from a wicked heart of incredulity in turning away from a living God, and hardens the soul in self-sufficiency, so that His voice is distasteful, disliked, and dreaded. Yet had they not often heard and read Joshua's testimony (Joshua 24: 2, 3)? "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, our fathers dwelt of old time beyond the river, Terah father of Abraham and father of Nahor; and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from beyond the river, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac." Assuredly it was not Stephen who slighted Jehovah's call of him who was to be dignified pre-eminently as "the friend of God." It was many centuries before the law, far away from Canaan, expressly before he dwelt in Haran; it was in Mesopotamia, infamous as the mother of idolatries, and the prison to which idolatrous Judah was sent, judicially, captive, for that sin.

Nothing can be conceived finer than the exact discrimination given to this holy man of God in beginning with Abraham. He first was not only chosen by grace, but called out of open departure from the true God, from country and kin devoted to other gods, to be the head of a family, and at length a people, whether in flesh like Israel, or (when Israel lost place for a while by apostasy) by believers spiritually as now separated to God for Himself, His own peculiarly. It was first outward, first what was natural, not spiritual which only came to light when the Jews rejected their own Messiah. The principle was plain in Abraham, though even in his case darkened and delayed by yielding to human feeling. For though he went out of his land, he did not get out of his kin, but dwelt with his father in Haran till Terah died. Then only God removed him into the land in which the Jews gloried as their dwelling.

It was not so with Abraham. He was a pilgrim and stranger in Canaan; and this by divine design: so far was Jewish boast from God's mind which Abraham enjoyed by faith. Faith brought him out of the land of the Chaldeans; but how in Canaan? "By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise as not in his own [land]; for he looked for the city which hath the foundations" (Heb. 11: 8-10). The Jews, like unbelievers at all times, are on the ground, not of faith but of tradition and external privilege. But the God of glory gave Abraham no inheritance in it, not even a foot-plant, and He promised to give it him for a possession, and to his seed after him when he had no child. Abraham thus lived on promise and walked by faith, not by sight. This has its highest form and power in Christianity; and its opposite is in Judaism as then, especially in such as hated Stephen.

How strange that any Christian should be so dull as not to perceive that this very exordium is brimful of what exposes the Jewish antagonists of fighting against their own scriptures and the God who sent the Lord Jesus in their hatred of the gospel testimony! We shall see that all the statements which the chapter records follow up the same yet ever-growing evidence urged on their hearts, if peradventure they might hear and live. But none are so impervious as those who rest on an ancestral religion with godly men in the line, who suffered in their day for their living faith from those who had not faith, the predecessors of those who resist the truth today.

"And God spoke thus, that his seed should be a sojourner in a strange land, and they shall enslave and entreat [them] evil four hundred years. And the nation to which they shall be slaves will I judge, said, God. And after these things they shall come out, and serve me in this place." At no time was there a more conspicuous proof of God's interest in them, than during those centuries, and the time of deliverance studded with miracles and still more glowing prophecies which followed: a time in every way striking both in Egypt and in the wilderness, but entirely apart from establishment in the land of promise. Never was there a more awful display of His displeasure and of blows in His wrath which befell their oppressors. Never was there a more wonderful witness in the past of His adoption of Israel as His own people, redeemed from the world's bondage, and its then mightiest and proudest monarch. When was a people like Israel carried through the desert by His own constant presence and faithful care, spite of as constant refractoriness even to rebellion on their part, kept as they were solely by Him with not a merit or a resource of theirs?

As His mouth had threatened judgments on injurious enslavers, so did His hand perform in due season. And this dealing of Jehovah the God of Israel fills the Law, and the Psalms, and the Prophets, which predict yet greater glories to come when they own not only their idolatrous evil but the still more heinous one of rejecting their own Messiah. Could any line of argument more lay bare the character of Jewish opposition to Stephen, or more powerfully support his testimony? For "this place" where they were to do Jehovah religious service in Acts 7: 7 was as different as possible from "this holy place" or "this place" in Acts 6: 13, 14. The one had the magnificence of "great stones and costly," and the splendour of gold and rich array; the other, the awe-inspiring and evident display of divine majesty in the true God proclaiming His law to His people in the wilderness of Sinai. Was the sublimity greater in Jerusalem or the temple from which the glory has departed? "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Men are apt to boast when they have least ground for it, nay, every true reason for humiliation; and this was Stephen's plea.

Another word is added in ver. 8, the pertinence of which one could not expect to be felt by those who only see the surface of scripture. "And He gave him a covenant of circumcision; and thus he begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob, the twelve patriarchs." God after the deluge had established His covenant with Noah and with his seed after him; "and with every living soul that [is] with you, of bird, of cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that go out of the ark — every beast of the earth;" henceforth, no flood is to destroy the earth. Of this everlasting covenant God set His bow in the clouds (Gen. 9) as sign. It was God's covenant with nature, and as permanent as nature itself for an earth inaugurated by sacrifice (Gen. 8). But the covenant with Abraham, of which circumcision was the sign, had a far deeper significance.

Important as God's institution of government was for man on the earth, the foundation of a stock in Abraham, separated from demon worship to the one true God, the Almighty, to he their God in their generations for an everlasting covenant, was incomparably more so. But even this was far from the narrowness to which Judaism reduced it; for if the covenant of circumcision was with Abraham, he should be father of a multitude of nations, and kings should come out of him. Hence its sign was not to be in the clouds for every eye to see, but in the flesh, with which it dealt war to the knife, proclaiming death on it as unclean; not merely purity demanded, but death in figure of Christ's death for His own, naturally as unclean and ungodly as others. It was not of Moses but of the fathers, as the Lord told the Jews (John 7: 22), proud of the law which none of them really kept, as thus too all came under its curse. But as a shadow, whereof Christ was the substance, it was most instructive, as the confession of flesh cut off unsparingly to be God's people, instead of the vain endeavour to ameliorate it by ordinance, morality, or philosophy.

With Abraham therefore circumcision began and was to be perpetuated in his seed after the flesh, and even with any stranger born in their house, the imperative sign of Jehovah's covenant in his flesh. But the Christian enjoys it in the better way of the spirit, circumcised with circumcision not done by hand, in the putting off of the body of the flesh in the circumcision of the Christ (Col. 2: 11). Here we are carefully told that "thus he (Abraham) begot Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day" (the day of resurrection and its glory according to that new estate for the believer according to the counsels of grace). In Gen. 15 he believed God, who reckoned it to him for (or, as) righteousness; he had been called out, and obeyed the call, as separated to Jehovah, both in uncircumcision. But it was after his circumcision, and in the full order of the covenant that he "thus begot Isaac and circumcised him the eighth day." So it went on henceforth regularly in the line: and Isaac [begot] Jacob; and Jacob the twelve patriarchs. It was a privilege conferred on strangers, on slaves; though so requisite for every male in Israel that he who neglected it was to be cut off from his peoples for his breach of the covenant. Who best maintained its spirit — Stephen, or his adversaries? Who can intelligently aver that Stephen beat the air in this brief outline? Great men are not always wise, indeed never so, when they judge scripture.

JOSEPH AND HIS PATRIARCHAL BRETHREN.

Acts 7: 9-16.

At this point the defence carries us on to the first of two signal types of our Lord, which yield overwhelming evidence to every true heart and exercised conscience.

"And the patriarchs, envying Joseph, sold him into Egypt. And God was with him, and delivered him out of all his tribulations, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt; and he appointed him chief over Egypt and all his house. But a famine came upon all the land of Egypt and Canaan, and great distress; and our fathers found no food. But Jacob, having heard of there being corn in Egypt, sent out our fathers first; and at the second [time] Joseph was made known to his brethren, and the family of Joseph became known to Pharaoh. And Joseph sent and called down to him his father Jacob, and all [his] kindred, seventy-five souls. And Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over to Sychem (Shechem), and laid in the sepulchre which Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Emmor of (or rather, in) Sychem" (vers, 9-16).

Here it is no question of unclean Canaanites or oppressive Egyptians, nor is it the failure of a saint through amiable feeling, or the pinch of want. The heads of the tribes of Israel betray their evil state from the first. Nor was there any just ground of provocation, but insubjection to the father, hatred of their godly brother, and rebellion against the mind of God. They envied Joseph and, even when they gave up their deadly purpose, sold him away into Egypt. Pride of position hates the faith that rebukes it, the spirit of grace in deed and truth, and proceeds to enmity beyond measure, more cruelly than the world.

Not a word does Stephen say of the Lord Jesus, yet who could fail to see the parallel between the Just One, and the guiltless object of patriarchal jealousy? Could any one doubt that his was no ingenious device to serve a desired turn, but the unquestionable lesson of their own scriptures? Had not the first book of the law God's moral aim and spiritual purpose in laying bare the base conduct of the fathers, and the sufferings of Joseph? Even their scribes did not limit scripture to a passing person or circumstance; the Pharisees confessed its divine authority; the chief priests, the elders, and the doctors of the law owned that under the surface it is full of reference to the Messiah, the hope of Israel. To confine it to its more immediate bearing literally was to deny its prophetic character, and betray oneself a sceptic or Sadducee.

So plain and direct were the facts in Genesis that it was enough to state them with all brevity. Yet when they are duly weighed, their more profound application becomes apparent; and God's design thereby is as important for souls as it is worthy of Himself. Israel's wickedness through unbelief is as manifestly foreshown as Messiah's humiliation and rejection by His brethren. Such was Stephen's thesis, which he could not but speak out if he cared for the Lord and for their souls. Disdain it they might, but it was just the truth they needed then as they do still. But if the Jews be prominent as they are, Gentiles share the same sin. It is at bottom the common guilt and ruin of all mankind, as the cross proclaims.

Equally certain is it, that as God was with the abhorred Joseph, so was He in all fulness with Jesus, the object of divine delight as He was the depositary of wisdom to His glory; and when delivered out of all His tribulations deeper than ever befell any, God highly exalted Him and set Him at His own right hand. But if it was not the Israelitish kingdom, of which Zion is the centre, this only confirms the propriety of the type. It was the administration of a kingdom wholly different from the day when He shall be the one king of all the earth as well as of the chosen people, coming in manifested glory on the clouds of heaven. That day is in no way arrived, as it surely will. But the despised and rejected One is exalted on His Father's throne, not yet on His own; and He has all authority over a kingdom as extensive as the world in a form quite special which He received when cast out and separate from His brethren. Of this Joseph's exaltation by the king of Egypt is the striking shadow, made chief over Egypt and all his house.

But as Joseph predicted in his sphere, so did the Lord in His far higher and greater deal with all the world. Yet famine and great distress of every kind His grace can use for even that mercy and blessing. But in order to be blessed the sinner must feel his evil state, and Himself work too that He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from him, deliver his soul from going to the pit, and give him to see the light. Food for the inner man is only from Him, as the sons of Jacob found none in Canaan; and their father, bearing of it in Egypt for the fulfilment of divine purpose, sent them there, where Joseph had provided for a famished world, and his heart yearned to supply his father and his brethren, little as they knew who sold him away there. They thought evil against him; but God meant it for good, and to preserve them a posterity in the earth and save their lives. How much more was this verified in the greater than Joseph!

Nevertheless the blindness was to pass from the guilty brothers. No thanks to them, but to his grace who on the second visit was made known to them. So it will be for the Jew when the Lord fulfils, yet exceeds, the type as He ever does. The repentance will be as deep as their faith will be living. "And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for an only one, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for a firstborn." How touchingly even the type exhibits this inward word in Judah's plea with Jacob that Benjamin should go as was required, and with Joseph for Jacob when he owns that God had found their iniquity, offering to abide as bondman in lieu of Benjamin! How yet more when Joseph weeping aloud made himself known to his brethren! Yes, it was to save their lives, and many more, with a great deliverance.

Nor was this all. "In the best of the land," said the great king, "make thy father and brethren to dwell" . . . "And Joseph placed his father and his brethren in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded." For this type looks at a far wider circle of blessing than Canaan; just as the rejected Son of man is destined to have dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages, should serve him. Compare too Isa. 49 — "It is a light thing that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." But this in no way hinders the special honour and nearness of Israel; for the Gentiles shall bring Zion's sons in their bosom, and carry his daughters on their shoulders; 19 and kings shall be thy nourishers, and their princes thy nursing mothers. They shall bow down to thee with face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet." This future earthly glory however is not at all noticed by Stephen, who speaks here to conscience in view of Jewish unbelief and sin against the Lord, as this only was then seasonable.

As no small objection has been taken to verses 14-16, suffice it to say that Stephen cites the number (75) of Jacob's kin, not as the Hebrew gives it (70), but as in the Greek version, the Septuagint, which adds these to the two sons of Joseph in their descendants, etc. It is only a further addition; as in the Hebrew itself we find 66 as well as 70 according to a differing point of view. The difficulty in the last clause of ver. 16 is more considerable, and lies mainly in the name of Abraham where Jacob might have been expected with burial of his sons in Sychem. That Stephen was ignorant of the Hebrew enumeration (66, and 70), or confounded the sepulchre in Hebron with that of Shechem, is too absurd save for a rationalist. How impute it to one so perfectly at home with the inspired history, not only in its obvious facts, but in their spiritual and prophetic import, to which the natural mind in the learned is as blind as it is in the unlearned? It was not without motive that he should draw attention by the way to the burial of the heads of the tribes, not with their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but in the seat of their Samaritan rivals. To account for the insertion of Abraham here, and for the peculiar description of the purchase from the sons of Hamor in or of Sychem, is another thing.

APPEAL TO MOSES NEXT.

Acts 7: 17-28.

Still more prolonged is the use made of an even fuller type of Messiah. This we may examine according to the three divisions of his life; each of forty years, in Egypt, in Midian, and in the wilderness.

"But as the time of the promise drew near which. God assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt, until there arose a different king over Egypt who knew not Joseph. He dealt subtly with our race, and evil-entreated our fathers, to make their babes outcast that they might not live. At which season Moses was born and was fair exceedingly [unto God]; and he was nourished three months in his father's house. And when he was cast out, the daughter of Pharaoh took him up and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was instructed in every wisdom of Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works. And when a. space of forty years was being filled to him, it came up on his heart to visit his brethren the sons of Israel. And seeing one wronged, he defended and avenged him that was oppressed, smiting the Egyptian. And he thought that his brethren would understand that God by his hand was giving them deliverance; but they understood not. And the next day he appeared to them when contending, and urged them unto peace, saying, Ye are brethren: why do ye wrong one another? But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who established thee ruler and judge over us? Dost thou wish to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?" (vers. 17-28).

The time of promised deliverance drew near, but it was not yet come. A different king over Egypt arose, who knew not Joseph, and looked askance at the growth and rapid increase of the Israelites. The providence of God raised up a fitting instrument for His merciful purpose. But even Moses must learn dependence on Him, and that neither the advantage of his person, nor the training in Egypt's wisdom, nor the court influence of Pharaoh's daughter, could avail to effect that purpose to His glory. Yet who was ever more strikingly marked out by divine providence, and who had better human means and opportunities? Though an outcast for death, he nevertheless was nourished by the princess royal as her own son. Not only instructed in all that Egypt could teach, but mighty in his words and works, who so proper as he by the favour of the king to lead God's people peacefully, out of Egypt and their frontier sojourn to the promised land? But no: this would have been man's method and the world's wisdom to the praise of Moses' genius and prudence, and in no way a foreshadow of Christ.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ: as Joseph was a witness of it even in Canaan, so was Moses now in Egypt. "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be evil-entreated with the people of God than have temporary enjoyment of sin, accounting the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he looked off unto the recompence" (Heb. 11: 24-26). Thus grace wrought in practical righteousness; it ought ever to do so in the believer, as it perfectly and always shone in Christ. It was in Moses the eminent proof of his faith, relinquishing advisedly every gain which providence had given him of a circumstantial kind, that no flesh should glory, but that he who glories might glory in Jehovah. Nor was it only that he turned his back on the world's power, splendour, and pleasures, for Jehovah, leaving any, charge of ingratitude to the royal preserver and munificent patron of his life up to mature manhood. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, His poor faulty people in their present low and degraded estate, rather than enjoy what was sinful and ungodly. He appreciated the actual bond of God to His people, and unreservedly acted on it in faith. Grace enabled him not only to see but to do the truth.

The reasoning of prudence would have kept him where providence cast his lot without will of his own. Faith pierces through all such pleas or excuses, because it follows God's love to His own, even in their abasement; as Christ did thoroughly, who never yielded to premature energy but waited in patience, suffering meanwhile to the uttermost. Any other principle however it be disguised is worldliness; and Moses is a blessed sample of fidelity, whatever mistake may have mixed up with it. The word to the Christian is plain: "not minding high things, but going along with the lowly." It is the very reverse of "condescending" to them; for this retains pride of place while affording countenance. Compare our Lord's words in Matt. 20: 25-28. "Not so shall it be among you: but whosoever would become great among you shall be your servant; and whosoever would be first among you shall be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

Thus holiness to God is ever separateness from evil, but also identification in heart and way with His people. But faith is now tried, and its path never long runs smooth. And here we are shown that Moses, when about forty years old, had it on his heart to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel; and seeing one wronged, he defended and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. Hating unrighteousness, he punished the oppressor of his brother, heedless of the consequence. But the following day his love met a rude repulse, and this not from an Egyptian but from an Israelite, whose wrong was now worse; for he rejected the intervention of Moses to make peace, when he spoke to their heart of their unworthy contention. He that did the wrong to his neighbour — it is ever so — resented the love that sought their good, and thrust Moses away. He did worse still. "Who," said he, "made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian yesterday?

The time of deliverance was not yet. Moses so far was mistaken. He had not yet fully judged himself; he unconsciously was off his guard in using his might in words and deeds. The people must be brought down lower — must cry to God under their bitter burdens, the Egyptians be forced to wish Israel good, and proud Pharaoh be crushed to nothing under God's mighty hand. Moses thought that his brethren would understand that God by his hand was giving them deliverance. But they understood not. And this is a far more searching trial than any fear of Egyptian anger. The Lord, who never failed, as Moses and others, suffered incomparably more than all from His people's unbelief, yea from His apostles' inability to understand Him, till He died and rose and sent His Spirit from heaven to lead them into all the truth. Man despised Him, and the nation abhorred. "We hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."

The saddest and most painful thing was His brethren's alienation. In this Joseph and Moses were types of Him; but each in a somewhat distinct way, the better to foreshow Him. Joseph was separated from his hating brothers, to rise through a humiliation still deeper where he was as a man that has no help, cast away among the dead and remembered no more. From all this he rose at once to be the highest next to him on the throne, quite outside Israel over the Gentiles. Moses was forced to flee from his brethren who would have valued his turning to account the world's influence, and cared not for his going down in love to share their affliction. But his heart was ever with them in his separation from them, and awaited the time to return for their deliverance from Egypt. Nor can any fact more clearly mark the difference than that he called his son Gershom, "a stranger"; while Joseph called his eldest Manasseh, "forgotten." For such Moses was, in no way settled down in Midian; but his affections were with his poor brethren, and he looked for the day when by his hand deliverance would come for them.

In Joseph's name for his eldest we have the other side of what was so fully verified in Christ; for God had made him forget all his toil, and all his father's house; as the second was named Ephraim, or fruitful, in the land of his affliction. But Gershom expressed that Moses was a stranger in a strange land, and Eliezer's name only comes in later, My God a help, when Moses under Jehovah's power had delivered the people. So carefully does the inspiring Spirit deign to keep us even in typical shadows from the narrowness of the human mind or will, and lead us on to delight in the largeness of divine grace in our Lord Jesus.

MOSES IN MIDIAN.

Acts 7: 29-35.

Moses then was rejected like the Messiah, rejected by his own people, God's people, for whose sake he had given up his earthly ease, honour, and prospects. His faith was thoroughly of and in God, yet to be vindicated in due time. But the energy that slew the Egyptian evil-doer was before the season, and gave occasion to the heartless Israelite to repel his gracious intervention and expose him to the vengeance of the oppressor. Moses must flee from his beloved but unworthy brethren, and wait on God's time and word in a strange land. He had not yet learnt to say, like the perfect Messiah, "Waiting I waited for Jehovah."

"And Moses fled at this saying, and became a sojourner in the land of Midian where he begat two sons. And when forty years were fulfilled, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sinai, in the flame of fire of a bush. And Moses as he saw wondered at the vision; and as he went up to consider, there came Jehovah's voice, I [am] the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. And Moses, all a trembling, durst not consider. And Jehovah said to him, Loose the sandal of thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is holy ground. I surely saw the ill-usage of my people that [is] in Egypt, and heard their groaning, and came down to take them out. And now come, I will send thee unto Egypt. This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who established thee a ruler and judge? him God sent a ruler and a deliverer (or, redeemer) with the angel's hand that appeared to him in the bush" (vers. 29-35).

The second period of forty years is full of spiritual instruction for us. Moses must learn the nothingness for God of that long span of his early life when trained in all wisdom of the Egyptians. Might in his words and deeds of that sort had no worth in His eyes, that no flesh should boast before God; that according as it is written, He that boasteth, let him boast in Jehovah. It is what answers to the Christian principle, My grace sufficeth thee; for power is perfected in weakness, as its exercise must take its start from the word of the Lord, as one is guided by the Spirit. Thus is it obedience, without which is nothing that glorifies God. This is all the more striking, because in Egypt it was during the earlier period that we read of that distinctive faith, which, as it flowed from God, also delighted Him, of which we have the record in Heb. 11: 24-26. Yet the spiritual dealing that follows is as invaluable for the soul in His service, as the blessing that lays the foundation for it is indispensable. Natural energy, which is man's glory, must be judged in and by the saint to God's glory. Then ensues true practical dependence on God, and the felt need of His direction. Even thus, when the call comes to act for God, what hesitation, and even shrinking, and sense of difficulty to the verge of unbelief! What a contrast with his self-confidence in the earlier days!

But it was not only the wilderness as the scene of continuous trial, nor. the quiet seclusion with God which the lowly life of a shepherd furnished, to unlearn as it were what Egypt had taught, nor the long daily proof to humble and prove what was in the heart (so blessed to Moses who bowed, and so fatal afterwards to Israel who did not bow). Moses had God's manifestation in the way most suited to the work given him to do, in a flame of fire out of a bush that burned but was not being consumed. It was holy ground: Moses was told to unloose his sandals from off his feet, and heard he divine voice say, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. It was for the fathers' sakes to whom He had pledged His promise and whose God He was. But He had also heard His people's cry under bitter oppression, and came down to deliver them. They indeed groaned and sighed by reason of the bondage; but they had not the faith to cry to Him. Yet their cry came up to God; and God heard their groaning, and remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, which they had forgotten, long sunk in the. darkness and idolatries of their cruel masters. But God looked on the sons of Israel and acknowledged them, and called His servant Moses, at this point of their depression,, to the great work of crushing the pride of Egypt, and pouring contempt on their gods in the redemption of His people.

But more we may note in passing: observe the force of his quoting the call to unloose his sandal. Holy ground is where God manifests Himself. It was not merely Jerusalem. So Jehovah decided with Moses in Midian; so afterwards with Joshua when he crossed the Jordan. Their idolising the courts of the sanctuary was out of season. But religious pride is like other pride, and often lifts its head higher in abject poverty. And the case of the Jews who charged Stephen falsely with blasphemous words against the holy place was yet more desperate and unfounded. For they had rejected their own Messiah, and God had raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand, far above every principality and authority and power and lordship, and every name named not only in this age but also in that to come, and subjected all things under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the church. Hence the centre of divine glory and attraction is no longer on earth but in heaven. What once had holiness relatively has lost it by unbelieving contempt of the Lord of glory, whom both. the Jews and the world's princes crucified. The only holy place God owns now, as faith too accepts, is above where Christ is. But though Stephen does not argue here but simply cites the scripture they all acknowledged, they are thus each way shown without excuse in their petty and malevolent jealousy. God's words exposed and refuted any such charge of blasphemy.

Jehovah must take the initiative. It must he manifestly His work, as Moses had learnt. And he became a type of a greater than Moses, as Joseph too before him, in being rejected by and separated from his brethren so dear to him, before God used him to become their ruler and deliverer. In very deed this was, for the cruellest and haughtiest of Pharaohs was raised up to show him His power, and that Jehovah's name might be declared in all the earth. Instead of energy to go forward, Moses was hesitating and diffident in the extreme, and the people hearkened not for anguish of spirit and from hard service. It was Jehovah that set out in tender words and with all assurance His undertaking Israel's cause, not only to deliver them from their sorrow under Egypt's oppression, but to bring them up out of that land unto a good and spacious land, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

No doubt another reason was before His all-embracing mind. Gross evil enveloped that goodly land: abominable idolatry with most debasing immorality. Jehovah would judge the iniquity of the Amorites, while He made Israel to take possession of the land, which had been so plainly marked out from Abraham's day for his descendants. Yet the O.T. yields ample evidence that Joseph and Moses were but types, and that all that Israel have yet enjoyed is but provisional, and, as far as the people and kings were concerned, an utter short-coming till He come who, fulfilling these types and many more, will bring in the blessing for Israel, no less than accomplish the judgment on their enemies. Then too shall be the higher glories of the heavenly things, and the boundless reconciliation of all things, over which Christ is the appointed Head, who will share all with the glorified heirs of God and joint-heirs with Himself.

This, as Eph. 1 clearly shows, is the true purpose of God as made known to the Christian. The future kingdom, with Israel as His earthly centre over all the nations is but a part of it, and if it engross the mind, necessarily drags down to the earth to no small loss. For God has made known to us, what He did not in the law and the prophets, the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself for administration of the fulness of the fit times: to sum (or, head) up all things in the Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth. Nor is our part confounded with either, but associated with Christ. Therefore is it added "in Him, in whom we also obtained inheritance, being marked out before according to the purpose of Him," etc. We are Christ's joint-heirs, and sealed with the Holy Spirit for redemption's day.

MOSES IN THE WILDERNESS

Acts 7: 36-43

In the last forty years of Moses the evidence adduced is no less striking both morally and typically to convict the Jews from age to age of the same unbelief and rebellion, and to display the ways of God in Christ, notwithstanding their self-will and blindness. "Who [is] a God like unto Thee that pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth [in] mercy. He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities, and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, the mercy to Abraham, which Thou hast sworn to our fathers from the days of old" (Micah 7: 18-20).

Here the scene lies mainly in the desert, after Israel's redemption through Moses' power in Egypt. "He led them out, having wrought wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness, forty years. This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, A prophet shall God raise up to you out of your brethren like me. This is he that was in the assembly (or, congregation) in the wilderness, with the angel that spoke to him in the mount Sinai, and with our fathers; who received living oracles to give us, to whom our fathers would not be subject, but thrust [him] aside, and turned back in their hearts unto Egypt, saying to Aaron, Make us gods who shall go before us; for this Moses, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. And they made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. But God turned and delivered them up to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in a book of the prophets, Did ye offer me victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? And ye took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan, the figures which ye made to worship them; and I will transport you beyond Babylon" (vers. 36-43).

When things are at their worst for the Jews, not only the apostasy but the lawless one, the antichrist revealed, and the godless of Christendom and of Judaism worshipping Satan and the man of sin as the true God in His temple, a greater than Moses shall appear to the destruction of His adversaries and the deliverance of an afflicted and poor remnant, who, small though it be, shall become a strong nation, as He will hasten it in His time. Not only will He redeem Israel from the hand of the enemy, but gather them out of the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Wonders and signs shall be, not in one land only but for all the world, "signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the sea roaring and billows, men swooning from fear and expectation of what is coming on the inhabited earth; for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming with power and great glory." "And the Redeemer will come to Zion, and unto those that turn from transgression in Jacob;" and Jehovah's covenant with them, being of His own grace after their manifest and utter ruin, will be from henceforth and for ever. So Jehovah says: what matters that which others say?

Now professing Christians are not entitled to prophesy smooth things for themselves, but to learn that they happened to Israel, and were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are met. For are the saints waiting in patience for Christ, dependent and subject to Him who is gone on high? Do they not act as if they wet not what is become of Him? and instead of being led by His word and Spirit, have they not set up calves of gold, idols to go before them, rejoicing in the works of their own hands? And has not God delivered by far the majority to worship images, pictures, crucifixes, dead men's relies, angels, saints, and the Virgin Mary, like Israel serving the host of heaven as madly as any heathen?

Consider the serious lesson in what Stephen quoted from the Greek Version of Amos 5: 25-27. When the Spirit of prophecy set forth their coming captivity, He goes back, not to the wicked kings of Israel, nor to shameless sons of David who ruled Judah, but to the idolatry in the wilderness at the very time when they outwardly honoured the tabernacle of Jehovah and the priesthood of Aaron. But God saw all the while the hollowness of their victims and sacrifices in His name; for in their hearts and secretly, they took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Raiphan (or, Romphan), the forms which they made to worship them. However God may wait in His admirable patience, it is the early unjudged sin that decides, though the execution of judgment may not come for many centuries afterward. The writings of the earliest uninspired men of the Christian era prove the fallen state which undermined and destroyed the apostolic teaching; whilst the centuries that followed kept ever growing worse and worse, till the highest arrogance sat enthroned on the ruin of the church's heavenly association with Christ in entire separation from the world.

If it was rebellion against Jehovah for "our fathers," as Stephen pointed out, to renounce subjection to Moses and thrust him away, and turn in their hearts unto Egypt, how much more heinous is the guilt of those who read but reject the Lord's ways in worship and service for their own pandering to the world and man's will in divine things! Is not the Holy Spirit now sent from heaven to be in and with us for ever in glorifying the Lord and His written will? The true question for the saint is, not comparing the evils of this or that denomination in order to choose the least offensive, but to cleave to Him with purpose, obedient to His word, and counting on the Holy Spirit's readiness to help, guard, and guide to God's glory.

THE TENT EXCHANGED FOR THE TEMPLE

Acts 7: 44-50

The worship of God according to the ritual of the law was no security against idolatry, as Stephen proved from the words of Amos the prophet, who goes back to the days of Moses in the wilderness for the sin which transported them after long patience to the lands of captivity. "The holy place and the law" were in vain for God's glory then as now; this was his answer to their boast, and his defence to their accusation. But he had far more to say, and as conclusive that faith in Christ was and is the true safeguard.

"Our fathers had the tent of the testimony in the wilderness, as he that spoke to Moses appointed to make it according to the model which he had seen: which also our fathers, receiving in their turn, brought in with Joshua when they entered on the possession of the nations, which God thrust out from our fathers' face unto the days of David, who found favour in God's sight, and asked to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob. But Solomon built him a house. Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in things made with hands, according as the prophet saith, The heaven [is] my throne, and the earth footstool of my feet: what house will ye build me? saith [the] Lord (or, Jehovah); or what a place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things" (vers. 44-50)?

Stephen, far from denying, insists that the tent of the testimony was made as God appointed by His word through Moses according to the model seen above, and that their fathers, receiving it from those before them, brought it with them when they entered on the possession of the Gentiles thrust out from before them, till the days of David, whose son built the house for the God of Jacob. But he no less insists on that to which the Jews were blind according to the prophet Isaiah: that the Most High does not dwell, save figuratively, in places made with hands. For the heaven is His throne, and the earth but the footstool of His feet. They exaggerated in what they had done, and forgot that He made all these things, which far outdo any structure of man. So that when they abused and perverted the outward form, He gave it up to the Chaldeans, as He would again to the Romans. Could their vain trust meet a sterner rebuke than God had already given and would give? For that Stephen knew our Lord's threat of the destruction soon to fall on the temple who can doubt, though He purposely lets the truth tell without His name in all this speech? It was His rejection that was shadowed in that of Joseph and of Moses; and now is shown God's rejection of the earthly house: each one the proof of Israel's unbelief and rebellion against Himself, which is Stephen's plea and demonstration throughout.

But there is more, and what could not be hid, the triumph for the truth in each case at the last. For, as we have seen, the rejected Joseph is raised to the height of power in the larger sphere of the world which Egypt figures, yet full of gracious care for Israel owning him at length; and the rejected Moses is made their redeemer and judge to lead them as a people set free from the house of bondage. And we may add the house of God, no longer "a den of robbers" as the Jews made it according to their own prophet's witness, is to be "a house of prayer for all the peoples." For then the Messiah is no longer despised, but "exalted, and lifted up, and very high" not only in Israel's eyes, but to the astonishment of many nations, and kings shutting their mouths at Him. Yea "from the rising of the sun even to its setting, my house shall be great among the nations of the earth; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure oblation; for my name shall be great among the nations, saith Jehovah of hosts."

How striking that no inspired writer applies Malachi's text to the gospel (as some do ad nauseam), but leave it for the day, when the kingdom is restored to repentant Israel! Both the renewed waiting for Christ's coming, and the immense growth of apostate unbelief, proclaim how near the time is. See the extraordinary contrast which never was as it is now. For the cry is gone forth at midnight: "Behold, the bridegroom! Go forth to meet him." There have been times in Christendom when the dreaded day was thought arrived (and so it was on a small scale in Thessalonica till the apostle corrected the false report. So it was in the Middle ages more than once. So it has been at a recent day. But what has this in common with the revealed hope of the Bridegroom? Terror reigned then through consciences far from purged and at rest in His love; and so it must be when He is revealed in flaming fire when the day of the Lord dawns on a guilty world. But the Bridegroom's coming has associations of joy in itself, and for all who watch, however feebly; and grace takes care that those who are truly His awake and with trimmed torches welcome Him.

If others prefer to say, "My Lord delayeth to come," we may and ought to grieve over an unbelief which betrays a liking for present things. But in presence of a hope which attaches to His person, His grace and truth, we need not occupy ourselves with contention. His word is plain enough, though tradition is a broken reed which if leaned on fails and pierces. But having His Spirit by grace, let us cleave to Him and the word of His grace.

APPEAL TO CONSCIENCE

Acts 7: 51-53

We can see from the use made of the prophet Isaiah respecting the temple, what an advance was made by Stephen, beyond the Twelve even as the spiritual precursor of the apostle Paul (dead in sins as he was then, and the avowed antagonist of Stephen). But now he speaks directly to the conscience of the Jews, exasperated by his trenchant application of the O.T.

"Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers, ye too. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand concerning the coming of the Righteous One; of whom ye now became betrayers and murderers, being such as received the law at angels' ordinances (or, injunctions), and kept [it] not" (vers. 51-53).

Loving and devoted even to death that his Jewish brethren might judge their sins and receive the grace of God in Christ, he thus delivered the most scathing summary of the people's sins from first to last. Yet he did not go beyond what all, in whom God spoke from Moses to Malachi, had testified here and there in their pleadings with them for the glory of Jehovah. With all their self-complacency they were "stiff-necked" in heart and ears. The outward sign in the flesh only made their total lack of its spiritual meaning more glaring. The flesh was strong instead of being judged as evil.

It was themselves who were resisting the Holy Spirit, "ye" pre-eminently. Without doubt, as already proved from Holy Writ, their fathers had so done: this ought to have been a warning to them. Alas! they also followed the same baneful course; and they did so "always." They had no just sense of God's grace in calling out Abram. They were like their ancestors who opposed Joseph and Moses. They broke the law, before it was deposited. They resembled the generation which had the tent of the testimony in the wilderness, but did homage to false gods. They boasted of the temple of Solomon, but rebelled against the Most High who is far above all that the hand makes. They killed the prophets who announced the Messiah; and in their own day they did worse than all before them by delivering up and murdering the Righteous One Himself.

It was no exceptional outbreak, but their habit. And so the Lord had told them in Matt. 12: 31, 32. "Every sin and injurious speaking shall be forgiven to men; but speaking injuriously of the Spirit shall not be forgiven to men. And whosoever shall have spoken a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in that which is to come." The evil and adulterous generation only waxed worse, after Christ's atoning work; so that when they spurned the gospel, nothing but judgment could be their portion; partially when the Romans under Titus took away both their place and their nation; fully under Antichrist, when the mass perish, and a believing remnant becomes a strong nation, the generation to come.

God's faithful grace had raised up true prophets in face of the many false, and those were persecuted by their fathers as faithless as themselves. Could they mention one who escaped that lot? And if any were more than usually gifted and privileged to announce beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, they were killed by their unrighteous ancestors who could not endure His coming to destroy them and their idols, with the corruptions in their train. Their rebellion against Jehovah and His anointed had only very recently culminated in their cry (not like those who said, Blessed be He that cometh in the name of Jehovah, but) Crucify, Crucify Him, "of whom ye now became betrayers and murderers." Yet He was the Holy One who, as He drew near and saw the city just before, wept over it, saying, "If thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are shut out from thine eyes. For days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall make a palisaded mound round about thee, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children in thee, and shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou knewest not the season of thy visitation."

And what was their glorying in the law but a vain and empty boast? They received it no doubt with the most solemn inauguration at Sinai. He shone forth from Paran, and He came from the holy myriads: from His right hand went forth a fiery law to them; or as Stephen said of their characteristic position, ye "received the law at angels' ordinances, and kept it not." A law that is not kept must only condemn the guilty. What blindness to brag of a law which they did not obey! But so it ever is, where man without faith in the Saviour pretends to honour God. There can be no reality of fruit acceptable to God. Their language may be timid and doubtful as to their own relation to God, presumptuous in setting one scripture against another, and in no way either submissive to God's word or enjoying fellowship with Himself in the grace it reveals. If we profit not by His grace, what remains but His judgment?

HIS SIGHT OF JESUS ON HIGH, AND THE FURY OF THE JEWS

Acts 7: 54-56.

Intense exasperation followed Stephen's appeal; and the words he added redoubled their fury to madness and murder.

"And as they heard these things, they were cut to the heart and gnashed their teeth upon him. But, being full of the Holy Spirit, he looked stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, Lo, I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God."

Impossible to conceive a more solemn issue on the testimony of Stephen, or a more awful proof of the Jews' hatred of the truth in direct antagonism to the Holy Spirit. His sketch of their history was indisputably true. Their recent behaviour and their present truculence were due to the same inheritance of alienation from God and His word which had already entailed woe upon woe. And darker clouds would gather round them, and still darker await them in the consummation of the age; when at length another godly remnant shall be raised up by grace, not to form part of the church as now, but to be the nucleus of the generation to come. Of these Micah 5: 3 speaks as the residue of His brethren, when the Ruler in Israel is about to stand and feed in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah His God. And they shall abide (or trust), with the unbelieving mass devoted to destruction; "for now shall He be great even to the ends of the earth," instead of being hid in God as now, the Head of the church, and they, instead of being merged in the church, "shall return unto the children of Israel:" the work which divine mercy and power will accomplish in that day.

But Stephen, like ourselves, had to withstand in the evil day, while the Lord is rejected on earth and crowned with glory in heaven. He was one of those whom the Lord before His prophecy on Mount Olivet had prepared His adversaries to expect. "Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes; and of them ye will kill and crucify, and of them ye will scourge in your synagogues, and will persecute from city to city; so that all the righteous blood shed upon the earth should come upon you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things, shall come upon this generation." Stephen's words penetrated their hearts, and their visage betrayed their murderous intent without even the sham trial they gave His Master. No defiance met their fierce gaze. But being full of the Holy Spirit he looked steadfastly into heaven, where grace gave him to see God's glory. It was a miraculous vision without doubt, admirably fitted to comfort the spirit of the faithful servant, who was as full of compassion for his brethren after the flesh as of zeal for the Lord. But how pointed the contrast! they always resisting the Holy Spirit; he full of the Holy Spirit.

He was given to see another sight still nearer to his heart, "Jesus standing at God's right hand." This opened his lips to confess His name in the most direct terms, and in the concentrated power of all he had testified. "Lo, I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at God's right hand."

There had been a transitional testimony up to this. The Messiah was rejected on earth, and the Jews were the most extreme in urging the deepest shame and ignominy for Him who was born King of the Jews. Thus they in their blindness fulfilled the scriptures that so it must be, if even privileged man be as wicked as God is good. But, as Peter preached, God raised Him up and made the very Jesus whom His people:. crucified both Lord and Christ. No apostle exceeded this till now. In Acts 3: 13 and Acts 4: 27 it is still the Messianic title of "servant" (not "Son"). Stephen, on the utter refusal of Israel to bow his stiff neck, testifies to His being "the Son of man:" an enlarged and judicial title of His glory, well known even, in the O.T. in the Psalms and Prophets, as the Lord had pointed out its force from the time that rejection began decidedly. So that Stephen was quite in keeping with the truth; for the Jew stood in dead opposition to the glorified Messiah, no less than to the Messiah in humiliation. Jesus was still standing at God's right hand. But the Judge was at the door. So he saw Him on high and proclaimed Him as the Son of man, who will surely come in the clouds of heaven, judging Israel and all the nations.

Nor should we overlook that, as he said, "Lo, I behold the heavens opened." To him it was a literal sight, as none should doubt who believe in God's power and grace. It is recorded for our comfort in faith. For it is meant to be as real in its spiritual significance to the Christian, as it was in every way to him who saw and bore witness. As for us the veil is ever rent, so the heavens are always open. Jesus is there, the Son of God, sent that we might live through Him, and that He might die for us as propitiation for our sins. He is there now for us, man entered into the glory of God, and Saviour of all who believe, the fore-runner for such there. And the heavens which were opened on Him, heaven's object, are open for us, that we may be at home in spirit there, before He comes to fetch us. Here we are unknown; our citizenship is there where He is. It is our joy and privilege to be heavenly, and not of the world as He is not. We are already delivered by His grace from that judgment which the Name imports for Israel and the nations; for we belong to Him, no longer to them. We say it, not of pride but of faith, being not even our own but bought with a price, and what a price! And shall we not seek to walk consistently with it, and to exhort our brethren equally brought to own it

THE CHRISTIAN'S DEATH UNDER MAN'S HATRED

Acts 7: 57-60

None so recklessly cruel as those who have the highest religious prestige, and reject the testimony of God which is their guilt and His rejection of their claims. So it was then in the great council of Jerusalem. They like their ancestors always resisted the Holy Spirit; Stephen, "full of the Holy Spirit," not only rebuked their present state (however decent in appearance) as worse than all the past, but testified such grace and glory in Jesus on high as never had been announced by God before With eyes fixed on heaven he saw by the Spirit's power not only God's glory but Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said (as already given) "Lo, I behold the Son of man standing at God's right hand."

This drove them to mad fury. "And they cried out with a loud voice, and held their ears and rushed upon him with one accord; and having cast [him] out of the city they stoned [him]. And the witnesses laid aside their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul. And they stoned Stephen praying and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my Spirit. And kneeling down he cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge; and having said this, he fell asleep" (vers. 57-60).

It is to be noted that Stephen spoke of the Lord as "the Son of man." So the Lord spoke of Himself, as the rejection of His Messianic dignity came out more and more. If the Jews refused Him as Jehovah's anointed Son of David, He, bowing to the deep humiliation, comes as the Son of man to seek and to save that which is lost. But He as such shall be seen sitting on the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Stephen told them that he beheld the Son of man standing at God's right hand. It was an important step forward in promulgating the truth. Peter presented the heavens receiving the exalted Messiah until times of restoration of all, things of which God spoke by mouth of His holy prophets since time began; and he therefore urged on the men of Israel to repent and be converted for the blotting out of their sins, so that seasons of refreshment should come from Jehovah's presence, and Jesus be sent to bring them in. And this awaits Israel's conversion. Meanwhile the heavens are opened for. the believer on earth; though he be not given to behold it like Stephen, it is no less his portion by faith. And the Lord Jesus receives our spirits above on death as surely as He did Stephen's.

Circumstances may differ; but, the inspired record of Stephen's death, is. ours now to appropriate fully. We, too are exhorted to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5: 18); and it, is our shortcoming and shame not to he so. We too are entitled to fix our eyes on heaven, and we lose much. if we do not. There is no veil to hinder us now more than then. For the Christian, for the church, the veil is for ever rent, and the heavens opened. As is the heavenly One, so are also the heavenly ones. It is the Christians' part with Christ before they are translated there at Christ's coming again; when, we shall bear the image of the heavenly One, as we have borne and still bear the image of the dusty man Adam. The Lord could say, Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit; and we with Stephen can say, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

No doubt timid unbelief of the gospel (which alas! often accompanies faith in Christ's person) may follow the ancient corruption of the truth, and dream of an intermediate chamber of dimness at the least till the dawn of our resurrection. But this is utterly false and anti-scriptural. Paradise is no prison nor dark abode. The paradise of God is not merely in heaven; but as man's paradise in Eden was the choicest spot for unfallen Adam, so God's paradise is the choicest domain above. There Jesus went after He accomplished redemption and glorified God even as to sin — the hardest task He ever undertook. Thither too the crucified but believing robber followed Him that very day, the unimpeachable witness that His blood cleanses from every sin. Therein all that overcome shall be in the day of glory, and eat of the tree of life when there is no tree of responsibility more to test, or threaten death (Rev. 2: 7). Stephen bears a direct and full witness to the Christian, not of the future change for the body, but of departure to be with Christ, which, as says the apostle Paul, is "very much better" than remaining as we are, absent from the Lord.

Whilst this was the first thought of Stephen's heart, how precious the grace that shone next in his kneeling and crying "with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" He does not say now as the Lord did before He died, "for they know not what they do." The Twelve, he himself, to speak of chiefs only, had laid that sin fully on their conscience. It was the practical grace of a Christian, doing well, suffering for it, and taking it patiently with earnest intercession that the evil-doing Jews might be forgiven. O what a contrast with the Latin and Greek cursing communities, as well as with the poor Jews themselves!

As Christians we confess and would fain follow the Blesser. So He consecrated His last charge, His last act and attitude as He ascended to heaven. "And he led them out as far as Bethany, and having lifted up his hands, he blessed them. And it came to pass as he was blessing them, he was separated from them, and was carried up into heaven" (Luke 24: 50, 51).

Christ Tempted and Sympathising

W. Kelly.

"For in that he himself  hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." Heb. 2: 18.

A NEW EDITION, REVISED 1906

LONDON: WESTON, 53 PATERNOSTER ROW

The sympathy of Christ is associated with His priesthood on high. He sympathises not with sin, nor with sinners as such, but with the suffering saints of God. At the same time the Holy Ghost looks back upon Christ's own experience when He was upon earth. He was tempted, but then the temptation was not in any way from within. There was in Him no propensity to evil that answered to the trial of Satan; but, on the contrary, all that the enemy found was dependence on God, simple unwavering faith in His word; never a carnal working, as in our hearts.

Hence, as there was in Christ the total absence of self-will inwardly, as He in every respect hated and rejected evil, there was nothing but thorough suffering. The effect of temptation on fallen humanity is not suffering, but rather pleasure, if we can call that pleasure which is the gratification of our evil nature. Christ knew nothing of this in either His person or His experience. Of motions in the flesh, inward solicitations to sin, He had none: He "knew no sin." Hence, in order to guard against error on so holy and delicate a theme, it is necessary that we should hold fast the truth of Christ's person as God has revealed it.

It is thus the Holy Ghost introduces the matter in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He begins with the person of the Lord Jesus. He insists upon that which, after all, is the most necessary foundation  -  His divine glory (Heb. 1). From Old Testament witnesses Messiah is demonstrated to be the Son (vers. 1-5), object of angelic worship (ver. 6), to be God (ver. 8), yea, to be Jehovah (vers. 10-12). If I do not start with this as my faith in Christ, as the basis on which all His other glory is built up, my perception of the truth of Christ will be soon seen to be radically false. No one thing at bottom can be right with us, if we are wrong as to Him who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Next, having thus fully shown His proper divine dignity, the Holy Ghost takes up His humanity (Heb. 2); but there is the most careful exclusion of all thought that Christ assumed humanity in the fallen and morally feeble state in which it is in us. Because the children (the objects of God's favour in this world) were "partakers of blood and flesh, he also himself in like manner took part of the same, that through death he might annul him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil: and deliver them, who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (vers. 14, 15). It was needful that He should become a man, in order, by His death, to vindicate God, annul Satan's power, and accomplish redemption. But it was in no way incumbent on Him to take into His person here below the smallest taint of the fall. Nay, it was essential that He should not be thus defiled. If it is required of a steward that he be faithful, no less indispensable is it that an offering should be pure and spotless for the altar of God. The Lamb of God must needs be free from the remotest degree of infection. And so Christ was in all respects and to the full. Other scriptures prove this amply in detail, and fully confirm what we have definitely in the Hebrews  -  that He took blood and flesh without the very least element of fallen nature in connection with it. As to proclivity, or even liability to evil, there is absolute silence; yea, rather, we shall see that such thoughts are carefully cut off beforehand.

In the Gospels, where we naturally look for the complete, because inspired, historical accounts of the person of Christ, more particularly in the Gospel of Luke, where He is displayed specifically as man, we find the fullest evidence of this. "The angel answered, and said unto her [i.e., the Virgin Mary], the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called [the] Son of God" (Luke 1: 35). It is evident, therefore, though truly born of a woman, though deriving human nature from His mother Mary, there was, even in respect to this, a divine action which distinguished our blessed Lord most signally and strongly from all others from His birth. What Rome has lyingly, and as a thing of but yesterday, decreed of Mary, is most true of Jesus: He, not she, was immaculate in His human nature; and this through the energy of the Holy Ghost (as even the most rudimentary symbols of Christendom confess, I thank God), the result of the overshadowing power of the Highest. Hence therefore "That Holy Thing" could be its description from the first. He alone of all men was born "holy;" not made innocent and upright only, like Adam, still less  -  like Adam's sons — conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. He is designated "That Holy Thing," it will be observed, when the question was not of what was simply divine (which indeed it would be wicked folly to doubt and needless to affirm here), but of what was human. "That holy thing which shall be born [of thee] * shall be called the Son of God."

* I bracket these words, not because they do not affirm a precious and essential truth (expressly taught in Matt. 1: 16), but because the testimony of the best MSS. (Alex., Vat.. Sinait., Bezae Cant., and in fact all of the first class, save the Rescript of Paris) excludes their title to a place in this text.

Matthew had already presented the birth of the Lord suitably to the design of his Gospel. "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us" (Matt. 1: 18-23). He was thus Messiah-Jehovah, called Jesus consequently (for He should save His people from their sins), the virgin's Son, Emmanuel, according to prophecy. His humiliation, His rejection by His own people, follows; but, first of all, there is the clearest statement that what was begotten in Mary, what was born of His mother, was of the Holy Ghost. It is wretchedly low and even dangerous ground to say, with divines of repute, that Jesus was born holy because born of a virgin. He was indeed so born of the virgin; but the holiness of His humanity, though of the very substance of His mother, turned upon the miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost.

Jesus then was not only Son of God from all eternity in virtue of His divine nature, but He was so called also because of the divine energy manifest in His generation as man, and therefore the unparalleled blessedness of His conception and His birth, immeasurable though the humiliation was for Him to take manhood at all. The Babe of Bethlehem, the virgin's Son, was not born, we may surely say, of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God in the highest sense. It was not merely as we are said to be born again, to see God's kingdom, which Christ is never — could never be — said to be: in His case it would be altogether derogatory, and a denial of His holy humanity,* to say nothing of His Deity. If we may so express it, He, the man Christ Jesus, was generated holy. "The word was made flesh." God "was manifest in the flesh." But even the process by which He came into the world, though "by the woman," was the fruit of God's power; it was a miracle of the highest rank, differing not in degree merely but in kind from the birth of Isaac, wondrous as it was; or from that of John the Baptist, filled though he were with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.

* The root and character of this error will appear from the words of Mr. Irving's treatise on the Human Nature of Christ. "The only difference, therefore, between Christ's human nature and the human nature of a regenerated man standeth in these two things: first, that Christ was in the condition of a regenerated man from the very first of his existence as a man; and secondly, He had the Spirit without measure, and therefore his regeneration was always effectual unto the perfecting of his faith and holiness, and the complete subjection of  the natural inclinations of  the fallen manhood" (p. 31). "We maintain the clean contrary, that every part of Christ was, in all its actings, Most Holy, yea, and in all its thoughts, yea, and in all its inclinations; and this not through any operation of its own, but through the operation of the Holy Ghost, which the Father gave to Him without measure," etc. (p. 78). Their favourite phrase about Christ was, holiness not of but in humanity by the Holy Spirit. [Three lines from p. 64 of the above treatise are in this edition omitted, as being a quotation by Mr Irving himself  rather than his own words.]

There is another most serious consideration which ought not to be forgotten. Fallen humanity calls not for amelioration but redemption, and needed it wherever it might be. Were the notion true that the Word was united to fallen human nature here below, He must have died to redeem it, that is, to redeem Himself! — overthrowing not only His work of atonement for others, but His own person. In every point of view, the idea is as false as it is destructive — an intellectual trifling with the great mystery of godliness.

There was therefore no admixture of the minutest trace of that sad heirloom of inward evil which Adam had handed down to his posterity. Human nature there now was in His person, as surely as He was and is God; but, by God's will and power, it was unsullied and holy. There was secured the absolute exclusion of the poison which sin had instilled into man's nature in every other instance. Hence the Lord Jesus was born of the woman, not of the man, being in quite a peculiar sense the woman's Seed. For thus it was the Holy Ghost was pleased to set aside for the humanity of Jesus every taint of sin inherent in fallen human nature (of course, in His mother herself, as in all others of the race). Being so born, even the humanity of our Lord was "holy," as we have seen. Accordingly, in His person there was the most perfect suitability for the work on account of which He came, sent of the Father. On the divine side He could not but be perfect, for He was the true God and eternal life; on the human side there was miraculously effected the complete disappearance of all evil from the body which God prepared Him. The power of the Highest overshadowed His mother from the outset, and thus only was "that holy thing" born of her in due time. "Who can bring a clean [thing] out of an unclean? Not one," Job 14. This, and far more than this, was "that holy thing" which was born of the virgin. With God nothing is impossible. Thus, long afterwards, the angel disclosed what baffled Job of old and satisfied Mary on the spot. Christ alone is, in every sense, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

With this agree the types of the Old Testament. Take that most conspicuous one in Leviticus 2. In Leviticus 1. Christ is represented as the burnt-offering; in chapter 2 it is Christ as the meal or cake-offering. This (the minchah, a gift or oblation) had nothing to do with what we call "meat"; it was essentially bloodless. In the burnt-offering there was the giving up of life: but in this there was no question of sacrificing animals, or of anything that involved the shedding of blood. It was of fine flour, and thus aptly set forth what the Lord's state was as connected with the earth (that is, in His body derived from His mother). There was, of course, no leaven or corrupt nature allowed, nor even honey or the mere sweetness of natural affection, pleasant as it is, but unfit for an offering to God. Frankincense was there, and the salt of the covenant of God; and, what is much to be noted in contrast with leaven, there was oil mingled with the flour in forming the cake.* This answers exactly to the passage in Luke 1. It was the well-known emblem of the Holy Spirit of God, who shut out what otherwise must naturally have sprung from the virgin. Thus her child by His power was absolutely free from sin. Of necessity all the offerings of Israel belonged to the earth. The bullock, the sheep, the goats, the lambs, the pigeons, the turtle-doves, etc., were necessarily of this creation, if man had to offer them. But there could be nothing where there entered less suspicion of evil than in flour. It was expressly also "a thing most holy of the offerings of the Lord made by fire." It was the growth of the earth, and set forth the Lord's human nature.

* I am aware that an author, whom I will not name, tells us that this type of Leviticus 2 cannot be applied to the human nature of the Lord Jesus without dangerous error. For the Holy Ghost, he says, was not commingled with the human nature of the Lord, as the oil was commingled with the flour. Divine and human elements were not commingled in either of His two distinct natures, And then, in a note, Hooker's reference to certain heresies is cited in his well-known comment on the ancient formulary ὰληθῶς, τελέως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀσυγχύτως (i.e. truly, perfectly, indivisibly. distinctly, in opposition to Arians, Apollinarians, Nestorians, and Eutychians respectively). — Now it is evident that this fear of dangerous error is due to his own absolute blindness respecting Christ's person. For the Eutychian error did not consist in affirming the real operation of the Holy Ghost in the conception of the Virgin's Son (which is a truth essential to the faith of God's elect), but in a monstrous blending of the Word with the flesh of Christ. Eutyches, in effect, reversed the momentous words of St. John (chap. 1: 14); for, were his doctrine true, we ought to read (not "the Word ἐγένετο flesh," but) the flesh became the Word. This fatal error (which confounded Deity and humanity, and made a new thing which was neither) has not one point of contact with the revealed truth of the Holy Ghost's action in counteracting fallen humanity from the outset of the Virgin's conception, and in so securing by divine power that the fruit of her womb should be holy (not fallen). No sober Christian ever admitted the strange delusion which seems to have originated with certain fathers, as it has been since adopted by some Socinians, that one part of Christ's human nature was framed by the Spirit and joined with another part received from the Virgin. This device was merely to cover their exclusion of the truth of His eternal Sonship, by construing one part of His humanity, thus imagined, as the Son of God and the other as the Son of man. What can one think of the spirit which compares with this Socinian dream the faith that maintains Christ's holy humanity against those who hold it to be fallen? And what can one think of the chief evangelical organ going lately out of its way to commend a doctrinal tract of this man? They used to denounce the same root of evil in Edward Irving, but alas! some of their own friends are now infected with it; and then again zeal for law, and over-strong feeling against some who condemn them ecclesiastically, lead them to welcome the most heterodox of adversaries.

I employ the expression "human nature," as I presume is ordinarily done, abstractly for humanity, without a question of the state in which it was created originally, or into which it quickly fell. Just so the word "flesh" is used sometimes in scripture for man's nature simply, as in "the Word was made flesh" (John 1: 14), God "was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3: 16), Jesus was "put to death in the flesh" (1 Peter 3: 18), "Jesus Christ come in the flesh" (1 John 4: 2, 3, etc.), etc. The special doctrinal sense of the term, as characterising the moral condition of the race, particularly in the Epistles of Paul, looks at the principle of self-will in the heart. But what believer, thinking of our Lord, would contend for, who does not shudder at, such a meaning in His case? By the context we discern its proper bearing.

Thus, ordinarily, "human nature" is, or may be, used irrespectively of its actual evil state, unless morally contrasted with the new nature. Human nature was in unfallen Adam; it was in Christ; and we of course have it now. But however really in all, it evidently was in a totally different state in Adam before the fall, and in Adam as in us since the fall: in Christ alone scripture pronounces it holy. There are thus three distinct phases of humanity here below — innocent, fallen, holy. Christ's manhood was in the condition of Adam neither before nor after the fall.

Plainly therefore the state of human nature is altogether independent of its real existence. The fall altered the condition of Adam's humanity; but humanity remained as truly after that as before. In like manner the Son of God, the Word, could be made flesh, and did become man, though ever infinitely more than man, taking human nature into union with the divine, so as to form one person; but the condition of His humanity must be ascertained from the scriptures which treat of it. Thus in Luke 1: we have seen that, from His conception and all through, Christ's humanity was "holy" in a sense never said of any other; not merely that the Holy Ghost was poured out upon Him, but that He was "that holy thing," born of His mother and called the Son of God.

Is it now asked, what was the object of the outpouring of the Spirit on Christ when He began to be thirty years of age? Assuredly it was in nowise for resisting inward liability to evil, or for any moral dealing with His human nature: for in Him was no sin. The Spirit was poured out for the testimony and display in man of God's power over Satan and his works. It was the Holy Ghost, not regenerating, nor cleansing (for there was nothing in Him, no, not in His human nature, that needed or even admitted of any such operation), but in power. Thus the Lord Jesus, going forth to be tempted of the devil or in the public service of God, was pleased to act in the might of the Holy Spirit. Enduring temptation, working miracles, preaching, all was done in that divine energy. We alas! may enter into temptation by the flesh, but in the Holy Ghost the Lord repelled evil, yet endured all trial. Hence the anointing with the Holy Ghost was a question of divine power,* as it is said, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him" (Acts 10: 38). Ignorant irreverence gathers from this that Christ had fallen human nature, and that, being liable to sin, the anointing of the Holy Ghost was given to keep Him from yielding! All who say this unwittingly blaspheme His person and moral glory. That Adam unfallen was peccable, the fact itself proved; that Christ ever was peccable, denies the truth of what He was and is, both in His Deity and in His Holy humanity.

* Even Augustine, who is not a whit behind the chiefest Fathers, stumbles, like one in the dark, at the anointing of Christ by the Holy Ghost. He has the temerity (De Trin. xv. 46) to deny that our Lord was anointed, when the Spirit descended on Him as a dove after His baptism. I presume the difficulty was partly owing to the just revulsion of godly minds from the hateful reveries of the Gnostics, which may account for this; partly to a want of simple-hearted subjection to scripture statement as to the difference of the Spirit's action in the incarnation and then at the Jordan. "Ista mystica et invisibili unctione tune intelligendus est, quando Verbum Dei caro factum est (Joan. i. 14); id est quando humana natura sine ullis praecedentibus honorum operum meritis Deo Verbo [sic MSS., at Ed., Dei Verho] est in utero virginis copulata ita ut cum illo una fieret persona. Ob hoc eum confitemur natum de Spiritu sancto et virgine Maria. Absurdissimum est enim, ut credamus eum cum jam triginta esset annorum (ejus enim aetatis a Joanne baptizatus est) accepisse Spiritum sanctum; sed venisse ilium ad baptisma, sicut sine ullo omnino peccato, ita non sine Spiritu sancto." It is curious to perceive the uncertain sound of Bishop Pearson on this head, evidently struck by the plain evidence of scripture and yet swayed in another direction by the jarring notes of Gregory Naz., Ambrose, and Jerome. It is hardly needful to say that none of these divines has laid hold of the simple but weighty difference of the Spirit's work in rendering the humanity holy for its union with the person of the Son; and then in due time anointing Him as man with power for His service on earth.

And here weigh the deeply instructive type of Leviticus 8. Aaron alone is anointed first without blood (ver. 12); when his sons come into question, he is with them, and then the blood of consecration is put on him and them (vers. 23, 24), as the righteous ground for their being anointed with him (ver. 30). So Jesus alone could be and was anointed (and as man, mark, it was) without blood-shedding. The Holy One of God, He needed no offering to receive the Holy Ghost thus. But if He would have us enjoying the fellowship of that unction from on high, blood there must be and was. So He, first anointed before His death, enters the holiest for us with the virtue of His blood; and being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, shed forth what was seen and heard at Pentecost and thenceafter. What a testimony, first to His holy manhood, next to the value of His blood for us!

The doctrine of Irving in its worst shape was, not that the Lord was ever guilty of sin, nor that He ever yielded to the overtures of Satan, but that, having all the frailties within that we have, His triumph over them by the Holy Ghost becomes the ensample to us that we too should gain the victory over the same evil in our nature by the self-same Spirit dwelling in us. Irving insisted loudly on the holiness of Christ's person. His heresy lay in imputing fallen humanity to Him; and Christ's holiness was simply therefore what any saint's might be in kind, if not degree, through the energy of the Holy Ghost, and not in the speciality of His person!

That Christ was made "in the likeness of sinful flesh," scripture declares; but even this shows that fallen nature, peccable humanity, was not in Him, though truly a man, without anything to single Him before the outward eye from others; a man who could be buffeted, spit upon, crucified, and slain. The Lord Jesus, thus viewed, had nothing apparently to mark Him out from the crowd. It could not have been said that He was in the likeness of flesh, any more than that He was in the likeness of God; for this would have denied the truth of His humanity and of His Deity. "The Word was God;" "the Word was made flesh." The one was and is His eternal glory; the other, what He deigned to become in time and will not give up for evermore. But it could be and is said also, that He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, which, as far as it goes, proves that He had not the reality of sinful flesh, but only the likeness of it. Otherwise He could not have been a sacrifice for sin, He could not have been made sin, as He was, on the cross. In "a body hast thou prepared me" the same truth is indicated, as we have already seen. Christ's body, though as much a human body as that of any man, was not generated and made after the same fallen fashion as ours. Even in this His humiliation God prepared Him a body as for none else, that it should have a specific character, suited for the singular work He had to do (Heb. 10). It is all a blunder to suppose that the reality of the incarnation involves the condition of either Adam fallen or of Adam unfallen.

The dilemma is not only fallacious but heretical that Christ must have been limited to the one condition or the other. I deny the alternative, which depends on the profound mistake of shutting us up to the condition of the first Adam, utterly ignoring the glorious contrast of the Second man. The assumption is that if Christ took neither unfallen nor fallen humanity, He could not have taken man's nature at all. Fatal oversight of the Christ of God! It is agreed that bare unfallen humanity, such as Adam originally had, is not true of Christ; but what an abyss of evil is the conclusion, that therefore His was fallen manhood! How plain too that the error goes very deep: for if simple unfallen humanity be exploded, and if Christ, in order to be man, can only take fallen humanity into union with His Deity, it must be fallen humanity still, or He has ceased to be man. This was just the dilemma in which Irving involved himself ("Human Nature," p. 135) in attempting to fix it on those who challenged his heterodoxy. But Christ is contrasted with Adam as a fresh stock and a new head, the Second man and last Adam, not a mere continuation of the first, unfallen or fallen. He is not a mere living soul (as Adam was before he fell), but a quickening or life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15). "I came that they might have life, and that they might have it abundantly" (John 10: 10). Was Adam unfallen either righteous or holy'?* Scripture never says so, and it cannot be broken. But I go farther: what scripture does say is inconsistent with such a standing. Absence of evil, creature good, is not holiness. There was this positive intrinsic superiority to evil in the Lord Jesus even from His very birth and before it. We are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity; the Lord's flesh was neither conceived nor made thus, but holy by the power of the Spirit.

* It is all error common to Irving and the theologians in general to confound with the general state of unfallen Adam that which was true of Christ here below and is true of the Christian now as standing in Him. Thus the former says "Manhood in Adam was sinless, set up in righteousness and true holiness by the Creator." It were invidious to specify the latter, who have made the same mistake; for their name is legion.

It is not true that a fallen man has merely flesh and blood; he has "the flesh" besides, as we see in the Epistle to the Romans and elsewhere. All do not distinguish rightly between "the flesh," and "flesh and blood." In us there is both, but Christ never had the flesh in this moral sense of the expression: because He had not, indeed, God condemned it morally in His life — executed sentence on it judicially (but in grace to us) in His death. Not only for "our sins" did Christ suffer, but for "sin." He took on Himself, as our substitute, not merely the acts and ways and workings, but the root of evil. Him who knew no sin, God made sin for us, as it is written, that we might become God's righteousness in Him. Thus it is not all the truth that sins were laid upon Him, but He was dealt with as to the subtle principle of sin. God did what the law could not do. The law could only take up positive transgressions, but the bottom of the evil the law could not reach, still less in grace to us. The law, even the holy and just and good commandment of God, could not do what God did in sending His own Son — could not get hold of this hidden spring of evil to deal with it summarily and for ever, and in mercy withal to us. Christ both manifested the total absence of the flesh in His life (for He never did anything but the will of God, and thus detected the rebellious ruined condition of every other man), and in His death bore its judgment, that we might stand before God in His risen life, free from all condemnation. "God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." This was precisely the impossibility of the law. The law could condemn the sinner; it could work wrath; it could put sin to account; it could give knowledge of sin; but it could neither blot out and forgive sins, nor execute God's sentence on the root of sin, so as to deliver the believer. God in Christ condemned the whole principle of fallen humanity or "sin in the flesh," and "for sin," i.e., sacrificially: the cross was the divine condemnation of it all, root and branch.

Thus in our Lord personally, besides His being the eternal Word, the Son of the Father, there were these two distinct things: first, that which answered to the type of the mingling of the oil with the pure flour unleavened (Lev. 2: 5); next, that which corresponded to the pouring oil thereon. The first is the action of the Holy Ghost described in Luke 1, from the very outset of His humanity, in order that what was conceived and born of the Virgin should be "holy." The second is what is described in Luke 3: 22 and Acts 10: 38. It is the force of the former truth that so many in our day, as of old, and doubtless all through, are apt to overlook, confounding it with the latter, which is quite another matter. Consequently they have so far lost the person of Christ. They have (as regards the human side of His person) reduced the Saviour, the salvation of God, into a mere child of Adam, singularly blessed no doubt, but far beneath the Christ of God. They apprehend not the mystery of His person, in itself altogether distinct from the anointing of the Holy Ghost, which accordingly only came on Him when He was baptised in the Jordan before He entered on His public service some thirty years after. His person then is the truth at stake, nor can anything be so truly fundamental.

The anointing in question points not to the formation of human nature in absolute purity (though of the virgin) for the person of Christ, but to the Spirit's conferred energy over and above that pure nature. It was for His public work; it was with a view to the display of divine power in the humble and obedient Man: "him [the Son of man] hath God the Father sealed" (John 6: 27). His own internal experience was not more really holy or acceptable to God afterwards than before. The point was the manifestation of the mighty grace of the Spirit in man to others. No doubt Satan did then come and try our Lord — did set in movement every possible engine of temptation, as we are told in Luke 4: 13. But "temptation" here is used, as scripture ordinarily uses the word, not for the working of inward frailty or evil, but for the solicitations of an external enemy, for the devil's presentation of objects here to allure from the path of God.

The first of the three great temptations, when the forty days' exposure to the devil was ended, was the suggestion which appealed to the Lord's feelings of hunger. "If thou art Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Why not? He was God's Son, He was hungry. Surely it was an admirable opportunity to prove His divine mission, as well as to satisfy the natural need of the body. Could He not turn stones into bread? This was what may be called the natural appeal. The second (at least in the Gospel of Luke, who was inspired to present the temptations in their moral order, whether or not the order of historic sequence was preserved) was the worldly appeal — the offer of all the kingdoms of the world on condition of Christ's doing homage before the devil. The third (in Luke  - for Matthew here keeps to the simple order of the facts and shows it was the second historically) was the spiritual appeal, and so not merely on the pinnacle or edge of the temple, but through the word of God. But in all, the Holy One of God defeated the devil, and this through the word used in obedience.

Thus we have seen the Lord entirely refuses the temptation to make the stones bread. It was the devil's suggestion, not God's word, which itself, and not bread, is the true food of the believer's life. With unwavering perfectness Christ lives as man, the Son of God on earth, by the word of God; He does homage to Jehovah His God, and serves Him only, as the Son of man; and trusts Him as the Messiah, not tempting Him as did the people of old in the desert. And here remark a feature in this scene which distinguishes Christ from others who might seem to approach Him, at least circumstantially. Moses and Elijah fasted forty days; but Moses was in the presence of God, sustained so long on high; and Elijah was miraculously fed by an angel before entering on a similar term of abstinence. It was not so with the Lord Jesus, who was in the presence of Satan, unlike the one, and was without any such previous sustenance as the other had enjoyed.

It is true the Lord Jesus did not come into an earth stainless and happy, but fallen. But to argue thence that He was in a fallen condition of humanity is utterly, inexcusably, impiously false. He could and did suffer, no doubt, from hunger, thirst, and weariness; but these things are in no way the index that human nature was fallen in Him, but of the circumstances through which humanity, holy or unholy, might pass. In his innocence Adam had no such experience; after his fall this and more was his lot. The holy person of Jesus did know these circumstances, and magnified God in them: what have they to do with the state of His humanity? with its holiness as contra-distinguished from a fallen or an unfallen Adam's? Who will venture to affirm that Adam, if kept from food even in Eden, would not have suffered from hunger? The argument is worthless, save to betray the will to depreciate the Lord of glory. The grand vice of it all is merging Him as much as possible in the fallen condition of the race. If innocent human nature had to do with a Paradisaical state, certainly neither fallen humanity nor holy humanity when here below was spared from tasting the bitterness of a wilderness world. This therefore does not affect the momentous point of the different state of humanity in Adam fallen and in Christ even while living here below. Thus the argument founded on our Lord's suffering hunger and thirst and weariness is a manifest sophism, because it confounds the circumstances which humanity may experience with humanity itself; it assumes from these circumstances an identity in the state of manhood, contrary to the most express teaching of the Bible and to all true knowledge of Christ. God tells us the facts to enhance our sense of the Saviour's grace and exalt His moral glory in our eyes; man, set on by Satan, hastens to pervert the facts so as to tarnish His humanity and debase His person.

To assert that the Lord Jesus was liable to sin is not only to deny His perfect humanity, but evinces, to say the least, the grossest ignorance of His person. It is an insult to the Son because of His humiliation, which no consideration can palliate, which man's unbelief and Satan's malice can alone account for. Certainly He was tried and did suffer to the uttermost; but thence to infer or allow that He had from the fall such frailty and inwardly temptable nature as ours is, I must regard and denounce as a heinous libel on Christ, as a lie most destructive to man. Scripture, while it clearly reveals the manhood of the Saviour, seems more careful to uphold His unstained glory than that of any other person in the adorable Trinity. And no wonder. God is jealous lest the Saviour's unspeakable grace should expose Him to dishonour. How painful that He should be wounded afresh in the house of His friends!

Some doubtless do not go so far or fast as others; there are, too, misled as well as misleaders. But there are not a few who stop short, for the present at least, of the natural consequences of the system they have somehow admitted into their minds. They may not allow liability to sin, and yet contend for fallen humanity, in Jesus. But will they affirm that He could have fallen nature in His person without touching the unsullied glory of His person? It is hard to see how the person stands if one of the natures composing it be fallen. Let them beware lest the only door of refuge be that of Nestorianism, which divides the Lord's person, virtually setting up a double personality in sharp antagonism (not two natures united in one person), in order to save His divine glory from being darkened by the shade of a fallen manhood.

Take a single chapter of Matthew — the very one from which men have drawn a weapon against the Saviour's glory in humiliation, willing to wound and not afraid to strike in His case —  Matthew 8, and let us see the perfect man in Him who was perfectly a man. "Lord," says the worshipping leper, "if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." The hand of man, the power of Jehovah, was there: who else could? who else would? He was come of woman, come under law: had this been all, He must have been defiled Himself instead of cleansing the leper. But as He was thus God, He was open to the need of man, not of the circumcision only, but of the uncircumcision also, were there but the faith that caught a glimpse of His true glory. And there was. For the Gentile centurion confessed Him supreme in His power and authority, so that not His bodily presence only (ever sought by the godly Israelite) but His word would suffice. "Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but only speak a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me.... And on hearing it, Jesus marvelled." He was indeed very man; but how much more! He said to the centurion, "Go; and as thou hast believed, be it done to thee." And his servant was healed "in that hour." Next, He comes to Peter's house and sees his mother-in-law laid down and in a fever; but in divine goodness He touched her hand; and not only did the malady leave her, but, restored to strength, she arose and served them. Nor was it only where a special tie existed. He was here below in grace, passing through a ruined, needy, sorrow-stricken world, ready to help any that came, all that were brought, demonised or sick; and a word was enough for the worst. Thus was fulfilled Isaiah 53: 4 (not yet the vicarious work of ver. 5, et seq.). Certainly that was not sacrificial; still less does the application sanction the revolting idea of our Lord's liability to our infirmities and diseases. It was the very reverse; it was the power that dispelled sickness from every patient in contact with Himself; and this withal as One not in unfeeling distance, but who (in love as deep as His power) took all, bore all, upon His spirit with God. Divine grace and human sorrow filled His heart, guided His mouth, and directed His hand. Yet none the less, but the more, was He the outcast Son of man. The foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, but He-! He had not where to lay His head. It was not law; nor was it necessity of circumstances or position; it was His grace in a world gone from God. If flesh offered to follow, it had better weigh whither Jesus goes and leads: for He does claim the heart, even at cost of breaking the nearest ties of nature. The burial of a father must yield to the paramount call of the despised Nazarene, if indeed we know His glory and have heard His voice. Jesus is Lord of the living. Those who do not follow Him are dead; they love their own. Leave the dead to bury their own dead. Is it not so, O faithless disciples? Do you presume to have greater love than His? to know His mind better than the Master? I do not say that there are not storms, and that the bark in which the disciples follow Jesus is not frail; but the Man who slept in it through all was the Divine person who arose at their cry and stilled their unbelieving fears by the word which rebuked the winds and the sea. Such was the Man who next cast out demons after a sort that could not be mistaken; but the world preferred the swine, demons, and all, to Jesus, unanimously beseeching Him to depart out of their coasts! Such is man; and such was Jesus even here below in the days of His flesh.

If we turn to John 11, we have a different but most instructive display of Jesus on the earth. For what is seen there is no remedial measure in a living Messiah. Nothing of the kind could adequately meet the depth of the ruin even for those who believed in Him and were loved of Him. Death must take its course. It was no use merely to heal: man was too far gone. The Lord therefore remains till all was over, and Lazarus slept in death. Jesus saw things in the light of day: this sickness was not unto death but for God's glory, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. He awaits therefore His Father's will and goes to raise the dead. Martha had no just estimate of the power of death any more than of the Lord's glory: "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died; but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." Neither did her orthodox creed meet the case: "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he have died shall live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world" (vers. 21-27). No; Martha did not enter in, though a believer, and this because she had but Jewish thoughts of Christ. Present resurrection power in Him was beyond her. She went her way and sent Mary, who, if she did not yet anticipate His power better than Martha, at least fell down at His feet, and wept as did the very Jews. Death was there; and now Jesus was there. He was the Son, very God, yet did He estimate death as none could but Himself who, a man, was that eternal life which was with the Father. He groaned in His spirit, apparently with the strongest indignation and pain, at the power of death over the spirit of man, and troubled Himself or shuddered. In divine grace He weighed and felt it all in spirit — wept, too, as they asked Him to come and see where the dead saint lay. Little did Jewish comment penetrate the reality; but the more did Jesus groan in Himself as He came to the grave, whence, spite of Martha's unbelief, the glory of God was seen in Lazarus coming forth at the voice of the Son. Nothing can be more blessed than this sympathy in entering into the sorrow and power of death, Himself all the while conscious of the power of life, but using it only as the Sent of the Father. This introduces into a new scene through the door of resurrection, when death has closed all connection between God and nature. Decent and dull orthodoxy finds its prototype in Martha: value for the person of Christ may be slow, like Mary, but, waiting on Jesus, at length sees light and life in His light.

If we look, again, at the doctrinal statements of scripture, Heb. 2 shows us the singularly honoured place of man in the person of Jesus according to Psalm 8: "But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for [or, on account of] the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every [man]." Incarnation could not deliver, all-important as it is. The person of the Deliverer was thereby manifested, but death was the pivot of blessing, if man was to be brought out of sins according to God: no otherwise could there be a righteous basis, for thus only is there a due dealing with our evil before God. "For it became him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (ver. 10). Thus it was fitting that Christ should pass on high through sufferings for the many sons God is bringing to glory. Their state demanded it; grace made it His path. But there is the greatest care to guard against irreverence toward the Lord Jesus. "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren" (ver. 11). The phrase "all of one" is exceedingly, and designedly, abstract. Still He is the Sanctifier, as risen from the dead; for so the quotation of Psalm 22: 22 in Heb. 2: 12 proves. Then first did our Lord put the disciples definitely in this relationship (see John 20: 17). "All of one" means, not His entering into their state, but His taking them into His. The foundation was laid in His death: as risen, He at once associates them with Himself. They were "all of one" thus. It is not men as such, but "the sanctified" (οἱ ἁγιαζόμενοι). He does not call them His brethren till He became a man; and only then distinctly when risen, according to the passages cited. The nearest approach before was when He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples and said, "Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matt. 12: 49, 50). But this is vague compared with "Go to my brethren," connected as it is with His ascending to His Father and their Father, and to His God and their God. It is manifest also that the Son's incarnation is, in verse 14, introduced as the necessary means for making void through death the power of the devil, and delivering those who were in bondage all their lifetime through fear of death. Alone He wrought this mighty work, by virtue of which, when risen, He gathers the sanctified into association with Himself; but in both as really man, for such the children were.

Power, the power of God, was in Christ. Was it the less bright because it shone through a life of absolute dependence on His Father, and the sorrows of His unfathomable humiliation in pity to man, love to His own, and devotedness to God's glory? Look at that extreme point of it all, the cross, the foolishness, and the weakness of God. Do they appreciate it who unwittingly slight the rights of God's person? "I have power [not δύναμις merely, but ἐξουσία, title or right as well as power] to lay it [my life] down and I have power to take it again." Yet was it exercised only in obedience, as He blessedly adds, "This commandment have I received of my Father" (John 10: 18). That Christ therefore "had in His nature not only a possibility and aptitude, but also a necessity of dying," is a statement so unsound that the reputation of a man, able and learned as Bishop Pearson was, will not avail to consecrate it (Expos. Of the Creed, Art. iv.). Had he confined himself to the more guarded language with which the next paragraph concludes, there might be nothing to object; for it is agreed that "by voluntary election He took upon Him a necessity of dying." But this is a very different proposition from having that necessity in the nature He assumed. It is John 10: 18 which is cited in the opening of this latter paragraph. Even here, however, the doctrine is exceptionable. The short time in which it pleased the Lord to die (so surprising to Pilate when reported), coupled with the loud voice with which He cried just before (so marvellous to the centurion who heard), points to the practical testimony of His power in death as in life, not to the total exhaustion of bodily vigour as the effect of previous sorrows, to which the bishop refers it — I might almost say more naturalistic than the heathen judge or the heathen soldier. To say that when by an act of His will He had submitted to the death of the cross, . . . it was not in the power of His soul to continue any longer vitality to the body (i.e., that when He had voluntarily given Himself to die, He could no longer live) is true indeed but very like a truism. But that from the first He had in His nature the necessity of dying, or that at the last His vigour was so exhausted that He must therefore die, is to cloud the truth of divine glory in His person by assigning to it a dissolution necessarily inherent in His humanity. It indirectly touches atonement also; for how deeply is God's grace in His death undermined, if He merely anticipated on the cross a death which must have been in some shape within a generation later? To me, I confess, the scheme ominously symbolises with the taunts of some who surrounded the cross: "He saved others; himself he cannot save."

The life of fallen humanity is doomed; but our Lord goes infinitely farther than negativing any such constitutional necessity in His human nature. He claims a power beyond Adam unfallen, or any other creature. None but the Holy One of God, and a divine person withal, could say, "I have power to lay down my life," etc.

Hence the bishop's note to the preceding page (though he justly insists in the text as well as note on the reality of the Lord's death, and, of course, on the separation of His soul from His body) is utterly beneath the intimations of the scriptures which he quotes. For all this eminent man draws from them is, that they teach not a mere λειποθυμία, or deathlike swoon, of which we hear in the later Greek writers, but an absolute expiration; and therefore, he thinks, we have not only the ἐξέπνευσεν of Mark and Luke, but in Matthew ἀφῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα, and in John παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα. Of course, his inference is true; but what intelligent believer will say that it represents the truth here revealed? Who but Jesus, Jehovah-Messiah, could be said to yield up, or dismiss His spirit? Who but a divine person, the Word made flesh, could deliver up His spirit? Only He who had before asserted calmly His full authority: — "I lay down my life that I might take it again. No man [no one] taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." The Nestorianism which divides the person is as dangerous and destructive as the Eutychianism which confounds the two natures to the overthrow of both. From the conception Deity was never severed from the humanity of Christ, no, not even when His spirit was in Paradise and His body lay in the tomb.

The truth is, that the statements of the great Anglican expositor of the Creed are not trustworthy as to the (if possible) still more essential and critical truth of the Son's proper and supreme Deity. I can well imagine the indignant scorn of the younger clergy, whose impulse is at all costs to defend their text-book. Graver men too among the better sort may be slow to accept such a charge. With such slowness I sympathise, provided there be along with it an honest and open heart to adhere to holy scripture as the sole unerring standard of truth. However this be, the doctrine under Art, i. is, that the Father has the divine essence of Himself, the Son by communication from the Father. "From whence he acknowledgeth that he is from him, that he liveth by him, that the Father gave him to have life in himself, and generally referreth all things to him, as received from him (John 7: 27 [? 29]; John 6: 57; John 5: 26). Wherefore in this sense some of the ancients have not stuck to interpret those words, 'The Father is greater than I,' of Christ as the Son of God, as the second person in the blessed Trinity; but still with reference not unto his essence but his generation, by which he is understood to have his being from the Father, who only hath it of himself, and is the original of all power and essence in the Son. I can of mine own self do nothing, saith our Saviour (John 5: 30), because he is not of himself," etc. At the end of the paragraph the bishop repeats the texts (John 5: 26 and John 6: 57), and enforces the same doctrine in the following paragraphs.

Now it is certain that Pearson misinterprets these scriptures, on which he (following some if not most of the fathers) rests this strange doctrine — a doctrine which soon turns to the denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ, and, in more audacious minds, to Arianism. The real starting-point in the passages of St. John is the Son, but viewed in the position He took here below: the Word, who was God, become flesh, who refused the very appearance of independence, was come down to do the will of Him that sent Him, did nothing of Himself but only whatsoever He saw the Father do, or what the Father assigned Him only to do. So absolute was His dependence that He could say, "The living Father hath sent me, and I live because of the Father" (διὰ τὸν π., not διὰ τοῦ π., as the Authorised Version would require). Still less difficulty is there in the reference to John 7: 28, 29. It is His mission, not subordination in the Godhead, which is in question. I think then that I am warranted in saying, that, throughout, the perversion of these scriptures is gross and perilous to the highest degree. What can be worse than habitually applying to the intrinsic glory of Christ the language which He, in lowly love, uttered in His place of voluntary subjection on earth? Can any man taught of God dispute the fact that Pearson fell into this error? The same John, who in the Gospel lets us hear the Saviour say that the Father has given to the Son to have life in Himself in his First Epistle shows us "that eternal life, which was with [not, from] the Father and was manifested unto us:" not a hint of the Father's giving Him to have life in Himself save here below.

Hence even some Romanist theologians are in this respect sounder, if not more candid than the "great divines" of the Anglican platform. Compare for instance the apologies for the Ante-Nicene fathers (Justin M., Clement of Alexandria, Origen etc.) in Bishop Bull's Jud. Cath. Eccles., with the frank admissions of Petavius in his Opus de Theol. Dogm. I fear that the acute Jesuit did not find the admission painful; for he was thereby enabled to insist the more keenly on that which is the foundation of his own system (and, alas! of many not there yet), that it is the church's function to decide and define what the truth is that man has to believe unto salvation. The Anglicans,* on the contrary, from the first have ever been under bondage to the earlier Fathers and Councils; and hence their leaders have never freed themselves from the lowering influence of the semi-Platonism which tinctures those ancient writings, and gives their admirers a wrong bias in the interpretation of scripture. For my part, fully allowing that the church (where and what is it now?) is, or ought to be, the pillar and ground of the truth, I believe that the truth is already definitely revealed in the scriptures, and with far greater clearness, fulness, and perfection than in any human formularies, either of the fourth and fifth centuries, or of the sixteenth and seventeenth. To receive, keep, witness the truth is the obligation and joy of the church; to declare with authority what the truth is belongs to God and His word; to teach and preach the truth the Lord raises up and sends His servants. If we mix things divine and human in the faith, it comes to the same disastrous effect as mingling works with grace for justification; being false in principle, the practical issue is, that the divine element is neglected, and the human one becomes an idol. "Our church" usurps the place not of God's church only, but, more or less, of His word.

* Think of a professed commentator like Dr. C. Wordsworth committing himself and the Dict. of the Bible (iii. p. 1358) to the stupendous error that God made Jesus to be Jehovah! He refers to Acts 2: 36, which really treats of official glory, not of the Deity or Jehovahship of Jesus. The Fathers so erred before him.

I observe with regret the influence of patristic or human theology on Dean Alford as to this foundation truth. How else can one account for the terms of his note on Romans 9: 5? "That our Lord is not, in the strict exclusive sense, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων θεός, every Christian will admit, that title being reserved for the Father; but that He is ἐπὶ πάντων θεός none of the passages goes to deny." I affirm, on the contrary, that no Christian, if fairly instructed, will admit but deny what is here predicated of the Father and of Christ. "In the strict exclusive sense, ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων θεός belongs to the Father no more than to the Son or to the Holy Ghost. The Father is supreme God, Jehovah; but so is the Son, and so is the Spirit. It is really true of the Godhead and of each person in it. (Compare Isaiah 6 with John 12 and Acts 28) They are not three supreme independent beings, but One Supreme with a threefold personality: all three persons supreme God, but none exclusively. But it is striking to see that, while the Creator in Romans 1: 25 is said to be "blessed for ever" (εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας), while the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is said to be the same in 2 Corinthians 11: 31 (ὁ ὢν εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας), it is to Christ and to Christ alone that Romans 9: 5 applies the still stronger terms, ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. Indeed I am not aware that so forcible and explicit a statement of divine supremacy can be found elsewhere in the Bible. So mistaken is the allegation of the Dean in every particular, that, as we see, the very text under his consideration proves that the strictest and largest form of that title is reserved not for the Father but for Christ; not because the Father and the Holy Ghost are not equally with the Son supreme God, Jehovah, but because the Son, having stooped to become man and die, needed the plainest appropriation of it which scripture gives to any person in the Godhead. The Father will have all to honour the Son even as they honour the Father. Faith sees it in the word and worships: unbelief stumbles at the word, but must bow perforce in the judgment. Can one but feel with Gregory of Nazianzus: "I am filled with indignation and grief (would that ye could sympathise with me!) for my Christ, when I see my Christ [surely it is not less, I would add, when the soul thinks of Him as the Christ of God] dishonoured for the very reason for which He should have been honoured most. For, tell me, is He therefore without honour because for thee He was humbled?"

I return then with the firmest conviction that the death of our Lord was, in the fullest sense and up to the last, voluntary, though in obedience to His Father. He tasted death by no doom of fallen nature, but by the grace of God. And this is entirely borne out by Philippians 2: 8, which clearly shows that in His case death was in no way through the common mortality of fallen flesh. For, "being found in fashion as a man," He did not necessarily die; but because of the purposes of grace, He "humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." It was for our sins, and therefore, as far as He was concerned, on a wholly different principle and for ends transcendently divine. Adam, failing man, disobeyed and died; Christ became obedient up to that point of death, the death of the cross. He too was made sin for us; He was made a curse for us; He was crucified in weakness. It was from no necessity in His human nature, which libels Himself, and would, if true, destroy our hope. It was the triumph of grace in the Son of man, who was giving His life a ransom for many. God was thus glorified in Him; and "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." I know not what of truth, or love, or obedience, or atoning efficacy for others, or of moral glorification of God in death, is left standing by the fatal error that makes Christ, from the birth to the grave, necessarily subject to the laws of fallen humanity in His own person.

Again, the Authorised Version of Hebrews 2: 16, is unequivocally false. The passage says nothing about taking up a nature or not, which was just settled explicitly in vers. 14, 15. The real meaning is: "For of course (δήπου) it is not angels he taketh up (i.e., helpeth), but he taketh up Abraham's seed." It connects Christ specially with the line of promise as the objects of this special interest to the exclusion of angels. I am aware that some ancient expositors and modern divines go with the English translators; but it is certain that they are wrong. For the connection of the thought is broken thereby, and a feeble reiteration of the truth, already stated more fully, is imported. And the error in sense led to a further error in form; for the translators could not say that He is not taking on Him the nature of angels, but He is taking on Him the seed of Abraham. Hence, in order to make it suit at all they were forced into the blunder of rendering ἐπιλαμβάνεται He took, etc.

"Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make expiation [or atonement] for the sins of the people" (ver. 17). Having thus prepared the way, the Holy Ghost did not feel it needful to guard the strong assertion that Christ was in all things made like to His brethren. Those who believed that He was the Sanctifier, as the risen Man, the Son of God who had by Himself purged our sins, need not to be told that fallen humanity formed no part of His person. The exclusion of sin in nature is added where it was more requisite, when the apostle (Heb. 4: 15) states how fully He was tempted like us.

Observe, moreover, in Hebrews 2: 18, "in that he himself hath suffered being tempted," there never was anything else: it is not that He suffered after being tempted, for this a man may do who yields and repents. There was not, there could not be, distress of conscience in the Lord Jesus, any more than the workings of unbelief, such as we may feel. He suffered in the entire moral being the sufferings of holiness and grace. He loathed and rejected all that the enemy presented to His holy nature. Hence He who in human nature knew trial and suffering beyond all is able to comfort the tried saint. This is the real idea and application of temptation here. It does not mean inward susceptibility of, or proclivity to, evil; it does in James 1: 14, where it is expressly connected with lust: if any man dares to apply this to Jesus, let him speak out, that we may know what he is, and that the sheep of Christ may flee from the voice of a stranger. But James, in the same chapter (vers. 2, 12), uses the word in its more ordinary scriptural application to trials. The confusion arises from not heeding the difference between such an inward working of fallen nature as is described in James 1: 14 and the being tried by Satan without. The true faith of the Son of God ought to have rendered such suggestions impossible in His case. There was no sin in Adam and Eve when they were tempted: hence fallen humanity is not necessary to temptation. But let it be noticed that, when our first parents were tempted, there was no suffering then: they yielded. It is in contrast with the last Adam, who was incomparably more tempted but in nothing yielded. He met every assault by the word of God, instead of letting it slip and transgressing it as they did. He came to do God's will, not His own. He acted in the power of the Holy Ghost, who brings out the suited scripture for the need, whatever it be. We, it is true, as men, have fallen humanity, which He had not; but then, as believers, we are born of God (Christ Himself being our life), and we have in the Holy Ghost power to resist, especially bearing in mind that Satan is now to us, because of Christ, a conquered enemy. But the old nature in us is still there and no better: victory, as far as we are concerned, depends not on its improvement but on our faith.

This false doctrine is sometimes betrayed by a wrong thought of Christ's state under the law. It is imagined that, from the humanity He assumed, there was moral feebleness, if not a repugnance to the law, as in other children of Adam. This is a fatal error; it degrades the Lord beneath His servants. I deny that the Christian's obedience is to do the will of God because he is obliged. Spite of the old man in us, there is also the new man; and scripture always speaks of us according to that new life that characterises us. Hence it speaks of us, when delivered, as loving to obey, as cleaving to God's word, as sanctified unto obedience — set apart by the Spirit for this very purpose (1 Peter 1). Now Christ never had the wrestling that we know from the old man's opposition in us to the Holy Ghost. In Him there was the absolute surrender of every thought and feeling to the will of God. There was but one apparent exception, where He prayed in His agony, "Let this cup pass from me." But how could He, who ever enjoyed the unbroken sunshine of God's favour throughout His career on earth, desire to be forsaken of God? It would have been indifference and not love, it would have been to despise the blessed fellowship between the Father and Himself. Therefore was it a part of the perfectness of Christ to say, "Let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not my will but shine be done." His humanity because perfect (may I say?) could not wish for that unutterable scene of wrath: but here too He was, as in all things, subject to the will of God. "The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it?"

Looked at then in the light of God's word, Christ's humanity was as real as ours (which itself differs not a little from human nature as it came from God); its state was totally different from Adam's either in integrity or in ruin. In its singularly blessed source and character, as in its practical development, there was that which, even on the human side of His person, contra-distinguished Christ from Adam whether in or outside Paradise. Was the agency of the Holy Ghost in His generation a small matter? And what of the fact that in Him all the fulness was pleased to dwell? There was nothing in Adam innocent that could be represented by the oil mixed with the fine flour any more than by the subsequent anointing with oil; nor was he at any time (as Christ always was) simply and solely in his life an offering to God, from which the salt of the covenant was never lacking. In the type of the Pentecostal saints, spite of their wondrous privileges, in that new meal-offering unto Jehovah, the two wave-loaves were expressly baken with leaven, and hence necessarily had their accompanying sacrifice for a sin-offering (Lev. 23: 15-21): first-fruits indeed to be offered, but not to be burnt (as was the oblation that represented Christ) on the altar for a sweet savour.

We may now glance at Hebrews 4: 15: "For we have not an high priest unable to sympathise with our infirmities, but tempted as he hath been in all things alike apart from sin." There is a notion too prevalent among theologians and their followers that the blessed Lord Himself was compassed with infirmities? Where is such a statement warranted in scripture? Do they call it an infirmity for a man here below to eat, drink, sleep, or feel the lack of these things? Do they or do they not go farther? What do they make of Matthew 2 and 3? of Matthew 8: 17, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses"? of His anger against the sabbath-perverters? of His walking in Solomon's porch, not in the sanctuary? of His sleeping outside Jerusalem and other holy cities? of His agony in Gethsemane? Need I dwell now on still more painful insinuations founded on erroneous views of the Psalms, on the types of the law, and on the prophets? Oh! it is grievous to think that these men pass current with heedless disciples, no less than with the blind multitude, as ministers of Him whom they systematically defame. Some may mean nothing wrong by isolated expressions and hasty ideas culled from old divines (not knowing, like Peter, what they said): but others work it out more daringly, little conscious that it is Satan's scheme for slighting Christ. None assuredly should predicate of Christ what scripture does not; all on such a theme should beware what they draw from a text here or there, savouring of natural thoughts as to Him whom none knows save the Father, lest haply they be found fighting against God.

Christ could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, nay, was in all points tempted like as we are, sin excepted. The word "yet" interpolated into the Authorised Version, makes the sense equivocal, if it be not spoiled; at any rate, "yet" probably helped on the misinterpretation that the words teach no more than that He did not yield to sin — that He was tempted, fully and like us, yet without sinning. But this is not the force. He was tried in all things after a like sort (καθ᾽ ὁμοιότητα) apart from sin (χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας). Tempted as He was in all things similarly, in this He differed essentially that He had absolutely no sin in His nature. This therefore very materially guards the resemblance from trenching on the state of humanity as it was in His person — "without [or, apart from] sin," and not merely from sins. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1: 8). Consequently we have inward temptations connected with sin in us, such as James speaks of, which He never had. The passage then proves the precise contrary of this pernicious doctrine; for it qualifies the resemblance of His trials to ours by excepting sin. With sin He had nothing to do in temptation, though He had all to do with it in suffering on the cross. He had not the smallest tendency to it in His humanity; though a partaker of blood and flesh, He had not what St. Paul calls "the flesh." There was no liability to sin in Him who was perfect God and perfect man in one person; there was in the first man, Adam, and he accordingly fell. But the Second man, the last Adam, had no such infirmity, though He had it in the sense of a capacity to suffer in body and soul and to die on the cross, if and when He pleased, yet in obedience to God for our sins (2 Cor. 13: 4). Of inward moral infirmity He had none.

Miserable comforters are ye all who found your hope of sympathy on His degradation! Had Adam been "born of God" in his entire nature and in the highest sense, he, without being a divine person, could not have sinned (1 John 3: 9). When the Christian sins, it is because he, spite of the new nature and of the indwelling Spirit, yields to the old man which is never born of God; he is off his guard, is wrought on by the enemy, and fails. Liability to sin there would not be in a nature exclusively holy. Who would affirm such a liability of Christ when He comes again in glory? Now, the self-same expression — "without sin" (χωρῖς ἁμαρτίας)  - is employed about Him then (Heb. 9: 28) as when tempted here below (Heb. 4: 15). In the days of His flesh He was "without sin." On the cross God made Him "sin for us." By and by, when He appears a second time to His own, it is "without sin." Once for all He was offered to bear the sins of many; soon will He appear for the salvation, not judgment, of those that wait for Him, but appear absolutely apart from sin, having fully done the will and work of God about it through the offering of His body once for all. Without the smallest particle of sin or tendency to it in His humanity, He was assailed to the utmost by the devil; next, He was to put sin away by the sacrifice of Himself. The second time He will be seen apart from sin, having settled all the question and perfectly glorified God about it in the cross. He will come again, therefore, without sin for salvation. No man is heterodox enough to impute to Christ in glory the least exposure to any inward evil; but if they dare so to speak or think of His humanity while He lived on earth, it is formally contradicted by the very scripture they are wont to allege — Heb. 4: 15. The Holy Ghost predicates the same thing, χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας, about Him in both cases. He was on earth, as He will soon appear in glory, wholly without sin.

Indeed had there been an infinitesimal particle of fallen humanity in Christ, how could He be a meet sacrifice to God for sin? Even the typical animals must needs be unblemished after their carnal pattern. No offerings, it is remarkable, were more stamped with holiness, if so much, as the meal-offering, and the sin and trespass-offerings. They emphatically were "most holy" — Christ in His human activity, and Christ made sin for us. The paschal lamb without blemish, the daily lambs without spot, the red heifer of the wilderness wherein was no blemish, and upon which never came yoke (note it well), all proclaimed that in the great Antitype fallen humanity could have no place. Had Christ been, as born of woman, under the yoke of fallen manhood in any sense or degree, had He been born into a relation of distance from God, even without question of a single failure in His ways, He never could have been a due adequate sacrifice for us; because there must have been thus the gravest possible defect in His humanity. For what so serious in such an offering as the signs of the fall, no matter how suppressed or attenuated? None can deny that the fall vitiates the entire constitution, save men blinded into thinking God is altogether such an one as themselves. This doctrine therefore makes atonement impossible, unless God can accept a fall-stained victim; and (what is worse) it undermines and assails the person of Christ, the Son, touching God's glory in the point of which He is most jealous.

As to the argument which demands how Christ could sympathise without personal consciousness of fallen humanity, it is worthless otherwise, besides evincing the judicial falseness and profound iniquity of the system. For if Jesus must have Adam's fallen nature to sympathise with mine, alas! I have also yielded to evil: am I then, on this view, to have or to lack sympathy therein? Certainly it is not because the poor sinner, however guilty, does not need pity. If the argument prove anything, it goes much too far; logically, it requires actual failure (and to what amount?) in the Mediator in order fully to sympathise with us!

The sympathy of Jesus is in scripture based on wholly different grounds. I admit that His divine glory alone suffices not; but it does give lustre and infinite worth to His most real suffering as Man tried, and in every way conceivable, sin excepted. He must have the nature of those whose cause He undertakes, though not in the same fallen state; He must have proved the anguish and bitterness of temptation here below; and so He did incomparably more than any other. In holy humanity He could thus feel sympathy with our infirmities, having felt the wiles and power and malice of the enemy, and so much more than we do, as His dignity and holiness and love transcended ours. Never having known sin (which, if known, narrows and blunts the heart), but having suffered infinitely, His affections are large and free to go out to us, in our sore distresses as saints, who have not only the same outward enemy to try us, but also a treacherous nature within.

The truth is that the believer, resting by faith on redemption as a work already and perfectly accomplished for him, does not want Christ to sympathise with his indwelling sin, any more than with his sins; he has started with the divine assurance that Christ died for both. And if Christ be risen, so is the believer with Him; and is this nothing, or is it not everything as a groundwork of comfort from above against fallen nature and its bad fruits? Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree:* in Him crucified, sin, the flesh, is already condemned. Am I not to believe it all, and accept humbly, thankfully, the peace of a triumphant suffering so wholly and unmistakeably of God's grace to me?

* 1 Peter 2: 24, in employing ἀναφέρω explicitly shuts out the notion, for which some contend, that Christ had our sins previously and bore them up to the tree. Προσθέρω admits of previous action, but ἀναφέρω never means this in such a connection; it is exclusively sacrificial. What thoughts of God and of sin can these men have! What anguish the mere anticipation of this cost Jesus! "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this cause came I unto this hour " (John 12: 27). So too the horrors that pressed on Him at Gethsemane, when His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death; and an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him (as, when the great wilderness temptation was over, angels had ministered unto Him). But it was for deeper conflict and more intent prayer and His bloody sweat (Luke 22: 43, 44). He was in no way forsaken then; on the cross, made sin, He was.

Not that there is not a wise and holy dealing of God with the believer who has been unwatchful and failed. But it is neither the Arminian plan that denies the permanent relationship of the child of God, and sets him to begin anew with another and another recourse to the blood of atonement, as if we were Jews and not Christians; nor is it the Calvinist idea, that finds a resource in Christ's holy eating, drinking, sleeping, praying, worshipping, etc., for our respective failures in these things, and so in all else. The principle of both errors seems to lie in Simon Peter's hasty words in John 13: 8, 9, as the truth which corrects them both shines out of our Lord's reply in ver. 10. "He that is washed (λελουμένος bathed) needeth not save to wash (νίψασθαι) his feet." The bustling earnestness of the one scheme fails to give its true value to the bathing of the person; the hard cold fatalism of the other sees not the need of the continual cleansing of the feet, because the person is once bathed all over. Christianity maintains both, neither weakening the fundamental and eternal character of the new birth nor denying the all-importance of continual self-judgment and confession. The bathing is never repeated; the feet-washing is ever needed here below, if we pretend to communion with Christ. The Holy Ghost carries on the work here in answer to the intercession of Christ above, and cleanses with the washing of water by the word (Eph. 5: 26) him who is already washed from his sins in the blood of Christ, already born of water and the Spirit.

And such is the doctrine of the typical Red Heifer in Numbers 19. On the basis of the complete sevenfold sprinkling of her blood before the tabernacle of the congregation, the rest of the sacrifice was duly reduced to ashes as a standing purification for sin. Then, if an Israelite were defiled, the remedy was, not a renewal of the blood-sprinkling, but the sprinkling of the unclean with the water of separation (i.e., running water mingled with some of the ashes of the burnt heifer). The defiled soul is made to feel by the Spirit, and word of God, what his trifling with sin cost Christ, the Son of God, who bore the unsparing judgment of it all before God when made sin for him. Such is the doctrine of scripture, old and new; such is the holy way of God in actual experience.

But the sympathy of Christ with sin (or even with sinners as such) would be an opiate for sin, to us most perilous, to Him most dishonouring. Not so: His sympathy is with the regenerate in their great weakness, who hate sin, who have to endure the contradiction of sinners, and who are opposed by Satan acting on the flesh and in the world. This therefore is the needed and the spiritual consolation: "We have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin." It is not merely that He did not sin when tempted, but that no principle of inbred evil, which we know so distressingly, was in Him. So, at the close of His career, the prince of this world came once more, but it was the same tale of perfectness, early or late: he hath "nothing in me" (John 14: 30). Socinianism denies the divine nature that was in Him; this scheme imputes what was not in Him, and what, if it were, would ruin alike His person and His work. Everyone, no doubt, is liable to error, especially if self-confident or trusting to human cisterns that can hold no water, to the disparagement of the fountain of living waters. But if any man of intelligence deliberately persevered with such doctrine as this, would it be right to regard him as bringing the doctrine of Christ?

Hebrews 5 may illustrate a little more fully the readiness with which man falls into the snare of despising Christ: "For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity" (vers. 1, 2). This is frequently taken as a description of Christ; whereas it is the contrast of an ordinary human high priest with Him. Ignorant and erring men have a priest like themselves — one compassed with infirmity. Such is not Jesus, the Son of God, who has no need on account of this infirmity, "as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins."* Doubtless, an analogy with Aaron follows in that "Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but was called of God." In fact He waited till He ascended, and entered on His priesthood on high. For perfection was not by the Levitical priesthood: the law perfected nothing (Heb. 7: 11, 19). Clearly then the passage contrasts Aaron and his sons in this with Christ. They were infirm men. For us Jesus, the Son of God, is the priest in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man. This did not hinder His knowing sorrow as none ever knew, but always the sorrow of righteousness and love: "Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though he being Son, [yet] learned he obedience by the things which he suffered" (vers. 7, 8). He had to learn obedience because it was a strange thing to Him who knew only to command. And being perfected (that is, having fully done the work necessary to secure eternal salvation, not for Himself but for others, and being accordingly perfected on high), "he became the author of eternal salvation, unto all them that obey him, called of (or, addressed by) God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec" (vers. 9, 10).

* It might seem past belief that any man of note among Christians could entertain a thought so deplorable. I must therefore be forgiven if I cite the words of the famous Hugo Grotius to prove that not even the language of ver, 3 sufficed to keep him from applying the entire description of an earthly high priest to the Lord: —  "Sequitur Christum quoque obtulisse pro se ὑπὲρ ἀμαρτιῶν, i.e., ut a doloribus illis, qui peccatorum poenae esse solent, et occasione peccatorum nostrorum ipsi infligebantur, posset liberari."

There is another false doctrine connected with this, that Christ by His incarnation took us into union with Himself. Indeed it was this too common but most dangerous error that brought in Irvingism — the notion that union is with Christ in flesh and blood. This, if pushed out, involves either universal salvation or that we must be saved otherwise than by Christ, thus leading to salvation by ordinances, or by works, or by both. Contrariwise we, Christians, are taken out of our natural condition and made members of Christ through the Holy Ghost: not Christ one flesh with us (in the sense of one common state of fallen humanity, which would subvert both incarnation and atonement), but we made one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6: 17). All this system of doctrine, it is evident, treats the birth, not the death and resurrection, of Christ as the basis of union, and so puts wholly in the shade God's judgment of sin in the cross. Yea, it makes so light of fallen humanity that Christ could have it without harm! Truly, "some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame."

There was no such thing then as union, no membership of His body, till Christ died, rose, ascended, and sent down the Holy Ghost to baptise the saints into one body. "Except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12: 24) Again, "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you" (John 14: 20). So the three unities in John 17 are prayed for as distinctly future then. Life there was of course in the Son always for him that believed; and this abides still: only now it is in resurrection. "I came that they might have life, and that they might have abundantly" (John 10: 10). But to be united to Him as Head of the body is another privilege, which demands not regeneration only, but the baptism of the Spirit. "For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body" (1 Cor. 12: 13). Scripture is express that not even the disciples were so baptised till Pentecost (Acts 1: 4, Acts 5; 2).

Like all error, this tends to lower the person of Christ and to exalt fallen humanity, and therefore man as he is. Real faith in Christ is the secret, in the Holy Ghost's hands, of all preservation from evil doctrine and practice, which is always, I think, attributable, if not always traceable, to some false view of Christ. The right faith as to Christ, the receiving Him with simplicity on God's word, is the foundation of all that is good in any soul: looseness allowed here, lowering Him, admitting anything that sullies or obscures His glory, is the gravest sin, the issues of which none can tell. Enough for us to know, fearing as we bear it in mind, that its least beginning is the beginning of a very great evil; since it sets itself against the main object for which the Holy Ghost is now come from heaven — the assertion of the glory and rights of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Never does scripture represent our union with Christ as before the Advent, or in His life here below, or even in His death, but with Him risen and glorified. It is true that when united to Him thus, scripture does speak of the Christian being crucified with Christ, baptised into His death, dead with Him, buried with Him, as well as risen. But nowhere is such language used of the faithful till after the work of redemption was wrought and He was glorified: then, no doubt, what was true of Him as their great Substitute might be, and is, said of them. It is idle in such a question to speak of the counsels of God. His choice of the saints in Christ before the foundation of the world is a precious truth; but it is not their union with Christ till they are actually called and brought into the membership of Christ by the Holy Ghost. So, again, His purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began, is not to be confounded with our forming part of Christ's body. Were we members of Him (save in divine counsels) before we were converted or even existed? The question is as to living union with Christ as Head, which, I maintain, is invariably in scripture made to follow redemption and the presence of the Spirit sent down from heaven after Christ went on high. If divine purpose be made to decide the matter, one might thereby justify the heterodoxy of those who say the resurrection or the judgment is past already, and the eternal state come; for these equally exist before God's eyes, and we look on them all by faith.

2 Corinthians 5: 14-18, again, is a full and bright testimony to the same truth, uprooting all notion of a righteous foundation for sinful man short of the cross. "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead." Not till then came out the complete demonstration of God's love and of man's hatred, of God's holy judgment of sin and of man's hopeless evil and rejection of good. The sorrowful fact, proved in Christ's death, was that all were dead. But grace gives us not only to pronounce on man morally but to judge what God was doing and manifesting there. "He died for all [nothing less could meet the case], that they which live [Christians] should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again." The conclusion is, that "henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more" — i.e., not in the condition in which error conceives we are united to Him. Incarnation stops short of the proof of total ruin on one side, and on the other of the sole adequate basis for union with Christ, which demands His death as a groundwork, and is actively exercised in relation to Him risen and ascended. A born Messiah was the crown of joyful hope to the Jew; to the Christian, even if he had been a Jew previously, the new place of Christ dead and risen eclipsed all such thoughts, showing him that his Christian ground of relationship is on the other side of Christ's grave — expressly not "after the flesh," but in resurrection. Therefore, "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new." Not even the foundation for this was laid till His death and resurrection; then indeed He arose from the dead, the power and pattern as well as Head of those that are Christ's. Before that a process of probation was still going on; henceforth He stood in the new and final estate in which He, the first- born, could have many brethren in due time predestinated to be conformed to His image. "And all things are of God who hath reconciled us to himself," etc. Even "now," as we are told also in Colossians 1: 21, 22, "hath he reconciled" us "in the body of His flesh through death" —  through death, remark, where alone our evil was judged and righteously put away. By-and-by the world will be cleared and blessed in virtue of His work; for the blood of His cross avails not for our peace only, but to reconcile all things unto Himself whether on earth or in heaven. Meanwhile the unspeakable grace of God has reconciled us by Christ, yea, has united us to Him who has glorified God in His death for us and all things. For Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; the same is He which baptises with the Holy Ghost; first, vindicating God about sin, then uniting us to Himself, not in flesh but in Spirit.

Finally, scripture is everywhere express and consistent that union is not with the Eternal Son as such in His Deity: else we should be deified, and such Christianity would be Buddhism. Neither is it with our Lord in His incarnation simply and as such: else all flesh absolutely must be saved. His being God the Son was His competency to undertake the work of redemption as man for men. But even He was not Head till God (being glorified in Him, not in living obedience only, but in death for sin and our sins) glorified Him in Himself above. (Compare Ephesians 1: 20-22, and all the scriptures which treat of His headship.) He was born King of the Jews: only when He is risen and ascended do we hear of Him as Head. Hence Philippians 2 contrasts what He entered as man with His place of exaltation. Incarnate, He took upon Him the form of a servant; and, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore also God hath highly exalted Him, etc. This is headship, if you will; that was humiliation, and in contrast with it. So, in Heb. 2, His being set over the works of God's hands (all things being put under Him) is unquestionably founded, not on His title nor on His manhood, but on His suffering unto death. Similarly, in Col. 1: 18, Christ appears as head of the body, as the beginning, the first-born from the dead; and this distinguished from His being the first-born of all creation, which He was when living here below (ver. 15). Thus too the truth gives due essential prominence to the death and resurrection of Christ, while falsehood shuts it out or makes it an incident by the way, not the turning-point of God's glory in respect of sin nor consequently of our justification.

It is of painful interest to notice, as I do in closing, that the notion here exposed is the chief point of contact between Rationalists and Tractarians. A friend of mine asked a certain dignitary of the Establishment what the essential difference was between his system and his evangelical father's. "This," answered the astute and eloquent prelate; "that the value my father assigned to the atonement, we (the Oxford party) give to the incarnation." This witness is true, and, the reader may be assured, of incalculable moment. The same idea underlies the Broad-church theorists. Reconciliation for them is the bridal of the King's Son with humanity; His taking our flesh, which is a blessed truth, being viewed as our union with Him, which is the same pestilent error I have been refuting. By this device the enemy contrives to shift the true epoch of full deliverance by faith, to hide the proper character and extent of Christian privilege, and to relegate souls to a state when redemption was not wrought for the putting away of sin, the Spirit not yet given, and Jesus not yet glorified; contrariwise, the legal system, with its carnal ordinances, earthly priesthood, and worldly sanctuary, was still in undiminished force. Through men of sentiments less pronounced, who jumble the birth, service, and death, of Christ in a common vicarious lump, his aim is to reduce all the ways of God to confusion, to destroy the definiteness of grace and truth, and to seal men in uncertainty, half Jews and half Christians, clinging to the Saviour, yet not, as far as happy consciousness goes, either within the veil or without the camp. Incarnation, blessed a truth as it is, was neither reconciliation through the death of Christ nor union through the baptism of the Spirit. Scripture carefully distinguishes them; tradition confounds all three, as does rationalism: — the former in consonance with the sacerdotal system, the latter in the pride of fallen humanity. The judgment of sin by divine grace, in the cross of Christ, and the new relationships in the power of the Spirit, when taught of God, deliver the Christian from both.

Christ the Life

John 14: 6.

W. Kelly.

He that spoke these words was the lowliest of men. How then did He come to utter them? Did ever a man since the world began take such a place? No man cometh unto the Father, but by me even as just before He had said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." There was not a word of boasting; it was never the way of Jesus to boast. Transparency was the thing that especially marked Him, and Him alone; and His love was as real as His lowliness. His was a self-sacrificing life continually. As a child it was the same; in the then single fact recorded of Him we have His own words, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And who was He that so spoke? and what entitled Him so to speak? It was not only that in Him was perfect wisdom and perfect goodness, and that He was the truth, but if He were not God (and I use the word in all its strength), how presumptuous His words!

But He was Son as no one else is son. The word of God speaks of many sons, but Jesus is the only-begotten Son of the Father. He became Captain of salvation. Was He a sinful man? He was the Saviour of sinners. How could this be if He were not a divine person? Every one else is a sinful man, every man born into the world; for Adam never had a child till he was fallen. Even Enoch was a sinful man, although in due time translated. Elijah was caught up; but of Jesus it is said that He ascended up. Now, He that ascended first descended; and He that descended is the same also that ascended up, far above all heavens, that He might fill all things. Of whom else could this be true? Of none but the Lord Jesus Himself.

In Christ the full truth broke in. He came not to display the glory that He had with God; this would not at all have met the need of sinners. He who had the glory gave it up; He first emptied Himself, and then humbled Himself. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, to make good the glory of God and the salvation of man. He showed in the world what it was to be here, in the face of all opposition and suffering, only to do God's will; and thus God's will was fully done by a man on the earth, and this not by power, but by obedience in suffering. Adam in Eden was not called to suffer. Jesus was the only holy man that suffered for sin. If you leave out that, you leave out the other grand pillar of the truth, that Jesus is He who was manifest in the flesh. He might have come in divine or in angelic glory, and need not have taken upon Himself the form of a man, by being born of a woman; but then how should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? And, further, if He had not, how could there have been salvation for us? It is of all importance to weigh and hold fast this truth, simple as it is. Man is a sinner, away from God, and knows it in his conscience, and owns it when he is brought face to face with God.

It is not the Bible that makes man a guilty sinner; but the Bible is the only key to all, and explains it fully and worthily. This book alone carries conviction for every heart that is willing to bow to God and be saved ; but the truth is that people do not want to be saved in God's way. They prefer the full activity of life to be their own, and to enjoy the world as long as they can. They may wish to be saved at the end, but there are many things that they feel unprepared and unwilling to give up yet. They will turn to God on their death-bed. But they feel that if saved, they must be saved to do the will of God, and not their own will; and, if saved, they are the servants of Christ. But do you want to be Satan's servants? Remember, you cannot be your own master. You must either be the servants of God or the slaves of Satan; for a man who does his own will is the slave of Satan. You may not believe this, but it is true; and a time will come when your own conscience will make you feel the truth of it, and that too when it will be the distressing harbinger of still worse distress; perhaps, in the moment of dying. What a terrible reality to wake up then with the awful words ringing in your ears — Too late, too late, too late! But I bless God that I have the happier task of pressing on you now the way that God has opened in Jesus for you, and the truth that God proclaims to the simplest soul.

Into the midst of this world's activities, when the fourth empire was in its power, came Jesus. How did He treat this book, the Bible? As none other; it was the book of books to Him. Scripture was His food and His weapon always. It was not the New Testament yet, for this was not written then. It was the very part that high and low most try to get rid of. Men say it is the writing first of one man, and then of another, sometimes put together by a third one or more. What folly! How then has it such astonishing unity of purpose and mind? It is madness and impiety for men to speak against the book that Jesus treats as the word of God.

He who raises the dead and quickens, does not (as some think, without love) let men slip unwarned into all superstitions. The true God is a God of active love. Scripture allows no such thing as God not caring for what is going on. But you say, "Does He not allow evil?" Certainly; He let angels and men fall; but this in both was the fault of the creature only. Have you not all known, at some time or other of your life, a season when you resolved to repent and to do good? How has it turned out? Did you succeed? or have you not proved that you are bad, and can do no good thing? How comes this? Did God make man so? God made the earth and the race without one evil in either; God pronounced every thing to be very good; and evil would have been kept out if man had looked to God. But man fell; and since "the world by wisdom knew not God," the wisdom of the world does not want God. Man wants his own way and will; whereas the glory of one that knows God is to do His will. But how is God's will to be known or done? I am a sinner, know nothing, can do nothing pleasing in His eyes. The Bible read in faith explains, not merely how evil spoilt all, but how Jesus came as the way, the truth, and the life, and how He justifies God in receiving poor sinners. Grace alone can meet the need; and as He came in love to win us, so He died in the fulness of love, to give us a purged conscience, that so, reconciled to God, we might worship and serve Him. If He had left man in rebellion, it would have been a strange proof of love. Where would be grace in giving man food and all things necessary for this life, and then to let him perish for ever at last? But no; He gave His Son that the believer should not perish.

The very least thing that God made bears the stamp of His hand; and not only so, but of His mind, of His beneficent goodness. From the first God looked into man's condition, and graciously met it all, unsought and unexpected, in His grace. He sent His Son, His well-beloved, His only-begotten, the One who thought it not robbery to be equal with God. This is the One God gave for your salvation. No effort of your own avails. You have neither power nor fitness to get rid of your guilt. Have you not tried? and have you not found out that you cannot? If you have what they call an elastic conscience, you may think that God is not going to be too nice about sin. But such a thought is really a most fatal blow at His holiness and His truth, for He has declared the contrary. But God has done what is far better than slurring over your sins; He spared not His own Son.

And mark the manner of it. The Son became man, the obedient One, the only man who never sought to do his own will. Where was there ever such a sight, such a reality, before? He could say, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." The very idea of such obedience was as far from every heart till Jesus came, as was God's love to lost sinners. Nor this only. Jesus, when asked, "Who art thou?" could answer, "Absolutely what also I say to you " (John 8: 25). Who could ever say this but One? Jesus always was just what He also said. Blessed truth, and how suited for God and for man! He Himself was the truth, the perfect truth, sent down to poor sin-blinded man; so that he has the truth, not only detailed in a book, but embodied in a Person, and this a man in the world tried as nobody ever was. It is everywhere the same truth, and all is perfect harmony with the utmost variety. No doubt there are shades of distinction in many different books of the Bible, but it is surely our ignorance when we find them irreconcilable.

The mere handiwork of God is beyond the wisest of men, and the wisest are precisely those who are most ready to acknowledge their ignorance. The more men really know, the more deeply they feel and own how little they know. just so with the word of God. What are difficulties to me may not be so to some one more spiritual; and when by faith I see more clearly, the difficulties not only vanish but turn into the strongest confirmation of revealed truth. One person puts everything into its proper place — Christ. If He were not God, He could not bring into relation with God; if not a man, He would have no point of contact with me. Both are necessary for His work. It is He who says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Man feels his weakness, his unworthiness, his unfaithfulness, when he judges himself before God. What life is this that Jesus is? what life did He manifest? Was it the life of Adam? Adam, we read, was made a living soul; but who and what is Christ? A quickening Spirit. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." Was it of angels? No; of men. It was not merely for Israel; the pride of the Jew did not like such grace.

But let us go back to a Sabbath-day at Nazareth, when our Lord went into the synagogue, and the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him, and He read those blessed words of Isa. 61, "The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me, because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor," etc. He declared that this prophecy was that day fulfilled in their ears, stopping short in the middle of our verse 2, the point then accomplishing, as distinct from the future "day of vengeance of our God"; for when He had read so far, He shut the book and sat down, with words of grace to all. Did He speak the truth? A great deal turns on this for your souls. Was He really the One foretold by the Spirit of Jehovah, the One that God the Father had sealed? If so, your salvation turns on Him. Do not say that words of grace are hard. What? hard to be saved by God, according to the fulness of His mercy in Christ! The same Lord that saves now will be the Judge by-and-by. God "hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained," the same Jesus whom God hath raised from the dead. It is proof to all. Either you are in Him now, or you must stand before Him then as your judge.

Remember that, when you stand before Him as your judge, there will then be no salvation. He went down into death to bear the judgment of every one that believes on Him. Was not this infinite love? Yes; but it was more, it was righteousness. It was not by power that He met the judgment due to sinners; it was by suffering. He suffered, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. This explains the way, certainty, and fulness of salvation, which would be all a myth if He were not God as well as man. There is nothing that binds all the truth together if He be not Emmanuel, God with us. The Jews will by-and-by be gathered in a different way, but it will be faith in the same Person. There is no gospel that is not grounded on Him as the sacrifice, yet a divine Person; for if He were not also a man, He could not reach me. Jesus, then, came and lived a man that He might do the will of God. What was that life? He lived on account of the Father (John 6: 57). It showed itself in unwavering subjection and constant obedience. No man ever has capacity for obedience until he becomes a partaker of that life. Without this life no man can please God in the walk of faith now, or stand in the presence of God; therefore it is of the deepest necessity.

"In this was manifested the love of God." Is it because He gave the law? No; for this brought in nothing but condemnation on guilty man. Although the law was in itself righteous, at best it made men feel their state. Love was "because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him," and this brings out the glory of His person. He was the Son of God, above, outside, and beyond all else, both the Increate and the Creator, the eternal Word of God; and the Father would have it known. It was necessary, that the testimony should go forth, if man was to live God-ward and be blessed.

And what was the purpose for which this only-begotten Son was sent? "That we might live through him." We were hateful, and hating, serving divers lusts and pleasures, disobedient, living to ourselves. It was nothing but sin; whenever we do our own will, we sin. Being born thus, we go on accordingly; and what will be the end of it? God's glory? or exclusion from Him, eternal punishment? Ah! we want a new life. Where shall we find it? Not in Adam, but in Christ.

Adam only transmitted his own fallen nature; but in Christ we have One who only did His Father's will, and He is a life-giving Spirit — the Head of a new family. Look thus to Him and live. God declares, that whosoever believes in Him hath everlasting life, and shall be saved. What grace! And this is the sure but the only way. "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

The question, then, resolves itself into this, Do I prefer my own thoughts, or the word of God? Are you now trusting in yourself, or confiding in Him? You ought to know; for if depending on your efforts, you are trusting a most miserable and broken reed. God bids me believe on Him, the only-begotten Son. Is Christ not worthy? Is God not true? He sent His Son into the world for the express purpose that we who believe might have life. Even supposing I show a desire to read His word, to pray to Him, and to do His will, what is to become of all the evil I have done, and the evil which alas! even as a believer I still feel within, and I may still fall into? For I have within me, that is, in the flesh or old nature, the tendency to pride, vanity, selfishness, self-will, temper, etc. How is a soul to be kept from yielding to these? Have you the power because you are converted? Conversion means the turning to God in your heart, mind, and ways, instead of to yourself. But what is to be done with these evil things, not only before, but after conversion, if we fall at times into them? The new life shows itself in dependence on God; and is there anything more suited to man than to look up to God? But with a bad conscience, how can one do so? In the misery of such a state, one is glad of anything that shuts out God — that keeps one from thinking of oneself and of Him.

But the grace of God has provided a remedy in the blood of Christ. The atoning work is done; but the truth is that naturally people do not want to be saved all at once. They would like to go on with the world a little longer. How deeply we need the life of Christ, in order that we may live to God, just as much as His death that our sins may be blotted out! If it were your death for your sins, you were lost for ever; if His, and you believe in Him, how blessed! He, the Eternal Life, came to die atoningly; He became a man in order that He might die for our sins. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He became a man, not only that I might partake of this life, eternal life in Him, but that He might die to take away my sins. It is God's testimony about His Son; it is His declaration of Himself, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." Life is given me now in this world that I may live the life of Christ, and not according to my own old life.

The moment we have life in Christ, we have a divine sense of our sins as hateful and intolerable. You know that all you have been doing has its spring in self, in nature. But if you receive the new life, you have also in Him the efficacy of His death to meet your sins; and this is salvation. It is sad shortcoming to preach only the death and not also the life of Christ, to be satisfied with merely showing how sins may be forgiven by the blood, without a word about life in Him. It looks like man taking only what man wants; the negative relief of what clears conscience, not the positive devotedness to God. But this is not enough for the saint, still less for the glory of God. We cannot have part of the blessing, but a whole Christ. God's will is, that every believer should live in and of this new life; that is, the life of every soul who is born again. God is better to Him than his own thoughts. The truth is that it is Christ, and not his own notions, or even conscience, that he must rest on by faith. Endued with natural life as a son of Adam, the believer has just as truly a new divine life in Christ. Is it possible to lose this new life? It is eternal life. What does "eternal" mean? But it is possible and easy to lose the joy of this life.

It is of all moment for a believer to distrust himself; but it is a wrong to God and His word, as well as weakness to self, to doubt His faithfulness, or that Christ's life does not stand for ever. If the new life in any way depended on himself, he must soon fall away into irreparable ruin. People talk of "the perseverance of the saints," as if it were they who held fast, whereas it is really they who are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." It is not then my perseverance, but divine power, that keeps me through faith.

Do you think that God does not look in compassion on the guilty sinner? Come then in the name of Jesus to Him, and confess your sins without extenuation or palliation as you could to none other. Already does He know the very worst of us. I can tell it all out to God, and even this is no small blessing to my soul, for then, for the first time, one becomes really honest, "without guile," as says Ps. 32. I need have no reserve, I can or would not keep back anything from God. Why should I wish it when there is this precious blood and water from the Saviour's side, a Saviour for all that come, who "suffered once for sins, just for unjust, that he might bring us to God"? This is the word that I would leave with you. How plain it is that the whole practical walk of believers flows from life in Christ, and is based for their peace on the blessed fact that they have been brought to God. The death of Christ takes away my guilt and bonds; but what is to be the spring of new life? How am I to mortify my old life? You may tell the old man to die, but it does not wish to die. God declares that He has given me, if a believer, another nature, new life in Christ. Nicodemus had to learn that he needed to be born afresh, not only to hear what Jesus had to teach. You may be sure that, when a soul really goes to God for its wants, he always receives through the Lord Jesus. Whenever a soul asks in faith, God fails not to give. Grace never sends empty away.

Where is the man who looked to Christ and did not find Him? Does He not say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life"? He is the only way of deliverance from all danger, evil, and sin; His blood, if you believe, brings You now to God without a stain upon you. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." If you have Him you have life in Him. Mere nature is incapable of pleasing God. Faith is the means of life, pardon, peace, strength, everything for the needy; and faith lays hold of what God says and does and gives in Christ, and it is the Spirit of truth which produces faith by our hearing the word. Thus we see the importance of the Spirit applying the word to our souls. But all-important as both the word and the Spirit are, neither could avail for the soul without Christ for life, and Christ's death to take away our sins.

W. K.

Christ the Truth

John 14: 6

I have already endeavoured to show the meaning of the Way; that Christ, and Christ only is the Way. But there is another thing, Christ is not only the Way to the Father, but He is also the Truth. Where is truth to be found? In Him alone. He Himself is the Truth. Thus the man who has taken the way, possesses the truth. He who has bowed to Christ does not want some new resource. Truly God is wise, and as good as He is wise.

Let me now try to unfold what truth is. Man in his natural state may ask, but eludes the answer. How is this? Because he is gone away from God, serves Satan in whom is no truth, and likes Christ less, the more he knows about Him. When He came into the world, people seemed to value Him at first; for they did not then know that He was the Truth, and were not yet proved by Him.

They were all looking for, and expecting the promised Messiah. The time spoken of by Daniel was fulfilled, and men were in a state of expectation. The famous prophecy of the weeks pointed to those days, and the Jews all knew, or might have known, that the time was quite near when the Messiah, the Prince, was to appear, though none understood that He was to be cut off. The very heathen were moved by the rumours of a coming Deliverer; they heard that the time was at hand that a mighty king should reign, and most remarkable changes happen for the world. Wise men came from the East to see the born King of the Jews. More than one hundred and fifty years before Christ, the Old Testament had been translated into the Greek tongue, which was at that time the usual means of communication, as French has been in modern times. This translation of the Bible was a sort of preparatory testimony. Thus the Jews were not the only people who were looking for the Messiah.

But He is much more. He is the Word, He is God, He is the light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. And men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Hence the early attraction soon faded, and gave way to fear and hatred; and as they desired not to know God or themselves, they sought to get rid of what convicted them by killing Him. They might kill, but they could not get rid of the Son of God; and as we have seen Him the Way, so He is the Truth. What is meant by it? Let us compare the law with Him.

The law is holy, just, and good; but still it is nowhere called the truth. The law is the standard of divine requirement from man; it declares what God demands from him who takes the ground of his own obedience as his standing before Him. The truth is the revelation of God, the manifestation of everything else, in Christ. It is therefore not requirement, but revelation. In fact, God Himself contrasts them; as it is written, "The law was given by Moses; but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Was it not God's law? Yes; but it was given by Moses, who was the channel of communication. But Christ was and is the Way; and this not only for God to come down to man, but for man to go to God — nay, to the Father. Besides, He is the Truth. He makes every one and every thing known as they really are; and when we weigh what the truth is, we can see that Christ only could be the full presentation of it. God is thus revealed; and Christ, being the revealer of God, is Himself said to be the Truth. As Son, He brings out what the Father is. But He, the Holy One of God, shows me what sin is, what I am. In short, He manifests every one and every thing exactly as each is.

God is never said to be the Truth, but Christ, being the image of the invisible God. Man is not capable of fathoming God; no man hath seen God at any time. Who is competent to know God? No man, nor even angel. The creature does not know God; but God can make Himself known to the creature. How? In Christ by the Holy Ghost. This is the reason why the Holy Spirit is also called the Truth in 1 John 5. Christ, the Truth, is the object presented in whom I can learn everything as it is; the Spirit of God is the inward power that makes the truth enter into my soul that I may have and enjoy it. Hence the necessity for the Holy Ghost to be the Truth as well as Christ. The spirit of man in itself is no more capable of knowing God than a beast of understanding the mind of man. The beast has its own creature instincts; but no beast, no creature of that order, can pass its own limits. No lower creature is capable of understanding man, and no man, as such, can rise to what is above his nature.

Yet, without the truth, how wretched one must ever be! I have sinned. How do I stand, and in what relation, to God? Are we doomed to be in utter uncertainty of the only thing that is of supreme importance? There are things that a man can come to, left to himself — dread and horror, hardness or indifference. But these fears are only the premonition of what, far more terrible and unending, will befall him if he lives and dies as he is. What is to become of his soul? My answer is: Christ is the truth; and Christ was here expressly on an errand of love, to glorify God, to save sinners by faith, to meet this dark and awful void, and give life and peace, with certainty, to the believer.

Do not take the ground of an unbeliever, and say that it is impossible to have certainty in this life. Perhaps it might be impossible for a Jew, no doubt it was for the heathen; but if God tells me anything, and I believe, is it certain or not? If God tells me His mind, does this give no certainty? Christ is God's revelation of Himself to me. Do you say, I am a sinner? It is true, as far as it goes; but even so you do not know what a sinner you are, else you could not take it so quietly. You go to God about your sins then. Will He leave you in a state of uncertainty? No; Christ has come, the sent One of God, to do His will in the offering of His body; and by Him came grace and truth, not merely truth. And what grace it was! The Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, becoming a man; and not only so, but born of a woman! Adam even was not, never having been born, but made. He was not a son of man therefore, though son of God in a certain sense (Luke 3). He came into the world mature and formed to be its head; he had attained his full proportion when he came from God's hand. Jesus was not merely a man, but the Seed of the woman, as no one ever was save He. He became a servant — all that man is — except sin. It is not only that He did not sin, but He never in His life knew what sin was; He could always say that His meat was to do God's will. "Lo, I come to do thy will." But He was made sin on the cross; He suffered the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.

Do I learn what sin is by prayer, or by looking into my own heart? No; but I see it in His cross. What did my sin cost Him? It brought upon Him, the Holy One, the horrors of divine judgment; and now He is become captain of salvation, having obtained eternal redemption. The same Jesus who gives me the truth of a sinner in myself gives me the truth of a Saviour in Him. Where shall I find what a holy man is? Can it be Adam? The man who could not keep his hands off the fruit of the tree that God had told him not to eat — he a holy man! Why did he not listen to God? He disobeyed, and became unholy. Not that he was made so; for God made him innocent, and innocence supposes absence of evil, with liability to fall into it. But when Jesus was made flesh He was not only sinless, but holy — holy not in ways only, but in nature. "That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." There also do we read, "A body hast thou prepared me"; and this is never said of anyone else. Why was this body so specially prepared? Because there could not be the least relic that defiles in the Holy One. The smallest taint of evil would spoil the sacrifice; the lamb for the burnt- offering was to be without blemish and without spot. When Jesus was born, although He was the Seed of the woman, there was no taint of sin in His nature; He is called that holy thing, for He was born by the power of the Holy Ghost. Thus He could take upon Him not merely all our sins, but sin itself. This is the truth.

If I want to see sin, I can see it by contrast with the Lord Jesus. He came and showed out all its darkness. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloke for their sin." Christ is the Truth; so all is brought out in its own character.

But there is just the same result about God; Christ as the Truth clearly shows what God is. It is never said that Christ is the likeness of God, though with the greatest emphasis said to be His image. It would not be true to say of any man that he is like a man, although you might say so of an angel. Just in the same way Jesus is not said to be like God, because He is God. Here was One who was perfectly able to show what God is. It is the Absolute deigning to become relative. As long as God is only God, He is unapproachable by man; man cannot understand Him. But I must know God, or I cannot have eternal life; and this cannot be apart from Him whom He has sent, even Jesus Christ the Lord. Jesus is God manifest in the flesh, and He has brought me exactly what I want. God is the One who loves me, who comes down in the person of Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, to meet the need of a poor sinner. If, again, I want to know what the devil is, it is the same Jesus that brings it out. He, a murderer from the beginning, and a liar, is the one being who stands always opposed to the Lord Jesus. Jesus therefore brought out what the devil was as it had never been manifested before; but the Son of God came that He might destroy the works of the devil.

Now, have you got the Truth? You have heard the truth in Him; what is the effect on your soul? "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." The law makes me feel my shortcomings, but the truth makes them even better known. But if I am willing to know how bad I am, I want to be delivered. Will the law do this? When the law was given, it put man at a distance. Moses was to set bounds to the mountain; and if a beast so much as touched it, it was to be slain. This, no doubt, was a wholesome righteous warning; but the truth is, that the Lord Jesus came down from heaven to seek and to save the lost. And how are you to be saved? By submitting to the Truth; by coming as a sinner to the Saviour of sinners. I cannot be saved except by the Truth. It is the Lord Jesus Himself who brings it all out to the soul, and in confessing Him Lord, I believe God, and set to my soul that He is true. By the grace of God my soul bows to the truth, and I can say in my heart, this is just the truth for me. I abjure my unbelief; I bow to what God says of His Son. It is God proclaiming what is true; and I believe He is as good as He says. I believe that He is forgiving my sins and making me His child on the spot. I have no desert; but Christ is my plea. I am willing to be nothing, that Christ and His cross may be everything for and to me.

But we must remember that the Holy Spirit is the Truth just as truly as Christ is. May He bring the truth home to your souls! Were you to live ever so long, and learn ever so much, it is only knowing better the Truth you receive at the start. Confess Jesus Lord, the only Saviour, the Son of God. Confess all that grace has given you to know, and look well to it that your ways be a living confession of that Blessed One who is the Truth.

W. K.

Christ the Way

John 14: 6

W. Kelly.

This was a momentous word for man — for every man, woman, and child. No words more encouraging were ever uttered, even by the Lord Jesus Himself, for such as felt the need of divine direction.

I have no doubt that there was more in them than the mere answer to the question. They meet the need not of one man only, but of all. Yet our Lord was not addressing a multitude of hearers, but the perplexed disciples; and this gives a definiteness of application. He is addressing a believer under Jewish prejudice, not an unconverted man. Not that I am going to confine myself to its strict bearing on the enquiring disciples, for there is in it the fullest answer to the darkest heart. There is divine help for those who know really but very partially. Their knowledge was scanty; they were not the wise and prudent of the earth; and Scripture takes pains to show this. They were not chosen for anything in themselves. It was manifest that they could add no lustre to the gospel. "Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence" (1 Cor. 1: 26-29).

Thus does God confound the pride of flesh, and show the utter folly of any pretension on man's part to worth in the things of God, seeing that he is really nothing but a lost sinner. When Thomas asked the question about the way, the thoughts of the disciples were still hampered by the earthly expectation of Israel. But how different was their condition in little more than a month afterwards! We do not hear again of Thomas. May it not have been because he was going on well? In that case there is not much to talk about. It is people's intrigues and ambitious designs, their quarrels and fights, that make up the most of history, man's attempts to circumvent or repel evil, sometimes successful, more often failing. It is the constant conflict of evil with good; and evil but too often prosperous. The time will come when good will always triumph; but it is not come yet. A poor thing truly is man — the world. No wonder that God's thoughts find their centre in one person; and He is the object of God here and everywhere.

One person was always before the mind of God, and this was expressed thousands of years before He became a man. He was not only perfection, but He was the perfect Man, as well as God come down to deliver those who were most opposite to Him in every way. Here we see divine good in a man, and nowhere else. No man can be a Christian who refuses Him, or takes any other way. On the one hand, were He not God it would take away from God's glory as well as destroy man's hopes. He could not else have been the perfect Saviour and Deliverer. On the other hand, it would have taken away all the means of our blessedness if He had not deigned to become man. But He who was God became man, is so now, and ever will so abide, though infinitely more than man. It is just as true that He is always God, even on the cross; and this is the pledge of sure and stable blessing for every soul who would hide himself by faith in Him, spite of all his sins.

Have you fled for refuge? Have you thus come to Him? Or are you thinking to try and make yourself a little better first? But remember, salvation is for sinners. He does not want people who are good (not that He could find them if He did); He is come to seek and to save the lost. It is they who need Him. Are you willing to take this place? It is a solemn thing to tell out all our sins to God; it is as much as to confess that one deserves hell-fire. Do not draw back when I press this. Does it make any difference to God's thought of you? He knows it all before; but for you it is all-important to take the place of good-for-nothingness in His presence. Thomas was slow to believe; and so are very many. No man likes to tell out what he really is, but when he does he finds out what God is, and He is love. Indeed grace, and grace alone and exactly, meets the need of him who finds out that he is nothing but a sinner. It will not do to say in a general way, "Ah, yes, we are all sinners." I must have to do with God about my own sins, and that in a particular way. It is neither faith nor conscience to deal with them all in a lump as it were. Do not tell me that you have done so; that you have been to God about your sins and come away empty. You deceive yourself as to this.

You have not been simple or truthful in telling out what you are, else you would have found all you want to meet your need in the Lord Jesus. His fulness meets all our wants. Could I say less when it is about Jesus? He did not come to limit Himself to any one people, or country, or age. His grace flows out freely to all. It is no longer only Israel, but any sinner at any time. When John said, "Behold the Lamb of God," what was the effect? He tells us: "which taketh away the sin of the world." Accordingly this is what the work of the Lord Jesus will accomplish; no particle of sin or of its effects will be left in the world. But that day is not come yet. Before it can come the wicked must be banished, that they may go to their own place. No man will be condemned merely because he is bad, but because he refuses the grace of God as shown in Christ. Wrath then comes on him for all his sins. The promise of salvation is to him who hears the word of God — the gospel; and man is condemned because he refuses God's remedy in it. Do not you then lose your time, and it may be your soul, in troubling yourself about God's dealings with the heathen. The Lord will judge them; and He will do His work perfectly. What you want yourself is mercy, forgiveness, salvation. Therefore, I pray you, banish all thoughts of your own on such a subject; you do not and cannot yet understand God's ways. Venture not to sit in judgment on Him.

There is nothing so presumptuous and inconsistent as unbelief, nothing so humble as faith. So those who would not scruple to discuss and condemn God's dealings with the heathen, count it the height of presumption on a believer's part to say, "I know I am forgiven, washed perfectly white, and free from all stain." Yet this confidence is from nothing in themselves; it is founded simply on faith in the efficacy of Christ's blood. It is due to what Christ has done, not to what we are. A man who knows he is a sinner gladly owns the Saviour. His first desire is that he may be brought to God. How is he to get to Him? Here is our Lord's answer, "I am the way." Let us consider then a little what "the way" means in Scripture.

When man was first made, he was not as he is now. God made man upright. He was the most wonderful being that God had made. An infidel may talk (and there is plenty of such talk in these days) of man having grown gradually to the state he is now in, that he came into existence of himself, nobody knows how, out of nobody knows what. And this is science! Nothing is so utterly foolish as unbelief. But supposing the protoplasm was seaweed, we have still the difficulty, How did the seaweed come? and how did it so change? The very least object could not have come into being without the will and power of God.

But wonderful as the power of God in His works may be, and the more as we think truly of all He has made, much the most wonderful is man even now, though fallen; for he is still responsible as the image of God, if not His likeness. And this is why murder can only be wiped out by death; for man has destroyed the image of God in another. Yet there has never been a good man born into this world.

Man was originally made in the likeness of God, but Adam was fallen before his firstborn child appeared. Thus sin had come in, and so even Seth was born in Adam's "likeness," though in God's "image" still. A brute has not a reasonable soul. Man is the only one of all God's creatures here who is thus endowed. We therefore see that God did not make the world or man as we see them now; for, when they came from His hand there was not a single thing that He did not pronounce good, or very good. Then there was no need of a way, for whether man turned to the right or to the left, all was good; and there could be no need yet to say, "This is the way; walk ye in it."

The use and importance of a way would be when that which may have been good everywhere is so no longer. Evil has come in, and the world has become a wilderness. Such being the case, there is no way; and we need one. The world is nothing but a waste and howling wilderness, through which we cannot pass without a way. There is no rest here, nothing to satisfy the heart of man. He may seek to take his fill of the pleasures of the world; it is but a dram to render him insensible to the fact that he is miserable at the thought of facing God. Having a bad conscience through his sins, there is no one he would so like to get away from as God. He has perhaps some fear of Satan, but he is not so afraid of him as he is of God. What does this tell? That he is a sinner away from God. It is the sense of sin that makes him afraid. The same terrible being (Satan) first entraps a man into sin, and then whispers that he is done for; first entices, and then gives a sense of God's judgment against him. Man then tries to drown his fears in pleasure. He will go anywhere, do anything, to get rid of the pressure of sin; he will occupy himself with, it may be, his family, his business, even his duties, as he calls them — anything that will keep him away from God. Then, it may be, he is laid on a sick bed, and he feels, "I must meet God in my sins"; and some especially come up to mind that had been long forgotten, but ah! none forgiven. For you cannot be forgiven a little here and a little there. Sin is not to be got rid of in this fashion, one at a time, perhaps when you feel sorry about it. Whatever they may say who sell masses, it is not so with God. But when and how does He meet this ruined condition? Man is lost, and the world is as much of a wilderness as the sands of Arabia to a traveller who has missed his way. Man has absolutely no resources as regards his sins. What then is to meet him in his need? Trying to make amends will not avail. Your sins are upon you, and what can you do when they confront you in the light of God's throne?

But how does God meet your need? Jesus says, "I am the way." Jesus is the Way, the only way to God the Father. Jesus is the Way in this world of utter alienation and departure from God. Man is the head of all the ruin as he is the head of the creation. Adam was the head of all before Eve was given to him; he had called all the creatures by their names. Eve's place was in association with him. So the church has no claim but by association with Christ. He is the way; and can this way fail? Christ fail! What folly! He is the Way. I have nothing to do but to take the way. Crowds of different cases come, and no wonder; for no one that came ever went away as he came. Nor did Christ ever send a soul away unblessed — none that came as sinners and lost.

This is what man really is, a sinner ruined and lost. He has no resources towards God; he cannot diminish one of his sins. What is to become of him? Jesus says, "I am the way," and it is sure, unfailing. The Son of God became a man in order that He might be the Way. He came to be a Saviour, but a Saviour only to those who believe. He will be Judge of those who reject Him. He has other offices too, but they are mostly connected with salvation. A man who will be saved is not brought into judgment. Men who have life and are saved have no sins upon them. How then and for what are they to be judged? "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life" (John 5: 24). The word really is judgment, not "condemnation," as it is translated in the A.V.

I do not wish to find fault with our translation, but let me prove that the word ought to be "judgment." "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment." Here the very same word that is translated "condemnation" is used. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." Here it is another word; and there is just as much difference in the words used in the Greek as in the English. What God declares is, that he that hears His word has everlasting life. It is a present thing. The believer again is passed from death unto life. What would be the sense of judging life, of judging what God has wrought?

But all men will give account of their deeds. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." This is a very different thing from being brought into judgment by God. To be judged, a man must be a criminal. It is not always the case when there is an earthly judge, for if the grand jury bring in a true bill, the man, even if innocent, must be brought before the judge, and might even be condemned; but this would be caused by man's infirmity. There could be no such thought in connection with divine judgment. No believer ever comes into judgment, speaking now of the judgment of the great white throne; and this because he has eternal life, and his sins are forgiven now. Are you rejecting this salvation?

God is now in Christ beseeching, entreating you to be reconciled on the ground of His acceptance of Him who was made sin. Your rejecting Him proves that you are not willing to be saved. He is ready to save you, to pardon here and now. But you have some secret reserve, something you are keeping back from Him. You either wish to serve sin a little longer, or you do not believe that God is as good as He is. You prove that you judge yourself unworthy of eternal life.

No man is saved because he deserves it. I implore you, put it not off, wait not for anything. Christ will not be more of a Saviour tomorrow; and are you sure that you will hear His voice tomorrow? Is it not to be feared that you will be less and less inclined to receive Him? He is the Way and the only way. When we get to heaven we shall not need a way, any more than it was necessary in Eden. All is right there, and no way will be required above. When in heaven there will no longer be responsibility. Here it brings danger, failure, ruin; for now, on the' ground of responsibility, as a man, you are lost altogether.

Henceforth it is really a question of faith. Do I rest on Christ, believing in Him? I learn that He has undertaken for me, that God has given me a Saviour, and that He commands me to repent and take the place of one that is lost. When a man tries to become religious, he is denying that he is lost; he sets himself to read and pray, to work out righteousness for himself. He says, David prayed three times a day, and I will pray four times; but will it help him? Do I think lightly of prayer? By no means, but when a man acts like this, he shows that he does not know his sinfulness and lost estate.

Suppose the case of one guilty of high treason and condemned to die. The king might say, "I know the man is guilty, but in my sovereign mercy I grant him a free pardon if he will only come and avail himself of it." But the man obstinately refuses to come out; he will not credit such goodness, and the king orders the sentence to be carried out. So it is with man. He refuses to believe that God is willing to save, and why? Because he judges of God by himself.

Faith is sure of God as He reveals Himself; and He is not only willing, but He can afford righteously, to save. God saves on the ground of Christ's redemption. It is not mere mercy. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, for Christ was judged for our sins by God Himself on the cross. Hence He is righteous to forgive; for Christ has paid the penalty. God is not merely justified in forgiving, but glorified also. It brought far more glory to God than if He merely punished all as sinners; for every attribute of His is satisfied — His majesty, His love, His truth, His holiness. All the grace of His character shines out for every soul that comes, bringing out more of the infinite worthiness of His Son.

Be afraid then to stay away from the Saviour of sinners, lest tomorrow find you in a more hardened state than today. All delays are dangerous; but what is so dangerous as to put off bowing to the Son and accepting God's free salvation?

W. K.

The Hope of Christ

compatible with prophecy.

W. Kelly.

There are few simple-minded Christians who, in searching into the prophetic word, have not felt the difficulty of reconciling the undoubtedly normal posture of the church in daily waiting for Jesus with the long train of successive events presented e.g. in the Revelation. The principle, if not the measure, of the difficulty is the same, whether you understand the Revelation to be fulfilled in a brief eventful crisis, or to extend over a course of many hundred years. In either way, can one truthfully expect the Lord from heaven from day to day, if one is looking out for a series of numerous, and some of them unprecedented, and all of them solemn, incidents to occur on earth, the gradual and accumulative evidence of His approach.

But it is certain that in the apostolic times, when the grace of God was proclaimed in its real power and freshness, when His word was most prized and best understood, and produced its loveliest effects, the saints were habitually expecting the Lord to come. In Him they had redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; and they knew it. They were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Were they, therefore, satisfied? Was not the Spirit Himself, blessed divine Advocate though He be, yet was not He the earnest of glorious things to come? Doubtless they received Him as the Spirit of sonship, and not as a spirit of bondage unto fear (Rom. 8). Yet far from His leading them into rest and contentedness here below in the absence of Jesus, in the same chapter it is said, "Ourselves also, [besides the groaning creation,] which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." It is the groaning of those who are justified by faith and have peace with God. It is the groaning of those who have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them, and bearing witness with their spirit that they are children of God. It is the groaning of the adopted earnestly yearning for the full results of adoption; of those who, because they have known God's grace in redemption forgiving their sins, look for more, for all, — for the redemption of the body in the actual presence of the Saviour, that they may be like Him and with Him for ever.

The aim, however, of these remarks is not to prove that the personal coming of the Lord is the hope of the church — proofs easily found elsewhere. My desire is rather to convince those who know what is and was meant to be the hope of the church, that God, by no concurrent or subsequent revelation, ever interfered with the practical power of that hope. That He might give fuller details as to the growing iniquity of man, of the Jew, and especially of the outward professing body, and as to His own judgments upon each before the millennial reign; that He might describe in greater minuteness the circumstances of that reign and the events that succeed it, is not only possible, but that which He has done. But that He, on this or any other theme, corrects in one part of His word what is affirmed in another, is that which every Christian ought surely to repudiate from the bottom of his soul, in whatever modified form it may be insinuated.

The word of our God needs no apologies from man. Unhesitatingly believed, every part of it will be found to be perfectly true, though (from narrowness and imperfection in our apprehension) patient waiting on God is needed to avoid the systematising of the human intellect, and to discover in what order God puts things together. Haste in deciding such questions only leads to forcing scripture, which will not yield; and hence the danger of framing one-sided hypotheses, which are only tenable by shutting the eye to the plainest scripture that contradicts them as hypotheses, though there may be elements of truth in them.

To apply this to the matter in hand, it is undeniable that the apostle Paul (to say nothing of others) invariably speaks of the coming of the Lord to take the church to Himself as that which might be at any moment, however He might tarry. But no necessary detention — no chain of occurrences involving a period virtually — no certain lapse of time — is ever presented to the church as keeping Him in heaven. On the contrary, if he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15), it is "Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." Admitting that "we" is a representative word, not the persons addressed merely, but those standing in the same privileges; still will any one say that the apostle or the Corinthian saints knew that the moment would be deferred till they had fallen asleep?* Was it not calculated, beyond all cavil, to keep them in simple, constant expectancy of the Lord?

* Nothing, it has been observed, more strongly proves the church's constant expectation of the presence of the Lord for it, uncertain when this was to be, than the fact that it needed a particular revelation to individuals (such as to Paul and Peter), about their departure first, which so far modified their individual apprehensions. The general expectation of the church was not affected thereby.

The Thessalonians (1 Thess. 1), who were trained, from their birth to God, in looking for their Deliverer, were they mistaken enthusiasts? Or, did not the blessed work of the Spirit in their case consist not only in turning them from idols to serve a living and true God, but to wait for His Son from heaven? Did that wise and faithful servant, who knew what it was to mingle the service of a nurse with the affectionate care of a father, — did he consider that blessed hope to be unsuited food for such babes? So far from it, that when he writes to them supplying some things that were lacking, the Holy Ghost impresses this great doctrine in such repeated and different modes as to demonstrate how cardinal a truth it was in the mind of God, and how influential as regards the communion and walk of His saints. It ramifies both Epistles, being not only found at least once in every chapter, but in some chapters occupying the most conspicuous place. (See 1 Thess. 1: 3, 10; 1 Thess. 2: 19,  20; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 1 Thess. 4: 13-18; 1 Thess. 5: 1-10, 23, 24. 2 Thess. 1: 5-10; 2 Thess. 2: 1-12; 2 Thess. 3: 5.)

Let us weigh the facts more. They had rejoiced in this hope of our Lord Jesus Christ from their earliest Christian career; they had patiently continued it through the Spirit; and the blessedness of such patience was sweet to the absent apostle, even as their work of faith and labour of love. True, they needed further light as to its circumstances, and the Lord granted it. So immediately were they awaiting the Lord, that the decease of some of their number plunged them into deep sorrow. Not, I apprehend, that they for a moment doubted of the salvation of those who were gone. No one that had the gospel in word only (much less knowing it in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as it came to them) could have such a doubt. But they feared that death had severed their departed brethren from the glorious hope, which they had so brightly burning before them, of being caught up together to meet the Lord in the air. They were gone and doubtless were happy; but would they not be absent from that crowning joy for which they themselves were waiting?

Here was the place (may we not venture to say?), if they had been mistaken in so waiting, to have corrected it. Here was the place for the apostle to write: — We have been all wrong in living with our eyes heavenward till the Son of God comes to take us to Himself; He is not coming soon. We need not yet expect Him; for many ages must expire before He comes. Besides, He has already given you some, and He now adds, more signs of His advent. You have not seen these signs yet; you must wait for them, and not for His Son.

The exact reverse is the fact. The Holy Spirit deliberately keeps them in the same attitude of waiting which He had previously wrought and sanctioned in them, though He gives them a comfort of which they were ignorant as to their brethren who had been put to sleep by Jesus. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [i.e. go before] them who are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with cheering shout, with archangel's voice, and with trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall arise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thess. 4: 15-18).

But it may be said, If the Holy Ghost did not here correct the excited notions of the Thessalonians, He did in the second chapter of the Second Epistle. I answer that the true question is, Does the Holy Ghost correct Himself? He may supply that which is suited to correct the undue sorrow of the believers in one Epistle, or their fear in another Epistle; but I insist upon it in the strongest manner, that if the church is set in the position of waiting for Christ's coming in one part of scripture, no other part can possibly alter such a position. It is necessarily right, whatever increase of instruction may be given. Let us only be well established in the perfectness of every word of God, and we shall soon see how little the passage warrants the notion that the apostle Paul, in the second Epistle, dissuades them from expecting Him, Whom the first Epistle had confirmed them in expecting.

In the first place, it is generally assumed that the day of Christ (or "of the Lord," for this is the true reading.) is identical with "the coming (παρουσία, presence) of our Lord Jesus Christ" in the verse before. But it is a groundless idea. If it be affirmed, let proofs be adduced. It ought to be quite clear that "the day of the Lord" is a distinct though connected thing. In its full ultimate sense (and no one disputes that such is its force here), it supposes the presence of the Lord; it displays the judgment consequent upon it. But the presence, or coming, of the Lord by no means necessarily supposes judgment. Is there a word of judgment, or wrath, or destruction, expressed or implied in the full description given in 1 Thess. 4 of the Lord's coming for His own? So when the apostle says, "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy" (1 Thess. 2: 19, 20), where is the word of judgment on evil? On the other hand, when "the day of the Lord" occurs, it is, whether used in a full or a limited application, habitually connected with judgment and its consequences (compare 1 Thess. 5: 2-4; Zeph. 1, 2, 3; Zech. 14; Mal. 3, 4). One infers therefore that, though the coming of the Lord may include the day of the Lord, as the whole includes a part, the coming of the Lord is in itself presented in an aspect of grace, not of judgment. Why should the terms and the things be confounded?

* So all the critical editors such as Alford, Bengel, Griesbach, Knappe, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, etc.; and this only upon external evidence.

In the second place, while it is true that the day of the Lord cannot come before the apostacy and the revelation of the man of sin arrive, which are to be judged in that day, yet is there a serious error in the English rendering of the last clause of ver. 2, "is at hand." The word usually rendered " at hand," "near," or "nigh," is ἐγγὺς or ἐγγίζω "come near," as is known to scholars. The word ἐνίστημι, on the other hand, is never so rendered in the New Testament, save in the passage before us. On the contrary, occurring several times, it is used invariably in a way which excludes the possibility of such a rendering (more especially when it is, as here, in the perfect tense). The first occurrence is in Rom. 8: 38. It is evident that here ἐνεστῶτα cannot mean things at hand. It is contrasted with μέλλοντα, i.e. "things to come." It signifies only and emphatically "things present," and is so rendered in the common Bible. See the same words and the same contrast in 1 Cor. 3: 22. Again, in 1 Cor. 7: 26, διὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν ἀνάγκην is properly translated "for the present distress." A distress not actually come, but only at hand or coming, would spoil the meaning. The next is Gal. 1: 4, "this present evil world," the only possible meaning of the word here. The next world, or age, will not be evil, and therefore "at hand," or "imminent," is shut out. Compare also Heb. 9: 9, εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκὸτα "for the time then present" (not "at hand," which cannot be the true force).

All these, notice, are instances of the same tense as 2 Thess. 2: 2. The only other occurrence is 2 Tim. 3: 1, ἐνστήσονται, in the future middle. Here the English version renders it, "shall come." Still, the meaning indubitably is not "shall be at hand," which could have no point, but "shall be there." To be impending merely was little: the grave thing was, that perilous times should be actually present. It may be concluded, therefore, from an induction thus complete, that in all the other instances the authorised version is right, but in 2 Thess. 2: 2 it is wrong. It is not conceivable to uphold both; so that, if right in 2 Thess. 2: 2, the version must be wrong everywhere else. But we have seen, from the intrinsic meaning of the word, as well as from the sense imperatively demanded by the context, that in all the other cases the translators are justified. They were therefore mistaken here, and the proper rendering, in conformity with their own translation of the word in the same tense elsewhere, ought to be, "as that the day of the Lord is present." So the Revisers give, "As that the day of the Lord is now present," adding in italics the adverb, which is needless emphasis. The sense is strong and clear without "now."

The Thessalonian saints had from the first known much affliction. They had notoriously suffered from their own countrymen, and this to such a degree that the apostle, in his earnest and watchful interest about them, sent Timothy to establish and to comfort them concerning their faith, that no man should be moved by these afflictions. They knew that "we are appointed thereunto." Nevertheless they needed comfort. The apostle had warned them before, that "we should suffer tribulation, even as it came to pass, and ye know." "For this cause when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain." But Timothy brought good tidings of their faith and love, and the apostle could break out into thanks and joy for their sakes before God, and he lets them know it in his first Epistle (1 Thess. 3).

The tempter, however, was not to be discouraged, nor diverted from his wiles. They had been already taught that the Lord Himself was to come, and the saints, sleeping or living, were all to be changed, and to be caught up together to meet Him in the air, and so be ever with Him (1 Thess. 4). They also knew that the day of the Lord was one of destruction and terror, unlooked for by the world: "Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night" (1 Thess. 5).

Accordingly, Satan appears to have distracted the saints by the harassing statement that the day of the Lord was actually there, thus seeking to rob them of all profit and joy in the persecutions and tribulations which they were then enduring. Nor let any think it strange if, in a time of perplexity for the world and persecution of the church, the fears of saints might be wrought upon; particularly as they knew that the day of Jehovah in the Old Testament by no means necessarily implies the personal presence of the Lord, though it looks onward to that anticipatively. Compare, for instance, Isa. 13, where God's judgment of Babylon and the Chaldeans is so designated: "Howl ye, for the day of Jehovah is at hand*; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty," etc. (See also Joel 1: 15, Joel 2: 1-11; Amos. 5: 18, 20; Zeph. 1: 7, 14, 15, etc.)

In the second Epistle the Holy Ghost conveys the needed instruction. "We ourselves," says the apostle, "glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day" (chap. 1). The time of retribution is not when Jesus comes, but when He is revealed.

* The words in the LXX. are ἐγγὺς γὰρ ἡμέρα Κυρίου. Will men defend a version of 2 Thess. 2: 2 which makes the Holy Spirit contradict there what He has unequivocally affirmed in Isa. 13: 6? The Septuagint and the Greek Testament are in harmony here. It is the English version which is at fault.

For though at His coming the church is caught up, there is nothing yet of retributive character. It is favour, not a process of judgment; whereas the revelation and the day of the Lord are, as is manifest, associated with judgment, and hence there is the public award of God then for the first time manifested to the world; "seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled rest with us; when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed." Doubtless there is a tribulation, and even the great tribulation in the time of Anti-Christ, previous to the revelation of Jesus; as obviously there is rest to those who sleep in Jesus now; and there will be rest in a fuller sense when our bodies are changed, and we are caught up to be with Him. But both are wholly distinct from the public or retributive tribulation and rest here spoken of. It is the day of punishment with everlasting destruction to the adversaries, as it is the day when Christ comes, not to present the Church to Himself, nor to take them to mansions in the Father's house, but to be glorified in His saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed. For "when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." It is the open judicial dealing (not the hidden joy or blessedness, before, then, or afterwards,) which here enters into the scene.

Next, the apostle turns to the source of their agitation. "We beseech you, brethren, by* the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled." Assuredly the consolation administered here is not that Christ's coming was a distant thing I Can it be that theologian upon theologian has desired to make of this fancied long and far-off absence of the Lord a balm for the tried and fearful? Can it be that the poor church has but too willingly sipped the cup, and, heedless of His words, cheers herself on the delirious career of worldliness, and folly, and faithlessness to Him? "Lord, how long?"

* The authorised version appears to be substantially right in thus translating ὑπὲρ when we bear the context in mind. Such is the rendering of the Vulgate, as well as of Luther. Professor Scholefield also, though choosing the sense "concerning," because of his interpretation, admits the sense "by" to be "an unquestionable one." The fact cannot be disputed that "on account of," "for the sake of," are quite common renderings: which sense of the word, connected with expressions of prayer and entreaty, is pretty nearly equivalent to our "by." None of the passages, such as Rom. 9: 27; 2 Cor. 7: 4, 2 Cor. 9: 3; Phil. 1: 7, cited by Rosenmüller, Schleusner, Macknight, Whitby, or Elliott, is apposite, because not one occurs after such a verb as ἐρωτάω. Let an instance be produced of ὑπὲρ after a word of beseeching, where it can be rendered in any other way. In certain cases, it is used, as Phavorinus says, ὁμοίως τᾳ περὶ, but not, I believe, in a connection parallel to the present, where it assimilates to πρὸς, as Stephanus observes, and translates it "per ut Greg. ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ δέομαι, rogo te per Christum. Sic. II. ω. Καί μιν ὑπὲρ πατρὸς καὶ μητέρος ἠυ>κόμοιο Λίσσεο, καὶ τέκεος ."

Not so the Thessalonians. Full well they knew that His coming was to end their sorrows and crown their joys. Under apostolic guidance they had looked, and the Holy Ghost had commended their looking, for Christ. Was it not the part of the evil servant to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming? But Paul was a blessed and faithful servant, who never says anything of the sort. He uses the fact of the coming of the Lord and their gathering together unto Him as a comfort against the anxiety created by the idea that the day of the Lord was already arrived — nay more, as a proof that such an idea was false. His ground of entreaty is two-fold. He urges a motive founded upon the Lord and heaven, and a reason connected with earth and the man of sin. There must he our gathering above, and the falling away below.

In the first place the Lord was to come, and they were to be gathered together unto Him, in order that He and they might bring in the day and appear together from heaven. This had not taken place, and therefore they were not to be disturbed as if that day had come, or could come previously. In the next place, he presses the point that the evil must first be developed completely which that day is to judge. "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away (or the apostacy, ἡ ἀποστασία) first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth, and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or object of worship; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." But the apostacy was not then come. "And now (if one may translate the apostle's word a little exactly) ye know what hindereth that he might he revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness* doth already work: only [there is] one that now hindereth until he be out of the way. And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the breath of His mouth, and shall annul by the appearing of His coming."

* There is a link of importance missed by the English translators between the mystery of lawlessness already working and the lawless one who is yet to be revealed. The germ was there in the midst of professing Christianity. which was at last to issue in so portentous a conclusion. Again, " wickedness " expresses the old and prevalent evil of man in all ages from the beginning. "Lawlessness" is the word used by the apostle, and exactly appropriate to the yet worse and special enormity, when the gospel is denied and the restraint of the law defied.

No! the Thessalonian believers were not mistaken in waiting for the Son of God. It is not wrong to believe that "the Lord is at hand" (ἐγγὺς), as the apostle pressed upon the Philippians when drawing to the close of his career. It is not wrong to establish our hearts because the coming of the Lord is drawn nigh (ἤγγικε, James 5: 8). Nor does the language of the Spirit, in the passage before us, depict excitement from a too eager anticipation of this glorious event — alas! that Christians should suppose we could too earnestly desire it. The expressions in verse 2 denote fright and agitation. The enemy sought to instil the idea that the day of the world's judgment was come, and themselves obnoxious to its terrors. Where then was their hope to be caught up to the Lord and to come along with Him? Would it have been sorrow and fear, if Christ had come and they had been translated to meet Him in the air? Rather would it have been the object nearest their heart since their conversion. Their faith was growing exceedingly, and the love of every one of them all toward each other abounded. Nay, far from weakening that which he had already taught, the apostle prays for them in the last chapter of the Second Epistle, that the Lord would direct their hearts into the love of God and into the patient waiting for Christ. That is, he confirms them in their expectancy of the Lord.

But the deceiver had affrighted them, not of course by presenting the coming of the Lord as an imminent thing, which was what the Holy Ghost had done, and which is for the church a hope of unmingled comfort, but by the report that the day of the Lord was actually present, — "a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness." The apostle had already told them (1 Thess. 5) that they were not in darkness that the day should overtake them as a thief. The tempter disturbs and confounds them with the thought that, as a thief, it was already come upon them; using, it would seem, some false spirit, or word, or letter, to give to it the colour of the authority of Paul himself. And how does the apostle defend them from such assaults of others, and fears of their own? For, let it be repeated, it was not high-wrought feeling as though Christ were at hand, but terror arising from their giving heed to the false representation that the day of the Lord was present, and they in tribulation on earth instead of being caught up to Jesus above.

The apostle at once brings them back to the "coming of the Lord" and their gathering together unto Him as their ground of comfort end protection against the alarms of the "day of the Lord." As if he had said, The Lord Himself is coming, and you will be gathered to Him. When His day comes, you will be with Him. You are already children of the day: and will come along with it, for you are to come with Him Who ushers it in. You therefore need not be troubled. Rejoice always. That day is not come. You will go to meet Him Whom the bride knows as "the bright, the morning Star" (Rev. 22: 16, compared with Rev. 2: 28); so that when the day breaks and the Lord appears, you too will appear with Him in glory. He and you introduce the day together — that day of retribution when those who trouble you shall have trouble, and you, the troubled, shall have rest with us, when our Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven, with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance.

In harmony with this it is written in verse 8 that the lawless one will be destroyed, not simply by the coming of the Lord, but by a further step of it, by the appearing or manifestation of His coming.* This scene is given at length in Rev. 19: 11-21, where in the prospective vision the seer beholds the heaven opened, and the Word of God, the rider upon the white horse, issuing to judge and make war. "And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen white and glean" — the righteousness not of angels, but of saints (compare ver. 8). The saints are already with Him. They follow Him out of heaven? as His army. Christ therefore must have come before this to take them to Himself; for they have been with Him in heaven and leave it together, preparatory to the battle with the Beast and the kings of the earth and their armies. This then is not merely the coming of Christ; it is Christ appearing, and we with Him in glory. It is His revelation from heaven, taking vengeance. It is the day of the Lord, when sudden destruction comes. It is the shining forth of the presence of the Lord Jesus, or the brightness of His coming, which destroys that lawless one.†

* The word "coming', here, and frequently elsewhere, is παρουσία which denotes not barely the arrival (like the verb ἔρχομαι in scripture and like the substantive ἔλευσις in Greek ecclesiastical writers), but the circumstance or state of being present; that is, "presence." Nevertheless, as the presence of a person, who is now absent, necessarily supposes his coming. the latter is often and fairly enough given as its English equivalent, though the former is the full meaning.

† If the reader is disposed to investigate further a subject so full of interest. he may derive much instruction, through the grace of God, by examining carefully the following Scriptures:

First as to ἀποκάλυψις Rom. 8: 19; 1 Cor. 1: 7; 2 Thess. 1: 7; 1 Peter 1: 7, 13 and 1 Peter 4: 13, compared with the cognate verb, Luke 17: 30; 1 Cor. 3: 13; 1 Peter 1: 5, and 1 Peter 5: 1. Next, as to ἐπιφανεία a Thess. 2: 8; 1 Tim. 6: 14; 2 Tim. 4: 1, 8; Titus 2:13. Lastly, as to φανερόω, Col. 3: 4; 1 Peter 5: 4; 1 John 2: 28, and 1 John 3: 2.

It is only needful to remark that, though (as already proved) we are not here below until the appearing of Christ, it is only then, and not before, that the result of faithfulness, or the want of it, will he manifested The labourer is to work patiently, and it may he hiddenly, in view of that day. Though still the παρουσία, it is more than the presence of the Lord; it is the revelation, appearing, or manifestation, as the case may be. Be it noted, further, that the appearing of Christ is still His coming, although His coming does not necessarily mean His appearing. Thus, when Christ comes to take the church first of all, it is His coming, but not His appearing, save to them that look for Him. But when afterwards He is revealed in view of the world, vindicating the ways of God both as to His enemies and His friends, it is still His coming, while, as a distinctive thing, it is His day, or the epiphany of His presence, as it is termed in 2 Thess. 2: 8. The recent Swiss version renders the entire verse thus: "Et alors sera révélé l'inique, lui que le Seigneur détruira par l'esprit de sa bouche, et rendra impuissant par l'apparition de son arrivée (ou présence)."

Matt. 24: 23-31 falls in with this view. "For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." It is His coming in connection with His earthly rights. Rejected of this generation as the Christ, He comes as Son of man (in which capacity He is never presented as coming to take the church). "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds." These are demonstrably not the church, because they are gathered subsequent to His appearing. The church, on the other hand, will have been translated before. For "when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." Our manifestation in glory cannot be after His manifestation. Christ and the church are to be manifested together.

Hence the signs specified in this chapter are demonstrably to elect Jewish disciples indices of His appearing. They are not to be regarded therefore as interfering with the posture of the church continually waiting for the Lord from heaven. They are signs for a remnant in special relation with Judea, who will be awaiting the coming of the Son of man. No signs of this or of any other description were ever put before the church, as such, whereby to judge of the near approach of Christ to take her to Himself. On the contrary, what the Holy Ghost taught the church is, to a simple mind, inconsistent with such indications: she was to be expecting always, because she knew not the moment of His coming. The apostle (1 John 2: 18) would have even the babes to know that it is the last time; and this, not from the spread of the Spirit of Christ, but from the presence of many antichrists. But, although they had heard that the Antichrist should come, no signs to be seen, no evils to reach the climax, no specific tribulations, are ever put before them, as events necessarily retarding the coming of the Lord to take the church. For the Bride the one heavenly sign is the presence of the Bridegroom Himself. But for a converted remnant of Jews, of whom the Lord has graciously thought in the instructions of Matt. 24, there are signs which will be assuredly given in due time before the coming of the Son of man.

Now it is precisely here that the Revelation affords so distinct a light, showing us the position of the glorified in heaven, Christ having come and taken them to Himself; and afterwards, during the interval of our absence in heaven before we appear along with Him, God's dealings, testimonies, judgments, and deliverances on earth. The Epistles gave us simply the fact of the rapture of those saints, but did not inform as to the length of the interval before the appearing and the kingdom. That such an interval existed might have been gathered: but whether long or short, or how filled up, does not appear in the Epistles. The Revelation furnishes that which was lacking upon the subject, and connects, without confounding, the church caught up to the Lord on high, with certain witnesses to be raised up during the closing term of the age on earth before He appears in judgment.

As for the relative bearings of the different portions of the New Testament, it may be said in general, that the Gospels have a character peculiar to themselves. Certainly it is not an exclusively Jewish condition, neither is it a proper church condition, but a gradual slide, in John more marked than in the others, from the one to the other. The Lord Jesus, rejected, was with His disciples here below. The Holy Ghost, Who of course was then as ever the faith-giving, quickening agent, was not yet given, i.e. in the new unprecedented way of personal presence as sent down from heaven, because that Jesus was not yet glorified. Hence the disciples, although possessing faith and life eternal (John 6: 35, 47, 68, 69), were not yet baptised by the Holy Ghost into one body. (Compare Acts 1: 5 with 1 Cor. 12: 13). In a word, the church was not yet built nor begun to be built: "Upon this rock," says the Lord, "I will build my church (Matt. 16: 18).

On the other hand the Acts historically, and the Epistles doctrinally, describe a different state of things as then existing: Jesus absent and glorified in heaven; the Holy Ghost present and dwelling on earth in the saints, who were thereby constituted one body, the church. Christ had taken His place as Head of the body above, and the Holy Ghost sent down was gathering into oneness with Him there, into membership of His body, Who is Head over all things. Such is the mystery of Christ, which it was emphatically given to the apostle Paul fully to make known. And as the Gospels may be regarded as the preparatory transition out of Jewish relations to the blessed elevation on which the church rests, the Revelation answers as the corresponding transition from the church one with Christ in heavenly places, by various steps or stages, down to those Jewish relations which for a time drops out of sight in consequence of the calling of that heavenly body.

The doctrine of the church is clearly concurrent with the one hope, which is found in the intermediate part of the New Testament. For along with the truth of the peculiar calling of the church, as the body commenced by the descent and indwelling of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, and thenceforward guided and perpetuated by Him — along with this truth, it will be found that the peculiar aspect of the coming of the Lord, for which I am here contending, stands or falls. None of the school of interpreters commonly called "the Protestant school" understood by the church anything more, at best, than the Augustinian notion of an invisible company from the beginning to the end of time. None of them therefore has an adequate idea of the new and heavenly work which God began at Pentecost by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The consequence is that, if they read of saints in Daniel, in the Psalms, or in the Revelation, they are at once set down as of the church. If they read of "this gospel of the kingdom" in Matt. 24, or of "the everlasting gospel," it is to their minds the same thing as what Paul calls "my gospel," the gospel of the grace of God preached now. Hence follows, and quite fairly too, a denial of any speciality in the walk and conversation of the saints since Pentecost, and a general Judaizing in doctrine, standing, conduct, and hopes. It is also a simple and natural result of this, that the Protestant interpreters, if they admit a personal advent at all to introduce the millennial reign, present as the hope of the church that which is, in fact, the proper expectation of the converted Jewish remnant; viz., the day of the Lord, the Son of man seen by all the tribes of the earth, and coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Nor is the truth of the church unknown to the Protestant interpreters only; it is equally an object of dislike to most of the Futurist school. And it is my conviction that the two baleful heterodoxies, which have brought such shame upon the revival of prophetic study toward the beginning and the close of the years 1830 to 1850, are intimately connected with the rejection of this grand truth. For an error touching the church cannot but affect Him Whose personal presence is what is so essential to it; and in the long run, that which dishonours the Spirit goes far to disfigure or deny the Person and work of Him of Whom the Spirit is the vicar.

In the Epistles, it is beyond doubt that the church is continually addressed as if there were no understood, necessary, revealed hindrances to the rapture at the coming of the Lord. How could this be if the church be the same body as those saints who are described in Daniel, the Psalms, etc., as being destined to certain fiery trials still future from a little Horn which is to wax greater to the highest degree, and his satellites who are yet to appear? How comes it that the apostle Paul, when he speaks of the coming of the Lord, never hints at this tribulation, as one through which the church must pass; but always presents His presence as an immediate hope which might occur at one unknown moment to another? That this inspired man understood the just application of these prophecies, better than any since his day, is that which few Christians will question. They were scriptures long revealed and familiar to Jews; and the Lord Jesus in Matt. 24 had very significantly linked His fresh revelations upon that occasion with the predictions of Daniel. Yet the Holy Ghost, in His constant allusions throughout the writings apostolic to the future hopes of the church, never once refers to those terrible circumstances as a future scene wherein the church is to enact a part. On the contrary, the way in which the coming of the Lord is put before the saints, as a thing to be constantly looked for, seems incompatible with it. We have examined the only statement in the Epistles which might appear to interpose such a barrier; and we have seen that, so far from contradicting the thought of immediateness, the apostle seeks to relieve the Thessalonian saints from all uneasiness about the day of the Lord and its troubles, by the blessed hope of His coming and their gathering unto Him, two things in his mind indissolubly bound together. It is a gathering unto Him, which must be before He appears to the world for its judgment, because He and they are to appear together. It is certain moreover, that there must arrive the apostacy and the revelation of the man of sin, not before the coming, but before the day, of the Lord. His coming will gather the saints on high; His day will judge the world here below.

The prophecy of Daniel had already revealed the leading features of the interval during which "the prince that shall come" plays his terrible role. "And he shall confirm a covenant" [see margin and compare Isa. 28: 15] "with the many" (i.e. of Daniel's people, the Jews) for one week. And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease; and on account of the protection of abominations a desolator shall be, even until the consummation (or consumption, as in Isa. 28: 22), "and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate" (Dan. 9: 27). That the desolator is not the Roman prince is manifest. He is hostile to both. The latter prince is described as one "that shall come," after the Messiah had already appeared and been cut off (as is plain from verse 26). There is also the certainty that "the prince that shall come" is the chief of the Roman people. For his people "shall destroy the city and the sanctuary." We all know who destroyed Jerusalem and the temple — the people of this future prince.

The latter part of the twenty-sixth verse does not continue the thread of the history farther than the general expression, "and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." In the last verse we are transported to the epoch of "the prince that shall come," and his actings during the last week of the age. This period is shown to be broken into two parts, during the former of which, according to a covenant, Jewish worship is resumed; but "in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease."

Nor is it in chap. 9 only. If Dan. 7 be consulted, it will be seen that there is a certain little Horn rising after the ten Horns of the fourth Roman Beast, before whom three of the first Horns fell — "that horn that had eyes and a mouth, that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows" (ver. 20). "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High (or, of the high places), and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand, until a time and times and the dividing of time" (ver. 25). Is it not evident that in chap. 7 is a Horn or king whose blasphemous pride brings judgment upon the Beast or Roman empire? that his interference with times and laws (that is, with Jewish ceremonial order) continues for three years and a half? and that for the same space of time, or the last half week, "the prince that shall come," the Roman prince of chap. 9, overthrows this ceremonial worship? For the Jew is still unbelieving and unpurged.

Now the Revelation not only takes up the last half of Daniel's week (Rev. 11, 12, 13) but shows what is the place of the church during this period. This truth it was not given to the Jewish prophet to reveal; because it was that which supposed and fitly followed the revelation of the mystery hidden from ages and from generations. Paul had given us the church waiting for the presence of the Lord. What is it that the Holy Ghost adds by John? What is the main outline seen in the Revelation?

After the vision of the Lord Jesus in Rev. 1 we have "the things that are," in epistles to the Seven Churches, so conveyed as to apply not only at that time, but as long as the church subsists on earth. Then comes the properly prophetic part, "the things which should be after" the church-condition had passed away. Throughout the prophetic portion of the book, the church is never described as being on earth. At the close of the third chapter it altogether disappears from earthly view. Instead of the churches being any longer traced here below, a door is opened in heaven; and the prophet is called up there to see "the things which must come to pass after these," i.e. after "the things which are," or the church regarded in the completeness of its varying phases on earth. Besides other things (the throne, and One that sat upon it being the centre of the vision), John sees, not seven candlesticks, but, suited to the new circumstances of heaven, four and twenty thrones, and upon them four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment and on their heads golden crowns.

Thus we have, in vision, the place and functions of the saints after they shall have been taken up to meet the Lord, and before their manifestation with Him in glory. Here is the simple reason. The way in which He and they are here represented emblematically is totally different from what is revealed as connected with either, when the moment comes to leave heaven for the purpose of judgment upon the beast, etc.; or from what is revealed touching the reign for a thousand years subsequent to that judgment: that is, in Rev. 19: 11, and in Rev. 20: 4-6. For can the scene in Rev. 4, 5 be interpreted consistently with any view, save that of the glorified being actually caught up and completed in the presence of God? It is a quite distinct thing from our sitting in heavenly places in Christ. Such is the subject of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Neither is it the same thing as the boldness which the partakers of the heavenly calling have even now to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh. Such is the subject of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the high-priesthood of Jesus is dwelt on at length, and the liberty which we have in consequence to draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. For it is still faith, and not actual possession, however it may be, through the power of the Holy Ghost, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

But quite distinctly the purpose of the Revelation is to disclose the dealings of God (whether the facts be expressed or understood), — but dealings which involve a certain condition of things that was future, if considered in relation to the circumstances looked at in the seven Epistles — "the things" in short "which must be after" those actually subsisting at this time. Nor can Rev. 4, and Rev. 5 be supposed to describe the blessedness of the spirits of the saints previous to the coming of Christ for the church. How could the departed who are with Christ be in fairness symbolised by twenty-four elders? that is, by an image evidently borrowed from the full courses of Jewish priesthood. The whole church, and not a part only, is comprehended in the symbol. But this can only be after the dead in Christ rise first, then we which are alive and remain are caught up together with them in the clouds, and so to be ever with the Lord. Accordingly, here they are represented as in heaven, the Lord being also there; and although made kings and priests even when on earth, still the time is not yet come for the exercise of government.

In beautiful harmony, therefore, with this peculiar and transitional period during which they are removed from the world, they worship above. But the saints below are not forgotten. Those above have golden harps and golden vials full of odours, "which are the prayers of saints." And they sing a new song, celebrating the worthiness of the Lamb to take the book and open the seals, not only because He was slain and had redeemed themselves, but had made them,* i.e. these saints, to their God, kings and priests. And they should reign over the earth. The fulfilment is seen in Rev. 20: 4-6: the reigning with Christ not merely of those symbolised by the elders, but also of the Apocalyptic sufferers after that on earth.

Moreover, it is clear on the one hand, that the lightnings, thunderings, etc., suit neither the day of grace nor the millennial state. Earth is certainly not then brought under the power of the blood of Christ, when these symbols will find their accomplishment. On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are saints on earth, while the twenty-four elders are before the throne above. That is, it is neither the millennial nor the present state; but an intermediate period of a peculiar nature, in which we have the throne, not of grace as now, nor of displayed glory as by-and-by, but clothed with what has been justly termed a Sinai character of awful majesty attached to it. It is judicial.

* In the text preferred by some critics, which omits αὐτοὺς "them," the sense is general, laying stress on the Lamb's having redeemed "out of every tribe," etc. It is the blessed fact so glorious to Him, rather than bringing its objects into prominence. But as most accept the pronoun, the observation founded on it is left.

But those above exercise their priesthood in the presence of God as the full completed chief-priests. Hence the symbol of twenty-four elders round the throne, at the time when (as all confess) earth is still unreconciled, however there may be the anticipative song of every creature in the next chapter. If this be true, it follows that the Lord's coming to meet the saints takes place between Rev. 3 and 4 (if the thought be pursued, which I doubt not, that Rev. 6-19 will be fulfilled in a rapid crisis), room being left there for His coming described in 1 Thess. 4 and elsewhere.

Then the properly prophetic part begins, when of course the main action of the book goes on subsequently to the removal of the glorified. It is plain that another character of testimony from that of the church properly is announced. For God Himself is revealed in ways different from those which He is displaying now; that is to say, not as showing the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, but in the chastening judgments of the seals, trumpets, and vials, preparatory to the great day of the Lord which Rev. 19: 11 ushers in.

On this coming state of things Daniel compared with the Revelation will be found to cast and to receive much light. For it seems plain that the saints of the Most High or heavenlies, of whom we read in Dan. 7, identify themselves with the saints who suffer under the beast, after the rapture of the glorified and before the Lord's appearing. They keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. This, be it noted, is the Spirit of prophecy. Yet, though they are not of the twenty-four elders, they will have their blessed and holy part in "the first resurrection."

Let it be remarked, that this term has nothing to do with the question whether all are raised at the same time. It simply describes the condition of those who rise and reign during the thousand years, as distinguished from those who do not rise till that period is ended. The truth of this seems manifest from the fact that Christ has part in the first resurrection; yet He nevertheless rose before the church more than 1800 years at least. Hence the thought is not forbidden of certain saints being raised who stand and suffer after the church is gone.

The symbol of the twenty-four elders continues unchanged throughout the course of the book, till Rev. 19. They enter into God's ways and judgments, as interested in whatever affected His glory, as may be seen in Rev. 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 19. But in chap. 19 there is a striking change. After the opening scene of the rejoicings over Babylon the elders no longer appear. The time for the marriage being come (and how evidently the church therefore is still viewed in the Revelation as unmarried!), the Bride, the Lamb's wife, is only then announced as made ready.

The heavenly joy and the Bridegroom and His bride being thus incidentally glanced at, He takes a new aspect, for the day is about to break upon the world; and so do we, for we will have gone long before to be ever with the Lord, and if He is about to appear, so are we along with Him in glory. Hence, in the eleventh verse, the prophet sees heaven opened, and a white horse, and He that sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war. In unison therefore, as He thus comes to smite and rule, the armies which are in heaven follow the Lord of lords and King of kings; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful. These expressions are sufficiently clear to determine who are meant by "the armies," if any one should have a doubt. It is the glorified who were in heaven, following Christ in the capacity of His hosts, clothed in fine linen white and clean.

Contrasted with the marriage supper of the Lamb, all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven are invited to the great supper of God. The prophet sees the Beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and His army. The result all know, as it ought never to be doubted (vers. 17-21).

In Rev. 20 follows the angelic binding of the dragon for a thousand years, and the parenthetic revelation of the sitting on thrones, or, at least, of the living and reigning with Christ, during that period, of such as had part in the first resurrection. They will not cease to be priests of God, though their office may be discharged in a different way from what we saw as to some of them in Rev. 4 and 5. But they all reign with Christ for a thousand years.

It is a prominent feature of the book, that in it is traced the sovereignty of God, not only in His purposes regarding the church properly so called, but in His gracious ways with an election from among Jews and Gentiles subsequently. Thus, after the glorified are seen in completeness in heaven, under the symbol of the twenty-four crowned elders (chap. 4, 5), we hear in Rev. 6: 9-11 of saints suffering, yet crying for vengeance. The announcement to them is that they should rest yet for a little, until their fellow-servants and brethren, doomed to be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. Vengeance should not arrive till then. These are evidently not the church, but saints on earth after the glorified are in heaven; their sufferings and cries to the Lord accord much with the experience detailed in the Psalms. Still, whether Jewish or Gentile saints, it is not named here.

In Rev. 7 we have a numbered company out of all the tribes of Israel, sealed with the seal of the living God; and after this an innumerable crowd out of all nations, etc., who are characterised as coming out of the great tribulation, and as having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. These groups are evidently distinguished from, if not contrasted with, each other; and they are still more markedly shown to be different from the glorified. For we have the facts not only of a certain defined tribulation out of which these said Gentiles come, but of the elders (i.e.  the confessed symbol of the glorified) still represented as a separate party in the scene* (ver. 11).

* I cannot concur in the view put forth in the most voluminous and elaborate comment of modern times upon this book, namely, that the sealed hundred and forty-four thousand are identical with the innumerable palm-bearing multitude; the latter embodying the idea of the different generations of the former in a corporate form! (for the idea of the church as one body here below by the presence of the Holy Ghost is utterly denied, and unceasingly distorted, in this system of interpretation). But Mr. Elliott allows that the twenty-four elders represent the church in the character of a royal priesthood. No one denies that the glorified, in different scenes, may be set forth by different symbols. But how comes it not only that these distinct symbols are in the same scene, but that one of the elders is found explaining who, what, and whence the multitude are? and that the description is of those who, among other things, come out of a particular tribulation, and thus form a peculiar class? Nor is this denied by Mr. Elliott, who connects "the great" with the fifth seal, as the complement of  the sufferers there, though another and distinct body. Again, if Israel, in verse 4, are to be understood symbolically, why not "all nations," in verse 9, which are plainly distinguished from the preceding company? And if the election out of Jews be the emblem of Christians, how come these same persons immediately after to be characterised as an election out of Gentiles? Where is the consistency of treating the former as symbolical, and the latter as literal? and the more so, as it is in the latter picture that various mystic personages appear, such as the four living creatures and the elders.

Under the trumpets again it is that we find the prayers of "all the saints" alluded to, who are of course supposed to be still on earth (compare Rev. 8: 3, 4, with Rev. 5: 8), and an implication of the sealed Jewish remnant being in the sphere, though saved from the effects of the fifth trumpet (Rev. 9: 4).

Further, in the eleventh chapter are seen the two witnesses, prophesying in sackcloth, and killed; in the twelfth, the woman persecuted by the dragon, who wars with the remnant of her seed that keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus. This evidently is accomplished by the Beast of Rev. 13, who makes war with the saints and overcomes them.

The fourteenth chapter consists of a sevenfold sketch of the dealings of God, which brings the crisis to a conclusion: the hundred forty and four thousand associated with the Lamb on Mount Sion; the everlasting gospel summoning all to fear and worship God because of the proximity of His judgment; the fall of Babylon; the declaration of torment for the Bestial worshippers; the blessedness from henceforth of those dying in the Lord; the harvest of the earth (out of which had been redeemed the one hundred and forty-four thousand, as first-fruits to God and the Lamb); and lastly, the vintage of the same. The reader has only to weigh verses 12, 13, in order to have the foregoing remarks confirmed. Even here we have the patience of saints described just before the harvest, the portion too, not of the glorified (for we shall not all sleep), but of a special class of sufferers here below, while the glorified are hidden above.

In Rev. 15 (preparatory to Rev. 16, i.e. the seven outpoured bowls of the wrath of God) is heard the song of the conquerors over the Beast, celebrating the works of the Lord God Almighty and the ways of the King of the nations. Compare also Rev. 16: 5, 6, 15; Rev. 17: 6; Rev. 18: 4-6.

Now it will not be forgotten that to those who kept the word of Christ's patience (Rev. 3: 10) the promise was to be kept (not in, or during, but) "from" the hour of trial, and so out of the fearful tribulation which is in store for the dwellers upon earth. But in the preceding scriptures it is clear that after Christ has fulfilled His promise in the translation of the glorified to heaven, there are saints on earth, both from among Jews and Gentiles, who suffer throughout the tribulation. And these Apocalyptic sufferers are described in Rev. 20: 4 as having part, equally with those glorified, in the first resurrection. For that text discloses, first, the general place of the glorified in the millennial reign, "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them." Next come those killed in the earlier persecution of the book (Rev. 6: 9-11), "And I saw the souls of those that were beheaded because of the witness of Jesus, and because of the word of God." Thirdly are the later witnesses for God, "and those who had not worshipped the beast," etc. (Rev. 15: 2). Those saints, who were called and suffered after the rapture of the glorified are emphatically mentioned, because it might have appeared that they had lost all by their death. Not members of Christ's body before Be comes for His own, they share not in the rapture; not protected from death during the prevalence of the Beast, they cannot be the living nucleus of Jews, or of Gentiles, saved to be the holy seed on earth during the reign of Christ. The two later classes suffer, are out off, but are not forgotten. "They lived and reigned with Christ the thousand years," as well as the first general class.

Thus the truth, brought to light in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, is assumed in the view which the apostle John was the honoured servant to enunciate — viz., the blessed condition and holy employ of the glorified round the throne and the Lamb, after their removal from earth, but previous to their appearing with Christ in glory.

The central part of the Revelation thus appears to corroborate, on an irrefragable basis, the truth that the glorified will be taken away and fulfil the symbols we have been noticing, previous to the day of the Lord. During that same time other saints are still groaning, who shed their blood like water here below (Ps. 74, Ps. 79).

Such seems to be the main key which unlocks an important portion of the book, and confirms the view, so bright to the renewed mind, of going to meet the Lord, without one earthly obstacle between. Thus is kept unblunted the point and energy of a truth only revealed in the New Testament. For the Old Testament spoke of His coming with all His saints, not for them; of His appearing in glory to the confusion of His enemies; not of His descending to meet His friends, when we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed and caught up together in the clouds. And hence, it would seem, the emphatic language of the apostle, conscious that God was by him revealing a new thing to faith. For in 1 Cor. 15 he says, "Behold I show you a mystery," and in 1 Thess. 4, "This we say unto you by the word of the Lord."

How sweetly do the closing appeals tell upon the heart of him who has an ear to hear I "I am the Root and the Offspring of David; the bright, the morning Star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come." It would be to lose or at least to misuse the prophetic sayings of this book, were we to have any other hope than that Jesus is coming quickly (Rev. 22: 7). It is well to read in their light the signs of the times: knowing the awful end, we can thus detect the principles now at work.

But it is a mistake to construe of such signs obstacles to the coming of the Lord; to say, until I know the arrival of this or that precursor, I cannot in my heart expect Jesus. Blessed be God I such is not the language of the Spirit. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." Are these the words of mere feeling, unguided by spiritual understanding of the mind of God? As a fact, we know that the Lord has delayed; but He is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness. He is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But who will say that it is conceivable to be looking for the Lord, wholly uncertain of the time of His advent, and at the same time to have the revealed certainty of a number of events which determine the year, or, it may be, the day?

That Jesus will arise, the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings (Mal. 4), is clear; and we know that the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matt. 13). But "this same Jesus" is far more than the supreme power of righteous government on earth. He is known to the church, at any rate, as the bright, the morning Star. Blessed light of grace, ere the day breaks, to those who watch for Him from heaven during the dark and lonely night I "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." The weakest Christian too can join: "and let him that heareth say, Come."

"He that testifieth these things saith, Yea, I am coming quickly. Amen; come, Lord Jesus."

W. K.

Brethren and their Traducers:

A refutation of Rev. F. Whitfield's letter to Rev. O. Debrée.

W. Kelly.

"Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein." — Jer. 6: 16.

No sooner had appeared my reply to a respectable assailant, than a fresh attack follows from a Mr. Whitfield — once, it seems, with "Brethren," then after the Dublin breach, in 1850, with the Bethesda or neutral party, and now a clergyman. His letter intimates (pp. 3, 4) that, while ostensibly apart from the Anglican body, he had never abandoned it altogether; but the character of the statements is such that the secession of the author, in his present state, ought to be a real relief to any circle where Christ is named. His honesty or his judgment before that step, was not worth much by his own account: whether they are worth more now, others will judge, when they have read my examination. From none have fallen stronger expressions of disgust at his tract than from members of the English Establishment. Some of different temper may be but too eager to receive the rashest language, and the most rancorous reports, and they may even refuse to hear the disproof. But God is not mocked.

Singularly enough, the very title page, with its motto of Prov. 18: 17, bears the stamp of confusion on it. For each of my opponents has been "first in his own cause;" and my lot is to search them. They, not I, provoked or renewed the controversy. The main subjects are here arranged under separate heads.

I. — Is "EVERY PARISHIONER" A SAINT?

Mr. W. affirms this (p. 6), lowering the notion of saintship so as to embrace all the christened who are not openly gross. Not so Mr. Dobrée, who admitted that the "affecting difference between the believing and the unbelieving is to be maintained and manifested not only in individual walk, but also in the gatherings of the saints, separate from those who know not Jesus. It is the will of God that it should be so." (Sep. p. 4.) Mr. W. maintains, on the contrary, that "saints" are "professing Christians, comprising both true and false!" and founds his conclusion on the address to the Corinthians. Strange that two officials, not only of the same system but of the same section in it, should at the very start oppose each other so diametrically (the last thing intended or perhaps even now seen by either); and this not on some small detail, but on a fundamental question, which yields in moment to few others in this discussion. If Mr. D. be right in this, as I am satisfied he is, how can it be denied that his coadjutor is totally wrong?

As to any difference in interpreting "every parishioner" (p. 4), the question does not even exist among upright men: the prayer-book, the canons, and the commentators on both are too explicit. Save the scandalous, who are expressly excepted, "every parishioner" includes the entire baptized population in each given district, i.e. practically any one that likes to take the Communion. Is this maintaining and manifesting the difference between believers and unbelievers? How does the admission of every parishioner to the Sacrament consist with gatherings of the saints, separate from those who know not Jesus? Which is God's will? and which man's? Mr. W. talks of "every professing Christian parishioner" (p. 4); but every body knows that the profession required in Anglicanism amounts to repeating the catechism and being confirmed. Is it pretended that this is what Scripture means by the confession or profession of a Christian man? He who seriously thinks so, must be a questionable Christian himself.

Further, the point is not what evils or errors broke out in the Corinthian church, but what was sought, according to Scripture, before souls were accepted anywhere and addressed as saints. Why is not this, the true enquiry, fairly met? Now no fact is more patent throughout the Apostolic history than that those baptized and received into the Church were accredited as true believers in Christ, regenerate, anointed and sealed of the Spirit. (Acts 2: 37-42, 47; Acts 4: 4, 32, 33; Acts 5: 13, 14; Acts 8: 12-17, 38, 39; Acts 10: 44-48; Acts 11: 17, 18, 19-26; Acts 13: 43, 52, and so on.) The Epistles of course confirm this. Thus, taking the first that comes, the Roman saints had their faith spoken of throughout the whole world, and Paul thanks God for them all. What Christian in his senses could thank God for "every parishioner" — I will not say in London, but — in any parish of England or Guernsey? As to Corinth, whatever men may exaggerate or defame, the Lord told the Apostle (Acts 18) that in this city He had much people, and not merely many professors. It is not the fact, though Mr. W. says it, that "some of them were not reconciled to God;" for 2 Cor. 5 is an address to the Corinthian saints, not about their own need of reconciliation, but about the character of the embassy, and the message to be preached to the world. Indeed, if anything of the sort were proved thereby, it would deny the saintship of not "some" but all there who had to be reconciled to God. Again, some, by their denial of the resurrection of the dead, betrayed their ignorance of God; as others fell into grievous and profane sins. But there is no reason to think the error was adhered to after the first Epistle; and surely David went as far astray morally as any: was he a true saint, or a false professor? These things, then, do not show that "saints" comprise false and true, like "every parishioner." The reader, taking any or all the other addresses to the churches, can estimate the worth of the assertion, "that our Church uses the term 'parishioner' in the same sense as Paul used the term 'saint.'" It is a fiction which dishonours God and ruins man.

"If Mr. Kelly had, with an unbiassed mind, taken his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon in his hand, he would have found that there is scarcely one of these terms (?) that is not used in an ecclesiastical as well as a spiritual sense." — (p. 6.) Neither in Old Testament nor in New are "parishioner" and "saint" used in the same sense; nor "parishioner" in any sense. How the Hebrew could decide an ecclesiastical question is perplexing; for Mr. W. admits (p. 34), that in our Lord's time "the Church was not formed." Undoubtedly, in the Levitical economy, Israel as a nation, and Jerusalem as a city, were called holy in an external way; but even then as now, "saints," as said of individuals, implied real intrinsic separation to God by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost. The difference is that then the saints were, so to speak, units, and chiefly among the Jewish people; whereas now, since the Cross and Pentecost, saints are called out from Jews and Gentiles into separation from the world, and baptized by one Spirit into one body, the Church. This is the teaching of the New Testament, the Gospels preparing the way, the Acts showing the facts historically, and the Epistles furnishing the dogmatic exposition. Nationalism may labour to justify itself by the Jewish model in the Hebrew ritual; but indiscriminate reception is unknown to, and contradicted by, all that God reveals as His will for the Church. The uniform practice herein was receiving such as were honestly taken to be believers in Christ and possessors of the Holy Spirit. Mistakes might be made, and hypocrites or self-deceived slip in: once in, faith trusted God, if His will, to manifest them by such moral or doctrinal evil as must require their excision according to His Word For the temple of God is holy, which temple the saints are.

Another remark (pp. 4, 5) is too serious as well as characteristic to be passed by. When the Holy Sacrament, says Mr. W., "was profaned by the Corinthian Church, the apostle did not constitute the sound portion of that body a judge of the spiritual character and standing of those who so grossly sinned in regard to it. Mr. Kelly's plan would be that he or others should judge their fellow-worshippers, in order to provide against unfit communicants. The Church's design is to call on men to 'examine themselves' as the most effectual and Scriptural means of securing purity of communion. As to the issue thus raised, we are quite satisfied to be guided by him who said, 'let a man examine himself (and not his neighbour), and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.' — 1 Cor. 11: 28." Now the Lord had already dealt with that sin directly (ver. 30), as an apostle had been given to act yet more promptly for Him in the different case of Ananias and Sapphira. But had not the Holy Ghost, in 1 Cor. 5, charged the body of the saints to judge evildoers hardly so vile and irreverent? Does He invest the saints with that which must result in "an ecclesiastical despotism?" (p. 5.) "I have written unto you not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, [is this necessarily scandalous?] or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner: with such an one no not to eat. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? Do not ye judge them that are within? [precisely what is called "Mr. Kelly's plan."] But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person." Here then, beyond controversy, is God's plan. He does constitute the assembly judge of evil apparent in their midst, commanding the refusal of any mark of fellowship, if a brother so called were guilty of drunkenness, etc. Is it not then equally blind and audacious to argue, that drunkenness at the Lord's table was not to be thus judged, because the direction of 1 Cor. 5 is not repeated in 1 Cor. 11? Is that ignorance sinless, which perverts the self-examination here called for, so as to blot out the Church's obligation to judge those within, already enjoined? In Scripture, all is perfect and perfectly arranged. Public, corporate discipline was authoritatively laid down in chap. 5. If the apostle declared this to be God's will there, and faithless men heard not: wherefore would they hear it again, in a portion which formally treats not of discipline but of the Lord's Supper? Will these mis-reasoners dare to say that the assembly ought to deal with the drunkard in general, but not with the aggravated case of Eucharistic drunkenness? Decorous men, if mistaken, from High Church and from Low Church, have hitherto crossed my path: the least logical and the most immoral argument yet offered was reserved for Mr. Whitfield.

II. — RECONCILIATION IN SCRIPTURE AND IN ART. 2.

Even Mr. W. agrees (pp. 6, 7) that it is the sinner who, in Scripture, is called on to be reconciled to God. This ought to close his mouth. For the need of an atoning sacrifice is another question and common ground, which last is confessed in p. 8, after an effort, worthy of the author, to link me with Mr. Maurice and the Socinians What is the fact? Mr. M. and all his company still preach their abominations under sanction of Anglican "orders," without effectual hindrance, still abuse God's reconciling love to evacuate the Atonement; all the "Brethren," without a single exception, maintain both truths fully, unambiguously, and tenaciously: what a resemblance — to a man troubled with an evil eye! Unclean spirits, in presence of Jesus, we are told, cried saying, Thou art the Son of God: am I therefore to give up this truth? or any other truth, because a foul mouth may utter it for its own purposes? To a believer, the sole question should be, "what saith the Scripture?" Does the Article speak like it? Clearly not. The Article speaks of reconciliation, as well as "sacrifice." Atonement naturally and properly falls under this last, so that the objection remains in all its strength against the error that He suffered, etc., to reconcile His Father to us. — As to the etymology of the English! word, more sense might have been expected from an ordinarily intelligent person, than impressing such an element to settle doctrine. Atonement, theologically, means expiation: to run from its actual force to its verbal source, is childish or worse. Its doctrinal meaning is not at-one-ment, which last, in truth, is a favourite Socinian (as well as Irvingite) idea. Hearken to one: "atonement always means in the Bible, making two or more persons at one or agreed" — a statement not so unlike some of Mr. W.'s talk, but clean contrary to the truth; for atonement, as a dogma, (the only question here,) never means anything but propitiation for sin. Another notable argument, (p. 8,) is that Rom. 5: 11, entirely justifies the language of the Article: — i.e. the well-known blunder, in our A.V., of substituting "atonement" for "reconciliation," eked out by the second blunder of substituting "reconciliation" for "atonement," in Heb. 2: 17! The scholarship, the reasoning, and the doctrine, are suited companions, vainly defending what is indefensible. Lastly, even were it supposed for a moment that Art. 17 etc., (p. 9,) present the right view, how could this purge Art. 2 from the taint of impurity? Does the signature of a truth clear the conscience in subscribing to an error? Let men beware how they trifle with so grave a case.

III. — IS MINISTRY FROM HEAVEN, OR OF MEN?

Ministry, in Scripture, (not in Art. 23), is the exercise of a gift, bestowed, in general, directly from above, but in exceptional cases, as Timothy's, by Apostolic imposition of hands. Hence, God's Word knows nothing of ordaining men simply for preaching, teaching, or the employment of any other gift. Does not the Article estop (preclude) within Anglican limits the liberty of ministry which Scripture asserts? To minister in the congregation there, without being called by men, is unlawful: in the Church of the Scriptures, (Rom. 12, 1 Cor. 12. 14, 16, Eph. 4, Phil. 1, Col. 2, 4, 1 Thess. 5, 1 Peter 4, etc.) it is not legitimate only, but a responsibility in every case where the Lord causes His light to shine. Where is the judgment or the candour of denying the difference? Not even the Jews were so penned up in their synagogues, as appears from Acts 13: 15, 16, Acts 17: 1, 2. And though the inroads of corruption were rapid, deep, and wide-spread in the early Church, (in nothing more marked, than as to ministry,) yet as late as the third century, traces of Scriptural liberty still linger. Thus Origen publicly preached and taught in the churches in Palestine, though not then ordained. And when Demetrius, of Alexandria, complained of it as unheard-of disorder, Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea, take their brother bishop roundly to task, and affirm that "wherever any are found fit to profit the brethren, the holy bishops ask them to discourse unto the people," giving instances where it had been done under Episcopal eyes. (Euseb. H. 13. vi. 19.)

But Mr. W. retorts ("myself being a witness," p. 10) that "Brethren" "do the same." I am compelled to say that his statement is untrue — has not even the appearance of truth. In certain cases, we do commend to God's grace those who go forth for Christ's sake, taking nothing of the Gentiles; but we never send any. Can that be what he so grossly mis-states? Nor do "Brethren" ordain elders, though they heartily allow that Apostles, or a duly-authorised deputy like Titus, quite rightly appointed these local overseers. But they do not see such Apostolic authority in others, any more than they claim it for themselves; if they knew of its existence anywhere, they would gladly seek its succour and sanction in the cases where Scripture shows it applied. Yet "Brethren" are no worse off in this respect than some of the choicest, happiest, and most blessed assemblies when Paul wrote. Is this my opinion only? Hear the excellent Bishop Hall in his Apology against Brownists (Works, vol. ix. p. 416). "He (Paul) writes to Rome, Corinth, and other Churches. Those his Divine Letters, in a sweet Christian civility, salute even ordinary Christians. And would he have utterly passed by all mention of these Church officers, amongst his so precise acknowledgment of lesser titles in others, if they had been all thus ordained? yet all these, more than true Churches, famous some of them, rich, forward, and exemplary." In Anglicanism, on the contrary, there is the pretension to ordain without the requisite authority; and Art. 23 is doubly wrong, if Scripture is indeed our standard, — as wrong in hindering the free exercise of spiritual gift in the congregation, as in appointing without competent title from God. If this be true, and needed truth for the fuller glorifying of God, it is not "lack of grace and love" to press it earnestly on His children; the real want of grace, methinks, is in such as resent it.

IV. — ARTICLES 36 AND 37.

I had pronounced these "figments," the offspring of superstition and worldliness respectively. Now for the proof. It is certain from Scripture (Acts 20: 17, 28; Phil. 1; l Tim. 3, 5; Titus 1; 1 Peter 5) and allowed by competent, godly Episcopalians that Bishops and Elders are not twain, but one office, and that Deacons had a proper work, for which they, (and not necessarily the Elders or Bishops), were distinctively fitted, instead of its being a kind of ecclesiastical boy-bachelorship, through which all must pass to the higher grades. Why, then, is a practice adhered to; in the face of Scriptures, which condemn it in the Ordinal itself? Because it is an ancient superstition. Custom, however, without truth, is but error with grey hairs, as Cyprian said. A more confused scheme can hardly be. For the Prayer-Book applies 1 Tim. 3 and Acts 20 to the Episcopal order in the sense of tradition, (not of Scripture), contrary to the judgment of many of their ablest doctors, who refer them both to Presbyters. This creates a gap in the form and manner of Ordering of Priests, where from want of texts treating of their duties with precision, they read Eph. 4: 7, Matt. 9: 36, and John 10: 1, not one of which is appropriate to Elders as such. But the worst of all is the abuse of our Lord's words in John 20 and the pretension to confer the Holy Ghost without the power. Our Lord, on the evening of His resurrection, breathed on those present, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whosoever sins," etc. not the receivers were the disciples, not apostles only, still less presbyters. The Anglican mistake is palpable, and the superstition dangerous; for that is made the peculiar badge of a few (with "ecclesiastical despotism," here indeed, "the inevitable result,") which Christ gave as the blessed portion of us all. When I know how saints in the Establishment have groaned under all this, how revolting is the unscrupulous zeal of one who seems resolved to atone for past infidelity to the Church of his forefathers by an almost frenzied readiness to do battle now for its worst faults!

As to the Sovereign's supremacy in civil things, "Brethren" yield to none in willing homage and subjection, not for wrath, but conscience' sake. Are we to render to Caesar the things not of Caesar only, but of God too? Scripture attributes the headship of the Church to Christ only. "Spiritual," as distinguished from Ecclesiastical supremacy is pure fancy: if not, where is the proof? God's Word leaves no room for human headship of the Church, Papal or Royal; while it demands allegiance to the Crown in its own external sphere. If the Church was only formed after the Saviour's death, Art. 37 must be all in the dark about the prerogative "given always to all godly princes in Holy Scripture," as far as Ecclesiastical things are concerned. Those who claim the chief rule in these estates for a King or Queen, are bound to prove it, if they can, from the Scriptures which really speak of the Church, and not of Judaism: if recourse is had to the latter only, we can see whither such men are bound. What can be more "worldly" than, without Scripture, to invent a place in the Church corresponding to the highest earthly seat? Are the world and the Church but different aspects of the same body? Alas! too true in the minds of many.

V. — THE ARTICLES DEFICIENT.

The charge was, that they do not even allude to some of the weightiest of revealed truths; such as the regeneration, indwelling and other operations of the Spirit, though upholding His deity and personality; and, in particular, that one would not gather from them the baptism of the Holy Ghost or His presence and distribution of gifts in the Church. The answer confirms the accusation, for Art. 27 treats not of regeneration, but of its sign. It is false that regeneration itself is referred to, save only as signified by baptism. It was meant clearly that there is no allusion to its own proper nature in the Articles. If Art. 27 really conveys that baptism is "an instrument through which the Holy Ghost operates," (p. 12), it is much worse than I ever thought it to be; because this would be a formal avowal of Baptismal regeneration here, as well as in the Services. Nor does Art. 17 allude to the indwelling, or the anointing, the seal or the earnest of the Spirit. His general working is not the matter in question, but His operations distinctively, and in particular, the nature and effects of His presence in the Christian and in the Church, as contra-distinguished from all that existed before Pentecost. Again, the reference to Articles 6 and 9 as Anglican testimony to Christ's headship, priesthood and advocacy, proves simply that Mr. W. does not understand these great truths. Besides, my argument was not for, but against such a human Confession, because of the evident imperfection of the Thirty-nine. But why the addition of some omitted and momentous truths of God should be "burdensome" (p. 13) to one who justifies errors and deficiencies alike, is not reasonable.

Next, Art. 6, while it asserts the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation, in opposition to Rome, does not imply that any Anglican, above all, a clergyman, is at liberty to dissent from the formularies, no matter how sure he may be that certain parts are unscriptural. This may possibly tax the "patience" of a zealot, but it is perfectly certain. Is this, then, duly to maintain the authority of God's Word? In the haste to contradict what no man can in fairness gainsay, Mr. W. says, (p. 14), that this Article "asserts two things, the sufficiency of Scripture for salvation, and secondly," whatsoever is not read therein, (about any matter) is not to be required of any man; and then refers to Art. 20. Now this is incorrect, as well as misapplied: for what is called the second thing in Art. 6 is indubitably the further explanation of its one object. And the prefatory Royal Mandate assumes that Anglicanism has nothing in doctrine or regimen but what agrees with Scripture. Whatever may be the outcry of some, (p. 14), I have produced proof enough from God's Word, which His grace will make effectual, I doubt not, in souls open to conviction.

VI. — BAPTISMAL REGENERATION.

That this is the doctrine of the Services for baptism, and the remains of Popish darkness, is my charge. What is the reply? I am sent to Arts. 25 and 27! It is taken for granted that there can be no jar between these Articles and the Services: a notion quite opposed to the judgment, not merely of unbiassed men, but of many Anglicans entitled to respect. It is well known that the Tractarians rely on the Services for Baptismal regeneration, and the Evangelicals on the Articles against it, and both with too much reason. For compromise has been the policy almost always, and thus real consistency exists for neither of the opposed parties. Now I impugned the Services, not the Article on baptism; and I do not accept the latter as security for the former. The really "uncandid and disingenuous conduct" is exclusively on his part who evades the question. The one point, which I have accused of Popish darkness, remains; the three Services, the Catechism, and the Confirmation, all attest that the Anglican doctrine is, regeneration of the Spirit in and by baptism. I have never said or thought that the Articles affirm this: let him who will, (I do not) say, that they contradict it. If it were true that they did contradict, a further proof would be afforded of their slippery, incoherent character, but no proof at all that the Services do not repeat, and are not founded on, one of the worst errors of Rome. Is it not certain that the Services suppose the subject (infant or adult) to be unregenerate before the rite of baptism, and pronounce it regenerate immediately after? Is not this Popish enough for an evangelical clergyman's task? Or does the mischief lie, not in the pestilent falsehood which declares that the baptized are all regenerate, but in the salt, the saliva, the anointing, the exorcisms, etc.? Where does Scripture teach this doctrine? Is it in Acts 2: 38; Acts 22: 16; Titus 3: 5? Does any one of these texts, or John 3: 5; or Mark 16, quoted afterwards (pp. 17, 19), attribute spiritual life to baptism? There is no semblance of that fatal error. I acknowledge the great importance of baptism as the first formal act which accompanies the confession of Christ. I own that he who refuses in such circumstances to submit to baptism has no proper title to be recognised as a Christian. True repentance and faith are inseparable, and neither can be without the quickening of the Spirit; but baptism is due to Christ as the expression of owning the Lord who died for us and rose again. The Jews who repented in Acts 2, were told to be baptized before they received the Pentecostal gift; the Gentiles of Cornelius' household had the promise of the Father given to them before they were baptized; but in neither case, nor in any other of which Scripture speaks, is one soul said to be regenerate by baptism. Of these Scriptures, only John 3 and Titus 3 speak of regeneration, but not of baptism. Through the word of truth, says James, did God beget us; born again, says Peter, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God; in Christ Jesus, says Paul, I have begotten you through the gospel. Nay more: the same apostle writes to the same saints, thanking God that he had baptized but few of them. "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel:" an incredible slight, if baptism were "plainly declared to be an instrument through which the Holy Spirit operates," but quite simple, if life be through the gospel received in the heart by the Holy Spirit. "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life," and so, even before, John writes, "as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." There is not a word about baptism, but all is to believe. So the application of John 3 to baptism is merely traditional, and at variance with the context: for how could Nicodemus understand Christian baptism founded on the not yet accomplished death and resurrection of the Saviour? Our Lord reproaches him, as an Israelitish teacher, for not knowing the new birth; and this, because it was not some new thing, but truth which he should have gleaned from the Psalms and Prophets especially Ezekiel 36: 25-27. All the faithful in every dispensation were and must be born of water and the Spirit, one as much as another. The passage, therefore, has no such reference, though I deny not that baptism may outwardly represent the truth there insisted on. I conclude, then, that Scripture offers no cloak to hide the shame of the Anglican Offices for baptism, but, contrariwise, attributes to the Word of God revealing Christ, that which they assign with Rome to an ordinance.

As for assuming "a meaning for the term regeneration" (p. 18), the Services etc. speak with such clearness and emphasis as to exclude doubt. "Spiritual regeneration," "born again," "regenerated with the Holy Spirit," "my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," ought to leave no room for hesitation. And very singular it is, that the same pen which in pp. 12 and 17 ventured on the ground of sacramental grace for baptism, descends so low in page 19 as to assert that "regeneration in all these services means the open admission of candidates into the church; their visible adoption as the Lord's children, of which water is the sign and pledge." Had this been said of baptism, one might have little to object; but to speak thus of "regeneration," is to impose, if on himself, on very few others, I hope. The doctrine is thoroughly bad — anti-evangelical, as well as anti-Anglican. 1 had almost omitted to say that I doubt not for a moment God's mercy to infants who die (pp. 17, 18). Matt. 18 is a comforting warrant as to not merely the little ones which believe in Christ, but little children in general. But spiritual regeneration in and by baptism is a serious thing for man to assert, whether for young or old, without God's Word. We may speak of answers to prayer; but is it "believing prayer" which asks for what is unscriptural? If baptismal regeneration be heterodox, prayer cannot make it true or holy.

My blaming the application of the ark to the Church, instead of to Christ, is deemed "very absurd." "What little paltry things the Plymouth Brethren catch at!" (p. 20) The ark notwithstanding is allowed to be a type of Christ; but this defence for the other turn is set up, that Christ and the Church are one and the baptized person is not only in the ark, but in Christ's Church! This is certainly a piece of pleading and exegesis which "Brethren" have no reason to envy. Adam and Eve were one, and typify the great mystery of the Church's union with Christ. But were the "living souls" one with "the vessel" which carried them through the deluge? "A little learning is a dangerous thing;" and Mr. W. is a witness of it. Does a spiritual man require to be told that the ark typifies salvation in and by Christ, not oneness with Him, which is shown elsewhere? To misapply the ark to the Church, is another bit of Popery, it is to confound the saved with the Saviour.

The next paragraph (pp. 20, 21) is a melancholy sample of the lengths to which a soul can flounder, when an apology for error is undertaken. "The scheme of sponsors is clearly sanctioned in Deut. 29: 10-16." The author of the argument, unconscious of making its folly manifest to all, does not fail to print the decisive proof in italics and capitals — "also with him that is NOT HERE, with us this day (unborn children)." Happy people of Kirkby Ravensworth! Other poor churchmen must wait at least till the children are born, before sponsors can do their work; you, of course, are taught to do what the children of Israel did, "by the same high authority" which publishes it to the world at large. One would think that, according to this principle, the three thousand souls, added on the day of Pentecost, ought to have stood sponsors for all the Christian children not yet born; especially as Peter told them, "The promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." The argument that it is the Abrahamic covenant, because of the reference to the fathers in verse 13, is frivolous. It was, no doubt, another covenant besides that which the Lord made with them at Horeb — a special covenant, when the children of Israel were in Moab, in order to enable them to enter the promised land, and enjoy it provisionally. When the covenant, not with the children, but with the fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) really comes into force for "that nation," they will enjoy the promises for ever; as we do now in Christ, and in a heavenly way, according to Galatians and Hebrews.

VII. — CONFESSION OF SIN.

Before turning to this last section, let me ask the reader of Mr. W.'s letter to compare my words, before he believes the groundless calumny that the reading of the Word of God in the [Establishment was attacked. I reasoned from the acknowledged design of the "Sentences" to show that the impenitent are there contemplated, and not saints only. Neither Mr. W. nor any one else ever heard those passages read, as they are there used, in any assembly of "Brethren" met to worship God. The "Absolution" was challenged as unscriptural, and chiefly for being sacerdotal, not declarative merely: else a deacon might read it, as surely as he might preach if licensed. Mr. W. infers (page 22) that I do not believe Christians have sins to confess! If he have an atom of conscience which has escaped the hot iron, how could he overlook the words in that very place? "I cordially allow the value to God's children of confessing their sins of omission and commission individually," etc. The disgraceful spirit which so tortures my words, would have sought to torture myself in days bygone — to return, perhaps, for a brief moment yet. As to the Litany, or the Collect which supposes worshippers not merely to have sin in them, but to be "tied and bound with the chain of their sins," (pp. 23, 24,) if people cannot discern the contrast between such misery and bondage, and the living liberty in the Spirit which Rom. 8 depicts as the normal condition of the Christian, they are assuredly for the present beyond the ordinary means of Scriptural conviction. They have lost the power of the gospel of God's grace in their souls; or, still more probably, they never knew it in deed and in truth. Christians I do not doubt they are, whom I love as truly as the "Brethren," for the bond is one, but the state in which they are is not Christian. "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?"

PART II.

The attack on "Brethren," especially at the beginning and close (pp. 25, 43) is written in the worst style of controversy. A vague hue and cry is raised against a body of Christians, as if that existed in their midst which was too bad to name — "the flagrant immoralities among the Plymouth Brethren." Along with a charge which demands the utmost care, and the fullest proof, lest a thoroughly false impression might be conveyed to the ignorant and the prejudiced, credit is more than once and most strangely, assumed for "the mantle of charity!" Do professions of love, loudly and easily made, render ill-will less odious? It is idle to say that there are "many of God's dear people, and many of my own highly-valued and beloved friends" found there. If the accusations were true, if "Brethren" did not clear themselves habitually from trifling with evil, I, for one, confess that they would be to my mind more guilty than their neighbours. For if others are fettered, we are not; so that any corporate indisposition to justify God, when sin is discovered, would argue a liking for iniquity, not a love of holiness. That among us, as even in the brightest days of God's church, isolated cases of a distressing kind have occasionally occurred here and there, nobody denies; as indeed any serious pretence of immunity from such things would be evident self-deceit. That the outbreak of scandals in those bearing Christ's name, whether among or outside "Brethren," calls for our tears and self-abasement, we feel — not on account of our reputation, but for His sake who is thus afresh wounded in the house of His friends. Let none expect here the praise of "Brethren" as a counter-blast to the foulest detraction, let none fear lest when reviled we should revile again: rather would we commit all to Him who judges righteously. It was probably owing to the Scriptural discipline carried out amongst us, that most cases of this afflicting character became known. What can be less worthy than to turn that grave and holy dealing into a means of blackening "Brethren," who were at least as free from blame as their accusers? If we had hushed all up, if for any consideration we had renounced our liberty and responsibility to put evil away, it would have been justly censurable; as it is, we court enquiry and have no fears for the result.

The charge that we go about, "not to bring sinners to Christ, but to draw away God's people," proves that there is no regard made to the appearance of truth. The sole foundation for it is the large place given everywhere in our midst to the progress of Christians in the truth. If God's children come, attracted by what they do not find elsewhere, is this our fault? But wherever there are evangelists among "Brethren," there is an active work among the unconverted. I remember a town in England where the same senseless cry was repeated, though the absurdity was peculiarly plain there; for every brother in communion happened to be a preacher of Christ to perishing sinners, and each used to set out on his labours all around, when the Lord's Supper was over.

REVIVED TRUTH.

Leaving the divisions till we examine into the cause, let me say that I adhere to the statement respecting the late revival of forgotten truth as to Christ's union with the Church, our proper hope, and the doctrine of the Holy Ghost. Mr. Burgh, (now called de B.) far from recovering these treasures, does not see one of them clearly to this day. The books for which he was noted, and the earliest known to me, were his Lectures on the Second Advent, and his Exposition of the Apocalypse the first editions of which, I believe, did not appear before 1833-4. Before that date, not a few had quitted the Establishment, and "Brethren" in Ireland had been walking in the joyful knowledge of truth far beyond these very elementary and not very sound works for years previously. That people in Dublin might feel a local interest in Mr. B.'s publications, is probable. But he was distrusted by intelligent men; among other reasons for this, — that having seceded, he rejoined the Establishment, on the same ground of tradition which is the basis of Tractarianism. Some may have hailed any glimpses of truth in the writings of one severed from themselves by so great a gulf. Even as to prophecy, he differs in most of his main principles from those which prevail among "Brethren." His view of the Seals, e.g., was ridiculous in the extreme. Thus the first he construed as Christ's Second Coming to judge! and the sixth as the literal signs at that epoch!! Any one who has the smallest insight into the Apocalypse will perceive not merely the double mistake, but the absence it betrays of real light to comprehend the structure of the book. Again, with him, the trumpets were to be taken literally, and not as symbols; the witnesses Moses and Elias, slain literally and rising, etc. I do not think I have looked into either of these books for more than twenty years, or ever saw those published since, nor am I aware of a copy in the possession of any brother. But I remember enough to say the affinity is not with "Brethren," but with Mr. Newton, who used to recommend Mr. B.'s writings. Both were ultra-futurist, both pseudo-literal, both rejected the older Protestant school, and both judaized greatly. Very different ground was taken, and is kept by leading "Brethren." I spoke, however, of our proper heavenly hope, as distinguished from the earthly events of prophecy; and of that, as far as I am aware, Mr. B. knows nothing, any more than of the true doctrine of the Church's oneness with Christ, or of the special presence and operations of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. Grosser ignorance as to facts, doctrines, persons, and dates, can hardly be, than in Mr. W.'s account.*

* Since the above was written, I have procured Mr. B.'s "Lectures," (ed. 3, 1845), as my remarks referred mainly to his "Exposition." Now, in Lect. vii. the doctrine is that the first resurrection is special to such Christians as are martyrs or at least sufferers. "Yes, there are Christians, and Christian ministers, who act thus [i.e., oppose pre-millennialism] in our day: and what shall we say of them? That, because believers, they shall reign? No, — we dare not" (p. 277). This he rests on a misapprehension of 2 Tim. 2: 12, and also on a passably false criticism respecting 1 Thess. 4: 14, as if "in" (literally through) Jesus were the same as on account, or behalf, of Him, which would demand a quite different construction Need it be added that "Brethren" unanimously reject such strange doctrine as this?

RECEPTION.

As to our receiving or rather rejecting some, the challenge is coarse enough. Every saint who walks as such is received unconditionally in the Lord's name. This, and no other, is our basis. I am told that it is not so, and that I know it right well! What is the reason for the unbecoming speeches in pp. 27, 28? "If 3 child of God comes to you from Mr. Newton's congregation, would you receive him at your table?" I answer, certainly not, because we are satisfied that such an one, if a child of God, is not walking as such, and is, therefore, inadmissible at the Lord's table. How could one be suffered to break bread whom we believe to be a partaker of the evil deeds of a blasphemer against the Lord? The general principle of welcoming every Christian, without imposing conditions of ours, is in no way contradicted by the most resolute refusal of those who dishonour Christ's name morally, or of others who bring not the doctrine of Christ — a still more terrible and fatal form of sin. 1 Cor. 5 is no plainer for parting from an immoral man that is called a brother, than 2 John is for rejecting such as do not hold a true Christ.* It matters not what may seem to be their personal qualities: Christ himself ought to be infinitely more precious; and true love is proved by abhorring that which is evil, as really as by cleaving to what is good. Scripture is too explicit to allow a loop-hole of escape from the positive obligation of the Christian as to this vital matter.

* The remarks in page 29, do not deserve notice. What I censured was the error of making love, in contra-distinction to holiness, either the centre or the principle of unity: whereas love is rather its energetic motive. The truth is, that Christ is the centre, love the active spring, and holiness the principle of unity according to God and His Word. To call these certain and elementary truths "hair-splitting," is only to expose one's ignorance to spiritual men.

Further, 2 John is decisive that it is not enough to be personally sound in the faith. Even a woman, the elect lady, is instructed by the apostle as to her own direct responsibility, if any one sought her house or fellowship who brought false doctrine about Christ. "If there come any to you, and bring not this doctrine [of Christ], receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." That is to say, the principle is distinctly laid down, that the person who religiously countenances those who confess not the Christ of God, becomes a partaker of the evil deeds of the deceiver, even without necessarily imbibing the evil doctrine. Indeed, a spiritual mind would feel that dreadful as it is to be misled for a time into such heresy, he is incomparably more guilty who, professing to hold the true doctrine of Christ, consents to fellowship with the man who denies it. "Now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth."

Now this is the attitude of "Brethren" towards the alleged blasphemer and his partizans. If we suppose for a moment that the blasphemy is a fact, 2 John not only vindicates the course complained of, but shows that it is an imperative duty, which admits of neither hesitation nor compromise. Had the elect lady, spite of the apostolic warning, deliberately received one who brought not the doctrine of Christ, she would have at once become identified with the guilt of the deceiver, and its consequences. In vain the plea that she was herself a godly christian, and sound in faith: still the Word pronounces — a "partaker of his evil deeds." She would, knowingly in this case, for her own ease have committed herself to an act of high treason against the Lord; she would have yielded to overt communion with that which to the last degree dishonoured His person: and thus, till she had cleared herself from the sin, in the sight of God and man, she would have sunk morally to the level of an accomplice. If she had better light, so much the worse to behave as if she had none. To receive her, under such circumstances, would be to participate in similar wickedness; it would be receiving her not to the glory of God, but to His shame, because it would be barefaced indifference to the affront put upon His Son. And "whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." "He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." "Brethren" have given pretty strong proof that they do not make light of ecclesiastical evil, by separating from all associations which involve departure from God's Word; but they refuse to put such questions on the same platform with deep, damnable, fundamental denial of Christ. The Word of God, not any theory or rule of ours, is the warrant for both. Did we follow our thoughts or our natural wishes, it is folly to suppose that we should pursue a course which separates us from hundreds and thousands, who would desire to be with us on condition of our letting them tamper with this treason against the Lord. Does such a course look much like anxiety for numbers?

NEWTONISM AND BETHESDA.

Mr. Newton's doctrine, to which I have alluded thus strongly, is, that apart from vicarious sufferings, ("Remarks on the Sufferings of the Lord Jesus," pp. 2, 3, note, pp. 9, 11), Christ came by birth as a man and an Israelite, into a condition of distance and inflictions from God, in which "He was made experimentally to prove the reality of that condition into which others, but more especially Israel, had sunk themselves, by their disobedience to God's holy Law, a condition out of which He was able to extricate himself, and from which He could extricate Himself by His own perfect obedience." (p. 12.) "God pressed these things on the apprehensions of His soul, according to His own power and holiness, and caused Him to feel a part of that which was exposed to the judgments of His heavy hand" (p. 14.) "And Jesus as man, was associated with this place of distance in which man in the flesh was, and He had through obedience to find His way to that point where God could meet Him, as having finished His appointed work — glorify Him, and set Him at His own right hand, in the heavenly places; and that point was death — death on the cross — death under the wrath of God" (pp. 31, 32).

Again take the following proofs from the "Observations" etc., by B. W. N. "We should regard him not only as one of the banished, but as one suffering also under the penalties which the law of his Father had imposed on the banished ones, with whom he had thus placed himself in association" (p. 8). "He was exposed, for example, because of His relation to Adam to that sentence of death, that had been pronounced on the whole family of man" (p. 9). "The mission of John must be regarded as an all-important era, not only in the life of the Lord Jesus, but in the dispensational arrangements of God. 'The Law and the Prophets were until John: from that time the kingdom of heaven is preached,' is a text sufficiently distinct. Indeed, unless grace be the same as law, and destruction the same as salvation, the infinite importance of that era cannot be denied" (pp. 10, 11). "The fire of Sinai began instantly to burn against them [Israel under curse], and therefore, even if every deserved infliction had been withheld from that moment to the time when Jesus was born, yet still He would have been-one of a nation that was exposed to all the terrors of Sinai" (p. 15). "And if the sorrow and inflictions which had fallen on Israel are said in Scripture to have been the result of 'curse' and of 'wrath,' then Jesus would have drunk of a cup of sorrow which was the result of such wrath and such curse." . . . . "He would then see that there is a peculiar class of sufferings, added to those which flowed from drinking of the general cup of human sorrow — sufferings which resulted from special inflictions on a peculiar people, and which yet were not the vicarious sufferings of the Cross" (p. 21). "Moreover, the exercises of soul which His elect in their unconverted state ought to have, and which they would have, if it were possible for them to know and feel everything rightly, according to God — such exercises, yet without sin, Jesus had" (p. 26). "The anointing of the Spirit would never have come on Him at Jordan, unless He had been fore-ordained and certainly known as the victim to be slain on Calvary" (p. 32). "And when thus exercised, though personally holy and beloved, He was made to feel that His association with those thus standing in the fearfulness of their distance from God was a real thing, and that it was so regarded by God. His was no mere pretended, imaginary association." (p. 36.)

If comment were needed on this evidence of strange and poisonous doctrine about our Lord, I would point (not to those who wrote exposures of it, but) to the printed confessions of at least three well-known men (Messrs. B., D., and S., ministerially associated in the closest way with Mr. N.), who owned publicly, and in the most solemn manner, that the doctrine was an elaborate system, permeating their view of a very large part of Scripture, and quite as deadly, if not more so, than had been charged. One of them warned people affectingly, that those who rested on what they had taught for years could not be saved. For briefly the heresy is, that Christ was by birth, relatively in man's distance as a sinner, and in Israel's special ruin under a broken law; that He was therefore obnoxious to the penalties of this double relationship, not imputatively, nor vicariously, but by association as one of them; that He extricated Himself by obedience, faith, and prayer, out of some of those inflictions by which He was threatened, passing notably by baptism out of law into grace — from Sinai to Zion; that He had the exercises of soul which the elect in their unconverted state ought to have; and that He had, spite of this, to find His way to a point where God could meet Him, — death under God's wrath; the anointing of the Spirit having come on Him at Jordan only in virtue of His own foreseen sacrifice. If all this be not an audacious contempt of God's testimony to our adorable Lord; if it be not a systematic overthrow of all that is really taught of His relation to God as made of a woman, made under the law, if it do not inevitably destroy the atonement and Christianity itself, words have lost their meaning. No heretic that I know ever set himself to debase Christ, — neither Arius nor Socinus, neither Mr. Irving nor Mr. Newton. None of them insinuated personal sin in Christ — Mr. N. perhaps the nearest to it, in that awful illustration, "If I were to send a faithful servant heavily burthened to scale the sides of an icy mountain, and were to see his foot slide, should I marvel?" (Remarks, p. 17, note.) Most heretics have said excellent things — Mr. Irving, perhaps, the most. The true question is: Did the peculiar doctrine of each supplant and destroy God's truth as to His Son? Who doubts that Irvingism did? Who can pretend that Newtonism is less anti-christian? The only right experience, under man's distance and a broken law, such as an elect man would feel if he felt as he ought in that condition, is that of a lost man; and if Christ, not vicariously, had to find His way to death under wrath as a meeting-place with God, all foundations are gone, and He must die for Himself, and therefore not for us. The partner in a bankrupt firm is necessarily liable: for such an one there can be no suretyship by grace. If it be contended that Christ is supposed to have extricated Himself from liability to die for Himself by good works and a sort of baptismal regeneration under John Baptist's hand, the truth is equally lost in another way; for this assumes deliverance from the wrath due to association with sinful man and transgressing Israel by works and ordinances without death. If again, it be said, Not so, but by His own foreseen sacrifice, we are brought round once more to the former abomination, according to which His death was needed to save Himself, and therefore could avail in no wise for others. The substitutory work of the Saviour thus vanishes, and what is of yet deeper consequence, the dignity of His person which clothes that work with its infinite value. If it be pretended that Mr. N. made an acknowledgement of doctrinal errors, dated Nov. 27th, 1847, I allow that he did withdraw the application of Rom. 5: 19 (first clause) to Christ, and the involving Him in the imputation of Adam's sin. But I have made a point of rehearsing as above what has never, so far as I know, been retracted: doctrine more degrading to the Saviour, more calculated to undermine His work, who can show? Let the intelligent and godly judge. Plainly, truthfully put, I have never known a child of God among Churchmen or Dissenters, any more than "Brethren," to hesitate as to its real source and character, as of the enemy, save only where souls had been themselves corrupted. "No man speaking by the Holy Ghost calleth Jesus accursed;" which is the precise issue here, more fully than in any other system of kindred blasphemy.

When the meeting at Bethesda, (Bristol), admitted several partisans of Mr. N., and thus occasioned a separation far and wide among "Brethren," it had been for years fully owned as enjoying intercommunion. Hence, there is no honesty in comparing that meeting with individuals coming from the national body or dissenters. How far Bethesda really coalesced, it may be hard to say: still, it was an accomplished fact, and no question was raised, till the crisis of 1848 came, when reasons were sought to palliate the fatal deed of receiving the known followers of a convicted heretic. Now we have always excepted cases of real ignorance. But what could justify receiving persons of intelligence who came straight from his party, eulogising and circulating .the very tracts which contained the anti-christian doctrine already described? Bethesda received them in the most determined manner, driving out not a few souls, some of them among the most spiritual, enlightened, and devoted there, who refused to sanction indifference to a blasphemy at Bristol, from which they were at all cost apart at Plymouth and elsewhere. Not satisfied with letting these people in, ten of the leaders at Bethesda put forth a too famous document, in which they laboured to defend their refusal of investigation before receiving the incriminated. The first thing insisted on was that the Bethesda meeting should clear those who signed it: else they would labour no more in their midst! Was it surprising that the mass fell into the snare, and consented to vote the leaders right, before the tracts were read, or comments allowed in presence of the meeting? After the breach was consummated, they held meetings in which Mr. N.'s doctrine was condemned, especially by Mr. M. as strongly almost as by any outside Bethesda. Partly by this, and partly by other means, Mr. N.'s partisans retired from Bethesda, expressly not waiving their claim to be there, but desiring to release the leaders of some of their difficulties. Could this yield a moment's satisfaction to a sober Christian? Bethesda was bound to clear itself openly of a sin of the gravest kind openly done: mere words would not avail, nor getting rid of souls in an underhand way. Subsequently a party was formed, a public building was taken, Mr. N. was had there, and two of "the ten" (Messrs. A. and W.) were found in their midst. The movement failed; and these two leading men, to speak of no others, after Bethesda's loud denunciation of the Newtonian blasphemy, after their own public association with Mr. N., were permitted to return to Bethesda, without the smallest confession of their notorious and flagrant sin. All they owned was the wrong of leaving Bethesda; but they were not asked, nor did they give, an expression of sorrow for the wickedness of fraternising with one who still retained the main part of his heresy as to Christ. And because we renounce all fellowship with such ways and persons, we are covered with the bitterest reproaches which combined folly and malice can heap up! We are taxed with "new tests," and I know not what. Whereas, on the face of the matter, it was the beloved Apostle, not we, who wrote 2 John. And if he introduced no now test when he insisted on uncompromising rigour wherever a false Christ was in question, how charge us with it who are very simply carrying out the Word of God given through him? Those who plead for laxity in such a case, would be more consistent if they denied the authority of this Scripture altogether.

LIBERTY OF MINISTRY.

How any man who has ever known the assemblies of "Brethren," can deny that this is the simple, honest practice in their midst, is mysterious. The only explanation of a statement to the contrary, is that an enemy may be so heated as to say anything. The fact is patent and certain. Along with meetings where the faithful come together, as such, according to 1 Cor. 14 there are other occasions when an Evangelist preaches the gospel, or a teacher discourses on a given subject or expounds a portion of the Scriptures. Ignorant persons sometimes confound these two very distinct things, and charge us with inconsistency, because they expect nothing but the assembly always. Wherever men so gifted are found amongst us, there is an active ministry towards both the world and the Church: for those who have from the Master talents to these ends, there are abundant opportunities for trading with them, as well as for souls to seek help and profit by their means. Thus, we have the assemblies of saints, and the exercise of ministry by gifted individuals, wherever such exist, each on its own ground, and both needed for God's glory, and the well-being of His children. If we denied the place and value of chief men, guides, rulers, etc., it would be the grossest infatuation, forsaking our own mercies, fighting against the Word and Spirit of God, and setting up that lowest of all low things — a religious democracy. As to the evil tale, which our adversary takes up (p. 32,) to show that liberty is in name only and not a reality, I never heard of anything in the least degree resembling it, save what occurred in the meeting at Plymouth from which "Brethren" separated. Liberty does not mean license for the flesh, nor carelessness as to the truth or holiness. But that there is the fullest real liberty, as the rule among us, is a fact which the reader can ascertain for himself by going to any meeting save those which are convened avowedly for individual ministry.

THE CHARACTER OF COMMUNION.

The first objection is to the remark that it is a sin to walk and worship with those who are evidently of the world and have not a pure heart wherewith to call on the Lord. This is imagined to be judging others improperly, and a presumptuous interference with God's prerogative (pp. 33, 34). Can anything be more deplorable? Are those who thus think, aware that the remark was grounded on the plain Word of God in 2 Tim. 2: 22? There the apostle first enjoins the duty of purging oneself from vessels to dishonour, (i.e., ungodly professors of Christ in the "great house,") and then, with the exhortation to flee also youthful lusts, urges on the man of God to follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. If Timothy was right in pursuing this path, are we wrong? If it was no presumption on his part, how can it be on ours? The ignorance of Scriptural principles and practice is truly astounding.

Next, the statements as to the tares are at least as hardy. "Passages which have reference only to individual conduct are applied to the Church in its corporate capacity. I shall only now refer to one — the parable of the tares and wheat" (p. 34). Why it is they who apply it thus, not I! Had I made this observation, there would have been some reason for it: but what can people mean, when the truth is that I complain of their misapplying the parable to the Church? And how do they get rid of our Lord's explanation, that the field means not the Church but the world? "The Church was not formed. It was in deed and in truth, the world then. What else could it be?" Can it be that this trash has been read and passed muster among Anglicans! If so, assuredly they are to be pitied deeply. The Dean of Westminster, it has been shown elsewhere, falls back on an error exactly opposite; for he will have it to be an anticipation of the future, when the Church shall embrace the whole world: a flat contradiction of the Church's essentially eclectic character. Nevertheless, no idea yet broached exceeds in childishness the view so confidently put forth by Mr. W. Is it not obvious that the Lord anticipates the kingdom of heaven, and that the verb "is" or "are," in Matt. 13: 37-40, has no reference to the question of the time then present, but is purely explanatory? Thus, He says, in the same conversation, "the harvest is the end of the world (or age); and the reapers are the angels." What would be thought of one who interpreted these clauses of the time then present? Equally groundless is it to speak of the field being "the world then."

The meaning of the parable is plain. Being the kingdom of heaven, it cannot be dated earlier than the Ascension. The good seed of the Word is sown of the Lord in the world, not merely in the land of Israel; and among the children of. the kingdom, Satan afterwards sows spurious professors. But both are viewed as growing together in the field or world; not a word is here intimated about either being in the Church or assembly. Both wheat and tares are new objects here below; they are not mere good and bad men, but righteous and ungodly professors of Christ in the world. Only at first the tares were not obvious; but they appeared' when fruit was brought forth, and the servants had no difficulty then in detecting them. It is false that the openly wicked are not tares (compare verses 38 and 41), and it contradicts the text itself, that wheat and tares can scarcely be distinguished till harvest (v. 27, 28). On the contrary, the Lord forbids the judgment of the children of the wicked one — not of some, but all — till the end of the age. If this applied really to the Church, it would bind together the godly and the ungodly, yea, the most notoriously reprobate as well as the rest, so as to forbid absolutely every act of discipline; it would contradict the Rubrics of the Establishment, and the rules of every religious society; and still more decidedly the Word of God would be broken thereby.

The truth is, that Christendom is meant; but who guided by Scripture, would call that the Church? All baptized persons, Romanists, Churchmen, Dissenters, "Brethren," are wheat or tares in the field or world of profession. There is no such thing as chaff (p. 35) in this chapter distinct from the wheat and tares. Elsewhere we hear of wheat and chaff, here only of wheat and tares. And the structure of the Greek in verse 38 makes plain to any scholar that as the good seed are co-extensive with the children of the kingdom or the righteous, so are the tares with the children of the wicked one. In other words, the notion that the openly wicked are not included in the tares is positively contradicted by the form of our Lord's interpretation; and if they are included, the argument for unholy communion, as the Lord's will (may they be forgiven the vile thought!), is destroyed. His instruction here has an aim quite apart from ecclesiastical fellowship. The servants are forbidden to execute judgment on wicked professors, lest misguided zeal might destroy true disciples; for who can say what prodigals or self-righteous men may not yet be brought to God? To spread the gospel, to walk in grace, is the proper business of His servants now: by and by, to angels will fall the work of exterminating vengeance, Our task is to sow the good, not to uproot or destroy the evil. Babylon is in the field, and the voice from heaven says, "Come out of her, my people." No, says the common perversion, "let both grow together till the harvest." If, on the other hand, we can renounce Babylon, and yet both continued to grow together in the field, we can with equal consistency leave every other error and evil condemned by God's Word: Matt. 13 raises no obstacle whatever.

Again, neither does the assembly, or Church appear in the remaining parables. All here is assumption without grounds. The Epistles in general show us corporate responsibility; but there, unquestionably, the wicked are to be put out: which could not be if the field ever became the Church. The Asiatic churches (Rev. 2, 3) are not intended to teach us discipline; but 1 Cor. 5 expressly deals with this point — for some alas! in vain. And, here, the old defamation of the Corinthian church reappears; and excessively dark it is. I have already shown that the application of "Be ye reconciled to God" is mistaken, and that the denial of the resurrection end consequent ignorance of God are exaggerated. Had these men denied the truth, after the Epistle was written, the case would have been far worse; but this none can say, and 2 Cor. rather leads one to the opposite conclusion. — Again, 2 Cor. 13: 2 as it threatens with apostolic discipline, so it in no way implies that they were not believers; and verse 5 argues on the thought that they were in the faith, instead of the common absurdity which Mr. W. shares. For the Corinthians sought a proof of Christ speaking in the apostle (verse 3.) Well then, says he, "examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" — the very last thing these men would allow. Thus, the strength of the reasoning turns on the certainty that they were in the faith. If they wished a proof of Paul's apostleship, they, as being converted through his preaching, were the proof of it themselves. If they were not in the faith, so far the proof of Christ speaking in Paul was gone. The argument, therefore, supposes that they were in the faith, not that they were not, as Mr. W. assumes. — It is needless to say that the divisions and heresies (or sects) in 2 Cor. 11 do not imply that the disorderly were not real Christians, any more than those who, too confident in their knowledge, made light of idolatrous evil. The rest has been already noticed. I utterly deny that any or all these things make out a parallel between Anglicanism and the church of God in Corinth. The Corinthian church contemplated not the population of the land, but only the sanctified in Christ, only such as were saints by calling, with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord. The Establishment not merely baptizes anybody, but teaches every one so baptized to say — what is notoriously a falsehood — that in baptism, "I was made a member of Christ, a child of God," etc. Multitudes of saints in the national body feel the sin of this, if Mr. W. does not; and very many do not suffer the Catechism to be learnt in their families, nor teach it in their schools. They are ashamed of it, and own that it is unscriptural.*

* Let the reader weigh the following testimony from an able and candid Anglican, whose work I have only seen since writing this tract. "From first to last whether it be for Infant or Adult whether in public or in private; whether the act be the initiatory of Baptism itself, or whether it be, as we have seen, the later process of Confirmation — in all cases alike, the phraseology is unmistakeable. In every instance, without exception, Regeneration — that is, Spiritual Regeneration, including in the ease last mentioned the absolute forgiveness of all sin, is asserted after Baptism, whilst, by the very terms of the Office, it was wanting before it. Why, Rome herself has hardly been more explicit; and we are utterly at a loss to conceive how any one, unbiassed by prejudice, and unwarped in his power of judging by still baser considerations, can possibly attach any other than a Romanizing meaning to words, borrowed, it would appear almost verbatim, from the very Ritual of Rome itself. . . . . . . . It is an undoubted fact, that men who, in the common business of life, act with unswerving consistency upon a totally different rule, hesitate not, in their more solemn capacity as the religious instructors of the people, to assert as true, in every instance, that which they hold to be false in many, and admit, to be doubtful in all." (Fisher's Liturg. Purity, V. pp. 104, 105.) "Both religion and good morals — nay, the very credit of the Gospel itself — are endangered, and that most seriously, by the use, and still more by the open vindication on the part of confessedly Christian men, of such questionable expedients, as these which have just been noticed.......Certain it is, that the great popular historian of the present day has not thought it beside the purpose of his great and elaborate undertaking to allude in pointed terms to the subject; and emphatically to denounce, as 'sophisticated,' that peculiar form of mental aberration which refuses to recognise, in the plain wording of the Baptismal Service, the 'regenerating virtue' of the Sacrament" (pp. 116, 117). "The Catechism of the Church of England, remains, to this hour, an essentially Sacramentarian Formulary — admirably adapted, in these days of extended and popular education, to impress the minds of the rising generation with the paramount of the Sacramental system; and thus to depreciate, in their estimation, the value of the more prominent and essential doctrines of the Gospel" (p. 223). "We must not, however, bring this chapter to a close without observing, that the vicarious undertaking of Godfathers and Godmothers which forms so essential a part of the baptismal theory of the Catechism possesses in itself not the smallest sanction from any authority, either human or divine. It is, in all respects, as irrational as it is unscriptural" (p. 239).

But the next paragraph (page 38) is perhaps the most extraordinary specimen in the tract. Mr Dobrée was himself my authority for saying that he had gathered from Mr. Darby the thought of a continuous bearing of the Apocalyptic churches (Sep. pp. 16, 17). To Mr. W. any debt of the sort is an affront. "They coolly tell us that we are indebted to them for these truths." Is not this strange in the face of Mr. Dobrée's plain words? Does he not know his own source better than his friend? But Mr. W. is still more unfortunate; for he proceeds to tell us that Mr. James Kelly put forward the same view long before Mr. Darby wrote his book or ever went among "Brethren." Now the truth is that the only works I know of Mr. J. K's on this subject (which he kindly sent me) strongly controvert any such view, and are apparently the development of a widely different theory thrown out by Dr. S. R. Maitland: namely, future assemblies of believing Jews in Asia Minor. So much for Mr. W.'s knowledge, either of "Brethren" and their writings, or of his own friends, whose wholly opposed schemes he actually imagines to be the parents of our's!

A very few words will suffice for the rest. One of our worst features is said to be "the notion of sinful impeccability;" but it is simply Mr. W.'s invention. There is hardly a meeting for prayer amongst us, where there is not distinct confession of sins; and so of course yet more in private day by day. Nay, more, I solemnly assure the reader, that we have from time to time assemblies expressly for confessing our sins and the sins of the church at large with fasting and prayer throughout the day. And something similar has been done on a large scale, where hundreds of brethren who labour in the word and doctrine met for conference and prayer: I have known the first day devoted to united fasting and confession.

Next, some of the wisest brethren notoriously baptize infants: the great majority of the foreign labourers do, if in England most baptize believers. But Mr. W.'s statement, that "they have, by far the greater portion of them, never been baptized," is utterly false. Nobody understood to be unbaptized, would be permitted to break bread. I know "Brethren" well, and I am not aware of an unbaptized person in their midst. How can men commit themselves to language so hasty as to assert what is contrary to the plainest facts? Perhaps Mr. W. may have spoken of the party he last knew in his transit from "Brethren" to the Establishment; but I must say that I exceedingly doubt it of them any more than of ourselves.

Again: all "Brethren" hold that not merely the New Testament, but the entire Word of God is for the Church. I am perfectly convinced that Mr. W. grossly mistook what he heard. What he confounds is the very different proposition that only certain parts of the Word are about the Church. Surely he does not gainsay this who holds that the Church was not formed when our Lord was on earth. It, however, is the simple truth. All Scripture is for our use and guidance; but only the great bulk of the New Testament actually describes and addresses the Church as such. No person who knows what the Church is can gainsay it.

We do believe that, though the Holy Spirit be equally God with the Father and the Son, yet that His personal presence in the Church, as sent down from heaven, accounts for the fact that there is in the New Testament no personal address to His person. We do believe that the true doctrine is "the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ." But it is a wicked as well as unfounded calumny, that we do not keep the first day of the week holy, though we believe it is the Lord's-day of grace and resurrection, not the Sabbath-day of creation and the law. We believe, of course, that our Lord fulfilled the law, and we doubt not that all He did end was is part of our acceptance. But this is not the righteousness of God which we are made in Christ. Still less does 2 Peter 1: 1 teach righteousness by the law. The meaning unequivocally is, that the saints obtained like precious faith with the apostle through God's righteousness, or faithful keeping of the promises. It is a question of context whether God and Christ are here classed together, or whether Jesus is not meant to be described as our God and Saviour. But there is no allusion, in either case, to Christ's keeping the law, but to the righteousness which secured faith to the saints. Even Dr. J. Owen admits that the meaning here is that "it is a righteous thing with God to give faith to them for whom Christ died" (On the Death of Christ, chap. 11, p. 37, ed. 1721).

Finally, so far are we from desiring to destroy or weaken the authority of God's law, that many "Brethren" (and I among them) strongly object to the Authorized Version of Rom, 7: 6, unqualifiedly preferring the marginal rendering to the text. For it is a dangerous error to say that the law is dead. Not so: the believer is dead to the law, and we are not under the law but under grace; and this, as a question of holy walk (as in Rom. 6), not justification only. Christ, and the entire Bible, are the pattern and rule for the Christian, so that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Hence, the appropriateness of Eph. 6; for if honour paid to the father and mother were emphatically prized under the law and its earthly promises, how much more should children obey their parents under the gospel. "But we know that the law is good if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man [the use to which it is now often and wrongly misapplied], but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners," etc.

"The Unity of the Spirit"

Ephesians 4: 1-3.

W. Kelly.

(This document is abridged by about 20%. That which is omitted is history and examples, but their removal also unbalances the article. The original document is the file: unity_sp.html. It is also suggested that the file: dochrist.html — 'The Doctrine of Christ and Bethesdaism' be read. Compiler)

The Need for Diligence

The importance which God attaches to keeping the unity of the Spirit is sufficiently plain to every Christian reader. "Endeavouring" fails to give the real force of the word employed by the Spirit of God. The word "endeavour" in the ordinary language of the day is habitually applied to that which men essay or seek after, even if they have not a hope of accomplishing. They feel that they may fail, but at any rate they try or "endeavour" to do this or that. Such is not the meaning of the word here, but rather zeal in heeding and carrying out what is already true, giving diligence "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." This, however, shows that not mere effort to attain, but earnestness to maintain, is the exhortation intended.

For the unity of the Spirit is to faith a subsisting fact; and the keeping it is no less our present duty. It is not that we have unity of ours to make, or that God is to make it for us in heaven by and by. It is here and now that the Spirit has formed this unity, the keeping of which is clearly our responsibility on earth. No doubt there is much to learn from the fact that it really is, as it is called, "the unity of the Spirit." It is not at all mere unity on our part, nor is it the unity of the body, though this is one result, but of the Holy Ghost who baptised into one body all who believe, whether Jews or Gentiles, bond or free. It puts forward the Divine agent, the efficient source and power of unity, the Holy Spirit; but it supposes and includes the one body, which itself is so positive and permanent a reality that expressions often used about it are proved thereby incorrect. Of rending the body we hear in man's language or writings, never in God's word. Just as a bone of Christ was not to be broken, so the body of Christ, the church, cannot be rent. "There is one body, and one spirit, even as there is one hope of our calling." These are the vital, abiding, and unchangeable truths in that new relationship. As surely as one Spirit has been sent down from heaven, there is but one body on earth; but that which the members of the body are called to keep is the unity of the Spirit.

There is since Pentecost a divine unity on the earth, not the mere aggregate of the individuals evermore called by grace, but those now made one by the Spirit of God. This divine society here below is not formed by the will of the persons who compose it, although it is to be supposed that their hearts if right and intelligent thoroughly go along with the grace that so united them. But the church or assembly of God is formed by God's will; as it was purposed by His grace, so is it made good livingly by His power, the Holy Ghost being the effectuator of this blessed unity. Hence the Spirit of God for that very reason has the deepest and the most intimate interest in carrying out this unity for Christ's glory according to the counsels of the Father. It is called the unity of the Spirit; yet let none imagine that he can intelligently keep the unity of the Spirit and forget for a moment in principle or practice the one body of Christ.

Too large a Unity-Looseness

There are, of course, various ways in which the saints may fail to keep this unity; but there are two general though opposite directions in which the failure may work, which are as prevalent as they are manifest. The first is by setting up a unity larger than that of the Spirit; the second by making it less. There may be a worldly looseness on the one hand, or mere partyism on the other; and the danger is so great that only God's Spirit can keep us looking to Christ by the word. Whatever may be the object or excuse, the will of man himself must be at bottom the motive at work in opposition to God's will.

In the first case men are prone to enlarge the unity. They insist on taking in multitudes beyond the members of the body of Christ, souls recognised as of Christ without adequate ground for it. Oh what dishonour to that excellent Name! I speak not of infirmity in accrediting any supposed to be true, but of the deliberate intention to accept, and treat as belonging to Christ's body, persons who do not themselves even profess to be His members, and have evidently never passed from death unto life. Rome, it is true, had so done in its mediaeval sway over the west; and the Eastern bodies, the Greeks, Nestorians, etc., were no better, any more than the Catholic church before that great rent which set them at variance. They had all sought and received the world by means of fleshy ordinances, apart from faith and the reception of the Spirit. The Reformation, much as it did, in no adequate way rectified this radical error. Protestantism rejected the woman ruling over the nations, and if possible all nations; but, ignorant of the unity of the Spirit, it set up in each realm, where its influence extended, its own independent religion as by law established.

Such is the well-known principle of nationalistic bodies wherever found, whether in England or in Scotland, in Germany or in Holland. They profess to receive all decent people in the districts or parishes. It is avowedly a religion for every body and in no way the intention or the desire to incorporate none that are not living members of Christ. Birth or local connections are allowed unless there be open scandal. There is no demand of life or faith, still less of the gift of the Holy Ghost, as of old (Acts 11: 16, 17). It is rather such a pattern as Israel affords, not the church wherein is neither Jew nor Greek but all are one in Christ Jesus. It is a question of family life and of geographical limits, and people are not Israelites or heathen but own the Christian religion, being in what is commonly called a national church: yet is it not clear that in a national church the unity of the Spirit cannot possibly be kept? One may be a true Christian or child of God, but there is neither the thought nor the possibility for a member of a national church to keep therein "the unity of the Spirit." Hence they speak of the Church of England, not of the church of God in England: still less do they contemplate all that are Christ's on the earth.

The fact is that, in escaping from Babylon, they have come to acknowledge a unity wholly different from, and opposed to, that of the Spirit. They have set up a unity which, if carried out with complete success, would comprehend the whole nation, saving perhaps those who eschew all show of religion. For I do not forget that the Rubric provides against heinous or manifest scandal. Notoriously, however, in every quarter, and almost in every family, there may be persons of more or less respectability, moral and amiable men, who know they are not born of God, and would shrink from pretending to be members of Christ, if they were not misled to claim the place on ritual ground. Most of these would shrink from being called "saints", and hesitate not to apply the word as a cant term of reproach to God's children who are not ashamed to call themselves what they are.

Clearly then such as disclaim the name thus are not saints, unless you can honestly conceive of a believer so sunk or dark as to make a scorn of God's designation for His children. And you may rest assured without a doubt that he who thinks and talks so does not walk as becomes a saint. Now if a man is not what scripture calls a saint, he is certainly not a Christian, except for God's judgment of his hollow profession. Is it not plain that a Christian is a saint, and a good deal more? There were saints in Old Testament times; there were saints before the cross of Christ; but were they really Christians so called? A Christian is a saint since redemption, one who is separated to God by faith of the gospel, in the power of the Holy Ghost, on the ground of the work of Christ. Whatever he may have been naturally before, God has quickened him together with Christ, having forgiven all his offences; and now, brought nigh by the blood of Christ, he draws near to God as a child. He is also a member of Christ's body.

Now these are the persons who are called in the bond of peace to keep with diligence the unity of the Spirit, setting their faces against everything which might falsify that unity. It is not merely that the Spirit inwardly, and the personal conduct outwardly, must be suitable to it, which of course is true; but if the affections and walk were ever so excellent, it would be a serious thing for the Christian to annul or overlook the expression of that unity. Yet does not every believer dishonour it who owns any unity whatever that is not of the Holy Ghost? If he owns the fellowship of nationalism in this or any other country, is it not clear that he is off the ground on which scripture places all the saints? As a nationalist, how can he be keeping the unity of the Spirit? He may behave as a true child of God otherwise; in general he may walk worthily of all respect and love; and certainly he ought to be an object of tender concern to any who are zealous in keeping the unity of the Spirit. For if true to their calling they must pray for the deliverance of all the children of God who are not in this following the will and word of the Lord Jesus.

Unquestionably those who own a unity which takes in the flesh, on the basis or rites open to all the world, are on ground far wider than that of the Spirit, and cannot be walking in accordance with it. True unity is exclusive of every other; as you cannot serve two masters, you cannot share a twofold communion. The unity of the Spirit admits of no rival.

Too Narrow a Unity-Sectarianism

But there is another form of departure from the truth which may hinder God's children from keeping the unity of the Spirit. By misuse of doctrine or discipline they may form a unity not only in fact but in principle and design narrower than Christ's body. Are such on God's ground? I think not. They may openly draw up their own form of government, or they may privily have an understood, though unwritten, system of rules which exclude saints as godly as themselves who cannot accept these rules. Here we have a sect. Their decrees are not the commandments of the Lord, yet they become practically as authoritative as His word, or (as is usual) yet more so. What is it for men to pretend that they have no human rules, when they introduce some unheard of conditions of fellowship, here rigidly, there loosely, according to varying policy or the caprice of their rulers, for those who come within their range? Anything of this nature takes the shape, not exactly of nationalism but of sectarianism, which (instead of too wide or loose borders) rather seeks to split up those who should be together, making their communion express their difference from their brethren, and in no way standing together on that unity which is of God. It is in principle sectarianism; and, if they know better, they are more guilty than ordinary dissenters.

Under this head we find God's children often scattered through the pressure of questionable and even wrong discipline, or of unduly urged if not false doctrine. Some prefer a communion which is distinctively Arminian, or decidedly Calvinistic. Some might press particular views as to the coming and kingdom of Christ; others as to ministry, bishops, elders, etc.; others again as to baptism, the mode or the subjects. These ecclesiastical legislators seem not at all aware that their abuse of these doctrines or practices is incompatible with keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, they themselves being wrong, if not in their views, at least in the way they are pressed.

Behind these public and settled aberrations from the will of God about His children, it will be found that there lie predisposing causes that grieve the Holy Ghost and hinder the true and spiritual perception of the saint. The most personal and perhaps most common hindrances flow from the state of the soul, through ignorance of a full delivering gospel. Sin in these circumstances has never been thoroughly judged as before God, and consequently deliverance (Rom. 8: 2) is but partially, if at all, known even in principle. Still less is there the power of the Spirit in unsparing application of death with Christ to self practically. Perhaps even the forgiveness of sins as a complete thing has been but feebly apprehended, as made apparent by the notion of the need of a fresh recurrence to the blood of Christ, or (as others would put it) of a constant process of cleansing going on, which they ground on a misunderstanding of the present tense in 1 John 1: 7, ignorantly reducing it from its moral import to mere actual time. Others again have a wholly superficial and even fallacious view of the world, as if it were now all consecrated to the Christian by that cross of Christ, whereby on the contrary the Christian is crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to him.

The flesh and the world being thus inadequately judged according to God's word in the light of the risen Christ, the heart is not in communion with God touching all within and without. Though there may be the utmost zeal for souls as far as their danger and God's pardoning grace are understood, and true and burning love that Christ should be honoured in their blessing, nature still has a large place, and the word and Spirit of God do not absolutely govern the heart separate to Him who is dead, risen and on high. In such a condition how can souls be expected to form a sound or spiritual judgment on the church, complicated as the question now is by its ruined state? They value science, letters, philosophy, which exalt the flesh, as well as associations which allow of ease and honour in the world. From lack of intelligence in the word, and feeble sense of fellowship with the Father and the Son, they fail to judge the present evil age and are absorbed in "their own things," if not ever seeking greater. They are consequently in danger of being the victims of prejudice and prepossession. They do not give to Christ His due and supreme place in a practical way; nor do they freely rise above brotherly kindness into the purer atmosphere of love according to God, so as to care for the church unselfishly as Christ's body. They are not prepared to break fully through the vain conversation which tradition has generated as much in Christendom as of old in Judaism. They shrink from the trying consequences which unhesitating and thorough obedience of the truth must entail on every one who is subject to the Lord. The eye is not single, and therefore the body is not full of light; the path looks uncertain, the word seems difficult, and danger appears to lie in the faith that follows the Lord at all cost.

Intelligence no Test for Reception

Are we then to fall back on prudence and require a certain measure of intelligence before reception? This is just one main mischief that has to be ever assiduously avoided, and treated as a mistake in principle, yea, a sin against Christ and the church. Nor could anything more directly tend to make the most sectarian of all sects than to exact, from the souls who seek to come in, a right judgment as to truth least known by the saints, the mystery of Christ, or in particular the one body for them made harder still, as it is apt to be in practice, by sections growing out of the actual fallen condition of Christendom.

Never was such a requirement heard of, even when the church began and the presence of the Holy Spirit was a wholly new thing. Saints were received on the confession of Christ's name, God having given to all the like gift, His seal and passport. The intelligence was on the part of those who recognised the worth of that Name and the gift of the Spirit as to themselves at the beginning. Had they claimed intelligence of the church as a condition of fellowship, it would have really proved their own lack of intelligence, and counteracted that for which Christ died-the gathering together in one of God's scattered children.

Has the present ruin of the church altered this primary principle? The firm foundation of God stands, but with this seal: The Lord knows them that are His; and, Let every one that names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. What bears His name is like a great house with vessels to honour, and vessels to dishonour, from which last a man has to purge himself, if he would himself be a vessel to honour, sanctified, meet for the Master's use, prepared unto every good work. If the public state be evil, individual fidelity to Christ is imperative: unity is not to overbear it, nor bind the Christian to unite the Lord's name with unrighteousness. Personal purity is to be followed also, and this not in isolation but with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Not a word about requiring ecclesiastical or doctrinal intelligence, but "with those that call" etc., i.e., with real saints in a day of lax and hollow profession.

At a later day, "the last hour" of John, we see how strongly the Spirit of God insists on first principles. "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" In presence of many antichrists, Christ abides the touchstone. The Spirit holds to His person unhesitatingly. To add aught is to take from Him, to dishonour His name.

But I will go further. Take the hope of the return of the Lord Jesus. You know how very important it is for Christians to be waiting in truth and heart for Christ from heaven; but would you require that those who seek fellowship in the name of the Lord should understand and confess that hope before you receive them in the Lord? Would not this be a sect? Be it that your assertion of the Christian hope is ever so right, and that the person in quest of fellowship is ever so ignorant on that subject, but who authorises you or others to stand at the door and forbid his entrance? Perhaps by entertaining some wrong thought, he may fancy that the Christian, like the Jew, or the Gentile in Rev. vii., has to go through the great final tribulation. Granted that he little understands the place of the Christian from not seeing his union with Christ in heaven, which is made known by the Holy Spirit in this day. Hence he is in confusion and knows not that the Lord will come and take His own before the days of that terrible retribution which is coming upon the world. He may even share the thoughts of men as unwise as any in Thessalonica and fall into the delusion of trying to escape the great tribulation. Too much occupied with prophecy, they had lost or never known the true hope of Christ's coming; and whenever we get absorbed in anything, whether prophecy, or the church, or the gospel, rather than with Christ, what but grace can hinder us from going farther astray?

Is then knowledge of truth or growth in spiritual intelligence to be slighted? In no way; but it is false and vain to require either as a preliminary condition from saints who seek fellowship according to God. Help them, instruct them, lead them on in both. This is a true service, but arduous withal. The other is sectarian, and wrong.

Christ the only Centre (and opposing claims)

If there are any who plead for so great a departure from Scripture and more especially from the characteristic truth of God's assembly, let them betray their new invention in opposition to the Lord, that others also may fear. Christ ever abides the one test, the only centre, to whom the Holy Spirit gathers. What the Lord declared just before the church began remains even more manifestly true, now that He is dishonoured in the house of His new friends no less than in that of His old. "He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad" (Matt. 12: 30). It is imperative to be with Christ for one's soul, in order to please God and not dishonour His Son; but there is now the privilege and duty of gathering, as well as of individual allegiance; and he who does not gather with Him only scatters, whatever appearances may say to the contrary. It is the once rejected and dead, the now risen and glorified, Christ, who is the attractive centre; and hence the sign of His death in the breaking of bread is equally the sign of the one body, which they in effect deny and condemn who would restrain it to their few, refusing "the many," that is all whom Christ contemplates and welcomes. He has not asked this at their hands; nor does He sanction such action in his word. And if not warranted of Him, what is it but party and arbitrary restriction, which does not refuse the vile only but the precious, unless they fall in with their unauthorised course whether they think it right or not?

Thus the direct tendency is to coerce and demoralise; for what is sought is not conviction on ground of Scripture, but, where there is no conviction, a blindfold subjection, a bare and often reluctant and unhappy acquiescence, an appearance of fellowship which is no longer living but dead. For the Spirit we have received is assuredly a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind; and in no way does He endorse what is thus formal in character, under human pressure or influence. The consequence is terrible: a premium to the more vaulting and turbulent spirits, who now more than ever would "hold the reins"; the comparative retirement, from their just and grace-given place, of those who care not to rule save in the fear of the Lord and by His word; the destruction of moral principle in such (and they are very many) as seek to silence their disapproval of the movement as a whole and in detail, either by attachment to leaders, or in holding to the greater number, which they fondly call unity. Protest (say some), but stay within; that is, protest but only in word! This we used to regard as the painful compromise of place-loving evangelicals; now do we not see it standing where it ought not? It is anything but truth and right; and this unity!

But there is all the difference of truth and error, on the one hand, between consistency with the unity of the Spirit for Christ's glory, carried out in holiness and grace according to His word, and, on the other, self-deceived and misleading abuse of unity to cry up a party bent on division with violence, which refused humiliation and prayer to arrest the evil, and declared Scripture needless for its demands or its justification.

No intelligent saint would ask for a positive letter of commandment, like a Jew; no one expects a modern place or passing circumstance to be named in the Scripture: to speak as if anything of the sort were sought is to evade and condemn oneself yet more. Where is the scriptural principle for turning a local difference into a wedge of universal division? Beyond controversy, when a question is raised with a world-wide scattering of the saints as the penalty, all who love the church are bound to be assured that the test is of God according to His word.

Some of us remember such a test more than thirty years ago. But then it was whether we could consent to make a true or a false Christ an open question. This we rejected with horror, when a large company of saints adhered to their leaders (even while they ignored the judgment of the assembly where the evil occurred), who let in the known partisans of a proved anti-Christian teacher, and denied formally their responsibility to judge it solemnly for themselves.

This was no test of man. It is the certain distinct requirement of the Lord. We are divinely commanded to reject any who bring not the doctrine of Christ (2 John). This goes far beyond the dealing due to those who act independently or make a sect. No ecclesiastical error, however, real or grave, could justify such rigour.

The foundation truth of Christ demands it. We owe it to Him who is our Lord, who died for us, whose glory the word guards as nothing else. We should never have been warranted to have acted as we did in 1848-9, if Christ had not been blasphemed.

Human Obstacles to the Unity of the Spirit

Now I come to the main point I would press. The unity of the Spirit embraces not only the intelligent but the simplest of God's children; it contemplates the body of Christ, and all the members in particular. For those who believe the gospel of salvation have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them and are Christ's members. They are therefore responsible to walk, as we are to own Him, in that relationship which grace has given to all. As members of Christ's body, they are bound diligently to keep the unity of the Spirit. There are national bodies and dissenting societies which have within them many, if not the mass, of God's children; and these systems, by claiming to be churches, prove a great perplexity to the believer. The evil of party, which showed itself in the early days, not only repeats itself, but works now with very great aggravation. Notwithstanding, grace would strengthen those who seek to do Christ's will according to their true relationship. It is man, and man pushed on by the enemy, that makes stumbling-blocks and difficulties great, yea, in appearance insuperable, so that the children of God may be tempted to give up true unity. Every faithful servant of the Lord has to seek, if not the removal of these obstacles, at least to help God's children in surmounting them. In a day of growing confusion, the constant effort of the enemy is to deceive and baffle and make it seem hopeless to keep the unity of the Spirit.

It is for us to consider whether we are using diligence to keep that unity in peace. No doubt there are internal dispositions or conditions requisite to do it aright. Of intelligence I do not doubt the importance in its place and time; but of this the apostle hints not a word here. What does he say? "With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love." Such are the declared and worthy qualities which the apostle seeks in those who would keep the unity of the Spirit.

And is it not well for us to challenge our souls, whether our confidence is in the apostle's word or in man's theories? Oh that we might cultivate such ways of grace as these in ourselves and urge them on others, in order to a walk worthy of our calling) Can we doubt that it is in this condition only that we can duly keep that unity: not in haste or harshness, not in impatience of others or self-confidence, but with all lowliness and meekness with long- suffering, forbearing one another in love? There was need of all this then: is it less indispensable in our greater difficulties now?

For then there was no perplexity through open rivals, no competitors for the claim of God's assembly on earth. The main hindrance was from within. Now there are those and other obstacles. Am I connected with any association which ignores the one body and one Spirit? Am I attached to anything that systematically opposes this unity? It is not a question merely of wrong persons coming in unawares, for the fatal thing is not that evil should enter, but that it is known and allowed. What evil things did not effect an entrance into the assembly even in apostolic days? But God owns the unity as of the Spirit so long as there is the true-hearted purpose, in dependence on the Lord and according to His word, to keep, or purge, out evil. It is not the entrance or amount or even character of evil that destroys the assembly, but the continued acceptance of it under the Lord's name, even when it is known.

But God will not sanction in His assembly the allowance of any real evil whatever; and evil, no matter what its shape or measure, must be judged as inconsistent with His presence who dwells there. The assembly is the pillar and ground of the truth: how then can falsehood be a matter of indifference in the house of the living God? Christ is the truth; and, without controversy, great is the mystery of piety. Hence the church's intolerance of that which undermines Christ. There must be the disallowance of all leaven where the feast of Christ the paschal Lamb is kept. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump; and none can be tolerated be it moral, as in 1 Cor. 5, or doctrinal, as in Gal. 5. If one called a brother be characterised by corruption or violence, by ways wholly opposed to the truth and character of Christ and to the very nature of God, he must be excluded from His assembly.

Forbearance and Faithfulness

What then is to be done if we find views, judgments, and principles at work which trench on and narrow, and so really counteract, the Spirit's unity? What if unscriptural tests be pressed so as to shut out deliberately souls at least as godly as themselves? What if conscience toward God be not respected, if there be no longer room for liberty in the Spirit and responsibility to the Lord Jesus? Were it merely an opinion of one or more, which was held without forcing it on others, there would be in this no sufficient ground for resistance. It would be sad to see saints preoccupied with their little theories in presence of Christ and that word which lives and abides for ever. Ordinarily it would suffice to express regret at, and protest against, what one might believe unsuitable among Christians; for we are called to peace and forbearance as well as fidelity. If you find in others what you cannot approve of, does not Scripture amply forewarn you of this, and call for patience, whilst looking to the Lord?

The children of God, called though they be to the enjoyment and expression of Christ, habitually demand the exercise of long-suffering and grace, as beyond doubt you yourself draw largely on the forbearance of your brethren. It cannot seriously be expected that those who compose the church of God should forego the character of a family, with its fathers, young men, and babes, to imitate an army under martial law. Regimental order is as far as possible from that which the written word prescribes to God's church, where, instead of a regulation standard, the utmost variety prevails, high and low, strong and weak, or even uncomely. 1 Cor. 12.

Scripture lays down the rule by which foreign elements, if they enter, are to be tried; and as there are manifold evils that may seek a footing, so there are distinct scriptures that apply to each case, from private rebuke to public censure, or in the last resort putting away. Those who cause divisions and stumblings are to be avoided; the factious, after a first and second admonition, to be refused; the disorderly, to be withdrawn from; those that sin, to be reproved before all; the wicked, to be put away. Reserve and rebuke have their application, no less than the extreme sentence of excision.

Nor would one deny the just practice of declaring outside those who have either gone away, wilfully refusing all admonition, or who audaciously despise and deny the unquestioned assembly by setting up another meeting, and so render admonition to be scarce more than a form.

Surely whatever is done ought to be according to the plain positive teaching of God's word. It is for the Lord to command — the church has only to obey. I take for granted that I address Christians who believe not more in the sufficiency of the written word than in the supreme authority of Him who wrote it for our guidance by the Spirit of God. Development is of man's will, and unbelief. God has left nothing to be added. The church is under the orders of the Lord. If the church recognise any one, it is because the Lord has already received him; and if the church put away, it is simply as doing the Lord's will. The church has no independent authority to legislate, but is called to believe, pronounce, and execute His word. Consequently, in all things the church has to remember that she is subject and He the Lord. He is to order, she to obey — her one place, privilege, and duty. The moment the church lays down an extra-scriptural test, she takes the place of the Lord, and there is a practical assumption, yea, a virtual denial, of His authority. The result is to form a sect in departure from the unity of the Spirit.

The apostles, though set first in the church, were patterns of Christian humility. Who was so remarkable for patience as he who was not a whit behind the very chiefest, to whom a unique place was given by the will of God and the authority of the Lord Jesus? How much then should every true servant of Christ cultivate lowliness in these days! If a man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things written are the commandments of the Lord. Let his very subjection to the word of the Lord prove the reality of his mission from Him. This is of the last moment for our souls now; for perils and perplexities are constantly springing up, which affect the saints wherever they may be, and not least those who are gathered to the name of Christ.

Let none fancy this is to disparage those admirable men whom the Lord used in days gone by. Cherish unfeigned respect for such as Luther, Calvin, Farel, and Zwingle, though quite allowing the infirmities of every one of them. It is childish to find fault with Tyndale and Cranmer, whilst idolising Melancthon or John Knox. They were all of like passions as ourselves, and if disposed to study their lives and labours, there are ample materials not far to seek for criticism; and so with men of God in our day. But is it of Christ to be on the watch for that which may not be of Christ? Faults are easily seen; it needs to-day the power of the Spirit to walk, not in their traditions, but in the like faith. Rarely has there been a time when faith has sunk to a lower ebb among those who might be supposed long inured to it than the present. It is most common to find saints who groan over a course as utterly wrong, and yet persevere in it for the sake of company, etc. How often they have to others insisted on the ancient oracle: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well." They believe it doubtless: why not, giving all diligence, add to their faith virtue? Have they lost all courage in Christ and for Christ? I speak for what is now going on to out common shame all over the world. The compromise which you would hardly expect in new-born babes of God characterises men who have long known the Lord, and even suffered not a little at one time or another for the truth's sake.

Our Urgent Duty-to keep the Unity of the Spirit

Beloved friends, it is of the greatest moment that we should try our ways, whether we deceive ourselves, or are in deed and in truth keeping the unity of the Spirit. Do not set against that duty the sad fact that the church is now a ruin. The question is, Are we not always to be obedient? It is not the point, how many or how few of Christ's members may act together according to the word of the Lord. Do we own, ourselves, the obligation to be thus faithful? The unity of the Spirit is a constant responsibility for the children of God to keep with diligence as long as they are upon the earth. He abides with us for ever. To keep it therefore is always a paramount duty.

Take a practical illustration. There is assembled in this room a company of members of Christ's body, who can allow neither the broad ways of nationalism nor the narrow alleys of sectarianism. They desire above all things to walk together so as to please the Lord Christ. What then must be their stand? What position ecclesiastically ought they to take, if they would act with spiritual intelligence and fidelity? If any in this city be already gathered to His name on the ground of the one body, they should not be ignored. It would be independence, not the unity of the Spirit, to take no account of such a gathering. The member of Christ's body who sought fellowship would ask, as he ought, if and where saints were gathered to His name. He finds, we will suppose, there are some meeting in this room, and prefers his desire to be with them on the same blessed ground of Christ. If they challenge his faith, it is not from lack of love to him, but from care for Christ's glory. They do not receive him because he says that he is a member of Christ's body. They require adequate testimony, where they have no personal knowledge. Nobody ought to be recognised on his own bare word; even the apostle Paul was not at the first. God took care to give an extraordinary witness through a certain disciple named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews that dwelt in Damascus, as in Jerusalem subsequently through Barnabas. The word is so plainly thus, and the danger so great otherwise, that no saint, who duly reflects with a heart and conscience true towards God, would wish to be accredited merely on his own word. Souls may deceive themselves, even if upright; but if you or I were to be so accredited, where is it to end?

Again, a Christian is brought before them, who desires to remember the Lord along with them. Perhaps he belongs, as they say, to the national establishment, or to a dissenting society. But he is well known as a child of God, walking according to the measure of light already possessed. What is to be done? To refuse this member of Christ, without the strongest ground of known sin, would put shame not on him only but on the Lord. It were to deny our title, the true centre of gathering. Membership of Christ attested by a godly life is the sufficient and only right ground on which a Christian should ask to be received. If one understood all mysteries and all knowledge, — if one had all faith so as to remove mountains, one ought to plead His name alone.

Scriptural Grounds of Exclusion

Are there then no exceptions? May there not be valid reasons to forbid even an accredited member of Christ's body? Certainly there are, as Scripture shows. Leaven of malice and wickedness is intolerable (1 Cor. 5); leaven of heterodoxy as to the foundations (Gal. 5) is yet worse; and the word is, "Purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump." Here are unquestionable barriers reared in the word of God, and due to the Lord Jesus. If any man that is named a brother be unclean in deed or in word, in ways or in manifested spirit, we are commanded not so much as to eat with him. And it were a far graver sin, if one did not bring the doctrine of Christ, or even denied everlasting punishment for the lost. God assuredly will never allow the profession of Christ to be a passport for him that dishonours Christ. Here, and here most of all is the Holy Ghost jealous, if the word of God is to be our rule.

All truth is no doubt important in its place and season; but it is worse than ignorance to put the body on the same level as the Head. Ecclesiastical error, even if real and grave, never approaches the denial of the doctrine of Christ. Weigh how the apostle of love, the elder, solemnly warns us to be on our guard in such a case. We are not free to receive even privately, much less publicly, those who bring not the doctrine of Christ. We are unequivocally bound not only to disallow heterodoxy in general, but in particular to reject that which is, and those who are, a lie against Christ, yea, to treat those who receive such as partakers of the same evil deeds. But we are not entitled to equalise the church with Christ, like a Romanist, or to put ecclesiastical error along with evil against Christ's person. This is not faith, but fanaticism: what can we think of such as conceive, or of those that circulate, this trash as the truth?

Still, in keeping the unity of the Spirit, we must accept the scriptural responsibility of purging out leaven. And, as we have seen, the Spirit of God writes direct to an elect lady and her children, because on such a question as Christ the duty is immediate and peremptory. Years ago, in having to do with such an one, that Epistle stood us in good stead. For on her pleading that she was but a sister, and it was not her responsibility to do this or that, she was at once reminded that it was not to an assembly, nor even to a Timothy or Titus, but to a lady and her children that the Holy Ghost wrote, insisting on her own personal and unavoidable responsibility. We may be sure that the Spirit of God did not thus inspire a letter to a lady and her children, without the most urgent necessity, and in order to meet just such an excuse for shirking what is due to Christ at any time.

All know that women are liable to err on the side of their affections, being naturally more disposed to act through feeling than with calm judgment. The word of God recognises this in repressing them ordinarily (1 Tim. 2), and in the special warning of 2 John. The truth may not be always pleasant, though ever wholesome and good; and it is the truth that one desires to press upon souls, and that we ought to welcome. We are bound to see to it that the church of God be not made a cover for any known evil, and above all not to admit or screen knowingly that which sullies Christ's glory.

Let us distinguish things that differ. The English Establishment, in spite of many and grave drawbacks, had a holy object in its rise, turning its back as it did on an abominable and ever swelling imposture. Though much hindered, especially by the king, in its work of clearing itself from many inveterate superstitions, it honestly set its face against what was known to be evil. But it retrograded afterward, until its ritualistic observances being made a test forced out many pious nonconformists whose origin thus was morally respectable and godly. For it was no mean struggle in those days to keep a good conscience, and to stand opposed to those who were dragging them down into formalism. We need not speak of the Wesley and Whitfield movement, which was in main missionary not ecclesiastical. We know later on, how powerfully God wrought in awakening His children fifty years ago to a sense of the departure that had taken place from the original ground of keeping the unity of the Spirit. In such days it was no small thing to recognise that there is such a reality on earth as the presence of the Holy Ghost, and consequently the body of Christ. Hence, if members of that body, it is our inalienable duty to keep that unity in its true character, whilst subject to the conditions which the Lord has laid down in His word, and to none other. The Spirit has created that unity, a unity which takes in all members of Christ's body, excepting those whom discipline according to the word requires us to reject.

It may interest all to know that not the least weighty testimony that was ever given on this momentous subject was written in the year 1828 ("Considerations on the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ"). The point was to show how impossible it is for saints who would honour the Lord to go on with the world, instead of walking (were they but two or three) in that unity which is of God; that in denominations the bond is not their unity but in fact their differences, and in no case therefore the communion of God's church at all, in faith contemplating as every true assembly does and must, all God's children. Those who call this looseness do not know divine ground, and have unwittingly slipped into a sect.

Grace and Liberty

The fact is that we are apt to forget our own beginnings and the gracious dealings of the Lord with us when we ourselves first broke bread, knowing as little perhaps as any.

How many brethren are now among the firmest and most intelligent in fellowship, who saw but dimly not the church

only but even the gospel of salvation, and revealed truth in general, when they found in the Lord's name an immediate passport to His supper! They were by no means clear as to their future course, though attracted by the grace which saluted them as brethren, and enjoying the simple faith which bowed to the word of the Lord in a way and measure beyond their previous experience. How unwise and unbecoming for such now to exact from enquiring brethren a knowledge of the church far beyond their own standard at their start, and in fact not to be got save within the assembly, and in the path of obedience where the Spirit guides into all the truth! To those thus growing up and led, catholicism or denominationalism is judged by the word, and felt to be altogether unsatisfying and distasteful, as being evidently of man and not of God. What gives these new and strong convictions? Neither influence nor prejudice, neither argument nor imagination, but the truth appreciated by the power of God's Spirit.

Are we then to play fast and loose with divine truth! Nay, but it is a question of the Lord's way with those who are His and have yet to learn: is it to be in liberty or in bondage? Doubtless every Christian ought to keep the unity of the Spirit, as gathered to the name of the Lord and to none other. A saint cannot legitimately have two communions. Is not the communion of Christ's body in principle exclusive? Follow with all your soul the Lord Jesus, own the one body and one Spirit, receive every godly member of His in His name. In this there is neither looseness nor sectarianism. As the word of God is plain, so does the presence of the Spirit abide. As He abides, so does His unity; and those who have received the Holy Spirit are bound to walk in that unity, and in none other. They are added of the Lord together, members of the assembly which God has formed for Himself in this world; and I deny the title of anyone to set up either rival or substitute. If you have His Spirit, you already belong to this one body, and are called to carry it out to the exclusion of all others.

Thus it is no voluntary society we have to do with. It is no question of framing something better than either nationalism or dissent, nor an alliance which really condemns, while ostensibly it sanctions, the existing institutions of orthodox Protestantism. The truth, however, is that before all these essays God had Himself formed His church on earth; and such as have His Spirit are thereby constituted members, responsible to act accordingly. In His church evil doctrine or practice is intolerable, if we bow to Scripture. Every Christian is bound to reject falsehood and unholiness, and this corporately as well as individually. For the ruin of the church does not shut us up to individuality. If we follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, it may and should be with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Isolation it is a sin to seek, as being a denial of fellowship. The church of God means the assembly of those that are His. But if ever so many, we are one bread, one body. As the Lord's Supper is the outward expression of this unity, it is unworthy of believers to complain that too much is made of His supper and Table; for it is God who calls them His, not we who only cleave to His word and confide in His will. Doubtless we need to keep Christ in this before our eyes; if not, we are in danger of moulding His Supper according to our will or caprice. If by the grace of God we have the Lord Jesus before us, our hearts will go out towards all that are His walking after a godly sort.

For a long time Satan has endeavoured to falsify the testimony of Christ amongst those professedly gathered to His name. One of his wiles has been, under pretence of light and righteousness, to undermine grace and truth in recognising freely the members of Christ's body.

Utterly misconceiving the stand against neutrality, they would make no Christian welcome to the Lord's Table who did not judge his old position by more or less intelligence of the one body and one Spirit; that is, without a virtual pledge never again to enter their so-called church or chapel. This is, to my mind, not unbelief only but a bad and base principle. It is an underhand way to make a sect of those that know the church, but really proves how little they themselves appreciate the one body: else they could not let knowledge override relationship to Christ, as they do.

Never is the church rightly or truly learnt save

within,

according to the word, where you must leave room for growth in the truth by faith and God's grace.

God's Principle of Unity.

W. Kelly.

[A New Edition being called for, the only change worth mentioning is in the induction to absurdity, given in pages 34 and 37 of the First Edition, which is now simplified. Reconsideration adds strength to my sense of the deep evil, however cloaked, of professing truth which there is no serious thought of acting upon or of suffering for. Better never to have known the divine will than (having learnt) to live in disobedience, and to attempt justifying the sin by a corrupt use of God's Word. "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!"]

PART 1  - THE ESTABLISHMENT.

Dear brother,

You have kindly sent me your letter, and I have read it carefully, and believe it to be not mistaken only, but a grave, though of course unwitting, dishonour to Christ. You cannot wonder, therefore, that I feel bound to answer it in christian candour and affection. For inexperience one may make allowance; but when crude thoughts are put forth confidently, and their direct tendency is to undermine the truth of God and the holiness of His Church, it is an evident duty to expose them. And certainly an assailant has no reason to complain, if the truth be spoken in love and for the Lord's glory.

The title: "Separation from evil: not God's principle of unity" shocked me and many others. Nor was I relieved by that which you acknowledge in the opening pages. For it is worse than useless to own truth which vanishes — nay, is contradicted — in practice. Separation from the world, and union among the saints, you say, are to be maintained and manifested as God's will, not only in individual walk, but in the assemblies of the saints. (pp. 4, 5.) So far, in words at least, we are agreed. I accept both principles as divine landmarks never to be forsaken; but how are you paying them homage? Doubtless they are the necessary result of the indwelling Spirit of God; but are they the principles of the Establishment, of which you are a minister? You well know they are not; and, mark, I speak of its principles now, not of its practice merely.

For (1.) the Rubric for the Communion prescribes that "every parishioner shall communicate." This is not an abuse but the system, and the obvious, undeniable intent of those who formed it; but if so, it is a systematic departure from God's intention as to His Church; for, on your own showing, He desires His saints to be united, and in real manifest separation from the world. Granted that the curate may repel an open evil-liver or a public wrong-doer if impenitent; but what of the numerous parishioners everywhere, who are neither scandalous persons on the one hand nor saints on the other, as both you and they would allow? Scripture, as you admit, contemplates the saints; but the law of the land contemplates the parishioners, the Rubric enjoins these to communicate, and you, as curate, must receive them, contrary to your own express conviction of God's will. The same men, the same day, both before and after the sacrament, you might address as unconverted, imploring them to repent and believe the gospel. That is, the position of a clergyman compels you to contradict what you feel and say as a Christian: for in the former capacity you are bound to welcome every well-conducted unconverted man — in the latter you are bound to warn him of so great and presumptuous a sin. Were you nothing but Christ's servant, you would faithfully do His will, whatever it might cost; and if God calls His saints to be separate from the world in their assemblies, you would not blow hot and cold in the same pamphlet, but rather seek to obey Him, especially in the most solemn act of christian worship, the Lord's Supper. In all circumstances, your language would, be consistent and your conduct in accordance with your sentiments. You would entreat or warn the unregenerate; you would teach or exhort the believers. Now, on the contrary, you may theorize as you will, you may hold ever so high the plain principles God gives for the guidance of His own redeemed; but you have not, and, as a clergyman, you cannot have, "gatherings of the saints separate from those who know not Jesus." (Page 4.) It is, you confess, the will of God that it should be so; but the rules of the Establishment require that it should not be so, unless we conceive every parish without a single worldly man. It is idle to suppose that you can in this thing comply with God's Word and man's Rubric; and it is painfully clear that, for the present, you have chosen to obey man rather than God.

(2.) Plain as Scripture is that the saints are one and bound to manifest their unity, in private and in public, it is just as certain that this is ignored and impossible in the Anglican system. Forms, services, doctrines too, are insisted on, which many intelligent believers reject as foreign and opposed to the Word of God. Hence separation becomes imperative, unless they are prepared to give up a good conscience and to join in what they regard as sin. I am aware that the Evangelicals, who groan under some of the offices, are apt to boast of the Thirty-nine Articles. But I, for one, dare not sign Art. 2, because its doctrine is to my mind, confused and erroneous in the extreme. God needed the atoning sacrifice, we (not He) needed reconciliation. So uniformly say the Scriptures, but not the Article. It treats our blessed Lord's suffering and death as the means of reconciling His Father to us; whereas the truth is, that God was in Christ reconciling (not Himself to the world, but) the world to Himself. (2 Cor. 5, and such is the teaching of Rom. 5 and Col. 1) This is serious; because it misrepresents, not some curious point of prophecy, but the gospel, making the Son's death the procuring cause of the Father's love, instead of viewing the cross as its blessed fruit and brightest demonstration. Thousands of devoted saints, who rest on the atonement as their sole trust in the matter of their sins, utterly disclaim this doctrine: indeed, many of the more enlightened clergy, as you may know, denounce it urgently, when they are not on their mettle in vain defence of the Article. And what is their position, consequently, in the eye of Anglicanism? The fifth canon leaves no doubt: " Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that any of the Nine and Thirty Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, LET HIM BE EXCOMMUNICATED IPSO FACTO, " etc. Which, then, is guilty, which is the schismatic, the Christian who adheres to the truth of God, or the body which presumes to excommunicate every one who impugns its own blundering perversion of the truth? Integrity of heart will not take advantage of the laxity of the day. The authorities may be indisposed to enforce the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican body; but as long as the Articles and Canons are the standard, (and you refer to them both as such,) is it honest to treat them as a dead letter when they prove inconvenient or unsound?

Evidently, then, the two truths, which you press as very plain in God's Word and given for the guidance of His people, are directly and completely set aside by the formularies of your own system. What is to be done? It were bad to confess the truth and do it not; it is worse still to confess, and then to weave reasons or excuses, yea, even from God's Word, for not doing His will. No doubt, one might remain a clergyman, disputing every Article, and defying every Canon; but, assuredly, as a straightforward (not to say a christian) man, the Prayer-Book ought to bind the conscience, while one continues to be even a Churchman. However, acting honestly or dishonestly in that position, it is as clear as light, that you cannot there carry out the principles of separation from the world and union among the saints. The so-called "Brethren" may be right, or they may be wrong; but your position is not enviable. It follows from your own admissions, that you certainly are not obeying what you know to be the will of God, and that you cannot do so, while you are a minister or member of the Establishment.

I bless the Lord that He does not thus perplex the soul, nor sanction the barriers which hinder our obeying Himself. There were no uninspired Articles, Canons, or Rubrics to trouble the conscience or interfere with holy liberty in apostolic days. And why have them now? The Word of God being a sufficient and a perfect rule, they are an incumbrance if they agree with it, and they are a nuisance and a sin if they do not. Why not gather as saints, separate from the world, unto the name of Jesus, the sole adequate centre for the redeemed? This embraces both your principles, as it was beyond controversy the original ground on which the saints assembled, worshipped God, and edified one another. Has it lost its virtue? or have saints of God lost their faith in it? Be assured, if it be His will, it abides the only divine gathering-place, for such as desire, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how great the difficulty, to please Him. Has God revoked His will because of the darkness of Popery or the divisions of Protestantism? Were any, in our day, to reform the old Constitutions and Canons ecclesiastical, or to invent a new code, they might (not to say must) fail as egregiously as their predecessors. Our wisdom is to commit ourselves to no standard but God's Word, and to trust His Spirit for light and strength to act upon it. There is not a true doctrine which is not revealed there perfectly. There is not a case of discipline for which it does not provide in principle. Are we wrong in cleaving to it, and to it alone, for our Articles, Canons, Rubrics, and every rule conceivable in things christian and ecclesiastical? If you own this is right, our basis is admitted; and the difference between us is, that we, surrendering all we know to be incompatible, take our stand upon it in simple faith, while you are in quest of reasons for adhering to a system where, confessedly, you cannot be subject to God's will as to the assembly.

You speak of the Lord's owning and abiding with any as "our warrant for owning and meeting with them." (p. 5.) This, forgive my saying it, is absurd. It would follow that we are to own and meet with every sect in Protestant Christendom, and with the " Brethren" too, I presume! That the Lord is indeed gracious, spite of sin, is most certain; but does He own false principles in opposition to His own revealed will? And if He does not, ought we? There are true saints in the most faulty sects of Christendom, and the Lord does not fail to cherish them, and we surely ought to do the same; but does He therefore approve, or call us to approve, of that denominational idea to which the sects owe their existence, and which is irreconcileably at variance with the manifestation of the one body of Christ? You say, "We must deal with facts." (p. 6.) My answer is, the Word of God must deal with us, and all facts must be judged by that Word. What abuse can be more miserable than to turn the Lord's blessing His saints, spite of their connection with sects, into a pretence that He owns the sects themselves, i.e., owns human institutions, which, as far as they can, nullify the testimony He wishes us to bear to the saints' unity! If you merely mean that He blesses and uses the saints in the various sections, it is true; but there the argument ends, and it is worthless. The sole criterion here is the Word of God; and it, we have seen decides for holy unity, in contrast with a system which deliberately embraces the world and scatters the saints.

Even you, an official, cannot but confess "how much there is that is sad and burdensome to the spirit" in your own body; but you add, "not in doctrine, however, but in practice." (pp. 6, 7.) I demur to this reservation. It has been already remarked that, even as to the simple fundamental doctrine of grace, the second Article is not only defective, but false. Nor is this all. Without dwelling on debateable ground in the intermediate statements, I must express my judgment that Article 23. is clean contrary to the truth on the momentous subject of ministry. For lawful call is there restricted to those who are chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them [by whom given?] to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard. But Scripture is express that it is the Lord, not man, who calls; that even apostles had to pray Him to send forth labourers; that it is the lord who, on his departure, gave his goods to his servants, to every man according to his several ability; that it is the ascended Christ who gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers; that the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal; that as every man has received the gift, they are to minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God; and this, as 1 Cor. 14 fully and precisely proves, within the assembly, as well as without. Not a word demands, warrants, or even permits, appointment by "men." It is an arbitrary usurpation of Christ's function. For, so far is it from being true that a call by men is necessary to validate ministry, that not a single precept, principle, or example can be adduced from Scripture to show that a man ought to have it before preaching to the world or teaching in the assembly. Not only is such a form needless. but it is wrong and disorderly, if indeed we bow to holy writ. That there were certain local charges, such as elders and deacons, where appointment was requisite, I fully believe; but these must not be confounded with ministering in the "congregation;" for the elders were not necessarily teachers, (as 1 Tim. 4 distinctly shows,) and still less the deacons. The appointment of these local charges depended, according to Scripture, on apostles, or on apostolic delegates, such as Titus. Of course, therefore, I consider Article 23 erroneous, and seriously so; for it goes openly to deny lawful ministry without this human call. And its natural complement, Article 26, maintains the authority of these man-made ministers when set up. If the only legitimate ministry be that which is chosen and called by man, no wonder that unworthy functionaries are expected; no wonder that the vicious step of such an appointment entails the equal evil of authenticating them, in the profaned name of the Lord, when they are so chosen and called. The double sin is thus wrought of denying the Lord's ministers who do not accept this call, and of conferring that title on ministers of Satan who may easily submit to it. And yet, whoever affirms that he cannot with a good conscience subscribe to these mischievous dogmas, is ipso facto excommunicated! Does the Lord own such a system, such principles, and such practices as these?

Article 35 seems to me a strange aspirant for so solemn a ceremony as subscription; for I am sure there are many eccentric and superstitious things in the Homilies; though I dare say they are as good as the Apocryphal books read for example of life and instruction of manners, according to Article 6. Again, Articles 36 and 37 (the latter as regards the ecclesiastical supremacy of the sovereign) hardly deserve discussion, as being mere figments, the offspring of superstition on the one hand and of worldliness on the other. What can justify a man's subscribing that which he believes to be false? Surely that body is not Christ's epistle, which first creates needless stumbling-blocks, by making questions such as these "Articles of religion" (!) and then excommunicates the conscientious Christian who affirms them to be erroneous. You cannot say that he is no true saint who thinks and says they are wrong; and yet your system excommunicates all such therein. If it were only for this, the Establishment could not be the Church of God in England, nor a Church of God anywhere, but a human body or sect. Its constitution, its law, necessarily separates from itself all believers who refuse to put the doctrine of the Trinity on the same level, as to required subscription, with the Protestant device of making the Queen's Majesty chief governor in states ecclesiastical, in order to get rid of Papal pretensions. Very many saints in your system believe the Queen's ecclesiastical supremacy is a mistake. Is it fair to appeal to the Canons and to deny that they are excommunicated?

Besides, the Articles are eminently deficient in another way. They do not even allude to some of the weightiest of revealed truths. Thus, though the deity and personality of the Spirit are upheld, a dead and ominous silence reigns as to His regeneration, indwelling (individual and corporate) and other operations. As far as this Confession of Faith is concerned, we could not know that there was such a thing as the baptism of the Holy Ghost, or His presence and distribution of gifts in the Church. Again, where is the testimony to Christ's Headship of the Church? where to His priesthood or His advocacy? where to the promised kingdom, to the restoration of Israel, to the blessing of the earth under His reign, and, above all, to the Church's hope in His coming? For these truths, all of them important in respect both of man and of God's glory, there is no room, no, not for a word; but, somehow, perhaps a dozen articles wrangle with the vanities of Rome, and even the dreams of the Anabaptists are not without a formal notice. And this meagre, negative, controversial, incorrect string of things, eternal and temporal, catholic and sectarian, good, bad, and indifferent, the clergy generally must subscribe! Nay, in the royal declaration which precedes, it is laid down that these articles "do contain the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's Word: which we do therefore ratify and confirm, requiring all our loving subjects [observe, not saints of God, but "subjects" of the English crown] to continue in the uniform profession thereof, and prohibiting the least difference from the said articles." Certainly, "the Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church" ought to have been inspired, if not infallible, to justify such a mandate!

It is an utter mistake, therefore, that in the Establishment "the authority of the Word is maintained: the individual conscience is to bow to it alone," if it be meant that "the least difference" from its own accredited formularies is sanctioned within its pale. The sixth Article simply asserts, in opposition to Rome, the sufficiency of the Scriptures, i.e., of the canonical books of the Old and New Testament, for salvation; but it is wrongly inferred from this that any member, above all a clergyman, may legitimately dissent from any part of the Prayer-book, no matter how loudly he may plead God's Word for a contrary view. It is taken for granted in the Article that the doctrine and regimen of the Establishment agree with, and may be proved by, Scripture, as is plain from Articles 20 and 21. But then this is the question. And what avails the Christian's assertion of the Word as the only authority, if he comes to the conclusion that much in the Articles and Services is without and against Scripture? Such an one, if he would walk uprightly before God and man must walk outside the Establishment. The Lord may convert sinners and comfort saints there, and everywhere; but to conclude thence that He ever was in, and abides now with, unscriptural Articles and Canons, or that He guides men in profiting by the status which the Establishment gives them, spite of their underlying its excommunication, is virtually to impute their own lack of holiness (awful to think!) to the Lord. And this, allow me to say, my dear brother, is just the logical result of your latitudinarianism, far as you may be from intending it.

But I have not done with the question of doctrines yet, and am sorry to say that, if we found a singular absence of some in the Articles, their presence is still more suspicious elsewhere. Thus, take the Baptismal service, which you have yourself sought to defend in Appendix B. (Pp. 44, 45.) You assert that "they (it, and the Burial service) are true of believers," and that, if only the children of communicants were baptized, and if only communicants were buried with the prescribed service, "much of the present difficulty would be done away: difficulty which exists not from anything untrue in the services and requirements of the Church, [i.e., the English Establishment,] but from that state of things which allows those who do not conform to the requirements of the Church to come within the operation of its services."

Now I am compelled to deny the accuracy of your allegations and of your reasonings. The Baptismal service is said to be for believers; but how, when infants are the subjects? Is it pretended that infants are believers? Or do you believe that the Establishment "exalts the Word of God alone" in the scheme of sponsors, that is, other people vowing repentance and faith for the unconscious babe? Besides, the service itself contradicts your assumption. If the child has not been already baptized, the priest proceeds to say that all men are conceived and born in sin, not that the children of believers are born in faith and a new life. He thereon calls on those present to pray that God would grant to the child that thing which by nature he cannot have: that he may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ's holy Church. Evidently, therefore, the service is not made for a believing child; for he that believeth hath eternal life, and we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So the prayer: "Wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost; that he, being delivered from thy wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ's Church:" a very bad misapplication of the type, for it puts the Church in the place of Christ. But, letting this pass, the sense is plain that the subject for baptism is yet to be washed, sanctified, delivered from wrath, and received into Christ's Church. So, in the next petition, "We call upon thee for this infant, that he, coming to thy holy Baptism, may receive remission of sins by spiritual regeneration." Clearly, the child is supposed not yet to have received remission of sins, which every Christian possesses. On the other hand, after the ceremony, the priest says, "We receive this child into the congregation of Christ's flock," etc., and "seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's Church, let us give thanks," etc. "We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church." I must say, then, that you have not correctly represented the service. Its own unambiguous language is entirely inconsistent with the trite and unworthy sophism that this office, at least, is framed for, and true of, believers; for it supposes the child to be in a state of nature and sin before the ceremony, and actually regenerate immediately after. I ask you, as in the sight of God, do you receive this as the truth? Or is it not rather the remains of Popish darkness from which the English Reformers had not wholly emerged any more than the Lutherans? God forbid that I should speak slightingly of those blessed men of God. Yet that is no reason why one should continue to subscribe to what he believes is an error, and be an active or passive party to the delusion of Baptismal regeneration. You may hide yourself behind the decision of the Gorham case. If so, it is, in my judgment, beneath a godly man who desires, at any cost, to glorify Christ; for that decision did not deny Baptismal regeneration to be the doctrine of the service, but simply barred a bishop from refusing to institute a clergyman who did not hold it. That is, men were suffered, even if they were Evangelicals, to take a benefice in the Establishment. The Privy Council refused to go farther. The doctrine of the service remains, of course, exactly where it was. Do you hold it? If you do not, what are we to think of your administering a rite in terms which you believe to be unsound on a vital doctrine, and which you would strongly condemn in the pulpit?

But it will make the false doctrine still more felt, if we examine the ministration to such as are of riper years. The grand difference there is that sponsors disappear, the persons to be baptized answering for themselves. "Doubt ye not therefore," it is said in the exhortation, "but earnestly believe that He will favourably receive these present persons, truly repenting and coming unto Him by faith; that He will grant them remission of their sins, and bestow upon them the Holy Ghost: that He will give them the blessing of eternal life," etc. Again, the prayer runs, "Give thy Holy Spirit to them that they may be born again," etc. Then after the rite, follow substantially the same thanksgivings and prayers as in the case of infants. That is, the doctrine of this service is, that adults, who are supposed to have true repentance and faith, are viewed as not born again till they are baptized: they are regenerate only thereon or rather therein. This form of the service is avowedly for believers; but alas! the provision for adults only increases the evil, and demonstrates incontestably that the services attribute the new birth to the sacrament. For these persons, confessedly believers, are yet treated as wanting the blessing of eternal life till the application of the water, whereupon they are at once regarded as made members of Christ. Do I, or did you, bear false witness to the Baptismal service and its doctrine?

What gives unspeakable importance to all this, is that on these anti-scriptural services the system rests; for only by their means, i.e. by sacramental efficacy in lieu of saving faith, could the rubric enjoin every parishioner to communicate, the line being drawn (not between believers and unbelievers, as you confess it should be, but) between the moral and the scandalously immoral, which exactly suits the world but is not the footing of the Church of God.

The Establishment is a grand, national institution. It has strong charms for my natural heart, many a fond association, countless links with the past and the present. But how efface from my eyes the view grace has given me in the ever-living Word, of God's Church? How forget that the Holy Ghost is sent down from heaven to gather the members of the one body, apart from the world, into present manifest subjection to their Lord? I dare not be disobedient to the heavenly vision, but seek, wherever I know saints of God gathered to the name of Jesus, there to confess my allegiance with unsullied conscience, there to bewail the present ruin of what was once so united and fair, there to cherish so much the more jealously all that remains through grace, there to be edified and, in my little measure, to edify others, through the sure Word and blessed Spirit of God.

For the pious and generous efforts of many saints, for the devotedness and zealous service of many a minister of Christ therein, I can heartily bless God, and desire to follow them wherever they follow their Master and mine. But I maintain as a duty to Him, and in the fullest love to them, that the Establishment never even professed nor sought to be a gathering of none but saints to the name of Jesus, owning the Holy Ghost alone as their faithful, present guide, and having the Word of God, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word, as their rule. In short, admirable as the Establishment is in many respects, it is not, it never was, a Church of God, according to the scriptural notion and working of that Church.

But this, if true, (and I challenge grave and godly enquiry,) clears the way at once. For if you and I are children of God, do we not owe it to Him to eschew every association of man which hinders our acting humbly and obediently as members of His Church? As a mere man, I might conceive myself bound to the Church of my country and sovereign; if radically inclined, I might claim the right to choose or make a church of my own; but as a Christian, my duty is to do the will of my God and Father; and if He has laid down in His Word the nature, character, principles, and limits of His Church, God forbid that I should not be found cleaving to His Word, and renouncing, as far as I know, all that it condemns. Is it really come to this, that the public walk and the worship of the Church are the only field where self-will is no sin, and Scripture ceases to have authority over the conscience? If satisfied that the foundations and distinctive lineaments of that which we have traditionally accepted as the Church, are unscriptural — if convinced that its headship, its ministry, and its membership, are alike the voice of strangers, are the sheep not to hear the Shepherd's voice? Are we not to go forth unto Him without the camp bearing His reproach?

You say that "services can only be framed for believers." (p. 44.) Excuse me if I show that those who made or compiled the liturgy have wonderfully succeeded in framing an order for prayer day by day, which aims at meeting the wants of both sinners and saints, but in truth is appropriate, as is the fact in most compromises, for neither. For whose use are the Scripture Sentences at the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer? Take, for example, the first: "When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." Can you pretend that these words, the first words habitually used in the Daily Service, are for believers? So too the texts from Matthew 3 and Luke 15. The question is not their inspiration, but their right application. Can you pretend that God meant them to open the worship of His assembly? Does He sanction therein the presence of wicked men who have to turn from their wickedness? of unconverted sinners who have to repent? of prodigals who have to arise and go to their father, who are not yet clothed with the best robe, who are lost and not found, dead and not alive?

That passages of another tenor, and only true of those actually saints, could be culled, is not denied; but what I have commented on evinces that conscience was too strong for the compilers. The theory, the unquestionable purpose, was to receive to all acts of worship every decently behaved parishioner, already made a member of Christ by baptism; but they could not enter on the ordinary daily service without an implied acknowledgement of their error in Christianizing the world. For the sentences selected (Wheatly says, with justice) are "such as are the most plain and the most likely to bring all sorts of sinners to repentance." It is not true, then, that saints only are contemplated here, as the best-known illustrator of the Prayer Book allows. It is an appeal to the wicked and impenitent, moving them to repent and be converted.

The real drift is unequivocally and distressingly confirmed by that which follows the general confession — "the Absolution, or Remission of Sins, to be pronounced by the Priest alone standing; the people still kneeling." How an intelligent believer, be he layman or clerk, can reconcile his conscience to this form, is an enigma to me, save as a striking instance of the darkening power of religious habits. For if we regard it as not going beyond a declaration of the gospel, the supposition is destroyed that only believers are in view. If we understand it as addressed to saints, what an extravagant denial of the privileges of the Church? I can comprehend, when the special occasion demands it, one or more open offenders under discipline and needing restoration publicly. I cordially allow the value to God's children of confessing their sins of omission and commission individually, and of confessing their faults to one another where requisite; but that the entire assembly, as such, should thus be addressed as penitently awaiting pardon through believing the gospel, is a contrast with all that Scripture intimates about the Church and its worship.

Curiously enough, to kneel on the Lord's Day was thought shocking in Christendom generally for many centuries after Christ, gross as the declension was in other respects. We know from almost every ecclesiastical writer of note that on this day there was no kneeling any more than fasting, "as symbolic of the resurrection (says the very ancient author of Quaest. et Resp. ad Orthodox. 115.) by which, through the grace of Christ, we were delivered from our sins and from death, which is mortified thereby." Indeed, in consequence of little discrepancies of practice, the Council of Nice went so far as to make a canon that on such occasions prayers should be made standing. (Labbé, Coll. Concil. vol. ii. p. 246.) I doubt that an allowed exception to this practice can be shown for 700 years; so that I have often marvelled how the sticklers for the Catholic usages of those early days could quietly resign themselves to a practice which was so universally and authoritatively discountenanced. Mistake me not: I do not contend for a superstitious revival of this or any other tradition. I am sure it is quite christian to praise standing and to pray on one's knees every day of the week. But I do not hesitate to record my opinion that the form grew out of (possibly the "Let us stand upright" was no better than a petrifaction grown out of) the blessed standing in conscious liberty and holy joy in which the Church should worship on the Lord's Day above all days. In the so-called Church of England it is not only that they are all, saints and sinners, by an alteration for the worse suggested by Bucer and Martyr, reduced on that day as much as another to an attitude which, for so many ages, was reserved on Sundays for a state of penance, but the substance of the error is betrayed by the demand and supply of a constantly recurring public absolution. Is it not the very spirit of the Jews, who must first clear themselves by a fresh sin-offering, before they dared to pass on to the sacrifices of sweet savour?

Besides, there is another serious fault, which proves that the Absolution is not merely declarative. The Priest pronounces it, not a deacon, who nevertheless takes authority, when ordained, to read the gospel, and preach the same if licensed thereto by the Bishop. Clearly, therefore, it is not such an announcement of forgiveness as the gospel contains; for in that case a licensed deacon might act as well as a Priest. And the people would sit to hear, instead of kneeling, "the Priest alone standing." A most unwarrantable liberty was here taken, derogatory to any Christians who might be in the congregation, deluding to the mass of unbelievers there, presumptuous on the minister's part, and in no ordinary degree obliterating the efficacy of Christ's work. To show that I am not exaggerating, let me transcribe Wheatly's conclusion. "From all which it is plain that this Absolution is more than declarative, that it is truly effective, insuring and conveying to the proper subjects thereof the very Absolution or Remission itself. It is as much a bringing of God's pardon to the penitent member of Christ's Church, and as effectual to his present benefit, as an authorized messenger, bringing pardon from his sovereign to a condemned penitent criminal, is effectual to his present pardon and release from the before-appointed punishment." Pardon to a condemned penitent criminal! What a testimony to this part of the Anglican Service! Could it suit the saints in Scripture, "who are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh?"

I have no desire to write of prayers in a critical view, but I must show cause why one who cleaves to the whole counsel of God as now fully revealed, is excluded from joining in the language of the Prayer-Book, if he would keep a conscience void of offence. How, then, could such an one adopt the Litany as an unobjectionable expression of his breathings to God? Where is the spirit of adoption there? Where the peaceful dependence of a child resting in his Father's love? Where a soul strong in the grace that is in Christ? There is the cry of "miserable sinners." When one thinks of "every parishioner," it is hardly to be regretted that the service is very far from uttering the pleas of a faith which does not exist. But if it be thus more suitable for unbelievers, may we not grieve over "saints in the Church of England" who are here made to forget the peace which they have with God, the grace wherein they stand, and the glory in the hope of which they are entitled to rejoice? "Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever." Strange infatuation, that true saints of God, "whom the Lord makes happy in his love," should habitually unite in petitions which might have served more or less before the cross, but are quite inconsistent with peace and joy in believing, such as a feeble Christian may now possess! I can understand an earthly people, like Israel, redeemed by power and not yet by the blood of Christ, deprecating divine anger; I admit fully that even the saints in their midst might do the same — indeed, could do no other, till the great sacrifice was offered and sin was put away. But the New Testament never supposes such a character of relationship or supplication since the day of Pentecost. The sentiment is not applicable to the Christian: to adopt it is so far to Judaize, which is a grave and dangerous error, as St. Paul's warnings show. Let me ask you, my brother, to explain how it can be said of real Christians, "though we be tied and bound with the chain of our sins, yet let the pitifulness of thy great mercy loose us?" If the gospel be true, those who believe are already forgiven for Christ's sake; and this, not some favoured members of the family, but all the little children; (1 John 2: 12) and we are called, all of us, to give thanks unto the Father, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1) "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." In short, on this all-important truth, the effect of Christ's death and resurrection for the believer, the Bible and the Prayer-Book teach, the former that the saint has been made free from the law of sin and death, the latter that the Anglican worshippers, "tied and bound with the chain of their sins," must pray to be loosed. If the New Testament language is founded on faith in the deliverance brought in by Christ's work, the prayer just cited cannot be acquitted of ignorance and belief.

Enough, however, of this distasteful task which your tract has imposed on me. Enough, and perhaps to spare, has been produced to satisfy an unbiassed spiritual man, that the services partake of the incoherent character, attaching to the whole structure. The daily service, I have said, is not adapted for believers, though I am far from admitting that it is a scriptural provision for unbelievers. The framers tried to meet both, but have succeeded in neither case. And why dissect the order for the Communion, the Visitation of the Sick, the Burial Service, the Commination, (is this for believers too?) and the Consecration of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons? To expose them would doubtless swell the account, some of bold contrariety to Scripture, others of palpable Judaizing. But I desire to say no more at this time than what may be required to convince a fair mind, that the English Establishment, spite of excellent things and people within it, is really, to all intents and purposes, the world treated as the Church, and this on the footing of religious ordinances, instead of living faith. There is not the slightest need that the priest or a single parishioner should be converted: the ritual would still proceed decorously, and there would be, according to canon-law, the sole authorized minister and church in the parish. Were the Holy Ghost to work in converting and gathering together souls to the name of Jesus, in dependence on His own presence and power, their assembly, however pleasing to God, would be denounced as a schism, not by you, perhaps, nor by a Tractarian merely, but by that which you are both, as clergymen, bound to obey — by the plain, unrepealed canons of your body. It is fully granted that there may be a godly minister, and a few or many saints in a particular district. But this is a mere accident and in no way essential to the system, the principle of which is to comprehend in a common religious profession all the subjects of the Crown, and to open to that which should be, a holy table for a peculiar people, redeemed and purified, to every parishioner who is not a scandal to his neighbour. "The Church of England," say you, "rightly requires that all its members should be communicants." (p. 44.) But all its members, where there are no separate meetings, are all the christened inhabitants — that is, in fact, all the world who are there. And the ground on which this identification of the world with the Church goes on, is that they have all been made members of Christ in baptism and recognized as already regenerate and forgiven all their sins when they were confirmed. This is unquestionably the regular doctrine and system of the Establishment. If it be not yours, as I believe it is not, it is because you really are not a Churchman, save nominally. But if it is the plain, positive intention of the system, whether people carry it out or not, your own loudly-proclaimed principles, union among the saints and separation from the world, are wholly inconsistent with it; the laws and fundamental constitution of the Establishment render them impossible to be adopted in the public services; and thus you are obliged, so long as you remain within your present borders, to be glaringly, hopelessly, false to the very truths which you have publicly confessed to be your own principles, and the will of the Lord. If you believe that God begets by the word of truth — by the gospel which is preached to souls, (James 1; 1 Peter 1,) and not that infants are regenerate by baptism, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council may protect you, if you should be hard pressed by episcopal rigour for your inconsistency; but ordinary conscience must condemn the official employment of language which altogether differs from your real thoughts on the momentous point of the new birth: language which makes (not a service for Christians, but) quasi-Christians for all the services which follow from Confirmation to Burial. Ought a Christian to say anywhere, above all in the professed worship and service of God, that which he believes to be untrue?

PART 2 — THE "BRETHREN."

WE are now come to the second part of my task; a reply, not to your apology for the Establishment, but to your strictures on the "Brethren" so called. Whether you have adhered to Scripture in attacking us, any more than to the Prayer-Book in defending your own position, remains to be shown.

Some six and thirty or more years ago, a few Christians were led to feel much the worldly, and abnormal state of Christendom. One of them was of Romanist parentage, the others were Anglicans. They prayed, they mourned over the low condition of themselves and their brethren at large, they searched the Word of God. They knew it was evil to worship God unscripturally; they saw it was right to meet and break bread, as disciples of the Lord and in dependence on the Holy Ghost. Pretending to nothing of their own, in conscious feebleness, but most happy in the discovery of their liberty in Christ to remember Him and build up each other, they welcomed in His name every saint, joining with them in any service where it could be with a good conscience, but refusing to own whatever they believed to be contrary to Scripture. On one ex-clergyman (who above the rest realized the present ruin of the christian profession, and was led out into much prayer, fasting, and humiliation about it before God,) special honour was put of the Lord; for He was pleased through him to revive, from the Scriptures, the mystery of Christ and the Church, the true character of our hope in the Lord's coming, the personal presence and operations of the Holy Ghost in the Church and the Christian, with a vast body of corollaries dependent on those grand truths, which re-acted on the gospel itself and set the salvation of God in a far clearer light.

Thus much I may say the more freely, inasmuch as I had not the honour of being a pioneer in the holy testimony of that early hour. But I do not feel at liberty to speak of the practical effects of what, I am assured, was the Holy Ghost's action on their souls and of many more who were attracted by degrees in England and abroad, as well as in Ireland.

Their position was this:-instead of making a Church, they owned the members of the Church of God, wherever they might be. They did not essay to form a perfect Church of their own; but they sought into that which God's Word reveals about His Church, and to this perfect revelation, this only, they clave. They found it spoke of a body on earth, Christ's body, its members one with Christ and with one another by virtue of the Holy Ghost's presence in them. They believe that, scattered as the members are, and grieved as the Spirit is, He is still here to guide the assembly; and that this assembly of God, the Church, is still here to be guided, and that, according to the Saviour's promise, two or three gathered to His name might count on His presence in their midst. Why not act upon it? They believed that nationalism and dissent are unknown to Scripture and contrary to its plain principles and injunctions. Why act with either? The one makes its basis broader, the other narrower than Scripture warrants. The "Brethren" saw clearly that the Scriptural ground is that of Christ's body-in its separation from the world, essentially different from a national system; and in its unity, just as essentially opposed to dissenting sects, formed on points of difference, which sever, instead of uniting, the saints of God. They did not organize a new system with its peculiar laws and regulations; they commended to each other the Word of God alone. What Christian could question that rule of faith and standard of practice? They did not call or choose their own ministers, but trusted the Holy Ghost to raise up and send whom He would. Who can gainsay the ministers whom the Lord sends?

Can you tell me of any saints of God, since the Church departed from its scriptural ground, who ever before saw, or assembled on, this basis? Do you know of any save "Brethren" who are simply, thoroughly acting on it now? Is it not large enough to admit every saint who walks as such, without imposing a single condition which he does not own? Is it not exclusive enough to keep off all who are believed on adequate evidence to be yet in the flesh? Does it not leave room for the Holy Ghost to exercise all His rights in the Church of God? Does it not maintain, in deed and in truth, the authority of the entire Word of God, without one human tradition to burden or stumble the conscience? And is not this, then, the only ground entitled to claim the ear of every saint of God? I read of that basis, and no other, for the Church of God in Scripture; I see that basis, and no other, taken among "Brethren," and among "Brethren" only. Try, if you please, and face the truth of Scripture and of the facts. You have only as yet assailed a shadow of your own making; and even in this you have fallen into palpable, surprising errors, as I am forced to prove.

You allude, first of all, to a tract written by Mr. Darby in view of the Evangelical Alliance. The title ("Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity") you have impeached — I hope, because you did not understand it. "First," you say, "separation from anything never can be a principle of unity; a common rejection of any error or errors does not afford a centre of union to those who mutually reject these errors." (p. 8.) Hence it is transparent that you confound the principle of unity with its centre. Had you read the tract with average care, the oversight could hardly have been made; for the writer has distinguished each element of unity with his usual precision. If "separation from evil is of God," as you do and must allow in the same page, if holiness be inseparable from His nature and all His other dealings, does a Christian want proof that God does not abandon His own moral character in the unity He forms and recognizes among His saints? On what possible principle save that of holiness (which is but another way of expressing separation from evil, where evil exists) could God carry out unity here below? You are surely not prepared to assert that He sanctions a unity which must exclude Himself, unless iniquity can have fellowship with Him.

The truth is, that you, probably misled by Groves' Memoir, have fallen into the blunder of understanding "centre of union," where Mr. D. meant and wrote accurately, "principle of unity." But even here you are wrong again; for the true centre of union is neither "love," as you say, nor "life," as Groves says, but Christ Himself-Christ dead, risen, and glorified at the right hand of God, the chief corner-stone of God's house, the head of the Church which is His body. I should be ashamed to cite texts of Scripture in proof of the truth that Christ is the centre of God's unity, any more than for the other truth that holiness is its necessary principle.

But if separation from evil be the only principle on which the unity of a holy God can be conceived to be carried out in an evil world, and if He has sent down the Holy Ghost to be the efficient agent of it, uniting us to Christ on high, I need not occupy myself with your next error, the imputing of "sad consequences" to a holy principle. It is false that the maintenance of unity according to holiness "leads to separation between true brethren." It does suppose the judgment, in the power of the Spirit and by the Word, of those who sin; but this is a blessed, not a sad, consequence, and the direct command of God. "Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened." Separation from evil is here most unquestionably laid down as God's principle of unity: and in holiness is that unity to be guarded practically at any cost. Otherwise all degenerates into the mystery of iniquity, and a form of godliness denying the power. "From such," says the Spirit of God, "turn away."

Much which you urge in pages 8-14 is not to me the evidence of a peaceful heart. The tone in which you resent anyone's thinking your course not quite consistent, somewhat betrays that spirit of judgment of which you accuse others, to say the least, much too broadly. He that is conscious of doing the will of God, can afford to go calmly forward in the path of Christ, undisturbed by the censoriousness of men. But I have generally found that "he who did his neighbour wrong" is the first to complain, "who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?"

If I do not mistake your allusions, you blame the discipline we have pursued as to Bethesda. Now I freely acknowledge the shortcoming of the "Brethren" and my own. But I am thoroughly satisfied it is of God that we should not have communion with a congregation which deliberately received the intelligent partisans of a blasphemer against Christ.* If you suppose that a believer, or a company of believers, can receive, or bid God speed to, such as bring not the doctrine of Christ but of a false Christ; that they can justify that reception when they know the depth of the evil involved, without becoming partakers of their evil deeds, I wholly dissent from you, and believe that the course adopted from 2 John is one of real love and holiness, and that neutrality in such a case would be the gravest sin and the foulest wrong to the Son of God. Have you not ventured to give an opinion on a matter of the most serious import, which you are not in a position to judge?

*The late Mr. Groves went along with Bethesda warmly. This was to be expected from one whose principle it was, if principle it can be called, to bear with all the evils of Christians rather than separate from their good. (p. 38.) Neither of these things, it is evident, ought to be done by the believer, nor ever was accepted by "Brethren." — It should be known also, that Mr. G., though often breaking bread with "Brethren," because of their receiving all Christians, notoriously never agreed with their principles; as I am informed by those who took that position from the very first and adhere to it unswervingly still. The effect of his own peculiar theory of universal association was practically to leave him universally "unattached." And it is this absence of a fixed, holy, divine principle in matters ecclesiastical, which is the chief point of sympathy between him and you.

You refer to such passages as Isaiah 1: 16, 17 ; 2 Tim. 2: 19; and 2 Cor. 6: 16-18, "and others, which teach, it is said, that the saints of God should separate themselves from the professing Church, because of the evil and ruin which indeed we all sorrowfully feel to be there." (p. 10.)

But who has said that saints "should separate themselves from the professing Church?" We have not left the professing Church at all. We found some things we used to do were evil, and we ceased to do them; we learnt there were other things it was well to do, and these we are now learning to do. Are we mistaken in either? Is it possible you are under the impression that to separate from the Establishment, or from Dissent, is to separate from the professing Church? To meet as "Brethren" do, in the Lord's name, is not in the least degree to separate from that Church, but to do what every disciple ought to do in it. Nobody does or can separate from the professing Church, except an open apostate.

I am sorry you find no guidance in this matter from the first two passages, for they are both full of light: that from the Old Testament, as a general principle of conduct for the individual; that from the New Testament, as expressly directing the Christian in a day of disorder such as ours. It is ridiculous to say that if a man really acts as Isaiah 1: 16, 17 directs, he can fall from one evil into a greater. For the word is, "cease to do evil" — not some one, but all evil. As long as that divine oracle is heard, evil, greater or less, is avoided. And what is this "greater evil?" "Refusing communion with those whom Jesus loves," &c. But there, again, are you not at fault? We receive every Christian walking as such, without reference to their connection with Nationalism or Dissent; we rejoice to have communion with them, whether privately or publicly. They may join us in the worship and the supper of the Lord; they are as free as any of us to help in thanksgiving, prayer, or a word of edification, if so led of God; and this, without stipulation either to leave their old associations or to meet only with us. Where is this done save only among "Brethren?" Were any of us, no matter how gifted of the Lord, to give out a hymn, to pray, or minister at St. John's Church, when you take the sacrament, the Canons (not Scripture) would treat it as indecent and disorderly; and so would it be, as far as I am aware, in any of the Dissenting sects, except by special courtesy. With us, on the contrary, if any godly Churchman or Dissenter thought fit to come when we remember the Lord together, he would be quite in order, if he did any or all of these things spiritually; and this, not from any mere permission on our part, but as a matter of responsibility to God and His Word. Which, then, is guilty of "the evil of refusing communion with those whom Jesus loves?" Certainly not we. If you mean that I, for one, would refuse, (not to have communion with God's children anywhere in a holy scriptural way, but) to join in the services of the Establishment, that is a very different question, and not a sin, in my judgment, but a duty to God, as I have already proved even on your own principles.

Next, 2 Tim. 2: 19-22 instructs, not so much, like 1 Tim., how to maintain order in the house of God, as how to walk when disorder reigns there. The primary comfort is the immutably sure foundation of God, its seal presenting, on the divine side, the sovereignty of the Lord who knows them that are His, and, on the human obverse, the responsibility of every one who names Christ's name, to depart from iniquity. Here, then, is the absolute obligation of the Christian to separate from evil in every shape. But we have that which is still more precise. The Christian profession was now like "a great house," having in it vessels, some to honour and some to dishonour. The jealousy of a saint to preserve unity might become a snare for his soul and a compromise of Christ's moral glory. Hence the Holy Ghost gives no uncertain sound, and leaves us not to speculation or self-will, but proclaims that holiness is still the only principle on which God maintains His unity. "If a man, therefore, purge himself from these, (i.e., from the vessels to dishonour,) he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work." You have neglected this scripture. You have allowed Satan to take advantage of your own glaring misconstruction of the parable of the tares, (of which more anon,) so as to fall into the fatal mistake that God would have us abide in fellowship with evil, practically, and in principle too, rather than break a unity which is no longer holy but an outrage on His character, as falsely pretending to be His. Important as it is to flee also youthful lusts, worldliness, and every other personal evil, it is not enough. We are bound not to join as Christians with those who profess the name of Christ but dishonour Him; we are bound by the Word not to have vessels to dishonour "in the same communion with us," (p. 35,) but to purge ourselves from them, and to follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, not with the world calling itself Christian, but "with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." To walk and worship with those who are evidently of the world, and have not a pure heart wherewith to call on the Lord, is a sin, it may be of ignorance, but without doubt a sin, which places us at variance with His Word, and proves we are so far indifferent to His glory — a sin so much the darker in proportion to our fancied light.

In vain you plead such texts as "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged;" "Speak not evil one of another, brethren," and the like. It is not we that judge, but the Word of the Lord, if it be rightly divided and applied. If you are at ease in your conscience, you have as little reason to feel sore, as I feel because of anything in your tract. Fully do I allow that we ought never to suspect evil nor to impute motives that are not apparent; and if any of the "Brethren" err in this way, they are as guilty as their neighbours, and indeed, more so. But all this, as far as it is true, is mere individual failure, and, alas! too abundant everywhere. To point a controversy by means of it, evinces, I think, not a little poverty in the way of substantial scriptural argument.

2 Cor. 6: 16-18, you say, (p. 11,) "teaches that the Church should come out and be separate from the world;" but this is the very thing we are doing, and the very thing the Establishment forbids your doing, since it commands "every parishioner" to communicate, and yourself to receive them at the communion. "It has nothing to do with the saints of God coming out and being separate from the professing Church, because of evil that may have come in there. God has shown His mind and will on this latter point." (ib.) He has indeed shown it, and it is "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." And is it not "iniquity" for one who doubts, dislikes, and disbelieves much in the Prayer-Book, to declare his unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything prescribed, sacraments, rites, ceremonies, consecrations, etc.? Do I hear some excusing themselves that they are the laity and can be silent? Hear Lord Shaftesbury at the last meeting of the Pastoral Aid Society: "I, too, have signed the Articles; I, too, am a subscriber to what is contained in the Prayer Book, just as much as the clergy are subscribers to it; I do, as a layman, everything that the clergy do, with the exception of the administration of the sacraments, and I take my full share of responsibility along with them." This is honest and plain-spoken: if it were felt in general by Anglican Christians, how many everywhere would cease to trifle with their consciences and depart from that which they know to be "iniquity!" As to your notion that we apply 2 Cor. 6 to saints quitting the professing Church, it is, I repeat, all a mistake. We are quite as much in it as ever we were: only we no longer do what we have discovered to be opposed to the Word, and we are endeavouring to walk in all respects in conformity with it as a whole. Again, we must not limit the passage in 2 Cor. 6 to saints "separating from the world;" for it not only forbids peremptorily every measure of association individually and corporately, in divine things, between Christians and the worldly, (which "Brethren" hold but the Establishment denies,) but it insists, for all who are separate and in the relation of God's sons and daughters, that they should cleanse themselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

But I must also make a remark, noticing in the next page (12) the constantly recurring illusion that it is a question of "separation from the professing Church." You evidently mean by that phrase the Establishment and the Protestant bodies in this and other countries; though your reasoning in general assumes the narrow bounds of your own system. But what of the Greeks, Nestorians, Copts, Abyssinians, &c.? Are they separate from the professing Church? The English Dissenters ought to be, one would think, by your logic, above all others; for they certainly separated themselves from the Establishment, and are running a race of rivalry with it. They were utterly wrong, on your showing; but as far as I can make out your singularly incoherent theory, these opposing systems are not excluded from "the professing Church" any more than your own. For the Roman Catholics, however, it is plain, you have as little mercy as they have for you. Theirs are damnable heresies, say you in language as unmeasured as the decrees of Trent. (p. 12.) "Roman Catholics, &c., do not receive the Word of God ! ! so they are not in the kingdom of God ! ! !" (p. 25.) Had you qualified your sweeping charge somewhat, had you accused them of overlaying, and to an immense extent evacuating, the Word of God by their traditions, I could have gone thus far with you. But it is false ground to deny absolutely that they receive the Word of God, and, if possible, worse to affirm that they are not in the kingdom, either as wheat or as tares.

My dear brother, bear with me if I tell you, in the plainest terms, you have thoroughly misunderstood the parable; and this misunderstanding forms the staple of your pamphlet, and has misled you to fight against as weighty a duty as any can be for a Christian.

I do not believe that you abhor the evils and errors of Romanism more than I do; but it is a calumny to say that Roman Catholics do not receive the atonement and priesthood of Christ — "not even professedly!" It is contrary to the plainest and surest facts; nay, even to your own Article 19, which owns its profession, calling it "the Church of Rome," though of course erring both in living and ceremonies, and also in matters of faith: an article which you have solemnly pledged yourself to take literally and grammatically. Hence your own Hooker, whom you cite approvingly, writes, in this far more correctly than you, "If by external profession they be Christians, then are they of the visible Church of Christ, and Christians by external profession they are all, whose mark of recognizance hath in it those things which we have mentioned, yea, although they be impious heretics, persons excommunicable, yea, and cast out for notorious improbity." This he says with express reference to Matt. xiii. (Eccles. Pol. b. iii., § 1.) What is of more consequence, the parable is itself against you; for the tares were the produce, not of the good seed corrupted merely, but of the evil sowing of the devil. Your denial that unconverted Roman Catholics, or heretics, are tares in the kingdom of heaven is, therefore, against the scripture commented on, not to speak of your own best divines. For there were two sorts of seeds; and not the good seed of the word only, as your reasoning supposes. Those divinely quickened in Romanism, as in Protestantism, are the fruit of the good seed; and wicked professors there, as everywhere, are set forth by the tares, the result of the enemy's seed. Your premises and deductions are equally baseless.

In short, the explanation is as narrow and unsound as possible: on this point no Papist ever put forth worse. And why, readers may inquire, why such a departure from the sense ordinarily and rightly given to the tares? Why deny that they include "the children of the wicked one," without restriction, within the entire range of Christendom-that is, all the wicked who are baptized and outside the heathen, Jews and Mahometans? Why are Romanists, for instance, refused a place, even as tares, in the kingdom?

The reason is obvious. You allow distinctly that "the only true way of witnessing against Roman Catholicism, &c., is by immediate and entire separation." But, then, if separation from Romanists is right, and yet they are outwardly in Christendom or the scene of the kingdom of heaven, your interpretation is ruined, and the pillar of your reasoning against the "Brethren" crumbles into dust. For if godly and ungodly Romanists are in the field of christian profession, (no less than godly and ungodly Protestants, so-called "Plymouth Brethren" and all,) it follows that we may all grow together in the field, and yet some of us may lawfully be in "separation immediate and entire" from others. If it be consistent with the Lord's word that Protestants should have a different ecclesiastical communion from Romanists, it may be, as far as this injunction goes, equally consistent for Dissenters to be apart from the Establishment, and I add, for "Brethren" to stand aloof from all, if all have more or less deserted the scriptural ground of christian fellowship. Thus the argument, drawn from secession from Rome to seceding from every other form of iniquity, remains wholly unimpaired. Nothing can justify a Christian's owning that to be a Church of God which is not: and that the Establishment is not God's Church, but fundamentally different from it, flows even from what you concede to be God's essential abiding principles for His Church — unity with all saints, and separation from the world. These are our principles, not those of the Establishment, nor of Dissent.

This, then, demonstrates how far you are entitled to speak disparagingly of the view given of the parable of the tares in the Bible Treasury for March, 1862. It is you who have wholly missed its meaning, not that paper. For what the Lord therein forbade was not the effort of His servants to make a collective testimony (p. 15) of God's children, apart from the children of the wicked one, (which is the unity of the saints, separate from the world-the very thing you have yourself over and over confessed to be the will of God, and ever to be held fast.) He interdicted their gathering up the tares, i.e., their forcible removal from the field, or, as I have explained it, their extermination. All hold that the enemy sowed tares among the wheat; (I never doubted nor concealed it for a moment;) nor does the reiteration of a fact which lies on the surface of the words modify my view in the slightest degree. All hold that the reason alleged by our Lord, for refusing to sanction the servants' gathering up the tares, was lest they should root up the wheat also with them. This, too, I should have thought was too obvious to require special mention in a paper which gave only select notes of a lecture. Add these points to what was there said, expand them as you may, so that it be done truthfully, and the interpretation I have given is altogether untouched.

But your view is due to a total neglect of the Lord's explanation, and leads you to contradict the plainest Scriptures elsewhere, as well as the principles yon lay down and urge so often in your tract. I will not spend time in taking up strange statements, such as your seeming doubt whether the tares were sown in the field. "From whence then hath it tares?" I should treat with the utmost indulgence mere incidental flaws where the main thought was of God. But I am forced to express my decided judgment that you have preferred darkness to light, in this instance at least: why, the Lord will judge.

Omitting detail, then, I ask where is the evidence that the parable applies to ecclesiastical fellowship? You have taken this for granted without attempting a proof; and I altogether deny it. In fact, the beginning and middle of your tract are at open war; and one, if true, destroys the other. For, in p. 22, without the least reason given for applying the wheat-and-tare-field to the subject of church fellowship, you actually thence infer, that it would injure the saints of God, "if they attempted to separate from the children of the, devil!" In pp. 4-6, the saints were to be separated from the children of this world; it was "very plain in the Word," "the will of God" and "to be held fast." But, in pp. 21-27, "His saints are not now to attempt it." "The Saviour forbids any separation to be made." Is it not rather too bad, within the same sheet, to declare, with equal strength, that the same thing is, and is not, the will of the Lord? When you begin, the separation of the saints from the world is a "plain truth" of God; as you advance, the very same thing is a mere delusion of the "Brethren!" "No separation . . . . . . . is the way of obedience!" (p. 27.)

The answer to all this is very simple, and the Lord has given it: "the field is THE WORLD." Hooker says (in the same book and section which I have already quoted) "His Church he compareth unto a field;" but he is wrong. The field is not the Church but the world. You have avoided the open statement of that error, but you have fallen into it only so much the more deeply, because unconsciously. The parable implies, that the tares were clearly seen to be tares, when fruit was brought forth, though not before. Here, then, are the tares, not merely left quietly in the world, but, on your view, known as tares in the assemblies or in the Church. In the parable, there is, of course, no question of gathering up the wheat, but only the tares, i.e., children of the wicked one, no longer hidden, but now apparent to the servants. Notwithstanding, there is no permission to deal even with the most evident or aggravated cases of evil; but, contrariwise, a decisive veto put by our Lord on every attempt to root them out. Apply this, as you do, to their growing together in the Church, and discipline is necessarily at an end; for, as you triumphantly answer, "it is written again, let them both grow TOGETHER until the harvest?" Of all imaginable schemes of Church fellowship, this is, I venture to say, the most preposterous. It is contrary to Scripture; for St. Paul insists that we are to judge them that are within, and that the wicked person is to be put away. It is contrary to the Rubric, which warrants the rejection of a notorious evil-doer, or scandalous person. It is contrary to your own admission that discipline should take cognizance of the ways of professors. The unvarnished, inevitable result of your interpretation of the parable is, to set aside all discipline, whether scriptural or Anglican. For who, under any circumstances, can be put out of the Church, if both good and bad are to grow together in it till the harvest or the end of the world?

But where were both sown? Even if we were not expressly informed what "the field" is, it would be a question requiring proof, and you could not be permitted to assume that the Church was meant; for the tares would have grown together with the wheat in the world, if there had been no such thing as the gathering together of the saints at all. But the Lord's explanation leaves your gloss without excuse: for your reasoning is really directed against His interpretation, without your knowing it, because you understand that to be the Church which He declares is "the world." In fact, not a word is said about the Church, as such, in the parable. For the wheat are simply the genuine Christians, individually considered; and this would have been true, had there never been such a corporate institution as God's assembly. The real question is about the field, i.e. the world, as the scene where the Lord had been sowing, and the enemy too. Hence those who apply it either to the sanctioned mixture of saints and sinners in church communion or to the prohibition of church-discipline, have wholly and most mischievously lost their way and are really setting their own perversion of the parable against the plainest evidence of other scriptures. My interpretation harmonizes what you dislocate, and falls in with the Word in general; for, I have taught and still teach, that, comparing 1 Cor. 5 with Matt. 13, the true and twofold meaning is, (not that wicked persons are not to be put out, and that they are to be put out, which is mere nonsense, and setting Scripture against Scripture, but) that wicked persons are not to be put out of the world, while they are to be put out of the Church. If this seems unintelligible to you, it is because you have mystified yourself through confounding the two spheres. To gather up the tares means extermination, or at least violence as to the world, not excommunication from the Church. The dilemma (p. 28) is therefore imaginary. For wicked professors may doubtless exist in Christendom (i.e., the field of the kingdom) without being accredited in the assembly (i.e., the Church.)

You wonder (p. 29) at the view that rooting up the tares means killing or injuring the pseudo-Christians. Are you aware that the famous Archbishop John Chrysostom, the greatest light of the Greek Church, gives just the same in his forty-seventh Homily on St. Matthew? Moreover, the ablest of Protestant controversialists answers your argument, drawn from the parable by his Popish adversary, precisely as I am replying to you: "Our blessed Saviour foretold, you say, that there should be in the Church tares with choice corn. Look again, I pray, and you shall see that the field He speaks of is not the Church, but the world: and therefore neither do you obey our Saviour's command, 'Let both grow up till the harvest,' who teach it to be lawful to root these tares (such are heretics) out of the world: neither do Protestants disobey it, if they eject manifest heresies and notorious sinners out of the Church." (Religion of Protestants, ch. v., part 1, § 57.) I had read neither the ancient nor the modern author, when I wrote the tract you refer to (p. 31) as containing substantially the same explanation which satisfies me still. If you were not convinced before, I am not without hope that enough is said now to satisfy you that, in uniting as saints, separate from the world, (of which you certainly should not complain,) we in no way transgress our Lord's injunction in Matt. 13; for what He forbids is not such a separation, but the attempt to root or expel false professors out of Christendom, which is very far from our wish or thought. Leaving them to abide therein undisturbed, we nevertheless purge ourselves from the vessels to dishonour, and follow the will of the Lord with them that call on Him out of a pure heart. Are you doing the same? To us both duties seem clear and consistent.

In truth, Protestants, as well as Romanists and early Catholics, widely departed from His mind as laid down in the parable. When such as professed to be Christ's servants handed over reputed heretics or other spiritual offenders to be punished externally, they did precisely what is for the present forbidden. Augustine made this mistake in a measure, when he urged the authorities to chastise the factious Donatists; and Gratian carried it out still more thoroughly. Well meant as this was, it was ignorance of the character which the kingdom assumes through Christ's rejection, and during His session at God's right hand; it was a slip into earthly righteousness out of the patience of heavenly grace. The value of our Lord's warning became apparent when the Waldenses, &c., were persecuted to death; for here was the extirpation of at least some wheat in the blind zeal which strove to get rid of the tares. It is not for the servants, but for the angels of the Son of man, to execute destructive judgment on mere nominal Christians. This is the point in hand: not keeping the unconverted, or purging the wicked, out of the Church, which is quite right; but the application of power to remove those accounted spurious professors of Christ from the world, which is quite wrong. In the end of the age the tares are burgled and the wheat shines forth in glory. It is an outward, judicial dealing with the tares, (which the Lord forbids to us,) not the putting away of evil-doers from the assembly of the faithful (which the Holy Ghost enjoins.)

Again, it was from not seizing the truth conveyed here and elsewhere that some of the Reformers erred greatly in essaying to enforce the kingdom of God on Jewish principles. Thus, in the sixteenth century, not only were many burnt and imprisoned in England for alleged dogmatic evil, but also some flagrant cases occurred at Geneva under Calvin's dictation. It is needless to enlarge on the Puritans, long after, and their excesses; or on the Scottish Presbyterians, whose desires, and deeds, with a similar end in view, are notorious. The penal statutes, till lately in force in our own country, bear witness to the same general tendency. In fact, it is the danger, not of Christians who seek by the grace of God to keep themselves separate from the world and pure, but of all who adopt the world as the ground of their ecclesiastical system, which they must next render compulsory by law: sorrowful contrast to the Spirit's action in the Church of God!

You admit that "the parable has nothing whatever to do with Church discipline." (p. 23.) But your application deprives discipline of its legitimate exercise, unless you can prove that neither wheat nor tares fall into sins which require exclusion. For, on the one hand, if the tares so sin and are to be put away, what becomes of your famous argument in pp. 20-26? "Is a separation to be attempted? 'Nay,' saith the Master." If, on the other hand, you confess that the exclusion of the wicked from the assembly perfectly consists with the growing together of the wheat and tares in the same field, your reasoning utterly breaks down: in this case you are forced to own the truth I am contending for.* Whereas, if tares and wheat grow together in the Church, the rule would be absolute and final, that discipline can exclude neither; for both are to grow together till the harvest.

*What can one think of the argument (p. 22) that as the saint must carry the body of death with him whereby he is burdened, "so, it maybe the saints of God must (!) have the presence of those who are not of God in their assemblies?" "Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?" Are "those who are not of God" members of Christ likewise? The Catechism says so, but what says the Scripture? "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" Are the tares the same? A tare is Satan's child; is your body his child? So the Gnostics used to hold; but your heart, I trust, will repudiate the error, at the expense of the reasoning.

Your use of Rev. 2 and 3, (pp. 15-18, 32) is the common resource of men in your circumstances, but it is as clearly wrong as your uncommon view of the tares with its portentous consequences. And for this plain reason, The seven assemblies in Asia, spite of the evil found in nearly all, were really churches. They were gatherings of saints or of those believed to be such, separate from the world, into some of which Satan had succeeded in introducing more or less grave evils. Now, in such a state of things, we entirely agree that separation would be schism and grievously sinful: for the entrance of evil, let it be ever so flagrant, into a scripturally-constituted assembly of saints, does not at all furnish a just cause for separating, but rather for patient prayerful looking to God for grace, wisdom, and power of the Spirit for oneself, and one's brethren, that the unclean thing, doctrinal or practical, should be dealt with, and, if need be, the evil-doer put away according to the Word of God. The Lord did not, could not, blame His saints for continuing in these churches. On the contrary, He warned them of the evils that were there and of His judgment if they repented not. No amount of evil that may come in calls for separation, until the assembly refuses to hear the Word of the Lord and to judge that which is offensive to Him. While the door is open for holy Scriptural discipline, a saint is bound to stay. Your fallacy, then, is in arguing from real assemblies of God to such a body as the Establishment; which, I have sufficiently shown, never was a church of God according to the sole Scriptural principle, practice, and history. What were we to do when convinced that the association, calling itself the Church of England, is not, and had never been, a gathering of saints in the unity of the body, separate from the world, and subject only to the Lord by the Word and Spirit of God? How could we, how can you, plead for continuance in that which never was on the same basis as the Asiatic Churches?

In few words, nationalism has no more claim than a dissenting society (less in outward form perhaps) to assume to be a Church of God as Scripture presents it. Schism is separation from the Church, not from nationalism or dissent. If they are both alien from Scripture, they have no claim upon my allegiance or yours. As Christians, we owe it to our Lord to meet according to His will, withdrawing from all that hinders it. Of the Evangelical Alliance, I need say no more than that it is a mere expedient, and does not even profess to take the ground of God's Church, though it is an amiable institute in its way.

From Mr. Darby's lectures on the Seven Churches you have gathered the thought, adopted by many Christians at various times, that, besides the primary application to the literal Asiatic Churches, a complete picture is furnished of the responsible professing body from St. John's day till the close. Hereupon you raise the old cry that there is no direction to come out of the professing Church, but blessing promised to individuals in it. We have no thought, in fact, of separating from Christendom, in which we all are equally; and we hold strenuously, that, wherever there is an assembly of God, (i.e., formed from its origin according to His Word, and still cleaving to that ground,) its miserably low condition would not call for separation, but persevering, devoted service, and waiting on God for a remedy. But you cannot hence make out a duty of remaining in an association which, never having been a gathering of saints according to Scripture, has no just claim to a single Christian.

Moreover, the argument is singularly unhappy, if judged by that view which, to you, "appears the correct one." For, on the protracted scheme of the Apocalyptic churches, Thyatira gives us Popery under the symbol of Jezebel; and you have yourself strongly and repeatedly insisted on the Christian's separation from that unclean thing. If, therefore, the epistle to Thyatira forbids not to come out from this evil, the other epistle cannot be said to bind us up with evils elsewhere, when remedy is refused and the godly, if they abide, must do or sanction that which is, in their eyes, false and iniquitous. I entirely, coincide with you that to stay in communion with Romish error is to lose all power for witnessing. Why should it be a virtue to stay in communion with that which we account Protestant error? In either case, it would be heartless indifference to truth and holiness. On the scheme you accept, Popery has a place in these churches, prophetically viewed quite as much as a national Establishment; and if it be right, as you own, to separate from Popery, spite of no command from the Lord to Thyatira, it cannot be wrong to separate from nationalism because of no such command to Sardis or Laodicea. That which decides its right or wrong is the answer to the question: Is nationalism according or opposed to God's Word about His Church? If the answer be clearly against it, would it not be well to bear in mind the maxim, "Non est faciendum malum vel minimum, ut eveniat bonum vel maximum?" But when conscience does not keep pace with knowledge, let it be ever so scanty, and when faith does not work by love to silence alike fears and cavils, farewell to a happy, thorough testimony for Christ.

As to page 32, I need hardly add that there is no analogy between the ecclesiastical evil of which you make so light and the state of things contemplated in the epistle of Jude. Nobody contends that the faithful should leave a true gathering or church of God, even if hypocrites have contrived to enter privily; on the contrary, those are bound, spite of these, to remain and build up themselves on their most holy faith. But it is never a duty to countenance the world with Christians intermixed, as God's church, nor to maintain, under any circumstances, a known error as His truth. If you say (p. 33,) "there is no message to or promised blessing from the Lord for a separate gathering of saints who have come out from the professing Church," I reply, first, that we do not come out from the professing Church, but from certain evils in it, which is a plain and necessary duty; and that, secondly, in the Scriptures referred to, there is no message nor blessing from the Lord EXCEPT for a separate gathering of saints who have come out from the world. To recognize and act on this, is, I affirm, the path of obedience, and obligatory on all Christians. For saints involved in evil principles and practices to say either "There is no hope" or "I have not sinned," (Jer. 2) betrays in both cases the evil heart of unbelief, and is condemned, not justified, in the Word of God. It is to be Antinomians corporately if not individually also. "Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever,"

Yours faithfully in Christ, W. K.

Unity of the Church in Inspired History.

W. Kelly.

UNITY ACCORDING TO THE APOSTLE JOHN.

The great truth and privilege of unity appears prominently in the Gospel of John and in the Epistles of Paul; but it is viewed in a different way by these two eminent servants of the Lord, by each subordinately to the purpose which the inspiring Spirit of God had in the work given them respectively to do. In the writings of both, unity supposes and is based on the Lord's death, as in the gospel of grace and in the church of God. Without the accomplishment of redemption as well as the incarnation not one of these things could be. Every intelligent believer knows what a place the apostle of the Gentiles was led to assign to the work of the cross, whereby God was glorified, the door opened to Gentiles no less freely than to Jews, and the mystery of Christ and the church came into view. But it is no less plain in the Gospel of John, which only the present paper contemplates, though its main scope undoubtedly is to set forth Christ's personal glory, and the mission of the Holy Spirit to be here in His own on His departure to heaven.

Hence in John 10 the Lord explains His giving His life, as the Good Shepherd, for the sheep, in contrast with both the thief and the hireling (vers. 10-13). His laying down His life for the sheep He repeats in ver. 15 before He speaks of His other sheep, 1 not of this fold" (Judaism), but believers from among the Gentiles, whom also He must bring, as hearing His voice; "and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd" (ver. 16). Here is in this Gospel the first explicit announcement of unity for the flock answering to the one Shepherd. It is due to His glory and His love, to His person and His work. They are His own sheep, they hear His voice. To Him the porter opens, as He only is the Shepherd, Who calls them by name and leads them out. For He disowns the enclosure now condemned, that once had divine sanction; and when He put forth all His own, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him. He is thus their way, protection, and warrant. A stranger they will not follow. It is not that they know every snare; but they know His voice (either in Himself or in whomsoever He speaks), not the voice of strangers. How simple and secure for him who hears!

Plain and all-important as this was, for it is the introduction of Christianity, it was a dark proverb when first spoken. "They understood not what things they were which he spoke to them." So it was when even before His Galilean ministry He spoke of raising up the temple of His body (John 2: 19-22). This the resurrection cleared up much, the coming of the Spirit what remained. But He adds a new and deeper figure with the utmost solemnity; He was "the door," not of the fold, not of Israel, but "of the sheep." All that claimed them before He pronounces thieves and robbers. Are not all since yet more blasphemously guilty? How awful for either! For the Father has given all execution of judgment to the Son on Whose rights they encroach, Whose title they in effect deny, as those that honour Him honour the Father also. The sheep hear Him, not these pretenders; and He is the door, so that if anyone enter in (for it is sovereign grace), he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out, and shall find pasture. By Him (not the law) are salvation, liberty, and food. In contrast with the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy, Christ came that the sheep might have life, yea abundantly in Himself risen. What can hinder Him and His grace to His own?

Thus He presents Himself as the Good Shepherd, and His laying down His life for the sheep as its exercise and proof, in contrast with the hireling, whose own the sheep are not, seeing the wolf's approach, leaving the sheep, and fleeing; so that the wolf seizes and scatters them. Far from self He cares to the uttermost for the sheep, and repeats His gracious title (14), declaring their mutual knowledge according to the knowledge the Father had of Him and He of the Father, saying again, He lays down His life for the sheep. This introduces the Gentile sheep, who could not consistently with the divine ways be brought in, and form with the Jewish ones "one flock," till He died, rose, and ascended to heaven. Here however the Lord, though revealing and reiterating His devotedness in dying for His sheep, speaks with the authority of His person according to divine counsels. Nor is there a passage in scripture which more definitely claims the "one flock" for dependence on Himself, or which excludes more peremptorily the pretensions of men to appropriate this place of His, the only competent and worthy One, the centre of all.

Not for a moment is it overlooked that, in restoring Peter from his distressing fall, He made its completeness evident before chosen witnesses by charging him to feed His lambs, to shepherd or tend and feed the sheep. Nor again does one forget that the ascended Christ gave gifts to men, not apostles and prophets only as the foundation (Eph. 2, Eph. 4), but evangelists, and shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, etc., till we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. But He has in no way abnegated His own relations because He gives and sustains subordinates, each in his place to serve and do His will as laid down in His word. Nor is any notion less worthy than to relegate the "one flock, one Shepherd" only to the future and heaven. It is here that we need to recognise both, as He recognises them. It is now that the enemy subtily and persistently and everywhere tempts the saints to give up the truth of the relationship as a present fact, and the responsibility it involves on us to walk faithfully in accordance. It is revealed to act on our faith and practice as we are on the earth. In heaven by-and-by there will be no question, for that which is perfect will have come.

In John 11: 51, 52 is the next reference. Here it is the comment of the Holy Spirit on the words of Caiaphas to the Jewish council, not in parabolic form like our Lord's in John 10, but in terms void of figure. "Now this he said not of himself (ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ); but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he should also gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad."

More than one weighty truth denied in Christendom we find here unambiguously. To the cynical sentiment of the wicked high priest God gave a turn of incomparable grace. Its adoption in apostate unbelief by the Jews in the politic sense of Caiaphas was the ruin of their place and their nation by the Romans. By-and-by mercy will prevail according to the oath sworn to Abraham, glorying over judgment. Jesus died for the nation, not to gather it into the church as some vainly imagine, nor assuredly to make it an object of irreversible woe like the Babylon of the seven hills, but to save and bless Israel as such at the end and for ever, beyond all that was ever tasted at the beginning under David and Solomon. For He Who died for them will come and reign over them, an infinitely greater than either (to cite a few decisive proofs, Isa. 4: 2-6, Isa. 9: 7, 8, Isa. 11).

But He should die, said the Spirit, for another purpose wholly distinct, and about to receive its accomplishment in the very near future while He sits at God's right hand on high. The virtue of His death was then to be shown in the new and wondrous work of gathering together in one the scattered children of God. Till Jesus died and went to heaven and sent down the Holy Spirit, nothing of the kind was known or could exist. In Judaism as established of God provisionally (and He had no religious dealings of a public nature elsewhere), no such gathering was thought of. It was an elect nation responsible to be governed by His law; and they were bound to separation from all other nations. There He dwelt Who brought them forth from Egypt to this end, Jehovah their Lord.

Now that the Jews rejected Him, Who was not Messiah only but God, His death (their awful sin) became in God's ways the basis of an entirely different and an incomparably "better thing," the gathering together in one of God's scattered children. It is the church undoubtedly, but not viewed as "one body" which was revealed elsewhere. It is family union, in the closest connection with life eternal, the special truth prominent throughout the Gospel and the Epistles of John, the groundwork of communion with the Father and the Son, as we find explicitly there.

Severance between the Gentile believers and the Jewish was therein intolerable. Yet before the cross the barrier, it is notorious, subsisted as God's actual order; and Jesus while yet alive in flesh charged the twelve, saying, Go not into a way of the nations, enter not into any city of the, Samaritans. Risen from the dead, He expressly bids them disciple all the nations. For the children of God were to be gathered in virtue of His death into one, they "one flock," as He "one Shepherd." Fleshly distinctions, and outward ordinances, vanished away before the infinite efficacy of that death which blotted out the sins of all believers in the gospel, and by the grace which united them. John 15 is not here alleged; because in the teaching of the Vine and its branches the Lord does not set forth our oneness with Himself, but our need of dependence continual on Him in order to bear fruit. The necessity of communion with Him practically is the point, not the privilege of union.

But it is in John 17, where this great truth of family union has its fullest expression. And no wonder; for it is the Son pouring out His heart's desires about His own to the Father before His departure. There are three occasions in our Lord's utterance where oneness is asked for His saints, and each of these has its own distinctive character.

First, in ver. 11 He says, "Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one as we." It is for those who then surrounded Him (as is certain from vers. 12, etc.), about to preach, teach, and act with apostolic authority when, Himself gone on high, the new work of God had to see the light as the witness of Christ here below. He is not content with requesting that, as He was taking a new position as the glorified Man in heavenly glory, in virtue of His person and of His work (1-5), they might share it as far as could be, both before the Father (6-13) and before the world (14-21); He asks that in this they might be "one," further adding "even as we." This goes wonderfully far in His demand on the Father. And it was wonderfully answered in that unity of mind and purpose, of word and deed, of heart and service which characterised that holy band. Where and when was there anything to compare with it at any epoch before or since? It is the more striking in the twelve; for we heard of their marked differences, and their mutual jealousies, (alas! how like other saints and other servants of the Lord in all ages), which the presence of the Lord only checked but in no way excluded, as the Gospels faithfully tell us. See the same men when the Holy Spirit was given: how their words and ways by His power only evinced the activities and affections of the life they had in Christ! "Peter standing up with the eleven," they were now truly one. If the multitude of those that believed could be and is said to be of one heart and one soul, and earthly possessions only gave occasion for love, still more emphatically was it true of those God set first in the church."

Secondly, in ver. 20, 21 the Lord makes request not for these only, but also for those who believe on Him (Christ) through their word. This enlarges the sphere, and embraces the mass of the saints following, who received the gospel in the love of the truth. Here therefore, anticipating the world-wide testimony and its rich results, He says "that they may all be one, as thou Father [art] in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me." It is not at all so simple and absolute as in the first case, where divine power wrought to secure an end so all-important. The vast range of their mission was an astonishing witness to the grace that operated in the face of every hindrance, but the effect of the power was attenuated ere long and never so complete. It is the unity of grace, of Christians in the Father and the Son ("one in us "), rising above obstacles within and without through the power of what was revealed and of Him Who made the blessing theirs: to the world, which had known them so different in every way and now beheld them "one," a testimony far mightier than miracles however striking and numerous. And so it runs, "that the world may believe that thou didst send me." For this was what sounded out in every place-that the Father sent the Son as Saviour of the world, themselves its living example in their measure, all prejudice notwithstanding.

Thirdly, "the glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them even as thou lovedst me." Here, though the Lord gave the title then, He looks on to the glory and the glory displayed to the world. It is oneness in that day, and is a character without alloy, quite answering to that of the new Jerusalem in Rev. 21, where the world beholds the glory of the heavenly city, the Bride or Lamb's wife; not the mutuality of grace as now, but the order of glory, Christ in the glorified saints, and the Father in Christ. Hence then only will they be "perfected into one;" and then only will the world "know" that the Father sent the Son. For how else could those who were once sinners be in heavenly glory but by His Son sent for their salvation? How else, that the Father loved them even as He loved the Son, but by their manifestation with Him in glory? It is now a question of the world's "believing;" in that day the world will "know," because it will see the glory in which Christ and the church will shine together.

UNITY IN THE PAULINE EPISTLES.

It is however in the Epistles of the apostle to the Gentiles that we find fuller light, where unity rises (beyond the union of God's children however sure, sweet, and blessed, as seen in John's testimony), into the truths of God's habitation, and Christ's body. To be built together is close indeed; to be constituted an organic body, the one body of Christ, is yet more, the closest unity possible. Let us trace this new thing to His praise.

In the Epistle to the Romans unity is applied practically, after the gospel of God has been elaborately set forth in Rom. 1 - 8 and God's sovereign grace to all is in Rom. 9 - 11 conciliated with His special promises to Israel. The saints are exhorted to present their bodies a living sacrifice, not conformed to this age, nor with high thoughts but sobriety. "For as in one body we have many members, yet all the members have not the same function" (thus communion is taught, each fulfilling his own place in the one body, but not exceeding his measure), "so we the many are one body in Christ and severally members one of another."

Thus, in this Epistle as in all the N.T. and in the nature of things, God does not fail to make it evident that it is for the individual to repent and believe. We are reconciled to God and justified individually. Before the body of Christ was formed or revealed, the believer had through His blood the remission of sins, and was a son of God by faith in Christ Jesus. The work of redemption was now accomplished; Christ had taken His seat at God's right hand; and the Holy Spirit came down to baptise all who received the gospel into one body, and to dwell in them as God's house. Then and there was the church of God formed. "The Lord was adding day by day such as should be saved together" (Acts 2: 47); and this united body was in due time called "the church" (Acts 5: 11).

The saints who believed through grace were no longer left as of old among their brethren after the flesh (Mal. 3: 16), however slowly they gave up habits and prejudices. They had now "their own company" (Acts 4: 23), outside Israel and of course the Gentiles. Their hearts, their prayers, their praises, rose up to God and His Anointed, Whose bondmen they were, bought with a price, and therefore to glorify God in their body. They were taken out of Israel and brought into the body of Christ by the uniting power of the Holy Spirit before they could explain its nature and character. But His descent they knew well, and that they had received Him. It was for Paul in due time to interpret the result and even to reveal it as bound up with Christ, given to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. The presence of the Spirit sent from heaven was their bond that made them one body, not their faith nor yet life which they had antecedently as individuals. They were no longer children of God scattered abroad, but gathered together in one; no longer invisible as units in the midst of the outwardly chosen people, but a corporate body on earth one with their Head in heaven, and as distinct from Jew as from Gentile (1 Cor. 10: 32).

In 1 Cor. 12 the apostle, before writing to the Roman saints, had discussed the constitutive principle on the side of the Holy Spirit's presence and action in the church, in the course of which the truth is stated as much above the Reformed systems or those who dissented from them, as above the ancient and so called catholic claims of Greece, Rome, or any others. His was the power that wrought in all the gifts varied as they ware, some of which the Corinthians were singling out for ostentation, all of them given to exalt the Lord Jesus. That love, a way still more excellent, must animate and direct each in order to a right exercise of any gift is clearly shown in 1 Cor. 13; and that power is to be subject to the Lord's authority in the regulation of all is the aim of 1 Cor. 14.

In these distinct manifestations then the same Spirit distributes, the same Lord is served, the same God effectuates, by each for common profit. For as the one body has many members, and the many members are one body: so also, he boldly says, is "the Christ," the body and Head. How truly then is it "one body in Christ!" Of this unity the Holy Spirit now given and present is the power. "For also [besides working in each] in virtue of one Spirit were we all baptised into one, body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and we were all given to drink of one Spirit" (13). It is not new birth, still less water baptism, but the effect of the Spirit given when Jesus was glorified.

But in the body are many members, not one merely. The lower are as essential as the higher (15, 16). All are proper to the body; and God set the members each one of them in the body as it pleased Him. How blessed and conclusive to faith! "But if they all were one member, where the body? But now [they are] many members, yet one body;" and the superior cannot do without the humbler members: all have need of each other (21). Pride is as out of place as discontent. Nay, those that seem weaker are "necessary," rather than the higher (22); and the less honourable we clothe with more abundant honour, and our uncomely have more abundant comeliness" (23). "God tempered the body together, so that there might be no schism in the body" (24, 25). Hence if one member suffer, all suffer together; if one is honoured, all rejoice (26). Such is the true organisation of the church through the Spirit, without Whom it could not be.

Very important too are vers. 27, 28. The first proves that the local assembly (here primarily at Corinth) is Christ's body, and severally members. It represents in the locality that body, assuredly not as independent of, but as one with, all on earth. Compare 1 Cor. 1: 2. All the saints here below were God's assembly, and each a member not of an but of the assembly, Christ's body. So the second demonstrates that if God set some in the assembly, it means not of course locally, but in it as a whole on earth. Certainly the apostles, etc., were not set in the Corinthian church or any other locality in particular. God sets the gifts in the assembly as a whole. They are, like the humblest Christians, members of the body; and the Holy Spirit acts therein by each as He pleases here below, for obviously it is no question of heaven. Thus, as the given Spirit abides with us for ever (John 14), it is unbelief to doubt that Christ's body exists here still, or that He can fail on His part. Let the members of Christ see that they be subject to the written word which alone secures the truth.

1 Cor. 14 furnishes, what was so necessary, the Lord's regulation of the assembly. For the exercise of gift therein (whatever the liberty where is the Spirit of the Lord) is not left to the licence, any more than the authority, of man. It is for His glory Who is the Second Man. The apostle therefore explains not only the relative value of the gifts, which men were apt to mistake, but the order that befits God's presence and promotes the edification of saints. What he wrote they were to recognise as the Lord's commandment. Now is all this, so due to His name, so full of enjoyment and growth and communion, is it obsolete? Is it not only lost for our joint walk, edification, and worship (15-17), but so fatally that we are not to seek thus to assemble, or to count on God's blessing in the only order He prescribes for the proper assembly of His own here below? Of course evangelising, or trading with individual gift, is not here in question.

In Eph. 2 the truth appears no less clearly, though viewed, on the side, not of the Spirit's presence and action to glorify the Lord, but of Christ's love to the church. Hence are omitted all references to such sign gifts as tongues, interpretations, miracles, healings. But nowhere is the unity of the church revealed more plainly, nowhere with greater elevation, or out of love so deep. Yet here as ever (and it is due to Christ and to God, to say nothing of the soul), the individual blessedness of saints is carefully treated before the church is so much as named, in the strongest contrast with the catholic system which makes all blessing hinge on the church to its own glory but really its shame. Now in Christ Jesus believing Gentiles, once far off, are become nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace who made both (i.e. Jews and Gentiles) one, and broke down the middle wall of partition . . . that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to God by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby. So at the close of chapter 2 we are said to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, as the Ephesian saints also were being builded together for God's habitation in the Spirit. Thus God's house, like Christ's body, is shown to be the church, founded on redemption, and made good by the Spirit sent from heaven to that end.

Eph. 4 presents the Spirit's unity with great fulness before treating of the gifts: "one body and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you [or, us] all" (4-6). Diversity follows in the gifts, which are not simply powers here as in 1 Cor. 12, but persons endowed for special ends in Christ's love to His own. His ascension is the declared starting-point after His wondrous humiliation and its fruit. "But to each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men . . . . And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto edifying of the body of Christ, until we all attain," etc. This is unmistakeable if we are simple, deriving both the one body and the several gifts from Christ on high after His victory over Satan to our deliverance, and that work of redemption which has perfectly glorified God even as to sin and our sins, so that His love can flow to the uttermost. Thus and therefore is Christ set as Head over all things to the church His body. What a glorious place this gives to not only the church but those gifts, the exercise of which constitutes ministry of the word!

Beyond controversy the foundation gifts are the apostles and prophets. The basis of N.T. truth they so well laid that there was no room for their continuance, still less for the delusion of their revival. The others, evangelists as well as pastors and teachers, are given "till we all attain," etc. Do we wish better security than the written word? Does unbelief tempt us to think that the one body admits of change without sin, or that the gifts of Christ fail, so that we need human imitations to supply their place? Do we believe that Christ's body abides on earth from the first, as that only to which we belong wherever we dwell, according to which we are called to walk and in nothing else? Do we believe that He has given evangelists to win the unconverted, or pastors and teachers to tend and feed His sheep as truly now as on the day of Pentecost?

The Epistle to the Colossians teaches no other doctrine, though its design is to assert the glory of Christ the Head rather than to develop the nature and privileges of the body. Indeed the special aspect of the mystery made known to the Gentile saints is Christ in them the hope of glory i.e. on high; the converse of what the O.T. prophets teach, Christ the glory of His people Israel with all the nations blessed but subordinate. A marked warning is against not holding the Head from Whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God (Col. 2: 19). Heathen philosophy and judaising ordinances were the dangers; and so they are to this day. Christ, not merely as Lord, nor yet as Saviour of sinners, but as Head of the body, is the object of faith, Christ ,ever working for the best good of all the body, not only through such a gift as Paul, but through the less considerable and marked, "the joints and bands" (cf. Eph. 4: 16). Thus was "all the body" to increase with the increase of God.

What a contrast with the increase of man when the spread of profession became multitudinous! "In the distress of the battle of Tolbiac Clovis [still a Pagan] loudly invoked the God of Clotilda and the Christians; and victory disposed him to hear with respectful gratitude the eloquent Remigius, bishop of Rheims, who forcibly displayed the temporal and spiritual advantages of his conversion. The king declared himself satisfied of the truth of the catholic faith; and the political reasons which might have suspended his public profession were removed by the devout or loyal acclamations of the Franks, who showed themselves alike prepared to follow their heroic leader to the field of battle or to the baptismal font . . . The new Constantine was immediately baptised with three thousand of his warlike subjects; and their example was imitated by the remainder of the gentle barbarians, who in obedience to the victorious prelate adored the cross which they had burnt, and burnt the idols which they had formerly adored" (Gibbon's D.& F. chap. xxxviii. A. D. 496).

The departure of the ancient systems into sanctioned error and evil is no doubt true. The Reformed Protestant systems began without any intelligence of the church of God; the Dissenters split off with less sense of it if possible. If we feel for the Lord's injured honour, and if we love the church, are we not bound to purge ourselves from the vessels to dishonour, as in a great house? What can we do but humble ourselves before God for that ruin in Christendom which we have all shared, and fall back on all that is open to us to obey in this evil day? We are sanctified by the Spirit to obedience: the divine word is the rule, and He is the yet abiding power. We are here and always to follow the Lord, not men. Are we to slight the organisation of Christ's body and His gifts for either the old devices or the new inventions around us? I trust not.

UNITY OF THE CHURCH IN THE INSPIRED HISTORY.

In full accord with what has been shown from the Gospel of John and from the Pauline epistles are the facts presented in the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples were born of God and had genuine faith. From deep anguish they had joy in their risen Lord. But as yet they were awaiting "the promise of the Father, which [said he] ye have heard of me. For John baptised with water; but ye shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1: 4, 5). They had not yet His personal presence so as to make them one. They were living units, but did and could not yet possess the promised unity. Saints of God individually, they were soon in virtue of one Spirit to be baptised into one body, Christ's body (1 Cor. 12: 13). Meanwhile they all gave themselves, Mary etc. with them, to persevering prayer.

When the day of Pentecost was a-fulfilling (Acts 2), the wondrous answer came. The Holy Spirit, attended by significant tokens, filled them all; and they began to speak with other tongues. Devout Jews from every nation were then dwelling at Jerusalem, who could recognise their own languages in Galilean lips telling out the mighty things of God, not in creation now, but in redemption. Nor was there only the church of God but the gospel of grace. For to those pricked in heart by the truth preached and saying, "What shall we do?" the word was, "Repent ye, and be baptised each of you in (or on) the name of Jesus Christ for remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (ver. 38). Thus was the blessing to go on, as it began; the saintly status precedes the grace which established unity and gifts. Repentance unto life, and washing away of sins in baptism, were followed by not gifts merely but the Holy Spirit given.

Thus were added about 3,000 souls that day; and they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. It was not a human or voluntary association, but a divine institution of unequalled character, the one body of Christ.* "And the Lord was adding together [the true text] daily those that should be saved" (cf. ver. 47 with 44). Baptism was the mark or sacramental badge for the individual; the Lord's Supper, for the communion of saints as one body (1 Cor. 10: 16, 17).

* "Divisions among Christians" (Ward & Co.) is a work apparently by a theorist and representing only the anonymous writer's ideas, though it may contain a measure of truth. chiefly applied negatively if one may judge by extracts; for I know no friend that has even seen it.

But beyond controversy the article of the church stood, not on the truth of justification by faith, but on the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. When this was a new thing, grace gave plain, characteristic, and irrefragable proofs. These do not seem continued beyond the apostolic era and the close of the N.T. canon, which supplied henceforward the weightier attestation of permanent authority in God's word. At first, as Christ, so also His own, had favour with all the people; for unselfish love, happiness, and holiness, all hanging on the name of the crucified but exalted Jesus, told on conscience and heart, to say nothing of wonders and signs.

But as the work grew, the Jewish rulers became exasperated and threatened in vain; for with great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. Lying was sternly judged "within" as lying to the Holy Spirit, for God was there as never before (Acts 5: 4). Signs were yet more abundant subsequently, as before the place wherein they were assembled shook in answer to their praying. Yea, their baffled religious adversaries might imprison or beat the apostles, but what could be done with men rejoicing to be counted worthy of dishonour for the Name? And every day in the temple and at home they ceased not preaching and teaching Jesus the Christ. The overwhelming appeal of Stephen to the Jews, always resisting the Holy Spirit as their fathers did, drew out their hatred unto blood; and all the saints were scattered save the apostles. But thereon the free action of the Spirit in the work of the gospel went forward outside the Jews. Even Saul, who had consented in his blind fury to Stephen's murder, was called as apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9), and pre-eminently became also minister of the church, whose union with Christ was conveyed in our Lord's words at his conversion, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest."

Now no one disputes that the saints assembled at first in private houses to remember the Lord in His supper, the centre of their worship. It was expressly κατ᾽ οἶκον "at home," in contrast with the temple (Acts 2: 46); and there would they teach the disciples, if not preach more openly (ver. 42). Ere long, even in Jerusalem, they might need a hundred upper chambers instead of that one which sufficed before Pentecost. Unity does not at all depend on all assembling within a single apartment. This would make it material. It is really in the power of the Holy Spirit. Hence coming together ἐπὶ τὸ αὐὸτ (1 Cor. 11: 20) admits of as many localities as suited the convenience of saints dwelling sometimes in all the quarters of an extensive city. No matter how numerous the assemblages might be, scripture (i.e. God's mind) regards the saints as the church met together for the same purpose. One Spirit, not theirs but God's, created and maintained the unity for the manifestation of God's glory in Christ. Hence we never hear of "churches" but solely of "the church" in a city as in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, etc.; though we read of "the churches" of Judea, Galatia, Macedonia, Asia, etc.

The notion however of "churches" only on earth, contrasted with "the church" in heaven, is not only unfounded but opposed to the word of God. For this reveals, not alone the fact of local assemblies up and down the earth, but that the saints there are members of one body, in which they are set by God according to His will for His glory. That some are no longer alive but gone to be with Christ in no way clashes with the living fact; for the Spirit came down here to establish the unity. Even among men the regiment abides the same, though individual soldiers are there no more. Independency is therefore the direct negation of that unity of the saints in one body here below, throughout manifested once, which each and all are responsible to manifest, though it be now manifested only by few. There was but one communion on earth according to the Lord's will and the apostles' teaching. A Christian (when godly discipline forbade not) was member of the church everywhere; a pastor and teacher was Christ's gift wherever he might be. "God set" gifts in the church. Scripture recognises no such thought as membership or gift in a church. Barnabas and Simeon, Niger and Lucius, Manaen and Saul, laboured together in Antioch; but so did such as visited Jerusalem or any other place. Intercommunion was the invariable rule, and liberty, not to say responsibility, of ministry in love. It was the right of Christ, not man's.

Undoubtedly there were also local charges, elders and deacons, in due time and place. In Jerusalem the "seven" were looked out by the multitude of the disciples, and appointed by apostolic laying on of hands, Scripture is silent how the elders there (Acts 11: 30, Acts 15: 2-29) entered on their duties; but we know from Acts 14: 23 that apostles chose them for the disciples, or an apostolic delegate like Titus (Titus 1: 5) established them where the apostle could not act. In no case was there popular election of elders. It was a task too delicate and difficult for the saints as a company; and it demanded apostolic authority direct or indirect. As the disciples contributed their money, it was fitting that they should look out dispensers in whom they confided; it was for apostles or their delegates to choose overseers or presbyters, to whom the rest could give no authority.

The apostles derived authority as well as gift from Christ, the source of both. As Christ conferred the highest and widest authority on the apostles, so did they appoint presbyters or elders and deacons in their local places respectively; the one as a spiritual charge, the other in temporal things, as is fully explained by the apostle, not to the assembly, but to Timothy in the third chapter of his first Epistle. One sees in the quotation which Eusebius draws (H. E. iii. 23) from Clem. Alex. how far the truth was lost thus early; for how absurd to imagine the apostle John recurring to lots! a mode adopted before the Holy Spirit was given (Acts 1), as Chrysostom rightly acknowledges.

But local charge is in principle distinct from the gifts which the ascended [lead of the body gave for the perfecting of the saints. Never do elders or deacons appear on any such ground. For the gifts flow direct from Christ, and are for His body wherever it may be. Nor does 1 Cor. 12 differ in this from Eph. 4, or Rom. 12 from Col. 2. And for this reason what unspeakable mercy to the saints! For the supply of those gifts which are of all moment depends on His grace and faithful care Who can no more fail now that He is on high, than when He came down to accomplish redemption for God's glory. In none of these, scriptures can we restrain the church or the body to a local assembly, though a local assembly was wholly wrong if it did not represent it. The assembly on earth as a whole is contemplated; and in it, manifestly one body, the gifts were set. Hence the apostle treats it as no less visible than Jews or Greeks (1 Cor. 10: 32).

This is the unity which is supposed in the very weighty scripture of 1 Tim. 3: 15. "But if I delay, that thou mayest know how to conduct oneself in God's house, which is a living God's assembly, pillar and support of the truth." Invisibility is out of the question. Responsible manifestation is the essence of what the apostle has before him and urgently presses. Nor would any other thought have been entertained, but for the practical ruin which so soon ensued, and the subsequent and deeper failure when the truth got swamped under tradition which was but precepts of men. Then began the desire to plead an invisible aggregate of saints within a visible mixed multitude, as if the church were only another Israel. The truth rather is that the church has departed from manifesting its original unity, according to the sad history of all the varied trials of man under responsibility here below. Who can see independent churches in the decree of Acts 15? Who can limit "all the flock," or "the church of God" in Acts 20: 28, to the city of Ephesus? The R. Catholics have abused the fact of the church as a visible unity everywhere to their own mere majority and the grossest sectarianism, heterodoxy, and idolatry. This does not justify Protestants in denying responsible and holy unity according to God's institution, or claiming license to set up churches independent one of another.

Are we then helplessly, hopelessly, bound by a chain of sin, either individually, or in our corporate place? If we turn away, as we are commanded, from those that create divisions and occasions of falling (Rom. 16: 17), is there no way by grace to stand approved when not merely schisms but sects appear (1 Cor. 11: 18, 19)? God has answered this very difficulty in 2 Tim. 2: 19-21, which contemplates a state of disorder beyond rectifying. "Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his, and, Let everyone that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness. Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honour and some unto dishonour. If one therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet for the master's use, prepared to every good work."

Before the church began, the Lord had given the great assuring resource for the darkest day: "where two or three are gathered together unto my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18: 20). In the brightest day no privilege more pregnant of blessing. We cannot expect all saints to recognise their relationship as members, and to refuse every body save the one body of Christ; but we can believe and act in faith ourselves. This is not a sect, but the way to be kept from it, while we look to the Lord, and own the ruin in loving sorrow. For without a real share in Christ's sense of the dishonour done thus to His name, knowing the church's privilege, and seeking to realise it, only ends in pride, evil, and worse confusion.

We are free, not to say bound, to remember Him in the breaking of the bread, but only in the unity of His body, and therefore receiving all that are His, save where His discipline intercepts. "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad" (Matt. 12: 30). Undoubtedly we need the Spirit of God to guide us aright in the midst of the scatterings and perplexities of Christendom; but we have Him dwelling in us, that living in the Spirit we may walk in the Spirit, not only as individuals but keeping His unity in the bond of peace. Obedience, according to the word of God, is the safe-guard of holiness in every way: to this we are sanctified by the Spirit.

W. K.

The Unity of the Spirit, and what it is to keep it.

Being notes of a lecture delivered in 1882 by W. Kelly.

Third Edition

'The unity of the Spirit.' Ephesians 4: 3.

It is needless for one to insist at length on that which is sufficiently plain to every Christian reader — the importance which God attaches to keeping the unity of the Spirit. It is true that 'endeavouring' fails to give the real force of the word employed by the Spirit of God. 'Endeavouring' is an expression which in the ordinary language of the day is habitually applied to that which men essay or seek after, even if they have not a hope of accomplishing. They feel that they may fail, but at any rate they try or 'endeavour' to do this or that. Such is not the meaning of the word here, but rather zeal in heeding and carrying out what is already true, giving diligence 'to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' This, however, shows that not mere effort to attain, but earnestness to maintain, is the exhortation intended.

For the unity of the Spirit is to faith a subsisting fact; and the keeping it is no less our present duty. It is not that we have unity of ours to make, or that God is to make it for us in heaven by and by. It is here and now that the Spirit has formed this unity, the keeping of which is clearly our responsibility on earth. No doubt there is much to learn from the fact that it really is, as it is called, 'the unity of the Spirit.' It is not at all mere unity on our part, nor is it the unity of the body, though this is one result, but of the Holy Ghost who baptised into one body all who believe, whether Jews or Gentiles, bond or free. It puts forward the Divine agent, the efficient source and power of unity, the Holy Spirit; but it supposes and includes the one body, which itself is so positive and permanent a reality that expressions often used about it are proved thereby incorrect. Of rending the body we hear in man's language or writings, never in God's word. Just as a bone of Christ was not to be broken, so the body of Christ, the church, cannot be rent. 'There is one body, and one Spirit, even as there is one hope of our calling.' These are the vital, abiding, and unchangeable truths in that new relationship. As surely as one Spirit has been sent down from heaven, there is but one body on earth; but that which the members of the body are called to keep is the unity of the Spirit.

It is not, as many interpret it, the unity of the family where the Lord guides one and all in communion with the Father and the Son; which is no doubt a very desirable, right, and blessed thing in its place, but provided for rather in John 17: 21, 22, than here. 'That all might be one,' in the Gospel of John, refers to our rising by grace above all that would set or keep us apart, one in the Father and the Son. So the Lord asked for us of the Father that we might be characterised by unity. But in the scripture before us, as in the writings of Paul generally, at least where the 'body' is introduced, it is another truth attaching to the same objects, yet not at all a contingent or changeable condition of soul, but the permanent and blessed fact, that God has established unity for His own glory by the presence of His Spirit, who has united us to Christ our exalted Head in heaven.

There is since Pentecost a divine unity on the earth; not the mere aggregate of the individuals evermore called by grace, but those now made one by the Spirit of God. There is thus a divine corporation on the earth, if one may be allowed to use so familiar an expression. This divine society — here below is not formed by the will of the persons who compose it, although it is to be supposed that their hearts if right and intelligent thoroughly go along with the grace that so united them. But the church or assembly of God is formed by God's will; as it was purposed by His grace, so is it made good livingly by His power, the Holy Ghost being the effectuator of this blessed unity. Hence the Spirit of God for that very reason has the deepest and the most intimate interest in carrying out this unity for Christ's glory according to the counsels of the Father. It is called the unity of the Spirit; yet let none imagine that he can intelligently keep the unity of the Spirit and forget for a moment in principle or practice the one body of Christ.

There are, of course, various ways in which the saints may fail to keep this unity; but there are two general though opposite directions in which the failure may work, which are as prevalent as they are manifest. The first is by setting up a unity larger than that of the Spirit; the second by making it less. There may be a worldly looseness on the one hand, or mere partyism on the other; and the danger is so great that only God's Spirit can keep us looking to Christ by the word. Whatever may be the object or excuse, the will of man himself must be at bottom the motive at work in opposition to God's will.

In the first case men are prone to enlarge the unity. They insist on taking in multitudes beyond the members of the body of Christ, souls recognised as of Christ without adequate ground for it. Oh what dishonour to that excellent Name! I speak not of infirmity in accrediting any supposed to be true, but of the deliberate intention to accept, and treat as belonging to Christ's body, persons who do not themselves even profess to be His members, and have evidently never passed from death unto life. Rome, it is true, had so done in its medieval sway over the west; and the Eastern bodies, the Greeks, Nestorians, etc., were no better, any more than the Catholic church before that great rent which set them at variance. They had all sought and received the world by means of fleshy ordinances, apart from faith and the reception of the Spirit. The Reformation, much as it did, in no adequate way rectified this radical error. Protestantism rejected the woman ruling over the nations, and if possible all nations; but, ignorant of the unity of the Spirit, it set up in each realm, where its influence extended, its own independent religion as by law established.

Such is the well-known principle of nationalistic bodies, wherever found, whether in England or in Scotland, in Germany or in Holland. They profess to receive all decent people in the districts or parishes. It is avowedly a religion for every body, and in no way the intention or the desire to incorporate none that are not living members of Christ. Birth or local connections are allowed unless there be open scandal. There is no demand of life or faith, still less of the gift of the Holy Ghost, as of old (Acts 11: 16, 17). It is rather such a pattern as Israel affords, not the church wherein is neither Jew nor Greek but all are one in Christ Jesus. It is a question of family life and of geographical limits, and people are not Israelites or heathen but own the Christian religion, being in what is commonly called a national church: yet is it not clear that in a national church the unity of the Spirit cannot possibly be kept? One may be a true christian, or child of God, but there is neither the thought nor the possibility for a member of a national church to keep therein 'the unity of the Spirit.' Hence they speak of the Church of England, not of the church of God in England: still less do they contemplate all that are Christ's on the earth.

The fact is that, in escaping from Babylon, they have come to acknowledge a unity wholly different from, and opposed to, that of the Spirit. They have set up a unity which, if carried out with complete success, would comprehend the whole nation, saving perhaps those who eschew all show of religion. For I do not forget that the Rubric provides against heinous or manifest scandal. Notoriously, however, in every quarter, and almost in every family, there may be persons of more or less respectability, moral and amiable men, who know they are not born of God, and would shrink from pretending to be members of Christ, if they were not misled to claim the place on ritual ground. Most of these would shrink from being called 'saints,' and hesitate not to apply the word as a cant term of reproach to God's children who are not ashamed to call themselves what they are.

Clearly then such as disclaim the name thus are not saints, unless you can honestly conceive of a believer so sunk or dark as to make a scorn of God's designation for His children. And you may rest assured without a doubt that he who thinks and talks so does not walk as becomes a saint. Now if a man is not what scripture calls a saint, he is certainly not a Christian, except for God's judgment of his hollow profession. Is it not plain that a Christian is a saint, and a good deal more? There were saints in Old Testament times; there were saints before the cross of Christ; but were they really Christians so called? A Christian is a saint since redemption, one who is separated to God by faith of the gospel, in the power of the Holy Ghost, on the ground of the work of Christ. Whatever he may have been naturally before, God has quickened him together with Christ, having forgiven all his offences; and now, brought nigh by the blood of Christ, he draws near to God as a child. He is also a member of Christ's body.

Now these are the persons who are called in the bond of peace to keep with diligence the unity of the Spirit, setting their faces against everything which might falsify that unity. It is not merely that the Spirit inwardly, and the personal conduct outwardly, must be suitable to it, which of course is true; but if the affections and walk were ever so excellent, it would be a serious thing for the Christian to annul or overlook the expression of that unity. Yet does not every believer dishonour it who owns any unity whatever that is not of the Holy Ghost? If he owns the fellowship of nationalism in this or any other country, is it not clear that he is off the ground on which scripture places all the saints? As a nationalist, how can he be keeping the unity of the Spirit? He may behave as a true child of God otherwise; in general he may walk worthily of all respect and love; and certainly he ought to be an object of tender concern to any who are zealous in keeping the unity of the Spirit. For if true to their calling they must pray for the deliverance of all the children of God who are not in this following the will and word of the Lord Jesus.

Unquestionably those who own a unity which takes in the flesh, on the basis of rites open to all the world, are on ground far wider than that of the Spirit, and cannot be walking in accordance with it., True unity is exclusive of every other; as you cannot serve two masters, you cannot share a twofold communion. The unity of the Spirit admits of no rival.

But there is another form of departure from the truth which may hinder God's children from keeping the unity of the Spirit. By misuse of doctrine or discipline they may form a unity not only in fact but in principle and design narrower than Christ's body. Are such on God's ground? I trow not. They may openly draw up their own form of government, or they may privily have an understood, though unwritten, system of rules which exclude saints as godly as themselves who cannot accept these rules. Here we have a sect. Their decrees are not the commandments of the Lord, yet they become practically as authoritative as His word, or (as is usual) yet more so. What is it for men to pretend that they have no human rules, when they introduce some unheard of conditions of fellowship, here rigidly, there loosely, according to varying policy or the caprice of their rulers, for those who come within their range? Anything of this nature takes the shape, not exactly of nationalism, but of sectarianism, which (instead of too wide or loose borders) rather seeks to split up those who should be together, making their communion express their difference from their brethren, and in no way standing together on that unity which is of God. It is in principle sectarianism; and, if they know better, they are more guilty than ordinary dissenters.

Under this head we find God's children often scattered through the pressure of questionable and even wrong discipline, or of unduly urged if not false doctrine. Some prefer a communion which is distinctively Arminian, or decidedly Calvinistic. Some might press particular views as to the coming and kingdom of Christ; others as to ministry, bishops, elders, etc.; others again as to baptism, the mode or the subjects. These ecclesiastical legislators seem not at all aware that their abuse of these doctrines or practices is incompatible with keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, they themselves being wrong, if not in their views, at least in the way they are pressed.

Behind these public and settled aberrations from the will of God about His children, it will be found that there lie predisposing causes that grieve the Holy Ghost and hinder the true and spiritual perception of the saint. The most personal and perhaps most common hindrances flow from the state of the soul, through ignorance of a full delivering gospel. Sin in these circumstances has never been thoroughly judged as before God, and consequently deliverance (Rom. 8: 2) is but partially, if at all, known even in principle. Still less is there the power of the Spirit in unsparing application of death with Christ to self practically. Perhaps even the forgiveness of sins as a complete thing has been but feebly apprehended, as made apparent by the notion of the need of a fresh recurrence to the blood of Christ, or (as others would put it) of a constant process of cleansing going on, which they ground on a misunderstanding of the present tense in 1 John 1: 7, ignorantly reducing it from its moral import to mere actual time. Others again have a wholly superficial and even fallacious view of the world, as if it were now all consecrated to the Christian by that cross of Christ, whereby on the contrary the Christian is crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to him.

The flesh and the world being thus inadequately judged according to God's word in the light of the risen Christ, the heart is not in communion with God touching all within and without. Though there may be the utmost zeal for souls as far as their danger and God's pardoning grace are understood, and true and burning love that Christ should be honoured in their blessing, nature still has a large place, and the word and spirit of God do not absolutely govern the heart separate to Him who is dead, risen, and on high. In such a condition how can souls be expected to form a sound or spiritual judgment on the church, complicated as the question now is by its ruined state? They value science, letters, philosophy, which exalt the flesh, as well as associations which allow of ease and honour in the world. From lack of intelligence in the word, and feeble sense of fellowship with the Father and the Son, they fail to judge the present evil age and are absorbed in 'their own things,' if not ever seeking greater. They are consequently in danger of being the victims of prejudice and prepossession. They do not give to Christ His due and supreme place in a practical way; nor do they freely rise above brotherly kindness into the purer atmosphere of love according to God, so as to care for the church unselfishly as Christ's body. They are not prepared to break fully through the vain conversation which tradition has generated as much in Christendom as of old in Judaism. They shrink from the trying consequences which unhesitating and thorough obedience of the truth must entail on every one who is subject to the Lord. The eye is not single, and therefore the body is not full of light; the path looks uncertain, the word seems difficult, and danger appears to lie in the faith that follows the Lord at all cost.

Are we then to fall back on prudence and require a certain measure of intelligence before reception? This is just one main mischief that has to be ever assiduously avoided, and treated as a mistake in principle, yea, a sin against Christ and the church. Nor could anything more directly tend to make the most sectarian of all sects than to exact, from the souls who seek to come in, a right judgment as to truth least known by the saints, the mystery of Christ, or in particular the one body for them made harder still, as it is apt to be in practice, by sections growing out of the actual fallen condition of Christendom.

Never was such a requirement heard of, even When the church began and the presence of the Holy Spirit was a wholly new thing. Saints were received on the confession of Christ's name, God having given to all the like gift, His seal and passport. The intelligence was on the part of those who recognised the worth of that Name and the gift of the Spirit as to themselves at the beginning. Had they claimed intelligence of the church as a condition of fellowship, it would have really proved their own lack of intelligence, and counteracted that for which Christ died -the gathering together in one of God's scattered children.

Has the present ruin of the church altered this primary principle? The firm foundation of God stands, but with this seal: The Lord knows them that are His; and, Let every one that names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. What bears His name is like a great house with vessels of honour, and vessels of dishonour, from which last a man has to purge himself, if he would himself be a vessel of honour, sanctified, meet for the master's use, prepared unto every good work. If the public state be evil, individual fidelity to Christ is imperative: unity is not to overbear it, nor bind the Christian to unite the Lord's name with unrighteousness. Personal purity is to be followed also; and this not in isolation but with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Not a word about requiring ecclesiastical or doctrinal intelligence, but 'with those that call' etc., i.e., with real saints in a day of lax and hollow profession.

At a later day, 'the last hour' of John, we see how strongly the spirit of God insists on first principles. 'Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?' In presence of many antichrists, Christ abides the touchstone. The spirit holds to His person unhesitatingly. To add aught is to take from Him, to dishonour His name.

Is then knowledge of truth or growth in spiritual intelligence to be slighted? In no way; but it is false and vain to require either as a preliminary condition from saints who seek fellowship according to God. Help them, instruct them, lead them on in both. This is a true service, but arduous withal. The other is sectarian, and wrong.

If there are any who plead for so great a departure from Scripture and more especially from the characteristic truth of God's assembly, let them betray their new invention in opposition to the Lord, that others also may fear. Christ ever abides the one test, the only centre, to whom the Holy Spirit gathers. What the Lord declared just before the church began remains even more manifestly true, now that He is dishonoured in the house of His new friends no less than in that of His old. 'He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad' (Matt. 12: 30). It is imperative to be with Christ for one's soul, in order to please God and not dishonour His Son; but there is now the privilege and duty of gathering, as well as of individual allegiance; and he who does not gather with Him only scatters, whatever appearances may say to the contrary. It is the once rejected and dead, the now risen and glorified, Christ, who is the attractive centre; and hence the sign of His death in the breaking of bread is equally the sign of the one body, which they in effect deny and contemn who would restrain it to their few, refusing the many, that is, all whom Christ contemplates and welcomes. He has not asked this at their hands; nor does He sanction such action in His word. And if not warranted of Him, what is it but party and arbitrary restriction, which does not refuse the vile only but the precious, unless they fall in with their unauthorised course whether they think it right or not?

Thus the direct tendency is to coerce and demoralise; for what is sought is not conviction on ground of Scripture, but, where there is no conviction, a blindfold subjection, a bare and often reluctant and unhappy acquiescence, an appearance of fellowship which is no longer living but dead. For the Spirit we have received is assuredly a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind; and in no way does He endorse what is thus formal in character, under human pressure or influence. The consequence is terrible: a premium to the more vaulting and turbulent spirits, who now more than ever would 'hold the reins'; the comparative retirement, from their just and grace-given place, of those who care not 'to rule save in the fear of the Lord and by His word; the destruction of moral principle in such (and they are very many) as seek to silence their disapproval of the movement as a whole and in detail, either by attachment to leaders, or in holding to the greater number, which they fondly call unity. Protest (say some), but stay within; that is, protest but only in word! This we used to regard as the painful compromise of place-loving evangelicals; now do we not see it standing where it ought not? It is anything but truth and right; and this unity!

But there is all the difference of truth and error, on the one hand, between consistency with the unity of the Spirit for Christ's glory, carried out in holiness and grace according to His word, and, on the other, self-deceived and misleading abuse of unity to cry up a party bent on division with violence, which refused humiliation and prayer to arrest the evil, and declared Scripture needless for its demands or its justification.

No intelligent saint would ask for a positive letter of commandment, like a Jew; no one expects a modern place or passing circumstance to be named in the Scripture: to speak as if anything of the sort were sought is to evade and condemn oneself yet more. Where is the scriptural principle for turning a local difference into a wedge of universal division? Beyond controversy, when a question is raised with a world-wide scattering of the saints as the penalty, all who love the church are bound to be assured that the test is of God according to His word.

Some of us remember such a test more than thirty years ago. But then it was whether we could consent to make a true or a false Christ an open question. This we rejected with horror, when a large company of saints adhered to their leaders (even while they ignored the judgment of the assembly where the evil occurred), who let in the known partisans of a proved anti-christian teacher, and denied formally their responsibility to judge it solemnly for themselves.

This was no test of man. It is the certain distinct requirement of the Lord. We are divinely commanded to reject any who bring not the doctrine of Christ (2 John). This goes far beyond the dealing due to those who act independently or make a sect. No ecclesiastical error, however real or grave, could justify such rigour.

The foundation truth of Christ demands it. We owe it to Him who is our Lord, who died for us, whose glory the word guards as nothing else. To say that then it was a question of the Head, now of the body, in order to put the two as much as possible on a level, is both want of faith in Him and want of intelligence in the word. It is an undue and even unholy exalting of the church, and so not only an unspiritual blunder but an evident excuse for yielding to sectarianism. We should never have been warranted to have acted as we did in 1848-9, if Christ had not been blasphemed. As a test it is absolutely unscriptural to equalise the church with Him, even if it had been true, which it was not of late, that the one body was at stake, for the meeting wrongly begun was nowhere recognised.

The comparison is a sophism. For the question of old was not about Christ as Head at all, but about His person and relationship to God as such. An antichrist was taught; it was not a mere failure, bad as this may be, in holding His headship. And so far now from maintaining the unity of the Spirit, so far from acting faithfully on the ground of the one body, the object has been and is to force on us the recognition of a meeting which had deliberately gone out and set up in self-will as a party, a meeting that never yet adequately and honestly owned these public sins to those against whom they sinned, not to say to all saints. The aim, of course, really was division, for no sober Christian thought such ways right; but certain were resolved, cost what it might, to sever between those prepared to accept as of God a meeting guilty of unjudged party work, and those who cannot but reject such independency for Christ's and the church's sake.

If this is not a human test, and as the result a sect, it would be hard to find either; for the ground is not even a difference of doctrine, still less as to Christ, but at most a question of discipline, even if the discipline were right. But I will go further. Take the hope of the return of the Lord Jesus. You know how very important it is for Christians to be waiting in truth and heart for Christ from heaven; but would you require that those who seek fellowship in the name of the Lord should understand and confess that hope before you receive them in the Lord?

Would not this be a sect? Be it that your assertion of the Christian hope is ever so right, and that the person in quest of fellowship is ever so ignorant on that subject; but who authorises you or others to stand at the door and forbid his entrance? Perhaps by entertaining some wrong thought, he may fancy that the Christian, like the Jew, or the Gentile in Rev. 7, has to go through the great final tribulation. Granted that he little understands the place of the Christian from not seeing his union with Christ in heaven, which is made known by the Holy Spirit in this day. Hence he is in confusion and knows not that the Lord will come and take His own before the days of that terrible retribution which is coming upon the world. He may even share the thoughts of men ,is unwise as any in Thessalonica and fall into the delusion of trying to escape the great tribulation, as some did forty years ago by going to Canada. Too much occupied with prophecy, they had lost or never known the true hope of Christ's coming; and whenever we get absorbed in anything, whether prophecy, or the church,* or the gospel, rather than with Christ, what but grace can hinder us from going farther astray?

If any one wants proof of the schismatic misuse of truth at work, he can see it in the 'Voice' for August, 1882, where the writer is so betrayed by his anti-evangelistic zeal as to say that 'a company of saints gathered by an evangelist seldom is sound in principle' (p. 247)! This crying up of one's own line is as unsound in heart as it is in principle; an offence alike against grace and truth. Every right-minded evangelist hails with] joy the service of pastors and teachers, that they may perfect the work. begun by the Lord through himself. But if these ἀλλοτριοεπίσκοποι were not blinded by self-occupation they would rejoice in the blessing (or what they call 'the success') of the evangelist, as alone furnishing them with a sphere for their own ministry: for how in general are saints to be called and gathered if not by the evangelist? And think of the confusion in what follows, where brethren from whom these men differ are contrasted with 'a member (however unintelligent) of the body of Christ' (page 248)! Is the evangelist then not a member of that body? The apostle (Eph. 4: 11, 12) ruled differently his place, relation, and function; but this pretentious school not infrequently show the worth of their intelligence by independence of Scripture. If this be the sort of thing the sheep now get, they are truly to be pitied.

And this brings me to the main point I would now press. The unity of the Spirit embraces not only the intelligent but the simplest of God's children; it contemplates the body of Christ, and all the members in particular. For those who believe the gospel of salvation have the Holy Ghost dwelling in them and are Christ's members. They are therefore responsible to walk, as we are to own Him, in that relationship which grace has given to all. As members of Christ's body, they are bound diligently to keep the unity of the Spirit. There are national bodies and dissenting societies which have within them many, if not the mass, of God's children; and these systems, by claiming to be churches, prove a great perplexity to the believer. The evil of party, which showed itself in the early days, not only repeats itself, but works now with very great aggravation. Notwithstanding, grace would strengthen those who seek to do Christ's will according to their true relationship. It is man, and man pushed on by the enemy, that makes stumbling-blocks and difficulties great, yea, in appearance insuperable, so that the children of God may be tempted to give up true unity. Of course every faithful servant of the Lord has to seek, if not the removal of these obstacles, at least to help God's children in surmounting them. In a day of growing confusion, the constant effort of the enemy is to deceive and baffle and make it seem hopeless to keep the unity of the Spirit.

It is for us to consider whether we are using diligence to keep that unity in peace. No doubt there are internal dispositions or conditions requisite to do it aright. Some say the mystery must be known. Of such intelligence I do not doubt the importance in its place and time; but of this the apostle hints not a word here. What does he say? 'With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.' Such are the declared and worthy qualities which the apostle seeks in those who would keep the unity of the Spirit.

And is it not well for us to challenge our souls, whether our confidence is in the apostle's word or in man's theories? Oh, that we might cultivate such ways of grace as these in ourselves, and urge them on others, in order to a walk worthy of our calling! Can we doubt that it is in this condition only that we can duly keep that unity: not in haste or harshness, not in impatience of others or self-confidence, but with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love? There was need of all this then: is it less indispensable in our greater difficulties now?

For then there was no perplexity through open rivals, no competitors for the claim of God's assembly on earth. The main hindrance was from within. Now there are those and other obstacles. Am I connected with any association which ignores the one body and one Spirit? Am I attached to anything that systematically opposes this unity? It is not a question merely of wrong persons coming in unawares; for the fatal thing is not that evil should enter, but that it is known and allowed. What evil things did not effect an entrance into the assembly even in apostolic days? But God owns the unity as of the Spirit so long as there is the true-hearted purpose, in dependence on the Lord and according to His word, to keep, or purge, out evil. It is not the entrance or amount or even character of evil that destroys the assembly, but the continued acceptance of it under the Lord's name, even when it is known.

But God will not sanction in His assembly the allowance of any real evil whatever; and evil, no matter what its shape or measure, must be judged as inconsistent with His presence who dwells there. The assembly is the pillar and ground of the truth: how then can falsehood be a matter of indifference in the house of the living God? Christ is the truth; and, without controversy, great is the mystery of piety. Hence the church's intolerance of that which undermines Christ. There must be the disallowance of all leaven where the feast of Christ the paschal Lamb is kept. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump; and none can be tolerated, be it moral, as in 1 Cor. 5, or doctrinal, as in Gal. 5. If one called a brother be characterised by corruption or violence, by ways wholly opposed to the truth and character of Christ and to the very nature of God, he must be excluded from His assembly.

What then is to be done if we find views, judgments, and principles at work which trench on and narrow, and so really counteract, the Spirit's unity? What if unscriptural tests be pressed so as to shut out deliberately souls at least as godly as themselves? What if conscience toward God be not respected, if there be no longer room for liberty in the Spirit and responsibility to the Lord Jesus? Were it merely an opinion of one or more, which was held without forcing it on others, there would be in this no sufficient ground for resistance. It would be sad to see saints preoccupied with their little theories in presence of Christ and that word which lives and abides for ever. Ordinarily it would suffice to express regret at, and protest against, what one might believe unsuitable among Christians; for we are called to peace and forbearance as well as fidelity. If you find in others what you cannot approve of, does not Scripture amply forewarn you of this, and call for patience, whilst looking to the Lord?

The children of God, called though they be to the enjoyment and expression of Christ, habitually demand the exercise of long-suffering and grace, as beyond doubt you yourself draw largely on the forbearance of your brethren. It cannot seriously be expected that those who compose the church of God should forego the character of a family, with its fathers, young men, and babes, to imitate an army under martial law. Regimental order is as far as possible from that which the written word prescribes to God's church, where, instead of a regulation standard, the utmost variety prevails, high and low, strong and weak, or even uncomely. 1 Cor. 12.

Scripture lays down the rule by which foreign elements, if they enter, are to be tried; and as there are manifold evils that may seek a footing, so there are distinct scriptures that apply to each case, from private rebuke to public censure, or in the last resort putting away. Those who cause divisions and stumblings are to be avoided; the factious, after a first and second admonition, to be refused; the disorderly, to be withdrawn from; those that sin, to be reproved before all; the wicked, to be put away. Reserve and rebuke have their application, no less than the extreme sentence of excision.

Nor would one deny the just practice of declaring outside those who have either gone away, wilfully refusing all admonition, or who audaciously despise and deny the unquestioned assembly by setting up another meeting, and so render admonition to be scarce more than a form.

The lesser excommunication was not yet invented, that is, the 'declaring out,' so stretched as to take in brethren who had no intention of going out: a convenient, but unscriptural way of getting rid of such as gave umbrage. Surely whatever is done ought to be according to the plain positive teaching of God's word. It is for the Lord to command — the church has only to obey. I take for granted that I address Christians who believe not more in the sufficiency of the written word than in the supreme authority of Him who wrote it for our guidance by the Spirit of God. Development is of man's will, and unbelief. God has left nothing to be added. The church is under the orders of the Lord. If the church recognise any one, it is because the Lord has already received him; and if the church put away, it is simply as doing the Lord's will. The church has no independent authority to legislate, but is called to believe, pronounce, and execute His word, Consequently, in all things the church has to remember that she is subject and He the Lord. He is to order, she to obey — her one place, privilege, and duty. The moment the church lays down an extra-scriptural test, she takes the place of the Lord, and there is a practical assumption, yea, a virtual denial, of His authority. The result is to form a sect in departure from the unity of the Spirit.

The apostles, though set first in the church, were patterns of Christian humility. Who was so remarkable for patience as he who was not a whit behind the very chiefest, to whom a unique place was given by the will of God and the authority of the Lord Jesus? How much then should every true servant of Christ cultivate lowliness in these days! If a man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things written are the commandments of the Lord. Let his very subjection to the word of the Lord prove the reality of his mission from Him. This is of the last moment for our souls now; for perils and perplexities are constantly springing up, which affect the saints wherever they may be, and not least those who are gathered to the name of Christ.

Let none fancy this is to disparage those admirable men whom the Lord used in days gone by. Cherish unfeigned respect for such as Luther, Calvin, Farel, and Zwingle, though quite allowing the infirmities of everyone of them. It is childish to find fault with Tyndale and Cranmer, whilst idolising Melancthon or John Knox. They were all of like passions as ourselves; and if disposed to study their lives and labours, there are ample materials not far to seek for criticism; and so with other men of God in our day. But is it of Christ to be on the watch for that which may not be of Christ? Faults are easily seen; it needs today the power of the Spirit to walk, not in their traditions, but in the like faith. Rarely has there been a time when faith has sunk to a lower ebb among those who might be supposed long inured to it than the present. It is most common to find saints who groan over a course as utterly wrong, and yet persevere in it for the sake of company, etc. How often they have to others insisted on the ancient oracle: 'Cease to do evil; learn to do well.' They believe it doubtless: why not, giving all diligence, add to their faith virtue? Have they lost all courage in Christ and for Christ? I speak of what is now going on to our common shame all over the world. The compromise which you would hardly expect in new-born babes of God characterises men who have long known the Lord, and even suffered not a little at one time or another for the truth's sake.

Beloved friends, it is of the greatest moment that we should try our ways, whether we deceive ourselves, or are in deed and in truth keeping the unity of the Spirit. Do not set against that duty the sad fact that the church is now a ruin. The question is, Are we not always to be obedient? It is not the point, how many or how few of Christ's members may act together according to the word of the Lord. Do we own, ourselves, the obligation to be thus faithful? The unity of the Spirit is a constant responsibility for the children of God to keep with diligence as long as they are upon the earth. He abides with us for ever. To keep it therefore is always a paramount duty.

Take a practical illustration. There is assembled in this room a company of members of Christ's body, who can allow neither the broad ways of nationalism nor the narrow alleys of sectarianism. They desire above all things to walk together so as to please the Lord Christ. What then must be their stand? What position ecclesiastically ought they to take, if they would act with spiritual intelligence and fidelity? If any in this city be already gathered to His name on the ground of the one body, they should not be ignored. It would be independence, not the unity of the Spirit, to take no account of such a gathering. The member of Christ's body who sought fellowship would ask, as he ought, if and where saints were gathered to His name. He finds, we will suppose, there are some meeting in this room, and prefers his desire to be with them on the same blessed ground of Christ. If they challenge his faith, it is not from lack of love to him, but from care for Christ's glory. They do not receive him because he says that he is a member of Christ's body, They require adequate testimony, where they have no personal knowledge. Nobody ought to be recognised on his own bare word; even the apostle Paul was not at the first. God took care to give an extraordinary witness through a certain disciple named Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews that dwelt in Damascus, as in Jerusalem subsequently through Barnabas. The word is so plainly thus, and the danger so great otherwise, that no saint, who duly reflects with a heart and conscience true towards God, would wish to be accredited merely on his own word. Souls may deceive themselves, even if upright; but if you or I were to be so accredited, where is it to end?

Again, a christian is brought before them, who desires to remember the Lord along with them. Perhaps he belongs, as they say, to the national establishment, or to a dissenting society. But he is well known as a child of God, walking according to the measure of light already possessed. What is to be done? To refuse this member of Christ, without the strongest ground of known sin, would put shame not on him only but on the Lord. It were to deny our title, the true centre of gathering. Membership of Christ attested by a godly life is the sufficient and only right ground on which a Christian should ask to be received. If one understood all mysteries and all knowledge, if one had all faith so as to remove mountains, one ought to plead His name alone.

Are there then no exceptions? May there not be valid reasons to forbid even an accredited member of Christ's body? Certainly there are, as Scripture shows. Leaven of malice and wickedness is intolerable (1 Cor. 5); leaven of heterodoxy as to the foundations (Gal. 5) is yet worse; and the word is, 'Purge out the old leaven that ye may be a new lump.' Here are unquestionable barriers reared in the word of God, and due to the Lord Jesus. If any man that is named a brother be unclean in deed or in word, in ways or in manifested spirit, we are commanded not so much as to eat with him. And it were a far graver sin, if one did not bring the doctrine of Christ, or even denied everlasting punishment for the lost. God assuredly will never allow the profession of Christ to be a passport for him that dishonours Christ. Here, and here most of all, is the Holy Ghost jealous, if the word of God is to be our rule.

All truth is no doubt important in its place and season; but it is worse than ignorance to put the body on the same level as the Head. Ecclesiastical error, even if real and grave, never approaches the denial of the doctrine of Christ. Weigh how the apostle of love, the elder, solemnly warns us to be on our guard in such a case. We are not free to receive even privately, much less publicly, those who bring not the doctrine of Christ. We are unequivocally bound not only to disallow heterodoxy in general, but in particular to reject that which is, and those who are, a lie against Christ, yea, to treat those who receive such as partakers of the same evil deeds. But we are not entitled to equalise the church with Christ, like a Romanist, or to put ecclesiastical error along with evil against Christ's person. This is not faith, but fanaticism: what can we think of such as conceive, or of those that circulate, this trash as the truth?

Still, in keeping the unity of the Spirit, we must accept the scriptural responsibility of purging out leaven. And, as we have seen, the Spirit of God writes direct to an elect lady and her children, because on such a question as Christ the duty is immediate and peremptory. Years ago, in having to do with such an one, that Epistle stood us in good stead. For on her pleading that she was but a sister, and it was not her responsibility to do this or that, she was at once reminded that, it was not to an assembly, nor even to a Timothy or Titus, but to a lady and her children that the Holy Ghost wrote, insisting on her own personal and unavoidable responsibility. We may be sure that the Spirit of God did not thus inspire a letter to a lady and her children, without the most urgent necessity, and in order to meet just such an excuse for shirking what is due to Christ at any time.

All know that women are liable to err on the side of their affections, being naturally more disposed to act through feeling than with calm judgment. The word of God recognises this in repressing them ordinarily (1 Tim. 2), and in the special warning of 2 John. Their activity is always to be dreaded in cases short of Christ, a dishonour to themselves and to the men whom they mislead. The truth may not be always pleasant, though ever wholesome and good; and it is the truth that one desires to press upon souls, and that we ought to welcome. We are bound to see to it that the church of God be not made a cover for any known evil, and above all not to admit or screen knowingly that which sullies Christ's glory. But women are bad leaders or even instruments, save as Scripture warrants.

Let us distinguish things that differ. The English Establishment, in spite of many and grave drawbacks, had a holy object in its rise, turning its back as it did on an abominable and ever swelling imposture. Though much hindered, especially by the king, in its work of clearing itself from many inveterate superstitions, it honestly set its face against what was known to be evil. But it retrograded afterward, until its ritualistic observances being made a test forced out many pious nonconformists, whose origin thus was morally respectable and godly. For it was no mean struggle in those days to keep a good conscience, and to stand opposed to those who were dragging them down into formalism. We need not speak of the Wesley and Whitfield movement, which was in main missionary, not ecclesiastical We know later on, how powerfully God wrought in awakening His children fifty years ago to a sense of the departure that had taken place from the original ground of keeping the unity of the Spirit. In such days it was no small thing to recognise that there is such a reality on earth as the presence of the Holy Ghost, and consequently the body of Christ. Hence, if members of that body, it is our inalienable duty to keep that unity in its true character, whilst subject to the conditions which the Lord has laid down in His word, and to none other. The Spirit has created that unity, a unity which takes in all members of Christ's body, excepting those whom discipline according to the word requires us to reject.

It may interest all to know that not the least weighty testimony that was ever given of late on this momentous subject was written in the year 1828 'Considerations on the Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ'. The point was to show how impossible it is for saints who would honour the Lord to go on with the world, instead of walking (were they but two or three) in that unity which is of God; that in denominations the bond is not their unity but in fact their differences, and in no case therefore the communion of God's church at all, in faith contemplating, as every true assembly does and must, all God's children. Those who call this looseness do not know divine ground, and have unwittingly slipped into a sect.

Far from looking for or valuing ecclesiastical intelligence before souls take their place at the Lord's table, it is quite a mistake for us to expect it, and a shame rather than an honour to the few who may possess it. For how did they as members of Christ acquire such knowledge? In manifest unfaithfulness; either still continuing in their denominational enclosures and activities with a bad conscience; or in the anomalous state of mere hearers outside, seeking to attain a more familiar acquaintance with that truth in which their outside position declared them to have neither part nor lot, as if their heart were not right with God. Yet all the while they were members of the body of Christ; and as such they should have been within, learning more soundly and happily the truth they were acting on in their simplicity, a truer and better sort of intelligence than that intellectual insight into the church, which has been so erroneously over-rated by some in our midst.

The fact is that we are apt to forget our own beginnings and the gracious dealings of the Lord with us when we ourselves first broke bread, knowing as little perhaps as any. How many brethren are now among the firmest and most intelligent in fellowship, who saw but dimly not the church only but even the gospel of salvation, and revealed truth in general, when they found in the Lord's name an. immediate passport to His supper! They were by no means clear as to their future course, though attracted by the grace which saluted them as brethren, and enjoying the simple faith which bowed to the word of the Lord in a way and measure beyond their previous experience. How unwise and unbecoming for such now to exact from enquiring brethren a knowledge of the church far beyond their own standard at their start, and in fact not to be got save within the assembly, and in the path of obedience where the Spirit guides into all the truth! To those thus growing up and led, catholicism or denominationalism is judged by the word, and felt to be altogether unsatisfying and distasteful, as being evidently of man and not of God. What gives these new and strong convictions? Neither influence nor prejudice, neither argument nor imagination, but the truth appreciated by the power of God's Spirit.

Are we then to play fast and loose with divine truth! Nay, but it is a question of the Lord's way with those who are His and have yet to learn: is it to be in liberty or in bondage? Doubtless every Christian ought to keep the unity of the Spirit, as gathered to the name of the Lord and to none other. A saint cannot legitimately have two communions. Is not the communion of Christ's body in principle exclusive? Follow with all your soul the Lord Jesus, own the one body and one Spirit, receive every godly member of His in His name. In this there is neither looseness nor sectarianism. As the word of God is plain, so does the presence of the Spirit abide; nor do I allow that keeping the unity of that Spirit is a vain show. As He abides, so does His unity; and those who have received the Holy Spirit are bound to walk in that unity, and in none other. They are added of the Lord together, members of the assembly which God has formed for Himself in this world; and I deny the title of anyone to set up either rival or substitute. If you have His Spirit, you already belong to this one body, and are called to carry it out to the exclusion of all others.

Thus it is no voluntary society we have to do with. It is no question of framing something better than either nationalism or dissent, nor an alliance which really condemns, while ostensibly it sanctions, the existing institutions of orthodox Protestantism. The truth however, is that, before all these essays, God had Himself formed His church on earth; and such as have His Spirit are thereby constituted members, responsible to act accordingly. In His church leaven of doctrine or of practice is intolerable, if we bow to Scripture. Every Christian is bound to reject falsehood and unholiness, and this corporately as well as individually, For the ruin of the church does not shut us up to individuality. If we follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, it may and should be with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Isolation it is a sin to seek, as being a denial of fellowship. The church of God means the assembly of those that are His. But if ever so many, we are one bread, one body. As the Lord's Supper is the outward expression of this unity, it is unworthy of believers to complain that too much is made of His Supper and Table; for it is God who calls them His, not we who only cleave to His word and confide in His will. Doubtless we need to keep Christ in this before our eyes; if not, we are in danger of moulding His Supper according to our will or caprice. If by the grace of God we have the Lord Jesus before us, our hearts will go out towards all that are His walking after a godly sort.

For a long time Satan has been endeavouring to falsify the testimony of Christ amongst those professedly gathered to His name. One of his wiles has been, under pretence of light and righteousness, to undermine grace and truth in recognising freely the members of Christ's body. Utterly misconceiving the stand against neutrality, they would make no Christian welcome to the Lord's Table who did not judge his old position by more or less intelligence of the one body and one Spirit; that is, without a virtual pledge never again to enter their so-called church or chapel. This is, to my mind, not unbelief only but a bad and base principle. It is in an underhand way to make a sect of those that know the church, but really to prove how little they themselves appreciate the one body: else they could not let knowledge override relationship to Christ, as they do. Never is the church rightly or truly learnt save within, according to the word, where you must leave room for growth in the truth by faith and God's grace.

There is then the danger of virtually denying Christ's membership by looking for an antecedent intelligence about His body which it is as unscriptural as unwise to expect, and the more wrong as it exists but feebly in many who have for years been in fellowship. But besides, there may be no less difficulty and danger among those already received, where the claim of truth or righteousness is pressed without grace. And those who are most wrong are apt to talk most loudly of that which they really imperil or unwittingly annul.

There are not many who remember the Plymouth division in 1845-6. Moral charges were not wanting then, but it mainly turned on an effort of a large and influential party which lost faith in the Lord's presence and the Holy Spirit's free action in the assembly, seeking independency with its leaders. It is needless to say that the heavenly character and the unity of the church had faded away, as well as waiting for the Lord Jesus as an immediate hope. God would not suffer in our midst such lack of faith and of faithfulness. But the mass of the saints were beguiled by the error, and deaf to the warning; and but few separated, branded as schismatics by those who boasted of their numbers, gifts, and happiness.

What was the relation of those who for the Lord's and the truth's sake were forced in conscience to stand apart? The high-minded majority utterly refused humiliation and rejoiced that those were outside from whom they had been long and with increasing bitterness alienated. The minority met at first in private houses only to humble themselves and pray, as after a little to break bread. But they never thought of rejecting the poor famished sheep who occasionally sought to break bread with them, without severing their connection with Ebrington Street. For indeed they were not only bound there by many ties, but under great fear through the swelling words and persecuting deeds of their old leaders and friends, not least of sisters who played an unenviable part in that sad history. They had of course this moral safeguard that none committed in will to the Plymouth defection, especially no chief, but scorned the seceders. Only the simple came, and, because they came, were cut off by the Ebrington Street party. But we received them freely in the Lord's name, even though they might be weak enough to wish fellowship still with their old friends.

But the moment that the blasphemous heterodoxy as to Christ appeared, there was an end of all this forbearance. The door was closed on all that continued with an antichristian faction. As long as it was an ecclesiastical error, however firmly we refused it and came out from it, there was patience with those who failed to discern it, or to judge it practically. Such known saints of Ebrington Street as came were cordially received; and who ever heard of even one in these circumstances refused? But on the contrary, when the false doctrine against Christ was known, an uncompromising stand was made from the first; and no soul was received thenceforward who did not clear himself from association with so deadly an insult to the Father and the Son. With partisans of that evil Bethesda identified itself, and necessitated the world-wide division which ensued in 1848.

What then can be judged of those who confound these two things so fundamentally distinct? the ecclesiastical error, and the false doctrine as to Christ's person and relationship to God? or the ways to be pursued in each case?

The divisionist party of today seems to me as guilty of independency and clericalism as that of Ebrington Street in 1845. And, believing them to be thus false to the truth of the one Spirit and one body, I cannot but feel thankful for God's overruling grace in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. For their intolerance of others has taken the initiative; and they have either gone out from, or driven out (too often by unworthy manoeuvres), their brethren whose one desire is to abide gathered, as we have so long been, to Christ's name. But they have proved their ignorance in the plainest way and to a surprising degree by prating malicious words about Bethesdaism, when they might know, if not blinded by haste and ill-feeling, that there is not allowed a shade of that evil for which Bethesda and the so-called neutrals were judged.

Let them beware lest, beginning with ecclesiastical error like Ebrington Street, they themselves fall ere long into like heterodoxy. I pray that in God's mercy our brethren may be spared such further sin and dishonour of the Lord. But detraction and neglect of Scripture and of facts as well as of consistency with all we have hitherto learnt and done before God, are a slippery bypath; from which it would be joy indeed and great grace from the Lord to see them recede.

"Unto my name."

Matt. 18: 20.

W. Kelly. (BT. Vol. N5, p.296.)

It is humbling and grievous when a servant of the Lord gives up any truth of God which he had not only held but advocated publicly, then doubted, and finally denies, from mere sentiment wresting scripture to popular error. Such is the character of "Gathering in the Name of the Lord Jesus." The friend who sent me the tract regards its writer as the best-taught man in their circle. Yet here he has sunk lower than many of his associates, even on his own showing in the first paragraph of p. 7; for they, if mistaken in their claim to be gathered to that Name, at least own it to be the only right aim for true worshippers. So sadly has he lost this truth as to stigmatise it as "the Corinthian school of 'Christ'" (p. 8) "against all the names of Paul, Apollos and Cephas!" "This is carnality," he says! Is it not deplorable to see a Christian become more unbelieving as he grows older? carried away by the Laodicean spirit of the day beyond many who probably know less, and blinded to excuse and spread utter laxity under cover of grace which is not grace? Can one honestly say less?

T. N. knows that those who in faith regard it as a special privilege and duty, to be gathered together to the Lord's name, are the farthest of any on earth from setting it against Paul, Apollos and Cephas. It was therefore wholly different with these frivolous Corinthians; who, whilst abiding in the same fellowship, did really and irreverently from their old philosophic habit set up in rivalry not those blessed servants only but the Divine Master as heads of opposing schools! Is there the least approach even to superficial resemblance? We dread all schism; we disclaim denominations or sects. These are what the apostle calls "heresies," and warns, in 1 Cor. 11: 18, 19, as the sure issue of unjudged schism. Yet the gist of this tract is to make light even of that graver evil, and goes so far as to rebuke the better desires of his own companions who left the sects, in order (as they judged) to be gathered to the Lord's name.

According to his present view, and "the Keswick motto," whether maintaining sects, or abjuring them, all Christians in the existing disorder and confusion, are alike gathered to His name! If he said that, as members of Christ and walking consistently, they are entitled to be received in His name and are free to take their place, it is true. But what if they ignore it and prefer a gathering according to their own views, or an organization that sets aside God's? Can it be that standing to this looseness, go where he will among orthodox denominations, he and other believers honour that precious privilege as truly as in apostolic days? There was an early man among Brethren (A. N. Groves.) who seems to have entertained or slipped into a similar negation of all divine principle. To simple and intelligent souls this was ever abhorrent. For it stultifies all scripture which treats of the church, and in particular this Epistle which T. N. perverts to his aid. Can he honestly believe that, when the apostle addresses the church of God that is in Corinth, "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours," he sanctions separate sects, and accepts what he calls a heretic (Titus 3: 10, 11) as all the same gathered to the Lord's name? This is beyond doubt what the argument involves, as foolish a thought as it is faithless.

It is therefore mere evasion of "gathered to the name of Christ" if we pretend that when gathered as "Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists, and those who refuse all separating titles" (to take his own phrase in page 8), Christians, however earnest, are nevertheless gathered to His name. They are never so gathered whilst they abide in religious corporations framed on these extra-scriptural lines. Nor is the refusal of "separating titles" enough. There must be the positive gathering to His name as the divinely given, only, and adequate centre for God's children, to the exclusion of all that is incompatible with it by the word and Spirit of God. Matt. 18: 15-20 supposes but one communion, no matter in how many places even in the same city they may meet. The church or assembly here and everywhere else in scripture implies inter-communion, and never allows of a fellowship independent and differing one from another. As the Head is one, so is the church according to God's will, who has sent forth the Holy Spirit to act as the power and bond of union for this end. "For also in one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free, and were all given to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor. 12: 13). See also Eph. 4.

But it is a delusion to fancy that if souls break away from divine unity for divers doctrines and governments of man's device, they are notwithstanding gathered to the Lord's name. Sect or heresy is insubjection to the Lord, whatever the plea to vindicate such a departure. The same apostle who laid down the principle of one body is the one to pronounce the man guilty of such self-will as perverted and sinning, being self-condemned. Heterodoxy or strange doctrine is quite another evil, which may go so far as to deny God's everlasting judgment of sin, or His glory who bore it away from all who believe. Surely great is the sin if one deliberately seeks to make light of the evil of denominations which directly oppose that for which Christ died: not, it is true, to save the lost, but to gather together into one the children of God that were scattered abroad (John 11: 51, 52). How bold to assert, that if Christians set up new limits of fellowship which narrow or broaden the divine will, they are to be notwithstanding condoned, and no less gathered unto His name than those who are faithful and obedient! Some may flatter themselves that this amiability is growth in grace; whereas it is increasing looseness, and the unwitting desire to excuse themselves and other careless Christians at the cost of Christ's honour and word, to say nothing of the personally present Spirit.

As to a junction of such believers to supplicate God the Father in the Son's name, they surely may, and never in vain for what is His will. But any union for the nonce falls far short of being gathered together unto His name. For this is nothing less than the constitutive principle of the church, abides always (even when not assembled) in its relation and its consequences, and has its "within" and "without" with incumbent duties permanently. He who refused subjection to righteous judgment of his manifest wrong, even to the extreme point of equitable and gracious desire to win him, was to be for a passing season as one of the outside Gentiles. He must, till repentance, lie under the stigma; as the rest would enjoy the standing privileges of their common relationship. For "the church" was to take the place of Christ- rejecting Israel on earth, of Jerusalem and the temple, though in living association with heaven far beyond Moriah or Zion. This is to read in faith what the Lord put into these verses; the tract forgets and tries to blot it out. Neither first nor last was the church to be a rendezvous for casuals. To be believers is not the point but to have His presence as the sanction of acts when gathered together to His name. To have the bishop as the centre with presbyters and deacons was the device of the second century and onwards; to have nothing but believers of all orthodox sects or of none is an abuse; to own the Lord in the midst of those (were they but two or three) who own no centre but the Lord is the sound and sole principle of God's church. But if it came to "two or three," what grief and humiliation became them, and utter refusal to arrogate to themselves "the" church, though eschewing all sects but taking their stand upon that ground of grace and truth and nothing else!

To assume that to be saints in the denominations makes them notwithstanding truly gathered together to the Lord's name opens the door to nullify the church, for which it substitutes a mere rope of sand. It is the device of latitudinarianism, and the abandonment of the Lord's promise to those who are gathered together unto His name. And what can be plainer, to those who have learnt from scripture the impending ruin evident already to inspired eyes and revealed in the Epistles and the Revelation, than that the Lord before the beginning here as elsewhere intimates that the falling away might be so great that only two or three here and there might be thus gathered in faith of God's will ecclesiastically for fidelity here below? Yet does He deign to provide the sanction here promised to those who obey His word in face of trial and ill report, instead of following the multitude in pride of antique error, or turning to indifference, novelty, and what not.

In earlier days believers were freely received as Christ's members who, having no right notion of the church, were hardly to be counted guilty of departure from what was of God. Yet those who personally departed could plead for no such favour. But there is now an ominous change foreboding "the apostasy." No saint in those days tolerated the sacerdotalism of Christendom with its lie of apostolic succession as the warrant, its saving ordinances, and its idolatry with the real presence of a demon. Still less had we to challenge those who countenanced the gross scepticism of the Higher critics, though we had to refuse such as fell into the denial of God's judgment of sins or the soul's natural immortality. We are now bound to apply the later tests of scripture.

When giving up in principle that blessed privilege, how self-deceiving it is to say, "Oh let me ever be gathered, when gathered at all, in that Name! And what I prize so much myself let me not refuse to any saint of God." Some at least of his own company will not deny that he has himself falsified the Lord's mind, and that what he has just written does not come from God but can only mislead those who heed it. It is no question of refusing to any saint of God his true place and privilege, but of convincing the erring that to be of a denomination contradicts it, and that to claim both is unfaithfulness and folly. As I have no wish to expose bad reasoning and misapplied kindly feeling, I refrain from doing more than, for the help of souls, pointing out the writer's radical mistake and sad declension, with much regret that it is a plain duty to do so.

Gathered unto His Name:

A letter somewhat revised and enlarged.

W. Kelly.

My Dear Brother,

I am but one of many who are praying the Lord to make Him your first object in your service of His name. There are far more who, if they knew the circumstances, would join in this, and not least some who are very devoted in the gospel work.

But they justly feel that it is Christ who gives every thing and every one due measure of importance in God's sight, and therefore in His children's, as in itself too.

Now Christ loved the church supremely and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having purified it by the washing of water by the word, that He might present to Himself the church glorious, having no spot or wrinkle or any of such things, but that it might be holy and blameless. That He came to seek and save the lost is most true and blessed; but nothing is nearer to His heart, next to His Father and ours, to His God and ours, than His body the church, now exposed to every snare and danger in the present evil age. For that precious object is a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men, in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenly places might be made known through it the manifold wisdom of God.

If you weigh this and far more which may occur to you throughout the New Testament, you will allow that the duty to the Lord in caring for poor sinners ought not to swamp the yet higher one of loving His own that are in the world, as He did to the end. And how can we do it better than keeping His word and not denying His name, urging others in faith and love to do the same?

Men speak of the necessity of organisation but they know not or overlook that God has Himself taken this into His own hands, and has already effected it. So we read in Rom. 12: 4-8; 1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4: 1-16; Col. 2: 19; and 1 Peter 4: 10, 11. It is therefore glaring presumption for men to pretend to such a work; nor this only, but unwitting contempt for what God has done. Human responsibility has failed to preserve intact the treasure: the church no longer walks in unity. Even in apostolic days we hear of schisms and divisions, nay of sects. The Gentile ceased to stand through faith, and became high-minded instead of fearing. Thus abiding not in goodness, the sentence was to be cut off as the Jew had been (Rom. 11).

Ecclesiastical history, though miserably undiscerning as to the Lord's way and will, is forced to own, not only heterodox parties, some of them numerous and wide-spread, but the church of the west antagonistic openly and for a long while to that of the east on a trivial question, aggravated later by a graver dogmatic difference after the original breach was healed at the council of Nice in A.D. 325. For how utterly sad to make a public breach about the time of observing the Pasch (or, Easter, as it was called later)? But the saddest fact of all was the church's observance of it at any time, whether when the Asiatics celebrated it, or as the Romans did. It was a return, as Gal. 4 had ruled, to the beggarly elements of the world. In east or in west the church judaised beyond all recovery. At length came the Reformation, which gave occasion to national churches so-called, and subsequently to nonconformist bodies. No wonder that Augustine's idea of the invisible church revived and prevailed among Protestants.

Throughout this system of change, ancient or modern, the assembly of God was let slip in principle and in practice. By baptism of water individuals were outwardly recognised as Christians by the power, or in virtue, of one Spirit were they all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, and were all given to drink of one Spirit. Justification by faith absorbed men just escaped from the idolatries and darkness of Romanism; so that none need wonder, that even the most advanced of the reformed were as ignorant of God's church as they were of the coming and of the day of the Lord. Of this their writings are the most conclusive proof; whether of Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin; or of Knox, Cranmer, and any other.

It is the fact that only since the first quarter of the last century was it given to any by grace to discard human tradition and return to apostolic truth and fellowship. As they recognised one another simply as members of Christ in the light of His glory on high and in the hope of His coming whom God raised from the dead, their Deliverer from the wrath to come, they learnt as never before the "one body and one Spirit." More and more they realised its blessedness, and sought to conform their ways, individual or collective, to the divine word which revealed this, the calling of all Christians (Col. 3: 15). No doubt grievous departure came to pass, early and recent. But are there none that hold fast, whatever it may cost? Let saints judge by the word and Spirit of God, and be faithful themselves if they can find none else obedient.

God formed the assembly by the presence of the Holy Spirit on and since Pentecost. The body is therefore one; and it subsists to the end in that divine constitution. "God set the members each one in the body even as He pleased" (1 Cor. 12: 18). "Now ye are Christ's body" (could the apostle say to the Corinthian assembly, and the same thing was true everywhere else of the like), "and members in particular" (ver. 27). "And God set some in the assembly: first, apostles; secondly, prophets; thirdly, teachers; then, powers; then, gifts of healings; helps; governments; kinds of tongues" (28). Eph. 2: 20 lets us know that we were built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who, as they did their work perfectly by divine power, were not continued. But all is given that is needed for the perfecting of the saints, unto ministerial work, unto building up of the body of Christ, until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Hence sign-gifts also soon ceased, such as miraculous powers, and tongues with their interpretations. But as God fails not in His grace, so we have nothing to add to His guaranteed gifts. We have only to walk in faith ourselves, and accept gratefully what He gives, recognising all by His word and Spirit.

There is also another difficulty. Local charges, elders, in order to have full authority, needed institution by an apostle or an apostolic delegate like Titus to choose or establish them. Compare Acts 14: 23, Titus 1: 5, and probably 1 Tim. 5: 22. But scripture provided for the lack of the completely regular appointment by such considerations as are suggested in 1 Cor. 16: 15, 16; 1 Thess. 5: 12, 13; Heb. 13: 7, 17, 24. If there be not apostolic nomination, there are among the saints such as possess the qualities requisite for elders; and, appointed or not, such men are to be held in due honour and deference by all who fear God. A human or unscriptural title would lend no spiritual weight. But churches, as any one may see, are fully recognised as in the Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Thessalonians, where we do not read of elders as yet existing in their midst.

Take the quite simple yet most affecting and very important duty of remembering Him on the first day of the week in the breaking of the bread, His supper. No doubt you are well aware how greatly this institution differs from what all Romanists and Protestants have perverted it to, as a sacrament with its priest or the minister set officially apart to administer it. You have learnt too that there is now also the added truth, in the standing and precious privileges of the church, that the Holy Spirit, Who baptised into one body, abides for ever in and with those that are Christ's, to work in them of His own will, one or another in all liberty, to glorify the Lord Jesus.

It was because Christendom had fallen away from those essential truths, here merely and briefly sketched, that a few (separating themselves from all denominational membership, as being but sects and denounced in God's word) met with little but growing light to begin, as the early disciples began, gathered to His name, to show His death till He come, and to recognise the abiding presence of the Spirit in the assembly, even if but two or three were thus faithful. They were not nor could be satisfied with an approach or a partial resemblance. They rightly felt that they must be faithful and do the will of the Lord. To this the Christian is sanctified by the Spirit.

When I was in C- through serious ill heath, it was a great joy that we could meet, if ever so few, as gathered to the Lord's name. The dear few met there, Mrs.- giving the use of a fitting room in her house; and if visiting brothers and sisters came to the town, they gladly enjoyed the privilege in a foreign land. And I remember a sister who was Mrs.-'s guest (a Lutheran if I mistake not, and certainly not in our communion) who was not refused but welcomed in the Lord's name. She had not learnt that Lutheranism is but a sect; yet she loved the Lord's name and word as far as she knew; and we could and did therefore heartily give her the right hand of fellowship.

I left when most leave, the heat becoming an injury to invalids at any rate; and the meeting fell through, because there was none but one brother (his wife being sometimes unable to come). And I understand that, knowing you were in communion, Mrs.- appealed to you in this strait. For it was a very sad thing that there was indeed no place in the town where they could break bread with a good conscience. It seems that you pleaded not being at home in French, so as to express yourself in prayer or worship fittingly. But when you acquired familiarity enough to preach the gospel to the world, you did not remove the difficulty by remembering the Lord with them according to His word. Apparently you had got interested in evangelising work, so as to overlook the infinite claim of Christ on you as a member of His body, and all the more because they were so few and so circumstanced, that your holding aloof precluded their thus honouring Him scripturally.

If this state of things be substantially true, I earnestly appeal to you in the Lord's name. Help with all your heart that which is manifestly due to Him and His alone. Ought not you and they to keep His word at all cost? Mr.- I know; for he often came to readings at Mrs.-'s on the First Epistle of John; and I doubt not that he has otherwise received light beyond most in his society, preaching the gospel too as not a few do indefatigably and earnestly. Still he is the minister of the Free Church (as I understood): which in no way, more than other denominations, owns God's assembly, or the Holy Spirit for action in it, as God's mind for His saints, as long as Christians, however scattered, are here below. To recognise the Free Church, or the Evangelic Church (which are what scripture calls "sects," each with its peculiar polity, ministry, doctrine, and discipline according to man's wisdom), is to compromise God's word, and to dishonour the Lord Jesus as well as the Spirit's presence and action as in 1 Cor. 12, 14. They don't pretend to carry this out, as far as is now possible, but argue against it. "All things" are not "done decently and in order," as the apostle prescribed, but as men devise for their day.

Now you, I presume, have learnt from scripture, that we are the Lord's now and for ever more. Let us help each other to be obedient. No one wishes to slight the vast moment of preaching the gospel: but honouring the Lord by doing His will helps us to preach all the better. It also makes the Spirit's action in the assembly a living reality; whereas dropping this for the gospel makes it but a dead letter. Further, one grieves Him by lack of faith about God's plain will, so as to risk the loss of all conscience about it, and to slip by degrees into any sect or all sects, if we begin to own one that looks fairer than others, instead of adhering to the Lord's word and way exclusively.

Bear with me, beloved brother, if I urge the truth, and your debt to sovereign grace. How I should rejoice, if you prayed over this matter before God; so that when our sister returns, you might all be together gathered to the only true centre, and not in word only but in deed and truth. Thus might you prove His blessed and blessing presence in the midst of the few, be a comfort and help in the highest degree to any converted by your means, and turn a real grief we feel when we think of it into a true thanksgiving. Beware of instability like Reuben; be rather a Joseph, adding on your part all diligence, and in your faith. supply virtue, in virtue knowledge, in knowledge temperance, in temperance endurance, in endurance godliness, in godliness brotherly kindness, in brotherly kindness love.

Ever affectionately yours in our Lord,

W. K.

P.S. A few words as to the position you are tempted to take. First, it is retrograde, breaking off, not only from all dearest to you in the flesh and in the Lord, but from what you have hitherto professed to be of God. The only thing which could justify it is the imperative duty of following scripture. But we, your family included, left all to follow scripture; we abandoned our denominations or sects, forbidden by God's word. The Eglise Libre began by adopting a new code of polity which is but of yesterday, with the ordinary false position of the minister, and no assembly open to the presence and free action of the Holy Spirit, as God's word requires. Weigh this before God; for departure into what is clearly unscriptural is most serious.

Secondly, you know that brethren as such went back to the primitive standing of God's church, gathered only unto the name of the Lord Jesus. To this we have adhered at cost of obloquy in 1880-1 and since, as your father well knew and refused with us to endorse the new departure of the Park St. party, which afterwards divided into Ravenites and Anti-Ravenites, to say nothing of the so-called Open Brethren who long before went off from us. I mention this to satisfy you that the resumption of meeting at P- is not adding a third or second meeting, but simply enabling those, now debarred by circumstances, to remember the Lord in truly scriptural simplicity. They, and they alone, would meet as all did, not only from the beginning of Brethren but from the day of Pentecost, however feeble representatives. The Lord provided for it in Matt. 18: 20; and, till they meet on this divine principle, there is no true representative in C-. Think of the solemnity of this, and of your being faithful or not, my dear young friend, I beseech you.

Be sure that I will pray earnestly for you.

Yours in Him, W. K.

"I am the true vine."

Thoughts on John 15

W. Kelly.

(Manchester Series No. 181.)

There is no place where the selfishness of our nature oftener betrays itself than in the way we look at scripture. We do not ourselves always know how our thoughts of the word of God tell the tale of our state in the sight of God. I do not speak merely of such extreme cases as that of the avowed unbeliever — though he too shows what his condition is — as being not merely bad but unable to appreciate what is good, not only not obedient in heart but rejecting and rebelling against the only light whereby God Himself brings a man out of darkness to the knowledge of Himself. It is plain, therefore, that, rejecting the word, he as good as says to God that he desires not the knowledge of His ways. But then the children of God themselves let us see what their state of mind is, not only by their want of relish for the word, or their want of appetite for every means that will give their souls an increasing enjoyment of the Lord, but, further, by the way in which they take it up, by their understanding or rather misunderstanding of it. For this is the secret of true intelligence: people do not understand the word by brighter minds than others, but by a more obedient heart. It is the single-eyed desire to do the will of God which insures intelligence of His word. And the Spirit of God it is that produces both the one and the other. Assuredly it is the will that darkens the understanding; and, where the Spirit of God gives a soul to please the Lord, there the obstruction in the way of His word disappears. When by grace we want to do His will, the light of God is assuredly not withheld: it is the will when not judged which produces darkness for us.

In no instance perhaps do we find this more frequently than in the way in which this chapter is taken. When men are not thoroughly happy in the Lord, they use the vine as a means of assurance to their souls, comforting themselves with the thought that they are in Christ, and that they will be kept by Him. They take the vine as the Lord viewed as a Saviour. But this is not the meaning of the chapter; for the vine is not introduced to shew His sustaining grace in carrying us through, but the responsibility of all who bear the name of Christ, the true vine, and the means of producing fruit unto God. Consequently it is not a question of abiding in Christ simply for security, nor of the grace that keeps up the feeble. Where this is required, the Lord presents Himself as a rock; and no matter how feeble one may be, if one rests on the foundation, the feeblest thing cannot be moved. There is indefeasible security for us in Christ. So again, if He tells us that we have eternal life, He shows also that we are in His hand and in His Fathers hand. It is evident on the face that none will be able to pluck us out of their hand.

But when we reach the figure of the vine, there is another truth. It is to show the absolute necessity of fruit being borne for God; and consequently the Spirit of God tells us here what the hindrances, at least what the ways of God with us, are. Now the first and grand point is that Christ Himself is the spring of all that contributes to fruit-bearing in any. It is not good desires only, nor the word of God; and it is not at all our being saved, though all these are precious and blessed and important in their place. Nay, it is not even prayer, nor is it the various means that God gives for sustaining our souls and cheering us on. But the one secret of fruit-bearing is having Christ before our souls and continually reminding ourselves that we belong to Him as branches to the vine — not merely as the hymn has it:-

For as the branches to the vine,

So would we cling to Thee.

The sense is not at all here one of security, though this be of course most true, but dependence on Christ and bringing Him in responsibility to God

The Jews regarded themselves as the only people in the world that God looked upon. Consequently their tendency was always to put inordinate value on the fact of being Jews. It was very important that the Gentiles should own the place of the Jews, but it only puffed up the souls of the Jews themselves to be occupied with it. It was all right for the centurion to feel how precious the Jews were to God; but there is no strength in the Jew continually boasting of his peculiar privileges. We want more than that if we are to bear fruit, and this is what Christ substitutes for it — Himself; to have Him as the One that we are inseparably a part of, wherever we may be or whatever our duty. Supposing I am in a family which puts me to great trial, if I look at either the family or the trial I may give way to a murmuring spirit; but let me remember, in the midst of that family, in my business, or in anything else, the secret that produces fruit is that I look up to God, remembering that I am a part of Christ in this sense — a branch of the only true vine. It is full of solemnity withal, and checks the spirit of finding fault. Does not Christ know all about the family, the business, the bodily health, the snares or the malice of others, the sorrow, all the things that try me day by day ? What has He put me here for? To bear fruit. Of what kind? The fruit that suits the vine, even our Lord Himself. You are in Christ as branches in a vine.

It is not a question of being members of His body to be cared for by Christ, but of being branches of the vine to bear fruit for God. "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away." There are times when the Lord so does, as He has ever done. There are times when the work is done, or the Lord sees fit for any reason to take away, whether there has been all the fruit that He looks for, or whether they are not bearing fruit. "And every branch in me that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." We see that every one who is bearing fruit is tried, has dangers, difficulties, and a great deal to break the spirit. We need it. It is all a mistake to suppose that, because a branch bears fruit, He does not purge; whereas that which does bear good fruit He deals with and disciplines, that it may bear more. And what a comfort for us to know that it is all for His glory! It is only a little cup of sorrow by the way, but the fruit is everlasting. Is that very hard to bear — discipline in this world, that the fruit may last for ever?

Now He addresses the disciples, and tells them that they were already clean through the word that He had spoken unto them. He does not say, Through the blood that I am going to shed. This was not a fact yet; but the word connects itself with our responsibility, the blood with His grace. The chapter is full of our responsibility, and it is the word of God that deals with our shortcoming and makes us feel what the will of God is.

But there are two kinds of cleansing true of every Christian. There is the word, by which a man is first converted to God, when he gets a new nature that hates sin, and by the same word he is afterwards cleansed practically. It is the purifying of every day. Besides, the believer is (as all know) washed by blood, the precious blood of Christ, that he may be clear from all question of guilt. The former is connected with our responsibility to bear fruit for God. We must be cleansed first, but already it was true that they were born of God, and now the urgent call was to bear fruit. It is not here connected with the fact that their sins were forgiven. This might be true; but there was more than this true. The believer receives a new and holy nature, and it is in virtue of this that he is called upon, by having Christ before him, and the continual remembrance that he bears His name in this world, to bear fruit for God. For we can only act for the Lord by acting from the Lord; and we cannot act from the Lord except we are abiding in Him, which means the habit of continually looking and referring to Him, of dependence upon Him. Therefore He says, "Abide in me." He does not say, I will abide in you for eternal life, but He exhorts them to abide in Him, that they may bear fruit. There is responsibility throughout.

"As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me." It is not a question of eternal life, but of bearing fruit for God; and He who best knew says that it is by abiding in Christ. How is it that we do not bear fruit ? It is when we are not abiding in Christ, where something of flesh or world carries us away; wherever we have an object that is not Christ, although the object itself may be right. If we walk in dependence on Christ, continuing in His love, and not drawn into what is unbecoming and beneath Him, we are kept: it is abiding in Christ. But wherever I have an object, even if it be a right one, I must take care that the way in which I seek to carry it out be right. Now the only thing that can make us either choose the right object, or take the right way, is having Christ before us. The vine does not represent Christ in heaven, but now on earth, and ourselves a part of that which bears His name here below. He knew it well whose words are "To me to live is Christ." His motive, his object, his life day by day was Christ. Not many of us can say this, or we may say it in very little measure. But there is nothing like it. May the Lord strengthen us earnestly to desire it, looking up to Him for grace to profit by His own word, and thus have it made true of ourselves! It was not because he was an apostle that Paul could so say. He did not lose his Christianity because he was an apostle; and we, though not possessing an official place, should earnestly seek it. Christ is better than all gifts, and better than any position in the church. Yet Christ belongs to the simplest Christian, and the simplest Christian is a branch in the vine as truly as an apostle.

Do not then let us excuse ourselves for our little faith shown in having grown so little. It is dependence on Christ that keeps one right. The strongest, if not dependent, will break down; the weakest will be kept if dependent. Let us then keep Christ simply and solely before our hearts.

W. K.

The Vision: and the just shall live by faith.

Habakkuk 2: 2-4.

W. Kelly.

"Jehovah answered me, and said, Write the vision and make [it] plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision [is] yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry" (Hab. 2: 2, 3). It is well known that the apostle Paul applies this to the very centre of the vision, and of all visions, to Jesus Christ the Lord coming back to glory. In Hebrews 10 we are told that "He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." Such is the way in which the Spirit displays His admirable use of Old Testament scripture. Already had the Lord Jesus personally come the first time, and been rejected by the Jews to their own ruin. The apostle's use of it gives the words a much more personal force; yet, we can see, not departing from, but only adding to, the evident issue contemplated in Hebrews 2, 3, which can have no greater fulfilment short of that crowning event.

But then there is another remark to be made here. The prophet lets us know that the vision of God is written so that a man does not require, I know not what accessories, in order to understand it. It was to be made plain on tablets, distinctly set out in large impressive characters. But it is not said, as the common view assumes, that the runner may read, but rather that the reader may run, and thus, it would seem, spread the joyful intelligence one to another. It has been suggested that we should compare Daniel 12: 4; but this, I think, carries out the idea of running to and fro, and increasing knowledge thus among such as have an ear to hear. The passage then holds out no premium to the careless reader, but shows how the reader of the vision will be stimulated thereby to earnest spread of the truth he receives.

It is granted, however, that scripture does meet and bless those who take but a scanty draught from the waters of life to which it points in Christ the Lord. At the same time they only enter into its depths who believe in its divine fulness, and have confidence that the Spirit, who made it the word of God in all the emphasis of that expression, delights to lead the believer into the understanding of all the truth.

Thus, while the power of the vision is shown in ver. 2, the sureness of it in ver. 3 (whatever may be the delay meanwhile) from ver. 4 we learn another thing, that is, the all-importance of faith to make it good for the soul before it comes. The result is not yet come; but this is no reason why we should not gather the profit by that faith which is the substance of things hoped for. It cannot be denied that this is an immensely important principle; and more particularly in prophecy. The common notion is that prophecy never does people good unless it treat directly of the times and circumstances in which they themselves are found. There can be no greater fallacy. Abraham got more good from the prophecy about Sodom and Gomorrah, than Lot did; yet it clearly was not because Abraham was there, for he was not in Sodom, while Lot was, who barely escaped and with little honour as we soon sorrowfully learn. But the Spirit teaches us by these two cases in the first book of the Bible His mind as to this question. I grant entirely that when the fulfilment of prophecy in all its details comes, there will be persons to glean the most express directions. But I am persuaded that the deepest value of prophecy is for those who are occupied with Christ, and who will be in heaven along with Christ, just as Abraham was with Jehovah, instead of being like Lot in the midst of the guilty Sodomites. If this be so, the book of Revelation ought to be of far richer blessing to us now who enjoy by grace heavenly associations with Christ, and are members of His body, though we shall be on high when the hour of temptation comes on those that dwell on the earth.

It is freely allowed that the Revelation will be an amazing comfort and help to the saints who may be on the earth during the time of which it speaks. But this is no reason why it should not be a still greater blessing now to those who will be caught up to Christ before that hour. The fact is, that both are true: only it is a higher and more intimate privilege to be with the Lord in the communion of His own love and mind before the things come to pass, though comfort will be given, when they come, to those that are immersed in them. Consequently we see in the Revelation (Rev. 4, 5, 6), already with the Lord the glorified saints of the Old and New Testament who were taken up to meet Him, including those to whom the prophecy was primarily given. Afterwards we see the judgments come in gradual succession; but when they take place, there are saints who evidently witness for God on earth, some suffering unto death, others preserved to be a blessed earthly people. To such undoubtedly the prophetic visions will be of value when the actual events arrive; but the most admirable value always is to faith before the events confirm the truth of the word. This is an invariable principle as to the prophetic word and indeed in divine truth generally.

Here we have faith and its ground thus stated: "For the vision [is] yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith" (vers. 3, 4). I suppose the proud soul particularly refers to the Chaldean. He was absolutely blind; but the principle of it is just as true of the unrighteous, Jew or of any man who hardens himself against the divine word. For certainly the wrath of God is against all ungodliness, and indeed, if there be any difference, against those most of all who hold the truth ever so fast in unrighteousness. It does not matter how orthodox they may be; but if men cleave to the truth in unrighteousness, so much the worse the sin. The truth in this case only condemns the more peremptorily. They may tenaciously hold the truth; yet truth was never given to make righteousness a light matter, but urgently due to God in the relations that pertain to us.

The object of all truth is to put us in communion with God and in obedience. But the man whose soul is lifted up is not upright, as is plain. The invariable way of God is this, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted;" and faith alone gives humiliation of self. It may he here observed that there are two forms of it: the happiest of all is to be humble; the next best thing is to be humbled. It is better to be humble than to be humbled, but there is no comparison between being humbled and being lifted up. Humility is the effect of grace; humiliation, rather of God's righteous government where we are not humble. This is what He did with His saints of old and outwardly with His ancient people. It is what is too often needful for ourselves. The best place of all is to be so realising what the grace and glory of the Lord are that we are nothing before Him. Humility is the effect not so much of a moral process with ourselves, but of occupation with Him. Humbling is the effect of the Lord dealing with our souls when He sees the need of breaking us down, it may be to use us, certainly for further blessing. We could not so deal with ourselves. Judgment must come instead of humbling, but in every case anything is better than to have our soul lifted up: where is the uprightness there?

"The just," it is said, "shall live by faith." This is used repeatedly in the New Testament. There are three well-known quotations in the Epistles, on which a few words may be desirable before we leave the subject. It is the apostle Paul who uses this text on all these several occasions. In writing to the Roman saints (Rom. 1: 17) he tells them that in the gospel the righteousness of God is "revealed from faith to faith." Such is the only way and direction of the blessing. The righteousness of God is necessarily outside the reach of any unless it be revealed; but being revealed it is revealed "out of faith" (ἐκ πίστεως,) and in no other way, and consequently '' unto faith " wherever faith might be. It could not be in the way of law: not even the Jew could suppose this, for the law claims man's righteousness, and does not say a word about the righteousness of God. The fact is that the law simply convicts man of inability to produce the righteousness which it claims; for though it demand it in God's name, there is only the answer of unrighteousness. According to the law a man ought to be righteous; but he is not. This is what the law proves, wherever a man fairly confronts it — that he is not righteous according to the divine requirement.

This state of ruin Christ has met by redemption; and consequently the gospel is entirely a question of God revealing His righteousness, though so many real Christians misunderstand it through their tradition. The meaning of the phrase is that God acts consistently with what is due to Christ, who has in redemption perfectly glorified God. He glorified Him as Father during His life; yet this could not have put away sin. But He glorified Him as God, when it was expressly a question of our sins, by His atoning death on the cross. Thenceforward God reveals His righteousness in view of that all- efficacious sacrifice; not only vindicating His forbearance in past times, but in the present time justifying the believer freely and fully in consequence of that mighty work. The first effect of God's righteousness, though not referred to in the Epistle to the Romans, is that God sets Christ at His own right hand on high. The next result (and this is the one spoken of there) is, that God justifies the believer accordingly. Rom. 1, no doubt, treats of His righteousness in the most abstract terms. The manner of it is not described till we come to Rom. 3, 4, 5. But even in the first statement we have the broad principle that in the gospel there is the revelation of divine righteousness from faith (not from law), and consequently to faith wherever it be found. Such I believe to be the force of the proposition. Probably the chief difficulty to most minds is the expression "from faith." It means on that principle, not in the way of obedience to law, which must be the rule of human righteousness. Habits of misinterpretation make the difficulty. Faith alone can be the principle if it be a revelation of divine righteousness; and consequently it is "to faith," wherever faith may be.

It is purposely put in abstract style, because the Spirit has not yet begun to set out how it can be and is. It would be anticipating the doctrine that He was afterwards to expound. For manifestly the work of Christ has not yet been brought in; and hence the consequences could not be explained consistently with any true order. It is mere ignorance to assume that scripture is irregular; for in fact there is the deepest order in what man's haughty spirit presumes thus to censure. It is entirely due to the haste which leads men naturally to admire only the order of man. As to the difficulty of the expression "from faith to faith," it is quite admitted that the idea is put in a very pithy and compressed form; so that to men who are apt to be wordy in the usual style, of course such compactness does sound peculiar.

This it is that answers to the expression of the prophet, "The just shall live by his faith." Success had great weight with the Jewish mind. They wondered at the prosperous career of the Gentile. But the prophet is explaining the enigma as Isaiah had done before. He insists that the only righteous man is the believer. It is not the justified but "the just;" and this in order to keep up the link between doctrine and practice, as it seems to me. "The righteous shall live by his faith." It is the combination of the two points, that faith is inseparable from righteousness, and a righteous man from believing. The Chaldean saw not God, and had no thought of His purpose or His way. The Israelite would find his blessing in subjection to His word and confidence in Himself. "Behold the proud! his soul is not right within him; but the just shall live by his faith." The expression then does not say the justified, but it is implied; and there is no real righteousness in practice apart from it. What preachers ordinarily mean is in itself true. We are justified by faith; but we do not require to draw out more than is in the prophecy; nor is justification explicitly developed in Romans 1 but rather in Rom. 3, 5. Let every scripture teach its own appropriate lesson.

Again, in Galatians 3 we have a slightly different use of the same scripture. "But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God [it is] evident; for the just shall live by faith" (ver. 11). Here it is sufficiently plain that the apostle is excluding the thought of justification by law, and the way he disproves it is by the cited passage of Habakkuk. Hence the difference between Rom. 1 and Gal. 3 is this, that in Romans we have the positive statement and in Galatians the negative. There he positively affirms that God's righteousness is revealed "from faith to faith," supported by this text; whereas the point here is to exclude the law distinctly and peremptorily from playing any part in the justification of a soul. Justification is in no way by law; for "the just shall live by faith:" such is the point in Galatians. Again, it is God's righteousness revealed by faith; for "the just shall live by faith:" such is the point in Romans. The difference therefore is plain.

In Hebrews the passage is used again in a way quite as different by the same apostle Paul. "For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith" (Heb. 10: 37, 38). The emphasis here is not on "the just" which is strong in Romans, nor upon "faith" which is strong in Galatians, but on "live" which is as strong here. Thus every word seems to acquire the emphasis according to the object for which it is used in these three places. In the end of Heb. 10 the apostle is guarding the believer from discouragement and turning aside. He quotes once more "the just shall live by faith." Accordingly we are shown in Heb. 11 the elders or Old Testament saints who obtained testimony in the power of faith. So they all lived in faith, every one whom God counts His worthies. It might be shown by faith in sacrifice, or in a walk of communion with God, or in anticipating judgment coming on the world, and accepting the divine means of escape. It might be in wearing the pilgrim character; or in the exertion of such power as delivered from the foe. But whatever the form, there was living by faith in every case. Hence we have here the most remarkable chapter in the Bible for its comprehensive grasp of the men of old who lived by faith, from the first great witness of its power here below to the blessed One who summed up every quality of faith, which others had manifested now and then: they separately and not without inconsistency, He perfectly and combined in His own person and ways here below, indeed with much more that is deeper and peculiar to Himself alone.

Thus I do not think that it is necessary to vindicate the wisdom of God at greater length. The passage seems most instructive, if it were only to show the fallacy of supposing that each shred of scripture can only warrant a single just application. Not so; though clothed in the language of men, scripture affords in this respect an answer to the infinite nature of God Himself, whose Spirit can unfold and apply it in distinct but compatible ways. Even among men there are not wanting wise words which bear more than one application, yet each true and just. If faith distinguished and secured the righteous in presence of the Chaldean invader, its value is even more pronounced now in the gospel, where it is a question of a soul before God, refusing false grounds of confidence, and walking unmoved in the path of trial among men.

Certainly the word of God is here proved to be susceptible of different uses, weighty and conclusively authoritative. That it is applied by the same apostle Paul makes the case far more remarkable than if it had been differently employed by various writers. Had it been so, I have no doubt that the rationalists would have set each of the different writers against the truth. But they would do well to weigh the fact that it is the same inspired man* who applies to these different ends the same few words of our prophet. He was right. And yet it is very evident that in its own primary application, in its strict position in the prophecy, God is particularly providing for a state which lay before the Jews in that day; but then the same Spirit who wrote by Habakkuk applies it with divine precision in every one of the three instances in the New Testament. For what is common to all is that the word of God is to be believed, and that he who uses it holily, according to God by faith, lives by it, and is alone just and humble in it, as only this glorifies God withal. But what is true in the case of an Israelite so employing the prophetic word applies at least as fully to all the word of God used by faith, and more particularly to the gospel, wherein is God's mind more than in any word strictly prophetic. Prophecy shows us the character of God more especially in government; but the gospel is the display of God in grace, and this in the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ. Is it possible to go beyond, or even to reach, this in depth? A simple Christian may indeed be led far beyond that which is usually proclaimed by preachers; but it is impossible to exaggerate the infinite character of the gospel as God has revealed it. We also learn from the use in Hebrews, as well as the prophet's context, that the vision looks on to the future coming of the Lord for the deliverance of His people. This indeed belongs to the prophetic word generally, and is in no way peculiar to this vision in particular. It is a striking passage — the vision, as setting forth, under the Chaldean the downfall of the hostile Gentile, proud as he might be, though Israel might have to wait for the accomplishment. And that the full force is only to be when the Lord is actually come in person, and in relationship with His ancient people renewed by grace, is the gist of the prophets in general.

*I do not stop here to state the overwhelming evidence that Paul and no other wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. The peculiarity of the style and method can be simply and satisfactorily accounted for by the consideration of his writing to believers of his own nation outside his Gentile apostleship. The doctrine is pre-eminently his own.

But it is important of course to hear in mind that, save in special revelations of the Jewish prophets, the vision of coming deliverance vouchsafed did not discriminate the time between the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. Perhaps we may safely say that none seems to have known beforehand that there would be a long interval between the two events; yet when the interval came we can bring passages from the prophets to prove it. So perfectly did God write the word by them, and so far beyond the very men who were the inspired witnesses of it; for no prophet knew the full extent or depth of his own inspired communications. This was a far better proof that God wrote by them than if all had been known; because whatever might have been the ignorance of Jeremiah or Isaiah, of Daniel or of Habakkuk, the Holy Ghost necessarily knew all from the beginning. Thus what they wrote, going far beyond their own intelligence, rendered His mind who employed them evident. Hence we read in, 1 Peter 1: 11, of "the Spirit of Christ which was in them;" and the same scripture which indicates the reality of the inspiring Spirit in the prophets just now quoted, shows that they themselves did not enter into all they wrote. They were "searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it. testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow." Certainly they did not know, but like others had to learn; and when they searched into it, they were told it was not for themselves, but "unto you they did minister the things that are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." It will be observed that the expression, "the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," as we know Him now, is in full contrast with the prophetic Spirit who wrought in them and is called " the Spirit of Christ." The Lord Jesus was the great object of all the visions; and this it is important to note.

"Spirit of Christ," in Romans 8 I think, goes far beyond this. As employed by the apostle there, it means that the Holy Ghost characterises the Christian with the full possession of his own proper portion as in Christ and Christ in him. The Holy Ghost is the seal of all, and dwells in the believer on this ground.

W.K.

Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples.

John 13: 1-10.

Our Lord had terminated all question of testimony to man whether to the Jews or to the world. He now addresses Himself to His own in the world, the abiding objects of His unwavering love, as just about to leave this world for that place which suits His essential nature, as well as the glory destined Him by the Father. Accordingly our Lord, as thus going to heaven (new to Him as man), would prove His if possible increasing love to them, fully knowing what the enemy would effect through the wickedness of one of their number, as well as through the humbling sin of another. Hence He proceeds to give a visible sign of His new care which they would understand later. It was the needed service of love that He would carry on for them, when Himself out of this world and themselves in it; a service as real as any that He had ever done for them while He was in this world, and if possible, more important than any they had yet experienced. For He was not yet lifted up. But this ministration of His grace was also connected with His own portion in heaven. Accordingly it was to give them part with Him above outside the world. It was not divine goodness meeting them in the world, nor yet on the cross where God had to be glorified even as to sin. But as He was leaving the world for heaven whence He came, He would associate them with Himself where He was going. He was about to pass, though Lord of all, into the presence of God His Father in heaven, but would manifest Himself the servant of them all, even to the washing of their feet soiled in walking here below. The point therefore, was not here as on the cross suffering for their sins as sinners, but the service of love  for saints, to fit them for having communion with Him, by cleansing them from defilements by the way before they join Him in that heavenly scene to which He was going at once. Such is the meaning suggested by the washing of the disciples' feet. In short, it is the word of God applied by the Holy Ghost, to deal with all that unfits for fellowship with the Father while Christ is above. It is His advocacy, to which the Holy Ghost answers here. Christ intercedes for us on high as identified with our every need here below, and the Holy Ghost meanwhile carrying it on by the work applied to us here to purify one by restoring him to the communion interrupted by a sin.

Ver. 10 explains the case clearly: "He that is bathed needeth not wash save his feet, but is wholly clean." There the initial bathing, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which is never repeated. But there is the need of having the feet washed whenever defiled by the way. Neither refer to blood but to water, indispensable as it is to be washed from our sins by Christ's blood for redemption.

W.K.

By Whom "Sent"?

W. Kelly.

A question raised in the Times of 8th February, and signed by "an evangelical churchman," is not to be rightly sifted in a journal avowedly of the world. Nor need it be mixed up with "the Torrey-Alexander Mission" which gave rise to it, and elicits warm recriminatory feeling from such as look only at the blessed aim, indifferent to the worldly methods, and the extremely humanitarian self-confidence which expects to surpass all ever done on earth. At that presumptuous slight of our Lord and the Holy Spirit (to say nothing of inspired apostles) as such an expectation implies, one must be grieved though not surprised, that so great inflation should rest on the support of Christendom's multitudes, and of an accompaniment to attract (solos, duets, and a carefully drilled chorus). One regrets it the more because of Dr. T.'s zeal and his earnest preaching when he adheres to it simply and solely.

But it appears to me that the questions are far graver than anything intended by an evangelical churchman, when he asks, "By what authority do they come? Who has 'sent' them? They have simply 'come,'" he evidently thinks decisive. What is his alleged ground? "The apostolic rule, which governs the Church and safeguards it from irresponsible and unauthorised teachers, is clearly laid down by St. Paul in, Rom. 10: 14, 15. — 'How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach, except they be sent;' and Heb. 5: 4, No man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron' i.e. consecrated. Now in the case of these visitors there is plainly no commission, no authority; they simply 'come.'" There we may stop, without encumbering ourselves with the detail of the London Evangelistic Council, which he says (and rightly as far as I know) is "a purely self-constituted body of excellent men." But even he must allow that I have fairly and fully presented his principle and the Scriptures cited as his warrant.

Here this "evangelical churchman" falls into the same unbelieving error as the persons he blames — the error of Christendom almost ever since "the apostolic rule," which governs neither his own church nor any other. And I marvel that safeguarding from irresponsible and unauthorised teachers did not, as he wrote the words, cover his face with shame and awaken pangs — in the heart of an evangelical. For he knows that its orders "authorise" at this moment thousands of clergymen, who know not but hate the gospel and "the truth as it is in Jesus." Are they not disloyal to the Head, yea to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as holy scripture? are they not divided into hostile camps of mutual adversaries, "higher criticism" sceptics, and disguised and dishonest papists in heart and in almost all save the Pope? This mixed multitude, some in the highest dignities, others in professorial seats of the Universities, far outnumber "evangelical churchmen," many of whom totally fail through "a purely Church point of view," and, as "loyal adherents to the Church's order and discipline," coquet with the Romanisers and the sceptics. Are they not all by the Church's orders alike "responsible and authorised teachers? Is this right before God? Is it not a scandal?

Let us however search the scriptures, which I trust he accepts as divine and authoritative, and test our loyalty to God and His Son, our Lord Jesus. Now it must have been the Thirty-nine Articles, or some preconception however else originated, which gave him to interpolate the church's authority or its ecclesiastical officers into Rom. 10: 14, 15; for not a word therein either asserts or implies anything of the sort. The apostle treats of the solemn theme of the righteousness of faith in contrast with that of the law, and shows that with heart it is believed unto righteousness, and with mouth confession is made unto salvation. For everyone whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they believe not? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach unless they were sent? even as it is written, How beautiful the feet of those that bring glad tidings of peace, of those that bring glad tidings of good things!

Here is not the least expression of church authority in sending out preachers. Nor is the entire Epistle stamped with anything more marked than the absence of such an element. The church on the other hand is largely developed in the First Epistle to the Corinthians as verified by its simple inspection. This is a striking fact from the ambition ere long of those in Rome to seek control and at length universal dominion in direct opposition to the Lord's will. The Epistle is throughout occupied with the individual wants of the believer, to ground him in the faith, to reconcile the Jewish difficulty of their special promises with the indiscriminate grace of the gospel to all, and to draw out the moral consequences of all this body of truth. But church and official authority are nowhere in it.

Hence is it not quite arbitrary to assume an ecclesiastical source of mission such as tradition dreams of? Why did not a single-eyed believer think of "God" in the case, or yet more particularly of "the Lord" as the Head? Could any other source be more apposite, or invest the preaching with equal weight or dignity? It may be said that the passage is indefinite, and that to bring in a divine source of mission here is no more certain than a traditional reference. But as believers we wrong God and His word if we allow it to be so vague; or, as the Romanists dare to say in their vulgar contempt of revelation, a nose of wax. You have all the N.T. before you. Show in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Epistles generally, or in the Pastoral Letters, a single word implying the need of what is called "ordination" for preaching the gospel. I venture to affirm that no man can. Undoubtedly elders and presbyters were nominated by an apostle, or by his representative in a defined place and time like Titus and probably Timotheus. But I go farther, and point to the very numerous witnesses throughout, that evangelising is recognised fully and freely under "the apostolic rule" as open and unfettered.

Thus it is recorded in Acts 8: 1, 4 that, when a great persecution rose on the day of Stephen's martyrdom, the members of the church were all save the apostles scattered from Jerusalem over Palestine, and that they went announcing the glad tidings. At no time was true order so high; yet no apostle raised his voice to ask, By what authority do you preach? Nay more in Acts 11: 19-21 we are told that "those who were scattered passed. through to Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch preaching the word to Jews only. But there were certain of them, Cyprians and Cyrenians, who entering into Antioch spoke to the Greeks, announcing the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus. And the Lord's hand was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord." What can be more conclusive? It was He only that sent them, and He who, as expressed, blessed their work. What authority can rival His? And is not this written for us? Is Scripture haphazard? Leave such thoughts to Romanists and Rationalists, and learn that tradition or reason is as unreliable in Christendom as in Jewry, and much more guilty; for we have the Spirit to make the word living beyond all experience before Christ.

Look at individuals. Who evangelised a city of Samaria, so that there was great joy that conquered the old wretched jealousy? and they were baptised, both men and women. It may be said that Philip had hands laid on him for serving tables in the peculiar work among the poor saints previously. What had this to do with his preaching? They were chosen to it that the apostles should give themselves, unhindered by such service, to prayer and the ministry of the word. He was not therefore ordained to preach. But as he is designated the evangelist," distinctly (Acts 21: 8) from being one of the seven," he preached actively and in various parts. This was God's order, not in the least traditional or ecclesiastical. It was the apostolic rule, or rather the free working of the Spirit with which no apostle ever interfered.

Take another instructive instance in Acts 18: 24-28. Apollos, though only knowing the baptism of John, diligently gave out what he knew, and learnt the way of God more perfectly through a plain Christian man and his wife, Aquila and Priscilla. Instead of getting him ordained, the brethren wrote commending him from Ephesus to Achaia as a great preacher and teacher without any formal act whatsoever.

I do not speak of Saul of Tarsus or of Barnabas, because it might be rejoined that they are both called "apostles" in Acts 14: 4, and that nobody denies their title. But if so, why do any pervert the action in Acts 13: 2, 3, as if it meant their ordination? What of inferior teachers ordaining superior prophets and apostles who had been teaching them all for sometime before in Antioch itself? Is this what you call "order"? It was nothing of the kind, but a "separation" at the call of the Holy Spirit of those two for a special mission in Asia Minor, a recommendation of them to the grace of God as it is called in Acts 14: 26, and repeated, it would seem, in Acts 15: 40. But even the great and large-hearted apostle loved, in speaking of his ministry, to place it on the broadest ground of grace, such as would vindicate the scattered preachers, "We also believe, wherefore also we speak" (2 Cor. 4: 13). This is "the apostolic rule," not the hoary-headed tradition of Christendom, which has so completely forgotten the word of God in these things, or dares to count it obsolete: a crown not of honour but of shame.

But the apostle adhered to the divine will; and in one of his later Epistles (to the Philippians) we see it tested in a trying case. "I would have you know, brethren (wrote he from his first imprisonment in Rome), that the circumstances in which I am have turned out rather to the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds have become manifest in Christ in the whole praetorium and to all others; and that the greater part of the brethren, trusting in the Lord through my bonds, dare more abundantly to speak the word of God fearlessly. Some indeed also for envy and strife, but some also for goodwill, preach Christ: these out of love, knowing than I am set for the defence of the gospel; those out of contention announce Christ, not purely, thinking to raise up tribulation for my bonds. What is it then? Only that in every way, whether in pretext or in truth, Christ is announced; and in this I rejoice, yea and will rejoice." Precluded from preaching freely as he was wont, he rose above all the pain of unworthy spirit and ways in the preachers. Though far from endorsing such fleshly pettiness, he could and would rejoice that Christ was proclaimed to such as never knew of a Saviour and of such a God as sent Him to suffer and to save the lost.

The question therefore is not whether all are qualified to preach, or whether those who preach do it always aright; but whether they are disqualified unless ordained. From the scriptures adduced it is perfectly clear that to hinder any Christian man who can preach is ecclesiastical disorder, and opposes the Lord's will as plainly shown by inspiration, the only unfailing standard for the Christian. Thence it is certain that they are entitled; and in the case of those who are endowed for the gospel more than others, it is well to consider what light Eph. 4: 7-13 gives us, where the title of these evangelists, as well as of the other great edifying gifts, is laid down. They differ in measure and character, but they are all gifts (δόματα) direct from Christ without intervention; and therefore distinct from local charges like elders or deacons, which did require due authority to appoint them.

But not so apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, which are Christ's gifts and need no authorisation of man. Apostles and prophets have the unique place of being the foundation, as Christ is the corner stone; and the foundation was so well laid, that neither succession nor restoration is anything but a fable and imposture. The evangelists are to call in from the world to God those who become members of Christ; as the pastors and teachers build them up in His grace and truth, holy and beloved. As may be noticed, bishops or elders, like deacons, are not "gifts" and nowhere included among them; but they required apostolic authority, direct or indirect, to appoint them: a very great difficulty to find either for many a day. But the edifying gifts from the ascended Christ are as unfailing as on the day of Pentecost, till the last members of His body who need them are made up.

It is worthy of "an evangelical churchman's heed that his slur on "come," instead of being "sent," has been anticipated and condemned in the last Epistle of the last apostle. "Beloved, thou doest faithfully in whatever thou didst work toward thy brethren, and the strangers (who bore witness to thy love before the church), whom thou wilt do well in setting forward worthily of God. For they went forth for the Name, taking nothing from the Gentiles." This was their merit, not in the eyes of Diotrephes the stickler for human authority, but of the apostle and so recorded by the Holy Spirit for our learning. They "came," they were not "sent" save by God.

But even good men like an order of their own, and are impatient of continual dependence on the grace of God. While the apostles lived, there was a strong tendency to slip from the things of Christ into their own things. We see it in the Galatians where the same retrograde spirit which sought to bring back the law dared to question the typical apostleship of Paul who did not know Christ at all in the days of His flesh, only when ascended. This is therefore of special interest and cheer to us who were called long after. As for us, all we boast is of faith, which looks to the unseen and eternal things. We therefore delight to read how the apostle encourages us as he did the early saints in Rome when he used the same term "call" for his own apostleship and for their saintship: not "called to be" as in the A. and R. versions, but in both cases "called" or by call, instead of a birthright as Israel's privileges were. How this meets all difficulties, all countries, all ages, and all circumstances! Grace can work on the same principle, whatever the position that God may set us in.

We all know the currents and too notorious objections of unbelief. They are equally used as to a Christian and as to Christian ministry. How can you know a Christian? says the evangelical clergyman, whose position obliges him to receive every parishioner as a saint at the Eucharist, though he is sure that many decent in conduct are dead in trespasses and sins. If he were not a clergyman, he could see clearer and would act very differently; but the rubric! Will "an evangelical churchman" venture to call this obligation "of the church's order and discipline" apostolic rule? I hope not; but if not, where is he? Why then was he so bold as to say, "The apostolic rule which governs the Church, etc. Such a rubric, which fends off the disreputable but admits and welcomes (particularly at Easter for reason given) every decent man though just as dead," is a flagrant departure from the essential nature of God's church.

But I must not overlook the reference to Heb. 5: 4. O "evangelical churchman," where have you been taught to commit yourself and your teachers to an error so stupendous as to confound priesthood with ministry? In the Epistle it is Christ compared with Aaron. What has this to do with preaching? It is the Book of Common Prayer that has misled you; for it habitually and shamefully confounds presbyter with priest, though they mean wholly different and irreconcilable things. What a pity you do not read the Bible to better purpose! But your safe-guards, your Prayer-book and your "responsible and authorised teachers," have led you into the ditch. Let me tell you, that according to the N. T. there is no earthly priest acknowledged in Christianity, which boasts of the Great Priest interceding for us in heaven, and invites all Christian brethren now to enter boldly into the holies by the blood of Jesus through the rent veil. You betray yourself, though "an evangelical churchman," still under much of Popish darkness. Bear with "an old disciple"'s plainness: we owe it to one another, and above all to the Lord.

Yours with hearty goodwill

W. K.

P.S. That the straitened rules of decadent Judaism were not so stiff as fallen Christendom's, the very N.T. bears witness. John the Baptist preached the coming Kingdom of the heavens, yet without a miracle for his mission from God. And Christians preached in Jewish synagogues on the sabbath without question of human authority. To believe the word is blessed if we obey, an empty boast if we do not. And how grave is the fact that in none of the denominations, West or East, National or Nonconformist, great or small, is there an approach to "the assembly" of scripture wherein the Holy Spirit is left free to glorify the Lord, dividing to each one severally even as He will! Yet how could this be in a Christendom which owns "the church of God" neither in principle nor in practice? So complete is the departure, not from the highest pretensions, but from the truth of the church as God has revealed it.

Use and Abuse of Wine, etc.

The testimony of the Bible to the:

with a notice of the corresponding terms in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, and remarks on the chief objections of modern times.

W. Kelly.

[The Hebrew characters are inserted with a transliteration only at the first mention of each word, thereafter only the transliteration is given.]

CONTENTS.

Introduction, — sin and its remedy

Estimate of each, by faith and by unbelief

The Teetotal system

The Gospel

Use and abuse of Wine in the Old and New Testaments

General result of this review

Twofold division of Teetotallers

Scriptural argument of the extreme party

Scriptural argument of the moderate party.

Summary of the various words in the Bible translated "wine," etc., or connected therewith, and all their occurrences:

THE HEBREW OLD TESTAMENT.

§ 1. YAYIN

§ 2. TIROSH

§ 3. CHAMAR

§ 4. SOVEH

§ 6. ASIS

§ 6. MIMSAK

§ 7. SHEKAR

§ 8. SHEMARIM

§ 9. YEKEV

§ 10. ASHISHEH ANAVIM

§ 11. DEVASH and MAMTAKKIM

§ 12. DEMA

§ 13. CHOMETZ

THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT.

§ 1. Οῖνος

§ 2. Ἄκρατος

§ 3. Γλεῦκος

§ 4. Είκερα

§ 5. Γέννημα ἀμπέλου.

Heresies linked with extreme Teetotalism:

I. — Plenary inspiration denied

II. — The atonement ridiculed

Conclusion

THE USE AND ABUSE OF WINE

The question of sin, in one shape or another, has, from the first, agitated men's minds. It could not be otherwise. For God erects a tribunal in the conscience of all, — even of the Gentiles who had not His written testimony. (Rom. 2) Philosophy gave neither solution to the problems of the intellect, nor relief to the anxieties of the heart; for as it could not rise to the Infinite Source of all good, so it did not dare to descend to the depth of the sinner's need. Evading the difficulties as long as was possible, it ended at last with denying all truth as to either. "The world by wisdom knew not God;" and where He is unknown, so is sin in its source, its nature and its doom.

On the other hand, the family of faith have ever had a certain knowledge of God, and therefore of themselves. This gradually increased from the word of judgment on the Serpent, till the Seed came to whom the promise was made. Thus the knowledge, though true and received with a divine conviction, was necessarily partial, as indeed the revelation was, till, in these last days, God spake by His Son, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person. In Him, specially in His death, the real character of everything was made manifest. There the badness of man, set on by Satan's craft, was met and overcome by the goodness of God. The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. There is no veil, as there once was in Judaism. With the cross it could not co-exist. but was rent from top to bottom. And if the holy light of God displays what the sinner is in his wants and wretchedness, it cannot but display the ample provision which God has made in the blood of His own Lamb. Thus is the poor believer taught what sin is by what it has cost the Son of God; and he adores as he sees that where sin has abounded, grace did much more abound.

Hence the distance between the wisest unbeliever and the least instructed believer in their thoughts about sin. To the one, Jesus is nothing; he may admire, and ask what is truth, but, like Pilate, he goes out without waiting for an answer. To the other, Jesus is all, Jesus is truth, and he knows it to his peace and blessing. The former is satisfied with stepping into the troubled waters of Bethesda — with a reformation of man as he is. The latter sees in sin, not sickness only, but moral death, and therefore can rest in nothing short of the quickening power of the Son of God. He knows that for faith is reserved the resurrection of life, the complement of the spiritual resurrection which is already enjoyed. Alas! he knows too that those who hear not the Saviour's voice have not life, and cannot escape the judgment which shall be executed by and by. "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true: and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." (1 John 5: 19, 20.)

Now, the Teetotal system, however modified, will be found to offend against these fundamental truths. Having a low estimate of sin, it presents as low a remedy. Even as to the single evil with which it seeks to deal, it barely skims the surface. It does not, it cannot touch the heart within, and so it wreaks its vengeance upon the liquors without. Pharisaism washed the hands, Teetotalism washes the lips. But the same word of the Lord detects the inadequacy of both. "Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: there is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear." (Mark 7: 14-16.) The entire spring of moral action, the heart, is corrupt before God. What man is, taints what he does. Hence, while the human method is to cut off this and that, the divine is, first of all, to make the tree good. If that be done, good fruit is sure to follow: if not done, the more men work about it they only get more bad fruit.

It is a new life which the sinner requires as the starting point; not a step Godward can be taken previously. But it is precisely this which the Gospel proclaims at once, without money and without price. The gift, the free gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. And God will own no way, no truth, no life, no Saviour but His Son. Therefore, to occupy men with a teetotal pledge, is in fact to divert them at best with a quack medicine, and this, not for the root of the disease, but for a particular symptom — to divert them, I say, from the Gospel, which is as efficacious a cure in the drunkard's case as in all others. For it is the power of God unto every one that believeth.

Since the days of Cain, man has never wanted some new or revived invention wherewith to patch up his outcast condition. If Teetotalism, then, had come forward merely as a medical discovery, or even as a branch of philanthropy, it might have passed unnoticed save by those whom it concerns. But seeing that, in its grossest form, it taunts the servants of Christ with their vain efforts, and professes to outdo the Gospel; seeing that, in its least offensive shape, it claims Scriptural authority, and aspires to be the pioneer and the handmaid of the Gospel, the subject calls for a passing notice.

The Christian reads the Old Testament. He finds that wine intoxicated Noah and Lot, (Gen. 9, 19) and that it afterwards afforded occasion for frequent and solemn remonstrance. (Prov. 20, 23 Isa. 5, 28, etc.) Again, he finds wine brought as a natural comfort to Abraham and Isaac, (Gen. 14, 27) and often so treated, literally as well as figuratively. (Deut. 14, Ps. 104. Prov. 9: 31: 6. Cant. passim, etc.) He sees in the New Testament neither contradiction nor difficulty. The Lord commenced His miracles by making water into wine, (John 2) was invidiously compared with His forerunner because He abstained not, (Luke 7) and made bread and wine (which John the Baptist never used)* to be the chosen, constant memorial of His dying love till He come again, the symbol also of our communion with each other. Finally, the Holy Ghost more than once dwells on the end of the drunkard, (1 Cor. 6, Gal. 5) corrects the unhallowed licence of the Corinthian church at the Lord's Supper, (1 Cor. 11) and warns believers, especially such as were prominent, against excess in daily life. (Eph. 5, 1 Tim. 3 Titus 2) At the same time, He takes pains (1 Tim. 5: 23.) to remove the scrupulousness of a devoted young servant of Christ, and en joins the use of a little wine, rather than water, for his stomach's sake and often infirmities. So graciously does God deign to interest Himself even in the bodily weakness and wants of those who love Him! The conclusion is irresistible. Total abstinence, as a general rule, has not, nor ever had, divine sanction. It is a device at issue with the plain facts and doctrine of Scripture, and this as to Christians no less than as to Jews. In the Old Testament yayin and in the New Testament οἶνος — that is, the ordinary words for "wine" in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures — are used both in a good and in a bad connection; because the moral evil lay not in the thing itself, nor in its use, but in its abuse. There were different kinds of wine then, (Neh. 5: 18,) as there are now. But not a single text intimates a particular sort of yayin which could not inebriate. Nay, more: what Scripture does say, disproves the fancy, as the sequel abundantly shows. Thus, Num. 6: 3 plainly marks off yayin as fermented grape-juice, and that in the vinous as distinguished from the acetous stage; excluding other fermented drinks, vinegar, unfermented grape-liquors, as well as the solid fruit of the vine. We who adhere to the regular sense of the word are not bound to produce specific proofs; we are entitled to take it in the same sense everywhere, unless positive cause be shown to the contrary. But those who affirm that in certain places the word has a different meaning, are, in each instance, bound to give Scriptural reasons adequate to produce conviction. This they can never do. We deny their affirmation: upon them falls the burden of proof.†

* Will it be said that the use of either is, abstractedly, wrong? was John the Baptist more pure than his Lord and Saviour? Note well, too that he abstained from bread as well as from wine. Are we, therefore, to abandon either or both?

† Hence the fallacy of reasoning upon such words as "Pagan," "Knave," etc., which are known to have shifted their meaning, This cannot he assumed as to yayin. Besides, the alleged parallel does not hold good. When "Pagan." was first used, it had not the sense of "idolator;" whereas, when yayin is first used in Scripture it has the sense of "fermented grape-liquor." (See Gen. 9: 21; Gen. 19: 32 35.)

Not to anticipate, however, the Temperance Reformers may be divided in twain. One party consider that alcoholic liquors are essentially poisonous* and therefore evil as a beverage; that in Scripture times there were two distinct genera of wine, etc., — the one unfermented and a blessing, the other fermented and a curse. But the moderate own that the use of alcohol is not in itself sinful; that inspired men, and even Christ Himself, did not abstain; that the habitual use of fermented beverages may be sanctioned by the Bible: still they plead that, though lawful, it is not expedient. It is plain that the latter system destroys the former. Among themselves the difference is keenly felt, if we may judge by the unusual acrimony of their recriminations. The partisans of expediency pronounce the doctrine of the ultra-teetotalers to be "preposterous and pestiferous lucubrations," "mischievous error," and "modern delusion," and hear in return that, in its present shape, their theory is "an absurd and blasphemous abomination, and the sooner it is universally scouted and scorned, the better" — "a fraud and a counterfeit of the worst description." Since this is their spirit to each other, he who is forced to condemn them both, can expect little courtesy from either.

* Writers on Toxicology include alcohol in the list. But so the ablest consider the chloride of sodium, or common salt. See Taylor on Poisons, pages 2, 3, 291. is then the use of salt, as a condiment of food, evil or immoral? — The same principle applies to vinegar.

Let us, however, examine their arguments; and first, of those who advocate "thorough and consistent Teetotalism."

The words for wine, say they, "must have been, at first, necessarily applied and restricted to fresh unfermented juices. The primitive process of wine-pressing is well expressed in Gen. 40: 11, and also by Milton," etc. Now, every Scripturian must know that this statement is not only without Bible evidence, but contradicted by it. Noah "drank of the wine and was drunken." This is the first recorded application of the word "wine." Is it restricted to fresh unfermented juice? Or does it not necessarily mean the fermented liquor of the grape? This case was long before the dream of Pharoah's butler, even if the process described there had been called wine-pressing in the chapter, which it is not. Nor are the reveries of "Paradise Lost" as to Eve, of weight on such a question.

We are referred to Lev. 10, "where Teetotalism is proclaimed as the Eternal's selected remedy for intemperance." But, in the first place, the restriction applies simply to Aaron and his sons. Secondly, it was in force only when they went into the tabernacle. Is this to proclaim Teetotalism? Does it not rather imply the ordinary liberty of the priests to use what on a special occasion was forbidden? Another writer reminds us that under the New Testament all believers are priests. Does he forget that .if Aaron's sons are to be spiritually interpreted. so is the type of wine and strong drink? Thus natural joy and excitement seem to be shadowed under these drinks, as the uncovering of the head and rending of the garments were the symbols of natural sorrow. Neither becomes those who enjoy nearness to God. His presence was meant to silence both. Whether, therefore, we look at the type or the antitype, Lev. 10 does not proclaim Teetotalism.

Next, we are told of "the establishment of the first Teetotal Society among the Holy Nazarites." Now, not only is their case a peculiar one like the priests, but there are points essential to the Nazarite which differ alike from the theory and the practice of the Teetotal Society. His separation consisted in three grand heads; he was to eat or drink nothing that came from the vine, to let his hair grow and to come at no dead body. None of these things is put forth as a moral principle more than another. The whole was a carnal ordinance imposed until the time of reformation. To drink wine was defiling to the Nazarite, but it was equally so to cut the hair. Christianity is subject to no part of the ordinance as such, though we may well profit by the truths which it figures. Moreover, when the days of his separation were fulfilled, God ordained that the Nazarite should shave his head and might drink wine. (Num. 6: 13-20.) Does God ordain what is wrong? The Nazarite was then free to drink the very wine which before had been forbidden. Does this permission really square with Teetotalism? Lastly, what has the principle of a separation from all vine-produce, in common with the Teetotal pledge? The Nazarite was forbidden the unfermented as well as the fermented, the solid no less than the liquid. Does this accord with the reasoning of "Tirosh lo yayin," or of any other accredited work of Teetotalers? If not one entire verse of Num. 6 can be honestly interpreted in favour of their society, why cite the Nazarite ritual as their precursor? And bow do they seek to escape from the net in which they have entangled their own feet? They are forced to allow that from everything pertaining to the vine the Nazarites equally abstained; but, with self-complacent scepticism, they add, that we, with our better chemical knowledge, of course do not! Can Christians tamely listen to such contempt of God's Word? The folly, too, of these speeches is only less gross than the sin; for, what had a Nazarite to do with chemistry?

It is enough to remark on the message of the angel of the Lord to the mothers of Samson and of John the Baptist, that theirs was an extraordinary Nazariteship. Again, the Rechabites obeyed in neither building nor sowing, quite as much as in drinking no wine. Their case, if applicable at all, would prove far too much. If it proved that men ought to drink no wine, it would prove that they ought to build no houses. (Jer. 35.) So Daniel and his friends abstained from the king's meat as well as his wine. If they drank water, they eat pulse. It was a question of Jewish cleanness,* not of morality. Accordingly, Dan 10: 3 clearly implies that, save in special circumstances, as fasting, the prophet did eat flesh and drink wine. The cup offered to the Lord upon the cross, and refused, did not consist of wine merely, and therefore does not bear on the present question. The case of Timothy, as we have seen, proves the reverse of what it is cited to prove.

* Who is it that appeals to the priests or the Nazarites, Samson or Daniel? Is it not the teetotal advocate? And who, then, is chargeable with the fallacy that the record of a Jewish practice establishes its propriety as a Christian principle?

The reader has before him the Scriptural argument of the extreme party. Let him judge whether the case of the moderate section is not as decided a failure. They appeal to Rom. 14: 21 and 1 Cor. 8: 13. The question is: does the scope of these texts coincide with that of a Teetotal Society? Is a drunkard the "weak brother" for whose sake the Christian is to forbear using his liberty?*

* See the "Scriptural claims of Teetotalism. By Newman Hall, B.A.," pages 4, 10, 11, 15, 16, 24. (1848.)

The simple reading of 1 Cor. 8 shows that nothing is further from the mind of the Spirit. The question here is one "touching things offered unto idols." The Teetotal question has nothing to do with such offerings. That is, the essential features of the Corinthian difficulty do not exist in the case of Temperance. Rom. 14 (though it mentions wine, which 1 Cor. 8 does not,) is as little to the purpose. At Rome, the dispute grew not out of Gentile idolatry, but out of the religious scruples of the Jewish converts, who, on certain days, would not partake of meats and drinks. Thus have we seen Daniel abstain from his customary food for three whole weeks, and every Jew similarly testified the affliction of his soul on the Day of Atonement. But it is preposterous to apply such a principle to a Temperance Society. Some Gentiles in these days may refrain from fermented liquors; others may adopt a vegetable diet. Is the Christian to be tossed to and fro at the whim of a world which perverts everything? Is he to refuse anything which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth? Lastly, the way in which "the weak brother" is treated is as revolting as untrue. 1 Cor. 5 proves beyond cavil that a drunkard is a wicked person to be put away from the Church, not a weak brother to be borne with. But Rom. 14 describes a class as different as possible — not false professors of lax, unholy walk, but real Christians who had feebly realised their deliverance from all questions about things legally clean or unclean. Therefore they retained a conscience in bondage to days, meats and drinks. Where is the analogy between the Roman and the Corinthian cases, and a Teetotal Society? There is none. But if so, it is clear that their argument from Rom. 14 and 1 Cor. 8 totally perishes.

_________________________

Let us now glance at the various words in the Bible rendered "wine," "strong drink," etc., and others connected with them. No wise man will deny the possibility or the fact of mistakes in human translations, nor will he say that the least error is of no moment. Yet, the believing soul will rejoice to prove afresh how God has watched over His Word, not indeed to keep the erudite from error, but to feed His babes day by day, even through the least exact translation. A show of learning may puzzle the unlettered Christian who meddles with it, as it will surely mislead those who trust it rather than the Spirit of God. But the minutest accuracy serves only to confirm the general teaching of Scripture, as might be expected by the heart that knows who and what God is.

The ordinary expression for "wine" in the Hebrew Scriptures is h yayin which occurs an hundred and forty-one times. Like the Greek οἶνος, the Latin vinum, the Italian and Spanish vino, the French vin, the German wein, and the corresponding if not cognate term in other languages, it designates the fermented juice of the grape. Gesenius conjectures that it comes from an unused root, conveying the ideas of "boiling," "foaming," etc., which is the parent of the word for "mud," as well as of that for "wine." The allusion seems clear to the frothy, turbid appearance which accompanies the process of fermentation; for, as Pliny, treating of this subject, observes, "Fervet vinum, cum ex musto in vinum transit." The phrase also shows that, in the common parlance of his day, the naturalist drew the same line which moderns do between the fermented and the unfermented juice of the grape.* In Eichhorn's edition of J. Simonis Lex. Man. Hebraicum, it is derived from the same source, "a fermentatione," while it is added that others seek the sense of softness — "sensum mollitiei et glabritiei quaerunt, et yayin h vertunt proprie molle, i.e. molliter per fauces descenders, conf. Prov. 23: 31 et Cant. 7: 10." Perhaps the author of "Anti-Bacchus" would no longer argue as he did, (page 94,) that the word is derived from the word "to press, squeeze," and therefore simply means an expressed juice.

* It is worthy of note that the passage which Dr. Lees cites from the same author (N.H. xiv. c. 9) proves the reverse of what it is quoted for and corroborates what I have stated in the text. "Medium inter dulcia vinu mque est quad Graeci ἀεὶ γλευκός vocant hoc est, semper mustum." Clearly, we have wine and sweets discriminated with care, and not in the least confounded with the intermediate substance, "always-must." Does this show that vinum is applied to unfermented things? Does it not prove the contrary!

The usage of the term, as it is more important than the etymology, so is it clear, uniform and decisive. What we mean by "wine," unless it be modified by the context which surrounds it, is certainly an intoxicating vinous liquor.* That this is the force of yayin h will be apparent from the inspection of all the texts wherein it occurs. In Num. 6: 3, "liquor of grapes" is distinguished from yayin h, or "wine," as is plain to the English reader. The "wine" was evidently the fermented liquor: the other phrase denotes any unfermented drink of grape-juice, and, therefore, forbids the thought that it was comprehended under that word. Hence yayin was even employed to denote the effect of wine. Accordingly, Gesenius gives "crapula" as a secondary meaning, and refers to Gen. 9: 24. 1 Sam. 1: 14; 25: 37.

*In this note are presented the definitions of "wise" given in all the correct dictionaries of the English language to which I have access. The term is explained in its popular sense, as our adversaries demand That it may, by a natural license of speech, be transferred to the liquor which is going to be fermented, is readily allowed. The mind, anticipating that process, may thus, with a certain logical inexactness, give the name to the juice where it is just pressed from, or even while it is still contained in, the grape. Such is the plain usage of the term in the sentences which Dr. Lees has culled from the writings of Greek and Latin poets, etc., and of certain modern travellers, naturalists, lexicographers and others. Candid men, who have read passages with their context must be aware that the meaning grafted on them by the too ardent defenders of Total Abstinence, differs from what was intended by the authors themselves. In the above use of the word, there is moral if not physical accuracy. It is a metaphorical application, which leaves the real import undisturbed. Where this import is departed from, it is incumbent upon any correct writer to supply by the context, plain, indubitable evidence of the sense in which it is employed. So we do nowadays in speaking of "home-made wines." Save in exceptional cases where the contrary is clearly implied, the original import, the popular usage and the scientific definition alike agree to include fermentation in the idea of wine. Thus it is explained: "1. The fermented juice of the grape. 2. Preparations of vegetables by fermentation, called by the general name of wines, have quite different qualities from the plant; for no fruit, taken crude, has the intoxicating quality of grape." (Johnson's Dictionary, and so Walker.) — "The fermented juice of the grape," etc. "A liquor drawn from vegetable bodies and fermented: but more especially the fermented juice of the fruit of the vine." (Maunder, — "The fermented juice of the grape; the juice of certain fruits prepared with sugar spirits, etc., as raspberry-wine, gooseberry wine," etc. [Of course, this latter clause applies only to modern liquors.] (Craig's Univ. Etym., etc, Dict vol. ii., page 1075.)

It has been said by Dr. Eadie, in his Biblical Cyclopaedia, that it sometimes seems to signify the growing fruit of the vineyard; (Deut. 28: 39. Jer. 40: 10-12; ) as in Germany, the vine-dresser in spring or summer will say: "The wine" blooms or flourishes well — "the wine" will be good this season. Now, supposing that the expressions were parallel, (for the first text speaks of drinking the wine, and surely not the growing fruit,) it is manifest that the phrase is figurative. Nor can a figurative use alter the real force of a word in any language. In fine, yayin h and Wein simply and properly designate the fermented liquor made from vine-fruit, and not the fruit itself, nor the bare juice while issuing from the press, though by a figure common to ancient and modern tongues, the one or the other may be so applied.* The text already referred to (Num. 6: 3) separates yayin from "moist grapes or dried" not less clearly than from any unfermented "liquor of grapes."

* See Burne's "Concordance of Scripture and Science," where, speaking of Isa. 16: 10 and Jer. 48: 33, the author says (in page 42) that yayin, being applied to the juice while issuing from the press, must of necessity have been unfermented; and in page 46, that these same texts seem, upon mature consideration, to refer, in reality, to grapes. That is, we are allowed our choice of meanings, provided we give up the real value of the word! So in page 41, Gen. 9: 21 and 14: 18 are compared, and the word is confessed to me" intoxicating wine in the former, but in the latter "the probability is great that it was unfermented." In page 45, we are told a different tale: "It is not improbable that the 'bread and yayin' offered to Abram (Gen. 14: 18) was bread and grapes." The remarks on Eccles. 9: 7 and Cant. 2: 4 need no reply.

In the Market Drayton Discussion (page 30) it was alleged, and without contradiction, that in Num. 6: 4 the wine and the vine tree are synonymous phrases, — that the word yayin was employed for the vine itself. This is not the fact. The margin gives the original literally, whence the English reader may see that gephen, the regular word for the vine) is found, no less than h, (yayin,) which appears here as well as in Judges 13: 14, not as a synonymous expletive, but for greater accuracy. It is true that gephen alone is the general Hebrew term for "vine." Still, yayin is clearly added here, as conveying not the same but another idea, to complete and define the sense, because the word in itself was capable of being applied to other plants, as in 2 Kings 4: 39. That is, the allegation is unfounded. Yet, granting it, what does it prove? That there was, or was not, metonymy in such cases? Is it gravely sought to make h yayin, in its proper sense, interchangeable, not merely with the "liquor of grapes," from which the Spirit of God expressly distinguishes it, nor with the grapes, but even with the vine itself? That it may, by a bold but common form of speech, represent the fruit, is confessed on all hands.

Again, the Teetotal argument founded upon Ps. 104: 13-15 is worthless, because oil and bread, no less than wine, are said to be brought out of the earth. If the context prove "wine" to mean grapes, it equally proves "bread" to mean corn; and if the latter is unreasonable, (save in a figurative way, as in Isa. 28: 28,) so is the former.* In truth, to deny figures in Scripture is, so far as man can, to torture and degrade the Word of God. It is ignorance, or worse. And those who boast loudly of their own matter-of-fact exegesis will generally be found to literalize the figurative, to allegorize the historical, and so to stultify the whole divine record by forced human accuracy in a part, which coheres neither with itself nor with all the rest.

* In Lam. 2: 12, the swooning children say to their mothers, "Where [is] corn and wine?" (yayin) There is no more reason here to confound wine with grapes than corn with the food which was made of it. In 1 Sam. 25: 18, 2 Sam. 16: 1, 1 Chr. 12: 40, Neh. 13: 15, yayin is distinguished from grapes or raisins, which is enough to show the fallacy of the reasoning.

Perhaps it is not amiss to add some few testimonies taken casually as to the nature of wine, which are quite needless to the simple reader of the Bible, but which may possibly be of use where the mind is pre-occupied with the modern oppositions of science, falsely so called. "Wine, an agreeable spirituous liquor, produced by fermentation from those vegetable substances that contain saccharine matter." (Encycl. Brit. 3rd edition, vol. 18, page 809.) — "The simplest case of fermentation is that of must, or the expressed juice of the grape, which, when exposed, either in close or open vessels, to a temperature of about 70°, soon begins to give forth carbonic acid, and to become turbid and frothy. After a time, a scum collects on the surface and a sediment is deposited: the liquor, which had grown warm, gradually cools and clears, loses its sweet taste, and is converted into wine." (Brande's Dictionary of Science.) — "All that which is now called wine in the east," says Mr. Henry Homes, Missionary at Constantinople, "is as truly wine as that which is called wine in France. Whether boiled or not, whether sweet or sour, all the known wines are intoxicating.* The boiling which the people of certain districts choose to give to their must, for the purpose of securing a wine that will keep better, should not be confounded with the boiling of the same must for the purpose of making sugar and molasses. In the former case, it is boiled perhaps half an hour, and not reduced one-twentieth in bulk; in the latter case, it is reduced more than three-fourths in quantity. And hence an 'inspissated wine' should never be confounded with inspissated grape-juice. The former gives us an intoxicating liquor, and the latter a syrup, or molasses. We might say the same of sweet wines, that although by drying the grapes in the sun, or by boiling the must, the wine is preserved sweeter than it would otherwise be, such wines are still intoxicating, and some of them extremely so. In some districts, the people regard the boiled wines as stronger than the simple fermented ones.† Those of Mount Lebanon are stronger than the majority of the wines of France." (Bibliotheca Sacra, page 292.) — Mr. Eli Smith, another Missionary in Syria, communicated to the same work the results of his own specific inquiry. "Unintoxicating wines," he says, "I have not been able to hear of. All wines, they say, will intoxicate more or less. So in regard to fermentation, when inquiring if there exists any such thing as unfermented wine, I have uniformly been met wish a stare of surprise. The very idea seems to be regarded as an absurdity."

* In the face of their own canon that the Bible is not a modern book we are referred by a Teetotal Essayist to Mr. Buckingham's Travels' who informs us that the wines of Lebanon and Helbon are the principal wines of the present day, the former being a boiled, and the latter a rich sweet wine." Hence, it is evident (!) that the two wines most esteemed in the Holy Land were boiled wines, were thick and sweet, and consequently (!!) were not alcoholic: and these wines were the liquors which the Psalmist says make glad the heart of man," etc. !!! But even if we let pass this last assumption, Mr. Homes proves as a fact, in the face of "Anti-Bachus," (page 102,) that boiled and sweet wines are intoxicating. Teetotal writers constantly and most confidently state the reverse — that the boiled and the sweet wines of ancient times could not intoxicate.

† Let those who desire to know how far the statements of "AntiBacchus" are trustworthy, compare pages 60, 76 77-88, where it is constantly reiterated that sweet wines are necessarily weak, and that boiled wines are destitute of strength It is supposed to be certain. But the supposition is unfounded, as appears from notorious facts stated by a Missionary, who seems to be friendly to Total Abstinence.

Ch. v.

GENESIS.

9: 21. — He (Noah) drank of the wine, and was drunken.

24. — Noah awoke from his wine.

14: 18. — Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine.

19: 32. — Come let us make our father drink wine.

33. — And they made their father drink wine.

34. — Let us make him drink wine.

35. — And they made their father drink wine.

27: 25. — And he brought him wine.

49: 11. — He washed his garments in wine.

12. — His eyes [shall be] red with wine.

EXODUS.

29: 40. — And the fourth of an hin of wine for a drink-offering.

LEVITICUS.

10: 9. — Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou nor thy sons with thee.

23: 13. — And the drink-offering thereof [shall be] of wine.

NUMBERS

6: 3. — He shall separate [himself] from wine, and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine

4. — He shall eat nothing that is made of the vine tree (margin, vine of the wine.)

20. — And after that the Nazarite may drink wine.

16: 5. — And the fourth [part] of an hin of wine for a drink-offering.

7. — And for a drink-offering thou shalt offer the third part of an hin of wine.

10. — And thou shalt bring for a drink-offering half an hin of wine.

28: 14. — And their drink-offering shall be half an hin of wine.

DEUTERONOMY.

14: 26. — For oxen or for sheep or for wine.

28: 39. — But shalt neither drink [of] the wine, nor gather.*

29: 6. — Neither have ye drunk wine.

32: 33. — Their wine [is] the poison of dragons.

38. — Which drank the wine of their drink-offerings.

JOSHUA.

9: 4. — And wine bottles, old, and rent.

13. — And these bottles of wine.

JUDGES.

13: 4. — And drink not wine.

7. — And now drink no wine.

13: 14. — She may not eat of any [thing] that cometh of the vine (lit. vine of the wine) neither let her drink wine.†

19: 19. — And there is bread and wine also for me.

* The gathering does not refer to the wine in this passage, any more than the treading refers to the vineyards in Judges 9: 27. In both texts our translators have supplied "the grapes" as needed to complete the sense in English. To a Hebrew it was implied. The version of De Wette adheres rigorously to the original.

† Even Dr. Grindrod ("Bacchus," page 237.) cites the mothers of Samson and John the Baptist in order to prove the pernicious influence of alcoholic drinks during gestation. As usual, Mr. Parsons goes still lower in his remarks. "The command given to Samson's mother was not arbitrary, but physiological. . . . Alcohol might have made a weakling and a pigmy of Samson, and therefore (!!) God enjoined 'total abstinence' both on him and his mother." ("Anti-Bacchus," page 33.) "God works by means: and, in performing a miracle, rarely acts contrary to his own natural laws." (Ibid, page 112.) Passing by the medical view as foreign to our discussion, I am sure that spiritual men will resent these statements, because in truth they deny miracles. For that which is according to natural laws, cannot, for that reason, be a miracle. What are these manifestations of divine power, but effects contrary to the established course of things? — a suspension of, or departure from, knows physical laws? To attribute them to such laws is just to explain awry all that is really miraculous. Nor can any notion be more opposed by fact. Thus, what was the link between the all-over coming strength, and the uncut locks of Samson? "If I be shaven," said he, "then my strength will go from me." Is this a sequence of which physiology takes cognizance?

1 SAMUEL.

1: 14. — Put away thy wine from thee.

15. — I have drunk neither wine.

24. — And one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine.

10: 3. — And another carrying a bottle of wine.

16: 20. — With bread, and a bottle of wine.

25: 18. — Two hundred loaves, and two bottles of wine.

37. — And when the wine was gone out of Nabal

2 SAMUEL.

13: 28. — Mark ye now when Amnon's heart is merry with wine.

16: 1. — And an hundred of summer fruits, and a bottle of wine.

2. — And the wine, that such as be faint may drink.

1 CHRONICLES.

9: 29. — And the fine flour, and the wine, and the oil.

12: 40. — And bunches of raisins, and wine and oil.

27: 27. — Over the increase of the vineyards for the wine cellars.

2 CHRONICLES.

2: 10. — And twenty thousand bathe of wine,

15. — And the barley the oil, and the wine.

11: 11. — And store of victuals, and of oil and wine.

NEHEMIAH.

2: 1. — Wine [was] before him: and I took up the wine.

6: 15. — And had taken of them bread and wine.

5: 18. — And once in ten days store of all sorts of wine.

13: 15. — As also wine, grapes, and figs.

ESTHER.

1: 7. — And royal wine in abundance.

10. — When the heart of the king was merry with wine.

5: 6. — And the king said unto Esther at the banquet of wine.

7: 2. — On the second day at the banquet of wine.

7. — And the king, arising from the banquet of wine.

8. — Into the place of the banquet of wine.

JOB.

1: 13. — Eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house.

18. — Eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house.

32: 19. — Behold, my belly [[is]] as wine [which] hath no vent.

PSALMS.

60: 3. — Thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.

75: 8. — And the wine is red.

78: 65. — A mighty man that shouteth by reason of wine.

104: 15. — And wine [that] maketh glad the heart of man.

PROVERBS.

4: 17. — For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

9: 2. — She hath mingled her wine.

5. — Drink of the wine [which] I have mingled.

20: 1. — Wine is a mocker.*

21: 17. — He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.

23: 20. — Be not among wine-bibbers.

30. — They that tarry long at the wine.

31. — Look not thou at the wine when it is red.†

31: 4. — Not for kings to drink wine.

6. — And wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.

* It has been said that yayin and shekar have a generic sense so as to include unfermented liquors. But our text shows the contrary. In the strong sententious style of the book, a caution is given about wine not a hint drops about a particular sort. "Yayin is a mocker, shekar is raging." Most Teetotallers who cite or reason on it, alter the phrase to "the 'wine' which is 'a mocker."' This obviously perverts the meaning. The passage warns against being" deceived by any wine or strong drink. vague terms as these are said to be, and, quite unrestricted seem inconsistent with the hypothesis. On the other hand, the warning agrees well with these two words, if they are the general terms for the fermented liquors of the grape, and of other fruit or grain, known in ancient times. And such is precisely the definition of them given by the most unbiased and the best judges.

† The reader will scarcely be prepared for the strange version and the still stranger interpretation of this verse which Mr. Walters ("Alcoholic Wines," pages 32, 33,) adopts from the Truth Seeker. "Look not then upon the wine, 'when it is turbid, when it giveth its eye in the cup when it moveth itself upwards,' that is, when it exhibits all the signs of having become alcoholic; and what is the reason assigned? 'For at last,' the process being finished, and the fruit of the vine being converted into alcohol, 'it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder."' Now it is enough to observe here that the words translated "moveth itself upwards" might, as regards the sense, be far better rendered "goeth down sweetly," "smoothly" or "straightly." see Cant. 7: 9. Hence, in the former text, the Vulgate gives "ingreditur blande," etc.; in both texts De Wette has sanft hinunter gleitet. The verse portrays the process of intoxication, not of fermenting; the seductiveness clearly belongs to the wine-cup and not the slightest allusion is made to the signs exhibited by the liquor in the vat. Assuredly it does not become alcoholic after it is poured into the cup, as this extraordinary gloss insinuates.

ECCLESIASTES.

2: 3. — I sought in mine heart. to give myself unto wine.

9: 7. — And drink thy wine with a merry heart.

10: 19. — And wine maketh merry.

SONG OF SOLOMON.

1: 2. — For thy love is better than wine.

4. — We will remember thy love more than wine,

2: 4. — He brought me to the banqueting house. (margin, house of wine.)

4: 10. — How much better is thy love than wine.

5: 1. — I have drunk my wine with my milk.

7: 9. — Like the best wine for my beloved.

8: 2. — I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine.

ISAIAH,

5: 11. — That continue until night, [till] wine inflame them!

12. — The tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts.

22. — Woe unto [them that are] mighty to drink wine,

16: 10. — The treaders shall tread out no wine in [their] presses.

22: 13. — Eating flesh, and drinking wine.

24: 9. — They shall not drink wine with a song.

11. — A vying for wine in the streets.

28: 1. — The fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine.

7. — But they also have erred through wine. . . they are swallowed up of wine.

29: 9. — They are drunken, but not with wine.

51: 21. — Afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine.

65: 1. — Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money.

66: 12. — Come ye, [say they,] I will fetch wine.

JEREMIAH.

13: 12. — (bis) Every bottle shall be filled with wine.

23: 9. — I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome.

25: 15. — Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand

35: 2. — And give them wine to drink.

5. — And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites, pots full of wine and cups, and I said unto them, drink ye wine

6. — We will drink no wine: for Jonadab commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed.

8. — To drink no wine all our days.

14. — He commanded his sons not to drink wine.

40: 10. — But ye, gather ye wine, and summer fruits and oil

12. — And gathered wine and summer fruits very much

48: 33. — And I have caused wine to fail from the winepresses.

61: 7. — The nations have drunken of her wine.

LAMENTATIONS.

2: 12. — They say to their mothers, where [is] corn and wine 7

EZEKIEL.

27: 18. — In the wine of Helbon, and white wool.

44: 2f. — Neither shall any priest drink wine, when they enter the inner court.

DANIEL.

1: 6. — Of the king's meat, and of the wine which he drank.

8. — With the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank.

16. — And the wine that they should drink.

10: 3. — Neither came flesh nor wine in my mouth.

HOSEA.

4: 11. — Whoredom, and wine, and new wine take away the heart.

7: 6. — The princes have made [him] sick with bottles of wine.

9: 4. — They shall not offer wine [offerings] to the Lord.

14: 7. — The scent thereof [shall be] as the wine of Lebanon.

JOEL.

1: 6. — And howl, all ye drinkers of wine.

3: 3 — And sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

AMOS.

2: 8. — And they drink wine of the condemned in the house

12. — But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink.

6: 11. — But ye shall not drink wine of them.

6: 6. — That drink wine in bowls.

9: 14. — And they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine

MICAH.

2: 11. — I will prophesy unto thee of wine and strong drink

6: 16. — And sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.

HABAKKUK.

2: 5. — Because he transgresseth by wine

ZEPHANIAH.

1: 13. — And they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof

HAGGAI.

2: 12. — Bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any mess.

ZECHARIAH.

9: 15. — And they shall drink [and] make a noise as through wine.

10: 7. — And their heart shall rejoice as through wine.

§ 2. Tirosh, NEW WINE.

There are eight and thirty occurrences of the word h (tirosh) in Scripture. From the root obtain, and hence to inherit, Furst deduces the meaning das Gewonnene, i.e. a something gained, an acquisition. In this etymology Moses Stuart acquiesces. — "Sic dictum (says Eichhorn's Simonis) quod se possessorem hominis faciat, ejus cerebrum occupando, ut ille non amplius sui compos sit." Parkhurst likewise considered it to mean new wine, so called from its strongly intoxicating quality in taking possession of a man, as in Hosea 4: 11, where the LXX give μέθυσμα and the Vulgate "ebrietas." Substantially alike is the opinion of Gesenius: "mustum (ita dictum, quia inebriando cerebrum occupat," etc.)* He adds, at the close, "de succo uvae Jes. 65. 8." So De Wette, Wie wenn sich Saft in der Traube findet: elsewhere he translates the word lost, save in two places, where he has Wein. In the same text, Luther renders it Most. The LXX render it ὁ ῥὼξ ἐν τῶ βότρυι>, and similarly the Vulgate, "granum in botro." There does not appear to be any greater difficulty in the phrase of the prophet than in the well known Latin verse, "Vixque merum capiunt grana quod intus habent." In four places the Vulgate has vindemia, while the English Bible makes it "new wine" in twelve passages, and once "sweet wine." Dr. S. Lee also and Mr. W. Osborne, Jugn., along with Fürst, hold the word to designate "new wine."

* In the Report of the Market Drayton Discussion, published by Dr. E. R. Lees, that gentleman (p. 29,) "begged to say he entirely concurred with Gesenius as far as his definition went, for he interpreted this same tirosh by the Latin mustum." This statement is most astonishing, especially when it is added that, in p. 26, the same speaker had defined Tirsosh to be "fruit of the vine," in its natural or solid slate, comprehending "wine in the cluster," vinum pendens, grapes, raisins, etc.; in short, all "vintage fruit." Greek — "Genneema tees ampelou," So elsewhere Dr. L. has said, "That tirosh ranked amongst the class of fruital produce, however, we have not the slightest doubt." (Temperance Topic page 64, and passim.) Now, the definition of Gesenins right or wrong, is entirely different. He held tirosh in itself to mean a liquid Dr. L. holds it to he a solid. The one defines it as must, the other as grape fruit. And yet many, never seeing so plain a discrepancy, have swallowed this bold affirmation of entire concurrence with Gesenius' definition! Dr. L. does not interpret tirosh by mustum, unless he alter the recognised meaning of the Latin word to suit his explanation of the Hebrew, which is utterly unwarrantable. Where does mustum signify solid grapes. It was applied to the grape Juice when expressed and passing through the process of fermentation, which usually lasted for about nine days When that subsided, the mustum became vinum. (Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, page 1045.) It is notorious that the fumes of the liquor, while fermenting, may inebriate.

A strange hypothesis has been recently advocated by a few, that the word signifies every where the solid produce of the vine. But this is amply refuted by Isa. 62: 8, Prov. 3: 10, and Joel 2: 24, which texts clearly indicate its liquid nature.* Not but that h (tirosh) like h (yayin), may be used poetically for the vintage fruit, which produced the liquor. Thus Gesenius explained Isa. 24: 7, "luget mustum (i.e. lugent uvae,") but this in no wise unsettled the proper meaning of the term. Stress has been laid by the author of Tirosh lo Yayin upon Micah 6: 15, as if it established plainly and beyond cavil the above distinction. "Thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine." To use the argument stated by Dr. Lees in its most pointed form, "Thou shalt tread tirosh, (not drink it,) for the thing trodden out was what usually was drunk. The first was grapes, the second wine — fresh, unfermented wine." But the Christian turns to the written Word, and finds the specious but shadowy structure dispersed into thin air by the touch of a single verse. The argument from Micah is that, though the h (yayin) was distinctively a liquid, i.e. wine, h (tirosh) being trodden must be a solid, i.e. grapes. Now, "it is written again" in Isa. 16: 10, "the treaders shall tread out no WINE h (yayin) in their presses." The same Hebrew word expresses the "treading" or "treading out;" and if the one predicates treading of tirosh, the other intimates that it was equally possible in the case of yayin. Thus, the proof in Micah 6 for the solidity of tirosh turns out to be null. Precisely the same reason appears in Isa. 16 for the solidity of yayin, which was nevertheless alleged to be in contrast with tirosh, as wine with grapes! Even yet we have not reached the climax of absurdity. For the same controversialist who pleads the treading of tirosh as proving it to be grapes, in contradistinction to yayin, (or, what be calls "fresh unfermented wine,") had, only in the preceding page, urged the treading of yayin as a real, not figurative, thing! In other words, what was emphatically a solid in page 31 becomes distinctively a liquid in page 32. And yet this crude and inconsistent reasoning has imposed with talismanic power upon many. Witness the works of Mr. Mearns, and of Mr. Burne, as well as of the original and more learned authors of the sophism.

* Even the author of "Anti-Bacchus" (page 95) and Prof. Stuart have bowed to the force of these Scriptures and rejected this chimera unless they have changed their mind since. The former, it is true, like others or the same school, is rather self-contradictory. Thus, in pp. 94, 95, he says Tirosh supposed to come from a root meaning head, chief, or beginning " may refer to the head or berry of the grape, or to the first or chief-juice that begins to flow, from the fruit; it is, therefore, (!) promiscuously rendered in the English version by the terms "wine," or "new wine." In Isa. 65: 8, it alludes we are told, to the juice in the ripe fruit before it was expressed, in Ps. 4, it refers to the growth of the unripe grape so other Scriptures which associate corn and tirosh. But in Joel 2: 24, and Prov 3: 10, it is, according to the same writer, the fresh juice which bursts from the winepress.

Much to the same effect has been built upon the expression "laid by heaps," in 2 Chr. 31: 5, 6. Advantage is taken of the marginal rendering "dates" instead of "honey," i.e. honey of grapes, dates, etc. It is sought to dispose of the other liquids by making tirosh and yitzhar mean, not "wine and oil," but grapes and orchard fruit. Now, waiving other questions, is it not plain that the difficulty of applying "heaps" to wine and oil, is not greater than in the case of oxen and sheep? Besides, what more natural than that the liquids (supposing them to be such) should be preserved in suitable vessels and thus literally be "laid by heaps?" Details are not given; they might well be deemed unnecessary where the nature of the thing implies the sense. But to alter the force of words, because of these or kindred difficulties which owe their existence to the reader's ignorance, is too serious trifling with the Word of God. Still less to the purpose are such texts as Deut. 11: 14; (comparing 15;) Deut. 12: 17; (if you read verse 16; 2 Kings 18: 32; Neh. 10: 37; Neh. 13: 5; Isa. 65: 8; Hosea 2: 9, 22; Hosea 9: 2; Joel 1: 10, 11: they are in no way adverse to the common and correct interpretation. Haggai 1: 11 has been cited as more formidable, the argument being that a drought could only affect growing fruit, and, therefore, that tirosh must mean grapes, not wine. But the rest of the verse refutes this slavish literalism. If the drought could affect men, cattle and the labour of the hands, why not wine and oil?

The last criticism I would notice on this head, is that given in Burne's Concordance, pages 70-73. It originated with Dr. Lees, who has attempted to make the term shekar (translated "strong drink") mean, in Deut. 14: 26, no drink at all, but solid dates, the fruit of the palm. The opinion is founded upon the supposed analogy of expression in the context. Thus, in verse 22, we have tirosh and yitzhar, and in verse 26 we have yayin and shekar. What more evident than their respective correspondence! It matters not that elsewhere the same writers insist most strongly upon their distinction, nay, contrast. Here it serves a purpose, that yayin, as a specific term, should bear exact correspondence to the generic term tirosh, and even that shekar should correspond to yitzhar! In such reasoning, which is best answered by being simply enunciated, it is hard to say whether positive error or suicidal incongruity is most conspicuous.

Ch. v.

GENESIS.

27: 28. — And plenty of corn and wine.

37. — And with corn and wine have I sustained him.

NUMBERS.

18: 12. — All the best of the wine,

DEUTERONOMY.

7: 13 — Thy corn, and thy wine, and thy oil.

11: 14. — That thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine.

12: 17. — The tithe of thy corn, or of thy wine.

14: 23. — The tithe of thy corn, of thy wine.

18: 4. — Firstfruit [also] of thy corn, of thy wine

28: 51. — Not leave thee [either] corn, wine; or oil

33: 28. — A land of corn and wine.

JUDGES.

9: 13. — Should I leave my wine.

2 KINGS.

18: 32. — A land of corn and wine.

2 CHRONICLES.

31: 5. — The firstfruits of corn, wine, and oil.

32: 28. — The increase of corn, and wine, and oil.

NEHEMIAH.

5: 11 — The corn, the wine, and the oil

10: 37 — Of wine and of oil; unto the priests.

39. — Of the new wine and the oil unto the chambers.

13: 5. — The tithes of the corn, the new wine, and the oil.

12. — The tithe of the corn, and the new wine, and the oil.

PSALMS.

4: 7. — Their corn and their wine increased.

PROVERBS.

3: 10. — And thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

ISAIAH.

24: 7. — The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth.

36: 17. — A land of corn and wine.

62: 8. — The sons of the stranger shall not drink thy wine.

65: 8. — As the new Wine is found in the cluster.

JEREMIAH.

31: 12. — For wheat, and for wine, and for oil.

HOSEA.

2: 8. — And wine, (margin, new wine,) and oil.

9. — And my wine in the season thereof

22. — The earth shah bear the corn, and the wine, and the oil.

4: 11. — Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart*

7: 14 — Assemble themselves for corn and for Wine.

9: 2. — And the new wine shall fail in her.

JOEL.

1: 10. — The new wine is dried up.

2: 19. — I will send you corn, and wine, and oil.

24. — The fats shall overflow with wine and oil.

MICAH.

6: 15. — And sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.

HAGGAI.

1: 11. — Upon the new wine, and upon the oil.

ZECHARIAH.

9: 17. — And new wine the maids.

* In the body of "Anti-Bacchus," Mr. Parsons observes, (page 95,) that "it is classed with wine, and certainly (!) may mean clusters of grape, eaten with the wine which the sensualists there mentioned were drinking at their luxurious feasts;" and in a note he adds, that "to say wine and wine take away the heart, would be tautology." But this is not what Scripture says, and it is hard to see the impropriety of classing wine and must together as instruments in the seduction of the heart from God. The text shows, first, that yayin no more includes tirosh than tirosh includes yayin; and, secondly, that the effort to distinguish them as "Tirosh lo yayin" attempts to do, is fallacious. They are distinct but not to be set the one against the other, as if the former were good and the latter evil: for as many texts elsewhere show the either may occur in a connection of blessing, so this Scripture proves that both may be the occasion of sin. It is singular that "Anti-Bacchus" has the same text cited thus in page 13: '"Wine and strong wine," says Hosea, "take away the heart." That is, what was "strong wine" at the beginning of the essay may mean clusters of grapes at the end. In truth, the term means neither the one nor the other. The authorised version is right, and these proposed but conflicting renderings are both of them baseless and untrue.

§ 3. Chamar, RED WINE.

The Chaldee chamar and the Hebrew chamar appear, in slightly varied forms, in the appended texts. According to Prof. Stuart, the word comes from a root which means to ferment. So Gesenius, "a fermentando dictum." In Ps. 75: 8, the root is found, which Stuart and De Wette view in the sense of "ferments;" our translators preferred "is red;" and Gesenius, "aestavit, ferbuit," though he also gives "rubuit" as a secondary sense. In Deut. 32: 14, Stuart understands it to mean "fermentable liquor," the LXX οἶνον, the Vulgate merum, and De Wette Wein. Khamr is the name in Arabic for ordinary wine, as distinguished from Nebidh, a home-made fermented raisin-liquor, but so mild that its alcoholic quality is often undetected.

Ch. v.

EZRA.

6: 9. — Wheat, salt, wine, according to the appointment of the priests.

7: 22. — And to an hundred baths of wine, and to an hundred baths of oil.

DANIEL.

8: 1. — Belshazzar the king drank wine before the thousand.

2. — Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded.

4. — They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold.

23. — Thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them.

DEUTERONOMY.

32: 14. — And thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

ISAIAH.

27: 2. — A vineyard of red wine. [Some copies read Daleth for Res which, if right, would alter the meaning to "pleasant vineyard," but most read as given in the text.]

§ 4. Soveh, WINE DRINK.

The word h soveh is found thrice, and evidently means an intoxicating liquor. It seems analogous, in many respects, to μέθυ (Lat. temetum,) which competent scholars say was perhaps at first any strong drink. Gesenius explains it "1) vinum Jes. 1: 22; Nahum 1: 10. 2) compotatio Hosea 4: 18." It is formed from a verb meaning to swill, ("potavit, idque intemperantius, ingurgitavit." Gesenius) and is a different thing from the debash or mel uvarum, i.e. must boiled down to one half (defrutum) or one third. (sapa.) Pliny and Columella treat these preparations not as wine, but as allied to it. They were syrups used as medicaments for their wines, and, naturally enough, are described in the treatises which discuss the nature and kinds of ancient wine. We have already seen that, even if the word meant a boiled wine, such a liquor inebriates.

The author of "Anti-Bacchus," (p. 97,) in the face of the Bible, maintains, from what he calls science, that the alcoholic wines of Palestine, if they did exist at all, were too weak to make persons reel, and therefore that, in such a case, they must have been drugged. Nevertheless, he regards soveh with suspicion. It is never, says he, "recommended in Scripture." Not so the "Concordance of Scripture and Science," though the author confesses "it is somewhat remarkable that such an innocent preparation (!) should bear a name derived from a verb signifying to 'guzzle.'" In Tirosh lo Yayin, it is treated as the "most superior wine." But sapa and defrutum, with which various Teetotal writers would identify the Hebrew term, refer to grape jellies. "They were nothing else," says Prof. Ramsay, whom they are bold enough to cite, as if he agreed with their view; whereas, in fact, he destroys it.

Ch. v.

ISAIAH.

1: 22. — Thy silver is become dross; thy wine mixed * with water.

* The word above rendered "mixed." means "circumcised," "cut:" a mode of expression common to the East and West, even to the present day. Prof. Stuart admits that the liquor in question was, in its original state lively and sparkling, and perhaps alcoholic; but if so, a chemist would say there was no doubt of the latter. — Let me take the opportunity of saying that, in the Teetotal publications I have seen, the references to the profane writers of antiquity are not a whit more accurate than their use of Scripture. A partial view of the author cited is ? day; of frequent occurrence, and not the gravest fault. Thus, In "Anti-Bacchus," much emphasis is laid upon the wine described by Homer. It was μελιηδής, and therefore! free from alcohol. But, how comes it that the reader is never told of the praise lavished on the vine of these times, because it was αἶθοψ, i.e. fiery or sparkling? Does the latter epithet prove that the wine was not fermented? or that it owed this characteristic to drugs? — Again, it is said, all writers seem to agree that the Greek wines were lusciously sweet. Now, without multiplying proofs to the contrary, we are assured by Prof. Ramsay that "there is no foundation whatever for the remark that the finest Greek wines, especially the products of the islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, belonged for the most part, to the luscious sweet class. The very reverse is proved by the epithets αὐστηρός σκληρός, λεπτός, and the like, applied to a great number, while γλυκύς and γλυκάζων are designations comparatively rare, except in the vague language of poetry. 'Vinum omne dulce minus odoratum,' says Pliny. (H.N. 14: 11, and the ancients appear to have been fully sensible that sweet wines could not be swallowed either with pleasure or safety, except in small quantitles. The mistake had arisen from not perceiving that the expressions οἶνος γλυκύς and οἷνος ἡδύς joys are by no means necessarily synonymous. The former signifies wine positively sweet; the latter, wine agreeable to the taste, from the absence of acidity, in most cases indicating nothing more than sound wine." (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, page 1050) Further, what unbiased person could argue from the expressions of a Roman poet that Lesbian was absolutely without alcohol? That it was among the weakest wines, and therefore termed comparatively "innocent," all admit but that it was an unfermented liquor is mere assumption. Those who assert it are bound to adduce something like evidence.

Ch. v.

HOSEA.

4: 18. — Their drink is sour. (margin, gone*)

NAHUM.

1: 10. — And while they are drunken [as] drunkards.

* There seems to be strong reason to prefer, with the margin, the natural sense of soor, as "departed," "past.'' ("recessit, i.e.transiit," Geseniuis Compare Amos 6: 7. So the Vulgate, "Separatum est convivium eorum," and De Wette, Ist ihr Zechgelag vorüber.

§ 5. Asis, SWEET WINE.

Besides occurring once as spiced wine of the juice of pomegranate, it is found in four places and translated sweet, or new wine. It is unquestionably derived from a root which means to tread: "succus, calcando expressus, spec. succus uvarum, mustum." (Eichhorn's Simonis.) In its origin, then, the word may have denoted no more than "trodden juice." Its usage is a different question. Thus, it was employed to express the juice of fruit irrespective of treading; and the context of Isa. 49: 26, and Joel 1: 5, is decisive as to its intoxicating quality where it denotes wine: Prof. Stuart himself admits this, as regards the former passage. Lowth, in his Notes on Isaiah, gives it as his opinion that even Cant. 8: 2 means wine, made inebriating by the mixture of more powerful ingredients.

Ch. v.

CANTICLES.

8: 2. — To drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.

ISAIAH.

19: 26. — Drunken with their own blood, as with sweet (margin, new) wine.

JOEL.

1: 5. — Howl, all ye drinkers of wine because of the new wine.

3: 18. — The mountains shall drop down new wine.

AMOS.

9: 13. — And the mountains shall drop sweet (margin, or new) wine.

§ 6 Mimsak, MIXED WINE.

The word occurs twice. It is explained by Gesenius as "vinum aromatibus mixtum. i.q. ." The mingling here was not, as in some cases, to dilute the liquor, but rather to increase its strength, like Pliny's "vinum aromatites,"* and the τρίμμα of Athenaeus. Accordingly, in the the LXX we have κέρασμα in Isa. 65: 8. The Vulgate is more like the authorized version, "libatis." The meaning seems to be "preparing the mixed wine for Meni," i.e. Fate. De Wette adopts Mills' view of the word here, as "the goblet" in which the mingling took place; in Prov. 23 he renders it "the mixed wine." The word mezeg occurs in Cant. 7: 2, where it is vaguely rendered "liquor," but better represented in the margin as "mixture." "Vinum mixtum, i.e. aromatibus conditum," is the explanation of Gesenius. So also the kindred mesek "mixture," in Ps. 75: 8. The verb-form occurs in the sense of mingling spice with wine in Prov. 9: 25 and Isa. 5: 22, which Gesenius classes together. One is a good, the other is an evil connection. Nor is the word mesek, but mimsak, in Prov. 23: 30, contrary to the statement in the "Concordance of Scripture and Science," pages 62, 63. It is also the strange assertion of another writer (Temperance Topic, page 129) that the Greek ἄκρατος answers to the Hebrew mesek in reality, the latter means "mingled;" the former, "unmingled." The same writer gives merum to another Hebrew word, whereas it is the Latin term for ἄκρατος.

* When the same writer says that "the most wholesome wine is that which has nothing added to the must," he does not mean that the liquor in its unfermented state, was wine, properly so called; but that the mixture of drugs (which, according to the Roman custom, was previous to or during fermentation, and not, as with the Greeks, afterwards) is injurious. Neither does he intimate that this most wholesome wine would not inebriate. Again, the filtering which he describes was meant, not to make the wine more moral, if we may use the absurd term of Theophrastus, but more useful to debauchees who wished to drink an immense quantity with the least possible danger of intoxication.

Ch. v.

PROVERBS.

23: 30. — They that go to seek mixed wine.

ISAIAH.

65: 11. — And that furnish the drink offering unto that number.

§ 7. Shekar, STRONG DRINK.

Shekar h to which the Greek σίκερα evidently corresponds, is connected by Fürst with ker, a Sanscrit root, signifying to burn; by others, with an Arabian word, (whence our sugar,) which denoted a saccharine substance, whether in a liquid or in a concrete state. The verb-form* is frequently used in Scripture (as in Gen. 9: 21; 1 Sam. 1: 14 ; 2 Sam. 11: 13; Isa. 29: 9, etc.) to denote intoxication. Accordingly, Gesenius explains the term, "temetum, potus inebrians, sive vinum Num. 28: 7, sive potus vini instar inebrians," etc. The ancient versions, the Greek and Latin fathers, and the lexicographers of early and recent times coincide in representing it as a liquor possessed of inebriating properties. See especially Prov. 20: 1, and Isa. 28: 7. In one passage only it is clear, if we compare Num. 28: 7, with Ex. 29: 40, that wine is meant. Elsewhere, it was an artificial wine made of barley, wheat, honey, or any fruits, excepting grapes. So Jerome says: "Sicera Hebraeo sermone omnis potio, quae inebriare potest, sive illa," etc. In Eichhorn's Simonis it is explained as an intoxicating drink, 1) a sort of ale. 2) palm-wine. Bishop Lowth prefers the rendering "sweet drink," yet considers that its name is "from its remarkable inebriating qualities." De Wette agrees with the English translators, in rendering it "strong drink," which is obviously better than "sweet drink;" because the latter does not, and the former does, convey the idea of the intoxicating power which the very best authorities connect with shekar. It occurs in Scripture twenty-three times, where its force is evident. That it refers to sweet fruit in Deut. 14 is, as we have seen in § 2, a mere and groundless fancy. The word "eat" (akal) is no valid objection to the liquid interpretation, as the reader may gather from Isa. 55: 1. See also Eichhorn's Simonis and Gesenius on Isa. 7: 15, 22.

* It is thus explained by Gesenius, "1) bibit ad satietem (i. q. ravah) Haggai 1: 6, ad hilaritatem usque Cant. 5: 1; Gen. 43: 34. Saepius est 2) inebriavit se," etc.

Ch. v.

LEVITICUS.

10: 9. — Do not drink wine nor strong drink.

NUMBERS.

6: 3. — He shall separate [himself] from wine, and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink

28: 7. — In the holy [place] shalt thou cause the strong wine to be poured unto the LORD for a drink-offering.

DEUTERONOMY

14: 26. — For wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth.

29: 6. — Neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink.

JUDGES.

13: 4. — And drink not wine nor strong drink.

7. — And now drink no wine nor strong drink.

14. — Neither let her drink wine or strong drink.

1 SAMUEL.

1: 15. — I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink.

PSALMS.

69: 12. — The song of the drunkards. (margin, drinkers of strong drink.)

PROVERBS.

20: 1. — Strong drink [is] raging

31: 4. — Nor for princes strong drink.

6. — Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish.

ISAIAH.

5: 11. — Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink.

22. — Men of strength to mingle strong drink

24: 9. — Strong drink shall be bitter to them that drink it.

28: 7. — Through strong drink are out of the way: the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink they are out of the way through strong drink.

29: 9. — They stagger, but not with strong drink.

56: 12. — And we will fill ourselves with strong drink.

MICAH.

2: 11. — I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink.

§8. Shemarim, LEES.

The term is twice (Isa. 25: 6) translated "wines on the lees," twice "lees," (Jer. 48: 11. Zeph. 1: 12,) and once "dregs." (Ps. 75: 8.) It is said that a kindred word is found in the Coptic, where it means "fermentation." In the first of these texts De Wette gives Hefen-weinen, and in the others Hefen, which means lees, as well as yeast. Most lexicographers derive the Hebrew word from a root meaning to preserve, but their explanations are various. That rich old wine is figuratively referred to in Isa. 25: 6, they admit, as many accurate versions have done. The link is easy between lees and wine, not so with "sweetmeats," whereby some would render the word.

§ 9. Yekev, WINEFAT.

It may be well to notice that h yekev, rendered "wine" in Deut. 16: 13, means "wine-press," or specifically, "winefat." (ὑπολήνιον, lacus torcularis.) See Num. 18: 27, 30; Deut. 15: 14; Judges 7: 25; 2 Kings 6: 27; Job 24: 11; Prov. 3: 10; Isa. 5: 2; Isa. 16: 10; Jer. 48: 33; Hosea 9: 2; Joel 2: 24; Joel 3: 13; Haggai 2: 16; Zech. 14: 10, which are all the other passages of the Old Testament where the word occurs. The vat is used figuratively for the wine it produced, as the floor is for the corn. De Wette preserves the figure thus: Wenn du einsammelst von deiner Tenne und von deiner Kelter, as the LXX and the Vulgate had done before him. The margin of the English Bible gives the literal force in the only instance where the text departs from it.

§ 10. Ashisheh Anavim, GRAPE CAKES.

In Hosea 3: 1, we find the expression h Ashisheh Anavim, which is rendered in our version "flagons of wine." (Margin, grapes.) Gen. 40: 10, 11; Gen. 49: 11; Jer. 25: 5; Num. 6: 3; Num. 13: 20, 23; Deut. 23: 24; Deut. 32: 14, 23; Neh. 13: 15; Isa. 5: 2, 4, Jer. 8: 13; Hosea 9: 10; Amos 9: 13, are all the passages where the former term occurs, and thereby the marginal translation is justified. This is confirmed by the connected word which means, says Gesenius, "liba, spec. qualia ex uvis passis in certam quandam formam constipatis parare solebant." "Cakes of grapes," or "raisins," would appear to be the right rendering. So De Wette gives Rosinen-kuchen, not only here, but in 2 Sam. 6: 19;1 Chr. 16: 3; Cant. 2:5.

§ 11. Devash, GRAPE HONEY.

Besides this confection of dried grapes, a kind of grape-jelly, or jam, is mentioned in Scripture. (See §4.) For this the Hebrews employed the term h devash, which was used to denote not only common and wild honey, but also an artificial syrup made of grapes, dates, etc., as probably is meant in Gen. 43: 11, 2 Chr. 31: 5, and Ezek. 27: 17. Gesenius adds, that it was must boiled down to one-third or one-half — Gr. ἕφημα; lat. sapa, defrutum, etc. "The finest grapes" (says a modern traveller in Palestine, Dr. Robinson,) "are dried as raisins; and the rest being trodden and pressed, the juice is boiled down to a syrup, which, under the name of dibs, (debesh in Hebrew, signifying honey and syrup of grapes,) is much used by all classes, wherever vineyards are found, as a condiment with their food." There is no reason whatever to confound, either with this syrup or with the grape-cakes of Hosea 3: 1, any one of the terms for wine which have been already explained These preparations of the grape, whether solid or liquid, were probably unintoxicating.* Not so the soveh, the asis , and the shemarim , with which some modern writers have sought to identify them. (See §§ 4, 5, and 8.)

* Nevertheless, Mr. W. E. Lane, author of "The Modern Egyptians," speaks of zebeed as a name given to an intoxicating conserve, as well as to raisin-liquor.

While upon this we may refer to Mamtakkim, the plural of a word which means "sweetness." Besides in Cant. 5: 16, which is not to our purpose, it occurs in Neh. 8: 10, where our Bible gives "the sweet." It is used to express sweet drink, without defining any particular kind, and so may have included yayin and shekar. Some may be inclined to view it as οἰνόμελι of the Greek, or mulsum of the Roman. This was of two kinds; in the one honey was mixed with wine, in the other with must. The latter, therefore, says Prof. Ramsay, was merely a very rich fruit syrup in no way allied to wine. The context, however, seems to favour the less determinate sense.

§ 12. Dema, LIQUORS.

Moreover, in Exodus 22: 29, we have another word which is as yet unnoticed, h dema. In the text, it is rendered "liquor," and in the margin "tear," which is its literal force, though, being here used metaphorically of must and oil dropping from the press, our version gives the sense. De Wette has Mit der Fülle [deiner Tenne] und dem Ausflusse [deiner-Kelter] as the LXX,with equal indefiniteness, ἀπαρχὰς ἅλωνος καὶ ληνοῦ. A similar application of "tears" occurs among the Arabs, as well as in Latin and Greek authors. Thus Theophrastus has τῶν δένδρων τὰ δάκρυα, and Pliny, arborum lacrimas. (N. H. lib. xi. c. 6.)

§ 13. Chometz, VINEGAR.

Prof. Stuart has attempted, but in vain, to disturb the common rendering of h chometz in Num. 6, where the Nazarite, it is said, "shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink." So the LXX ὄξος ἐξ οἴνου καὶ ὄξος ἐκ σίκερα οὐ πιέται, and the Vulgate, "acetum ex vino, et ex qualibet alla potione." It occurs also in Ruth 2: 14, Ps. 69: 21, Prov. 10: 26, Prov. 25: 20, and in all is translated "vinegar." But in the Nazarite's case, the American Professor would have it to mean fermented wine, or fermented shekar, because of its derivation. Now, it is clear that, if this notion had been well founded, it would destroy his own main position, that yayin and shekar are generic terms, including fermented as well as unfermented liquors. Again, it is certain, first, that fermentation is equally predicable of acetous as of vinous liquors; and, secondly, that if, strictly speaking, h chometz means acidification, then acidulated wine or strong drink, is a phrase more applicable to the acetous than to the vinous fermentation. Thus, then, the true restriction laid down in the chapter respects: 1, the fermented liquor of grapes, h (yayin) and of other fruits or of grain, etc. h (shekar); 2, the vinegar of these liquors; 3, any liquor of grapes* ("potus ex uvis solutis s. maceratis," Gesenius.) This might include such a liquor as is described in the dream of Pharaoh's butler, which certainly was not wine† or vinegar, and was called neither the one nor the other in Gen. 42; 4, moist grapes or dried; and 5, any thing made of the vine, from the kernels even to the husk.

* Green grapes are, to this day, used in various ways in making a sour-sweet drink, as we are informed by the Missionary Homes. — In Eichhorn's Simonis, we are told that F. M. Lufft understood it to be the sherbet of the Arabs.

† "Aegyptii enim (says Rosenmüller) ante Psammetichi regis aetatem neque ipsi biberunt vinum, neque Diis libarunt, docti a sacerdotibus vino inesse pestiferum aliquid."

It remains to notice the corresponding words in the New Testament.

§ 1. ΟΙΝΟΕ, WINE.

Οἶνυς, (vinum,) is unquestionably "the general term for the fermented juice of the grape." (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, page 1044.) When accompanied by qualifying terms, it was, like our own "wine," capable of being applied to wines made of palm-juice, lotus-juice, etc. Similarly modified, it was even used of the fermented juice of apples, pears, etc., and of barley, wheat, etc. There was, besides, a large class termed οἶνοι ὑγιεινοί into which drugs were introduced for medicinal purposes. Not only, says Prof. Ramsay, were spices, etc., steeped in wine or incorporated during fermentation, but even the precious perfumed essential oil (unguenta) were mixed with it before it was drunk. In Rev. 6: 6, οἶνος is used, by metonymy, for the vine-fruit.* But such a case affords not the slightest ground for the notion that it ever does or can denote, properly, anything else than wine, i.e. fermented grape-liquor. Such reasoning would unsettle the basis of all language. And yet this is the ground on which some† have ventured to assail the ordinary meaning which has been hitherto attached to h tirosh and h yayin — to the former in every passage, and to the latter in certain texts of the Old Testament! Here, as there, we have the corn (distinguished, it is true, in a remarkable way) and the oil. And it is the association of the corn and the oil with the wine, which, among other considerations, has led to the fancy that their Hebrew equivalents, so often joined together, mean really, and not metonymically only, the solid produce or ingathering of the field, the orchard and the vineyard. Nobody denies that we may so understand the words by the familiar figure which takes the wine and oil as the chief representatives of all the other products. From this figurative application to argue that ἔλαιον and οἶνος really mean olives and grapes respectively — from a similar premise to draw the same deduction as to yitzhar and tirosh ‡ — is a sample of the critical ingenuity of our day, which makes up in temerity what it lacks in truth and even the appearance of reason.

* Just so, we speak of "a wine-grower," instead of employing the more literally correct phrase, "a grower of vines." But no sensible person would say, on this account, that "wine" means "vine fruit." The same principle applies to the figurative usage of vinum (for grapes) in Plantus, or Varro, and to vinum pendens in Cato: it explains the remark of Gesner, that vinum, vitis, uvae, and vinea, as kindred terms, are sometimes used synonymously. If unlimited there is no sense in it, but this the learned critic never meant — While upon the point, it may be observed that Livy does not speak of any invaders being ''captivated by the lusciousness of the fruits, especially of the grape." His real words are: "Eam gentem, traditur fama, dulcedine frugum, maximeque vini nova tum voluptate captam, Alpes transisse, agrosque ab Etruscis ante cultos possedisse: et invexisse in Galliam vinum illiciendae gentis caussa," etc. No scholar can have the least hesitation as to the meaning of the historian. By vini and vinum, he means "wine," and nothing else. Dr. Lees has no warrant for asserting that "the grape" is meant in Livy v. 33. Compare ix. 30; x. 23; xxv. 23; xxvi. 14; xxix. 8; xxxvi. 11, 14; xl. 19; xli. 4: xliv. 30, where, as in the passage so needlessly questioned, the word has its ordinary sense.

† See, for example, Dr. Kitto's "Physical History of Palestine." page 324., and the articles by another, on Drink, Fruit, and Wine, in his "Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature." It is only fair to add, that in his "Pictorial Bible" (Standard edition, 1848) the author is understood to have returned to the older and sounder view, if we are to judge by the note on Micah 6: 16.

‡ For a specimen of the inconsistency which goes hand in hand with error, compare, as to yitzhar and shemen, Burne's Concordance, pages 44, 43, and 56. The real difference between the two words is, that the latter means oil in general, the former means new fresh oil — "oleum," says Gesenius, "maxime recens et hornum." The relation is similar to that between tirosh and yayin. Pliny's phrase — mustum olei — may illustrate this.

Ch. v.

MATTHEW.

9: 17. — Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles.

MARK.

2: 22. — And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.

15: 23. — They gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh.*

LUKE.

1: 15. — And shall drink neither wine.

5: 37. — And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles.

38. — But new wine must be put into new bottles.†

* The corresponding text in Matthew 27: 34 seems to show that the wine in this case was a sour small liquor, ὄξος, translated vinegar, and occurring in verse 38 of the same chapter, Mark 15: 36, Luke 23: 36, John 19: 29 (bis), 30. The mingling with myrrh was to produce stupefaction, and the Lord refused that cup.

† In commenting on verse 39, the author of "Anti-Bacchus," (pages 107, 108,) first urges that it may simply allude to taste, some preferring old wine, and others new. This notion at least derives no countenance from the text, which seems to insinuate the reverse. But another explanation follows, — "Old wines, among the Romans, signified week wines, very thick wines, wines that had not fermented and would not ferment. Pliny says, etc. . . . A sweet weak wine was therefore (!) the old wine most sought alter," etc. Now, without pausing more than to state that the opening and closing remarks of the same paragraph are at open war, a citation from Prof. Ramsay's art. VINUM, is sufficient to show how far the second explanation is more successful than the first. "The ancients considered old wine, not only more grateful to the palate, but also more wholesome and invigorating, (Athen. i. p. 26. a. ii. p. 36. e.) and, curiously enough, Pliny seems to suppose that it grew more strong and fiery by age, in consequence of the dissipation of the watery particles." (H. N. vii. 3.) From the preceding page of Dr. Smith's Dictionary, it will be seen that the great majority of inferior wines were thin, watery and contained little alcohol. See pages 1047-1049. After this it is needless to expose the many wild statements of Archdeacon Jeffreys in his sermon on the wine made and used by our Lord. Of these, two may be cited as samples: "the unfermented wines of the ancients were the only wines that would keep." "The most esteemed and highly valued wines of the ancients, were totally different from what we now call wines .... were unfermented and unintoxicating." Even Dr. Lees, extreme a partisan as he is, admits that the unfermented liquor was best when new, while of fermented wine we say "the old is better." (Temperance Topic, page 130.) This frank avowal; will also dispose of Prof. Moses Stuart's argument in page 53 of the same publication.

Ch. v.

7: 33. — Neither eating bread, nor drinking wine.

10: 34. — Pouring in oil and wine.

JOHN.

8: 3. — And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto him, they have no wine.

9. — The water that was made wine.*

10. — At the beginning doth set forth good wine thou hast kept the good wine until now.

4: 46. — Where he made the water wine.

ROMANS.

14: 21. — Neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine.

EPHESIANS.

5: 18. — And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.†

* Is it right to quote Augustine (in Joann. tract 8) as a Teetotal witness in any way or degree I In truth, he argues against the Manicheans, and taxes them with perverseness in attributing wine to the devil whilst they would eat grapes. The reasoning may be indifferent, as the language is overstrained. Of this, advantage is taken to prop up the delusion which the illustrious Bishop of Hippo was exposing! For what is the theory of "Tirosh lo Yayin" but the Manichean error in new dress? Nor was it confined to these heretics. Theodoret, Epiphanius and Basil the Great describe other sects which maintained views about wine similar to those held by modern Teetotalers of the ultra ranks. Dr. Grindrod admits the fact, but denies the analogy, on the ground that these ancient parties were heterodox in matters of faith. Now, first, the analogy is in reference to wine, and this does not depend upon other matters. Secondly, it will be shown presently that, as in ancient so. In modern times, heterodoxy in matters of faith accompanies these views.

† Two words in this verse have bees subjected to no little violence. First, it is said that μεθύσκεσθε means drenched rather than "drunk;" secondly, that ἀσωτία means danger, not "excess." Now, it is certain that In the New Testament the regular word for drunkenness is μέθη, for drunkard μέθυσος, for making drunk μεθύσκω, and for getting drunk μεθύω, or, what is equivalent the preceding word in Mid. as in our text. That μεθύει, in 1 Cor. 11: 21, means "plentifully fed," is the mistaken notion of Mr. Ewing in his N. T. Lexicon. But πεινᾶ compels us to no such violence. Our own version faithfully represents the original, and makes good sense, in spite of the strictures of Archdeacon Jeffreys, The Septuagint translation of Ps. 36: 8 is not parallel, because wine is not in question, and the expression is certainly figurative. The Vulgate also has the same — Inebriabunter ab ubertate domus tuae." Here, on the contrary, it is a question of literal eating and drinking. All admit that μ. may metaphorically mean "soaked," "steeped," as in oil or water. Hence it may also be transferred from the effect of wine to that of passion. But all this does not in the least weaken the proper meaning of the word. Accordingly, even in 1 Cor 11: 21, we have the same idea given in the versions of Wiclif, (1380,) Tyndal, (1534.) Cranmer, (1539,) Geneva, (1557,) Rheims, (1582,) and the authorized. (1611.) It is the same sense in John 2: 10, save in the Bible of Wiclif, who has "fulfilled." The ruler evidently did know the good wine from the had: he is merely describing the custom of substituting a worse wine when men could not discern the difference. That is, the context favours the common rendering. — Next, that ἀσωτία in the New Testament, means "excess," "prodigality," "dissoluteness," is manifest. It has just the same force in classic Greek. He who has read Aristotle's Eth. Nicom. may remember the sentence (ii. 7) — περὶ δὲ δόσιν χρημάτων καὶ λῆψιν, μεστὴς μὲν ἐλευθεριότης, ὑπερβολὴ δὲ καὶ ἔλλειψις, ἀσωτία καὶ ἀνελευθερία. Not danger but waste is the thought. So in Rhet. ii., where it is contrasted with φειδώ. This may justify our translators: though "riotousness" as given in the Rhemish, accords well with their own version of Titus 1: 6, 1 Peter 4: 4 and of a kindred word in Luke 15: 13. Wiclif translated the last clause "wherein is lechery." But to say that he understood the evil to be a property of the wine, is as unwarrantable as to say that our translators meant "the excess" to be in the first drop. Just apply this notion to 1 Tim. 5: 23, and we should have the Spirit of God advising Timothy to use a little "danger," or "excess," or even worse, for his stomach's sake. Their absurdity is not the worst thing about these pseudo-criticisms. It is evident, I think, that ἀσωτία refers to μεθ. οἴνῳ, not to one only, but both.

Ch. v.

1 TIMOTHY.

3: 8. — Not given to much wine.

5: 23. — Use a little wine [or thy stomach's sake.

TITUS.

2: 3. — Not given to much wine.

REVELATION.

6: 6. — Hurt not the oil and the wine.

14: 8. — The wine of the wrath of her fornication.

10. — The wine of the wrath of God.

16: 19. — The wine of the fierceness of his wrath.

18: 2. — Drunk with the wine of her fornication.

18: 3. — The wine of the wrath of her fornication.

13. — And frankincense, and wine, and oil.

19: 15. — And he treadeth the wine-press.

§ 2. ΑΚΡΑΤΟΕ, PURE WINE.

In Rev. 14: 10, we have the expression τοῦ κεκερασμένου ἀκράτου, more fully describing "the wine of the wrath of God." Lowth and others consider it to convey an antithesis which does not appear in our version — "the mingled unmingled;" that is, the figure is taken from wine unmixed with water to weaken, but mixed with drugs to increase, its strength. See § 6. The reader may compare an illustration in the Septuagint version of Ps. 75: 8, οἴνου ἀκράτου πλῆρες κεράσματος. Here, as in Revelation, the word is an adjective, and so understood in the best translations. Since, however, it is beyond doubt used substantivally, like the Latin merum, in classic authors, it seems well to notice a word, which is included in most Teetotal lists of New Testament terms.

§ 3. ΓΛΕΥΚΟΕ, SWEET WINE.

Γλεῦκος appears to be used properly and ordinarily in classic Greek to denote the sweet unfermented juice of the grape. Nevertheless, it is certain, from Acts 2: 13 compared with verse 16, that this is not its New Testament sense. That a word may bear a meaning here different from what it has in classic authors is confessed. (Temperance Topic, pages 95, 96.) The context shows that a wine which was familiarly known to possess intoxicating properties, is meant. Mere irony! exclaim Dr. Lees (M. D. Discussion, p. 18) and Mr. Burne. (Concordance, pp. 100, 101.) But if the insinuation of the Jewish scoffers had been ironical, would an apostle have gravely replied, "These are not drunken, AS YE SUPPOSE" — not merely as ye say? Do men in these days pretend to understand the taunt better than St. Peter did? Or if he be allowed to have understood, do they mean that he chose to allude to it as if he had not? Alas! what is such reasoning; if it be not taking pleasure in unrighteousness? The sense is perfectly simple to those who believe the Word of God. Mr. Burne tells us, that "no part of Scripture is better calculated to support the wine question doctrines of Total Abstinence, than this." It may be so; but the Christian will thence conclude how far the Bible sanctions Teetotalism, and how far such interpretations inspire him with confidence in the judgment of its advocates.

Ch. v.

ACTS.

2: 13. — These men are full of new wine.

§ 4. ΕΙΚΕΡΑ, STRONG DRINK.

Είκερα is explained by Liddell and Scott as "a sweet fermented liquor, strong drink." As it is clearly the Hellenistic form of h shekar the reader is referred to the Hebrew word. Like γλεῦκος, it is found but once in the New Testament.

Ch. v.

LUKE.

1: 15. — And shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.

§ 5. ΓΕΝΝΗΜΑ ΑΜΠΕΛΟΥ, FRUIT OF THE VINE

'To these we may add a phrase used by our Lord in Matt. 26: 29, Mark 14: 25, Luke 22: 18, τοῦ γεννήματος τῆς ἀμπέλου, "the fruit or product of the vine." Those who consider tirosh to mean all vintage-fruit, treat γ. τ. ἀ. as being synonymous with that Hebrew term. (Market Drayton Discussion, p. 26.) Now, every text where the Greek expression occurs gives a clear and decisive negative. The three Gospels prove that "this fruit of the vine" was a liquid capable of being drunk, not a solid, as the grape or vintage-fruit is. Yet this gross inconsistency appears, not only in the same page, but in the same line of the leading Teetotal champion! Nor is this all. The same individual, in the Temperance Topic, p. 130, affirms that the language of our Lord is only applicable to old unfermented wine, or to raisin-wine! Does tirosh mean either, even on his own scheme? or on the scheme of any body else?

Having now, expressly or tacitly, exposed the character of the principal statements, reasonings and criticisms, put forth by those who claim Scriptural support for the Teetotal Society, I would gladly close. But it is my painful duty to warn brethren in Christ, who may be here and there among them, of two baleful heresies which appear in the recent expositions of the extreme school. One is the impious folly which seeks to undermine the plenary inspiration of God's Book. They assert that Genesis e. g. is not a literal inspired history of creation, that it opens with a fable which is the vesture of great spiritual truths, that it is a book with distinct and composite elements — its Elohim and Jehovah documents dovetailed in the history. (Temp. Topic, pp. 118-120. See Burne's Concordance, pp. 10-12, 78.) Hence the change of the common rendering of 2 Tim. 3: 16, without a reason or even a notice to the unsuspecting reader. Thus, the author of "Anti-Bacchus" (p. 112) silently reads "all Scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable,"* etc. Obviously the object is to turn the edge of the text, nay, to make it appear to sanction an error which its correct sense utterly condemns! The practical consequence also is clear. Man sits in judgment upon that word which shall judge him at the last day, and censures with various degrees of incredulity the Pentateuch of Moses, Canticles, Daniel, the Gospels, Hebrews, and the Apocalypse. He cannot find what he expects a priori, and at once stigmatizes such and such books as at issue with his ephemeral notions, and therefore not given by inspiration of God. That is, his poor, proud mind, constitutes itself the umpire of what God ought to be and to reveal, and condemns whatever is against or above itself!

* I am prepared, if this were the proper place and, season, to prove that the authorized version contains the only right translation of the verse: that for the proposed alteration there is no warrens either in Scripture or (so far as I know) in any correct Greek writing; and that the Holy Ghost elsewhere, by a similar construction, owns the common rendering with approval and shows the change to be the offspring of man's meddling semi-erudition.

The real question, then, is between the present day, and (not the Jews nor even Moses, but) the Holy Ghost. And what do these self-blinded men? Fairly scouting what they slightingly call the doctrine of verbal and scientific inspiration, they decidedly maintain the superior certainty of modern science, where it ventures to speak. Let us be thankful at least for their candour, and pray that God may be pleased to rouse such of His sheep as have listened to a voice far, far different from that of the good Shepherd. When men are fallen to such a depth of rationalism as to ridicule divine inspiration as divine ventriloquy, and to deny the exactness of scriptural history, which they would sublimate into a myth, it is time to remember that all men have not faith, and to shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness.

Still more deadly is the second heresy. It is the open denial of the divine glory of the Lord Jesus and of his atonement. One clear passage may suffice where a doctrine is so revolting and blasphemous. It occurs in a critique on a volume of Rhymes, the theology of which is characterized as execrable and immoral. On what ground? "By a gross misunderstanding of Scripture, [it] represents the God of truth as charging one man's sins upon another! i.e. Adam's upon us! ours upon Adam!! and all upon Jesus Christ!!! Does not God look upon things as they are? Deals he in legal or theological fictions?" (Temperance Topic, p. 136.) Most readers probably know as little as I do about these Rhymes; their doctrine may not be unexceptionably propounded, but ever, Christian will feel the sentiments just quoted to be the slander of an enemy upon the cross and personal honour of Him who is God over all blessed for ever. To reason upon it would suppose an amount of ignorance and indifference about the Saviour's glory, which cannot be presumed in any who really know and love Him.

Such are the doctrines of accredited advocates of Teetotalism — not of all, but of some who rank as the ablest, the most active, and the most acceptable in the society, excepting perhaps the well-known Popish priest, Father Mathew. Alas! Romanism, Infidelity, and Latitudinarianism are rapidly finding and taking common ground against all who value the doctrine of Christ. But can you, dear brethren, countenance, in any way, those who hold, publish, preach these soul-destroying errors? If we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And what fellowship hath light with darkness? Remember, he that biddeth such an one God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds. (2 John 9-11.) To those who are still in the darkness of nature I do not address these exhortations, but to you who are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

LITTLE CHILDREN, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS.

The Word of God

2 Tim. 3: 16.

W. Kelly.

When God made man, He did not make him as he is, any more than the world as it is. He made everything good, but He was not pleased to put forth His power to keep everything good. He was pleased to put the creature to the proof. He tried the creature in two great spheres — above and below. The angels fell before man; and the chief of those that fell above is the great tempter. No man can account for sin, for the ruin of the world, in any other way than Scripture reveals. Many a man has essayed to do so. The brightest wits and the greatest minds have attempted it; but they have never conceived anything that was not rubbish when they have not followed the word of God. Some have endeavoured to account for sin by supposing that there are two Gods — a good one and a bad one; because there are evidences of goodness all around us, and there are too plainly the evidences of badness. This hypothesis, I need not stay to show, is sheer folly. There is but one who is Almighty; and man cannot get rid of the consciousness of One — not merely one thing but One Being — One who has power and will and purpose, One who has affections no less than mind, but who, nevertheless, subjects the creatures that He made to a moral probation. If He kept everything from falling, there could be no such trial at all. All would be mechanical or chemical; and the wonderful scene of the conflict of good and evil — of good wrought by His grace in the heart of man, and rising above Satan's power and wiles of evil — would be quite lost. What is still more important, the active display of love and righteousness on God's part, of moral qualities reproduced in repentant believing man, would be completely destroyed, if it were merely divine power so keeping the creature that there could be no failure.

But evil never came from God — only from the creature once innocent, now fallen, that kept not his first estate, but chose to do his own will and have his own way. An angel did this first. Man was misled by him who, straying and exalting himself, beguiled others both in heaven and on earth. That creature is called Satan — the Devil. All efforts to get rid of this fact have proved utterly vain, so much so that the boasted lights of antiquity fell consequently into one or other of these notions: either that God is everything, which denies sin; or, secondly, that there is no such being as God at all; while both cases led to worshipping ever so many false gods. Witness now the two greatest philosophers of Greece who have exercised perhaps the largest and most enduring influence over civilised men outside the Bible — the one the head of Pantheism, the other of Atheism. There is what man's thought ends in when it is logically carried out. Man in his fallen estate may reason God away; yet he excludes God, not from his conscience, but in his reason; for at the bottom of the man's heart who does so there is the uneasy feeling that what he sees around him did not grow like a potato — least of all, he himself and his fellows. He feels that, though fallen, he is a moral being who will have to give an account of his action; and to whom but to God — the One who made him and all things?

The creature, having fallen from God, has lost the truth. No longer innocent, he has God as his Judge. Satan lost Him first, for ever, and his angels. Man and his race have lost Him; but oh what mercy now shines on us! Yet you, dear friends, every one of you, like myself, once had Him not. Have you found Him? Do you know Him? Do not tell me you cannot. You cannot of yourselves: man cannot by searching find out God. But God can reveal Himself. It is true, a keen infidel who is still living [?] said the contrary — said it was impossible for God to make a revelation of Himself; but the book in which he, a Deist, said this proved the folly of it. If an infidel can make a revelation of his mind to do people mischief, I suppose God can make a revelation of His mind to do men good. Is not this reasoning a sound and sufficient answer? Can any man, save an atheist, deny the force or the reality of it? If a bad being can reveal his mind to ruin, cannot the All-wise and All-good reveal His mind to save? Of course He can. The notion, therefore, that God cannot reveal His mind is not only false but denies that He is light and love — a falsehood that is contradicted by the very effort to argue in its support. The writer makes a revelation of his mind, such as it is; and we reply, If man can make a revelation of his mind, surely God can of His: otherwise you are reduced to the absurdity, that what is possible to man is impossible to God. Is this reasonable, or is it folly? Can any man in this room maintain that, what a man can do in his feeble way, God cannot do in His blessed and almighty way?

Now the Bible lets us see from the first — and it is worthy of God — that no sooner had man turned against God through the instigation of a mightier rebel than himself, than a way of escape for man on God's part was opened up in hope. Man succumbed to Satan working upon the will of the woman. Ah! how natural it is, as most know quite well — how true to the heart of both. The woman's feelings get entangled, and she is deceived. A man, if God were not concerned, properly loves his wife, and can not bear to leave her alone. His affections engage him; everything as a man and a husband combines to make him go along with her, although here alas! it was rebellion against God. This is exactly what Scripture lets us see in Adam and Eve. The devil knew what he was about. Eve was deceived — Adam was not. She was drawn into sin, and, through her, Satan misled Adam into sin boldly; and such has been the history of many a man and woman since then. This does not throw blame on the woman only. They must divide the sin between them; and he is a base man who would try, as Adam did afterwards, to throw the whole on his wife. But it is the effect of sin. He, who ought to have been her shelter and protector, first followed the bad example and then betrayed her — as it were, an informer against her. How degrading is sin ! So it was from the first, and is to the last.

Now, let us look at God. We have seen enough of Satan and enough of man for the moment; let us turn to Him who here comes on the scene, and whose first word shows the havoc that the devil had made. "Adam, where art thou?" No readiness to meet God now — no candour, confidence, or truthfulness; man hides himself, in despair, behind the trees in the garden, with a bad conscience. "Adam, where art thou?" Man was gone from God. This is the state of man still, of all mankind, of every one of us naturally. I do not say that we all abide there now. Thanks be to God, He is a Saviour God. But He judges sin. In Himself He is light and He is love. Our sins make Him a Judge: His grace made Him a Saviour. We all naturally think of God as a Judge, because we all naturally more or less have a sense of sin; and guilt always dreads a moral account, the retribution, the judgment of God. Conscience erects a judgment-seat, even before man must rise from the grave to stand before the great white throne and give in his account. A man may try to get rid of it, and he may do so while pre-occupied. He may drug himself with ample material in this poor stupefying world, with its varied and intoxicating pleasures; but the moment of sobriety, the anguish of self-judgment, comes, and God is on the judgment-seat of conscience.

Scripture says that God did then deal with man — fallen man — to lay his sin upon his conscience, and to trace its root to the evil personage that had brought it in, and to announce the glorious truth of grace meeting the evil and ruin, of grace providing a righteous way of escape. If ever there was a worthy purpose for revelation, this must be one. And this is exactly what Scripture reveals. It is not the dream of the gods coming down to indulge themselves in wickedness, as some of the greatest wits in this world have believed. They had sunk low enough to receive that their deities were drunkards, fornicators, thieves and liars. Such were they whom the heathen adored, and amongst the heathen were some of the brightest men that ever lived. It was not for want of intellect or refined culture, nor for want of learning any more than logical power, that they fell into such gross deceits. No one can say this who knows the history of the world, and of the men upon it.

Apart from the Bible, there is sin, misery, ruin, and death. Scripture lets in the light of God, and that light assuredly is far from being the lurid menace of punishment merely. It reveals incomparably more and brighter things than the awful scene where sinners are judged for their sins. This there is and ought to be for those who defy and reject grace — for those who in the face of the Saviour's cross deny God coming down to man, deeply pitying him, and fully providing for his salvation. The Bible accounts for sin but never justifies or slights it. Man, under Satan, wrought that evil thing. The Bible shows the way out of sin, and that the only way to the Father is by the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, coming into this world, and that, too, given and sent by God, not implored by man. Not man devised the plan or even sought that God would of His mercy carry it out. Man never thought of it; for he with a bad conscience never expects good from God. For his soul to be saved, and his sins to be blotted out, for God to love him, and to put the best robe upon the poor ragged prodigal, for the father at the very start to embrace him, and then to bring him into such a place of joy as he never knew before — man never had so much as an inkling of grace like this.

Yet this the Bible shows is God's love to sinners, especially in the New Testament. But the man that does not believe the Old Testament is not to be trusted about the New. If a soul cavils about Genesis, I should not trust him about Romans. I know there are men who say that the New Testament is a grand book, and will confess that the first chapter of John is more sublime than anything Plato or Aristotle ever wrote. To be sure it is, infinitely so. But the man that pretends to exalt John and depreciate Moses I would not trust for a moment, because that which Moses was the instrument of revealing lays the foundation for all that John gives us. You cannot understand the blessing of the Second man — the last Adam — unless you have seen the creation and fall of the first man, Adam. There is, therefore, between the Old and New Testaments an organic unity. Nothing more remarkable than this, however much one may differ from the other.

When you see a tree, you do not require a philosopher to tell you that, when it is complete, it has all its parts with striking appropriateness — that the deep root, which penetrates the soil and gathers the materials of nourishment for the trunk and its offshoots, is as necessary for its growth as the branches and the leaves — that what is unseen is as thoroughly ordered by One who perfectly knew, as that which is visible; and that from the tree man reaps benefit, and even the cattle, for God takes in everything. Not a little tiny insect, not the greatest of quadrupeds, not a human being, that does not in some way or another reap all suited good from God; and even those things that might seem to be obnoxious in themselves form part of a vast scheme of God's contrivance, of His forethought, of His abundant provision for the wants of men or beasts here below. There is no stinginess, if I may say so, about God. He does not merely give us the things we absolutely need. This is not the way God treats man or any creature. You have only to look when the sun shines, you have but to think of the rich beauty of the earth around you — though it be a groaning creation — to see what pleasure God takes in goodness abounding. He did not make things to die, but to live in endless variety. He declares that He is not the God of the dead but of the living — this no doubt said in the highest sense is in every other way true. You see a blighted earth now; but even the blighted earth everywhere bears its testimony to the beneficent wisdom of its Maker.

But earth and sea and sky just as plainly afford traces of some dreadful evil that has passed over all — of an enemy's hand that has been there and sown evil. There is not a tempest that rages, there is not a volcano that pours out its destructive lava, there is not a blast of lightning, but tells that there is, above, below, around, disorder in this once untainted universe. And how much more, when you come down to the moral evil under which groans every town, and every hamlet; ay, perhaps every home, even the happiest hearth, has had its blight. And whence comes this? From God? Never. A being of perfect goodness and power, who would make the world and man as they are, is morally an impossible thought. But God never made the world as it now is; He did make it, but He made it good. God did not create anything unworthy of Himself.

And just here is where the value of the word of God comes in. The Bible bears witness of the grace of God meeting the ruin that man and Satan have wrought between them. It is not merely goodness in natural things, but in holy love, which, recognising and judging the evil fully, nevertheless comes down to get rid of it, and this at His own expense, and, let me add, by suffering beyond all measure. What is all that the men who ever lived have had to endure compared with the sufferings of Christ? I do not speak of what man did against Christ, but above all of what God did in His cross. You do not believe it! Then you must settle this with Christ Himself. What was there so bitter or awful in the cup He had to drink as God's making Him sin for us, when He forsook Him? How do we know? He who is "the truth" declares it — said so on the cross — said so with His dying lips, when even false men will sometimes speak the truth: how much more He who never said anything else but the truth, who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life!" Yet for our sins He died, and tasted death as none other ever did. He tasted not merely death upon the cross, but therein the judgment of God. And there is the ground on which God can be a God of all grace, the basis of grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. For He who thus died is risen — risen to be the Saviour, as He is if rejected the Judge.

Accordingly the foundation principle of this — the first germ of this weightiest of truths in the Bible — is given in the same chapter which shows us man departing from God — man forsaking God, and not God forsaking man. God forsook His Son on the cross, that He might not forsake the poorest of sinners that looks to Him. In that chapter (Gen. 3) you have a Saviour revealed to hope; and such is the allusion of the "everlasting gospel" in the Revelation. Does not this show you what a wonderful book the Bible is? It stretches over many centuries. It was written, parts of it, by kings, and by shepherd-boys, by priests, by soldiers, by civilians; by what one might call comprehensively men of every class, from the fishers of the Galilean Sea to the learned Jew of Tarsus, one of the most famous seats of philosophers at that time in the world, the rival of Athens. And yet in all the vast scope of its variety, Scripture stretching in its penmen from the days of Moses to those of the last apostle, in its themes from eternity to eternity, there is under all honest tests the most perfect harmony.

Beware, then, of those who would have you give up Moses. Listen not to the siren voices that would seek to charm you away from the truth of God, and more if they dare to tell you that they are not undermining the Bible, but only denying Moses. Alas! my good friends, to deny Moses is to undermine Christ; for Christ says that Moses wrote of Him. Christ had no question; and this is what satisfies a plain man that believes in Him. People may talk about evidences; and, of course, it is all very fine to do so with those who are not familiar with the subject, and have scanty knowledge of the original tongues. Of one thing let me remind all — whether knowing these languages or not — and it is this. Many a one knows a little Greek and some less Hebrew; but what of that? You know English; but it does not follow that you have at all a mastery of the language. Remember then that most of the young men who learn Hebrew and Greek at college are very far from having a mastery of these languages. Most have a smattering, and this is all. They are then turned off to their parishes and pulpits, where they have no time to become real scholars, as they ought not to pretend to it. This is not said out of the slightest disrespect; but simply to show you the folly of supposing that merely running through a grammar and a few works in a foreign tongue makes it really known. Not at all. Most graduates (no matter what the degree or where) would find it hard to translate unseen Hebrew or Greek. They do not know either of these languages in the least as you all know English; and yet for all that would any of you set up to be great English scholars? Even ordinarily fair and easy translation (to which few are equal without effort and preparation) is but a small step in learning. Enough however on that point.

But I press this upon you — that God has in Christ's testimony given the believer incomparably better proof than all evidences put together. Do you believe in Him the Son of God? I am now speaking to such. Some might appeal to persons who have no living faith but a mere creed, to those who talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, as others would of Socrates or Gautama Buddha, who are yet perfectly certain that the facts are true, and that His recorded words are substantially authentic. This is coming down low enough. Yet on the lowest of all grounds, on that of creed, men have still some respect for the authority of the Word made flesh — of Him who is perfect Man and true God. Now, not only is He spoken of in this word, but He speaks of God's word authoritatively and unmistakeably.

There is no use to try and shirk the truth by mustering difficulties and saying, "Ah! we don't know that." Here is a book unlike all other books, bearing the stamp of truth and holiness upon it as no other book ever written. Here you have testimony borne to the blessed One, by His apostles, whose lives and works, miraculous or not, were a bright evidence of His divine truth, grace, and power. What totally different men they became, from what they were! They used to be prejudiced, narrow-minded Jews, utterly indifferent to souls, wholly wrapt up in their own dry traditions. See how in a short time, amazingly short indeed, all was changed, and changed in virtue of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ applied to their souls by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. They gave it as their testimony — sealed not merely by blood but by a course of such lowly yet faithful devotedness as the world had never seen — that the Lord Jesus uniformly treated the Bible (that is, of course, the Old Testament) as beyond question the word of God; that Moses wrote the law; that it was not Moses' talk, which later authors wrote — not merely traditions and legends strung together partly by himself, partly by people who lived after him: the Pentateuch was written by himself. And thus in all sorts of questions you find not only His authority coming in, but the man Moses himself, as the inspired servant of God, appealed to by the Lord. "He [Moses] wrote of me."

How happy it is that a plain man or woman, or even a child, can feel the force of this testimony! Every one of you will stand before the Lord Jesus, who is the Judge both of the dead and of the living; and He has pronounced judgment upon this question. Ought it not to be fairly faced? Do you believe men — perhaps young daring men who have studied Hebrew, but with the most superficial knowledge of the Bible? or do you believe the Lord God in the person of Christ?

Look at the position of the world when the Son of God came down and gave this testimony. He stands between the two Testaments, as it were — at the end of the Old, at the beginning of the New. He pronounces upon the Old. He divides it into its parts — the three divisions with which every Jew was acquainted — the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets: the Psalms taking in the poetical books, the Prophets comprehending more than we call prophetical, the Law embracing the books of Moses. There you have substantially the Scriptures called the Old Testament. The Lord, when risen from the dead, bore testimony to the authority of these books (Luke 24). Surely you do not think that even an ordinary man carries his prejudices into the life beyond the grave!

In this world men may make mistakes, but not in the next: all illusion is then over. Just think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. You find the rich man there waking up to the reality of things. Then he cries "Father Abraham!" Then he feels what sin is, and its immediate torment, although there be not the final sentence, but the separate state. That rich man then feels how blessed is the once wretched beggar — wretched in this world — but blessed in the next, where angels carried him to Abraham's bosom. Blessed picture of God's goodness at length to a long despised sufferer, who clung in faith to His truth. In vain the rich man prays for his five brethren, that some one would go and warn them lest they should have his portion in torment. What does Scripture say? "They have Moses and the prophets." Moses — not some prophet in the days of King Josiah who wrote a religious romance for the Bible in Moses' name. Do you ask, Who speaks so wickedly? Possibly the voice of a faithless Jew or a blaspheming Gentile? I grieve to say it is too common a voice in Christendom, echoed in Scotland.

Is it not a portentous thing that men should come to such a pass? To deny the genuineness of the books of Moses is a daring insult, not only to the Scriptures, but to the Son of God Himself. It is giving the lie to the Saviour, and the Judge of all. Yet men are to be found who deny to Moses the Books of the Law — most audaciously of all, the last one that professes to come most directly from his mouth. Nevertheless if there is the least trustworthiness in Deuteronomy, it is what Moses said himself. It is not merely what he collected, or what he caused to be written, but what he uttered also.

Of course by this nobody means — except Jews perhaps — that Moses wrote the last chapter about his death and burial. I do not say it is impossible, and that God might not have revealed these things to him. But there is no need to assume any such anticipation. There is an evident break after the closing and crowning song of Moses; and the last chapter is clearly, in my judgment, added by an inspired person who took up and thus continued the record of the enlarging and developing purposes of God. No need therefore, for any bit of superstition — as I conceive it is — in supposing that Moses necessarily wrote the account of his own death. There are in Scripture evident traces of the hand of an inspired editor — of one raised up by God to put the books of the Bible together. You must remember they came out separately. Not only have they been combined since, but there are, here and there, what one may call inspired insertions. God can give an inspired editor as well as an inspired writer. Every Scripture is inspired, and so was the person who edited it and added these joints and bands when the time came to close the canon of Scripture. It is only unbelief that makes difficulties out of that which is plain enough.

But what shocks every spiritual and even moral sensibility is that any person bearing the name of a Christian — nay, of a Christian minister — should couple fiction with the books of Moses, as if they were only a religious novel founded on traditional facts and documents — on what it was conceived Moses might have said — put together ever so many hundreds of years after the legislator died. Divine wisdom has taken particular pains on this point. Christ says, Moses wrote so and so; it is not somebody else imputing it to him, but Himself vouching for Moses in a way that He does rarely for any other. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." And so it has been. Those who hear not Christ in the Gospels, reject His resurrection.

We ought to feel thankful that Scripture is so written; because it is the fatality of unbelief to degrade man as well as God — not really to exalt either. Unbelief, too, is blind enough to attack the very thing that is strongest, requiring therefore no support by arguments drawn from other passages. Take a quite different illustration. There are those that idolize the virgin Mary to the depression of the Lord Jesus; yet how remarkably Scripture contradicts the notion, and protests against it by anticipation! It is left for our instruction in the Gospels that the virgin Mary never asked the Lord anything but what the Lord, instead of granting at once, modified at the least. Again see how God guards against unduly exalting Peter as the head (practically as a foundation-stone if you please) of the Christian church. In the very chapter from which men deduce the idea that he is the rock of the church, the Lord calls him Satan. Strange rock he to be sure! Peter was a very honoured servant of God, but even such an one may at times say or do something utterly reprehensible. Therefore it is we cannot trust ourselves. The Christian is a fool who trusts himself; and therefore the Lord rebuked Peter for our profit, as well as for his own. The very God who was going to use and to honour Peter still proves what Peter was in himself. The moment he looked away from the Lord, he was as liable as any other to be turned aside into some evil snare of the devil. Apart from the Lord, you are nothing and can do nothing.

But again observe God from the very earliest bringing in what the book of Revelation calls the "everlasting gospel." How remarkable a phrase is this! Many a man has read and cited these words in Revelation 14; many have thought of them; and not a few have explained the thought unwisely, no doubt. The phrase never occurs except in this one place. Why is it called the "everlasting gospel"? There is always a propriety and a force in every word of Scripture. Let me tell you, as far as the Lord enables me. In the last book of the New Testament the Spirit of God recalls the first revelation of Christ in the Old Testament. In the garden of Eden, in the paradise that was blighted and lost by sin, God did not fail to point to the Seed of the woman — the bruised Seed of the woman, remark — that was to bruise the serpent's head. Is not this gospel? Has it not been blessed gospel from the very first? Is it not also the gospel to the very last — "everlasting gospel"? There is as yet no allusion to His being sacrificed for us. This could not be until offering or sacrifices distinctly came in. Nor was there yet a revelation of Him as Saviour of His people from their sins. His people, of course, had to be called first, and their ruin shown first and last, salvation being fitly explained afterwards. It is not the notion of priesthood. It is not the figure of a captain. Still less is it the truth of the head of the church. All these things were revealed in their due season. But the last book in the New Testament sends you back to the first book of the Old; and thus you hear the blessed voice of Christ, as it were, reverberating through all Scripture an "everlasting gospel." And why so? Because God ever takes pleasure in saving souls; and, in order to save sinners, there must ever be an "everlasting gospel. "

I speak at present of those that hear the truth — of those that listen to the word of God. Infants are not now in our view. Not that there is the least doubt that God's grace does save little children, but there is a somewhat different way of course. It is wholly unscriptural that God punishes babes if they are not christened. There is not the slightest ground for a thought so unworthy of God, so harsh to man in one way, so self-exalting to him in another. You may ask how one can know. Do you know it? How do you know anything? Through Jesus — the same One brought in to prove the Bible. Jesus the Lord shows us very clearly that the God who gave the law is greater than the law itself, and that God was showing Himself in divine grace to be much greater than in judgment. The judgment of God is a solemn certainty; but the grace of God a still deeper truth. God manifest in the flesh, God present upon earth in the person of His own Son, shows us what God feels about little children. The disciples did not like to be troubled with them. They thought it was too bad to take up their great Master's time with mere children. How did the Lord answer it? He took them up in His arms and blessed them — a good lesson for the disciples. How often they need the Lord to correct their inadequate notions! If the Lord took up and blessed little children, does it not tell me what God feels about them. He does not bless little children on earth to send them dying to hell. But if they lived to rebel against His word and against His Son the Lord Jesus, if the children when grown up dare to despise Him that died on the cross, if they refuse to accept the Saviour proclaimed in their ears, is there anything God resents more strongly ? It is bad enough for one man to lift his hand against another; and we justly abhor the man that would lift his hand against his father or his mother. But when we think of what Father sent His Son to be a Saviour how awful the wickedness of despising both, and therein of rejecting the gospel of salvation!

People pretend that they do not mean evil when they say man is but a developed monkey. But such ideas originate from the desire in man to get rid of responsibility and of God. None of that folly! You are moral beings; you have souls, you have consciences. You know very well that you are not brute beasts. You consciously have in your souls, in spite of all efforts, a dread of God, a fear of punishment for sins. A hare does not sin, nor a horse or cow; and you would be shocked at the philosopher who tried to prove that a horse, cow, or hare, had a sense of right or wrong, no less than a man. You might not be able to answer the sophistry, but you would feel that he was deceiving you.

Man is conscious of sin, and fears God; but God sent His only-begotten Son to save sinners. Hence all is changed for those that believe, and for more too. Look at the blessed change that has come over us in these very lands. Time was when our ancestors ran wild in woods, when our forefathers were stained blue, when they sacrificed their fellow creatures, and when the most shocking immorality prevailed. Elsewhere a man might marry several wives; but in this very land several men lived with one woman; and in this very land children, and even men and women, were burned in honour of their gods who were not God. What has changed all that? The name of Jesus. Even those that are not won to the True, but try to prove there is no God at all, reap incalculable benefit from the purging away of all that detestable filth and cruelty. What swept it away ? Was there no cause for it? Leave that irrationalism to the infidel. But one cause adequately accounts for such effects: only the name of Jesus — indisputably His name. Before His name was known these abominations flourished. Even the Romans, with all their power, only sinned after another manner — perhaps more decently; yet were they idolatrous and unclean. Is this the case where men really believe in Jesus? Nay, is this the case outwardly where men, even without living faith in the Lord Jesus, still respect the Bible?

I was speaking to a particularly wicked sceptic the other day in London, when he said to me deliberately, "I do not believe the Bible; but if I had the power, I should have the Bible read by every one." How strange such homage to the Bible! He acknowledged the moral power of the word, and that there was nothing like it. Frankly, however, I do not believe he would thus use power if he possessed it: you can never trust men of this stamp; yet is his remark an unmistakeable and unwilling testimony to the power of Christ and His word.

On the other hand, people who hold the Bible only in the intellect are in danger of letting it slip altogether, and of becoming downright infidels. A tendency of that kind is at work among young men now. They begin more than ever to talk disrespectfully of those who are ministers. Now, it is not my business in any way to uphold the clergy; but still I have a horror of pulling down religion that is a reality, and I have the greatest love for many clergymen. Everything that is real, righteous or good — whether it be in what people call a state-church, or in a non-established Christian society — whatever is of God I would honour and love. And every one who is of God — every man who is a minister of Christ, not merely in word but in deed and in truth — is surely to be honoured and loved. I may not agree with him; and of course he may not agree with me. You cannot expect one to uphold another if they differ rather seriously. But, then, you must remember that all other things are small compared with the word and Spirit of God, with Christ Himself and with Christ's redemption. What ecclesiastical difference is to be compared with the revelation in Christ, or of God in the Bible? Of course those differences have their due importance: and let me say that I felt them important enough to leave all that was dear to me in this way on earth. Still, we surely ought to rank Christ's person and God's word unhesitatingly above ecclesiastical questions.

And see how simple it is. The only possible means for men to know God is through His making Himself known to men. I admit that for a long time the word of God was not written. For more than two thousand years the word of God was not yet written. Men had no more than the word of God spoken, and that little word uttered in the garden of Eden — supplemented by the promises that came afterwards, as well as by manifestations that God gave from time to time — was quite enough, when God had not added more, for men to live and die and go to heaven upon. Nor is it absolutely necessary that a man should read. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." How many had only "heard" that word, and truly looked for the coming Saviour! A man's whole life is affected by this, not by deep study, but whether he rests entirely on Christ or he is trying to save himself. What a change faith in Christ effects! Receiving Him as the Son of God with my heart, and my conscience bowing to the truth which convicts me, I love Him because He first loved me. Is not this the gospel? And there in germ at least it was in Eden — "the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." It is the everlasting gospel.

Long afterwards — and there was wisdom in the arrangement — when man's age began to be shortened to its present limit, God made a written revelation. Some make merry at the idea; but the time will come when they must weep. Faith sees divine wisdom where incredulity mocks. Do you not see that when man's age is expressly said to be shortened to threescore years and ten (Ps. 90), Moses, the man of God, was first used to write down this word? Scripture, therefore, is more than the word. It was the word before Scripture, but now Scripture is God's word written by inspired men. So all Scripture teaches. Any one who is familiar with the New Testament will admit this. "Every scripture [is] given by inspiration of God." This is an important statement, because it shows that the Holy Spirit was providing for what was not yet written — for the Gospel and the Revelation of John, as examples, not yet written. Every scripture — whether what was written or what was going to be written — every scripture is given by inspiration of God.

I am perfectly aware that some learned persons translate it thus — "Every scripture, being inspired of God, [is] profitable." What difference is there? A shade in the form — nothing in the substance. The difference is that the one rendering is the assertion that it is inspired of God; the other admits or assumes that it is inspired of God. Whether it be an admission or an assertion makes no difference for anything at present before us. The point is that it is inspired of God, if you believe the apostle Paul.

The entire subject is opened out remarkably in the second chapter of First Corinthians, where is shown the part the Holy Ghost takes in three ways. It is by the Holy Ghost that the things are given (1 Cor. 2: 12); and the Holy Ghost it is by whom we receive what is by Him revealed and communicated (1 Cor. 2: 4-16). Supposing you had a revelation of the mind of God, if it be not communicated in fit words, others would not be able to apprehend it. The truth would be seen but dimly; just as light passing through a coloured medium seems to alter the colour of the thing it falls upon. But the Spirit of God cares for duly communicating in words the truth of God. Then, again, your minds are not capable of taking in the truth: but the Spirit of God deigns to work in man. In what believers? The apostles or the early disciples only? God forbid we should be so unbelieving! The very thing that has preserved the church of God all through the ages has been the possession of the Spirit. This is a cardinal truth of Scripture. Every godly Presbyterian or Independent or Wesleyan Methodist or Anglican has the Holy Ghost, just as much as the people whom they call — I do not call them — Plymouth Brethren.

It is not at all a question of setting up any one class, of course one's own; to my mind a low, bad and perilous conceit. Were a man to rise with the cry, "You cannot get the Holy Ghost unless you join us," I might well reply, "My friend, has the Lord not shown you that it is never a mark of the truth for people to draw others into their ranks by promising the Holy Ghost to such as join themselves?" Such pretensions ought rather to warn off. The Spirit is received by the hearing of faith (Gal. 3: 2), by believing the gospel; and, thank God, the gospel of salvation, if preached by but few, is confined to none. It is no doubt an excellent thing to have the gospel preached, not alone simply and freely, but fully; and I have a judgment where it is simply, freely, and fully preached, though it might be unbecoming to say where. Of this it is for other people to judge in their consciences, examining the word of God. But this I do say — every real child of God who is resting by faith on the work of Christ has the Holy Ghost. Consequently he has the Spirit of power, and not life only. The new nature or life is not the same thing as the Spirit of God, because the new birth is called a new creation, and the Holy Ghost is not a creature, but a divine person. How few know they have the Spirit of God!

I remember being much struck with an instance of this some years ago. A poor christian friend had been a bad man in his early days, a smuggler; so that, as you may suppose, he was a very rough sort of man before God brought him to a knowledge of himself; but he was a genuine saint of God in the after-part of his life. A physician, who was also a friend of mine and a Christian, attended him when very ill, and ordered certain things. The man looked up simply, and said, "Well, sir, I must be careful what I do and what I take; for you know, my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." The physician thought the man utterly deranged; so little are people used to such language in daily walk. It is all very well, they think, to have all that in the Bible; but they never think of hearing it in common things. Yet the aim of faith is to bring the things that are in the Bible into every-day work; and it is from want of this that so many Christians do not know, walk, and worship, better than we see. They think the Bible is something to be kept quite apart from ordinary life. On the contrary, scripture is given to be inwoven and to interpenetrate with every duty and joy and sorrow of every day. Would to God that we lived, and so reflected, it better! Would to God that our worship, wherever we might be, and all our conversation, were more simply a savour of Christ to God!

People sometimes give religious conversation a bad name, because they know that, when a rogue wants to get money, he is apt to come with a grave face and talks "Dear brother," and all that kind of thing, in order to accomplish covetous ends. But can this justify others who are afraid that it is downright hypocrisy to be brimful of the Saviour and the things of God? There can be no question, indeed, that the Saviour meant, and the apostles also, as inspired by the Holy Ghost, that we should really be every day waiting for Christ — that we should be in all things great or small serving the Lord Jesus — bearing shame and trial, insult and injury, with patience, yet joy, as pleasing the Saviour. Take, for instance, a Christian with a capricious master. If the servant does not think of Christ, he may be always murmuring and complaining of his lot; whereas if he does or bears all to Christ, he accepts each burden gladly in His name. Faith in Christ changes the whole face of things where it is a present living reality. How is this made good? In the power of the Spirit who directs the eyes to Christ.

The Spirit of God is, however, given to every man — not in the world, but in the church, to the believer only (1 Cor. 12). There is no such thing as the Holy Ghost sealing an unbeliever. The Society of Friends consists largely of morally respectable persons; but herein their doctrine is fundamentally wrong, in that they hold that the Spirit of God is given to every one absolutely. This is a total mistake. For the grand difference between the church and the world is that the world has not the Spirit — seeing not nor knowing Him; but the church possesses the Spirit, and, what is more, the Christian also. That gift is true both individually and collectively; and the consequence is that both the church and the individual are bound to walk and worship in the Spirit. A solemn responsibility indeed! And the way it works is this; the Holy Spirit does not glorify Himself. Still less will He glorify man in his natural state. Nay, He does not even glorify the church. He is here to glorify Jesus. This is the test, the chief and best — "He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you" (John 16: 13-15).

I have not gone into any great detail. I would rejoice to enter into all the books of the Bible, as I have been doing, indeed, of late in more than one place; and therefore the subject is fresh in my mind. But I have endeavoured to speak to you in the plainest simplest manner as to that which is most important for your souls; and I do entreat of the Lord that He may awaken in your heart more firmness of faith in these days when so many are departing from the truth.

A short time ago, a certain dignitary in the land that borders this on the south published a sermon to the Jews, urging them to abandon their faith and to accept the Messiah. To this a Jew replied that he thought it would be imprudent and unreasonable for him to give up a religion which even his lordship admitted to be of divine authority, for a further revelation of which he was not sure; more particularly as so many bearing the name of Christians were now abandoning Christianity. It was a humbling rejoinder; and all too true; not that it will avail him for a moment when he stands before the Lord Jesus Christ for judgment.

Still it is a solemn fact that men are becoming sceptical: and the reason partly is this — the unreality of much profession, not to say of many who are really Christians. We ought all to take it to heart. I believe that, just so far as we do not walk according to Christ, we are hardening the hearts of unbelievers. What profanity to use the gospel to make people decent men and women without being Christians at all! For, if it is merely a creed-faith, men think there is not very much to choose between a Christian and an infidel. Though I have referred to the putting down of open immorality and downright wickedness of all kinds as the effect of Christianity even outwardly received, still the one thing for the Christian is this, that at all times he should be able to say, "For me to live is Christ" — not merely to belong to Him, but, "For me to live is Christ." How is this done? By the Holy Ghost giving the word power in the soul, with self so judged that Christ may be all. God grant that He may work so in us all! Amen.

W. K.

Christian Worship

Being the substance of three lectures by W Kelly.

(Copyright: A Poots, Belfast, 1995.)

Lecture 1.

"True worshippers." John 4: 20-24.

The grace of our Lord is as rich as it is conspicuous in the scene before us. Had it not been so, He would not have unfolded worship to this woman of Samaria. He would have chosen some more worthy person. He might have found readily such an one as Peter or John, or had He gone beyond the bounds of His own disciples, such an one as Nicodemus, or Joseph of Arimathea. But not so. He was making known expressly the free-giving of God, revealed in Himself the Son, and distinguishing in the broadest and the most distinct manner the difference between that which had been and that which was not to be. The old worship was altogether unsuited to the new purposes of God; another hour was dawning. She of Samaria thought, like many an one since, that the worship of God was only a question of human opinion. Strange that even God's children should doubt that God's worship must be of God's will! That He Himself should be denied a voice, the voice, in His own worship is indeed the climax of man's incredulity. But so it has been, and so it is, and men see not the presumptuous self-will that does not allow God to decide what is His will for the worship of His children.

There is no subject in which men think that difference is more allowable than in worship. But our Lord Jesus brings out the truth of God as to it unmistakeably. Man's will is bad enough anywhere but specially so where it intrudes into God's worship. Not that one pleads for the light of God in this matter and not elsewhere. Be assured that those who complain of lack of light on such a subject in scripture have a far more serious question to settle. For this is as much a matter of revelation, and so of faith on our part, as the salvation of a man's soul; and the same faith which can trust God in one thing can trust Him in everything; while on the other hand the incredulity which doubts God on one point is ready to doubt in all. Those who talk doubtingly of the authority or the certainty of God's word as to Christian worship, ministry, the coming of the Lord, or anything else that is revealed, will be found to have no rest in Christ for their souls. The evil heart of unbelief is at work and unrebuked.

I deny (as a matter of fixed principle) that the word of God is obscure: the allowance of such a thought arises from nothing but secret infidelity, and infidelity from an unjudged will. For let us for a moment consider, Is it God's word, and is it for man, that is, for His people? Will you affirm then that man speaks more clearly than God? Will you deny that God, when He proposes to reveal Himself to man, can make Himself understood by His own or by others?

It is freely admitted that there is another characteristic of God's word. It is necessarily a moral test of the heart; and God, therefore, does put His word in such a form that dependence on Him must be exercised, and that rashness or a heady spirit will mistake. Not that this makes obscurity, but that faith and the affections are thus put to the proof. "If thine eye be single," says the Lord Jesus, "thy whole body shall be full of light." The light of God always discovers and deals with a certain moral state; but God by His grace makes the heart to welcome the light.

The Lord then clearly draws a contrast between what was and what is now. Undoubtedly the woman of Samaria was wrong in her thoughts. She belonged to a people who took up the law, a heathen people who copied the forms of Judaism in part. "Salvation," says the Lord, "is of the Jews." These knew whatever had been known in the matter of worship; but no matter what the darkness of the Samaritans, or the glimmer of light among the Jews, another hour was coming when a new character of worship would be brought in for the children of God; and I specially draw your attention to this. It is not for a moment denied that there were other vast changes, such as the preaching of the gospel to every creature. I merely now refer to the fact that the two things were to go on together, but altogether distinct in their own nature. In short, then, the gospel was to be preached to every creature, and the children of God were to be henceforth true worshippers.

What then did our Lord mean by "true worshippers?" He first speaks negatively. "The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." (Ver. 21). It was no longer to be a question of "this mountain," with its spurious imitation of Israel, nor of Jerusalem with its imposing ritual of the law. But "the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." (Ver. 23.) This is the first point of which we have to take notice. Henceforth it is a question of worshipping the Father, a simple but wondrous privilege, in a general way easily enough understood, but not so easily carried out. To do so one must clean break with the world. For man, the world as such, does not affect it, nay, dares not to worship the Father. Nor need you wonder; for, if you search the word of God, you will always find that "the world" and "the Father" are in constant antagonism; just as the Son of God is to the great enemy, and the flesh or fallen man to the Spirit of God, so is the world to the Father.

One marked feature then of this new worship is, that the world is necessarily excluded. I do not mean by this that the world may not be present to hear; but that the nature of the worship shuts out the world from taking part. This will be made still more evident when we enter into particulars. It is God's children alone, those who have faith in Christ Jesus, who worship the Father. Yet doubtless the attempt has been made in many lands and ages to bring the world into Christian worship. The invariable effect is that such worship turns out fit neither for the world nor for the family of God. The effort to comprehend both on such a ground and for such an end must be a failure, a delusion. For the world, by the very fact that it is the world, is incapable of so worshipping. Christian worship supposes the truth known, yea, God Himself known; Christian worship supposes a new nature given; it supposes the gift and power and action of the Holy Ghost; it supposes the Christian assembly wherein the Spirit works by whom He will. And all these things are wanting in the world. Nay, further, to put the world upon this ground is to deceive it; it is to be active parties in falsifying the conscience, and in deluding men as to their true condition in the sight of God.

But there is another and very grave result. The children of God never preserve their own elevation by grace in attempting to comprehend the world as worshippers; for thereby the world is not raised up, but the church sinks to the level of the world. Consequently the language of such worship savours always of uncertainty, hesitation, and dread, in the soul's relation to God; entreaties for pardon, deprecation of judgment, unbelieving prayers for the Spirit of God to be poured out afresh, and all the other petitions which naturally flow from a position which is essentially false. This is found in all religious systems invented by man.

Yet if there be intermingled with it God's solemn judgment of sinners, incongruous as this may be, it appears in some sense a merciful inconsistency, rather than that the unconverted should be cheated by a more consistent worship to take the place of God's children without a warning. For what could be more awful in its way than to hear an unconverted man formally assuming the language of the church, expressing a delight in God of which he knows nothing and a communion with the Father whose love is hateful to him? But in fact all the liturgies I have seen (and they are not few) merely fall back upon the feelings of men, with a slight tincture of gospel and a large infusion of law. There may be sublime language and glowing ideas, chiefly borrowed from the Old Testament; but in substance they are utterly beneath intelligent Christian use, apart from faults of form, and the very idea of a liturgy now.

But, when we come to search and understand the distinctive truths of the New Testament, we see that what the Lord Jesus here intimates of the immense change in worship then at hand was connected with the revelation of Himself, the accomplishment of His work, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord could not but say, if one compares the Jews with the Samaritans, "We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." For worship is always according to the revelation: what then could it be where salvation was not? Jewish worship was set out in figures and shadows; salvation was a hope, not an actual relationship and possession. The Jews were looking — and they were right in looking — for the Messiah, who would not only tell, but accomplish, all things; He whom they were looking for was to be a Saviour. The salvation that the Jews had before their eyes was still a thing in prospect, and not yet brought home to the heart as a present reality. While they waited for Messiah, the worship was suited to their state. It was surrounded with priests and forms, which showed that the way was not made manifest into the holiest. (Heb. 9)

But an end came to this state of promise and provisional imagery. The veil was rent from top to bottom, when the Jews led the Gentiles to crucify their Messiah, God's Son. Wonderful to say, in that crime of man, in the cross, God wrought redemption; and man first stood in the presence of God, a Saviour God. The whole Jewish system was at an end; it was dead if not yet buried, for God allowed a decent time for the funeral. But Judaism cast away life in rejecting the Messiah, and the cross made it evident. From His rejection the Lord (as the Spirit afterward) was gradually unfolding, as the disciples could bear, the new order of things; for those accustomed to the old wine did not relish the new all at once. They frequented the temple at the hour of prayer, though they went to their houses to break bread. For a little while they were half Jews and half Christians. But God was about to lead them out finally, and the Epistle to the Hebrews cut the last cord which bound the Christian Jew to the old economy. From that moment it was unfaithfulness to Christ, as he was now made known, to linger among the old things. "Let us go forth therefore unto him," etc.

In the same Epistle God instructs us in Christian worship as contrasted with the Levitical service. What do we find? The legal sacrifices superseded by that of Christ, and the Jewish sanctuary, figure of the true into which Christ is gone, where we now draw nigh in faith. The old sacrifices were always renewed; the Christian knows but one sacrifice, and the reason why is, that it has brought in perfection. Otherwise you only repeat and thereby give witness that you have nothing perfect. But the essence of the sacrifice of Christ is that it is once offered, and by that one offering He has not merely sanctified, but perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Nothing can be more distinct than the doctrine of the apostle as to the offering of Christ for the Christian. He is looking not at passing circumstances, but at the essential difference between the Jewish worshipper and the Christian. The Jewish worshipper needed the constant succession of offerings to meet his wants; the Christian's wants are already met in the cross and in Christ Himself.

The new state of things has been effected by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus. The Christian is brought into the enjoyment of God for heaven and eternity; and this now by the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, whilst waiting for Christ to take him on high.

Let us look briefly at some of the privileges that constitute the true worshippers. It is evident that the very first want of the soul arises from the fact that one is a sinful, yea, lost man. For a sinner is rather a leper than a worshipper; and a leper, as you know, was by God's word an outcast, one who must stand afar off and announce his own uncleanness; one who was not only out of his tent, but out of the camp of Israel, and so incapable of bringing his gift to the presence of God. Such is really the condition of every sinful man before God. A leper typifies not a Christian in a bad case, but man who is wholly in the loathsomeness and corruption of his natural state, far from God. Whereas the Christian is born of God, has received a new life or new nature that no man possesses; naturally, with which Christ alone quickens. How is it to be had? Only in the Son of God, and this only by faith. There is no other life Godward.

It is granted that there is no true faith without repentance, and that what is commonly called Sandemanianism or Walkerism is in this utterly wrong. All efforts to obliterate repentance, in order to ease or simplify believing in Christ, are false, evil, and dangerous. They slight the work of God in the conscience and reduce faith to intellectualism. This however is not the point now, but the great truth that he who believes has, according to scripture, everlasting life.

Yet new birth alone does not make one a Christian worshipper. Supposing you had ever so many born of God, you would, were this all, have not one "true worshipper." Not only, therefore, the world cannot be true worshippers, but even if people were truly converted, this of itself would not constitute them such. Hence it is that Christ does not say a word about worship in John 3, because He is there simply insisting on the necessity of the new birth. But in John 4, we have Christ Jesus the Giver of the living water, and true worship follows. In John 3, the Lord is the Gift, in John 4, He is the Giver. If some think these distinctions rather fine, it is because they do not understand them. They are as plain as they are important; and men simply show their own lack of intelligence in the truth by such quibbling. Are they ever happy men? Do they really enjoy peace with God? When we see clearly our own state and His grace, the truth as revealed is enjoyed without cavil. I have said that in John 3, the Lord Jesus is the gift of God the Father, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son." In John 4, the Son of God says, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." The living water is therefore the figure not of Christ, but of the Holy Ghost; and I wish to prove the truth that you not only need life in Christ, but even if you had it, unless you have also the living water, you cannot be a true worshipper. The Holy Spirit must be given in order to this.

Many assume that the moment a man is born again he receives the Holy Ghost. But this is to confound the new birth with the gift of the Spirit. It is untrue that every man receives the Holy Ghost at the moment of being born again. There is an essential difference between the two operations. When one is born again, he is awakened from the slumber of sin and cries to God in the consciousness of his guilt and ruin. From the grace of Christ he may have divine comfort, but God lets him taste of the bitterness of his own heart and ways. In the great majority of cases converted souls know what this is; and it is well that they should.

I do not deny that it is an imperfect state, a state very different from the just effect flowing from a full knowledge of the gospel. Such may look to Christ without knowing His work, or the good news of salvation. In this state one is not a true worshipper. How could one not yet in the condition of deliverance worship in Spirit and in truth? Is it pretended that one who cries "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" can at the same time say that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death?"

Outward affliction well consists with joy in the Holy Ghost at the same time, but not inward bondage with inward liberty. Those who say so cannot know the deliverance in their own souls, or are blinded by tradition and will. Till set free as well as quickened, we cannot truly worship our God and Father. Christian worship is the expression of the heart's joy, of its perfect satisfaction in Christ, of conscious nearness to our God and Father, as children beloved. Salvation (not life only) is what one wants, that the living water may flow, and he adore and praise. One may be born of God, yet without simple submission to the perfect work of the Lord Jesus one is sure to be craving this or that, doubtless cleaving to Christ, no longer in the dead state of nature, but still without real enjoyment of God in peace, perplexed, tried, and unable to say, "Abba, Father." In this condition, then Christian worship is impossible, and you do wrong to invite such to worship the Lord. You place them in a false position, and tempt them to become hypocrites in leading them to sing hymns altogether beyond their faith or experience.

With this state of things the doctrine of the Lord entirely coincides. He does not hurry on souls before they have the requisite power through His own grace. When the woman asked Him whether He was "greater than our father Jacob," He answers, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." He who has so drunk can worship God as a Christian. "God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." All else is the sacrifice of folly, at least it is not worship in spirit and in truth. There is a divine spring of joy given inwardly, and, until one is brought into that condition, it is in vain to expect true Christian worship from him. It is of importance to recognize this, as it is a fact that many converted souls are not thus emancipated from sin and the law. (See Rom. 7)

In order to make it clearer, let us refer for a moment to the day of Pentecost, when the apostle Peter says to those convicted of sin, "Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." When men truly repent, are they not believers? It would be a sorry doctrine which supposes genuine repentance without real faith; yet the gift of the Holy Ghost was consequent upon all. He Himself received the Spirit as the Holy One of God, sealed by the Father as man here below. But we could not have the Spirit thus till sin was judged in the cross and ourselves washed in His blood. Then we could, on the ground of His mighty work which annulled sin, not only be quickened of the Spirit as sinners, but be sealed of the Spirit as saints. This is the Christian, and he is a true worshipper: till a soul is brought really to this, he cannot be. Thus we see in this instance how truly Christ is the Giver of the Spirit to those who already believed. Until redemption was accomplished, there was not a clear space or righteous ground for the Holy Ghost to dwell in. But when the Lord Jesus had effected that mighty work, He went up on high, and sent the Holy Ghost down. He is thus the Giver of the Spirit. He gives that living water to the believer, not to the world; to the soul that rests on Him and His redemption; not to the one that hates sin merely, but to him that has found in Jesus and His work all that the heart and conscience need before God. He has received the Holy Ghost, and the grace of God has given it to him.

Those under law, doubtless, do not as yet possess the Holy Ghost. This is why they so often fear and question; but when they bow to God's righteousness in Christ with simple faith, they receive the Holy Ghost. One may thus account for so many persons as are supposed to be brought to God on their deathbed. The great majority of those who are made happy then have been already converted. But there were perhaps allowed hindrances. With death staring them in the face they submit to the righteousness of God, and the Holy Ghost is then given to them.

But look again at another case in scripture. In Acts 19, it is mentioned that there were at least a dozen men at Ephesus who were believers but had not received the Holy Ghost. They did not even know the fact. Of course they had heard of the Spirit, but somehow not as yet of the gift of the Spirit. They knew from the teaching of John the Baptist that the coming Christ was to baptize with the Holy Ghost; but when they heard the full truth from the apostle Paul, they received the Holy Ghost. This is the grand point, for miracles and tongues might cease: the Holy Ghost was to abide for ever. Therefore I believe that not even the dark ages of popery nor all the divisions of Protestantism, so painful to the spiritual mind, have driven back the Holy Ghost to heaven. I believe in His continued presence, because I receive the words of Christ. The Holy Ghost is always given to the believer when he has submitted to Christ's redemption. This shows the great importance of the gift of the Spirit: without it there is no true worshipper. He is not only quickened, but one who has found rest in Christ and is sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. Such as these the Father seeks to worship Him.

Accordingly this is the condition that is supposed in all the Epistles. Take for instance the Epistle to the Romans. The apostle addresses them all, the saints that were then at Rome, as being dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, as being in the Spirit and having the Spirit in them. How blessed! There are the true worshippers.

So again, in the Epistles to the Corinthians, the same thing re-appears. There were many lamentable features there requiring to be dealt with even by public discipline. Did these destroy the standing of the worshippers? Paul calls on the Corinthians to put away the evildoer from the assembly, but not to cease breaking bread themselves. In chapter 5, he is speaking, not about the Lord's supper, but of ordinary intercourse with a known unclean professor of the Lord. Certainly we should never be suspicious; but where plain undeniable evil exists, the wicked person should be put away from the saints. Whether he be converted or not is not the question, but proved evil in one bearing the Lord's name in the church is inconsistent with the fellowship of saints on earth. Here it was the very one whom, on repentance, they were called in 2 Corinthians 2, 7, to receive back. The gift of the Spirit appears throughout.

In the Epistle to the Galatians serious error is corrected and solemn warning given; but they are addressed as God's children, having the Spirit of sonship, and thereby crying Abba Father in contrast with the Old Testament saints. They could worship therefore.

In that to the Ephesians the Christians are treated as already blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, and hence, as having redemption and sealed by the Holy Spirit, able to draw near to the Father. So the apostle, though solemnly admonishing the Colossian saints presents them as "giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," etc. They were true worshippers.

The Philippian believers the apostle calls to rejoice in the Lord alway, and says that we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

Even the Thessalonians, young saints as they were, are exhorted to rejoice evermore, and not only to pray unceasingly, but in every thing to give thanks as the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning them.

The Hebrew Christians are addressed as having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and, having a high priest over the house of God, to draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, etc.

The apostle Peter calls the Christian Jews to whom he writes throughout Asia Minor, a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus. See also 1 Peter 4: 14

The apostle John treats even the babes of God's family as having known the Father, and all the family as having their sins forgiven, and now as children of God. He tells us that, as confessing Jesus to be the Son of God, God dwells in each and he in God. He declares that love with us is made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as Christ is so are we in this world.

There can be no doubt therefore that the contrast is painful in the extreme between the uniform language of the New Testament about Christians as thus called to worship in liberty and joy and nearness to God, and that of liturgies ancient or modern; and this because the results of redemption soon got merged and hidden in Jewish forms, and the law was recalled to the place of the Holy Ghost, and man in the flesh intruded wholesale into precincts which belong only to those solemnly accredited as God's assembly, the body of Christ.

But even the best position and highest privileges will fail to keep a man right with God; dependence on the Lord and obedience alone can do this. Nay, further, the greater the privilege the worse the fall, if the soul wait not upon God. It is a great mistake to think that only the wicked can fall: Christian men may, yea must, if unwatchful. The condition of the true worshipper is not such that he remains immoveable as a statue. He is alive unto God, but is responsible morally; he ought to grow but may decline. No doubt he has his "old man," the only thing to do with which is to judge it, treating it as vile and evil, according to the cross, where it was condemned root and branch in Christ made sin for us. (Rom. 6: 6; Rom. 8: 3.)

Thus, as the rule, all saints are now called to join in the worship of God. They are saved that they may, not serve only, looking down, but worship, looking up. hence the all-importance of the Lord's Supper, the centre of Christian worship, and of its celebration on each first day of the week. ( 1 Cor. 11; Acts 20.) But this will come more fully before us when we treat of worship itself, and of divers helps or hindrances to it.

The souls whom the Lord contemplates are those who, as believing in His name, have not life only but the Spirit, who have therefore liberty and power, and can thus unaffectedly and with simple hearts unite in thanksgiving and praise of their God and His God, of their Father and His Father. Such as may be born anew but are not yet delivered nor in peace with God need the gospel that they may join their brethren, apart from the world, in that which will occupy them all for ever, begun even now on earth by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

Lecture 2.

"Worship in spirit and in truth." John 4: 20-24.

My present task is to speak a little, not on the worshippers, but on the worship — on worship in spirit and in truth. On this subject many, not to say most, of God's children have accustomed themselves to language and thought in general vague, often removed far from the truth of God. They have allowed themselves the habit of calling every religious service worship, embracing not only prayer, but preaching or teaching. Even the larger part of that which is thrown into metre or verse in hymns is only the expression of desire, sometimes of doctrine, very generally of prayer. Proper worship is the rarest thing possible, even among the true children of God. The reason is plain. You cannot have true worship unless the worshippers are set consciously in their Christian place before God. I endeavoured to show on a former occasion that to be a worshipper supposes, not only divine life in the soul, but also the relationship of a child of God known by the Spirit now. This is not always the state of converted men. they have been, by some sad means or other, possibly with upright enough intentions, turned aside from the full grace of God, they have been afraid of confiding in what the Lord Jesus has done for their souls.

It is granted that the grace of God is so infinite, and so above the thoughts and reasonings of men, that nothing but the power of the Holy Spirit can keep the soul in the enjoyment of it, and that all attempts to look at grace out of God's presence is attended with the utmost danger. The flesh would habitually turn it to license; and thus it is that many godly souls have been stumbled, seeing such overwhelming evil by wrong representation, or, as we should rather call it, by mix-representation, of the grace of God.

They have heard the most high-flown expressions the cover of sin, or even of hypocrisy. Instead of judging the man, they have sometimes slipped into misjudging the truth of God. This is not wise; for it can never be without the virtual impeachment of the word of God. Their consciences are thus at the mercy of evil or careless men who dishonour all the truth they talk of.

When we open the scriptures, we see His grace and truth clearly. The very object of God in so revealing Himself is to put believers, convicted of sin and repentant, in the bright, thorough, simple-hearted enjoyment of His grace, that the whole life should be the expression of thanksgiving and praise, as well as of service and devotedness to Himself. There is another reason why people shrink from this, because they have accepted the mischievous idea that the Christian is left in this world to improve the race and be an ornament, if not an ameliorator, of society, to deal with mankind as under probation and the law of God, just as Israel were before redemption. Now I do not for a moment deny that the Christian is meant to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. He is here for a testimony; but a testimony of what? of his own goodness, or of Christ's? It makes a great difference, "Let your light so shine before men," said our Lord, "that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." This is the grand point. It is not, Let your good works shine before men, the effect of which would be to glorify yourself. And here is where men are apt to err, because the glory of a certain individual casts a sort of halo around the race to which he belongs.

But it is a totally different thing where "our light" shines. By our light I understand our holding forth Christ, not qualities of our own, but that which we have only in the Lord. Consequently it is the good confession of His name. When men see good works coupled with the holding up of the Lord Jesus, the profession of Him does bring glory not to us but to our Father in heaven. These are the words of the Lord Jesus, but men shrink from that which gives them the distinctive consciousness that they belong not to the world; for there it is man has not a little inclination to figure. It does not matter how obscure he is, he would like to be somebody. But this is the very thing that Christ would relieve one from; for if the gospel be true, and it is not for Christians to doubt, one of its first principles is that we are dead to the world, and that our life is hid with Christ in God. When a man is dead, there is an end of him. This is what Christ writes upon the believer, what He makes good and true in everyone who has accepted Him and His mighty work. We are crucified with Him, not as men say called to crucify nature; but all that are Christ's have crucified the flesh and its affections. Thus you see the first principles of Christianity sever those that are Christ's from the world, from its interests and its objects; while they introduce them, if you will, on a new ground into the world, for it is granted that this is also true. "As thou (the Father) hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." The death of Christ takes us out of the world, but by His resurrection we are sent into the world on a new footing of life and righteousness. It is on the new ground of God's righteousness that we stand as true worshippers, and thus only can we render worship to our God and Father in spirit and in truth.

Now even God's children shrink from this place. They love the Lord Jesus. They cleave to His person, they find comfort in His love, they cannot do without His blood; but they would rather not go farther. They would rather not give up the world quite. They would like to be sure of the next world; but the tenacity with which they hold to this world forbids their having a true present link with the next. In such a state Christian worship is impossible. Hence, therefore, as it would never do to deny that they are worshippers, or that they worship, they get to call even going to hear a sermon worship. We all know this, and perhaps some now present are in the habit of saying so. I refer to it for the purpose of showing the too common vagueness of God's children as to worship. The condition out of which worship springs by grace is so feebly realized that we must not wonder at it.

What then is Christian worship?

The worship of the Israelites was suited to their condition. In that worship every Israelite joined. He brought his oblation, his gift, his peace-offering; and there were also presented the fruits of the land that God gave them, as we know that God prescribed on their entering the land. Now we should feel that such a call does not belong to the Christian properly but to the ancient elect people.

God is now forming since redemption another company of worshippers having no connection either with Jerusalem, or with that mountain of Samaria. A new thing has taken place. Worshippers are no longer called to Jerusalem, nor does grace exclude the Samaritans; but contrariwise, wherever the Spirit of God forms a people for the praise of God the Father of the Lord Jesus, throughout the world, these are the true worshippers; and the true worship is their adoration of Him who has brought them into such a blessed relationship. Their hearts delight in what He has done and suffered for them; they find their joy in Himself. God has given Jesus Christ His Son, and has displayed Himself in Him. True Christian worship is their hearts' return for all.

Accordingly, by the Spirit, our Lord Jesus here gives a certain characteristic of it, which I shall dwell on for a few moments. "The hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father." Now it is remarkable, if you look at the language of Christendom at large, how little the Father's name appears. Take up any form of worship in any part of West or East: there is trifling difference in this respect. They all agree in sinking down from conscious nearness as children to the Father, into the distant place of a people; before a governor and a judge. If they approach God, it is to One at a distance, to a God that they are in quest of but dread, to a God from whom they are seeking in some way to win a certain measure of enjoyment they do not yet possess, a certain confidence they desire but do not as yet know.

Hence, therefore, we find distance and doubt, fear and anxiety, marked in the formal language of such souls even if children of God. Take one very well-known instance, and by no means, as it appears to me, an extreme case. Texts illustrating the wicked are selected to prepare the soul for a knowledge of God, such for example as Ezekiel's, "When the wicked man turneth away from the wickedness that he hath done," etc.; or the words of the prodigal son, "I will arise and go to my Father. " What is the meaning of all this? It is surely not for the Christian. Is the Christian a wicked person, or even one who is arising to go to his Father like the prodigal? In such a state of soul Christian worship is and must be unknown. After these texts are read, there is a confession, and this again is followed by an absolution; and then, but still with dread and vacillation and perplexity, a certain recognition of and yearning after God is expressed, a deprecation of His anger, entreaties for favour, especially in earthly things, withal prayers for pardon and so forth. If you ask, Is not that scriptural? I answer, Is it scriptural for Christians in their worship? No, beloved friends, but for those who have lost the idea of worship, and have sunk into another people who are not another, but rather half Jews and half Christians.

We have referred to the prodigal son. Now if we wanted to take that text to describe Christian worship, it should be the prodigal not in his confession of sin, but when he has arisen and gone to his father, when the best robe is put on, when the ring is on his finger, and the shoes on his feet, and when there is the scene of gladness, not merely the prodigal or the friends or the whole house rejoicing, but, best of all, the father himself rejoicing. "Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found." Some no doubt will exclaim, That is heaven. Not a bit of it. It is here, it is now. It is true of the Christian in this world. It would be perfectly impracticable for the world; and herein lies the hitch. They want to bring the world into the worship, and, as they cannot raise the world to Christian worship, they sink the Christian in worship to the level of the world. But I deny that the parabolic scene of joy in the parable means heaven; and I will tell you why. The eldest son was in the field; and when he came to the house, he did not understand the reason of such joy. He in effect disowns the prodigal as his brother, and casts up to the father "this thy son," who had wasted his substance with riotous living. Is not this here below?

Thus the real point is God the Father finding His joy in blessing the prodigal, yea, bringing him into the communion of His own joy. Such is the character and spring of Christian worship. It is the sons of God that enter by the Holy Ghost's power into the delight of the Father Himself in Christ. But, again, you see it cannot be heaven; for when we are there, there will be no elder brothers murmuring at the grace of God. Can you deny this? Can you affirm that this is not the just application of the parable? Can you say that there is any shifting the scene?

It is not in heaven that the prodigal was clothed and blessed. It was here; and it is very solemn to think that it is here, and here only: when we depart to be with Christ, there is no putting on Christ in heaven. If we have not put on Christ here, we shall be found naked, according to 2 Corinthians 5: 3: "If so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked." The wicked when they rise at the resurrection are to be clothed; they are to have their bodies; but when thus clothed, they will be found naked, for they have not put on Christ here. The just will have been clothed too, but the clothing of their resurrection-body does not leave them naked, but rather manifests them like Christ. Now, no doubt, men by their clothing may, in the eyes of their fellows, cover over what they really are; but in the resurrection-state all must be manifested, whether they be just or unjust. It is the Christian's comfort that in glory he will be manifested; but for the wicked, what a solemn thought that they will be seen through and through! Then they must — I will not say be honest, but be — absolutely unveiled, and detected in all their hatred and evil. When clothed, they will be found naked. But we put on the best robe here. We have all the blessing of Christ now as the fruit of redemption; and this is what was intended to be shown.

Thus you cannot separate the worship from the worshippers; and consequently, as the revelation of God is always the ground of the worship, and as He makes Himself known as the Father, He necessarily looks for and desires the loving praise of the children of God. He could not look for or accept any thing less than such worship. We deserve nothing indeed but judgment; but redemption has made us spotless according to the faultlessness of Jesus Christ before God. What has put us in this absolute purity before Him is the work of Christ already done, and the Holy Ghost is given to us as the power of enjoying it. The Holy Ghost is not given to us in heaven, but on earth. We shall enjoy and worship in perfection there; and no hindrance can be then. We shall be in eternal and complete enjoyment, and in the possession of all that God has given us through His own Son; but here we are brought by faith, yea, in the Spirit, into the reality of it, though we may make drawbacks many and great.

The immediate object of Christ's becoming incarnate was to reveal the Father. He grew up perfect as an infant, as a boy, as a man. We find Him blending the most entire submission to His parents, with the consciousness of divine relationship. I refer to this to show the sense He had of His Sonship as man here below, for throughout all His life on earth He speaks of God as His Father. Yet when He on the cross made atonement for sin, He poured out His soul unto death, and, as He did so, with these most solemn words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" On arising from the dead, He sends by Mary of Magdala the message, "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Thus He addresses His own disciples in these two relationships, the one in which He had walked all His life, the other expressed in His dying upon the cross. But He puts His disciples in both His relationships after their judgment was past, after their sins were taken away from them so that all that God is as God, and all that He feels as Father, should be nothing but love and satisfaction in them as believers because of Christ's redemption. What wisdom and grace! and therefore it is that we are brought into the enjoyment of Him not only as Father but also as God — so terrible before redemption, but now the source of the deepest blessing to the Christian. If we did not know Him as God, it would be a very great loss to our souls. We need to be kept with solemn thoughts of His majesty, as well as to rest in His love as Father; and the Son of God keeps the whole balance of the truth undisturbed, and lets us learn what He discloses of God as God no less perfectly than what He tells of Him as Father. He has now brought all to us in the way of perfect grace. So fully does His love make believers as Christ Himself, apart of course from His deity.

So it had been predicted of Him in the great psalm of atonement and its results (Ps. 22.) "I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee." Who could declare it as He? and when could even He have declared it as when raised from the dead by the Father's glory after having been brought into the dust of death for sin? None but He could feel to the uttermost what it was to be forsaken of God and not heard when He cried; but now, heard from the horns of the unicorns, He enters as the risen man into the light and glory of God shining for ever on the accepted sacrifice of Himself and declares to His brethren the name (now we can say) of His Father and their Father, of His God and their God; and there and thus, in the midst of the church now set free for ever by and in Him, praises Him. Oh! what praises were Christ's, delivered now at length, and from so great a death! But are they not our praises too? And is it not "in our midst" that He sings them? What a character does not this communion imprint on the church's worship! The praise of Christ, after sin was judged as it never can be again, and He who was crucified in weakness lives by the power of God, gives the just and only full idea of what becomes God's assembly.

Are these your thoughts, brethren beloved of the Lord? Is this the standard by which you try your hearts and lips when you would present spiritual sacrifices to your God and Father? Be assured, He values none compared with those of the risen Christ, who deigns to be the leader of such as cleave to Him in this the day of His still continued rejection, though He be, as we know, glorified on high.

Truly His is in the highest sense a new song. Alone He had thus suffered; not alone does He praise, but in the full chorus of the consciously redeemed. How wondrous that it is not here merely "in" the congregation but "in the midst" of it that He thus sings! In the day of His power it will not be so for "the great congregation." Not that His praises will be lacking in that day; not that high and low will not praise in the earth when all Jehovah's works shall praise Him and all His saints shall bless Him. Still it remains true that there is a revealed association on His part, with those who are now being called and gathered since His resurrection which exceeds in depth anything said of those who follow in that bright and blessed day. Not to the great congregation is He said to declare His God and Father's name. In it indeed will His praise of Jehovah be, but not in its midst as on the resurrection day for those who have not seen and yet have believed. Compare verses 22, etc., with 25, etc. For what is said of that jubilee for Israel and the earth would still be true if He praised alone on His ground, and all others on theirs. Neither does He call them His brethren as now, however He may pay His vows (in itself another distinctive mark) before those that fear Jehovah, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess Him Lord, to God's glory, even to the ends of the world and throughout all kindreds of the nations.

Is not all this grace indeed to us who deserve nothing less, this true grace of God wherein we stand? May we appreciate the counsels and ways of the God of all grace who has called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus. To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever Amen. May our praises then abound; but may they be Christ's praises in our midst, who deigns to be where two or three are gathered to His name! He is not absent if we are called in aught to vindicate the truth or holiness of God: is He when we gather to worship His and our God and Father? By Him therefore let us offer sacrifice of praise continually, that is, fruit of lips confessing His name.

This then is what the Lord Jesus brings us into as true worshippers. He says that the worshippers should "worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him." Unspeakable goodness! We see this by the person He was then seeking Himself. The woman of Samaria — what was she? She thought Jesus was only a Jew; she did not know that He was the Son of God. But the Lord soon woke her from her dream. In a few words He brought before her all her life up to that moment. He told her of her five husbands, and that the one with whom she now lived was not her husband. Thus she was laid bare before the light of God. She felt that He was a prophet, and the Lord did not leave her until she knew that He was the Messiah, the Son, the Saviour. This was a worshipper the Father was seeking, and could she not worship in spirit and truth? He comes with power to make us what He seeks us to be. He does not look to find it in us. He seeks ourselves, no doubt; but He gives us a new life, a new power, the Holy Ghost; and the consequence is that we are thoroughly furnished, not only for every good work, but for Christian worship. This woman is just an instance of it.

But there is more. It is not enough that we worship the Father, as grace reveals Him in the Son. There is the two-fold relationship, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." When He speaks of the Father, it is the fulness of grace to make us what He wants us to be, but when He speaks of God, it is a necessity of His nature, and of ours too as born of Him.

Just so it is that one sees very beautifully in Romans 2, a witness of the latter truth. The apostle is going to bring in redemption through the blood and resurrection of Christ: the one as the basis of justifying, the other manifesting its power. But before this he lets us see that God's principles are immutable. He shows us that it is only those that are found neither contentious nor disobedient, but on the contrary, that seek Him according to His own nature, who have eternal life. As he says in verse 6, "Who will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life; but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile." God's moral principles are not at all hampered by the grace of the gospel. Here is the secret by which He makes an ungodly man a godly one. But though this is the grace of the gospel by which a man is brought out of guilt and sin unto God, the nature of God is not altered by the grace of redemption in Christ.

This may suffice for the general principles of Christian worship for the children of God, I should rather say for such as are capacitated by the Spirit of God to draw near in the love of Christ and in the knowledge of His redemption, by the power of the Spirit to praise and adore the God and Father of our Lord Jesus that has brought them into such a place, and has manifested Himself in such goodness to our souls. And accordingly, it is in this spirit that we should read the New Testament.

Take, for instance, Ephesians 1, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love; having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." I refer to this to show the condition, as also the spirit which alone produces worship. Is it any wonder that one cannot get the world to worship? It is not a question of educating men up to the point. The question is, when are people brought into the Christian state? It is then incumbent on them to worship in spirit and in truth. You see the same relationship here, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings. He is not merely going to bless. A man who is waiting to be blessed may be a hopeful person; but he is not yet set free, as in Romans 8: 2, etc.

I remember, well, some time ago, during the revival movement, being often pained by rash expressions, from men talking lightly upon the grace of God. The truth is that bringing a man from darkness to light, from Satan's power to God's, is a serious thing; but I do not believe its reality unless there be a true (I do not say a deep) work in the conscience of the individual; I see this in the case of the women of Samaria. Christ brought the whole truth of her life into the light. She was convicted. There is no grace unless faith be accompanied by repentance. Here we see all these blessings, but the point I refer to is that it is a present reality. When the children of God have the Spirit as a well within according to His word, then we have Christian worship.

I shall enter, of course, upon the helps as well as the hindrances according to the notice already given, but merely touch now on the principle of Christian worship. Take another passage from scripture, the Colossians. The apostle says in chapter 1, "Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, and to all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." Now just contrast these words with any liturgy that was ever invented. "Which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light!" Do you think that those persons who believe it would or could be afraid of sudden death? that is, of a speedy going to heaven to be with Christ? Why is it that professing Christians are in such dread of sudden death? It is because they think of a needful preparation for death. It all arises from an uncertainty about the Christian deliverance already effected. What is wanted even by real children of God is a better, a truer, knowledge of what salvation is — not as a state we are hoping for, but in which we stand virtually now. The Old Testament speaks not of the Father and the Son as the New, nor of salvation in the Christian sense of the word; but the one does not set aside the other, they are the complement of each other. In the Epistle to the Ephesians as referred to, salvation is always spoken of as past and present. It is a state that flows from what has been done by and in Christ. But then quite in another way we are waiting for salvation. We have got the salvation of our souls, we are now waiting for the salvation of our bodies. But the salvation of the soul is as completely effected as it can be; redemption is wrought by Christ and accepted of God, and the Holy Ghost is already poured out on us. It is a solemn thing to affirm the possession of the Holy Ghost, but at the same time nothing is more sweet. Yet let me tell you that many good men are mistaken by fancying the basis of it to be something in themselves, instead of what Christ has done, sealed by the Holy Ghost. He never sealed until the work of redemption was done. In the Old Testament times there was never any saint without being quickened by the Spirit of God; but they could not have His seal until redemption was accomplished, as in Ephesians 1, 4.

So in Colossians we see the saints described as giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

Without multiplying instances, I give one passage more: "We have an altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach" (Heb. 13: 10-13). The apostle takes advantage of a beautiful type in the law. When a victim was brought to the brazen altar, the blood was not brought into the holiest at all; the animal was killed outside. But when the blood was carried into the holiest, the body was taken and burned without the camp. This, he says, is what was found in Christ who suffered without the gate and is now gone into the presence of God, in order to place us within the holiest and without the world.

What if some look for a middle way: it is a poor comfort to have anything but the full grace and glory of God. We should not rest short of the truth of God on man's prudence. The way of prudence is unsafe in the sight of God. It is not faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Hold on, therefore, not to the reasonings of common sense, but to the revelation of the divine word. We are brought into the holiest because of that blood that has cleansed us and removed every trace of sin; and here, too, we who are brought into the holiest take the place of Him who was crucified, bearing His reproach.

Are you willing to be despised? to be nothing here, because made everything in the presence of God? This is the true glory of the Christian, and the Christian does most for God when he is most despised of men.

May our record be not in the newspapers, or on tombstones, but on high, where it is never forgotten. The Lord grant, meanwhile, that we be worshippers in the holiest, and witnesses without the camp, bearing His reproach.

Lecture 3.

Helps and Hindrances to Worship. 1 Cor. 14: 15-26.

We have already seen, first, the necessary condition of those who are called to worship. The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, Himself, expressly lets us know that the Father is seeking worshippers, and that the true worshippers are such as by grace worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Thus they are not only His children but have the Spirit of adoption given whereby to cry Abba, Father. We have seen, secondly, that God is made known in a two-fold manner as object of worship: first of all, in the relationship of Himself as Father; secondly, according to His moral nature as God. The Father is the nearest and most intimate relationship in which it is possible for Him to be known; but it is also needful to worship Him as God, lest there should be a forgetfulness either of His moral nature or of His divine majesty. We have now to enter into a little more detail of a practical kind in order to deal with the third part of my subject: "helps and hindrances to Worship."

You have already gathered, I trust, clearly, what can scarcely be called a help, since it is the necessary power for worship. Still it may be well for me to touch again on it to-night, because the hindrance from ignorance as to it or unbelief about it is of the greatest importance. I mean the presence of the Holy Ghost, and it is not merely to touch the question of the so-called gifts of the Spirit — for I speak now of His acknowledged presence. Clearly this is a capital truth in the matter now before our minds. It connects itself with the very being, not well-being only, of the church. So the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4: 4: "There is one body and one Spirit." And none will ever be found to have a just acquaintance with the truth of the Holy Ghost in relation to the Christ and the church who have not been taught of God its nature as Christ's body and God's habitation.

So far from this, all attempt to sever the Holy Ghost from Christians and the church issues in errors of the most dangerous character, though perhaps in different, I might say opposite, directions. Where the Spirit is severed from Christ and the church, it then becomes a question of quakerism or of clericalism. The church is either ignored, or it is practically a matter of clergy as the men who assume exclusive possession, with perhaps even control, of the Holy Spirit of God. The one makes the Spirit to be the universal endowment of man, apart from faith or life eternal, and thus blots out the existence in principle of the church of God in which the Spirit dwells as His temple apart from the world of unrenewed men; the other denies the privileges and responsibilities of God's assembly in effect by the unscriptural invention of the clergy as the one channel of His public and orderly action, the guide of worship, and of authority in discipline. They are thus, if errors at all (as I am sure they are), serious and destructive. I am not now thinking of the issue of souls, but characterise by the word "destructive," that which is opposed to the will and glory of the Lord Jesus, which surely ought to be of all things dearest to the children of God; and the more, because they are saved.

It is not only then the principle of a clergy (I do not mean ministry or the exercise of a divine gift, for this is of God) which is so grave; but there is another form of error that is apparently nearer the truth, but I think even more distant still, namely, the idea of the Spirit of God being given to every man without exception. The word of God most explicitly shuts out both these wanderings of men's minds. Nowhere in scripture is there such a thought as the Spirit given to man as man. Contrariwise He is given properly and exclusively to the believer.

And here it is we see the importance of distinguishing between the new birth and the gift (δωρεα) of the Spirit. No man receives the Holy Ghost when he is first awakened to God, but as a believer invariably. He is quickened as a sinful man; indeed, if it were not so, he never could be brought out of his wickedness. God deals graciously with him, spite of a rebellious history and all the evil of his nature. Thus is he born again. He repents and believes in Christ; but the Holy Ghost is given to him, never as an unquickened, always as a quickened, soul. Such is the uniform doctrine of the New Testament. "In whom, after ye believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father." I do not attach any great importance to the question of the length of time that elapses since they believed; for though only a minute, it is just as real as if it were seven years. It is the believer who receives the Spirit of sonship, that he may have the joy and power of the relationship. But he is already God's son by the faith of Christ; and, because he is a son, he receives the Spirit of adoption.

Now this is of great importance in the subject before us, because it is not the simple fact of being quickened on which worship turns, but of the possession of the Spirit. All the children of God that rest on the Lord Jesus in peace, according to God's word — all such have the Holy Ghost. but they may be much hindered by wrong thoughts. The Holy Ghost has thus to do with the soul, when a man has judged himself, and has found in the Lord Jesus and His work all that he wants. He is, therefore, brought by the Spirit to judge himself before God, receiving the Son of God and life in Him. Such an one submitting to God's righteousness then receives also the Holy Ghost.

But now, as we have seen, comes another and a very important connection with our subject; the bearing of this on worship. Now I affirm that, according to the doctrine of the New Testament, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven is the active agent and power of all that is for the blessing and direction and instruction of the church, and also for the worship of God. It is He who, present in the assembly of God, acts among the children of God, and produces adoration, draws out the hearts in thanksgiving for the mercy that He has shown, and in praise for what the God and Father of Christ is and has revealed to them in His Son. This is worship accordingly, hence the Holy Ghost cannot be rightly or reverently called a help. He is really the one and only power of carrying on worship in the church of God according to His expressed mind. so we find in the New Testament that worship was invariably conducted, not by a few, still less by only one individual acting for the saints; it was the common joy of the saints of God expressed according to the sovereign and free action of His Spirit in the saints. Hence, therefore, with Christian worship we in due time find the assembly or church of God. Neither can the assembly with propriety be called a help. The one body and one Spirit are the necessary conditions of worship.

These two things, I repeat, are found in order to it: the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and, again, the Holy Ghost acting not in the individual as an exclusive mouthpiece of praise to God for a congregation, but by whom He will in God's assembly. Still less is there such a thought as man at large — fallen man — invited to draw near and take part in addressing and blessing God, as if capable of worship: a most offensive notion and wholly opposed to all the holiness, grace, and truth of God. I cannot conceive anything more foreign to the plain facts of the New Testament than the idea that the Holy Ghost was given to man as such. The Holy Ghost was given, to man indeed, but first to Christ who knew no sin, and then only to those that believe in Christ. So far from this, He is only given to man when he takes the place of one dead before God, when he has come to recognize the great truth of Christ dead, the only hope for fallen man. but, then, in no case is the Holy Ghost given to a man as man, but to the man who is born again, when he has called on the name of the Lord as one needing the Saviour, and thus, confessedly dead before God, lives unto God as one henceforth dead to sin. Therefore it is that, as a matter of fact, until God brought out this great truth, there was no such thing as the gift of the Holy Ghost, which draws out the Christian in worship.

In fact, Christianity only began with the manifestation of these profound truths. In Old Testament times there was no such state of things. Then man was under probation; now there is an end of it, and man is lost or saved as to his soul. Supposing man has been proved guilty of every sin and iniquity, what is the use of trying him any more? Such is the sentence which is now pronounced on man under the gospel. The whole race is declared by God to be in this condition. No one can or would deny that from the beginning there have been saints, that is, souls that were born of God. But now that the Lord Jesus is brought out as the second Man, the last Adam; following Him there is the gathering out from the world of those who, both in nature and position, are according to the truth in Christ a new creation. They have derived their new character from Christ risen from the dead.

But, further, the Holy Ghost comes down from heaven to act in this new order of things, in this new creation that God has thus produced, founded on Christ the Lord. Therefore the notion of a clergy, an especially consecrated class, distinct from God's children, thoroughly carried out in popery, is utterly false. There one sees the pretensions of man to act as God. On the other hand, we have the opposite error in what is commonly called quakerism, that is, the Holy Ghost given to man as man; and of the two I think quakerism is, if possible, the more revolting. The whole theory is fundamentally evil and erroneous. I am speaking now not of the moral qualities of many Friends but only of the system of quakerism. It is well known that their doctrine on this grave subject is that the Holy Ghost is given to all mankind, to a Jew or a heathen, to an infidel, a Turk, or anybody else.* Now I call this of all doctrines professed by Christians the most opposed to the truth of Christianity. Can any view be more offensive? For the teaching of the New Testament as to this is plain: namely, the Spirit is given neither to a man, nor to a caste of men, on the one hand, nor to the race universally on the other; but to those only who stand in Christ. Again, the Spirit, who is the seal and earnest of the individual Christian, baptizes them into one body. Thus may all see that there is "one body and one Spirit."

*A Christian, who thinks better of the doctrine of the Society of Friends than I can, sent me a recent document which sounds more than usually Evangelical. But even here those good words only disguise their unquestionable belief that Christ's redemption procures the Spirit for all men without exception, apart from the new birth or faith of the gospel. This is exactly what I tax them with and maintain to be evil and heterodox.

But as for the application of this truth to the matter of worship, let us turn to 1 Corinthians 14. It is the just and the fullest statement throughout the New Testament how God intended His will in this respect to be carried out. The apostle writes thus: "What is it then? I will pray with the Spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. Else when thou shalt bless with the Spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? for thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified" (Ver. 15-17).

We see from this and much that follows that hindrances to worship were very early brought in. Hence we can learn that it is not a mere matter of the absence or the presence of power that all turns on. There can be no question of the power that was with the Corinthians. It is a great mistake when we hear people talking about Christians without the power to worship. If they have the Spirit, they have the power. There is another and a serious question to consider, the allowance of fleshly motives that makes the coming together a dishonour to God. But it will not do virtually to reproach the Spirit of God with the blame of it, as all seem to do who sanction the question. Have we got the power? The Holy ghost is faithful and has never left the Church of God. He is always in and with us; He is present to guide and help the saints. It is no question of power, for the Christian has the Spirit to carry on the worship of God. It is rather the power of unjudged flesh which hinders the Spirit of God, and consequently dishonours the Lord Jesus.

So it was in Corinth. There was the fullest proof in that city that it is no question of power. The Spirit of God wrought among those saints manifestly and mightily. They spake with tongues, we are told; but they were carnal. They were in their ways a spectacle of shame, instead of being a practical testimony to the grace of the Lord Jesus. Is not this solemn lesson to us? We ought to be jealous for the glory of the Lord, and most watchful against anything that would detract from that witness to Him we are called to give as God's children. Now the Corinthians had forgotten this; and the apostle reproves them, "I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all: yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue" (1 Cor. 14: 18, 19).

These philosophic Corinthians were occupied with the power they had received from God, instead of seeking His glory. So the apostle has to take them to task as children. He says, "Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be manly. In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that they will not hear me, saith the Lord. Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not: but prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe. If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in private persons, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? but if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or a private person, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: and thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying" (Ver. 20-26).

I refer to this not as if worship were the only matter for the assembly, but to show that it has a real place therein, and because we see clearly both what the will of God is, and the way in which His will was hindered. The will of God was that the church should come together as His assembly to the glory of the Lord, and when they come together the Spirit would act in that assembly by this or that one in their midst, leading one out into prayer, another into thanksgiving, another into prophesying. But all must be under the hand of the Lord. This was the ground taken. The Corinthians overlooked this, because of pre-occupation with powers conferred, and slipped aside. They brought into the assembly what, if in fact the power of the Spirit, was His power wrongly used for self-display, not in order or for edification. Thus the very carnality of the Corinthians becomes, in the grace of the Lord, the means of great instruction to us.

The Corinthian church was in painful disorder; and I ask you, Have you profited by it? It is a poor sign of repentance, or moral profit, where men only see the faults of others; rather is it the invariable sign of a heart that is not right before God. Where there is an unexercised conscience, there may be an eye keen and sharp enough in detecting other people. But if you desire to walk with the Lord, I ask you, Have you learned His will? Where has God laid down, do you ask, the manner and order of the Christian assembly, how He Himself is to is to be worshipped in it, and how His children are to be edified? I answer, in His word. There can be no doubt what the will of God originally was for the church. Have we deliberately made up our minds not to seek His will for our worship now? Let us consider the undeniable facts, in the plain word of God, as to this.

I am speaking now in no mean city where Christianity abounds: at least one sees representatives of many denominations. But where, I ask you, among them all is faith in God's word and Spirit as to worship? Where do you find the Holy Ghost left to act freely among the assembled saints? Some may object that, if this were so, it would result in all sorts of disorder. What, the word and Spirit among God's saints lead to disorder! Is it not rebellion to refuse subjection to His will? The Corinthians were disorderly because they slighted it, and their correction is God's rule for us. And it is a far greater sin in the face of such scripture to set up a human order subversive of God's, than even to be as disorderly as they were. Where Christians are gathered to the Lord's name, God is there to set crooked things straight. But if they depart from the scriptural regulations of His assembly, in dependence on the Holy Spirit, it is no matter how admirably the substituted order may be conducted, it is a false state of things. No reform can set right what is radically wrong.

Do you question the facts? or misunderstand the case? I am bound then to explain. You object that the present lecture justifies the ways of modern Christendom. Supposing, for instance, you say we look at such a meeting as this: it is not left to the Holy Ghost's sovereign action in the assembly. Granted: no one contends for blotting out preaching of the word or discoursing to saints. We are not assembled now for worship, etc. One who has received a gift from the Lord Jesus is using it for the good of Christians. Thus we are not shut up to one mode or resource of action. Ministry is not the assembly, although gifts may be exercised there, but not there only. The word of God shows both to be divine without confounding them. There were individuals endowed by our Lord with power from on high to expound, exhort, teach, etc., and they are not only free but bound to do so: they wrong Him and the church, if they do not. But the exercise of ministry on individual responsibility is quite distinct from the assembly where all come together (gifted or not) in dependence on the Spirit. If I have a gift from God, what is called in the parable of Matthew 25, such or such a "talent," I ought to go forth as Apollos or any other of old. God's word is plain; the Lord's call is binding. Woe to the man who refuses! The principle is just the same, whatever the measure or nature of the gift from the Lord; it may be for edifying the saints, or for the conversion of souls.

It is on this principle that all individual ministry is exercised; and therefore one should never find fault with any truly gifted for ministering to the church, or with others who labour to disseminate the gospel, using their gifts among souls converted or unconverted. On the contrary, one would desire to see more and more liberty, more and more power, more and more sense both of dignity and of responsibility in those who thus labour in the word.

But besides all this, and if possible more important still, is the assembly of God, their coming together as such in dependence on the Lord's presence and the free action of the Holy Ghost in their midst carrying them on either in the worship of God or in the edification of one another, perhaps both conjointly. Is this not a part of scripture obligatory on the Christian assembly to the end? Are you prepared to reject God's word as to this for old or new tradition? It is objected indeed that the Epistle to the Corinthians supposes there were tongues and other extraordinary powers. But the absence of tongues, etc., can never nullify God's word for all that abides. Have you given up this Epistle as God's principle? If you are not acting on this word of His, you are acting on man's, on a mere innovation; in short you are clearly fallen into departure from scripture, and in this at least are not doing the will of God. No wise Christian looks for sign-gifts as things are; but their absence and consequently the non-application of what regulates their action in the assembly cannot efface for faith God's principle and regulation of all that remains.

Along with the fact that there is the one body as well as the one Spirit, there is the responsibility that God's assembly should give itself up to the Lord, in dependence on the Holy Ghost; that the assembly should come together looking to the Lord to work in them by the Holy Ghost. This is all one contends for; and every intelligent Christian must contend for this, or give up his profession of cleaving to apostolic authority and order. God's assembly with His Spirit freely acting in the midst is the essential condition as regards Christian worship. You may say that in the present ruined state of Christendom one can only have it in an imperfect condition. But this is the will of the Lord for all His saints; this is the one scriptural view of God's assembly meeting here below.

There were undoubtedly of old certain outward powers or signs, gifts that have lapsed or been withdrawn from the church. As to this I am far from agreeing with those who, particularly in this part of the country, some years ago, fell into a great delusion by yearning after the revival of miraculous vouchers and tokens. To my conviction, as the church is now, it was an unspiritual thought, and an unholy desire. The children of God would have shown a truer sense of what is due to God by humiliation in sackcloth and ashes, by repentance, and so seeking the path of obedience in the waste, rather than by wistful aspirations after these outward displays of power which once adorned the church as the vessel of Christ's glory. I believe, if there had been a deeper and more just judgment of our fallen estate among those referred to they would have been kept from this error and been spared the terrible dishonour of the Lord's name that ensued, not only in wildfire and demon power but in false doctrine as to Christ.

They were right in feeling the Babylonish confusion of Christendom; but they ought to have ceased from all they knew to be contrary to God's word, and they ought, while humbling themselves for their own sin and that of all in setting Him at nought so long, to have praised Him for the presence of the Holy Ghost, and asked grace to act on it without anxiety or hesitation. But no, they were in the same unbelief as others, and prayed for Him to be given afresh, as if He were not sent down to abide for ever, and hence they fell into even greater abominations than the rest, as they saw the evil more, and yet set up higher pretensions, with no faith whatever. For nobody doubts what is the Lord's will as to the Christian generally. You can say and even teach any amount of truth, provided you treat it as mere theory by not acting on it: but where is the Lord, where is faith in this? Instead of doing the truth and abstaining from all inconsistent with it, they prayed for extraordinary power, and had the audacity to set up apostles, prophets, etc., once more, as a revived system.

Now it ought to be plain to any spiritual mind that such a revival could not be in our present ruin. If the Lord gave the public signs of faith to all, it would sanction the wicked, divided, faithless condition of Christendom; if He gave to you only, it would be a practical denial of all His saints elsewhere. Impossible that the Lord would do either. He continues all the gifts needful for His work in man and in the church; but He would deny neither the faithful presence of His Spirit on the one side nor the ruin-state of Christendom on the other, as this delusion in effect denied both. He did pledge all that was necessary for perfecting the saints, and He has fulfilled it; He did not pledge Himself either to continue or if possible still less to restore, a series of sign-gifts, and He has done nothing of the sort. It was only a false appearance brought about by the enemy in a very presumptuous sect. Indeed no holy person could conceive the Lord bestowing such gifts indiscriminately any more than to a party.

For, if we test it, where can we conceive the Lord would begin? In Rome? "Oh!" says some good Protestant, "this would never do, give them to Rome!" Yet be assured that there have been not a few who, even in that idolatrous system, have lived and died in the Lord — nay, I believe, been not only pious laymen but priests, and monks, and popes. Yet you will all rightly feel that if the Lord were to vouchsafe the wonderful signs of His spiritual power, throughout that idolatrous system, it would seem His sanction of its iniquity.

Suppose in the next place that He gives powers to all (I do not know how many denominations there may be): still He gives them to all the denominations! "Oh, no," some zealous Plymouthist would exclaim, "this would never do; it would sanction denominations contrary to His word." To whom then could they be given? To the Plymouthists so-called? Let me tell you that the "Brethren" in question have just enough to do to be kept themselves aright; and I am perfectly persuaded that, if they could have had these powers given to them exclusively, it would prove an intoxicating cup administered, ruinous to the Lord's glory and to their blessing. To my firm conviction nothing could more falsify all that we own to be His mind. We do confess the one body and one Spirit; we do not deny our present ruin-state, but mourn it. I would not, if such a thing could be, have for myself or desire for any saint, what would exalt us to the depreciation of the truth or to the ignoring of others, no less members of Christ than ourselves, but above all what would lower and misrepresent our Lord. There would be the utmost danger, yea, the moral certainty, of their becoming what their worst enemies say they are now. It would directly tend to their denying the Christian name to all other saints, and it would practically deny their testimony to the ruin of that which bears the Lord's name here below. Therefore, as it appears to me, when the Lord saw all going to ruin, He righteously and in wisdom discontinued those external powers.

The Lord Jesus said in Mark 16, that these signs should follow; but he never said how long they were to last. They did follow them that believed; and there is the simple truth of the matter. For their continuance or revival you have no divine warrant.

If you, brethren, believe in the presence of the Spirit of God, it will be no question to your minds but clear and sure that He acts by whom He will in the assembly, as certainly as by individuals in the way of ministry. It is as important as it is true, that the ministry is a permanent and divine institution; but, then, the same Spirit, who thus works individually, works corporately in the church. Do you doubt the competency, or willingness, of the Holy Spirit to maintain order in the assembly? Suppose, for instance, it were only a human company: a gentleman asks a dozen of his friends to his house for dinner, what, I wonder, would be thought, if anyone were to say, "It is a very dangerous thing to have these twelve persons at dinner; I am afraid there must be grave disorder." You would feel that this would be rather strong language; and if men can feel confident that at a decent table there need be no distrust of propriety, can Christians doubt that the Lord would give order among God's children meeting in His name? Is God the author of confusion? What is it that accounts for such thoughts? The unbelief of the world, which neither sees nor knows the Holy Spirit, the fear that God's children will be actuated only by fleshly motives on such occasions. The real presence of the Lord in His assembly is not thought of.

No doubt, if Christians came together as so many men, with no Lord to look to, as if God took no concern or control in His own assembly, there might be nothing but disorder. And this is the very thing I would impress on you who are gathered to the Lord's name: we meet not merely with mutual love and courtesy as Christians, but as members of Christ who compose God's assembly. Can any conceivable principle clothe with such confidence and solemnity the gathering together of souls on earth? It is no invention or assumption of ours; it is the will of the Lord for all that are His own here below. You, if a Christian, are unfaithful if you do not so meet, nor is it possible according to scripture duly to worship Him otherwise.

But the assembly of God, like the presence of the Spirit, is more rightly perhaps to be viewed as the condition of worship in the hour that is now come, than as a help to it.

A most important help certainly in the worship of God is the Lord's supper. In the early church they were so filled with the Spirit and so enjoyed the fellowship of one another at the Lord's table that they came together for this purpose every day. At that day they first knew that Christ was in the Father, they in Him, and He in them. And no wonder. It was a new and truly divine thing, that holy fellowship; and when they met together, that which expressed this and more than this, the Lord's supper, was always before their hearts. So we are told in Acts 2: 46; "And they continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart." This is the picture that is presented by the new-born church of God.

We have a view of the same supper of the Lord still later (Acts 20); and no doubt, as the Spirit of God has given us both, so each is for an important purpose.

From the first statement we gather that it would not be wrong to take the Lord's supper every day if circumstances called for it, simply and holily, as then. In Acts 20 we have the more ordinary state of things; and thence we learn that the habit of the church was to break bread on the first day of the week. We are further told that "Paul preached," though it is not properly preaching, but discoursing. There we find just what we may see elsewhere, liberty in the gathering together of the church for one who may be so led of the Lord to instruct or exhort the brethren. Assuredly there is nothing that shuts out the assembly from edification by the word, even when met to break bread. Anyone that denies this seems to me fighting against plain scripture; for I have known persons, in their reaction from going to hear a sermon, allow themselves the thought that, because we come together to break bread, there is no room for the Holy Ghost to teach or exhort by whom He will.

The breaking of bread is and ought to be the standing service for the saints on each Lord's day, but not so as to exclude the action of the Spirit for the joy of faith and help of the saints. Only let all be simple and real, which the Holy Spirit alone can give or keep up.

It is common again to find saints who, if they do not despise, certainly neglect, the Lord's supper. Their fear of ordinances perhaps, or more generally their fondness for preaching, causes them to swing to the opposite side. Worship is thus well-nigh lost. Such a habit necessarily lowers the place of God's children or church into that of mere hearers. Not that it is not important to receive instruction; but it will be found that, where by grace you take and hold your place as true worshippers, you also receive the profit of the truth a hundred-fold more than when you sink into a mere auditory.

Those who are content to be no more than hearers never come to perfection, to use the apostle's words. They are stunted in their spiritual growth, instead of increasing by the knowledge of God. Nor wonder at this for the present aim of grace is forgotten or unknown. The object of God in bringing us to the knowledge of Himself in Christ is to draw out our souls to His praise in worship, and to His glory in service. The Lord's supper is the central feast. For the Christian to abandon this for sermon-hearing is a woeful and disastrous descent, which settles him down to the means and not the end of God, not to speak of immense loss in every way. In short, then, the evangelical idea and practice of merging worship in sermons, besides being an evident departure from the revealed will of God, dishonours the Lord and His death, grieves the Holy Ghost who would glorify Jesus, and injures the children of God beyond calculation.

But we learn from a previous chapter (1 Cor. 11) of 1 Corinthians that, as the right use of the Lord's supper is of all consequence in God's worship, so there is danger in various ways to the saints. The Corinthians lacked gravity in this as in other things; and the Lord both resented and corrected the evil. They appear to have mixed up the love-feast or agape with the Lord's supper; and as they allowed nature to come in (probably from old habits as heathens), some were guilty of excess in eating and drinking, while the poor were made to feel their condition. This was in every way most grievous; and the apostle was led of the Lord not only to explain that His hand had been dealing with some in sickness, and others in death or falling asleep, but to separate in future the Lord's supper from any such feast.

Further great principles are laid down of the utmost value for our permanent good. "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world" (Ver. 26-32).

Thus, on the one hand, self-examination is urged on the Christian — never a doubt, but to prove himself, and this with a view to come, not to stay away. On the other hand, if one eat or drink lightly (that is, "unworthily"), he eats and drinks judgment (not "damnation," as it is most faultily rendered, but judgment) to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Hence, when the Corinthians failed in self-judgment and treated the Eucharist unworthily, they fell under the Lord's judgment, which, however serious and humbling, was really merciful, for, when judged, they were chastened of Him that they should not be condemned with the world. That is, even this wrong brought not "damnation" but His chastening judgment.

Hence we see that the Lord's supper constantly before us is meant to call forth in the saints this constant habit of self-examination. And we see at once how important is its bearing on the worship of the saints. For if they come carelessly, the Spirit in very faithfulness will testify to it; and they will then, if honest, betake themselves rather to confession than to praise, and thus the proper worship of the assembly will be interfered with and hindered. If due self-examination go on, the conscience is kept good, and the heart can flow out, as the Spirit guides, in praise and thanksgiving unimpeded around the table of the Lord. Thus the instruction of the Lord lets us know what a help there is when the Lord's supper holds its due place, what a hindrance when it is despised or abused.

Let me here notice what is often a difficulty to some persons respecting a hymn-book. We have a book of Psalms in the Old Testament, but none in the New Testament  -  only the certainty that the Christians in these the earliest days had in use among them such metrical compositions as are styled "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." Why such a marked difference? They do not see through the cavil of such as harp on the inconsistency of written hymns and of extemporaneous prayers. But the truth in scripture is plain that in the apostolic age such were the facts. They had hymns, etc., to sing, whilst they prayed according to the moment. To have hymns then is quite right, according to God's word. It is an utter error in all who think that hymns were impromptu compositions which the Spirit of God gave on the spot. There is no warrant for any such notion. For example, the Corinthian brethren came each with a psalm. This does not mean the Psalms of David, but a Christian psalm. Hence the fact is that, in all lands and tongues where Christianity is known, the believers are sure to express their Christian joy and thanksgiving in suited hymns, because the New Testament supposes a new state of happiness through the gospel such as must needs find such a vent spontaneously.

For now the saints are shown to be perfectly blessed in Christ, and having the Spirit as a well of water within springing up into everlasting life. They long for Christ to come, or to depart and be with Him. In the Old Testament, on the contrary, there was the fear of death which kept them all their lifetime subject to bondage. It was as to them an unexplored and dark region. Christ's death and resurrection have changed all for us. Whereas for the most part the joy in the book of Psalms is on this side of the grave, and hence in the presence and reign of the Messiah. On the other hand, in the New Testament, the Messiah having come and gone after accomplishing redemption, the church is being called. There is therefore no need of inspiring a book of psalms, for the Christian has the salvation of his soul, and can joy in God fully revealed and known, and hence he makes psalms and spiritual songs for himself. What a help and power to worship is not this!

But there is a remark I may be allowed, and not unnecessary in the use of these compositions. If the Spirit had to provide ready-made a praise-book for Israel, but left it for the Christian heart and mind to do this work according to their measure, there is nothing more needed than self-judgment and dependence on God in using hymns in the assembly. It is really a solemn thing to give out a hymn there, because thereby almost more than in anything else you risk, if wrong, drawing the whole congregation along with you, or you compel them to mark their sense of your error by an ominous silence. Thus it is plain that for giving out a hymn in the assembly, when if a man goes wrong there is or is not spiritual discernment, it becomes much more serious than those conceive who think there is nothing so easy as to spend a little while together in singing nice hymns. For this the Holy Ghost is required, for He, dwelling in that assembly as God's temple, knows just what is wanted. But thanks be to God! He is there to guide according to the present mind and will of God. This should lead one to be not morbid but prayerful, to watch earnestly that it be the Lord's guiding and not his own will in any way. On the other hand, if the Spirit guides in a hymn, it is no less serious to slight it through a crotchet or perhaps a feeling against the person who gave it out. How all-important is the presence and action of God's Spirit in the church of God! I commend this not on the ground of common sense, but as the certain will of God to you as His children who stand only in faith. I might much extend this lecture by touching on many other helps and hindrances to worship; but this may suffice for the present.

May you have grace to be faithful in following out the truth as you learn it from God! If any deliberately prefer to His will for His church what man has set up, I must leave them in His hands to whom they shall give account. There is no reasoning that can stand before the word of God; and the Spirit will surely strengthen all whose eye is single both to know and to do the Lord's will.

Worship in the hour that now is.

John 4: 23, 24.

W. Kelly.

(Adapted from a lecture 'Christian Worship' at the Haverstock Room, Kentish Town, May 17, 1870.)

One cannot understand the nature of worship without taking into account the new relationship of the worshipper. One must consider the place in which divine grace has put him, as well as his new obligations.

Time was when God had a worshipping nation, a people who stood on the ground of their own responsibility to God. This was the standing fact of Israel who fell as Adam did before. And the conclusion that Scripture draws for all now is, that on such a ground there is and can be nothing but ruin. What really can be more just? Man himself acknowledges that law is a righteous ground, and in fact is ever prone to take it. Israel only did what every other nation in the earth would have done in the same circumstances and what most professors are doing now, because they have not learned the true conclusion from God's history of Israel.

The mass of souls in the civilized world — in these countries at least — attempt to stand before God substantially on the same ground as Israel did. That is, they take as their rule the law of God, and endeavour, as they say, to shape their conduct according to the law of God, nevertheless looking with a kind of hope to the Saviour, that if there be sincerity they may at last get to heaven, saved then from their iniquities. This is the patent fact in Christendom, as no one can deny. It is found in its most open form in Roman Catholicism, but substantially also in Protestant countries, not being confined to any particular class, creed, or polity. I use the fact as the all but universal position taken by man where he has heard of Christ, even when possessing the word of God in his hand.

Now God did bring out this principle in Israel; but it was for the purpose of guarding man from ever afterwards taking such a place. The main object of the Old Testament was to show that they had every possible help as a worshipping nation. Yet the issue of the trial was the rejection of the Son of God, and their own remediless ruin, for eternity indeed, but also for this world. They came under the chastening of God until He gave up such dealings as even broke them up as a people, and dispersed them to the ends of the earth. All these experiences, trials, and punishments of the Israelitish nation were really the result of the self-righteous effort to take their stand on their own merits, or legal obedience. It is not to be supposed that they did not look to God, or that they excluded prayer; it is not meant that they did not mingle every kind of form at any rate of expressing their dependence upon God. The truth is, that such forms are but a veil which serves to hide the true state of the case from men's own eyes, and acts as a cover over the faults that God's eye continually sees, and because of which at last He must judge, or abandon His own character.

The Lord Jesus, in the chapter before us, causes the light to shine in answer to the question of a poor Samaritan woman, who really had no character to lose, yet was encouraged by His grace, and ventured to ask Him about worship. If she thought herself unknown, He not only knew perfectly her history, but let her know that He knew it. Nevertheless, in the fulness of divine goodness, even from her He did not withhold what surely every soul ought to know — what it becomes more especially the Christian to know — what the will of the Lord is about our worship.

Yet there is not a single range of truth on which man is more sensitively tenacious of his own thoughts; none where he is less willing to enquire of God; nothing on which he is more ready to take up arms if opposed, or himself to force on others, nothing on which he more resents the interference of strangers, settling down in traditional views and ways, rather than be subject to the truth. He likes to worship as his father did, or his grandfather before him, and, if he knows of anybody beyond his grandfather, he is only so much the prouder of it. That is to say, he likes to look back at a long succession of people worshipping as he does, and likes to do, himself. In short, there is no serious thought of the will of God about the matter. Where is any true reference to the Lord Jesus — the only One from whom we can perfectly know what the mind and will of the Lord really is? Now the Lord has anticipated this, and in no way left us a prey to doubt, having left on record His answer to the enquiry that was made then. He declares it in the case of the simplest person that can be conceived; whence we may learn beyond doubt how deeply it affects every soul in earnest about God. It could hardly be said that the woman of Samaria was divinely concerned at first, but the Lord did not leave her till she was.

Again, there is a very important consideration here: not only the contrast between the worship that the Lord was about to introduce with that which had been; but also what is necessary in each individual soul to lay as a basis and power for worship. There is weighty order in these chapters. We must not take them isolatedly. The truth of John 4 supposes that of John 3. The third does not bring us into worship, but it lays down what is inseparable as a preparation for worship. The great truth of John 3 is the necessity of being born again (the new birth as it is called), and next, that the new birth cannot now be separated from what is no less necessary, the cross of the Lord Jesus. If I am born again, I have it by believing in Jesus, the Son of man that must be lifted up from the earth — the only-begotten Son of God, given by God in His love to the world, that "whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Now, this of itself does not make man a worshipper, yet it is the admirable and only fitting basis for it. But we want power as well as nature in order to worship according to the exigencies of God's mind as now revealed, and according to the love that will make us thoroughly happy in worship; that it should not be merely a duty coldly rendered to the Lord, or with an effort, but a full, unaffected, and holy flow of joy. Not that duty is excluded. There is not, as far as I know, a single thing that pertains to us here, but what, if it end in duty as far as we are concerned, springs from grace in God Himself. When we look at it on every hand, in point of fact we shall find in John 4 that both points of view in worship are before the Lord, and both are revealed to us.

He shows, accordingly, to this woman, that it was not enough for God, if enough for man's desire, that we should be just able to enter into the kingdom of God. He would fill the heart now with divine joy. The power of the Holy Ghost associates us with the love of God that He has given to us in Christ. I say "associates us with His love in Christ," because one may look at the power of the Spirit of God in a merely external way. This a man might have, and manifest its energies, and nevertheless be lost after all. I grant you that it is a truth which many do not understand, but Hebrews 6 is perfectly clear about it. We find persons who had tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and yet fallen away. We must carefully remember that such apostates were never born of God. There is no such fact or teaching in the New Testament as that one born of God perishes; but then we are not always judges of who are, and who might not be, born of God. We may be deceived. There are those who apparently begin well, run zealously, and turn aside. There may be men possessed of mighty powers, working miracles, or displaying other effects of the presence of the Spirit of God (and these are brought before us here) who nevertheless fall away irreparably.

But what is spoken of in John 4 is not the external working of the Spirit; it is His power mingling itself with, and acting in, that new divine life which is given to every believer. This clears the subject at once. For that which is supposed in Hebrews 6 does not touch upon Christian worship, which clearly is the subject here, and this in contrast with Jewish, or, yet more, Samaritan forms. The religion of Sychar was merely the vain rivalry of those who had no part nor lot in the promises of God. But it is the solemn truth revealed by our Lord that Christian worship supposes the passing away of Jewish worship. Such is the fact before all eyes now. The people of the Jews, witnesses of God for ages, have disappeared from their land, having lost their public testimony, and are cast out of the only place in which that witness could be properly borne. They have no longer the consecrated spot where the holiest of all once proclaimed to the world the God that hid Himself in the thick darkness, to whom the High Priest drew near once a year tremblingly, not without blood, nor incense. But now all is changed; and those who alone are true worshippers are supposed to possess, not only a new life capable of entering into the mind of Christ, and having the moral feelings of God, which those that are born of Him have and must have; but further, that they, propitiated for and cleansed by the blood of the cross, possess a new divine power working in that life by which they are enabled to worship in spirit and in truth. This is the main subject of that part of the chapter which has been read tonight.

Now I do not speak of a thing outside you. If you love the Lord Jesus, if you have turned to Him in the bitterness of your souls, if you know the anguish of being sinners convicted in the sight of God, if nevertheless the proclamation of His mercy has touched and won your hearts to Himself, if in short you have faith in the Lord Jesus, you are children of God. Fear not those who call it presumption to take such a place. It is presumption if you have not faith in Him, but the truest humility for those that believe. It is what you owe Jesus. You are false to your Saviour if you question what He has done for you. You owe it as a part of your allegiance, your loyalty to the Lord Jesus, to let all know the great things the Lord has done for your soul. But, as the consequence of the mighty work of the Lord Jesus in your salvation, you are constituted worshippers — not now on the footing of a nation tried by its efforts under the law of God, but of His children saved by sovereign grace. Legal probation was the case once with the children of Israel. But Christian worship is founded on the momentous fact that the cross of Christ has closed all trials of the creature on the ground of his own responsibility; that God has brought in an entirely new thing, not man tried, but, God as the Saviour-God, and man (i.e. believers) on a new footing — taken out of either the ancient people of God or any other; for it is of no consequence what people may have been, but what grace makes them now in Christ.

It is a question of giving Christ to those who, when they had nothing but sins, are, in faith of Him, brought to confess their sins. I grant you, without the confession of sins, without the justifying of God against ourselves, there is nothing as it should be, nothing divine, in any soul. But then, if you are confessors of the name of the Lord, you cannot choose your place: God has defined it, as His grace has given it all. He puts in this place those who receive Jesus. His own children He puts in this place of men cleared from their sins, their evil nature itself judged and done with before Him This most comforting truth communicated to their souls sets them the more free to know Him better, and to worship Him who so loved them. In principle, therefore, every Christian is constituted a worshipper. The sad fact, however, meets us now that there are very few Christians indeed who know what Christianity is. Thus the last truth that people are apt to learn is the first truth in importance as practically concerning themselves. Not that people have not got notions of Christianity, but that the clear simple spiritual understanding of the new place into which Christ has brought us is in general the least understood by believers.

Let me ask the question: Supposing you were to go among the Christians of this city — and certainly they are not behind those of other places — supposing you were to go throughout this land, or the countries which surround it, among those who are really children of God, would you find in their hymns of praise, in their spiritual songs, the consciousness of their perfect nearness to God, of their present joyful rest in the Lord, of their delight in His known presence by the Spirit of God, of their waiting for the Saviour to come and receive them unto Himself? Is all this their language, their uniform language? I fear that I am doing no dishonour to any congregation of any body, to any form of worship as it is called, if I say that such would be altogether the exception, and not the rule. The reason is manifest. Even Christians are afraid of seeming to slight the place of Israel in the Old Testament. Consequently for the most part — and I am not speaking of any particular denomination — go where you may, in France, England, Ireland, Scotland, or any other land, substantially it is the same thing, though with marked differences undoubtedly. It would be unjust to say that the language or the form is exactly the same; but I may well ask — Is there the simple, holy, joyful, sense of nearness to God, unclouded peace, without a single spot or stain, without a question of fear, on the part of the body of Christian worshippers? He who would affirm this must have had a very different experience from mine. The reverse I believe to be true.

For the most part the prayers that are found in use among the real children of God — and the more real, the more you will find this — betray the anxiety of godly men, their earnest desire to awaken from indifference and form to a sense of sins, warning and entreating, beseeching and expostulating, if by any means to alarm, and somehow to win, men from the world to God.

Is this then worship? Not an element of it. It may be service, as far as it goes, and it is; but this confusion of things, so widely differing, makes it the more needful to explain what Christian worship is, what is its nature and distinctive character. I answer, that it is the united outpouring of thanks and blessing to God and the Lamb, from hearts purified by faith, who have the knowledge of the Father and the Son by the power of the Holy Ghost; and who therefore draw near in the happy confidence of His love, in the confessed delight and enjoyment of what God is, in the praise of what He is, and of what He is to them.

Preaching, or prayer on the part of those seeking the conversion of souls, is not worship. Intercession for saints even is not worship, unless it rise up to the character of thanksgiving and of blessing. Very often they may approach and mingle. Still, prayer in its own essential nature is the spreading of our wants before God with the desire of relief, and of answer in His grace. And it appears to me that scarce anything is less happy than teaching or preaching mixed up with prayers. I am not alluding to preachers only; for the evil is common among those who have no evangelistic gift; and yet they seem hardly to know what prayer is, still less worship. What they substitute for it is often an iteration of truths, then quite out of place. Suppose that we were dealing with individuals, it might be perfectly right; but when one thinks of speaking to God, is it becoming to teach Him? This is forgotten.

Need one tell you how the very thought of the One we are speaking to is lost in such cases? They are thinking about this one and that one — I will conceive genuine in their love and desires; but even then sincerity can never cover nor excuse such a fault. They are off the ground of Christian worship; and this is an essential fault if the object of the meeting be worship.

I say, then, that the expression of our wants to God, although most proper in its place, is not worship. Again, confessing our sins is not worship. This I do most entirely admit to you, that if people do not confess their sins day by day they will not be able to worship when they come together; if they are honest men, the effect of not confessing at home, of carelessness in self-judgment, leads to the turning of worship into an occasion of confession, because the heart is burdened. Thus, instead of its being the joyful drawing near to God and raising the hearts of all to the worship of the One before whom we bow, and in whose nature and grace we take our delight, and telling what we know of Him, and how we appreciate His love — instead of this, the heart is oppressed with a sense of its unworthiness, with its failures from day to day; and accordingly the meeting becomes one of confessing how much we fail, instead of the power of the Spirit going out to our God in the sense of His grace and of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Everyone knows that it is impossible for the soul to be born of God without feeling the need of prayer. Crying to God is always true in its own place, it is true every day, true throughout the day; but the subject that I am bringing before you now is worship, not prayer. Again, in order to produce the sense of our need, and of any measure of confidence in God, there must be conversion. The Holy Spirit uses the word to quicken the soul; as we know, normally this was done by the preaching of the gospel: and this is, I need not say, ordered of God wisely and graciously. But neither preaching nor praying is worship, and the mingling of these things together tends to obscure them all, and comparatively to destroy the sense of what worship is for the children of God.

Hence you will find as to this, two parties among those that bear the name of the Lord. There are mere formalists, who very often sound right to a certain point in what they say; for they will tell you that the great thing wanted by Christians is Christian worship. Therefore, they cast a slight on those who go almost wholly for sermons, whether to rouse the unconverted or to instruct the faithful. Yes, but it surely is of no small importance to know that we have the Christian people before we begin to worship. A further question still arises, — Do these men know the truth? Are they themselves born of God?

And there is exactly what drives the other class into an opposite ground. They look around; they know more or less the character, the life, the state, of most of those who compose the congregation; and, feeling very justly that they are in general not born of God, but in the disobedience of nature, and in darkness before God, they most earnestly seize the opportunity (though nominally for worship) either to thunder out the law, or to preach, as far as they can, the gospel to win men's souls to God. This, we have seen is all right in its own place; but it is a profound error to call it worship. Thus it is that mistakes are found on every side.

There is danger and difficulty unless we are simply looking to Christ, and content to follow His word: when we look to Him all is clear. Scripture shows that the gospel is necessary for bringing in God Himself to the soul, and, to speak still more strictly, for bringing the soul to God. Suppose that one has found the Lord, submits to the righteousness of God, and has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him: then comes worship (as it is said in John 9, "Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him"). But though, in principle, every child of God is entitled to worship Him, in point of fact there are many who may not be able to rise at once into worship. The reason is because their practical state is not one of rest in His grace. They are not quite easy in His presence, they would be afraid to die, they hope at last to go to heaven; but they are not happy or sure. Worse than this, they think it is a dangerous thing to be sure; they have been told so by those who ought to know, and they devoutly believe it. They are afraid of the grace of God now, and dread the judgment-seat by-and-by. Now if they reversed matters, if afraid to trust in themselves, they would be right. If they were uneasy lest they might be taking the ground habitually of their own deserts, of their faithfulness and obedience, then it would be so far wise. But after looking to Jesus and at His great salvation, after hearing the way in which God speaks of the Saviour and the Holy Ghost testifies to the perfectness of redemption, to allow one question after this is nothing but unbelief.

But supposing this has been secretly judged, and the soul has received with all simplicity the message of the grace of God that brings salvation; what then? Now is the place for worship. Now, the soul at ease, at liberty, and in peace, delights to draw near to God. But not alone: grace strengthens the new-born instincts of obedience, and there is no thought of forming one's own plan of worship, and we must still listen to the Lord, who does not merely speak of a single soul here and there drawing near in adoration, but of "the true worshippers," and "they that worship," etc. Christian worship supposes isolation no more than will-worship. Liberty undoubtedly there is, but this only to please God; not, one undertaking worship after this fashion, another after that. He who alone reveals the Father, and is with Him (as we hear elsewhere) the object of our worship, shows us how we are to worship. And if our hearts, knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, really desire to worship Him, surely we shall want to worship Him according to His own will. We lose our pains, and turn our worship rather into a grief and a dishonour to Him (not to speak of loss to our own souls), unless we are found worshipping Him in the spirit of intelligent obedience.

It is notorious that in the Old Testament much is said of worship in Jerusalem. But in the New Testament we find that on the day of Pentecost, after the cross, when the believers received the gift of the Holy Ghost, they were not left where they had been; they thenceforth began to form what is called "their own company." What does this mean? Without a doubt the company of those that confessed the name of the Lord Jesus like themselves. It is not implied by this, that unbelievers might not creep into their midst, but that nobody was received who was not supposed to believe in Him. Granted that it does not become a Christian to be suspicious; but it is the duty of faith and even charity according to the word of God and as far as we can discern, to guard the company that bears the name of Jesus from those who are not of Him — to warn others from taking a place in which nothing can sustain but life in the power of the Spirit. What wretchedness, whether deceiving or self-deceived, to profess eternal life on earth, and after all to be lost in hell! I see no care for Christ's honour, nor love to man, in such indifference as some count charity. It is really unwillingness to bear for the Lord's sake what is painful to flesh and gives offence to the world.

True love invariably seeks the good of its object. In the Christian, also, love submits to One whom we own infinitely superior to us, and withal loving us with a perfect love. We are not put on the ground of doing things merely because we think them right. We need not hesitate to say that, if we desired or sought to do right, simply because we thought the thing right, we should be always wrong. In short, the only true principle for a Christian, is obedience. We are sanctified unto the obedience of Christ. It is the very life-breath of the new nature. It was what was found in perfection in Christ, and God now calls us to walk even as He walked. Assuredly there is immeasurable distance between the perfection of Christ's walk and our walk; but this is certain, that we are bound to go forward in the same direction. The Lord may and does distance us, but we are bound to be on the same road. We are called to direct our faces to the same heaven, and we are bound to go onward, according to the measure of our strength, after Him, not away from Him. This is what is implied in being sanctified unto His obedience. God has given us to see its perfection in Christ, but He has set us in the very same path; as He said Himself, "Follow me." So here, as to this most important department of what concerns a Christian.

For the new nature has two, and but two, spheres of exercise; one sphere of its exercise is upward, and another sphere downward. Life goes out in praise and adoration towards God, as it is displayed in active goodness towards man. This includes of course those that are members of the same body, and none but the possessors of the life of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. Besides the love towards all mankind, and yet more intimately to his brethren, there is nothing that ought to stamp a Christian so much as worship. The love that was in Christ ought to be reproduced in the Christian. He has the same life, and that life is exercised in its own divine affections by the Spirit of God. But then, the highest sphere of its display is not downward, but upward. Hence, however precious service may be, whether in the higher part (namely, ministering to the church the grace of Christ and the truth of God), or in the giving out the gospel of God to the world (and these are the different parts of Christian ministry), precious as either may be, nothing equals worship. In the one case you are looking at man, or the saints; in the other case you are before our God and Father, and as much as God is above man, so is Christian worship even above Christian service.

For true worship is the common united occupation of God's children. God would give them the best place: and the very object of Christian ministry is to bring souls out of this naughty world, by the grace of God and the truth communicated to them, in order to set them in holy liberty and delight before God. This is its object. It is evident, therefore, that Christian ministry does not stop, as it were in the doorway between the children of God and their God and Father. Ministry points to the door, and, more than this, it introduces into the house; but when the door is reached, it merges in the crowd of those that enter and adore. When it acts otherwise, it ceases to be Christian ministry, and becomes mere clericalism — ministry for the flesh and for the world; ministry with the effect, if not for the purpose, of exaggerating and exalting self. And what is there of Christ in all that?

This, then, is what our Lord Jesus brings before us — God, as He knows Him; God manifesting Himself in two ways. First of all, He is the Father; not God in His abstract majesty as such; not Jehovah in government of a people, thus remaining hidden away in clouds and veils, so that He could not be known intimately, only approached dimly and distantly. So it had been, and it was Judaism. But a change was near; which Jesus here announces. Christianity is the ineffable love of God that comes down and seeks worshippers who are by grace made His children, not only bringing them out of their vileness, but at once calling them to Himself, as Father. For it is no question of gradual attainment, a sort of process of purification, either on earth or in heaven, or in some invisible state of the dead. The blessedness of the gospel is, that it shines from heaven and meets souls on the earth, putting them while here below through the cross into relationship with heaven, yea with God Himself. This is Christianity; anything short of it is not our revealed portion, though short of it there may be many elements of truth. There are none that know and love Christ at all who have not a measure of the truth. And there are those that preach not a little that is unsound, with a very small measure of the gospel. Does it not delight us that they preach Christ (even though there be sad drawbacks), and that God uses it? What a mercy that He does not limit His blessing to such as teach Christ fully, that His mercy is with all sorts of preaching and preachers, even such as are much mixed up with the world! Nevertheless there is something of Christ about them, and God can and does use this. Are we jealous of it? Do you not like God to save people, in a Roman Catholic chapel, or anywhere else?

It is not that we should count it a right thing for persons who know better, to go here and there. On the contrary, if you have the truth and know it, by all means stick to it. Never be afraid of giving unflinching support to what you know is the truth. We respect the man who inflexibly stands to what he accepts as divine; only first take care that it is divine — that you have the truth and will of God. I repeat, he who boasts of a principle that he will never give up, ought surely first to look well to himself that he has learnt it from God; that he has it in his soul by divine teaching. Tests soon come to try whether people have been taught of God. When a man has truth, he is not afraid of looking at it again and again. He is not going, like Balaam, to enquire according to his own will, when God has given him his plain answer.

On the other hand, a man who has the truth from God can wait patiently on the difficulties of others. He bears to be sifted and examined, because he is perfectly certain of the truth as revealed of God, and believed by him, without pretending to answer the objections of every man. He will seek ability to estimate aright the difficulties of others; but even if he cannot solve them, this will not lessen his conviction of the truth. I may have the most perfect certainty that I am a living person before you; but if some man asked me to explain how I know that I am alive, I might have difficulty to give reasons adequate to convince; yet this does not hinder the certainty of the fact, nor one's own consciousness of it. In his conscience, however, the caviller knows perfectly well that he is talking folly all the while. He is aware that to reason against the truth of what is, by putting frivolous perplexities, has no real sense in it. Surely, beloved friends, in the things of God we are not to allow such a spirit; but always to treat cavilling objections as sin. At the same time, if you have the certainty of the truth of God, you may and ought to be patient with others; you will be wise to avoid making attacks on them. This can only rouse animosity. God who has brought you to Himself, and made you a worshipper, has made all His children equally worshippers; and that which is thus according to God for one Christian must be right for all. Now, if you have your eye single, you will not be afraid of the light of God. You will delight to examine His word, and see whether in this you do so follow the light of God — whether, according to our Lord's description of a true worshipper, you are worshipping the Father in spirit and in truth.

It is evident from what has been observed that the first qualification and basis for worship is this: not only that we are really the children of God, but that we should have the consciousness of it. He who may be a real child of God, yet doubts it (and there are many such), cannot worship God practically while he abides in that state. What he needs is to understand the truth more fully; he wants to know even the gospel better. He may be a believer, but far from clear; such an one is not yet free. Supposing he takes his place as a worshipper in that condition, he must join in words that are above, not only his own experience, but even his faith. Consequently such an one is in danger of seeming more or less hypocritical when he is telling the Lord how he delights in Him and His salvation, yet he does not delight; when he is thanking the Lord that he has no doubts, while he has doubts; when he sings as in joy that all his fears are gone, whereas many deep anxieties remain and recur. It is evident that such a condition is not favourable in any way to the general simplicity and truth of the Christian. It is due to the glory of God, according to the Scriptures, that His children and their worship should be direct, transparent, and as true as redemption known in a good conscience can make it; for the worshipper once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. While a man is in a harassed unhappy condition, wisdom would not hurry his coming to the table of the Lord, which is the proper centre of Christian worship. Nor would love call him, till set free, to join in that which is necessarily the expression of peace, of rest in the Lord Jesus, of rejoicing in His grace, of waiting and longing for His return in glory.

It is clear according to the Scriptural account of worship — in the New Testament — that all this is pre-supposed. For souls born of God, yet in bondage, what is to be done? Christian teaching is of all moment. The Lord provides the instruction that is requisite. Above all, it is to be found in the gospel fully preached, without going farther. It is no abstruse mystery which is needed; but what every Christian conscience ought to feel to be the truth, once it is presented from God's word.

How comes it then, that many do not relish the full testimony of grace in redemption? Because they like the dim twilight of Judaism; they prefer to be left a little uncertain and somewhat vague. The moral reason is evident: when men are enveloped in a haze, they can indulge the flesh, they can trifle with the world, they can enjoy earthly pleasure. They thus please themselves with little compunction. Do not mistake here. God intends that His children should be thoroughly happy and walk in liberty. But that liberty is in freedom from sin to serve Jesus: to do the will of God is the growing delight of the heart, in cleaving to the Lord, in knowing His will more perfectly, and in a single-hearted self-renunciation, in order to glorify the Lord Jesus.

We know that the devil endeavours to make all appear to be a gloomy subject and a very painful strain. Not so: under law there was gloom, condemnation and death. The gospel sets us in conscious life, liberty and the light of God's presence. This is exactly where people mistake. They can only conceive that the obedience of a Christian must be that of nature, which consists in obeying commands that are contrary to what we wish. I have no hesitation in saying that such should not be the obedience of a Christian, as it never was of Christ; and Christ always decides the truth for a Christian. Our Lord Jesus, when He was here below, habitually spoke out of the sense of His being a Son, the Son of God. There is no small analogy with the Christian. His being a son of God is not a groundless vaunt, nor any real exalting of himself. How can I boast of that which is pure grace towards me? How can I be vain of that which does not in the smallest degree belong to myself, which was not acquired by my merit, but only and freely given me by God Himself in the name of Jesus Christ His Son? But when you have received Christ, the new life of the believer delights in the will of God, and is deeply pained whenever there is forgetfulness of His word, and a doing what is contrary to it. Here is where the connection, and the necessity, and the joy, of this worship appear.

We know, alas! that a Christian may slip into what is wrong; and hence, therefore, arises the need of self-judgment. How is it stated in 1 Corinthians? I particularly mention it, because we find it there (1 Cor. 11) connected with the dealing of the Lord, who was pleased to lay down the serious yet simple principle by His servant the apostle, that, if the believer does not judge himself, the Lord judges him. And it is evident, further, from 1 Cor. 5, that between his failure in self-judgment and the Lord's sure judgment, if all else fail, there ought to be the judgment of the assembly. Christian discipline, I grant you, many people shrink from; they are afraid of its name, and dislike all approach to it. We know well why. They are aware how it has been made an instrument of torture, what it wrought in the dark ages, not in isolated cases, but in multitudes. I do not wonder they dread it. But the abuse of the truth, the vile corruption of the ways of God in the church, and the perversion of that which should be the holy obligation of the Lord's name into a means of priestly domination, is no reason why we should abandon the word of the Lord and our own bounden duty. I say this word abides; and it is most evident that no difficulties, no confusions in Christendom, were ever meant to weaken the word of God.

Hence, therefore, as connected with our subject, it is plain that to carry on Christian worship truly, there must be holiness of walk, with self-judgment, in the believer: otherwise the worship is lowered, or becomes formal and false. If there be on the part of those who compose the assembly the habitual want of self-judgment, they will all surely sink. If we live in the Spirit we must walk accordingly, or we soon cease so to worship. Instead of being a company of souls that freely and thoroughly enjoy the grace of God, they will, if upright, lapse into groans and sighs and self-reproach, which might be necessary and right in the closet individually, sometimes even for the assembly, too; but a sorry substitution of another service for Christian worship.

But more than that; it is the business of all Christians (and of some especially) to watch over each other in Christ and for His sake. So far from its being a presumptuous interference with one another, it is the revealed will of God (1 Thess. 5), the instinct of new life, and the sure fruit of love. Do you think, for instance, that a parent, or even an elder brother or sister, fail in love because they deeply feel and express their sense of a wrong done by one of their family? I need not tell you that sin is of such a nature, that, if there be none other, the youngest of all is entitled and bound to lay it as a charge on the oldest of all. Granted, that this would be a serious and an undesirable state of things; for we have always to consider in these matters the way of doing them. And one need hardly add that zeal or good intentions will not satisfy the new nature — nothing but the will of the Lord. It is always painful to have to touch another's wound. I press particularly this, because haste to find fault, whether publicly or privately, is the cause of as many practical difficulties as any other; and I cannot conceive a greater intrusion on Christian worship than the introducing of such topics habitually into seasons devoted to it. Surely, beloved friends, that is neither the time nor the place, nor the rule in ordinary circumstances, even supposing our thoughts may be ever so correct. What we have there to do is not to be finding fault with this person or with that thing: let us take another and more fitting occasion; let us seek alone and in private, if indeed we ought to do it at all. Would it become a woman to be forward in such matters? or, again, a young man with those older? There should always be the cultivation of the lowliness of grace, more particularly if you are obliged to blame another: there is no time that demands such love, and that calls for such humility.

I do not apologise for having touched on these practical topics, as connected with worship, because we know them to be very materially and intimately linked with it. Nevertheless, I desire to come back to the main business. For, while there are these incidents in our own way, or these difficulties through others, which may be more or less hindrances, still it is very evident that the characteristic objects for which God has a people here below are the two spheres already named. Another occasion may serve to speak of ministry; but not now, when I only refer to it, lest any one might suppose it was overlooked. Having it as the present object to treat of worship, I press this, — that any of you, children of God, who are not seeking to take the place given you by the word of the Lord, of true worshippers worshipping the Father, are losing your time upon the earth in forgetfulness of your sweetest privileges. No one dictates to you; you are not advised where to go, what to do, with whom to consort, but this only — consult as to it the word of God for yourselves. If you be afraid of the test, if you are unwilling to follow its direction, you have not avoided a bad conscience. Remember what you are sanctified for. Let nothing be so prized as the glory of Christ, nothing so authoritative as the revealed will of the Lord.

Let me press this also upon you, as self-evident, that if you are mingled, Christians and no Christians, men of the world and believers in Christ together, there cannot be worship in spirit and in truth. There never was, since the Lord announced its nature, real Christian worship where such mixture exists. The effect of the attempt is not that worldly persons are raised upward to the ground and power of worship in spirit and in truth, but that Christians must go down to the atmosphere of the worldly. That is to say, you abandon (and for what? or on whose authority?) all your own proper privileges. There are few things so dreadful as putting such language, the language of Christian nearness, into men's lips that are far from God. Among many, even among some called evangelicals, worship is in practice, as in principle, scarcely known. Persons who have outward forms do maintain it in name; but it is earthly and almost wholly false, being for the most part a kind of galvanic movement kept up among the dead; it is fatal for man, and profane in the sight of God. No, it is divine life and redemption that must be the basis of worship; and the Spirit of God alone is the power of carrying it on. As it is addressed to our God and Father in the name of the Lord Jesus, so is it offered on the principle of the unity of Christ's body. It is essentially above the pettiness of a sect, and its true character dies and vanishes before it can be made to express peculiar views. When God formed His church upon earth, there was no such thought as men making a draft of doctrine or a code of rules; neither should there be now. The church of God is the best school of doctrine: practically, we learn ourselves, and others, there as nowhere else; but it is God's doing while we are there, not before going in.

Nowadays, people constantly bring their notions into the church, instead of forming their judgments from the teaching of the Spirit by the word in that place of light and truth. I maintain that thus formed you never can be right; and, therefore, far from attaching value to the conceived notions of any in such circumstances, I entreat them to think only of Christ, before they are on the true ground of confession and worship: the communion of those that are His. Many, for want of seeing this, labour to get up notions before they are true worshippers. But it is vain. They are always one-sided, and their views sure to be foreshortened in some sort of way; they are apt to be or go wrong in most important particulars. It is never wise to theorise apart from the facts of Scripture; and none can doubt where they point. Be assured there never can be true intelligence until you have taken the place of true obedience. All real understanding in divine things is of faith, and cannot be separated from moral state. It is the effect of obedience, and the fruit of being judged by God's word, of your not presuming to judge — which is what people do when they try to be intelligent before they are willing to receive, learn, and be everything, in and only through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This I believe to be the true way. The Lord would humble souls first, and would then exalt them; it is the abased, or rather those that learn to abase themselves, who have that blessed promise. The true pathway then is Christ: to come in, not as having ready-made views and a stock of judgments, but content with this only, that God in grace has met me in the midst of my folly and sins, and has given me Christ. After the mercy He has shown me in redemption, there is nothing that I should not desire to learn of such a God, as there is no good thing that His love keeps back from me. Thus grace makes one willing not only to learn but also to do for His name. How much there is, which comes with all simplicity and only in due proportions, when we are gathered to the name of the Lord, and all truth is felt to be practical in the worship and service of the Lord!

And now a little word as to the object of worship. You will find in Scripture that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus is habitually prominent. For instance, in this chapter of John's Gospel, He is the One whom our Lord Jesus puts forth. But you are not to draw from this that the Son of God is not an object of worship equal with the Father. The reason why the Son could not be put forward in John 4 is manifest: it was the Son that was Himself speaking, and, therefore, as He came to glorify the Father, naturally and necessarily He does not treat of His own glory; nor does the Holy Ghost, when He was sent down from heaven to glorify Christ. But let us take the very first chapter of Acts, when Christ went above. The disciples were in difficulty about an apostle, in Judas' room, and at once betook themselves to the Lord — not to the Father, but to the Master. And when Stephen bows down, about to depart, he asks the Lord to receive his spirit, not the Father. So when suited blessing is desired for the saints, whether the church or individuals, it is always from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. If it were blessing fully stated, it was from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

But then there is this difference, and it is an important one, that although the Holy Ghost is in His own right and title equally an object of divine worship as the Father and the Son, yet the Spirit of God is now pleased to take the place of giving effect to the counsels of God, and to work for the glory of the Father and the Son in the church. Hence it is observable that, although the Spirit of God be in His own nature entitled to worship, He for the time exalts the Father and the Son, just as the Son on earth was always exalting the Father. This is the real key to the absence of direct worship addressed to the Spirit of God in the New Testament. It must never be supposed that the Holy Ghost is not worshipped; for when we adore God as such, He is worshipped in the unity of the Godhead. "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him [it is not merely the Father, but also God] must worship Him in spirit and in truth." If we say God, the Father only is not meant, but the Trinity. Evidently, then, we worship the Father in saying God, but we also worship the Son and the Holy Ghost; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are equally God. And, consequently, it is seen at once how blessedly this fits in with worship. It is not full Christian worship merely to worship the Father. To our Lord Jesus, according to Scripture, not only angels pay homage, but glorified saints praise alike God and the Lamb: He is worthy.

We have in the Revelation an insight into the worship that we shall pay, when we are thus glorified in the presence of God: Revelation 4 and Revelation 5 are explicit. Therein is disclosed that heavenly scene; and first of all God as such, the Lord God Almighty, has His homage. The chapter speaks about earthly dealings and judgments, and the Lord God Almighty, who takes, as is meet, the universe under His ken, is thus worshipped. But in the fifth chapter there is an advance. There the elders direct their song of praise first of all, and very especially, to the Lamb. "Thou art worthy to take the book"; and this is in the very presence of God the Father. As it is said elsewhere, "Let all the angels of God worship Him"; so too all the elders of God worship Him. The persons who have the most intimate acquaintance with His mind worship Him emphatically, and after this personal manner: '` Thou art worthy to take the book." This surely is the fullest warrant. It is no use to say that it is all a future scene. Why is it revealed to us now? What is the object of God in revealing that which is to come, except to act on our souls now? It is not merely to inform us of something that will be by-and-by, but He intends to give our hearts present fellowship with His mind, and thus form our thoughts and convictions of due and full heavenly worship now. I think and trust then, that it will be plain to all Christians here, that the worship of the Lamb, of the rejected Messiah who died and rose for us, is as truly Scriptural as the worship of the Father; and that the worship of God, as such, includes in its scope and nature the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

For our present profit it is evident that conscious possession of the Spirit and the direct assurance of His guidance, now that we know the Father and the Son, are vitally momentous. On this one may say a few words. How are Christian people, when they come together, to know how to worship aright? Ask yourselves, Do you not know that the Holy Ghost is sent down for the express purpose of guiding the children of God? Certainly if He guides them in their service, and in their walk, and in their communion, He takes no less interest and active place in their worship. And so it is that in 1 Cor. 14, (founded on 1 Cor. 12, the present action of the Spirit,) when the assembly of God's people come together, you find blessing and praise as well as prayer. It is not only the exercise of gifts in prophesying or in singing. The various elements of worship are all brought in. For what can be more so than blessing and praise? Accordingly, therefore, the Spirit of God is as much the practical power in the assembly as He is in the individual. Man's will is ruinous and wretched.

The Spirit of God is the One who can alone guide aright; but then He is here for the purpose. Consequently, while the service of need has its place, there are times when He draws out our hearts in worship. "God," as such, may be before our eyes. Quite right and very true, as it may be exactly seasonable, and more so than any other object. At another time "the Father" might be most before our hearts; at another, again, "the Lord Jesus," in one glory or another. I do not believe that these things can be regulated aright by the wit of man, nor that there can be any rules given as to them; but that the spiritual discernment which is fostered as well as formed by the word of God will feel and own the right thing at the due time. This is undoubtedly very difficult; but the church of God is not meant to ease us of difficulties, but to exercise us in what would be altogether impossible to nature. Give this up, and you will merely sink down into a thing of nature and of the world — religion of common sense. You degrade and ruin the worship of God, unless it be sustained where nothing but divine power can; and the need of the divine Spirit has to be confided in, especially when we remember that worship proceeds in the unfettered assembly of Christians. There is the blessedness of believers, that if you are really faithful to the Lord, you will be in the place of His will, and working according to the love of His heart, and joining in such worship as demands nothing short of the presence and power of the Spirit of God.

Clearly, therefore, an unbeliever, or even a believer not yet emancipated from law, would spoil such worship. But then, if there be spirituality in an assembly, there will be detection, and removal in due time, though it is well not to be hasty. You know the patience of the Lord, who knows how to make manifest in due time what is for His glory. It is never right to be suspicious; on the other hand, it is wrong to be careless. Is it really argued that, because there was a Judas among the twelve, you should consciously let in Judases? But the Lord knows how to make the presence of one manifest. To turn him out should be a pain: but it is our duty to do so when there is a manifestation of that which calls for it even in one who is proved at last to be a saint.

In no case ought there to be haste; but always the exercise of dependence and confidence in God. Grace does and will keep up the hearts of the children of God. Legality brings in its own things, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with downcast feeling, and thus clouds in every way the children of God. These are not the ways to help saints: but by grace and truth better known, exhorting them to lean on the Lord, and so prove that the gracious God who has done such infinite things in Christ is always for them, and will take up their cause in every circumstance. May He grant that we hold fast and seek to know Him better, and grow in the brightest place than can belong to the Christian on earth — the place of worshippers, who, if they rejoice to adore the Father that called them and revealed Himself in grace, must worship God, according to the exigencies of His nature, in spirit and in truth.

W.K.